WS1924 Navigating Real Estate Challenges | Highlights Tony Lopes & Marc Kuhn

In today's episode, we've compiled an exciting collection of highlights from our recent shows. We had the pleasure of speaking with some incredible guests who shared their entrepreneurial journeys, insights into real estate investing, and valuable advice for both seasoned and aspiring investors.

Tony's Journey from Layoff to Real Estate Success

Our first guest, Tony Lopes, shared his inspiring story, which began with a layoff that served as a wake-up call, prompting him to pursue financial independence through real estate investing. Starting with a four-unit building and working his way up to larger multifamily properties, Tony's approach was methodical and relatable. He emphasized the importance of starting small and scaling up, debunking the myth that you need to jump into large-scale investments right away.

Dirty Boots Capital: From On-Site to In-Depth Analysis

Tony also introduced us to his venture, Dirty Boots Capital, which combines on-the-ground experience with a deep dive into economic reports and trends. He highlighted the significance of understanding migration patterns and macroeconomic indicators, such as the 210 spread for treasuries, to make informed investment decisions. Tony's coaching through Dirty Boots Capital aims to help both active and passive investors navigate the complexities of real estate syndication.

Marc's Transition from Concrete to Real Estate

Our second guest, Marc Kuhn, recounted his transition from pouring concrete to becoming a real estate entrepreneur. After a job loss and a bout with a panic attack, Marc realized the necessity of creating a business that could operate without his constant involvement. He shared his experience with leveraging time, money, and media to grow his business and the pivotal role that hiring a business coach played in his success.

Connect with Our Guests:

If you're interested in learning more from Tony and Marc, you can find Tony through Dirty Boots Capital and Marc on LinkedIn, where he shares his insights and strategies for creative financing and real estate investing.

Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share The Daily Real Estate Syndication Show with your friends.  Thank you for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode!

VISIT OUR WEBSITE
https://lifebridgecapital.com/

Here are ways you can work with us here at Life Bridge Capital:
⚡️START INVESTING TODAY: If you think that real estate syndication may be right for you, contact us today to learn more about our current investment opportunities: https://lifebridgecapital.com/investwithlbc

⚡️Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheRealEstateSyndicationShow

📝 JOIN THE DISCUSSION
https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestatesyndication

➡️ FOLLOW US
https://twitter.com/whitney_sewell
https://www.instagram.com/whitneysewell/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-sewell/

⭐ Be Our Guest!
We are continuously working hard to help our listeners with their journey to real estate syndication. If you think you can add value in any way to our listeners who are in commercial real estate, then we’d love to have you over.
Apply here: https://lifebridgecapital.com/join-our-podcast/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, we've packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you're going to enjoy the show. Thank you for being with us today.

Deana Berg: Tony, this is Tony Lopes. He is our guest today from Dirty Boots Capital. Thank you so much for being with us.

Tony Lopes: Thanks for having me, Deana. This is going to be a fun conversation.

Deana Berg: I'm excited. As we mentioned, we just were kind of doing some pre-show prep. I love anyone with the Boston accent. I picked it up three seconds into the convo. Pure entertainment for me. The East Coast is a little bit like a foreign country. I'm a Seattle West Coast girl, even though I live in Denver now. So it's kind of like watching an amusement park, you know, just the East Coast.

Tony Lopes: I love it. We could create a show just with my my crazy accent, my crazy Boston accent. That could be a 30 minute show right there.

Deana Berg: Yeah. I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist. Most of you are probably listening to the podcast, but Tony had the Boston hat on, so he makes no bones about where he's from, which I love. All right. Well, Tony, let's get into this. You have a lot of experience. You know, as the show, we send our guests kind of, you know, some information, getting ready to figure out how we can best leverage the experience of our guests. Tony sends me like a nine page bullet point. summary of all the things that he can share, which for me is like a total gift hosting a podcast. We can go anywhere with this. So folks buckle up. Tony, give us a little background about who you are, how you got started, and then we'll get to the now.

