How To Get Started In Real Estate Investing with Marc Ruiz

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Marc welcome to the show. I appreciate you having me on. Hey, appreciate you taking some time out of your day to hang out with me for a few minutes here to tell us your story. I know you and I've been connected for quite some time through Apex, a great online and offline mastermind community created by our buddy Ryan Stumann. And it's just great to see how podcasting reconnects us. And in this case, that's exactly what's happening here. We were chatting for a few minutes before the interview, and it's kind of wild how we all get connected these days. And it could be a comment on a post or in the right room or, you know. in the right area online, whatever it may be. So good to have you here. So I love to tell people stories on this show. So for some context, let's back up to the beginning of the story, wherever the beginning is for you and what really brought you to, to what you're doing right now. I know you said you've been in the real estate business for over 20 years now, but how did it all start?

Sebastian Rusk

It started 20 years ago, watching late night infomercials. I actually remember very vividly because I was home late after work, and I was watching TV. And back then, you know, you had the infomercials. You had George Foreman selling grills. You had Tony Little selling exercise equipment. And then Robert Allen pops on the screen and says, you can buy real estate with no money down. I was 21 years old, I didn't have any money, so it sounded great. So that's how it all started. Like I jumped on this, no money down bandwagon. I went and mentored with Robert Allen and learned how to do it. And I did some creative finance that evolved into fix and flip and buying Burt, which was where we buy and remodel, rent and remodel kind of deal. Then I built a construction company to support my flipping habit. And it's just gone from there.

Marc Ruiz

support my flipping habit. So walk me through that. What was that like 20 years ago to buy a property with no money down?

You know, it's been a very interesting evolution because, you know, 20 years ago, yeah, I think this was before the real estate crash of 07. So, you know, it was pretty easy. Now I say it's easy. Convincing somebody to sell you something with no money is not easy. So you have to be very creative and you have to figure out how to get in there and solve people's problems. Because, you know, as an investor, you know, people's like, oh, we're here just putting in money, we're making money. Like, no, we're actually solving problems. And what makes us great investors is how we're able to go in and help people and solve the problem they're facing. So creative financing, no money down is like we're taking over their mortgage. We're coming in and we're working with the banks and doing the short sales. We're doing the subject to where we just take over the mortgage, make the payments and rent it out. Or we go in and we buy it, we fix it up, we sell it, that kind of thing.

So this was basically, are these people that are in trouble with, with the current situation?

Yeah, we, I hate, you know, people don't call us when things are great. It's typically, you know, you have a death divorce, moving, loss of job, something, some kind of, uh, not disaster, but it's not, there's some kind of problem that's going on that they need help with.

Yeah.

And they are conventional putting it on the market and selling it the traditional way. It doesn't work for their situation.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. They don't know. Nobody calls when it's good. When it's good to go to the bank. Right. Right. Yeah. It's good. You scale the MLS. Right now. Are you still doing any of the same things that you did 20 years ago today with the same processes and systems?

No, no, we we've, you know, in the beginning, it didn't have any money. So we had to get creative and we were doing outside the box. And as we evolved, and I started getting some experience and some backing and some money, we just started buying. It's so much easier just to buy cash and to go in and do what we do. And, you know, do the remodel, do the fix and flip, or do the remodel and refinance. I think it's just so much easier just playing cash. Because when you're doing creative finance, there's a lot of moving parts to it. And you have to, there's just, there's a lot of, there's a lot more legwork involved than just paying cash. I mean, cash is king, real easy just, and. As we got into buying and doing remodels, I said, I built a construction company to support my flipping habits, because I got tired of dealing with subs, subcontractors who worked on their schedule and did what they wanted. I figured out that if I could control the contractors, I could control job flow.

Yeah. That's smart. And then you, it's, it's, it's within, it's within your grasp then. So have you done just when you, when you created the construction company, have you just been doing just your projects or do you, if I need you to.

Yeah, primarily our projects, you know, I have been, so we've been doing construction, uh, 13, 14 years. We do a little bit of outside retail work, but I'm not a custom guy. I don't take orders very well. This is why I'm self-employed. I'm not a very good employee. I don't listen. So I don't like working for other people, not that we won't. And the people that we work for, you have to be in the circle. You have to be in the group. I'm like, you can't hire me. You can't hire us. But if you're in the group, then I'll help you out kind of deal.

