Episode 234: Justin Moy – Transitioning from Sales Pro to Passive Income Investor in Commercial Real Estate

Justin Moy  00:03

To me, being in touch with society, what people are looking for how people change and how the things we want the things we tolerate, how we want to be communicated to change, and having systems and processes in place, but being flexible based on who you’re talking to, and how you can do what we’re all paid to do is best serve your prospects and your clients.

 Intro  00:17

Welcome to the Making Sales Social Podcast featuring the Top Voices in Sales, Marketing, and Business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show! 

Bob Woods  00:17

Justin Moy, President’s Club investors is joining us today in the Social Sales Link Virtual Studios. For this Episode of Making Sales Social Justin, his managing partner at President’s Club investors, a commercial real estate investing firm that has been making waves by helping top producing sales professionals replace their high income with passive income, mainly through commercial real estate investments. So we’ve all heard of side hustles, where all kinds of people are making money outside of their regular jobs doing well, all kinds of things. 

Justin is going to talk about a kind of sort of side hustle that I think you’ll probably see is geared a little more towards long term growth than an immediate second income. Although you do it right, you can actually get a second income out of it as well. So with that, Welcome to Making Sales Social. 

Justin Moy  01:45

Bob, Thank you so much man. It’s been really exciting. We were talking before we were recording, and this is going to be a phenomenal episode. I’m excited to be here, excited to share everything I know, with your guests and your audience.

Bob Woods  01:56

Sounds great. Sounds great. So our first traditional question to anybody walking in, if you can walk into a virtual studio walking into the virtual studio is What does making sales social mean to you?

Justin Moy  02:09

Yeah, I think it’s such an important question, especially now with the explosion of AI. And that kind of, you know, threatening in air quotes, right people’s jobs. And, I’m in the camp of saying right now, I don’t think that really good sales professionals are in threat there, but who knows what this kind of evolves into. So being social, when you sell, I think just is putting that human element to it. A lot of people, a lot of top reps, have systems and processes, but understand that different people have different needs.

And it takes adjusting to different styles. And as time goes on, people on our attitudes go on, if you look at, you know, closing tactics and sales training from, you know, the 60s and the 70s. It’s way different, right? So it’s a lot about adjusting these things. So being social just means being to me, being in touch with society, what people are looking for, how people change, and how the things we want the things we tolerate, how we want to be communicated to change, and having systems and processes in place. 

But being flexible based on who you’re talking to. And how you can do what we’re all paid to do is best serve your prospects and your clients. So that’s what it means to me. Really, I give that a lot of thought. I hope that makes sense. But that’s it

Bob Woods  03:23

That makes perfect sense. And it’s essentially, because because I’ve asked this question and a lot of podcast episodes, you’re probably the first person that I’ve heard of, at least to bring up AI as as as part of it, because I think you’re right, just in terms of making sales social, you don’t think of AI as being social because it’s, it’s a algorithm, it’s an artificial intelligence generating this stuff, if anything, it can, if used incorrectly, it can take the social out of it, because you’re taking the person out of it. And I think that that leads into everything else that you said, and I think it was just Pitch Perfect. Absolutely.

Justin Moy  04:05

Appreciate. Yeah, I think and it’s a big conversation to what it will become. Because our parents and their parents’ technology, it was kind of shrugged off by them to “Oh, that won’t be a threat, that won’t be an issue.” You know, at some point, we’re gonna be the people who our kids are telling us, “No, Dad, like that’s an AI, you can’t talk to that like that, or that’s not a real person.” Because you never know when that kind of change in technology is going to happen. So I’m interested to see what happens over the next couple of years because that’s just something that’s just blowing up exponentially.

Bob Woods  04:34

Yeah. And you said a couple years, I’m honestly thinking months to like, maybe a year. Yeah.

Justin Moy  04:41

Yeah. That’s very feasible. I mean, that. Yeah, it could be the door to door salesperson that knocks on your door and they walk off you’re like, “Oh, my god, that was that a robot was a machine.” So I mean, it’s getting really serious out there. So I think it’s gonna be really interesting to tell. But yeah, it’s always that social element to it. And whenever there’s disruptions in technology, You’re in big, big market shifts, the top always kind of rises a little bit to the top, and then the bottom kind of falls off. So if you’re a top rep and again, you’re in tune to your social selling skills, you’ll be just fine.