Tony Lopes: Sure. So I, I personally like to share my story in a very relatable way to the, to the audience, to your listeners, because At the end of the day, we're all trying to achieve the same thing of, you know, having a certain amount of wealth, having a certain amount of freedom in our lives to be able to do the fun things we like to do with our family. So, you know, I share with folks, I'm no different than anybody else. My parents actually migrated to this country. prior to me being born. So they came to this country with very little. And when I was born, me and my siblings, they handed down the tablet of, because they saw this country as a country of great opportunity, they handed down the tablet of, go to school, get a great education, you'll get a great job, and you'll be set for life. Which I think many of the listeners and the viewers can resonate with. That's a very familiar mantra that we have, right? Well, I went to school, I got a great education, I got two degrees, a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and an MBA, two great degrees. I went to work at a great company and then I was laid off. And I was like, well, wait a minute, this wasn't part of the mantra I was handed down from my immigrant parents who saw so much opportunity. So that was my awakening. is really what it was. And I said, I gotta do different. I wasn't financially independent at that time. I had to go find another job, which all of us can relate to. And so I found another job, but at that point I said, I have to do something different. I had a little bit of familiarity with real estate investing. My father as an immigrant had done some real estate investing. So I had some amount of familiarity. And so that's the route I took. is part-time, after work, nights, weekends, I started investing in real estate. And I didn't start in a huge way. I bought a quad, a four-unit building. Did some amount of fixing up on that, rented it out from that cashflow and that equity. I still have the building today actually, but during that time I used that equity and I used that cashflow to start building some spec homes. Again, all while working my job during the day. So I was building a couple of spec homes, nights and weekends, and From there, I took that cashflow, invested it back into the multi-space because I saw the multi-family space really as a great avenue to create not only appreciation for myself, wealth for myself over a long period of time, but also this great thing we call cashflow. And so I continue to buy multifamilies again to, you know, so for your audience, one of the things I like to hit on is, you know, I didn't start doing this, like buying, you know, a hundred unit buildings. you know, with $10 million. I did not have that. I came from a very simple upbringing. So for me, I started with small buildings and eventually that allowed me to amass enough cashflow to allow me to retire from my day job at the ripe age of 44 years old, which I'm very proud of.

Deana Berg: That's amazing. So this is income replacement where all of your like single family and small multis, I mean, the spec funds, were they all in the Boston area where you lived?

Tony Lopes: They were. They were actually up in New Hampshire, just north of Boston. Yeah.

Deana Berg: So what was the time period from the time you started this till the time you were able to replace your cash flow, your income through cash flow at 44?

Tony Lopes: About 15 years.

Deana Berg: Okay. That's helpful and reasonable, you know? Yeah. Again, I hear all these headlines of like, you know, zero to 2000 units in six, eight months, you know, which is amazing for some people. But I just think I love how realistic your story is. And it's also kind of takes the tension out of it in terms of like, hey, I can do this. I'm not going to jump off into oblivion thinking I'm going to become, you know, this cash flow king or queen in six years, even, you know, I mean, but I mean, six months.

Tony Lopes: You're, you're, you're absolutely right, Dina. And that's, that's why I like to start there with my story, because I think a lot of your viewers, a lot of your listeners can relate to a lot of different aspects of that story. Right. So, but that just kind of, you know, freed up my time now that I've replaced my, my W2 income, my job income with cashflow, which is a very doable thing. Now I can go off and do all sorts of other crazy things. And so, yeah, we can expand on all the different things I touch these days.

Deana Berg: Yeah. So what is Dirty Boots Capital? That's the name of your company, but what do you guys do? Where did that fit into the timeline of the 15 years and what does that look like now?

