this is the Better Life podcast with Brandon Turner and cam Cathcart what's up man dude it's good to see you it's good to see you man so I saw something online did on Instagram inappropriate oh I don't know I haven't searched for you that way okay but uh but I saw something on your Instagram should I be worried no it was awesome you're looking you I saw you looking at a property yeah yeah yeah empty big giant empty lot yeah I'm I'm just beginning to think and this is not a I don't know if it's going to happen or not but I'm just beginning think I might want to build a house I've never built a house before in my entire life like to live in I've always bought have you ever built I've never built no yeah I feel like that's that's the thing I've never done so why not try something new and you know I feel like I'm just bored sitting at home for three minutes every day so I might as well try to fill that last piece of my day with uh a giant multi-million dollar construction deal well I really want you to because you said that you were going to own or Finance your current house to me at 0% 0% interest that's I'm such a nice guy so I'm I'm pumped for you to build a house oh thank you well speaking of owner financing which I will not be doing on my house but uh today's guest actually talks a little bit about how he got into real estate using a kind of a really unique a take on owner financing I've never really heard before but could probably just complet like allow you to print money in today's uh economy which is super cool so we talk about that with Mark I'm excited about that and honestly it's such a cool story because he started making a dollar an hour dollar an hour and working his way up to a $25 million your company yeah wild yeah we talk about that today yeah developing real estate uh owning real estate Partnerships all that we talk about working with your spouse finding good employees um luxury storage I lik luxury storage that's fasc there's not a lot of people doing that there's no one doing what he talks about yeah that was super cool I'm gonna like definitely go look into this with Open Door Capital afterwards and think should we be doing this too uh super cool and uh you know my favorite part of the interview we just did though was it which I'm excited for you guys to listen to It's that remember the conversation about like 10x thinking yeah this idea I I won't I won't spill the beans but if there's one piece of today's episode you listen to you guys listen to that ep the part about 10x thinking we talk about the 10x rule from Grant Cardone for a little bit and then the thinking that can come from that and actually all three of us came up with one or two solutions for making $20,000 a month within six months from right now starting with nothing I'm not saying you have to follow one of those plans but that the point of that was so powerful in terms of 10x thinking so listen for that and maybe will making 20,000 a month within 6 months let me know if you do doing that for any area of your life because I remember you actually talked about in one of your goal setting things and and I'm not I can't I can't talk about it because you have to listen to it but it was life-changing just that thought process doing that it's powerful stuff so with that said all that and more is coming uh but before we get to the actual interview I'm not going to throw an ad in we'll do that later I do have a very deep personal question to ask oh no what do you like most about me CAM oh just kidding don't answer that question I love the fact that you're going to own or Finance your house a you're a good man all right let's get to the show with our guest today Mark Mark welcome to the podcast man dude thank you so much for being here it's great to be in Maui it is it is great to have you in Maui and I see the sun uh paid special attention to you I'm I'm officially a redneck now it's going to turn it's going to turn into man it's going to look great yeah it's going to be it's going to peel might you're like me like Midwest so like you you burn and then it peels off and your even whiter than you started yeah yeah I'm an old concrete guy but I'll get into that but I tanw it's just I think it was too much yeah yeah I couldn't tell yeah it could have been the mass the outdoor massage maybe yeah yeah no I didn't do outdoors I needed AC bad that's right your buddy did outdoor you did indoor you made the better choice all right man so I know you as a pretty successful highlevel real estate investor you're a developer I know you do a lot of what you call Luxury self or storage right I want to talk about that today um I know you're a father of several kids I know you got a wife so we're going to get into all that and more I think you're crossfitter you've mentioned it 13 times at am K every yeah that's that's why I know you as today yeah but who was Mark Yeah man so uh like I said I I actually grew up um with next to Dad really in a concrete business uh at age six so my parents separated very early um by age five they were gone so my dad started this concrete business and uh I lived with my mom we were very frugal grew up in a trailer court and had just super humble lifestyle that I didn't know any different on but I always uh was a kid that kind of wanted a little more um and so I worked with dad every summer so from age six I started at a dollar an hour um pouring concrete you know at that point I wasn't doing a whole lot in the concrete business I'd sweep the trailer take a nap on it you know whatever but he'd pay me a buck an hour that's like a dollar an hour yeah I I remember my first check I didn't get overtime either but I worked 52 hours I got 52 bucks hey you know back in '94 I was like the richest like I and and and ever since that first check like I like like I want to keep this going like how do I keep this going I let I just wanted a lot out of life and and my parents you know supported me very well but I just kind of kept going so anyway I kept working um for uh every year my dad would give me a dollar an hour rise I'd go leave school and and uh in the Summers I'd stay with him work as much as I could uh pouring concrete learning the trade of construction basically whether it's siding Roofing whatever we we did mainly concrete but I learned all sorts of traits which I didn't think was super important at the time other than making money with my back but I learned a lot of crucial skills that I use like today in real estate um and so anyway I I kept going with Dad for like the next 14 years I mean stayed right by him and my goal was like well maybe I can take over this construction company like dad's back's going bad we're in concrete I mean it's going to happen and anyway went to he always told me though he always told me every single time he's like go to college because you don't want to be doing this for the rest of your life made a lot of sense cuz he's got all these back appointments and you know whatever and I uh I I just remember him always telling me that and then and then I did it I went pursu pursued College I did for I went to for mechanical engineering you know this is how it starts out and then I'm like wow that's way too much math and I'm not that highly skilled so at math and I thought it was good at math but simple math and and then I went in and and for like business some of the college credits went over and then I was like I want to go back into construction management so I did four years of school I'm still like 12 credits away from a bachelor degree you didn't actually graduate I I didn't I like thought about it like going back in Co and like that's funny trying to like do it like online but it was like 15 credits and then it was I don't know just it's not worth it other than maybe I could have a grad party yeah my wife's a few credits short right now I'm getting her and it's just like she keeps every year she'll like I think I'm just going to go get it and I'm like honey we've made it you don't you don't need to like you're not going to go apply for a job like she's like I know but I'm just so darn close to like a four-year degree and so she might you could have a big a big party out graduation party yeah so like I was into that cuz whenever that happened but anyway never never got my degree I basically at that point butt heads with Dad then because he wasn't letting me take over his his company he he had like a work truck figured out for me and like this was a big deal my dad like we're a three-man company so like I'm the rightand guy like I'm the main guy and then he took away the truck and I was like what the heck and then I we kind of butt heads and I left and I went to get a W2 job before I want to get to the W2 stuff what you did there but I'm curious of as you look back on years and years of working with them at the end there I mean like it wasn't a big business why didn't that scale what didn't he do or what did he do that made it not scale to a big operation with lots of employees yeah man he's he's His Own Worst Enemy I think that's most business owners today they just get in their own way because no one does it better than him well if it's and and he treated me like that I learned from his internal processes of just doing it a lot but he couldn't get he couldn't trust anyone else he you know was always the best he had to do he had to make all the decisions he I think in that frame of mind I mean there's a lot of baby boomers that just do things themselves and they always do it because that's how it's always been done and they don't trust anyone else they can't scale they just can't get out of their own way uh definitely my dad's problem uh super stubborn wasn't able for me to like relieve him like Dad I'll go sell the drive whatever we're going to be pouring like I'll go do this and and you know just just wouldn't trust me didn't even trust me at the work truck I'm like 18 19 20 years old like I guess you probably don't want to give 18 19 20y old trucks but I was like going to take like I could I could have done it I could have he could have still been in the business I'd worked right beside him and I could have expanded it because I wanted more but he's at at that point when like Baby Boomers tell you like you're going to fail because you're going to expand like you're going to you're just not going to you out things are outside of her control then right like they like to be in control of everything Paws everywhere so uh once it's outside of his control he's like you're going to have too many problems too many people I don't want to deal with this and then that's kind of why we separated there was an online business once I was pursuing I was literally I didn't actually want the business I wanted the domain name um so I contact the owner and I'm like really want this domain name and he's he's like well I'm not going to sell domain name but I'll sell the company and I'm like oh let's let's talk about it and it was like a supplement company and I was like okay let's let's talk and I got the numbers and and baby boomer old guy and he goes now listen man you know listen Sunny this is not one of those businesses that you can just come in here and run on the Internet by yourself like you know like or like you know try to Outsource things you got to be working at this every single day 70 80 hours a week that's what it takes to run this kind of business and I just was like first of all I was like seing dollar signs cuz I'm like I'm like oh this is such a good opportunity uh but he's like I won't sell it unless you move down here and you work with me for two years every day and I'll teach you the business and I'll make you a good deal carry the contract on the whole thing and I'm like oh my God it's almost enticing enough because it was like a you know n supplement business yeah it was like an eight figure supplement business