Finding & Analyzing Profitable Commercial Deals | Investors Round Table
In this episode of the Investors Round Table, we'll dive into the crucial process of finding and analyzing profitable commercial real estate deals. Logan, Matt, and I will share our insights into identifying market opportunities, evaluating risks, and building a steady pipeline of deals that deliver strong returns. Whether you're just starting or a seasoned investor, understanding how to navigate these areas is key to succeeding in commercial real estate.
Matt Anderson, Anderson Legal
Logan Freeman, FTW Investments
Get commercial real estate coaching, courses, and community to jumpstart your investment journey over at CRE Central: www.crecentral.com
Key Takeaways:
Identifying Emerging Markets:
- Track public infrastructure projects, city council meetings, and development plans to identify areas primed for growth.
- Look at residential market indicators like days on market to spot emerging neighborhoods. - Understand the local market dynamics, not just national trends.
Balancing Risk vs. Reward:
- Quantify and manage different types of risks, including feasibility, financial costs, and quality.
- Aim for a low basis to better withstand potential risks.
- Focus on buying right, as that can help mitigate issues even if other aspects of the project go wrong.
Maintaining a Deal Pipeline:
- Utilize Aristotle's advice - tell people what you're looking for, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.
- Build relationships and network actively to uncover off-market opportunities.
- Communicate your investment criteria clearly to everyone in your network.
Staying Competitive Without Overpaying:
- Prioritize understanding the seller's needs and offering unique solutions over just competing on price.
- Build rapport and relationships with sellers to create a competitive advantage.
- Consider the "blue ocean strategy" to find ways to provide value without direct competition.
About Your Host:
Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors.
Episode Transcript:
Tyler Cauble 0:00
Are you looking to take the next step toward investing in commercial real estate? But don't know where to go? Series central offers a comprehensive education and coaching platform designed to help you get started. Our online courses cover a wide range of topics, from the fundamentals to advanced strategies, ensuring you have the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in this competitive industry. As a member, you'll gain access to our exclusive online community and monthly group coaching calls, providing you with valuable networking opportunities and personalized guidance from experienced professionals, whether you're a beginner or looking to take your career to the next level. Cre Central has the resources you need. Visit www.crecentral.com to learn more. Welcome back to the commercial real estate investor Podcast. Today, we're back at you with the investors roundtable. And considering it is October 16, 2024 it is the beginning of q4 and the fact that I just got back from a trip to Cancun in which I was planning for 2025 I figured today, let's dive into goal setting plans for 2025 what we hope to achieve, where we're taking our businesses. Really excited for this conversation today, guys, because my business has changed drastically over the last four to five years. A lot of that has been because of the podcast, because the YouTube. Logan, I know you're going through some changes with your businesses right now. Matt, I would imagine you're starting to evolve some of your outlook as well, based on some of the conversations that we've had. So I think that this is going to be a really interesting conversation, and to properly set the tone, Matt, I'm going to kick it off with you. Give us a little bit of background on your entrepreneurial journey with regards to real estate, right? So that we kind of know what's changing for you the road ahead, where you been,
Speaker 1 1:53
yeah, man, well, you know, we started about a decade ago dipping our toes in the water in real estate investing and bought house hacks, small flips, things of that nature. Started working as a w2 as an attorney. Eventually started my own law firm, and I used to take, you know, like, seller lead calls in my office as a WT to lawyer. So I'd be like, hanging up. I'd be like, talking to a lawyer on the phone, like, Dan, man, I need to call you back. I got it. I got something else I gotta deal with. Hang up and answer my seller lead, you know, while I'm in, my boss didn't know that, but, uh, so that's kind of how I started, yeah. And so, you know, was always setting goals along the way, tracking my net worth, doing different things like that. And I actually found a journal not very long ago. I'd probably find it close by. I found a journal from like six, seven years ago where I was setting my goals, about wanting to get into commercial, wanting to get to financial freedom, all these things I wanted. So for me, setting goals has been extremely instrumental every step of the way, every time I wanted to level up or achieve something or obtain financial freedom. So love
Tyler Cauble 3:04
it. Yeah, that's great. Logan. Logan, what about you? Man, tell us a little bit about your background. What got you to where you are today?
