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.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: We touch each day.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: 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. Today we're talking with real estate entrepreneurs Anderson Orweila and Nick Johnston. What started as a mentorship has evolved into a partnership. They explain how the two pillars of trust and transparency helped them build a solid foundation for their business relationship that started as a friendship, then became a series of joint ventures, and is now a thriving company.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Hey, and welcome to trust this, today's episode. I have Nick Johnston and Anderson, or Whela with me, and we're going to discuss partnerships for the most part. But before we get into partnerships, because these two guys have a great partnership, a business partnership that's lasted longer than most that I've worked with over the years. But before we get into that, I want to ask Anderson and Nick Anderson, let's start with you. What was your journey? How did you get where you are today? Where did you start, and where are you today in your business life?
[00:01:35] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. So it's a broad question. I'll try to shorten it.
So I'll give you the most precise answer I can. But I started, like other entrepreneurs, they want to create something for themselves, something where they're not constrained by a boss or a schedule.
I quickly found out that you actually end up working more, but having the flexibility and time is huge. And I think that's what I was looking for. That's what everybody's looking for. So my goal from the beginning was really to just build a rental portfolio.
I did well with that. I started flipping a little bit of wholesaling to get to that point where you're building capital and you can acquire the rentals. And I was coastal along pretty good.
I thought I was going to semi retire until Nick came into the picture.
And when I met Nick, I was at a point where I could kind of know, maybe dive into other ventures or start looking into other things.
But he just came in, and he came with the energy, and he came with the qualities that you need an entrepreneur and a good partnership to make it work, and we double our business very quickly. And from there, it just became a good partnership.
I don't know if that's precise enough, but let me know if you have any questions.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: No. What about you, Nick? How did you end up where you are now?
[00:03:26] Speaker D: So kind of a funny story, but I was working at still do, actually, I still work at my sales company. And my aunt was asking was, you know, talking about some success I've had, and she said, well, what do you plan on doing and what's your long term goal? And the only thing I could come up with, and this was early in my just want to buy a boat. I want to buy a boat. I want to go fishing with my dad. And she said, you should read this book. It's called rich dad, poor dad. And she said, well, instead of buying a boat now, if you do follow what's in this book, you could buy a bigger boat later. So in your early 20s, you're like, oh, I'd like to buy a bigger boat. And I read it, and a lot of reflection, but I kind of figured that my purpose, what I truly love, is real estate. And so I dove into a bunch of books, really tried to get into real one, kind of got connected with Anderson through a mutual friend, and hit it off with Anderson. And I said, look, I want to get into know full fledged.
I really don't know what I'm doing, but I'm willing to just work for free just so I can get the knowledge and experience.
And Anderson took me under as kind of a mentor. And funny enough, we actually timed it perfect because we got together in 2019, started buying properties in 2020, and the rest is history.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: So how has that been? So you came in as a mentor mentee relationship. Has it changed over the past four years?
[00:05:30] Speaker C: What would you say, Nick? I don't think it's changed. I think there's also the relationship has grown to where we can feed ideas and we can go back and forth, negotiate our things and what we're trying to do back and forth.
But there's always something that's being brought to the table from Nick. There's things that I bring to him, and it's kind of a mutual thing that goes back and forth.
What would you say?
[00:06:08] Speaker D: It's changed and it hasn't changed. It hasn't changed in the sense of there's still a lot that Anderson knows, that he's got some more years, some more wisdom that I lean on and pick his brain on, but it has changed in a sense we, we kind of a little more mutual, you know, bounce stuff back and forth and try and come to an agreement.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: I think that our goals, what happens, Joe, is I think we're in agreement. And part of the reason I think, and I've had this conversation with Nick, is the reason our partnership continues to work and evolve is because we kind of agree on, hey, where do we need to be? How do we need to navigate this market?
And you know that when you have turmoil and you have all kinds of different thoughts and opinions from everybody, it's kind of hard to navigate those waters.
So we try to just go back to basics and try to keep a mutual agreement and let some room for flexibility on where we need to adjust, instead of saying, hey, this is what we agreed, this is what we're sticking to, and there's no deviation from there. So I think just that alone has basically been conductive for the partnership to grow has been conducive, I should say, for the partnership to continue to grow in different areas.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Now, how did you guys structure your partnership? Did you guys set up an LLC? I mean, I know the answer, but did you set up an LLC? Did you do a general partnership? Did you just sort of wing it? How did you come into this?
[00:08:08] Speaker C: We first winged it at the beginning. Okay.
Because I had worked with partners, and like you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, it's not easy to work with partners.
