May 23, 2022
Sam Primm is a Real Estate Investor, Educator with over 40
million dollar Real Estate using people's money He started a
successful Rental Real Estate company, Wholesale company and he
does Flips as well. In this episode we talked about:
* Sam’s Bio & Background
* The First Investment in Real Estate
* Using Other People's Money to Buy Real Estate
* Network Building
* Private & Institutional Lenders
* Capital Structure
* Interest Rate Risks
* Journey on Social Media
* The Process of Property Acquisition
* Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned Useful links:
Book “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff
Book “Eat that frog” by Brian Tracy
https://www.instagram.com/samfasterfreedom/?hl=en
https://fasterfreedom.com
Transciption: Jesse (0s):
Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is
Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate
with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact
real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or
raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one
square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jennifer
gala and you're listening to working capital the real estate
podcast. My guest today is Sam prim. Sam is a real estate investor
educator with over $40 million worth of real estate using other
people's money.
He started a successful rental real estate company, a wholesale company, and he does flips as well. We just kind of went over a little bit about his portfolio right now, Sam, how's it going?
Sam (45s): It's going well, man, it's going well, appreciate you having me on.
Jesse (47s): Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. I think one thing we miss here in the intro is just the fact that your social media presence with real estate is pretty pronounced. It's part of the reason that we connected, I saw what you were doing online. And I said, you know, I think that listeners would get a lot of value about you coming on, telling your story, and also talking a little bit about that presence online. So thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Why don't we take a couple of steps back as we normally do here and talk a little bit about your background and how you got into real estate, you know, from, you know, where you started and where you're at today.
Sam (1m 23s): Yeah, for sure. So I don't have the most exciting story, like, you know, some guests and some people I know that, you know, came over here or grew up super, super poor and didn't have, you know, much of an upbringing. I had a normal upbringing, you know, my parents were middle-class. My dad was an engineer. My mom was a teacher. My dad worked for the same company for 40 years and retired. That was kinda what I was grown up in. That was kind of how I was raised, you know, save money, save money, save money, invest, and went to college and was kind of planning that path.
But kinda during college, I started a, a house, you know, painting company with my buddy. We started to kind of paint in the summers, painted exteriors of houses and fences and decks, kinda got some entrepreneurial itches and then went to school and finished school and then, you know, graduated and got a job out of school. And he got an engineering degree and we were just doing our own thing. And then we started to connect and talk real estate and we decided to go in and buy one house a year for 10 years was our goal. And just kind of start to just see what real estate can do for us on the side.
And that kind of ballooned into what I'm doing today. I kind of really kind of ventured away from that traditional mindset of work for somebody else, your whole life. I was able to quit my full-time job and go full-time in real estate a few years later and really enjoying now showing other people that you do have an option. You can do the traditional path, but if that's not for you or you can't do that, or whatever, whatever the reason may be, you do not have to work for someone else, your whole life. You can do what you want when you want and real estate's the best, you know, kind of bridge to help you get to that life.
Jesse (2m 53s): So, Sam, what was the first investment in real estate that you, that you ever did? What did that look like?
Sam (2m 60s): It was a single family rental. I actually bought it in 2014 into 2014, bought it with the thought that you got to, I was going to fix it up and sell it and take that profit and put 20% down on a rental. So back then, even when I started, you know, investing in real estate, I thought 20% down on rental property. So, all right, I don't have 20% to put down, so I'm going to flip a house, take that profit and then put 20% down. So I thought for every, you know, one rental I wanted to buy, I had to flip one, so two houses to get one rental.
But during that process, I learned a, about the cash out refinance and kind of leveraging money and leveraging bank funds and all that, all that stuff that I'm sure a lot of your viewers know about, but I didn't know about it. And I ended up actually turning that one into a rental that worked out pretty well. So just, you know, jumped in and was figuring it out and then found out about refinancing and, and all that cash out stuff. And you haven't looked back since, and haven't had to put 20% down of my own money on anything since. So
Jesse (3m 55s): That's great. So in terms of the actual debt side of the equation, when you are looking for properties and over your career, when you've been looking for properties using other people's money, I mean, people hear that and they, you know, intuitively understand what that means. You know, you understand what the words mean, but in terms of actually executing that and doing it in a way that doesn't put you in a unreasonable amount of risk, how do you approach that? And what does that look like for you when you're saying you're using other people's money to buy real estate?
