Eric Neely is a truck driver and Acquisition Manager & Customer Relations of Febros Captial, Eric who has been in the real estate industry for over 20 years. He started to learn more about investing and networking with other professionals in the finance world and created his own podcast, The Wealthy Trucker, in 2017. Recently, he partnered up with another real estate professional and invested in a smaller apartment complex. Eric Neely handles broker relations and even speaks directly with asset sellers. He also maintains relations with bankers and our investors. As a highly educated and experienced entrepreneur, Eric brings specific skills to the table, and always asks the right questions when evaluating a possible asset.
Highlights:
[00:00] – [05:48] How to Succeed as an Investment Professional
- Eric Neely is a real estate professional who focuses on developing private placements in apartment complexes.
- He is also the host of the Wealthy Trucker podcast and has invested in larger apartment complexes.
- He recommends networking to build trust before attempting any deals.
[05:48] – [11:39] Full-Time Truck Driver Becomes Property Manager.
- Eric shares his experience in scaling a real estate business, including their first deal and subsequent deals.
- He recommends avoiding relying on myths about real estate and instead of learning as much as possible from personal experience.
- he added the importance of regular communication with property management companies, as well as taking care of finances and distributions.
[11:40] – [17:45] Closing Segment
- For Eric it learning the importance of screening tenants and learning the importance of being personable and talking to people while taking care of them should be priority as its not only making money for yourself but also impacting lives.
- Final words
- Reach out to Eric
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- See links below
Tweetable Quotes
“Cause we don’t allow, people to just come sit on the property, so we’re impacting more than just the people who live there we’re impacted the community. And then beyond that you’re impacting people who are looking for passive investment opportunities.”
– Eric Neely
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Connect with Nick Neely visit their website at FebrosCapital.com
Or listen to his podcast: The Wealthy Trucker Podcast with Eric Neely
Connect with me:
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Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Eric Neely: the fact that we self manage that it really ironed into my head, how. , you may be creating an investment vehicle for somebody. You may be trying to make money yourself, but you’re also impacting people’s lives that live in your Eric Neely is a real estate professional focused on developing private placements in apartment complexes. So the everyday professional has an opportunity to invest in high yield cashflowing real estate. And he’s also host of the wealthy trucker podcast. And if I’m not mistaken, Eric, you’re calling me from the road today on interstate.
[00:00:43] Sam Wilson: I think it’s i70 there in Kansas. Welcome. Welcome to the.
[00:00:48] Eric Neely: Thank you, Sam. It’s a pleasure to be here and yet that’s correct. I’m sitting on the side of the highway right now in my office behind the windshield.
[00:00:56] Sam Wilson: Yeah, I have to say this. I give you props for having fairly good audio for a guy sitting in a semi-truck.
[00:01:01] Sam Wilson: That’s pretty good. I’ve had people sitting in their own home offices with poor audio, so that that sounds good. I appreciate it.
[00:01:08] Eric Neely: Nope, no problem. Well, I, I have a lot of experience of listening to podcasts. And also like you said, I run my own podcasts. So audio is something that I had a little bit of time to research because I knew it was pretty important.
[00:01:21] Eric Neely: So the headset I bought was specifically so that I could do what we’re doing right now. Oh man. That’s
[00:01:26] Sam Wilson: fantastic. I love it. There’s three questions. I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me, where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get.
[00:01:35] Eric Neely: Sure. Well, I started, honestly it probably, driving a truck, I’ve been a trucker for 20 years almost.
[00:01:41] Eric Neely: And, really didn’t take investing seriously at all. Honestly I had a 401k and I always put money. But I just ignored it pretended like it wasn’t even there that way. It wouldn’t never be tempted. So I didn’t even know how well it performed. So that’s where I was. And as I was driving trucks, I spending all this time out on the highway.
[00:02:04] Eric Neely: I started, thinking about how am I going to get out of trucking. Eventually I can’t do this forever. It’s beaten up my body. And I don’t know. What I need to do to prepare for retirement. So, ended up starting to educate myself through podcasts and ran across the infamous BiggerPockets podcast and thought, well, maybe I can start flipping houses, something like that.
[00:02:27] Eric Neely: And just ultimately the more I learned about it, the more I realized, man, I’m already working 60, 70 hours a week out here on the road. There’s no way I can flip houses and do it consistently. And I also have a close friend of mine who’s in the finance world. So I started talking to him about this multi-family syndication thing that I’d heard about and said, what do you think about that?
