How to Scale Commercial Real Estate

✨Join with us today is Stewart Heath, the Founder and CEO of Harvard Grace Capital, a private equity real estate investment firm that helps people build wealth faster through hands-off real estate investing that generates passive income, reduces risks, maximizes tax efficiencies.    In 2016, Heath was recognized as a finalist for the Nashville Business Journal’s CFO Awards.    Connect with Steward: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartoheath/   Website: https://www.harvardgracecapital.com/   Watch More: https://youtu.be/Q2ncvGi6kyo Connect with me: https://brickeninvestmentgroup.com/   I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.    #commercialrealestate #realestate #brickeninvestmentgroup #realestateinvestment #realestatetips #syndication #buildwealth #propertyinvestments

Today’s guest is Greg Friedman.   Greg has more than 23 years’ hospitality experience with an emphasis on deal-structure and financing. He successfully has led Peachtree in more than $8 Billion in hotel acquisitions, investments and development since co-founding the company.    Show summary: In this podcast episode, Greg Friedman shares his insights on the commercial real estate landscape, focusing on the lucrative opportunities in credit trade for financing acquisitions, developments, and recapitalizations. He recounts Peachtree's adept navigation through economic downturns like the Great Financial Crisis and the pandemic, crediting proactive investment strategies. Greg also discusses the hotel industry's potential, driven by favorable supply-demand dynamics. -------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction (00:00:00)   Greg Friedman's Background (00:01:07)   Influence of Family and Entrepreneurship (00:02:00)   Navigating the Great Financial Crisis (00:04:29)   Investing During Market Disruption (00:06:39)   Hotel Investment Strategies (00:09:23)   Opportunities in the Hospitality Space (00:12:11)   Investment Risks and Opportunities (00:13:17)   Lending and Financing Strategies (00:16:58)   Target Audience and Demand Profile (00:18:44)   Conclusion and Contact Information (00:20:30) --------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Greg: Web: https://www.peachtreegroup.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Greg Friedman (00:00:00) - Across all commercial real estate. I think the best opportunity set is on the credit side. The credit trade me hands down, is the most compelling trade today. And if you're doing direct lending, you know where you're financing groups to go out and acquire and develop assets or even recapitalize existing assets. And a lot of cases were, you know, ultimately driving from a standpoint of the investments we're making, we're getting, you know, outcomes that are very similar to what we would be getting if we were investing on the equity side.   Intro (00:00:29) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:42) - Greg Friedman, thank you for taking the time to come on the show today. I certainly appreciate having you. Come on.   Greg Friedman (00:00:48) - Yeah. Thank you Sam. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show with you today.   Sam Wilson (00:00:51) - Absolutely. Greg, as our listeners know, normally I give the guest bio there in the beginning, telling all about the guest and where they come from.   Sam Wilson (00:00:58) - But instead, we're going to skip straight to the same question I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me, where did you start? Where are you now, and how did you get there?   Greg Friedman (00:01:07) - Definitely. so, you know, I graduated from University of Texas at Austin back in 1999. I spent, you know, about eight, you know, 8 or 9 years in banking before I started Peachtree going back, you know, to 2007. And, you know, Peachtree, when I originally started it, it was a, you know, small family office that we were focused on going out and acquiring and developing hotel assets. And like all businesses, we've transitioned through the years and we've transitioned into a vertically integrated private equity firm that invests across, you know, all commercial real estate property type. So we invest, you know, still very heavily across the hotel space. But we also have investments across all commercial property types as well as we have investments outside of real estate as well.   Greg Friedman (00:01:49) - And then as I mentioned, we're vertically integrated. So we own an operation development lending asset management company, so forth.   Sam Wilson (00:01:56) - That is fantastic. Did you grow up in a family of entrepreneurs?   Greg Friedman (00:02:00) - You know, I did. So my my grandfather was a huge entrepreneur. He was a doctor by trade. And he, he also owned a bunch of real estate, like any good doctor that lived in a small town in Alabama, because I grew up right outside Tuscaloosa. He was, you know, he was very focused on not only being a doctor. He was an eye doctor. He was also focused on doing everything from owning commercial real estate, you know, to owning a home building business to owning movie theaters. So he was, you know, very entrepreneurial. So he was a huge influence on my life. And he, you know, owned hotel properties. And that was, you know, that's how I sort of got into the business because he owned a business that owned hotels, but also owned a hotel lending business.   Greg Friedman (00:02:43) - So I personally grew up around the business before, you know, professionally getting into the, hospitality business on the lending side, when I graduated college.   Sam Wilson (00:02:51) - Got it. And so was that. I guess maybe that's the answer, the question that's kind of what gave you the bug early on that said, hey, this is this is kind of the direction we're going to take, but what did you decide to do differently? Maybe, you know, when you launched Peachtree that your family wasn't already involved in.   Greg Friedman (00:03:08) - Yeah. So, you know, at this point in time, when I launched Peachtree, my family was pretty much out of the hotel business outside of, you know, some limited investments. So it was, you know, my grandfather, unfortunately, he was, you know, at this point in time, he passed away shortly after I started Peachtree, but didn't have a lot of, you know, he had sold off most of his investments. And same for my mom, who was a big influence as well.   Greg Friedman (00:03:29) - But, but really went in and, you know, initially thought I was going to, you know, just focus because I knew the hotel business from a professional perspective that was out there financing, capitalizing hotel projects and have financing capitalized over 300 hotel projects across the US when I was on the banking side, so I wasn't necessarily looking to duplicate what the family business had done. I was trying to really create my own legacy. And, you know, with myself and I had a partner that still is involved in the business today. The two of us both wanted to create our own legacies, to go out, you know, acquire and develop hotel properties. And we had, you know, our own capital that we were investing. So, you know, personally was using my capital along with my partner. And then our family members were investing heavily. So my grandfather, my mom and so forth were big investors. Initially when we went out and acquired developed assets, when we set up a business.   Sam Wilson (00:04:20) - Got it.   Sam Wilson (00:04:20) - You launched that in 2007. That seems like the prime time to, get heavily into commercial real estate. How did you weather the next 3 or 4 years?   Greg Friedman (00:04:29) - Yeah. So we're good at picking timing here. So we picked it in May of 2007 when we formed Peachtree. And and that was probably the absolute peak before the great financial crisis. And so we, you know, so we went out and, you know, made about eight, 8 or 9 investments across the lodging space, in 2007 timeframe where we bought some land parcels that we ended up developing into hotels shortly thereafter, or we bought actual hotel assets. And it was, it was sort of interesting, just as I reflect on it, because, you know, it was probably the best lesson, you know, for us on the business side, because we quickly went from, you know, being able to play offense, meaning we were able to make investments to happen to play, you know, truly play defense because we were going through one of the, you know, worst economic situations of all time.   Greg Friedman (00:05:17) - With the great financial crisis that really took hold by the mid part of 2008. And, and we successfully navigated through that environment, not only do we end up producing, you know, decent returns, we, you know, all those investments we made, we actually made positive returns on every investment we made pre, great financial crisis. But we were we were super active. We were, you know, very good about not only playing defense but being able to go out and play offense and buy a lot of distressed debt during the great financial crisis. You know, where we bought over, you know, 50 loans. We bought a lot of hotels that were in distress on the real estate side as well. And we bought, you know, we developed a bunch of hotels from the ground up in the middle of the great financial crisis. So we had a lot of success making new investments as well as playing defense. And, you know, being able to, you know, really optimize and drive the returns across our, you know, our existing investments at that point in time during the great financial crisis.   Sam Wilson (00:06:13) - It sounds like you guys were. What? Let's be brave when others are fearful. Like you guys were brave when others were fearful in in this time. What? What did you guys do differently that able you know, that allowed you guys to go out and buy distressed hotel assets and say or distressed debt, whatever i

Today’s guest is Jay Conner.   Jay Conner has been buying and selling houses since 2003 in a town of only 40,000 people with profits now averaging $78,000 per deal. He has Rehabbed over 475 houses and been involved in over $118 Million Dollars in Transactions.   Show summary: In this episode, Jay Connor discusses the advantages of using private money and private lending over traditional banking methods for real estate investments. He shares his personal success story of raising $2.15 million in private funds within 90 days. Jay also highlights the importance of mastermind groups, building a strong team, and the transition from mobile homes to single-family houses. Additionally, Jay promotes his book "Where to Get the Money Now?" which offers a step-by-step guide to funding real estate deals, and he provides a special offer for listeners to receive an autographed copy.   -------------------------------------------------------------- Mastermind Groups (00:00:00)   Background and Journey (00:00:45)   Transition to Private Money (00:02:22)   Deployment of Private Money (00:03:49)   Protection for Private Lenders (00:04:38)   Applicability to Commercial Real Estate (00:05:59)   Building a Strong Team (00:06:52)   Automation and Delegation (00:10:03)   Efficiency and Growth (00:11:48)   Raising Capital Strategies (00:14:31)   Raising Private Money (00:16:35)   Mindset and Rejection (00:21:40)   Book Recommendation (00:22:24)   Offer for Listeners (00:22:46)   The giveaway (00:22:55)   Raising money principles (00:23:39)   Thank you and closing (00:23:56) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Jay: Web: www.JayConner.com   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jay.conner.marketing   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/privatemoneyauthority/   Free Book: https://www.jayconner.com/book   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Jay Conner (00:00:00) - My business started to skyrocket, like overnight when I started joining really good mastermind groups, mastermind groups of where I, fellow like minded individuals are in real estate investing and have been doing it a while. I'm not listening to advice from somebody that hasn't even done their first deal yet, right? I'm listening to advice from fellow mastermind members that are doing 50 plus deals a year. Welcome to the how.   Intro (00:00:33) - To Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:45) - Jake Connor has been buying and selling houses since 2003, in a town of only 40,000 people, with profits now averaging $78,000 per deal. He has rehabbed over 475 houses and been involved in over $118 million in transactions. Jay, you've been on the show before. It's really great to have you back for round two. Thanks for coming on today, Sam.   Jay Conner (00:01:08) - Thanks so much for having me back. Talking about my favorite subject in topic. And that's private money and private lending, because quite frankly, that in and of itself has had more of an impact on our real estate investing business ever since 2003.   Sam Wilson (00:01:24) - Absolutely. Jay, I asked this question to every guest that comes on the show, and so I have to ask it for the listeners maybe that didn't hear your first episode in 90s or less. Where did you start? Where are you now? How did you get there?   Jay Conner (00:01:40) - So where did I start? I grew up in the housing business with my dad, Wallace Conner, and at one time he was the largest retailer of mobile homes, manufactured housing in the nation. So I grew up, you know, being around a family that was that helps people own a home. So in the early 2000, the consumer financing for that product went away across the nation. And I knew if I ever wanted to, if I ever got out of mobile homes, I wanted to get into single family houses. Now I've done commercial as well. I've done condominium developments and, shopping centers. But my focus has been single family houses. So how did I get to where I am today? Well, I'll tell you.   Jay Conner (00:02:22) - In short, from 2003 to 2009, I relied on institutional money and local banks to fund our real estate deals. And in 2009 January 2009, I had a rude awakening. I was on the phone with my banker, and I learned that my line of credit had been closed with no notice. January of 2009 I'd done a ton of deals with my banker, and of course, during that time, they were not loaning out money to real estate investors anymore. So I knew I had to find a better and quicker way to fund my real estate deals. So right after that, I was introduced to this concept of private money private lending, self-directed IRAs. I'd never heard of any of that stuff. And so in less than 90 days, I raised $2,150,000 in private money and lending from individuals through connections that I have and had. And since that time, I've not missed out on a deal for not having the money.   Sam Wilson (00:03:27) - That is fantastic. It, $2.15 million in less than 90 days. Yes, you had the context or contacts to do that, but what did you have them invest into? I mean, it's one thing to go out and say, hey, I have, you know, this is the thing we're doing, but where did that money get deployed so rapidly.   Jay Conner (00:03:49) - In single family houses? So I had houses under contract to buy and close on before I knew that, you know, that my, my line of credit had been shut down and so but I only needed, $500,000 or so to take those houses down. So the other $1.5 million we started putting to use on other deals that we were negotiating on, you know, over that 90 day period.   Sam Wilson (00:04:20) - Got it. One of the things I think, that you've always stressed to your lenders is they are direct investors. Their name is on the they, you know, not just a promissory note, but they hold the deed of trust or I guess, you know, depending on what state you're in, I'm not sure how North Carolina does it or the mortgage. is that still the case today?   Jay Conner (00:04:38) - That is the case. Everything that we do with single family houses is what we call one offs. So what do we mean by a one off? Well, a one off is that you've got a private lender, which by the way again we're not talking institutional money.   Jay Conner (00:04:51) - These are individuals. These are human beings just like you and me, using their investment capital and or their retirement funds to invest in our deals. And so you have a private lender or maybe a couple of private lenders that are funding a single family house. And as you said, they get the problem. They get the same protection as a bank, right? They get a promissory note, they get the mortgage or the deed of trust here in North Carolina that collateralize that note. So we're not borrowing unsecured funds. They get named as the mortgage on the insurance policy. That's another layer of protection. We name them also as additional insured on the title policy. So we give them the same protection as the bank. So the private lenders are not having any kind of equity position. It's not joint venturing. The private lender acts in the same capacity as the bank. And it is our entity, our company that owns the properties. Right, right.   Sam Wilson (00:05:47) - And that makes perfect sense. And for those of you who are listening to this, go and wait, Sam, why are we talking about private lending on single family homes? On the how to scale commercial real estate podcast? It's because the principles are the same.   Sam Wilson (00:05:59) - Not only do I think the principles are the same in the in the way that you can utilize this strategy in commercial real estate, because I think, as you mentioned, you may have done that with shopping centers and with other things. but it also could give you something else in your tool belt. Another way to think about how to take down a deal, because there's there's not a one size fits all approach to how we finance and take down assets, even on the commercial. And I think even especially on the commercial real estate side, where you get into some very, very creative financial structures. So this, this may be just one more thing in your, in your toolbox that you can go, oh, here's, here's a way I can plug somebody. And I know that has a lot of capital that maybe could help us get this deal done. So very cool. It sounds to me when you mention all of this, like, you have to have a great team behind you that is able to get all these eyes dotted and t's crossed.   Sam Wilson (00:06:52) - Otherwise this becomes an administrative nightmare.   Jay Conner (00:06:55) - Absolutely. The team is so important. So who are the team members? Well, first of all, it's my opinion. You're not really in business as a real estate entrepreneur or investor until you have a relationship with an excellent real estate attorney. As a matter of fact, our real estate attorney is right next door down the sidewalk, about ten feet, so that's pretty convenient. I've been with the I've been using the same firm, the same group of people, ever since 2003 when we started. So we got a long history of relationship to Sarah. So the real estate attorney is important. I am not a realtor

