How to Get Free Money From the Government?

Steve Trang: Everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Real Estate Disruptors. Today, we've got Josh Ziklowski with ERC Specialists. He flew in from Layton, Utah to talk about how to get free money from the government. I am on a mission to create a 100 millionaires, and the information on this podcast alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years.

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Josh Ziklowski: I'm ready. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Steve: Oh, it's my pleasure. So before we get into all this ERC stuff, before you found all that, you did start in real estate.

Josh: I did. And I I think that's what kinda helped me be a serial entrepreneur. It is, I would say real estate is the trunk of my tree.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: You know, I started with flipping homes years ago, through a mentor I had in 2003, and then seven

Steve: years ago.

Josh: 2003. Yeah.

Steve: So it's been a while.

Josh: It's been a while.

Steve: Yeah. Alright.

Josh: Coming up on twenty years, actually, next year. But, then I started getting into commercial real estate about seven years ago, doing a lot of triple net stuff with, retail, flex industrial, medical and dental. And, yeah. And then through being a serial entrepreneur, had some other businesses, one in in the oil business, where in 2020, price per barrel was negative $30 a barrel one day. And because of that, it kinda it kinda pushed me into a different direction,

Steve: you

Josh: know, because I was trying to, like, find ways to combat, you know, our oil business because it was suffering.

Steve: So fix and flip into commercial, doing a lot of triple nets. So I like to I'm gonna pick on commercial quite quite a bit. I don't think commercial people really understand how commercial works. Right? I mean, you drive around, you see the street, you see the signs, whatever.

Right? But for me, you know, wholesaling at times is a bad wrap. But I don't see any difference between wholesaling and commercial real estate. Can you walk me through what you see or like some of the differences?

Josh: No. I think I think you hit it right on the button. It's funny you say that because wholesaling the part of wholesaling is, you know, you put in a contract and you can technically back out. You might lose an earnest money deposit or whatever at the very at the very end, but you won't close on it until you have a buyer. Right?

Mhmm. Commercial is very similar as far as like, for instance, I have a property in Syracuse, Utah. Like you mentioned, I'm out of Layton, Utah, and I have a property there. I put in a contract for six months due diligence, and I waited, and I had an extension for another three months after that. So nine months just to find the right tenants, which ends up and triple net means that they're paying for your taxes, insurance, everything.

Right when I had it fully occupied, I closed on it.

Steve: Right.

Josh: And this was a 100 and, like, $5,000 purchase. But I waited because I wanted to be absolutely sure that this was a legitimate close, and that's how commercials and so coming back to wholesaling is it's very similar is you kinda wait to the very end. You might lose and earnest my deposit or you close on the deal and you make, you know, 5 to $20.

Steve: Right. So you look at, so commercial, like, if you're working your way up, do you were you a cold caller? Like, from the Oh, absolutely. Right?

Josh: Yeah. I was a I was a door knocker.

Steve: Door knocker.

Josh: You know, more than a cold caller. There was no, there was no software around. Like, I was literally just knocking on doors in twenty third 2003, you know?

Steve: Yeah. So you get in and you got a door knock. I had a cold call. Right? Josh here's a list.

Hammer this list. And don't talk to me until after you finish hammering this list. Right. So you got to start off there. You got to deal with, landlords or people that own commercial properties.

And then it's like a pocket listing, Right? Because you don't you might put it on CoStar. You might put it on, what's the other one? LoopNet. Yeah.

Right? You might put it there, but you might not. You might just have an internal, it's not an MLS, but it's an internal, listing service. Right? Is that accurate?

Josh: Yeah. Very accurate. Right. So you

Steve: got your own private network. You're trying to market your own private properties. And then when you do sell it, typically you're double ending it. So you're finding the seller and you're finding the buyer. Mhmm.

Josh: Is that? Yeah. And when you talk about putting up signs and stuff at the very beginning when you described commercial, that's how I thought commercial was. It's like if you had a vacancy, you just put up a sign and hopefully, you know, Starbucks calls you and says, hey, I wanna put in with Starbucks.

Steve: Well, that'd be great.

Josh: Yeah. You know? And because I learned from my mentor, his name's Scott Scheele, is there is a whole different, plan to that Mhmm. You know, to make it so you can be a lot more professional with a little bit of education type of thing. Yeah.

So

Steve: But you gotta cold call the sellers, potentially cold call the buyers or cold call the potential tenants. Right? Yeah. Maybe peel them off from one building to another to your building. Right?

So that's what you're getting paid for is the marketing.

Josh: No. Totally. I mean, when I have a vacancy, literally, I when I first started, now I have a team in place, but I I would call 200 to 300 potential tenants from the East Coast to Texas to Idaho that I would buy a list that they had a they had an an idea of maybe coming into this spot in Utah. Mhmm. You know, and I had some sort of list for that.

And I would call them, cold call them.

Steve: Potential people.

Josh: Yeah. Does

Steve: that mean, like, people that have expressed interest? They didn't sign up on a website? Like, these are people that might be interested.

Josh: Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: And then, the other thing too, I kinda compare, right, you know, again, like picking a commercial in the, in the past is that as a realtor, we have the National Association Realtor with the code of ethics. Right? Like, if I'm saying mean things about Josh, that's unethical. Mhmm. In commercial, that felt like it was totally cutthroat guy.

I haven't done a lot of commercial transactions, but when I have done them, it feels like they can smell weakness and they will crush weakness.

Josh: They they can. No. And, it's funny because I literally was grinding for the first. And it's it's a lot of it's funny because I paid I mean, not paid. I I invested.

I would say invested as far as in education in in residential, you know, when I flipped homes and stuff. Then when commercial was a 6 figure, education, right, when I first started. It took me almost a year and a half, two years to make residual income from that. And a lot of people quit after, like, six, nine months, and that's even a long time for them. You know?

For me, it took a long time because I wanted to change the way I was doing things because I felt like if I would have passed away one day, I would have left my kids a chunk of money, but not keys to an apartment complex or keys to a shopping center that they could maybe utilize for twenty, thirty years after that.

Steve: Right. Okay. So anyway, I just kinda wanna highlight that because you do have the commercial experience. And I think, like, there's this idea that, you know, wholesaling is unethical or whatever. Yeah.

And I see so many parallels between commercial real estate and wholesaling real estate.

Josh: Oh, totally. Absolutely. I can totally see what you're saying with that.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So, you said that oil changed your business. And so you again, so oil changed it. What exactly did you pivot to after oil?

Josh: So when I was in the oil business, I was in there since 2019. Actually, 2018. And, because in Wyoming, I'm in the out of Utah, but I want Wyoming. Every well was plugged, and there was an article that and that hasn't happened in eighty six years through the because of the pandemic. Right?

So in price per barrel was negative $30 a barrel one day. I was trying to effect extra stimulus. I did PPP number one, number two. And if you've heard of PPP, you definitely wanna listen here because this is what we're gonna talk about is that's under the CARES Act. And I got a state of Wyoming grant.

Well, back when there was PPP, there was also something called ERC, but you couldn't get one you couldn't get both. You couldn't get PPP and ERC until president Biden amended this in March '21 where he said, hey. If you got PPP, I'll allow you to get ERC. And the what that what that is and and, started with is up to $26,000 per w two employee. And so when I first read about this, it was because a friend of mine said, hey.

Here's another, opportunity for your oil business. I I found that I reached out to my CPA, which I'm in Phoenix right now. My CPA used to be Tom Willright, in his group. You know, that's that's Robert Kiyosaki's CPA. And he said to me, you know, 95% of CPAs won't do this because they don't do your payroll.

Usually, you have ADP or Paychex or Gusto. Reach out to them. So I did, and I reached out to my friend of mine who is a state representative for ADP. And he said, oh, man. We're not amending returns.

We're only doing active payroll. So you're gonna have to find some sort of service or third party that can help you claim this credit. Mhmm. And they called it credit because a couple different reasons. But, basically, I mean, I know you use the word free money.

That's one thing that our attorneys have said, hey. Don't use the word free because there's always a cost to something. But in essence, you know, if you don't know about this, you're gonna get some money that let's just call it newfound money you didn't know about up to $26,000 per w two employee. You have 10 employees. There's quarter million dollars.

Steve: Right. You know? So you read about this back. You said 2020? Yeah.

So the ERC started in 2020.

Josh: Exact same day as PPP. That's what's so funny. Everyone knows about PPP, but they didn't know that this started

Steve: the same time. PPP, EIDL Yep. And ERC. Mhmm. And I never heard about ERC until Terry Terry Therick connected us.

