Real estate investment is full of challenges and opportunities. So, in this episode, we invited Adam A. Adams to share his real estate journey and his forward-thinking strategy for a successful real estate career. Dial in now to learn more!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
About Adam A. Adams
Adam A. Adams, known in the real estate community as “Triple A,” has educated thousands of investors through real estate conferences, radio & podcast interviews, his coaching program, and his thriving Meetup group. His efforts to educate and inspire other investors have earned him the prestigious title “Master Investor” by Think Realty magazine, and he is also a three-time Hall of Fame winner from RE Mentor for his successes in multifamily syndications.
In 2005, Adam took the plunge into part-time real estate investing, but it quickly became his full-time passion. Today, he hosts the Podcast on Podcasting podcast and is the owner of Grow Your Show - a company based on serving podcast clients from all around the world, helping them launch, grow, and monetize without being overworked.
Connect with Adam
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
Real estate investment is full of challenges and opportunities. So, in this episode, we invited Adam A. Adams to share his real estate journey and his forward-thinking strategy for a successful real estate career. Dial in now to learn more!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
About Adam A. Adams
Adam A. Adams, known in the real estate community as “Triple A,” has educated thousands of investors through real estate conferences, radio & podcast interviews, his coaching program, and his thriving Meetup group. His efforts to educate and inspire other investors have earned him the prestigious title “Master Investor” by Think Realty magazine, and he is also a three-time Hall of Fame winner from RE Mentor for his successes in multifamily syndications.
In 2005, Adam took the plunge into part-time real estate investing, but it quickly became his full-time passion. Today, he hosts the Podcast on Podcasting podcast and is the owner of Grow Your Show - a company based on serving podcast clients from all around the world, helping them launch, grow, and monetize without being overworked.
Connect with Adam
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] Adam Adams
Interest rates make a huge difference on the value of a property because you can't pay so much for it if the interest rates are high. The only thing that really happens when interest rates are high is some other countries, they come in and buy U. S. real estate for cash because they have negative interest rates.
[00:00:17] 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.
[00:00:40] Roger Jacobsen
Welcome to the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. Today we have the totally awesome Adam AAA Adams, who's a good friend and he'll be talking about some of his different real estate things and a tax lien sale. That's awesome. Welcome to the show, Adam. Hey, what's up, man? And then we have Anthony here. Co-hosting. How you doing, Anthony?
[00:00:59] Anthony Esparza
Pretty good. Glad to be back for another recording. Sounds like we have a pretty cool guest. Adam Adams here. So thanks for being here with us.
[00:01:08] Roger Jacobsen
Great. So, Adam and I met about five years ago. It was a Facebook post that he created where he's like, come to Denver. If you come to Denver and see the eight asset classes, I will give you a ticket for 9 and 22 cents. So on a whim, I went to Denver and I was super excited at the time about self-storage. I didn't really even know what the other seven asset classes were. What anything had to do with them and just decided to drive to Denver. So I went to Denver, got the 9 and 22 cent ticket for eight asset classes. While I was there, he invited us to come in November. Says, if you guys are here and you want to come, I'll give you a ticket for 11 and 22 cents. November. So I went to that one with Richard Gates and then I cornered Adam at one of the dinners and I says, Adam, you know what? It would be so cool if you came to Utah and presented in front of my group, Utah REA. And he's like, sure. And I'm like, bro, this isn't charter jets and limos and VIP service. This is like, you fly Southwest and I pick you up to the airport. And he's like, no, I'm from Utah and I'd be glad to do it. I'll visit my family. I'll drive my dad's truck. I'll come speak with you. And it was awesome. So that's how it got started.
[00:02:26] Adam Adams
Yeah, it's funny. I was just telling somebody about that, that same story, just it may have been yesterday and was very recently and you came up and the 9. 22 came up and it's just interesting that we're kind of bringing it back full circle for, at least for me, the listener, maybe they're like, what is he talking about? In my opinion, I think it's interesting because I've been thinking about this five years ago, just yesterday.
[00:02:52] Roger Jacobsen
So you introduced me to apartment syndication. You and your team were incredibly knowledgeable. And with me and my team, we ended up where like 140 doors and millions and millions of dollars in real estate under asset management and stuff. So it's really incredible. And when you look at the. There's people like Tate Siemer that have just blown it out of the water, and it was all because of that 9. 22 that Roger went into Denver on a whim.
[00:03:24] Adam Adams
You know, if you didn't come to that, then I think Emma and Tate... And there's a couple other people that come to mind, but I think Emma and Tate would have never been into multifamily as much as they are.
[00:03:37] Roger Jacobsen
A hundred percent. And there's so many people too, that at least know of you and everything else, because of all our trips to Denver and everything else. And you and chat Whitfield have been here multiple times to Utah. So that's really cool. Why don't you start off with giving us some of your history and bio and what you've done?
[00:03:57] Adam Adams
Yeah, I will start. With my stepdad, so I grew up in Utah. My stepdad is an investor and a business owner and he had been telling me, you know, to save 10 percent invest 10 percent pay yourself first, get your taxes out right away and very smart advice. And I wish that I had started it that earlier, because I started working for him when I was about five years old, six years old, started driving the tractor when I was eight, watering plants for a dollar an hour. And he kept telling me this, but I was like, but what can I do if I only have 40 cents of my own dollar? It seems crazy. So as I was growing up, that advice stuck with me. And it's interesting. I'm dyslexic. I don't like to read or anything. So eventually this book called Rich Dad Poor Dad came out and I think this was in 1997. I must have been 16 years old. So he wanted me to read that book. So he gave it to me and I never read it until college like fast forward to like nine years later or something like that. And he buys me a piece of property and then for 100 bucks off a tax deed. I'm Basically what happened is there was a tax deed, and it was for just the owed back taxes for a cabin lot at the time.