Tony Lopes: Sure. So to break down Dirty Boots Capital, so Dirty Boots was came from the fact that years ago, I could just walk on a job site, get my boots dirty, looking at the job site, seeing what I have to fix in terms of windows, doors, roof, whatever. I could get my boots dirty just walking on a job site. Today, things are a little different. We have things like migration patterns that we need to understand. So I get my boots dirty walking through those reports of migration patterns, financial reports, macro reports, what's happening in the economy. Today, we have to be so much more vigilant and savvy in terms of what's happening within the economy, whether we're having a recession on our doorstep or not. Do we have inflation for longer? We have to understand these things better. So I get my boots dirty walking through those types of reports. Separately, capital, when I do my coaching, so part of Dirty Boots Capital is coaching. I provide coaching to folks who either want to active or passively invest. So part of the capital piece is so many people have come to me over the years and say, Tony, I don't have enough money to invest to start being an active investor and buying real estate. I say, that's okay. Tell me a little bit about yourself. and come to find out they're a contractor of some sort, or they're a real estate agent, or that they have some other skills that complement being an active investor. And so I say, that's okay. I get you may not have the capital. Why don't you partner as an LLC or a partnership of some sort with somebody else that does bring the capital? but may not have the time or your skills to be able to do the rest of the stuff. Mm hmm. So now that's that kind of like blows their mind and they start to think, OK, yeah. And oh, by the way, that makes it easier when it's two people doing something, so to speak, for the first time. You're not going alone. at this. So one person may bring the capital in terms of the money, another person may bring the capital in terms of the knowledge, what they hold between their ears in terms of how to fix things, or maybe how to list an apartment for rent, or dealing with contracts, whereas the person with the money Maybe they just have the money and they don't really know the other piece or don't want to deal with the other piece. So that's where the dirty boots capital came from. So we help people not only with the coaching that we do, but also educational blogs, videos. and also helping people with syndication get into syndication, if that's a route they want to get into. So we never push anybody into any particular situation, but if syndication is something good for them, we help them figure that out.

Deana Berg: So I have a question about the dirty boots and the reports that you're wading through. Can you share any of the top line report titles in case anyone is interested in looking at some of those things? Which are the ones that you find yourself in the most?

Tony Lopes: Yeah, so the one I find the most interesting that I look at. pretty frequently is the 210 spread for the treasuries. It's a FRED report. And there's a lot of reports put out by the Federal Reserve. They have a database called the FRED database. You can go online, access a whole bunch of different reports. But I like the 210 spread report. So just Google FRED 210 spread, that report will come up. And when you look at it, it gives you 50 years of history. And so, wow, that is such a great crystal ball to be able to help us understand where we've been and where we may be going in the future. And so every time we dip below the zero line on that report, it indicates a certain amount of badness. Okay, and then you can see tracking every time we dip below that line, soon thereafter we fall into a recession. We come out of the recession, it dips below the zero, we go into another recession. It goes back up, you know, we have these business cycles. So where are we today? We're below the line, we're below zero. It's starting to track back up, which is a good sign. However, 50 years of data is telling us this is an indicator that we are going to see some sort of a recession. So I think that's super important to watch that, to watch that metric and help us understand where we are. We, we can't live with our head in the sand. We have to understand some of these things and why we're investing in the multifamily space. Super important indicator.

Deana Berg: Yeah, so this is the kind of information I think listeners find really helpful is like the name of this report. Any other reports that you can share that we can point listeners to to do their own, you know, kicking around in the dirt?

Tony Lopes: Oh, I wasn't prepared for that one. So I like to look at the home ownership rate. And not just home ownership rate, so to speak of what's, what we're seeing in this country. I also like to look at other countries as data points, right? So right now we are at 66% home ownership rate in the United States, which, okay. However, that's trending down, right? Because of the interest rate environment. There's a lot of things that will drive that down. that chart down. So I look at that chart, but looking at other countries. So we're at 66%. I look at another industrialized country like Germany. Sometimes we compare ourselves from manufacturing base or an industrial base. We compare ourselves to Germany. Well, Germany only has a 47% homeownership rate. So they obviously have many, many, many more years on us. They're a much older country. They're a very industrialized country, which makes them similar to us. But it just kind of makes you, just like you said, Dina, it makes you go, hmm, what does that mean for the future of the United States? Look at Japan, right? A lot of headlines out there, a lot of speak is about the Japanification of America because we hold this very high debt to GDP, not as high as Japan, but we're trending in that direction. So along the lines of the Japanification of the United States, I look at, well, what's their home ownership rate? And their home ownership rate is 55%. So lower than what we have in the United States.

