What I don't observe is the reciprocation of them asking you. So what I, what I say that is the key is to ask that question. Welcome back to The Art of Connecting Podcast. This is your host here, Hayden, back with another episode for you. And today we have Thomas Demoss here joining us on the show. What's up? This has been a long time coming. Yeah, I know. You've been like for two years you've been like, when you're gonna have me on your podcast. And I'm like, when are you free? And it's like, that's the real question. The day was tough. So, yeah, every day is tough. I feel like I'm so glad that we finally get to do this. I always give a little bit of a backstory of where I met the guests who I'm having on. So I'll do that. I met Thomas. Gosh, like probably four years ago now, three, four years ago, going to the landlord luncheon in Chattanooga. And I, it's funny'cause I just saw him on YouTube this morning when I searched Chattanooga real estate trends. His ad with Lee pops up before then. Oh, okay. Awesome. And so Thomas is the. I, well, I won't give too much of the backstory, I guess,'cause I, I tend to do that. But yeah, I met Thomas in the Chattanooga real estate investing community and I'm glad we finally get to have you on the show today. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. Awesome. So if you don't mind just as most podcasts start, if you can give us the quick little intro if, if it's possible. Yep. I know. I'm, I'm very long-winded. I'll try not to be. So real estate, why am I in real estate? I heard it the other day. The purple Bible is risk book. I was brought up, and I've said this a couple times on other shows, but my dad was a, I was an investor who taught me about investing and money and all the inflation stuff, and so I knew the hard assets were where I wanted to be, and real estate was really cool. So that was the path we took. We bought our first house. We've been in Chattanooga for about 25 years now. Oh, wow. Dang, you're old, so not. I know. I am old. Holy crap. I'm old. Yeah, we started buying single family rental properties, ab class properties basically'cause my wife talked me out of doing section eight, which I will always be thankful for. Really? Yes, yes. I like my Section eight. I, it was, it was the first real estate course that we took Uhhuh and I've never done a section eight property. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I was. The wisdom that she shared. I was working a job, she was working, this was before kids, and she said, you need to be able to do something that you can manage that doesn't take a lot of your time. So you need to really look around where we live. Mm. And we kind of set, you know, I don't know, 10 mile radius or whatever, the first house we bought, I was driving in, in the neighborhood just. A mile from our first house saw for sale by owner house sign. And called the guy up. Made an offer and we bought it for what he owed in the mortgage. Oh wow. Kicked it up. Still got the house today. That's how I bought my first one too. For sale. For sale by owner, baby. There go. It's a way to go. It is. It really is. Yeah. So you read Rich Dad, poor Dad. Yep. That started you in the real estate investing. You're like, I wanna own assets. Yep. And then, and I was in college and the rent, we were renting houses and these, you know, old men would come by and they didn't look like they had a care in the world. Life was going great. They just collected their rent and I talked to them and, you know, got some wisdom from them early on. So yeah, it all kind of pointed towards real estate. Awesome. And now you own really one of the largest real estate companies in Chattanooga for buying off market properties. Sure, yeah. Chattanooga Property Solutions. You have ads on YouTube, mailers, Facebook, everywhere. You can have an advertisement. I feel like you've got some, right? Yeah, we, we do. We changed that a few years ago. We bought into everything. We've gone through all the trends. We did a ton of direct mail. This was probably five, maybe four or five years ago. I look back at, at our returns and our metrics, and I literally could have put$65,000 in a, in a trash can and lit it on fire. And everybody talks about everything changes, but we changed. We, we changed to inbound marketing radio, tv, all online. PPC, we, we are local and that's what we really wanna leverage. We see people we buy houses from all the time. I have. We actually just did a deal with my. Son's first baseball coach and his wife, she called us. Actually on the way down here, I got off the phone from a girl that was friends with my wife. I haven't talked to her in 20 years, but she saw ad on television. She goes, I'm gonna call them. So it worked out really good. Wow. I remember. I guess probably two or three years ago Lee, Lee brought me over to your office. Yep. I remember that we sat down and talked about potentially working together and while that didn't work out, something that really stood out to me is something that you said and he said, I wanna be able to go walk in the grocery store Yep. And see anyone who I bought a house from and for them to not be mad to see me, but to be happy to see me. Yeah. And that's pretty much what we've done. I don't. I don't know of any situation to where we've done a closing to where people have been upset with us. And we've done some, we've done some really crazy