Real Estate Underground

Mastering Market Selection for Real Estate Investors with John Casmon

• Ed Mathews • Season 4 • Episode 128

Share episode

Send us a text

Ever wondered how to transform a corporate career into a thriving real estate investment empire? Join us as we chat with John Casmon of Casmon Capital Group, who shares his remarkable journey from navigating the 2008 economic downturn to managing a portfolio of over $100 million in assets. Listen as John offers invaluable insights into market selection strategies, focusing on the Midwest and Southeast regions. Discover how he identifies promising areas by targeting neighborhoods adjacent to emerging hotspots and the crucial role of assembling a reliable team of property managers, brokers, and professionals in managing investments across diverse markets.

Explore how John transitioned from solo investing to building scalable partnerships, emphasizing the power of networking and mentorship. Learn how he leveraged platforms like BiggerPockets to connect with local experts and the importance of forming strong teams for understanding market dynamics. John's story highlights the significance of confidence, credibility, and connections in raising capital for multifamily real estate, and how podcasting can be a powerful tool for expanding networks. Through this conversation, we unravel the complexities of multifamily syndication, financing strategies, and the potential for larger investments.

Shifting perspectives from seeking help to offering genuine investment opportunities can significantly enhance effectiveness in raising capital. We delve into the mindset needed for success, both personally and professionally, exploring how acting with confidence and providing valuable investment options can shift conversations from pleas to opportunities. Additionally, we touch on how John balances parenting with a real estate career, finding joy in coaching youth sports and spending quality time with his family. This episode is packed with strategies for growth, resilience, and achieving a successful life balance.

Introducing Keyholders Collective commercial

New outro for Season 4 (2024)

Additional Resources:

Ed Mathews:

Greetings and salutations. Real estate undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews. New season, new season how about that? Huh? Thank you so much for continuing to follow the show, as always. If you enjoy what you're or you get something out of what you're listening to or watching, I would welcome a subscribe. Hit the button below on any of the platforms that you listen Apple, spotify, amazon, youtube, whatever and also leave a comment, because I'd love to know if there are folks out there that you'd like to hear from or subjects you'd like us to cover. By all means, let us know, because we certainly pay attention to that and try and address requests. With me today is John Kasman of the Kasman Capital Group. John, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you. I had the opportunity a month or two ago to be on your show, which was a whole lot of fun, and I'm grateful that I was able to cajole you into coming on our show as well, so welcome.

John Casmon:

Absolutely Thank you Ed Appreciate you having me today.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, of course, of course. So for those folks that haven't discovered you on LinkedIn or elsewhere, why don't you tell us a little bit about your company and who you are?

John Casmon:

Yeah, so listen, I am a multifamily investor. I partner with everyday professionals to invest in syndications, which is really just a fancy way of pulling money together to buy large apartment buildings. To date, we've invested over a hundred million dollars worth of apartments. On top of that, I also coach other people how to do the same exact thing. But of course, it wasn't always like that.

John Casmon:

So I started off as a dreamer myself, trying to be interested in real estate, being curious about it, and one day I was working at a pretty big corporation. This is back in 2007, 2008,. The economic downturn hit and I watched a lot of my peers get let go, and during that time I realized I really needed a plan B and that dream I had of one day owning real estate needed to be more ofa priority than just a dream. So I started to consume everything I could about real estate. Investing took some time, but ultimately I moved to Chicago and did a buy in a two unit building with my wife. We started to scale that portfolio and we learned from every deal we did and it's like I said ultimately we were able to scale that up to a larger portfolio and help other people along the way.

Ed Mathews:

Congratulations on your success. A hundred million dollar asset or a portfolio in what 16 years is pretty damn impressive. So in terms of the way that you approach real estate, let's talk about market selection first. So where is your portfolio predominantly?

John Casmon:

Yeah, most of our portfolio is in the Midwest and we have some of the Southeast region as well. I live in Cincinnati, I'm from Cleveland, ohio, I lived in Detroit, lived in Chicago, lived in Dayton, so I'm very familiar with the Midwest and I think there's some misnomers around the Midwest I know you're out there on the East Coast and probably hear similar things but the Midwest is a great place to invest. You can get great cashflow. There is some appreciation, despite what you may think. But we focus on markets where there's growth Columbus, cincinnati, indianapolis they have strong fundamentals and we really like those markets. And again in the Southeast region, we're in the Atlanta markets, we're in parts of North Carolina and South Carolina and again, we like to focus on those fundamentals to find that value and drive that appreciation for our investors.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, so let's talk about market selection, because if you look at this just geographically, that's a pretty wide swath of ends. Within each market there are relationships in terms of property managers, in terms of brokers and agents and lawyers and all that right, and obviously the effort to land and expand in Indianapolis and then in Columbus are probably two very different efforts. Right, one's more or less your back door, the other one is at least, if not a plane ride, a pretty long drive. And so I'm curious about a couple of things. One is, when you talk about market attributes, what are you looking for in a market? What makes it viable? And then the second thing is what's your process to build a team there?

