What makes an outstanding property management company? Learn the answers in this episode with Glenn Gonzales unveils his journey into the real estate industry and delves deep into the intricacies of managing investment properties. This exclusive opportunity allows you to gain valuable insights into this real estate niche, so tune in and expand your knowledge!
Key. takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
About Glenn Gonzales
Glenn C. Gonzales, CPM, is CEO, partner, and co-founder of Obsidian Capital Co. is an entrepreneurial individual with over 30 years of real estate experience. Since 1994, Glenn has been an instructor for multiple apartment associations, including Utah, Washington, and San Antonio.
Glenn’s many years of industry experience, coupled with his ability to motivate and lead, has enabled him to build an effective management operation and assemble a strong team of professionals. Over Glenn's time in the business, he has acquired and sold many multifamily properties on the ownership side, primarily in Texas, and is continuing to aggressively and profitably expand Obsidian Capital's portfolio. Glenn has owned over 4,500 apartments throughout his investment career.
Connect with Glenn
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
What makes an outstanding property management company? Learn the answers in this episode with Glenn Gonzales unveils his journey into the real estate industry and delves deep into the intricacies of managing investment properties. This exclusive opportunity allows you to gain valuable insights into this real estate niche, so tune in and expand your knowledge!
Key. takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
About Glenn Gonzales
Glenn C. Gonzales, CPM, is CEO, partner, and co-founder of Obsidian Capital Co. is an entrepreneurial individual with over 30 years of real estate experience. Since 1994, Glenn has been an instructor for multiple apartment associations, including Utah, Washington, and San Antonio.
Glenn’s many years of industry experience, coupled with his ability to motivate and lead, has enabled him to build an effective management operation and assemble a strong team of professionals. Over Glenn's time in the business, he has acquired and sold many multifamily properties on the ownership side, primarily in Texas, and is continuing to aggressively and profitably expand Obsidian Capital's portfolio. Glenn has owned over 4,500 apartments throughout his investment career.
Connect with Glenn
Connect with Us
To learn more about growing your wealth through multifamily investment opportunities, visit Monument Real Estate Capital and schedule a call!
Follow our social media pages!
Facebook: Monument Real Estate Capital
LinkedIn: Monument Real Estate Capital
[00:00:00] Glenn Gonzales
We're 50-50 partners. He just steps up and steps in when I'm out and I step up and step in when he's out. What a perfect partnership that we have developed over the years. They're out there and you find the good ones and you just stick with them. You can make a lot of money. You get a lot of good things.
[00:00:14] Podcast Intro
You are working professional but struggling to balance the workload of your career, family obligations, and preparing for your financial future. If so, this podcast is for you. You've spent years learning your craft, and now it's time to focus on your financial future. This podcast will teach you what you need to retire wealthy and happy. Let's dive in.
[00:00:38] Ben Waller
Are you thinking about buying your own investment property or are unsure of how difficult it will be to manage? Welcome to the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. We created this podcast to provide financial tips and tricks to help you build up your passive income and also provide methods that you can use to protect your wealth so that you can plan a better future for yourself and your family. We're grateful to have this podcast sponsored by Monument Real Estate Capital Monument Real Estate Capital, helping you retire 10 years early through real estate investments. In today's episode, we get to learn from Glenn Gonzalez, who has managed thousands of apartment units throughout his career.
[00:01:18]
Let's jump in so you can see if managing investment property is right for you. On today's episode, we're excited to have Glenn Gonsalez with us. A brief background about Glenn. He is the owner of Obsidian Capital Company. He is the principal of Napa Ventures president and broker at CGC Investments, and Glenn has over 25 years experience in the multifamily real estate industry. He's overseeing the operation of over 7,000 units across 38 properties in five states. He's currently based in Austin, Texas. A brief overview of what we'll cover on today's episode, we're gonna talk about getting started in real estate investing. We're gonna talk about what it's like managing an investment property, and we're also gonna talk about who Obsidian Capital is and what they do.
[00:02:01] Earl Cline
Glenn, thanks for being on the show today. Would you be willing to share a little bit about your background? I'm, I'm curious about how it talks about you starting out as a maintenance person or, uh, cleaning porting, something like that, and how you ended up managing thousands of apartment units.
[00:02:16] Glenn Gonzales
I sure will. Thanks. Uh, well, Ben and Earl, thanks for having me on your show. I'm pretty excited, so it's always kind of fun. Relive the past and talk about how I got from A to B. A lot of people say to me when I meet him, how did you get started in real estate? Earl, to answer your question, I started off as a maintenance man. I was going to college up at the University of Utah and my wife at the time was a leasing consultant at the apartments that we had just moved into as newlyweds, and they got behind on work orders. So do you wanna help do some work orders and get caught up? And I'm like, sure. But in that process of doing that, I'm shoveling walks in the snow and.
[00:02:53]
Picking up dog crap and fixing toilets and dishwashers and stoves. And meanwhile, the people that were leasing the apartments are in the office talking on the phone. I'm like, man, I wish, I wish I had their job, not this job. And so the regional manager came to visit the property and I stopped her and asked, uh, Hey, is there any chance I could kinda work in the office and maybe be a manager someday? And they're like, aren't you the maintenance man? Like, yeah, I am like, well, maybe you should go back and keep doing maintenance. And I'm like, oh. That's not cool. But anyway, long story short, they eventually called and said, Hey, we have this little 60 unit apartment community. Would you like to be kind of the part-time manager and the part-time maintenance?
[00:03:33]
Cause we can't really afford full-time for each one of those. And I'm like, absolutely. So I did. And that was my introduction into property management and out of maintenance. But that's what transitioned me. But that's where it all started. And over my career, I was then a property manager, a regional manager. And grew with a small fee management company to be their director of operations and kind of outgrew that company and actually got fired. Funny story, I was the director of operations and I had a mentor. His name was Dale Longhurst. He helped me get my CPM designation and helped group my careers. I was growing in property management.
[00:04:11]
I graduated from the University of Utah. I was supposed to be a hospital administrator and I did an internship and I did not want to be a hospital administrator the rest of my life. So I went to my boss, Dale. I'm like, Hey, I'm gonna make property management my career. And he's like, that's great. You know, you need to do this, this, and this. Get your C P M, get your real estate license and perfect your craft. I'm like, okay. So I did that and I was with him for five or six years and then he fired me. And I'm like, I'm your right hand man. Why are you firing me? He's like, you know what? Because you keep saying you wanna buy the company, you wanna be the boss.
[00:04:45]
You, you know, we're a small company and you've gone as far as you can go. He's like, and tell you, take my job, but I'm not going anywhere. I own it. And I said, so you're firing me? He goes, you need to go soar with the Eagles. And I'm like, so you're firing me? He's like, you will land on your feet. You'll get a better job. You'll get with a better company. You've got so much more to give. And I'm like, but you're firing me. I mean, really. Um, but he was right because I was in a comfort zone, you guys, and I probably never would've left that company. It was my whole world. And I left that company and went to another property management company. It was probably twice the size. And I became their director of operations and also learned all the tax credit stuff. So they were doing development, they were doing property management and tax credit management. So I just added that to my little toolbox of. Things that I learned along the way
[00:05:38] Earl Cline
Was that Sovereign Emerson that you went to
[00:05:40] Glenn Gonzales
It was, uh, horizon? Nope. It was called Evergreen Management. It was with Peter Cook PSE development. Do you know the guys? I do, yeah. So I was with Helen Kessler was my boss. She was the president and I was her director of operations.