situations. I mean, I don't get too dark, but we had a lady in Hickson, her son or, or sorry, her, her husband who committed suicide, and Lee went and met with her, and Lee does what he does took care of her and she was super thankful because. Money and the price of the house was not the most important thing to her. It was getting rid of that memory. That's what she wanted to be rid of. Yeah. And so we helped with that and did it in a really, really fast way that expedited her to move on to the new part of her life. That's a company I used to work with had the same thing. There was a, a gentleman, his son passed away in the house and he just wanted to get rid of it. Yeah. And, and he didn't wanna get ripped off, but Right. He wanted to get rid of it. He didn't want to have to. Deal with it anymore. Yeah. And, and it's, and we tell people, and we're not ashamed of this. We're a for-profit company. I have three kids. I have a wife, I have to pay for my house and kids. And so we're, we have to run a profitable business, but we're going to, we're gonna do it in a way that we respect our folks that contact us. So, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. So you stayed incredibly consistent Yep. In real estate. Do you, do you feel like that a, a portion of your success has led to zoning in on Chattanooga real estate specifically and staying in the game? Yeah, I mean we've always been a single family, residential house buyer. I have one duplex, I had two. I sold it. It was a pain in the butt. And we keep the one in Red Bank'cause it's in a really good area. And we've stayed focused and I've been tempted to do some syndication stuff, and I mean, that's great. That's great for everybody else. I, we just do what we know. We do it really well. Time has been our best friend, and so that's just workforce. I don't, I, I like. Where I am in life. I, I don't, I may be old, relatively speaking, but I was a joke, by the way. I know I said that because you look so good. You don't have any gray hair. I'm 50, so I'm 50. I turned 50 this year and I great shape. We wanna maintain a level of margin in our life. I don't, you know, I don't need to go do everything. Yeah. So, yeah. That's awesome. So I want to kind of zone in on the art of connecting and talk about. Relationships in your business, and I know we have some interesting stories on both sides of Sure. Great relationships and also some relationships that you've told me about that were Yep. Tough. Yep. So just in general, how important have being connected to the right people and having the right relationships been as you've grown your company? Yeah, I, I said this actually today. We met with a new title company and they were asking our story and, everybody that sits at the table that, that we work with today is an organic relationship. The folks that I've found off, like Indeed or any type of job solicitation site, they haven't worked. And it's funny, I, I, Sarah who works with us, told her story and she got emotional telling it because it was providential that she was with us. Lee, same way. I, I knew Lee years before he worked for us and. There's a mutual respect. And then, you know, I'm, I'm a Christian. I really guarded, God, ordained everything. And there was just, you know, things worked out to where he came on board with us at the right time. And it's, it's just really worked out. So we've been blessed that way. Yeah. And something that's impressive to me too is how lean of a team you run. Yeah. You have, what, four, four people? We have, what do we have? I have VAs, but like VA in the Philippines. I've got a general contractor. I've got Lee and Sarah. And Dustin. And then Brooke, who is now our, Brooke is now a partner with me in a property management company that we are starting. Oh, wow. And she's also our lead agent, so. Oh, awesome. Yeah. So you're selling houses now? She's gonna sell the houses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Technical property solutions, those, yeah, she's gonna sell the houses. So you're pring your broker's license to use Smiley? I, I am. Yeah, we, I, I did, we got the broker's license years ago. Didn't really do anything with it. Have the great office in sson. This is, it is the way that I wanted our business to be, and we've just evolved in that respect. So now we I used to use the term a vertically integrated company, but I, I had somebody say, it's not really verti. You're, you're horizontally integrated. Mm-hmm. You have a lead funnel that, that comes in based upon our marketing, and then we have different. Categories that we can put people in different solutions that we can pivot to. Right. And so that's what we do. That's amazing. Oh, that's so cool. I hadn't, I didn't know any of all of that since we last met. It's pretty new. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. That's exciting. Awesome. And so your, I guess, I guess the next question I want ask would be these relationships that were kind of providential for you. Were you seeking out somebody when these people came in, or was it more of you met someone and you're like, I want you to work with me. I don't know where, but I want you to work with me. That I would say it's been kind of half and half. When we first got started I mean the relationship that started Genna Property Solutions, I'm a partner. Former partner Wally. We were, went to church together and we just kind of sat down one day and said, you've got an, an area of expertise that I don't have. I think we can combine and, and do something really good. And we did. You know, he's, he's Wally has, has gone on his own now. We're not partners anymore. I still love him to death. It was just, it was a, it was a time for him to make a change. And then everything else has just kind of worked itself out. Mm-hmm. So you know, Dustin that is with us now. He, he wants to learn and so he's able to kind of be a participant in what we're doing, and he's learning a ton. He's, I, I, I think we've, IM partisan wisdom into him. Hopefully he appreciates that and he's. Helping our business as well. So it is a kind of a reciprocal relationship, so it does work out good. It's funny because you go listen to all of these podcasts and shows and you hear everybody saying, oh, force your way in, you know, or like, grow as quickly as humanly possible, you know, and you've gotta kick the door down. Yeah. It sounds like you've, you've gone the exact opposite way. I don't, I do feel that, like, that temptation is always there. I. We, we did the mastermind thing and I, we've considered doing it again. And there's yeah, there, there's a couple books and a couple themes that I've been exposed to lately that's like, don't do what other people do just because they're doing it. Do your thing. Figure out what you want to do. And my struggle today is a balance between stewardship and contentment. Hmm. I don't have to do anything else like, right. I mean, I'm pretty good right now. I. We've, we've, we're got, we are in a good spot, but the stewardship part of that means I don't get to be lazy. And so I still want to continue to leverage and steward the gifts that you know, that God has given us and make sure we do a good business. And I. I don't believe in retirement, so we gotta keep going. Yeah. When you retire, you die, right? Yeah, pretty much right here. Absolutely. So I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to build my parents a rental portfolio. There. You, you go. We actually, we just well, we, I say I just put offer in on a duplex over in Brainerd. Okay. 1% rule there. And you can find that these days, that's a win. Yeah. So we got that offer out. Hopefully the guy takes it. But I called my mom, I was like. Hey, I got something for you guys. What do you think? She's like, that sounds good to me. Yep. And so. I, I, I agree. Like I, I look at my parents as they're kind of getting ready for air quote retirement. Yep. But I'm also like, I don't want you guys to not have anything to do.'cause you need, my dad needs something to do. Yep. Yep. No, that's it. I mean, this, we we're at a stage, I mean, I just sat down with our attorney. We're trying to figure out, you know, our wills and things like that. And I'm not planning on dying, but I don't want to do it when it's too late. Mm. And so my goal for our business is for our kids to take it and grow it and leverage it and to steward it in a way that can benefit their family and, and, you know, whatever God calls'em to do. So we've been really blessed. I mean, like I said, I'm not the smartest guy in the room and I don't want to be. If I am, I'm gonna leave because there's no value there for me. So, we just wanna keep growing our business and doing things well. And I mean, you mentioned the, the scale that we have. I, yeah, we don't do it the way everybody else does it, and we have been super fortunate. You know, I, my goal is to help everybody on our team achieve the goals that they want to do. And it looks different for, you know, for everybody. But I mean, I, I like that we can help. Grow other team members' net worth, whether that's housing or whatever it is by what we do. So, yeah. And I feel like so many people in this industry, in the wholesaling, real, real estate industry specifically, I. A lot of them are flying by the night. Yep. Right? Yep. Whereas you, I, I drive by your office going to church every Sunday. You've got an office right there where people can come in. Not very many people do, I've heard, come into the office, but actually they, we've had an influx. Oh. I think everybody's kind of, and Lee does a good job of bringing folks in and we, you know, it's. We can show people where we live. Yeah. Like, I'm not ashamed of that. This is our office. Come in, talk to us and we'll hang out. Yeah. Most wholesalers are you know, flying by the night. They're based outta somewhere that that's not here. Yep. They have no vested interest in this community. Right, right, right. And whereas you guys, that's another thing about your business too, is you're not just trying to wholesale. Right. Right. You're looking to acquire first and then. If it doesn't fit your box, absolutely. You already have the deal. So then you dispo it in the wholesale. Yeah, absolutely. So I, I want to learn about the acquisition side,'cause I, I don't think we've really gotten to discuss that that much. And something I'm really curious about on the side of like how you look at debt and finances and all that kind of stuff. And then I wanna circle that back to relationships too, of like Sure, what types of relationships have allowed you to, but when you're acquiring a property. What are some of the pieces that you put into place and like do you lean towards debt or like to do cash? So we buy most everything technically for cash. We will do cash out