Introduction to REI USA

 

Once you get to a certain level in your real estate investing career, you just know that the more you serve others, the more you’re going to receive in life. That’s the ultimate purpose of REI USA, according to Stacy Rossetti. In this episode, she dives into the WHY of creating an online education and networking platform that aims to help aspiring and established investors cut their learning curve. As deeply committed as Stacy is to real estate, she is also extremely passionate about coaching and empowering others. That’s what REI USA is all about, and we get into the juicy details on how it works in this episode. Don’t miss this one!

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Introduction to REI USA

I’m going to be introducing REI USA and get into all the different ways that I raise money. I’ve been investing in real estate since 2011. For the first five years, I did wholesaling and rehabbing. Typically, I was mostly a rehabber and one of those crazy people who did 10 or 15 rehabs at a time. I don’t recommend that, honestly, but in order to be able to do that, you have to raise money. You’ve got to learn how to raise money. What happened was I wanted to grow my company, so I hired a consultant to help me put a strategy together.

This is maybe 2 or 3 years into doing rehabbing. I hired this consultant. The first thing he did was when he sat me down, and we thought we were talking, he said, “Stacy, tell me what you do.” I was like, “I’m a rehabber.” He was like, “No, you’re not a rehabber.” I was like, “I’m a rehabber. I buy houses, and I flip them. I’m a flipper.” He’s like, “No, you’re not a flipper.” I was like, “Residential redevelopment?” He’s like, “No, you don’t do residential redevelopment.”

Why You Are A Fundraiser More Than Anything Else

I was like, “What do I do? Tell me what I do then.” He was like, “Stacy, I’m going to tell you something. This is going to change the course of your company. If you don’t take this to heart, essentially, you are not going to be able to achieve all the things that you want to achieve.” I was like, “Tell me. What is it? What do I do?” He’s like, “You are a fundraiser. That’s it. If you want to be successful in this industry, you have to learn how to raise money.”

When he told me that, a light bulb went off my head, obviously, and I was like, “That’s right. If I want to do all the stuff that I want to do in investing in real estate, I have to learn how to raise money.” Previously, I had been to bootcamps where they taught you how to raise money, but nobody had explained it that way. The truth is that if you want to do all the things that you want to do in real estate investing, you have to learn how to raise money. That’s hands down the most important thing.

I’ve been investing in commercial real estate for five years. I buy storage facilities if you don’t know. Luckily, I got pregnant in 2015, and it changed the trajectory of how I was running my business. I had been focusing on rehabbing for five years and did 100 rehabs in five years. It was nuts. I ran around like a crazy person, but I’d never even focused on passive income. I had a couple of properties that I accrued over the course of the five years. Essentially, I didn’t focus on that.

I was all about getting the next deal done. I’m very blessed. I had a daughter. Her name is Lillian. Having her changed my outlook on how I wanted to grow my business. I started to focus on passive income. Luckily, I got into storage. That was the model that we got into. We’ve been focusing on that ever since. Commercial real estate investing is very expensive.

 

 

You can go out and buy small properties that are a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Typically, you make the most money when you’re focusing on buying properties that are $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, or more. I don’t get into huge, big commercial real estate investment properties, but I do focus on the $1 million to $3 million properties.

If you want to buy $1 million to $3 million properties, you have to learn how to raise money. You have to be a fundraiser like my consultant said several years ago. Luckily, back when I met him, and he told me that I needed to be a fundraiser, I took that to heart. I started reevaluating my company, thinking, “How am I raising money?” I have no qualms with asking people for money. I have no issues with this at all.

I pitch every week. I’m talking to investors. That’s my job, essentially. Find them, fund them, and run them is what I teach for storage investing. I delegate find and run them, but I do the fund them. I focus on raising money, and that’s what I do the best. I’m a money magnet. In fact, I tell my students this all the time, if you want to raise money, you have to believe that you’re a money magnet.

If you do think and believe you’re a money magnet, are you a money magnet? This is something that I tell my students over and over. This is what I tell myself. In fact, on my phone, I have a popup 2 or 3 times a day. It says, “I’m a money magnet.” It pops up, and I’m like, “Yeah, I need to think about that. I need to think about money.” On my phone, I have a couple of reminders. One of the reminders that I have says, “Everything goes right for me.” That pops up all the time on my phone.

