413 Units at 23: Caleb Hommel on Senior Housing and Speed

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0:15 And we are back on another episode of the Owner Meeting podcast. I'm Christian, your channel host, joined today by Caleb Hal. Caleb, good to see you again, man.
0:23 Appreciate you having me back, dude. Caleb and I have done nine deals.
0:26 I think eight or nine deals. Uh, we're closing another deal here on 81 units next Friday, which is a week from the
0:33 filming of this episode. Dude, how many units will that put you at roughly? 413.
0:40 413 units. 23 years old. You grasped the millionaire status at 22
0:48 in your portfolio. So, this is just going to increase. Did Have you done the math yet for how much net worth the uh 81 and the 144 are adding to your total net worth stack? I haven't done it yet.
0:58 Last time I checked, it was closer to 15. So, this has actually pushed me closer, if not over um around that two million mark.
1:04 That is So, first of all, congratulations. Absolutely incredible.
1:06 So, you're close to being a multi-millionaire now.
1:12 Two is technically multi. Uh you're uh sitting near multi-millionaire status.
1:18 Uh you started buying four years ago, is that correct?
1:22 Dude, it's it's hard to remember at this point, honestly. I don't remember.
1:25 [laughter] It's hard to remember time in real estate because you said all we did.
1:27 Uh it was like 18 18 going on 19 I joined the mentorship. So yeah, it's been like a little Yeah. Yeah. So you would have closed that first deal in 19. You recently turned 23. So you're sitting probably just under four years.
1:38 Yeah. Like three and a half.
1:41 That's amazing. And then you Yeah. And like you said, you started at the very back end of 18. So you've been working at it for just over four years. You've owned real estate for just under four years. Dude, that's ridiculous.
1:51 I mean that that is a ridiculous portfolio. And a lot of these portfolios are joint ventures where you have high equity stakes. This isn't I see people
2:00 2 minutesonline being like, "Oh yeah, you know, I have 5% of the GP that owns 20% of the thing." It's it's not that. I mean, you have like 30 50%.
2:10 Yeah. I think the minimum stake I have in them is like 15 to 20%. On like larger deals and obviously if you get larger deals like diluting equity is kind of something that happens as you have to bring in more and more capital.
2:20 But overall, yeah, I definitely have more than like 2% of a deal on everything.
2:24 What deal are you enjoying the most? You you've closed I'm going to give everyone a quick recap here, but tell me if I'm missing any. You've done an eight, a 10,
2:33 a 10, a 25, 26, 44, 76, 144
2:41 as and then you're about to close this 81. of all the ones that you've closed and operated already, which which has been your favorite?
2:50 That's a good question. Out of stuff we still load, dude, I think it's honestly um the 44 unit senior village community.
2:56 I've just found the senior deals, one, they're the most stable, so they're the lowest stress. Um which is always a benefit in business. Um other than that,
3:03 yeah, I think it's just that one. It's really cool. Um I don't know if you remember when we got photos of like the fall or Christmas party or a party for like the seasonal party. That was one of
3:11 the coolest things I've ever seen. Like I'm like, "Oh, these tenants actually come together." And it's almost it's hard to get lost in the numbers sometimes. You look at tenants as numbers on a spreadsheet in these
3:19 things, but it's like, "No, these are living breathing people and we're providing them a really awesome place to live." And they're even having like seasonal parties. This is one of the
3:26 cooler things like sentimental wise in business I've ever experienced.
3:30 Yeah. Well, and unfortunately, like occasionally because it is a senior living, they're they're the the living and breathing part. Uh it happens a little bit less from time to time.
3:39 Absolutely. But that's the satisfaction turnover we ever have at the building is which is which is great if you're in a position where you can find the place
3:47 that you want to live all the way through to the end of your days. That's pretty I feel like that's a pretty good community that I mean the satisfaction on the landlord
3:55 side too. It's like man I'm providing like people places to live where they never want to leave. I'm like that that feels pretty cool.
4:01 Yeah. Running bingo nights there. I I I think I agree with you. It's it for me it's between the the 76 and the 44. The
4:09 76 is a much harder project. A lot more a lot more work. The the 55 plus community is so fun because a lot of
4:17 them one they know how to be tenants by now. They're 55 plus. And there's a lot of people like in that demographic.
4:23 either you did the thing where you saved saved, you bought your house, you fixed your you did your retirement, or if you're renting over 55, uh you're
4:31 typically on fixed income, you're retired, you don't [clears throat] have you're maybe not as well off as some other uh people of that demographic,
4:38 but you're typically a pretty good clean tenant. Our unit turn costs there are like nothing on the rare occasion that we have turnover.
4:46 Absolutely. And it's like if you're a 55 like let's say 65-year-old person I find it very in my head. I that's a 25-year-old kid who's a deadbeat versus 65-year-old grandma on social security.
4:57 Who's going to damage the unit more? I'm like grandma goes all from the the long journey of her bedroom to the couch and back a few times a day. It's like
5:06 doesn't leave the house much. Maybe goes on her little scooter a few times a day, but it's like it's just such an easier tenant mix to have than some of these like we're buying these um low income.