John Casmon:

Yeah, those are great questions, and great questions to the point where, when I was really starting to scale my portfolio and I realized I couldn't just buy properties that were 15 minutes from my house anymore, I had to ask these questions to myself and, to be truthful, I couldn't find the answers. When I was in Chicago looking and investing in Chicago, my strategy was try to find the next high area right, so find that up and coming location. I couldn't invest there because usually those price points were too high, so I would look. Try to find the next hot area right, so find that up and coming location. I couldn't invest there because usually those price points were too high, so I would look right next door. I'll give you an example there's a neighborhood in Chicago called Logan Square, and Logan Square started to really I'm sorry, lincoln, jesus. Which neighborhood am I thinking about here? Yeah, logan Square, I was right the first time.

John Casmon:

I was thinking of Lincoln Square, logan Square, lincoln Park I was like, wait a minute, which neighborhood? So Logan Square, right, and Logan Square started to get really popular and the price points there just didn't work as well from an investing standpoint. But right next to that was Avondale, and Avondale hadn't seen the same level of appreciation but it had a lot of the same benefits. Right Close to nightlife, you had restaurants, you had cafes popping up, the train was right there. So we actually invested in Avondale and about a year later we were able to get similar rents as what they were getting in Logan Square. So by using that strategy, it worked out really well.

John Casmon:

When I was looking to invest outside of Chicago, mainly because I got priced out of the neighborhoods I really liked I had to reinvent the wheel. So here are a couple of things that I started to use to help me find the best places to invest. One we want to understand what's happening at the macro level of that market. So I started to look and see where's population actually growing, what jobs are there, what employers are there, are they diverse employers? Right? I mentioned that, my initial jumping off point for real estate. I went through a big layoff. Well, I was in Detroit working at an automotive company and, as we know that industry, that city, was so driven by the automotive industry that it really crippled everything. It didn't matter if you were a doctor and in your mind you may have thought you were insulated. Everybody took a hit. Right, your home values went down, the entire city kind of took a hit. And then it took some time to slowly rebuild. So we look at the diversity of jobs. We want to see different industries so that not one industry won't cripple a sector right, so that takes out markets where they're more focused on, say, hospitality or oil or things like that. So we want to see really a diversification of the types of jobs that are there. And then the piece that took me the longest to understand was to actually have some sort of competitive advantage.

John Casmon:

When I first went to this exercise and I did this at, my mentor laid out the process and I went through and I did all this research. I looked up best places to invest and I Google all this research. And I looked up best places to invest and I Googled all this stuff and I'd make this list and one list would have this city at the top. Another list would have another city at the top and I would just cross-reference, all right, which ones are in everyone's top 10 list. So I landed on this one market, madison Wisconsin.

John Casmon:

And at the time I was still in Chicago and I'm like awesome, madison Wisconsin, that's going to be our market. And I'm talking to my mentor at the time and he's like what do you know about Madison? I say nothing, I've never been there, I have no knowledge of it outside of University of Wisconsin. And he's like I think you should do a market where you actually know something about it, where you have a reason to go there, something there I'm like, yeah, man, I guess there's a practical component to this that I didn't think about.

John Casmon:

So I started to step back and say, okay, which cities do I actually know and will I travel to and am I familiar with? And my wife is from Cincinnati, so we were going home to Cincinnati every other month and, as we talked earlier in our marriage, we knew that it was going to be important to be around our families as our kids got older. So we aligned that, hey, at some point we'll probably move to Cincinnati. As I took all that in and started to look at the numbers, cincinnati as a market started to make more sense. It had the population growth, had diverse industries. There were eight Fortune 500 companies located here in Cincinnati. Logistically, geographically speaking, it was really well located. So they have a strong kind of logistics component. Amazon just built a one and a half billion dollar airport hub here. So you have a lot of those factors that come into play in this market made sense.

John Casmon:

So if I'm telling other people how to select markets, I would say definitely focus on population, understand the growth trends there, definitely focus on jobs and make sure that not just the amount of jobs but the industry, diversification of jobs, and I would even add a little nugget to say make sure that those jobs are recession resistant. But you want to be in industries where, no matter what happens with the economy, those jobs are still in demand. Again, logistics, healthcare, education those jobs do no matter what's going on with the economy. Where you don't want to be necessarily as hospitality, travel, tech, those things are a little bit more fluid. I'll take those. Yeah, exactly. So I'll take those factors and then add in the component of do you have some natural or some competitive advantage, either growing up there, having family or friends there, anything like that and I would use those to select my market.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, those are awesome points. I would add two to those, and it actually addresses what your mentor was asking about. One of the things that we're always looking at is a city's Madison, wisconsin, for instance, to use your example, one of the first things I would do is pull the city's 10-year plan and make sure that I comprehensively understand. Okay, here is where the mayor and his or her administration is looking to take the city over the next 10 years. Here are the capital projects they're investing in. Here's where private industry is investing in the city.