wow and uh it's still there I might pursue it at some point uh I still think it's a phenomenal idea it was a huge distraction I do you have to move to uh Southern California so there's worse places to move to right but you know we could wholesale the I know I know yeah I thought yeah the easier way to answer to that one by the way I could do it I just didn't do it I just didn't I didn't have the guts or it's really just a distraction so I'm actually making a good choice I don't know you can go either way but I could have just found a partner and then the part like partner and said hey this is my partner he's going to move down there and work with you for a year or two and learn the business and then when the guy all out someday then we can figure out how to grow it into business but anyway I understand the baby boomer mindset of like like they didn't read the emth or Rich dab portat or the cash flow quadrant they don't read those books traction they just like this is how we do the business right and I think there's tremendous opportunity there especially with the Baby Boomers today retiring right to to buy their business they don't understand leverage like they don't understand leverage of money because they've been reing Dave's Ramsey or or some kind of belief of that they don't mean they don't like to leverage their time they don't trust anyone else and they don't leverage media like we are today like they just don't even get it like it's not even in the cards so um I think I think that was my dad's biggest problem he's he's just was stubborn around the fact so um yeah anyway I got a W2 all right doing what and uh testing uh concrete and soil so it's about as boring as you could get but it made good money and I could go to College full-time so I was actually still finishing College uh and I never actually finished because I actually got fired from that job after a year in just cuz like I you know as an entrepreneur apparently we don't take Direction well and like we don't listen you would have probably gotten fired from the guy the supplement guy likein know it's like that's going to happen so anyway I got fired I went and and at that point this is always waight so it's like really like in North Dakota it was okay because of the oil but like in most parts of the nation was like the world was ending and it was hard to get like financing but I did qualify for a loan we bought a house we got like that $88,000 Obama check we called it and uh for buying a house like you just a new home buy and and anyway so we got this $88,000 check but in order to come with the down payment I had to sell my girlfriend's car now wife so I I don't think her parents are like super proud of me this day she we went and traded in the car got like six or seven Grand cash enough to come up with the down payment and then we like leased a new like Toyota Venza or something and and and and so we had these $300 payments but we had the Seven Grand cash to close and the bank needed that to close on it so I didn't have any money she had money she had a marketing degree and she was like yeah so anyway we got engaged and and bought a house and sold her car to get it but we got $88,000 back I was like I'll give you the money back yeah that that's so fun I haven't thought about the $8,000 like it wasn't that long ago when the government was like paying people to go buy houses cuz nobody was buying houses now here we are today we're like dude it's coming back yeah yeah yeah it's just weird how markets work it's like it swings so wildly one way to another and then back and then yeah yeah and and yeah so we got this we got this house and then I got let go for my job like two weeks later so I was like so I'm just actually my dad came over he's like oh you know by this time it's been a year so he's like all right we'll talk again you know what I mean like nothing happened he's like what do you guys need something he's like yeah I knew it wasn't going to work out with him so I just started my own thing which is Mac you know and and that's my initials I just like I'm an to install a fart fan for somebody for like 280 bucks yeah so that was my first thing I got a job like called somebody it's like yeah I'll just I'll install a fart fan for you 280 bucks and then and then my wife's dad owned a big business in town and he had an employee way like up North Minnesota like very North and there's no there's nobody up there apparently any contractors and got a 20 $30,000 job from him and then just wow one after another kind of grew it from $200,000 in Revenue in the first year to 25 million plus today this construction company or what yeah so it was construction just purely construction so I just added one to two people each year um hit lots of barriers and and and you know you go through different phases in in a company right like I have mentors I ask how do you break through the one to two million it's like well you got to add people and you got to take on risk and um and process and different things and then there's the3 million5 million range and then you hit new problems it's like how are we going to do 10 million if we can hardly do three to five well we're going to have to do start doing commercial work you know you you just start thinking bigger and then once I kept thinking bigger now we're like you know how do we do 50 100 million you know that's that's what we're going to keep working on when you started your own business was your what was that like with your dad well it was rough right away he was actually working for me because we had a lot of business I was doing a new thing called stamp concrete so this would be the textured concrete well in North Dakota that was apparently new in in that time about 08 or 2010 so um we were the only guys but we were getting a lot of work because of it and then we started marketing which no construction company markets especially in North Dakota so we were getting some business for residential yeah we were attacking it and and so dad was working next to me and then I was helping him on the side because he didn't have any help he was always reliant on me um and and so we just kind of and then he worked for me and then he just retired and moved to Arizona at some point amazing yeah so you're just talking about like the the two to three you have to do something different million the five to 6 million we have to do something different what was the hardest hurdle along that line of growing to $25 million where was it like this sucks I'm going bankrupt yeah I want to go hide in a corner I think there's like a few Milestones where I hit that but maybe that's just a natural thing you know think uh and and so I I think the one to two like you leave the ability to do things like I did with my Dad yeah um and so I was like 5 years in and like it was like 200 Grand and we were doing 500 and like 700 then then 1.2 million and I was kind of running it like my dad I didn't know business at that time so I actually ended up in the hospital with like a full-on I didn't know what happened like I and I will not go to the hospital like we're just going to die out there instead but like my chest was like yeah I was like we got to go to the hospital now was with some buddies and they're like yeah you had a full-on panic attack and it's like you know you're living the healthy construction lifestyle which is two monsters two cups of coffee you know you're smoking cigarettes with these guys out in the field like you're just it's not healthy I haven't smoked cigarettes yet today but I've checked off the other cett so well well at some point it's going to catch could make it a good night afterwards and yeah but go get a pack but but I was I was invincible at that time though so it was like and then I and then he's like you got to like slow it down I just had a kid and then we built a house like I thought it was like the lifestyle people like die for like I had 15 employees but they all relied on one person me if I and I realized you know if I don't make some changes meaning delegating or trying to get someone else responsible that I'm gonna I'm gonna I mean I'm just going to die doing construction I was killing it though I was making tons of margin handling all everybody's issues and driving myself up basically to a freaking grave so yeah that was that was the toughest moment one to two million so cuz I think a lot of people struggle with that like solo preneur where you you work really hard and you you make money by the amount of effort that you put in um and then you end up realizing this is terrible and you have a panic attack and are at the hospital because you've worked so hard like so what was the next step to get through that because that I think that's one of the hardest parts in business is when you go from like working in your business to working on your business so what were your next steps forward yeah so I just humbled myself and be like hey I need I need outside helps so then I started bringing like my wife into this situation I'm man I'm like cuz I as entrepreneurs we don't write processes like it drives us NS and so my wife's very good very opposite of me very you know detail oriented and gets everything done right but then I I I kind of added managers I added people that were expensive they had mortgages and I was like getting nervous like these people like have families the support and like so now I need like this other risk of not just like getting these guys like paychecks and they spend it every Friday and they need a paycheck again Friday where now I have to like support people so I have different risk but they're willing to take a lot of the burden to dayto day from me um and I think you just got to put yourself in a room like can you can you put your phone down for a week and and leave and is your business operating right like you just literally have to ask yourself a question and then and then I just got super curious like I like how does the bit like how do you have 500 employees like that to me boggles my mind cuz today I have 50 okay well 50 you know at that time is like how in the hell would you run 50 people well you got to find the key people to run you know you can only only so many tiers talking to you at the same time but I just learned that you have to delegate and I got super curious and that's what like starting reading books whatever just starting to figure out how to run business not just running a solo preneur freak lifestyle that I'm going to do it all yeah I mean yeah at the end of the podcast we always ask about you know the books that have kind of changed your life but but maybe I'll preempt that here is like what were some of the resources if you could think back that helped you get into that mindset of being an oper like a business owner from uh someone who just ran their own business yeah I I would say you know a book that I would share at the end is like The Road Less stupid by Keith Cunningham I mean I think it's just such a I'm a concrete guy so I'm simple guy at heart and I think he just lays operations into like the simplest formats like are you just working every day or do you like you have a score like are we playing basketball without a hoop here like uh does that do you do you know you're actually accountable to do like do you even have a metric I asked my employees today like hey are we crushing it or not and it's always good and it's like I I don't want that answer I want a metric I want something they're responsible for and I want someone to measure it now it's like now I'm talking in the terms of business I'm not talking in the terms of checking in if you're doing what you need to be doing you need to be you know it's like that's that's kind of how you start as a solo preneur and but it it wore on me it wore on me to the point but a very good one buy back your time Dan Martell he will show you how to