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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PODCAST With Matt Larson:
0:56 - How Matt Larson got started in real estate
5:24 - Progress through buying, flipping & wholesale deals 9:16 - How Matt went from student to teacher as a self-taught investor 17:31 - The steps Matt took during the recession to excel 22:03 - Strategies and teaching styles that Matt implements in real estate coaching program 25:02 - Virtual Assistance & the fear of the unknown explained 31:11 - A day in the life of Matt Larson unfolded
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST AUDIO
Matt Larson: And within four years, I had 450 houses in my portfolio, $1 million, liquid cash. I went in, I was a broke guy. 2008, I still only had about $20,000, cash. By 2013 I had seven figures. Spencer Sutton: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Atlanta Real Estate Investor Podcast. I'm Spencer Sutton and I've got with me, my co-host Matthew Whitaker and we are pumped to have Matt Larson with us. Now, we don't know Matt personally. We just got on this podcast and started talking about all kinds of things, but Matt, I'm really excited to dig into your story and hear more about even your coaching programs. So welcome. Matt Larson: I'm glad to be here. I'm excited. Matthew Whitaker: Yeah. Before we got started, we had so much in common with Matt that we almost forgot to hit record. I felt like we were having a podcast before the podcast so I'm super excited to dig in more. Spencer Sutton: All right, Matt. Well, let's kick it off. I mean, I think our listeners want to hear how you got started in real estate. We'd love to hear your backstory and take us up till today. Matt Larson: Okay. All right. So I grew up in a small town in Illinois called Aledo, It's about 3,700 people. And I went to college after high school not really knowing what to do. But I liked to play football so I thought, I'm going to go to college. I wasn't interested in school at all. And after one semester, the college literally said, hey. A lot of people have this cool story where they drop out of college and make all this money. I actually have a story where the college said, you can't come back. My GPA was too low. And so I go back home and my dad's like, hey. I'm 19 years old at this point. My dad's like, you got to go get a job till you figure out what you're going to do. And the only place really hiring was this machine shop right in the town I grew up in. Matt Larson: And so I started working in a machine shop at 19 years old and I did that all the way through 30 years old. I wasn't exposed to entrepreneurship or business or any self-help books. I'd never heard of them before. And what got me into real estate is a funny story. So I was 26 years old, working in a machine shop, I was dating this girl. And we started dating at 26 and at 30 years old, I'd been dating her for about four years now. I come from a poor family. She came from a wealthy family. And so there was some struggling there. And at 30 years old, she'd said to me one day, she says, "Hey, I want to break up." And I'm like, "Why?" And she said, "Well, I want to date somebody with status. I want to date somebody that makes money." Matt Larson: And so it hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd never really thought about making money before. I didn't really understand how money was made. And the only thing I knew is what I was told growing up for my dad. And I had really good parents. My parents were amazing people, but they didn't understand wealth or business. They just never been around any of that. My dad always told me, he's like, "If you want to make more money, you work more hours. Overtime is time and a half. If you want to really make a lot more money, work every holiday." He said, "You always cash in your vacation. You don't need to take a vacation, cash it in and take the money." And so I didn't know how to make money. Matt Larson: But all of a sudden I'm very motivated to figure out how the heck do I make my money. I just lost this girl. I was heartbroken over the whole thing. Didn't really know anybody in business. None of my friends, we all just worked regular jobs. And so I'm up late one night, I see an infomercial come on TV. And it's this guy selling this real estate course. And so I'm thinking, man, I think this is my ticket. Maybe this is for me. I had never bought a house before. I lived in a 300 square foot apartment at this time, paying $275 a month. And my parents had never bought a house before. We'd always rented. And so oddly enough, my dad always said, "Never buy a house, always rent because if something breaks, you don't have to pay for it." Matt Larson: And so I'm super excited. I see this real estate book. I've never read it. At this point in my life I didn't know that self-help books existed, never heard of them. And I read this book and I'm so naive that I believe every word in this book, and I just go out and just go do what the stuff said to do. And 30 days later I did my very first real estate deal. And here I am, I am just as broke as can be by the