Logan 3:10
Yeah. I mean, I probably am. Am one of the most perennial and most profound goal setters that anyone has has ever seen. And I'm actually a recovering achiever, and I'm going through a 12 step process to try to not identify my love that I receive and the way that I feel about myself from achieving. So be very careful with goal setting. Okay, because I have a I have a very strong relationship with it, and it can get you to a certain place for sure, but I got so focused on achieving goals that ultimately were the wrong goals, and by the time that it was too far in and I was going to achieve it regardless, because I am an achiever, the damage had been done. And so frankly, I have, I have really revamped the way that I I set my goals and my annual visions, and really try to focus on 12 week sprints, guys. So really focusing on 90 days. Because what I have learned over the last two and a half years is, if you want to make God laugh, tell them your plans, and I tell you what like it'll always, always, you know, just something that I think I want to have, have happen I work towards, I find out that, you know, that's the wrong the wrong thing. So 90 days is typically a really good, I think, metric to be focused on, whether that be your your health or your business. But I still do track my what I call profit producing activity. And most valuable priorities every single day through an app. And you know, it's scientifically proven this app to really help. If you focus on three areas of your, of your of your life, it's just your energy, right? I talk a lot about zest and bringing the best energy that you possibly can on a regular basis your work. So what we're talking about here, and then your love and your life, right? And all three of those things have to try to be optimized, because I optimized in 2021, 2022 for work, and was able to do $92 million of real estate. But what was the result of that? Well, a not so happy wife, 3040, get, you know, pounds gained and some really bad habits and not very, very good health. So I've kind of revamped the way that I think about, you know, how I go about setting those goals with an overarching theme of just trying to be a better version of myself today than I was yesterday. And I have my measurables that I track on a regular basis, but I don't really look past 90 days, you know, at this point, because I don't want to be climbing the ladder just to get to the top and realize it's, it's leaning against the wrong wall, you know.
Tyler Cauble 6:11
Yeah, that's be a little detrimental to figure out that you're climbing the roof of the wrong house. If that's the case, right Question of the day, if you're joining us live is, what are your goals for 2025 we want to know. Jump in if you want us to hold you accountable. I'll say them on the podcast. It will be forever, permanently minted in the digital world out there. That is what your goal is for 25 so jump in. Let us know. As far as my background knows, my background goes you all probably know this already, but in 2018 I left the boutique development firm that I was working for and started my own commercial real estate brokerage. Now that same year, I started a commercial property management company. And those have really grown together, but the thing that really started to change the way that I do business was in 2020 when the covid shutdowns happened, I started this YouTube channel. I started this podcast. And really started going all in on that, not all in back then, compared to what we're doing today, but I was very consistently creating one video a week, one podcast a week, and each year since then, I've said, let's double down on the content this year. Let's double down on the content again. Let's double down again. You do that a couple years in a row, and it starts to really compound. And so I'm excited to to kind of share what my goals will be for 2025 because it's going to be very different from from how it historically has been. I think the three of us are all in very fortunate spaces to where we've probably had the goals of I want to make six figures in one year. I want to make seven figures in one year. And it's all of these monetary based goals that I'll tell you after hitting them feel so empty. It's not nearly as enjoyable like, you know, I had all the net worth goals and all that kind of stuff. And, man, it's nothing changes at all, right? You don't get a sense of accomplishment once you hit those. And to be fair, I think that that's that's coming from a perspective of we've hit those, right? So it's, it's easy for us to say, but I was disappointed when I hit those milestones, because it wasn't like a momentous occasion. Matt, you and I were in go buttons together. A lot of that mastermind goes through goal planning, goal setting, accountability, having a tribe of guys around you that that know what you're looking to accomplish, and they're going to hold you to it. I mean, walk us through what your what your goal planning is for 2025 and what's going to be changing for you moving forward.
