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Multi-channel realize that particularly it's a team sport. I mean, you need a team of what? Brokers, lawyers, you know, lenders, property managers, accountants. You know, this is a bunch of players that have to kind of interact to make any deal possible.

So to really get to the apex of it, to really achieve your goals, You need to develop relationships. You need to have the template mindset. It's so difficult as a solo person to a do anything in this space because we may climb up, it would just be a slow climb. Welcome to the Share the Wealth Show where minority professionals can learn to escape the racial wealth gap and catapult themselves into abundance.

Your host, Nicole Pendergrass, grew her net worth from being negative to multiple six figures. Join her on her investigative mission to expose secret strategies of the wealthy so we can all have the tools needed to build the life and legacy we were created to possess. Now it's time for the show. So we're back again.

This is the second part of the episode with today's guest. I need you, if you have not heard part one, go back to the previous episode and listen at first and then come back and join us here today. But you're not going to want to miss what they already said, because then you'll be lost with what they're about to say. But in any case, you need to hear the whole conversation, is why we split into two parts.

There's so many nuggets, it's so juicy, go back and listen to the first part. With that we're gonna move over into the real estate side of things. So first though, you still actively an orthopedic surgeon? Oh yeah, I'm gonna do it until my hands can't do it anymore.

How until, so I'm looking at you and your partners at XSITE Capital. Everybody's still active in their jobs, right? in their W, everybody's still active in their jobs, but not necessarily in W twos. My partner, Leslie, I was- It still works as a CRNA, you know, but not necessarily full-time.

My other partner, Tenny Tolofari is a cybersecurity consultant. Okay. Yeah. All right.

So, all right, maybe they finagled a little bit of time, but you have no time, how are you like? So this whole conversation is about people creating that passive income. So I'm sure you're going to share how they can invest with you so that they can just have that passive income coming in, but what you are doing is not passive because you are an active operator. So how in the heck No, that's that was actually 22 months old now and I have another one five month old.

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. Yeah, so but you know what cuz I have a w two I'm still working full time and I have two young kids. I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old two daughters and they have a beautiful yes and they run runny ragged and I'm doing real estate and I'm doing this podcast and I'm doing my w two and I'll take it again. So, and my r R is nowhere near as demanding as yours.

So how, please, share the secrets. I'll tell you, it's the power of community. When I say power of community, I mean the community of one, my partners. You know, I have both Leslie and Kenny Tolofari, who are the most amazing partners.

You know, I'm able to leverage their time, their energies, their resources, their incredible knowledge, their tenacity, their persistence. able to leverage all of that to advance our mutual goals of educating people in about the asset class that we. And also helping them to create wealth as a result of that education. And without them, there's certainly no way to do this.

And also, we've also hired to make our lives much easier. We have an incredible team, including Braden Hyde, who is our investor relations associate, who just is amazing and incredible, including Macy Price, who is like our marketing specialist, who is incredible. So, I mean, we've hired very well. We've been quick to fire when people are incompetent, and we've been slow to hire.

And so, what that has helped us do is essentially hire like a fantastic team. And I mean, we have other folks that work with us, maybe on a part-time basis, and people like Manny Alastom who helps us with underwriting, people like Forest Brown, who's helping us with some of our acquisitions work, people like Thalia, who is also helping us with some of our acquisitions and back-end support. So we've put together like a great team of people literally working on a daily basis to advance our We run a very tight ship. I mean, we have a deal flow systems and processes that is super tight.

There's a certain number of deals that has to go through that process on a weekly basis. There's a certain number of LOIs that goes out on a weekly basis. There's a certain number of deals that needs to be under on a weekly basis and we hold each other accountable to those. And that's kind of the of ship we're on.

And also we implemented traction. Are you familiar with traction? The entrepreneurial operation system. Yeah, it's on my list I have.

So absolutely. So that is what magic for us. We literally implemented that. And since then, I mean, we have done close to $100 million in acquisitions since then.

And it's incredible. It's been a game changer for us because we have a total of about $125 million in acquisitions so far, four deals, two as lead general partners and lead sponsors, and two others as core general partners. But I mean, we stay on top. We have goals, and we figure out what we need to achieve those goals.

Reverse engineer those steps and we go at it. do we need to do on a daily basis? What do we need to be doing on a weekly basis? What do we need to be doing on a monthly basis, quarterly basis and a yearly basis.

And that's how we've been able to achieve what we've been able to achieve so far. But we're just getting started as far as I'm concerned and a response from our community has made the job even easier. Maybe initially, I was having to, I'm also very intense when I decide to do something. Initially, I would have to create a list of 500 people and call to call for 12 to 14 hours on a weekend day, just to get like a small fraction of them to invest in our deals.

Now, the investors do the job for us because they now are getting their distributions, they see the proof in the pudding, they know, like and trust us and so they are willing and ready to invest with us and bring all their friends to invest with us. So they are actually our best advocates and they go out there and tell their friends and their friends tell their friends and before you know what, from one group we haven't, from one person we haven't filed 12 to invest with us. And that's how we've been able to, I mean, our last deal, which we closed in April, 2022, we raised $7.52 million to buy $17.4 million deal $4 million deal, 112 units, downtown Columbia, South Carolina. And we were able to raise that in less than 30 days and over-subscribe on it.

And. And then the way we do that is just, you know, I mean, obviously when we started to raise $1 million with Elle, it took calling like hundreds and hundreds of people, but, you know, but now it just happens over. Over time TAL example and just explanation of your team and how you built it and grown. And I may have to like, pick your ear offline more about how to grow from a company of one to bringing on the people instead of having, you know some VA's here, VA's there, which is fine but having some people who are more like invested in the company and the company's mission and want to grow with it and help the company grow together.

So bringing that on site on team and like working with people on a consistent basis would be great. And so I'm definitely gonna reach out to you more. No worries. I mean, I'm here for you.

And I'm sure why don't you just photocopy your whole like a business manual and send it to me, I could give you my address. So actually, you know, if I had one, I would just send it to you. Whatever it is that I got, I can certainly share with you no questions about it. We pride ourselves on the spirit of abundance at XSITE Capital.

And one of our goals is to help others create as many XSITE Capitals as we can a out there, you know? So that's why, when you were saying earlier that I'm going to, we're going to tell people about how to invest with us. I'm like, no, actually, guess what? My primary goal is to educate, right?

And so either you invest with us or invest with others, but as far as you, the person in our community, is investing and growing your wealth and growing your mind and getting to it at the next level, my job is done. The universe has a special way of making that spirit of abundance pay off in too many ways. and I'm a testament to it. Yeah, same here, I completely agree with that.

I'm definitely beyond blessed, especially when you look back from where you've come and how far, you know, you might not be exactly where you want to be. They have more goals in the horizon, but if you really reflect on what you've accomplished so far, you know, just be grateful and blessed with that. And I know I definitely am and I can see with you and probably your partners too, I haven't met them yet, but it sounds like a great team. Yeah, we're blessed.

, I mean, our philosophy is if you want to go fast, you go by yourself, right? You want to go far. Far, go together. You go together.

And multi-channel realize that particularly it's a team sport. I mean, you need a team of what, brokers, lawyers, you know, lenders, property managers, accountants. You know, this is a bunch of players [inaudible]. the power of the economics of scale, you know, when you think about, so if you're the single home you are renting out, and you can't find a tenant right away to fill it up, or you Now.

, in the banks, right? That money becomes a liability to them. It's what they do with it. They invest it.

They lend it out. They do something with it. They generate an income with it. All of a sudden they an making 5, 7, 10, 20, 30% on it.

And they give you a nice 0.1% if they're being generous. So. Think about it. You know, if they are doing that, why can't you do that yourself?

why can't you find ways in ways to invest that money? So, when I started to discover this thing, it blew my mind. I was like, man, well, I consider myself a small person, but this is not smart, keeping all of this, you know, trying to save. You cannot save to wealth.

Just remember that. you cannot save to wealth. You can save to a little bit of money, there may be some breaches, but you can't save to wealth. You can't save to create legacy wealth.

So when I discovered all of this and I discovered the wealth creating capacity of real estate, I discovered that it's a tangible asset on things like stocks and crypto, which is just existing in either virtual worlds or in some computers. This is something that I actually can touch. I could walk in it. I couldn't open the room.

I could see the toilets. I could see it. it meant so much to me. And then when I realized that it was going to be possible to actually provide great accommodations for other people, you know, I'm in the service business I serve and all people walk that have quite a bit of pain and debilitations in their function..

And just like I'm helping people to walk in my day job, I'm helping people to financially mobilize in my real estate job.- So that for me was, that just gave me so much joy. And then when I really rediscovered that, a lot of people in our community of healthcare professionals, a lot of people in our underrepresented minority communities just didn't really even have access to this. myself savvy investment wise, but I didn't know about this. I didn't know I didn't buy in 100 unit building wasn't not in my realm of possibilities.

I. Mean, of what I could do. And so when I was realizing. That man, this is possible, even though I don't have the.

The $20 million to go buy $100 million under unit building. I could, through multifamily syndications, pool resources in my communities, and then 60, 80, 100 of us could pull out resources and go buy that same building and take advantage of the wealth creation, wealth generating, cash flowing,. Advantages, tax advantaged benefits of this building. Oh, it blew my mind.

And guess what? Around the same time, I realized that I really was developing, I was born and raised in a lower to middle income country. And I did total joint replacement in the first place because my grandmother had end stage knee arthritis and couldn't get access to a joint replacement surgeon at that time. So by the time I was in residency, unfortunately she died.

But now I get to replace other people's grandmas, uncles, aunties, father's mother's knees and hips and it gives me so much joy. And particularly when I get to do it in low to middle income countries and help to expand access in those places. And to do that, I discovered that to really be able engage with that work of expanding access in places that didn't have access to those surgeries and knew that I needed to buy some of my time freedom back. And realized there was a great way to do that.

And so, I mean, I could continue to go on about the multiple reasons why it just made absolute sense, but I mean, don't get me wrong. I still love doing what I do. And I will probably continue to do it for a long time. I love the institution that I'm currently at because they give me a great platform to do this work and engage with it fully in a way that is very meaningful.

And they also support a lot of the work that I'm doing internationally, which means a whole lot to me. I don't want to stop working. You know, a lot of people do real estate to stop what they're doing, I love it too much. The operating room is my happy place.

I don't want to stop, But I certainly want the freedom to be able to maybe do a little more of some of the international work I'm doing. I would love to have the autonomy to take my family wherever I need to take them and wherever time I want to take them, you know, for as long as I need to take them without having to worry about, you know, the income that needs to come in and things of that nature. And that's the kind of freedom that real estate can give you. all in and it's been just an incredible journey so far.

Wow. That was super impactful and very touching. Just your story and your why you even went into orthopedic surgery in the first place and that how like even though you couldn't help your grandma, now you can help other people's grandmoms. And I love that, you know, and then that gives you the freedom.

Like you said, with the real estate, it gives you location freedom so that you can go to these other places and you can help in a wider area of people who don't have access. And so you've taken that not having access with mobility. And like you said, you're helping people be financially mobile as well, because you're taking that same mission into the real estate side in your investment vehicle. And we are very much aligned when it comes to that, because my whole platform is about helping minorities and underserved communities have access to these types of opportunities.

So I'm still working on that, and I'm still on the journey, but I, you're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you. I love to see, you know, people like you, people who look like me, people with the same mission, you know, moving forward, because you're leaving that trail to follow.

And so I thank you for your, Wait. Don't go yet. Have you been looking for a way to get started in real estate investing, but you just don't know how, you need the launch pad is brought to you by my company nor best holdings and the launch pad is a free guide with a ton of resources I've compiled to help you invest into your first real estate syndication. It includes terminology, book resources, video explanations, all the information that you need.

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And if you have any questions at all please feel free to reach out to me now. Let's finish up the show. So what we're going to do now is actually I'm going to ask you the last a couple of questions that I ask every guest. The first one is Warren Buffett actually said that the diversification is protection against ignorance.

Now, I kind of take that to mean that people diversify because they don't know what they're doing. So they're using that to like hedge their investments. And whether that's good or bad, just depends on your viewpoint on it. But what do you think about diversification in that statement that Mr.

Buffett said? Well, Warren Buffett can say anything that he wants to say, and he'll probably be right. I mean, the guy's proven through his life work that he is deserving of making a statement like that. I think what he was just trying to say, at least from my perspective, is that you need to be focused.

You need to have like, a main focus and a strategy for wealth creation. And yes, you could have peripheral other sources of income. I mean, I think the IRS at one point released a publication that says the average million in the US, that's about seven sources of income, right? So for me, diversification is having multiple sources of income so that even if one sector is R is impacted adversely that you were still overall fine.

And for me, the main source of focus for me when it comes to investing is real estate, obviously. Prior to real estate, it was angel investing. And so now I feel like I've gotten about six of the seven sources of income covered. The only one that's left is the products focused income stream.

And I do believe actually to some extent almost everybody needs to, especially in this digital world, that you kind of need to, you know, have some products out there that you are, you know, selling out to the world because this great opportunity is there. I just don't, after time or energy to do it at this point, a given everything else that I'm doing. But at some point, don't be surprised if I tell you that I've got some story, probably, I'll probably be a silent partner in it. But don't with surprise but yeah I do believe that you I mean to me I think you still have to be somewhat diversified you have to have one main focus where you know you solely believe in it you do a deep dive and really understand it properly so that regardless of the economic conditions and the market conditions you're going to be fine just like now even though the interest rates are going up and there's a little bit of angst in, you know, multifamily-realistic community, I'm not stressed.

You know, we just have to kind of, modulate some of our strategies to fit the current realities. But I know the fundamentals, and I know that if I stay following the fundamentals, I'm going to be okay, and my investors are going to be okay. So I'm not really stressed at all. Actually, I think there's going to be great opportunities coming up in the next several months in the Muay Thai family real estate.

And I'm just at this point, tightening our operations, getting us ready to take advantage of those opportunities when they come. So when you have that level of mastery of your main source of investment, then you could kind of sit back and relax a little bit, but also continue to invest. I mean, I have a small crypto portfolio and I don't know much about it, like dollar cost average, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and if it works out, great. If not, great.

I don't try to buy the low or sell high, I just dollar cost average it. My stock portfolio, I don't know how to trade on a daily basis, so I have somebody managed that for me. For other sorts like angel investments, I'm investing in actually the founders. I want people who are greedy, adaptable, who have great ideas, who are not just going to quit at the first sign of trouble.

And when you pair those types of founders with a good idea, then the company has a great chance of surviving or doing very well. So that's usually my strategy that. There are multiple examples, but you know, I think you just have to, you know, have one main focus for us to kind of, you know, spread your eggs in a few baskets. I like that.

So the, have the focus on the one that you're actually going to be active in kind of, building up and then kind of passively invest in some other ones that diversify your portfolio. So that's- that's great advice. Second question, actually, have you played monopoly before? Yeah, somewhat peripherally.

Okay. But now the avenue is the cheapest properties, one of the cheapest and boardwalk, you know, is the most expensive. So what is your strategy to win? Which property are you buying first and why?

It depends on how much funds I have to start. If I have a lot of funds to start and independent on the growth prospects of the expensive property after significant research, if I'm able to determine that, you know, like there is significant growth prospects and I have the money to buy on, to, you know, post a board walk, go to board work so that I can start taking advantage of maybe some expansion of boardwalk Avenue. So that would be my strategy. So the basic answer is just get in,.

Just get started. Just buy something. Absolutely. No matter which way you go.

Absolutely. Because it doesn't matter, even if you fail, you learn so much. So you're only fail by not trying at all. Because I know some of the people in our communities who were so paralyzed by their over-analyses of every possible scenario that could go wrong with any, investment, you know, including stocks, including crypto, including real estate, where they just so paralyzed that they don't move at all.

And they just keep their money right in the bank. And but you know, it's funny, they keep their money safe in the bank and then the bank is investing it because they were too scared to absolutely and the bank managers love them yeah they love them and they also love the feeling they get when it's when they walk into the bank you know the bank manager is like bowing down to them you're investing whether you're actually deciding to or not right somebody's investing your money unless you're and mouse starts with one step and that time to take that step is now. Mic drop, boom. I don't have sound effects, so boom with my fists on the table.

But in any case, so I just want to thank you. Oh my god, this conversation was great. We talked for a while. This is.

Excellent. Like we could probably talk for so much longer too. Oh yeah, we could have it kept going for the next two hours. Yeah, oh my gosh.

What is also gonna say, oh, tell people, thank you first of all, again, for coming on and sharing all your experience and wisdom and insights with people. And I really hope they took something from this. It would be crazy if they didn't. But any case, how can people reach out to you if they wanna know more about what Excite is doing, if they wanna connect, you know, what's the best way to reach you?

Absolutely, yeah. So I'm in, I'm on LinkedIn, Julius Oni, J-U-L-I-U-S-O-N-I, but also, you can just email me at juliusoni at xicapital.com. That's X-S-I-T-E, capital.com. And my first name is J-U-L-I-U-S-O-N-I.

It's juliusoni at xicapital.com. Also, you can just come to check us out at xicapital.com. There you can find a lot of information, you know, that can educate you about what we do. And our multifamily real estate could be another way for you to create passive income and grow your wealth.

We also, we pride ourselves significantly on the particularly, the education that we provide. We also have a meetup every first Mondays of the month, the exciting world of multifamily meet-meetup and it's virtual, so you could join us. So just follow us on our platforms, and join us in the meetups and let's engage in this conversation and continue to grow together, so thank you. Perfect, definitely, and we're gonna have all those links to your contact information, your website, the meetup, all of that, we'll have in the show notes so that everybody can just access that easily.

So thank you again, Dr. Oni, for being with us today. Everyone, if you have gotten any kind of insights or nuggets from today's episode, please give us a rating or review so that this information can be shared with other people And so thank you too, for bringing that. Thank you so much, Nicole.

This was a great conversation. Thanks so much for creating this type of platform to educate folks and I just can't say a thank you enough for the opportunity to speak on your platform. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that.

All right, everyone. So that is a wrap and we will see you next time. Awesome. Did you love this episode of Share the Wealth Show?

Be sure to connect with Nicole by following her on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. If you picked up any of the gems that were dropped by today's guest, make sure you not only put them in your bag, but if you know of someone who would benefit from this information, don't keep it to yourself, share the wealth, and make sure to leave us a rating and review. We'll see you for next week's episode. subscribe so you'll be notified.

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Because yes, if you're self employed, you're still a little better than those people that are employed. But guess what, you're still trading your hours for dollars s too. And you're still paying relatively high taxes, but maybe you have a little more wiggle room there to like, you know, upset some of your tax liabilities, but amount you can make is still limited, to. you actually physically present or a re actually, actively working at a job.

Welcome to the share R the wealth show where a [inaudible] to possess. Now it's time for. Hey guys, how are you today? actually is an orthopedic surgeon.

And his path to doctor. And then how that transitioned into real estate and why he even R I touched a little bit on that and I actually got my eyes open to a whole other world that I didn't know existed. And it's so easy. There's so many different avenues for creating wealth and it really kind of just depends on where you're starting from, the assets and resources you already have and what your goals are, where you at to go and my your risk tolerance from.

that stood out the most, you know? This is definitely gonna be, a two- a two-part,. -part series, because we talked for a long time, but that's how much information was being shared there R and you don't wanna miss it. You wanna listen to the full episode, both parts, but just to.

a, Julia started as a CEO and co-founder of XSITE Capital Investment, LLC, why I connected so much with him and that's why we had so much talk about during the episode. We, talk about strategies to grow, maintain. and to develop minority wealth. And today we have with us, Dr.

Julius Oni. And thank you so much for coming and joining us today. I'm really excited actually to dig into our conversation because I know about you peripherally. I've seen you as some stuff.

We've had some like conversations, but I really want to dig in deep and get to know more about you, your company, your mission and everything that you've been involved with. So firstly, thank you for coming. Secondly, I gave a brief overview of your background and kind of what we're gonna talk about earlier, but can you dig in a little bit on what you're doing now and maybe I don't know how far back you wanna go, but from childhood or whatever, to like, what made you wanna be a doctor? And then what made you wanna get into real estate?

What was that path like? That's a great one. Yeah, thank you so much again, Nicole, for the opportunity to speak on your platform and get into this discussion. And I was particularly excited to talk to you because obviously we are aligned in our.

to try to expand the minds of people in our communities. And. And to increase the wealth growing capacity of folks that look like us. Certainly.