5:15 We're buying these affordable properties and it's like some of those it's like okay we got to go in and clean house and provide a little bit of order here. They got to go into an area and clean it up.
5:23 The seniors are just okay cool. Like do I get bingo night? Do I get a ride to the food bank? Like it it's a lot easier to deal with. Well, and this is
5:31 something that I think a lot of younger guys miss this 55 up niche because that's our next deal. We're closing the 81 units also 55 plus. uh their
5:38 occupancy is 100% 100% collections which means they have no delinquencies on their on their books and they have like
5:46 a 40 person wait list for an 80 person property 81 that's there's a huge demand and I think there's a lot of like you're
5:54 we mentioned this already you're 23 I don't think a lot of 23 year olds go out and say hey I should buy a 55 plus community that that my tenants are going
6:02 to be more than twice my age who's going to take me seriously and and on my end, right? I'm only 33. I
6:09 turned 34 in like two days, but a I think a lot of younger investors skip 55 plus because it just it's you just don't think about it as much.
6:20 Well, it doesn't sound it doesn't sound sexy either. It's like, oh, 55 plus.
6:24 It's like a lot of people are trying to get in this assisted living thing and all this and they're just blatantly missing an opportunity for, hey, what about the folks who can't afford the
6:31 primo fourstory assisted living building in Highland Park, Dallas? And it's like, okay, what about the people who just need a nice place to live? They're old.
6:39 They're kind. They're respectful. Some of them are a little ary. And it's like that's going to happen. But I I have to agree with you as oper if
6:45 you're looking at just raw operations and money that we made dollar per dollar on
6:53 running a property. Well, 55 plus hands down. It is simple, easy, can print money.
7:02 Obviously, you still have to buy, right?
7:04 But absolutely, we bought 44 units for a million8.
7:09 I mean, the pricing that we bought that for is unbelievable. Uh it I agree with you. Best deal we've done. You walk the
7:17 campus, it's beautiful. The office is beautiful. The Bible studies, bingo nights, Christmas parties, and you can do it all in one campus. You get to
7:24 contribute to the community. I It's a great That's a great pick. My hope is that the 81 unit ends up being basically a clone of that.
7:32 The carbon copy. Yeah, that that would be ideal. I mean, honestly, dude, talk about fitting well into our business where we have management in house as well. It makes our skill of hiring good
7:41 managers in a market like amplified cuz like these 55 plus at a 76, you know, we're kind of cleaning house at so to speak. They don't really care as much like, hey, the property manager is
7:49 really nice, respectful, always there on time. But when you talk to a 55 70-year-old lady, let's say, and Hannah day in and day out is there every like when whenever she's supposed to be
7:57 there, she's there. She's she's nice, she's kind, she's charming, it's like that goes so much farther on tenant retention on these communities as well.
8:04 And is having decent human beings sitting in the office a couple days a week, if not every day of the week, goes 10 times farther.
8:10 Let's talk. So, so for people listening, this is one of the biggest operational pieces and and this is something that we've had to learn by doing. Kayla and I
8:18 invest heavily in secondary markets. So, we're not like I don't invest way out in the middle of nowhere like I used to when I was younger. But yeah, have you um the example I give
8:27 people is you've heard of San Diego, California. You've heard of San Diego, Texas. I've never gotten a yes. I didn't even know this place existed. It's like 400 people. It's We don't buy in those
8:36 kinds of places. We buy San Diego. They they don't assume San Diego, Texas.
8:40 No, [laughter] I I've never gotten that one before. So, but these secondary markets, uh, Stevenville, fastest growing college in in the entire arguably America.
8:50 Yeah. In the entire America. Um, they do fantastic. Uh, their football team just won state. Uh, their high school football team, which is crazy.
9:00 9 minutesUh, you have the it's like 35,000 person population if you don't count the college, which isn't counted in the census. If you do count the college,
9:07 close to 60. Abene, Texas, 180,000 people. Rapidly growing market.
9:13 They're basically big small towns is what we've tested.
9:17 Where do you find that you need an on-site unit countwise? Where does it make a difference? Because there there's certain buildings like our 25plex.
9:25 There's no universe where it makes sense to have an on-site manager.
