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Systems & Processes With Jerry Green

UWS 8 Jerry | Systems And Processes

Most real investors only know how to go out and put deals together. They don’t know how to build their real estate business the right way with systems and processes. They don’t know how to balance the real estate side with the business side so all they do is chase deals. Entrepreneurs need to understand that their ability to grow their business is limited to themselves. Join Julie Houston as she talks to Jerry Green, the President and Founder of Real Estate Solutions Unlimited, Inc., about the right mindset you have to have as a business owner. Jerry managed to balance being an REI and actually running a real business. So now, he works as the CEO of his own REI Business where he gets more profits and more time for himself. Learn how you can do just that. Stop chasing every deal and start treating your business as a business, not as a side gig.

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Systems & Processes With Jerry Green

I’m super excited for this episode. We have Jerry Green with us. If you do not know him, you have got to know Jerry Green. Jerry, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Julie. I appreciate that. I’m absolutely glad to be on here.

We’re so excited to have you. I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a long time. You and I have personally met, and you’ve got a lot of wonderful things going on right now. Before we dive into that, why don’t you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

I live in Germantown, Ohio, with my wife and kids. I got to go back and tell you a little bit of how I got started in this whole real estate thing. That goes back to 1994. That’s when I first started in the real estate business. I was living, at that time, over in Springfield, Ohio, and was working. Prior to that, I worked at the business of my dad as an electrical contractor. I could go on and on tell you about the whole story on things, but take it through quicker for people here to understand my journey. I was working in the contracting business with my father. We had a situation where a contractor that we work for big large general contractors shut his doors.

When he shut his doors, we were in a position of our contracting business. We ended up closing. We had closed the doors to our little business because we couldn’t recover. They owed us a chunk of money, and it was something we couldn’t get out of. We had to go out of business and I was like, “What am I going to do?”

I’m looking at jobs, and then I saw an advertisement on a local TV station about a seminar back in ‘93 or something that was right before I started in the business. I thought, “This is cool. I’m going to go check it out.” I went to the seminar in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a three-day training with a gentleman named Charles Givens. Very few people have heard of him. He’s on the old ones out there that were around for a long time.

I decided to get involved in working the business course. I didn’t know what I was doing. Julie, I met a gentleman at the event that I ended up hiring as my mentor. The thing is, I didn’t have anything to pay him because what happened was I went through bankruptcy from the business we had to get out of. I didn’t have any money or anything like that. What I did was I went to my mom and dad to borrow their credit cards.

UWS 8 Jerry | Systems And Processes
Systems And Processes: The market right now is about to shift again. There’s certainly more motivation and more opportunities coming up as interest rates rise and inflation continues to go on. It’s exciting times.

That’s how I got started with that side of thing. I hired a coach, and the first thing I started doing was wholesaling properties. That’s how I started supporting the thing. I was basically going out and finding deals in wholesaling. If you take that back in the ‘90s, nobody knew what wholesaling was. They were like, “You were insane. What is this crazy thing that you’re doing?” I started and continued to grow that, and then I merged into the fix and flip side of things. I built that out and started working with private capital. My wife and I worked in the business in the early 2000s.

I think you’ve heard this story, too. It was over in Springfield, Ohio, about an hour from where I’m at now. I was working on a business with my wife. We found out we were having a baby. We were super excited, and then she started having complications. It was one thing after another. Finally, our little boy was born. The day he was born, within two hours, we found out that she had cancer. Guys, I went through months of unbelievable stuff. She had been treated at a children’s hospital because of childhood cancer.

I was in that position where I ended up moving out of our brand new home we built and living in the Ronald McDonald House for four months straight. We finally got home with that cancer. It was kidney cancer. She had no kidneys because they had removed them. It was unbelievable, guys, what I went through. That’s something I could tell people hours of what all we went through.

During the very short period of time, we went through a tremendous amount of stress and hospital stays. Julie, on that side of things, they tried everything, but cancer reoccurred, and she passed away ten months after a little boy was born. Here I was, in my 30s, widowed with a new baby boy and trying to figure out what I was going to do in my life because she was my life partner.

