Ep. 16 - From Crisis to Cash Flow in Property Management

Welcome to the loop, your weekly dose of all things property management. I'm your host, Colin Stewart. And each week we dive into the latest trend strategies and stories, stories shaping the property management world. Whether you're a season pro, we're just getting started. We're here to provide insights, expert interviews, practical tips to help you navigate the ever evolving landscape or property management. Today's episode we sit down with Chris from big real T sales and management to talk about surviving the 2008 crash, building the property management company from scratch and using recurring cash flow to create long term freedom. We also dive into why most mom pop investors struggle to scale and why Chris is now focused on larger acquisitions and private funds. Chris, welcome to the show. Welcome back to the loop, your weekly dose of all things property management. And each week we're going to dive into the latest trends, strategies and stories, shaping the property management world. Whether you're a season pro or just getting started, we're here to provide insights, expert interviews and practical tips to help you navigate the ever evolving landscape of property management. Thank you, Colin. I appreciate you having me on as we were discussing prior to the show. I can see that we're going to get along swimmingly when it comes to talking about all things real estate. I think so. I'd love to start with your journey into real estate and talk to me about how you got into it. I'll keep it very brief so that I don't bore anybody. But honestly, this was a life changing event for many people in different ways. But I was kind of a late bloomer. Wasn't really sure what I wanted to do in life. And so like most people I jumped into the corporate world thinking that would solve my problems. And I found that I was absolutely miserable. I was doing real estate radio ad sales back in the day. And everybody around me was miserable. Does anybody actually like what they're doing? But here we are struggling right because we got to put food on the table. And I was newly married. It was when the towers fell 9/11 was really by triggering point if you would. And it was like, it happened. I just got married. Like this was only a year into our marriage. Now the sun were dealing with this major trauma, so to speak. And I saw how everybody was miserable. And I was like, this is crazy. Like I have my life ahead of me and it can be changed in an instant. So I made a decision at a point either I get out and do what I really wanted to do. Or I fold into the corporate envelope for the next 30 years. So clearly I chose to become unemployable ever since. You know, I had a similar story, but it took me a little bit longer. Whereas I was in corporate, the corporate world not working for big companies, but also in sales selling for different helping different entrepreneurs, you know, build their first, I don't know, a million, a couple million in revenue. And then realize that I didn't want to do this for other people for my whole life. And I would be the best rep for the first year. And then the worst rep the next year because I'm like, that's no longer interesting. I'm not learning anything anymore. I figured it out. I did really great. Cool box tech. Now what's next? And I just couldn't, I wasn't a great consistent like, oh, I'm going to be your top number one performer, year over year over year. And so I've made it to the first one, 27 when I pulled the plug and went from six figures to zero figures. And I get it. And you know, sometimes you jump into those things and you don't really know what direction you're going to go. And for me, I got my real estate license in early 2002. And but I knew from the day I got my license, I knew I didn't really want to be a realtor. Like that was not my lifelong ambition. I really wanted to always be involved in investing real estate. I was doing some flips learning the hard way, you know, making some money on some deals, losing some money on the others, but learning a lot along the way. And I started off in most of the trade so I could do pretty much everything because I started flipping myself. So with the towers fell, I got my license and I did get into residential sales. And the next six or seven years, that's what I did. I worked with buyers and sellers. And right around six or seven, we had a couple of friends or family that said, hey, do you think you can manage these properties? And it was enough to pay the one car payment. I just, that's what I remember most. Was it paid the car payment, everybody? And I was like, okay, well, we got these, you know, a couple of people, we, you know, the checks come in, we deal with it, pays the car payment. That was fine. We were still doing 90, 95% sales, 5%, maybe some management, maybe 90 to 3% management money. But it was the weight market crash that did me end. Weight in October of '08. I had one of the largest deals in the pipeline, residential, like a $1.3 million dual-sided deal in the pipeline. And I had a couple others. And within five days, every deal I had, just $65,000 of commissions that were going to basically feed my family for the next six months gone through no fault of my own mind. And at that time, my wife had left corporate also. So we were two licensed agents working completely as independent contractors with no health insurance with a four-year-old and twin-one-year-olds. Oh my God. So you can imagine, you know, we, everything with the crap. Everything with the crap. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you people. I didn't end up homeless on the street, but I mean, I lost every property I owned. No, no, I kept one. I was down to one property. I lost a bunch of properties. And I went bankrupt. That was it. The house of cards came falling down. I was over leveraged and undercapitalized. And without having that steady income from the corporate, you know, part, my wife being in corporate. But do I complain? No, sir, I do not call because from the from the ashes of the '08 meltdown, we built what is our company today? That's rose the Phoenix. That's amazing. We did. We looked at each other. It was like November of '08. And we were like, this is BS. We didn't do anything wrong. You know, we had everything done right. We had just enough put away, but we did not foresee the economic collapse. I mean, I don't think anybody did. And that's that was kind of the problem. I had a similar experience. I was selling into construction at the same time. I had just closed a million and a half dollar deal to sell 327 kitchens to two high rises. One project. I had our company was already cash-strapped because we were scaling from like five to 10 million in sales. And we had a bunch of projects. And so we