Appearances, continued.

Yes, this philosophy that may have a partner we write on is called the fact. And what that means is, well, you're not good at your leverage because you cannot be good at everything. By the time we go in, I share with you my background. You're gonna know a little bit about me and my educational background and a whole bunch of other stuff.

But we came to the realization that in order for a business to succeed, you gotta put yourself out there. And if we don't really know how to do it, we need to bring you the expert. Welcome to the accelerated investor podcast with Josh Cantwell. Josh Cantwell.

If you love entrepreneurship and investing in real estate, then you are in the right place. Josh is the CEO of Freeland Ventures Real Estate Private Equity and has, personally, invested in well over 500 properties all across the country. He's also made hundreds of private lender loans and owns over 1,000 units of apartments. Josh is an expert at raising private money for deals, and he prides himself on never having had a boss in his entire adult life.

Rosh 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, listen, learn, and accelerate your business, your life, and your investing with the Accelerated Investor podcast.

So,. Hey, welcome back to Accelerated Investor, Josh Cantwell, back here with you. And I am, man, I'm just blessed and excited and, you know, just a really grateful for all of our members who are participating in this podcast and sharing this on social media and it leaving us comments and ratings and reviews and questions. You know, we're just getting tons of engagement.

a lot of awareness about what we're doing and what we're teaching as far. Raising capital, investing in apartments, investing in cashflow, and as well as, you know, taking people down their entrepreneurial journey. Today, I have an amazing guest. His name is Tenny Tolofari.

He immigrated to the US about 10 years ago from Nigeria. And so for those of you who are thinking like, hey, I don't know if the real estate's gonna work for me. There's a lot of hurdles, a lot of challenges. I don't know how to raise money.

I don't have a lot of connections. I don't know how it all works. I don't have the knowledge. I mean, imagine coming to the US, not really knowing a lot of people, not having a huge network, not having really raised a lot of money before, immigrating to the US and building a multifamily empire in just the last 10 years, having to learn lots of new things, meet a lot of new people, and really not having a ton to fall back on other than grit and talent and drive and motivation.

That is my guest Tene. Tene, thanks so much for hopping on Accelerated Investor with me today. Man, thank you very much, Josh. Came back and I can't speak too much on those great compliments.

I really do appreciate it. Thank you for having me, I'm excited. You hit the nail on the hurt. Being excited to be, have this opportunity and this platform to share my story with you.

So I do appreciate you having me- Yeah, you bet Tene. So what I'd love to talk about with my guests right off the rip is what they're working on right now. Rike today or yesterday or tomorrow like what are you doing in the middle of this virus business but what do you what are you excited to work on? Do you have a new apartment that you're working on?

Are you raising money for a deal? Are you doing analysis on some deals? Are you networking? Tell us about some of the stuff you're doing right now.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Again, I want to first of all, appreciate Thank you for everything that you do for this platform.

I know a lot of people listen to your podcasts and get a lot of value. So, to continue to shine a light and thank you for that. Me and my partner, you know, again, the name of my real estate investment company is XSITE Capital. Me and my partner, Leslie Awasom, we opened up the company last year, 2019, general of 2019.

And since then it's been an amazing journey. Since this whole pandemic started, we went back to the drawing board and started asking ourselves, what's going on? What are we gonna do right now? What's going on with the market?

What's going on with the properties? What marketing campaign right now about why real estate is a great asset class, specifically multifamily for people to get into. So we're actually doing a serious marketing campaign right now. We just brought in, we just hired a marketing strategist recently to help us with our brand.

So we're working on all of that, you know, just to make sure that once we get off this whole pandemic situation, we're ready and good to go because a lot of people wants to do business. and they don't focus on the marketing. They think that, you know, people would know that. One thing that I've come to the realization is you cannot be in obscurity and a lot of people know that and people will know you.

You have to make people know that you are available. And this is what you're doing. So me and my be my partner Leslie, this is what we've been working on to make sure that we're not in obscurity any because that's one of the problems we faced when we first started. Yeah, so you're bringing on actually a marketing strategist.

So it sounds like maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, but if that's not your wheelhouse, right? If that's not your expertise, maybe your expertise is raising money in deal structuring and your expertise is not necessarily marketing. I definitely applaud you for taking a look and kind of doing some self-reflection saying like, this is my zone of genius is not necessarily in marketing myself or branding myself. to do that, is that kind of your thought process?

Like you wanna focus on finding deals and finding money and have someone else do the branding and marketing for you to kind of get your name out there, get more exposure? Absolutely, absolutely. There's this philosophy that may have a partner we write on is called the fact. And what that means is what you're not good at, you leverage because you cannot be good at everything.

You know, by the time we go in, I share with you my background now, you're gonna know a little bit about me and my education, my background, and a whole bunch of other stuff. But we came to the realization that in order for a business to succeed, you gotta put yourself out there. Re, and if we don't really know how to do it, you need to bring in the expat. So that's what we're doing right now.

Yeah, especially in the multifamily space, right? Because so many deals, especially in the big multifamily space, a lot of those deals never hit the market. They're all done off market. They're all done as pocket listings, or they're done direct to seller.

And those brokers and sellers have to know and have confidence that you R can close. And a lot of that comes down to the networking, putting yourself out there, if they don't know you, if they don't have a feel for who you are or have a relationship with you, or have either maybe had a coffee or soup or broken bread with you, or met face to face or online, they're never really gonna even bring you the opportunities, right? So it's almost a must do in the big multifamily space. you can get away in like residential and small multi-family, you can get away with not necessarily being out there or not really networking that much.

You can still find a lot of deals, but the bigger and the better the deals, the more the broker is really protecting their reputation and protecting their commission and only wanna bring the best deals to people that they already know. So just tell me about that experience for you. Again, it goes back to some people want to do stuff and they want to do it in isolation. You can only be one person, and you can only have one knowledge.

You can only go out there and do as much as you can when you come to research online. But it's different when you're having conversations with people that are ahead of you, 10 times ahead of you, 100 times ahead of you, and you're networking with them and learning from them. big piece of our marketing strategy is how do we make sure we continue to create ties with people that are already big in the marketplace? Something that they know that we are playing.

So We're having conversations with the industry experts. like the expat that they think that these are the expat in the industry, we're just learning, and applying the things that we learn in our journey. So networking has played a huge part, again, if you want me to go into some more details about how we started our journey, I can share that with you. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's do that. Because, you know, a lot of people in real estate that maybe think like, I just want to buy properties and I want to create cash flow. [inaudible]

[inaudible]

[inaudible] a lot to those people, all comes down to networking. so, that's, yeah, yeah, so, Tony, let's back up because a lot of people, don't understand that, but you had a number of particular challenges immigrating to the U overall 10 years. That a lot of other people, they don't have, right? You came here 10 years ago, not knowing a lot of people, not knowing a lot of the areas, language, all of this different stuff.

And then you also wanted to jump into real estate at the same time. It's not like you just relied on the W2. So, tell us, why did you come to the U, What brought you here? And then, how did you get established?

And then we'll talk a little bit about your jump into multifamily. Absolutely, absolutely, thank you, man. They was just telling me about things that would be coming into the United States and they're just pushing me all the way back Yeah, I see a big smile on your face, man. I can tell a bit that, it's probably a point of pride, it's probably a point of, like a lot of excitement and emotion, right?

So, I could see your body language is changing as I'm watching you for sure, man. It's awesome. So tell us about it, man. What a big challenge to overcome.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I'm a second to the last child of seven. I'm a twin with a girl. I'm raised by my mom and dad.

My mom is a petty trader. I don't know if you understand what a petty trader is. Petty trader is basically the guy that sells stuff. They sell stuff in the open market.

So she sells something called Gary, which is a food that we eat in Nigeria. And then- Tell me about Gary, what's the closest, like what's the closest thing you can compare it to in the U.S.? Nothing. - Okay.

Honestly, nothing, because it's made out of cassava. Cassava is a plant that they used to make it. When I was little, I went to the village with my grandma and I saw the process of how to build it. It's kind of an interesting process of planting and investing.

