Our portfolio now is a hundred million. So I figure if we, if we've done you know, 30, 40% of that down, so we're somewhere around like the, you know, 30, 40 million range in capital raise, and that's all internal in our core team. welcome back to The Art of Connecting Podcast. This is your host here, Hayden Fike, back with another episode for ya. And today we have Vince Gethings on, did I say your last name right, by the way? I should have asked that. Yeah, I always, no, you nailed it. Don't ask, let's go. Awesome. I had a guy who was in Africa and I just completely butchered his last name and I felt so bad, so I'm glad I got it right this time. How you doing today, man? Ah man. I'm doing great. How are you? Doing fantastic. Just got back from a very long trip. So just trying to get all of the ducks back in a row again to keep moving forward. So it's, it's been a fun day so far. A fun Monday. But Vince, why don't you go ahead and just introduce yourself real fast, the audience, and let people know who you are. Yep, absolutely. My name is Vince Gethings a entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur. I own six companies. Before that I was in the military for 16 years. I was in the Air Force stationed all over the, the country. And then I started getting into multifamily investing. Then I started getting into buying some businesses like the m and a space. And now here we are in 2025 Q2, where I own six companies and you know, living the dream. Cool man. And I saw your on your Facebook and LinkedIn, you've got the plane. Mm-hmm. So talk about that a little bit.'cause a few of my friends that are ex-military have their, have their own little planes there and it's, it's an aspiration of mine. Yeah. So I was in the Air Force, but I was not a pilot in the Air, air Force. I, I didn't didn't go that route. But I did end up just going and pursuing my private pilot's license on my own. It was just one of those things that, you know, you hear a lot of people like yourself say, oh, I always want to do that. But most people never do. And, and one day I. My wife actually got me a, what they call a discovery flight, where you just kind of, you go up 30 minutes an hour with a, with a instructor and see if you like it or not. And we went up that, we did that and that was 2016 or something. And I fell in love and was like, I'm gonna do this. So I went and got my, my license, bought a plane actually learned to fly out in Hawaii. So that's a whole nother whole nother story of, of learning to fly by hopping island to island you know, across the ocean. That's a ton of fun. So that's where I learned to fly. And then got back to the mainland as we, as we call here the mainland, and bought another plane. And continue. I'm, I'm kind of grounded at the moment, but that's another story. But you know, right now you know, I'm gonna be getting leveling up here to another, another plane here soon enough. Nice. I was with do you know Bill Allen? Yeah, I've him on the show. He's got TBM, that that thing is, that's like the pinnacle of every private pilot's plane is what he's got. Yeah. He's, he's really, I go to pick, I go to pick bill up from the airport. He was coming to visit and he he, they were flying in and he go like his assistant at the time, Maddie was texting me and was like, Hey the plane's broken. We're. We're driving and then she goes, Hey, we're not driving. We're taking, we rented a Cessna and we're flying in. I gotta pick him up. And he left the, the break bar on, or the, the battery, basically. Mm-hmm. He left the, the, the electronics on in the plane somehow he like bumped it or something like that. And that was a, I forget what she said. I think it's a$5,000 switch was what it is. Like the battery, he's have to replace the battery.'cause when it drains you can't just recharge it. Yeah. You have to replace it. And I was like, golly. You know, it's like you accidentally flip a switch. And it's five grand. That's insane. Yeah. They're not, they're not they're not cheap, but they are fun. They, they are. Yeah. It's a whole different level of unlock when you can be a private pilot and it's, you can't really you can't really explain it unless you, unless you do it. Yeah, I agree. You got a discovery flight for Christmas, so I've gotta just put that on the schedule and I'm gonna go hop up there. And I've ridden in Bill's plane, I've ridden in some cessnas. I, I love aviation. It's, it's something I'm excited to explore more. So I was excited to see your plane on the, on the cover photos. Nice. So let's, I wanna start out with something that. I haven't asked any of my previous military guys. I've had on have Dave per, on the show I've had Bill Allen, so I've had a few of the, you know, successful military guys that left and, and ended up creating brands and something that I've never really asked and something that I like to think that I would do if I was in the military. How important is like who, you know, in the military and like, I always imagine the military as. You move up by knowing the right people or is it skill-based? How does that work when you're, when you're in the service? That, that's a tough one. I can only, I'll, I'll share from my, my experience only they spend a lot of time figuring out how to get, get away from the. You know, what, what they call the, the good old boy system there, there's a lot of checks and balances to try to eliminate that about the who, you know and the way they do evaluation boards and things like that. But it's, it's really hard to get away from, you know, that, that, that good old boy system. I would say not so much as making rank. I, I don't think, and I don't know other services, again, from my experience only, I