[00:02:49] Eric Neely: And he he said, man, I’ve got clients that, that I do their taxes, and this is exactly what, I already understand this. I’m like, well, what do you think about us? Getting into partnership and doing something like this. And he goes, let’s do it. Let’s make it happen. So. I said, well, I’m going to spend the next couple of years learning how to do it while I’m out here on the road.
[00:03:05] Eric Neely: Use the highway education tool. So podcasts, audio books, and started networking. We created our own meetup a few years ago that I host in our local community in Wichita, Kansas. And and then I started the podcast the wealthy trucker and. The sky’s the limit and wherever the Lord will take us is where we’ll go.
[00:03:27] Eric Neely: And so now, today I own my I joint ventured into a apartment complex a couple of years ago. I J I’ve invested passively into larger apartment complexes and we are in the process of closing a larger syndication. So. If you take the education you get and apply it, you can go anywhere.
[00:03:51] Eric Neely: And I still worked full time driving a truck. So it’s still sitting in a truck right now,
[00:03:55] Sam Wilson: man. That’s a lot of moving pieces and you’ve done what I think a lot of people. Are unwilling to put themselves out there and do right. I mean, you started a podcast, you started a meetup.
[00:04:06] Sam Wilson: You those are obviously thought leadership platforms but also just kind of built a brand and a following around what it is that you’re doing. I think that’s really cool because then that takes a little bit of courage. Did you do that at the same time that you already had deals going?
[00:04:19] Sam Wilson: Or was that something you had first? What would you recommend to somebody in your shoes?
[00:04:23] Eric Neely: You’ve got us. You’ve got to tell people what you’re doing and it’s challenging to do it when you haven’t done a deal yet. And that’s where, I mean, I guess if I look back on what I did and how I could maybe do it different, the one thing I regret is not starting the podcast, as soon as I did.
[00:04:39] Eric Neely: I mean, I get more reach with the podcasts. I talked to more people because of it. and again, Your name out there so that people know what you’re doing. And that’s ultimately what it boils down to. People have to know what you’re doing. This is very much a people business. If people don’t know what you’re doing, they’re not going to invest with youth.
[00:04:54] Eric Neely: They don’t know who you are. They don’t know. They don’t know. I can trust you. That’s the common thing you hear. So they don’t know, like, and trust you. Why would they invest with you? I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say, well, if you have a deal, the money will come. I think. Not really true, because if people don’t know who you are, if they don’t trust you, why would they invest with you?
[00:05:13] Eric Neely: I don’t care how good your deal is. So that’s kind of how it is, but that’s how my mindset works. Anyway, if I could do it different, I would have started the podcast sooner. We did do the meetup pretty early, but, and Wichita, Kansas. Anyway, it’s a smaller community, don’t know how many people we have there around less than a million.
[00:05:32] Eric Neely: And so. the reach, there was not as great as it might be in a bigger metropolitan area. So my meetup ranges anywhere from 10 to 20 people on average per month, it’s a small amount of people. It still gets me there, but The more people you can reach, the more people that you’re talking to, the better off you’re going to
[00:05:48] Sam Wilson: be.
[00:05:48] Sam Wilson: Right. Tell me about your deals. You said, can you rewind that a little bit for me? I know you said what you guys have bought so far. Can you give us the S the summary on what you guys own currently?
[00:05:59] Eric Neely: Sure. We bought our first one, like I said, it was a JV deal. It was really between me and my business partner.
[00:06:05] Eric Neely: I was telling you about that. Does the finance, and then one of them. Primary capital partner. He put more, most of the money into the deal between the three of us. We bought that we self-manage it. And really that’s because that third partner that I’m talking about, he is retired and he wanted something to do.
[00:06:25] Eric Neely: And he’s been in business most of his life. So anyway, long story short, it’s been, it was an amazing learning. Curve buying that property and self-managing it because you really learn what you’re going to ultimately end up hiring a third party to do. Right. And that in itself was worth quite a bit.
[00:06:45] Eric Neely: So, learning the importance of screening tenants and learning the importance of being personable and talking to people and taking care of them. I mean, the fact that we self manage that it really ironed into my head, how. , you may be creating an investment vehicle for somebody. You may be trying to make money yourself, but you’re also impacting people’s lives that live in your property.
[00:07:10] Eric Neely: And if you don’t think about that, I think you’re not really seeing the full picture. And if you’re just being ingredient and wanting to make money, then I mean, you can do it, but that’s not what this is all about in my mind. So. Self-managing it really drove that home for me that, Hey, this is somebody’s home.
[00:07:27] Eric Neely: They’re living in my property. I need to treat it like that and take care of them correctly. And so if I’m going to hire a third party, now I’ve got a whole new set of criteria and standards that I’m going to hold this third party, property management company to, and if they’re not taking care of the people out the way I wanted to take care of the people, then that I have no business dealing with them any longer.