Ed Mathews:

The other thing, the second thing, that I always like to do, is I subscribe to the local newspapers, and so I am. Obviously, I don't live there, but you can get a pretty good flavor for a town or a city if you are reading the news section, the business section, even the nightlife section, to figure out how vibrant a community it is, right. And so those two things if you don't, if you don't necessarily know the city, those are two things that might help, maybe a little bit of a cheat code in terms of starting to get your head around what it's like to live there. All right, cool. So now you start to target and zero in on Cincinnati, for instance. Right At that point you didn't live there, so I would imagine you started to build a team. So walk me through the process of how you found do you self-manage or do you outsource that?

John Casmon:

I do not self-manage, we use all third party.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, smart by the way, I'm a full two inches shorter, having self-managed for a period of time and I am now coming around on that. Having self-managed for a period of time, and I am now coming around on that but the the I'm curious about what your team looks like locally and how did you go about building that team?

John Casmon:

Yeah, when I was in Chicago, part of what I realized was, again, my strategy was not going to continue to work for me in Chicago. As I wanted to scale, I needed bigger numbers. I needed to be able to create cash flow for my investors. At that point I was just doing it by myself, but I wife and I would save our money. We'd buy properties, save our money, buy a property, but you do that enough times and you never sell a property, you just keep running out of money. So I started to really say there's got to be a better way of doing this. And as I was exploring the options, I went to this seminar and it was one of those TV guru kind of seminars too, and they yeah, they were pitching.

John Casmon:

One was free, so that was cool and I got me to the 197 one, right, yeah, yeah, 192, 97, whatever it was.

John Casmon:

So I go to this three day event and my wife and our senior talking over after day one hey, should we sign up for this? It's a big investment and I'm like I don't know. So we're like let's go to day two and let's see how we feel after that day two. They go really hard on the sales pitch and I'm a marketer so I'm like I wanted to buy, but they just crossed some lines. I remember they distinctly said if you don't have the money, call your credit card company and ask them for an increase. And I was like I don't know, man, I feel like if you're trying to invest in real estate, the money going deeper into debt doesn't feel like the right move. So at that point we just got turned off and what we did instead was day three. I'd already hired a babysitter to come and watch our kids this whole weekend, so we're like sitter's there. Why don't we just go to the library and check out the resources? Right? Because my big takeaway was we had a lot of resources, we just weren't leveraging them. So what I did was we sat in the library, I went through books, we made a list of different resources. One of those was bigger pockets. So I started to get really active on bigger pockets and, because I knew I wanted to start investing in Cincinnati, I made it a point to try to reach out to other investors and in doing this, they all tagged this one guy. So I'm like awesome bet. I'm like hey, dude, I'm coming to Cincinnati this day. I would love to meet you. Everybody tagged you. He's great. And he said I got this podcast. Why don't you come on and be a guest? I was like what, what's a podcast? Do what? I'm like all right, you're still gonna meet with me though. Right? He's like, yeah, so I do this podcast, I meet with him. He tells me he has a coaching program. So, after thinking it over, I ended up hiring this guy to be my coach.

John Casmon:

Now, this is back in like 2016. So, as we're talking about investing in Cincinnati, he starts to lay out the process to building your team. Right, so you need to have brokers, you need to have property management companies, you need to have lenders. So I'm starting to make connections and what I would do is, every time I came to Cincinnati, I would set up meetings with these kind of people. Right, and you only need one connection to start, because with that one connection I asked for referrals. Hey, mr Investor, what broker should I talk to? So he gave me, oh, here's two or three brokers and I would reach out to those brokers and if I could get them on that trip, great. If not, I got them on the next trip when I got to that broker. Hey, mr Broker, what property management company should I talk to? What lender should I talk to?

John Casmon:

So over time, in a very short window, I've got a pretty extensive list of potential partners, right. And if someone's name came up multiple times, right. If I go and talk to five different people and all five people say you need to talk to this person, they were highlighted at the top of my list, right? Okay, this is the guy I need to talk to. So that was my approach, building out my team and it was a great place to start. And, like anything right With any other business, some of those people stick with you for a couple of deals and some of those people you end up having to let go of pretty quickly. So, even though you've got good recommendations and referrals, it doesn't mean you stick with those people for life, but I thought that was a great way to build out my team.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, that's so smart. I do the exact same thing and the question I always ask is hey, John, you're a world-class broker. If I was going to hire somebody and I couldn't hire you, who would you work with? Because obviously you want to massage the ego a little bit, but also you want to understand, like you just alluded to high-performing players, know other high-performing players. That's who they hang out with.

