Ep 104 - Leveraging Organization and Task Management to Escape Corporate Life with Eric Martel

Today, we have a fantastic guest on Elevate Your Equity podcast, Eric Martel. Eric is the founder of MartelTurnkey with this family. On this show, we talked a lot about mindset shifts, time management and task management. He emphasized on the show:

• How has task management helped you amplify your investing success
• How do approach goal setting with execution of those goals in mind
• What advice do you have for investors out there to increase their organization skills

More about Eric, he purchased his first apartment building at just 18 years of age while still at university. After graduation, in his position as an actuary, he was dismayed to see hundreds of company pension plans being rolled over into 401(k)s shifting the retirement risk to employees. This made him reconsider traditional beliefs about saving for retirement. After the Dotcom crash of 2001 Eric started looking for ways to earn passive income. Eric now shares what he has learned, so you too, can stop trading your time for money.

We thank you so much Eric Martel for coming on the show!

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5 Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

• on our website for blogs & other podcast interviews! elevateequity.org
• our YouTube channel! youtube.com/channel/derekclifford
• our book/audiobook! amazon.com/dp/ebook

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

• on our website for blogs & other podcast interviews! elevateequity.org
• our YouTube channel! youtube.com/channel/derekclifford
• our book/audiobook! amazon.com/dp/ebook

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Transcript

Introduction: 0:03

Welcome to the Elevate Your Equity podcast where we, as married busy professionals leverage real estate investing to unlock the three plus one degrees of freedom, health, location, time and financial.

Derek Clifford: 0:16

Today, we've got an awesome guests on the show Mr. Eric Martel. Eric Martel purchased his first apartment building at 18 years of age while still in university. And after graduation, in his position as an actuary, he was dismayed to see hundreds of company pension plans being rolled over into 401 K's shifting the Retirement Risk all to employees. And this made them reconsider traditional beliefs about saving for retirement. And after the.com crash in 2001, Eric started looking for ways to earn passive income and founded MartelTurnkey with his family. Eric now shares what he has learned so that you too can stop trading your time for money. So, Eric, it is a pleasure to have you on. How are you sir?

Eric Martel: 0:59

Well, thank you for having me on.

Derek Clifford: 1:01

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about you. This is a great like, jumping off point about your corporate experience. Why don't you talk about some of the pain that you experienced there, in your own words, and then we can talk about how that led you into real estate? Like, because you skipped over that a little in the intro. So I wanted to make sure we explored that fully.

Eric Martel: 1:18

Yeah, I mean, I did mention, I mean, I started my first apartment building, I was 18 years old, eight unit apartment building, and that cash flowing, no money down because I had, I had no money. And really what really allowed me to do that was this real estate investor. And that mentored me basically into buying that. And I didn't realize the importance of that mentor, until, like, when I started writing my book, that's when I thought, I keep mentioning this guy. It's like, maybe as he had more of an impact on me then, and I realized, and when I kind of analyzed that, you know, I kind of came to the realization that my parents were great, and all of that, but they had a massive gap in knowledge between, you know, what they knew about, you know, punching the clock at the factory. And then you know, and investing, they didn't know anything about investing, they thought that people in business or rich people were cheated the system somehow. And but they didn't understand the system themselves. So is it how do you know people cheated, and stuff like that? So. And then when I met this guy, this real estate investor, he was just a regular, like, he was a community college teacher, nothing special, no smarter than anybody else. And that's when I realized that yeah, this is not about some kind of like, special key to a special door that allows you to get in is some kind of skills and knowledge that you have, that you anybody can gain, to basically start investing in real estate and build equity, build cash flow, and all of that. And that was my big lesson there. So that's when I bought my first apartment building, cash flowing, but I didn't have money. So he taught me what he he knew. But he was kind of like a solo individual kind of guy. He never really partnered up with anybody. And the knowledge that he gave me also is the knowledge that he couldn't give me around putting a deal together about finding, dealing with other people's money and all of that. And this is why I ended up, you know, working, went back to corporate America, and worked as an actuarial consulting, associate actuary and basically destroyed retirement systems for most of America, and then worked in high tech. Yeah, and then moved to San Francisco. At that point, I had tons of stock options, and in 2000, and at perfect timing, for the.com crash to occur. And so I lost millions of dollars on that.com crash basically started from scratch, and came to another kind of like, key moment in my life where I had to decide what do I do not worry, if this is nonsense I had, I was up here, my financial advisor telling me, hey, you've made it, you've made it. And then six months later, oh, no, you have to keep working for another 40 years. So that was a big gap. So I said, I need to figure something, I need to be in control. I need to have passive income. I want to be able to work and live anywhere I want. I don't want to be limited. Because as an actuary, you're kind of limited or as a lawyer, you kind of limited where you can work, you have to kind of get your license again, and all that kind of stuff. So I didn't want to deal with any of that. I didn't want to sell my hours anymore. And that's when I started doing businesses. I started looking for actually real estate upfront, but I was in the San Francisco Bay Area, nothing worked like a numbers and make sense. If I wanted to cash flow, I had to put more money down like 50% down and then the return on investment was like, you know 2% What 3% is like I can do better in the stock market. Even the bonds I think were higher at that point. So Mmm, that's not gonna work. And then I didn't want to travel too far out, I didn't want to go like Fresno. I know some people actually invested in Fresno. They were very successful at that point. I don't like driving that much. And I still had like in mind that I would have to go and drive there to start a couple of businesses with my wife, local grocery store, gourmet sauce company and all of that. And came back to real estate really, like six years ago, seven years ago, this was a different we tried again, I tried again with my two sons to kind of do it again in the Bay Area, do more flip do wholesaling do all of that. It was just insane. I mean, we would the market was not even as hot as it is today. And it was just insane to have you go to a house and complete that job in San Francisco $745,000 was the list price, I put an offer of 1.4 million or something like that, and is sold for 1.6 million. This is ridiculous. Two houses that I actually bid on, put an offer on in San Francisco, both of them ended up in the newspaper about how crazy the real estate example. That's That's how crazy the real estate market.

