Epic Real Estate Investing - Balancing Career, Family, and Real Estate: Aaron Ameen's Story | 1409

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

In this episode of the Epic Real Estate Investing Show, Aaron Ameen shares his journey in real estate investing while balancing a full-time job as a management consultant and raising three young children. Aaron and his wife have successfully built a portfolio of eight single-family rental properties across Iowa, Washington, and Nevada, all while navigating the challenges of long-distance investing. They discuss their 'live then rent' strategy, the importance of self-management skills, and the lessons learned from early investment mistakes. Aaron also talks about creating the Hybrid Real Estate Professional Podcast and the value of having a supportive spouse in the journey to financial freedom. Tune in for actionable insights on managing real estate investments remotely and achieving success amid a busy life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terio Media. Hey, strap in. It's time for the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. We'll be your guides as we navigate the housing market, the landscape of creative financing strategies, and everything you need to swap that office chair for a beach chair. If you're looking for some one-on-one help, meet us at rei-i-a-s.com. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Let's go. And please help me welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. Mr. Aaron Amin. Aaron, welcome. Thank you very much for having me. You bet. So I enjoyed our conversation. We got to talk about a month ago.

And I want to learn all about you. You're in real estate. And tell me to what capacity and how did you get there? Yes, sir. Well, first of all, it was a pleasure having you on my show. I appreciate you taking the time to come on. Yeah, my name's Aaron Amin. I live here in Houston, Texas.

My wife and I own eight single family rental properties across Iowa, Washington, and Nevada, the closest rental at this time is 1,000 miles away. And the furthest one is almost 3,000. So we are long-distance, single-family buy-and-hold investors. At least that's the foundation of our portfolio. I also worked full-time W-2 job as a management consultant. And I am a proud father of three young children ages 3 and under. Three and under. Busy life. Yeah, we got one-year-old twins and a 3-year-old daughter running circles around us. Oh, my gosh. You know what? I can't even imagine what that would be like, but I wish that was my experience because I'm thinking about his second child, but it'd be 13 years apart. I wish I would just had them. But at the time when I had the first one, I was like, oh my God, how well did I do with two? But that part would have been over by now. That was our thought process. We'll have them close together and kind of get the crazy part out of the way at the same time. And of course, now that we're right in the thick of it, we're questioning our thesis there, but it's a

beautiful time and we're not rushing any of it by. Right. Well, that's good. No, you shouldn't. But I couldn't wait for it to be over. So I remember that for my situation. But I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I wouldn't wish you to rush through that is what I'm trying to say. Well, sweet. So you've got the kids, you got the family, you got the job, you got the properties, and you got this podcast. So that's not like the normal background of someone that has a podcast. So what inspired that and what's that all about? Yeah, so I've always enjoyed content, writing, kind of getting thoughts out of my head. So it started with me about two and a half years ago.

I just, I took a writing challenge. I'll give them a shout out. It's a program called Ship 30 for 30. And the whole idea was that you, for 30 days straight, you create what they call an atomic essay, which is like a 250 word. You take just one thought and you figure out how to express it and explain it, right? It could be a concept or it could be any idea that's floating around in your head.

The idea is to just get it out and get it on paper. and more importantly publish it out on the internet to get some feedback on your ideas and spur some conversations. And so I did this challenge, 30 pieces published in 30 days, and I basically never stopped. And so what happened is over time,

I started building, I started understanding and refining. At first I was writing about all sorts of stuff like my background in the concerts industry or I'm a drummer, and so I'm very passionate about music. And I tried all these different ideas out. And where I landed is what my podcast is mainly about now, which is our journey to build a

real estate portfolio while working full time and building a family, right? So there was this natural evolution of the content that I was writing. So it started as daily content and then it turned into a newsletter. And then ultimately I had a library of all these ideas that I had been kind of getting real-time feedback for. And it spawned what is now the hybrid real estate professional podcast, which is primarily guest interviews, people in my network, kind of dissecting their success stories, and then also sharing some ideas and experience from my journey that has helped us, including some of the

harsh kind of lessons and maybe mistakes we made so that other people can avoid it. So kind of a natural evolution of content creation. Sweet. So that's why I wanted you on is because you're doing something that a lot of people aspire to do because they're a full-time something and they want to be a real estate investor. Some people like what they do for living and they want to have a on the side and do a part-time. Some people want to pursue real estate investing to go ahead and replace their day jobs

income. But you've been managed to pull eight rental properties together while working a full-time job. So have they all kind of come about the same way or do they each have their own unique little story? Well, each one has their own unique story, but there's nothing crazy or particularly unconventional or creative about what we did. Three of them were what we call the live-then rent strategy.