Sam (4m 26s): Yeah, for sure. Cause if you're, if you're not using your own money, you're putting 20% down, you know, you could be overleveraging yourself, like you said, and putting yourself at unnecessary risk, you know, shift in the market could sink you. And, and that did a lot in oh eight, it's sunk a lot of people. So the key to using other people's money in your own money honestly, is making sure there's equity in the property. Everybody thinks that banks care about that 20% down when you're buying rentals, they don't, they care about that 80%. They want to just make sure that they are not over leveraged themselves and that there's 80% equity in the deal.
So if you can creatively use somebody else's money to find distressed properties, you know, fix them up, manage them well, whether we're talking, you know, single families, commercial multi-families, whatever it is, if you can just find the deals out there and use other people's money and, you know, find a good enough deal and increase the value enough that there is at least 20% equity at the end, then you're not over leveraged. If, if you bought a million dollar apartment complex and put $200,000 down, there's 80% equity. If I've, you know, did the same thing and use somebody else's money and have $800,000 of somebody else's money in the deal, and it's still worth a million, why it's the same position?
There's, you know, there's, there's not any risk there. As long as that equity is built in, obviously there's some more intricacies that go into it and there's a ton different ways to do it. But I think the key concept that you brought up and kind of wanted me to drive home is as long as you're buying at a discount and managing it properly, you shouldn't over leverage yourself. If you do it the right way, it's not buying things at market value, you know, a hundred percent of costs, a hundred percent of value, a hundred percent of loan. It's, you know, we're, we're deep, we're much less than that. There's a lot of equity built in at the end of these deals that just grows over time.
Jesse (6m 5s): So during that time 2014, and I guess the, the few years after that, that got you to where you're at today, the actual network that you had, the people that you went to to actually raise money from, how did that evolve? You know, did you have somebody in the beginning that you were doing this with, that kind of showed you who the ideal people would be that would invest with you? What did that look like?
Sam (6m 25s): Yeah, kind of. So I knew that you could use other people's money to buy and fix up a property. I think, I don't remember. I think that flip or flop the torque and Christina moose or whatever, the ones that was on HTV. I remember seeing them go to like their lawyer's somebody's house and they would get the money and then they would fix up the house and they would split the profit with them. So I knew you could do that. So I knew that you could borrow money to buy and fix up a house. I just didn't know about the 20% down. And that's what I did on my first property. I borrowed the money to buy it and fix it up. It was from like a kind of a friend of a friend kind of thing. It was one of my dad's friends that owned a business.
I'd known him growing up a little bit and he'd always talked about, you know, if we ever get into business, you know, he'd like to help me out kind of like a, a mentor type thing, but he wasn't a real estate investor more just on the business and mindset side of things. And we talked and, you know, met a few times and, and showed them the plans and show them what we wanted to do. And he said that he would be willing to give us, you know, you know, a hundred thousand dollars to buy and fix up a house. If we found something that worked and showed him the deal and ran through the numbers and we did that. And then we did it again. And I continued to use that same private lender for, for a long time.
My first, first three or four years in investing in real estate, I had a full-time job. So it probably maybe a 20, 20 rentals or so. So it was good, but it wasn't anything crazy. But then after that, you just make connections and know the right people and that lender talks to other people. And then eventually we, you know, got more money than we know what to do with now, just as far as, you know, sourcing deals for private lenders, it's, it's just, it can be tough to find private lenders. So I was pretty lucky, but I always tell people whether it takes you two months or two years to find a private lender, always be looking one private lender can change your life.
There's other, there's other options. In the meantime, you can wholesale, you can use hard money, you can use lines of credit, you can do a ton of different things. Self-directed IRAs, all those are great. But, you know, using a, having a private lender that has flexible terms that will lend you a hundred percent of purchase and rehab on, you know, whatever the property may be is life-changing so be looking for one, you may stumble across when, right away, you may not, but don't give up because one can change your life. For sure.
Jesse (8m 27s): And what was the, I mean, flexibility, you mentioned that there w what are the other appeals that you have with private lenders, as opposed to institutional institutional lenders for what you're trying to do?
Sam (8m 38s): Yeah. So private lenders are, you know, their flexibilities by far the biggest one. So, you know, if I'm buying an apartment complex, I'll go to private lenders and they'll put 20% down. And then the other 80% is institutional. Whether it be, you know, government money, Fannie, or Freddie, or whether it be, you know, bank money, but they're, they're going to be in second position. Then the private lender is okay with that. It's, you know, most hard money lenders or other institutions won't want to be in second position. They're going to want to be in first position to be most secured. So they're flexible because you have a relationship with them.