[00:07:49] Eric Neely: So it’s very valuable.
[00:07:51] Sam Wilson: Absolutely valuable. And that’s a that’s an education, I think like you said, that everybody probably needs even if you learn it on a smaller property, just to get your head wrapped around what you’re going to expect from your property management company on a larger on a larger scale.
[00:08:07] Sam Wilson: Tell me about the biggest deal you guys have done in the syndication space. And tell me the, kind of the things that you learned in raising capital for that and bringing investors on board, and I’m gonna keep throwing questions at you all at once. And then maybe tell me about the conversation you have with investors as it pertains.
[00:08:24] Sam Wilson: I’m sure you get asked. Hey, wait, you’re still a full-time truck driver. How are you going to take care of this asset?
[00:08:29] Eric Neely: Right. It’s it was a 66 unit in our local market. Wichita. The reason I stuck to which doll was because I needed something in my backyard that I could still have eyes on regularly because I work full time.
[00:08:42] Eric Neely: So that’s been one of the discussions with people that, well, listen, I’m going to be there on a very regular basis. , My communication with my property management company is very regular, and ultimately they’re the ones managing the asset anyway. So, and then when it comes down to doing distributions and taking care of the finances, well, my business partner has his own accounting company, so that all gets handled through there.
[00:09:07] Eric Neely: So. Anyway, that’s been some of the conversation on that as far as how I’m going to take care of it as a full-time driver. And then beyond that, like it was a 66 unit complex. It was about a $2 million raise and, I did the capital raising through. The platforms of talking to people on the wealthy jerker podcast or going on other people’s podcasts.
[00:09:30] Eric Neely: Once again, back to just talking about it all the time and then met quite a few people through the meetup that we do in town. I’d go talk at the other real estate meetup in town, even though it’s mostly single family people there, there’s still people looking for passive investment opportunities and they’ve got the mindset of investors.
[00:09:47] Eric Neely: So, I’d go talk at their meet ups. And really just getting out and talking, talking, talking that’s that’s. That was the, that was the key element of raising capital. And then, oh, I don’t know. I mean, there’s a lot of different things. You do. I built a website, which I did myself. I sometimes I think I should have just hired somebody.
[00:10:07] Eric Neely: It would have gone faster and looked better, but ultimately I did build it myself and in managing a CRM, That’s something that I went through a few different iterations before accounting started figuring out, all right, this is the way I need to do it. And just trial by error.
[00:10:24] Sam Wilson: I like it though. I mean, that’s what it takes.
[00:10:26] Sam Wilson: I think that’s what a lot of people, especially as they’re coming in new to this space, they want to hit the home, run out of the gate. They want it to be, they want it to be fast. They want it to be now. And it’s, and this is a slow. A slow growth process. And I think that oftentimes gets overlooked and underappreciated because, we’re, we live in a society that once, once it done, we want it done.
[00:10:47] Sam Wilson: Now we want it done. And this is a, this is not an overnight success business. So I think I think you’ve set the bar appropriately for what it takes. Building a meetup, building a podcast, building a website, talking about your deals to everybody, you know, it’s a moving train, but once it gets started, it’s hard to slow down.
[00:11:04] Sam Wilson: Tell me, was there bad advice that you have received along the way in the scaling process where you’re like, yeah, that was, that just didn’t work out the way that I was told.
[00:11:13] Eric Neely: I think I kind of mentioned it earlier, but I think the idea that if you have a deal, the money will come. I think that’s bad advice. I don’t think people should lean on that.
[00:11:23] Eric Neely: I just think that’s going to inevitably happen. The reason that it kind of does happen is because if you’re actively pursuing a deal and trying to make things happen, you should be out talking to people and networking and to make it happen. And the more you talk about it, the more that people will want to invest with you.
[00:11:43] Eric Neely: And inevitably you’ll start finding the money. but to say that it’s just going to come almost as if you don’t have to put any effort into it. That’s bad advice.
[00:11:53] Sam Wilson: Was there good advice that someone gave you along the way that was a pivotal? Hey, this is something you should think about or was there a mentor that gave you something that said, Hey man, this is, here’s a good piece of advice that comes to top of mine.
[00:12:05] Eric Neely: It’s all about your mindset. I mean, the knowledge required to run a syndication or buy a property is. It’s not a heck of a lot more than what you need to just buy a single family house. I mean, there is more, I’m not going to lie, but it’s not overly accessible that. Anybody couldn’t just go out and get the education.
