Today’s Guest is Eric Brewer.
Since 2006, as a real estate investor, Eric has done over 3000 residential real estate deals in Pennsylvania and Maryland. His experience covers purchase, renovation, direct to seller marketing, novations, turnkey rentals, and property management. Join Sam and Eric in today’s show.
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[00:00:00] Intro
[00:00:26] Eric’s journey from the car business to real estate investing
[00:01:01] Eric’s path to becoming a CEO and his leadership philosophy
[00:11:07] The style of management and leadership in the car business
[00:12:57] Transitioning from the car business to real estate investing
[00:14:02] Joining a mastermind and implementing new leadership habits
[00:23:14] The importance of personal and business alignment
[00:23:28] Closing
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Connect with Eric:
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/eric_brewer_invest_/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/eric.brewer.79
Web: http://www.brewermethod.com
Connect with Sam:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/
Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Eric Brewer ([00:00:00]) – Those relationships, whether it was my choice or their choice to leave. When that ended, it exhausted me. I took it personal, which as much as people say business and personal are two separate things. I think that’s a myth. I think if they are, you’re doing one of those wrong. If your business isn’t a little bit personal and your personal doesn’t have a little bit of business in it, those two are out of alignment and need to be fixed. Welcome to the How.
Sam Wilson ([00:00:26]) – To Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we’ll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Since 2006, Eric Brewer, as a real estate investor, has done over 3000 residential real estate deals in both Pennsylvania and Maryland. Eric, welcome to the show.
Eric Brewer ([00:00:50]) – Thanks for having me, Sam. I’m excited to be here.
Sam Wilson ([00:00:52]) – Absolutely. Eric The pleasure is mine. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less.
Sam Wilson ([00:00:57]) – Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?
Eric Brewer ([00:01:01]) – Cool. I started in the car business. I cut my teeth in real estate as a cold call refi lender that was cold, calling people in 2005, just trying to get them to refi their existing mortgage. So got sort of indoctrinated in the world of real estate. Um, I am now, um, a true, I believe for the first time ever CEO in charge my organization where I have three words that define my daily roles and responsibilities, and I literally make no decisions in regards to properties or pricing or personnel. With the exception of our executive team, which is comprised of a CLO department business unit leader for every important part of our business. We operate in three states currently opening up a fourth, um, July 1st and I got here through a combination of uninhibited willingness to fail, probably a delusional perspective of what was possible, um, and an exceptional support system of people that kind of peeled me up off my back each time fell down.
Sam Wilson ([00:02:16]) – And that’s really cool. A lot to dive in. There are a lot that we could we could really dive in on in particular, if you. If you don’t mind, give me a quick summary. I know you just kind of gave us the high level and most of the time I pick I started on that on those three questions and we take it from there. But I feel like there’s more to your story maybe that we should hear. I have no idea. Okay. I don’t actually, I have no idea. But give give us give us give us the give us your story if you can, and then we’ll kind of take it from there.
Eric Brewer ([00:02:49]) – So I I’ll go back as far as I can remember and feel as relevant. Um, right around my sophomore year in high school, I got off the beaten path, and, um. There was a separation between my mother and father, and I was left basically alone for very. For way too long. And at that point is a 14 or 15 year old, you know, teenager.
Eric Brewer ([00:03:17]) – I started doing stuff I shouldn’t have been doing. I stopped studying. I start partying. And then one thing leads to another and I’m barely limping out of high school with a diploma. Attended summer school, failed summer school, started my senior year as a junior, had to do a bunch of makeup classes, work a part time job because my parents wouldn’t pay for me to go to a tutor because they’d already, you know, kind of survive the embarrassment of summer school. So was just kind of a knucklehead. Mean wasn’t like robbing banks or jewelry stores or anything, but like, you know, just wasn’t doing the right things and, you know, took a senior week after when most seniors go to the beach and sort of party a little bit to celebrate their graduation. That lasted about six months for me versus six days for everybody else that had a college to report to or a meaningful job or some type of responsibility. And six months later, all my friends had gone off to college or had real jobs and had zero direction about where was headed in life and reached out to my dad.