We've all kind of gone through multiple different journeys of getting here. but it just warms my heart every time when I see, you know, another minority professional, you know, expanding the mindset, doing it completely outside of the box and it warms my heart and I want to commend you on all that you're doing so far. But to your question, how did I get here? Well, currently a North Creek surgeon and real-life state investor.

Well, prior to me identifying as that, I was just Julia's only the little kid growing up in small town,. Re up, I didn't- I didn- didn't.- didn't I didn't do much of an investment, you know, there was no money to be invested. But very shortly after becoming an orthopedic surgeon, I actually also didn't invest much either. I think all the delayed gratification of, you know, spending over 14 years, either, you know, from undergrad to finishing fellowship, you know, 14 years of delayed gratification will make you kind of spend money and any You know at some point and try to keep up at the Joneses.

And you know, that's what, just like any other person who's gone through that experience with not much significant financial education. It's not unusual to just lose your mind for a little bit and find it again at some point. But that moment of just going all out, and trying to buy whatever luxury item you can get your hands on. And, it was relatively short-lived for me.

because, even though it was fun, I quickly realized that I didn't necessarily derive that much pleasure from getting, you know, liabilities, if you want to call it that. And I started investing with my first home that I bought, you know, I bought a residential home at that point in Philadelphia, and then thought that I was going to start getting a single family home every single year for the portfolio that I'm gonna sell as a portfolio as an alternative to my classic traditional 401k, you know, investment. But I quickly realized that I was a poor landlord, because I didn't like to deal with toilets, termites or tenants, really. And it wasn't because tenants are not fantastic people.

I was just busy, too busy with my primary day job. day job, that it was kind of tough to be R primary person and the responding to those folks. And even when I try to use property managers, that just even further decreased my cash flow significantly. Because you were still responsible and you still had to kind of actively participate in the decisions.

If the HVAC machine went out, you still got to pay for it. You still got to, you know, talk about, you know, all the different options for it. And if the doorknob was broken, then you got a pretty big bill for it, you know, and you have no choice but to pay for it. So quickly I realized that single family wasn't going to be the way to go after I think about, after buying my second property.

And then- So that was year two? Yeah, that was my year two. And then around year two, I discovered angel investing. And so I started invest, you know, because my brother actually had a startup and I invested in a startup.

And then from that point on, I discovered demo days and started to invest in different early stage startups, pre seed round, and with the expectations that these are high risk, high reward investments. And they were like long-term plays. If you're going to be a serious angel investor, you know that maybe 10 to 20% of your investments are going to be the. source of the major success.

So that was fun. That was really fun to evaluate those companies and come up with your own little criteria for determining what companies you were gonna invest in. But the fact is that was not going to replace my cash flow. And that was relatively high risk, high reward.

Thankfully, a good number of them, about 20% of them are still doing very well. So I think I'm on the right path with those investments. So between the years of 2015 and 2020, The vast majority of my investments were in startups, and I invested in quite a few of them. So around 2020, at the beginning of 2020, was COVID, the pandemic struck.

And for the first time in a long time, I started to question my sole identity as an orthopedic surgeon, right? Because for three months I was stuck at home, couldn't operate, and my identity up to that point was fully encased in my status an orthopedic surgeon. I love operating. The operating room is my happy place.

Anyone who knows me well will tell you the same thing. So all of a sudden I was home. One thing I deep discovered though while I was home was I also loved hanging out with my family R and I love the time freedom I had and I love discovering other ways of learning. I mean all the things that were outside of orthopedic surgery.

For the first time, I picked up a couple of, you know, fictional books. I picked up a couple of personal development books. My partner, my current partner, Leslie Awasom, who was a CRNA, who worked as a CRNA with me at my current job, had mentioned multifamily to me at some point prior to that, but I just kind of ignored it if you've done. So I finally got to dust up whatever materials he had shared with me and read a little bit about it.

So I started to realize that, man, this is an incredible wealth creating tool that we could use, that I could use to buy some of my time freedom back, that I could use to potentially buy some of my geographic freedom back, that I could use to, you know, spend whatever, do whatever I want with whoever I wanted for however long I wanted, you know, in whatever place I wanted and that's kind of the definition of financial freedom for me. And so, when I realized that this was case, then the question was how do you do it? How do you actually start buying apartment buildings? How do you take advantage of the economics of scale that multifamily presents to you?

How do you take advantage of the amazing tax benefits of multifamily? How do you take advantage of the fact that it's so recession proof, you know, or maybe not recession proof, but at least recession resistance, right? I need a take advantage of the incredible fact that it's a tangible asset, you actually could touch it, people understand it. And how.

Do you stop democratizing access to this asset? Because when I started looking at all the conferences and started actually engaging with it, I didn't see that many else get professionals represented in the folks invested in this asset class. I saw lawyers, I saw business people, I saw engineers. I certainly didn't see that many healthcare professionals represented.

And then I saw a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds. I didn't see that many, you know, black people. I certainly didn't see that many women, you know. So there were some very clear, underrepresented minorities, you know, when it comes to folks that were participating in this I realized that there was a great opportunity to take the gospel of multi-family into our communities of health care professionals and of underrepresented minorities, of immigrants, and of, you know, people that just did not have ready access to this asset class.

And that's how XSITE Capital was born. So. And that's our XSITE Capital was born. So..

That's the story. Oh my goodness. You touched on so much stuff. Like I was sitting here trying to jot down notes and keep up,, but okay.

Let me look through here and see where I want to go first. Cause I don't know what direction I want to take it. Well, you asked for it. You told me.

Yeah, I did. I did ask for it and you gave it all. Like, and I love it because there were so many hidden things within your journey that other people can like glean from. I think one of the biggest things is,.

We talk about high earners, and especially when you get into, you know, doctors and medical professionals and things of that nature, we talk about lifestyle creep. And we talk about how a lot of times high earners, as they start making more money, they start spending more money and their expenses become higher. So it creeps up with their income. I just shared an article not too long ago that majority of people who make over 200 families that make over 250 thousand dollars a year have a like either I forgot what their net worth or they still live paycheck to paycheck or something crazy where they just didn't have the assets or the net worth to match their income but you put it into perfect perspective because you said it took you 14 years of schooling and struggle and delaying your gratification.

So it's not that you don't know how to delay gratification. you have delayed gratification to get to the role that you wanted to get to, which was that career. But then now it's like, all right, I delayed gratification long enough. Now I made the money.

Like now I can spend it. I could do what I want with it. You know what I mean? So that just makes you appreciate more and not warn the high earners, you know, that you just spend all their money on keeping up with the Joneses and the big house and the fancy car and all that stuff.

Because you really get to understand from a person's like their mindset, Because if I had to delay gratification for 15 years before I did anything, because they're always working, even when you make a little bit of money, you don't even have time to spend it because you're busy, you know, rotations and whatever else you're doing. Yep, absolutely. So that is completely understandable. And I think that will talk, speak to a lot of people's mindsets who have made it.

And they're like maybe the first generation in their family or someone, you know, making a lot of money at a certain career, but now either they're helping their family out, needs help because they're the most successful person. So they're helping people with bills and issues. Then they're also wanting to live a better lifestyle because they've been delaying their gratification for so long. But then we kind of stopped there and you have found the key of not just letting it sit there because like you found out with the pandemic, if you stop working, what if you couldn't go back and have more.

You know what I mean? And it. It sucks to say you gotta delay a little bit longer, but you at least got to put some things in place where you can like still enjoy the fruits of your label, but then still try to build up for the future. Yeah, so.

I think you make some amazing points there, and I think just to add a little bit to that before you move on to the next point, the fact is as high earners, as high income professionals, We are just highly skilled wage workers, you know, that's it for the most part, you know, especially doing an employee precision, right? Highly paid skilled workers is what I meant to say. Highly paid skilled workers, you know, we have a skill and we get a lot of money for it, but with that responsibility or with that kind of pay, especially in an employed situation comes high taxes, right? So the growth usually looks pretty good, but that means you're like in the highest tax bracket for the most part or close to the highest tax bracket.

And that means your tax liability are gonna be much higher. Another thing that really hurts us as the highly paid skilled workers, particularly medical professionals is that we usually also have relatively high loan burdens. So you have a, yeah, you do get paid a good amount, but then you paint relatively high taxes because it's a WTO income. They take that those taxes even before you can see anything, right?

And then you have to still pay your loans down because now finally you're making some money and all those loans you've been deferring, you got to stop paying them down. And on top of that, you had the lifestyle cryptoid, because now everybody's looking at you. You're the orthopedic surgeon, you're the cardiologist, gastroenterologist, anesthesiologist. How come you're still driving your Honda Accord from undergrad or medical school, you know?

So you want to keep up with the choices. You want to take a vacation, nice vacation with your family. You know, you want to buy a relatively nice house so that, you know, you're not embarrassed when people come in to see this doctor house, you know? So, and then, you know, you have kids, now your kids wanna go to like the nice private schools and things like that, and so it starts to head up.

So it makes sense, the article you're talking about that folks that make 200,000 plus that still live in paycheck to paycheck makes absolute sense to me. But what we have to realize is that when we get to those levels, we need to like start figuring out ways to start generating significant passive income. Income that actually is made when you're sleeping, eating, brushing your teeth on vacation, wherever you are. You know, that income is still being made.

And it's not the same thing as being self-employed. Because yes, if you're self-employed, you're still a little better than those people that are employed. But guess what? You're still trading.

Your house for dollars too. And you still pay rather than high taxes, but maybe you have a little more wiggle room there to like, you know, upset some of your tax liabilities, but amount you can make is still limited to when you actually physically present or actually actively, you know, working at that particular job. But when you have true passive income, where you just could be slipping, eating, you know, doing whatever you are and the money is still coming right into the account, that is when you really are starting to create true wealth. And that's why, when you start stepping on to that journey of financial freedom or financial independence.

And you know, and I love that. Okay. And we're definitely going to talk about the real estate side and how people can rate that passive income, especially with the multifamily real estate in the field that you're in with your company. But I kind of want to touch a little bit on the angel investing aspect first, because that's so new and so different, like I'm not new and different for us maybe, I haven't had anyone on R my show yet who has been an angel investor or at least that they didn't share with us.

But I know you got introduced because your brother was starting a business and you were investing in his business. What resources did you find? How do people find out how to be an angel investor? Is there a certain income limit?

Because I know I've heard that that's not just open to anybody. Like if you aren't making a certain amount of money that those doors are not going to be open. And then that's where,, when you're putting seed capital in, by time it gets to the stock market or IP, those angel investors get bulk of that profit. People who are buying stocks, they're getting the scraps left over, honestly, like, yeah, you can make money on stocks.

I'm not knocking people's stock portfolio, don't come from you guys. But the risk is upfront, like you said, is high risk, high reward. So first how do people even get into that world and what are the barriers to entry? What do you have to have like checked off on the checklist to Rangel invest?

That's a great question. So first to answer your questions, I think typically you have to be an accredited investor, which is just meaning as an individual, you make $200,000 per year for the past two years with reasonable expectation of continuing to I make that in the next couple of years, or $300,000 in income as a couple, or a million dollars in network, right. This is the same thing for multi-family, right? if you're gonna do a private placement, especially a five or six C, which we can go into later, right?

You have to be an accredited investor. So it's the same thing. That's the. That's the lowest barrier, right?

Oh, with regards to the expertise to actually, I guess, get access to the. And to know what you're investing in, you know. And to know what you're investing in and knowing how to like, you know, assess some of the things of that nature. Just like anything else, It takes quite a bit of research.

For me, it was set in deputies somewhat that I kind of fell right into it. So after investing in my brother's company, MDes Global East Company was selected into an incubator called Textars in Austin, Texas. There's an incubator called White Combinator in Silicon Valley that also has a bunch of like this startups that you can evaluate. but there are actually crowdfunding sites also where you could just like on this real estate side, you have Crowd Street and Fundrise.

This is actually the equivalent of that for Angel Investing to where you could put a little bit of money, $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. or whatever to invest in some of a these companies. I am not sure what the names of those companies are, but people could just type in Angel Investment, crowdfunding or something like that, and they should be able to find that on the internet. I have not done those crowdfunding type engine investments, but because I kind of got this, saw my brother go through the process of trying to raise money, precede, or family and friends rounds, seed round, I was kind of able to learn almost alongside of him and slowly but surely I started to identify some companies that I would love to invest in and started to cold call or cold email like founders of those companies and to say, you know, I've been looking at this for a while, I'm interested and they would present to me and I would invest.

And eventually I developed enough of a relationship with some of those founders, you know, when they discover are their friends starting something that they think I would be interested in, they'll pull me in. on the advisory board of at least four of those startups that I invested in. But there's multiple ways to access that. But I think the first thing first is to educate yourself about what angel investments are, you know, kind of start maybe with and people could go to the white combinator website because you could go to the Techstars website T-E-C-H-S-T-A-R AR as Techstars website.

Those are two incubators, you know, one in Austin, one in Silicon Valley, and just reading their websites and kind of seeing what they do alone gives you a nice little idea of how angel investments work and potentially how you can participate because they have what we call demonstration days, demo days where you can literally travel to their places and just sit there and listen to multiple startups present. Wow. And angel investors all over the country go to these demo days and just listen to different pictures, and then. R- Wow.

So those incubators, those are not crowdfunding incubators. Those are a normal accredited investor level incubators. Yeah, absolutely. Those are not crowdfunding incubators.

These are like great incubators where they literally see through thousands and thousands of applicants or founders who have great ideas and want to explore them, and then they select which ones they think they want to help build up or develop. And so they now bring those founders together and provide them with the tools to take their companies from one level to the next. Yeah. And by doing so, then present them to and also, essentially, bring them in, develop them, and then bring in a bunch of investors onto their platform to.

invest in those companies. Okay. Yeah. All right.

That's great. And just for everyone who's listening, if you are not accredited, the crowdfunding websites where you can find out about angel investing, those are ways where he was saying you can put in 1000, 2000, or something like that crowdfunding is basically for anyone's income level. So even if you're not accredited, you can play angel investing at a small level just to get your feet wet and get started until you become accredited, since we're working on that. But in any case, okay, actually that just is just a whole another world..

You know, like when you get into real estate, you're so like you're a surrounded by. Real estate stuff all the time. You just get used to it. You're just engrossed in that world, but then other people don't really realize what's going on.

And that's how I feel like when you were explaining about the incubators and these demo days and everybody's traveling, all these angel investors are coming, but that's just like their normal world and we don't know that's existing, you know, because it's so outside of the realm of what, you know, mass main street investors and anyone else does. I just think that is something that I would be interested in looking into and just exploring what that world even looks like. But one thing that comes to mind is, do you get a rush kind of the same as gambling with investing as an angel investor? I feel like it's just high risk, high reward.

But if you're pulling that lever every time you company. So I'm actually a poor gambler and I don't like gambling at all. I don't like gambling at. So with high risk comes high reward, right?

And you cannot make that type of investing your main source of investing if, or you playing with it's relatively small funds, right? So I wouldn't recommend that that's all, like someone should use that as their main strategy to invest. The vast majority of angel investors have actually accumulated a little bit of cash to invest with, and then they use that to invest. So because of the nature of it, you know?

So I would say for those that are starting out, yes. Oh, and I think that company actually for the car funding is seed best or something like that. You got people looking up, yeah. All the links in the show notes to all these different incubators.

Seed Invest. So anyways, I mean, I don't get much of a rush from investing blindly. No, all my investments are very educated investments, right? Now, one thing I realized quickly over time is that without taking some risks, you cannot really grow wealth, right?

And so my strategy to investment is to do relatively lower risk, higher average annual return type investments like real estate, and combine that with, you know, higher risk, and then it starts from there and then continuum kind of goes on to then, you know, higher risk higher return investments in stable markets or developed markets like the US and others, and at the highest level of risk, which I also do, is investments in emerging markets, where obviously you kind of invest that money and forget about it, but then those actually have the highest return of all. So my investments goes from the lowest risk, I guess the lowest risk is really just living your money account, but that money is actually losing a value a little bit. I don't know if that's the lowest risk. They're risking it in other ways.

No, I mean, you're definitely risking it because especially with 6% to 8% inflation, that money is losing value on a yearly basis, you know? But you can, I guess, say, certificate of deposits, you know, money markets, things like that gives you like maybe the tiny little percentage. Those bonds or, you know, things of that nature and then you can do. And I have the little stock portfolio too that I have a brokerage management for me, a brokerage account that is managed for me.

You know, that's not my main source of investment. So I don't really, I just let them do what they do with it. But real estate is what I'm most passionate about. It's so tangible.

I. I understand it. Now, over and over the last two years, where I've seen it work, and I've seen us help others create wealth with it. So for me, it just makes sense, you know?

And to the point that I made earlier, you actually could create stable cash flow also with it, unlike some of these other strategies that I just mentioned earlier. Yes, very true. So okay, with that, we're gonna move over r into the real estate side of things. Okay guys, don't kill me, but I'm gonna have to cut this episode short.

This is too juicy and we need to do this in a part two. So stay tuned for the next episode that airs and you can hear the rest of our conversation. Did you love this episode of Share The Wealth Show? Be sure to connect with Nicole by following her on LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook.

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What would you do if you of the [inaudible] Investment LLC., it's a firm that helps its partners and investors reach financial freedom by and thank you so what our story, my co-founders and I are. We all had all have good successful careers, good high paying jobs. But we all just feel like something else is missing, that there was something else out there that we needed to pursue and our own individual explorations and research. Somehow we found each other and found multi family.

And found each other and now created this company called XSITE Capital Investments, focusing in on creating a platform where we could grow the minds of people and help them grow their wealth as well. So it's just been an exciting journey since we got started and that journey has brought me here to having a conversation with you, Brandon. So I'm looking forward to this one. Oh man, look, I'm happy to have you here.

And right off the bat, you got busy on some important things here and taking inventory, kind of getting an understanding of where you are and whether that's in line with where you want to go. And, you know, so you said something that is important that you are all three of you. So there are three, just in case I wasn't clear at the introduction, there are three founders, co-founders of XSITE Capital. And all three of you have high-paying jobs.

Yeah,. Here you are, going down this path, you know, toward syndication, housing, commercial real estate. And I think that's important because that highlights that, like you said, there's something, you felt that there was something missing. And you wanted to, Rach the point where you had to make a decision.

And I think it's also incredible that all three of you know, we'll. Get into kind of what the relationship was before you formed X like capital, but all three of you did that. And so I had the same mindset to do that. So I say that that's important because I want the listeners to understand that a high income does not necessarily mean that you don't need to pursue other things.

So clearly, you all had the wherewithal, the financial strength to, in some folks' opinions, you might have just been able to kind of say, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing because you have enough coming in to, if you wanted to, you just continue and kind of see where that takes you. But I'll let you kind of expand on that. But if I had to guess, I would say probably maybe time freedom, kind of a long-term generational wealth, these kinds of things kind of started to enter your thought process and your mindset, which made you say, okay, well, let's take some action here. So help me kind of understand, help the listeners understand, why not just stick with the high paying income?

And what made you say, So you know what, we need something else. I think our CEO, Dr. Riz-Zoni says it best. I liked how he puts it, he's an orthopedic surgeon.

So you can imagine like the career pathways that how he's viewed in society. And he says to himself that at the end of the day, I'm just a high skilled employee, right? And I cannot pass along the skills over to my children. If I'm not here tomorrow, My kids cannot inherit any of my orthopedic surgeon skills unless they go to down the same path of education that I go through.

But with these assets, you have the potential to create generational wealth. Wealth that can get passed along from one generation to another. Not saying that you want to build a generation of people that don't go out there and do the work, but the other thing, the really powerful piece of pursuing this path is the financial education, the education that you get on the way, because that is one of the things that blew our minds, because all of us have high graduate degrees, been to school all these years, but there are very simple financial concepts that we do not understand, right? We do not know that there was ever a possibility for people like us to buy these asset classes, right?

So when that possibility came to mind, the light bulb went out and we started asking ourselves, Like how many people in the community that we live in, the community that we were frequent, do not know that this exists and they have the potential to leverage this, to grow wealth for their families and our future generations. And we actually went around and did a straw poll, asking around our immigrant community, ask around our healthcare community. And what we realized where a lot of the under. presented minorities had no idea that you could have access to this asset class as a passive investor or use it as a way to grow up.

