Podcast 213. Breaking Down the Real Estate Barriers with Marcus Maloney

Average Joe Finances:
0:02

Hey, welcome back to the average Joe Finances podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni, and today's guest is Marcus Maloney. Marcus, super excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me. Welcome.

Marcus Maloney:
0:13

Thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate you having me on the show. And thank you to the listeners of the Average Joe Podcast just for welcoming me here today.

Average Joe Finances:
0:21

Absolutely. Hey, I wanna start this off the same way I start every podcast episode, and we wanna know more about you. So if you could share a little bit about yourself, share your story. Who is Marcus Maloney?

Marcus Maloney:
0:34

Sure. Okay. So what I'll do, I'll give you, the overarching view and then I'll drill down a little bit Mike. High school dropped out before graduation. Became, got my M B A and took the college route and everything like that. But just specifically flat out, Marcus Maloney is a real estate investor that goes out and finds amazing opportunities, assets with a lot of equity. And we use that equity to reposition properties, to turn those. Those liabilities into, wealth appreciating assets. So that's one of the things that I do, and I feel that's my go-to, that's my niche. We like to take properties, not so much to go in and do a fix and flip, but just to turn, to take properties that are not generating income, and then turn those around. Generate income for myself. Like I said, just to drill down a little bit now yeah, I dropped outta high school man when I was two to three months from graduating because I just felt that I wasn't gonna graduate. I was always that kid that questioned authority. I questioned teachers, why do we have to learn this? How's this applicable in my life? And they could never explain it, they was always just say, because you have to. And that wasn't enough. Yeah, it wasn't enough of a reason for me because I always had a dream and I always focused on real estate, so I just always wanted to know how it was applicable to me, and I speak to the listeners right now, and whatever you're doing, just make sure it's applicable to the goal that you're trying to reach. Even if you're in your nine to five right now, We know that may be temporary, or you may love your nine to five, but how is that gonna help you with your finances in the future? Mike to boil it all down, man, I got started really learning about my finances and learning about investing at an early age, what we had to do. Unlike most kids when you return back to school, you go school shopping and you get new school clothes and everything like that. That was just something mom and dad did for everybody. For us, I grew up on a 49 acre farm, and what we had to do was in the spring we would buy piglets, for 20 15, 20 we buy. Fatten those piglets up over the summer and then we would take them to the auction and right before school starts and we would make money, so we would invest 15 to $20. We would feed these piglets till they got fat and we would take them to the auction Right before school starts. We would make like $300. We would get the delta between the 15 to$20 and the 300, was anywhere from, 85. Two 80 to 2 85, and that's what we were used to go and do our school shopping. So I learned at an early age buy low and sell high. And I just continued that throughout my career.

Average Joe Finances:
3:31

Right on. Were any of those piglets saved by a spider? No. Charlotte, no Charlotte's web happening here okay. No I had to ask, I had to ask, but no that's great, man. At a very young age now you're learning about this, about investing essentially, right? Buying, buying the piglets at. When they're babies, for 15 to 20 bucks and then fattening them up and selling 'em for 300. Yeah. Now, obviously there's cost in there as well with having to feed them and stuff. So you can think about that in a real estate term, like holding costs, right? So like, how long are you holding them for? How much is that eaten your profits and things like that. So I think that's a very valuable lesson that you learned at a young age, and probably one of the reasons why. You were questioning, school and stuff hey, like this stuff isn't gonna help me when I leave here. What's gonna help me is learning how to make more money.

Marcus Maloney:
4:22

Exactly. Exactly.

Average Joe Finances:
4:22

So yeah, I think you had something instilled in you at a very young age, but now you did say that you went on to actually go to college, get your MBA, right? So did you wind up going to get a GED or did you go back to school and finish?

