How to Build a Business That Runs Without You, Keith Gillespie, REI Automated, with Sindy Thomas

Keith Gillispie is the founder of REI Automated, a platform that helps investors build businesses that run on systems instead of chaos.

He’s helped hundreds of investors close more contracts, capture millions in equity, and finally build freedom through automation — all with his no-fluff, story-driven approach that connects with real investors.

Keith's gift to listeners: Your audience to get their one free course.

One Free Course - Page 2
https://playbook.reiautomated.io/one-free-course?campaign=OFC&source=Keith&term=

Keith's website:
ttps://www.reiautomated.io


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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And my wife had to reintroduce me to my own children because they didn't know who I was. They were hiding behind mommy because they didn't recognize that. And that really broke me because my dad died when I was eight years old, and I was raised without a father. And here are my children being raised without a father, except I don't have the excuse of being dead. I'm alive and I'm well and I'm choosing to live this life. And so it was in that moment that I said something's gotta change.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hey Insider Family. Today we're talking about an easy way for anyone that's interested in real estate investing. My special guest today is Keith Gillespie, and he's the founder of REI Automated, which is a platform that helps investors build businesses that run on systems rather than chaos. Now Keith has some real-world experience, and he's helped more than hundreds of investors close more contracts and gain millions in equity and finally build freedom through automation. He has a no-fluff, story-driven approach that connects with real investors. Let's welcome him into the show. Welcome into the Inside of Career Club podcast. How are you today?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

I'm doing absolutely amazing. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

So before we get started with talking more about your business, would you share your story with us and how you got started into real estate investing?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Yeah, I'd love to. So it was um, I'll take you back one decade. It was 2016. I was active duty in the Marines, and I had just gotten home and I tried to open the door to our apartment. Me and my wife at that time had been married for a couple of years, and um I I tried to open the door, and you know those little flippy metal things that like even if you unlock the door, it's still gonna so she had that thing. She knew that I was coming home that day, so I don't know why she had the thing on this. And anyway, so she peeks through and she goes, babe, close your eyes. And I'm like, dude, like I haven't seen you in forever. Give me a hug, give me stop playing games. She's like, No, you have to close your eyes. So, all right, I'll close my eyes. So she opens the door, she says, Drop your bags, come on in, but keep your eyes closed. So I drop my my sea bags, I step into the house, and she says, I need you to look up and hold your hands out. And so I look up like this and I hold my hands out, and she puts something in my hands, and it's hard and it's round, like cylindrical. And as soon as I felt that, you know, because I just got back from overseas, uh, I'm in a different headspace. It felt like a pipe bomb, you know, like the big bad things that blow up. And uh, so I immediately stop. By the way, this is recorded, it's up on YouTube if anybody wants to watch it. You'll see me stop in the video and I go, is it gonna explode? I don't know why I have to ask my wife this, but she goes, No, I I don't think so. Okay, so I go back to feeling I cannot for life of me figure out what this thing is. She lets me fumble with it for about five seconds. She says, Okay, you can open your eyes. And I look down, I'm holding a pink baby bottle with a positive pregnancy test inside of it.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Oh, must have been one of those big ones, huh?

SPEAKER_02 3:18

And and that's how she surprised me. Yeah, that we were that we were having our daughter, and I had missed her pregnancy. I was there for the birth of our daughter, fortunately. And the very next month I left, I went back to go overseas. Oh, and uh I came home, she recorded the second video, surprising me a second time of I'm pregnant with our son. And that's also up on YouTube, kind of a similar story, except she didn't do the baby bottle this time. And in that second video, you actually when when I realized that when she gave me it was a cookie that she gave me the second time, and with the cookie was a plastic bag that she was holding in her hand, and she just left it up, and inside the plastic bag was a pregnancy test. You actually see me collapse to the ground, and you'll see a wave of three emotions about that fast. Wow. You're gonna watch the video. The first one, of course, is shock of like I wasn't expecting, like, it's happened. This is happening, we're having a baby, right? Yeah, and the second number one was immediate remorse. Oh, because this was the second time that I've missed your pregnancy. And then the third emotion was joy, we're gonna have a baby. Our first one was awesome, right? So you actually see that boom, boom, boom. And uh I got up and the video was awesome. So anyway, it was it was right there though that I decided I have to get out of the Marine Corps. I love the Marine Corps. I was I was active duty for eight years. You never hear me say a bad thing about it. But what I will tell you is that it was good only for a season. Because for the next three years, I left to go overseas a lot. Over eight years, I was in 13 different countries. I was gone all the time. And for the next three years, I would go overseas and I would come back home, and my wife had to reintroduce me to my own children because they didn't know who I was. They were hiding behind mommy because they didn't recognize daddy. And that really broke me because my dad died when I was eight years old, and I was raised without a father. And here are my children being raised without a father, except I don't have the excuse of being dead. I'm alive and I'm well, and I'm choosing to live this life. And so it was in that moment that I said, something's gotta change. I can choose to do something different. I can choose to come home and father my children and be a husband to my wife. And um, so that's how I got into real estate investing. We were gonna go buy a house with our with the money that we were setting aside, and we were working on our credit. Instead of buying a house, we ended up paying for a $35,000 education and coaching program that maybe some people know the name of is fortune builders. They're the largest education coach and coaching company in real estate investing in the United States that's ever existed. Okay, and and we proceeded to go from you know fortune builders to rich dad, poor dad, Robert Kiyosaki. He joined him and Grant Cardone and John Martinez sales and negotiations. Those I'm not so familiar with, yeah. But yeah. And uh still, I mean, to this day, I I just bought a course last two months ago now, and even 10 years down the road, we've uh we've done deals across 34 states. Still worth it for me to be uh be a student of my craft, if you will, you know. And so I think I'm on I think I'm on course number 57 um over the last 10 years that I have have learned and and grown our business from.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