Today’s guest is Ryan Smolarz.   Dr. Joseph Ryan Smolarz is the founder of STOR, leveraging his experience as an entrepreneur and Otolaryngology practitioner to guide people toward financial sovereignty.   Show summary: In this podcast episode, Dr. Joseph Ryan, a former otolaryngologist and founder of Store Partners, shares his transition from medicine to commercial real estate, focusing on self-storage facilities. He highlights the importance of team building, relationship-driven negotiations, and ethical business practices. Dr. Ryan also discusses his podcast, "Medicine and Money Show," and invites listeners to connect with him for educational discussions on investing. -------------------------------------------------------------- Building Successful Teams (00:00:00)   Introduction to the Show (00:00:31)   Dr. Joseph Ryan's Background (00:00:44)   Transition to Real Estate (00:01:10)   MBA and Transition to Real Estate (00:02:08)   Challenges and Enlightenment from Higher Education (00:04:27)   Transition to Self-Storage Focus (00:09:42)   Staying in Self-Storage Lane (00:11:41)   Decision-Making and Deal Selection (00:11:47)   Managing Capital and Acquisitions (00:13:57)   Challenges in Business Growth (00:15:51)   Remote Operations and Team Building (00:19:51)   Finding Deals and Relationship Building (00:20:59)   Building Rapport and Deal Cycles (00:23:26)   Conversation with Potential Investors (00:25:03)   Conclusion and Call to Action (00:26:19) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Ryan: Web: https://storpartners.com/#/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-ryan-smolarz-4803a81/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: *Ryan Smolarz * (00:00:00) - Where I think the, you know, the Alpha lies in building the teams. we have a big focus on that. And, trying to find people who were who were all rowing in the same direction with. I find that super important. you know, the when you know, you have a good team, when one person on the team doesn't like the decision, but everybody else does, and they are rowing even faster in the same direction that everybody else is.   Intro (00:00:31) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:44) - Doctor Joseph Ryan is the founder of store. That's. That's spelled excuse me store. He leverages his experience as an entrepreneur and otolaryngology practitioner to guide people toward financial sovereignty. Ryan, welcome to the show.   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:00:59) - Hey, thanks for having me. Sam, this is going to be great.   Sam Wilson (00:01:02) - Absolutely. The pleasure's mine. Ryan. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less.   Sam Wilson (00:01:07) - Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:01:10) - I started in 2017. I realized that, going from room to room as a doctor wasn't going to allow me to retire. And, once I decided that I ended up in a month, I was sitting at a desk in the in an MBA program in Miami. And, so we decided to get into commercial real estate. We, built a assisted living home and started an e-commerce company. Like a lot of people kind of, diversified out. And now we're sort of the diverse offering, if that's a word I'm not even sure, down into more of a focus. And, self storage is certainly one of those. And, where we're going, we want to do right by our investors, raise capital and buy, self storage facilities and, you know, do the best we can for, for our people, our investors, the people who believe in us and treat us well.   Sam Wilson (00:02:07) - Got it.   Sam Wilson (00:02:08) - Now, you're you're an EMT and you decide that you want to do. You said going room to room as a doctor isn't really going to lead us to where we want. So you went to get your MBA? Yeah. It sounds like more education. I mean, you're already super highly educated. So what what was the kind of thinking there or thought process there? And how did you get how did getting an MBA lead you to real estate?   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:02:29) - Yeah. So, when I was what happened was, I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to go on a surf trip, and I had no idea how to get into my bank account to see if I had enough money. I didn't even know what bank we banked at. So my wife took care of all of that. and so I realized that, you know what? Maybe, money is not fun tickets. And I should probably take it a little more seriously. Right? So doing the things that I do, I sort of take it to the extreme.   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:03:06) - And I was like, well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all the way. So let's learn how to do business and the whole bit. And so, yeah, the next month I was in that MBA program and, kind of spiraled from there. you know, I realized that I really liked it. And in that moment, I became, an investor instead of a consumer. And I can tell you that that was one of the most powerful things that's ever happened to me. or, you know, my children's birth and and raising them and my wife and the relationships, but just the outlook on life. my thought process sort of switch from thinking about, you know, watches or cars or whatever it was to solving the world's problems and, capitalism. And, you know, how can we take those thoughts and, you know, do something with them and change the world for better? And, man, it was life changing.   Sam Wilson (00:04:05) - Did you do you feel like you.   Sam Wilson (00:04:07) - And I'm going to. I guess when I say this, I don't think of higher education as a place where people typically get enlightened to go be an entrepreneur. Even in the MBA program, how did was just the right school, the right timing? Was that the right people? Like what was the confluence of things that occurred to really inspire this in you?   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:04:27) - Yeah. So, you know, I was starting from absolute zero. I didn't know, you know, how a bank worked. I didn't know what an interest rate was, really. I mean, we had a mortgage on our house, but, you know, I was like, oh, it could have been 12, 15, 100. It wasn't. You know, I don't want to change anything for me. I didn't really grasp the concept of, you know what that meant. And, once I figured out that, you know, if you do understand business and you can, you can put these ideas into fruition. that there was always a place that there was, like, this itch I was trying to scratch, and I never could figure out what what it was that was off.   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:05:12) - and almost instantaneously, when I made that, that jump, it was completely different. Like, I didn't have that feeling anymore. And so, yes, the MBA, the MBA program was really meant for people who are in that, you know, business, corporate ladder. But I just use the information in a totally different way. Right? I just took what they were telling me and applied it to where I wanted to apply it. and it really worked out perfectly.   Sam Wilson (00:05:44) - That's awesome. So you've gone from a guy that doesn't even know where he banks to now running funds, buying self-storage, raising capital. I mean, being very, very in the weeds in the finances.   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:05:58) - Absolutely. Yeah. We did it, man.   Sam Wilson (00:06:00) - That is that's awesome. So what, outside of the MBA program, how did you then take the next steps to figure out? I know you mentioned the e-commerce business. You mentioned some other things along the way, but kind of give us the, the maybe the modified version of what happened over the last six years to get you where you are now.   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:06:18) - Yeah. So I you know, I always had these ideas in my head about things that I wanted the bucket list. Right. What are the things in life that I want to accomplish? And, I had these ideas for some patents. And so, you know, one day I just said, you know what? We're going to write these patents and we're going to push it through the system and see what happens. And so we did, got a patent attorney and, started having the conversations and, wrote two patents. One of them is supposed to launch the product here in a couple of weeks. It's been, you know, almost five, six years of in production. Wow. yeah. So, you know, once I figured out that Wall Street sort of has this language that they don't want retail to know what it means and that, you know, I've been through medical school, got the anatomy under my belt and learn Latin and, you know, all the things that were really difficult to learn.   *Ryan Smolarz * (00:07:17) - I said, you know what? I think that, you know, the stereotype of doctors not being able to learn this stuff is just garbage. it was the same thing in flying a plane. You know, people told me that I couldn't be a pilot. I said, that's just garbage. so I'm going to go learn how to do it. And, you know, being a contrarian and it's just sort of the way I think and the, you know, you tell me I can't do something. Okay, well, that means that I'm going to do it. If I want to write, I want to.   Sam Wilson (00:07:49) - I would I'm sorry. Go a

Today’s guest is Mark Podolsky.   Since 2001 Mark has completed over 6,000 raw land deals with an average return on investment of over 300% on cash purchases and over 1000% on land deals that he financed.   Free Book: https://landgeek.samcart.com/products/dirt-rich?utm_source=how-to-scale&utm_medium=podcast   October 2021 podcast:  https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/21693923   Show summary:  In this episode, Mark shares his journey from hands-on management to overseeing his business in just 30 minutes a week by building a capable team, establishing efficient systems, and utilizing technology for automation. He stresses the importance of delegation, staying focused on high-impact activities, and operating at a strategic level.    -------------------------------------------------------------- The importance of focusing on your comparative advantage (00:00:00)   Introduction to the show (00:00:39)   Mark Podolsky's impressive track record (00:00:52)   Mark Podolsky's return to the show (00:01:04)   Recent developments in land investing (00:02:08)   Automation and scalability in land investing (00:03:30)   Different methods of buying land (00:05:27)   The value of cash flow in financial security (00:08:51)   Adapting to economic cycles and mitigating risks (00:10:54)   Land as an inflation-resistant asset (00:13:44)   Strategies for land acquisition and investment focus (00:14:55)   Time management and life philosophy (00:16:37)   Scalability and automation in land investing (00:18:26)   Achieving business efficiency and learning from past experiences (00:19:35)   Leveraging comparative advantage and delegation (00:21:10)   Mark's offer (00:22:31)   Link in show notes (00:23:06)   Contact information (00:23:39)   Closing remarks (00:23:53) --------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Mark: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelandgeek Web: https://www.thelandgeek.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Mark Podolsky (00:00:00) - Let's say, for example, you are, you know, the best at finding deals, right? Right. Like that's how you're making your money. You're, you're you're finding these deals, but you also type 135 words per minute. Right. And so you're like, well, I can I can hire someone at 80 words per minute. But they're not. I mean, they're fractionally as good as me. I might as well type it for myself. But the answer is no. You're comparative advantage, even though you're might be the best typer is going to be you're only should be focusing on deals, right? And letting everything else go.   Intro (00:00:39) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:52) - Since 2001, Mark Podolsky has completed over 6000 raw land deals, with an average return of over 300% on cash purchases and over a 1,000% return. That sounded like I just hit puberty.   Sam Wilson (00:01:04) - My goodness, Mark, where did that come from? 1,000%. Let's try that again. A thousand. Hey, whatever. We're going to leave it in there. I like this man. You made 1,000%. I don't care how you say the number. That's a lot on land deals that you financed. Mark, welcome back to the show.   Mark Podolsky (00:01:17) - Sam Wilson. Brother. Great to see you again. And look, I. You know, these these little puberty things. That's pretty cool.   Sam Wilson (00:01:26) - It is until you're until you're 42. And,, you know, you don't want to be there anymore. Hey, man, it's great to have you back on the show. For those of you who are listening. Today, Mark came on the show two, two and a half years ago. I don't have the episode number right in front of me. If you want to go back and listen to that, I would highly advise it, because what Marc does in that show is really breaks down the land investing business and what that looks like.   Sam Wilson (00:01:48) - We probably won't spend as much time on the nuances and kind of not the new, but maybe more time on the nuances today, but last time, kind of explaining what the land business is. So go back and listen to that if you want a primer for this episode. But today, Marc, it's great to just have you back on the show. We got lots of things to talk about. So tell me, I guess in the last two and a half years, what's been going on?   Mark Podolsky (00:02:08) - Well, I'll tell you that it's a good time to be a land investor. And the reason being is when we are doing our deals, we're paying cash. And so interest rates can do whatever they want. And it really doesn't matter. And so for us, it's been a great, you know, sort of bull market in in raw land investing. And we've seen our note portfolio increase now., gosh I don't even have the percentage. But it's it's really been exciting last two, two and a half years watching our clients get out of what I call civil economic dependency, which means if they're not personally working, they're not making any money and seeing how they've been able to quit their jobs, it would retire their spouses and have that security, knowing that when their passive income exceeds their fixed expenses, they're working because they want to, not because they have to write.   Sam Wilson (00:03:07) - No, that's hey, man, that's that's a great,, a great thing, certainly to strive for the land business, at least a lot of times what we see and other guests that we've had on the show that talk about the land business, it's a very active. It's like flipping houses, but without the house. I mean, is it how how does how does what we've kind of heard some people talk about versus how you do it, how do those two differ?   Mark Podolsky (00:03:30) - Yeah, that's a great question. So really, the last thing anyone wants to build from this build for themselves is another job. Right. And we see this happen all the time where people come in, they're enthusiastic, but then they don't have the wherewithal to start building systems, processes, playbooks, swim lanes to say, okay, how do I leverage my time for the highest impact activities? So the way that we teach this, and the way that we set up our own business is using software on the front end, inexpensive virtual assistants and software on the back end.   Mark Podolsky (00:04:10) - 90% of this business is automated and is scalable. And so it actually said, I've got my my second book. It's just about ready to come out in a few months. Dirt rich too. The plot thickens. How to scale your land business. And so I talk all about the pieces that you need in order to to grow, scale your lab business without making yourself crazy. And this really can be applied to any business that you're trying to grow., it's just it's just one of those things because. We think, well, we should be doing all of it and we don't scale. And so it kind of gets back to that sort of Michael Gerber E-myth piece as well. And, you know, are you the technician? Are you the,, you know, the other pieces of it and most people are coming in the technician and we want to become the CEO of our business.   Sam Wilson (00:05:08) - Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And the land business is a it's a is a very interesting business because there's a thousand ways you can do it.   Sam Wilson (00:05:16) - Like what I know you mentioned here, you mentioned early on a note portfolio like what's right. If there is any one particular strategy that you like to employ, what is it?   Mark Podolsky (00:05:27) - Yeah. So I like really three buying. Sort of simple ways to start to buy land. The first one is direct. So what we'll do is we'll do county research, we'll pick our county, and then we'll start looking at comparable sales. And essentially we'll take the lowest comparable sale in a county. We'll divide by four. That gives us what Warren Buffett call a 300% margin of safety. And we'll send direct offers to those people. And why are we doing that? Because we don't want to be in the appraisal business. If we send out a blind offer, then next thing you know, we're spending all our time on the phone appraising and negotiating. So this is just an offer. Take it or leave it. Maybe there's some room for renegotiating, but not much. Right. So that's the first way we can buy.   Mark Podolsky (00:06:14) - The second way we can buy is we can totally eliminate the aspect of getting a list, scrubbing a list, pricing a list, mailing a list, and we can go straight to a wholesaler. They've already done all this front end work, and now we're buying it at a premium of what the wholesaler bought it for. But they've left enough meat on the bone because our margins are so high that we can go in and make. Maybe 100 to 300% on our investment. So you've got retail, you've got a wholesale. And then let's say that you're really cash constrained. And you just want to sort of dip your toe in the water or you're just. Your capital is really dwindling. There's something that we have been teaching now called land arbitrage. And so land arbitrage is typically when someone like me will buy a piece of land, let's say the market I bought it in, let's say I paid $10,000 for it, and I started selling it for $400, down $400 a month. And after, say, ten

Today’s guest is Ben Lapidus.   Ben Lapidus is the Chief Financial Officer for Spartan Investment Group LLC, where he has applied his finance and business development skills to construct from scratch a portfolio of over $500M assets under management, build the corporate finance backbone for the organization, and organize over $200M of debt capital from the firm. In addition to completing over 50 real estate transactions at and prior to Spartan, Ben is also the founder and host of the national Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference and managing partner of Indigo Ownerships LLC.   Best Ever Conference Code Use code “INVEST” for $300 off any ticket type at https://www.besteverconference.com/   Show summary:  In this episode, Ben Lapidus joins Sam to discuss the nuances of the commercial real estate market, with a focus on self-storage and investment strategies. Lapidus shares his expertise on navigating the current market, the importance of robust business plans, and the challenges of finding attractive yields. They also talk about the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference, detailing how it adds value for passive investors and the innovative strategies used to attract them.    -------------------------------------------------------------- Self-Storage Market Insights (00:00:00)   Introduction and Background (00:00:37)   Current State of Self-Storage Market (00:02:03)   Investment Strategies and Passive Investors (00:03:34)   Conversion Deals and Opportunities (00:05:18)   Shift from Office to Self-Storage (00:06:00)   Interest Rates and Debt in Self-Storage (00:07:14)   Pricing Mechanism and Market Response (00:08:36)   Commercial Real Estate Market Overview (00:10:33)   Alternative Investments and Portfolio Allocation (00:11:57)   Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference (00:13:46)   Strategies for Attracting Passive Investors (00:15:41)   Conference Organization and Team Management (00:18:28)   Closing Remarks and Special Discount (00:20:16)   Best Ever Conference (00:20:30)   Contact Information (00:20:50) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Ben: Web: https://www.benlapidus.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Ben Lapidus (00:00:00) - If your business plan can survive 2 or 3 years of negative leverage, because you can take a low enough IRR that you can store enough cash on the side, then it is a great time. If your business plan is overly aggressive or you're trying to seek a very high IRR at a at a velocity of capital deployment, that's unachievable, then now is a bad time to make an investment. You might want to wait 12 or 18 months to do so. Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:37) - For those of you that don't know Ben Lepidus, you need to know him. I've known Ben. Now. What? Man? What's been seven, eight years at this point? Yeah. About to go about that. I met you normally, Ben. I love to do a long winded introduction about how great the guest is. You are a great guest. I'm. It's my honor to have you on the show today, but before I give you my own introduction, I'd love for you maybe just to come on the show today and tell us a little bit about who you are, and then we'll get into it from there.   Ben Lapidus (00:01:03) - Yeah. I'm the founder and host of the best ever Real estate investing conference., not the brand, just the conference. And,, was a founding team member of Spartan Investment Group, which bought a half a billion assets under management in self-storage, recently retired, but have a long history of buying single family multifamily self-storage assets over the last 12 years., recently or prior to that,, was in the adtech space, learned a lot about big data, started a study abroad company Costa Rica., and have tried several other startups that failed. So I'm an entrepreneur at heart and can't wait to talk about whatever you want to talk about.   Sam Wilson (00:01:36) - Dude, that's that's a whole lot. I mean, my gosh, that's a lot of moving pieces there. Most recently you were like you mentioned a,, a partner there at Spartan Investment Group where you guys bought an absolute ton of self-storage. Why don't you just give us maybe a high level view recording this? What? Its end of February 2024, high level view of where self-storage is now and then maybe is what you see across the commercial real estate space as a whole.   Ben Lapidus (00:02:03) - Yeah. So self storage still has incredible fundamentals. When you look at the supply demand of self-storage, it's gone from 1 in 11 households to one in less than nine households are leveraging self-storage or consuming self-storage just over the last 5 or 6 years. That's an incredible shift in demand in a 5 or 6 year period simultaneously, construction costs,, going up, interest rates going up have made new supply difficult. So the fundamentals that drive storage is still in a very attractive asset class. That's on the consumption side on the on the,, the consumer side, on the investor side, investors have wised up to it. So it's become incredibly competitive. And the the spread between what you can get on the equity side versus what you can borrow on the debt side, has been radically compressed., and it now mirrors one of the major five food groups. You've got all of this office money, which was the largest component of commercial real estate coming out of office. And it's number one place to place it is self storage.   Ben Lapidus (00:02:59) - And that's just a lot of moving money. So from an investment perspective, the supply and demand,, isn't as attractive as it used to be. So I think what we're going to see over the next two years is do rates compress faster than cap rates?, and do the supply and demand economics on the consumer side kind of create a skyrocket effect of occupancy and rental rates such that it's attractive enough despite the competitiveness on the investment side?   Sam Wilson (00:03:23) - Wow. That's a that that that's an impressive,, impressive insight there. So yeah, I guess, you know, in short, is now a good time to to be investing in self-storage.   Ben Lapidus (00:03:34) - Now, there is never a bad time to be investing in self-storage. To be clear, it's recession resistant. It's always going to go up because of those supply demand economics. It's just is this the best time to generate the cash flow that you need to kind of cross the chasm if you're buying in a negative leverage environment. And so it's really about your business plan.   Ben Lapidus (00:03:54) - If your business plan can survive 2 or 3 years of negative leverage because you,, can take a low enough IRR that you can store enough cash on the side, then it is a great time. If your business plan is overly aggressive or you're trying to seek a very high IRR at a, at a velocity of capital deployment, that's unachievable, then now is a bad time to make an investment. You might want to wait 12 or 18 months to do so, right?   Sam Wilson (00:04:18) - Right. What about what about that conversation with investors like as in passive investors? How does that work when you're looking at deals that may be negative leverage? I mean, is that even a conversation that's being had?   Ben Lapidus (00:04:30) - It is. And that's because you just kind of find a different investor profile as the yield moves from kind of value add to more opportunistic, you have to find the investors who are willing to take the risk return ride with you at the end of the spectrum where those yields are achievable and attractive. If you're trying to get, you know, a 6% cash flow with a 14% IRR on an asset, that's 70% stabilized, that's been in existence for ten years with no expansion potential, that's going to be really tough.   Ben Lapidus (00:04:59) - But if you can find a conversion opportunity or the doughnut hole in a state that is booming with those supply demand,, economics working in your favor on the consumer side, then you can achieve those 20, 25, 30% IRR on a ground up development or conversion deal or an expansion.   Sam Wilson (00:05:15) - What do you say when you say conversion deal? What comes to mind?   Ben Lapidus (00:05:18) - Yeah, conversion is just taking,, a space that is not used for storage today and converting it for,, storage purposes. If you if you like, like a Macy's, a Kmart, a Shopko and just converting it into kind of like how urban air. I don't know if you've got urban air where you are, but I. Here in Colorado, there's an urban air chain, which is like an indoor like,, pre-teen park for trampolines and stuff. And they've just been converting, you know, grocery stores basically into,, urban air adventure parks. It's the same thing with storage.   Sam Wilson (00:05:51) - Same thing with storage. Be it office.   Sam Wilson (00:05:53) - , I know I'm a passive investor in an office to storage conversion project right now.   Ben Lapidus (00:05:58) - Hotel to storage? Yeah, all sorts of things.   Sam Wilson (00:06:00) - Which is wild because you're looking at this. They've they've converted it from,, office to storage and, and just like you're saying, the opp