Derek Clifford: 6:16

That's incredible.

Eric Martel: 6:17

And they were like a couple of years apart. But yeah, so that didn't work out. And so then we said, Okay, well, let's look out of state this point, we have technology at that, you know, we have the phone, we have DocuSign like to electronic signing, we have cameras everywhere. And so well, let's let's look out out of state let's look at and let's, let's be strategic about it. Now, we're going to start with a white piece of paper and say, which market do we want to go to? What landlord friendly state we want to have, you know, some kind of affordable housing, we want to have a meet, like, look at that 1% roll at the Metro level look at what's the median rent, what is the median house value? Is it close to that 1% rule, that is probably a good probability that we're going to find something in there. Also look at growth, the economic growth, and also demographic growth, we didn't want to have anything that was too exuberant in terms of growth, because that's going to affect the market. So population is growing at 5% a year, you know, there's gonna be too much demand on the real estate, we won't be able to find deals. So that's kind of that's gonna be out these kinds of things. So basically establish a whole bunch of criteria. Yeah. So we started with Memphis, Cleveland, did a couple of tests in those cities, and we bought something in St. Louis as well. And when great, we bought that house, like, I think we bought that house like$40,000, but five or $10,000 down, and it appraised for 60,000. Or, you know, and we were able to get all our money out. And do it again says, Well, this is great. You know, we're printing money, honestly. And yeah, we just kept kept on going after that. As we grew. I mean, our friends, I mean, they, they've seen that. People we knew and our family knew what we were doing. We always did something different than other people. So they said, What are you guys doing now? So well, we're investing in real estate. So what we're investing in Memphis? What? Why Memphis, blah, blah, you know? And then, yeah, so that's gonna say, Well, I want to invest with you, I want to lend you money. I want to be a joint venture I want to do I want to buy one of your, your rental property. And then, well, we didn't think about selling them. But okay. So that's when we started. We started selling during, and we decided to basically renamed ourselves MartelTurnkey and start selling to investors, we realized that there was a market for that. And you were doing it better than some of the other players on.

Derek Clifford: 8:56

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for explaining all of that. That gives us a lot of context for what we're going to be talking about now.

Eric Martel: 9:03

Yeah, sorry. I've been getting kind of babbling.

