Building Wealth Through Real Estate Investing with Matt Theriault

Jordan Mendoza (00:01.269)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host and I've got a very special guest today. His name is Matt Terrio and I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today.

Matt Theriault (00:16.086)
Hey, thanks for having me Jordan. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm CEO of a company called Epic Real Estate. And what we do is we show busy professionals how to build a passive income portfolio so they can retire early. And I show them the hands on how to do it. And then my wife runs a turnkey business where she'll actually just do it for them. There's a lot of people.

Jordan Mendoza (00:38.818)
I love it.

Matt Theriault (00:39.574)
Yeah, so a lot of people out there like what they do for a living. They got their careers going and they want some real estate, but they don't have the time or really the desire to do all the heavy lifting. So that's what Mercedes does. And there's a other side of people that are the other type of person that, you know, wants to get their hands dirty. And so they come to me. So that's what we do.

Jordan Mendoza (00:49.982)
I love it.

Jordan Mendoza (00:59.091)
yeah, done for you and done with you, right? And that's, you those are models that I have in my business because again, everybody has different goals. Some people have a bigger budget, some people have a smaller budget and some people have more time and they've got less time. And so I'm excited to honestly, Matt, really dive into, you know, how all this came to be. And in order to do that, my favorite part of the show is really taking a rewind. I want to dive into adolescent years. So we're going to...

Matt Theriault (01:01.422)
Hmm.

Matt Theriault (01:12.545)
Yep.

Jordan Mendoza (01:25.257)
Rewind to like elementary middle high school. We're gonna kind of see what you're made of what kind of kid you were you are So, where were you born and raised my friend and then what type of stuff did you get into?

Matt Theriault (01:27.822)
Mm -hmm.

Matt Theriault (01:37.014)
I and raised in Newport Beach, California at the famous Hoag Hospital. From there I spent most of my elementary, middle school and high school all in Orange County. I up spending most of my time in Irvine. I played every single sport there possibly is until I hit puberty.

found out that I was not an equal as far as a physical specimen goes. Because before 13, 12, everyone kind of runs the same speed and can throw the same speed and everything. And I had great hand -eye coordination, but I was really slow and I was really short. So went through high school and made the tennis team and became a disc jockey. I embraced break dancing back in 84, 85.

Jordan Mendoza (02:04.171)
you

Jordan Mendoza (02:26.963)
Let's go brother. I've been doing it since the early 90s, so I feel you there.

Matt Theriault (02:30.22)
Yeah, that changed my whole world and I was such an outcast in high school because of that. Everyone thought I was a weirdo.

But it just grabbed me and I just loved it. And so that's really where kind of who I was most of my all through my teens and my twenties. I was a hip hop producer. I had my own record label at major label distribution with EMI and made my millions by before I was 30. And without no effort or anything, it was just kind of, I was really fortunate that people wanted to give me money for what I did. And I was like, wow, this was really cool. Life is easy. And,

Jordan Mendoza (02:58.817)
passion sounds like.

Matt Theriault (03:06.478)
So yeah, those are the younger years. And then this thing called, I don't know if you remember Napster. Do you remember this, this website? Yeah. Yeah. Lime wire. That's right. I remember that one too. Yeah. Turn the whole industry upside down. And in six quick months put me completely out of business. And I was 34 years old at the time and having kind of coasted through life up to that point.

Jordan Mendoza (03:12.903)
Yep, sure do. Yeah. LimeWire, Napster, a couple of those platforms. Yeah.

Ha ha ha.

Jordan Mendoza (03:26.507)
Wow.

Matt Theriault (03:33.848)
Well, I made a brief stop in the Marine Corps. forgot about that. I spent six years there. But I was still doing music while I was enlisted. when that digital download came along, it killed all the music stores and people stopped buying compact discs and they stopped walking into record stores and music stores.

Jordan Mendoza (03:49.631)
Yeah. Tower Records just went under, man. I remember that. Yeah.

Matt Theriault (03:53.327)
It just went under, I know. And they returned all of their product and they wanted all their money back. I was like, then you multiply that by a hundred stores and then you got the best buys and then you got the warehouses and then you got all these different places and you know, I had to file bankruptcy and that was in 2001. And went out and just started looking for a job and found out that I wasn't qualified to do anything. I didn't know how to do anything else.

Jordan Mendoza (04:10.901)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (04:19.374)
So, you know, when you don't know how to do anything else and you're not qualified, you go out and you look for sales jobs. And so I looked at the insurance industry and stumbled there and went to the cars and did that. I went to ride four five different multi -level marketing companies and, you know, ended up just bagging groceries at 34. And I was really fortunate that the grocery store union was on strike.

So I got to start at $21 an hour. And I was like, well, this ain't bad. Because my only reference to hourly wages was when I was a teenager, I used to clean the golf carts at the golf course. I made $3 .15. And so that was my only reference point for an hourly wage. And I thought $21 an hour. I was like, hey, that's not bad at all. I think this could work until you get your very first check.

Jordan Mendoza (04:53.974)
you

Jordan Mendoza (05:12.378)
Yep.

Matt Theriault (05:14.562)
And you're like, who's this guy FICA taking so much money out of my paycheck, you know? But yeah, so I did that and I don't for about six months I finally just kind of woke up. like, wow, if I don't, I really missing my money by the way. And to go from seven figures to that was quite the deal. But about six months after that, they went off strike. The strike was solved and everyone was coming back to work.

Jordan Mendoza (05:19.271)
Exactly, yeah.

Jordan Mendoza (05:33.894)
yeah.