Ed Mathews:

It is a and you want to know that the top three to five rockstar brokers in your particular market may not do business with all of them, but very least they will be the people that you interact with. They'll give you, they're the person that you have a cup of coffee with when you're in town to talk about, potentially, what's going on in the marketplace, right? What are you seeing on the ground that I can't see from 300 miles away? And help me understand your perspective on the market, Because the fact is that one of the cool things about property managers and brokers is they don't see just your deals right is they don't see just your deals right. They know most, if not all, of the A players in terms of investors in the area and so they have a unique view into many deals across many different asset classes, across many different lending relationships and teams, and all that and their insights are absolutely invaluable.

John Casmon:

Just to give you a perspective right and just to ladder that up, man, not just the deals, but the businesses, right, they know who's in trouble, they know who's trying to liquidate, they know which companies are downsizing. So they are talking to all these investors all day, every day, because that is how they generate their business, which is so different than residential, where it's more of a transaction relationship. Someone buys a house. They expect to be in the house for five years, 10 years, 15 years, whatever it is. So it's more about that one transaction With commercial real estate. Those brokers expect to be on both ends of that transaction and they expect you to sell it again in three years or five years. They're keeping tabs and they know who all the players are. They sell it again in three years or five years. They're keeping tabs and they know who all the players are. They know this guy. He's trying to come up with $10 million to transition this. This guy's trying to liquidate his portfolio, move it all to Florida. So when they have that level of knowledge, it definitely helps you to have those relationships with those people, because they're going to help you be able to find the opportunity.

John Casmon:

The last thing I'll say, too, is if you're going to do what you and I are talking about banking these connections. What you need to do as an investor is be very clear of what you're looking for, have your deal criteria ready to go, because what also helps with those brokers is asking and understanding what is their specialty. If you like 50 plus units on the east side of the city, you need to tell that broker that, because that may not be what they do. They may only do 10 to 40 units on the west side of the city, so you don't need to waste your time. And then that natural transitional question is hey, here's what I'm looking for. Do you know any other brokers that focus on this? So that makes it natural, because now they're not even serving a competition, because they simply don't service what you're offering. So the more you know, the more clear you are with what you're looking for, the easier it's going to be for you to find it.

Ed Mathews:

It's very shrewd, because the fact is that these brokers they're not on salary right. Their most valuable asset is their time, and so the more you can do to maximize their time. Having a clear buy box, being very transparent in terms of what you're looking for, being super responsive when they send you a deal or reach out to you those are things you can do to build credibility so that you can earn the right to do business with them over the course of time. One of the things that I'm always interested in and the game has changed quite a bit in the last 18, 24 months is raising money, and so $100 million portfolio that tells me you've raised probably 25, 30, $35 million in equity. So what does your capital stack look like for a typical deal and how are you raising the money?

John Casmon:

Yeah, I'll tell you this, man. First of all, when I was getting started and I really couldn't wrap my head around the financial side of it Like I'm pretty good with numbers but just like they just seem so big, right, like you said, $25 million, $5 million, $8 million, $10 million Like it just seemed like big numbers and I had a fear and it's probably a fear that many of your listeners have where I didn't think people would want to invest with me, probably a fear that many of your listeners have, where I didn't think people would want to invest with me. And even if they did want to invest with me, I didn't know who or how, I didn't know the process. I was scared I would lose money. I had all these challenges that I faced when I was starting out, which is one of the reasons probably the main reason I ended up hiring my coach, because he had raised a million dollars for his first deal and that really stood out to me, because I wasn't looking to raise 20 million or 10 million or anything like that. I really just wanted to buy probably a half a million dollar property and have somebody who could bring half the down payment. Right, if I brought half, can they bring half? That was as far as I could see, and if this person had done that, I thought they could help me as I watched them scale their portfolio. That's when I realized, oh wow, wait a minute, there's a whole other way to go about investing, and it made me pivot right. So because I saw that and because I was having my issues, I ended up taking action to get started and raise capital for our deals. The very first deal we did was 192 units. It was a $16 million acquisition. We raised around $6 million for that.

John Casmon:

Now I want to be clear I didn't raise all that money myself. As a matter of fact, I raised probably a smaller portion of that, and that's the beautiful thing about commercial real estate you don't have to do it all by yourself. It truly is a team sport. And because I was starting out, I was able to leverage the experience of another group, the credibility of another group, and bring my investors into the fold to just be a part of that deal. And eventually I got that experience where I could go out, do my own deals and scale that way.

John Casmon:

So here's some of the tips to raise capital for deals One and I always tell people. There are really three C's when it comes to raising capital. The first C is going to be confidence. Confidence comes from preparation. You got to put in the work, okay. You need to know everything about the market. You need to know the deal. You need to know about the risk. You need to know how to mitigate the risk, even if you've never done it before. You're listening to this podcast, you're listening to me, you're listening to Ed. You've got to educate yourself so that you actually know what a good deal looks like. You need to underwrite deals. You need to put in offers. You need to talk to the other folks in the market and the industry so you can recognize and pinpoint these opportunities, create a great business plan and go from there. Confidence can't be faked. If you're in it, you're reading it, you're analyzing deals, you're going to be able to recognize those opportunities and you're going to be confident about it.