Another one that pops up is “I’m a money magnet.” My suggestion to you guys is not to use my card on my phone but essentially use the phone to have you have affirmations reminded you because the truth is that raising money is nothing but a mindset. We’re going to tell you strategies, and you’re going to hear amazing coaches and investors telling you how they raise money.

The truth is that money is nothing but what you believe. I remember when I was a little girl, I used to tell myself, and I’m going to break the cycle. That’s one of the things that I tell myself all the time, like, “I’m breaking this cycle,” because a lot of us come from like families where money is this issue. Money is a huge part of your life.

 

[bctt tweet=”You’re not a rehabber, a flipper, or a residential developer. You’re a fundraiser. If you want to be successful in the real estate industry, you have to learn how to raise money.” via=”no”]

 

I remember when I got into real estate investing, I was one of those people that in order to learn how to invest in real estate, I got into a coaching program and paid a lot of money to get in this coaching program. I paid almost $50,000 and didn’t regret that at all. I remember when I was sitting down and paying the money to get into the coaching program, the guy was across from the table, I wrote this huge check. It was a massive check.

I told the guy, “I can’t believe I’m writing this massive check to you right now.” He was like, “Get used to it.” I remember that he said that to me. The truth is, over the last several years, I have written a lot of big checks. It’s all about accepting that this is possible for you. It is. I want to put that out there. I’m going to go over REI USA, all we offer, all the way that I raise money, and what I’ve been doing over the past several years. I want you to know that this is possible.

What REI USA Has To Offer

You have to keep telling yourself over and over. Set those reminders on your phone, “I’m a money magnet. Everything goes right for me. I can write big checks,” whatever you need to put on your phone to remind you so that you can start putting yourself out there. What I want to do is I’m going to go over to REI USA. I started REI USA a couple of years ago. I truly believe it’s one of the best ways to learn to invest in real estate.

You get to be put in front of amazing investors across the country who want to share what they know about what they’ve learned over the last X number of years that they’ve been doing this and all the different deals they’ve done. I’m going to tell you that the people here are teaching and sharing and coaching for REI USA out of the kindness of their hearts.

Once you get to a certain level in your real estate investing career, you know that the more you serve others, the more you will receive in life. That’s the basis and the ultimate purpose of REI USA. I started REI USA right around when COVID happened years ago. Before that, I had gone to a Tony Robbins event. If you guys have ever been to Tony Robbins, you know what he teaches.

Essentially, the one message that I love about Tony Robbins is the secret to living is giving. That message is very important to me. It’s the basis of what REI USA stands for. When you get to a certain point in your life, it’s not about how much money you make. It’s about how you can serve others and help others. The truth is that teaching is one of the ultimate ways to serve others.

 

 

If you have all this knowledge, there’s no reason to keep it inside. You should share it with the world. I am an open book. If you know me personally, I’m an open book. I’ll share anything that I have, whatever works with me or worked with my husband, and all the things that we do, we’re going to share. It’s the same concept with all of the coaches and investors for REI USA.

We all want to share what we know because we ultimately know that it’s the highest form of service for you and to the universe. That’s what I want to go over. It’s REI USA and all we offer. I’m going to get in and show you some of the things that I do to raise money that you can do as well. REI USA is not a big group of people, but we are a good small family.

What you’ll notice about REI USA, once you start getting into it, is we offer anywhere from 15 to 20 live webinars throughout the month. This is a virtual summit. This is a special thing that we do a couple of times a year. Typically, the teachers teach once a month. I’m not 100% sure how many teachers we have now, but we have anywhere from 15 to 20 teachers. They all teach once a month.

You’ll have what we call small group sessions. When you can come to a live session with one of the teachers, you will have a small setting where you can turn your video on or unmute yourself and ask the questions you need. All the teachers and everybody will teach, coach, and share their knowledge on whatever topic they’re teaching.

The good thing is that we’re such a small family that it’s small group coaching. You’ll be able to get some one-on-one attention. You have to listen in and get started. After a while, once you start getting going, you’re going to ask questions. One of the questions I always tell everybody that you should be asking all the teachers is, what marketing are you doing right now in order to find deals?

Another question you can ask the teachers is how do you find all the money to do all the deals that you do? That’s the whole purpose. That’s the question how do you find all the money to do all the deals that you’re doing? It is one of the questions everybody’s asking in their minds, but they’re not asking the investors themselves.