Matt Theriault (05:41.71)
And they said, Matt, we love you. You're great. We'd love to keep you, but you're going to have to go through the union process now. So that was, I had to start at $7 an hour at that point if I wanted to stay. I was like, God, no, I can't, I can't live on the $21. You know? And then, you know, I went home one night and kind of, it was a misery. earlier that day, the grocery store manager had said something to me and coincidentally, we were the exact same age. He was the manager. was,

Jordan Mendoza (05:51.147)
Jeez. Yeah, not going that far backwards. Yeah.

Matt Theriault (06:11.47)
I was the bagger. he said, Matt, you know, if you really want your money back, it's probably going to happen through real estate. Let me show you what I've done. So he'd been there since he was 16 years old and he was 34. He was two years away from being at the 20 year mark where he was going to be able to withdraw. He could quit and retire off of 70 % of his salary. And he said, but look what I've done.

I've picked up a few apartment buildings while I've worked here, and the passive income from my apartment buildings is going to far exceed what my pension would be here from the grocery store. So I'm out of here in two years, and I'm going have this little 70 % of my salary, and I have all the cash flow. And he said, Matt, real estate is the final frontier where the average person like you and I have a legitimate shot at creating real wealth.

And at that point in my life, I didn't know any better. I was about as low as I'd ever been. And I really missed my money. I didn't know how was going to get it back. But I knew I had to learn something new. And I was like, well, I want to go learn the thing that pays the most. And if this guy said real estate, then he's living walking proof and he's out of here. And so I went home that night, took a bottle of wine and hit just me, the wine, and Google and started searching everything real estate.

and then discovered that I had an estranged aunt just two cities over who had been the number one real estate agent there for 15 years. So I just had a lot of liquid courage in me at that point and fired off an email to her. And she responded immediately in the morning. We had lunch that day and within 24 hours I was enrolled in real estate agent school, which I thought was a logical place to start. It took me about four years to realize that wasn't a good place to start.

Jordan Mendoza (07:41.77)
Wow.

Ha ha ha.

Matt Theriault (08:00.512)
not if you ran it for the money, because I discovered kind of the hard way that I was just sitting on the wrong side of the desk. And I had a couple clients, they were very successful and they were flipping houses and they had had rental properties. I just started looking at the statements, their closing statements, and they were great clients of mine. They just give me, I didn't have to work for it or anything. They just give me the paperwork to process. And I collected commissions. It was easy, easy money. But I started looking at the paperwork and comparing commissions to profits. And I was like, ooh.

I want that. And there was just that pivotal moment. I remember it was a Saturday morning, it's like 10 30 a They came in, they signed all their paperwork. They were like 20 minutes late. I was in a suit and tie. They were in jeans and a t -shirt. They signed their documents left for the weekend. And I was stuck there, I'll go hold their house open. And I was like, that's it, I'm done. And so I've made a commitment that weekend to never represent another person in a real estate transaction again. I was gonna act on my own behalf. I was gonna go buy and sell and do that stuff.

Jordan Mendoza (08:31.988)
Yeah.

Jordan Mendoza (08:48.993)
Hahaha.

Matt Theriault (08:59.746)
That's kind of where the whole real estate game started. So it wasn't even in the car. There wasn't even a thought until much, much later in life after a serious fall from the music industry. Yep.

Jordan Mendoza (09:01.333)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Mendoza (09:07.809)
Yeah, after some highs and some lows, right, some adversity struck. And so there's a lot to unpack there. And, you know, I have to just because at 43, I still teach breakdancing in my garage on Saturdays. It's something I'm very passionate about. Still windmill and still doing groundwork, trying to teach my kids. None of these knuckleheads want to learn. You know, you know how it is, right? And so.

Matt Theriault (09:19.64)
Do you really? that's amazing.

Matt Theriault (09:27.99)
huh. It's so funny during COVID when everything went, cause I'm in Vegas and all the shows were shut down. And I just started Googling stuff like that. like, I need to do something. And so I found a out of work Jabberwocky and he and I are buddies now, but I went over to his studio and sharpened up my skills. So yeah, it was fun.

Jordan Mendoza (09:43.475)
Okay? Yeah, that's awesome.

There you go. Yeah, just be going and man, you you know, I don't have to tell a guy like you, but like the culture is there, right? And if you go in and you're even the half bit interested, people are going to invest in you. They're going to be willing to coach you and teach you. And, and if, if you know a B -boy, like you're going to be friends, like you're going to be a lifelong connection. You know, you can, you, you connect, right? And there you're going to do bust out some things and they're going to be like,

Matt Theriault (09:55.522)
Mm -hmm.

Matt Theriault (10:01.218)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Jordan Mendoza (10:15.649)
I've never seen that before. Where'd you pull that out of your bag? And then you're going to see some crazy stuff they're doing. And it's going to be like blow your mind. man, just watching people now and some of the power moves that they do and just the transitions, it's just insane. And I'm thinking, I remember kind of doing that when I was 16 and I see some of this stuff. I'm like, I would have never thought to even put that move with that mover, that thing together.

And so I want you to share, because I think this would be helpful for the audience, because most people will never know how hard breakdancing actually is. How much effort, how... I mean, you're essentially doing calisthenics for hours, and it takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of thinking on your feet, a lot of creativity, a lot of joy and passion. I mean, there's so many variables that go into it. So if you could just share...

Matt Theriault (10:56.363)
huh.

Matt Theriault (11:04.664)
Mm

Jordan Mendoza (11:11.189)
maybe a couple lessons from breakdancing that have actually helped you in business. Because I know there's a lot of things that are going through your mind right now that you're gonna be able to pull and share that'll give people some context.

Matt Theriault (11:14.374)
wow.