John Casmon:

The second thing is credibility, especially if you're new. Right, if you're new, you don't have much credibility as a new investor, but you do have your professional experience. In my case, I was in marketing and advertising for 15 years. I oversaw a hundred million dollar advertising campaigns and did some big, huge promotions. I was recognized as one of the top marketers in advertising, so I had that credential there. But on top of that, my credibility came from the partnerships I was able to build, both leveraging the experience of my mentor, my property management company, the contractors that I tapped into, the brokers that I was working with. So by putting all that experience together, that gave me credibility.

John Casmon:

Then, lastly, is connections you have to be able to take the network you currently have and be able to expand that. We talked about podcasting earlier, but podcasting is a great way to make some new friends right, make some new connections and expand your network. And that's really key. If you're going to raise capital, you can't rely on one individual. You have to be able to build a network and serve that network with these opportunities. So those three C's are absolutely critical if you're going to raise capital it's the confidence, it's credibility and it's connections.

Ed Mathews:

You're raising six Tells me that probably half, a little bit more than half, of that was for down payment and the rest was to do rehab and upgrade.

John Casmon:

Yeah, so the beautiful thing, if you are interested in being active and scaling and being in the business, is as a multifamily investor and, I guess, more directly, as a multifamily syndicator you really get paid three ways, right.

John Casmon:

So you're raising capital for the down payment and the renovations, as you mentioned, and also the closing costs, but you can also get paid up front through what's called an acquisition fee, and this is the fee that you charge for the ability to be in the deal.

John Casmon:

As you may imagine, it takes a lot of work to build these broker relationships, to find deals, to do due diligence, to run this as a true business, so that acquisition fee is a way that we compensate the company to help keep things moving and hire employees and things like that, so there's an acquisition fee. The second way you get paid, though, is through cashflow, and that could be through asset management fees or cashflow distributions or just equity distributions in general. And then the third way you get paid is on the equity upside. So when we sell that property, typically it's going to be for a profit our LPs, our investors they get paid, but we also get paid as what we call the general partnership team. So you get paid three ways. So when you're raising that money up front, that $6 million, some of that goes to the down payment, some of that goes to the renovations, closing costs, reserves, but then a portion of that also comes to you, the general partnership team, as an acquisition fee.

Ed Mathews:

Nice, okay, and so I assume agency debt in a in a deal that size.

John Casmon:

So that deal was agency debt. There are some pros and cons to going to agency or bridge debt. I know some folks are really specific right now. We're like we only do agency. I don't want to touch bridge. There's some folks who've gotten in trouble right now with bridge debt.

John Casmon:

But the problem isn't bridge debt. The problem is just the assumptions that people make, and that's why it's all about the business plan. You have to have a strong business plan. You need to have some flexibility in case things change, which they always do. So make sure you build the right business exactly when things change. That's what you're really looking for. But there's a lot of benefits to agency debt. You got a fixed rate. You could typically do interest only periods. You can go with a longer period. There's lots of benefits there. Typically it's non-recourse loans, but with bridge, typically there's no prepayment penalty. You have more flexibility. You can refinance whenever you want. You can sell, you can exit whenever you want. But the downside, of course, is that the interest rate is typically variable, so you're not going to. You're really subject to wherever the market is at any given moment.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, hey man, I could talk about the way you operate your business and the raising money and insurance and all the other things that we can talk to. We need to start to land this plane, one of the things that I always like to ask entrepreneurs like you. I really want to understand what makes you tick and we go into the final four, and those final four questions, hopefully, will help us understand who you are and what you do for a living and, more specifically, what gets you out of bed on Monday morning. Let's talk about that first, if you could finish the sentence for me. My purpose is I'm curious. What drives you?

John Casmon:

Yeah, it's a great question when I think about my purpose. I've spent a lot of time thinking about that because, as an investor, you can just build your own personal portfolio and be quiet and never get on a podcast and try not to let anybody know what's in your bank account. But obviously we get out here and we do this. So part of it for me is recognizing people need to see and hear stories like ours so that they understand it's possible for them. My purpose is to help other people find financial freedom through real estate investing, whether they want to be active or not. So that is what my purpose is. That's what I'm looking to do from a service standpoint.

Ed Mathews:

Awesome, I love it. And you had mentioned a mentor earlier on in our conversation, and I've yet to meet a successful person who hasn't had a coach or a mentor or a boss of some sort who've had a significant impact in their perspective and their own success. So I'm curious what is the best advice you ever got from someone like that in your life and who gave it to you?

John Casmon:

It's a great question, lots of great advice. I'll give one from the mentor, since we talked about him a little bit earlier. His name is Joe Fairless, by the way, very well known in the real estate space and podcast and landscape and you said Cincinnati, I figured.

John Casmon:

Yeah, joe's my guy, so good friend and great mentor. But he said something. I actually had him for my conference that I was hosting and he came out as one of our guest speakers. And the short story is, when I met him, I told you he had that one deal he raised a million dollars for. What I didn't mention is that deal was going terribly at the time that I met him and shortly after he started to scale up and do new deals with a new partner.

