Episode 3
· 21:29
Alright. We are recording. This is episode three of Workspace Podcast. We are here in the bonsai room of Workspace Provision. My special guest today is Matt Fries with Homestead Heritage Mortgage and several other things.
Grant Paxton:How are you today?
Matt Fries:Pretty good. How are you doing?
Grant Paxton:Good. Matt, tell tell us about yourself.
Matt Fries:Well, I wear a lot of hats. So my main priority is is mortgages right now. But, you know, I I own some investment properties and somehow fell into selling flooring also.
Grant Paxton:Very nice. A little little mixture of things. I looked at your social media. You're you're a bit of a ham. You're a bit of a social media guru.
Grant Paxton:On your social media and your website, there's a picture of you holding like a sign.
Matt Fries:So it's funny that, you know, a friend of mine, she offered to do some headshots when I got into mortgages. Mhmm. And, you know, we were kinda playing around and like, just joking around like, oh, you should do like a used sales guy. Right? Used car salesman.
Matt Fries:Yeah. And that was actually just like a playing around photo and it it stuck. And now, like, when I p give people my business card, they're like, oh, well, I've I've seen you on Facebook. So it's it's it's memorable. It's it's it's gimmicky.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Can now say, you're that guy.
Matt Fries:Exactly. They don't they don't recognize me till I hand them the card.
Grant Paxton:Very good. So on a day to day basis, what are some things that you're doing?
Matt Fries:So, A lot of mortgages. Like, right now the market is slow for everyone. It's it's still cranking for me, and I think it's mainly because the social media helps, the investment properties, investors are always buying, but, you know, I work with first time home buyers and everyone else, but right now, while a lot of the loan officers are struggling right now, still investors are always gonna buy.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. I saw somewhere that you help people invest their money in other ways through real estate. Tell me a little bit more about that. What is your objective there?
Matt Fries:Well, so I get get and I might waste a lot of time because it takes longer for me to do that portion than it does to do a mortgage, right? So a lot of the people I talk to, I sit on phone calls for hours with them because the I'll run AirDNA, I'll I'll pull the comps, you know. I'm investor first and then and then a loan officer. So
Grant Paxton:Okay.
Matt Fries:You know, I I look at, hey. Is this gonna be a good deal for them or whatnot? And I spend a lot of time, you know you know, trying to make sure it's the right property for them, exact same way as I if I was to look at investment the property for myself.
Grant Paxton:Okay. So you started as a investor yourself, and that's what led you into this line of work? Yeah. I I I've my resume goes all over
Matt Fries:the place. And and while I was doing all my other careers, you know, in the meantime, I was doing real estate investing on the side. Finally got to a point where I got a phone call one day and says, hey. You want do you wanna be a branch manager at a mortgage company? And I said, I know nothing about mortgages.
Matt Fries:And they said, that's fine. We'll we'll teach you everything you need to know. And I was like, you know, and but it's all commission based. And I said, you know what? I'm making enough now in my real estate.
Matt Fries:I'm traveling all the time for work. I'm tired of traveling. Let me try it out. And so I totally changed careers, got into mortgages, and, yeah, it's it's it's just it's boomed about a year ago. I said, you know, why am I a branch manager?
Matt Fries:Why am I not doing this for myself? So I started up my own mortgage company and here I am.
Grant Paxton:I watched one of your videos on TikTok and I can't remember where it was exactly. Maybe you can lean on that, but you purchased the property and you said I just had to paint here, pull down the popcorn ceiling. Are these some things you do yourself or are you kind of a general contractor in a way or
Matt Fries:So I was was doing everything myself. Mhmm. Like, in my previous career, I was a laser engineer for a while for cataract surgeries. And so and then transitioned from that to a surgical trainer. Both of those roles, you're literally sitting around with nothing to do for there were months I had nothing to do.
