
The Multifamily Real Estate Experiment Podcast
“Multifamily Real Estate Investing for the Career Professional.” Join Shelon "Hutch The Marine Investor" Hutchinson who talks to military veterans and real estate professionals about the results of their journey and multifamily real estate experiments. Each week, Hutch discusses Multifamily Real Estate Investing for Career Professionals and military veterans to help you build wealth and financial independence. Questions about Multifamily real estate investing are systematically dissected as your host works through observations and data to answer the week's question.
The Multifamily Real Estate Experiment Podcast
MFREE 101 Full Episode with Sam Morris: What’s Scarier? Making a Move or Missing the Window.
In this episode of the Multifamily Real Estate Experiment podcast, I'm your host Shelon Hutchinson, also known as Hutch the Marine Investor, welcomes Sam Morris, a partner at Lone Star Capital. Sam brings over 20 years of experience in multifamily real estate, having executed more than $550 million in deals and managed over $1 billion in real estate financing. The discussion delves into Sam's real estate journey, the current economic climate, and the impact of high interest rates and inflation on multifamily acquisition. Sam shares his insights on asset management, investment strategies, and the importance of mentorship and strategic alliances. The episode also highlights the upcoming Lone Star Capital summit, emphasizing the value of networking and continuous learning in the real estate industry.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:27 Guest Background and Experience
03:43 Real Estate Insights and Economic Climate
07:54 Investment Strategies and Market Analysis
15:24 Asset Management and Operational Excellence
19:06 Merging Companies and Future Plans
21:45 Summit Event and Networking Opportunities
29:15 Focus Round and Closing Remarks
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Thank you to all of our listeners!!! We would love to hear from you!!!
Email me at:
hutch@hsquaredcapital.com
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Visit our website to find out more:
www.hsquaredcapital.com
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The Multifamily Real Estate Experiment
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Are you multifamily enthusiast? Welcome to another episode of the Multifamily Real Estate Experiment podcast. I'm your host, Shalon Hutchinson if you in real estate for a long time, and you connected with me. You know me as Hutch, the Marine investor, and today I. Today we have a guest That, man, it's like it's really worth bragging about because this guy, every conversation is transformational. See, Sam a good friend. Sam Morris is a partner at Lone Star Capital I. Where he leads acquisition, asset management, and investor relation. This man has over 20 years where he have ex executed more than$550 million in multi-family deals He has. He has built a successful firm in a sunset capital and. Have since joined forces with Lone Star Capital, which is a vertically and also a fully integrated company that delivers outstanding return to investors. Sam also spent 18 years in corporate banking managing over$1 billion in real estate financing. So listen, when it comes to navigating today's economic landscape. He doesn't just have opinions. He adds data, experience, and strategy. Sam, I want to welcome you to this podcast episode, brother Hutch man. Honor to be here, bud. Good to catch up with you again. Always. It's great to, to talk with you and always I. Learn more about what you've got going on in your journey, man. Yeah, absolutely. And as, as am I interested in your as well, brother. Now, before we get into the meat and potatoes of things, man, I'd really like to know, do you have a favorite real estate quote or mantra that drives you? Yeah, I've been obviously doing this for a while and I always I chuckle because, it's so funny when people. will come to me and ask certain things like that. And I always say, real estate is easy. It's people that are difficult. And and that goes from, residents to employees, to, sometimes investors, things like that. It's real. The real estate side of the business is actually really easy. To me. dealing with all the people that are involved in it. no doubt man, that quote resonate with me and I think it will resonate. With our, listen this very deeply right as we aspire to reach more veterans and investors. I had a sergeant, major Sergeant Major Garcia. He said that the Marine Corps is a perfect organization run by imperfect people. So a lot of people think that we are in the war fighting business, but when you think about from inception to retirement, we are technically in the people business because there's something fascinated about the quality of people that is willing to be committed to a life of service. That the ultimate sacrifice is the ultimate sacrifice. And there's so many people that, that have joined the military like myself, especially those folks who are joining my timeline, who have seen the transformation of the military, in different ways. Because when you think about it. The military is supported by society and what comes with that is a lot of social and societal concerns and challenges as well. And we have to, inoculate these folks into a culture of war fighters, but also understand that if you take care of the people will take care of the mission. And the mission is to be ready Whenever a nation is least preparing, man. Beautiful. I think that quote really resonates with our listener base. So thank you for that one. No, that's awesome, man. just be mindful of your time, Sam and I really hope we can capture some of your journey dive into it, man. You have been in the game, through multiple cy multiple market cycle and I really want to know how do you see the current economic climate and high interest inflation that have really dragged on for a little bit and a tighter capital markets, how do you see that affecting multifamily acquisition, especially, with underwriting? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. It would absolutely have impact. And for those that are trying to figure out, hey, what's my next step? Or I'm a military vet and I'm trying to figure out this game of a secondary stream of income or something of that nature. You gotta get in the game. I made that decision at a young age. I was in my twenties when I first started investing into these deals, and so My first deal I closed was in 07 of the larger apartment size deals. And so in 2007, that was a different market back then. All of a sudden you have 2008, 2009, and you have a crash in the market that's of substance. the financial just crash of the market, which was very different than, like what we've had recently. Yeah. Although interest rates have gone up and things like that, it was not. To the severity of what we had back in 08 09. and so in 08, 0 9, we always joke about you really had to learn how to, you wanna talk about like dog fighting and things like that. it was, you were given a knife into a gunfight and said, go win. that's really what it was. It was, you had to out operate, the people next to you.'cause it was a scarcity mentality. You know when you look at today's environment, and it's ironic because investors typically chase the hot new thing, right? I always laugh because it's so funny because you're seeing a pullback a little bit for people wanting to do equity site type deals'cause they want to go chase yield somewhere else or something. And the irony is the cycle of things. The way it works is, I made a comment to the team a while back. I said, this really feels like 2010 to me, which I know that's 15 years ago now. But yeah, when we acquired a deal in 2010. two or three years later from owning that deal, we were like, my gosh, why didn't we buy everything we could have at that timeframe? And a large portion of that was, man, in 2010, it was scary to buy a deal. It really was. You're sitting there is there anywhere further that this can drop? I have a great example of a deal that we acquired in 2010 that we still own today. It's actually, we're gonna be listing it for sale this year, so 15 years later we're selling the deal. We paid 24,000 a door or so for that deal in Houston, Texas, and we got it under contract right now for I think 117 or 118,000 a door. Now that's 15 years later. the beauty of that is too, we've refinanced it multiple times. So everybody's gotten all their money out and we're playing with house money, so to speak. acquiring at that time was scary. even deals that we're looking at today, you have to sit there and go. Man, there's some scariness out there. Some of the fears of the unknown. a lot of investors are looking at this too, even in the underwriting and things like that. The underwriting may make sense, right? Which I would hope it would, but pulling the trigger to actually invest your own dollars into it is a little scary right now. It's a risk business, right? There's no perfect deal. there's no deal that ever hits pro forma. I always joke about that. I'm like, I've never seen a deal hit pro forma on the good or the bad side, right? Never seen one hit perfectly on pro forma because it's impossible to project five years out. What all your expenses are gonna be exactly for each of those line items, what all your income's gonna be exactly for each and every month. Our pro formas are based upon an educated guess where we think we're, we are where we're going to be and we build in hopefully some conservative aspects to that, to where we can hopefully be pro forma. But that being said, As an investor, you have to decide, is there a group that I know I can trust and get on board with? Is there a product that, I'm comfortable putting money into, and is the return associated with that product, gonna help me get to my next goal? And so from an investor perspective, that's really some of those things that you're having to look for, when you're trying to evaluate your own situation, to determine whether or not you invest your money into really any deal. Yeah, so it sound like, anyone can find a bunch of noise in the headline, from your seat man. what data point do you actually pay attention when assessing whether it's a good deal or good time to buy or sell. I really that you really emphasize on. First the investor, identifying what they're looking for, and then actually find the trusted team that can help them to accomplish their goal. But what data points are you really looking at? the deal, believe it or not, is the last thing we look at. So we first have our own investment thesis, right? And as an investor, you should have your own investment thesis. Like I want to do. These types of deals in this location that have this kind of yield or this kind of subcategories, whatever. The more defined you are. The