I’m very humbled by the attendance at FIG’s Intermountain Real Estate Investment Summit. I’m grateful for the people that have come today and watch each of our summit videos online. A lot of respect for all of you.
Topics Discussed In the Video:
- The Founders of FIG (How we started)
- What is FIG?
- How to Succeed in Multifamily
- An Abundance Mindset
- FIG IREI Summit Info/Sponsors
Starting the Fourplex Investment Group
First of all, I want to introduce what our slogan or mantra is going to be for the Fourplex Investment Group Summit. “Be more”. The goal is that everyone who comes here walks out as more of an individual… with more character, more knowledge, more capacity, and much better relationships.
That’s the goal that’s going to come out of this event. To be more than you were when you got here. That’s what we hope to have happened.
I’ll start by introducing Mike Miller. Mike is the founder of Fourplex Investment Group and started the company when the market was at the bottom of the market.
He’s been a builder for 20+ years. One of his favorite slogans to share with me that I’ve heard time and time again, is “there’s no luggage rack on a hearse”. That phrase comes from the aspect of, when you die, you don’t take things with you.
Mike Miller is a person of an abundant mindset. There is nothing that he owns that he is not willing to give to someone else that needs it. I’ve always loved that about him. He takes that same attribute into the business world.
If he creates a business, he wants everyone that’s involved with him in the business to have everything that they can get out of it as long as he can survive. That’s been his mindset from the time that he started FIG’s business years ago.
Mike Miller is a “just do it, guy”. Mike just does it. He doesn’t think about it. We have that in common. He’s an agent. He’s an action taker. When Mike wants to do something, he just finds a way to do it. Might start acting and then figure it out along the way.
It’s an amazing attribute to have because he breaks himself into uncomfortable areas in the business world and figures it out along the way.
This picture of a wall represents the barriers to freedom. Mike doesn’t see barriers. Mike, like these people here, sees opportunity. He’s not going to let the wall stop them from trying. He’s going to climb it, get over it, and find out what’s on the other side. Mike in any challenge is going to find out where the opportunity is.
What is the Fourplex Investment Group (FIG)?
The Fourplex Investment Group does development, land development, building, FIG has a real estate brokerage, Capital Advisors Real Estate (formerly a REMAX Equity brokerage), and then property management as well. We’re a full-service, turnkey multifamily company.
How we started: Back in the turn of the market, in the wrong direction…Mike Miller was doing spec homes with hard money loans because banks wouldn’t lend at the time and I was selling them as a regular realtor. Great experience. We sat in the office and said…
Where are some opportunities in the marketplace that we can build and sell and not compete with these big box builders? Because to compete with them with their buying power and systems is just too hard. They have land holdings that are large.
At the time, I was working with quite a few clients that wanted stability, and Mike Miller had had a good experience with multifamily in the past. He said that no matter what the market did, it was a good thing to hold. Renters stayed regardless of if the market was good or bad.
So I said, “well, why don’t we build multifamily?” Then Mike had that genius idea of doing it in full-on communities, attaching an HOA to it. They look and feel like townhomes or condos, they operate like it, they’re managed like an HOA, and then we would manage the whole thing for the clients.
The first project we did was in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Nine fourplexes. There’s someone at our summit that was one of our first believers. He bought three of those fourplexes. We’re grateful for his faith and trust, and he’s still investing with us to this day.
We sold out that whole development within 30 days of launching it. It was a great opportunity for our investors and a really cool experience for us. We realized we might be onto something and we had no intention at the beginning of actually creating a business.
It was, “how do we sell stuff, to make money, when stuff doesn’t sell in the market that we were in at the time.” And it worked. So we kept going.
Since that date, the Fourplex Investment Group has sold well over 300 million dollars in real estate investments that we built. We’re up to almost 500 million in sales and we’re in Utah, Idaho, Texas, and Arizona.
