DeAnna Rogers EPIC Rise to Airbnb Entrepreneurship Success

Summary

In this conversation, Jon Stoddard interviews Deanna Rogers, a prominent figure in the M&A space, discussing her journey from event planning to her current role with Roland Frazier and the Epic training program. Deanna shares insights on the evolution of their training programs, the impact of COVID-19, and her ventures into real estate and Airbnb investments. The discussion highlights the importance of emotional connections in business decisions and the strategies for navigating the real estate market. In this conversation, Jon Stoddard shares his insights on real estate investment, emphasizing the importance of strategic growth, innovative marketing, and the power of networking. He discusses his approach to property management, the significance of thorough research, and how to create unique offerings that stand out in a competitive market. Jon also highlights the value of conversations and relationships in uncovering new business opportunities and revenue streams.

Takeaways

Deanna Rogers has been working with Roland Frazier for almost 12 years.
The Epic program evolved from the need for virtual training during COVID-19.
Investing in Airbnb properties can yield significant returns if done strategically.
Creating unique experiences in Airbnb properties can attract more guests.
Understanding the local real estate market is crucial for investment success.
Emotional connections can drive business decisions and investment strategies.
The importance of pivoting business models in response to market changes.
Effective marketing strategies can lead to high occupancy rates in rental properties.
Analyzing costs and potential revenue is essential before making real estate investments.
Networking with industry professionals can enhance learning and growth opportunities. We chose to cover the mortgage plus 25% growth.
Running the numbers is crucial before buying property.
Investing in unique features can make a property stand out.
Marketing efforts led to being fully booked in a week.
Networking can lead to unexpected business opportunities.
Changing your mindset can attract new deals.
Authenticity in conversations fosters genuine connections.
Researching the market is essential for success.
Creating multiple revenue streams is a smart strategy.
Proximity to influential people can open new doors.

Watch the Interview: 

 Transcript:

Jon Stoddard (00:00.078)
it's recording. So today I have a guest, top &A entrepreneurs, Deanna Rogers, and I call her the glue because you'll see her all the interviews, all the courses. Here's Deanna. Hi, Deanna. Hi, how are you, John? Nice to be here. Thanks for joining us. I had something with Chris Daigle earlier, but I guess the traffic at the airports is so crazy now that they can't fly around. wow.

Yeah. Well, I'm at home. I'm not at an airport, so I'm good. Good for you. Good for you. So let's get started. Now I got to kind of go back a little bit about how you got started with this whole legs and then to Epic and how long you've been working with Roland and what's that been like? Yeah, I'm happy to give you my background. So I used to own my own event company. I had a company called AMG, Affiliate Mastermind Group.

And we taught event planners how to run events, how to do joint ventures, how to get like affiliates and how to grow your business in your event using affiliates and masterminds and things like that. And so I did a lot of more, was in the real estate space more so. And I worked with Roland Frazier because Roland Frazier at the time was speaking on a lot of stages in the real estate space. And so I knew Roland very well and I had my own company and I started doing events for event planners.

Now my events were about 200-ish person events and I had Roland and his partner Perry Belcher come speak on my stage and then part of they came and spoke to my mastermind and then a year later they decided that they needed, they wanted someone to come in and kind of run their events for their company in trafficking conversion and all those and so they brought this opportunity to me and I've been with them on that side of things for about nine years. I've worked with Roland

closer to 11, almost 12 years. But in this capacity for about nine years. That's cool. When you joined them, you were still doing real estate affiliate programs events or did they just say, hey, we need you in this area now? I moved full-time. I was doing my own events. was doing my own mastermind, my own joint ventures. I'd written three books. Three books? Yeah, I was staying very busy.

Jon Stoddard (02:25.518)
But I knew that if I ever wanted to scale to the level, and obviously if you know Roland Fraser, he's got such a vision. He's a big visionary. And I wanted to scale with him. I wanted to do these bigger events than two, three, four, 500. My biggest event at that time was I think 800 people. So I wanted to scale. I wanted to get to that 8, 10,000 person event, which is what we've done. And I've been so blessed to be able to work with people like.

Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice and Perry Belcher. But I knew that I had to transition that. And so I joined his company nine years ago. Yeah. Did they buy you or just kind of was an acquirer? released, no, I actually, I still actually have the company. I don't do anything really with it. We basically, I had a partner that finished out any additional contracts that we had out.

the company is still, I mean, I can still do things with it if I wanted to, I haven't just because I've been so busy. However, so yeah, I finished out, I think I finished out like that last year, and then I just didn't take on any more new clients. So, yeah. So when did Roland bring this legs? I guess it was called legs on the first one, right? The very pilot program and then he changed to Epic. Yes. So we started that almost three years ago.

and we were going around, we were doing them in London every quarter and we were doing it. We did them in Vegas and Austin and San Diego. And we were, we were doing legs. was a leverage exit, grow and scale was the name of it. So legs. and we were teaching that in like two day classes and we would get anywhere from like 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 people in a room, depending. And we try to keep it really small because rolling likes to make it very interactive. so I think our largest was like almost.