So we occupied them at one point. We bought them with owner-occupied financing, slightly lower down payments, and we lived in them for at least a year. And then we moved out and kept them as rentals, right? So three out of eight kind of tick that box. That's house hacking. And then that strategy are two of the best ways to get an early entry into real estate investing. Beyond that, we also long-distance investing was a muscle that we built kind of organically. So the very first property we invested in was in Las Vegas.

I know you live there now. We lived there for five years, 2015 to 2020. And so the very first rental property we bought was in our backyard. It was like about one mile away from our primary residence. So we did not start as long distance investors, but we moved to Washington during COVID and we had four rentals at the time. And so we kind of by necessity learned how to do long distance. Once we conquered a little bit of that emotional anxiety around being far away from our rentals, it gave us confidence to be able to go into new markets. So we ended up investing in an area called the Quad Cities in Iowa, which is a more affordable, kind of stable,

run-of-the-mill Midwest market. And I always joke that the purchase price of a property in the Quad Cities is less than a down payment of a property on one of the coastal markets where I grew up, like in Washington. So we kind of over time, like I said, strung together a few with that Lib than Rent strategy. And then we found a more affordable market where we could kind of snowball the profits from those first properties use it plus our income to save for down payments into a more affordable market. So there's definitely stories behind each one, but that's kind of the high level.

That's great. It's something that I promote all the time because I used to be of the mindset that buying your primary residence is a terrible investment, terrible idea. You can rent a property and live in a much nice neighborhood, but then buy income properties and you can still get all the benefits of owning real estate. and I was subscribed to that for so long until I met the guy, and he totally changed my mind on this whole idea, right on my podcast while I was interviewing him, he's got the four rentals or something like that. Michael Zuber, maybe?

Was it Michael Zuber? No, it was a guy, gosh, darn it. If I watch his YouTube channel, I think something about four rentals or just four rentals. I know who you're talking about, and they have kind of the same thing, but it's not the same thing. But anyway, he'd said he thought it was actually a really good idea.

If you're going to get started, to not be a full-time real estate investor, this live and rent strategy. Right? Get in with a three and a half percent down. And anyone can do that. Anybody can do that. And if you can't do that,

then you've got some other problems that you need to tackle first. But I mean, 10,000 bucks with a three and a half percent down payment, that can pretty much get you into something anywhere in the country. And you can live there. It doesn't have to be your dream house.

It doesn't have to be your castle. It's going to be a temporary situation, but then you move out and then you keep that what is an arrest. and just kind of do that. You did that every other year for 10 years. You're so far ahead of everybody that did not do that. I would add to that, too, that, you know, when you're younger or maybe you have a little more flexibility,

I wish I learned about that earlier in my 20s so that I could do it more because you can pretty much do it every single year. How old are you? 35. 35. Okay. Yeah. She looked like you just got out of high school.

All right. But very good. I'm glad the three kids aren't aging me yet. I have one quick anecdote, if you don't mind about this. So the very first property we bought, we got four uses out of it. So we bought it as a primary house before we were ever investors. And we didn't, I would be lying if I said all this was intentional. But we lived in it for three years.

My wife and I got married in the backyard, made a ton of great memories as our first starter home. Then we refinanced it, used the money from the refi to buy two more rentals. Then when we moved away from Vegas, we turned that house into a rental. So adding one more rental to our portfolio. And then before the five years expired on our capital gains exclusion, we sold it at a $165,000 gain tax-free. So we've learned all these skills and strategies along the way. And we were able to get four separate use cases out of one house.

And that's something, again, it wasn't fully intentional along the way. Like, we didn't engineer that whole plan from day one. But it's just an example of how you can take a primary house and get multiple uses out of it and turn it into an asset. where it otherwise could be a drag or a liability. For sure. And it's such a good point because I started as a real estate person because I was really interested in the money.

I made a bunch of money in the music industry. That thing collapsed. So I had to start over again. And real estate looked like it was going to pay me the most. Either I was going to sell real estate or I was going to sell Lairjets, whichever had the highest commission. Real estate seemed a little bit easier and I didn't know anything about Jets at the time. So that's how I got into it.

