Why Philosophy is the Ultimate Business Hack (with Troy Gandee)

In this episode of the Blue Cup podcast, host Russ Scheider interviews Troy Gandy, a successful real estate broker and entrepreneur. They discuss Troy's upbringing in West Virginia, his journey through various life experiences, and how he transitioned into the real estate industry. Troy shares insights about his travels with family, the founding of Maven Realty, and the importance of civic engagement in his community. The conversation also touches on personal challenges, including alcoholism and anxiety, and how Troy balances work and family life while pursuing hobbies like golf and tennis. The episode concludes with a look at Troy's future plans and upcoming adventures. In this engaging conversation, Troy Gandee and Russ Scheider explore various themes including travel aspirations, real estate challenges, personal growth, and the importance of community. They discuss the shift in travel preferences as they age, the complexities of managing rental properties, and the life lessons learned from growing up in a challenging environment. The conversation also delves into the significance of financial stability in real estate investing, the value of philosophy and critical thinking in business, and the success of their community-building initiative, REI Central.

Takeaways

Travel preferences change with age, seeking comfort over adventure.
Real estate sales can be impacted by market conditions and labor issues.
Tenant management can lead to unexpected challenges and stories.
Growing up in a challenging environment can build character and resilience.
Financial stability is crucial for successful real estate investing.
Philosophy teaches critical thinking, valuable in real estate.
Ethics play a significant role in real estate transactions.
Community initiatives can foster collaboration and support among investors.
Incremental growth is key to long-term success in real estate.
Building a rental portfolio is accessible to those willing to sacrifice. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Pretty good for a hillbilly from West Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

She came home and saw him leaving the shed and she was mad at him, so she tried to run him over. It's just obsessive behavior.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Now it's got a podcast go.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Hello and welcome to the Blue Cup Podcast. Make sure you like, subscribe, and click the bell below. And we have a special guest today, Troy Gandy. And Troy and I have been friends for gosh, eight years, something like that. At least. Yeah, at least. Yeah. So um I'm very excited to talk to Troy today and to have him share with you some of the adventures he's had with his wife and with his family and the brokerage that he's built. I'm an agent. Troy is my broker. So I I have total faith in this guy and um looking forward to the conversation today. So to get us started, and I'll I'll go a little further. My whole family's from the low country. Everybody's like everybody's in Buford County or Charleston County. However, my dad took a job in the mountains of Virginia, and I grew up in the Shenandoah Valley and was there for 20 years or so and completed college there. And Troy grew up right on the other side of the mountain in West Virginia and pretty different circumstances. So if you will, talk a little bit about where you grew up and how you grew up, because it that's part of who you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Yeah, and we do have a lot of similarities with that stuff. We've talked about like just growing up being like dirty country kids and stuff before. Um, I grew up in Princeton, West Virginia, which is like way far south in West Virginia. It's basically close to the Virginia border. Um, is a good place to grow up, not a lot of economy, but like fun, you know, good place to like run around the mountains and do do crazy stuff with friends. Really, I was raised by a single mother. I have two older sisters, so essentially I had three moms. Um but my dad wasn't really in the picture. He he kind of left when I was really young, and then he passed away when I was young as well. So my mom had a pretty good job, especially for being a woman at that time, like in the late 80s, early 90s, kind of in a not an executive level, but like a managerial position with a cable company. So we were fairly comfortable, but it still was really difficult for her to take care of all three of us. And I was essentially just a latch key kid, really. There, there's not a lot of millennials, I don't think, that had that, but I was often like walking to school, walking home, skipping school, getting in trouble all the time. A lot of trouble later. But uh, you know, other than that, just like pretty typical kind of Appalachian, you know, sort of redneck-ish kid upbringing.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

It sounds right from what I know of you, and the um kind of where you are now is so different from where you were then. So in between, so to talk about after high school, didn't you go to California for a while?

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah, that that's where things got real weird for me. So when I was in like sixth grade, we had to move just from one town to another, and that was like devastating. It was like such a big deal to have to leave all my friends, right? And then it was for work for my mom, and we ended up moving back, so that was like pretty big move within like a year there. And then I got in trouble in middle school and was like on the verge of getting expelled, so then I had to switch schools again. I'd actually forgotten about this till recently, but was about to get expelled, so I had to switch schools again, so there was like a lot of shifting there. Um, and then this was kind of during the Great Recession. So my mom lost her job because there were just like corporate cutbacks. I was the last kid, and she just wanted to get and I was in trouble all the time. So she was like, This is the wrong environment for you for like how susceptible you are to getting in trouble. So we moved to South Carolina, she moved to Charleston. I stayed in West Virginia with my older sister, which was very contentious.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Um, because she was like just kind of becoming a so what'd you do to almost get expelled from middle school?

SPEAKER_02 4:15

I was just in trouble all the time. It was a lot of it was just like anti-authoritarian stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah, we we share that, we share that.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yeah, and then in small towns it's just like very political, and there's a lot of favoritism and things like that. And I was like, I I just there was like inequalities and inequities in different places that I was always unhappy with. Um, so I was just like kind of always rebelling against the system. A lot of it at that time was sports too, because I was playing soccer, and the soccer team just had like no funding, no attention, they didn't care. We were way better than the football team, but the football team got like all of the attention from everyone, and so I was always getting in trouble with that too. I was just like in in-school suspension constantly and stuff. So you were just fucking the system in general. I mean, and I still do that more than I should. I know, I know. It's wild. But uh, yeah, you know, I mean, it's just to to some degree it was I'm proud of it though, because it was based on value and virtue, you know. Right. So I I don't really mind, whatever. And then so then I I did have to move to South Carolina, and that was my senior year in high school. So that there was like another big move. That was another like really big depressing move. Fortunately, I was able to get out a semester early, just the way that my credits transferred. And then at that point, I like just had no idea what I was gonna do. I'd been kind of displaced so many times that I didn't even really feel like I knew like where I should go or anything. So that's when I went out to LA. I was 17 when I went out there for no like particular reason. Like I had I'd met some people in entertainment and had if people were like, hey, you come out here, I think you can find a place to go to work to do whatever. So then on the way there, the writer strike started. We were literally like driving across the country when the writer strike started. Um and then LA was just kind of a ghost town for close to a year. It was still a great experience because I was like 17, the other side of the country. I had to be pretty self-sufficient. I still had help from my mom, but it was uh I was working full time and met a lot of people and got involved with some projects that were like in early phases, but it just was a weird time. So that that was when I just decided to come back.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

And it was LA right in the middle of the writer's strike.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Yeah, it was crazy. So we came back, came back, and when I got back, like shortly after I got back, the writer's strike ended. But I that city, that whole thing just wasn't really for me, anyways. It may have been a different story if I was there when it was like normal, but uh came back and then was like, okay, I should go to school. But again, being like anti-authoritarianism and like anti-establishment, I never took my SATs or L or or ACTs or anything. So I went to Trident, which is a community college, a local community college, and then I took so I did that for like a year to save money, and then I took a placement test, and my my performance was high enough that I was able to transfer into College of Charleston.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Oh so then I went to CFC from there. Yep. Yeah, Trident Tech is a great resource we have locally. Um, I've I've seen lives transformed at Trident Tech in all sorts of fields. And you in college, once you went to College of Charleston, you majored in philosophy, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yeah, yeah, which worked out well. So I was working here, I was working at an outdoor store doing like paddling and backpacking and things like that. And one of my best friends working there, she was my became my roommate too. She studied philosophy. I had no idea what I wanted to study. I thought like political science or something like that. Definitely more of a like a soft science guy um than hard sciences, but she studied philosophy and I would kind of like peek in on her and see what she was working on, and I just really liked it. It was like fun. Um, so that's what I decided to do. I did that, studied philosophy, and I had two minors. One was environmental studies and the other was literature, and it was a little bit too much because I was working full time too. But at that time, I thought I was probably gonna go to law school um with that degree, but that was at that time too, the job market was pretty terrible. So I knew a lot of people that were going to law school or grad school just because they couldn't find jobs, they were just kind of like kicking the can down the road. Right. And I was like, I don't want to do that, I don't want to go get encumbered by all this debt and then be like fighting for my life to get a job. So got to undergraduate and uh started doing real estate stuff pretty shortly after that.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah, how did you get started?

