Jul 23, 2019
James: Hey audience, welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast. Today, we have Adam Triple A Adams. Adam's one of the Facebook stars, I would say, in the real estate business in the multifamily space because he does a lot of things using social media and I'm proud to have him here. Adam owns, almost sounded at 770 units worth 54 million. And right now, he has been focusing on Oklahoma City to buy their deals and he's the Master Investor of the Year, nominated by Thing Realty. So Adam, do you want to introduce yourself?
Adam: Yeah, hi. Adam Adams, originally from Utah, I live in Denver, the host of the Creative Real Estate Lunch Club, host of the Creative Real Estate Podcast and very focused on syndicating deals. So raising equity and buying larger apartments, we closed on 150 units last week and we just want to keep that momentum going.
James: Hey audience, just a quick note, this is the first time we are streaming live into our Multifamily Investors Group to add value and to allow people to answer questions, real time. I mean, this is almost the ninth recording of the podcast and Adam definitely helped me here today. He helped me to set up this live streaming, which I always want to do from the beginning, but there's a lot of tricks to get it working and I'm so happy to have him help me here. And you can definitely ask questions in the comment box. So go ahead and ask and I'll try to answer as fast as possible, but thanks for joining today. This is the Achieve Wealth Podcast where we focus on value add real estate investing.
So Adam, Why don't you tell what has been your recent focus on the multifamily space?
Adam: Yeah, the main focus is trying to do what we can as a company to add value to other syndicators. So helping other people raise equity, helping other people learn how to do the business. Some of the people watching are personal friends of ours on Facebook right now, Mike Upload, Vincent John, Jesse's on here. Van2 says 'awesome'. It's what we're trying to focus on right now, is just add the most amount of value. See if we can help other people and inspire them to get into multifamily syndication. And we partnered with other people often, we'll help raise equity for deals that you're closing on so that's really what we focus on. 300 of the 700 doors that you mentioned, we personally operate every day and we're always looking for more of those deals, but we've also raised equity for other people's deals.
James: Awesome. Awesome. So, Adam, can you tell us, I mean, value add is important in value adding to other people's lives and just giving out content is very, very important as well. But in your experience, what has been the best business plan that you have seen in terms of value adding to a multifamily deal?
Adam: Okay. So when you're talking about value add to a multifamily deal, you mean the actual property, right? And you don't just mean adding value to other people?
James: No, no. We'll come to that some other time.
Adam: Yeah, we do small things. Like upgrading kitchens, flooring, the bathrooms, painting. So generally what we do for value add is that. We've also implemented what's called RUBS- ratio utility billing system to kind of make it so that the burden of paying for the utilities goes on the tenant instead of us. So we've done a few different things with five syndications that we've closed and it's always different. Just because I say I like RUBS, it doesn't mean you can do that in every single market or in every single neighborhood. Sometimes you can do it on a B class, but not on a C class. So there's not one thing that we do, but we obviously try to raise rents and cut every expense that we can and make the property run more efficiently.
James: Okay. Awesome. I mean, you have been nominated by Thing Reality as the Master Investor of the Year because you add a lot of value, right? But what do you think is the secret sauce to your success in adding value to others?
Adam: Honestly, I would say the one thing that kind of sets me apart or my team apart is that the way that we give is we give fully and willingly. A lot of folks that are doing the business either want to charge for every ounce of advice that they give or they want to not share it with other people because they feel like that's their secret sauce and they're only going to be able to make money if you don't make money. And I think that I've noticed that with some people, they're like, well, I don't want to teach people how to do RUBS because then all of a sudden they're going to make all this money. I want to buy them from them where I can start implementing this. And for us, it's a little bit different. We decide what do people need to know, what are the problems, what have we gone through? Like our own personal issues with running certain properties. And we try our best to just give those pieces of advice and not just part of them, but like in detail.
So when we share things like how we're utilizing Facebook algorithms to get our name out, like we share that. Most people would charge tens of thousands of dollars for that piece of Info on how to do that but we just want other people to grow with us. And I think because of that, people talk about us, they say: you should go to our conferences, you need to go to blue spruce conferences, you need to listen to Adam Adams or whatever because we don't hold back. And that's probably the big thing is as I see most people holding back or only doing it when they're getting charged or giving you some of it and saying, if you want to know the rest, you have to like, come and pay me or you have to do this or you have to do that. But not us, we just give freely.
