Beyond the Deal

From Neuroscience to Real Estate: Tim Fergestad’s Path to Wealth & Freedom

• Michael Wagman

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In this episode of Beyond the Deal, host Michael Wagman sits down with Tim Fergestad, a neuroscientist turned real estate investor, to discuss his incredible transition from academic research to building financial freedom through multifamily investing. Tim shares how his background in science shaped his analytical approach to real estate, why he left a high-pressure research career, and how he scaled his investments from single-family rentals to large multifamily deals.

Discover how Tim navigated the shift from academia to investing, the importance of market selection, and why passive income was the key to reclaiming his time. Plus, he reveals his top real estate investing strategies, insights into asset management, and why scaling multifamily properties is more effective than single-family rentals.

If you’re looking to break free from the traditional career path and start building wealth through real estate, this episode is packed with actionable insights and real-world strategies to get you started.


Key Takeaways:

✅ How Tim transitioned from neuroscience to real estate investing
✅ The benefits of multifamily investing over single-family homes
✅ The 1% rule and why investing out of state makes sense
✅ Managing stress as an investor & raising capital the right way
✅ The psychology of investing and how to make data-driven decisions

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introducing Tim Fergestad: From Neuroscientist to Real Estate Investor

00:02:10 Transition from Neuroscience to Real Estate Investing

00:04:06 The Financial Advantage of Scaling Multifamily Investments

00:06:04 Starting Out of State Real Estate Investing

00:08:07 The 1% Rule Versus Reality in Phoenix Real Estate

00:10:07 Navigating Quality Job Growth in the Sun Belt

00:12:09 Impact of Interest Rate Spike on Multifamily Deals

00:14:15 Challenges in Property Management and Refinancing

00:16:14 Managing Stress in Real Estate and Personal Growth

00:18:14 Challenges in Real Estate Investment Deals

00:20:08 Importance of Tenant Satisfaction in Property Management  

00:22:09 Optimizing Sleep Environment and Technology

00:24:11 The Power of Routine for Productivity

00:26:09 Maximizing Productivity in the Quiet Morning Hours

00:28:00 Balancing Entrepreneurship and Family Life

00:30:14 The Importance of Networking and Collaboration in Academia and Business


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https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwagman/

https://www.instagram.com/nimble_capital_group/

https://nimblecapitalgroup.com/


Follow the guest:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timfergestad/

https://oakstreetassets.com/


Interested in mentorship and learning how to raise capital? Let’s build your life of freedom. Book your free discovery call here: ⬇️