SPEAKER_02 8:36

After graduating, I didn't know still really what I was gonna do. Um and that was wait, what year was that? It was like 2011, I think is when I got out when I graduated technically because I took a year off when I was after school, and then I had those two minors, so I was a little bit slower to graduate. Um, and the economy was turning around at that time, but um it still wasn't fantastic. So I was just kind of trying to figure out what to do. And a family friend is an agent, she's a really big agent. She does mostly like luxury stuff, more what we call like retail transactions. And I just said bumped into her at some thing with my mom, and she was like, Hey, if you got your real estate license, I bet my broker would hire you. And you know, at that time, like you think it's like a big deal for a brokerage to bring you on. So I was like, Yeah, why not? I may as well try it. Got my license through getting my license, too. I had become more interested in investing just because I don't really want a boss, I don't really want that like strict schedule. I wanted freedom going back to being a little bit of an anarchist with that stuff too, you know. So I started looking into both of those things simultaneously, but got the got the licensure done and hung my license with a small brokerage that was over on Sullivan's Island at that time.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, and that served your um your need for freedom and self-control. So let's skip skip a while and talk about a love some of the travels that you and Rachel have done. Tell us about Iceland.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Yeah, that was a fun one. Um when did we go there? That was a little while back now. It was prior to us having our son. Um 44 years. Yeah, it's been a little it was before we had Ori actually when we did Iceland. Um more than that, though. Yeah, it was a while back, but that was a really fun trip. We did the ring road, which is like the highway that goes all the way around the island. So you fly into Reykjavik and then you get a rental car, and you just do like Airbnbs or camp or whatever all the way around. So it's really cool. We go to hot springs and um like different glaciers and things like that. So I think that was about a week. We drove all around there doing stuff. That was a really fun trip. We actually met a few people too. There was another group of people that were doing the same trip, and they were like a few hours ahead of us, so we kept like running into them at each destination and we became good friends with them. So we we kind of hung with them for a little while and we were still in touch with them. So that one was a good one. But we tried generally now that we have our son, he comes with us, but we try to do one international trip every year at least. We'd like to do more, but because of the school schedule, we don't wanna we don't want him to miss too much school. So we'll do usually like one international trip each year and then a handful of smaller, you know, more regional trips every year.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah. Did you take your son to Portugal?

SPEAKER_02 11:17

No, we haven't done that one yet. When he was in pre-K, he was in a Spanish immersion school.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

So for the first like three or four years of his life, we did a lot of just Latin countries. So we did Mexico a couple of times, we did Costa Rica last year, I think, with him. We did just get back from Bermuda in May, largely just because we have that direct flight. So it's really easy. That's not a Latin country, but it was just a very easy trip. Um, and then Rachel and I, for like different anniversaries where we'll come up with some reason, we'll go where we can. We've done Paris, we did Barcelona last year. Um, our 10-year anniversary wedding anniversary is coming up, and I think we're doing Morocco for that one. So, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Pretty good for a hillbully from West Virginia.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and when that's you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this at some point, but that's one of the things about doing what we do that is a benefit, is you know, you don't have to go clock in, and there's not like uh you know a factory where you have to be like physically putting these pieces together. So you can you have a lot more freedom. Um, and most of the stuff that we do, with some exceptions, but most of it can be done virtually. So if we're gonna go somewhere for a week or so or less, uh it's not vital by any means that I be here as long as I've got my computer and my phone on me.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Right, right. Yeah. Um, and one of the things we like to impart on this podcast is that anybody can do this. It seems out of reach to a lot of people, but it's really not. If you if you're willing to put in the work, take a little bit of risk, but measured risk, don't take stupid risks. You can build something that gives you the freedom to do this kind of travel or or whatever it is that you want to do. So that's important to note when you started in reality.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

I was 20 uh 2012, I believe, or twelve 2013, I believe. Okay. So I was with it's been a while. Yeah, sorry, it wasn't that. I think it was 20, it was 2016, actually. I I have so this is another interesting point, too. Is I you and I have talked about this over the years. I am an alcoholic, I've been sober for 13 years. Um and uh sometimes my memory is awful with things like that, with dates and things like that. Rachel gives me a hard time because I'll be like, yeah, just the other day. And she's like, that was four years ago. Why did you say the other day? But I was with a small brokerage on Sullivan's Island, um, I think for about a year and a half, and they were really good to me. They let me do investing. I started flipping around that time too. And the goal was to flip and then take, you know, flip two or three properties a year and take the bulk of those proceeds to buy rental properties. But they were very good to me in in letting me invest, but the fees were relatively high. And I started doing a pretty significant amount of volume where I was just looking at like the amount that I was giving back giving away essentially to the company, and there was no cap system there. So a lot of companies, you know, would have a cap. You reach your goal and then you're 100% commission after that. And they didn't have that there, unfortunately. And I don't blame them because they were very small, there was only like four or five of us. Um, and then I got scalped by one of the big national brokerages, made me a bunch of promises, which we've talked about before too. I'm not gonna say specifically who it was, but they promised a bunch of resources and things like that they were gonna give me if I came. And finally I was like, okay, I'll do it. And I transferred over there, and they did not give me any of the stuff they told me that they were gonna give me, or they provided it, but it had a bunch of caveats and strings attached to it. Right. So I was there for like a month and I was like, no, I'm out of here, dude. I'm not doing this. At the at that time, I had been licensed long enough that I like kind of during that transition, I got my broker's license. I upgraded it from salesman um to broker, and so so I could start my own brokerage at that point. And I was like, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna start my own brokerage so I don't have all these rules, which is you know the same theme that we keep talking about. So I started Maven Realty at that time, and it was just gonna be me. I had no intention of having a bunch of agents, but this was we met prior to this. I think you remember me like saying, I'm gonna start my own brokerage, and just because I don't I want to have a lot more freedom and flexibility. And I was selling a lot and I was representing a lot of investors, I was helping a lot of investors buy or sell properties, it was probably approximately half of my transactions. So some of them were going on to get licensed themselves, or um, you know, other agents were recognizing what I was doing with the investment stuff, so they started coming to me. Dan Rivers is a friend of ours, I'm sure he'll be on this podcast at some point. He was the first one that came to me and he was like, Hey man, like I'm doing the same thing you're doing. My brokerage is being really weird about this. What if I just hung my license with you and became an agent with you? And then I had to figure out that whole thing, you know, it was like right.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