Matt Fries:So I would go down my condos are on Myrtle. I'd go down to Myrtle, and I'd just do all the work myself. And then I if I had received a phone call saying, hey. This cataract laser's down, or we need somebody to train during the surgery, I'd hop on the next flight, and I I would go handle that. Even if I was down in Myrtle renovating a condo, I I had to pack my stuff up and go.
Grant Paxton:How did you get into the laser surgery aspect?
Matt Fries:So everything everything in life is is all about who you know. Right? And and so I was I did IT prior to that. And IT, it was general IT. And I did it for a long time.
Matt Fries:And I realized it wasn't a whole bunch of money in IT. And one day, I got a phone call, said, hey, you do wanna be a laser engineer? I said, I know nothing about lasers. I said, we'll fly you down to Florida and teach you everything you you know you need to know. And I Wow.
Matt Fries:I said, how'd you get my phone number? And and it turns out a friend of mine who works for the manufacturer of the laser gave him my phone number. They called me. They needed somebody who could become a laser engineer. Then, you know, I worked for two different laser companies, and one of them, that's when they decided, you know what?
Matt Fries:You would be a good surgical trainer. And then I was teaching one step in cataract eye surgery.
Grant Paxton:Okay. That's to me a very specific thing that you got into, but that's fantastic. You seem to have a entrepreneurial, I can't hold still sort of spirit. Is that correct?
Matt Fries:Yeah. Well, you know, bad thing. I'm always chasing the money. Right? So I I'll get into something and and say, oh, wait.
Matt Fries:There's more money to be made over here or over there, and I'm constantly following that. So if you look at my resume, it's all over the place. But the last, you know, five years, mortgages are do it. Mortgages and rental properties are really doing me well.
Grant Paxton:How how many properties do you own?
Matt Fries:So, you know, I got I got up to 14 Airbnbs. I sold a now I think I have a dozen.
Grant Paxton:Do folks manage it for you? Yeah. Or you're still on the phone with these properties all the time? Or
Matt Fries:So I so I I use third party software for automation. So it sends out the emails, it notifies my cleaners. It it handles everything automated. It eliminates human error. The only time I I have in my listings, hey.
Matt Fries:I'm busy. I don't have time for phone calls. If you have a problem, message me through Airbnb, and we'll we'll and then I have a great maintenance guy down there that if I say, hey. There's a problem here. Go go fix it.
Matt Fries:Make it go away. Okay. And he will whatever needs to happen, he'll make it happen.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Are these properties and investments all in a certain radius? Are they close to each other, or are they kinda spread out?
Matt Fries:You know, they're sort of spread they're all in Myrtle Beach, but Okay. They are kinda spread out, you know, sorta. There's certain resorts that I have invested in. Like, one resort, have three properties. Another one, I have five, and then spread out besides that.
Grant Paxton:Got it. Now COVID, unfortunately, is still part of a lot of conversations I have, but I use it in retrospect to the ups and downs of the economy and people going out and about, people spending money. Is life back to normal for you in that regard? Well,
Matt Fries:rents Airbnbs were amazing right after COVID. Amazing. Everyone had money to play with. Last year, rents were down a little bit. This year, they're down a little bit more.
Matt Fries:So it's not as profitable as it was. It's still profitable. It's still making money, but not nearly as much as I was making on the Airbnbs. Okay. I'm sure that'll come back around when people start traveling again.
Matt Fries:Right now, it's just people are keeping the money tight.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Are they long term rentals or short term? Just people on vacation? Yeah. A weekend?
Grant Paxton:A week? What what kind
Matt Fries:of Most people are only booking like three or four days right now. Okay. And so it's like during you if you book during the weekdays, you get a really good deal. Book on the weekends, it's more expensive, but they're shorter bookings. So
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Awesome. What are good in a business sense referrals for you or maybe lean a little bit on upcoming goals or growth in general? What are you looking to do now?