Okay. So why specifically real estate? Why did you choose that?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Easy. There were two different reasons. The first was I uh at the time, my squad leader in the Marines had given me a book. He knew my story coming out of high school. So my my father died when I was eight years old. I'm an only child, and um he was 100% disabled coming out of Vietnam. And so my wife was his primary caretaker up until the day that he died. She had never held a job, and so as soon as he died, well, the money was coming in from the VA. Now it's not because he's deceased. So what does she do? Well, she does what kind of everybody's trained to do go back to school, get your degree, land a secure job, and work until you're 65. Problem with that is um, I don't know if you know this, but college doesn't pay you very much.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

No, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

So no money's coming in. My mom's going to college. How are we gonna live? I was the main breadwinner for my family. Me and mom lived off of about a thousand dollars a month because that's all I could make as a 10-year-old kid. $1,000.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

That's pretty good for a 10-year-old kid.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

That's right. Thank you very much. Uh yeah, I was working my butt off. And um, so I but we were super poor, right? I grew up insanely poor. And when I joined the Marines, I was making more than double, almost triple that, just right off the bat. As a 17-year-old, I graduated high school, I joined the Marines, and I'm I'm filthy rich. You know, I'm I'm doing really good. And I will, I was so rigid. I remember I would eat the same thing. I I every single day, I would open up a can of beans, I would open up a can of chicken, and I would dump half of it into a bowl, I would mix it up, I would put it in a tortilla, and I would heat it up in the microwave, and I would have two of those for lunch. And I think it was like a dollar ten or something like that. Like I still remember that I was just I was the cheapest thing ever. All these Marines, they're going out, they're spending, you know, $15, $25 on a meal. I was like, y'all are crazy. I'm racking in the dough right now, you know. And uh so he saw how fiscally responsible I was, and he said, Keith, you know, I just read this book, kind of has a lot to do about finances, but it taught me that everything that I've learned up to this point in my life was wrong. And the book that he gave me was what some call the Purple Bible Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Okay, and so I read that, and you know, Robert Kiyosaki and Rich Dad Poor Dad, and he talks about two different things, uh, mainly, and that's stocks and real estate. Okay, and uh, so that's that's the honest reason. And I started doing some research, and I, you know, a lot of people lose money when it comes to the stock market, and real estate makes more millionaires than any other uh industry, at least in the United States. And so I saw these statistics according to Google, you know, every because everything that you see online is true. Um, and it it seemed good to me. All right, cool. I have my my path moving forward then, and that's how I decided to do real estate.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Okay, so you have your path moving forward. Um, when did you realize because you were now doing it well, actually, you weren't doing it full time then. You were you were just kind of getting into it, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I literally built my business during my lunch breaks.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

I read that.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

I could not work before work, I couldn't work my real estate business before work because so I got I my first duty station was Virginia, but I didn't get started until my third year into my first enlistment. So I only had a little bit less than a year, truthfully, until I moved. And then I moved to Hawaii. And in Hawaii, I don't know if you know this, but right now I'm in Florida, so it's Eastern Standard Time. Hawaii is six hours displaced from Eastern Standard. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm already getting up super early. I was getting up around four o'clock in order to get to PT, physical training. We worked out, you know, in the Marines every day before work. I'm already getting up at four. Now I don't know about you, but I am not a hampic camper when I'm waking up at three. If I see three is the first digit, I don't care how much coffee I have to drink, it's not gonna affect my mood. I just really have to pee. So before work, it's not sustainable. After work, it's not sustainable either because I was getting home from work around 5.30 to 6. Well, 5.30 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time is 11:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Call somebody at 11:30, see if they pick up their phone. And if they do, you're gonna buy in their house, you're just gonna get cussed out. You know? So I couldn't do it before work, I couldn't do it after work. I literally built my business during the one and I couldn't do it during work. I'm not allowed to have my phone on me. I have to stick my phone in the secure lockbox. So couldn't do it before, couldn't do it after, couldn't do it during. But Cindy, I have to get the heck back home to my kids. How am I gonna do this? Only time that I could do my business was on my list.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Real dedication, and it sounds like you were fairly organized if you were doing it, you know, in 60 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

I wasn't in the beginning, let me tell you. That's actually how REI automated came into existence.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

All right, that's a good segue.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Talk about that. Yeah. So, what did the business look like before systems and automation enter the picture? And then what did it look like after?