So, you know, exactly what you're getting into and who exactly you're dealing with. Correct. Yeah.

I mean, I try retail work about 10 years ago and it's, you know, when you work with somebody's home, it becomes a whole emotional roller coaster and no one ever really complains about the job. They complain about the mess you made or you tore up my yard. You, You messed up, you made a mess in my house. It's construction site people. So it's so much easier to just go in as an investor, as a construction job. And we do, we learned, it took me a couple of years to figure this out, but I learned, I do basic cookie cutter stuff. Like if you look at my houses, they're all the same color. They're all the same finishes. I mean, you get it, you know, it's a little bit repetitive and a little bit boring, but the guys know what they're doing. We're efficient. We're faster. We're like, we can get through that and then we can buy in bulk. So there's a lot of benefits to doing the same thing over and over again.

Yeah. Well, so what would you say, even now that you've got everything, you know, in house, if you will, under one roof, what would you say the biggest challenges or bottlenecks are for the business, even though you've got everything within your grasp?

I mean, the biggest bottleneck has always been, and still is, me. I'm a little bit of a control freak. I've been involved in, you know, there's not a job in the company that I have not done at some point. You know, when I started, it was me, a contractor, and a helper. And I ran construction up until five years ago, and then I hired, I brought in a construction manager, because I finally had enough. But there, I've done every position. Like, I'm not, I've never, I've always been, if I, If I ask somebody to do it, I've either done it myself or I'm willing to do it myself. But nowadays, I mean, it's still me because I moved to the business development phase. Like I have two jobs, money and stuff to work on. So as long as they have money and stuff to work on, they don't need me. Like the construction side, I have a construction manager. I got about 30 guys on payroll, 40 or 50 subs. Like it's really efficient.

Yeah.

So what, what's the, what's the best part except not having to deal with subs.

Yeah.

Not having to deal with subs.

Um, you know, I, I, I've evolved in like my evolution when I joined Apex, I was an investor who, you know, we did a lot of remodels and we built some houses. Now we are a turnkey provider. It completely went through an identity crisis when I joined Apex. I love it. And had to completely recast who I was because, you know, I was always an investor. I was always, you know, I was a one man band for 15 years. I mean, I say that I had people working for me, but everything went through me. Now, I have teams of people. We have eight different companies and we've vertically integrated. So I have people who run all the day-to-day stuff. I don't do day-to-day anymore. I'm just fully on development. If I'm involved in day-to-day, there's something I'm finding. So, but, you know, we've integrated, so, you know, we own the acquisition company. We do the marketing. We buy the properties. We own the excavating company. We own the dirt work. We own the plumbing company. We're affiliated with the heat and air and the electrical. We are the general contractor. We are the property manager. We do the maintenance. I've inlined everything and we now are full turnkey providers. So when we say, we're not like the other guys who are brokering or part of it, like we build it, we warranty it, we manage it, we maintenance it. We do everything for our investors. So are you just doing it there in the Oklahoma area or you do it? Yeah. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Yeah. I, I've learned my lesson on getting out of my backyard. You know, once upon a time we, we worked in Tulsa and Oklahoma city and Dallas and the different markets or they're different worlds for one. And then, uh, just the proximity, you know, how much time I spent in my truck when we were working out of town. It's like just ridiculous having to go make different job site visits. So I figured out that I can stay in my little circle in my backyard and we can, we can work. We have more work than we can get done.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, you go where the riches are in the niches, right? Yes, sir. But also not trying to, yeah, there's different regulations and permits and logistics and rules. And I can only imagine, I don't know anything about your world, um, but you know, the, other than the general premise of what it takes to make stuff like that happen. So when you said, you know, we, we, we do some marketing. So who do you market to? Like, who's your ideal customer?

