Modern Investing Strategies: Thomas DeMoss and Sharad on Real Estate Reinvented

For this intriguing episode, CEO Sharad Mehta of REsimpli talked with real estate investor Thomas DeMoss twenty years ago. Showing a picture of real estate investment dynamics, the DeMoss brothers from Chattanooga show their journey from modest beginnings to a sophisticated business model integrating wholesale and rental properties.

Their incredible buy-and-hold rental background starts the conversation with cautious transition into wholesaling and property flipping. Sharad and Thomas discuss how changes in the COVID-19 and real estate markets have affected them. Their remarks capture market knowledge of the requirement of investment flexibility in current times.

The show rents and markets actual real estate. Key to their success, the DeMoss brothers think are customer service, vendor openness, and trust. Their genuineness and friendliness define their real estate investing strategy.

Furthermore covered is their shift from outward to inbound marketing. Team development is another very important issue, especially in relation to the main responsibility of acquisition managers. The DeMoss brothers realize they must have a strong, coherent team if they are to satisfy company goals. Other investors seeking performance might find use for their team dynamics and leadership development.

The episode offers fascinating concepts on work-life balance. Stressing personal happiness and self-defined accomplishment helps them to resist financial pressure.

As Sharad and Thomas search their principles and who they would spend a day with, the show concludes brilliantly. This last part stresses honesty and the central concept of the podcast—balancing success in the areas of personal and business life. Their guidance on market strategy, corporate success, and living a healthy, happy life would be immensely valued by novice and seasoned investors.

Transcript:

Thomas DeMoss  0:00  

Ehsan Rishat, Sharad, can you hear me?

Sharad Mehta  0:02

Yes.

Thomas DeMoss  0:04  

Hey, how you doing

Sharad Mehta  0:05  

good? How are you can you hear me, good?

Thomas DeMoss  0:07  

I can. I can, yep.

Sharad Mehta  0:11  

Let me do this. Okay, cool. How are you doing

Thomas DeMoss  0:17  

good today? So actually, I was just listening to a call in our REsimpli counts.

Sharad Mehta  0:23  

Oh, perfect. Yeah, hopefully you’re going to get that property under contract.

Thomas DeMoss  0:27  

I hope so we’ve got some pretty big ones coming down the pike, so we’re excited about it.

Sharad Mehta  0:32  

Cool, awesome, man. Do you have any questions on the the podcast?

Thomas DeMoss  0:39  

No, I’ve done a couple of them, so hopefully I’ll just wing it and do provide some value, so we’ll see

Sharad Mehta  0:45  

some awesome. Yeah, I usually, like, I don’t have any set questions. I like to kind of ask questions based on, you know, your experience, and just make it super conversational. Yeah, absolutely. It should last about like 30 to 45 minutes or more than that, okay, cool, all right, give me one second.

All right. And then, just to make sure, how do you say your last name, DeMoss.

Thomas DeMoss  1:20  

Demos Yes. Cool,

Sharad Mehta  1:24  

awesome. All right. Ready to get started? Cool. 123, hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli, host of the REsimpli podcast, bringing on a very special guest on the podcast today. Thomas DeMoss. Thomas, how are you doing today? I’m

Thomas DeMoss  1:40  

good. Sharad, I appreciate you having me on here.

Sharad Mehta  1:43  

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? What kind of investing do you do?

Thomas DeMoss  1:51  

Yeah. So we’re based out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Well, it’s a small town 20 years ago, but now, with everybody moving to southeast, it has just boomed. So there’s a there’s a lot of transition. There’s a lot of people moving into our area, mostly from more expensive, you know, areas of the country, the Coast, East Coast, West Coast, California. And so we moved here because of we discovered it before they did. My wife grew up here, and, you know, I we visited. Loved it. Loved the natural resources, just mountains, trails, outsides, beautiful, and just been here for about 20 years now. How

Sharad Mehta  2:38  

far are you from Nashville? About two hours, two hours, okay, yeah,

Thomas DeMoss  2:43  

depending on traffic,

Sharad Mehta  2:44  

how long you’ve been there?