Deana Berg: But not trailing too dramatically. Tony, thank you so much. You were so great. So knowledgeable. Love the accent, but talk to you all day.

Tony Lopes: You're so kind, Deana. I appreciate you. So far, guys. Excellent. Thank you for having me, Dina. I appreciate you.

Deana Berg: Marc Kuhn, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. Thank you.

Deana Berg: Yeah, well, great. I'm excited to hear your story. Sounds like you are a entrepreneur at the heart and soul, which I think a lot of our listeners are going to identify with. So why don't you give us just a little background, tell us about your family, and then we'll kind of get into the meat of what you want to discuss today.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, so I guess me today I got three beautiful little kids, 10 eight year old girls and then I got a three year old boy that keep me keep me busy but they're also my pride and joys. And then I have my wife that I've been with for 12 years now so we've gotten to experienced my entrepreneurial journey together. And she basically fills in all the weaknesses that I have. As an entrepreneur, you can have many things on your mind and many things going at the same time. And she kind of picks up the pieces behind me and keeps the ship floating and keeps everything together. Wow, what a team.

Deana Berg: So let's talk about professionally, like, where did you come from? Where are you at now? And how did you pivot there? Are you where you thought you would be?

Marc Kuhn: That's a great question. And, you know, I was, uh, even just six years ago, I just poured concrete for a living. That was really what I did to make money. And, and that's what I know the best. So I, I grew up right next to my dad. My parents were divorced at a young age, uh, age six. And, uh, my dad went and opened his own construction company and, and, uh, you know, Uh, I stayed with mom while we went to school and, and construction was every summer. That's just what I got used to. So, uh, poured a lot of concrete, some carpentry projects. We'd built some things, garages, whatever. Um, but it was always mainly in the concrete business. And I guess you fast forward a little bit. I did go to college for four years into, you know, I went to high school, went to college for four years. Dad's like, ah, I don't think you want to be pouring concrete for the rest of your life. So of course, go to college. And I think what I learned was drinking was fun. And, you know, I'm still 12 credits short of a degree. So I didn't really advance my career any any further. But, well, here's the deal. My last year of college, I went for construction management. I was like, I was going for business management, and then I pivoted. I'm like, well, I love construction, so why don't I do construction management? Well, you figure out that construction management has nothing to do with actually like physically doing construction, which I knew the most. So I realized that I was working full-time at this time. I got a fiancee at the time. We bought a house because it was 08, and the houses were cheap. I think they were giving away like 8,000 bucks if you bought a house. uh, Obama or something was doing that at that time. So I was like, Hey, we can get a house really affordably. Um, we got in for zero money pretty much. And I ended up getting fired from my job two weeks after we closed. And yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. And I had a W2 job, so my dad didn't fire me. I butt heads with my dad. And that last year of college, I was working a W2 job and working about 45 hours a week plus going to school full time. And so my heart just, you know, obviously, I lost my job, I'm still going to school, I had to do something. And so at that point, I aborted everything. And I, you know, installed a fart fan for somebody in their house. And I was just trying to come up, that was my first job. And I was just trying to piece together money to make sure I could get this mortgage paid, right. And my fiance, you know, she's, her parents are like, Oh, my God, what is this guy doing? You know, bought a house, this is going to be the worst thing ever. I had a lot of burden on me to, to make it through that time. And it's weird though, as an entrepreneur, I think, you know, you don't, people always talk about being an entrepreneur, they don't commit to being an entrepreneur. And at that point, I didn't commit, I just had to get desperate and desperate times. And I think that's what, and I just committed, I was like, I'm gonna do construction, I'm gonna make as much money as I can, I'm gonna make the mortgage, everything's gonna be good, and I'm gonna work my ass off. And I think That's what some entrepreneurs, you know, they'll be working their job. And then slowly and slowly, though, like I already had a mortgage at that age, you know, I was 22 years old, and I had a fiance and I had, but lifestyles just get more expensive. Now you have private schools, and you got kids coming into the picture, our lives get more and more expenses, which gets harder for us to go on. And, you know, we can't quit our job now. reliant on the income, we can't go do our vision and, and take it. So I always try to inspire younger entrepreneurs. It's like before you live the lifestyle inflation life, which most younger people live today, it's like, commit to what you want to do in life. And before all that happens, don't wait. I mean, the sooner you can do it, the easier it becomes.

