#146: From Immigrant to Investor with 2,200 Units

Welcome to The Accelerated Investor Podcast with Josh Cantwell, if you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has personally invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He’s also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn’t dream about doing deals, he actually does them and so do his listeners and students. Now sit back, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and your investing with The Accelerated Investor Podcast.

Josh: So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor. This is Josh. I am so honored to be with you to share a little bit more about multifamily investing in this podcast. I’m going to be interviewing a gentleman named Reed Goossens. Reed is actually an immigrant to the United States from Australia, actually immigrated to the United States chasing his former girlfriend. Now, his wife, who he met in Spain on the beaches of Spain, came to the states with no extra cash, no experience with real estate, nothing. Read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Got very interested in real estate. Spend two and a half years on the sidelines not doing deals, but reading, learning, analyzing deals, but never making an offer.

Josh: And so in this podcast, you’re going to see how Reed grew from no experience as an immigrant Australian into the United States to now having a portfolio of over 2200 units of apartments. He’s done 10 massive apartment deals and an over two hundred and fifty-million-dollar portfolio. You’re also going to hear Reed’s six tips and six strategies for raising private capital for deals. Doesn’t matter if you’re funding a business. A single-family deal, a multi-family deal, residential or commercial.

Josh: You’re going to love these six tips from Reed, the tips that he’s learned over the past eight years of buying, syndicating and managing multi-family deals and large apartment building. So hope you love this interview for Accelerated Investor with Reed Goossens.

Josh: Reed, I’m so excited to have you on Accelerated Investor. Thanks so much for carving out some time. I’ve been looking forward to this podcast interview for a long time. So Reed, give us a little color about you. But kind of start with telling us a little bit more about something that you’re working on right now, today that you’re most excited about. You know, there’s a lot of things going on in the world. COVID, the election. There’s a lot of people that have a very positive outlook on the economy. Some people have a very negative outlook. What I’d like to hear from entrepreneurs is people who are in the game mixing it up, stirring the pot and doing amazing positive things in the middle of all this chaos. So what are you working on right now that you’re most excited about?

Reed: Well, first and foremost, thanks for having me on the show. Might really awesome to be here. Yeah, I guess there is a little bit of uncertainty in the market right now. COVID, election, fires, civil unrest, all the good stuff that we want in a recession. So what else can you ask for? But what I’m looking at right now is we’re still doing deals. Were still actively raising money on some deals in Austin, Texas. Really excited about to be partnering with our first ever private equity firm, which is really a new step in a new direction for the type of capital we’re going out and chasing.

Reed: But I can talk a little bit more about how we’ve got to that point, but that right now is what I’m working on. That’s a deal we just were given opportunity to have a crack at this deal off market about two years ago. I won’t mention the name. Two out of the three sellers didn’t want to sell to us. Fast forward two years later. It’s now gone full circle. We had over forty five offers on. This deal is now. We bought it eight million dollars more than what we pinned it for two years ago. So things have changed. But we also have different equity source today, which is also really, really exciting for that new relationship to blossom.

Josh: Awesome. So tell me about that deal again. If you’re working on the middle of it, you probably won’t talk too much about it. But off market deal. Everyone, of course, the stuff that’s on the market, if it’s commercial, it’s probably been picked over. If it’s on market and it’s residential, people are making like multiple offers because supply is so low. So finding deals off market is hugely important. Doesn’t matter if you’re a residential or commercial. Finding deals off market. So how did you find that fuel off market? And what are some of your other strategies, ways you typically find deals off market in today’s economy?

Reed: Yeah. So remember, this was an off market deal two years ago that the brass tacks of it is that brokers had the keys to the kingdom. Right. This particular deal, they floated it to this brokerage firm that we had bought five deals from in the past. It was in Austin. They knew where we’re active. We’re active buyers in that particular market. And they came to us in one other group just to sort of get a bit of a sniff test. So, you know, it’s not that we were out doing yellow letters or pamphlet drops. It was purely through having relationships with the right brokers in the market and hanging around the hoop. That’s the most important part. You are we’ve proven performers. We hang around the hoop. We constantly contact with these brokers.