Thomas DeMoss  2:45  

So we’ve been here, I think 20 years now. Actually, I was just looking at my timeline, yeah, it’s yeah, it’s just right at 20 years,

Sharad Mehta  2:53  

perfect. And how long have you been an investor? And that’s the only market that you invest in

Thomas DeMoss  2:58  

is the Yeah. So we do our area. Geographic area is probably about 60 mile radius of Chattanooga. So would encompass the Chattanooga metro area and then North Georgia. Okay, we do. We’ve expanded it a little bit. I’ve got some properties that are in Lafayette, Georgia, which is a smaller town, okay, but lot of industry down there, and it’s growing, so got it, yeah,

Sharad Mehta  3:26  

and how long did you say you’ve been investing first?

Thomas DeMoss  3:28  

So we’ve been, we’ve we started investing, actually the the year we moved to Chattanooga. So right at 20 years, we bought our first house, and then we bought our first investment property. Shortly thereafter,

Sharad Mehta  3:40  

got it. And then what are you wholesaling? Are you flipping a little bit of everything?

Thomas DeMoss  3:45  

So we’ve done a little bit of everything over the past 20 years. Kind of the short story is I got into real estate investing, and I think there is some ambiguity to that term. These days, anybody that says they’re in real estate or maybe wholesaling calls themselves a real estate investor. And I would say that that’s not necessarily true. An investment is something that you buy, you hold, you get a return. A stock would be get a dividend. We get rental, rental income. But we actually did start what I would determine or calls investing. 20 years ago, we bought our first single family house, and then we’ve been doing it ever since. When we first got started, I was 100% buy and hold, because it was all I could do. I was working as a sales associate for another company, and really we just, we just started buying houses because Rich Dad, Poor Dad was the book, you know, got it got us started. But really wanted to focus on the areas that we lived in that were probably about, you know, five mile radius of where our home base was, just so it’s easy to manage. And that’s how we started. Yeah.

Sharad Mehta  4:59  

You, you started, basically inspiration to be a real estate investor was to from Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Secretary. It

Thomas DeMoss  5:07  

was, it was, and I’ve told the story before, when in college, we rented a house, and we would always our landlords were these, you know, older guys who just came picking up rent seemed like they didn’t have a care in the world. And it just, you know, didn’t like, okay, it seems like a lifestyle that might be attractive. And then growing up, my dad had taught me about investing, more more stock market investing, but essentially the concept of money and investing and time value things like that. So there was a lot of influences, but real estate was something that I wanted to get into. And

Sharad Mehta  5:42  

when did the transition from investing rental properties to being more actively involved and doing it full time happen for you? So

Thomas DeMoss  5:51  

that happened about, I’d say, nine years ago. We started Chattanooga property solutions, is our company. Up until then, we had just been buying kind of single family rentals, and that’s what we specialize in. But we got to a point to where I could replace my wife’s income. We started having children. She decided to stay at home, everything just kind of work. And then we got to a point to where I saw the market, and she had Chattanooga transitioning, we decided to take advantage of it. I had a buddy of mine that had flipped houses, and when I say flipped actually just renovated to sell. Most of the renovations that I have done have just been on rental properties to buy and hold. So selling properties was something that I had to get accustomed to. I really like, I love the game Monopoly, so I want to hold on to as many pieces as I can. So we started to do that. That was about, like I said, nine years ago. We started doing some direct to seller marketing, just gradually, really, just getting into that side of the business. It was very easy back then. I think it at the time we started, I was the only one that had a, I guess, a home buying website for our area. So it was easy, and then that just progressed into the many different facets of our industry.

Sharad Mehta  7:19  

So what are you doing now? You still focus primarily on residential properties?

Thomas DeMoss  7:26  

Yes, we we’re trying to just accumulate a good portfolio of single family investment. I’m not going to turn I’ve got a one duplex. It’s in a killer area. We just evaluate the opportunities, deal by deal, and if something makes sense, we’re going to take it down,

Sharad Mehta  7:44  

right and then so market, you said the market has changed significantly. I’m sure Since covid started, like, you’ve seen a huge impact in your market. How are you adjusting for that? I’m curious with like, I’m sure the prices have gone up. Like, demand supply is always a challenge. How do you manage