Anyways, that was the trade my mom was doing. She's a petty trader. You think about, you know how they have like dump trucks, the big dump trucks that they used to carry a whole bunch of concrete and stuff like that? Yeah.

My mom used to be on top of that. They call it 911 in Nigeria. She used to be on top of that with the goods. The goods are gonna be on the bottom part of the truck and then they will stay on top of it and travel like 30 to 40 miles more into another to buy and sell those goods.

And sometimes they go through the night. I didn't know the danger my mom was in until I became older. b OK. Normally, it was like she went to a market she's.

Going to be back. But later on, they usually just hang on top of those trailers for a very long ride to be able to buy the product and bring you back to the marketplace. That's how she raised us, my mom, but that was a cup, and I don't know if you're familiar with cups, and then you had to make a lot of money as well. Okay, And then we have, they had seven kids.

I grew up from the best of the best that's a lot of people sure um actually I usually let people know that listen when you think about that kid in I was in a class and there was holes there holes in this in their school pens I was one of those kids because yeah yeah in the end is in my primary school we were asked to sit on the floor there is no seats like you can and sit on a desk to learn. So you have to sit on the floor. And then by the time you sit on the floor for so long, the concrete on the floor, start eating into your pants. Oh, it smokes.

So all my friends, like all my friends who are thinking about getting your real estate or in real estate who are thinking like, I don't know if I could do this. I don't know if I'm smart enough. I don't know if I have the knowledge. I don't know if I have any connections.

I mean, at least you have the ability to sit in a desk, right, learn the business, sit in a chair, like a big leather chair like this or whatever. You know, I have three offices in my home, right? So my wife's, we have one upstairs for my kids, which should be mine, but I gave it to them. And then I'm in the basement home office.

And then I have a real office where all of our employees and I have another beautiful space there. So I have four chairs and you take that totally for granted to think that you grew up sitting on a concrete floor with the concrete eating into your pants. And- That was just the beginning of the story. I know, but I'm just thinking like how the little things we take for granted and the people who concoct in their brain all their challenges that they have.

I can, can't do real estate because of this, this and this. At least you have clothes and pants and a desk in a chair, like those things that you took for granted. Tenny didn't even have when he was a kid. His mom is literally taking a dump truck as like an Uber ride to the market.

Yep., I mean, that just hearing that. So tell us more like what, tell us about what happens next. So I, you know, I went to school with not smart at all.

If you say people are smart, some people now see me and say, this guy is smart, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, don't say that, right? So, not having the best of education while I was growing up, hit a lot of my ego. So, I had my choices I thought she was brighter, that me were little.

So, when you think about kids knowing how to spell, like I-T-E-T-S-O-O, and oh no, I couldn't do all of that. Wow. I was like, six or seven years old, I couldn't spell. And then I can remember one of my aunts saying, dude, what the hell is going on with you, man?

look at your sister, she's doing good. Why can't you, you know, pick up stuff if I don't learn, They know. I don't have the right environment. to learn about these things.

How do you expect me to know how to do it? Anyways, I went out of a primary school, went into high school. Now, because I didn't have self-esteem, I had to depend on other people to pass my classes. Like when they say, you know what, in Africa they have taboo to, you know what the taboo is basically is a crime to copy off of somebody else's work.

I'm like, no, I'm going to hold on to this dude for the rest of my life, because without him, I can't pass my class. So I held onto him. I had a bunch of friends like you, Tenny. I had a bunch of friends like you that cheated off of me in high school and college.

Yeah, I did. But hey, you got to do whatever it takes, man, right? Yeah, because that's the only way I could. So when I was about to finish high school, that's when I hit an epiphany.

And that was the friend I was depending on was going to go study when we go to college, he was going to go study mechanical engineering. And I wanted to do electrical and electronics engineering. So I, and I asked myself, what's going to happen now? Yeah.

So I went home, so I remember that evening, I went home to my mom. I said, mom, so the problem is I just found out that the guy's name is Clever. Clever is about to go study mechanical engineering and I want to do electronics engineering. So what would we do?

She was like, why are you depending on Clever? Why don't you think you can do it? That is interesting, I might be able to do it. Now the problem I faced, wasn't that I cannot basically read and understand and apply myself, was that I didn't have the confidence, if I have a question and I put in the answers, I'm not sure that that's the right answer, so I have to reach out to somebody else to validate what I was doing.

So anyways, my mom said you can do it, but some of you can do it, just try R. So I went back to school, went through school, the exams I normally take to get out of high school and I started depending on myself. So when I got into college now and I saw somebody that was like me, that is looking for somebody to hold on to, I'm like, huh, so this guy wants to hold on to me. So I got to be the best that I could, Right?

Yeah. So in college now, I was now the person somebody was depending on. So because I know somebody was depending on me, I study all night. Because I really know my weakness.

My weakness is, if both of us are in the same class, if it's takes you an hour to study and take an exam, it's gonna take me 10 hours. So I know my weakness. So I'm like, how can I compete and be at the same page with you if you're gonna take you one hour? So while everybody's partying, I was in my room studying.

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That's joshk Whatcoaching.com forward slash podcast. So what was it, so Tenny was, so you know, I talk a lot about in my different trainings and podcasts and things that the best way to learn is to teach, right? You don't really realize how fast when you learn something, let's say real estate, how fast, if you study it and learn it, that you already know way more than the average guy knows. So you have some level of knowledge beyond them.

And you can always be reaching up to a mentor or a coach who knows a lot more than you do. And then at the same time, be kind of giving back or passing down or letting somebody reach up to you, is a lot of power in being in the middle. And I think that's part of the entrepreneurial challenge that we all have, regardless of what kind of real estate we're in or what kind of business we're in, is to always be a student and a teacher at the same time. Absolutely.

And that's what, and me, just knowing that, I think it's just something that I felt like, commitment to learn from you that gave you faith in yourself. Is that what you're saying? 100%. Okay.

Now I could not see him fail. Yeah. I'm like, no. Often, what we often work harder for others then we'll work for ourselves.

Ourselves, exactly. So when I think of like what gives me motivation, it's usually not because something like a bunch of things that I want. It's usually because I'm fighting for my wife, my children, my father who has Parkinson's, I'm a pancreatic cancer survivor. So giving back to people who had pancreatic cancer, people that are really struggling now, especially in this virus environment, that we're in to pay the bills, what can we do to give back to them, back to my church, my faith, things like that.

That gives me more motivation than just saying like, okay, what do I wanna do for myself? I wanna be rich, I wanna have all this money, I wanna drive a Ferrari, I wanna have a huge house. That's not really motivating for me. It's usually giving or providing for someone else.

And it sounds like for you, that you had like no confidence or very little until you felt obligated to help and provide for someone else, is that right? Academically, yes. Then when I was, you know, in college. Yeah.

Again, I was still having some of the struggles that I had, you know, self esteem problem, but that was a huge part of me wanting to be more. And at one point, like I said, my family was like, when they say upper class, there was no middle class in Nigeria and then lower class. My family's in the lower class, right? And I asked myself, if I want to be better, and I want to take my family out from the lower class and bring them up to the upper class, what do I need to do, what was one thing I can do?

All I needed to do was to change my environment. Yeah. And that only environment that I thought about was, what if I move myself to the United States and come here, get my education, now I can be in classes, I can be in the class with other people that are in the upper class of Nigeria. Now I can mingle with them.

Now we can have conversation. Yes. So I went to my mom. I said, hey mom, this is the deal.

I wanna go to America when I'm done with my undergrad. She's like, you know, my mom is, she's not illiterate, like she's not educated. She's like, what are you talking about? We don't know anybody in America, how you gonna do it?

Yeah. I said, mommy, just tell me that you support me. And I'll do what I have to do. She was like, okay, we're on one condition.

If you graduate with a summer cum laude, That is the equivalent of what she wanted me to graduate with R. Wow. She set the bar high. Huma cum laude is no joke, man.

Graduating with honors. She said you can do it as long as you graduate with honors. Yeah, that's the kind of the equivalent. How am I going to do this?