9:29 Yeah, it really comes down to exactly like you said, it comes down to like really size of the building. It's really cool with our managerial efficiencies too of having everything in house. Like
9:38 44 and a 76. The 44 does inherently not need a property manager on site if we're being really honest. Like we don't need an on-site manager there inherently. But
9:46 since we manage everything in house, it's like, hey, you could spend a few days a week at the 76. Then you spend a few days a week in office at the 44. So the managerial efficiency, um, probably
9:55 the most valuable piece I think like that I didn't expect of our companies when we started kind of throwing this thing all at the whiteboard, hoping things would stick. Um, I would say that if you're just buying a standalone
10:03 building in a new and there's just so many there's so many answers to this question. And if you have a like Stevenville, we've got almost 200 doors there. If we bought, heck, we might be
10:11 get be able to get away with an 80 unit not having on site in Stevenville. Like truly, like we might be able to get away with that cuz we have so much efficiency. But if you're entering a new
10:19 market, like you cannot go in to a deal smaller than that can support a property manager on site. Like looking at deals in Huntsville, Texas, north of Houston,
10:27 we cannot enter the market for less than like 100 units because it doesn't make sense. There's no managerial efficiency there. We buy a 50 unit in it. you're actually just looking at one this week
10:35 and it's like, okay, what am I going to do? Charge a 1% management fee plus payroll? I'm still way over my budget for that. It doesn't make sense. So, kind of a long-winded answer to your
10:43 question, but again, it just depends on if you already have efficiencies, you already have a team there, you're already up and running.
10:49 Yeah. And we found like the difference on that 44 unit, the real difference ended up being like we had the right person and she started taking office
10:58 hours. We had the hardest time. Uh we were sitting at five vacancies out of 44 unit. We weren't heavily vacant, but we were more vacant than we should be for sure. Uh we were sitting, you know, in
11:07 the high 80s for occupancy. We call in our portfolio the 9595 rule. You want to be 95% of market rent, 95% occupied.
11:15 That that's where we considered the property stabilized and performing. So we're sitting a little bit under our standard and we were there for what most
11:23 of the first year. It was it was a significant chunk of time. I remember that as our quarterly meetings. It's like okay, we haven't had anybody leave or die and we also haven't had anybody
11:31 move in. Yeah, we we had we had like one person move in and one person move out was like the the what we' done for the year.
11:38 What we ended up doing on that campus, we parked someone in the office and this is really important to 55 plus as well.
11:44 Uh we have more applicants actually just drive to the building and ask to rent there and what it looks like uh than we do online calls or anyone through the
11:53 portal and we're just not seeing the same virtual traffic that we are in other properties. We put the right person there with standard office hours.
12:01 Two months later, 100% occupancy and we maintain that. Someone moves out, someone passes away,
12:09 fill I mean it's filled within probably uh least within a week moved in within a month. There's a lot of moving that I
12:17 found, but and it's very quick and like all these people out there like we were actually Christian and I had an owner meeting with the property manager who's done 25,000 units at one point in time
12:25 and talk about just like it's still a people business and even more magnified with seniors. My grandma, if my grandma's looking for a place to rent,
12:33 by the grace of God she has a house, but she's looking for an apartment, she's not calling. She's driving there and seeing, hey, can I talk to somebody and figure this out? AI is not a solution for seniors in any way, shape, or form.
12:44 No, it it it's you if you're doing a senior property, I think it needs to be a bigger one. If you try to do like a small one where it's too small to have an in office, I think you're probably
12:52 going to really struggle. Uh you actually do want common areas. You want common spaces. You want some sort of event space on the campus. Doesn't have
13:00 13 minutesto be huge, but you need to have common area and you need to have on-site leasing. We found that that was the most important thing for that 55 plus. I want
13:07 to talk about this this owner meeting thing. So, we're we're sitting here on the owner meeting podcast. I built the whole business. You know, I started my career talking to Gary Man in Moses
13:16 Lake. He owned over 100 rentals. I wanted to own over 100 rentals. Gary's in his 70s. A lot of what I did in the
13:22 beginning is I modeled what Gary Man did over the first 50 years of his career or I guess 40 years of his career.
13:30 I modeled that and was able to do it in two years, not because I'm awesome, because Gary spent 50 years refining his model and he passed the knowledge to me.
13:38 And so we start this whole owner meeting podcast doing exactly that. So when we need to do something, we're talking about buying an office building. We're
13:47 going to see depending on how negotiations go here in due diligence whether that happens or not. But I'm talking to people who own office. We're scaling our PM company. What do you do?
13:56 Do you muscle it out and read a whole bunch of books or do you just take the cheat code? Go to the people who've already built the business that you want
14:03 to build. Uh Caleb, how did you find this individual? because you actually booked this call for us. Uh second person that we've talked to who's built
14:11 a huge PM company. Uh 25,000 units. Do do we remember how long it took him to build that?
14:16 I think it was like 10 years plus. It was it was fairly quick for that size units, but still an extended period of time.
14:22 So So a little over a decade, 25,000 doors. Uh if you guys are curious, I I looked at some comps for what those sell
14:29 at. Some of those companies when you have your exit 25 to40 million is what the he was a big fish. Let's at the very least very large fish.
14:39 Yeah. That that that is the the value that he created in a decade. So if you're looking dollar per dollar of what you created valuewise I think most of us
14:47 would would put in the work to do that right now. What if you could do it faster learning what he learned? So uh
14:54 Caleb, how did you find this guy? Yeah, he's actually um very close friends with the our favorite broker um Garrett. Best broker in Texas and kind of in the
15:02 United States. He does a lot of stuff in the south broker in Texas. He doesn't live in Texas. He's in Oklahoma.