Thomas DeMoss  8:03  

covid? Covid is kind of rock things. Everybody said, you know, the new normal? The new normal is just, there’s always something that transitions almost every three to six months. So what we saw prior to that is there was some consistency in the market, you could make a little bit of mistakes and but right now, you’ve really got to be proactive with what you’re doing. You mentioned, how far are we from Nashville? A good kind of anecdotal story would be not the Nashville market got saturated. I’d say maybe five to seven years ago. So all because of our proximity to that, that city, all of the investors in Nashville decided they couldn’t make the returns there, so they started, they saw the growth in the transition that Chattanooga was having, which was very similar to what they had. So they almost had an advantage, because they could kind of see it in the rearview mirror, they can say, Okay, we saw what Nashville did. Took, you know, 1015, years. We see what is happening in Chattanooga, so we pretty much know how this is going to shape out. So the competition that we saw early on was from a lot of folks coming from outside of our market, and specifically folks from Nashville,

Sharad Mehta  9:18  

okay, and then what has that done to like, I’m sure the prices have gone up. There’s a lot more competition. What are you noticing that’s working for you? And where do you see the market going, like, from here?

Thomas DeMoss  9:31  

So like I said, probably the last 18 months, we have seen a transition. Are we run a very lean team. There’s three of us, and we have historically done about 40 transactions a year. I had a business partner a few years ago. We were kind of heavier on flipping, but because. Of the I guess the risk, the low or no risk in wholesaling, and the wholesale fees that we were able to attain, we have ultimately transitioned into, as far as our active income business, completely wholesaling and not flipping. But then again, we pick off the deals that that makes sense for us to hold in our portfolio.

Sharad Mehta  10:22  

Got it and then the ones that you’re wholesaling. Are you doing assigning the contract? Are you double closing?

Thomas DeMoss  10:28  

We are assigning the contracts. On occasion we will double close or hotel is kind of what we call it. But my preference is, if we can do an assignment of contract. That’s what we prefer to do our you know, try to not entice more people to come to our market, but our profit margins and our wholesale fees, they have risen dramatically. And I think a lot of that is attributed just because there is a lower supply of inventory, both on the investment side and the retail side. Got it. We’ve seen that. I do have my real estate license. So I am, you know, versed in kind of both worlds there, okay?

Sharad Mehta  11:12  

And when you I’m just curious, when you’re assigning a contact, is there a, is there a certain assignment fee, like, beyond which you feel a little uncomfortable with your buyers and saying, Oh, my God, I don’t, I don’t know if I want the buyer to know that I’m making like, 5060, whatever that number might be.

Thomas DeMoss  11:34  

That is a great question. And, you know, we, I had to have that, I guess, moral dilemma early on, when we first started our business, we would, we would not do assignments. We there was actually a guy who had moved to our area, and we would just refer those out, and so he would do the assignments and pay us, essentially an assignment referral fee. We did that for about a year, because I really struggled with that concept is, are we? Are we taking advantage of these folks? Are we? Are we doing the right thing? And what I came down to is, and what are what we share with the sellers that contact us is we’re there to provide value to them that can be realized many different ways. It could be simplicity, it could be certainty. I would say the folks that call us that are in a distressed situation, rarely is money the ultimate determiner of their purpose.

Sharad Mehta  12:39  

I agree with that, yeah, yeah. So

Thomas DeMoss  12:42  

we’ve, we’ve made some fairly hefty assignment fees and and we’re, we’re very transparent. I mean, you have to kind of be careful with using some of the language, because it does confuse sellers. But we are very transparent with how we do the process by which we’ll tell them, hey, you know, this is a property that we can give you X amount for, but we’re it doesn’t necessarily fit our Buy Box, so we will bring some other investors to the table to see if it might fit theirs. And we’ve been doing this now, as far as a wholesaling business, think for seven, eight years, we really pride ourselves on taking care of the sellers and our and our clients, and we’ve never had anybody say anything about the money that we made. Because I, the way that I understand her to kind of explain it, is like, Listen, mister seller, you know, we’re a for profit business, and we’re very upfront with that. It says it on our contract, we don’t hide away or shy away from the fact that we have to make money. We spend a lot of money through our operations and marketing. So we’re very transparent with that, and we just ask them, Listen, if we make our money on day one or day 60 or day 90, does it matter to you? And most of them say, I don’t care how much money you make, as long as you can give me the price that I need to, you know, move on with my life,