So that's the foundation of what started XSITE Capital because we kept asking ourselves what, and we looked around, go to all the seminars, we don't see any other platform out there. So we were like, what if we become that platform that creates this community where people can come and learn, go out and use this knowledge for themselves and also give people the opportunities behind what we do. And that's what is pushing us. It's like the driving force that wakes us up every single morning, regardless of everything that we have going on.

Because if you could think about some of the careers, we have, it requires a lot of time commitment. Sometimes I wonder how I see or does the thing he does with the patient load that he has. And one of the, he's been voted the top surgeon in the Baltimore area multiple years in a row. So, but with that, we still have that commitment because of the mission, the vision that we have behind it.

So it's the field that keeps us going and it's just been an amazing journey so. Oh, that's incredible. So, yeah, I love that. So the mission that underpins what you all do and your motivation is trying to make sure that you increase the level of exposure of this huge, I mean, this is an entire just a different world really, depending on what you've seen before seeing this space, and then exposing people underrepresented minority community to this space and the possibilities that exist within this.

Because I can tell you, same thing here. Rowing up, I didn't know anything about this. And no one that I knew personally or in my family knew anything about this. And for me as a child, not as a young child, but sort of as a young adult and mid-teens, something kind of just grew within me.

This interest is curiosity. And over time, it eventually led me to this space, you-know, through reading and research and things like that. And so it's just long drawn out, you know, process that finally led me here. But I love that, you know, what you guys are doing is you're essentially compressing that time for other people and saying, hey, listen, here's an opportunity that you.

You may not have been exposed to or aware of and we can help educate And then also help take action and to be exposed to and leverage this opportunity. So I think that's incredible. You also talked about kind of time management and commitment really. Because right, you know, how often do we hear folks say, well, we, you know, how can you do this with the schedule that you have?

And, you know, we have the same 24 hours. How are you able to do so much and achieve so much? And I think it comes down to setting goals, right? having a clear goal, you already mentioned that you have a That's why I talk about the why a lot because the why is so important, right?

If you have enough, it depends on where your priorities of things are listed, right? Like how you talk about setting goals, it depends on where your priorities are. Like if this mission, this why, is something that inspires you so much that it's right there at the top of your list of things that are high priority to you, you're gonna share some of the other stuff that is not of high priority so that you use those 24 hours in the day to focus in on this. Yes, it's all 24 hours in the day, but within that 24 hours, there's a tremendous amount of time.

And if you do a simple exercise of tracking, how you use your time on a daily basis, you will find that on each and every day you have at least six to seven hours that you're torn away, that you could dedicate to something that inspires you. And that something can be a huge source of inspiration to other people. So again, that's what we do. and love doing it and enjoy the process of it.

Yeah, and I'll also say that I think one thing that people maybe don't realize is, so yes, we have 24 hours in a day, but if you establish a strong team and if the business that you get. Involved with specifically in this space here, if you leverage your team to do it, then you effectively have more than 24 hours, right? You can get, so you kind of, you spread the tasks out, you have some trust and some understanding that, hey, I know that this person is capable of this and here's my strengths and my weaknesses. And so as a team, we're going to tackle this.

Well, now a sudden have more than 24 hours effectively. Yeah. Right. So let's talk about that kind of, how the three of you got to know each other and made the decision to form the company and maybe some backstory here.

Absolutely. So, the exciting journey started off, initially started off with Tenny and I. So, I had started investing in real estate, then I met Tenny through an introduction. Tenny had like a financial services business.

So, he R was doing a presentation at one of the sites where my wife works on insurance and using good insurance products. And my wife was like, That sounded interesting. We had been talking about our life insurance policy at home and we didn rd like what we have and we're looking to change it or to get something else. So when my wife heard Chinese speaking and all the explanations she did, she was like, I met this guy.

He's an insurance, he has an insurance sales company. I think you should meet him and have him come talk to us. I'm like, I'm tired of this insurance. I don't want to meet another one.

All these financial advisors, I don't and I'm getting my financial education myself, and I'm gonna figure it out." She's like, no, she insisted. So I relented and then he came over and we're talking,I had my bunch of skeptical questions for him and he gave all the answers. He was very honest, very upcoming. And then we just started talking about all this stuff and found out he was into personal development like I was.

At that point, I had been, I had become some sort of a lone soldier because I got into real estate and personal development none of my family were really interested so I was in this little cocoon by myself and finally I found somebody that was in that same line so I was like maybe my wife was excited that I found a friend and now she could get me out of the house because so much time without so Tenny and I used to meet every Friday we'll meet on Fridays in College Park, Maryland and play a Robert Kiyosaki's board game cash flow and just talk about business and through that he was like you know I've always been interested in real estate. You're doing a real estate and why don't we come together and scale and take it to something big and go after our big goals that we have for ourselves because we were both talking and realized we were both like big idea guys or big vision guys so that's how we came together initially and formed XSITE Capital and decided to go after multi-family asset classes after we did our research and realized that the representation R was really low and the opportunities there might exist. So when we started we. So I'm thinking who do I talk to as investors?

One of the very first people that came to my mind was Dr. Julia Zoni, our third partner. So we work in the same hospital. He's an orthopedic surgeon, very financially savvy guy.

We talked during cases in the hospital. He talks about all the startups he's invested in, the real estate that he does. So I'm like, this guy is an interesting guys. So I love listening to him, very knowledgeable guy.

So when we started, he was one of the first people that I approached and I was like, listen, we're doing this stuff in multi-family real estate.. We have a meetup. I would like to invite you to attend, but he never showed up. And so when we had our first opportunity, I sent it over to him for him to review, you know, he reviewed it, but I never heard back from him.

So that first the first opportunity. Tenny and I struggled because we were invited to be part of a deal by one of our mentors and we had to be able to bring a certain amount of capital, so that our risk aligned with that deal, but we were unable to meet up our own end on the capital side because some of our investors backed out last minute. So we wereI disappointed and devastated and Tenny and I, this is a practice that we all do as a company now. Whenever we go through anything, we debrief and talk about it and see how we could do better.

So we have one of those debriefing sessions and we're talking about how well we could have done better, how we could present these opportunities to. And I remember telling Teddy and one other guy that was listening to us and just kind of mentoring us during that process. I was like, there's this guy at the hospital I work with, his name is Dr. Giozone.

I presented a class to him in the past. I know this would be a perfect opportunity for him. But he is not responding to my messages. And we actually practice Brandon.

So we actually practice like how I'm going to go approach him. The guy's 10 year and The other guy gave me some tips on how to approach him. And I was like, okay, I got to find the right opportunity at work to talk to Dr. Oni.

I never got that opportunity because about a month later he called. He called and said, Leslie, I finally had the space, of mine, to review some of the stuff you've been sending to me. Is your other partner available or like to talk to you guys? Because I just don't want to be an investor.

I want to be a partner. There we go. And I said, wait. Wait a minute.

Hold that thought. Yeah. So I called Teddy on the phone and we jumped on the call. And we just, spoke for like two, three hours.

We just kept going and talking and realizing like the mission, the why. It's, like, it seemed. He had been listening to our company in the background and everything just came together during that conversation. I remember that day very well because it was a day that everything changed for Excite because once Dr.

Oni came in and became part of this mission, everything just took off from there. He brought in a tremendous amount of quality and added to the value of everything that we're putting together, just took the company up and we've been growing ever since, so. Oh, that's awesome. I'll tell you what, you know, the truth is, if you sort of think about a what was required, it was you had to be prepared, you know?

I couldn't. So it's, you know, some folks in here1959 might think, or, you know, I bet if you, in your circle, your personal circle, if you kind of told them sort of the end result, then they might say, oh man, you're lucky. But it's like, well, no, we had to prepare, all right, go ahead, yep. Absolutely, we had to.

the company was founded February 2, 2019. There's never been a day since that day that we haven't been working towards this vision. We made a commitment up front and I think that's one of the huge mistakes that people make is like, they want to get in business and they want to do it for six months and see if it works or it doesn't work and then the back out. We made a commitment to give everything we got for at least three years.

And if it doesn't work after three years, them before we step back. And every single time, it's not like as soon as we started everything just started coming to a no, we put in the work every single day on ourselvesves and on the business. And it was that combination of effort. We got to a point where we were worthy of our third partner to come in and then take us to the next level.

And when he came in, we kept on putting in the work and got to the point where we were worthy to have all these people coming up to our platform and being part of this mission for us to move forward. So it's because our mentor a few people and I tell them it's a process, but you have to be committed. Every single day put in the work, the results will come, but don't expect it to come up and the next minute you have all these big things because it's an everyday process. Yeah, absolutely.

And there are R folks who want this step change to occur, but without a really taking the effort to R step up to that level. And you use the word, though, that one word in my opinion actually sort of summarizes it in its vision. So you all had the vision to say, this is where we want to go. And I think you just mentioned that you had the commitment to say that we'll give this a try.

work hard for three solid years. And then at that point, if it doesn't pan out, or if it has not pan out by the end of that three years, we'll reconvene. But that requires vision and commitment. And so, you know, some folks might have the commitment.

But that vision is a tough when to come by, because you have to see something before it's there. And that's a very challenging thing to do without the motivation, without the personal development and the growth and the mindset. Because you just don't, without those things, your vision is blurred. You can't really see that, you know, with this, with the time that we're going to put in, here's where we want to go.

There are a lot of folks that would have given up after their first attempt to meet with, you know, Julius Dr. Oni, and to meet with him. And then if he didn't give them, you know, time at that point, they might have given up. Oh, well, you know, I guess it's just, you know, we tried, right?

And it might have even, there might be comfort in that some folks would sit up there and kind of say, well, you know, we try to pull some details together. And I guess it's just not going to work out. Yeah. But right, that's a lack of vision.

Yeah, you know, so you're absolutely right. When you see it, you are persistent to go after it, and you understand that whatever happens along the way, it's just what is happening. It's just another step along the process. You don't worry about negative or failures or whatever.

It's just a checkpoint on the journey to where you're going. So you just keep going. Yeah, you're very right. The vision is very important.

Now, that's the power of the personal development piece, Brandon, because, and that's one of the great things that I love about this business, because there's a lot of in order to be able to come from a position of, for example, like us being an employee, to seeing yourself taking down this million dollar assets. There's a lot of inner work that you have to do, you know, but when you do that, it just doesn't only affect your business as a multi-family operator affects you in life. I can say, learning about multi-family is the best thing that happened to me in my life because it improved my relationship with my wife, my kids, everybody around me, improved my vision of life, improved every part of my life, you know, because of that personal growth aspect to it. aspect to it.

So that's why I am my partners and I, we are so passionate about this space that we're in, and the value that it could bring to other people as well. Yeah, it really is a fascinating space, because I have found that more often than not, just like you mentioned, the folks who are in this broader ecosystem, there tends to be this positive, this abundance mindset, because in a sense, that's what's required. So if you think any one of these projects before you get to the point where you've closed then you are now operating the asset, it requires vision if you think about it. And so I think that might be why there's a common thread among the folks who investors and partners and fund managers and all these things and builders is because you have to have a vision and you have to commit to taking the steps to realize that vision.

And so just, so if you don't have that, you really, this is a difficult business to be and if you do not have that mindset that's required. And so that's one of the things I love about this space as well. And so I want to dig into a couple of things you mentioned and one of which is representation, which is very important. And so, you know, I'd like to get your perspective on what you feel might be kind of a root cause or one of the causes as to why there is kind of this underrepresented presence from minorities in this space and then kind of what does Excite doing to help address that r within your community?

That's a very good question, Brandon. I think my personal opinion, I think, is lack of exposure, lack of knowledge, you know. For example, the mere fact that we are doing this, you know, somebody else that has similar backgrounds to us will look at this, okay, if this guy said doing it, that means it's possible for me too. And we are lowering that barrier of entry by not making it complicated for others right, because the tendency sometimes is when somebody from a community gets access to stuff like this they try to make it more complicated for another person to come in.

you know, so we're simplifying the process by letting people know that, you know, we are not rocket scientists, you know, we work hard. The great thing is like from the communities that we in, we have people that work really hard. But it's not about working hard. It's you can put in the same amount of work, but with a bigger vision, and you have to get a bigger goal, like you a compass way more than putting in a because if we're talking about hard work, if you look at the people that do construction on the street every day, they work really hard.

If you put in that same amount of energy with a bigger vision and a bigger mindset to something bigger, you're gonna get that. So by us being out there marketing ourselves, one of the main reasons why we market so much or why we present ourselves out there so much is primarily so that somebody else can look at us and say, you know what? If these guys can do it, we can do it. We offer a lot of free education to people that are serious that wanna take advantage of it and move forward and do something with themselves.

So again, our philosophy is we do not lose anything or we do not take anything from us by us teaching you what we know, right? So we operate on that abundance mindset is one of our core values. We will share whatever information that we have or encourage other people that are looking to do this. And provide opportunities for us to partner up and uplift each other, you know.

It's all about building a community of like-minded people and then going out there and educating others and showing others that this too is possible for you to do. Yeah, that's incredible. And you touched on something I think that's very important and that we're both, we're members of communities where folks work very hard. And the simple truth is that working hard, it's important, but so often it might not be enough.

To get you to your financial goals, your time goals. And there's a coach named Jim Rohn, he's passed now, but one of the things that he said that's very powerful is if you work hard on your job, you can make a living, but if you work hard on yourself, you can make a fortune. Absolutely. So that statement right there really summarizes kind of what you're saying is that, Listen, hard work, it's critical, but working on what?

Some folks will step back-back and just say, I'm busy, I had a long day, I had all these means of what were you working on? And so where did it get you? What's the ROI on network? Is that in line with where you actually want to go financially, with what you want to be able to do with your life?

That type of analysis is what's important and what can sort of unlock things that we didn't see before. I haven't really sort of told my full story, I guess on the podcast, yes. Oh yeah, so that'll be a future episode. But I can tell you that I've had to do that analysis a number of times where I've had to stop and say, I just went through a couple of years of working with this company or a few years and here I am now I have nothing to show for it.

with at least in terms of what I want, financially for myself and for my family. And so I had to stop in and make a change. So that's what's required, you know, it just, and I think you're right. It's being able to expose our community, you know, to these opportunities and then to say, okay, you know, and with that comes an analysis.

first the first realization that yes, you can be involved in this here it is. But also this analysis of what's required to get there. Very important. And so you mentioned assets, right?

That the exposure to the reality that we can actually acquire these types of assets. So I wanted to touch really quickly on XSITE Capital's assets, because I don't think I mentioned that in the intro. And I wanted to follow up, I'm gonna follow up on this point, but share with us what you all's assets under management is and $25 million of real estate assets on the management. And a spread over four properties, a 49 unit in Washington DC, class A product, 132 unit in Columbia, South Carolina, class B product and 113 units in Columbia, South Carolina, and a 400 unit property in South Bend, Indiana.

Yeah, and we keep growing, we're looking to acquire more. So hopefully we'll close on a couple more deals before the year is over. I, bringing the most amazing results that she could ever you know so I can over It's pretty clear and what you all's vision is also clear that the level of sophistication that you see with any one of you. I respect it and I think it's something worth touching on.

I think it's also a critical piece of the puzzle in this business. What are your thoughts on that? On having a strong brand? How has that helped you all in connecting with folks, networking and growing?

your perspective on that. Branding is everything, you know, that's how you know that that's the . Face that the outside wall sees and that's how you judge and you have to be clear on who you represent, what you are there for. So I don't have to be clear, Brandon.

I appreciate the compliments that you say about our brand, but I just wanted to mention this, especially for anybody starting out. We didn't start out this way. I'm just gonna put it out. We didn't.

start out this way. It was a little shaky in the beginning, but along the way we found the right path and then we found our confidence and believe in and what we are. I think and that's just to say that if. If you're starting off, don't be stuck starting off.

Don't be stuck and trying to get everything perfect to where we are today before you get things started. Along the way, you might make some mistakes and before you get things done. Along our journey, we started off, we knew exactly why we were doing this. We knew our mission, but we did not put our mission out there.

We fell into the trap of copying what somebody else was doing in the beginning, because we thought that was what was going to give us the credibility that we needed instead of sticking to our own vision and our own identity of why we're doing this. The moment we connected to our why and put our why out there, that's when the brand really started coming into place, right? And that is when we started attracting the right set of people that will help us push that brand forward. And we actually attracted the right person that came in the version of our CEO's wonderful wife who is like a great branding expert.

She helped us redefine our brand and our brand story and everything, and got us on the right path. And again, I think the most important thing is connecting with your why, believing strongly in your why. I'm putting it out there, you're going to attract the right set of people. And then the brand just keeps getting better as we grow.

Well, we're just very blessed and very grateful for the responses that we're getting. Yeah, that authenticity is And it's understandable too because it's real estate at its core is something that is tried and true. And so, sort of modeling, I'll call it modeling ourselves after someone who's had success, there's some merit to that, I believe. Even from a branding perspective, there's certainly merit to saying, I see that person has had success doing this way.

And let me see how far I can get doing that and whether I can sort of add in some pieces of myself. But I liked it, what you said is, you know, your growth didn't really start to kick in and you're in your cohesiveness, until you attached your why and your motivation to it. And now you have this clean, authentic, you know, picture that represents exactly what you guys are looking to do. So, I think that's just incredible.

So. So, you know, I wanted to ask you just really quickly about kind of teamwork, right? And how to get the most out of your team. But what makes kind of like a rockstar team for you guys?

What pieces does a syndication or a sponsorship team need to have in order to function in Excel? You gotta have that tenacity. The way I look at that team is, I wake up every day asking myself, okay, what can I do to bring a lot of value to my partners? Or what can I do to bring a lot of value to the team?

And I get that kind of a response back from all of my partners, because I've learned in life that a lot of times you get what you reflect, what you put out there, you get it back. So it starts with you as a member of the team, focusing more on the effort that you could bring in. And I have that same kind of mindset in a partnership. In a partnership, the question you ask is, what can I bring in?

Like, what value can I bring in? And the more value I bring into any partnership, the more value I get back from my partners. So that's our philosophy. We start as founders, we start by leading by example.

And right now we have employees and we have other team members that work with us in everything that we do. But if as founders of the company at these early stages, we are not leading by the right example, putting in the effort. There's nobody more tenacious in our company than us, founders, right? Like my partner in Charlotte, we call him Tenacious Tenny.

He actually. He sold his home here in Maryland and moved his whole family to North Carolina so that we can have presence in our market. So those are the kind of commitments that we make as leaders of our company and once you lead with that kind of tenacity and commitment, the rest of the team usually follows. And the other piece to that is you gotta have a lot of empathy and understanding when you're working with people, you have to be vested in their growth.

I think that's one that are associated to be part of this larger mission. It just makes a very cohesive and good working environment with everybody pointed in the right direction. And we also implement systems. We adopted the traction system that keeps everybody in track.

That we have our goals broken down for every quarter and everybody has their responsibility all lined up for them and we keep everybody in track, hold everybody accountable. So it helps us out a lot. Oh, that's incredible. So you using kind of like smart goals, kind of like, yeah.

So EOS is like an entrepreneurial operation system by Gino Wigman. This book is called Traction. It has a very good coin size system that helps you really get things moving in the right direction. Okay, I have to also put that in the show notes as well, just as a kind of a reference point.

No, that's, yeah, that, that's incredible. I like also that, you know, for some folks, this is the urge, this urge to settle in kind of once they have formed a partnership, as opposed to, you know, consistently asking themselves how much or challenging themselves to bring value to the partnership and to continue pushing, you know, because it's sure you can you have strengths and weaknesses among your partners. But the only way that the team is going to grow and move forward is to always ask yourself that question, like you said, is how every day I wake up, how can I add value to my partners? How can I move this ship forward?

And so I like that, you know, as opposed to just kind of saying, okay, we have our partnership team, I can sort of, you know, relax a little bit, and they're going to take care of the parts that missing and it will just kind of, you know, coast. And so I think that's important because that's the only way that, you know, a team can get to where you guys are and to where you guys are going. So I think that's incredible. We're getting a little close on time, so I wanted to ask you something really quickly.

And this is something I've just started for maybe y the past-past couple of shows, in real estate now? I'll say determine exactly what goal you R want, even if it's just buying one rental property or it's like investing in your first syndication or doing something, do exactly what you want. Then every single day, you start your day, right? Three things that you could, three action steps that you could take that will move you closer to that.