Eric Brewer ([00:04:20]) – And he’s like, Hey, no, this isn’t probably what you want to hear, but you should strongly consider the military. My father was a lifelong military retiree in the US Army. His father retired from the Air Force. A lot of my aunts and uncles, we were a military family and I did reluctantly. He was like, Hey, don’t think have any other choices. I’d work like a construction job for a week and a half and realized I’d rather punch myself in the face than ever have to do construction again. And, um, got shipped off to basic training. Probably the best thing that best thing and worst thing that ever happened to. I knew for sure it wasn’t for me. But at that phase in my life that it kind of smacked the ignorance out of me. And it was a big eye opener. Um, so did my time in the US Army was a 68 Lima, which back then was an avionics communications repairman. Um, had zero interest in it. Don’t even remember why I chose it is because it was as far away from battle as possible, and it was probably one of the lower physically demanding jobs in the military and had a good enough test score to qualify.
Eric Brewer ([00:05:30]) – So anyway, came home from that and zero civilian application for, you know, working on helicopters back home where I’m from in central Pennsylvania. So came back home. I ended up applying for a ad in the newspaper at a car dealership for a lot Porter, which is you organize the cars on the lot, you do some deliveries and was like, Oh my gosh, a Mercedes and a Toyota dealership that was already sort of a car, you know, had a lot of interesting cars and an affinity for for for cars. And I show up, showed up for the interview. And the only real clothing had was my military uniforms, like 37 pairs of jeans, shorts and white tank tops and the double breasted pinstripe suit I wore to my senior prom. So the most appropriate one thought to wear was my double breasted suit. So I’m sitting in this waiting area at the car dealership. And have you ever been to like a the waiting room at the service department? Like it’s a high tension environment, right? Like, everybody’s sitting there.
Eric Brewer ([00:06:34]) – They’ve already been there too long. They’re kind of pissed off with the guy because they came in for an oil change and now they got a build at 700 bucks. And I never forget the guy’s name was Mark Smalley, and he was the service manager, comes out into this waiting room and he’s looking around and he like double takes and looks at me and goes, Eric and I stood up at attention, Go, Yes, sir. And he goes, You wore a double breasted suit to a $7 an hour job and said, Yes, sir. And he goes, You’re hired. And my career in the car business started right there at seven bucks an hour. Flash forward eight years. I was the general sales manager had basically held every position in the dealership. And just through sort of determination and a lack of any real other obligations than to try and make money and put food on the table. For myself, I was working anywhere from 65 to 95 hours a week throughout my career there. And after eight years in the automotive business, eventually selling five, 600 cars a month, managing 100 plus employees, I’d gotten burned out.
Eric Brewer ([00:07:38]) – That business has a way of. Taking its toll on your soul and also was about to have or just had my first child and knew that I couldn’t be a good car guy and a good dad at the same time. So chose to go the route of being a good dad. Um, tried to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Didn’t know when got out of the car business once again reached out to my dad and he’s like, Hey, don’t think you’re just good at cars, you’re good at management, you’re good at marketing, you’re good at sales. Where could you leverage that experience and not have to work 95 hours a week and had sold some some cars and done some business with real estate agents, appraisers, you know, lenders. And I’d also really valued, um, at that car dealership would say our expertise was finance. We were able to help people with little money down and bad credit, big down payments, very rate conscious people that owed too much on a trade, too many open auto loans.