[00:05:16]
And this hundred bucks, he made me pay it. Like, he gave it to me, and then later on, his accountant, I guess, didn't want him to lose out on money, so I had to pay what he paid. So that's how I got that first piece of property, and now I finally own a piece of America. I was in college at the time, and it was just like an acre of land in Utah, and interestingly enough, two years later, in 2007, they started bringing like electricity, water, fiber, like internet. So the values were going up very, very quickly. And so this guy reached out to a real estate agent, like Anthony. And so he reached out to a real estate agent and this agent gives me a call and a text, and I think he emailed me as well, like because it was an owner's association, it was like a private community. And so all of our information was on hand and so he got ahold of me and he's like, hey, this guy wants to buy these things. I think it was like only for like 12, 500 or something like that, but a very good return. So like for 12, 500 dollars and I was like, oh, that's. Great. I'm still in college. I'll do it.
[00:06:29]
And anyway, when I sold that, I realized that I made more per hour or more per the whole year. I could, if I would have graduated with my degree and started working. So I decided to read that book, Rich Dad Poor Dad. I was like, you know what? I'll read the book that my dad told me to read because this was pretty epic. And I guess he's right about some things. I read it. Which was not easy, but easier because I don't know if you guys have tried reading Robert Kiyosaki, but I think it's meant for someone like me. And I learned from that the same stuff my dad had been telling me this whole time. You basically should have a business or a form of income and you should put as much of that money toward investing as possible. So, I decided, okay, I'm gonna start. What Robert did was Robert was a passive investor. I don't know if you all knew that, but he never really bought the houses. He never managed the houses. He invested with some people that did apartment syndication. So basically, he would keep his focus on his business and then as much money as he could, he would give it to these.
[00:07:31]
Guys, these players who did apartment syndication and that's what he taught in his book and then I went to one of his events actually in Utah, Salt Lake at the top floor of the Wells Fargo building and got to meet him and he was an interesting guy. Sometimes he's a little moody and sometimes he's a little forceful. I'll say that much. But at that event, that's when we learned he's like, you think I own single family? You think I'm running the team? Deal. And everybody's like, yeah, because that's what we think when we think we need to get in real estate. And he's like, are you kidding me? I put all of my focus on my business. I make as much money as I can so I can give it to someone else to invest for me. And I think it was, I'm trying to remember the guy that he invested with. He's pretty well known. And I've spoken on stage with him in Texas once upon a time. Just can't remember his name. Anyway, so this thing about apartment syndication became an idea for me, and I did my first apartment transaction. It was only a threeplex, and it didn't go so well because I bought it in 2008. So we can end there, but that's some of the stuff that I had learned. That's kind of what got me into what I do.
[00:08:42] Anthony Esparza
That's awesome. Super cool. Question come from me since I'm kind of the young buck around here, but I know you were talking about pretty much owning your first piece of land, then you sold it in college and then you read the book and that kind of got your ticker going off. So what were your first kind of early on deals? I mean, did you jump straight into apartment syndication? Did you do single family, multifamily? How did you build off of that first one and continue to move in the direction that you're in?
[00:09:09] Adam Adams
Yeah, well, after selling the acre of land in that cabin lot. And the owners association which now has a house on it and I think it's like a half a million now after doing that I read the book and then my next steps the takeaways that I got from the book were so he talked about the four quadrants employee quadrant self employed the business quadrant and the investor quadrant and so when I was looking at that I thought. He talks a lot about any of the quadrants is good. You can make great money in any place. For example, on his game Cashflow, the people that are teachers, you know, have a W2 and they're some of the lowest paid in the nation. He talks about the teachers and how as long as they start investing as soon as possible, then they can get out of the rat race, which means they can be financially free.
[00:09:57]
So I thought to myself, all right, I'm going to start a business because I need a backup employee quadrant you pay a little bit more in tax that self employed it's a lot better for tax wise but you can get in trouble so my goal was to be a business owner so I started to do two things in 2007 I launched a handyman company. And I started doing property management. So the way that I did property management was I called and called and called people I had the worst pitch ever I called people over and over and over and I was like, hey, could I live? Hey, i'm looking for an apartment looks like you've got an apartment I want to live for free and I want to be your manager What do you say and I got a lot of no's but reed quinn At the 18 plex, just South of BYU. He said, that's what I'm looking for. And so I was pretty excited. I started managing the 18 unit. And then he gave me his 4 unit in Provo, and then he gave me a condo in Orem, so I was in 3 different cities, and just only working for him, and the way that I started that handyman business is interesting, because on the top of the 18 unit, It's three floors, and so there's six units across there was six swamp coolers.