easier it is for you to go, yeah, this is the type of deal that I'm looking for. And then you're finding a sponsor, That you can invest with somebody who you can trust, and trust and be able to help you execute that deal. You're looking at the structure of how they're gonna put it all together so that you know how you and everybody in the deal are gonna get compensated. And then you look at the deal now when you're talking about data points into. We do multifamily housing, workforce housing in the state of Texas. And for the size deals that we look at, we're typically gonna be in the primary markets because of the size of the deals that we're looking at. So it gets even more and more defined. Of what we do at Lone Star Capital. And so if an investor goes, Hey look, I'd like to have some exposure and multifamily in the state of Texas, I'm raising my hand and saying, Hey, I'm probably somebody that we should probably connect to see if we align well with one another. Okay. And from there though. when you're talking about data points specific to the deals, what people are gonna be looking for, there's all different kinds of things that we look for, those KPIs, those key performance indicators that we're looking for. But some of the bigger drivers for that is gonna be in particularly in this market where we are today, the supply demand, where we are with how much supplies in the market versus how much demand's associated with that supply. Right, and a way to figure that out too is gonna be population jobs in particular. Like we're looking for that in migration. What are they're coming here for? Do we have jobs to support these people that are coming in? Do we have jobs to support the amount of units that we have? on the ground for the residents to come and work and live here. Yeah. and so there's some imbalances. And when you find those imbalances, and they can even be sub-markets within a larger market too, that becomes an area that we would key in on. and so from that perspective, that would be one of those things that we would look at. And we're looking primarily in the Houston, Dallas, DFW market, San Antonio. Really, those three main markets are the three main markets that we're looking in at right now. we're finding a lot of opportunities associated with that. And even once you find the opportunity, that's really where I say a lot of the work really begins because you're having to do a lot of things and put a lot of man hours and make sure that these are the types of deals that we're wanting to do. And does this fit our investment thesis? Are we gonna be able to get the kinds of returns associated with the risk that we're looking to take into these deals? so there's a litany of lists that we go down, to be able to see, hey, is this an opportunity worth bringing to our investor base? Yeah. That is awesome, man. I've navigated so many conversations with operators, that really forced me to create a due diligence guide for passive investors. if you listen to this episode and you want to get a copy of that due diligence guides, just let me know and what it factors in is a lot of the questions that Sam is talking about right now. If you are sitting on the sideline and you want to get some more clarity into what it takes to speak to a high performing operator, you can ask them a lot of questions from that due diligence guide. And one of the cool thing about it is that, the kind of real estate, the investor packets that lone star and Sam puts together really in all actuality, answers most of your question. However, some things are a little bit more nuance, right? Where, If you're talking to a person like Sam, you can ask Sam, what am I not asking you that I need to know? And he will be very transparent that to tell you, So that's one of the things that I like about yourself and the lone star capital team. Sam is the transparency in conversation, but not just conversation, but also in the performance of assets as well. Yeah. and clarity of that message is really big for us too, right? Because if we're not clear. With what the deal is, you lose the potential of somebody being able to invest with you. There's an old line that says, if you confuse, you lose. A confuse mindset say no, because they do. If I'm confused I can't move forward with you. And so clarity is a really big deal, like the transparency that you're speaking of, and understanding The positives and negatives to getting into any kind of deal like this, right? it's not a hundred percent positive, right? You are giving up certain things when you invest into a multifamily deal, right? One of the big ones I like to tell people is liquidity, there is a liquidity premium for you investing into a multi-family deal. Meaning it's not a liquid asset. It's not going and buying a stock that you can then, the next day or that day trade, right? We're in these deals for a particular period of time, and so you are taking on. an illiquid investment, and there's a premium associated with that. Just like you're paying a premium, a liquidity premium. When you go and buy a stock or bond or something, you can trade right away. And so there's positives and negatives to everything that we do. And just being clear about what it is that you're looking for. your investment thesis, understanding that from the get go will help put you into the right, investment vehicles going forward. You'll learn your own risk tolerance, things of that nature, because all those