James: Got It. So yeah, I think it's important to take leadership, right? I mean, not everybody wants to take that leadership. Leadership is really hard and I mean, I commend you for taking leadership and taking like what? Four different conferences in Denver, is that what do you guys do? That's hard. But I think you took the leadership and I commend you for getting that attention and the value that you bring, which is a win-win situation for you, for your investors and for the people who are attending the conference. So coming back to some of the engagement in Facebook, I think you are really good in understanding the algorithm of Facebook, right? So can you give a few tips to our audience and how can they grow their brand? How can they grow their presence on Facebook? And what should they use Facebook for? What should they use LinkedIn for? Because I think you are pretty well-established even on LinkedIn, right? So can you give us some tips on that?
Adam: Yeah, yeah. So to try to give that in a fast--- there's a lot of info there. And the reason I say that is because we have a 13-week raising money course that like teaches you. There are a lot of modules on Facebook and there are modules on LinkedIn and it just goes into tons of detail and I could never give you 13 weeks of info but the way I look at both of them is that this is how people are going to find you. I believe that one of the things that people do for vetting, vetting a new operator to go with or vetting a coach to hire or vetting a private money lender is they check out their references by going on their Facebook and scrolling through and seeing the types of content that they give. People don't do business with businesses anymore. People do business with people that they know, like, and trust.
So we use Facebook and LinkedIn to allow people to know who we are and they are different. And you said you think I'm pretty active on LinkedIn? I'm not that active on LinkedIn. I have a profile because I know I have to have a profile and Chad from our office has optimized the LinkedIn so that it has a whole bunch of keywords so that when people are looking for a syndicator that they find me instead of someone else. I have that and I need that and we use it and we do a private messaging on there and connecting with people. But where I really post the most is on Facebook. And that's one thing that I suggest to a listener is not to worry about having Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and all the other things, but to have Facebook and LinkedIn and a focus on one, where you just going to add value every day as much as you can.
And think about it like this, add value to your target audience. Now us, we have conferences, real estate conferences, and so I want to be able to sell more tickets to come to our conferences so I know who my target audiences are. It is somebody who's getting new into syndication so that's who I play to, that's who I help. I give the most amount of value as I can to teach that and I put that all over my Facebook so everybody knows exactly what we're doing. And as far as your listener, they might be only wanting to target accredited investors. So it just depends on who you're targeting. You might find more accredited investors on LinkedIn, but I find more aspiring syndicators on Facebook so that's how it works for me. Does that make sense?
James: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So that makes sense. In terms of who do you want to engage in both different platforms, right? So that's good. And also let's go to your favorite topic because you're one of the top 1% in the world in meetups, right? So tell me, I mean, I'm thinking about starting a meetup, but if I start one, what should I do to grow that meet up to the next level?You are the master of meetups.
Adam: I certainly try and as on our raising money course, there's a giant part for just the meetups and I'll give you the most I can in a short amount of time right now. Is number one, people want to be heard. This is big. So you're running a meetup and you're going to fail your people and they're going to stop coming if you don't let them be heard. So how can you let them be heard? This is how. You can allow every single person in the group to be able to share their name and what they're looking for. Why are they here today? Or what is their business? Or how can they help? Or even randomly enough to say, where do you plan to be in five years? And when people get to share, you know, I plan to be in multifamily or I need to close this, or I have a wholesale deal for you, whatever, when they are allowed and able to share that with the group, they feel like they got a ton of value.
And if you can just imagine being at one of these meetings, if you have something to say, and most people are shy, even extroverted people are pretty shy. And so if what you do in your group is make everybody, like if they want to talk to people, they have to literally go and reach out to everybody and say, hi, my name's Adam Adams. I buy apartment buildings with my friends. If you want to be my friend, come and talk to me. If they had to shake everyone's hand to say something like that, then it would be very difficult for them. They would only get a few people in the group. So when you give them a chance to be heard, hey, let's go around and introduce yourself, tell us what you're looking for. And then I get to say the same thing. My quick pitch. I'm Adam Adams. So I buy apartment buildings with my friends. If you want to be friends, come and let me know.