don't know I don't think it's as much as make a rank as it is the opportunities that were given to you that allow you to make the rank, you know, so like, Hey, we have this position that's opening up and we wanna, you know, tag you for, or we have this, you know, special, you know, event or something like that. We want you to lead. And, and so they. Who, you know, could allow you to be presented with opportunities that allow you to progress once you have that opportunity on like your, you know, your you know, resume. So the next rank and the next board. So I think that's more or less my experience is is, is the who you know is, will give you, you know, better opportunities you know, to make rank. I always like to think if, if I got drafted. If that were to happen, God forbid, so I still can be drafted for another year. I'm like, I would just figure out, I would, I would, I would figure out a way to like, like make, make the best out of it. I would just like connect my way to, to, to make it okay. So I don't have to go and like go be sling an M four on the field. I think most people. In this country would benefit from even just two years of service. And, and I was surprised when you, when you get deployed and we do joint exercises with a lot of other countries and things like that, and I don't know if you knew this from any of your other guests or anything like that, but you're in there with German you know, Germans and all these other different countries and Brits and stuff like that. And Aussies and you realize that a lot of those countries, it's like mandatory. For like, from like 18 to like 24. Like you have to serve your two years serve the country. And at first I was like, man, that's messed up. So they're pretty much like a hundred percent draft for like everybody. Or some, some version of that. But then it's like, I wonder how well equipped those young people are. Because of having to have served, having to, you know, go through, you know, just basic military training and things like that, and the resiliency and the grit and, you know, all the mental toughness that they're gonna get at a very young age. How, how that's gonna serve them. So I kind of admire that a little bit about other countries, you know, that Yeah. That they have, that me and my friends that have done, like, I have so many friends that came outta the military and just did really well because of it. And, you know. It's interesting because I, I know so many of those people that have done really well straight outta the military, several in Action Academy as well. People who are, are veterans that have just really crushed it, like Calvin. But then there's also the, you know, they're the 1%.'cause I talked to Dave running the military millionaire, and he is like, yeah, like, like if you're successful outta the military, you're the 1% right. And I'm like, I guess I never really think about that. You know, it's like all the people that. Get out and just go live normal life or, or even have a disadvantage because of their service. So, well you said, sorry for the random sidebar, but Yeah. Well, you already said it, you know, you make, make the best of it, you know. Yeah. I, I think, I think I'm a better off person for having, having been put in situations that I was in gives me a level of grit. I guess, that, you know, the average person probably wouldn't have. It gives you some fun conversations too. Me, me and Adam Whitney, we shared a room one time in Cabo on an Action Academy trip, and man, the stories that that guy had me had to, had to tell it was, it was really something it It was enjoyable. Yeah. He was talking about, he was in the middle of the Middle East somewhere and had to burn his poop in a pot and stir it up. I was like, dude, that's crazy. Yeah. That's some jarhead stuff right there. Yeah. I was in the Air Force, like, yeah. We, we, we, we stay at Hilton's and you know, we got not different experiences. That's funny. Yeah. Adam's great. I freaking love that guy. But anyways, we'll be off the military track. I was just curious about that'cause it's something that I've been thinking of and curious about. Let's transition into business. So you were in the military, you served for 12 years, you said, right. 16, 16, 16 years. Okay. I think it was 12 or 16. And so you got out and when you were getting ready to exit the military, did you have a plan? Did you like know, like, I'm gonna go get into business or real estate or do this? Or were you just like, you know, I'm getting out soon. What am I gonna do? Like, what, what, what did that look like to, to be exiting the military? That's a great question. I'll, I'll lead, give you the couple years leading up to that. So I started investing in real estate in 2013. I used my VA home loan, which anybody that's on listening to this is, is a vet. Absolutely. Use your VA home loan. It's like one of the best benefits you have to build wealth. You know, that's something that, you know, me and David, we, you know, we shot that from the rooftop. You mentioned David earlier from hi his channel there, but, 2013, I did a VA house hack. So I bought, bought a house with my VA home loan, lived in it, fixed it up, sold it in 2016. At that time, I wanted to get into buying rental properties in 2016. So I was buying small rental properties single families duplexes. I, I built up to 20 units while being active duty in, in Hawaii. So that was pretty good, like compared to like, you know, my peers and stuff like that where I was at. Then I got the, I wanted to get into large multifamily. So I, I was like, all right, how do I get into large multifamily? I see these other guys doing it. How do I get in? So I joined a mentorship group and a coaching