40 to 50, but he preferred that 25 to 35. And so we would just go around to different cities and do these legs classes. And very, so much fun, got to meet so many people, got to do so many different deals and get to know people and grow in that legs portfolio that we had at the time. But then obviously COVID happened. And so we couldn't do events anymore, but the training was so essential and we felt like,

Jon Stoddard (04:45.718)
if there was any time for people to be learning this, it was this time. And so we had to pivot. know that word is used a lot, but it had to be pivoted to what could be done virtually so that people could still be utilizing that content, but in acquiring businesses while people are still working from home or that are afraid to get out or so we moved the name over to call it Epic, Ethically Profit in Crisis.

And so it became epic instead of legs. And then he's just tweaked it along the way, made it so much better. gotta say, it's just boom. It is mind blowing. It is. It is awesome. It is. And I will say, we've seen so many other people out there that have done it and I've never seen anyone that does it quite like what Roland Fraser does. So. Yeah. You know, back to the leg thing. It's interesting that you guys

really brought in early on really heavy hitters. I mean, the guy from real estate and all the other guys were just big heavy hitters. I guess you went to the Brian Dice group and digital marker and the big heavy hitters joined early. As far as speakers or? Not as speakers, but people that go through the course and say, hey, I need to add this. Well, we hit our friends and family list first on the very first launches.

So obviously, those are people that are in our wheelhouse, our friends and family. So they were the first ones to jump on and go through the program with us. And now we scale it out to everyone. But our original first two cohorts, which was in April and May of last year, that was more internal to the people that we wanted to see that would go out and do this program with us. So yeah, you saw a lot more of our friends and family more so than just

other clients that we've acquired through media. Now you're on Epic 14 or 13? We're on 13 right now. I'm going to date this. This is no longer ever agree if I say this. We're continuing. Yeah. This is awesome. You guys have created an incredible deal flow, I think for your group too, but all of a sudden the knowledge shared between everybody in the community. I'll give you an example. I went to Sharon Brown's virtual coffees.

Jon Stoddard (07:09.838)
where she has the breakout sessions. I mean, I just like learn more from listening to whatever somebody else is working on. Yeah. There are, if you look at the Epic alumni group, there are so many incredibly talented people in that group. Sharon being one of those as well. So very much so. Yes. Yeah. So I want to talk to you about what you've done on the side. Now you were in real estate and this

And I heard you mention this talking about you're buying properties and now you're turning to Airbnb. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. How many of you done of those? So we're going on our third. we're working on that. I looked up things like the economics of this and it didn't really give any numbers, but what's important is the profit potential, the right location, competition, and upkeep and expenses. Where are you buying these properties?

So right now, currently, I will tell you, we are currently buying on the coast of Texas. So there's a place called Port Aransas. down by Corpus Christi. We've been buying property there. So we did buy an existing home. It was literally about 100 yards from the ocean. And so it was a person's second home. And we turned it into an Airbnb. we bought it in...

November or December of this last year. And by January, we posted our very first Facebook post before we even did paid media. And we had filled it up with one Facebook post with $18,000 worth of business with one. We knew it was a hot commodity because people can work remotely. So they're willing to go to the beach and, and work in an Airbnb and be on the ocean while they're working. And, you know, so we knew that that was really important.

And so, so since then we've bought a couple more places, we're buying land now and then going to build is basically we've bought in the same neighborhood. and, so our family's bought two more. so there's a total of three on that strip. and where that the one that we just bought two weeks ago is actually right on the ocean front. It's goes directly from the pier over. Definitely going to go for a higher price, right? yeah, so it definitely did. but I will tell you this. So, you know,

Jon Stoddard (09:34.222)
did put a couple hundred thousand into fixing it up and making it, but we automatically, when we did the evaluation, we already had what we put into it, into the house. Like it's crazy how just since November to now, how much that property has gone up. And we are doing about 90, we'll do between 80 to $90,000 in recurring revenue each year.

pays for itself. It doubles, it doubles the pay for itself. Plus the equity in the property has gone up already three times on what we wanted. So for us, it just made a lot of sense to keep doing those properties. Now what we are looking for also now, because the beach homes are quite more expensive than what you would find anywhere else if you go by there, there are probably three X more.

than if I were to find a house in Houston or San Antonio. So what we are looking now is also across from hospitals. So any type of home in the hot, like it crossed from like a major cancer center or a major transplant hospital. And what brought that up was because my husband had a liver transplant from my son. And so we had to rent a home for...