And but over, so now here we are, 21 years later since I became a real estate agent and turned into a real estate investor. And I say now, like my YouTube channel, my podcast, it's less and less of a real estate channel. It's more of a money channel disguised as a real estate channel just because the real estate is the actual vehicle that gives the average person like you and I the chance to do amazing things like you just described. What else could you have put that money in that would allow you to do that? not very many things take all the boxes that real yeah you would have to pick amazon out of a million

stocks to really kind of pull something like that off you know what i mean and still i don't even know if you could have because you wouldn't have had the ability to leverage you couldn't have accomplished as much as you have in that small amount of time so yeah it's like i'm not i don't even think myself as a real estate guy anymore i'm just a money guy i'm an economics guy inflation guy passive income guy. It's just that real estate is the vehicle that allows you to do it

without a whole lot of intelligence. There is some easier entry points than most people think. I think some people stop before they even learn about the fact that you can do a 3.5% down payment on your first owner-occupied house, right?

So something breaking through that kind of educational barrier can be difficult when you're talking to someone who's not exposed to channels like yours or places like bigger podcasts. So I think, yeah, challenging that kind of default assumption is another thing that is a benefit of being able to

kind of spread the message. For sure. Yeah, I mean, the subtitle of my latest book Escape that's all about challenging or she's, I don't even know the name of my book, challenging or overcoming unconventional wisdom with real estate or something like that. But most of the book is about what we're taught through conventional wisdom and how most people just don't make enough to save enough for that whole plan to work. And it's certainly not working a time where you're still young enough to enjoy it.

And just by being able to leverage someone else's money to purchase an income producing asset like real estate. Whether you know what you're doing or not, kind of like what you're saying, it just kind of checks all the boxes and moves you right along with the system and you grow with the system. And the system always wins. So that's awesome. I love hearing stories like that. My grandparents were kind of accidental investors in very much the same way. And I got to witness that.

So you also said the first few of the properties. So we're through owner financing. So as your primary residence, how did you seek those out if someone's interest was sparked by that? Yeah, sorry, maybe I should clarify. I was saying lived in rent. None of them were actually purchased through seller financing. A couple of them were found off market. But when I say it's a conventional kind of boring path, everything was either found on the MLS or through an agent that we had met through a previous transaction on the MLS.

Got it. We didn't go color too far outside of the line. to try and find these properties. We just tried to keep ourselves lendable. That's part of my idea behind the hybrid real estate professional is we kept our jobs. We kept our balance sheet fortified. We made sure that we only bought income producing properties that we understood that the way that we showed up on our tax returns was going to influence our ability to continue to scale and get loans. And we build great relationships with the agents that we worked with. And so the three best performing properties in our portfolio. These were not ones that we lived in. They were bought off

market through more or less pocket listings from agents that we had worked with in the past. Got it. So, you know, we got a first stab at them. They never hit the open market. And we pretty much jumped on them at the right time. We were hungry. We were ready to go. We had built a reputation as people who could close deals. So I would say we got good deals on those. But part of that is because we were willing and able to move quickly, and we kind of recognize the opportunities when they popped up. I can share a little bit, kind of the most unique story in our portfolio.

These are our second and third rentals, respectively. The agent who sold us our first property, about four months after we bought it, he called us and he said, hey, I have these two single family houses, and they're currently being leased out to an assisted living operator, and it takes a certain type of buyer to want these. They're on these five-year commercial-style leases.

Yes, they cash flow really well, but they come with this kind of additional risk that you have a business basically operating inside your house. And so we had to kind of study up on what the implications of that would be. Do I need a huge several million dollar umbrella policy? Like, is this operating legally? What's all the licensing requirements, et cetera? But basically we did a quick scramble to figure out, hey, does this make sense? Is this fully legit?

And then we jumped right on it, right? So within that really short, pretty much three or four day period before he was going to go call someone else, we said, yeah, we definitely want first stab at this. And to this day, those two properties have been the best performing in our portfolio. At the time, they were about 40% above market rent. They were locked into these five-year leases that had built-in renewals and they had rent escalators every year. So we've had zero vacancy. We have a company operating and providing a great service, providing assisted living support for adults with developmental disabilities. and they are great tenants. We have kind of an even extra layer of oversight because the state and that company both enforce good living standards. So we have extra eyes taking care of our houses. And those opportunities never would have come up if it weren't for building that initial relationship with the agent and sharing with him what our intention was for our investing

