Episode 19| Nathan Walldorf: Leveraging Connections and Masterminds to Grow From A Few Units To 800+ Units In One Year

Nathan Walldorf is a Chattanooga native turned national multifamily investor. Nathans family has been in real estate over 90 years, but he thought he would pursue ministry. His route changed and led him to go into real estate full time. Nathan successfully led a career in selling residential real estate in Chattanooga, when him and his wife realized they wanted to start investing in multifamily so they have a chance to retire. In this episode, we talk about how important connections have been to Nathan as he raises capital and works daily to find deals. 

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it really was through getting involved in a, in a multifamily mastermind. That was yeah. Led by a guy named Brad some rock, but It was the people that were in that, that group that probably changed their trajectory. I mean, it. It was something where without all the relationships I've made with so many people in there had grown close to and gotten to know without that existing. You know, really we, we got in those like 836 units. A little over a year, you know, like we would have been lucky to get in one apartment building. Nonetheless five and one year. Welcome back to the art of connecting podcasts. We have another wonderful guest with us today here on the show today, we have Nathan Waldorf with Waldorf capital. And I'll tell you guys how me and Nathan met. I had sent out a LinkedIn message to, I. I literally searched on LinkedIn. I searched real estate or real estate investor. I saw Nathan's name. I added pretty much everyone that popped up in Chattanooga. That was a real estate investor and sent them out a message. If they connected with me and said, Hey, I'm interested in real estate. I want to learn more about it. I'd love to connect and go grab coffee and. Nathan responded. And we met up and got a coffee, had a wonderful chat about multifamily real estate, my interest in what Nathan's doing. And it was a perfect fit to have him come on the podcast here today. So. I always love to preface my guests with the meeting story, because I feel like a lot of people would just say, oh, it's just his friends that he interviews. I'm like, no, these are people that I just cold message. No. Total strangers. But now we're not strangers. How are you doing this morning? Thanks for having me on your podcast. It is my pleasure. I'm so happy to have you on here. So to get started. Let's talk a little bit about what you've got going on right now. Real estate ventures and all that kind of stuff. I was telling Nathan before we started, we'll spend about the first. 10 15 minutes talking to business and in the back 10, 15 minutes talking about networking. So. Let's, let's hear what's going on in your world. Yeah. So yeah, I'm Nathan Waldorf. We I've been in real estate for like 17 years in real estate sales in a long the way my wife and I started investing in real estate. So we've been investing in real estate for about 11 years cause You know, Just kind of realize after a while that I didn't have a business, I could sell. Yes. As a residential realtor and I didn't have a you know, I wanted to get some of my time back and I really wanted to be able to spend more time with family and. And obviously be able to kind of retire as well as help other people along the way. So so we ended up. We went from kind of doing our own individual investing. To learning that you could buy apartment buildings with groups of investors. So we spent a lot of money learning and time and a lot of networking time. Learning how to do multifamily. And obviously investing ourselves before we ever. Decided before we decided to bring people with us. So my wife and I have a company called Waldorf capital ventures. Like I said, that we started together and that's what we do. We buy apartment buildings. Help folks get tax savings and get some kind of residual income along the way off their investment. Passive income. And typically then when we sell the property and say five years, folks get a good equity, multiple on their money. So something around. You know, And they ended up with like a 90% return or so. On their investment after five years, total. So with tax benefits as well. Right? And the tax benefits are awesome. So you get bonus depreciation and we share that. You know, in a prorated manner throughout. With everyone who is invested in the, in the property. So. Awesome. Cool. What did your first deal, your first multi-family deal look like? My first one. You know, I got into a group like a mastermind. Network with a, with a bunch of folks and got him, got to know him really well. Actually it wasn't two masterminds. But in, in somebody who was in both of those kept talking to them and they said, Hey, we've got a deal in Duncanville and Texas, which is right outside of. Dallas. And he, he said, he asked if we would like to be general partners on that deal and raise equity for that deal. They had a little gap they were trying to fill. So we came in, helped them raise equity and. And kind of watch over. We've been watching over sort of the asset management with them and You know, making sure that property is going in the right direction. Cool. And how many units was that? The first one it was like 201 units. Ha. Something like that. Yeah. And take it easy on the first. Yeah. I mean, that was our first big apartment building, you know? We've owned like we have in about 16 units, wholly owned around town. And we've, we've done everything from single family to this stuff. We've kept is more like duplexes, the quads, and we've even my wife's a contractor. So she's built some or developer. She likes me to call her developed. So she's built some quads also that we, that we lease. But yeah, that was my first like small multifamily, but it just, when you get in to doing large multifamily, it makes more sense if it's a hundred units plus. Far as the property management and all of that, that's where it kind of gets a little easier. I mean, even. I think grant Cardone talks about that too. He does a lot of multifamily investing and he says, you know, you really want the more units. Almost the easier to. Yeah. And what, because you get that on-site management and you can start to have those pieces put in place when you have all together. Yeah. From what I understand of it, I'm still learning. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and we've had duplexes where. And this is another big reason. We kind of made the jump to larger multifamily. We had a duplex where the sewer line broke and then. And not in the crawl space, it was really nasty. Not only do we have to replace the sewer line, but we also had to remediate in the crawl space. And I mean, there goes, at least that year's worth of profit maybe to, you know, A lot of money that it costs just to, just to fix all that up. So, I mean, when you've got my analogy is if you've got a hundred units and one goes down, you still got 99 others that are paying the bills, you know? So, whereas when you've got a triplex or something like that, if you, one unit goes, comes available, You know, you. That's a, that's a much larger chunk. That's 33% of your money on a triplex plus something I think about with multifamily too, is you you know, with larger multifamily. We've got one main coming in. And if you had a duplex, you I'm going to make coming in like this. They're a little bit bigger, right? Yeah. But. And you do have, you have an AC on every single unit with multi-families you still have like compounded out things that can go wrong. Yeah. And there's definitely pros and cons to each, but I definitely tend to agree, like the multi-family is attractive for sure. In the larger numbers, larger numbers. It's it's I feel like it's a little less risk. Yeah. So how do you decide. What areas to invest in. So, I mean, we always look at areas where there are, there's lots of job growth and population growth. I mean, that's the, that's the two main things. And particularly like you don't want to invest in a one horse town, you know, that's got one industry. Or if that one industry goes down, then you're going to have props. Yeah. So that's what we really look at. We like more major metropolitan areas. Sometimes it's surrounding areas. Like I said, as long as there are people moving in and jobs. Because you need people to rent and you need them. I need them to have good jobs so they can pay their rent. So when you're thinking about a new area, Do you like go into your contact book and see, you know, that lives there and kind of ask them their opinion on it? Like, how do you lean on, do you lean on your connections to check out an area? If you're not super familiar with it? I mean, yeah, we've got, you know, we've got some good friends and say in Nashville, we love the Nashville market because how could you not, you. They've got like something like a hundred to 200 people a day moving in. But but yeah, every now and then when we see a place we'll, we've got some friends there who will call and say, Hey, what, tell me about this area. You know, is this a good area? I've got several different, cause I've got a lot of realtor, friends in Asheville too that have. So sometimes I'll call them and say, Hey, what do you think about this property in this location? And they'll give me some great stats to help me know if it's worth it or not. And. Some of it is we've looked enough where we're starting to figure out where is good. And but yeah, it's always worth asking somebody. Yeah, something I found too, at least, I mean, this has been probably a Southern thing, but pretty much everywhere. I look at different properties. If I contact somebody in the area in the south, generally, I don't know. I haven't looked at Northern properties. Don't really invest up there. Yeah. But yeah. Oh, I've forgotten to mention that earlier, when you said where to invest, it's gotta be an area that's land landlord friendly to. So like in an, in California. You know, I've heard of stories where people couldn't get tenants out for nine months or something like that. That's why California is don't even invest in California anymore. Yeah. No, I hear all the time. Oh, invest. Best in the Midwest and the south. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. They're creating company. That's where you are, but sorry to interrupt your question. I was thinking whenever I'm looking at a new area, I mean, there's thousands of realtors in these bigger cities. I've found the in, in our industry, people are so warm and friendly to give advice. And you'll hear the good and the bad. A lot of times the realtors, especially like you call and you ask about, Hey, what do you think about this area? I'm not going to flame any city in Nashville, but yeah. You know, there are certain ones. It's like, don't do that. But you know, you ask what about this area? And they go, Ooh. I would not recommend that area. And I feel like you definitely have to. Make a few friends to make sure that. And getting the same picture. It helps. It helps for sure. When you are. Identifying a new market to go invest in. What would that process look like? Well, I mean, Honestly, we just have, we've got We've got about four markets that we look at in general, four or five. So. Mostly they're markets that I