[00:11:11]
Now, your listener might not know what that is. If they're from Utah or Colorado, they probably do. But if they're from Texas or Florida, they're like a swamp cooler. Anyway, there was six of these on the top of the building, and I was commissioned to find somebody to do that stuff. So I've got this guy to come out a second guy, and I got a third guy. And the prices were insane because I thought that they would be complicated. But they took off the screens and it was the simplest machine you could ever imagine. And so I'm like, that's all you're going to do? And they're like, yeah. And so what I did is I went to read and I go read. I got one person saying it's going to be 150 per unit just to look at it. And if they need to do anything, then it's going to be like 50 bucks an hour. And so the estimate is this. I don't remember what that was. We just call it like 1, 500 or 2, 000 bucks. And then the next guy was about the same. And the next guy was about the same. They averaged about 300 per unit. And I realized that it would not take very long, and so I just swallowed, did a dry gulp, and took a breath, and I was like, I think I could do all of them for this amount, plus parts.
[00:12:26]
It ended up, I was getting paid minimum wage, or, I don't know, it was like 12 bucks an hour back then. And I go, I could do it for this and I got nervous because that was going to end up being like 35 an hour for what I assumed. And he goes, yeah, you can go ahead and do it. So that's when I was like, I'm going to start doing this for other people. So I built up a small company where I had 13 employees and you remember how I sold that one piece of land and made like 12, 000 or whatever it was now that I start this business. I remember other people in my college. I was going to Utah Valley University, except it was called UVSC back then. All the other people at the college, they were making something like 10 grand a year going to school. And I ended up launching this company, this handyman company, while also working for Reed. And the handyman company was netting me 20, 000 a month with my 13 employees. And I was just like every month I'd make twice as much as a lot of the other people that were making it through a whole year. And I thought that was really, really cool.
[00:13:36]
Of course, 2008 end up happening and things change, but that's where I kind of started seeing some of the magic of running a business and investing in real estate. If we fast forward, I lost my apartment in 2011. Like it started costing me a lot of money in 2009 and a lot more in 2010. And 2011, I finally called up the lender and I said, I can't pay this again. Like I've used all of my credit cards. I've used all of my savings to support this failing apartment and I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'm out of options. And so I did a deed in lieu of foreclosure, stayed away from real estate for a couple of years and then I got back full time, 2015. Wow.
[00:14:17] Roger Jacobsen
So for background, what were you going to major in at UBSC?
[00:14:23] Adam Adams
Music education. I was a composer. I wanted to be a band director. So music had always been a big thing for me ever since eighth grade. And my goal was to give that type of value, what I had learned, how I had gained. I had become a different person after learning music. And I wanted other people to have that. And of course I was writing music, like every night I was staying up like until 3, 3. 30 in the morning and waking up at 6 for early morning orchestra. So like music was a big, big thing for me. So that was my goal. My goal was to become a band director and. I think that they start out or back then. I think that they started out at something like 12 grand a year. So it was just like, I sold this 1 piece of property and I made like more than I would have made an entire year of working. That's pretty insane.
[00:15:12] Roger Jacobsen
500 a month versus 12 grand would be 1000. So you're making 20 times. That's why you make a year.
[00:15:21] Adam Adams
Yeah, I don't know the actual math. I don't dare agree with you just in case it's not right. I need to write it down to that, yeah, I was really a lot happier running a business and investing in real estate. Of course, I didn't start doing the syndication because I didn't know anyone to do that. So I bought my own triplex and that's honestly the big reason why it failed. This is a good story for anyone. Whether you're launching a podcast and you want to do the work yourself. Whether you're going to buy a triplex and do the work yourself. Or you're going to do a business and you're going to wear all the hats. For sure, this is a good takeaway. So I bought this triplex and the total rents were about 3, And my mortgage was there. I had expenses like taxes, insurance and things like that. I had to get the lawn mowed and everything else. So I was going to net 300 bucks a month. And because Robert Kiyosaki teaches you not to do it yourself. So I thought about hiring a property management company. But the problem was, Okay. That they would take 10 percent of the rents which meant that I would own this thing But it wouldn't actually be an asset Robert Kiyosaki teaches it's an asset if it puts money in your pocket But if I bought this triplex And lived there I would break even.
[00:16:45]
So basically I wouldn't spend money on, I wouldn't lose money on my mortgage or rent either. I would break even. So it probably would have been fine. But I said, hell no, I'm not going to do that. Like I want to make that money. There's no reason to have this if it's not going to put money in my pocket. So what I ended up doing is I spent a ton of money, a ton of time making less than minimum wage. And I messed up on my contracts because I didn't want to hire an attorney because I wanted there to be money in the bank. And so for me, wearing all the hats for me, not being willing to put it off to someone else is actually the reason why I lost it. I should have had a property management company, but I said, no, I've been managing 23 units for this other guy for a year. I'll be fine. And I wasn't so. There you go.
[00:17:30] Anthony Esparza
Crazy. We, um, jump back down that road of like, even like somebody like myself, I'm sure there's other pretty young people out there like looking to do somewhat similar of kind of what you did, but trying to wear all the hats and that's honestly like, in at least. I can relate in that way because sometimes I catch myself doing that with my business. There's things I do myself that I don't really need to do, but I do it to save the money. And so if you could expand on the idea of like, why you should be hiring out a property manager, why you should be maybe not netting 300 a month and just break even because if you could kind of dive into that reason why that's important.