[00:05:55] Earl Cline
So Glenn, I thought I recognized you when you came on board. You might not remember this. We have a ton in common by the way. I managed a property while I was going to the University of Utah. My wife and I, I think it was a little 60 unit over in holiday that we managed. I did a lot of the maintenance. She took care of the office. But when I graduated, I did an internship down in Southern California with Iram Management Company. Two or three years later, I came back and I actually interviewed with Dale, and I'm pretty sure that it was you that was there. That interviewed me to come to work for Dale long, long time.
[00:06:26] Glenn Gonzales
Wait, so Dale fired me and hired you. You took my job, bro.
[00:06:29] Earl Cline
No, no, no, no. He didn't actually hire me. He was afraid to hire me. Rema, I think was the name of the company, Dale. When I left California, I probably had 5,000 multifamily units. 2 million square feet of office in retail. And I remember Dale looking at me and he said, Klein, you have so many skills, but I am terrified to bring you back here because my portfolio is about half of that small little portfolio that you ran in California. I remember meeting you and, and working with you back then. And life is very small. We end up 20 years later or 25 whenever it was, uh, talking on a podcast together.
[00:07:06] Glenn Gonzales
So, holy cow. You know, Dale Longhurst is still a very dear friend of mine today and I mentioned to him in the book because he was a true mentor, he groomed me from maintenance man and he taught me everything he knew. And he's just a good man to this day. We're still friends. His dad, Ray Longhurst started the company and if you remember the name of the company is Real Estate Management Associates. It stood for Rema, R E M A, all
[00:07:33] Earl Cline
World when you get into, into this business. And I ended up coming back, uh, from California. I ran the commercial division for, uh, James Terry. I know James, and that's why I asked you about Sovereign because they ended up became Horizon and Pinnacle. They kind of split up and had done a lot of uh uh, SA Section 42 down in California. But I came back and ran the commercials division. Remember the Walker Bank building downtown? If you grew up here in Salt Lake City, you have to remember the, the big tower that, uh, changed colors when, uh, to tell you what the weather was gonna be. That was how we knew what the weather was when I was a kid. No world Earl. That's funny. I know. I've met this person in the business world before, so it is really, really fun to have you here.
[00:08:16] Glenn Gonzales
I'm gonna share one more story, Ben, if that's okay. And Earl. Absolutely talking about these stories. I was at a conference and we were going around this big circle introducing ourselves, and some guy across the room said, I don't really wanna introduce myself. I wanna introduce that guy right over there. And he pointed at me. I looked him like, oh no, what did I do? Who is this guy? I didn't recognize him. And he's like, I'd like to tell you a story about that guy. He's like, I was buying an apartment community, and two days before closing, the chiller broke. And he's like, he pointed me. He goes, that man bought me a new chiller for my property.
[00:08:50]
Where most people. Would've put a bandaid on it and just sold him a broken chiller. Cause it was two days before closing. Ernest money was already non-refundable. He already had his equity and his loan lined up and we could have stuck to him. But I don't do that to people and I don't want people to do that to me. So here I am sitting in a room a year later after that Transac transaction and he brought that up and vouched for me as a person that tries to do the right thing. So, you know, if you have listeners out there and they're doing the wrong thing and they're gonna try and pass something off to a buyer, don't do that.
[00:09:21] Ben Waller
This is a good point that the real estate world is a small world. So, We got the two of you on here. So if you do something to, for lack of a better word, screw anybody over it will most likely come back to haunt you.
[00:09:34] Glenn Gonzales
Yes. Or they'll talk about it on a podcast and you don't even have to be on the podcast, you know?
[00:09:38] Earl Cline
Good to, uh, catch up with you again. You wrote a book called Maintenance Man to Millionaire. You wanna tell us a little bit about that book?
[00:09:44] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah, so I really am not author in any way. A lot of people that met me just kind of asked me the question, how in the world did you get from being a maintenance man to owning 6,000 apartments? That just doesn't happen to people. And I'm like, yeah, it's long story and it's kind of a journey. And there were lots of ups and downs. So, so a couple people encouraged me to write my journey kind of as a journal type thing. And a couple guys says, you gotta write a book. And I'm sitting at a conference and somebody actually. Put together like a little PDF of a Maintenance Man to Millionaire and emailed it to me while I was sitting at the conference and he's like, here's the cover of your book. I looked and I laughed, and then I went and talked to my wife about it and she's like, yeah, you, maybe that's something you should look at doing.
[00:10:29]
And so I did. We went through all of the experiences I had, both good, bad, and ugly, and the lessons that I'd learned and the most valuable lessons that I learned, I stuck 'em all in the book. And that's where it came from. And my wife was a little embarrassed because she's like, why are you gonna name it Maintenance Man and Millionaire? It sounds like you're bragging well. Not bragging, but it does kind of have a catchy title to it. So that's how it came to be. And it's just 12 chapters and it just talks about kind of the life lessons and at the end of each chapter there's like a little glen, a little nugget that you could take away. And you know, the first chapter really talks about you like the individual, the value of you and what you can do for yourself. Cuz some people think, oh, I gotta be educated, I gotta have a master's degree or a doctorate degree or something to be someone or something. And that's really not the case. Just be you.
[00:11:20]
But just be the best you, you can be and be good at what you do. If you are gonna be a maintenance man, be the best maintenance man. If you're gonna be a podcaster like Ben, do your research and interview people and Earl just be a good guy and help people and stay in the industry and teach people along the way. Just be you really. And those little nuggets in, in the book and, but it also talks about some of my failures as well, so, Anyway, so you guys can tell your listeners to go. It's on Amazon if anybody wants to get it. I do not have it on Audible. I'm sorry. I really need one of your listeners to say, Hey, I'll read your book for you and record it, because that's not me either.
[00:11:56] Ben Waller
We'll have links in our show notes for that book as well.
[00:11:57] Glenn Gonzales
Okay, thanks.
[00:11:59] Earl Cline
And it's interesting the, your wife's asking you why you do that. Well, the, the truth is the life cycle of wealth, I believe, is that we start with this passion, this desire, right? To do something. We work hard and we start to achieve that. But as we get older, there was a time I enrolled to go back and get my master's degree. And at the time I didn't need a master's degree. In fact, I had progressed to the point in my real estate career that was even going to help me. But my goal at the time was, when I get to this point in my life, I wanted to be able to go back and teach people how I had done that.
