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Lori and Gordon – Sprinkman Real Estate
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You have found Authentic
Business Adventures,
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the business program that brings you
the struggle stories
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and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.
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We’re locally underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
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My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
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author, speaker, and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
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And today, we’re welcoming/preparing
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to learn from Lori and Gordon
of Lori and Gordon Real Estate.
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So Lori and Gordon, how are you guys.
Doing today?
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We are awesome.
Thanks, James, for having us.
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Fantastic.
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I’m excited because Lori,
I’ve known you for a long time.
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And when we first met, you were
not in the real estate business.
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Gordon, I met you today.
Five minutes ago.
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Five minutes.
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You were not in the real estate business
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when you got into the
whole business world.
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Correct.
Yeah.
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It’s been a while.
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But here we are in this amazing office
here, downtown Madison, I would say.
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Thank you.
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Let’s start with you, Lori
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when you first got started on
entrepreneurial journey.
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Let’s just take it back, way back
to when you first started.
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Your business.
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James, remember, we met
when we were six years old.
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Six years, right.
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It was little blocks.
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Yeah.
Well, thanks for having us today.
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It’s exciting to be here and
thank you for tuning in and watching us.
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Gordon and I have been working together
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for the last almost four years,
but our goal is to share with you a little
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bit about the journey
of what we did prior to meeting each other
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and then what we’ve done
over the last few years.
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It’s been interesting.
Lots of different curveballs and COVID and
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all the random things that get
thrown at business owners.
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Real estate in the past four years, I can
imagine, was super feast or super famine.
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Yes, it has been exciting is the word.
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Sure.
Nice.
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Exciting.
Yeah.
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I went to University of Madison.
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I’m pretty much born and raised here.
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We moved here as a family when I was
six or seven years old.
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I definitely eat, live, and sleep,
and breathe, Madison, Wisconsin.
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After school, I had visions and dreams of
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being a high powered suit wearing
female in the marketing world.
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Oh, really?
That’s what you went to school for?
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That’s what I went to school for.
Oh, interesting.
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I never knew this.
Okay.
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Turns out the only place
that was hiring was Valpack.
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Do you remember Valpack?
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Oh, my gosh, the blue envelope.
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They’re still around.
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They’re still around.
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They’re still around.
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But I didn’t get a cool office.
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I didn’t have to wear a power suit.
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I was going to have to go door knocking
and get people to sign up for coupons.
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And it just really wasn’t my vision.
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And I had coffee with a doctor
one day that I was friends with.
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And I said, if I could find a career
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that people liked me, they came
back because they wanted to.
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They paid me more than I was worth,
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and they showed gratitude,
I would do that job.
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And guess what that job was?
I don’t know.
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Massage therapy.
Massage.
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So the doctor’s like, massage.
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She was like, I got a massage today.
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I paid that woman $50 for the hour.
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She’s like, and I gave
her a $10 tip and a hug.
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And I told her I loved her.
Wow.
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And I was like, Well, that’s the job.
I should do.
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That’s pretty.
Dramatic, right?
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It was extremely dramatic.
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But that was a life changing
conversation for me.
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I guess.
Because I immediately looked up schooling,
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went back to school, got my cosmetology
license, and off I went.
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The funny thing is
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after I got done with the massage
school, I went out to do what?
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Get a job, right?
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I interviewed at really in 1996,
there’s only two places
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that did massage here in Madison at
that point in time, so a long time ago.
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Both of them said,
I’m sorry, we’re not hiring.
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I did what every logical 21
year old entrepreneur would do.
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I said, well I better start my own business?
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And that’s how we started.
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1996, small little spot on O’Dana Road.
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Hundreds of people have been there
and supported me over the years.
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It was pretty incredible.
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And then in 2014, I’m sorry, in 2007,
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we got an opportunity to move
into the Princeton Club.
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A big gym on…
Huge place.
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Huge place.
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That was a really awesome
opportunity for me.
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We took the dive.
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars
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of remodeling, building
the suite, 27 employees.
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Holy cow.
Full on spa.
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Now I was big deal.
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We really did well.
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In 2014, I was walking down the hallway.
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I had literally worked
every single weekend of my life.
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We were open seven days a week.
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I had 27 employees.
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At this time, my now husband
was working with me.
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There was a lot going on there.
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One of the team members said to me,
Lori, you’re not happy anymore.
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One of your employees said that?
Wow.
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Was she right?
She was right.
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I think I just had a resting.
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Oh, you did get the face.
I had the face.
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I just was walking around angry.
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I came home that day and I decided
to take a drastic change in my life.
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I put my business for sale on Craigslist.
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On Craigslist?
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I just was like, spot for sale.
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Here’s how much you can make.
Take it.
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Just to reiterate here,
because I’ve seen businesses
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for sale on Craigslist, but it’s usually
like, hey, I got a dump truck and me.
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It’s got a flat tire, it’s for sale kinda thing.
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You don’t see businesses
that are actually making money
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with multiple employees,
27 employees in a huge club.
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You don’t see that.
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It’d be cool if you did.
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Well, you did for a day.
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You could have seen it, James.
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It could have been yours.
Dodge the bullet.
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Somebody reached out.
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It turned out that they were our buyer.
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Within a day.
That’s amazing.
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So you know my husband, nick.
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He was like, This is a scam board.
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Don’t respond to these people.
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Craigslist is full of scammersers.
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The first week when you put anything
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on Craigslist or wherever,
you’re just expecting the jump, right?
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All the.
Tire kickers.
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It worked out.
It did take a year.
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It was not just a poof,
here’s the check, and move on.
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There was a lot of drama along the way.
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However, it did finally sell in 2014.
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It was the hardest
and the best day of my life.
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It was super emotional to say goodbye
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to all those clients that I had built
relationships
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with, to all of the team that had been
with me, some of them, eight or 10 years.
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My identity,
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everybody in Madison was like, Well,
that’s Lori from the Oasis Dace.
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When people are like, What do you do?
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I was like, Are you
still in the Oasis Dace?
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I used to own the Oasis Stay,
so I didn’t even know how to communicate.
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Interesting.
It was a very, very difficult time for me.
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But I was ready, and I also
thought I was retired.
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I thought for sure I made enough money
here to live on for the rest of my life.
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We took year off,
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went to Mexico for a month,
and I volunteered, and I worked out.
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I just thoroughly enjoyed my downtime.
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I hadn’t had a Saturday off
in probably seven years.
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Wow.
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So it was something that I
really needed to do for myself.
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I imagine that comes to the point where
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you’re like, Okay, I got this time,
and you don’t even know what to do.
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I’ve never planned for this.
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I don’t even know what do
people do on Saturdays?
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I know.
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So there were some Saturdays I
literally just sat for the TV because.
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I could.
All right.
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And it was not something I had done.
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We talked about…
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I mean, that was the hardest
job I’ve ever done.
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Not only physically giving massages 4 to 6
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hours a day, but hurting
cats of employees.
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I said we had 27 employees.
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If every single one of them had one bad
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day a month, I was dealing
with crap every single day.
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Oh, yeah.
Never stops.
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It.
Never stops.
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I’d love to have employees
that only had one bad day a month.
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Exactly.
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So needless to say, it was much deserved.
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Some things happened financially
that we needed to make some extra money.
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You guys both know me well enough
to know that I’m a hustler.
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I just really felt like
there’s got to be a way.
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I don’t want to go get a job.
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You mentioned working for a boss.
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I’ve never had an employer.
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I mean, yeah, I waited tables back in
the day, but I do think I’m unemployed.