There are people that, you know, or people that, you know, know that understand real estate that don't usually, they don't have millions. It's usually it's, you know, I just had a student the other day that was like, I can't find a private lender. And then all, you know, all of a sudden he was talking with a real estate agent that he was trying to buy houses from. And that agent said they always want to do invest, but they don't have the time or knowledge. And they had an extra 150 green, you know, they didn't have millions, but they took some out of the stock market and they had that and they're willing to invest with them because they knew them. So it just comes from different sources. It usually doesn't come from a rich uncle or even a rich friend of your dad like minded, but, you know, there's a ton of different places.
You can find them. And they're just flexible. They're understanding. I think a couple of the second deal I did, we couldn't pay back. The private lender has full amount plus interest. So he let us roll that into the next deal. And just things like that. There's flexibility being second position on terms, and I'm on lengths of things. And, you know, when you're dealing with somebody that they have relationship with built with, you can talk about that when you're dealing with these bigger institutions, they're just a number on a spreadsheet to them. They don't give a, they don't give a crap if you had an issue or not.
Jesse (10m 10s): Yeah. I feel like when you're dealing with private lenders, if the deal goes sideways, God forbid there, you know, you want to work with the person, the person typically wants to work with you where it's the bank. Like you said, if you're just a number on a spreadsheet there, you know, they can be a little bit more aggressive and saying, yeah, sorry, like this, we're going to take this action X. That might be pretty detrimental to your investment in terms of the, the, what you described there. So the 20% down from a private lender and then the balance from say an institutional lenders. So that to me is a very similar or very common for a short-term kind of, you're basically trying to stabilize an asset or you could potentially be flipping it.
How do you look at the capital structure when you're dealing with more of a longer term, hold on your real estate.
Sam (10m 54s): So everything, and we've done this a few times now, so I own six, six apartment complexes, and I've done this on three of them and three of them in the process of doing this. So like, what I've done in the past is for one of my second apartment complex, I bought it. No, nothing big. I haven't done any huge deals yet. This was a 32 unit. So what we ended up doing was we bought it for 1.1 million. So we've got 20% down from our private lender. So he lend us 20% down, which I guess is 220 grand. We got an $880,000 mortgage from the bank.
So it was worth a little bit more than that when he bought it. So there's equity built in, but we improve the building over the next couple of years. You know, we increased cashflow by raising rent. We use some of that to fix up the property and we, you know, got efficient with the expenses and managing and just took care of everything and just kind of turn the building. Wasn't a nightmare, but we turned it around relatively quickly and just two years. And we were paying the private lender a little bit out of cashflow. And then two years later, it appraised for 1.5 million. So we took some equity out.
We refinanced at 80% and paid him back as two 20 plus interest. And now we own it and we own it. Long-term and, you know, we have a one point had a one point, you know, one, something million dollar note on it. It was worth 1.5. And then two years later, which was last year, just the price for 2 million. So it just kind of shows you that you, you get one of these assets and you can force the value in force appreciation by being efficient and raising rents. You can create so much equity so fast that you can do these short term. I call them short term burst deals in two or three years.
You can, you can reposition an asset and create enough equity and value by you controlling the asset properly to get enough to pay him back plus interest and move on to the next one. It's just kind of a rinse and repeat thing. I haven't, you know, done the syndication route where you're raising 20% from, you know, lenders that you're going to pay back over the next, however many years or, or anything like that. But mine's a little bit more of that, you know, smaller scale. But if you do it enough, you know, like I said, I got 40 million that I own a hundred percent of you can, you can scale pretty quickly.
Jesse (12m 57s): Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's good money to be made. And both strategies might find the, like you said, almost a, like a, a variation of the burst strategy where you are buying, holding, or refinancing, renting all the RS. But if you do the syndication route, it's basically the same thing. I, the only difference would be an equity portion coming from LPs. So we, we did something very similar recently, and it is just a larger version of buying that single family house and, and doing a, doing a burst strategy with, so in terms of the, where you kind of see the market right now, obviously we're in a time right now, it's Q2 20, 22 interest rates have continued to go up.
How do you look at the risk of your deals in terms of interest rate, what you typically keep in reserve? Like how, w from a risk standpoint, how do you, how do you view your, your real estate acquisitions?
