Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I'm Joe Siegel, founder and CEO of Aspire Legal Solutions, and Myland Trustee, the largest and fastest growing land trust company in Florida. Our passion is helping people aspire to a better life. One of the many ways we do that is by helping them remain anonymous when it comes to their real estate holdings as they build their wealth. But it also extends to everyone else we touch each day. We're fortunate to work with some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country who share our mission of aspiring to a better life. And we hope others will benefit from hearing their journeys, tips, strategies, and tactics to get there.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: We ended up doing 910, 30 ones in 2022. We call it our real life monopoly year because we basically took four green houses and bought red hotels. It's been tremendous. It's been life changing.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Greg Bond is a successful commercial real estate investor and property management guru. He started out in his family's map making business, but when technology made paper maps obsolete, Greg learned how to educate himself on new ideas, so he's comfortable with taking risks. He started out in residential, but he's quickly shifted into industrial real estate, using 1031 exchanges and accelerated depreciation to maximize his return on investment. Hey, I'm Joe Siegel. We're here today with Greg Bond. Greg's been a friend and a client of ours for a long time, and I've also, like many of the others in the master series, I've seen Greg grow and change his business model over the years. So today I want to talk to Greg about where he was, where he is, and how he got there. So, Greg, why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, how you started out and to what you're doing now, where you are now.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Joe, like a lot of other people, started out in single family homes, right? I went to an event at, God, I can't even think of the name of it now, but it was a pre Dave Ramsey type class where live below your means, invest the difference type thing. Right? Stay out of debt.
It's called Crown ministries. And that really got me thinking about homes, because the instructor said, your home is your best investment. And while I don't necessarily totally agree with that now, it really got me thinking that if your home was your best investment back then, I was thinking, why isn't two homes or three homes or five homes or ten homes even a better investment? So Jane and I, when we first got married, decided that we were going to live well under our means. We were going to live on my income and bank her income for investment. Purposes, but we had no idea what to invest.
You know, growing up in both similar situations, lower class homes with parents that didn't have much extra capital to invest, they didn't never invested themselves. They didn't know how to teach us to invest. So we came up with this crazy idea of buying a rental house with that investment money, and one turned into two, turned into five, turned into ten, turned into 20. And before, you know, we've got quite a portfolio in single family homes. That was back in the. Turned out to be one of the best decisions we've ever made, because those houses have just propelled us forward. My initial thinking was that I just hold those. I think we ended up with about 30 by 2001. And those 30 homes, I thought, well, if I can manage them and keep them full until we retire, 30 rental homes will throw off a really nice retirement income. And so that was the whole goal, was just to keep those houses rented and throwing off cash until we retire. And then once the mortgages are paid off, they throw even off more cash, and that's what provides for the retirement. So that's really what got us going at that point. I was in the mapping business, so my father had started a map business in 1976. Paper based maps, where we drafted maps, published maps, and distributed maps. The paper based maps, we were one of the major suppliers to AAA, and then we did use the data to make wall maps and street atlases and all sorts of other products, paper based. And that kind of blew up in 2008, which then I jumped into real estate full time at that point. What a time to jump into real estate.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah, 2008, for those who don't remember, that was really the start of the great Recession. And in Florida, it lasted until at least 2012. 2012 is when we finally started seeing properties come back. So how did you survive through the great recession there?
[00:04:47] Speaker B: We actually thrived. Jane's an attorney, so she does mortgage foreclosure, so her practice was going crazy during that time. She couldn't hire attorneys quick enough. So as fast as she was making cash, our 30 rental homes really initially were really a huge anchor around our neck because tenants couldn't pay. Both husband and wife lose their jobs, now they can't pay their rent, now they stay in the house, now we have to evict them. Then they damage the house on the way out, pissed off at the world, and it was quite a time just trying to kind of get our hands all around that and stay solvent. Luckily, we were able to do that. We didn't lose anything, didn't go bankrupt and pulled out of it. But in 2008, when I jumped in full time, I didn't realize what had really gone on in the housing market, Joe. And so I was trying to figure out what I was going to do full time after the map business collapsed. And one of my friends said, well, why don't you jump into the real estate business? You've been doing that kind of part time anyway with all your rental houses? And I said, no, I don't want to do that. And they said, no, you should really check it out. And they told me to go to an auction.