Reed: And they were the first ones to come out to us to say, hey, two years ago, that is, you know, have a have a sniff. It is to have a sniff of this deal. Tell me what you think. And they knew that we would get back to them really quickly. And so they could get back to the seller really quickly on what they think they could potentially sell the deal for. And our mind, the listeners, that two out of the three sellers on this deal two years ago wanted to sell that one guy who held out. Unfortunately, this gentleman has passed away and that has then keyed the actual sale today. But that went to a full marketing cycle. That’s when, as I mentioned before, over 40 different offers were on this deal. And this is amidst COVID because it is a great part of Austin. We were still able to win it based on our relationships because we’d been involved such from such an early stage in that in the process.

Josh: That’s fantastic. So you mentioned you did five deals with this group. Talk to our audience and tell me a little bit more about kind of the first deal you did with the group, because the first five is what got you in the game on this one. And a lot of people could say, wow, great, you’ve done five other deals. So you already had a relationship. Good. You know, good job. But, you know, with all due respect, like you already had an in there, they’re really asking. The better question is, how did you build the relationship on the first deal when you didn’t know that commercial group didn’t know that commercial realtor had your foot in the door on the first one?

Reed: Yeah, that’s such a good question. Right before me on based here in Los Angeles, California, when we were first when I was first looking at deals in San Antonio, Texas, I was underwriting a ton of deals and getting into best and final on some small stuff, you know, less than 50 units. But I wasn’t getting that nod or the tip of the hat from the broker. So to having a little wick within the ear of the sale, I to say, hey, give Reed this shot. You know, who’s this Australian guy talking on the phone on these best and finals calls?

Reed: And that’s where I met my business partner, Andrew, who is a local got to Austin, Texas, who had the boots on the ground. Right. And we create a partnership. And through that partnership, he was able to stoke the relationship fires. You know, being local, I was able to underwrite a ton of deals and get that first one under contract. We had to take a better mouse. Right. But we had been underwriting probably 60 or 70 deals in a couple of years leading up to that first deal in order to show the broker that we are with our weight in gold and that we could be trusted and we could close because that’s they taking a risk on us to give us the sort of the leading horse and say to the seller, give it, give the assign it to these guys because they will be out to perform. And so they’re taking a massive risk.

Reed: This particular brokerage firm had sold this deal. It’s a 1980s deal. It sold at four times in the past. They’d sold it to this current seller that was was selling it to us. So a lot of relationships goes into these things. And it’s not just about us showing up in and improved, trying to prove to the broker that we can do it. It’s also about them taking a bet on us that they can keep those relationships with these existing sellers that they’ve forged over many, many years in this market. And that’s really you also have to go in with your eyes wide open about that particular relationship, because it’s not just, hey, gimme deals and I’m going to perform these. There’s two sides of the coin is also the buy side and there’s also the sell side. Relationships are really important.

Josh: Yeah, I work with a commercial agent here in town. In Cleveland, he sold forty thousand units and he’s in the Midwest and deals don’t trade as often in the Midwest as they do out in the West Coast or in the Southeast or the South West. They just don’t trade as often. So forty thousand years for him is a massive amount of deals to market. And he’s told me how he sold the same building four and five times over the past 30 years because he’s got relationships with one guy, works with a buyer who can close. That buyer trusts him, then he relists and sells it. And conversely, to your point, we’ve got a deal right now that we’re sniffin, that it’s a 275 unit and it’s not fallen out of contract twice with his buyers.

Josh: The first buyer, when COVID hit, tried to retrade it. The second buyer was about a week away from closing and didn’t have enough equity capital raised. Both times those buyers had pinged me. I decided to wait those deals out, kind of sit on the sidelines. Now the listing agent is starting to realize, well, why is everybody keep pinging Josh Cantwell in his group for capital? Because the word got around. Right. So into your point now that the seller is very upset with the listing commercial broker because they twice bought buyers who didn’t close or couldn’t close and that relationship starting to get a little sour, some sort of sitting on the sidelines were kind of waiting to see if that deal swings back around and hopefully we can jump into it.

Josh: Now to up here a little bit more about your strategy for. Well, first of all, let’s talk about your deal structure. You’ve got twenty-two hundred units. You live in L.A., you’re investing in central Texas, about a quarter billion-dollar portfolio. Twenty fifty million dollars. You also emigrated from Australia. You’re not from the US. You’ve built this amazing business, you know, without a lot of the I guess the background, the language which the connections a lot of other people had. And so let’s first talk about your deal structure, because then I want to talk about raising money and your strategy for raising money, especially when you didn’t grow up here in the US with lots of family and friends and things like that that you could raise money from. So first, what’s your favorite deal structure for your large apartment deals?