things vary with the investor. And we think we have something that's really great to offer. But we also know that. we're not perfect for everybody in every case. absolutely. One of the things that our veterans typically do well on active duty as well, right? Because wherever we go, we can trade stocks. If we have access to the internet, we can buy and sell stocks, right? So a lot of veterans who are mindful about the way the money can grow, invest in the stock market. in that three pack we did, in Houston. One of our investors in that deal is a military veteran and he's heavily invested in the stock market. So I like to talk to him about the opportunity costs, and that's one of the things that we talk about in the initial conversation. look, you're going to invest this 50 grand right? And you're gonna have an amazing day in the stock market, and you're gonna think about, man, if I had that$50,000 in this specific, stocks, you would've gone to X amount. But also, I need for you to have the same conversation with yourself whenever you have a really bad day in the market and that stock go really bad, really down. And then also focus on, okay, that stock went up and down, but I'm still getting. Check from the deal that I invested in Houston. So really look at it and where your opportunity costs, to your point, before you invest. And also, as we go on this journey of holding this property. Now look. Sam, a lot of folks thought there was gonna be a ton of distressed property, and there's gonna be this huge sell off, and we see that in 2020. And a lot of folks was expecting that in 2024 and 2025 as well. And, when that didn't happen, we see some folks, they shift into different asset class because they need to feed the beast, right? Yep. While at the same time trying to stay conservative, in an environment, Sam, where when capital. Is more expensive and rent is flattening out in some markets, what are some of those successful asset management skills or, what are some of the keys to successful, asset management and what levers are you really pulling on, to remain conservative, but also conservatively aggressive? No, I got, yeah. I got what you're saying. Yeah. this is gonna be a little bit more, this is kinda like a 1 0 2, 1 0 3 kind of answer. I got you. having somebody who actually understands the asset management side of it, which is your business plan, that's somebody who's too execute upon your business plan. But there are constant pivots along the way. That's why I say no pro forma is ever. Exact right? Correct.'Cause you get in there and guess what? Something changes, right? Or, life happens, the market happens, whatever you want to call it, and you have to make pivots associated with it along the way to get you closer, either back aligned with your business plan or opportunity that could be in excess of your business plan and you can make pivots associated with that. So there are all kinds of different things that can be done. and I can give you an example of one we looked at yesterday. and it had to do with, insurance. Okay. And you sit there and you go, insurance has, okay, yeah, I know you gotta have insurance for real estate. But, we had a property where we had several fireplaces within the property that were just unusable. And actually, Rob and I were talking, I said, Hey, if we seal these up, seal the chimneys, seal the fireplaces, go and see what our insurance company will actually do from a renewal perspective. in Houston, Texas too, We've had some challenges associated with insurance. It's been one of those uncontrollable expenses that has really. Been very elevated in the last few years because of the storms that we've had over the last, seven or eight years. And insurance has been one of those, fairly volatile, uncontrollable expenses, meaning I don't have control of it. I'm at the mercy of the insurance company who's willing to do it. However, there are steps we can take, if I go spend this little bit of money, it could save me this minor bit of money, but it can save it for me every single year going forward. And so that's something that truly adds NOI value, And so that's how we value our properties based on the NOI. So if there's things that we can do to help increase the NOI, which we get paid a multiple on for value of the property, it's something to consider. And each case, there's something always a little bit different, and every property is gonna be a little unique. And so being in tune with. How the property operates, what the property needs, and the people you have at the property, meaning your team that's there executing your business plan. there are certain things that we can recommend and do at the property to help make it more valuable, which increases the return of the investors in the deal. that is great, man, because a lot of folks, whenever we talk about the uncontrollables in real estate, two things really come to mind and always the head of the discussion, is We cannot control taxes, we cannot control insurance. But I think you are debunking. That concept, right? As long as we understand what the insurance companies are looking for, how our properties are positioned, to mitigate a lot of the risk that insurance companies is accepting, then we can potentially control. And I mentioned the three pack earlier that we purchased. That one we actually had the tax abatement part of it, right? The tax strategy, right where the taxes was eliminated for 99 years, which is