 

[bctt tweet=”REI USA is one of the best ways to learn how to invest in real estate.” via=”no”]

 

REI USA puts you into this small group setting where you can ask those questions, and it’s not live. It’s not in-person. It’s through a computer like this. Sometimes I feel like it makes it easier. I was talking to an owner of a storage facility. I’m in LA and I buy all my storage facilities in Georgia and Florida, and maybe in Texas. We’re also living in Texas, but essentially, I told Chris, who’s my acquisitions manager.

I said, “We have a storage facility. We put an offering for $1 million.” He talked to the owner, and the owner said that he wants $1.254 million to purchase this facility.” I said, “Can you please ask the owner if he can hop on Zoom so that I can talk to him.” At least I’m face to face, and he can see who I am. He can know that I’m a real person because I’m not the one that negotiates anymore. My acquisitions manager does all that for me, but I like to hop on and introduce myself and let everybody know I’m a real person. The seller wanted $1.254 million.

We ran the numbers, and I wanted $1 million, which I also thought was a little bit high. I was like, “Let’s see if we could meet in the middle.” The owner came onto Zoom, and we had a conversation like this. I got to know him and asked him questions. I said, “I would love to work with you. We’ve looked at the numbers. We’ve looked at everything that you’ve given us. I definitely want to buy this. I’m very interested in buying your facility.

The truth is, you’re running your numbers on your expenses. I need to run the numbers on my expenses. My expenses are these. You handle the facility yourself. I’m going to have to use my management company to manage this facility. My expenses are a little bit different than yours. Because of that, the highest I can go is $1.1 million. That’s all I can go. I wanted to talk to you and make sure that that was okay with you before we sent over the contract for you to sign, and you get shocked at the number.”

He was like, “I don’t know if I want to do this or not. Due to the fact that you took some time to meet me, I understand where you’re coming from. I’m open to that. Go ahead and send me over the contract for $1.1 million, and we could put it under contract.” The whole thing was me hopping on Zoom and asking him if he would take a cheaper price. Even though it’s not about learning how to invest in real estate, it’s the same concept.

You get to hop on Zoom in a session like this and have direct communication with an expert investor that wants to guide you and tell you exactly what you want to do. You should take advantage of that. A lot of times, it’s easier when you’re on Zoom. If I was face to face talking to this guy asking for like a $150,000 decrease in the price, that’s a little bit harder if you’re face to face.

 

 

On Zoom, it’s not that big of a deal because I’m in a different state, and it’s a different concept. Take advantage of that, is what I’m saying. Take advantage of how the setup is because it does make things a little bit easier. If you don’t want to put yourself on video, you don’t have to. You can unmute yourself and ask the question, and nobody even knows what you look like anyway, which makes it even better.

If you’re talking to an investor or a seller or something like that, obviously, you wouldn’t want to show their face, but coaches and staff are slightly different. I do the same thing with lenders. I pitch every Monday to my investors. I have a Zoom meeting set up and email reminders going out to my private lender list every Sunday night. It reminds them of my Monday meeting.

I’ve grown my private lender list over the course of the last couple of years or whatever. Anybody that I know has money, and I’ll show you what I do to get lenders on my list. I email out on Sunday. I remind my list that I’m going to be pitching on Monday. I have the same time. I’ve been doing it almost since the beginning of 2022.

Every time that I pitch on Monday night, I typically have 5 to 10 people show up and listen to me. These are all people that have come into my network. They’re all people that I know. Obviously, you can’t go out and ask strangers for money and stuff like this because you can’t do that. Essentially, these are people in my network. It’s like, “I’m going to be doing a pitch. Would you be interested in popping on real fast and hearing me out for half an hour on what I’m doing?”

Utilizing Zoom is what I’m saying to have people come on and hear you out, or to be educated or talk to investors or sellers is the way the world is working now. The truth is people are open to this. People are open to this type of communication, so take advantage of it. I do. I’ve done $20 million in transactions in several years. I am raising millions and millions of dollars on a regular basis. That’s number one. That’s like one tip.