Derek Clifford: 9:05

No. Good. It's good. It's good. I like it. Because it's a good, it paints a good roadmap for a lot of the folks out there who are potentially looking at, you know, starting from scratch just like you did. Obviously, you had a mentor to help you in the beginning, but you're putting the pieces together to find something that you wanted to do out there. And since you worked as a lone wolf, it's very easy for me to understand that you would also want to expand that model. And I can almost guarantee you right now that it is not a lone wolf business that you have going on. So you've grown beyond that. Yeah. Which is great. So the main reason that we wanted to talk on the show, and I can understand there's a lot of things involved in this right. But in doing turnkeys, you have the acquisitions piece, you have the rehab piece, the property management, there's a lot there, right, there's all these pieces. And so what we're going to be talking about today is task management because it's one of the superpowers that you mentioned that you had, I can clearly see how that would be the case because you worked in corporate jobs for much of this While you were building up your business on the side, let's talk about what task management means to you. And is it related to time management? I just want to hear your take on what the superpower means to you.

Eric Martel: 10:11

I mean, yeah, that's management is really Yeah, it's also about time management. But it's not just that because time management is more like personal, but often is referred to as personal. But to me, task management is looking at the tasks that you have to do the tasks that you have to delegate the being able to prioritize them. And also being able to estimate some, some of the tasks are very short term that you want to be able to, you know, just get them up, get them done, get them out of the way, you know, if it's less than 510 minutes, then you have things that you have to concentrate, you have to spend some time on it, then it's about estimating also, kind of how long you're going to do that. How long it's going to take to do that. When is it due? Is there like some kind of hard date? Is this something that I need to do? Do we need other people? Do I need to delegate that to somebody else? This is kind of critical to basically be able to handle all these tasks, who's working on what, and then what am I responsible for. And the other thing too, that's important tool is also time blocking, basically blocking your time in your calendar, if you know, it's gonna take, I need to concentrate for an hour. I know people are gonna say, what, an hour more than five minutes. But.

Derek Clifford: 11:26

that's the culture we live in, sir.

Eric Martel: 11:29

Exactly, exactly. You know, I do a lot of tech talks. And just like, you know, two minutes is like this, is it. I can't even watch the whole thing or one. Yeah, so you know, but sometimes you need to concentrate dedicate a certain amount of time, you don't want to be bothered, you put something on your calendar and say, I'm going to be working on this. Yeah, that frees your mind to do other things. And also part of that task management to me is that kind of like when I start my day, and when I end my day, I look at shifting priorities and things that need to be done that should have been or things that should have been done that were not done, you know, and kind of like reviewing all of that.

Derek Clifford: 12:04

Well, let's talk about the tools that you use to keep track of all this. I know, there's a lot of different electronic tools, or maybe pen and paper tools, you know, how do you think about doing all of this and how do you track everything?

Eric Martel: 12:15

Yeah, so I mean, the calendar, I live by my calendar, so if it's not in my calendar, it's not going to happen. So that's one thing. The other thing too is I use Asana, I mean, it's a pretty good tool for task management and stuff like that. So I have different projects. And different companies have different kind of projects as well. So I keep track of that. And then I can, we can easily delegate to people and saying, You need to work on that you need to do this. And this is when it's due, and then people can put notes. So that's pretty good for these task management piece of it. And of course, we had the CRM, or customer relationship management software that we use for all the properties. So all the properties are in there. We have different workflows that automate things. And that also creates tasks for people, for different people, including myself. And then that's another place where I normally get that in an email, or it's in the CRM. And I can look at this, that task list there as well. So it's kind of like these two things. And then there's the email. So email, I have the basically have, I flagged things and have red, orange, green, depending on things. So things that need to be done today, I flagged them as red, orange is things that need to happen, you know, like next couple of days, and then I have like, green is things that are ready to go, the yellow is things that I'm waiting on somebody else to respond to the email. So that's kind of how I do things.

Derek Clifford: 13:41

That is really cool. I have to say, too, and listening to you speak, I'm glad that I'm on the right track. Because I use the exact same tools, I use my calendar, if it's not my calendar, it's not gonna happen. And I use Asana to help delegate and do things. And I know there's other people that use Monday or clickup, or some other form or notion even. But I love that you're doing that. And then I also have really proud of my email inbox because I segment it so it's very like it start at the top. So those are my tasks, items to do. And then it's unread, in the middle. And then the bottom is everything else. And I have all these filters that come in that I can predetermine. Anyway, it's a whole nother topic. Anyway, I love this because this is totally appealing to my engineering brain. And so that's why I want to get to the bottom of this a little bit. So let's talk a little bit more about you. Now we know the tools that you use, and we know what task management is, how did you develop the skill? Like how did you get to know to even do all of this stuff wasn't necessity or?