an amazing business strategy. So I think a lot of folks, When they talk about, asset management, they look at how do we, pay less for renovation and different things. But I think you're looking at the bigger picture that a lot of inexperienced operator may not be considering. So thank you for dropping the golden nuggets on us as far as the asset management goes one of the things that, you pride Lone Star Capital in doing is having a fully integrated, processes where they have construction in-house, they have the management in-house acquisition, the entire execution, from inception of identifying the property all the way through sell. Of course, on the backside, you have a broker that deals with the transaction, as we, Push towards the end of this, podcast, I really want to talk about the idea. You are a businessman who did some amazing things with Sunset Capital, transition from the banking industry. Build Sunset Capital into a massive, business. let's talk about the integration between Sunset Capital and Lone Star Capital. what sparked you? what really went off that you say? Okay. I think Sunset Capital and Lone Star Capital, I've dated long enough. Let's get married. Yeah. And and we and that's the thing. We did date for a while too, right? So we did, last year alone we did$160 million in deals together. Awesome. Yeah. really what it came down to for me, was I'm a little bit more of a gray haired guy. For in, in comparison to the rest. Yeah. yeah. Sometimes better having gray, you'll take it. having the human capital side, which Lone star really just thrives in having a culture that it was extremely similar. it was a no-brainer. Yeah, it really was. I had been approached by other groups, and it would not have been the Same kind of, merger, I'll put it that way. Gotcha. now I have, I've been a part of sales before too, right? I've been a part of bank sales. that was something I had done in a previous life kind of thing. So I knew when a new culture gets introduced to an existing company, what can happen. one of the things about just being, having already done so many deals, having already known the people that were there, having already worked with the people there, it made it really much more seamless, than what people would realize. Because we dated as you speak before we got married. and it's actually been a great transition. I get to, kinda sit back a little bit more, watch, how the cake is made, so to speak. having done it a few times myself and, when they come to me and go, hey, what do you think about this? I'm prepared to offer that opinion. and getting to, be over the acquisitions, the asset management and the investor relations side, working just with great people. Not only that, just great young people who are energetic, who Truly want to do things right. Who are transparent, who just, you know, we just aligned so well, that the merger has actually been pretty easy, to say the least. No, man. our first interaction, you and I was at, a Lone Star Capital summit out in New York. I brought my daughter out and, it was an amazing experience and just being, having conversations with you, over the years, and I've actually working with the Lone Star Capital guys, phenomenal group of people. And to your point. Fair. I was gonna say super young, but fairly young. They are committed to making their job, their profession, which I really do appreciate with this young group. And it's really amazing to see you with so many years, end market cycle of experience, joining such an amazing team or joining forces with such an amazing team. And I can't wait to talk to you. I'm glad you brought up the Lone Star, summit event, because that is where we met. And at that time, that was almost three years ago now. Something I would bring up because we are gonna have another one. It's the fifth iteration of it this September, and to go to our website, to apply, to be a part of that. It's a highly curated event, and, you meet just some pretty amazing people and it's limited, so we do. We limit it fairly significantly about the amount of people that we'll take the summit, just so that, everybody gets tremendous value from it, is really the easiest way to say that. Yeah. when I walked into this summit, I was dressed. Fairly nice. I had a nice blazer on a nice dress shirt, but then I had my signature hat on, right? And then I went over to have a conversation with Rob Beardsley. I think this was not the VIP night, it was the following day. I showed up. I dressed really nice, but I had my signature hat on. And I was talking to him and he was engaged in the conversation. But then he looked at my hat, he looked at me, then he looked at my hat and he looked at me. I took my hat off. it's kinda man, what is he giving me those, those, nonverbal cues? No. and I say that to say this, is that when you are in the environment of that summit, and the quality of people. I wanna say allowed, right? Because a very curated set of people invitation mostly. The quality of people that is allowed to attend the summit makes you want to elevate your standard just by walking in just the checking alone in the one world trade center, just walking in. You feel as if you are stepping in the presence of a higher class. Of, communication, quality of people, and also investors. it makes you want to elevate your standard by the way you carry yourself and by the way you present yourself, verbally, I would say, look, it's held at one World Trade