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Agreed.
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I took advantage of the shared economy.
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We rented out a room
in our place on Airbnb.
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We started driving for Uber.
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I started dog sitting.
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I would go to people’s houses and take
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care of their dogs while
they were on vacation.
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We started making extra money.
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It was enough money to travel and a little
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beer money and some fun and shopping and
all the things that were important to me.
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But I knew it wasn’t going
to get me to where my.
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Goals would be.
Sure.
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The next level.
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That brings me to the now.
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In 2016, I used some of my money
to purchase an apartment building.
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All right.
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I’ve made a bit of money off of the Oasis.
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How big of a…
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I’m 90 units.90. 90.
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I could go big or go.
Home, James.
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Okay, well, I guess.
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What year is this?
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2016.
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Okay, so where’s this?
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I’m trying to remember where
real estate market was in 2016.
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It had recovered.
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Okay, so prices were high?
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No, they were better than 2008.
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When they were back,
remember when Six was up here?
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You were there, maybe a little.
Bit closer.
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Got you.
And interest rates weren’t?
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They were probably close
to where they are now.
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Yeah.
Okay, 6 ish?
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Yeah.
I think our first property that we bought,
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our interest rate was
like 5.75 or something.
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So it was pretty much right
where it is right now.
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Nice.
And myself and a couple of other partners,
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we bought a 90 unit building
on Raymond Road.
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On Raymond?
Okay.
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Yeah.
All right.
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So that was a really big change.
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Ironically, a couple of months later,
the owners that had sold us
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the property on Raymond Road came to us
and they had another one down the street.
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They were like, Are you guys
interested in buying this one as well?
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Well, that was 100 units.
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Oh, wow.
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I wasn’t working at this point in time.
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One of my partners said, said, Lori,
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would you consider property
managing this property.
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For us?
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I was just going to ask you
who’s doing the managing.
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Okay, this is 90 units.
Me.
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Hi.
All right.
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I said, nick, we’re selling our condo
and we’re moving to an apartment.
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We’re going to buy this building,
we’re going to manage it.
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He was like, Oh, dear Lord,
what are we doing?
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But he’s always been on board
for my big audacious ideas.
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So we did it.
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We moved into a little 900 square foot
apartment and we sold a lot of our stuff.
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We sold our condo.
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We just really burned the ships
and went all in.
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Part of managing that many apartments,
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I had to get my real estate license
so that I could sign leases.
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I did that.
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As all these people were moving out,
I was like, Well, where are you going?
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Well, guess where they were going?
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They were buying a house.
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The logical transition,
you rent and then you buy.
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And I was like, I have my license,
I should be selling these people a house.
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More money I could make.
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All right, sure.
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So in 2017, I started doing real
estate on the residential side.
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I joined a company that had a really good
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team, provided leads, t was really,
I really hit the ground running.
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But it was a fricking lot.
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I was managing 100 and some apartments.
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I was selling real estate
and it turns out I was really good at it.
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In that second year, I
sold like 79 houses.
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In your second year?
Yeah.
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The average realtor sells
like 12 houses a year.
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Double what the average.
Realtor does.
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I was insane.
What do you attribute that to?
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Was it taking the tenants
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of your buildings and moving them
to houses, or was it just…
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You know what I attribute it to?
Charming style?
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That’s it.
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It is my relationships.
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I think the reason why I have always done
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really well in life is because
of the relationships I have built.
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The relationships through the spa world,
the relationships through the community,
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the relationships with my friends,
my neighbors, my coworkers.
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I always say that the good thing about
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working with us is people
like me and people trust him.
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They don’t like you.
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That’s really, I think, then the thing.
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I work to be a good friend.
[00:13:10]
I work to pass referrals, give referrals,
be an eye, like giver’s Game.
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That’s always been my motto.
[00:13:19]
I think growing up here,
a lot of networking, right?
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That’s how we got.
Oh, my gosh.
[00:13:24]
Yeah.
All of the things that…
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Back when you could, right?
Make a difference.
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Back when I could did make a difference.
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And still to this day, that network,
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I was just saying
last week I was at a big Mastermind group
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and they said, What’s the best
advice that you ever received?
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And I said, My net worth is
directly attached to my network.
[00:13:45]
And I really strongly.
Believe that.
[00:13:47]
That’s fair.
So, yeah.
[00:13:48]
Well, you want to hear something funny?
[00:13:50]
I just saw this.
[00:13:51]
So the end of 2016, I went
to Keller Williams Bold.
[00:13:57]
It was a be an amazing realtor training.
[00:14:02]
And
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we had to write down what one goal is that
would propel us to success in the future.
[00:14:09]
I wrote down that I wanted
a business partner.
[00:14:17]
2016, just getting started in real estate.
[00:14:19]
We had no idea what it looked like,
but I said, I want a business partner
[00:14:24]
that will help me grow
so that I can make $100,000.
[00:14:27]
That was.
My goal.
[00:14:28]
Nice.
[00:14:32]
Lo and behold.
Low and behold.
[00:14:34]
Three years late.
[00:14:35]
The mail got lost.
[00:14:39]
But finally, Gordon was
shipped in from out east.
[00:14:43]
All right.
[00:14:45]
I was actually about five and a half
hours south at that point.
[00:14:48]
Oh, you were a Midwest
guy for a minute, weren’t you?
[00:14:51]
Yeah.
[00:14:53]
My story is nothing like that.
[00:14:55]
I’ve never been to a spa.
You didn’t have a massage place?
[00:14:57]
No, I’ve never been given.
A massage.
[00:14:59]
Although you probably would be good.
[00:15:02]
I never considered it.
[00:15:03]
Things go sideways, I guess I.
Have options.
[00:15:05]
Yeah, right?
Next thing you know.
[00:15:08]
Yeah, my story is really different.
[00:15:09]
I graduated from college.
[00:15:12]
I was in school and I went
[00:15:13]
to the University of Alabama Huntsville
and I was an engineer.
[00:15:17]
I played baseball and
I was definitely going down that path.
[00:15:22]
I always loved business, but
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I would rather read the Wall Street
Journal than popular science.
[00:15:29]
But I knew that if I just go get
[00:15:31]
a business degree, quite honestly,
I was like, so did everybody else.
[00:15:35]
That’s a long line.
[00:15:36]
I was like, I’m just going to be like,
these people, not that there’s anything
[00:15:38]
wrong with it, but I’m just going to have
to find some little competitive advantage.
[00:15:41]
I need to just get a more difficult degree
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that’s maybe in higher demand, and maybe
I can make more money when I graduate.
[00:15:47]
My
theory was I was like,
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I’ll get a degree in engineering
that’s the closest thing to business.
[00:15:53]
I was like, That’s a good blend.
[00:15:56]
I got an industrial and systems
engineering degree and a math minor.
[00:16:01]
And I was like, Okay, now I’m numbers,
[00:16:03]
but I’m also management, and I’m also
nerdy on the engineer side.
[00:16:08]
So I can fit in with a lot of people.
[00:16:10]
It’s a pretty good skill stack.
[00:16:12]
That’s my approach.
[00:16:13]
There’s a lot of people that I
described to that theory, if you
[00:16:19]
keep building your skills,
and it’s not just taking a class here or
[00:16:22]
there, but really
choosing things that build on one another,
[00:16:25]
without having even a college
degree, you can do a lot.
[00:16:32]
Lo and behold, that worked.
[00:16:34]
By the time I graduated college,
I already had a job.
[00:16:37]
Literally, I was already working
there as part of my senior project.