didn't have cash to build the showrooms. So I put 12 grand in materials on my personal visa so we could build the showroom as part of getting the deal. And like I remember just like looking at our finances and saying like, I'm never going to get that commission. Because I was looking at how things are going. It's August. And I'm like, there's no way we make it through with the cash flow we have and what everybody's going for going through. And so I had to walk away from 150 kent commission. And like, fortunately, I was a bit younger. I was still with my parents. And so I could survive. I was still in school actually, technically. I was my last year of university at work full-time through the last three years of university and went to school full-time. And so fortunately, I was still living with my grandpa. Otherwise, it would have been, I mean, it was still bad. And like, I came out of that with debt and, you know, a war wound. But it taught me, you know, the ups and downs, the chaos. And you survived that. And you're like, geez, I feel like I'm bulletproof here, you know? Well, well, let's continue that on. Because I think that's exactly it where you start to feel like you're a little bit bulletproof. So we, I had so much old, we were managing for some friends and family paid for the one car payment. So in like October, November of '08, like, hey, what if we just try to go get a couple more to pay the other car payment, too? At least that'll take some pressure off. Yeah. In fact, this was back when you went on Craigslist. And I just started emailing people directly, hey, can I manage your property? Can I manage your property? And of course, when you're doing that, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly. But I didn't care. I'll take anything at that point just so I can start to build the book. And my wife, Stephanie, my business partner, she is also my wife, but she is my business partner. She went out there and she started scrubbing Craigslist. And she found an HOA and got us an interview with them. They were looking for a new property manager. And we picked up that client. We would have them for the next 13 years. Wow. And so what would happen is by about fall of nine, we were definitely feeling pretty confident a year later by the, the by fall of 2010. I remember new years eve into 2011, looking at my wife, Stephanie, and saying, if we don't even rent one unit or pick up a single client or sell a single home, we're going to make this much under contract this year. And being two people who are self-employed, real estate agents, like to be able to say that can create not our goal is, ours, no, this is real. These business, yeah, I can go to a bank and show them this is our cash flow. And so that was it. Once we picked up one HOA, we were really off and running. And then on my 40th birthday, 2012, I was told by my spouse, you've got 90 days, 90 days to go up in your own brokerage. We don't need to be under another broker anymore. We have enough cash flow. We don't need them. And so, and I was already an associate broker. So I did in 2012 of 2012. That is our, that is our big day. 12, 12, 12, our three lucky numbers per second. So, yeah, it was it. Then we were off to the races. We, you know, we really started taking off. And we always stayed small. What I mean by that is we thought big, but we, we behave small. I kept our location small. I kept our expenses low. And so we've been profitable for quite a few years. And that was the decision you made right from day one. You wanted to stay slim, profitable, scrappy. Yeah, because I would see what, like I would look at brokerages. And I would think, because we open a remax. We had a remax for six years. Of course, we opened the day the frickin pandemic started. So that was great. Amazing timing. You know, I thought, you know, owning a brokerage was the thing. And I had a small brokerage, meaning a small location. And I would look at these big offices. And I'm like, no, wonder you have to have so many agents. You have so much overhead. And I was always of the understanding, like it's not how much you make. It's what you keep. So I may have less cash flow than a big brokerage, but my net profits are way higher. Because I don't have overhead like you guys do. I mean, the first, the ever-n-er-eight years, I was in Spring City, PA. I think we were paying $500 a month for our office. As a bro, and we were cash flowing. 60, 80 grand a month out of that little location. - Get out of town. That's crazy. I think I was paying the same amount at the same time period for two desks in a co-working space. - You know, Fred, this wasn't a great, you know, this was an older building that I managed. And it was a 10 by 30, it was like 300 square feet and it was like 500 bucks a month low-cost and included heat. And I think I thought I might even include an electric. I don't even remember, but the point is that, you know, we understood that if you kept your expenses low, you could make an easier profit and create the same margins. And at the same point, we also learned that by being small, we could then start choosing who we want to door. - Yeah. And so talk to me about choosing, because I feel like the, when you're trying to get something off the ground and you have a limited amount of revenue, you're willing to take anything. But at a certain point, there's this, the switch flips where you're like, okay, we're fed. Okay, we're fed and the car payment is covered. Okay, so now we have this choice. Like when did you feel like you had reached that point where you could choose to, you know, say yes or no to customers? - I think you hit the nail on the head right there. I think it was first, you know, we were coming out of desperation from '08. So it was like, we'll take anybody. I dabbled in Philadelphia, the Roxborough Maniunk area get up. I will not touch Philadelphia, man. I won't touch city management. But we tried. You know, we did, it's like if someone said they had something, we would go out. Now granted, some of these early management clients became buyers and sellers that did help my business. So some of them were worth picking up for all their stressors. But what you did is you look at your budget, you know, like what do I need? And I live my entire life. Like if I just need more money, then I just go find more business to fill that money. So I'm like, oh, we've got this day, because I'm okay, I'm a street. All right, divide that by the number cash flow. All right, we need to go find 10 more town homes. Let's go mail 500 letters and see if we could pick up 10 accidental landlords who don't want to give up their interest rate or can't because at the time, they were undervalued. The thing is I should go back and explain is when I got on a property management early in the O607, after the