Speaker 1 8:53
Yeah. And so for me, I always, you know, the goals are sort of the target, the immediate target, right? You know, whether it's 90 days or a year, you know, commonly people do a year ago, it's the target, but you got to understand why you're aiming at what you're aiming for, right? So for me personally, I always want to reflect and spend the time. What are my priorities? How have they shifted? Where have I come from? Where do I want to go? So one thing I always do, or typically do when I'm setting goals is I want to look backwards. I want to say what has happened in the last year? What have I done? Well? What have I not done? Well? Have I grown? How have I learned? And I want to go back five or 10 year years, and have some gratitude and have a feeling of abundance and love for the journey I've been on. And for me, that gets me in a better middle space, right? Because it's like, I mean, for me, personally, 10 years ago, I was in jail. I was sitting at a jail cell with $170,000 in debt. So you know, for me, it's easy, but that that sort of starting energy is very helpful for me, because it's like, legitimately, yeah, like, literally, literally,
Tyler Cauble 9:57
okay, well, tell us a story you can't. It
Speaker 1 10:01
only for 48 hours. It was a stupid law school. It was alcohol related to law school. But it's easy for me to have gratitude from where I came from, I didn't murder somebody or anything like that. Come on. Calm down, allegedly, but yeah. But my point is, I think it's good to start big picture and kind of narrow down, right? So, like, what do I want my life to look like in five or 10 years? Like, what's my you know, vivid vision is a great book for this. What's my vision for my life? What are my priorities? Um, because, similar to what Logan said, I got carried away with, like, getting really detailed on the financial goals, and then turned around and my marriage wasn't where I wanted it to be, and my health wasn't one where I wanted where I wanted it to be. And like Jim Rohn, he does one of my favorite gold setting and he he says in his goal setting session, one of the things he says is, don't forget to count the cost, right? So anyways, that's what I that's how I want to like, to anchor it. And so based on those whys, based on those priorities, then, okay, what are the things that are going to get me there? Right? If I could do one thing in the next year that's going to get me closer to that priority, to that why? What would it be? And I just start, you know, so there's a lot of time of thinking in meditation on this sort of thing, and then as time goes by, you revamp it. So for me, this year was about growing and building the law firm. And it's starting to feel like I'm going to go back to my real love a little bit with my personal energy and time, which is real estate. You know, I still have my health goals and my family goals and my spiritual goals, things that nature. But when it comes to the business, I want 2025, to be a year of deal making for me again. Um, so personally, that's, that's where I'm going with it. Whatever else, yeah, I
Tyler Cauble 11:50
was going to say me, what does that look like? Specifically for you? Like, if 2025 is going to be about deal making, and I'm, I'm asking you, because we're going to hold you accountable, obviously, like I said, Yeah, we're putting it in the airwaves. What? What does that mean that by the end of 2025, you want to have accomplished? I
Speaker 1 12:07
don't know yet. I'm actually still figuring this out. So I've got the the next thing in front of me is more on the law firm. I need to delegate and get some of these pieces figured out. That's so so much of my time not being sucked up. Yeah, yeah. And I don't have an exact, clear vision. I've got a few things I'm trying to figure out. Do I want to be a part of a fund or just keep the partnership model? There's some things. So I don't have it figured out yet. It's going to be a little bit of a process for the next couple months, but I know next year, at the end of it, I want to be talking about the deals I've done in the passive income, I've increased in the wealth I've built from doing the deals. That's great, man,
Tyler Cauble 12:43
it sounds like you and I are in the same boat. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but it sounds like a key hire is going to be pivotal for you moving forward. Logan, what's going on in your world in 2025
Logan 12:53
Yeah, a couple frameworks that I want to kind of introduce are the first being addition by subtraction and singularity of focus. You know, I think that it's really easy to get red, pretty thin and be master, sorry, a jack of all trades and a Master of None, right? So really doubling down on what I think can be a huge year in regards to real estate, and that is real estate transactions, facilitating real estate transactions, being a part of them, and figuring out how to continue to build upon the brokerage components and foundation that I have set. So a little bit on that front is like, look, you know, I've, been in the brokerage world for about seven or eight years now. We've had some success. I've got people underneath me working on a regular basis, so it's leading that organization in a really effective manner. So what I'm thinking about on that front is, what are my standards? And the standards being really important, because we're talking about goals here. But like Tyler just mentioned, like once you hit a goal, that goal is now your new baseline, right? And so you have to define what winning actually means for you. And let this is the dichotomy of