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Welcome to Beyond the Deal, a podcast where we go deeper than the numbers to discover what are the tips, tricks, practices that lead to success in life and business. My name is Michael Wagman, I'm your host, and I am obsessed with personal growth and development. Today, our guest is Tim Fergusad. He is a neuroscientist turned real estate investor, good friend of mine, and a passive and active investor in a few of our deals. Now, before we get started today, I would like to thank the sponsors of the show. That's right, me. We are the sponsors of this show. Nimble Capital Group provides passive investment for investors looking for a variety of different return options. We offer tax depreciation, equity appreciation, and cash flowing assets. And secondly, if you are interested in learning how to do what I do, raising capital for real estate deals, I take on 10 new students every single month for my private mentorship coaching course. So please reach out, see the show notes in the description below. Let's get into it. Tim Fergestad, welcome to the show. So happy you're here. All right. Thank you, Michael. Pleasure. Always like connecting with other capital raisers. Yeah. So you and I have been connected for probably three or four years now. You've invested in some deals with us. We're actually business partners, but for for our listeners, why don't you tell the guests a little bit about yourself, 'cause I do think there's something really fascinating about you. And anytime somebody mentions you, I was like, oh yeah, the the neuroscientist turned real estate investor. So please enlighten our audience. Sure, sure. I thought you were gonna say, yeah, I have some fascinating aspects maybe. That's a nice way of putting it, right? When people confuse you, You try to be fascinated so you don't judge them. So I'm a nerd. I went to college. I'm from Minnesota. I went to school in the University of Minnesota Duluth, which was great because it was a little bit smaller school at the University of Minnesota system. So that allowed me as an undergraduate to do research. I was published in physics and got to do genetics research and the biochemistry department and stuff. But I ultimately went on to graduate school at the University of Utah and the medical school there and got a PhD in neuroscience. So then went back to the Midwest and I was doing research in the genetics department at UW Madison, which was awesome. There was a lot of good stuff. And it was studying the molecular mechanisms of synaptic transmission and the the underlying processes of cell excitability and heart arrhythmias, seizure disorders, things like that. And then I actually was getting into more of the mechanisms of sleep, which has been a much more popular topic nowadays, which I think is great because it's super important. So yeah, yeah so how did I pivot into real estate is basically We had family, had kids, and working $100 a week or more was fun back when I was younger and didn't have kids. Nights and weekends you know at the lab, that was all good. But I left I left science ultimately for lifestyle and money, basically, and I started investing and realized, wow, my my traditional investments were pretty bad. So I had to start educating myself on that and figuring out why the market was doing you know an average of 7% to 9% and my returns weren't that good. Right. And And figuring that out. And I discovered real estate and fell in love with that because it's the greatest wealth building vehicle on earth. And so went heavy into that and tried all sorts of things. And then I started to back off a little bit. People get excited about something, they go hard into it. And real estate, I was no different, but more balanced, but really fell in love with the scale of multifamily. So I started actively doing that as well as investing in other people's deals as well. So was your first multifamily, or I mean, was there a transition when you were doing neuroscience and then you got into real estate, did you say I'm going to be a flipper or did you go straight into passive investing? What did that look like for you? Sure. Sure I got my license here locally. I'm a handsy guy. I can I can swing a hammer and stuff. So I figured I'll get my license and I'll flip and hold some plexes here locally. And I started to realize as I was trying to make the deals pencil or make sense financially, that I could do better in other markets. So I ended up getting single family rentals in other states and getting third party property management to run them and and do the value add to some of the contractors. But as I tried to scale that, and the classic example I like to use is if you have a rental and somebody sort of, they don't even have to trash it, it's just you have to renovate it, it takes a month or two, nobody paying rent. And then maybe takes an extra month or two to get a new tenant and hopefully they're good tenant. But even if even if they are, that was two to three months, nobody paying rent, which if you're using leverage on that, you have to pay the mortgage and so forth. And if you have an 8 plex and one or two people move out, you still have six people paying rent. And so that was way easier. So that was kind of the one of the first aha moments for me that. how you can decrease expenses and just the power of scale in in multifamily. So I started investing in other people's deals and started to realize, whoa, these are awesome. I sold my last single family rental just last year, just a couple months ago. So I'm I'm done with those those stupid single houses. All right. Yeah, I mean, I often use exactly the same example. Whenever I'm speaking with investors on the phone, I like to say that if you own a duplex and you have a vacancy, then you're 50% occupied and you'll probably have to come out of pocket for that other 50%. But if you own 100 units and you have a vacancy, well, you're 99% occupied, right? So the economies of scale, they're just really unbeatable. And the amount of work to to have, if you if you have 100 single family homes versus 100 unit complex, the number of transactions involved and all that, it's just way easier. Especially if you've got to send a handyman all over town and you've got kinds of toilets and all different kinds of roofs. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense. Whereas if you have one big complex, you've got one roof, all the same kind of toilet, all the walls are the same color, you know it it just makes so much sense. So obviously you're preaching to the choir here, but hopefully somebody listening you know maybe has an aha moment just by hearing that as well. Can you briefly talk through, what prompted you to move out of state first? You know, when I think when a lot of people are getting into real estate investing, they only think, well, maybe I'll buy a duplex or, you know, maybe I'll buy a single family home and they don't even have the idea that I could go look in an area where it's much more affordable and much more cheaper. The idea of being a long distance landlord is for some reason so unapproachable for some people, so what was that like for you to, into getting into that? Sure. A lot of my story's common. It's sort of an organic process where everybody you know watches a flipping show or something, and then they they see a house down the street, and they think they're gonna manage it as well. And a lot of people do. They manage their own properties, and then they know enough subcontractors or people to do anything that they're not licensed for or something, depends on if it has to be to code or not. But then they may or may not find out they enjoy that process. But there's something I originally called, I was on bigger pockets, right? Trying to actively do all these myself and start learning the basic rules. And there's something called the 1% rule, which is you want the rent to be about 1% of the purchase price of the house, the monthly rent. So if you buy a $200,000 home, ideally you want to shoot for about a$2,000 a month rent. That's just a rule of thumb. It depends on if maybe you have some secret sauce, maybe you live in a place that doesn't have taxes or something. By the way, it used to be the 2% rule. 1%. Now 1% is almost unattainable in almost every single market across the country. But yeah. So if you if you have leverage, if you don't just want to buy, I've used leverage on homes. I've also just bought homes with cash and in which case you don't have to worry about the 1% rule per se. You don't have a mortgage to pay, but you do want a return on your investment, right? You want to know how much you're getting for your time and your money. Real estate is such a great asset class. There's so many great loans available, so you can get really powerful leverage. Obviously, it's dangerous, right? If you over-leverage yourself. So that's kind of what I learned was the 1% rule wasn't attainable here in Phoenix, to answer your original question. It was more like the half a percent rule. The average price, say 10 years ago for a home in Phoenix was about$250,000, and you could not get...$2,500 a month's rent. You can maybe get $1,500 a month's rent back in the day. Whereas I could buy homes in another market in another state that could easily do that, could perform. So it just made more sense financially to get properties in other states or other markets. Of course, then you can't manage it yourself and you got to budget in how much, you know usually 10% or something for a third party property manager to to manage a single family home. There's pros and cons of that because you find a good one, that's very important. As always, tenant screening is crazy important. Now, as you've shifted your model into larger multifamily, into bigger deals, are there markets that you are actively pursuing at this time, and and why those markets? Yeah, so so when you're going into bigger properties, a single family home, you can probably get away with a property in most markets if you know, if it's a quality home. And there's even moderate demand. But when you're doing these bigger projects, you want to make sure there's really strong growth. Usually population growth and strong rental tenants or strong tenants follow quality job growth. So that's largely what we look for. I'm market agnostic. I just, I'm not in this. I I like providing safe, clean, affordable housing in places, but I'm also in this to make money. And that said, I wanna make sure that we can lease up these projects, these bigger ones, particularly when it's not my money, I'll take more risks with my money, but when I'm using investor money or something, I desperately wanna make sure it's gonna perform. So I really wanna make sure that we do our due diligence and make sure that there's quality job growth and we're really confident we can fill up the the property with good tenants. So the bigger scope, the Sunbelt's been growing in population, there was a big exodus since COVID from some markets down south. We're in Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Georgia. So there's a lot of people in Florida still. There's still a lot of good quality job growth in a lot of the big markets. But I am largely market agnostic. If it pencils, it makes money, I'm interested. Got it. So you said something there and I want to pivot for a second because I I love that you said this. And And this podcast, while we do talk about real estate and we do talk about deals, it's really about