a meltdown, there were a lot of good people with really good credit and income who were stuck in upside down homes. And that became my bread and butter. I marketed to them and said, you are an accident landlord. This was not your goal, but your credit's too good to walk away. Give us your property for five to seven years. We'll ride it out, manage it. The whole nine yards of them will let you know, it's time to pull the trigger and sell it. Amazing. I was going to ask about the accidental landlords. And so you basically helped bail people out there upside down on their mortgages. Yeah. So what happens? We started seeing, like you asked, when could we start choosing? We could start choosing when I became known as the property management investor guy. So all of a sudden, when I was a realtor, I was a red apple and a red apple tree. No one cared. I wasn't seen. But then all of a sudden, I'm an orange and a red apple tree. All of a sudden, I was a unique business that people, even other agents, I would call on and say, I got a client, there can you help them. And so when the phone started ringing inbound. And by the way, I built my entire business with, I think, over all these years, probably between, I've probably spent less than 10 grand in marketing in 16 years. Amazing. Probably could have done more work. In fact, it's a marketing, but we built slow and steady. And so to answer your question to circle back, when we got to the point where there was more money than month as they say, then we could start to look at and say at the end of the year, we'd start to go, who's the pain in the ass? Which property? Which client? Who gets the axe? And then we started firing people. And some of them were big clients that we had like 10, 15, 20 units with, but they were jerks. They were, they were slum lords who wanted me to really be the inter, the step between them and their, their, their, their nefarious, not breaking your laws. I'm saying they just wouldn't fix things. I would give them guidance like, and they just didn't care. As one investor told me, these were these two brother-in-laws. They built this big empire and then they got into a fight and probably lost half the value in a matter of five years. Because they couldn't work together. And he told me one day, I didn't buy these properties to put money into them. I only bought them to squeeze money out of them. I was like, done. I'm done. You're a slum lord. I don't, I don't like slum lords. I have no, I have no time for that. Yeah. That's a, it's, it's got to be a tough, a tough game in the, in the beginning because there certainly are going to be folks that have that opinion and that way of doing business. And when you don't have the luxury of choice on the clients, then you kind of have to, to do that, but get up above that line. Must have felt absolutely great. Do you remember the first one where you said, hey, I'm putting a bullet in you. I don't want to work with you anymore. I've put quite a few bullets. I've put a bullet in you. To the point where people are shocked, I've had people literally be shocked and like, let's say I fired an HOA, which recently just happened. After 14 years, we basically found we, you know, the, the, it's a small community. Yeah. It's, they don't have economy scale. They're entry level homes. Everybody coming in doesn't understand on HOA work. They don't understand that they are co jointly on the hook. And it's all private development. So every, in every square inch of sidewalk and asphalt, it's all on them. And some of the owners kind of lost their mind during the annual meeting, cutting me off. And I just said, guys, you know what, when this contract comes up, we will not be, we're done. We're not rebiddy. And I just found out that the other management, one of the other, one of my competitors that basically just told me, don't, we don't want your, we don't want you on. So, but my point is one of the, one of the spouses of one of the board members who was new, the, the she had just come on the board, was like, I can't believe he can talk to us this way. And Andrew on, I might lead property management. Like he's the owner of the company. He doesn't answer to anybody. Mm-hmm. So if he wants to fire you, then he's going to fire you. But for me, I would say I had a, I won't go into too much details, but she was an old head, had own real estate for many years. And when she yelled at me because her 91 year old tenant was finally moving out of his three story walk a unit. And she wanted to know what I had done that. I'm like, I didn't do anything. He's just old, man, he can no longer do these stairs. So one of my fellow Rotarians who was in, in real estate for a long time who had dealt with her years before basically said, you know, you have to understand there's a time when you simply say, you know, I don't need this anymore. Here's your keys. And that was exact. She was the very first person. She had 13 units. So it represented a pretty good chunk of money, $600 a month minimum cash flow. And I was like, I'm done. I don't need you. I'd rather make less money and not deal with the fact that no matter what, by the way, there are these, these, we learn. And we have a whole thing about all the different types of owners we work with. A shoe is the one you could never please. It didn't matter what you did. Interesting to go ahead. Go ahead, please. I was going to take us in the, you've got all these different types of owners that you do or don't work with. I want to pull on that thread. Can you help me understand that one? Absolutely. You know, I was a psych major early in my college career. I got out of that though, but I still remember some of my classes. I did not realize how much of real estate property management on both sides, investor and tenants, it's psychology. These are people in the end, you're dealing with people and they have their own fears, their own foibles. So there's different kinds of them now briefly go through a couple just for fun. One is the control freak. They're the puppet master. They don't really want property management. They want you to be the go between, but they really want to stay in control. Then you have the others, the micromanager. Micromanagers want to question everything you do. You tell them this is the going rate. We are, you know, we're not going to get quotes for three plumbers to swap a toilet. We know on average what it's your cost. And then we talk about the ones you can never please. There's ones that you can never please. One of the biggest ones that took me the longest time to realize Colin was the Dr. Jacqueline Mr. Heitz. Hmm. Those would be tricky. And Dr. Jacqueline Mr. Height usually is their personality A in the morning, their personality B by one or two o'clock in the afternoon. They took me over 10 years to put the two and two together. Why do you think Colin that people were one way in the morning, but complete raging assholes by two o'clock? I don't know. Really like their coffee. Sad they can't even drink any more coffee. They're drinking something, but it's not coffee. They're alcoholics. So they had that first drink in the morning to sue things out. They're in a great mood. They call you. You talk about their properties or whatever issue they're dealing with. And it's like they're great. They love you. You're doing fine. They're two o'clock. They're deep into their pores. And now you get the angry, hissed off drunk and there were clients we would mark. Do not call after 11 o'clock. Do not call after noon after 11 o'clock. Yeah. I mean, I guess they're alcoholics. So you can't. Yeah. But again, we start to let them go because we can't deal with that. I'm not going to deal with you yelling at my people because you have an addiction. 