way. I don't have two nickels to rub together. And so I do my first real estate deal. And then I did another one. I did another one, I did another one. And within my first 12 months, I did 12 real estate deals. And so that following year I did 10 more. Matt Larson: And then the following year after that I did 19. So I did my very first deal in November, of 2005. And I set the goal at that point, I wanted to prove to not only the ex-girlfriend, but just to the world, I had this chip on my shoulder, I just wanted to prove that I could do something. I graduated really small school, 81 total students in my high school. When I dropped out of college, everybody who knew me made fun of me. It was like, I always lived in the crappy houses in town and we just never had nice cars or anything like that. So I had this little chip on my shoulder and I wanted to prove myself, and I was willing to work really hard. And so November 2005 I did my first deal. And I set a goal that I would be retired from my job and live off cash flow within three years. Spencer Sutton: Are these deals rental houses that you're buying or are they flips, like when you first got into it? Matt Larson: I started buying rentals and doing a few fix and flips and then eventually did more wholesaling deals. And so a little bit of both. My first deal I got a guy to go in with me on it and I did the work to the house. He put up the money and then at the end we refinanced out and I cashed him out and gave him his profit and kept the property. I still own the first one I ever bought. Probably will never sell it. So the thing is I set this goal to be completely retired within three years. It's November, of 2005, not knowing three years later, it would be November, of 2008. And so none of us knew what was coming. And the cool thing is, is a lot of people complain right now that it's really hard to find deals. Matt Larson: Oh man, I'll always hear people complaining, oh, I can't find any deals. Oh, it's so hard. Oh, multiple offers. Oh, every investor gets 20 postcards. I hear that complaint, but what people need to understand is, this is an opportunity to get tough and get strong and get amazing at being able to produce real estate deals at a time when it's difficult. It's like walking into the gym and if you can lift 100 pounds, but you choose to pick up 20 pounds, you're never getting stronger. If somebody's sitting there in your face, yelling and screaming at you and saying, you're going to pick up 150 pounds, you figure it out. And so this is an opportunity for all of us to get better at what we do in these competitive markets. And that 2005 to 2008-time period made me amazing at real estate because it was really hard. Matt Larson: And plus I didn't have any experience in any of that stuff. So 2008 hits and I ended up leaving my job just right on schedule three days prior to the goal. My first deal was November 10th, 2005. My last day was November 7th, 2008. I leave my job. I'm now equipped. I have just a little bit of money. I have some cash flow. I've been able to wipe out a little bit of my debt. And so now I have the most important thing though, is I had the experience and I understood what was happening. And when I quit my job and went full-time into real estate, now I had all my time too. Before that I was working 60 hours a week for three years, trying to do real estate on the side. And so 2008 hit and it was a rocket ship. It was a gift, 2008 hit. Spencer Sutton: It wasn't near as competitive at that point. Matt Larson: It's very easy to get deals, Matt. If you are good at marketing and getting deals in 2005, 2006, 2007; 2008, you could spend 10% of that amount of money or effort to get 10 times more. And so by the time 2009 hit, I had a lot of momentum and within four years I had 450 houses in my portfolio, $1 million liquid cash. I went in, I was a broke guy. 2008, I still only had about $20,000, cash. By 2013, I had seven figures and was making that amount flipping plus 450 houses. And I did it in a very short period of time because of the opportunity we were given, but I was prepared sure from previous years. Matthew Whitaker: So I have a number of questions. I've just for writing them down as we went through it. The first one, and I think you hit on it is what happened to the girlfriend? Did she break up with you? Is that now she's wishing she was... Matt Larson: I've never seen or heard from her since. Spencer Sutton: Okay, well, good riddance. Matt Larson: I'm sure she's probably heard some things. Matthew Whitaker: There you go. Matt Larson: It was one of those things is really hard to go through, but it was a gift, right? I mean, it was a good thing that happened. Matthew Whitaker: Tell me, you're like the modern day, rich dad, poor dad story. Right. I don't know if you've ever read that book, but the whole premise of the book is the person that wrote it was always talking to his dad, which told him to go to school, get good grades, get a good job, versus the whole idea of owning a business. Have you read the book and then I'd like you to expound on how your thinking changed and what that first book was