[00:16:40]
Nice.
As an engineer?
[00:16:41]
As an engineer, yeah.
[00:16:43]
I was an engine nerd, man.
[00:16:45]
We built engines.
[00:16:46]
I worked at Navistar, which is
the same thing as International.
[00:16:49]
We built the power stroke engine for Ford.
[00:16:52]
I did not know anything about engines,
but I knew how to do it.
[00:16:56]
I knew manufacturing.
[00:16:57]
A lot of the theory.
[00:16:59]
I was mechanically inclined enough to
help the guys work on the machines.
[00:17:03]
But that was super challenging.
[00:17:05]
I was 22, 23 years old,
[00:17:08]
and I’ve got people two,
three times my age reporting to me.
[00:17:12]
Wow.
That’s not an easy task.
[00:17:15]
No.
You learn to navigate things
[00:17:19]
strategically pretty quick
when you’re just basically
[00:17:22]
you’re old enough to be their son,
but you’re also telling them what to do.
[00:17:25]
Give me ballpark of what year ish?
[00:17:29]
2004, 2005.
[00:17:30]
That would have been like ’03 to ’04.
[00:17:35]
For three years, I did that.
[00:17:36]
That was one of the more valuable
experiences of my life because
[00:17:41]
later in life, right, as we’ll get to,
I had to deal with contractors and things,
[00:17:44]
all these people that you need to gain the
respect and you really have to have…
[00:17:48]
You can’t just pay somebody and expect
to have the respect that you might get.
[00:17:52]
But you’re really looking for loyalty
[00:17:53]
and you want them to put
you at the top of the list.
[00:17:56]
That’s something I learned
by dealing with those guys.
[00:17:58]
If I wasn’t handling things correctly,
they were sure to tell me.
[00:18:02]
They were more than happy to.
[00:18:03]
They were like, Young man.
This young punk.
[00:18:06]
It was fun, though.
[00:18:07]
It was great.
[00:18:10]
But we were making good money.
I was an engineer straight up.
[00:18:12]
That’s back when you could
actually get a job, get a job.
[00:18:14]
You know what I did?
It was crazy.
[00:18:16]
I was living in Alabama
for pretty good money.
[00:18:20]
I was like, I need to buy a house.
[00:18:22]
I grew up in the construction business.
[00:18:23]
My dad had a construction company
the whole time I was growing up.
[00:18:26]
Every summer, there’s me beating nails.
[00:18:29]
I was doing construction stuff.
[00:18:30]
I was like, I need to buy a house.
[00:18:32]
If I’m going to buy one,
let’s buy something ugly and fix it up.
[00:18:35]
I bought an online…
[00:18:38]
I bought a foreclosure, a hud home.
You can literally…
[00:18:40]
It’s an online auction.
[00:18:41]
I bought one.
[00:18:44]
You have to keep them for a year without
getting into the stupid details.
[00:18:49]
I had to keep the house for a year.
[00:18:51]
Well, that gave me plenty of time
to do all the work myself.
[00:18:53]
Talking about I’m up on the roof,
new siding flooring.
[00:18:59]
The roaches that this house came with,
the termites, you name it, man.
[00:19:02]
You’re free to charge.
Oh, yeah.
[00:19:04]
All my little friends that lived with me.
[00:19:08]
But it was fantastic.
[00:19:10]
But living in a construction site,
I mean, I could never do it now.
[00:19:12]
I’m a family man.
But back then, it was what I needed to do.
[00:19:15]
And it was looking back, it was gross.
[00:19:18]
But that one project went pretty well.
[00:19:22]
And by the time, before I was even done
with it, I was like, Wait a second.
[00:19:25]
If I pull an equity line on this one,
I could buy that property over there.
[00:19:29]
So within 12 months, I own two properties.
[00:19:31]
And then I was like, Oh,
well, if I have a…
[00:19:33]
I know some other people at work
and maybe some family members.
[00:19:36]
There’s this other deal over here.
[00:19:39]
You guys want in on this deal?
[00:19:40]
I think this one could be a rental.
[00:19:42]
I’m going to flip this one.
[00:19:44]
This thing turned into a business
outside of engineering pretty quick.
[00:19:48]
I was like, Wow, this real estate
thing is fun, investing specifically.
[00:19:52]
I worked as an engineer for three years
[00:19:56]
and I was like, I
got to do real estate full time.
[00:19:58]
So I’m from the Baltimore area, like
she mentioned, I’m from the East Coast.
[00:20:01]
I
proposed my then girlfriend, now wife,
[00:20:07]
because I wasn’t going to ask her
to leave without a commitment.
[00:20:10]
She said yes.
[00:20:12]
In 2007, we moved to the Baltimore area.
[00:20:17]
At the time, we still had
six houses in Alabama.
[00:20:19]
We had created this little real estate
mini portfolio thing.
[00:20:22]
Yeah.
[00:20:22]
19 and a half or were
you on the other one?
[00:20:25]
Yeah, I had the whole thing going.
[00:20:29]
Ultimately, it turned out that I had
[00:20:31]
done an okay job at that, good enough
to not be a huge problem for me.
[00:20:35]
But knowing what I know now,
[00:20:37]
I should have probably handled
doing those deals differently.
[00:20:40]
Maybe some of them I
shouldn’t have bought.
[00:20:42]
But we came out great.
[00:20:44]
Ultimately, I got into the business full
time real estate as an investor in 2007.
[00:20:50]
Great time.
Yeah.
[00:20:52]
Things were looking good until about
six months after we got…
[00:20:56]
Things were actually probably
starting to head down.
[00:20:59]
Honestly, I was like,
That turned out to be a blessing.
[00:21:02]
What I learned how to do
is find good deals.
[00:21:06]
If you can do that,
you’ll never go hungry.
[00:21:08]
I
guess the short way of telling my whole
[00:21:12]
story is that I came into this
business by way of investing.
[00:21:15]
Whereas she came in as, I think,
[00:21:20]
a little bit as an investor,
but as an agent before me.
[00:21:25]
I wasn’t an agent until 2019, 2019 is
why I have my real estate license.
[00:21:30]
But
keep in mind, I had done hundreds of real
[00:21:33]
estate transactions across
that 2007 to 2018 period.
[00:21:37]
I had done more deals than many realtors
[00:21:40]
do in their entire career
as an owner, as a buyer and seller.
[00:21:43]
I mean, we’re talking wholesale,
retail, all the different stuff.
[00:21:48]
And ultimately, we used
to buy homes that were…
[00:21:50]
I’d buy a house for $50,000,
put $150,000 into it.
[00:21:54]
We’re talking large scale renovations.
[00:21:57]
The idea of paint carpet isn’t
a thing that existed in my world.
[00:22:01]
I learned construction.
[00:22:04]
Then when I
decided I was like, You know what?
[00:22:07]
This is cool business.
[00:22:08]
It’s really good money.
[00:22:10]
You flip 20, 25 houses a year,
that many transactions.
[00:22:13]
You can add up.
It’s not bad.
[00:22:15]
However, you have
to constantly chase business.
[00:22:18]
I have to find more houses.
When they come available,
[00:22:20]
I have to be available seven days
a week if that’s what it takes.
[00:22:23]
I knew that when I’m
60 years old, I can’t do that.
[00:22:28]
I had to come up with a plan.
[00:22:29]
I was like, I need to do some
passive income, passive thing.
[00:22:37]
For me, I had learned about apartments
and I was like, Let’s do this.
[00:22:42]
I seeked out somebody
that could help me with it.