[00:12:35]
And, uh, the, to my thought process was, uh, go teach at a university. And without a master's degree, they wouldn't, they, they won't let me on campus, right? And so I, I, I never did I get all plenty of opportunities to teach through coaching and mentoring and other things like that. But, but the reason you wrote the book, I'm quite sure is for that reason at all. Uh, uh, you want to, you're looking for ways to give back and talk a little bit about, uh, exactly what it is that you've learned along the way, and it makes perfect sense to me. So really quick, one last thing. What inspired you to want to do more with real estate Then just start where you started as a maintenance person.
[00:13:13] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah. You know, I was, I was employed as a regional manager at Equity Residential. I was donating my time to the Apartment Association and I was sitting on the board of directors with a bunch of other individuals. And this was in Washington State and there was a gentleman there named John Gibson. Earl, you probably know John Gibson. He never all knows everybody. But anyway, he was sitting there and I said, I'm a regional manager, but I wanna own some real estate. Cuz John just, and others, the owners that kind of sat on this little pedestal, like they're the owners, right? They own the apartments. I'm just the guy that manages it for them.
[00:13:47]
And I said, I got this little 60 unit deal. Would you take a look at it and tell me if you think it's a good deal? Cause I trust you. He's like, sure, I'll look at it. He was my second mentor, by the way, John Gibson, he is in the book too, as being a mentor and he said, you know what? You'll probably do okay on that, Glenn. I'm like, oh great. He's like, but I have a deal that is better. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, I'll sell you this little 44 unit deal. In a place called Puyallup, Washington. And I said, really? And I said, tell me about it. And he goes, well, it needs a little bit of work. I'll carry a note back. You need to come up with $150,000. I'm like 150,000. Where am I gonna get $150,000? I didn't, I live paycheck to paycheck. I got five kids and a mortgage and a car payment. And I'm like, ah, there's no way. So I went to my boss and a contractor that we did a lot of work with a vendor in the industry and I said, Hey guys, I found this great deal and we need to come up with 150,000 bucks between the three of us, and I think that we should be partners.
[00:14:44]
I showed 'em the numbers and they said, you're right. We can make some money on this deal. We should do it. And I'm like, great. You put up 75 and you put up 75 and that'll be our down payment. And they're like, well, I thought we were gonna be street partners. And how does that math work? And this is where I learned about syndication for the very first time, but I didn't know it had a word. I said, well, gosh, guys. I found the deal and I'm the one that's gonna make it happen. You put up the capital. You put up the capital, and we'll split it evenly three ways. I said, but here's the deal. You get paid before I do. So if we make money, you guys get your money back. And if you don't, I don't get anything either, but I'm doing all the work.
[00:15:23]
So I'm like, all right, fair enough to them, that wasn't a lot of money to me. It was a ton of money. We did it. We gave the down payment, he carried a note back, and honest to goodness, we worked our little magic for a year and a half and sold it for a million and a half more than we paid for it. And if you can just imagine the feeling that I felt living paycheck to paycheck as a regional, my very first 44 unit deal, be able to split a million bucks with my friends. They were happy. I was happy. And I'm like, I can get used to this. That's the biggest check I'd ever seen in my life. That's kind of what did it for me. To be honest with you, I still worked as a regional manager after that. I still did my paycheck to paycheck, but I had a little more money in my savings account. So then I invested it into multiple four or five different rental homes. And then in 2008, 2009, all those went away. Most of 'em went away on a short sale, and most of 'em went away on all the down payments that I had put were all gone. So we can talk probably for hours, guys, about. Cycles, real estate cycles and watching the economy and, but it makes me more aware today when I do my investings cuz we now go through cycles still today.
[00:16:35]
We're facing cycles right now. Anyway, it came back in 2014, 2013, started bounced back. I bought a 200 unit deal and it was kind of the same story. I'm now in Texas, I'm the president and owner of a property management company, fee management. And I came across a deal that was getting foreclosed on. The bank called me and said, Hey, property manager, will you give us an estimate that'll take so we know kind of what it'll take to fix this problem. And I told him, I'm like, I did, took me a couple weeks, but got bids, got estimates, evaluated, told 'em, Hey bank, you need a million dollars to fix your problems. And they said, we're foreclosing, we're not investors, we're gonna fire sell it. So I said to the bank, Hey guys, if you're gonna fire sell it. Why don't you fire, sell it to me. I'll give you a million bucks and we'll fix up and all the money. You'll go into the property, you'll be in a better position you were before. And they're like, okay. Do you have a million bucks? It was the same story as 150,000 that I needed way back in the day. I'm like, no, I don't have that. And a million bucks.
[00:17:30]
That's a lot of money. So now I knew what syndication was. Now I'm learning because at this point, this is my, it was a 200 unit deal in San Antonio, and I'm like, I wanna buy this deal. It's a gold mine. I swear guys, nine times outta 10, I'd go talk to investors and they're like, is this your first syndicated deal? I'm like, yes it is. They're like, uh, hard pass for us. It's a no. And I can't tell you how deflated I felt when nine outta 10 people tell you no, but one would say yes, and the nine people that said no, I asked them, I said, well, do you know anybody that might be interested? They said, yeah, these guys take like risky deals. Call them. They gimme a name or number. And so that's what we did. We and my business partner at the time, we just worked the phones and raised the million bucks and that we sold it on our one year anniversary for a 48 IRR. So those nine people that told me no, I called them and I said, here's what I sold it for. Here's what I bought it for, and here's the return the investors got. They're like, wow, okay. You got our attention. We're in on the next one. What do you have after that? Uh, it seemed like the floodgates were open, got gone.
[00:18:38] Earl Cline
So just listening to you, I think it's funny people underestimate. The power of going through property management because of the in-depth understanding. We just wrote a business plan for, one of the things we're trying to do as our company, and I use the analogy that the difference between looking at properties from a drive by every week and see them versus having to manage from long distance. And it's the difference between being, uh, site certified in an air, in an airplane versus instrument rated, right? That uh, you get a way different perspective. You're able to look at those things and deliver really, really incredible results to your investors because of that infinite knowledge of what goes on in the, uh, property management world.
[00:19:20] Glenn Gonzales
So, You're speaking my language. I'm a private pilot and I don't have my instrument rating, but I love to fly and I think all the places I could fly if I just had that instrument rating. Along that same line, Earl and Ben, I was recently visiting one of my properties up in Fort Worth and big hot water heater that serviced, uh, the laundry room went out and I asked him to gimme some bids and came back and they said, here it is. It's like 6,000 bucks. I'm like, 6,000 bucks. I said, let's go look at it. So we went over to the laundry room and I looked at the water heaters, one of those really big a hundred gallon plus water heaters. And I asked the manager, I said, what does it service? And they pointed at these four washer and dryers. I said, so you need a water heater this size to operate those four machines?
[00:20:04]
They're like, apparently that's what the plumber said. I said, I'll tell you what. Why don't you run down to Home Depot? Take 500 bucks and go buy a regular 40 gallon water heater. Or even a, you know, 30 gallon, you don't need one this big. And the maintenance guy could put it in himself. Cause I was a maintenance guy. Put it in a water heater, right? Take out the old one, put it in the new one. So then it was like $500 water heater plus the maintenance man's time and we just did it in-house on site. But unless you have a little bit of experience, how many times does a regional manager or a property manager just give you a bid and say it's gonna take four or five, $6,000 to repair?