That's that's a gold nugget. Ryan tagged that because a lot of brokerages prevent us. I'm an investor and an agent. I'm one of Troy's agents, and Troy doesn't limit the number of transactions that I can do for myself every year, and a lot of brokerages do. They don't like you to be buying rental properties or doing you know other types of creative real estate. So it's important to be with a brokerage that is okay with that.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

Yeah, and that's just when your interests align, I think.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Because we don't do anything really exceptional, like I don't spend a fortune on marketing and we don't have like some big crazy office or anything like that, but we're like really powerful for the size for the we do a lot of volume for the size of our company. Um, and I just trust my agents. Like, I don't bring in brand new agents, I recommend they go to one of the bigger, more national chains where they can get a lot more training because I just don't really have the time or ability or the resources to give that to them.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

But agents when I when I joined with you, when I got my license and joined with you, I had been buying and selling houses for six years and decided, okay, let me get my license. I'm you know, I'm paying all these commissions and fees. So why wouldn't I just keep those commissions and fees? But I had been doing it for six years. So when I talked to you, your immediate response was, Well, yeah, you already, I mean, I already understood contracts, I already understood closings, both sides buy and sell. And that's the kind of agent that fits really well at Maven. Maybe not six years' experience, but some some level of experience.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of our agents that have that. And I tell a lot of them, you know, they're like, Well, I've never been an agent before, but I've been investing for however long, and I have all these rentals and I've bought this stuff off market. And I'm like, you have probably more practical knowledge of how this works than the majority of the agents that are running around our market because they've done it from the inside out, they've been the consumer before, so they understand how it works, um, which I think is really vital and very helpful. Cause I I mean, there's a lot of agents I know that don't really buy and sell property themselves, so they don't necessarily understand like what it looks and feels like from that property.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

That's an important distinction. Let's let's talk more about the lifestyle. How old is your boy now? He's almost seven now. Wow. I remember him as a chubby little toddler. So I know a lot of times when I call you or interact with you, it's like, well, I have this, woot, and that, and the other thing with with him. And I love that we can adapt our lifestyles to be with our kids. And that was a big thing for me when I got into this. My kids were pretty little. And I would dedicate, I would get up early, early in the morning, do a workout, do my work. And in the summertime by 10 a.m., I was like, let's go play, let's go to the beach, let's and then, you know, two, three, four o'clock, you have to check back in and work into the evening. But it it's an amazing amount of freedom. And I love the time that you get to spend with your wife and your son.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah. I mean, I and I work from home for the most part too. I mean, we can be like hanging out watching a movie together, and I'll be actively working, you know. I just have to answer an email, maybe like step out of the room to answer a call or whatever. But I would much rather that than have to make a morning commute and then just be gone throughout the day. Um, and then like show up at dinner time, you know, it's kind of the opposite for us. You know, it's with the way, at least on the brokerage side, because the investor side's a little bit different, but at least on the brokerage side, which is really where the majority of my time goes, I'm really just on call. So the way that I've explained it to people, and I've probably said this to you before, is that the way I look at it is that I'm always off work, but the second something comes in, I'm working until I've completed the task and then I'm off work again. Right. But I'm, you know, it's constant, so there's ebb and flow all the time. But that's why I just do stuff like as soon as it comes in. I mean, there's plenty of stuff that I have to push back for some reason. I might need more information from somebody else. So I've got to kick the can down the road. But when stuff comes in, I try to just get it done and then I'm unencumbered again, and I can do whatever I need to do until a new task comes up, and then I just do it. Some of that for me too is anxiety. I just have a lot of anxiety. So when there's loose ends, they just really bother me. It's like an itch that needs scratched. So I just like to have things done because I just feel like there's this pressure off me. Um, and then I'm basically just like in holding formation, living my life, doing whatever I kind of want to do until a new task comes in and then I deal with it.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Well, let's let's talk about alcoholism, anxiety, and golf.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Sure. Right? They're all they're all one and the same, I think. It's just obsessive behavior.

unknown 20:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Is all that it is. So obsessive behavior, I get it.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

It's just obsessing over whatever. And for for that first 10 years after college, when I started doing this stuff at like 24, I'm I'm almost 37 now, but that first 10 years, I didn't have any hobbies. The obsession was like don't drink and work, basically, which is not necessarily healthy, but it's better than the you substitute one addiction for another, it's cross addiction. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

One addiction for another.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yep. And there's plenty of people that can get away from that. For me, it's I think a lot of mine is anxiety that drives all that stuff. I just kind of feel like I always need to be doing something. Like anytime you're with me, like my legs are jittering and I'm picking at something, or you know, I've kind of always got to be right.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I always have to have perpetual motion. And you feel guilty if you're not engaged in something.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Yeah, I just feel lazy. Even if it's like weeding the yard or like blowing leaves. Like if I'm not doing something, I feel like lazy, you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

I did it yesterday. I ran through all of my phone calls and I'm sitting at my desk drumming my fingers. So I g I go outside and pull the garden hose out and manually water all of our plants.

SPEAKER_05 21:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Which we have a hundred plants. So it's like, you know, I can't just do nothing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Yeah. I think that's for a lot of us that have had substance abuse issues, I think that's a a big Part of it is just like this just motor that you can't slow down. Like you stopped by my house the other day in the middle of the day, and I was in the crawl space, just like crawling around checking stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

So true story. Two days ago, I stopped by Troy's house to drop off a check for my quarterly dues and my office fees and everything. And I'm ringing the ring doorbells and I'm walking around the house, and the dogs are barking, and he comes boiling out of the crawl space of the house with a handful of this bundle of wire that you had gathered up. It's like, yeah, there's some water in under the house, and I'm getting that out of there. But I found this wire and I had to just that need to always be doing something.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Yeah. Yeah, which serves, I mean, it's very useful if you know how to harness it, you know. So for that first however many years, that was sort of the obsession was like just like incremental growth with sales, agents, brokerage, flips, rental doors, whatever it may be, you know, just sort of like slowly building things up. Because I'm also not like an exponential growth guy, it scares me. I like small incremental growth, which you know about me, just being a little bit more conservative in that regard. But then I started, I didn't have any hobbies other than that. So other than a periodic video game, just like as a you know, sort of distraction. But I bought a property where as an Airbnb where you have to join the country club there. So I joined and I was like, I guess I should play golf because I've paid for this, and then immediately got obsessed with it. I never really played golf. Um, and now I'm pretty thoroughly obsessed with it. I am in a slump right now, which is a bummer. Um, so I've started playing a lot of tennis too, and that's that's another exception. Oh, you're in tennis now too. Yes, I I have like dual obsessions at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

That's good. That's good. He's very patient with me and lets me play golf with him, even though I'm terrible. And I get good coaching. If you see the Dan Rivers episode, same thing. Dan coaches me through, and I've played with other people who are like, You're on your own, dude. I can't even play with you. But well, you know, I appreciate the fact that you're patient with me.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

I mean, I haven't been playing long. I'd started during COVID, really. So I'm not like far enough away from that period to to to have forgotten how hard it is. You just don't get to play enough. You gotta play more.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, I know. That's what everybody tells me. You'll get better if you play more.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yeah. Well, then you hit a wall. I'm I'm in a pretty bad slump right now. I've had to go back to taking lessons and very regularly. I'm seeing my guy every two weeks, so we're we're kind of fixing everything at the moment. But you know, it you do need to have leisure, you gotta have hobbies too with this stuff. If you don't, you're gonna burn yourself out, which is what I was kind of facing pretty seriously at that time. Was just working constantly. I mean, there would be little bits and pieces in there, but travel kind of became an obsession for us too. And at that time, we didn't have the resources, we weren't really doing as well financially. So we had to be really scrappy with those trips, and that was fun. The whole thing was a part of travel, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