100%. Okay, Joe. Time to get going, buddy. All right. Have a good day at school. You too, Chris. By Neil. All right. Yeah, that would be wild to deal with. I've had some Dr. Jacko, Mr. Hyde's myself. I don't know if I ever pinned them as alcoholics. But again, I think I was dealing with more on the beta B side of things as opposed to dealing with kind of consumers. If, by the way, you might not even know. I mean, anybody could be dealing with any affliction or any addiction. And we know that we actually tell our owners that. I'm like, we could put the best tenants in, but we're only one break up. You know, one job loss or one relapse away from a good tenant becoming. Unfortunately, a problem tenant. So we're very like we understand that. Like we understand the odds, the risks and things like that. We try to counsel our clients. But at this point, I'm looking at that plant behind you in the corner there. And that's the kind of tenants. I'm sorry, that's kind of clients that we work with. I call them and that's no disrespect. They're potted plants. Fake plants. They're by the name of the year case. But like, I mean, we wanted to play. There are favorite buildings and clients. because we put them on the shelf, we take care of them, and we nurture them, but they just continue to produce fruit for us, and they don't cause us a lot of maintenance. And it took us time to build that portfolio of clients and properties. - No, it is a process. - It sounds like you spent a little time with city management, and you're not a big fan of it. You tell me more. - Yeah, I mean, listen, everything looks good on paper, and I consider myself a pretty moderate libertarian. I was probably considered left of center when a halt just started five years ago, but lately, I've been pegged more towards conservative side just because I'm a business guy. But the reality is, I'm pretty easygoing. I'm pretty liberal. I'm kind of a live and let live kind of person. Colin, I just had my, I just talked myself to serve what was the question again? - So why not city management? - City management. Okay, so I'm gonna give it to you this way, and this is for all of my left leaning friends who wanna run these cities. Beware the law of unintended consequences, okay? Most people who consider landlords to be the evil bad people and property management for the evil bad people or somehow anyone owns real estate and is can afford to own another property that they don't live in, that somehow they are all rich fat cats. And nothing could be further from the truth. The statistics show that majority of real estate owned in America by mom and pops are two to three properties, many get between five and six and they just peter out. It is not like these people are all, all Rockefellers or Trumps or BlackRock and things like that. So the problem is law of unintended consequences is that you have very liberal policies that you think are going to help your tenants, but instead they end up hurting them. Are there slumlords out there? Yes, do they skirt the law? Yes, so what do you do? You create laws and make those who are already doing the right thing do more. But those who are getting away with murder continue to get away with murder. And here's the park on, the government will never tell you. They need those slumlords. They need those to elapidate properties because they're the only properties that will take the people who are between homelessness and an apartment. So it's the dirty little secret. It's the old like someone's gotta do it. But you go into the city and I will tell you right now I have sat in court rooms in the city and I saw landlords speaking every language from every continent on this planet in the city. And all of them are dealing with the same struggles. I need to get a tenant out who's not paying rent, but the city is gonna do everything possible to make sure that person isn't homeless and you're gonna pay for it. And so what happens is you just go, it's not worth the aggravation to deal with city property. I don't care if it's Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City. You name a big city. I want nothing to do with it. It's interesting. Do you think it's specific to Pennsylvania or like is this just city versus not city? You know, you can be mad at me, but the facts don't lie. If you do deep research on Gemini, you will see the best places to invest our red city. So San Antonio is more of a most like what you call red city. So where they are landlord friendly and they want, like, 'cause remember, you wanna be a landlord friendly area because you want business, you want growth, you want billions. If no one's gonna develop because you are strict with what you do, then what's the incentive? So what ends up happening is you wanna solve the problem but you're punishing the very people that wanna help you. And you know, it's all fun in games. We are dealing with a property right now. We just got a tenant out. She was arrested for breaking back into the unit. One of the first we've had in a while and it took us about six months to get her out plus the arrest for the break and at her. We can't feel it 'cause we gotta hold the stuff in the unit for 30 days per real estate law in Pennsylvania. So this one tenant is now cost these owners probably around 12 to 15 gram between loss of rent. My extra fees, the lawyers fees, the court costs also removing all the items, it adds up on the mistake but the law is designed to help them more than it is to help the landlord but it's like who's paying for this? - Yeah. And you can see how good intentions well, like good intention going into a law past through a bunch of bureaucracy scaled up. There's gonna be some unintended consequences where it's not serving the people that's maybe designed to protect. - So good one for Pennsylvania was prior to it, it is a first complaint, then they can appeal, they