Brian Aplis shares his journey from college walk-on kicker to multimillionaire entrepreneur, building a successful T-shirt company with 65 employees before selling it. He discusses his transition into real estate investing, lessons learned from going too big too fast with Airbnb properties, and his current success in triple net commercial development and home services.
Focus on relationship building over transactions - small thoughtful gestures and serving others without agenda creates long-term business opportunities
In real estate, go slow and steady like a marathon, not a sprint - scaling too quickly can lead to costly mistakes and unwinding
Always evaluate deals based on their own merits rather than worrying about what others are making in the transaction
1:55:06Josh Stech, founder of LendingHome and Sundae, shares how he built a billion-dollar real estate lending company in just five years, scaling to 14% market share. He discusses the venture capital playbook, hiring at scale, maintaining culture with 500+ employees, and his transition to solving the property sourcing problem for investors through Sundae's marketplace model.
1:50:17Steve Trang interviews Damon Lyons of Sellers Advantage, who shares his journey from losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis to building a $30 million assignment fee business. Lyons discusses his evolution from loan officer to foreclosure auction specialist with Posted Properties, then to direct-to-consumer house buying, revealing the systems and massive marketing spend that enabled his California operation to dominate the market.
Get a free AI-powered review of your sales calls. See exactly where you're losing deals and how to fix it.
Get notified when new episodes drop, plus a free AI call review.
Partner with people who have complementary skills and established track records in their areas of expertise
Build systems and hire experienced people from competitors when scaling a service business rather than trying to figure everything out internally
”“You only have one chance to make a first impression. And always, no matter what, like, do the right thing when nobody's looking because it pays dividends.”
”“If you're always in everybody else's pockets and you're always worried about what everybody else is making, that's not how you buy a wholesale deal.”
”“In real estate, you wanna go slow and you wanna go steady, and it's a marathon, not a sprint.”
”“If you come into our office, you'll see outside of our studio on the wall, it says everyone eats. If you wanna be successful long term, we have to both feel good when we walk away from it.”
20989 words
Brian Aplis: I'm building a wholesale team, Steve. This person's gonna be probate. This person's gonna be pre foreclosures. And I had 28 chairs and 28 job descriptions, and Steve was just like, that's not how you do this. And I was just like, yeah.
It is. Everybody's gonna be focused on just that. And then it's like, oh, actually, it's better to do it with, like, three people. And Steve taught me that. And I was like, oh my gosh.
I'm making more money with three people. And so going big there didn't work.
Steve Trang: Welcome. Thank you for joining us for today's episode
Steve: of disruptors where millionaires are made.
Steve: Today, we have Brian Aplis
Steve: and Christian Cato with Hungry Investments driving all the way in from Tempe, Arizona, literally right up the street. We're gonna be talking about how Brian went from college walk on to multimillionaire to how you guys became triple net titans. Guys, I'm on a mission to create a 100 millionaires. The information on this show alone is enough to help become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one.
And if you're already a millionaire, we want to recognize you here on this show. So please scan that QR code so we can highlight you. And if you want help to become a millionaire even faster, scan that same QR code, and we'll see if we can help you. And before we jump in, if you're here to learn how real entrepreneurs are building real empires, make sure you hit that subscribe button because net because every week, we're dropping lessons that can create your first or next million. Also, our AI lead manager is now up and running.
If you want to hear for yourself how our AI lead manager sounds, text AI caller to the phone number 33777. Again, AI caller 33777. Ready? Let's go. Alright.
So it's been a long time running. Yeah. Right? I've known you guys for a long, long time. So I think this is a really, really long overdue.
So we started off the show with college walk on to multimillionaire. Yes. And then for those of you guys that don't know, we had Jesse Braille on the show Yes. A few weeks back. And he credit Bryant a lot of his success.
So let's talk about how we went from the first part, college walk on to multimillionaire.
Brian: Alright. Let's go. So it all started, grew up in Vancouver, Washington. Mom and dad, still married after sixty years, built the family bond, have three sisters. You know, it's always been a rambunctious big family environment.
So I always knew, like, getting off to college was, like, my first big thing. Right? And then I made it to college. Right? My dad was always like, you're just gonna go to community college.
You're just gonna stay in this bedroom. You're just gonna do this, and you're just gonna do that. You're not gonna do that. He was always, like, kind of like you. It's almost like reverse engineering.
Like, if you want this type of life, this is what you're gonna have. You know? You better do something different if you don't want this type of life. And so I was like, man. Alright.
I gotta get the heck out of here. So I finally was able to get, my athletic, aspirations put put to put to bed, and I was, you know, track. I was football. I was soccer. I was, you know, just trying so hard to put all my energies into being the best athlete that I could.
I got scholarships for being a place kicker because I played college my whole life. And, dream team, you know, four a, five a, You know, everything was awesome. I had all these letters showing up, and I was like, I'm going division one, full scholarship, dad. You know? And all these different opportunities had came.
I went went to University of Oregon, tried out with the Ducks, University of Washington, and then Washington State University. And Washington State was the only one not offering me a scholarship at the time. And I was like, wow. Ryan Lindell. Ryan Lindell went to Malibu High School.
I had a chance to beat Ryan Lindell's records as a kicker. Ryan Lindell is a hall of fame kicker in the NFL, played for the Seahawks, went to Wazoo, and he happened to be in my same fraternity, Alpha Kappa Lambda. And I said, you know what? Something's telling me just to go to Washington State University. Go to the Eastern Washington.
Go to the Wheatfields. Just walk on. You're gonna you're gonna get your spot. You're you're you're gonna do everything. Go go through winter workout.
Just do the spring ball. Get get it get it going. Right? You'll you'll persevere. And I joined his same fraternity, and I, you know, went to Washington State, and I I was because he always practiced with with Ryan Lindell in the summer.
And he's like, you got what it takes. You're gonna you're gonna make this. So I'm like, I'm not screwing this up going to some strange school where I don't know anybody. I'm going right where the, you know, the the the the kicker that, you know, was in my sister's grade, three years older than me, and spending time with me, helping me, mentoring me. And I I was just like, you know what?
I'll figure out the money thing. You know, we had some Pell grants.
Steve: You had
Steve: full rides to other schools?
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I did.
Steve: You went? Yeah. I did.
Speaker 3: Let's be let's be honest about why you chose Washington State. Yeah. And it was because you met me at a at a summer at a summer fraternity recruiting event.
Brian: That's that's a I
Speaker: I just wanna make sure we get
Brian: that one. That's that's, again, when it started, when I was figuring out where I wanted to go, and then it started, you know, being recruited. And I was like, man, everybody you know, I'm getting letters. People want me in their fraternity. This is so cool.
This is so different than me just, you know, being a high school athlete.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And, you know, everything was focused on just grades and athletics. But this is super cool. So I went to Washington State University, and it turned out that there was a transfer from the University of Oregon, Anousa Wilkinson, and the head coach of the Washington State, football team called Jeff Banks was actually, you know, bringing he was coming over from University of Oregon and replacing the kicking coach at Washington State. And so when it was my time to go, they had a transfer from U of O and a transfer of the coach and the kicker from U of O. Both of them came over, and I lost my spot, which I felt was unfair politics wise.
Right. And I said, you know what? Maybe that's a sign. Maybe I'm done with athletics. Maybe it's time to make money.
And so I started figuring out ways to make money because I needed to pay my way through college. Right? My dad was, hardworking. You know, he he he was always working for other people as a hydraulics, engineer, and he didn't ever have his own company. He wasn't an entrepreneur.
My mom was a school teacher, kindergarten for thirty years. We had four kids. Like, we did fine. Our house was nice, but there wasn't, like, an extra $40 a year for school or anything like that. Right?
And they they told me when I made the decision to turn down scholarships, you know, that I needed to apply for financial aid. I need to get Pell Grants. I need to figure out what was gonna happen. And, you know, my Blockbuster, you know, sales days of working at Blockbuster Video for three years weren't gonna pay the bills. Right.
So I noticed that when my money was running out, my dad was gonna help me as much as he could, and I wasn't a big advocate of debt. Right? You know, just take out student debt. Just pay it off later. My whole thing was like, no.
I don't do debt. My dad raised me, like, very much, like, no no debt. Like, my dad didn't carry a lot of debt. Like, it wasn't a Dave Ramsey type type stuff. Right?
Like, I know there's good debt now being in real estate, but there was bad debt, and everything was bad debt, it seemed like, in my day. So bottom line is I started selling t shirts on the college campus in my fraternity basement. And I found a niche where I could talk to other fraternities and sororities. And if I became social chairman of the fraternity, then I would be in charge of placing the orders for the events. And there was, like, nine events, 10 events a year.
Right? 150 sweatshirts, 150 T shirts. And then I would create buy ads for, like, six, three fraternities, three sororities, so all everybody had to order a shirt. Mhmm. The sororities had 250 girls in their house.
Now my order size, I was figuring a way to have buy ad parties and and things, and we would get, like, 1,500 shirts. I'd make about $3 a shirt or something like that, and it just became this thing where I it was hard for me to even get to classes. Like, I was managing 26 fraternities, 13 sororities just at Washington State's campus. Yeah. And then eight miles away over at University of Idaho where they just had those crazy murders that was just, like, national news.
Steve: Yeah.
Brian: That was literally a eight minute drive that I used to bring Christian, and we used to go knock fraternities and sororities because I tried to get Christian on the on the squad for the t shirt thing back in the day. And they had, 13, fraternities, another eight sororities. So it was a total of, like, call it 50 different chapters, and I had, you know, 75% of those chapters, I think, within the first year just by being social and and getting to know these people and buying them their favorite gifts. And, you know, if they gave me a hint that they like something, I followed that. I I just did whatever was a little bit different.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And then turns out, you know, it it it paid my way through college.
Steve: And You're the only one hustling college.
Speaker: Like, he hustled on everything. Like, he said he tried to get me involved, and he I was like, I'm not selling to your team. I see how much money he's making. I'm like, maybe I should start
Brian: selling T shirts, but,
Speaker: I mean, this guy would sell anything. Like, he knew every single event that was going on, like, months before. Like, how'd you know that party was going on? Like, oh, I'm ordering shirts for it. And, like, yeah.
And because of your shirts, you got us involved with, USA student travel and
Brian: Oh, that was big.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, we sold Whistler eTrips over Christmas break. We sold every spring. Everybody that was going to Mexico for spring break, we sold all the trips. We got our trips for free.
We were down there. We were like the VIPs. We went to Cancun for, what, six weeks in the summertime because we
Brian: And that's where it really exploded. My senior and my junior year, I was spending summers. I'd interned enterprise rent a car. I knew what shirt and tie, 6AM to 6PM. I was selling damage waivers, selling insurance, washing cars.