Sam (13m 51s): Yeah. Interest rates have gone up way more than I thought they would way quicker, but even, even with that, I'm not, not overly concerned. A majority of my portfolio, we have tied up at, at 10 year arms, you know, tenure. So the rate's not going to just, I guess for eight more years now, we locked them in a couple of years ago. So majority of it is eight is eight more years of our current rates. Modem is non-recourse with some government and funding, but as far as going forward with the current purchase, I'm just keeping that into account interest rates are going to be a little bit higher.
If we do a deal now, or we have a three-year arm or something that probably going to be a little bit higher, but I don't think they're going to be substantially higher. And now that my portfolio has got to a point where I'm just trying to add good assets to it, I'm not worried about, you know, they're all good deals. They all cashflow on their own, but I'm just looking at it as more of a portfolio that I'm going to have for 20 years. So a little bit of interest rates, a little bit higher on the portion of the portfolio right now, isn't extremely concerning to me. I don't love it, but also going with higher interest rates, rents more rents going up every, I think I heard the other day or read something rent's going up every year in the past, like 90 years, except 2008 or 2009, like one is the only year rent's ever not gone up.
So with increase interest rates, you also have increased expenses. We're getting more efficient in management with property, with software, with things like that. So you can offset some of that extra interest on that. You'll be paying with a higher, with a little bit higher interest rate, but you can offset that with just being smart and efficient and just scaling and not worrying about, you know, having to spend a little bit more. I feel like if your deal hinges on 50 basis points, you'd probably buy in too deep. Anyway, I understand this gone up more than that recently, but in the, in the commercial game with a small local banks who I deal with, it's it hasn't gone up.
It hasn't gone up near what the residential has. That's right. Not to get too into a, you probably know this better than I do, but the, the residential, the mortgage that people hear about this going up like crazy is based on the ten-year treasury, what, what we borrow at the small local banks that I deal with. And part of the reason it's based on the fed funds rate, and that's barely gone up. So they're kind of based on two different things. And, you know, you can take advantage of one while the other one's, you know, doing something. And so there, there's always some way to be flexible and get around it. I, I'm not thinking that you're not going to be able to invest in real estate because interest rates are too high, but that's kind of how I look at it.
W what do you think about that?
Jesse (16m 10s): Yeah, I have very similar view. I think the 50 basis points comment, I think it actually is accurate because even though rates have gone up higher, if you're doing an analysis and underwriting a deal and say, you're playing Monday morning quarterback, and you're in the deal now, and rates have gone up. If you didn't, if you didn't have some sort of sensitivity analysis that gave you a bit of a range, you don't underwrite a deal and go, okay, I can't go higher than this. You give yourself a little bit of padding. So you, yeah. Even with the padding, you might be, you might be within 75 bips or 50 BEPS.
And it, like you said, if that's going to kill your deal, then you've got bigger problems to worry about. I think the, the different approach that we're taking is just looking at things banks, when we're doing refinances or bef before LTV loan to value was a lot bigger piece of the pie. Now, debt service coverage ratio is which makes sense, right there. They're being cognizant about how much you have in cashflow. And it kind of, I think every once in a while, every five, 10 years, we need a little bit of a jolt in the real estate industry because we start getting away from the fundamentals and then we kind of need to be brought back that cashflow is, is a key aspect of what we do.
So I think, you know, provided that we don't go into a global pandemic again, which is kind of, I only laugh. It's, you know, it's not funny, but only ironic in the sense that we always say, like, you know, caveat this, as long as this doesn't happen, it will be okay. Now that we have seen something very intense, like the last two years, I think investors will be a little bit more prudent, but provided that we don't have anything crazy geopolitically going forward. I think that it's not unhealthy to have interest rates go up a little bit and values of cool off, especially in some of the major markets, you know what I didn't even ask.
What a, which market are you currently investing in right now? We're
Sam (17m 58s): St. Louis, Missouri, everything. Everything's here within an hour, hour and a half of a, of St. Louis on the Missouri side. So yeah, everything's here local in the Midwest, not the most exciting city, but it's a great city to own rental properties in and invest in is, is pretty stable. You don't get the swings. So it's, it's a good place to be.
Jesse (18m 16s): Yeah, for sure. What, switch gears a little bit here and talk about this presence on social media. It's pretty fascinating to me, especially in our space because, well, I guess any space you get all these quotation gurus online and posting random stuff, and just kind of filtering through a lot of that. I saw the content you were posting really interesting, engaging educational. You kind of go through some of the deals. We'll put a link up for listeners to check you out on Instagram. And I assume you, you know, you have a link for YouTube, but talk a little bit about that, that journey on social media as it relates to real estate.