quite a while and rather than staying in hotels, we wanted to run an Airbnb, but we wanted to be across from the hospital because I had to be with my husband and my son in the hospital at the same time, so in our whole family and in dogs. And so we just transplanted our whole our whole home for a couple of months. So what made us think about that was, you know, there's a lot of other families transplant families that would prefer to stay in a home instead of being in a hotel during those medical times. And so and you can get

homes a whole lot cheaper than on a beach home. And then we can do the same thing, buy those homes, flip them, turn them into Airbnbs and make an instant profit. And so the margin is a lot better there. So that's our next properties that we're looking at right now is across from Houston and MD Anderson, San Antonio at the transplant hospital, Dallas transplant hospital. So any place like that that we feel like children's hospitals where parents need to be,

Jon Stoddard (11:56.641)
where their kids are and having it to where it's a place for them to go and call home versus being in a hotel. Yeah. Well, first question is how's your husband and your son, guess. They're both doing well. That was two and a half years ago. Okay. Yeah. My son gave up 67 % of his liver to my husband. So you only need 43 % of your liver to... Well, it grows back. Yeah. So the person that's

The donor, his liver grows back. that's interesting. Well, I'm glad to hear they're doing okay. Good. Yeah. Thank you for asking. So on these Airbnb, back to these beach houses. you're, did I know that you have to, this is what I read, that you actually have to furnish them yourself. So you go in there and sign them. So we go in and, so you have the shell, you know, and we go in and we furnish it with everything from beds to pots and pans to the linens to towels to.

I mean, think about everything that you would have in your home, know, everything, dishes, utensils, coffee mugs, like you have to just literally walk through every room, washer and dryer, all those things. And then you take the top of that and you're like, okay, now how can I make this an experiential place? So like what we've done is we've created, and then we put a golf cart with it and we've created.

wagons, or they can go to the beach. We've done, you know, sand toys for children and beach towels. So they don't have worry about things like that. And toys, we did a barbecue pit. We added a pool and we had a heated pool. So that way if they, it was cold and rainy at the beach, they've now got a heated pool. And so we've added new elements that makes our home a little bit sexier than the other places along the strip. And so that, that what, and then we created it as a Google business. So people now,

rather than going through management companies, they're Googling where to go stay in Airbnb. So we are getting about 3000 hits a month on our one property. Are you using some of that expertise you kind of- Of course I ... power from digital market or go- Of course I am. Of course you are. That is awesome. So you're getting 3000 hits. A month. Yeah, a month. Yeah, and we're booked. We're booked solid for the rest of the year. Like we don't have, that's why we want to build more houses.

Jon Stoddard (14:17.553)
quickly is because we don't have enough space. Like it's book solid. And how do you, is this like a, when you're financing this, is it just a regular mortgage or is it kind of a, a different type of loan from a bank? can only do two homes with your mortgage and then you have to do it as a business. we created under our SPV as a business. So we have an SPV that's our Rogers Capital Investment, which is our SPV. And then everything that we buy with Airbnb falls underneath.

Yeah, that's interesting. So what's the goal for you and your family is just 1020 homes in I don't know. I think it really depends on what we see the market as right now real estate is hot. The problem is, it's it's a seller's market and not a buyer's market right now here in Texas. So we're paying kind of top dollar. Whereas Texas knows about ups and downs, don't they? Yeah. And the thing is, is like, for example, a lot of land

you know, seriously, the lot of land in August, just the lot without, you know, the house on it was running about 200,000 just for the lot. And now it's about six, 700, just from a lot without no house. So it's very different, because it's on the ocean. It's right there at the beach. So, so it's, we're, being very careful with that because it is more expensive. whereas in that's why we're looking at other places as far as.

investing in places across from hospitals because that you can get a house for like 200,000, 250, 300, like nothing hardly, you and then flip it. You'll spend maybe 20 to 30,000 flipping it if it's already in a decent shape and then you can get it on the market within 60 to 90 days and then you get your recurring revenue instantly just like that. So is that a that's kind of like a

you know, an experience you guys went through for the hospital thing and wanting to be close to the hospital. So, you know, at night you want to go get food for your husband or whatever it was. Did you also do some research or this is trending towards Airbnb or? No, it was just because we've experienced it. So it made us think like, you know, we, cause when I, when I did look, when I had, was in actually in Australia when we found out that my husband had to do the, you know, the surgery real quickly. And so I had to like fly home and

Jon Stoddard (16:40.449)
get my pack my son and my husband on a quick fly home though. No, it was not. was 24 hours. But on the flight, luckily I had a lot of time to be Googling where to live for the next couple of months. And so, you know, we packed up our family and our dogs and I wanted to, if I was going to be there for a long time, I wanted to be in a house and not in a hotel. So I looked at Airbnb and what was great was I was looking for how close could I be to that hospital? So that way, if my husband or my son,

had any issues, I'm right there. If I want to go home, take a shower, if I want to go cook, if I would, if I'd like to just be in a home environment instead of a hot, you know, a hotel. Yeah, there's a, there's a hotel here close to the hospital. And it's just, you know, it's one of those hotels like, man, you don't want to stay any more than just a weekend there. Yeah. And people don't, and you don't, you don't think about it when it's just a hospital stay, you know, hotels are fine.