Eric Martel: 14:38

So yeah, pretty much by necessity because when I was working so when I started working in high tech, I ended up becoming pretty soon my leadership skills were kind of like recognized and then that's when I started being more like technical lead or something like that. And I'm not even an engineer, but I was technical lead on some technologies and stuff like that and then after that I basically moved into project management very quickly. Yeah, so I certified as a PMP. I also went to Stanford University for an advanced project management kind of certificate there as well. They don't even offer the program anymore, I don't think. But, you know, that's kind of when I, when I learned my skills, because I had to manage projects, I had to manage other people, and all kinds of different deliverables, different things. And so that was a great way for me to try different methods and say, Okay, well, I'm gonna do this, I'm going to do that. And then oh, that didn't work. That kind of like redo the project plan and all that. Then I also got into Agile methodology, which is kind of what Asana kind of does now. And what much more agile from that perspective. So I did a lot of project in agile as well, to help basically coordinate all the efforts and then kind of like delegate tasks and keep track, I think that the biggest thing is keeping track of what's going on, it's one thing to delegate but then if you don't follow up, and he's like, You delegated me 10 things to me, and you never checked on on it. So,

Derek Clifford: 16:05

You know, it's a very underrated skill to have that. And I know that from working in the Project Management realm to feels like you are babysitting and cat herding in the Project Management realm. And honestly, even though those are not the very unclarified ways of saying it, these are what keeps businesses afloat is check ins, right? Accountability and making sure that people are doing what they're doing. So I love what you're saying here.

Eric Martel: 16:27

Yeah, to me, I never saw it as necessarily babysitting, maybe there was a couple of people that, you know, that were like I always work with, I always consider that was working with professionals. And it was more about the coordination effort. Because you're doing a piece of this a module, let's say to talk about high tech, you're doing a module, somebody else is doing another module, but there are dependencies between the two. And we're all looking at the same project plan or the same things and said, Well, you know, here's a dependency, I need this before I can complete this. So when is that going to be done? And then this, there's also dependencies on this one, so and everybody can see this. And for me, a lot of that was also about educating the developers, the testers and the users kind of like, what the project plan was about, and what it was showing us. And, you know, because people look at that, and they think it's very, very complicated, but it doesn't have to be like you can is really, this is what it's doing the calculation for you. And letting you know that, you know, based on this information, you just give me this is going to be late. And then we can look at.

Derek Clifford: 17:30

Let me ask you just a quick side question to this before I ask. The next one is, obviously you're working with a lot of teams, how did you get your team's buy off in all of this task management and project management type of stuff that's, that's just as important as setting up the systems?

Eric Martel: 17:46

Yeah, I mean, for me, like the all these estimates and stuff like that, all these deliverables, I say, well, we need to do these deliverable. I got them from them. They told me, I said, well, well, I need to have a design document. Okay. So your response, this guy's is responsible for design document, and you know, what kind of deliverables you need, blah, blah, blah, what does that look like? And how long does it does it take to do that deliverable? And all of that, and then you said, Well, if it gives me that, by this time, and I understand the scope a little bit, based on the assumption, I'll be done development by this date. And you have choice, it gives you choices as well. So you can say, at one point, when say, Well, I just received a design document. And it's completely different than what I wanted than what I expected. I told you 10 days or 100 days to finish this, but now it's just not the same that doesn't. So things have changed. So how do you handle that change? While you can kind of like take things back, scope it down to what you were expecting, you can increase the timeline, you can add more resources, you can split things. So it's about handling managing these changes, so that you you really focus on the timeline, what is what is truly important in terms of the end deliverable, the end goal for the love business users or the business? Yeah.

Derek Clifford: 19:04

Yeah, I love it. Because this is so like, a lot of people may think that we're just talking about software right now. But this is so applicable to real estate investing, because even with a project, right, like, let's say you you have to buy a project, there's a due diligence process that can be project managed, right, like you have to submit the LOI first that's a gate, right? Once the LOI is submitted, then you have your due diligence, and then you have your closing, right. And so you have all these different sequences and flows and workflows, and things have to get done before something else gets done. And so it's very applicable to real estate investments, want people to understand that this is a very valuable talent that you have been able to leverage to your success. So let's go ahead and talk about that real quick. How would you say that this task management approach or this task management orientation has helped amplify your investing success or even enabled it in the beginning?