15:08 Yeah. In OKC. Best broker I've worked with to date by far. Not even close. Uh little rougher on the edges, which I think Christian and I both prefer. So,
15:15 one of the guys actually at his brokerage who does very very little brokering on the side. It's basically clients from his PM company who needs some help. He's he works with Garrett at
15:24 the brokerage, not an office. Um the guy lives in Arkansas and talked to Garrett like Heyman, really trying to grow this PM company. Oh, you should talk to Dave.
15:31 Cool. Let's set up a call with Dave.
15:32 Literally got the call booked the next week and we're talking to him and and tons of insights and and the takeaway from the meeting and this is just like every single real estate owner meeting.
15:41 The takeaway from the meeting was like, "Hey, there's some things you guys are doing right. There's some things that you guys should double down on. And if you need anything else at any point, you
15:49 have my number. Give me a call." And that's that literally to build any business. That's all you need. You don't need a thousand people giving you feedback. Though you can always listen
15:57 to the other medium podcast. We we'll cover a whole ton of people here. What you really need is you need two or three people whose model that you really like that you want to follow and you get them
16:05 in your corner and you ask for help and a it is very very very common for these people to want to help. They give you a
16:13 lot of knowledge. They've built the business especially these guys or gals who have retired. Uh Caleb and I have talked to a lady who had $80,000 doors in her PM company named Kathy.
16:25 Some of these people have built absolutely massive businesses. And if you can take that knowledge and you can use it to compress time, this is like
16:33 you can build eight sometimes nine figure businesses in less than a decade.
16:39 It's hard, but like if you look at the pay scale, that's pretty good. our PM company. I don't know if I've shared this online, but like
16:47 Caleb and I have 35% stake in our PM company and then our between our designated broker and our leadership, they have the rest of the remaining equity.
16:55 You have a $30 million exit and you own 35% of a company that frankly that doesn't suck. Doesn't suck. Yeah.
17:02 I would like to get there faster rather than slower.
17:05 And it's talking about simple takeaways and just like overlooking basic things like, hey, probably need a revamp on the website. It's like cool, that's great feedback. If you're going to talk to an owner, one of the first things they ask,
17:13 hey, let me see. Hey, can you send me a little bit more information about you?
17:16 And it's like, okay, you want to make sure you have something presentable and it looks kind of badass. Other than that, just like it's a people business.
17:21 What do you say, Christian? For the first 5 years, he never hired outside management. It was promoting internally.
17:27 It's like, hey, the on-site turned into the regionals, the regionals turned to the managers, the managers turned into the VPs, the VPs turn blah blah blah.
17:33 It's like everything was done internally based off people. And I I'll tell you this, being on the because I'm on year five of owning management companies. I
17:41 I've successfully actually built, scaled, and sold my first one. Uh certainly not for $30 million. Uh but I have actually sold my uh you know, I've
17:50 actually gone to private company and done a done a transaction before. So I've done this once before on a small scale. When you are doing the hiring and
17:59 firing on the PM level, it's a ton of hiring and firing. It is so hard to find great PM. So when you find one, they
18:06 tend to make really good regionals. I would say it's a 50/50 on a regional, whether they're perfect as a regional or they're actually a good candidate to
18:14 move up as a VP. Certain people just are there's sometimes there's a perfect role that they're awesome at. But a great PM
18:22 almost always makes a great regional and you're going to fire like hire and fire four PMs on average before you find
18:29 someone who's great as a regional. So hiring from within is so important because if you at least in this type of business,
18:37 I found if you bring someone in from the outside, they don't know their your systems. They're from a different company. Uh they have a great resume,
18:46 but they don't have the experience. They almost always fail. It is a company that does so well if you can hire from within. I love building PM companies
18:54 from the ground up. It's the only business I like doing that with because you get your systems, your processes, you get your core team, and the people you built with, you can continue to
19:02 scale with, which has worked immensely well for us. I mean, last thing add there, talk about culture. It's like somebody who's already involved, somebody who's been there for an
19:09 extended period of time, understands the culture. If they're still there after 3 years, 4 years, they probably like the culture. That's it's a pretty safe assumption. They're still there for that
19:17 extended period of time. You don't hear any gripes in four years. either they are horrible communicators about how they express their feelings or they genuinely enjoy working with you. And those are going to be the two options.
19:26 And if you have somebody over time for us, it's like we've had certain certain people who actually moved from Washington and done this thing with us and they're [clears throat] still here for a reason. They're a part of
19:34 leadership for a reason. It's like, okay, this person's really valuable and talk about being in the right role.
19:38 Sometimes somebody is an A player and they're in a role and they look like an F and you're like, gosh dang, I cannot do this with this person. Shift them around to a different position. Oh, here's what was missing.
19:47 Yeah. Check. And sometimes it's hard to do, right? Sometimes you sometimes you let go people who might have uh might have thrived in another position.