Marcus Maloney:
4:35

Yeah. What happened? I dropped outta school and I was sitting around the house and my mom, she's an astute person. She, had, she was a nurse and my dad was, he was an immigrant from Panama, moved over to the state. So I definitely couldn't sit around and do nothing, so it was like, all right, what are you gonna do since you dropped out school? So I was like, you just try and go and guess what I. So I went from the back of the class right to the front of the class before my graduating class even graduated. So they graduated the end of May, the beginning of May. I was already done, had my high school diploma or high school equivalency. So I went from the rear to the front instantaneously. So that taught me also that you don't. So I went, got my GED and then there college. I kinda screwed around in the streets because I was always thinking about money, so I would do a lot of odd things, we were selling car stereos, doing all kind of things just to make money. And then I finally found out, Hey, you know what? That wasn't gonna get me too far. And my brother, he took a different, he took the traditional path. He was the person, so my family would always be like you need to go and be more like your brother, Mike. Go to school. Go to college. So I took on that philosophy and I went and did it. And yeah. And then I got my MBA, and then it was like, okay, I got this degree. What's next? And then it was like I just couldn't figure it out. But one thing that I learned and how I got into real estate is because when I was in high school, actually. He was working for the state as a nurse and she bought two dilapidated houses. One was an old raggedy rental and the other one was a fire damaged house. So immediately we were like what is she doing? Because my mom was always entrepreneurial what is she doing buying these raggedy houses, me and my brother and my cousin, the only thing we thought was this is more work for us to do. Right?

Average Joe Finances:
6:46

Oh, she was putting you guys to work in those homes?

Marcus Maloney:
6:48

Yeah, she was, yeah. She was putting us to work.

Average Joe Finances:
6:50

First the piglets now it's time to do some home repairs. And she's teaching you life lessons though. That's great.

Marcus Maloney:
6:56

She was teaching us life lessons, and that's exactly what it was, Mike, because what we had to do was we had to work with the contractors and she was doing a rehab on converted. That we kept and actually we hold to this day. And then the other one, she flipped it and then she came and showed me and my brothers and my cousins, she was like, this is how much I made on this one transaction. And it was like 30, 40,000, something like that. And this was in like 19 88, 89 or whatever this is before flipping. And HDTV was even a thing that.

Average Joe Finances:
7:34

That's a lot of money back then.

Marcus Maloney:
7:36

Yeah, definitely a lot of money. And then that struck, that bugging me with real estate, right? Because I was like, if she can do this, and she did it in a few months. I was like, wow, you know what? I like to get my hands dirty. I like to do things like that. And then I saw the profit potential in it. So I was sold and I was hooked after that, Mike. So she definitely instilled in me and my brother, entrepreneurialship. So from there she quit her job, walked off her job. She had a dream to do like residential group homes and everything like that with kids. Okay. We were awarded a contract through the state. So now that's what around the state of Illinois, just south of Chicago. And then I do some fix and flips and do some wholesale and have a rental portfolio also. We're deep rooted in real estate, but then we have the social consciousness aspect of it also, because we help with, disadvantaged youth from the inner city. That's in our residential group homes.

Average Joe Finances:
8:34

Yeah. Yeah. So actually I wanted to ask you about that too. Going from what you learned as a kid when your mom, showed you those two properties to where you're at now, what made you decide to go that route to, to start purchasing the residential like group homes like that? Versus the traditional, buy and hold, rental real estate kinda like what you learned at a younger age. What made you decide to go that route?

Marcus Maloney:
8:59

You know what? I'm a third generation entrepreneurial, right? So my, so we have a whole social service agency. My grandmother started it with, she didn't even have a high school degree. No, she didn't even graduate eighth grade, but she just had a love for kids. And my grandfather, same thing, was a little league baseball coach. And he, what he noticed, he. Have the practices with the kids and moms and dad practices trickling down. Him going around picking up all of the kids, and he noticed that the inner cities were turning more and more violent, more and more aggressive, and they were like, we want to take some of these kids from the inner city to the country and show 'em a different way of living. So they started back then in the seventies, like 1978. And again, with my grandmother not having an eighth grade diploma, my grandfather barely graduated high school. They didn't know the ins and outs and how to navigate contracts with the states and things like that. And that's when my mom stepped in and she helped and she took it to one stage. And now me and my brother, we have just grown it exponentially now and we're just help more kids. Mike, everything that I do is nontraditional man. And that's why, people ask me what are you doing? I'm like, okay, now which route do you to go down? Do you want down individual investment path? You want down my family's investment path? So it's. We have a lot going on.