Center in Manhattan. it's unbelievable views, unbelievable. Location, it's at our corporate offices. and I would tell you that, I don't think I'm overstating this, but I would say it's the top 1% of this industry is at this summit. And so if you want to meet what I would consider some of the best, just for the knowledge alone, it's worth the price of admission, I will also tell you, we know of deals that get done From this summit. Millions and millions of dollars of deals that get done from this summit. And it's not just someplace to show up, Hey, I got this, or Hey, I'm trying to raise money for this, or whatever it may be. Come with an open mind and my goodness, it is a, It could be life changing for a lot of people. And yeah, definitely trust me and I don't think I'm overstating that. It really can. And so the irony with that is, like I said, this will be the first year I'm actually part of the Lone Star Capital Group, right? And three years ago I was running my own company and it really wasn't even on the mindset at that point that was gonna be something that could occur, but. And so there are all kinds of things that can, you can literally find future business partners. You can find all kinds of things at this summit. And it is smaller. I think we cap out maybe 120 or so, so it's not like it's, a crowd of people. But you will meet every single person there and have the opportunity to shake everyone's hand. So I cannot say enough of how excited I am for this year's summit.'cause we have a lot of fun things going on. this year that even make it a little more different than years past. That is awesome, man. I received an invitation from Craig yesterday, so we'll see how that goes. Good. All right, man. So let, I wanna be mindful, man. I got about another 10 minutes here and I also wanna get into the focus round. But before we get into the focus round, I want to ask you. You've been active in Houston, despite some soft in some of the rents, some of the areas for in rent. what still makes it compelling to invest? You're not saying in Texas. So you mentioned three markets that you're in, right? Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. What makes it still compelling to invest in Texas? Yeah, and each market's gonna be a little bit different, but I would actually say. To me, Houston's probably the, one of the most attractive markets in the entire south right now. One of the reasons for that is it's chewed through a lot of the supply, so it chewed through a lot of the supply faster than other markets, and therefore, the rents that you're talking about. We're actually starting to see rent growth again in Houston, and it may actually lead the southeast this year. I'm actually that bullish on Houston. Nice. from Dallas's perspective. Dallas, I think is probably, it's probably one of the most liquid markets in the entire United States, meaning there are that many people from all over the country that want to own in Dallas, and so very tradable assets from that perspective. San Antonio hasn't quite, I think, gotten over a lot of the supply stuff that we'd like to see, and so you are seeing more flat and even underwriting. You're gonna have to underwrite more flat. rental growth there. And you really have to find something that's more opportunistic probably in nature. Gotcha. To make San Antonio look good. Austin, which is our fourth biggest bigger market, I would just say there's still carnage there. And, as much as I'd, love to say I'd love to own in Austin, I just don't think I wanna own there right now. probably easiest way to say that. And I will say we have not talked about this much, but we have been looking in another market outside of Texas, which will be the first time we've ever done anything like that. And I'm not saying we'll have a deal there, but we are looking at the Phoenix market now. Okay, that makes sense. Phoenix is right behind Houston. As far as population, Phoenix is a great area to own. Again, just not now. it's one of those things, for us, we've been, we're obviously touring assets out there, learning the markets, it takes us a long time before we're able to truly pull the trigger. But you have to be prepared to do that. You have to, we send resources out there, they go and tour the tour. The markets show us what's available. Let me see what's being built. Let me see where the areas are. Who's, we have to go and understand and learn the market before we're really able to, pull the trigger. Although a few of us do know the market fairly well, the whole team, we gotta build everybody up to understand exactly what we're getting in. The way that we're looking at deals is appropriate. So the areas that we're looking at are appropriate and all the things that we're wanting to do as good fiduciaries to our investors, are appropriate. And it just takes time and effort and resources to do all that. Yeah, that's awesome, man. I heard Rob Brezel talk about it. Maybe a few years ago, he'll talk about, a lot of folks, get it backwards, right? However, at Lone Star Capital, what they do, if they want to grow into a billion dollar company. You build a system that will accommodate a billion dollar, operation and then grow into it, right? So what a lot of folks do, they wait until they get to a certain point before they start employing people or growing their team. But if you already have the team to do the thing, then the thing will actually catch up with the team. You keep