Mathew Pezon’s Journey From Chemical Engineer to Full-Time Real Estate Investor

Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to the Wealth in Yourself Podcast, a show dedicated to helping you master the complex subject of money by simplifying it through stories and actionable advice. I'm Josh St. Laurent and this is Wealth in Yourself. Josh St. Laurent: Welcome to The Wealth in Yourself Podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. I'm your host, Josh St. Laurent. Today, we're joined by Matthew Peason. Matt and his wife, Anna, started doing property renovations themselves in 2014 and now own over 200 rental units without any investors or partners by buying deals off market. After side hustling for almost a decade and almost getting fired right out of college, Matt quit his corporate job and now buys and repositions small, multifamily properties full time. Today, we're talking about how to achieve financial freedom and scale of business to 25 million in assets starting from nothing. Josh St. Laurent: There's a big place in Matt's heart for helping historically disadvantaged groups learn to invest in real estate. He donates time and resources to facilitate credit counseling, financial literacy and real estate entrepreneurship at the real estate lab in Allentown, Pennsylvania. We're going to look at the mindset of the entrepreneur, how business processes set the business owner free and the steps entrepreneurs can take to know their financial numbers. Matt, welcome. I'm glad you're here. Mathew Pezon: Thanks for having me. Josh, I'm excited to be here. Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. I've been really looking forward to this conversation. If you want to just kick us off or anyone who's listening who's not familiar with you, what do you want them to know about you and the work that you do? Mathew Pezon: Sure. So I started out a typical path went to college, did chemical engineering school and I converted from that to the very generous bio that you just gave there to a real estate investor. Mathew Pezon: So really the message that I want to send is that anything is possible and I'm not from any type of wealth or money and I'm paving my own way and it's absolutely possible and just a normal guy from a normal background and I'm excited to explore that with your audience today. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious as to the journey, like how did this come to be where you were in school for chemical engineering and then you work in corporate America? What was the transition like? How did you decide? What? I'm going to start investing in real estate. Mathew Pezon: Right. It's the next natural thing. It's actually not. I'm from the fourth generation of engineers. So that was the natural path. When I graduated from chemical engineering school in 2010, it was the depths of the great financial crisis. Jobs were hard to come by and I was fortunate enough to get a job. Mathew Pezon: These days it's a different job market but at the time it was tricky. So I got a job in a career development program. The first role was in IT and not related to chemical engineering. They had no documentation, no processes. It was sink or swim and I sank and my boss told me I was the worst employee the company ever had and they should fire me. So it was not the best start to my professional career. I should probably call that boss and thank him because he did me a huge favor and I didn't know it but I was scared. I didn't know how is I going to pay this 50 grand of debt that I had accumulated with my student loans and car loans. How is I going to do this? I had negative $50,000. I had no cash and my boss wanted to fire me. Mathew Pezon: It was scary and I needed to figure out another way and that's when I think the entrepreneur me was born that day. Josh St. Laurent: Very nice. So what was the first deal that you did maybe talk about some of the learning lessons too along the way because I'm sure that's changed compared to the deals that you're now buying? Mathew Pezon: Sure. After college, I was working full time and I was really learning how to be an employee, how companies worked, how systems, processes, big companies do things. And then I went to business school because I knew that I couldn't rely just on chemical engineering. I learned that pretty fast thanks to my first boss. So I wanted to go to business school and I wanted to go to Spain and to Europe and learn there. So I did a full bright scholarship and then that's when I learned about debt. Mathew Pezon: I went to IE Business School and I learned about debt. I learned about investing and I learned about entrepreneurship, about enterprise, about commerce and business and it just it opened my eyes to what's possible. So when I got back to the US in 2014, I immediately started buying houses, but it took about six to eight months of learning and we could dive into that. But I didn't just put in an offer and buy the first house that I came across. I probably saw 100 houses before I bought one. So it was a game of education, finding mentors, coaches. And that's how I got started, but I did the academic portion first. Then I got mentors and coaches and finally after almost two years of classroom study and mentorship and learning and seeing 100 properties, I finally bought one. I want to make sure I don't make any mistakes. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, definitely. I can totally resonate with that. My journey was similar when it comes to real estate investing, getting the education first. So that very first deal, you said you looked at it maybe 100 houses. How narrow was your niche back then? Did you know you wanted to invest in a multi-family property where you're looking at a little bit of everything? Maybe you were looking at single-family properties. Can you talk about how you narrowed in on that first investment and what made you feel good about it? Mathew Pezon: Yeah. So originally, I wanted to buy one house a year for 10 years and I just wanted to buy single-family homes because it's what I could come up with a down payment for. I fortunately was able to save up enough money in that eight months or so before I bought the first house and I had paid off all my student loans by living very fruently. Mathew Pezon: So I had, I think, 20 or $25,000 saved up. At the time, I had no kids. Now I have three children and three out of three actually. So it was different back then. I could just cut my costs and that was it. But at the time, I was really looking for what can I afford and I wanted to do single-family rentals. I thought one house per year for 10 years and I should be able to retire. That was my only real thought process. What can I afford and let me do one per year? I think I can save 20 grand a year. That's enough for a down payment, at least in my market and at the time. And that's what I niched in on. Josh St. Laurent: Now are you buying local to you in Pennsylvania or what, how did you decide on the market that you landed into? Mathew Pezon: Local to me in Pennsylvania, I could go and meet the investors and I could be in person with them, walk the properties together with them. So I was right there. It was people in my backyard that I could meet with. I happened to live in a good investing market. Josh St. Laurent: That's amazing. So you're investing local to you. The plan to start was one house a year for 10 years. I spent 10 years in the bio. I covered that you've got 200 rental units. So something went awry in the plan there. So can you talk about how you went from, you know, the goal was 10 and you ended up with 200. How did that happen? Mathew Pezon: The mentors that I was associated with, they helped me understand that I could put three and a half percent down on a house and own four units but live in one and rent out the other three, which I did. Mathew Pezon: And so I bought the first house in October by February. I identified a four unit property of the following year. So four months later. But I think I only needed like $8,000 or $9,000 to close on the house as a four unit. And then a few months later, there was a really discounted two unit that I was able to buy as a construction loan with the bridge lender that the group introduced me to. So by being involved with the right group and having the right team and they had contractors and title companies and lenders, they could refer me to I was able to grow faster than I ever thought possible just by meeting the right people. Josh St. Laurent: And this was like a mentoring group locally to you. It sounds like of other real estate investors that you could sort of learn from. Mathew Pezon: That's right. That's right. Mathew Pezon: It was a local realtor who would take people around to investment properties and at the time, there were more readily available. But the principles of real estate investing haven't changed and those realtors still know contractors, title companies, lenders, etc. So you could still anyone could do this today if you find an investment focused realtor in investment properties that really specialize in it. A lot of realtors will say they specialize in investments, but they don't. A true investment focused realtor who can teach you. You can become a really good repeat client for them and they'll help you along the way. Josh St. Laurent: Couldn't agree more. What about along the way I have to imagine, especially early on, let's say year one, where they're hurdles that ended up being learning lessons, maybe through the group and the mentors that you had or maybe on your own, you had to kind of learn the hard way. But I hear a lot of stories from especially new investors. It's like, man, year one, I learned so much. Like I thought it was one way, but it was totally different. Can you talk about the early days and some of the big learning lessons? Mathew Pezon: I had all the knowledge up front and I never made any mistakes. No, just kidding. That's I made all the mistakes in the book. And even reading books, I would still not do it. Not for everything, but really it's you realize I tried to be proactive to learn best practices. But I still hired bad contractors. I still would let the wrong residents into the homes. I didn't get the best financing terms that I should have of all the things. Right. Mathew Pezon: So that's not to dissuade anyone from getting involved, but I just tried to take the blinders off when I say that no matter whoever's trying to get into a new business, any business, even if it's a well-worn path like real estate is, there will be trials and tribulations, there will be difficulties. The key is to learn and read and get involved with communities and mentors as early as possible. And then actually do the stuff that people say to do or not do. And that's where I went wrong. I academically knew stuff, but then I would get taken advantage of by