Average Joe Finances:
10:33

No, that's great. Marcus. So actually let's rewind back to the beginning. So what was your first deal that, your first real estate deal that you did yourself?

Marcus Maloney:
10:44

My first deal Mike, I was wholesaling, right? We had moved from Illinois to arizona and I was promised a job because I was like, okay, the family is stable, everything is going good. I want to get out of the cold and I wanna move to Arizona. But at the same time, I wanted something to do. So I went and I was going to get a job and that job was rescinded. So the first thing that I knew was, hit the ground running, get in the streets, try and find out, how. One of the things that I did was driving home Sunday from church. I was going to a open house, and it was a realtor sitting in an open house, and I said, Hey, you know what? If you know anybody that got any off market properties or any pocket listings that you have, you know what? I'm cash. I'm ready to close quickly, just let me know. It was like the next day or two days later, he gave me a call and he was like, Hey, you know what, I have this lady she's going through a divorce, husband left, she was a stay at home mom. She can't afford the mortgage. Five kids, give us an offer on the property. And I was working with another investor at the time who was my mentor. And we got that property under contract, wholesale deal and it just lets me know that, hey, you know what it was possible. And that was my first.

Average Joe Finances:
12:05

It showed you that was doable.

Marcus Maloney:
12:08

Absolutely. Absolutely. And then from there, I just continued to turn that money into more money and I had the money coming in from my from the rentals. So I just kept doing that.

Average Joe Finances:
12:21

Nice. So do you still do wholesaling now or have you tran transitioned and shifted into something else?

Marcus Maloney:
12:27

You know what I still do wholesaling not as much as I used to. That used to be like the bread and butter. We would Sure. I would wholesale and then cherry pick, pick the ones that I wanted to do for fix and flip, or you pick the ones that I wanna hold in my rental portfolio. But now I still I like to transaction. I like the hustle and the mu and the bustle of wholesaling. So yes, I still do deals.

Average Joe Finances:
12:50

Okay. Right on. But you're still, so you're doing that and you're still focusing now on the residential group homes that you're working on right now?

Marcus Maloney:
12:58

Yes.

Average Joe Finances:
12:58

Do you do the wholesaling to build capital to purchase these other assets? Is that why you still do the wholesaling?

Marcus Maloney:
13:04

Yeah, and we do the wholesaling because, not really just wholesale, but it's to find all market deals, so versus going through the MLS, we still do the marketing and everything like that to find deals. And really, we're not doing it to wholesale, we doing it to find more properties to put in our portfolio, but if it don't meet within our buy box, within our criteria, we say, okay, then we can wholesale this deal out.

Average Joe Finances:
13:31

Okay, gotcha. So when it comes, so you're not doing that then in, in Arizona, you're still doing that back in, in Illinois.

Marcus Maloney:
13:38

Both actually I'm doing

Average Joe Finances:
13:39

Oh, okay.

Marcus Maloney:
13:40

I'm doing yep. Deals both. So I do virtual fix and flips and virtual wholesale back in Illinois. And then I do fix and flips and wholesales in Arizona as well.

Average Joe Finances:
13:51

Okay. Right on. So if you're not pulling that data off the MLS and you're focused on like these off market deals what are you doing to get that data? Do you do like skip tracing or how are you getting that?

Marcus Maloney:
14:02

Yeah, so we use pop stream and I have a 7 day free trial you could do something as, let's just say if you're doing San Antonio, you could put, pick a zip code in San Antonio. Put in the criteria. Let's just say if you're looking for absentee owners, these are landlords that may be tired or have a lien or something like that. And then it just spit out all of those owners. And we always like to put in, a 50 to 60 percent equity commission cause were looking for deals, and then it'll give us, the addresses and the names, and then we skip Trace to get the telephone numbers, and then we call, or we'll send them direct mail pieces to see if they're interested in selling.