We dated in high school. We were in a position where we built the business together, everything. It took me about two years before I got functional again. I’m still doing real estate, but I was very much at a distance on things. I did end up getting remarried to my wife now. I met her, and I refired the business up full speed again. I went heavy into the rehab side, Julie. I had built this big team out over here in Dayton, and multiple project managers were working for me doing lots of rehabs. I then got to the point where one day I came in, and I said, “I freaking hate this.” I think of it as a big machine up. I realize I hated it.

The reason I came out to this point where I said, “I’m doing everything myself. I’m the one doing all the sales and all this. Everybody else is riding the Jerry train. This has got to stop.” I realized something that I had to stop. The light bulb came on one day when I looked at it and drew a line down a separate piece of paper. I said, “Here’s real estate on one side. Here’s business on the other side.” The problem is I was caught up in the real estate side so much. I was a deal chaser, and that’s all I was doing. What I had to realize was, how I could shift that thinking, go over to the business side, and create a true business out of this.

What I do is take the real estate, and real estate becomes nothing more than a product. I then worked the business side, and I turned in as much product as possible through that. Once I’d done that, it changed the game. It took a little while to do that because it wasn’t something you could change overnight. I started moving that side of things.

In real estate investing, you have to be able to balance both the real estate side and the business side. Click To Tweet

I ended up getting rid of about 70% of my team and rebuilding things over again. That was many years ago. Now looking many years later, here we are in a position where I have to set up where I have a COO that runs the organization. She does the day-to-day overseeing that side of things. I have an acquisitions department, a dispo department, and transaction coordination, and everybody is in their unique boxes.

It’s a production line process. That’s what we do. The cool thing about that, Julie, though, is it allowed me to step out of the day-to-day. Our team is very active in the business. For instance, this month, when we were at the 9th, as of yesterday, they had 14 new deals in the pipeline. I don’t even know the addresses. I normally know anything about them whatsoever. It’s a production line that runs. It allows me to work as true CEO and oversee the numbers and the culture.

That component for 2 to 3 hours a week, then I spend the majority of my time investing in the educational side, which I love to do. That is training others how to do what I’ve done, how they remove themselves and build and scale their real estate business, get out of the daily grind, and how to acquire more deals through a very systematic sales process. That’s my 50,000-foot view of things. Over those years, I’ve done thousands of deals, everything from single-family, multifamily, some commercial buildings, fix and flip business, and rental side. You name it. It’s pretty well everything.

What is your primary focus right now? Do you see any changes in your current market that you’re investing in as far as the economy or anything like that?

Over these years, I went through a lot of cycles, as I said, different models. The rehabs and all that stuff push up the Law of Complexity, so I want to look at things that are way down on the Law of Complexity. We went back to more heavy. It is a wholesale model, and we still buy and hold. That’s our primary business, and that’s what’s going on every day.

The cool thing was I’m not involved in that. When it comes to the marketplace, this is something I’ve been excited about. What we’re waiting for is it to shift again. We’re starting to see that little shift because we see motivation start to come up a little bit more on things. There are more opportunities when it comes to this. Interest rates rise and inflation continues to go on, so these are exciting times.

I’m glad to know you’re still doing well in your area. What are your top three keys that you implement for yourself or your business on a daily basis? If there were any three or a few primary things, what would they be?

UWS 8 Jerry | Systems And Processes
Systems And Processes: Your business will only grow to the level that you grow first. So you have to be growing constantly. Feed your mind by reading or studying. Your ability to grow a business is limited to you.

I’d love that when we do it organically like this because this makes it real. A couple of things on that, Julie. It is some simple things on a personal basis. One of the big things in the mornings and stuff for me is to get very grounded, and I love to do meditation. On a personal basis, that’s a big deal for me. It’s to be able to have that time to meditate, get in the moment at things, and not get caught up in everything.

The switch is so easy to do. You know that. We do it all the time, especially as an entrepreneur, and that’s a big thing there. When it comes to the business side of things, there are a couple of really big areas. Number one is to start understanding that your business will only grow to the level that you grow first. With that side of things on a daily basis, you got to make sure you’re constantly growing.