already have some knowledge about, or that I've got a partner. On the ground with really good knowledge about, so, I mean, that's why we've invested in Dallas and in their light Nashville where they've got tons of jobs and tons of people. Great things going on. But I'm not going to say, I know every bit of Dallas, you know, I love north Dallas that have been invested in so far, but so yeah, you totally need people boots on the ground who. Who know it well so So, yeah, I mean, I think that, and I'm definitely had different folks in different markets. Some who are doing multifamily and some who maybe aren't, but usually all of them have some interest in multifamily that I'll reach out to and ask about. Well, let's talk about the mechanics a little bit more on the investing side. So as far as someone who is, they they're interested in investing in multifamily, they don't have that connection. They don't know who to chat with. What what's the first step to get started? First step. That's a great question. I mean, A lot of folks I think, I think it helps to really get to know the process. Like we, we invested. At to the first step really is invest passively. We've done that before we did that a lot run about 2000 units, just passively. Where we we don't run the asset. That's a great way to get started. You also want to make sure, you know, kind of what you're looking at passively. I mean, we invest in a few of them just based on who we knew and we had looking back I'm like, and I should ask for. You know, should I ask for like his kind of pitch deck and looked over his underwriting and there are certain things I should have looked at, but then I know now, you know, now that I'm doing the underwriting and the pitch decks and all that kind of stuff for folks, so. So this is a great place to start and it helps you kind of get your foot in the door and learn the business. But you also want to like the premise of your show. I mean, you need to be around people who are doing it. Hmm. Do you need to be around folks, especially it's such a team sport when you buy an apartment building because you need the guy, who's the network guy who can help you get the loan. You need the guy, who's the experience guy that's already done. It's already been in multifamily for at least three years for the lender to give the loan. And you need other partners to raise money. Cause if you're, if you're buying a$33 million property, Right now you're probably raising 15 million, at least to that. I mean, that's, that's a lot. So you need a team of people all going to their spear and raising that equity. You have to put 50% down right now. If you want fixed rate debt, which is kind of your safest deal right now. Then yeah, you're going to not quite 50, but sometimes 60% somewhere around there. I mean, if you make your term of your loan longer say sometimes that, that. Loan to value comes down a little bit, but yeah, pretty much somewhere around there. Yeah. That's that that's a task. It is. It is. It is a monstrous task that can seem overwhelming, but I mean, it's all about. It really is all about your network. And who you get with. And you'll find, we feel like we get to bless people by giving them an opportunity. They wouldn't normally have, like, our big story was I had, I had some money in a 5 29 for my kids for seven years and they were getting ready to go to college. Now I feel like that money hardly grew at all. No. And whereas if I'd put in an apartment building, if I known about this known people doing it. Five seven years ago, I could have doubled that money, you know, so right now I've got about half of what it would take to pay for kid's college. I could have had all of one. Pay for kid's college. If I'd put it in an apartment buildings to create way to diversify and. Get into real estate without having to deal with tenants and toilets. Yeah, absolutely. So shifting gears, you kind of hit on it already a little bit. Yeah. But so let's talk about using your network to raise money and then we'll kind of like, this'll be the networking happy aspect of it. So. Say you just got to deal. It's 30 million bucks and you have the net worth partner. You know, you, you have the experience already, so you're good on that. What, what do you do to go and find the money? What does that, how. Like, let's just say it's this two years ago, like you were starting and he didn't have a Rolodex people. You could just call. So like you you've got everything the pieces put together. How do you find the money? What would be honest, you kind of, you kind of need the Rolodex ahead of time. So I already did from being in selling, doing real estate sales for years, I already had a pretty big Rolodex and I. Honestly, I did a lot of phone calls, just calling folks saying, Hey, here's what we're doing. We've got this apartment building. Here's what the returns look like. Is this the type of thing you would be interested in? I got a lot of nos and that's okay. It's not for everybody. But also get a lot of yeses and it really was about finding. Who my audience was like, who was it that really would want to be in something like this. Like we found people who are already investing in real estate. Loved this loved it. The idea of investing in apartment buildings passively. So, so yeah, really, we just knocked on all sorts of doors. Cause I feel like it gives great advantages. If you're a high net worth earner. Or really most anybody. I mean, if you want to retire someday. Especially with the way the stock market's been going the last couple of years. Yeah, we saved a bunch of folks last year from their money being cut in half. By them kind of whether they did a self-directed IRA into