goals, because if you go set out to do $100 million in real estate transactions in a year. Let's just say, okay, and your previous best was $40 million and you end up at $75 million is did you fail? You failed on the goal of doing $100 million but you almost doubled what you have done previously, right? And so you have to make winning really achievable for yourself, and I think that is really important for people to keep in mind. And so I have standards, standards of conduct in my health, in my relationships, and in my business, and how I'm trying to show up on a regular basis. The other, the other framework, I would say, is, you know, something we have. Really mention here we've talked about the what of what we're trying to accomplish, but, like, I heard somebody the other day was talking about, you know, I'm actually focused on who I am doing life and business with, and what comes of that if I surround myself, you guys just mentioned gobundance, who I surround myself with things are going to happen. Because I often say, opportunities don't just float out there in thin air. They're always connected to somebody. And if you're connected with people that are holding themselves to a high standard, you know, opportunities are going to come to you. So I've got some very specific, you know, 75 to 90 day goals that I am focused on right now. And it's one. Number one is to be like Tyler cauble on on YouTube. You know, I have zero YouTube presence, right? And so I've got over 300 videos on LinkedIn, and I'm putting all this content out, and that's great, don't get me wrong, but people don't go to LinkedIn just for video content. Where do they go for that, the second largest search engine in the world, which is YouTube. So big goal of optimizing my YouTube, the second component of this is, is raising the L, you know, the the productivity, so the production value of those videos, and so instead of me just being behind the screen and a camera actually getting some nice, you know, components of that. I think that's a big one for me as well. And then, you know, I have this heroic app that I have mentioned that I try to optimize my energy, my my work and my love, and it gives me a score. And I'm at like, 87 right now. I want to be on average and 90% you know, I want to be optimizing my heroic soul force so I can go out there and continue to bring the energy that I want to bring. And that encompasses a lot of different things. It's a lot of habits and and things that I'm trying to work on. And I think that through that framework, if I continue to do those activities on a regular basis, the goals that I know that I have and I want to achieve, they will be achieved. But I'm redefining what winning looks like for me. Because if I go out and do $75 million instead of $100 million and I only did 40 last year, that's a win, you know? I mean, that is a win, right? And so previous life for me, that would have been in a journal. I'm, you know, I'm sitting in December, and I've only done $80 million in real estate, so to achieve that goal, I've got to really do some drastic things to try to get to $100 million that might make myself. The cost of doing that could be a lot higher than the actual reward. So just a few frameworks to kind of think about is standards that you have for yourself, who you're doing your business and life with, and then addition by subtraction and singularity of focus is really what I'm honing in on right now.
Tyler Cauble 17:45
Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, it's, it's wild to go back and look at the YouTube channel now because, I mean, we're officially, we're at 542 videos, which is really hard for me to believe. I can't believe we have that much content out there. Yeah. And by the end of 2025 I'm planning on having over 700 videos, right? Because, I mean, we're doing one produced video a week. We're doing well, and we'll be implementing shorts. We'll probably be over 1000 videos, honestly, next year, because I think that YouTube just counts shorts in that. But we're doing one produced video a week. I'm doing one to two live streams a week. I mean, you start adding up the map. I mean, that's 150 just on full length, like 30 to 60 minute videos right there. Just the amount of content that somebody could come in and consume from our conversations alone is pretty incredible. So so my my goals, I'm starting to take the social media side of things a little more seriously this year. You know, for the past few years, I've said, All right, what would it look like to double down on it again? And I think this year really, my thesis is like, what does it look like to 10x what we've been doing and really go all in on this. So that, to me, means we're gonna start producing somewhere between 50 and 100 pieces of content a week. And that sounds like a lot, until you start really thinking about it, it's like, okay, well, I'm already doing one blog post a week. I'm doing one YouTube video a week. I'm doing a couple of live streams, right? So that stuff you can then take and as annoying as I find Gary Vaynerchuk, one thing that he does nail is go out and create 1000 pieces of content from one right? It's like the one piece of actional advice I think he's ever given. But so you know that blog post becomes five tweets, it becomes a LinkedIn post, it becomes, you know, whatever, right? So we can start to recycle a lot of the content that we're already producing. So I've hired a full time social media manager to start pumping out that content on January one. Because we're already creating it, we might as well start recycling it and making sure