refis, the bur method. I, the debt thing, I'm not a fan of Dave Ramsey'cause I would be poor if I did. But I do think he provides value for people on a very basic level of teaching them about not to get into consumer debt, credit debt, things like that. But with real estate, I mean, you know, this, most, most people's wealth is built off of real estate. That's where it is. You can't argue with that. I, I will admit that the way that I run numbers on a buy and hold property today. Is not as stringent as I did when we first got started. I mean, I had my spreadsheet, I could tell you my cash on cash return, B, return on equity. All, all the numbers I knew right now, I don't, it's not that I don't care about that, but for me, the location of the asset matters more than kinda, I mean, we just bought a house on Signal Mountain. I've never been able to buy a house on Signal Mountain. We got it at a great deal. I'm probably gonna have. I dunno, 40% equity in the house. And we're gonna keep it forever. That's the goal. So that's, that's what I'm looking at is really just the asset acquisition. The market right now is not great with interest rates. Everybody knows that. What does blow my mind and I. I know what, I know the business that you're in with private money, hard money lending. 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 of Connecting now back to the show. i, it, it, I, that is a good business and it solves a lot of problems, but I have never had to use it. Because I've always cultivated good relationships with local lenders. We, we primarily do most of our refinancing with a local lender here. I don't, I don't mind sharing it. Rock Point, Stacy being, she's awesome. That's what helped us kind of grow our business. Now there's pros and cons to everything. You've gotta keep more money in the deal. I, I don't, you know, I'm, I'm leaving cash in the deal. I'm fine with that because I want my deals to cash flow and they look good on paper. But we have a pretty good amount of equity in most of our properties. I have, you know. Several that are paid off and I've wrestled with, well, maybe I should just refinance them and keep growing and I can, I have that option, which is nice to have, but I haven't executed on it yet'cause I haven't really needed to. So, yeah. That's, yeah. Nice, nice. And so you were able to build up your, your war chest kind of through the. You know, the properties don't fit your box there maybe for somebody else. Yep. But you make 20,$30,000 Yep. On dis disposing those deals. Right. Right. And that allowed you to have the cash to be able to not utilize hard money and things of that sort. Right. Yeah. I, so this was the thing when we were we were growing up, I had a W2 income, so I was very bankable. Mm. That was one of the things that my parents' dad taught me is. Is you want a bank to look at you favorably, and I knew what that looked like. You need to save money, you need to have reserves. So banks go, okay, something happens so you can take it. Right? So that's not hard. When we kind of got into this business, there was a big, and there still is a, Hey, why don't you go buy six rental properties and you can retire and quit your job? You can't do that. No. I, I will give credit to this, to Steve Tran. He has called, he said that rental properties are not passive income, they're reliable income. And I a hundred percent agree with that. And what I'm a big advocate for is do not only have reliable income, you, you need at least getting off the, you know, to start, you need to have an active income. Mm. So the way that my family structures ours is we. I don't touch my rental income. We put all that back into the portfolio to acquire and renovate and rental properties. They take a lot of work. Yeah. So, I mean, you've gotta have that there. But I, I do think, and there are anomalies of people that, that get fortunate and they can, you know, hit a home run and get. The right properties to where they can retire until they have kids and get married. Yeah. And life gets expensive. There's someone that will not be named that I used to follow on Instagram and Facebook. And he recently bought himself a nice brand new a hundred thousand dollars truck. Sure. He's I think he's acquired probably like. 2025 section eight rentals. Yep. But it's like mobile homes. Yep. Bottom of the barrel, like the crappiest hor most horrible properties you can buy. And he sells a lot of Instagram courses. Sure. On how to get rich in real estate. And it's just really funny to watch when you. See that, and you know, I guess I'm, I'm not the one to judge people probably look at my Instagram or like, oh, this kid thinks he's hot. But it's really interesting to watch when you see not just that person, but other people too that, you know, post, oh, I'm 24 years old, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But on the lending side Yeah. When you pull back the curtain. Yes. And it's cool. It's a lender's perspective. You see it. Yeah. Being in commercial and residential finance. You know, you go look at that Instagram on somebody and you see this big image and then you pull back the curtain and you say, okay, well what, what cash do you have? And there's no cash. It's all debt. All debt. And, and then it's like, oh, so you're basically 110% leverage. Yep. And you're living check to check. Yep. That was I, I've got another good friend of mine who. Was