Eric Brewer ([00:08:40]) – We were known for being absolute wizards when it came to finance and we could figure out how to get more people in a car than our neighbor. So I’m like, Listen, I want to get into real estate. It’s a good, I think, parallel for for my experience that I’ll have a short learning curve and want to start in finance. So I went to 3 or 4 local lenders, interviewed their weighed the comp plans, training, all that stuff, and started working with a place called Comfort Home Mortgage. And the way I started was cold calling Internet leads that they got for people that wanted to refi Sota crap ton of loans made a boatload of money and about six months into that my mentor from the car business called me and said, Hey, I’m selling the dealership. He was like 39 years old, nowhere near being ready to to retire. He had a motor that to this day, I’ve never seen anybody match. He was just always the first guy there, the last to leave. He was just an absolute assassin.
Eric Brewer ([00:09:42]) – And he invited me to be partners with him and open a real estate investing company. And one phone call and one lunch later. Um, see, our property group was born in 2006 and flash forward today. Now it’s been rebranded as Integrity First Property Group. Him and I are still very much friends. I bought him out about four years ago and now we have 40 employees and operate in three states.
Sam Wilson ([00:10:08]) – Wow, that’s crazy, man. You never know when one or what one thing will lead to the next. I mean, that’s that’s that’s an awesome, awesome story how you just you got into it. Um. You know, there’s probably a lot of our listeners that can relate to that. I know. I certainly can. That kind of wandering in the beginning where you’re like, Oh man, like I have no idea what to do next. And then it’s not like you figured it out just by, you know, through through trial and error. And I think you said that there in the beginning, one of the things you said was an uninhibited, I think, willingness to fail.
Sam Wilson ([00:10:42]) – Yeah. So that’s really, really cool. What were some of the things because you also mentioned how you’re now the CEO of your company. Right. And you said if something doesn’t fit inside of these three words, you mentioned that I never caught what those three words were and then kind of back. Tell the backstory, if you can, of how you came up with those and how you’ve kind of developed this philosophy of leadership.
Eric Brewer ([00:11:07]) – Yeah, it’s, um, so I’ll go back to like, uh, the, there’s, there’s nothing more I think, different than the style of management and leadership that I experienced in the car business in the late 90. So what is widely become accepted as the right way to lead and manage people now? Like it was literally just like you see in the movies. I mean, it was a bunch of, you know, guys and $1,500 suits, chain smoking cigarettes, cussing like sailors. Operating in the grey, like throwing fistfights in the back lot and people like, I got fired once a month.
Eric Brewer ([00:11:53]) – Like it was. It was the absolute wild, wild West. Right. And it’s it’s not what I would describe as servant leadership, Let’s just put it that right. And think what we’ve learned over time is like people just cannot work under those circumstances for an extended period of time. We’ve realized that people now appreciate probably more so than income the opportunity to have balance or attach purpose to the work that they do. And, you know, so for me, for about ten years, leaving the car business, um, I’ve managed very much the way that I was managed, right? So remember, um, you know that about every three years, um, I would have almost 100% turnover in my company. And it was like after the third cycle of that, I’m like, This is exhausting, right? And this will make more sense when we get to what my I believe my sole purpose is here. But those relationships, whether it was my choice or their choice to leave, when that ended, it exhausted me.
Eric Brewer ([00:12:57]) – I took it personal, which as much as people say business and personal or two separate things, I think that’s a myth. I think if they are, you’re doing one of those wrong. If your business isn’t a little bit personal and your personal doesn’t have a little bit of business in it, those two are out of alignment and need to be fixed. And I just you know, we were making a lot of money doing a lot of deals, having awards and accolades to be able to show externally, but internally was starting to feel a little bit like I did at the end of the car. Business was starting to feel burned out, but felt it was more my wrongdoing than it was the nature of the business. And I started seeking answers. I got into a mastermind, completely changed my life, was introduced to an implementer, hired them to come implement into my business about seven years ago, completely changed my perspective on leadership management, delegating tasks. The role of a CEO, um, just turned everything upside down.