that you read? Matt Larson: I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad a long time ago, right after I got into real estate. The first book I ever bought off the infomercial was one written by Dean Graziosi. One of his first books he wrote on real estate, Be a Real Estate Millionaire, that whole series. And again, there wasn't a ton of technical knowledge in that book. And neither Rich Dad, Poor Dad too. It's not like they give you a step-by-step formula, but it was the idea that was important. Right. And so yeah, I mean, I mean, I remember my friends in my mid-20s, all my friends were buying their first house. And I remember sitting down with them telling them, listen, you're making a mistake. I can do the math for you and show you how renting is a better deal. And so it was a very big mind shift when I started reading books on real estate and I figured out, man, I'm not only wrong, but my dad was wrong. I remember it was one of the most exciting times of my life, not because I was going out and doing real estate 100%, it was more like I was learning at such a fast pace. You couldn't feed the appetite I had for books. And I was never a book reader before that. All of a sudden I wanted to know everything. Matthew Whitaker: It's really interesting how many people get into real estate off of the late night infomercial? I mean, we've literally talked to, I think at least four or five people that were up late one night, just happened to watch the infomercial, bought in and everybody makes fun of those, but it more so shows you the value of the mentality of education and growing. And you said you read a lot of books. It's just to me, super interesting that everybody seems to get instinct from an infomercial. Matt Larson: So here's where the funny part of the story is. So I'm sitting here, I'm working my butt off. I'm working 60 hours a week. I'm doing real estate on the nights and weekends. I'm literally like I get home at work at five o'clock. I make myself a full pot of coffee and I drink a full pot of coffee to stay up till midnight, 1:00 AM learning and working and everything else on real estate. And so about two and a half years after I bought Dean's book, I get this letter in the mail saying, hey, Dean's trying to find his top student. And so they're like, hey, we've out of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of students we've narrowed it down to a hundred people or whatever it was. And so they sent all these people, this is back before, cell phones now all have their own video cameras, this is before then. Matt Larson: We're talking 2007, 2008, right? And they sent us a little video camera and they said, hey, go out and stand in front of some of your houses and tell us a little bit about how you bought them, whatever. Just keep the video short and submit it, and mail it back to us. So I go out, I really was feeling, it was a hustle. I was so busy, I didn't really want to take the time and I wasn't going to do it. In the last second I said, you know what, I'm going to go do it. So I got a buddy of mine to film it. We weren't around 15, 20 houses that I had bought and sold or owned as rentals. I sent it in and not thinking I had a chance of winning. And the winner gets an all-expense paid vacation to the Caribbean, which is also another reason why I wasn't really that interested in going because I didn't take vacations. Matt Larson: I do it anyway. I send it in. Next thing I know I'm in the top five. And so, hey, you're in the top five, we're going to vote in a week to see who wins. So I ended up winning this contest. And so crazy thing is they get ahold of me, hey, you're the winner. They do all this promotional stuff. And they're like, hey, we want to schedule your vacation. And so yeah, I said yeah, I'll call you back. I'll look at my calendar. I'll call you back and let you know. And so I never call them back. Months goes by. They keep touching base every month. Like, hey, when are you going to schedule this vacation? I mean, this is going to be a vacation of a lifetime. And so I think it was six or seven months had passed. Matt Larson: They constantly were touching base with me. I wasn't responding. And finally, I just said, listen, here's the deal. Here's what I want. I don't want to go on the vacation. I'll trade that in if you just give me dinner with Dean. If Dean will agree to meet me for dinner. And so they're like, you're crazy, but nobody else would do that. But we will ask him and see. And oddly enough, he agreed. So I met him for dinner in 2000 and, I think it was 2009, I met him for dinner. And I told him my story and everything I had accomplished. And the next thing I know, he's like, hey, I'm going to write a new book and I want you to be in the book. So I'm in this book that he writes, it's called Profit From Real Estate Right Now. That was the name of it. Matt Larson: So anyway, I start becoming friends with him and he realizes I'm wholesaling houses in 2008, 2009, 2010. Doing double closes and assignments of contract and he's like, man, nobody's got this figured out right now. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm just doing it. And so the next thing he goes, hey, why don't you help me write some books and help me with some real education because what you're doing is working. And so it was weird. So for eight years, I wrote and built all of Dean's real estate education. And I got paid a royalty for doing that. And it was crazy. I went from student to teacher, and at some point the pinnacle of that was Tony Robbins wanted to learn. He was writing a book at the time. Matt Larson: He wanted to learn real estate because he wanted to teach it to his students because Tony was getting a lot of hassle from his critics about, hey, it's all great, Tony, you do these amazing events. Everybody gets pumped up and they leave and they don't have anything to go home and apply it to. So he picked real estate. And crazy thing is Tony's got access to everybody on the planet. And he went from one person to the next to the next to the next to the next asking who's the top single family home real estate guy. And eventually that call went to Dean and Dean called me and says, man, you're the one that does all the real estate. You got to be the one that teaches Tony. He hadn't done a lot of his own stuff in a long time other than just buying a portfolio here and there and stuff like that. Matt Larson: And so I sat down with Tony Robbins and Tony was my student for three days straight. I'm in the nicest hotel room I'd ever seen at the Wynn Hotel. I didn't realize there's hotel rooms that you can't rent, that they just reserved for celebrities. And I'm sitting there, he's got bodyguards, he's got three personal assistants, and a chef, and a chiropractor. And I'm teaching Tony one-on-one for three days how to do real estate, single family, home investing. And he never picks up his phone once to do a text or email. It was total focus. The dude is one of the smartest dudes I've ever met. And he literally remembered every single word I taught him. Matthew Whitaker: What did you teach him over those three days? Can you give us a general outline? Matt Larson: Yeah. So I just went from start to finish, how to do marketing to get leads. How to take those leads and sort those leads and how to run comparables. How to find buyers, literally start to finish all the way through a complete deal and then the last day he got all excited. He goes, hey, we're in Vegas. He's like, hey, I want to go look at some houses. So we got in a car, I was walking Tony through houses that were at that time probably $150,000 houses. And he's this big dude ducking down a walkthrough. It was pretty cool. But he's a very, very sharp guy and very nice. I was eating meals being prepared by his personal chef. And it was crazy. It was a cool experience. Spencer Sutton: That is an awesome story, Matt, and something that you said, I want to go back to it because Dean was even amazed that you were able to really go through this whole 2007, 2008, 2009 period, and be extremely successful with it. I mean, Matthew and I got into the business maybe a little bit before you. So I started wholesaling in 2004, Matthew around the same time, but the recession just literally ate our lunch. How were you able to withstand that recession? Not only just survive it, but apparently obviously were thriving. You still do a ton of deals. I know the deals were out there, but how did you manage to survive that? Matt Larson: So what's crazy is, first of all I didn't have a lot. By the time 2008 had hit, I had a portfolio of houses. There weren't a ton. I think it was around 30 houses or so at that time, and those houses were paying me about 5,000 a month cash flow after all expenses were paid. I had done a good job of reducing my expenses. I lived in a small house. I didn't have a super nice car. I mean, I was driving, at this time I'm driving a Ford Taurus. I wasn't living big. I didn't have a reason to live big. I hadn't earned that yet. I wasn't making millions of dollars yet. I was making a few thousand dollars a month and I didn't go out to eat. I didn't spend money, okay. Because I hadn't earned enough. Matt Larson: And so I kept my expenses low. My property stayed rented. Rents went up in 2009. Rents went up 15% across the board in all my portfolio because the demand was high. So many people had lost their houses and they were looking for rentals. So that was step one. Step two, I was doing fix and flips in the recession on the super cheap starter homes. I had done a bunch of research and saw that. I'd pulled the data from the MLS that there was a certain price range of home that was selling really strong. And it was in my area. It was that $120,000, $80,000 to $120,000. Those houses were selling on average, if you priced them 5% below what they were worth, they were selling in 17 to 20 days. And I did fix and flip after fix and flip to retail buyers in that price range. Matt Larson: And I don't think a single one lasted on the market more than 30 days. I priced it cheap, but it was easy to price cheap because I was buying them so cheap. Spencer Sutton: Dirt cheap. Yeah, absolutely. Matt Larson: So I just did clean up remodels. We're talking carpet and paint. Made