John Casmon:

So I asked him I said hey, reflecting back, what gave you the confidence to buy new properties and do new deals when you knew this deal was like just hemorrhaging money, when you knew this deal was just hemorrhaging money? And he said that's a great question. And he ultimately said I thought about it and ultimately I asked myself what would a billionaire real estate investor do? And that's so important because it's so easy to have these limiting beliefs based on the feedback or results we're seeing today, without focusing on the big picture of what we're becoming, whether it's trying to lose weight, whether it is trying to make money being an entrepreneur, you have to ask yourself what is the future version of me, how would they react?

John Casmon:

And if you want to be a billionaire real estate investor, you got to think like a billionaire real estate investor would, and in that case, if you got a bad deal, you don't stop investing in real estate because of one bad deal. Right, you got to keep pressing, learn, take the lesson and keep pressing forward, make those adjustments. So that's really important because I think it just helps people not to get their identity tied to one thing, whether it's real estate or anything else. Become the person you want to become and think like that person would think. That's the best advice I could give.

Ed Mathews:

Such good advice because I've seen, and even in particular, even then and I struggle with it to a certain extent, but you freeze right. You're like, oh my God, this isn't working. Okay, I got to stop and I got to figure this out, and it's the worst possible thing you can right. You've got to continue to make forward progress and and I love the idea of don't think like you are today, think of who you will become. Think like the person you will become. It's almost as the what's the act, as if, so that you don't get bogged down in that self-talk of okay, I'm failing, no, you're not, You're learning a lesson. Right, mistakes are simply lessons. They're bumps in the road that teach you something.

Ed Mathews:

I personally have learned almost everything I know from screwing stuff up and fixing it or not fixing it. The successes are wonderful, but I don't know that I learned a lot from them. I don't know about you, but I tend to learn a whole lot more when I stub my big toe on something. Absolutely, that's what the lessons are. Yeah, exactly, and they hurt bad, but that's okay, you get through them, okay. So when I look at folks that are in continuous growth, like yourself, one of the things that is almost universal is. Leaders tend to be readers, and that's very true of the entrepreneurs that I've met over the years as well, and so I'm curious how do you take in information physical books, podcasts, whatever and also, who are the authors and creators you tend to pay attention to?

John Casmon:

All of the above. What's worked for me more recently is there is an app called Headway and it's basically the short version of most books they have in 15 minute intervals. I like that and you could go on there. If you want something that's productivity or something that's about wellness or whatever it is, you can go and get the synopsis of a book in 15 minutes. It's really good.

John Casmon:

What I've been doing is when I go to the gym, I will play that while I'm warming up and stretching and walking on treadmill, whatever, and then I'm ready to work out. I'll put on something to get my energy going, but that's great. There are audio books. I love Audible, so I'll check out different Audible books and things like that. The thing that I'm listening to more now, or authors that I'm checking out I'm really big on just the marketing systems right now.

John Casmon:

We talked about the limiting beliefs and things like that with is really putting myself out there from a standpoint of not wanting to be like this guru kind of person. I've always had this resistance to coming across like a guy who just wants to be the social media person right. So it's been this internal conflict because I'm not allowing myself to grow and I'm basically sabotaging things to an extent, but, on the same note, I'm not allowing myself to grow and I'm basically sabotaging things to an extent. But, on the same note, I'm also not helping people who could really use the help from someone like me, and instead they go with someone else. Maybe there's another person who's completely qualified and cares and all that great, but you and I know that there are people who certainly just do it for the money and could care less whether or not you get results.

John Casmon:

So that's something I've had to deal with, and part of that is some mental process things. Also some tactical things. So there's a book it is right here, $100 million offers by Alex Ramosi that I was listening to, the audible version of this. The audible version was so good I'm like I need to get the physical so I can actually see this stuff. So I ordered this, got the physical. I didn't know it was going to be this big like a magazine, but I got the physical version.

John Casmon:

So this is one that I'm really interested in right now, just because it's a matter of tidying up offers and just how to make sure you're communicating value. I mentioned that I've got my coaching program. My clients are killing it in the program. Right, I got one dude I had. He had he was doing a deal. He raised no money. He thought he was going to raise a million dollars. He raised nothing. He hired me and within about three months he's raised $600,000 for this deal. So, with just a little tweaks and changes, same exact deal, by the way, same exact deal. So nothing fundamentally has shifted there, but he went from being able to raise zero to $600,000.

John Casmon:

So it's things like that where I know the value I provide for people, but I think sometimes we can be a bit too. I don't want to call it shy, but we don't like to toot our own horn, so it's getting out of our way to recognize. Hey, I know I provide great value for my clients. I need to make sure that we're communicating and conveying that so that they understand the value that they're going to get if they work with me. So this book's really great and I like authors that kind of help us help other people and be more effective there.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and a hundred million lead and a hundred million dollar leads is as good a book. They're both outstanding. So I'm curious, you mentioned your student. What was that switch that flipped for him?