don't appeal and you wait the 30 days and you can file the possession, you gotta wait 10 more days, then they go file the consul. So it's about a 45 day window from start to finish that the consul is going to eject you from the property. And the way it used to be called in Pennsylvania was if they did not get their stuff out by the day of ejection, that was now yours to take and dispose and sell to make back, it was like you abandoned it. Some well-meaning politician, oh this is not fair and then they changed a lot, said within 10 days of the ejection, if the tenant says to you they want their stuff held, you must hold it for a total of 30 days. You could charge a reasonable fee for storage and moving, but they've gotta have the opportunity. So what do you think most tenants do? - They say they want their stuff, they wait the 30 days, then they never come for. And you're still stuck removing it and you're still stuck in your room. And that my point is like all you did was punish owners. And I get it. It was one on paper that sounded like it was a really good law, but what it ends up doing? 'Cause the landlord's always stuck, do we pay to have the stuff moved to storage? We just leave it, it's cheap, just leave it in the unit for 30 days. - That was gonna be my next question. Yeah, 'cause that would be set, 'cause the manpower just to move it is costly and storage is costly. - Yeah, when you're dealing with, yeah, when you're dealing with mom and pop property, even small apartment buildings, less than 30 units, it's not like we're dealing with like a 50 or 100 unit building where you might have an onsite super. Then you've got a team, you guys can go clear this out, you've got the labor already for the property, but we're dealing with, you know, duplexes, five units, six you, these are one off buildings that we're managing. There's no onsite supers. - Yeah, I'm curious, I wanna transition from, we talked about kind of the, 'Tosin 8, 2009, the chaos. If we fast forward to 2021, semi-retirement, paint the picture, how did you get there? Like what was the keys to the king, keys to unlocking semi-retirement? Also, semi-retirement sounds super boring. I can imagine, we're in a foreshadow a bit. - It is awful. It is totally, it is the worst. - It is the thing, as an entrepreneur, everybody's like, oh, we wanna get to, I wanna buy a portion, not work after I'm 40, you know, and be so successful this and this and that. And the closer you get to that, the more you realize, I don't actually want that. But tell me how you got to that in the first place and then we can tackle the other bit. - I'll tell you right now, briefly in my early 40s, I had just lost my taste for stuff. You know, I've been chasing things, material possessions for a long time. And I just, almost all of a sudden, I realized like just nothing, I bought a couple motorcycles midlife. Nobody deal, they were fun. But it's like, you're just not in care. Like you just realize like when you start to realize stuff comes off of factory and I realize like, it's not the ownership that's the maintenance. And by maintenance, I mean maintenance of the machine, maintenance of the cost, maintenance of the insurance, like maintenance of the storage, I get all ads up and then you start to realize what does it really mean? And so when you ask what is retirement, first let's talk about first, what is your definition of success? And for me, my definition of success was freedom, meaning that no one's knocking on my door, no one's looking for me. I, whether I'm awake or asleep, my life is calm, peace. The other thing that you have to decide is, you know, what, what type of lifestyle do you want? So I live beneath my means. I live a relatively, I mean, I have a nice house, you know, but I don't drive a Porsche, I just saying, a sports car is if I want to borrow them, I will and if they're not covered in advertised and I think they're a waste of space. But in 2012, when we started to gain traction in the business, I don't think I was thinking retirement. I think it was right around probably 20, 17, 2018 that we were making like significant cash flow that like we really didn't have to worry every month where was the money coming from. And I did not go into lifestyle creep. I kept my expenses down versus like going up. And so we made more money, but my expenses stayed the same. Hmm. 2020 took us by surprise. We had just launched a remax division. So I've got some investors working with me to open this office and the day that literally the month that we opened, they shut like the monthly, they shut the, we had our grand opening in February, they shut the world down in March. Brutal. And we took minimum advantage of the PPP loans. I only asked for what was our payroll, not a dime more. I was like, nope, because I knew the government, any new time you missed your step arm and arm with the government, they could change the roles. So I wanted to make sure that I was covered in case they changed and said it's not a debt forgivable loan. But we were right at the beginning of real estate syndication becoming the next hot thing in real estate investing. And a lot of tech people were getting out of it and getting into syndication. Right. And so I was working with a couple of syndicators and COVID happened and two months later, it started doing like, hey, how are you guys making out? How are you guys doing? And my one friend who had just bought a class C with investors in Richmond, Virginia, not more than nine months earlier, said they were at a 35% collection. That's got to hurt. Now what am I supposed to say? We're at a 99.5 collection rate. And we maintain that through COVID. And after about three months, I was like, we're pretty good. In fact, we had one tenant call and she was a middle-aged woman in her 40s and she was like, so what's it like over there? Like how many people are holding back and Stephanie goes, what do you mean holding back? She's like, well, withholding their rent. It's a none. We have nobody that's withholding their rent. And so she paid the next, she paid that day or the next day. What we did was we simply contacted all our HOA, all of our tenants and we simply said, we know there's a problem going on right now. We have no idea what we can do. We will waive all eight fees for the foreseeable future. All we ask is you communicate with us and let us know. I don't care how late you might have to pay. All I want to know is you tell me that this is what's going on. And people started paying weird dates when they could. But nobody ever got behind. We had three tenants in total that got got behind two of those three were ones we inherited. They were not placed by us. The one that we did place, they unfortunately ended up having a relapse now. Callism being home for six or nine months. And