A Hero’s Journey of Hard Truths, High Performance, and Self-Accountability with Joshua Smith

Transcript

[Mattias] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate.
[Mattias] I’m Mattias, an agent and investor.
[Erica] And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist.
[Mattias] Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing.
[Erica] Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors.
[Mattias] Ready to level up?
[Erica] Let’s do it.
[Mattias] Welcome back to the REI Agent.
[Mattias] Today, we have a a really great guest, Joshua Smith.
[Mattias] He is the host of the Get Shit Done podcast, GSD mode.
[Mattias] Sorry.
[Mattias] GSD mode, Get Shit Done mode podcast.
[Mattias] He’s a guy that I listened to before, and, he’s motivating.
[Mattias] He definitely has a really good clarity, good insights.
[Mattias] He, is in the Phoenix market and is seeing, you know, pockets of that market already being in a real estate crash.
[Mattias] And he, you know, has thoughts and opinions about what may happen with the market even though or or he says, you know, preparing for the worst while, you know, hoping for
[Joshua Smith] the
[Mattias] best.
[Mattias] And, he he has some insights as to what what he thinks could happen throughout the country or certainly in in different markets, that especially the ones that saw, you know, really high, spikes in in purchases and institutional investors, etcetera.
[Mattias] So, interesting.
[Mattias] Definitely something if you are, curious about that kind of thing, it’s a good good one to listen to.
[Mattias] What struck me about him was he seems to have a really good ability of seeing things from a very high level, looking at things, from the big picture.
[Mattias] Like, kinda where do you wanna go?
[Mattias] Where what’s the market doing right now?
[Mattias] Where’s the advantage in the market?
[Mattias] And then boiling that down into processes that will actually get you there.
[Mattias] So it is just a really good reminder how in all facets of your life, if you are just focused on the day to day actions, you’re not life is just gonna kinda happen to you.
[Mattias] You do have to take that time to kinda think about the market as a whole, your life as a whole, where do you wanna be, where’s the market going, and what opportunities there are in all those areas, and then systematically go after those.
[Mattias] So, yeah, it he’s he’s it was a really good conversation.
[Mattias] And it was a little bit of a longer one, so I’m gonna keep this intro a little bit shorter.
[Mattias] So without further ado, let’s just jump right into it.
[Mattias] Here’s Joshua Smith.
[Mattias] Welcome back to the REI Agent.
[Mattias] I have the honor and privilege of talking to Joshua Smith today.
[Mattias] Joshua, thanks for being on the show.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Thank you for having me, man.
[Joshua Smith] Truly honored to be here with you and excited for this.
[Mattias] It’s a it’s a lot of fun to talk to you.
[Mattias] I’ve I’ve listened to you.
[Mattias] I’ve listened to many podcasts of of yours in the past.
[Mattias] So, yeah, it’s it’s a fun full circle thing.
[Mattias] I think there was a local agent actually that he didn’t he wasn’t really in my market, but he sold a couple houses in my market that you had on as a guest, which I thought it was kinda fun as well.
[Mattias] I think it’s zave Zayvon?
[Mattias] Zayvon?
[Joshua Smith] Oh, yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Mattias] I’m out of Virginia, so if that puts any, context into to where we’re we’re talking from.
[Mattias] But, Joshua, tell us a little bit about kind of your journey in real estate.
[Mattias] What got you started and then maybe how you got into podcasting as well?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah, dude.
[Joshua Smith] So, jumped in twenty years ago.
[Joshua Smith] Actually, twenty years ago this month, man.
[Joshua Smith] So February.
[Joshua Smith] And, you know, college dropout, just looking for a way to make money, dude, that didn’t require a college degree, get into massive debt.
[Joshua Smith] And and, you know, I’m looking for an industry where yeah.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, the reason why I kinda left college and and dropped out of college was, yeah, I didn’t wanna pigeonhole myself into something that I didn’t have in this amounts of opportunity.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I wanted to have something where I’m always controlling my own fate, control something that’s important to me.
[Joshua Smith] People don’t some people value it, some don’t.
[Joshua Smith] For me, it’s something that’s really important.
[Joshua Smith] So 02/2005 Phoenix, Arizona.
[Joshua Smith] I just moved from Michigan to Phoenix.
[Mattias] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] And I was actually working in the health club business at the time, but same thing there, dude.
[Joshua Smith] I love selling memberships, all of that.
[Joshua Smith] I love that business, but it’s like every time we start making good money, they change our comp structure.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so I’m looking for a different vehicle.
[Joshua Smith] 02/2005 dude, real estate market’s just banging, man.
[Joshua Smith] You know, the perception to everybody was all these realtors are just crushing it, killing it.
[Mattias] Right.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so I’m like, okay, I’ll go jump into real estate, you know, two week crash course, you know, whatever.
[Joshua Smith] And, you know, and and, you know, two things there, man, is number one, I had the passion, the work ethic, like, that desire to go out there and succeed.
[Joshua Smith] Number two, like, I knew I, you know, I was 23 years old, never been an entrepreneur before.
[Joshua Smith] I knew I needed the right mentor.
[Joshua Smith] So went out there, found an amazing mentor, and they just hit the ground running, dude.
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, 40 deals my first year, a hundred and three to second, then that scale up to a few hundred after that, just over 320 deals a third year.
[Joshua Smith] So that led me into, you know, really scaling and building my real estate team.
[Mattias] Wow.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] And twenty years later, man, you know, been in the, you know, several different facets from teams to franchising to, you know, other aspects of it.
[Joshua Smith] But it’s been a been an amazing, amazing, you know, I say amazing, you know, goods, bads, ugly, everything in between, you know, but, wouldn’t trade it for the world, man.
[Mattias] Thinking about 320 deals gives me a massive headache.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] And it’s been I mean, you know, not just myself, but myself and my team, not counting the brokerage side.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I’ve done over 7,000 transactions now.
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, it’s been been a lot of volume.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] That’s amazing.
[Mattias] So, I mean, you’ve you must be a master at systems and and getting kind of your processes down so that you can, effectively I mean, how early were you delegating with with doing that many numbers, so fast?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So so okay.
[Joshua Smith] ’48, my first year.
[Joshua Smith] Now you gotta remember this is also 02/2005.
[Joshua Smith] So capacities might be a little bit different today, but 02/2005, dude, there’s no smartphones.
[Joshua Smith] Like, we didn’t have scanners.
[Joshua Smith] Like, everything was still faxed.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] There was no DocuSign.
[Joshua Smith] There was no
[Mattias] Right.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So things maybe took a little bit longer.
[Joshua Smith] Maybe, maybe not.
[Joshua Smith] I don’t know.
[Joshua Smith] But for me, it was 48.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] And I wanna double go into the next year, but I was like, dude, I don’t I’m already working, like, 4AM to midnight.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I’m like, there’s not enough hours in a day to do this.
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, at that point in time, I hired my first assistant, you know, forty hour week assistant that was able to take all these central non money making activities off my plate so I could allocate all my time on the mic and money.
[Joshua Smith] Then that led me to a hundred and three deals.
[Joshua Smith] Then from there, now I’m at a point in time where k.
[Joshua Smith] When new buyer or sellers wanted to, you know, set up a time to meet with me.
[Joshua Smith] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] I’m three two to three weeks booked out.
[Joshua Smith] People might wait two to three days.
[Joshua Smith] They’re not waiting two to three weeks.
[Joshua Smith] So I was, okay, I’m pissing away money.
[Joshua Smith] You know, again, I hit another glass ceiling capacity.
[Joshua Smith] So I started bringing on agents.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So it only took a year to, you know, leverage from an admin’s aspect.
[Joshua Smith] Two years to start leveraging on the agent aspect.
[Mattias] And what was that what what agent did you bring in?
[Mattias] Did you have some specific roles with, like, a buyer specialist, showings showing
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] That was you know, because back then, dude, again, this was like, teams weren’t really a thing,
[Mattias] you
[Joshua Smith] know, like they are today.
[Joshua Smith] Like, we didn’t really know.
[Joshua Smith] It’s kinda, you know, jumping off the cliff and building the parachute on the way down.
[Joshua Smith] Now luckily, you know, my dad owned and operated gyms for thirty years.
[Joshua Smith] So I grew up in that industry, and I built sales teams in gyms.
[Joshua Smith] And I’ve, you know, all the way from, you know, doing presales to starting a new facility and building the staff up.