actually run it business and go from not just a small business guy to actually running multiple things at the same time and very organized and very free yeah I mean so freeing man once you get that shift mentally and then put it into practice your whole life changes like all of a sudden like things are getting done it's like watch it's like raising a kid for a number of years and all a sudden watching your kid like do their own work it's like you've been folding their laundry for years and wiping their butt and all of a sudden one day they wipe themselves you're like this my life just changed yeah my life just changed let's go yeah and then they regress and they go back in you know it takes some work to get there but like when you get yeah when you can get your business running like a well-oiled machine and then your life just becomes tinkering that engine yeah yeah it's so magical yeah it's dude it's so freeing and I just wasn't thinking big enough though like and and you know you can knock like Grant Cardone but I'll I'll bring him up and and the book 10x rule like and and I was talking apartments and um Brandon stuff's popping up and I'm like okay these are duplexes and fourplexes and then and then Grant's popping up and he's like no less than 32 units you know you know the deal and I'm like which I disagree with him on that but yeah you know he can have his opinion yeah right he be wrong it's fine and I was so confused I'm like I don't know what to do I'm like what does noi mean what is all this so then there's like this whole lingo it's like a government like lingo that you need to learn and that took me like three years but he just got me thinking bigger in the fashion of like dude you're just trying to figure out your little business over here like people are solving much bigger problems than you are like just pays it's just as much work to think bigger as it is trying to do one house at a time or whatever but it is important to do a deal small and then get big because there are different problems at different levels yeah um the 10x rule made a big impact on me too just that idea of like you know the quality of your life is determined by the quality your questions I've heard that quote many times and the 10x rule was like well just 10x your goal and then ask the question how do you get that done was very much like like oh that is a great question like I just made a YouTube video or a video the other day for social media and in in there I I mentioned like what does that actually mean for a real estate investor I said well if you were to go I'm going to try to you know whatever get 20,000 a month in passive income over the next decade so I can retire 10 years from now that's fine that's a good question to ask and answer yeah but what if you had to do it in the next six months that's a better question to ask how how would you get 2,000 a month let me ask you on the spot oh I love it Mark what would you do if right now you had to gun to your head like you know had to have 20K a month in passive income or mostly passive income uh within the next six months what would you do what strategy would you pursue you know I think in the short term you can coach and you can teach and you can sell online courses right like and and I think that's a quick way that I would pivot I would put myself in a room as we were talking before and shoot a course or or something to the help but that ain't that ain't going to get you there it's or you know it it will get you there but over time as as good as you are a marketer I think if I had to go 20,000 in passive income you know there's so much creative Finance out there right now and there's 10,000 baby boomers retiring each day I think those business owners that have been doing everything I think there's a lot of opportunity within business uh real estate's just slower and and it's not as stable as we talk about it it's very it is very stable but it's also slower it's not not every year is going to be 2020 and and we're going to be in 2024 now you know and so I think business is I would attack a business I'd figure out the ones Google search it what are the best ones to perform right now and try to figure out a great way to Market it I I love that you said that I think that's a great answer it's different than the answer I said like when I was WR in the video I was like I don't know I'd probably go how would I buy 10 airbnbs on the next six months that would make 2,000 a month a piece well and then then you start answering that question I love that you brought it that way cam what would you do 10,000 you had to make 20,000 a month in the next six months G to your head gun to my head 20,000 a month next six months it doesn't have to be real estate it could be anything by the way it doesn't have to be Bes anything legal it can be anything dang it man it swear I was going to go with this and and moral dang it my only fan idea okay yeah yeah um 20 grand a month in the next six months starting from nothing yep um I would I would go the short-term midterm rental route okay and I would try and buy as many of those as I could over the next six months um I would bring in Partners to help pay down debt so they would cash flow more and I would give them a piece of the equity uh a large piece of the equity and I would get more of the cash flow yeah I love that mhm so what we all just did we all different solutions to that same problem but it was a bigger problem and then some people might be listening to well well I can't sell you know the course idea it's actually I think that's a brilliant idea sell a course but people are like well I'm not a real estate investor how can I do a course you could learn marketing and go partner with a guy like Mark or Cam and make them the face of it split it 50/50 you run the back end and all of a sudden now you're making 20,000 a month because you have credibility it's like I'm not saying that anybody should go out there and do that but the point being when you ask a bigger 10x question you get a bigger 10x answer and those answers exist so anyway all that to say Grant Cardone made a big impact on my life and I started Open Door Capital right after I inter interviewed him oh W because I was like shoot like I see what Grant's doing here he's answering he's solving big problems by asking big questions I can do the exact same thing and I just been following his model ever since Le Scientology but you know following yeah yeah the guy's a the guy's a great marketer I mean can't knock he he understood that concept of like build a brand that people love you or hate you doesn't matter but people know you and some people love you and you can do whatever you want he understood that model well then I then not only that but think about the guy's age yeah how in like cuz you're performing at that 65 yeah he's performing at a high level a very high level he's got some peptides in definitely he's peptides yeah but he's he's crushing it it's also reassuring to people listening to the show going well I'm in my 40s or I'm in my 50s yeah who cares yeah like it's never too late I just learned this the other day I made a video about this as well because I'm making a video but there's a guy named Alfred uh this is years and years ago Alfred is 55 years old and he's the guy that invented dynamite and so he's 55 uh he's making loads of money super successful then his brother dies his brother dies and but the newspaper this is way you know hundreds of years ago the newspaper gets it wrong they think that Alfred died so they write the obituary for this guy Alfred they write it the whole obituary on and they called it The Merchant of death is dead that's the headline on the newspaper the merchant so he reads this he's like oh shoot my entire life my legacy that I'm leaving is to be The Merchant of death that I made Millions off of hurting people so Alfred whose last name is Nobel ended up changing his entire life and started the Nobel Peace Prize and changed his legacy so the lesson being you're never too late to change your legacy that's an amazing story I've never heard that before yeah true story look it up on Wikipedia dang I've used Wikipedia before true but everything's true on that yeah there is some debate whether that newspaper article ever existed but that story like most people agree that and either way it's a great story yeah Nobel Peace Prize was founded by the guy who invented dynamite yeah he just didn't want to be known as the guy who invented dyam dynamite I mean there's so many Amazing Stories like that that people start like wasn't I mean the Walmart guy didn't he start like the nickel and dime store for and when he was in his 40s or 50s yeah it was late yeah KFC was like 60 something yeah it's amazing oh yeah that's right yeah yeah the colonel the colonel yeah colel I seen that you always see like the garage or the Jeff Bezos or the well Elon Musk is probably a special thing but I don't know how you would Leverage pay all the way to the yeah to basically zero um but but Grant Cardone he posted a video the other day and I think he was in his late 40s of him doing one of his very first videos and it was just it was so fascinating that that was only I mean wow I mean he's still he's 20 something years or 15 years older than me in that video yeah um's still still doing it yeah I love it all right well I want to know more about the real estate investing as you got into that but before we get there let's get to Today's Show sponsor so on the show 100% of the ad Revenue that comes in goes directly to the hands of a charity that our guest wants to support so where should we send all the money from today's show yeah man I I really have a lot of support for back the blue so I think there's just such a a demand you know for everything that happened in Minneapolis obviously and man I was in Minneapolis at a Twins game these these they're just so under staffed I think they 50% staff there I mean they got huge I mean these guys just are protecting themselves out there and trying to keep the streets as safe as they can uh there's not enough support going to those guys and and they leverage their lives every day I don't think for enough pay yeah all right man we we'll do that all right well today's episode is brought to you by the better life tribe uh specifically we're just going to give you a free gift if you're not a tribe member that's great I'm GNA give you a free gift and maybe someday you become one so here's a free gift just go to my Instagram beardy Brandon and shoot me a DM and in that DM all I want you to write is four letters c l a c Kelk I'm going to send you an actual like the the rental property calculator that we built for tribe members it's really good it'll help you analyze rental properties in under a minute I think you're going to love it so again go to my Instagram beardy Brandon and just DM me the word Kelk and I'll get you hooked up right away all right real estate so you started learning the lingo started learning the processes kind of reading listening to people tell you you should buy no more than you know 32 units or above or Brandon say you should buy ugly duplex what' you do yeah so anyway I this goes really back to my business I needed to figure out now to go from 5 million how do I get above you know really a 10 million construction company and I had to leave res that's kind of where you start leaving residential work and you have to start entering commercial work which is just really a hard space when you're used to doing residential all the time so anyway I I realized that all right I need to start like developing I got to like figure this out so there were some uh guys out of Vegas they were up in North Dakota oil boom there wasn't much going on in Vegas so they bought some land in and we were developing for these guys uh town homes and uh well after I think it