Eric Martel: 19:55

Well, I think it's really it's amplified because we're able to start publish like a process, we know that like we do, we have like 200 houses right now at different stages of development. And then each one of them has, depending on the web stage, there are different tasks that need to be done, and different tasks that are assigned to different people. So what's great about it is that we know already, so we already know what the process is, for each of the house, it's always the same thing pretty much. And then we basically develop our system to basically keep track of that and set the task. Every once in a while there's changes and these changes, also, we do the task as well. So if we have a change in, for example, in closing date, when we sell the property, or you know, the renovations get pushed, then it kind of like affect other things down down the line. So without that, I think it would be absolute chaos.

Derek Clifford: 20:52

You have all these independent activities need to happen and ones need to happen before the others do. And you're trying to do this multiple times. And I think the key thing is the repeatability, which to me, sounds a lot like scalability, especially if you can delegate.

Unknown: 21:09

Exactly. And this is what happened. I mean, we have an acquisition team, they have their tasks and stuff like that. And then there's a handle over when it when it goes from, you know, offer submitted into under contract and then into under construction. So that's when we we get it, and we have the house. And now we can start renovation. So that triggers a whole bunch of other things. And then we have a project coordinator that basically tracks tracks this down all the changes all the the rehab, and all of that any kind of change order that occurs. And then keep in touch with the salespeople. And the salespeople while they're trying to sell the house. And they have to monitor the the rehab how well it's doing. And then but they also have to make sure that they connected the lender to the so that's done automatically through email, the CRM sends all these intro emails and all of that, but you still have to monitor so the salespeople right now is monitoring the buyers and the end is the lender. And then also for the appraisal, it's after the renovation, okay, the renovation is complete, or is about to be completed, or this is the estimated completion date. And we the lender is ready to send the appraiser, okay, well, let's start scheduling that we've identified the appraiser blah, blah, blah. And all of that is in there. And we have a dashboard, actually, that look at every day to track all of that. And, and everybody's speaking the same language, different stages and different tasks, we know exactly what's supposed to happen.

Derek Clifford: 22:35

Exactly. Because there's clarity in the process, you know, when one person makes a change, it's going to affect the downstream. And I think that that's so cool to be able to build that process out. And that feeds back to, you know, my original point a couple questions ago about how to get your team to buy off on it, right? When you have a process that's clear like this, and they understand like, why they're not getting the inputs, they need to do their job, it's because of some upstream process, right? And then they understand that if they are delayed, it's gonna affect the downstream thing, because you have the clarity, and you have the whole process already lined out. So I love that that's really great.

Eric Martel: 23:07

And they're part of this thing is that the my team is part of the process, you know, so I serve my team. Because sometimes the sales team is coming to me and said, you know, it'd be nice if when this happened, you would actually send an email automatically. Okay, so now I'm a software developer, I go and CRM and I do something like that. I love that I actually yesterday there was we do this cash flow spreadsheet as well. So on the acquisition team, so when they do they do some cash flow spreadsheet, and I automated the creation of this cash flow spreadsheet yesterday, and then the, because I had some free time. And then, as we all do,

Derek Clifford: 23:44

Yeah. All right, just a little bit.

Eric Martel: 23:47

Yeah, so and so the guys were so happy that the all the new guys push a button, and then just created the spreadsheet, and then they can they can share. Yeah, potential buyers and stuff.

Derek Clifford: 23:59

Absolutely. And you know, it's it's going to be, it's really tough for people to not see the value in doing something like this, if everything is spelled out, and the ability for them to not have to worry about administrative stuff, they can just focus on what they do exactly, well, and then the process takes care of everything else. That's what I absolutely love about this. And I'm hoping that our listeners are taking away that process is our power, you have product process and people and your product is real estate, we already know that works. The people are good, because you've already got that their processes where people struggle a lot. And so if you have those three things in progress, like I think it's Marcus Lemonis from he was on TV, but those three things that he talked about that businesses work really well and I think like you've got all three of those things down pat, which is why you're seeing all this success.