goals for our family. So that's one story I always like to share about this relationship. It's a great one. Those were early on. this was part of your first few, right? Yeah, and I would say that the moment we closed on those two, that was when we really kind of felt our identity shifting. This wasn't just some random experiment or side idea where we were going to own one or two

rentals. No, this was really part of our identity. And that's when I started coming out of my shell a bit more and telling the story that, hey, my wife and I, we are real estate investors. I started being able to proudly share that that's something that was part of our life now. So what have you learned from those first few? what lessons did you learn for those first few that actually helped you in the later purchases? I didn't read a single bigger pockets book or listen to any podcast. The only, and this is not a

little thing, but the only exposure I had to real estate was my parents. They are very experienced real estate investors. They started in the early 2000s. They invested while I was growing up. I didn't pay a ton of attention at the time, but I was very aware of their journey. They went through the ups and downs of the recession and I saw them come out on the other side. I saw the stressful moments and I saw the highs. And I saw them doing it all while they were working and while they were raising us. Right. So I guess it makes sense that I believed that was possible from day one. But some of the lessons that I learned, right, is that immediately I did not expect everything to go perfectly. There were a lot of mechanics we had to learn with those two assisted living deals.

the loan almost fell through three days before closing. We had to switch lenders. And we had to get involved and learn some of the legal. We had to basically defend the fact that those homes were lendable under that situation. We also were self-managing all three of those properties for the first several years. We actually just six years later brought on a property manager. So we learned to self-manage and we wanted to build that skill of building relationships with the tenants, running all the rent collection, leasing, et cetera, on our own because we knew that property managers

come and they go. I had seen that a few times in my parents' journey. And then ultimately, I saw their decision to self-manage because they wanted to have real control and influence over their own properties. And they saw a lot of people doing a not-so-great job, right? So I think in summary, we went a little lone wolf on our first few properties. We got some scars and scrapes, and I wouldn't trade those lessons for anything in the world. However, on the other side of that, once that identity shift started settling in and we started actually utilizing the abundant resources of the internet and podcasts and books and communities and coaches, we saw that there was a straighter-line path and a bit more of a measured approach to real estate

investing that could probably avoid some of the mistakes we made. And that's part of why I'm so passionate about turning it around and telling some of the stories of the maybe shortcuts or just some of the kind of, you call it what, the stupid tax or the ignorance tax that we paid at the beginning. But like I said, I wouldn't change anything. I just, I wouldn't wish those same avoidable mistakes on anyone else either. Yeah, you know, it's good though, because they're kind of unavoidable. Everyone kind of experiences different things, but there are tough lessons because they're typically connected with finances and those can be kind of the most painful, at least they felt immediately, right? But there are lessons. If you walk away with the right lesson,

they're invaluable. If you walk away like in 2007, 2008, there are so many people that walk away. Oh, damn, real estate. What a scam. I'll never do that again. I was like, you just paid so much for that education. Now when you do it again, make sure you're applying the right lessons, Yeah, I think nobody can take the experience away from you, even if you lost money on a deal. Whatever you learned from that is with you forever, right? And so we're very lucky that at the beginning of our journey, some of it was timing. Some of it was we bought the right types of deals at the right time with the right type of financing. But, you know, the early lessons we learned stayed with us forever. And I would say kind of the biggest lesson that we learned and the biggest

scar we got was on deal number six. So this, if you go long enough, you're going to run into something crazy. And this was the first property we bought in Iowa. We basically were building a team from scratch. We had researched a ton of markets across the Midwest and the South. And my wife and I honed in on this area called the Quad Cities because it had affordable houses, nice, steady. The other two markets we were in were very volatile. They went up a lot and they pulled back in 2021. When things were peaking, they peaked high and then they drew back. And what we wanted was stability. So we found a market that we thought would provide that. And then we were really eager and hungry to start investing right then and there. So we kind of rushed through the process of building a

team. We had a playbook and interview questions and we felt like we were asking all the right questions. But in hindsight, I was just hearing what I wanted to hear for the people that I was interviewing. And so we built a team somewhat haphazardly. We did not do reference checks with other investors. We kind of just let the questions and the conversation and the gut feeling. And guide us. And long story short, the first property manager we hired is the middle of January in Iowa. And they said, they promised us we could get a certain rent that the data didn't back up. They advertised it. It was about seven weeks on market, not a single showing. And we come to find out because we were 2,000 miles away at the time that the gas had been turned off for