[00:22:46]
I guess long story short,
my wife and I decided she’s from St.
[00:22:49]
Louis, we were doing pretty well.
[00:22:52]
We were like, Things are good here,
but maybe it could be great there.
[00:22:55]
It’ll definitely be different.
[00:22:57]
The landlord situation,
[00:22:59]
the opportunities there for what
we’re trying to do is better.
[00:23:01]
So let’s go to St.
Louis.
[00:23:03]
And that was 2018.
[00:23:05]
And then we had what was probably one
of the toughest years of my life.
[00:23:09]
Everything that we had strategized,
[00:23:11]
I’d say two of the 10 things
that we planned worked out.
[00:23:13]
The other eight were like, Oh, wow.
[00:23:17]
That laughed at me for planning them.
Sure.
[00:23:18]
That’s how it works.
Yeah.
[00:23:20]
So 2019 rolls around.
[00:23:25]
We’re about a year into the whole St.
[00:23:27]
Louis experiment, I’ll call it.
And i was.
[00:23:30]
Experimented on.
[00:23:32]
And we’re like,
Something’s going to change.
[00:23:34]
Either we’re going to head back
to Baltimore and just pick up where we
[00:23:36]
left off, or we’re going
to do something different.
[00:23:38]
And
[00:23:40]
the company that she was working
with at the time, the owner was like,
[00:23:43]
If you want to come here and learn
the apartment business, come.
[00:23:47]
Join me.
[00:23:47]
Because you were in a Mastermind
group together, right?
[00:23:49]
That’s how you knew him?
Yeah.
[00:23:50]
We did.
Got you.
[00:23:51]
I had known him for probably three
years at that point, just on top of it.
[00:23:55]
It’s a decent relationship,
but it’s still a Mastermind.
[00:23:58]
He said, Well,
come to Madison, check it out.
[00:24:01]
And if you want to join
the team, you’re welcome.
[00:24:04]
I met her that day.
[00:24:07]
It was me, our middle child now,
and my wife, we came up here.
[00:24:12]
We met at a Lori’s over
south of here anyway.
[00:24:18]
And L orie showed up.
She had her little shiny pecker hat on.
[00:24:21]
I was like, Who is this.
[00:24:23]
Wisconsin guy?
[00:24:24]
Welcome to us, guys.
[00:24:26]
I’m like, What’s going on here?
[00:24:27]
She’s got diamonds on her pecker’s hat,
which all makes sense now, right?
[00:24:30]
It makes sense.
[00:24:31]
Anyway, and ultimately, we met that day.
[00:24:34]
It was inconsequential, I’d say, overall.
[00:24:36]
But part of ways, and then
I learned the area.
[00:24:40]
And we were like, All right,
well, we have two choices again.
[00:24:42]
Baltimore or Wisconsin.
[00:24:43]
We’re like, Let’s do Wisconsin. W
[00:24:46]
e moved up here,
dove into the management business.
[00:24:49]
T hat was April of 2019.
[00:24:54]
And then
[00:24:56]
pretty quickly,
I connected with you and we were like,
[00:24:59]
We started talking real estate. And
by August of that year,
[00:25:02]
I had my license in the state
of Wisconsin, which, look,
[00:25:04]
if you’ve done real estate,
getting your license isn’t that hard.
[00:25:06]
I was just going to ask.
[00:25:08]
I’ve done hundreds of real
estate transactions.
[00:25:10]
It was just a matter
of learning what they do here.
[00:25:12]
And I’ve been educated.
[00:25:16]
I took the real estate class in Alabama.
[00:25:18]
My wife was an agent in Maryland.
[00:25:19]
She was an agent in Missouri.
It’s just what we do.
[00:25:22]
I’ve been in real estate
since I was in my 20s.
[00:25:24]
At this point, I’ve been
in it for almost 20 years.
[00:25:28]
Oh, wow.
[00:25:29]
I got my license.
[00:25:33]
And then she was nice enough
to take me on the ride along.
[00:25:35]
She was like, Hey,
[00:25:36]
you don’t have a lot going
on in the business because I’m not local.
[00:25:39]
I know real estate,
but I don’t know Madison.
[00:25:42]
She don’t know the area.
She really knows Madison.
[00:25:44]
And she’s like, She had
a lot going on, as she said.
[00:25:47]
That was one of the year where she sold
a bunch of houses really on her own.
[00:25:52]
And she was like, You can come along.
[00:25:53]
And then pretty quickly,
while we were in showings, I was
[00:25:57]
contributing things and then
we’re bouncing things off one another.
[00:26:00]
It became pretty clear that her skill
set and my skill set were complementary.
[00:26:04]
A lot of people talk about that.
[00:26:05]
But if you ever came to a showing with us,
it’s the example of all…
[00:26:09]
It really is where the things
that I’m good at and she picks up.
[00:26:16]
It was a really natural fit.
[00:26:19]
She was like, This went good.
[00:26:21]
Should we do this on purpose?
[00:26:24]
Mind you, we barely knew each other.
[00:26:26]
We had been working together in the same
[00:26:29]
property management company for just a
couple of months, but not even together.
[00:26:33]
He and his wife were at a different
property in Sun Prairie,
[00:26:36]
and me and nick were at a different
property in West Madison.
[00:26:39]
We saw each other once
a month at a meeting.
[00:26:42]
That’s funny.
[00:26:43]
He had said, I
want to make some more money.
[00:26:47]
We’ve got two kids.
[00:26:48]
We want to buy a house.
[00:26:50]
He was like, I’ll do some maintenance.
[00:26:51]
I was like, Gordon, you’re not going
to make enough money doing maintenance.
[00:26:55]
You should be doing real estate.
[00:26:57]
He was like, Well,
what does that look like?
[00:26:59]
We literally jumped in the car together
[00:27:01]
for eight hours, had a bunch of showings,
the listing appointment.
[00:27:04]
He helped me write an offer.
[00:27:06]
He was very coachable
and willing to learn.
[00:27:09]
I could tell his work ethic
and mine really aligned.
[00:27:11]
We were both whatever it takes type
[00:27:14]
of people. And
by the end of the day, he’s right.
[00:27:19]
We were just like,
should we do this on purpose?
[00:27:20]
And he’s like, well,
what do you gain from this?
[00:27:23]
Good.
Question.
[00:27:24]
Because I’ve already
very well invested in Madison.
[00:27:29]
I’ve already got a successful business
going.
[00:27:32]
What could I gain?
[00:27:35]
And there were several things
that I believe to be true.
[00:27:40]
Number one, I thought safety and security.
[00:27:44]
I mean, look at this guy.
[00:27:45]
Sure.
[00:27:46]
It’s a real thing to have a single
[00:27:50]
female going into random houses
with strangers you’ve never met.
[00:27:53]
There’s a lot of crazy things going on.
[00:27:56]
So for me to have a permanent security
person with me, that was one thing.
[00:28:03]
The second thing was
[00:28:05]
his brain and his knowledge and his
skill set was not something I had.
[00:28:09]
I did not grow up in construction.
[00:28:11]
When you put the two people,
I always believe better together.
[00:28:17]
Like I told you,
surround yourself with people that are
[00:28:20]
smarter and better than you,
and you will elevate yourself as well.
[00:28:24]
Having his knowledge,
I knew would be better for our clients.
[00:28:28]
Also.
[00:28:30]
The leverage of time.
[00:28:32]
Huge one.
[00:28:34]
Remember, I had told you I hadn’t
had a Saturday off in five years.
[00:28:36]
Now I went back to work and I literally
was working seven days a week again.