Bob Woods  05:11

Okay, that sounds great. That sounds fantastic. So we’re going to do a proverbial shifting of gears here into what you came here to talk about, and that’s passive income. So can you share your journey and what led you to focus on helping sales pros achieve passive income and you’re going to talk about commercial real estate, because that’s what you focus on. But as I said, in the intro, “There are a lot of ways to do it.” So approach however you want. But I do think that passive income and side hustle may not be the best way to put it. But at the same time, it does represent passive income.

Justin Moy  05:50

Yeah. So, how did I get here? When I was 17 years old, I got my very first office job. I was an intern at a commercial real estate company. And I just fell in love with it right away. So I think I was somewhat lucky on my part that I just so happened to find something that I enjoyed. And when I was 18, I got my real estate license. And I’d always loved sales. I’d always been good at retail sales, I sold home gyms, I sold athletic shoes, athletic apparel, and I was always like, the number one supplement sales person in the region for GNC like a lot of these things. 

So I thought, “Okay, I have somewhat of a disposition in sales, and I’m sort of good at it, I like talking to people so why don’t I go and sell houses and make a career out of that.” And, you know, Bob, between me you and everybody listening, I fell flat on my face for six months, I sold nothing. And I know we’re going to talk about commission only rolls. But that’s what real estate is. It’s it’s you don’t eat if you don’t kill. So luckily, I was 18. I was living with my parents. It wasn’t that detrimental, but it sucks to cold call for six, eight hours a day, every day for six months and have nothing to show for it. 

So once that six month mark hit, I actually was going to quit my job, I was going to quit, I told myself I was going to leave and never come back. And as fate has it, that’s when I got my very first real lead. And they got my very first listing and then bought and sold her next home with her. Made me $60,000. Net commission, right, really with one, quote unquote, one phone call, right, I made hundreds and hundreds of four, but with one call, right. And that’s what put me on track to hit the president’s club to hit top producers and hit our century club. 

And throughout that process, I realized that I was very transactionally rich, but I was not wealthy at all. I was good with my money and I was frugal, and I didn’t live this lavish lifestyle. But I realized I’m burning out really fast. And it’s only been a couple of years of doing this. And I don’t think I want to or even could do this for 40 more years until I’m 65 or 70, or whatever the age will be by the time we get to retire that much. Yeah, it’s going up everywhere. And yeah, France is writing over it. So you know, 40 plus years, it was my journey. And I said I don’t want to do that. How can I do it differently? So I spent years researching investments, businesses, franchises, stocks, and their retirement accounts. 

Like I couldn’t find anything that made me feel like “Okay, this is a really feasible way to retire within about 10 to 20 years.” And that’s when I dove into commercial real estate, I was selling single family homes, but the scale that you hit with commercial real estate, apartment buildings, self storage facilities, strip malls, all that stuff is just so much faster, I got fascinated with the field, I dove in super, super deep, and really found out that it is feasible to replace my income with passive income within about 10 years of doing that. And so I dove in there, both feet. And now I really help spread the message of this because I think everybody needs to know about it. And everybody can benefit from it. 

But because we’re in sales, and we have unique challenges, and that are variable income, and that are extra susceptibility to market downturns, we need investments that can help balance those things out. And nobody was talking about it. Right. Everybody would talk to me about investing in your skills to make more money. And that’s great. You should do that. That should be the number one thing you do. But nobody was really there to tell me good advice on what to do now that I’ve made some money. How can I set myself up for long term success? So that’s really the 10,000 foot view of where I started, why I built this passion for helping salespeople. Why understand the pain points that I didn’t find were addressed in retirement strategies when I was looking and why I love what I do today.

Bob Woods  09:37

Wow, that’s great. That’s great. So you. So we talked a little bit about the 100% commission based thing already. What I’m wondering this is probably a little bit more specific than what we talked about before we started taping but like, you know, as we said before, a lot of sales reps out there are 100% commission based what we’re talking about now is building passive income but by setting an income aside, what what are the risks nowadays of being 100%? commission based and also doing this at the same time?