Right? So you there was PPP, EIDL, and ERC. So you're saying you got the PPP money, EIDL money?

Josh: Not in my oil business because EIDL is well, technically, they're both alone. Mhmm. PPP was alone that was forgiven later. EIDL is alone over thirty years. We, as the oil business, didn't do the EIDL.

Got it. We did PPP number one, number two. We got a state of Wyoming grant that gave us some 6 figure money as well.

Steve: What was the difference between PPP one and PPP two?

Josh: PPP two, in order to get approved for PPP number two, you had to show a 20% 25% loss Mhmm. From the year before.

Steve: Got it. Yeah. Because they were sending us emails like, hey. Like, you should apply for this. And every time I looked at it, I was like, but we can't show this.

Josh: And that was the reason. And that's what's yeah. We'll go over more, but that's how ERC actually started, but then this was amended five different times in 2021.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: You know? But PPP number two was you had to show a 25% loss. So we got about a 185,000 on PPP number one for the amount of employees that we had, then we got the exact same amount for PPP number two Mhmm.

Steve: You

Josh: know, because we had a loss.

Steve: Alright.

Josh: Well, in oil. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Steve: It was kinda harder to show that in in real estate. I mean, we're 2021 is a pretty good year for a

Josh: lot of us.

Steve: Fairly good year.

Josh: Yeah. For a lot of people.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So then, so you saw ERC. You looked into it. And then Tom Wheeler, at that point, was doing your accounting?

His group. Yeah. His group. And they said, go talk to, whoever's on your payroll.

Josh: Yeah.

Steve: And you went to go talk to them. They're like, we don't do this. We only amend returns. So they don't do tax returns or they don't do ERC applications?

Josh: They don't do, they don't amend your quarterly returns.

Steve: Okay.

Josh: So, like, I always tell people, don't get mad at your tax professional for not knowing this. Mhmm. Because this isn't something that usually they're probably even it's in in their, wheelhouse or even on their radar. Right? Right.

But then even payroll companies are saying, like, hey, you know, we're pretty much a software company. We will do your active returns. Go online. Do your Gusto quarterly. But if it's an amendment, that's a different story.

Steve: Why is an amendment necessary?

Josh: Because we're going back, in like, right now, we're in 2022. So we're going back to their 2020 returns and saying, hey. Send this over, and then we're gonna file this based on what you, claimed, how many employees you had that quarter. Mhmm. So, like, even, like, when you think about the word fraud, like, in PPP, that was because you just answered a couple questions.

This is like saying, hey, we have to match what you already filed a year and a half, two years ago with the IRS. So the the opportunity for fraud is, like, it's hard. It's actually hard to commit fraud because it's like you told the IRS you had 13 employees. Now you're telling me you have 30. I can't say you have 30 because you already said to them in 2020 you had 13.

Right. Does that make sense?

Steve: And it makes total sense. Okay. So, so you go to the payroll company. Like, we don't do a minute return. So then what was the next step after that?

So kind of the you you never read the

Josh: book who not how? Yeah. I'm a huge proponent of that. It's probably one of my top three books now because that's what changed my life is I kinda was like, yeah, man. This is it's a little too good to be true, number one.

But number two is like

Steve: Oh, yeah. That's why I said to Terry.

Josh: Yeah. But number two is like, I'm not a tax guy. Like, I've never even I I've I've logged into QuickBooks probably a dozen times in my life.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: And but I have, you know, an accounting person or whatever that is professional at that. So kinda that same mentality. Why don't I get the right who's, partners, stuff like that, to start a business? You know? And, and it's funny because we used to think, like, man, if we could make an extra $10.20, $30,000 a month, this would be awesome.

You know? That's how we started. But we went from six partners. Now we have, eight or nine equity partners to two hundred and two hundred ten employees, you know, over the last year and a half. And, we just help businesses from one employee to 500 employees claim this credit.

And, I should say, because I was saying earlier, why do they call it a credit and not a grant? You know, because we we said we don't wanna use the word, quote, unquote, free money, but the reason why they're called they don't call it a grant is because in a grant, you have to disclose what you're using the money for. Whereas a a credit why they call it a credit is you can use it for whatever you want. And this is not a loan. It's forgiven right when you get it.

Mhmm. You know, whereas PPP was a loan that you had to forgive later and you had to disclose what you're using the money for. Right? So you can use it for whatever you want in this. And that's what's really cool about this program.

Steve: So you want again, I'm looking at like, you already have your regular person doing your taxes. Does they were not able to do the ERC return. You had to go find people to figure this out. Yeah. What was that process like?

Josh: Well, it and so one of my partners, her name is Jerry. She's on the, different boards of, the Payroll Association, National Payroll Association, Utah Payroll Association. If you remember what I was saying earlier is if you got PPP, you cannot get ERC back in 2020. Mhmm. Well, people that didn't get PPP, they tried to get ERC.

So she was she was doing claims of ERC back then. Right? So she already been doing this. But and when we first, talked about the opportunity of of working together, it was mostly because, she had been doing it, but also, you know and she'll admit to this. She thought the only way you could do this is manually.

You couldn't do this to scale. Like, there's I don't know if she used the word impossible, but it was very unlikely for her to have the mentality of, like, thinking, oh, you gotta literally probably hire 50 to a 100 processors to do this. And we said, yeah. There's gotta be a different way. And, we kinda took the mentality of Henry Ford, and and, that's another partner of mine that's very good operations.

His name's Justin. As far as the, tech technology piece, we wanted to build a conveyor belt like Henry Ford. It's how can we start with the car here to have it out to production over here, you know, and make it so because right now, we're handling about 400 companies a day. Mhmm. And how can we do that?

And that's what we we started with. And granted, we've had plenty of growing pains with it, and we still have them today. But because this is a program, you're not make you're not building a business for a ten, twenty year exit. You're building it for, like, a three year period.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: You know? And so we've had a lot of things, but luckily, we've, been endorsed by many different agencies, associations. Even our Utah state attorney general is now on our board.

Steve: Oh, that's huge.

Josh: Yeah. And a a former, US attorney general. His name is Matt, Matt Whitaker under when he was under Trump. He's on our board as well. So he probably

Steve: has a pretty good idea how it works.

Josh: Yeah. Exactly. And and believe me, when we first talked to him, it took him about three or four weeks to even get back to us to vet us a little bit. And so we're fortunate that he, you know, said, hey. You guys are legit.

This program is legit. I wanna work with you guys.

Steve: Got it.

Josh: So,

Steve: talk to me about, like, the first batch. I'm I'm assuming you start off yourself. Right? You're your first case study. Yeah.

So what was that like when you first went through this?

Josh: Same thing is it's always too good to be true, and that used to be my, start of my presentation for a good year. Mhmm. You know, when I first started the when we sort of first started the company in May '21 is that's how I'd start because that's how I originally started. And I used to tell people because I want them to vet it. I want them to Google ERC credit and go to the irs.gov website.

That's how it all started. Right? And because 10 out of 10 business owners back a year and a half ago didn't even know about it. Now I would say three out of ten, four out of 10 know about it now. There's more companies out there, trying to do this and all that kind of stuff.

But, when I went through it, you know, received the money, then I I the one thing we set up is, because the one that the one thing that's crappy with the program is the IRS does take six to eight months to send out the money. So what we said is like, hey. We're not gonna charge upfront for our services. We're gonna charge 15% of what they get, on the credit side. So if they're approved for, you know, a $100,000, we're gonna charge 15%, $15,000 to file it for them, and we'll wait until they receive their money.

So it could be six to eight months. So we'll and we set that up because the IRS was taking a while, and it was a little too good to be true versus

Steve: Why is it that PPP and EIDL were relatively fast, and ERC is six to eight months?

Josh: I think it's more of, because obviously, like, PPP was a frenzy, like, literally. And and banks were were making a up to 5% commission for brokering that money.

Steve: And if you remember every reason in the world to get it done right.

Josh: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the thing is is they were so aggressive because there was about six or seven questions. Do you have a do you have an EIN? Do you have this?

Do you have this? So okay. You're getting the money within six, seven days. Mhmm. You know, where this is like getting tax returns, quarterly returns, I should say.

Your you actually, we asked for your PPP information, your payroll report. It's very detailed. You know? And that's why payroll companies, CPAs, enrolled agents, they don't do it because it is so far off their radar, and it takes literally two to three hours per employee to file this. Yeah.

So and that's why we kinda set up the way we did. Okay.