sort of everything else. So, you know, beyond the deal, we want to go beyond the deal itself. So you mentioned... A lot of intangibles. Yeah. Yeah Well, and you'll take a lot more risk with your own money, but when you're dealing with investor funds, talk a little bit about sort of the the psychology there of when you become the steward of somebody else's hard earned money. Oh, that's, oh, that's, that's their kids college tuition, that's their retirement funds and all sorts of precious dollars. Yeah. I I take that very seriously. That's sacred. And so I'm a bit, yeah, I I know that about myself. I'm a very conservative person. I'm an analytic. I'm I'm not that risky, but compared to, it's another level of conservative I take with other people's money. We have, we're doing a series of townhome developments here in Phoenix and we had a really, a deal that, an opportunity with some land and stuff in a really good area to pencil. And it would've been great except there was some potential legal problems. And when you're developing, it's those holding costs and those delays that can really sink a deal. And the general partners, we were like, ohh yeah, this is great. This is such a good one. We're excited. Let's do it. But ultimately, the senior sponsor called off, said no, because he's like, yeah, I do this all day long with my money, but we just can't move forward when it's somebody else's with that degree of uncertainty. Anyway, so yeah, that's a tough one, because there's some things you get excited for, and you you really have to put investors first. For sure. I talk about this all the time, and you know I talk about this with other investors. I even talk about it with my passive investors, but the last two and a half years, really, since July of 2022 and the interest rate spike, how has it been going since then? Let's talk about that. I know there's so many multifamily deals have gone sideways then. A lot of people got these deals. In the 21 and 22 with floating rates and you know all you could get was bridge debt at the time and you couldn't even apply for Fannie or Freddie because it was just so competitive. It'd take us six months to close an agency loan, right? And so and then all of a sudden, boom, overnight. And these deals are like, holy crap, my interest rate just doubled. So right. Did any of that happen to you and and how are you dealing with that? Sure. We had a couple of projects that we partnered on. I wear different hats on different deals. Sometimes I'm a co-GP and I'm actively helping with the asset management and so forth. There's some other deals where I'm more passive, I'm more of a fund manager. Sometimes I am a fund manager and I'm not a co-GP. So it varies on how much control I have. But on the deals where I do have control, I'm a co-GP, there was one with a lead sponsor, for example, We got hit by that, right? It wasn't just that the floating rate, we bought a rate cap and all that stuff. And then sure enough, it took, you know, we didn't, no one saw the the Fed raising rates that fast, for example. But the residuals from that big rise in values over COVID with all that monetary injection in the United States was, yes, rents went up, but then like a year or so later, 'cause there's a lagging indicators, taxes went up, insurance went up. And, and all that stuff happened. So we also had a few on the ground events that, that hurt this one deal. It was like a perfect storm, right? The neighboring competing property did a whole renovation and then did a year long lease up under Cardinas all year long and stuff. So it was just, it was, I don't want to say a comedy of conditions cause it was pretty sad, more of a tragedy of, of things. And The good news is those are some partners. They weren't the active managers per se. We had to fire our property manager there, which was annoying, I'll say. Living is is based out of Dallas. And then we were in Dallas and we thought, these are a big group. We'd be totally happy, right, with them managing it and good good experience and good record. But they dropped the ball, ended up having to get rid of them. I fired them too, if it means anything. Right. Right. It's hard, but we had almost everything that could happen happened, but we had some really good big pocket partners on that deal who were not going to let that deal die or or get in trouble. So that was our worst deal so far, right? The rest, we had one we had to refinance in summer fall of 22, right? Because rates were going up like, ah, right. We were able to get ahead of it and so forth. So thankfully we're doing pretty good, but there's one that's. We have another year. They We got the funds to get another rate cap and prolong another year and all that. And we have a plan out too, by the way, with the property manager change. And we know we can execute on that business plan and get us to a value that will work independent of cap rate change. It's been tough. And that's hard. I have I have investors in there, some of my best investors, some friends, family, even in that one. I just had had a deal. I got my mom into a deal, which I don't know if there's any, any more money that's more precious than mama's. Yeah. Yeah, yeah man. So it it gets really stressful, especially when friends and family are involved and you want to just be the absolute protector of their money and you want to to make them so much money, but there are outside forces at play, right? And sometimes you can get into a deal with all of the best intentions, all of the correct due diligence, and some things can just go wrong. You know, we've had deals where I don't think More than two days have gone by without a plumbing leak on on one deal. It's just something that nobody could have predicted at the day of closing, but