Justin Moy  10:13

Yeah. So if you’re 100%, commission base, essentially, you’re playing what I would deem a higher risk high reward game, right? Because if you have about a mixture of base plus commission, I wouldn’t expect your splits or your commission projections to be as high as if you’re 100%. Right. And rightfully so you’re taking on more risk being commissioned based only, so you should have more reward. Now, when you are looking to build out something more consistent, you want to slowly and incrementally buy future income. 

So when you’re commission based only you need to have in my opinion, more reserves than maybe the average corporate employee might be comfortable with, some people might like three months, I personally like six months, that’s just for my style depends on yours, your field, your volatility, and how volatile your job in your field is, and what you sell. So once you have that base, and you feel really good about it “Okay, I can sleep at night, because I know I have whatever 612 months expenses,” it’s in a high yield savings account. So it’s not getting eaten away by inflation every day. 

I have that. Okay, now I want to start buying some future income. So to me, it’s just about having a longer runway, because you don’t know when that dry spell is going to hit. And that’s one thing that’s always in the back of our minds is sales people’s, even if you’re really, really good. You’re always thinking, what could shut this water hose off? What can kill these deals? Where am I? Where am I not looking that I could, I could just suddenly lose my pipeline right now. 

So you want to have a little bit more risk mitigation by having more of that base and having more of that emergency fund upfront. But then you really start to buy income, and then you can level out those months, and then slowly with every investment you make, you’re reducing your dependency on closing that next deal until you can completely replace that at that commission with passive income.

Bob Woods  12:03

Right? Yeah, exactly. And there are many ways to get that passive income going to We’re obviously going to be talking mainly about commercial real estate. But you know, there’s also, as you said, before, investing in the market, it’s you’ve got annuities, you’ve got, you know, purchasing a franchise. May has somebody else running it, as well as real estate. So talk about how a sales professional who, as you said, is already taking a risk, especially if they’re 100% commission based, that person truly decides what’s right for them. 

Justin Moy  12:34

Yeah, the first thing I’ll say is, “The only type of passive income that exists out there is if you are an investor.” So there’s a lot of people who angle what they do is passive income, and it’s just, it’s just blatantly a lie. So buying real estate is not passive income. Owning real estate is not passive income. But investing in real estate is same with like you said, franchises or businesses, a lot of people and in different careers, I’ve worked with a lot of franchise, franchisees, and there’s a big sell of wallets, passive, we already have the systems, you hire a manager, they do everything and right. And it’s kind of pitched that way. 

But there’s nobody who’s in the franchise space who owns a business who is passive, but you can invest and be passive. So the first thing is, you really want to understand what are you getting yourself into, because every hour that this investment that this other business that this other piece of real estate takes away from your ability to sell, it’s likely going to actually cost you money, because your dollars per hour should be very high selling. So when you buy a property, you actually become an employee of that property, it’s your job to make it run. 

So don’t buy another job. If you’re looking for passive income look for the real true passive strategies. Now what we do is called syndication, it’s one of those strategies. And the reason why I picked it is because looking back at historical performance, looking back or looking in the future of what kind of industries can be disrupted, I felt like commercial real estate was the most stable, historically had the best risk adjusted returns and some of the best tax benefits in this country. And it wasn’t going anywhere. 

I understood it, everybody’s going to live in an apartment at some point, everybody is going to need self storage facilities. So it was very, very stable. And historically, they perform very well during recessions and downturns, which is one thing that sales professionals need to be hyper aware of. So I know I went off on a little bit of a tangent, but I just get so passionate about these things. So I hope that answered the question. If I left anything out, you know, let me know happy to happy to revisit. 

Bob Woods  14:41

Yeah, no, I know I actually thought that that’s really good because it could be because it does kind of refrain. And kind of better defines what people think of what passive income and verb is versus what it truly is. So I thought that that was a really good answer to that. So, um, when it comes to commercial real estate, and as we were talking about before, I was actually in commercial real estate several, like 85 lifetimes ago. 

And people are out there, and they’re seeing what’s happening in the market. Right. And they might be thinking, is that still a good way to invest? I mean, because you got falling rents, you’ve got rising vacancies in some of the sub markets that we’re talking about. And, you know, especially you see some of the turmoil being seen in markets like, you know, San Francisco, Portland, New York City, those areas. What do you tell those people?

