Special Guest: Army Vet, Cancer Survivor, Combat Athlete, Realtor & Finance Pro - Joseph McNeal

In this episode, I talk with Joe McNeal, a former Army soldier turned real estate and financial expert. Joe shares his journey from growing up in Chilton County, Alabama, to serving 11 years in the Army as a combat instructor and fitness trainer, before transitioning into real estate and financial services.

Joe discusses how he started investing in real estate while on active duty, the challenges of buying a property management franchise, and how he built a successful business helping people grow wealth through real estate and financial planning. He also dives into his passion for MMA and Muay Thai, and the lessons martial arts teach about perseverance and success.

Links:
Website: https://www.jessievirga.com/episode20 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvirga 
Podcast equipment: https://amzn.to/3BxWVTf
Book list: https://amzn.to/3zYwYMo

Transcript

0:00

uh well I'm Joe um I was a GI Joe during army after high school I had my humble beginnings starting in central Alabama I grew up on a farm and I joined the army pretty much get out of those those conditions and get my education paid for so I was in the army for over a decade had a pretty stellar military career and then I got out and started focusing on real estate and different business operations so where in Alabama did you grow up I'm from I'm originally from the dead center of Alabama it's called Chiltom County and we're well known for our peaches so it's about an hour north of Montgomery and an hour south of Birmingham right in the dead center of Alabama oh right okay yeah and then you were in the army let's talk a little bit about that what was your MOS what you do how long were you in yeah so I didn't know obviously like most people uh typical 17 year old you really don't know what you wanna do uh so I started off getting experience by joining the military to work in aviation so I was a 15 Yankee in the army I worked on a patchy helicopters and then obviously would as you gain more rank it started scaling into working a little bit on other uh other helicopters but joined a B Aviation technician however after about five years I became a full time combat instructor and master fitness trainer and I have a pretty heavy background in human performance and that's where my career took off when did you get out of the army like what year I got out in 2,016 and um I joined in 2005 I was nine days short of 11 years and decided to get out okay and so what did you do when you got out I know for a lot of veterans it's like they don't have the next step necessarily prepared well I went into business for myself um whenever I got stationed at Fort Carson out here in Colorado from Germany I started investing in real estate and that was 2,014 and you know two years later I decide to get out of the military and I bought a property management franchise so that's I was just went into business for myself oh so you started your entrepreneurial like journey while kind of still active duty yeah yeah and if anyone's considering it I would definitely recommend doing that while you're still in you can you know be building something on the side but yeah I was investing in real estate while I was in the military yep yeah I definitely recommend that for a lot of folks I made some smart moves but a smarter move would have been to start investing in real estate and using the VA loan or or at least you know doing something on the side like definitely so talk about so the acquisition of a property management company how did that look for someone who was active duty at the time well you know I joined the military 17 years old and before that I grew up on a farm it was all this was brand new to me but between multiple deployments I had a little bit of cash saved up and I was bouncing around on what I was gonna do next in my career because personally I like martial arts and human performance and physical stuff way more than you know real estate or financial services however um you can use real estate or financial service or any business really to give yourself a platform to go do whatever you want but it really what it looked like was just the fact that I had some money saved up from deployments and so I spent a lot of money on getting a franchise um and being able to leverage their processes and systems to launch a a real estate journey a real estate business and then okay so you got out so you went from Germany to um to call to Colorado did you were you deployed anywhere else besides Europe or like where did your like military like career take you yeah um started off with training I think in South Carolina Fort Jackson area then I went and had like 39 weeks of advanced training for aviation up in Fort Eustis Virginia and then my first duty station was actually Camp Humphreys Korea so I spent a year in Korea after that I came to Fort Campbell Kentucky from there we deployed Afghanistan and then when I got back from my deployment shortly after that I re enlisted to go to Germany and then while I was in Germany I deployed Afghanistan and I also extended my my time in Germany I love Germany Germany is amazing so I extended my time there and then I finally I decided to come back to the you know my home country and I got stationed out here in Colorado yeah I just uh I have a security business and we picked up a subcontract and I'm like man I can support this contract anywhere in Europe and my I have like my eyes set on Germany yeah so no that's awesome okay so then so you acquired this property management company while you were in um do you still have that property management company or what what did that look like afterwards yeah so um we can dive right on into that so when I was in the military I literally I worked and went to school my whole military career even if the operation tempo was really really high and I compromised my sleep and I studied and all that stuff and I bought that you know like I said I started