Matt Fries:Yeah. Mean, best referrals, realtors, they, you know, they bring me a lot of business. You can get borrowers. You can pay for leads, right, in the industry. But a lot of those lead they're they're going from lead source to lead source looking for the unicorn who can get them approved.
Matt Fries:I do a lot of creative financing, so I end up spending a lot more time on a lot of the clients who need it. But a lot of times when the leads are coming from realtors saying, hey, look, here's a good client here, you can preapprove them. Those are the those are the best leads. Those are the awesome leads. But I do spend a lot of my time preapproving those people who were told no by the last 10 real loan officers.
Grant Paxton:K.
Matt Fries:And then I know usually, if there's a will, there's a way. I can figure out a way to make it work, but it does take more time.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. You're easy to talk to. You're friendly. You're outgoing. I think that that already set you apart maybe with some folks in this field.
Grant Paxton:Is that correct?
Matt Fries:Yeah. I hope so. Yeah.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Because opening finances or getting loans and things, at least in my realm, it's always been a really private personal thing. And so I'm always leery, I guess, when you're working in that space.
Matt Fries:Yeah. No. I I think I think people do trust me. You know? It's I try to befriend all my clients.
Matt Fries:Right? Like and and a lot of them, I either earn their their trust or, you know, if it like you said, who who's my perfect connections? Perfect connections are realtors, and then there's the triangle of trust that you do a group text and say, hey, look, here's Matt. He's awesome. He's gonna take care of you.
Matt Fries:It works out better than a realtor who say, hey, give this person a call. Alright? Then and then they they have no idea who you are, and you're cold calling them, and they've got their wall up and everything. But when you have that good circle of trust, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:This episode is powered by Foxtrot Print, located here at Workspace Provision Co at 14101 Capitol Boulevard, right where Wake Forest meets Youngsville. Foxtrot Print specializes in pieces that keep your business moving. Menus, loyalty cards, booklets, thank you cards, and more. As a husband and wife team, we work directly with you to create print that makes an impact and helps your business stand out. I've got two boys, a dog, I play music, I run a print shop.
Speaker 3:Life at home is busy. Trying to grow a business at the kitchen table and run it out of your garage? Forget it. That's why I joined Workspace Provision Co on the North Side Of Wake Forest at Youngsville, North Carolina. It gave me more than just a desk and a space.
Speaker 3:It gave me focus, community, and a place to grow. As a small business owner, having a space like this has made all the difference. If you'd like to grow your business too, check out Workspace Provision Co, Youngsville, North Carolina.
Grant Paxton:Those circles of people and keeping them close to you, and they're your partners. They're your folks that are going to say, hey, this guy I trust. This guy's so cool. I'm reiterating a little bit of what you're saying, but I find in my business, in the print world, I just need to make people like me. I just need to be likable and then talk about my work and make it less of a hard sale.
Grant Paxton:And it maybe seems like that way for you sometimes as well.
Matt Fries:It definitely help. It also helps. I have two backyards. Right? I have my Myrtle Beach backyard, and then I have my backyard here in Wake Forest.
Grant Paxton:That's true. Let's talk about that a little bit. Were you from Myrtle Beach, or what is your connection there?
Matt Fries:I just you know, I back in 02/2015, and I you know, I Airbnb started getting popular, and I said, let me find figure out where where where rentals will work out. And, you know, I reverse engineered the numbers by, alright. This guy's calendar's full. He's got this week available. Let's see what he's charging for this week.
Matt Fries:Okay. He he's charging $99 a night. Okay. That means he's probably making $3,000 a month or, you know, whatever. Yeah.
Matt Fries:And and that's why I started doing that all over The United States, and I'm like, what Merle Merle's numbers are really good for how cheap the properties are. And then once I started, I built my client you know, I built I built my cleaners, my maintenance guys, my flooring guys, like, everything I need down there. And now it's like, well, I'm I'm concentrating on this area for that reason, but I need to diversify. And I start looking in other areas like Destin Beach and other vacation rental places
Grant Paxton:Okay.