Today’s guest are Alex Morrison and Andrew Runnette.   Alex Morrison has broad experience across real estate, capital markets and startups. Alex currently is the founder and CEO of Portal Warehousing, an innovative real estate operating company in the flex warehousing space.   Show summary:  In this podcast episode, Andrew and Alex, co-founders of Portal Warehousing, discuss their innovative flex warehousing business. They detail how they provide small industrial spaces to various businesses, emphasizing the flexibility and services they offer, such as logistics support and community building for their members. They share their strategic approach to market underwriting, building selection, and the importance of location in gentrifying areas. Despite challenges in scaling and logistics, they highlight their efficient systems and the high demand for their spaces, evidenced by rapid occupancy rates. The co-founders invite building owners to consider management deals with Portal Warehousing, which seeks to expand its unique model nationwide. -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro (00:00:00)   Concept of Flex Warehousing (00:02:17)   Finding Properties and Plugging Tenants (00:07:17)   Membership Perks and Differentiation from Self-Storage (00:12:27)   Challenges in Scaling and Overcoming Them (00:17:08)   Underwriting Deals and Selecting Locations (00:18:17)   Underwriting Markets and Demand Generation (00:18:59)   Building Criteria and Location (00:20:12)   Real Estate Cost and Client Opportunities (00:21:34)   Minimum Building Size (00:23:07)   Conclusion and Contact Information (00:23:55) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Alex and Andrew:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/portalwarehousing  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portalwarehousing/   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/portal-warehousing/ Web: https://join-portal.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Alex Morrison (00:00:00) - They have very limited options after they outgrow their first space, which maybe is a garage, maybe a bedroom as they get to that next level., the options drop off. They need to sign a five year lease, and there's not a lot of space that's available sub 5000ft². So what portal is doing is being an institutional level provider of small warehousing space.   Sam Wilson (00:00:19) - Welcome to the how to scale commercial real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:32) - I've got Andrew and Alex with me here today from Portal Warehousing. Andrew and Alex, welcome to the show.   Alex Morrison (00:00:38) - Thanks so much for having us.   Andrew Runnette (00:00:39) - Absolutely.   Sam Wilson (00:00:40) - The pleasure's mine. I always asked every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there? And, Andrew, if you don't mind kicking us off by answering that question. And then Alex, I guess we'll have you be up next after that.   Andrew Runnette (00:00:55) - Yeah. No problem. Thanks for having us on., we started the company about three years ago., we just opened our fourth warehouse,, and we've got for,, Salt Lake, Tempe, Brooklyn and LA., it's been a journey, and we're, you know, we're growing and just moving on to the next one as we go. So I'll let Alex take it from there.   Alex Morrison (00:01:21) - Yeah. I mean, the the genesis of the company actually came at the start of Covid when the world changed. And, you know, traditional methods of real estate were kind of changed overnight. And I was based in LA, and the only thing you could, you could tour for the first six months of Covid were industrial buildings., so we looked at buying a lot of industrial buildings for my last,, the company I worked for lastly, which was a real estate private equity company. And ultimately that journey led us to developing an operating company that could plug into vacant real estate and add a lot of value.   Alex Morrison (00:01:54) - And that and that, you know, three years later is portal. And what we do is as effectively,, we're a co warehousing, flex warehousing operators. So we provide industrial space for businesses of all sizes to, to use for all sorts of purposes. But basically the solution is a flexible industrial product that,, serves a lot of needs on the logistics side and the warehousing side.   Sam Wilson (00:02:17) - Okay, that's really, really cool. I love that in the name again of your company is Portal Warehousing going to learn more about it? I think it's join-portal.com. So give me a breakdown on that. Like what's a who's a customer. What is flexible warehousing I know we talked about this before the show. You guys said something along the lines of, you feel like where you are now is where maybe self storage was 30 or 40 years ago. Kind of give us just a broad overview if you can.   Alex Morrison (00:02:43) - Yeah. Like I'd say from a fundamental perspective, if you think about an industrial business or an industrial user of space,, there's a long tail of users that are smaller.   Alex Morrison (00:02:53) - , you know, the Amazons of the world take on 50,000 100,000ft² plus of spaces, but there's a massive amount of companies that just need a couple thousand square feet or less space. And their options are super limited. So the genesis of portal was actually thinking about our network in the e-commerce space and learning, you know, their their kind of supply profile as you as you start a company and think about the last company you saw advertising or purchase from on Instagram, these companies have products they need somewhere to store them and fulfill them out of. They have very limited options after they outgrow their first space, which maybe is a garage, maybe a bedroom as they get to that next level,, the options drop off. They need to sign a five year lease, and there's not a lot of space that's available sub 5000ft². So what portal is doing is being an institutional level provider of small warehousing space.   Sam Wilson (00:03:42) - Got it. An institutional provider of small warehousing space. Is this kind of I mean, we're going to use this maybe not even the right term, but I mean, we see it happening across Airbnb ten years ago, you know, hey, we're working.   Sam Wilson (00:03:55) - We're doing you know, people are renting out their houses on Airbnb. We're seeing it happen in the parking industry where we're, you know, anybody with a lot that can park a semi and some other things those get, you know, turned into,, you know, semi parking spaces. And you guys kind of saw this, I guess same opportunity in again, smaller, potentially unused spaces. And or maybe you're taking big buildings and converting them I don't know. I mean it's that kind of am I thinking along the right lines here.   Alex Morrison (00:04:21) - Yeah, exactly. The thought is there is a massive amount of of customers out there that need a functional place to operate. They don't need the 32 foot clear class A building. They just need an industrial logistics environment with a dock door and loading in a commercial address. And we can take spaces that range from your class A warehouse to, you know, our newest location in Brooklyn is actually on the seventh floor of a multi-story, you know, a true multi-story warehouse that was built 100 years ago with freight elevators and logistics for that manufacturing kind of company.   Alex Morrison (00:04:52) - We can plug our customer in. That just needs a highly functional space,, and some logistics services and basically fill buildings that, you know, are antiquated from today's traditional logistics perspective.   Sam Wilson (00:05:06) - Got it. Okay. That's really, really cool. Tell me, I guess when you you guys are all over the country, you said Salt Lake City, Tempe, Brooklyn, Los Angeles. How how do you underwrite? How do you even figure out if this model will work where you guys are going?   Alex Morrison (00:05:24) - I mean, we there is an enormous demand. We think this product works in, in every city. We have to be smart on location. We're really focused on infill amenities markets. If you think about our customer profile, which Andrew can kind of jump into a little bit, they want to be in a convenient we're really selling convenience as well as space here. The core product is space, but it's also the alternatives are very slim. So our customers are paying for for high quality functional space near where they where they work.   Alex Morrison (00:05:55) - So generally that means last mile locations that are infill. They'd rather be in downtown LA than going out to the Inland Empire, for example. And Andrew, one of you, you know, show Sean some of our story, Sam, some of our,, example kind of customers that we work with.   Andrew Runnette (00:06:13) - Yeah. We've seen a lot of crossover sand between, you know, people doing industrial work but also doing e-commerce work, but also using the spaces where they work out of it as well. So you've got your side hustler, you've got your Amazon full fillers, right. You've got all those kind of profiles that co

Today’s guest is Ben Fraser    Ben Fraser is the Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer at Aspen Funds, where he combines his analytical nature with a passion for delivering outstanding client service and strong returns through out-of-the-box investments.   Show summary:  In this episode, Sam speaks with Ben Frazier from Aspen Funds. They delve into the complexities of raising capital and the strategic shifts Aspen Funds has made to adapt to the evolving market. Ben outlines three common scenarios they encounter: providing gap funding for urgent capital needs, facilitating loan assumptions to improve leverage, and offering rescue capital in distressed situations. He explains the intricacies of negotiating with senior lenders, emphasizing the importance of understanding their motivations and the power of being the last money in. Ben also candidly discusses the current challenges in the commercial real estate market, including rising interest rates and an influx of new supply, suggesting that survival through the next few years will be key for investors.   -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro (00:00:00)   Ben's Career Journey (00:01:14)   Evolution of Aspen Funds (00:02:00)   Challenges in Raising Capital (00:03:42)   Adapting to Market Changes (00:04:55)   Navigating Risks in Real Estate Investments (00:05:13)   Building Trust with Investors (00:07:13)   Attracting Capital through Thought Leadership (00:10:52)   Timeline for Capital Attraction (00:12:13)   Current State of Commercial Real Estate Market (00:14:05)   Future Opportunities in Real Estate Investments (00:17:57)   Conclusion of the Show (00:17:57)   Gap Funding (00:18:24)   Loan Assumption (00:19:56)   Distressed Rescue Capital (00:20:52)   Hope for Sponsors (00:23:32)   Negotiating with Lenders (00:26:15)   Conclusion and Contact Information (00:28:52)   -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Ben:    LikedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwfraser https://www.linkedin.com/company/aspen-funds   Web: aspenfunds.us   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Ben Fraser (00:00:00) - There's something like 9 million accredited investors just in the US, right? For any one of us to be successful, I only need like a couple hundred investors. You know, if I want to go big, a couple thousand investors, that's not that many in the sea of accredited investors. And so my mindset started to shift. We started to position ourselves as thought leaders,, to attract capital to us as authorities in our space, doing a lot more content,, getting in front of audiences virtual and in person and starting to kind of build a,, an attraction mechanism to bring capital to us.   Intro (00:00:36) - Welcome to the how to scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:49) - Ben Frazier is the chief investment officer at Aspen Funds. They're an inc 5000 company, and he's responsible for sourcing, vetting and capital formation of investments. He has prior experience as a commercial banker and underwriter, as well as working in a boutique asset management group.   Sam Wilson (00:01:05) - He's also the co-host of the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. So if you haven't checked that out, go check that out as well. Ben, welcome to the show.   Ben Fraser (00:01:12) - Hey, thanks for having me, Sam. Absolutely.   Sam Wilson (00:01:14) - The pleasure's mine. Been there. Three questions. I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Ben Fraser (00:01:22) - Yeah. So you kind of said a little bit. I was,, spent some time in banking as a commercial banker, underwriter. Learned a lot. Got to look under the hood of ultra wealthy borrowers of the bank. And my favorite thing was going to look at their personal financial statements and tax returns. Learned a whole lot. Two biggest takeaways were the most wealthy,, borrowers were business owners and real estate investors. And I thought, hey, that's what I want to do. So an opportunity to join Aspen Funds about six years ago now, I've become a partner and,, helping scale and grow the business,, and running running my team.   Ben Fraser (00:01:55) - So it's it's been an amazing ride. And,, just kind of getting started to.   Sam Wilson (00:02:00) - That's really cool. What was the opportunity that you saw when you joined Aspen Funds? Like, what was the gap that you said, hey, man, this is something I can fill and this is the direction we can take the company.   Ben Fraser (00:02:09) - Yeah, well, I kind of got bait and switch that I like to say in a in a certain way, because I was coming on to be the VP of finance. So as a banker, you know, finance MBA. So I was like, I'm going to go kind of the CFO route, kind of help with the the finance side of the business. So I joined, you know, they'd been going about five years at that point, had only raised about 10 million bucks. So it was pretty small at that point. But so opportunity to help scale and grow something. But then very quickly they said, hey, you know, we actually need help raising capital because that's, you know, really we need to scale.   Ben Fraser (00:02:43) - And I'm like, okay, that's not what I really signed up to do. But hey, I want to just help out where I can and, and the and grow. So learned very quickly., I had no idea what I was doing and,, tried all the wrong things. Made a lot of mistakes., wasted a lot of money,, trying to do different campaigns. But fast forward to six years later. We've raised over $200 million in equity from investors. And,, continue doing to to scale up. So it's it's been a fun thing. I have an amazing team. It's not all me. I have about,, six different people that are on my marketing and investor relations team. So we just continue to be able to invest in good people. And I don't do any calls anymore. But still, you know, run that team, right?   Sam Wilson (00:03:27) - No, that's really cool. I'd love to hear a little bit more about those kind of mistakes and things that you say maybe you did wrong early on, but before we get there, let's talk maybe about what Aspen was doing then and maybe what it's doing now.   Sam Wilson (00:03:40) - Like, how has that changed?   Ben Fraser (00:03:42) - Yeah. You know, I think it's important to have an agile business model, especially in real estate and investing, because the tides can change. Right. And what you were doing before,, may not be a good place to be now. And what was really cool at the genesis of Aspen, it was really an opportunistic thing that our, our founders saw, and it was buying discounted distressed mortgages on, on homes. Right. And at that point, coming out of the great financial,, crisis, they saw this opportunity was a great opportunity., but it really launched us. We continue to operate those funds that continue to perform very well, but it's just not the same level of growth that we've seen in the past. And so several years ago, we started to take the same approach that we use to identify really good opportunity sets, really good, what we call macro driven themes. So we're looking at the macro economic picture, trying to find where we think these long term trends are going to kind of carry the next wave and, invest in those verticals.   Ben Fraser (00:04:45) - And so we have a few different verticals we kind of focus on and have expanded into a lot of different,, kind of asset classes from there. And, continue to, to grow those.   Sam Wilson (00:04:55) - Got it. What about the distressed mortgage business? What's that? I mean, what's that look like today? If you guys were I asked this this is kind of a leading question because I'm, I'm an investor in a distressed mortgage fund that is basically gone belly up at this point.   Ben Fraser (00:05:13) - Oh, no. Yeah.   Sam Wilson (00:05:14) - It's not good, man. It's not good. I could I got a front row seat on telling you the wrong things to invest in., but it's gone belly up and I'm looking at it going, and they made some mistakes, I think maybe 3 or 4 years ago where they ended up doing. They took these loans and they did worker work workouts. Work around.   Ben Fraser (00:05:29) - Workouts. Yeah. Workouts.   Sam Wilson (00:05:30) - Yep. Workout. Okay. I'm not in that business. You can tell,, with the borrowers, but they were resetting then, you know, the interest rates at that point in time, like, hey, Ben, cool, man.   Sam Wilson (00:05:40) - We can rework your loan. I know you had 100 grand. We bought the loan for 20 grand., you know, we'll reset it for 70, and you can,, you know, you can take the well and we'll, you know, set it at 3 or 4%. Well, now, nobody wants those. They can't resell them. Like the value of those loans is declined to almost nothing because nobody wants to take a 4% or 3% loan on their books because they're not worth anything, because now it's, what, 7% that's going rate something like that? How did how did you guys get around not getting caught holding the bag like that?   Ben Fraser (00:06:08) - Yeah. You know, again, being agile n