a commercial banker. He just retired because he, he used his commercial banking relationships to leverage that. I mean, he has partnerships with some of the bigger builders and, and I love the guy to death, but, but he did what you said. He looked under the hood and he saw who was gonna, who had. Money and who didn't? I read a, a book many, many, many years ago called the Millionaire Next Door. Yeah. And this is a great book.'cause statistically you look at it, I mean, I drive a, I drive a 2019 Nissan Titan. Oh, you upgraded last time it was like a 2008 it Nissan Titans. Yeah, it was 2012. So I did upgrade. And here's the thing, I hate buying freaking cars. Yeah. Like, it drives me nuts. Like I don't care what I pay, just get me off the dealership as fast as I can go. But. Could I afford to buy something? Sure. But I don't need that, so Yeah. I'd rather go buy a house. Right? Yeah, exactly. It's it's an easy trap to fall into though. Yeah. Especially when you're young. Yep. You know, you see, you see all these other people being successful doing these things, and so quickly you can have some small wins and you're like, oh yeah, this is gonna keep going. And then the market changes a little bit, and then you have a house that hasn't sold yet that you thought would sell and all of the different things that could happen. That's definitely not personal at all. Yeah, no. It, it, it's happened. It's I tell you what this is and, and this is the thing, and we're, so far, we have never lost money on a deal. Wow. That's crazy. There's, there's one that's kind of still hanging out there, we don't know yet, but, and, and it's, and I'll tell you, there's pros and cons to that. I mean, Warren Buffet's number one rule, don't lose money. Okay. I got that. There are drawbacks to that because I will confess that that has caused me to not be as aggressive as I should, which may or may not have hurt me in the long run. Right. I'm okay with that. But there is a balance that you've got to look at. So. One of our friends, Jeff Hol, says, if you haven't lost money on a deal, you haven't done enough deals. We've done a lot of deals, we've done a lot of deals. I'm just very conservative. I don't, I don't want to, I don't wanna do that. Yeah. So I agree. Yeah. Whenever I, I have some friends that do flips and they'll do a flip for 20, 30,000 of, of, of margin. And when I tell people my margin, they look at me like I'm crazy. I say, I wanna have a hundred thousand dollars of gross margin. That's not a net. You know, I don't, I don't need, I'm not greedy. I don't need a net a hundred grand, right? But I wanna have a hundred thousand dollars in between of, you know, what I'm purchasing and rehabbing it for, and what I plan on selling it for. Because you're, you have unknowns. You're holding costs, you're opening walls, you're redoing floors. Especially if you're renovating. Yeah. Yeah. It, it's a totally different, I mean. We were blessed when we got started.'cause we started in, oh gosh, what was it? 2017, 18. I mean, the market was nuts. We, I've seen houses that we flipped being resold two and three times and I mean, that was, and everybody, that was my regret is like, I, I let go of too many, we drove past one the other day, right by UTC on 10th Avenue. We bought it for$25,000. I mean, insane that we did that. It's on the market for a half million right now, so it, it's, yeah, I know. Oh, I know. That's like a, a knife in the heart. Yeah. Oh, and we've done that hundreds of times. Yeah. The stuff we've sold in, in Red Bank and. Hill City, you know, all those areas that now you can't buy anything for less than, you know, half million dollars. It's just, and to, to look, and this is the thing. It's hard for me to do that. I got, I'll tell you what, when the Chattanooga market started to take off you talk about relationships, some of the relationships that I had was with some folks from Nashville. And I would ask them, tell me your perspective. And, and basically what I was trying to do is look in the rear view mirror, what they saw happen in Nashville. It was hard for me to really understand that, like a house that I bought for$85,000 to really think it's gonna sell for 150, like that blows my mind. And now that house for 150 is gonna sell for 250. Like, it's just hard to really understand that until you look at how the economy works and how inflation works and how it works in other markets. To really just evaluate where we are in our situation. My mentor came down about a month ago'cause he, he built a lot of houses and he's basically having to go an hour outside of Nashville right now. Yeah. To build houses. And he wants to be building 30 to 40 a year, but right now he's only able to build like 15, 20. And so he's like, he came and spoke at my meetup and then he, he came back down and he was like, he just kept saying over and over and over, this is Nashville 15 years ago. Yeah. Because he, he's been building in Nashville for years. I agree. You know, talk, I've given credit back to my wife. She kind of orchestrated how we started our business and what we acquired. The other two times is she, she told me when I found out that our office was coming up, you know, the ability to buy that. I bought that actually from a wholesaler. She goes, buy it. I mean, it's, anyway, I got a lot of money. I got a lot of equity in that house. Yeah. And then we bought a house on 100 South