Appearances, continued.

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 2,000 homes and apartments. And he brings experts in all aspects of real estate investment and management onto the of the show.

Now, here's your host, Rod Cleef. Welcome to another edition of How to Build Lifetime and Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing. I'm Rod Cleef, and I am thrilled you're here. And I know you're going to get tremendous value from the gentleman we're interviewing today.

His name is Leslie Awasom, and he is the director of operations for XSITE Capital, spelled X-S-I-T-E. They have $107 million in assets under management. And they just started a couple of years ago. So that's very impressive.

But welcome to the show, buddy. Hey, Rod. Thank you so much for having me. Just, it's an honor to be here because listening to someone like you over the years, to get to this point and to be sitting here having this conversation with you is like, I'm living my dream right now.

So, thank you so much for having me on your podcast, right? Well, thank you for those kind words. I really appreciate that very much. So, why don't we start the way we normally start by having you tell my listeners how you got started because that's not what you do as a W2 right now.

And so, it's, and we talked about this a little bit before we started recording so I'm looking forward to hearing your whole story and then we'll drill down on some stuff. So take it away my friend. All right Rod. So my journey into multi-family investing started somewhere around 2016 like in the early phases of my career as a nurse and aesthetic.

I had this career that I worked out for that I was looking forward to earning a healthy salary but I just I got to a point where I felt like that was the ceiling to my growth in the healthcare field, because as a nurse, unless that is the next step was probably to go get a doctorate degree and do some research or but that wasn't exciting to me. So I just could not imagine my life being that, regardless of the fact that I had such a great job. It's fantastic schedule. I had great time, enough time to spend with my family.

I kept asking myself if this was all for me. So around the same time I was asking myself about that, I came across an article on Yahoo that talked about a book written by some guy that wrote another book called Rich Dad for that and the name of the book was Second Chance at Your Money and Your Life and he said it was written for millennials with a lot of student loan debt and that need financial knowledge and that appealed to me. So, I bought the book and I started reading the book. And the book, it just felt like Robert Kiyosaki was a long-lost uncle that was talking to rea, giving me the advice about the stuff that I needed to hear at that point in time.

So I took the courage and I started applying some of the stuff he's talked about, which was investing in real estate, go out and network with other people. So I came out of my comfort zone, went out to meet up events, started listening to podcasts like you're old. And I finally took the courage and bought my first investment property which was a condo, did like a BR model on it and it worked great because when I went to refinance the values in that particular neighborhood had gone up. Due to nothing that I did but the values went up and now the renovations added the value by $77,000.

So seeing that much value created, kind of sparked a light bulb. And I started going to more events, came across one of my first partners along the way. And we decided to segue and focus into our multi-family investing. And we formed a company in 2019 and just been pushing and working hard since then and starting to see some of the great results right there.

Rodk- I love it. So before we started recording, I asked you what role you played on your team because, you know, guys, we know this is a team sport. And would you answer the question again, on the show? What role you play and then talk about, because I didn't see the rconnection between your current role, you know in the medical field and what you're doing now.

So, could you repeat what you told me earlier? Yeah, absolutely. I'm director of operations at my company. So, I do all the data analysis for like the markets, the property, I do the underwriting for the properties, I'm looking at the numbers to make sure that they're within the projections that we want to present for investors and I come up with the business plan as well for each of the properties that we go into.

And interestingly enough, the analysis part is something that ties in with what I do on my day job as a nurse and a status because what we do is we have to evaluate all the scenarios, every new patient that comes and you have to look at all their history, the medical history, everything that's going on, relate that to the surgery and identify whatever kind of risk that you might encounter during the surgery. And then you try to eliminate that as an anesthesia provider. So we do everything on the back end to make sure that somebody doesn't die when they're having surgery, which is good because it helps you to dig in deep and analyze and find out everything. But there's a downside to that, which I mentioned to you earlier, Rod, is why you making sure relations and our, and as CEO, then a Tenny Tolofari is the.

The partner I'm referring to is actually, CEO Well, that's, Typically, I would have him on the show versus you, because. like kind of pushed me into uncomfortable situations., relent one thing that really helped the fear and a the got I've got out of analysis paralysis be first becoming aware that this is what I you know, versus, you know, and I really- that I'm the one interview, but-interview thing you have in there's like this glass of a Coca Cola. The only way better read than most college graduates.

I've got thousands of books in my library, but you know, so guys, please recognize that your education actually starts when you get out of college. 's is. Great for technical role like yours and you need it. But unfortunately, college, there are some sad statistics a round success relating to college graduates and They're disappointing and so, you.

You know, we get a lot of people in my ecosystem that went to college and never really pursued [inaudible] track myself on what I'm doing. And one of the things is to listen to a podcast every day. One of the things is to spend 30 minutes reading every day.

Or one of the things is to meditate or listen to something positive every day. And I started doing that like about three years ago. I could see a myself changing. I could see myself becoming rappier in and a very other aspect of life, not just in understanding motor family.

And one of the things was reading something about motor family or doing something that is increasing my knowledge. So I could see myself changing R I could see myself changing along the way. And when you start seeing those kinds of results, you just, keep going. So today I still do that I read every day, I meditate, I try to meditate every day.

I still sign up for courses, boot camps, personal development, programs at every time of the year, I'm investing in something that is building my mind because I have seen the results that is I've had in my life. It's not just about financial, It is, as a great amount of results in my own personal life. So there's no way I could pull it back from that. Love it.

Love it. love, and you know it's interesting. A lot of what you said, I'm assuming you exercise a well. It's always about growing and happiness comes but you know, the other thing at the end of that, I have people put declarations down that they're going to commit to and on my personal one.

And you were resonating with me because on my own, it, it's read 30 minutes a day. It's exercise a body part every day. It's do some focused meditation or prayer or an or something to hone my mind. And I was just interviewed on another show right before this one.

And I referenced because they, the guy asked me what my favorite podcast was. and the only podcast I really listened to is Tim Ferriss's and I get excited because my the biggest secrets to success is focus, right? Okay, the people that are the most focused are the most successful. And I started to hear a pattern.

Now what he does is he interviews the best in the world in every walk of life, actors, Arnold and Ed Norton and Jamie Fox and athletes, Michael Phelps and Kobe and other people that have been on his show and then billionaires like Ray Dalio, the best of the best. And I started to hear a pattern, they all meditate- And so, what does meditation enhance? Focus, right? So, no, I love that.

So, again, so you read every day, you read something that's going to expand your knowledge, you meditate every day, you exercise. I love it. And what else can anything else that you do that comes to mind, or did that Just being aware of my own thoughts, you know, because like, it's very easy to get caught in the negative pattern. So that's something that I'm getting better at doing right now, just being aware of my own thoughts, being aware of the way I view other people, trying not to judge people because it's tough growing up in a religious background to where you thought to think a certain way, then going out into the wall and looking at people in a survey.

So I'm working on looking at people just as people, not to judge people and not to judge situations based on my own views or the way I look at life. So, wow, that is very insightful, buddy, and very impressive frankly. And, you know, one of the things they teach you in, you know, a more advanced self-actualization is to be an observer of your own thoughts. And it's very, very powerful.

And I wish I could say I've mastered that. I'm nowhere near that, you know, because, you know, we think thoughts every day, we're asking ourselves questions all the time, all day long, and those questions can empower us or R they can disempower us. And. And so you've got to take a look at those, and I didn't get this until I'd spent several years with Tony Robbins and discovered that a question I was asking myself daily was how can.

How can I show them I a, I'm good enough. In fact, when I discovered that, I'll share this for. The first time publicly, I probably cried. For 30 minutes.

I was like, Holy shit. That's what it is. And now that question caused me to be a huge success financially because I was pushing so hard, but it also cost me my first family. It cost me time with my kids because I was so, you know, I'd come home and I'd play with them, but I was somewhere else mentally.

Biggest regret in life to this day, which is why with my students- I spent so much time on making sure that you are paying interested in investing in multifamily, right? Well, you don't want to miss this. We're having our live in-person three-day bootcamp this December 3rd, 4th and 5th in all of this. All of my past events have sold out my live events.

And we've already sold hundreds of tickets to this one. Now, I'm going to be only be doing one of these live events per year. And this is it. And please know this as well.

My events aren't some big sales pitch like most others. I teach you what you need to know to go out there and crush it in this business. And Past participants have done just that. They bought literally tens of thousands of units.

We're also going to have billions of dollars represented by the panelists on stage each day to answer all your questions. And also the networking at my events is just extraordinary. Lots of people meet their team members and future partners at my events., so make a decision.

Make a decision that you're not going to settle, that you're no longer going to settle for less than a life you deserve. and you're going to go out there and build lifetime cashflow for yourself and your family. before I cut Rusev. And if that's, I mean, if you've exhausted, that's fine.

I'm just going to say I'm grateful for guys like you that I've gone to those experiences and are willing to share with people like for others to listen to, because I listened to your story within the first five minutes, you'll hear about the most painful moment in my life, which was telling my kids, we were getting a divorce because I've been so totally focused on success. Now, you know, thank God now, because I've got the most beautiful human being on the planet as my wife, but at that time it was bad, but that, you know, I found that really resonates, you know, people, you know, you've got a lot, I've got a lot of competitors in the business talk about how great they are. And I've even had one post that say, how can somebody lost $, $50,000,000 teach you how to buy as my wife, but at that time, it was bad. Anyway, I digress.

So, let's see. What suggestions, Leslie, would you have for, you know, I have a lot of listeners like you that are still caught in paralysis that haven't taken action. They know R they want more out of life. They're sitting on the sidelines.

They're thinking, they need to learn every little thing about this business before they actually take action with anything. What would you say to that person? And what coaching might you give them if you were coaching them? I would say do exactly what I did which is find somebody else that is on the opposite side that takes.

Action and does not get stuck in analysis paralysis even if in your own analysis the action that person is taking is the wrong action align yourself with that person and just follow them and take those actions yourself. Yourself and soon enough you realize that action is way better than analysis because from action you get way more data that you could use to come up with whatever process R that you want to take forward. Right now you're analyzing based on a limited amount of knowledge that you have. So when you take that action, even if it's the wrong action, you get way more data that you can use.

I love that R that I love that answer. That crack cocaine to an analytical person. You combined the action with more data. Oh, yeah, I want more data.

Oh, I freaking love that answer. That's awesome. So, you know, as you were getting into this real estate game, okay, were there any aha Anybody that's a millennial with student loan debt, he breaks down the financial system in a way that was easy for me to understand. His books are fantastic.

Every one of them is truly fantastic. And I thought I'd seen them all. I missed that one, but okay. But anyway.

Anyway, aha moments. If you would, besides that book, anything else come to mind when I ask that question. Oh, yeah, most of our moments. TheI first was like, when I was doing my renovation for the single family condo, the first one I bought, took two weeks off of work to do that and I've never felt so happy in my life doing something like that.

I was off-work on vacation, going there and looking at this and conceptualizing what I wanted this project to look like and bringing it to life moving in a turn and in there and I felt so happy so to me that was like a light bulb moment like maybe this real estate thing is something that I should be doing and then when the when I got the appraisal and the refinancing the value build up that was another big aha moment for me and' and then you know with our multifamily business as well going out and talking to people And Rada and seeing that look in their eyes when you able to explain to them the value that you were to Rada. Oh, I understand now why guys like you are so passionate and talk so passionate about the multi-family and I want to go out there and spread the word to everybody because there's so much value that we R give by being operators and by buying these assets, and presenting it to our investors. And the value we provide to those communities and the value we provide to ourselves and the economy in general and so on and so forth. Well, let me ask you this.

What's your driver, buddy? What is your why? Actually, before you answer, I want to circle back to something you just said, and I hope you guys identified it. He discovered that he actually loves this freaking business by taking two weeks off and spending time at that home and playing real estate and that's the operative word there is playing real estate and so here's my advice to you listening.

If you can't learn to love business and you can learn to love really anything if you apply yourself, you associate pleasure with the action of doing it but if you can't love this business, for God's sakes, go do something else. But when you do love it, honestly success is inevitable. Would you agree Leslie? Oh, I absolutely agree.

Absolutely agree. And I could go hours upon hours talking about real estate and you know, and I enjoy it. So when you love it doesn't feel like work because when we look back at the journey, we did not get success immediately. It took us almost like 18 months to get on our first deal.

But never in any one of those months did I feel disappointed or look back and go like, oh, this is not fun. What am I doing here? At every point along the way, we were having a great time just growing. Love it.

So back to the question I was starting to ask, what is your why? What is your driver? What is really driving this? And actually, I'm.

I'm going to regress again for the moment because I just realized it was something. mot I. When you love this, guys to influence people, they passion and when you love it a feel that passion. If you don't love it, you.

a can't fake that passion. But that passion. But in this business it's. I.

R. think I've alluded to my Y a little bit I mean I'm in a business that helps me continue to grow and I driving force. I mean, I'm in a business that helps. a goal that is worthy.

I Night and Gales, the We work so hard and we forget, what's the purpose of life. Exactly. I love that one. Well, keep going.

I mean, other one or two, There's so many, right? That I can't, I used to do this thing every Wednesday is called wisdom. Wednesday's where I just throw out some of the quotes that I like. I have a bunch of them.

I can't think of. Oh, that's all right. Don't worry about it. So let me ask you, I've got a couple more quick questions.

Yes. Tell me about, any early failures that you had that may have contributed to future success or just failures in general, and what was the lesson involved if anything comes to mind for you? Yes. So initially, early, on in our journey, we had an opportunity to be co-general partners on the deal and where someone brought it to us.

And at that point, I was still stuck in my introvert, in my little space trying to stick in the analysis and not going out and talking to the people. So we did choose the easy route, trying to find one or two investors that will bring the funds to invest on a deal. And once we heard a yes from one investor that would say, oh, I'm going to a bring all the funds you need to invest in that, stop talking to people because I was more comfortable being in myself. And then we ended up, the investor backed out in the last minute and we were able to get on the deal scrambling in the last minute to get investors.

So that taught me a lesson, that in order to be successful in this business, I'm going to have to break out of my shell. I cannot just rely on my other partners or everybody. So we all have to break out of. And do some of the things that we're uncomfortable with.

So we learned from that, sought more guidance, got more education, and then went out and did things differently. So, and it has led to a lot of growth that we've had since then. No, that's a great example. In fact, you know, I tell my students, and not the growth piece of that example, the actual, the technical side of what happened where you lost an investor is, you know, I tell my students over, subscribe by, about 25%.

Like this latest deal, we just closed, we needed to raise 12.6 million. We had soft commitments for 15. And we had to heard the cats to get that, to get to the 12-6. It's like, you know people's lives, things happen the way they chase a shiny object and see something else or so on and so forth.

Both Scott and I, my partner were super busy. So we didn't have the time to give it the personal attention, which is one of the reasons that, you know, it's great that, you know, that we got it. Subscribe. But, you know, it's kind of funny that, so don't ever, you know, if you get a big investor on a deal that says they're going to put up a good chunk of it.

Don't stop. Keep looking and even be careful with a large investor, maybe even limit the amount of their investment because they can cripple you. I've had stories of people on the show that have been, you know, literally almost lost deals because they couldn't, and we've gotten deals that people had that situation happen. We have a deal in Dallas that the guy, couldn't raise the money, he had commitments, couldn't raise it.

And you know, we've got R10 million in equity and equity in that thing now since we closed. So well, listen, brother, I appreciate you bing on the show. It's a real treat to meet you and I hope that we stay in touch, my friend. Thank you for adding value.

All right. Thank you so much for everything you do. And thank you so much for having me on your show. It's truly an honor.

Thank you. 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.

Go into that saying people that you care about losing a lot of the stuff because they make some of the decisions you want to do things the right way. You want to come back and look at things the right way so we work from a numbers perspective and don't get emotionally attached to it. Are you ready to change your life welcome to the multifamily investor ladies podcast sponsored by freedom capital investments and berkewood capital. Your hosts, Linda Brooks and Lisa Hill, are two dynamic multi-family investor syndicators who combined have more than 400 doors in their portfolio and growing.

Join them on their journey as they show it's R you've tuned in a another episode of the Multifamily Investor Ladies Podcast. We're here to help you get educated about the world of multifamily investing from a passive investor standpoint. Each week we bring you a guest who can share their experiences, their advice, their insights, their dos and don'ts even about the best ways to navigate the world of multifamily real estate investing. Getting educated is the key.

And as you all know, Lisa and I are active investors. That means we research, acquire, raise capital and engage our passive investor apartment buildings, and you, as passive investors, get to enjoy the returns. Now, Linda mentioned one of the first steps in the process, and that is research. How do we decide on a market or a city or a town to buy in, and what do we look for?

Do you get better returns in a large city like Washington, D.C., or Dallas? Or should you. invest in a building in a medium or small-sized city? of XSITE Capital Investments.

He manages the Thank you so much for having me. Well we can't. Thank you enough for sharing your coming on board and sharing your insights and now you bought your very first property just a few years ago. 2017 and then R.

What in about two years you moved on to multifamily investing. Investing. Tell us the story behind that. Why and how did you do it?

Well, you know, whether you come from a background of a successful business people or like you or like you're the first person in your family going to college that equally comes That was the story of myself, my partners, and I. We share similar backgrounds in that, my partners, Tenny, Julius, and I. We share similar backgrounds in that we both good successful careers, we're making great income, but we were more interested in growing our wealth in one way or another. Individually, we have both, we have all been investing in real estate.

For my own, I started investing in 2017, I bought my first investment property,I bought my first. And what led me to buy that property was when I started working in my career, as a nurse, and instead is a very high paying successful career. But I felt like it was a ceiling to my growth. And I kept asking myself, so what's next?

What do I need to do next? Do I have to spend my whole life in the hospital and miss out on my kids and the important R appointments on my kids. So I wanted to do something else to grow. And I started doing some research and reading books, and I came across one book by Robert Kiyosaki talking about a second chance at your money and your life, which really connected to me that would recommended investing in real estate.

I took the plunge, started attending some real estate networking events, then eventually bought my first property at the same time to my partners on the end to looking at the same thing. So we realized that we shared similar vision. So as we started networking and talking to each other and learning about each other and going to events, we realized that multifamily investing provides the greatest vehicle for wealth growth. And a lot of people in our communities did not even know that this vehicle of investing existed.

When I talk about our community, I refer to like people in like the medical community, which we work in minority communities as well. A lot of us work hard, we go to school, we get good jobs, have good degrees, but then. When it comes to the money and where we're a very, very strong on that. So that is the passion that pushed us behind on starting this company that we have that is growing right now after the investment.

Man, that is so true, and more than the medical professions, trust me, but yeah, thanks. Listen, before investing in a property, knowing your market is key, right? Yeah. And so how do you determine a good market from a not so good market?

What's your market data analysis? What does your process look like? This is the part of the business that I really love, looking at all this data and trying. To come up with a story and putting all these puzzles together.

So we look at a lot of trends. We've learned tremendous amount a and we use some of the skills that we've learning, finding this market. So going into each market, first off we look from a macro perspective like where is the economy going, where are things going, one great book that I recommend to anybody looking to get into this is called Big Shifts Ahead, book on demographic on what is coming and what has happened over the years. It gives you like a R good perspective of what has happened in the USA over the years and what is coming in the future.

So R we look at sources like that to determine and where the future trends are. And once we identify where the future trends are, then we start looking for markets that fall in that trend and then going into a more deeper analysis. Some of the things we look at when we're looking for markets, we look at population growth. Of course, when you're buying apartments, you need the population for people to run in that.

We look at our income, demographic, median household income of the members in that market. And we look at historical rent growth in that market as well. We look at job growth. Job growth is very, very important because is you can where there are no jobs.

So we traditionally go where there are jobs and that's where we go. Linda, you notice being our mentees of Dave Lindo, you know, his strategy of investing in emerging markets. So we incorporate that into our data analysis when looking for markets. try to identify markets that are right there, the cost of growth R have all the fundamentals to explode, but that might not have already exploded yet.

I'm very grateful that we're having some great success with that so far. Yeah, you mentioned big shifts ahead. I like that and maybe you can give us a little insight into what the future is, what you're seeing as far as the trends for now, because we were talking about a lot of change with the pandemic going on, right? So I'm not sure the book could predict what would happen in a pandemic.

How much has that changed the market and your market data analysis? So it's interesting because I read the book before the pandemic. I've heard a lot of people say that book also talk of being diverse, you know, and some of the recommendations that the book talks about is like, it's predicting that in the U.S. in like the next 10 to 20 years, there's going to be a lot of Spanish speaking Americans, traditional Americans, like first generation Americans in the U.S.

So you have to incorporate all of that when you're going business. Like, for example, when we go to these complexes and trying to do value. add, we take all of that into consideration, look at the demography of the area and trying to place, resources or amenities, you know, that makes sense for demographics. So we look at all of that stuff.

So to answer your question, the book Was right in predicting what is happening. The book never predicted that COVID but all The trends that it predicted are Being accelerated at a much rapid rate By COVID. Okay, r So a lot of people feel more comfortable Investing in places where they know Or where they might live or where They're from or their hometown's or Know someone who lives there. Is that necessarily a good barometer?

No, that's besting based on an Emotional connection. You got to invest based on data. on data. That's why I love data because sometimes I'm emotionally connected to a city or property but then the data kicks me, it kicks me out of it.