[Joshua Smith] So I had experience with building teams.
[Joshua Smith] So I was just like, hey.
[Joshua Smith] Let’s just replicate sales to sales, business is business.
[Joshua Smith] Let me just replicate what I did over here.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So I’m like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] In the gym business, you always hire the admin first so we could focus more on sales.
[Joshua Smith] Then you start, you know, slowly adding salespeople, build the sales teams, you know, then you get out of sales, become the sales manager, you know, right?
[Joshua Smith] And then just build the way up.
[Joshua Smith] So I did it the same way.
[Joshua Smith] And so it really started off with me with just overflow.
[Joshua Smith] I had so much overflow, you know, in most of my business with buy side at that time still.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so, so now I’ve, I’ve never been one that was like, oh, do my agents have to just buy side versus sell side?
[Joshua Smith] It just happened to be that pretty much everything I had for them was on the buy side.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So but just on the you know, it was just fifty fifty split, you know?
[Joshua Smith] But, dude, I was providing, like, 90% of their business where it’s just like, hey, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Here’s here’s somebody who needs a house.
[Joshua Smith] Go find them a house.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] So that’s the next question I have for you.
[Mattias] I mean, where are you drumming up that much business that fast?
[Joshua Smith] Dude, I, I’m a workhorse, you know, so I start off doing, like, you know, I mean, a minimum five upwards of, you know, seven plus open houses a week.
[Joshua Smith] Mhmm.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] And and so start with that, then quickly got to a point where I was like, alright, man.
[Joshua Smith] I need open houses.
[Joshua Smith] I need storefronts, but I’m spending ten hours a week prospecting for other agents to beg them to do their open houses.
[Joshua Smith] So I realized that was a vulnerability, so I started going go after expireds.
[Joshua Smith] Mhmm.
[Joshua Smith] Then very quickly, I realized, man, I hate cold calling.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I know it’s effective.
[Joshua Smith] I’m good at it.
[Joshua Smith] I get it.
[Joshua Smith] It works, but I just hate it.
[Joshua Smith] So Right.
[Joshua Smith] Then I had to start coming up with inbound expired and other other inbound style seller campaigns.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] But target, not just doing, like, geo farming, but just, like, very targeted direct campaigns.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So really in the first couple years because I just moved from Michigan to Arizona, so I didn’t have a script.
[Mattias] I don’t
[Joshua Smith] really know anybody.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So, just started building so heavily from, you know, open houses plus with our targeted mailer campaigns of stacking listings.
[Joshua Smith] And then back then too, you don’t get this so much today, but it’s like you get a listing, man.
[Joshua Smith] Like, you get sign calls like crazy.
[Joshua Smith] Open house updates like you know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] It was it was a different time, you know, and different in good ways and different bad ways too.
[Joshua Smith] But that was it, man.
[Joshua Smith] I up up until you know?
[Joshua Smith] So it’s really just expireds, cancels withdrawals, and open houses until the great financial crisis.
[Joshua Smith] You know, jumping in February from live, and then that hits.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] And luckily, dude, just doing my expires, canceled, withdrawn, because I treat them all as, like, the same niche.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] That didn’t let into accidentally led into me doing a bunch of short sales.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Like, I remember having my first expired or my first short sale.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So I go on and ask, you know, having a conversation with seller.
[Joshua Smith] Everything’s good to go.
[Joshua Smith] Get their home listed.
[Joshua Smith] You know, like, a week before before closing, the title company calls me and they’re like, well, you know, when’s the seller planning on bringing in their funds?
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, what are you talking about?
[Joshua Smith] They should be, like, netting, like, $18 here.
[Joshua Smith] Like, what do you what do you mean funds?
[Joshua Smith] Like, oh, they have this line of credit on the property.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, that was never disclosed.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] I had no idea.
[Joshua Smith] But so then I could reach out to them.
[Joshua Smith] Like, oh, yeah.
[Joshua Smith] We did take out a line of credit, but we didn’t know that that was attached to the house.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Because they’re like, you use that to, like, buy cars and RVs and shit.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So and now again, remember, like, I’m, like, 24, 20 5 at this point.
[Mattias] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, now maybe I would’ve caught it, would’ve known better, would’ve, you know, paid attention to the premium.
[Joshua Smith] But, yeah, I didn’t know what I was doing at this point.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But it’s I stumbled across my first short sale.
[Joshua Smith] So then I was like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] What’s our option?
[Joshua Smith] Well, we can go out there and try to negotiate a short sale, get a short payoff for that.
[Joshua Smith] And then but then it came to okay.
[Joshua Smith] Every reason things were expiring was because they didn’t have enough equity because the market it’s kinda like what we’re starting to see again here, you know, in in my market and a lot of other markets as well as, you know, feeling like 02/2007 all over again.
[Joshua Smith] Possibly even worse.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So then, so then that led into short sales.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So then I’m like, hey, man.
[Joshua Smith] And I just start you know, I’ve always been a big believer in and my philosophy is always, okay.
[Joshua Smith] There’s no such thing as a good market or bad market.
[Joshua Smith] The market’s always good for somebody.
[Joshua Smith] It’s our job as professionals to identify whom the market is good for, pivot shift, and adapt accordingly to whom the market’s good for.
[Joshua Smith] And I don’t care whether you’re representing on the buy side or if you’re looking to go out there and and invest yourself.
[Joshua Smith] It’s all the same game.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] You know, so so then from there, I’m just, you know, paying attention to, okay, like, we’re doing a lot of short sales, seeing those really pick up.
[Joshua Smith] Well, now I see this thing called REO starting to pick up.
[Joshua Smith] Well, what the hell is REO?
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So it’s certain you’re figuring that out and we pivot in that.
[Joshua Smith] And next thing you know, we’re representing, like, 35 different banks, asset management firms, outsourcers.
[Joshua Smith] So when you talk about systems and processes, like, do my first few years, I got, like, you know, 2,005 till about 02/2008.
[Joshua Smith] I was just a workhorse, dude.
[Joshua Smith] I didn’t have systems to processes.
[Joshua Smith] It was just let’s just go out there and freaking grind.
[Joshua Smith] And and but then when you start getting all these banks, you know, and even let’s just say, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, Fannie Mae Direct.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Well, then Fannie Mae Direct, maybe I’m working with six different asset managers.
[Joshua Smith] So we got Fannie Mae Direct’s kinda playbook of how they want things done, but then each asset manager has their own operation style.
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, so the next thing you know, we’re working with these, you know, 30 plus outsourcers, asset management firms, you know, carrying 400, you know, upwards of 400 assets anytime.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I had to get damn good and learn processes and systems very quickly to be able to manage that.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, now now it’s kinda what I’m known for is systems processes scalability, and and I’ve learned to love it, but it wasn’t, like, an innate thing.
[Joshua Smith] It happened out of necessity because it was the only way because, like, dude, if you didn’t I remember one year, it was Christmas Eve when we were kinda new into this, and Fannie Mae dropped 17 new assignments to me on Christmas eve.
[Joshua Smith] So I had to go to my whole team.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, hey, guys.
[Joshua Smith] Like, my goal is to get you all home by Christmas, but, like, we’re probably gonna work till, like, one, two in the morning.
[Mattias] Oh my gosh.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Because I get like, if they don’t they don’t with with task assignments, it’s like the task assignment’s the task assignment.
[Joshua Smith] There is no, oh, it’s Christmas day.
[Joshua Smith] We’ll give you an extra day.
[Joshua Smith] And if you don’t hit their KPIs, like, you’re fired.
[Joshua Smith] You’re done.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So you had you had a really very, you know, quickly learn systems, processes, scale, you know, because then also on those, now we’re talking, you know, the this $300,000 property is now worth 85,000.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] And the banks are expecting you to take lesser commission because they’re giving you volume.
[Joshua Smith] So if you didn’t figure out the volume game and how to manage this at volume, like, very difficult to make it in that that arena.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] I mean, so were how long were things taking to sell at that point when you were selling the REOs and the short sales?
[Mattias] I mean, they were average, what, couple months?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] I do.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, got to a point where we had about fifteen months of inventory.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So so, you know, a year plus.
[Joshua Smith] Now Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] The nice thing about the disposition side for for and and we do a lot now with you know, we represent a lot of big, hedge funds and private equity firms and, you know, have now for the last you know, it’s been a big part of my business for over a decade now.