Matt Theriault (11:20.877)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (11:25.14)
one adjective you left out is it takes a lot of courage. Cause, you know, if you've never done a backflip before doing that first one is like, that is really hairy and, you know, and doing windmills and, you know, and flares and gosh, those things are like so scary. remember the first time trying them, you know, but, you know, I guess if there was a lesson,

Jordan Mendoza (11:31.925)
Definitely takes some courage. Yep.

Matt Theriault (11:55.022)
It's always just get a good teacher, get a good mentor, get somebody that knows more than you. When I started, that was in 85, so nobody knew anything. So I would just copy what I saw on TV and try and mimic it, right? And if you look back now, it's hilarious on how basic it is, but back then it was like something so fascinating. I was like, wow. And then to see like what they did in the Olympics this year.

Jordan Mendoza (12:07.625)
Watch and do, yeah.

Matt Theriault (12:21.56)
I was like, my God, I just, I can't even imagine. I mean, it was so, there's no catching them now, but I guess just having a good mentor and just sticking with it. I think also, you know, if you really love something, it doesn't take a lot of discipline, right? So if there was something about business, you know, find something that you really enjoy doing and...

Jordan Mendoza (12:24.363)
Yep.

Matt Theriault (12:47.67)
I think I'd heard somebody say, you know, it's kind of common advice for people to say follow your passion, right? And I've been listening to this one guy, Scott Galloway. know who he is? Yeah, I don't know. He's kind of a, I mean, a very successful business guy. He's had three or four very successful exits and he's kind of retired now. And, but now he's kind of become a business influencer.

Jordan Mendoza (12:59.435)
don't believe so.

Matt Theriault (13:11.766)
and he's got a podcast and everything. And I just really like listening to him. But he said, following your passion is like the worst advice that you could give somebody. You want to follow your talent. And that little distinction, I think, is a big, big deal because, you know, as much as I loved breakdancing, I wasn't nearly as talented at it as my friends. But where my talent was, was with the music. And

I had the radio. I mean, we called them ghetto blasters. It sounds so weird, but at that time in life, that actually was the term that you used. But I had the big radio. I made all the mixed tapes. I'd have two radios together and try and hit the record and play button at the same time trying to mix them. And I would sell tapes at school. And that fed me through all my sophomore, junior, senior year. I had a nice little business of making mixed tapes.

Jordan Mendoza (13:45.269)
Ha ha ha.

Matt Theriault (14:06.982)
And so I followed, I was able to stay within my passion of hip hop, but followed my talent more with making the music than the dancing itself. And so I guess I had no idea what I was going to say, but I think that's a pretty darn good lesson that came out of break dancing was to more follow your talent rather than passion. Yeah.

Jordan Mendoza (14:26.185)
Yeah, identify your strengths and go all in on that. Because if you have the strength and ability and you put effort into it, that strength and ability gets stronger. that's, mean, it literally proves because you went on to make millions with that talent and with that ability, which is pretty awesome. And you mentioned a short six -year stint in the Marine Corps. So definitely thanks for your service.

Matt Theriault (14:46.4)
Mm

Matt Theriault (14:53.87)
Mm

Jordan Mendoza (14:54.453)
you know, that's, you know, for some people that is everything, but for you, it seems like it was a stop in the road. So I'd love just to get your take on, you know, what was that experience like? Where did it come from? Right. Because you go from breakdancing and hip hop, and then you got a six, a six year short stint in the military, and then it goes into real estate. So like, how did that stop even occur? Like, where did it come from? Is that something to where, you know, someone suggested it or maybe you said, Hey, like

Matt Theriault (15:05.207)
Okay.

Jordan Mendoza (15:22.815)
but so maybe it'd be a way to pay for school or your benefits or I'm just trying to figure out the context on how that stop happened and then yeah.

Matt Theriault (15:27.502)
Sure, yeah, no, I look back and first I was raised by a single mom. And so I kind of grew up my whole life feeling a little bit inadequate and wimpy, right? Because I just could tell a difference that I, you know, I wasn't a tough guy. I wasn't masculine. I didn't have a whole lot of confidence. And once I hit about 16, 17, 18, I was really feeling like, you know,

behind, so to speak. And so there was that craving there. And then if you remember like in your junior, senior years that, you everyone's talking about what's next, like this transition from high school to college. And then they would talk about statistics. If you don't go to college right away, there's a 73 % chance you'll never go and you're gonna be a bum and da da da. Yeah, I remember all those conversations and those things kind of freaked me out. And the other part was,

Jordan Mendoza (16:14.953)
Yep. It can be a failure, yeah.

Matt Theriault (16:25.076)
Eventually, I knew I was going to have to go live on my own. And that was terrifying to me. Like, my God, I have to get a job and use money to pay for a place to live. And I just had nobody in my life to really teach me how to do those things or like to let me know that that's nothing to be scared of. But I was terrified of it. My biggest fear, and I had no reason to fear this because I mean, wasn't didn't come from a poor background. But my biggest fear was just being homeless.

That was like terrifying to me. And like I said, I had no reference point. I had no reason to have that, but that was in me for some reason. And so, and then I didn't want to drop out of school. We didn't have the money to pay for college. I got accepted to USC and I so I wanted to go so badly, but you know, my mom was like, you know, you better start saving your money. You know, and it was at 60 grand, 70 grand a year at the time. But.

Jordan Mendoza (17:10.172)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (17:15.97)
The joining the military just seemed like the right thing and I was going to do the reserves. So I wouldn't have to go all the time. I could go through boot camp and someone could kick my ass for three or four months. And that would hopefully that would straighten me up and turn me into a man. And then third thing was I knew I'd never be homeless. So kind of check these three boxes that were going that were inside me in in high school. And so I did, I did that.