Eric Brewer ([00:14:02]) – And over the last 6 to 7 years, I’ve slowly been unpacking my bad habits and replacing them with more productive leadership habits was probably the world’s most toxic manager. And now I think if you were to ask people that know me and spend time with me, I’ve become, um, someone that a lot of people follow in regards to leadership, which is almost embarrassing to me to think about because of how far I think that I’ve come and how much I look back on the way that I used to make decisions. And the way that I used to communicate with people and how polar opposite it is from today. It’s amazing that didn’t just run myself off a bridge seven years ago or have someone run me off the bridge that worked for me because they couldn’t stand being around me. But um, yeah, that’s iOS and a mastermind completely changed my my personal and professional, um, experience.
Sam Wilson ([00:15:02]) – Wow, that’s that’s, that’s awesome. What I mean, when you say and maybe you gave some of this color if your leadership style was forged in the car dealership world, you know, if that was if that was where you took your your operating cues from and that carried over into then what you were doing, I can imagine, you know, you already mentioned kind of what some of those toxic habits maybe were, but how did you get plugged into let’s talk about the mastermind and then the of course, iOS is is traction, right? Yeah.
Sam Wilson ([00:15:35]) – Okay, cool. So those of you who are listening, obviously, Gino Wickman, how do you say his name anyway? You can look up the book Traction.
Eric Brewer ([00:15:43]) – Gino Pacman. Gino, it’s.
Sam Wilson ([00:15:46]) – Wick. Something I can’t remember.
Eric Brewer ([00:15:47]) – Yeah. Wickman You know, Wickman.
Sam Wilson ([00:15:49]) – Wickman Okay. There you go. Look up that book Traction, because that’s what Eric is referring to. Obviously, you’ve heard that book on this show before, but and everybody said the same thing, like, Hey, this book changed my life, changed the way we do business. How did you pick a mastermind? I mean, this is this is a this is a personal question for me, Eric, because, yeah, something I’ve thought a lot, a lot about, and I’m like, Oh, I want to do that. But if you’ve done any cursory searches, there’s about 900,000 of them across the United States.
Eric Brewer ([00:16:20]) – So I had. Really no clue what a mastermind was. I’d never been to one. It was completely off my radar.
Eric Brewer ([00:16:29]) – And I live in central Pennsylvania. My mentor and business partner at the time, Craig Rich, lived in Baltimore County. So there are only about 40 minutes apart. And part of our natural growth in central Pennsylvania where we started flipping houses was we eventually moved in to Baltimore County and we were talking about think at this phase in our business from really oh five, oh six, all the way up to around 2012, 13, 14, 15, we bought almost all of our inventory off the public auctions, sheriff sales tax sales. What we would constitute is like on market, right, non direct to seller. And as the the real estate market started to recover, as funding became more readily available for investors, that inventory started to become more difficult to acquire. Our margins started to compress and we went through started looking for advice on direct to seller. And we actually we ended up with like two options. One was a franchise, um, without saying exactly, there was really two franchises out there that, you know, 7 to 10 years ago were around and go, Hey, we’ll do direct the seller for you.
Eric Brewer ([00:17:48]) – You just give us the money and we’ll mark it for you through billboards and and all that stuff. And you can, you can, you know, absorb our brand and you just have to go out and buy the house. Okay. And through that process got introduced to a man named Brad Chandler who operates out of like the DC metro area. And we had like a mutual friend or something and someone connected us. We set up a zoom call with Brad, and Brad was like, No, no, I wouldn’t go the route of the franchise. You need to join Collective Genius. That’s the mastermind that I’m in. It’s changed my life. Everything that I do today in my business came from there. Let me invite you as my guest. So me and my partner, Craig Rich, went to, um, a meeting. We were extended an invite. We spent three days there, completely blew our mind. And at the end they said, Hey, do you want to join? We’d like to extend an invite.