it's something that we've been dealing with now for years. It gets pretty stressful. What are you doing? I know you mentioned earlier that you got into real estate in the first place because you were tired of working 100-hour weeks. But when you have to raise $5 million within three months or you don't close, that can also be extremely stressful, right? So what are you doing to combat the stress of raising capital? Well, it's something that I I didn't appreciate in my previous career as a scientist was personal growth, right? I I did not, I would learn technical skills. I would read scientific papers, I would learn and do electrophysiology. molecular genetics. I'd be doing electron microscopy. I wasn't going home and reading self-help books. I I was learning and reading all day. I didn't go home and work on myself for decades. And being a parent and other things sort of force you to grow and take care, you're a role model. You start taking care of yourself. And when you're a high performer, you really need to get proper diet, sleep and exercise and maintain your energy 'cause it can be pretty demanding, pretty stressful. So I've been generally pretty good about that stuff, but I've had to had to ramp it up as I've gotten older, particularly when you have kids, you don't get as much sleep. And so I'd say balance helps me a lot. I'm actually more efficient and I perform better. You don't have time for that stuff, right? I don't have time to exercise, but you actually exercise, and even though you have one less hour to work, you actually somehow get more done with one less hour on your work'cause you have more energy. Mental clarity and so forth. So that helps me a lot, right? When you're when you're dealing with those sorts of stresses, when you have a Capital Partner, big, big check writer who fails to come through and not sleep and things like that. Yeah, it can be very stressful being the entrepreneur and taking all the risks. That's one of the things I like as an LP when I invest in other people's deals that I don't have the stress. I don't have to worry about it and I'll continue doing that and investing in other people's deals for sure. It's awesome. But as a GP, I've lost money, earnest money on on deals and stuff where that hurts and I don't like doing that, but it was in the best for the investors, right? Because like back to 2022. We had a different deal in Texas follow through because it was a combination of things there too. We had our lender bailed on us, right? The Fed was raising rates. And our lender bailed on us and we had to get a new lender and the new loan wasn't as good. And then a month later they retraded us. So the deal kept getting worse and worse. We had a capital partner who couldn't perform on time and it was just better to just not force that deal. And sure enough, we're so glad we didn't and do it again. But the only thing I learned out of that one, by the way, is when you have big check writers is to get a pursuit cost agreement or something if they're really serious. to put a little bit of skin in the game, at least on that side. So that was the only thing I really learned out of that one, other than, right, well, securing capital is clearly very important, but also it's relationship based, I guess, is the biggest thing with the lender, with your capital, everything. It's very much a people business, even at the property, right? Property management. And it really comes down to people, all businesses really do. Yeah, absolutely. On those deals where you are an asset manager, Is there any sort of best practices that you have found make your life easier when it comes to maintaining morale and strength amongst your property management? Well, the first thing is great reporting, improving the reporting and stuff. So we can, before we even have our meetings and stuff, I can see better what's going on and track their performance. So I can get on there and I can really stress their their whims, right? We always have a period where we say, when we start off, most calls, hey, what's new, what's going on the property and stuff. And then we go through leasing and those efforts and any special events going on. But we absolutely want to celebrate wins because most places we're always putting out fires. We don't take time to celebrate the whims. And yeah, as you say that you want to keep people on the ground happy, keep a good environment because that that translates into the tenants and stuff, particularly when they're leasing up. If it's a hostile environment and they're stressed out or if it's a calm and welcoming one. Sure. I often say that it's a little bit like hospitality property management in the sense that you don't hear about things when everything's going right. Right But as soon as things start going wrong, ohh you better bet you're going to hear about it, right? Especially when it comes to the tenants. And And so keeping morale high amongst your property management company is very crucial in that sense. And if the only time they see you is when you you want to talk about a problem, then Just, yeah, it gets reinforced. There's some psychology there, I'm sure. Yeah. All right, cool. Well, earlier you mentioned that you were doing some research on sleep. I'm just, I want to dig into this because sleep is so important to me as somebody who did suffer from insomnia for about six months. and now is very diligent about sort of my sleep hygiene, so to speak, and my routine around it. What did you learn and and do you have sort of a nighttime sleeping routine? Do you have some sort of, some that you can give us? Sure. Sure There's a professor out of California, Matthew Walker, who has a good book called Why We Sleep. He's on like Rogan and other podcasts and other stuff