[00:18:09] Adam Adams
Well, first off, if I didn't live there, Cause I paid myself rent. I bought it in a company and I paid the company rent, if that makes any sense. So if it wasn't me there, I probably would have been netting money, but because I was actually living there, I was pretty close to breaking even. But I mean, the idea of wearing all the hats can go anywhere. Here's a couple of things that happened to me. I didn't have the contract that they would have had if I used a professional property management company. I took from a lot of other contracts and I kind of put things together and attorneys will know this better than anyone else. Some of the language needs to be conspicuous, they'll say some of it needs to be in like all caps or even bolded or else just because it's written in the contract, it's not enforceable if it's not conspicuous, if it's not like in face. And, to me, I didn't know any of that back then, so I was like, Oh, they accidentally wrote all this in capitals, so I'll go ahead and fix it. I'm getting, like, weeded in the small details. And, of course, like, I had a lot of other mistakes in there, or I would make up my own laws. Like, which also can't be enforceable.
[00:19:19]
I'm like, no, that's not strong enough. I need them to do this. So anyway, I wrote my contract. I did my best. I was about your age as well. I wrote my own contract. I never went to law school. So it wasn't very good. And additionally, just like the applications, like application fees and things like that would have been a thing. And I got to a place like after 2008 and 9 in Utah, like Utah was maybe at least a year behind most of the other rest of the country. So a lot of the country started feeling things in 2008. And in Utah, we didn't feel it until another year after. And I would say that, like, me doing all of the work made me stressed out. And here's another thing. And I think this goes along with your question as well. As I'm pulling away from my business that I was netting 20, 000 a month, As a college student, and I thought that I was like the best ever. You're like, untouchable, right? I have to pull away from this company. In order to put my time, you know, I was working about 60 hours a week in my company and I was taking 18 credits.
[00:20:28]
I was very busy and now I'm also running my own property that I've never ran on my own. And I also don't have the systems ready when I worked for read. He had a lot of the systems. He had the contract. He had things that he wanted me to do and he still made a lot of the big decisions. And so now it's me making the decisions plus we're in a recession, but now it's me making the decisions and I'm doing it poorly because really, I don't have the experience or the knowledge in order to do it the right way. And so imagine I was making 20 grand a month over here, but in order to not lose 300 a month in this other place, I'm starting to lose 15 grand a month in this other place. Right. So if we do the math, it's like at least 50 times. It might be 500 times. But to save 300, whatever 15, 000... Divided by 300 is 500. I'll just make a guess. I can't say for sure because again, I don't have it in front of me, but I lost a lot more by trying to save that money. And here's the thing that I think people that are launching businesses do people that launch a podcast do people that start getting into real estate. They say I don't have enough money to hire an executive assistant I don't want to hire a salesperson because i'm good enough at sales and I don't want to lose part of the revenue to somebody else and so what we end up doing is we end up wearing way too many hats and because we're not able to focus on one thing.
[00:22:03]
Then nothing that we do is really at a full capacity. So like if it's a podcast, for example, if we're editing our own show, if we're marketing our own show, if we're trying to do all of those pieces and not just push record, we're doing essentially 12 an hour work, 17 an hour work, 25 an hour work in order to save a couple of pennies. Yeah. While. Over here because we're not staying in our genius zone for example a podcaster who has a business where they can make let's just say twenty grand a month they can net twenty grand a month but now they're taking twelve of their hours each week and putting it into trying to figure out this podcast. And they've got over on this other side, their business starts to fail and it was just because they didn't want to lose money. But if they would have done what I guess Roger did with his podcast, for example, hired a company like outsourced all of this. So now I can just push record. Now Roger can still stay in his apartment syndication business. You know what I mean? Now he can stay in what he's focusing on in his genius zone. And I think that that becomes a big mistake for most people starting a business or Getting into real estate or doing a podcast. Yeah. Like the smartest thing that your listener could probably do when it comes to investing is keep making the money that they're making and passively invest with somebody else. Like where somebody else is already running the show like Robert Kiyosaki did. Invested in syndication. For example, I love that.
[00:23:36] Roger Jacobsen
I'd say that one of my biggest growth things and I learned this as a carpenter because I did finish carpentry up in Park City for a long time where I was probably one of the better, if not the top top tier, it was really hard for me to hire other people because I'd be looking at people going, you're a D carpenter. And I'm an a carpenter and so when I learned is I could hire 2 guys that were D carpenters at 60 percent and because I would be almost like a passive situation, but I've hired them. I get 120 percent out of 2 guys and I didn't actually have to work to do that. That was really 1 of my big aha moments. So I could hire people selectively choose what I would and wouldn't allow them to do. And that kind of began where I was able to delegate and use other people to help me accomplish my goals.
[00:24:31] Adam Adams
Yeah, that'd be fun, especially in Park City. That would be a cool place to do carpentry. I think you can make good money and do probably you have a lot of really fun things to create.
[00:24:42] Roger Jacobsen
Absolutely. Super rewarding. The hardest thing was when I was working up on Alan Gold's house and during the time of building his house, it was like a 7. 7 million house on bid and he sold Biomed Realty, which is a nationwide huge company for 4. 1 billion and his net was like 2. 3 billion and I'm sitting here like. I'm having a hard time earning like 40 an hour. Adam, you haven't mentioned that you are our producer. Is that because you don't want to? Because I want you to.
[00:25:19] Adam Adams
Uh, no, I, I guess I just don't want to self promote on someone else's show. So I think that's really where it probably stems from. Like I'm impressed with you that you were smart enough to offload your stuff to someone, but I didn't want to mention that it was. Our company that was doing all the work for you.