Broad. I. It was one of Ethan Collier's first developments. When I was doing a radio show, I had him on. It was like the south side was nothing. And my wife saw it. She goes A great deal in houses, buy it. And, and two years later they go, oh, we're going to build the Chattanooga Lookout Stadium and we're gonna do the bend. Like the south side is gonna blow up. Yeah. Like it already is. But once everything gets developed, I think it's gonna be just incredible. One of my friends, I took him out with Ted when he was in town. You would, you'd know him. And he owns like three city blocks. Yeah. Of south side. Yeah. And we ride, we ride around. He's like, yeah, I own this. I own this, I own this. I'm like, oh my gosh. And he is all in on south side. Like he's building 160 over there right now, I think. And. It's technically East Lake, though a lot of my listeners are not in Chattanooga's, we're, we're jabbering on about Yeah, sure, sure, sure. Places in Chattanooga. But, but look at your own hou, own your own area, what metro you're in. Yeah.'cause if, I mean, things are growing, you just gotta pay attention to it. Yeah. And it's easy to, to not, you know, see a small little blip and then you don't know where it's going. Right. And, and to, to your credit on selling those houses. You don't know what was gonna happen in the next year. Right. Two years, five years, 10 years, 15 years. Generally, real estate's going to appreciate, but it's not an improbable possibility that real estate decreases in value. Correct. Yeah. Right. In 2008 we saw, you know, 50% value wipe out. Yeah, it is. It was a great time to be a buyer. Yeah. So, yeah, and, but at the time of 2008. When you're in it, it seems like a terrible time to be a buyer, right? So I I, I try not to beat myself up for the ones that I sell. I know 1000% the house that I have for sale right now, I'm going to regret it. I know it's gonna be a$600,000 house one day, or$800,000 house, and I'm gonna drive by in that freaking house. And I'm gonna say I wish I would've kept Marlborough Avenue, but. If you want to have that opportunity to buy Marlborough Avenue 7 0 2 Marlborough Avenue, you can buy my house. There you go. We've done one on Marlborough as well. So yeah, it's such a great freaking neighborhood and I wish I could keep that property, but I think in 10 years I'm gonna look at it and be like, why didn't I keep that? But. This is the note to self for 10 years later. You know, you need money right now. You gotta live, you need money right now, everybody. Yeah. You gotta have money to live on. And that's, that's just the, you know, going back to that active and passive income, you, you gotta do both. I feel like you have to do both in order to really achieve success. Yeah. In this real estate market. I mean the, the greatest thing about owning rental properties is you know, the tax advantages that it has, and it also has the debt pay down. Like I've got, I mean, everybody says all these things, but you really don't realize them until it's 10, 15 years later. Right. And that you've got all this equity in a house that you haven't paid, maybe a few mortgage payments on it when you're actually fixing up. But most of the time it's from folks that are. Yeah. And you can cash flow on it Sure. Too, while at the same time, you know, make a little bit on each one. Yeah. I mean, here's the crazy thing. We, we've got enough doors and I mean, we're not like killing it, I mean, based upon other people, but like with rental increases that we've seen. I mean, if we increase, I. 50 to a hundred dollars a door on all of our properties. It's a significant boost, monthly boost. So, yeah, I mean, quantity does matter, right? And then having, you know, if you believe in paying them off, that's okay. Everybody's gonna get to a point in life where you, you, you don't need to acquire anymore. You just kind of stop. We're just not there yet. If rates go down to three point a half, 4% like they were a few years ago, I'll refinance everything. Yeah, because it's free money. Yeah, exactly. So something that I, I admire about you though you just mentioned, you know, we're not killing it like other people. It kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You, for our listeners, you'll, you'll see these people who are crushing it, right? Yeah. They've got a billion dollars in assets or whatever. They say, and then you see those people in the news six months later for, you know, taking investors money or doing things in an unethical way. And something that I admire about you is it doesn't really matter how many doors you have, how many do you actually own, right? You own your properties. Yeah, we a hundred percent. So you don't have people that are, you're not, you don't own 1% of 2000 units. Exactly. You own your properties and you control them, right? Yeah. I mean, it is. So my wife and I are a hundred percent owners of everything we have, so I don't have to. Anybody else or, yeah, I mean, the syndication's cool to be like, oh, I a thousand doors. Do you really? Yeah. Oh, you don't? I own 5% of a thousand doors. Right? Yeah. Awesome. So we, it's already 4 0 5, which is crazy. I've, my time just continues to go by quicker and quicker. So I want to ask you really as far as. If you could go and make relationships with people in the very beginning when you're getting started that you know now, what would be those key