contractors due to payment terms or quality issues or whatever. And so just get educated, learn, and yeah, you'll get battered and bruised a little bit, but just make sure you're purchasing deals deep enough that the deal can support any of your mistakes, because you won't make mistakes. Josh St. Laurent: So let's dig into that a little bit, because I know that was a part of your bio that jumped out to me. Like how are you finding these quote unquote good deals, right? That have enough of a buffer in there to make way for, you know, interviewing the different contractors and having a little leeway with tenants and things like that? How do you find the good deals? Mathew Pezon: You don't find them on the MLS. Typically you find them as referrals. I do a lot of direct to seller marketing. So I would get home after work and I would go on the county website, look up all the properties in the area I wanted to buy and I would handwrite letters. I hand wrote in hand address, 600 letters and mail them out. That took me almost a full weekend. I wouldn't recommend doing that like long term, but I just wanted it. And so that's where the deals are. It's just going right out to the people that own the houses. Mathew Pezon: It's either you're solving one of two problems to get a deal. You're solving either a people problem or a property problem. And if you can provide solutions, you can get properties at a discount. Someone's willing to sell their property to you for cheaper because you can either fix it or resolve a resident or a personal problem that they have. They either need a cash offer. The residents are allowing any showings, properties trashed. They're behind other taxes or mortgage. Like any of these people are property problems. If you can solve them and sellers will call you and ask you to solve that problem for them, you can buy a house at a discount. And that's your compensation for solving that problem. Josh St. Laurent: Now are there clues that you're looking for when you're on, let's say the county website, that are sort of a giveaway of, hey, there might be a people or property problem associated with this specific property I'm looking at? Mathew Pezon: Sure. There are definitely clues. In the earlier days, I would drive around and I would look for houses that looked like they need work. The grass was long. There was mail stuffed in the mailbox that was overflowing. So no one was there basically to pick it up. They were broken windows. The roof was really old and it looked like it was leaking, but the owner hadn't fixed it. I would just write all these properties down. So you can physically go look and see which properties have problems. From there, that's on the property side. So you could just get in your car, bike, whatever, ride around, cord addresses and send letters. Mathew Pezon: On the people side, each county is different depending on your state and each county is different. But in the US, any lender issues or tax issues or credit card judgments or divorces or whatever, they're all recorded at the county courthouse. So if you can go online to the county's website, create an account. It's usually free or it's a small fee. You can search all of these judgments as they're being filed. You can see that a lender filed on this homeowner today. So what can you do? Well, I know people that go knock on the door, I haven't done that, but I send them letters. And you can see all the tax judgments and all these different things, who's in probate. So you can find all this online on the county website and then you send letters. And that's the people side. It's the property issues or the people issues. Josh St. Laurent: Got it. It's sort of a driving for dollar situation. Sometimes where you're looking at the property itself or digging into the county website and trying to find maybe something on the people's side of things that could alert you to, hey, this might be a good deal or a good property. So it sounds like the transition was quick, right? From single family to multi family, your mentor has sort of showed you a path to, hey, use, you know, three and a half percent down. Josh St. Laurent: I'm assuming FHA mortgage to lock in like a fourplex or something like that. So then taking the next step, you mentioned early on, especially like finding a good contractor, finding good tenants. That was sort of the next piece of the puzzle. What do you do differently now? Would you say from, you know, let's say your first year of investing to sort of short and that cycle to finding a good contractor or maybe you've built out a team at this point? Mathew Pezon: Right. So I have built out the team and I have relationships with the people that I do business with over and over again. The short and the process or short circling, it really comes down to having the right team and people in place, both on the rehab side, the right bankers to finance the properties and then the right property managers to manage. So it's by it right, finance it right, manage it right. Mathew Pezon: If you can do those things, you can scale. But if any one of those breaks, if you pay too much, if you can't get alone or you can't get your capital back or if you just let the property go and you don't manage it right and you don't manage the resident correctly, if any one of those breaks, your business will break. Ask me how I know that. Right. Yeah. They'll all happen to me. My first flip, I lost 12 grand. Just I've