[00:25:37] Roger Jacobsen
We want to thank you personally, because you've taught us so much. And in this next space, you run grow your show. That is our podcast producer. So we're able to use your 20. VAs to help us produce and edit and everything else. And we're so busy that we constantly are running out of time and the emails build up and everything else. And that's even with your help. So thank you very much.
[00:26:05] Adam Adams
Yeah. So whenever I launched that podcast agency, my thought was, I want to serve people who are really busy. Make good money and they just want to be able to offload the hard parts of their production, like all of the back office stuff. And so I started thinking about who I would call and it was really successful people that were friends and for the most part real estate friends because I had been in real estate since, you know, maybe since Anthony was born. I don't know. Very likely that's very likely. Yeah, so around too long, we've really enjoyed serving. Podcasters and our 30 some odd employees help about 60 ish podcast hosts right now and about 100 over the last 4 years and our goal is to increase that and be able to serve more people at a high level.
[00:26:56] Roger Jacobsen
It's incredible. I really enjoyed listening to the creative real estate podcast and that was always my go to when I was going on an airplane as I download several episodes and depending on how long the flights were. I'd get like four or five episodes and it was always incredible. So thank you for doing that.
[00:27:18] Adam Adams
Awesome. Now, um, thank you for telling me where.
[00:27:21] Roger Jacobsen
Where are you at with apartment syndication? You had a big team and…
[00:27:27] Adam Adams
Yeah, I like the question and I need to dance around and skirt around it somehow. Where am I with apartment syndication? My biggest mistake that I had ever made is just partnering. With people too soon, and there's a lot behind that for me, I found over the years that having business partners isn't my favorite. I'd rather have employees. I'm fairly lazy and so I want to hire people that do stuff. And when I had partners, business partners in the syndication space, for example, I did some work like I podcasted I did all the social media stuff I ran the events I planned the events I invited people the events and so I was able to stay in my genius zone but with business partners they wanted to hold me accountable for other things that were outside my genius zone. And it really stressed me out. It really overwhelmed me. It was like, no, no, no, no. This isn't what I do. I'm already working a hundred hours a week for you. I'm already working a hundred hours a week. And the reason we're successful is because you do the thing you're good at. You do the thing you're good at.
[00:28:35]
And you've been letting me do the thing that I'm good at. And so it was a source of contention for me where arguments stemmed and stress would come from. It was being held accountable for things that I didn't want to do in the first place. I never agreed to, and then they would think that I'm lazy. They would be like, he's lazy, which is absolutely true. I don't want to work at all. I want to be retired. I want to just have fun. I want to be on the beach. I want to go to the gym. Yeah, just like do other things than work all the time. And especially when it's something that I'm not very good at, or it's not my skill. Kind of like when you were talking about in the green room for a second, you were talking about how like technology isn't really your thing. It's not your favorite thing. But at the same time, we can control our own attitudes toward things. I tried and tried and tried to, you know, control my attitude and I was doing okay. But one day things kind of. And so there's really two parts to it. There's the part of where I'd rather just be in charge and not work very much.
[00:29:38]
Just kind of sit on, you know, like a board of directors type of seat as like a CEO type of thing, but not spending a lot of time in the minutia and having employees that could do everything. And so it's that part. And then it was the part where I lost my apartment, my multifamily back in 2011, where in 2009, it hit me hard in 2010. Like, I'm barely scraping by. And in 2011, I finally have to call up the lender and be like, I don't know what to do. So I've become a little overly sensitive and afraid of Whenever the next crash might be just because I was in one and lost an apartment, which is embarrassing. And I've got to tell you about it. And your listener probably is hearing that I lost an apartment. None of us wants to say those things out loud. And I certainly don't want it to happen more than once. And so when I was looking at the the market in 2019. I had felt like it was the longest up, let's call it a bull market. It was like the longest up word trending market that we had seen in a while. And I expected that something would change in the next few years. And so the other reason that I slowed down and was like thinking, Oh, I'll just start a podcast agency. Is because I don't want to be holding too much real estate if there is a crash now. It doesn't look like there's going to be one when covid happened.
[00:31:03]
I was like, I knew it. That didn't really make a big difference. So who knows? I have a couple of houses and I have a couple of apartments that were syndicated that we still have left me and my team. We are still business partners. We didn't like nobody bought out anybody. But once those are sold, they'll be done and If I see a crash happen, I'll probably start syndicating again and raising equity for deals. And that just stems from, A, I definitely don't want business partners. And B, I don't know when the market is going to change. And I would like to wait until it already has changed and is starting to go back up. Like, for example, if I would have bought in 2005, well, I bought that other piece of land. But if I would have bought multifamily in 2005 and sold it in 2008, It would've been a lot different than buying it in 2008 and selling it or giving it back in 2011. Same thing if I would've bought it in 2010 and sold it this year, you know, I'd be a very rich man. So timing of the market makes a difference. I think it's important. And I have always thought I want to be in a market cycle where there's a tailwind rather than a headwind. So I want the market to project me even further than I can on my own versus the market to kind of fight against me. And so I've just gotten really cautious about that as well. That's great info.
[00:32:25] Roger Jacobsen
We really appreciate you sharing that. The thing that I'm seeing right now is I kind of feel like we're in a false bottom. There's a lot of syndicators right now that are facing a new cap rate. And I watched somebody's Instagram real today that is a popular lender here locally. And she was describing an apartment that had been bought at 1. 1 million and they had a loan for 800, 000. And now the new value with the higher cap rate on this particular deal is a 724, 000 evaluation. And there's people that are out there that are creating rescue funds to buy some of these things. And I don't feel like we've really hit the real bottom. I mean, we don't know exactly what interest rates will do. We know inflation is high and the government wants to fix it. But they stalled on interest rate increases on the last meeting. Where they go next is still, you know, a crystal ball. Question, so we could see interest rates go up again that could put the hurt on more people. And again, extend the amount of people that are in these shorter term loans. So, they get caught by the next 1.