relationships in your business to make connections to I lenders Banks. That's what I would do. I mean, I appreciate what you have done. It's kind of what I did. You've got people that know how money works and, and. That's hard these days. They don't teach that in school about how money works. My, my dad and mom and I was just in a, in a culture that I learned how money works and that was extremely advantageous and we tried to teach our kids that as well. That's where I would get to. And then just talking, like you said, talking to bankers. Hey man, what do, what do I need to do in order to get bankable to get a loan, to ask them that question? So one of the guys that works with us, Dustin, I kind of tried to push him in that in that way. And he had always done hard money loans. And he goes, Thomas, I, I talked to my lender that, you know, financed my house and kind of told him what we were doing with the investment property. He goes, yeah, sure, I'll give you a loan. And it was, it's gonna save him a significant amount of money versus using private or hard money. And most people don't have those conversations because they don't think. They're gonna get a yes. Well, all they're gonna tell you is no, but they're gonna tell you how to become bankable. And so, yeah. I think relationships with folks that know about money, like you've done, you just seek those people out. You know who they are. Mm-hmm. Go talk to'em. Yeah. So, yeah. And so many people are afraid'cause they don't wanna seem like an idiot. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing is you, you don't wanna seem like a fool. Right. I, I just had someone on the podcast yesterday when we talked about we all start somewhere. We all start somewhere. Right? Absolutely. And and you started somewhere. I started somewhere. We're all at some point newbies. We absolutely, and that's the thing too, is you don't, like I said, I made a comment. I don't want to be the smartest guy in the room. I don't, because I mean, I may be adding value to those people, but I'm not adding value to myself and like, not to be selfish and arrogant, but that's. I don't if I'm, if I've stopped learning, like you said, I've stopped growing and I don't really wanna be that person ever. So what are some ways that you still learn today? What are your favorite learnings? I, I do read a lot. I. I listen to the Disruptors podcast with Steve t Trang. If you're not listening to it, I think it's probably one of the, the better podcasts out there and after the Art of Connecting, I know after the Art of connecting listen to, Hey you gotta start somewhere. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, no, it's, that's it. And just having those relationships. I, I've been fortunate that. I'm not scared to ask people questions. Mm. You know, you've met my kids. Yeah. Trying to teach them that. Yes. Like you're not gonna learn. They came and interviewed me. I was so proud of them. You gotta talk to people, you gotta ask questions, you know? And people like to talk about themselves. So you finding a mentor that can teach you about business, most people are super happy to do that. Yeah. So, yeah. Hmm. I love it. Finding the mentors. So where did you find your mentors in the beginning? Like I said, it was Rich Dad, poor dad. It was my dad teaching me about money. We, we kind of did it all on our own just by finding the right resource. Mostly it was just reading, it was reading a podcast and pulling the trigger. I never, yeah, I just, we just did it. Yeah, it was, I. It, it never felt uncomfortable. Just kind of weird. Like, I mean, I bought houses that I haven't even seen, so it's just, yeah, you just do it. Hmm. So, and you don't have to have those, those personal people. It can be a podcast or a book or something like that, but just go do it. I mean, bigger podcast, bigger podcast was, you know, just coming out and we kind of got started and everybody jumped on that and that was a, a good resource. But yeah, just finding those folks that are. They're making the moves that you want to make and associating yourself with them. Yeah. And Peter Pak was who I had on yesterday. He's a big networker out of Atlanta and does like, co-living. Yeah. And he said the best question that you can ask, the one who owns a business.'cause he, he started a commercial lender and then became the president of the bank that he was working for. And he said, ask them how they got started. Yeah. That is the most simple, easiest way that you can get an end to an entrepreneur's brain is say, how did you get started? Yep. And you know, that's, that's the easy 30 minutes of them talking about themselves. Right. It's, everybody loves to hear that story. Absolutely. And then you just sit there, you shut up and you listen. Right? And you take notes and then you ask questions about different things. Here's what I'll say. Yeah. I've observed, I didn't mean to cut you off, but, oh no, you're good. Here's something that, that I have observed. I do that a lot, and I know you do as well. What I don't observe is the reciprocation of them asking you. So what I, what I say that is the key is to ask that question. Most people are not gonna ask that question. Most people don't ask, they don't want to learn. They, they're scared. I have sat down and, and had conversations with people at lunch and I've asked them about their whole life. And they have never asked me