So the numbers are there to help you make good financial decisions, right? Like I've heard it a lot, like people say, oh yeah, this place is booming, oh, this place is booming, then you go in and crunch the numbers and I realize now this doesn't make any sense, actually the jobs are dropping, population is dropping in that area. And when you make those emotional decisions, that's when you make financial mistakes. And I'll say I'm lucky because I got exposed to this in 2008, right?

I had a family members that got into real estate because it was all everybody was talking about by house, blah, blah, blah, blah. They lost all their houses because of the crash. So those are some of the experiences that guiding me as I move forward and seeing people that you care about losing a lot. Because they make some of those decisions, you want to do things the right way.

You the components into that acquisition. So that was interesting. I'm glad you asked that. We started working on that deal before COVID.

Ah, okay. We started working on that deal before COVID, then COVID hit. So our partners and I had a conversation, and the initial thought was we need to back out of this deal and wait and see what things are because we don't know where things are going, the panic and everything. But then after sitting back and zeroing down everything, And I went back and looked at the data, right?

Emotionally speaking, it was like, okay, let's run. Everything is going crazy. But we went back and looked at the data. What did the data show?

right, we live here, we feel the pause of everything and looking at the numbers, the numbers supported that. And then we start looking at reports from all the big guys, the big industry guys listing the markets that are poised to bounce back early from the COVID crisis. And DC was right there the top three, you know, so looking at the data, regardless of everything that we're going on, that property still makes sense, you know, so we decided to proceed with it. And I'm glad we did.

The market is facing those challenges that were that we're navigating through the storm very well. So I'm happy that we're having that experience as one of our properties for sure. Congratulations on that acquisition. That's huge.

And glad things are still looking up and you're riding the storm very well. You mentioned the data and I think our listeners want to know, where do you go to get the data? What do you do? I know there's the Milken report, there's census data, there's, I don't know, do you go to Realtor.com?

How can our passive investors learn and get more data analysis. So a very easy resource is Citidata. And I'm going to refer you guys to a class taught by one of our mentors, Neil Bauer, real focus. I think he offers it for free on his website.

I have no affiliations with it. So, but I was one of his students in the past, but it's a great class on how to pick neighborhood markets. And it just doesn't apply to multi-family applies to single family as well. And all the steps and the tools that he provides on there are free.

And anybody can go in and use it. I think it's real focus or something like that, but just look up Neobawa real focus. It goes to the step-by-step process on how you can look at median household income on city data, or you could identifier path to progress on city data. And the numbers that you need to be looking at for the population growth, the job growth, the percentages that make sense, you know, and we use that format as well to identify the markets we go into.

We also invest a lot in a lot of different tools that we use to investigate. what markets are in, but most importantly, boots on the ground. Because a lot of times we value the relationships that we build in the ground. Like, for example, the Carolinas, we're making it our main market.

So one of my partners actually moved this whole family down there so that we could have that presence. Because when you go out and talk to property managers, talk to people in markets, they see things that maybe the co-star report and these other reports don't have it in there yet. And that is the experience we had with the property that we have on the contract right now, right? Because when we're looking at that property a few months back, some of the data sources that you're looking at online were not necessarily favorable, but boots on the ground, our property management company was telling us, listen, this is happening.

Do not turn your back on this, come down, look at this, come and take a feel for it. And we went down, looked at it, and we then did some more research on the ground and got more insight of what was going on. And sure enough, when we went on the contract, then the reports started coming out about, you know, Columbia, South Carolina, jumping, all this stuff. So we're very grateful that we have this process in place and it's r working.

Awesome, I took that class and I concur with you, 100%. So, would. Would you say the time period between market cycles is R from 5-10 or 12 years? Oh, it depends.

It depends on the location. I've seen some markets go from recession to expansion, then back to recession. Depending on what's going on, especially now with COVID. So it depends, but traditionally it's like five to 10 years, correct?

And the least preferred cycle is buying at the peak market, right? Right. Okay. Why?

Well, when you buy at the top, right? Again, the economy goes in cycles. Everything goes in cycles. Everything in life goes in cycles up down.

So when you buy at the top, then you're buying at a point where a correction is get to happen, you know, unless you plan to hold a property for very long period of time. You know, then like this, say, real estate, when you hold it long enough, it's forgiven. Because if you plan to hold it for 10 to 15 years, to be honest, it really doesn't matter when you buy it, because over time, you're still going to make your money. money.

So, but for the syndications that we do where we hold properties three to five years, It's very I read a book as you know, us being part of the Dave Lindahl training program, Dave Lindahl's books that talks about real estate. And so he talks about the different phases of the cycles and the best time to consider buying. Thanks for sharing that with our listeners. So the best cycle to buy is when the market is flat, Love it.

Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Before we wrap up today, do you want to tell us a little bit about the deal you have on the contract? Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity, Linda.

So it's a 132-unit class, project in Columbia, South Carolina, located in one of the best neighborhoods in Columbia with the top high school. So that high school provides a strong backbone for that community. Like I was mentioning some of the data that is coming out of that area now. That neighborhood had about 8% brand growth over the last 12 months, you know, and everything that's happening in Colombia, expanding due to e-commerce.

So we have it offering to accredited investors only minimum investment at $50,000. And if you want to find out more about the property, please don't hesitate to reach out to us and you can visit our website or you can contact me directly. And I'm sure, is it okay if I give them a contact information? Of course.

That was the next question. You. You could actually reach out to me, text me. My cell phone number is 301-655-4708, again it's 301-655-4708.

our website is www.xs and x I look on site capital dot.com. That rr XSITE Capital dot com and x site the s the site is within s right so x s and sam it e.com capital dot com XSITE Capital dot com correct excellent well Leslie thanks so much for being a guest on our show today you've already told us how our listeners can get in touch with you any last words before we close out? Well I just want to say thank you ladies for having me on this platform and I really thank you for what you guys are doing. Keep striving forward and let's keep providing value to the community and keep helping other people grow their wealth and grow their minds as well.

One more thing I forgot to mention, please feel free to join our meetup. We provide a lot. Education to investors and people looking to grow in this business and become part of the platform, and whatever resources you need on your journey to growth, please, please. Don't stick to reach out to any one of us.

We, we're very passionate about that. Yes, indeed. We'll have all this information on our website, as well, in case you didn't, you're driving, and you didn't get to write any of this down. Leslie, thank you so much, and a thank you for joining us, everybody.

To show our appreciation, we would like to offer you a special gift. Be the first person to contact us through our website, multifamilyinvestorladies.com, book to help you advance your passive investing journey probably will be the Robert Kawasaki book, right? Second chances that Leslie mentioned. that's a great book to send.

Yeah. Yep. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to leave us a five star rating right there on your favorite listening platform. And if you like what you hear on the show, you find it helpful and want, to learn more, go ahead and hit subscribe.

Thanks again for listening. And remember, it's never too late to start passive investing in real estate with the multifamily investor ladies. For more information about today's episode, learn more about passive multifamily real estate investing or to reach Linda or Lisa directly, visit us on the web at multifamilyinvestorladies.com. Thanks to Mil for joining the Multifamily Investor Ladies podcast sponsored.

Your hosts, Lisa Hill and Linda Brooks, remind you it's never too late to get started on your multi-family real estate investing journey, and they'll show how to do it successfully as a passive investor, and we'll a see you next time.

If you have a debt, or he's about paying off student loans. We're your host Daphne Vanessa and Shamil Rodriguez. Welcome to the student loan podcast, everyone. Today we have a very, very exciting guest.

I mean, how exciting is this to have Leslie Awasom himself, famed investor, really mentor of a tribe of people who are up and coming in the world of multifamily investing. So we are super excited to have Leslie on today. And with that, let's get started. So Leslie, how are you?

I R I am wonderful. Great, great to hear. So the audience doesn't know as much as we do, but we would love for you to share with them, what your story is, how you became so successful, and what was your interesting journey to get to where you are today? 1st off, thank you.

Vanessa, thank you, Shamil, for having me on your platform. I'm grateful to be here to share the little experience that I've had. So I'm just grateful to be here in the US. So I migrated to the US about 20 years ago.

My mother was here in the US working as a nurse. So she brought us all over, my siblings and I. And I started off here chasing the American dream like everybody else. Come from an immigrant family.

highly encouraging immigrant population. So I went to school I started off studyinging computer science around 2000 then right when I got done one of my certifications got a job offer the dot-com crash happened so I lost that opportunity went through some stressful moments ended up in a car accident in the hospital where I was airlifted to a hospital where I almost lost my life because I was doing the wrong things, hanging around the wrong set of the crowd and not really focusing on myself. So after that incident, I decided to I was living in Maryland and I decided to pack my bags, move to North Carolina to go pursue a career in nursing, because my mom is a nurse. So I went to nursing school, graduated from nursing school in 2008, came back to it and I just I felt like I needed more for my life.

I wasn't just sure why and for us in the immigrant community that when you need something when you need more the solution is education. Parents emphasize education so you got to go get more school. You know you got to keep going until you have a doctor until you have a PhD or whatever. You got to keep going there R.

If you're not a doctor yet you got to keep going back to school. So I went back to So, I went back to school, got my master's in nursing anesthesia, great career, great job, high paying job, have R been doing that I've been doing that for the past five years, really grateful for that opportunity to be taking care of people in that capacity and grateful for all the resources that come along with having that kind of a position. But even at my job as a, and I still did not feel fulfilled. I felt like there was a ceiling of, and I felt like I was at the ceiling, I was making all this money, but I was not happy because I felt like I wasn't growing, there's just a limitation of how much growth that I could have in my career.

So I was just wandering around trying to ask myself if this is really what I want to do in the past, for the next 20 years of my life. At that point, I was. This is a student little podcast, so I'm going to explain. I was busy working overtime.

I was working about, 60 hours a week, trying to pay down my student debt. Because I was like, so scared of all this debt, I got to pay down. I got to get this monkey off my back, if that means anything to you guys. Absolutely.

I was doing that, but just didn't feel fulfilled. So at one point, I was reading through a Yahoo article, just trying to read business news, figure out what else is out there. So I stumbled across an article I talked about some guy-wrote a book for a million years that are drowning in student loan debt, and that it's the author of some famous book. Read that part that I had, not read it, at that time.

So I say, you know what, that's the situation. Let me read, let me buy this book and read. I was at that point, I was dissatisfied, frustrated, and I was open to more knowledge. I was open to try something else.

I was open to try a part that is not on the traditional part. So I started reading that book, and it felt like Robert Kiyosaki was talking to me. Now finances and financial education is not something that we hear that I did not have anybody that rought me anything about banking's systems and all that stuff. So it's from that book that I learned how the banking systems work, how the debt system in the U.S.

works, and how everything is, how you can get yourself out of this situation, you know, so I started following some of the recommendations in that book. The book recommended read more books on financial education. Read this. I just dove in and started reading, started educating myself, started investing on myself.

And so one of the recommendations of the book was looking to real estate. He talked about the advantages of real estate, which made sense to me. So I started investing in real estate back in 2016. And that was really working.

The first property went really well. So I was all in I said, this makes more sense So I got to keep going. And I'll fast forward 2019, I met my partners and we transitioned into multi-family investing, like buying more bigger apartment complexes. And together, we've been able to do some R amazing things and since I met my partners, the growth has been tremendous.

So I'm just grateful to be where I am today and I'm grateful to be having this conversation. That's fantastic. I, so much to unpack there. I would love to start off with the psychological part.

Sure. So the, can you talk about the, now let's talk about, did you take out student loans for each of your computer science degree and the nursing degree as well? I took out student loans for every year. I was given the money, I took it.

No, I understand completely. So can you share with the audience, because you've hit a point of success now that sometimes can be hard for our listeners to, and imagine themselves in. Just right now at this point, can you walk them through what it was like to figure out, you know, how am I going to pay for school? Does it have to be, you know, why does it have to be loans?

Can you just share a little bit about your mindset back then for the audience? There was not many options. There are two options. I have to go to school.

I don't have the money to go to school. And I'm in America. The line of opportunity is the government is giving you money. and the government was paying for me to go to school.

So it was completely, those two options, it was a no brainer. So I didn't see it as a problem at that point in time. I was just happy that I have this opportunity to better myself. Okay, so when you approached it, you are looking it from that perspective of, I had this chance and I'm not going to let it slip away.

I'll figure out the rest later. Absolutely, absolutely. I'm just going to go to school and I'll get a job And I'll take care of you later, that was the mindset there. Nice, well said.

I think that's such a unique perspective that a lot of us don R think about in the United States. I think even if I come from immigrant parents as well, I take it for granted the fact that back in my country, it's true that it is a game of economics. And even if you have a lot of ambition, if there's not a family sponsoring you or if you don't come from a well-off family, you aren't going to school. So it puts it into perspective where, a lot of a lot.

Of us complain about student loans, right? But what's the other option is not having the opportunity to further yourself, and would you be where you are? So I think that's a huge takeaway that I would love for the audience to kind of digest that is big on mindset because it sounds like that type of a mindset is what made you successful later on. how do you think the two correlated between.

You're always looking at the optimistic side, even though, you know, something can seem insurmountable. I got to tell you this. It wasn't always that way. At that point in time when I was taking the student loans, I was raking student loans to go to school and I knew I was going to pay it off at but to be in all fairness to everybody in the audience or the people you referred to, I too felt that burden at the end.

It's not easy to come out of school. It's easy to take the money from the government, right and the government gives you money even pays for your rent. It's easy to take it but then at the end when you get that bill and you owe because when I got my bill I owed uh what was it like two hundred and three thousand dollars I was like whoa and then the paycheck you're gettingI that you thought was that big you know it's not that big then you gotta be making this payment and what so you start asking yourself all these questions, like when am I ever going to pay this? So you start having that burden, right?

So it's easy at that point to miss the whole concept of the student loan. And I honestly did not get that, right? I was struggling to pay back my student loans with that mindset, like, oh, I need to pay this, but oh, this is so much of a burden to me until I read the book, Second Chance at Your Life and Your Money by Robert Kiyosaki. And then it led me down this path of personal growth and development.

And down that path, I was listening to one of my mentors and he said, if you have a debt, look at the debt as somebody else's investment in you, right? That money came from somebody else to invest in you. So look at it from a point of gratitude, like somebody believes so much in you that they gave you this money to go and do something. So you have to pay it back, but look at it from that point.

And at that point, it really, that's what hit me. It made sense to me at that point. Then I had to reflect on how I came into this society and had nothing, and I had this opportunity to have this. Now the debt is no longer a burden, right?

But it's something that has helped me to bring me up to this point, right? It's no longer something that I should feel like I'm fighting that translate to in terms of, well, actually, before we get into the future, because we all know the story, but let's walk the audience kind of through where you were piece by piece. So what we, we've done with other audience members is that we look at the pie, like, what did your student loan pie look like, and did you have a strategy to pay it off? So question number one is, do you remember, you know, what your student loan total burden looked like?

You said, a 200 something thousand, was it all private? Was it all public? How much of it had variable interest rates versus a deferred interest? Do you remember?

It was all public. It's all federal loan. The mixture of subsidize and un-subsidized. I think when I came, I bundled it all up to one payer and the total was like 203 and $800.

And the interest rate is like 6%. And so what is the strategy with paying off student loans? What do you believe in terms of when to start investing versus when to start paying off your student loans? R.

What's your idea on that a. R. So this is my mind and initially when I started off everything else was R. My whole life, having fun, everything else was R.

I was working, like I said, 60 hours a week over time, dropping it in my student loan, someone's making $10,000 payments, someone's making $5,000 payments, trying to pay it off. I was trying to get that monkey off my back, but it was like overburdening me and everything. So when I discovered, when I a started to understand finances, trying to get better at my mindset and trying to understand everything, One of the principles I learned is never do anything with your money if you haven't paid yourself first. And the other principle I learned is invest 10% of your income in your own personal growth.

So those are the two things I do not compromise with. else is on hold, right, but 10% paid to myself and 10, about 10%, not fully 10%, but I try to get close on my own personal growth and my personal development, you know, so I invest in myself by buying books, signing off for courses to learn how to keep growing, how to keep getting better, how to expanding my means to associate myself with better networks where I could learn some of these things, where I could increase my income. there are two ways that you could pay this and not one way is the wrong way or right way, right? At the end of the day is what works for you, right?

For me, the concept of shrinking down and just focusing on that was overburdening for me and it wasn't really working, right? It's, for me, I don't think it's worth it to be paying that then it becomes like some kind of a stress on you where you get sick or whatever, right? So when I discovered that, what I did is put myself on a 10 year payment plan. I was trying to pay it off in like five years.

I put myself on a 10 year payment plan where I make a payment every month. I know that payment is something that I could pay without having any issues. And. I still have enough to invest in myself and invest in my personal growth.

I still have enough to take care of my family and my kids. Smart, very smart. And so that's different than what a lot of people that have paid off their student loans have said but your net worth is also very much higher than theirs. So can you talk to us about the difference in interest rates between investing versus paying off your student loan debt and why that difference in interest rate might be something to think about?

So I invest in multifamily real estate. The deals that I'm in now, one of them has an average annual return of about 25%. Wow. the other has an average on a return of 18%.

My student loan interest rate is 6%. percent. You know, so now you get where the math and the differences. Now let's put the percentages aside and all that.

I know you guys I know people like messing with the. But my belief is and I think a lot of other more smarter people way ahead of me have said it right that you're worth your network grow as much as you grow as a person right. A lot of us students when we come out of school with a student alone we put our own growth on hold like we feel like the education is the pinnacle of where we need to go and we stop everything else and focus on this and lock us up in for five years or six years that we want to pay off this dead and then cover everything else. Right.

Right. But you don't have to go too far to see in nature. And we are here to grow. Right.

Everything in nature is yet to grow. Everything in nature is yet to grow into its highest potential. Right. So But whenever I stop that growth, I don't feel myself.

When I'm engaging in activities where I'm growing, then I feel like I am living the best life for me. And for me, that's more important than I'm having a zero balance on my student loan. I am on a trajectory to pay it off in 10 years, maybe less. I did not expect, to be honest with you, I did not expect the growth to happen with me as it did.

Like when I was involving in personal development and personal growth, I really did not expect it to have the results that it has had, but it has, you know? So I'm happy, I'm grateful where I am. So it's working for me, so I'll keep going down that path. Nice.

So to follow up on that idea, Lizzie, I like it. And I wanna make sure that our listeners learn from what I think is a really key part you said there, which is, would you s mind sharing a bit more about why you kept pushing forward through your personal development journey, even though you didn't believe it internally. That little inner voice is like ahh, I'm doing it, but I don't know if it's going to happen as fast as I think it's going to happen. Try to help somebody who might be out there who's saying, oh man, I'm trying this, I'm working three jobs, working two jobs, and I just don't feel like it's coming to me as fast as I wanted to.

you know, kind of, keep going. The power of your mindset cannot be overstated, right? I know you see a lot of everywhere in the mindset, it's king mindset, and that might get a little bit nauseating, but I will tell you this. Your mindset is everything, right?

Your perspective is everything. For me, learning about my mind and learning about how I view certain things and understanding how simple things, simple changes in life can affect your growth has made a huge difference. I started, the number one thing that you could do, I started being really ungrateful. I had all this, I had the same position that I have right now.

I had pretty much kind of almost the same life that I had right now and the same kind of opportunities around me, but I was so ungrateful. And when you live in that space of ingratitude, you are unable to see the opportunities When you live in that space of dissatisfaction, you are unable to see the opportunities that are around you because you spend most of your all in life, they did not go to some other planet to get it. Everything that they got is a year right around us, right? And we, it's just, you just got to change your perspective, open your eyes to see it.

And that's why the mindset is important. If you're not able to change your mindset, change your berspective, you are on a different tunnel or vision, right? It's not like it's all here. So changing your mindset helps you see things differently.

It helps you look alive in a different perspective and helps you value yourself more and the more you value yourself, the more you're able to invest in yourself and the more able to grow. Very well said. Thank you Leslie. Would you mind a quick question just because I know we have a bit of an understanding of real estate.

We're not like you guys, but we know enough to know the difference between multi-family homes just for the people that aren't familiar and as we do this for a lot of our guests that are from different fields. Would you mind walking through r the listeners, what that means? Is it a duplex? Is it a triplex?

Is it an apartment complex? Would you mind just educating the listeners briefly about what it is that you do outside of your nine to five. Yeah. So multifamily, simply much means two units and up.

But for our business, we focus on like apartment complexes, ranges from 50 units and up. So we find great opportunities in our emerging markets. We purchase those apartment complexes together with our investors and the great thing is, it is like a solid, strong avenue for world growth that has existed over the years for a very long period of time. So we never knew about it.

Like I said it's all here but you don't have the perspective to see it. I didn't have the perspective to see it until I started engaging. engaging, then I came across this and I asked myself, I've been in the US for a 20. I thought I was ambitious, how come I've never heard about this?

And asking myself that question and realizing that a lot of people in my community have no idea that these opportunities exist out there for them. And we're talking about a lot of people that are hardworking, people that are medical doctors, that are lawyers, that have PhDs, that have good earning jobs, don't know that they have this stable vehicle of investment available to them. So, that whole idea, when I was sitting down and having a conversation with my partners and I, we're going to the educational process and learning about this, and having this conversation and learning and thinking that, we could actually take this back and come back to our communities and tell people, okay, these are the opportunities that exist, really got us excited. And that's how we started our company and that's how we started at XSITE Capital to focus on this as a class and to bring that education, to educate people because all of this begins in the mind.

The growth begins in the mind and the more educated that we are about the opportunities that available that the more we are able to choose what works best for it's not a one size feet tall for everybody. You got to see what aligns with you but we gotta educate people so they can know about it to be able. Yeah. And so you talk about the mind a lot.