So again, I went back to school and started studying and blah, blah, blah. R.gradation. So yeah, I did a lot of studying to be honest then because I had to come to America. So one of the things that stood to my head was, in each class that I want, you know how to say prophesy what you want, and put it, and visualize it.

So when the school was on strike, I went to my school, and in an apartment of like maybe 50 units, I was the only one in that whole apartment, because everybody was home because it was strike. So in my room, it was like this room that I'm in, I have my classes, each of the class what grade I wanted on the wall. Okay. I was taking nine classes then.

Nine? Nine. Wow. So I put all of them on the wall and when I finished studying each one, I write the grade that I want on it.

So if is, let's say computer science, I'll put a big A on it, or a big B. Okay. There was no C on the wall. So all of them I put A or B, depending on how I feel about it.

Guess what? The exam came, I wrote, My G.P.A. school went up. Anyways, I finished, got my degree, and I took, to my mom, I say, mom, I got it.

Now, my dad is in the picture, but he wasn't in the picture of the drive. He was that guy that just said, you know, what do you need? Here we go take the little amount of money that I have, blah, blah, blah. But he was in the picture of the struggle that I went to and the self-doubt and all that.

He wasn't part of all this conversation. He was seeing me as a bad child because I was a, No, we up everywhere in Nigeria. Um, but anyways, I went to my mom told us to say, well, you did your part, I R do my part, go get admission in to school in America. I got admitted to school in Virginia, COVID-19 National University.

I went to the visa at one time I went there. I think God just I was just destined is not me doing is just that God just want me to be here. My first interview I went there I looked at the console line in their face and say, listen, I'm going to the United say, why? I told him, I don't want to be where I'm at.

I want to go over there and study to be better. They gave me a visa. I took. Just like that.

I flew to, where my dad was. I told him that I had a visa. Here we go. He was like, so yeah, you're more than planning all of these?

I said, yes. So who do you go to? You and you go about to go meet in America. I said, we'll figure it out.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's like, and you're having so much fun with this.

I'm having fun with it, but the things that you're doing, a lot of people would say, oh my God, that's such a big deal. You just seem to say, this is just what I want. I'm just gonna figure it out as I go. I don't know everything, but I'm gonna have faith in myself.

I have faith in God. I'll have faith in the process. But this is just gonna work out. Actually, I just looked up on my screen the word faith.

And the definition of faith, according to the dictionary, is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. So you've talked about faith. I'm not talking about like religion, like I'm Catholic, I have a lot of religion, a lot of faith in Jesus Christ, a lot of faith in God, but I'm talking about faith in yourself, right? Complete faith or confidence, it's just going to work out.

And it sounds like you just said, like I've got to make this happen. I want to go from, really the drive seems like, from like you said, lower class to upper class. And if I just change my environment of just going and socializing and networking, being around people that are at this higher level, this is like inevitable for me. Like you had faith that this was just going to happen only a matter of time.

I just have unresolved faith. I wasn't scared. You know, if you think about moving from your country to another country and you're scared, I was not scared at all. I've never done that.

So I can't comment. I lived in the same area within 20 to 30 miles of where I grew up my whole life. I have not taken that leap, but I understand what you're saying. I've been in mastermind groups, for example, when I was a little bit younger with people that I thought were like 10 times, 20 times, 100 times further along than me and I was scared.

Like I was literally afraid to walk in the room, but I went and walked in the room anyway and spent time with those guys that I perceived to be so much further advanced than me, so much further along than I just said, I'm just gonna go again, just like you did. my game through association by just hanging out with them and just, I just see what happens. I know it's part of the process, right? So it's amazing that you said that, but you, like, I'm going to move halfway across the country to do it.

I didn't know what to be honest with you. I would say like, I was not even thinking about the impact of what I was doing. I was just like, this is the life I want to have chosen, I'm going. And I just kept going.

The lady that I met in the plane coming here, after she heard my story, she didn't even want to give me her phone number. She ran. When we get out of the plane, she ran. I had to chase out, like, hey, listen.

I don't have any family here. Can I at least get a number and I can call you sometime to ask questions? All right. And then she just nonchalantly gave me her number.

And then again, I went through that, went to the school. The school didn't have a lot of opportunities. So I transferred ransified to Bowie State. Bowie State is in Maryland.

And then there, I had an opportunity to work in the school. And then one of the memory that stuck to me. My girlfriend at the time left me, because I didn't have money to be sent to her back home. And I do understand why.

But the problem is how do I be sending money home when I can now buy shoes? I remember having a shoe. In my shoe, that was when I was going to grad school. If I put my feet in the water bottle, water goes into my shoe.

Oh, socks are all wet. You're miserable for hours. Because I'm wet, you're shrinking. My room I was staying in has a twin bed in there with no window blinds.

I got a window blind. I changed my bed when I met my wife. Okay. So when I had a girl that was coming to my house now, because I broke up my ex and I met my wife, I had to go buy a curtain on my window and then try to change.

No, she was coming when I had my twin bed. After a little while then I was able to afford to change my bed and I just knew the only thing I had that could set me apart was this education. In my class, I thought I was a genius. Okay.

I was, I graduated with a 3.9 GPA because somebody had to be in one class. Because your mom told you that you had to. You had a grade two. Anything else.

I didn't have anything apart from school. Yeah. What's the takeaway from that, right? For you, for me, for our listeners, is that for that period of your life, whether it was, I think, two years or four years to get your graduate degree, you were laser focused on one thing.

One thing. And you just did that one thing. And that's really sort of the blessing and the curse of our society today. Absolutely.

Is so much social media, so much information, so many advertisements coming at us focusing on one thing for an extended period of time. Henry Ford once said, the greatest trait a man can have is the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period of time. And you came to a new country, learned a new language, didn't know anybody, didn't even have to have blinds on your windows, wet socks and shoes, but you focused on one thing and you graduated with honors in a totally new language, in a totally new society. and culture and everything.

Yeah, so you graduate and you've had a lot of R success a lot of success in your regular job, right? W2 job. Tell me about that. Like what did you do for work before you got into real estate?

So before I graduated, I got a job in DC. I graduated on the, I think on 18th of December of 2012 from grad school. I got an offer before that time. So by that time I graduated and I already got a job.

So from there I transitioned to Boeing. I worked there as a cyber security expert with them. And then from there, I transitioned to Deloitte. We came in console time with Deloitte as well.

Got it. So that's my professional background. But in 2016, while I was working at Boeing, I was looking for, because I already have, in my mind, I was thinking about, this 905WG is not just going to be the path. There has to be something better.

So one thing I thought about was, okay, since I'm in this cyber space, I'm working with a defense company, which is Boeing. Why don't that open up a contracting company, like one of the companies that offers employees to the government? So why don't I open up a company? So I open up a company called Toulouse Network, probably to provide consulting services to the government.

But in that process, as I was doing that, I got sick. I hurt my fifth disc where I could not sit down, I couldn't sneeze, I couldn't R do anything. Now, this is an interesting part of the story. So you know, now I have a nice job, you know, things were good.

Now I was like, I have to take care of my mom, right? So I flew my mom a year, brought my baby sister here. My baby sister has to. Go to grad school.

Now I'm going to be paying for her to go to grad school. I brought my mom here to. Take care of my mom for she to come take care of her health. So everything was good.

This was in 2016. My mom came in general of 2016. In March, before my birthday, that's when I hurt my back. Now, maybe I brought my mom here to take care of her.

She now has to start taking care of me. S So I'm just trying to think about myself. What is, what'sness. So when I went through physical therapy, I didn't want to go through surgery.

They said, actually, we'll just go through surgery. I said, I don't want to do that. And so I went through physical therapy. So when I was coming out of physical therapy, I'm like, let me start asking myself, what can I do?

What kind of services can I provide to other people? So I came into it, I found a company that offers a solution that can help people that are professionals like myself. If they get sick, they don't lose their home and all this kind of stuff. I'm like that sounds good because I have all this dependant on me.

What if I wasn't able to provide to them? I would have been screwed. So I got into the financial services industry. I started providing financial solutions to people and that's how I met Leslie, who is my partner in real estate.