group, jumped in at 2018 and started scaling into large multifamily. So I went from the, that 20 units and 20, 16 to 18 and up to like 800 units by 20 21, 20 22. And so it got into large multifamily. And then so that now we're talking right around 2021. This is the, the timeframe we're at COVID is, you know, full swing. Everybody's on lockdowns world's fricking going crazy. And I was like, not really happy in the military anymore. And at the time. I was doing what we call a special duty. It was a teaching somewhat assignment, so I wasn't deploying, I wasn't doing any crazy exercise. I was pretty much in my nine to five office job, so it gave me a lot of time to build my multifamily company out. Then that job was ending.'cause special duties only, you know, three to four years. And then you gotta go back to what your normal job is and then go back to deploying, go back to all the, the full swing of the military stuff. And so in 2021, I had to make the decision, do I want to, if I go back to the flight line and continue working out the rest of my career, which was only four more years I have, on one hand I have. Go back to the flight line, get 20 years, get a pension for life. That's the golden, you know, the golden parachute. Everybody in the military, at least the Air Force is shooting for is that 20 year pension and medical for life. So I was at year 16. Then on the other hand, I had Tri-City Equity group, which is my my multifamily company. Is at like 40 million, 50 million assets under management. And it's growing and it's like scaling. So I had to make the decision, if I go back to the fight line, Tri-City equity group will probably die off.'cause I just, if I get deployed, if I have to go do a remote tour in, you know, Korea or something for a year, like this thing is probably gonna fizzle out over time and, and never be able to you know, bring it back up. So I had to make the decision and, I had to think about this and I talked to the, the wife and everything like that, and the decision was what is that pension worth? And at the time that pension was worth, you know, it's about three to four grand a month. And so roughly I was like thinking, you know, a mil rounded up. It was a million dollars from the time my age now to the time I'm at, like whatever, 62 retirement age, like the IRS retirement age. So I rounded up to about a million dollars. So I was like, that is, do I stay in the military and get the pension? Medical or can I get out and bet on myself and make a million dollars and to make up for that pension. And I chose to burn the ships, you know, get get outta the military. I ended up making that million dollars in like 18 months or something. Like it was probably less than that actually. It was probably less than a year. I made up that, that difference with the pension for betting on myself and, and getting out in 2021. So that was kind of the, the long, long story of. Kind of how I'm, how I left the military and decided to decide to get out and pursue real estate full time. So you were, you're doing real estate full time and a lot of people are gonna be listening to this. And the question I get all the time with my real estate meetups and all the different things that I do is like, yeah, that's cool that you built that and you made a million dollars. But like, how did you get started? It sounds like you started with the VA loan. Mm-hmm. And like what did that transition look like to go from like single family into multifamily? And you said you got into a group, so maybe talk about some of the connections there that opened your mindset to make you realize like, oh, I can go and buy apartment complexes. Absolutely. So we started with. If you can imagine if you're listening to this, if you can imagine like kind of like stairs, like you go up a little bit, hit a, hit a flat, and you have to go up a little bit, hit a flat. And that's what my experience is, you know, getting to where I'm at now and I'm up, you know, somewhere halfway up the staircase, right? So I started with at the bottom with my VA home loan that got my foot in the door. I got my first door was my VA home loan. You pretty much don't need any down payment. You sign with a pen and you know, you write, you write your name, get a house, right? So that was my first one. Then I, I took that, I made about 130,000 off of that first VA house flip. I did. I took that, and then that's what I used to buy my 20 units. Those 20 units were purchased right off the MLS, so realtor.com, zillow.com, you know, local MLS sites. Because there's duplexes, fourplexes, and that is what I knew at the time. That's all I knew. We're talking books like Brandon Turner's books and things like that, BiggerPockets, like that type of community to buy your first couple units. You have your duplexes, fourplexes. And then that time, that's kind of where that group, you know, tapped out. So I got up to my next level, and then I, I plateaued again. So now I'm at the second plateau, and then I was like, all right, now I have to go back to drawing board and figure out I need more education, more resources, more networking to get to that next level. And that next level from the, the 20 units was a group called Wheel Wheelbarrow Profits. That was that that group Jake and Gino Wheel Bear Profits. That was the group I joined. Learned about how to do multi-family investing. And then I went from the 20 units up to 800 units. That's where, and then I met my, my partners. Some of it was through that group. Some of it was just through my local meetups. But the, that group gave me the resources yeah, everything, the checklist, the know-how, how to underwrite, how to find properties, how to talk to brokers, how to. Put