Steve: So you're the first case study. You got it. We started it, and it's six to eight months until you got Yeah. Your your was it credit? They call it

Josh: It was it it's a check-in the mail. Even though they called it credit, they called it overpayment technically with IRS. What does that mean? So if you're receiving because back in the day when before we a lot of us were self employed, we'd receive a tax return. Right, where, we were w two employees or whatever it was, and, we'd get 3 or $4,000 back.

It's basically that, but the IRS calls it an overpayment. So in other words, like, let's say your quarterly in 2020, quarterly three, you know, you already paid your payroll tax back then. Now because you had 10 employees, you can get up to $25,000 that quarter. They're saying, hey. We're gonna pay you overpayment for that quarter.

That's why they call it overpayment. So Yeah. Our our clients will get, you know, a notice in the mail that says, hey. You got an overpayment for this quarter. So someone's approved for 200,000.

Technically, it comes in six different checks because of six different quarters. It comes as a overpayment from the IRS.

Steve: Got it. Okay. So you started it. There were some challenges, but you're able to work your way through. When did it go from, like, let's try this on ourselves to, like, hey.

Let let's make this a business. Right? Because you talk about serial entrepreneur. I also have that problem. I imagine some of the people listening have this problem.

So what was it like from, like, getting yours done to making this a business?

Josh: Yeah. So when we first started the business, just like PPP number two that we talked about earlier, you had to have a 25% loss. When this program started, there's a couple questions in what we call our questionnaire. Do you have 500 employees or less? If the answer is yes, obviously, all w two.

The next question is is, did you have a 20% loss, you know, from your 19 quarters to your '21 quarters? That's how we started the business. But then president Biden amended this literally four or five different times in '21 where he changed up the questionnaire. He says, hey. Did you have a 20% loss, or were you shut down partial or full based on government mandate, or did you have a supply chain disruption to your business?

And even Forbes did an article in March '20, '22 that said 80% of businesses actually qualify for this, yet seven out of 10 don't even know about it. Mhmm. And it's because of that supply chain. You know? Just like you said, is in '21, it's like, we made a lot of money.

Like, in real estate, we made a lot of money. Well, did you have a supply chain? Well, yeah. I mean, we couldn't get lumber. We couldn't get windows for sixteen weeks.

I mean, we had to go buy it from someone else, or we had to do this supply chain.

Steve: Or extra hard money costs.

Josh: Yeah. Well, I I when and I've never actually had someone talk about that, but, you know, that adds to your bottom line. And they call it, did you have a 10% or more or less nominal effect? Mhmm. You know?

In that case, you did, you know, because you could have profited 40,000. Now you're profiting 30,000 because you have interest on it, whatever it

Steve: is. Right. Yep. Okay. So then, once you you got this going I mean, I know, like, we went through this and, like, Terry again, Terry Terry, he's the one that connected you and me.

I remember he's like, Steve, you gotta check this thing out. I was like, you're crazy. Like, this can't be real because I had seen other people post about it on Facebook. And I did my research. I did my due diligence.

Like, we don't qualify for this. He's like, just talk to Josh. Okay. Fine. So I talked to you and that's when you had informed me that what I had read before was no longer true.

Josh: Right.

Steve: Right? And so I was like, okay. Yeah. I did experience some supply chain issues, and it did affect us. It did hurt us financially.

So then we went through it. And I wanna say, for our two different companies, I think we have 70,000 coming in somewhere around that number. Yeah. So, obviously, this this is real. Right.

So if someone wanted to to do this, like, what would that process be like? Like, someone's listening right now. He's like, alright. If if if this is legit. Right?

Josh is running the business. Steve's gone through it. He's getting the money. What steps do they have to take if they want to to qualify for this?

Josh: Of course.

Steve: For this?

Josh: Yeah. So there's gonna be two things. We'll go over the second one here in a in a few minutes. But the first one is, we set up with you guys to make it easier for your listeners, which is disruptors,uh,.com/erc. They'll go through a few different questions.

And to to what I was saying earlier is we don't charge for our services upfront. And this is for someone that has w two employees, anywhere between one and fit 500 employees. Right? They go through that. We're gonna make it an easy process for them where they're gonna fill out it's gonna take them five or ten minutes, per EIN.

So if you have a couple EINs, maybe a restaurant and you have something else on the side, whatever it is, then we're gonna ask upload us some certain documents, your nine forty ones for six different quarters, and we'll show you what the what those are, your paper report and then your PPP information. That's all we need. And then about two to three weeks, we'll come back to you and we'll say, okay. You're approved for, in your case, 72 let's say, $72,000.13. Do you want us to file?

Technically, you can actually back out that point. I mean, 95% of people, when they see the number, they're like, oh, well, you guys already done this you guys already gone this far. Let's just do this. You DocuSign it. You agree to the 15% fee when the money comes, and then we wait six to eight months.

Mhmm. Right? Technically, as well, I mean, at the very end, you can actually pay our fee upfront and get a discount from 15 down to 10. That's up to you. We don't we don't mind what you decide to do, but it's gonna be up to you.

And that's how we make it very seamless for you. You know? At the very least, we might say, hey. You know, you send overs you send over, your information, but this quarter is a little like, you know, it was a scan. It's not we can't see it that well.

Can you resend another a different scan to us? Outside of that, like, we try to make it very seamless and very easy for, an an owner, or they might just pass it on to their bookkeeper that is in charge of that and does all that stuff. So.

Steve: So Yeah. And we basically had our in house, person who manages all our finances. Yeah. And she went through that process. And, there were some challenges, but they're all mostly on our end.

Alright. Getting the payroll reports and everything else. So Yeah.

Josh: But at the very end, I mean, it was seamless. I

Steve: mean Oh, yeah. I mean, working with you guys was it was really, really, helpful. So why do you think this is, right, that 80% of people qualify or 80% of companies qualify, but seven, ten aren't aware of it?

Josh: I think they are aren't aware. It's it's kinda like what you said. I think one of the top things I get all the time is, like, hey. My my tax person or I looked into this, and I didn't qualify. As I used to say, and this is a bad way to say it, but I used to say, oh, well, your tax person doesn't really know what we know.

But I kind of took a step back and, like, hey. That's the worst thing that they do I can do because they trust their tax person. So rather than saying that, I used to say now I say, like, hey. Your tax person, he or she was probably correct at that time.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: But it's changed since then. Right? This has been amended, and that's why Forbes did the article is because in November 21 when they said if there's a supply chain based on certain questions, you do qualify. And so that's the that's the push I do with people now is I you know, I was really on the call with two different CPAs today, and one of them is like, man, I heard about this, like, a year ago, but my focus is helping people with their 10 and 11. It's not payroll.

Steve: Yeah. It's not even priority.

Josh: Yeah. So, you know, I this is great for my client, and I have other clients that I wanna, refer to you guys. Mhmm.

Steve: Awesome. Yeah. And I think the I mean, I even still see it today, you know. Like, time to time, like, hey. Like, I'm just hearing about this.

What do you guys think? Right? I wanna say it comes up probably, like, every other month. Someone just posted on Facebook, hey. I'm hearing about this thing.

Is this thing legit? I was like, yes. This is legit. So And I think it it's

Josh: it's kinda funny because both of us been real estate. Right? It's kinda like real estate is you hear and then you wanna verify. Mhmm. Is you know, there is thirty, fifty different ways to make money in real estate.

And when someone brings something up like, hey. Did you know you could do this with the in addition to subject to, you could do this. Mhmm. Are you sure? Let me verify that.

You know? And you still wanna verify it. Right? But you hear about it and you don't discount it, but you're like, let me look into this. And this is kinda what that is.

Right? Is this some little too good to be true, but let me verify that

Steve: a little bit. So I remember when COVID, you know, first started, you know, in in, I mean, March 2022. I don't remember exactly when PPP and the IDL started rolling out, but it wasn't too much longer. I wanna say it was like maybe May, right? I don't know for sure.

Josh: In 2020?

Steve: Mhmm. Mhmm.

Josh: About then.

Steve: And I remember like I saw some people were like, I hate big government. This is wrong. We shouldn't take money from the government and and this and that. And and because of that, I will not ask for the PPP or or EIDL money. And then we kinda have this thing right now where a lot of people are kinda pissed off about the student loans thing.

Yeah. So what do you say to the person that that asks you, hey, Josh, isn't this morally wrong? Or maybe or maybe that's not the right question, but, like, I'm opposed to this. Like, what would you say to that person?