[00:20:41]
And those are one of the painful experiences. I learned that the hard way when we had a property in Fort Worth where the maintenance guy was going through air conditioning units and he just didn't have the skillset to troubleshoot it. So every month I was getting this ridiculous H V A C CapEx expense on this property, eating up our cashflow. So I talked to the manager and she's like, I don't know, they just need to be replaced. They're super old. So I asked the maintenance guy, let's go walk over and show me how you troubleshoot these things. I don't know if it's a relay switch or if it's low on Freon or a thermostat. Let's go look. Tell me what, how you walked through it. We walked out to one room. He goes, I have no idea where to start. I'm like, so when one of these break, what do you do? He's like, I just call an H V A C company, and they come out and replace it. I'm like, oh my gosh. I look back at how much money that really cost me as an owner and my investors, just because nobody asked the hard question, what do you do to troubleshoot it? Yeah. We hired a supervisor that was H certified problem solved, and he just.
[00:21:43] Earl Cline
I could see Ben laughing because when we got started as a group, we'd have our Tuesday meeting where we'd go through the properties. And I can't tell you how many times I said, this is ridiculous. I can't believe, figure it out. These guys are making $300 an hour for a plumber. What are you, are you kidding me? And it's just that mentality that says, Hey, I've done this a hundred times. I've looked at the cost of, I know what a water heater costs. I know what, how long it's gonna take them to do this. And uh, it's amazing how, uh, how that changes your perspective. Ben, I apologize. We got started here and I probably even jumped over a couple of your questions that you've got going here, but I'm gonna give you a second to get caught up. How's that?
[00:22:21] Ben Waller
Well, Glen answered several of my questions. We didn't even have to ask him. So he's just light years ahead of us. Well, but yeah, but it's good. We like these stories. Glen, I was gonna ask you about your first deal, but you told us that story, which is wonderful. One of the things I wanna point out to our listeners is that your first deal, at least from the way you told the story, was executed pretty well. And I would say that. One of the reasons you were able to do that was because of your years of experience in property management. You knew how to operate the project. It's not like you went from nothing to your first deal and it went well, right? Like you had a lot of experience before that. And you also mentioned you had at least two mentors, probably others. That's one thing I'm trying to pull out for our listeners, like you wanna be an active real estate investor.
[00:23:05]
You can definitely do that as long as you're willing to put the time in either with a mentor or with a partner so that you're able to execute properly on the business plan and you don't end up either losing money or really just causing yourself a problem. So thank you for sharing that story about your first deal. I do also want to ask, and this is kind of a broad question, but I'm asking it this way on purpose. Are there things you wish you would've done differently or better at the beginning of your career that our listers might be able to internalize and use so that they don't make similar mistakes?
[00:23:38] Glenn Gonzales
That's a great question. I think back on, Getting from A to B, and I'll share with you some of the successes and I'll share with you some of the failures. I think one of the things that I did well over the years was I invested my time in people and relationships. There was a guy, uh, by the name of Ed. And he was up in Washington and he was 70 years old. And I really looked up to Ed, you know, he was, he was very successful in real estate and that's all he did. And very entrepreneur. And I told dad, I said, Hey, if you ever wanna retire, you know, he is 70 years old. Go to work every day. If you ever wanna retire, will you call me? I'd love to buy your company.
[00:24:15]
And, you know, and just kind of pick up where you left off. And he's like, I will never retire. Well, we stayed in touch over the years. He turned 80, he was biking in some country in Asia and got sick and he's like, uh, maybe I should rethink this. You know, he's 80 years old at this point, still very active in real estate and, and health. And we went, uh, biking, uh, together in New Zealand and sure enough he agreed to sell me, not just his management company, but cuz I didn't need the management company. But he sold me eight department complexes that he owned up in D F W. And there was about a 1500 units, maybe plus or minus a little bit. And we closed all eight of those over six months. So he was a friendly seller. We came to a sales price. He gave us the time to close this one and then close the next one, and then close the next one. But that was a relationship, relationship that took a decade or longer to develop. And I didn't want anything in return.
[00:25:12]
I just wanted to be the guy's friend and it paid off. Now that was a success that, or started early in my career. I continue to to live by that same philosophy today. One of my failures is sometimes I jump into partnerships with people too soon, with really not knowing their true strengths or their true character. And sometimes you get into a partnership and you're in it and it's like a marriage and you realize, Hmm, this isn't working out. I feel like I'm doing more than my fair share, or, But he shouldn't say things like that because that's not really an honest statement. And, you know, and, and then you, over the years you start learning character traits that may be different, you know, call it right or wrong, that are different than my character traits, uh, or the things that are important to me.
[00:26:01]
So I think early in my career, Ben, I think I jumped into partnerships with really not fully understanding who I'm partnering with because things will be great. You guys will be friends when things are difficult and it takes, you gotta roll up your sleeves, it gets difficult. It just like any other relationship, sometimes that strains the relationship. And depending on how you act or they act or react, it could be good or bad. Fortunately, I've exited partnerships. Okay. Um, but, I've learned a lot through the years on maybe vetting out my partners that I'm gonna get in bed with, per se. Cause you're in it to win it and it's tough to get out.
[00:26:42] Ben Waller
So what I'm hearing you say is, for anybody who's getting started or trying to scale up, if you're going to look for partnerships or joint ventures, whatever you wanna call them, make sure that you are vetting or really digging into the person you're looking at doing business with. Because it's like a marriage, it's very involved. And if there's something about that person that you won't mesh well with it, it could end badly.
[00:27:06] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah. I mean, I actually got in an argument, I started this podcast with you guys sharing a story about when I was at that conference and I ended up buying a chiller for this buyer. I, we were the seller, but my business partner at the time, he did not wanna buy the chiller. We got in an argument over it and I told him at the end of the day, if I have to, I'll take it outta my cut. But he's like, we're not obligated. He's closing in two days. Whether or not we buy a, a chiller. Or not. And, um, that just didn't set well with me and that really demonstrated the strength to think of his character and my character and what we stand for. But he was technically right. We were not obligated, but I felt morally I was obligated. You can't really put moral in a contract. I think that's something that your mom and dad taught you when you were young or you've developed over the years, or it's important to you. I don't know. So that was a lesson, and I have, I think it's um, chapter right in my book.
[00:28:06]
I talk about partnership patterns because there's also roles, you know, and, and there are times it was that same character guy that said, I think Glen, we should go buy some apartment complexes and buy a bunch of them. And he was very motivational and what he brought to the partnership was a lot of initiative. And he also was not, he didn't put any limits. I remember having a conversation with him. About buying a 650 unit apartment complex. And I'm like, dude, that's a big deal. I don't know that we can do that. I'm like, we gotta go get a, a loan from Fannie Mae from for $30,000. I don't even know if we had the liquidity. You know? And he's like, well, we'll just ask one of the investors to put up their balance sheet with this. I'm like, who's gonna do that? He goes, just ask. But he was right. He was absolutely right. We bought that sucker. So, you know, when I talk about partnership patterns, you just need to go into it with your eyes open. The good and the bad there are good and bad in every partnership. I can talk for hours about that too.
