In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, Mat Zalk reflects on impactful conversations with Cain Wright, Scott Reeves, Ryan Mayfield, Deren Huang, and Ross Heyman. These industry leaders unpack strategies for scaling real estate investments, mastering sales techniques, and fostering leadership development. You’ll also hear about creative financing options, the evolving institutional investment landscape, and data-driven approaches to team success.
From Deals to Leadership: Expert Strategies for Building Wealth and Teams
Mat Zalk is the President and Property Manager at Keyrenter Property Management, which has offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Arkansas. He focuses on the acquisition and management of single and multi-family residential properties on behalf of himself and a small network of investors.
Before founding Keyrenter Tulsa, Mat was a Strategy Director at The Property Finder Group, where he worked closely with the CEO and senior management team on various international acquisitions, scaled local teams in the group’s Saudi Arabia and Egypt offices, and executed a number of strategic projects in the core business market of Dubai. Mat has been an active investor since 2014 and is a licensed real estate agent in Oklahoma.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [1:02] Incremental steps to successful property investing
- [2:00] Why activity and networking remain crucial in real estate sales
- [2:43] The transformative power of construction loans and private equity in property management
- [3:31] How the post-recession environment shaped institutional investments in single-family homes
- [4:55] The measurable benefits of team performance assessments in property management
In this episode…
Real estate and entrepreneurship often come with challenges, including scaling investments, mastering sales strategies, and building cohesive teams. Missteps in these areas can stall growth, but with the right strategies, they become powerful drivers for success. What insights can we gather from industry leaders who have navigated these complexities?
According to Cain Wright, focusing on “path of progress” areas allows for capturing equity while leveraging revitalization trends. Scott Reeves highlights the importance of consistent sales activity, emphasizing that effort often outweighs skill in achieving results. Ryan Mayfield discusses the transformative power of data-driven leadership, using performance metrics to target improvement areas and build stronger teams. Meanwhile, Deren Huang dives into creative financing and networking strategies, and Ross Heyman explores the rise of institutional investments in the build-for-rent movement, offering a macro perspective on emerging real estate trends.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Cain Wright on LinkedIn
- Scott Reeves on LinkedIn
- Deren Huang on LinkedIn
- Ross Heyman on LinkedIn
- Ryan Mayfield on LinkedIn
Quotable Moments
- “You get the rep, the reps, you start to understand it more.”
- “It’s all about activity… you can be the worst salesperson but have enough activity that you’ll still succeed.”
- “I learned about hard money, private money, partnerships… and started networking on a really normal basis.”
- “… institutional scale investors look for areas where there is not yet consolidation of ownership, and they create value that way.”
- “It’s not just shooting in the dark; we’re actually aiming at something, and we intend to be able to show a strong ROI on those things.”
Action Steps
- Start with a solid foundation in property types that are known to appreciate, such as single-family homes: This ensures a more secure investment due to their consistent demand and potential for increasing value.
- Adopt a persistent approach to sales and networking activities even if they are challenging: Consistent activity is a proven driver for opportunities, crucial in the highly competitive real estate market.
- Explore creative financing options like hard money and construction loans to expand your portfolio: Expanding financial literacy opens doors to more diverse investments and can accelerate growth.
- Stay informed about emerging “darling” asset classes to capitalize on trends before they become saturated: Early identification and investment in these asset classes can yield higher returns as the market matures.
- Implement regular data-driven team performance assessments to enhance efficiency: Metrics-driven assessments provide tangible goals for improvement and can directly correlate to increased productivity and ROI.
Sponsor for this episode…
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 00:04
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Mat Zalk 0:20
Mat Zalk here, I’m the host of The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business and real estate leaders. Thanks for tuning into this special edition of the show where we’ll take a look back at some of our favorite conversations from previous episodes. It’s brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter Property Management, we are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. No matter what rental you have, single family homes, condos, town homes, apartments, we have the management solutions you need. Go to keyrenterpmc.com or email us [email protected]. Now let’s hear some top conversations from past episodes.