So I've always been a student of Robert Kiyosaki. You know, I already reached out of cash flow quadrant. And in the cash flow quadrant, he talked about the E, the S, the B and the I, right? I've always started.

I started thinking about how can I be in the. The B and I quadrant, right? And the B is the business, I invest in real estate. I've already started building the business in the financial space, but the iPod was missing, which is real estate investment.

So when I met Leslie and I met Leslie to his wife, I went to do a presentation for financial services and I met about 10 to 12 ladies and they were all in the medical field. I want to learn more, so Leslie's wife was the only woman that gave me all this say listen come to the house and come and talk to my husband okay so I went there Leslie's very skeptical very analytical very focused he has a whole bunch of questions that he said he wanted to ask me and I just went there and lawmaker, I just shared with them. with them I. my philosophy So R We of class, we- Well, well, I have a couple comments first before we talk about real estate ral estate your favorite type of multifamily deal, but a couple comments are I just keep thinking about how, first of all, how blessed we are in the United States that, you know, to be a student at a university that many people in other parts of the world already considered that to be upper-class, right?

If you just are in high school and you're getting an education, you have clothes on your back, youB have a place to go to, you're safe, you have an environment of home, you have parents. You know, even if you're from a single family parent, brother, sister, everybody's safe, you have transportation, you can go to a high school or a college, university, that in, you compare that to most parts of the world, you're already a middle class or upper middle class relative to the rest of the world. So let's just keep that in mind that we're so fortunate the United States, that we cannot rest on our comfort zone and say, well, I've got a pretty good life. I mean, how many people in the United States that are middle class or lower middle class or upper middle class, they could be achieving so much more but they don't know struggle like you did.

They don't know poverty. They don't know not having an education. So they take all that for granted and they monkey around the rest of their life, farting around with not achieving, not pursuing, because they're like, this is good enough, right? And comfort is the enemy of progress.

Comfort is the enemy of growth. So many people in the US are comfortable that they're not reaching. And that's why we see so many immigrants, the Asian community, your community, Nigerian community, people that don't have a lot, all of a sudden that like, I've got to get there. And then when I'm there, you're like, Well, might as well just keep going, right?

Might as well just keep building. And so I just wanna recognize that, man, and just tell you how, first of all, how proud I am of you, how awesome it is to hear your story. Thank you. Your story, to tell my listeners like R, you've got no excuse if you, you know, they have no excuse.

After hearing what we just heard Teddy from you, that they can't achieve more and do more because they most likely grew up with the same or more, slightly more. Maybe than what you did. Cause you really came from almost nothing. The other day, I was having dinner with my family.

I was like, man, I'm having a dinner with an American wife. I was growing up. That was not something that you can think that is even possible. I could not find something that I'm.

Being in America and I have an American wife. Wow, wow. There's no way I could conceive that. Well, at one point, I had to believe that's my system.

Yeah. So Tony, help me understand like the comparison between like where you are now relative to what I don't want. I don't want to sound offensive. But what class would you be in Nigeria comparing where you are now in the US?

Would you be like upper class upper? Middle class like way upper class in Nigeria, you know, comparing to what you have now in the US. I just don't understand the difference in classes societal differences. between Nigeria and the US.

With my income, I'll be upper class. With the income I make and the standard of living that I'm living, you know, I definitely will be in the upper class. I might not be in the elites, but definitely upper class for sure. Yeah, right.

You know what, in America right now, I think I'm getting close. I'm after the upper class in America right now as well. So in Nigeria, definitely upper class. 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. Using the same 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 deals 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 like the one thing that stands out to me out of all the things you've said is just that you changed your environment. Yes. Like just that changed my environment. those three words, I need to change my environment.

And if I change my environment and who I'm associating with, I can completely change the course of my life, which is what you've done, to the point where like you're like laughing about, like I have an American wife, I'm so excited about it. It's so, it's just cool, man, it's just so cool. So the only thing I don't do often, I don't do a lot, I need to do more of it, is gratitude. And that was that dinner, that's what I was looking at my wife, I looked at my daughter, I'm like, man, this is how far I've come.

Sometimes when I share my story, my wife met me, like I said, I had a twin bed in my room. She was mean, she had a little car. Anyways, I don't want to do that to anyone. He's okay.

Let's keep going in the interview. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I tell, I have actually sitting right above my computer on my wall right here that it says, a great day always begins in the gym and ends with a book. and the reason why, for me, a great day begins in the gym and ends with a book is typically when I'm in the gym is it allows me to completely clear my mind.

And then I have the opportunity to think about, wow, look how grateful I am. Look at all the things that have gone right. And even the things that have I gone wrong, we have a lot of things that have gone wrong, over the last 20 years, to think like, what are the lessons I've learned from the things that have not gone right, right? The times I've gotten screwed, the times that things didn't work out, because that stuff happens too.

So Tenny, let's talk for a few minutes about multifamily real estate. So you said you did all this research, fix and flips, rental, single family, self-storage, assisted living. You landed on multifamily real estate and apartment buildings. And you have this 192 unit already.

And so tell me about your strategy today. What are you looking for to acquire more of these 500 doors? What specific asset classes? What specific types of areas?

Is it value add? And how are you looking at the syndication side of things? Actually, pretty much what we're doing right now is just viewed more of an investor base. The way we chose multi-family is because, one, we will not be able to take big asset class on our own, right?

If you observe, we have a meetup that we have running right now, and a whole bunch of people that we meet at this meetup are people that already do flip and flip, and wholesaling, And one of the problem that they had was, or they have like single family homes that they rent, is the problem of management, the day-to-day running of the property and the headache from tenants and all that stuff that comes with it. And when we discovered that is something that we can transfer. And if you can remember, I talked about leverage earlier, if we can transfer that responsibility to an ex parte that can take care of that, why we get the benefit of having a property? Why don't we do that?

So right now we're looking to bring in a bunch of people like us that are looking to have real estate properties, but don't wanna be worried by the whole big management of the property, running of the property, dealing with tenants and all this stuff. We wanna look for those are the kind of people who are looking to. This year, our goal is to qualify for the unit, But with this whole pandemic going on, we're still having that as our goal, working, building our brand and doing our marketing and continuing to talk to investors on a daily basis and do what we're supposed to be doing, right? And of course, we're always open to learning and getting feedback from people that will meet.

But our goal is right now, is to look for one of these emerging markets and one of those markets to identify is North Carolina, the Charlotte area, Charlotte-Durham Chapel Hill area, because the growth in terms of demographic, that's really good. My partner, Leslie, actually went to school down in Greensboro. So he's familiar with the area. And I went there with my family not too long ago, visited the market, it's a great market.

And we want to be in that market as well. So that's one area we have a team already. We have a property management company, brokers, and the team that can help us run the business down there. So once this whole pandemic gets died down a little bit, We're going to make you take a trip down there, meet with our brokers, and start looking at asset class that we can take down so that we can start moving towards achieving our goals.

Yeah. So, Tenny, tell me a little bit more about the way you're building your team, right? Because a lot of people understand, you know, large assets, like large apartments, requires a team, you know, property management company, boots on the ground operator, general partners, somebody who can sponsor the loan, somebody who can raise money, and all these different kinds of things. So tell me a little bit more about that for you.

Like, how are you building your team? How are you networking? Who do you wanna put on your team that you have or who do you need to put on your team that you don't quite have yet? Yeah, so when it comes to the team, when it comes like property management company, when we got involved with the property in Marietta, Georgia, I went there for the due diligence process.

So I went there for two days and we walked to the properties and had an opportunity to interview the property management company that was gonna be proud of the property and had a concrete conversation with him and the sponsors of that property they've been in that market in Atlanta for a while. And these property management companies one of the company that they vouch for, so I had an interview with the lead the regional director and I say, hey listen, we're looking to acquire property in North Carolina. do you guys call out as areas? And he said absolutely.

So he did an introduction to some of his folks in North Carolina. So we have that property management team. They're very big. They're on our website.

They had a guy. We wanted them to manage our. And then when it comes to sponsors, it's just networking. So we were part of a group, a mentorship group where we were able to network with some high net, what folks, both people that have about 2,400 units to 3,000 units under their belt that we're gonna be working with when it comes to sponsorship and stuff like that.