You know, it was like looking for flight deals and then like did you go, did you go as much as hostels and that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Not quite. We were we weren't far from that, but it that's Airbnb has made that easier. Now it's probably not quite as high quality as it was, but at the time, Airbnbs were better, kind of think there just weren't as many of them, and it hadn't become quite so saturated. So pretty much anywhere we went then we would find an Airbnb that was like in a certain part of town where you felt like you really could kind of immerse yourself into the city very well. Now with the kid, we like hotels more now just for the convenience of like a gym and restaurants right there. And if there's a kids' club, like that kind of stuff, it makes it a lot easier now. Uh, but you know, it it's just different. If we just travel differently now that we have a kid, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

I like Airbnb because I have a bunch of kids, and we'd have to get multiple hotel rooms. Plus, I prefer to cook my own meals because my stomach gets upset pretty easily. So having the Airbnb to, you know, eat one meal a day out and two meals a day in has been really useful for us for traveling. And plus, plus, we have a pile of kids, so you gotta have beds for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Yeah, and if you bring your animals too, I mean you got dogs, if the dogs are coming. Travel for us, because of my anxiety and my wife too, neither one of us want to be gone really more than a week. Like a week is like a long time for us. We start getting really anxious because we board our dogs. We have an Airbnb at our house at a guest house that my wife runs. That's kind of her primary um little hustle. She doesn't have to work full-time anymore like she used to. Um, we have a couple of little side hustles that she can supplement her income with. Like five to seven days, we're we're ready. We're ready to get back.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Yeah. So talk about Rachel and the side hustles and the how she replaced her job with managing your Airbnb and then the side hustles.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah. She had um very traditional corporate jobs, like software company stuff for the most part here in Charleston, and really wasn't compensated. I think this is still the case for a lot of these companies, not compensated well for the amount of hours and work and responsibility that they had at these companies. Um, and she just was very dissatisfied with them. Specifically, one, it was largely a commuting issue because the commute was like really terrible for her to get there, and she was just really unhappy with work. And we were getting close to a point where I could have she didn't necessarily need to work, but it still was very helpful because I've I've just always been very insistent that we live below our means. So I didn't want to like you know, stretch paychecks out too much. And then she got pregnant with our son, and the insurance, the benefits were great where she was. So what we decided to do was like, let's, you know, have him um on their insurance and then go back and see if you really want to be there or not, if you really want to stay or not. If you don't, then we can probably subsidize her with the Airbnb. We had an Airbnb in a garage at our house that we'd had operating for a couple of years, uh, and it was about half of her income approximately with that, but um, she was willing to take that haircut just to improve her quality of life. And then I supplemented it a little bit more with some administrative stuff that I give her. Um, and that's been years. She's done that for about five or six years. Yeah, she did just recently start subbing at our son's school. Oh, okay. Yeah, she really enjoys that. She almost went to grad school to be a teacher, and her mom's a teacher, so she kind of gravitates towards that and has a lot of uh affinity for that industry and a lot of respect for teachers. But uh yeah, she's subbing at our kids' school, which is uh pretty nice supplemental income for her, and then she just has more purpose. It kind of makes her feel like she's yeah, it's it's all about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

I'm married to a school principal, and it's it's very purpose driven. I mean, um I love to hear that she's doing it because she wants to do that. And yeah, it's some income, but it's something she wants to do. Yeah, she loves it, man. It has a purpose.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Yeah, and she's gotten to know all the kids in the school, she's got to know all the staff and things like that, you know. So it's been cool too as a parent of a child at that school because she just is like more aware of the institution there, you know, and we she has more sympathy for like when our teachers send feedback or whatever it is, like she's like, Yeah, it's I know why, you know, it's it's a lot easier to to process it. So it's been good.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Yeah, it's all about the community. And I've learned a lot from Beth about community, you know, because I I get in my hole in my head hole, you know what that is.

SPEAKER_05 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Where I can only think about what I think about, and then you know, she'll have me engaged in community activities of like, oh, there are these all these other people that I don't even know exist because I only deal with you know certain things in certain people. So I think that's great. I mean, and that's that's not just it's it's income, but it's also purpose, satisfaction.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, and I think a lot of people that are looking at this kind of thing, doing this kind of stuff for work, like my day-to-day tasks, it's not necessarily um, you know, like any big ideological thing that I'm doing, but there are aspects of it. Like I can, I can my wife can do things like that, you know, and any income that I make can go towards like different causes that I support. And I have the ability and the time to do other things, like I'm on a civic club in our neighborhood and things like that, you know. So sometimes you've got to do the work itself so that you have the ability and the time and the resources to do the other things that are more purposeful, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Right. So one of the things I admire about you, and I I hadn't even thought about this in the preparation for the podcast, is the civic involvement with the um, especially with your park circle. Uh, for those of you not from Charleston, Park Circle is a a really cool middle-aged neighborhood in Charleston. It's not from the 1700s, but it's not new. And it's a a vibrant community. Talk about what you've done with the city council or the the board, or um, I'm not sure even what they're asking.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Yeah, it's a civic club. So neighborhoods like this, we don't have an HOA, like an official HOA. There's a couple of pockets that have an HOA. So these are just civic clubs, which are um, it's it's really kind of an old school, like a mid-century sort of idea that fell off. But certain neighborhoods like this, they're they're back again. You see a lot of these downtown in Charleston here as well. We don't have any governance or anything like that. It's more just like bringing civil complaints and concerns to a centralized place. And then it's also a platform for like our city councilmen are always there, representatives from the police department, code enforcement fire, state legislators come by every now and then, and that kind of stuff. So it's it's almost like sadly, I think things like Facebook and Nextdoor have kind of replaced these a little bit, but they can be used, I think, in conjunction with one another. So we meet, we used to meet every month, now we meet every other month, and it's really just a place where you can like talk about your community. And my particular civic club is Old North Charleston, which is probably about half, a little bit less than half of Park Circle proper. It's kind of the older part, and then there's three or four other civic clubs in Park Circle, so we do things in conjunction with them. But I've done that for years. There was a period where I took a break from it. I'm the vice president. I've never done anything really other than be vice president because it's it's enough responsibility without being too much. You know, I other things like I've adopted a park in Park Circle through Maven that I take care of. And then I do things too with my political party of choice through kind of like the county party. I do things there periodically, go to pop-ups and donate and county and state conventions. So you can but if you're on the convention, you vote for sort of like the agenda and the concerns of the party the following cycle. So those are a bit to go to as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Okay. Yeah, I know it's useful to know the chief of police and the the mayor and sit in a room with them from time to time, especially as a property owner and a business owner.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Yeah. As an agent, it's extremely helpful. If I have a client that, you know, they want to someone just sent me a weird property the other day. It's an old house on a about a three-quarter of an acre lot. They want to raise the house and subdivide the the dirt and then try to build two to four homes on it. So I just text my councilman and I was like, hey man, what do you think we could do with this? Now he's he can't make that decision from a text message, obviously, but he can give it a glance and he can say, Yeah, I think that the zoning board of appeals, like they probably would be supportive of this. And if everything works out, then I would I would vote for approval or I would suggest approval to the zoning board. So just things like that are very helpful, you know, to have resources and access to people, even just to ask their opinion on stuff, you know, you're not asking for favors or anything like that. I would hope you're not asking for favors or that whoever your elected representatives are aren't just giving out favors, but just asking for their opinion, say, this is what I want to do. How would you recommend I go about doing it?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yes, that's perfect. And because you volunteer your time and are involved in the community, you can text your city councilman. I mean, that's that's pretty special. And uh I think anybody could learn to do that, but very few of us do.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah, I love civic clubs, they're easy. I mean, they're the a big reason why I like my particular neighborhood too is that it's more blue-collar. Again, like growing up where we did, I feel a lot more comfortable with that, with just that kind of blue-collar vibe and allure. So you're not you're not paying to play really in a place like this nearly as much. Like people are legitimately are excited to see growth and improvement in a place like this neighborhood in Park Circle. So usually everybody's efforts are for general betterment of the area, you know, not necessarily just financial gain. Oh, that's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