I think we live in a very business minded world, and we have certain expectations of people, of our partners, and when they're not being met, then it's very easy to just, everything would just start crumbling down. So I was very hesitant to work with anybody, with any partners. I mean, I had come out of some not so good partnerships, so I was hesitant, but I was lost my train of thought there for a second.
[00:08:57] Speaker D: Our first deal we did was Anderson. It was actually kind of a flip, but it was a whole tail, and so we closed on it. And I believe your LLC and then my personal name, and then it led to, okay, maybe I should start an LLC. And so we would split things up, I guess, like a joint venture, 50 50 with each other's llcs. And then it morphed into, let's just do a full time, 50 50 LLC partnership.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah, we definitely did not wanted a long commitment, so we started just doing joint ventures, which led to the partnership later in our partnership that you helped us open. And that's the one we're operating under now, mainly.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: Yeah, you took the path that a lot of, I think works out best for partners is, okay, let's just do one or two deals together and see how we work well together. And then after that, it's like, okay, well, let's just do a joint venture for this project and joint venture. As I've told you guys in the past, it's a loose confederation. You're still individuals, but you're coming together for this one or two projects just to develop them. And it's a little more formalized because there is a written agreement, usually. And then after that, if you see that's going and you go, hey, we're working really well together all the time, so let's just go ahead and form a full blown LLC where we put our two organizations together and formalize all of that around an Anderson, I know you'd had some problems in the past. Had you done the same thing in the past, or had you just sort of winged it all the way through?
[00:10:57] Speaker C: No.
When you're first getting started, there is a certain enthusiasm, and you just want to go.
I think it started as a joint venture, but then it was being dragged into a quasi partnership, and it was just getting weird, and we didn't know.
How do you split this?
If I'm not happy, how do I get out? What's fair? And those are the things that you don't take into account at the beginning, because you're just first starting out, so things don't turn out to be fair for either parties, really.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Do you find that one of you is more what I call the visionary? You're more focused on the strategy and the vision, whereas one of you is more focused on the details and the day to day operations, which we would call an integrator. Do you find that, or are you guys both sort of equally serving in those functions?
[00:12:07] Speaker D: I think we go back and forth on both sides.
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good question, and I think you're right, Nick, because maybe I do handle a lot of contractors, a lot of the rehab, so I'm very detailed with that type of stuff.
But I have the vision of, hey, how things need to look at how things need to be, how we should invest.
I'm good at knowing how to allocate the resources to get something done.
Nick is very good at the paperwork, the detail part of it, the stuff that I slack on.
Yeah, he's good in that area, and he's good visualizing that area and visualizing potential problems with paperwork, with insurance, some of the accounting. And then I'm more on the hands on type of type of thing.
[00:13:20] Speaker D: We go back and forth on coming up with hypothesis and kind of our philosophy on where the market is going to go. And that's where we both wear the same hat, where we visualize. Okay, where do we see the market going? Where do we know this deal, this particular property going? And we're both visionaries in that sense. And then spitball kind of come up with a good strategy.
[00:13:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Joe, one thing we started which we haven't really performed yet, but we're starting to write down what we think is going to happen in six months from now, and then revisiting what our thoughts were and see how well. And we're not trying to predict anything. We're not trying to predict the next crash or time the market perfectly because I think that's impossible. But at least get an overall sense if your judgment was right or if your judgment needs to be how you can adjust your way of thinking, adjustment to navigate smoother through the markets.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that's cool. I'd never heard anybody doing that. That's smart. I'd never thought of doing that myself, of writing down, okay, here's where I think we're going to be in six months. Now let's go back in six months and see if I was right.
A lot of people, yeah. They don't follow up on those analyses because they've been predicting the next recession for the past three years.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: Exactly.
Yeah. So it's very important to actually write it down because I've caught myself again, this is where a partnership helps when you're in communication with somebody who's also being, who's also trying to make sense of what's going on. So we go back and forth a lot on what we think. So your mind can change from like one week and I've cut myself thinking this now, and then I'll revisit the same thing two weeks later and it's off. So if you write it down, give it the six months, then revisit, and it's like, okay.
I think more wisdom comes from that than jumping on every news article that comes out or the market's got all those things that are out there.
[00:15:48] Speaker B: It's planned wisdom. I've never thought of that. That's a good idea. Planned wisdom is something that we all need to work on. I think.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: I think so too. There's so many noises out there and everybody's trying to make money in every industry. So people tell you what you want to hear at that moment. And I think as human beings I think we're very carried out by the emotional part, and we tend to gravitate to what sounds good to us at that.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Agree? I agree. Hey, Nick, since you're fresher to this than Anderson is, I want to ask you, when you first started out, what is something that you thought was really important that you needed to know that since then you've learned it really wasn't. You could have skipped it entirely.