It was always like, alright. You know, I know what hard work's gonna be. And I almost I almost didn't do the entrepreneur thing. I almost worked for Enterprise Rent A Car after two internships. I won intern of the year one year and top sales of the year the second summer.
And then I still managed to find some time to get to Cancun, and that's where I actually recruited all my campus ambassadors across the whole entire country because they were coming in herds of 2,000, grad students every single week to to Cancun from all across the country. These people are going to Ithaca, Cornell, Rutgers. Like, it didn't matter. Pepper Pepper didn't matter. And I figured out as long as I'm there, I would recruit them, give them my card, and tell them to go back to their parents and say they found a job on their college graduation trip to sell apparel, and all they need to become is a T shirt chair and social chairman of their fraternity and sorority.
And they had a job that they could pay their way through college just like I did. And so I was basically recruiting, and I
Speaker: the affiliate.
Brian: I I I created a campus ambassador program and a house rep program. So there was a campus rep that would hire all everybody in a house. So if you were one of those 26 fraternities and 13 sororities, you were now getting paid 50¢ or a dollar per shirt as a house rep. The campus rep was making an override at an additional 50¢ times everybody. Right.
And so I realized real quick that if I could put people in charge, and that that's where it kinda dominated. And I was top five nationwide in the whole entire country within five years of graduating college. So when I was 25 or 26 years old, I was paying the most amount of royalties to a Greek licensing company, top five out of any licensing company in the country, strictly because of those spring break trips and and the way that I was recruit campus advisers.
Speaker: Honestly think if, like, Instagram or social media was as prominent when we were in college as it is now, this could be a completely different conversation just knowing knowing this guy. Like, Fashion Nova, he he he could have been the original fashion like, you know, with all the ambassadors and, like, you know, Gymshark.
Brian: We were still doing we were still doing faxes on black and white color proofs for my approvals for my T shirt orders. Yeah. Literally in college. That's how back it was. It was literally like you had to go to the fax machine to get a fax of what your art proof was gonna look like for your design.
Steve: You already figured out sourcing, recruiting.
Brian: Yep. So I found a local screen printing shop.
Speaker: Without Google, without insertion
Brian: An hour and a half away. I figured out how
Speaker: school away.
Brian: I figured out how to bring the shirts to the campus through a shuttle company that would charge me $30 a box, and
Speaker: they should
Brian: shuttle it. And it and it was just like, I figured out how to work terms with the with with them, how to get this. And so it was the start of my entrepreneurial journey, and that's that I had a real quick decision when I it was time to graduate. And was I gonna take the for sure thing? They told me I'd be a branch manager within, one to two years based off of my previous, you know, internships.
And I would have my pick of the car on the lot. I could drive any car Enterprise had, home. It would be my car. I'd have a team, and I'd be making 6 figures. That that was back in 2002.
So 6 figures back then is probably, like, $250 nowadays. Yeah. And I turned that down to move to Arizona and take a, you know, chance at the one thing. And then my dad, saw me do that, and that's when he turned his resignation with his employer and started his own hydraulics repair business after seeing me make it two years out of college, and I was now 24 years old. And he said, you know what?
Son, thank I wanna say thank you because I wouldn't have ever done this, and I am having the time of my life. My dad is now 75 years old. He's been running his, hydraulics business for the last eighteen years, and he can't hang it up. He can't hang it up because he loves what he does, and he wished that he started it not when he was 57 years old, but when he was 35 years old. Of course.
So that's that's the biggest blessing is just knowing that, you know, taking the shot at becoming an entrepreneur and leaving the comfort zone.
Steve: It was twice here, you turned down, like, a pretty solid opportunity. First one, you had actual scholarships.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Like, ask her. I'm gonna do it the hard way. Yeah. And then same thing again. Like, you had 6 figures, company car, whole team and everything's like, ask her.
I'm gonna do it my way. So it's probably got some trends here. So, eventually, though, you sold that company.
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Brian: Yeah. So bought my first house when I was 21. Didn't even rent a house. Like, just used my money from t shirt world and just bought a house, just planted, you know, planted my feet here in Arizona. And then sixteen years later, after buying multiple commercial buildings, expanding my operations, and getting accounts like the NFL and the NBA and the MLB and the World Series.
And it it's a short story, but Super Bowl forty nine came to town in Phoenix. And that was, what, like, almost eleven years ago or something like that. Ten years ago? And they said, hey. We're looking for a local a local printer.
Who's the best? And they asked one of the large format companies, Blue Media. Blue Media is very well known for, just premier work for Fortune 500 companies, and and they they they were just getting started with the NFL at the same time that I was. And so they said, hey. We do all the big printing.
Brian over explosion sports where he's gonna do all your small printing. And and so they plugged me because I was always serving. I was always sending them business and referrals, and I was handing them they're handling their customers like a boss whenever they refer me.
Steve: Mhmm.
Brian: And so, like, you only have one chance, to make a first impression. And always, no matter what, like, do the right thing when nobody's looking because it pays dividends. And I would've never got that referral if I didn't treat their referrals and their customers, like, to the to the t. You know? So I think, that's the main thing is just, you know, maximize the opportunities that you get because the small things are the big things, and you never know what's gonna happen.
Steve: So talk to walk us through the opportunity when it came to sell.
Brian: Okay. So I found out that I was gonna be a dad. And,
Steve: you know Eight years ago today. I don't know. Long more than eight years ago today.
Brian: You know what? It it was about nine months earlier today. I did share with you. Today is my daughter's birthday. She's eight years old.
Her name is Bailey. She's the she's happy birthday, Bailey. Your dad loves you. Love you too, Beata. My wife, beautiful, best mom ever.
And we had an opportunity to become a dad and become a family. And I was like, man, I had been married to Beata since, June '14, and my daughter came in August, August '17 was when I found out that I was gonna be a dad, a little bit later, December 17. And, it was just one of those things where I was like, alright. I have, about 65 employees, and I have a kid on the way. You have
Steve: 65 employees?
Brian: What is gonna be yeah. What is gonna be the next fifteen years? What's the next stage of my life? And I had never really thought about selling, and sales were kind of, you know, coming down a little bit. You know?
I was I was really high in, you know, 2013, 2000, you know, '11. Those those years were just, like, so high. And then I started losing sales reps and started losing things. And, you know, I I started this in o two. So it was, like, ten, eleven years later was my peak, and then I held on, and I stayed in for fifteen years.
And sometimes, you know you know, you're kinda looking at, well, I should have sold four or five years ago, but now I gotta do this. And I couldn't keep up with technology and all the you know, there were competition coming out. Everybody was, like, young, and they had more energy. And I was like, man, you know what? Why don't why don't I think about, like, what it looks like?
Because I wasn't just
Speaker: constant grind too, like, with turnover and retention. Yeah. Every four years, his reps are graduating.
Brian: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so it was just one of those things where I looked at myself, and I said, you know what? Let's look at selling. And so I put it up for sale.
People started coming in. I hired a broker. I had, three different offers within the first sixty days, and I was like, wow. This is really gonna happen. My goal was to sell the company before my daughter was born.
I literally sold the company within four weeks of my daughter being born born, October 2017. And, it was just crazy because I got a new house. I had a new bay a baby, and I no longer had a business. And I was like, what is happening? And that's where, you know, I originally met you was because I think it was back in and Jesse had referred, you know, me as a a a screen printer for the disruptors Mhmm.
Merchandise. Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Steve: You were the first supplier.
Brian: Yeah. I was the first supplier. And I think my sister's doing it now for you.
Steve: Yeah. That's the
Brian: Yeah. Awesome. Shout out to Casey at Modern Threads. Amazing. Yeah.
And so, basically, you know, it was always a passion of of mine. We had some cool jumpsuits that we made for the disruptors, and it was always, like, fun to just get involved. I remember, Payson Jamille were, on your show, and they were doing, like, Payson Jamille Does America. And one day, they were going on your podcast on disruptors, and I showed up with, this Payson Jamille Does America, like, Beavis and Butthead type of shirts and one for Steve and dropped them off. And it was, like, a cool way for me to kinda just let people know that I care through, you know, like, a piece of merchandise that took time to create and think through, and it was thoughtful.
And it didn't cost a lot of money, but it was more like the thought. And so I think those little small, deposits along the way in relationships, they add up again. Like, it's always the small things. And so I keep going back to, you know, just just executing. But it's the best day of my life.
I can't believe today is the day that my daughter was born and the day that I'm on real estate disruptors, that I've been the biggest fan of real estate disruptors. And because I made the shirts for you, you had the opportunity to say, oh, what are you doing after your T shirt business? I I do this running club, and, you know, why don't why don't you why don't you come out? And I said, yeah. That sounds good.
And he said I said, what time? And he said, like, oh, like, 04:30, five. And I said, okay. Yeah. Sure, bud.
I'll see you then. And then I tried it one day, and it was, like, a game changer. And, and pay and and and then Pace started join PACE PACE, yeah, PACE started joining the runs, and it was just one of those things where Steve was pouring all this, amazing, real estate knowledge into me. And it was early in the morning, and he was my mentor. And, Steve, I wanna say thank you because I I joined your brokerage.
I'd I'd I came in and became the biggest advocate of real estate disruptors and making all the merchandise and apparel and anything anybody got in real estate. I tried to get them over to Stunning Homes, and, it has just been so amazing to see where real estate disruptors came and all your 100 millionaires and everything that you've done.
Steve: Well, I mean, it was awesome. Right? Because, like, when you first joined us, like, I think Jess is, like, you know, make sure, like, you take good care of Brian because, like, he's super, like, well connected. He knows all the people and he has all the resources and, like, he is, like, big, big heart. Right?
He always wants to help. Because we've had lots of conversations right, when we're running and Mhmm. Technically, it was 05:30
Brian: in the morning.
Speaker: It wasn't 04:30. We wake up at five, and then we
Steve: have a group test for you as well. And if there was enough if there's at least one other person off
Brian: Yeah. We would go run. Three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, man. It was awesome.
Steve: It was great. Right? And it was, like, me, you, Pace, and, and Chris. Right? So it was the the four of us.
We're running, together. So it was a lot of fun. And I still remember, like, one day we were running, and you're just running around in Super Bowl gear.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. Right. Super Bowl hasn't even happened yet.
Steve: Like, you didn't have to play. Yeah. And then I felt like, what why are you wearing Super Bowl gear? Yeah. And there's always some other random NFL gear and whatever else, NBA gear.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. Man, I did make some extra pieces for for for me. I'm not gonna lie about that. I those were samples that we had to make a couple adjustments on, by the way, NFL.