[Joshua Smith] But so the nice thing about, you know, this is, like, they need to unload these, dude.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So versus a typical seller that won’t price right won’t price right.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] My I mean, again, average, you know, got to a point where where inventory due was fifteen months, whereas state means that the average home was taken a year plus to go out there and sell.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But with, okay, preforeclosures, time is of the essence, so we’d have to get them you know?
[Joshua Smith] So most of those we’d have on a contract within a week or two.
[Joshua Smith] You know, the banks, they would kinda have their you know, wanna start a little bit high, but they they they needed to you know?
[Joshua Smith] Because it all the whole cost was astronomical for them.
[Joshua Smith] They needed to unload these.
[Joshua Smith] Just like when I’m working with Blackstone and their, you know, their dispositions team, that’s like, hey.
[Joshua Smith] Be like, we gotta unload these so they can’t hold on to them for a year.
[Joshua Smith] Like, they’re under unperforming assets.
[Joshua Smith] Like, we gotta unload them fast.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So it was a little bit different than maybe a traditional realtor at those times for me.
[Mattias] Sure.
[Mattias] You know, just out of curiosity, I mean, one thing you you mentioned that you think that, you know, things could be even worse than than, coming up.
[Mattias] If if you are a person that’s also interested in investing in real estate and you, are a realtor that has access to these banks or sets up systems or looking to get into that, Is there any kind of conflict of interest or any kind of, no nos with wanting to buy one of those, assets that comes up, as an REO?
[Joshua Smith] No.
[Joshua Smith] It’s just like, look.
[Joshua Smith] I’m living in a Fannie Mae house that I bought from Fannie Mae.
[Joshua Smith] It just okay.
[Joshua Smith] There was restrictions where if I was a listing agent, I couldn’t acquire it.
[Joshua Smith] So it was like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] This listing comes up.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] I could just give it to another agent or have them reassigned to another agent.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, because I like to, you know, buy one thing through the bottom and then you know?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So then, yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So so, you know, and every bank’s gonna or every institution’s gonna be like, if I’m working for a private equity firm, they don’t really give a shit as long as their numbers are number.
[Joshua Smith] Now some of these, like, government sponsored entities, the GSEs, they might have some more red tape.
[Mattias] Well, and sometimes they wanna have it be, like, you know, they wanna have two weeks of time for a a primary residency resident to buy, that kind of thing.
[Mattias] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Yep.
[Mattias] So so I got into I started I got my license in 2014 to give you perspective.
[Mattias] So I I was kinda probably at the I I mean, honestly, I feel like it was, like, the perfect time to to to learn in in a more balanced market that was kinda starting to pick up and then have experience by the time things really were rolling.
[Mattias] I’m curious what indications you see, in your market that make you believe it is, possibly gonna be worse or a similar kind of crisis?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Look.
[Joshua Smith] So I was just speaking on stage about this yesterday.
[Joshua Smith] I was few hundred agents here in Phoenix.
[Joshua Smith] So it was at an event for him.
[Joshua Smith] And and a couple of things to understand.
[Joshua Smith] Number one, real estate’s very hyperlocal.
[Joshua Smith] So even, like, in a GFC, like, I have friends in Alabama that, you know, run large real estate companies that are like, hey.
[Joshua Smith] Our market went down 2%, where my market, you know, I had a hundred and $50,000 acre parcel lane that now we’re selling for 5,000.
[Joshua Smith] You had homes that were 600,000 now that we’re selling for $1.85.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So our market got demolished.
[Joshua Smith] When I say our market, Phoenix, Arizona.
[Mattias] That was
[Joshua Smith] due to that was during the GFC.
[Joshua Smith] Okay.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] You know, like, you know, house that was, like, prime example, like, maybe it was $5.50, 5 70 5, peak 2025 or 02/2005.
[Joshua Smith] The bottom, you know, January, ‘1 ’70 ‘5.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] And then it took us it dude, it took from 02/2005 peak.
[Joshua Smith] 02/2012 was the bottom.
[Joshua Smith] Back to 02/2019, though, to just get back to 02/2005 pricing.
[Mattias] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] So if you look at the historic average, usually for for down cycles, it’s it’s about a ten year recovery period, right, from, again, peak to valley to correction.
[Joshua Smith] That one was a little bit longer, but that was again, not all markets.
[Joshua Smith] Like, every market can be different, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So there is no, like, nationwide, this is exactly what’s gonna happen.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But then from there, like, I was telling everybody yesterday, like, look.
[Joshua Smith] The best way I found that to to plan for business and just protect yourself is hopefully the best plan for the worst.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, I don’t have a crystal ball.
[Joshua Smith] I have no idea what the hell is gonna happen.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But I am prepping and planning for this to be worse than the great financial crisis and they’ll be worse than the great depression.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Because if we look at look.
[Joshua Smith] Again, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with who who knows?
[Joshua Smith] There’s so much manipulation.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, if you look we should be in an eighteen year long depression right now.
[Joshua Smith] Like if you remove away all the deficit spending and just the manipulation of the markets and really just a freaking federal reserve and the printing press and then bail the, you know, like if you remove, like we would be, if you look at year over year from GDP growth outside of manipulation, we’d be in like an eighteen year long depression right now.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I don’t think that anything was corrected during the great financial crisis.
[Joshua Smith] I think they just unplugging holes.
[Joshua Smith] And now when you look at the the global debt market, you know, when you look at, you know, corporate debt, government debt, consumer debt, like, dude, I don’t know if there’s any way out of this.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Like, who knows what’s gonna happen?
[Joshua Smith] Global default, debt jubilee.
[Joshua Smith] Who the hell knows?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] But what I do know here for The US is if you go to Federal Reserve, St.
[Joshua Smith] Louis, which is the Department of Federal Reserve that’s responsible for tracking what’s going on with the consumer.
[Joshua Smith] And then just go so go Google and you must watch what it says.
[Joshua Smith] Federal Reserve Saint Louis consumer debt versus savings chart.
[Joshua Smith] No point in time in recorded history have we seen, you know, debt to savings, like the gap be this wide or accelerate at this pace.
[Joshua Smith] Like, the average person is way worse off than they were before the great financial crisis and way worse off than they were before the great depression.
[Joshua Smith] So so, again, I don’t know.
[Joshua Smith] There’s too many there’s so much, like Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Dude, who knows, man?
[Joshua Smith] The Federal Reserve might step in and buy $90,000,000,000 a month of mortgage backed securities again and manipulate the market and artificially prop it up.
[Joshua Smith] But if they let the market do what the markets are gonna do, yeah, this thing is gonna get fucking ugly, dude.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Now that’s gonna you know, like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, Arizona, Florida, Texas Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You know, parts of Nevada, you know, Atlanta.
[Joshua Smith] There’s definitely areas that are gonna get ripped apart much harder than, you know and I mean, typically, the markets that went up the fastest go down the fastest.
[Joshua Smith] And then there’s also a direct correlation to paying you know, based on, you know, investor acquisitions versus, you know, because investors will just start unloading.
[Joshua Smith] Like, we’re already seeing in our market, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I mean, I went for 02/2012 to 2022 with investor clients, you know, acquiring 20 plus properties every single month like clockwork.
[Joshua Smith] You know, these are big institutions that we’re representing.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Too thin.
[Joshua Smith] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] Cost of capital goes up.
[Joshua Smith] They’re stopping now to now.
[Joshua Smith] We’re just unloading and just you know?
[Joshua Smith] And I was looking, like, watch what smart money’s doing.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Watch watch what, you know, Blackstone is doing.
[Joshua Smith] Watch what Ron Buffet’s doing.
[Joshua Smith] Watch what like, what are they doing right now with their money?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] It’s a pretty good tell of you know?
[Joshua Smith] Because they’re they’re gonna be protected.
[Joshua Smith] They’re gonna get the hell out before it’s Joe Schmo.
[Joshua Smith] It’s us regular, you know, peasants that get caught.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So
[Mattias] So so be cash heavy.
[Joshua Smith] You know, and I again, I’m I’m not, you know, I’m not gonna tell anybody.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] I I’m just walking through what I see, what I pay attention to, you know, with that.
[Joshua Smith] And then, like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I’m not personally gonna not gonna say anywhere I wouldn’t, but definitely not my market.
[Joshua Smith] Am I gonna be a buyer in this market?
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But what I do joke is I still have a lot of, you know, clients that wanna do it Even though I’ll tell them, like, hey, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Like, why don’t you just go put that in t bill for some time, guarantee you a 5% interest, you know, right, 5% return for some time until you know?