Today’s guest is Joel Friedland.   Joel has 40 years of experience as a broker, investor and syndicator in industrial real estate.   Show summary:  In this episode Joel Friedland  shares his journey from starting as a broker to establishing his own firm. He stresses the importance of specialization and building lasting client relationships. Joel discusses the industrial market's growth due to e-commerce and manufacturing but warns of economic downturns. He advocates for all-cash deals, avoiding debt for investment stability, and highlights the competitive edge it provides. Joel compares leveraged investing to gambling, promoting a risk-averse strategy for long-term security.    -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro (00:00:00)   Staying focused on industrial real estate (00:01:57)   Market swings and the state of the market today (00:06:18)   Types of industrial real estate and market demands (00:09:10)   Positioning in the industrial real estate market (00:11:06)   Reasons for selling industrial buildings (00:15:24)   The no-debt financing model (00:17:53)   Competitive offers and leveraging returns (00:21:29)   Risk Aversion and Leverage (00:23:45)   Gambling in Real Estate (00:24:47)   Balanced Portfolio and Risk Mitigation (00:26:57)   Conclusion and Contact Information (00:27:48)   Closing (00:28:25) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Joel Friedland:  Instagram: @investingwithjoel YouTube: @britproperties Tik Tok: @investingwithjoel LinkedIn: Brit Properties Web: https://britproperties.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Joel Friedland (00:00:00) - In every downturn when there's been, let's call it agitation of my mental health and my investors. Investment safety. Yeah, it's been because in every case I can prove in every case it's because we had a loan.   Intro (00:00:18) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:31) - Joel Friedland has 40 years of experience as a broker, investor and syndicator in industrial real estate. Joel, welcome to the show.   Joel Friedland (00:00:39) - Thanks, Sam. It's great to see you.   Sam Wilson (00:00:41) - Absolutely great to see you, Joel. I asked three questions to every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   Joel Friedland (00:00:52) - Sure., so I'm 64 today. I've been in the real estate business since day one. I've only had one career, and it's industrial real estate in Chicago. I started out as a broker, working for a family that was in the business for decades, and they had 80 buildings that they owned as syndicators, and they hired me as a leasing agent right out of college, and they trained me and taught me, and they were my mentors.   Joel Friedland (00:01:20) - And eventually I tried to join the family wasn't my family, and they wouldn't let me in. So I started a business with three other guys and we did the same thing. I've stayed close with that original family. I'm so close with them, actually, with one of the one of the sons that today I'm having a call with my advisory group before I buy buildings. I have an advisory group zoom meeting, and he's one of the leaders of the zoom call, and that's from 40 years ago. Same relationship. Still love him. We love each other and he's brilliant.   Sam Wilson (00:01:57) - And that's absolutely amazing. I mean, I don't know if I would put that in the blessed category, like there's there's very few people that can have a single career, not only a single career, but one in a very, very niche asset class without ever looking to the left or to the right. How did you stay on track and avoid temptation to look at other shiny objects?   Joel Friedland (00:02:24) - So I have studied successful people. I've studied people who are super wealthy.   Joel Friedland (00:02:32) - And primarily families that are super wealthy. And I'll tell you what they have done with their business. They've stuck with it. They don't go. They don't go to the right. They don't go to the left. They just stuck with it. I can give you the stories of about 200 family businesses that I've done business with as a broker and as a syndicator, where they invest with me and every one of them goes back decades. I have a company. We're buying a building right now from a family that started a business in 1935. In Chicago. It's called the. The company in the building is called talk. Often they make you know, have you ever been in a parking garage or a university or mass transit place where they've got those posts with the blue lights, with the phone you pick up or you push a button to get security? Yep. They make those talk. A phone makes that. So these two guys started the business back in the 1930s. And now the the family that owns the building that they've been running the business in.   Joel Friedland (00:03:44) - , they are are the grandchildren of the original founder. Why are they so rich? Because they did one thing. Because if you jump around, you don't learn. The ins and outs of the business. When you do something long enough, you learn it. And I'll give you an example, just like a. A metaphor or a or a. I don't know the difference between the, but,, an analogy. So,, my mother had,, kidney cancer diagnosed a few months ago. All right. So who does she go to? She goes to the kidney. Removal urologist. Who's the best in the world, right? You want the best one in the world? Would you go to someone who says, well, I used to do knees and I didn't like that so much, it didn't work out. So I started doing brain surgery.   Sam Wilson (00:04:45) - It didn't like.   Joel Friedland (00:04:46) - That. So I decided to go into being a urologist. And I've done a few kidneys. I've done it for a couple of years.   Joel Friedland (00:04:54) - You know, you could move the frick out of there so fast. Yes, but the person who has done dozens and dozens of kidney surgeries a month, right? Same thing, same thing, same thing. So that's what my mother did. We went, we're in Chicago. She went to the University of Chicago. And Doctor Shalhoub is the guy that she saw. You know what? He removed my dad's kidney 12 years ago. Wow. He's the guy we trust. So. I'm in the same business, industrial real estate in Chicago. The niches, small industrial buildings, class B. With it are occupied by manufacturers that are owned by families. That's my niche. That's it. And there's 16,000 industrial buildings in Chicago. And there's about 20,000 companies in Chicago and industrial one point 5,000,000,000ft². If I can't make a seven figure income by knowing that market really well, I'm a moron. But I'll tell you what. If I go do deals in Tennessee, or I go into the office leasing business, or I go into the retail business or the multifamily, someone who's been in it for 40 years like I have, is going to eat my lunch, right.   Joel Friedland (00:06:15) - So I stick with one thing.   Sam Wilson (00:06:18) - I love it, I love it. That's that is that is admirable. And I appreciate you, given the insight onto your motivation and kind of thought process behind why you have stuck with that one thing, that one thing has seen, I'm sure, in the last 40 years, many different. Comings and goings of both market swings, of industrial appetite, of tenant, types of lease rates, cap rates, the whole nine yards if you will. Can you break down some of that for us? And maybe at the end of that give us a state of the market today?   Joel Friedland (00:06:52) - Sure. 1981, when I started working for the Podolsky family,, there were interest rates out there like you wouldn't believe 17, 17 to 20% makes today's 7% mortgage look like a really good deal. We were in a terrible recession. It rode up after that because there's a recovery after recessions. And then in 1990, we hit another bump and there was a downturn. And through the 1990s it was great.   Joel Friedland (00:07:21) - And then there was another downturn in 2001 when nine over 11 happened. And we rode that up. And then there was another downturn, which is the worst 1 in 2008. And now things have been riding for 15 years, all to the good low interest rates, cap rates coming down. You can't blow it in a market where you can borrow at 4% and cap rates keep going down. But that's changed. And now people are struggling because interest rates are all of a sudden at 7% instead of at 4%. And if you had floating rate debt and a lot of debt, you're screwed. So the market's been great. Industrial has been great for four years. Rents have increased 80% throughout the entire market in North America, including Canada. And that means if your rent was $5 a square foot when you started out five years ago with the lease, today it's nine. So it's been booming because of the internet? Because the internet requires warehouses. And because of manufacturing. Because as manufacturing does well, it requires industrial buildings, which are warehouses that they fit with their machines and bring all their employees in to make stuff.   Joel Friedland (00:08:35) - So that's t

Today’s Gust is Ben Spiegel.   Ben is a experienced portfolio manager specializing in niche lower middle market commercial real estate opportunities.   Show summary: In this episode, Ben Spiegel, founder of Redwood Capital, discusses his transition from investment banking to real estate private equity, focusing on niche lower middle market opportunities. He shares his "asset agnostic" investment philosophy, in-house property management strategy, and his goal to build a premier outdoor hospitality brand. Ben also talks about the benefits of diversifying asset classes, the growth potential in the outdoor hospitality industry, and his success in developing luxury RV resorts, leveraging USDA loans for financing. He offers insights into selecting locations for RV parks and encourages engagement with his firm. -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro (00:00:00)   Transition to Real Estate (00:00:57)   Future Goals (00:02:25)   Operating Different Asset Classes (00:04:09)   Bullish on Outdoor Hospitality (00:05:14)   Luxury Outdoor Hospitality (00:06:51)   Financing and Development (00:10:51)   Location Selection (00:18:38) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Ben:   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/redwoodcapital   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redwoodcapitaladv   Web: www.redwoodcapitaladvisors.com   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Ben Spiegel (00:00:00) - I don't think that it is that difficult to specialize in more than one asset class. And I think that when you when you don't subject yourself to specializing in one asset class, it enables you to really have a much more robust deal pipeline that allows you to source many more opportunities and therefore deploy more capital.   Sam Wilson (00:00:23) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor. We'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Ben Spiegel is an experienced portfolio manager that specializes in niche, lower middle market commercial real estate opportunities. Ben, welcome to the show.   Ben Spiegel (00:00:45) - Thanks so much for having me.   Sam Wilson (00:00:47) - Absolutely. Ben. There are three questions I ask every guest who come to the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   Ben Spiegel (00:00:57) - Yeah. So I started on the investment banking side of things at Barclays. I quickly moved to the buy side, working at, uh, several, uh, special situations, hedge funds, uh, investing in, uh, distressed and, uh, stress, special situations, bankruptcies and restructurings.   Ben Spiegel (00:01:16) - Uh, I was there for about 4 or 5, six, seven years. And then when I, when I started working at those firms, I was smart enough to start taking half my bonus and buying real estate with that. And after being on the buy side for about 6 or 7 years, I was presented with an opportunity to buy a large non-performing loan, uh, and take it through bankruptcy and, uh, restructure it. And when I did that, I decided to leave the buy side, and that's when I started, uh, Redwood Capital, which is a boutique, uh, real estate private equity syndication firm. Um, so I, I have about 75 million under management, uh, right now, uh, fluctuates up and down. Uh, I invest really. I like to call myself asset agnostic and that I invest in everything from medical offices to, uh, to our to luxury RV resorts to multifamily. I don't really have a preference as long as it has, uh, cash flow and I can understand the drivers of it, I will invest in it.   Ben Spiegel (00:02:25) - And, uh, basically, where do I want to be? Uh, I want to be five, ten years from now. I want to have 1500 to 2000 pads, uh, under management or under my ownership, uh, in a private REIT that I'm currently forming right now. Uh, and to be a premier outdoor hospitality brand, uh, similar to a, a marriott or a Hilton, but, uh, of an outdoor hospitality style.   Sam Wilson (00:02:54) - Man, that's really cool. I love that you mentioned a lot of different asset classes there. Are you guys coming in just on the capital side on those or you actually operating the deals yourself?   Ben Spiegel (00:03:04) - No, we're we're we're we're operators as well. We have in-house property management. And uh, actually I just actually was talking to somebody about this the other day. I think that's really one of the most important and overlooked things in this business. I said that, uh, in real estate, if an asset is managed by a third party, it really will never reach its full potential.   Ben Spiegel (00:03:24) - Uh, because coming from the private equity world, incentive is being incentivized and having a sense of ownership is everything. So in every deal I do, I give my property manager internal property a piece of equity. And I also put them on a quarterly, uh, bonus structure, uh, that's tiered based on, uh, profitability of, uh, how the building does in terms of if it's clear, certain NOI hurdles, they get an incrementally higher bonus. And I have found over the years that that had the return on investment for that amount of money has been ten x.   Sam Wilson (00:04:02) - How what's that process been like, and how does your team juggle all these different asset classes?   Ben Spiegel (00:04:09) - So I guess, um, real estate compared to corporations where you have fluctuations, commodity price fluctuations, it's it's relatively straightforward. I mean, you have your revenue, your expenses. Uh, I mean, uh, there's some obviously variables related to the tenant structure, uh, the longevity of it, but I don't think that it is that difficult to, to specialize in more than one asset class.   Ben Spiegel (00:04:38) - And I think that when you when you don't subject yourself to specializing in one asset class, it enables you to really have a much more robust deal pipeline that allows you to source many more opportunities and therefore deploy more capital.   Sam Wilson (00:04:57) - Interesting. Okay. Very very cool. And the one thing that one focus of yours and you mentioned this here and kind of what your 5 to 10 year plan is, is that you are incredibly bullish on the outdoor hospitality space. You want to grow that side of your business. Can you give us some insight as to why?   Ben Spiegel (00:05:14) - Yeah. So just to kind of give you some quick four facts and a lot of people are really aware of. But right now the average age of an RV owner in the US is 32 years old, right? Last year, our 2022 460,000 new RVs were shipped, but only 17,000 new pads were built. The average age of the existing RV destination is over 40 years old, and 92% of which are owned by single owner Mom and pop that do not have the necessary resources to invest back into their businesses.   Ben Spiegel (00:05:54) - To bring the, uh, their destinations up to the level that the new generation of RV owner needs, such as even most. Most don't even offer Wi-Fi or cell service on their on their sites. To kind of give you an idea of how behind the industry is and what really, uh, makes things exciting is Covid just changed everything post-Covid, 60% of uh, uh, permanent office worker or office workers are now permanently remote. So you have this whole new lifestyle, this new nomadic lifestyle that's being embraced. And it's, uh, it's really catapulted the industry into a stratosphere that nobody really thought it could ever go.   Sam Wilson (00:06:40) - Buddy. And you're specifically focusing though on the luxury outdoor hospitality spaces. What does that mean and why is that?   Ben Spiegel (00:06:51) - Yeah. So luxury in terms of outdoor hospitality. Me it's more of an amenity focus. Uh, that it's luxury is it's certainly a lower bar than you would think of when compared to most other asset classes. Uh, luxury basically means you keep a clean site. You have a pool, you have a pickleball court, a gym, maybe a gym.   Ben Spiegel (00:07:15) - Uh, we have gyms. And, uh, we like to incorporate a work center, maybe, depending on the location. But, uh, there's two different, really, uh, main kinds of RV destinations. You have communities and resorts. So resorts are located very close to a major attraction, uh, close to Disney World, or they're right on the beach. Uh, and they're able to charge a higher average ADR average daily rate. But the downside with them is you have a lot of higher turnover. Your average day is 3 to 5 days max. So there's a lot of turnover, a much larger vacancy rate as opposed to a community where you're probably located. Still in a very convenient location right off the highway, but probably about 30 or 40 minutes away from like the beach. So I, I only focus on the Gulf Coast, more specifically, uh, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. And, uh, so we're we a community would be about 30 to 40 minutes from the actual coast, uh, right off a hot, you know, a main highway.   Ben Spiegel (00:08:22) - Um, it would it still have, uh, not as many amenities as a resort, but but close to it. But the main difference is your average stay is 45 to 60 days. And, uh, you also need less, uh, staff to, uh, run it. So you're, uh, you'