It was with Williams and Williams. And I went to this auction and I had just planned to observe. And I get to the auction and it's one of these ones where they have it at the house, and there's a speaker in the middle of the yard and there's an auctioneer there. And they start auctioning off the house, 2020, and they auction off the house. And I was amazed. I'm watching this. They were auctioning off two houses, one of them in Sanford, one of them in Deltona, and they finished the one in Sanford and started the one in Deltona. And the auctioneer started and nobody bid. There was eleven guys, eleven people on the lawn with little paddle, and nobody put up their paddle to bid. Even a minimum bid, $10,000. This was a little mackle home up in Deltona. Double lot, fenced yard, just been painted, new appliances. Nobody bid on it. And so the auctioneer actually stopped the process and said, is anybody interested? And I kind of looked around and I said, I raised my hand. I said, yeah, I'm interested. He goes, where's your paddle? Did you not register for the auction? I said, didn't know I needed to. He goes, so somebody grabbed me and took me to the side and got me registered. And he was a lot older than me. He said, son, I've been doing this for a long time. He said, I've never seen any of the lenders accept a minimum bid, which is $10,000, which is what you can bid. He said, I've never seen them accept that, but I have seen them accept bids of 15,000 and over. So what would you like to bid on this property?
And I said, well, I'd really like to call my wife. So I called Jean and said, jean, I'm going to buy a house, another house. And she said, what?
I said, honey, it's $15,000. And she said, did you say 55? I said, no, 15, one, five. She said, we'll buy it. And that's the first house I bought in our self directed Roth Ira and paid $15,000 for it. And it was just crazy. So I followed around the auction circuit for probably a year or so until it went online, and then it just went crazy and people were bidding stupid prices. So that didn't work anymore. So then I started going to the courthouse steps and all sorts of other sources to source properties, to buy properties. And, yeah, it was quite the time. It was fun. It was something different every day, and I absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed it.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah, at some point, you got out of residential and into commercial. So tell us about that transition, how you did that and why.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Yeah, well, in 2008, as I progressed through, I started selling Properties turnkey. So I'd buy the property, rehab the property, put a tenant in the property and sell that property to investors.
As that process continued, I had one of the investors that I sold the property to, and he turned around six months later and sold it for a 40 profit. And I said, wait a minute, I'm trying to set it up for investors. And now I have an investor that turned my property in six months and made an extra 40 grand that I really left on the table. So I said, no, I'm going to start flipping to owner occupants. So we basically geared up, started doing basically the same process except selling to owner occupants. And that process lasted from maybe 217, 18 through 2021. And then it got so competitive, Joe, that we did, I think we did 40 to 50 properties in 2021 and got to the end of the year, and we made under $100,000. And I said, we've made way, taken too much effort, too much time, spent too much money making just isn't worth it. So we said, let's shut the thing down. And right at the end of 2021, I'd taken one of my commercial properties and exchanged it out through a 1031 exchange. And as I really got analyzing that 1031 exchange, I went, oh, my goodness, I've been missing it.
And so a lot of our houses that we had purchased during 2008 to 2012, because we were holding some as well, as many as we could, as many as our cash flow allowed. But a lot of the properties from the 90s were paying off, right? So you see that huge amount of appreciation. So when I started really analyzing that and looking at my return on equity, I went, oh, my gosh, I've missed the mark. I should have been turning these properties quicker. I've always looked at my return on investment. Well, in that time frame, 2008 to 2012, people are buying houses for 40, 50,000, $60,000. So extremely low prices, and all of a sudden they appreciate to, in 2021, you go, there's a huge amount of equity there. So when I started looking at my return on equity, that really became the catalyst for me to say, it's time to turn that property to get out of this property. Whether I jump into single family homes or double down, sell those and use it as a down payment for more properties, or whether I jump into another asset class, that was kind of the decision. And we decided to jump into industrial properties. So commercial industrial property. So we were trying to take, say, roughly four homes paid off at 250 each is about a million dollars. So if I had a million dollars in equity, when I really started to analyze it, I said, if I don't have a mortgage on these homes and see I'm renting them out at $1,500 a month, I'm roughly generating and keeping in my pocket about 750 a month. After all my taxes, insurance and maintenance and property management fees and all the fees that go, the vacancy, everything that goes along with it. So I said, four houses at 750 apiece is $3,000 a month. $3,000 a month times twelve months is $36,000 a year. $36,000 a year, based on a million dollars in equity is only a 3.6% return.