Speaker: So I just I gotta show you because Bryant would get these sample things that have all the companies drop stuff off Be like, hey. Here's our new shirt. Like, start printing on this shirt, and, like, I'd go there and be like, oh, Brian. What do you got? He's like, oh, just go grab out of that box.
And I'm like, I need workout shirts, and it was aloe. Mhmm. And it was, like, free stuff in a box they're trying to get Bryant to print on, and now they have their own storefronts in, like, Scottsdale Fashion Square. And they charge, like, $200 for a shirt, and it doesn't even have anything on it.
Brian: Yeah. Bella Bella was the, you know, the brand that aloe came from and birthed from, and a girl named Abby was their head head of design. And Abby reached out to me because I had the connection with all the, demographic of all the women that would wear Bella and Aloe and Yoga. It was all the 18 to 20, 20 year old college kids. Right?
So they were like, alright. What can you figure out what they like, how they did provide feedback? And then I look at it now, and I look at how big Aloe is, and I had a small sliver of, like, the design implementation twenty years ago.
Steve: Talking about the free stuff, man. Shout out to Casey. Right? I buy these Travis Matthew polos branded
Brian: Yes. Cheaper
Steve: than I can buy a regular Travis Matthew Polo.
Brian: Shout out to Casey. That's great.
Steve: Branded is cheaper Mhmm. Than buying full retail.
Speaker: Love it.
Brian: Oh, man. You know? Steve's got the bigger checkbook ready.
Speaker: Casey, I'm mad.
Steve: But to be clear, like, you had a sizable exit,
Brian: right, where you
Steve: Yes. You had not only did you sell your company Mhmm. But you also had a couple of commercial buildings Yep. At the same time.
Brian: Yeah. I just I held on to the commercial buildings. They were free and clear, and they were just printing money. That was my income because I didn't have a job anymore. Yeah.
And, it I found out real quick, that I'm not a good employee because within, like, six months of the new owner, I me and him were not on good terms, and I was no longer processing orders with him. And I was like, this is just wild. Alright. I got a five year non compete. Let's just see what happens.
But, anyways,
Steve: So then, you know, we start running together, and he's like, well, I wanna start investing in real estate. Yes. Right? And then at that point, you're just like, I'm thinking about doing this, doing that. And, eventually, I think the first thing you did was wholesaling.
Was that the first thing you do when you dip your toes in?
Brian: I was buying my wholesale deals from Jesse. So Jesse got me overpaying because
Steve: Jesse was ripping me off.
Brian: Jesse Jesse was definitely taking taking care of business. No. And and and it was funny because I was thinking that the wholesaler's job was was to provide me the ARV, provide me the rehab budget, provide me the buy you know, the buy price. Only put good deals in front of me. And I was like, didn't even know how to comp.
I was like, can can you just run the comps? Can you just get me a good deal? I've known you. You were just like, I've known you. Now.
Yeah.
Steve: You were very trusting of all the whole Yeah.
Brian: I was like, can you just just give me a good deal. Right? And then I found out real quick that, you know, I need to figure out how to comp, and I need to become a realtor. And that's when I went to realtor school after talking to Steve. So he was like, you just need to become a realtor.
And I was like, oh, shit. I'm gonna be a realtor? I used to I used to kinda make fun of realtors when I was doing my business for fifteen years. Like, look at all these uneducated people. They don't need six weeks of going to a class, and all of a sudden all of a sudden, they're a realtor.
I'm never gonna be a realtor. And and is it real realtor? And I was just like, wow. I'm really gonna do this. Thank you, Steve.
And so went to went to class and joined the brokerage, learned how to comp, and learned how to look at after repair value. And, you know, and and it was just crazy because I bought three deals, and I bought them really quickly. It was, like, within a thirty day cycle because I had all this extra cash from selling my company. I'm like, I gotta put it to work. And, one of my first deals, was like an Arcadia lite deal, and it was so funny because I was, like, thinking that I'm just gonna, you know, add some square feet.
Right? That's just what you do. Turned out that this, like, floor plan and everything was, like the whole thing basically need to be demoed. And I was like, I need a contractor, Steve. Who do you got?
And he's like, I got this guy, Pace. And I go, okay. Pace, would you be okay coming out to my property? Pace comes out in his Prius, and he starts walking Pace
Steve: Morby for every guy.
Brian: Yeah. He starts walking the property because Pace back in the day was a was a contractor. Right? He was for hire as a contractor. He had owned We We Buy All the Houses franchise, but he was for hire as a contractor.
And I was running with him, and I got to know him. And he he was like, man, I I think your best bet is to just kinda start over here. And I was like, what are we talking about? Jesse sold me this deal. It was just supposed to be, like, this clean, you know, thing.
My first deal ended up being a new build. And 2511 East Earl Drive, Phoenix 85016. Right? You you remember you remember those deals. And, I learned a lot of valuable lessons, and, paid for the whole thing, didn't borrow hard money, had the carrying costs, ended up, you know, going going through the process.
So I learned a lot fast because my first deal was a new build.
Steve: Yep. That's right. And I think at this point, right, you had partnered, with Cody.
Brian: I I did about eight prod eight deals before partnering with Cody. Okay. So Cody, I met him in 2004. Christian and I were headed up to Rocky Point, Mexico for a weekend getaway, and our friend Alex Daley, had had rented a villa on the beach. And he said, hey.
There's a group of six or eight people. Couples, come hang out. You know, we were
Speaker: couples except for me and Brian.
Steve: Yep. We you guys are
Brian: Yep. Yep. Yep. We we we were just like, alright. Let's go have some fun.
Alex was not coupled up, and we were like, let's go. And sure enough, Cody and his ex wife Shannon, who's a dear friend of mine as well and their eighteen year marriage, I had the opportunity to speak at Cody's wedding and build a great, friendship with Cody. And then, after about eight projects, Cody kind of, you know, had said, hey. You know, what's going on with all your projects, and how are they doing? And I was going to, like, you know, Clever Labs, and I was kinda learning, like, how to talk to sellers.
And, you know, it was just one of those things where I was took took them out to lunch, and Cody and I sat down at Cafe Boa, same place that, you know, Cody and Shannon had, you know, had their first date. And I was just like, wow. Okay. What's happening here? And it was just like, alright.
We're, gonna start start being a partner, and I didn't want any handouts. Cody had been in the game for a decade or longer. And, you know, I think you and I even had a chance to talk about this. Do I wanna partner, and do I not wanna partner? Is he is he the right partner?
And and and and I just I had peace with it, and I said, you know what? Let's do this. And so we started Green Elephant Development together. We had a third partner named Garrett. Garrett was gonna be the contractor.
I was gonna be the realtor. And, you know, Cody was gonna be the credible guy on the microphone, the social media, and Instagram, and hopefully help us raise capital. And so that's kind of the how that formed. And, you know, to this day, that was formed, I think, November 18. I sold my business October 17.
So I had a full year, thirteen months, before partnering. And, fast forward, Garrett is exiting the partnership. We had an agreement at five years that, at the end of five years, we won't change anything for five years. But at the end of five years, if anybody wanted to do anything different, that would be the time to do it. So we held our our friendship as as and we held our five year commitment to each other, and we didn't change anything and change splits or profit margins or do anything.
And, now liquidating the portfolio and going through those changes, Cody and I are partnered on Green Elephant Development, fifty fifty now. And, Christian and I are partnered on our hungry development side of the business, and, we are super excited about all the retail triple net, development that we're doing.
Steve: Well and I think that's, awesome that you had that five year plan
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Foresight. Because, like, we were talking Cody. It's Cody Sperber.
Brian: Yes.
Steve: Right? So Cody Sperber was a business partner. And then Garrett already had tremendous track record before you partnered with him. Right? What was, like, what were I
Brian: Buffalo Wild Wings. Yeah. He was a family business. They had two locations. They had a 100 plus employees, and he had built one of the Buffalo Wild Wings from the ground up Yeah.
As an owner build. And so he had a gotta pick the right partners.
Steve: Correct. Yes. Alright. You're super successful. You've got an incredible track record.
Yes. Alright. Hey. Everyone come work with me.
Brian: Yep. Divide and conquer.
Steve: That's pretty smart. So get that. And another thing too, like, we talked about this when Jesse was here. It's like, we all
Steve: went to Dallas together.
Steve: Mhmm. Again, like, it was it was, incredibly grateful for that. Right? Because, like, this is my time where, like, I'm coming up. I'm going on stage.
Yes. And he flew out there just to support me. Oh, yeah. There was nothing else. Nope.
Like, no agenda.
Brian: Yep. Bring the hats, bring the T shirts, and just show up.
Steve: You brought the swag. You brought this swag this swag with you.
Brian: Yes. Your
Steve: it was your carry on.
Brian: Yes. Yep. Anybody who was on the fence about not going to support Steve?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian: I was like, you're coming. We got a flight, and we had a a great crew there. That was the kickoff to, wow, this isn't just my next business venture. This is my next family.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And, our dinner that we had that night was so special. And the fact that you were the first one out of our friends to go on a big stage Yeah. We all needed to be there to support you, and I was a big advocate of that. And that that was a a pivotable moment. If you talk to Pace, Jamil, you know, Jesse, Annie, Evo, yourself, Brett, anybody that was on that trip Mhmm.
It was a pivotable moment about where we're going as and and how we're gonna hold each other accountable. And we still have a group text to this day To
Steve: this day. Yeah. Absolutely.
Brian: Of, you know, sharing each other's wins, sharing each other's birthdays, you know, congratulating people on their exits or new business ventures. And it's just been such a blessing, and nobody knows that stuff. But it is one of the most powerful group texts of the people that are in that text. Not because what happens in the text, but just the unknown silence of the bond and the sincerity that you know that if you get in trouble, you can call the titans of the industry, and they will have your back in a single group text.
Steve: Yeah. It's it's pretty incredible. You look into it like, man, it's pretty wild. That's what we got in there. And you talk about the dinner.
So there's, this is what we had, Annie. It's not Dragon Nova anymore. But Annie. Right? Freaking every night we went out would tell them it was my birthday and then make them sing happy birthday to me every night in Dallas.
So, yeah, you talk about the dinners. Like, that's what I took away.
Speaker: Oh, it
Brian: was that that that was good. You know? Until it came came time for the check, and then all of a sudden, the gentleman that said that he's taking care of dinner didn't didn't end up didn't end up being able to take care of dinner.
Steve: Oh, you need take care. We just need the seven credit cards. Yeah. Oh, so that was fun. So and then I wanna hit one last thing, and then we're gonna hit about the commercial.
So, I asked you to come on. Okay. Right?