a property or sold stock, moved it over. But helped a lot of folks really save their money and then it should double in the next, just about in the next In the next four years from now. Does your firm do education on how to like shelter taxes as far as like, okay, we just finished up this project. You're getting paid out your 90% return. Roll, you know, cause you, we both know how that works. You should 10 31 that money and is of like, You know, like for crying investment to shelter, those gains. Do y'all educate people that are newer to real estate on how to, you know, strategy-wise on like, okay. This investment matured. This is what you may want to think about doing with it, not obviously giving investment advice, but you can do this. If you want to. I mean, yeah, we. You know, especially in the, on the get-go we help educate them on bonus depreciation. You know, where they, which is when they, you can take an apartment building and take that. If you had like a rental you'd, normally your accountant would, would do depreciation based on 27 and a half years for 27 and a half years of ownership every year, they depreciate a little with bonus depreciation. They can. We do something called a cost segregation study. And anyway, that allows you to write off that whole 27 and a half years in one year. So. You may be able to write off 60% of what you invest in. As a negative K one. So, I mean, those are the types of things we educate them on. The hard thing I've found is it's hard to find accountants. Who. No, how to apply that. I feel like it's hard to find them that know how to apply it the right way or the best way. A lot of accounts kind of, or just to do your taxes and fill out your paperwork. Right. We have found some that, that do know a little more about how do we save money, you know, like we studied under Robert Kiyosaki's. Accountant in Robert Kiyosaki. I just, the guy wrote that, that. Wrote rich dad, poor dad. He basically charged this guy. He said, I want you to go out and figure out how I can pay less taxes, you know, less to know. And so that's what he did. And so we got to work under him for a little bit. But yeah, I mean, that's, that's the challenge. We don't do a lot of the 10 30 ones are kind of hard to do into syndication. That's what, that's what it's called when you. Gather a group of investors together. So we don't do that as much, but a lot of times you can. Once you sell and you, you make your money off an apartment building. We do explain, you can reinvest that and you're going to get some of those tax credits or those tax savings again, on that money. And. And it is like a 10 31. It sort of keeps kicking the can down the road. Eventually you're going to pay taxes on it, but instead of paying taxes right, then, then you would be you know, again, doubling that money again, and then you need to be growing and growing that money that could have gone to the government years ago. Right. And it's a compound effect. And over time, you know, there's different ways that. And there's always new things coming out to new ways that you can. No, it's not, not cheating is taking advantage of the system. Totally. I mean it's legally. Yeah. looking for the. The ways that that are out there to reduce your bill. Yeah. That's part of wealth building too. Is obviously growing your wealth, investing your wealth, but you also want to. Do what you can and not pay as much in taxes. Right? Cool. And talking about a CPAs. This has been, I have several people all the time ask me, you know, a good CPA, you know, a good CPA. And it's, it's one of those things that I feel like it's hard to find them. You find a good CPA, you hold onto it. Yeah. Yeah. And especially in the real estate investing world. You really need someone that understands how all of this works is. It's really complicated. When you sounds like you had some issues, finding someone good, like what, how did you go and find a good CPA when you were looking? So, I mean, so we worked with Tom. And we all rights group he's got a group of CPAs that are under him, and that was good. That kind of gave us the education of what we needed to do to save on taxes. I have to, we're kind of in between CPS. Now, so we will, like I said, we've had some really good ones, but maybe you didn't understand how to, how to help you save taxes as much. So. Cool. And it really. Whenever I need somebody that does a specific thing. I shoot it out to like the Facebook group message for the real estate investors and Messaged someone like you. Hey, I've got a really complicated situation. Who would you recommend to take care of this? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just having that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, definitely in our network. We've, we've got some money that we're probably talking to Sans. Okay. So we'll say. Cool, cool. And so I kind of want to rewind a little bit. Back to like a long time ago before you got into real estate. What. What got you into real estate, like in, what did you do before that? Cause I'm always curious to hear this. Like what, what was your origin story to get into this industry? So, I mean, my family's been in real estate for like 97 years. And Chad, Nick. For a long time. I never had planned to really get into real estate. In college after college, while in college, I did a lot of youth ministry stuff. And then working with. Young life and Knoxville. And then we started it down in Guatemala city. But my mom got sick and she had cancer for like 11 years. So we wanted to move back and be closer to family. And when I moved back, I just couldn't. There weren't a lot of options that would feed a family of four and youth