Sharad Mehta  14:15  

right? Do you have you ever gotten any pushback from the seller? Like, I mean, there’s one thing saying, but when they actually see the settlement statement, and they see you guys making 2030, 40,000, like, Oh yeah, that we have not we have, that’s good. We have not that that goes to show, like, the communication that you’re having upfront, yeah, you know, setting the expectations. There’s way too many wholesalers out there. And by the way, I agree with you that real estate investor versus real estate wholesaler. I always joke that I think real estate investor is like the only profession, if you want to call it where, like you can literally just get a business card printed, go around and start calling. Also real estate investor, there’s no credential, nothing that you need, like real estate agent, or, you know, if you’re a contractor, you need some sort of education. But real estate investor, my parents could come visit me from India and saying, Hey, I’m also a real estate investor. I have no way to, like, say it you’re not. But anyway, yeah, there’s, like, way too many wholesalers out there who are not transparent about the entire process, and I think it it leaves a very big bad taste in seller smile, entrusting other investors like yourself who are credible. I think that becomes a very uphill battle.

Thomas DeMoss  15:35  

So one of the ways that we’ve overcome that is we’re very, I guess, active about getting reviews. We want people to tell the story their experience with us. And for the most part, people love it. They love telling the story because we have offered such a value to their life. And unfortunately, as long as we’ve been doing this, you’re right, we’ve come in not as the first offer, but as the second offer, sometimes from folks that couldn’t execute the contract. And I’ll say this, we don’t enter into contracts that we can’t execute on if we can’t assign them. So there are, there are some deals that we just can’t close, but our contract canceling of contract ratio is minuscule. The market is changing, so sometimes we will get a little bit more aggressive, if you will, on the purchase price. But when we tell people we’re going to do something, nine times out of 10, we’re going to do it. And the only time we’re really, especially recently, the times that we haven’t been able to execute on the closing had nothing to do with what we agreed to. If there was title issues, it was probate, there was airship things, and so, yeah, that’s I can count. I literally can count on my hand how many contracts we’ve broken, you know, over the past. You know,

Sharad Mehta  17:03  

that’s amazing. That goes to show like your guys are running such a legit and, you know, ethical business, yeah. I mean, it’s going to happen. Part of the nature of the businesses, like the title ish, we, we had a contract, like, couple of months ago where the husband signed it and the house was deeded to wife. He’s like, Oh, you know, but I was married to her, Can I not sell the house? I’m like, No, that’s not how it works. Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, it’s such a fun business at times that you hear these crazy stories, but you know, just going back to like, that’s something like, kind of what you were saying initially, you had this struggle of like, you question, am I taking advantage of the people you know, making this money? I used to struggle with that also, but I came to the same realization that as investors, we’re adding so much value, and we’re looking at through the lens of money, but the seller is not like we just got a property under contract for, I think, 2530 35,000 the guy is going through foreclosure, he reached out to us through our website, and then we got it under contract. The houses with about 150 to 175 it needs about 2530 but that guy, he has a very tight deadline to me, in like, a couple of weeks, that he needs to sell the house. I think that’s where, that’s the realization that we need to come to as investors. Like, that’s the value at not everyone is looking through their lens of money. Yes, of course, we want to help someone out, and, you know, get them the most money we can and still be able to make profit. But money is something might be important for us, but for the seller, it’s like, something totally different, like, they just want to, like, it’s way more important to for them to just get rid of this house and then move on and have do other things in life. So, yeah, that’s that’s super, super important. Yeah, absolutely. And then with what you are doing right now, I mean, this is like, super high interest rate market right now, like, we’re at like, 7% or something crazy. I’m working on a loan for a commercial property or a multi family property, and it’s like, over 8% Yeah, yeah. What do you see, like, first of all, what’s like working for you right now, in your market, like, right now, what are you doing? You know, we’re in the we’re in the age where, like, some states are coming heavy, like, banning wholesaling, basically, like assignment of contract, you know? So that’s changing certain things, and then we’re living in this environment where texting is getting more regulated, like calling, cold calling is getting more difficult. So like, how are you dealing with all of this, and what’s working for you guys?