Sam (18m 52s): Yeah. So I just started posting a little bit on Facebook about what I was doing, you know, and drummed up a pretty good amount of, you know, interest from just friends and family and people that didn't know that I was investing in real estate. They just thought I had that full, you know, my full-time job. And so that kind of started to get some traction and, you know, it didn't really think a ton of it. Then I went full-time in real estate in 2018 and was focused on growing my rental portfolio and growing, you know, the flipping company and doing all that for a good year and a half, two years and occasionally posting on social media.
And then we got those businesses to a pretty stable place being my business partner, Lucas, and kind of had the idea of you run those, keep those going. I'm going to try to, you know, get into this education space and try to educate people what you're doing, because the minimal exposure I had was just inundated with people. How did you do it? Can you teach me how to do it? How do you do it? You know, so I thought, well, let's, let's try to, you know, make a social media about it and try to maybe create some type of course or mentorship. So I just started by just giving away as much as I could for free on YouTube and then Instagram and slowly getting some traction.
And then Pope did Tik TOK and got made fun of for a while. But I posted on Tik TOK once a day for 30 days and said, I'm just going to give it a shot. And this was back in 2020 middle to end of 2020, and then that blew up and then everything else kind of just followed from there. You know, ticktack saying is it all starts on Tik TOK? And for me, it kind of did that kind of gave me the credibility to grow the other platforms. And like, what you said is what I do. I just try to post informational stuff. I don't overreact. I could have a bigger following if I was a, fearmonger not going to name any names, but the people that have had that YouTube thumbnails for five years in a row saying the world's ending and the market's going to crash, eventually they're going to be right.
But you know, those people that do that negativity and that just kind of drove me crazy. And also I knew somebody that had done three bird deals and wrote a bird book. So I was just like, come on. So anyway, so I decided to, to teach and go in a little bit more and go full-time into it. And the last I've been doing social media for about years. And as you alluded to, you've got a decent following on tic-tac YouTube and Instagram, and just trying to provide as much education as I can. It's fun. Obviously I can make money from it if people want, want me to educate them further, but regardless, it's just a good place to, you know, be creative and have fun and teach people and show them that there is another path out there that real estate can be fun.
And it's a, it's a good thing to invest in and so great way to get free eyeballs.
Jesse (21m 13s): So I don't think I connected with you on Tik TOK, but what was that 30 days like, was that just I'm going to post some deals, some, some tip, but what did that 30 days look like?
Sam (21m 22s): I just, I just was posting and at the time my Instagram was probably like 500. My YouTube was probably like a thousand, I don't know. And I just wasn't getting as much traction on them. So I thought let's hop on Tik TOK. I had somebody told me that people were talking about real estate. I thought it was just a place for people to dance and you know, what it's turned into now, craziness. But so I got on not early, but kind of early. And then I just posted once a day for 30 days. And I think my fourth video got a hundred thousand views and I was like, holy cow, it was like a 15, 22nd video. You know, it makes sense now that people can scroll and see, you know, five different people in one minute, the only platform that really allows for that.
But yeah, and then just kind of got some traction there and then other social media started to grow and then it's kind of the staple. I, I don't even, it's insane. I have 1.5 million followers on Tik TOK, and it's just like, that is like a city. And then when it does bleed over to the other platforms and now, yeah, and now that tic-tacs allowing for longer videos and things like that, I'm trying to leverage it to, to, to push people towards the other social media platforms. Cause tic Tacs fine and all, but you know, in five minutes, someone probably sees 50 different people on Tik TOK in five minutes.
They've see probably 10 people on Instagram in five minutes. You just, usually one people on YouTube and same with podcasts. So the goal is to push people to the longer form content, to warm them up and teach them more. But just taking advantage of what's out there. And it's a lot easier to make a 32nd video than an engaging 30 minute podcast. So that's, that's what I was doing for a while and still do.
Jesse (22m 53s): Yeah. And it's, you know, like we're talking right now, if we probably end up putting this on YouTube, you know, it's one thing to have this story. Some people, you know, you, I find a lot of people just like people are visual learners. I find we, we remember stories better. You have this long form aspect of, of Sam prim they'll remember certain aspects, but you know, like at some point in this conversation, we said, DSCR, you know, that's a 32nd video for tech doc or for Instagram. Right. But you can't get the, well, you can only get so much information out there in the short form. So that makes sense that you kind of capture them there, bring them over to longer form content.
So in terms of the educational stuff, what type of, what type of stuff are you putting out there? You mentioned the course that you had.