And what happened there was I was the very first company to go through this extended combat training. And so that wasn't on the plan. I was supposed to be in three months and then back home and going to the college. And so that three months turned into, because I was, I missed the cutoff date. I'm trying not to make this a boring story, but it got extended. My initial training got extended for six months.

Jordan Mendoza (18:06.623)
No, you're good.

Matt Theriault (18:10.402)
So now I said, now I missed college. So I missed the new semester. And then I finally got out. I went to college. I was only there for about three or four weeks and then Operation Desert Storm hit. And then they activated all of the reservists. So now I was full time. So I was more time as active duty than I was a reservist. So that was just kind of like an accident. Like there was this bad timing. Say again.

Jordan Mendoza (18:21.281)
I'm out.

Yeah.

Jordan Mendoza (18:33.159)
Unexpected detour, Unexpected detour. Yeah.

Matt Theriault (18:37.656)
Totally, totally. But the whole time I was still working on music in my barracks. I had my own little section with my music thing and just pushed it into my closet and locked it up and everything. And I was still driving to Los Angeles on the weekends and submitting demos and doing all that stuff and trying to balance them all. And you you leave the base looking like a Marine. And as soon as you, when you're driving into LA, now you can't look like a Marine. You have to look like you're just a civilian.

Jordan Mendoza (19:05.205)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (19:06.702)
So I played that game. that's how that happened. And then Desert Storm was over. And it was at the same time that I got my first record contract. And do you remember a group, Arrested Development? Yeah, they just won all the Grammys that year. Well, you're hip hop. You're a big boy. know all the groups. How old are you? 43? Okay. So Arrested Development just won all of those Grammys. They were on EMI.

Jordan Mendoza (19:25.601)
Yep. 43.

Matt Theriault (19:36.322)
they needed a follow -up act for it. And we were kind of, we had this little hip hop kind of a country type flavor to it. And they said, you'll be perfect. Cause we just had this Southern hip hop thing and now this thing is gonna happen. And so I said, but that got this problem in the Marine Corps. And I said, well, could we write you a letter? Like they're gonna try and write me a letter to get out. Like, I don't know, let's try. And so they wrote me a letter and I took it to my, my captain and.

Jordan Mendoza (19:56.243)
You

Matt Theriault (20:05.88)
I said, I got a recording contract, but I can't take advantage of it because I'm in here. And he says, well, hot damn, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I'm not going to stand in your way. And so he gave it to the major and the major said, wow, this is cool. I'm going to get in your way either. Gave it to the Colonel and gosh, within probably seven days, I found myself standing in front of the base general trying to get a discharge. And my God, that was terrifying.

Jordan Mendoza (20:15.489)
That's awesome.

Matt Theriault (20:35.7)
And so I walked into his office and he kind of just looked up and looked over his glasses, his reading glasses, and he says, so are you the rock star I'm hearing about? Like that. I was like, sir, yes, sir. And he says, well, you've served your country. You've done more than the minimum. We just kicked the ass out of Iraq. And, you know, as long you promise me an autograph when you get famous, I'll go ahead and sign this.

Jordan Mendoza (20:44.095)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Jordan Mendoza (21:04.64)
That's awesome.

Matt Theriault (21:05.194)
And he signed me in honor of a discharge. And I don't know if that's ever happened. mean, Elvis Presley had to do his full term, right? So, but that's kind of how that happened. And so as soon as I got out, then EMI reneged and took the contract back and didn't sign us after all. I was like, God, I went through all of that. So we ended up on Scotty Brothers Records. They were famous for they made billions off of one person, Weird Al Yankovic.

Jordan Mendoza (21:08.821)
Wow.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's cool.

Jordan Mendoza (21:21.665)
Jeez.

Jordan Mendoza (21:34.064)
wow, yeah.

Matt Theriault (21:34.966)
And that's the label I ended up on. There was that one song that was really hot at the time though, because they just started their urban development, the Sceelo, I Wish I Was a Baller. Yeah, so he was like the hot urban act on the label. So we were going to follow him and came out with a couple of records they didn't hit. And then I just started making my own records and pressing my own records.

Jordan Mendoza (21:42.901)
Yep, yep, yeah.

Matt Theriault (21:56.46)
And so I would go down to the factory, them my masters. They'd give me, know, come back a week later, they'd give me a thousand records and boxes. And I put those in the trunk of my car.

And I had this little route from, it started in Los Angeles. I'd go all the way up to, go through Oakland and San Francisco, then come all the way around inland, down through Riverside, San Bernardino, Riverside, then all the way down to San Diego. And I was just selling my records, putting them on consignment in all the different record stores. And then by the time I got back to Los Angeles after a week trip, it was time for me to start the trip again to go and collect the money from the records I sold.

and replenish with a new product. So that was, I was literally selling records out of the trunk of my car. I mean, that was a literal thing. And so I did that for like a year or so. And then a couple of those records kind of hit. They were really big with the DJs. And I got a call from, of all people, EMI again. And they didn't even remember me as an artist, but they said, hey, you got some hot records. We'd like to distribute these globally. And so.

Jordan Mendoza (22:42.027)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (23:01.762)
Long story short, they wired over a hundred grand and I signed the contract and I was on my way.

Jordan Mendoza (23:02.047)
That turned into the break right there.

Jordan Mendoza (23:07.103)
Yeah, that's awesome. listen, for everyone that's listening to this or if you end up watching this on one of our platforms, it took a lot of grit, a lot of determination. It took some hard questions. mean, think about the different layers that Matt had to go through with the military to be honorably discharged just to find out that the contract wasn't going to happen. But you still got up, right? So I mean, I'm seeing.