the full seven weeks. The house was sitting at 37 degrees just above freezing. And nobody had been there in that entire time. So we were being lied to the whole time and it was being advertised above market rent. So this was our first truly long distance sight unseen out of state investment. And that would, of course, basically made us feel like we made a huge mistake. We got in ahead of ourselves and this is a horrible idea. That was kind of a turning point in our journey where we had to decide, are we going to quit or are we going to try and figure it out? And luckily, very luckily, the agent that we worked with had another person. who was starting up a property management arm,

she was able to swoop in, more or less save the day for us. Go figure she made the adjustments and advertised it at the right market rent, had a tenant secured and ready to move in within seven days. We were able to get through all the, you know,

there was some damage for sure, but it didn't cost an arm and a leg. We survived, right? We were emotionally scarred. We survived. We had some cash flow from our other rentals and from our W-2 job to make sure that didn't financially ruin us.

and we ended up building a relationship with this new property manager, and we ended up buying two more houses in that market later that year, right? So I think we learned some of the toughest lessons in the second half of our journey so far, just by being hasty and trying to rush through things that deserve more time and attention than we gave it. Yeah, a lot of those big lessons come in the expansion phase. We got two or three of these things worked really well. Let's go get bigger. Let's do more.

And I think we probably learned one of the biggest lessons that I eventually came to to be one of my main talking points is that real estate is so safe. It's the people that are risky. And if you really want to live off of passive income, you really want to live off of cash flow. You've got to do just as much due diligence on your property management as you do the properties themselves, maybe even more so, right? And then you find a good one. And now you want to take care of them.

And I always say like your dentist, your car mechanic and your property manager, once you find a good one, treat them well and hold on to them for dear life because finding bad ones can be very, very costly and frustrating. Absolutely. And this is also part of why I think that the skill of self-management, whether or not you want that to be your long-term plan, just understanding the mechanics of how to deal with tenants, how to do leasing, how to do collections, learning the local regulations. Yes, maybe you want it to be more passive in the long term and you want to

property manager to run stuff for you. But if you don't know that stuff and something ever happens, your property manager retires, or God forbid, they do something horrible and you end up needing to fire them, well, if you don't have any of those skills or knowledge, what are you going to do in the interim while you wait for somebody to take over? Having the ability to flex into that and take control when you need to, that was something we felt very strongly about from the beginning. Are we better than a property manager? Absolutely not. Someone who's profession is to do that is going to hopefully, in theory, do it better than us. But having that skill to fall back on,

we still, to this debut is a very important part of our toolkit. You know, you keep saying, we, we, we, and it sounds like you've been very fortunate to find a like-minded wife when it comes to money, when it comes to entrepreneurship. Because stuff like this, anything with finances, but even real estate and having some bad experiences, depending on the background that each partner has, when it comes to money and investments and entrepreneurship,

that can cause a real divide, but it sounds like you two have been aligned and been a force to move forward. Is that always been the case? I consider myself very lucky. I appreciate you calling that out, right? We are on this journey together. I would say there are different times where we've had different levels of involvement, depending on what's going on in our careers. Obviously, we had three kids in the last three years. So there was a lot of push and pull just in our personal lives.

We've also moved across the country three times in the last four years. And so I would say we're pretty battle tested in our relationship as far as kind of navigating the trials and tribulations of life. And this is all part of the bigger picture, right? I always say that our path, our investing path was not linear at all, even though it sounds like, oh, great, you went from zero to eight properties. But it wasn't a straight line path. Of the three properties that we lived in and then rented, two of those were because we moved for reasons unrelated to investing. And we just happened to decide at the time that keeping those was a better decision than selling them. And so I think we've always made all of our big decisions together.

We always have healthy discussion about that. We don't always agree. And it does put additional strain on your relationship when you're building businesses and kind of crafting a vision together. You're not always going to be in perfect harmony. But I do consider myself very lucky that we are both passionate about what real estate and investing can do, not only for the two of us, but for our family and our kids and generations to come. And I feel that I have a concept. I always like to say that with real estate, you own the upside, that you own your own

upside. And as a W2 employee, which I currently am and still plan to be for a long time, no matter how hard I work, even if I'm in a sales job or something where it's commission-based, you don't own 100% of the upside of the company you're working for. You don't. But in a real estate portfolio that you're building through responsible leverage and operations and value add strategies and whatever you do, you do get to own that upside and ultimately decide how you channel that into the impact that you want to have in your communities and the rest of your