[Joshua Smith] Because in my again, every market’s doing different things.
[Joshua Smith] But we got prices coming down at a very fast rate.
[Joshua Smith] We got cap rate compressions happening for the first time in multiple decades.
[Joshua Smith] You got 10 evictions skyrocketing.
[Joshua Smith] Then we got whole costs going up.
[Joshua Smith] You know, taxes, insurance, HOAs, cost of maintenance.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, it makes zero sense.
[Joshua Smith] There’s too many vulnerabilities to me.
[Joshua Smith] It makes zero sense, you know, to at least go out there and buy and hold unless you get an absolute steal.
[Joshua Smith] But then from there, okay, even when we’re talking with you, I’m gonna flip or, you know, like, get in the flipping game.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, look, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Like, again, hope for the best plan for the worst.
[Joshua Smith] Okay?
[Joshua Smith] Worst case scenario, if you cannot get this thing moved, can you live with it?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Can we get somebody in there at least cash flow a little bit or break it?
[Joshua Smith] Like, can you live with worst case scenario?
[Joshua Smith] And if you can’t, then don’t freaking do it right now, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Because I’ve just I’ve seen it too many times where people get stuck.
[Joshua Smith] They got you know, I was just having a dinner the other night with a with a friend of mine that, you know, is a is a not a massive investor, but a pretty pretty avid investor.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] And, you know, he recently just got stuck in this recent downturn with ’22 projects going on at once.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Lost I mean I mean, we’re talking, like, 8 figures, an 8 figure loss of everything.
[Joshua Smith] Wow.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] I’ve heard definitely heard a lot of, horror stories or veterans or people that went through the last downturn, holding the property that
[Joshua Smith] And I’m not talking last downturn.
[Joshua Smith] I’m talking got Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] We’re talking 2022.
[Joshua Smith] And going 2023 got hit.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] I hear you.
[Mattias] I I we’re not our market’s not there, for sure.
[Mattias] We’ve we’ve still seen, increase in prices, and we still have you know, it’s it’s it’s not as much of a seller market, but it is still, somewhat.
[Mattias] You know, I expect most of my listings to go under contract in three days.
[Mattias] Usually, a little bit over asking price.
[Mattias] It had one go crazy over asking price.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] 20% over Northern Virginia?
[Mattias] Not quite.
[Mattias] We’re we’re like a tertiary market, underneath.
[Mattias] So two hours south of DC.
[Mattias] Okay.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] Which which that the proximity to DC helps, some of our prices and stuff.
[Mattias] But we have a a university town that kinda keeps the economy rolling.
[Mattias] But, but, yeah, I’m I’m just saying it, like, it it could definitely catch up here too as well.
[Mattias] It’s just definitely different, from what you’re describing.
[Joshua Smith] Well, many even e like, we see even pockets within the pockets.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So it’s like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] What could be happening here in Maricopa County, Phoenix Metro, obviously, can be different than, you know and not even Virginia.
[Joshua Smith] Like, Virginia Beach can be totally different than what you’re seeing.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] But then from there, it’s like, hey, man.
[Joshua Smith] We have a couple pockets within Phoenix, not a lot, but about 5% of of the markets out there that are still crazy, that are hot as hell, man.
[Joshua Smith] But it’s like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] 95% is melting down.
[Joshua Smith] Like, you know, we’ve got many zip code when I say melting down, like, we got many zip codes that are already already technically in a real estate market crash.
[Joshua Smith] Because the crash is just 20% beyond the, you know, the peak.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So if we look at 2022, when we peak to now, we’re already beyond, you know, 20% correction, which would technically be a crash.
[Joshua Smith] What’s weird about this time too, dude, is, like, all the pockets I’m seeing, not just our market, but even throughout the countries that are staying super strong is is the luxury market, where luxury is always kinda if you look at the last year, a hundred years of real estate, like, luxury has kinda led the slowdown.
[Joshua Smith] But I think that and then getting it, I’m just talking out of my ass.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I don’t know.
[Joshua Smith] But, you know, my guesstimate on this is because we are going through and continuing to go through right now or, you know, have been for last, what, three, four years now and continuing to go through this, the biggest transference of wealth in history.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, so we’re seeing the middle class just be eliminated.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] And there’s no need for it.
[Joshua Smith] There’s no, you know, they’re they’re the industrial revolution is done.
[Joshua Smith] We’ll see if it comes you know, but there’s like, it so it’s either it’s the haves and have nots.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Where it’s like people are getting poor, people getting richer.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Like, oh, like, if you go in my market at Queen Creek, you know, Paradise Valley, you know, which is the most fit expensive ZIP codes in the The United States, Like, those pockets are freaking staying you know, multiple offers staying super strong where it’s more like the middle class markets that are just getting destroyed.
[Mattias] Are they are they often cash?
[Mattias] I would assume they’re they’re at least, heavily cash.
[Mattias] Like, so the the interest rates aren’t, applying as much to them.
[Mattias] Do you think that’s part of it?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Well, yeah.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, that’s part of it.
[Joshua Smith] Plus they’re just we have a number.
[Joshua Smith] When you’re seeing you’re seeing the well transferred, it’s just people are making more money or they’re making less.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] And it’s people I talk to too, friends, you know, whatever.
[Joshua Smith] It’s like, dude, they’re either financially doing the best they’ve ever done in life or they’re getting ripped apart in a way that they never have.
[Joshua Smith] Now that’s, like, one percent versus ninety nine percent.
[Joshua Smith] Ninety nine percent of human beings out there get some most unenrolled time to be alive and is a US citizen recorded history.
[Joshua Smith] Never had a point in time where it’s been more expensive to just operate and live life than what we’re seeing now at any point in time and and since 1776.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] And then even when you look at real estate, like, even in the early eighties when interest rates were 20%, you know, close to 20%, it still was more affordable to acquire real estate than it is now.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] That’s one thing that people often will will bring up.
[Mattias] Like, oh, the interest rates have been higher than this before, but, like, yeah.
[Mattias] But the the affordability of the house, like, the purchase price was at a price where the the, like, the payments were more affordable.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] I know.
[Mattias] That’s a that’s kind of a a silly point or a misleading point maybe.
[Mattias] Well, I guess I guess with all that said, I mean, you’re talking about, you know, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst.
[Mattias] How do you prepare for, this possible downturn?
[Mattias] What what steps, what actions, where should you focus, your your your future, you know, growth, in to to be prepared for this kind of possible downturn?
[Joshua Smith] You know, I mean, get get get lean.
[Joshua Smith] You know, you wanna be able to move fast.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So, like, great one, Buffett says, when the tide goes out, you see skinny dipping.
[Joshua Smith] Like, make sure you don’t get caught skinny dipping.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So you wanna you wanna be fluent, man.
[Joshua Smith] You wanna be able to scale, move fast.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] You wanna be the speedboat, not the Titanic, you know, which I know is harder, you know, for depending on the level that we’re at in this business, but, you know, do your best with it.
[Joshua Smith] Then from there, man, just keep the eye on the ball, man.
[Joshua Smith] Make sure you’re tracking everything.
[Joshua Smith] Keep your eye on the ball so that way you can shift and pivot.
[Joshua Smith] So example with this, you know, people were coming to me in in 02/2008, and they’re like, oh, man.
[Joshua Smith] I’m having to get out of business.
[Joshua Smith] Nobody saw this coming.
[Joshua Smith] And and I was like, how did you not see this coming?
[Joshua Smith] Like, I I’m not gonna lie that I didn’t know the severity of it.
[Mattias] Right.
[Mattias] But I’m
[Joshua Smith] like, you know, but, like and I didn’t realize this at the time, but I had a great mentor that taught me how to read and track markets.
[Joshua Smith] So it’s like every single month, I’m tracking you know, where inventory greater growth of inventory.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, we had thirty one months of straight inventory.
[Joshua Smith] It was a slow progression month over month incline, but, like, you’d had to totally have your head buried and seen and not know that we weren’t transitioning into a mat you know, to a heavy, heavy buyer’s market.
[Joshua Smith] Now maybe you wouldn’t expect Lehman’s brother and Bear Stearns to collapse and for it to go to the free fall that it did.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But I was like, hey, man.
[Joshua Smith] Before that already happened, I was already in with 30 banks.
[Joshua Smith] And and, you know, short said, like, you know, because we’re paying attention.
[Joshua Smith] So make sure that you’re paying attention to market.
