The Lucky Titan

Going horizontal to get vertical. How to maximize your time, to build your business and your wealth With Samson Jagoras

July 12, 2021 Josh Tapp
The Lucky Titan
Going horizontal to get vertical. How to maximize your time, to build your business and your wealth With Samson Jagoras
Show Notes Transcript

Samson Jagoras is a commercial real estate broker and the founder of Growth Vue Properties, a multifamily investment firm. 

Over his 13+ year career in business, executive leadership & entrepreneurship, he has served as a Futures & Commodities broker, actively invested in real estate, and acted as the Chief Strategy Officer for Madwire, an INC 500 marketing, and technology company. After consulting thousands of businesses, hiring north of 400 employees, and scaling revenue from 7 million to over 100 million in ten years he walked away from a $250,000 a year salary and a long-standing career in tech, to focus entirely on investing in commercial apartment complexes, and helping investors put their money to work. 

Samson now leverages his talents and expertise in commercial real estate to structure, negotiate and manage multifamily projects for passive investors; where he leads the "Passive Power Group" a premier membership investment network for highly successful individuals – who want exclusive access to passive real estate investment, education on the inner workings and nuance of the industry, access to advice from our network of professionals and a bi-monthly look behind the scenes, on how we screen, and underwrite the best deals. 

Samson graduated from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and holds a master’s degree from Logan University.

passiveinvesting.pro to learn more about the power of passive investing in real estate

Samson Jagoras on Linkedin

@Samson.jagoras on IG

But you can also find me on all the other major platforms: tik tok, clubhouse, facebook

Josh: What is up everybody, Josh Tapp here again and welcome back to the lucky Titan and today we're here with Samson Jagoras super excited to have this guy here, I mean, he has such an incredible backstory of how he got to where he is today growing a company from 7 million to $100 million in revenue, taking 30 employees to 600 employees, I mean, it's just crazy he's done a lot in scaling companies, but then he's gone on to create a very successful investment company as well as in the real estate space so we're here to talk today with Samson about that, and really how to take what the wealthy are doing, apply it in your life, so you can actually scale and grow so Samson, say what's up and then we'll hop in man,

Samson: what is going on, man, I'm pumped to be here on the lucky Titan, thanks for having me. It's a long time coming.

Josh: good to be here. I'm glad we got past all the roadblocks we can make this happen. Um, so let me ask you this man, just to kind of kick it off, because you really intrigued me with your response this question so what is it that the wealthy are doing that those of us who are not are not doing?

Samson: Yeah, so the number one thing that wealthy people do that most investors don't do is they surround themselves with other incredibly smart people and they are very good at one thing, critically analyzing an investment, they are not trying to be real estate experts, stock experts, cryptocurrency experts, restaurant tours, right, they know what their lane is and that's how they became very, very wealthy, right but what they do is, they critically analyze deals, and they regularly and often deploy capital with other really smart people and so we hit on that, right, if, if I want to go buy a business, man, I know a lot about business, but I'm sure I have some blind spots so I'm going to call you, Josh and if you want to go buy an apartment complex, you're probably going to call me right and so that the wealthy people are just good at that because at a certain point, you make so much money that it's nearly impossible to effectively deploy at all and it's it's about taking your money and putting to work for putting it to work for you so that you don't have to

Josh: right and I love that response because everybody's like, Oh, you could go hang around wealthy people, we all know that, right, we are saying the reason you hang around them is to pay attention to the one thing that they do, which is like you said, they just know how to analyze an investment and that, you know, we've we've been in the process of acquiring another company right now and I've realized how critically important that is because you get so emotionally attached to these companies you want to buy after analyzing them and everything but sometimes you have to step back and look at it and say, I love the company, I love the people, it's not a good investment and I think that's the number one skill of an investor is knowing when to say no so let me ask you this Samson, just to kind of get an in depth response to this one is really what what do they need to know about invest and investment to know that it's worth investing in, in your opinion?