And if I can feel that I shared that with the whole room, I already know that the specific people in the room that resonate with that thing that I said, will come to me. So I get a ton of value by actually being able to do that. And so that's the first thing, let them all be heard. The second thing is I would say...
James: Can I ask a question on the number one?
Adam: Yeah, yeah.
James: So don't you think it's going to take up a lot of time? Let's say you have like 40 people in the first meetup, isn't that going to take a lot more time from the meetup? Because a lot of time, we want to do a lot of networking or presentation so that people learn. I mean some of the introduction itself can take a lot more, right? So how important is that introduction by everybody in every meetup?
Adam: It's extremely important. It takes time, but it doesn't take time from the meetup. It takes time, but it actually adds a lot of value to the meetup. And when you are saying, oh, I want them to be able to network instead, well, this is the best way to let them start networking. Because then somebody's going to say, Hey, I just want to lend passively. I just want to lend my money passively. Someone else is going to say, Hey, I'm an operator, I'm raising equity. Someone else might be saying, I have a wholesale deal available. Somebody else might say, I'm an fix and flipper and I need a wholesale deal. But if you don't let them share that with everybody, then they're going to have a harder time finding that right person. And if it's your group, James that they're just going to have to network just to get that out, there's a high probability, an extremely high probability that the wholesaler might not be able to find the fix and flipper and the syndicator might not be able to find the passive investor and the passive investor might not be able to find the syndicator. So you have to intentionally facilitate it.
And when we think that we're taking time away, then we're already destroying ourselves. It's not taking time away, it's giving a lot of time and value to everybody in there to be able to share that. And they're going to keep coming back and back and back and your group, instead of having 40 next week, it's going to have 45 the week after. But if you start with 40 and you don't let them share that, a lot of them are going to be like, Eh, I didn't really get value out of it so some of them won't come. So now it will be 35 and then it'll be 30 and then 20 and then it will diminish and dwindle. And I see this happen all the time. That's one of the big things that set my meetup apart is that we do a few different things that nobody does, even if they sound counter-intuitive, but because we do them and we do them regularly and religiously and continue to do them, people grow.
So we grew a group, it was a lunch club and I don't know how many people you think would go to a lunch club, but I used to think it'd be like six people, maybe a dozen people. I dreamed I was like, oh, what if I could have 30 people at lunch? That'd be crazy. And all of a sudden, we had it where it was 40 every week, then 60 every week and then we went all the way up to 176 people, weekly on Thursday in the middle of lunch, people drove, came, networked, learned, and then drove home. Spent four hours in the middle of Thursday. I would never could have imagined that we would have had a hundred people a few weeks in a row or 176 people. But we did and that's because we did it differently.
James: Okay, awesome. Continue to your second point.
Adam: The second point was to not sell. And I think it's important to sell. I mean, it's a benefit to your business to sell, but like we're talking about the conferences, which directly correlate with the meetups. I don't have anyone selling at my conferences.
You've been to one of my conferences, right?
James: No. Not yet. I need to make it to Denver.
Adam: Okay. So the conferences are no sales pitch and I needed you to say that you've been there because like most people think that obviously, you're going to have a sales pitch. How are you going to afford to have a conference? So it's just we never sell anything. We don't have a product. We don't have a service. We don't do anything. We don't have any of the speakers that are flying in on their own dime, they're not allowed to share a coaching program. They're not allowed to share a product or a service that they're going to sell. The only people that are allowed to even share that are just the booth sponsors. We have some sponsors that can sell, but the speakers are there just to add value.
And that's the same thing that should happen with your meetup groups. A lot of people, they bring in outside speakers. The REIAs that's how they make money is these outside coaches come and sell and like once you've seen the same selling speaker like two years in a row and you're going to the same REIA and it's that same no investor coming to sell more of their note course, you don't want to go anymore. You've decided, I've already gotten sales pitched by this guy twice, there's no reason to go again. So you actually stay away from it. With mine, every single attendee understands that they're not going to be sold anything and so they attend over and over and over and that's something that we've built in. We just added that or not added that, something that we built in in the beginning. We wanted to make sure that we had that when nobody else did.