[Joshua Smith] Why again, because it doesn’t matter.
[Joshua Smith] There’s no such thing as a good market or a bad market.
[Joshua Smith] The market is always good for somebody.
[Joshua Smith] I always look at real estate is is we got, like, a science experiment.
[Joshua Smith] So if you look at the control, the control is a piece of real estate.
[Joshua Smith] That is my job is to move that piece of real estate.
[Joshua Smith] Again, whether I’m helping a client or if I’m acquiring it, my job is to know the real estate, to move that, like, to know the product and be able to move the product.
[Joshua Smith] The variable that will change throughout, you know, all of our lifetimes, our careers is who’s buying it, who’s selling it, why they’re buying it, why they’re selling it, where they’re coming from, where they’re going.
[Joshua Smith] So as long as I’m always paying attention to that and I’m able to pivot shift, you know, and adapt accordingly based on my focus, my prospecting, my marketing.
[Joshua Smith] So, like, here’s an example, dude.
[Joshua Smith] Like, with my market, you know, we went from being the fifth most affordable metro in The United States to be in the top five least affordable.
[Joshua Smith] So home that’s maybe 800 today, you know, seven years ago was 300.
[Joshua Smith] So locals, like, in like, household incomes haven’t went up barely at all.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So, like, locals, I can’t afford it.
[Joshua Smith] They’re like, screw this.
[Joshua Smith] So I’m like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Well, who’s our market good for?
[Joshua Smith] For?
[Joshua Smith] So I know the top 10 states.
[Joshua Smith] I know the metros within those states.
[Joshua Smith] And then within those, then I know the pockets where, hey.
[Joshua Smith] Our market is a win for us.
[Joshua Smith] So, like like, let’s just say I’m running ads, which I do a ton of, like Facebook ads to San Francisco Bay Area.
[Joshua Smith] So they’re living in a 1,300 square foot, three bed, two bath, hundred year old house that no longer feel safe living in their own neighborhood because of all the crime and homelessness and and whatever.
[Joshua Smith] This is their words, not mine.
[Joshua Smith] So they’re selling that for 1,500,000.0.
[Joshua Smith] They’re coming out here buying for $8,900 what feels to be a mansion, 5,000 square feet, brand new gated community.
[Joshua Smith] You know, like, to them, they’re like, holy crap.
[Joshua Smith] We cannot believe that this is even a possibility.
[Joshua Smith] So so this is what we gotta always be pivoting.
[Joshua Smith] Okay?
[Joshua Smith] Like, who’s your market to win?
[Joshua Smith] It’s always a win for somebody.
[Joshua Smith] It’s always good for somebody.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So making sure that you’re just being fluid.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Those that that get ran over, those that just stay in the same place, man.
[Joshua Smith] Like, you gotta gotta move.
[Joshua Smith] You gotta pivot.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] That that is definitely true about this industry is that things are rarely the same, and you have to just kind of keep, yeah, keep your head on a swivel and keep, an eye on where things are going and and try to keep up.
[Mattias] That’s, you know, that’s really that’s fascinating.
[Mattias] I’ve I’ve actually considered doing similar kind of ads, to Northern Virginia, because I think a lot of people have been dreaming of living in the valley, in in a a bigger metro area, a simpler country kinda life.
[Mattias] You know?
[Mattias] And, there’s been a lot of job cuts, and it might be the time that, people might wanna be, transitioning to a more simple life.
[Mattias] But, yeah, that’s that’s awesome.
[Joshua Smith] And it starts with awareness.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] If they don’t have awareness that you exist, that you’re not an option, they’re not gonna go there.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So Right.
[Joshua Smith] You know, we gotta make sure we have that right target approach.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] And just, again, always looking at, like I said, February it’s okay.
[Joshua Smith] If we look at the journey, right, 02/2005 to 02/2008, ‘2 thousand ‘7, ‘2 thousand ‘8 was heavy traditional buyers expires, and that pivoted very quickly into, you know, short sales REO.
[Joshua Smith] Well, then 2011, short sales REO starts slowing down.
[Joshua Smith] Now don’t get me wrong.
[Joshua Smith] I’m always still doing some traditional business too.
[Joshua Smith] It’s just, you know, short sales and REO might’ve been 75, 80 percent of it still.
[Joshua Smith] Like there’s no point in time where you’re banning all of it.
[Joshua Smith] Well, then all of a sudden, we start seeing short selling REO, like, starting to dry up a little bit.
[Joshua Smith] K.
[Joshua Smith] Well, again, who who’s buying?
[Joshua Smith] Who’s selling?
[Joshua Smith] Where where’s the market going?
[Joshua Smith] So now I started seeing all these hedge funds, imitation homes, coming in and buying.
[Joshua Smith] You You know?
[Joshua Smith] And next thing I know, I’ve seen this this coming to call them.
[Joshua Smith] I never heard of them.
[Joshua Smith] Imitation Homes buying 500 units a month in my market.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, how do I get them with them?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Now you gotta figure that out.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] They gotta go in and and so, okay.
[Joshua Smith] How do I get with Imitation Homes?
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] We’re doing sixty, seventy units a month with them.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So then okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, traditional hasn’t picked up yet.
[Joshua Smith] Short sale and REO are coming down.
[Joshua Smith] More institutional investors were going up and up and up.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Well, that lasted for so long, then that started coming down.
[Joshua Smith] Audio and short sales was good still going down, but then Trishon started picking up.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] And and then, dude, like, for like I said, 02/2012 to 2022, you know, we’re doing 20 plus acquisitions a month through Blackstone.
[Joshua Smith] Well, 2022 when the Federal Reserve goes from quantitative easing to quantitative tightening, because a lot of people think that these big institutions pay cash for it, and they don’t.
[Joshua Smith] They have a direct line with the Fed or or, you know, direct line with whomever, Goldman Sachs, but then that is based on the overnight, you know, fed, you know, overnight rate.
[Joshua Smith] So when they go from, like, point 5% to 5%, and they’re buying these at 5% cap rates, like and it’s a floating rate pretty much, dude.
[Joshua Smith] They’re they’re done.
[Joshua Smith] So we went from overnight, you know, 20 you know, 200 plus transactions on annual basis, you know, to, like, hey.
[Joshua Smith] We’re just done.
[Joshua Smith] We’re stopped.
[Joshua Smith] Now, luckily, I’ve been through this enough times and I put all my eggs in one basket.
[Joshua Smith] So we’re able to be fine.
[Joshua Smith] We’re still, you know, go out there and move our, you know, 700 homes a year, you know, and adapt.
[Joshua Smith] But it’s like you always gotta be adapting.
[Joshua Smith] So then we start adapting.
[Joshua Smith] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] Well, big money’s stopping acquiring.
[Joshua Smith] How are local investors doing?
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Because for me, you know, for the longest time, I didn’t wanna focus on, like, the onesies and twosies with the investors.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] But then we started assessing, okay.
[Joshua Smith] What’s going on here?
[Joshua Smith] So then now for the last two, three years, man, we just been stacking up listings on the acquisition side or the the disposition side because investors are just getting crushed out here.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So this is where you just always gotta pay attention to, again, like, what’s going on with the market?
[Joshua Smith] Where’s the opportunity at?
[Joshua Smith] Because my job, again, is my job is to know the product and move the product.
[Joshua Smith] Mhmm.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Then from there, all the other crap’s always gonna be changing.
[Mattias] And when you’re when you’re looking at these types of investment, buyer sellers, was that any multifamily as well, or is that primarily, like, single family, condo, townhouse kind of thing?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] For for me, for us, for our market, I have a lot of, you know, clients of mine.
[Joshua Smith] Agent partners, I should say of mine, that are in areas where multifamily is very popular.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Here in my market, dude, it’s it’s not that it’s not, but it’s no.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, we’re pretty much all single family.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] Same same here.
[Mattias] But, yeah, I know that a lot of people got held like, got caught, like, holding, bridge loans and not not projecting the rates to go the way they did, from when they, you know, underwrote the deal for the beginning.
[Mattias] So that’s been a bloodbath too, for a lot of places.
[Mattias] Not that everybody’s, you know there’s definitely people that are still doing well.
[Mattias] I think also, you know, when you’re looking at, investing and and putting your money into different things, keeping mind of what could happen could also, you know, help determine what kind of asset class you might be looking at.