Eric Martel: 24:46

Yeah, I mean, this is this is typical, you know, business when we're done with business and corporate is about people process. You know, there's these are the two big ones right? And the third one but two big ones. I think it's kind of like getting these these things lined up. The other thing too, that people don't necessarily realize is that as an entrepreneur, you're wearing multiple hats. And eventually, you want to take some of these hats off and give them to somebody else, right? And how do you do that you need to define the process and you need, you need to document it. For me, like I did bookkeeping. So I used to do a lot of the bookkeeping and all that for the transaction, but that became too much. I wanted to offload that to somebody else. So I created an SOP, a standard operating procedure document that outlines all the how to record all the transactions correctly. So that when I look at the report, it makes sense to me, it was pretty big document now, but now I pass it on to my bookkeeper, and he's the one that's managing that now. And whenever we do some changes, then he can manage those changes. And we're doing that for other things as well. So if you want to delegate your tasks to somebody else, prepare a document, it doesn't have to be like a Word document, you can also do videos on that as well. Here's how to do this transaction, or this type of thing, this task, this activity or this task, and then you record it with a screen share whenever and then say, this is how I do it. Every time you have this, this is how you do it. And then you delegate that to somebody else.

Derek Clifford: 26:20

Yeah, I love that. And that's actually something that I've used so many times, and here's the extra step you can do is you can have that person, take your video, and then document it is like take your video, whoever it is in to say, Hey, break this down into steps in Asana, and SOP so that you and someone else can follow in the footsteps, the exact 1234 steps in order to do achieve the result that you need. Awesome, great stuff.

Eric Martel: 26:43

Same thing with the Sale, and it's not just for me like it's also for my sales team. So right here, we're getting a project coordinator that I mentioned earlier. So you know, there's some of these tasks that are going to be offloaded from them, some of these tasks are going to be offloaded from other people on the team into that role. So that's going to create the SOP, if you will, for that particular job.

Derek Clifford: 27:05

I think that's that's it's brilliant, you know, and a lot of people need to understand this, I know that it's in the nitty gritty, and it's something that people don't like to work in. But these details are so important, because it's the scalability of your business. That's why it's so important. I have two more questions left for you, before we go into the Rapid Round. The first question is, how do you approach goal setting now with the execution of these goals in mind? So when you when you look to set a goal, I'm sure you're bringing in tasks and how you're going to break it up into pieces? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Eric Martel: 27:39

So for me, when I'm looking at goals, I'm looking at things that are a little bit more about scale, I'm really focusing on scale right now. So and I'm looking at it and I'm saying like, how do we scale this business? And I'm looking at it as and I'm also thinking about, like, why we were successful bla bla, and how do we go to the next level, and you see a lot of problems. That's what you see, you see a lot problem and say, We need to make this better. Some of it is about these, like pest management and stuff, how do we make this better? How do we improve that? How do we automate and all that, but they're also bigger problems that we're trying to solve. So there's like in terms of scalability, there's one thing how do we scale this business? So we're expanding to other markets and all that kind of stuff? But also, how do we help customers or clients or investors grow their passive income portfolio, our big thing is to help people achieve financial freedom. That's what we were here for. That's what I'm you know, that's what I'm good at podcast is really to help people achieve financial freedom. And I know I talk to a lot of people, a lot of investors, it's about, you know, I have $10,000, I don't have the$30,000 to buy one of your rental properties. I say, Okay, well, well, you need to get like, you need to save more you need to cut your spending, too, to get rid of Netflix, and yeah, maybe you need to get a side gig, maybe you need to do you know, get more money, and then get that done and then get the ball rolling at least. So we're looking at these big problems and say, Well, how do we do that? Like, how do we solve that. And so that's why we started this, we're starting this tokenized Real Estate Fund, which is basically a real estate fund that's going to be investing in single family rentals is gonna have a single family rental portfolio already in there. And then the tokenized part of it is that is going to be you're going to buy a token for as little as $50 You're going to have a digital token that's going to represent a share of the business and then that's going to be in your digital wallet. You'll be able to trade these coins on the open market the coins appreciate and you will also receive cash also through that same digital wallet, you're going to get like US dollars into your digital wallet for cash flow. So anything any kind of distribution, any kind of cash flow that's occurring end up The portfolio you'll receive in your digital wallet. So that means that cool if with as little as$50, you'd be able to have a share of that half cash flow and all of that. Yeah, that's gonna solve the problem for a lot of people.

Derek Clifford: 30:12

I gotta be honest with you. I'm fascinated by this tokenize real estate. And I think after the show, I want to hang around to talk with you a little bit more about that because there's room for this in syndications as well. And that's the realm that I operate in. I've seen operators use it already. And I'm just fascinated by getting set up. I think it's a huge opportunity, especially once it takes off.