had the wrong resident and you need the right contractor and the right team to do the renovations as well. But that kind of goes with managing it right. Any of those three things break, it's going to break. Josh St. Laurent: I would love to hear in your mind, what is the biggest mistake that turned out to be like the biggest learning lesson? Mathew Pezon: So there's all these risks that happen when you're buying a property. Mathew Pezon: What's behind the walls is the resident, if it's occupied, is the resident going to pay? What type of timeline is this going to take to do all these repairs? What type of budget will it take? What quality of work will the contractor do? Or just our jobs leaving are coming to the area. What are interest rates going to do? So I could go on and on about risk and risk mitigation is a key element of staying solvent. But it really comes down to how do you offset those risks? Mathew Pezon: You pay less for the property. If you go over budget, if you pay full market price and now you go over budget on the rehab, not only did you pay full market price, but now you're under water because you invested more money into the house than it's worth. So you can't scale a business that way. Mathew Pezon: In order to offset risks, you must purchase at a discount so that all of those risks are lower. You build in all the risk to the offer to the seller. Josh St. Laurent: Do you have a spreadsheet that you use to calculate the highest price maybe that you would be willing to pay? That way you can go into a deal and have for the negotiation, hey, this is the price where I can't go above. Mathew Pezon: Yes, and I've built it out over 10 years and there are calculators you can get online and different things that do the same thing. So not all listeners are as maybe as financially minded as me, but you don't have to have this super sophisticated Excel spreadsheet. Just get started. If you know when you research on zillow or realtor.com or whatever, that houses are trading for 200, but you can buy it for 120 and put 30 into it. Mathew Pezon: You're into it for 150. It's worth 200. Chances are pretty good that you mitigated all the risks there, right? Even if you go over budget by double, you're now you're into it for 180. Well, it's still worth 200, right? So you don't need a super sophisticated spreadsheet. I have one that we have all of our exit strategies are in there. If we're going to like try to put a property on the MLS and innovate it or if we're going to hold it as a rental or if we want to flip it, like who the end buyer would be, we have all that. But you don't need that. Just take action. Get started. Find good deals, get hungry and make some equity. Make it happen. Josh St. Laurent: Yes, yes, absolutely. I second that. So I'm curious about like what is the plan for you moving forward? You got the 200 units now. Josh St. Laurent: It sounds like some of them you sell, some of them you rent. What about looking forward? Let's say the next 10 years. What does that look like for you and your company? Mathew Pezon: I have a young family like I mentioned earlier. And so I want to build something for them, for myself, build a big business and help my family achieve financial stability. So that's that's a key principle for me. On the business side, I'm going to continue buying single family and small multi-family assets. It's just very, it's a liquid space to be. There's always a buyer. Your end buyer is usually a family who wants to live there. With how inventory is so constrained, I don't see my investment thesis changing much in the next 10 years. So I mostly buy and hold, but I do flip just a generic cash for down payments if it's not a rental asset. Mathew Pezon: Where I'm going to add an additional business is in the medium to large multi-family space. As my team grows and gets more competent, there's 10 of us. I'd like to do more flips, generate more cash and just buy 20, 30, 40, 50 unit apartment buildings. Basically trading the greenhouses into a hotel, kind of like to use them on an opal analogy. Up until now, I've only been focused on the greenhouses, but in the next 10 years, I plan to focus on the red hotels. Just not actual hotels. I don't plan to be in that business. It's very nice. Josh St. Laurent: Well, that's exciting. If someone's listening and they're like, man, I want to recreate what Matt did. What advice would you give them? Where should they start? What should they be doing in the next, let's say, 90 days to get their first property and get the ball rolling? Mathew Pezon: Before anyone focuses on real estate out there, they need to focus on the real estate between their years. And so I mean their mindset, their mentality, how they think about wealth, how they think about money. So it always starts in the mind. And after that, what's your credit score? How much cash do you have in the bank? How can you maximize your income drastically cut your expenses so you can save cash for down payment? And then you need to find your market. You need to find your team. So after you have your mindset and your investment philosophy, your market and your team, then and only then can you find the property. People want to jump to the property and they don't think right about money. They don't know why they picked the market that they picked and they don't have a team. So, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, I buy from a lot of those people. Mathew Pezon: They get in over their head. They don't know what they're doing. They don't have a team and they turn properties into blighted situations that then people like me come in and fix. But at the end of the day, it starts in your mind. It's your mentality and then it's your finances, your team, your market and then the house. So don't jump right to the house. Everyone wants to do that. Don't do that. Get educated. Fix your mindset. Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. The education and the mindset are so crucial. Like, when it comes to real estate investing, do you have any tips on finding mentorship or finding groups or people to learn from when it comes to real estate investing? Mathew Pezon: Yes. So one thing that I'm super passionate about that you read in the intro is giving back. So I donate time resources, energy to help other aspiring entrepreneurs get started in real estate. Mathew Pezon: So finding groups like a real estate lab in Allentown or going to meet ups, finding local investors, a lot of realtors post stuff on social media. So find who is doing something successfully, not what they're saying, not what they're putting on social media, but what they're actually doing. And you're going to have to sift through a lot of marajas to get to the right people, find people that are actually doing the thing and then find out what value you can offer them. Don't just go to them and say, can you help me? Can you mentor me? Those that have made it in the real estate business are very generous at their time in education. They know the value, but try to give first before asking for something. It's just a best practice that I found. Try to give away freely before asking for anything in return. Mathew Pezon: And if you give first, you're more likely to get and find the local people who maybe will end up taking you under their wing and learn from them. Josh St. Laurent: I love that advice, especially the giving before getting is so important. I think a lot of people skip over that. I'll throw a question out at you here that I get from a ton of real estate investors. Not sure how applicable it is. It sounds like a lot of the real estate you've done has been local to you, especially out in my neck of the woods, people in the Bay Area, California, buying locally is not always an option for them. So do you have any advice for those people who are living in an area where they're priced out? They want to invest in real estate, but it more than likely needs to be remote investing outside their local area. Mathew Pezon: Right. So I was actually in California last week and I saw that Southern California. So Russell Gray, it was one of the real estate guys, but they say, live where you want to live and invest where the numbers make sense. And so I think that principle is true. You won't cash flow in those markets in California coastal markets, but you can still live there. That's great. There's a lot of attractive things about coastal markets and that's excellent. But you need to invest where the numbers make sense where the rents can support the debt. That way you don't have to come up with a 500,000 teller down payment. So there are markets like that, Midwest, the South, Pennsylvania, some market like that. It's absolutely doable. But make sure you go, you build relationships, you really need and get to know very well your boots on the ground and be willing to go to the market regularly to make sure that the team knows that you're on it, right? Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, couldn't agree more. I think that's the biggest hurdle I would imagine when people are trying to invest remotely is building the team, finding the good people and not cutting corners. Do you have questions that you ask new contractors that you haven't worked with before, or maybe a better way to ask this question is how do you weed out and make sure that you're working with someone that you're going to be able to trust and rely out and be a part of that team, you know, over the long term? Mathew Pezon: It is tricky, but there's a set of, there's a pattern that I've seen over time. Whether it's with any vendor, you can google them and look up their business and see what type of ratings or reviews they have. If it's a one or two-man crew, just getting referrals who have you worked with before, then just meeting them, shaking hands, seeing what they're like, and then setting up your contract terms. If a contractor wants more than 25% down to start, I don't work with them because that means they're taking my deposit to finish the last job. The most expensive part of a job is the labor generally. Now, if it's just like a granite countertop install, well, that's, you know, the granite's the most expensive thing, but if you're, you're renovating a house, paint, flooring, stuff like that, like the hardest part and what takes all the time is the labor, so if they need 50% down, it's because they ran out of money in the last job. So I like to give maybe 15, 20% down tops to pay for material and you should just ask them, why do you need 50% down? You're not buying all the materials up front, so what's the money going towards? Like, just ask, where's the money going? Oh, well, you know, I just need to pay my guys and, well, it's only, you know, it's a five-week project and you quickly realize they can't even make payroll on Friday, right? Let alone by the supplies and if they're