[00:28:40]
It’s like a natural.
[00:28:42]
It was just like, I just keep
working, just keep working.
[00:28:45]
But I knew the only way that I would be
able to travel or go on vacation
[00:28:48]
is if I had a partner that could be
here when I was gone and vice versa.
[00:28:51]
I could do that for him and them.
[00:28:54]
And so really, after one ride along,
[00:28:57]
we made a commitment to each
other to start working together.
[00:29:02]
And that was the end of 2019.
[00:29:04]
We finished off the year strong.
[00:29:07]
And then 2020 happened.
What happened there?
[00:29:10]
I mean, there was this little thing called
[00:29:13]
COVID that cracked into
the world, a pandemic.
[00:29:17]
And so we had to immediately pivot.
[00:29:19]
And that’s the best thing about us,
[00:29:21]
I believe, is that both of us
always find or create a way.
[00:29:26]
We are going to make it work.
The hustler.
[00:29:28]
Yeah.
[00:29:28]
And so here we are putting on our booties,
putting on our gloves,
[00:29:32]
putting on our mask, doing video
tours for showings, clients.
[00:29:37]
Is that what.
They were doing?
[00:29:38]
That’s what we were doing.
[00:29:39]
We sold homes to people
that never sold a house.
[00:29:42]
A lot of them.
[00:29:43]
It was at least 10 that year. Yeah.
Did you take any video, walks?
[00:29:45]
Yeah.
So you’re.
[00:29:46]
Taking video walks?
Oh, yeah.
[00:29:48]
Military folks that weren’t allowed
to leave the base, but they had to move.
[00:29:52]
And yeah.
Holy cow.
[00:29:53]
These folks they were like…
[00:29:54]
Doctors coming here
to help at the hospitals.
[00:29:56]
But they weren’t allowed to travel
because they had been exposed.
[00:29:58]
All these different reasons.
Sure.
[00:30:00]
So talking about the reactions
of people as they…
[00:30:03]
After they saw the videos,
they make the transaction.
[00:30:06]
I mean, imagine that, right?
[00:30:07]
You’re coming from, I don’t know,
some cases, Maryland, Ohio.
[00:30:09]
But in the biggest.
[00:30:10]
House or biggest thing you’ve
ever bought in your life.
[00:30:12]
A lot of these people are moving out
[00:30:13]
of an apartment for the first time,
and they’re literally, they don’t know us.
[00:30:16]
They’ve never met us except for over
Zoom or something.
[00:30:19]
How did they choose you?
[00:30:20]
It was online, Zillow, whatever.
[00:30:21]
They found us.
Referral, some people.
[00:30:23]
Some people found us on Zillow.
[00:30:26]
Some people, I think,
just called on a listing.
[00:30:30]
Yeah, that’s who we popped up.
Yeah.
[00:30:31]
And so we would literally do Zoom.
[00:30:34]
And I think that’s where we shined because
I could dig into the construction side,
[00:30:37]
like what’s going on here, what’s likely
to come up in an inspection, etc.
[00:30:41]
And you could talk more about local market
[00:30:43]
houses, what’s nearby,
walkability, stuff like that.
[00:30:46]
Yeah.
[00:30:47]
And it all seemed to be this perfect
[00:30:52]
amount of information they
needed to make a good decision.
[00:30:55]
Sure.
And so ultimately, yeah,
[00:30:58]
every time they’d come, though,
we’d meet them for the first time.
[00:31:00]
Then they would walk into their
house and we were just waiting.
[00:31:05]
If they smile, it was just like this,
it was a sign of relief
[00:31:11]
because you had been
giving these people what you believed
[00:31:14]
to be great advice. But
ultimately, they had to feel it.
[00:31:17]
It never failed us.
[00:31:21]
Ultimately, everybody,
as far as we know, was very happy.
[00:31:24]
That was an interesting time.
[00:31:25]
It was good.
[00:31:27]
It was exciting,
but it was indicative of our style.
[00:31:32]
Keep working.
[00:31:35]
A lot of people were shutting down.
[00:31:37]
I was watching people through social
media saying, I’m not leaving the house.
[00:31:41]
I haven’t done any work.
[00:31:42]
There’s nothing to be done.
[00:31:44]
We were the type of people that was like,
The show must go on.
[00:31:50]
Totally.
You know what.
[00:31:51]
I mean?
A thousand times over.
[00:31:52]
We got out there, we did whatever it took.
[00:31:55]
We were safe and we had a great year.
[00:31:59]
In 2020, we were able to help 114
people buy and sell houses.
[00:32:08]
That’s incredible.
It was literally incredible.
[00:32:12]
We were one of the…
[00:32:13]
If we count us as a one
in a unit, we were one of the top three
[00:32:20]
realtors in Wisconsin
for sales and volume.
[00:32:24]
Were other real estate agents just
[00:32:26]
calling it quits or they’re
putting everything on hold?
[00:32:29]
You’re talking about community wide.
No, I.
[00:32:32]
Mean, I think some of that happened.
[00:32:35]
Some people were…
[00:32:36]
Nobody knew the truth about
anything that was happening.
[00:32:38]
Everybody was trying to get
the best information but like…
[00:32:41]
We’re all trying to figure.
It out.
[00:32:42]
It’s like fog of war.
[00:32:43]
You don’t really know what’s happening.
[00:32:44]
Even if people are trying to be super
[00:32:46]
honest with you, you’re just like,
Should I do this or not?
[00:32:48]
It’s going to hurt me.
[00:32:49]
They didn’t know if by going to their
client’s house, they would hurt them.
[00:32:53]
I think some folks were just
trying to be Uber cautious.
[00:32:56]
They weren’t in the position
to be as motivated, maybe.
[00:33:01]
I think there’s probably
a number of things.
[00:33:02]
I think some people thought that
[00:33:05]
real estate was going to tank
and that they might want to just hunker
[00:33:08]
down and conserve their capital
and maybe do something.
[00:33:10]
All right.
This is what.
[00:33:12]
I know that 2008 was going to.
Happen or something.
[00:33:14]
Yeah, for sure.
[00:33:15]
And look, I can understand why.
[00:33:18]
If anybody came to you and said, look,
[00:33:20]
we’re going to have this thing,
it’s going to be called the pandemic.
[00:33:21]
The whole world is going
to shut down for a while.
[00:33:23]
But by the way, real estate
is going to be awesome.
[00:33:25]
Would you be like, I would have been like,
that doesn’t make sense.
[00:33:28]
Come on.
Let me tell you, the Wisconsin
[00:33:29]
bars are shutting down and the real estate
is still going to be all over the place.
[00:33:33]
No, don’t see it happening.
[00:33:34]
Don’t see it happening.
[00:33:35]
Well, and there was a minute,
remember, when we were…
[00:33:39]
We didn’t even know if we were
going to be considered essential.
[00:33:42]
Yeah.
Oh, that’s right.
[00:33:43]
The essential thing.
[00:33:46]
Well, this is a funny story.
[00:33:48]
We didn’t know what our world
was going to look like.
[00:33:53]
And so Gordon and I did
a family run at Costco.
[00:33:55]
Remember?
We bought $500 worth of food.
[00:33:59]
Oh, nice.
You and everybody.
[00:34:00]
Else, right?
You guys better move in with us.
[00:34:03]
We got to keep working.
The apocalypse.
[00:34:05]
Is coming.
If they are not going to let us leave our
[00:34:07]
house, you better come,
and we’re all going to be here.
