MFREE 121 Full Episode with Senate Eskridge: How Can You Leverage Seasons and Synergy for Real Estate Success?

In this episode, Senate discusses his interests outside of work, namely golfing and cigar culture. He shares transformative opportunities in his life, highlighting the impact of network marketing and personal development figures like Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone. Senate emphasizes the importance of asking intelligent questions for entrepreneurs and provides career advice focused on starting with the end goal in mind. He defines true success not in financial terms but in personal happiness and contentment, citing moments spent with family as his greatest measure of success.

00:00 Introduction to the Focus Round

22:06 Fun and Hobbies: Golf and Cigars

22:36 Life-Changing Opportunities

23:19 Mastering Communication Skills

23:45 Real Estate Wisdom: Begin with the End in Mind

24:41 Defining Success: Happiness and Contentment

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

Thank you to all of our listeners!!! We would love to hear from you!!!

Email me at:
hutch@hsquaredcapital.com

*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
Visit our website to find out more:
www.hsquaredcapital.com

Join our Facebook Group:
The Multifamily Real Estate Experiment

Follow us on Instagram:
@hutchthemarineinvestor

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

Wah Gwan, all you multifamily enthusiast. Welcome to another episode of the Multifamily Real Estate Experiment podcast. You know this podcast where we explore the mindset, strategy, and system to help you own more of American today's guest is a rare leadership combination. It's just small business roots, big time multifamily experience. a deep passion for helping everyday people build wealth. He's a founder, and CEO was born and raised in Twin Falls, Idaho, a community. He never really left or ever stopped investing in, and he has partnered on over a thousand plus units. Of multifamily across the country. He have helped nearly a hundred family or people, begin investing in multifamily real estate. He have built and led multiple business. He's a founder of the Idaho Summit, the Idaho Real Estate Conference. He have led. The magic value real estate investor meetup. You have served in Twin Falls Chamber of Commerce board and he has built a life structure around. If you listen, I know this is important to you. He have built a life structured around family, faith, entrepreneurship, and service. Senate, welcome to the episode today, brother. Thanks for having me. What an amazing introduction. Great job, man. I appreciate it, brother. So be here with you. Thank you so much. Today we're gonna ask a question, how do you build real estate, wealth and community through multifamily investing starting from a small town? But before we get into that sentence, I wanna know, do you have a real estate quote or mantra that drives you, the way you live, the way you invest, and the way you lead community?

Speaker 2: 1:44

Wow. The first, mantra that really pops into my mind about real estate is, We don't wait to buy real estate. We buy real estate and wait. It's been attributed to several people, Sam Elle, and a few others as well. And so it really comes down to, of course you've gotta understand market cycles and all of those types of things. Okay. But you can make money in any cycle if you know what you're doing. And as far as like when it comes to community and things like that. I really follow Zig Ziglar's, advice. The more you help other people, the more you're gonna get, I think the exact quote is, if you help enough people get what they want, you're bound to get what you want.

Speaker: 2:20

that is fantastic, man. And that's a really unique way of looking at things. When we got into real estate, if you talk to my partner, Dr. Heath Jones will tell you that. He looked at several ways of making money, he's also a GS 15, GS 14, on the DOD side, right? And. When he started looking at, build a YouTube channel, creating a blog and all these other things, it's like how much of that really helped people, and even for myself when I got into real estate, it's about how do I build a second income after I retired? But the more you get into real estate, especially what we do in the multifamily space and build a community and podcasts you get to realize that you are helping other people level up. And there's something that gives your life purpose about that reason why I wake up at five in the morning to record these kind of content. Right. you have built businesses, raised a family, invested across the country, and you've educated hundreds of aspiring investor, all from twin Falls, I, Idaho, can you walk us through your journey? How did you go from a local entrepreneur to multifamily operator with, a thousand plus units, and what role did community, family and Idaho play in shaping your mission?

