BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 333: A Guide to Getting Started in Commercial Real Estate (+ Laundromats?!) With Ken Wimberly

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

Commercial real estate like you’ve never heard it before!  On today’s episode, Brandon and David sit down with Ken Wimberly, the owner of a Keller Williams commercial brokerage and a commercial investor himself. Ken shares some incredible tips on how to get into owning commercial property, including how to find quality tenants, how to structure the lease, and how to protect yourself from a changing market. He also provides great advice on building relationships and identifying who NOT to partner with. Ken goes on to talk about how he went from working in a pizza restaurant to cashing his first check for 50K as a broker—with absolutely no training program! He shares some incredible advice for opening a laundromat, making huge returns, and successfully investing in other people’s deals, too. If you’ve ever been interested in how to do big deals without big headaches, this episode is for you! In This Episode We Cover: How he builds relationships How he learned the commercial business sitting across from a mentor and listening How he buys laundromats Investing in commercial spaces Using OPM to buy land and selling a 5K investment for 150K  How he earned a commission of $50K on a deal he couldn’t do How he chooses his business partners His morning routine What to look for in a potential partner to disqualify them How newbies should start off investing in commercial property How to balance investing with family time How he structures deals Tips on owning a business inside your commercial building How he invests in other people's deals And SO much more! Links from the show: BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Webinar BiggerPockets Commercial Lenders CBRE BiggerPockets Podcast 190: Building 61 Different Passive Streams of Income with Pat Hiban BiggerPockets Podcast 322: 3 Things Every Leader MUST Do to Scale with Ben Kinney Google Alerts GoBundance BiggerPockets Business Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 333. My $5,000 that I had invested into that deal, I sold for $147,000 because we created value. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others

who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? This is Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast, here with the Man and Plaid, Mr. David Green. What's up, buddy? Not much, man. It's going good.

I was just watching that video that you edited for me while I was there in Hawaii. We had a little surprise ending. It's pretty cool. That was kind of cool. And we're not going to tell anybody what the surprise ending was. We're going to make them go watch the video. So what was the video called? It was like, I'm going to get the exact name, but it's five.

five tips for renting a property. Yeah. No, renting. It was five tips for renting out your home. I think that one was with the special ending. Something like that. Anyway,

check it out biggerpockets.com slash YouTube or YouTube.com slash bigger pockets. Either way you'll end up on the YouTube page and watch the video David Green put out. We had a fun ending. But anyway, no, that was fun. I got to play director for a day. I'm not usually playing the director. So, you know.

You're really good at it. You're like that actor that says, you know what? Now I want to go behind the camera. And I want to show how deep and, and diverse, my talent level really is. Yeah, me behind the camera was like jumping up and down. Like, come, David.

Woo! That's fun. Anyway. Mooning me with your white butts and make me laugh. I think we did do that, didn't we? That's not the surprise I need, though, so don't worry about that. But anyway, today's show, let's talk about today's show. Today's show is all about, well, it's about a lot of stuff.

But specifically, we talk with a friend of ours named Ken. Ken is a commercial real estate broker and commercial real estate investor. Now, if you're thinking, well, I'm not in a commercial. Listen to this anyway. The advice he has is just so good for anybody, whether it's residential or commercial. He talks about how, you know, why he got started with rentals, but then really that he quickly scaled past his rental properties into something like commercial properties, like, you know, a number of different types there. But we talk about shopping malls. In fact, he's getting into laundromats, which I mean, you guys are going to be blown away at the discussion of laundry mats.

I know that sounds like weird, but like listen to the kind of cash on cash returns he's expecting in that business. Very cool stuff. We talk a lot about why, you know, certain types of commercial real estate are very dangerous right now and why some of them are actually like completely recession proven. That might be one of the best things you can do at this point of the market. If you're struggling finding deals, this might be a really interesting niche for you to dig into. So definitely listen for all that. And of course, listen later. He's got a cool kind of a side project called Legacy of Love.

He's going to talk about that later. If you have kids, you cannot afford to miss that section. It's very, very cool. But anyway, before we get into that show, enough of talking about the show, let's hear today's quick tip. Like that? I changed it up a little bit so you didn't know what was coming. All right.

So today's quick tip. Here's the deal. We're talking a little bit about commercial properties today. So I thought it would be cool quick tip to mention. We actually have like recommendations or a directory you could call it of commercial lenders on BiggerPockets. If you go to BiggerPockets.com slash loans, you can look for different companies

that will actually help you scale into commercial properties. Like we support anything five units and up, commercial, retail, anything over about 500 grand. Some companies like StackSource, Branch Equity, CBRE, and others. So if you are thinking about going that route, you want to get pre-approved, you want to learn more. You want to connect with these companies. Definitely check it out,

BiggerPockets.com, slash loans, for some options to make your next commercial investment happens. So check it out. And that is today's quick tip. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund.

Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought-after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes.

Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at Fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed, sponsor job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post.

The best part, no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com. slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

You've upgraded how to buy properties, but did your insurance get the memo? When investors start scaling, insurance can't be an afterthought. Most policies were designed for a single property, not multiple rentals, LLC ownership, short-term stays, or properties mid-rehab. That's where blind spots can creep in. NREG works exclusively with real estate investors. They understand portfolios, how risk compounds as you grow, and why insurance should protect your upside, not just a checkbox. One uncovered claim can undo years of progress. Before your next acquisition, review your insurance.

Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash B-P pod. That's n-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P pod. All right, and with that, I think that's all we got. So last thing I'll say before you into the show is, Actually, I must say two things. One, if you have not yet left a rating and or review for the Bigger Pockets podcast over in iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play, wherever you listen to your thing, could you do that for us?

That helps us a lot. And also, if you're listening to the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast, that's our newest show we just launched. We need me a favor and go leave a review for that one as well. They could definitely use some reviews over there since we have like 8,000 on this show. I mean, we like them too, but, you know, they're just starting out. So go help our buddy's Jay and Carol Scott, get them some good ratings and reviews. you're not listening to that show, you definitely should be. It is fantastic, really, really good. I'm especially looking forward to the one coming up this week. So check it out. And with that,

let's get to today's show with Ken Wimberley. All right, Ken, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast, man. Good to have you here. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah. So today we're talking about your real estate journey. And I know you've done some, I don't want to call it complex, but stuff that I have not got into. You've definitely you know pushed into the the commercial space you got a lot of knowledge there but also you got some cool like family uh parenthood uh stories i want to dig in on i i know a little bit about you and your story but every time i i people are always like do you know ken like you're one of those guys people are like you know can you should really talk to ken so here i am talking to ken today so it should

be good honored i'm looking yeah i've been looking forward to this we had a brief connect in in uh go abundance and in breck and so i've been excited to for this conversation. Well, awesome, dude. All right. Well, we'll start at the very beginning. So can you walk us through like in a minute or two, like your story up until real estate? Like how did you get from where you are, like where you started, where you up until your first real estate deal, how you kind of got into the idea of real estate? You bet? I'll go back to age 12. Okay. We'll be here a long time. Yeah, it's cool. Back in the time machine. That's good. Really. So at age 12, I watched the,

movie taps. Tom Cruise's first movie. And me and a buddy of mine watched that. And we actually went to our parents and said, hey, can we go to military school? Like that looked cool. We want to go to military school. And six months later, I was living in military school in Missouri, you know, hundreds of miles away from my home. And I went to a private boarding military school for four years. And I bring that up because I think that helps set a little bit of foundation in my life as far as some discipline, leadership, ass whipping kind of stuff. There's a whole other journey and story on that. But I think when I look at some of the habits I have in my life today, I can look back to that time in military school.

I graduated military school as about it 20. It's 16 years old. So I was, I skipped a year because as great as military school was, I wanted to get out. I was like, hey, I want to go see some girls and go to college. Went to Texas A&M, my first semester in college, and I made it a 1.2. So I went from top of my class, granted, it was a class of 50, but still as number one out of the 50, to 1.2 in college. And then, anyway, I made it through college, ended up with a TCU at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth

and studying real estate with a finance with a real estate emphasis. However, in the middle of my real estate career, America went to war. in Gulf War I. And I remember sitting on a buddy of mine's couch watching the bombs fly. And literally the next day I went down to the Navy recruiting office and I signed up from the Navy. And so that was basically my junior year of college. I went and signed up for the Navy.

And so I left college for a few years. And with your boot camp, I was air crew stationed in the solid Japan. And I was a cryptologist. I did Morse code, flew around the world listening in on Morse code. I got out of the Navy, went back to TCU, finished by the degree of finance real estate, but didn't go into real estate at that time. I had interned at an insurance and investment firm, so I was doing basically estate planning life insurance. That sounds thrilling.

I actually working for the partners that were doing estate planning life insurance, but I was a numbers junkie. So I was building these financial modeling spreadsheets to show you how insurance would, you know, fund, pay all your taxes and take care of everything. And I did that for a couple of years and then got an entrepreneurial bug. I had worked in college as a pizza delivery driver. And I love the pizza. I love the concept. And I said, you know what? Actually, my buddy in mine from the Navy and I decided we were going to open a pizza restaurant. So we struck a deal with the owners of that concept. It was just a small family owned concept. Struck a deal with them. Did a licensing agreement. and we opened up a pizza restaurant in April 2000.