[00:34:09]
So Gordon and his wife and his two
kids came and lived with nick and I.
[00:34:12]
Did they really?
For one.
[00:34:14]
Day. yeah. We were like, We’re good.
[00:34:16]
That’s how it worked.
I think.
[00:34:18]
It lasted one day.
It was.
[00:34:19]
And then they were like,
Well, this was fun.
[00:34:22]
And they packed up and they left.
[00:34:24]
But nobody really knew
what was going to happen.
[00:34:27]
And then I think it was that day that they
[00:34:29]
decided that we were essential and we
were going to be able to go to work.
[00:34:32]
T hey were like, Okay, we’ll be okay.
[00:34:35]
W e kept on keeping on.
[00:34:37]
O ur life did change, obviously.
[00:34:39]
Everyone’s did.
[00:34:40]
We all hung out with a couple of people.
[00:34:43]
We didn’t go and do things.
[00:34:45]
We learned how to cook.
[00:34:47]
Gordon’s an amazing barbecue chef.
[00:34:50]
He’s traveled the circuit and has
won a bunch of awards and accolades.
[00:34:54]
T hat came in handy when we
couldn’t go to restaurants.
[00:34:56]
We ended up making the most of it.
[00:35:00]
But along the way, we just kept working.
[00:35:04]
Then in 2021, we survived the year.
[00:35:09]
Things seemed to be
a little bit more normal.
[00:35:12]
We had a really good
[00:35:14]
system. W e decided then that maybe it was
time for us to change
[00:35:21]
and make a little bit more
of the money that we were making.
[00:35:24]
We had a really hefty split
[00:35:25]
with the previous brokerage that we were
with, and that’s how we landed here.
[00:35:32]
Got you.
Okay.
[00:35:33]
In 2021, we interviewed a bunch of places.
[00:35:36]
We wanted to figure out
where our next home was going to be
[00:35:40]
that we could keep
the level of professionalism and
[00:35:45]
all of the other things that our clients
had set as expectations
[00:35:48]
of working with us and maybe even elevate
that experience and be better
[00:35:52]
and be rewarded for all
the hard work we were doing.
[00:35:55]
So that’s how we came here.
So can you.
[00:35:58]
Pause for a minute?
That’s our story.
[00:36:00]
So people that don’t know,
[00:36:04]
you guys are successful, you’re doing
well with the place that you’re at.
[00:36:08]
How does the real estate world
work where you need a brokerage?
[00:36:11]
Good question.
[00:36:12]
When you get your real estate license,
you have to be a salesperson.
[00:36:19]
You have to be
someone that works for someone else
[00:36:23]
for a brokerage
for the first two years or 24 sales.
[00:36:27]
Obviously, we
[00:36:30]
had done that, so we could have gone
and gotten our broker’s license.
[00:36:36]
However, again, I told you,
we believe the power of a team is good.
[00:36:41]
Being in a place where maybe they already
[00:36:43]
have the brand recognition, what
a broker provides is brand number one.
[00:36:51]
They also provide the security
of heirs and emissions insurance and.
[00:36:56]
The overhead.
[00:36:58]
That goes with running the company.
[00:37:01]
Both of us had had our own businesses
for 20 years leading up to this.
[00:37:05]
Neither one of us really
wanted to start that again.
[00:37:09]
We didn’t want to have people coming
and work for us and employees
[00:37:12]
and a business and overhead
of an office and all of those things.
[00:37:16]
So we really felt like it was a smart
decision for us to put ourselves
[00:37:22]
with someone that already
had all those things.
[00:37:24]
So we can just do what we’re good at
and not have to worry about all of the…
[00:37:28]
The other headaches.
Headaches.
[00:37:29]
Let’s call.
Them that.
[00:37:30]
So there’s the trinkety office stuff
[00:37:33]
and all the paperwork insurance,
all that stuff.
[00:37:35]
So you guys can focus on real estate
[00:37:38]
and the transactions
without having to deal with the other…
[00:37:42]
The businessy stuff that nobody
wants to deal with.
[00:37:44]
But there is the freedom as a salesperson
to move about brokerages as.
[00:37:48]
You.
Choose.
[00:37:50]
Because I think that speaks
to your question a little bit.
[00:37:52]
You’re not required to work.
[00:37:55]
Somewhere for any particular company.
[00:37:56]
You’re not tested.
[00:37:58]
Typically, you’re an independent
contractor.
[00:38:00]
Okay.
You have to be, right?
[00:38:02]
Yeah.
As a real estate agent, correct me if.
[00:38:04]
I’m wrong.
Yeah, you can be licensed.
[00:38:06]
But if you’re going to be out there doing
the business that we’re doing, yeah, yes.
[00:38:10]
So as contractors,
we have loyalty to where we’re with.
[00:38:17]
But at the same time, at that time, you
[00:38:21]
couldn’t help but look at the money and
say, but we could have kept more of it.
[00:38:25]
But know this, too.
[00:38:26]
We’re also the type of people that
we made a proposal where we were.
[00:38:30]
We didn’t just say, Look, we’re gone.
Thanks.
[00:38:32]
We’re out.
[00:38:35]
We gave them the opportunity to match
or beat what we were offered elsewhere.
[00:38:39]
That didn’t happen.
[00:38:42]
We are where we are now.
[00:38:44]
But I think in the end, no question from
our perspective, it was a better fit.
[00:38:50]
Yeah, it was meant to be.
Sure.
[00:38:51]
Besides the financial aspect,
[00:38:54]
I mentioned there’s also a culture
or a character of a brokerage.
[00:38:58]
I don’t know very well, but I know there’s
[00:39:02]
dozens, if not maybe
hundreds of brokerages.
[00:39:04]
And even just from my just seeing,
you can see, okay, this
[00:39:10]
is how I would describe them
versus how I would describe them.
[00:39:13]
So is this a.
Better fit?
[00:39:14]
Not one of them.
[00:39:15]
There’s not another one
in Madison that has this.
[00:39:17]
None of them have a turret.
[00:39:18]
This is pretty funny looking off.
You’re sitting here.
[00:39:20]
They just don’t have it.
[00:39:21]
But this is the office.
It’s what you see.
[00:39:24]
But everything else is the same.
[00:39:26]
All the systems, the parts
that you don’t see are there, too.
[00:39:29]
It would be hard for you having not even
been a client, you know what I mean?
[00:39:35]
But the way we do things, this is just
[00:39:38]
emblematic of the whole process
and what you get when you.
[00:39:41]
Deal with us.
Got you.
[00:39:42]
The thing that we liked about coming
here is this is a local brokerage.
[00:39:46]
Right.
I was just going to ask.
[00:39:47]
You about that.
This isn’t a chain.
[00:39:48]
This isn’t a national…
It’s not corporate.
[00:39:51]
They can make decisions inhouse.
[00:39:54]
We get to be a part of something local.
[00:39:57]
That was important to me.
[00:40:00]
And Spurman has a higher Echelon…
[00:40:05]
They’re known for their luxury homes.
[00:40:07]
They’re great living.
[00:40:08]
They’re better experience
than some of the other brokerages.
[00:40:14]
And if we’re going to make a change,
we wanted it to be with one of the best.
[00:40:21]
Nice.
Smart move.
[00:40:23]
Smart move.
[00:40:25]
So the other brokers, or.
The.
[00:40:26]
Other real estate.
Agents.
[00:40:29]
Are they cool?
Yeah, cool.
[00:40:31]
The thing that we
[00:40:33]
have learned over the course of our life
is we don’t like a lot of drama.