Because regardless of what you're doing or what you're not doing, James and Listener, the best way to be different, the best way to get people to come to your events is to do something 100% different. So if everybody else is meeting at dinner, you need to meet at lunch. If everybody else has a free meeting and ours were free but if everyone else is just free, free, free, free, I'm sorry, but you've got to charge 200 or even 2000 a year because now, you can set yourself apart. You can say everyone in this group is more serious than anyone in any other groups because we're paying 2000 to be here instead of all those free groups. So it's not like you down-talk, talk badly about any other group, but you always set yourself apart some way.
Every other group out has a $200 a year or a $20 per day meeting. Well, then you say, hey, we don't need that, we're just going to be free. And you capitalize on the thing that makes you different. You capitalize that you're the only group in the city that doesn't sell, you capitalize that you're the only group that's 100% focused on multifamily or you capitalize that you're the only group that facilitates letting people introduce themselves. All the other places, they're so worried about being rigid and strict and nobody feels like they get heard. And that's why we do it differently.
Whatever you are doing differently and that's the third thing, is just make sure that you find a way to set yourself apart. I don't care if you charge more, charge less, charge nothing, meet at lunch, meet on Saturday, meet on Sunday, just do it differently and that will set you apart. So those are three really good points.
James: Okay, awesome. I think that's a huge value that you're giving out there. So I think apart from that, I mean, I want to go to a more personal level, right? So I mean, why do you do what you do? So I mean, why do you do so much of work and in terms of getting into real estate, multifamily, you know, why do you do what you do?
Adam: All right, so I buy apartments and syndicate deals because I like passive income and I go the extra step and do something that no one else is doing. Like hosting conferences every year, hosting meetups. Last year we hosted over 200 events. It's insane. I'm hosting a podcast. Why do I do those extra things is because I legitimately want to add value and give back and at the same time, it's just wanting to passionately see other people succeed. I know and understand that I can partner with somebody. If I can teach you how to find a deal, but you don't know how to raise money, all of a sudden, you'll find a deal and I'll raise all the money. We'll manage it, right? If I can teach you how to raise money and I go and find a deal, well you can partner with me and now we can do this together. You get value and I get value.
So to me, why do I go the extra mile and to put out content, put out videos, podcasts? Why did I teach you today James? I hope we don't mind sharing this, but we walked through before this, we walked through a Facebook live, right? And so that benefits me a lot, right? It benefited you and it's going to continue to help you and I love that.
But at the same time, well, I get to be your very first guest that goes Live in your Facebook group, right? So I just believe that in giving first, if you always give first, somehow you'll get it back. You don't have to worry about life if you can just focus on, how can I add value to James today? How can I add value to the listener today on their own meetup groups? And all of a sudden, I helped you with your meetup group or someone else with their meetup group and their meetup become super famous because they just heard this one podcast and learn three random things. And now they call me and say, Adam Adams, I want you to be my first speaker. I want you to be one of my speakers next year at my meetup group, will you accept the invitation? And now I have the opportunity to go and grow my name across the US because a lot of different people heard this podcast guest. So it's just give first and you'll always be able to grow.
James: Awesome. Awesome. So can you tell me a proud moment in your real estate journey, one moment where you really felt proud that you did something? Can you share it with us?
Adam: Yeah. I'll give you one that you weren't even expecting. For two years, I grew my business. For two years, I focused on my business so much and one day my son came up to me and unfortunately, I was on Instagram trying to grow my brand. And my son said to me, hey, can you play this game with me? I said, sure, give me one minute. And I thought it would take one minute, but it took like five or 10 minutes. And so he came back up. He goes, Dad, you always do this. You're always on your phone growing your brand. He didn't say that, but he's seven. But he's like, Dad, this is what you always do. You're always working. And I looked at him and then I got a tear in my eye and I was like, holy cow. Then I went to a mastermind group with Rod Cleef. He runs this awesome Mastermind group. So I went there and Jason Peril, he's listening now, he was one of the people at the group and I poured my heart out and I just said, man, I feel like my business is going well. I'll tell you, I just got my feelings hurt and I never knew how like this impacted my kids that I was focusing on working. So James, when you say, what's something that you're proud of It's ever since then, I actually made a conscious change and I found a way to spend a little bit more time with my kiddos. When I'm with them, I'm not on my phone, I'm not on my Instagram. I'm looking at them in the eye. And I try now and it happens most of the time. One of my kids comes up, dad, can you play this game with me? I shut everything else off, I look at them in the eye and said, I'd love to, let's play that game. It sounds so good and then I play it, I put my heart and soul into it, we play for an hour. So if there's anything that I'm proud of is that the business is going fine, it's growing, people know who we are, we're getting deals, we're closing deals, we're raising money. But I finally found a way to start focusing on my kids more and that's really what makes me feel so choked up.