Brian: Yeah.
Steve: But there is, you know, like, one kinda funny sad story. Yeah. There's only one person I've ever had to sever at my brokerage.
Brian: Right? We got What what does sever mean? That's what what does that mean?
Steve: We got to a 120 something realtors at our brokerage. I was like, I've only had to sever one. And so I had to call you. Right? Because our managing broker, Lisa, was like, Steve, like, this guy is a liability.
I was like, Lisa, you say that about everybody. You literally say that's about everybody's liability. Right? He's like, yeah. But, like, this guy can actually bring you down.
Speaker: I was
Steve: like, so what does
Steve: this mean? He's like, alright. Fine. So I call her. He's like, oh, okay.
Fine. I can see your point. Right? I I pay you literally to protect me.
Brian: Yes. Yes.
Steve: Alright. I was like, so, I call you. I was like, hey, Brian. Like, I don't know how to tell you this as as your friend. Yeah.
So I said, yeah. I'm gonna have to sever you. What was your question?
Brian: I go, what what do you mean sever? What does that mean? Is that like, I didn't understand what that meant, you know, not being an employee for anybody and not being the right because you're an independent contractor. Yeah. I never really never really understood what that meant.
And then he said, well, you're you're fired. And I said, Steve, we're buddies.
Steve: What are you
Brian: talking about? I got I got, like, 9,000,000 in the pipeline. What are you talking about? He's like, yeah. You know, I think the way that you're, you know, wholesaling, it it's it's gonna, you know, affect being the realtor and my brokerage and, you know, assignments and the contracts and just the equity and this you just gotta, you know, be a little more careful.
And I was like, well, alright. And and and yeah. Can we still be friends?
Steve: Yeah. Well, it will tough because now
Brian: I think you said if you stop doing this, you can stay. And I said Oh, hell. Yeah.
Steve: It was tough because Brian is a friend. Right? Yeah. Like, we were, again, running together still
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: Right, and
Steve: everything else. And Brian never complained about how much he was paying me. Yes. Right? Like, he was playing he was paying a healthy split, not once ever complained
Brian: that, hey.
Steve: Like, we gotta change the splits. You're charging me too much. Right? Brian was happy Yep. Right, paying me.
Yep. And so it was just like
Speaker: He's also out there doing stuff. Like, he's a go getter. You never have to, like, come on. Go.
Steve: Yeah. Never had to say, hey, Brian. You need to work harder. Yeah. That was never the concern.
It's like, Brian,
Brian: he's like, woah. Real it back.
Steve: These things.
Brian: Yeah. I think I was moving too fast for for for your brokerage, but the the amount of stuff that I learned in in in the time and the in the years that I was was here, even just showing up for your weekly meetings Oh, yeah. And your team and Ryan Zollin. I mean, you had you had so many just big time a players and, Matt Potter and just so many people to this day. Just everything.
You know? If I didn't make my millions before getting into real estate, he would have made me a millionaire in real estate. Yeah.
Steve: I'm a real And
Brian: I would have been one of his how many how many how many millionaires have you verified?
Steve: Verified for, like, 13. Like, verified.
Brian: And he's gonna get to over a 100. Yeah. And that's been his ultimate goal, and he's got the jumpsuit that says a 100 on it Mhmm. That I made for him for disruptors. But
Steve: I'm one
Brian: of those people regardless of my success previously before real estate because what the connections and the ability of what I was able to execute and put in a put in a put in a play.
Steve: Think about those. I I you remind me because I I forgot that we used to have those meetings where we got, you know, Jared Parker,
Brian: Walker, Paul Carter, Ryan Zolin. Incredible. Incredible. MD.
Steve: Right? Like, these were our Yeah. Brokerage meetings. This is wild. Yeah.
So alright. So then, you go you got a green alpha development, and then actually, I said we're gonna go go to the the triple nets.
Speaker: But Yep.
Steve: You're good. You also launched another venture.
Brian: Yeah. Yeah. So, back in January 2024, first sale of this business didn't actually happen till May 2024. We were building. It was one of those things where 2022 kinda, you know, corrected with the interest rates environment.
Could get a lot
Steve: of people.
Brian: Everybody everybody knows it was, like, three percent rates. All of a sudden, they're 8% rates, and it's like, what happened? I'm in the middle of 20 projects. And, you know, how what how is this gonna affect resale value? Nobody can afford it.
You know, you you gotta start dropping the price. You gotta convert them. And I was going heavy. It was like the Airbnb thing, and I had created this turnkey bandb.comairbnb. And my whole thing I
Speaker: swear I
Steve: told I tried to talk to you. I had to go into the Airbnb review.
Brian: Yes. Yes. Yes. You did. Yes.
You did. If you could just listen to Steve, you would save yourself so many problems. Yeah. And and and and and I got pretty heavy into the Airbnbs, and the and the Airbnb market got saturated. And I always thought, hey.
Worst case scenario, they're furnished rentals. They're gonna rent for more than unfurnished rentals. And as long as, you know, my, mortgage payment is less than what, furnished rental, comp would be, I'm gonna be okay. But that didn't happen. That didn't happen because what happened is the Airbnb market got saturated because everybody had my idea.
Go get a second, third home as an Airbnb at 3% rate, furnish it, and just, you know, be a hobby Airbnb thing. So you just treat it as like a hobby. And so at scale, I had, like, 28 of these things, big ones, Vegas, Costa Rica, Park City. Oh, yeah. You know, all these, like, you know, luxury type of seven figures.
Buddy. Seven figures ones. And I still have all those, because I keep my good ones. But a lot of my Scottsdale, PV, those types of ones, Mesa, I just thought Chandler. I I I had just gone bazooka wild on this thing, and I got caught doing DSCR refis in that in that thing where a lot of the rates became seven and eight, and they no longer cash flow.
So now my mortgage payment, and they wouldn't loan on a full, BRRRR strategy, the high, debt to ink, DSCR ratio. And so it was, like, 85% instead of, like, 75%.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And so I was not only leaving cash trapped in deals, I was, you know, having higher mortgage payments, and then they came with prepayment penalties and step downs. And there was all these navigating things that if I just, you know, stuck with, you know, just flipping instead of trying to convert everything into furnish long term holds and rentals Mhmm. I would have saved myself about two years of hard work that I had to unwind. Mhmm. And so those two years while I was unwinding the hard work of what I everything I put together, I said, wow.
You know, Cody had came and said, we we need to think about, like, home service. And we were looking at home service.
Steve: Before we talk about home service, because I think it's absolutely critical, before we talk about that. Knowing what you know today, what will you do differently? Like, what questions would you have asked to prevent yourself from going through that? Because that's two years of work you didn't have to do. Correct.
Brian: I I would say don't go don't go big. Don't go all in. Mhmm. You know, especially in real estate. You know, my my MO was always, like, go hire 300 campus ambassadors.
It's all gonna figure it out. Go big. Go big. And in real estate, you wanna go slow and you wanna go steady, and it's a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah.
And I think I sprinted to this Airbnb thing.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And I I I, among lots of others, you know, had to, you know, regurgitate and correct. And luckily, you know, financially, everything was stable enough, you know, because a lot of people really got hurt.
Steve: Yeah.
Brian: And they didn't have the means to make it work. Mhmm. And, you know, I'm just thankful that we were in a position. But the interest rate environment of what happened in that time made me really think real estate because I had sold a business and built a business at one point.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And so, you know, Cody was talking. He had met this gentleman named Jonathan, who's one of our partners in Florida, Jonathan Tesmar. Amazing guy. He's our CTO. And they were kinda he's like a technology, like, just wiz wiz.
Right? He can just navigate. So we had a technology guy, and then Cody and Mike Freeman and myself have been best friends. Mike Freeman's been at my wedding. I we were all at Cody's wedding in 2004.
We knew each other. We all figured, you know, that there'd be ways to work with each other. Mike had worked with Cody at adjustmyloan.com, which was a loan modification business. They worked together. We were always just kind of like you know?
So they they got to talking about starting a a home service business. Cody approached me. Mike approached me. We ultimately decided I'd be, you know, a great addition to the CTO, and then Mike would be the CEO. Cody would be the CMO.
I would come in with my strong financial background. I'd be the CFO and kind of more of an operations guy. I'm always at the office, you know, because we had other jobs, and so not all four or five of us could just kinda be at an office until this company starts making money. And home services were trading at high multiples, and I had known Yeah.
Steve: I I wanna just Yep. One second. Because I'm not sure that's the right lesson about, like, don't go too big.
Brian: Okay.
Steve: I don't know. I'm not saying that's
Steve: that that you're wrong. Sure. The I think there's, you know, elements of, like, we gotta go all in because, like, sometimes, like, you you just kinda, like, dip your toe. Right? You're not really gonna catch momentum either.
Yep. Yep. Like, I don't know. Like, for us, you know, the the questions I I I've been asking recently is like, okay. What's the worst that can go wrong?
Yep. And then can I live with that downside? Right? But we also couldn't predict it three to 8%.
Brian: I honestly thought that. I said the worst that can happen is a furnished rental will rent for more than what my mortgage is because it's not an empty rental. And so, again, I just I wish, you know, I wish it was a trend. Airbnb was Oh, it was really very much
Steve: We talked about it on the show.
Brian: Yep. And, you know, I don't ever wanna put my future in somebody else's algorithm.
Steve: Mhmm.
Brian: And I felt like one change on their platform, you know, they could just stop marketing my property.
Steve: And that's the that's what we talk about, like, Airbnb. Like, the risk of Airbnb is like Yep. We we're talking about the regulation risk or the city risk. Like, if SkySle decides, no more Airbnb is like, well, now what do you do?
Speaker: Yeah. You dealt with that in Vegas.
Brian: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So, definitely, that's what I mean by I wish I didn't go buy 28 of them. Mhmm.
I wish I would have just, you know
Speaker: Moderation.
Brian: Yeah. If I would have been able to put permanent debt on them and go slower and then just gradually, you know, grow. But I just thought that the rates were gonna be this way, and I need to buy everything before the rates change, and I got caught in the middle.
Speaker: I, from an outsider's perspective, watching him him and Cody and those guys do this Mhmm. Didn't frankly understand how you could just go find any house and turn it into an Airbnb. Like, it made sense, like, what he's talking about, the ones they're keeping
Brian: Mhmm.
Speaker: Which are in Yeah. Certain Only the intangibles. Key travel destinations. Like, they make sense. Like, you're gonna have a bachelor party is gonna come in and need a, you know, 10 bedrooms and, like, a pool table and stuff.
But, like, some of these tucked in a neighborhood didn't necessarily Yeah.