was 2012 H it was probably 2015 16 these guys got burnt out in like North Dakota they're like hey it's getting better in Vegas like this isn't working like buy the rest of the development from us so I was like well I was like I didn't have a lot of money at that point I was like well what do you guys want to do here and he's like I don't know just figure it out and we'll we'll kind of like seller finance you know this to me was all new lingo cuz like I didn't get to that book yet I'm just trying to figure out like duplexes or 32 units and so like all right um you know here's here's some cash down and I'll buy some of the other units get a loan on them uh that we sitting so we were trying to sell them my wife is a active real estate agent she's trying to sell them I'm building them this was great we're working for them but now they're leaving the picture now we're like now we got to be the money guys so now you got to figure out okay how to finance this stuff and um I remember going to the bank and just asking these guys from pegas hey this is what I need um you know for seller finance or kind of carry me through this deal um and they actually acted like the bank on most of it we ended up buying out a few like of the single family homes and we rented them out um so we kind of kept them so we were like I was like geez we're we're like doing it we're landlords now we're developers now we're like and then and then I just mapped out these were five plexes we were building um we were just selling them so it was you know we were still generating Revenue with each one um and we built another I think I don't know it's probably like 80 units in this whole development we had like 50 we needed to build out but um in development your money is always made in the back end you know the last 20 30 units you really make um and so we kind of continued just building and selling building and selling and suddenly the loans were getting down there and we're like well how do I like and then I start hearing words like syndicating and this and so I was like well what happens if we like hold on to the 22 units we have left rentals and then roll them up because I needed cash to go do something else like you're always in the the hunt for more cash so then I did my my first syndication had 22 units there that I just rolled together so it was my first development my first um and this is all kind of like in 2021 2020 area um during Co and yeah started figuring out like how to raise money because like money is always your problem as the developer you need to continually make and make more money and especially I didn't I was a guy that like never wanted to sell anything well that's great if you're great at raising money it's not great if you need more money to keep going so um anyway we kept these 22 units still have them today um and we we we raise money for them so they're you know cost basis is 210 they're worth 270 so it's great you know they're they're an easy investment what did you learn in that first syndication like by the way could you define you know what is syndication for those who don't know and then what did you learn in that process of getting started with that yeah so syndication basically is the ability to raise uh I I felt like me having these town homes and learning all this education about passive investing and things like people were risk adverse I I was more risk adverse than they were so they they had money they wanted to put money into the deal I was like hey how how can I let my friends into this deal how can friends whatever you know you need to reach out to right away how can they invest beside me and still get a deal done here um and so yeah they they invested beside me and and I acted as the GP so I was a I had all the equity in the deal so I was actually just I had cheap financing on the deal so I was just rolling My Equity out while they roll equity in $50,000 a time so they're able to basically have zero or actual mailbox money is what I usually call syndication like just relax yeah it's my job for this thing to perform and if it doesn't perform I don't get paid and you're the first one to get paid on the deal basically yeah I tell my investors that all the time it's probably been my best sales pitch for raising capital is I don't get paid unless you get paid and I even take it so far because I I make a lot of you know good money at book royalties and other stuff so I don't need the money so I don't even take a like a I donate my salary and it's like it's it's a marketing thing because it sounds really good but it also makes me like this has to work otherwise I'm wasting like a decade of my life but like my investors love that cuz I'm just like I don't make anything this is a complete waste of my my 30s if this doesn't work yeah and so like this will work because like it has to it'll make me a billion dollars if it works and if it doesn't work it's going to just be a 10 year waste of time right so like I like that out syndications it really align Interest really well and you got to be careful when you pick a syndicator make sure it aligns I mean some people buy airplanes and helicopters off you know off of their syndication like up front before the deal works out well uh so you just got to be careful of like you know what you're doing right yeah well I mean how many syndications have went sideways now in the last couple of years because there's no 3% rates anymore and they charged a lot up from fees and some of these greater guys are great salesmen and don't tell you that they made a bunch of money and now they're left holding the bank and a lot of people are going to lose equity and a lot of I think investors there could be good investors are probably shy now they're just sitting at 5% money so um it's harder to ra we know you're out there hard yeah stop it's hard to raise money though right now like it's for sure harder than it's right I I know I've heard you talking before that raising money I think it's all about alignment with investors you're not making money on the deal you're hoping that this works out in the long run and it will right like it's just real estate is time but I think including some of the businesses whether it's the management companies or like if I leverage my Construction Company my development company as a holding company and align with some investors being able to invest on that side as well as the real estate side so basically mixing the cash flow of business in with the cash flow real estate the stability of real estate um is really an alignment process so I've been kind of going through the holding company process letting key investors in there to help the syndication side because it really aligns with themart we we just started because you know again cash flows super hard right now because the interest rates are so low right so but everybody wants cash flow and we're competing with you know you can go get a treasury bond for 5% so people like well why would I invest with you at no cash flow when well longterm we're gonna be we're going to beat the stock market and beat treasure bonds but it doesn't matter right so we are actually doing a new model right now and and uh we're going to do 20 to 30% of our fund that we're raising for right now we're going to put into uh hard money notes so we're investing in hard money which produces you right now the hard money rates are like 12 13 14% And so we're lending out 12 13 14% through a partner who's running the whole thing a hard money company so that way you know if you figure you're getting a plus points right there's 12 133% interest plus points ends up being more like 20% interest if you add it all together so if a quarter of our fund is that it's like 5% interest cash flow right away now there's no upside on it but the upside is on the real estate on the back end so by incorporating we're doing mobile homes sell storage and noes like hard money All in One Fund now you get cash flow and long-term Equity so I think we're going to see a lot more of that I probably shouldn't even say that publicly because now more people are going to just copy what I just did but uh I think it's going to be really really helpful yeah well it's cash FL it's hurting now everywhere every everyone's focused on operations it's like how tight can I get operations well I don't know I mean there's a if you're not a good operator right now you're not going to be around long I don't think but if you are a very good operator yeah there's no room for mediocrity anymore in the market there is not you have to be great yeah yeah you do I I don't know if you said that I think probably I've been listening to your stuff off course lately but it's like it's so true like we're so focused on operations within the businesses and and the real estate side it's like you got to meet weekly like the real estate is a business at the end of the day too treat it like one yeah remember back in like 2012 when you just like bought a house and it made you bunch of money like was those are the good days man I miss those yeah you just buy anything like you couldn't Finance it there was no loans but anything you bought was just like hey cash flow money this is great wow yeah it was really nice back then but every era's got their own problems right today like yeah well today's got a lot of problems but you know like for a while it was yeah you couldn't get the financing but you get find deals then you could get the financing all day long but there were no deals now today there's no financing and no deals so now you're just you know double screwed but yeah we're making it work yeah I think I think the key for anyone new listening to this I mean it's it's like Pace Mor's obviously tooken over the world but it's like creative everyone's got to be creative if you're buying a business you're buying real estate you have to be creative there's almost zero way it makes sense for a baby Boomer's price to make any kind of sense unless you have a lot of cash on the sideline that you're willing to bet on but um I think there's there's a lot of creative finance and that's that's the main thing that we're using I literally bought 80 units um and we creatively I creatively financed the guy was his his dscr was in jeopardy with the bank meaning his his Mor his mortgage was you know less than the payment you know or the noi the the property was actually producing an income so he was like a one to one and starting to drop below that so then he's delivering checks to the properties yeah well it was you know it was kind of ran like a slow more you know they just he didn't wasn't running it correctly and so I formal every building to have X amount of construction um included myself as a developer fee on each unit coming in at 50% equity which was just me just doing all the paperwork basically and I own 50% of now 80 units that you know we creatively and I have his properties actually performing so he gave up 50% of his Equity but L now now he didn't lose his properties because he was in Jeopardy of that um so is he smart or is he dumb maybe both yeah well how did you find that property uh social media social media yeah just just uh throut a story hey looking to buy Apartments if you know anyone looking to sell or or partner on a deal and uh yeah gave the kid 1,500 bucks and literally added 3 million to my balance sheet that's amazing appreciate that and how did you negotiate that to like cuz I I've sat in a lot of creative Finance meetings or negotiations and it's always so tough so did you did you lead with that or did you lead with the price and then you just through talking with him you guys came up with that like how did you figure all that out yeah I think you're just trying to solve someone's problem like I think that's like the better you can get it and this isn't any conversation but like I was getting good with that so I