Thomas DeMoss  19:36  

So we’ve done a little bit of everything when, when we first got started, we kind of did the traditional route. We were really heavy in direct mail. We embraced cold texting for a season, and then probably about, I think it’s probably about two years ago now, we were looking our operations cost and. Turn and just, you know, what were we getting from all that span? And you could see on the horizon, things were changing, like you had mentioned before. I mean, mail is getting more expensive. I mean, they keep increasing the cost of postage. So at some point that’s not going to be, you know, you got to mail a lot to get a return. So the first thing that we did, we transition to all inbound marketing? So what that means is we started running television ads. We had always been really heavy with PPC. That was our really our main lead source was pay per click. Like I said, when we first got started, we were one of the few that had a website, so we had a little bit of the the SEO already, but we’ve embraced that, that path as well. So pay per click, SEO, TV, radio, the mostly the inbound stuff. We’re we’re trying to create a relationship with sellers before we even meet them, and if you’ve been on social media, this happened to me this week. I actually met another real estate investor. I’d followed him on social media, so I knew about him, and we met each other. We we knew who each other were. We already had a relationship. And so we see similarities in that, with that inbound marketing, with being able to tell our story of a 30 to 62nd commercial can build relational interest with with with sellers, and it just helps. And so that’s what we transition to,

Sharad Mehta  21:32  

yeah, and I think moving forward in another like year or two, as texting is getting more regulated, right? Cold calling is again getting more regulated. I think it’s going to give a huge advantage to investors who have funds to invest in inbound marketing, like PPC, SEO or TV, radio. I think that’s going to be the future. As like you said, direct mail is getting more expensive, right? Yes, it’s not that if the direct mail is getting more expensive, you can cut down on the number of people you need to mail to. You still need to mail it to the same number of people, but as more people drop out, now you have a little less competition. Instead of a seller receiving 15 mail pieces like the seller might only get seven or eight, so you have like half the competition now and then with texting, like I personally noticed, on my cell phone, I used to get so many cold texts that, which is, it’s such a huge relief to be on the other side. You know, as an investor, I feel like we were part of the problem. We, like, flooded the market with these like tech. I was never, I was never in favor of it like, I tried it for like, you I tried it for maybe, like, six months. I felt very icky about it. I’m like, you know, just, it doesn’t feel right. Yeah,

Thomas DeMoss  22:50  

it didn’t. You were. We had a few people that would respond to it, and there’s, there’s folks that have done really well with it, and that’s great. It just wasn’t the business model that we wanted to embrace. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  23:00  

I think it’s just it goes into your reputation, right? I mean, it’s that the kind of reputation you want to have, like spamming people into yes,

Thomas DeMoss  23:07  

no, no, I’ll say this before we even started running television ads, I had a he’s a friend now, but an ad salesman for one of our NBC channels. He called me as soon as soon as he knew what we were doing. He said, Thomas, you need to come in and do this interview channel, interview show. It’s, it’s a local interview show, and you can pay to be on it. They also have, you know, local spots and whatever. But we did that, and we posted it on our Facebook, you know, Instagram, everywhere, posted it on our website, and that was, it cost us like 450 bucks, but it was about a five to seven minute interview. And what we found was that that relationship capital, that you know, we didn’t even know that was out there, we were building with people, because they would say, well, we saw you on what was it was three plus year we saw you on three plus you, and we’re like, we filmed that a year ago, yeah, but we put it on all of our social media, and everybody kept watching it, thinking it was like, this month. And so that really helped tell our story. And the other thing was, it was kind of that third party credibility. So we were being interviewed and we were just telling our story. It wasn’t like we were pitching anything, it was. But it really, really helped, especially as far as credibility and online searches, we would have people that would fill out our our web forms, and they’d see that video. And especially when the market got more competitive, they’re comparing us with another, you know, click person, and they can see that, and it just really, really helped. So that’s why we started doing the TV. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  24:46  

absolutely. I mean, they like investing in credibility. Like, this is something we’re like, it’s a company are being very proactive. I mean, we’re a very virtual company. I live in California. My project manager lives in California, an hour north of me, and then one person for. Philippines, but we’re being very like proactive about every we’re helping these homeowners, you know, get out of a trouble, a distressed situation. Let’s make sure we hire a videographer. Go and ask these people. They’re more than happy to talk about it. It’s just such a simple thing. The more of that you have, the more credibility it builds for you. You know, not only does it help with your ranking and all that good stuff, but just imagine a seller going to your website, which has tons of testimonial from other sellers in similar situation, versus going to another website that just talks about, you know, just generic value add. But it doesn’t mean testimony like immediately, the one with testimonials and reviews from other homeowners, it’s going to have such a huge advantage over the one that does not. I’ll