SPEAKER_02 12:26

So, real estate investing is more than a full-time job. Anybody who who is a real estate investor will agree with what I'm saying, especially if they're a solopreneur. If they're the only person, there is no team. It's more than a full-time job because you you're doing marketing, you're doing sales, you're doing analysis, both deal analysis as well as risk analysis. You're you're learning, you know, contract ball. There's so much involved in real estate investing. And here I was, a 20-year-old kid with no experience in doing this at all. Trying to learn how to do this. So I'm not gonna lie, um, I wasn't organized. I was floundering for a very long time. For four and a half years, I was floundering just trying to find my foot. And um, and so especially when we got to Hawaii, I really had to figure out a way to make that hour. If I only have an hour, I have one hour of inputs, but I need eight hours of outputs, meaning I need the result of a full-time job so I can get the heck out of touch and come home to my family and replace my W 2 income with the Marines. So I have one hour of inputs that needs to equal eight hours of outputs. How do I do that? Well, I need to create as many automations, I need to be as efficient as I possibly can, I need to be extremely effective, I need to have everything organized. There needs to be an SOP for everything. And I need to automate as much as I can, and anything that I can't automate needs to be delegated to another person because I only have 60 minutes, and those 60 minutes better be talking to the hottest sellers and buyers that I could possibly find. So that's what I did. And it took five years to get there of just trudging through the mud, of building out these systems little bit by little bit by little bit by little bit. It took forever. And I sacrificed a lot of late nights, a lot of weekends. I'm sure almost every late night, actually, and almost every weekend. And I remember, you know, anytime Marines travel, we travel on on buses, whenever we're on the ground, right? Like stateside. I'm not talking about when you're overseas. But we travel in buses, and all the Marines are messing around. And here I am, earphones in. Yeah, I'm I mean, I'm working, I'm writing, I'm learning, I'm listening. So I had very little free time. And the blessing of investing in real estate is it can all be done virtually. So as long as I have Wi-Fi, I'm good. I've closed deals in Japan, I've closed deals in China, I've closed deals in Guadacanal, I've closed deals in Mexico, I've closed deals a whole bunch of different places. How was I able to do that? As long as I have Wi-Fi, you can do this. I'm not saying that it's gonna be easy, it's definitely not convenient. You do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Um, how did you deal with language barriers? And well, obviously, time change, you're doing it virtually, you that helps out a lot. But with dealing with the language barriers, and you know, you're not able to look at the property, it's all virtual. How do you do that and make sure that you aren't making a big fat error?

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Yeah, easy question. Um, it's easy in theory. In theory, yeah. In practical application, it's definitely a little bit more complex, but I'll make it sound really easy. So I don't deal with language barriers, by the way. I speak no other language. My wife is Mexican, and when I was dating her, my mother-in-law now taught me to say, no entiendo nada lo que mereces, which means I don't understand a word that you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

I still don't speak any Spanish or anything. And I assume maybe you're asking that because I was in different countries, but I was in different countries, but I was investing in the United States, and so I I was only speaking to English people, okay, English speaking people.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

However, right, I understood that you were like buying property in Japan. Oh, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Totally different loss. But when it comes to making sure that you're not going to make a big fat error, that is where it gets fun. Because I've invested across 34 states. But how many of those states have I been to? I don't actually know the right answer, but I think it's about 10. But how many of those we're just talking about the state? How many have I been to? Maybe about 10 out of those 34. But how many of those properties have I seen? Two. I've seen two of those houses because I had to. Because I had to. Every single property I bought without walking it. Did that mean that I bought it without seeing it? No. We get a home inspection, and that home inspector's job is to point out every single little thing that is wrong with that house and to document it with a picture proof, and then to write a description with some arrows of exactly what he's talking about. In addition to that, I would typically have the seller actually do a walkthrough of their house, a video inside and out. Or if they couldn't do a video, then we would just do like 50 to 80 photos, you know, maybe 50 photos on the inside, 30 photos on the outside, showing me the condition, showing me the layout, showing me all that stuff. That would be first, and then we would get the home inspector, and then I would have a realtor go in as well. I would have my realtor walk the property, make sure that I've got my valuation correct. Hey, I think that I can sell this for $310,000. What do you think? Go out to the house, record it while you're there, and tell me what you think we could sell this for if it's all fixed up and it's beautiful. And uh, and so did I walk any of the properties? No. Did I see all of the properties? Yes. And dare I say, anybody who thinks they need to be watching, you know, like physically there looking at the property is foolish because you're not a home inspector, you're not a structural engineer, you're not a contractor, you're maybe some people have never even renovated the house. Like, who are you to see or to say that the house is in good or bad condition? Why don't we let the professionals do it?