Reed: Yeah, so we do it on a syndication basis. So for those folks who don’t know, syndication is it’s really pulling investors money together and we go out and buy large russets. Typically we do a 70 30 split. So 70 percent goes to the pace and we do a thirty percent to the jeepneys. So sitting in is about a capital stack, you know, the debt sitting in first position and then we carve up the equity piece, which is, quote unquote, second position into two different slices. Class A being a 10 percent paid present preferred return and they get paid. They don’t get to participate in any of the upside once we sell the deal. And then we go to Class B, it’s after them. They get an accruing seven per cent, but they get 70 cents of the upside.

Reed: And then we have the GP who is us, which means 30 percent of the deal. So all through syndication, I might’ve confused couple of your listeners just then, but it’s really just around about like a mez preferred return throughout our current investors. And it allows them to choose whether they want to sit in class A piece, they want to sit in class B piece. They want to sit in both. Or they want a bit of cash flow and also long-term appreciation. So it really helps us raise our capital quite effectively and quickly, really when we go launching a deal, you know, to our investor database.

Josh: So let’s talk about how you built your investor database, right? Because so raising pretty much all the capital through syndication, through limited partners, allows you to deal deals with little or none of your own money. Your deals are really big. So you’re typically getting nonrecourse funding. Looks like you’re investing in terms from Florida or central Texas, where I would imagine that kind of Austin market and around there. You’re buying deals in the path of progress. You’re betting on that long-term growth in central Texas, which I think everybody knows that that part of the country is growing like wildfire. So you’re buying deals for cash flow now and allowing that kind of path of progress to push the rents up.

Josh: Make sure your deals appreciate through increasing income. So we know that model and you have, you know, the numbers, the metrics, the analytics to support that. But now you’ve got to go find investors. You’re not from this country. Never raise money. You’ve got started with real estate after reading Rich Dad, poor dad, an amazing sort of immigrant story, but not a lot of connections. So you’ve built this kind of six step process over really over the last eight or nine years or so with really nothing to start, nothing to leverage, nothing to begin with. So how did you get your start raising money? And then let’s talk about the six-step process.

Reed: Sure. So getting the start of raising money, it was really talking of creating a podcast, and that was what these six years ago now, 2014. I started my podcast called Investing in the US. And really it was just about my story because I had a pretty cool story that I moved halfway across the world to chase a girl and I ended up falling in real estate. Yeah. I met in the beaches of Spain. That’s correct. Yes. So that’s a whole other story. We can have over beer if we ever get together.

Reed: But the impetus of that was I wanted to share my story. I was doing these small deals, 30, 40, 50 thousand-dollar deals in upstate New York when I was living in New York City. And I thought to myself, wow, this is incredible cash flow. What why aren’t more people talking to the international folks about the benefits of investing? And so I was like, well, I’m an international folk. I’m going through these rules and lessons. Like, I don’t even know what a credit score was.

Reed: I didn’t even know what an EIN number was or an LLC. And so I had to learn about all these things. And so I just started pressing record and started to interview some people that I was growing my network with. And remember, or if you don’t know, my background’s in structural engineering, I’m a very black and white brain. I didn’t have any creativity. So creating a podcast out of nothing was a really big step for me. But sitting here today? I know six years later to over 250 episodes, I’ve interviewed a lot of different people. And through those interviews, I’ve seen different ways in which people create a brand and create. And I credit is sort of six steps. And I call it the six P rule to raising capital.

Reed: And it’s really raising capital for any deal, for any business. It doesn’t necessarily need to be real estate, but obviously I’m very focused on real estate and the six pages are as follows if you want me to get into them. So it’s again, it’s all through observing these other entrepreneurs who’ve been successful. Right. The first part is professionalism. And professionalism is always the hard one to give yourself permission that you have enough credibility to go out and start raising capital. I think that’s the most important thing. Right. And no, no one just born with 15 years or 20 years’ worth of real estate experience, they have to get started somewhere. Right.