Thomas DeMoss  25:48  

give you just an example. I had a lady that I’d been working with for about a year. She had called me and we were working and really the timing wasn’t right for her, but at this moment, it was right. And she had another investor that had made her an offer. It was a few $1,000 higher than ours. And I said, you know, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to check out our websites. I want you to go to his. I want you to go to ours, and you tell me what makes you more comfortable. And for her, it was the reality that we had a Better Business Bureau rating, yeah, A plus rating. And that changed her mind. She literally said on the phone, okay, I see your better business rated. I feel more comfortable with that. So we got the deal over the the other company,

Sharad Mehta  26:37  

yeah, absolutely. It’s like investing in those small things in your business, being consistent and asking for that feedback, it goes such a long way. And this is the one where you actually had a conversation, where you made someone like, there’s going to be so many in homeowners, sellers that compare your website another without even like having that you know, a conversation with you just, just going to default, gravitate towards you guys, because you have all of these, you know, amazing testimonial. I have a question for you so you didn’t like a market and you’re like, 60 mile radius from Chattanooga market. Are you guys going on appointments, doing virtual What are your thoughts on that we’re,

Thomas DeMoss  27:18  

we’re, 100% real. I mean, we go in the living rooms. We I don’t feel comfortable doing virtual stuff. We don’t even wholesale our stuff virtual. We want people to go see what they’re getting. So, yeah, ours is belly to belly. Sales got an incredible Acquisition Manager. Are we are in alignment with what we are trying to accomplish. We want to make sure that our clients and sellers are treated fairly and respectfully before anything. And I mean, it’s funny, you talk about reviews. We actually have a review from a gentleman that we essentially told him not to sell his house, but we walked him through the process, we educated him on his options, and his best option was to stay in the house. So he left us a review, telling us how, how great we were, being honest with him and and that’s something that we really do. We do pride ourselves on, yeah, and

Sharad Mehta  28:18  

now i i also like this is something I’ve also struggled with, and I feel very uncomfortable with also buying virtual like, even though my team is all remote, we still send a contractor to do a walk through. And we have a local person. Sometimes, if someone else you meet and have a property management company, just to, you know, build on that here, we’re local company, but it’s, I think if you’re local in your market, it’s my personal opinion and belief on this. Is if someone is selling their home, which is probably, you know, the most expensive asset they have, there’s so many emotional value attached to it. If you’re able to go on an appointment in person, meet the person, walk them through the process, versus someone who’s making an offer over the phone or communicating through text or email. I think by default, you will have an advantage if you’re able to do this in person versus do that over over the phone. I’m sure you run into the situations where you know you have a seller looking at your offer and you’re able to meet them in person, versus someone who’s out of state in a different market, but making an offer on this property, I think it just immediately gives you an advantage over the other investor. Yeah,

Thomas DeMoss  29:26  

it does. And like I said, going back to the marketing thing, they’ve saw our ad, they’ve seen us on social media, so they know us, and we’re not shy. I mean, we one of the things that I would encourage more investors to do is on your website, do an about us page. Don’t, don’t just do the carrot template very simply. Just tell people about so,

Sharad Mehta  29:47  

so important, yes, like, personalize your picture. I mean, you get these website out of the gate, they they look great, but you have to personalize. Yes, you know, yes, absolutely, very and then how long have you? Acquisition Manager been with you?

Thomas DeMoss  30:02  

So I think he’s been with us three years now. We knew each other before he worked for a competitor. They did some restructuring. You know, obviously when the market changed a few years ago, everybody was kind of shuffling, and we were friends before that, he knew who we were. I knew he was and when I, when I knew that he was available, we reached out and connected. And it’s been, it’s been a great, a great partnership.