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

That's what the home inspector is there for. That's what the realtor is there for, that's what a contractor is there for. Send those people through and get their opinion.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Okay. So tell us about build building REI automated and what this system does for real estate investors.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Admittedly, REI automated was never meant to be commercialized and never meant to sell it. It was never meant for other people. It was literally my solution to my problem. Ah, okay. I am busy working, and the Marine Corps is not a W-2. It's not, I mean, it is a W 2, but it's not like a normal W 2. Yeah, it's not a good thing. It's not a nine to five. You can't clock in and clock out like you have you have 24-hour duty, you're going overseas, you're bringing work home with you. So it's a lifestyle. It's not a job, it's a lifestyle. Yeah. I would say that's true of the military, period. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. All the military. So it was important to me as I'm building REI automated, and I needed to solve my own problem. And it took me, like I said, four and a half years of floundering until I really felt like I found my footing. And I started, I started getting really good at it. And from year four and a half to five and a half, that was the year 2020, we made like more than $300,000, about $330,000 net profit just from real estate. So here I am. I'm 25 years old. I think, yeah, 25, 24, 25,000 years old, making $330,000 plus my Marine Corps income, plus my wife's income. Like I am, I am as high on life as it gets, you know. And my mentor at the time, he was like, Keith, you know, like you, you're you're doing it. You're doing the thing. You're doing really good. How are you doing it? And he starts digging into my business, how things are progressing. How are you able to get eight hours worth of outputs when you only have one hour worth of inputs per day? And so I started showing him the software and showing him the systems. And he goes, You know, you're kind of being a jerk at holding this so close to your chest. You can help so many people. Why are you not doing that? I was like, dude, I don't think you understand what you are insinuating right now because it would be super complicated to template everything. Nothing was templated, right? Like everything was exactly how I wanted it to be. It was very specific to me and to my business and to the team members within the business. It was not templated for any other. And then once I created the software and then I templated, then I have to do training videos, and then I'm gonna have to service those people. I was like, man, this sounds like a whole other job. And he's like, Yeah, you could look at it that way. Or you could look at it that you're gonna help a lot of people change the trajectory of their family's financial future and make a really healthy income doing it. And go, wow, you know, like you've just said two things that kind of convicted me just there. And uh, and so we did. 2020 is when we we started building or like templating all of this stuff out. And uh and at the end of twenty twenty, we had a soft launch just for a couple of people, about forty people, and then we had a public launch January like sixth or January eighth of two thousand and twenty one. And it has grown a lot since then. It has grown so it's amazing. To answer your the latter portion of your question, though, what does it do? Well, I'll separate the business into three pillars. There's three pillars that are automated.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

That's one of my questions. So we'll just roll right along.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Great. It sounds like I can read your mind. Have you ever baked a cake before, Cindy? Oh, yeah. What are the three just absolutely essential ingredients that every cake must have? You know what they are?

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Um, I would say flour.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yes, that's one. Yes, that's two.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

And some kind of liquid. It could be milk.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Oh, sugar. You have to have sugar. Okay. So you have to have these. If you take out the sugar, that cake is not going to taste like a cake. If you take out the egg, that cake is not going to look like a cake. And if you take out the flour, it's not going to look or taste or smell or anything. It's not even going to resemble a cake. So there's three essential ingredients baking a cake. Similarly, there's three essential ingredients to be successful as a real estate investor. It starts with your education. Because if you don't know what you're doing, fear, analysis paralysis is going to take over. I don't know what to do, therefore, I do nothing. Exactly. So let's first learn what to do. And how I already explained to you, there's all these things you have to learn. You have to learn marketing, and you have to learn sales and negotiation. You have to learn uh deal structure, and you have to learn deal analysis, and you have to learn how to raise private money, and you have to learn how to hire and train team members, and you have to learn how to automate and scale your business. Blah, blah, blah. There's there's like 12 things. There's 12 core things that you have to learn. And you have to be at least proficient at all 12 of them. Because if you if you're bad at just even one of them, it will tank your business. You have to be proficient in all 12 areas. So that's education. This is pillar one that Aria automated is. I have 12 different courses teaching each one of these things. That's pillar one, which is education. Pillar number two is operating system. You always have to have an operating system. I call it my Mickey D's method. So if you were um, what what where do you live, city and state?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Um, California.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area because most people have originally from the Reading area. So you live in San Francisco Bay Area. I live near Orlando, Florida. If you and I were to pause this podcast, go down to our local McDonald's, grab a big Mac, and come back and share it. They're gonna come out looking the same, they're gonna come out smelling the same, and they're gonna come out tasting the same. How is that possible? We're 3,000 miles apart from each other. Well, it's possible because it's the same exact ingredients and it's the same exact process every single time. Down to, you know, when they put the patty on and they and they lower that that heater, the grill or the griddle or whatever it's called is the same temperature at your location as it is on mine. And then you ever been, you know, waiting for your food, you're ordering your food, and the stupid machine beep, beep, beep just annoying the heck out of you. Well, that's because it's time to lift that griddle up. So it's the same temperature, it's the same time, it's the same ingredients. They don't even trust you to squirt your own mayonnaise anymore because you may be a little bit more heavy-handed than me. And your location will go through more mayonnaise. So they have these pumps now. You just you squeeze the trigger, and the same exact amount of mayonnaise drops. Everything is the same. Well, we need to have that same Mickey D's method within our business. Okay. Everything that we do, whether you do it or whether I do it, whether the house is in Florida or the house is in California, regardless of the purchase price, regardless of the renovation, it walks down through this assembly line, just like those patties, right? And so there's a system for absolutely everything, whether it's baking your burger or it's cleaning the bathroom or it's inspecting a home or triaging a cellar every time it's done the exact same way. But how do you enforce it? Because you can teach somebody how to do something and they won't do it. The only way to enforce it is if there is an actual system, i.e., software. The software is the guardrails. You can't go past this thing because the system prohibits it, and you can't go past this thing because the system prohibits it. This is the way. So we started creating software. We have a lead generation software, we have a CRM software, we have a deal analysis software, we have a scripting software, we have a lending software, so on and project management. We have all these different softwares so that people are set up for success. So we're setting them up for success with the education. They know what to do, but they may not know how to do it. So you give them the process to do it. That's exactly correct.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