investing in real estate and in my mind I was like no one's gonna outwork me I'm gonna be this multi millionaire by time I'm 30 and I'm gonna buy this property management company and make it be super successful well that was my first like big setback um whenever it comes to real estate you know each state has their own rules and regulations and Colorado is a I think it's kind of his own thing whenever it comes to real estate we have a very unique I guess and well the rules and regulations are pretty pretty strict on the way you market and advertise and so I was in this position where I had bought a franchise and I was in this agreement that I would advertise obviously the franchise that that business but in the state of Colorado if you are a real estate agent you have to advertise your your um your brokerage you have an employing broker you know someone who's been in the business longer that's gonna take on some of the liability of your operations and you have to hang your license with an employing broker in the beginning and so I was pretty much stuck in the middle where you know I have to market who whoever my brokerage is and then I'm on I'm in this agreement where I I have to market you know this property management franchise that I bought and that really caused some issues so I wasn't able to go to the marketplace and just hang my license with the best firm or best brokerage because I was in a contractual agreement of advertising that that franchise um so instead of being able to just go out there like I said to the open market and hang my license I had it dwindled down to pretty much I only had one option and so I did that for a few months to say the best words it was a very big and expensive learning experience I got out of that and then I started my journey with the current firm I'm with now another real estate franchise but after about a year I had to let go of that of that property management franchise after about a year however I Learned a lot and of course I stayed in real estate and stayed consistent and it definitely paid off what would your advice be for someone who finds themselves kind of stuck and when do you think is like a good time to to realize that you need to back away from that business you know everyone's situation is different and I don't really see I didn't really back away you know I stayed in real estate I kept doing it I stayed consistent I still have rental properties but you know this I would have to say it's it's just different for everyone but if you've been in if you spent a lot of money uh on a franchise and you know you go a year and you're really working you're struggling you're doing everything you really are trying and doing everything you can and um you know you're getting to where I mean I had I had money and then I pretty much lost it all trying to trying to maintain everything in my business for a whole year um I can't give an exact answer because again each each situation so unique but to make a long story short for me I held on to it for a whole year I was paying fees every single month not making any money from it uh but it's just you know real estate rules and regulations can be complex especially in the situation that I discussed that I was in yeah yeah I didn't realize Colorado was unique in that regard I don't I don't know if California is the same way I don't think California is the same way but I think that's one of the benefits of having a franchise is that if you're not really too familiar with being an entrepreneur running your own business franchise just gives you all of that it's like here's your franchise manual follow it but yeah there are some limitations um so so you left well so you're still in real estate so let's talk about kind of what you're doing now because I know you are also a subject matter expert at least uh when it comes to um like you you said human development right looks a personal development so I kind of wanna touch on those two things too like what you're doing now and then that aspect of it yeah so um human performance I mean yeah so I got a younger me I had highly considered becoming a doctor I wanted to be a psychiatrist but after after being deployed and seeing some stuff and then I'm just I don't do very well with like the whole blood and stuff and I had a MMA fight and I beat this guy up and I just I realized I didn't like blood and I quickly realized like I don't wanna go to medical school I don't wanna be a doctor because it's just it's not for me um so then I was like well I'm gonna be be a psychologist versus a psychiatrist so I don't have to go to medical school but I'd always been some type of athlete lifting weights and trying to be fit and then being in the army and being really interested in martial arts so I ended up cutting out the psychology I got my undergraduate in psychology but then I went and focused on human performance and I got a graduate degree focusing on exercise science and injury prevention but um when I was in the service like I became a combatives instructor and then that human performance degree really really helped me get ahead I mean along with a background in educational psychology really just you know trying to optimize learning doing knowledge transfer optimize learning optimize training reducing the risk of injury down lowest level 2 or as much as you can because as you already know combat combatives and combat sports is hard on the body and the military or at least at least the army they can lose a lot of money and a lot of manpower with soldiers getting hurt in combatives training um but you know outside of that yeah I got a whole bunch of certifications in the field and just I went really far down down that rabbit hole and to this day it just it helps me pick up things faster it helps me train and lead and mentor others I think in a more efficient way because you know if we follow the right models or think in a pretty much a superior way we can get more done and less time and get to get closer and closer to our goals way way