We ran that for, and the people that were running the existing business are like, I mean, these guys are running it so horribly. Cash management process. That's so many systems that they just didn't have. So our plan was to come open five, put systems in place, and then create a franchise model

and actually franchise the entire concept. That was our plan. Somehow the best laid plans don't always work out. And within 18 months, of us opening, we ended up shutting the doors. And as I dissected that venture, I look at all the mistakes we had made. And oddly enough, the biggest mistake we made in that whole thing was a real estate mistake. And back then, I knew nothing about real estate back then. And I didn't know about the difference, frankly, between commercial real estate or residential real estate. I didn't

know there was a different broker of commercial real estate versus like I hired my, the residential a realtor that rep me on my house to help me go find commercial space. And to his credit, he said, yeah, I'm not maybe the best qualified, but I'll do what I can. And so we ended up taking double the space we needed, which led to more labor than we needed, which led to more equipment that we needed, more electricity, more everything that we needed because of a space requirement. And, you know, while our business increased month over, month over month over month, it started off so much slower than we had anticipated in our debt just kept amassing during that time. And all that extra overhead and space we had ended up being the anchor around our neck

that they caused us to shut the doors. And that was a tough thing. I remember as we were contemplating, you know, shutting the business down, we had employees that were working for us and they were relying on us. And it was we had poured all of our life savings into this business and just hours and hours and hours, you know, the restaurant business of work we had put into it. And we're sitting there contemplating, shutting it down. And I remember turned on the TVs when we came into work one day. It was September 11th, 2001. And it turned on the TVs and the Twin Towers were on fire. And, you know, it made me realize that what we thought were just these insurmountable obstacles and problems were just minuscule compared

to the real problems in the world. Yeah. Well, we made the decision, we shut it down. We filed actually Chapter 7 person bankruptcy. It was a real low point in my life. know, I felt like I let my partner down, my wife down, my whole world down right there. And it, you know, we had to totally climb out and rebuild. I stayed in the restaurant business for another year because that's what I knew at the time. So I went to work as a GM of this regional chain in DFW and enjoyed the work. But I was working probably 70 to 80 hours a week. I was commuting 50 miles each way, sometimes twice a day.

And, you know, because when you're the GM and someone doesn't show up, guess you'd job is. It's yours. And so I started to the math, I was making like 50 grand a year at the time. I'm like, I'm making about minimum wage with this job right now. And I'm miserable. And at the time, we were eight months pregnant with my first child. So I decided something had to change because there was no way I was going to just be an absentee father when I had a baby on the way. And that's when I actually got into the real estate business. This was October 2002. I got into the real estate business. And I look between residential and commercial, both into the brokerage side of the business. And I'm a finance guy. I'm a numbers guy. I'm not a paint and carpet and fancy anything like that.

And so I really leaned towards that commercial real estate side. My family was in the development business. They developed single family lots for home builders back then. And got an introduction to a commercial broker and went to interview with him. And he said, well, Ken, so we're not like the Big shops. He said, we're a family-owned place. We don't have a formal training program. We don't have a draw. We don't have a salary. You probably won't make any money for at least a year. And you're going to need to bring your own computer, but we got a desk and a phone for you. And I said, well, that sounds good. I signed me up. And I literally made, that was his sales pitch to me. And I jumped into the commercial real estate world at that time. And it was, you know, 15-hour days.

his first one in, last one to leave, just grind in, studying, and he didn't have a formal training program. So my training was I set across from him, and I listened to every single conversation he had. And after every conversation, I would ask, what did this mean? What did that mean? Who are you talking to? How does that work? And he was so patient with me, and he just sat there and answered all my questions, and I slowly

started learning. I just started grinding. I didn't know what product type I was going to focus in, but I was just trying to do everything. and eventually there was a developer that was in our office and land developer. And I went to him today, he's still a great friend and client today. And I said, look, I'm a relatively intelligent guy. I was like, I know how to run analysis and the numbers. I know how to do research.

I know how to do some stuff. But I don't know exactly what I'm doing. If you will tell me what you need, I will be your guy. I will go make it happen. And he said, all right, Ken. And he kind of laid out what he was looking for. and his company was looking for. He became my very first client,

and I said, today we remained friends. But Tom, the broker I worked for, he told me I was going to take me at least a year to make any money. He was pretty true. It was 11 months before I made my first commission check, and it was $1,337,

11 months into the job. And so that was a real grind to get to that point. However, the next month, I made my first $20,000 commission check. right because the work I had been putting in, the grinding and the, the pipeline that I'd started to build, started to pay off. And in the subsequent year, I made over $100,000. And then every year since, I've made more and more money and been able to scale my knowledge and team in the brokerage business.

Okay, wow. Okay. So that is your story getting into the real estate world, which is interesting that you got the degree in real estate finance or finance with real estate. Yeah. Went kind of that side route with the pizza thing. which a lot of people do. They get into something that intrigues them or that they think it's like, oh, well, I like pizza or I like restaurants.

I think that would be fun to own one. So they go that route. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, we can do a whole show. I'm sure just on like space issues. Like, I'm sure you could talk forever on that now that you've been doing this. But I want to move on to the next kind of phase of your, of your, you know, you became a broker,

a commercial broker. Can you first describe, for those who are not familiar with the difference between commercial real estate brokers and resident? I'll explain kind of what the difference is. And then we'll walk into actually like investing here in a minute. Sure. Well, I mean, the residential brokerage is everything you think in homes. Any homes from small little starter homes to fancy multi-million dollar homes, but a home that you would live in.

In fact, up to, you know, duplex, triplex, quadplex kind of there. Then that's single family. You get beyond that and you're getting into the commercial world. So anything from apartments and multifamily is concerned in the commercial real estate world, shopping centers, office buildings, land, churches, self-storage, everything that's not in a home or house there is in the commercial real estate world. And it's a broad asset class. And so in our world, we need to, if you're in a major market,

you need to specialize and pick an asset class there. All right. All right. Okay. So you became a broker. Became more and more successful at doing that. Let's walk through like when you started actually putting your own money into real estate deal. Like if you started buying something for yourself, did you like, what does that look like?

Maybe even go to the like, what does your investing look like today? Personally, you invest in other people's deals. I know there's some of that and there. I'm curious of that. And then we'll walk backwards in some details. Well, as I started getting successful in the brokerage business, I mean, real estate as an industry is a brokerage is an industry is a phenomenal way to create cash flow and is some good cash flow. Yeah.

However, that cash flow is not wealth, right? wealth is what we do with that cash flow to invest in long-term assets. And so I was starting produced decent cash flow and had some excess money. And more importantly, I was seeing deals out there, right? I was out there in the business and seeing deals. And so I started looking maybe, and of course, I was watching people put together deals because I'd represent them. And that will, I could, I should start doing some of this on my own. Now, I had owned a couple of single family rentals prior to being in the real estate business. So I, since Red Rich Dad, I had poor dad, like everyone.

And that kind of got me thinking. And so we had bought a couple of single family rentals, but I don't know if you've ever had this experience. But I was managing myself. And there was always a solid story and always a challenge and always an issue. And so I found that experience to be kind of miserable. Oh, man. My landowner's been easy, peasy.

I mean, I've never had a single. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I was in there. And I didn't scale big enough. it taking up assets to actually hire a property manager or I didn't budget for the hiring the property manager initially.

So that side was a little bit of pain in the rear to me. And I also didn't have probably the drive or the wire, the intelligence that I have now to look at the bigger picture. However, so as I'm in the commercial real estate world, I can start putting together some of these deals. And I'll tell you an interesting story here. I haven't thought about this in a long time. The first deal I tried to put together.

Okay. It didn't work, but a buddy of mine and I, we saw this ideal corner piece of real estate. Like, this is great dirt. We knew it was going to be a hit. I was right across the street from a major hospital that had just got announced. It was a four-way lit, hard corner intersection, and 10 acres of dirt. Like, this is going to be great. We could put pad sites up on the end.

We could put a Walgreens. We could put a restaurant. We could put a storage facility back there. Like the all kinds of stuff that we potentially do. So we wouldn't put that dirt under contract. And so we made an offer on it, got it accepted. We put earnest money, put it in the title company under contract. We had 60 or 90 days to go evaluate it and do our homework.

We went to my cousin and actually said, hey, how'd you like to be the financial partner, the equity partner in this deal with us? Because we had the vision, we had the concept, we had the hustle. We did not have the money. So we went to my cousin and said, hey, how'd you like to back us in this deal? He said, yeah, that'd be great. And I said, I'll back you in it. And we keep going through.

So we start looking for potential tenants. We start doing our homework and figuring out who we would potentially bring to this. Land deals are, they're a long life cycle. But this is going to be a great deal. Well, anyway, we get to a week before the expiration of our due diligence. And then my cousin comes and says, hey, I haven't been able to raise the money for that deal. So I'm going to be out. Oh, man.

And I said, what do you mean raise the money? You said you were the money. You said this was your deal and you were in and you were the money. He goes, I don't know, I was going to try to raise it. And I couldn't do it. So we made a big mistake. We had assigned the contract to my cousin at the time when he had agreed to kind of come in and be our partner. And he actually put some additional earnest money up and he was going to be our partner.

Lesson learned right there, never assign your contract. So he came to us. And it's literally a week before a week before the due diligence expires. And he said, well, you can go try to hustle. to someone else and at least make a commission on it. I'm like, that was not what we signed up for. But interestingly enough, I went to a guy that I did not know who was in a big player in the commercial real estate world, well known.

And I went and sat in his office and I pitched the deal to him. I said, hey, here's the deal. And I laid out our vision. I laid out our plan. He said, okay, I like it. I said, but the due deal which just expires in a week and it's got to close 10 days after that, right? So he's got like two weeks of time here. He picked up the phone to the secretary, he says, hey, how much money do we have in XYZ account? She said something to him. He's like,

okay, we'll close it in two weeks. He closed the deal in two weeks. I got paid a $50,000 commission on the deal. So it wasn't all for not. I made a nice commission on it. I did not get any equity in the deal. And he executed exactly our plan. There's now a Walgreens there. There's a, a couple of restaurants and there's a DeVita dialysis. And it was validation that for a couple of young hustlers, we had a good idea. We just didn't quite execute right there. But that was my first foray into starting to put deals together.

So I love that story and a couple of things I want to point out in there. So in the book that Josh Dorkin and I wrote recently, how to invest in real estate. We talk about this concept called the deal delta. And I like to put names to things. So I put a name to it. The deal delta basically says to put together. there any real estate deal? And you just perfectly described it. You really need like three things.