And do not end your day without completing those three action steps. It could be simple things as calling a real estate agent to look at a property. There'll be something like evaluating a property or listening to a podcast that is related to that or reading a book that is related to that. But block that in for the next 90 days, do three things.

Three things only that are moving you towards that goal. And I promise you after Well, absolutely. The best place to get in touch with us is on our website. We have a ton of resources on our website.

It's www.XS and XyloFund SS and SAM, I-T-E, that's X-Sight, capital.com, that's X-I-T-E, capital.com.com. And you could come there, sign up to join our investor club where you get access to a lot of our exclusive content and the opportunities that we have coming up as well and today's episode and you'd like to learn more about commercial real estate investing please like subscribe and share and we'll see you again next week. I'm Brandon Jenkins and this is the capital stack where we help you learn apply and prosper.

Just go down deep within and figure exactly what it is that you want to do, one big advice I'll give that really helped me was to like read books, like find books on finance, find books on like personal development, read those books and understand the financial system and take it from there and see where your passion lies. And I started by reading a book by Rovik Yosaki called second chance at your money in your life. And that book kind of opened my mind up to like the possibilities and understanding the financial system. And from then on, I just kept going and kept going and I'll find myself here.

Your network is your net worth. Come listen to some of the most successful people I know. Share invaluable knowledge, stories, and advice in real estate, business, and beyond. is Yona Weiss excited to be here today, for more than one reason.

Well, actually several reasons. One reason, because we have two guests. So that's always great, double-, the fun, on. How are you doing, and how r you doing today, first of.

Thank you so much for having us. We really appreciate you and. Very happy to be here today with you with my incredible co-founder, Mr. How are you doing?

I'm doing wonderful. You know, I just like to listen to Dr. Aunty talk, so he said it all, and we were grateful to be here. Thank you for having us.

It's really my pleasure. You guys are awesome. Doing incredible things. And I'd love to get into the fact because you have something a little bit unique because you both come from the medical space, correct?

You're both active in the healthcare. Dr. Ani, obviously you're a doctor, and unless you are a full-time nurse and anesthesiologist. Anesthetist.

Anesthetist. Anesthetist. Anesthetist. Yeah, I'm going to have to practice that a little bit.

Maybe my others can work on that, but tell me how you focused, you know, still doing that working in the hospital, working in healthcare and managed to balance the real estate investment. Obviously, this is something that you guys are passionate about also helping others in the medical profession do the same thing, like help to preserve and build their wealth through real estate investing. So that's something I'm really curious about because it's not very common. I mean, we definitely have had people in all sorts of walks of life that obviously real estate investing is the common denominator in this podcast.

A lot of almost all their guests have to do with that. But because you guys come from such a unique background within that, and are still currently working in that field, like, that's what I want to know. How do you balance it all? So yeah, thanks for asking that question, Yona.

And you actually answered some of the questions for Ruz already in the question that you asked, but Leslie and I actually met in the operating room, you know, he was putting patients to sleep and taking care of them on the anesthesia. And I was replacing their hips and knees. And it was during that interaction, or that working through that working relationship that we ultimately developed a friendship where we started to discuss real estate and potential amazing, you know, a wealth accumulating capabilities of multifamily real estate in particular. And when we started to explore multifamily real estate, even more, we quickly realized that, yes, one, health care professionals weren't very represented, you know, in all of the conferences that we would explore.

You know, there, we certainly saw some lawyers, you know, JDs, we saw some MBA business people, we saw some CPAs, you know, accountants, we saw, you know, just real estate folks from different backgrounds, but we certainly did not see too many people from the of medical field and there were a few teams, you know, there were teams like Viking Capital and a few others, but it was the exception, not the rule. And then we did a straw poll of people in our network and asked them if they actually knew about the ability to pull out resources to go after large properties and buy this cash flow and multi-family properties that each one of us would not have been able to do individually. And people didn't think it was within reach at all. And so we saw an opportunity to really educate not just our health care professionals, but we saw the same trend also within our underrepresented minority groups.

We noticed in the conferences too that we were the significant, we were the minorities. And so we focused on those two avatars. Does that mean that we don't take money from everybody else? Oh, we absolutely.

You'll take it, I'll take it a little bit. but we center those groups, our attempts to a educate our community of investors. And so, yeah. So that's really what inspired us to go into multifamily real estate.

We were really inspired to take the gospel of multifamily real estate to our communities of investors, you know, the healthcare professionals, the underrepresented minorities and others. And the response has been incredible. I mean, we, the proof is in the pudding. Yeah, well, I mean, a follow up question to that a really, just kind of digging deeper a little more.

To answer your question, why are people in healthcare like underrepresented in the multifamily investing space? I mean, from an active side, it just makes sense. It's a very time consuming profession, especially if you're in the ER and you're working extended hours, it's difficult, which is really my question to you guys, like, how do you balance the full time, or I don't know if it's full time, maybe you can answer that involvement in the medicine, as well as finding time to successfully, as you have done, operate and find real estate. I think I would love for Leslie to chime in, but I just want to start the answer to that.

The only reason we've been able to do it is by leveraging our community. One, we've leveraged our community of partners, meaning Leslie and Tenny and I have come together as literally one person. to leverage each other. So when I'm not able to make a meeting, Leslie's able to make it and when Tenny's not able to make it, I'm able to make it.

And so we've been able to be a unit. And so that is help us significantly. Significantly. And then we also have been very fortunate to have a community that has believed in the vision that we're presented to them.

And that is really the secret to our success is that we did not have to go through the know, like, and trust process. You know, we in our individual professional careers already developed those relationships where people knew, liked, trusted us. So by the time we came together as a group and presented these opportunities to them, it was easy for them to invest. But Leslie?

Yeah, and to add to that, you know, the key thing is the why behind everything that we do, right? Like, someone like Dr. Judaism, he's a very busy guy. Sometimes I ask myself how he does it, but I'm sure that's the same question that somebody asked about us.

But is the reason behind why we started the company in the first place. And is the people that we serve, like Dr. Oni mentioned, some of the avatars and some of the people that we've. We've collaborated with to take down some of these assets.

Those are the people that we out here doing what we're doing for. And once you're able, to see the light bulb goes up and somebody said, when you teach them about multi-family, once you're able to get that call from an investor that says, oh, I'm so happy I got my distribution. And you know that you play a role in that. You were able to arrange everything else around your life to find time for that.

Like when you find something that you truly passionate about, that you truly enjoy doing, time comes up somehow and we've been able to do that successfully because we really enjoy what we do and we really enjoy working with each other as well. That's awesome. It makes a lot of sense, like anything, right? It's all about priorities and it's about having the passion and having the why and that comes through for sure to your investors and I love the fact that you're able to leverage you in an existing community and I think, but you still didn't answer the question, How do you do it?

Well, I'll tell you. Nights and weekends and just... Any time in between. For example, I recently went down to per diem, like work PRN.

So in the hospital, for example, for an anesthesia provider like myself, the advantage I have is I could kind of design my schedule. So I've worked the shifts that nobody else wants to work, right? And during those times, I have time to do other things. For example, I'll work a 24 hour shift on a Sunday.

Nobody wants to work that, but because I'm able to do that, I'm able to work less during the week. For example, I just left a 24 hour call shift on Sunday and drove straight to the airport and got on a plane After surgery, you can see him stay on the call with investors too late at night. And we also give a lot of credit to our other partner who is not here at Tenny Tolofari. He pulls a lot of weight for the company as well.

And the fact that he's not in healthcare, he's in IT and he's a little bit remote, that gives us the flexibility for him to be present on the ground and do some of the things that we need to get done. Right. He's an incredible partner. He actually sold his home in the DC area, moved his entire family to our target market and the Carolinas, and it's been our boots and ground and pounding the doors of the brokers and developing those incredible broker relationships.

And just like Leslie said earlier, I mean, yesterday, also, saw patients all day. And then right off the scene, 20-something patients jumped in the plane, flew out to Columbia, South Carolina to check out the property that we just closed up. So, I mean, this is what we do. We are so dedicated to it.

But at this point, our identity is not just our day job, it's also as real estate investors that we are fully dedicated because the people that invest with us are friends, families, people in our network, people in the network of our networks and we take that very seriously. Sure. And it helps to find great deals and to give great returns and that speaks for itself. And that will definitely bring back return investors, as I'm sure you've already experienced.

Tell me where you came up with the name, the XSITE Capital. I like that. There's like, when you want to start a company, you go through several names, right? When you started, we're just throwing a bunch of names out there, you know, tried all kinds of names and nothing really seemed right.

Then all of a sudden, XSITE Capital came and we're like, wait a minute, this sounds really right. You know, this makes sense. We are happy, guys, we get really excited. We're very pushful.

So that we have that energy. So it kind of matches the name of the kind of company we want to build and we went with it. So that's how we came about. There you go.

All right. And not great gives for a great introduction to podcasts also. So. So there you go.

Right. That's awesome. Now, do you see yourselves continuing this path, the same work schedule? Or is there a certain point that you have a year or two, five, 10 years down the road, where you're like, listen, we own a billion dollars in real estate.

We don't have to work 24-hour shifts at the hospital anymore. Or maybe that, maybe you do. Maybe that really, they're both are your passion. So, I'm curious to know if this is a path to retirement or is it just something that you also have passion about?

Do you want to go first? Yeah, sure. So, I envisioned myself the path where at some point I'm totally transitioning out of like the full-time role in healthcare, working in the hospital, taking care of somebody, working um, working for somebody else in the hospital to more of an independent provider, but recently had an experience that kind of changed a lot for me and a very profound experience where XSITE Capital, we co-sponsored a mission trip to a very Nigeria to do a hip and knee replacement. And during that trip, I spent one week, we spent one week, I worked there with Dr.

Oni and another orthopedic surgeon. And we were replacing hips and knees for free for a bunch of patients that could not afford it. There I got to see how you could give, you could practice health care by helping people not practice health care to get paid for it. And it changed something fundamentally within me and that's something that I would love to continue doing.

Like, so the path is for XSITE Capital to get all businesses to get me to the point where I don't have to work to end for anybody, but still able to use the skills that I've gained as a healthcare provider to provide help to like. People that cannot afford it. So, yeah, so that's the path for me. And I'll let Julius talk more about that.

Yeah, my, I mean, my plan is similar. I mean, I love what I do. I love replacing people's It's a passion of mine. I was inspired to do it because my paternal grandmother ends the arthritis of both knees for the last three years of her life.

And she wasn't very mobile. And there was no one to do her total joint replacements at that time in Nigeria. So now I'm able to do the. Same for other people's mothers, fathers, uncles, aunties, grandmas, grandpas.

And it just warms my heart. And it makes me feel like I'm living in my purpose, for my purpose, particularly when I'm able to do it without necessarily getting paid for it. And so that's why my life's vision is really to increase access to musculoskeletal care in lower to middle income countries, starting with Nigeria, where I was born and raised, but certainly beyond that particular country. And this most recent trip that we took to aware in Nigeria was a text case, a pilot to see what it feels like, what it could be ultimately.

And it was an amazing experience, I mean, just to see the lives that we changed and it just warmed my heart. And I guess Leslie caught the bug too. And now we are really dedicated. We're planning to continue to co-sponsor that on a yearly, maybe by an annual basis and also try to invest a portion of exciting profits into similar charitable causes.

and programs that would create sustainable programs in different parts of the world. So in the perfect world, we get to a billion dollars, two billion dollars in asset management. Yeah, you probably see me just shuttling around the world, replacing people's hips and knees for free, and teaching, trying to a teach folks on the folks do you use thatI Well, if you gotta chop up a... You gotta replace the roof.

Realize a level of ten I. It requires a level of conscientiousness it requires a level of consistency and. the different the aspects of and also the management and the deal we raised about five point seven five million to close 17.45 million deal. We couldn't do that if it was for our community of investors that truly just believe the vision and just want to go along with us.

Some of them are repeat investors. We call them our unicorn investors. They've done all four deals that we've done so far. They've done it with us.

They are still asking, where's the next one? It's incredible to see that community grow and can't wait to continue to grow that community. For sure. I want to ask one question before we jump into the final four, because this time just flies by here.

But what advice would you give to someone that's in a similar position? Obviously, you guys both come from healthcare attendees in the IT space. There are so many people out there. They're earning a high income, and they may not be enjoying it as much as they are.

I mean, what advice would you give to them to see what other options are out there? I would say just go down deep within and figure out exactly what it is that you want to do. One big advice I'll give that really help to like read books, like find books on finance, find rbooks on like personal development, read those books and understand the financial system and take it from there and see where your passion lies. I started by reading a book by Rovik Yosaki called Second Chance at Your Money in Your Life and that book kind of in opened my mind up to like the possibilities and understanding the financial system and from then I just kept going and keep going and I'll find myself here.

So it's do not give away control of your life to somebody else. Do not wait for somebody to decide what your future is going to be. You could start by creating that future for yourself. So you just there's a ton of resources out there that you could go YouTube books and read and figure out exactly what is it you're passionate about and go after it with faith.

Go after it without fear and it's all going to come together eventually. Yeah, I couldn't articulate that better, but education I think is key. I think you know, in addition to books, podcasts, you know, that's where I got started. And my credit, Leslie and Tenny, got started a little bit before me.

So they were able to kind of show me a little bit about some of the things that I needed to read. I mean, in the first week of learning about this. I was reading The Wheelbarrow Profits and Self-Investor. I was on different podcasts and just soaking up information left and right.

It was an incredible experience. It was like going back to school again. And I felt like an intern again. And it was rejuvenating.

Because at some point, you get to a level of expertise in your field of work that they start to kind of get a little, you know, jaded, even though every opportunity to replace my guests. I'm excited to hear your different answers. Sometimes we take the partners off, but just love to hear one back and forth here. Unless you want to try something different and see if you can.

No, you're shaking. Now I was going to say, I'm going to ask Leslie a question, right? About what he thinks Dr. Julius, his answer will be, but I'm not going to go.

We'll just we'll get your own unique organic answers here. So first question, Leslie, I'll go to you first. What's the worst job that you ever had? Well, I was in college, I got a job at a Kmart distribution center.

The shift, there was a sound like there's someone doing the holidays, the shift for that job was from 10 p.m. to about 11 a.m. in the morning, very weird shift. And what we used to do was to get on like a cherry picker you drive in the warehouse.

And you pick loads from one place to another. The warehouse was like 100 degrees hot in the summer. It was a tough job. It was but it was one of those jobs that really asked me like, do people do this on a daily basis and they're satisfied, like, I need to do better for myself.

Yeah. For me, it was tough. The schedule was tough. The working conditions were really tough.

So I feel for people that go through that working. Feels like that on a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, there's people, that's their career.

I mean, unfortunately. Wow. Yeah, that's tough. But definitely learn the lesson there quickly.

Yeah. Dr. Oni, what about you? What worst job you ever had?

Worst job I ever had was my first job in the US. I came in as an undergrad student, and I was working at Sodexa, Maria, and that job entailed washing dishes and taking the dishes out to, so serving and working in the cafeteria of the school. So I was essentially serving my fellow students and I would take the dishes out to them and then pack Rady dishes and take it back to wash them and bring them back out. The toughest part of that job was not just the, You know, I was this squany, you know, 17-year-old and it was just difficult to like push this really heavy cart out, but the most difficult part was the emotional part of it, because, you know, you think high school students are like, you know, tough on their fellow kids, college kids are just glorified, you know, especially the freshmen and sophomore students, They're like just glorified high school, and they, I mean, they would just make fun of you and it was tough.

So, and so I'm trying to dodge new and right anyways, you know, so that I would never forget that job. Eventually, I was able to segue into office job took a lot to do that, but that's the worst job ever. Yeah, that's hard. Definitely hard.

I can hear that. I love that. So, a second question, what's a book that you've read, and you've already mentioned a few, but what's a book you've read that's giving you a paradigm shift? So, Dr.

Onan, let's start with you this time. I love The Us, Never Split a Difference by Chris Voss. I thought that book helped me to just be a better communicator in general, to be a better negotiator, and it just teaches a lot of life skills. I've had to read it about two or three times, but I would go with one more book because this book was also very important and opened me to have an identity shift.

And that was Miracle Mornings by R. Harold. Reading that book completely changed my morning routines, even though I may not be able to get to all, you know, six things, you know, silence, operations, visualizations, exercise reading and scrolling. I typically try to get to at least meditation, which is silence, exercise, and reading every day.

So, and that has completely changed the color of my days. the second chance at your money in your life by Robert Kiyosaki. Because that was really the book that opened up my mind. I expanded my mind to like a much wider world than what I was living in.

And it just took me from there to like reading tons of other books. I've had like several mindset shifts along the way, but I'm going to give credit to the one that started it all. So I'm going to say second chance at your money in your life by Robert Kiyosaki. That's great.

I don't think that's a book that anyone has ever mentioned on this complex. So I'm excited to check that one out because I haven't even heard of it. I mean, obviously, everyone's read the Rich Dad Poor Dad and other books in the Rich Dad library, but that's one that is new to me. So I want to definitely check that out and add that to the reading list here.

So appreciate that. Always nice. To get a new book on the reading list. What is a skill or talent that you would like to learn?

Let's go with you, Leslie, first. I like to become proficient. One of my goals this year is to learn more about industrial estate, to become proficient on the writing, industrial estate, and maybe developing warehouses. That's one of my goals this year, something that I like to get good at.

Very good. That's awesome. Okay. Well, we'll have to speak after.

I may have some good connections for you in that space because some great people have been doing that for a while that I know. What about you, Doctor? I think I want to learn how to speak Spanish, you know, this sounds like it's such a beautiful language. I tried to do it on Duolingo at some point, and I got to a pretty good level, and then life just got in the way.

And I would like to go back to that, and we get proficient in that language. I think it's such a beautiful language. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure it's practical as well, right?

Absolutely. For my patients, yeah, and of course. Fourth and final question, what does success mean to you? So we'll start with you again, a Dr.

Oni. Success to me has been able to fully achieve my vision of improving access to musculoskeletal care in lower to middle income countries, starting with Nigeria and beyond. And to do that, I would probably need to achieve financial independence or financial freedom. And with that, my definition of that is being able to do what I want to do with the people that I want to do it with, where I want to do it at any time that I want to do it.

So the time freedom, the geographical freedom, you know, and the financial freedom, those needs to work together to allow me to fully live on my purpose. And yeah, so that would be that'll be success for me, making a difference in those people's lives and creating a little bit of a legacy there. Awesome. Awesome a love that answer.

What about you Leslie? What does success mean to you? Kind of similar but what Dr. Oni said like having the ability to do what I want to do when I want to do it and just being able to get up every day doing something that pushes me to grow, I consider that a success.

So for me, every day I wake up and push myself to grow a little bigger, or to challenge myself to do something that I probably, was not able to I do before. I know I've had a very successful day. And the more of those days I have, the more successful life I'm going to have. That's awesome.

I love that. It really is just, you know, it's every day, waking up and trying to make the best day you can. And it's little successes, you know, every single day try to be a little bit better. So love that and you guys have been great guests.

I cannot say how excited I was for this and you did not disappoint. So thank you very much. I appreciate you guys coming on. Where can our listeners find you or reach out to you?

And they could join us at XSITECapital.com. That's X-S-I-T-E-C-A-P-I-T-A-L.com. And please join our investor club. That would get you right into our mailing list so that you can get all the educational materials that we send out to our community.

All right. very good. We will make sure to put that in the show notes for anyone us to check out XSITE Capital and everything that they're doing and continue growing, continue being successful in everything you do. This has been a lot of fun.

I appreciate you Real quick, I have one question for you. Did you like this episode? If you did, I want to ask you a huge favor. See, the biggest thing that helps this podcast grow and that will spread this message to the whole world is that if you leave a review, a rating, and subscribe to the podcast, what that does is it basically tells the platforms that this podcast is out on is that you like my stuff and I'm doing some right.

So take a few seconds out of your day, hit that subscribe button, leave a rating review I would be extremely grateful. Also I want to hear from you guys so I want to give some feedback if you have any questions for future episodes please find me on LinkedIn, send me a DM, a connection request, Yona Weiss and I'd love to hear from you.