Of course, I have our attorneys and my accountants and a whole bunch of other people that's part of the team. And then for boots on the ground, they're still networking. We've met some great people that leaves down there in North Carolina area. And we've had meetings with them.

We're trying to make sure that our philosophy align because again, you wanna do business with people that have the same philosophy, which you so that if you go into business, you guys can continue to do business. not like you go into business and then at the end of the day doesn't work out and you have to sell the property and all this kind of headache. So we want into a business with a solid people a group of people that will feel that we can grow together then go and just rush into anything. If it takes us 10 years to find the right group, yeah that means it's 10 years for us.

So we're not in a rush and that's a conversation we're having with our investors. If you're in a rush right now we can show you some other operators that are in the marketplace we can go with them,. But we're not in any form of a rush. We're not desperate more right now.

Yeah. Got our time and building our stuff. Tenny, you said, and again, as we kind of round, to use a baseball analogy, round third and head for home to kind of wrap up our interview today, you had said you did a lot of research on fix and flip and single family and these other asset classes and landed on multifamily. Tell me why.

What did you find in multifamily that stuck out that led you down that path? think it's just excitement, man. I think me and my partner, me and Leslie, we met and after we did this, we just excited about the industry and we just started researching. One of the main things for multifamily, again, I mentioned, is having that expert manage the property for you because they are going to run it on a day to the basis.

So actually, we actually putting me and Leslie after we formed our company, we put in an offer for a couple of single-family homes. We had to pull back those offerings because we realized that we have to go in there, manage this property, run around, do all these things. And then we started starting observing the number of units you have to have in order for you to be able to afford a property management company. When I talked about vacancy, how does vacancy impact your income and cash flow?

you know, and when it comes to taxes, when it comes to leverage, you know, when it comes to people who need to have place to leave, you know, so a lot of these things made a lot of sense to us. I think apartment, of course, as we grow in the future, we might decide to say, okay, maybe there's other ways we can serve, which is provide real estate for a certain group of people. But for now, we think multifamily And our philosophy is how do we use multifamily to provide affordable to house and to people? Really excited to leave it.

Our philosophy is how do we create an environment by a design? How do we make sure that somebody wants to live in a place they can use that, they can conceptualize it and then actually live in there. Again, that's for the future. But again, those are some of the exciting reasons why we chose more.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, all the things you talked about, leverage, being able to bring in a partner, some people think, like, how am I gonna buy a $20 million apartment deal? Well, there's people that like to just step in and sponsor loans, that's their role. There's other people that are good at raising money, there's other good boots on the ground, and your job is to kind of orchestrate pulling all those people together. I did a podcast yesterday, and actually, it was one of my coaching calls, and we talk about the movie about Steve Jobs where he's up on stage.

And Wozniak is out in the crowd, his original partner from Apple, and Woz is pissed off, and he's kinda berating Steve Jobs in front of a bunch of people, and he says, like, what do you do? You don't sit on a workbench, you don't create software, you don't create hardware, you don't do marketing, like, what do you do? What's your job? And he says, Waz, I'm the orchestra conductor.

Yep. Orchestra conductor is no more important than the people in the orchestra, because some people have to play the cello and some people have to play the violin and some people have to play these different instruments. But somebody has to be the conductor. Conductor.

And that's really what you're saying. It's a very similar analogy as you're going to be the conductor, you are going to pull in the different pieces of the puzzle together. And that's as any CEO of any and any leadership team, their job is to pull people together as the conductor. You don't really have to.

People say, well, you don't do anything. You're the CEO. The truth is I know how to do everything, My main job is team building, networking, recruiting capital, bringing in the right operators and then doing the due diligence to find the right deals. That's ultimately your job.

You don't have to have a huge balance sheet and sponsor every loan. You don't have I have every connection and raise every dollar. You don't have to manage every unit. Your job is to be the a conductor.

Absolutely. And if you surround yourself with the right team, we are really, really huge leverage, man, because, again, this is because, you know, me, after I got to a point where I became like, I. I know my stuff. You know, don't mess around with me.

You know, I think I'm good. Though I continue to do personal development and I came to the realization that people are successful. They surround themselves to the best. were the best.

Yeah, absolutely. No doubt. I mean, I heard a great interview with the CEO of 1-800 got junk. Okay.

And I've passed the story along to many people and like, you know, we'll wrap up our interview here with this, but he said in the interview, he said, you know, I never had a great idea. He's like, my idea of R and D was rip off and duplicate. He said, you know, I just surrounded myself with amazing people. and I pulled their best ideas into my business.

It was the ultimate version of don't reinvent, the wheel. and he kind of used the R and D instead of research and development of replicate. or 99.9% of what we do, somebody else has already done it. They've already had the idea.

It's R- How can you pull their information, their strategies into your life and implement them in a passionate way to do what and accomplish what you want to accomplish. You want to accomplish, absolutely, absolutely. That's fantastic. Tenny, well, listen, we've got a wrap, but this has been amazing.

I've had such a blast getting to know you and your story. And like I said, we're getting ready for this. One of my daughter's closest friends is Nigerian, her parents were immigrants. I coach her in volleyball.

Her name is Ima Odiawa. And Ima is a total doll. Actually, today's her birthday. She's an amazing kid.

We're going to drive by and honk But man, just an awesome story. Thank you so much. So for any of our audience that would want to connect with you, invest in your deals, network with you, whatever, what's the best place for them to reach out to you? So you can go to xsitecapital.com.

XSITE is spelled X as in xylophone, S as in samuel, I as in indigo, T as in tango, E as in edworld, capital.com. Perfect. Yeah. We'll put that in the show notes.

Perfect. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then my email is Tolofari at xsitecapital.com.

My cell phone number is 2-0-2-5-6-9-5-0-7-2. That is 2-0-2-5-6-9-5-0-7-2. Tenny, listen, this has been an absolute blast getting to know you and your story a little bit better. Look forward to seeing all your success and to continue to level up.

Yeah, absolutely. I would like to come back on. I would like to come back on with my partner. I don't know if you're open to it, but me and my partner would like to come back on and you get to hear our story, our journey and journey.

, and there's a whole bunch of things I would have loved to say. When you start sharing your story, you don't want to stop talking about it because there's some people out there that are to inspire. That's what our goal is. Even if it's one person that will inspire to do more and be out there, help more people, that's worth it.

Absolutely. Tenny, listen, thank you so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, Josh.

I look forward to meeting you and talking to you, See you again. All right, you got it. Take care. All right.

Take care. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Josh Cantwell and the Accelerated Investor podcast. Leave a comment on our iTunes channel and let us know what you want to learn next.

Or who you'd like Josh to interview. While you're there, give us a five star rating and make sure to subscribe so you can be the first to hear new episodes. Follow Josh Cantwell and his companies, Strategic Real 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 josh-kantuocoaching.com.

Hey, the but it's only been within on the announcement publicly anywhere else I'm doing it here to take a sneak peek at the book. Now, the book won't be launching, it won't be available on Amazon or anywhere else until June 1st, but between now and the end of the month, I am offering to send this book for free to you to check it bout and give me some feedback and maybe more importantly, to read it so that when it does go live, you can give me an honest review of Amazon to which I would be eternally grateful, but real estate.com subject line I will need real answers you are in the right place and now your host Mike Simmons. Hey guys how are you doing today. Hope everyone is doing great.

I hope we're all staying safe and happy and healthy and we're all getting through this crazy coronavirus pandemic. Healthy and gonna get the other side of it someone who leading a major sales force in one of the fastest-growing financial services in America. He's also a global cybersecurity professional supporting the likes of Boeing and a and they are rocking We. Don't know each other previously and I sometimes people that I've known for years and sometimes I interview people and the first time I'm meeting them is on the show.

So that's always exciting for me to meet new people and to find out their stories and how they got started and what they're doing and you are doing something different than what I do in my day to day business, which is multi-family, right? So I'm excited to dig into that world and find out more about it so people can get a little more familiar with you and your background. Tell me go back before real estate. Tell me what you were up to, what were you doing, and then we'll move forward into why you got into this whole crazy world of real estate.