Reed: But a lot of us have a journey up until that point when we get started where you come through. I like myself. I came through an engineering background, so I had different analytical skills. I was very good at holding rooms and having presentations and very technical. So I had that side of the business down pat. And so using those skill sets in order to say, I am worth going out and asking people to invest my deals and I can rely on these skill sets and I can show them that I’m professional in everything I do is the professionalism. The first one. The second one is pitch. And how you pitch someone is really, really important.

Reed: I interviewed a gentleman by the name of Dan Priestley, who has a great analogy around pitching, and he uses for the pitch about three different ways of pitching people. There’s the social pitch, there’s a scheduled pitch, and then there’s the sales pitch. Right. And then the social pitch. You want to be pitching to people. So they they’re intrigued about what you have to say. Remember, when you pitch someone, no one says, oh, that was a great pitch. They say that was a great conversation. And so think of like something like Martin Luther King, the I Have a Dream speech. He did not say that speech once. He said it thousands of times before he got on the Washington Monument. And that’s the same way you have to pitch your business. You have to pitch it a thousand different times before you get people emotive enough to want to understand what you want to do.

Reed: So that’s P number two, pitch. Number three is practice. And that’s where we start to get take from. A social setting into a scheduled setting, and that’s where you might meet someone at a made up event, you pitch them your idea. They say, hey, this is fantastic. I want you to meet up for coffee. Let’s get a scheduled pitch. And in that scheduled pitch. You can practice your pitch even further with your pitch deck. Which is a sort of more professional flier that you can bring with them and show them the A-Z of what you do. And that then leads to the next pitch, which is a platform. Right. So you need a platform on which you need to go out and create and share your story and tell and educate others about what you do. Like a podcast.

Reed: And different platforms can exist in different ways. There’s newsletters. There’s blogs, there’s podcasting, there’s videos. There’s all these different social media platforms out there that you can leverage your message. And through that you can attract an audience and a following that people love what you have to say and that they will be ultimately your investors in your deals. So we’ve got professionals and pitch practice. We’ve got platform. We’ll send them a profile. So profile is all about having an online presence, right? You know, if you want to start raising capital successfully, you will be Googled. So you need to be online. You need to have a really professional online brand. And that is understanding that people will only invest your deals because first and foremost doesn’t invest in you. Right? They don’t invest in the deal itself. That’s sort of secondary. They actually invest in me, Reed Goossens or Josh Cantwell because they trust you. Right.

Reed: And through listening to your story, through understanding your pitch, through using a platform like podcasting or blogging, they’ve gotten to know you a bit better. And thus they can then trust you because you are a brand and you have a fantastic profile. And then the last pitch, last P is practice, practice, practice. I forgot my Ps Patients, patience, patience, patience, patience. It takes ages a long time to build up a brand and build up a network of people who want to invest with you because it takes years to build up trust and transparency. But it can be a second that you can lose it if you do something wrong. So really leading with a personal brand of being vulnerable in your story, your approach, so people can get to know you really quickly and then asking the question of, hey, I’ve got these incredible investment opportunities.

Reed: You’ve heard about it, me talking about on my podcast or my blog. I’ve educated you about it through the different platforms that I’ve used to get my message out there. Would you be interested in investing alongside of me. And those six Ps are the Ps that I’ve sort of pulled from different people that I’ve interviewed and cultivate them in one sort of formula? And again, you can apply that to any business. And what you’re truly trying to do is be a key person of influence in your sphere. So people can think of you as you’re the real estate guy, and I want to go invest with you when I have a bit of excess cash to go invest in real estate. So that’s the six Ps and the formula that I’ve created over the last little while through interviewing some incredible minds in the entrepreneurial world.

Josh: Nice, great. Love it, love it. Professionalism, pitch, practice, profile, and patience. The six Ps. I love it. When many people that raise capital are really using the 506C, the Jobs Act, using syndication and allowing, whether it’s YouTube or podcasting to be their voice and ultimately sending that traffic somewhere so people can kind of opt in to look at deal flow. So they’re going to her accredited investors using general solicitation. What is your favorite platform for kind of getting investors to kind of opt in, kind of nurturing them, using once your YouTube videos, podcasts kind of sinks in, people are like, I want to check out Reed’s deals? Is there a platform that you use or one of your favorite ones kind of nurture and manage your investors?