[00:33:37] Adam Adams
Yeah, there's a couple of people that are pretty well known in apartment syndication right now that not all of their deals are going as well as they wanted them to go. So some things have changed market wise, and I think a lot of it has to do with interest rates and perhaps even cap rates, which I didn't even know had changed 4 to 4. 5 years. But definitely. Interest rates make a huge difference on value of a property because you can't pay so much for it if the interest rates are high. The only thing that really happens when interest rates are high is Japan and some other countries, they come in and buy U. S. real estate for cash because They have negative interest rates in some of those other countries as well. So it's like they will keep the values up high because they're not using loans. Like most of us are using loans. So they're going to make money regardless. But for the majority of syndicators, I think it makes more sense that we do like a 80, 20 loan, or maybe even just like a 70, 30 loan. And it can get really tough if you have higher leverage, like your total amount of cash flow goes way down. So some people have struggled and some people are keeping their properties in a really good place. For me, I'm just going to wait. I'm going to wait. And then whenever I see that things are at something that looks like a bottom and it's about to go back up, that's when I'm back in.
[00:35:05] Anthony Esparza
I got a question. Going back to 2011 when you lost your property, sounds like you've kind of you're waiting to get back in the game. Sounds like you're going to do so, but I'm curious, and this might be like a viewer standpoint question, but what did you learn and coming out of 2011 when that did happen? And obviously you're, you're okay now and and you've worked things out, but if you could go back, what would you have done differently? Say timing the market? Sometimes timing the market is. Even like Roger said, a crystal ball, you don't really know where it's going to go. If it's going to stay flat up, down, whatever. What would you take just from that experience? Like, would you have done anything differently? Maybe it was hiring a property manager and just focusing more on your business. Next time around. Are you going to take any different precautions? Are you going to leverage your properties better? What would you say about that kind of situation, what you learned and what you're going to take forward with you?
[00:36:01] Adam Adams
I think that's a really great question and I think it's kind of hard to answer everything. I've learned a lot and one of the things is that I should have a professional doing that stuff. I should never be stressing myself out, working harder than I need to, not being able to focus on the thing that makes me the most amount of money just in order to keep the small amount here. That's a big lesson. Something else that I have done really well ever since losing that property and knowing that some of it had to do with my own contract that I hold from other contracts that I had seen and tweak things to make them quote better is that I always, always, always hire a attorney when it comes to anything to do with the law. Now, Roger knows a partner of mine, which we can just like keep nameless, especially for this. Who did a lot of work on our property and he exited a deal. Against my pleading that he needed to have an attorney write the exit class at the exit contract. So, basically, you go under contract. You have an goes under contract and then you're about to purchase this property.
[00:37:17]
There are only certain ways that you can get out of a property in our contract. We did not have force majeure cited. So this was in the very beginning of 2020 force measure was not part of our contract and explain what force mature is. Oh, yeah, it's like an act of God. It means like covid or an earthquake or a fire or everybody moves out of a city for some reason, like something crazy catastrophe, a tsunami or whatever would happen. That would say, hey. Because this crazy act of God just happened, a fire or whatever, now it's no longer in our best interest to close on this property. So you can use force majeure as a thing in a contract to protect you in case something like that happens. All of a sudden, you try to buy a property, and then there's an earthquake, and all of the roads that get to and from that property Are closed down for the next year and a half because they've got to rebuild all the roads.
[00:38:18]
Well, you shouldn't have to buy that property because now it's not worth anything. And the other person should be able to use their insurance policy to protect them. And so it wouldn't make sense for me to buy something if nobody could come or go. And a very similar thing that we were seeing that was happening is like COVID had happened. And this business partner, I kept saying. Have an attorney write it. Have an attorney write it. You're going to miss something. He wrote the exit clause anyway, even after he told me that he would get an attorney. His thing is, we've already spent so much money on this deal, it doesn't make sense to spend another 300 bucks or 1, 000 bucks, whatever it might cost, to have an attorney exit the clause. I can just write it myself. And I kept saying, no, you're going to miss something if you write it yourself. So the next thing that happens is I'm told that he submitted it. He didn't say who wrote it. He told me that he submitted it and we lost 315, 500, 315, 500 because he wrote that thing himself. So that goes back to what we were talking about before, when we're talking about hiring attorneys, when we're talking about doing the work yourself, just to save a couple of pennies, he lost a hundred times the amount of money.
[00:39:32]
A hundred times the amount of money he would have spent three hundred but instead we went ahead and spent three hundred fifteen thousand five hundred dollars. So it's a tough pill to swallow that he didn't just like go with. The thing that I had learned and especially because he told me he would that was like the most frustrating thing and then I'm like here I am cussing up a storm right because we choose how we react in situations And I'm like this idiot like wouldn't listen thought that he wanted to save money but really ended up losing a lot more money hundreds of thousands of dollars versus just like A few hundred and it was because he wanted to save a couple of dollars. So there's people that do that all the time. It's not just him. And that's not the only reason why I didn't want to be part of the partnership. Right? It's just like for me, if I tell somebody to do something, they're going to do it or they're fired. If I tell you to hire an attorney, you're going to hire an attorney because it's my decision. But when you're a business partner and you have like 50, 50 say, or whatever it is, and you don't do it, then that just makes me feel like I'm screwed. Like I got screwed over when I knew what needed to be done and it's a tough pill to swallow. So. Some of that money was investor money like around a hundred and fifty thousand of that was people that wanted to partner with us and so they invested and it took us near one year because we lost our own money also we lost our earnest money and etc and so now it's all of a sudden like.