[00:29:07] Ben Waller
And I appreciate you telling those details in respect of your time. Let's switch gears a little bit. I knew that you and Earl had similar experiences. What, and that's why I had him on the show today. I want to talk about property management specifically because I know you both have a lot of knowledge in that arena. But the purpose of these questions today is to help our listeners understand what property management is really like and how involved that is. So cuz we have listeners that are like, oh, I want to get into real estate investing. I'm gonna do it on my own, but they don't. Fully understand what that means.
[00:29:38] Earl Cline
So that's what we wanna talk about a little bit before we go, I, I'll just share this so you can probably relate to this. I have joked a number of times I believe that we're on this earth because we need to grow and progress, right? And I always joke that there's no better relationship on the planet. To make you grow and develop than having you live with somebody of the opposite sex. That marriage relationship is there to fulfill our need to be tried and tested. Second, only to that is a partnership relationship, right? You go in, you become good friends, you do a lot of things together. I think my two partners and I, we probably spend more time together with each other than, than we actually do with our wives sometimes. So, and it could be just like a marriage, right? It's incredibly fulfilling, but you have to make sure that you get the right one. Let's put it that way.
[00:30:19] Glenn Gonzales
Right now, Mike Woodfield is the co-owner. He's the c o o and I'm the c e o, but we're, we're 50 50 partners. He just steps up and steps in when I'm out and I step up and step in when he's out. You know, he just had a baby, but what a perfect partnership that we have developed over the years. They're out there and you find the good ones and you just stick with them. Cause you can do, you can make a lot of money, you get a lot of good things. But Ben and Earl about property management, I have maybe somewhat of a conflicting opinion on property management. My personal preference, I'll start with that. It's just Glen's personal preference. If I'm gonna use a third party property management company, I'll get a small to medium size property management company. Somebody that had call. It depends on where in the property. 2000 to 10,000 units, maybe 15. That's a kind of a small to medium sized company.
[00:31:13]
There are other management companies that have a hundred to 300,000 units in their portfolio. And I'm gonna share with you maybe two scenarios. I use a small to mid-size management company on some property owned in Kentucky, a couple 250 units, something like that. And when I call, I get the owner of the management company. And generally speaking, she's with the regional manager all the time. And I'll say, Hey, can you get some new handrails? When I was there last, they're, they're starting to fall off and she's like, yes, I'll take care of it and send you the bids. And they usually show up within about two days. Up in Fort Worth, I was using a mid-size management company. They got sold to a very large management company that's nationwide. And so the property that I had managed, company that I originally hired had about 15,000 units. The ones that manage it now through that acquisition, they probably are 150 to 200,000. So same scenario I call the regional or the manager, can I get a bid?
[00:32:09]
Yeah. It takes two weeks. I call again, I'm like, you know, did you get those bids? Oh, I forgot. I'm like, well, what happened? Well, I have 8, 9, 10 other properties in my portfolio. Um, I had an owner in town and I said, okay, uh, when are you gonna gimme those bids? And then when I do come in, they are so high and being in the business, I'm like, why are these so high? And the response is, well, they are approved vendor. We only have two that we can use. You know, we've vetted 'em out. They've got the proper insurance. They, you know, they got, they've been in business so long, they pay their fee to be our preferred vendor and we're going to recommend them. One of those vendors was that plumbing, that water heater that I just shared with you a little while ago. Right. It was their preferred vendor that wanted to charge $6,000 for a hot water heater that's serviced for machines. Right. But if you have a class A property that's five or 600 units and you may wanna go with a big national company, you know, that brings in corporate tenants and there's a place for everything really.
[00:33:13]
But that's where I'm conflicted. Right. Because I worked for big management companies. I worked for Equity Residential, super efficient, but they were a REIT and we had 250,000 apartments. But they were really good at what they did, and we managed our own. We didn't really do fee management for other people. They were, it was a big R and I learned a lot from that company. Um, I also worked for small, like Earl. I worked for Dale Longhurst, he had 2000 units in his fee management company, and I personally have owned 6,000 and did my own property management in-house, you know, so I've been all over the world on property management. I have different opinions, depends on the scenario, depends on the owner, depends on the investor. Some people are more hands-on and that's all they do. Some are, maybe they're a roofing contractor and they don't wanna be property manager. They just wanna invest in real estate. So my advice depends on who's asking the question. Is that elusive enough?
[00:34:06] Earl Cline
Interesting. You talked about big property management companies. I, I worked for a very large, it was a publicly traded read also, they were headquartered in Addison. You probably know who they are, but it used to be Walden, I think they changed their name to something else now. But they had over 80,000 apartment units and I don't know if it was because it was a reit. I am very outspoken about REITs. And how they manage. An example was at the end of the year, we all put our budgets in, right? And they looked at 'em and they said, if everybody spent this much money and collected this much rent, our share price is gonna lose $2 a share this year. We can't have that. So what they do, somebody that had no common sense about property management went through and said, you don't get 20 carpets this month, you only get 12. Right? And they dictated that and they sent it back to us and Walden ended up. Being sold. Literally, somebody came in and bought out, they paid about half of the full value of those properties, partly because they were on their books, what their acquisition, less depreciation, and that's how they were on their books.
[00:35:10]
So they were less by a long ways, and they weren't focused on raising the, the value of the property. They were only focused on, on increasing the income. And usually that meant cutting back the expenses to the point where they weren't run very well anyway. The worst management company that I ever worked for was that publicly traded reit and it was just exactly that They were fairly large and I think some of it was the size and the complexity of getting stuff through a vice president and a regional vice president and a senior vice president and all this kind of stuff or whatever it happened to be. Right. But part of it was because it was a reit and you've had that experience. I'm curious what you think about, uh, not necessarily working for, but the way a REIT runs a property versus a developer or that type of thing.
[00:35:54] Glenn Gonzales
You know, when I was with the reit, you're absolutely right. I mean, the numbers came from the top down, not necessarily what the assets needed up. And so they're managing towards return to the shareholders cuz it's a publicly traded company and that's what's driving their decisions. A developer or an owner that's gonna own it for 10, 15, 20 years, he's gonna look and see exactly what the property needs all the time. Although the REIT did that too, I was working, I mean the REIT that I worked for at Equity Residential, they were a really good company. They put money in the deal. They did try and do, like you said, Earl, hey, we'll give you 10 carpets this month and maybe you can get eight more that month or whatever. And then they would lay it out because it's all about cash flow, but you can't predict when you're gonna need a carpet. But it's just rolls up. It's all numbers. But I learned quite a bit actually in the reit and I've worked for large management companies and small ones. So yeah, good experience though in the property management. And really the answers really will be, it depends.