ministry. Area. So I went into real estate. And Initially struggle with that decision, but then finally felt like God was kind of saying, this is just what I want you to do till I tell you something different. Okay. So, so I did real estate sales for a long time. And like I said, I think both my wife and I hit that point of saying, something's got to change in life, you know, where we want it or. Tom back and wanted some at a business that was sellable later on. And that's, that's when we sort of made some shifts and she started investing in real estate. And I just sort of focused on doing sales and paying all the bills so that she can invest. At when she'd sell stuff or whatever, she could just keep investing and reinvesting. And I covered all the bills along the way. So, so it was a team effort. It's totally a team effort. Awesome. I I've found that the people who try to do it alone don't typically do to wow. Yeah. Even like you have to have everyone on board because it's a. For me, it's been, you know, it's a rollercoaster, like it's, you know, it's. Vanessa out. Yeah. Rates are great. Nora gets on fire and then interest rates. Aren't great. And, you know, things slow down and you really, you have to have. You have to have an outlet to be able to really discuss like what's going on right now. I feel like, yeah. And it's good to have that's what's awesome about masterminds and things like that is. Or even whether it's just a networking group, have other people around you who were saying, well, here's what we're seeing. Here's what we're doing here are the shifts we're making and really being able to kind of learn from those folks. Absolutely. And as far as like, so you went from youth ministry. And your family was in real estate. So, and you and sales, mostly on residential and commercial sales. So did you, when you first started, did you have this book of business just handed to you or did you have to go out there and beat the pavement and build why? And to go? I had to go build it. I mean, the one thing I did have from being in young life, I kind of already had a mailing list, I guess you would say if folks that I had, I'd already raised money before it was on a smaller scale and stuff like that. So, I mean, I did have sort of a. Spear. I could go to, I wouldn't say all those people who Who who gave the young life for me to work with young life. I wouldn't say to all those people turn into clients, but yeah, I mean, I had to get out there and I had to figure out how to do it, and I had to beat the pavement. Find buyers and sellers and things like that. So, What were some methods that you use besides a mailing list when you were getting started? I mean that mailing list. You know, also did a lot of. You know, I've always believed in kind of being of service to your community in whatever way. So I've had. Like with my community. It was sometimes it was teaching. We started a Sunday school class. Cause there wasn't one, a friend of mine and I, because there wasn't one. For our age group and our church, it was kind of weird at that time. That was back when I was in my twenties, not anymore, but but anyway, so we started that Sunday school class. And I would teach here and there later on did small groups and. And things like that. And again, as well as, as a realtor have done a lot with our association realtors. But yeah, I think I just grew relationships through that and some of those came back. And some of it was standard advertising, you know, like just doing website stuff. Cause that's where people are looking for homes and getting in front of people there and. Being as helpful as I could. And I'm trying to be the first guy they talk to you. So and just giving quality. Care so that when they want to buy or sell later, they'll come back to me. Awesome. I was going to mention this. I forgot in the first app. First of the episode, I was like, Nathan's the first person I've had my podcasts. I see them on a billboard almost every day. St Elmo. If you're passing by, you'll see us face on there. It's a church. spot. Lots of our spirit drives by. Absolutely. I was cracking up. So I was driving by and I was like, I need to mention that when I interviewed him, I saw him on that billboard. Yeah, that's, that's super cool. I love. Every time I have someone on. No matter how big things are they're doing. Like. You're in excess of 2000 units in limited between limited and general partner. And it always. 800 and. What is it? 836 units. It's general partners. And then you have two thousands limited. Yeah. And I think about like, it all starts from somewhere, right. You started with telling us Sunday school classes saying, there's this need that needs to be filled. And you get led on this journey through life. And I'm, I'm on that journey right now. I didn't teach Sunday school to get business. I just, wasn't why I did. I say you see a need and you fill it in the community and things happen that way. Absolutely. I kind of like hit on that and Lacey's episode. She was like, she slapped my wrist is it's like, you know, You, you don't take, you don't go and do good with the expectation that you're going to get business out of it. But you do good and business flows from that. That's what I've found. And it's pretty incredible. How, if you just focus on being a blessing for other people and being. Positive and good and doing things that are helping others. Without the intention of this is gonna lead me to money. It. You know, kind of happens that way. I feel like, or look for ways you can support other people's businesses, you know, like. Okay. Cool. What are you doing? You know, I love that. I mean, Real estate sales. I would say agent to