You need knowledge. You have to know what you're doing. You need hustle. Somebody actually do the work. And then you need the money, you know, to be able to pull it off, right? Like if you have those three things, you should be able to pull off any real estate deal. You should be able to do real estate. And where people get stuck all the time when they're trying to get into it, whether it's residential or commercial, it doesn't matter, is they only have maybe one or two of those. They don't have all three. And I would tell people, just pick two. Like if you don't have the money, you had the knowledge and you had the hustle. And so you went and found the money. I just love that. It's a perfect example of that. Well, and you're exactly right.

And most deals I do today, in fact, almost all the deals I do today, I don't bring all three. And oftentimes, like, I've got a development partner that I'll bring into most of my deals because his construction knowledge is so much higher than mine. And I love having him on the sponsor side of our deal. So he and I will go sponsor deals together. We'll go raise the capital. And both of us have lots of access to capital. So we'll typically go raise the capital. He's got a better construction knowledge than I have. I probably have more of a relationship capital than he has that I can bring to deals and it will go do that. But today, I'm invested in office buildings, a net lease office buildings. I've got a couple of single tenant net lease office buildings that

just kind of pay rent every month, which is great. We just bought a 50,000 square foot shopping center last year. And this is a great deal. We found one in a small market. I actually have a a real estate franchise in the small market in Texas, and we found a 50,000 square foot shopping center for sale at $22 a square foot, which is really cheap out here in our market at 22 square foot. We bought it at an eight cap on actuals with about 20% vacancy. So we got, we put together a great deal. Same thing, we went and raised the capital for it.

We put a little bit of our own money into it, went and raised the capital. and we're actually now launching our very first laundromat facility into that building. It's under construction will be up in like two weeks. So now we're going to own the real estate. We have a separate business that owns a tenant that's in the real estate. There will be a cash flow operational business. That's cool. Yeah, the laundromat thing, you and I talked briefly about that.

I think that's a fascinating model. Can we deviate here for a second and talk about laundry mats for a second? I know you're just getting into it, but why laundromats? Like you explain what, what's like to do that? Okay. So, but the laundromat came as a system beauty. It came from a real estate deal. Okay.

So in that same town, the town is Abilene, Texas, right? So it's about 125,000 people in this, in this smaller town in West Texas. In that town, I have another friend of mine or a client of mine who's become a friend. And he calls me up and says, Ken, how'd you like to invest in the shocking center with me? Because his daughter is going to a college out in that town. And I own the local real estate. and so he says how do I can invest in the shopping centers tell me more I'm interested and so he was under contract for a shopping center wanted me to come in and be his partner I said well let's go find

he had some vacancy said well let's go look and see if we can find some tenants during your due diligence period and so I was at a real estate conference looking for potential tenants for this you know B minus C plus shopping center and I came across a laundromat group and so I kind of I pitched the shopping center to them. They said, well, send it to me the details. Send them the details. They got back and he said, this is like a perfect laundromat location. So, well, okay, what would you need as a laundromat? We need a 10-year lease with four or five-year options. Like, perfect. Sign here, press hard. You know, I'm ready to get you as a head. Because the landlord, no-brainer, because I pitched out a lease rate higher than any of our other tenants would be. Like,

no problem. Perfect. And I thought this is going to be at home run. Well, come to find out, the people I was talking to were not laundromat operators. They were actually equipment vendors that were looking for operators. And so that got me, they didn't have an operator enabling. And I said, can you find one? They said, well, we're looking, but we don't have one right now, so we're not a player. So I talked to that particular guy that asked me to be his partner and he said, look, I'm covered up. I have no interest in getting in that business. And so I went to another good friend and client of mine. Hey, man, have you ever thought about this as a cash flow business?

So let's investigate it. And we started investigating it. And we kind of looked at each other and said, look, you and me are two or cut from the same cloth. We're both big picture deal guys. We love putting stuff together. We are not operators. Neither one of us are operators.

We're like, we got to get that third component. And so we went to a third partner of ours that I'd been wanting to get in business with for a long time, who's just an operational master and approached Simpson. Hey, do you like to explore this with us? And the three of us started looking into it. And it was an attractive business model, right? It's a cash flow business model. It's a recession-proof industry. Frankly, if anything, their business kind of a laundromat gets a little bit better in bad times because people have even less money to afford repairs and being able to buy new washers and dryers. And so recession-proof industry, it's, uh,

these days, like what we're doing, it's all card-based systems. So no more coins and collecting coins. It's all card-based systems. And we're using this as a vehicle because we're all, you know, we're all capitalists, but we're also all altruistic people. The three of us, that's why we're good partners together. We want to do more with our lives and with our businesses. So with our laundromat, it's a laundromat with a mission, we call it, to improve the lives of our customers in the communities in which we work. So we're doing it. How do you do that? So we've got a kids' play area in all of our laundromats, much like a little chick-fil-a-type

kids' player. And we've got reading areas around the play areas where we've got bookshelves and the kids can sit and read. We've got TVs up on the walls that are showing family-friendly or positive programming only. No daytime TV, no Sally, Jesse Raphael, you know, junk up on TV that's just mind-numbing stuff. No news actually up on the TV. It's positive programming that we're showing.

We're bringing in like the score program to come and teach people about, not all the time, but say once a month. We'll bring in the score program to host small business workshops, teach people about how to start their small business. At tax time, we'll bring in the score program to come help folks with their taxes. We'll bring in tutors to help people reading English, which may be some of the only English reading they're getting right there. And so we're just, we figure if we can genuinely help,

two families a year per store in our intent is to open 100 to 500 stores, right? If we can help a couple of people a year with every store, we're going to make our little dent in the world. Ken, if somebody wants to open their own laundromat, what do they need to get started? Capital-wise? Or... Like, how much capital? What kind of knowledge-based do they need? What are the steps somebody has to go through if they want to open one? You know, within a year, I think so...

Okay, I'll give you our example. Within a year, we studied the industry heavily for about a year. We went to conferences. We talked to other operators. We looked at the industry averages and started. So what we found to do the kind of stores that we want to do, which are 4,000 to 6,000 square foot locations, our first one, 6,200 square feet, it's going to take about $1 million to 1.3 million to open each location.

And that is both from an equipment and a utility extension and a buildout standpoint on all things and a little bit of working capital in there as well. So I'm saying about a million to 1.3. You can all day long finance 70% of that. Okay, so you've got to bring the remaining 30%. The 70, there are the equipment manufacturers themselves will finance these laundromats or there are lenders specific to this kind of things. The SBA will finance them.

You can do an SBA loan for 90-10 on there as well. So can you, and then, I'm assuming you're going to lease, like one of your own properties, you're going to lease, like to begin with, is that right? Or are you renting an actual place from somebody else? Oh, exactly. That's part of our, that's the beauty of our strategy. Right. Now we've got this five to seven thousand square foot tenant. So we will go buy. So our strategy is to go buy shopping centers with vacancy. No, we've got a backfill. While we're under the due diligence of the shopping center, we will underwrite the location as a laundromat. If it's a great laundromat location,

then that is just extra points we add to that shopping center right there. And then we've got a built-in 5 to 7,000 square-fet tenant that comes in. Not only that, we have other tenants that are natural co-tenants for the laundromat. So like in this shopping center that we have right now, we've got a buddy's home furnishing and easy pond and a CSL plasma. All of those, you know, we all hit the same target demographic right there. So we've got relationships with these existing tenants that will bring to our other shopping centers as well. Well, so that brings up a good question then.

Or I hope it's a good question. The question I have in my mind is like a lot of people are worried about shopping centers because, I mean, look what happens to malls around the country now. A lot of them are dying, right? So here you are actually getting into, like, you know, building your portfolio of things that a lot of people are scared of. I mean, why do you, why do you feel confident about those shopping centers and they're not going to go the way, you know, as Amazon becomes more and more dominant player?

Well, there are certain things that people are going to all. always go shop for, right? Why is Dollar General doing so well and expanding at 900 to 1,000 stores a year right now? So those are some of those things that folks will go in and shop for. Even, you know, I'm a grocery shopper. I like to go into the grocery store and shop in the grocery store and three to four times a week because I don't like doing huge trips and I've got a local neighborhood grocery store. Groceries got a little bit of a, I mean, there's a lot of stuff happening in the grocery, but in, so the pond, pond industry, people are going to go into the pond stores, the plasma industry.

You've got to be in there getting a needle stuck in your arm for the plasma. In Buddy's home furnishing store, that's a rent to own kind of deal. You're going to be in there seeing this stuff. Those kind of tenants that we're going after are perfect shopping center tenants right there. Yeah, yeah, we did an episode. I can't remember what the guest was. It was probably a year ago now here on the podcast. I mentioned something similar.

It's like these little strip malls, like we're not talking about buying a shop copy model with JCPenny and Macy's falling apart here. We're talking about like the small thing with the hair salon. People are always going to need their hair done. They're always going to need their nails done. They're going to get their nails. Yeah. Yep.

People like to go get ice cream after a movie. You know, things like that. Like I am fascinated by that model because again, I think there's such sound logic in there. I mean, obviously some industries will change over time, but some things are just going to always be around. And if you buy it right, if you're not buying it, my concern is you buy something with a tenant that is a risky tenant and you've overpaid for it because it's on a long-term lease and they signed an overmarket rent and then you're in trouble. And so in my brokerage business, I advise people

against that all the time. I'm like, look, you got to really think through all the metrics when you're investing in this. So from our investment standpoint, we like, you know, B and C shopping centers that have vacancy in it that we can buy at a discount. So we're buying them right on a pound per, you know, price per square foot basis. Back to your laundromat. How much can some somebody expect to make if they buy a laundromat in the area that you're operating? As we kind of look through, we expect that this will return between 2 and 400,000, getting up to maybe 450,000 at this one location on an annual basis. Okay. And that's that's profit or that's revenue?

That's profit on that. So if you're in it for a million, you had to put 20% down. or 30% down, you're in for 300,000. There's a good chance you can make all your money back the first year. Well, then, so we expected the first, we assumed if you finance 30% of it right there, year one, after taking out debt service, okay, year one, you're going to be the 30 to 35% cash on cash return. And you'd go up to 40 to 45% cash within a couple of years.