Josh: I would say it's available. Yeah. It's available. And I say that because, I have great stories to it. You know, being a person that, I was I mean, I'll just say it here.

I I was against the pandemic, all that kind of stuff. But I also looked at, like, what positive, positive pieces that happened from it. One is, you know, I was able to have dinner with my family every night nonstop for a good three or four weeks. I love that. I actually miss it.

Right? But with this, to to your point is, it's available. But the other thing is when I first started, I used to say, like, oh, man. You know, this is something else that that they're gonna put out there, and, you know, people are gonna take advantage of it. At the very beginning, I used to have people that told me no because of that.

Right? But then I had people, and one one story I have is in Utah. They, this pizza joint, they have probably five or six locations. They when I helped them get a little over half $1,000,000, when I sat down with them before they got the money, they said, man, we've been talking about adding another store or two. We're gonna do that with this money now.

Yeah. Unless they added two stores, I don't know what what they decide to do, but that adds 20 jobs per location. And that added that's gonna add up to 40 doing jobs. I mean, that's kind of the purpose of it. Yeah.

And so I I think it's one of those things that, yeah, you could debate both sides. And if someone, you know, starts arguing that side, it's not not like I'm gonna disagree with them. It's just like, hey, it's available. If you take advantage of it, great. If you don't, dude, I I respect that too.

Steve: Right.

Josh: You know?

Steve: I mean, I thought it was kind of a little bit of, hubris. Right? I think, the people are saying, like, I'm not gonna take this money. I don't wanna take money from the government. At the same time, I think, as a business owner, we have fiduciary to our employees and people that look up to us because they count on us Yeah.

For payroll, right? Like we as entrepreneurs get to enjoy all this craziness and we get to go on and we ride the ups and downs. Right. But when we get really low and really down, they are the ones at risk. And I think we have, I think we have to be great stewards to protect the company, whatever we can to protect the company, to protect all those people that rely on us.

Josh: Right.

Steve: Yeah. So I see some of those people that were absolutely adamantly against it, and, I don't think they're still in real estate.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I think you I think, it's our employees are our kids.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: You know? I mean, you know, they have families and stuff, and our kids, I mean, they don't have families yet. I mean, my kids are under the age of 15, but, our my employees, I mean, I'm always thinking about, like, you know, what can I do for them? And, you know, some are single, some are married, some have kids, and, you know, same thing. You know?

You know, what can we do to help the the company? And this program happens to be something that, you know, you can utilize within your employees or buy more equipment to add more employees, whatever you wanna do.

Steve: So Right. So, let's take a quick commercial break, and then we'll get to all the live questions. Guys, ask your questions in here. I I know Josh wants to answer all these questions for you guys, so we'll take a quick commercial break here. Welcome to the disruptors selling system.

Obviously, I believe in sales. I'm teaching this course. I'm very passionate about sales. But I readily recognize that our sales stuff does not matter until we're able to market effectively. There's a saying that professionals sift and sort and amateurs convince.

But when people think of salespeople, they don't get the warm and fuzzies, and so we need to make sure we're separating ourselves from what the typical salesperson sounds like. I don't know what it is, but it seems like every salesperson has that same melodic tune when they're calling people and saying, how are you doing today? As you can see, we really try to do everything we can to not sound like a salesperson. Now I fully embrace my role as a salesperson. Salespeople are needed in this world.

In our program, you're gonna learn how to book more appointments from the existing marketing you're already doing. You'll learn how to get more contracts signed and, ultimately, learn how to get more of those contracts across the finish line. Because we know we don't get paid for signed contracts. We wanna get paid for closed escrows. Let's get started.

Alright. So, guys, again, this is a live show. So please ask your questions, for Josh to answer. So, while the questions start coming in, let's talk let's go back to, your your journey here. So why did you go from real estate to oil?

So it's not necessarily saying I went to one or the other.

Josh: Real estate is always the trunk of my tree even today. It was having another branch. It was having diversity, and diversifying my portfolio and my time to see I had an opportunity that I was getting into on a minority piece, in the oil business and, which was delivering water and stuff in the oil business. And then we expanded that, and then we decided to buy a business out of that. And we paid a lot of money for that business, in early twenty twenty.

Steve: And then Well, you got into it right

Josh: Right. Before. Yeah. Yeah. It was, when you look back, it's like, oh my gosh.

That was a terrible move. But I think the terrible move turned into something that's gonna be Starting to do business. Yeah. Like, a 30 times x on on what I invested in that money. So, that said, that was kind of the main purpose.

And during that whole time, I'm still doing real estate. Right? Yeah. It was just, like, had this thing, but it was pulling me away from real estate estate quite a bit because it was, like, suffering so bad. Yeah.

I mean, it was literally I mean, I I may have said earlier, but in the state of Wyoming, it has happened eighty six years that every single well was plugged.

Steve: Well, was this that time where, I remember, like, the the oil reserves were so full that trucks of oil were, like, we have nowhere to put this oil.

Josh: That's that's why it was negative $30 a barrel that day. Yeah. That's exactly why. Literally, there's people at the at the ports, people as in barges with oil. They're told to go home.

Go back to Iraq. Go back to I don't know where they're going back to, but China, whatever, because there's no oil, we can't bring them the oil on the on the soil right now.

Steve: Yeah. It's crazy that way. Yeah. Was it? And we kinda have the opposite problem today.

Josh: Well, it's funny. We we were trying to think of, other ways to to, make money with that. And we had, a couple people that's like, hey. We have extra, I don't know what they're called, silos or whatever to put oil in. And it was like a kind of a rush dash within three or four days and it ended up not working out.

But we were really close to the to making money at that. But, you know, just being a little creative.

Steve: Yeah. So, we did talk about how to work with you, right? Yes. But let's say someone were so bold to say, hey, you know, I'm looking at a question from Johnny B. Right?

Let's say, I don't wanna go through Josh. I want to do this myself. I may not agree with them all. We just talk about who, not how. Yeah.

But let's pretend someone wanted to do that. Sure. What would that look like?

Josh: So I always tell people is, you know, by all means, you can, you know, just like anything else is, you know, you can, if you're getting sued, you can set you can certainly defend yourself. Right? The chances of you have if it's a pretty big, lawsuit or whatever, it's probably best to get an attorney. Mhmm. I compare it the same way is you can certainly do it yourself, and I'm not gonna tell people not to.

It's gonna be a lot harder. I don't think they're gonna get the max amount, because we specialize in it.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: But they're certainly well willing to do that. Right.

Steve: So if they wanted to do, like, where would they go to do that?

Josh: Read up on the irs.gov website 250 pages worth of documents to understand something that, you know, someone else could do and Alright. Get paid 15% if the money comes.

Steve: Yeah. So read up on the Yeah. On the IRS website. Okay. So you had your your business.

So, I mean, let's talk about what what does your real estate business look like today?

Josh: I have, I mean, little under 20 properties in the portfolio, all commercial. I have, five right now that are in processing, whether it's, constructing or, the land, working with the city and stuff like that. So I haven't done as much, but at the same token is, I've done enough. What you know, especially with, you know, getting into commercial real estate with depreciation stuff, I just something I'm always gonna do.

Steve: So is it something really more where you own properties, not so much you don't have a a team that's, like, sourcing deals or or or sourcing listings or anything like that?

Josh: So I do. I do have a partnership. There's I'm one of five partners.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: And, we we're in a contract in a couple deals right now, and we concentrate on the triple net stuff, like I was saying. And, like, we were just saying this last couple weeks to take a more aggressive approach, a little bit more marketing this year. Especially, we've been waiting because we're waiting for really, really good deals. Mhmm. Because although we're aggressive, we're also conservative.

And, you know, based on what I was saying with our my mentor, Scott, he's been saying, hey. Hold off for you know, don't be so aggressive until the next which is six to twelve months from now. There's gonna be some really, really good deals coming out. We're already starting to see some of those deals that we're that's what we're pouncing on

Steve: right now. So walk me through that. What do you consider to be a good deal?

Josh: Good deal is, in place cap rate around 7. So that way our investors, our limited partners are making money, with meat on the bone. So something that maybe has a vacancy or, we're buying something that isn't triple net, but it could be converted to triple net. Maybe it's a gross lease. And, you know, that's what we kinda look at.

Something that we can buy for maybe, like, say, 2,000,000 that we can sell for three to three and a half, you know, in a couple years.

Steve: So then is your play predominantly more purchasing, stabilizing, and then selling? Or you're also keeping some of these?