Eric Martel: 30:31

It's kind of like it's syndication. To me, it's syndication but on steroids. Because what are some of the problems with syndication? I mean, you first of all, is that normally you have to put Yeah, exactly. Yeah, liquidity problem. So that means that I put my money in, and it's stuck in there for three to five years, I sometimes I get a little trickle of cash flow. But that basically stuck in there. But this with these tokens, you can transfer them, you can exchange them in these open exchanges, like ATS and all of that, and we're going to train you, obviously, we have a big education thing that needs to happen here, we need to educate a lot of people on that. But the liquidity problem is solved. If you know you need to get it back. After six months, you can get your money back. The other problem too is the entry point in the entrepreneur. And syndication is often you have to be accredited most of the time. And sometimes the entry point is like $50,000, $100,000. Well, that doesn't solve the problem that I was trying to solve. I'm trying to solve it for people that don't have enough money. They have like $5,000, they can buy a rental property. So there's, there's no way you're going to be able to go into a syndication and they're probably not accredited. Yeah. That's the other thing. Right? So I really like that.

Derek Clifford: 31:52

Yeah, I love it. And definitely want to learn more about this for sure. So we'll be talking about that. Definitely either on the show, or maybe on another show or outside of the show. So definitely excited about that.

Eric Martel: 32:03

Anytime, yeah. As things progress, I mean, I can just come back and give you an update and show you how that works. I think there's a big education piece that needs to happen, because of course, people don't have a digital wallet.

Derek Clifford: 32:14

Of course, of course. Last question I have, before we head on to the Rapid Round part of the show is what advice do you have for investors out there to increase their own organizational skills if they don't have your background?

Eric Martel: 32:28

Organization skills. So I think one of the best thing to recognize or forget what the book was, but it was about entrepreneurship. So when you're honest, you have to first of all, your mentality needs to shift. So there's a mindset shift that when you're working full time, it's one thing, but when you're an entrepreneur, it's a different mentality, you're in the driver's seat. So you want to make sure that you think about it, you make things happen, that's what the entrepreneur is. And for me, like my mindset shift happened, even when I was a full time employee, I never thought of myself as a full time employee, my full time job was a side view, my main job was being an entrepreneur doing business. And unfortunately, I had a side gig that was taking 40 hours of my time, but sometimes even more, and you know, but it was paying the bill. So I always saw my full time job as a side gig so that my mindset was clear on that. So that's the first thing. And as you are an entrepreneur, and you're working on your business, you need to categorize Oh, it's called the book that I'm referring to. It's called the E Myth.

Derek Clifford: 33:31

Yes, I was thinking that in my head, you want to say.

Eric Martel: 33:35

And in this book, I mean, they basically say, Well, every time you work in your business, you realize that there are different hats that you're wearing. They're different departments optimized selling something I'm going and doing invoicing, and doing accounting, I'm doing hiring, and you kind of like spread it out. At the beginning, it's all one. But then again, you kind of like define kind of what that the processes, the tasks associated with that. And the ones that are the most repetitive, you kind of put them in a box, and you give that box to somebody. We have a lot of people out there, if you look at up works, or any of these platforms, where you can delegate these tasks to virtual assistant, the better defined these boxes are these tasks are, the easier it is to transfer them to these virtual assistants, it is very cheap to have them do the work for you.

Derek Clifford: 34:26

Yeah, especially if you're working a full time job and you're on the coasts, right? And you're looking to invest in the Midwest. Oftentimes, like you know, you can you can find a virtual professional that will be gladly working for you, at least in quarter one of 2022 for somewhere around seven, five to$7 an hour. And then the more talented ones go up to like eight or $9 an hour. And so we've been able to leverage that really, really well. We're looking we're looking to expand our team out there because of the amazing work that they're doing so completely agree with you there. All right. Well, thank you, Eric, for all this great information. This has been fun. pastic. But we're going to head into the final segment of our show, which is called the Rapid Round. And it's five questions that we ask every one of our guests, and they're meant to be answered in about 30 seconds or less if possible. Okay. All right. So question number one, what book has had the biggest impact on you and why? And we ask that it not be rich dad or the Bible, because we get those all the time.

Eric Martel: 35:22

Oh, yeah, no, it's Yeah, so for me, it would be What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

Derek Clifford: 35:27

Oh, awesome. Book.