That's a solid investment, right? Now, we haven't opened yet, right? that could be totally wrong. We're going to, however, we've studied and we've talked to consultants. We've talked to other laundromat operators and we've talked to a lot of people. Here's what I find interesting or fascinating or amazing about your story here. It's like contrast this new business. I mean, it's almost like this could be an episode of the Bigger Pockets of Business podcast too,

but it's all real estate, it's all related. But like contrast the first deal, the pizza place you did, which was like, hey, it'd be fun to go buy a pizza place and you went and did it. versus like we started this time. It's like we studied the market for a year. We went to conferences on it. We talked to a bunch of operators. Like the difference that I see between then and now just shows your growth as an investor, as a business owner as a, you know, as a business person.

Like I just think that's fascinating. Well, and it's also, you know, really important to have the right partners in your business. And I've got the right partners in this. Both these guys are growth minded. both these guys are are conservative yet we all have a certain I mean to be an investor you've got to have a certain risk tolerance out there so we have a risk tolerance but we we've all we've all done a great deal of homework and we each bring different strengths to the table that right there is a big big help and we have a week we've got a weekly partner call I mean every week we're on the phone for

an hour talking about every single detail that we've got going on on this so that's been going on for months now. So can you had mentioned earlier that you were someone who brings relationship capital to a deal? And that kind of implies that you're really good at meeting people, knowing the right people, connecting people. And you said just now, well, when we do a deal, you want to get everybody with the different strength. Can you share a little bit for somebody who hears that and says, man, that's what I want to do? I want to go meet people. What are some things you look for in a potential partner? What are some of the expectations that you set? And what are some of the things that you see that you say that would be a problem later. I want to avoid that kind of person, a red flag.

Yeah, great question. So to think through in potential partners, number one is a growth mindset. With all of my partners, I want someone that's open-minded and realize that no matter how smart we are or they are, they've got a growth mindset and they are looking to learn more and to get better. So for me, that's important. Integrity is the foundation. So we say, What would I avoid? If I know anything about someone being a non-person that does not have integrity, they're out from the get-go. If I look and see how they treat other people or talk to other people and they talk down

or disdained other people, they're not for me. We're looking for the right personal that is partners. But they need to have each partner that comes to the table, they need to have a certain skill set. Like my one partner is really, really good at construction management and the development side of things. He sees, you can look at a set of plans and he can look at a construction site and see things that I would never see. I would never see. And that is so valuable to me.

And then our operating partner, I mean, this guy's just detailed to the nth degree. And I witnessed that detail because he ran, he ran like all of KW. Kellel Williams membership divisions at one point. And so he was running like six different membership divisions. He was in charge of the commercial company that I was on his executive board. And I'd watched him lead this company for years. And I was like, that is a guy I want to be in business. He had an impeccable truck record.

So I'm looking for certain skill sets. And it depends on the challenge we're facing. What skill sets do we need? And it depends on what challenges we're facing ahead. Where do you feel like you picked up the ability to see that in people? Yes. That's a great question. And I think time, me spending time, getting to know other people,

Okay, I'll tell you, some of it came, getting out of my comfort zone, I go to a lot of conferences where I have to meet other people. And some are small conferences, like 50 or 100 people. In fact, that's where I met this one partner, this so good at the construction management. We were at a small, there's probably 75 people there. It's a real estate exchange conference that we were at. And ended up, you know, he had commented on a property I had. We ended up going to lunch together. I do not like meeting new people. My first Go Abundance meeting then I went to was like Tahoe 2015. I knew a couple of people. I don't like meeting new people. And it makes me uncomfortable, right? And it, you know, once I get to know them, it's phenomenal. I love it.

I'm just, I'm uncomfortable meeting new people. Maybe I'm a little uncomfortable in my own skin. But I do it. I put myself out there and I do it. And I so I think the answer to that question is, I've just put myself in that situation sometime and had so many times and had the opportunity to meet so many people. And I'm also more of a listener than a talker. So I will just listen a lot in my just observing how people react and what they say, how their, what their mannerisms are, I guess gives me a little bit of insight since I'm not talking over them. It gives me some time to observe who they are. There's an irony to this because, Nobody likes to get aside their comfort zone, of course.

But there's some people that don't mind those group settings. They actually love them. They get juiced up. These really extroverted people that they get in that big crowd and they're like, oh my God, there's these new people. And they're that like, it's a dog in a room full of new people. It's all this stuff to smell, right? They just, their tails wagging.

They're loving the whole thing. Brandon and I tend to be more like you or we really hate that, to be honest. Like, I'm going in there clenching my fists. Like, this is going to be horrible. I would rather be in several, like, fights to the death in an arena than have to go to a place where I don't know someone and make conversation. I can't stand it. But because we don't like it, you tend to notice things that people that are having a great time just don't. If I know, man, I really don't like meeting people and I'm listening to this person talking. I'm paying a lot

more attention to that person to find out, well, are they a threat or not? Is this a good person or not? Why am I so uncomfortable here? And sometimes you bond with the other guy in the group that also doesn't like new people. I think that's really when Brandon and I became best friends was at a Vancouver go go button and we just hung out with each other the whole time because we didn't we don't know everybody, right? You don't know if you can trust them. You don't know if they're full of it. I think a lot of people struggle with that. But what happens is your antenna is up and on and scanning so hard that you're seeing deeper into people than the ones who are just having a good time and it's always a party. And you end up picking up these traits that you developed almost as like a survival tool because

you need it to live in that environment. And that's what I'm I want to encourage people about. I have found so many times the thing that I thought was why weakness can become a strength if you put it in the right position. You mentioned earlier that you started at a commercial brokerage and I wanted to ask you, why did you pick that from a pizza chain? Like, that's a huge jump. And you did a lot of things that we always say, oh, you worked for a year and you didn't

make any money. You mentored from somebody. We hear those stuff constantly. But one thing that was very unique that you said was I sat across from the guy and I listened to what he said. and how he said it. I didn't just say, well, who's going to train me? Who's going to be my mentor, right?

I need someone to train me this thing. You made it your responsibility. And you were smart enough to recognize it's not just knowing how to run the numbers or the metrics. It's how you talk to the person. How do you convey yourself as a trustworthy person who's representing them, not just a salesperson? How do you handle the emotional spikes your clients going through? Because as we know in sales, if you can do that, you can get a deal closed.

Man, if you can't control your client's fears, they're, they're backing out of the deal and they're not going to accomplish their goals. I feel like that ties into what you're saying with, I don't like meeting new people. So I better learn how to do it smoothly. And now look where you're at. You've got these abilities that most people will or opportunities, most people will never have. It's come around. And I love that observation there.

It's so true. When I mentor people these days or I talk to people, one of the most important skills, I tell people that they need is communication skills. Someone's coming out of college or going into college, but go get a communication degree. learn how to truly communicate with folks. But yes, how did I choose or get in from the pizza business into real estate? Real estate was something I wanted to do out of college. I interviewed it a couple of commercial real estate firms out of college.

And I mean, my emotional intelligence has grown so vastly since back then. I mean, I had no skills. I mean, no great people skills, no communication skills back then. I didn't have follow-up skills. I mean, I look at my own kids right now, but come on, man, get it together. And I'd really focus on that, but I didn't have that back then. And so I interviewed it a couple places. I didn't get callbacks.

I didn't really follow up. And I just like, oh, I guess it's not for me. So I stuck where I was. But it was something that I wanted to do from way back then. Why? I didn't know. It seemed like just an industry that appealed to me, right? And I had, I know that was before Richard Porda.

It was just an industry that seemed to appeal to me. And I knew that I would want to one day, invest in that kind of stuff. So if I can get into it, learn it, that'd be great. It just, you know, I took a sidetrack for a number of years. Well, I think a lot of us can relate to that because we just know we love real estate. All of our listeners love real estate. There's this allure to it.

I mean, to this day, those words, real estate will make me stop what I'm doing and pay attention. If I see them on the TV on the news or I see an article that says real estate, I just immediately think I have to read that. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people that are the same way. So what you get is you've got like this elusive financial freedom. them and you've got all these people that are hearing the word real estate orbiting around it. And we're like, how do I get in there?

Where's the door? And then we interview someone like you. And that's what you're sharing is like, this is the road that I took to get in there. That's what's so fascinating. So you've told us you started at a pizza chain. You were working yourself to the bone. You took a huge gamble on yourself. I'm assuming you set yourself up to where you had enough money that you could go 11 months without

making a check, really 12 because $1,800 isn't really money. Can you tell us from that entry point? What your portfolio looks like now? What are the different real estate holdings that you have and what businesses do you own? Sure. So today, it's, I own a commercial real estate brokerage team. So KW net lease advisors, we sell triple net investment properties. So we rep buyers and sellers on triple net investment properties.

I've got a Kellel Williams franchise in Abilene, Texas. I've got the laundromat. We're launching laundry love opening up for active businesses. and then we have a, I have a separate company that's just an investment company. We use, it's really just a separate LLC that we use as an investing LLC. And then our last company that we just launched

is Legacy of Love, Parents, Child, Journaling program that we launched. So those are active businesses. Then in income production properties, it's single-tenant office properties, a couple of those, some oil and gas holdings. We had some family land holdings

that we made investments in, God, almost 20 years ago that a bunch of our family members went in and made some investments 20 years ago. And it's interesting. I mentioned earlier that the land business is a long-term play. And that land that we invested in 20 years ago is just now finally being developed. And it's being developed into something magnificent. It was a thousand acres of land being developed in this magnificent mixed-use property, but also out of that thousand acres, we ended up with some oil and gas holdings out of that.

So we've got oil and gas holdings. We've got, I'm invested in just some other people's deals. I've got a friend of mine that has a, not a reet, but it's a private fund that is for commercial real estate assets. He actually has two funds. One is for cash flow and the others for appreciation. and I'm invested in his appreciation fund right now because I was invested in another fund he did and it turned out incredibly well. So I went back into this next fund right there.