one question about mine, and that's not me being selfish. It's just a pattern of how we are as humans. It's like, why wouldn't you ask me a question? You know, let's just reciprocate here. Let's add value to each other. But I You don't see that? Yeah. It yeah, it's true. And I think it's wherever the power position is, right? Sure. Like what the request is of the lunch. It's, yeah. You know, are we going to get lunch because I want to be mentored by you. You know, your mentor's not gonna be like, alright, PIP squeak, you know, you've done one deal. What's your story? Yep. Yeah. I guess there's this book that I read that Julian said, recommended to me is Pitch Anything. Yeah. And it talks about how there's power frames, right? Absolutely. Yep. Not that's a total other conversation, but I think. Going into a conversation, you need to know where your position is. Right? Right. Are you going to learn from that person? Yep. Do you think they're gonna come to learn from you and you never know? Absolutely. You may learn something new from that person that you never expected. Yes. And I've had that happen so many times. Yes. So you wanna stay open? But sometimes you get in a conversation and you know, I'm meeting with somebody and I'm like, I just wanna learn from this person. Right. Whenever they'll ask about me, I'll just redirect. I know. I'm like, they don't ask about you though. And that's the Yeah. I think that's the difference is most successful people are accustomed to asking. Mm-hmm. To reciprocating. Yeah. To adding value. And I just find that that's, sometimes you don't see that, so, and it's something that's really good to be intentional about. Right? Yeah. Because I have to like. Tell, like, tell myself, I'll be like, all right, I've talked for five minutes now. Yes. I need to ask about them. Right. So like, oh, oh, so what about you? You know, and a lot of people, especially in sales, they really miss that. Yeah. Because it's so easy to just go blab on and on and on, and then you, you look up and the time's out and they're like, oh, it was nice to meet you. Yep. And you just talk 90% of the time. Yep. Yep. Yeah, so it's always good. You can always learn something from anybody to ask those questions, even if you're a new, new newbie or not. It's just, it's good to get to know people. Yeah. Hmm. That's amazing. Well, we're at our time to ask the last question, and that is, what is a connection to a person or group of people that has changed the trajectory of your life or business? Hmm. It could be Robert Kiyosaki, theoretically, since you read his book. It could be, i, like I said, I, I'm a Christian. I people can take that. For what it's worth, I believe that my relationship with Jesus has really helped me become the person that I am today. Both spiritually and, you know, professionally because I, I don't look at things. As mine. Yeah. It's, it's god's And I've got a steward at the way You're a steward. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. So I worked at Chick-fil-A. That was a, there you go. A big portion of our, our mission statement there was to be good stewards. I, I believe that. I think we should be, I mean, why wouldn't we be? Yeah. Like that's what we're called to be. So Well, and when you look at things with that lens, it completely changes everything. Right? It changes your, your why. It changes your motivation. I've run into that. I just got back from Hadas, you know? Yeah. And it's changed. Like I'm excited for the meetup tonight'cause I'm about to show up with some fire. And really I hope that the message that I can share with people is we have such an amazing opportunity here to be stewards of what God has given us in America. Absolutely. And a lot of us squander it. Yes, we do. And don't take advantage of it. So I'm excited tonight'cause I've got some videos and photos that I share. There you go. There you go. And preacher Hayden's gonna come out a little bit. It's good. It needs to come out every now and then. That's right. That's right. Well, Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the show today. People wanna follow along with your real estate journeys and adventures. Where should people follow you? I mean, we're on Instagram, Facebook, it, it's Thomas de Moss. Just look us up, companies, Chattanooga, property Solutions. We're all over the place. So you know, I, I will be, I'm gonna go young, like, and subscribe to our Facebook and YouTube page at Chattanooga Property Solutions. We'd love to have you. I mean, we put deals out there. Put our seller success stories out there. You can learn about what we do, how we do it, and. Hit us up. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, guys. If you are still listening to the show, I just wanna tell you thank you. Thank you, thank you so much. It's such an honor to get to do this to get to talk into a microphone and have people actually listen to me. It's really cool. If you got value outta the show and you learn something new that you wanna share with somebody, that is the. Best way for a podcast to organically grow. So click that share button. Share it with your mom and your sister, and your dad and your friends. And then also if you can leave us a five star review on wherever you're listening to the show, it helps the show grow well, with all of that, we will see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening to our connecting.