Eric Martel: 35:28

Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was interesting book because it's about that mindset shift of kind of your full time employee. And then just like, sometimes you think, oh, yeah, just a continuation, but it's not. It's not really.

Derek Clifford: 35:41

Yeah. Great, great. Book. Number two, if people wanted to emulate your success, what is the first actionable thing that they could do to follow in your footsteps?

Eric Martel: 35:50

I would say again, I would say mindset, I think, and then start really categorizing and then counting the boxing these processes and stuff like that, then getting some virtual assistant, I think that's the first thing.

Derek Clifford: 36:03

Fantastic. Love it. Number three, what is one tool process or hack in the last three months that has helped you save time or effort?

Eric Martel: 36:14

Well, I use that all the time. It's not just in the last three months, but it's really Yeah, the customer relationship management software. For me, it's it's critical. So that would be the number one tool that I would use.

Derek Clifford: 36:25

Got it. Anything in your personal life that maybe you found like for me once I found Instacart I was like, my whole world. Oh, you know?

Eric Martel: 36:35

Well, I do again, it's it's not Instacart. But Asana, I mean, I use that all the time. I mean, my calendar is this is everything that Asana is pretty good. I put more and more stuff in that even for myself as reminder. Yeah. These are big ones from.

Derek Clifford: 36:49

Got it, all right. Number four, if the people that you know had to describe you with one word, what do you think that word would be?

Eric Martel: 36:59

That's a tough one.

Derek Clifford: 37:02

And let's not curse on this.

Eric Martel: 37:03

No, I know. I just I eliminated that one. doesn't want that. I don't know. I think like I would say like a leader, I would say, Yeah, I think that's what I would say.

Derek Clifford: 37:17

Maybe builder or provider right? Based on what you're telling me because all the being a servant. I wouldn't say being, you know, a slave, but really just being a servant. Like, yeah, what's the right word?

Eric Martel: 37:30

Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of people also the talk about like, CEOs and stuff like that talk about themselves as the servant leader. Where they basically, yeah, they're the leader, but they're also serving the people that are working for the company working for them.

Derek Clifford: 37:46

Love it, man. I think that's a very accurate word as well. So all right, last question is What small thing do most people not know about you?

Eric Martel: 37:55

Oh, maybe barefoot running? Is that something?

Derek Clifford: 38:00

That's cool.

Eric Martel: 38:02

So I like barefoot running. So that's what I do if I can, as long as the ground is not crazy, like California, but I was close to the beach here. So not anymore. But I was last year. So I was working, running on the beach every day and go swim in the ocean every day. I missed that. I'm just moved a little bit too far from downtown LA.

Derek Clifford: 38:25

That makes sense. But it's still accessible. You could you could get there if you needed to. But yeah, yeah. Well, Eric, thank you so much for coming on the show. We've had an awesome time talking about a lot of important stuff that I hope all these entrepreneurs and side hustlers out there can take away for their business and hope they understand how important it is to build processes and build this automation and think about scalability in terms of task management. So but before we go, I'd like you to tell the audience a little bit more about how they can find out anything that's going on in your world and some of the things that you're going on, that you're working on outside of the investment fund in crypto.

Eric Martel: 39:00

Okay, so that's very good. Yeah. So on one side is the Digital Real Estate Fund. So this is keep keep an eye on that. You can go to MartelInvest.com for that. The turnkey rentals the if you want to buy turnkey rentals, MartelTurnkey, everything social is actually on MartelEric.com. So you can have all my things there. TikTok, EricMartellofficial on Tiktok and Instagram. So, TickTock is an amazing platform. I love it. Everybody should be doing that. That's about it. I think this was very good show. Thank you very much for exploring that. And yeah, we'd appreciate it.

Derek Clifford: 39:38

Teah, absolutely. And Eric, it's been a pleasure having you on thank you for being on this has been it's been great. And for all those listeners out there who have listened all the way to the end. Thank you guys so much for doing that. And if you could please leave a rating or like or review wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast, because by doing that, we'll get into good favor of the algorithm Gods and will continue to get more exposure to more individuals, which will lead to awesome guests to keep continuing to come on the show like Eric. So, Eric, thanks again so much for coming on.

Eric Martel: 40:11

Thank you for having me on.

Derek Clifford: 40:12

Right yeah. And, and thank you listeners for listening and we will see you next time. Take care of everyone. This is Derek signing off.