Welcome, this is the Lifetime Cash Flow through, real estate investing podcast. This is where you'll learn strategies to help you achieve lifetime financial freedom through real estate investment. Your host Rod Cleef has owned over 2000 homes and apartments and he brings experts in all aspects of real estate investment and management onto the show. Now here's your host Rod Cleef.

to. Another edition of how to build a lifetime cash flow through real estate investing. I'm Rod Cleef, and I'm. I'm thrilled you're here.

And I know you're going to get great value from the dynamic gentleman I'm. Interviewing today. His name is Julius Oni. Now he r a doctor orthopedic surgeon.

His company XSITE Capital. They've purchased, I think, in excess of $125 million in assets in the last couple of years. So they're really cranking it up. And we, we're going to have a lot of fun today.

Welcome to the show, brother. Thank you so much Rob. I've been so, so inspired by your work and I'm glad to be here. Oh, that's kind of you to say that.

Well, listen orthopedic surgeons make pretty decent change. So I want to know, I want to hear the story and I want to hear how real estate came into the picture. So please give us a little more background on you and then we'll dig in. Thanks.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. We do fairly decently and I cannot complain about how well I'm doing with my orthopedic surgery salary. But one thing is very clear, I'm not able to pass down my orthopedic surgery salary down to my progeny. Even if they do choose to become an orthopedic surgeon, they're going to have to do the work themselves.

And this really, I mean, I could help them to prepare for the- exams. I can help them to, you know exactly what the next steps are. But there's really no way for me to pass down my highly paid skill work, because that's what I am. I'm a highly skilled worker to them.

And so, for a long time, since I started practice, just a little over nine years ago, I always wanted to figure out ways to create passive income. And I started with single family, quickly realized that the cash flow wasn't as impressive as I wanted. And I wasn't as excited about managing tenants, you know, termites and toilets, like they say. And then I also did some angel investment.

But that like I probably know it's a high-risk, high-reward type play. Sure. You're typically spraying and praying, you know, you're investing in a bunch of companies and you hope that maybe 20-30% of make up for the entire investment and do well. introduced me to multi-family real estate.

And when I discovered the wealth creation abilities of multi-family, I was like, wow, this is incredible. Started asking people a in my network, a you know, and just did a straw poll of them and realized that most people in the healthcare field just did not know that it was possible to pull resources to buy this large cash flowing multi-family assets. And then I also started to go to some conferences and quickly realized that, you know, I was seeing a lot of the MBAs, a lot of CPAs, a lot of JDs, a lot of, you know, real estate folks from different backgrounds, but ELSK professionals were not well represented in the cross section of people that we were seeing. So me and my partners then at that point figured that there was a great opportunity here bring the gospel of multifamily real estate to our communities of healthcare professionals, of underrepresented minorities.

Obviously, we take money from everybody who wants to invest in us, but we center those avatars. And it's been an incredible journey in the Nice, nice. Yeah, I've got you know, I was just mentioning to you, before Rwe started, I've got a mastermind that it's coming up in June. And it's I hosted three times a year, it's called the multifamily boardroom.

And I've got a couple of doctors that are in there, they're brothers. And, you know, they've got a few thousand doors. And they do the same thing. In fact, they wrote a book, I think, for health care professionals, because yeah, and I wanted you to say it, I didn say it, but you stop working, the revenue stops.

So that's why this business is so exciting. And you mentioned lots of other very technical, learned a higher education positions like JDs and engineers and so on and so forth that end up in this business, because it can become passive at some point. So let me ask you this. I mean, was there an aha moment when you're like, okay, I need to be doing this?

I mean, was there an epiphany moment or did it kind of build over time? Just maybe you can describe what happened. My epiphany moment was actually more gradual because we, I met my partner in the operating room. It was a certified, registered nurse and menestasis.

And I was replacing people's hips and knees and after surgery, we would get together and just talk a little bit about real estate and the powerful wealth creation abilities of multifamily real estate. And quickly by reading a lot of books, by listening to a lot of podcasts, I quickly realized that multif Rial estate was an incredible vehicle to creating wealth, not just for myself, but for our extended community. So, and once I took that straw poll of folks around us and realized that most people did not know about it, I knew that there was a great opportunity here to share about this with a lot of people. Yeah, you're kind of in the catbird seat because you're already in the community and a lot of operators want to break in to the medical community because it's high income.

And for the same reason that you're in it, as an opportunity for passive income that's much more secure than being an angel investor. I mean, yeah, you could be an angel investor and be probably more successful, but like anything, you need to study it and you didn't have the time to study it. You're busy fixing hips and knees and so on and so forth, right? And so, and that's the problem with a lot of these things is you can't dabble, and you were smart enough to get in there and really study, go to conferences, do those things so that you educated yourself because, you know, like anything, dabblers get crushed.

And so, in any business, whether you're investing in the a stock market, and why would you give your hard-earned money to somebody if you didn't know what it was? Which is a real argument for people to come to my boot camp, frankly. And so, you know, just if you're going to, even if you're going to invest passively, frankly, because it's just so risky. And, you you know, like as a stock market example, you know, those guys that sell you stocks, they're salespeople, they're not analysts, they're not, you know, experts in the business.

And it's the same thing, you know, and there's risks with what we do. You know, the operators that are. Especially right now, as aggressive as some of these people are being So let me ask you this That is a great question. I mainly focused on investor relations and the over leading the overall vision of the company as a CEO.

And my partner, Leslie, I was some focused on the operations and underwriting. And he loves, I mean, it's a genius with numbers and he knows how to work those really underwrite this properties quickly and efficiently. And my third partner, who is what we call Tenacious Tenning, actually moved this entire family, sold this home in the D.C. area, moved this entire a family to our target market.

You know, which is where, which is the Carolinas, you know, the South Carolina, Georgia, just the southeast U......, so it moved RI move this family there., I mean, you talk about unwavering faith, and even when we weren't really sure that we were going to close any deal, but you just knew that you needed to do it a pound in the pavements with the brokers and developing incredible. Relationships with them, and that has led to a lot of success for us. Yeah, that's fantastic. And that's what I look for my team as well is that desire.

you know, if that burning desire is there, all the other things will work themselves out. Yeah, there could be some slip ups and some mistakes and, you know, some false, you know, some false starts, but that's probably the most important thing. So, talk about the first deal you did, break that down a little bit. Where was it?

How many doors? How'd you find it? How'd you close it? You know, to break it down a little bit.

That's a great question. So the first deal we did but did with some more senior general partners. But I would love to talk about the first deal we did by ourselves. Okay, go there then.

But let me interject something. Let me inter Rject something before you go before you tell that story. Guys, this is how almost everybody starts. They align with a sponsor is what it's called.

And it's someone that's done some deals that has the Fannie Mae card or the Freddie Mac card. So they've got some experience, they satisfy the experience piece. And then very often, they'll help with the resume, with the liquidity and the net worth requirements, because you need a net worth equal to the loan amount. And you need liquidity post-closing equal to 10% of the loan amount.

So you bring somebody in that's done this before, they get a piece of the deal I, obviously. And sometimes they want to control the deal, which is understandable, since if you're a newbie. But, and we do this a lot. I mean, out of the, I don't know, 4,000 doors we've bought in the last few years, you know, it's been mostly from students bringing us deals and we sponsor them.

And so that's how people get started. So anyway, please tell us about the first deal you did on your own. That is so true. You can have said that more accurately.

But the first deal we did on our own, at this point, my partner had moved his family to our target market. a Another thing that and capturing all the information that you need for the SEC for the syndication there are software well software is the wrong word, there are you can utilize some are very expensive like juniper square and then and then there's others that are very expensive and there's others that are very, very reasonable and everywhere in between and some are newer than others and they've got pitfall and so you know we've gone through two of them now ourselves but that's I just want to wanted to give a little clarification on what a portal is. So please continue. Thank you.

And then for a acquisition pipeline, we also created a pipeline, a way to track all the acquisitions, know which one that's been underwritten, which one it's in. And so, and everybody was on the same page about, you know, what was going. And then we decided, listen, what, how many deals do we need to underwrite to achieve end of the year. And so, and we just reversed engineer that.

Whatever that was, we held ourselves accountable to those numbers. So I am super freaking excited. Why am I excited? Because our next three day live boot camps in Denver, which is my old stomping ground.

Now, if you haven't been to one of my three day boot camps, my super early bird pricing is ridiculously reasonable at $197 for the entire three day event, especially because there's no sales pitch. It's just three days of training about every aspect of this business from picking an area, to building a team, to finding deals, to evaluating those deals, to networking. It's incredible because you know this business is a team sport to be able to raise them out that we. Right.

What we plan what software. what to use to try to use your a ground break ground breaker, but I'm using syndicate. and syndication. the ability as well as, well, I'm sure it does, and we throw links in there to all the a documents, to the old brokers, OAMs, to all of that stuff so that everything's right there.

Yeah, love it. And guys, this is how, you know, every business out there, including this one is nothing but people and systems. You get the right people and you put together the right systems, and success is inevitable. So, love it.

And now what did you do to make your meetings more efficient? I mean, we implemented the entrepreneurial operating system. You did EOS traction. Fantastic.

So we had. Everybody read the Geno Wigman traction book and pretty much implemented it to the team. Let me expand on that too as well. You bring up some great stuff up.

up. So guys, in fact, I fact, I introduced this to my mastermind members. E R S is an entrepreneurs operating a system is a name given to a system by a guy named Geno Nobody's accountable, so it does that. It helps you, gives you a framework to get, to focus on the next 90 days goals, and they call them rocks, a bit their goals for the next 90 days outcomes that are committed, that you're committed to accomplishing.

And, it's been fantastic for us, and we had our normal weekly morning meeting this morning, and then every quarter you do a leadership meeting, which we're actually next week, quarterly leadership is next week to reestablish our next, 90 day goal. Yeah, rocks they're called. And so, you know, it's a very, very great system for once you get your company, I wish I'd known about it 10 years ago and other companies that I've owned. But it's, you know, it's interesting, Julius, we were talking about, I was telling you about that gentleman that I forgot to hit the record button, Albert.

His company was actually referenced in that book He was one of the case studies. Yeah. So I called Albert. I was like, holy shit.

You were in this book that we were one of the first ones. But so yeah, that's fantastic. I'm really glad you brought that up Yeah. So what did you have to give up to or sacrifice to get to the success that you have now?

And forgive me, I forget to call you doctor. Yeah, it's fine. Juliely, this is completely fine. That is a great question.

I mean, there's no free lunch and certainly if you doing what we are doing, and literally have a- day job, which I love dearly and I truly enjoy, and also had on, this awesome responsibility of helping people create wealth through my family real estate. Something has got to give. But I give credit to my family. They're super understanding.

My wife has been incredibly supportive. There's certainly times when I've had to go to a deal to do some due diligence, and that would be at the expense of having to spend some time with family, but she's been incredibly understanding. And when I'm around, I do my best to make sure that I'm very intentional about spending significant time with them because without them, I wouldn't be able to do it. Well, we do it all for them.

Honestly, that's the bottom line. If you get right down to it. And the key is to be present when you're with them, you know, your kids and your spouse would rather have a 15 minutes of your total presence than an hour of distraction. And so, you know, and so, I mean, you're still doing this on the side, you're still a surgeon.

Yeah. And guys, that's what's possible. That's what's so exciting about this business. I mean, don't tell me what you do is any more complicated or consuming than what Dr.

Julius here does. And I'm going to tell you that, you know, and I've got scores, you know, lots of students that have retired from very high paying, you know, six-figure jobs like, you know, we're talking, we've been talking about doing this on the side with kids, with spouses and the whole thing and so it's absolutely doable. So, you know, let me ask you this because you're the CEO of your company and what do you think is a characteristic that one or more characteristics that leaders should possess, okay, as they're leading their team? Because guys, you know, if you're watching this, I know you're a leader.

If you're listening or watching this show right now, you're a leader. And you know, right now the freaking world leads these leaders. More than ever before. So share some insights on what you believe characteristics of leadership possess one or more.

I think a leader needs to have- incredible emotional intelligence. You have to be able to know exactly when to push and pull and who to push and pull when and at what time you do it. employees or partners may need, there may be times when they just need encouragement, when they need, you know, just to be, you know, just need some TLC, you know, if you want to call it that. And some other times, they just need to be pushed, they need to be, you know, I'm called out in with love, but call that.

And so, but being able to know when to push and pull, being able to know, you know, the motivations of the people that work with you, and to align the overall mission and vision of the entire company with those motivations. I think it's been some of the insights that I've learned over the last two years. Oh, that's incredible advice. Now, let me ask you this.

How. How did you hone your emotional intelligence? How did you grow on that? I know how I did mine.

I'm just curious how you did it? It just happened naturally or did you study or go to any courses or do anything? So I mean, I think it's a combination of things. Obviously, been in it for about nine years, been an orthopedic surgeon.

You are automatically a leader in that operation. So yes, in my first few years of practice when something went wrong, you know, I, you know, smashed out a little bit and what, you know, overreacted. But then as you developed, you quickly realize that once you overreacts, now you make everybody completely nervous. And then people can I.

Give their best to that patient. Same with real estate, you know, you just have to be I quickly learned over time just to be able to kind of take a deep breath and analyze its situations, analyze it, figure out how best respond to it, knowing that, you know, responding to it in a knee-jerk fashion could potentially lead to things being said that I can't take back. And this is the emotional intelligence I've developed over the years has not just helped me with the real estate company, it's helped me with family, it's helped me with work. But for me, also I need to take some classes at the Cary School of Business at Johns Hopkins where I work, and so I was able to, you know, learn a little bit also there about some of the qualities you need.

And I read a lot, I podcast, and I have, you know, in the morning, I have my morning routine, including, you know, meditation, exercise, and reading, focused on the Very nice, very, very nice. You know, I will tell. And that is that they all meditate. In fact, I was just listening to Hugh Jackman yesterday when I was exercising and he meditates, and I was like, that's a clue.

You know why that's a big clue is because what does meditation enhance your focus, right?. So let me, you know, Dr. You know that I've got a lot of aspiring investors that listen to this show. I mean, I'm blessed to have them come full circle all the time and they, you know, they've started by listening and now that, you know, they've implemented, but.

But they're a lot that haven't taken action yet that know they need to do more and out of fear or limiting beliefs or comfort even they haven't taken action. What would you say to those people? First, I would say the journey of a thousand miles, you know, start with that first step. Yeah.

So you just. need to take that first step. And that first step, you know, maybe, you know, getting a mentor, maybe going to the like a master class, maybe investing in educational material so that you can start to speak the language because commercial medicine in general,. It's a completely different language.

And then those people need to start identifying as what they aspire to be. One of my greatest challenge when I took on this challenge of exploring commercial real estate was the inevitable identity crisis that comes from trying to identify now as a real estate investor. I was for several years, I've always identified as an orthopedic surgeon, as a hip and knee-replacement surgeon, and that was my identity. So when this opportunity came and we decided that we were going to go out and spread the word in our communities, I was like, what are people going to think?

Are they going to think that maybe things are not working out well? in orthopedic surgery are they still going to respect me as an academic orthopedic surgeon, and those fears almost stopped me from moving forward. No kidding. Wow.

But then I quickly realized that after reading, I have to listen to a lot of podcasts like yours and others. I quickly started to realize that, you know what, I am presenting an opportunity to these folks. And someone had told me in one of those books or podcasts that, you know, you need to start identifying as what you aspire to be. And so when I would introduce myself in any forum, I would say, I'm Dr.

And before he was comfortable with it. And the opposite actually happened. People didn't say, Oh, why are you doing this when you're an open surgeon? They were like, wow, this is incredible that you discovered this and you're sharing it with us.

How can what can we do to go on this journey with you? And that has been the incredible insight for me. So for those people that are not sure about how to get started yet, just take that first step of faith. Dr.

Dr. Martin Luther King, take that first step in faith, and the next step will be revealed. I love it. Listen, and by the way, something you said is something I teach heavily, and that is anything you put the words I am in front of as an identity statement, and you were struggling with your identity, and then you just incorporated real estate investing.

I am in orthopedic surgeon and a real estate investor. You just added an and you owned it. And when you say, I am enough times, I am this, I am not enough times. In fact, that's one of the things we do my bootcamp is an identity statement that starts with the words, I am because you know, the more you can identify with what it is that you want, that you aspire to be, it pulls you into it.

And so it's a very powerful exercise. We do my boot camps, but and then you own it. It just, it becomes you. It just, it's just, it's your identity.

So no, that's a great, great answer. So what is your definition of success? My definition of success is the ability, so my life's vision is to improve access to musculoskeletal care in low to middle income countries starting with Nigeria and beyond. Wow.

And I've worked very carefully over the last several years to try to achieve that vision, and by doing some charitable trips, just like one we just came from in Nigeria where we did free total joint replacements for people that couldn't afford it. And my company was actually lucky to be a sponsor, a co-sponsor of that effort. And it was my nonprofit that we, I co-founded with other surgeons that also led that effort. So in a perfect world, I would have financial orthopedic surgeon, and particularly a joint replacement surgeon because my grandma's mother, my paternal grandmother in the last three years of her life had end stage arthritis of the knees and there was no surgeon to fix her knees.

And so now when I get a chance to fix other people's mothers and fathers and grandmas and grandpas and uncles and aunties, it just makes me feel like. I'm living fully in my purpose. Particularly when I'm able to do it for folks that can actually afford it, it's I can't describe to you how amazing that feels. I know how amazing it feels.

That's awesome. That is so awesome, brother. And guys, I want you to pay attention to something. He instantly was able to carefully and concisely articulate his vision and mission in life.

Do you know how powerful that is? Because he knows what it is. and so he's living it right now and you know I'm so impressed with that my friend and I don't in fact I don't want to go any further than that. I want to end on that because that is so freaking powerful.

Thank you so much. Very impressive. Very impressive my friend. Thank you so much.

This has been a real treat and you know I spoke to your meetup once, and it was a blessing R. And I had no idea you were a doctor then you're very humble as well and so, but very impressive. Well, thank you. It's great to see you, my friend, and I'm sure we'll stay in touch.

Thank you so much for inviting me on your platform, Rob. It's an incredible honor. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Lifetime Cash-Flow through Real Estate Investing Podcast.

If you've enjoyed the show, please take a minute to visit iTunes and leave your comments. For more resources or to connect with us further, please visit our website at rodcleef.com. Tune in next week for our next show.

As an immigrant chasing the American dream, I came in with very high ambitions. I didn't feel like I was satisfied where I was at. I felt like there had to be more out there for me. And the next thing I thought of, which is what most of us think of, is get another degree, get another job.

I discovered that real estate is truly a good vehicle to invest in. And that might provide me something else to do while I work as a nurse and aesthetics. came across multi-family and the buttons just click. When we decided to go into multi-family investing, we decided to go all in and put everything else aside.

There are a lot of people that are wishful that would say, I want to do this, but when it comes time to do the work, they don't do the work. It doesn't matter who you pay and what we've learned is the more work we put in, the more our mentors want to help us, want to push us to move forward. You got to have along the way. If you go to the multifamily space, if you like go to conferences, go to all these places, you don't see a lot of immigrants like us, you don't see a like of us over there.

You don't see a lot of people that have stepped out of that herd, we work hard. It takes breaking out that fear. That's probably the most difficult part, like breaking through those years. Mindset has been so important, Reuben, it's been so fundamental to my growth and our growth as a company.

I thought that I had to go ask people for money. I wasn't coming from a congruent place inside, deep inside of me, I really did not believe that I was giving that value. I felt a lot like I was asking the investor for money is like the investor is doing me a favor. And there's something that does not connect when you come from that kind of a place.

The most important part of character raising number one is that you believe in the value that you're providing. And when you believe in the value that you're providing, you attract people, you attract the right people that come to you. Go talk to people about what you do. Enjoy the fact that you're doing it.

Give them the value. and you won't have to chase anybody to come in best. If this guy could do it, then I could do it too.

Rock and roll. I got Leslie awesome on the Capital Racers show. How are you and my Rea? Tastic room, but I love that.

This is great. I love it. and how you got invited to Jerome Meyers' event. Thanks, first of all, Ruben for having me.

On your show, man. It's an honor. It's an honor to be here. I am Leslie, I'm the Rector of Operations at XSITE Capital Investments, a company we founded in 2019.

Two of my partners and I. And along the way, a Jerome Meyers is somebody that I've always looked up to and admired. My love is authenticity. He's somebody that I've reached out to on multiple occasions to ask questions about different things.