Speaker 2: 3:30

It actually a lot, because if I hadn't been here and didn't have the community that I have, there's no way that I would be able to be where I am today, a hundred percent, right? So, I've been an entrepreneur pretty much my entire life. I was the kid who sold things outta their locker in grade school and junior high and things like that, right? I've always known that if I needed to make wealth, I had to make it myself, right? Yeah. Now I've had a couple of W2 jobs. It's not that I've never worked for someone else. You know, sometimes benefits are important and you gotta have health insurance and some stuff like that you only really get in W2 jobs. I raised five beautiful children with my amazing wife right here in my community, and they all stepped up and helped me, my community, my family, churches, things of that nature. When my kids were really young, they helped with those types of things. it inspired me to turn around and give back I Do a lot of things in my community now, mainly to give back because I got so much support when my kids were younger. Wow. And when I say support, we're talking, helping transport'em to school. And then, and we're talking, sometimes, Christmases we're a little lean. And people stepped up and helped when you're grazing five kids with a young family. And so now we do those types of things today. as far as real estate goes, I really honestly got into real estate. Kind of by accident. I had three cars that were traveling, 25 miles one way, right? So, I do the math on that 250 ish miles a day that we were driving every single day. It just didn't work right. so we had to move and I did the math. by making this move, we were gonna save enough money to pay the new mortgage payment. We could pay two mortgages, because of the money we were saving. Oh, wow. but the first house that we moved out of this was 2009. And everyone knows what happened in 2008. Right. there was this big crash, and no one was buying any houses in 2009. And so it sat on the market. And so what do you do with a house you can't sell? You rinse it out and now all of a sudden I have$200 or$300 a month in cash flow and I just fell in love. I'm like, holy crap, this was easy. Let's go do it again. You know? And I figured it out pretty quick. It isn't easy, right? I mean, it's not get rich quick. It's not, super easy to do. But, we spent 10 years doing single family fix and flips and burrs and, you name it, in the single family space, we've done it. And, I honestly say I've done more single. Family transactions than most realtors in my town. During that 10 years we were doing several every single year. Honestly kinda lost count, but it's somewhere around 200 or 300 transactions that we've done in 10 years. I really got burned out and so in 2019 I moved into multi-family and really honed in on that and focused on, becoming the best multifamily expert that I possibly could. Went through seven different mentorship groups, read tons of books. I spent enough time, money and energy, in training in multifamily. I could easily have a master's degree. or Even a PhD. I've spent a lot of time, energy, and money learning how to do this right. Which is good because now we're well over a thousand doors, somewhere in the 1300 range. invested in nine states.

Speaker: 6:35

That's pretty cool, man. let's go into that blueprint, from small town to, a thousand plus units, I like for listeners to know the so people think that you need to live in Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta to be successful in multifamily, but you built a portfolio from Twin Falls. How does someone from a smaller market scale into big deals, and what's the mindset shift that is required?'cause I'm dealing with that here in Hawaii. Where it's really challenging to paint a picture for someone who can only think local with very low cap rates, no cash flow, to think about cash flow on the mainland amongst other benefits, right? What's a mindset shift that's required from people who live in a small community, to invest in bigger deals, maybe outside of the market as well.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Yeah. first of all, let me just say that you can make money in any market if you know what to do in that market, don't think that there are bad markets, There really aren't, in my opinion. some markets are better than others, Don't get me wrong. And it really depends on what strategy and things you wanna provide. But I would say that the answer to growing outside of your local area, is partnerships and teams. That's the mindset shift I had to get to when I was in single family, I had to get out of, I'm gonna do everything myself to now, I need a team of people that I can trust and that I can rely on, we've heard the quote several times. Multifamily is a team sport. And it's a hundred percent true. You can own a portfolio of 10, 20, 30, maybe a hundred, single family doors. And if you have the right property manager and the right systems, you can run all that yourself. But to do that, even a single building with a hundred units is a big challenge, I've done a lot of coaching and teaching, and I've got an entire section that I teach people on about how to choose the right partner because it's absolutely critical. We've also heard the saying that, One plus one isn't two. If you do it right, one plus one can actually equal 11.

Speaker 3: 8:31

Yep.

Speaker 2: 8:31

You've gotta be very selective and choose the right partners because if you get the wrong partners, one plus one isn't going to equal even two. It might be 1.5 or even less than one because you're fighting and not getting along and not getting anything accomplished. I would say that's the answer is embrace teamwork. And have the right, that's also, man,

Speaker: 8:51

That is a good thing. So you've helped, nearly a hundred people invest in multifamily. What does beginners get wrong? And you know What fear? Hold them back. Because a lot of people listen to this podcast episode, are or transition in veterans, right? And some of them are, business owners. Looking to use multifamily, whether as a passive or active investor. What does your teaching style emphasize so they can finally take action?