All right.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

So we originally started just with these two pillars, but people still weren't successful enough, or at least deemed by me. I'm looking at it and I was like, man, these people should be getting more success faster. Why are they not more successful and why are they not getting that success faster? We had about 110 clients, 120 clients at this time. I went and I interviewed every single one of them. It took me about five months to get them all on a Zoom call, 60 minutes, and I just interrogated the crap out of them. I asked them every question about their business. And and the the overarching restraint was them. They were getting in their own head, they were getting in their own way. It was always, it came back to two things fear of failure or fear of the unknown.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Oh, okay. I was gonna say fear of success, because there's no two.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Okay. There is, but the fear of success is actually defined as the fear of failure because they will be losing friends, they'll be losing status, they'll be losing whatever, and that is actually defined as failure. So there's a fear, fear of failure, or there's the fear of the unknown, which actually, to your point, could be well, I don't know if I'm successful if this person is gonna leave me. I don't know if I'm successful, people are gonna take advantage of me because I own a boat or whatever it is, right? It's always tied to the fear of failure or the fear of uh the unknown. How do you overcome that? Coach people, you you support people, you put them in a community, and we work on mindset. We hold you accountable, we raise the standard, we give you permission to do things that are scary and outside your box. You can. You have to have the education, you have to have the system, and you have to have the support. If you have one of these ingredients or two of these ingredients, it doesn't matter. You're going to fail. I can guarantee it. It's not a matter of if it's when. You have to have all three things, and that's why we built the company on those three pillars.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

So you're known for helping investors replace chaos with systems, right? What's the first step in getting started?

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Education. I think that a lot of people want, they desire, they have the desire to go over there. But and they know that they're here. I know I'm here and I know I want to get there. This is just like Google Maps, right? When you want to get somewhere in Google Maps, it only needs two things. You supply it a point of origination and a point of destination. And as soon as it has the point of origination where we currently are, and the point of destination where we want to go, then it guides us. This is the problem that most folks have. They may know where they are. Here's what I'm gonna be we're gonna get even a little bit deeper than surface level here. A lot of people think they know where they want to go, but it is not clearly defined, it is very foggy, they have not really dug deep and done the work that is necessary on what do I want and why. Because once you know why, now you can get really, really clear on what you want. And once you get really clear on what you want, you just reverse engineer where you are. And so it's it's a simple gap analysis, right? I am here, I want to be there. What do I need to get there? And let's build the bridge. And that's gonna start with education. But so education to answer your question is step one, but the truly is a step zero. Step zero is getting clarity on actually what you want.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

What you want, yeah. How do you help people get clear on what they want?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Oh my goodness, I have a whole course dedicated just to that. I actually have a two-day exercise. I was trained on on this by Tony Robbins. I actually I actually took some things from Tony Robbins, took some things I learned from Dean Graziosi, and took some things that I learned from Rock Thomas. Rock Thomas was my life coach for about five years, and he was trained by um not Zig Ziggler. It's the guy who coached Tony Robbins. That's Rock Thomas's mentor. It doesn't matter. I these three men are just the most amazing men in the whole wide world. Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Rock Thomas, amazing individuals. I took what I learned from each of them and I created a two-day seminar that gets you extremely clear on what you want, on why and exactly how you're going to get there. It eliminates all of the distractions. It gets it cuts through the fluff. A lot of times we say, Oh, I want to do this, and you're like, Yeah, do you really want that? Because it's going to come at the cost of this, this, this, this, and this. And you're like, Yeah. Never mind. That sounds too hard. You know, like, I want an eight-pack. Hey, you're going to have to be in a calorie deficit for a year. You're going to have to work out every single day, and you're going to have to go on uh two walks, two walks a day. Now, I I'd rather watch Netflix and eat my muffin in the morning. You know, like a lot of times people say that they want something. Yeah, but they're not they're not willing to do what it takes to do. That's exactly right. But but once you really put it together, they're not they're not willing to sacrifice and give up other things.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

How do you coach investors who are stuck and I have to do everything myself, Trep?