that like thin on their cash, it doesn't matter what they say, they're going to do what they have to do and it's not in your interest. There's just a series of questions like that that I ask contractors. Josh St. Laurent: Yes, that's very true. I've learned that less than the hardwant, fortunately. The issue with the contractors usually isn't the quality, it's like the money or the time they're either going to take six months when it should be six weeks or they need all the money now and are they going to run off with it? Like usually if you can get them to do the work, it's going to be okay, they're good enough quality, but they all love to send you the quality pictures. Look at this renovation I did and like look at this good work I do, but they want all the money up front, right? So like just be mindful. Quality, they're probably all going to do it about the same. It's the money and the schedule you have to watch out for. Mathew Pezon: Yes, it's a great point. Josh St. Laurent: Something I didn't realize early on, but it is such an important point. So I appreciate you bringing that up. I like to just throw it back to you kind of at this point in the show and say, what am I not asking that I should be? Josh St. Laurent: Right? Like what should we be talking about? Maybe it's siphon deeper into mindset or finding deals or maybe something else that we haven't even talked about at all, but I wanted to throw it back to you and just ask what else? Mathew Pezon: Marketing and sales. I mentioned all the risks in how do you offset the risks, the contractor risks, the bank risks, tenant risks, all the risks. It comes back to getting a good deal and that comes back to how are you marketing? To whom are you marketing? And how are you doing in the sales process to get the deal? Mathew Pezon: You make money in real estate when you buy. So to survive in this business and to make money in this business, you have to buy, right? Everything downstream after you buy is a line item on a budget or a performer. You have to manage those things. I'm not saying they're not important, but you live and die by the deals that you do as an investor. So especially if it's your first or second or third deal, doing a bad one can set you back for a long time or can put you in the penalty box if you can't pay the lender. So it all comes back to sales and marketing. It's a people business at the end of the day. Like houses don't sell themselves. So you have to be good at marketing and sales to succeed in this business. Josh St. Laurent: You mentioned a couple of things at the beginning of the show. I know for your first deal or maybe your first couple, I'm sure it looked like writing 600 letters on the weekend handwritten to get responses from potential sellers. How has that evolved in transition? I know you mentioned social media posting. Are you still going on the county website? Are you still driving around looking for the long grass and the over full mailboxes? Or how has that evolved in your process? Mathew Pezon: Yeah. So in the beginning, I didn't have a process. I was the process. So today, we have a CRM. We treat it like a business. So we have, we use left-made REI, love that company. They changed a lot of things for us. We can track leads or follow up for leads. We have different cadences. We can see our marketing metrics and we ride our direct mail through them. I have a full-time person who sits in the Philippines who goes to all these county websites and pulls the data for late mortgages, late taxes. I have a call center and also full-time employees that answer the phones and a sales team that goes out to the properties. So it went from a one-man show, a guy who almost got fired and he's ducking in the conference room to do real estate deals so that his bosses don't know what he's doing. And I still got four out of five ratings and high performance reviews anyway, but it was a perception to me. So I never really talked about it at work, but I went from a one-man show to now a team of 10 and people that are really honed in their process with training, onboarding procedures, processes. So that's where we've grown to in the last 10 years. We're running this like a company. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, which a lot of people sort of skip that step, right? And they hit a wall or a ceiling really. I've seen this time and time again where people are doing all the investing themselves and it gets to a point where it's like, I'm doing all that I can. I can't really manage anymore. And it sounds like the solution in your world anyway was to sort of delegate that out, build a team, find the trustworthy people. Can you talk a little bit about the evolution of the team? Josh St. Laurent: Maybe like at one point it was just you, but what was that first hire? What, you know, was most important to offload and I imagine that plays into your own strengths as well. Mathew Pezon: Yeah, 100%. So my red line for me by myself was I think 150 doors that I had personally cured. My wife and I had our first son and we just had twins five months ago. So, you know, once we had our son, I really did have to choose job family real estate. I had to pick two and I'm not giving up my family and I want to give up real estate. So what principles that it's the no principle I had to learn what to say no to. I got crystal clear on what value I bring to the company. I knew that I needed to really hone in on sales