What are some concrete steps that people can take to change negative tunnel vision? Because I know I personally am not very good at getting out of negative tunnel vision. And so what are some examples that people can take? Like, is it writing down something positive and placing it places?

Is it making sure that you read a certain number of pages per day. What is that success habit that you have that's helped you stay in a positive tunnel vision? Something easy that anybody just get up every morning. First thing in the morning, get a piece of pen and a paper and write 10 things that you're grateful for.

And really feel the gratitude. Just feel how grateful you are. It doesn't have to be financial. It doesn't have to be anything.

just feel just being grateful that you're here. I'm able to breathe this air is enough. That's a great piece R feedback. So listeners, you hear, we now know, be grateful, express gratitude, 10 things that we're writing down per day.

And so following up on the wealth growth aspect, it looks like of all the strategies for achieving success, you've chosen, make more money. So there's some people that do live way below your means, some people do make more money, some people do a combination of the two. Am I right in assuming that you are the make more money class? Both.

Both, okay. Both, Rachael, it's all about balancing expenses and expansion, the thing that will not work for me is sacrificing expansion for like stop expanding myself just because I want to crumble and save and not be able to live life, no. So it's a mixture of both. I'm not extravagant, I don't spend carelessly, but I re-need my.

[inaudible] I'm not vegan. I dug in a lot of content that is helping moving me forward, you know.

And I've been able to break some of those challenges break some of those fears. And I just, I'm happy for where I'm at. I'm grateful. And I keep trying to grow every single day.

It's amazing. How are you surrounding yourself with other successful people? I know you've done a fantastic job of creating an environment for mentees to have the opportunity to meet other successful people like yourself, but how did you find that network? Initially, when I read books that said you don't have to have necessarily physical mentors, you could have audio book mentors.

I had a bunch of those, but I got to a point where I said, So I love this kind of That was a scary part, but as things happened, the very first r person that showed up at our thousand doors across the US of multifamily assets. And then he became a mentor, you know, showing us all this. So it's just about having faith, putting, yourself out there with a pure, an open heart. And believe me, everything falls in place.

It's like when you take one step in the right direction with an open heart, with faith, like 10. Different steps, 10 different things are lying next to you. So at least that has been my experience for which I'm very grateful. It's amazing.

So I wanted to dive into that r little bit more because sometimes Leslie, we have some people that feel like, oh, I'm working full time. In your case, we're in 60 hours a week, sometimes more, I'm sure. And it's not an easy might think, oh I just don't have the time, I'm too busy, how were you able to say I want to stay in my current path, but I'm also going to invest in real estate and manage those two worlds together? I gave up everything else and I'm focused on that, right?

If something is very important to you, find time for it. Show me your calendar and I'll tell you what your's working overtime, doing all this stuff, putting all the extra money into my student loans. And then when I started investing in real estate, I kind of cut back a little bit. I'm probably working out maybe about 40, 50 hours a week maximum.

But I designed my schedule in such a way that I have time that I can make time for real estate, right? For example, I'm a healthcare provider. So one of the shifts available to us is to do a 24-hour in-house call shift where I stay in the hospital for 24 hours and I respond to emergencies. Now the great thing about that shift is you can go there and work for two hours and 18 and the rest of the day you don't have anything to do, right right?

So, guess what? Everybody doesn't want that shift, I signed up for it. And those hours I spend doing my real estate stuff. And when I have a case, I put that aside and I focus on the anesthesia.

So it's all about when something is really valuable to you, you're going to find time for it. All right. During breaks at work, I'm listening to a podcast. You know, I really enjoyed this.

I really enjoyed the journey. So for me, it doesn't feel like I am working, it feels like I am living life. So that's why it comes a little bit easier. R.

No, that's very well said. I think the gratitude point that you brought up is very important in opening up your mind and focusing around you, but then also seeing the idea that you are taking advantage of the small moments, right? Because a lot of times people will use time they're waiting in line at r the grocery store or maybe they found an extra. 15 minutes and now they're gonna scroll through Facebook or ESPN or whatever the case may be.

But instead you decided to reinvest that extra spare time back into yourself. I think it's amazing for our audience to hear because a lot of times people get the stress, right? They may not be at that where they're seeing their debt as an investment from the government into them. But hopefully they will after hearing this episode with you.

And they by going out, drinking, or playing video games, or whatever the case may be. So I think, I appreciate it, Leslie, that you're sharing that advice, because I'm hoping that it'll hit R someone at home that might be feeling a little bit underwater or feeling a bit stressed and saying, hey, I'm working too much, I don't have enough time, or these loans are too much for me to handle, I don't know what to do, am I ever gonna get rid of these, and you're able to get to that point. So would you mind sharing a bit about the Meetup, a little bit of more, I think it would be great for our listeners who are interested in real estate to learn a little bit more about what that platform is and how they can connect with it if possible. The name of our Meetup is the exciting wall of multi-family investing.

It's virtual, it's on Zoom right now because of the pandemic. So we host every first Monday of the month. And we strive, again, we strongly believe in the power of the education of expanding your awareness and expanding your opportunities. So we endeavor to bring some of the top speakers around the country, come and talk to anyone who attends about different aspects related to multi-family real estate investing and mindset.

Again the mindset is very powerful, so we bring people that can come and talk to people. You can come and ask questions, learn, participate, be part of the community. We send out a lot of educational content to members of our Meetup platform, and we are getting better on that, and intending to do a little bit more of that as the years come about. It's amazing to see some of the growth that has happened to some of the members that have been, of our community.

It's an amazing feeling to be in that position to be able to expand somebody else's mind and they go out and do this, and because somebody else did it for me too, so yeah. Awesome to hear. There's so much to pack out here, so much success, Leslie. You are running this meetup, up you're inspiring people, you've completely expanded the life of your family, and there's a lot more to come, but how do you feel about also being a hero R in the pandemic?

You're a part of the medical professional, you're a part of saving lives in this pandemic, you guys have been heroes in the current state. What does it feel like to be in that space and I'm going to tell you something, that's the reason why I'm so grateful for real estate, because what real estate did for me, it's not just financial, it probably to some extent saved my life, I don't know, but who knows what destiny is. Coming into this pandemic, because of real estate, I learned about the gratitude mindset, your mind and everything and learning about everything. So coming into this pandemic, I was mentally fortified to deal.

Right. This is the one time in my life that I faced a stressful situation. And I feel like the one guy that went to work every day and seeing what we're doing as a service, as something really beautiful, as being part of this, opportunity to are in to see people that are at least in their most vulnerable moments and you're able to be there. You have the skill to help them through that, right?

So that was the perspective I took to work every day, you know, being able to get up every morning, early in the morning, do my meditation, do my gratitude journaling a exercise and go to work feeling happy, feeling energized. I think it protected me psychologically and probably biologically from any of the stresses that came along. You know, it has been a very, very challenging moment for any health care provider. It has been like the past few months has been very stressful.

I've had a few colleagues that have been hit with the virus, and it's not something that is easy to deal with, you know, so again, we still the journey is too long, things are still getting bad as the days goes ahead. My heart goes out to all the people that are lost family members in this pandemic. So I just, I'm. Just again, grateful and happy that I list I can help in this situation.

So I do the best that I can to help and protect myself so that I can protect my family as well. Amazing. Wow. I'm so inspired.

This has been really, I R mean, I can't say favorite, but definitely one of my favorite episodes. I've learned a lot. I think there's a lot of action items that we took from today's episode, which is the gratitude journal, making sure, sure that your mindset is in the right place and some concrete steps that you can take to get there. Looking at the value of your actions in terms of debt versus investment and thinking about what actually makes sense for you.

view, and looking at things always in a positive view. So those are just some of the takeaways that I had. Some. I think that is key.

I 100 1000% agree with that concept because absolutely. Yeah, I can guarantee that is the and that is a lot of things because we focus so much sometimes on the money and forget that the money does not exist if we don't exist. don't exist, right? Yes.

You are the person that goes out there to make the money, so you gotta elevator skill. In order to be able to make more money, you got elevator skill in order to remain competitive in this environment. The economy is changing at a very rapid rate. You know, some of us are gonna get left behind because we got comfortable where we are and that felt like that was the end.

But as human, the human nature is to keep growing. Invest in that growth. If you do 10% investment in your personal growth, your personal development, I guarantee you will see results. You're right.

The fantastic that you've blessed us with the opportunity to share your wisdom with us and your experience so that other people can learn from it. I know I've taken away some things here. It reminds me, I don't know if you've read Cal Newport's book of deep work. It really goes on that mindset of building up your skills so that you can continue to evolve and doing it incrementally but consistently.

So Leslie, I mean, I don't know about you Daphne, but this is really a very, very positive episode. I'm looking forward to seeing the reaction that our listeners have to it. Yes. Thank you so much, Leslie, for your time.

I don't even think a rapid round would do this episode, justice. So I am going to and here and on a high note of everybody, invest 10% of yourself, people who are interested in the exciting world of multifamily investing, please, please attend the meetups. I have and I've learned so much. I really appreciated the line by line look, I'm a nerd.

So I appreciated the line by line look into what steps to take to actually become a multifamily investor one day. In my case, a lot of people were experienced in the meetup already. And then I really just appreciated you sharing the mindset piece. That really was for me, the biggest takeaway Because without us shifting our mindsets about student loans and whether it is a curse or a blessing, are we really going to be able to tackle it with mental peace?

And so I think that was a huge lesson. you want to pay it side or you want to pay it happy. You might as well be happy while you pay. All right guys, thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much. Have a good one. All right, you too. Bye-bye.

Bye.

Because the credibility is what is at stake and the You don't want to go and do these things because if you're syndicating the deal and you have a lot of people's money, you don't want to play with that money. So you want to make sure you equipped yourself with the right team, surround yourself with the right mentors. And then do all you can do in terms of putting yourself in the right position to win. So that's what we've done in our business to try to make sure we equip ourselves and us or under ourselves, with the right set of people and get the right set of training as well, and continue to educate ourselves such that, you know, when these opportunities come, we'll be ready to jump on them.

This is the Everything Real Estate Investing Show with Sean Pan, where we interview local real estate investors and professionals to go over tips, tricks and investing strategies to Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Everything Real Estate Investing Show with Sean Pan. Today we have Tenny Tolofari. Tenny is a real estate investor that specializes in investing in apartment complexes. In this episode, we'll talk about transitioning from a full-time job into becoming a full.time real estate investor.

We'll be talking about what you need to do to start getting recognized as a real estate investor, as well as how to create strategic partnerships to leverage any skills that you're lacking every Wednesday and Sunday and release a show notes on our site, everythingrei.com slash podcast. By the way, if you need help financing your next real estate project, check out Conventus Lending. Conventus is the best hard money lender with amazing rates and incredible service. I've used them for years.

And they've always been incredibly easy to work with. If you rneed a hard money loan, contact me at sean at everythingrei.com to get $1,000 off of your processing fee. And if you want to know the secrets of how investors in the Bay Area are making huge profits in one of the most expensive markets in the world, download the free, ultimate Bay area investing handbook on our website, everything.ai.com. Enjoy.

All right, Tenny. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Go ahead and introduce yourself and let us know who you are and tell us what you do. Thank you, Sean.

I really do appreciate you for having me today. I'm basically a real estate professional. I basically buy apartment buildings across the merger market in the United States. I have a partner of two, Leslie.

I was some and Julius Oni, they are both medical professionals and I have an IT cybersecurity background and a financial services background as well. So three of us came together from joint forces to form XSITE Capital Investment LLC. So focus heavily on multi-family asset class. Great, and how did you b find your partners and how did you even get started with real estate investing?

That's an interesting question. Thanks. So I came to the United States. I was born and raised in Nigeria and I came to the United States for grad school.

So in 2012, I graduated with my masters in cyber security. When I got out of an opportunity grid carrier, I worked companies like Boeing and Deloitte, providing cyber security expertise to these companies. And at one point in 2016, I asked myself, you know, do I want to continue to work in the corporate world forever, or should I think about something else too? Man, I came across one of the fastest growing financial services company in the country.

And I said, Okay, maybe these guys will be able to teach me about business. So in 2016, I joined the financial services company to learn about entrepreneurship. And I started offering financial solutions. In that process, I met one of my partners, Leslie, I met his wife when I was doing a presentation and then the wife introduced me to him.

And then from there, we basically found out R that we had some similarities when it comes to ambition and philosophy books we're reading. And from there we started having conversations, we started meeting to play the robot Kiyosaki board game, where he talked about how to buy assets, real estate, and the whole different types of asset class. And then from there we started talking about business and in 2019, we decided to open up XSITE Capital. And amongst all the different asset classes out there, we chose Boca family because of a whole bunch of reasons.

One, which is you can leverage an expat, which is a property management company, debts that you can get on it is great. The loan that you get on it is non-recursive, where the burden is not on an individual, but basically on the property itself. And also tax benefit that comes to it, depreciation that comes with it. So a lot of different benefit comes with this particular asset class.

So we decided to just dive in and learn as much as we could in it. And in that process, we met our partner, listening, who brings a lot of investor relation to the team. So three a lot of similarities because I was also an engineer before going to real estate full time. And actually, I was working at Boeing for about three years from 2011 to 2014.

Oh, yeah. Where were you at? I was in El Segundo. So we were working on satellites for the government.

I was in Charleston. Okay, very nice. After supporting the commercial plane over there. And did you R say you work for Deloitte as well?

I've only played the online version, but it's pretty fun and you get to learn all the concepts of like buying cash flowing assets to be able to, you know, get that outer circle where you're like living the rich life. Yeah. So one of the things that we both learned about ourselves while we were playing that game, me and Leslie at the time, was I have my habit with money, how I hold onto money and I don't want to kind of just put it and invest and how he's a little bit more, you know, I don't want to put the money, I put my money to work for me. So we kind of started understanding, a different nuances about ourselves, our character, how we manage money and everything.

So it was a good experience. a good experience. Absolutely. And your story is so interesting because you guys learned about the different investing strategies out there.

You guys got interested in real estate investing,- but from your story, a seems like your first real estate investment, was your apartment complex that you guys bought? So for me, yes. Wow. Leslie, he's been doing like the single family property investments before we met.

Me, I had the only property I had at the time was my resident where I'm living at, but I have not invested in any real estate at all. I know that that's one piece that I've been missing because if you know the Robert Kiyos, cash flow quadrant, he talked about the EDS, the B and the I, and he said, if you want to be wealthy, you want to be in the B and the I quad, so I have the E where I was working the corporate job and now I'm establishing a financial services business, which I've worked building the business in the B. Now, now what was missing is the eye where I can invest my money in. But I've not looked into it that much because people I surround myself with at the time were not people that are thinking about investing in real estate and other people that are entrepreneur in nature.

But when I met Leslie, he was already working in that space. So I found out that might be a good partnership when it comes to invest. So that I moved from, you know that I'm working on that Robert Kiyosaki talked about in his book, so. So effectively, partnering with people allows you to skip some steps.

Like, you didn't, have to go through the whole acquisition of small rental properties, like single families duplexes and fourplexes, and you could just partner with people who've also had that experience and move onto the bigger stuff. Like, apartment complexes. Correct, because one thing that we did earlier in our journey was to learn about all the different asset classes out there, right? just to try to understand what people are doing, because if you don't know what people are doing in the pros and cons, you will not be able to effectively secure your business.

So we learned about flip, buy on hold, wholesaling. We went to all these different conferences and different events and met with a lot of different people. And one of the things that a lot of them were complaining about his tenant, how they have to deal with tenants, the scalability of it. There's one point I r talked to a lady, she said she had a four unit apartment in D.C., she actually was just breaking even.

That means she's not getting any cash flow. Why? Because the amount of money coming in is not enough to service the debt. bigger because we know that if we have more units, 20 units than above, one, we'll be able to have a good property management company that can manage your property.

Two, we'll able to sell this are dead. Three, we don't have to worry about toilet and dealing with tenor because we're transferring that body now to a property management company. And then a whole bunch of other advantages that come with doing more units. I mean, of course, vacancy.

If you have a four unit apartment, one person goes out, you have 75% vacant. If you have two people go out, you have 50% vacant. Three people go out, you have 25% vacant, right? So those are some of the things that we looked into and we decided to go big, Derek.

Because there's no reason why not. There's no reason why not. If it's a matter of money, you just need to raise the money And you said 20 plus units, right? How did you end up, getting that like 190 plus units?

That's like almost 10 times your minimum threshold. Absolutely. So what happened was, we started networking. We became a part of basically a mastermind.

Group and a mentorship program. We try to put ourselves out there to let people understand that we're in the space, right. And as part of that networking network and we came across a group that invited us to be a part of that 192 unit that we did in Marietta, Georgia, The biggest lesson that I If with our family and our friends, because we felt like, OK, maybe let's a do what we're doing. We don't need to tell a lot of a people.

But that was the wrong thinking, right? So we finally found a great deal as part of the General Partners, whatever our task was to raise it, a certain a lot of money. And of course, we're going to be involved in running the property. and so the long story because we did not reach out to investors up front.

We were, believing They finally backed out at the last minute. So because of that now, we couldn't go in as general partners. So we ended up just putting our money into that deal as limited partners for that particular deal. Yeah, it makes sense.

So I guess lesson learned is that you need to prepare for people to back out. And so it's probably best practice to oversubscribe, at least for the verbal. And be like, look, there's something. I have a deal.

I'm going to give you guys priority, but if you back out, I already have a long list of people, so you're not going to be like, what happened to you guys? You, You're not going to be like without the funds during crunch time? Absolutely. You want to start letting people know about what you're doing, because you don't want to, another lesson from that is you don't want to go to people to ask them for $50,000, $100,000 of their hard end money.

You don't even know that you're actually doing this, right? So when we are in crunch time, at that time, when I started going to our family and friends saying, hey, we have this deal. We need to raise half a million dollars. We need to bring $50,000 and they're like, what are you talking about, man?

When you decide investing in real estate, when you start investing in this kind of real estate as big, you know, that you have to raise this amount of money. So the credibility was not there. the trust was not there. So that was one of the big mistake that was made at the time as well.

Right now, we're seriously fixing all of those. Yeah. So what would you do to fix that problem? Because I feel like this is the same challenge that almost every new investor has.

They just come out and they say, hey, I understand that real estate is a great way to place my money for great returns and I know like syndications are a great way because you can pull money together, but how do you get people to trust you if you've never done a deal before? You want to let them know that you're working on it before you find a deal. For instance, if you're on my body right now and I say, hey, Sean, man, I've been and going to different realistic conferences, having to go into mentorship program. I'm involved in different mentorship program.

I'm studying. This is what I'm learning right now, right? It's just like going to school, right. And your friends will start understanding this is what you're doing for a long period of time.

And when you come now with a deal, they will not be surprised. They'll be like, oh yeah, tenure has been working on this for a while. Let me check out, let me see what he's doing. But if you don't tell them, you don't inform anybody about it.

and the first time they are seeing you, It's a deal and you're asking them to give you $50,000. R that's kind of really, really hard to sell, you know? So you want to kind of start just sharing with your friends and family because that's where a lot of people start. Someone like me, I don't have friends and family because my whole family is back home in Nigeria, so the people that I work with, the people that I went to school with and when I just showed up and start saying, Hey, I have this 192 unit deal is a great deal.

I have the right team. The deal was like amazing with the team, the experience, everything. You cannot afford that deal. But because a didn didn't share with people upfront, we kind of fell short.

So that is one big thing that I think a lot of people should start doing. Just start sharing with people what you're doing, even if you don't have a deal, just open your mind and talk about it as long as you're determined to do it, like you want to do it. It's not like one of those guys are saying I want to, I cannot, but if you know that you're doing this, stop telling people earlier on. That makes sense because I think maybe before people think, oh, Teddy, yeah, he's a pro at cybersecurity.

So if he has something related to cybersecurity, sure, I have to let people know that you're now in the business, you are this type of person. So when you have something to show, it's not like coming out of the blue. Absolutely. So like right now, people call me and consult me for cyber security to say, hey, dude, you know, having this problem or I want to do this, what having a lot of events.

I'm out there on social media. So they are beginning to see that I'm serious about this whole thing. I'm producing a lot of content with my partners. And again, we're just closing this.

We're going to close on this deal tomorrow. So by the way, they see these things and they hear all the information and all the stuff that we have in, they're going to start taking me seriously now. You see what I'm saying? Absolutely.

I think social media and content creation are super important things to have because, like you said, like people see that stuff all the time. I think maybe I've been in real estate space for that you're at Home Depot or whatever, they think of you and when they have a question on real estate, they go to you first. Absolutely. Yeah.

So what are you doing on the social media front or content creation side to get people to know more about you as a real estate guy instead of you as a cyber security guy? Right now. I don't put anything about cyber security on social media. The only thing on LinkedIn, if you look at my profile, you see cyber security export, that's it.

And then syndicator and then multi-family and then you look at my, You see my company, so I don't say anything about, you know, cybersecurity or any of that, because that that's where I'm moving out of, right. But again, that's the core of my background. So with our content creation, there's a lot of new people that is in the space. There's a lot of people that want to learn, that wants to learn from.

I experience as well. So we try to just share whatever we have. We see ourselves as a, we don't know who you can help. For instance, there's a lady that sent me a text message listening to one of my.

my podcast and she says she heard about my background, where I came from, and everything that really inspired her. Like, she just takes me out of the blue. That, hey, listen that she needs me to advise her on what she what to do. She wants to house hack.