19:53 Sometimes you move people around and they just never quite get the hang of it. You know, we've had we just recently dealt with a a situation where an employee started a complete a competing company and stole a lot of our business.
20:06 You run into all of it. Uh you said something that is really cool to hear a 23-year-old say uh culture. When you're first starting a business for your first
20:14 usually first couple years, sure culture is important. You're going to see a lot of books on how important your your business culture is. When you're first
20:22 starting a company, butts and seats and surviving is all you're working on. You're like, "Hey, we got we got roles.
20:28 Uh the company's grown beyond me. We we got to get a body in here and hopefully it's the right person." And it's usually not. You know, you interview Amen.
20:35 you're building your team. Culture is not the first thing you work on. Uh it's not something you get to work on when you've established a team and you're like, "Okay, good. We're keeping
20:43 everyone." It's really fun to get to have these talks of uh culture. So, Caleb has been a huge part of uh building multif family strategy, the mentorship. So, it's a great example.
20:54 There are enough people on the sales team today to field a full fantasy football team like like we we could we could we could start a awesome league.
21:05 When we started there's like two guys and we have to hire and fire like every two months.
21:11 Yeah. There's no culture there. By the time you you start liking people, they're already gone.
21:17 Yeah. Literally, it takes some time to build culture.
21:20 We're just entering this phase where it's like, "Hey, PM, this is why we're looking for an office." There are enough humans where we It's faster and better
21:28 to have space projects that take us all day to do because I like, "Hey, I'm waiting on Caleb for this piece of information.
21:35 Good. I got it from Caleb. Now I need something from Christian. And now I need to go back to the other property owner." like all these different roles. There's certain things where it's like, hey,
21:43 projects that take a few hours remotely can take 15 minutes in office. If I can go down the hall and we can knock out this project. This is you start to get
21:50 this and now now you see each other every day. You guys have office parties.
21:54 You have you actually get to start to build the culture of the company. This is where you get real retention from
22:01 everyone I've spoke to. You don't start with that. That that would be stupid.
22:05 You're just going to lose money. But as you start to hit that phase, that's where your business tends to start blowing up that in a positive way.
22:12 That's where, hey, we we're faster, we're sleeker, we see each other all the time. We're an actual team and you start performing
22:19 like a unit. It's just like a sports team. If everyone practices individually as a remote company, you can have people who are pretty highly skilled, but you
22:26 don't play as a team until you play as a team, which is why we're at the phase that we're at. Just so cool that you get to do this at 23.
22:34 Yeah, I know. And even it's you can still build it remotely. It's more difficult. Like for you mentioned MFS, like we're over a 10 person team pretty easily at this point. And it's like,
22:41 okay, how do we build culture? Daily meetings. How do we build accountability? You're on time or you're not let in the meeting or if you show up late a couple times, hey, one more time and you're out and you're actually out.
22:51 And how do you build people that respect your time and respect their own time? You start throwing challenges in there.
22:55 Hey, if you do XYZ, monetary reward of some sort. Okay, we're all bought in.
23:00 23 minutesWe're all in line there. If it's not inerson communication, the second best thing if possible is virtual communication. Slack has been incredible. It's like just keeping guys
23:08 engaged, keeping like following up in group chats, guys responding throughout the day. It's like actually building a culture. It's so much easier in person, especially like a manheavy business like
23:16 PM. For sales, sometimes sales isn't always feasible. When we've got some dudes working for us in Germany, we're knocking it out of the park. It's like,
23:23 hey, I can't bring Dan from Germany to the States right now. Doesn't have a visa, any of that stuff. So, uh, virtual culture is extremely important as well.
23:31 Oh, I love that. What What would you say thus far for you has been the hardest part of starting and running multiple
23:39 businesses? I tell everyone not to start multiple businesses at a time. You convinced me to break my own rule and do that with you. So, we we did exactly
23:46 that and it's been exactly as hard as I thought it would be. Um, what has been the hardest part for you
23:53 going through, you know, helping scale and launch multif family strategy and then directly owning and launching property management
24:02 while doing real estate acquisition, both JVS and syndicated. Syndicated, you're running a fund. I would almost call that its own company.
24:10 So, you really have like a capital raising company. You have a real estate acquisition company essentially. I know it's the same thing, but really it's two
24:17 things. You have a property management division which is absolutely a standalone company that does, you know, personal and third party
24:25 and then you're scaling full-time another company. Uh yeah, what's the hardest part?
24:33 Yeah, I think it's like mental management. I don't know if that's the the perfect term for that, but like being able to stay locked in even when it's like, hey, great success in company
24:41 A and company C. We're putting out fires all day. And it's being able to hit an equilibrium, which is the battle. Most of the time it sucks. Most of the time you're not going to be able to find it.
24:48 For me, it's the worst at night when I start getting a little more tired. I'm like, "Dear God, my whole universe is collapsing in right now. This is horrible." But trying to find equilibrium throughout the day and just
24:57 being content. It's like, "Hey, cool." Like being able to celebrate the success of company A and deal with the hardship of company C at that same time and still
25:04 try to keep some sort of kind of even keeleness. By far the most difficult aspect of everything.