Steve: I never penciled out for me.
Speaker: Yeah. It didn't make sense.
Steve: So alright. So now going back to this. So you're saying you were aware the home services sell for a high multiple.
Brian: Yeah. I just didn't want to be in an environment with real estate where if an interest rate changes like it did, what are you gonna do for two years? How are you gonna make money? Everything kinda stopped. The institutional funds stopped buying.
Right? Everything dried up. Wholesaling was pretty much, like, really hard, you know, unless you were very good at virtual and you identified, you know, what markets you could really shift to. And I was never good at virtual. Every time I tried to do eight markets, you know, you you this this you'll appreciate this.
I was like, alright. I'm I'm building a wholesale team, Steve. I have these Manila envelopes, and everybody has their chair, and this this person's gonna be probate. This person's gonna be preforeclosure. This person's gonna be, you know, whatever it was, utility, list.
This person and I had 28 chairs and 28 job descriptions, and I hired 28 people. And I had started them all on day one, and Templeton Walker came in, and and Steve was just like, that's not how you do this. And I was just like, yeah. It is. Everybody's gonna be focused on just that.
And then it's like, that was another thing. I went really big and tried to get, like, a really big wholesale team, and I had one of the largest besides Kegley. In a matter of, like, twelve months, I had, like, 30 people working in my pictures and everything, and I was thinking that I was, like, doing everything right. And then I was like, oh, actually, it's better to do it with, like, three people. And Steve taught me that.
And I was like, oh my gosh. I'm making more money with three people. And so going big there didn't work. Going big with, buying all these Airbnbs didn't work. And so I keep kinda saying, like, marathon, not sprint with real estate.
In business, we're doing the exact opposite. In that home service business, we're going big. Mhmm.
Speaker: We're
Brian: not we're not going slow. We're our marketing budget's over a $150,000 a month. Mhmm. We're doing
Steve: So when did when did you start the home services company?
Brian: January 2024. So okay. We were fed up with just real estate being slow. I wasn't buying properties. It was just like, what are we doing?
You know? And let's, you know, let's get get going on, you know, plumbing, electric, roofing, flooring. What could what what's the best, you know, business? And Yeah. You know, Cody and Mike and Jonathan decided on floors.
They were they were like, I don't wanna be on top of a roof. And and and and and I and and I was like, cool. I know my buddy. He's got a $38,000,000 flooring company in Portland, named Tyler Long, PJ Long, shout out to PJ Long floor covering, and, he's one of my investors today. Almost got 7 figures with me.
And, I was just like, alright. I know somebody in the industry that I trust, that I went to high school with. And when I asked him, like, how's the foreign business? And he took it over from his dad, and he's been in the business for thirty years. And so I felt comfortable, moved forward, and, we identified roles, responsibilities, built a real business.
And we have about 30 employees right now, and we're doing over 1 1 and a half million dollar a month every single month consistently now since since February. Awesome. And our first sale was May. Yeah. And so we had about nine months between May and February before we hit 7 figure months.
Steve: Mhmm.
Brian: And so right now, we're just we're doing about a 130 installs a month, and we're learning how to get five star reviews on, you know, 70% of those, 80% of those. And we had to navigate a lot, you know, between, just overall customer cycle, like, from lead generation to setting an appointment. Like, it was just, you know, getting the design consultant to get out there and and be selling and then having the installation corner figure out, like, you know, which what install date and which install crew. Mhmm. And then it's like the field manager has to go check up on the jobs, and so he's he's looking at five to eight jobs a day.
And then it's like, you know, the customer experience manager has to follow-up and make sure nothing went wrong.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And then it's like, you have all the financing, and how are they gonna pay for this, and how do we set up 0% interest? How do we and so we just got whacked across the head in our first six months, and we literally had one employee that acted like she was doing everything. And she fainted on the job, and we found out that she fainted because she literally couldn't handle the stress of everything she was throwing underneath the rug. And after she didn't come back, we had found out that we had, like, we had customers that had paid us that never got calls for installs. We had, like, all the wrong product going in.
She was giving away free floors. We had we had customers calling us saying, Katie told me my floors are free. The because you guys were two days late, and it's, like, a $30,000 deal. And I'm just like service. What is happening?
You guys, like, stop. Like, we need to figure this out. And so it was I I
Steve: will give you a 5 star review if I got thirty seconds on
Brian: the mark three. It was wild. So then we had to start hiring, you know, real, experienced people from other flooring companies, pay the premium, and learn alongside them. And it's been a amazing journey with, You're profitable now. My part oh, yeah.
Yeah. Real profit. 6 figures a month, profitable. Alright. And, we're only going so, you know, we brought in our fifth partner, who's a king in in the home service business, and, his name is Tommy Mello
Speaker: Mhmm. Of A one Garage. Mhmm.
Brian: He had exited his company for, I think, 300,000,000 for not even, you know, minority percent, and he's gonna go and exit the second for another six or seven. So he'll potentially, you know, be a billionaire. And so we're learning with his c suite executive team on how to do this. And and I met Tommy back in the day when I was buying League Geeks Mhmm. You know, for wholesale deals and invited them to Cody office, and that was our first meeting.
And the only reason that I knew Tommy and that we're even potentially, you know, partners is because I provided a one garage embroidered polos
Steve: Mhmm.
Brian: With the red a on it, and that was because I own the T shirt company. Yeah. So everything kind of always goes back to where you started when I was 20 years old.
Steve: I still remember, like, meeting Tommy.
Speaker: Yeah. Right?
Steve: Yeah. So Supposed to come on the show. I'm just still waiting on Tommy.
Brian: Oh, let's get him on here.
Steve: So, like, I met him through Jesse and Jared. Yeah. Right? Because they're he was selling leads.
Brian: Yeah. Lead geeks.
Steve: And I remember going out to his warehouse. Yes. And this is way before. Right? Like like, he was already doing really well as a garage guy.
Brian: Yes. But he
Steve: was doing, like, all this other stuff too because I don't think he was really focused yet at this time. I remember walking around his warehouse. It was like, you do what? You do this and this and this and this all up in this one warehouse. Right?
And so it's when I heard, like, what he was able to call, I was like, man, that's awesome. Right? Because he went, like again, killed in SEO, killed in garages. I think he was kinda distracted by some other things. And now here he is, like, literally the biggest.
Right?
Brian: Yeah. There's
Steve: Of all of us now.
Brian: There's only gonna be three billionaires in Arizona, and he's gonna be one of them. Yeah.
Steve: Alright. So, and then you decide now, while with all this going on now so you still have all your Airbnbs.
Brian: Mhmm. Right?
Speaker: And you
Steve: still have your commercial properties.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: Let's do more commercial.
Brian: 100%. Yep. And Christian and I have always wanted to work with each other. Obviously, my recruiting efforts were poor. I could never get on the streets to do, to do his T shirts.
Steve: Commercial building's
Brian: a lot of red
Speaker: and blue red and blue.
Brian: He went a he went a different way because our my dad, which is also his dad. Right? Good old Frank Cotta. He told me one day I'm gonna have the the the the the airplane that says Ragman on it. That's on my dad.
Speaker: I always said.
Brian: T shirt man. And then
Speaker: He'd make so much money to have one of his own big old jumbo jet that would say Ragman.
Brian: Yep. And and, and so Christian went into commercial real estate, and I went into T shirts. Mhmm. And he worked for some of the largest developers in the state of Arizona. And I was always, like, ad admiring, you know, that he's in commercial real estate because I knew commercial real estate is the big bucks.
Mhmm. But I was, like, focused. I'm like, alright. I'm just gonna continue this journey on, you know, this and stay focused. You know?
And, Christian, go ahead and tell him a little bit about your My name is Lance McCann. I have recently switched in sessions with Ian Ross. Bill's conversations with Ian has made me $50,000 in the past two deals that I've had. I was able to renegotiate go back and renegotiate the original purchase price on one deal when I say $40,000, and I got another $10,000 off my other deals. Calling in, give him a chance,
Speaker 4: do what we're granting. If you like what you just heard and would like similar types of success, text close to 33777, and we'll see if you qualify to join objection proof selling. We're taking good sales reps, and we're making them objection proof.
Speaker: Well, we so just to back back it up, I mean, we started working on the commercial stuff together before, well, Floridaddy started.
Brian: Three years ago.
Speaker: Yeah. So we'll have our well, the Hungry Investments will have our three year anniversary come October Mhmm. November. Yep. So the whole the first year took we didn't do anything.
It took all of twelve months just to even get your feet underneath you, and I call it, like, you know, swimming with a kayak. You gotta get out in the current, and it's you're doing a lot of paddling until you get into the current. I we had to let all the brokers know. We had a development company, had to reach out to all of our networks again and say, hey. Look.
I'm not doing brokerage. I'm doing development. We had to find our investors. We had to find opportunities. We had to piece it together.
So the first year, there was literally zero deals in the pipeline and all expenses. So, I mean, you know, like Bryant said, when we came out of college, I come from a commercial real estate family. So my parents are, you know, very close with my parents and Brian's parents are, like, best friends. So, we're almost like family. And I grew up around, my dad had a construction company.
My mom managed the office. At one point, they had 3,000 apartment units that were managed by mom and dad. Mhmm. Mom ran the office, and dad had the crews. And we'd turn over an apartment, and the crew goes in, fixes it all up.
We would buy full fifty, sixty unit apartment complexes and gut them
Brian: Mhmm.
Speaker: And bring in 25 guys and just go floor by floor, apartment by apartment, and redo the whole thing. Mhmm. So I knew early on, and I tell Bryant this all the time, like, I joke about it. I don't touch tenants and toilets. Mhmm.
So residential wasn't an option. I bought two houses in my entire life. All I did was cut the check for them. I didn't even represent myself. My wife did.
Mhmm. So, like, even Bryant helped us buy our our our house we live in now. So it was straight commercial from the from day one. And, in college, you know, with Bryant, you know, we I knew I was gonna get into real estate a lot earlier than he did. I just didn't know exactly how that was gonna happen.
And when we graduated college is when the .com bubble burst. Yeah. That was there's been a couple of bubbles that we've had to navigate. The first wasthe.com. So out of college, I thought maybe we'd go work I'd go work for Deloitte and Touche or, you know, AT and T, something like that, working in tech.
That didn't happen, and I went to work for my dad running one of these crews. So I started with a hammer, you know, swinging a hammer with a four year college five year college degree, and went and got my real estate license early on and went straight into commercial real estate working for a small developer in Tucson. I did really well. Some of the bigger, you know, bit one of the big development companies down there was like, who's this guy that's doing all these leases? And they brought me on board.