[00:41:05]
We've got to pay back a debt and it was like around 150 grand. I think there was like three people that did it around 50 each and we finally got that paid back. So everybody who worked with us, they were all good. Everybody who was on our side, we had raised all the money and we start writing checks back to people. A business partner who can also name nameless, although this isn't a bad thing, chose that, Hey, I'm not going to wire the money because every freaking wire is like 30 or 60 bucks. Every time you wire money, so he's like, I'm going to do checks. So he gets a checkbook and he like hand writes dozens and dozens of checks. I mean, this guy's getting carpal tunnel and licking envelopes and mailing off to dozens of people. And so I went to a conference like right after that, I was speaking at a conference and one of the guys behind me. He goes, Hey, man, I just wanted to let you know, like, that was really admirable. What you guys did, like, send all the money back. You exited it for this reason you lost money, but I still got my money back. And I was like, well, what else would we have done? You know, like, what other option is there? Obviously, but I will always remember the feeling that I got from that. Person behind me and a couple of friends who called me and said, I really appreciate you. I will definitely invest with you next time you have a deal. So that's awesome.
[00:42:29] Anthony Esparza
I can really see why you don't like, um, business partners and my takeaway. Took from you is make sure your contracts are correct.
[00:42:37] Adam Adams
Yeah, the contracts need to be correct, but also when he was writing the exit, he could have easily cited something that was in the contract as well. But instead he chose to cite force majeure as the reason we're exiting, but the contract never said that we could leave because of force majeure. So, yeah, it's just like, he could have easily done that. And I think any attorney would have looked for that. Any attorney would have pulled up the document and typed in force majeure. Okay, good. They've got a force majeure clause. We've got COVID coming. This is a slam dunk or all right. Do they have force majeure? Ah, that's too bad. That would have been so easy. Okay. What else can I cite that will actually let them out? So. Yeah, I kind of think you're
[00:43:21] Roger Jacobsen
giving too much credit to lawyers because here on the Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast, we generally hate lawyers. We have a few friends that we love, you know, their partners and whatnot, but generally speaking, lawyers are.
[00:43:35] Adam Adams
I like them for some reason. And I dated one for about six years. And she was wonderful, although we thought very differently. It was kind of like a match made in heaven, right? So that was that part of my experience. But the other part is that I've been saved by attorneys multiple times in multiple businesses ever since trying to become my own lawyer back in 2079.
[00:43:59] Roger Jacobsen
I have 3 things that are going to are related to. Bonnie's car accidents and one is related to a gap loan that we won't go into, but we'll find out how the lawyers do. And as of right now, I'm just kind of on the fence. So anyways, on that fun note, let's talk about something else. You just hit 184 consecutive days of learning Spanish on Duolingo. That is incredible. That's more than half a year.
[00:44:33] Adam Adams
It'll be, I think it'll be 185 as soon as I get off of this call.
[00:44:38] Roger Jacobsen
Do you want to speak some Spanish to knock that credit out? Just kidding. What's your goal as far as learning Spanish? Is this a travel goal? Cause I would love to speak Spanish when I go to Honduras, we're working on a development deal on Roatan Island. We've been to. Uh, Costa Rica, uh, Belize was kind of a weird thing because I thought we were going to be speaking Spanish nonstop and it's all English speaking.
[00:45:06] Adam Adams
Well, there's probably four reasons why I'm learning Spanish. And you're only going to remember the one about girls. You're only going to remember the one about girls, but I'm going to intentionally say the others first and foremost. So hopefully you can remember those. So one is I've got a podcast agency. And podcast in Spanish are really growing right now. They've been growing ever since the beginning of the year that we're in right now. It's becoming that it's almost one of the most spoke languages on podcasts. And I want to get on the forefront of that. So I want to have the best amount of knowledge as I can around Spanish so that we can attract the clients to be able to edit and post produce people's podcasts that are in Spanish. So that's one reason. Another reason is that I've always wanted to learn a language and I got to a place in my life where I'm like, I've been putting off some of these bucket list items for a very long time. Speaking Spanish is a bucket list item. Speaking Spanish is something that I've always wanted to do. I did it a little bit. I did a Mormon mission long time ago in Los Angeles, no longer Mormon today, but I did that and I learned a lot of Spanish. Some Spanish, and whenever I got back to my house in Utah, I started just wishing that I went Spanish speaking because I learned a lot of Samoan. I learned a lot of Tongan. I learned a lot of Korean and Chinese, and even I did an ASL, American Sign Language, and I did some Hawaiian and Spanish. And so I was really grateful to be in all of those cultures in Los Angeles. But when I came home, I was like, I can speak Tongan pretty well. I can speak Samoan pretty well. But like nobody can like one out of a hundred people, maybe.