Matt Theriault (23:29.91)
Exactly.

Jordan Mendoza (23:34.729)
resiliency, tenacity, slanging them out of your trunk until you got that next contract. When your why is bigger than your how, you're going to find a way to get to success. Now we fast forward again, you go from working at the grocery store, the thing happens with the union where you basically have to go three times less pay than you're making and you end up finding this little thing called real estate.

Matt Theriault (23:41.944)
Mm

Matt Theriault (23:48.13)
Mm

Jordan Mendoza (24:03.871)
getting plugged in with your aunt, starting to see where the real money is being made and kind of make that shift into growing portfolios, it sounds like. So I think we're kind of at that place. So let's talk about that first maybe decade of real estate where you kind of went from the lower side of commission to trying to build a portfolio to where you can start seeing bigger profit margins and really building a book of business. Can you just give some context on

what that was like. I'm sure there were some growing pains. I'm sure there was some bad deals, some deals that went south and didn't pan out, right? Where you're thinking, man, maybe I made the wrong decision here. So give us a couple of stories, share some lessons. And then before we actually wrap up our conversation today, I want to talk about escape. I see it's right back behind you on the shelf there. I want to talk about this fourth book that you've got and maybe how we can help some people escape their current situation.

Matt Theriault (24:38.808)
sure.

Matt Theriault (24:44.952)
Yeah.

Jordan Mendoza (25:00.863)
and dive into a better situation. first, let's get some stories on the real estate journey, kind of some ups, some downs, and some lessons. And then we'll dive into maybe some tips for folks listening that say, I want to do what Matt did. Like, I want to build wealth through the vehicle of real estate. And then we'll jump into the book.

Matt Theriault (25:18.808)
Sure. One big misconception is that when I tell people, ask me what I do for a living, and I say, I'm in real estate. They all immediately think real estate agent, right? And real estate agent, real estate investor, there's a very little overlap. There's not a whole lot of common ground other than just houses are involved.

And so being a real estate agent does really nothing to prepare you to be a real estate investor. I probably the majority of the agents in my office didn't even own their own home. And getting a real estate license barely prepares you to be a real estate agent. It basically just teaches you to the minimum to keep you out of jail, but you have to go learn how the business works on your own. So you're always investing a lot of money and time into secondary education to learn how that business works.

And when it was time to make this transition to real estate investor, did the same thing. I walked, placed down a giant chunk of money at the time. was unheard of. was $22 ,000 for this program. And that was in what, 2006. And that was unheard of. And my mom was like, what did you do, huh?

And my grandma, she heard about it and she was like, well, do they have like, you're to get like a certificate or a degree? And it's like, no. Well, do they have a job placement program or something like that? Like no one could even understand what I was doing. And so didn't have a lot of support from home doing that. But I just committed and where I was learning from, had a couple of different mantras. One of them was, move at the speed of instruction.

So they said, if you put yourself in a position where you need to know everything before you take that first step, you're never going to make it. So here we just learn a little, do a little. Learn a little, do a little. And their mantra was travel as far as you can see. And when you get there, you'll see further. And so that was the whole thing. And if I didn't have that type of instruction and that type of guidance from my mentor, who knows? It might have been just like everybody else that buys an educational program and never even opens it up.

Jordan Mendoza (27:11.542)
Yeah.

Yep.

Matt Theriault (27:33.422)
So I did that and I got my first deal within, was, found the deal and closed it within like 60 days. I mean, like a $27 ,000 check. And I was like, okay, this is cool. And, say again, yeah, totally. It was great. But then it took me about eight months before I got the next deal. And, you know, $27 ,000 doesn't really go over eight months, spread over eight months. So things were getting really tight there at the end.

Jordan Mendoza (27:45.003)
Got your money back right there, right? Got your investment back? Yeah.

Matt Theriault (28:03.042)
But I came across this little book. I don't know if you've ever heard of it. It's really rare. It's a purple cover called Rich Dad Poor Dad. You heard of this book? OK. And it talks about this concept of passive income. It had this new definition of wealth in there that most people think wealth, and I was included, was just having a lot of money in the bank. And when I was in the music business, that was the goal. How high could I stack my chips?

Jordan Mendoza (28:10.2)
Yep, yep, heard of it.

Matt Theriault (28:33.326)
That book had a different version of if you were to stop working, how long could you live? Right? And so I had, kind of defined it, are you, and it did it like in a 30 day timeframe or a framework for a month. So, you know, could you work, if, you know, would you run out of money on the 15th and then have the rest of the month's bills type thing. So you needed enough monthly passive income to pay your monthly bills.

And once you hit that 30 day wealthy, now you're wealthy. You're free. Right. And so I'd never been taught anything like that at all. I knew nothing about money. I knew how to make it as a producer, but I had no idea what to do with it or how to make it grow or anything. And so that was like kind of what really opened up the door for me to really research the topic and how money works.

So I just went and said, okay, I'm just going to do exactly what he said. I need to push my expenses down as low as I can. And I do increase my passive income as high as I can. And in three and a half years, I passed the threshold where my passive income was exceeding my bills. And that was just such a celebratory moment because I wasn't wealthy by any means, but I didn't have to work. I didn't have to report to anybody.

And having been in both scenarios already at that point in my life, so was like 39, 40 years old, I preferred to have the minimal amount of money and not have to work, then a lot of money and had to work and grind every single day like I did in the music business. So that was a big deal, because I never wanted to go back to...

Jordan Mendoza (30:14.325)
Sure.