Yeah, I didn't think of it that way, but that that makes a lot of sense. You say it that way. So, what's your next adventure? Do y'all have a trip planned or anything?

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Yeah, we have a couple small ones. We you know, the priorities change with trips with a kid. We're going to Universal Studios next month. Okay. So it's not, you know, we're not going to be able to do that. Exactly. But you know, a few years ago, we would have been like, we're going to the Philippines or something. You know, we would have wanted to do something more like that. But with a kid, you know, it's just his interests, and you want to see your kid have a lot of fun. So we're excited to do that. Um, Thanksgiving, we're going on a trip, West Virginia, to see family. I'm going to Scotland next year to play golf with some friends. Oh, fun. Yeah, so that's kind of like sucked all the uh trip air out of the room a little bit for my wife and kid, and they're being very patient with me for that.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Um, so but our You're going to Scotland for how long?

SPEAKER_02 35:47

I think eight days or nine days is what we have to think about. Oh wow. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

So that's a little bit long for me, but yeah, there's like but overseas travel, man, that the travel days are brutal. So you need a little recovery on each end.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Yeah, and we're gonna be walking at least 18 holes every day. So we're gonna need a little bit. No, I don't think so. All walk and push carts. So there's eight of us going, so I'm kind of just along for the ride.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

I don't really want to be like, oh, I'm gonna leave early, or I'm gonna so some someone else is at um is organizing the trip and you're along for the ride.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Yeah, for the most part. We're all kind of doing suggestions on where we want to go and where we want to play and things like that. But there's one guy um who's a really good buddy of mine that's been before he's done this trip, so we're really letting him just kind of take the reins on it for the most part. And then we have our 10-year wedding anniversary coming up in 2027, so we're excited for that because that's an excuse to do something like kind of kind of weird trip-wise.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Define weird.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

We're not sure where we're gonna go yet. Lake Como, Morocco. We've also been talking about Japan because that's just the wife and I. So it's just not it's not quite as typical, you know. Like we can be a little bit more adventurous with those trips because it's just Rachel and I. But as we're getting older, we don't we want to be comfortable now more than we used to.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

So getting older, 30, almost 37. So getting getting old. Yeah, we're not really slumming it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

For sure. We just we don't really want to slum it as much with those trips. Like, I work so much and so hard. Um, I don't work grueling hours, but like I'm always available. And anytime something comes up, I do it. I rarely ever take a sick day or whatever. So when we travel now, a lot of it is like I do just want to stay someplace where it's like really comfortable and they have a spa and they have a good restaurant, and I want to just like chill, you know.

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Yeah, I think um Tokyo would be exciting. I think Tokyo would be a pretty cool place to visit.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Yeah, Japan's on the list, pretty high up on the list for us.

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Yeah, and the food, from what I've heard, the food in Tokyo is just outrageous. Yeah. Um, that that would be a fun trip. Um, trying to think, I just had some friends who went there. I can't think of who it was. But between that and watching Anthony Bournain's old shows about going to Tokyo, that looks like a pretty exciting place. Weird story, when I was a freshman in college, I didn't know any of my roommates. I just showed up and I had three roommates, and I showed up with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other, because that's how old I am.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

And my two of my four roommates who had never met each other before grew up in Tokyo, but they were Americans. Cool. And so they both spoke Japanese, and one was uh uh the nose guard for the football team, so he was this monster, and the other one was a skinny, super brainiac kid who rode a motor scooter around campus, and uh their stories about Japan. I I haven't been, but that's someplace I'd love to go.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

That's awesome. That's I bet that was a culture shock a little bit for you from Virginia. You're just like, what language are you speaking?

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Yeah, they were Americans, but they had they had both gone to high school in Japan.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

And didn't know each other and were from different parts of the country, which is the most bizarre coincidence. But I heard a lot of stories about Japan. That's awesome. Yeah, so you're selling off a bunch of properties right now.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Well, I mean, we had some flips. We had five flips all kind of get bottlenecked at the same time, largely just kind of labor issues where like this one was delayed and you know, like kind of bled into the beginning of the next project. Like I thought these were gonna all be staggered well, and everything just sort of got stuck together. Um, and then the market had slowed down significantly in the summer. So selling those. We have sold all of them now. We only have one left. Um, and it's been slow there, so I might just refinance that one and keep it when I make a decision in the next few days on that because it'll cash flow. Um, and then I can sell it later down the road um when things kind of normalize a little bit more. I did sell, I had a six unit um in Orangeburg, an apartment building um that I had for a little while. I did sell that a few months ago. I didn't really want to, um, but I was just having some like operational issues with it, just being, you know, over an hour away and didn't really fit the sort of like plan with the other doors that I hold long term. So you did sell that, and that that's actually been a little bit of a relief because every month was like sort of a surprise with that property. I never knew if it was gonna be good or if it was gonna be bad, you know. So I'm glad that that that one's kind of out of the portfolio now. It just makes things a little bit more certain.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Yeah, yeah. When when did you buy that portfolio?

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Um, that one I bought like 2022, I think. And I sold it um I think like early this year. Yeah. So, you know. And it was it was performing. We had stabilized it a bit, it was doing a lot better. Um, but I just wasn't really in love with it and it had appreciated. So, you know, we did pretty well selling it. Um I just there's I think for me, for the stuff I'm gonna hold, I like the assets that I have now, and I'm very familiar with the market that they're in, and I'm willing to pay to save up longer and pay more of a premium for those because I just like the economics better of them.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

So, why weren't you in love with them? What what was wrong with them?

SPEAKER_02 41:17

My PM had infrastructure there, but it was just it's too much of a delay to get things done. Um, because it's very rural there, it's an hour away from Charleston, approximately an hour away from Columbia. There's not much of much there's no metro area really there. There's a bunch of colleges there.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

No, it that's a strange place.