deals under contract, how to raise the capital, like the whole, how to manage it when you're, when you're done. Closing. That's a was a big one that I didn't see a lot of other groups doing was, you know, how do you manage this thing after you close? So they got me all of that and that's how I was able to scale very quickly. And just a couple years from the, the 20 units up to about 800 units. Now it's probably. You know, we've probably transacted over 1400 units, but we, you know, we sold some over time, so, you know, we're down in the 800 range. Something that I've seen has started to become a little bit of an issue is like all the different multi-family operators that got used to the covid wave of, you know, you can't lose. Right. You got free money. Mm-hmm. You've got low, low insurance rates and now all of that's changing. So how has that been for your multifamily business with navigating the insurance rises, the taxes, you know, going up and is it, is it still the same? Is it easy for you to raise capital or are you having more of an issue? Are you still doing that? Are you still doing the multifamily? Oh, absolutely. We're, I'm leaving this call and I'm actually gonna go to our property as soon as we're done. So I, I'm still in the game. Luckily the, the education that I got had me really grounded in some really solid fundamentals, so I. Conservative underwriting, really know how to manage assets correctly. Like I said, that was something I didn't see in a lot of other groups as I was networking is, you know, they got, they taught you how to find properties and raise money, but they didn't teach you how to manage it. And especially through turbulent times like we're in now with high interest rates rents declining. So luckily my portfolio has been fairly well. You know, some of that's obviously luck, but, you know, good, good solid fundamentals in operations as well. I'm the asset manager of my company, so we're in it day to day and we're vertically integrated, meaning we have property management in-house as well, so that gives us a ton of control over our assets. The, how we, how we've changed is how we pivoted, I wanna say changed how, how we pivoted after Covid. We saw the interest rates obviously not coming down as fast as people like. We saw the the taxes, insurance, like you mentioned, just increasing, increasing so our deals as attractive as they were. No they're not, but we, so we just gotta be more selective. And we have to, you know, readjust our underwriting to be more, more you know, conservative. And I'm not trying to just be cliche and just kind of, say you know, the cliche things, but what the property management company does for us is because we self operate self-manage our properties. I can dial in my underwriting like so crystal clear, and I know I can execute on it because I have all of the data. It's not some third party property manager. It's not just looking at comps. It's, I have. All of the data from my portfolio in this location that I know, you know, very, very accurately what I can operate a property for and what it's gonna produce. So that's given me a, a bit of a competitive advantage lately. And then one of the pivots that we made was before Covid, we did what was you know, we call it like a mile wide strategy. So I was in like five different states I was in, I was in Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Michigan. Probably some other state I'm forgetting, but we had apartments all over, so we went really wide. And what that allowed us to do, and this is a kind of a rookie type of mistake that I see a lot of people make, it's not really a mistake, but you know, you'll, you'll get what I'm talking about when I explain this. So, when people are new to investing in, in multifamily real estate, they want to, you know, go to all these different markets. They want to cast a really wide net.'cause then they get a lot of deal flow. Like a lot of deal flow. But then what ends up happening is you scale really fast, which is initially good. But then you become your own bottleneck in this equation, because then that's, for me as asset manager, that was five different states I had to fly to. That was five different property managers I had to manage and you know, 30 different contractors and all these landlord tenant laws and all these different states I had to manage. And then when Covid hit, it got even worse because now each state, each local municipality, each county made up their own covid rules that I had to, you know, worry about and navigate through. So we went from the mile wide strategy. To a mile deep strategy, and that was right around 2022 was like, alright, what areas and of our portfolio are performing the best. And it was the higher class properties in the nicer the nicer areas when we talk nicer areas, meaning higher median household income, higher population growth and things like that. Higher, you know, population, business growth, income growth median household income. So those are our main KPIs. So those are the areas that like, could withstand the, the covid shock the best. And it wasn't even like a close second, like those KPIs were like all the way up here. And then there's a big gap. And then like the rest of our portfolio how it was handling covid. And so what we decided to do was just sell everything that wasn't in this one market, and we went to a mile deep in this one market. And we went vertically integrated, mean we brought everything in-house. Our unit turns in-house, our maintenance, our property management, all in-house. And that has gave us the biggest boost to our operational efficiency and our confidence to continue to buy even in this market. Because we, we've now so many