Sam (23m 34s): Yeah. So Joe, I have a, I have a mentorship currently, you know, it's a lot of different things that go and it, but basically it's everything or, you know, everything I can put into that content about creating a rental portfolio using other people's money. There's 250 videos I put in there because no one likes to sit down. No one has an hour free time, or usually they don't. So I spent about eight months making five to 10 minute clips of every single step of the way. So someone, if they got a free 10 minutes can just watch to my videos and learn a little bit or poke around and see.
So there's that, there's a closed Facebook group. There's weekly mentorship calls, group mentorship calls, and then all the resources you'll need. So it's pretty in depth and it's pretty comprehensive. You know, we just launched it about six months ago, had a little over 500 people sign up. So it's, it's not, it's it's for people that are willing to take action. We'd one of the questions is making sure that they're willing to take action. We just don't want to take people's money just to take their money. If they're willing to take action and it's a good fit for you, but it's been fun. And it's just kind of one of the trickle down effects of getting a lot of eyeballs, a certain amount of those people will want we'll happily give you money to teach them further.
You know, we're not holding a gun for anybody's dad to sign up. So it's, it's been, it's been a fun thing that I don't really push a ton. A lot of people don't even know I have it that follow me on social media. So I kind of like it that way.
Jesse (24m 50s): Yeah. I mean, it's also too, it's a reflection of, of yourself. So this idea of just, you know, signing up a million people in the short term is, you know, a lot of people do it, but if it's something that you you're trying to build and you want it to be quality, it makes sense that you want people to actually be in there engaged because unfortunately, a lot of people, you know, we've all been guilty of it, but there are a lot of people that consume a lot of great content, but never take any action with it. Whether it's a finance real estate need, it could be anything. So it's, it's definitely one of those things you want to have that action piece connected to the actual consumption of, of information.
Want to just hop back to the real estate side of things. So, one thing that we talk about with a lot of guesses, their process for acquisition now more than ever off-market deals are, seem to be the route that a lot of people are going in terms of finding properties. We'll see if that changes with the changing environment out there. What's your process when you're looking to acquire properties. And maybe you could talk about if, if it has evolved when, since you started out.
Sam (25m 54s): Yeah, it has. For sure. So at first, when I was, you know, just doing this on the side, I was, you know, buying things, certain things were on market, you know, back in 2015, 16, it was a little more common to find some of these on market deals. So that's what I did at first. And then through some local wholesalers, you know, people that were out there doing the work themselves and, and drumming up the deals and bringing them to me. And then we, you know, went full-time and have our house flipping company now. So we have five full-time buyers. That's all they do every day. They buy between 30 and 60 houses a year and they go and find the deals and drum up and talk to other wholesalers and connectors and real estate agents and lawyers and senior care facilities and all those kinds of things we buy.
We bought 252 houses last year. And I think like 165 of them were through no marketing spend all just through networking and our, and you know, going to find people. And then we also do the, do the advertising. You know, we got Facebook and AdWords and SEO and all those. So we do a mixture of, you know, you know, actual ads and then a mixture of networking for the sort of the houses. But for the apartments, that's a little bit different, you know, we've done some mailers specifically to owners, but we're, we got most of our deals. I've just been dealing with local brokers and, you know, local people that are wholesale on those deals.
And, you know, people that come across these cause you know, the commercial space is a little bit different. An agent can get something and you kind of have a pocket listing and put shell it out. They don't have to blast it to everybody like they do on the residential side. So yeah, just getting to know people and networking our last three apartments we bought from the same broker that he brought to us first because we were able to perform on one. So relationship-based, I guess is the key to what we've done. It takes time, but it takes time upfront. You'd be friendly and get to know them, offer value. Then you get a gravy train of deals coming. And yet it takes a little bit of time, but our last three deals I've been through one guy.
I mean, we'll probably buy 20 apartments from him in the next 10 years. So that's well worth it. I'm spending some time, you know, you can flood the market with advertising. That's an option, but not everybody has the money or knowledge to do that. So anybody can go network and market with people and, and, you know, come across deals that way.
Jesse (27m 56s): Yeah. And it's beneficial for him as well. Right. You have a qualified buyer and he knows that when he has that pocket listing, that you're going to be one he shows. I think it's, it's just, it's interesting to see the different approaches people take. Like for, you know, a lot of people come in with mailers. I found with our market it's, hasn't been, as we haven't had seen that much advantage or that much output from mailers, but I still call direct. I'm a broker by trade. So it's a little different in the sense that, you know, I get the free quote freebies of CoStar Altice, a bunch of different software pieces that when I need to find a corporate search for a numbered company, it's something fairly easy for me to do.