SPEAKER_02 41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Any any adventurous stories, crazy stories about tenants and not, you know, I I had a lot of single families prior to COVID that I self-managed.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

And when COVID hit, I started picking them off and I'd sell two or three of them at a time, and then I moved into apartment. Moving into apartment, a big part of that upgrade for me was that I got them managed. So I don't self-manage really any of my stuff anymore. When I self-managed, though, there were a lot of stories. Probably the craziest one I ever had was the first property I owned that I turned into a rental. I had some tenants there for a couple years, and I got really close with them. They were really sweet, but this was a low-income area, so they would have trouble every now and then, and I would give them extensions, and every now and then I'd just knock some money off rent and things like that. They were great for a long time. And then they started having some marital issues, and there was a lot of fighting between them, and they would call me, like each one would call me to just like complain like about the other one. There was one evening that one of them called me and said that her husband had attacked her, he hit her with a lamp, and then he called me and said that she tried to push him in the bathtub, and it just like it kind of kept getting worse. It kind of came to a head when um I'd I'd lived there for a little while. I house hacked these, so I put a pretty nice shed in the back, right? Maybe three or four years prior to this because I needed it for my tools and stuff. Apparently, he was living in the shed. Um wow, she came home and saw him leaving the shed, and she was mad at him, so she tried to run him over and he dove out of the way and she drove through this shed, this like you know, thousand dollar shed that I just put in like three years earlier, and it just like exploded. And I got a call from the police about it, and I was like, that's that's enough, y'all. We can't, you know, I had to evict them. They did leave like voluntarily, but I was like, I'm gonna have to evict you if you don't leave. And then they left voluntarily. That was probably the worst one because that went on for months. It was like, and then they would call me and say, We made up, it's fine. And then it was like another fight, like the following month. It was pretty wild.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Well, I know 10 years ago you lived in the neighborhood where you had the rentals, and I remember some stories about the neighbors and um a little bit of gangbanging going on.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Yeah, we had a bad one with a neighbor. They had it, they had dogs that they just left outside all the time and they would bark constantly, and they were mistreated too, and just really loud music all the time, and then there was like drug trafficking issues, you could see it close. Early that they were selling drugs. And then we found out later that there was some elderly abuse going on, too, that this was like the grandmother's house, and it was like the grandkids and the nephews and all that stuff coming from they would get out of incarceration and come and kind of like take advantage of this woman. And that was a bad one. That went on for months. And I did have to get the police involved with that. They already had some investigations going on. Before that, really we ever got a solution to that. We moved out of that one and we bought another one that we turned into a rental. And it was like a big improvement neighborhood-wise. So we didn't really have all those same issues anymore. But I think eventually that that there was a resolution there. We didn't live in the house anymore, but the police did finally take care of that.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Yeah, I remember you telling me several times you would just go over there and talk to them, and they would completely reject what you had to say. Yeah. And then the police need to get called. So yeah, it was bad.

SPEAKER_02 44:52

Um just all night, you know, it was rough. And there were kids too at that house sometimes, and there was a lot of stuff going around going on there that they just shouldn't have been part of. So um, but you know, that's when you're swimming in certain waters, like that's just the reality. So if you're gonna invest in real estate in lower income areas, like it's just that's just gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Yeah, I mean, it's a sacrifice that you made to get, you know, to the next level, the next level, the next level. But that's what were you twenty five, twenty-seven, something like that?

SPEAKER_02 45:25

Yeah, the first one I bought, I think when I was 24, and then we basically bought one a year for like four years. Yeah, and then around that time, like the sales and the flips and everything started to increase and get better. So then I could just flat out buy rentals. I didn't need to occupy them anymore. Right because I'd have to live in them to put less down to get a better interest rate, you know, all that stuff, and then move out. It got to a point where I didn't have to do that anymore, which was great. So that's the biggest thing with all that is like you don't have to be special to build a rental portfolio. Like, there's so many loan products out there, and there's so much uh just like stimulus with like FHA, you know, conventional loans. There's all kinds of first-time home buyer grant programs, all these things you can take advantage of to start building a real estate portfolio. There's really no reason, you know, if you're of average ability, there's no reason that you shouldn't be able to do this stuff if you're willing to sacrifice.

SPEAKER_01 46:13

Yeah, if you're willing to sacrifice and have bad neighbors, maybe and take a little risk, but it's a very measured risk. I mean, what you're you have to live somewhere, so why not make it to your advantage? A lot of it. And then 10, 12 years later, you're taking a golf trip to Scotland. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Yeah, and it's just been making good decisions throughout and not getting over leverage. That's been a big one for me. We know a lot of folks that when you start picking up speed, it's easy to feel like it's unstoppable, you know, and it's not gonna end. And it's easy to bite off more than you can chew. So I just see it as you just take like one success at a time and you just stack them. You don't need to go try to win the whole world at one time, you know. It's just a lot. Um, a lot can go wrong when you do that. So if you just set like you're really good about goal setting, I do it to a more minor extent than you do. I really should be better about it. But I give myself sort of arbitrary goals all the time where I'm like, you have to do this and you have to do that, then you have to do this. And they're not huge goals, but it just keeps you sort of slowly moving, you know, towards the finish line.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Yeah, it's incremental growth. And um I I was at your house two days ago. You have a great house and a great location now, and I I have flipped houses all around where you lived before, and it ain't great. It was a place to start, and I I think a lot of people need to hear that and maybe take a little time and think I can do this if I'm willing to endure, you know, barking dogs and maybe little police presents and whatever for a period of time. And I remember when you were doing that and your sweet wife endured a lot through that time, but you know, it it's worked out really well because you did the right things in increments, you didn't try to do everything all at once.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

So and that's a good point. I mean, she she sacrificed a lot and she was very patient doing that with me, but now she doesn't have to work a nine to five job that she doesn't want to work. Correct, you know. So it's important if you can get your partner to understand that with you. And there's there's things that help. I mean, I we used to play that cash flow board game a lot.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

And that helped her to understand, okay, I see what we're doing. We're kind of gamifying everything and it makes it more understandable.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Yeah, Robert Kiyosaki's um cash flow board game is it's very cool. And it really, even when you think you know something, it still opened your mind to possibilities just by playing the game. Yeah. It's extremely well designed. For those of you listening or watching, if you haven't heard of Cash Flow by Kiyosaki, it's a great board game to understand real estate investing. Yeah, so awesome. Yeah, that's cool. That's a great tool. So, what are you looking forward to?

SPEAKER_02 49:01

Um, I feel more stable now with things generally with business. Like I don't have as much financial anxiety as I used to, um, which is great. It just feels better. And a lot of that too is like from coming through that weird COVID cycle where for us in real estate it was like hockey stick growth and then sort of plateau and like a slow slump. Coming from that, I I try not to really get too excited about these different trends and go like all two in on things. So I I really try to be pretty conservative. Like when commission checks come in or proceeds from a flip or whatever come in. I try to put a pretty decent chunk of that away to the side just to have reserves. I try to keep about 12 months reserve funds, 12 months of a salary if I needed to aside, because it just makes me sleep better. Um, and it's it's gotten easier to to do that over time, largely because we're not we're not house poor, we haven't bought more house than we should, we haven't bought cars that we shouldn't, we don't, you know, have vacation properties all over the place and things like that. So it's easy to have a little bit more financial security, is what it feels like.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

I have a I have a good friend who describes his life as a blend of Dave Ramsey and Robert Kiyosaki. And I think that's really useful because too much of one or the other gets us in trouble. Let's go back and talk about growing up with your mother in West Virginia and the kids you hang out hung out with. You've told me some stories about um, you know, adolescence. Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