Today’s guest is Clint Harris. Clint spent 16 years in medical sales, built a STR portfolio to replace that income, and a property management company. He made the jump to self storage conversion projects, and then syndication, and is now a General Partner with Nomad Capital, $120 million AUM. Show summary: In this episode, Clint Harris, a partner at Nomad Capital, shares his transition from medical sales to real estate investing, focusing on short-term rentals and self-storage conversions. He emphasizes financial independence and the value of time and location freedom. Clint discusses the slow but rewarding process of real estate investing, the balance between active and passive roles, and the importance of aligning strategies with personal goals. He also speaks on the power of partnerships and leveraging others' strengths. -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro (00:00:00) Clint's journey in real estate (00:01:05) Lessons from early real estate investing (00:03:16) Transition to self-storage projects (00:09:39) Balancing financial and time independence (00:13:07) Challenges of managing multiple ventures (00:18:52) Operating Partner and Manager Selection (00:19:09) Nomad Capital Partnership (00:20:05) Contact Information (00:21:02) Podcast Wrap-up and Call to Action (00:21:19) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Clint: Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/clint-harris-543265139 FB: https://www.facebook.com/clint.harris.3150?mibextid=LQQJ4d IG: https://www.instagram.com/clintstagram_nc/?utm_source=qr Web: https://nomadcapital.us/ Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Clint Harris (00:00:00) - Traditionally, we'll buy a building for a couple million bucks, put a couple million into it, and then stabilize. Value is usually between 13 to $17 million, which means we're sitting at around 30 to 35% loan to value when we are stabilized. So we can refi to 5,560%, pay our investors and ourselves when we do that, and we're paying people out by way of a refinance, it's a nontaxable event because it's not a capital gain. We didn't sell anything, so they're getting a nice return. We keep some money, keep the lights on here at Nomad, and then that gives us the ability to continue the scale. Intro (00:00:32) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor. We'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Sam Wilson (00:00:45) - Glenn Harris has 16 years in medical sales. He has built a short term rental portfolio to replace his income. He has a property management company and now he's doing self-storage conversion projects and syndications. He's also a general partner now with Nomad Capital and has over $120 million in assets under management. Sam Wilson (00:01:04) - Clint, welcome to the show. Clint Harris (00:01:05) - Thank you. Sam, great to be here. Great to see you again. Sam Wilson (00:01:08) - Absolutely. Always good to see you, Clint. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there? Clint Harris (00:01:18) - I started building in a career in medical sales. That is a short. It's a young man's game that will grind you up in terms of nights, calls, uh, working weekends, heart problems. I was implanting pacemakers and defibrillators. That is not a Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 kind of job. So that's where I started. Because of that, I actively focused on looking to build an off ramp from that lifestyle to stop trading time for money. Uh, and that got me into single family rentals, where I discovered that it's a very slow way to get ahead. That got me into, uh, buying small multifamily properties and converting them to short term rentals. Clint Harris (00:01:59) - And that taught me the value of multifamily and the value of asset class conversion that drastically increases the value of an asset, because you change the formula by which the asset is valued. And that led me to, again, a very active profile. It replaced my income. It gave me a level of financial freedom, but it did not give me time or location independence. So in the pursuit of time, location and financial independence, that led me to self-storage, which is where I am now, and general partner with Nomad Capital. We specifically focus on buying big box retail buildings like Kmart's, grocery stores and warehouses, and we convert them from one single big box into 6 or 700 class A climate controlled self-storage units. And it's taking those same lessons. It's it's one property that can be converted to a different asset, where you change the formula by which the value is created, and you create multiple tenants and putting them in place, you're buying for less than the replacement cost. Use vertical integration to leave as much value as you possibly can. Clint Harris (00:02:55) - And that's what changed my life in a meaningful way. And I left Cardiology behind in in 2022 and, uh, full time nomad and real estate investor. Sam Wilson (00:03:04) - Man, that's really cool. I love that you you've gone through several iterations of the business, and I guess in what and what year did you start investing in real estate? How long has that been? Clint Harris (00:03:16) - I started investing in real estate. Let's say I bought my first property as a duplex when I was in my early 20s. I'm okay. I'm 41 now. I would tell you this. I started investing in real estate when I was probably 2324. It was the post 2008 crash era. So between 2010 and 2013, I think my wife and I bought nine single family properties, I believe, um, the reality was there's a big difference between investing in real estate and doing it correctly. I'll tell you, I did it wrong for at least ten years. It wasn't until, uh, I relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina. My wife and I took a promotion. Clint Harris (00:03:56) - We moved to the beach, and I used a lot of road time to start listening to podcasts aggressively and educating. So I said, I've been doing real estate a long time. I've been doing real estate correctly, uh, since 2018. That was when we first got it right. And we started we unloaded some single family properties. We did some 1030 ones, and we started buying multifamily properties with bad long term tenants, converting them to Airbnbs. And that's really where it kind of took off. And the lesson I learned is, you know, you could have four condos at the beach with four mortgages, four sets of HOAs and four sets, utilities and break even. Or I could buy one quad plex, have one mortgage, one set of taxes and utilities, and net 80 grand a year. So the unit density in that lesson. So I think there's a big difference in investing and investing correctly. And I certainly was not doing it the right way for the first ten years or so. Sam Wilson (00:04:46) - Well, yeah. Sam Wilson (00:04:48) - And that I mean, that's kind of the thrust of the show is how to scale. Like it's it's one of those things where and you've made the, the, the progression. I think that so many investors make along the way, myself included, where it's like, oh, wait, like this, just this doesn't work at the single family level. Uh, what were some of the things, I guess, I mean, you because you developed a model, you said, okay, this model didn't work or isn't working the way we want it to. Like getting through those transitions is oftentimes tough. And or people can be accused of shiny object syndrome going, well, here's the next greatest and best thing. Like, how did you work your way through that without feeling like you're just chasing your own tail, trying to find the next iteration of what might work? Clint Harris (00:05:27) - Well, I did, I think that's a really, really good question. If I'm trying to give you the most condensed life experience that I can that's going to offer the most value to you and your listeners, I would say this with single family rentals. Clint Harris (00:05:38) - The lesson that I learned there is that if one property is 1 or 2 headaches a year, and then you multiply that by nine, it's it's a very slow way to get ahead. It does not scale very well. And ultimately like it's just not worth your time. The mistake that I made from there, not a mistake. As part of our journey moving into small multifamily properties. And we still own and we have 14 Airbnb properties and a property management company that manages another 80 listings. Which is why I keep talking to you about laundromats, because we got £40,000 of linens a month during the summer to deal with, um, the the issue when I made the jump from that first portfolio that we built and ultimately we took it apart and rebuilt it into something else, here's the important thing I think I was really focused on. The finances. And single families would just way too slow. So the financial independence and the goal that I had to reach in terms of financial independence and cash flow was there by jumping to a short term rental strategy, specifically with multifamily properties. Clint Harris (00:06:38) - However, when we built that portfolio out to the point where it replaced my income from surgical sales, we

Today’s guest is Anton Ivanov.   Anton Ivanov is a US Navy veteran, real estate investor, entrepreneur, and founder of RentCast.io and DealCheck.io.   Show summary:    In this podcast episode, Anton Ivanov, a seasoned real estate investor, shares his expertise on optimizing real estate operations. He advises on the importance of delegation, professional property management, and maintaining a CEO mindset. Anton recounts his journey from house hacking to managing a diverse portfolio, emphasizing starting small and learning progressively. He highlights the need for efficient turnover processes, tenant retention, and aligning rental rates with market trends using tools like RentCasio. Anton's strategies have notably increased revenue without new acquisitions, showcasing the value of operational efficiency and cost management for sustainable growth.    Links:  https://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/21693881   -------------------------------------------------------------- Delegating and Focusing on Improvement (00:00:00)   Introduction and Background (00:00:26)   Starting and Growing Real Estate Portfolio (00:01:18)   Focusing on Improving Operations (00:02:48)   Transitioning to CEO Role (00:03:35)   Professional Property Management (00:04:50)   Minimizing Vacancy and Tenant Retention (00:09:14)   Implementing Systems with Property Managers (00:13:45)   Lease Renewal and Rent Adjustment (00:18:14)   Vacancy Minimization (00:20:36)   Lease Renewal Strategy (00:22:13)   Action Items for Revenue Growth (00:25:13)   Expense Reduction (00:27:27)   Contact Information (00:28:56) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Anton:    Email: anton@rentcast.io   RentCast Facebook: https://facebook.com/RentCastApp Twitter: https://twitter.com/RentCastApp Web: https://rentcast.io    DealCheck Facebook: https://facebook.com/DealCheckApp Twitter: https://twitter.com/dealcheckapp Web: https://dealcheck.io   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Anton Ivanov (00:00:00) - You know, ultimately you are in charge. It is your business, it is your assets. But you need to be able to delegate and kind of step back and focus more on areas that need improvement, as opposed to just doing everything yourself.   Sam Wilson (00:00:13) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:26) - Anton Ivanov is a US Navy veteran, a real estate investor, entrepreneur and founder of rent, Cascio and Diehl Checchio Anton, welcome back on the show.   Anton Ivanov (00:00:36) - Thanks for having me, Sam. Great to be here as always.   Sam Wilson (00:00:40) - Absolutely. The pleasure's mine. Anton. It, uh. I didn't look it up here ahead of time, I can't remember. It's been a couple of years since the last time you were on the show, so it's great. Great to have you come back on. I don't remember the episode number. So here, maybe we'll include that there in the show notes, in case you want to go back and kind of hear Anton's, uh, first podcast with us, where he breaks down a lot of the ways he built this business and some really other cool, uh, things that he's done there in his real estate investing career, which we're not going to really get into too much today.   Sam Wilson (00:01:07) - However, Anton, for every guest who comes on the show, even returning guests, there are still three questions I asked them in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   Anton Ivanov (00:01:18) - Absolutely. So we started investing, uh, me and my wife about, uh, it's been about ten years now going on that, uh, we actually started very small. We started with house hacking. Uh, you know, we bought a one duplex that we lived in. One of the units rented out the other. We moved on to some out of state turnkey investing in single family properties. And then most recently, we were buying commercial multifamily in, um, commercial and like, fourplex residential multifamily in Kansas City, Missouri. So we've had kind of a very, uh, more slower growth, I like to say it, but it was more manageable. Uh, it helped us make, you know, some smaller mistakes, learn from them, and then move on to bigger deals over the years.   Anton Ivanov (00:01:59) - And we've covered a lot of this with you, Sam, on the last podcast. So, um, again, I'm a big proponent of kind of not jumping into necessarily the biggest deals, uh, if, if, you know, if, if you prefer starting smaller and learn from that. Um, and yeah, we've been super happy with that, uh, lately and kind of what I wanted to focus on this show. We've, we've spent a lot of time on focusing on improving our operations, um, and kind of increasing the cash flow. The existing units we have, we have, uh, 42 units right now spread out across, uh, three places, Atlanta, uh, San Diego, and then the bulk of our portfolio and, uh, Kansas City, Missouri. Um, and yeah, just the market recently has been a little bit tougher. You know, obviously we have still prices are pretty up there. They haven't, uh, softened up, as I would expect them by now.   Anton Ivanov (00:02:48) - And then the rates are high. It's just kind of a tougher environment, in my opinion, for acquiring new rentals. So I think it's a great time to focus on operations, because I think it's oftentimes neglected by some investors that just kind of focus on more and more deals, more and more units in their portfolio. Uh, but I think you can get a great ROI in your time and kind of effort by just focusing on what you already have.   Sam Wilson (00:03:12) - Man, there's a lot to be said for that, and I look forward to jumping in to getting kind of the nitty, your nitty and gritty details on how you guys have done this. I guess before we get into that, though, 42 units spread completely across the country. I mean, yeah, Kansas City, San Diego, and if you're if you are managing operations, it sounds like you're, you're self managing these properties.   Anton Ivanov (00:03:35) - Um, so no. And actually that that takes me straight into our first point is, uh, you know, I look at, you know, when you first starting investing in real estate, you're kind of more I would say, uh, you know, boots on the ground.   Anton Ivanov (00:03:48) - You're more involved, especially with acquisition and management. I think it's important as you transition to larger volumes of units, you know, ten, 20, you know, 40 like US units, especially if they're spread out across the country. Um, I think at that point, you kind of stop being maybe like the workhorse of your business, of your real estate, uh, you know, venture empire, if you would, and you kind of start to become the CEO, right? Where you're, you know, ultimately you are in charge. It is your business. It is your assets. Uh, but you need to be able to delegate and kind of step back and focus more on areas that need improvement, uh, as opposed to just doing everything yourself. So one of my, you know, first tips for kind of improving operations at scale, uh, again, is not necessarily doing it yourself, but finding professional property managers. So we've used professional management for all of our units. Funny thing is, when we bought that duplex that we house hack, that was our first property that we bought, we used the property manager for the upstairs unit, even though we lived in the building.   Anton Ivanov (00:04:50) - And it sounds kind of stupid, maybe silly, you know, like, hey, why don't you just manage your your right there. It's the unit above. But I had this vision of kind of growing our portfolio to 40, 50 units, and I wanted to start getting experience with working with property managers, kind of seeing how that plays out, which prepared us to, uh, later buy out of state properties that I was not going to manage myself. So I think it's important, you know, I I've met folks who self-manage, especially if they're local. The buildings that they own are local. It can work. But I just think it turns into a full time job very quickly, especially if you have a lot of units. I think you can free up your time. Uh, and if you find a good manager, you know, and kind of work with them. Right. It's it's also another thing I would say about property managers. Uh, it's it's not really a give it to them and forget.   Anton Ivanov (00:05:40) - Kind of arrangement, which I think some people expect. Um, and, you know, in an ideal world, maybe it would be. But everybody is different. You're you're different from, you know, Sam from, uh, from me the way you want your units managed. And, yes, a property manager has their own, like, procedures and steps, and they like to do things a certain way. That doesn't mean that you can't go to them and say, hey, look, I know you guys like to do it this way, but here's how kind of I would like to tweak the process. Like, again, you're basically the CEO. You know, they're working for you. You're paying them. Um, and I think as the CEO, you have the full right. And kind of not to micromanage them essentially, nobody likes that. You know, they don't want you to be there just making every little, y

Today’s guest is Robert Withers.   Robert is an Entrepreneur and Real Estate Finance professional with experience in Conventional , SBA & Private Equity CRE financing.   Show summary:   The conversation unfolds with an introduction to unconventional loans, followed by an exploration of the scale of real estate podcasts.The discussion touches upon selling brokerages, navigating agreements, and imparts valuable lessons on scaling a real estate business. Throughout the episode, the speakers candidly address challenges in scaling, regional business variations, the significance of relationships, and provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of commercial finance.   -------------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 - Intro 03:54 - Speaker, guest journey. 06:48 - Guest's background, transition. 09:31 - Selling brokerages, agreements. 12:45 - Scaling business lessons. 15:54 - Challenges in scaling. 18:32 - Regional business differences. 21:45 - Importance of relationships. 24:50 - State of commercial finance. -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Robert:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/M1CapitalCorp   Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-withers-602b16/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/M1CapitalCorp   Phone: (914) 490-8623   Web: https://mortgageone.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: 00:00:00:01 - 00:00:36:12 Robert Withers Why lock into a seven and a half percent, 3 to 5 year conventional loan with prepayment penalties when you can take interest only debt at a point they have a point and a half to two points over that. Okay. No prepayment penalty. And if it pencils, meaning if the numbers work, you'll have an opportunity in two years to hopefully lock into long term as cheap as possible interest rates going out for that, you know, for that either five or ten year term that you're looking for.   00:00:36:23 - 00:00:58:16 Sam Wilson Welcome to the How to Scale commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Robert Withers is an investor, entrepreneur and real estate finance professional with experience in conventional SBA and private equity. Robert, welcome to the show.   00:00:59:01 - 00:01:00:21 Robert Withers Thank you, Sam. Great to be.   00:01:01:03 - 00:01:09:21 Sam Wilson Absolutely, Robert. The pleasure's mine. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me, where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   00:01:10:21 - 00:01:42:18 Robert Withers Well, okay. Where do I start? I started in the men's clothing business back in 1982. And basically what happened was I had was given an opportunity to be able to jump into the mortgage business because of the expensive men's clothing that I wore. Somebody took notice. So that was a sharp dresser. It gave me an opportunity to be able to get into sales in the mortgage industry in the early eighties and taught me the business.   00:01:42:24 - 00:02:14:15 Robert Withers Four years later, I went into my own business, started my own company after three mortgage companies on the residential side, which I all sold the last one right prior to the to the financial crisis. We took a little time off, reset things, decided that residential mortgages wasn't something that I wanted to do any longer, and jumped into the commercial real estate finance field.   00:02:14:23 - 00:02:18:03 Robert Withers And I've been there ever since. That was in about 2014.   00:02:18:22 - 00:02:32:16 Sam Wilson Got it. Okay, now that's cool. How did you when you sold all three of those businesses this this is getting in the weeds a little bit, but it sounds like you figured out how to do it once. And you said, look, we built one company. Want to go out and just do it again. But how did you get around non-compete or did you just.   00:02:33:03 - 00:02:33:24 Robert Withers I waited them out.   00:02:34:09 - 00:02:34:17 Sam Wilson Okay.   00:02:35:04 - 00:02:55:04 Robert Withers I waited them out. You know. But you know, Sam, it's interesting you bring that up because I. I sold a mortgage brokerage. Now, I don't know if you know anything about our business, but not a lot to sell there, right? There's not a lot of, you know, really good will and maybe some of a pipeline that you may have in it.   00:02:55:20 - 00:03:18:10 Robert Withers The companies weren't huge companies, but they did you know, they did a few million dollars worth of business a year. So they were nice sized companies. My first one was a sale and I was young when I did it, so it was awesome. I sold it for seven figures. I actually sold it to somebody who decided to reinvest the money back into the company so we could go national.   00:03:18:17 - 00:03:45:24 Robert Withers That did not work out. It didn't work out for me. It didn't work out for him. And I wound up buying the company back, which and then developed my second company. So the non-compete wasn't really an issue because of the fact that I kind of waited it out and then was able to buy the company back and take it into my second mortgage company, which I sold and turned that actually into a mortgage bank that we were in several states.   00:03:46:08 - 00:04:07:00 Robert Withers So it was kind of cool. We had a great time. But my, my partner and I had a disagreement in the in the direction I wanted to take it more of a New York luxury market based. And he wanted to do government based business. And we had a we agreed to disagree. It was very you know, it was it was very cordial.   00:04:07:10 - 00:04:23:01 Robert Withers And then my third one, which launched me into my third company, which I shut down really, but sold off some pieces of it, but shut down prior to the financial crisis, non-compete were really never an issue. Timing because of the timing that we took. So.   00:04:23:01 - 00:04:42:02 Sam Wilson Right. Yeah. And if you're listening to this and you haven't sold a business, a lot of times there's going to be restrictions around you getting back into the same business, especially in the same geographic area. If it's a geographically bound company where it's absolute what you can't for three or five years compete in this, you know, whatever the radius is from your business or, you know, and they're all structured differently.   00:04:42:02 - 00:04:56:10 Sam Wilson But that's a that's really cool. I appreciate you giving us the insight there. I think you may have answered this question, but you said in the company that you guys look to scale because the name of the show is how to scale commercial real estate. You guys said, hey, we're going to scale. And I think the principles are the same.   00:04:56:21 - 00:05:08:10 Sam Wilson We're going to scale this business, you know, across the United States. And you said that didn't work out. What were some of the lessons you learned in that didn't work out, process it?   00:05:08:10 - 00:05:46:18 Robert Withers I think for the most part it was two things. We were really more of an East Coast. The leadership team on our company was really East Coast focused. So I found as we talked to people throughout the country, that mindset and how things are done both in, you know, on a local basis and on a regional basis differ greatly from New York to California here and from New York to Tennessee and from New York to the you know, to the northern parts of our country.   00:05:46:18 - 00:06:11:02 Robert Withers So, you know, I think cultural and that not culturally. I think it was just a matter of mindset. And I think the way that we wanted to run our company isn't what we saw. We could replicate well in other parts of the country. So we decided to really stay more on the East Coast. We were licensed in Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Florida.   00:06:12:09 - 00:06:36:09 Robert Withers And from that part, we were we were successful. And we, you know, we were able to scale, but we were able to scale in what we knew rather than, you know. And you would think, you know, listen, you know, a product like a mortgage is universal, right? It's the same it's a national thing. You know, it's it's it's rates are driven by national for national reasons.   00:06:36:09 - 00:07:02:02 Robert Withers You know, there are state regulations. But for the most part, the markets that buy mortgage loans are national at Fannie and Freddie Mac. But doing a good job in markets that you don't understand is it can be very difficult. And when management doesn't agree with what boots on the ground, well, the flops, the philosophies of each when there's no agreement, it's difficult.   00:07:02:02 - 00:07:22:13 Sam Wilson So I could see that. And that's something that I think until you've lived in various parts of our country, you may not understand. You know, here in here in Memphis, Tennessee, if you get on the phone, even with somebody if I saw you yesterday, Robert, we're going to talk for about six or 7 minutes about nothing. We're going to talk about the weather.   00:07:22:21 - 00:07:39:24 Sam Wilson We're going to talk about, you know, family, all sorts of things. I lose you there, Robert? No. Okay,