it was a mess. But for the everybody else, he's in quiet. And we and that's when I knew that's when I knew we had it right. And I said staff, if we can work from behind a screen in Pennsylvania, might as well work from a screen anywhere in the world. And then so a year later coming up next month, July, 2021 was when we moved to Florida. Right on. So what happened with the the real estate agency, the brokerage, the property management, you just you to let leave it in PA and say, you know it's fine. Or do you have people on the yeah, we have people up there. I built the right I built the right team up with the right people in place. And again, we run small. We're highly leveraged because we can be. And so Androana is my lead P. M. up north. She's basically I, you know, she became my right hand woman. I taught her everything by like how I did it. She pretty much is about 95% there of what I've done knowing how to go to court, how to talk to lawyers, how to talk to vendors, how to deal with judges, you know, all of it from soup to not she can place tenants, she can have tenants, you know, and she's been very, very instrumental in our growth towards the investment side of understanding for me, encouraging me like, Hey, we've got these skillsets. Why are we not put into that to better use now that we know what we know? And I give her full credit for giving me the nudge to for us to start growing in the next development. I love that. So you find somebody awesome to run the PA office who moved the Florida is sent me retirement and then just sit idle, play video games, ride your motorcycle. I wish I could say I went on some grand adventure or did this know? Honestly, like for the first time in all those years, like there was a little more money than month. No one's looking for me. Like I was when I say I was working four hours a week, that that's probably about right. Yeah. Could I have done more Colin? Yeah, but I've been running since a freaking eight. And maybe I just needed a little bit of mental health break. So retirement, when I say retirement to people, what that simply means is though there's enough money coming in that I can now choose to do what I want. Do I think retirement means sit on a beach and drink peanut colladas for 30 years? No, I've been doing this for a couple years. I'm already I'm already bad. Crazy. I hate some new challenges. But I needed a moment to breathe. You know, when you spend, I mean, all of my 20s, I was in debt. I wish I could say I had a miracle story, but I spent so many years in debt and then I had high debt because I was leveraging for properties and flipping and all this stuff. And then the market crashes and the whole house of cards comes crumbling down. You know, and then I had to I had to move back in with my parents with my wife and three kids, which was very humbling, but it turned out to be the best thing ever because I helped my father through his alcoholism. And he helped me build this business by just letting me be. And I thanked him. But mentally for what he did and the fact that if my parents had not really given me a free place to stay, it's the American dream of building a business. It's almost impossible unless one spouse has a freaking steady job because we pay for everything. And I'll tire right now. Health insurance alone is the biggest reason why most people will never leave the corporate. Remember when I quit my full-time job. I was making six figures and I went to zero figures and my wife, I think she was on like 22 or 24 grand a year at the time working for a nonprofit. It was like I was referring hockey, making a thousand bucks a month, referring hockey. And I had it worked out where like I think our seven 180 bucks went to like rent and then like a hundred bucks went to groceries and I had 40 bucks left over for a bottle of rum. That was like my monthly ration of rum. We could afford one bottle of rum. And that was like that was it. That was it. We were very, very lean. But I couldn't imagine trying to do that in support of family and all of that that had been absolutely well. Absolutely humbling. I think I remember I think the last paycheck that I got my son was like around three years old and I drove a limo for the winner to put money on. And it's humbling. Picking up corporate people and taking them to QVC and knowing that they're you know these are business owners are worth a million. It was very humbling to me. And but I you know now I'm the guy in the back. If I really wanted to go somewhere I could get the lift up and it's weird when you're in the back of the car you're like hey you know okay I mean it's I'm on my bike ride this morning and I'm riding by the construction workers and I started off working for Hankles and McCoy you know during summer bouts working like heavy labor construction. And you know I used to be the guy would make fun of guys like me riding their bike around the neighborhood now I'm the guy I used to make fun of. So it's it's it's weird because you we aspire to be more but we kind of hate until we have it what it is that we really yeah I remember I think just reflecting on like the things that I thought when I was you know 27 and getting started the things that I thought I was going to do the trajectory I thought I was going to go totally wrong dramatically different the things I thought of a car about I turned out not to care about at all you know the money the like not working them all those kinds of things and then you know you get into it you're like okay well you know I can take a break and I I don't have to work every day you know like well what's important like well it's not it's not working or not working it's interesting work or not interesting work and to me that was like a big realization. Yeah so that so that was exactly so we opened up the remax office and that was doing well we actually had quite you know a couple profitable years I helped a small team grow to almost a million dollar you know cash flow in commissions for the for their team but it was it's a renewal it was a six year renewal so they you know we were coming due and I asked my partners would invest a do you know that I must want to have their name on this mast head because you know I'm we're legally obligated to pay these and nobody wanted to step on the like well I'm I'm done putting my name on the debts so that everyone else can make money and the reality is once again I got distracted looking at the next shiny object of like oh maybe I should do this because other people are doing it and and I could grow my business and not realizing like are these potted plants does this does this give you steady predictable income and if the answer is no I I don't want them and I will hear people like I never markets the most like there's no such thing as passive income and yeah