Absolutely. Again, you know, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be on the show. Without folks like yourself who have the opportunity to share stories and I don't motivate or inspire people that wants to get in the space. I was born and raised in Nigeria.

I was born to a family of seven, two boys and five girls. I'm a twin, I have a twin sister. Okay, cool. I grew up in a community where my mom was a But you know, we R didn't have a lot growing up.

I went to public schools. I was one of those kids, when you see, you know, I know that in the Western world, when you see some kids in Africa, you see some kids that have holes in their pants. It's cool. I was one of those kids.

Yeah, I'll be real. Because of my classroom, when I was in my primary school, classroom, we didn't have a desk. So we have to sit on a concrete. After a little while, your parents are rubbing on a concrete.

Wow. So that's how I grew up. I went to school there. So I struggled with academics, because you know, I couldn't spell.

I couldn't spell I-T-E-T-N-O-S-O, so I can still R- everything in my head, because my aunt, my sisters, they were doing better than me. And they were like, dude, why can't you just spell this little word, man? Just two letters. Yeah.

So that kind of hit my ego. So because of that, going through school, I was more, I wasn't confident in myself, I was depending on other people class by classes. But fast forward towards graduating from high school. Since my 12th high school I was always depending on somebody else but towards the ending I realized that one of my friend that I've been depending on all this while he's about to go study mechanical engineering while I want to go do electrical engineering.

So the problem now is, now he's leaving. What you gonna do boy? I'm like oh my god. So I went straight to my mom like hey mom, my friend is about to go study something else, I'm about to go study something else, I'm not going to do.

He's like, why can't you study by yourself? Why can't you pass your exams yourself? Why can't you be the reliant on yourself? Now, I know that I can study and try to do my exams, but I'm not just confident.

So that's the kind of struggles that I had. And with that conversation, my mom led me to a point to where I started believing in myself. And then I moved into college, my study in electrical electronics engineering. And now in college, somebody else now was not depending on me.

So now I understood the burden. And in my second year of college, because we're like, in Nigeria, we have first, like, top class, and then lower class, there's not like middle class, we're in the a lower-class. In my second year in college, I'm like, how do I move to the upper class? And the only answer that R that I get was to, wants to get out of Nigeria go study abroad, and that way I can be part of that cycle.

I went to my mom and said, hey mommy, I'm about to go study my master's in America. She's like, are you crazy? Who do we have in America? We have nobody in America.

We don't know anybody in America. So where did that come from? So I thought, hey listen, that is the only way. That's what I wanted to do.

She was like, all right, grab the bed. If you're able to graduate from college with summer cum laude, which is your equivalent of the college second class,ivision in Nigeria. Okay, okay, I would do whatever it takes to send you abroad to go to school. I said, that's a bet.

So I went to work. My cousin in undergrad was five years. So my God's grace, you know, I studied hard. I graduated with a second class of motivation.

And I took you back to us. Hey, mom, I got you there with a degree you ask. Oh, crap. Now I have to know I have to figure this out.

She said, if I have to sell everything that I have, my clothes, my boxes, of the lands that I have, I have to do it. Because, you know, coming to America to study, we paid everything out of pocket. There was no loan, there was no grant, nothing. My tuition this semester was around $8,000, right?

And that was minus living expenses, housing, accommodation, and all of that. So I brought it to her, I said, I have a mission right now, what we're gonna do. And I went to my dad and we had conversations, it's like, this is a good opportunity, you should go ahead. So I landed here in America, in Dallas International Airport, August of 30th, 2010.

And then there's this lady that I flew in with. This is funny story. So because she knows that I didn't know anybody here and everything, she saw me like a liability. So when we got out of the plane, I said, hey, listen, can I get your number I can give.

Welcome to America. Right. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

That's too funny that I had. One thing that I had with me was I wasn't scared. I wasn't had no doubt within me that, you know, that future is going to be bright. So all I got was to come here, go to school.

So I went to I came to VIU, Virginia International University in Virginia. That's where I started. And from there, I transferred to Bowie State University. That's where I got my master's in cyber security.

So before I graduated, I got a job. Because I knew that all I had was education, so I had to give it my best. Because of that, I graduated very good. My GPO was very, high.

And then I got a job before I graduated, before I knew it. I got a lot of job with Boeing, and then I became a global consultant with Deloitte. So my career became very good. And in 2016, I brought my mom here to come on here to go to grad school as well.

Nice. So life was good. So in 2016, when I brought my mom, I was working at Boeing. I was one of the cybersecurity professional there.

I had my fifties hurt. So now me, I brought my mom to take care of her here. She doesn't have to take care of me for three to four months, because I couldn't move. I have my fifties.

it was accumulating because I like to lift weight, heavy weight. I think that was what costed and I wasn't protecting myself using good posture and stuff. So I think that but again, I finished from my therapy and everything and I was asking myself what's next, what r, what's next. I don't just want to walk 9 to 5 but of course I work with a great company, great income, great everything.

But what's next. So in that search, I ran across a company financial services company. And they started to tell me about money. There's a lot of opportunities I bought the first book about entrepreneurship, which is reach that Wow.

The cash flow quadrant. Yeah, Rhea then I. I didn't a what I was doing. I the cash flow quadrant book.

That's why he was meaning, okay. Now this is making. A lot of sense. Population of America, when it comes to working entrepreneurship and business and wealth in general, where do I want to fall enough cash flow quarter, I want to be in the B and I, right, which is big business and investor, so the financial services platform give me an I say, hey, listen, I do this, I like to come and show to you guys, if you're interested.

And she said, okay, no problem. I'll give you my information. So she gave me information. Everybody gave me the information.

I don't, everybody that gave me the information. Only Leslie's wife picked up on my call and say, Hey, listen, I need to talk to my husband. So I went to his, to their house and Leslie's a very technical individual, very, very like detailed oriented. So he has a bunch of questions and like, who's this financial guy that, you know, bring it to the house.

And I had an open heart, R. I went over there, shared with, then what I had. And it was not talking about philosophy books that we're reading. At that time I.

I was reading the biography of Elon Musk. He was reading that same book as well. And then when I started to talk about money master the game by the new Robin, he has read that book as well. So we were like, okay, there's a lot of things that is, you know, connecting between the both of us.

All right, Why don't we just meet up another time? So from there, we started a video relationship. We started meeting up at a game, like a brewery, where we play board game. And then we started playing the Robert Kiyosaki cash flow board game.

So they played that for a couple of weeks and we started inviting other people to join us in that process. We started thinking about what should we do? How do we start a business? You know, I say, Hey, listen, I'm already good in entrepreneurship.

I do financial services business. He's already doing real estate investment. I'm like, the missing piece for me now is moving from the B to the I. Yeah.

Robert Kiyosaki cash flow quarter, right? I'm like, the only real estate that I have right now is my residence, where I leave that. I've not really started investing in real estate. People are like, man, we can do that.

Man, you can fund team and try to buy real estate. So that's how we started in 2019, January of 2019, we formed our company, XSITE Capital. And out of all the asset class, because what we did is we were those guys that want to invest a lot of a money in our bocation. So we invest a lot of time and resources to go to different bootcamp.

went to wholesaling class. Flipping class, a whole bunch of different seminars to try to understand what is really going on. He's already doing some form of real estate in the past, but out of everything, we decided to do multi-family. Okay.

So last year in September 2019, we invested in 192 unit in Marietta, Georgia. And this year, we're looking to acquire 500 units as the primary sponsors of the deal. So, that's my journey so far. I know it's a long story, but I hope that's interesting enough.

I want to go back. I have a question for you. Okay. So, you started off, you grew up in Nigeria.

Correct. You talked about sitting on the concrete floor and then you came to America, your mother, your family got together the resources they needed to make that happen because you fulfilled your end of the bargain there. What do you think when people who grew up here in America say, I don't have the opportunities to succeed that other people have. Or I wasn't born into the right social class.

Or I don't have the opportunities that other people have who are successful. It has to drive you nuts, they hear that kind of stuff. It used to drive me nuts. But I came to the realization it's more about exposure.