I'm invested into a mixed youth development that the guy that I did that first deal with in or that didn't work out in that I ended up just having the commission on. That guy and I invested in a project together. He developed a mixed youth project. In fact, that's where I'm sitting is in the office in that next year. use project right there. We're invested in a residential reet and then the shopping center that I mentioned and then we just put a little money. My cousin's developing some Class A multifamily and we've got some funds in that as well. Nice. So you're you're spread out pretty wide. And I want to talk about this. And I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's something that, you know, a life and when they're getting

started with real estate, they're just getting into the game. They're like, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this. I want to do this. Like how do you balance being diversified with focus? Like, how do you look at those two things? Well, everything I'm doing personally, it's in the shopping center business, right? If it's me personally, we're doing, the reason I have the office buildings is because they house the businesses that I own, right? So, but personally right now, anything I'm buying right now personally is we're looking at shopping centers for future laundromats.

So all the other stuff, I'm invested in other people's deals. And Pat Hyven made a comment a few years ago that, really stuck with me. And this was, a lot of this happened just in the last probably five years. And I haven't made a comment. He said, I own a small percentage of a lot of deals. And they all add up. And I thought, ding, ding, ding, ding. Because I've been trying to just put together my own deals there. And I thought, you know, I should be putting a little bit of money into other people's deals here. And it just hadn't hit me at that point, honestly, until he made that comment. And so from there, I started, you know, putting a little money here and there into other folks' deals. And some of them have really paid out quite nicely.

So I'm curious about as an investor, somebody who puts money to other people's deals. A lot of people listen to the show right now are looking to raise money from people like you potentially, right? They want to go and put together that deal. I'm curious, what makes an investment attractive to you? To a guy like you who you've got some income, you've got some good businesses running different ways. So you got maybe some money to put into a deal. Like how can somebody stand out to you or to a, not you particular, but a person like you? and to make you want to go into a deal with them.

You know, for me, as much as anything, it's the person putting together the deal, right? Do I believe in the person? Do they have a track record? And look, we all started off at some point with no track record. So we've all got to do our first deal there. And I would put money into someone with their first deal if I believed in that first. Now, I'm not going to bet the farm on them on their first deal.

But I would put money into someone's deal if I really believed in that person in the project they're working on. The other, though, for me is it's got to be an asset class that I believe in, right? And it's something I understand and I believe in. If they're going into some esoteric asset class that I don't understand, no thanks. The biggest deal I've ever lost, ever lost, we invested money into life settlements. Okay? You know what life settlements are?

It's where people are betting on, you're buying insurance policies on people that are terminally ill. Okay? It's the life settlement business. and there's a whole industry out there because some of these people, it was, in theory, a very viable industry. You know, people are trying to wait, let's say they had a $10 million insurance policy, and they've got less than a year or two to live. And they said, look, I can cash out on this policy today and sell it for $3 or $4 million, right?

I have the money today. Someone else has the insurance policy, and they created the entire industry out of this. Well, we invested, this is through a family holdings we did, and we invested $80,000 into this company, or into some policies that this company was promoting. And later, the guy that ran that was indicted and sent to prison. And they had falsified underwriting reports, and it was just a big mess. And we lost a massive amount of money on that deal.

But I didn't understand it. Right? I mean, I understood it in theory, but I didn't understand it in the nuts and the bolts. And so if I can't understand it, the nuts and the bolts that was a great lesson, right? where they say you learn from the losers right there. And that was a great lesson to me in avoid those things that seem too good to be true.

Walk away. There's a whole lesson on that and Riches Man in Babbel. That's what I was just about to say. One of the best piece of advice in that book is don't invest in something that you don't understand. That's simple. Maybe a great deal. Numbers might look on paper that people might be super influential. If you just hold true to that, that sounds great.

I hope you guys make a whole bunch of money. I don't get how this thing works. that's not my deal. In fact, I've rarely ever heard about somebody who lost money on a deal that wasn't breaking that rule, or at least one of the rules in that book. I see that all the time. There's all kinds of asset classes that are out there, right? Then people try to get me to look at or invest in and I share the crypto world. I don't understand that. There's no way I understand that. Same thing as me or cannabis. That's another one that's coming up all the time. Everybody's jumping into it. I'm like, hey, that's really cool. Ben Kinney said something I really liked when we interviewed him.

he said, I wouldn't, I only want to do stuff that would leave the legacy I want to be remembered for. I don't want to be remembered as a drug dealer or a pot buyer, so I'm just not going to do it, right? He didn't say it's a bad, you shouldn't do it. It's a bad business. Just he didn't, that didn't align with how he wanted to remember it. It was very simple, not my deal. And I feel like a lot of the time, knowing what to eliminate is a better tool than just knowing how to find a deal. Having a criteria that you can say, nope, nope, nope, nope, makes it a lot simple.

Yeah. Saying no is an important thing. It's very important. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Fundrise flagship fund.

Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought-after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes.

Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship Fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at fundrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. There are two kinds of real estate investors, those who have reviewed their insurance and those who think that they have. Most don't realize their coverage wasn't built for how they actually invest. Vacancy periods, rehabs, short-term rentals, or LLC held properties. These gaps surface only when filing claims. That's why investors work with NREG. They specialize exclusively in real estate investors, understanding portfolios, risk at scale, and cash flow protection. One claim can erase years

of returns. If you own a rental property, don't assume you're covered. Have NREG review your insurance with someone who gets investing at NREG.com slash BPPod. That's NR-E-I-G.com slash B-Pod. Wouldn't it be great if your houseplants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there. Airbnb has a great feature called the co-host network, which makes hosting your home so easy. If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local co-host to take care of the hosting for you.

These co-hosts are vetted locals who already have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests, creating your host space, and managing reservations, so everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip. Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making memories somewhere else. Your home, might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. If you think property management is expensive, try mismanaging a vacancy or an eviction or a maintenance issue that turns into a five-figure problem because no one caught it early.

That's expensive. A good property manager isn't overhead. Their protection against small mistakes turning into big losses. And that matters more than ever in this economy. That's why I like mind. Unlike other property managers, Mind manages your property like an investment. They obsessively measure the things that matter for your bottom line. Things like occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score, and they have the results to prove it. Go to mine.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get your first month free, which is much cheaper than learning the hard way. So let's get a couple specifics also. It's not often that we get a commercial real estate broker here on the show. So I want to ask you a couple of just questions about the industry,

about people who want to get into commercial real estate. Maybe they own some residential and they're like, I want to buy something commercial. I want to buy that shopping center. I guess the first question I have, I'll fire a couple, I'll fire a couple of match you. But first of all, how do you find a good commercial broker? I mean, like it's different than residential. So how do I find somebody who's actually, I want to go buy, for example, me personally, like I want to get heavily into mobile home parks over the next three years.

I got to go of a thousand units in three years. I got to find some mobile home park brokers, right? I mean, somebody who I can deal with that or I want to buy a shopping center. How do I do it? Well, you made the right move and I already introduced you the guy in the mobile home parks right there. That you did. Use your network, number one, use your network to get introduced to people.

The other is because, right, nothing's better than a, not just a warm introduction, but a validation. And someone said, this guy is it, right? He's done it. I've seen it. He's valid. So using your network desk, if you don't have that, there are industry associations, commercial real estate industry associations, like in Dallas, there's North Texas Commercial

Association of Realtors. I've met some great clients. Okay, so exactly just that. I met a great client at one of those little coffee and networking events. So go to some of the little industry or local Realtor Association, commercial Wilter Association trade groups right there. And then CCIM is a phenomenal trade group within the commercial real estate world that is professional brokers that really understand underwriting of things. CCIM and SIOR are a couple of designations. And if you look for brokers that have got, at least they're going to understand the underwriting.

And frankly, both of those designations have a pretty big portfolio of experience required for you to become a member. So a couple of things to look for. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I like the network part of that too. Yeah, I did that you introduced me to some mobile home.

A couple. Yeah, buddy. Anna, yeah, you, you get me a couple people to connect with because, like, you're just, anyway, use your network. That's what David said earlier, right? My relationship connection. That's, and I enjoy that, right? Yeah.

That is. I love that. Right? So if you said, I'm like, oh, you need to meet so-and-so. And that, that gives me energy. But just going up and meeting people in a random room does not get me energy. There you go. All right.

So I love that because we tell people all the time, relationships is where it's at. And then a lot of people, they understand the concept, but they don't always know how to actually go about doing it. But finding the broker is like finding a fisherman that will bring you fish. That's how big people get deals. Is they're not just doing a direct mail campaign looking for the fish themselves? They found someone who already has that network established a bunch of nets out there and they go get the fish from that person. What about when you want to pick a market? What are things that somebody should look for in an area where they want to invest in multifamily? me. For me, it's the market that you're already in. Okay, there's, unless there's just some compelling

reason why your market is, is terrible, there's nothing going in it, I'd say it's the market that you drive and that you know and you pass every single day and start with that market. Think of everything you drive by and see on a daily basis right there or that you can go and inspect on a daily basis. Now, I've invested, I mentioned in Abilene, a West Texas market, but I'm out there all the time. We've got a franchise out there. So I, unless I'm in someone else's deal that's in another market, I'm looking to my local market to invest. Okay, so let's say I've just hired you to be my coach and I want you to help me find commercial property. Can you give me the steps that you're going to put me through, hey, David, do this, learn this part, then move on to here, then move on to here and

kind of give us an overview of what somebody needs to do if they want to be a multifamily investor. Yeah, I would tell someone first, I'd put them through a couple of courses that we can send them to online and have them learn just the basics of the industry right there. But if you want to invest, let's say first, let's pick an asset class, whether it's shopping centers or multifamily or office buildings or whatever, stealth storage buildings or mobile home parks, whatever it is, first pick the asset class. Next, let's identify everything in your city. Let's say you live in Cleveland.