Josh: Yeah. So one thing is, Scott, so, yeah, to we, purchase, stabilize, add well, add value, stabilize, and then whether we sell or we keep you know, one thing Scott's always, taught is keeping 50% in your portfolio for cash flow and 50% for flipping deals.

Steve: Mhmm. Got it. So with the craziness, right, with the Fed rate. Yeah. It's affecting, you know, interest rates and everything else.

Right? Because, like, commercial financing is tied very closely to Libor or something else.

Josh: Mhmm.

Steve: How have you seen that affect values in commercial real estate?

Josh: Already. I have. In addition to I've had sellers, buyers, that have been reaching out to me, that have been backing out, that have been really concerned about, you know, getting into this property because now they're they're offering memorandum, their OM has changed because, because, you know, they're only gonna be able to get their investors x amount of dollars per year as far as return versus what they were thinking they could get two, three months ago. Right.

Steve: You know, because

Josh: a commercial deal takes six months to close. Nine months, maybe.

Steve: So if you're in commercial right now, you might be drinking a little bit more at the moment.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Steve: Yeah. Okay. So it's affecting so having rates go up causes the cap rate have to go up, right, as far as purchase price or sales price

Josh: Yep.

Steve: Because causing the value to go down. And so are you guys seeing because we're seeing right now on the traditional side, that the market, velocity has slowed down a lot. Right? We went from, like, a month like, we went from weeks or maybe a couple months of inventory to, like, five months of inventory overnight. Right.

Are you guys seeing the same thing on the commercial side?

Josh: Yeah. Which that's what I'm liking right now. Mhmm. Because I've been waiting to buy. Right?

I've been waiting for, these things based on my instruction instructed instruction from my mentor and other friends of mine, and I've been seeing it too. Like, hey. It's just really hot. And there was a lot of people in that were selling properties in commercial that they would sell it because they're like, wow. I can make, you know, $23,000,000, but then they happen to force themselves into a ten thirty one event, which now they're in, like, a four cap or a five cap, which is not great.

Right. You know? But they're able to cash out. Now they got something that's making a little bit of money, and they're like, oh, man. I shouldn't have maybe done that.

Maybe maybe I should, should not. But I had a lot of people that's like, I'm not I'm not selling because I don't know where to put it.

Steve: Right.

Josh: I I don't know where to find a really good deal after this one.

Steve: So, you know, reading the books, this is a long time ago. Right? Reading the books, understanding OPM, leverage and this and that. It's like, okay, well, I'm gonna do houses for a while. And at some point, I'm gonna graduate to commercial, right?

Like that's what you tell yourself. And then as I started leasing spaces and like working with some people in the commercial side, I was like, the cash flow is not nearly as attractive as you may think, potentially. At least this has been my experience. Right? And I'm looking at, like, spaces that I've leased, including this particular space.

Josh: Mhmm.

Steve: The amount of TI they had to do upfront until they recapture the tenant improvements Right. Is sometimes years. Right. So how do you deal with that long term cash flow situation?

Josh: So number one, I have good partners. Yeah. So, like, my one partner, in particular, his name's Chris down in Houston. He, his background's analytics.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: Right? He's done a lot of stuff with BP oil and stuff in the past and and current, actually. And he'll tell me. Basically, I'll say and, he'll either be a good person or bad person. I always tell him it's like, hey.

I got this really good deal. I did the numbers, and it's not so great, Josh. Oh, okay. Sounds good. We'll back out of that one.

Right? Alright. But he'll tell me, like, hey. Based on the TI, based on this, based on that, this is gonna be a slam a a double or a single, you know, or this is gonna be a home run or, like, hey. We gotta back out.

And that really helps helps me out, and I would encourage anyone. And that's what when I made that transition to commercial was that who not have mentality of you know? And I've had friends, believe me, that have wanted to make that transition to commercial from flipping a lot of homes, thirty, forty homes a year, but they have a hard time not letting go of a 100% ownership. Yeah. You know?

Whereas in commercial, it's like like, we me and a couple partners, we just hit us, a home run per se. We bought a property back three years ago in, Atlanta. It's a surgical center. And, we just had the tenant actually about three months ago tell us, hey. We wanna buy this.

We bought it as a nine and a half cap with 50%, vacancy. So we had a lot of upside. Right? And, anyways, they're buying it. We we bought it for, like, 2,120,000.00, I think, dollars, and we're in a contract at $4.04.

You know? Right. And, I'm walking away with investing, like, $10 of my own money as far as, you know, when we first started to I'm walking away with 3 or $400,000 as, I think, a 17% ownership.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: So you they they you hear that number, you're like, 17%? Like, why would you even do that deal? Well, it's because I have other partners that are doing certain things. I did my I did my part. They're doing their part.

I'm walking away with something that's cash flowing, you know, when we close. And two, three years later, I'm making I'm moving now 3 or $400,000 here in about a month or two we're gonna close. Mhmm. So, you know, you gotta have that mentality of, like, not being a 100% owner all the time.

Steve: Right. So for me, you know, singles, doubles, or we're talking about, okay, that was $10,000, $20,000. What does a single double home run look like in your world?

Josh: I would say it's you think about cash flow first is, you know, an extra $2 a month

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: I would say, is a single. And probably $2 each base, let's say. Mhmm. You know? You know, a home run, I think, is, like, $8.

I mean, that's a $100 a year on one property. Right?

Steve: Right.

Josh: And very doable depending on the property and depending on how you negotiated it. Just like in real estate, we always say you make money when you buy, not when you sell. Right. Right? Same thing with commercial.

So, we do the same thing. And that's where I think, the piece is. The appreciation piece or knowing that you're gonna flip the property and add tenants or whatever it is, then it's kind of that cherry on top because we don't buy properties unless it has cash flow. I know people do. I don't.

And when I then sell it, I'm walking away at least with a 7 figure, exit Right. You know, on my ownership for sure.

Steve: Yeah. That's awesome. David Smith asked the question. So what is a quick way for someone to figure out if they qualify for the ERC program? I know we talked about, like, going to the website, you know, disruptors.com/erc.

They can go fill out the whole thing. But just real quick to see if it's you know, if if they should start the process, what is a quick way to know if they qualify?

Josh: That's the best way because we don't ask for any credit card, nothing upfront. Just basically going to our questionnaire. We've made it, like, very detailed so you can go through it. And it'll take you five or ten minutes per EIN. You'll go to, disruptors.com/erc.

You'll go through some questions. You'll go through a couple of different prompts, and then you'll know in, like, ten minutes. Yeah. And it granted, it's still a prequal, and I say that because and it's pretty detailed prequal. Like, based on the questions you give, you know, now we just need to see your documents to verify what you said.

It's gonna be two weeks from now, and then you'll have some newfound money of something you didn't know you had.

Steve: Yeah. Is this more along the lines, though, I mean, for sure, I need w two employees.

Josh: For sure. Yeah. And there's another opportunity too that, you know, maybe, you're a business owner, but you're a sole proprietor or something. Maybe you know someone. Mhmm.

And we can go through that in a little bit. But that's something else. That way, you know, we capture, I guess, all your listeners is someone that has a a business, you know, with w two employees, this benefits that by going to, the website I talked about earlier. But then the other piece is, you know, maybe you know, a plumber or electrician that you can bet that could benefit from this. And, we've also set it up where you can make a little bit of cheese from that by going to, you know, ercdis disruptors.com.

Right. Because, you know, there's just a huge blue ocean with this, especially we have another year and a half, two years in this program. Mhmm. I mean I I mean, I just wanna help every business possible. You know, I used to there's two, statistics we've used to say, and, obviously, I'm gonna talk about both of them, but there's one in particular that we're really concentrating on.

But we've people have asked me, okay. How much how many people have you filed for? Or how much credit have you filed for? Well, credit wise, we've done about $3,500,000,000 of credit for customers. As far as the amount of, filed customers, clients, businesses, almost 19,000.

So we're averaging about 400 a day. Now the 19,000 means something more to us than the the other number. The reason being is we've had other companies that and we've even had people that says, hey, this person has a 100 employees, you know, let's let's work with them instead of that five employee or 10 employee companies. Like, no. We don't at the very end of the day, we wanna have a number and say, hey.

We helped 50,000 businesses. Whether you had two employees or if you had 500, it's one company to us. Mhmm. And that's huge to us because we wanna make sure that we're not overlooking the small business to maybe a medium to higher, you know, employee sized business. Yeah.