Deana Berg: Something I want to highlight that I think is actually a gift. It's kind of like the fire of desperation. That is the, um, you know, the baptizing of every entrepreneur. It's like until you get to that point where it is. sink or swim, do or die, you got to set your forehead like Flint and just move forward. I feel like at that point, you're then able to prove to yourself and to others if needed, that you actually have what it takes to kind of do this. So we can look at those transitional points as man, this was the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to me, or they can be the greatest gift. I mean, was that a pivotal moment for you that you look back to and you said, man, I had more in the tank than I thought that I did.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, you know, and my w two job that I had, it was just very, very complacent and just took a lot of time. And it's like I we grew up very lower class. And my, you know, my mom lived on food stamps. And it is, you know, we just, we had everything we needed and nothing more. And I just always had this thing where I wanted more from life. So I worked my tail off for my dad to always, I bought my own cell phone, I paid for my own car insurance, you do all these things, you know, tabs, and I always I was living a lifestyle inflation when I was 14 years old, you know, I had to pay for a cell phone bill. And I, and so I had bills that I had to cater for. And I think that makes you more hungry. I just wanted more out of life. At the end of the day, I wanted everything every other kid had and their, their parents were paying for it. So I just needed to get creative with how I had to commit to that. And I think that was just my motivation to try to fit in.

Deana Berg: So this at this point is when you launched your career into construction. Talk to us about what you learned as an entrepreneur and where you are now. I know that's kind of a big gap you're covering, but I know that you have some really well thought out ideas around succeeding as an entrepreneur. I'd love you to share those.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, well, I got I got really two main points on how I've pivoted from where I started and where I ended up now. And, and I want to mention this one first, and it's more or less, I got really curious. So I got curious about, you know, owning a business like, hey, can I do this? I didn't know anything about it. My dad never taught me the business side of things. He taught me all the trades and the craft. But I think you, as an entrepreneur, you have to be very uncomfortable. I was like, oh my God, I'm going to screw up my taxes. I'm going to screw up the accounting. I'm going to whatever. I'm going to run out of money. But I got really curious about business and how, you know, how do you build a business? What, you know, why do the super wealthy all have businesses? And so curiousness also led me into real estate because six years down the road, I started getting curious, you know, about real estate, and then Grant Cardone pops up on your phone, you know, and then you're like, wow, in this is what the super wealthy do. And, you know, they live this, this wonderful life, and they make money while they sleep, and you start hearing all these different things. But I always come back to anytime I want to start something new, or I want to go somewhere I get, I always remain very curious and very humble. Like I'm always asking questions to other people. I do a podcast with higher-level people. I love just being around those people and being inspired by them and, you know, getting to ask them high-level questions that you can't just ask your colleague right next to you or somebody else, right? So, curiousness is probably the number one thing how I've gotten to. Obviously, you got to take commitment to action. And you can't just learn everything, but being curious and then taking action has gotten to me where I'm at. And then really like the second part of this, or like the three things I really want to talk about is, is using leverage. So, so I was a concrete kid. Like I didn't know a lot about business and I don't think college taught me a whole lot about how to run a business. I, you know, how to open LLC. I, you know, all this stuff was foreign to me.

Deana Berg: Why isn't that a business class? It definitely should be. You know, yeah, I do the opening business.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, they teach you strategies and they teach you different things. I was just on a podcast with a president of a university here and asking those specific questions, you know, how do you adopt AI and how do you, just the basics. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, how can I learn from TikTok faster than I can learn from a college? Scrolling reels on how to open an LLC and get business insurance and go into business. It is bizarre. I don't know.