[00:40:40]
The only drama I want is
on the Bachelorette on TV.
[00:40:43]
I don’t want it in my life.
[00:40:45]
Shut it off when you’re done
and move on with your life.
[00:40:48]
That’s one thing that I think we really
appreciated about being here is
[00:40:53]
there’s a good amount of people here,
but everyone keeps their business.
[00:40:57]
Everyone is nice, everyone is
[00:40:59]
professional, but we’re not
intermingling and we’re not gossiping
[00:41:03]
and we’re not creating
problems for our coworkers.
[00:41:06]
Nice.
[00:41:08]
For me, the older I get,
that’s just super important.
[00:41:10]
I want to be able to go and do what I need
[00:41:14]
to do and not have to worry about the
little chitter chatter in the background.
[00:41:19]
I bet, especially, I’m just laughing
because I have employees too.
[00:41:23]
And sometimes you’re just like, This
shouldn’t be a problem.
[00:41:26]
But it’s a problem.
[00:41:28]
And I can imagine in the spa world, that
had to be 20 times what the idea was.
[00:41:33]
Oh, my good God.
[00:41:35]
I can only imagine.
[00:41:37]
I’ve had enough drama for 10 lives.
[00:41:40]
I don’t need it anymore.
[00:41:42]
Everyone has seen the TV shows
of the little salons, right?
[00:41:48]
And everybody’s
talking about everyone else and talking
[00:41:51]
about their clients
and gossip and gossip and gossip.
[00:41:54]
And you buy into that when
you’re around it.
[00:41:58]
It becomes like you
know what’s the saying?
[00:42:01]
You become the five people
that you spend time with.
[00:42:03]
If you’re around a bunch of people,
I’m very easily can get involved in that.
[00:42:09]
Can you believe it?
What did she do?
[00:42:11]
What did he do?
And another thing.
[00:42:13]
But when I’m not around it, that’s not me.
[00:42:16]
And so it’s just better for me to be
in a place where there’s less of that.
[00:42:23]
And I’m just much more
successful when that.
[00:42:26]
So, yeah, 20 years,
I really know what I want.
[00:42:32]
Fair.
Totally fair.
[00:42:33]
But if you have any dirty secrets, you.
Can still tell me.
[00:42:35]
I don’t.
[00:42:38]
None that I would…
[00:42:39]
Yeah, lame ones.
So
[00:42:41]
I guess as far as you talked about rental
property, you had rental property before.
[00:42:45]
Do you still have
that in your back pocket?
[00:42:47]
Yeah.
[00:42:48]
So that’s really where our
life has come since 2021.
[00:42:56]
Wow.
[00:42:57]
So both of us bought new homes.
Okay.
[00:42:59]
And i was able to
fulfill my dream of moving to the lake
[00:43:05]
so that I could do
boating and entertaining.
[00:43:08]
We love where we live on Lake Keeganza.
[00:43:13]
And that has been a dream for both of us.
[00:43:17]
So that’s awesome.
[00:43:20]
And a couple of months before or a couple
of months after, you guys bought a house
[00:43:23]
in a community that was
kids driven and good school district and
[00:43:29]
good for them, for neighbors
and barbecue and all the awesome things.
[00:43:32]
Gordon was able to travel a good bit
and really get back out on the circuit,
[00:43:36]
which is his passion and his barbecue and
won a bunch of awards.
[00:43:44]
And we’ve really turned our life into
the vision that we had more so.
[00:43:49]
It doesn’t mean we don’t still work 24 7
when we have to,
[00:43:53]
but we’ve been able to
focus a little bit more on the things
[00:43:57]
that are important
versus just always chasing a dollar.
[00:44:02]
The other cool thing
that we did, you share.
[00:44:06]
With?
With management.
[00:44:06]
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.
That’s really important.
[00:44:08]
And that speaks directly to your question.
[00:44:12]
So the thing is, these business,
[00:44:13]
when you’re in real estate, especially
when you come in as an investor.
[00:44:15]
I can’t turn that off.
[00:44:17]
That’s really where I come from.
[00:44:19]
So how do you make all that work together?
[00:44:22]
Because we have all these capabilities.
[00:44:26]
We’re the preferred
[00:44:27]
agents of the Madison Real
Estate Investors Association.
[00:44:31]
We have a management company.
[00:44:33]
We now have, outside of the portfolio she
was talking about,
[00:44:36]
we now have 158 apartment units
that the management company manages.
[00:44:41]
That we’ve just bought in.
The last two years.
[00:44:43]
Last two years.
[00:44:43]
We’ve got four full time employees,
two part time employees in that company.
[00:44:49]
Wow.
And then we also do private money lending
[00:44:53]
for people that want usually fixed
and flip type deals, six months,
[00:44:56]
short term loans to keep investors going
and to help new investors as well.
[00:45:01]
We do a one stop shop.
[00:45:04]
What we do here is part of it.
[00:45:05]
But what feeds what we do here
is because we can do so many.
[00:45:09]
Different things.
[00:45:13]
That’s really the vision is these
things all work together in my mind.
[00:45:18]
This is one piece and it’s very important
[00:45:21]
piece and it’s one thing
that we do really well.
[00:45:23]
But one of the things that we really are
passionate about is
[00:45:27]
helping people that want
to buy investment property that are like,
[00:45:30]
I tried the market, I tried
crypto, whatever it is.
[00:45:35]
They’re not experts at that.
[00:45:38]
Arguably, no one is at times.
[00:45:41]
And we say, Fine,
come to us with our open arms.
[00:45:44]
We will help you with real estate.
[00:45:46]
There’s been so many people that we’ve
[00:45:48]
been able to help
really just build their future.
[00:45:51]
That’s one thing that I’ve
always been passionate about.
[00:45:54]
A lot of these folks, they think that, Oh,
I could never get into an apartment deal.
[00:45:58]
She talked about
her first 90 units, whatever.
[00:46:01]
When she was in the spot,
[00:46:02]
she probably never would have
imagined that she could land there.
[00:46:04]
But she did.
[00:46:06]
It’s just a matter of knowing the right
[00:46:07]
people because you’re getting
security and returns that we’re talking,
[00:46:12]
you’re talking like hedge fund level stuff
that you can do locally.
[00:46:16]
You know what I mean?
It’s for the people that…
[00:46:18]
Those are the people we want to help.
[00:46:21]
That’s one thing we’re just very…
[00:46:23]
I think we focus on in addition
to retail clients.
[00:46:29]
Our goal is to have enough
[00:46:37]
business of a life so that we can continue
living the life that we’ve created that we
[00:46:43]
enjoy without having to
constantly be chasing houses.
[00:46:47]
Who knows what’s going to happen, right?
[00:46:49]
The market right now is saying, Well,
this real estate might be iffie in 2023.
[00:46:53]
We might be in for another recession.
[00:46:58]
Our mindset is to just put our head
down and to just keep moving forward.
[00:47:02]
You can’t buy into the hype.
[00:47:04]
You can’t buy into the drama.
[00:47:06]
You just have to stay focused.
[00:47:08]
It might be a good opportunity for us
to buy more apartments this year.
[00:47:11]
It might be a good opportunity for our
investors to buy more houses to flip.
[00:47:18]
That’s super important, I think,
and part of the whole
[00:47:24]
entrepreneurial mindset is
no matter what, find a creative way.
[00:47:28]
Right.
It’s the name of the game.
[00:47:32]
Tell me, you raise an interesting point.
[00:47:34]
When you’re a real estate agent
[00:47:36]
and you’re looking at a property
or you see a property
[00:47:38]
and you see it’s a good deal, how do
you not jump on every one of those?