faster uh versus just doing trial and error cause a lot of us were simply just following the wrong models you know our goals are are one thing and then we follow some model that it doesn't really connect to our goal and you can save a lot of time energy and money by following a a a proven model what does mentorship look like in that regard I don't know if that's a service that you provide but if someone was like you know what that sounds great I want you to be my mentor what does that look like well I consult a lot of people with their obviously their home buying needs and real estate needs so I help people buy sell and invest in real estate and that comes down to analyzing their portfolios or analyzing a property that they want to acquire um or just advising and consulting them throughout the home buying process outside of that in financial services we give a whole picture look you know we can look at the equity in your real estate portfolio but we can also optimize um you know the things that you need to do to reach your goals financially people we help people set up private pension plans we help people protect their money um and and things like that um outside of that we we're always trying to grow our talent base and so we recruit and recruit talent and of course try to mentor them to be in successful and lead them to success as well that's interesting so you essentially tied your psychology background with financial goals it sounds like and that sounds awesome um I have a background in psychology obviously and I have I'm a business you know I'm a business person so um is that is that a correct kind of like distilling that down to that is that yeah you know to an extent you know the psych a psychology background helps uh you know with dealing with people and things like that I think I got the most benefit from my my psychology background mainly with like educational psychology really you know helping people learn more faster that's the whole human performance thing you know and so we can take that and into consideration with a lot of stuff um but whenever I think about that skill set it's it's more on the physical round you know okay yeah just a unique background cause I feel like even though it might seem separate but I think your ability to understand someone understand their goals and what works well for them also gives you some insight when it comes to mentorship um and that you know financial real estate like business mindedness so that's yeah that's pretty interesting so your business now so let's talk a little bit about that so what is the name of your business well I'm an independent contractor in real estate and independent contractor in financial services so my license is hung under two two different um uh corporations two separate licenses you know got to be licensed and insured and in both of these fields and I'm really trying to bridge the gap there um as you you may already know I don't know if your viewers will know but whenever we talk about financial services or people working in the financial industry real estate is typically one of the biggest financial decisions of a person's life like every year even if they decide to rent you know that's a lot of money they're dishing out it's a big financial decision what you do with how you uh obtain your shelter what you do to to live and the financial industry kind of just like overlooks that you know they don't really take that in consideration and then in the real estate industry whenever it comes to finances here we are uh helping people transact one of the biggest financial decision of life but then again whenever it comes to finances like outside of real estate they don't really understand that point of view and so I'm really trying to bridge the gap and be like a one one one stop shop for people's estate and portfolios and really just designing the infrastructure that they need to reach their goals in leveraging real estate and financial services yeah I like that's actually something that I could use cause right now I feel like I have 75 different people I have someone I have nobody who's helping with me with real estate but then I have like a fiduciary I have two fiduciaries and then I have an estate attorney and then I have like someone who's managing my trust and it's it gets to be too too much sometimes so having a one stop shop is so needed but um so what does that look like so if I came to you and I said I wanna buy this house which this is an actual thing I'm looking at buying a house in upstate New York so if I come to you and say I wanna buy this house I wanna build my portfolio my goal is to is to you know privately own you know five or six houses across the United States so how do you without giving away like getting secret sauce but like how do you analyze that how do you help me determine what my goal really is and is this house what I need to reach that yeah so typically what we have to do before we make any recommendations you know we got to do pretty much a data collection it's kind of like going to the doctor and uh you know saying you have a cough they they would probably ask more questions you know depending on the severity of something run test and then you know gather data so we would do a data collect and with what you just said specifically when it comes to real estate I have experience in Colorado Alabama and then some overseas experience you know each state gotta have a separate license but we have a referral network and what's awesome about people who are veterans you there's these programs out there that most people are oblivious about oblivious to and don't know about that can give you substantial savings and rewards whenever you do real estate transactions um but what it would look like is I would have to ask more questions collect more data before I could start making recommendations but whenever you're looking to purchase say in New York I would go through my referral network and try to connect you with a competent broker out there that would give you