Average Joe Finances:
15:21

Okay. So you do, you do targeted direct mail. It's not just like a blanket to like certain neighborhoods. It's like somebody, the, if the home meets that criteria, they're getting a letter from Marcus.

Marcus Maloney:
15:32

Yeah, so we, we have a avatar, we have a seller avatar okay. We look specifically for that avatar and those locations that we wanna buy in.

Average Joe Finances:
15:41

Okay. Right on. What, you do it in that order, but like what kind of marketing techniques have you found work best for you when it comes to finding these deals that you wholesale?

Marcus Maloney:
15:53

Okay I've done text messaging. I've done cold calling, I've done direct mail. I've done PC. One of the things that I still find to be the most lucrative is the cold calling. It's a lot of external work. But at the same time.

Average Joe Finances:
16:08

Hate cold calling.

Marcus Maloney:
16:10

I know a lot of people hate it, it's a lot of external work, but I've built a team around it. We have a team of callers that do all of the initial dials for us. And that it's just been the most lucrative for us. Yes, it's a lot of grit. It's a lot of work, but we still get deals from it, Mike. Nice. But one of the things important. It's the follow up. You can make that initial call and that seller may not say, I'm ready to sell right now, but as my partner say, it's an event-based business. You gotta wait till that event happen. That event may happen, six months from now, nine months from now, maybe even two years from now. But you want to still have your team calling and following up with that person. That way when that event happens, you're the first person you tap it on.

Average Joe Finances:
16:59

Yeah. No, that that's fantastic because, I've heard this before too, like a buddy of mine was telling me not to get discouraged because I was doing like some mailers and stuff. I'm also a real estate agent, right? So I was doing it for that purpose. Like in certain neighborhoods. I was sending out these mailers and he's you might not get anything at first. He's but you never know. Somebody might be getting ready to sell their home and then remember that they got this letter from you, and they're gonna go search for it and give you a call. They're gonna remember your name and go look you up and give you a call. Yeah definitely there has to be something that will trigger that. If they remember you if you did something creative to get them to remember you, then that's that's something different as well. And actually, I wanted to ask you that. Do you do anything creative, like in your mailers? I've heard of some people, they'll send like a manila envelope and they'll put like some money in there, like some change like coins because people feel that and be like, oh, this feels different. What's in here? Oh, change, yeah. And they're like, oh. And they'll actually read the letter, because it was something that prompted them to open the envelope and not just throw it away like other mailers that they may get. Do you do anything like that?

Marcus Maloney:
17:59

Yeah, I forgot the name of that. I can't, I don't know why I'm drawing a blank, but yeah, so my direct mail guy local based in Phoenix, and that's all he talks about. He comes up with all of these creative strategies, to get people to open up your letter, right? Because we have people that's gonna send postcards people gonna send letters, I am a letter guy because I think, it's more professional, especially when you're trying to do certain things and yeah, so on our envelope, we have different things. We may say. If it's around property tax time, we'll put in red, important property tax information, real big, bold block letters on the envelope. That'll make people open it up. Yes. Once they open it up and they read the letter, they'll call back and catch you out but you'll get some people that will say, you know what, Hey, you know what? I am interested in selling. Let's have a conversation. Yeah, you have to play with the envelope. We went from doing white envelopes with black and red letters to pink envelopes with blue letters, blue envelopes with pink lettering on it. So you have to ab test, you have to test different strategies and different methods. But yeah, direct mail works, man. That's how I got started. We still do direct mail as follow ups and it works.

Average Joe Finances:
19:17

Right on. Yeah I just wanted to ask you about that.'cause, I, I hear people that do all sorts of different things and creative ways to get leads and, doing the wholesaling piece, I know like your focus is finding off market. Like you're not gonna find many, if any. On the m l s right, when it comes to that 'cause you're looking more to solve someone's problem, right? Somebody that's in a situation and your job is really being a problem solver, not so much being a wholesaler. That's the way I look at good wholesalers. You're problem solvers.