John Casmon:

There were a couple of things and a lot of it's what we've just talked about. Right? One of the biggest mistakes I see investors make when they're looking to raise capital is one they come from a place of fear. Okay, so they've got this number in their head that they got to hit, and it's it can be daunting, right, it's okay, if I don't hit this number, I'm not going to be doing this deal.

John Casmon:

So if you got to raise $500,000 and you're approaching someone like you need them to invest, otherwise you're not going to close this deal, guess what it's going to feel like you're desperate. It's going to feel like you need me to invest, and that's not going to make anybody comfortable, right? That's why that confidence is so important. You almost have to approach it where you don't care if they invest or not, and it's not a toy. Again, I'm not saying that as like a sales tactic. I'm saying you need to have so many options that it's really just a matter of finding the right person, not finding that person right.

John Casmon:

I don't care if you invest. I need someone to invest, but I don't need you to invest. I'm going to give you the opportunity, but I'm also talking to other people. So it was shifting that mindset, but also giving him some strategies and some tactics so that he truly had options and he wasn't relying on one person to write a big check. He was really now tapping into his entire network, sharing what he was doing, sharing the opportunity and now giving them the chance to decide. Hey, that's something I want to be a part of. Awesome, yeah, I love that.

Ed Mathews:

But hey, that's something I want to be a part of. Yeah, I love that. So I'm a sales and marketing guy in my background as well, and I was never more effective than when I knew that I'd already made my number for the month, quarter, year right, Because I didn't care if you bought, I didn't care if you invested, I was just going to do the right thing and help you understand here's the opportunity. You can take advantage of it or not that you understand here's the opportunity. You can take advantage of it or not. That's up to you.

Ed Mathews:

And that change in mindset was revolutionary. Whether you're raising money or selling stuff or whatever, the other thing that I always that I had to overcome and this was a while ago, but I occasionally still struggle with it is you're not asking for anything, right? You're offering an opportunity. You've said that a couple of times. Anything right, You're offering an opportunity. You've said that a couple of times, John, and I think it's exactly right. You're trying to help and you're trying to get somebody to either break free from the rat race and create another passive income stream that hopefully someday will allow them to take that job and tell his boss to shove it. More importantly, you're helping them get off the stock market rollercoaster which has been a bit trying over the last month or so, and over the last 50 years for that matter. But so yeah, it's interesting how a change in perspective, a change in mindset, can change your effectiveness and your ability to do something and help someone right.

John Casmon:

Absolutely. And to crystallize that, when I did my first raise, it wasn't until we closed on the property and one of my investors said thank you to me, and when they said thank you, my initial reaction was thank me, no, thank you. But then I processed and they clarified and I did everything that I said this was going to do right. We had a platform to provide them with passive income. We had a platform that could give them wealth appreciation. We had a platform to help them reduce their taxes. We had a platform that gave them diversification from the stock market, as you just called out, and they don't have to do any work. How great is that?

John Casmon:

So when our process is, yes, I'm getting compensated for it, but I'm providing a real service, it's not like I'm just begging my friends to invest. No, I'm providing a real service and I got a lot of work I'm doing on this. So when that truly connects and you realize that it's not these people helping you, it's really the other way around, and you can truly internalize that, then you don't feel the pressure of trying to get somebody to invest or whatever like that. Now, it's just a matter of hey, let me find the right people who are looking for these opportunities and make sure that they have the information they need to make an informed decision.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's not multi-level marketing where you're selling your family's hope, right? I mean it's Come on, john, I need you to invest in this. Just this one thing, right? The fact is that and one of the things that I do with my friends and family is you have to ask I'm not selling you a thing, right? I'm not the guy at Thanksgiving dinner selling to Uncle Dave the next great deal. It's just not the way my brain works. But I never want to be that guy. The dinner party was like hey, you want to buy my stuff? I tend to find those people creepy, but the fact is that if you provide opportunity and folks come along and come in and out of your life and some of them will go hey, I want to learn more about that. Great, let's have a cup of coffee and let's talk about it and see if it's a good fit. And sometimes it is, sometimes it's not, and either way is fine, right? Absolutely All right. Last of the final four.

John Casmon:

I almost got waylaid here, but I want to know what success means to you. Success for me really means control over how you spend your time, who you spend your time with and what you're doing during that time. It took me a while to really come to that conclusion. I remember when I was first starting out in my corporate career there was a senior executive at an agency I was working for and I was like an intern or whatever very junior, extremely junior right, and someone asked this person about work-life balance and they were trying to say they had a work-life balance. And someone asked if they had kids and they said, yeah, how old are your kids? And the person paused and didn't think figure out how old their kids were. And then they were asking another question about the kids and they couldn't quite answer that and they eventually just said the nanny kind of handles all of that. And that stuck with me as wow, like I never want to be that disconnected from my family or my kids. And I didn't get to this in a story.