was like trying to like and he's like well I really want to own everything he's like I just I'm probably going to have to sell some of it to keep like the good one right or whatever the good apartment and it's like well why don't we keep them all but they all need you know I'm in construction I need Windows and roofs and like they need this stuff and that way they like can operate and and I was showing him I was like well here's your 50% equity and then like here's what your 50% equity in 10 years because I'm I'm getting you a 3.6 note you know and he's like Baby Boomers lost out I think a lot in this like they should have took out some debt if and a lot of them just still everything cash it's probably great now but they should have had a cheap loan and leveraged it and anyway so he's going to have way more equity in 10 years after I refinance these fix these properties up because they really weren't worth anything noi wasn't I'm like your properties are all underperforming these things are all going to need money some other developer going to come in here and just buy them from you uh but I'll keep you in the deal at 50% and we'll all these together it's actually a pretty brilliant model so he was winning and I was winning and I was willing to come in and operate them as they should be and and and he was willing to come on board with that and we actually sold one of the buildings for like $1.1 million in profit so we split that too 550 Grand and then we still got like another I don't know 70 68 units on that so we bought like 15 or no we bought 24 more yeah so anyway it it just shows you that like creative like and every everyone's got a problem out there I mean you can see plenty of apartments that need work like I guarantee that those things are going to be in Jeopardy in the next 5 10 years there's all these apartments from the 80s mhm cuz that was like whatever no one could afford anything kind of like today now we're building all there's a most apartment most building permits four Apartments like a million some units coming online wow um in the next year and a half all from Co basically um and so that's going to hold the rental rates down again you know so it's just you can find a lot of apartments in the 80s where these guys are looking to exit because they're starting to be a problem and if I can help solve the construction that's what I learned when I was a young kid learning next to Dad so I learned the construction aspect which helps me today that's awesome yeah so love that cool man I like that all right off-the-wall question here but I like this one I got a list of these I I'll just admit it I I saw a t a Tik Tok or Instagram video I think it was Instagram video of like I've got six questions for you and they were all really good questions I wrote them down here and I'm not going to ask you all of them but I got a couple that I really want to ask you imagine you have a chance to revisit is a moment from your past what moment would you choose and what would you do differently this is this is when I was in business like early years I missed like six seven years where I was just like the solo PR grinding MH I didn't need to do that to myself I just all I needed to do was leverage other people's time and figure out how to run a business uh I wish I would have got curious way before that hospital visit and figured out how to buy back your time uh if you need learn how to do processes yeah which I didn't want to do just figure out a person who likes doing them MH and man that changed my life and and Chang his business very cool next question you receive a letter in the mail today it's from your future self what do you wanted to say oh my God my future self um dang how far in the future I don't know pick a date far in the tomorrow oh man well I buy Bitcoin yeah it's coming back yeah I heard a lot of things about sports betting I I um you know I think it's just it always comes back to thinking bigger and like my problems are pretty small when I when I get in the rooms with with guys like you especially so uh you know kind of the key pushing motivational type thing is kind of what I would write to myself because I get in my own head and I don't know if every entrepreneur has this but like I get in my own space and then I like now you're like doubting yourself or confidence level whatever you know never felt that way no no not at all imposter syndrome not every every yeah it's like gosh you know and it's like so I think just just motivating myself and and and really thinking bigger all right last of the random ones I'm going to give this one to cam as well both you're going answer one uh if someone gave you a box of everything you ever lost what's the first thing you would look for oh that's good not that we remember everything we ever lost but everything you ever lost in a box um what are you looking for in that box jeez I don't know like I'm thinking what's in this box like you got something cam oh you know I there's there is one thing that I I I don't know if I lost it or just misplace it but my grandpa when I was like eight years old gave me a like a Bowie knife I think is what it's called um and and I thought that I had saved it and I for the you know the last four years have been looking for it cuz I I packed up all my stuff we moved to Denver and I remember packing up my room and I I put it in a place um and it's not in that place anymore and so I'd love to find that I'd love to find that he he passed away about two years ago so I'd love to find that Bo knife uh I got I I'll say one while you're thinking but um I was on a canoe trip I was in fifth grade and there was there hated it I was like really chunky really overweight really out of shape could not carry the canoe and like it was a horrible canoe trip up in the Boundary Waters mesot and U I got made fun of there a bunch of bullies on the trip that just like mocked me I had no friends it was like just a horrible week of my life but the the guy who was like the camp guide like this old guy kind of Grandpa character he saw that and he he made me Whittle like at around the fire this stick this like long like six foot stick with like wolf faces in it and it was amazing I saw him working on it for hours hours and uh and then he gave it to me uh and I had it for a minute and then one of the bullies took it no yeah and gra went in my tent found my underwear put underwear on the stick and then ran around the woods and then threw the whole thing oh so the thing I would want is my underwear back but who is his bully let's this is a bully yeah we're we're gonna we're g to kill this kid uh that was my yeah that was my I want that I want that stick back not the underwe this is going to seem real weird but I like from age six to like 14 we had these like concrete so as a concrete guy you learn these concrete tools that you love like you use them every day like this these are the tool so I had this mag um and a MAG would be something you would smooth the concrete out with and and before you Brom it and uh I had this mag for like 12 years and then wow someone ran over with the skid steer like mangled like but this thing like gets more narrow because it's made of magnesium it like wears so it gets very thin um it's like a little float you just hold it with your hand not a big deal but like I had this thing for years and then they destroyed the whole bucket of tools that was like my concrete tools oh and I remember how crushed I was and it was like something super stupid cuz you just go to the store and buy another one it's like you're starting over it's like there's emotional attachment I was like gosh there's so much time with this mag in this concrete tools but maybe that all happen because wanted me to do more in life I don't know if if you could go back would you still start the construction company or would you go right into real estate yeah I think the construction business is important to me because you like to do what you're passionate about um and I I did it my whole life I I wish I knew more about business in real estate I I I really didn't but I I do love my Construction Company still today um because I like talking construction I like talking concrete I like I like everything there is about it um so no I think I think I'd stay with construction and and keep developing real estate now I get to do The Best of Both Worlds my eyes that's cool yeah all right man where'd you meet your wife oh well there is a downtown bar called sledsters and it was ladies night and also happened to be my softball night um so I was the typical guy in 09 that would bleach his hair had two earrings you have a little shell neck necklace oh no no I didn't go that far I didn't go that far I had like DC Shoes though cuz those were big and I wasn't a skater but uh I was a construction concrete guy and my wife is like probably more into like Prince Charming type guys uh and and I don't know somehow it was double earrings that's what got her yeah in the DC Shoes that's what I tell her and she's like you kind of came over to our table and talked about your Dy that you just got so it's like I wasn't necessarily like Prince char winner yeah I lived a block with in her and like we both lived a block apart whatever and so got her number and like she hit her up for like three months and never said anything and yeah anyway the story is not as romantic as you would think um there was no long canoe trips um and uh but yeah we we finally had a first date and never left each other what do you love about your wife um she's everything I'm not so I'm kind of a a spaz as far as a entrepreneur I I like to do a lot of different things and and uh lots of I like to get deals done and she loves to like me to do that but like she'll operate like behind the scenes she doesn't want to see a camera she doesn't want to um so she's just like everything that I'm weak at she does really well at like she likes the same thing and like processes do she still actively work in your real estate and construction businesses so she's a yeah she's a realtor so she's just getting used to the commercial lingo um and she you know she has it more relaxed than she you know we're not relying on her income we'll just put it that way so we have the flexibility now so she uh yeah she likes to make supper like I get knacked that I don't cook enough uh I'm waiting for you to open this daycare business uh the so yeah yeah so then I can go on a date night with my wife and have it planned cuz that's the problem having three kids it's just like something's going on or the kids got cheer the kids got this and every life gets in the way and then you're not doing any date nights with the wife well I was going to open the date night business but then I called one of my friends cam who decided to poo poo the idea live on a thought it was a great idea yeah you lie like through your teeth and you say yes I'm sending you $400 that was what was happening I would have that's that's funny for those who don't know what we're talking about uh I interviewed Noah Kagan on the podcast a few weeks back and uh Noah made me come up with a business idea on the podcast and then validate it by calling somebody who might buy that's I called cam here and uh cam was very excited about the idea but then I knew you weren't going to buy cuz I knew you had just got that Nanny I know so I chose I I probably should have called someone else but I was like who do I call it really quick uh Cam and then uh you were like it's a great idea but I don't need it I I love the idea I love the idea about that you have to do it it's a use it or lose it everything about that idea is great it's a cool idea a million dollar business that you made in an hour yeah it was a it was a million-dollar business weekend so go to listen Night episode it was episode I don't know of the podcast so but it was