Today’s guests are Jeff Patterson and Matthew Bell.   Show summary:  In this episode of the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show, guests Jeff Patterson and Matthew Bell discuss the opportunities presented by electric vehicle charging stations for commercial property owners. They highlight the benefits of having charging stations, such as increased customer stay and revenue generation. They also discuss the potential costs and incentives of installing these stations, emphasizing the importance of taking advantage of current incentives. The guests also explore the marketing strategies for charging stations and the potential for partnering with the federal government in developing charging infrastructure.   -------------------------------------------------------------- Opportunity for Commercial Property Owners (00:00:00) Introduction of Matthew Bell (00:01:04) Monetization and Regulations of EV Charging Stations (00:06:11) The payback period and potential costs (00:09:51) Incentives for EV charging stations (00:11:17) Solar and EV charging possibilities (00:16:23) The Efficiency of Solar Power for EV Charging Stations (00:19:12) Opportunities for Commercial Property Owners (00:19:47) Marketing EV Charging Stations (00:21:51) --------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Jeff and Matthew:  Web: https://www.phoenixparkingsolutions.com/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Jeff Patterson (00:00:00) - There's a reason why, um, companies like Starbucks and, uh, waffle House, which I put in one of my recent LinkedIn. There's an article out there where they're looking at it because they want people to stop and stay longer at their business while their car charges, and they've ran the calculations on how they're going to make more money by people being longer inside their stores. So it's not just about the investment in getting the return of the chargers outside. It's about the additional money you could make inside your business. And depending on what your business model is, um, you know, that could turn out really favorable for you.   Intro (00:00:36) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:48) - For those of you that don't know, Jeff Patterson was on the show on November 6th, you should go back and check out that episode. That's episode number 866. Today we're here doing round two of the show with Jeff and also with Matthew Bell.   Sam Wilson (00:01:04) - Matthew, welcome to the show. If you don't mind, you know, again, if you want to hear, just buy. I'll go back and hear that one. But, uh, we're introducing Matthew here to the show as well. We're going to do a two person or three person episode here today. So, Matthew, can you tell us, uh, just quickly what your background is? Actually what I normally ask Matthew, and I can't help but do it. I'm sorry. In 90s or less. You got to tell me. Matthew, where do you start? Where are you now? And how'd you get there?   Matthew Bell (00:01:26) - Sure. Absolutely. Thank you, and thanks for having me on today. Um, so I'm our vice president of business development at Pyramid Network Services. So, uh, I started in telecom right out of school. Uh, worked on the first major build out for sprint. From there, I moved I became outside counsel for Verizon for a number of years. Uh, there I moved to in-house, um, corporate counsel for a large fiber company.   Matthew Bell (00:01:50) - Uh, eventually that sold, went back to sprint, uh, for a period of time, uh, and ran national build out there for Network Vision, where we went and, uh, updated 27,000 sites in about three years. Uh, and then when that ended, uh, wanted to do something a little bit different. And that's how I ended up at pyramid.   Sam Wilson (00:02:10) - That's awesome. Cool. I know the topic that we are covering here today, for those of you who are interested in what episode or the, uh, you know, round two of this, of this episode is we're talking about electric vehicle charging stations. So maybe, Jeff, you can kick us off and tell us just what that means, what the opportunities are, and kind of how you guys tie into that right now.   Jeff Patterson (00:02:32) - Sure. Thanks. Good to see you again, Sam. Um, so everybody's hearing all the the sound out there on the street, and it's in this article on this social media platform about EV car.   Jeff Patterson (00:02:45) - You know, uh, they're making this new one, or, uh, California is mandating no combustion vehicles after 20, 35 to be sold. Um, there's a lot to be said, but there's a lot of consumer questions going on. And I know for a lot of investors and commercial property owners, what do I do? Who do I even talk to about this? And that's where Phoenix kind of came in the market of, well, we're talking about cars talking about charging a vehicles, which typically is going to happen in a parking lot. So parking companies seems to be a logical place that you'd reach out to. Um, now for us, we decided to partner with pyramid and s, uh, because of their full turnkey agnostic, uh, services. So, um, instead of me partnering with, just for instance, ChargePoint, which a lot of people, you know, know anything about EV chargers I've seen out there. Nothing wrong with them. Um, but I would be dedicated to one single charge company with pyramid and s.   Jeff Patterson (00:03:46) - Um, we are able to work with multiple, uh, charging station companies to offer what's best for anyone out there. And it doesn't just have to be someone who's looking for my particular operation services. It could be a strip mall. You could be a a waffle House, a huddle House, uh, uh, a Walmart, um, the Starbucks, you know, we do everything from start to finish and, um, you know, really are there to help everyone along the process because most people don't know. Where do you start?   Sam Wilson (00:04:17) - Absolutely. No. I mean, yeah, if you asked me that today, I'd be like, I have no idea. So you you guys get to plug in and work basically with everybody, you know, everybody from even I would imagine, multifamily property owners. I mean, any property type is really your target avatar.   Jeff Patterson (00:04:33) - Correct.   Sam Wilson (00:04:34) - That is wild. So what's what's the opportunity for a building owner, say, somebody like me, like, how do we how do we how do we, no pun intended, plug in with this.   Sam Wilson (00:04:44) - And I mean, is there monetization opportunities? Is there like why would we even provide this other than just a nice thing to have?   Jeff Patterson (00:04:55) - Well, it depends on what type of property you do have. You know, you mentioned multifamily, for example. Well, what type of, um, multifamily project do you have? If you're in our city and you're in places where EV charging is growing? If I own an EV car, I'm not going to come live at your apartment complex if I don't have a way to charge my car. So this becomes very important for you to be able to, um, not lose potential, uh, residents. As you know, you're growing and maintaining your business profile. Uh, similar things would be, um, think about, like, a Whole Foods or. Uh, Matt and then were recently educating me on school buses. Uh, a lot of school buses are going, uh, electric and, uh, pyramid has a platform there. They work with a company, and they installed the chargers for the entire county for the school system to take the school buses.   Jeff Patterson (00:05:49) - Electric. Uh, it really depends on where you're at, but there is monetisation options. For instance, no one really charges for free. Um, you know, you plug up, you pay for the amount of time you use and, um, you know, based upon your initial capital investment and what you're charging for therm, uh, you know, like any other investment, there's a break even point and then profitability afterwards.   Sam Wilson (00:06:11) - Is there on on that monetization aspect, are there regulations around how much you can mark up that electricity? I know utilities are pretty heavily regulated. I know if you produce and of course, you know, it's the fox guarding the henhouse, but if you produce electricity, you know, via solar, you're going to be limited via contract rates. And as to what that gets sold back to the grid. So conversely, are there limits as to what you can charge at an EV charging station to the end user?   Jeff Patterson (00:06:41) - I'm going to turn this one on to Matt.   Matthew Bell (00:06:42) - Yeah.   Matthew Bell (00:06:43) - There currently are not. Um, obviously, if you're charging a huge amount, there'll be an issue there, but it really comes down to the speed that you're charging at, and I think that's why it's not regulated. So there's obviously a larger upfront cost to install a level three EV fast charger. And the EV fast charger can, uh, charge your car in approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Uh, whereas like a level two charger is more set up, uh, to do it over a few hours. Uh, so again, thinking about the different kind of, uh, location that you're at, whether you're a commercial property, uh, a hotel or something li

Today’s guest is Andrew Brewer.   Andrew is a Real Estate Developer and a Buy & Hold Investor   Show summary: In this episode real estate developer Andrew Brewer shares his journey from stationary engineering and facilities management to real estate development. He discusses how his background has equipped him with valuable skills and insights into asset management and construction. Brewer emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and understanding the concerns of property owners. He shares his strategy as a developer, the challenges of remodeling versus new construction, and his approach to valuing land for development projects. He also highlights the necessity of taking calculated risks for wealth building.   -------------------------------------------------------------- Stationary Engineering and Facilities Management (00:01:43) Experience Working on a High-Rise Building (00:04:13) Lessons Learned from Construction Defect Litigation (00:06:14) The skill set as an owner and investor (00:10:15) The difficulty of remodeling vs building new (00:11:21) Valuing shovel ready projects (00:18:28) The risk of investing (00:19:27) Valuing land and potential (00:20:20) Factors in determining offer price (00:22:09) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Andrew: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-brewer-b6b042125/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrew.brewer.irongall Web: www.irongallinvestments.com Web: www.distance3development.com   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Andrew Brewer (00:00:00) - What the owners look for. What do investors look for? What makes something a good investment, which is a different skill set to this is how you asset manage this facility. Um, and then I was able to use that knowledge and speaking with, you know, the HOA and the property owners at this facility because I'm starting to think like, okay, what are they thinking? You know, what are their concerns? They've bought this unit in this building. What are their concerns as an owner, which may be very different to my concerns as somebody that's trying to keep the lights on. And then how do you balance those two things? Um, so I think that, you know, that was really invaluable to, to starting my own company.   Intro (00:00:35) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:48) - Andrew Brewer is a real estate developer and they buy and hold investor. Andrew.   Sam Wilson (00:00:53) - Welcome to the show.   Andrew Brewer (00:00:54) - Hey, thanks for having me. Absolutely.   Sam Wilson (00:00:56) - The pleasure is mine. Andrew. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   Andrew Brewer (00:01:05) - Um, so I started, uh, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, so I guess I started there. Um, I actually started my career as a butcher. Uh, I did that for eight years through high school and college. Uh, when I graduated college, I moved into stationary engineering, uh, which is facilities management of large commercial assets. And from there, um, I moved into, uh, running my own company and developing real estate. Uh, where I'm at right now is I run my own company and I develop real estate. And what was. I'm sorry, what was the third question?   Sam Wilson (00:01:40) - Where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Andrew Brewer (00:01:43) - Uh, how I got here is I, you know, I did a lot of reading, you know, listen to podcast, read books, went to meetups, like, did that whole kind of route to educate myself about the ownership side of real estate? Uh, and I developed my skill set through my W2 job as a stationary engineer.   Andrew Brewer (00:02:01) - Uh, and then also by doing projects, uh, both by myself and with partners, uh, kind of mushed all of that knowledge and everything together to start my own firm, and here I am.   Sam Wilson (00:02:12) - Wow. That's a lot. A lot of moving pieces. I'm curious, what is stationary engineering? I've never heard that term, and that's, uh. I'd love to get a little insight on that and how that shaped what you do currently.   Andrew Brewer (00:02:25) - Definitely. Um, so stationary engineering, contrary to most people's first opinion, is not creating new types of paper. Um, it actually is the the other definition of the word stationary, which means like stationary as and it doesn't move. Uh, and that's um, that's as opposed to in that industry, marine engineering. So when you're dealing with like large boats, battleships, cargo ships, things of that nature, all of those ships have systems that, you know, keep that ship running. They have generators, boilers, filtration systems, um, all that kind of stuff which run, you know, the power for the ship, for it to move lights, you know, anything like that that's needed on a large ship.   Andrew Brewer (00:03:09) - Now, all of those systems can exist off a ship, and often they exist in buildings. So when you are a stationary engineer, you are doing all of that applied engineering work, but in a stationary facility, as opposed to a facility that moves. Um, so a stationary engineer could also be called, uh, like a facilities maintenance person or, you know, something like that. Uh, the engineering portion of it generally comes when you're dealing with a large systems like high pressure boilers or things of that nature, which is a little more in-depth and requires a much more specialized skill set than just, you know, swapping out. You know, light fixtures or something like that, which is something that, um, which all facilities maintenance people do. But it's only the engineers that get to work on the actual, like, big systems because something like, uh, a high pressure boiler, I mean, that could explode and kill people. So you need to know what you're doing. It can't just be some rando that comes in and starts working on it, uh, so that, um, that's that job, um, where I was working.   Andrew Brewer (00:04:13) - I mean, they have these in all types of buildings. Um, the facility I worked in for a number of years, uh, was in San Jose, California. Uh, it was a high rise building, 27 storeys, um, composed of 197 residential units and then eight ground floor commercial spaces. So it was half of a city block, that one facility, um, because it was a high rise. We had a lot of, uh, singular systems in the building, um, on a lot of apartments, like garden style apartments. When you think about the Hvac system, generally, you'll see like a roof, and there's just like a whole bunch of condensing units all in a row along the roof. You know, when you're in a 27 story building, you've got less roof area. You can't just fit a bunch of condensing units. You have one system for the entire building, uh, which would be a cooling tower or a chiller or something like that. And then that is supplying, um, you know, refrigerant and cooled water to all of the 197 Hvac units that are in there.   Andrew Brewer (00:05:13) - So it's a very different system that you have to work with. Um, so that's that's the building that I worked in. I started there as a utility engineer, worked my way up to the assistant chief engineer of that facility, um, and worked on, you know, everything in that building heating and cooling, electrical, plumbing, uh, you know, even some structural work, cosmetic stuff. Worked very closely with, uh, the HOA board and the property manager to keep that facility running. Um, keep everything running on budget. Um, you know, there was a there was a lot of it was kind. A mishmash of, you know, property management, maintenance work, asset management, facilities maintenance. Like we kind of did it all because we were actually a relatively small team for that facility. Um, and that's, you know, that's really how I got a lot of my hands on knowledge. Um, while I was there, I also acted as a consultant for construction defect litigation lawsuits.   Andrew Brewer (00:06:14) - Uh, so I did that. And, you know, basically that's suing developers and builders for, uh, defects in their construction. Um, and so, you know, so I did that as well and then participated as a project manager in reconstruction projects. You know, like if you win a construction defect litigation suit, generally there's a large settlement. That settlement, if it's used properly, is used to remediate all of those problems in the facility. So that's, you know, basically a huge redevelopment project that then has to happen, which in a high rise, as you can imagine, involves a lot of work being done suspended on lifts many hundreds of feet above the ground. Um, which is not always super fun.   Sam Wilson (00:06:59) - No, but would you say that that is where you really, um, you know, figured out how to become a developer?   Andrew Brewer (00:07:08) - Uh, that was instrumental in it. So, um, doing that job, um, I didn't actually develop anything from the ground up, but the process of, you know, redevelopment, working on those lawsuits, um, that all gave me a lot of bac