I went, yeah, I don't like that return. That's not good enough. I want it to be at least above five, if not seven to 10% return. So I go, how do I relverage and jump into another asset class? And so we basically sold through the 1031 exchange. And for your listeners who don't know what a 1031 exchange is, it's part of the IRS tax code 1031. And basically you exchange one investment property for any other type of investment property. So going to be raw land to other raw land. Raw land to investment homes. Investment homes to raw land. Anything as long as it's investment to investment. So we went to the bank, said, Mr. Banker, I've got a million dollars in equity setting here. How much will you lend me if I buy another property? And they said, greg, we'll loan you 75% loan to value. Well, it's not quite that simple, right? Where's your personal financial statement? Where's all your tax returns? The typical stuff that a bank is going to do, they look at it and say, great, we'll loan you 75% loan to value. So if you got a million dollars, we'll loan you three we basically then take that million dollars, knowing that we've got a loan from the bank for 3 million. We go find a roughly $4 million commercial property, buy that commercial property, and now that commercial property throws off anywhere between, let's say, 10,000 a month.
So now I'm making. Instead of 36,000 a year, I'm making someplace between 120 and 150,000 a year. I go, wait a minute. This is good. I like this. Now, granted, I had to sign on a $3 million and get my wife to sign on a $3 million loan, which is sometimes the harder part, but it really propelled us kind of, to that next level. And it's not something that I really anticipated or planned for. It's just something I think, know as you're kind of in the midst of it and you're looking at what's the next step, what do I, you know, how do I move myself forward? It was just something that kind of happened. And now I get looking at it, Joe, and I go, wow. So the power of the 1031, by not having to pay the tax. So I had those rental homes from the 90s, so some of I had owned 25 years.
A lot of them I had paid off. So maybe some of my dune longer than that because they were all on 30 year fixed rate mortgages. But to look at that and go, wow, I took depreciation on those homes for all that time. Right? I enjoyed the cash flow off those homes all that time. Intrinsically, I was like, this is good. I understand the business. I don't want to move into something new because there's risk there. But I go, if I don't move and take that next step, I'm never going to learn, I'm never going to grow. And so it was really a great thing for us. We ended up doing 910, 30 ones in 2022. We call it our real life monopoly year because we basically took four green houses and bought red hotels. And, yeah, it's been tremendous. It's been life changing, even from the aspect of most of the commercial buildings have, especially on the industrial side, have at least five year leases, and most of them are all triple net leases. So triple net lease, the tenant is paying the taxes, the insurance, and the maintenance. So you trade these houses that you're constantly, maybe not every year, but every other year or every third year, maybe churning a tenant through, and then you got to repair them and fix them up and do whatever needs to be done, and you're managing them, and the AC goes out, and it needs a new roof, and it needs paint, and it needs this and it needs that. And trading all of that for one property that basically you do very little on, you're responsible for the roof, and that's about it. So on top of just that process in and of itself, then we looked at it and said, my goodness, now we've got this $4 million building. We can do a cost segregation study and push a substantial sum of that depreciation forward.
So now I don't pay any tax on the income that I'm receiving. On top of it, I'm a broker, so I receive a commission because I represent myself in the purchase of that property. Commission of two and a half or 3% on a $4 million building that's someplace between 100 and 120,000. Well, all that income is sheltered as well through this cost segregation. So the steps that we went through are pretty easy and simple. And it was just kind of figuring out that next step, which I think should be easy for a lot of single family home investors. But it's just the risk, right, that they're going to have to jump out and sign their name on a substantial loan.