SPEAKER_02 32:05

This is not very common for me for two reasons. The first is I have branded myself as REI automated. And so people are naturally attracted to automating their workflows. And so even if they feel like they have to do it themselves, we're gonna automate it. And we have tons of solarpreneurs, by the way. That means an entrepreneur that's just a one-man show, and they're super successful and they're making lots of money. Like, for example, I have this guy who's active duty in the Navy. He just had a beautiful baby girl two years ago, and he is going through electrical engineering full-time with 23 course credits. Yet, in seven months, he's put eight properties under contract, netting more than half a million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

Well, good for him.

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Like, I don't care about your excuses, just follow my direction and good things happen. That dude has everything against him. He has no time, he has no mental bandwidth. Yet, he has massive and imperfect action and his speed of implementation. When I tell him to do something, like literally that night, he texts me that he already did it.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Ah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

So I attract a crowd that says, I'm gonna follow you. Even if I have to do it myself, we're going to at least automate it, you know, have a computer or software do it. But then the second thing is again, I'm fairly abrasive. Like, I'll rough you up. I'm I'm not very uh from the military, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Set all that into shut up or get out of my program. If you're not gonna listen to me, stop paying me money. I don't need your money. I'm here to help you. And if you're not gonna listen to me, then it's not gonna help. Go away. Follow directions, follow simple instructions. It's literally a law in the Marines. Instant and willing obedience to all lawful orders. Meaning, if I tell you what to do, if I'm a sergeant and you're a you know private, and I tell you to do something, you don't ask me why. You just shut up and you freaking do it. Because if you don't, you may get killed. We don't have time for you to ask why. We can debrief when we get back on base, right? But but instant and willing obedience to all lawful orders. I don't even care if it doesn't make sense to you. Do the thing. We will tr we will teach you why it worked afterwards.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

I know. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

We don't have time right now. So that's kind of the environment that I lived for eight years, and I'm not that strict when it comes to civilian life because civilians are not um you're not as receptive to this form of leadership. So I I tone it down quite a bit, right? There's a fairly big extreme gap here. And also, I you know, my dad was born in 1950. I mean, just do the math. I was kind of raised by like grandparent-aged parents, so I'm very much an old soul and like respect your elders, you know, is is a thing with me. So I mean, some of my oldest clients are 83 years old doing this full time. Wow. And uh, and so as much as I'm respecting my elders, I'm also saying you're paying me to follow my direction. This is what you need to do.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Okay. What's the hardest lesson real estate has taught you? And how do they shape your approach right now?

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Wow. Cindy, I've been on a lot of podcasts and nobody has asked me that question before. What is the hardest thing that real estate has taught me? I feel like I've learned a lot of important life lessons. I'll give you one business one and I'll give you one personal one.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

The business one is just because you can do something and do it well doesn't mean that you should. And it doesn't mean that your process will work for others. You must strip it down to the principles of not what you do, but why you do it. Write down those principles. When you pass it off, this is kind of like the commander's intent in the Marines. It's like, hey, I don't really care how you get the thing done, but that's the objective. And here's how I've done it in the past. That is true leadership, in my opinion. A lot of times people are like, this is exactly how we're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

You know, especially in corporate America, we we're gonna do it this way because this is how we've always done it. Shut up. Well, we're not gonna break, you know, we're not gonna have to change things if it's always been working.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Does that mean that if we have a square wheel that we shouldn't round it out for a little bit of a less bumpy ride as we're going down the road? Like, let's optimize this, let's streamline this. So I believe in none of those things. I think that we need to have a commander's intent, which is here's the reason why we're doing this. Like, this is the objective. Here's how I've done it in the past. I'm gonna pass it to you, and you use your initiative, your leadership, your experience, your knowledge, your studying in order to get the mission accomplished. That's the best way, in my opinion, to scale your business. And that's really what we do in every capacity. Now, on the personal side of things, what real estate has taught me is that money is not what any of us are after. Not a single person. Everybody gets into business to make money. I did, you did, every single person gets into it for the money. But really, what we're chasing, we want the money. Why do we want the money? Because we're gonna use the money to buy an emotion. I believe that everything that we do is emotional currency, not financial currency. And so instead of chasing the dollars, why don't we chase the emotion?

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Like peace.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

Yes, or well-meaning. That is my word, actually, like peace. Um, not to turn into a hippie. I don't think that I identify as a hippie, but peace and love is the first thing that came to mind, you know? And uh, and so like me and my wife, we've been married for um 13 years. We have two kids. Like, I just want nothing more than to hang out with my family and to make a difference in their lives and to teach them and to watch them grow and to enjoy those moments. And that is my the happiest times in my whole entire life is when I'm just being with my family. I don't have to be doing things, I don't have to be having things, I'm just being with them. And so that's something that I that I yearn for now. And oftentimes, you're you know, you brought up the word peace, but business is hard, man. Business is very stressful, and there's a lot of pressure on you, and oftentimes it's difficult for us to find that peace. And sometimes it's better to actually slow down when we think, no, I have to be running, I have to be working, I have there's so many things that I need to get done. Some of the times it's better to slow down because all these problems that we would like to keep ourselves busy with, they'll kind of find a way of working themselves out. Like most of the time, like more than 90% of the time, they're gonna work them themselves out. And the second part about that is you are creating like a vacuum, you're creating room in your business for somebody else to step in, take initiative, and gain grow through the ranks of your company. If you have if you have staff, of course. That's what I'm talking about. If you're a solopreneur or not.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Okay. I want to go back to the busy the piece you said about being busy. I used to work for um one of my managers, she was director at the time, and I was her HR recruiting manager. She always said, and I always think of this go slow to go fast. It's very simple, right? But when you think about it, you're going slow, you're figuring it out, you know what you're gonna do, you've got it all down, and then once you've got it, you can go fast. You don't have to think about it because you've already perfected what you're doing. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 40:18