[Mattias] You know, for example, if if you wanted to if numbers still looked pretty good without aggressive projections on a mobile home park, for example, that might be more recession proof, than buying something, you know, like a I don’t know, more luxurious, townhouse or, you know, I don’t know.
[Mattias] The it’s it’s all definitely, that’s gonna be there might be more pressure to or more demand coming to those kind of places, the cheaper the rent, etcetera, than, you know, some of that might be a higher rent in the investment side.
[Mattias] But, yeah, I’m curious if, well, let me ask you quick.
[Mattias] You’re you’re obviously a very driven person and and do crazy things.
[Mattias] You’ve you’ve been doing this podcast.
[Mattias] You’ve been selling all these houses.
[Mattias] How do you keep your mind right?
[Mattias] How do you take care of yourself?
[Mattias] I know you still exercise.
[Mattias] What what all do you do?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah, dude.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so I’m I’ll do my best to answer this.
[Joshua Smith] Because when people say to keep your mind right, I don’t know if there is, you know, if there’s a yeah.
[Joshua Smith] I was thinking I’ve been thinking about this a lot, you know, like, just over the years of, like, alright, man.
[Joshua Smith] Or is it that we’re all individually super messed up?
[Joshua Smith] Or is it that, hey, man, there’s really nothing messed up with us.
[Joshua Smith] We’re just trying to fit into this messed up fucking world.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So then we have all this, you know, like, I don’t know.
[Joshua Smith] And I’m not gonna pretend that I, you know, I’ve got my issues.
[Joshua Smith] Don’t get me wrong.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But, yeah, health and fitness is a big aspect of my life.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I allowed myself to become extremely depressed.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] We’re just daily consumption of my thoughts.
[Joshua Smith] We’re just running committing suicide, and that all led to me getting morbidly obese.
[Joshua Smith] Next thing you know, I’m three hundred pound, pounds, close to three hundred pounds.
[Joshua Smith] And and when I was trying to overcome, you know, the depression, I was like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Well, what’s the opposite of depression?
[Joshua Smith] K.
[Joshua Smith] We got fulfillment.
[Joshua Smith] Then I’m sitting there thinking, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, what would make me fulfilled?
[Joshua Smith] Like, what would make me happen?
[Joshua Smith] Like, I don’t really know.
[Joshua Smith] But then I was like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] There’s two areas of my life that I’m pretty sure that if I could get these dialed in, that put me on the right path.
[Joshua Smith] Number one, that was, you know, I was a call to drop out and never made more $10 an hour, sick and tired of being broke.
[Joshua Smith] Number two, so I was like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] If I could figure out how to start making some more money.
[Joshua Smith] You know, number two, if I can get my health dialed in and not be absolutely ashamed of myself every time I gotta look in the fucking mirror.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Actually have energy.
[Joshua Smith] And so I just went to work on those two things.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] That led me into sales and led me, you know, into real estate, then I, you know, led me on to my, you know, hundred plus pound weight loss journey.
[Joshua Smith] And Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So, and he gotta, you know, you gotta lose it.
[Joshua Smith] He gotta keep it off.
[Joshua Smith] And, and, you know, part of the health and fitness stuff is probably because, you know, I grew up as the the the chubby fat kid, man.
[Joshua Smith] I had two older brothers that were very athletic, very in good shape, and don’t like, they picked a living shit on me and bullied the crap.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, plus, you know, kids are mean, dude.
[Joshua Smith] So I was, like, you know, bullied it.
[Joshua Smith] You know, he’s, you know, I don’t wanna say bullied outside my brothers, but I was, you know, my buddies always made jokes.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Mattias] Sure.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so now I’m, like, at a point in life where, like, dude, if I can’t see visible abs, like, I feel like shit about myself.
[Joshua Smith] And I don’t know if it’s, you know, there’s probably some issues there, but I’m like, hey.
[Joshua Smith] Why fix them?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] It forces me to eat super clean, forces me to work out like a beast, like, forces me into having healthy habits.
[Joshua Smith] You know, if I were to sit down and talk with a therapist, they’d probably be like, you’re broken in so many ways.
[Joshua Smith] But I’m like, k.
[Joshua Smith] Fix me in the ways that don’t serve me, but then let me stay broken in the ways that serve me as well.
[Joshua Smith] I look at this.
[Joshua Smith] So yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, I’m very diligent with health and fitness.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah, then when COVID hit, man, I, you know, I was always a gym rep before that, but when COVID hit, no gym.
[Joshua Smith] So I set up a home gym, which now I’m I love.
[Joshua Smith] So I’m able to get up early, work out, you know, eat the same five meals pretty much every day.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I’m very strict with my diet.
[Joshua Smith] And not just from an aesthetic standpoint, but I’ve also found of k, what foods give me good energy, what foods make me lethargic or put me to sleep so I know, you know, like, like, just I wanna optimize for output of and not just for business, but for you know, I wanna have energy when I’m not doing business too.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so that’s gonna work out diet, and then I don’t know.
[Joshua Smith] I can’t remember what the original question is.
[Joshua Smith] So
[Mattias] Well, I mean yeah.
[Mattias] I mean, that’s you’re answering it.
[Mattias] I mean, I think, like, I when people ask me the same kind of question, like, kinda how do I how do I keep myself going, how do I keep my mind right, how do I, blah blah blah.
[Mattias] I often turn to, like, while I go to the gym.
[Mattias] And there’s definitely times that, I I don’t wanna talk to a certain client.
[Mattias] I don’t want it to I don’t wanna respond to a message until I’ve gone because I’m like, this is just not gonna I need I I need to go there process or not process, but I need to get my mental, my stress out.
[Mattias] You know?
[Mattias] I need to get, a more clear headed.
[Mattias] And and once I’m done with the gym, I’m gonna be able to respond more diplomatically the way I hoped I would’ve, that kind of thing.
[Mattias] So it’s it’s you know, that’s a huge part for me as well.
[Mattias] At what point in this so so you you kinda started your business and fitness kinda journey at the same time.
[Mattias] Did you also when did you, you said you’re married now.
[Mattias] Right?
[Mattias] You have a family.
[Mattias] When when did that start for you?
[Joshua Smith] So met my so high school sweethearts.
[Joshua Smith] So we met 16, got, you know, married in 02/2005, serving kids pretty much, you know, few out a few years after that.
[Joshua Smith] So I had her first child in 02/2008.
[Joshua Smith] So we’ve been together for, you know, pretty much our whole lives too.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So whole
[Mattias] I mean, you you just started everything.
[Mattias] February
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] But we met, you know, ‘6 ’16.
[Joshua Smith] So I don’t know fuck what that was.
[Joshua Smith] Nineteen ninety nineteen ninety eight.
[Joshua Smith] You know, that’s when we met.
[Joshua Smith] You know, so we graduate in February.
[Joshua Smith] So I’m at 40 we’re about 43 now.
[Joshua Smith] So
[Mattias] Well, I mean, kudos for you because, getting through all that stress doing building that much of a business, you know, able to still maintain the, you know, the exercise and diet routines, it’s not easy with kids.
[Joshua Smith] None of it is, dude.
[Joshua Smith] None of it’s you know, it’s it’s all hard.
[Joshua Smith] But, you know, it’s I look at this of, okay, success, it takes massive amounts of pain to create success.
[Joshua Smith] But also struggle creates massive amounts of pain.
[Joshua Smith] Like, no matter what, like, people are just so delusional anymore of of and it’s just so addicted to comfort and that this you know, there’s this entitlement issue going on and and and has I mean, even if you start like, if you go like, I love reading, like, Frederick Nietzsche and, you know, if you read his, you know, works back in the eighteen hundreds, you know, him talking about this.
[Joshua Smith] And, you know, but there’s just people are just so damn entitled, think that life should be easy, life should be comfortable, life should be good.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, like, look.
[Joshua Smith] I’ve I’ve kinda you know, I’ve lived the different worlds, man.
[Joshua Smith] Like, been broke as it gets and then I’ve had some, you know, okay money.
[Joshua Smith] Not, you know, Elon Musk money but okay money.
[Joshua Smith] You know, right?
[Joshua Smith] I’ve been, you know, morbidly obese, massively out of shape to pretty damn good shape.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I’ve competed in bodybuilding stuff on stage.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I’ve been in pretty damn good shape.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Now both had mat different pains in different ways, but both came with intense pain.
[Joshua Smith] So then it’s like, dude, just pick your fucking pain, but don’t be delusional thinking that e either path is gonna be easy because there is no such thing as easy.