My ideal customer is, high income, high net worth individuals who need a safe, secure place to put their money that's gonna bring in a return on their money and also a tangible asset that's gonna grow in value in time. So, I'm looking for the guy who wants to get rich quick. Now, with that being said, I mean, we do mentoring, we do training, I have a mastermind on how teaching people how to do what we do. Um, but our, our general, our focus is on those high income individuals who need somewhere to put their money. That's going to produce income. Like we're selling income producing assets.

We're selling tax shelter and long-term wealth creation. I mean, that's, that's a, that's a pretty enticing offer, especially to, you know, your demographic of people who are looking to, you know, figure out how to, um, you know, spend their money accordingly, invest their money accordingly. So.

Well, running the mastermind and teaching people how to invest in real estate, what we figured out is most people don't really wanna invest in real estate. They just, they saw it, they watched HDTV and it looked like a cool way to make money. And at the end of the day, they wanna make money. And what they don't realize is if they just double down on what they're good at, what they do, they make more money than what they would if they were trying to get into this industry, because they don't account for the learning curve. They don't account for the mistakes and the time, the distraction. like if you you spend that same time and energy that you would learn real estate. Cause you know that if you take chase two rabbits, you're not catching either one. So you distract yourself from your primary business. So your primary, your income goes down. Then you come over here and you don't make as much as you thought or as you hope. So you're really not being productive, but what we figured out, and this is how we got into the turnkey, is if you focus and double down on what you're good at and then find a investment partner who is good at what they do, you can increase your revenue and then put that money into an investment that is now increasing more. So now you're actually making more money. That make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. So do people come to you just with money to invest and then you help them show them what to do? Yes. Okay. And what's that typically look like? Cause what's the minimum investment someone comes to you with?

Well, it really $100,000, because what we are bread and butter is duplexes. So we're the small multifamily. We do single family, but duplexes, twos and fours is our bread and butter. Our duplexes run, if you were to buy it outright, $370,000 to $400,000, depending on the neighborhood and if it has a garage. And the way that we pitch it is we go on a 30-year DCR debt with 25% down. So you're $100,000 out of pocket. and then you have a control of $400,000 asset. Where I figured out how to stack the debt is actually working through Apex, working with Brian Wolf. We do a cost segregation study and accelerate depreciation. So you give me $100,000 cash, we give you an income reducing asset, and then we give you a $70,000 depreciation to write off on your taxes.

Smart. Yeah, Byron knows a couple two, three things about those numbers. I don't buy that old Byron Wolf. I go, Chrissy Wolf. No, no. Young Chrissy Wolf. Old Byron Wolf. Let me, let me not go on the record there. Yeah. I'll get pulled aside in Dallas in a couple of weeks by Chrissy and a little talking to great, great people past past clients and just dear, dear friends. Good old apex really, uh, helping us create our family of choice. Right. Right.

And then, you know, there's, My background, I was like, I live in real estate. I live in construction and I don't understand taxes. I don't understand, I mean, I'm not even allowed to log into QuickBooks because they make a mess. So having people who are really good at those things have helped me to stack the deck to make us stand out and make our offer better for our investor.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, time we're recording this, we're just days away from the end of 2024, which is wild to, to even say on here, what are you excited about for 2025?

2025 is, you know, we have, we've had a lot of evolution this year. And like I said, the identity crisis and really getting into our niche. And now I'm just, I'm excited because now that we are very clear on what we're doing, who we're talking to and what we're talking about, it's so much easier to market and to talk to have those conversations. Like I know exactly who we're after. And then we've streamlined production. Like we build the same thing. I mean, it's not, It's, you know, I used to say, you know, doing the same thing is boring, but boring is profitable. Yes, yes. When you start chasing shiny objects, and I'm guilty of this, I've chased some shiny objects and it's ultimately, it's cost me money, it's cost me distractions, and it cost me frustration. Now we are focused, like this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is who we do it for, and this is it. And now we're just streamlining production and it is so much easier. It's a relief to not have to chase shiny objects anymore.

Yeah, isn't it though? Isn't it though? Well, Marc it's been great to connect with you again, brother. Look forward to seeing you again in a couple of weeks in Dallas here. And it's been fun to learn more about your business, wishing you a real prosperous 2025. And thanks again for hanging out with us.

I appreciate it.

Look forward to it. Thanks, brother. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios. We'll talk to you next time.