Nothing against hotels, but if you're an extended for any reason with a loved one that's in a hospital for a long period, you don't want to be, it's one, it's more expensive to be in hotels and then you have to eat out every meal and you can't have lots of family. Like with the house, with the Airbnb, you have four or five bedrooms and you can have a whole family stay with you. You have dogs in the back. had dinners and we had our dogs with us. We didn't have to board our dogs for two months.

you know, and so just things like that, that you don't think of that is very important to a family. So for us, we experienced it. So we knew that is something that people will be looking for. So to us, it just made sense. That's what we want to invest in. You know, that, that's a really important point to tap into, you know, emotions and trends and changes. That's really important. And I look at a lot of that comes from hanging around this whole digital marketer and environment and Roland Fraser.

Yeah. And you know, the other thing too is just looking at like, again, and also looking at trends, like for us, we're also looking at Brackenridge, Colorado, because it's a, it's a great ski place and the prices, the prices of log cabins up there are not that expensive. You can get a log cabin for about 450, like whatever that number is. Right. So, but, but then you have to look at the math and go, well, it will probably only be booked five months out of the year. So the math has to, you know, the math has to work.

Jon Stoddard (19:01.437)
if it's only gonna be booked during seasonal times versus whereas if you're at the beach, can be pretty much the beach like at Port Aransas is about 90%, right? At a hospital you would think it could be 80 to 90 % because you're around. So when we're looking at those places of where we think those hot markets would be, although seasonal is amazing and what might trigger us to still do that is because

you know, personally, we may want to have a beach home and, you know, a home in Colorado and we can personally just write it off and we have it when we want it. And then we rent it when we don't. But if it's strictly just for business purposes, for our investments, we're probably going to stick to more of anything that can be rented that what we've made our family, we made a family decision. If it can be running more than 75%, we'll buy it. So that's kind of what our, you know, our numbers were. If we think that this house,

is can be rented for 75 % of the time, then we will buy it. Yeah. And now with 3000 leads come in, I'm just curious, do you, do you put it in Airbnb and like for sale bot? What is it? No, we do VRBO. Yeah. No, we do VRBO, Airbnb, Google. But the, where we're getting the most is we're just driving our own traffic. So we created our own Facebook page. have our own website.

We drove all of our own organic traffic and it got filled. We do have a management company right now. Not positive that we're gonna stay with that company because every, out of all of them, they only booked one. We booked all of the business ourselves. Now, I don't want a job. So we did the management company just so that they have to mess with it and not us. But you can always find someone local if you wanted to pay someone local to do it.

cheaper probably than a management company. So there's ways to look at that. Yeah, is that management company also, I mean, when somebody leaves the your Airbnb, they got to clean up and check. Yeah, they there. There's also every you have to look at every city. Every city does have laws that that allow for short term rentals. Some places will allow you to have a short term rental without a management company. Some places won't they require you to have management company because within

Jon Stoddard (21:22.285)
I believe it's within five miles or 10 miles of your home. That way if something were to happen, there's a management company close by to take care of that property. So it just depends on the location, Houston, San Antonio. You have to look at the city, what the requirements are. But management companies are typically going to charge you 20%. And so you have to know that going into that, whereas Airbnb and BRBO is 3%. So if you can do it by yourself,

and save 17 % override, that's where you want to save that money. So you have to look at all those little things when you're looking at, know, what's this, what am I all in for? You know, and, and what am I going to make as a profit on this? Do you want that 17 % margin to be given away or do you care? It may be that you don't want another job. Like for us, we chose not to this year because, we didn't want another job. we wanted someone else to handle that, but we also negotiated.

What we did is we went in and we pre booked everything. We did one Facebook, ad got about just one and got almost 20 K in business, went to the management company and said, we'll drive our own business. You drop your prices. Well, when they saw that that's a pipe wrench, you know, but when they saw that they were like, well, would they rather have 10 % of everything we have or zero? So it was, they said, okay, we'll do 10%.

And because there was, it was a no brainer. were giving them money. we had done all the work. Well, I'm actually thinking about creating one, starting competing against them. So I hope nobody on that group sees this, but, I don't think that, I think there's a lot of money to be made there. that it's got a high, that makes so much sense. mean, who said it, you know, you buy your costs.

And that is definitely a cost. So it's a 20 % markup. It's a lot of money and people don't think about that when you're really looking at all the numbers. So, you know, we do have to look at that. You look at that because you have, you know, you've also got, you know, insurance and you have, the cost of just upkeep and you've got a pool, you know, pool companies and you've got a trash company and you've got, you've got to have someone clean it every single time. That's 180 bucks every single time someone leaves. So you've got all these expenses.