I said, wow, that's an amazing start, right? But again, if I didn't put myself out there and started sharing my story with some people, you might not connect with everybody, you know, just not one person that was able to connect with, kind of, you know, I showed that to my wife and I was like, oh wow, look at you, I'm impacting people's life. So just those kinds of things, no matter how little it is on social media, on podcasts, wherever I can provide value to people, I try as much as possible to do. And of course, we're always seeking expertise from people that does marketing, create content, reach out to people that knows how to do these things because that's not my domain.

So we consult them, ask them for help and they come in and help us do some of our marketing strategy and stuff like that. Yeah, it truly is one of the best feelings to be able to help someone out with something that you know. And you know, like whenever I get emails from people who listen to the show, I always reply back. So anyone listening to this, feel free to email me and I'll be sure to reply back to you guys.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Do you have any challenges while promoting yourself as like a real estate, you know, professional while also working full time? Definitely.

The challenge that you have is just trying to find that balance, right, right? But at this point, because I'm so passionate about this, me and my partners, work on this around the clock, right? We don't a set time now, we're like, okay, this is the time I want to do. You know, when you do your full-time job, you have schedule.

That is a schedule that you maintain. But with this, it's around the clock, you know, we have to get on a call at 12 mid-ninth to do it. have to be somewhere, we'll be there. So don't be in the future, as our responsibility becomes more when it comes.

managing these assets, I'll have to move away from my full time job within the next year or so. But for now, you know, we're just doing both. I'm just doing both of them, and making sure that I'm able to be productive. Yeah, I was trying to say challenges in terms of like having your co workers know or your bosses know, because I know when I was working full time as an engineer, I.

I was scared to post some of the things, because I knew my coworkers would see it. And I was scared that I managed to find out that I was like, flipping homes or doing real estate on the side. Yeah. Or, you know, posting on LinkedIn, right?

Like, oh, my boss is my LinkedIn connection. So do I say I'm a real estate investor on LinkedIn? Me, I don't really care about what they think or if they come back and tell me why you posting about real estate. I'm like, do you want me to leave?

Do you want me to leave? I leave. I go to find another job or I just quit and do real estate full term. Because this is my drive, this is what's my passion.

Everybody have something that they do. Some people like fishing, some people like to buy houses, some people have to rehab, some people like to do different things that outside of job. And one of the great thing about Deloitte as a company is, you know, they allow you to do things that you want to do as long as anything that affects the brand or is not affecting your role, I think so far I I've not had any problem with it at all. That's good.

I know one of my other friends, he was working at a company and they knew that he was very active in the community, the real estate community and even had his own meetup group. And they were telling him, hey, like you got to take all this stuff off LinkedIn, you can't be doing this. Like, don't worry about side hustles, just work for the company, we'll take care of you. And I was like, I don't know about that.

It was a good thing that he ended up leaving the company. Yeah, for sure. If I was the one, they start pressuring me like that, I could like, cheers. Nice, very nice.

. So after you did this first deal with the 190 apartment complex, what did you do next? So we took a lot of our challenges that we had in that, challenges of creating our credibility, building our-systems, bringing in the right set of people on board. One of our mentors was saying that, dude, you know, you guys have gotten the education, you guys have gotten the experience, you have gotten the network.

Right now, all you need to believe in is faith, because you need to have faith in what you're trying to do. And I learned that line, that's what one of our partner Julius came on board. So he's our investor's relation partner, but he brings a lot of that network to our company. So since the 192 units have, we've been building our brand, building our team, building our backend system, forming, our teams in the different markets that we're in.

and that's how we're able to prepare ourselves for the deal right now that we're closing tomorrow in DC. Are you able to talk about that deal at all? Yeah, I can give some information about it. Yep, go ahead.

As I was saying, the properties in class A for the nine units high rise building is right on. R the core of DC, is called Step Worth. It's an amazing asset in a prime location. The exit plan for the property is called the combustion and you know, it has a lot of great return.

Of course, definitely, if anybody was interested, I appreciate to give you some more information. An investor cannot get them at this point because we're closing tomorrow, but it's a great asset class, great property. We're me about this deal. And I told them that, you know, we're interested about this deal when they go on into contract.

And why it took this long for them to close is because, So a lot of our investors are excited about it because it can actually walk to the property or take a drive to the property and see it physically. A lot of our market that we invest in is in Charlotte, North Carolina. That's a little farther out. So this is a prime property that a lot of our investors are, and is looking really, really good.

So what kind of roles do you play as CoGP? In this particular deal, one of the things that we do, you know, risk capital as one, the other role that we're going to be playing in this deal the deal is helping them manage the property, or going to be on the general managers call phone calls to manage the managers. And of course, we're going to be helping out with, you know, basically running the day to day operation of the property when it comes to relationship with our investors relationship with the property managers. And of course, working with other partners as well as Co-GP in the deal.

the deal was an eight million and the minimum was five million dollars. But my team, we actually raised 775 million, 775 thousand 775 million. Nice. That's a lot.

Yeah, congratulations. Congratulations on that. So I guess in this case, you're still kind of working with someone else who found the deal and who managed to you know, create- all the structure, so you're R to synd capital that we're working. They have.

And that. So if you're a brand new investor, you know, brand new investing team, how do you get a group like capital to take you seriously and allow you to even have the opportunity to raise money for them. You got to deliver. You got to show that you're serious, you got to show that you're willing to do the work.

For example, we met with one of the partners of Viking, we put a call to him and say, Hey, listen, we're in the DC area, we're part of a network that we're looking for somebody around here that you know, does a to me, just put something in my calendar with my with our assistants and she went ahead and scheduled a call the meeting and we met and he was like man I like you guys are you available to go to Atlanta with us and we were. We were ready. We booked our flight. Unfortunately my partner Leslie couldn't come at a time.

I flew down there to Atlanta with them well spent two days booked my hotel and everything spent two days with them looked at a property did a due diligence with the property management company so he was like, these guys seemed serious. While I was there was another opportunity that showed up, I don't know, I don't want to go into the details, but it's a great opportunity where there was an off-market deal and they were looking for somebody to buy it and I had somebody that wanted to buy it and the person flew down a liner to try to get the property. So he started taking us. My group seriously, because he saw that we were serious about what we're doing.

And that opened up the opportunity for me to come in as GP. And that's where they opened up the opportunity for to come in as GP. And then from there, you know, you had already shared this particular deal. We're by the closing DC right now with me while we were there.

And now we just delivered. You know, we exceeded our commitment. Our commitment was $500,000 and we had $775,000. So when you see these things that, you know, you see that you're building your brand, you're going to all the different events.

You know, we met in Colorado, we met in Boston, we ave met in different. that they are having a real estate event. And he's seen us that. were active in the industry, he sees that you guys and if we don't have the answers, we can reach out to people that have it to provide it to them.

That's great. And so what are the steps that you're going to take to do your next deal? Oh, that's pretty simple. Right now we already have teams in one of our main markets, Charlotte, North Carolina, Durham Chapel Hill area and North Carolina.

We have a team already in place. We have the brokers, the property managers. They're actually knocking on doors on our behalf right now. So we have a list of properties that we're targeting we have team members down there, like R.U.

We have investors lined up because right now I'm speaking to you if somebody we have people that wants to put money in this deal in DC, we can take their money anymore. So we have this guys on the within list for upcoming deals that we have coming up. So that's what we're doing. Just continuing to talk to brokers over there.

What could our existing brokers and our management team that's over there? Yeah, that's great. So because you have some experience doing some deals in your belt, now brokers take you more seriously because I know you can close. Your investors take you more seriously because they've seen that other investors have already R done deals with you and you already have like property managers and systems in place because you already have done deals in those areas.

Correct. And so the thing that like my broker that I'm working with now in North Carolina, you know I just went on LinkedIn. R saw him, he's the owner of a brokerage firm in Charlotte. I just sent him a message and say, hey, listen, mom, I'm going to be in Charlotte, I'd like to meet with you, and we have dinner.

And he was like, dude, I think I like you were thinking about I'm going to call the orders on your behalf and then we're going to work together So this kind of relationship and we're doing the same thing for we're having the same relationship with some other brokers in Durham Riley Those areas as well. So just pick up the phone call. People down. We are all human beings Just call people in some people might don't want to talk to you.

Some will give you audience, you know Yeah, that's great. I mean, it sounds like you have a very promising future head for your group Absolutely. Absolutely. The future is so bright, man.

And our goals are very aggressive as well. Yeah. Well, Tony, this has been a great conversation. Do you have any last words of advice for our listeners before we enter show today?

My advice is, you know, don't just sit on the sideline. If you know that you really want to do this, just get started. And get yourself as much as you can r. There are a lot of free resources that are out there.

You can reach out to our group. You can reach out to Shawnee has a bunch of content. There's a lot of different resources out there, if you really want to do this, just get started. And start sharing it with people.

Don't wait until you have a deal because at that point it's just going to be new to them or the people you know and they might not take you seriously and you become desperate. So my advice is just get started if you really want to do something, COVID-19. There are a lot of people, unfortunately, that are a ill that passed away. My heart goes on to them and their family but there's a lot of people that are actually doing stuff with this whole crisis that's going on right now.

Like, I just share with you guys, we're closing the deal tomorrow. So don't use this as an excuse not to do anything. If you have a dream, continue to pursue your dream. And once, about the time, things are going to start falling in place.

That's awesome. And Tenny, how can people get in contact with you? The easiest way to get in contact with us is you can go to our website, is xsitecapital.com. XSITE is X as in xylophone, S as in Samwell, I as in Indigo, T as in Tango, E as in Edward, capital dot com.

And we have a meetup group as well. It's called the exciting world of multifamily investing, meetup and networking. And we have a Facebook group where we share resources and we try to build a community as well. It's called the exciting world of multifamily investing.

So those are some really cool places that you can get a hold of us and get some of our content. All right, T, well, thank you so much for sharing how to get involved community, family, commercial, real estate, even with, you know, this crazy economic crisis going on. So. Thank you so much for all your advice.

I appreciate it, Sean. And thank you for everything you do continue to keep the good work up. And I do appreciate your time too. Cool.

If you want to be in the real estate investment industry, do what you can to get into the business so that people start associating yourself with it. For example, I used to be an engineer in the past and no one would come to me for real estate advice, But by consistently everything REI. And if you thought this was a great episode, let me know what your key takeaway was and share it with a friend who's interested in real estate investing. Thanks and have a great day.

This was another episode of the everything real estate investing show with Sean Pan. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a five star rating. It will only take a second and it'll help a lot. You can contact me at Sean at everythingrei.com.

That's S E A N at everythingrei.com. Thanks and have a great day.

looking to learn from other investors mistakes. I know you are too. You've found the right place. Welcome to Myers methods presents multifamily missteps.

Hey everybody, and welcome to Myers methods presents multifamily missteps. So I'm your host, you're wrong. And I, I've got the great pleasure of having Leslie. I'll assume with me today, Leslie, how are things?

Yes sir. And according to you in like DMV, right? Yes. I'm in Maryland.

Had over in Maryland. Man, man. So if the listeners want to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to do that. So the best way you could actually reach me on my cell phone number, which is 301-655-470-8, or you could send me an email, it's L-A-W-A-S-O-M at X-S-I-T-E, capital.com, that's X-I-S-T.E, capital.com, X-I-capital.com, that's the name of my company, but my telephone number is there, 301-655-4708.

Perfect, perfect. He's a brave man. Who knows how many people gonna call him off of that? Want me to edit that out at some point, let me to know, I'll go back.

But now that they know how to get in contact with you, why don't you give them a little bit of your background and kind of introduce us to the deal that we're gonna talk about today. All right, again, I'm Leslie Awasom, and I'm a real estate investor, and also a nurse anesthetist on my 9 to 5. I started investing in real estate back in 2017. That was initially pushed forward by my desire to provide an alternate source of income for my family, and to provide stability for my family after witnessing what happened in the 2008 with the markets and everything.

So I started seeking alternative methods and fell on real estate. 2017, I had the courage to finally go out there and get my first property. Did my first rental property that worked out really well. Did that, then towards the end of 2018, I met my mama, Mr.

Tenny Tolofari and we were talking about investing, looking at ways that we could scale and came across multifamily investing. So we started our company XSITE Capital Investment in 2019 and focusing on multifamily syndications. And it's been a great amazing journey so far, journey filled with a lot of growth, which is what initially pushed us into this business. And as part of that in 2019, we came across a great opportunity that was a great opportunity to propel us forward in our journey.

Made some mistakes along the way and I'm happy to share some of that with you today. Oh man, happy. That means you've healed from all of the scars and the pain, man. So tell me, how did you get into this space?

Cause you've guys been going after some pretty big deals. I mean, I heard you on Adam Adams podcast and reached out to you off of that. And I think you closed like over a hundred unit deal on your first one, right? Yeah, so we are in 192 doors as limited partners in the deal that I'm going to talk about because we had the opportunity to be on the general partnership side.

And just like you said, it was hurtful when we were unable to deliver and did not get on that GP side. It really hurt, but it was a great opportunity for growth for us, a great learning experience. And sometimes you're glad that you go through that hurt because it makes you a more stronger and better person. That's a good approach.

I'm not good of a, but I appreciate that. So talk to me about the deal, man. What happened, set the whole stage for us. All right, so this deal, part of one of the things we do is we host a meetup, we do a lot of networking because we know this is a relationship, business, so we go out there and talk to a lot of people.

And this deal, we came across this deal through one of our networks. Our main partner on the deal, we have been trying to get in touch with him and connect with him and network with him for a long time. He finally met us and we sat down, had a conversation, shared with him our enthusiasm, our vision and our goals for the future. And he connected with us.

A lot of the things that where he's at today, we could see ourselves going there. He is like a great role model for us. So he saw that in Austria as well, and given us a chance to improve ourselves, he saw that in Austria as well, and given us a chance to improve ourselves, part of an amazing deal, a great B-Class asset in a great market, with a great group to be part of, to start off with. So in every way, it was a very great opportunity.

So we had that opportunity to be part of the general partnership side, which would give us an opportunity to keep learning, to gain that experience on that side of the business and give us that credibility to keep growing as well. But unfortunately, we were unable to meet up on our part of the race. Go ahead, I'm sorry- How does that work? Because I've never done a syndication, everything that we've done so far and what we preach in our businesses, joint ventures.

So how do you raise and become a general partner and all this things, because it's foreign to me. Yeah, so the way it works is in the syndication on the general partnership side, everybody plays, everybody that's on the general partnership side plays a role, you know, but part of it might be raising money, but then you play another part on the management side. So we were offered the opportunity to get a small portion of the general partnership side, but we had to raise a certain amount of money and we were gonna play an active role in the management as well, to be part of the deal. So the structures, everybody, the structures is different but everything has to be done on the legal side because in order to be part of that deal, you have to have an active management role.

So that was opportunity that was offered to us. We actually flew down there and took part in the due diligence process and spoke with the team, met with everybody down there. So, but when it came time for us to close, to deliver our end, we were unable to meet up with the funds because some of our investors backed out at the last minute. So, but we stuck with the deal as limited partners and put some of our own money in it.

So, I never hear anybody talk about investors backing out at the last minute. I've had it happen in the deal before. Investors, they were partners in our deal. Talk to me about that process because there's a sausage that gets made when you're raising money and nobody actually talks about how that actually happened.

How did you get people committed and then how did you know that they'd be committed? Walk me through that process because it's a secret sauce evidently. Yeah, so most of the responsibility really fell on us. We didn't do the right things in the beginning because you have to talk to as many investors as much as possible and get like pre-commitments from your investors, have a list of people that you can reach out to when you have the deal at hand.

We had a very, very small list. We had not done a good job of putting ourselves out there, of letting everybody know what we do. So at that point when we got the deal, we reached out to the list of people we had And one of them actually said, yeah, I'm very interested. This is a very strong deal.

I'm going to bring in the funds necessary to close on this deal. So once we heard that, we stopped raising. We got really excited. We felt really confident that we have this on lockdown.

This is locked. We got to move on to the next thing. We were already celebrating a rookie mistake. But now, a few weeks to the closing, we started reaching out, just to make sure everything was okay and we could not hear back from that person again.

So now at this point, now the pressure is on. We gotta start going back now to start reaching out to other people and that was really the worst thing to be doing at that point. And when you have that pressure on you and you're talking to some people maybe for the first time, it really doesn't matter how much of the numbers that you're presenting, you know, it's difficult for anyone to want to give you for like a week then a week later got a message and said they've been busy they'll get back to us and you know yes. Wow so is there anything that you guys could have done differently in order to have success on the back side of this deal?

Oh absolutely there are a lot of things I would have done differently that's why to some extent we kind of thankful that we had this experience. Now the business that we in is a great business it really does provide real opportunities for people to grow their world. We did not do a good job of putting it out there and letting people know that this is what we do, that we have these opportunities that we could present to them to grow their world. What's up guys it's your host Jerome.

I just want to let you know we launched My Use Methods in the fall of 2019 with the ambition to inspire a new breed of multifamily investor. If you are interested in getting into multifamily or scaling your current business, hop over to our website at myreusemethods.com to grab your free four-. We were a little bit shy. We were a little bit shy, not putting, not talking about ourselves, not talking about our deals.

Because one of the mistakes we made early on is when you get in there, when you start going to networking events and you start going, talking to people, You meet people that will tell you that they have the capital, they have this money, they have all of this to do this. We rely too much on that. We did not go out there and try to talk to people around our network and see the people that we could help around our network. We rely too much on that.

A lot of things have changed since then. We've changed our approach. We're focusing more on capital raising, focusing more on making our brand known and making ourselves known. been it's been a really really good experience helping people learn more about financial education and growing their world and the response has been very very positive so far so sometimes I got slapped my head-slap myself in the head and ask myself what was that really thinking why was that not going out there you know talking to people but all that exchange now we're moving forward.

Okay, so I gotta ask right? So the guy didn't have he just kind of vanished you want to talk to your other list everybody says list it's kind of like a code word how do you make a list how do you build a list how do you get people ready to hear about the deals that you're working on because I haven't actually seen a prescription for doing So, you just tell people what you do, right? You'd be surprised. You tell people what you're doing.

Some people reach out to you and say, hey, I want to learn more about this stuff that you're doing. I hear you're doing real estate. What is it about? And I just sit down and talk to them, and I tell them, this is what we do.

These are opportunities that we have. If you're interested, when we come across an opportunity like this, we would like to present it to you. That's fine. Let's say.

Okay phone number and email address. And we just have that person as part of our partner, as part of our network. And we reach out to the person periodically and let a r let them know exactly what we're doing, where we're at with everything. And now, if we have an opportunity that comes, we're going to present it to everybody that has shown some interest that we have a prior relationship with that has shown some interest in investing and if they're interested then they'll make a commitment at that point in time.

So the difference now is we're just talking to more and more people to reaching out making the outreach bigger than what we were doing before you know so I know everybody that we talked to does not agree to invest some people just want to learn about what we do and we keep those people to as part of our network and keep growing the network and on whatever value we could provide to any person we keep doing that. One of the things that One of the 's that scares me about raising money is the sophisticated versus accredited thing. The majority of my people you know I'm not you're almost you're basically a Dr. right you administer anesthesia you got these group people around you that are high network I went to public schools the whole way through, I got an engineering degree, you know, a lot of folks that I'm around are accredited investors.

And so how are you like qualifying whether or not somebody sophisticated or not if they don't have the network or are you only working with accredited investors? Yeah, that's a valid question because we dealt with that too and we made the decision not to restrict our outreach so we made the decision to work just with accredited investors. So because the last thing we want to get involved in, is some kind of legal issues so we made the decisions to work just with accredited investors that way we could maximize our marketing and which is what we've been doing how did you how do you find an accredited investor like my dad was a soldier right and we didn't have doctors and attorneys and then it's coming over for dinner and I'll be honest with you and I was in high school I didn't even know what an engineer was until I thought it was just a person that drives the train so like how are you, is it just a function of like your day job or how are you finding those accredited investors that are interested in investing in multifamily? Yeah, my profession does definitely help because I have access to people that might qualify as accredited investors.

But we're not limiting it just to a circle, we're reaching out on doing a lot of online reach out, doing a lot of marketing online. we're getting some good results from that as well. Going out before the COVID outbreak we were doing a lot of networking events, going out and talking to people and there are a lot of accredited investors out there looking for the right opportunities. You'd be surprised until you get out there and start talking to people you would be surprised at the amount of people that have that network that are looking for the right opportunities to invest in.

So, that has been a pleasant surprise for us because we've met some good people along the way. Do you have to have, so back to the list thing, right? Yeah. You do it on like pen and pad, or you got Excel, or you got like MailChimp.

Like, let's talk to me now. No, we have a CRM system. We have a CRM system. We have a great virtual assistant that keeps us organized.

So we have a CRM system that we keep a list of everybody that's probably primarily a meetup. Anybody that's in a network that has not showed any interest in investing. We have another group of people that showed interest in letting us be partners on their deals. And we have people that like so we just keep it's just about being organized you have a list for investors list for lenders list for property management companies and just people that you could reach out to for different purposes.

So we have a VA that makes sure sure that we still organize with stuff like that. See, now you're getting a super fancy. You got a VA and everything, man. So talk to me, I guess two things, right?

Because it's not just you. So how'd you pick your partner? And then how'd you guys make the decision on the VA? And then like what type of financial commitment is that?