variables. So that was a change that we've made to your point of like, you know, there was easy money, there was all this stuff. You know, going on in 20 20, 20 20 22. And then the music kind of stopped in 2022, and then it was like the tide went out and was kind like, who, who's really the operators here? I feel like we fared very, very well in that, in that equation. You know, we we've never done a capital call or anything like that, never had a property go back to, to the, to the bank. So I think we fared very well in that. But a lot of it was because of the, the education we had and, you know, we bought right? And we manage really, really tight. On the ops side, I wanna talk about capital raising'cause it's a huge part of scaling. Oh, you did ask that. Scaling like you have. Yeah. So are, are, are you the one raising capital for these deals or what does that side look like? Do you have a partner that does the capital raising side? So I'll, I'll answer your question, your other question from before too. On my team. So when we're talking Tri-City Equity Group, everyone's a capital raiser. I don't have, I we don't really outsource capital. I don't have like a, I I've never done pe or anything like that, or, or family office. It's just a lot of that money is, they can write big checks, but a lot of it comes with strings attached. I just don't really want to deal with right now in my business. I'm sure maybe at some point we'll get to that, but right now it's just not worth the the ask that, that comes with those, those bigger checks from like PE or the the family office type money. So yeah, we, we raise our, our capital in internally. I don't know what the number is, probably 40 million or so. Our portfolio now is a hundred million. So I figure if we, if we've done you know, 30, 40% of that down, so we're somewhere around like the, you know, 30, 40 million range in capital raise, and that's all internal in our core team. And then, so that's your first question. The one you asked before was how, how has that changed over the last couple years and I, and, it's kind of interesting. So on the, say for example, the last deal we did was 28, 20$8 million deal. We had to raise 11 million. This was in December. With everything that's going on in the markets right now which is probably why you asked it, and I'm sure you've heard it's hard to raise money. And what we've noticed on this deal was our investor portfolio our investor list kind of split into two groups. We had the one group that normally. Was our value add type investors. So the people that are going after like the C class value add type of deals that were, you know, really big on the run up of this last bull run for the multifamily. And then we had the, the already wealthy group here that they already got their money and they're just looking for safe alternative assets. They want the, they want the tax benefits, they want the, the preservation of capital and they're not really looking for the, the high IRRs and things like that. What we noticed on this last raise, the 11 million raise, was we did have some drop off of the value add investors. Maybe 20, 30% just chose to sit on the sidelines on this last one. While the, the bigger investors, the more wealthy investors that are just looking for capital preservation and the tax benefits, they like doubled down on this last deal. And the, and I think the reason was where the market was going. They were pulling money from more risky assets, stock market or whatever, and, and they saw real estate as a a safe a safe haven asset and a lot more stability than whatever else they were in. And they wanted to preserve that capital and get the tax benefits. And it also, this deal was a very, higher class asset than what we normally do. This is a two, 2021 construction. A class deal, doesn't need anything. Just turnkey, buy and hold it for, you know, seven years. Let the market appreciate and, and take care of it there. So, so we lost some of the value add investors, but we gained a lot more wealthy investors that were writing checks, you know, two, three times the size of the value add investor. So that was my experience on, you know, kind of the investor sentiment across my my last raise. So I'm raising 15 million right now for my fund, Acadia Capital. Oh, hey there. It's me again. I know you expected Morgan Freeman to come on and talk about the biggest company in the world. Well, I'm sorry, but you get the next best thing. This show is sponsored by the company that I co founded, Acadia Capital, and acadia is a hard money lending fund originating loans in Southeast Tennessee and Northern Georgia on residential one to four unit renovation properties. We are regulation D five Oh six C fund and are actively seeking accredited investors. We provide fantastic first position real estate back returns. If you're ready to get your tired and lazy capital to work with a minimum 8 percent return, go to Acadia loans. com backslash invest. Not only do we accept standard investments, but we can also accept self directed IRAs and other self directed retirement accounts to take advantage of tax advantage investing. Thank you so much for listening to art connecting now back to the show. So what I was saying is I'm raising 15 million for a acadia capital right now. And so it's kind of a selfish question, but where do you find your investors? Like, obviously it sounds like you probably have an avatar. I feel like that's like the really important part of raising capital is having your avatar. But what as you were going through this and learning, what were some of your things that were really important to look for in an investor? Like what does your avatar look like and how do you find them? I I'll answer this to the best of my ability. So I do raise capital, but I am not like a professional capital raiser. Like there's guys out there that absolutely crush it on this. I found that social media not really good conversions. Most of my investors have come from local meetups like the small, small meetups, not like the big, you know, thousand person conferences where there's just so many people, it's just chaotic. I've gotten most of my investors from the, the, your local, you know, 30, 40 person, you know, monthly meetups. And then what I would do is I'd go. Find like two or three of those in my local area, and I would just go to them religiously and slowly build up my credibility and my, you know, local celebrity as or cloth calls it in his books. Whatever It's pitch anything, right? You just Yeah, I have that in my bag. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a great book. Like, I, I definitely didn't, didn't reinvent the wheel on, on this. So there's a couple good books out there that, that really helped me but become, you know, get that local authority, that local celebrity of. Continue to go to these events and, and, you know, con contribute, and then people will start trusting you more. They'll start asking you more. And then so that's where I got, when I'm looking at the core of my investor list, that is where I've gotten most, I'm sure I've gotten some people that reach out on social media. Some, some people that reach out because of, oh, I heard y you know, Haydynn's podcast, you know, let's talk. Yeah. But it's, it's, we're talking, you know, 3%, five, like 5%. Like, it's very, very uncommon to have that to have that conversion. So local or authentic meetups through those those local you know, meetups. And then from there, after I. Started transactions. So we've gone seven or eight full cycle deals for Tri-City. So after that, that's when my, my list really blew up was return, return your investors' money. That's, that's the best way to raise money is, is return your investors' money. And they're gonna bring in, you know, two people next time. You know, three people next time they're gonna bring their brother-in-law, sister-in-law, you know, their, their, their coworker that, you know, has been asking, you know, but they're, they're the first time they're kind of like, Hey, let me risk my money. If it goes well, I'll put my name on the line to, you know, my friends and family. And that's where I got pretty much, I would say that makes up 80% of my investor list is local meetups that have organically built relationships. And then as I return capital to them, they've each told two people. And that, that's probably 80% of my investor list. You know, I think, I think the, the brand awareness matters, but I think people put too much emphasis thinking it's lead generation instead of like the omnipresence brand awareness. Like, I don't go on the podcast to expect leads. I don't go on I don't do Facebook posts or Instagram posts or LinkedIn posts to expect leads. I expect to meet somebody at a local meetup. Have a real connection with them, and then they go back and like, who's this Vince Ethings guy punch me in a Google and I show up everywhere. You know? Yeah. They're like, oh, okay. Well, he's, he, he has, he's been around. I can watch some podcasts with him. I can, you know, watch, you know, go stalk him on Facebook a little bit, see if he's the real deal. That's what, that's how I view all of this stuff, is that brand awareness versus lead generation. Yeah, it's, it's really interesting because now. And it's funny'cause I, I, I don't know if you have this effect, but sometimes I, I like stop and reflect a little bit and I'm like, holy crap. Like I'm becoming that person who I looked up to years ago, right? Like that person that was the, the podcast guy, or had the meetup or, or you know, had the storage facility. Like you slowly become the person who you look up to, at least in my case. Now it's like you can Google me and you're gonna see like 25 different things, right? That, that are all like credibility builders when Yeah. I have no need to lie about what I do. Right? Like there's no reason. Well, Hayden, that's, that's an important there's important thing in there and a lot of people, they either get this or they don't get this, is that, you know, when you're, when you sit down, I'm sure you have. You're like, all right, what's my vivid vision? Right? If you've done those exercises, what's my goals? What's my five year goal, 10 year goal? And then you're, you know, Haydynn, three or four years ago you know, that must have been such a big, daunting task to, to do that. But eventually you become the person that is deserving of that goal. And that's, that's the crazy transformation. Part of it is like, you know, five years ago when you write these goals down, you're, they're just pie in the sky, you know, whatever. But you lose your focus on it and you, you transform yourself into the person that, you know, can attain those goals. And, and yeah, a lot of people don't make click. And it, it's pretty powerful seeing the same thing happened with me. You know, I joined Jake and Gino and Wheel About Profits as a student in 2018. Now I own the company. It's, we talk about like crazy stuff, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it's crazy when you, once you put your you know, your goals and vision down. Yeah. And something that I, I coach a lot of people now, I, I have the honor of helping guide people in their business to, to grow their businesses. And it's really interesting when you've, I'm not, I'm in the same place as you. I, I'm probably like, I'm half, I'm like a quarter away, up the elevator or 