Marcus Maloney:
19:46

And you hit the nail right on the head, Mike. That's what we look for, we are not looking for properties. We're not looking for people. We're looking for problems. And the people that can solve the hardest problems, make the most money. And that's really in life. If you can solve problems, people are gonna pay you top dollar to solve their problem. And that's what we look for, in real estate when we're doing off market deals, is we're looking for the problems. One of the things, my attorney that we do deals in Illinois, he always say, he say, Marcus, if the deal is not difficult, somebody would've already done it. So let's work on this difficult deal, make some money, help the seller, and then we can move on to the next one.

Average Joe Finances:
20:25

Nice. Yeah, no that's good. You're finding the problem solving them and you're making it better for everybody that's involved. One for the seller that's in that situation they're getting out of a bad situation. Two for you, and your family, right? Because now you're able to make a profit off of this, and then three, you're able to turn this over to another real estate investor or somebody that actually could use the home at an afford price. That's definitely awesome. Now, I wanted to ask you too because you had mentioned that you have a team, so the team that you use, obviously, they're making phone calls, they're doing mailers. How much onsite stuff do you actually have to do? Or is it pretty much all virtual for you?

Marcus Maloney:
21:03

The majority of it's virtual, but what I have to do is a lot of training and monitoring. So I have to monitor the team. I have to make sure that they're hitting their key performance indicators. How many dials are you doing per day outta those dials? How many contacts are you making? So I'm really into the metrics, digging deep into that information. I do get on the phone. When, let's just say if my acquisition manager gives me a call and I get a rise outta that, let me listen. Let put my active listening ears so I can hear the problem. And then that way, me and him, we can figure out how we can solve this problem with the seller. And that's what a lot of people miss, is they think that they need to solve the problem for the seller. No, you wanna solve the problem with the seller because once you do that, then they're gonna say, you know what? Was definitely well worth it. I know I didn't get top dollar, but we worked together and we solved this problem and it's a sigh relief for them. Yes. So I still get on the phone, Mike. I still, make sure I monitor the team and see what they're doing. So I'm in the trench.

Average Joe Finances:
22:12

I definitely appreciate that, Marcus. Now I want to get away from the wholesaling piece right now and talk a little bit about the the residential group homes that you've okay. That you've invested in. So because obviously what it sounds like to me, Marcus, is, you're all about solving problems and helping people, and, What you're doing up in Illinois, the way you described it earlier is that, you're able to provide affordable housing for troubled youth and things like that. So can you talk a little bit more about that, about, when you first started investing in properties like that to where you're at today?

Marcus Maloney:
22:45

Sure, Sure. So actually, Mike, you know what, again, it wasn't it didn't start with me, it started with my grandmother back in 1978. She just opened up her doors. I say I have tons of family members because I would come home from school or something like that, and I wouldn't know who was sitting in the living room or who was sitting in the kitchen, right? Because She was just so friendly, so open. She loved to help people. She was the servant after God's own heart, honestly. So from there again, my mom, she opened up the door. She started working with kids and then because of what we were doing, we were working with a lot of the kids from like the juvenile detention centers. So they had an option, Hey, you either go to the detention center or you go out to this 49 acre farm in the middle of nowhere, get rehabilitated and then you go back out, be a young man and live, an astute life. Now, these kids wasn't criminals or anything like that may have had to much any issues not gonna school. They may, stole a bike or stole a car, something like that. But it wasn't anything, class X felonies or anything like that. So by doing that, we had the 49 acre farm, we had the farmhouse, and we just opened the doors to the farmhouse and we were helping these kids. The state of Illinois, they noticed what we were doing. Because we was being referred by third party individuals, they noticed what we were doing and then we would take the kids that came to us back up before the judge and the judge was like, man, you guys are working miracles with these kids. Whatcha doing? And it was basically just making sure they had a regimen. My, they had a certain time to get up, they had chores to do. We just introduced them to the farm life, right? It's five o'clock in the morning, you're up, you're out feeding the pigs, doing whatever, and then in the evening you're going to bed and that's it. So we would take these kids back up before the judge, and the judge was like, man, you guys are doing miracles. Because he started sending us some of the. Rough of the rough kids, and because of that, he had a relationship with the Department of Children and Family Services and they were like, Hey, you know what? You guys really need to look and see what these people are doing out here. And from that they awarded us. Think at the time it was like $1.2 million contract to start opening up the bed. For kids. And then we had that one, one house and then we started buying more houses and more houses. But it's a team effort. Mike. We have counselors.