there is there is such thing as passive income now how passive it is depends on you the investor so I could be a passive investor and still be completely involved or I could be a passive investor and have nothing to do with it but get my quarterly reports all depends on how you look at it and that's where we're at right now it's just realizing what are we good at what can you know where can we take our best talents and how do we find the people actually appreciate them because you'll realize like I I was angry call in a little bit I was a little but her because after 2020 I didn't get one call from one owner thank you make that would be challenging and I was like but but then I thought about it I was like thank me for what and I mean that the right way I did my job I placed the right people I created the right system they didn't need to thank me because my my my gratitude was in the fact that we just keep getting paid year after year and most of my clients are seven plus years on the flip side just to defend you and your ego I think you know doing well through extraordinary circumstances sometimes deserve just a little courtesy of like hey that was really hard for everybody and you like you held you know be nice especially you deal with somebody owns like 75 units and not a single call when they don't have a single vacancy it's like you know just one ad a boy would be not 100% we made it through the pandemic I think we had like 70 people and we've made through most of it without laying off anybody and like that's great it was so hard and like we took on debt we took on like made some hard decisions but yeah ultimately made it through I kind of felt the same it was like you know we did a really hard thing I did get I did get some gratitude though so I can't say nobody said anything anything kind ever just would have been nice just a couple calls but you but again it made me it didn't make me feel good though that they were like hey we have trust in faith that steady as she goes so like I think you know that was probably kind of almost the same thing I don't want to say anything because maybe I'll jinx it so I'll give people credit but again they're humans I think as I get older I realize again they're just everybody's they're just humans we're all just here totally I know we're at time do you have a few more minutes I've got one last question for you all the time you want all right we're going another two three hours let's get a bottle of bourbon out and take some mushrooms this can be a long one we can do this again absolutely love it so we we talked about you know moving to florida semi-retirement not working for you talk to me about how you get into private funds and getting into the investment side of things like what was the what was the journey there so the jury and you know the funny thing was back in 2019 2020 Michael Blanc was doing a lot of real estate syndication courses and a couple of my buddies that we were partnering with flew out to Denver and you know sat there for the course and got the pitch for the 35,000 dollar you know do it yourself and I'm like oh we don't need this guys I've been doing management you're a lawyer you're this you're a real estate we can do this on our own and what happened was I would create a group like a board to say let's go do this and then what happens I realize I'm the one finding the money I'm the one finding the properties I'm the one who's doing all the legal back work I'm the one who's setting everything up like why am I splitting profits potentially five ways when I'm doing all the work but in my mind after having gone through eight no nine I was like well you know team work makes the dream work as they keep saying yeah money multiple people responsible you know many hands and it failed and I'm glad it did so you know some things changed two partners left another partner with another direction and I basically bought them out from the investment pool that we had done together and I just kind of parked that letting it make some money but then I really sat down and what happened was I had started opening my division in San Antonio out in Texas. And we were using the same playbook that I had done here in PA, accidental landlords, direct communication. And we started picking up some clients out there. And all of a sudden, I was like, Oh, man, I'm right back to dealing with these are not investors. These are mom and pops. These are regular Joe individuals who are not investors. And every time expensive comes out, we're right back to, I don't have the money. And it's like, I don't want to deal with this. And so I 53 years old was finally Chris, but if it's not working, it's okay to pump the brakes. Doesn't matter if you spend some money going this direction. This doesn't serve me. And so I took a step back. This was late fall 2025. And I really sat down. I started chat GBT and conversation. I was like, what and and it came down to like, we are not using our talents the right way. We obviously know how to find the right property source the right tenants. You know, we know how to put reserves together. We clearly know how to create keep a value add. What are we waiting on? And that's what I said, you know what? I'm going to put the feelers out to my network of 20 plus years and see is there even interest in funding me from a private fund. And so far, the feedback has been pretty good. I mean, I just started this last week. So we're getting feedback fairly quickly from people are like, I'm in. I you know, they get that I've been doing this and being a steward of money, which is the most important responsibility we're given 100% and I love that it's kind of taking it from like the business to consumer side to the business of business side. You know, you're probably still dealing with businesses or people, but it is more of a business relationship that you're having as opposed to like, I'm a accidental landlord and I own a house or I've got two or three and I'm the most inexperienced landlord, whereas these are more likely professional investors. And they're going to see this as such and you just look at the prospectus is like, it's going to you're going to put this in. It's going to come. It's going to put this out like, don't worry about the bits in the middle. Yeah, we and we're handling it from cradle to grave. So, you know, we've we've shown with large HOAs that we can do this. We've done emergency response. We moved out here July of 2021, my by Labor Day 2021 to what I've been under two and a half months. One of my longest the member I told you about that HWA managed for 13 years had a tornado ripped through finger of God came right across and hit the only freaking townhome development in five counties that I know. 32 homes just 32 townhomes destroyed out of 156. I grew up there spent