the most you know the most benefit so would you so do you manage or portfolio or would you like if you were my mentor would we maybe meet once a quarter to go through kind of like like lay everything out as it relates to financial management and real estate I'm trying to get an idea of um cause I know a lot of my viewers are um you know either in real estate or are looking to invest in real estate um and a lot of folks who listen are trying to find smart ways to spend their money like they want their money to make the money so this is like a hot topic for them um especially for some of the business owners like I have clients who I've helped you know they're making a ton of money and they're like what do I do with it it's just sitting in a bank account yep um that's a great question um again it really goes back to the data collect we we could definitely meet every quarter but typically unless a client makes a is coming to like a big decision of acquiring another property or something happens in their estate but definitely on a yearly basis we reanalyze where people are make sure they're on track but if the situation needed every quarter we could do that as well okay yeah that I mean that sounds good too like I know for me when I make big purchases it's usually every year it's not yeah too frequent um unless like you know I have a fiduciary who handles like stock portfolio and you know like I'm a broker who does that so that's like I talk to him weekly which is annoying yeah handle it um yeah anyway yeah that's cool I want to talk a little bit about like your your MMA side of stuff so what was your I know you come from Alabama I'm not too sure what your background your athletic background is but what kind of LED to you where you're at now with the competitive side of sports yeah I well I knew I wanted I I always wanted to be a martial artist but where I'm from in central Alabama there was no wrestling team there was not a lot of martial arts and plus this is back in the you know when I was a kid it was like the 90s and then I was a teenager the early 2 so it's a little bit different but I remember watching the early UFC's um and like I just I always wanted to be a martial artist but I never had the opportunity to train about as far as I got as a child was owning a heavy bag and I worked I remember in my mind like man I worked all day long to buy me a pair of boxing gloves um but whenever I joined the army there I was 17 years old and it's probably the same in Marine Corps but through your basic training you get so many hours of like combat training or hand to hand combat that's part of it and so that really sparked my interest outside of that I was just really into like weightlifting at the time and just trying to be super strong uh but eventually through some combatives training and just getting more and more involved in the MMA community once I got to like Germany I went out into the to the city and I found like a MMA gym or kickboxing gym and I just started going like I was I just I wanted to train and for like six months here I am I'm a very strong GI Joe for like six months I got beat up by everybody yeah cause as you know like people that when you walk into a gym like jiu jitsu someone's wearing a colored belt you know that they they've been beat up plenty of times but they didn't stop and um one reason I didn't improve as much as I wanted to do is because at that time I didn't speak very good German and of course the class was in German uh some people say I can't even speak proper English uh you you know being from Alabama but yes I went there for like six months and then every time I went to a promotion board I told them my short and long term goals of being a combative instructor and being a mixed martial artist and I eventually kind of push my career in a way to where I got through the all four levels of combat's training and everyone knew that I was always training outside of work going to a gym off base and after I finally went to like Level 3 Mac P Modern Army Combat Skills Program in the army where I really got the basics of striking that really up my striking game so that when I went back at least I wouldn't getting beat up by everybody but um I've just stuck I've stayed with it over the years and I've lived in MMA and more Thai camps in Thailand for months at a time and as I told you I've acquired some real estate out there and have have connections out in Thailand I love that place but I fought Muay Thai in Thailand and I'm just I love the grapple I love the just constantly evolving constantly growing and whenever it comes to martial arts there's so many similarities with like martial arts and business the just a you know in business you can't fold whenever you get a couple of objections I mean you look at some of the most successful businesses around like I think I read like Jeff Bezos went like 10 years before Amazon was profitable or something like something you know really extreme like that um and MMA can be the same thing you know your brand new white belt and you just go in the gym and everyone's smashing and beating you up all the time but if you stick with it you know stay consistent and coachable and committed you you just keep getting better and there's no such thing as failure if you don't quit you know if you don't quit there's no such thing as failure you're just in the process right you know yeah I was I was laughing cause I was like yeah business is like that everybody's always trying to beat up somebody else but no I no I think that's awesome so when I was in the Navy a lot of what so Navy like close quarter combat is reminiscent of U Tai cause it's designed to be close quarter combat in small spaces like like on a ship uh in the Marine Corps they have the uh MCMAP Marine Corps Martial Arts program and that's very reminiscent of jiu jitsu there's a lot of striking there's also a lot of like weapon retention and and utilizing what you have on you um there's also some maneuvers that are reminiscent of like you know do