Deana Berg: That must have been a really interesting conversation with a college president because I think a lot of folks are saying, what future is higher ed with the implementation of AI? That's another podcast.

Marc Kuhn: I want the link to your interview. Well, I will send you the link. So I'm from Thompson, North Dakota. This is a very small town of a thousand people. Well, Greg Brockman is the president of OpenAI. He created ChatGBT. He created Dolly for Google. He created all these things. And he's from our small hometown up here in North Dakota. And yeah, the University of North Dakota, President Andy Armacost, who I just did an interview with, just got to interview him a few weeks ago. I've been trying to get him on a podcast, but you can about imagine. how hard Greg Brockman is to pin down on a podcast lately, but I'm going to keep after it. And hopefully one day I do get him on brilliant guy. He didn't even finish college though. And, and, and he shared that with me. He's, he's like, I don't know. 20 credits short, 30 credits short of a degree. And, and, you know, it doesn't matter though. He, he obviously is doing just fine now, but he, you know, he created Stripe and all these things from a small town in North Dakota. So there, there you can educate your listeners. Go, go search a Greg Brockman as he's a, he's a genius of a guy. Um, but you know, and, and I think though, when I was talking about leverage, You know, and I'm not talking like Dave Ramsey stuff here. Like I'm not going to say not borrow any leverage, but you have to leverage. You'll, you'll realize that the super wealthy, when you get curious about that, they're, they're leveraging three things, time, money, and media. And not everyone in media, but I think it's very important as the society grows up with a phone in their hand that. they're all watching, you know, marketing is changing. And it always changing, right? Like it's, it's drastically always changing, but you have to get used to media. So, but I want to, let's first sit on time and time is leveraging through, you know, there's such lots of solopreneurs, but then, you know, you realize that the big solopreneurs all have these team of VAs behind them, or, you know, there's someone behind them. Maybe it's a wife, maybe it's whatever, but it ends up always developing to be a team because they realize that they can't always produce everything, and they have to leverage their time to go and do bigger, more important tasks. And they should be doing that. So, you know, I think one of my regrets in business is not hiring like an assistant, like I end up doing all these, trying to line up every meeting, and then you're in a meeting, and it's scheduled changes. And, you know, as you get more you know, not important, but like busy, it's just your schedule fills up, you need someone to keep you more prepared, and end up getting a lot more done and advancing your career. So you don't even need to go hire like a top notch $100,000 $200,000 a year guy, you literally hire yourself an assistant leverage yourself. Um, and, and so just you'll realize though, that the, the most, some of the most successful business owners I know spend very little time at their company. They lead, they manage, they provide, um, they ask their leaders to provide solutions to problems and they just lead them to the right, to the right answer that they feel that that lines in a value with the company. So, um, you know, I always had to ask myself. did I have a company? Can I leave for a month? And will it operate without me? Or do I just have a business that owns me?

Deana Berg: Good question. Yeah, you're then that is a really great way to, to just, you know, structure things. But yeah, I mean, it's kind of the same concept of working on your business versus working in your business. But I like that question.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah. And I always ask myself that. And I think someone told me, it's like, Hey, can you leave for a month and come back and everything's good? That's like, well, yeah, my wife's here. Or if somebody's here, or if you know what I mean? It's like, no, how about like, if you just leave? And, you know, that's in 2016, I ended up having a panic attack just because, um, I wasn't sleeping at night and I wasn't healthy. I wasn't taking care of myself physically, I guess. I was in shape. I poured concrete for a living. So it's like, I'm in shape, but I was not physically healthy, which means you're not mentally healthy. I was just ending up doing everything. That's why I was the guy that answer for every, you know, every problem. And after a while, you realize that eats on you. So I made a pivotal point in about 2016, 2017, to get interested in real estate, other sources of income, and then actually build a business that can operate without me. And so I, what I, where I failed there, though, it took me three years to really figure out that I didn't know what a mentor was. or I didn't have anyone to ask questions. And so I was just trying to navigate books and I'll do it all myself.