agent. We don't always. I now have a core group that I'll call in different areas or have different expertise is and say, Hey, what are you seeing here? You know? And that more came out of my, my investor background because investors are it's one. That's such a great community investors are, cause they they're willing to share. Here's how I had success. Here's what I did. Here's what you could do. You know, they share a lot of really cool stuff. With each other. And it's you feel less, maybe it's more of an abundance mindset of you know, there's plenty of, plenty of business out there. So. They just they're, they're kind of willing to share their secrets with one another. So I don't know where I was going with it. That's okay. Well, somebody's talking about that investor, like in. And networking with investors. Yeah. That's really the reason why I'm still hearing more than doing this. It is a. Need to be careful because I have a lot of friends that. Realtors. You know, the realtor culture is like you said, it's pretty closed off. You know, it's like if you're running a campaign and it's going really well for you. You're not going to hear about that. They're not going to be over there telling you how to do it. Cause that's theirs. Whereas with investors, I feel like everyone is so creative and. You know, I can look at the house that's over here and say, oh, this would be a great. This, and then other investor can look at it and be like, oh, it would be a wonderful, this. And everyone just has their expertise. So I feel like that's why people are more open in the messaging world is because. Yeah. There's so many different lanes to make money. And most of the time, the person you're talking to doesn't know even how to execute what your idea is because it's your. Like it's, it's your personal touch and. You know, I might look at something and say, that would be a great Airbnb for nurses and make it a mid-term rental and somebody else would look at it and say like, it would be a great. You know something else and that's completely different. A retail store. And I have no idea how to do retail store. But I have a little bit of idea on how to do an Airbnb. So I love that because everyone just collaborates together. Yeah. And I'd say it doesn't have to be that way. I mean, I know. Like I said now in real estate, there are a few folks I'll go to and say, Hey, what are you seeing in this area? Cause I know you do a little more than I do here, or I know you do a little more, whatever, large acreage than I do. What are you seeing here? And so I do have select groups and, and I also try to be helpful to cause it. I don't necessarily do it for the dividends, but it does pay dividends. Like if somebody calls. Even if you don't know the agent real world, so, Hey, I saw that you just did this and it went under kind of your house went under contract. Did you feel like that helped, you know, I've kind of lent some advice to folks like that and where it does pay. Dividends is when you go. If I were to go later and put an offer on his property, then. And there are several people putting offers. There's a chance he may be like, I think if we work with this guy, we're going to be safe. Yeah. Yeah. So I think a lot of those types of things can kind of come back around in time. It's reputation. No matter what business you're in. Yeah. Yeah. Is it going to be. Hey, when I call Nathan, like, am I going to get the cold shoulder? And. That would be helpful. Yeah. And yeah, I just, I want to always be that person who. Is available opened talk, and sometimes I talk too much. And I'm like, Hey. I need to calm down. And I always preface any advice that I give with like, I've been doing this for under a year. So this is all coming from people who are wiser and smarter than me that I've listened to. But yeah, take it as a grain of salt. As you will. And go verify it for yourself because I, you know, Well, that's the way to go. I mean, if you want to go farther, faster then you really, you want to be around people. Who've done it before, who are more experienced. Like our partners are more experienced than we are intentionally. You know, And we make sure that really good people. Like our partners in multifamily and make sure that they're really good people. You are whose culture matches ours, whose whose culture is about being investor first about taking care of our investors in the end, and then taking care of us because we want it to be a blessing for everybody. So, so when you're looking for a new partner, how, how do you identify somebody? Who. Let's just use your, your partners, for example, like when you were looking for them. You mentioned the culture being important. How did you culture's huge. Yeah. Yeah. How did you go about verifying? Like, did these people. Meet the X, like the expectations of where we want to be at. What are some things that you did to make sure that you guys aligned before you went into that business relationship? You know, most of our partners came out of a mastermind and that really it's all about getting to know the people, you know, I mean, in that mastermind, we got to it, it was yes, in part about teaching us, but in PA. But a big piece of it was building relationships between other people in the group so that we could see if, how they do business is how we want, how we do business, how we believe in doing business and making sure there was that kind of synergy and that that same kind of, kind of thoughts on how we're going to take care of our investors. How do we take care of the property? And everything else. So. Cool. Yeah. I have a business, have several business partners and before I jumped into it with anybody. I really like, I want to sit down and have dinner. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I want to see. How, how do you treat the waitress? You know, how do you treat your other partner? Cause I you know, and yeah. I feel like all of those things. And as you get to know them a little bit better, it's like, are there red flags that pop up of like, oh, well we can just cheat here because. We probably won't get caught. Yeah, no, that's not somebody that I want to work with that has that mindset of like, Hey, we can cut corners here and then it'll give us this in return. If we cut that corner. And Or if we exaggerate the returns, we're going to give. Yeah. Just to get investments, you know, like, yeah. We're like, no, we're not going to do that. Absolutely not. One group like that. And we're just like, this is just not a fit. We also made our own, we did some work with Cardone ventures Got it. Natalie and Brandon Dawson are awesome. Folks who have built big businesses and sold them in. We kind of took some of their resources and. And you really want to define your own. You know, what are your core values really helps because then when you're, if you've kind of got an idea already in your head of here, here are the general core values I'm looking for. That helps a lot when you're sitting with people. To kind of see if they fit that. You know, fit those core values that you're looking for. Yeah. I feel like having those like posted somewhere to like writing. Yeah. And reviewing those constantly. Totally. I feel like that's really important too. And some of that I need to do is, you know, I have kind of like my pillars for the podcast of. You know what my goals are with this, but I can definitely be more intentional with that. And it really helps give you motivation and direction. When you look at that and say, this is why I'm doing what I do every day. Oh, because I've read, I need to get back to my morning routine. Why read the morning miracle. Really stuck out to me. Yeah. My wife loves that book. What stuck out to me was when you go and you hit the snooze button, you're delaying your life. You're delete. That means that there's something about your date. You don't want it to start. And when I started thinking about it that way, I was like, man, like, I, whenever I go sleep in I'm like, what am I delaying? Like, why, why do I not want to go start this day? And I feel like it really circles to that. What is your, what is driving you? What's your mission? What's your purpose? Yeah, totally. Why are you here? And once you have those and you review them constantly and they align with where you want to be going. Some really incredible things start happening. Yeah. I mean, your why is huge? It's I hadn't heard that before for years and years. I'm like, ah, whatever. Over the last several years, I really realized that why is huge? I've had really strong wise. It really did. I pushed myself to do something bigger. And so yeah, whether that's, you know, one year it was dang, my kid's going to college next year. I really need to double my income and just. There's something about even saying that out loud, like I needed double man. Yeah. May this made me go out there and do it and, you know so, so yeah, and I mean, we have some, some pretty big whys, like I've already said several times, you know, Getting our time back and actually being able to retire someday and that, and kind of blessing other people that, that really drive what we do drive us to kind of. Keep looking for apartment buildings and environment right now, like you said earlier, where interest rates are high and that makes it harder for deals to pencil in, but we're still looking and underwriting and. I'm still trying to get to know people like this podcast is about and be around folks and find people who can be served by what we're doing. Awesome. I love that. And I my, my why right now, And it changes your why changes as life progresses? Yeah. But the reason why I get out there and bang my head under houses and an addict slipping my head in the attic yesterday. And. On a house, the other. And you know, the reason why I do all of that is my goal is to be able to have the freedom to go. And I want to take my parents on a vacation. Yeah, because they've given so much for me. I want to be able to take my parents on a vacation just to tell them like, Hey, get off work. These days we're going. You don't have to think about anything. Yeah. And like it takes money and freedom to be able to do that. So that's, that's why I am building what I'm building is because it's, you know, you, it's not overnight. You have to build that machine. You have to go and hit your head and houses and look at deals and run numbers and all this stuff. And but it's, it's, I've heard from so many people who were kind of at the mountain top. It's enjoy the journey. Yeah, because it's, you're, you're always on a perpetual journey. And once you hit that peak, then you're like, well, There's another mountain. Yeah, exactly. So I would get to my last question here. I wanted to ask. What is, what is the connection or. Someone that you met or a relationship that was made that really just changed the trajectory of everything for you. Really. It was a bunch of relationships, but I, it really was through getting involved in a, in a multifamily mastermind. That was yeah. Led by a guy named Brad some rock, but It was the people that were in that, that group that probably changed their trajectory. I mean, it. It was something where without all the relationships I've made with so many people in there had grown close to and gotten to know without that existing. You know, really we, we got in those like 836 