Today’s guest is Rod Kheif.   Rod Khleif is a multiple business owner and philanthropist who is passionate about business, high performance, real estate and giving back.   Show summary: In this episode Rod Kheif, a successful business owner and philanthropist, shares his journey in the real estate industry. He discusses his early start, inspired by his mother's investment, his significant loss during the 2008 financial crisis, and his recovery. Rod emphasizes the importance of mindset, determination, goal-setting, and focus. He also highlights the significance of surrounding oneself with a positive peer group and the role of meditation in enhancing focus. Rod provides insights into the current state of the commercial real estate market, advising listeners to be conservative in their projections and to educate themselves before investing.   -------------------------------------------------------------- The mindset it took to recover from losing $50 million (00:01:54)   Importance of goal-setting and decision-making (00:03:48)   Pushing through fear and limiting beliefs (00:06:13)   The importance of focus (00:07:38)   Playing to your strengths (00:08:25)   The power of peer group (00:09:15)   The Projections and Debt Crisis (00:15:23)   Opportunity in the Market (00:16:11)   Lowering Interest Rates and Future Outlook (00:17:42)   The episode ends (00:23:57)   Rod shares his contact information (00:23:35)   The hosts thank the guest (00:23:50) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Rod Kheif: Website: http://Rodkhleif.com LinkedIn: Rod Khleif - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodkhleif/ Twitter: @RodKhleif - https://twitter.com/RodKhleif Instagram: @Rod_Khleif - https://www.instagram.com/rod_khleif/ Facebook: Rod Khleif Official - https://www.facebook.com/rodkhleifofficial/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/RodKhleif   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Rod Kheif (00:00:00) - It's how do you get anything if you don't know what it is? You've got to create a burning desire or hunger. You've got to want it. That's how you push through fear. That's how you push through limiting beliefs or that's how you get uncomfortable. You know that comfort zone is a nice, warm place, but nothing grows there. And so you've got to push through fear and all that by knowing what it is you want and why you want it.   Sam Wilson (00:00:20) - Welcome to the how to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:32) - Ratcliffe is a multiple business owner and philanthropist who is passionate about business, high performance, real estate and giving back rod. This is your second time on the show. It's been a couple of years. I didn't have time to look up the episode number beforehand, but in case you didn't hear rod the first time, go back. Find that episode there on the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast.   Sam Wilson (00:00:50) - That was a great episode then. Rod, it's a pleasure to have you back on today.   Rod Kheif (00:00:52) - Oh thanks, brother. It's good to see you again.   Sam Wilson (00:00:54) - Absolutely, rod, the pleasure is mine. There are three questions, however. I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there in 90s?   Rod Kheif (00:01:07) - God. Oh, man. That's a that's a long, sordid story, brother. I started because my mom bought the house across the street when I was 14 for 30 grand. Two years later, she told me she'd made 20 grand in her sleep. And I said, forget college. I'm going to do real estate. And and fast forward to today. I've owned over 2000 houses. I've rented long term 200 of them in your backyard in Memphis. We won't talk about that. And then the rest are in Florida and Denver. But, you know, I now own thousands of apartment units.   Rod Kheif (00:01:37) - I lost $50 million in 2008 and nine, and it was a single family that pulled me down. And so what I'm known for talking about on my podcast and at my live events is the mindset it took to have 50 million to lose in the first place. And probably more importantly, the mindset took to recover from that to the success that I'm blessed to have today.   Sam Wilson (00:01:54) - Let's talk about that because I think, you know, if we get and we don't have an agenda for this show, I think you and I talked here ahead of time. For those of you listening, you know, a lot of times we'll just kind of hash out some of the high points we want to hit. I think you and I are going to kind of wander all over the place today and have a good time doing it. But one of the, you know, we talked about that on your first episode. So you can go back and listen to Rod's story. You can lose in 50 million bucks. That's a big deal.   Sam Wilson (00:02:17) - That's a big hairy deal, not only to build a portfolio of 50 million, but then to lose it. I do want to talk about the mindset it took to recover that. So let's spend a little bit of time there and then compare that if we can, before the show is over, we're going to compare that to where you see us in the market today and kind of how.   Rod Kheif (00:02:32) - The proverbial, you know, what's about to hit the fan, uh, there's no question about it. So, uh, you know, so how did I, uh, how did I have 50 million to lose in the first place? And how did I recover? I, when I, when I lost everything I associate with what I wanted and why I wanted it. So, you know, if you come to one of my boot camps, the first thing we do is goal setting on steroids. Because how do you get anything if you don't know what it is? You've got to create a burning desire or hunger.   Rod Kheif (00:02:57) - You got to want it. That's how you push through fear. That's how you push through limiting beliefs or that's how you get uncomfortable. You know that comfort zone is a nice, warm place, but nothing grows there. And so you've got to push through fear and all that by knowing what it is you want and why you want it. So you've got to do your goals. By the way, if you haven't done your goals, write this down. Write down rods, links com or text the word links to 72345. If you're driving at the bottom of that link tree, that's got all my social media, it's got my podcast. I have the largest commercial real estate podcast really in the world now we're over 20 million downloads. And and it's because I spent time on mindset and psychology. But if at the bottom of that, Linktree is my goal setting workshop, I do it every year on the first year. I'll do it again January 1st of this year. And you know, how do you get anything if you don't know what it is? Right? And and people spend more time planning a Christmas party than they do designing their lives.   Rod Kheif (00:03:48) - And so do your goals. That's designing your life. Have your spouse do it. Have your kids. If they're over ten years old, do it. So again, text the word links to 72345 or go to rods links.com. It's there. I'm not going to try to sell you anything. Just go design your life. So that starts with goals. Then you got to make a decision. And that's what I had to do back then. I decided to get out of my pity party and get my butt back up and make stuff happen. And the Latin word for the word decision means to cut off. Uh, for a great analogy, for a real decision would be if you're going to attack the island, you're burn your ships because you're taking their ships home. It's committed. There's no one foot in, one foot out dipping a toe in the water. It is freaking done when you make a decision. So you got to make that decision. That's the next piece. Then. Then for me, I had to I had to get back up after I made the decision of what I was going to do, which was focus on on multifamily, uh, because my multifamily did just fine when I lost everything, it was the single family that pulled me down.   Rod Kheif (00:04:40) - So then I took that first step and I went out there and started buying multifamily again. And that's the next piece. You got to take that first step. And, you know, in this business, I have a lot of students that are very analytical. And if you're analytical, you know who you are, and I love you, but you know how you typically have to check off every box before you make a move? Well, you can't do that here. You've got to take that first step. You know, great analogy for this would be you can drive all the way across the United States at night. Headlight only seen 60ft in front of you. You know you'll make it. Other people have made it before. You may have some obstacles, but it's the same way with your goals. But you got to take that first step, okay? So make a decision. Take that first step because you don't want regret. You know, um, the worst thing in the world is regret.   Rod Kheif (00:05:20) - Don't fear failure. Fear, regret. Um, you know, there was this nurse in Australia I may have mentioned on the last episode with you named Ronnie Ware as a hospice nurse, and. Yeah, and you're right, the five, uh, five biggest regrets of. She asked that, she asked her hospice patients. Do you have any regrets? And the biggest regret was not

Today’s guest is Michael Wiener.   Michael Wiener, Partner at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles, focuses his practice on structuring real estate and corporate transactions in a tax-efficient manner and providing his clients with creative solutions to complex tax issues.   Show summary:  In this episode Michael Wiener discusses various topics, including 1031 exchanges, California property tax, and partnership tax issues. Michael emphasizes the importance of consulting tax advisors early in the process and having a sophisticated team to handle all aspects of a transaction. He also shares his personal experience as an investor and the complexities of holding real estate through legal entities. The episode provides valuable insights into real estate transactions and tax implications.   -------------------------------------------------------------- The 1031 Exchange Challenge (00:04:37)   Understanding Taxable Boot (00:08:25)   Complex Math in Tenancy in Common (00:09:42)   The 11th Hour Panic (00:11:01)   Consult Your Tax Advisors Early (00:14:34)   Complexities of Partnerships and Separate Exchanges (00:18:59)   Passive Investing and Syndication (00:22:00)   Negotiating 1031 Exchange in Joint Venture Agreement (00:23:00)   Challenges of Distributing Cash from 1031 Exchange (00:23:59) --------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Michael: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-wiener-50a8a73/   Web: https://www.greenbergglusker.com/michael-wiener/insights/.   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Michael Wiener (00:00:00) - You sell $20 million of real estate that has $10 million of equity. You need to purchase at least $20 million of real estate with at least $10 million of equity, because you also see, some people will say, hey, well, I purchased the $20 million of real estate. I got a $12 million loan, and I just cashed out $2 million. And yeah, no, you did. That's great. But. It's taxable boot.   Intro (00:00:27) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:40) - Michael Winer, a partner at Greenberg in Los Angeles, focuses his practice on structuring real estate transactions in a tax efficient manner and providing his clients with creative solutions to complex tax issues. Michael, welcome to the show.   Michael Wiener (00:00:54) - Thank you very much for having me, Sam. I'm really excited to be here.   Sam Wilson (00:00:58) - Absolutely. The pleasure is mine. Michael. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less.   Sam Wilson (00:01:04) - Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there? Well.   Michael Wiener (00:01:10) - About ten years ago, I had my own firm. I was, uh, or just starting my own firm, um, doing some 1031 work, I. Wound up, uh, seeing an ad on the internet. I don't even remember what I was searching for. For an attorney to join a tax boutique in Century City here in LA. So I responded to the ad. Turned out it was a 1031 exchange specialty, um, firm. And, you know, basically based on my practice and some of the clients I was doing work for, we knew a number of people in common. Um, so I wound up joining that firm. It was a four person firm. A few years later, that firm was acquired by a slightly larger firm, and then that firm was in turn acquired by a larger firm. Um, and throughout it, I have to say, I'm really grateful my, uh, my traditional client base stuck with me throughout all the, uh, throughout all the firm uprisings.   Michael Wiener (00:02:15) - Um, and then from the larger firm, which was one of the largest firms in the world, um, I transitioned my practice with, uh, one of my partners and colleagues who have been with me since the, uh, since the smaller firm over here to Greenberg Luster, which was a, um, which was a better fit. I'd worked alongside Greenberg Lustgarten deals, both co-counsel and adverse for many years a phenomenal firm and, uh, and been here for about four and a half years. And I love every day of it.   Sam Wilson (00:02:45) - That's cool. And it's 1031. What you still focus on primarily?   Michael Wiener (00:02:51) - Um. Uh, I generally wind up dealing with tax issues related to the real estate industry, and obviously 1031 is a big part of that. The last, you know, four ish years, really, since 2018, qualified opportunity zones have, um, have become a bigger part of that. We also being here in California, we have to deal with prop 13, California property tax, um, and transfer tax issues and then also deal with um partnership partner, excuse me, partnership tax issues related to structuring um, joint ventures and and real estate investments.   Michael Wiener (00:03:35) - Um, and that then extends its way out to sort of syndicated tenancies of common and, you know, different ways of investing in real estate and being able to take advantage of all of the wonderful tax benefits of doing so.   Sam Wilson (00:03:51) - That gets really complicated really fast. For those of us that want to just go out and buy stuff and own and run real estate projects. You're a great complement to our to our team because the rest of us don't want to think about, you know, probably the things that you think about day in and day out, you know, specializing in this. I can only imagine. No, no, two days are the same would be my guess.   Michael Wiener (00:04:14) - Oh, no, two days are the same at all. Um.   Sam Wilson (00:04:18) - It's crazy.   Michael Wiener (00:04:19) - Every day is a unique challenge, and every day is another opportunity to learn. So what are some things?   Sam Wilson (00:04:27) - Let's talk. Let's talk. 1031 because you've touched on several things, and I know any one of these topics, we could probably burn the entire podcast, you know, going down that rabbit trail.   Sam Wilson (00:04:37) - But let's let's stay on 1031, because I would imagine that for the bulk of our listeners, that's probably something that is applicable. What what are some common challenges and what are some common misconceptions, maybe that you run into when executing a 1031?   Michael Wiener (00:04:55) - Well, the first thing that a lot of people forget about or just don't remember is that in addition to spending all of the money that you get from the sale of your relinquished property, you also have to replace your debt.   Sam Wilson (00:05:13) - And.   Michael Wiener (00:05:14) - You know, you see people from time to time who say, oh yeah, no, we completed our exchange. We sold a property for, you know, $20 million with $10 million of debt, about a $10 million, uh, property. This is very, let me say, very simplifying the facts. Fact pattern. Um. We bought a property with, um, with the $10 million. And, you know, we got this great deal. We only have to put $2 million, $3 million of debt on it.   Michael Wiener (00:05:42) - And we, you know, you know, huzzah! We, uh, we completed our exchange, and it's well known. Yeah. I mean, yes, you did complete an exchange, but you're going to have to. And it's very important to remember that that gets, um, especially tricky in a, uh, uh, tenancy and common context where you have multiple exchanges. Um, investing people, completing multiple exchanges, investing in the same property. And they have to, um, and they have to, you know, satisfy their debt replacement requirements, especially if they had different leverage ratios on their, um, on their up leg. And can wind up with a situation where you may need to invest some fresh cash in order to to equalize it.   Sam Wilson (00:06:34) - So let me let me see if if I can summarize what you said, you replace the one of the one of the things that's often overlooked is that you replace the debt and the equity. So if it's a $20 million property that you originally purchased and that was debt and equity, again, let's call it 10 million in debt and 10 million in equity.   Sam Wilson (00:06:53) - And then you sell that, you harvest, let's call it it was a breakeven deal. You harvest that 10 million in equity. You can't go out and buy a $12 million property with 10 million in equity and 2 million in debt. Exactly. You got to replace that debt.   Michael Wiener (00:07:07) - Well, you can you don't have to replace the debt per se, meaning you can add fresh cash. You have to go basically equal or up in value and equal or up in equity. Right. So, you know, if you you could put in $2 million of your own money, you know, not exchange cash or money that you raised from an investor and then just get an $8 million loan, and that's fine. But too many people overlook that, overlook that aspect of it.   Sam Wilson (00:07:38) - And that that is not an aspect of that. I even understood until right now. So not just to many people, but myself as well. Uh, so yeah, that, that that's really it has to be equal or greater.   Sam Wilson (00:07:49) - Price point.   Intro (00:07:50) - Period. Exactly.   Sam Wilson (00:07:51) - Then what you previously.   Michael Wiener (00:07:53) - Just if you sell, you know, using our fact pattern, if you sell $20 million of real estate that has $10 m

Today’s guest is Frank Hanna.   Frank B. Hanna, Jr., ChFC®, Private Wealth Advisor, is a leading specialist in Estate / Tax Planning, Private Real Estate Investment, and Wealth Management for a select group of individuals, executives, and privately held business owners.   Show summary: In this podcast episode, Frank B. Hanna Jr. explains how they bridge the gap between traditional investments and real estate, offering sophisticated real estate deals to high net worth clients. Frank also educates clients on the benefits of Delaware Statutory Trusts (DSTs) for tax-deferred property exchanges. He shares his optimistic perspective on future economic opportunities, attributing it to maturing debts and banks' reluctance to lend. The episode concludes with Sam appreciating Frank's unique approach and valuable insights.   -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro (00:00:00) Introduction of Frank B. Hanna Jr. (00:00:52) Frank's background and current business (00:01:16) The 1031 Exchange Solution (00:09:45) Delaware Statutory Trust as an Alternative (00:11:13) Diversifying with DST Programs (00:16:29) The debt situation and upcoming opportunities (00:22:00) Taking advantage of opportunities in the market (00:21:16) Contact information and resources (00:23:31) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Frank:  Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/RevXWealth   Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/revxwealth/   LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/revolutionx-asset-management/   Web- https://www.revxwealth.com/     Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Frank Hanna (00:00:00) - You know, we manage north of $1 billion for clients. And, you know, when things get rough, you know, the advisor in me, you know, worries for my clients because I know they they get concerned and they get upset. But for me, as an entrepreneur and a real estate investor, I, I get excited to take advantage of some of those opportunities that are out there. And I think, I think there are going to be a ton of opportunities over the next, the next 18 or 24 months for the groups that are well positioned, that are well capitalized. And, um, you know, have, you know, the iron gut to take chances and, and, you know, pursue some of the opportunities that are out there.   Sam Wilson (00:00:39) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:52) - Frank B Hanna junior is a leading specialist in estate and tax planning.   Sam Wilson (00:00:56) - He also specializes in private real estate investment and wealth management for a select group of individuals, executives and privately held business owners. Frank, welcome to the show.   Frank Hanna (00:01:06) - Thanks for having me, Sam.   Sam Wilson (00:01:07) - Absolutely. The pleasure is mine. Frank. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Frank Hanna (00:01:16) - Um, I started in the, uh, hotel restaurant business. Did that for a number of years, managing, um, family owned businesses. My my family and businesses did that for, you know, 15, 20 years and got out of that and was doing a little bit of, you know, single family home construction, house flipping type stuff and, um, then diversified into some, some other sectors of real estate and, um, you know, wasn't in love with the restaurant business, ultimately had a lot of good relationships from that and had an interest in real estate and basically packaged that into a kind of hybrid financial planning consulting business with a real estate arm.   Frank Hanna (00:01:59) - And, um, I, uh, currently live outside of Philadelphia. My partner and I have been working together for, um, about 15 years. We started, uh, Revolution X years ago. We rebranded recently, and, um, you know, we've got a, uh, a nice footprint, um, you know, probably on East Coast primarily, but we do business across the United States.   Sam Wilson (00:02:21) - Wow. That's a lot of moving. Uh, a lot of moving pieces there. You 15 or 20 years in the family business and. And how did you. I mean, it sounds like a strategic shift when you got out of the family business and said, okay, we're going to go into wealth advising, planning all those things. Like what? What was the the evolution of that? Yeah, I'm sure there's a lot there that I just.   Frank Hanna (00:02:42) - Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great question. So yeah. Uh quick quick turn there. So I, it's funny my um, I, I had had a little bit of background in real estate, um, through my family.   Frank Hanna (00:02:54) - So my father had done restaurants for years, and he had kind of taken some of his successes and, um, and, and, and wealth from that to get into real estate. So I learned a lot through him and through some of our relationships there. My partner was actually doing like high level financial planning for some recognized individuals. Um, where I was living down near Ocean City, Maryland, and he actually was calling upon my father to try to do some financial planning. So we we connected. My dad actually pawned him off on me, and we got talking and started brainstorming and said, hey, you know what? He he's got a lot of good tools that his toolbox on the financial planning side of things. And I think, I think he can help us and help some other people. And I had a good background on, um, you know, business management, tax planning, um, you know, real estate. And we said, hey, look, let's, let's kind of package what we're, what we're both good at and see if we can, um, capture some market share and focus on a certain type of client.   Frank Hanna (00:03:56) - Um, and we, we started from there and, uh, you know, from the ground up. It was a tough, tough fight, but we're, uh, we're rolling pretty good now.   Sam Wilson (00:04:06) - Wow. Okay. I mean, and this is one of the things I think that we've see in the real estate world is that there's people who are like, you know, I'm only real estate. That's it. They they're only going to invest in real estate. And then you have people that are, you know, the typical stock and bond brokers, financial planners, that that's all they know. And the two seem to not very often intersect where you find some of the understands business and understands real estate that understands traditional kind of investing channels. Is this kind of what you've done, has been able to blend all of those?   Frank Hanna (00:04:36) - Yeah, I think so. You're right. You're right. So you have your you know, typically, typically most of your high net worth clients or our high net worth clients have have some wealth in real estate.   Frank Hanna (00:04:45) - Maybe they're doing that on their own. Um, and but yeah, you're right. Some people just love, love the, the thrill of kind of that real estate deal. And they put every last dollar into that segment and sometimes don't get, um, you know, many dollars over to your more traditional investments. And then you have the other people that, you know, save into their, you know, 401 KS or the brokerage accounts. And, and that's how they kind of grew up and, and were taught that way. And, um, ultimately those people, you know, never really, um, you know, transcend into the real estate space because they don't really know where to start. So what we've done is, is taken some of those more sophisticated real estate deals and packaged them in a way where they are securitized and people can invest and get access to some of those deals. And yeah, we've kind of bridge that gap where you can have the best of both worlds. So most of our clients, um, you know, will typically, you know, dabble in both spaces.   Sam Wilson (00:05:46) - Walk us through that, like, how are you packaging those up and presenting those to your clients? I know that there's a lot of times there's they're just from the. The brokers I've spoken to in the, in the you know, the financial planners, they say, look, you know, we can't we can't do this because their, their hands are typically tied, especially by the bigger shops that they work with. They just can't simply touch that sort of thing. So how are you guys doing that.   Frank Hanna (00:06:08) - So so we really like so in the in the financial advisory space, you have to, uh, you know, hang your flag with a broker dealer. Right. So everybody has to have a broker dealer that, you know, supports you, um, make, you know, make sure you guys are doing things the right way and, and, yeah, some of those bigger broker dealers, they're just, you know, like, they're the, the massive ship moving in the night. They don't typically want to invest the resources for all those different advisors.   Frank Hanna (00:06:36) - And and some of those type of alternative products can be somewhat sophisticated. So um, we moved away from there. We used to be with a big, large broker dealer that was not favorable. They didn't want to do anything that was out of the, uh, you know, quote unquote vanilla or the norm. Um, and now we we work with a broker dealer, um, tha