10% up the elevator where you're half up, you know? And, but even when you're 10% up the elevator, you're higher than someone who's on the first floor. I have the pleasure of helping these people, their business. And it's so interesting to see the thing about this in the car. It's like'cause I'm in a coaching group and they're asking questions. It's like, the second I believe that I could buy a house is what I bought a house. Like until you believe in yourself that you can do what you want to do, and I'm rereading Think and Grow Rich right now, and it's like mm-hmm. You have to believe that you can do something before you can ever do it. Because if you don't believe you can do it. You're never going to accomplish it no matter how small or large the goal is. And it's just fascinating. I was getting some text message from a coaching group men, and I'm like, I wonder if they believe that they can buy a house. I need to like make sure that they know that they can do this. Absolutely. Good stuff. Yeah. Well, so I wanted, we, time has gone by so quickly. I wanna talk about business acquisition, like really fast. Let's do. I wanna learn.'cause it sounds like this is something, an avenue that you're really excited to, to transform into. You've got six companies right now. So what, what's, what are you excited about in business acquisition? Like why, why are you doing this? The cash flow versus like effort compared to real estate is, is. Kind of not comparable, like the cashflow that you can get off of a so for context, the businesses I buy aside from Wheel our profits is home service based company. So I own a, an installation company that's seven territories and I own a flooring company. I'm looking for more home service type trades. I understand that being, being a mechanic in the air Force working on planes, I really understand that kind of mentality of like that mechanic construction, you know, type mentality. So I can, as like, you know, really personally, I know what makes'em tick. I know how they, you know, think process, so I can I'm really good at working with them. I like. The, again, how the high profit margins on these service-based companies are compared to for example, just we're talking just, you know, monthly cash flow from a service-based company compared to my real estate, I get way more off of the service-based company for the amount of effort that I have to put in. So I really like those. And then I also like the fact that once I built this, you know, the system and the framework out on the first company, which was the installation company. All trades are, are almost identical. As far as like the, the cash flow cycle or, you know, from a lead to customer fulfillment, it's the system. The processes are virtually the same. So I can go buy a plumbing company, an HVAC company, a roofing company, a painting company, and it, and it's 80, 90% the exact same framework for each of these things. I can just keep bolting them on. And so that's what I like about the service-based companies. I'm probably gonna stay in that niche because I really understand it and I have everything. So now I can get e economies of scale because now I can use the same marketing company, I can use the same back office support. I just need the different trait skilled tradesmen and sales guys to, to run, you know, my teams. But why companies at all? So service-based companies. Again, provide that cash flow and provide surplus cash flow that I can use to buy more real estate. So it's not this, I wanna be very clear that this is not a pivot. I'm not pivoting away. From real estate at all. I'm founding. I found another way to make more cash flow so I can buy more real estate and accelerate my growth of my portfolio. Multifamily real estate is still, to me, the best asset class ever invented. No, even with this, you know, last couple years of, you know, not, not so great market nobody's gonna convince me of that. There's a better asset class than multifamily for long-term wealth creation and preservation. So. How do I buy more of it? Well, for me, my solution was I really got into these service-based companies. I can generate lots of cash flow. That surplus cash flow goes into buying more apartments. A lot of people don't realize that the end game for the wealthiest people of the world is always real estate. They create cash in many different ways, but that cash almost always ends up in real estate'cause it's the way our system is designed. Our tax system is designed to reward property owners, and that's why 60% of Americans own a home is because our system is designed to reward people that own real estate. Especially when you start getting in the investing world. Man, our whole, our banking system, our tax system, everything is designed for us to win in real estate. So it's really awesome. That, you know, you're, you're doing the small businesses, but the whole purpose is to create that money machine to be able to go buy more assets, which is, it's the way to do it, in my opinion. It's, it's what my mentor did. You know, he sold 30, 30 McDonald's franchises to go and, and build houses and buy real estate. So it's, it's really cool to see that. That cycle and how it all works so well. I wanna honor your time here, man. I know you've gotta go look at another property. So I'll go ahead and ask our final question, and that is, what is a connection to a person or group of people that change your trajectory of your life or business? I. Well, we already mentioned it a couple times on here, so No, no spoiler. But it, it really is the webo profits academy and then Jake and Gino, when I met them in 2018, like they're, you know, they're the real deal. You know, they got, I don't know 