Visited him in Greensboro a while back. And we, he probably fitted us to a beautiful breakfast, one of his best parts over there in Greensboro. So I liked Jerome. Jerome is a great guy and I, look up to Jerome a lot.

So it was an honor for me when Jerome reached out to me this year and asked me to contribute to his Mid-Atlantic Investing Conference. So I was truly honored to be part of it. Again, just trying to share our story and share our experience and provide value to whoever we can. Like same thing, like you guys are doing, copying from the best.

Awesome. Okay. So let's dive a bit into your story. Tell us about, where are you from?

How did you get into this multi-family game? Where are you at today? Let's start there and then we. I'll go into the future of XSITE Capital.

So absolutely, I'm originally from Cameroon, small country in Central Africa, migrated to the US in May 15th of 2000. As an immigrant chasing the American dream, I came in with very high ambitions, looking to make the best out of the society that I had the privilege of being a resident of. So when I came in, my initial plan was this same plan, like most people, go to school, get a great job, and then retire and everybody that I saw around me was going on that same path. Couple of experiences along the way, switch majors from computer science to healthcare, got into nursing.

Then in nursing, I was like, now I need to do more. So I didn't feel like I was satisfied where I was at, I felt they had to be more out there for me. And the next thing I thought of, which is what most of us think of is get another degree,. Get another job.

Right. So I looked into my field and saw anesthesia as a good option, like a challenging field to get into. And the benefits as an anesthesia I love the value that I'm like this is that work for all these hours. so ask someone like this is real, this is it proof of concept?

I got to dig in deeper and on top of that. I really enjoyed the process. I got took a 2-week vacation off of work to supervise the construction and renovating of that condo unit. And Rubenutes was probably one of the best 2 weeks of my life.

I spent hours and hours at the property going back and dealing with contractors and all of that. And for somebody else, it might have been challenging but I really enjoyed it. So that spoke to me that the whole real estate thing. is something.

So as I We started at we were the at that time, he was like the first person that I saw in my immigrant community. That was reading books on personal development, that was reading autobiographies and stuff. So that really meant something to me. So he my night started hanging out every Friday night, we'll meet at a little boardroom, like a coffee shop where they play board games and we'll play Robert Kiyosaki's game.

Catch flow. Yeah. I love that game. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So every Friday night we'll meet and play cash flow one-on-one and just talk business, talk about life. At some point we were like, he was like, I've always wanted to get in real estate too.

You already in it. So why don't we just partner up and do something? And we say, yeah, let's do it. I think you are here because he, I saw him.

He has a lot of the qualities that I don't have. I saw him as somebody that I could learn from and somebody that I could grow by being associated with. So we decided to partner up then went into research mode to figure out what aspect of real estate we should focus in on. Came across multi-family and the buttons just clicked so and then we just dove in deep dive into multi-family on this new studying and started the company.

Along the way we felt like we were getting stuck the growth was getting stuck. We started asking ourselves like what else can we do to move ourselves forward. We knew at that point that we needed somebody else to come on board and be part of the movement and around the same time to Julius. Okay, it's just funny how things happen.

I'm just going to tell you the story because we had this opportunity among a deal. I think I talked about it at Jerome's event. We had an opportunity to be a part of a deal and we had to raise a certain amount of money to be on that deal. We were unsuccessful, bringing our own end of the capital to be part of the deal.

So after that meeting, we sat down and we were talking and having a conversation and trying to debrief and talking about what way to go next and I kept telling you that there's this guy that I work with that I know this business will be like a perfect fit for him that his name I said his name b is Dr. Julius Oni. He's an orthopedic surgeon. I work with him all the time.

He invests in single family. He's like I know that he could be like a perfect investor for these assets. and Ruben like life as life happens in crazy ways about a month later Dr. Oni calls And he was like, Leslie, I've seen your events.

I've seen what you guys are doing. I'd like to talk to you and your partner. Teddy and I jumped on the phone, got on the phone with Dr. Oni and he was like, I just don't want to be an investor.

I love what you guys are doing. I want to be part of it. I want to be a partner. So, and we got on a call spoke for about two hours and everything just clicked.

like on multiple ways, just so grateful to be part of it. Cool, there's so many things that I could talk about in what you just said. Let me ask you a little bit more about when you first started getting into multifamily and then started getting stuck, you were unable to raise capital, you ended up working with another doctor to get into larger and larger deals or perhaps form this new partnership. Tell me about this transition because I don't think that you started going from single family into large multifamily syndication.

Was there a transition? Were there joint ventures? Were you trying to take down 20 unit properties with your own cash? Tell me about that little moment in history.

What was going on? I when we decided to go into multi-family investing, we decided to go all in and put everything else aside. One of the things we started looking into was to look at bigger properties. Our first initial deal was like a co-general partnership which I joined one of our mentors on his.

Brought in some of our investors in the deal R and then took participating in the asset management as well. So for us, that was a transition period where we were able to be a junior partners on the deal and then learn from a more experienced operator and learn the ropes after that went over to start leading on our own deals as well. Okay. Stop right there.

So you went from single family and I guess and gather that you were learning from a mentor about multifamily syndication and decided to take the jump past small multifamily or medium-sized multifamily right into a syndication by partnering with somebody that was already doing it and learning from them, bringing asset management skills and capital to the table. Is this correct so far? Yes, sir. Fantastic.

Fantastic, great. Okay, so how did you get hooked up with a mentor in that space? How did you find out about this because a lot of people don't skip that step. Tell me how did you do that?

One of the things we knew when we started was we did. Actually, our first initial mentor was some guy that the day we registered the company, the very first thing we did was to pay some guy we saw on Facebook that was advertising about Monte family. We paid him for his mentorship program and he just sent us a bunch of materials and we were on calls every month. And we just took it and ran with it.

And we took it and ran with it. But it wasn't really just a true mentorship program, like I said. But then, so along the way, we were like, well, we're not getting the true value from this that we felt like we were. And we were like, so what's next.

Let's look for a better, bigger program that gives us access to a larger network. Because one of the challenges we faced with that program was we didn't have the network. The program didn't have the network. And we knew that we needed to be in a much larger network to grow.

Rso we pay for another mentorship program and we got in there and started learning and got part of the network. We knew what we were going to get in there and we took food, went after that seriously so one of the things we did with that program was we called the coordinators and said, give us the name of every person that has gone to your program in the Maryland DC area that has been successful and they gave us names of about 18 people and we called every single one of them and tried to schedule a meeting to talk to them to learn from them just to pick their brain. About three of them responded and set appointments with us. Two of them ended up counseling but one of them showed up and the appointment and we drove all the way to Virginia to meet him and on the very first day we met him started talking to him like it just connected.

He saw us in himself so he gave us a chance. He was like, I like your tenacity, I like your hustle, I like where you guys are coming from, I like what you guys represent. So, I'll give you guys a shot. And that was the first deal that we had the opportunity to be part of where we were unable to come over the capital needed.

And he was like, I'm flying down to Atlanta tomorrow in two days. If you guys are serious, jump on a flight and meet me down in Atlanta for the intelligence. My partner, Tenny, did that. He flew down to Atlanta.

And during the flight, he sat in the same, met him at the airport. They flew together. So, and we just connected from that. And he just became like a big brother and a mentor for us in this space.

And I helped us a lot in our growth. Leslie, I can't tell you how many people I talk to that say, hey, I have no skillset or I don't know exactly how I'm gonna get in where I fit in. I don't know how I can just join some syndication group. I'm happy to pay for a mentorship program, but I keep on telling them over and that like when there is a business owner that sees a tenacity or some kind of willingness to work really hard in an individual, they very frequently will give them a chance.

Now, you just said that this is exactly what happened to you. And I kinda wanna question you about this particular aspect from the audience perspective. They're looking to get into syndication and they may not know exactly how to do it or if they need a mentor, but I can, guarantee, a lot of times if you're working really hard and can display that to a operator or a potential future partner, they pick up on that. Do you ever talk to people that kind of are in a similar situation?

What do you tell them? You know, I can't tell you the number of people that I've reached out and said they wanted to learn or they needed some kind of mentorship or guidance. And I've offered to reach out to me, whatever you do, I can help you or share the knowledge I have. I guess everybody has different motivations.

Well, you meet the people that I got, just brought someone on to our company as an intern and that is somebody that has that same kind of tenacity right from the very first time we met him. There are a lot of people that are wishful that would say I want to do this but when it comes time to do the work they don't do the work and even some people that pay for mentorships but they also want everything to be given to them without putting in the necessary work that you need to do to go in so I think that if you probably look at the stats for the mentorship program. some more than some other people. It's probably less than 50% of people that go to mentorships and actually go out and do something else because it doesn't matter what matters is the amount of work that you put in.

And what we've learned is the more work we put in, the more mentors want to help us, want to push us to move forward. I think it boils down to why you want to do this business in the first place because you got to have the reason, you got to have the strong reason why you want to do it to keep you pushing forward because they're going to be challenges along the way. Fascinating. Okay, so I'm kind of curious, what is your reason for why you want to do this?

And can you give any advice to somebody that says, hey, I have these reasons, but maybe they're just not compelling enough or things get in the way there's obstacles or limiting beliefs. Like, how do you break through that? How do you develop and really concentrate on that compelling reason that makes it so powerful that you go after it at a level that most people don't. You know, for me, Ruben, personally, I have to grow, like I have to be constantly growing to be happy.

Multifamily investing, provides me a space where I haven't grown so much as a person. Yeah. On a personal level for multiple forms, but I could have done the multifamily on my own or whatever or do it some other way. But for us as a company, the reason behind us really coming together and forming XSITE Capital is because when we started researching our multi-family, I remember the day very well, we were sitting in the Wegmans here in London, Maryland, and we were talking about it like if you go to the multi-family space, if you go to conferences, go to all these places, you don't see a lot of immigrants like us, you don't see a lot of us over there.

You don't see a lot of people that have stepped out of that herd because a lot of us immigrants that come here, we work hard, we go to school, we have great jobs, we earn really healthy salaries but very few of us look outside of that path. There's something else available I pulled a lot of my colleagues and talked to a lot of other people and none of them knew that multi-family investing exists. So we created our company so that we could go out and go after that demographic and tell them about what's happening over out in multi-family. So that's why it's so much fun for us to do it because when you start doing it you see the effect on the people that you're educating the people that you're exposing to this the light moment.

It's a wonderful experience, man. I'm just having a great time doing it. Yeah,. I wouldn't say it's just the immigrant community.

So like I spent a lot of time, my family's from Mexico and I've been and lived in Mexico a lot of times. And a lot of the people that I come across just randomly or people that I make friends with, they are really not entrepreneurial-minded. They have a lot of times either limiting beliefs or an inferiority complex and they think, Oh, that's for somebody else. I could never do that.

The entrepreneur, I'm kind of curious about this because immigrants that come to the United States are typically regarded as people that are really working hard. You come from Cameroon. I'd really love to kind of dive in. I'm guessing that it's very similar to Mexico where there's a few people that immigrate or a few people that are entrepreneurial minded, but the majority of the public are really not focused on creating wealth, but within this particular group and not just from Cameroon, but immigrants, whether they come from India or China or Ireland or Mexico or South America or wherever they come from, they typically have this drive to better themselves.

But for you specifically, when you came from Cameroon, what was it about you that allowed you to go and chase becoming an entrepreneur or was it just something that was inside always that everybody around me like they finally hit me in like sometime this summer that I was always looking for somebody like me right now to guide me to show me that there is more so I finally hit me that I'm becoming that person that I was always looking for so when I came here in my community it's my community is made of hard workers when I came here Ruben my mother brought us all from Cameroon at the same time my three siblings and I and my mother is a nurse I told you, Lorraine, she used to work 80 hours a week to take care of us. Like she worked her tail off to make sure that we had enough to eat a place to live and had everything that we needed here. And that is the similar story of a lot of people in the immigrant community. Like I have friends that have like seven or eight degrees that are very intelligent, go to all the schools and they have jobs.

And the only way we see is get another job. I know people that have two, three jobs. But as. You and I know there's another path out there, but it takes breaking out that fear breaking through that those limiting beliefs then to be able to see that and that's probably the most difficult part like breaking through those years.

It wasn't easy for me. I'll tell you, it wasn't easy for me. I'm grateful that I met someone. like Tenny, who didn't have some of the limiting beliefs that I had.

And so I kind of piggyback behind his courage and was able to break through some of those fears. Then the light things became started becoming more clear and clearer for me. Did you think that you were going to be an entrepreneur when you first came to the country? I just knew I was going to do something big.

I just didn't know what it was. Yeah, I've always had that in my mind right from a little boy, but I just didn't know what it was. I just knew that I wanted to contribute something significant. Cool.

A lot of times I have guests on, we talk about their story, we go into their business model, how they raise capital and stuff. And then the second time they come around, I kind of talk more about their background and their mindset and dive deeper into that. I don't know when you're going to be coming back on the show. So I'd rather instead of waiting for two years or a year before you come back on, I'd like to take a little bit of time to kind of dive into the mindset.

I know that you've read a lot of books, you started some meditation practice. I love talking about meditation. I kind of wanted to spend a little time before we go into capital raising and then the lightning round talking about what it is that you do and how important it is in terms of meditation and mindset for you to have success as an entrepreneur in this foreign country to you. Tell me more about what is your meditation practice?

What do you do to create success in terms of raising capital and having success in your multifamily business? Like I explained to you, one of the things Robert also talked about in that book was meditation, like meditation. Robert talked about meditation. Yeah.

I've never heard him talk about meditation. It's written in his book. He mentioned meditation that it works for some people, but he doesn't do it. His sister is a Buddhist monk, I believe, or something like that.

Wow. One of the things he talked about was. Like successful people that mentioned that. And some of the other books I started reading also talked about meditation.

I didn't quite know what meditation was, at that point, but I was at a point in my life where I knew there had to be more and I was willing to try anything to find out what that more. So I, along the way, I came across the, I don't know if you heard about this platform called Mindvalley, I came across the Mindvalley platform by Vishen Lekiani and he teaches six phase meditation that goes through. It's a guided meditation that goes through six phases. Gratitude, forgiveness, visualizing and all that stuff.

So I started trying it out. I started practicing it out for the first couple of weeks. It didn't mean anything to me, but after. About two months, I started seeing a difference in my mood, in my attitude, the way I was carrying myself and going about life, my outlook on life.

It started changing. And if I go a day without doing it, I feel like something significant in my life was missing. So then it became real to me that this meditation stuff, there's something powerful behind it. And the more I read more books now, impersonal of my understanding, just having that moment in the morning to quiet down your mind, just let your thoughts go away and just quiet.

Right now, sometimes I do the guided meditation. Sometimes I just listen to my heartbeat for about 20 minutes in the morning. And that just gets me in a very nice space for me to be able to go about my day, to conquer anything that comes along. And mindset has been so important, Robin, it's been so fundamental to my growth and our growth as a company.

We all study a lot of personal development, and we all practice stuff to help us grow as individuals. So the mindset has been very, very powerful. I. I always say that I got into real estate because I was looking for to create another But then I got into real estate and grew into somebody else.

Like, because I got into, yeah, because I got into real estate, my health got better because I got into real estate, my relationships got better. I got better friends. My finances got better. Every aspect of my life got better.

So that has been a fundamental piece of everything that we do. And I encourage anybody that is looking into real estate, overall, if. If it connects to you, dig in, dive in more and it's going to be helpful, yeah. Okay.

So you knew nothing about meditation from your time in Cameroon. Everything that you learned about meditation and spiritual practices, or maybe a good chunk of it, at least in terms of real estate is stuff that you picked up here in the United States. Is that correct? Absolutely.

And growing up in Cameroon, I was raised Catholic. My parents are Catholic. I switched over to the Protestant church later on in life, but all I learned from the way religion was stuck to me was about prayers and going to church and stuff like that. And I was never taught, I never knew anything about meditations, at least as the way I practice meditations.

Whatever religion or thing that you do that makes you a better person, that's great. However, I do get concerned with fear-based practices because it's kind of the opposite, at least in terms of my perspective of what meditation is because meditation is never fear-based. And when you're, you never ask for things from a place of need. need money, or I need health, or I need love, or I need this.

Would you please send it to me? It's like more from a place of gratitude of like, oh, I'm already connected to this person that I want to, attracted to my life. I'm already attracted to these people that will do business with me that I can help. They're looking for me just as much as I'm looking for them.

And I'm so grateful for it. It's a completely different perspective. I absolutely agree with you. What I've learned is religion or any kind of spiritual practice is highly dependent on this perspective of a teacher, of the teacher.

Some of the same things that are learned in church that I learned now, the perspective that I see now is different. Some of the same texts can be interpreted to enslave you or can be interpreted to empower you. Oh, that's so perfect. Unfortunately, in a lot of societies around the world, especially in some of the societies that we come from, it's been used predominantly to enslave people.

Not to say they're not areas where it can empower people but at least from my own experience and the exposure that I had, it's been used that way but there's so much power in any spiritual practice when it is used to empower the individual because at the end of the day spirituality is all about connecting with yourself or connecting to your higher being or whoever you want to call it. So it's amazing how when you get that true connection to yourself, true connection to your God, and then amazing things that happening in your life. Oh, this has been so fantastic. All right.

So tell me a little bit about what you've learned about capital raising along the way. You mentioned that you failed at your first capital raise. What did you learn from that? The biggest thing I learned from that was about connecting to your wife, you know, letting everybody know what your wife is and being true to yourself.

A lot of times when we get into it, this is like, I thought that I had to go ask people for money. Even though starting off the company, we knew this was like a great opportunity that we're providing to the community, just that thought of going out and talking to people and presenting the opportunity for them to invest in. I wasn.t coming from a congruent place. What I mean is inside, deep inside of me, I really did not believe that II was giving that value.

I felt like I was asking the investor for money, the investor is doing me a favor and there's something that does not connect when you come from that kind of a place and it doesn't matter what kind of marketing skills or whatever you're going to come across as you're trying to manipulate somebody. So I think the most important part of capital raising number one is that you believe in the value that you're providing and when you believe in the value that you're providing, you attract people, you attract the right people that come to you and for us that has been my story from connecting to why we're doing this in the first place, coming out more and talking to more people and one of the other powerful things that has been very instrumental in our growth and capital raising is the value that we give. When the more value you give to people, when you become known as a person that gives value, it just brings the right set of people to you and going out there talking to people, being authentic, being true to yourself and believing in the product that you're providing out to the people. So, and investing in myself for the people that are out listening that I think a lot of them, particularly listeners So this show understand that adding value is the key.

They've heard it over and over. It's almost like a cliche. How do you do it if you're trying to figure out, and what did you do in particular to add more value to the community and connect with people? We educate people, to our meetup on a monthly basis.

We bring experts around to come and talk to develop for our multi-family. For me at my place of employment, at my job in the hospital, I became known as a real estate guy, and everybody that had any kind of real estate issues was always reaching out to me. I'm always ready to talk to people and guide them or teach or educate them on R different aspects of real estate and even multi family investing. And our approach is usually we will educate you it doesn't matter if you invest with us or whatever, right?

The most important thing is that you take that knowledge and go use it for yourself and use it for your family. So I don't come from a place of oh, if I talk to you, I'll need you to invest in me. I had to explain to, you know, show, you know, so key that is so key is like, Hey, go out there and make friends, not go make clients. Exactly.

And exactly. It cannot be a transactional relationship. It cannot be a transactional conversation. Go talk to people about what you do.

Enjoy the fact that you're doing it. Give them the value and you won't have to chase anybody to come in best for you. Yeah, they will self-select and come to the people that they resonate with. One last question real quick before we jump into the lightning round.

Are there any tools or systems that you use today that you didn't use in the beginning and what are they? Yeah, we use EOS system, Entrepreneur Operating System, which we learn from traction. And it has just been very, very key in having us really focusing on the direction that company is going and having our meetings very structured and our weekly objectives and goals, very structured. It's a great system for any small entrepreneurial company to use.

So I really like it. Is this a tool for capital racing or something else? Oh, no, no, just for business. Are you talking about a tool for capital raising?

I'm specific about capital raising. Well, we use our syndication pro for one of the sponsors shout out to them. Yeah. So we use that for like having our investors onboarded and having people look at our sample deals and making sure that this is something that they're comfortable with investing and we use that a lot.