Jon Stoddard (23:42.817)
that you don't think about when you're buying, but you do need to make sure you're plugged in those numbers and those numbers make really good sense before you make that investment. So, that's why we said it has to be able to be rented 75 % of the time to make it make sense. How do you know that though? I mean, how do you judge that? We just did the math. We figured out what is it going to cost if we never, if we rented it only just to make the mortgage payment, like

whatever we've invested in it, plus the mortgage. You know, what is that dollar amount? If that dollar amount is 50 K a year annually that we have to have. Well, if you're getting 15,000 a month in rentals, then I really only need to rent it three months or so to make it profitable. The math works really well, right? So that's why you have to just do the math. But if for some reason,

you know, and again, that's where we look at the cost of the land is costing us more right now. The cost of buildings costing us more. So it's that same house may be a lot more. What's that going to cost? No, we will charge more, but you know, so you have to really do your due diligence, really make sure that the numbers do make sense and then make sure that you can cover, with rentals what that is going to, you know, cover, cover your own expenses plus

all the other, you your growth that you foresee. So like we gave ourselves a margin of 25 % growth year over year. So as long as we cover the mortgage plus 25 % growth, we were fine. We're going to do that, totally fine. But that was what we chose to do. Cause we want to make sure that we're continuing to put back into the property. We don't want to, we want to be able to like add new elements and make it better and you know, do new things. to keep it.

a hot market. So yeah, I guess I'm a little daft on this, but how did you, you know, you say, Hey, want to, you buy the property first and then you work out the numbers that you have to make, or is it you, you know, I did the numbers first. know, you do the numbers first, then you bribe, then you go buy a property first. Well, I mean, no, I mean, we were on vacation when this fell in our lap. So we were looking at

Jon Stoddard (26:01.683)
We had some friends of ours that knew that we were investors and we were on vacation with them and they had just bought and they were like, you should, you should buy this too. You've got money to invest, so you should do this. And so we went and looked at it and we found out what the mortgage would be if we just invested, if we paid cash, we knew what we would spend and, or if we did a mortgage, we knew how much that mortgage payment would be. Then we just, we ran the numbers. We spent about two days, I think running numbers.

And by the end of the weekend, we put a cash offer plus some other things that we added that we wanted. So we put an offer in. And so we knew that, okay, if this is what we want, this is what it's gonna look like financially. Plus you gotta add insurance, plus you gotta add management fees and you gotta add all these things. And plus we knew we were gonna add a pool and we knew we were gonna add landscaping. Who would have thought that landscaping with coconut trees and

all these different palm trees would cost $28,000. Who knew, right? So you got it. You got to do the math on that. Who knew that the pool would end up being 10K more than normal? So you just have to make sure you have all those numbers and you plug it in and go, worst case scenario, X is that number. And so then what I need is I need, if we're gonna rent it for $700 night, then, cause it sleeps 12, then okay, I need it to be rented.

X amount of time. But then you go and you look at the other other properties nearby and you see what those rent, you know, those rental homes are going for how long have they been on the market? What are they? What are they doing? And when you see what like we went to the next door neighbor, next door neighbor has a home that's a short term vacation rental wasn't nearly as nice as ours and it was making 60k in rentals a year. we're like, okay, we're fine. All we're good. You know,

So, you you just have to do, you have to do your research, make sure that it's something that you're worth doing. And then don't be afraid to just dig in and figure out how to do it yourself and do a lot of it to save yourself the money. That's why I said we did the Google our business and we did our own website and we did all of our own Facebook advertising and we did all that ourselves. And it, mean, literally within a week we were, we, from the moment that we launched it to

Jon Stoddard (28:17.887)
I think it was seven or eight days later, we were booked solid for the whole season. Yeah, that's amazing. mean, if you do that so well, and most, you know, lot of these people that do VRBOs or Airbnb, they'll just go to Airbnb and wait for that traffic to come in. Now you're creating a system where 3,000 people are coming to your website every month. Yeah, that's, I got to believe there's some value into that. Other people coming to you and saying, I need that help.

Yeah. And what we also found too, we were, we, didn't want to wait on a company to fill our, our home for us. Like that's just not in my DNA. Like my husband and I both were like, we're not waiting on someone to fill this. We'll do it ourselves. Like, you know, we, we have the skillset. He's a marketer. I'm a marketer. We, can do it ourselves. And, and so we did. And then, then we realized how fast it filled and we're like, well, now any more houses? Like we need to keep, keep filling them up. Like we, had, we found. playing Monopoly here.

Yeah. So now it's like, okay, I need another one. I need another property. but it, know, but then we also, we also realized long-term that we want to be above everyone else. So you have to look at what are you standing about? Like when we looked at what everybody else in that area was at, most of them that live on the beach just had a regular beach home, but they didn't have a pool or they didn't have a golf cart that went with it. So then we were like, okay, well, we'll invest 50 K into a pool. We'll buy a golf cart. Well,

we'll add these elements that makes ours stand out. So when someone's Googling and they see our, our property, it's the first thing they want. Then what we did is we created, you know, a contest for, to see who we could get that would book it while we were still building. Like, so for example, like in the building phase, like we still had the pool going, being built. So we couldn't really rent it to people for money, but it was empty while we were building all this construction.