So they were a large scale developer that built Walmart's, Home Depot, PetSmart type shopping centers. Mhmm. I got assigned to work on the team that handled all the outparcels. So as the principals worked on the big tenants in the back, I was on the team leasing up all the smaller multi tenant buildings and the the pads out by the street. So I got to know Walgreens, and I got to know the, you know, bank the guys that were doing the bank deals and, like, the shops we were working with at the time Paradise Bakery, which is now Panera Bread.
Steve: Yeah.
Speaker: So I got thrust into this world of real estate that was on another level. You know? It was corporate. Mhmm. And my parents had all these all these apartments, and I told my parents, why are we why are you taking calls at 03:00 in the morning because someone's toilet's clogged when these guys over here don't even have to pick up the phone about rent?
It just shows up automatically.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: And if the air conditioning unit goes out, we don't even know about it. Mhmm. Like, all we're doing is making sure the landscaping's done and everyone's paying their fair share. Like, I just I took a this, like, keen love for retail and triple net, and I talked to my parents and I said, we gotta start selling all these. It's too much.
I see my dad's kinda getting worn down. My mom's stressed a little bit and, you know, trying to make sure people are paying their rent, and I went full bore. I I helped my parents sell all of their apartments, and we moved everything into shopping centers in Texas Yeah. Of all places, which was great because Texas and Arizona are probably two of the states that have done the the best over the last twenty years in in terms of appreciation. And I helped my parents kinda buy and, you know, buy the strip centers that needed face lifts.
And, you know, I tell my dad, hey. Look. This shopping center that we're looking at has too much parking. Let's see what we can do. We bring in, Starbucks, and we build a building for Starbucks out in the parking lot.
Brian: And we That's why
Steve: you see all these little dash bros.
Speaker: It's the same exact thing. So I've been doing this for twenty five years, whether it's been on the brokerage side or directly, you know, through my family. About five years ago, six years ago, my dad started getting sick. We had, like, 500,000 square feet of shopping centers spread out across Texas, mostly, like, from Corpus Christi down to, like, South Padre Island and, like, Harlingen area. And I noticed my mom was having to run it.
My dad was getting sick. He was out for long periods of time. I needed to help my mom. At this point, I'm working for a large developer here in in Phoenix who has, you know, built all the LA Fitnesses, Walmarts, all that kind of stuff. And and so at that point, I told my mom, we don't have the money to fix these things up, and you can't handle it, and I can't handle it from Arizona.
And so at that point, that's when I started talking to Bryant. What do you think about creating a development company? Mhmm. And the way we can create the development company is we're we're gonna sell all of my parents' assets in Texas, and we're gonna take that money, and we're we're gonna put in a family trust, and we're gonna start investing it with my parents, but we're gonna invest it into our own deals, and we're gonna find new partners. Mhmm.
And we're gonna grow and scale this thing. And he was like, where do I sign?
Steve: Yeah. That's Hungry Investments?
Speaker: That's Hungry Investments. And so that first year, like I said, took us a while to get our feet under us. Mhmm. We hired a young guy that worked at didn't Armando work at Kigli?
Brian: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I called Brian. I said, we need one guy that can pick up the phone and call and isn't afraid, and he picked up made a few phone calls and got the same name, Armando Delgado or Armando Delgado. And I was like, alright. Where do I meet Armando?
Brian: Funny story about Armando. Jamil mentioned it. It was one of the biggest deals ever Kegley ever did. We had a $250,000 assignment on a deal in Sedona Mhmm. And Armando.
And I guess it was like a big flag in the office. It was like a banner. It was just like biggest deal ever done. And, Jamil gave props because we had Avengers, our our mastermind, for a few years.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And Jamille was speaking at one of our vendors mastermind, and he goes, you know, just the ability to, you know, understand, you know, that, you know, every chance and every relationship has the opportunity to make you millions, and don't ever just shove off just because, you know, the relationship, you know, isn't being nurtured or watered. And he was just saying, like, you know, we've we've always, you know, had opportunities to, you know, work with each other or do things with each other, and some people just are always transactional. Mhmm. And they're just not there for people and unless there's money involved. And so it was just one of those things where, you know, Jamil and myself, you know, were fast friends in the beginning, and then there was a time where, you know, Jamil didn't like me.
Mhmm. And I was almost caught in some crossfire. And, it was just really awkward, and I was like, Pace, how do I fix this? I love Jamille. And I he and I was like, I'm gonna write him a letter.
I wrote him wrote him a letter, and, you know, that didn't work. You know? And I was just like, okay. Well, I gotta figure out a way to fix this because Jamille's family to me. And all of a sudden, Jamille came around.
We had a heart to heart. And, ultimately, you know, we do we're doing quarter million dollar deals together, and Armando worked for Jamille.
Speaker: And Wasn't I think Jamil's the one that told you you need to talk to this kid, Armando. Yeah. And Brian put me in touch with him. And And
Brian: so, again, our dinner, our people, same thing. Our family ends up, you know, being one of our best acquisitions guys.
Speaker: We've he's been with us since day one. And since then, we've brought in a friend of our a a friend of mine
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: That we call uncle Phil. Mhmm. I've known Phil for twenty five years
Brian: Mhmm.
Speaker: Since I started. He's been the AutoZone rep for Arizona for as long as I've known. 77 years old. He knows everybody, and everybody loves Phil, and he will shoot you straight. And he didn't really know what he was getting himself into, but now, like, he just got back from England.
Mhmm. And we had we had a call this morning. He's like, man, it's great to go on vacation and know that the boys got it all under control. And with Phil comes his guy that he's groomed for the AutoZone, you know, the AutoZone account named Brennan. And Brennan we're grooming him to be, you know, kind of a project manager and handle entitlement and development.
So, yeah, we're, you know, we're we're cruising at this point.
Steve: So, question about the name. Yep. Cambria Investments.
Speaker: So I came to Bryant, and I said, look. Let's start a investment company for triple net single tenant retail. That's what we're gonna start. 99% of the tenants we work with are restaurant related. I wanna call it hungry for two reasons.
Number one is we have an appetite for investing. Mhmm. Number two is because Les Miles always had this, you know, the motivational speaker. I used to listen to him all the time, and he'd say, you gotta be hungry. And so that, like, kinda stuck with me.
Mhmm. And it also made sense too because I told Brian, I wanna do this. So we picked up a lot of things from I worked for some super, super successful guys in commercial. It's very different. Like, it's very there's a corporate institutional feel to it, and there's things that I think we can change as times are changing to make it better.
And one of those is if you come into our office, Steve, you'll see outside of our studio on the wall, it says everyone eats. And so the idea was, from our standpoint, is that if we look at a deal and we underwrite a deal and it doesn't pencil and you've gotta shave somebody out of the deal, then you shouldn't do the deal. Yeah. It's it's gotta be where the transaction at the end of the day, if you wanna be successful long term Mhmm. We have to both feel good when we walk away from it, and the only way that happens is if everyone eats.
Steve: Yeah. I totally get that.
Brian: Yeah. You taught me one thing. You said, look. If you're always in everybody else's pockets and you're always worried about what everybody else is making, you know, that's not how you buy a wholesale deal. Right?
You buy a deal based off of the ARV is this. Do you believe in the comps? The contractor bids are coming at this. Do you believe that you can get the rehab done for that? If you buy it at this price, and do you think the timeline is this and the average days on market are this, if you can sell it and make the profit that you wanna make, does it matter if this guy makes 5 k on an assignment and this guy makes 5 k on assignment and the original guy made 10 k on assignment?
Does that matter? In in the beginning, I was just looking at a HUD. I'm like, what are all these people? And who is this LLC, and who is this? And I was, like, learning about this stuff.
And Steve was one of the guys that originally came to me, and I said, I'm gonna back out of this deal. Everybody's making all the money. Like and he was like, you gotta look at the deal itself. And that's what you're referring to is, does the deal make sense without cutting everybody's commissions, without cutting are we trying to turn an Airbnb into a thing because we just feel like that's the right thing Mhmm. At this time, or are we are we really gonna be disciplined on what our buy box is and if the deal makes sense?
And it goes back to me not renegotiating and trying to get better rates with you because everybody provides value. Why are you gonna cut people out and then expect the same value? It's not gonna work like that. There's gonna be the contractor that says, well, I'm I'm doing this at cost. That's why it's not done yet.
That's why you got that guy to install your thing because you were trying to be a cheapskate. Mhmm. Always, you you get paid what you, you know, you're gonna get what you paid for.
Speaker: Yeah. We I mean, in what we do now on the triple net side, it's a I it's like a very gated blue blood network. You don't just crack that code. No. Like, you don't come from the East Coast and drive in, and you're like, I'm doing all the deals.
Like, no. It's network. It's relationship. It's all that. I mean, we understand.
We've built a we've, over the last three years, built a strong network.
Brian: What do we got in the pipeline right now? Because that's what the viewers wanna know. Yeah. What are these guys doing?
Speaker: I'm getting to like, the whole idea of, like, everyone eats. You can't plan to make your you're trying to make a 100 millionaires. Don't in commercial real estate, where is the camera? Do not try and make your first million on your first deal. It will not happen.
K? Yeah. So we're happy with knowing what our returns need to be. Is it worth it for is the juice worth the squeeze? I could go on with food puns because we've come up with every single one.
We're making bread, you know, all that kind of stuff. But is the juice worth the squeeze? Like, you have to, again, go back to what Brian just said. No. If you're okay with the return for the amount of work and effort you're gonna put in, then do the deal.
But don't try and get the deal done and then go back to your broker and say, you know what? I can't pay you 3%. You're making too much money. No. Because that guy is gonna bring us deals over and over and over again.
Steve: Or he's not gonna bring any more deals.
Speaker: Correct. Because you And it's very quick to fall onto the other side. Mhmm. You know?
Steve: Yeah. So, back to Brian's question. So how much do you have in escrow right now?
Speaker: So in our first three years, we have our first two deals coming full cycle. Those two deals will sell for roughly 10,000,000 Mhmm. Between the two of them, and that's the the gross value in the marketplace. We have another two large scale developments right now. They're about 20 to 25,000,000 total value in in the development phase, getting ready for instruction q four q one of next year.
Right now in our deal pipeline, we have another six or seven deals, you know, escrow in various stages, of about 30,000,000. So over a $100,000,000 in our first three years.
Brian: And and Pace is gonna be our partner on a Chipotle deal. Mhmm. And he's got every he's he's he's got everything already placed for the the capital and working with his team. And it's so cool to be just doing retail deals now with PACE Mhmm. And, you know, just doing business again with people in that in that group.
And it's just, like, crazy. I to me that I get to do this every single day. I get to work with my friends. I get to make my friends' money. We have what we call is our twenty twenty program.