I wish I could get the message out to more people that it's relatively easy. In fact, I'd love to manage their commercial property form. Right. That's my other business is a property management business. So I took a lot of the investors that I had purchased homes for, and I was managing their properties, and I said, here's what we just did. And so we've only helped one individual that's jumped in now, and he's now purchasing his third commercial building, and we're managing all those for him. But we helped him find them, right. And helped him get them the financing set up, because we kind of know the steps now. And it's been a pretty simple process. So I hope to help a lot more people kind of make that transition, and it's been wonderful. And then, Joe, you look at kind of the next step from there, right, because you're always looking, where's the next step? Where do you go? And I'm looking at the 1031. I'm going, oh, my gosh, if I buy the right property and let's say in three to five years, I say, okay, I've improved that property. I've somehow created value in that property, and I've created another, let's say, million dollars in equity. So I went into it with a million dollars, and then by principal pay down and appreciation and improving the value of the property, because a commercial property is based on a cap rate that's sale side. And so I'm able to generate another million dollars. I sell that property and I 1031 it again.
And now you go through the same process and you say, Mr. Banker, I've just sold my commercial building. I now have $2 million in equity. How much will you loan me? Oh, Greg. Yeah, we like you. You've made all your payments. This is a wonderful thing. We'll now loan you $6 million. I go, wow, there's six and my two. Now I can buy an $8 million building. What type of cash flow does an $8 million building throw off? Well, now it's going to throw off 20, 20,000 to 25,000. And what type of commission do you get on an $8 million building right now? What type of cost segregation study is done on an $8 million building? Now you just do the process all again so you can replicate this every, depending on the economy and where things are going and what interest rates are at and how things are flowing, you could replicate this product or this process every three to five years. So it's just like, wow, where do you get, and so I looked at it and said, how many 1031 iterations do I have left in my life or in my mind? Which is going to run out first, my life or my mind? Hopefully it's my life.
I'd like to think that my mind will remain good, well into my eighty s or hopefully ninety s or with Technology, who knows at this point. But yeah, it's been a drastic change in what we were doing, and I've loved it every step of the way. It's just been phenomenal.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Well, you make it sound easy and simple, but you're throwing out terms.
I'm hearing two things there, education and risk. Comfort.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: To me, and this is what a lot of people are going to ask is, where did you learn, because you're throwing out terms like roI, return on equity, triple net, 1031. You're throwing out terms that sound like greek to a lot of folks who are in real estate.
Where did you learn how to do your analysis of a building, of a lease before you buy it, and how you're going to know that, well, this is going to make the money or it's not. And how did you determine what, because there's commercial, there's shopping centers, there's office buildings, which a lot of people are staying away from. Now there is the industrial warehouse like you're talking about. How did you decide what asset class you were going to get into. How did you educate yourself? Where did you get your education about all of this?
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Books, podcasts? That's basically it.
And a lot of trial and error now, I guess, had some commercial property to begin with. So I own my own, just like you, I own my own office building. Right through the map business, we owned a big commercial warehouse or 60,000 square foot warehouse that was our distribution center that we were able to keep from the map days. I had a little bit of basic knowledge on industrial real estate because of that, and that's where I was comfortable. So that's what I jumped into.
I had already jumped in 2016. I had jumped into self storage, which I absolutely love. Self storage and assisted living, that's a whole nother story. Our assisted living is quite the story in and of itself, and we're still struggling through that one right now. But, yeah, the whole self storage thing has been wonderful. In fact, we bought three facilities, expanded one of them ended up selling them in 2020 and 21 because we just got such unbelievably, in my mind, stupid offers. I mean, offers that you just go, you're going to pay me how much? Okay, it's yours, right? Everything's for sale at a price. And they hit the price. And I said, yeah, done. Get rid of these things. I thought we could jump into other ones, but finding out, just kind of like the rehab business, it got so competitive and everybody was looking at self storage facilities that we couldn't find a whole lot of decent deals that we could add value to or create some sort of value. So we started basically entitling raw land. So we were buying five acre parcels, entitling them for self storage, and then getting ready to build. It's just kind of a progression in each asset class and kind of understanding it and becoming somewhat of an expert. I'm certainly not the expert, but I certainly know enough to hopefully to make the right decisions and make some deals with some positive cash flow.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: So how did you get comfortable then with the risk? Because going from $200,000 mortgages to million dollars of mortgages, how did you get yourself comfortable to go, okay, we can sign this, and I'm not going to have a panic attack every five minutes.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Yeah, most of these deals, Joe, that we took over at least, already had tenants in place.