And, yeah. So we again, we wanna make sure we help as much people as we can, because believe me, you'll be surprised that your neighbor, the person down the street, has no idea about this and has five employees, and it means a ton to them that you're putting, like in your case, dollars 70,000 in their pocket.

Steve: Right. So if you're listening to the show, and you can think of a friend that owns a business, it doesn't matter what industry. It could be in real estate, you know, plumbing, whatever. Or it could be totally outside of this industry. But if they've got a business and they've got employees, go to eicdisruptors.com, fill out to be an affiliate, for Josh.

And then, you know, when they get paid, you'll make a little extra as well.

Josh: Yeah. There's no cost to be an affiliate. The other thing is is, like, when you're talking, I was I was sitting here thinking is, you know, we've been endorsed by many associations, but one in particular is we the part of this program is not just I mean, yes, it's w two, but what I mean by that is we always think about just for profit business. This actually is for nonprofits. Uh-huh.

Churches. We we do a lot of private schools, that actually, you know, we were endorsed by the, the private school association of Hawaii. In Hawaii, you know, they were shut down quite a bit during the pandemic.

Steve: Yeah.

Josh: So the private schools I mean, there's some that have 80 to 200 employees. You know? And so, one of our, representatives went out there and did a presentation for that association and there was she said there was 60 to 80, businesses, private schools that were there in that presentation and more than half of them was like, oh my gosh. This would be great for, you know, what we could use for our our, our private school, whatever, because, you know, sports were, you know, pretty much shut down or you can only have your family member go watch your game or, you know, all that stuff. So we lost on concessions and all that stuff.

So, there's there's just so many different ways that, or different pro different companies or opportunities that, you know, this program is for than just the old old, for profit business.

Steve: Yep. So John on Instagram wants to know, and this is kinda general question here. For entrepreneurs, what are the top five best options for investing your earnings? We don't have to go through five. But what are your top options for investing your earnings?

Just in general? In general. I think this is a free for all. You can go anywhere any direction with this you want.

Josh: I'm a I'm a big proponent in real estate. So, you know, I do I think number one for me is commercial real estate. Number two is lending money in real estate. You know, when I was in residential, especially when you're like, hey. You know, got a hard money lender, you know, charges two and twelve.

That's always the kind of the going rate until you kind of build a relationship. Now I'm the I'm I'm the person charging two and twelve, you know, so that's that's pretty awesome.

Steve: That's the other dream when you're growing up Yeah. In in this world.

Josh: Yeah. And because it then I'm just doing research on being a first charge seat position, all that kind of stuff. Number three for me is different business opportunities. There's a gentleman named Kyle Malan Malan. I think Kyle Malan.

Yeah I can't what's his last name? Malan. I never say it right And I and believe me, and Kyle and I are good friends. He can't say my last name right, so we got that in each other. Yeah.

But, no, I I like to buy, you know, acquisition businesses, like, in that in that case, and I'm getting hard into that this next year or two. I have, I just started money in in crypto just in that last four to six months, more on the coin side, not the NFT side because just because I don't know NFTs yet.

Steve: At this moment, we ain't really missing anything.

Josh: So Alright. And then lastly is I'm buying up on some Airbnbs Yeah. As far as partnerships and stuff like that. Not only just for the cash flow, but for the depreciation and tax cost, segregation piece.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, Kyle Mallett, I went through his program, the buying businesses. And, man, it's mind blowing. And if I had more time and resources, definitely something I would wanna pursue. Yeah.

When we look at who and how, that's one of the things I've thought about. The other side, on on on the blockchain side, we do have, you know, a whale club. That's something that Paul Sparks and I talk about every Friday. And we have our own way of combining real estate and the blockchain. So, right now we're actively looking at tokenizing real estate.

So we're trying to be like We won't be the first one, but we're gonna be one of the first few. So we're

Josh: we're bridging people. Talk about that. Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. So And I bet that would

Josh: just revolutionize the real estate industry.

Steve: Give us a month and a half. So a month and a half We should have that here.

Josh: Forty five days.

Steve: Forty five days. Yeah. We should have it. If we don't have it figured out forty five days, it's gonna be very disappointing. So then Young and Broke, channel on YouTube.

Boxable is creating a new platform for real estate. Do you think it is Elon Musk has one under SpaceX and brings two cash I I don't understand the question, but it's a great channel

Josh: name. Box of eight is creating a new platform. Oh, I lost it. I didn't understand that question.

Steve: I don't understand the question either, but I mean, that's an awesome that's an awesome channel name.

Josh: Young and Broke. I like that.

Steve: There you go. I have plans on buying these casitas and creating cash flow rentals with them. I think that's awesome. If you can buy casitas I think with casitas, though, you have to own the the primary as well. So, so then let let me ask you right now then.

You got multiple things going on. And clearly, you when you said serial entrepreneur that that you went from, like, commercial to lending to, Kyle's thing, which is not even real estate anymore Yeah. To blockchain, which is also not even real estate anymore. You've got a lot in your head right now. Right?

So what keeps you going?

Josh: I mean, ERC has obviously taken 90% of my brain Mhmm. And and my daily piece, but commercial real estate's definitely close second. The other ones I kinda mentioned, Kyle, I'm not it's not full time at all. It's something that I've kinda been on a because there's things that we have to realize is there's general partners and limited partners. Right?

Limited partners is you're kind of on the outside. Like, I got some extra cash. I wanna put it in here. I wanna make sure it's a good investment. I only wanna spend an hour or two to understand it, and then I'll put money into it to make a good return on my money.

In essence, that's kinda the hard money side right now. The general partner is like your day to day, you know. And so you have to appreciate, you know, if you're an investor and to understand general partnership versus limited partnership, I was always a GP, a general partnership, general partner. I was never an LP. But now I can see why there's a benefit to the LP where you're you're so busy doing something else, but you want your money to work for you with people that have good character, that you trust, that the deal is good.

That's where you wanna put a lot of your money. And so when I talked about those five things, four of them were LPs. You know? That what like even the the crypto, I'm a very very l p in that. I'm not very I'm not active at all.

Yeah. You know? I I literally was on, on the phone with one of my friends yesterday for about an hour to understand a couple more coins and what he's doing, security side, all that stuff that I didn't know about. And so I still wanna be educated. You know, it's kinda like my this is kind of a side note, but even my son, for instance, you know, he's been he's 15 and he's been flipping shoes.

You know, I have these, Jordans here, but he's been flipping Jordans for a couple years. He got me into it, and he's made some money in it. Couple grand, you know, at the age of 15 well, 13 to 15. But he's been telling me, I don't wanna go to college, dad. And I used to say, like, oh, man.

I kinda, like, I understand it, but I'm like, that's so early to say that. Right? Mhmm.

Steve: But then

Josh: I it hit me about a month or two ago as I said, man, I gotta change his verbiage. So I told him, I said, Gunnar, his name is Gunnar, I know you don't wanna go to college, but you definitely need education, whatever that is. If it's in if it's in crypto, if it's in real estate, the education is what we should start seeing in our minds, not college. Right? Because I mean, we all know, like, I have I have a degree, but what's the ROI on college?

It's hard. Right? But it what's the ROI on education? You know, if you spend $2,030,000, 40,000 with a mastermind group, whatever it is, I mean, for me, when I went masterminds three or four years ago, that's when my my income 10 times.

Steve: Right.

Josh: You know? And so I think, I know I went off a little tangent there, but, you know, I think, like with my son with the education side, you know, it kinda goes with the LPs of I wanna be a little bit educated, maybe not full diving in as a GP, but that's kind of the the main piece to it. So the long answer.

Steve: Well, I'm with you on that on college. Right? College right now for us is a struggle for me as well. And I'm I'm speaking as a person that went, you know, the four year degree plus the master's degree, you know. And I'm Yeah.

No longer really sold on it. Yeah. What is your biggest struggle right now?

Josh: Biggest struggle? I would say six, twelve months ago, it was traveling a lot. Obviously, I'm here in Phoenix while my family's in Utah, but, I've I've, done a lot of condensing that travel. Like, I mean, I'm literally just staying the night here, flying back to Utah tomorrow. Whereas, you know, in the past, it was three or four or five days.

You know? It was, it was grinding, and, it was it wasn't great. I would say, you know, you know, texting or FaceTime my wife every night, my kids. You know, I'd wanna be there. They'd want me there.

And that was tough. And I would say that was my biggest struggle. Now I would say I've really condensed that. And, yeah, that's that's pretty much it. As far as the business side, this ERC side is, I don't know how to explain it, but just getting the word out to the more people is the struggle.