Samson: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, we, we have a framework that we use, right so who are the people that are ultimately involved, obviously, if you're buying a business, or you're investing with a sponsorship group and a real estate investment, you want to understand who the players are, who the sponsorship team is ultimately going to be and then you want to own the details, at least in my world, in the world of real estate investing, is, if there's a lot of times I talk to people, and I say, hey, why do you invest in that market, they can't tell me they can't, that oh, well, the price is good and, and, and it's affordable to buy apartments or whatever, I'm like, well, that's not a good, cheap and good aren't necessarily congruent, you know, I mean, so own the details, why do you want to be in a market because it's really easy to get confirmation bias, and, and over, over, convince yourself that like, Hey, this is a good deal, because of x y & z fall in love, get too in love with it, you know what I mean and then it's really important to know what the exit plan is going to be, right, and then what the risk and returns are going to be ultimately in that deal and so if you have that framework, and you follow that over and over and over again, you can I can use, I can apply that to anything, I can apply that to a restaurant, I can apply that to a hotel or a club or, you know, whatever it may be and then obviously, there's some key metrics that as you become a more passive investor who's deploying capital that you need to be aware of, you know, internal rate of return and understanding what cap rate is, understanding what equity multiples are, and understanding how that actually plays into the business plan and the strategy that they're going to deploy there's a million ways to make a million bucks you know, you just you got to find the right people understand the strategy and invest

Josh: and I love that and what a cool thought process I hope people will pay attention to that maybe even go read, re-listen to that section. So you can think about is this the way that I think is this how I analyze a deal so I want to ask you this Samson, especially because this has become really your area of expertise is identifying in your specific case, multi Or multifamily complexes in order to buy them gain, gain big investments get other people that back you in it so you can you can all grow so I can walk me through a little bit of how you identify that with an apartment complex especially.

Samson: Yeah, so the the markets a big key right so, you know, the I think over the last 10 years, you pretty much could have bought in anything in real estate and been successful but it ultimately comes down to you know, what's the population, right so when you're buying large commercial multifamily, your customer, right is tenants, right, and so you need to be in a population where there's enough tenants, for you to have customers to serve, right? The second piece that you want to pay attention to is what's the population growth, right, what's the rate at which it's growing, because if it's not growing, it's it's dying so you're also going to look at the net migration so it's pretty simple that if people are moving to somewhere, that they're moving there, because there's jobs and because they move there, there's going to going to be more jobs and ultimately, real estate is a micro economic type of environment just because one markets doing terrible doesn't mean another one's doing terrible during 2008, when the residential housing market was melting down, loveland Fort Collins, where I'm at in Colorado was the strongest market in the entire country, right, well, how is that possible, right? So then it comes down to employment growth and income growth, because those are going to be the things that ultimately determine whether or not you're going to be able to maintain your tenant base and whether or not they're going to be able to afford the rent increases over time, once you kind of have that unlock, and you know why you want to be in the market, everything else is just underwriting having an understanding of what new inventory is coming on the market, what your nearest competitors doing in that sub market, what are the schools like what is the household income, like, Am I going to be able to drive the income in order to improve the value because with changes in commercial multifamily or just commercial real estate in general, is everything's built on the back of cap rate, the capitalization rate in that market, it's not based off of price per square foot so if I buy a property, I'm looking to be able to drive the rents and improve the operational efficiency, not necessarily just sit and hold it and might pray to God that the price of the stuff is going to go up, which it will, you can't print, you know, $1.9 trillion, and don't expect inflation to happen but the most money is made when you operate, it's not necessarily when you buy, yes, buying a good deal is important but when you operate the heck out of that deal, and you get it operate more efficiently man, you can create value out of nowhere, we walked in apartment complex last weekend in Oklahoma City 288 units, and the property was run by a group who used to acquire apartment complexes, they had started getting distracted, because they were doing more development and their in house property management team was not managing the property Well, at all and with about, you know, $250,000 worth of investment into what is probably going to be about a $15 million acquisition, we'll be able to drive about two and a half million dollars’ worth of value by improving the net operating income by just better managing the property and that's the that's the special skill set of commercial, multifamily and scale and that's what we do, you know, in order to make a ton of money basically create money out of nowhere, right, one, one man's inefficiency is another man's Delta.