process so that meant I couldn't do all the searches anymore and I couldn't do the loan packages anymore and I couldn't do a lot of like the long term follow up. I only needed to be closing the hot deals and going on appointments. That's all I had time for. Everything on the back end was back end, but what moved the needle for me was closing the deals. So I knew if I just could close the deals so then I hired one assistant then two then three then four to do all these tasks and now we're sending out you know 10,000 letters a month 12,000 14 16,000 letters a month. Now I need a sales guy and keep up with all this so it's just but then I need a training. How do I even recruit for that? I need a recruiting process. What's the right personality for that? What's the onboarding process? Where are the KPIs? I didn't have any of that stuff. So we've really in the last two years honed in on the business side, but for your listeners and for anyone out there who's looking to get started, just go do deals. Like you don't have to get caught up in what's the KPIs and what sales, you know, or what CRM and health often do I follow up? What do I say in the letter? Just write a simple letter to 500 people. Hi, my name's Matt. I want to buy your house. Call me at this number. Send it. Josh St. Laurent: That's it. Right. Don't let complexity be the enemy of progress. I love that advice. I do want to dig into the sales process. That sounds like kind of one of your strong suits where your focus is maybe taking us back to some of the earlier days. Like what did that look like when it was just you or maybe you and a small team, someone responds to your letter and they say, you know what, you caught me at the right time. I actually am looking to sell what are kind of the next steps between then and closing? What does that sales process look like or sound like? Mathew Pezon: Yeah. Well, first things first, people do business with those that they know like and trust. So I position myself as the local guy, our tagline's your neighbors. So, okay, we're just the people down the street that own a house near you, sell to us. Like we're already here. Might as well sell to someone who knows your area. Right. So I made myself relatable and then just talking to people, being a good listener, good people skills, and just letting them tell you about their problem and how you can fix it. And then once they know like and trust you, then you can buy your house, their house. And then at that point, you take it through the sales process. You have to order a title. You have to get insurance. You have to get a lender and you need the city to inspect for a CEO and worry about as is and then you close. So, but really the key is the front end of, okay, who am I mailing to and how do I treat those people when they call me? Josh St. Laurent: So important, right? In any sales cycle, like getting to know like and trust somebody, find out what their pain points are. It's so, so important. So I'm glad you went there. Josh St. Laurent: I want to transition a little bit, ask some more personal questions about you. These are sort of the big three that we asked towards the end of the show. So first question is, what does living a wealthy life look like for you? Mathew Pezon: Wealth is not only financial. I have come to realize this a lot more recently, especially having a family. I mean, there's just so many different aspects of wealth. Health is wealth, financial wealth, their spiritual wealth, emotional wealth, just our mental health, and are we reading, growing, family relationships? So there's all these different types of wealth. And so I was trying to optimize them all. And, and it's a given take. I mean, I could spend 16 hours in the office, but if I don't watch my kids grow up, like, I don't want to miss that. So it's this constant game of how do I create the most value in the amount of time that I have and 100% not just financial, like how I used to think. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, it's so much bigger than money. Yep. 100%. If you could give one message to someone working to gain financial freedom, who isn't there yet, what would it be? Mathew Pezon: Mindset, the mindset of the investor and a producer, someone who creates value is what will make the wealth and money follow. If Amazon didn't create value, people wouldn't buy on Amazon. If Apple didn't create value, people wouldn't buy iPhones. They would buy the next thing. So be someone of value with skills, knowledge, financing, ways to get deals close, and people will pay for that service. So think about wealth differently. Think as a producer, someone who creates value, who solves problems, and the wealth will follow. The money is just a result. So many people look at the money as the end goal, but that's only a result of helping other people. There was a huge mindset shift for me. Josh St. Laurent: Yeah, it's an interesting point. I mean, I'm sure you've run into this as well, talking to other real estate investors, but there is this perception out there that there's like these greedy money, hungry real estate investors that are just snatching up all these houses just to make all this money. But to your point, just a second ago, a lot of times you're solving a problem for the seller. You're making the house nicer than it was before. You're giving someone a great place to live. Like you are doing a lot of good and adding a lot of value along the