Sharad Mehta  30:26  

And since he’s local in your market, this is something I’ve heard from many, many investors. I’m sure you’ve seen other investors. Acquisition Manager is one of the roles. It seems like it’s a revolving door. You know, acquisition managers come in like for you do have someone for three years that’s, yeah, that’s very rare in this industry, because what happens is, either they jump another opportunity or they end up actually competing with you on your market, right? You know, how do you like, how do you prevent that from happening? Like, is there something you’re doing? Sure,

Thomas DeMoss  30:59  

that’s a great question you should probably ask him, I

Sharad Mehta  31:03  

we do, is that something that’s ever like, crossed your mind? I’m just, Oh, it

Thomas DeMoss  31:06  

does. I told him the other day. I said, if you, if you decide to go somewhere else, I’m just gonna just close the doors, because I’ve got, I’ve got him, and then I’ve got my general contractor. They are such, they’re so valuable to what we do, and to me personally, and I’m like, you know, so I don’t know we do a little bit differently. He’s, he’s also a buy and hold guy as well. So there will be deals that come through our pipeline that don’t make sense for me. He loves the creative stuff and like, if he can write something up and it makes sense for him, and we can, you know, we’re all kind of accomplishing the financial goals that we want to do. I’ll say, do take it like it’s yours. We’re just we’re able to do that. I know, I know a lot of organizations aren’t, but we can, so we just maintain that flexibility.

Sharad Mehta  31:56  

So if I understand correctly, if it’s a lead that does not work for the business. And then he’s like, Hey, can I take this, you know, I can do something creative. And like, yeah, I don’t want to even deal with that. Like, just go for it. Yeah,

Thomas DeMoss  32:08  

yeah, yeah. He makes some stuff complicated. I’m very simplistic, yeah? And we’re, I guess, a point in life to where I could be selective in what we take down. And so if something comes through and it kind of fits, he’s trying to build his portfolio as well. And sometimes it just fits where he’s at. He’s more comfortable with it. Now, we’ll do traditional stuff as well. But yeah, it’s just trying to, you know, we’re all trying to get to similar spots, right? And, you know? And I think just adding that value, I recognize the value that he brings, and I definitely want to make sure want to make sure that they that they understand and appreciate that, or that it’s appreciated. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  32:47  

do you charge him any like, if he takes a lead and deep charge? Okay, yeah. I was just curious, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Like, you know, like, I guess that’s he can see that as part of his compensation, in a way where he didn’t have to pay for the lead in and have to do the marketing. So, yeah, that makes sense. Thomas, this has been absolutely, what was that? That’s it. It

Thomas DeMoss  33:07  

works for right now? Yeah. I

Sharad Mehta  33:09  

mean, it works absolutely, no. I mean, it’s, it’s very rare, like in this business, for someone in an acquisition role to stay with the company for more than a year or two. Honestly, it’s very rare, you know, just the nature of the business, generally, someone in an acquisition role, they tend to be, you know, have an entrepreneurial mindset, so they will come in. I mean, it’s happened to me, where I hired someone local in Indiana, you know, they were with me for about a year or two years. They actually ended up starting their own business, taking my contractors, and it’s just like, and that’s, it’s not me, something that happened to me. It just, it’s the nature of the business, like it happens to so many people that once you understand, especially back in the day, where you could just, you know, go, like, sign up for a texting software, get a list, start texting. It was just like, so easy to do

Thomas DeMoss  33:59  

that it is. And I think one of the barriers to entry now is, you probably heard this, it doesn’t cost any money to be a real estate investor. That’s kind of the terminology. Well, it really does. Driving for dollars costs money. Everything costs money, your time, and the deal flow right now is a little bit less than what it used to be. But we, you know, we’re investing a lot of money into our marketing and and it works. I mean, my acquisition managers in my television commercial with me, so he’s, he’s the one in the living room, so we want to make sure that that that relationship capital is there already. So it works really, really well.

Sharad Mehta  34:38  

That makes sense. Yeah, no, Thomas, this has been absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your journey. Yeah, couple of the questions next part of our segment, yeah. What do you do for fun?

Thomas DeMoss  34:50  

I got three kids, so I’m spending as hard as I can. So my daughter is 17, and I’ve got two boys, 15 and 14. Oh,

Sharad Mehta  34:59  

cool. Yeah, my daughter, who just turned four, and my son’s gonna be eight in November, such a fun age. Yeah,

Thomas DeMoss  35:07  

we spend, yeah, we spend a lot of time together, which is why I wanted to get into this. We’re at the, you know, we could always, we could probably do more financially, but my time is the most valuable that I have right now. And so we’re, you know, we’re, we’re, we spend a lot of time with kids. We do travel, we go on vacations, but you know it is really right now, and just spending as much time with our kids as we can, yeah, just whatever that may be,

Sharad Mehta  35:33  

yeah, absolutely. And when you, when you talk to people who are a little bit like ahead of you in life, you know they’re like, 6070, when you asked, and nobody ever says, I wish I’d made more money. Obviously, I wish I had spent more time with family. I wish I’d like spent invested more in relationships. So absolutely doing it, yeah, you’re doing the right way. And what’s the one book that had the biggest impact in your life? It could be personal book, business book, or one of each. Yeah?