Yeah, so I like to say that it's a funny story, I met my partner, I think my wife got tired of me talking about real estate and investing with her, so she found me a friend. Because at that point in time I was at a space where I was doing a lot of reading, keeping to myself, doing my rental projects, you know, and very skeptical where I associated with and just trying to guard my mind space. So, she told me about, my partner does financial services. So, he did a presentation where my wife works.

And my wife was like, I met this guy. I think you should meet him. I think you guys would get really get along. R I'm like, I don't know, stuff like that.

But he finally came, we had a conversation and realized that at that time we're reading the same book on the autobiography of Elon Musk. So, we connected on that. And I realized that he has the same kind of mindset that I had, he had the growth mindset, he wanted to grow. So we started meeting and playing cash flow board game every Friday evening and just talk business and life and everything else.

So realized that we shared a lot of the same vision. He has a super drive, he's very outgoing. I'm more on the shy side and kind of was more of an introvert at that point. So we decided to put our forces together and move forward.

And when it comes to the VA part, we don't shy away from investing in ourselves. Whatever resources that we've put in our business so far, and we've put in a lot of resources in our business to help it grow, is we look at it as an investment in ourselves. The results might not be immediate, but the growth is happening on a daily basis. We are not where we were when we started this business in 2019.

I can guarantee you that a lot of growth has happened on the personal basis, we've expanded ourselves tremendously and we know that great things are coming. So we look forward to the journey. We're really enjoying it so far and we look forward to keep going. Your positive mental attitude is out of this world, man.

I'm excited to get the opportunity to share with you. So I think I got two questions left and I'll ask for the time because these are kind of deep. The first one is, so you guys weren't able to get in the GPU on the last deal. How are you picking and choosing who you're gonna partner with to get that first deal done?

And kind of what's the criteria for a deal for you? So as far as the partners that we choose people that share the similar, the same vision of growth like us, people that are at a high level of integrity and people that we could learn from, you know. We've been very, very fortunate. We've met some really tremendous people in this journey.

That's why, one of the reasons why I love this business, because I've met some really, really great people. So we find somebody that shares the same vision as us, somebody that we could learn from, and we've met a few people like that. As far as the deal, we'll look for deals that are cash flowing from day one, B and C class assets. At this stage of our growth, we're not looking at a total repositioning kind of deal.

We're looking for like light rehab value, that kind of deals in strong and stable markets. So we're going on the conservative and safe side to start off our process. Then as we grow, we'll find areas of opportunities that we could grow to towards and keep growing. I like it.

Final question is, what words of wisdom would you have for our listeners? The only words is, get started. Get started, get in there, start doing it, don't limit yourself. I say that because I was at a space where I was limiting myself a lot.

I was at a space where I had a lot of fears. As you can see back here, it says something about, don't let fear kill your dreams. I had to buy that and put it on my wall to remind myself every day because investing, growing wealth, is a personal growth process. And once you get started and push forward, there are going to be R some disappointments along the way, but you learn from them and move forward.

And you're going to be glad that you took this journey. It it's been a great, amazing journey for me so far. And I look forward to the future. Awesome.

And I can't help but ask, man, so are you native to the US or did you come over later? No, I'm from Cameroon, a small country in Central Africa, so I've been here for 20 years now. 20 years now, killing it. Burgh for your day job and your night job.

So, man, I appreciate you coming on and sharing the missteps. I wish you the best of luck. If there's anything I can do to help you on your journey, please don't hesitate to reach the reach out. And we'll talk to you soon.

Thanks, Jerome, thanks for having me and have a good day. You made it to this juncture, so you really love what we shared on this episode of Mayu's methods presents multi-family missteps. Do us a favor, give us a five-star rating, give us a review and share this with somebody who's interested in multi-family advice. Until the next time, the pack is with you.

Ooh.

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Get started with this, get your 7 day free trial and start growing your business even more so than you have been. Quick disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. For more information, go to bestevershow.com. Best ever listeners, how are you doing?

Welcome to the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever show. I'm Joe Fairless. This is the world's longest running daily real estate investing podcast where we only talk about the best advice ever. We don't get into any fluffy stuff.

What to say, Leslie? I will some. How are you doing? R.L.

I'm good Joe. How are you doing? I'm doing well and I'm grateful to have you on the show a little bit about Leslie. He's a co-founder and director of operations at XSITE Capital Investment.

He's got three years of real estate investing experience, bought the first property in 2017 and in 2019, invested in a 192 unit apartment community. He's based in Hanover, Maryland. With that being said, you want to give the best of your listeners a little bit more about your background and your current focus. Sure.

Joe, by the way, thanks for having me here. So a little bit about me, I've been in the US for the last 20 years. here from Africa 20 years ago and in 2008 myself started my career as a health care provider. I was there and I witnessed what was happening with the economy.

I got to see some older nurses that I was working with lose a significant portion of their retirement as a result of the economic crisis of 2008 and that kind of scared me and left a little bit of an impact on me. I wasn't quite sure where to go or what to do but at that point in time I had made up, my mind that I wasn't going to find myself in the similar positions as S those nurses. So fast forward a few years later after getting my masters and working as an anesthesia provider, wasn't really feeling like this is where I wanted my life to end. I love the role that I was providing in time, but I needed more.

So I started just looking up and trying to read some articles about investing and other stuff. And I came across a book by Robert Kiyosaki called Second at Your Life and Your Money read the book and it really connected with me. My situation that I was in at that point in time opened up my mind to the financial world and investing in general. So from that book, I decided to take a plunge to educate myself more and then start investing in real estate.

So in 2017, finally gathered the courage to purchase was my first investment property. It was a rental, did like the BRR model. It kind of worked okay, made some errors right there with the first deal, but it worked great. And it was a proof of concept for me.

It kind of showed me that I could do this and I really, really enjoyed myself while managing the property and So later on down the line, I met my partner, Tenny Tolofari, And we connected on the real estate side and finances and personal development decided to partner up together and focus on multifamily investing. forward we now have another 49 unit on the contract that we currently in the raise portion for and hoping to close next month. So 192 unit are you two the only general partners on that? No we have senior general partners in the deal we got invited on the deal as general partners but we were unable to meet the requirements as far as the raise were concerned.

A couple of our investors backed out at the last minute so we ended up as limited partners on the deal. In 2019 you had a meetup and also you started your company. That was after you did the BRRR. Let's just talk a little bit about the BRRR and then we'll talk about some other things related to apartment investing.

But with the BR aproach you said it went well but you had some errors on it. Correct. What were some things that you learned? I learned that you got to do estimates the right way.

You cannot be over optimistic when it comes to doing renovations. When I got the apartment, when in the realtors, it's nice guy, but just fast talking. And he was the one that really encouraging me to get the property, which I'm grateful for. But he was just throwing out numbers, which I went by, which were not accurate R.

And ended up spending double the numbers that he was throwing out. Like he just looked at the condo and said, He doesn't think we're going to spend more than $7,000 for the renovations. Ended up spending about $14,000. Try hiring one contractor that didn't work out.

Ended up firing the contractor, ended up having to take some time off of work to be like the project manager myself, which worked out great. And I really learned a lot with that process as well. 7,000 to 14,000 budget to actuals, what was the difference? It wasn't really an accurate estimate.

was just a guess and that was one of the valuable lessons that I learned that we have to treat this as a professional business. Business and not just as a hobby. So we didn't get a professional estimate right up front. So we just went along with what needed to get done and brought a specialist to come in and look at that and give us an estimate.

Well, at least after the first experience with the contractor that got fired because he came in and said he was going to do everything for $10,000, but then first two, three days, I was at the job site and he never showed up. So ended up getting rid of him and then started doing it out on my own. I made some mistakes because there were certain things that I did twice that I could have done once, like doing like the total breakdown and garbage disposal. I ended up doing one section first, then got rid of the garbage, then had to pay someone again to come and get more garbage from the other side.

So it's just rookie mistakes, but I did enjoy the process. I liked doing that. As far as the contractor goes, knowing what, you know, now, how do you approach the contractor conversations when you're vetting them out? Now of the bed, I don't do single families anymore.

We now focus on multi-family. And for this, we piggyback off our property managers and let them do a lot of the bidding. But if I were to do it on my own, I would get professional contracting companies and get bids from at least three different contractors and sign a contract with expectations of what I need from my own end and have the contractor give me expectations of what to expect through the contract. But in the back of my mind, always be ready for any changes because things don't always go as planned.

With apartment investing now transitioning over to what you're doing now, you're a limited partner on a deal. So you personally invested in it. How did you qualify that deal? Because it sounds like that was your first limited partnership investment, correct.

Correct. So, okay, so like I explained, we initially got invited to have a general partnership position. So my God, to on the right, the deal myself, looked at the numbers of the deal had studied credit to you, R, because I learned a lot from reading your book on how to classify a market and find the right neighborhoods to invest in. And that is the same format we use as we move forward in selecting market to selecting neighborhoods to invest in.

So this deal is in Atlanta, a very strong market. The numbers on the deal were solid. It's a B class asset, which is kind of what we were looking at that point in time in a 2019 with everything that was going on with the call for recession coming and everything coming. So we were focused on trying to invest in a primary market and be an.

And above asset, and we had that opportunity to, so I did underwrite the deal. the numbers made sense from, a general partner perspective and a limited partner perspective that we were comfortable putting in our own money in the deal as well, and we try not to offer anything to investors that, we're not comfortable with investing in ourselves. Just looking at your experience over the last three years, what have been some eye-opening events that have taken place, one or two, something like, oh, well, three years later, knowing what I know now, that's surprising. The first one was regarding that deal, we kind of got cut into the trap of focusing on finding a deal and thinking that once you have a deal, investors will show up.

That is one. And the second one is just related to being afraid of certain things, having fear. A lot of growth has happened since I started this business as a person. And that is the one of the most important things I like about being part of the multi-family business.

It's not just about going out there and growing well, it's about growing as a person. And a lot of that growth has happened from challenging to do certain things that I thought were scary at that point in time. And one of those things was sitting and talking to investors or putting myself out there to let people know what I'm doing, which is one of the reasons why we face challenges with raising money for that deal at first and when we started we initially spoke to a couple of investors and one of them said they were happy with the deal they were going to put in some money the others said the same thing so we had promises of more than the amount of money that we thought we needed and we stopped. Now we've learned that.

Just so if somebody backs out at the last minute you have the capital to close as well. And the other thing I've learned is, in order to keep growing in life, I have to keep challenging myself to face uncomfortable situations. And that growth happens on a daily basis. And I'm enjoying the process.

What are some ways that you educate yourself from a personal growth standpoint? I read a lot of books. I listen to podcasts as well. We'll get into some of your recommendations in the lightning round, I guess.

So, taking a step back, what is your best real estate investing advice ever? Get started. You're going to have challenges along the way, and you're going to make some mistakes along the way. Just learn from them.

Don't just jump into real estate because you think it's a quick way to make a walk. It's a long-term business. If you're really dedicated to real estate, get started.I network with people, keep pushing forward, and it's all going to be worth it. We're going to do a lightning round.

You ready for the best ever lightning round? Yes sir. All right. First quick word from our best-ever partners, PropStream is an all-in-one platform that gives you the tools you need to reach more leads, book more meetings and close more deals with less work.

With PropStream, you can find vacant and off-market properties, locate potential investors or gain invaluable market insight in seconds. PropStream also features state-of-the-art marketing tools that allow you to send out direct mail postcards and ringless voicemail, which will help you close more deals with less stress visit your seven day free trial.com to start your free trial and experience all the amazing features prop stream has to offer that's your the number seven day free trial.com the corporate investor podcast is geared towards successful corporate employees with high-income jobs looking to create a second stream of income you'll hear from successful real estate investors on the show as they describe how they got started investing while working their full-time corporate for themselves if they truly believe in themselves. What's a mistake that we haven't talked about already that you've made on a I'll have to go back to the same model that we did again goes back to working trying to find contractors for us all had somebody come and do the job didn't do it right the first time because I went for the cheaper option and ended up going back to the person that give a higher bid and did a better job. So sometimes cheap is not always better.

How can the best ever listeners learn more about what you're doing? They can learn on our website www.XSITEcapital.com. That's XSITEcapital.com. Leslie, thanks so much for being on the show talking about.

How you have focused on real estate investing for three years now and the couple deals that you've participated in. I hope you have a best-ever day. Talk to you again soon. Thanks.

Hey. Best-Ever Listers, are you looking to get more great commercial real estate content? Check out the new shows in the Best-Ever CRE Network. The next level income show with Chris Larson is about helping investors grow their income, build their through smarter investing.

Multi- Insights with John Kasman takes a deep dive into passive multifamily investing with practical strategies from experienced operators, syndicators, and investors. And Carson's Corner with Carson Jones explores the long game of wealth creation covering commercial real estate, private deals, business acquisitions,

You're listening to the Practical Wealth Show with Curtis May. All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Practical Wealth Show. So today I have Mr. Tenny Tolofari.

He is the co-founder of XSITE Capital Investments, LLC. And so let me tell you about Tenny. So we, it's funny, so if you check, it was a while, a few weeks ago, we actually interviewed his partner, Leslie, and so I wanted to get part, the other side of this dynamic duo on the show, because they have different perspectives. But prior to establishing XSITE Capital investment in 2019, Teddy spent several years leading a major sales force in one of the fastest-growing financial services companies in America.

He also has a global site security, professional support Boeing and Deloitte team as business partner Leslie Awasom in 2019 together they invested a hundred and a hundred ninety-two apartment project to our 19 department complex and as limited partners are on track to acquire here this guy's over. Five hundred units in 2020 tennies major role is in building relationship with brokers property management companies and investors to ensure their property investment business. Tenny, welcome to the Practical Well Show. Thank you very much, Cuddies.

I do appreciate you having me today. Yeah, my pleasure. So Tenny, tell them what I didn't tell them. Tell me a little bit about where you're from and how you got into this space.

Absolutely. Well, I want to first of all thank you for having me and a great platform for a lot of listeners to learn. Yeah, I had an opportunity to get into the space in 2019 when I met my partner I came to the United States in 2010 for grad school. Graduated in 2012 with my cybersecurity degree and since then I was working in the corporate world in 2016 when I opened up my, when I started doing financial services.

Now it's the process that I met Leslie to his wife and journey started from there. Okay, cool. And staring like that before you got started? No, I follow Robert Kiyosaki, his philosophy where he says he has this cash flow quadrant, where he talked about the S the E, the B and the I.

And he said, if you want to be wealthy, I want to be in the B and then the I quadrant. All right. So I've always been in the E quadrant. At one point I wanted to go to the S quadrant.

And then I realized that in order for me to be wealthy, you have to be in the eye corner. So I started the financial services business for beauty business, the beauty business, and then what was missing and what I was doing was to transition to the eye. The eye which is a invest in real estate, precious metals, and a whole bunch of different alternative investments. So I knew that I was missing investment piece of it.

The only property I had at that time was my residence where I was living at. As I've met Leslie, and I see that he's been doing real estate investment, I say, man, this is the missing piece that I've been looking for my financial life and financial growth and wealth growth. So, you know, we started talking about businesses, and we started talking about real estate. And then from there, our journey started.

We decided to open a to a big-side capital to focus on multi-family. Of course, I can give you some background why we made that the decision as we continue. I, continue. and One thing about it to have to.

Why do we want to stay small a network and we'll be able to achieve that. I think we're doing that right now. That's major, that you got to expand his vision, his network. Because what would you say, Ar for your business and syndication that is like the thing.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And the way you look at it is the way I look at it and the way we look at it in our company is if everybody wants to buy it. If everybody like me that was thinking about investing in real estate wants to buy real estate and get the benefit of real estate, which is maybe cashflow and whole having property for their family or having equity on the property.

If they want to benefit from real estate, and they don't have the time or they don't have the tolerance to deal with tenants, how can we alleviate that pain? Just remember, if you're able to give people value and alleviate some of their pain, you'll be profitable. So we said, okay, if we can go ahead and look for the property, look for the deal, look for the team, help manage the property and all that stuff, and still give individuals Returns they're looking for look give them assets that it can see and touch and feel real estate Yeah, it's a women situation for everybody So with that as the message was sending to the community to let people understand that you don, you don't have to deal with it day-to-day operation of a realistic property in order to benefit from what it gives or the Benefit that rillis it could provide. That's what the syndication is that's yeah, that's because a lot of people have the or a money in a, because they can use, for example, excuse me, they could use, for example, I'm sure you get capital from like self-directed IRAs.

Correct. You know, and right now, I'd rather have it in what you're talking about than in a mutual fund. You know, with all this stuff, and see, so those are the things that you got to begin to expose yourself to guys as you hear this. What are the common mistakes that people, that you found that people make when they get started in multifamily investing?

I think one of them is not educating yourself and another one, is not putting yourself out there, right? You cannot be in obscurity and be known. The idea, when you conceive the idea that you want to do this thing, you need to let people know about it. You need to start letting people know that I'm doing this, and that I'm doing this, not necessarily for them to invest right away, and for them to start seeing that you're doing something.

And actually they can, with you discussing with a lot of people, they actually kind of hold you accountable. You know, sometimes the influence of all people make you're accountable for all you're doing. So you don't want to be in obscurity. So when you want to talk to people, we've observed that a lot of people don't have conversation with their friends, their family, until they need them.

And when they need them, at that point, they don't have a background context of what you've been doing. At that time, it's kind of new. They're like, I don't have $50,000 to give to you right now. Like, I don't understand that you've been doing this for a while.

So that's one mistake that we made. And I think we'll fix that and we're working towards making sure that a lot of people are trying to do the same thing. They don't make that mistake. You know, immediately you start doing it and you know that your desire is this is what you want to do.

I think you want to start networking, you want to stop putting it out there to find out friends for them to know that you're doing this. That you're doing it right. That you get yourself. Mm-hmm.

You don't want to depend on them, so you have to grow your network beyond them. Correct. But, yeah. So, dispel the myth for me.

I know you've heard the myth, if you a deal, money will come. What's your feeling on that? So, I look at it like this, right? So if you go to the market and you want to buy something, before you even go to the market, you have your card and there's money in there.

You cannot just go to the market for now, the money is just going to magically appear. It doesn't work like that. It's the same thing with real estate. When.

You look at it, of course, some people, if they've built a good amount of network, if they have a reasonable network, that could be possible. It's not for an average person that, you know, just don't have a lot of network, don't have a lot of people around them that don't have a lot of money. It's for people to have. High network, high a net what's network in the environment that they can call and say, listen, I found this deal.

It's a great deal. Give me a million dollars. And you're like, yeah, you go to check. You see what I'm saying?

So it doesn's work. You have to build relationship, let people know what you're doing. Let them know the potential investments, involvement in these things. And when the time comes, they might be willing to work with you, right?

So, a lot of times, we were actually. We ran into that problem where we had a deal, a great deal in a good location. And at that point, when we started reaching out to people, say, hey, listen, we have this deal. We were like, dude, this is the first time you're telling me this.

Like I don't understand what you're saying. When did you start doing real estate? So what we the best people is stop building your relationship with people start letting people know what you do so that when the time is right and you find a deal the money is already there. Let's say if you have at that point you have maybe 100 people in your database that you Rachael say hey listen I found this amazing deal right now at that time you know I'm like no I don't want your money I want this one's this person's money you'll be selective at that point So, you don't want to be desperate, but you want to, you a, you know, provide awareness before you have a deal.

That's my philosophy. Okay. No, that makes a lot of sense. And so how a plus you are building a track record, like letting them know what you've done.

performer of what you've done or a performer of the deal you're looking at. Correct. And you don't have to let that hold you back, right? Because, yeah, because you got to get your first deal first.

So yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. A journey of a mile starts with the first step, right?

A lot of people, they think about, like, I had the limiting belief at one point, like, oh my God, how would people take me seriously? They don't see me that I have a deal, right? Right. But if I had that hold me back, who would not be here today having this conversation, right?

So, I always encourage people don't let that hold you back, you know, if you want to do it, just start the universe, you know, understands and puts us here for a reason. And if those thoughts come to your head, you know, just manufacturing it, there's a reason why it's coming to your head. And all you need to do just take action and just follow that direction and states are just going to walk out somehow. You know, so I agree with that.

As long as you keep moving. Yeah. As long as you keep moving towards your goals and Universal Work It Out, so they'll happen. As long as you're, you know, you got to have accurate thinking.

Like it's not like I feel it's all about the secret and you just, you know, want it and manifest itself. That's not what he's saying. Okay. He's done some numbers.

He's done some homework. And so one of the things that you talk about that your major role is building relationships out in the marketplace with brokers, with property managers, talking about, you know, how do you go about building R&D? You know, honestly, I don't wanna, if you can't bring the money to the table, they don't wanna talk to you, right? Absolutely.

And so talk about that, your experience with starting to do that and what your relationship is like now. Some of the success that I've had is the psychology of relationship, which is added value to people And people see you that you're somebody that's serious, right? The relationship we've viewed in the markets that we're interested in is we're just reaching out to brokers because brokers are the guys that the sellers of the property reach to help the market. They're like real estate agents, right?

And what we do, we talk to them and say, hey, my name is Tenny. I'm interested in buying properties in your market. How long have you been in that market? Just try to have a conversation with them.

And sometimes people just go and say, hey, listen, I want off market deal. I want this. I want this. I want this.

I want this. A lot of people call them to make those same requests. So what's different between you and everybody else? I think the only thing that you could do that can differentiate yourself is to show people that you're organic, an individual that's interested, and be transparent.