The REI USA Website

Website for REI USA, I wanted to make sure you all knew about this and are familiar. Christie is our community manager. She will be sending everybody that signed up a welcome email introducing herself. She also does demos of REI USA, the website. If you want to spend 15 or 20 minutes getting a demo of everything we offer, I wanted to let you know that you can email questions at REI-USA.com and let Christie know. She can get you a demo.

 

[bctt tweet=”Teaching is one of the ultimate ways to help others.” via=”no”]

 

What she’ll do is she’ll tell you maybe which coaches would be great for you to work with and stuff too, as well. Depending on what your goals are, which coaches will be great for you. On the homepage, we have this new quiz. It’s which real estate investing coach is right for you. You can go through it, and it asks a series of questions. In the end, it’ll tell you which coach would be the best one for you to start with.

A lot of people ask, which coach should I go to? Obviously, if you go to the events calendar, you’ll be able to see what everybody teaches. Mike is going to teach land and Noah and Christie do private money. You’ll see a whole bunch of different events here on the event calendar. I always tell everybody to come to the Events Calendar and register for whatever you’re interested in. You can click where it says the Trainings Calendar and you can see the whole view.

This is all the sessions of everything that we offer. We put 60 days of sessions up. We don’t put them so far in advance, but we do put them in the next couple of months. You could pick whichever one that you want. If you want Online Marketing For Investors, you click on that. You can register. If you’re logged in, you would be able to register automatically.

Once you’re in the portal, you can register. I wanted to remind you of the REI USA Facebook Group as well, too. Make sure everybody’s in there. This is where all the teachers are here. You can tag a teacher if you have a question. Typically, Christie or Ivan, or one of our team members will come in. If you post a question, we’ll tag the teachers that could help you, too as well. Utilize the Facebook group to ask questions if you’re stuck or have challenges or anything like that. I want to make sure you all know about that.

I’m on the dashboard in the REI USA portal. I’ve logged in right now. As members, you all have access to this, and this will go away. You’ll have access to your membership level. This is going to tell you how many sessions you’ve watched. It also tells you when you’re going to achieve the next level. At every level, you have different bonuses.

Once you get in, after you’ve watched five sessions, you get a free coaching call with Mike Watkins. Darlene is giving away her bootcamp. After ten sessions, you can go to her Foreclosure Bootcamp and get a free ticket for that. William Tingle teaches creative financing. After fifteen sessions, you get a free coaching call with him. Rachel is teaching vacation rentals. She’ll do a strategy session after twenty. David is also teaching and does a short sell coaching session after 25 sessions. Basically, when you get into your dashboard, you’ll be able to see where you’re at right here and what needs to be to the next session.

 

 

We’ve got badges for all the things. You’ll get a badge for attending this virtual summit. All your badges show up on the directory. You have access to the members’ directory as well too. The members’ directory is where you have an instant buyer’s list. Let’s say you want wholesale and you have access to everybody’s numbers profile. You can get in touch with everybody and say, “What are you interested in? Tell me what you’re interested in, and I’ll go out and look for you or whatever.”

You can look to see your areas. If you’re in Kansas City, you can find everybody in Kansas City, contact them, and have an instant buyer’s list. There’s the member’s directory. You can click on them and put your email address and all this stuff right here. You’ll see badges and stuff. That means this is what they’re doing. After this, everybody’s always like, “I got a whole bunch of information on raising money. Now what?”

You have all these free courses that you have access to. Mike offers this wholesaling course. These are my seven critical steps. You’re like, “I don’t know what to do,” you go to the beginner’s one. Here are our badass women. This is like all the women of REI USA teaching. This is our last virtual summit that you can watch. It’s amazing sessions from these ladies.

Alan Cowgill has offered his private money and made it easy. If you want more help on how to raise money, you can watch this. These are all three courses that we have available to you. A lot of people say, “I don’t know where to start.” Obviously, you’re going to want to hop on to the sessions, meet all the teachers and get to know them. This is a course that I did.

It’s basically going to take you on your first steps and deciding which direction to go in the market, setting up your office, systematizing your marketing strategies, putting deals under contract, mastering, analyzing deals, negotiations, and then money. I feel like these are the seven most important things that you should be focusing on.

That’s available to you. Let’s say you go to the calendar, register for a whole bunch of sessions and can’t make them. They’re all in the training replays for you. They’re all there. We keep the last like 90 days or something like, this is what we do. You could come in and you could watch any of these sessions from anybody here. These are all the replays from the last session. A whole bunch of other stuff as well, too. There’s a three-day challenge and things like this.