Whereas I know, you know, for a private investor to do that, they have to scale their business fairly, fairly big, but a lot of this stuff, depending on which state or province, if you're in Canada, in terms of, you know, where you're finding information, it's a lot of this is publicly available for on the apartment side as well. So you can usually enough elbow grease and you can find a name for a person, but you're absolutely right. It's a different animal on the commercial side, but in terms of making those relationships, I think, you know, just going back to your educational aspect, I think stuff like that is, what's so valuable in education.
And one thing is, okay, you can say connect with a good broker, but there are aspects of, you know, making sure that you sound like, you know, what you're talking about and you know, do's, and don'ts when you're trying to connect with the brokerage community. And not that they're, you know, we're this, you know, just geniuses, it's just the fact that you want to be speaking our language. And there's a couple of red flags that just jump out right away. When brokers hear somebody talk that, you know, you can, you lose credibility fairly quickly, but if you do the opposite, you know, it's a, it's a list an off-market listing then I'll definitely want to get out and, you know, give to somebody that if they sound like they know what they're talking about.
Sam (29m 40s): Yeah. I agree. Hundred percent like that. The education is, is just huge. And it's obviously something I believe in it's something I practice and I pay a lot of money every single year to be in a couple of masterminds and some subscription services. But it's, you know, they say you can't buy time, but you can like time, you can buy time by being more efficient and effective. If, if you know, you took 10 years to learn how to do what you do. And you know, we're putting a lot of that in this pocket. Someone keynote can spend listened to, you know, 10 hours of your podcast and get two years worth of knowledge and information.
So they can be more efficient and effective. So whether it's free or paid. And I take part in this, in all my businesses and every aspect, I'm writing a book right now, and I got a ghost writer helping me write it, like taking other people's information. So you can be, and their knowledge and experience. So you can be more efficient and effective and kind of take that group path and have less headaches and, you know, do more in less time you are buying time. So yeah, that's huge. That goes along with the lingo that you're talking about and just general, you know, just having somebody keep you in the lanes and keep you out of the gutters is huge, hugely important.
So yeah, I fully believe in it and sell it obviously, but also take part in it. And pretty much every business I have.
Jesse (30m 51s): Yeah. Well, it's a great community be in. I find that there's a lot of like-minded people. And generally speaking for the most part, everybody is pretty encouraging when you get into this business. And I, you know, I assume it's similar for other industries, but one thing I've always loved with the real estate industry is that if you are hustling and, and you are outwardly showing that you're interested, older individuals in our industry do want to do nothing but help you. I've found that through my career is because they see a little bit of themselves in you. I want, you know, when they're 50, 60 plus, and they see a younger version of themselves kind of doing their thing.
So reaching out to those people is, is something that, you know, if you can add value, it's something that I always encourage for people to do.
Sam (31m 31s): Yeah. Don't, don't underestimate vanity. I see it all the time. They're, they're willing to help. They really are those older people, they a hundred percent want to help. They see themselves in you, but they're also like, Hey, this is what I did. Look at how cool I am and look, here's the secrets that I did. And I figured out, and look at me, I did this, you know, look up to me and it's, it's everybody has it as natural. I'm not trying to dog on anybody. I have it, you have it everybody. But if, you know, people will, some people have a little bit more banning than others, but having, you know, people, you know, be able to say, look what I did and have you be like, wow, that that's something and that's real.
And that, that goes along with people wanting to help you're right. Real estate investors are surprisingly helpful in my opinion, compared a lot of other industries.
Jesse (32m 10s): Yeah, for sure. And you're absolutely right on the vanity side, I've found that even on the podcast and it's, and again, it's not to say that in a negative way, but I get a lot more honey from people I reach out to, especially on the commercial real estate side and, and the academic side, when I said, Hey, I just read your last paper, you know, that you wrote on, you know, commercial real estate prices and their effect on X. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, read my work. Okay. Like, you know, I would test it. So yeah, definitely. That's a good aspect.
