Joe Herrera comes from a long line of alcoholics and his family lived from paycheck to paycheck. With a lack of ideal role models in his family, Joe got terrible grades and he barely finished high school.

After graduation, he went on a 2-year mission with their church and this experience changed him as a person. Coming home, he knew he wanted to break those generational chains and make something of himself. He also knew he didn’t want to pursue college. Since he believed that he has a talent in sales, he decided to go into real estate.

Several years into the business, Joe decided to shift his focus and start a marketing technology company. Unfortunately, the app they developed was unable to reach the number of daily users they needed and they couldn’t raise the additional funds to keep going and the company eventually failed. 

In 2014, Joe went back to real estate full-time. But this time around, he wanted to do something different. He took what he learned from running his marketing tech company, which is the power of social media, and used it as leverage to blow up his real estate career.

Today, Joe Herrera is the Owner/Partner at Joe Taylor Group. He is also the Owner of Love Local Real Estate, Brokered by ΓEA⅃ Broker.  He believes that agents should focus on money-generating activities like building relationships and getting deals under contract.  That is why they’ve built a system that handles the technology, lead generation, and transaction management side of the business.

Let’s hear from Joe as he shares his journey, his insights on the challenges that the real estate industry is facing, and how his failures led him to success.

08:52 Why building a real estate business is not really a fun endeavor

Guy Gal has always been a problem solver. Growing up, he liked to solve complex problems especially when they affect people he cares about. He also liked to do it for those who deserve to be helped because they were exploited or mistreated. This had a great impact on how he made decisions in his life.

Guy started his first company in college and what started as a little weekend project eventually grew into a company with hundreds of employees.  Many years later, he realized that this was not how he wanted to live the rest of his life.  He wanted to live his life more deliberately and find something that he will enjoy doing forever. It didn’t matter how difficult or complicated it was, as long as it’s worthwhile.

Then he remembered how he, as a consumer, had both good and bad experiences with real estate. He wondered where that inconsistency came from and asked an agent about it. He was told that no matter how much creativity, effort and hard work an agent puts in a transaction, it’s the brokerage that gets the credit.  That’s why some agents prefer to have a company of their own without having to operate a brokerage to do it.

That’s when Guy had the idea of starting an “invisible” brokerage that will come in and do all the back-office work to serve the agent and his brand with no compromises whatsoever.

Let’s hear from Guy as he shares his insights about the real estate industry, his mission to go against the monoliths in the business,  and how his achievements paved the way for his company to earn the title - Company of the Year by INMAN.

07:24 Why Guy chose the real estate industry

When he was six, Rod Khleif and his family migrated from Holland and settled in Denver. They didn’t have much growing up. To put food on the table, his mother worked as a housemaid and did babysitting on the side. But his mom had an incredible work ethic and was a bit of an entrepreneur as well. With the money she earned from babysitting, she bought the house across the street from where they were living. Three years later, his mom was able to sell that house and make a $20,000 profit. He remembered his mom telling him that she made $20,000 in her sleep. This sparked his interest in real estate investing.

In his third year of being a real estate broker, he met a guy who taught him that up to 90% of our success in anything is our mindset and psychology.  This thought led him to 10x his income that year. In 2006, his net worth shot up to $17 million - while he slept.

But all that changed when the market crashed in 2008 when he lost a staggering $50 million. His net worth dropped by more than 70% and he felt he had to throw in the towel. This painful yet valuable lesson reminded him that the key to recovering from his losses was to work on his mindset.

Today, Rod Khleif is an accomplished entrepreneur, real estate investor, author, mentor, and community philanthropist who is passionate about business, life, success, and giving back. He is also the host of the top-ranked iTunes real estate podcast: The Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing where he advocates creating lifetime cash flow through multifamily properties.

Let’s hear from Rod as he shares his life’s journey and why real happiness cannot be achieved by having the life you always dreamed of but by giving back to those who truly need it.

06:04 How Rod lost $50 million

Visit his website: https://rodkhleif.com/

You can also join his Multifamily Bootcamp which is happening from Dec 3rd to 5th, 2021.  To get a special discount, text multifamily to 72345 with the code: rodfriend

Although Andrew Franklin’s father had a successful real estate business, he was against the idea that his children would follow in his footsteps. Somehow, he believed that the real estate agent will be eliminated in the future. So Andrew worked in investment banking for 6 years, primarily on mergers and acquisitions.

Here are ways to get in touch with Andrew:

Doug Gieck was managing ice cream shops when he got headhunted as a client care coordinator for a referral business under the REMAX Alliance brokerage.  He didn’t know anything about real estate then but he was able to learn his way around by making appointments for real estate agents.

06:22 What is 8z’s big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG)?

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-gieck-34b601a/

When Chris Craddock graduated college in 2000, he worked as a staff for a Christian ministry where he earned $20,000 a year.  After 3 years, his wife got pregnant and he knew he needed to earn more. This was when he looked into real estate investing and got the idea of talking to people who were in distress and offered to buy their houses. In the next four months, he ended up making 12 times as much as he did in a year doing his previous job.

To get in touch with Chris Craddock, check the links below:

Instagram: Chris Craddock @craddrock

Tamir Poleg started in the real estate industry as a construction worker 16 years ago. This experience allowed him to learn homes and construction from a fundamental level.  After earning a degree in economics, he joined the tech world with a couple of start-up companies doing mainly sales positions in Europe.

03:36 Why Tamir decided to go into the real estate world?

In 2005, Rivers Pearce started doing e-commerce and lead generation for an ad agency in Atlanta and then moved to Charleston and South Carolina.  Five years later, a real estate technology startup called BoomTown was looking for someone who can do search engine marketing and Rivers joined them as their 10th employee.

00:57 How Rivers came up with the weightless concept?

Growing up, Steve de Laveaga loved playing basketball. As a high school senior, he attended basketball camps at Cal Lutheran. Due to his athletic talent, he was offered a full academic scholarship and decided to take up Communications.

Upon getting his real estate license in 2000, Michael LaFido worked as a part-time agent and full-time high school health and physical education teacher. But with a growing family, he felt he was spreading himself too thin.  So in 2010, he decided to go into real estate full time.