units. A little over a year, you know, like we would have been lucky to get in one apartment building. Nonetheless five and one year. So. That that definitely changed the trajectory of our life and gave us. Different vision for where we were going to go in life and in what we kind of hoped to do in life. It was much bigger than what we had before, you know? Kind of the grind of building one unit or three or whatever, four units at a time. That vision changed a whole lot. Once we found a whole community that we could work with and partner with and create. Well, we were able to create, so I feel like that's probably, it was a hand up too, you know, it's like totally. You're you feel like you're here and I'm. I guess I'm on a podcast, so I can't demonstrate. You feel like you're at one place and like, as soon as he reached your hand up and you get pulled into that, you know, you're surrounded by these people who are. Doing bigger things. You, you have, you. You force yourself to learn, like they talk about cap rates and cash on cash and all these things. And you're like, wait a second. I need to learn what that means. What does that mean? You know, what is an equity multiplier, all these things that I had no clue. Existed in the world. What do I know what a pro forma is and anything like that? And I go on these calls in my mastermind and it's like, they're rambling off all this stuff. And I'm like, Hold on. I don't even know what I'm looking at. I need to figure out what I'm looking at, because this is really cool. So I feel like when you just start submerging yourself in that, whether it be in person or through a virtual mastermind or whatever it is, You, you force yourself. Bye bye affiliation. To do better. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's always great to be around people that are further along and then you, cause there's so much you can learn from them. Yeah. Even my last mastermind, when a bunch of us were. When it's been a hard year to find deals that pencil in it was just so cool to see. How several of these folks were pivoting. You know, like, well, I'm actually I'm actually doing this other thing now, or I'm syndicating oil Wells. They'll do that. Texas, you know, or I had other people who were doing weather some, I can't remember what they call it, but they buy loans are either buying loans from. From banks or something like that. And they were becoming that the loan holder, but the bank sells it to them for less money than what owed on it, just to kind of get it off their books and get it on somebody else. And. So when that person refiles or sells, and probably a few years, they make a whole bunch of money off that. So they're all sorts of neat things. And I never would have like, If it hadn't been for being in some of these groups, I never would have even thought it's possible to buy a a hundred unit. Building or more. I just wouldn't have had that vision. I would've thought, oh, that takes that's like some multi-modal. Yeah. Millionaire is big shout. The whole down payment and no idea until I got around people. You were saying, no, you know, people raise equity for this and this is how they do it. Here's how you structure it. And so that kind of, you know, was. My blow that made me go, wow, this is really doable with the right team. So let's get out there and do it. That's so cool. Well, this is kind of, we're coming to the end of the episode here. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah. I want to go ahead. And where, where, where can people reach you if they're interested in learning more about syndication and investing and all the things that you do? Yeah. So I'm have people ask me all the time, you know, how you get into. And the multifamily or R and, and really the best way to do that. And probably the best way to start a conversation with us is if you go to, we've got a website, it's the wealth building. trifecta.com. So make sure you put it into the, or you'll end up on some guys, like, I don't know, crypto currency thing, but. So go to the wealth building, trifecta.com, sign in, and part of what we'll do for your podcast listeners. Is we'll give you a free half an hour to just kind of get on the phone, get on a zoom with us and, and see, see what your next steps are. You know, so that's, that's really what that's designed to do is. Help you figure out if multifamily is a good fit for you. And help you figure out what your next steps are and, and even see how you can take your own time back, you know? How you can kind of create a legacy for your family as well, and and see, see how this award, so, and it's whether you've got a million bucks saved up or a hundred thousand dollars in an IRA or something like that, or even just$50,000, you need to invest. It's a, it's a great, it could be a great fit for you. So. If you want to know more about syndication, about what we do investing passively, that's a great way to, to start. Okay. Awesome. Well, we appreciate you coming on here. If you guys got value out of this episode, please go up to the top there wherever you listen to podcasts and leave this episode a five star review and share with a friend. And feel free to reach out to Nathan as well. He's been a wealth of knowledge already for me, just from the one meeting we've had. He I feel like, kind of like me. Accelerated learning. It's it's with the master ride really is just kind of the, the results of that. But he's a year, a year or two ahead of where I'm at right now. And it gets me excited to see where Nathan. Yeah, because I have relationships. It's pretty cool, man. That's crazy. So well thank you guys for listening to the podcast and we'll catch you on the next episode.