Example Projects:
In Vineyard, Utah we’ve developed close to 600 doors. You can see the difference between a fourplex in our communities. They are full-blown townhomes. Managed, they have amenities, and the landlord doesn’t have to worry about their ownership experience.
Our typical investor has zero desire to be a landlord. Our typical investor says I have extra disposable income, and I want someone else to be the landlord on my behalf. Send me checks that make me happy. That’s our client. We’ve been able to do that time and time again.
Mindset of Abundance
Our team is passionate about maintaining a mindset of abundance. Mike Miller has a mindset of abundance. I have a mindset of abundance. We want to bring our clients together to say, “Hey, this is what we do…but there are so many other opportunities in this real estate space that are fantastic.”
Some of our clients are potentially outgrowing us and now don’t want to do residential loans but want to do larger commercial projects or syndications. We’re going to learn about that.
We have many different professionals here that I’m really excited to learn from myself, that people that have come will be able, to gather some great information and network with.
Learning Through Real Estate Investing
Growing wealth in real estate is a learning experience where you kind of get some scars, you fall on your face, you meet the wrong person, you get the wrong advice, you keep trying, and then the right coach comes in, slows you down centers you gives you a pat on the butt. Then you wait, and you nail it. That joy you have between mentor and follower is so real. You succeed, you figure it out. And it actually works.
It’s so hard when you’re at the beginning of your real estate investing career because that first one is the hardest. Getting the first net worth of 100k is really hard. And then to become a million net worth is hard. But all of a sudden, that goes to 2 million, 3 million, 4. It rockets forward. The momentum picks up because you know how to make quicker decisions, you know how to get rid of the riffraff and dial it in.
The goal is to find out who you connect with, who is going to be that person that centers you, let you slow down, put a great plan together, and have that feeling when you’ve nailed it with real estate because it can happen.
We don’t know at all, and no one in real estate does. No one that presents knows at all, we’re all learning. For people with attention issues like myself, it’s awesome because I never get bored in real estate. It’s so dynamic. It’s always changing. I love that I get to learn over and over and over again what’s happening in the market.
Be curious and be abundant. Don’t be a “me monster”. Be there to learn and give and it’ll be a very rewarding experience. Be teachable. Take lots of notes, put action plans together. Be approachable. Don’t be selfish and think you need to tell everyone about what you want. It doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. It repels people.
Have lots of fun, get to know each other, and learn and give. I promise things to come back in abundance when you do that.
“Everyone has a plan until I punched them in the face.” Can you imagine getting in the ring with Mike Tyson? Real estate is like that. We have these cool plans, and then we get punched in the face.
The difference between those who make it and those who don’t: Some people get back up figure it out and try again. Some people run away scared. Stand back up. Learn from the experience and move forward.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Break down the barriers of your personal thoughts of what you know today and tomorrow, and think…maybe there’s a slightly different angle that I could learn from, and I’m not quite seeing it how I should.
FIG Summit Sponsors
First Colony Mortgage and Suncor Financial are our two Platinum Sponsors. They are the main sponsors for the real estate investment summit and help financially to put a lot of it on. We’re really grateful for them and their two key members, Lane Aldrich, Curtis Ray, and Porter Shumway.
Next, we have Hall Labs and Brett Wilkie. They’re a tech company that started off inventing the Black Diamond drill bit and sold it for a lot of money to Slumber Jay which is a large oil company. Now they’re a think tank operation on the border of Provo and Springville, Utah. They call themselves market disruptors. They create awesome technology, take it to the market enough to disrupt the market, and then get acquired.
Jared at Hill Insurance single-handedly does all of FIG’s insurance needs. From the builder to the development to the clients. We’ve actually gone through many insurance providers. When I met with Jared, I said one thing I said, Jared, I don’t ever want to hear from a client anything about insurance. If you make that happen and do it at the right price, you’re in. I haven’t heard about insurance since and it’s been so great to have a great service provider to take care of our clients on insurance.