the next week. We coordinated $150,000 in tree removal work alone. So I was like, okay, we click again, and we helped get the stuff. We dealt with the engineers and we just learned like we've got this. We've got the skill set to do this. So you are correct from business to client. We're taking the same thing we've been doing. We're just now saying, Hey, we just want you to put our faith in us. Let us go find the property requirement. Because when we looked, in fact, I saw it's talking to Stephanie this morning. I said to her almost every problem, every fire that we find ourselves putting out, I said, it's because our clients don't listen to us. And she's like, yep, I said, so we would have none of these fires if we didn't have to answer to them the way they want us to. So let's say you're coming to me calling right now. And you said, Chris, I would love two hours of your time for a bootleg, sorry, a boot boot camp on how to be a better landlord within two hours. I can give you enough information in print and discussion that will save you money. You give me five grand. I will save you 15 right off the bat because one or two months of vacancy add that up where one bad tenant could be one to six months vacancy. When you add that up in an average $2,000 a month rental, if I save you two to three months lost, that's four to $6,000 right there. But this one client that we just had didn't listen to us. We said, this is not the right tenant. They're not qualified. I don't care. You will put them in. Well, that's the client that's now about $15,000 in the whole. So his short term thinking we want the tenant now versus could be another one or two or three months of vacancy blew up. And it's like, and this is why I would say them. Colin, I would rather put a highly qualified tenant in low market rate rent on an apartment than ever go for above market rent by someone who's on the board. You'll always make money long term with a good prospect at an under market rent. I get it. That goes against the thinking of maximizing profits, minimizing expenses. But I look, well, what is it? What is a vacancy cost? tenant placement fee turnover, loss of rent, potential upgrade costs. headaches, you know, headaches. I'd rather keep that tenant in now. Great. And you want to go the other way too, which is never raising rents, never making fixes. So they stay there 20 years. But there is a happy medium you can find. Totally. Yeah. And I love how you're kind of you're obviscating just a little bit more from the end user, you know, in this is like, hey, you can still have the benefits of the property ownership experience and being an investor that you don't have to go through all the headaches of this and that you let the person who knows how to make these decisions, make these decisions. And we don't entangle any of the investors or any of the people that should make those decisions in that it's a better product at the end of the day. And Colin, I feel I feel that I did some people I knew at this service might not have changed. But I watched a lot of people in five years getting a real estate syndication. I'm like, what is spirit like I understand they ran this business over here. But what does that have to do with understanding how to run an investment property, especially one of scale, at least weren't even like 30s or 50 hundred unit buildings. And these were the first ones they were touching right out of the gate. That sounds like a great idea. I could tell you right now on these two hands, I know at least this many people have lost at least 150,000 dollars in last five years, if not millions. And so what happened was I finally was like, like we sat down, I talked to my wife, I talked to my my, my, Andrew on my partner, this is a guys, we are we are doing a disservice to prospective investors out there because we bring what they really want, which is trust finding the right property. So I'm not selling pie in the sky investments. I'm not selling you sky high return on investments because the higher the return, the higher the risk. Now I'm not saying we'll never get into a fund like that. But right now as I build my reputation and we evolve into the next level of the business for asset and acquisition, asset acquisition and management, I want to build something slow and steady because that's that's what has won me out for the last 14 years. I love that. Chris, I feel like I could keep you on this on the show forever. And I really appreciate all the extra time you get in the stories you're sharing. If people want to learn more about what you're working on about, you know, the the new investment thing, you know, the current property management real estate business, what's the best way for them to do a little research and find out more about you? You can always google me and ask the big guy.com. I've been using that moniker for about 20 years. My website for the most part is big realt management.com. But ask the big guy if you're trying to find me. If you use Google that, I assure you will find me. And of course, shameless plug. You could always find me on Amazon for my book. You suck now own it, which you can buy. It was a self help book that I wrote during COVID. This was my COVID book. And it is a humorous take a humorous take on self help. But remember, if you do order a copy, I did put a disclaimer on there that this book sucks. Okay. So, but it is, it's just talks about I talk about my failures. It's, you know, I talk about the fact that, you know, sometimes your failures are your greatest lessons. 100%. I would say the same about my book. This one here. It's on Amazon as well. The terrifying, hard of finding customers. And it's basically all the struggles I had in getting my business up and running enough the ground and everything I learned because without all the failures, you don't get all the learnings. You don't get all the learning. That's what I'm saying. It's like, that's what they say. What was the lines like people underestimate or overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a lifetime. And I'm starting to really see like, it's the old like, wow, I've been sharpening my acts the last 14, 15 years. Like now we're ready. And I even said to my wife, Stephanie, you just walked in. I said yesterday, I'm ever saying, I'm like, I am so glad that it did not work out with the investor partners in 2021 because not even I for saw them doubling the rates in six months, thereby collapsing the commercial real estate market. Because they have the member as interest rates go up, prices go down. Yeah. Incredible. Well, Chris, thank you so much for kind of on the show. I really appreciate it. We'll call and thank you. I really appreciate it and have a great day. It was a pleasure. And thanks to everybody for listening. We'll catch you all next time.