I have more and more people now than a year ago that believe me. You know? Like, I have high school friends that I think to this day, they haven't even taken advantage of this program, and I told them about it when I first came out. You know? But outside of that, like, I, it I think everything's a grind.

It's just like, what do you consider a struggle? Like, I, I don't feel like I struggle. I feel like I go through every day. I'm very positive. I wake up at four or five in the morning, you know, read, listen to book, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So

Steve: Wasn't it funny, though, those that are closest to to us are the ones that don't listen to us?

Josh: Oh, for sure.

Steve: That's just the way it goes.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah. It's still crazy to me.

Steve: So, like, I'm a sales trainer. I sell I I train people across the country, right, like, on a regular basis how to how to sell. And we actually hired a sales consultant to come to my office, right, to train my realtors. And my front office person's like, what? You're the sales trainer.

Why would you hire a sales trainer from outside the organization to train your people? I told her, because people close to us just tune us out. Like, that's just reality. They don't listen to us. So bring someone else, teach something, same stuff we teach, but if someone else says it Yeah.

It's reality. But when you're telling your friends, they're like, yeah, whatever.

Josh: It's Josh being Josh. Yeah. For sure. No. It's still it happened today already.

Like, I have three, director of sales. Well, not they're all director of sales, but they're my business development, sales team. And, one of them is like, hey. This customer just still wants to hear one of the owners of the company. And I'm like, I'm gonna tell them the same thing you told them.

Mhmm. And it's just they wanna hear an owner. You know? It's just, it's a human nature thing, I guess.

Steve: It is. Totally is. Real quick here. So Camilo Tatis on YouTube. So he said, unfortunately, it got a little late, but he just, heard heard him talking about ERC.

So, is ERC a real thing?

Josh: It guess what? It is real. Yeah.

Steve: A real can

Josh: I and then this is what I we talked about this earlier? I know, is it Camille? Camilla. Camilla just got on, but Camilla I would tell you is every time I start a presentation a year and a half ago was I used to tell people okay this is too good to be true the first thing I want you to do is go to ERC or I want you to Google, type in ERC credit. After the ads, go to the irs.gov website and you'll see employee retention credit.

You can either listen to me now or you can read those 250 pages then we can talk after you read those 250 pages, but this is what it is and it is real. And, the next thing to verify is to call your tax professional, call your CPA, call your enrolled agent, whoever did your taxes if it's H and R Block or whatever and just say hey I was looking at this is this real? They'll tell you it's real, they might tell you you may or may not qualify. Now the reason the reason why I say that is they only probably read or understood the program when it first started but this has been amended five different times where you know, president Biden's made it even Forbes did an article to make it easier for business owners to qualify. So, I think that's the quick thirty second or sixty second version for Camilla.

Steve: And I am testament. Right? Like, I got the money. Yeah.

Josh: So And you actually receive the checks.

Steve: I actually receive the checks. If you

Josh: go to our website, ERC specialist too, I mean, there's a testimonial page that these are people that actually receive their checks, and you can watch 15 of them if you want. Yep. You know? If you wanna apply, obviously, you you will you go to disruptors.com/erc and, apply as far as a business owner. But, we we waited six, eight months to get those testimonials because, you know, Iris took a while to send out the checks, and right when we got it, it was like gold.

You know? And even then, it's still there, 15 different, stories. People still question it. Like, I got a a text today. Hey.

Why aren't you guys on the BBB? Mhmm. You know, like, because I know what the BBB is. Like, I gotta pay a subscription. Just go to our Google, what do they call that?

Google rating. You know, that's that's even better than BBB. You know?

Steve: So BBB is funny. Right? Do you have So funny.

Josh: Have you

Steve: ever ever had a BBB account? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Josh: I know all about it. Yeah. It's a giant scam.

Steve: It's such a pay to fly.

Josh: It's a yearly man like, annual fee, but yet consumers, like, have this idea, like, you know, you in the Better Business Bureau? What's your rate?

Steve: Over 55 or 60. Right? Like, younger people, it's Yelp, which is different pay to flight. But older folks, it's, like, people that remember the white pages, know BBB. And, yeah, it's just total pay to play scam.

It's crazy because I know because I was one of those people who paid.

Josh: Oh, yeah.

Steve: And they're like, hey, you got this complaint. How do you wanna handle it? I was like, I have an option. Yeah. I can I can just like delete this?

I can

Josh: dispute this complaint?

Steve: Yeah. So they're like, you wanna delete this? Like, yeah. So crazy. So on Instagram, Garren, this question's for Steve.

What's your first investment? What got you to make that investment? Man, it's been a while. I would say I mean, we're gonna go back. My first investment was probably that candy.

Right? Like, I was flipping candy in eighth grade, you know, buying for a nickel sum for a quarter.

Josh: Dude, I love that.

Steve: That's a good story. But I would say, you know, getting older, I don't know we bought that rental, vacation rental that was a disaster that we foreclosed on or a Ponzi scheme that I fell victim into. I'm not really sure it was one of those, but both of them were bad decisions. Go ahead.

Josh: I saw the name.

Steve: Oh, you know who it is?

Josh: That's my son.

Steve: Oh. Gary.

Josh: I saw Gary Zig.

Steve: There you go.

Josh: So that's, it's funny he asked you the question. It's kinda like what you just said is, like, I'm his dad, but he he always asks other people around me, like, so tell me the advice that you have in business. Yeah. You know? Like, I have a good friend, Mark Evans, I was on the phone with today, and Garren and my son, Gunnar, they look up to him like no other, which is great.

I actually appreciate it.

Steve: Yeah.

Josh: But I always assume there there is a piece of me that's like, god. That'd be so cool if they look up to me at some point.

Steve: Yeah. I got the same situation with my kids. Alright. So the the question on, on Instagram from Austin. So this is, makes a little more sense.

So what are your thoughts on Boxabl and similar affordable prefab tech homes? I'm not familiar with that. Are you familiar with it?

Josh: Oh, that's not I don't know what Boxabl is,

Steve: But prefab tech homes. Right? I I think this is, like, kind of pre manufactured homes.

Josh: How do you know? I haven't been into that, side of it. The one thing you'll find out with commercial real estate is, just like we talked about, there's 30 different ways to make money in real estate. Right? In commercial, people will say, oh, I wanna I wanna get into, multifamily.

I always say multifamily is the gateway drug. Like, it's the first thing when people go from residential commercial just to kinda learn it, because it's so they understand it. People can live there. You know, they someone had a duplex or triplex, whatever it is now. They're doing 60 units.

But, like, when I see the Boxabl, it's the same thing of, like, there's so many different ways, so many asset classes, to get into real estate that I like, I was pitched, about three weeks ago. I'm like, hey. There's this development out in California that it's gonna be Tesla approved. You know? There's gonna be Teslas that you if you buy a house, it's gonna be, like, on the grid and you get a free Tesla.

You know? It's included in your house, all this other stuff. I'm like, yeah. That's just not my thing. You know, it might be someone else's, you know, and that's probably this boxable is I'm always looking at different opportunities.

I I'm not in storage either. You know, I'm not in storage. I'm not in, mobile home parks. I I had a mobile home park, you know, four or five years ago and then realized after about three months, I don't wanna be in mobile home parks anymore, but that was just me. Right?

Steve: There's really no shortage of ways to make money in real estate.

Josh: Right. There really isn't. It's just everywhere. I mean, they're not making more dirt.

Steve: Yeah. How how will you know when you're successful?

Josh: It's funny. I don't I don't know if that word is a good word for me, successful. Because I saw a thing with Matthew McConaughey a few years back where he's always chasing his 30 year old, his 40 year old, his 50 year old that he talks about. And, I use the I always I always use the word rich is I read something about five, ten years ago is what is the word rich means something different to everybody. Yeah.

The word rich for me is to create more memories with my kids. Is I have four kids, beautiful wife, we've been married for twenty plus years and if I can continue to create memories with them, I consider myself rich. Now I say that because I've been at Disneyland broke. I've been at Disneyland not broke. Guess which one I had more fun at?

You know? And so if you wanna say, oh, money doesn't mean, what do they say?

Steve: Money isn't everything.

Josh: Money isn't everything. Maybe to you, but for me, I I had a lot more fun when I had money. And I still have a lot more fun. I feel like I'm rich because I can create those memories with them.

Steve: I mean, I always go back to Daniel Tosh. Right? It's like, yeah, you know money, that's my happiness. But have you ever seen a person sad on a

Josh: on a on a

Steve: jet ski? I know. Right? Right. On Facebook, deem a call.