So in the first deal I did in 2021, we took over a ten year lease with seven years left on the lease. So credit rated tenant, been in the property for 13 years. So they were in the second term of a. They had already finished 110 year term. They had exercised their option and were in their second ten year term. So pretty good certainty that they were going to stay, right? So I know I've got seven years of a good tenant. I look at where the value would potentially be and where my principal paydown would be at that 7th year, and go, yeah, I'm comfortable with this. And that's how most of the deals progressed, where it was three to five years left on a lease, and a lot of the buildings multitenant, where there's different leases happening and expiring at different times. So the chances that you're going to get a big empty building with no tenants is pretty remote, just because this one's expiring in 2027, this one's expiring in 2028. This one's expiring in 2029. So you got a pretty good idea of the cash flow and how things are going to go. And once you get one going, it's kind of like what I experienced with a house. You get one house going, well, this house goes vacant. Well, the profit from this house covers this one.
Should one of them go vacant? Should they both go vacant? Now you got some issues right now. You got cash flow problems, but keeping enough cash flow back has been my biggest problem.
Keeping that reserve, especially when you get into bigger type deals.
Yeah, just ask my wife. That's one of her concerns. Do we have enough cash should a big problem happen? Diversity.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Keep a number in your mind of what you just keep a number in your mind of what you always want to have in reserve, and you just hold that back at all times.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Absolutely. I think that's key when you get into the bigger deals, because I talk about our distribution center that we had, the big warehouse. And Joe, in 2008, what I experienced in the single family side was I lost 30% of my tenants. And of those 30% that I lost, probably the majority of them had to evict, and quite a large percentage did damage to the house. But I had this commercial warehouse at that point, and I had a five year lease, and so that tenant continued to pay me through 2011. So I rode that out. So the commercial side basically helps support the residential side in 2008, when everything went down, and then just the reverse happened, because in 2011, that tenant's lease came up and I had a vacant 60,000 square foot building for 18 months. So Jane and I were sweating it every month. We had about a 25 nut to cover to pay for that commercial building and pay the mortgage. And, yeah, it about squeezed us to death. But it finally leased up and luckily during 2008 through 2011, we were able to get all the residential homes back up and monetizing. And so once those came up, those helped support the commercial building until it got leased up. So it was just the reverse. The commercial subsidized the residential when the residential went down, and the residential then subsidized the commercial until the commercial got back up and going. So it was kind of a nice play and I was certainly glad I had that sort of diversification during that, during the 2008 kind of through 2000 downturn, a lot of lessons learned. A lot of, well, what does it change life look like to you? Typically I'm the age where I wake up about 05:00 a.m. Now I go to bed at nine, so I'm one of those. And so I get up and exercise.
I'm on a bible reading app where you're going through the bible on a year. So there's a certain amount of reading that I like to do there. And then I like to listen to podcasts or read a book. And that time in the morning is great for me because I'm not getting any phone calls, I'm not getting any emails, nobody's texting me, right. Most other people, I don't know if they're sleeping or what they're doing, but it's great time for me to think and kind of strategize and just get myself ready for the day. And then, Joe, I create a list.
I can get somewhere between ten and 13 things done in a day. So I just make my list. These are the most important things that I to get done in the day. And then I rank them and then I just start checking them off. Here's what I do, here's what I do, here's what I do, here's what I do, here's what I do. I get to the end of some days, right? And I got so many interruptions, I only got four done. I get to the end of some days and I've got them all checked off and it's like, great, now I can look towards the next day and what I need to get done, I've really got.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: Property managers are glad if they can get three things done in a day.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Well, sometimes it's not three, sometimes it's one. But the most I think, like I said, that I can get is probably somewhere in the ten to 13 range.