Matt Fries:I can't quite find the kind of return on the the purchase price, right, anywhere better than Myrtle still.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Very good. I know I'm from Pennsylvania from South Of Pittsburgh originally, and that was a vacation spot for a lot of folks. And they keep coming back, and now you're growing your properties there and, making money from it. It's fantastic.
Grant Paxton:Tell me a little bit more about Matt outside of business. What are some things you do for fun? Are you a family man?
Matt Fries:Yeah. Yeah. Wife and two kids, eight and 10 year old kids. We weekends, I try to disconnect as much as I can since I do work a lot. Like, I literally work sunrise and sunset during the week.
Matt Fries:But weekends, I try to disconnect a little bit. And besides that, I play a lot of pickleball and volleyball.
Grant Paxton:Okay. You've been playing pickleball for a long time?
Matt Fries:Yeah. A couple years now.
Grant Paxton:Is there a go to spot in Wake Forest for you?
Matt Fries:So the underground, which we won't talk about here.
Grant Paxton:No, for sure.
Matt Fries:Yeah. But it's it's nice because you can actually reserve your own you're you pay for a private court so that way, if you have a crew of four that wants to play and uninterrupted, you can pay the money and play uninterrupted.
Grant Paxton:Very, very nice. Now the folks I talk to love tennis. They don't like pickleball and I get a little bit of it from the other side. I thought they would be like best friends, tennis and pickleball, but it seems like, and I could be wrong. I'm sure there are people that play both, but it seems like you're one or the other.
Grant Paxton:Do you feel that way?
Matt Fries:So yes and no. A couple of the guys I play with, they switched from tennis to pickleball once they started playing. It's funny because, like, they they jump on the courts and they pick it up right away. The only difference is the tennis players that hop on to pickleball, they have the tendency to stay at the back of the court where pickleball, you're supposed to stay at the front. And you could you could tell when some it's like, oh, You used to be a tennis
Grant Paxton:You're a tennis player.
Matt Fries:Yeah. Yeah. But they pick it right up.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Do you like ping pong? Do you like table tennis?
Matt Fries:So I didn't because I was horrible at it. But Okay. More recently, I I I got on the table tennis match, and I was actually really good now. And so learning what I've learned from pickleball has really picked up in table tennis because you learn kinda to push the ball instead of swinging at the ball and just little things like that.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Even tennis racket, someone that hasn't played, you hit them a ball and they'll hit it out of the park and don't realize the motion or the amount of power behind it. The table tennis, I've always loved ping pong.
Grant Paxton:I've played a lot from high school through college just for fun. And one time when I lived in Florida, I joined a ping pong club, like, and it had a pro shop and it had people that were, like, sponsored by local businesses that would sign up for tournaments for, a cash prize or something. It was it was pretty serious. And I thought I was good. I thought I was real good until I went to that club.
Grant Paxton:There were people that were, you know, the paddle was an extension of their body. Like you see these YouTube videos of these Volleys that are just insane and these guys are 20 feet off the table. That's what this was like. Wow. But the pickleball, you've played it a while.
Grant Paxton:Did you play it in school? Or
Matt Fries:Not in school. I I picked it up a couple years ago. You know, actually, what's funny was I I was playing a lot of racquetball. And somebody came and knocked on the racquetball door and said, hey, hey, we're playing pickleball up the road if if you wanna come next Tuesday. And the guy I was playing with him and I were like, I don't know, pickleball sounds kinda weird.
Matt Fries:So we went up there, and he he fell in love with it. I was more of a racquetball guy. I'm like, no, I'm sticking to racquetball. Yeah. So him and I kinda split off.
Matt Fries:He went straight pickleball. I went racquetball. He he actually owns a pickleball plate now. Yeah. So he really got into it and Good.
Matt Fries:Yeah.