you have a bayonet you know probably not but you know there's some things that that reflect that and I think that's kind of what started my journey in Brazilian jiu jitsu is I was like this looks looks like a good cardio workout and I could learn to like fight on the ground um so I went to I did that but I actually started in Krav Maga and that was a humbling experience cause Krav Maga is all about like mutilating the other person and I loved it but then when I went to jiu jitsu I was like super confident I just came from crockling guy I got this I got my ass kicked by like children this is humbling this one little girl her and I were like um her and I were sparring and she just spider monkeyed me and it was like don't let the other person like they've have this game on open mat where's like don't let the person get your back or like you know don't this other let this other person break your guard and um I remember this little girl just like whooped my ass I don't think I won against her once and I was twice her size but yep yeah you mentioned that you have a fight coming up so is that like a mixed martial arts fight or is it specifically like Muay Thai nah it's it's an MMA belt out here in Colorado Springs oh that's awesome yeah yes Joe the real estate pro you know I can literally we can go through a home buying consultation the process a home selling consultation or real estate investment consultation to really shave a lot of time sometimes years off someone's learning curve cause I've done made a lot of good to get gained a lot of experience in that realm and then outside of that we do personal financial reviews we literally sit down and it doesn't matter you don't have to have a lot but we sit down and we we review everything you got going on we take consideration like what your goals are and then we come up with a custom roadmap to help you get there oh that's pretty cool have you ever done a group setting yeah well when we do like kind of a group setting it's more uh more training you know we have a group and it's more training to help them understand stuff because once we get into like collecting the data is some of us kind of personal you know talking about people's finances and their whole portfolios or their whatever their business is so that's very rarely uh done out in a group setting yeah I was just wondering cause um I've had I've hosted kind of like personal development or like specifically for veterans like a development course for example where I have experts come in and they talk a little bit about stuff and then um what they do is after after your segment there's like a break and they can you know go up to you and schedule something with you for that more in depth um that more in depth like data collection you know understanding a little bit more about what they're what they're looking to do but yeah no that's I I think that's pretty awesome so I know so you said you're licensed in Colorado Alabama and then there was somewhere else or you you operate in yeah I am uh Kentucky Alabama uh Colorado I think North Carolina and in the financial services our territories aren't so like consolidated so it's pretty it's pretty easy for me to scale into different states if someone needs you know services is cause it's mostly the same for the most part the real estate parts a little bit different because states can vary greatly and it's like a big much of like a higher acquisition cost you know get license in another state when it comes to real estate it's really hard to have you know be licensed in every state in real estate that would I don't know I don't know if anyone has done that um but you can't in financial services it's it's a much easier um place to to scale your territory so if someone was in a different state it wouldn't take much for me to be be quickly be in a position to help them there yeah and then so you leverage a network of real estate professionals in those other states so I think that's like a great full service option so is it um so when it comes to managing someone's portfolio what information do you like them to have kind of ready for when they come to talk to you yeah so we don't I don't like necessarily like manage someone's portfolio we literally we just kind of like attack strategies we we help them properly build their their portfolio in the most advantageous way that is in line with their unique and specific goals and each person is fairly fairly different and some of these can be you know pretty synergistic and kind of complex but we literally just sit down we just need to know like what what your goals are like what do you want what does retirement look like for you when do you want to retire because we have to take in all these variables of wealth and one of them is time like we all should have been investing sooner because time is it you know compounded time and compounding interest over time I mean that's a huge factor in creating wealth we need to know how to structure our stuff to hopefully reduce or eliminate taxes because taxes are your single largest expense throughout your life um we need to learn how or know how to get a very high return on our money cause obviously your rate of return is also a factor we got to be a pretty you know we pretty much need to eliminate taxes we need to outpace inflation and everyone's situation is different but we just take a look at what they have going on and what their retirement goals are and then we are able to create a custom roadmap to help them reach their goals and with me we can also take in consideration your real estate holdings you don't have to go to a separate person because I'm licensed in that too and I can literally calculate and analyze about how much equity you would have in your home or you know if you have rental properties and we can take all this data into consideration to come up with the most efficient road map for you to you know reach success yeah no that's I might actually have to talk to you after this cause I need that I've been managing