25:10 Yeah. Well, and and you guys may not know this, but like when I'm running uh we I we've done this webinar series that we've developed over the last several years now.
25:20 There's been I I was looking at the registrations. 100,000 people have registered for this webinar series in its various forums throughout the past
25:29 several years. Caleb's on every single Wednesday that we run this at night with me making this thing happen. Caleb's a
25:36 morning person, not a night person. like there [laughter] there's some there are some evenings I'm imagining the last thing you want to do is uh help out with
25:44 the webinar and we're going [snorts] tell you oftent times you know I'm ending clo I'm supposed to end closer to
25:51 8 I'm ending closer to nine o'clock and Caleb's in there helping me out and answering questions and pushing the it
25:58 the state management is really hard because companies you can't you don't really get time off like stuff happens and you deal with it.
26:09 Same with the buildings.
26:11 Fire happens at 3 in the morning. I'm still getting called. I need to, you know, not that it happens often, but a
26:17 few times a year, you got to flood our fire. We own hundreds and hundreds of units. Caleb has over 400 units in his portfolio. That's a massive portfolio.
26:27 Stuff happens.
26:30 It is really, really hard. What what has worked for you as far as that staying locked in while you know 95% of business is just a grind.
26:39 The 5% is awesome, but the 95% is like you're just banging your head against the wall. How do you stay? Absolutely.
26:47 I mean like the 5% is like the top of the mountain like you're feeling that for a brief moment every day or every week. Most of the time more than anything it's like you're kind of in that middle phase of grind. Head down
26:55 dose to the grind. So not thinking. Then another vast portion of it is hey feeling kind of this sucks. you're not very you're not very like you're not happy, you're not joyful of certain
27:04 parts of that. Um for me it starts in the morning and dude spending time in the word like seriously if I'm spending time with God in the morning and realizing like cuz business is great.
27:11 Business is fun. Business is cool like like I I wouldn't choose my I wouldn't devote my career or my profession to anything else. But there's something more than this. We're not here for a
27:19 billion years. We're here for like a hundred years tops. And it's like being able to set my mind on something else in the morning like hey what am I doing this for? Who am I doing this for? Why
27:27 am I doing what I'm doing today? and being able to see like, hey, does that align with God's will and God's what God wants for my life? Man, that makes total difference when the storm's like like
27:36 whether it's partners are being turds, tenants are being turds, people are the hardest part of business cuz inherently people suck. Um, so it's like dealing with that stuff throughout the day is
27:43 the thing that gets me more than anything when people are customers or just whoever is being a pain in the butt. And it's like, okay, when that's going on, how can I treat them as how
27:51 God's will for me to treat them, how God intends for me to treat them, and like go through that storm and be like, okay, I'm going to make it through this. This is temporary. And being able to set my
27:59 mind on something a lot more important than business is the only way I know how to get through. Like some days, dude, it's like a 12 to 16 hour day of pure
28:07 slogging it out. You don't even get the 5% at the top of the mountain. You're completely underwater. It feels like all day. There's no other way to make it make it through than that in my opinion.
28:16 Oh, no. I love it. Yeah. Well, that that's sticking with the uh best book of all time, which I usually have uh behind me here, but I was I was like, "Where's my where's the Bible?" Oh, right. Uh
28:25 it's it's out in the living room because um I'm reading it. Uh [laughter] it misses the podcast background too often because it's in uh it's in use. Uh which is a good place for it to be.
28:35 Dude, that is that's hard to replace. And if you're if you're listening to the podcast and you're like, well, I mean, I don't
28:43 not a Christian or I don't have faith, so that doesn't really apply to me. Uh first of all, hard recommendation,
28:50 find your faith immediately. And uh yep, I I would start there. But that practice
28:57 of getting centered and understanding what you're doing beyond just the business, at the end of the day, you're worth, again, we've just covered this, right? You're worth about $2 million.
29:06 There's a point as a 23-year-old worth a couple million dollars.
29:11 You don't end up needing more money pretty soon. Like, you're you're entering the point. Yeah. You you still have some hustle in front of you, but you're getting to the point where you're
29:19 like, when it gets hard, more money is not going to be a fantastic motivator.
29:24 Yeah, you need to know why you're doing things beyond business. Otherwise, you hit a certain point and you just stop. And I've seen people do it all the time. And it tends to be people who
29:33 don't have any other driver than I want to compete or make more money.
29:38 When it gets hard, those things don't hold up. You need to know exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it.
29:44 Totally. It's like people talk about like I think the term that got really overemphasized over the last decade and a half was just I haven't been in business for that long, but just seeing
29:51 stuff is what's your why? What's your why? what's your why? And it's like there's some kind of corniness to this like, okay, this is a little overplayed.