Grant Paxton:It's kind of turns from a hobby to an addiction almost. That's good. It's a good way to blow off steam. Do you ever do business on the pickleball court or you kinda separate that? No.
Grant Paxton:It like that's
Matt Fries:the thing in in in real estate, you know, in in mortgages real estate, never you know where you're gonna get a client. Right? So, you know, from pickleball, you know, these network the networking events I do, the or, you know, everywhere you you have clients. There's there's guys I've played pickleball with that. One of them is now a real estate investor and he flips multiple properties.
Matt Fries:You know, I helped him get there.
Grant Paxton:Great. Fantastic. Definitely think it's important to have your activities to blow off steam, to de stress, to debrief is what I call it. I play music. I look forward to having some gigs around town and meeting other people doing it.
Grant Paxton:Lately, my best audience is my family, but certainly hard for me to not want to make money even with a hobby, you know. On that topic a little bit, maybe tell listeners here to this podcast for someone like yourself that seems to wear a lot of hats and to be working sun sun down. What is, I'll put you on the spot a little bit, what is some advice you would give a busy, small business professional to keep their sanity or to how to keep them in check when they're wearing, when they're the CEO and janitor of their business.
Matt Fries:You know, I'm still learning how to keep my sanity myself. But no, I you definitely like you said, you got you have to do something to blow off steam. So I I religiously Monday nights at, you know, at 09:00 at night, I'm playing I'm playing volleyball. And and like Wednesday nights religiously, I'm playing pickleball. I'm disconnected.
Matt Fries:No matter how busy my workload is, you know, a lot of times I try to cut off my work at 09:00 and not work past then. Last night, I actually worked till almost midnight. But, you know, I I try to I try to do some I also play Call of Duty. Like, on nights I'm not doing volleyball or or pickleball, I I do hop on Call of Duty.
Grant Paxton:Do you have the whole gaming setup? Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty hardcore. Yeah.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Cool. I've never really gotten into that. I like a lot of retro games, a lot of old Nintendo games, but I've never got into the Call of Duty video game stream, you know.
Matt Fries:It's funny because, you know, I have have my squad I play pickleball with. I have my squad that I play Call of Duty with. So but it's Okay. It's we're both we're pretty intense.
Grant Paxton:Yeah. It it seems to be kinda two different breeds of people too, probably.
Matt Fries:It is. And, you know, and that's one of one of the when I got into mortgages, one of the first questions somebody asked me, do you play sports? Do you play video games? Are you competitive? And I was like, yeah, I'm competitive.
Matt Fries:They were like, alright, you need be a loan officer. I was like, why? They said, because competitive loan officers, they don't lose a deal, right? Like, so Yeah. So, like, it and I think that is another reason why I've progressed in it, because even if I have to give up my compensation to make something work out, I do not like to lose a deal.
Grant Paxton:Very nice. Well, that's good. You can keep you can sharpen your competitiveness on the pickleball court, bring it back to work, and and make money, get deals done. Before we kind of sign off here on our podcast, could you tell listeners how they can connect with you?
Matt Fries:Yeah. The best way is if you go to my website, it's Matt Fries, but it's spelled like fries, mattfries.com. There's a button at the top of the page to schedule time to chat.
Grant Paxton:Very good. Well, thanks. I appreciate you coming in, being the special guest, making this something special for workspace provision here. Has the community here benefited you? Do you find yourself connecting with a lot of folks in this
Matt Fries:Oh yeah, no, the, and the more I'm here, the more I'm like walking through the door and I'm like, oh hey, I haven't seen you in a while, and then it helps with the referrals and whatnot. So I initially just needed a space as a loan officer. They need to inspect and make sure you have a lock on your door and, like, in cabinets and all that stuff. I was like, okay, I'll I'll grab this space. But it's turned into more of a family now.
Matt Fries:Right? Like Yeah. Know?
Grant Paxton:Yeah. Good. Alright. Good deal. Thanks, buddy.
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