But the property management side has been tremendous for me because I manage all my own properties as well as for other investors. So I seem to attract the investor that is looking for somebody to look at this deal with an investor's mindset. And that's how I look at all my investors. It's like, okay, if this was my property, what would I do? And then I give them that advice, and most of the time, they accept that advice and we move forward. And so I love the property management. I've got a great staff that's been with me for decades.
Early on, boy, I think probably that the price really doesn't matter that much. Negotiating on price, I was so fixated on trying to get the best deal that I think I missed a lot of good deals, good solid deals, because I just had to get the best deal. And looking at it now, it really didn't matter whether I paid $3,000 more for that deal or $5,000 more, right? It almost becomes irrelevant over time.
So I think that would be my biggest takeaway, is negotiate. But don't negotiate so hard you lose the deal, because that deal may be one of the best deals that you ever find. So be willing to pay a little bit more for something, because in the long run, it's going to pay long term dividends for you.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: What's something that people can expect to struggle with along the way as they move through any kind of owning or running their own business? What are some things that they can expect that they're going to absolutely struggle with?
[00:29:45] Speaker B: My biggest things were cash flow, just with the ups and downs of the economy and where things are going and what's happening.
My biggest thing was by far, cash flow.
Second was probably employees just trying to keep good employees and motivate good employees and provide some upward mobility for those employees. And I think probably cash flow employees. They were probably the two biggest things that really affected me.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Do you think you've solved them now?
[00:30:20] Speaker B: To a large degree, yes, just through training. Not that, God forbid, we have somebody that gives their notice today. But, yeah, I think I've got some tremendous people that they know the business, they know what to do. And they'd always come to me and say, what about this? And I'd say, what do you think? What do you think? The best three things we could do with this. So it's kind of a training process to say, if you own this property, what would you do? And they'd say, they'd say, yeah, that's exactly what I would do. Do it. And so it's going through that process and getting them to the point where they know what I would do probably, maybe sometimes better than I do, Joe. And they handle it. So I got involved with a group called sharper process, and it was a system basically to manage your business. And so sharper helped us get the right people in the right seat. So they did a bunch of tests with everybody, personality tests and that sort of thing. And they said, prescriptive index. And they said, greg, this is a wonderful person. Nothing wrong with this person, but you just got them in the wrong spot. You need to put them over here. Right? And so it was that process of getting the right people in the right seats and then getting our processes down so everybody understood them and they were written. So if somebody did leave, we've got our written processes down, and then we just now have. For each business that I've got, we have an hour and a half meeting once a week. And other than that, I let everybody do their thing. They work from home. If they want to work from the office, the office is there. But guess what? Nobody works in the office. I go into the office now and it's like, yeah, there's nobody here. This is boring.
Quite frankly, I don't even know if I even need an office because everybody enjoys working from home.
I think just getting it set up and it does take a while. I mean, I spent years and years and years on the property management side doing it myself. And then software comes out and you go, oh, my gosh. It solves this, and now it's in. Technology improves this, and the software can do this and this and this and this, and now, Joe, my gosh. With AI and what's going on right now, you go, mind. The sky's the limit. I mean, it's an exciting time to be alive. It's just amazing the things that we're going to see change. And I'm so excited for you forgot what?
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's great.
It sounds like what you guys were using is the entrepreneur operating system traction by Jenna Wickman. It sounds like eos on that, which is what. Yeah, it's the same thing. We operate on a lot of our folks that are part of this master series, they use some form or fashion. My group I use, they focus on law firms, some focus on real estate, some folks on dental offices. But it is just a wonderful way, easy way to run a business.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: I just love it because they come in via Zoom, right? They're the moderator. They come in and say, okay, what are the issues everybody's got? We use some software called Asana. I don't know if you use Asana or not, but basically they're able to add stuff in. And here's all the issues we need to deal with this week. And here's the issues from last week and who's going to do what. And they basically take notes on everything. And Joe, you're responsible for this. And so next week comes up, Joe, did you get this done? I don't have to be the one to say, joe, why didn't you get this done? They're asking the question, I get to come alongside you and say, joe, obviously you didn't get it done this week. What were the problems? How can I help you solve this problem?