life. So I think my wife and I are aligned in feeling that way. And that's what helps us kind of get through the tougher times when they come. Yeah. I think you are extremely fortunate. It speaks volumes of you recognizing your good fortune because, you know, when people reach out to us here and we kind of get two types, we get the type that they're the busy professional, they've got the W-2, that is their career, but they recognize that they have a need for real estate to incorporate that somewhere under their financial plan. And so a lot of them will work with my wife in our turnkey operation, cash flow savvy. And there's others that they don't like their job and they want to get out and they want to find a new thing and they want to be a little bit more hands-on and they want

ended up flipping and being a landlord and creative financing and they kind of reach out to me. And most people that reach out to us, if there's a good fit and everything and the finances aren't too strained, they almost always go forward. They almost always do with the exception. Well, let me see if I can get the spouse on board. And it's not always the wife and it's not always the husband. It's both sides. But we've seen most commonly that the saddest part of how white people don't move forward is they just don't get on the same page with their spouse financially. And I remember when I was younger, well, I guess if I remember remembering back, I was always younger. But I remember I had a job of cleaning golf carts. I was 15 and a half and that's what you needed to have your work permit.

And I'd get up at 4 a.m. I'd ride my bike to the golf course before school. I'd put them all out for all the golfers. And I would go to school and then I'd come back and I'd clean all the golf carts up and plug them back in and start all over again. the morning. So I did that for a long time. And I got to meet a lot of people that show up and play golf early in the morning. And there was a lot of regulars. And I remember some of the pieces of advice that I did not follow, but now being where I am today, I was like what valuable or invaluable advice that was. One was certainly marry someone that you can talk to. And when you're younger and the hormones are raging, and it's like, no, I just want a hot wife. And I kind of where I was at that age. And I went through two of them that didn't work out so well.

And fortunately, the third time around, I really did marry my best friend. It's so cliche. But I just, I can't wait to talk to her when anything good or bad happens. She's the first person I want to call it. And so that's who I'm going to grow old with and it's going to be a great life because of it. The second one was make sure that you like their family because you're going to marry their family as well. And so that was another one. And the third piece of advice, like when you're picking out a spouse, was make sure that you guys are on the same page when it comes to finances when it comes to money.

I think those are just so invaluable when you're picking out your spouse because of those types of things like financial freedom and wealth and doing well for yourself economically is important to you. It's got to be important to your spouse as well. And that wasn't my intention to go down those life lessons. But I see it so often here now. And once I hear someone like you talking about it, it just stands out as obvious. Every metaphor I had was not a good metaphor. But it sticks out like the turd in the punch bowl. But it's just that obvious to me now.

And obviously the turd being the good part. Boy, this is not going where I planned. No, those are great lessons. I see it. And it's so important if you want to better yourself financially that you and your spouse agree on it. So what is that? And I think that's really important. I know someone that's listening right now, they're like, gosh, if I could just get my wife on board,

if I could just get my husband on board to support me on this, I know I could crush it. I know I could kill it. So knowing what you know, they've heard me talk for doing this, gosh, this is my 15th year doing the podcast. And I've talked about this a lot. But someone fresh and someone who's experienced it and is thriving because of it, what would be your advice to somebody that might be having those challenges of getting their spouse on board with their financial future? It's a really good and somewhat complex question, right? Because I always think about marriage as, yeah, and the decision to marry somebody. You love them in the moment and you're in love with them in that.

moment, but you also have to think, like, is this someone that I can grow together with, knowing that over life, over five, 10, 20 years, things change. When my wife and I got together, we were 23 years old. We were party animals, me more so than her. At one point, five and a half years ago, I ended up having to check myself into rehab and get my shit together, pardon my language, but I had to kind of clean up my act. And the things that we used to do together, we no longer did together. And there was a question that we thankfully very quickly answered about

well, if we're not able to have this kind of party, concert, live music, lifestyle that we so bonded over, are we capable of growing together in this new version? Thankfully, the answer was yes, because we had also been

through other things in our life that had stress tested. Are we built to endure change? And so I think when you're, to answer your actual question, the idea of investing is typically a fork in the road or a turning point for someone where they're making a conscious decision maybe to decouple from making 10% 401K contributions on their paycheck and instead

peeling off some of that money and investing it either in themselves for skills and personal development or into something like real estate. And so I think when you're trying to explain or rationalize or even just get some buy-in from your partner, explaining it as an investment. And instead of treating it as this line item on your guy's personal balance sheet of, hey, I need to take $15,000, $20,000. I'm not spending it. I'm investing it. And I'm investing it because I believe in and understand the potential of what this can do for us and our family.