James: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I was in the Mastermind too, so I remembered that time when you went up there and tell that story.
Adam: And I was crying, right?
James: Yeah. You had a teary eye and very vulnerable. It's a moment. I know in social media sometimes it can be addictive and you are trying to respond to one and sometimes your kid needs that one minute and sometimes that one minute becomes five minutes and it's just not good. So that's good. So let's go to newbie questions. What are the top three to five different types of advice that you want to give to newbies who want to get started into this syndication and being operative for multifamily? What do you want to give us an advice?
Adam: All right, I think this is an important question. So I'm really grateful that on your podcast you ask this to guests. So the top three to five things that I would say to a Newbie, and hopefully these are impactful for anyone. So if you're listening and you are new, take super good note of this and pay close attention because I'm trying to give you value from the mistakes that I've made. So here's a couple of things.
Number one, just freaking start. Just start. Everybody has all this fear and it holds them back. So just find a way to get over that. That's number one.
Number two, when partnering, don't let the blind lead the blind. It's insane. So what I'm saying is, you're a Newbie and you think you're going to partner with one or two or three other brand new people, none of you have ever done a deal, but you think that like somehow this is going to work. I'll tell you, it's way too hard still to raise money. It's way too hard to get a broker to take you seriously and give you a deal. It's way too hard to manage a property with no experience. So instead of partnering and letting the blind lead the blind, align yourself with somebody who's already doing the business. Find a way to add value to James. Find a way to add value to Adam Adams. Find a way to add value to somebody and you take on a responsibility of raising equity, managing the property, finding the deal, whatever. Putting in earnest money, putting in passive money, however you want to do it but align with somebody who has a track record. Very, very important.
The next one that I would say is when partnering, it's very critical that you understand that you do not have to get married on the first date. It's critical. What I mean by that is all of a sudden you say this is a good person, I'm a good person, we should just partner. And all of a sudden, you form a team but you've never done business. What I would say instead is to court or date that person for a while. Go on a date with them with the first property, go on a date with them with the second property. And then if you just absolutely just bond so much, then get married. Then say, we've been connecting so well as we've gone. So instead of just doing this, how we've been doing this, how about we decided to form a brand new company and we really make this something special; now you get married. So those would be the three main pieces of advice that I would share with a new listener.
James: Okay. Yeah. If you guys want to start dating some experience sponsor, I mean just be more active in the group. Ask simple questions. I mean, there's so many people in the group. I mean, I'm so proud of the group. We have like 770 people right now and I just look at the stats, almost like 650 people are active in the group, which is really good. And just start asking simple questions and there are so many people help each other, right? So do that and add value to others, whatever you know you want to share and you can actually absorb as well. So you can start from there if you want to start the dating game that Adams has been talking about.
All right, Adam, thanks for joining us today. Do you want to let the listeners know how to get hold of you?
Adam: Sure. For those of the listeners who are active on Facebook right now, if you're not already friends with me, feel free to add me. But I'll tell you one quick thing; I won't accept you unless you write a message. I get so many randoms and I don't know like what country they're in, if they're real, if they're a robot. So just send me a message and an invite and I'll definitely add you if you haven't already. The other place that I would say is if you're just listening on the podcast, just go to realbluespruce.com, real like real estate and then blue spruce, the tree. And that way you can find my bio, you can find my email, you find anything about me there and you can get ahold of me. So realbluespruce.com
James: All right Adam, thanks guys for joining us. This is actually almost the ninth recording of our podcast and we are planning to launch our podcasts by the end of this month, end of April. So hopefully, I'm right now on track to launch it and it's going to be a blast because there's going to be a lot of commercial operators and people are going to be coming and sharing their real style, how do they add value in their properties? And I hope to get good reviews from everybody after we launch and that's it. Thanks, Adam for joining us.
Adam: Thank you.