them look nice. Didn't do any extensive. We're talking two, three, four week rehabs tops. Cleaned them up, relisted them. And I was selling them like hotcakes. They had to be FHA compliant. As long as that was the case, we sold them quickly. And I remember the very first flip I did in 2009, the first fix and flip during that whole crash. I bought a house for $57,000 in Moline, Illinois. So we closed it day one, day two rehab started. Day 10 rehab was complete, which was just carpet and paint. We relisted it for $119,900. Matt Larson: The house was worth probably $130,000, $140,000. Buyer came in and made an offer by day 11 and all cash. And this was a retail buyer. All cash, not an investor. They were moving in and they closed seven or eight days after that. And I netted $50,000 in a recession on a fix and flip retail house. And that was like, the light bulb went off. I'm like, I can still do this. I just have to price the houses cheaper than everybody else, but I'm buying them so dang cheap. It doesn't matter. The profit margin is still there. That helped me. And then it was simple. Matt Larson: I had done a good job of managing my properties, and I went to the banks, and the banks were happy with what my portfolio had done. They were happy with the performance and they basically started doing less business with more people and more business with fewer people. And because I had that track record of three years, they basically said, we'll still lend you money. You can't get 100% financing anymore, but we'll lend you money, you put money down, cover the rehab. And then I was just doing the buy and fix, rehab them all and then refinance, pull my cash back. And I moved quickly. That's how I got to 450. I did the BRRR technique and at the same time, simultaneously wholesaling and flipping a lot of houses. Matthew Whitaker: And Matt, you today, the guy that taught Tony Robbins for three days, you have your own coaching program, right? Matt Larson: Yeah. Matthew Whitaker: And so I'm curious, what do you teach? What strategies are you teaching now and what seems to be working in today's market? Matt Larson: The reason I started coaching was because I basically got bored. My real estate business, I had built out. I built my real estate business as a real company. I know I mentioned to you guys earlier about my 18,000 square foot facility. And I'll jump into that in a second, but really what happened was I'm very process-driven. My mindset is a visionary, but I have a strong implementer type personality as well. And I've been process-driven for a while. And I basically built processes on everything that we do in the company. And then I started hiring other people to run those processes. And in the course of that, I built my company to the point where it's flipping 15, 20, and sometimes more than that houses a month, but I don't spend my time there. Matt Larson: I work less than five hours a week in my real estate business. And so with that, I got bored. I basically, last year finalized the final touches on that whole system. I'm sitting around, eating too much, laying on the couch and a good friend of mine says, Matt, you really needed to teach other people how you have done that. And so I'm like, man, I just don't know if anybody would buy any of my stuff. I mean, I created stuff for Dean for years and years and years, but I'm not a marketer. I don't know how to write copy. I don't know if I can sell. But I said, you know what, I'm going to give it a shot. So I took systems that I had already built in my company. We didn't have to create products. I just took systems we already use for ourselves and made it look pretty and packaged up and put it for sale. Matt Larson: And oddly enough, people started buying it. And so I went from an idea, to have a coaching program, to I needed to hire a full-time employee or two to help me with the whole thing. It's been massively successful. Way more than I thought it would ever be. But my specialty is teaching people how to use virtual assistance to help them in their business. Most people get into real estate with the idea of making a lot of money and sitting on a beach, sipping a cocktail and not really working. And most people, a year, two years, three years down the road are working more hours than what they were before they got into real estate, a job they didn't like. Now they've worked themselves back into a pickle where they're still working a ton of hours and they're not enjoying life. And they're constantly going through the same problems they've always had because they didn't build a system around solving that problem. And so that's really what I focus on, is teaching people how to get their time back through outsourcing a lot of the stuff they do and with virtual assistance. Spencer Sutton: That includes the lead gen, right? Matthew Whitaker: Yeah. That's what I was going to ask them. Give us an example of how you use the virtual assistant today. That would've been something that you would have physically done or maybe even hired a domestic employee to do. Matt Larson: I have 13 full-time virtual assistants that work for me right