[00:46:52]
But if I speak Spanish, then it's almost like one in three people can. So I said, ah, I wish I would have gone Spanish speaking. You know, you can't pick the language you go. But I did get home and I was like, I wish that I would have done that because my friends that I was in high school with and stuff, they learned their languages really, really well, wherever they went. And I was jealous. I was quite jealous. So the second one was the bucket list item. The third reason why is because I travel a lot to Spanish speaking countries. The fourth. Is that I want to retire in probably costa rica or maybe silica mexico or something and so when my kids are out of school I got seven years from the time of recording this until I can retire my plan is that i'll live in a spanish speaking country and then the one that everybody's gonna remember is. I think I might be with a woman who is Spanish speaking, and so I may as well learn it so I can impress her mom or something like that. So, single today, but if you look at the people that I've dated, they're generally, their skin's a lot darker than mine. We'll just say that.
[00:47:57] Anthony Esparza
Adam, I love your four reasons, but we all know the three are just coverups. Yeah No.
[00:48:04] Roger Jacobsen
That's awesome I think that you have to also include Music as one of your languages because learning music is definitely a lot like a language So with that you're at like seven languages, I think so that makes you obviously a spy because only spies fix languages or more.
[00:48:21] Adam Adams
I know a surprising amount of Samoan and Tongan, but I wouldn't be able to get along if that was the only language, right? They would have to also speak some English. Spanish has gotten fairly good. I can't speak it fluently, but I can understand almost everything. Like I've been studying it enough that especially if I read it, if I read it, I'm pretty sure what everything means. Music is a big one, and I think you're right. I think I did learn a lot about music in grade school, junior high, and high school is what I meant to say, but it's a passion for sure. I want to do that again. Maybe that's another bucket list item. I need to, like, write another symphony or something, maybe before I'm 50, we'll say. I like that goal.
[00:49:05] Anthony Esparza
Gotta stay in touch with your hobbies. Yeah.
[00:49:08] Roger Jacobsen
Super cool. I expect to see more video on Facebook of you playing instruments and singing and whatnot.
[00:49:14] Adam Adams
So, got my tuba. I got my tuba right here next to me. I can play it for you guys. Do you wanna do that for the podcast? That would be cool. Let's do that on the next podcast. I'm the next one.
[00:49:25] Roger Jacobsen
Well, we'd like to thank Monument Real Estate for keeping the lights on here at Retire Wealthy and Happy podcast. Uh, monument Real Estate. Helping you retire five to 10 years early. Anthony, do you want to run through our final four real quick?
[00:49:43] Anthony Esparza
Yeah, absolutely. I do know Adam talked a little bit about Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I don't know if that answers one question, but we'll just jump right into it. Adam, what is your favorite book?
[00:49:53] Adam Adams
Let's just say Compound Effect, let's make that my favorite book for today, I try to read a lot of books or listen to them. I'm dyslexic. So the reading with my eyes isn't going to happen, but compound effect was really, really good. It just teaches you to do small habits and to just do them a little bit over time. And it makes a big difference. And I think that's 185 days as of today, okay. Is because I'm focusing on just those little things over time. So I would say Compound Effect, it'll teach anybody a lot about themselves.
[00:50:25] Roger Jacobsen
0. 1 percent improvement of yourself every day equals 37 times over a year. I like that. Number two question, what brings you happiness?
[00:50:32] Adam Adams
My kids and my health, nature. Those are some of the big things that bring me happiness. So doing things that are good for my body, like exercise or eating well, doing things that are good for my relationships, like spending time with my kids. Those are the things that I think bring me the most happiness.
[00:50:54] Anthony Esparza
Cool. Question number three. Describe what your future retirement looks like, and I think you already gave us a glimpse of that.
[00:51:00] Adam Adams
Costa Rica, maybe Sayulita, Mexico, and what I think I'll probably do is I'll probably start a company, Costa Rica or Mexico or something, with just ice baths and like red light sauna, that I can, you know, just, Serve people but also live in a really cool place and spend a lot of time I like those areas because mountain biking is not too far away either like in Puerto Vallarta There's good mountain biking in Costa Rica There's a lot of good places that you could take a mountain bike, but also you could be in the ocean. So I would say that is retirement for me, and then just physical. My kids will probably stay living in the U. S., so I'll just fly back and forth pretty regularly, but that's after they graduate.
[00:51:45] Anthony Esparza
Nice. Maybe a little, uh, put together a little Spanish singing band or something.
[00:51:48] Adam Adams
You know. You never know. You never know. It would surprise me, but you never know.
[00:51:54] Anthony Esparza
And final question for you today, Adam, what's the best way to give back?
[00:51:57] Adam Adams
I like the question and I should have maybe spent more time writing things down. Probably the best way to give back is through your time and energy, like through the knowledge that you gain. For example, writing a book or hosting a podcast could be some of the best places to give back because you're encouraging others to be able to grow and learn from what you've gone through to avoid some of your failures, like not hiring and you know, who's counting. I think that's the best way to give back is to have a platform where you can share what you've learned along the way with other people that are going to be going through that same stuff. Love it.
[00:52:42] Roger Jacobsen
And we really appreciate you giving back here on the podcast and all the way back to the 9 and 22 cent ticket. So super, thank you. We're going to wrap up and we'll probably want you back on the show again sometime. So.
[00:52:57] Adam Adams
With my tuba?
[00:53:01] Roger Jacobsen
Thanks for everybody for joining the Retire Wealthy and Happy Podcast. We'll see you next time.
[00:53:05] Podcast Outro
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