We have a um in the Marines, one of the things that we do is breaching doors. So if any, if you've ever watched like a cool military movie, and they have the guy that hits the door, kicks the door, and then all the Marines rush in, they're shooting all the bad guys. Well, we used to train those drills, and each person has a different job. One man has a different job than two man, has a different job than three man, how you sweep through where you step, what if it's a corner fed room, if it's a center fed room, meaning where's the door located on the wall? All of that matters. And a lot of times there's so much pressure, and whenever they're training you, there's so much haste that you don't take the time to chill the f out and think, what is my job? Stop worrying about everybody else. Because if you screw up, you let everybody down. And here's the thing we would do these drills forever until everybody got it right, and it was terrible. But one of the things that it taught me, and and they would scream at this slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Because slow is smooth, meaning nothing goes wrong. And because nothing went wrong, you accomplished the mission. But as soon as you went fast, you made a mistake, you jammed your door in the in the wall as you were going around, you tripped over the threshold of the doorway, whatever it was. Now you are shook from that. The bad guy who has a gun shoots you. Well, now two man has to freaking shoot that guy while three man drags you out, and now you've taken two Marines out of the fight, putting everybody else at risk. Now we have to evacuate people. Now medical, you know, like you've just ruined it for everybody because you went fast and because you slipped, because you tripped, because you knocked a wall, because you made a noise. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And that's slow is number one, planning where you're going. Clarity on what you want is the is step zero. Literally, you cannot do anything if you do not where you're going. You're flying blind. Then the second thing is when you're reverse engineering the process, you have to think through not just as yourself, but as the next person behind you who's gonna follow this process, what would they need to see in order to set them up for success? And as you systemize your business like this, you can automate and you can delegate it. And your business will effectively be run by others for automation.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

Okay. So I read something about you um getting ready to release something new with your software. Would you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_02 42:55

We are very close to releasing this, yeah. So we just released our CRM. Anybody listening to this doesn't know what a CRM is? It's a customer relationship management software. It's basically who are my contacts, how do I contact them? What are my notes? It houses everything. It is the central source of truth, right? So you call out of there, you text out of there, you email out of there, all your documents are there. Every it houses everything. We've just created this software, we've launched it. It's amazing. If anybody's heard of like Go High Level or Salesforce, or we won't get into it. We are better objectively. We are better than all of them. It is so cool what we've been able to do. So, what we're what we're about to bolt onto this is a second software. We've been working on it since July of last year. We've already had 230 people, I think is what we're out, 235 beta test it. They've been using it for many, many months now. A lot of people have made a lot of money already. In the system, but it hasn't really gone public yet. So the CRM is called Deal Base, and the C uh the lead generation software is called Deal Labs. And so what it does is it finds on market deals and off market deals. What do you want? You want one, you want the other, you want both, whatever. So we have different ways of going through it. I won't get into it, but basically, we we get all of the information from like if it's a for example, if somebody has listed their house on Zillow and it's for sale by owner, we're gonna collect the information that they have on for sale by owner. But then also we're gonna enrich from where we have data providers that we buy the data from, making sure that we actually know what is the value of this house, you know what what is the mortgage that they have on the house? What can we rent this house for? Right? So we're getting all this data, we're enriching. Now we have the the whole picture. Now we're gonna analyze it. So we have AI analyze it every which way. What if we buy it with a VA loan? What if we buy it with a conventional loan? What if we buy it with a DSCR loan? What if we buy it with a hard money loan? What if we buy it with private money? What if we keep the mortgage in place? What if we get owner financing? What if we get a hybrid of the both? There's a whole bunch of different ways to buy the house. And then there's a whole bunch of different things. Now that we have the house, we could wholesale it, we could wholeale it, we could retail it, we could wrap it, we could rent it, we could lease option, we could novate it. There's all these different things, both entrance strategies and exit strategies. And what it's doing is it's saying, well, what if you did this and this and this and this and this? And then it goes down to this one. Well, what if we did this and this and this and this and this? And it and it goes and it crosses the web across all of them, and then it presents you all of the options. And it says, Cindy, we analyzed, we scraped all this data, we we enriched all of this data, then we analyzed all of this data, and then we scored the data. And here's the top 10%. Just call these leads, and it will turn into a deal. Wow. It's very good. And then we give you a script. So all you have to do, I mean, you don't even have to be a sales and negotiation wizard, you could be a buffoon, but you have to basically have a third grade reading level. Like my son can read the script and it autofills all the information. It's literally like you don't have to do anything. You just you literally just dial and you read the script. Wow, it's so easy.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