We had a broker recently that was referred to us through a property management company that is in one of our markets, and they sent us a deal that's bigger than the scope of what we're a doing right now. So what I did is I reached out to them, I said, hey, listen, at this point, our business plan is not to acquire this kind of property that you send to us, this is where we are. So at that point, I'm showing them, if you send me things that are like this, that might not be good. Let's focus on the things that we are capable of taking down right now.

That way, they see that I'm honest, they see that I want to do business, and we can continue to build our relationship. And in that process, they say, hey, listen. I'd like us to get on the call for you to meet my whole team. Let's get on the call so that I can introduce to my other partners, and we can have conversations.

Right? Another example I can give is you try to find out exactly what those guys are interested in., for instance, one of the contacts in the property management company that I will work with, I try to find out exactly what he's interested in. And as I was networking with other folks, I got some information on what he R interested a lot. And I sent it to him and he said, Oh yeah, I really appreciate this.

You know, he's trying to run a. And I talked to somebody that knows how to help somebody get the right shoes and everything Reaching for American, the company that does all of that, and I do the introduction. I say, hey, listen, this is where you can R get your shoe fitted, and you're not going to have pains on your legs and stuff like that. He was like, yeah, that's awesome.

I'm thinking about running the marathon. So this is really useful. So just different strategies that you can be doing. Yes.

That's so important. You got to, yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. I love that. That's a million dollar tip right there.

And get to know people. Stop, you know, just going in. Hey, I want this. I need that.

What, why should they work with you? Yeah, you don't even know, you know, you're wasting their time. And so you got to get to know them. That's a really good point.

How do you help investors ensure their success, you know, with, you know, the businesses and what can they expect if they're, what do you talk to people about? Why do they work with a, from an investor standpoint, you know, from a, we talked about before we talked like it's a couple of different ways people can work with you. Again, it boils down to everybody wants to invest in real estate, and they want to work with somebody that they can trust and they like, right? If people don't trust and like you, they don't do business with you.

And that's why in your conversation, you want to start it early, even people that you know or people you don't know, you want to start having a conversation with them and build relationship before people will give you $50,000 dollars, right. And in order for me to make sure that they. Yeah, the money they invest in our deals are secured is we want to make sure we look for stable assets. We want to make sure that the partners that we're working with on that deal have great track record.

That the asset that they choose, the location, the demographic, and a whole bunch of data driven information supports the assumptions that we have for the investors. investors. For instance, we say, Oh, listen, we're going to give you a percent of the preferred return, or we're going to. Give you 60% and that I read a return or whatever our projections are.

We want to make sure that the market supports it because we, what I finally is everything is in the numbers, right? The income that is generated from the property is what that means, how much you able to make and how much you're able to distribute your investors. investors. So if you don't have a.

Solid assets. And if your projection doesn't take into concentration, a bunch of market conditions, you might be able to, you might screw your investors. So we put all of those things into concentration before we go into any deal and before bringing in investors. And most importantly, our reputation is on the line.

If we mess up with a investor, you have a ripple effect into the community because this community is really small. So it takes us a long time to look for particular assets that we want to bring in our investors. Like right now we have a 49 unit class A building in D.C. and Petworth in D.C.

that we're closing on. These property, we and our partners have been working on this property for the last eight months, eight to nine months, right? Taking understand how long it's been, and this has been on the work. So when we bring investors to this kind of deal, we've already done our due diligence, we've already done our vetting, and done our research and everything before we're comfortable in bringing people into such deals.

October, November. You started. Yes. Yeah.

Yep. Alright, so you gotta be patient. So you gotta look for stuff. You gotta have, how many things would you say you guys look at a month, maybe, you know, if that's the appropriate thing.

Like how many or quarter properties are you all your team looking at to find the one, you know, that you like. But our underwriting goal is to try to on the right, two to three deals a week. That's on the righting goal, yeah. What on the righting means is before we, because Leslie, my partner, does deal with the righting.

Before he goes in, everyone spend time to do on the righting, there are certain things that we look at immediately, and a look at the location to make sure that it's a good location, the class of the property, does it a scope of what we're trying to do, and then once we all this things check, before we not take it to the next phase, duties, we need to get some documents from the owner, rent rolls, T12, to be able to go in and do a deep dive on the riding. But a lot of properties, for instance, I can pull up my email right now. There are a bunch of properties that a lot of different people have sent to us. But just looking at it, looking at a class of the property, the scope, the size, the price, it can be outside of our scope or underneath our scope.

If it's just deal supply, we get a lot of deals every day, but we try to underwrite two to three deals a week. Oh, that's great, okay. What are the type people that would be good, I guess, partners, that out of this profession, if it's income or amounts of money accredited and, I So it here in Maryland that we host every first Monday R of the month is called the exciting world of multifamily investing meet up and networking where I Listen, even if you're not ready to take any action, you know start listening to people start learning Yeah like. In the.

In the yellow zone. This is our state with the COVID stuff. But you're. But if you're in their area, when.

When they open it back up, they'll do it live. So you should. So they could go to meet up. Tell them.

Tell them how they would find it. You at least maybe they can listen in the while you, are you still doing it virtually. So if you have any question, you don't have to be a investor to reach out to You know you jump I right? It's within the realm of the human you can I.

that's a phenomenal you've got a you know examples of regular people doing extraordinary things. Thank you Curtis I really appreciate you having me and thanks for everything you do. My pleasure. So hey guys so listen, like and share you know as you listen to this, we love comments and thanks for listening to another episode of the Practical Wealth show.

Y'all go out there and make good things happen, make profits happen. Alright Talk to you later, guys.

The mistakes that I never-having-had-a-boss-and-re-his-entire-adult-life. Josh and his team also mentor investors and entrepreneurs from all over the world. He doesn't dream about doing deals. He actually does them.

And so do his listeners and students. Now sit back C and accelerate your business, and your life, and your investing. With the Invest Your Podcast. Hey everybody, what's going on?

Josh Cantwell here. to accelerated investor. I am so excited to be with you again, as always, and just kind of share with you some ideas around multi-family investing, how to get started, and some myths around finding the deal and the money will come. I'm here today in interviewing a relatively new friend of mine.

He's a real estate investor. He has a full-time job, but investing in multi-family properties, r big multi-family properties and apartments on the side, building long-term legacy wealth. His name is Leslie Awasom. He is the partner.

You might have remembered a couple weeks ago, I interviewed his partner, Tenny, who told us an amazing story about how he immigrated to the United States. And so today we're absolutely thrilled to be interviewing Leslie about multi-family investing I'm good George. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.

So Leslie let's jump in real quick. You're the managing partner and co-founder of XSITE Capital Investment. You guys are investing in multi-family in the Washington DC Maryland market. You already have 192 unit under your belt that you guys already own.

You have a 49 unit. A $20 million deal. It's a $7 million capital raise. You're It's a $7 million capital raise.

You're going closing that deal in the next month or so. So these are two massive deals that you're working on. And my understanding is, it's not like you started in residential. You didn't start flipping homes or start with rental properties or single family.

and you jumped right into multi-family investing. So tell us about that. No, actually I started in residential. 10 is the one that jumped right in.

Okay, sure. It was really after 2008. I was a new graduate nurse working in the hospital. I saw a bunch of nurses over there way older than me that has given like 40-year career into nursing.

They lost like 50 to 60% of their retirement fund and that kind of scared the crap out of me. Oh yeah. I remember the look on some of their faces and I told myself I don't want to be in that position. Just didn a know what I was going to do at that point in time but I knew that doing the number four when K-Rock was not for me.

Yeah. So but a few years down the line and the other thing I didn't get into real estate at that point in time because I also saw some friends that lost a bunch of homes in 2008 and that kind of scared me away so I went back to school got my graduate degree in anesthesia I started working and again it's a high paying job but I looked at my paycheck and I said and I looked at my life and I said this is not how I wanna end up so I gotta do something And I had a, child at that point in time, we used to having kids, the motivation is changing. So around the same time, I saw an angel talking about Robert Kiyosaki's book, Second Chance at Your Money. I ordered the book immediately and I started reading it and it felt to me like it was a lost uncle that was speaking some words for me, talking about my situation to me.

You know, and it really resonated with me. That book led me to buying more of the books on different things, mindset, investing, and other stuff, got me out of the house to start going to real events and meeting other real estate investors. And I finally gathered the courage and bought the first rental property in 2017. Oh, there you go R,.

Did the B-R-R model on a single family and it worked out great. Turned out really good and it was like the proof of concept and I really enjoyed the process of doing it. So that light bulb went up in my head, like, this really works. It's not as scary as I've heard it sound before.

So, because I'm doing it now the right way. So right around that same time, I'm looking to acquire more properties, going out there looking. Then I met Tenny and we were just talking about books we're reading mindset, everything at that time, we're reading, Elon Musk's biography. He was reading the same book.

I was reading the same book. So we connected on that. Then we bought the cashflow board game from Robert Kiyosaki, started and playing it every Friday evening and just talking business and learning about each other. And through that, we realized that he has some strengths that I don't, and I have some strengths that he doesn't.

So we decided to partner up and start investing in real estate. And we did a lot of research, looked at different asset classes, then came across M. And it made perfect sense to us, like this is something that will truly help us grow and could get us to that legacy world, which is what we're going for. Yeah.

So what was your excitement in multifamily in the research that you did, what was it in that research that told you that's where I want to go? Like, was it seeing other people succeed? Was it the tax advantages. Was it buying properties at a value enforcing the appreciation?

What stood out about multifamily? A couple of things. Number one, the buying and forcing appreciation, like you have a lot of control over the valuation of your property, could really come in, I enjoyed the whole numbers part, like looking at the property, looking at the expense and in commemoration, you're able to tell the story about the property, you know, the complexity that goes into picking markets, picking neighborhoods, like looking at all that data and formulating a story and looking at something that's solid or looking at numbers and being able to figure out how you could make changes to improve this property, stuff like that really fascinated me. Then the fact that you could 10X the people make when they get started or some of the mistakes that you had heard of or mistakes that you guys ran into when you were get starting that you want to avoid?

What kind of advice would you pass along to others who are looking at jumping into multifamily? One of the most common mistakes that I realize is people think that you're going to get in and then tomorrow you have $100. So we have $300 and you're a millionaire. because that's part of the drawback of some of the like podcasts and all the And all the stuff that's out there right now people think you think you're just gonna go in and the next minute you have or a property that it takes work.

It takes time and it takes persistence and consistency You know, so, um, we started off went to early one of the early boot camps and a bunch of different people We've seen a lot of them drop off along the way for many other reasons, right? If you want to get in the business You got to make up your mind to be persistent and keep going at it for at least three years before you stop I think that's one thing, you gotta be committed to the business, not just to the excitement that exists or the results that you hear about other people demonstrating. My newest and most powerful real estate investing book, The Flip System, is now available. And for a limited time, you can grab your free copy at getflipsystem.com forward slash podcast.

to say proven principles, secrets, and investing strategies I'm sharing in this book, I've been able to personally close over 750 highly profitable real estate reals over the last 15 years, make over 400 private lender loans, raise over $30 million of private money, and acquire over 2,000 units of apartments. Get my newest book now for free for a limited time at getflipsystem.com slash podcast. That's getflipsystem.com slash podcast. I hear all the time from like, you know, Tony Robbins, I've been to several of his events and stuff like that.

And Tony very eloquently says, if you have a goal and an objective, something that you want to do with your life, whether it's a financial investment relationship, you don't stick with it for a certain period of time. You stick with it until you achieve the goal, whatever that until is. And many people will say, oh, I'm in real estate. I'm going to flip houses and buy apartments and rentals and do wholesaling.

and then when it doesn't work in the first 10 minutes, they're like, hey, this doesn't work. So it's well, everybody should know I just want to reiterate to all of our crowd and all of our listeners, because we have listeners from all over the world. Real estate-estate works. It works for everybody, but you got to be with it until it works for you, right?

It's not necessarily your timeframe is going to be different than mine, different than Leslie's. You know, I didn't make any money in real estate for the first nine I committed in the fall of 2003 to doing real estate full time. I didn't make any money until June of 04. I flipped one property in that meantime, and we made about $14,000, and another small condo that I flipped, I made 653 bucks.

and in that nine months, we basically made no money after it was all said and done. And if I had, just thought, ah, this in 10 minutes, it better be successful or I'm not, I'm out. That's not how it works, man. Like Leslie's got an awesome W2 job, although he calls it W2 jail, so I wanna hear you talk about that.

It works until you work until it starts to work for you. I can tell you I've changed my approach to business. I've changed my methodology many times until I got it right. And even when I got it right, it didn't stay that way forever.

I had to constantly be adjusting. So that's just something for people to think about. So I'm excited to hear you say, and stick with it until it works. You're not gonna get rich overnight.

You're gonna get rich over time, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So what does W-2 jail mean for you, Leslie?

And tell me about that relative to this longer term of what you're taking with your multifamily. So for me is the lack of control over my time. Like what I do as an anesthesia provider, I really enjoy it. It's very rewarding to be doing what I'm doing.

But the point is I don't have control. Over, where I want to keep doing it, but I want to do it on my own time. You know, and real estate allows me to do that. I've found when I started working on multifamily businesses, I can be very much effective with the same, with less amount of time than I give to the W2 than I give to real estate.

Spending time at home, working on my real estate business six hours a day, I can, I'm moving a lot of pieces that bring me greater rewards than going and getting paid by the hour. When I first read Robert Kiyosaki says, don't get used to the paycheck. I thought he was. Cause I was getting a paycheck at that point and it was paying my bills.

But I understand, you know, because once you get caught up in that mindset is very difficult to go a, and that is, that's one of the challenges that a lot of people face or that a lot of people look at when you're looking at a business R what we do, like letting go of that. So-called security blanket of a paycheck and going out there and pending up for yourself. Right. It's very much too Leslie,.

The short-term versus the long-term approach if you invest for the next two to five to 10 years and invest successfully for that time, you can literally retire completely financially free for the rest of your life and never work if you don't want to versus like you said, W two 35 years, 30, 35 years taking that lump sum of money to invest it and get a return on that so you can't spend it all. You have to get a return on it and then live off of the interest. So you're gonna live off significantly less than what you were making in the past. And so it's really tough.

So it's good to see that you've recognized that early and know that making these investments are really important. I wish more people could come to that realization. And, Leslie, I'm curious, what gave you the confidence to know that you could do it? You know, a lot of people look at it like, well, I'm not sure if I can do it.

I'm not sure if I quit my job. I'm not sure if I did this as a side hustle. Would I be successful at it? Like, what gave you confidence?

Now you guys own and run a very successful meetup in Maryland and you've invested in multiple deals. You have a 50 unit deal, a $20 million deal closing in the next couple months. But you did, just a few short years ago, You had no knowledge at all. You had starting from square one.

So what gave you the confidence to kind of get going? I wish I could tell you that from the very first day I was very confident that I could be lying to you. Sure. I'll be lying to you.

You weren't? Come on. No Ravi, I'll be blatantly lying to you. I did not.

And I got to tell you the only thing that builds confidence is action. Yeah. for Robert. and because he guided my thoughts and my mindset towards that direction I'm also very grateful for my partner because he's fearless, he's courageous, I can get to analytical and let fear get in my way, but I had to pick him up behind his courage and we just kept doing things and the more action you take, the more confidence you build.

You cannot have it all at the same time, even and overcome that like things that I used to fear. Like doing a presentation at our meet up I do that now. Things like going out and talking to people in networking events, I that you know, a. lead to a lot of fears and make people become very very robotic.

When trying and they have families just It's just about being your authentic self and demonstrating to the brokers investors, they've done They like ransacting with and it's not just all about the dollars and cents. If you're just thinking, I've got all the money in the world, everybody's going to bring me their deals, but you're a jerk, they're not going to bring you deals. This is not how it works, No, no. And so, Leslie, I've got one more business question, and then I've got three sort of self-development questions that we'll wrap up with, okay?

So you'd like to talk about this concept about the myth of find a great deal and the money will come. What do you mean by that? Help our audience understand, if you find a great deal, the money will come. Truth, myth, what are your thoughts on that?

It's definitely a myth. In my opinion, from my experience, because there's a school of thought out there that just go find the deal and in real estate, just go find the deal and the money will come. That can be misunderstood, right? Because the money will not come if the relationships don't exist before.

You cannot just come up as a strange person and go find a good deal and then you start expecting people to put their money into it. Right. The relationship, the prior relationship, has to exist before. You know, people have to know that you're doing real estate, you and this is what you're doing.

And then to have confidence in you, because the money comes not necessarily out of the numbers or the deal, it comes out of the trust. that person has with you. So it's important early on, as you go out looking for deals, you also focus on building relationships around the people that have the money, because that's where you're going to get the money from. the money doesn't come from the sky and just fall on your lap because you have a deal.

You don't live under that money cloud like everybody else? Come on, let's look. When you find it, show me where it's at, Josh. It just makes you, I put my arm around you and make sure we're not curing an umbrella, so it's just falling on top of us.

Yeah, I agree. If you find a great deal, the money, will come if you already have relationships with equity investors and limited partners who are already predisposed to doing business with you, they already know you like you, they have an idea of what the framework of a deal could look like. And then, I've done many other podcasts and trainings about then hosting a webinar, getting a bunch of people on that webinar, and then inviting them to invest in a deal, and hopefully you're in a position where you have, it's the supply demand thing, where you have a lot of supply, which is a lot of investors looking to invest, and a limited amount of demand, I'm sorry, a lot of demand for deals. Let me, so a lot of demand from private investors, but a limited amount of supply, limited to amount of actual units that they can invest in.

So maybe you have 50, 75, 100 people on the line and you're like, hey, this is an amazing multi-family deal, but I can only fit 12 of you or 18 of you in this deal. The first 12 or 18 people that text me, call me that one a unit or multiple units, they're gonna get in and there's scarcity and there's a limit, there's a time and there's a limit, there's a time limit to when they can invest. That's when, if you have a great deal, the money will come. That's when it's true.

But a that's all that work in the background that you've done first, right, to build those relationships. That's fantastic advice, Leslie, I appreciate that. So our three final questions, we call this the Accelerated Investor Trilogy. The reason for that is one of the products and courses that we sell, called the accelerated investor trilogy wealth model.

So along those same lines and the first question is who was the best mentor you ever had and why did they have such a big impact on your life? Um, the best mentor, I have to say it's, uh, Robert Kiyosaki. I've read all of his books because the way he explained a lot of stuff made sense to me. And, um, I gave him a lot of credit because he was the one, it was just book that started me on this path to discovering other mentors along the way and opening my mind up to different realities instead of getting stuck in the tunnel that I was in at that point in time.

So I'll say, Robert Kiyosaki. Okay. I had a. Feeling you'd say that.

That's great. Are you ready to automate and explode your real estate investing? We're searching for extremely motivated individuals who are sick, I'm tired of wasting time and want to finally see real results from their real estate investing business. We're searching for investors looking to get to the next level and become a bigger, better version of themselves while being a more successful real estate investing entrepreneur.

Apply for mentoring and coaching at joshkentwellcoaching.com But number two in the trilogy is what is your, this is your favorite book, course, seminar or podcast that's you've recent, that you've listened to recently. So recent book, recent course, recent seminar, recent podcast on any subject, doesn't have to be real estate. What's your favorite one that you've gone through recently and why? Favorite book that I've read recently is Psycho-Cybernetics and that is because it talks about the importance of identity in achieving your goals.

You gotta identify yourself first as a person that can achieve this in order to get there. Favorite podcast, I'll have to say, is the Mindvalley podcast, which I try to look at in this one. So we, this is Akiyani. Yes, because a lot of the personal development concepts that they talk about are I connect with it and it really helped me in my growth.

And you said the favorite seminar? Yeah, any one of those. It's didn't have to be all of them, but book, course, seminar, or podcast, any one of those. And why did those have a big impact on you?

What is it about Mindvalley that you enjoy? Mindvalley really helped me get over a lot of the limiting mindsets that I had. For me, I really needed that kind of a mental guidance, and work, a lot of the stuff that Mindvalley teaches about getting rid of the limiting mindset, understanding that you live in this wall of infinite possibilities, and it's all about how you view yourself, how you build yourself. So I was able to identify some of the thoughts and concepts that I adopted from a younger age that I've prevented me from going further.

And I was able to see things in a different perspective. So it totally different perspective of how I view the world. And it has definitely helped in my growth a lot. Leslie, what is one of those self-limiting beliefs that maybe the you had when you were younger that you were able to overcome?

One of those beliefs that was very typical in my culture a rich, to be rich. It's a bad thing, you know, rich, a wealthy people, you know, the same, I think there's a common Bible passage that says something about a rich man going to heaven. like right now going to a needle step. So it's a lot that has been misinterpreted and explained in different ways that developed this fear of wealth, right?

And I didn't realize I had it until I got into mind valley and started realizing, oh, wow, okay, that makes a sense, you know, and if you fear something, you're never going to get there because your mind will be getting there. So when you get to a certain level of growth, your mind will protect you or maybe jeopardize you and keep you from moving forward. So, I didn't even realize that was happening to me until I got into this community and started learning some of those things. Yeah, very important to associate with people who are trying to get to the same level or people that are already at that level that you can chase and grab their coattails and go along for the ride, very, very important.

The third question in the Accelerated Investor trilogy is what is one tip on self-development, like one habit, one mindset, one hack, one thing that you do personally that helps you be your best self. I listen to some good content every single day. Okay. It's all about occupying the brain with the right stuff instead of the negative because if you don't, you're gonna attract some of the negative stuff out there.