All right. So let's identify every property in a five-mile radius from where you live right there that is in that asset class. Then we're going to look up the ownership and the details of all that. And then we're going to start contacting the owners and start and get to know the owners of each one of those. I'm walking through the steps of how they can go about that. But I heard Aaron Amuchisaghi's podcast recently.

And what he said is exactly, go to the tax rolls. You can get the basic data from the tax rolls. Then you can go Google the address or the name and start getting the phone number or email address. You start contacting these people and making introductions of yourself and learning about their property and their asset. In addition to that, you can set some Google alerts related to your asset class and you'll get emails every single day related to your asset class. And you start learning an immense amount just by reading two or three articles a day. related to your asset class. Yeah.

That's a great tip. Sorry, I didn't want to cut you off. I just thought, man, that's such a good tip. Yeah. The Google alerts for your asset class.

I'm going to totally do that today. I've done that for several things I wanted to learn about. And I would get these Google alerts. And eventually it was just too much email. So I turned them off. But when I want to learn about something, it's a great way to do it. You should also,

by the way, side note, put your own name in a Google alert. And that way, if it ever comes up after you get a note. There's a famous skateboarder name, Brandon Turner and then there's me. You might not want to do that.

You know, I might, well, yeah. What is a Google Alert? What's a Google Alert? You can go onto your Google account settings and go into, I forget where you go, but you can go, you can Google, Google Alerts. But it's in your settings and you can type in any subject that you want to be notified about and you can either get a daily or a weekly email from Google and it'll have the different headlines of any time that name or phrase or whatever pop.

up in like the top blog articles the top things that somebody wrote so so people could do this for bigger pockets and see all the new videos that come out and all the blog posts everyone should go set a Google alert for bigger pockets right now. They might get a few to me emails. That's a great idea, actually. All right. So just to recap real quick, the, you know, if somebody wanted to get to your spot or, you know, get started, you were helping them.

They should get the education. They really got to like learn what they're doing here. they got a network, you got to start getting the Google alerts. What else can you throw out them? Learn about the properties that are in your market right there. Oh, yeah, the asset, yeah. And start, okay, then when you're calling on, folks, hey, set up coffee or lunches with the owners of these asset classes, just get to know them, start talking to them, get known as a local

real estate investor that's out there. Hey, I'm looking to invest in this kind of stuff right here. What can you tell me about what you've learned? It is amazing how generous people are with their time and what they'll share with you and what you can learn from others. Yeah, that's neat. All right, well, that's really, really good. And again, this is fantastic.

Actually, you know, David and I have been talking lately about introducing maybe a new segment to the show, which we haven't officially done yet, but maybe it'll come. Basically, like, I want to ask people, like, break down like a five-step process to get to where you are today. And that's what you just did. You're like, hey, if you want to invest in commercial deals like I do, do these things. And the funny thing is, most people won't go out and do them. They're like, yeah, that's good advice.

They're not going to go on and do that. But I would encourage you to be listening. I mean, like, don't just take what he said is like, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. But like, how can you actually put all that stuff into practice like starting today? Well, and the other thing is, so once you start learning, then you learn how to underwrite the properties, right? And I know you guys have tools to help people underwrite different things. And there's tools if you take. So CCIM, the industry group I mentioned, has some great tools that you can use.

And there's other subscription service tools that you can use. But you've got to figure out how to underwrite properties. And they set a goal. Underwrite two properties a week. Right? If you sat there and said, all right, this is my commitment. I'm going to underwrite two properties a week and I'm just going to look at it. Even if you have no way to complete a transaction today, because you come across a home run, guess what?

You're going to figure out a way to complete that transaction. Yep. Yeah, that is fantastic advice. That's another one of those moments where people need to hit that rewind button on the podcast app like two times and like listen to that again. Because this applies to everybody. You're trying to get into industrial, commercial, residential. It doesn't matter. Set a goal, how many deals you're going to analyze and start doing it.

This is like we interviewed the author of the book, Four Disciplines of Execution, Chris McChesney recently. And that was his big thing. It's like, get some lead measures. Like what is your lead measure? Things that you can act on and do. So I love that you said that. Now, before we move on, we got to do the deal deep dive and we're going to go into the famous four and fire around. But I want to know more about this legacy of love thing.

I've heard, I've heard that you used the word once today. And I've heard a little bit about it. But where did this come from? What is it? Kind of walking through that. Sure. Legacy of love is, it was a passion project is what it was. So I'm, I'm most important in my life. I'm father of three children and husband of an amazing wife. I mean, that's, if I'm not doing those things right, then nothing else matters. And when my children were very small, in fact, my daughter was one and my son was

still in the womb, I made a commitment to start journaling to each one of them. Just to some, slow down, not let the moments pass, and capture some little moments. And it was a cool little exercise. And at first, it was just how cute they were and the little stuff they're doing. And as time went on, the entries became quite deep and involved. I would write about their growth and their involvement, my own personal struggles in our family. I wrote and journaled through the 2008, 2009 financial crisis and what that did and what that did. And what that that took to get through during that time. I actually ended up getting divorced from my older kids' moms,

and I wrote and journaled about those things. And it's just a very private process that I was going through. And the intent all along, I was going to just do this, never tell anyone about it, and give it to each of my kids at their high school graduation. It's going to be 18 years of your life through my eyes. However, over the years, I've shared this concept with lots and lots, especially dads, and then I'd search your own with moms

and just parents in general. I'm like, hey, here's something you've got to think about if you've got kids, just saving some moments for them. And everyone always like, holy cow, that is a phenomenal idea. And I love a lot of parents started taking action on that. And then other folks would start calling me and saying, Ken, you need to do something with that idea. And it just planted the seed in my head. Actually, you know, fellow GoBundance member, Daniel Ramsey in Vietnam had told me, he said, He said, Ken, that is the most amazing idea I've heard.

If you don't do anything with that, I'm going to take my foot and just kick your ass personally on that. Because that is a phenomenal idea. And it really, the more encouragement I got, I started thinking I'm going to develop something with it. The final straw was I went to a private mastermind, Turygo Bundance, with Jeff Hoffman, the founder ofpricelyson.com. And I had an opportunity to sit down privately with Jeff and tell them about the idea and what I've been doing for my kids and the concept of bringing that to market. And Jeff's like, that's a great idea.

You need to move on it and take action. And so I did. So I spent the last 18 months and we've created a cross-platform program, meaning you can use it on the web, on your phone, on your tablet. It all sinks together like an Evernote or a one-note type process. And a place, it's very private, unlike a social network, this is a very private thing that you can insert photos, videos, text, voice note, voicemail.

So you can save, like when a little kid leaves you that sweet little voicemail. I remember my son, he used to live me the sweetest little voicemails, and I'll keep them forever. And they're gone. I don't know where they are. Eventually the iPhone updates or whatever. But now we've got a place where parents can save all that stuff and then pass down for future generations.

And so this was, you know, it was a passion project for years that's now become something to think will be very big. And our goal is to grow this thing. 10 million subscribers. So, and today we've got like 200. So we started out here and got a 10 million. Okay, so I mean, I know that's a real estate show, but a lot of parents that are listening to this show right now.

If somebody wants to check it out, where do they go? Legacyoflove.com. So that's dot APE. Legacy of Love. We're on the iPhone or the iOS and the Android stores. You can download the apps there. It's a free download. It's a free program.

It's a free medium model. So we have some premium subscriptions. and you know what if any of your listeners actually want a premium subscription we'll add a discount code pockets yeah we'll add a discount code of pockets and we'll will uh 20% discount off of any of our premium stuff if they want it that's awesome dude thanks that's very cool happy to yeah i love that because i mean my parents did something somewhat similar and we'll move on after this but like not they didn't journal every day but when we were really you really you're really young. I mean, like under two years old, my parents wrote a letter to us. Each of the kids, we had four kids in my

family. And it was like a, it was like, I don't know, I think mine was 12 pages long. And it took about a year to write it. And it was like their hopes and dreams for us, what they were seen already, kind of of my traits. Just really, really cool. And then they gave it to each of us on our 12th birthday. And we got to travel anywhere in the world. We wanted to go on our 12th birthday as a family vacation. Then when we we'd go there, we'd open the letter. I did mine. I opened it at Sea World in San Diego. That was my favorite. Like that was like where I wanted to go. Anyway, it was just just, yeah, it was such a cool thing. story. Thanks. Yeah, it was, it was such a great just thing, you know. So I don't know. I love that. Like that time invested now that it takes a long time maybe to do stuff like that. Like the

like if they love you over the years. But man, it pays off in memories long term. Well, the really cool thing. When I did it, I thought how much time is this going to take me to do something like this? And I just made a commit I'll do one entry a month, right? Because that was reasonable to do one entry a month per kid. But now 15 years. later, there's hundreds and hundreds of entries. And I go through them and I look at the evolution of our lives. And it is a, it means as much to me as it ever will to them to go back and look through these things. Yeah. That's, that's cool. That's awesome, Ken. Well, all right, so we got to, we got to move this show along. This has been fantastic. But I want to head to the next

segment of the show and dive deep into one of your deals. So it is time for the deal deep dive. All right. Let's get to the deal deep dive. This is a part of the show where we we dive deep into one particular real estate investment that the guest has done. So Ken, we're going to fire some questions at you about one of your deals. You got something in mind that we can drill you on? I do. I have a really interesting deal. All right.

All right. So let's go through these. Now, we'll this fire, I think we have eight questions total. So the first question, what kind of property is this? Land. Land. Yeah. All right.

How did you find this land? So I drove by it every day. it was a piece of property that I drove by every day going back and forth to work. I'd seen it is on my radar. And it was much like I mentioned earlier where I saw a valuable piece of property, I thought, hey, we could put a deal together on this. It was actually the same partner that I had structured that deal with. I said, look, this is a great property for an office development.

It was a six acre. It was actually three different tracks of land on a major road that was due to be expanded down the next couple years it was going to be expanded and it backed up to the 17th and 17th green and 18th fairway of a golf course like that would make such a cool little office development we should go put a deal together on that so that's that's how it started driving by every day cool so how uh so normally i ask how much was it but first how did you i don't even know how did you did you read did it go for sale or was it for sale or did you reach out to them It was not for sale and we reached out to them is what we did.