John Casmon:

But when I was in my career in advertising there was a moment where it really shifted me to say I need to start raising capital Cause. I was very apprehensive at first, but it was my son's birthday and I think he was like I don't know three or something, so very young. But it was his actual birthday and there was a shoot that I needed to go on. I didn't want to go, I didn't want to miss my kid's birthday and there was nobody else who could go, so I ended up having to fly to Atlanta do this shoot. I'm miserable and I'm pissed, and I never. I didn't know why. For years I didn't understand why I missed. I didn't miss his birthday party or anything like that, I just missed his actual birthday.

John Casmon:

I realized later on that it's because two of the values I cherished the most were in direct conflict. I cherished being a hard worker, being reliable, being dependent. My father was like that straight blue collar, never miss a day. That was something that was ingrained in me. But I also cherished family and putting family over everything, and in that moment I chose the job. It frustrated me because I never really directly said that, because I could have just said no, I'm not going to spend my time with father or my kid.

John Casmon:

You figure out what you need to do If that does. If that means I need to give my resume, that means that. So I, when I fast forward in process, oh, I need more control over my life. That led me down the path of raising capital, because the reason I couldn't get more control is because I didn't have enough money to invest. If I got to a point where I didn't have to rely on how much money I had, then I could invest. And that forced me to say get out of your own way. If family is the most important thing to you, make it the most important thing is, stop with the excuses. So that pushed me and, like I said, I met Joe and things took off from there.

John Casmon:

But control, success means control. Do what you want to do, and it's okay. If your control is not the same as mine, right. If you love work and that's what you want to do, great. But be in control of the work you do, where you work, how you work. Just take that control and that's what true success means to me. Take that control.

Ed Mathews:

And that's what true success means to me. Yeah, money is time. Right, it's your ability to decide. Okay, it is 6 AM on Monday morning and I'm going to be specific about how I'm going to spend, intentional, about how I'm going to spend next 12 hours before I sit down to dinner with my family, and to have that power in your life. That power in your life, um, is a gift you give yourself. Hopefully, the folks that are listening out there you're listening to John, you're paying attention to what he's saying, because having the ability to decide what you're going to do that day on Monday morning at 6.00 AM, um is one of the more empowering things you can do as a human being, because having to go to work is one thing, getting to go to work is an entirely different thing.

Ed Mathews:

Right, and yeah, I had a similar experience. First four years of my oldest daughter's life. I was gone on her actual birthday because the company I was working for, their national sales meeting, was the first week of November every year, and when I told her I was leaving, when I told her, hey, I'm getting a new job, the first thing out of her mouth was does that mean we get to hang out or to spend time on my birthday, and I'm like, oh, and it never occurred to me she was three and four, but it never occurred to me that she was even and four, but it never occurred to me that she was even cognizant of the fact that, hey, it's my birthday, my daddy's not here, and you know what she was. And it broke me and that was one of the things that put me on the path that you and I are on right now. So kudos to you for recognizing that early on.

Ed Mathews:

So, john, I've really enjoyed this conversation. I really enjoyed your podcast. By the way, could you tell folks about your podcast and then we'll land this plane.

John Casmon:

Yeah, this podcast is called Multifamily Insights. It's available wherever you listen to shows Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube and we talk to professionals in the multifamily space, some folks who are in marketing or mindset but really trying to help people learn how to build a multifamily portfolio. Whether you're active, whether you're passive, trying to get started, already have a huge portfolio but want to scale. Great insights, great guests like yourself. So we love to talk to other folks just to understand what challenges they've overcome and just really give you the insights necessary to be successful. So check out Multifamily Insights wherever you listen to podcasts.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and I can vouch for it. I'm a regular listener and I learn something on every show, so thank you for doing what you do, John. All right man. So when you're not saving the world from real estate, what do you like to do for fun?

John Casmon:

We talked about control right, and my youngest son has become very athletic. I'm guessing he was always very athletic, but it really. Despite my best attempts, he's become that dad who's like all in his kid across the town all day, but I end up coaching his football team. So that's something I've really enjoyed. We've got a group of 20 some kids and being able to teach them some of the values that we've learned later in life and trying to instill those lessons into them as little kids I think is so much fun and also just a great game to play. It's bonds that they'll have for the rest of their life. So I really enjoy spending time with my boys and the things that they enjoy doing and again having the flexibility to be a present father, so that's something I really enjoy.

Ed Mathews:

Awesome, fantastic. And so if folks wanna learn more about Casman Capital, your coaching program or your podcast or anything else, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

John Casmon:

Yeah, just go to KazmanCapitalcom. You can find the buttons there to reach out, schedule a call and all that stuff. We're going to be doing a Raising Capital webinar very soon as well, so all the links and stuff for that will be on the website. So just go to KazmanCapitalcom.

Ed Mathews:

All right hey.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Ed Mathews - Clark St Capital

Host