now in my companies. All of my marketing is done through virtual assistants. So all I do is set a budget. I'll just say, hey, each week I want 5,000 postcards to go out. I want 3,000 cold calls to go out. I want to send out 2,500 text messages and then that's all carried out by somebody else. We do direct mail. I love direct mail. It's one of my favorite lead sources. Texting is really sexy right now, but I actually do better with direct mail. We still do texting too, but I haven't sent out my own direct mail in years. I don't remember, the last seven, eight years ago. And so we just created a system on how to follow the process to make all that happen. Matt Larson: And so we do the marketing. I don't personally approve any deal in my company. I built parameters out to basically says, hey. We incorporate a lot through Podio. So I had a Podio programmer on retainer for two years helping me build out my Podio system. And we basically just get up in the morning, dream what we wanted it to do, he'd carry it out, and I spent a lot of money to build it. But we have systems put in Podio where a deal comes through, and once we enter all the data of the house, we do a blueprint on the house that a virtual assistant builds for me. We have predetermined supply lists that go in that tell us what the supply list, the scope of work is going to be. And then at the end, based on what we have it for an offer price, it tells us how much money we're going to make. And it's either it's a green light red light. Like, hey, this deal works. Let's move forward. This still doesn't work. Cancel it or ask for reduction. Matthew Whitaker: And when you teach people to use virtual assistance, what are some fears that they have, they are probably unfounded fears that hold them back from using this resource? Matt Larson: First of all, believe it or not doing deals is fearful for most people. They'll, self-sabotage, they'll have a deal staring them right in the face that they need to move forward on. They'll self-sabotage and not do the deal because I don't know what to do. I'll get this deal under contract. I'm going to be afraid. So one of their fears is actually doing deals. Secondly, is that before they hire a virtual assistant, they're like, what if I can't afford the virtual assistant? Or what if the virtual assistant has a question and I don't know how to answer it, or what if something gets messed up? There's just a fear of unknown I think in a lot of that. Matt Larson: And so my systems basically teach the virtual assistant. I have my program that I created called Virtually Unemployed 2.0, it's a series of 90 videos and hundreds of pages of text with processes already pre-built. So if you wanted to send direct mail, for example, you would send my video on direct mail and my text to the virtual assistant and they can do it from there. They could literally just, oh, okay, I do this first. I do this second. I do this third. Boom, it's done. Direct mail goes out. Same with cold calling. Same with texting on the marketing side. Matthew Whitaker: How do you find these virtual assistants, like where are they? Matt Larson: So in the beginning I used simple resources like Fiverr. If I needed like a one-time job done, I'd go to fivver.com. But if I wanted a full-time or part-time virtual assistant that was going to do reoccurring weekly activities, I would hire them direct from Upwork, upwork.com. Now I have a virtual assistant that actually is my human resources person. She's in the Philippines. She finds all of my new virtual assistants. So what happened was, it's kind of crazy. You never know what path life's going to take you, but we got really good at the virtual assistant thing that are running my company. And one day somebody bought my Virtually Unemployed program and then reached out and said, Matt, this is great. It's great information, but I don't want to do any of this. Can you just hire a virtual assistant for me? And I will pay you to do that. Matt Larson: I'm like, that's not a bad idea because we're really good at it, we're good at finding them. And so I started a virtual assistant service that does it for people as well. Her name's Hazel, I have a girl on my team, Hazel, that is a human resources. She's in the Philippines. She finds them. She does the interviewing. We do a lot of testing before we hire somebody. They have to take a disc test. They have to take an English test. We interview them like crazy. And then we pick the top candidate. We've never had one that we've had to fire. Matthew Whitaker: And how do people screw it up? How do you screw up a hiring a virtual assistant? What are some things you see people doing wrong? Matt Larson: They don't interview correctly? I know there's a lot of really sophisticated personality tests out there. And some people will say, well, you got to use this one or you got to go with that one. I've been very good with the DISC test. You guys are probably familiar with DISC test. And so, for example, if you're going to hire a cold caller, for example, you would never hire a cold caller that's got a C personality type. It just doesn't work. The person's