that it's getting out there. To where everybody is. The next thing I need to do, Matt, we were kind of talking about this earlier, is I've got to make a key hire. I need to hire either a COO or an operations manager to take over and run the day to day of the cobble group and parasol management. I've got five brokers at the cobble group now. I've got three full time employees at my property management company. We manage about 2.1 million square feet of commercial and that is too much for me to handle with everything else that I want to focus on. And we we really had this conversation, quite a bit on this, this forum retreat that I was at, where the bigger your company gets, the more you need to focus, right? You can't do marketing and sales and operations and this and that, because you'll do none of them properly, right? You have to start making these key hires. And the one thing that I'm better at than anybody else, at least on my team is creating content, right? That's one thing that I know, with the knowledge that I have built up over the last 10 years, I can go out there and just really continue to crush so I need to hire somebody else to kind of run the day to day there. So if you're listening, and you are a broker that wants to come work with us, or you have a hell of an operations background, and you know how to run companies. And you want to take this brokerage, in the property management company, and grow it, reach out, because the brokerage, I'd like to get to three to five locations in the next five years, outside of Nashville. So we're ready to start scaling that. And then the other big thing is focus on the CRA accelerator and the brokers mastermind. Those are two different groups that I've got going now, the Siri accelerator, which I'll, you know, hear at the intro of all of these podcasts. That's our mastermind. It's group coaching for commercial real estate investors, for aspiring commercial real estate investors, and it's doing phenomenally well. I only add like we started it last year, I added 16 members last year. So far this year, I've added 76 and net, we're planning on adding about another 20 by the end of this year, and then 120 to 150 sometime next year. So it's growing, but I'm not growing it so fast that it's unwieldy. And to where the students get lost in the mix, because I'm very hands on with that program, and so I want to be able to take the time and dedicate the time properly to it. Logan and I just launched, I mean, last night was the first class the brokers mastermind, that is a group coaching program specifically for commercial real estate brokers that want to go earn a million dollars a year or more in commissions. I've done it. Logan's done it. Logan has taught other guys how to do it, and so we are ready to start really growing that and focusing on education. My overarching goal right now at this time is to become the premier educational resource on commercial real estate. So that'll be a combination of the YouTube channel, that'll be the podcast, that'll be the blog, that'll be our newsletter, right? It's all these different touch points to where we can just share how to invest in commercial real estate, how to be in commercial real estate, how to get started, because that's exciting to me. I really have enjoyed that side of things. And again, that's not the trajectory that I was originally on. It's interesting how things changed in 2020 just by starting a YouTube channel. It's kind of, you know, a little bit different of an approach, I guess, which, which has been a lot of fun. Matt, talk to us about how, you know, Logan kind of mentioned, you know, hitting goals and then feeling unfulfilled. I touched on that as well. Talk to us through how, because, I mean, everybody listening to this podcast is probably planning for 2025 right? They're probably sitting there going, what goals should I set? Right? And if you have zero commercial properties, set the goal to buy one. If you have one commercial property, set it to buy two, right? Just make it simple, and then break it down into, you know, actionable items. But I want to know Matt, like, how have your goals changed over the last five to 10 years because the way that you look at goals, the way that you set goals, the things that you hold yourself accountable to, at least for me, have drastically changed over the 10 year period. I would love to hear like what your thoughts are on that
Speaker 1 24:37
Yeah, and it sounds like me and Logan have gone through something similar, which is I was, I would say I was holding too tightly onto my goals. And a theme of the last year or two of my life has been journey. It's about the journey, not the destination. So I had this problem in my life where I'd set these goals and I'd become obsessed with them, which is a good recipe for success. But the problem is, then, you know, if I did. Hit them or I hit them, I became consumed by it, right? And it became about that outcome. I've realized, as I've matured a little bit, and for you know, hopefully a little bit, that it's really more about the journey. It's about who I'm becoming, than about whether I hit a certain target or not. And so that's become a big shift for me. Another thing that's been a big shift for me is trying to always reassess my priorities, because it's easy to get caught up in these goals and forget what your real priorities are. And there were many times in my life where, you know, I would say, you know, the most important things to me are my family and my, you know, spirituality and health. And then I'd look at how I spent my time, and it was not at all