Josh: Yes, and I love the thought process around that because you're, you're not betting on the real estate being, you know, you're not betting that, oh, it has to go up X amount of dollars in order for this to succeed. You're just saying let's treat it like a business up 

Samson: operational efficiency, 

Josh: right, it my business brain goes wild with that, because it's like, oh, well, if you can just treat it like a business. You know, essentially it is. 

Samson: yeah, that's what you're buying, you're buying a business, you know, and, and you're buying scale and, and every little change, you know, if I move the rent, across 150 units, $75 and I divide that by the capitalization rate, that's how much value I could

Josh: right, love that. well, and let me ask you this, because a lot of the people watching and listening to the show today are, you know, they're the type of people who they've already got a successful business, but they've been told all along, like, stay in your lane, right? Just keep building your business, keep focusing on your business, what would you like? How would you help somebody like that to understand the value of investing in real estate because that's currently where I sit, right,  I've always been told just by another business keep growing because that's what you're good at right?

Samson: right, I mean, it's it comes up the horizontal streams of income and diversification. You know, we live in a capitalist society so the government relies on us to do two things, create jobs and supply housing to the market so when you do those two things, you receive the maximum benefits within the tax code and, you know, within the tax code specifically as it relates to real estate, you have some pretty special things like 10 31 exchanges, or opportunity zones, which are ways to defer capital gains and or never pay capital gains if we're talking about opportunity zones so it's a way to take all that great wealth and income that you're building and parlay it into something else and what I know about a lot of founders and working with a lot of other entrepreneurs, is they're crushing it and all of a sudden, they sell their business, they have a massive payday and then they have, you know, 10 million bucks, that is not actually producing any income and if you don't deploy that into things that create income for you, that'll quickly dwindle away, now, most people are thinking like, oh, when I have that day that I sell something, then I'll do it but you can get invested passively into large commercial multifamily, be a limited partner get mailbox money for as little as like $50,000 in an investment and you do that two, three times a year and you do that for 10 years and all of a sudden, you have a pretty nice healthy income coming in every single day and also, you know, what happens with these entrepreneurs is they get really successful in one business, they sell it, and then all of a sudden, they think that, that means that oh, that because they made a ton of money in one industry, that that implies that they'll be good in this other industry, and they can just hop into it that's not necessarily true, either right? You see it a lot with want to pick on doctors, but sometimes doctors are incredibly smart dependents spend a ton of time going to school, they make great income, then they think, well, I could just carry over that skill set into buy an apartment complex, not necessarily, right. Horizontal streams of income to me are important, because you know, when we were scaling up as a part of a marketing and technology company for nine years, and there are a few times throughout that career, when we had to adjust the pay when you're on the executive leadership team and you're an equity holder, sometimes that means you're gonna have to star for a little bit, right so there were times when we were first starting up that company where my pay got cut pretty significantly and it was really hard on my family and so when we those probably like seven years ago, the very first time that that happened to me and when that happened, I said never again, I'm never going to be in a position where one business can take me down financially so I just started going horizontal, and you know, 200 here, 300 there, 500 there, 5000 here, 6000 there, now the sudden I have multiple streams of income from different real estate properties that I own, also in a really sweet strength and conditioning facility and that creates income for me as well and and then putting together deals is another way that I create income for myself as well and then consulting and speaking and stuff like that so yeah, it's just about going horizontal, not vertical and protecting your wealth because you work damn hard for it and one day, something's going to change. You may say that I'm going to work till I'm 60 sure, but you get married, you have kids, you have grandkids, something happens to your health are you putting yourself and your family in a position to be okay, ultimately?

Josh: Right? Yeah, that's awesome. It's what I love about that, too, is like you're saying that's that's true diversification, right is they're not you're not betting, I always get nervous about betting, especially in the business realm on one industry, like the guy who constantly buys Facebook ads, companies, right, like that's, you're betting on a platform that could easily shut you down at any given time right? I'm anyway, so that's why I heavily believe in that it's like diversify but all within what you know, it's I love that you've done that with multiple different businesses so so talk me through a little bit here, because you've got a course that you've started producing here for entrepreneurs, really, and helping them kind of work with this mentality, figure out how to make things very clear and straightforward for them so can you walk us through what that is and what you're going to be doing there?