Thomas DeMoss  35:59  

So I’ll take a little different path. I mean, you know, I’ve got a faith background. I’m a Christian, so we read the Bible, and I think that’s really important, like prioritizing that,

Sharad Mehta  36:11  

but then my Bible is the number one answer. Funny, a lot

Thomas DeMoss  36:16  

of people would say that, but don’t necessarily read it. You know, I became a Christian shortly after we moved back to Chattanooga, so that’s kind of an integral part of my story. So it’s that that is. But as far as, like, a practical application in real estate, the thing that’s made the biggest difference in my life, honestly, in the past two years, I’ve got it on my desk here. Dan Nicholson wrote a book called rigging the game. Okay,

Sharad Mehta  36:42  

rigging the game, yeah. And so

Thomas DeMoss  36:46  

it basically, in our business, there’s always this push to one up everybody. There’s the competitiveness, there’s the drive. And I had it and and Dan, you know, never met him, but I’d love to you, but he wrote a book that it’s basically how to achieve financial certainty and navigate navigate risk and make money on your terms. Yeah, I think the key there is your terms. I mean, if, if somebody calls me up and says, Hey, I’ve got 100 rental properties a couple years ago, but like, well, I want 101 Yeah, I just want that. I don’t need 100 rental properties to obtain the financial position that we want to be in. And so that’s the thing. It helped me understand it’s okay to not want to be like everybody else. You know, we’re everybody wants to leverage and grow and do this, and those are good things, and I think there’s merit there. But to grow, just for growth’s sake, it’s not really that important. You gotta figure out why you want to do it.

Sharad Mehta  37:53  

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s such a great answer. And thank you for recommending that book. It’s, I think it’s one of the biggest struggles that people have in the social media age is their expectation of their standard of life comes from what other people are doing. Like they they want the car that other people are driving and, you know, sharing on the social media like, it’s something you have to know. Like, is that something that you really want. Like, the answer that you gave a couple of years ago, you said, oh, I want a month. But like, do you really, like, what would you do with that? You know, like, are you willing to make other sacrifices in your life? So again, like, going back to what we were talking about earlier, money is not important for everyone. Like, yes, you need a certain, you know, standard of living. But beyond that, like, you gotta figure out what is more important time or money? Yeah. So, yeah, thank you for that great answer. Absolutely. All right, if you could spend a day with anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with, and why?

Thomas DeMoss  38:53  

Man, Umi, that’s a good question. Um, there’s a lot of people.

Sharad Mehta  39:02  

Um, more than one if there’s, are you struggling with

Thomas DeMoss  39:08  

that? Gosh, I don’t know that. I have, let’s say, trying to think there,

if we could go back and, like, if, yeah, go back in history. I probably want to spend some more time with my dad. We did not have a wonderful relationship. But if I could go back and kind of have that conversation with him now and say, hey, you know, probe into why he did some things that he did, and just maybe, you know, get some answers there. I think that would be, that would be one. But, yeah, I’m trying to think, gosh, there’s a ton of people, you know, we’re, I’m a history guy, so just going back, try to figure out, you know, why they did what they did. But yeah, so no answer off the top my head, other than just maybe reconnected with my father a little bit. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  40:00  

no, that’s, that’s a great answer. Ben, thank you for sharing that. Alright, Thomas, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about your journey and what you’re doing. What’s the best way for them to do that? It’s

Thomas DeMoss  40:10  

always on social media. I mean, we’re so our company’s Chattanooga property solutions. We’re pretty much all over the internet, hopefully, and we’ve got a Facebook, Instagram. Thomas DeMoss, it’s my Facebook and Instagram. So, yeah, hit me up. Well,

Sharad Mehta  40:25  

perfect. We’ll put in links to all of that in the show, Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Absolutely incredible. Thank you so much. Thanks. Applause.