Average Joe Finances:
25:17

That's amazing.

Marcus Maloney:
25:17

We have, yeah, we have staff. We have clinicians. So it's not just, a residential group home, but it, like I said, it's a whole social service agency to make sure, we take a holistic approach with these kids.

Average Joe Finances:
25:30

I like that. I like that because, I love being able to share stories about real estate investors that are doing good for society. Not just, yeah, okay. You can invest in real estate and make a profit for yourself and become financially independent. How are you helping other people? Yeah. How are you giving back, and I do this podcast as one method of giving back, right? But there are so many people out there doing so many more amazing things than that. What you're doing, Marcus. And that's fantastic. And, and even. Going back to when your grandmother started it to now keeping this alive and going it it's just amazing because you're actively changing lives. It's not just about, Hey, oh we can make money by doing A, B, C, or D No, you're act you're actively changing lives for the better and giving, kids a second chance that they may not have had if they did not have something like this available to them. I definitely commend you and your family on that. That's That's really amazing. Thank you. And awesome. So thank you. I just wanted to point that out there, man, because I love sharing stuff like this. It's there's some other real estate investors. I know that they coined the term, ROI, but it wasn't return on investment. It was return on what was it? And Pat. Impact. Yeah. Yeah. Michael and Susie Barnhart they have a podcast where they talk about that stuff too. So that return on impact, man, what you guys are doing. That's huge. Again, kudos to you guys.

Marcus Maloney:
26:47

And, you know what, Mike?

Average Joe Finances:
26:48

Yeah.

Marcus Maloney:
26:48

Speaking on that, and the reason why I bring, the reason why new impact is because our philosopy is, you can't, everybody wants to be an influencer, right? They wanna be an influencer unless you make impact. Once you make impact in somebody's lives, now they look at you as, Hey, that's somebody that's influential in my life because they have impacted me in some way or somehow. So it's not just social media, get on, do a bunch of talking, but how are you impacting, how are you changing lives? And this is one of the things, one of the ways my family wanna impact as many kids as possible.

Average Joe Finances:
27:25

I absolutely love that, Marcus. That is fantastic. That's probably gonna be the clip that we use for the audiogram of this episode because that it's impactful, right? It's yeah. Yes, everybody wants to be that, that popular social media brand or whatever it is, but what are you actually doing that impacts others? Why should somebody want to follow you and follow your brand? Because just because you're investing in real estate that's cool, but what are you doing to give back? No, I definitely appreciate that. Alright, Marcus. So we talked about a lot, right? We went from wholesaling to, not just the group residential home, but like this entire social service that your family provides for young kids. And definitely a lot of stuff to unpack unpack here. And I'm pretty sure that my audience is like listening to this and saying, wow, this is a lot of value add here. And they're gonna wanna know more about you and stuff, but we're gonna get to that in a second. Because what I wanna do is transition this into something I call the final round. It's what we're gonna ask you, the same four questions I ask everybody that comes on the show, and it gives us a better idea of who Marcus is when he is under a little bit of pressure and asked some tough questions. So if you're ready to go, sure. We'll get this party started. All right, let's do it, Mike. Alright, let's do it all. Marcus. You've had a lot of experience in, in a bunch of different facets of real estate and that also involves, your finances and other things. Even going back to the farm life. So there's a lot you can probably pick from here, but I wanna know, what's the biggest mistake that you've ever made when it comes to your finances? Investing real estate or just business in general?