[00:36:54] Earl Cline
I'm curious also, I'm listening to, uh, you talk about your experience. It seems like you went from Salt Lake and then I'm assuming Seattle because you were with Equity Residential up in Seattle. That's right. Yep. And then what took you to, you're in Austin now. I've, I've spent a little bit of time in Dallas and, uh, and several times to Austin. I, I love both of those cities. I'm curious what got you to Austin?
[00:37:14] Glenn Gonzales
So I was getting laid off my job up in Washington. I actually switched from Equity Residential. I was working for a privately held company and they owned a competing company. I guess it was publicly traded. And I worked for the private side on the value add and I was an asset manager for them. So I went from being a regional manager, director type of having thousands of units to the ownership side. So now I work for the company that bottom, I was the asset management. I hired management companies to work for us. So all I did was switched. I still a W2, I just switched. Switched side of the table I sat on.
[00:37:51]
So I went from being the regional manager, answering the questions to the asset manager, asking the questions to the property management company. And that was a great experience too. But then in oh eight and oh nine, they were laying off tons of apartments, employees, me included. And the company went from, you know, 60 employees down to like, 15 and that was up in Washington. Same time Washington Mutual went outta business. It was a tough time for everybody. And so I moved to Texas cuz I had a, a person that I knew that was buying an apartment complexes and he wanted to self-manage. He got tired of the property management company. And so he had a couple thousand units and said, why don't you come down here, I'll make you a partner. And that's what got me from Washington down to Austin. And I did that for a little while until I just finally learned how to syndicate my own deals. Tell us a little bit about that process.
[00:38:45] Earl Cline
What it, uh, I know you did a couple of deals here and there. How big of a difference is it now, the idea of syndicating raising money and, and how much more complicated this makes your real estate?
[00:38:57] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah, so really when you're a W2 operator, you see things from the properties perspective all the time. Cause that's all I knew. And it gets really different when you're trying to buy a deal and you're negotiating the purchase price. And you've gotta really understand the type of financing and the amortization that you're gonna need to make that deal profitable or not profitable. You know, you factor in whether or not you're gonna do a cost segregation on these deals and the investors are gonna get a negative K one in year one, two, or three, or. Positive K one, cuz that that will determine the type of investors that are coming in. And then you really understand insurance and the premiums and the type of deductibles and the type of coverage you either have or don't have.
[00:39:41]
So your perspective from an owner versus your perspective as an operator are two different worlds. And I had a pretty steep learning curve moving from an operator to the ownership side and it just, you know, even my legal documents with the attorneys on getting the language correct for the partnership agreement and then being regulated and making sure that the private placement memorandum is in order with all of the s e c regulations and so forth. So there's just a lot to learn on the ownership side as a sponsor and as a syndicator, I'll tell you, if you're making money for your investors, they're paying you pretty well. So there's, there's that side of it. So, We had probably three quarters of our portfolio we'd written in some waterfall structures. So the more the investor made, the more, you know, my percentage ownership goes up and my cut gets bigger. So if they're making 20%, 25%, I'm getting a good chunk of the profits as well. So I was highly motivated to make them money and they like that structure. And so, I don't know, there's a lot to, we could talk about just on that alone, you know?
[00:40:52] Earl Cline
So I'm questioning, I'm, I'm gonna ask a couple quick questions about property management and, but what do you think an investor, if you're looking to hire a property management company, what do you think that as an owner, what questions should you be asking?
[00:41:04] Glenn Gonzales
That's a great question, Earl. I would ask what size company they have, number of units, their staff. I would find out what kind of software they're using. Tricky one is I would ask. If the regional manager that's gonna be over your property, are they centrally located to the other properties in that regional's portfolio and how many are in her or his portfolio? And the reason I would ask those questions is because if you have a regional manager and you want 'em to go visit your property, they can go there once a week, once a month, once a quarter, or once a year. And that will dictate on how busy that regional manager is and their capability of getting there. Right. So if I have a regional manager and part of their properties are in Dallas and some are in, you know, Waco and some are down in San Antonio, what is the likelihood of that regional actually getting there?
[00:42:01]
Yeah, slim to none. You know, they can't travel frequently enough to really be an effective property manager. On the flip side, if there's a regional that has seven or eight man properties in there, all within, call it all within Fort Worth. They have perfected their craft in Fort Worth. They know every vendor. They know the judge on the evictions, they know everything. And those are the good questions that they can ask is tell me about the regional and things of that nature. So interesting.
[00:42:29] Earl Cline
I've shared this a few times, I think, but. When I was managing the commercial division, all commercial properties, I had probably 120,000 square feet of tis under management. I used to get in the office at seven in the morning, I'd push the button on my phone that says that you got messages right. And, and I'd start downloading. And I had six or seven to-do list items from the day before that I had not gotten to yet. And they were rated 1, 2, 3, and four. And then I started taking notes and, and I'd get about halfway through the 15 messages from the night before. And I've got, oh my gosh, this is an emergency. I gotta go take care of this one right now. Hang up the phone. Go go make one phone call, which was two or three more phone calls, right? Then I'd come back and I'd push the button again. And now I'm at 15 or 16 again and I'm starting one by one. And sometimes it was four or five o'clock. And I'm looking at my assistant going, Hey, can you do me a favor? Go down to Subway and get me a sandwich because I'm starving. Yeah. And I'm not gonna be outta here. And people don't realize that that's how incredibly busy sometimes you get. Uh oh yeah. Uh, when you're doing property management.
[00:43:37] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah. Property management is, because I was in it for so many years. I mean, you literally are just putting out fires every single day. You know, whether it's an employee issue, they quit, gotta replace somebody, they got hurt. Workman's comp, there's claim on insurance, delinquency, collections, just you name it, every day there's a fire to be put out somewhere. And I feel. After being in it. And I have a lot of respect for property managers and regionals who are good at what they do because they're, gosh, they've got so many balls over the air at any one given time. And so if, if I don't get a call back from a regional today or tomorrow, I cut 'em a lot of slack.
[00:44:18] Earl Cline
It was in a, uh, a class long story, but I ended up being, uh, I had a, uh, uh, an anger management class has to do with a 20 year old divorce kind of a thing. But, and I'm trying to convince the guy, Hey, I really should not be here. I do not have a massive anger problem. And one of the things that I used as I'm talking to him is I, like, I have been a crisis manager my entire career, right? There is nothing. My wife can come in and scream and yell at me at the top of her lungs, and I'm just like, It's not gonna do any good to fight back. Let her calm down. Because I know in a couple hours or at least a day or two, she's gonna come back and say she's sorry. We're all gonna be happy again. But the, it's amazing when you go through a, I think we should have PST or whatever it is, the trauma if you've been in property management log.