You got to be reading, studying all the time, and feeding your mind on that side of things to make sure you’re expanding and growing on that because your ability to grow a business is limited to you. It’s something that I shared with my team. We do several meetings a week. Every two weeks, we do this joint meeting between our companies. Everybody comes on. I asked them a question, “What comes first, wealth or mindset?”

It’s a mindset. That’s a big thing. We have to look at that every day. That has to be that side of things. The last thing I have to say that held me back for years was not getting out of my own way. A lot of people don’t think about this, but as an entrepreneur, you literally have to practice every day on getting out of your own way. You have to do that constantly. I had it all the time.

That’s good advice. I liked that.

You got to get out of your way every day. You got to let others master what they’re going to do. The thing I was always guilty of was stealing the ball from other team members. It takes practice on that, Julie. When you ask about the things I do every day and every week, that’s what I do. Sometimes, they think, as entrepreneurs, you get this all dialed in. I do have the same crap that everybody else does, but what I’ve learned to do is control it better.

I love the rawness in that because it’s true. A lot of people might be on the outside looking at you and you’re experienced. They think, “He’s got it. It’s easy.” If it were easy, everybody would be doing that.

Mindset always comes before wealth. Click To Tweet

You still get the wind knocked out of you.

It happens. Here’s my question. Without knowing what you know now if you could go back to younger Jerry when he started in this business, what would you have done differently?

I get asked that, and one of the big things that I look at at the top of my list on this is I wish I would have started treating it as a business day one because I didn’t. What I did was I treated it more as a side gig. I describe it this way. I always think of it as somebody out there working a little food stand, a hot dog stand on the corner, or something like that. If you think about those, you see contractors that are heating, air conditioning, or plumbing contractors.

There’s nothing wrong with it. A lot of times, what they do is they never get out of that mom-and-pop type thinking. They get stuck in that. That’s probably one of the biggest things that I would shake myself and say, “Jerry, realize that this is a business. The more you can dial it up now, the more you’ll be able to move more deals, make more money, have a bigger impact, be able to help your family more, and give you back so much more of your time.”

Time is definitely a valuable resource for sure. A lot of people don’t have that time.

No, they don’t. What’s sad, too, is they don’t even have an awareness of what we’re talking about.

I haven’t thought about that. That’s a good point.

UWS 8 Jerry | Systems And Processes
Systems And Processes: Treat your business as a business. The more you can dial it up, the more deals you’ll move. You’ll make more money and give back so much more of your time to your family.

We have our team members that come on all the time. Our team members and staff have never been around this type of thinking. We have to open that up for them, show them a new world, and how to reprogram their mind so they can start thinking about doing more. They’re able to achieve more, bring more value to their family and others, and how they can make a bigger impact.

Part of what I look at, too, is the limitations in your mind. You get that thermostat in your mind. You sit down with limitations of how much money you can make. It’s changing the thermostat so that you feel okay about making more money because most people internally don’t feel okay about it. They think it’s evil because of programming or something they had when they were little. When they’re little, they are being taught, “That’s enough. You don’t need to ask for anymore.”

I couldn’t agree with you more, and thank you for that feedback. I appreciate you giving me your true, honest feedback and not holding back.

You’re good. Those are some of the big things that I look at that I think are crucial if you’re going to do anything in life, especially in business. As real estate entrepreneurs, obviously, we run into so many things. For me, it’s not just real estate. It’s my educational companies and all that. You got to be in a position where you have to look at each day to the point where there is an opportunity you’re going to get, have things happen, and get the wind knocked out of you. It’s that awareness that you can go on.

I’m assuming this is part of your training in a sense. I know that we’re going to be giving out a link for more information on what you’re going to go over, and it’s going to be UndergroundWealthSecrets.net/Green.

A couple of things that we do, Julie, is that on our educational side, one of the things that we specialize in, first of all, is we help real estate investors. This is specific more towards a real estate investor-type business. You can apply it to any business, but what we do is we work with real estate investors that have started doing some deals, or they’ve been maybe doing a deal or so a month. They’re to the point where they’re overmanaging rehabs, rentals, or dealing with this, doing acquisitions, marketing, and all these things. They get to the point where, very quickly, you start running into burnout, or they can’t get anywhere. They reach a plateau.