I think any, any time in life, you can kind of a tickle or a, you know, a warmup through the vanities angle or a little bit of the stroke in the ego. I think it, you know, it helps Sam. We're coming up to the end here. We've got a few questions at the end. We ask every guest. So if you're cool with that, I'll, I'll send them your way. All right. All right, Sam, what you know, talking about mentorship, what is something that you would recommend or encourage for a young person getting into our industry, whether that's, you know, investing or commercial real estate as a, as a profession, you know, even on the institutional side,
Sam (33m 19s): Just take advantage of all the free resources out there, your podcasts. Those is a ton of social media stuff. I'm on YouTube and Instagram and even Tik TOK. Now, like we kind of alluded to, but just take advantage of all the free stuff out there. You can learn so much for free if you're willing to spend a little bit of time and energy on it. So take advantage of the free stuff out there, and then that'll guide you to pay stuff if you want. But also get out and network, go to these meetups, go to meet people, go grab lunch with someone it's so much different commenting on somebody's Instagram or joining a Facebook group and chatting then getting in your car, driving, going to a meetup, meeting, other people that got in their car and drove and went to that meetup.
Those people are so much more valuable to connect with than somebody you just met online. So do the online research, but go meet people, talk to people because those people are the people that you want to know. And you, one connection probably will eventually change your life. You just gotta meet that connection. So go connect with people in person. And if you're young, like you said, man, people like to take you under their wing, especially if you're super young and just wanting to get into it in green, you don't even have to act like, you know what you're talking about. As long as they know that you're green and you don't act like, you know what you're talking about, you'd be shocked at how many people will help you.
Jesse (34m 31s): Yeah. It's almost an advantage if you act like you don't really know what you're talking about, they want to, they want to help you out. So speaking of resources, what's something, a podcast or book that you're reading right now that you could share with listeners.
Sam (34m 44s): Yeah. I just talk on that. I love listening to podcasts and listened into books and kind of getting, I usually get my active information and active knowledge and, you know, from, you know, masterminds or podcasts or YouTube like this, but my overall like mindset stuff comes from more books and things like that. A book that I just read again for the second time that I, I really, really like is a pitch. Anything, if anybody's ever read a pitch, anything's a good one. And then eat that frog,
Jesse (35m 13s): Oren Klaff right. Pitch anything,
Sam (35m 15s): And then eat it just about, you know, conversations and how you can kind of not control the other person, but you can kind of lead the conversation to where you want and lead the relationship to, to, you know, something that's beneficial for everybody. And then also eat that. Frog's a really good, simple one that I kind of liked. It's just about, if you get the, you get the hardest thing over at the beginning of the day and everything else, it's not just like, you're done with the hard thing. It's like, you got momentum, you got the energy from it. And then everything else seems easy. You get, if you wait until the end of the day, do the hard thing, you won't do it. Or you do at the end of the day.
If you do the hard thing at the beginning of the day, you get literally twice as much done. So just suck it up and do it. So that's that's I really liked that book.
Jesse (35m 52s): Yeah. We'll put links to both of those. I've, you know, I can't even, it was probably three, four years ago. I read, eat that frog and I was so confused. Cause a buddy sent it to me and I was like, what is this? I don't get the, you read the book. And you're like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. No, I mean the, the, the title, when I first saw it, I was like, what am I getting into? But yeah, it's basically getting, getting that, you know, that toughest thing out of your day and then setting yourself up for, you know, for the rest of the day, week a year. That's awesome. We'll put a couple links to those last question. We'd like to ask all of our guests just cause I'm a bit of a petrol head.
First car make and model
Sam (36m 26s): First car make a T at 1993. Stick-shift Toyota Corolla.
Jesse (36m 31s): I like how you say stick, stick, shift. I listened to this econ talk one of my favorite podcasts and they call it a, a millennial security device.
Sam (36m 39s): Yeah. I've heard that too. That that's true. That's true. That a lot of, not a lot of people can, can find those these days.
Jesse (36m 46s): Awesome. We'll say for those that want to reach out, we alluded to it throughout the whole podcast, but working the working, they get to you. What's your handle for Instagram? Tik TOK or YouTube.
Sam (36m 57s): Yeah, they're all. It's all the same. It's same faster freedom. So my name and then faster freedom is my brand. So same fastest freedom on Tik TOK, YouTube, Instagram, check out the stuff. If you like it, shoot me a follower and shoot me a message on Instagram. I, I try to get to as many as I can and I'll usually get to them within a day or two if I don't get them right away. So shoot me a message. If you have any questions, I'd love to help you out.
Jesse (37m 17s): My guest today has been Sam prim Sam, thanks for being part of working capital.
Sam (37m 21s): Thank you. I appreciate being on.
Jesse (37m 30s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one. Take care.