[00:45:06]
Yeah. You need counseling for trauma care, I think. Without a doubt. Anyway, last thing about this. Tell me a little bit about owners. And we have owners that always joke. They got their financial reports every month. They put 'em in a binder. They gave 'em to their C P A once a year, and that was all that they did with them. And then I had other owners that, I mean, they were calling me every week going, Hey Klein, what about this and what about this? I literally learned to read financials from a mortgage guy that also owned about 500 units. We managed for him and he literally put me through the ringer every single month until I finally had every single question.
[00:45:44]
In advance before he called me and he knew what, and I knew what he was gonna ask. And after a couple of times of me having all the answers, he got bored with that. And then he showed up at the property one day and he calls me from the property and going, Hey, what's up with this tree? And what's up with this? And I'm like, oh my gosh, now I gotta go walk the properties before I send 'em the financials too. How often should an owner, how involved should they get to, uh, to get good, uh, service from your property management?
[00:46:09] Glenn Gonzales
You know, I think you get what you expect if you wanna get on calls and go over the financials. I think the regionals and the department will be, and the property manager, they'll be willing to do that. And I would recommend that, you know, I put together asset management plans. Uh, when we buy a deal and I give it to the property manager in the regional, I actually make 'em, sign it. Here's our marching orders. So when we get on a call every week for the first two months that we take over, buy an apartment community. That's frequent, right? But there's a lot of moving parts when you take over a new community, you know, especially if you're doing renovations, then it gets to once a month where we're going over our financials and we go over the financials with the property manager and the regional, and then it, sometimes it goes over longer or shorter.
[00:46:57]
But for the most part, those managers and that regional, they begin to understand the financials themselves because now they're looking at their own property from an owner's perspective. So if your owners aren't really taking the time to do that, you're really doing a disservice to yourself and to the apartment manager, property manager in the regional, because they will rise to the occasion. So I read the financials all the time. I even go home with our investors. So I dunno if that answered your question, Earl or not, but yeah.
[00:47:30] Earl Cline
Absolutely. Yeah. I personally believe this, the more involved you are with your management company, the less likely they are that $3,000 water heat. Yours was six, by the way. Yeah, right. And you wondered how much of that's going back to his brother-in-law, the plumber or whatever, you know what I mean? But the more often you get involved with those financials, the uh, less likely they are to quote, steal from you.
[00:47:51] Glenn Gonzales
So, yeah. Yeah. And you just gotta be hands-on. So, Ben, go ahead. You were gonna, I, I interrupted you. I could see. It's okay.
[00:47:58] Ben Waller
Do you have five more minutes? I know we said 60 minutes, but you have five more minutes.
[00:48:01] Glenn Gonzales
I got all day to talk about this stuff. I love this stuff. I going anywhere Earl can talk for hours too, so.
[00:48:08] Ben Waller
Yeah. Uh, maybe I'll have to reign us in. We've loved everything you've been sharing with us today, Glen. I wanna just briefly touch on Obsidian Capital. Can you give us a little detail about what it is you guys focus on and why somebody might come to talk to you about, uh, investing with you?
[00:48:23] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah, sure. I guess we'll talk about our most recent one. We just bought 232 units. We got that opportunity cuz um, close with some of the brokers and they had a for sale on the partnership side. Had to get rid of it, but it was just north of Austin and Temple and it had an assumed loan of 3.27% interest rate and it was fixed for the next 10 years, nine and a half years, to be honest. And so it has instant cashflow. They had done some improvements in stuff on the interiors and we bought it. Because they hadn't even touched the outside yet. It still looked Doug, but they did a lot of the heavy lifting on the inside, so they really weren't capitalizing or getting the most rents they could. And now that we've owned it for a month, month and a half, every person moves out. The new one moving in is like 300 bucks more.
[00:49:10]
So we're doing fairly well on the lift in today's environment. That's pretty good. So Sitting Capital is owned by Mike and I. We're very involved. We walk the units, we do our due diligence, we talk to all the investors. We are not doing a high amount of volume. We don't do deals just to do deals, but we make sure that it really is. Our deals are customized to our investors. If they wanna park their money and don't wanna worry about it for five or 10 years, we will take 'em that deal. There are other investors that I only like to type my money for three to five years. I don't wanna be long-term. So we could sign, find some potential value add.
[00:49:48]
We're actually building some stuff right now from the ground up and there's a group of investors that like newer product, so they're heavily involved in that. So we try and customize the deals and match up the investors to, to their personal goals. Cause everybody's got different goals. Some of 'em like risk riskier deals. Some of 'em don't want to think about it. They're gonna put money in just cashflow. Just send me a check once a quarter and I don't wanna pull it out and go find another deal that may or may not make as much money as the last deal. So then they all have different criteria and we try and just, we talk to all the investors on the phone, we talk to all of them.
[00:50:23] Ben Waller
Well, it sounds like you've got a ton of experience and you're demonstrating that by saying you have different investing strategies you use for different investors and you try to achieve the goals that they're looking for with different investment opportunities, right?
[00:50:35] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah, yeah, and they can find us on, I mean, we have our track record and, and information and links to podcasts like this on our website, which is Obsidian Capital co.com. So Obsidian Capital co. I think you have links and stuff. You'll, we'll have that in our show notes.
[00:50:50] Ben Waller
Yeah. Yeah. Glenn, I want to ask you, since you have so much experience in the market, what do you think will happen in the real estate market in the next five years? Obviously, this is a very broad question, but you can answer it however you want.
[00:51:00] Glenn Gonzales
Okay. I do have a crystal ball. Where did I put that thing? Yeah, here it is. And so, you know, the interest rates are gonna come back down to a reasonable level. I mean, we could not stay in business if interest rates were really at two and 3%. Banks can't stay in, they don't make enough money. The cost of money and all that is just too low. So that stimulated our economy and did a great job, right? And people started spending and then we got inflation. Now, we've gone to the other extreme, I believe, in the next five years that interest rates kind of come down a little bit to kind of the happy medium. And I think that is the right place that we'll need to be. So if you could in today's environment, find deals that you can underwrite to, then you pull the trigger. There's still a little bit of a disconnect where some sellers are still holding onto a four, four and a half cap rate, and interest rates are seven, seven and half percent. And that math doesn't add up. You can't buy something at a four cap and go get a new loan at seven and think you're gonna make money. Cause you can't.
[00:52:05] Earl Cline
We joke about that all the time, right? Yeah. We just tattoo stupid on their forehead. If your cap rate's gonna be higher than, uh yeah, they're your lower than your interest rate.
[00:52:13] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah. Yeah. And if you think you're gonna buy it at a four cap or four and a half cap and improve operations and then sell it at a three cap. So those that are really underwriting to compressed cap rates are not gonna do well. Right. So be conservative in underwriting. I also believe that when we're underwriting, I used to underwrite to a five or 6% rent growth. We are now at a 2% rent growth in our underwriting models. So, and in some cases, maybe flat, you know, Austin has seen double digit rent growth. Uh, double up in Dallas was, was very high as well, but, We're very conservative. And the reason we're doing that is we do believe that there will be some people being laid off work.