Cain Wright 1:02
I always feel like the first four or five are the most difficult, right? So as you get the traction, you get the rep, the reps, you start to understand it more. We started to build some equity. I was growing professionally, and then, you know, it was time to, at that point, really gravitate in my in my view, I still love the single family model. I still do a few flips a year, but it was just an economies of scale thing. So I started, I had kind of developed this philosophy on single family of to some degree, a path of progress investor, right? So we discussed this a little bit. But, you know, I Don’t speculate on values, but I buy in areas that I don’t want to be the pioneer. I don’t want to be the first guy there, but as I start to see traction in certain revital revitalization and components to where I can justify a strong recaptured equity position at the time of when I’m finished, but I still anticipate some escalated appreciation because of the fundamentals of that area, that’s where I started pursuing.
Scott Reeves 2:00
Something I talk a lot about, and I’ve done a few sales trainings, is I did not like cold calling in 1989 when I first got out of college. I do not like it today, but it’s something you have to do. It’s all about activity. You can be the greatest sales person in the world, but if you’re not, you don’t have any activity, you will not succeed. So, and you can be the worst salesperson, but have enough activity that you’ll still succeed. So it’s a combination of both that and and it’s changed a lot, Mat, it’s, you know, with technology and LinkedIn and social media, you know that whole landscape has changed dramatically from when I first started, you’re picking up the phone or writing letters.
Deren Huang 2:43
Then I learned about construction loans. I learned about hard money, private money, partnerships and different things like that, and started networking on a really normal basis. And so kind of getting back to your first point of finding deals, if you’re the person finding deals, you know you usually can hopefully partner with people to either with the capital side or the experience side, because you have what they want, you have what most people want, which is a good, solid deal, or, you know, whatever the case might be. And so as just that experience kind of got deeper, and the knowledge and all the education kind of get further and further, plus then with, you know, human resources, whether it be partners or other people, managers, bankers, different things like that. That is kind of what shot me towards the, you know, in the stratosphere.
Ross Heyman 3:31
One of the events that occurred after that recession, or in the back half of the recession, was that institutional equity. So large scale investors started saying, hey, there is an investment opportunity to purchase single family homes with scale at a discount to their to what we believe their value is. And so you had groups like invitation homes that you know maybe they have $18 billion or so of single family homes on their balance sheet. So I think the build for rent movement was really something that came after this idea that, you know, in real estate there’s, to my knowledge, anyway, always sort of been darling asset classes. So at one point it might have been self storage, or maybe it’s medical office or manufactured mobile home, housing, the build for rent, single family space has been something that’s been attractive before, before build for rent, even in just scattered site existing resale homes. So if you think about one of the things that institutional scale investors do is they look for areas where there is not yet consolidation of ownership, and they go and they consolidate, and they create value that way. And so those folks are creating value the same way.
Ryan Mayfield 4:55
Well, you know, I would actually push back just a little bit, because I do think that we can show. Uh, some, some really good ROI on that stuff. This isn’t how everybody does it, but one thing that we do, that we offer, we do quarterly team performance assessments with our clients. And so we baseline that at the beginning, so we know kind of where our starting point is. We’re talking actual data driven metrics on things like communication, relationships, alignment, execution, capacity, team culture, all that kind of stuff that maybe most businesses don’t track or don’t have the means to track. You should track your own turnover, right? You don’t need me for that, but I can help track those other things. And so what I actually do with those clients is we’ll take that assessment and then wherever we’re scoring low, those are the things we’re going after month after month. As I’m working with them, we’re going, Hey, we’re going to improve team communication. Three months later, we’re going to take that assessment again, and we’re going to see a huge increase in that, and we’re going to shift our focus somewhere else. So it’s data driven, like strategic leadership and teamwork development stuff. It’s not just shooting in the dark. We’re actually aiming at something, and we intend to be able to show a strong ROI on those things.
Outro 6:10
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