welcome everyone to another exciting episode of the teamly talks podcast i'm your host out of alexandria virginia andrew becker on today's episode it's been a while we're just talking since we last spoke, you guys, but Tenise and Paul Myers of the Road Warrior Investors from Boise, Idaho. Welcome, you guys. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Good morning. I don't normally have two people on at once, so it's always exciting to have a duo here. But for those of you who don't know who you guys are yet, if one of you kind of want to take the reins here and give us a high-level overview. Who do you guys help? What do you do in real estate? Yeah. So, I mean, we're obviously Paul and Therese Myers. Husband and wife team, we've been doing this for 20 years. And we basically help people out of tough situations and buy houses. And we ultimately, at practice, have extra strategies on what to do with those houses to funnel our business, basically. We've been doing this for 20 years. Oops, go ahead, Andrew. No, you go ahead, please. Sorry. We'll say, so yeah, Paul Myers, Denise Myers, also known as the Road Warrior Investors. We've been in real estate for over 20 years. We stumbled upon it. But to the bigger point, you know, it's about people. These are life changes for people when they're talking about their homes and what they need to do next. We take that seriously. And we get phone calls from people all the time that need to sell their house in a non-traditional way, right? We know how to sell on the market, but there's also off the market. And I think people don't realize that that is an okay way, an okay route to go because not everything fits the market. Yeah. So many stories. It could be for the house condition or it could just be for the situation too. I've bought brand new houses for people before too. Yeah. And the timeline too, right? Not a lot of people have the luxury of getting it ready to list. We ran into this too. I'm sure you guys see this all the time. people sometimes are embarrassed or they don't want a list and they don't want to go through the process of having people come through their home going through inspection so that's where you guys kind of come in and you can close deals rather quickly if needed right absolutely yeah we've come across situations people just they don't want people other people to view the house i'd want a situation where a lady who's hard of hearing i've been wanting to go to the house she already had another house to go to they just wanted a easy solution they didn't want to fix let's um let's talk about your strategies though because there's a lot of different ways that you guys can take it and everyone listening right that's in real estate so when you get a lead or get someone calling you i'd love to talk about your marketing next but what how do you kind of like do your due diligence and figure out what's happening like walk us through those steps where if i call you and say hey i have a house where you land ultimately with how you're going to help me Really good question, Andrew. Thank you for asking that. So you're right. We get phone calls all the time. And really our biggest goal when we get a phone call from someone is twofold. One, I do want to understand why they want to sell. So we try to capture that. But the bigger piece too is I need to set an appointment and go out and see the house. We have a lot of investors out there who don't necessarily see the house. And from that, what we see because we've bought them from them is that the numbers change because they don't realize something is off in the house. Maybe the roof is leaking, they've missed that in their numbers and they have to go and reduce numbers. No one likes to have an agreed upon number and then have it changed later. No one does that, right? So we do like to go see the house so that when we come in, we sit down with them one-on-one. And again, we take the time to understand what is going on and how we might be able to help them. And then from there, we move forward with, okay, you do want to sell your house or based on the conversation, it really sounds like you want to stay here and refinancing to get your payment down might be the better solution. So we'll introduce them to a mortgage person because we have those business resources on the back end. So it's really just taking the time to understand what's going on and how we might be able to best help. So what I just heard, Denise, is that you sometimes don't move forward yourselves with the homeowner. You listen to their situation and if you can keep them in their house, that is an option or a goal of yours, you guys as well. Yeah. We look for the best solution for the seller, basically. We always want to make sure that people have a place to go. We never want to buy a house and they have nowhere to go. We've come across situations where people are, or you can tell they're a little mentally incapable or there's some challenges there. We're like, hey, we're not going to, hell, we can't buy your house, but we'll put you in the right direction to get some help that you can help so nobody else takes advantage of it Right That comes across more often than not And the goal is really it people before profits I mean we really try to take care of the people I mean nobody as Denise mentioned earlier nobody wants to