too. He's a lot of good content online, but for the most part, Routine is paramount, right? Trying to go to bed at the same time, trying to wake up at the same time, trying to get you know a consistent amount of sleep. And then there's environment, right? It's cold. It's like 64 degrees is the ideal temperature or something. Most people don't like it that cold, but that's the optimum temperature for most people. Dark, quiet, right? All those sorts of things are amongst the top 10 things that really help you get quality sleep. A lot of people think that just because they went to bed and got up at the same time that that they got good sleep and that's often not the case. Anyone who's ever had alcohol or had a big meal before bed or even had surgery or something, anesthesia and being unconscious doesn't mean you got restful sleep. Yeah. That makes a whole lot of sense to me. I'm religious about having my room feel like an icebox before bed. I absolutely need it. And I have one of those you know I I have the money to fix this. I don't know why I don't, but I have a hot cold room and it just happens to be the master. So in the summer when it's 115 in Phoenix, my room is so hot, I can't sleep in there. I often end up sleeping on the couch. But in the winter, like now it's 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house and I love it. I sleep so good in there. You know You know what I bought last year, which I like, I didn't need it. Some people, they get hot flashes and other stuff, but I got a SleepAid. bed pad or whatever. And there's like Chili bed or something. There's some other brands out there too, but basically it senses and controls the temperature, you know, at night. And it optimizes throughout the night based off of your sleep patterns and stuff to keep you in deep sleep or in non-REM or whatever it is to make sure you get the best sleep possible. So without having to change your environment too much, if that's hard. Right? You could you know do something like that. And it gives you a lot of good metrics, surprisingly good metrics and and feedback on heart rate variability, if you snored and how about you can even some of them, if you have an adjustable connection, it can it can help mitigate that and so forth. So there's other tricks to optimize that way as well. Yeah. If this podcast ever gets big enough, I'm gonna reach out to them immediately and be like, sponsor me, give me one of those. They look cool, but you know, it's what? It's like a $6,000 mattress pad or something, but I really want that. Not that much. I think maybe maybe a third of that or half. It depends on what you're getting, but yeah. Well, speaking of nighttime routines, do you have a morning routine or anything that you do sort of religiously to get yourself in the mindset for productivity for the day? Yeah, I try to. Routines are crazy important. That's one of the... Things I didn't appreciate back in the day. The kids I guess it maybe was a big part of that too because they kind of have their own routine. You try to get them on your routine and they definitely need a routine no matter what it is without any structure. They don't know what's up and down. Yeah, my kids are in high school now, so it's a little bit different, but I get up for everybody else and I get up and I can pound out some critical work before I ever look at emails and other stuff to start to take over your day and start putting out fires and and things. So if you really want to make advances on the big. ticket items, really move the needle on the big rocks or important things in your yearly goals, right? I I have some time blocking that I set up in the morning and and maybe I'll do some light stretching, drink some water and then just sit down and just get to work, focus, do what needs to get done. And then when everybody else gets up, then I take a break and go you know make breakfast or whatever and interact with everybody else. And I have an office over at the Quarter in Scottsdale that I work you know about halftime because I work at home part of the time too, and so that's that's bittersweet. I get to see the family more and stuff, but of course, I struggle with productivity when the kids are home and other stuff. I put a sign on the door when they're doing podcasts, but they could bust in anytime, I have no idea. Well, I I couldn't agree more, and I've actually adopted this since coming back from my my world tour, I think. Anybody who can see the video right now can see that behind me, my office is full of distractions. It's the music in the studio. Ohh I would love to play with all the time, right? And so there is something really powerful. There is something to be said about going to a place and in that place, work happens, right? And maybe it's not your home. Maybe you have to... So we actually also have an office downtown now, even though... Both Mike and I are able to work remote. There's no reason we can. We did it for many years. We've chosen now to actually get an office together and make an effort to be there quite a bit during the week. So I think that's really powerful advice for our listeners is I also wake up early and I also find that while the rest of the world is still quiet, that is a great time to get a lot of thinking done, to get a lot of productivity done. And you know I don't have kids, but I'm sure that that is a very loud, powerful distraction. A lot of people like to get in their exercise'cause then their day gets away from them, they don't fit it in any other time. But so they do it first thing in the morning, they spend an hour or something working out. I I could do that, I've done it in the past, but those are some of my best, for me, some of my best mental hours, right? Clarity and and that work. That's