It's about people you surround yourself with. Who you grew up with. The kind of information we consume. I used to be like, when I first came, a couple of years I came here.

I see people don't want to be serious about their life and everything. I used to get really bad, like all of those things I excuses. But I came to the realization as I continue to mature and grow, that is more about the people you surround yourself with. They're your friends, your family, you know, where you grew up from.

Because you can only be what you surround yourself with. Think about this. The neighborhood where I grew up from, they have a whole bunch of, when I say bad people, they have to go still, they get in trouble a lot. I hang out with some of these guys.

And my dad, you know, I have my older brother, he's like seven years older than me, and then I have a bunch of my sisters, and me. So we had a family meeting and I showed him my certificate and he there that they can get. Only if they are willing to move. And if you think about it here in America as well, a lot of people, they move from where they grew up from and go to another environment, they go and associate with the right set of people, they become better.

Yeah, I agree with you, man. So that's my take. Yeah, I think it is, who you surround yourself with. As a parent, even with your kids, I would definitely make it harder for my kids to hang out with the bad kids or the kids that I knew were a bad influence, I would make them jump through a lot more hurdles to go and hang out with those kids than I would with the.

The kids that I knew had a good family and had a good support system. Like if they want to hang out with those kids, b, it was easy. I'd drive them over there, I'd make it happen, right? So I think, and then when you grow up, it's no different, right?

The people you surround yourself as an adult tends to be the kind of person you are. So I guess what I was getting more at and just kind of, I was kind of being a little silly and making a joke, but there are people who were born here in a America, just a middle class family with good parents and all the opportunities in the world and sometimes they're the ones that'll be the first ones to make excuses about why they can't do something and, you know, here you came here from another country, you know, you had no support here, you had no friends and family. You didn't you're reading, you were reading books that inspired you and you didn't understand some of the concepts in it because you had never been exposed to it, right? And then to hear someone who grew up here in a nice family and had opportunities to say, well, yeah, you're doing it, but I can't, I don't have those opportunities.

And it's like, come on, man. Everyone has an opportunity. It's just how badly do you a want it? And what are you gonna do to get there, right?

So, and I think that's cool. Go ahead. I'm sorry, you were gonna say something. Like I said, you know, I've, you know, come to a realization that a lot of people don't appreciate what they have, right?

Listen, let me give you a story. I said, I sat down on the floor R to go to school. It wasn't there, until now it was not there. So in my room, because I knew what I wanted to achieve, I had to study a lot.

Let's say both of us are in the same class. If we have an exam to write, if it takes you an hour to study the material, it's going to take me 10 hours. So I knew that I had to put in more time than everybody else. So during the night, I turned everybody to sleep and I'm studying.

I did that for so many months. So in my room, when you're coming and you're going through, you see a candle right by his misstudy. There was one thing I did that was insane. That people think I was, when my friends thought I was mad.

Like I was running crazy. In my room, in my office right now, you see I have my cars that I aspire to buy, and my dreams and some of the things that I have on my wall. Something similar. Then I didn't know anything about vision board.

I don't know anything about no vision board or nothing or visualization. Yeah. I just said, this is the grade I want to have for each class. I studied on that class, put it on the wall on an A4 paper, and I write a big A or a big B on it, right?

And I had nine classes I was taking that time. So every time I finished studying for one, I put it on the wall. So one of my friends came in, and I was in, because we were on strike then, what I mean by strike is that means everybody's home, all the students are teachers at home, nobody's taking classes. I was the only one in my hostel.

So one of my friends came and visited me and you were like, you hope to go where I was at home. Like, do you know what I'm talking about? All these A's and B's on the wall? I said, no, no, no, no, no.

I know what I want. I don't want this life. I don't want to be at this point, about some of my friends have asked me back home and she's struggling to take care of the family. That's not a life I want.

If I have to study the study and my mom said she's going to help me go to America, I'm gone. So come R here, don't appreciate what they have. They don't understand. So that's why sometimes they say, if you want to teach some kids, take them to a shelter.

Take them abroad. Let them go see other people. Give them perspective. Yeah.

Gratitude perspective is one thing that helped a lot of people if you want to make them change. And now one of my mentor says, people change due to two things, through desperation or to inspiration. Mine was both. So when you flew in, did I hear you say that you landed in Dallas International Airport?

No, Dallas International Airport. Okay. So how did you get to DC? What brought you there?

So it's a plane. Was that what you were going to school? Was that, t was that the school that you were going to attend? Yes, the school was in Virginia.

It's in Virginia-International University. Okay. Virginia. Okay,.

Gotcha. The closest airport was Dulles International Airport. So I can still remember everything. So I flew when my flight was Lufthansa airline.

That's what I call it, my airline, Lufthansa airline. So I flew into Dulles dollars. and I got a taxi. I can still remember how much I paid for the tax is $60.

Okay. From the airport. So we have, I was going to stay and I stayed kind of just to somebody temporarily for a couple of days before the school found that, like Yeah, let's do it. Come on, this is good.

So, in my room, there were two guys in my room with a twin bed, just one bed. So, we alternated a who was. Oh, Oh my g. Oh my There you are, back on the floor.

You got all the way. America just ended up on the floor again. So it was crazy, man. I finished that and then, you know, I transferred to movie states.

Of course, the only thing that I had was education My wife, when she met me, because I didn't want to spend $20 and get haircut. My shoes then that I had, I avoid where there's water bottles. I avoid it because if I go close to where there's water, I put my feet in, water gets in my shoes. Do you know why?

Because I don't they don't wanna spend a dime to do. I grew up here, and I had my own bed, and I sat, you know, like when I was in school, the So it's a whole different thing when you up your self like right now if I wanted- when I started my real estate investing company like I had friends and family to support me and around and you know R all that stuff like I didn't go to. another the country to start a K a whole a business that's doable and you did it R that point home guys if you're listening to this and you're thinking I don't So we have So., one, somebody you have to build a relationship That You know, this is what I Yeah, because of what I'm trying to achieve.

Yeah, so that's how it works. So when it comes to advertising online, you want to make sure that you have a relationship with people. The five or six B requires R to not have those relationships, whereas the five or six C requires you to have a relationship with people. Yeah, that's the big no-no that people do.

They get on Facebook and they say, I'm looking for private investors. And then worst of all, they say, I can guarantee you a 12% return. You know, I mean given guarantees people you don, you don't know are the big pitfalls that people a lot of times making most of time It's innocent. They don't realize that it's wrong, but you just got you have to be careful with that pre-existing relationships And only soliciting for people you already know is a way to stay a little bit safer in that So let's talk about multifamily why multifamily?

Why are you guys not buying a bunch of single-family homes? What do you like about multifamily? It's just about our dreams, right what we want to do So when we only open up XSITE Capital, we actually put in contract with a couple of single family properties duplex, but we say, you know, let's continue to educate and to educate ourselves. We actually started research, excuse me, I started leaving as well and a bunch of other asset class, but I came across an article by Grand Cadone actually, where He talked about investing in real estate, and then he talked about one door.

He talked about 16 doors. He talked about if you I have one person leave, you have 50% vacancies. All those things are not making sense to me. And he talked about management.

Because I read a lot of books and I try to keep myself in books, and they talk about leverage. How if you're not an expert, you can look for the expert person to take care of the responsibility for things you don't know how to do, and it's called leverage. he talked about leverage,. We're just bringing in the property management company to take care of the management piece of the property.

But if. s you want to manage your property, you want to make sure that the income that's coming in is enough to cover the expenses for the property manager that is on there and the expenses that go with the software and everything that they do. So once we studied that, we realized that multifamily gives a lot of advantages compared to single family because single family, if you have one door, if the tenant leaves you 100% they get. If you have two doors, 1% leave, you see how about 50% they get.

That's what I'm saying. So if you have multiple doors now, you'll be able to adjust for the vacancy. and he give a $16 minimum for you to be able to hire a property management company. And again, let me just go ahead and explain a little bit about how we acquire property.