Yeah, I mean it couldn't have we couldn't have been much worse, really. Uh because I had a really normal, like I played sports, organized sports, we were involved with the church and all that kind of stuff up until about middle school. And I think it was around that time my mom just got like a lot busier with work and she wasn't available as much, so I had more freedom, and then just started pushing back against the system more and more. And then I started skateboarding, and that just sort of opened up this like whole other just like all this counterculture that I was really interested in, just like punk music, metal, skating, alternative sports, like literature, like we were like reading interesting things too that I just like wasn't aware of, you know, because in youth group we weren't we weren't reading certain things, you know, right? Or like talking about like art or whatever artists and things like that. So a lot of those kids came from houses that weren't there, they're just more more poverty, essentially. Um, so even though they had good intentions, they're there was just bad behavior that comes along with that stuff, and we just all we drank a lot, even at like a super young age, we smoked a lot of cigarettes. That's kind of when the opioid epidemic was getting really, really bad in that area, too. So there was a little bit of that on our part, not a ton, but a lot of my friends' families had fallen victim to that. So there wasn't a lot of like oversight at home for a lot of them. Um and then I also started teaching snowboarding when I was like 14, got a work permit from that through school. So that was probably the one that was more damaging for me as far as like bad behavior goes, because we would go pretty much every day after school to this mountain, and there was like no, I mean, we were we were like employees, so we were like in charge and responsible and things, right? So between all those, it was just like a lot of substance stuff, just staying up too late, you know, getting in trouble, running from the police all the time. But when you grow up in a certain place like that, any any kid that grows up in a rural area, there's kind of two paths. It's either like youth group, straight and narrow, or you're gonna go get in trouble because there's not a lot else to do. You just start falling back on like destructive stuff because it's fun. So like fireworks, bonfires, drinking, four-wheeling, mudding, whatever, because there's not a lot else to do, and that can get out of control pretty, pretty rapidly, but it also builds a lot of character. So if you make it through all that stuff, it does teach you a lot about yourself and it teaches you gives you a lot of perspective because you're seeing other walks of life, you know, you're not just in an echo chamber necessarily, right? So that's always been um really helpful for me was seeing just the way that a lot of my friends grew up is very different to the way I grew up.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

So yeah, I mean you're it could destroy you, or it could, as it has for you, as you said, create strength and awareness, and you see it crystal clear. Some people get stuck in it and never get out of it.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

Yeah, a lot of my friends are stuck, and I'm sure you you've noticed that too. A lot of friends pass away. Um driving, you know, whatever it may be. Um, and it wasn't necessarily their fault. I mean, their actions are what ultimately created that, but for a lot of them, they grew up in sort of a pressure cooker where like that was almost always going to be the eventual outcome. I mean, it's just really hard for certain people to to to get out of those circumstances.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Yeah, yeah. Glad you were able to break out of it. I picture you running wild on um was that snowshoe? What what's a resort?

SPEAKER_02 54:05

Yeah, winter place is where I worked mostly because it was closer to me, which is worse than snowshoe. Snowshoe is pretty good for the southeast. Winter place was pretty rough, but it was like ours. Like we ran that place every day, you know. It was so fun. Yeah, but we went to Snowshoe a lot. We worked all the busy weekends, any long weekends, we'd go up to Snowshoe and fill in there. And it was, you know, like we were like 14 or 15, and we'd have to go like work lifts and stuff like that, be like lifties. Yeah, it's like 40, 50 year old ski bums, and we're like 14 or 15, and it's like, whatever you need, you know, it's just a crazy thing. But it was great. It was a it was a really fun way to grow up. It does make you pretty self-sufficient when you have to get yourself to work, you gotta get yourself home, you gotta get your own gear, you know. You gotta like when the boss calls, you gotta answer whatever it is, you gotta cash paychecks, talk to HR, you know, all that kind of stuff. When you're like 14, like those are good lessons to have, and then a lot of those folks would go work on the river in the winter, they'd be whitewater guides in the river in the winter. So we we would do a lot of whitewater rafting too, and climbing and bouldering and stuff up there, too.

SPEAKER_01 55:13

Yeah, do you ever do right water rafting?

SPEAKER_02 55:15

Yeah, um, not for a long time. My mom loves it, she's always just been like kind of a freak of nature on the front of a boat. She's like really aggressive as a paddler. So she would try to cook us. Yeah, she always tried to take us on family trips, but for a long time we didn't do it. I took my wife actually, she didn't grow up in a very like adventurous household. So I took her like five or six years ago and she loved it. So we kind of it's kind of like a every other year thing now. We're actually going this uh this summer. We're gonna take Ori for the first time down like the kitty side, which we're excited about, and then we'll run and then we're gonna run the new the following day too ourselves. So it's fun.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

Yeah, I just know that a lot of the ski instructors, snowboard instructors in the summertime convert to whitewater rafting or fly fishing or mountain biking or something. So yeah, we've never really talked about that. So I was curious about that. So how'd you meet your wife?

SPEAKER_02 56:10

Just from College of Charleston mostly, we both went there and we just shared a lot of mutual friends, and we would just kind of like circle one another. There was just a lot of like, you know, we had like we each had like core groups of friends, but they were kind of they kind of met in the middle, kind of a Venn diagram. So we were aware of each other, and then we just kind of started dating a little bit later, you know. So no, no crazy story, just sort of like me and college Charleston running essentially in the same circles.

SPEAKER_01 56:37

Yeah, just kind of a normal interaction. I have a young protege who's asking me what he should major in in college to go into real estate.

SPEAKER_04 56:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

And I thought of you immediately because of the philosophy degree. And I thought about several other people that I know that have degrees that really don't seem like they fit with real estate. So, what was your college experience like with philosophy?

SPEAKER_02 57:04

I loved it. I think for me, I'm not uh much of a hard sciences guy. Like I always struggled with algebras and chemistries and things like that. But the really interesting thing about philosophy is like the core, the whole synthesis of it is you need to learn how to be critical. You're trying to learn how to think is all that you're doing, really, and make arguments. So you either start from nothing and you build an argument to try to like make sense of something, or you do it the other way where you have a premise and then you try to deconstruct that back down to a universal truth or whatever. So all you're doing is just looking at the world critically. I mean, there's nothing, there's no thing in the world that I wouldn't think you would benefit from those skills. I would say it depends like what kind of real estate you want to do. Like if you want to do like commercial real estate and things like that, then probably a business degree honestly would be better just because it's more traditional. But you know, if you want to be small and lean and build your own business and be very flexible in different facets of life, something like philosophy, I think, is great. And it gets a bad rap because it can be it can be like a little bit elitist, it definitely can, but you know, all you're really learning how to do is just take anything and make sense of it or identify if it's bullshit or not, really. Right.