29:57 And there's also some truth to it. It's like, hey, if you're if your why is say I want to make money, that's not a very deep why. Like, it's truly not like cool, go do something else. Like, if
30:06 like honestly, you could go like, not endorsing this by any stretch of the imagination, but you can commit crime, steal, steal drugs, blah blah blah.
30:12 There's a million different ways to make money. But it's like if you actually have a why that's deeper than bigger than you and you have ethics that are bigger than you and you have a goal that's bigger than you. It's that's how
30:20 you get through the tough day is not I want to make more money and then as soon as stuff hits the fan, you start bowing out pretty quickly.
30:27 Yeah. Well, and I I I had the privilege of seeing that with my first uh the first ever mentor I had when I left the nineto-ive. I went to I went to work
30:34 with an entrepreneur to help them launch. So, I mean I mean kind of like a I did a hybrid exit of the nineto-ive. I I worked for an entrepreneur in a
30:42 nineto-five role starting a company. So, it was like a I consider that like my uh my master's degree in starting a
30:49 business. It's like, oh, let's go out with with someone who's done it and start a business, right? Stuff got hard.
30:56 They I mean, they they went like ultimate give up. They uh they they they went in and you know, I won't name names, but you know, they they they
31:04 stole security deposits from their PM company, which is highly illegal, which is which is, you know, federal crime, uh, stealing money,
31:13 uh, embezzled from his other companies, uh, you know, bought planes, cars, left the state, and, uh, and tried to hide.
31:24 Like I I I have seen people give up on incredible levels. And I'll be honest, when I when I first met this person, their their full intention was, hey, I
31:32 want to create an amazing culture of work. I They loved their businesses.
31:36 They were a joy to be around. I I honestly think they started this thing being like, "Hey, this is going to work." Uh, the problem is business is
31:44 hard and all of your plans don't always work. Correct.
31:47 When it got hard and everyone was working, I would catch him in his little secret office playing Minecraft.
31:56 I'm like, it if you give up and you play Minecraft and then you steal money and flee the state, uh, there's not going to be a
32:05 sustainable way to run business. And I know it's a silly example, but that's I mean that's really that's what happened.
32:09 The first time I tried to learn how to do business, I literally watched someone implode at a unbelievably high level of
32:18 they just went nuts and made bad decisions.
32:23 We get the privilege on the back end of that of watching all that happen. We got to learn all the good, all the bad, and you know, talk about owner meetings.
32:30 That's why we share the stupid tax on almost every single episode is you can learn a lot of things about what
32:38 not to do. And if you avoid those mistakes and build the same business, you can end up with an amazing business.
32:46 I learned how to start a PM company and hire from I had a great PM company.
32:50 I got to learn a lot about how to run, you know, learning from quoteunquote the wrong mentor. I got a lot of value out
32:59 of that. And that's one of the questions I asked myself today. I'm like, sometimes you there's especially in creative finance, there's stuff you can do and there's stuff you still shouldn't
33:07 do. I ask myself, would this guy do this? And if so, then we're like, they're probably not going to be the right side of ethics.
33:14 Uh, totally.
33:16 Guys, absolutely. Those guys are the guys when you start squeezing squeezing something so to speak, that's when you start seeing what comes out. And for the guys like uh we won't name the John Doe
33:25 Christian speaking of but when you start squeezing them and stuff starts hitting the fan and it's like if it's a one time thing and the guy needs to catch a break and he's in the middle of the day playing a game on his phone or whatever
33:34 cool is when pattern recognition happens and it's like hey this has been four times five times I've seen you doing this now it gets ugly and those are typically the people in business um I
33:42 had this really ignorant thing when I got into business I'm like there's going to be no problems and sunshine and rainbows all over the place. It's you never get that's not real for anybody
33:49 thinking about it. It's hard. It sucks most of the time, but you get to pick your problems. Like with PM, we are choosing a different set of problems than somebody who runs an AI startup
33:57 business. Like we picked the lane, we picked the problems we deal with. And it's the guys that usually think it's going to be all sunshine and rainbows.
34:03 And they continue to believe that. And then they have this rude awakening of it's not sunshine, rainbows, and la landing singing kumbaya. And then they
34:11 start getting squeezed. And then you start seeing the good, bad, and everything else start coming out of them. Yeah.
34:17 Oh, Caleb, it is fantastic having you on. Um, guys, the reason that I have Caleb on, and I I bring Caleb on
34:26 quarterly uh to the podcast, so we've seen him multiple times as a recurring character. And not only is he my business partner, I think it's such a great example of what you can do in a
34:34 very short period of time. He started at 18. He's 23, like recently turned 23.
34:38 Since I've met him, he has uh found his faith. I was at his baptism. I was at his wedding. He's been married. Uh he's
34:46 gone from I I remember that first deal that you did. You put the down payment on a credit card, which I do not
34:52 recommend. Uh but Caleb did not have the like six or $7,000 to put down on a property. He's made millions of dollars
35:01 in a 4-year period without a college degree, without all the advantages that one might have. Like he he went from no
35:10 money to lots of money. it it I'm not calling it get rich quick, but you built a shocking amount of wealth in a relatively short period of time. It is
35:19 such a great example of what is achievable. It's something that I was never able to figure out in my career.