Reed: Yeah. So we actually own all that through 506B, so existing relationships. So through the outward facing podcasts, the books, being interviewed on other people’s shows, people get to see and understand who I am. They get to like me. And let’s remember, the most important thing about raising capital is that you are a brand. You are standing on a mountain of value. And that value other people can look at and say, I want to be a part of that. And so once you have that relationship, people usually reach out through my personal website or my business website, bald home cap, dot com. And they can they can see the deals we have done.

Reed: We don’t really put up any branch, solicit any sort of returns or those on the Web site, the publicly facing. We need to get to know people because this is a two way street. Remember, people invest in deals all the time, but not every single investor is suitable to our business. Right? So we want to be working with the best investors possible who understand the business in the ins and outs, understand the risk profile. And that is all about money, making sure you have the understanding on the front end. You have that relationship so you know what a person will and will not invest in before you approach them with that specific style. So the might hear me on our podcast, or see me read one of my books or listen my own podcast. I might reach out to me. We’ll have a phone call. We’ll get on the last to get on the database and through that database, that will stop. See, as we have gills come up, they’ll start to see the deals that we will push out to that database.

Reed: And you only can get on that database by asking me to get on it. I just sort of, you know, stuck you in through ether by buying lists or anything like that. So we have to have that preexisting relationship. And then through that, we make sure we still have different barriers to make sure that we’re not just allowing anyone into the database. We are having checks and balances in place that people have to go through a form to fill out to say, hey, why would this deal be intriguing to you? You know, you’ve clearly read the material. We haven’t given you any legal documents yet. At least let’s understand why you’re interested.

Reed: And then from there, we can say, hey, we want to work with this person. We don’t wanna work with that person. And then we’ll send them the legal documents on our online secure portal. And that is sort of these five or six steps in there before someone is actually physically signed up for the deal and wired their money? So a lot of things in there, but that is the process in order to keep compliant with the 506B.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely, and I love the fact you’re starting with past deals. I remember when I first got started raising capital. I started thinking, like, well, what can I show people that gives me the professionalism. Your first P. Without making an offer, without talking about how much money I need to raise or how much money they can invest or their rate of return. And my securities attorneys as well. Tell me about your past deals with past deals if you don’t. I got all these other past deals, he said use those. Because that’s the professionalism that you talked about without actually making them an offer on a future deal. They can get to know you. Get them on a Zoom call. Get them face to face. Learn a little bit more about them. Ask them the questions, create the relationship.

Josh: You’ve done that and you know, you’re following the rules, which is exactly what we need to do. Now Reed, you’ve been so successful at raising money. Twenty-two hundred units, 250-million-dollar portfolio investing also virtually, which is great about large commercial. You can invest in central Texas when you live in L.A.. But all this starts without any knowledge about real estate. With no, you’re a structural engineer by trade. You come to this country by way of Australia and doing some things in the UK and then coming to the United States. Meet your wife. You land in L.A. and, you know, not a whole lot of experience with with real estate to start out with.

Josh: Everybody starts with zero. So help me understand, like, what was your attraction to real estate? What was your start like? What did you do when you first got going? Because people could look at 20 to 100 units, like, why just what my first 10 unit or I’m looking at my first 200 unit. Right. It’s amazing how fast things can grow. And you forget about, well, when I got started, I knew nothing. I knew no one. I had it all. But a lot of people that listen to you and I are in that kind of boat. Tell us about your staff.

Reed: So to start really just came with a wanting to be more and do more. Right. I returned from a period of time overseas and at the end of 2009, I was back in Australia in 2010 and I felt like a star athlete sitting on the sidelines looking at my life go by, which was the game being played in front of me. I’d really enjoyed studying engineering, but I knew that I had more to give. I wanted to be my own boss and that’s why the Rich Dad Poor Dad book came. I stumbled across that. Through that, I started to self-educate about real estate because that was the sort of I could have got to start investing in stocks and bonds or businesses. But I chose real estate because I had that structured engineering background and I was working as a structural engineer.

Reed: So that was the start of it. And then I actually didn’t buy my first deal until I moved to the United States in early 2012. So I was sort of self-educating for about two and a half years prior to buy my first deal. And that first deal was thirty-eight thousand dollars in upstate New York and Syracuse. I was living in New York City at the time and that was because that’s all I could afford. I didn’t have credit score. I’d buy the cash I did save was my own cash from working as a professional.