Yes. Yeah. And just before we jump into the lightning round, anybody that's interested in trying out syndication pro, if you go to their website syndication pro.com and mention the Capital is guiding me towards wherever, whatever desires that I have. instead inside of feeling bad for having desires than things that haven't been.

I love that. OK, I know that you like to fly road. What's your favorite aspect of flying. Is just the perspective of the wall that you see with the about being able to observe you able to observe in So that was one of those things that I enjoyed doing.

Just spending time, taking pictures and playing with it so. Is it a reasonable hobby in terms of price or is it very expensive? It can get expensive. AnLA alright.

How about this, Matt? How long do you want to live? Still, I'm a 107. Woo, okay.

Name. An irrational fear that you have or that you used to have. I'm afraid of the water. That's when we realized that I could really connect to the water.

Like I did in the Key UK, because I had a near drowning experience as a child. So that kind of trauma. traumatized me a little bit. So going in the water was also me trying to face my irrational fears and I felt so at home so at peace in the water so yeah.

I love it. What do you do in order to elevate yourself in terms of creating greater success? I invest in my mindset. How do you do that?

I read every day or I listen to an audio that has to do with mindset. I'm always involved in some kind of a mindset cause or coaching program at every time of the year. That's amazing. Have you ever experienced a miracle or had a near-death experience?

My life is a miracle, Roman. Right! That's the answer. That's the answer, man.

Everything I'm driven of, everything I visualized, this is all coming, I'm creating it. So my life is a miracle. That's fantastic. I love when people say that.

And for a near-death experience, I had one. I had a car accident. It was like November 18, 2002. I fell asleep on the wheel and got into a head on collision and had to be air-lifted to the hospital.

Yeah, so that was a near death experience for me. I hadn't heard about that. We'll have to chat about this more in the future. What's your favorite part about being a dad?

Oh man, the opportunity to mentor my kids and the opportunity to see them grow. Just to be there to answer some of the questions is like the best part for me. One last question asked by Sheena Amigo, one of our great listeners. What impact would you like to leave in the world.

I would like to be the person's like I like to be someone that serves as an example and an inspiration to other people like me that come from very little means that have big dreams so that always want them more for themselves I want to be that one of those people that you can look up to and said if this guy could do it then I could do it too so I just hope to continue being an example for others to be able to look up to. Yeah, that's a key philosophy thinking that if other people can do it, you can do it too. It's really one of my models. All right.

Shout out to the capital razor nation. Thanks for tuning in. Please take a minute today and leave us a five star review. If you've been liking the show and you haven't left that, man, I'm actually calling you out.

Please leave us that review. We actually need that in order to get great. guests like Leslie on here. Shout out to legacy acquisitions, my company, Check us out at legacy acquisition.com to our sponsor, Syndication Pro, Good Egg Investments, Kate and Patel, Jerome Myers, and check out our capitalrazorshow.com website.

It's got a lot of episodes and great resources on there. Leslie, what's the best way for the audience to get a hold of you? xicapital.com Join our meetup, the exciting world of multifamily investing. We host our meetup every first Monday of the month is on zoom.

Join us. We have exciting guests and exciting topics. So it's looking to educate and give value. So come be part of the community.

We look forward to chatting with you and connecting with you. All right, cool, man. I look forward to following you and hanging out with you and having you

Welcome to the Multifamily Investor Nation podcast. I'm your host, Dan Hanford, one of the in Columbia, South Carolina. Not too far from me where I'm at right now. I'm only about 10 minutes from this property.

So let me turn it over to you first, Julius, and let you just do some introductions Thank you, so much, Dan. Thanks for having us in your podcast. It's been a long time coming and we are super excited to be here. I am Dr.

Julius Oni. I'm the CEO and co-founder at XSITE Capital and I'm here with me today, Mr. Leslie Awasom, our Director of Operations and also my Co-Founder. And last but not least, our tenacious Mr.

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That's passiveinvesting.com. Investing involves risks, including possible loss of principle a targeted returns are not guaranteed. Please review the offering documents before investing. Well, it's exciting to have all three of you on ahead and dive right into this acquisition.

And first, I'm not sure who's going to get started with us. you guys kind of just play off and if you will, but how did you guys originally find and source this particular deal? We started XSITE Capital about two years ago. And very shortly afterwards, got an opportunity to acquire a property in Washington DC without mentors, Viking Capital at that time.

So 49 unit in Washington DC. And shortly after that acquisition was in July, 2020. Shortly after that, we had to decide where R2 target market was gonna be. And after doing quite a bit of research and looking at the migratory trends over the last decade and looking forward, into the next decade, we noticed that a lot of people were moving from the north, from the east, from the west to certain places in the country.

And the recipient of a lot of that migration were places like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Florida. So we had to decide where we were going to find our flag. Around that time, we settled on, the great states in Georgia. And our, one of our partners, Tenny, did an amazing thing at that point.

He sold his house in DC, moved his family to Charlotte, North Carolina, so that it could be boots on ground and actually so that we can be just as competitive as anybody else in that market. There it started in August, 2020, Tenny moved this family to Charlotte, North Carolina, started looking for deals. So Tenny was knocking at the doors of the brokers, setting up meetings. There was a time when it drove three hours R down to see a broker for a 15 hour meeting and drove three hours right back.

So six hours just for a 15 minute meeting. But guess what that turned out to, a Now, I was penciling. I finally were on, I now pencil, after six. the barrels initially, and that at some point, maybe the middle of the barrel and eventually we got a pretty decent deal that actually penciled.

So it was an awesome trajectory for us to go through that. So once you got this deal, you kind of underwrote the deal, went and toured the property and you put your initial offer and this LOI, walk us through that initial LOI. What kind of like terms did it have in there and kind of earnest money deposit that it had in there? Or did you leave some of that for negotiating points to later on down the road?

got to some of the best and final, and we got to do that best and final round. We submitted the offer. In terms, the deal was $12.5 million. We put in an offer, 30 days inspection period, 30 days, close.

I think we did a 15 days extension and the offer. was actually accepted by the broker. But, they turned around and we have another group that the bseller have a better relationship with. thousand dollars to the price.

Uh, that made it, I think 12.55 million. So that's how we got to deal on the contract and close the name, what kind of earnest money deposit did you have on this one? About 100,000. So, 125,000, was the Earnest Money Deposit.

And, was any portion So we now have this deal under R contract has s been awarded to you or now on the due diligence period. Can you talk to us about any types of things that might have came up during the due diligence process that might be interesting to talk about. One of the reasons why we wanted the dual back was because there was a flood in that property. I bought a year prior to us taking it over.

over when that previous buyer went and saw the flood history without doing much investigation, he backed out of the deal and that came to us. So that's one of the things that we focus our due diligence on trying to figure out if that flood was something that's a one-time event or that's something that happens on frequently. What we realize is there's like a sewage line. There- there's like a line that passes around the building, which the city of Columbia takes care of, that had been clogged up for a while and was not taken care of.

That's why there was a flood in that particular property in property. And that was something We really worked, a property management team, which are reassured us that is something that we should not R. R did a little bit of more investigation and we were comfortable going into the property at that point in a time. completed everything.

We're happy to go ahead and move forward with the property. Were there any the lender required like CapEx things that you had to address? Yes, the lender I required us to do. I think it was about $ innovations or those CapEx items?

Absolutely. We're trying to get us, most of that money back right now. We just received file for some of it. And we were just talking about it earlier this morning.

So we are filing to get the. R of it, because all of that is completed right now. Sure. Sure.

Walk me through what you're doing for property R management. I know you mentioned third party. Are you still doing third party management on this? And if so, who are you using and how have they been and various things like that?

Yes. We using third party and we're using first R communities management. They've been amazing. What we didn't mention.

What we didn't mention was they were with us from the beginning of this journey from the acquisition phase. one. This is like one was to do a renovate 88 of the units. The prior owner had done 10 of those units and was getting an average rent of about $125.

So our initial plan was to do the rest of those do about 88 more of those units and then take advantage of that rent bomb. We rebranded the property as well which was part of our business plan from Churchill to the view at St. Andrews. We renovated the leasing office which got completed like a couple months ago from like the old 70s leasing office that they look like to a more modern leasing office with a little workout studio that's in there so you walk into the property and it gives you adding a nice barbecue area also cleaning the pool area to add more modern furniture and make it look riser so the exterior wise walking into the property, you get a more different feel, and we are renovating the interior.

So our plan was to renovate about four units a month, going We've been able to rent maybe about six units right now, but it's still meeting all of our, it's still exceeding all of our projections because of the organic rent growth that has happened into the property so far. What's the overall CAPEX budget for the interiors? The overall CAPEX budget for interior was about $597,000, I believe so. So 597, that was just for the 88 units, correct?

Correct. So right at about $6,800 a unit, somewhere around in there. And how much did you budget for the exterior? We had a total of about $352,000 budgeted for exterior.

Okay. And does that including the 177 and required CapEx as well? No, it doesn't. Okay.

Roughly about $540,000 somewhere out of there. Correct. They're kind of the original business plan or projection was to be able to achieve at least $125 rent bump. What are you getting on those renovated units?

And then what are you getting on the just organic turnover that your research you're seeing from the organic rent growth for the organic rent growth, we're getting average, of about $152 in rent bombs since April of this year, since April of 2021, sorry. And for the unit renovations, we're getting $150 in rent bombs from the renovations. So exceeding the numbers that we projected on even on the rent growth. I mean, to me, when I look at that as I go, there's no real reason to even renovate to hit the business plan, keep the cap X dollars and keep that as a return of capital investors when you sell this bad boy in about a.

Exactly. That's the conversation we had recently. We already meeting the return by the time we go to the lease terms, we should have met our exceeded like the projected income growth that we were going to have from renovations. So the questions we, should we go ahead and renovate all 88 units or do a small number and allow.

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Investing involves risks, including possible loss of principle. Targeted returns are not guaranteed. Please review the offering documents before investing. So walk us through the financing that you had on this particular property.

We had a Fannie financing on this agency loan debt. We had a three years IO interest rate, ended up being 3.64 with a prepayment on it. What kind of prepayment was on it? A million dollars and it fades up over the years.

It's kind of like a step down prepay. Correct. Yes. Okay.

So Fannie Mae long term, three years of interest only. Why do they only give you three years? Instead of maybe a little bit more, did you try to push for a little bit more or did they want to charge you more interest or what was that discussion like? Yeah, actually we did.

We tried to push for 48 months IO that wanted to charge us more interest on it. So we just elected to keep on three years. Yeah. When this sounds to me like the way things are going, you might not even keep this thing for three years, depending on how things go over the next several years or at least being able to do some sort of like supplemental loan or refinance or something like that The asset is performing really well.

We're excited for the returns that we're going to be able to present to our investors on this deal. So we're going to see how the year goes, how 2022 goes, then we'll make a decision on what direction we of want to take. But most likely, the current climate continues, then it will be favorable enough for us to exit much earlier than we anticipated and be able to return some good returns to our investors. And how did you structure this deal with your investors?

It was an 80-20 split. we get 20% average on our returns. It goes. Um 60 40.

There was a 7% prep. So 7% prep than an 80 20 split and then a 60 40 split after it achieves a 20% IRR average on our return, average annual return. So after you hits the average annual return or 20% in a split, 60 40, correct. Good.

How did you end up raising the capital for this one? Before you answer that question, how much capital did you raise for this one? And then how did you go about raising it? Weocally raised about $5.3 million for this particular property and raising it.

We did it just by, because we had spent almost like a year between our last acquisition and this one. The last one was July, which was our first one. This was the first one where we actually were the lead sponsors and GPs on it. So we had the opportunity to educate a ton of investors and acquire a lot of investors in our network, outside our network over the next several months.

And so this actually was a pretty big shocker to us. Our philosophy is to give, and just give to everybody around us without no to kind of reward you for selflessness in a lot of ways. So we ended up partnering with a few people in our mastermind group who were just new to this. And so those were our code GPs.

We had a key principle from like other multi-family and developers from the Boston area that we had met in the past at some conferences. So we partnered with them as key principles on it, brought in about four small groups that's general partners on this deal, and XSITE Capital, raised the balance of the deal. So we ended up bringing in about 80 investors onto the deal. And we were so shocked, because we raised that capital necessary within 30 days, and oversubscribed the deal.

So it was one of those deals that definitely opened our eyes to what the possibilities were. And since then, we've been relatively fearless and there's been able to develop even greater relationships with faster amount of investors. And for example, the current deal that we have online right now, we've not done much marketing for it, but within two weeks of bringing it online, we've already 80% subscribed on it. We expect that to be completely fully subscribed, probably within the next week or so.

It's amazing what happens when your community of investors, your professional communities and the education that you're providing to them, we have definitely tested the power of community. No questions about it. It's exciting to see you guys grow, obviously, in inquiring this asset, being a second asset and then having that deal you have right now that you're raising for, it's exciting to see how much money that you guys are able to raise through a lot of your connections and contacts and just the relationships that you've been able to build over the last several months and years, if you will, as you guys have continued to grow your team. So I want to kind of ask a different question here, two different questions here at the end.

And, you know, each one of you don't have to answer this, but just kind of whoever you feel like is best for this. What did you guys find was easiest during this entire process, acquiring this asset that maybe originally you thought was going to be a little bit more challenging. For me, I'll have to say it's the capital raising. Because going into this business, I had a lot of limiting beliefs and a lot of fears about talking to people and telling them, like, I always had to go anywhere with the mindset thinking you're asking people for money.

But when you realize that you're actually creating a platform where you could give value to people. It changes things a little bit. Once we had the deal, once we had gone to all the checks and balances, had the deal reviewed by so many different sources to make sure to solve it. And when you go out and present it to people it was much easier to raise the capital for the deal than I anticipated.

So for me, I'll say that that's probably what was easier than I thought. For me, I think what was easier for me was the working with everybody to get the deal over the finish line. From our KP's to our co-general partners to the property managers that even the folks on the other side, loan guys on the other side, it was just surprising to me how seamless the process went. I mean, we delivered on every metric that we promised, we closed and the day we promised to close.

It was super smooth. Everything that I thought was going to be difficult was relatively easy. Things that I thought would be easy, like transferring money on the day of close. out to be extremely difficult.

So, yeah, it was. It was unbelievable. It was an incredible experience for us and really opened a eyes up to a lot of this. Well, the last question I have here is kind of the opposite of that.

And it's what did you find that was harder than you had originally expected where in the beginning, maybe you thought was going to be a little bit more like a walk in the park. We had set up a bank account with one of the major banks, who leave them unnamed, and we add all the funds wired into the account. And they did a lot of due diligence on us before opening the account. I suppose they continue to do the due diligence on us as we fill the account with significant funds from the investors.

And then on the day of wiring of clothes, all of a sudden they triggered an investigation on us because they wanted to understand where because Tenny had walked into the bank. It may have been this Nigerian accent that did it. But for some reason, the bank triggered an investigation and they had to go, I guess, to some central location. And we literally were down to the wire sweating, blood, sweat and tears, just pouring out of us trying to get this money to the Tidal company.

I think we got it in within 15 minutes of what the deadline was, right guys? Yes, the Tidal company's company, the lawyers, everybody on the call, they were like, dude, what's going on? You guys are actually showing a riddle close this deal today. And I was in the bank, so, that's crazy.

Well, yeah, 15 minutes before, I think 3 p.m. instant time, I was used to wire the money. And I think at 2.46 p.m. or something along those lines, Finally, the money got made after hours and hours of investigation, and us completely losing our marbles.

But we got it all back together and we celebrated very shortly afterwards, but it was a very traumatic experience, very shortly afterwards, removed funds from that bank. Now we are with a more friendlier bank and look forward to working with them for a long time. Very good story and obviously a great one to kind of finish, the podcast episode on, you never really expect some things like that to happen. But when they do, it's like, wait a minute, you know, those are the things you don't really plan for.

So definitely, you know, it's one thing that we've learned as well to make sure that a couple of weeks before closing, make sure you contact the bank and say, Hey, are you be prepared for R this large wire, because it's H going to happen. So if you need to do anything, you need to sign any forms, maybe to get anything set up. Let us do that now, instead of that day. So that's a good point to bring up there.

Well, Julius, Leslie, Tenny, thank you so much for being here on the podcast. Like you said earlier, Julius, it's a long time coming to have you on. Glad to be able to get each one of you on. I know in the past we've had to get you on, and there's been a few things that have come up with me and me getting sick and the various things like that.

So thankfully, you are the first podcast that I have recorded for 2022. That's going to be exciting to continue to follow your team and to see how many additional deals you guys close. And I know you had this other deal that's closed and later this month, I believe, and it's going to be exciting as we move throughout 2022 and be able to have you on some future episodes to do some more and I know you had this other deal that's closing later this month, I believe, and it's gonna be exciting as we move throughout 2022 and be able to have you on some future episodes to do some more of these interviews to let more people understand, kind of see what kind of deals you guys are putting together and then go from there. How can the listeners reach out to you if they have some further questions for you about this acquisition or if they want to continue to follow your team further?

So they can reach out to us at XSITE Capital, that's X-S-I-T-E, capital.com. My email address is juliusowning, J-U-.L-I-U-S-O and I at xsitecapital.com. Leslie. Mine is L-A-W-A-S-O-M at xsitecapital.com.

And my is C-T-O-L-O-F-A-R-I at xsitecapital.com. Thank you. Awesome. Thank each one of you for being here once again and appreciate the episode and looking forward to continue to follow you and inviting you on some future s as you continue to close more deals.

We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

Welcome to creating wealth through passive apartment investing podcast. In this show, we will discuss about best and worst experiences about passive and active apartment investing. And I am your host, Ramakrishna. Let's begin the show.

Today's our guest is Leslie Awasom from XSITE Capital Investment. Hello Leslie. Welcome Leslie. Thank you.

Thank you. How are doing? I am doing well. Hope you are also doing fine.

A little bit about Leslie. Leslie is the director of operations and co-founder of XSITE Capital Investment LLC. He managed the company operations, market data analysis, cash flow, and budget analysis. Leslie bought his first investment property in 2017 and transitioned to multifamily investing in 2019.

Leslie still works as a nurse anesthetist in Baltimore, Maryland. Leslie on the XSITE Capital team hosts a rapidly growing multifamily focus meetup in Maryland where they provide resources and add value to individuals interested in growing their way and changing their financial future. So with that, Leslie, you want to add anything to your background? Oh, that's marvelous.

Thank you for such a great introduction, Rama. You said, I'm Leslie Awasom, Director of Operations at XSITE Capital. XSITE Capital is a company that was co-founded by myself and my two amazing partners, Dr. Julius Ony and, Mr.

Tenny, Tolofari. Just grateful to be part of this journey. Just grateful to be in the space that we're in and grateful for all the growth that we've been having so far. Cool.

Thank you. So would you share your thoughts of getting into real estate and multifamily from your professional background? and professional career. It doesn't matter whether you come from a lineage of business people or you're the first to go to college or you like the first person to get a job in your family.

There always comes a point where you have to make like some crucial financial decisions. And that.s actually the story of my partners and I. We had been successful in our respective careers, but we all had like experiences where we had to sit back ask ourselves if this was the only path to get us to where, to the dreams that we had, if this was the only way to go about living life like working nine to five. And that led us his financial services business that him and I met because he came to do a presentation to me on some of the products that they offered and we connected, realized that we shared similar goals and then connected there and started a friendship which later developed into a partnership.

And then down the line, we also came out, met Dr. Julius awni and then also became part of the group. And we decided to form this company to go out there, look into multi-family which we noticed when we started learning about multifamily, we noticed that a lot of other professionals like ourselves that come from minority backgrounds like ourselves knew nothing about this asset class. So we started our company because we wanted to go out there to our community, to our healthcare community, to our immigrant community and preach this gospel of multifamily investing because we saw that it was truly like one of the great opportunities that are out there for professionals to grow their world and that is what led us to start our XSITE Capital investment.

Great, so wouldIy share any of your limiting beliefs before getting into real estate and how did you all commit? Oh my goodness, I had so many limiting beliefs you have no idea. This is a very good question because for me real estate is more than just growing wealth. It has been like a tremendous journey of personal growth and I couldn't be really more grateful for discovering the field of real estate because it's led down a path of growth that I never really anticipated.