Matt Theriault (30:22.476)
bagging groceries again. I think those fears of being homeless kind of surfaced again. I I'm just like, you know, one bad day away from that being me out on the street. And so that was, that was kind of how that happened. And so now my whole goal was, my whole kind of way I operated, I was going to increase my passive income to pay for the lifestyle, not increase my lifestyle. had my passive, had to build passive income to chase it.

Jordan Mendoza (30:50.699)
Yeah. Yep.

Matt Theriault (30:53.006)
And what a difference that made in my world. so then I started looking at more and reading other books and reading it from other, learn from other people. And I was like, wow, you know what I actually did? I accomplished in less than four years what 95 % of the population can't do and doesn't do in 40 years. And what really triggered me and at that time there was that one commercial, I don't remember that company, ING.

Jordan Mendoza (31:11.189)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (31:19.822)
And they had like, what's your number? And they had all those people walking down the street and they this big giant numbers under their arms, like 1 ,373 ,000, whatever. And that commercial like said, my gosh, they're focused on the wrong number. They're focused on how big of a number they need in their bank account so that that big mountain of money will eventually produce a stream of money for them in their retirement. I was like, why does it produce the stream in three and a half years?

Jordan Mendoza (31:24.715)
Mm

Matt Theriault (31:48.43)
Now I've got some extra and now my stream is producing the mountain. I was like, well, why chase the mountain? That's a really hard way to go about it. It's much easier to generate $5 ,000 a month of passive income than it is to save $2 million. You know, and you can do it. It's not easy. It just happens a whole lot faster. Like they're both hard work. But I was like, well, wow, how long do you want to work hard? And so.

Jordan Mendoza (31:51.766)
Yep.

Matt Theriault (32:15.97)
You know, as bagging groceries and everyone around me seeing me do that, and then a few years later, you know, I'm playing golf on a Tuesday. And they're wondering, how do you do that? Like you were just bagging groceries and now you're like just doing whatever you want all day long. And so I had a lot of lunch meetings and a lot of coffee meetings of people wanting to pick my brain. And then I was like, hmm, there's a lot of people that don't know about this. And I certainly would have known about if I didn't, you know, cross that one grocery store manager that told me about real estate.

And that kind of just evolved into me teaching as well. And then here we are today and I do both full time.

Jordan Mendoza (32:55.393)
Yeah, that's great. I love it. Yeah. And so, you know, what I'm hearing is, you know, messy action is better than no action, right? When you get new information, we got to go apply it. And that's something I'm when I'm coaching my students is like, hey, if I give you something, go test it, like, go put it out, because that's the only way you're going to see if it works. Right. And that's the only way you're going to see where your strengths are, where your weaknesses are, where you might have to make a very slight shift because

I'm sure for you, when you kind of look back at everything that you've done, you were only a couple shifts away from getting to success, right? But we needed, you needed those people in your corner. You needed the mentors. You needed someone to invest in you to plant the seeds. But you also had to go and invest in yourself, even when everyone else in the world was saying this is not a good idea, right? And, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've been in that same situation where someone's like, why did you do that?

Matt Theriault (33:30.147)
Mm

Jordan Mendoza (33:51.883)
do you know? And again, they're looking out for our best interests. I understand that. But this is where trailblazers make the separation, right? Because trailblazing is not easy. have to be willing to take risks. We have to be willing to go out after our dreams. And even when you're a bad deal away from being homeless, you're still going to go after it with a reckless abandon. And so kudos to you.

for continuing to show up, for not giving up. And now you're also helping other people realize those same dreams and accomplish their goals. And I'm pretty confident in everything I've heard along with your wife and this partnership. You're able to collapse timelines for people, right? Where now you're probably seeing people get results even quicker than when you were able to do it when you first got started, you know? And that's such a beautiful thing when people start to have those realizations. And so I want you to give maybe

your two top tips if there's someone listening to this that says, you know what, I actually want to build passive income in real estate. You know, this is something maybe they've got some cash, some cash, you know, maybe they got some 401k, they've got some money, right? They've got some stuff to play with and they need a vehicle that they can install a system to where they can build that. So what would be kind of the first two places you'd advise them to start?

Matt Theriault (35:15.266)
Without, everyone needs to own some real estate. Everybody has to. I was in, I shared an office with a financial planner. He was one of my best friends and he happened to be a financial planner. And he said, you know what? I've sat down at the kitchen table with so many families that, and none of them, the only people that had a shot of reaching their retirement goals were those that had incorporated real estate in some way into their financial plan.

Those that depended 100 % on the stock market, none of them were almost there. None of them were going to hit it on their deadline. so you got to get a piece of real estate. And there was a study that the Federal Reserve just came out with this. This was what, two years ago, three years ago? And part of that study revealed that the average owner of real estate, the average homeowner, is 40 times wealthier than the average tenant.

40 times. Like this is this is a clue right there. Now what if you owned two houses? Right and that's it. You're 80 times wealthier type thing. And.

Jordan Mendoza (36:14.879)
That's astonishing. Yeah, it's a big number. Yep.

Jordan Mendoza (36:25.63)
And if you have a building or a duplex or, you know, a multifamily asset, then that number probably just keeps going up,

Matt Theriault (36:30.551)
Yep.