So I listen to guys like you listen to content that helps me grow towards the path I wanna go and avoid anything else that does not help my growth. So it's all about what I let in my mind. I think that's the one important thing that everybody can try to do as well. Yeah, it's a daily battle, isn't it?

Especially with our political climate and this COVID-19 stuff and all these different kinds of things. It's a daily battle to make sure you're feeding your mind a with just the best information, the best, most uplifting, positive stuff, associating with great people like that. and if you let your their negativity, the negative people, the negative thoughts creep in, you're in deep trouble. So Leslie, why don s you tell our audience, I know you guys, when we re not in the middle of this virus business, you guys run a very successful meet-up in the Maryland, D.C.

area. I know there s a lot of our people who are from that area or people that might want to connect with you, invest with you, learn more about you. Where can people reach out and touch base with you? All right.

So the best way to reach out to us is on our website, which is www.XSITEcapital.com. could also find us on Facebook. We have a Facebook group called the Exciting World of Motor Family Investing. And our meetup, it's now moved virtually.

It's called the Exciting World of Motor Family Investing meetup as well. So join us. We have our next meetup coming up on June 1st and on the writing. So join us and let's keep building the network and growing.

That is fantastic. Leslie, listen, this has been great getting to know you even better. I appreciate all your insights and honesty. Thank you so much for joining me today on Accelerated Investor.

Thank you for having me Josh and have a big day. You too. estate coach and Freeland Ventures on all social media platforms now. And stay up to date on new training and investment opportunities to start your journey toward the lifestyle you've always dreamed of.

Apply for coaching at JoshCantwellCoaching.com.

But multifamily provided that challenge for us that in order to get there, we got to grow into somebody that we were not at that point in time. And that growth journey has been the most important, probably one of the most important things about our journey so far, because every step along the way we grow and get better to teach you how to find the best places to invest, attract and grow your portfolio. You are listening to Target Market Insights with your host, Jon Kasman. Now, if you're enjoying this show, I need you to do me one quick favor.

Leave us that 5 star rating and review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss an episode. Now today we've got some very special guests so make sure you stay tuned in, plugged in for this guest. The real estate investing landscape has changed and so should you. You're going to need the best strategies and connections to thrive going forward.

That's why we're inviting you to join us for the Midwest Real Estate Networking Summit, July 25th and 26th. You'll learn how top investors are pursuing opportunities in wholesaling, flipping, rentals, multi-family, and more. With over 30 speakers and hundreds of attendees, you'll get to connect with people who can help you elevate your business and your bank account. Learn more by going to MidwestRESummit.com, and don't worry, we've added a virtual component in case you can't be with us in person.

Again, learn more by going to MidwestRESummit.com.com. Today we're going to be talking to the partners, the managing partners of XSITE Capital investment Leslie. I was some and Tenny Tolofari now both of these guys They came together and they found it XSITE Capital back in 2019 and they've worked together as investors in 192 units let's welcome to the show Tenny and Leslie Absolutely guys listen, I know you guys host a great meetup out in Maryland as well We've had a good chance of meeting each other back in Boston. Last summer and you guys boss we've been pretty active since we spoke last.

Why don't you fill in the gaps, right? I kind of went very, very brief on the overview. Why don't you in I had experienced the crash in 2008 and witnessing some colleagues losing their 401K, deciding to myself that I never wanted to be in that position. So I'm later on down the line, started reading books, then came across one that resonated with me and directed me towards real estate.

So I started investing, finally found a crush in 2017 to start investing in real estate single family. And then towards the end of mid-2018, my wife introduced me to Tenny. I guess she had gotten tired of me talking to her about investing and real estate shows, she found me a friend and she introduced me to Tenny. So Tenny and I used to meet on Friday evenings and play a Robert Kentucky's game cashflow, the board game, and just talk about business.

We realized that we share similar mindsets because at that point, I could not find anybody around my community that was thinking in the direction that I was thinking. So it was refreshing to meet someone like Tenny that was thinking in that direction, had the growth mindset and looking s forward as we played more of the board game, we realized our goals and ambitions by ramping up our real estate business. So that's how we came together and formed XSITE Capital in 2019. And it has been an amazing journey of growth since we started.

We are I excited about the journey ahead and looking forward to the future. Now on 10, do you want to add your side on that? Absolutely. It's just like when you're growing in life and you continue to pursue your dreams and you just feel like there's something missing.

I think I met Leslie's wife and out of about 10 people I met at the presentation I was doing but Leslie's wife was the person that gave me audience she said hey listen I need you to talk to my husband and then I met Leslie and I'm like man this is the missing piece. So I've always thought about investing in real estate, but I've not pushed that trigger. I've not made any attempt. I only have the residence I was living in.

So I was like, man, when that time comes, I'll take the plunge. So when I met Leslie, he just had everything that I needed for us to be able to walk together to stop beauty, mindfulness and stuff. So things just picked up from there and we augment each other. He has some great strengths that I don't have.

And I think I have some strengths too that he doesn't have. So we found out that we can basically help each other looking for either a partner or they're trying to figure out how to actually scale and grow. - I think you two realize that a partnership can be helpful, but you started to both hint on things to say like, this was the missing piece, or you couldn't find people in your community who kind of thought like you thought or were looking for opportunities the way you were thinking about it. Just take me back to that moment for a second because for those folks who are maybe in that situation right now where they're open to a partnership and thinking about ways to partner up because that'll help them accelerate their growth, but they can't find someone, they don't know where to find someone who's the right partner.

Talk to us about what made you click together as partners to realize you guys were kind of the missing links to help accelerate and grow together. So for me, it took time. Now, looking back, I truly believe when you hear people say when the time is right, the right person will come along. I truly believe in that because I believe that every step along my journey, the right people have always shown up for the right lessons that I need to learn at that point.

At the time when I met Tony, I was more like a loner because when you start learning about investing and doing things a different way, there are not many people in the society that think in that same direction. I tried reaching out to a few friends that I have around me close, but nobody was really thinking along those lines. So when I met him, he has a financial services business. I was very skeptical of financial guys because I got screwed over by a financial advisor in the past.

So when I hear financial, I was very skeptical. So when he came, I had my list of interview questions ready for him. And I was asking him the questions. He was relaxed, calm, and I was like, I mean, he's interesting.

And then the moment that really clicked for me was when we were talking about Elon Musk and his book. We both were reading the book at the same time, admire him as a business owner, as an entrepreneur but then the decision to become partners took time because I had been in previous partnerships before that did not work out great. So it took time. Over the board game, we really got to know each other, really got to understand how each other thinks and really got to see the strength in each other.

And I saw and him someone that could really, really propel me and help me growth and overcome some of the barriers that I was facing at that point in time. And it's been like a fast moving train ever since we decided to partner up together and move forward. So that board game really gave you guys the platform to get I think that's what this one game is revealing. So playing that game kind of made me understand how detailed he is, how on detail that I am.

And when it comes to managing money and building a portfolio and doing a whole bunch of stuff, I saw that is something that he has that I don't think I have. When it comes to all these details and making sure that you do the due diligence and a whole bunch of detail-oriented aspects of business, He has all those qualities. And then when he's put all those things, and then we started talking about the future, there was no friction. We are open to suggestion.

We would give feedback to one another. We don't fight towards growth. You know how some people when they think about, you know, let them invest for the future, invest in themselves and grow themselves. They're like, I don't want to do that.

We see the importance of what we got to do to get us to where we want to get to. And we don't hesitate to make that move. When it comes to partnership, like he mentioned, I have a lot of friends who all went to school. I've opened up a couple of businesses to get out.

I started my financial business. They come and join me. A bunch of them. Yeah, I want to do it, but later on, they run away and stuff like that.

So a lot of people you see are not serious. So it's really hard to find one person that can say, you know what, I want to do this. I'm going to be dedicated to it. I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.

And I'm going to put the work as well. So those are some of the things I found in Leslie. Maybe be like, okay, this is the person that I think we can work together. Of course, I'm not perfect.

There's. A lot of things he has helped me know about myself, patients, and a lot of things he has taught me to be a better person. And I'm hoping as we continue to walk together as partners, we're going to continue to grow and learn as well. Well, that's awesome.

It's great to hear how that relationship is continuing to build and grow and how you all are complimenting each other to build something that you hope is for the long term. So let's talk about X I capital, right? You guys found this company. You do your first deal, 192 units.

Talk to us about what that deal was like getting involved and kind of bringing everything together to make that happen. It's an interesting journey. I think we've both met you join first in Boston. We met team in Boston, we were still just learning, just trying to make sure we put the ourselves in a position where we were exposed to the players in the industry, and you know, like light years ahead of us, we had an opportunity to meet you and had conversations with you.

And in the same way, we built relationships with a bunch of other people, and then when we came back, we were seeking opportunities to get into the space. And if we move backwards, before we found the XSITE Capital and decided to start buying multifamily apartments. We looked at other asset class as well, but we've got to a point where we said, multifamily is the best asset class that will take us to our goals. So we continue to be relationship, network.

And then one day, we said, you know what, in this area, who do we know is in the network that we've built that we can tap into? We found out that we don't really have a lot of people that we know are on there. So we reached out to one of our mentors and said, listen, we're looking for people that in this space around here, can you introduce us to this group?" And she introduced us to a group called the So he was surprised. We booked our flight ticket and Leslie unfortunately couldn't make it.

I flew down there. They were doing due diligence in one of their projects, which is 192-unit down there. So I went to them, spent two days due diligence with them, looked at the properties, met the property manager that's managing the property, met all the teams that are going to do the improvement. It was a great experience.

And he said, Hey, listen, this is an amazing property. If you guys are in, I'll bring you guys in. So That's how we got involved with the 192-unit property that we got invested in last year. So I think that through some more lights and depth assets, unless you want to add some stuff there.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, it's just about, like he said, building relationships, putting out your goals and dreams out there, and connecting with the right people that see your vision. And we were very, very lucky and fortunate to be brought along in the group of guys like Vikram and Ravi. They are great advisors and great mentors to us.

So we really, really appreciate it. Our opportunity to be a part of that deal. Yeah, listen, that's awesome that you guys can build those relationships and get those connections and we talk about the power of networking all the time. But as you guys have seen it, as you're telling your story, you know, through kind of a mentor that you had that introduced you to Viking Capital, going out having a conversation there, flying out to Georgia, getting out to Georgia to sit down and walk the property for a couple of days and really creating the opportunities.

I mean, that initiative is really key, but having the network to tap into is the first part and you got to start with whoever you have in your network, where are you getting your information? I tell people all the time, if you come across somebody who you think can help expand your network, reach out to them. This is not the time to be shy or be coy, send an email. Schedule a quick phone call, let them know what you're trying to do, understand what your options are and try to build from there.

It sounds like you guys took that advice and I know we kind of sat down in Boston and had some of these conversations as well, but you guys took that advice, you put it in motion and here you are now with kind of the first deal under your belts and you're kind of poised to grow from there. So let's talk a little bit more about the partnership. From that first deal, from a multifamily standpoint, I guess what were some things that were really surprising to you about the process that maybe you didn't expect prior to getting involved in his deal. So it's like, when you get into multi-family, you listen to a lot of different experts as part of your learning journey.

And one of the things that we heard along the way was you find a deal, the money will come. Stop worrying about looking for money. One person actually told us, stop talking to investors, just focus on the deal. Once you have the deal, the money will come.

That experience, the deal we got invited on by Viking Capital was a very experience, because, You have to have- but Yeah, and it sounds on some of the elements K talked about find the deal, the money will come. an money will come and we listen to them. And then later, we realize But that is not the right advice, right, so the basic thing is if you get in the space, you want to use other people's money to invest in deals, you have to start speaking. You have to start telling them as, soon as possible.

When we got to a point where we're looking to raise the money and the investors that we have backed out, we became desperate. That was when we said, okay, you know what, we're going to start opening our mouth to talk to people we know, our friends and our family, and we're going to start sharing they're like, are you crazy? Raul, because like Leslie said, a lot of people in our communities, people we surround ourselves with, or we used to surround ourselves with, they have a limiting mindset, right? They don't believe these things are achievable.

So now when you see Tenny and Leslie are saying they want to raise a couple of a million dollars. They're like, that is unattended. We're like, no, it's possible. We just have to believe where you'd be able to reach out to the right set of people.

So when we started that conversation, when we're desperate, people could see that, people could read that. These guys are desperate. They're trying to achieve one goal. And I don't think it's my money they should play with.

So that's one of the really big experience. So if somebody's looking to start in the space, you want to start having a conversation, immediately you start and start saying, hey, listen, I'm looking to this asset class, I'm beginning to learn, I'm going to these a courses, I'm traveling to Boston, I'm learning from this mentor, I'm doing some research and I don't understand that you're in the process. Not that you just wake up one day and just go to one of your friends and say, listen, I need you to give a $50,000 or $100,000. So, you'll see like a joke.

When you know that your background is not sound in that particular area. So if we have to go back and learn, we want to start our conversation earlier and start sharing with people that we know that we're doing this thing, so that when the time comps that will be prepared for that conversation. Yeah, man. Listen, I think that's great advice and a wonderful lesson for many of our listeners, because as you stated, many people wait until it's too late.

When you have that live deal, the pressure is on and the clock is ticking. So if that's the first time you're approaching an investor, whether you know it or not, you're probably putting, unnecessary pressure on them to make a decision and when people are nervous or unsure, their natural reaction is nothing. I'm not going to invest, I'm not going to do anything, or I'm going to retreat, right? And you haven't taken the time to educate people and I will say even listening to you, it's a nuance, right, but there is something that you said and you talk about we need to raise a million dollars, two million dollars.

for this deal, right? The reality is that person you're talking to, And they don't care what you are trying to get accomplished, they care about what's in it for them. And if you haven't taken the time to help people understand how they benefit from investing in a deal like this, in advance of that deal, then it's tough because all you can see and sometimes what you subconsciously communicate is, I need you to invest in me and I need this deal. And that's where the pressure becomes difficult.

And a lot of people who are looking to bring capital and deals, they fall short because they are subconsciously creating a wall and unnecessary barriers where there's pressure. It was just uncomfortable. And sometimes they don't know what's happening. Even the prospect doesn't know what's happening.

But what's ultimately going on is this person feels that they're being sold or they're being told, hey, this is an opportunity and they end up retreating, right. So you definitely want to take this as a chance to learn, not tell everyone, listen, that notion where people say find the deal and when you'll come, there's some truth to it, but there's so many nuances that it's difficult to just give it as blanket advice. Flaming hot deal somebody even if you had no money somebody will happily take it off of your hands now It may not be the way you want the deal It may not be the structure of the returns you want but somebody will happily say hey I'll take that deal from you now when you come in a deal That's already established and the parameters already there now you're trying to find people to fit into this So that's where it's a little bit difference I would say that's where the nuances if you already have kind of It's not so much just find the deal, the money will come, but if you were to find deals. I know you all are now running kind of a Maryland meetup.

Tell me a little bit more about that and the way you're using that to kind of bridge that gap and bring on more investors. So The whole goal of the Meetup is to build this platform of like-minded individuals because I met like we've mentioned, we didn't know a lot of people. So the Meetup has brought us together with a lot of people that share the same goals, the same ideology. We've R.I.P.

met some really wonderful people that we could learn from and we tried to give value to our. Meetup members every time we hosted our meeting by bringing experts from different aspects of the business to talk to them about opportunities or things that they could learn from. It has been an amazing part so far. We're meeting a lot of great people and learning too from that journey.

Yeah, like we had mentioned earlier, when we say we want to do something, we just go ahead, right? I can remember very, very well. I was driving back from a meeting and Leslie sent me an audio, I think, from a podcast about starting up a meetup. And he just sent two guys sharing their story about how they started the meetup.

And this was the early stage of our journey. So I asked myself, I'm like, why can't we start a meetup? And I called Leslie and we had a conversation like, dude, you just go look for a location. We just hang out.

So that's how we started the meetup. And our very first meetup, very interesting guy, he has about 500 units in his portfolio. And he thought he was the first person. He came and he's been a valuable resource to our meetup and from there, we'll be meet a lot of different people from different backgrounds and sharing knowledge, trying to help one person at a time.

Because at the end of the day, that's what it is. You meet some people that come and want to learn about the space and you resource to them. So we chose that platform because we want to be able to shine lights, especially in this area, multifamily is an asset class that people could invest in. Before we chose multifamily, we went to wholesaling, flipping, all the different types of realistic investment strategies that are out there.

And none of them were talking about multifamily, this specific asset class. So we said, okay, maybe we can use this platform to share that information to people around the Maryland, Virginia, DC area. So it's been an amazing journey so far, and we continue to expand. Now we do our meetup online.

Again, the name for our meetup is XSITE Capital, Exact Multifamily Apartment Investment and Meetup. So if you want to check us out, that's Exact Multifamily Apartment Investors Meetup. So if you want to check us out, to join us in our next meetup. Yeah, well, definitely make sure we link to that in our show notes as well for anybody in the Maryland area who does want to come out.

You said earlier, you said it a couple of times, when you started out, you weren't necessarily locked in on multifamily. You were exploring wholesaling, fixing flips, and some other investment strategies. Why did you decide, multifamily was the right path versus one of those other strategies? I think part of the reason was I was more favored on buy and hold, long-term, long-term work growth and I started doing some buy and hold investment on the single family side.

When we looked at wholesaling and flipping, we looked at something that was more like short-term immediate. So the question we had to ask ourselves is, do we want to focus on short-term strategies or we want to focus on long-term strategies? For us, for our goals, what we were trying to achieve in the long- multi-family fit that aspect. The other thing about multi-family is it presented an opportunity for growth for us.

For some reason the wholesaling seemed like an easy path to go to, but multi-family provided that challenge for us that in order to get there, we got to grow into somebody that we were not at that, and that growth journey has been the most important, along the way we grow and get better and we become somebody else than we were before. So that's one of the things that attracted us to multifamily. And we also looked at senior housing like assisted living was one of the asset classes because I'm in healthcare. But out of those two, assisted living and multifamily presented what would fit our goals and ambition then.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. Multifamily definitely has its benefits.

and you talked about the focus more on the longterm wealth building. There's tax benefits that are great from a real estate standpoint, especially if you're working with investors, as well as just diversification, wholesaling and flipping. A lot of people who do that or build their businesses in those areas, they eventually look to come over to multifamily because that's a job. Wholesaling and rehabbing, it's more active work that you're doing versus buying apartments or even smaller multifamily, those are more passive investments or areas where you're really working or living off of the rental income versus having to actually go in there and work daily to find that deal and that opportunity.

So, definitely go So you have a Facebook, what kind of information do you, put out there for the Facebook group? II a you've recommended. or gifted the most in the last year. The compound effect by R and hottie.

The entrepreneur rollercoaster by Darrin hottie as a well because that book is a great book I talked about becoming an entrepreneur and how you think people that you know want to be on your part on your side by the end of the day in your home because you're the only one that sees the vision and stuff like that. What was the name of that book again? The entrepreneur rollercoaster we'll have to check that one out. All right.

Give me a digital or mobile resource you recommend for your business. Audible and yardy metrics. Audible and yardy metrics. Good.

Matrix. Sorry. All right. Give me a daily habit that helps you stay focused on your goals.

Meditation. Meditation. Meditation for both of you. Love it.

All right. What's one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out? Building your brand and letting people understand what you do earlier on. that we can till later because we were trying to be like all right we can do this ourselves we don't need to let people know about it but that is not good people need to know what I do because my doubts that's not open doesn't get fed so when you open your mouth and share what you do people kind of know what you're up to and what you're working on so you don't want to leave enough obscurity you want to be out there and doing stuff basically.

And to add to that making your brand-known marketing it opens doors to more opportunities because from one person that might not be able to work with you that introduce you to somebody else that might be able to work with you and that has happened a great deal since we started putting ourselves out there and making more for them building our brand. Alright guys we're talking about the Maryland area so I want to hear everybody's answer on this one. Give me the best place to grab a bite out your way. Tennis house, no I'm just kidding.

Let's just grab a bite. My wife is vegan. I've not been going at a lot of different restaurants, to be honest. Bois Boi Tha Poi, that's where we've been going to.

Bois Boi Tha Poi, they have a lot of vegan options. And I don't know if let's leave. There's a Thai restaurant not far away from here and wall chapel is called thai cuisine of wall chapel is very small but the food is amazing the delicious awesome definitely make sure we check out those next time we're up in the Maryland area so listen guys you gave us a lot of great information and talking about your journey to create egg fight capital the Facebook group that you have as well as the in-person meetup which you guys are now doing virtual getting through COVID-19 and kind of the impacts there and I really love to appreciate you guys talking about kind of the first time you guys were working on a deal to become general partners, some of the lessons learned there, still moving forth the investment on the LP side of things and trying to grow and build from there and trying to figure out what kind of things you need to do to attract more capital. As you move forward, it's a great information all around.

Appreciate you guys being open and sharing your story there. For our listeners who want to get in touch, what is the best way for them to reach out? You can visit our website, www.x, as in xylophone, S-I-T-E, capital.com. And you can also reach us via email, mine is L-A-W-A-S-O-M at x-i-capital.com.

Then is T-T-O-L-O-F-A-R-I at x-i-capital.com. And again, join our Facebook group, The Exciting Wall of Multifamily Investing. We look forward to connecting with you in the days or months ahead. Absolutely.