[00:16:50] Speaker D: Um, I guess knowing.
Don't know if this really answers the question, but having every answer to every scenario possible and having everything.
Real estate is very dynamic, and so having everything meticulously thought out can really hinder yourself from doing a deal.
And then on top of that, sticking concrete to the numbers can limit how a deal is.
Know, I think Anderson really taught me this, was sometimes it's not so much about the deal itself, like getting the deal or how the numbers work as it is to how you structure the know. If you can structure the finance a certain way, then it makes sense then to everybody else that's not too familiar with it, then it may look like a bad deal. But in reality, hey, the cash flow from something like that is spectacular, and I'll do that deal all day.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that reminds me of something Greg Bond said one time when I was talking with him. He know I used to worry about price all the time, and I would let a deal go over 2000, $3,000 difference in price. And he said, now I know in the long run, it's not so much that it's more what you were saying, the structure of how long am I going to hold this and am I going to make it up anyway?
What about you, Anderson?
[00:18:33] Speaker C: No, that's a good point Nick brought up. But I think early in my career, I learned the value of our know we get so fixated on, and I think sometimes we try to be too mechanical about these deals and we try to put them on spreadsheets.
I think this is what Nick was relating to. We try to be so precise because we're trying to come up with the perfect formula, but it never works out like that. You're never able to capture the full potential of a deal when you're being so strict about these numbers. So maybe this is where my visionary part comes in, because I can say, hey, I know on paper it might not look good, but we got to take this into consideration. We got to take the appreciation that's going to happen in this area. So you got to take into account some of the unknowns and take them up for consideration in your formula, and that's very hard. Not in your formula, but when you're trying to come up with value, if you try to frame that into a formula, it's never going to work, you're never going to be able to account for everything. So being in sync with the market and being, just knowing what's happening, and again, what resources you have at hand, I think it gives a better feel, it gives you more value. You can pull the value out of an.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Okay, cool.
Anderson, what is something that you do in your daily routine now that you didn't do before that you find is very important for you in your daily routine?
[00:20:37] Speaker C: Joe, I think we lost you there for a second, but I think you asked.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just asking you what is something in your daily routine that you do that you didn't do before that you find is very important and helps you get more impact out of your day?
[00:20:59] Speaker C: I start out with a quiet hour in the morning.
Quiet hour, just a very structured routine in the morning.
Waking up at the same time. I don't think the time matters when you wake up, even though I do like waking up before the sun comes out. But I think a very structured at least routine in the morning is very important to at least get going, because when you get into the field, you're going to encounter chaos.
Dealing with contractors and dealing with things being built, there's just a lot of chaos. So that helps me a lot. That helps me a lot, I would say. And then try to stick to an hour where you completely at night, where you actually disconnect from work and try to really shift your mind into something different.
But that structured time in the morning, it's important for me.
Yeah, I don't do any crazy meditations or anything. That's nothing crazy like that. I do pray, but then that's part of that morning routine.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: What about you, Nick? What's something that you do every day that without it you wouldn't be right? That day?
[00:22:37] Speaker D: I started out middle school, high school, I was a swimmer, and so we would wake up 430 every day and swim, be at the pool at five. And so I feel like I'm a Dalmatian with too much energy if I don't wake up and first work out, do something for an hour.
So I still get up at 425 every day, work out.
But something similar to what Anderson said that I've incorporated over the past couple of years is a little bit, I mean, it's meditation, but it's meditation. Quiet hour, carve out.
I started to carve out 2030 minutes every morning. For me to just sit there in silence and reflect can help prepare yourself for when stuff comes at you throughout the day. Gives you that little extra time period to take it all in and think of a better response than to just be intuitive, fast response. And so that's incorporating meditation for me has been big, interesting.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: I've been hearing a lot more about that over the past three years. It's meditation. People have started pushing that or enlightening, revealing that as a part of their daily routine to help them center themselves and prepare for the day.
I think that is apparently and truly very important for a lot of people to make that part of their routine to get through their day.
[00:24:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: What's something that you did five years ago that you got a lot of pushback on, or maybe you just did in your past, anytime in your past that you got a lot of pushback on, but you kept doing it, and now it's turned out to be right or turned out to be wrong for you.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Something that's big that I can actually reflect back. Now, since I've been in the business for a long time, I knew a lot of people in the industry that were doing the flips or they were trying to rehab their rentals, and some of these guys were very quick and very efficient at it. And it would always take me longer to do a rehab or do something, but it was because I was doing things the correct way.