A monkey, um it's a comprehensive system for real estate.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

Everything that you need. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

So let's say we've got lots of listeners that are interested in learning more about how they can get in contact with you, how they can sign up to use your system. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 46:54

Yeah, I have actually made something specifically for your audience.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Oh, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 47:00

If I didn't give it to you before the podcast, I will get it to you afterwards. Okay. Um, but one of the things that I want to do for your audience is anybody who's listening to this, I want to give them something very valuable or very free. There's no sales pitch, and here I'm not going to ask you for any money, then there's no bait and switch either. Well, all these courses that I that I told you, I have 12 of them. Well, I've chosen eight of them that I'm willing to give away for free. And it's not because I'm not willing to give away the other four, it's just because they're too complicated. You know, it's not like 101, 201, it's like 801 type of thing. It's super advanced. So there's eight of them, and anybody can click on the link that I'm gonna give you. You can spread it out to your audience. They can click on that link and choose any one of my courses for free. It's not a 30-minute presentation where I'm just like talking to a group of people and then I slapped it up on the internet and I called it a course. It's not some AI slop that I used, you know, Claude or Chat GBT or Gemini. I spent hours just creating the curriculum. What? And then hours rehearsing and then hours recording. There's probably about seven to ten hours across any one of the courses that your audience is going to choose from. About seven to ten hours of curriculum, just recordings, and then they get documents, and then they get templates, and then they get resources on top of that. Each one of those courses has additional documents. That's wonderful, Keith. It's really great. So it's totally free. And if you want to learn more uh, you know, about me, you can just go to our website, rei automated.io, www.rei automated.io. Uh you can learn about us there. And then if you wanted to talk to me personally, just find me on Facebook. My name's Keith Gillespie, and my last name is spelled really weird. It's G-I-L-L-I-S-P-I-E. Everybody thinks it's an E, but it's an I. G-I-L-L-I-S-P-I-E. Send me a message, send me a friend request, I will DM you. And if there's anything that I can provide you to help you, I will. You're free to tell me you came from Cindy's podcast because I like her. She's really wonderful. She asked me a hard question that I've never been asked before. It was great.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Do think a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Yeah, yeah. Kept me on my toes.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Uh well, it was wonderful talking to you. What a wonderful thing. And how great was that that your was it your mentor that that told you, why aren't you keeping this to yourself? Yep. Because he uh is allowing you to bless others. It is literally changed yourself.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

It's changed the trajectory of my family's, like my lineage is better because of that one question that he asked, and we have to date, we have been able to impact 570. We're at like 572 or three or four people who have been able to get their first deal done, which is the most important deal. The first deal is not the one that you make the most money on. The first deal is the one that changes your mindset, it's the one that changes your identity, it's the one that opens up the world to you. And the perceived glass ceiling that you that's been holding you down has now lifted, and you say, you know what? I can do this. Wow. And we've been able to do that for 570 plus great equal over the last five years. Yeah, it's been really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

It's gonna be a lot more.

SPEAKER_02 50:20

Sure hope so.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

I'm sure of it. Keep it. Thank you so much, Cindy. I appreciate you. My pleasure to speak with you. God bless you. And I just thank you for being on the show.

SPEAKER_02 50:33

Yeah, absolutely. You're amazing. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

You're welcome. All right, I'm gonna sign off now. Okay, I'm gonna describe someone, and I want to know if it reminds you of someone, maybe you. You've been looking for a job for a while. You're a strong leader with years of experience, but your jobs are just stalled. You're frustrated, you're not getting interviews, or maybe you are getting interviews, and the interviews that you're receiving, you're not doing a good job in them. You walk away and they didn't go as you expected. Now, each time this happens, it chips away at your confidence. You're losing valuable time and you're scared. Scared that you're gonna have to settle for a job that's beneath your capabilities. If this is you, you need clarity. Now, if you want a resume and a LinkedIn profile that finally sound like you, that come across clear, confident, and differentiated. If you want to do resumes, pardon me, if you want to do interviews where you can speak about your leadership, impact, and strengths without second guessing yourself. Or maybe you want recruiters reaching out because your positioning is sharp and compelling and draws them in. What about doing a job search that feels structured instead of scattered, strategic, and aligned with your goals? If you're ready for that kind of clarity, contact me on LinkedIn and put in the keyword clarity and I'll reach out to you and we'll figure out what next steps are, okay? Now, I want to thank you for listening because your support's a blessing. Now, if you enjoyed the podcast, give us a positive rating on Apple. And remember, new podcasts are released every two weeks on the first and third Wednesdays. And share this with your friends, please. Now, before you go, let's speak victory over you. No matter what it feels like, you've got a bright future. Good breaks are looking for you, and new doors are about to open. But one thing you have to do is to believe it. Believe it, believe it, believe it. Now, until next time, take care.