one just type in a Better Life podcast Noah Kagan k a ga and if you want to listen to that episode it was fire Noah is a character I love that dude yeah all right man tips for working with your spouse what do you got for those people who are in your shoes yeah I would uh space so make sure you're not put them in a space where they're accountable like I try to leave my wife out of the accountability she helps facilitate certain areas where there's problems so I detect the problem facilitate and then like let her do her thing we if we work together and we're reliant on her selling the house to make income to make the bills it seems like that didn't work very well so if you guys can get accountability in other areas of the company if you have that option obviously we have we have some vertical of companies so that helps us but um yeah man I and try not to talk about it at home but how do you not talk about business at home it's like and she she yells at me about like no phone at the table and like you know it's like I get it I get it and and but then she kind of has respect for what I'm doing like you're getting all these deals done and takes a lot of effort and you're on your phone all the time and and so I try to be more conscious of that I use the focus mode on my iPhone a lot in 24 and I've also uh Along with Dan Martell's buy back your time I don't check my emails anymore I my assistant kind of orchestrate everything so just reducing notifications overall and like and like give each other space don't um try to hit date night if Brandon can come up with that like spend time enjoy each other because if you get if you involve business it's gonna it's not GNA end up great for you taking Heather to spago tonight are you have you been there yet it's at the Four Seasons I think no it's that yeah that Four Seasons righto I've not been there we have been there yeah it's the one restaurant I feel like in South M is that on the top level I don't know but I know it's we ate there last night it's like the fancy restaurant over there yeah I hear it's good we ate there twice twice yeah it's $500 for two we know that I only got one carrot so I was kind of pissed last yeah it's a fancy it's fancy it's going to be good night tonight and I have B watching the kids so D all right here here's a little personal qu not well I mean it's about business or personal but it's a a intimate question we'll call it that way what what's an area of your life first of all that you're just really strong about like you're really good about doing like you're people would say like oh yeah like Mark's got this thing figured out and then the opposite what is something that you just know that you're weaken right now so I go I I follow a theme and I have like an email subscription called unfollow the herd and so I'm very good at at creatively finding opportunities I see opportunity where others people see problems um and I help people take action um and and so I'm always I'm always I think my strength is always finding an opportunity like there's so many opportunities out there like people sometimes like the blindfold is must beond like there's nothing going on there's no perfect deals that are penciling with 9% cash on cash like that's a dream it just doesn't happen I'm sorry um and there's no businesses that are evaluated at they want 6X for the multiple and it's like okay um so anyway I I I kind of tell these these beginners uh and I I script unfollow the herd uh into their brains and and show them how I'm doing these deals like literally at a a little bit higher level um and maybe they're five years behind me maybe 10 years maybe two years you know but I try to show them that there's opportunity uh and I'm of course a little more risk adverse so I can see that opportunity so uh I'd say that's one of my big strengths um one of I weak at right now man I'm not an operations guy and and I think in a time like this where operations is such key that I need to find more and more really good operators to grow my business and and I think that's just going to be the key to things yeah going forward so in your businesses cuz you've you said you got 50 and how how have you found great people to work for you yeah I you know I think social media can detect those people um so far in North Dakota you know they're not as social media heavy but um they're all happy that I'm on with Brandon so I appreciate that but yeah the whole state the whole state everyone loves you they love me it's like they love me North Dakota the Midwest yeah it's it's like I'm famous in Japan but I think I think finding those people you just like people bounce off other people's energy and I think that's really what people detect and if they like working in a like it's all about like yeah you want good operators you have to have a great culture yeah yeah um and that's something like the culture drives the business if it's a miserable place to work and it's like not cool and you know whatever it's like people don't want to work there they just don't they don't want to work 50 hours a week they really don't like as we keep getting old I mean the hours are going to go down and we're going to need more people to do our stuff so if the culture can be really fun um we Thrive we just just try to stress on that it costs money to have culture at a business I mean you got to do events together and spend time together and be around all these people if you have as many employees as you gets harder um you have to especially remote workers get really hard yeah I I don't even know so like I think I think just keep driving the culture to get better operators and and that's like I think almost culture trumps yeah operators at the end of the day but like I need to get better how do you build culture in your in your business like yeah um you know you're doing internal things you're doing like Super Bowl parties that you know would be coming up you're doing thanks or friendsgiving and that type of thing you're doing um we send out like a message we have like our GM does a message to the group or like say Brandon would send out a private message to like through slick text or some of these crms and you just try to be a person and and try to have fun or I think it's it's not an easy thing um but that's some of the ways that we do it we try to stay in front of everyone have fun and like I mean there's some concrete guys out there so like we'll try to record them do some video do some different things that make that make it fun yeah that's cool yeah what's your portfolio consist of today um so have about 150 multif family units um Town Homes different things like that and we have um I have a thing called luxury storage which is um I'd love to dive into deeper and and luxury storage is kind of where I'm I'm growing and a lot of the reason why I would get on this podcast um to help share the word of it so it's basically larger self storage units but I think as we all know especially with a million apartment building permits online we all know that housing is most unaffordable and housing is super dense it's almost like like Hawaii's going to be I think that's going to happen in the states it already is right like it's you don't have a yard you don't have a garage you can I think we were talking to some of the Uber drivers like to have a parking spot for your car is like a big deal yeah or like you got to give up air conditioning you want the parking spot or air conditioning you can't have it all um and I think that's just the way people are going to find affordability in the future um so I I've kind of been preaching luxury storage which is going to be a larger storage unit and it's going to have it's going to be like a flex industrial space so it's going to be HVAC so it could be an 18x 50 unit um it'll be 16 feet tall so you could fit a semi in there whatever um it'll have two lights and an outlet and basically an automatic garage door opener and so it'll be guys like small business owners that need a place to store something but it'll a unit doesn't have a bathroom you know shouldn't be running your business you're not going to put a sign above your storage unit but it's going to give you a place to have hbac have all your stuff in there and and just have a different style and so it's larger Self Storage essentially right like um and I think as housing gets more and more Den these businesses like compete for space like they just need some I have businesses rent 10 10 storage units you know and they just keep a fork Clift there with their flooring in there and that's what they do um but there's just not a a lot of flex industrial space that's smaller so I'm not talking about these Mega buildings we're doing the smaller spaces yeah it's like industrial it's like Warehouse industrial but on a small level it's almost like tiny homes for Real Estate like for residential but it's Industrials warehouse but for tin ones it's true yeah so it's like inste of like a big Warehouse where you're going to have a triple net lease at six bucks a foot whatever we're getting double that plus we're paying all the utilities you can swipe it on your MX we can treat it we can adjust the rents on the Fly based on occupancy so if we're a 99% occupancy like we are one that we just built then we now we start driving the rents up cuz we don't we you can change your rents every 30 60 days right like you just like a self storage unit um a lot of these REITs you know I I love I love sell storage because there's no regulation on it in multif family you get in different states with regulation I think things are just going to become more regulated over time and it's going to go to the tenants favor because it's so unaffordable and and so unfortunately that's what I don't love about M multif family what I learned so I've started doing more storage and leaning into storage development and so I'm going to take a luxury storage brand and build it um not only in the dtas but um in the sunb markets and we're partnering people so if you are interested in luxury storage find me on Instagram mark.on dmac and just DM me the word luxury storage actually you can DM me luxury storage on any platform and I will figure out how we can partner or you can invest in one of our luxur storage facilities do you have any cities picked out specifically where you're like this is going to be an amazing spot to do this yeah yeah so uh Rapid City a couple like we're in the midwest right now so obviously heated units um we're doing North Dakota which will be Grand Forex Fargo um we like bismar um those would be like the three main towns and then uh sou Falls and your um uh Rapid City Markets we really love those markets I think even working South to Indianapolis and Kansas City like they're really good Market for this and we've gotten told that multiple times CU we get a lot of attention from this okay um but we also want to get into the Sun Belt markets like there's s in $500,000 condo shops for like uh Toy Barn if you're familiar with that but it's like you park your car in there and it's like a little hangout man cave but it's like an 18x 50 space that might have like two levels in the back and you park your couple Ferraris in there and it's I mean they're getting a lot of money for these spaces so we want to open it up not just from car guys but we want to open this up as Flex space small businesses um but we still want to treat it as Self Storage so we can and we will try to hold the whole property um which is getting challenging because you need to raise money in order to do that so we may have to sell off individual condo units but the goal would be to continue to roll up 30 40 50 of these facilities so instead of selling them at a six and a half cap we could roll them up to a life insurance company at four or four and a half cap that's cool yeah how do you Market that like who you