[00:52:55]
People will be affected by the higher interest rates. People will get nervous about spending, so they probably won't upgrade their apartment. They may stay in a classic unit a little longer. So there's so many variables that influence me personally. Plus, I lived through one of those markets where I personally lost a lot of money when the cycle came to an end and I lost all my money. You know, to be honest with you, I was broke, so I learned a lot. It hurts when you lose money, and I have vowed not to lose money for our investors. So I'd rather not win a deal and be more conservative today. And I would recommend that your investors kind of do the same thing your listeners is to really, if you get an offering where you see 10, 12% rent growth and you're going at a four cap, I would, I would just say ask a lot of questions.
[00:53:47] Ben Waller
That's a great point. So whether you're investing with a Obsidian Capital or any other group for that matter, make sure you're looking at the details of the financials. There's a lot of assumptions that are in there, right? And anybody can make them look however they want to. But being conservative in nature and making sure that the assumptions are making sense for the current market and what we think the market will be like in the future is very important in being able to actually hit those returns. Yeah. So you're at least not losing money and hopefully making a good profit on your investment.
[00:54:18] Glenn Gonzales
Yeah. It's very easy for a person in my position or a sponsor to have an exit cap rate at five, but that really maybe only gets the IRR to a marginal IRR, so they could just change that one number and say we're just gonna exit at a four and three quarter percent, uh, on the cap rate, and all of a sudden the profits just jumped. And so, and all they did was change one number in the spreadsheet and then that move that IRR up just enough to get somebody's attention. And so, Be cautious of that too.
[00:54:51] Ben Waller
So thank you for sharing that, Glen. Yeah, we could talk to you for hours. Our, most of our episodes are only about an hour, so we probably have to wrap things up. Is there anything else that you would like to have our listeners know about either property management or just real estate in investing in general that you feel is a, is a nugget that would be helpful?
[00:55:09] Glenn Gonzales
Real estate investing and being in property management has blessed my life and my family, so I'm, it's all I know, so I'm very biased. Right. I mean, but I've also seen investors make a lot of money as well, so, you know, to you, to your listeners, I guess the nugget would be just be realistic in your expectations. There's no such thing as Get rich quick. You see a lot of flash on, on Instagram and Facebook and some of those other social media platforms. It is a lot of work day in and day out. It's a grind and so, uh, my nugget is just be realistic.
[00:55:43] Ben Waller
That's very important. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Earl, do you wanna do the Final four or do you want me to do the final four?
[00:55:48] Earl Cline
Yeah, lemme go ahead. And, uh, we, we always ask four questions of, uh, of all of our guests. It's interesting to kind of summarize and get a unique perspective. And so some of these, I can guess, but we'll ask them anyway. The first one is, what's your favorite business book? And I, and I know you're gonna say it's, um, Maintenance Man to Millionaire. I think it is, but uh, yeah, no, go ahead.
[00:56:09] Glenn Gonzales
You know, there's 10 Great Commandments that are really good things that can help people stay on the right course and make good business decisions if you follow those. I was given a book that I read recently, never split the Difference, and I forgot the name of the author, but it's a good book. It really talks about negotiations and it's very helpful insights, right? You never split the difference, and it just talks about how you can get to the right spot through negotiations where other people don't have to feel like one person won, one person failed, and it's, it's a good read. Yeah. Very cool. Chris Vos, I think. Yeah. Thank you, Ben. Yeah, that's right. What do you think brings you happiness?
[00:56:46]
Oh, there's so many things. I wish you guys could see it. I got my family portrait up there on the wall over there, and, um, beautiful. You know, right now I have, you know, six grandkids and my wife and I love spending time together. I don't know, I'm a family guy. At the end of the day. That's what brings me, you know, more happiness than anything else. And it's funny you say that. My daughter is calling me as we speak, so I'll, I'll text her back, you know, family, I really, I go and I do real estate. I'm all in. I perfect my craft to be the very best I can, but in the end, I take all the spoils that I can and share it with me and my family and, and we spend time together. So, You might relate to this.
[00:57:34] Earl Cline
I, uh, I joke all the time if I'd have found out how much fun grandkids were, I'd have skipped over the kids. Yeah. And gone straight to grandkids.
[00:57:44] Glenn Gonzales
So, yeah. They love you. They just wanna play. I can just thank you candy and leave It's the best.
[00:57:50] Earl Cline
Best. And send them home to mom and dad. Yeah. Anyway, tell me what your future retirement looks like.
[00:57:58] Glenn Gonzales
Oh, future retirement. You know, my wife jokes that I will never retire because I love what I do. I come to work and I really enjoy it. I, I like the people I work with. If I could, I would probably come into work two days a week and then I would travel. I would go visit the kids, the grandkids. I would go see cool places. My wife and I recently went to Israel and we went to the Holy Land and over to Egypt and had a wonderful time and we, that was on her bucket list and that it was great to be in a position to do that and to go for, you know, two weeks there. So I think my retirement, uh, if I could build my cashflow up and, and I'm well underway. I've got enough cash flow through just one here, one there, you know, just a little bit of investing that it's replaced my salary. So that's just on cashflow, so that's fun.
[00:58:51] Earl Cline
Very cool. Uh, what, what do you think, uh, the best way to give back?
[00:58:55] Glenn Gonzales
Oh, if you could be a mentor or share with somebody along the way, and I, I don't wanna get emotional, but there were a couple guys in my career that took me under their wing. And I'll forever be grateful for them because they showed me the ins and outs outside of school or formal education on really what it takes to be a business person. And I today find that so valuable. So I do as much as I can to mentor people and help and answer questions. You know, I don't charge for that. There are people that will mentor for a fee and I mentor because I've been mentored before. So I give back to the industry as much as and as often as I can.
[00:59:35] Earl Cline
Thanks man, we appreciate you sharing, and this has been so much fun. It's good to catch up. I do realize that I was gonna meet an old acquaintance from a way, way back in the past, uh, long, long time ago today, but I really appreciate the time we spent. Roger and I are thinking about going down, visiting a friend of mine down in Houston. We're going to, uh, ride motorcycles out to, uh, Twisted Sisters, which is just, uh, just a little bit west of Austin.
[00:59:59] Glenn Gonzales
I've been on that road when I had a gold wing. So yeah. We should stay online and visit for just a sec after you're done recording. But, uh, Ben and, and Earl, this has been so much fun and you've allowed me to ramble on and share experiences and stories, and I'm very grateful for that opportunity. And thank you for, uh, allowing me to be a guest on your show.
[01:00:21] Ben Waller
Absolutely. Let's just finish and then we can keep chatting. On today's episode, we covered getting started in real estate investing. Glen and Earl shared quite a bit of knowledge about what it's like managing investment property, and Glen also shared with us what Obsidian Capital does and, uh, how you might be able to, to work with them as with investing.
[01:00:41] Earl Cline
Earl, will you finish? Uh, yeah. Again, thanks very much. Thanks for joining us on the, uh, Retired Wealthy and Happy podcast, and we'll see you all next time. Thanks, Glenn. Thanks.
[01:00:50] Glenn Gonzales
Thanks Glenn.
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