buy a house and sell it at discount later. You know, there's always a reason why nobody really wants to do that when they buy a house, but life changes and that's sometimes what happens. So we're going to help. Guys, that's really cool. I've had a lot of people on this show and I don't know if I've heard anyone ever say that. So that's really cool that you sometimes don't move forward yourselves, but whatever it is, and you help them stay in the home. It's important, David. We don't do so many other creative financing things, too, that puts people in jeopardy either. We don't do sub-two. We don't do innovation. We buy the house, right? Back to basics for you. It's free and clear. We buy and we're done. We're done. We can do all their life and everything hanging over their head. It's just a lot easier. It's cleaner. I think it's the right thing. Yeah, I like that. Denise, you said something earlier that got me kind of excited. You said a lot of people call us all the time asking for help. So the big question, you guys, is because this is, you know, whatever is going on in the economy, real estate's kind of lead scarcity is like every, you know, everyone's talking about it, but it sounds like your phone is ringing consistently. So how the heck are you getting people to what we refer to in the marketing world is direct response marketing of people actually reaching out and calling you for help? Can you walk us through what your strategies are there? The elusive. Yes. You're right. So Homebusters of America, Homebusters of America, We Buy a Lead Houses is a franchise. Corporate is in Dallas, Texas. They have a third-party marketing company that does the majority of the marketing for us, which enables us to, when the phone does ring, focus on the customer and not all the work going into the marketing. And, you know, the Imaginuity practices a variety of different marketing strategies as well. They use AI. They do mail. They do SEO, radio, television, billboards. You name it, they're in it. And that helps get the brand out into the community. Yeah, there's like 900 franchises across the country. So this marketing company does marketing for all the franchises across the country. So we know, they know exactly how to find people and how to find motivated sellers, basically. They know how to do that. It's really power and power in numbers, too. Another thing that Denise mentioned is a brand name. So, you know, we have a brand name. Investors, so I go to an attorney's office and start working with them. They know we kind of have parents, right? so we have a little more before we walk in versus you know hey I just buy houses and then they're like who are you so I just do a little more professional professionalism than the average person it doesn't make a big difference and that's what we've been as home investors for a while we own two franchises actually and you know if it didn't work it wouldn't be here but it works and can I elaborate on that too Andrew so we've been doing over 20 years in real estate investing if you are going to move into this full-time there's three things that you need access to in order to be successful. You need access to leads. You need multiple lead streams coming in in order to be successful. You need access to education, but know who you're being educated by, right? Real estate is vast. You have residential, you have commercial, you have land, you have development, you name it, right? Pick a lane and start there. right good advice just listen to that don't start a mile wide start there is a while you can do that's a problem yeah and find the experts in that lane that you can that you can connect with and learn from and then the third thing that you need access to is money real estate is expensive i don't care who you talk to you need some of your own but you need access to other people's money right and so that's what we really discovered within home festers the business, we have access to all three of those things plus a lot more. So it really has helped us build our business, grow our business, scale our business. It allows KZ that is part of HomeVestors to grow their business any way they want to see fit. Some people have to grow a big and buy a whole bunch of houses and a whole bunch of people and other people don't. It can be any kind of business you want. Right. Yeah. It's a community of like-minded individuals where you don't have to necessarily start on your own trying to figure it out. And you mentioned something earlier in our pre-episode discussion. You live in Boise, Idaho, you guys, but you're in Seattle, Washington. And I was like, oh, why are you in Seattle, Washington? You're actually coaches within the Homevestors world as well. Can you talk us, you know, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this community that you're in. Walk us through like what you do for others as well. So Homevestors, you know, model is, it's a franchise like anything else, like the Jimmy John's or McDonald's. You buy in the franchise and they offer support. Somebody joins Homebusters they go to Dallas Texas for a week and they go through corporate training and They give them a lot of information Region specific what we do is a little different everywhere you at So they have local development agents or coaches in the markets that people are in to help them through the process of buying and selling houses. They're the ongoing coach. We'll help them with paperwork, questions, comparables. But Denise and I are those development agents for Homevestors in the markets of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Nevada. So we are very familiar with those markets and can help new franchisees or even existing franchisees with any questions they have. Whether it comes to a legal issue or ARB in a house, there's so many different things we can help with. But that's how we do it. Yeah. You guys travel around a lot, helping others in the home investors community as well, kind of, whether they're new franchisees or existing ones that just help. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, Paul and I are kind of at that point in life where, you know, we can, we can stop what we're doing today, but we're having fun. So we are doing our buying as well. We're actively out in the field to buy houses and sell them. However, the other fulfilling component right now for us is watching new home investor franchise owners coming in and within a year or a year and a half, walk away from their W-2 job. Yeah, that's cool. They're following the business process and system and it's working. And that's what we're experiencing. So you kind of went from the operator to like educator, mentor shift. although you're still operators, right? You're still doing this. We still actively buy in our franchises. We still go to buy appointments. Well, and that's the bigger piece too around the education is knowing who you're being educated by. Are your educators currently doing what you want to do or have they done it 20 years ago? Where are they, right? And we've been doing it for 20 years and we're still out in the field. Paul and I went on a buy a point just last week or just earlier this week, yesterday I think it was, right in the living room with sellers talking to them figuring things out right what's what's going on and how we might be able to help so we're still actively doing that we even offer that to frank new franchisees coming in andrew we'll go you know as part of the onboarding everyone learns differently do you want something to go in the living room with you wow okay to the franchisees free of charge basically so that as any franchise you pay fees to the franchisor some of those fees kind of cover our time to help to help other franchises out basically you know that's what i said about franchise home investors any education you do with the home vest is all free it's all included no matter what there's never like i have to re-up and renew it's always included there's never i can call anybody up in the franchise network and homebusters and ask them questions if i want to buy rentals in florida i can call somebody up down there it's got a thousand they share that's the strength of the small the community that homebusters it's so important to have people to reach out to in florida in a state that you might not be familiar in so that's really cool so just to kind of like bring this all together you guys you're in this homebester world they help with the marketing your phone rings and then you all work, whatever exit strategy it is. And it sounds like you buy homes, you flip. Let's talk about your team. Is it, do you have more people on your team? Is it just you two? How are you managing all of this together? That's a brilliant question. So we're a pretty small operation. Paul and I have our amazing development agent support manager, Tammy, who is based in Boise. And she is our puppet master behind the scenes who we could not do everything that we do without her. So thank you, Tammy. We have a construction crew that follows us around in Boise. We have a construction crew here in Seattle as well. The construction crew here in Seattle is also shared amongst the ad council. So other franchisees do leverage the construction crew. We also have a guy, a husband and wife team that actually buys for us here in Seattle because we live in Boise. We can't really get here that often. So they actually go out to the houses for us and they're part of the team as well. And then we have franchise owners in, like Paul said, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Nevada, and we're always reconnecting with them to understand what they need and what type of support they need. Because, you know, everyone learns differently and needs different types of resources. So, right. We can have more than one franchise in a market, too. We're looking for more. We want to have the most, the more we have in a market, the better we do, because we pool our money every month to Homebusters who buys us advertising. So, we do review that as an ad council, like, let's say, Seattle. But the more people are advertising, the better the advertising gets. We get on billboards, we get on TV, we get on more high ticket items that most regular investors can't ever get to because it costs too much. So if you pool all the money together 10 people you spent a hundred grand or 150 a month you get a lot better advertising right Yeah Regular investors on their own can afford that And how does that work out of curiosity You pull a hundred K to do all this advertising Is it just like one lead comes in, goes to you guys, the next lead goes to the next person. It's kind of like a round robin type of