So we had people that would go and spend the weekends and then write us reviews. So we built our reviews up real fast before it even went on the market. So there's just things you can do that gets you up to that level real quickly without you really having to do a whole lot. That's cool. And that's, that's for marketing. You learned that from your affiliate days and everything. It's been fun. It's really been, it's been fun to see it.

Jon Stoddard (30:43.073)
grow and we're definitely growing with it. We're learning a lot along the way. So yeah. So I mean, what's next because, know, sometimes you get into business and you first get into it and you build this foundation and goes, you know what, how do I move up and how do I move up and I don't want to move up. Is there something different after this? Like, is it still owning all the properties like monopoly or is it owning boardwalk different types of properties? it's different, different streams of income for sure. Like,

My son, and you guys know coach Adam, Adam has been my dear friend for many, many years. My son, who's I have three boys, 29, 27 and 24. My 24 year old wants us to buy a gaming store through Adam. And so who knows that's what that's been on the table about us possibly buying a gaming store. We are currently looking at

buying into a partnership and doing more so what Roland teaches with the zero money down, but we're going to do more of an earning interest. But we are looking at acquiring. So very interesting. I don't want to say too much, but it's local and it is down in Austin. They have a place called Rainy street and it's just a street full of different bars and restaurants and they have live music and it's just become like the happening place to be. Well,

where we live, they've created another one like that. And the people that started it three years ago are struggling and they don't know how to market it to get it really hopping. And they need a little bit of investors too. So we are in talks with them to I think take that on, which is something random that we've never done before, live music and restaurants. Bars, alcohol. so.

Such a different beast. I'm going to have to learn all those laws because that's a very different beast. But it's also in the same field of it's very different revenue stream. And it's different. like different. I like doing things that are different and that really expand us. So I'm kind of almost positive we're about to take that one on. We've still got a little bit of more due diligence and meet with their attorneys. But that one's.

Jon Stoddard (32:57.101)
probably going to come to fruition. Yeah. So you can see immediately what you need to do to that. I mean, that's the deal with the earnings. mean, they're not going to invite you unless you can bring something to the table that they can't do, which is the marketing. Well, that one, and this is what Roland teaches. It's all about proximity and getting out there. Right. So this one just happened to be that my husband and I had a date night and we went and decided to go watch live music. And we sat there and

had a drink and we were just sitting there enjoying the band and noticed all these little restaurants and places and we went up to the bar and I could tell that the one lady and her husband were the owners, you could tell. They're probably working around the clock. were. Yep. And I struck up a conversation with her and it was funny enough that within 15 minutes and it was just a very, right, it was just fun conversation. My granddaughter was there running around playing and she's like, yeah, you know,

there's so much more we could do to this place, but we need investors and we need help. And I was like, well, I like all of a sudden I was like, well, let's have another drink and let's sit down and let's talk about this. And so, I mean, and then like an hour and a half later, and then now we're going on a month that we've been in conversations and in serious conversations with, you know, property and attorneys and where that, what that'll look like. And so,

What was so funny was we just went there though for you know to have a drink and watch a band. And so it and again and then my husband at first was not you know no it's really not our we're not we're not looking for anything that we have to have another job and it felt like it when we were watching them but then when we we've gone back you know

I don't know, like six or seven times and we've been watching and I'm like, we don't have to work it. We just have to give them the skillset and hire them the right people to have them do it. They just didn't have that. And so there's so much more we can bring and help them and get it scaled and make this huge and make it another big, huge, live entertainment place where we live. and, scale it. So.

Jon Stoddard (35:07.693)
I'm kind of it's actually something I'm excited about just because I've never done that before I've never had a live entertainment company so Yeah, so you know kind of think outside of the box you got to think outside the box a little bit and you just like I said it's all about Conversations and proximity so we didn't go there looking for that just like we didn't look for the Airbnb's when we was on vacation

Like those things. You're doing that. I mean, you're tapping in, like you're letting the universe talk to you and say, Hey, keep your eyes open for this. And you did it at the hospital. You did it. You did it. That's a restaurant. Yep. You just have to, like, once you become an investor in your mind and you start thinking along those lines is I'm an investor and I want to create revenue streams, different, multiple revenue streams. Then that's how you think. You're just thinking differently. You're not thinking of

you know, I'm going to go online and start looking for businesses. No, it they'll come to you based on you changing your mindset. And yourself and like going to a restaurant or doing whatever you do. Yeah, absolutely. So do you go to all the war rooms and all the other masterminds? I my my team and I we put them on. Yes. my God. That's like the million dollar billion dollar.

intelligence you hear going in and out of these things. That's awesome. I'm a very lucky girl to be able to get all that information and still do my job and take it all in. So yes, I'm very blessed. Now your husband, you guys are copacetic about, you know, the information that flows back. Do you guys have like the same mindset in that when you're talking? No, we're well, we're very different, but yet very much alike. We're very competitive.

both of us are extremely competitive and we don't like losing. We like to run and just do things quickly. So that, we're very different in our mind. Like he's very skilled in sales and marketing. I've got marketing too, but I also think differently than him. And so, yeah, we have a lot that compliments each other, but a lot that is very competitive and very much we hold each other accountable. So.