Okay. Three different property. We kind of reached out and we actually had to mail by one. We couldn't get them on the phone. But we eventually got all three property owners to respond to us. Okay. How much was it or were they asking originally? And then we'll go into.

I think it was total around $600,000 on that one for the three. How did you negotiate that price? Because we knew. I was at that time, at that time, I was in the land business. That's what I did every day was I was in the land brokerage business and I knew what land values were worth. One of the guys really, there's actually four tracks lane we tried to buy, but one lady was just too overpriced. She thought she had the Taj Mahal there. And what she had was a little really crappy little rental home on there that we weren't gone anyway.

So she still owns that crappy little rental home right there. And there's a beautiful office development surrounding her. Oh, funny. Yeah. Okay. How did you fund this deal? OPM. Other people's money. Other people's money. So actually, I had a good friend of mine that ran a really successful window and door installation business, had a lot of excess cash, and he was always looking to invest in deals. And so my development partner and I went to him. We said, hey, here's the deal we're putting together. Are you interested? He said,

absolutely. So he was our sole equity partner in that deal. So my, my development, development partner and I each had a total of about $10,000. We had $5,000 each into it. We put in earnest money. And the equity partner put in the remaining amount. And we had a bank note on it as well because banks were lending on land. So we had a bank note on it as well. But he put all that required equity up.

Okay. Once you bought it, what did you do with it? Well, we took it through actually prior to closing on it while it was in the feasibility due diligence period, we took it through the zoning process at the city because it was unzoned land or it was at a default zoning on it. So we took it to the city. We did, well, prior to that, we did a land plan on it, laid out what we thought it should be, that we took it into the city and took about two months, take it through both planning and zoning and then the city council to get zoning approved. And then once we closed on it, we just kind of sat on it is what we did

because this was interesting timing. This was in, oh, so I forget, I even forgot this part of the story. So here's what was going to happen. We were going to start development on it. We were going to start development on the project. It's going to be a $3 million bank loan to start on our first two buildings is what we're going to do. Here's the irony of everything. The beautiful wife that I am now married to was my banker at the time way back then.

Really? We're going to fund a $3 million note to go close and build our first two buildings. the week before closing, our equity partner came to us. This is 2008. The markets are starting to melt down already. The residential market had already melted. The commercial market was starting to melt down. And he was in trouble in a couple other deals.

And he came to us and he said, guys, there's no more money. I'm not going to be able to put any more equity into this deal. We're not going to be able to pull the trigger. And at the time, we are devastated. We're like, oh, no, we're not going to be able to start. on this project. In hindsight,

that was the greatest gift we could have ever received because if we would have started on a $3 million project as the markets were cratering, we would have been in big trouble. So... You own the land, at least at that point, right?

We own the land. We own the land. It was fully entitled and ready to go. So here's the interesting part of that story. Markets crash and nothing's really happening. The rest of my world starts crashing. Just all the deals I had going. in the brokerage business, they're all falling apart because they're all land deals and nothing's happening in the land deals at that point.

I was way overextended at that point in my life. Had a big old house and, you know, all the show. And it was like an anchor around my neck. Okay. So things were just melting down around me as well. Went to a builder friend that I knew. And I went to the builder friend who loved this project. In fact, they were going to be the builder for our office project right there.

and I said, hey, you guys, because he had approached me, hey, we want in that deal, we want in that deal. I went to him. I said, all right, here's your opportunity. I am in a place where I need to sell. And here's your opportunity. If you want in the deal, I'll sell it to you. I pulled up my closing statements earlier today.

It was interesting. I looked at in years and years. My $5,000 that I had invested into that deal, I sold for $147,000. Oh, wow. Because we created value. We took what was just a couple of, janky as best as you're in rental homes there we leveled them we we took it through zoning we brought

this entire we entitled the property brought value to the property we that took five thousand dollars it became worth the hundred forty seven thousand dollars that's so cool that's a good good ROI right there's a good what it was was a blessing right I needed I was it was a blessing that it was a blessing that it came at a time where I really needed those funds. Yeah, cool. So I guess the last question, I'll just kind of wrap up then. Like, what did you learn from the deal? Overall, what did you learn from this experience? I really learned that it's, you can create something out of nothing, right? You can create, and it's not out of nothing with a vision, it's an execution on that vision. We had the vision. My partner and I knew. We saw it. We laid it out. We took it through zoning.

The council saw it. And we were able to entitle this property. We created. We create a, created true value. So you can create value out of a vision if you see things that others don't and then go take action on seeing things that others don't. So that was the big thing for me. That was our first, we had seen it before, right? But we weren't able to see that vision through. In this case, we were. I sold my interest in today. That's actually a beautiful what we had planned. It got modified slightly, but it's a beautiful office part today. Very neat. Very neat. All right. Well, cool. That was a deal deep dive. And now, before we get out Here, let's go over to the world famous fire round.

It's time for the fire round. All right, time for the world famous fire round. Of course, these questions come direct out of the Bigger Pockets forums. You can visit them at biggerpockets.com slash forums anytime. You should ask questions there. Actually, there's an entire commercial real estate forum there. And people, if they have more questions, they can always jump in there. But let's fire a couple of them here at Ken.

Number one, Kevin from Beaverton, Oregon, asked, he said, hey, my grandfather had a long career investing in single family houses, but he just gave me some advice and said, start with commercial property. I'm curious, is that even possible to just jump right into commercial? I always assume that's mostly unattainable unless you're maybe an accredited investor. Any tips for starting out directly into commercial? First, sure, it's possible to jump into it and not have to start with single family.

Because I kind of mentioned in my own journey, I own two small rentals and then got out of that business pretty quick. So it's possible, much like I mentioned earlier, it's pick an asset class in commercial. Commercial is a very broad word in a very broad category. So pick a specific asset class within commercial real estate, study it, and start small, right? There are small shopping centers and there are power centers in malls. Start small, start with a small multifamily, start with a small office building. There's lots of little stick and brick, small office buildings that you can potentially go buy and lease out to someone.

So I think it's super doable and it's affordable. Start in your local market, learn it, pick a niche, stick with it. Beautiful. All right. All right. Next question. This is from Joe Strickley in Santa Barbara. I think triple that leases are some of the best deals out there.

I'd be interested in any thoughts or experiences on which tenants are considered the best. To me, the U.S. Postal Service has to be. to be on that list, followed by Dollar General and then Starbucks and banks. What kind of businesses are best for triple net leases and what kind of commercial tenants do you look for in general? So all of those are interesting tenants. So let's start with the post office, right? Post office, U.S. government guaranteed, great tenant to have backing as far as a credit

standpoint. However, like everything, the devil is in the detail. So read some of your government leases and they have. they can have annual cancellations in the leases right there. So if for some reason a particular department did not get funded for that year, your leases can be canceled. So like everything, devil's in the details. I do know people that invest in post offices and they love them.

Post offices have two different types of leases, one where the landlord pays more of the expenses and one where the tenant pays more of the expenses. So so much is in actually reading the actual leases under their. dollar general it's kind of like the golden child right now they have great credit they're expanding at 900 to a thousand stores a year they they're same store sales typically are are up year over year over year on these things the caution on dollar general that i just avoid a lot of them are really small markets like 5,000 people or 1,000 people or what's going to happen if dollar general does vacate at the end of your 10 or 15 years on your lease. What are you going to do with a property in a town of 1,000 or 5,000?

If you're in a town of 25,000 or more or 50,000 or more, there's plenty of alternate uses for that. So I think just be careful on the location and the size of the town that's in there. Starbucks, you mean Starbucks, another gold-plated credit right there. They're popping up everywhere, solid business model. Okay, but here's the challenge I find with Starbucks. And they're usually in great locations. Challenge I find with Starbucks. is the rent that they pay on those buildings are so high. Often it's, you know, $40, $50 a square foot in a market that you might be paying $20 to $25 a square foot in.

So if Starbucks goes dark at the end of their lease, now, great news is you can pretty much count on them throughout the term of the lease. But if they go dark or relocate, which does happen, you know, watch out, and they do relocate on occasion. And they were paying $40 in a market that you might release at $20, you just lost half of your value right there in your income. So lots of things to pay attention to with these types of leases. I actually wrote, in fact, we can include it in the show notes.

I'll send you a white paper that I wrote, which had about 10 or 12 metrics that I tell people to pay attention to when looking at triple net investments because there's a lot of things. And the rent that the tenant is paying relative to the market rent really affects the value of the property and the amount you're going to pay for that property. Not good to know. And hey, just in case people, we kind of jumped it through it without talking about it, in case people aren't aware, what does it mean triple net lease? What does that mean? Sure. Triple net. The triple nets refer to taxes, insurance, and maintenance. So in a triple net lease, typically the tenant is paying their pro rata share or if it's a single tenant building, the tenant would be paying 100% of the taxes, of the insurance and the maintenance. the maintenance, I kind of go, yeah, because again, the devil's in the details on the leases.

Sometimes there are landlord requirements. People are calling them triple net leases, but they're not true triple net because the landlord may still be required to maintain the parking lot or the structure or the roof of the building. So, but in general, the triple nets first to the tenant paying for taxes, insurance, and maintenance. Cool, cool, cool. All right. And I like that because it definitely reduces some of the variability. variability. Is that the word I'm looking for? Anyway, you're looking at, you know, basically the base rent is your income. Yeah. Yeah. It makes for easy quick math. Yeah, that's cool. All right. Next question. Number three. I'm selling ownership from Joey. I'm selling ownership in one of my companies for 300K. With the sale, though, I'm losing a $40,000 year salary. So I'm just trying to find out, how would you invest $300K to try to replace some of that salary? You know, I've got a couple rental properties right now, but would you, you know, pay them off or would you buy them? more rentals or something like what would you do with 300k if you needed to make some income if i'm in 300 000 for for me i could buy a shopping center honestly i'd buy it's the business we're in i'd go buy a value ad shopping center that had some vacancy that we could put a couple of tenants in and then

increase our n-o i and you know if you get that 300 000 you just get that to a 10 cap on there 10 or 10 cash on cash it's 30 grand you get it higher from there you can almost replace everything yeah so Hi. Cool. Question number four, Andrew Perkins from Kansas City. My wife and I are 30 years old. I have a four-year-old daughter and a new son on the way. I work full-time.