We try to keep as many replays as we can because we know it’s very hard to make the live sessions sometimes. We put those up and keep those up for you so you can see those. You could check everything out here. I wanted to remind you of the Forms Directory. You have access to the contract and things like this because people say, “I need contracts.” Make sure you check out the Forms Directory. This is where all the contracts are. Everything that you need.

 

Important Links

• Events Calendar
• Trainings Calendar
• Online Marketing For Investors
• REI USA Facebook Group
• REI-USA.com
• REI USA – Facebook group
• http://www.rei-usa.com/membership/
• http://www.REI-USA.com/trainings/
• http://www.REI-USA.com/ teachers-spotlight/
• http://www.rei-usa.com/free-template/
• https://www.instagram.com/reiusa_/
• Free Online Jumpstart Course for Real Estate Investing: https://bit.ly/3IrDji9
• REI USA Youtube: https://bit.ly/36QPoQl
• How to Get Started Investing in Real Estate: https://bit.ly/3pIxB4r
• Talk to Kristi, Our Community Manager, for a FREE 10 Minute Website Demo: https://bit.ly/3pIxB4r

 

About Stacy Rossetti

Real Estate Investing – My Journey, My Career My Life

As a real estate investing expert and coach, I have built my name on the results I have created – for myself and for my students.

Investing in real estate has changed my life, opening doors for me and my family and affording me an outlet for all my creative and entrepreneurial energy. Through scaling up a renovation company in Atlanta with hundreds of transactions to learning to invest passively through creative financing deals and storage facilities, I have not only overcome many trials and tribulations, but systematized and organized my days so that I can run several successful businesses.

Day after day, I work hard at what I do, striving to stay ahead of the curve by building on my knowledge and making shrewd decisions. This did not happen overnight, of course. My early days in real estate were slow, exhausting and hard, but little by little, I earned a sense of what worked and what I needed to do to achieve consistent results. Because I taught myself all this learning through experience and mentors, the process was gradual and required the utmost diligence on my part.

Today, I own and operate REI USA and StorageNerds. REI USA is an online education and networking platform that is exactly the tool that I would have wanted when I was getting my start, something that aspiring and established investors can turn to, a means to cutting your learning curve dramatically. Together my husband Pete and I currently own and operate eight storage facilities. Investing in self-storage is our passion and how we have decided to build wealth. It is the best kept secret in the investing world and I don’t know why more are not investing in it.

In addition to investing in real estate myself, I have since discovered another passion in my life – coaching and empowering others. Whenever I see that I have guided someone toward a breakthrough or helped them to transform themselves professionally, I feel deep fulfillment, confident that I am on the right path and reinvigorated to go out and do even more.

As a coach and teacher, I specialize in helping my students navigate real estate investing, rehabbing, and storage facilities. These are all complex, involved topics, but I have honed my ability to communicate the intricacies – and found ways to demystify them efficiently. Seeing the light go off in my students’ eyes, I know that the magic is happening, and in everyone I teach, I recognize myself – wide-eyed, hopeful, firmly believing in all the opportunities that real estate investing can present. For years, I have connected with my students through workshops, offering a glimpse into the thought processes and techniques that have led to my success.

In order to share my knowledge with as large an audience as possible, I have currently expanding beyond person-to-person coaching, developing a Self-Storage Investing mastermind and group coaching mentorship called StorageNerds. This mastermind draw on my years of experience in real estate and self-storage investing and break down my ideas and strategies in a way that even beginners can digest.

My passion is to help beginner investors learn to invest in real estate and my mission is Affordable Financial Literacy. REI USA embodies this mission by engaging those that truly want to learn to invest in real estate but don’t want to go broke doing it. Over the course of the last five years my husband and I have spent many years perfecting how we find, fund and run our storage facilities so we can be anywhere in the world. Our facilities are truly passive income and we love sharing our tips and tricks on how we manage them through our StorageNerds mastermind.

Renovating my first home in 2012, I knew that I had stumbled upon something big – a calling, a vocation, a passion. There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to stick with real estate and give it everything that I had. Collaborating with my husband has been a bonus, and I am grateful every day for the career that he and I have created together.