Today’s guest is Larry Taylor.   Larry Taylor is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Christina. Mr. Taylor is responsible for vision, strategy and leadership. Mr. Taylor is a seasoned investor with over 40 years of real estate experience in the Westside region of Los Angeles.   Show summary:  In this podcast episode, Larry explains how his company identifies valuable properties and adjusts their portfolio in response to market shifts. He also discusses the expansion of Christina's investor base, now open to all 50 states, and the opportunities this presents. The episode concludes with Larry sharing his insights on the desirability of owning real estate in the Westside region of Los Angeles and the host directing listeners to Christina's website for more information.   -------------------------------------------------------------- The perception of buying rent controlled properties (00:00:00) Larry Taylor's background and starting in real estate (00:01:11) The impact of regulatory environment on real estate business (00:04:53) The importance of performance certainty in property sales (00:12:14) Adapting portfolio strategy in response to changes in tax and securities laws (00:13:55) The benefits of real estate ownership and the government's support (00:16:17) The growth of investor base and potential for discounted properties (00:22:29) The vision of owning the best real estate (00:23:49) Contacting Christina (00:24:28) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Larry:  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/christinala/   https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-taylor-7679479/   Web: https://christinala.com/     Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Larry Taylor (00:00:00) - There's a perception amongst investors that buying rent controlled properties which have depressed rent rolls because those rents have not been allowed to go to market is a bad investment. And I say, oh no, no, no, that's a good investment. You're never going to have a vacancy. And the value can only go up because ultimately, no matter what, rents will rise because they have to rise.   Sam Wilson (00:00:25) - Welcome to the how to scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Larry Taylor is the founder and chief executive officer of Christina. He is a seasoned investor with over 48 years of real estate experience in the West Side region of Los Angeles. Larry, welcome to the show.   Larry Taylor (00:00:51) - Hello there. And how are you?   Sam Wilson (00:00:53) - I'm great sir. How are you today?   Larry Taylor (00:00:55) - I'm doing really great and I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.   Sam Wilson (00:00:59) - The pleasure is all mine. Larry, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less.   Sam Wilson (00:01:06) - Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Larry Taylor (00:01:11) - Uh, I am a self-made self-starter. Uh, started as a USC junior. I was a scholarship student. I formed the my first real estate company while I was a student. Uh, the premise of that was to buy real estate in the west side of Los Angeles during the, uh, Nixon wage and price level freeze. And, uh, today we're doing the same thing in the same location.   Sam Wilson (00:01:40) - Wow. Most people. I would assume. Maybe I'm wrong, but. You know, the strategy shift over the years or the asset classes or the type shift. I mean, doing the same thing and the same location for 48 years. It sounds like you guys have either, um, just gone really, really niche or I just found a gold mine and just don't want to leave it. What? What's the story there?   Larry Taylor (00:02:09) - Well, the West Side region of Los Angeles is like the Permian Basin.   Larry Taylor (00:02:14) - Basin? Basin is to oil. It's drilling oil on a proven field.   Sam Wilson (00:02:21) - Okay.   Larry Taylor (00:02:22) - It's fully it's fully developed. It's highly desirable. It is the best year round climate of the United States. Has the highest concentration of millionaires and billionaires in the world. It's the center of tourism center of an entertainment center of technology, two largest ports, and the two busiest ports in the United States. I could go on and on, but, um, uh, if you're drilling oil in a proven field, you're always going to hit oil, right?   Sam Wilson (00:02:50) - Right. I mean, you a lot of things have changed. I think maybe we maybe you said this off air. Maybe we said this, uh, at the beginning of this recording. I'm not not quite sure which one it was, but I think you said you guys formed your company in September of 1977.   Larry Taylor (00:03:06) - That's correct.   Sam Wilson (00:03:06) - A lot of things have changed in in your region, I would think in particular both socially regulatory wise. I mean, a lot of things have kind of come down the pipe that have have made, uh, a lot of people kind of steer away from California.   Sam Wilson (00:03:20) - I know you just mentioned at least ten reasons. I think right off the top of your head as to why what you're doing is, is, is the right time and the right place to be there. But kind of give us, if you can, some of the history of how some of the changes of have have, uh, come about and then how they've affected the way you guys have done business.   Larry Taylor (00:03:38) - Well, first of all, California is a huge state. Yeah, California, the the economy of California, if it was a separate country, would be the sixth largest economy in the world. Uh, there's a world of difference in California, where the northern part of California doesn't resemble the southern part. Um, it's a very, very huge area. And Los Angeles is a very, very huge geographical community. And so when people talk about California, you might as well be talking about southern South America, or you might as well just talk about Western Europe. I mean, California is a huge and diverse, uh, state, which is, you know, larger than most countries.   Larry Taylor (00:04:28) - And so when people talk about California, I don't know what they're talking about, because I can only talk to you about the hundred square miles of the west side of Los Angeles. I don't know anything about the rest of California.   Sam Wilson (00:04:41) - Got it. Very good. But can you. Can you give us a little insight maybe as to kind of the, the way the regulatory environment has shaped the way you guys do business, if it has it all.   Larry Taylor (00:04:53) - Well, of course it has. And its constantly regulations are constantly are constantly being enacted, reenacted, revised. Um, and and that's just not just Los Angeles or just California. It's the entire United States. So the regulatory environment is, you know, again, it creates opportunities. If you look at it strategically, it's the regulatory environment that creates opportunities rather than, uh, acts to, you know, uh, restrict opportunities.   Sam Wilson (00:05:34) - Can you give some insight?   Larry Taylor (00:05:36) - Sure. For example, a couple of years ago, California passed Assembly Bill 330, which ultimately became Assembly Bill uh, SB eight, which basically was designed to stimulate the creation of housing because the state of California is generally considered to be lacking of housing.   Larry Taylor (00:06:00) - So this was an idea that was passed by the state legislature to encourage housing and all the communities. And in California, however. There was an exception that was added very, very last minute to that bill which said, yes, we want to accelerate the ability to build housing by eliminating local restrictions or being able to expedite local over local restrictions. Unless what you're going to do is remove existing affordable, rent controlled housing, in which case, if you remove something that's already rent controlled or restricted in some fashion and you decide to build something on that site, you have to bring back that which you removed. At the same rent or less than what they were when you removed them. What that does is it takes away all of the incentive to remove existing rent control. So you can't really remove it. What happens is if it can't be removed, it can only become more valuable. So in a sense, what everybody's saying. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. This new regulation which was designed to stimulate housing, I'm saying, is all that did was it may stimulate the growth of housing in areas where there isn't already housing, but where there is protected housing, it is now protected from demolition into perpetuity, which means no more competition.   Larry Taylor (00:07:43) - So if you have a fully developed area and all of these properties are protected and nobody will ever come in and tear them down and build new, that which exists can only become more valuable because the demand exceeds the supply. So in that situation, regulation actually made a rent control property more valuable, which.   Sam Wilson (00:08:05) - I think entirely. I mean, that's that's all together. I mean, it's unique, you know, in the, in the just in the, in the concept itself. But let's assume m

Today’s guest is Jay Helms.   Jay Helms is a financial freedom achiever, a real estate investor living a nomadic slow-travel lifestyle with his family of 5, founder of the W2 Capitalist and Amazon #1 Best Selling Author.   Show summary:  In this podcast episode, Jay Helms emphasizes the importance of having "growth friends" who are also focused on real estate investing, and making daily calls to expand this network. He also discusses the evolution of his W-2 Capitalist community, which now includes a hard money lending solution. Jay highlights the importance of strong partnerships in real estate investing and shares his criteria for selecting partners.   -------------------------------------------------------------- The Growth Trends Exercise (00:03:33)   Changing Who You're Talking To (00:07:12)   The Impact of the Exercise (00:09:07)   The W-2 Capitalist Community (00:10:03)   The Importance of Consistent Networking (00:11:52)   Partner Criteria and Building Partnerships (00:16:43)   The W-2 Capitalist Community Growth (00:20:28)   Listening to Community Members' Needs (00:21:26)   Importance of Solid Partnerships (00:27:30) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Jay:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jay.helms1 Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayhelms/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jay_helms YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/W2Capitalist Phone: 205-249-0248 Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Jay Helms (00:00:00) - So the easy trick to doubling or just growing your portfolio is changing who you're talking to. Now, I'm not saying that you should go out and tell your mom, hey. Or your, you know, your your brother or sister saying, hey, I'm not talking to you anymore, right? I'm not saying do that. I'm just saying take. Make two phone calls a day, right? Most people, if they're working a W2, they get a lunch hour. This is not going to take you 30 minutes to do. You're going to call somebody. You're going to talk to about those things that are where we're focused on growth.   Intro (00:00:32) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:45) - Jay Helms is a financial freedom achiever, a real estate investor living a nomadic, slow travel lifestyle with his family and family of five. He's a founder of the W-2 capitalist, and he's an Amazon number one best selling author.   Sam Wilson (00:00:58) - Jay, welcome to the show.   Jay Helms (00:01:00) - Sam. Thank you. Man, that was. Man, I don't I don't want to say this wrong. This is going to come out wrong. But you got a voice for radio. I got to be careful not to say. Somebody told me once you got a face for radio, I think what it was, I was like, I.   Sam Wilson (00:01:13) - Probably got that too, man. You. You can hurt my feelings. It's all.   Jay Helms (00:01:16) - Good. It's awesome. Thank you for having me.   Sam Wilson (00:01:20) - Absolutely. The pleasure's mine. Jay. There are three questions. However. I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Jay Helms (00:01:30) - Yeah. So where I started, uh, like most people who I put in the sophomore level, we started with a single family. Uh, buy and hold, just one, one bedroom, one bath rental property my wife and I bought with a homemaker line of credit.   Jay Helms (00:01:43) - And we have scaled up from there. We've we've done almost anything and everything that does not involve wholesaling and flipping, although we've lived in a couple of living flips and burned a couple of properties. We've joint venture GG LPs. Uh, we're still in a lot of those deals together. That's kind of where we're going to stay, and that's in the small to medium sized multifamily space. And, uh, we've transitioned into lending and hard money lending. Um, and that's kind of where we're at today, even though we've got our portfolio, we've kind of focused on hopefully I see it as a graduation. So we're just, you know, we're lending to people, um, and we're earning a lot higher interest rates. We're not getting to tap into the equity, uh, unless someone a joint venture piece or a GP, uh, or LP deal, but with a lending piece, it's just it's so much more passive than, you know, other stuff. It's just it's incredible. But, uh, how we got there and we're going to talk about this is really through partnerships, right.   Jay Helms (00:02:43) - And getting to know folks and really, uh, learning some, some lessons along the way, uh, about what a great partnership would look like. And, and, uh, you know, I hate that old saying that the only ship doesn't sell as a partnership because it's simply not true. Um, doesn't mean you're going to have some rough seas. Possibly. But, uh, one of the things that I've figured out along the way is not only with investing, do you have to have investing criteria and stick to those investing criteria. You also have to have partnership criteria, and you got to stick to those partnership criteria when an opportunity presents itself.   Sam Wilson (00:03:17) - Man. That's great. That's absolutely great. There's a lot of questions I have probably about kind of that story that you told us, you know, from doing single family residents live in flips, uh, you know, small to medium sized multifamily. And there's a lot of management, I think that goes into that. Maybe we'll get to that partnership side of things.   Sam Wilson (00:03:33) - One of the things that, you know, you and I talked about obviously before, uh, kicking off this show was really talking about a growth trends exercise, which you kind of find is something that I think it's been instrumental in how you've gotten to where you are now. So before we cover those, you know, finer points in your story, maybe we can start there on that growth trends exercise and just tell our listeners what it is and how it applies to them in you.   Jay Helms (00:03:59) - Yeah. And so for clarity, let's give credit where credit is due. I did not create this. I stole this from Hal Elrod, who we, uh, most of us probably know is the author of the Miracle Morning, uh, series. And, uh, so how does this thing where, um, and I heard it from a third party. It doesn't matter where it heard from. I heard from somebody else. It wasn't strictly from Hal, but basically, you take out a piece of paper, right? It doesn't matter how big.   Jay Helms (00:04:24) - Eight and a half by 11. And you draw, uh, two columns on it, right? The left hand column, you're going to label this growth friends and the right hand column you're going to label as maintenance relationships. And I do this exercise with almost everybody who comes to me and says, Jay, I'm having trouble growing. I don't know what what's going on. I'm doing the things like all the all the stuff that people in the podcast say to do. I'm doing this things I'm not growing. But I bet you're not doing this. So here's, here's the exercise is you get out your phone. Right. You got your sheet of paper, you got growth friends and maintenance relationships. For this exercise we're going to label. We're going to define what those two categories are right. Um, growth friends are people who talk about investing in real estate, building wealth, having a better financial future for for yourself and your family. How do you how do you grow your net worth? You're you're talking about growth, right? And the things that are important to you, in this case, real estate investing.   Jay Helms (00:05:20) - Everybody else for the sake of this conversation falls into a maintenance relationship category. Okay? I don't care if it's your mom, your dad, your brother or sister. Everybody else falls into that maintenance relationship category. Okay? Now and I don't know where my phone is, but I was going to show it, like, grab your phone, right. Grab your phone, you scroll to your most recent phone calls. Right. And you're going to go through the top 25, maybe 30 most recent phone calls. And you're going to put folks based on those definitions we just talked about in one of those two columns. Just write down their first name or their initials basically. Once you've done that, now you're going to go to your text message. Because if you're like me, most of your most your conversations or a lot of your conversations are happening over text. Um, I was playing Halo with my son last night, and I'm getting a text from one of my partners. Hey, I found this 12 unit, and so my son and I, we're we're swapping the controller, we're taking turns in Halo and and, uh, while he's doing his turn, I'm sitting here trying to write a property on my phone, you know, as we're doing it.   Jay Helms (00:06:21) - And so. But go through your text messages and you do the same thing, right? Go for maybe the top 2530 text messages. If it's about growing your real estate portfolio, it's about building wealth. Uh, how to, you know, better secure your future financial future for your family. Then those folks or those messages that you're talking to are going to go in the Growth Friends column. Again, everybody els