It opened my eyes up to a wall that I didn't think was possible. Before startinging real estate investing, I fell into that category of thinking that everything that you needed to do, you had to do it on your own. It was tough for me to envision scenarios where you work with our partners or partnership how you grow together as a group and I had so many fears Rama. I was afraid of so many things that I could not even understand why, I can't really understand why I was afraid of at that time.

Like I'll give you a story. When we started, we host a meetup here in DC. And I remember one day, my partner Teddy called and said, we're gonna start a meetup. I'm like, a meetup?

We don't even know, we're still trying to figure ourselves out. We don't even know what we're going to talk about. It's like, no, we're starting a meetup. And he registered the meetup and reached out and he said, you're the operations guy.

You're the guy that spends all this time reading on the data and stuff, so you're going to do the talking. Needless to say, I was scared. I was scared to death. I was really scared.

You have all these fears like you're not good enough or that there's a typical fear, the impostal syndrome, fear that everybody still goes through that today. So this is some of the beliefs and challenges and fears that I've had to overcome in this journey that I'm so grateful for because it has opened my mind up to many other possibilities. Got it. Thank you.

Thanks for sharing. So would you share what is the investment philosophy now? InvestmentI philosophy is growth. We always look for assets that have tremendous opportunity for growth.

Our core value is growth. We seek to grow ourselves and grow whatever investments that we have for the long-term and we seek to work with individuals that are also seeking to grow. I would summarize it in one world and say growth, we look for opportunities that are there to grow. Got it.

So what do you also share any of your breakthrough moment in multi-family space? It's probably like our very first experience that we had, the opportunity of failure, it. and with our property management team. View, like really strong relationships with the property management team that we work with now.

One of the key things that we do is really involving our property management very early on in our asset search. We just don't reach out to our property manager even put in an offer and that collaboration, the great working relationship that So creating this solid team to work with in every aspect, which is like one of the key things that we focus on. Working with great partners, creating a very solid team, hiring very qualified people, and creating that on the onset helps with the implementation of any other great ideas that we have. ideas that we have, because you might have all the wonderful ideas, all the wonderful tracking sheets, all the wonderful KPIs to track and all.

But, if you do not have the strong team in place to implement those plans, it's very likely that you're not going to be successful in implementing your plans. Got it. And what kind of KPIs you would track? For our properties, we track everything from the number of leads that we get property visits that we get just to see how far our marketing is going.

We also track to see on the month by month basis because we at a phase now in one of our properties where we increasing rent because the market is significantly hot. So we track to make sure that as we increasing the income going up, the bad debt is not increasing as well. So we keep track of all that data on the month by month basis as well. Got it.

Thank you. So would you share any of your challenging experiences so far in multi-family space? Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you like one of our properties.

We closed on the property and now two weeks later, we get a call from the property manager and she's like. One of the units is on fire and fortunately, that happened when I was on my way to visit the property. After the initial visit during close, I was going over there to meet the team and to have a conversation and talk about future plans for the property. And while on my way to the properties, she caught and set one of the units on fire.

Needless to say that, that's not the best of news to get when you get a property right off the hand. But it gave us the opportunity to see how good our property management company performs on the crisis situation. And it was amazing. It was an amazing experience because we were very satisfied with the level of communication, the care for the tenants that was provided by a property management team.

And it also gave us the opportunity to identify an issue that we probably might have missed out on during our due diligence, which was like one of the fans, one of the bathroom fans in the units. This is like a C-Class property, 70 built, so those fans are old and we realized that they have a high probability of causing another fire. So we went ahead and changed every single one of them in the whole complex. So these challenges give us opportunities to streamline our process, to get better and also help us identify future problems that may arise and try to take care of them out of the bed.

Got it. And thank you. So would you also share any of your best multifamily investing experience so far? I have to say my best experiences so far has been the amount of knowledge transfer that we've been able to do with that investor base.

My best experiences so far have been the moments where we sit down with other healthcare providers like us and talk about this asset class and you see that light bulb goes off in their head and they understand the opportunities that exist in this space. Probably my top experience because I'm director of operations, I get the privilege of being the person that processes the distributions. So my best highlight of my multifamily career so far has been those moments when I push that button, send out distributions to all our investors. It's an amazing feeling.

Cool. What is your current focus and share something you're excited about now? Our current focus is getting our next deal. It's a very challenging market out there right now.

Our current focus is making sure that we stick to fundamentals and hitting the pavement to create relationships and find the right opportunity that we can present to our investors. As far as excitement, Rama, I'm just excited about life. I'm excited, about everything that's to come. I get up every day, a sense of joy and happiness for being in the position that I'm in and for having the ability to provide value to as many people as we have the possibility to as XSITE Capital.

So I'm just excited for the future. I'm excited for everything that's to come and very grateful for life. Got it. So anyone advise that how impact on you?

Two words on waing faith and massive effort. That was when we faced that challenge early on in our journey, one of our mentors told us to go read a book by our error is the miracle equation and what he emphasizes in that book is always have on waing faith and put in. Massive effort and that advice has a tremendous impact on me in every aspect in life. Always having faith and putting in the work.

Got it, cool. Any books that have impacted your life and battery? Yeah, I just list, I just talked about one of the books and it is a miracle equation by. Again, it's about emphasizing putting in massive effort and having on wavering faith in whatever direction you're going in.

That's one of the books that has had a tremendous life. Another book that had a tremendous impact on my life is Second Chance at Your Life and Your Money by Robert Kiyosaki. It was rly the first book that I picked up and opened up and read that talked about finances or real estate investment. And it was that book that got me started on this journey of personal growth, journey of business and entrepreneurship.

The book really opened my mind to a lot of possibilities, gave me the space to a way more in my life than I ever thought it was possible. Cool, and how about giving back to community- I love giving back by educating others. I love talking to other people about multi-family and just to letting people see the possibilities in life that they have for themselves. I'm letting people being able to challenge some of the limiting beliefs that we all face when we seek in to grow beyond our comfort zone.

I love doing that and just love sharing my experience with people. And one of the other things that we do as XSITE Capital is, since we are two of our co-founders, both from the medical field, we do missionary work. Our CEO and co-founder, where Dr. is an orthopedic surgeon, and together with the foundation operation Stand, Walk, and Run, travel all over the world and perform surgeries to people that need new hips and knees, and it's something that my CEO has been that has been doing for the past few years, and it's something that also is the XSITE Capital getting, going to be collaborating with that foundation as well to help people in less fortunate areas that need that kind of care.

Got it. Thank you. How can listeners connect with you. You can reach out to me on any one of the social media pages.

I'm active on LinkedIn and Facebook and my name is Leslie, L-A-S-L-I-E, Awasom, A-W-A-S-O-M or you can reach me via email at l-a-w-a-s-o-m at xsitecapital.com. Our website is www.exasenzylophone, S-I-T-E, capital.com. And I look forward to connecting with each and every one of you and please reach out if you have any rations. cool and awesome thank you Leslie thanks for adding value to the show thank you Rama thank you so much for having me on your platform sure if you like the show please subscribe share rate and review and if you want to connect with me please send me a message info at busha capital dot com thank you for listening creating wealth through passive apartment investing podcast i hope you learned something from the show see you in the next episode thank you any information provided from these shows or educational purpose only.

All right, so here we go again is multifamily live super excited to have XSITE Capital on the show today. How are you guys. You're wonderful. Fantastic.

They're great. Happy to be here, Jason. Well, we are super excited to have you on the show. So we have Leslie and Julius today from XSITE Capital and whether you come from a lineage of successful businessman or you and your first in your family to graduate from college.

where you have to make some serious financial decisions and change your life forever. And that was the. For our founding partners, two of which were talking today, Leslie, Julius, and Tenny, who all came from different backgrounds, and they had one thing in common. They worked hard, they earned healthy salaries, and they wanted to take their wealth to the next level, but they were just trying to figure out how.

And after individually investing in various specifically, in the entire industry. An opportunity that many minorities or health care professionals were not privy to, or really just able to ease the access. So they form XSITE Capital. And XSITE Capital currently has $125 million of real estate or assets under management, works with accredited investors to help secure risk-adjusted returns, helping them earn passive income and ease.

Currently, XSITE Capital is expanding in the Southeast and accepting new investors. And with the pleasure of meeting just a couple months back here, bolt on the show and was there first, how did the two of you meet? So I work as an orthopedic surgeon and Leslie is a certified registered nurse in the anesthetist, so CRNA. And the first time we met in the operating room.

I'll let Leslie take it from there. Yeah, so the first time I met Julius, I was in the operating room and income, this guy, surgeons sometimes can be very down, but income, this guy with so much energy, we're gonna have a fantastic sacrific nice day. I'm like, is that the surgeon for this case? I got to know this guy, I gotta make this guy my the friend.

So I just reached out to Julius and we started talking about real a real estate. I could overhear some of his conversations talking about some of the investment properties that he had. So when I started, when we started getting into real estate, so we reached out to him, to engage and it's just been an amazing journey so far. Unfortunately that we don't have a tech partner attending here as well.

But so that's how Julius and I met. That's incredible. And so multifamily, did you each, so it sounds like Julius, you actually had some properties first or have done some kind of real estate projects. Was it in the multifamily arena or what was the urge or the emphasis to dive fully.

Into that arena. So I was investing in single family. And at that point, my main investment strategy was I was doing a little bit, some angel investing and single family. and Leslie at that time was doing single family, which is like just-renovating single families, rental single families doing the Burr method.

And Leslie and my other partner, and our other partner, Tenny, had actually met earlier and were the first to discover the fantastic world of multifamily real estate investing. And then they introduced me, tried to introduce me to it initially, but I knew everything I needed to know about real estate and I thought I was on a path. And my thought at that point was a acquire a property of two every year and build this huge portfolio single family homes, and then eventually maybe, you know, let them appreciate organically over the years and get some cash. Flow from them and maybe sell them as a portfolio eventually.

But then, you know, at one particular point, Leslie finally after a lot of persistence, convinced me to take a look at a deck Rady put together for a deal that they were looking at. And I just, I felt like I'm reading through the deck. When I eventually opened the deck, I just felt like this new world was open to me. And I felt like I just couldn't believe that I didn't have, I wasn't previously privy to the information that this deck was presenting.

How is it possible that we could pull resources from just individual investors like myself and come together and go down and take this large properties down and take advantage of the economics of scale, take advantage of the tax benefits of this properties, and all the other advantages of this, of multifamily real estate. I was having my Eureka moment and my mind was just completely blown. So from that point on, I called him up and my other partner said, guys. I'm not just trying to invest as a passive investor.

How about we bend together and go out and really preach the gospel of multifamily to our community because if I don't nobody, and I consider myself relatively savvy with regards to financial investments, then I know a ton of people didn't know about it. And I did do a little straw poll of, my close friends and colleagues, and nobody else knew about it. So I knew there was an opportunity there to get the word out there, educate people, partner with people to take down this asset classes and the rest is history as they say, and our journey so far has just been a testament to the power of community. So I'm excited.

RYAN That's incredible. And you know, so many people in your position, just being as busy as each of you are here, just choose to pass around. stop there. This sounds like a lot of work.

This sounds very overwhelming. Leslie, how have you successfully integrated into your work-life balance will call it or just to have the time capacity and be able to put the energy in this? Because there's a lot of people here today saying, man, I, you know, maybe they have any kind of job out there. They just are just looking for the time.

What is it? What have you done to make success out of what you're doing and still be able to do everything else that you were already doing? When we discover multifamily and started talking, I think our CEO Julius alluded to that and started realizing that a lot of members of our community have no idea that disaster class existed. So putting ourselves in that position, like what if we could create this platform and where we could go out and teach the community and tell people about multifamily investing.

This would be, so that was something that we're powerfully passionate and everything else are just around it, right? So I made changes to my schedule where. I worked, I picked up the shifts that nobody wants to work. So I do the off-call shifts on Sundays when everybody's relaxing.

That's when I'm in the hospital all day. And the advantage to that is through that, since it's a down day and a day that we do just with emergencies, I have a lot of time on myself. So instead of watching Netflix, I'm reading books on multi-family. I'm doing a lot of research or doing all this stuff like that.

So we have made those adjustments along the way to be able to accommodate, to have the time for it. And what I've learned is if you have a strong enough why, reason why you want to do something, you're going to find the time to do it. So we've been able to balance. Rana, it's just like so much of a joy doing what we do that you find a time somehow to make it work.

Also, just to piggyback off of that, I think it speaks to the power of having like amazing partners. because what each one of us cannot do, be able to leverage off, of. Of each other's strengths, which complements each other, and we form a pretty strong unit. So our other partner, Tenny, who we call Tenacious Tenny, because it's just like a bulldog and just goes out there and gets things done.

I mean, he was so committed, that he sold his home, moved this entire family to our target market. Wow. At the beginning of this relationship, so that we could be competitive in our target market. So when you have an amazing person like that who is able to just move and change his life around to sacrifice for the group and lead our acquisition strategy on round, that was key.

I mean, Leslie is incredible with numbers. Loves under right then, and is probably like the mindset guru of the group. And it keeps us all like, you know, on top of our personal development and we call them Sensei for that reason. So you have that, and then you have someone like me who I love the larger vision and coming up in a creative ways of getting our brand out there and interfacing with investors and teaching folks out to kind of learn more about what we're doing and come together and I'm able to also leverage in some of the goodwill and integrity and credibility that I've built over the years, you know, being in this field of medicine for, you know, close to 10 years now, as an attendant surgeon.

So we were able to do that, combining the strengths of all three of us really gave us all the freedom to be able to make it happen. Yeah, accountability is so huge, right? And so when you take a partnership, it's also just as important for each to identify their role. So each knows where they sit, right?

And you each have done it very successfully because lots of times when I see partnerships having an issue, it's because they're not clear on who's doing what and where their power aligns and where they can put this here. And, you know, to everyone listening here, you find the time. You want the time, you find the time, you know, just even talk about Netflix, I'm sure people can say, oh, yep, there's 4, 6, 8, 12 hours a week that I could take back here. And just, you know, kudos to Tanning, moving into the market, right?

But if you want it, like, what's stopping you, maybe it's a short term pain, but the longevity of what the success will be overrides that, right? Nobody's going to think about the short term pain. And most people live in the short term, right? They say, oh, I don't want to do this, because it might discount me, or it might, you know, change my way of life, or it might change how I, how you know how much money are making or just for the short term right and that's how most get stuck because the short term pain may seem like you know I'm going to work in our two three hours I've already done a 12 hour day right but they don't look at the longer term vision here which you guys have done successfully so for people listening talk to us about your current portfolio of the 125 million dollars of assets under management talk to us about what that comprises is up and maybe the first deal, how it all came together.

Listen, do you wanna go? No, go ahead. So yeah, so very shortly after we got together, obviously we had invested prior to that as passive investors. So we kind of knew how we've worked on the limited partnership side.

in the acquisition of a 49 unit, $20 million acquisition called the Griffin in DC. And that was like the business plan was about seven years condo conversion. And that was acquired at the height of COVID. I think it was May 2020.

So there was quite a bit of angst about what was laid ahead and what we were about to experience. but I want to make one point on that. Is that for people listening, don't surpass the point where they said 49 units, $20 million, right? So they did not just say, let me just put my toe in the water and see where it is.

They found a good, reliable partnership and they found a great project and said, okay, we can go ahead at the height of CO right, so please carry on. So, I mean, once we decided that this was the way for us, we really did not want to dip our toes in when we were first. And we were able to also learn how to interface with investors and raise capital and we leveraged on the experience of our lead general partners to really get that process going and interestingly something had to happen at that point we had to kind of change our mindset a little bit because I'm an academic surgeon We had to kind of change our mindset a little bit because I'm an academic surgeon and I was doing this on nights and weekends and I was a little worried about, are people still gonna take me seriously as a surgeon? Are people gonna take my paper seriously when I publish?

helped me work through some of that limitations. Why do you have to define yourself as one thing? Why can't you be defined as a great earthquake surgeon and also as a fantastic real estate investor? So I had to work through that and a lot of that had to do with, I mean, I consumed, God knows, how many podcasts and how many books in such a short period of time.

I mean, I was reading a book a week or something along those lines and it was amazing. But anyways, going back to the acquiring our first property, we then went, at first, once that mindset was sharpened, we just went right in and we started to raise capital. And interestingly, something happened. We started to realize that we were right, there's a huge thirst for this asset class in our community.

And when I say our community, I'm talking about our community of healthcare professionals. I'm talking about our community of immigrants I'm talking about our community. Of minorities. I'm talking about you know our community of professionals who just you know are stuck in this w2 jobs and do not know what to do with their nest egg or with some of their savings.

So all of this started to come together and we were like oh wow we were right our hypothesis was right this is so needed in our community. So we were able to raise the funds for that particular first deal super easily. It was unbelievable. And we actually almost over-raised.

We had to actually we were supposed to raise just 500,000 dollars. We ended up over-raising. We went back to our lead general partners and said, can we raise more? They're like, yeah, keep it coming.

And eventually they were like, stop. And that gave us the confidence that, yes, we are right. Now we just got to go all in. And for our next deal, we were the lead general partners.

Partners and that was the acquisition, the 132 unit at a class C property in Columbia, South Carolina that we acquired for $12.55 million. And yeah, and it's been off to the races after that since then. It's so important too is that many times we think like who would want to invest with us, but especially when you're starting out, right? And a lot of us get stuck in what we've done before.

And that has to be our role, whether it's a job or a professional sports player or anybody, right? Just to transition to that new thing. Well, how can it be? But breaking that mold, and again, it goes to the accountability and the partnership, you can see the strength there.

But even talking to investors, sometimes the most important thing is just let them know what you're doing, right? Because they don't know it's available, right? So we come in our mind to try predict what the response is going to be before we give people the opportunity to respond. And that happened so many times and I hear from so many people is that, well, you know, they won't want to invest with me.

Well, how do you know? Have you even asked, right? And now you get to this point, you've created a trusted community, you have a trusted community around you. So what's the worst thing they say?

Oh, no, it's not the right time or no, it's not for me. And then, okay, fine, no worries, but it's there when it's there. And so many people are grateful, they can still, I mean, you think of a lot who you just mentioned, right?, working in W2 job, lots of taxes, lots of other points right here. So how can they offset some of that happening here in multifamily real estate, but they didn't even know because what's in front of them is the larger RE How be some interest increases in the next year.

paying a lot of attention on the bographic data to see everything that's happening in each before we jump into looking at cost really just hitting them, hard or labor or what, but he's saying he's seeing that in pretty, pretty over the top across projects that he's been looking at right now, which is speaks to a lot, right? And that the timing getting delayed with everything else that's happening with the labor shortage. And there's a lot of pieces you have to plug in the puzzle. And one of the things with multifamily is it doesn't move quick, right?

It's not like you can go in there and like, let me flip this house. And this is a vacant house, this role, right? there's a 50, 100, 200, 300 people living there that you're trying to work around everything with schedules and everything else. And it can be a beast if you expect everything to go perfect.

so that's really good points especially thinking about you know just inflation the impact on expenses. So thank you for sharing that there. And one other thing Jason that we did that on our previous property that is helping us right now which is something we learned from our mentors is having a lot of cushion on the deal going in because things like- this can happen where your estimate expense is based on what the economy at that is at that point. Things change during your business plan without having any kind of questions that might really mess up with your return.

So some of the. The question that we on the road and sorry not deal going in is helping us now with the value item in with the changes in expenses. So and it's something that we continue to do on every deal that we look at. Guys, I just I love the story Leslie enjoying just thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your story and for everybody you're out there helping.

Thank you for having me. We'll say mental strength first, but then strength to carry through because there's a lot who start and just say, ah, it's too much, right? But it's just the please tell them the best to reach out to you guys, to learn more about your company and projects you're working on. So yeah, so our website is www.xsitecapital.com and you can reach out to either one of us Mine is juliusony at xsitecapital.com and Leslie.

It's L-A-W-A-S-O-M at xsitecapital.com. That's L-O-S-O-M at xsitecapital.com. So you listeners have heard it here. If you are telling me you don't have time or you don't have energy or it's, but you want it, then you have to look at what you're doing each and every day because you're coming from two people that have plenty of excuses they could give you of reasons why they wouldn't be like they're making it happen and they're making it happen in a huge way.

So thank you both for again, coming on the show, we'll talk to you shortly. Thanks Jason. Thanks Jason, it was such a pleasure.