What I think and what other contractors taught me that was the correct way.
So there was always this debate of like, well, you're still doing this, and we're done with this flip, and we're getting ready to move on, especially in the rental. In the rentals.
But it turns out that by paying attention to detail and doing things right the first time, you don't have to go back and fix them. So essentially, every rental that I rehab, it's almost like a new house by a new house. I don't mean like, I took it down to the studs and I just rebuild this thing. It's like, no, I didn't take any shortcuts, so I did it right, and I'm not having to go back and fix this thing. So it's something that you don't know.
People with more experience could be telling you like, hey, you're burning time here. You're burning time. Time is money. But at the end of the day, I'm happy that I did it that way because I'm not having to go back. Like some of the people that I know that are constantly having to go back, or, hey, they're tired of that house, that it's always giving them a problem, and now they want to sell.
I've had something particular happen as well.
And this was my mentality from the beginning. It's like, hey, when I rehab. And the reason why I like single family homes, we have some multifamily stuff, too. But the reason I like the single family stuff is that they're liquid.
You can treat them as separate assets or separate. What would be a good word? If you need liquidity? I don't have to sell my building. I can just sell one house. Okay. So I've had a scenario where I needed liquidity or I needed a better deal came through.
All I had to do was just non renew the lease for the people, paint the house, and the house was fixed. It was already done. That work that I put in three years before it paid off quick, you put the time up front so that you don't have the headaches later on.
[00:27:47] Speaker D: Well, funny enough, too, all that work has actually helped us from an insurance standpoint.
[00:27:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point, Nick. So there's a lot of stuff, Joe, where a lot of investors are struggling because they didn't do the roof that they needed to do back then, and now they're getting squeezed on the margins, on the profits, and it's getting tough. It's getting tough for them.
So that's been nice, too. Even with all this insurance stuff, we've been able to keep the stuff that had been rehabbed with pretty much no issues and still keep a decent premium.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Cool. Yeah.
So your model is buy, rehab, or remodel and rent. You stop there and then refinance, if needed, to pull out some cash.
That's your model, correct?
[00:28:48] Speaker C: Yes.
I'm doing the whole burr brr. But I was doing that before that even became popular.
Not that I knew that was the thing to do or that that was a strategy in real estate, but it just seemed like it was the most common sense thing to do. So from the beginning, from my first rental almost ten years ago, that's pretty much what I did.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Nick, what's something that you had learned that you had to unlearn throughout this process?
[00:29:31] Speaker D: It's a good question.
I guess the biggest one would be when you first start out, you have that entrepreneurial mindset. And so you're thinking, I have to do everything.
Certain times, yes. You do wear many different hats. You do need to get involved, especially learn something and outsource it. But I see there's a guy next to one of our properties where he's out there every single day doing all the work himself, and it takes him three, four, five months to turn a unit around. And when you first start out, you think, I need to be the contractor. I need to do everything. And quickly unlearned that, to grow, to scale, to have financial freedom, your time back. It's build a relationship, learn to work with other people and work with a team to accomplish whatever your goal is ten times quicker.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: I'm hearing that that's a common theme I'm hearing in these podcasts. It's who, not how.
Who do I get to take care of these things, not how do I do it myself if I really want to grow and scale.
And that's a common theme that I'm hearing from a lot of entrepreneurs as we do these. It's been interesting to figure that.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: Oh, sorry, Joe, go ahead.
Wait, no, I was just going to say we've been spending a lot of time and money and energy in team building, because I think back in the day, we had this mentality of higher and fire, and I think that worked for a while when you had so many contractors out there. But in today's economy, where your workforce just feels like it's contracted and limited on every corner, it's like we've been having to take some of the guys that we've had, or some of the contractors or vendors and just start shaping them slowly into what we need them to be. So being more patient with them, spending more time creating systems, mainly systems and checklist of, hey, this is how we want things done. This is how they need to be done.
So just being a good babysitter, I guess, for a grown up babysitter, but it's worked out. It's worked out because they stuck with us.
It's helped us to scale the business in the partnership. Really.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: How many properties do you guys have now? How many did you start with and how many do you have now?
[00:32:43] Speaker C: I started with one. I mean, with really no properties.
I think altogether we have around 40 doors. 42. I don't know. Nick, did you ever do the math at one day?
[00:32:58] Speaker D: I know between us we have 19 units. And then I think combined of all others, between what you and I have as involvement, we're up to about 40 units.
[00:33:14] Speaker C: Yeah, right around 40 doors. And there's a mix of mostly single family homes. Mostly single family homes. But we do have several triplexes now and duplexes.
Yeah.