35:24 Like I I did the whole college 9to-5 grind grind grind for eight years to build a half million dollar net worth by the time I started on my first
35:32 significant apartment project at 29 years old.
35:36 You can compress time if you learn from the people who've done what you want to do. Caleb joined the mentorship group with me. And I'm not saying like
35:44 Christian's the perfect mentor, especially back then, but Caleb found someone who's done the thing that he wanted to do and he learned and he compressed time from what I did.
35:51 And I did it with Gary. And I'm sure Gary had multiple mentors before him who've done it. If you can just accumulate and apply the knowledge, that
36:00 36 minutesis the one thing that Caleb is just incredible at. You can go from idea to concept. We go, we get out of meetings, we have ideas.
36:09 Usually by the end of the meeting, Caleb's already texting be like, "Hey, so I've already knocked out this, this, and this, and this is in motion. Hey, we're launching a new product." Awesome.
36:17 Um, I know you haven't actually like finished the product or created a landing page. Just so you know, the boys and I have already sold three of them.
36:23 Uh, so you better you better get that done because you have uh you now have to deliver in a week.
36:29 that that is the one thing that I have learned and it's been reinforced my re relationship with Caleb. That lag time
36:36 between hey I have an idea and hey we're going to go out and do it for Caleb.
36:41 It's it's there is no lag within the same meeting that we talk about doing it. It's already starting to get done.
36:48 If you can do that you will end up with a business like Caleb. If you're listening to this being like man I've thought about going into real estate or buying a bigger apartment complex. I've
36:56 been thinking about it for two or three years. The only significant difference between you and 18year-old broke Caleb
37:03 is Caleb started working on it the second he decided that he wanted to go buy apartments. That's the only significant thing about Caleb that is
37:12 unique and different where I'm like, you know, sometimes I'm like, "Oh, anyone can do this." You can't if you don't have that. That is that is a a thing
37:20 that Caleb has really taught me and reinforced me. So, Caleb, I appreciate you being on the pod. I appreciate all your insights cuz you've gone through more business than most people will go through in their career.
37:29 Yeah, most 23 year olds long time to go, bud. You got uh you said we might live to 100. So, you got about 75 more years of play in you. You got some you got some time. Who knows?
37:39 Yeah. Bill Gates starts doing all this weird stuff. Maybe we get longer. Um but the the last thing I've got to see just wrapping that it's like speed to like idea and execution is like the number
37:47 one thing in business and it's a sense of urgency, but it's not rush. And it's like a lot of people have this misconception of like I'm one of them. I want to be at x amount of units, x
37:56 million in real estate, x amum, whatever metric we're going to use by certain age. It's like great, that's down the line. That's that's like 100 million steps in the line is that that that that
38:04 result. But it's like taking like urgency from steps 1 2 3. And it's not rush. It's taking your time. Like there's stuff like I figured I would have a certain x amount of units, x big
38:12 portfolio at 23. I want to hit x amount of net worth at 25. Granted, those goals probably haven't come true yet. They might. It'd be really cool like hit a billion dollars in net worth one day,
38:21 like as a goal. But it's truly it's like speed to like I speed to idea to execution is the most crucial thing. But just don't rush through it. If it's a really stupid idea like you should go
38:29 like st people security deposits and buy a plane, let's probably hold off on executing that idea. But just taking it one step at a time and how quick you can
38:36 go from step one to two to three to four to 5 to 6 to 7 8 to 9 to 10 is like literally the name of the game.
38:43 Absolutely. Well guys, that that webinar that uh we run, we've been perfecting that. We run that on Wednesdays. If you want to check out the next one, you're
38:50 listening to this podcast, the link for that is multifamilystrategy.com/workshop.
38:55 If you go to that site and we have an upcoming webinar, that will show up there. So, whenever you're listening, it's almost every Wednesday I go live on
39:03 that and I'll I'll always be tweaking it and iterating it. So, if that is something that you're interested in, uh, check that out. Get multiffamil strategy.comworkshop.
39:11 You guys want to join our free school community, just check out multif family strategy community on school. uh about 3,000 people there talking deals, real
39:19 estate, setting goals. Yeah. And uh and growing. We have no marketing budget that goes through that. That is an organic community of 3,000 people who have joined and set that up.
39:29 Tons of free resources, calculators, uh mini courses, all the stuff that you're looking for on the education side lives
39:36 there. A lot of it lives there completely for free. So you can connect there. uh multif family strategy on school s k this is the owner meeting
39:45 podcast we do this meeting so that you can speed up your journey wherever you're trying to go especially if it's real estate
39:53 multif family but learn from the people who have done the thing that you want to do Caleb's one of the people who's done a lot that I think a lot of people want
40:00 40 minutesto do uh and he's done it very very young so Caleb thank you for joining us you guys like subscribe do the thing and I'll see you on the next So,