growing the team, so I like that you guys are actually growing a team, to accommodate different markets, before. You actually execute in set market so that you have to be above the growth effectively. it's not linear. It's, hundred percent. That's how it goes. And so if you get behind the growth, that's when you're really scrambling and it becomes much more difficult. We have seen those companies that have scaled too fast and not been able to operationally take care of the business plan. So Sam, as we wrap up, I got five questions that I want to ask you. We call this a focus run. What do you do for fun? Oh man, I love hunting, fishing. okay. In particular with my boys. Nice. I'll golf every now and then too. My brothers and I just got back from the masters last month, Augusta. So yeah, it's awesome. Good times. And hanging out with family. Okay. That's awesome. We got them. We got a, close to 140 units there. currently we sold off the rest of them in Augusta, Georgia. Yep. So what is one opportunity was the game changer to you? One opportunity was a game changer for you? Man getting mentored, by specific people, and I'm thinking of one in particular when I was still in college and he was the chairman of a bank. and I didn't realize how big of a deal that was at that time. but he pretty much just said, you do what I tell you to do and you'll do great. And so I would just, as young and dumb as I was, I just said Okay. and I'm so glad I did because it really changed the trajectory, of my career. So be mentor and be coachable. Correct. That's the one. Super important. What is your top principle when it comes to communication, communicating with investors as far as, communication, check, just laying it on the table for'em. Yes, man. just tell'em exactly how it is because I'm more of a matter of fact guy if it's good, tell'em, Hey, it's good. If it's not so good, tell'em it's not so good. But if it's not so good, give'em the reasons of why and then what you're gonna do to mitigate it or what you're gonna do to help'em out with it. and kinda just be honest. I hate to say it, that's, that, that easy. But, nobody bats a thousand in this industry or any industry. And, just tell'em where you are and then what you're gonna do to try to make it right. So here's the thing. You communicate with a lot of people and it had to be at least one conversation you had with an investor. That may have been more sophisticated than you are and ask you a question that you was like, I don't know. You say I would tell'em. Oh my gosh. You know what? That is a great question. I don't have the answer for it right now. Will you gimme some time to get the answer though? I'll go find it. that's something I should probably know too. I'll go find it. And if you go do something like that and that drives you too. it would drive me to sit there and go, oh my gosh, somebody asked something I didn't know the answer to. And I take that as a, what, better up my game, right? but I don't have that answer right now. let me get back to you and here's the timeframe I'm gonna get back to you in it also provided another opportunity for a future conversation, which is awesome. Yeah, man. So that's awesome. Now, so what is one thing you wish you understood earlier? Gosh, you have to be in the game to win the game. Makes sense. Alright. If you're not in the game, you're not gonna win the game. I totally understand. so what is, to what do you attribute your success? Oh, there's a lot of things I could attribute it to. I married the right woman. that's huge. It really is probably one of the biggest decisions anybody will make in their life. I tell my kids that almost every day. Almost 22 years now for me and my wife and our four teenagers. We really clinging to one another with that. but I would say that. That would've probably account for the bulk of your success because, you constantly will have somebody in your corner. Yes. and I know that's a non-business answer, but it's reality that's 100% in line with the we see business rights. in today's society, Sam, I want to truly thank you for this conversation, man. I know you're a busy man. I really appreciate you taking time to join us on this podcast. If our listeners wanna get in touch with you, Sam. you mentioned earlier about the summit. How do they get in touch with you? Yeah, so my email is sam@lcre.com real easy. and that's our website, lSCRE.com. I would highly recommend everybody go to our website. We got great content there. Free giveaways, including underwriting, toolkits, things like that. We have educational material you can also apply to come to our LSC summit, which I do highly recommend everybody do. It's something that's absolutely well worth the cost of admission. but that's the easiest way to get ahold of me. Yeah, absolutely. Sam, thank you so much And listeners, I hope you take away, some golden nuggets from this podcast episode. I want to thank you for spending time with us, and thank you for enjoying another episode of the Multifamily Real Estate Experiment podcast. If you like the value we provided, please drop us a five star rating and a. Fair review. so we can get this message out to other investors. And look, our mission remain the same. Our mission is to help you. The veterans will sacrifice so much, small business owners really runs the economy. our goal remains to help you to own more of America. until next time, I'm Hutch Marine investor out. Thank you, Sam. Thanks Hutch.