1800 units that they own by themselves. No partners, no syndications, like that's, and they self self-manage. So meeting them, being part of their community you know. Again, opening up, shedding those limiting beliefs, you know, is really good at shedding those limiting beliefs. And, and you know, getting you to believe in yourself that you can do these things. To meeting him, having him ask me to come back as a coach in 2020 for the company which I've been for the last Five years and then, and then last year, taking over taking over the company and, you know, taking that torch and bringing wheel our profits to the next level, to the next generation of multifamily investors. So you know, meeting, I would say Gino, Gino Bar, that'd be the, the one connection. That changed it all for me. And I did want, did wanna kind of tell one little other piece if you have the time, which was Yeah. You know, before we jumped on the call I was like, Hey, I got a, a banger thought for that we just went over. And one of my masterminds that's super high level mastermind was, you know, the balancing of saying no'cause a lot of high, high entrepreneur high entrepreneurs and a lot of busy people, they always try to think, well, I gotta say no more. I gotta say no more. And the, the conversation is, well, well, what if that one call you didn't answer was one connection that would've gotten you to the next level? And so we, we went around this, this is a, a table of probably 10 millionaires and we just four hours on this. One question was, how do you balance. Work-life balance and saying no to opportunities and saying no to, Hey, I don't got time for that call. I don't got time for Haydynn's podcast. You know, I catch the next, the next one. But what if that one listener listening to this is going to be, that will solve a huge problem in my business, or take my business to the next level. Or, or, you know, something like that. So it, it was a, it was. It was a good conversation. I don't think we ended on another a final answer. But my, my, I lean toward it's worth taking the call'cause you never know you know, if what, where that's gonna go. So more connections are worth it. Versus the, you know, say, no, I gotta protect my time and, and all this stuff. I'm like, just fi find five minutes, jump on the phone call. You never know what's gonna lead. Something that I started doing. It's, it's a great point and we will leave this like little nugget, and I think I mentioned it before on the show, is I, what I used to do was a 30 minute free like Google meet and that was like my intro call and what started happening was I was so busy running around looking at properties or you know, running, starting the finance company that I would just, it would slip through the cracks and I would miss the Google meet, and then people would text me like, Hey, I'm on the meeting. I'm like, oh crap, I'm sorry. I'm literally like, I'm under a house right now. Like, I can't, I can't get on the call. And so what I started doing instead is I did a 15 minute phone call where the person calls me. So what that has done has completely transformed my intro calls and I also build in a 15 minute buffer on either side. So if someone, you know, if it's a great conversation and I wanna keep going and it's, you know, super valuable for both of us, then I can keep going and stay on that phone call for a little while longer. If it's not the best use of my time and I could be doing something more efficient, I say, Hey, it was great to get an intro. Sorry, I've gotta hop on to, you know, get ready for the next call. And so that has completely changed everything for me because now people are calling me, which I always answer my phone. I'm just not always the best at like making the calls. Right. And then also it gives me that buffer time and 15 minutes like, you know. We can, we, a lot can happen in 15 minutes, but also if it's not going anywhere, you've, you're all good. There's no sweat off your brow. You just wasted 15 minutes of your time and you keep rolling. So that was, that was how I kind of balance that issue is I still take the intro calls, I'll take an intro call with anybody. We start with 15 minutes and see where it goes from there. That's a good one. It's a good, good solution for it. Awesome, man. Well, hey, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I really appreciate your time. It's been fantastic to get, you know, get to know you a little bit better as well. If people wanna follow along with you and see your journey, see how you're buying companies buying real estate or wanna get in touch, what's the best way? Yep. I'm on all the socials, so I, I'm probably the only Vince get things around. So if you wanna LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Website, Vincent dot or vincent gethings.com, like pretty easy to find. Awesome man. Thanks so much for coming on the show and look forward to hopefully seeing you, an action academy trip sometime soon. No, absolutely. I'm excited. See your journey, man. You're going places. You're, you're very bright and I'll be, I'll be looking out for you. Sounds good, man. I'll see you soon. Alright. I forgot to do this part. Let me do this before I've stopped recording. Sorry. Alright guys, if you're still here, just wanna tell you, thank you so much for listening to Art of Connecting. It means so much to me. If you can just leave us a five star review on Spotify Apple Podcast. Wherever you're listening, it's the best way to help a show grow. Also, share this show with someone else'cause that's the best way to organically share with others and grow the podcast. Thanks again for listening to Art of Connecting. We'll catch you on the next episode.