As an entrepreneur, you have to practice every day getting out of your own way. Stop trying to steal the ball from others. Click To Tweet

What we do is we take somebody. It could be somebody that’s been doing it for years. We have lots of students do it that way. We have students that have been doing it for 6 or 7 months, and they want to grow. The problem is they don’t know how to grow and do it right. What they learned is how to go out, put deals together, oversee marketing, make offers, oversee a rehab, and things like that.

What they never learned is how to take this real estate investment side of things, take it, and build it into a real business. Also, how to put the right systems or processes in place, have this overall operating system, how to start building teams, who to hire first, and start laying this all out. What we’ve done, and this came from people asking me all the time, “How did you do this,” is we started a two-day training. It’s called Our Systems And Operations Training. I know I’ve shared that with you before.

I know some people that have gone. They’ve given incredible feedback.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I know John has been and some others. What we do is we have a small group of people that come right into our office, and we spend two days with myself, my CO, Ashley, and my whole team. We’re not going into a hotel or that type of environment. We’re coming to my office, and they get to see our business in action and experience it.

We open up the format as we go through each department of our company. We say, “This is how you do this.” We lay that out for somebody, so they get to see it and talk to the members of the team because each department comes in and talks about what they do. We give that all to our students so they can take it and mirror it.

On day two, we break up into these groups, and then we drill down on everybody’s business, and you help them create a foundational roadmap. They leave, on day two, with a to-do list of what they need to do to start building and scaling their business. It’s a very powerful two-day event. We call it Our Systems And Ops Event. The next one is coming up at the end of October 2022. I can have Amber share that with you as well.

I know we’re going to share more information with our readers. Again, for more information on what Jerry went over, it’s going to be at UndergroundWealthSecrets.net/Green.

UWS 8 Jerry | Systems And Processes
Systems And Processes: It doesn’t matter if you’re fixing and flipping, wholesaling, or buying multi-family. It doesn’t matter. You got to be good at putting more deals together or none of that works.

The other thing we do too, which a lot of people know about, and we’ll let the other readers know too is I purchased another company, the REI Sales Academy, from John Martinez. For some of you who know John, he created the gold standard when it comes to real estate investors and sales training. Specifically, that’s about you being able to acquire more deals.

I don’t care if you’re fixing and flipping, wholesaling, wholetailing, or buying a hold. None of that matters. Multifamily doesn’t matter. You got to be good at putting more deals together, or none of this works. What we did is we went in and purchased the company from John because it’s an area that we always specialized in anyways. It was a perfect fit.

John built out this tremendous sales process. Any other trainers out there who have done some sales training have spun off from John’s. It’s a good standard and real things. John built a tremendous sales process out, but he didn’t have the practical side of the real estate background like I did. I have so many years and thousands of deals, so we’re adding all that knowledge to the academy.

Congratulations. That’s awesome.

We’re excited about that on things, Julie. What we’re going to do on that side is we’re going to continue to expand that. In the REI Sales Academy, what we do on that is we have an online academy that students can be a part of, which basically is set up where I do a live training every week and the students can be a part of that. We’re going through a 12-week curriculum through a 12-week sales process, and they’re interactive on that webinar live each week. In addition to that, we’ll have access to an online portal with all the training and even the ability to drill down a specific subject matter.

Let’s say you’re having trouble with sellers that are pretty resistant or giving you a lot of pushback. You can drill down that subject matter very specifically, and then you can dig that up. There are videos about how to deal with people that are resistant when it comes to trying to acquire properties. We do that in an online academy. The other component we do is some live boot camps.

It’s what we call Our Sales Training Boot Camps. Our main educational side is having people build and scale their real estate business and grow themselves. If you look at it, we have become the sales training arm for anybody in the real estate business. Whether you’re a solopreneur or you have a team of 100 people, that’s what we do.

Jerry, I want to thank you for being here and sharing this with our readers. This is some incredible stuff. It was such an honor to have you.

Julie, you’re welcome. If anybody needs anything, they can hit me up on social media too. It’s easy to find. It’s Jerry Green. Whatever I can do to help you guys out.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

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