SPEAKER_01 58:20

Yeah, I I mean those tools are very useful in real estate. You know, as you said, to take a premise and break it down or take a thought and build it up. Um I love it. And I'd kind of mentioned that to him. If he really wants to do commercial real estate, I'd get a finance degree. Really, really understand the number and for investments and the the residential stuff and um a lot of the things we do. I think the critical thinking that you mentioned is the that's the key. Being able to apply critical thinking to what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 58:56

And ethics too. I mean, ethics is very important to me, and that's one of the major components of philosophy is ethics. And that's why, you know, we we do a lot of business. We've got close to 40 agents, and we've never been sued, we've never had a formal complaint, none of us, you know. Um, I mean, eventually those things just happen because it's just exposure, you know, exposure liability things do eventually happen. Um, as an agent specifically, and an investor, if you're gonna be a landlord or you're gonna be flipping a house that you're gonna sell as a product to an end consumer, you want to be as ethical as possible because this is a very it's a high liability litigious industry that works. And that was a my favorite classes really through philosophy were always the ethics stuff. Because you can you can view ethics in any capacity, too. It can be business, it can be. I did a lot of like environmental ethics, a lot of like animal ethics, different things like that. It was really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

Huh. Okay. Well, if I remember correctly, there's a separate ethics section on the test that I took to get my license. There's the kind of mechanical operational part of real estate, and then there's a whole separate test, and it's graded separately for ethics.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

Yeah, and when we renew our licenses, it it's more so as a realtor. If you're just an agent, there is an ethics component. But if you're a realtor, that's like the main thing that they're really focusing on is the professional ethics. Um, when we do our continuing education too, I mean that's one of the core classes, is we always have to take at least one version of an ethics class. Right. As a licensee. And they they do change it sometimes too, and they'll have little variations on the type of core so that we we aren't just doing the exact same core ethics class all the time, which I think is really helpful to look at that, you know, from different different places. Because I think business, it's really easy in a capitalistic society and with business to not be ethical. At almost every opportunity, you could easily be unethical and take advantage of somebody. So I think it is important. And I think for us, these are reputation businesses largely what we have. So if you're taking care of people, it's likely that's going to turn into more and more business, you know, whether that's referral or just accelerated business with your client.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:08

Yeah, the the Napoleon Hill thing. Give more service than expected. Overperform.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:14

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

Love it. All right. What else do we have to talk about? We talked about golf and travel and REI Central.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

We can talk about REI Central.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:24

Let's talk about REA Central. Yeah, let's that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

Yeah, so he Russ was really great about when I first met Russ, I think that's actually how I met you. I was flipping houses, and in a neighborhood where I flipped a house, I noticed another investor had flipped a home and he had a sign in there. So I called him. I was whatever, 425 or whatever I was, maybe a little bit older than that. And I was like, hey man, I'm a younger investor. I think we're doing kind of the same thing. I'm having a really hard time finding a group of some kind, like a mastermind or something, you know. And he was like, Well, he was like, I'm in this lunch group. It's kind of like fight club, nobody really talks about it. He's like, Let me check with the guy and I'll get back to you. And then he called me back and he was like, Yeah, Russ said you can come, check it out. Like the first one, you know, we just got to feel you out, make sure you're all right. So I went to that lunch group that you you'd been putting on, and there was a little bit of a shortage at that time in Charleston, in my opinion. The mastermind meetup scene was bleak, was really bad. So this definitely met what I needed, met my needs there um to be able to go to a place consistently every week and talk to people. And all you guys were further along than I was too. So it was extremely valuable for me. And that's how I met you, really. And we did that for quite a while, and we would often talk in that group that we didn't have a bigger, more produced place to go. We didn't have anything bigger where we could have like a lot of new investors and we could have speakers and we could have this, that, and the other. So when was it like 2020, 2019?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

I think so. 2020.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:54

It was like COVID, like pretty peak COVID time that we launched. Me, you, Kelly, and Dusty just noticed a lack in like the mastermind, the the RIA essentially space in Charleston's. We started, I like to call it kind of an anti-RIA. I know you know. Of course you do. Yeah, yeah, true. Because that what pushed me away from the more traditional REAs was the second you walk in the door, you get attacked, and people are trying to sell you a program and they're trying to.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:18

I'm teasing you, but that's a fair appraisal because the RIA, if you look into that organization, yeah, it's it's very monetized and very driven by just getting people to pay for the experience. Yeah, it does cost money to join RES Central, but it's dirt cheap. It's too cheap.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:36

You know, and then there's not we're we're not there's not mandatory stuff either. Like there were some some of the groups that used to exist, you would join, and then you would have to buy this book, and then you would have to get like certain things, and we're like, you know, it was almost it were like multiple stacks.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

It's not an entree into a coaching program or a you know, buy the book, here's your mentor. It's not an entree into something else. It's exactly very pure. We made it very pure from the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:02

Yeah, and it's been really successful. I mean, we have approximately a hundred people come every month to the main meetup, which is a massive feat in its own right to have that many people consistently come. And then we all have different strengths too between the four of us. So everybody kind of fills in in different places where they're needed. And um, you know, we have we don't necessarily have a speaker, but we'll have something at that main meetup. We might have a panel, and then next month we have a buddy with a lot of doors that's gonna come talk for a little while about various things, and then it just breaks out into networking. Um, and then the subgroups, which you run, the flipping group, I run the landlord group, then the commercial group, and we have the women's group as well. So I've I've been really proud of it. Again, like ethically, I feel like we are fairly ethical. We try to be very fair with who we allow in, what we allow people to say. We don't overcharge for it. It really when we started it, it really was kind of between the four of us. We felt like it was a way that we could give back and provide something that was really kind of missing in this area.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:04

Yeah. And by the way, I still run the lunch group every week and I hope to see you sometime.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:10

I know, I haven't been in a long time. I apologize.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:12

Well, the lunch group used to be much bigger because we didn't have RAI Central.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:17

So now that we see each other every month at RAI Central, there's still a core group of us who meet for lunch. But I started that just out of I I came out of a um, I guess you'd call it a corporate career, and I visited all the groups, I joined all the groups, and I would sit at the table for breakfast or lunch or whatever. And a year later, the same person was saying they were looking for their first deal.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:41

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

And I'm thinking, well, I I can't really help this person or learn from this person. So I started my own little thing, and then, you know, we looked at that and said, This could be so much bigger. And it is I mean, it's huge now.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:54

So, and I think it's super valuable to to the community and has certainly enhanced my business. Business as well. So it was a it was a good thing we did, Troy.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

I think so. I've been, you know, and the fact that it's gone on this long, like some of the other groups that I've been aware of in the past, they didn't make it five almost six years. So it's pretty incredible that it's still going. And you know, I think a lot of it too is because the four of us just like each other and trust each other. And none of us derive our income from it. So there's not ever any animosity or weirdness about anything there, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:29

Right. But yeah, I've been very proud of it. Well, and that has a lot to do with ethics too. Is none of us none of the four of us are selfish and trying to get over on the other person. I mean, there's just none of that. It's um and we've had speakers like Chris Rude came in from out of town and he said, This doesn't exist in any other market that he knows of. I'm sure there are some that we don't know about, but when they visit other markets, he said, there's just not this level of collaboration like we have in Charleston.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:01

So yeah, I mean to me, it's to me it's kind of punk, you know, it's pretty punk rock that like we don't overdo it.

unknown 1:07:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

There's not like a headline speaker, and like not one of us doesn't have like a suit and a gold microphone, like trying to steal the show or anything. It's just like, no, this is we're gonna keep this kind of like under the radar a little bit. Um and I think to me, I think that's the main reason why it's been successful too, is I feel like our our members, when they come, they don't feel like they're just being preyed on.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

Right. It is pretty punk rock when I have to yell, you fuckers, shut up so we can hear the speaker. Yeah, which you do pretty much every month. I love it. Well, hey man, I really appreciate you being here today. Um, it's been fun getting to know you even a little bit better, and we'll we'll have another conversation soon. So this has been the Blue Cup Podcast. You know what to do. Like, subscribe, click the bell, and comment. Give us comments so we can get better. And we will see you next time. See you, buddy.