[00:33:34] Speaker B: So how do you guys handle your tenants? Do you handle that in house, or do you use management companies for that?
[00:33:43] Speaker D: You asked us at just the right time.
[00:33:48] Speaker C: I think just like everything, Joe, we had a good property manager, and I think that things just. They also grew. They also grew very fast.
I think sometimes we can be too ambitious about our goals, and what happens is that you might grow to a certain extent, but then your quality might start to sacrifice other things. So it's always like, you got to know which battles to pick and choose.
Recently, we had to choose the battle of taking some of those properties back, and it was a combination of many things.
It was a combination of several things. So we're trying to in house that now we do have some help to manage that part, and we have some processes already in place that we were trying to implement to facilitate that switch.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Okay, well, since our mission is to help, to help people aspire to a better life. And Nick was speaking about his aunt, who got him to read rich dad, poor dad, who is someone who has helped you guys aspire to a better life.
Anderson?
[00:35:23] Speaker C: I think, joe, I've given this question a lot of thought, because there hasn't been one particular person that really said, I never had a moment where things click in or what this person said and made me do it, but I just knew that I wanted flexibility and time, that I wanted to build something for myself.
So there was a lot of people in the way.
If I want to talk about individual people, it probably was.
Somebody that helped me at the beginning was actually a realtor, a friend of mine. He was a realtor, not even an investor.
So me watching him kind of gave me the confidence that, hey, if he can do it, I can do.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: It.
[00:36:32] Speaker C: Yeah. And then just reading, there's a lot of material out there to read that can kind of help you and shape you into just being successful in the business.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: What's one of the best books that you've read that you really think everybody should read?
[00:36:54] Speaker C: Probably rich dad, poor dad.
I know everybody talks about it. I know it's kind of even cliche to even talk about it because everybody knows it. But I think people know the book. I just don't know if they actually read it and apply what's in the book.
But you can ask anybody. I mean, you can ask your neighbor, and they know about the book, but do they actually apply what's being there? I think what the book does is there's that mentality in the money that needs to be switched that it doesn't click with everybody. I've also discovered there's just personalities out there that don't.
They're not interested. They just want the regular job, and that's okay.
That's an important book for me.
[00:37:55] Speaker D: Yeah. Anybody that is yelling at a cashier at Home Depot needs to yell how to win friends and influence people.
Everybody in society should read that book, but particularly those people.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: Yeah, but there's a lot of good books out there. They don't have to nowadays. There's a lot of coaching and a lot of stuff out there.
I actually feel that it's better to start with the simplest books, the books that can actually kind of shape your mind, not the ten steps how to do this or your next step to your next million dollars.
Start with the simple books. The richest man in Babylon. That's a simple, easy book to read. It's entertainment, and it's entertaining, and it's got good financial.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: Oh, that's a good one. Okay, I heard of that one. Richest man in Babylon. That's a new one for me.
What have you been reading?
[00:39:10] Speaker D: I'm actually.
I'm a little drier. So Joe and I were talking that I was an economics major, and so my fiance always makes fun of me for reading Ray Dalio's books and any kind of economic book.
One I actually just finished, it was Twilight in the desert, and it talked about the saudi oil fields and the economics of processing and extracting oil. So thought it was an interesting book.
And then Robert Green, I think Robert Green's got a lot of good books.
He talks about, what is it like, the 51 laws of human nature?
And I wouldn't take his books too seriously, but at its core, I think he does a very good job of articulating human emotions, human intuition, and bringing that to shining that to light. And people take that for kind of an improvement book. And we all have flaws. And how to pay attention to some of your short, just human nature, overall human shortcomings, how you can pay attention and just make better decisions throughout your day.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: Cool. Well, I want to thank you guys for coming. I can tell you just confirmed my belief that you're a good partnership that works well together. I know that you papered it up, you got it right in the beginning. But I can tell you complement each other with your different skill sets and your different backgrounds. And I think that's very important for a good partnership to not just survive, but thrive.
And I also sense that there's a lot of trust between the two of you, which I think is also a foundation that a good partnership has to have that you just trust each other. So I want to congratulate you guys number one on where you've been. And I encourage you. Just keep going. It sounds like you guys are definitely on the road to scaling up and just getting better every day. And I'm really happy for you. I'm so happy. I remember the early days and I'm so happy for where you are now.
But again, thank you guys for coming on today. And we'll put your contact information down in the show notes. So if anyone needs to get in contact with you, just be prepared. You may be getting some emails or phone calls from some people.
[00:41:50] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: Again, thank you guys for coming on. And with that, we're out.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this edition of trust this.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: If you got something out of it.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: 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.