Jon Stoddard (37:20.909)
Luckily for us, when we both knew that we wanted to start investing a couple of years ago, we just decided that this is what we want to look for when we do it. now not everything, there's things that I find and he's just like, nope. And then there's things that he's finding and I'm like, nope. We are allowed that veto. I just saw some interview with Charlie Munger just saying, hey, sometimes I get to say, no, that's a stupid idea, Warren Buffett.

right? So we are allowed that but no but again and we both are very we we want to leave a legacy for our children and our grandchildren and you know so it's very important for us that we're finding things that will help you know create that for them and give them you know their their peace of mind and then also you know some we're not spring chickens either so we want to make sure that you know we're creating that business so it's been fun it's been I know is he full time

He full time with you guys? He's the vice, no, my husband's a vice president of a separate company. So we are not in the same company. But yeah. And your, your kids, I mean, they're all grown. mean, they're all my kids are grown. They are there 29, 27, 24. So, my gosh. Yeah. And they have separate jobs or doing entrepreneurial stuff. They are not now our youngest, our 24 year old is entrepreneurial. He actually works with my husband and does sales and marketing for my husband's company, but

The 27 and the 29, the 27 year old is actually a stockbroker. He's got a series 10 license. He went on his own path, but he did a very great job. I'm proud of him. So he's, he's does that. And then our 29 year old also manages companies, but they're, he does more of the automotive companies. And so very different, different skill sets. I would like to see them someday come into the companies that we, create and help run them, but.

will never make them. It's always something if they want to great. If not, then that's great as well. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Anyway, we've almost done 45 minutes and I really appreciate the time. I mean, I just like there's so much that you're seeing behind the scenes like, where do you keep getting the ideas? Well, it's proximity to power being in the war room and doing your affiliate program and hanging around people that are, you know, doing bigger and bigger things and you're doing so many different things with this Airbnb.

Jon Stoddard (39:48.151)
but you're adding a different layer on it, but you're also keeping just your mind open to what the universe is telling you. He's like, hey, this lady needs help. I'm going to ask. You're almost like that Geico lady at the beach going, where she said somebody else starts talking about, gosh, I wish I could bundle my home and auto together in my boat. And she runs over there and it goes, I'm going have a conversation.

You know, but I think it's true. Like I think once you change your mindset to where you are an investor and you're wanting to go do these deals and they just you you find it it becomes it falls into your conversations without you that's even meaning to you know, I've been on club houses. I think I've mentioned this before on an epic call once that I was on an epic call. I'm sorry. I was on a clubhouse with some friends of mine. We have a business women entrepreneur group that we do.

it's called coffee in the clubhouse every Friday for women entrepreneurs. And we were just talking and you know, people know that I invest and this friend of mine, she also invests and she does real estate and she just like me, you know, we just, it just, it just rolls. We're just talking about what we're investing in, what we're doing and how we're doing things. It's not like we're targeting anyone in particular, but someone on that call actually was like, my gosh.

I need to talk to y'all after the clubhouse, how can I reach you? And we're like, you know, we gave our information and then an hour later, this person reaches out and is like, okay, so my next door neighbor is in Oklahoma. They live in Oklahoma and they have this garbage disposal company. And I mean, you asked me if I was ever gonna do a garbage disposal company. No, no. No way. The garbage, right? But then she's like, but look, the husband, the...

husband and wife died, the kids inherited, the kids want nothing to do with this garbage company. And I'm like, okay, do you know the numbers? Cause I'm not into garbage, you know? And she started spouting the numbers and the numbers was incredible. And I'm like, let's have another conversation. So my friend started having this conversation with her and my friend is actually going to do the business and I may jump on it with her, but it's, an incredible deal that if it comes to true fruition,

Jon Stoddard (42:00.797)
It's amazing deal because the kids just want the cash they want out. They don't want anything to do with this garbage company. Their parents died and they just want money. But the business, what they're asking was like less than a million dollars in the company itself is doing 4.7 million a year. Holy cow. was like,

Let's talk. But my point of that was, is that that just happened on a clubhouse. Like literally we were just talking and then before you know it, you know, a couple hours later, we're all having this phone call and it's just gone into different things. So there's, there's so much, think it's just whether or not you're just thinking differently and talking to let people know that you're an investor, that you look at, you're looking for deals and people will just add, like, I didn't know who this person was from Adam. I'd seen her on the calls a couple of times.

but I didn't know her and I definitely wasn't looking for garbage company in Oklahoma. Like I live in Texas, you know? So that's what I'm saying about just having your mindset change and letting people know, then things just come to you and you can pick and choose what you think is going to be a good fit or you send it off to your other friends and then maybe you get a piece of the deal. Like there's just so many different ways to do that, but you just have to change your mindset.