going to be miserable and they're not going to be good at the job. So that's one thing people will mess up is they don't take the time to do it right where they match the right personality with that specific job responsibility. Spencer Sutton: So you would want a high D, high I, for that position, correct? Matt Larson: A hundred percent. Well, first of all, they have to be goal-oriented good and driven to hit that deadline each week. But also they have to be okay with being told no, and yelled, and cussed at when they call somebody. If they've got a weak personality that doesn't mesh well with that they won't last. Spencer Sutton: Right. Matthew Whitaker: I want to wrap this up with, I would love to know what a day in your life is like. So it's for the people that are just getting into real estate and they have this similar dream to you, to grow a business so that they don't have to go to a nine to five job. Can you explain what a day in your life is like now versus the nine to five world? Matt Larson: First of all, I'm very big on time with family, time off and everything else. So I used to work a ton of hours. That's just the way it was like I was grown up. I was really taught growing up. Now, I take every, usually Thursday, Friday at the latest, I have a lake house. I go to the Lake a lot. So Thursdays and Fridays, I take off and go to the lake. I'm there all weekend until usually Monday I come back. I don't work the weekends at all. I just don't want to work weekends anymore. So we just don't do it. And so I take a lot of time for family and off time. Now, during that time, I'm thinking, I got my brain working a little bit. So it's not like I'm being lazy, I'm just letting my ideas flow. Right. Matt Larson: Sometimes you can get so busy, you don't allow any ideas to happen. But other than that, during the week, I don't have to spend a lot of time in the real estate company. That runs on its own. So I've been putting a lot of my time into the education company right now. Again, I never expected it to really take off, but it's done really, really well to the point where it's almost a phenomenon. And so I've put a lot of time and effort into that. We've got a whole bunch of products we created. So I spent some time creating products. And then now we get up in the morning, we think of... If anybody's ever seen some of my ads on Facebook, they're funny ads. Matt Larson: We would come up with funny ads to run to get people's attention. I'm always working on that type of thing now. But again, I have a routine. I get up in the morning. I built a crazy gym in my house. I have a personal trainer come to my house in the morning, workout. And then from there, I just plan my day and figure out what I want to get done for the day and think of cool ideas that a visionary would want to try. Right. I mean, in my own company, right? The cool thing is I don't sell any education or do any teaching on something I'm not doing. People will ask me all the time. Hey Matt, can you teach me how to do private money? And I'd say, no, because I'm not good at private money. I've never really done it before or anything like that. But if you want to learn how to really save a bunch of time and explode your business with virtual assistance, I'm your guy. And so I just focus on product creation in education that will help my students. Spencer Sutton: Matt, this has been awesome. And I want to know, I mean, for everybody who's listening, I know that your website is realestatematt.com. So how else can they get in touch with you? Is that the best place to send them? Matt Larson: If they want to just interact with me again, because I have a little bit more time on my hands than a lot of people probably do. You can find me on Instagram. If somebody messages me on Instagram, I'm really the guy on the other side of the phone. Spencer Sutton: Yeah. That's what I did. That's actually I reached out to you. Matt Larson: Oh, okay. Yeah. There you go. So, I mean, I'm active there. If somebody hits me up, I try to respond to every message. Pretty unusual for me to miss one. And so yeah, my Instagram handle is realestatematt just like my website. I try to deliver value there every day and post stuff that can help. And I also do what I call Freebie Friday. So I do sell education and I charge for that stuff. But if you hit me up and I'll hook you up, but if you want the free stuff, stuff that other people would charge for, I give away. Each Friday, I find something we take out of our system and I give it away. It's called Freebie Friday. And you can go to my Instagram bio and my Linktree and find some of those freebies. And there they're powerful. So no cost. Spencer Sutton: Awesome. Matthew Whitaker: Well, Matt, thank you so much. This has been great. And I hope people will reach out because obviously anybody that has 450 rentals is doing something right. Matt Larson: That's for sure. I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the conversation. Spencer Sutton: All right, everybody, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and leave us a five-star review. So, until next time we will talk to you soon.