Reed: And so I bought it all cash. And for me, that was, you know, my whole thing in life is is fear of regret. Right. Like the moving to the United States was I was wanted to move here to give it a go to be an expat and live in New York City and chase a girl. If it didn’t work out, I’d go back to Australia, get another engineering job. That’s the worst-case scenario for me. So I got really used to pushing my boundaries and not wanting to wake up when I’m 70 years of age going, jeez, I wish I’d given that a crack when I was younger. And so when you live, when you try to live a life like that, it’s easier said than done. It’s about consistently pushing those boundaries.

Reed: So that first deal, I was like, well, I don’t have a car. I’m going to get on a Greyhound bus. I’m going to get up to Syracuse, check out some deals, because they they’re really, really cheap compared to where I come from in Australia. And on paper, they look great. And instead of spending money on a mentor or, you know, more courses, I sorta had been self-educating for two and a half years. That point is like I need to get going in the deep end. I can’t get to deal number ten without doing deal number one. And so that was the first deal. And so you’ve mentioned before about, you know, this these accolades and whatever success looks like some two hundred two thousand twenty hundred units, blah, blah, they’re all numbers. But it starts with that first deal.

Reed: And so I encourage people who are listening to this show is just get started on that first deal, It can be anything. It was a thirty-eight-thousand-dollar triplex for me that ended up having a drive by shooting and Section eight tenants that I’d learned a lot on really, really quickly. But it got a got me going, right? It’s not about smacking it out of the park on that first deal. It’s about getting off the home plate and getting to first base. That’s all you have to focus on. And once you start focusing on those little incremental steps, you’ll then be able to look up after a couple years of doing it and go, wow, I’ve come a long way.

Reed: And so the biggest piece of advice I can say to people to wrap this up is like, you know, Tony Robbins talks about you can overestimate what you can achieve in a year, but you can underestimate what can achieve in a decade. So we know that this will take some time, but learn to push your boundaries and go out and challenge yourself. Every day. And remember that the best deal to get done is the first one, because we’ll get you off to the races. And it will allow you to give yourself permission to say, hey, I can do this.

Josh: You might have already answered this, but as a good structural engineer would do the time. You did a lot of analysis. Two and a half years. Some people never make the first step. You know, I have thousands of students. We’ve been training and educating for 15 years. But many people that come through our websites and through our webinars and our programs and our podcasts, it’s like I’m going to do it. And they never do. You took your time. And as a good engineer, I would expect that to take some time. I’ve worked with engineers, many times. But you eventually did that first deal. You came to the United States. You did it.

Josh: Specific advice on that first deal. Like, what was it that finally pushed you over the edge and said, I’m going to buy this one? Then you wrote the contract and you’re like, holy crap. They accepted it. And now I’ve got to close it. Holy cow, I’m signing the closing documents. But those are all milestones to investors. So tell me about that. And then ask one final question about your when you’re really big deals about signing on the dotted line for your first big deal. But tell us about that. How did you get over that two and a half years to finally knock it off that first one?

Reed: I still remember being on the subway, just trying to work. No. Stuck in a book about, you know, I think cash flowing in. Some really good book but I can’t remember the exact book. It was a really good book. Like Cash Flowing in duplexes, triplexes and quads and it was a great little analytical book that I loved. I ate that up because it was very numbers orientated. And for me, again, it was just the realization that self-awareness to be like, huh. I’m never actually going to get to the number one if I don’t actually go and do it. It’s kind of like reading a book about losing weight. Right. You don’t actually lose weight by reading a book. You got to open the frickin gym door and get on the treadmill.

Reed: So it’s the same idea there is that you’ve got to get on the treadmill. And for me, I knew that I’d come to a to a knowledge base that I was sound enough in my in my view of how to underwrite a deal, that I could make an educated decision. And again, it was my own money. So I was willing to lose that. And I’d rather. And again, I was never going to lose it, but I didn’t lose it. But I can make money on it. But it was about saying all the risks. Okay. What’s the worst that can happen? I lose all my money. It was no one else’s money. It’s my money and I’m willing to do that. And it’ll be a great lesson to get going off to the races. And I need to get that first deal done because I just I’m sick of having my nose stuck in a book. So, again, assessing all the worst-case scenarios. Remember, me moving to this country was just giving it a crack.