[Joshua Smith] But you gotta just what is the pain that I wanna go out there and experience?
[Joshua Smith] And and, you know, it’s like when people ask, like, what do you what do you do to keep your mind good?
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, nothing.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Like, I don’t think there is such a thing as a good mind.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] People are like, you know, I’m I’m like, dude, I got dude, I have days where I wake up where I’m I’m motivated.
[Joshua Smith] I’m ready to go.
[Joshua Smith] I have more days where I’m fucking pissed off.
[Joshua Smith] I wanna stay sleeping.
[Joshua Smith] I’m demotivated.
[Joshua Smith] I’m depressed.
[Joshua Smith] I don’t wanna do any of this.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, you know, it’s like when people come to me like, oh, ask me.
[Joshua Smith] Like, what’s their goal?
[Joshua Smith] I just wanna be happy.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] I get where you’re coming from from that, but that is a bad that’s a terrible goal.
[Joshua Smith] There’s there’s eight different emotions as a emotionally regulated healthy human being.
[Joshua Smith] You’re gonna experience happiness about eighth of the time.
[Joshua Smith] You know, and happiness only exists because you also experience sadness.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So you’re probably gonna be experiencing happiness in the eighth of the time.
[Joshua Smith] So what are you gonna do the other seven eighths at the time?
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] You know, so I would just look at it like that.
[Joshua Smith] I’d be like, my mind goes to dark places all to whatever, but I still gotta perform whether I want to or not.
[Joshua Smith] It’s like, hey.
[Joshua Smith] Here here’s where I’m at.
[Joshua Smith] Here’s where I wanna go.
[Joshua Smith] Here’s the shit I gotta get done.
[Joshua Smith] K.
[Joshua Smith] Regardless of what I’m not you know, whatever.
[Joshua Smith] Just let’s get up and get shit done that we need to get done and execute what we gotta execute.
[Joshua Smith] And what I found is that’s what creates true fulfillment is Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Progress.
[Joshua Smith] It’s not happiness that creates fulfillment.
[Joshua Smith] It’s progress, man.
[Mattias] That’s what I was gonna say.
[Mattias] It’s kind of this, interesting, people people imagine success, like, when you’ve made it, that you’re, like, you’re sitting on a beach drinking cocktails, doing nothing.
[Mattias] But when reality, like, that’s not gonna keep you fulfilled.
[Mattias] That might be fun for a day or so, but, like, you know, after that, like, you know, getting out there and, you know, when you get done with a hard workout, you feel great.
[Mattias] You feel like you’ve achieved something.
[Mattias] You’ve kept the promise to yourself, after you you, have, you know, successfully built a business or successfully closed a deal or whatever it is.
[Mattias] Like, they they there was struggle there and that, you know, will make you feel fulfilled.
[Mattias] And, to your point, I think oftentimes people actually need to self impose hardship on themselves to be able to feel, good, and that’s done through exercise.
[Mattias] That’s done through maybe cold plunges.
[Mattias] I mean, all that kind of stuff can, self impose pain, discomfort, whatever that you have to push through.
[Mattias] And when you do, then you feel good.
[Mattias] And it’s it’s a thing that people often don’t get because they wanna go from their air conditioned house to their air conditioned car, and drive to the air conditioned office and, you know, kinda never, yeah, never actually imposed hardship.
[Mattias] When when, you know, when we were evolutionarily, we were, you know, probably having to go for periods of time without food.
[Mattias] You know?
[Mattias] So there’s all these things about fasting that’s, you know, supposed to be good for you.
[Mattias] And we had to do exert, energy to, be able to, you know, survive, to to hunt, whatever.
[Mattias] And I think that, you know, we are in a society of abundance where we have everything given to us.
[Mattias] And if we don’t do those things to ourselves, we just don’t have that balanced life that or more balanced life that we, we want.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] It is interesting, man.
[Joshua Smith] It’s like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] For most of human civilization, like, the biggest threat was starvation.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Now we’re in a period of time for the first time ever in human civilization where, k, the biggest the biggest threat is too much damn food.
[Joshua Smith] Like, nobody’s starving anymore.
[Joshua Smith] It’s it’s, you know, unhealthy levels of too much adipose tissue.
[Joshua Smith] That’s what’s killing people.
[Joshua Smith] Where it used to be starvation, now it’s dude, like, there’s such an abundance.
[Joshua Smith] It’s but look, like you said, like, we’re wired to to the wiring’s deep to live this way.
[Joshua Smith] Well, now we’re living a different way, and we’re all having to adjust to it.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Mattias] And the whole food industry is designed around, you know, taking advantage of our natural, tendencies to wanna get that fatty food, to wanna get that stuff that we needed when we were in a starvation mode, but we’re we’re really not anymore.
[Mattias] So Yeah.
[Mattias] It’s, yeah, it’s it’s just good to be aware of those things and and to realize what true fulfillment where true fulfillment comes from like you talked about.
[Mattias] So I gotta ask if, any of these, things that we just talked about gave you an idea for a golden nugget you could share with the audience.
[Mattias] It could be a a new investor.
[Mattias] It could be, I’m sorry, a new agent.
[Mattias] It could be for, you know, anybody at all or maybe people that are looking at, a possible downturn.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] I would just say, man, just, you know, the most I think at least what I’ve discovered, like, I don’t honestly know shit about shit.
[Joshua Smith] So say, you know, I don’t know if I’m the right guy to listen to or not.
[Joshua Smith] But, you know, what I can tell you, what I’ve learned through my own, you know, personal experiences, there’s nothing more powerful than taking the time to get extreme clarity.
[Joshua Smith] You Get extreme not just on the immediate.
[Joshua Smith] So many people get, hey, man.
[Joshua Smith] I’m struggling right now.
[Joshua Smith] I wanna do this.
[Joshua Smith] I get a they get clarity on the immediate, the twelve month goal.
[Joshua Smith] I’m talking about the long game.
[Joshua Smith] Like, yeah.
[Joshua Smith] I mean, know what you need in the immediate, your six month goal, your twelve month goal, but then know, hey.
[Joshua Smith] What is that?
[Joshua Smith] Like, when I’m 84 years old, sit on my deathbed replaying the tapes, how do I want that conversation to go?
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Like like, reverse engineer this, get that extreme clarity because the more clarity that you have, there’s two things.
[Joshua Smith] Number one, it can allow you to reverse engineer the right blueprints to get from where you’re at to where you wanna go.
[Joshua Smith] It’s the only way.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Because the mistake that I made so many times now in my, you know, twenty year entrepreneur journey is, you know, he started getting five years into this thing.
[Joshua Smith] You have to realize that, well, should I accidentally put myself into a metaphorical prison, not the metaphorical empire.
[Joshua Smith] Or, like, the other analogy here people like like, yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You’re gonna go climb this mountain.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You get to the top.
[Joshua Smith] Then you realize, fuck.
[Joshua Smith] I climbed the wrong damn mountain.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So when you have clarity, it allows you to know, okay, what is the exact mountain that you wanna go out there and and whatever it may be, health and fitness.
[Joshua Smith] Like, you know, you’re talking about intermittent fasting.
[Joshua Smith] Okay.
[Joshua Smith] Well, is intermittent fasting the right protocol for you?
[Joshua Smith] You have the right system for you?
[Joshua Smith] I don’t know.
[Joshua Smith] Depends on what your goals are, what you want.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] We start breaking those down.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] There’s no right way for everybody’s.
[Joshua Smith] But when you know, here’s where I’m at, here’s where I wanna go.
[Joshua Smith] Now, again, allows you reverse architecture of the game plans.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] So it allows you to do that.
[Joshua Smith] But then number two, it also there I found when you have extreme clarity, there’s no such thing as burnout.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Because now yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You put in the hard work day by day, but you’re seeing day by day progress.
[Joshua Smith] You know, brick by brick progress, and burnout only takes place and exists when you are executing, you know, at a at a high level and you’re not seeing any any progress or return.
[Joshua Smith] That’s when burnout kicks in.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] So that’s the the biggest nugget that I have, man, is get extreme clarity on what is it you want, and then, dude, like, go after it, man.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I get people all the time.
[Joshua Smith] They’re like, oh, that’s gonna take, you know, five years or ten years.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Like, I just got involved in this new venture.
[Joshua Smith] It’s probably gonna take me ten years to get to where I truly wanna be at with this venture.
[Joshua Smith] You know, I’ll tell people that I’m like, well, man, it’s ten year.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, dude, the ten year is gonna pass anyway.