Speaker 2: 9:16

Yeah. Well I'm gonna give you two answers The first one is that people need to understand that owning real estate, if your name is on title, is not passive. The number one thing when somebody calls me and says, I want to own real estate, can you teach me how to do this? Or can you help me buy my first apartment building? they think it's a passive income approach. They think that they're gonna be able to buy this and set it and forget it, and just have mailbox money by owning an apartment. That is not the case. If you buy an apartment building, you're buying a business, a fully operating business, You have to have people that can manage and can control and run on a day-to-day basis. Now, is it less complicated than, buying a, McDonald's franchise? Yeah, sure. It is less complicated but it is still a business just like a McDonald's franchise. Imagine if you had a, McDonald's franchise that had a hundred customers, That came to you once a month, and bought a$1,500 product from you once a month, That's the type of business that we're looking at, right? And that we have to serve and they're gonna use every single day. These people think they're gonna buy an apartment and get mailbox money. If you wanna do that, then we need to have a conversation about passive investing and investing as a limited partner. That's a completely different conversation, and I have helped lots of people do that, and I'd be happy to have a conversation with you about mailbox money and truly passive. But if you want to own and actually buy apartments, Then, the first thing you gotta understand is the team. We just talked about that, right? But how to actually take action and go to the next step, Is that you don't need to know the entire road to take that first step. Facts. There's tons of cliche quotes out there about the longest journey begins with a single step or all those types of things, but. Just go to work, start looking at deals. Analyzing deals. putting offers in on deals, start talking to brokers and actually do the work. Now, hopefully before the person hears that advice, they've got some education behind them too, they have to actually know some things. But you gotta actually just pull the trigger.

Speaker: 11:27

That's good, man. And I think what you have created, in the communities that you have led, you have led the Magic Valley, invest the meetup, you have served in the chamber board. you have co-founded the Idaho Summit. So I wanna talk to you about this, man. Why is community leadership so important to you, and, how does being deeply involved with your community make you a better investor and educator?

Speaker 2: 11:52

First of all, I think that we owe everything in our life to our community, that scrolls all the way up into countries and, all that kind of stuff. Just think about it no matter where you live, if there wasn't a group of people around you. Somebody had to build roads, somebody had to build schools, somebody had to do all this kind of stuff. If somebody dropped you wherever you live now. In the natural state of the place you're in today before a human ever touched it. What would life be like? Pretty deserted. Well, we wouldn't have any relationships. But literally just to be able to survive. I live in a desert, it's dry. There's no water. There's really no animals. I couldn't hunt, I couldn't fish, any of that kind of stuff. I believe we owe it to our, the other people around us that make this kinda life that we lead possible. To give back something. And to do it at your capacity. Right. I'm not gonna sit here and tell your listeners that they need to be on the Chamber of Commerce board there, that they need to be a Chamber of Commerce ambassador. But I think that we all owe it to the people that make our lives so easy. To give something back, whatever it is that we can, and maybe that's a throw a nickel in the coin jar for the guy ringing the bell at Christmas time. Or maybe that is being a volunteer, serving at a soup kitchen. Maybe it's being in political office. For me, I have found working in the chamber running leadership events and bringing personal development to my community, is where I shine.

Speaker: 13:20

Find where you shine. So, you know, you can either get into a community or you can create your own community, building something that folks can come together or join something that folks already coming together. So that's, that is awesome, man. Idaho Falls, right? or Idaho in general, I, Idaho Multifamily. Let's talk about that kind of geography, right? So most investors skipped over Idaho entirely, but you'll build a thriving ecosystem there. What is the Idaho and a wide mountain region offering that investors aren't paying attention to yet?

Speaker 2: 13:52

Extremely low expense ratios. The reason people look at, Idaho and gloss over it, is they're comparing it to Dallas, and Phoenix. if you look at, an apartment building in Dallas and you're paying 200,000 a door and your rent's only like 1200 a door, 1100 a door, something like that. And, Especially when you're paying 6%, 7% interest on your debt, that's just not gonna pencil out.

Speaker: 14:25

Six, seven.

Speaker 2: 14:26

Gonna pencil out. And the reason is because in Dallas and in Phoenix, your expense ratio is probably 45, 50, 60%, maybe on the high end. Right? That'd be way high. Don't tell anybody this, but my expense ratio in Idaho is 30%. It's insane. The expenses to run one of these properties are so low. In Idaho, our property taxes are really low. Our insurance is really low. Maintenance costs are really low. Expense ratio is the secret.

Speaker: 14:57

So that's more money to the bottom line, right? that is cool, man. Let's talk about this real quick. You've coached many investors from their first deal, to get some real momentum. What separates the person who buys one door? from buying a thousand units, what habits, what system, what relationship, what mindset shift, they need to get into to create that scale.