Reed: You know, like the worst-case scenarios. I don’t get a job and I move back to Australia. And when you get comfortable with the worst-case scenarios and you sit with them for a little bit of time, you then to start to realize, okay, I can do this. It’s not as big as scary as I think it is. And yes, there was some butterflies in my stomach. But sometimes you get to a point where, you know, you need to make that leap of faith and you’ve done everything you can. You’ve done all the due diligence. You’ve done all the reading. You’ve done all the practice examples. But then it comes a point where you need to say, I need to bet on someone. And the best person to bet on is myself because I’ve just gone and done all this self-education. And that’s the launching pad you need to go off and do your first deal. So I hope that answered the question, but that’s sort of it’s the betting on one’s self when, you know, when you come to that point, your life like, okay, I need to take that next step.

Josh: Yeah. I love the advice about, like analyzing getting comfortable with worst case scenario. And I think that can be great advice for almost anything we do in life, not just a real estate license, freedoms, starting a business, but anything. What’s the worst case? That was the worst thing that can happen. Okay, I’m cool with that. Like you said, I’ll sit with that for a minute. You’re comfortable with it and then take action on it. Final question. Tell us about your first big apartment deal where you had that same maybe nervousness, that same. Oh, man. Like almost like, you know, that was that first deal that you did, the little thirty-eight-thousand-hour deal.

Josh: But now it was the first big one, maybe a hundred unit, maybe a 300 unit or whatever you thought holy smokes are off or just got accepted. We’re now buying this big ass deal. I’ve got to syndicate it. I got to raise a bunch of capital. And you started going with that larger deal because a lot of our subscribers are there. They might own a five unit. They might have a 10-unit, twenty-five unit, 50 unit. And now they’re moving into buying their first hundred fifty, two hundred, four-hundred-unit deal. And it’s like it’s scary. Exciting. Can’t sleep. All of those emotions are going through. So tell us about yours.

Reed: So the transition out of the single families. I’ve got a mentor and through that mentor I was able to co-syndicate on a couple of deals. And co-syndication’s good. You don’t have to focus on finding the deals. But once I broke out of that mentor and started doing my own, I had a bit of track record doing some syndication deals coast indicating rising a little bit of money. That first deal of back to where I met Andrew, my business partner in San Antonio, we were underwriting 60 or 70 deals. Excuse me, I was getting very close on best and final call. So I was doing all the steps, you know, with pride. You know, indicating you had some other team members doing leading the ship, I was now the captain and copilot on my aircraft and it was all up to me. Right.

Reed: So my business partner. So, yeah, it was scary that some sleepless nights. I’ve got a gray spot in the back of my head. When my wife calls it the wild horn patch of stress. I still remember to this day we tried to sign up with a crowdfunding website. It was one hundred ninety-two-unit deal. And the crowdfunding website was going to bring, I think, one point five million and we needed to raise six million. And they didn’t raise a dime. Right. Where were you been? Actively rising. We were really close to the finish line were a couple of weeks out from closing and they drop. And I remember going, oh, I don’t know, I could swear on this podcast, but oh, as HRT we up the creek and we would back calculate into ten. How much do we need just to close and do even have that right. I get this one cut phone call and I don’t know, I’m not hugely religious. You know, someone’s looking above or from below wherever you want to think and get this phone call.

Reed: And this guy had accidentally sent out our deck to a bunch of investors, accredited investors at a bank. And this guy calls me up and hey, I read your deck, I’ve listened to your webinar. I really like it. Can I ask you a few questions? Get to know you a little bit. And I need to invest one point five million dollars. And I said, you do? Yep. And after a 20-minute conversation, he was pretty much over the line and that filled the void. And it was just like this was like what just happened? What just happened? I couldn’t predict it. You know, I’d already raised the majority of the six million. But it was that last little piece. And again, it was the most stressful piece because we thought someone else had the ball and they didn’t. And then it was back to us and we’re like, oh, crap. We need to again, back to proving to the broker, proving to the seller.