[Mattias] Right.
[Joshua Smith] What the fuck am I gonna be doing in my life?
[Joshua Smith] Like, it’s gonna pass anyway.
[Joshua Smith] So you might as well, like, you know, don’t worry about the time.
[Joshua Smith] You know, be intentional with the time that you have, but it’s like time’s gonna pass anyway.
[Joshua Smith] So you might as well go after it and build the life that you truly want.
[Mattias] Oh, %.
[Mattias] I think I say this a lot too that, you know, just life if you don’t if you’re not living intentionally, life is just gonna happen to you.
[Mattias] You’re gonna you’re you’re gonna be going along.
[Mattias] It’s like a being a ship in a, you know, in a harbor without a rudder, and it’s just you’re getting blown around with everything.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] So, yeah, I love that.
[Mattias] That’s so so important.
[Mattias] And I you know, what you said about, it giving you, like, avoiding burnout by having extreme clarity, that’s a % true.
[Mattias] I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about that way.
[Mattias] Like, that I definitely will go through spurts, up and down in my sales, and I think a lot of it has to do with, my my burnout, my level of motivation.
[Mattias] But here recently, you know, I I definitely put out, like, a five year plan, all that kind of stuff, and broke it down, into smaller goals and, just, yeah, fired up like I haven’t been in a long time.
[Mattias] So it’s it’s a it’s a really good really good point.
[Mattias] That brings me to my next question and that is if you have a, book that you think is fundamental everybody should read or maybe one that you’re just currently really enjoying.
[Joshua Smith] No.
[Joshua Smith] I don’t.
[Joshua Smith] And I know everybody’s about books, and and and I am too.
[Joshua Smith] But, I’ve wasted more time reading books than I’ve gotten out of the books.
[Joshua Smith] And it’s not because of anything with the book.
[Joshua Smith] So the piece of advice that I have there is is you gotta you gotta get clarity again on, like, what is the book?
[Joshua Smith] Because there is no like, we’re all we all have something that you know?
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, I’ve come up with over the years of, you know, what I call my mastery framework.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So whether it be going after books or podcasts or what because, dude, this stuff becomes just mental masturbation.
[Joshua Smith] Like, it it becomes no different better time you spent than bingeing Netflix.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So, you know, then from there, it’s okay.
[Joshua Smith] I always identify.
[Joshua Smith] K.
[Joshua Smith] What is the one current biggest obstacle that I am experiencing, that I’m facing?
[Joshua Smith] Business life, whatever.
[Joshua Smith] That if I overcome this, if I get this dialed in, it will take my life or my business to the next level.
[Joshua Smith] Let me identify that one thing.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Then from there now that I know the thing that I need to focus on, now I know what to allocate my you know, I’m gonna allocate all my self development time and energy to solving that problem.
[Joshua Smith] Then from there now, I start asking myself, what’s the best way to solve it?
[Joshua Smith] K.
[Joshua Smith] Sometimes it’s found in a book.
[Joshua Smith] Sometimes maybe it’s a conversation.
[Joshua Smith] Just reach out to, you know, buddy of mine like yourself.
[Joshua Smith] Hey, man.
[Joshua Smith] I need this.
[Joshua Smith] What you like, if I know a buddy that’s an expert in that space, sometimes it’s a coach, sometimes it’s a consultant, sometimes it’s, you know, so there’s gonna be different ways.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] But then from there, now but now that I know what it is I need to solve, you know, right, then I’m going to, identify, okay, what’s the best medium to learn this?
[Joshua Smith] And then I’m gonna stick with it until I understand it.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] And by understanding, I mean, k, you do not like, you can’t truly implement and create success with anything until you understand to a level where you can essentially teach it to your peers.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So, Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] You know, most people just again and I went into this too.
[Joshua Smith] Like, the whole, like, oh, you gotta read 50 books a year.
[Joshua Smith] Like, you know, and the next thing I’m looking at my freaking going through my library.
[Joshua Smith] I’m looking at these books.
[Joshua Smith] I’m like, I know I’ve read it, but I couldn’t tell anybody what the hell it was about.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So
[Mattias] I don’t know how many times I’ve been driving down the road with an audible, like, you know, at two x speed, and then I’m like, I I I have no idea what just it’s been twenty minutes, and
[Joshua Smith] I have
[Mattias] no idea what just happened.
[Joshua Smith] So, like, right now, I’m reading Eric Worries GoPro because this new business I’m involved in, it has an MLM component.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] Mhmm.
[Joshua Smith] So I read the book maybe six years ago, good sales book, but then I was like, hey, man.
[Joshua Smith] Now that I’m, you know, involved, I’ve never been involved in MLM and you know?
[Joshua Smith] So now that I am or a business that has an MLM component, I’m like, okay.
[Joshua Smith] Let me he’s the best in the game.
[Joshua Smith] You know, he coached Ed Mylett.
[Joshua Smith] You know, he’s like he’s like, he’s the dude.
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So I’m like, you know, now I’ve in the last five months, I’ve reread that book.
[Joshua Smith] I like to do audiobooks 12 times.
[Joshua Smith] Wow.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] So as a busy okay.
[Joshua Smith] Like, now I saw I read this research, say, from NASA one time that they said the average human brain only retains 10% of what they learned the first time around.
[Joshua Smith] Mhmm.
[Joshua Smith] So can certainly just rip it through books.
[Joshua Smith] So, like, I need to find me book, and then I need to read that book at least 10 times.
[Joshua Smith] Now I’m dumber than most.
[Joshua Smith] Like, I I’m not I’m, you know, not an intelligent human being.
[Joshua Smith] So the average might take 10 times.
[Joshua Smith] It might may take me 15 times.
[Joshua Smith] You know?
[Joshua Smith] Right?
[Joshua Smith] But I’m gonna read it until I freaking milk everything out of it till I till I know the concepts that I need to know to go out and implement, execute, and then make the change I’m looking to make.
[Mattias] That’s really good advice.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] No.
[Mattias] I I think that’s awesome.
[Mattias] If people are interested in, knowing more about you, following you on social media, website, etcetera, I see, you have it.
[Mattias] For people, not watching this, what what are those, platforms?
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] And just
[Joshua Smith] so everybody knows, I mean, I have some health and fitness stuff.
[Joshua Smith] We do, like, around a week with with my health and fitness mentor and, you know, interview other, like, Ultimate Health physicians.
[Joshua Smith] And so, you know, tiny bit of that.
[Joshua Smith] Most of my stuff is real estate specific.
[Joshua Smith] But even from there, because I know a lot of you are on the investment side, most of my stuff is for, like, real estate professionals, the real estate agent, team leader, broker, and looking to grow in scale.
[Joshua Smith] So you might wanna follow my stuff you may not want to.
[Joshua Smith] All my shit is free.
[Joshua Smith] You know, it’s all like, if you go to YouTube, you know, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, it’s just all Joshua Smith GSD.
[Joshua Smith] GSD stands for Get Shit Done.
[Joshua Smith] So the podcast is GSD mode Get Shit Done Mode.
[Joshua Smith] So you can go to gsdmode.com or just any social media platform, YouTube, wherever, just type in @JoshuaSmithGSD, and you’ll find me.
[Mattias] That’s awesome.
[Mattias] Yeah.
[Mattias] Thanks so much for your time.
[Mattias] This has been an awesome conversation.
[Mattias] I really appreciate it.
[Joshua Smith] Yeah.
[Joshua Smith] It’s been fun, my friend.
[Joshua Smith] I really appreciate you having me on, dude.
[Joshua Smith] It’s it’s it’s always fun flipping the role, man, where I get at because I’m always in your seat interviewing others.
[Joshua Smith] So it’s always fun being on the other end, man.
[Joshua Smith] I always it’s always an honor, so I appreciate it.
[Mattias] I actually just, was on one episode, for the first time because I’ve been not turning in the process of writing a book, so I’m waiting to to get on other people’s episodes or other people’s podcast until that comes out.
[Mattias] But, but, yeah, it is a very different process feeling the other.
[Mattias] But, yeah, thanks so much.
[Joshua Smith] Yep.
[Joshua Smith] You got it.
[Erica] Thanks for listening to the REI agent.
[Mattias] If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week.
[Erica] Visit REIagent.com for more content.
[Mattias] Until next time, keep building the life you want.
[Erica] All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy.
[Erica] It is intended for entertainment purposes only.