Speaker 2: 15:20

Well, there's a lot. Right? But the first one is confidence and belief. You've gotta believe that you can do it. Yeah. I spend an enormous amount of time working on people's belief and confidence and just getting them to pull the trigger on the next thing. I literally told one of my students, about two weeks ago, we had a lengthy conversation I've taught you exactly how to do this. I just need you to go and do it. I can't do it for you. You have to do it. It was kind of a rough conversation to get past that wall Of confidence, so that's the first thing belief, And then the next one is you definitely need to be organized and have systems. and have processes and plans together. I don't have the greatest memory in the world, right? And I, you know, some, maybe somebody have better memories than I do, but I've gotta use a CRM to remember who to talk to and when to talk to'em. And I've gotta use a, process tracking or a task tracker. I personally use notion, for this, but there's lots of good ones out there. monday.com, Trello. Any one of these things, you've got it, but you've gotta have these kind of tools and systems in place.

Speaker: 16:24

Awesome man. So talk about confidence, to get to competence, I know a lot of folks that try whether you build a community or join a community and the whole team sport. So in the goal of actually doing a acquisition, if that's your goal, if you listen to this podcast and that's your goal, your competence, drives your confidence. If you're doing this thing by yourself, you can also join another team, somebody who's doing exactly what you're doing, learn the ropes you have paid for this mentorship. Don't have to go the journey by yourself. You can identify other people in your mentorship group that is a spine to do the same thing you're trying to do, and what you find is that they might have. Some of the strength and confidence in the areas that you are struggling with. And when you bring those confidence together or those areas of competency together, then that will actually increase your success and drive your momentum. On your goal to gain confidence or competence, you can join a team or even create your own team to ensure that you have the right synergy to scale. You often talk about your family, five kids who are no adults, right? I think you say you don't have kids, you have adults. How important is family leadership in your life and how do you balance entrepreneur investing with parenting? I know you got older kids right now. How do you balance all of that?

Speaker 2: 17:50

Now it's a lot easier because they are adults and pretty self-sufficient, I mean, you never stop being a parent. Your kids are always gonna need you. The day my mom passed my mom taught me lessons the day she passed, right? So they're never gonna, they're never going to stop needing you. But it is easier now. And when they're younger, it wasn't easy for sure. Right? Like, I can remember several times when I absolutely had to go to work. But I really wanted to be home with my kids or I wanted to be somewhere else, but the choices I made was I had to go and do it. I don't actually believe in balance. You asked me a minute ago how you balance things I believe in seasons not balance. There's different seasons for different people sometimes you need to focus on. This is the where you raise your kids. This is not where you start a business. This is where you raise your kids. And then now maybe when the kids are a little bit older, I don't know, in school or whatever, right now this is, oh shoot. Now this is the season where I go and start, a business transporting kindergartens to kindergartners to and from school because there's no bus for kindergartners. They don't get to use the bus. and so we started business doing that, right? Yeah. And it involves our kids, the other problem with that we're raising kids, we're starting businesses, well, maybe our health suffered a little bit. I wasn't as fit as I am today. In fact, I weighed almost 300 pounds at one point. I was just not okay. I was not fit at all. Didn't pay attention to my diet, didn't pay attention to my health. And now I'm suffering because of it, admittedly, But that was not part of that season. Now it's part of my season today, right? I'm in the gym four or five days a week, cardio, watch what to eat, do all those types of things. if somebody could truly balance all of those things, like I spoke on a wheel and have it run perfectly, they'd have my admiration. I've never been able to do it. So I think that it's a lot less pressure if you just focus on, this is the season for X, Y, and Z.

Speaker: 19:51

No, I like that man. And I also typically talks about synergy, right? creating synergy in your life, creating alignment. However, I love the way you put it. As, as far as seasoned knowing what's, what seasons your life is, and that takes a lot of effort, I know you know this, right? sometimes, and if you listen to this podcast, you may not know this yet. This is the reason why we record this podcast for myself and our guests to share this kind of information with you. So you get to level up from these information, for example. If you know that your life gonna go through seasons and you can sit down with your life partner, your spouse, or even if you live in a multi-generational household, like a lot of people do here in Hawaii, if your paradigm, or culture in your household, and you know that you're gonna go through seasons, you can actually plan these things out. Use that information to bring things closer to you, to where you don't make too much unnecessary sacrifice on your goals, to accomplish these different seasons. You are able to create a lot more synergy in your life. To accomplish significantly more than we have in our lifetime. If you are able to create synergy based on the seasons that you think your life is gonna go through, I think that's a good strategy. Senate, thank you for that because a lot of us, end up growing through a lot of things. I know you've heard this a lot because you've done a lot of coaching talking to a lot of mentees and in our own life as well. Most of her life trying to make money, right? And then the potential to spend the later years of her life, spending all the money to get her health back, and different things like that. You know what I mean? So being able to bring all those things into the present and plan towards it to be more mindful about it, I think it's probably, the way we should create our life. And a lot of times we are not thinking that far ahead, and not a lot of folks are really talking about that, So if you listen to this podcast. And you are at a phase of growth in your life or the planning stage of your future it's really important to understand, how you can create a little more. So maybe not balance, but you can create a lot more synergy in the early years of your life. So, Senate, I wanna go into the focus round. This is where I ask you some things based on the acronym, which is focus. What do you do for fun when you're not, running deals or events?