Reed: All those things are racing through my mind, proving to the bank guys that we can close on this deal. And this guy calls me out of nowhere and I thank the universe or whatever that might be believing e fill the void. And it was just it was to this day, I’m gobsmacked at how we got that one over the line and what we did. And it was the one that I was Icaza, the captain and copilot in. And we’ll drive in the ship. And it was it was pretty scary and kept me up many, many nights. And now we’ve gone on to do 10 more deals. And it’s been an incredible journey.

Josh: That’s great stuff. Read, listen and appreciate all the stories. Hearing about your deals, the way you raise money. The six Ps, If our audience would love to reach out to you, connect with you, read your books. Follow your podcasts. Where can they get more information.

Reed: The easiest way to go to is ReedGoossens.com. The podcast is there Reed Goossens is spelled R-E-E-D-G-O-O-S-S-E-N-S.com. The books are there. The podcast. The audio books are there. The blogs are there. You can reach out to me if you ever come in through L.A. you want to grab a beer or coffee or lunch, just hit me up at info@reedgoossens.com and we’ll get to know one another and check out some more stuff that I put out there in the universe and hope you hope you get something out of this podcast today.

Josh: Thanks a lot. Listen, thanks so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor. 

Josh: Hey, guys. Hope you love that interview with me and Reed. I had a blast interviewing him, learning more about his investment strategy, how he syndicates these large apartment deals, the six PS of investing, six PS of recruiting private capital. Also love his stories about it being on the subway and realizing that he was like an all-star and not participating in his own game of life because he was sitting on the sidelines afraid to do deals, finally jumped in. And so those of you that are on the sidelines, jump in, get a mentor. Check out JoshCantwellcoaching.com. You can also download our books and getflipsystem.com. Check out the Accelerated Investor podcast. Follow that. Get all that information.

Josh: But eventually you’ve got to jump in and do your very first deal. You’ve got to get off the sidelines. Get going. Just like Reed did. So thank you so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed this interview with Reed, go right now to wherever you find your podcast. Leave us a rating. Leave us a review. Send us a screenshot and we’ll send you a free Accelerated Investor t shirt. Thanks so much for being here. We’ll see you next time on Accelerated Investor. 

Hey, Josh here. And do you want to win a free Accelerated Investor T-shirt? All you have to do is give Accelerated Investor our podcasta rating and a review on iTunes. OK. Do that now then send us a screenshot on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. What we’re going to do then is every week we’re gonna pick our favorite rating in review and we’re going to send that person a free T-shirt and maybe again, some other cool fun stuff as well from Accelerated Investor. So, again, don’t forget to take a screenshot, leave a rating review, take a screenshot, send it to us so we know exactly who you are. And then once a week, every week on the podcast, we will announce a new winner. Don’t forget to take a screenshot and send it to us so we know exactly who you are. We’ll announce a new winner every week.

You’ve been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor Podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next, or who you’d like Josh to interview. While you’re there, give us some five-star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, the Strategic Real Estate Coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now and stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of. Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.

Every real estate investor starts from scratch, but newly immigrated Reed Goossens from Australia started with literally zero. With no existing relationships to build on, no capital, and entirely new financial rules, Reed took the plunge into real estate investing in the U.S. Today he owns 2,200 units of apartments and has a $250 million dollar portfolio, and runs a popular podcast for other immigrants who want to invest in the U.S.

Reed shared with me his 6 best tips for raising private capital for real estate or any other kind of business venture. As you put your face and brand out there, you don’t want to just share about yourself. You really want to get to know your investors too, so that you can understand what kind of risks they’re comfortable with too.

Diving into the 6 Ps, Reed gives examples of how to use these to build the relationships you need in place before you create your first syndicated deal.

  1. Professionalism
  2. Pitch
  3. Practice
  4. Platform
  5. Profile
  6. Patience

No matter where you start from, everyone has to make that first giant leap into real estate. Reed realized that he was sitting on the sidelines of his own life because he kept reading, studying, and analyzing deals, but he never pulled the trigger and bought something. If you need a mentor to help you make that first jump, let’s connect and get you in the game.

What’s Inside:

  • How to build relationships to find off-market deals.
  • What Reed’s first terrible deal taught him about investing.
  • The three different ways to pitch someone, and why need to learn more than one pitch.
  • Why getting comfortable with your worst case scenario can help you make that first step.

Mentioned in this episode​

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