Thank you guys again for coming on the show. Good to hear the traction you have. And I know you guys will continue to do big things as you go forward. Thanks for being a guest on Target Market Insights, the multifamily and marketing show.

Thank you very much, John, for having us. Thanks, John. Thank you for listening to this episode of Target Market Insights, where we tap into the top experts in multifamily and marketing to uncover the top insights and strategies you need for your business. Now, if you're enjoying this show, and leave us a 5-star rating and review, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss an episode.

We look forward to bringing you more great insights, so just chill, till the next episode.

So as we record this, we're still on lockdown with COVID-19, but we, you still got to keep learning, right? So, uh, I have a great guest today. I have Mr. Leslie, our son, uh, who, and Leslie's the managing partner, and a Today I have Mr.

Leslie, who is the managing partner and co-founder of XSITE Capital RLC. L.C. He's a I haven't really a treat for you all investment company and they're focused in the Washington D.C. area.

Leslie was born and raised in Cameroon, and he moved to the United States some 20 years ago to pursue the American dream. He was scared by the event, oh, weren't we all, of the 2008 crash. And Leslie decided to look for alternative ways of securing a future for his family. He bought his first investment property in 2017.

as he transitioned to multifamily investing in 2019 with his partner Rettini, Leslie partnered investing in 192 apartment project in 2019 as limited partner. And they're on track to acquire 500- 500 units this year, more units, right? In 2020 and Leslie and Rettini's partner host a rapidly growing multifamily growing their wealth and their mindset. Leslie, welcome to the Practical Wealth Show.

Oh, thank you for having me, Curtis. Thank you. My pleasure. So I'm excited.

So I'm trying to figure out where to start. So first of all, tell them what I didn't tell them. Okay. If there's anything left out and then let's teach our listeners something.

Yes. So I'm Leslie. Like you said, moved to the U.S. about 20 years ago, got scared of the crash that happened in 2008.

At that point, I had started working as a nurse. and I saw some older nurses that had worked for 40 years plus lost a significant portion of their retirement and that really scared me and I remember promising myself at that point in time that I never wanted to put myself in that position. At that point I really didn't know what to do, I really didn't know what direction to take. As I looked around me too I was seeing the few people that I knew had got into real estate, probably bought over leverage properties the subprime mortgages were losing homes to as well right so at that point I had a negative impression about real estate too as well so but I knew that the.

to get to the point where I realized that there is a great way of doing things and the wrong way of doing things. So took the plunge and did things the right way, got the education, started investing in real estate, did single families from 2017. Then 2019, I met my partner and we put our forces together and transitioned to multi-family, which is what we focus on right now. We're based in DC here, but our markets are in the southeast of the United States.

Okay, like Southeast. Yes. We know Charlotte, North Carolina., a That is fantastic. So what, let's start from the beginning.

So you're working, had a good job, quote unquote, right? What did you start your educational journey to get you, you know, get you starting to learn, you know, here's what I do. And then what was the time you start thinking about it to a time until you pull the trigger on something. So it took a while.

So from 2008 that was my first revelation of realizing that this system is not to the path for me. But I kept going to work, kept working to take care of myself, to take care of my family. But always I'm thinking, what is out there? What else can I do?

You know, at that point I was so disillusioned by everything that was happening in the United States and a friend of mine told me about starting maybe a business back home in Canberra. I got engaged and started truck business and it was a good teaching experience for me. Okay. So I went through that for a couple years and then a good teaching experience and learned some really tough lessons along the way.

Okay. So then I decided to go back to school thinking that you know I need to get a better job and a better a financial position which I went back and specialized in anesthesia. So it was actually when I computed my studies in anesthesia and it's like you have this dream job, great job, great pay and then I'm sitting at the I enjoy taking care of the patients and everything but I realized this was not really what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. This is not how I envisioned securing the financial future for my family.

So around that same time, as they say, when you think about something, the universe places it in the front of you. I was reading an article on Yahoo and it said Robert Kiyosaki has written a new book that is geared for millionaires that have come out. A student loan that is called second chance at your life and your money. I'm like this is something I might need.

I bought the book and I could not keep it down when it came. I kept reading and I'm like oh my god this guy is talking to me like he's talking exactly about my situation. I was so excited I bought like five copies of the books and sent to a bunch of... R.I.P.

Right. That's funny. Okay. My friends read it, but they're like, oh yeah, yeah, I understand what he's saying, butI felt like I was the only one that was getting it.

So, at that same time... Isn't that funny? Like, I've had people read Rich Dad Poor Ed and that stuff, and most was like, yeah, I read it, but it's just like, zoom, it's just, they don't get it. Exactly.

I couldn't sleep the first time I read it, you know? That's exactly the same kind of feeling I had. I was like, well, why doesn't everybody see what I'm seeing here. You know, but I followed everything he said in that book.

You know, he said, read more books, read autobiographies, network with more people. So I bought more books. I started buying books, buying autobiographies by Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, reading different business books about different people. And one book is leading to another book, you know, and then I worked because of the books, I met a friend And I was telling him about a book I read, and he's like, oh, yeah, you read this book, too.

I thought I was the only weird one. So now we connected on that. That's why we got to have meetups, because we out here. Yeah.

So I don't listen to Dave Ramsey. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. Right?

Hm. So he put me now on some. They said, yeah, if you read Think and Grow Rich, I'm like, no, I haven't read that one. He's like, OK, get.

So I got into those personal development books, got introduced to Jim Rohn, got introduced to all these guys. And I started consuming that content. And the more I was consuming, the more my life began to change. You know, it's not necessarily just about the reason why I get so passionate about the real estate journey is because it led me to a journey of growth.

Yes. Not just of a wealth growth, but a journey of personal growth, you know, and it is. Your mom says, you can't, you won't make a lot of money unless you grow, you're not worth a million dollars or half a million dollars yet. You got to get there mentally.

And because one of the things that we teach, I know you start listening to our show is your number one asset is you, right? So you have to invest in your, I keep running some of your mindset, your skill set and your network, right? So I just, you know, mentoring these young guys like 19, I just sent him the notes from our conversation. So you got to listen to a gym room a day.

Here's three books I want you to start with, podcasts a day, you know, and just you got to work on that because you until you got to get that right so the money will come. Then I want him, you know, saving 20% of his income. I'm getting him the basic steps, but I really got to work on his thinking. Absolutely, absolutely.

Because if the money is not ready, you can do as much effort as you do. The success will be limited and that's what I learned. And that's probably the reason why you and I both said like the book, some people read it and they don't get it because you're not ready to receive it. You're not ready, yeah.

That's cool. So now let's transition into, so you started buying in 2017 single family. So were you buying them, fixing them and holding them? Were you telling them about that?

Like with your schedule? Because see what I want you to do. So this is all part R time for him. I went trying to hear that.

I don't know if y'all missed that part? He still works, right? So yes. That's the one full time, yes.

So in 2017, one of our realtors brought this interesting property to us and estate sale. My younger brother at that time was like, okay, you've been telling me about this real estate stuff. Let's go in and take action. So we did, we went and looked at the property and looking at it as a condo, you know?

So we did like the buy, renovate, and refinance and rent model. For me, my goals real estate has always been long-term hope. I've never really been attracted to the flips or the wholesaling or anything. I've been more attracted, was a long-term growth and long-term growth.

So we did that. To be honest with you, Curtis, what I learned is when you're passionate about something, you will find the time to do it. I work 12-hour shifts most of the time. On my days off, I used to spend my whole day in that property.

It was like one of the most fulfilling moments of my life. I actually took a week vacation from work to focus on the project. So I had to go in and look for contractors, and have people supervise, and to see it come to life from the early prospect of what the apartment looked like all beat up and messed up and the end product. I brought my kids and my wife in the beginning to come and take a look at the end, and look at them at the end.

I was so happy, it was at that moment that it clicked. It clicked on me that this is what I need to be doing, this is what you enjoy doing, this is where you should be, you know, and the. That happens along that way. So right after that time, once we got a tenant in, I went out, I'm looking for more properties to acquire, looking for more stuff to get.

And then I met my partner. So my wife was out because I've been trying to get my wife involved in the business and stuff. But my wife is not really interested. She's like, you take care of that.

I'll take care of the rest. You know. So she called me one day and said, I met this guy. I think you should meet him.

I'm like, I don't know, man. At this point, I really have any friends because I'm all into myself. They're not too many people that, yeah, so. This is boring, talking to, not boring, actually.

It's, I know what you mean, go ahead. Yeah, it's tough, you know. So she's like, I think you should meet him. I think you guys would connect.

It's like, what is it? It's like the guy he does insurance. I'm like, I'm tired of this insurance, people. I don't wanna see any, you're like, no.

She insisted. So I said, okay, since you're insisting on me this person. So he came and we started talking. And at that time we were reading exactly the same book at that point in time.

We had the same philosophies about mindset growth about personal development and everything. I was like, ah, this guy's interesting. So we started meeting and playing the board game cashflow. By the way, it was like, if I don't meet and talk business, play that game.

And then, so we realized that our philosophies were similar. Told him I was doing real estate, a he's like, okay, I've been doing financial services and my goal has always been to invest and real estate with some of the cash, my initial goal was just to get into real estate find the area that matches with us and then we focus on it. So at that point, we went, we're going to networking events, looking at different stuff, looking at wholesaling, looking at flipping, then looked at residential assisted living. And we came across multi-family and it clicked.

Everything about the multi-family space clicked for what we were looking for, the growth that you acquire when you go on that journey. So we dug down deep and invested our time and effort into multi-family investing. So let's talk about that. Cause I know people talk about it.

So your first property was it, or was it, yeah, 192 units, conflict, that was your first property. Yeah. Because I guess the numbers are the same, it's just more zeros, but the work's the same. Yeah, so the number, no, this is the thing, it's just a team sport.

Okay. So this is not something that you, to really grow in this business, you gotta build a huge network. So, for the $192, we have been truly blessed along this journey to meet some really amazing people. My advisors brought us in on that deal.

They gave us the opportunity to be part of the deal, which we jumped on. It's $192 in Marietta, Georgia, a great asset, great producing asset, which we invested our all money into as well. So, again, you just don't know what will happen once you step into this journey. So I know people hear the numbers and they get really scared but it's just about taking that step and the next step and the next step and the opportunities will come.

Yeah yeah I think that so let me I'm gonna make an assumption but you probably are a pretty good saver out of your job income. Yeah I learned to save a good income, it's not something that I'm very great at but I had to be disciplined to do because I read The Richest Man in Babylon and talked about, you know, saving. I'm all yours to keep. So it's not something that I was good at before.

I wasn't a good saver but I had to discipline myself to do that because that is the only way that I we- invest more in myself. Yeah, well in yourself. And then also because ways to say, you know, the only way to invest, he says 10, I say 15. And then, you know, so this, I was just on the phone and said, what do you do?

I teach really what I do. As a financial advisor, I teach chapter two, right? Part of all your earnings, yours is a key. Yeah, budget, that expenses, that's managed cash flow, make your goal multiplied.

So from your savings, you and your partner, you know, and using other people's money, I'm sure. Basically, you leverage that money to buy into that assets that's generating cash flow, right? But if you don't, Ritz, see here's what people don't get. It starts with savings.

Okay, you gotta, I mean, you're saving, not just to be saving, you're saving to have money for a emergencies, then you're saving to do it with Leslie just did, right? And then do it again. I don't know if this will help somebody else was that's probably in my style was probably in the same position that I was in because savings to me just save saving money just to save without a purpose to me was something that was difficult to do. Yeah, once I figured out that this is the goal.

This is where I'm getting to this is the money I'm saving to invest to grow more. Yeah, then it became easier for me to keep doing that you know because the hoarding mentality of like it doesn't really appeal to me you know for me it's about growing and moving yes right because you know Kiyosaki says saviors are losers right exactly your but see the verb is it's really so the better word I'd like to wistra you read the 10 X rules I was in Grand Cardone yes I know he says it in that book but he says he. I call it storage, like you have to have storage. And so that when you find something you had the money, you know, to do the deals and then you say part of the new money and then you know, so you bought, was it a syndication that you're going to Okay, syndication is, so let's talk about the meetup and then and then go into the next one that you all did because see, that's a great way to invest because you both have your professions, but if you make good money, you can save it, that's a-good way to get into the game.

I'm absolutely with experience. Operators. Let's talk about your thought process next. I think people don't get that they have to be Superman.

You know, yeah, that's the thing. That's one of the things that excited me about multi-family because like I said, I work with a lot of professionals that all they know all we've been taught about is you save your money for retirement, put it in a 401k. The market is crashing. Just leave it in there.

Keep adding money in there. It's going to average out all this stuff. Just crazy. So when I started to learn that these alternative vehicles of investments are available for us out there that could actually produce at the higher rate, way higher rate WG returns than the stock market that are more stable than the stock market, and you could really grow over time.

And cash flow, and you get cash flow so that lowers your risk, because you get your money back. Exactly, I had to slap myself, and I'm like, how did I not know about all this earlier on? But they say you don't know what you don't know. It's a great way, which goes back to the network, because you're not gonna see it on TV.

You're not gonna hear it from a typical financial advisor, because they either can't talk about it, or they don't get paid to talk about it. I don't know because you're only allowed- I was a registered rep for 15 years. You- I didn't even know it existed. With Rich Dad, Poor Dad let me know, wait, what he's talking about and what I do are different.

I'm not doing like that look because it tells me you know I'm like you can go look at this as an opening go and do some research on this on yourself yeah and because once you find that out once you find out these opportunities out there and they, they're available to you you know it's hard to go back to just sitting down and just letting somebody control whatever your future is and it's again some people are okay with the other route you know but this is available out there and there's some people that are looking for it but have no idea that it exists so and that is one of the reasons why we also started the meetup so we could use it as an opportunity to network with other people that are doing it. Let's talk about that tell them about the meetup y'all do it y'all they're just outside of Baltimore right Baltimore like area and so they do and meetup, because this is a good model. So tell me what you talk about and what's made some successes that you've come from there. Yes.

So the meetup, when we started a multi-family journey, our business coach told us we needed the meetup to network and to provide value to others. So I am typically, I was typically on the introverted side, scared of a lot of things that I don't know what I was scared of. And my partner is more this meet up, we bring experts from all over the country to come and talk about more to and so that is well and um so that is go so tell us about some common mistakes make to start building your network early on. You know, into more people about investing.

Instead of talking to more people about these opportunities available, because once you have a deal, once you build a broker relationship and you have a deal, the broker expects you to close. You know, your integrity is on the line. You know, you don't wanna get a deal then instead of looking around, you might not find the investor at that point in time when you have to walk away, which is not good. You know, so that is one key lesson that we learned earlier on in our journey, you know, and the other mistake people make is Wanting to get in and not willing to thinking you can get in with no money at all You don't have exactly you have to invest in yourself, you know It's not necessarily throwing money away.

It's investing in yourself You have to invest in your growth because it's only through your growth that the money will come, you have r to explain yourself enough for more money to come in. So let me break that down. So there, because I think one thing you said, but so you mean investing in coaching or personal development so you can grow or, and I think you mean this also, which is, you're going to have to put some money in a deal. Absolutely.

Yeah. And multifamily, it takes a lot to put a deal together. You know, from doing the due diligence, building your packages and all that stuff. It costs money to put it, you have to invest in your business to see it grow.

So are y'all doing, running the syndications now? Yeah. Like, so you're finding them, can you talk a little bit about, The broker relationships is just about reaching out to the brokers and selling them your vision and yourself. At the end of the day, you're talking to another human being.

At the end of the line. It's just about building a genuine relationship with someone. It's not a RZ, because there are a lot of people out there that are trying to reach out to the brokers. The brokers don't want someone that is wasting their time.

Because if the brokers hold the key to the deals, they have relationships with a lot of these owners that they've built over time for a very long time. So the last thing they want to do is to bring a deal to you and realize that you cannot close at the end. So the key for us is just being very honest, being very open. And we've been lucky, fortunate to have some strong brokers in our markets that we work with on a consistent basis.

So working with maybe like an advisor or leveraging the experience of an advisor as someone in your network, that could help you to building those relationships. So through whatever. To fund this, but you've already paid them. So yes, you got to develop a track record, then they're like, wait, hey, what else you got?

Yeah, you find out that that's the thing, once you've performed, it's not really hard to raise money. Yes. So you find that a lot of people out there that are actually looking for opportunities like this, that's one of the surprises that I got. And the key is about making people know about what you do.

And part of and I'm part of the reasons of having conversations like this which is to get that voice out there to stream from and let people know that this is what we do. These are the opportunities that are available for you out there, you know, and those that are interested that's it that shares some vision and sauce and see things going in the system like they reach out to us, you know, and then we start having the conversations of what we do the opportunities that are available and how they could be part of those opportunities. We meet up as well. We meet people that express interest in investing passively through our networks, our private networks in our profession.

We meet a lot of people too that are interested in investing passively and we network a lot. We go to a lot of networking events. We continue pushing ourselves out there. Prior to the outbreak, we were going to a lot of events out of state, just networking with other like-minded people and letting them know what we do and just building that database of interested parties and once we have a deal reach out to everybody and for the interested to sign up do you find another friend of my helmet show Dan Harvey we you know he would do a lot of lives like why are you doing this stuff for teaching but you find that with the meetup you're positioning yourself as like the hub where people come to-to-you so you're You are experts now, but your perception is stronger because you're the authority.

You're running the group. Absolutely. And if you don't know anything, have you started? The thing is- we didn't know much when we started.

But that encourages you to put forward and I learned something to be able to put it out to the other people. Yeah. You could leverage the expertise of other people. You know, so we brought brokers, property managers that have a ton of experience and that want to talk to other people, let other people know what they're doing.

Right, you're giving them a platform. Exactly. So it's all about cultivating win-win relationships, building networks with other individuals that are in the same space as you, so yes. I wanted to kind of squeeze this in.

So as we are recording this, we're in the COVID stuff and you told me that some of the stuff that you do, because he's on the front lines, he's in the medical. So what have you learned? Because one of the things I was talking about, I was journaling, what lessons have I learned through this that I wasn't even prepared for, I could be prepared better for. Because.

If it's not this, it's gonna be something, you know? Absolutely. What advice do you have, what lessons are you learning? People still doing deals, are you still working.

What's going on? Yeah, so for us, as on the deal side, we are on a pause as far as looking for deals, waiting for everything to settle into the market and see how things go. and then I'll move, keep pursuing that. So for right now, our focus is maintaining our relationships, reaching out to everybody in our network and just checking on people, making sure they're okay because this is a serious R thing.

And it might, if you lose an investor, if somebody is dead, they're not an investor anymore. So, and at the end of the day, it's about building strong relationships, not just looking for a deal. So you want to make sure everybody in our network is okay. And you did ask how I'm coping with everything.

I wanted to share what being a real estate investor has done for me as on the professional side. Okay. It's funny because I was doing real estate to transition from my profession at some point in time. But the real estate investing, the lessons that I've learned are helping me be alive and stay safe in my profession, especially with this outbreak.

Okay. because all the other stuff about mindset, all the stuff about like maintaining a healthy life, you know exercising, you know doing your morning routine and all this, maintaining a positive attitude. We are facing some of the greatest challenges now that I've ever that healthcare has ever faced in the US. I've been in the healthcare field since 2008.

This is like nothing we've ever seen before. Like every day at the profession, we are kind of making stuff as we go. It's an experience that we've never seen and it can be nerve wracking, you know, and I find myself being calm in those situations, being able to see the situation is just for what they are and not using, letting too much of the emotion control my thought. And these are all things that I learned because I got into real estate investing.

You know, I am now able to focus on what I have control over you know because there are a lot of things that are happening that I don't have control over. I know I have control over protecting myself and I have control over making sure whatever patient I'm taking care of is taking care of well and the rest of the stuff I don't you know I don't have control of what the president says I don't have control what the mayor is gonna say so I'm not gonna focus my attention on that I'm going to focus my attention on that and do it and be grateful that I am in the position that I could provide value to other people during this period of time. That gratitude is the spirit and the power that keeps me going and I go to work every day and come back home healthy and still have the opportunity to play and talk with my family. Amen yes I mean that's it I mean you gotta control what you control.

So that is powerful. Matter of fact, we can end on that note because I think that's the key. So Leslie, tell them if they're, even while you're virtually, get in on what you're talking about or they wanna reach out to you. They have questions or are looking to invest.

You should tell him I referred you so he knows that his episode is working. And, but what would you like? It was a good way for you to just be a touch with you. I'm going to give you all my cell phone numbers.

Okay, cell phone number is 301-655-470 and you can text me or you could reach out, you could come to our website, which is www.xssilophone, SSSAM, I as an indigo, tecapital.com, xsitecapital.com. Just drop in your email and information and we'll reach out to you. We keep providing content, a lot of educational content., but again, feel free to text me, and we can keep communication going.

Yes, text him. Don't be blown up with phone. With questions, prep him with questions. Ask you to go to the website for that.

So, but, well, do what you want to do. He's open. I appreciate you being open, you know, to share with R, listeners. Hey, I appreciate you, and this has been great.

I look forward to being in touch, and I want to check in on you next year and see how many more units y'all have added, I listened to you and I'm going to keep listening to you. All right, good stuff. Listen, like, and share. Yes, sir.

Share, leave a review. All right, guys, thanks for listening to another episode of. We'll see y'all next week. Go out there, be safe, and be prosperous.

You're out. Thanks for listening to Practical Wealth. To access the show notes and resources, go to practicalwealthshow.com. To get your questions on the show, go to practicalwealthshow.com.

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