It has to tie back to a vision of what you want your future to look like. And if you believe, I think sometimes it's hard for people when they see the first property and they say, well, it's only going to make $150 a month in cash flow. How the heck is that going to do anything? for our family. That's a big deal. I think you have to be able to explain and articulate that you're starting a snowball rolling down the hill and it's only with time and with good strategic effort

and some element of luck, that snowball will grow and compound. And usually it's not the first three or five years that feels like it's impactful. It's the year 10 and year 20 and your ability to kind of endure through these strategies. So I don't know if sell is the right word, but you have to be able to articulate the vision of what these investments can do for you and your

family. And of course, that may or may not land. It may or may not work. But hopefully, you know, a partner who loves you and wants what's best for you and wants what's best for your family, well, at a minimum, hear you out and understand versus, hey, some guy on the internet told me I should buy houses. Like, can we go withdraw from, take a 401K loan, right? A lot of it's in the delivery and the, and how you connect it back to your overall vision for your life together. Or just go find a new one. Yeah, that would have been a quicker answer. Yeah, no, I think you're right.

And from my experience, I think this is really important things. I think this stops a lot of people because they just not in agreement with their partner. And it's the reason there's disagreement or there's the reason that one side is holding the situation back from any sort of progress in this context is that the one partner that wants to move forward, that wants to take the chance, that wants to take this calculated risk, there's somewhere in that past relationship where they gave their word to something and they didn't follow through. And now the partner doubts you. And it might be totally in the subconscious. It's not like they're, remember that one time you said you're going to, it's just there. It's in

the ethos. It's in the relationship. And so just, you know, if you're going to go out and you really want to do this and the partner is not on board, you have to keep your worth this time, you got to follow through. You've got to succeed. You got to prove to them that this is the right move. And it's your responsibility to do that because somewhere, whether you know it or not, or you're aware it or wherever it or not, you didn't keep your word. And now that's in the space. And I mean, I think you have to set yourself up to succeed as well, right? So if you're coming and saying, hey, I want to invest $10,000 in this one-on-one coaching program, the first thing your spouse who's never heard of this coach is going to say is that sounds like a scam. How is that going

to get us any closer to your goal, well, depending on who you select, of course, it probably, hopefully is not a scam. And what you have to kind of lean back on to your point just now is this is the accountability and access to the information and the roadmap on how to do this successfully with not only without giving up, but without making what could be avoidable mistakes, you know, the faster path to successfully doing this versus going lone wolf and tackling it my own where not only might I give up at the first line of adversity, but I might make a mistake that could cost a lot of money. So that's the other thing too, is like when you're rationalizing an investment in a personal development program or a coach or some sort of community that can

give you the guardrails to be successful, you have to articulate it that way too, right? These are guardrails. This is a playbook. Here's some people that have had good results. I've done the research on this person. Maybe, hopefully you've even run a basic background check or something to make sure that the same way that you do do diligence on your investing team, if you're bringing on a mentor or a coach, they're an important part of your team. And you got to make sure that they're the real deal as well. So a lot of it's in the delivery. And ultimately, these are investments.

They're not expenses. They're investments in yourself. And in my opinion, that's the best place you can invest. Amen to that. I can't disagree with one word that you just said. I've just always, if I wish someone would have told me in high school that one of the, real hacks or shortcuts to success is just be intentional about creating your environment, right? Who are you spending your time with?

Whether it's mentors or a community or a group of people, a mastermind group, or a coach, whether you paid for them or not. Just be very intentional about that. And that's going to get you there. Shoot, I would say peer pressure. Like when we were in high school, that was like a negative thing. Like you did bad things because you were pressured by your peers. but if you get around a good group, it works both ways.

All of a sudden, you're like, well, gosh, everyone's succeeding, and I'm looking like a loser here. I better get off my ass and do something. And that peer pressure, once you understand that it works both ways, just choose better peers, right? Cool. Aaron, it's been a pleasure. You said you were a drummer.

Yes, sir. My son's a drummer. So I got a self-serving question. How long have you been doing it? What type of music and what advice would you give a 13-year-old that just has been playing the drums for a year or so. And is showing signs of like, hey, he's got some talent. God, I love this question.