Totally, totally. And so my tip would be just to start acquiring. if that's, you know, if you're blessed with the resources and the finances to do one a month, do it. If you're, if you're not, and you can do one a year, do that. Or if it's one every other year, do that. Or if you got to save your down payment, which is ridiculous, you don't have to, but if you feel like you had to do that for two years, then do that. But you have to have the real estate. And I believe this more and more and I'm not,

You mentioned my book and thank you for mentioning that. But that's very much what my book is about, is that real estate really is the final frontier where the average person has a shot at creating real wealth, of creating some sort of financial freedom. I mean, if you're super talented, God bless you. If you're an inventor or you're a great athlete or you can sing or dance and you get paid a lot of money for that, that's awesome. But I'm just talking about the average person.

just doing something as boring as buying real estate and holding onto it will get you there. And it's going to get you there with greater certainty and at least twice the speed than if you don't get it. So I think that's really important. if you really want real estate, you can get some. There are so many government programs. You go to zerodownkit .com. I got 10 ways in there. That's totally free. 10 different ways that

how you can acquire a property with no money down. And it's not weird stuff, not weird government, know, things that only work for a couple people and now they put in a book. No, these are things that are live and well right there. You just have to ask people for it. And then you go to the bank, you go to a realtor, you say, hey, what about this program? What about that program? They'll walk you through it so anyone can do it. And anyone that says that, houses are too expensive and I can't afford it, you're not trying. You're surrendering. You've given up.

Matt Theriault (38:28.654)
So I would say that would be the first tip is to get a piece. The second thing is what I've really come to learn here probably in the last decade is how our financial system works, how the economy works, particularly when it comes to inflation, how inflation erodes the purchasing power of our money and how ...

a dollars, what we have just came out of like three years of massive inflation that we've probably any of us have experienced in our lifetime. So you can see how, you know, before the pandemic, your Starbucks coffee was $3 and 50 cents and now it's $8. Now it didn't get more expensive. It's still the same coffee in the same size cup. It doesn't have any greater value. The coffee bean doesn't taste any different. It's not made of gold.

Jordan Mendoza (39:07.734)
Yep.

Matt Theriault (39:18.19)
But it takes more of your money because your money lost purchasing power. So you have to give more of that money to buy that same cup of coffee. And so what that did is if you had 100 bucks in the bank in 2019, then you left it there, didn't even touch it. And here you are in 2024, it's not $100 anymore, even though your bank balance says $100. You might just have $80 in there, purchasing power. You can only buy $80 worth of stuff today.

when you could have bought $100 worth of stuff in 2019. So once you really get a grasp on that, and it's this hidden tax, so if you have just money sitting in a bank account, you're losing. If you don't have your money invested in something that's greater than the CPI, greater than the rate of inflation, then you are losing money by being safe and holding onto it and not taking risks. So the big thing that you can do, and this is how all the wealthy people stay wealthy,

This is how all the governments stay wealthy and in control because they know this one secret. The one secret is to borrow a depreciating asset like money to purchase an appreciating asset like real estate. That puts you on the right side of the economy. You might have heard the expression, don't fight the Fed because the Fed always wins, the system always wins.

to buy that's depreciating and all of our money is depreciating, to purchase something that's appreciating like real estate, it never is not appreciated. To do that, that puts you on the right side of the economy, that puts you with the Fed, that the system is going to win there. So that's the second big tip and you don't have to understand how the economics work or the inflation works, just make it simple, just borrow money from the bank, put as little down as you can and buy as much real estate as you can that you can responsibly afford.

And you do that once a year. mean, you only have to do that for 10 years and you'll be wealthier than anyone that you know.

Jordan Mendoza (41:10.271)
Love it.

Jordan Mendoza (41:16.725)
Yeah, and you know, and we've seen the markets, right? I I bought our house seven years ago and now it's doubled in value, right? And so we've got this positive equity and we're in a position now where we're saying, hey, what if we took some of this cash and bought another property, you know, and had another asset that we could build and that turns into now a portfolio, right? And so we have that same mindset because I've seen what's happened literally to my own house where we paid one price and now

And there's a lot more zeros on the end of it, which we can access and we can leverage that to reinvest it in something else, right? And I've got land we're going to be buying in the Philippines to build a vacation. And so there's things that we're going to leverage that money for. And I think that's the point that Matt's trying to make is it's like, listen, your money is always going to not be as valuable. And so let's use that to something that can grow in value over time. And then we take

Matt Theriault (41:48.226)
Mm

Jordan Mendoza (42:13.013)
those profits and we reinvest that and then we just keep building your wealth, right? And so talk a little bit about the book because there are a lot of listeners that, you know, they're trying to escape a situation. Maybe that's the job that they're knowing that they have these talents and skill sets somewhere else, but they need to feed their family. Let's face it, the economy is tough. There's a lot of things happening out there, but maybe they know that they need to also be doing something else. And so

Share a little bit about where can they grab the book. Of course, we're going to link it in the show notes, but what are some takeaways they can get? What kind of value can they expect to get out of it?

Matt Theriault (42:48.526)
Well, to piggyback on everything I just said, and hopefully you can sense the passion that I have about it, I believe in that much. And that passion really comes from what I'm going to say next, is that if you've been paying attention, you know that the corporations have been buying so many of the houses. BlackRock is on track by the year 2030 to own 60 % of all single -family homes. And I think we're going to be in a place here within the next 10 years that

If you own a house, like God bless you, thank God you got in, but if you don't, it's just gonna be beyond your reach. And it might feel like it's beyond your reach right now, but it's not even close to where it's gonna go. so...

Matt Theriault (43:34.286)
That and here's the other part of it is if you look at our population Right now the biggest generation that we've got are the Millennials and I believe we're I've been saying this for about Citing the statistic for about three or four years. I might be off by a year or two But the peak age of the millennial right now, I believe is 32 years old So there's more 32 year olds in this in the United States than any other age. Okay

And the average age of the first time home buyer is 36. So over the next four years, we're gonna see more demand for real estate than we've ever seen in the history of this country. And we just came out of a 10 year deficit of building. We didn't build enough houses to anticipate this, to satisfy this.