[00:47:41]
It’s got to be just that you can’t jump
[00:47:44]
on every one of those,
but there’s probably this thing like.
[00:47:46]
It’s a good deal.
[00:47:48]
Well, for me,
it really forces you to focus.
[00:47:54]
Otherwise, you’ll buy
anything that looks right.
[00:47:57]
And that isn’t the same thing
as having a business model.
[00:48:02]
You know what I mean?
[00:48:04]
A good deal is a good deal.
[00:48:06]
And there are different ways to dispose
of those or to make money off of those.
[00:48:11]
You don’t necessarily have
to commit to them long term.
[00:48:13]
But for example, we had two opportunities
[00:48:19]
brought to us and we ended up buying one.
[00:48:23]
And then in light of everything else
[00:48:25]
that we had going on, we said,
This one should go to someone else.
[00:48:28]
And it went to one of our clients.
[00:48:30]
Got it.
[00:48:33]
Could we have pulled that off?
Yes.
[00:48:35]
But with everything we had going,
[00:48:36]
we picked the one we liked better and then
gave somebody else an amazing deal.
[00:48:41]
For us, having
[00:48:44]
a little bit of focus and trying to stay
within what you have going,
[00:48:48]
I think it’s a lot of the lessons we
probably learned earlier in life as
[00:48:51]
business people where we would have
done that other deal that we’re not…
[00:48:56]
Chasing shiny objects.
Exactly.
[00:48:57]
We’re just doing what we should be doing
at a pace in which we should be doing it.
[00:49:02]
Which to me is, I mean, that sort of
[00:49:05]
slow and steady approach
seems to pay dividends more than being
[00:49:09]
hyper aggressive as
I was when I was younger.
[00:49:11]
It does open doors, though, that we could
pivot and make changes if we need to.
[00:49:18]
If the market did change
for the residential real estate,
[00:49:21]
we could do some rehab because
Gordon has that as a skill set.
[00:49:24]
We could do some more property
management for other people.
[00:49:28]
There are things that we could do,
[00:49:30]
but we’ve really found that our
success is staying in our lane.
[00:49:35]
All right. Keep the focus.
[00:49:36]
Focusing on one thing, like you said.
[00:49:38]
But having all those skills
makes our business more resilient.
[00:49:41]
When folks are running
around like, oh my God.
[00:49:43]
I might not sell a house this year.
[00:49:44]
I’m like, fine, I’ll buy houses,
I’ll manage apartments.
[00:49:48]
We have all these like they’re in place.
Adapt as needed.
[00:49:51]
Sure.
Cool.
[00:49:52]
Super cool.
I appreciate you guys being on the show.
[00:49:55]
Thank you it was fun.
[00:49:56]
The last question that I have is just
[00:49:58]
for someone that’s interested
in getting into the real estate world.
[00:50:01]
There’s probably some
things that you learned.
[00:50:02]
Is there any advice that you would have
for them before they jump in head first?
[00:50:07]
I think my personal advice is find a team.
[00:50:10]
Align yourself with someone else that’s
[00:50:12]
already doing this, that is successful,
that has the systems in place
[00:50:17]
that will help propel you because
everyone thinks they can just go out
[00:50:20]
and sell a couple of houses,
but it is a big deal.
[00:50:22]
There is a huge learning curve.
[00:50:24]
And for myself coming from a different
industry, totally in shifting
[00:50:28]
to real estate, finding a good team
that would help me with training and leads
[00:50:34]
and all of the things real estate
was pivotal in my success.
[00:50:38]
All right.
Very cool.
[00:50:40]
Yeah, I’d say I…
Find a
[00:50:42]
good partner.
Yeah.
[00:50:44]
No, it’s helpful.
[00:50:45]
But I would say,
let’s approach it from the investing side,
[00:50:48]
because that, in my opinion,
is also getting into real estate.
[00:50:51]
I think you need to get educated and
you need to be passionate about it.
[00:50:55]
You need to surround yourself with it.
[00:50:56]
If you’re driving, you should
be listening to a podcast.
[00:50:58]
If you’re at home,
you should be reading a book.
[00:51:00]
It should feel that way to you, otherwise,
you’re not going to be successful.
[00:51:04]
Otherwise, you should hand your money
[00:51:05]
to somebody else and let them
invest it into real estate for you.
[00:51:08]
So surround yourself
with it, get educated.
[00:51:09]
There’s local programs where you can pay
[00:51:11]
to learn and be literally mentored
by people that are successful.
[00:51:14]
Do that because it’s going to pay for it.
[00:51:16]
The hard lessons, the expensive lessons
[00:51:18]
are the ones where you lose money
and you didn’t have to.
[00:51:22]
Education is expensive.
[00:51:24]
You’re going to get it either way.
[00:51:25]
That’s the one thing I guess the thing I
always love is when, quote, then they say,
[00:51:30]
if you want to be successful,
just figure out the price and pay it.
[00:51:34]
And she knows me and she
knows that’s what I do.
[00:51:37]
Whether it’s barbecue, real estate,
whatever it is, that’s what it is.
[00:51:41]
The hard part is figuring out the price.
Fair.
[00:51:43]
And so that’s what I would recommend.
That’s cool.
[00:51:46]
I love it.
[00:51:48]
This has been Authentic Business
Adventures,
[00:51:49]
the business program that brings you
the struggle stories
[00:51:51]
and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.
[00:51:54]
You can do us a huge favor.
[00:51:57]
Subscribe, give it the big old thumbs up,
and of course, comment below
[00:52:00]
and let us know how your real estate
journey is going or you hope that it goes
[00:52:04]
because everybody’s
on their ladder somewhere.
[00:52:07]
My name is James Kedemann
and Authentic Business Adventures is
[00:52:11]
brought to you by Calls On Call,
offering call answering services
[00:52:14]
to service businesses across the country
on the web at callsoncall.com.
[00:52:19]
And of course, The Bold Business Book,
[00:52:21]
a book for the entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.
[00:52:25]
We’d like to thank you,
[00:52:26]
our wonderful listeners,
as well as our guests, Lori and Gordon.
[00:52:29]
Lori and Gordon, where can
people find you?
[00:52:30]
Well, you
can go to our website, Loriandgordon.com.
[00:52:34]
That’s the easy way.
[00:52:34]
Is it really?
Loriandgordon.com.
[00:52:36]
So, L-O-R-I-A-N-D.
[00:52:38]
Yeah, G-O-R-D-O-N.
[00:52:41]
We’re also on Facebook and Instagram.
[00:52:43]
All right.
Happy to.
[00:52:45]
Phone number?
I don’t know.
[00:52:46]
Do I do phone numbers now?
Phone number?
[00:52:47]
Absolutely.
608-888-1500.
[00:52:50]
That’s how you know
they’re serious, right?
[00:52:52]
Otherwise, they’re just like, I’ll
[00:52:53]
send you an email.
Text?
[00:52:54]
You can text.
It’s okay.
[00:52:56]
All right.
Very cool.
[00:52:57]
Thank you so much for
being on the show.
[00:52:58]
Thank you.
It was awesome.
[00:52:59]
This is been
[00:53:00]
let’s see, what do I got to say here.
Past episodes
[00:53:03]
can be found
morning, noon, and night.
[00:53:04]
The podcast link
found at drawincustomers.com.
[00:53:07]
Thank you for watching.
[00:53:08]
We’ll see you next week.
I want you to stay awesome.
[00:53:10]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.