Samson: Yeah, so people, people will generally go this route with real estate as they go on want to own real estate so the get listen to the podcast, buy the books, go to the webinars, go to the courses and all that stuff and then they realize, Wow, I didn't realize I was gonna have to start another business, which I don't have time for, I still feel like I don't have enough information or knowledge to actually execute the highest level and by myself, I feel like I don't have enough money to get the best deals and so they hit this Crossroads where they say, Okay, I'll do real estate later, I'm just gonna keep investing in traditional stuff, or I want to become a passive investor, well, once you decide to become a passive investor, there's still a whole other learning curve that you have to go through, what is cap rate, what is internal rate of return? How does it relate to this deal? What What is a good IRR a   nd what are the things within the pro forma or the deal that would actually tweak that number, right, like understanding all the levers that are being pulled and all the players that are a part of it is crucial to your confidence in executing in the deal, now you don't have to be the expert, you don't have to manage the asset but the human condition we are we are programmed when we are uncertain. We retreat, right we do not do anything. So the whole point of this course is to just make you educated and sophisticated and give you a framework that you can critically analyze any deal whether you invest with us or you invest in anything, this framework applies and, and when you understand how multifamily works, and actually some of the safety and security around it, it makes you feel really good, you got to know it in your bones to feel confident in deploying capital so, you know, the idea came on the back of just some of our investors, as well as some of my friends who are limited partners and deal saying, like, man, I spent months 6 7 8 months talking to different sponsors, and trying to figure out who I should place capital with and it's really easy to just place capital with people, because maybe they have the best marketing sure, but each deal is its own thing so in that deal, does the business plan Make sense do the economics Make sense and can you justify the business plan so yeah, that's the whole point of the course. And I'm excited about it, because I love I love real estate, I think everybody should have multifamily in their portfolio and there's a lot of people who think that, oh, it would be nice to own an apartment complex but I can't afford that and the reality of it is they can they can get access to it in fractional ownership, and get the same if not better returns than they ever could by, you know, buying a single family property and managing it themselves.

Josh: and I love that because it's, and you even mentioned, this, to me in the pre interview call is like, one of the reasons why you feel a security and as well as that, if you've own one unit, and the family leaves from that unit, you're 100% vacant, where if you have 100 units, 20 people can leave and you're still doing great, right 

Samson: you're still crushing it. Yeah and it's the economics of scale, right I mean, if you've been in business, and you're listening this podcast, you know what it means to get scale on a business and operational efficiency and so you can really get that with more units, because you can have on site property management, on site, leasing staff, everything's in one place, you can get more scale out of your marketing, right, you can get more scale out of your building costs, right because you're buying in bulk and doing all those kinds of things so it's incredibly, incredibly important, especially like when we're talking about something like building costs you know, lumbers up 240% steals up 300%, right so scale in every way, shape, and form in order to make that property just pop. 

Josh: love that. Well, so where can people gain access to that program as well, I was kinda curious that,

Samson: yeah, so it'd be at passiveinvesting.pro, I put together a master class, as well as a couple other little nuggets that help you learn a little bit more about multifamily and if you're interested from there, you can just go ahead and sign up and take the course.

Josh: Love that. So make sure you go check that out everybody. So it's passiveinvesting.pro, make sure you go check that out. It’s not .com it’s .pro for those of you who struggle with that. 

Samson: If you want to be a professional passive investor, right, just go to passiveinvesting.pro

Josh:  Yeah, love it. So just to wrap this up, Samson, I just want to ask you one final question. So if you leave one final parting piece of guidance for our audience, what would that be?

Samson: And that's a heavy question. 

Josh: Always.

Samson: For me, I think at the end of the day, what we're all chasing is time and every dollar that I make is future time earned and so being able to deploy that capital again and create passive income, is my main focus and not losing sight of the things that are ultimately important, right, I'm living life right now and being an entrepreneur affords me the opportunity to take my girls to school and pick them up and be a gymnastics and do all the things that life is about living, you know what I mean? So, yeah, you know, invest your money wisely, time is money and don't wait to start doing that, because one day your business's not gonna be there. You know, you gotta have other other ways to create more time freedom for yourself, which is, time is money.