Oh, and both work full-time plus a little extra. We are both on the same page with the ultimate goal of financial freedom through real estate. However, I find myself obsessively researching networking and other things like that to realize this goal. How do you balance work, family, and investing? Any practical tips and experiences would be appreciated. I prioritize family first. Okay, so I'll start by saying that I prioritize family first. I also, I wake up early.

I go to bed early and I wake up early. So I spend time with my- You're a miracle morning-houride guy, right? What's that? You're a miracle morning, hallow-ride guy, right? Yeah, so that- I met Hal at my first Go Abundance conference, and I started reading his book on the flight out there.

And that book really shipped, I was already a morning guy, but I was not a purposeful morning guy. And then absolutely. So now I followed the American morning process, which doesn't take that long to follow that. And then get my day started off right, but I get up at 3.45 in the morning. And so to answer the question, I'm up in the morning, my miracle morning barring the exercise, because I do the exercise last, but is knocked out by, let's say, 430 or so. And that 430 to 6.30 time period, that two hours, there are no obligations on me at all.

It's, I'm, I'm focused on the things that I need to focus on. And sometimes that's deal analysis. Sometimes it's specific projects I'm working on. Sometimes it's a couple of days a week. I'll allocate email time or I'll jump in there and just get rid of all my emails. But it's, that's the me time. So if I was looking to get into real estate investing and do some of this, wake up early, which requires that you go to bed early because everyone needs,

the more and more and more I read, people need seven hours of sleep a night. Right. So make sure you're going to bed at a decent time to get up early. But that time in the morning, there's no obligation. You don't have your job obligation or your family or your kids or anything. And I think that's some of the best time. And for me, mentally, that's when I'm at my best, is early in the morning. It's a great tip.

Yeah, really, really good. All right. Well, Ken, before we get chat here, let's go to today's. Famous for. These are the same four questions we ask every guest every week. But before we get to them, let's hear what's going on this week over on the Bigger Pockets business podcast. with our buddy Jay Scott.

Hey, Brandon and David, we have a great Bigger Pockets Business Podcast episode this week. We've got a guy named Rue Hill. He owns a surf coaching resort, exactly what it sounds like. It's a place where you can go to learn how to surf and have a great vacation. And he's used technology. He's used science. He's used data to build an amazing business that's a lot different than what you would probably expect from a surfer dude.

and he's going to tell us all about how he's built his business, how he's built his team, and how he's built his resort. So tune in this week on the Bigger Pockets Business Podcast. Okay. Now, everybody, get back to your famous four. All right, time for our famous four, the same four questions again that we ask every guest every week. So, Ken, number one, do you have a favorite real estate related book?

Yes, probably the million. All right, number two. I'm sorry. Yes. Millionaire real estate investor, right? Gary Kellerman, Jay Popason. I read Rich had poor dad, and that was phenomenal, and it kind of got me started. But Millionaire Real Estate Investor, it got me fascinated with things when I read that.

And it talked about putting the team together and really starting to understand the different components that you put together to be able to act fast once you had a deal because you had this team and in a group that you'd assess. So that, for me, was my favorite real estate-related books. All right. Next question. Number two, what is your favorite business book? scale by Jeff Hoffman, David Finkel, incredible book about how to systematize and scale your business. Cool. Actually, for whatever random reason,

have two copies of that book. I don't know why, but I have two copies on my shelf. Read it. Yeah, good. Yeah, I have read it. It's good. It is very, very good. Number. You have two copies because that book is scaling itself. It's replicating. It's been systemized. Well, I think somebody set me one, and I think the other one I bought on Amazon. We got one from Go abundance, I think. Oh, that's what it was. Maybe about one. When he came to speak to us, they sent it to us.

All right. Number three, what are your hobbies? We're a big ranch family. So we love time out on the ranch, fishing, hunting, exploring, hiking, shooting guns. I have a problem. I've collected probably 20 or more guns now. So if I can get out to the ranch and go shoot out some firepower, then I love travel, especially with my family. So we usually do one really cool trip every year.

We've been to Diego Garcia. to Costa Rica to Baja Peninsula, Mexico. Did a epic trip together to Rocky Mountain National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Grand Teton Master Park. So I love any of that kind of travel with the family. And then other hobby is I love adventure races. So I've done nine tough mutter adventure races, and I'll do my trip here in September.

So that's kind of a little thing of mine I like to do. That's cool. I was just thinking I might sign up. I might have to sign up for one of those. I'm doing triathlon this week, well, Saturday. Nice. And so, you know, half Iron Man this Saturday. I'm like, what do I do after that?

We'll be able to do a tough mutter. I don't know. Come on. Join my team. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. Number four. Ken, what sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started? I think a few, I mean, there's a lot of things.

I'll give you three attributes that I think. And one is I think that they understand their why. they understand their kind of purpose in why they're going about real estate investing. I think that's why I wasn't a successful real estate investor when I started a long time ago. It was just something that that sounded good, that I thought I should do, but I didn't have the purpose behind it and why am I doing it. So I think once we all understand our why, it helps us to be much, much more successful investors. Number two, I think that they're willing to make a decision and take action

because so many people, there's analysis paralysis, and you'll think, I'll study deals, I'll look at deals, I'll think about deals. But if we don't take action, nothing happens. And so they've got to be willing to take action. And as I mentioned earlier, get out of their comfort zone as they're taking that action. And then the third would be,

they've got to have a certain tolerance for risk. It doesn't mean they're like seeking risk, but every single investment has a certain degree of risk to it. And there's things we can do to mitigate that risk. but if someone is just ultra-conservative, they have no tolerance for risk, then investing might not be the best gig for them. All right. Good answers.

All right. All right. Ken, last question of the day. Tell us where can people find out more about you? Well, if anyone wants to email me about any real estate related things, it's Ken at K-W-N-E-L-E-A-S-E.com. any information on legacy of love. It's Ken at legacy of love. On Facebook, you can find me Ken Wemberley.

It's actually my Facebook name is Lord Wemberley. It's a whole other story there. Our Legacy of Love Facebook page is Legacy of Love app. And on LinkedIn, it's Ken Wemberly, CCIM. Well, dude, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Good luck on the legacy of love thing too. I mean, we talked about a lot of cool stuff today,

but I just think that's such a cool thing. So, you know, good luck on that. And everybody out there, go sign up for it and go check it out because if you got kids, they're going to thank you in 20 years from now. Absolutely. Thanks so much. It's been great hanging out with you guys. All right.

Touch you later. Appreciate it. All right. That was our show with Ken Wimberley. Awesome, dude. Awesome stuff he's got going on. His story is so interesting to me, just how his arc of doing so many different things to get to where he is today. Yeah, he's got a lot to share.

And even though he does a lot of different things, there's a common thread in all of them. And that's why he does well because he understands that niche. Yeah, very, very much. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to see where that goes. I can't wait to watch a kind of legacy of love thing take off because I think people are going to love that. So, and yeah, good, good dudes. So yeah, commercial real estate. Definitely interesting thing.

I tripled net leases, man, I would love to get into that someday. I'm holding off for now because, again, you got to pick an asset. Like, that was one of the most powerful things I think he said today is like, he said it numerous times. Pick an asset. Like people are like, I want to buy, you know, all sorts of things. things. Just pick something. What are you going to do? Right? You're going to go do, you know, whatever. Just pick something, shopping centers or I'm going to buy factories or office buildings. Just pick something. Go learn everything you can on it. Set up those Google alerts and get it done.

Very, very good advice from Ken. It's very good advice. And you gave that to me when we were in Hawaii. I've been thinking about it quite a bit. It doesn't matter what you pick. You just have to pick a thing and then go dominate it. Yeah. Yeah, I actually say that a lot because I'm like, people get torn all the time over like, what should I do? I'm sure if I should go this way or that way or this way or that way. At the end of the day, it does not matter. It really doesn't. You'll never know if you picked wrong. Like, oh, I should have gone into industrial and I went into commercial.

You know, you're never going to go, oh, I picked the wrong one. Just as long as you pick one and put your heart and soul into it, you're going to be fine. So for those people out there struggling with indecision right now, just know that it really doesn't matter all that much. Just seek to become the best at whatever it is you choose. So it's kind of like that way with like, this is way deeper than we need to go on this podcast. But I'll say like almost with like spouses, you know, like I think I've heard people like, I'm not sure if I picked the absolutely perfect person or, you know, I, I, I really like them a lot, but I'm not sure if I should get married to them because I'm just not sure if

they're quite perfect. What if somebody more perfect comes on later? And I was generally my advice to those people is like, like, you'll make it good enough. Like, you just, you know, if they're good enough, like this maybe is horrible advice, but if they're good enough, go with it. Like, if you feel it and you're like, yeah, they're good, go with it. You'll figure it out. Like, you're going to choose based on your actions, whether or not your marriage is good or not. So I'm not saying to marry someone horrible. But does that make sense? Am I just,

am I crazy here? No, I think what you're saying is most of us are more powerful than we think we are. And we will make the choice that we make good. It's not the actual choice. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not like a choice. It's, you have the responsibility to make something good or not good. And so stop thinking that like the universe has like this absolute what's good and what's going to be good and what's going to be bad for you. It's like you make it good or bad. You control your life. Anyway,

off my soapbox. And I'm going to go eat some breakfast. Awesome. Well, I had a great time today. Thank you for being a great host and making the way for a co-host like me, Brendan. Well, thank you. This is David Green for Brandon, the philosopher Turner, signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the height, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited. from biggerpockets.com.

Your home for real estate investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and

Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calico content. And editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to you sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant

opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.