Speaker 2: 22:10

Yeah. So, two things. They kind of go together, right? I love to golf and I like cigars and the whole culture around cigars. So, golf and cigars are my two fun things. But also I found something that I love to do for work. Work is also fun for me. That's good.

Speaker: 22:26

That's good. And you and I, we have smoked some cigars in different parts of the country and those are always pretty cool, man. You always got a nice flavors. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, man. Appreciate you brother. So what opportunity changed your life forever?

Speaker 2: 22:42

I joined a network marketing company long before I got into real estate. It introduced me to personal development I was successful. I made good money. But really what it did was. Introduced me to personal development. Things like people like Tony Robbins, things like people like Grant Cardone, people like Ed Millet, and it changed the direction of my life because of personal development.

Speaker: 23:03

That is so cool. you mentioned Jim Roh earlier. you have a lot of talks where you spoke to network marketing, right, because you get a lot of No. Right? you get a lot of nos. So being able to, turn rejection into opportunities, while building your own resilience and marketing as well, I think is pretty cool. What's one communication skill that every investor or entrepreneur needs to master?

Speaker 2: 23:26

The ability to ask intelligent questions, right? and to really think through things before they ask. Not because they, not because of. Incorrect question or unintended question is a problem, right? That's not my point, right? But to be able to think critically and ask the right

Speaker: 23:43

questions. That is cool man. What do you wish you understood earlier about real estate or business?

Speaker 2: 23:52

Size doesn't matter. Begin with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey would say, right? if you wanna buy apartment buildings, buy apartment buildings, right? If you, if I wouldn't, I, this is my number one piece of advice, would coaching students and then people say, well, I wanna start with single family, or a fourplex. No. Begin with the end in mind. If you wanna buy a 200 unit apartment building, go buy a 200 unit apartment building. Figure out how to get there. Maybe it's a starting as an LP or exactly like you said earlier, get on a team of people doing it Maybe go to work for somebody. As a job. Maybe you're the janitor of this company that's buying 200 unit apartment buildings, but start there. Right? Start where you want to be. Now, if you don't wanna do 200 unit apartment buildings, you wanna do single family, Awesome. There's nothing wrong with single family. Start there.

Speaker: 24:40

That's so cool, man. You have raised a family, you have built community, you have helped people invest, whether it be on the active side or passive side, Senate today, how do you define success?

Speaker 2: 24:52

for me, success really comes down to happiness. And contentment. When I'm sitting in my living room and my children are around me and my grandbaby is playing and he lets out this huge belly laugh, and every other person that's in the room just gets lost in watching him laugh, I look around and see all of these amazing people that I love and that love me. That's the most success I've ever felt in my entire life. It didn't matter how much money I had, didn't matter what kind of cars I had, It didn't matter. Any of those types of things, money's great. And, success, financial success is important, right? It really, really, really is important. But finding the thing that makes you light up, that makes you joyful, far more important than money.

Speaker: 25:48

Oh man. That is so good. Appreciate that, man. So Senate, this has been powerful, For our listeners who want to, learn about investing in multifamily, attend the Idaho Summit connect with you for coaching or explore deals, with you and your team, where's the best place for them to

Speaker 2: 26:03

reach you? The best place, is meetsenate.com. You can book a call right there. You can download my free passive investing course. You see all about me, all of my socials and everything, but I'm also the only Senate Eskridge out there, So Google me, I'm on all the social media platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, you name it.

Speaker: 26:22

Gotcha, man. So listeners, what you just heard is a masterclass, honor What is possible when you mix community, discipline and the commitment to helping others succeed? Senate showed you today that you don't need a giant city to build giant wealth. You just need the right mindset, the right mentor, and the courage to just start. Until next time, keep investing, keep experimenting, keep finding ways to own more of America. I'm Hutch the Marine investor out.