thing. It's kind of like that. It's actually a really creative system. It works really, really well. Basically, if you spent double the advertising that I did, you get twice as many leads. So leads kind of go through a rotation system, but it's based on how much you spend. So the more you spend, the more leads you'll get, but it's proportional to all the leads coming in. So basically, it's an AI program in the background. And we have transparency in the Salesforce system that Home Investors uses to show the number of leads everyone's getting in the market. It's pretty consistent. If you've only got 10 leads in a month, it breaks it up, right? Yeah. I mean, it does a really good job on that. Very cool. But the lead comes in is your franchise lead. You do whatever you want with it. Some people buy it. Some people don't. Some people will send it to another franchisee if it's too far away or it's too big. We trade amongst each other a lot. All within the community, right? So guys, one other, actually two more questions. Where did the name Road Warriors come from? What's the story behind that? I love sharing the story. So Andrew, Road Warrior Investors was created from Paul and I. We are empty nesters. We love to travel. We have access to 900 plus real estate investors nationwide. And no one is sharing the story around the human impact in which things are happening with real estate investing. Everyone's always focused on the shiny money over here, right? No one's talking about the positive impact in which real estate investors are making in their communities house by house. And so that's where Road Warrior Investors was created. We like to travel. We want to tell these stories and we have connections with investors nationwide. Very cool. I love that. One last question. I'll give this one to Paul since you just answered that one. at the end of every episode or whoever, it doesn't really matter to me. Is there something besides Homevestors? Like if people want to go check that out, you've talked a lot about this today. We have, they can go check that out. So besides Homevestors, is there a resource, a book, a checklist, something that you can share you guys for anyone that's listening that can better their life, their community, or their business for them? We're actually working on some stuff too. We are. We're working on some back end stuff that Tanisha's kind of working on to help facilitate something we can offer? So I'll give you this, Andrew. You can certainly go check us out on roadwarriorinvestors.com. So that's our website. If you want to reach out to us, you can certainly click the link there and it will come directly to us and you'll be connected with us. Paul and I are working on an offer for people and the offer is pretty simple. It's, you know, real estate investors find themselves looking at deals and they're not sure if the deal will pencil out or not. And so we're putting together an offer where investors can come to us and we can do a deal review to enable them to really kind of get a better idea of is this a smart bet or a not smart bet will i lose money or make money like a deal profit calculator something like that is that where a lot of years of experience i have you know we've done a lot of rehabs over the years i have a big construction background myself so i can look at pictures and kind of go through a house and kind of point out trouble areas that people overlook a lot of times they get some trouble investors so this thing i know we can help analyze and go Okay. How would someone get access to whatever you're referring to right now? Is there a link that you could send me or? I'll post. That's why I had Denise answer that question because she's more in charge of setting up. I think by next week we'll have that. Yeah. I'm going to use up the essence because we just got your post-production stuff, Denise. So we're working fast right after this episode. So hopefully that link will be ready by the time we go to publish this. But I think you have enough time. Yeah. It's probably three weeks out. Appropriate companies to get this sorted out. We just need to. I think it'll be next. People are just, you know, it takes time to get it all together. Gotcha. The bad ends. My goodness. Well, I'm going to hold you to that, but we will follow up on that. So whenever, Denise, you just pointed to you. I don't know if you saw that. We will follow up, but as soon as that's ready, if you can send it to our team, we will include it in the description of this episode, as well as a way to get in touch with you if they want to talk about what you of going on in Idaho and all over the Pacific Northwest, it sounds like, or just want to chat and learn more about what you guys do. They can also talk to us about if they're interested in Homebush franchise, they can talk to us too about that. I mean, this franchise is available across the country, pretty much every market. We can help facilitate that if they want to explore that journey as well. Reach out to us directly. We'll put them up with the right resources on that. Awesome. Sounds good. Well, guys, it was a pleasure having you on. I know you're traveling now. So safe travels back to Idaho, whenever that might be. And thank you so much for your time and being on the show today. You bet. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks.