way. And I think it's important to remember that as part of your process and not just skip over to only the financials. Mathew Pezon: That's right. And my counter to that sentiment is, well, why didn't the folks that have that opinion offer more, right? And buy the house themselves, right? It's, well, I mean, there's a buyer, right? So there's a market. And the other thing too is if creating value and capitalism, if that were bad, then there wouldn't be this innovation. And we'd all be stuck back in caves without wheels and without, you know, modern technology. But someone is driving innovation that helps everyone, right? So a profit motive is a good thing. I think that people look at money as bad. And that's one of the limiting beliefs that can hold those back who say they want to create wealth. But then they think it's a negative thing, or they think they're not worth it, that their services aren't worth enough. And then they undercharge or they take a loss. A profit motive is noble. It's the right thing to do. And you're creating jobs, you're creating opportunities, solving problems and driving society forward. You're solving blight, you're fixing issues. So you should and need to profit from those activities. Josh St. Laurent: I love how it just came full circle back to mindset to the original answer. So potentially, the hardest question of the day here, if you only had a thousand dollars and you were starting over, what would be the first thing you would do with that money? Mathew Pezon: I would put it into a savings account and I would pause and go online to the biggest free encyclopedia ever known to humanity and learn as much as possible for free on YouTube University. There's no lack of information, mindset, knowledge available. It's unbelievable what you can find for free online. I would join real estate, networking groups. I would do all this stuff for free. After a couple weeks or, you know, assuming that's a thousand dollars for investing, assuming you're making your normal like housing payments and food payments and stuff, that's your investment capital. Spend three to six months learning. And then I'd go out and I'd send $600 of letters. I'd see what happens. I would call those people back just with a relentless hunger and drive and passion. And then with the other $400, I'd probably send out postcards to the same list again. Josh St. Laurent: I like that. So really, the risk for you is making an uneducated decision right away with the thousand dollars and then it's gone and then you got nothing left. So your advice is really to get educated first, get the mindset in the right place and then go after some leads. I like that a lot. Mathew Pezon: That's right. And have a plan with what you're going to do with them. So yes. Josh St. Laurent: So for anyone listening who wants to connect with you, where is the best place to track you down online? Mathew Pezon: Sure. I probably should have a separate website, but my home buying website is pzonproperties.com. And we have a forum there. It's like our motivated seller form. So if you want to connect, fill that out. Just say that you found us here. Eventually, I'll set up another website. But for now, that's where folks can go. Josh St. Laurent: Awesome. I'll put it right in the show notes. So it's easy for people to track you down. But I appreciate you being here. This has been really fun. I'm glad that we did this. I learned a lot. Any parting words, anything else that we should know that we haven't talked about. Mathew Pezon: Just that mindset is really important. But believing that it's possible and feeling that you have that self worth, that you are worth creating wealth for, that you're worth generating the wealth for will drive you forward. It's not enough just to have the mindset or just have skills. You really have to believe and have drive. And you have to have a reason why push hard, but it's going to get difficult and that drive and that persistence will get you through and that perseverance. So that grit is needed to really make things stick for you. Josh St. Laurent: Absolutely. Thank you for being here, Matt. Appreciate it. Mathew Pezon: Thanks for having me, Josh. Josh St. Laurent: Definitely. This has been the Wealth in Yourself podcast where we help people to design their ideal life and take control of their time and money. Our guest today was Matt Pzon. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. The Wealth in Yourself podcast is hosted by me, Josh St. Loren, an edited and produced by Ray Haycraft. To learn more about how to make your money work for you, visit us at www.WealthInYourself.com and connect with us on all social media at Wealth in Yourself. This podcast is educational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice. Please do not construe anything said to be advice. And the opinions of the guests may or may not represent the opinions of Wealth in Yourself. This podcast and the information presented are separate from my employment at Golden Gate University. Still, they are part of my mission to make no cost financial knowledge more accessible. If you like the show, please take a moment to leave us a review. We read all of your feedback and we want to make sure we cover the topics that matter most. If you have a specific subject you'd like us to explore or a guest you'd love to hear interviewed, don't hesitate to shoot us a direct message. And as always, thanks for listening.