Deana Berg: In terms of timeline, you're still running your own construction company, is that correct? Or is it concrete or both?

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, it was construction. We were doing general contracting and concrete work, basically those two specific trades.

Deana Berg: And you have this epiphany, I need to figure out how to make money when I sleep and how to create a self-propelling flywheel in my business in the event I leave for a month. So then you dive into books and education and you're realizing you need a mentor, but you don't know what a mentor is. Okay, keep going. This is good.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah. And well, I just, the books and like, you can do everything yourself. You can educate the hell out of yourself online. Right. Like I just, I spent three years trying to figure out business again by myself and just implementing all these strategies. And my team was like, all right, where are we going this week? Like, what do you, what are you focused on? And it's like this week it's KPIs next week it's leadership. And it's like, you know, it depends on what book I'm reading. And, and really I needed, um, you know, it fast tracked in 2020, because I, we hired a business coach in EOS implementer. Um, so entrepreneurial operating system, and it can run a coffee shop, it can run a billion dollar business. And once we got online, that's when we started forming a board within the company, which is just higher level people in each department. There's one person in charge of marketing, one head to chop, as they would call it in EOS. One person, you know, that's heading the financial department, one person that leads it operate, you know, it's like specific areas instead of, oh, how many arrows point at the business owner? Well, usually too many. and that's why you're reliant. Or it could be the business owner themselves just is the worst down to me, just they're not willing to give it up. And that's where a lot of businesses get stuck with. I think I've just seen a statistic that 92% of businesses do under a million dollars of revenue. That's just, it's usually due to the operator themselves, not willing to give up control. So once we got hit, it was literally 10X the business since then. So it's, It's funny how you get.

Deana Berg: Let's talk on this just for a second. That's a big comment you just made. So EOS, you mentioned it briefly, entrepreneurial operating system. You bring in, it's Gina Wickman system for the listeners. I'm sure other guests have discussed it too. So you specifically implemented this. You hired an implementer. And so what was the timeframe for that? You bring it into your business and you say, we're going to hire you for X amount of time.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah, in the US system, you usually like people will try to do it themselves. I recommend not I mean, it might cost you $60,000. But it's really a two year deal. You graduate after two years.

Deana Berg: That was my next question is with if you would share the cost. So that's great. Okay. Your investment of 60 grand you 10 x your business. That's amazing. That took two years.

Marc Kuhn: Yeah. Yup. And, and he's really your cheapest employee you'll ever hire or you or she, you know, whoever your implementer is, but they're really a mentor on how to run a business because they've ran many different businesses. They're, they're, they're, they might be doing 20 businesses at the same time. Um, and you, you know, you, you get open about your issues and solving things quickly. And as a group, not as a business owner, instead of you making all the decisions, it puts the decisions on a group. Yeah. Yeah, you align the like, as an entrepreneur, we have all sorts of ideas, right? It's just like, which one is our company going to follow, right? It's got to follow our values. And it's got to follow everyone's got to be on board. Yeah, if you can get everyone on board, man, that's when we started really steamrolling ahead. And actually, You know, we were doing $2 million in revenue, two to three in 2016 and 22, we did 25, you know? So it's just like the, the alignment of where we wanted to go.

Deana Berg: It's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. Anything else before we wrap up?

Marc Kuhn: No, I'd say, you know, hey, follow us on LinkedIn. How can people find you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Mark Kuhn, M-A-R-K-U-H-N. You can just search me on LinkedIn. I'm on there all the time. I have an email that I do every Saturday. Um, it's on sub stack. You'll also be able to find that on LinkedIn called unfollow the herd is the theme of mine. So you'll see that throughout my content, but you can follow me everywhere. YouTube. I teach how people can creatively finance projects and you don't need a lot of money to do what we're doing. I promise you. And you know, YouTube, Instagram, all of the social media platforms.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you're telling your friends about the Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to lifebridgecapital.com and start investing today.