[00:12:25] Eric Neely: Like I said, I got most of my education listening to podcasts and reading audio books. I didn’t get it all there. We did end up hiring a mentor that helped us really refine the underwriting process, which is pretty important. If you’re going to be able to give somebody a perspective on what kind of return you’re going to give them.
[00:12:42] Eric Neely: But that, that was really the only thing I paid for this as far as knowledge is concerned. So. Really? The best advice is, just, you got to get your mind in the right place. If you look at a hundred thousand dollar house and think, oh, I can easily afford that, but Julie get a million dollar apartment complex.
[00:12:59] Eric Neely: It’s like, there was no way I could do that. Well, honestly, man, it’s only one more time. And there’s no reason you can’t do a $10 million property as your first one, as long as that, what you set your mind on and you’re focused on it and you don’t tell yourself you can’t do it. So yeah, our first indication was a $2 million raise.
[00:13:19] Sam Wilson: Yeah. That’s a strong raise out of the gate.
[00:13:22] Sam Wilson: Absolutely strong raise that’s fantastic. Tell me if you were to fast forward five years from now, what do you want your business in life to look like?
[00:13:30] Eric Neely: I want to be able to hit the road when I want to, as opposed to when the company tells me I have to. So that would be an ideal situation.
[00:13:38] Eric Neely: I love driving. I really do. I can see the mountains every other day, cause I’m on my way to Denver right now. And. It, I would like to be in a situation where I can go hop in a truck and do it just because I want to do it. I enjoy real estate. I really do. I love touring properties, figuring out the problems and how I can make them better.
[00:13:59] Eric Neely: So I would imagine five years from now, I’ll be doing a lot of that and just solving problems. I mean, the beyond that got five kids. So five years from now, I want to be spending as much time as I can with my kids, even though some of them are already be out of the house, that’s fine. I can still spend a lot of time with them.
[00:14:19] Eric Neely: and then just volunteering more at church really is one of my big goals of volunteering the high school ministry now. And I’d like to be able to do more there than what I’m able to do right now.
[00:14:30] Sam Wilson: Got it, man. That’s great. I love that, future thinking and, , did not just thinking in terms of business, but also personally where you want to land with that.
[00:14:39] Sam Wilson: And I guess this is maybe the last question here I’ll have for you before we sign off. But when you think about the word impact, can you define that word for me? And then tell me what type of impact do you want to have on other people?
[00:14:51] Eric Neely: Oh impact. I mean, you’re changing lives when you’re impacting somebody.
[00:14:56] Eric Neely: I think about that 24 unit property we bought, we impacted the lives of 24 people when we bought it, because it was a beat down, run down class C almost class D property. And now, even though it’s still in a class C area, it’s almost a B minus a at this point because of what we’ve done to turn it around and not just from an aesthetic standpoint, but we got rid of a lot of bad people and almost well, really everybody in there now is a great individual, even though they’re lower income, they’re a great individual.
[00:15:35] Eric Neely: So the impact that we had, I mean, I don’t personally see it in the entire community, but I’m sure I know it’s happening. Cause, cause we don’t allow, people to just come sit on the property, so we’re impacting more than just the people who live there we’re impacted the community.
[00:15:53] Eric Neely: And then beyond that you’re impacting people who are looking for passive investment opportunities. You’re giving people the opportunity to finally start making mailbox money in an asset that is so proven that it’s one of the safest investment vehicles in the world, real estate. so the impact is vast right in this business.
[00:16:16] Eric Neely: I love it. I love it. It’s what I enjoy.
[00:16:19] Sam Wilson: Yeah, we can clearly tell that Eric, I certainly appreciate you taking the time to break down today. What it takes to grow a syndication business, even when working full time. For those that say it can’t be done, you can clearly prove that they’re wrong. You’ve done it from the road.
[00:16:32] Sam Wilson: Mostly you’ve done it fairly rapidly and with precision, I think I think that’s it. And you’re clearly what your definition of the word impact you’re impacting the people. And lives around you, both on the investor side and on the tenant side. So kudos to you for making it happen and doing what it takes to get it done.
[00:16:49] Sam Wilson: If our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?
[00:16:53] Eric Neely: Well, you can schedule a call with me if you go to my website, it’s capital.com. And then also if you listen to podcasts or you’re on YouTube, look up the wealthy trucker, and the ability to connect with people on there as well.
[00:17:08] Eric Neely: And
[00:17:08] Sam Wilson: that’s FEBROS capital spelled F E B R O S Capital Febroscapital.com. We’ll make sure we put that also in the show notes, Eric, thank you again for coming on the show. Certainly appreciate it,
[00:17:20] Eric Neely: Sam. It was fun. I appreciate it.