Rather than being the bad guy, I get to come along and be the good guy and help you accomplish what you need to accomplish to push my business forward, to push your career forward, to get you skills and do whatever else. So I really like that side of it that somebody else is keeping track on who's doing what. There's accountability. They get an email on what they're supposed to get done that week. They know they're going to be accountable the next week on what they got or didn't get done. And yeah, the whole process has just been great for, I think it would be great for any business. Just the structure of that type of environment is wonderful for a business.
[00:34:33] Speaker A: It really is.
The big thing is the accountability. And a lot of people don't understand what that means.
So for people who don't get it, I go, it's who's responsible for getting this done? And so many businesses, they'll just say, well, this needed to get done, but who was the person in charge of it? And no balls are hit to right center field and everybody going, well, I thought you were going to catch it. It's always ultimately it was you and you can't then sit back and say, well, she didn't get me what I needed or that's not an excuse. You're responsible to get it done, get it done however you have to get it done. Now, if you do have someone who's not responding to you, you don't walk into the meeting say, well, I didn't get it done because they didn't do what they were supposed to do. That should have been handled before we ever got into this meeting through whatever channels had to get handled. You need to take care of that. So yeah, we use it religiously. We use 90 IO as our system of record that keeps track of all of our issues and to do's and rocks and our accountability chart and all that good stuff, but I think as long as you just have something. I work with another group. They basically use Google Docs and Google sheets to keep track of everything.
Do you have a dashboard of key performance indicators that you look at regularly to tell you how you're doing?
[00:35:58] Speaker B: Every week? Every week, we go over those key indicators and say, where are we at? Do we have an issue? Is this trending down? Is this trending up? It was really key during COVID Are people going to pay or aren't they going to pay? So we really tracked closely, are people paying? How many people have not paid this month? How many people? Where are things trending just for our cash flow? And then, obviously, to make sure we were taking as good a care as we could of our investors or the property owners, it was key to have those metrics and know them inside and out. So, yeah, very important.
I think something else that was really key to me, Joe. I got involved in 2014 in an investors cruise. And the cruise, I think they spent three days on land and then taking all sorts of classes. It was through a group called the Real Estate Radio guys. They have a pretty popular podcast, so maybe some of your listeners have seen that. But it was great. It was called their summit cruise, and we'd go on this cruise every year. And the reason that I liked the cruise was that you get on the ship, right? And then there's classes, but they'd set up a meal every night. So you got to sit at the table with one of the speakers.
And it wasn't like you go to an event. You see the speaker on stage, the event ends. Everybody goes out the back door. The speaker is behind the stage, and they have their other door. You never get to interact or talk to them. So this I really enjoyed just because of the interaction and the ability to get some one on one time with the speakers and say, hey, here's what's going on. How would you solve this? Or what do you think about this? Or what do you think about that? One of the speakers was Robert Kiyosaki. So we got to know Robert fairly well. You know, seeing him five years in a row for a week, you spend five weeks with somebody over five years, you get to know him a little bit. But just that type of individual that I would never, ever get any facetime with or any personal time with at all. And the crews provided that, so it was tremendous. And then the type of people that attended that were just the type of people that I want to be around, they were all doing something different. They all had a different take.
They were all really competent at what they were doing. And so it was just good to share stories and hear what other people were doing.
It was really beneficial to Jane. And I went the first year without Jane, and then every year after that, we ended up taking or going together, and ended up then taking our son Nick on one, and he went twice with us, and he was impacted by that as well. So I think the educational side was really key for me.
In 2008 through probably 2014, I was just so busy doing the stuff I was doing that I didn't really pay attention. But now, looking back, I go, I wish I would have paid more attention to my education.