Justin Moy  15:37

Yeah, what I tell those people is now is a phenomenal time to be on the buying side of real estate. It’s a phenomenal time. So there is distress in the markets. Now, depending on what side of that distress you’re on, it could actually spell a lot of opportunity, or you could be on the receiving end of that and be in trouble. So this is a reason why we actually haven’t bought a new acquisition in over a year. But it’s been about a year and a half for us, because we knew this is not sustainable, we knew these interest rates are going to start rising, and they’re going to start rising fast. 

We knew by looking at inflation, the Fed was going to be very aggressive with this. And that’s one thing about commercial real estate is it allows you to join different teams like ours, because the average investor, the everyday sales pro, who just you know, wants to buy real estate probably isn’t dedicating the time to reading the studies like we are observing the trends like we are and really knowing the markets that we’re buying in and are going into. So there’s a lot of headlines about commercial real estate being in trouble. 

There’s about one and a half trillion dollars of distressed debt coming due in commercial real estate over the next about 18 to 24 months. It’s exciting because we are looking to buy. So we are looking to buy some of those distressed deals. But also understanding below that headline, a lot of that distress in that 1.5 trillion is in large, large, large office buildings. Cisco, like you said, New York, Seattle a lot of these places. So we don’t buy office buildings. And that’s something that everybody knew after the pandemic was going to take a really big hit. 

So there’s a little bit of a scare tactic in there, because unless you’re really in that boat or in that buying field, you’re not going to get as impacted. Then there’s also certain trends like rents falling, rents are falling, and they damn well should be falling because they were just way too high. And they grew way too fast in certain areas. And yes, we’re landlords, and we want to charge a fair market rent, but it is hard to have to go to somebody say, “Hey, your rent went up 24%.” And that means, to me, that wasn’t sustainable.

And we knew that would come crashing down a little bit too. So we’re starting to see rents fall, but we’re starting to see them fall from what were unsustainable heights. And again, we avoid a lot of those areas. Because when you look at median income statistics versus rent growth statistics, we saw that imbalance was forming and took a step back so if you buy right you observe the trends, or you partner with people who buy right and observe the trends like us, you can come out on top of these.

Bob Woods  18:07

Let’s talk about property types really really quickly, because you said that you don’t invest in the, in the really, really large office buildings and, and things like that, which like I said, I bring in commercial real estate before I absolutely get that. What are some of the categories that y’all do invest in?

Justin Moy  18:26

Yeah, so we are predominantly in the apartment building space and self storage. Now within apartments, you have a few other kinds of sub silos, you could do low income housing, or voucher tax credit properties. So we haven’t gotten too fancy into those yet, but it is something that really interests us. And we have some partnerships that we’re forming now with some groups that do very, very good income, low income housing projects. 

And so we can kind of learn with them too. But we’ve really stayed in those two, we’re getting into the Airbnb markets now. And those are going phenomenally well. So those are really where we’re housed. So we don’t do a lot in the office. We don’t get too fancy with you know, warehousing industrial, physical flexspaces. You know, we and I’m not saying those are bad assets, it’s just that it’s hard to be an expert everywhere. So we’ve really siloed into apartment buildings self storage for now. 

Bob Woods  19:18

So let’s talk about good stuff now. Share a success story, if you could have a sales professional who transitioned into real estate investing or maybe just even started to add it and and achieve their passive income goals.

Justin Moy  19:31

Yeah, so I have a colleague and a friend of mine, and I won’t say his name because Donald Trump says he’s rich, but he’s not famous. So you know, and he is one of the people who we kind of started this a little bit together. He was doing it sooner than me, but he was a top performer in the sales space. And I actually ended up being able to retire right before 30 around 28. So he got in very early. And he just always had this forward thinking that a lot of people when they’re 18,19,20 just don’t have. And so he saw this as a really big opportunity. 

And so again, he fit that thesis of It took him about 10 years to replace his income. And now he does real estate investing full time, he’s traveling all around the world. And he’s really who a lot of people, I think, would emulate and follow. And I have two others who are following similar paths. They’re not quite there yet. But I’m seeing that in about two to three years, they’ll be set to and from my personal journey, I’m probably about five or six years away. And I just turned 30, a couple months ago. So it is extremely feasible. It happens to a good amount of people that I know. And that’s the path that I’m on now. And so far, it’s trending that way. 