things on my own and I think a lot of people are like me where it's like we know we need to invest so we start to invest in stuff and we start to you know things start making money for us and it's like okay like do I have a plan here like I just have like stuff going on everywhere yeah so what would be your advice for someone who's like me who's doing all of this stuff oh well again I I'd have to know more you know it would be like I'm a personal you know be a a consultation I would have to collect more data cause it really depends like what when do you want to retire what is your retirement life look like how much do you want to retire on and so there's all these variables that that kind of influence what you need to be doing now and you had mentioned earlier you mentioned the term fiduciary and I love that because people need to they need to act like they have a fiduciary duty for their future self you know and I feel like a lot of people kind of overlook that or they get tangled up in what's going on now um and one way to promote your best interest in the future is to sit down have have a professional look at your portfolio taking consideration where you wanna go and come up with a roadmap you know that is literally promoting your your future best interest so I've asked you several questions and your answer to most of those has been it depends on you and I think that everyone needs to realize that anybody who gives you a blanket answer you should not follow that it should be exactly what you said it depends on you and your goals a lot of times I have people who are like well do this and it's like well it's not cookie cutter like everybody's not gonna so I love that you've done that because I've asked you a ton of questions all somewhat varying but you're always like it depends and I'm like that is such a great answer because it really does depend what any advice that you would give me here right now is good enough for me like it would help me but it's not gonna help someone else who's not me so no that's that's awesome I like that that's how you said that cause I people ask me the same thing and it's like what would you tell us success you know what would you tell a business owner to do right now and I'm like who's the business owner what's their business what's the advice they're looking for yeah no that's that's awesome thanks for that so if the devil the devil is in the details yeah no that's that's awesome um so if folks wanted to get a hold of you or get in touch with you to learn a little bit more about how you can help them create this this roadmap to financial success how could they reach you you just go to my website Joseph mcneil.com Joseph is J O s E P H Mcneil is m C N E a L you could also email support at josephmcnail com as well those are uh two pathways of really getting in contact with me and we can get on the calendar and and do this it's very beneficial you know it's complimentary but it can make people aware of what they need to start doing now cause the first part of changing anything is just being aware and most people are very unaware of the products and services out there to help them reach success I know I was oblivious to so many of them till I got into the business myself and you know a lot of people they feel like they need to stick with a company or organization to have a retirement plan but you can literally set up your own retirement plan and you can have multiple plans you know there's nothing stopping stopping you from that but most people feel like they need to stick with a company that has a maybe a 4 o 1 k and but there's other options out there and you can capitalize on you know several of them yeah no that's like I just discovered like investing into life insurance so like I started doing that and I was like what else is there like I need to put my money places so where where do I put it so no that's awesome that's a great one that's good thanks so much I I don't know of many other people who who do what you do who look at the whole picture and look at the goal and like is this yellow brick road gonna take you to the Wizard kind of thing so yeah um no that's awesome and I think everybody needs to to utilize that that kind of service um especially now with a lot of military folks I maybe it's just like because we're older so I see a lot of my friends who are e eights e nines who are commissioned officers and they're starting to make some real money and they're like I need to put it places or my kids are out of the house now like what do I do with this money so um I think having that road map I know you and I are probably I'll probably end up making a I'll probably end up scheduling an appointment with you cause yeah I need there's no road map right now so yeah awesome well thanks for being here I don't know if there's anything else that you wanna talk about um or let the audience know as it relates to to what you do nah I mean you know I really believe in it it's very valuable um I would highly encourage people to take advantage of the opportunity wouldn't it's you have nothing to lose you know you only have stuff to gain that's it so it's a huge it's just a great return on your time invested of leveraging something like this and even like you even if you have fiduciaries and people already helping you it never hurts to get like a second look because there's so much out there and a lot of people are only focusing on one or two things but when it comes to financial services we work with a lot of different companies we're non captive and then when you throw in real estate skill sets with it we can literally give you a whole big great picture look of what you got going on and what you need to do to get to where you wanna go no yeah that's awesome yeah I know for me I have a lot of people who do a lot of different things but none of them talk to each other I'm the central point so yeah yeah no thanks thanks so much thanks for being here I will leave a link to get a hold of you in the description and then yeah awesome