And probably since 2016 or 17, Joe, I've kept every little lanyard you get with your name on it. I've kept them, and they're hanging on my wall in my office. It's a thick thing now about this big around, and it comes down, but I go, you know what? I've spent a ton of money on my education. Now, that's some proof of it.
And just to be able to look at that and go, okay, how many dollars have I spent, right, plane fare, right, rental cars or ubers and the meals and the time and the effort and the notetaking and all of that, and the entrance fee, and you go, wow, I bet you I've spent a million and a half dollars on my education since 2014. And you go, wow. So in ten years, I spent over a million dollars. So I've maybe spent $100 to $150,000 a year on my education.
Right. Mastermind groups and CFRI I absolutely love.
I think it provides such a tremendous education for people just getting in and more experienced investors. That's one thing that I would highly, highly recommend is the educational side. And it's so easy now with podcast, you put this out and how many people are going to listen to it and benefit from it. So I just did another podcast yesterday, and I developed something called the idea quadrant, which is basically how to analyze a property. And you're asking how I look at them. And I use this idea quadrant to analyze property, and it gives me the income, the depreciation, the equity through the amortization schedule that I'm receiving, and then the appreciation. And it's key thing that I use for my decisions. Wow.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Well, and that seems to be a theme that's running through these as I talk to people, that surrounding yourself with the right people is very important. And those educational opportunities are usually where you are surrounding yourself with people and that's probably some of the biggest pushback I get from my crew, from friends and family. They're like, why are you spending all this money flying around and going to these things? Why are you joining this cult? They joke about that. Why are you joining this cult?
It's not. It's really just trying to better yourself. And a lot of times, you have to just turn those people off, turn that noise off in the background. Go, that's nice. I know you guys don't like this and you don't get it, but I know what I'm getting out of it, and I can see what I'm getting out of it, so I'm going to continue doing it.
One of our biggest mission is helping people aspire to a better life. And so the last question I always like to ask during these talks is, who is someone who had that impact on you to help you aspire, help your aspirations to a better life where you are today?
[00:41:59] Speaker B: Well, I think early on it was growing up, I grew up in michigan. I think it was probably our local pastor, just seeing how he treated people, and he didn't treat the bank president any different than he treated the janitor of the school. Right? And so I think I really appreciated that and learned from that.
Everybody has worth, and you need to treat everybody like you'd want to be treated. So maybe the golden rule, but I saw that played out in his life, and that had a real impact on me. And then I think sports coaches, just seeing a lot of the coaches that I had, joe, they wouldn't ask you to do anything that they wouldn't do themselves. So if you need to go out and run 5 miles, they're going to be right there with you, running the 5 miles with you, showing you that they can do it, too. I don't want to teach on anything that I haven't personally done myself. I see gurus teaching stuff that they haven't done. And until you've done it, there's a certain aspect of it that you just really don't understand. So I want to get a good grasp of it by doing it myself before I endeavor to teach it. And then the reason I want to teach it is because when I know I have to get up on a stage and teach something, I'm going to learn it much better and prepare myself, because I know people are going to ask questions that I don't know the answers to. So I better know my material inside it out, and it forces me to internalize it, and I don't know if that's just me or if a lot of other people are that way. But for me, it's very important to do it, have gone through it before I teach it, and then teaching is kind of the last step for me to internalizing and understanding it even better, because going over that material at that level, you tend to learn a lot.
Know. And then all the business, there's, there's just a ton of them that I've learned know. Eddie Wilson is one.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: The person who inspired you, your aspirations the most. It's not a business guru and it's not anything to do with necessarily business, but it's just being a good person to get goodness back. If you put goodness out there, that's great.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: Thank you so much for coming on today and being with us. I know you're up in the Ocala forest, living up there, but what you've had to give today means so much to everybody. Again, thank you very much. We're going to have your contact information down in the program notes and everything. So if anybody has any more questions for Glenn or me, feel free to reach out to us and we'll get back to you just as soon as we can. And with that, we're out today.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this edition of trust this. If you got something out of it, please press like and subscribe and give us a five star review to help us reach others who can benefit from this series. Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life. Bye.