reflective of that. And so for me, one thing strategically that I actually started doing was I started to do so I'd always make a list of like five to seven goals, and usually one or two would be business or finance related. One would be health related, one would be family related, right? Or about my marriage or whatever, and and always the business and the finances were at the top, and typically marriage or spirituality or health or something like that was at the bottom. And I would say that my health is super important, but on my goal list, it was at the bottom right. And so I started being really thoughtful about that. And so one year, I literally just flipped it like my marriage was not doing the way I wanted it to be. So I put doubt as number one. And I even, you know, and I was like, if all, if I don't get any of this stuff, I'm gonna get this one. And I went, my marriage went from a four to a 10, and in six months. Now I didn't make as much money that six months, but I was not unhappy about it, right? And so, like, so I think that's important for people to remember, because, you know, a lot of people just talk about the finance and you don't want to lose, you know, and I journaled last year. I Journal last year. I guess I'll code it, because I think I used expletives in my journal. But I was like, I was like, you know, if I, if I double my my net worth and in the next year, but I risked my marriage and my health, will it have been worth it in no, you know, with expletives around it, it's like, but we can't. It's so easy to get caught up in that, you know, it's so easy to get so down the rabbit hole of a goal. And you look around and you're like, What am I doing? You know, you don't know how you got where you are. So that's, I think that's been the biggest shift for me, is constantly reassessing my why, reassessing my priorities, reassessing what I want out of this life, and making sure that that is reflected in my 90 day goals, my year goals,
Tyler Cauble 27:34
yeah, what a great way of looking at it, right? Because we say things, but we don't necessarily take action to prove that that's true, right? It's almost like we're saying it just to make ourselves feel better. Yeah, my health is a high priority. But yeah, it's number 10 on your list of 10 goals, right? Yeah, yeah. Logan, what about you? Man,
Logan 27:54
man, one question I'll just have everybody ponder is a mentor of mine asked me, Who are you building the castle for? And that put everything in perspective, and delineating my identity from being an achiever to just being the best version of myself daily, and surrendering my ideas and wills to Gods was a massive relief in my life. And I'm still, like I said, a recovering achiever, and I'm still going to have that in my DNA. But if you just ask yourself, Who you're building the castle for, that really puts all of those other goals in priority, and can really help you answer the question of what you should be focusing on. So I'll just leave it at that.
Tyler Cauble 28:46
Yeah, that's that's funny, because that that kind of leads into what I wanted to say the parting words I mean when I when I first got into commercial real estate, when I first got into business, every single goal that I had was financial, and every single time I hit those goals, it was total BS, honestly, like, it was just like, Okay, I hit that. It didn't change anything for me. It was, it was the year. This was probably three or four years ago. I changed it to things that I wanted to accomplish that were actually meaningful, not just monetary, right? That the monetary goals started to come, which I thought was really interesting, right? Because I wasn't focused on I mean, if you focus on money, it's like watching paint dry. It's going to take forever go focus on other things, like Matt said, enjoy the ride, man. And here's the thing, too, if you're feeling behind on money, I'm going to be really honest with you. Everybody lies about how much money they make, what their net worth is. They lie to you by showing off their car on Instagram. They lie to you about talking about the watches that they're buying, because what you don't know is how much debt they have behind the scenes. And that, to me, is it's. Keeping Up with the Joneses, and it doesn't matter. Like Logan said, Who are you really building this castle for? You're not building it for them. You're building it for you, your family, whatever you you know you want it to be, so ignore everything else. Be better than who you were yesterday. Appreciate you guys for joining us this week's investors Roundtable. We'll see y'all in the next one are you looking to take the next step toward investing in commercial real estate? But don't know where to go. Siri central offers a comprehensive education and coaching platform designed to help you get started. Our online courses cover a wide range of topics, from the fundamentals to advanced strategies, ensuring you have the knowledge and skills needed to thrive in this competitive industry. As a member, you'll gain access to our exclusive online community and monthly group coaching calls, providing you with valuable networking opportunities and personalized guidance from experienced professionals, whether you're a beginner or looking to take your career to the next level. Cre Central has the resources you need visit www.crecentral.com to learn more you.
Each week, I'm going live at 8:30am CST for my "office hours" to answer your questions about commercial real estate on the show. Let's hear what you'd like to know when it comes to brokerage, investment, and development!