Mhmm. So if an investor comes in and we use their money to gap fund a deal, our average acquisition is $2,000,000 bucks.
Steve: Mhmm. So if
Brian: we buy a bank and it has a good high traffic count on a good corner, and a lot of these deals that are coming full cycle are on
Speaker: the bank.
Brian: Bank of America as well as Fargo's, whatever the case is. We just want good real estate on good corners with good traffic counts, and then we'll either retrofit it, scrape it, and then we'll build a quick service restaurant. So that's what we're doing in the retail space. The average timeline is only nine to fifteen months for these deals. Even new construction, fifteen months.
It's wild. It takes take me eighteen months to build my 20 houses a year in PV and Arcadia that I was doing. Right? Speculatively, not knowing who the end buyer is. These, we get LOIs.
We get leases in place. Fifteen year leases, four, five year extensions. We already know what it's gonna trade on a cap rate to a ten thirty one buyer. We're not in these things to hold them. We're in them to flip them.
So, again, it's so cool to understand that I only need, you know, 30% down on $2,000,600 or whatever, plus some developer fees and prepaid interest to get a deal done. So a twenty twenty partner can come in at, like, $750, for example.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Brian: And then they can get 20% of the profit on the deal or 20% on their money, whichever is greater. So Wow. If their 800 can turn in and our average profit is usually now, we're usually basically 1.2 to 1,500,000.0 per deal. Mhmm. So on one five at 20% is $300.
Steve: Yeah.
Brian: On seven fifty is over 45% return, and sometimes we're finishing these in nine months.
Steve: Yeah.
Brian: And so it's like, I'm able to make my friends these types of crazy returns, and then we pay them out before the other GPs in the deal make any money. So they're guaranteed 20% on their money or 20% of the profit, whichever is greater. And they take even if the deal only makes, 300,000 and their 820% is one sixty, they get one sixty. The rest of us split the one forty. So we've got it down.
We have, like, a a list of, like, you know, 20 people that are just wanting to fund our deals. And now we got hard money lenders that are like, we just wanna do your equity, and we wanna do your debt. Because they're seeing us share the debt around because we have about 13 deals that were in contract negotiations and tell them about the
Speaker: Well, so yeah. So Carolina. Going back to, like, the the two of us. So you see he's got clever capital in Hungary. Mhmm.
It made perfect sense for us to partner. Obviously, Brian and I are best friends and go back all the way to college. But identifying and knowing each other so well, like, one of the things I always credit him with is he's got a keen ability, and you can probably relate to this, Steve. He'll ask anybody for money. Mhmm.
And a lot of times, I'll give it to him.
Steve: Mhmm.
Speaker: And most people just won't even ask. Yeah. And so from a capital raising standpoint, holy crap. That's like it's like a dream come true for raising capital. But, like, for me, my strength has always been like this I've got this, like, brain that organizes and systemizes things.
And so very, like, organ like, if you looked at my systemizes things and so very, like, or like, if you looked at my Gmail, you'd probably throw up because it's so organized. Like, every single property that I if it gets past a hurdle, it gets a folder, and it gets a folder in Google Drive. And everything's and so I can keep track of, like, every property we've looked at for the last three years Mhmm. And go back to an email that was there and and so on and so forth. So, like, you know, for the two of us to come together, it took half of the it took half of what I had to worry about before off of my plate so I can focus on doing the deals.
And now I just come to Bryant, and I say, here's the these are the five deals I'm working on. Here's how much we need to raise. Who do you wanna talk to? How are we gonna use the fund? What kind of financing?
And he can give me those numbers, and I can plug it all in. And I don't have to worry about it. I'm brilliant. What do how are we looking on capital? How are
Brian: It took me a while to get this is Clever Capital Fund. This is my third fund. Right? The first fund, 5,000,000 debt fund. Ten, eleven, 12%.
One, two, three year commitment paid quarterly. Right? Unsecured promissory notes. Learned a lot. Raised a lot of money.
Was able to it was a different time back then. Money was flowing. You know? Trump was not even in the present you know, presidency, and it was just like, alright. People just invest.
Then second big investment was a syndication for 432 unit, $115,000,000 asset. That was amazing. Learned how to do my first fund to fund with Vina Jetty, and then ultimately moved into my third fund, which is a $50,000,000 equity fund. And so that's where my passion as a fund manager comes into play because I get to, you know, offer high returns paid quarterly backed by real estate in an equity fund. And the people that I'm meeting on the on on these funds and and our investors, and one guy just sold his company for $52,000,000.
I just get to talk to him. He he gave me $250 in my fund. Mhmm. You know, he's getting paid quarterly, and he's got I got he's like
Speaker: Set up
Brian: these courses and more. Yeah. And so it's just like, until you create a fund, you don't get to have conversations with guys that have $52,000,000, you know, exits and wanna give you a test on their $2.50. Right. Right?
Because you gotta do the hard stuff. You gotta actually set it up and and and and and not go work for somebody, but move from Washington to Arizona and do the entrepreneur. Turn down the enterprise job. Right? Turn down the scholarship.
Turn down the I'm not gonna raise money. That's crazy. That's that's a lot of work. That's a lot of risk. That's a lot of, like, sleepless night.
No. I'm on my third fund. I don't care how hard it was.
Speaker: He was a humble brag, though, because you don't get to have those conversations if you don't put yourself in the position, be able to have those conversations. And so he went and figured out and researched and started the first fund. And then had the second when we started Hungry Investments, and we started talking about how are we gonna finance these deals, we have the capital on the equity side. We can go we have the soft cost money. We can do this.
I I focused on figuring out how to make the the development company profitable, but the the structure of how we have everything I mean, Bryant are the partners on the development company. We have our team involved in that. But when we go purchase it, we have our separate holding company that's five people. How is that? What are we putting back into the like, there's a lot of moving parts behind the scene that nobody sees.
Steve: Right.
Speaker: And so for him to to be like, I think we should start a fund. Okay. What does that mean? Don't worry about it. I'm gonna go take care of it.
Sweet. Let me go out here and do this, and it's just become this snowball. I have twenty five years in this, Steve. I can pick up the phone and talk to a broker that reps a big name tenant and find out in thirty seconds, a minute if they are interested in a site. Mhmm.
You know what kind of confidence that gives you writing an offer on a $1,900,000 property if you already know three tenants that you think you can put in there? Mhmm.
Steve: Oh, yeah. Your offer's way better. Way stronger.
Speaker: You put your head down and sleep better at night. Mhmm. And so, I mean, that's the point that we've built to because there's a, you know, great, you know, there's a a great play off of each other. He wanted me to to mention I mean, we have our podcast, which we gave you the hat for Mhmm. And Steve.
Which we'll have to have you on our our podcast.
Brian: Let's do it.
Speaker: It's the numb the number one commercial real estate investment and development podcast on YouTube. Uh-huh. I have to
Steve: figure out if I can make the drive there.
Speaker: Yeah. It's pretty far. It's like a five minute drive. But we had a guy on on the podcast. His name is Sean Finnegan.
And, again, this goes back to, like, your network is your net worth. Right? So we're constantly combining networks. And how can we I had another friend of mine, Elio, just last week that was on our podcast who we needed help putting this building that we're doing, the deal with PACE, and we couldn't figure out how to get ahold of someone. Oh, the people live in Kingman call Elio.
Elio knows everyone there. Within two days, we had direct communication going, and we had a contract working on it. Yeah. Yeah. And Elio asked nothing for it.
No. I'm glad I could help. Great. Another guy put us in touch with a gentleman named Sean Finnegan in Utah. Sean's an amazing human being more so than a businessperson.
He's a great businessperson, but he's a better human. And I had him on the podcast, and I knew he had partners, and they were in Crumble Cookie. And as we're on the podcast, I find out, oh, wait. You guys are the franchisees for Swig? You know what Swig is?
No. It's like one of the fastest growing, most trending new concepts. It's dirty sodas. It got popular with, real lives and Mormon wives during COVID. It's all over TikTok.
If you or have TikTok or, you know, kids that have TikTok, ask them to go on there and look up Swig. Mhmm. And you'll be like, oh, how have I not heard of this? It's they're popping up. They're 900 square foot buildings with a drive through, and that's it.
Mhmm. And they do, like, 1,500,000 average unit volume per store.
Steve: Wow.
Speaker: And so these guys have I think
Steve: I met Sean at,
Speaker: Sean Finnegan, the ex room?
Steve: I think I met him at, who's the RocketLister guy?
Speaker: Oh, what was the AI sales name?
Brian: Devin is the guy who owns sales.ai, and so they work together. Sales.ai,
Steve: it was a podcast, so we were, like, yeah, walking past each other.
Speaker: Like, I was walking out of pocket. Glasses? Yep. I was just like,
Steve: but, anyway
Speaker: So we had him on the show Mhmm. And I hear him talk about Swig. And then afterwards, I'm like, tell me more about like, I wanna know what's going on with Swig. Oh, we have the rights to North Carolina and South Carolina. I'm like, how are you expanding in North Carolina to South Carolina?
Well, we're gonna you know, we got some brokers, and my partner takes care of it. Can you connect me? And so this has been ongoing for, you know, about a month and a half or so. And now we're working with them as their preferred developers in North Carolina and South Carolina to try and help them expand and open 40 locations in the next five years.
Brian: 40. And each one is couple million dollar?
Speaker: No. I mean, it's probably for us to go in and build it, I was we have to dig into the numbers Mhmm. Which is another we're doing some construction now too. We can dig into that. But each I would say it probably costs 8 to 900 to build it.
Brian: Yeah. Plus the dirt. You know?
Speaker: I was all all in. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Plus your dirt. So Oh.
Yeah. And we but, I mean, it's a lead in for us to be able to put it you know, identify a spot for them and then figure out, can we put a McDonald's or, you know, Raising Cane's or something.
Steve: Yeah. We got 40 opportunities, you'll you'll make you'll you'll make it work.
Brian: But bottom line is they're committed to use us as the preferred developer for all of their 40, deals. That's incredible. So it's just like, man, you talk about a fix and flip, and you talk about I'm gonna make $30. It's gonna be 6 months of my life, and the numbers pencil, and I'm okay with that, to going to 100,000,000 plus in in deal flow and escrows, you know, big fund, and, ultimately, clients that are committing to do 40 deals with you. And it's just like Objections.
Speaker: It's just like
Brian: it it's all happening so quickly, and it's just one of those humble pie. Right? Yeah. It's just like you're here because you put in the reps, because you treated the people along the way the right way, and you didn't deviate, and you didn't take shortcuts, and you gave up on the for sure things to do the hard thing. Mhmm.