who are you marketing to is just people drive by and it's like Flex industrial what are you saying to get people the right people to be interested in ay storage we've been navigating obviously we're using Google and and Facebook ads and that type of thing cuz so far both of our facilities whether it's in Fargo Grand Forks um they're not on the main roads we're like we're like a and and and I think if you're good enough on online marketing you know Google storage in any market and see who comes up it's very easy to get in the front of them ads and fill up your space what I also love about storage though you fill up the space people fill up an 18x 50 well they ain't moving out tomorrow like they'll tell you like my buddies come to me I'm going to just put my boat in there for a couple months I just need some space and they out them been there for a year it's like and and they're willing to pay the six 700 bucks a month to do it on their AMX or whatever write it off on their business I don't care yeah um yeah that's cool that you're you're working to businesses because it's just another expense it's just another few hundred a month whatever yeah and there's there's toys and RVs like I thought that's what it was going to be but it's all these small businesses and flex spaces and people just need cheap space they don't necessarily want to rent out 20,000 sare ft and and that's not for everybody so I wonder if I could put a St like cuz you got power in there and you I was like wonder if you could put like a podcast studio in just come over record I got to get like more creative in my content so like I'm trying to figure out what to do in storage units yeah yeah maybe I'll make yeah put my podcast studio in a in a luxury storage unit it's a cool idea man I mean what's what's it cost to build one of those versus like a normal sell storage you know the difference like I mean is that significantly more really all your adding so this is how this all happened I built a building that was um it was 48 by 184 I don't know why I know the numbers but anyway these are like 13 by 48 deep units um one overhead door and I heated half because I was like I was like skeptical I was like any anyone need storage this big yeah and then and then I did the other half unheated well I rented out the half unheated at 200 and I rented out the other half at like 250 well the side that was heated all filled up I was like $50 more they're willing to pay that much more for heated and then um like it's only 5 grand or six grand for the furnace to heat the other side so boom heated them and I actually doubled the rent and went to 350 all filled up I was like people need climate control to heat in North Dakota it is very cold so I get it but in Phoenix is also very hot so they need it as well um and so that was my trial and effort and I just kept building I just kept building buildings we're up to like 60,000 ft in a terrible demograph Market by the way and we're 99% full and we're building another one in Fargo which is better demographics growing Market um and we're about 40% through the build so we got a weight list going already on that market so and we have a facility in sou Falls that we're um already in TR trct to build in the spring and then now we're attacking Rapid City right now we just going to L and land brilliant man I really like that it's a cool strategy I kind of like new takes like it's not a brand new you're not Reinventing the wheel but you're just doing a different take based on what the market needs that's that's how real estate investing works yeah yeah so it's a little different take than Self Storage but it's still treated as Self Storage we love the flexibility and leasing because in Self Storage it's just a it's just a battle of Revenue and occupancy you're just you're just fighting the two and and you really want to be down at 85 like I should be jacking all the rents 100 bucks a month but um you want to be nice too and and these reats are brilliant when they come to leasing up a self storage facility because that's usually the hardest part it could take years to fill up Self Storage but they rent down they said oh it's a it's a 10 x10 unit oh we'll rent it out for 10 bucks or or 10 bucks a month brand new facility lease it out to you well that's that's the market that's the street rate they just want to fill up the facility they do it they know that people are going to move in and then they quadruple the rents to market rate and 70% of the tenants stick around yeah because it's sticky so anyway very cool man yeah yeah I'm passionate about luxury storage dude it's exciting luxury storage all right dude well we got to start moving towards the last kind of three segments of the show but before I get there I like ask question anything that I did not ask you that you never get asked that you're like I just wish they would ask me this question anything that we didn't cover in your life I no man we we hit it we hit my whole life it I I feel like yeah I feel like I feel like like you just went to the prologist yeah I feel like we're at the therapist like I got it all off my chest I feel good now when did you start building these luxury self storage units so in 2020 when I started yeah just started introducing to the space and and now it's like I was on P's podcast and people still reach out today about the podcast um so I'm hoping the same thing happens from here um and I want other people to get into it very cool man love it all right well let's get to the 321 pivot so I want to know three books that changed the direction of your life three books that pivoted your life two people and one quote all right so the three books I know we talked about this but like The Road Less stupid is I think I think as in a time that we're in like I said operational heavy he dumbs it down and talks in the word of like contractor language in that book to the point of like makes business and operation stupid easy if you do it that way uh so if I'm the business owner that's struggling to get to the next level I would go and reread that book that's a book that I probably read there's a chapter in that book that he wrote do you remember that chapter where it was like Hey me and all my friends went bankrupt in the and afterwards we wrote down every lesson we learned from going bankrupt in the 80s from Real Estate here they are and I'm like that might be the most helpful chapter of a book I've read in my entire life like it was just like and how simple does that seem I know it's just like hey we all lost a lot of money now here's what we did wrong people should be writing I'm writing down right now was hard in my life and and kind operations cuz it's challenging right now you got to be on top of your game so uh I think Keith Cunningham's brilliant cool um and so uh how to win friends and influence people like Dale Carnegie's a a beast and it's just it's a classic book but I think if you can learn how to be a better Communicator a better friend um as you're an entrepreneur like all these transactional type meetings you know what I mean or like try to figure out how to be a good friend or come off as a good person yeah I just love I think I struggle with that a lot so I try to I try to read his books and like try to be a better person cool yeah um I'm gonna go with Dan Martell's buyback your time because I I think go with the whole theme I'm talking about here and and I got I actually was at uh wealth con with Ryan Pan's events and he was speaking there and he sent out his his sop so like his his processes for his assistant I don't know if you have that I don't but I heard it's pretty great I'll share that with you and it's phenomenal I mean he can and he goes through assistance I'm sure you know it's just that's what happens and man his processes are too a te actually Dan and I are planning I'm not I don't want to officially announce anything but we are planning a uh we'll call it a together cuz I don't really have a better name for it out here in Maui later this year so Dan Martell coming out to Maui hopefully do some fun stuff so yeah y'all pay attention for that and be in the better life tribe if you're not because that's what it's going to be for so oh dang he's a beast he's a beast anyway all right two pivot people ah well I'm goingon to go with Dad on the first one because he's he kind of laid the the footprint of what me starting in construction I don't think I would have started in construction I don't know if I'd have been into real estate and I don't know if I'd have went into business business even though six years I didn't know what I was doing um because he never really taught me business I think it's pivotal to learn concrete not saying you should go all learn concrete I think you should everyone should have to pour concrete you'll learn how I actually really enjoy pouring concrete that's a fun job I've done it a number of times it's great we should pour concrete sometime we should it would be a good time it seems like a great hangout it is a great it it's there's something powerful about Just Doing Hard manual labor with a bunch of other dudes you just build such good like and dry yeah the time is taking you have to be very efficient yeah and you can make concrete look very easy or you can make it look very hard and get burnt so yeah man I I I think concrete work taught me a lot through my life so my dad um um I'm going to have to say like the 10x rule cuz uh Grant Cardone popped up on my phone first when I was thinking about all this real estate and just built that Curiosity so I don't know if it was the 10x rule but the Curiosity of like thinking bigger I that helped me get to leveraging both time money and people cool love it and then one quote like what is a pivot quote in your life that you heard and you're like I got I got to change everything um I was just actually watching this and I knew this question was coming up but I was watching a yogi Bara like Netflix documentary this is really weird I was really sick last week and I didn't know if I was going to be here um but as I follow a theme called unfollow the herd uh Yogi Bara says a um when there's a fork in the road take it um and I don't think enough people do that they would just naturally follow the herd all the time and sometimes the opportunity is not you sometimes have to go against the grain in order to seek that next opportunity so I think when Yogi bar say that um he was like do you even know who yoga be Yogi Bear is this Yan guy he didn't not Yogi Bear yeah Yogi bar yeah yeah but really short look like a guy or is that who the ab what's Yogi Bear's like the bear what's his catch for I don't know isn't he like in conservation bear SMY the bear SMY the bear Smokey yeah Smokey it was one of the Bears it was one of the Bears Smokey the Bear all right what's your favorite Bear yes which bear is best Grizzly which false black love so okay question for you okay so if you could go back to 20-year-old you you've just lost your job you've just bought a house you don't know you don't know what the next step is if you could go back and have a conversation to that person and give them advice what would it be gosh just get a curious a whole lot faster on how to run a business not how to ruin your back um you know and and just educate myself I don't think enough people like through mentorship like I I think as a concrete guy you kind of get egotistical um I think a lot of people can get egotistical leaving you know they're just having ego so they don't want to ask for help I think once I finally dropped the barriers and like didn't have to go to the hospital 6 years after and take a bunch of punishment I help I held myself back that's what I did but once I got like really vulnerable with myself and like like really got deep like ask for help ask for mentorship pay for good mentors man they can cheat time