Yeah, that's good advice. I mean, I get a lot of people on LinkedIn from Epic reach out to me and says like, Hey, how do I get deal flow? And I said, well, it's, massive action. I mean, if you're doing LinkedIn sales navigator, if you're doing direct mail, I mean, Jeff Charlton talks about that. If you're networking, you're doing clubhouse. She's got to do it all till you get that flow in. Yeah. And then once the flow starts coming, you're so swamped. you, then you, then you create like an affiliate network where you can give it out to other people, but.

I mean, that's where Roland is the master. Like Roland has created this to where he gets so many deals because they just come in all the time and they're big deals. And he can be a little bit pickier on things because he's got so many, but it's because he has worked so hard to get in that space and let people know what he does. And he's just a, he's a brilliant, you know, at what he does with that. So again, but you have to start somewhere.

Jon Stoddard (44:18.005)
Right? So like I'm not rolling Frazier, but I started somewhere and I'm getting to the point now where things are coming a lot easier. I'm having conversations that are much easier and things are rolling in a different path for us just because I'm thinking on a different level and everyone. have those conversations with a restaurant owner and a garbage disposal owner about the business. That's like two different, but it's the same. It's, it's, it's all the same when you're like, well, are you interested in,

Are they interested in selling? Like, are you interested in selling? That's exactly what I said to the lady on the call is like, well, are they interested in selling? And she's like, yeah. And I'm like, well, then let's chat. Like it was, it was literally those two sentences. And then here's my phone number. me when this call is over, you know, and that's all it was. And you know, the, the restaurant, the, the restaurant thing that we're looking at.

was literally I'm standing at the bar ordering a margarita and I noticed her and I was like, knew, you know, people that are owners just have a different look and feel, you know, and I just knew they had to be the owner. So I just happened to walk up and I was like, man, do you own this? And yes. And I'm like, man, you've done a great job. I didn't even realize this existed. And I complimented her. And then as she's just like, well, I mean, just so I'm so tired. Like I live and breathe this. And I'm like, girl.

you've done an amazing job. So I started with compliments and then I was just, was curious and I'm like, my mind, I'm curious. I just like to know numbers. I'm like, I'm just curious. How long have you been here? What have you done to get this going? Are you on Facebook? I've never seen you before. And before you know it, she's like, well, yeah, but me and my husband started this grassroots. We started it with a trailer in the middle of a lot, you know, three years ago and we started with $5,000 and she's like, and now we're doing this, this and this. I'm like,

man, I'm like, are you doing this, this and this? And before she's like, no, but I really wish I had an investor that would help. I'm like, well, well, like a hook and a fish line. did. And then it just, it just morphed, right? But that's that conversation. I never went in making that conversation awkward. I never went in like at a bullion in China shop and said, I'm, you know, no, it was conversational. And it was me complimenting her on what she had done. And I could tell she was tired. I could tell that she had worked her.

Jon Stoddard (46:31.245)
tail off to create this, but I could also see from what I was looking at, my gosh, this is like a gold mine that could have so much more. Like you could have a dance floor and you could have more restaurants over here and you could have a play area up here for kids. You could have an outdoor dance, you know, a dance hall over here. You can have this. And I mean, my mind just started and I'm like, wonder why she's not doing this. And so then as I started thinking those things, I'm like, well, I'm going to ask her, you know, and, then it came to it. She's just like, well, I mean,

my husband and I just, we just don't have the funds because we're doing this ourselves. And I'm like, and she's like, but I'm looking for investors. I'm like, they're in the business. They're sucked. They working. They are working it. She's a hairdresser and she just turns every bit of her profit into this to make it go. And she needs investors to make it run. But I never would have gotten that information had I not have just complimented her and told her what a great job she was doing. Cause it's an amazing property with.

All these you know all this information before you know it an hour and a half later She'd already given me some of her financials verbally. She'd already told me how she gave me financials No within an hour and a half and she'd give me the financials of what she was paying for rent on property what she was charging She had told me what she was looking for for an investor like an hour and a half later because we just hit it off conversationally, so What I always try to tell people is be authentic be a real

Just let people know that you're investing and don't try too hard because when you try too hard, it comes off fake. But when you're generally just looking out there for things, they just fall in your lap and it's just organic. That's beautiful. And we're going to end on that. you so much for the time. I appreciate this, man. You are really the glue that brings this together because I've tried to be that person that goes, hey, could you finish your question off? We need the next question going and you do a great job of that.

You guys have a great job with the whole package, the whole Epic course. Thank you so much. You know what? Thank you. Thank you for interviewing me. I love you guys. And it's just such a pleasure to work with all of you Epic members. I appreciate you. Yeah, it's a great group of people. Awesome. Well, thanks, John. I appreciate you. Thank you, Deanna. All right. Bye.