Speaker: And
Brian: I just think if there's a lesson out there for any of you guys, it's don't take the shortcuts. Don't do the short term pain to, you know, not have the long term gain. Everything that you do is just a rep, and it's a lesson, and you're setting up yourself for the future version, and that's where you get. You know? You get to your mid forties and, you know, you got your kid's birthday party, and that's all that matters at at this point.
Right? So
Steve: I wanna make sure I ask two questions. So first for you, you're talking about what what he says is you've got an incredible ability to just pick up the phone and find money.
Brian: I go. I actually go and I fly to events. I hang out at, you know, Trump Doral. I I go to f one events. I I Jets and Capital.
I go I I Tim Mai is a mentor of mine in the capital raising space. I joined his mastermind, and he invited me to speak on his stage at his hero Capital Alliance events for three different events in a row. I was able to speak on his stage. I put myself in the right rooms, and then I try to figure out ways to serve. And, it's not always about give me money.
It's about, like, hey. I'm doing this. You're doing this. How can I help you? And I don't ask for anything from anybody.
That's the biggest thing is that it's some it's weird because it's almost like I have no problem asking for money. I just tell people what I do, and then I usually get them to ask more questions.
Steve: Mhmm.
Brian: And then I have no problem asking for money. I I I I plant the seed to get interest, and that's pretty much it. But I always just dive into what they do, and I figure out ways to provide value.
Speaker: If you were a slogan, you'd be Nike. Just do it. Like, there's just there's no hesitation.
Brian: Yeah. I'm not I'm not I'm not afraid to be embarrassed.
Speaker: No. And he's very comfortable in uncomfortable situations. So, like, if what what's it's not hard. It's just new. Right?
But we get super uncomfortable with it. And so where most people will hesitate or just delay or
Brian: Mhmm.
Speaker: Procrastinate doing if we talk about it, it's usually the next day there's some progress that's been made, and I'm like, well, shit. Now I gotta catch up. And so, like That's Brian.
Steve: So for you, you're talking about the ability credibility when you pick up the phone. Like, they'll take you seriously. So, like, who are some of the biggest clients that you served?
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Speaker: I was the McDonald's rep for Phoenix for seven years.
Steve: So that's a pretty pretty big one.
Speaker: Yeah. And, I mean, that that's a story in and of itself how I got that client. Like, I did what other people wouldn't Let's
Steve: talk about it.
Speaker: I wanted to work with McDonald's. They had a rep they'd worked with for, like, fifteen years. And here I am, some young broker, and I have no business, and I'm pick I'm calling. I can't get a phone call, and I know I have a site. Mhmm.
I I know this. And this is before Google Earth and all that. Like, Google Earth was just coming out. Yeah. They didn't have all the software.
They had big giant map books and all that kind of stuff. I mean, this is when we had the whole wall of, like, the area of the photos for Phoenix. Remember those? Now I go over to my buddies, Western retail. They have one of those, and they turn into pop art with, like, different colors faded into it and stuff.
But I knew that this was a McDonald's site, and the crazy part today is one of the top performing McDonald's in Phoenix. Mhmm. It was an old Irish bar. I'd gotten finally gotten the owners to tell me they wanted to retire. It was on hard Corner, some Walmart across the street, and I couldn't get them to answer.
So I literally was like, look. If I can this is a deal, and I know I can make this work. Let me go talk to them and pick, like, five or 10 other sites I think work. So I took the time, and I created these things inside Google Earth, and we couldn't take it on a laptop because we didn't have Apple laptops. But I printed them all out, and I had this big binder, showed their existing sites, had circles, did all this, and I went down to their office.
And I asked if I could talk to the real estate director, and they're like, do you have a meeting? No. Well, you're you can't get in there. I'm like, I'll wait. And I waited and I waited.
And then then I waited, and it was like a whole day went by. And this the receptionist told me to come back tomorrow. I think they'll have some time or they'll be heading out for a meeting, you know, around 11AM. So I came back the next day, and I sat there and I wait. I was like, I'll just wait.
And then finally, they came out, and she kinda pointed at them. And I walked up, and I was like, hey. I need to introduce myself. My name is Christian Kaiba. I've tried to call you.
She's like, I know who you are. I'm like, I just need to show you this site. And and she was like, what's that? And I said, it's a book, and I put together a whole bunch of sites. She said, really?
Can you come back tomorrow? And so I came back, and I went through this whole book, and I went through my whole process of why I thought this would work without knowing their numbers and what they mean. She said, this is good. This is really good. I'm gonna give you a shot.
And so she started telling me this is where we wanna be. Can you go find us a site? Can you do this? And over a, you know, five, six year run with them, I did, like, 15 deals. Yeah.
And it wasn't always the easiest deals. Like, there's a lot of deals that I tried to work on that didn't turn into anything, but that led into doing other deals, and it just it helped me build my credibility.
Steve: Yeah. I mean, definitely. Right? You took the time to figure out what they need. And then once you get one of those guys in your pocket, like, you've done it.
Oh. Anyone else
Speaker: I still love I love her to this day. She's retired now, but that was, like, I always credit her. I call her, you know, mama mama d, mama d, mama d, mama Darla.
Steve: Yeah.
Speaker: She helped she helped make my career.
Brian: Yeah. Absolutely. There's always those single people that just have pivotal moments where your career shifts, and that's a big deal. That's again how I feel about you, Steve. Like, the fact that I was able to, you know, join you on those runs, and you were able to introduce me to PACE as my contractor, and Jesse was able to introduce me to you because you needed a a merchandise thing.
And Jesse also introduced me to Brandon Simmons and the Go Givers and that whole group and brought me to my first meeting where I met every one of you guys. And so I just I don't know. I feel so blessed and so energized. And I know you said don't hit the table. But, man, I just wanna let let let you know how much of a big, you know, blessing that you are in my journey.
Steve: Oh, thank you. Thank you for saying that.
Speaker: Mhmm.
Steve: So one more question, and then we'll wrap up. So what is the difference between McDonald's and, you know, you're saying those apartments you're doing. Right? Because, you've got to work with all sorts of different like, you know, for someone that hasn't had a taste. Right?
See what it's like to work with a corporate client. What is the biggest difference?
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I'm look. I won't poo poo on anybody's dreams of owning apartments. It's just not my
Brian: Mhmm.
Speaker: Not my flavor. Right? There's there's something different about the I guess, I'd call it almost like the level of professionalism. Mhmm. Even though we don't have to wear a shirt and tie and be in, like, the corporate setting, there are times where that it calls for that, and you have to read the room.
But when you work with the Circle Ks and the Starbucks and the McDonald's and, you know, all these different you know, the Chipotles of the world. There's just something, like, sense of accomplishment when you're working with that level of tenant. You know that there's that much financial scrutiny and and success and everything that goes behind it. It takes a long, long time. We I talk about this all the time on our podcast.
It's not you gotta pay your dues. Rent is due every single day. Like, you don't just jump into it. It's gatekept. It's a blue blood network, and that's almost what I love about the fact that where you wanna get into that network, you gotta get into it with us.
You have to invest in Clever Capital. You have to invest with us because we me and Phil and, you know, the people on our team have put in that twenty years of blood, sweat, and tears Yeah. To get to a point where now you can go into a new market, and we can pick up the phone and say, hey. Can you introduce me to your counterpart here? And when you come in and we're vying for the same site as two other people, what's your track record?
Your track record speaks for itself. So we get chosen our offers get chosen over somebody else's because of what we've done in the past. So the the apartments, it it's fine, and I know a lot of people that make a lot of money. It's just at the end of the day, the time that it takes and the speculation that's involved all the way up until that time, there's too many variables that I don't feel like I can control. Mhmm.
And with what we do, I feel like I can at least pull the strings enough as we're going along to mitigate risk and adjust for the risk. And if something comes up, I usually there's there's a plan b or a plan c or a plan d.
Steve: Yeah. I like that. Last thoughts. I wanna leave all the listeners with I'll start with you first.
Brian: I would say that even though I feel like I'm doing a lot of different things, you know, and sometimes I question myself, do I have shiny object syndrome? Why do I have a fund? Why do I have an event center? Why do I have a a a development business? Why do I have a home service business?
Right? Why do I have a wholesaling business? Why why why why do I do this to myself? Why can't I just, you know, just be a dad and just spend time with my family? I look at it as, like, I am setting the discipline up for my daughter.
I am showing her hard work ethic. I am proving that every day when I wake up and go to work and every day when I come home, I provide for my family. I've been able to retire my wife. She's an amazing woman. She's a nurse, biology degree, everything.
She doesn't have to work anymore. She's able to spend time with her daughter. So there is a purpose. There is a why. And why do I do development, and why do I do home service, and why are we starting our construction business?
Because it's all vertically integrated in real estate. Everything that we're doing in real estate, the event center is within a company of a building that's in a holding business that I own, and then I host my accredited investor dinners, and I host meetups, and I host events that I get to come that I meet people. And we do about 50 events a year, and that moves the business for my other businesses. And so I think everybody likes to point fingers and say you're not gonna be successful because you're doing this, and you're doing this, and you're doing too much. If it's vertically integrated and it is in the same, same reason and industry of what your ultimate main business is, my main business is real estate.
Mhmm. So if having an event center or having a luxury Airbnb or having a construction business or having a material sourcing business or having a home service business relates to real estate, then I'm in.
Steve: Yeah. I get lots of thoughts.
Speaker: Success leaves clues. Doing the right thing is always the right thing to do.
Steve: Yeah. If
Speaker: it doesn't feel right, don't do it. I like it. And that includes partners and deals.
Steve: If someone wants to work with you guys, what's the best way?
Speaker: Hungry-inc.com is our website. We're on YouTube. Right? Mhmm. So this guy's got a great podcast here teaching you how to become a millionaire.
If you wanna get into commercial real estate, make sure and go follow and subscribe. Like like, subscribe, smash that bell. Do all those things at Hungry Investments on YouTube. You can find us on Instagram at Hungry Investments, Clever Capital Fund on Instagram as well. Everything connects between Clever Capital and Hungry Investments.
Steve: Awesome. How How about if someone wants to work with you?
Brian: Yeah. I think the first start is just, you know, become part of our deal. It's an equity fund. 50 k gets you into our deal. It gets you paid quarterly.
You gotta learn why we bought the deal, how we pivoted on the deal, how much money we made on the deal, and just become part of what we're doing over here at clevercapitalfund.com.
Steve: Awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much.
Brian: Thank you so much, Steve.
Speaker: Thanks, buddy.
Steve: Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. See you guys next time.
Brian: Shout out to Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.