So that's the other part. So you've got this huge demand, this natural demand of just normal everyday people like you and me would need a house to live in. But then you've got the corporations buying them up. There's BlackRock, there's State Street, there's Vanguard, they're all buying real estate. Jeff Bezos, who's retired and has more money than God, just came out of retirement and started his own real estate fund to buy exclusively single family homes.

And so the demand is so high and when the demand goes up that much and there's such an imbalance, prices can only go one direction.

And here we are, what, a week away or so from the next Fed meeting. They're going to cut interest rates. And I don't know how much that's going to imp, this one is going to impact the mortgage rates, they're going to be, houses are going to become cheaper to buy here in a second. And then they've already promised pretty much through November and December that they're going to do two more great cuts. We have an election, so they always do this in the election. So the incumbent always want to make the economy look good just before election day. So that's going to happen a little bit. So houses are going to become a little bit more affordable.

Matt Theriault (45:28.57)
And what's going to happen is all these people are sitting on the sidelines saying houses are so expensive that they're all going to go rushing back in as soon as they hit their magic number, whatever their number is. I have a feeling it's going to be right around five and a quarter, five and a half. That's going to be like the trigger point where we're going to have this massive rush on real estate again, and prices are going to continue to go up.

Jordan Mendoza (45:38.603)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (45:49.422)
So my advice is, by now, while the market is still a little slow, there's still a lot of people out there right now that have been sitting on the market for a while, you're gonna find some deals, you're gonna find some motivation. Just go out and submit 10 low offers every weekend with your realtor. And wait till one gets picked up. And then go ahead and you get in, and then when the rates come down, now you come and refinance and you got the best of both worlds. You got the low price that you got today, and you'll get the low payment that you'll be able to get in the next four, five, six months.

Jordan Mendoza (46:15.872)
Love it.

Matt Theriault (46:16.45)
And so my book is all about that. It's taken all this conventional wisdom that we've been taught to save, save, save, and put it in a 401k and invest in the stock market and go for the dividends and all that kind of stuff. And that's all fine and dandy in a vacuum and how your financial planner explains it to you on how this magic of compound interest goes, right? But here's the problem with that is most people just don't make enough to be able to save enough for that plan to work.

If you're a really high income earner, then you've got an advantage and you just need to put more away and it's going to work out for you. But if you're anywhere in the median, plus or minus 50 % of the median, so you're making 100, 150 grand even, having a really nice salary, you still probably don't make enough to save enough.

Jordan Mendoza (47:02.785)
In 2024, that $150 is not really doing much. Not when Taco Bell costs $40 for a family of four, just to get a couple tacos. So yeah.

Matt Theriault (47:05.697)
Yeah.

Matt Theriault (47:09.834)
Exactly. my god, I saw this headline the other day that said, the poor people aren't even going to McDonald's anymore.

Jordan Mendoza (47:19.294)
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty wild. Yeah, so listen, we are going to link escape down in the show notes. And I also understand, you know, you and your wife are partners, you know, in your doing teaching and coaching, but you're also actually helping people that want to collapse their timeline. So talk a little bit about that. Some of the ways that you can help people, because there's going to be people that hear my voice right now that say, man, I want to do what Matt did. But you know what?

Matt Theriault (47:20.854)
It's too expensive. Yep.

Jordan Mendoza (47:47.945)
I actually don't want to put in all the work because my bandwidth is limited. But you know what? I've got this little nest egg. I've got this IRA or this Roth IRA or this 401k account that there's a couple zeros in there. And maybe there's a way that I can partner with them to help them actually walk me through and hold my hand so I can actually make sure that this gets done. Because I don't know about you, but the reason why I've realized a lot of success is not because I'm the smartest guy on the block.

is because I've had a lot of people that have been willing to invest in me and I've invested in myself with coaches and mentors and that's what's helped me collapse that timeline. So share a little bit about what that looks like if people want to partner with you guys.

Matt Theriault (48:32.046)
Sure, probably the easiest thing to do, she has a investor packet that's got the 10 top cash flowing markets in the country. You can grab a free copy of that. That'd be a great place to start. And if you want to talk to her, there'll be little, some instructions on how you can do that. That's at cashflowsavvy .com. Cashflowsavvy .com. And then if you wanted to reach out to me, probably the best way to do that is through the book. It's at Amazon for 19 bucks, but if you go to

Jordan Mendoza (48:50.942)
Awesome.

Jordan Mendoza (48:57.515)
Perfect.

Matt Theriault (49:01.262)
MyEscapeBook .com. It's only $4, but I also have a free course there for you that Rich Dad asked me to make for his community. And so he allowed me to give that away as a freebie to go along with the book. So I'll give that to you as well. So that's at MyEscapeBook .com. So that's probably the two best places to go.

Jordan Mendoza (49:11.822)
Awesome.

Jordan Mendoza (49:15.904)
Very cool.

Jordan Mendoza (49:20.245)
Perfect. Well, we're to make sure we put all those links in the show notes and that way you, the audience can make an informed decision for yourself. Hey, go take advantage of the free stuff, the free course and resources. And maybe that'll be enough to get your, you know, boots going in the right direction to where you say, you know what? I think I want to book that secondary call and get some help with this stuff. So, hey, Matt, I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to come share all about how you have blazed your own trail. My friend, keep up the great work.

You're a true trailblazer and it was great hosting you on the show today.

Matt Theriault (49:54.232)
Thank you, Jordan. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Mendoza (49:56.757)
My pleasure.