Marcus Maloney:
29:03

Sure, sure. I think the biggest mistake that I made, Mike, was really not trusting in myself and trusting in my investment strategy. I think my biggest mistake was not having the courage to go out there and do more deals. Buy more properties so I can then impact more people. So I'm more of a conservative. I'm very laid back, very reserved, and I wanna look at all of the numbers and everything like that. And I'm trying to I'm shifting my idea of my investment strategy somewhat. And to put a bow on that I bought a property. I was on a property last month. Never been in the property, couldn't see the interior of the property, had a squatter in the property and everything like that. Normally Marcus Maloney would not do that deal. But after much prayer and meditation, something was urging me to do the deal, do it. And I went on ahead and I did the deal. And it turned out to be probably one of my best deals that I have ever did so my biggest problem or one of the things that I wish I could have changed was just being more faithful and more encouraging myself to get out there and take some of the big challenges head on.

Average Joe Finances:
30:23

Okay. Yeah, definitely appreciate that. Wanting to be able to get rid of some of that fear, right? Some of that fear of beyond unknown, take more risks yeah. Yeah. Take more risks. Yeah, because that, if you invest in anything it's a risk, right? Whether it's real estate, your, stock market, whatever it is, any type of investment always carries some type of inherent risk, right? Alright, so Marcus these questions all tie into each other. So the next one I want to ask you is, what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first got started?

Marcus Maloney:
30:52

That I don't have to have all of the answers, and know where to get the answers from. That's where I believe mentorship is key. Mentorship is not just about learning, but it's about getting the answers that you may not be able to find the answers to. So just like you, Mike, if you're going out, you're investing in a deal, or you're, let's just say if you're doing single families now and you say, you know what I want, get into multifamily deals. It's always best to find somebody that's in that niche. So if you come across something, you can say, Hey, you know what? Lemme bounce this off of you. What do you think about this? And they'll have you to look at it from a totally different perspective. So I believe just making sure you have the right people around you is very key and very important.

Average Joe Finances:
31:42

No, it is all about who you surround yourself with, right? That it's very famous saying, you are the average of the five people that you hang around with the most. Yeah, I think it's important that we pay attention to who we're giving our time to, right? So definitely appreciate that. Okay. So Marcus, the next question again ties into it. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out today?

Marcus Maloney:
32:06

Sure. And it goes back to what we was talking about Mike, one of the tips and tricks that I would like to tell people is one, I'm gonna give you a tip and I'm gonna give you a trick, but I just wanna put this in your listener ears, is that to always be active listening because no matter where you are, You can find a real estate deal just by having your active ears on and listening to some of the situations and some of the problems that people are having. One of the things so always active listening. Always listen more than you talk, especially if you're on the phone. So Mike, if you're trying to get a listing, you want to hear. Why they wanna sell, how much they wanna sell for how much time they need. Things like that, right? That way you can solve the problem so you can bring a solution. So that's what we do with our sellers. Now, one of the tips that I normally don't tell a lot of people this, but one of the tips is when you're on the phone and you're talking with the seller, or you're talking with yeah. A client or something. Do not hang the. Wait, be the last person to hang the phone up. I've closed so many deals because people may have thought they hung the phone up, or right before they hang the phone up, they'll say something and now it's okay, that's what I needed to hear. So when I follow up and I make a phone call back, I kinda lead into that situation, so just an example so I was working on the deal and the lady, I had made the offer over the phone, me and my acquisition manager, and we were only a couple of grand off, and they were like, you know what, if they can get to X, I think we'll do it. And this was, she thought, she hung up the phone, and so immediately what did we do? We called her back. Once the phone hung up, we called her back. So you know what after further consideration, I think we can do X if we do X. And it was a little bit above the number that she said. I said, if we do X, can we send over the contract and get the deal signed right now? And she was like, you know what? Me and my husband was just talking about that. Yes, let's go ahead and do it. So be the last person to hang up the phone.

Average Joe Finances:
34:21

Yeah. I like that. I like that. Be the last person to hang up the phone. And I like the first part of that too, Marcus. The always, always listen. And you made a very good point too. We do, we have two ears and one mouth so we could listen twice as much as we speak. So.

Marcus Maloney:
34:35

True very true.