as rested as I'm gonna be. And actually when I can sneak away, that's one of the nice things about having flexible schedule is I can get to the gym kind of on my schedule. And so in the afternoons, that that sort of lull in the afternoon where I don't like to exercise right before bed and then it affects my sleep a little bit. So yeah, right in the middle of the day is ideal for me after lunch, go sneak away and do that. But as I get older and and get used to a routine, my body winds down pretty well 'cause I'm on such a good sleep routine. when it hits nine o'clock or something and my body's like, okay, we're going to bed a little bit. And it doesn't want to to do anything too mentally arduous. Makes a lot of sense. I'm sort of the same way where nine, 10 o'clock comes around, you gotta pry my eyes open at that point. But you know my girlfriend on the other hand, she'll stay up until two in the morning working. And I'm like, how could you do this? I could never, right? But you know To each their own. That's what works for me is what works for me. What works for you is what works for you. I'm blessed to have a spouse that helps out too. The kids will stay up late or go out late and somebody has to stay up and wait for them. Thankfully, she's up for doing that more than I am usually. Not just am I grateful that I have the flexibility, because being an entrepreneur is lonely. Usually you're by yourself, so you have to be self-motivated, right? get things done. You don't have a team to fall back on and so forth. You have to be competent and and skilled, but particularly dealing with kids and stuff, having having support and help and flexibility in your schedule is crazy, crazy helpful. Yeah. Can you expand on that a little bit? 'Cause I I couldn't agree more. I have found that as I'm further down the road of entrepreneurship, it becomes harder and harder to relate to the people you used to hang out with or you know the things that you used to talk about because there's just, the things that are problems for you, they can't even fathom. You know They're not there. So can you expand on that a little bit about you know maybe what are you doing to sort of, you've got a family and a wife and everything, but you know to maintain social interaction as an entrepreneur and a strong social circle. Sure. Sure Well, one of the great things about being in this industry, in my opinion, is most of, a lot of entrepreneurs are growth-minded. Right. And with that comes an abundance mindset. So we're willing to help each other. We're willing to share knowledge and and there's enough for everyone type of thing. It's not a zero sum game. So there's a lot of great people. If you're just willing to get out there and and go to those social events and meetups and you guys have had some great ones and I've met all sorts of great people, including you there. And that's a great support mechanism. I'm part of a few different masterminds in different aspects. I tried to do this by myself. for a long time. I tried to, I was looking at some fourplexes in Columbus and trying to remotely manage them and and work with contractors and brokers and stuff. And then they'd just go dark and I'd have to go find a new one and stuff, and it was very hard. And so it really is a team sport. And your network is your net worth. I didn't appreciate that coming from a scientific background. I was I was naive of that. I thought, you know, I wore all the hats. I wrote grants. I taught lectures. I I did research. I was in the lab, right? And you have to get good at delegating and training people and stepping back. And some of those skills translated, but I didn't really appreciate it. Because in academia, it was more competitive, right? Trying to get grants, you don't want to share your data until you get it published and stuff. Whereas in the real world, you get things done with help of others and you get it done faster and better with the help from your friends, right? And I didn't appreciate how important networking was. And so that's something I've been able to work harder on and grow, and that makes you feel not so alone, but you also grow faster. You help each other and and you can, what's the same, if you wanna go far, go together. Yeah, at the at the top, everyone collaborates. At the bottom, everyone competes. That's what we like to see. Okay, yep. I couldn't agree more. You know Similarly, I got my start in residential and I was flipping houses and you know I thought I could do everything myself. And when I went through my mentorship for multifamily, they teach you that you can do everything yourself, that you can be the asset manager and the capital raiser and the property manager and you know get the loan and all this kind of stuff. And it's just not how it really works at the end of the day, particularly not in multifamily. And And having specialization, being very good at one thing, it's like now all I do is raise capital. I focused a little bit on marketing 'cause this is fun for me, right? But all I do is raise capital and I don't wanna be an asset manager. I can make decisions from time to time. I can weigh in on things, but do not- You need to understand it. Yeah, exactly. It's very educational to try and do it all yourself, but it's not scalable. It's just not feasible, yeah. All right. Well, Tim, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for your insights. Before we go, I do want to ask you, where can the people find out more about you? Well, my company's Oak Street Assets, oakstreetassets.com. I also have a link to your page of timfergustad.com, which goes to some other resources I have available as well as the website, and you can find me online and stuff there, so that works out pretty good. Thanks so much. Thank you