Eric Brewer ([00:18:41]) – We think you’re a good culture fit. You bring value to the community. We’d love to have you. And we signed up. And, you know, now it’s been seven years there. Now I’m actually part of the leadership team at Collective Genius, so I’m one of about a half dozen or so people that run, facilitate and drive the strategy behind that mastermind. And literally every aspect of my business has the fingerprints of on it, starting with the introduction to a guy named Gary Harper and Susan Harper, who runs Sharper Business Solutions, who came here back then and implemented for me over. We spent three days, ten hour, three, ten hour days together where they ripped apart my business, my organizational chart, our systems, our processes, everything. And we built from the ground up. And yeah, it completely changed the trajectory of our business.
Sam Wilson ([00:19:36]) – That’s cool, man. I love that. I love that. Very, very cool. Thanks for giving us some insight on that. You did mention and I’ve asked I asked this once, but I’ll go for it again, the three words you said, Do you remember what you were talking about on that front? We said, hey, there’s three.
Eric Brewer ([00:19:48]) – Yeah. So part of the the exercise inside of, of interaction is defining like what you stand for as a person and then attaching sort of your personal y, driving that down into the business’s sole purpose and then the company’s core values and then making sure that that resonates and translates down into the most entry level person in the company, right? They all need to be speaking the same language, showing up for the same reason with the same end goal in mind. And we started with purpose. And I don’t know if you’ve ever, you know, gone through the exercise of defining your why or your purpose, But it is hard. It is. And, you know, so I have I have been literally been working on that for about five years straight. And I’ve wrestled with it. Right. I always felt like I was giving surface. Well, I want more money. Why? Well, want more time? Why? Well, it gives me more freedom. Why is that important? It’s like, dude, like, can I just give you the money answer or the family answer? And we had gone through a quarterly planning session where Gary came back 3 or 4 years later after we initially met, and he was working on this purpose with me.
Eric Brewer ([00:21:01]) – And I said, Yeah, man, it’s my purpose. My why is to positively impact the life of my family. And he looked at me and goes, I think you’re full of. And I said, What? And he said, You mean to tell me that God puts you on earth to positively impact the life of seven people? That’s it. Seven people. That’s all you’re capable of. And after I got a little upset with him, I realized he had a valid point. And I started, you know, it was really about my family, their families, their grandkids, my employees, family. It was a much bigger, you know, group of people that I wanted to have an impact on. I was just I was living small. And that’s triggered this whole sort of purpose. I asked myself 15 times a day now, why? Why is that important? What’s that mean to you? Is that a big deal? A little deal? So the three words for me currently today that I can summarize my job description as relationships experience freedom.
Eric Brewer ([00:22:10]) – And then each of those have like their own sort of nested like if you say, Eric, what do you mean by relationships? Hey, my focus each and every day needs to be to develop new, meaningful relationships and nurture existing meaningful relationships. Yeah, right after I do that, that creates a unique, pleasurable experience for everybody that I come in touch with. New people, existing people, employees, vendors, Customers. Investors. Bankers. Everybody. And as a result of doing those two things, the natural result of that is to have freedom, right? So those are the three aspects of my job description and my life that get as much of my focus as I can responsibly manage.
Sam Wilson ([00:22:53]) – Man, this has been fantastic. Eric, thank you for taking the time to come on the show today. You’ve given us so much to think about. We didn’t. This have been a little different show and I kind of felt that that was going to be the case. Just talking to you before we kicked it off was like, you know what? We’re probably not going to talk all that much about real estate, but you have driven home tremendous value here to me personally and I’m sure also to our listeners here today.
Sam Wilson ([00:23:14]) – So thank you for taking the time to be very real and just tell tell your story and what you’ve learned and your journey thus far. Certainly appreciate it giving us tremendous value If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?
Eric Brewer ([00:23:28]) – You can follow me on Instagram. I’m pretty active on there. I’m posting 3 to 5 times a day. A lot of the conversations you and I had today, I’m sharing real life experiences on Instagram. It’s Eric underscore Brewer underscore invest.
Sam Wilson ([00:23:41]) – Awesome we will make sure we put that in the show notes Eric thank you again for your time. I do appreciate it. Thanks buddy. Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories.
Sam Wilson ([00:24:10]) – So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.