Yeah, so I've been playing drums since I was 10, so 25 years now. And I played in every type of band you can imagine, starting in the concert bands at school. So I did symphonies. I did jazz band. I did a pep band. In my early phase of my drumming career, marching band was my thing. And I know a lot of people were probably rolling their eyes right now because they think, you know, It's nerdy or crazy, but to be honest, I played the trumpet. Go ahead.

There you go. So you get it. But marching band is where I learned most of what I still, to this day, feel are the core fundamentals of teamwork, discipline, taking my physical health seriously. A lot of the best habits that I built came from my time in marching band in high school and in college. But from there, you know, I turned into kind of your more prototypical drum set, rock drummer. I've always listened to and enjoyed playing rock, especially heavier hard rock. I was in a regional touring band called the Goodhurt, shout out Goodhurt for a few years. So we did some touring around the Western U.S.

and a couple times on the East Coast. And that was more kind of like radio-friendly rock. My advice to a 13-year-old, because I just remember so vividly how passionate I felt about becoming a better drummer when I was 13. Just lean into what you enjoy. I think that was some of the most fun. I ever had my entire life was coming up as a drummer. While I was also coming of age,

don't be afraid to wear that as a badge of honor. And if you want to practice four hours a day, that's what I did at that time. I just was so obsessed with the idea of getting better, not because I was competing with other people, but because I truly embraced competing with myself to develop a skill. And I think the skills I developed at that age, again, carry forward into everything I've ever done ever since then. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. I'm going to tell him to practice.

That's what I'm going to tell him. Have you seen that little, there's a little black girl on YouTube. I think she's got like a British accent or an Australian accent. I'm not sure. So I hope I didn't offend the Australians and the Brit's Brits out there. But have you seen her before? I have not, but I'm going to have to go figure out what you're talking about. She's amazing.

And she's younger. I think she's like 10 or 11. And there's this one channel I follow just because of my son. It's all just about drummers. They just did a long two-hour special with Phil Collins, which was really interesting. They got the guy from Def Leppard was on there, I think. So anyway, they just always have these drummer sessions. And so she got in on it and like these two amazing guys, I pretty much bands there because I wasn't a rock guy.

She just sat in the middle and they would play something, and she would mimic it. And she could mimic everything. At that age, it was remarkable. It's fascinating to watch. You know what I will say one cerebral comment about drumming, right, is that I learned coordination, right? your arms and your legs are doing different things at the same time. In the band I was in, I was also singing. So I had five things going on at the same time. But it was interesting, because you have to kind of rewire your brain to be able to move different things in different

ways at the same time. And I think that skill, for better or for worse, set me up to kind of multitask and have different things running in my brain at the same time. Sometimes I think that's a curse, but other times I think having built that muscle is an extreme strength that has also served me well. Right. It's awesome. Yeah, I'm amazed on how his arms and legs do all these different independent things. Aaron, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. And I know that you're going to get some listeners from this because I think we talked about a couple subjects that I think are right in the forefront for a lot of people.

How do you do this with a full-time job? How do you do it with your spouse? Right. So the name of the podcast is the hybrid real estate professional. Is that right? Yes, sir. The hybrid real estate professional podcast, so you can probably find that anywhere that you're listening to the podcast.

If you're hearing my voice, you can certainly find it here. Is that the best way for someone to get in touch with you or is there a better way? Yeah, so that's a great place to just hear some of the conversations and experience that I've had. If you like anything that I said so far, hopefully you'll like that show. My favorite kind of asset that I love to give out, my business partner and I run a coaching program called the Remote Real Estate Academy, where we teach people how to invest long distance. but within that we have what we call the 20-minute investor, which is how we kind of built and grew our portfolios

in a system that fits in 20 minutes per day. So we ran a workshop on that that includes all the workflows, software tools that we use to keep it manageable and from taking over our lives so we can still spend time with our families and succeed in our jobs. So you can find that at 20-minute investor.com. Like I said, it's a free workshop and all our workflows. So that's a good thing to check out if you're trying to do something similar to what I've done.

Perfect. So you can catch Aaron at the 20 minute investor.com or go catch him at the hybrid real estate professional podcast. Well, let's stay in touch, buddy. And again, it was a pleasure. And I'm looking forward to the future for you and coming back and sharing what you're up to. Thanks so much. I look forward to staying in touch. Perfect.

Take care. And that wraps up the epic show. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might too? There's a really good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share it with them. And ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. God loves you and so do I. Health, peace, blessings and success to you.

I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know, home boy, we got the cash low. Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first, there, the last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes.

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