How long on average is it taking to

Josh: receive checks? Six to eight months. It's funny though because, and I'll tell your your listeners this, is if 10 it's so funny because the IRS, we file it, we send it off to them. If I filed 10 of them, one of them somehow is sending it in three to four months. Majority is six to eight months.

So I tell everyone six to eight months, so don't give us, idea that, hey. Josh said three to four months. The other part is they send it in six checks. And this is like the like the old IRS. They're still sending that today Mhmm.

And in the post office. Like, of all the new technology we have, ACH, all that stuff, they're still sending checks this way. And it's believe me, it's frustrating because, you know, I'll have clients all the time that says, oh, I've received four of six checks. I don't know what these other two are. Then we'll have to have them fill out more forms to make sure we can track it and all that stuff because IRS, you know, is is so awesome.

I feel like the like, I'm in Utah. So Ogden, Utah is one of the hubs for IRS. I've always told my employees especially is, like, I feel like there's one like, for you listeners under the age of 30, there's a thing called a fax machine you probably never heard of before. But there's a probably a fax machine in some big 5,000 square foot, building that's faxes are coming through daily, and it's just getting like, no one's seen them. You know?

I just feel like you guys have fax machines. That's how I feel like the IRS is.

Steve: I mean, that doesn't sound out of the question. I watched a great this is on TikTok. Right? You got, Chamath, I wanna say. Right?

One of the billionaires on all in talk. You ever listen to that one? No. So this guy is, like I really love a a a lot of what he says. He's like, alright, so we just raised $80,000,000,000 not raised.

We took $80,000,000,000 from taxpayers to hire 87,000 IRS agents. He's like, if you went to Silicon Valley and he said, alright, I want you to create software that will detect when someone's cheating on their taxes. What do you think is the absolute most a tech company would charge you? No one would have the courage to save 5,000,000,000. Right.

It took 80,000,000,000. Wow. Right? To hire eighty seven eighty seven thousand agents. Yeah.

Right? So anyway, just Yeah.

Josh: And the thing is is, like, these days, it's actually hard to find, like, really, really, really good people. And so 87,000 is just so much over a certain amount of time to find some

Steve: Yeah.

Josh: Qualified people.

Steve: Well, that's assuming that they want qualified people. But that's another story.

Josh: That's another podcast. What

Steve: is your superpower?

Josh: Networking and people. Yeah. And I didn't realize that till probably three years ago. I I was always considered, like, someone that was social. You know, I I was I grew up in a small town, but four sport athletes, you know, because there was nothing else to do.

And so I was always been around sports, which, you know, you lose games, so that's part of what I was okay with rejection. But then as I got older, I kinda realized my like, someone asked me that, and then even someone asked me that, you know, Tiffany and, Josh, hi. Mhmm. They asked they said it in one of their things about a year ago. And I sat there and, like, oh, yeah.

Someone talked about that about three or four years ago. And it really kinda rec you know, made me, really think about that a little bit harder. And it is it is networking. It's it's just enjoying, people of all shapes and sizes. You know?

And, you know, yeah, that's that's what I enjoy. I enjoy being around people. I actually my wife doesn't. She's more of a recluse. And I think that's what kinda helps us because, you know, there's times that I need to kind of abide by what she wants and then she'll, you know, be the the person on my hip when I want to go enjoy, you know, that, you know, social Mhmm.

Networking or whatnot. Yeah. And what

Steve: is the greatest lesson that you have learned?

Josh: I think, just taking advantage of your time. Like, I I am I'm not gonna get, emotional or anything, but I it kinda sat me there for a second is, you know, like, my oldest is 15. Like, he was born yesterday. You know, he's 15 years old, and I have him for another three or four years. I have my 12 year old for another six, seven years.

And then they're gonna start their own families. I'm happy for them, but I'm sad for myself. You know?

Steve: And and it's it's powerful. Right? And that's something that, you know, a little bit we're going through in our house right now. Right? It's like, man, we've been listening to our bus for some time now.

Josh: Yeah.

Steve: Right? So but kind of missed some stages along the way. Right. And that's part of the entrepreneurial journey.

Josh: It is.

Steve: What book have you gifted more than any other?

Josh: What was the exact

Steve: What book have you gifted more than any other? No Excuses. No Excuses?

Josh: Yeah. It's called No Excuses. It was something that I read. I actually watched this guy. His name is Kyle Maynard on 2020 or Dateline years ago.

He's someone that was born with no arms and legs, and he could write, you know, perfect penmanship. He could type, you know, 50 words a minute, and he literally had no excuses. He ended up playing, I think, college wrestling for, like, University of Georgia or something. He was out of I think he was out of Georgia. He was in a wheelchair and just very, very motivational guy.

And, you know, through about the first five to ten years of my real estate career, I gifted that book to a lot of people.

Steve: Mhmm.

Josh: You know? And, and even today, I do it. I'll buy, you know, ten, twenty, you know, things of it, and I'll gift that. Well, that's probably my top one. My second one's the who not how.

Since since that came out, I've gifted it whether through Audible or whatever in the last three or four years, But No Excuses is definitely my top one over the last twenty years.

Steve: Got it. It's powerful. So I want you to lead the listeners with one last thought before we do that and make a few quick announcements. Guys, if you got value today, please like, subscribe, share, comment, even leave a five star review. We got that bum RJ Bates out there saying to leave three star reviews.

So go out there, five star reviews. And then we do have, sales disruptors master class. You guys saw that earlier. If you guys are interested in potentially getting, you know, it's not free government money. It's a credit.

Alright. Disruptors.com/erc. If you want to help other people, go to ercdisruptors.com. That way, you can get a little bit of something for helping everyone else inside your network. And do tune in tomorrow.

We got part in the disruption. We'll be talking about what's going on with the real estate market. And we'll be debating that. And next week, we got Steve Valentine, a good friend of mine, talking about the latest in his in his journey. So last thoughts you like to leave the listeners with?

Josh: I you know what? I I mean, I think about all all the different, businesses or whatnot. The one thing I would tell people is something that I had to learn, about three, four years ago is to really concentrate on one to three things. And and, I say that because I when I, you know, when I was suffering in that oil business in 2020, I I was actually in probably about 10 different businesses. You know, one of them as the majority owner, all the rest minority owner.

But it's still, like, what do they call that? You're a a professional of so many, but a master of none or something like that. There's a Jack

Steve: of all trades master.

Josh: Yeah.

Steve: Master of none.

Josh: Yeah. I feel like I was at that point. I'm I'm sure there's a lot of listeners like that. It finally, like, hit me one day, like, oh my gosh. I gotta just concentrate on one or two things.

Mhmm. Master that and then move on to the next thing. And so if I had to leave leave your listeners at one at one thing, it's not like what my background is or what business I have. It's, you know, as far as leaving an impact on something that I could probably teach you guys and gals on what I, you know, failed at, suffered at for for a long time. And then finally, it hit me one day and hit me right between the eyes, and and now that's what I do.

You know? And a lot of people have tried to bring me into different opportunities. I was literally on a call yesterday, and I just told Mike, I don't have any bandwidth for that. Mhmm. Like, I I just don't because I'm gonna take away from other stuff that's actually doing really well.

What specifically had to happen

Steve: for you to to to for that to sink in?

Josh: I think it was a financial problem. I think financially, like, just seeing, like, oh, I just lost a lot of money doing that.

Steve: You know?

Josh: It was definitely finance financial. Yeah.

Steve: And I know that's something that I needed to learn Yeah. Much earlier in my career. Still kinda learning right now. It still hasn't really sunk in yet.

Josh: It's hard not to follow as a serial entrepreneur that finding what they call that shiny object. Like, you're always following like, oh, man. That looks so cool. Yeah. And you're like, now I I'm really good at not seeing it.

I wanna hear about it, but I know if I wanna pursue it or not.

Steve: Yeah. What am I what what am I gonna give up to get that?

Josh: Exactly.

Steve: Yeah. Someone wants to get a hold of you. How would they do that?

Josh: I mean, on the website, you know, on the ERC specialist, my my email is joshz@ercspecialist. You're welcome to email me with any questions or anything you have. I think that's gonna be the best oh, Instagram is, the josh z. Well, at the josh z. I don't even know what my Facebook is.

I mean, my you have my last name. So if you type in my last name. There's probably only about 20 of us in the

Steve: in The US. Alright. Perfect. Awesome. So thank you very much.

Yeah. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you guys for watching. See you guys all next week. K.