Average Joe Finances:
34:35

Definitely appreciate that. Alright, Marcus, the final question or the final round, and this is opinion based, but do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Marcus Maloney:
34:49

You know what? I'm gonna lean I'm gonna go back to something that everybody has read or even know about, but I'm gonna go back to the Bible. That's my most favorite book because there's so many investing principles in there that people can pick up from. From, the, that with one two. There, there's so much. So if you want a great story, you wanna learn, I would say just listen to, to, or just read some of the chapters in the Bible is excellent, but to take it outta that realm, I enjoy the alchemy. That's probably my most favorite book. And the reason being just to, it talks about the journey to what you're trying to accomplish, the journey of your dream, you're gonna go through so many challenges, so many ups, so many downs, but if you stay the course and you stay the path, you're gonna accomplish that dream. So I always tell people, always enjoy the journey. Don't look just towards the destination, but throughout the journey you're gonna learn so much and you'll look back and you'll say, youi learn more going to the journey than just getting into the destination.

Average Joe Finances:
36:05

No, I like that. I appreciate those recommendations. And that's only the second time somebody's recommended the Alchemist. It's on my list and yeah I think I gotta move it up because it definitely sounds like it carries some great financial principles for you to use and business principles as well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely appreciate that.

Marcus Maloney:
36:22

A great podcast same as flock. I love the, we love Equity real Estate show. That's the podcast that I'm a host of and the AZREIA show. So it's two podcasts.

Average Joe Finances:
36:32

Oh see I forgot to preface it with besides your own. Okay. But that's okay. Because actually let's get into that. Where can people find more information about you? Can we get your website, social media, your podcast things like that. Like where can our audience check out more of Marcus Maloney?

Marcus Maloney:
36:49

So on all social media all social media platforms, it's @mrcsmaloney, that's Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn YouTube. And then my podcast, which is the We Love equity real estate show. And then my website, Marcus e Maloney e stands equity, so marcusemaloney.com. You can go there. We have tons of free content there. And then our YouTube channel, MRCS Maloney also Free content. And I love to give Mike, if you haven't noticed that this is the theme of this podcast. So I have tons of things on there that are, that I like to give away. Free purchase contract. If you want to jump on the phone with me for 15 minutes, you know I have a free 15 minute consultation there, and I'm not trying to sell you on anything. Hey, you can go and you can buy from anyone. I'm not trying to sell you on anything. I just generally like to answer and help answers people question.

Average Joe Finances:
37:47

Marcus, just another good way that, that you're giving back to the community. So I love that. Okay. This has been fantastic, man. I feel I've learned a lot from you and just having this conversation with you and just seeing the things that you're doing. Marcus, it's just been really refreshing to have a conversation like this. And I wanted to ask you, do you have any final thoughts for our listeners?

Marcus Maloney:
38:07

Yeah. One of just enjoy the journey guys. Enjoy get out there. And if you have a destination. You say, hey i want to be a real estate investor, your a inspiring real estate investor. The universe is gonna put so many roadblocks in front of you because it's gonna test your wheel. It's gonna test your mic. Is this something you truly, really want or is it something that you just desire to have? And once you get through those roadblocks, those doors will be opened up to you. So you just have to know what you want and go after it no matter what challenges you face. And then finally, get out there, network. Get from behind your computer. Go out. And go to, real events, meetups, wherever you need to go in order to meet other real estate investor and like-minded people, and start bonding and start making those relationships because it's not the real estate that's gonna make you successful, but it's the relationships that's gonna make you successful.

Average Joe Finances:
39:05

Absolutely love that, Marcus and I couldn't agree more that's some of the best final thoughts I've had on the show. So definitely appreciate your wisdom there at the end. And again, Marcus, I wanna thank you so much for taking the time outta your day to, to join me today on the show and share your story and share what you're doing because you're helping change lives and I'm hoping that by getting this out to my audience, that they're gonna learn more about you and you can help change even more lives. So again, thank you so much.

Marcus Maloney:
39:32

Thank you, Mike. I'm just an Average Joe working in real estate and trying to help people.

Average Joe Finances:
39:36

I love it. I love it. And hey, to my listeners, I wanna thank all of you so very much for joining me and our special guest, Marcus Maloney, on the average Joe Finances Podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Marcus. Aloha from Hawaii and have a great rest of your day.