Bob Woods  20:54

So you said something, well, good for you. And congratulations, by the way, I’d say it’s it. I know that it’s a lot of hard work. And when you get success from hard work, it’s even sweeter, basically. So congrats on that. 

Justin Moy  21:08

Yeah, thank you. 

Bob Woods  21:09

Sure. So we’re going to talk in a couple minutes about a resource that you’re offering. But for our listeners who are intrigued and want to learn more, what kind of outside resources or advice would you recommend to them? So they could deepen not only their understanding of commercial real estate investing, but maybe even some of the first steps that they can take as well.

Justin Moy  21:31

Yeah. So if you’re just so shocked and blasted by real estate in general, because there’s so many verticals now commercials, what I and I had what I feel are good reasons for that. But there’s so much to like, if somebody comes up and says, “Oh, I do real estate as a profession, there’s like hundreds of things that they could be talking about.” So if you just have no idea where to go, where to start. BiggerPockets is by far the biggest real estate investing Forum website out there. You could check out all different strategies you can learn from a ton of people, you can read forums and topics and really deep dive there. 

Bob Woods  22:04

Bigger pockets you said?

Justin Moy  21:31

Bigger pockets.

Bob Woods  22:04

Alright. Just wanna make sure that was clear.

Justin Moy  21:31

Yeah, by far the world’s largest one. So tons of info there. If you want to be more passive, you know, I have a podcast, you’re listening to this, you’re clearly a podcaster of passive real estate strategies where we talk about only the passive things, the syndications and the funds. So if that’s the silo you want, that’s a good resource. 

But you really have to narrow down where you want to go, like what you want to focus on in real estate, and then dive in there. Because if you just want to, if you’re just interested in real estate, there’s so much that that encompasses, it’s hard to start somewhere. So bigger pockets, probably a good place. If you’re just so overwhelmed by it until you narrow it down, then you could dive into some more specific resources.

Bob Woods  22:49

And speaking of specific resources, you have one as well. And you go ahead and yeah, let us know about that really quick. 

Justin Moy  22:57

Yeah, if you are at all interested in this journey, this investing strategy being passive, I go to the retirewithin10bundle.com, it’s retire within one zero bundle.com. That is our page there, you’re gonna retire within 10 calculators. So put in some very basic information about you. And it will actually show you how long until you can retire. By replacing your income with passive income with our strategy for most people within about seven to nine years.

You’re also going to get an ebook, the top secret investing strategy for sales pros, is going to take a little bit of a deeper dive of what we spoke about today, then the third is actually a bonus gift for you guys. So it’s going to be something that’s going to mitigate your risk if you do decide to start investing and save you dozens of hours down the road. If this is something that you pursue. So, retirewithin10 bundle.com and the 10. Is the number one zero.

Bob Woods  23:49

Yeah, yes. Great. Well make sure that that’s in the show notes too. But I think it’s really interesting, because just as there are many, many, many different types of real estate, vehicles, categories, wherever you want to say to invest, and there are also many, many different types of people out there. So obviously, so when it comes to salespeople, though, I mean, we and you’re in sales, I’m in sales, we have some very specific unique types of things that we need think about so so so the fact that you’re addressing this specifically from the “Hey, you’re in sales here, what you here’s what you can do standpoint,” I think is especially attractive.

Justin Moy  24:31

Yeah. And I talked about a lot of those in the eBook too, that’s on there, kind of some of the pain points that are unique to people in our field and how this strategy addresses it and why I really favorite and also goes into how we pick certain deals, too, because we’re very picky. And we don’t just pick anything, we pick things only if they’re right for sales pros.

Bob Woods  24:49

That’s a great way to end things. So Justin Moy, Managing Partner at President’s Club Investors, Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your time today.

Justin Moy  25:00

Thanks so much. Thanks for listening. 

Bob Woods  25:00

Appreciate it. And thank you for streaming this episode of making sales social. So remember when you’re out and about this week, be sure to make your sales social. 

Outro  31:48

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