so much faster than you trying to figure out anything on your own love that yeah so I I do have a question for you and I'm sorry this is kind of should have asked this before but you said you've talked about curiosity over and over and over again in this and and I love that and I'm fascinated by that because I'm I'm an incredibly curious person when it comes to business when it comes when it comes to anything and so when it when you're looking at your business um I I am curious of like hey would that work is that going to work is but eventually you have to make a decision and like and and do that thing and so how have you in your life like been like this is what we're going to do if you're always curious how how do you figure out what the right thing is yeah I I don't I don't think there's ever the right thing okay I think you just have to make the decision on yourself to tell make a plan everything happens for a reason you know let God figure out the plan I think after that don't everyone will sweat the decisions down to never making an action and I I'm not a believer in that I will I will figure out a decision and and lay three on the table you know narrow it to one ask your team who's helping you achieve that yeah and and I don't I think once like I I operate on a system called EOS and once I was back from making decisions just at Mark's level like like I don't think it just takes one person you got to have other input at this table let's all come up with an option see which one works best talk it through and then we're all bought into it yeah I think once it your understanding as a team aspect and that's you know a lot when my team really took off too because I'm letting us all make the decision not Markus just coming with this crazy idea on his head and like what are you talking about we don't want to do that you know so um you buy everyone else but yeah EOS is a really big form of which helps my business grow today at a and I don't have to be there for a month they know what to do they know what the decisions to make they know to make a decision as a group yeah beautiful amazing all right what is something you've enacted in your life in the last 12 months that's just giving you a better life enacted enacted like started doing could be a habit trait could be something you bought could be a new activity anything at all that just given you an improved life this year um you know I think in the short term like I'm just trying to get rid of notifications I I think if more people can find the focus button on their phone and like focus on what they're doing because as a developer you end up getting all these deals as a real estate investor there's so many deals like how do it gets so clouded so um I think when I'm shooting media I'm in Focus mode and I was like wow this is like yeah this is amazing my phone doesn't beep and I can like have it by me and and and really focus on what I'm doing and talking about so uh being intentional reduce notifications and just really focus on what you're doing and I get so much more done yeah it's like amazing like I feel like in 20 years we're all going to look back or maybe you know look back on our life today back in 2024 and be like what were we doing like having our phones Buzz constantly all day long like I hope we get to a point in Civilization where we're like that was nuts like that was absolutely nuts what were we doing and I I hope like 2024 is the peak and we all just start going a little more Lite where we start saying like like technology we're going to back off cuz it's it is insane yeah this is going to sound really sad um and crazy but I was talking to somebody about the podcast and they're asked me what I liked about it and one of the things that I love is because I put my phone away I don't have my Apple watch on and I'm like it is might be the only two hours during my day where i'm or or or week if we're shooting one every week that I'm not getting notifications left I probably am I just don't know you don't know about it um and half the time the problem gets maybe more than half they get figured out anyway yeah we can go to a restaurant and have the same convers it's going to be completely different we're not going to be this deep we're not going to be you know I think that's what I love about podcasting I get my employees my main employees we have the best I learned more about them in that hour than I would learn about them you have with your employees in the Ming I do the podcast like I had them all on in a year like instead of doing their review do their review like internally share it with the team and then you can like the team learns more about them what motivates them and like I I think it's just like we don't have any notific going we're just having like a deep conversation you ever heard that game where you you're at dinner with a bunch of people and the first person to look at their phone pays for the meal mhm yeah we should play that more often yeah go to Four Seasons and and like everyone leaves their all right man last question of past present future all right so you said you have three kids right I have three kids three kids love it and how old are they I have a 10-year-old girl 8-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy amazing yeah that's awesome they're my they're my beasts okay so so let's pretend it's 60 years down the road um and and you are you're gone at this point how old are you 35 hopefully you're not gone 95 let's say 80 years down the road um they're talking to their grandkids and their grandkids ask them hey tell me about Grandpa what what do you want your kids to tell them yeah that I think my kids will know me as you know dad likes dad likes to I like to be out there a little more than probably most North dakotans like I like to be known and I like to talk to bigger people and and I think they just see me taking a lot of action I'm in front of big groups of people and they're like he's just really risk advert and like my daughter she's funny because she asked me she like you ever you know I asked her in the car like are you ever get nervous she does cheer in front of like two 300 people so she's just on the floor doing her thing and I asked do you get nervous she's like no no I'm like what do you think about I don't really think about anything dad and she's like the best like she's like freaking crazy and uh you know I said well what are you thinking about she's like well sometimes my cravings What kind of craving these are I always like podcast in my car with my daughter and I love it and uh it's kind of going off the point but she's like ah you know if there's a hot dog wrapped in a tortilla covered in Sugar I wonder if that would be good like what are we talking about but like but like I think they just know me as being fun and then and I I care about everybody I'm pretty easy to be around and and I don't know I think they they know I genuinely qu to help people and so I think we always want to be KN to help people yeah and so now I'm getting more intentional with that within like coaching people and and unfollowing the herd giving media on how I'm doing life so people can just reenact to what I'm doing it's awesome it's amazing all right dude wrap up first question what are you excited about oh man I'm excited for interest rates to come down 3% yeah let's yeah I I am believing in faith that that's going to happen this year oh man um I'm super excited I'm excited about this luxury storage thing in my life right now I get a lot of attention because of it and I'm trying to formulate how do I partner how do I get investors behind me uh in in seeing that model and and building that out and I'm having a lot of fun doing it so um we get yeah we're getting all sorts of messages within LinkedIn or all our platforms on people whining and getting excited about it I didn't know that well where where can people find you to to learn more about that and reach out to you yeah so uh dayto day I'm on Instagram all the time uh I post every day on LinkedIn that is my biggest platform by far yes um I think we have 30,000 followers on LinkedIn we we do a good job within LinkedIn and and uh giving media people trying to get them to unfollow the her themselves there's all these business owners doctors pharmacists all these highly leverage people they want to quit their job tomorrow like you went to school for 12 years and you want to quit your $400,000 I'm like don't do it like just hold on like yeah this rates aren't down yet yeah he's like I got a few million bucks like hold on to that job I promise you you're going to want to keep it let's let's figure out a plan for you and how to get out of that job I think there's a lot of people wanting to unfollow the herd and like get out of their daytime they want to buy back their time they want to get time back on their side and no matter what so um I'm heavy on LinkedIn I share a lot of that in in a busines to business type platform what's been your secret on LinkedIn what do you do there what do you post cuz I'm not very active there yeah um I I uh I post every morning um at 8: a.m. or about 7:20 like 7:15 a.m. and anyway the post goes out and we I just talk about people on passive income whether it's business talk about you know my holding compy talk about things I'm doing uh how I'm finding opportunities where they're not finding opportunities and then I get them to the email which is unfollow the herd where you actually see the breakdown of my like the behind the scenes of my deals so you can reenact it and see what I'm doing like like I show them the HUD report and I'm like I got all sorts of emails on there so we have like 3300 subscribers on that email now um and I actually Mentor some people once in a while now and and through all through Linkedin literally LinkedIn has been my only I'm like the ls house in the beginning like like literally it's just all LinkedIn that's where 99% of my traffic comes from man I should probably rior apparently not good at other media video media uh I'm trying to do my best there you go yeah so cool man yeah I love it well this has been awesome thank you for being on the show today yeah thank fantastic I'm excited to dig in especially with the luxury storage we got talk more about that with you and opener Capital so yeah hell yeah let's talk let's do it appreciate you all right and that my people is the show thank you for tuning in I hope you enjoyed the insights from the episode and hey before you go if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoyed the show in general please consider leaving us a rating and a review wherever you listen to podcast we really do value your feedback and we read your comments to make future decisions about topics and guests and everything else plus it helps us reach more people the more reviews we have and last but not least please head over to social media and consider friending following subscribing and all that stuff uh to both better life at betterlife over on Instagram and my own personal beardy Brandon for more that's beardy with a y at the end of it beard with a Y Brandon on You Know YouTube Instagram everywhere else thanks again for listening I am honored that you would bring me along on your journey to Building Wealth without losing your soul this show has been a production of the better life tribe copyright 2024 our producer is Kevin Ley with podcast pointman our videographer and all-around talented video guy Carson Smith my co-host is the amazing cam Cathcart with dealflow realestate.com and finally you know this show has been all about living a better life but if you want my spiritual answer to what it takes to live not only a better life but the best life head over to a betterlife.com /b bestlife I got a 13-minute special video for you there for the better life tribe my name is Brandon Turner signing off [Music]