They have good jobs, or jobs are moving in there. The economy and the market is good, and we have stable, low-crime, and good assets class as well. So we go to those markets and we look for good properties that are underperforming. What underperformance means is the property manager is not maximizing the potential of the deal or the property.

Sometimes they call them up shops. bSo we look at those properties, get them, and Then we try to optimize the property by fixing some of the units and do some work in the to be able to increase direct because when you increase the net, you have a potential of increasing the value R of the property. Totally. Can I ask you a question?

Let me stop you though, because I like to make sure I'm making this clear for the listeners. You said you go into emerging markets and you look for opportunities under performing assets. How do you look for them? Where do you look for them?

What's the process for actually locating properties? That's a really good question. So we use demographic data. So basically, for instance, if we go to realdata.com, if you go on there, or Yari Matrix, or Makasa Melecha, all these guys put digital statistics about markets that are doing good, that are having job growth, that are having decline in poverty, that companies or industries are moving to, that particular demographic of people are moving to.

So we follow those trends to be able to identify these markets, right? For instance, one of our markets is Shallow. Shallow right now, the number of people that migrate before this pandemic started, that moves to Shallow. I think it was 102 per day.

There was a lot of people moving out there, right? You have the banking hub, technology is going, and a lot of people are moving down there. And if people move there, what do they need? They need apartments.

They need somewhere to leave. So if we are able to provide places for them to leave that's conducive, clean, and they can leave by design, we can make money. So that's why we look for opportunities at places where they have stable job, the growth is there, poverty is low, crime rate is low. So we use all these different statistics to look at a particular deal or marketplace that What mistakes do you see that people make?

What mistakes did you make when you were starting a multifamily? What mistakes do you see other. People making that they could avoid. I think one big mistake is I think I can get to what is not educating yourself enough, three actually, one is not getting yourself enough to is not getting started.

And three is, you know, you're looking for a deal before you look for money. OK, right. So now get the started is what are you waiting for? You know, I know sometimes some people are scared, right?

But if you don't put yourself out there, you don't know what you don't know. Dude, you're on the right podcast, man. This is just start real estate. That's what it's all about.

This whole podcast is built on the concept of just start. Get out there and go, man. Absolutely. Absolutely.

I've never done commercial real estate before. I've never done rent out before. I just had to put myself out there and learn. So we invest a lot of money in our education.

Um, again, that's the second phase of education. If you want to do something. Instead of you trying to figure out everything yourself, you want to look for people that are already doing it. That way, a path could be shorter.

Yeah. to go into the learning curve but the path is going to be shorter. So we surround ourselves around mentors and we join different groups, we a ten different conferences that has to do with multifamily investing. And for over a year and now that we have our company, we've been able to surround ourselves with some great people in the industry.

Like right now we understand and we know who the top dogs are when it comes to multifamily investing. And we've been able to shake hands with them, and some of them have been to their podcast as well, and continue to build his relationship with it. And then the other is in our own journey, some people says you look for the deal and the money will come and there's another philosophy. This is you gather the money and then you look for the deal.

So from our own experience, you look for the money, look for the deal and the money is come is a myth. It's not right. Because it's like basically saying, when I have the assets, then I have to go start looking. looking for money.

But who knows that you're doing that? Who knows that you invest in the real estate. If they don't so, that you involve in real estate. So we were in obscurity and then we saw a deal, the 192 million dollar legislation that we invested in.

It was a. A to say, Hey, listen, let's partner up R to get out. I think this deal down. And we had a huge opportunity there.

But now we had this deal on the contract, let's start looking for money. Now, because we have timeline, we now became desperate. Now people can see desperate, like, oh, dude, why are you so, why so R like this I don't have $50 the $50,000 laying around, I don't have $100,000 laying around to just assets, cash flowing, performing very well, the potential for growth is $300 Start letting people know what you do. Start telling people that, hey, I'm interested in multifamily.

I'm interested in real estate. I'm interested in assisted living. I'm interested in commercial real estate. Any kind of a real estate that you're doing, any kind of business that you're doing, you got to.

open your mouth because once you're in obscurity, you know a way. I totally agree. I built my entire company off of that, concept. The first deal I used my own money, I told everybody who would listen to what I was doing, and I had funding for it.

I think it's a lot more money you're trying to raise. Sometimes in single family deals, especially depending on how competitive the environment is for the investor, if I get a single family home, and I'm in Michigan, so we're talking about. Maybe a $30,000 to $60,000 house. If I get that under contract, in that house will retail for 150.

$3 million. So yeah, man, it's good. And it's all like, this is what's great about getting on a podcast, interviewing people that I don't know as well, like your history and your experience is different. And you've just learned to play this game in a way that you and that's what people need to hear because there's people listening to this, not just all over the country, but all of the world.

So it's good to hear other perspectives on that. and I appreciate much. Thank you. So talk to me about how you build relationships with brokers to help you in your business.

What are you doing and how are you building those relationships? Well, it's pretty simple. Just call them. Yeah.

There are not these guys getting calls from every investor in the world and how do you So we had a mentorship program where we have a bunch of students and they were teaching everybody the same thing, you know, have the script, call the broker, this is what you say, this is how you say it. And these bookers get, this calls every single day. Oh yeah. So, I can pick up the phone and call anybody.

Like if the president, you give me the president's phone number right now and I have something to tell him, I'll pick up the phone and dial him and say, hey, Mr. President, my name is Tenny. So that is the kind of, that's my superpower. So my partner, this blue is mine one of these days.

So we went for a bootcamp. We have like 500 people in the room. My goal in that bootcamp was to network with people there, tell them what we do, and I had a flight to catch. So when we had a break, you know how you finished with presentation and then we have a little break where the people actually chatted.

I told my partner, I'll be right back. So what you saw me doing was I was moving from table to table. I say, hey, listen, my name is Tenny. I'm about to leave.

I would like to reach out to you at one point to tell you what we're doing. We're into real estate investing, with our family, blah, rah, blah. If you don't mind, can I have your card? I went, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, poo, get all of those cards.

And I say, hey, Leslie, here's the other card that I got and I'm leaving. And I left. He was like, oh, my God, how did this guy do this? That is not my superpower.

Going into a room and networking with everybody, not my favorite thing to do. But you know what, this is a people business. You really need to be able to talk to people. And you're right, having that power, like you said, a lot of people shy away from that.

A lot of people don't want to make that call to the broker because they're afraid, you know, or they're calling and they're just reading a script because they don't know how to talk to people. So knowing how to talk to people is important. I 100%. I just call them and say, Hey, listen, my name is Danny.

I'm with XSITE Capital. Two things you can want to listen to me or don't want to listen to me. You don't want to listen to me. That's fine.

I call the next person. Right. Again, these are things that I learned. I wasn't fun like that.

And he's big and a lot of kids are scared of him. And when the way in assembly line, the way his kids are gathering and then he has his own speech. And then I saw myself raising my hands off and asking the question. I can still remember that, right?

And I've done that a couple of times where we have like this big audience and people are scared of them. And then I raise my hands and I say, hey, let's have a question. So I knew that I have it in me. So when I went to my financial services business that helped me build it up my confidence.

And I realized people want to be touched. We're all humans, we interact with beings. So anyways, back to brokers. So I just called them and I talked to them.

And then, you know, we fly down to where they are. I see them. So recently what we did was, you know, we went to Houston recently using is one of the market we're looking at. So I just went online so one of our mentors showed us how we can get the top brokers in the city.

What we need to do exactly to narrow it down because in every city they have three to four top brokers that manages most of the assets in the city. And your goal, we didn't know this until December of last year. From January we opened up our company we didn't know this until December last year. They said you want to identify those four brokers Do you want to provide that if you visit the state, you want to buy them steak, and all you do is say, Hey, listen, Tenny, I could go to be in your city next week.

Do you have an opportunity for us to meet for in the course? Just shout out. I'd like to talk more about your city and what's going on in the real estate market. That's it.

Yeah. And if they say, yes, I'm available, fine, meet if they say they're not available. Well, maybe I can come again another time. Yeah.

I have a project that I'm looking at. They'll meet with you. So we went to Texas. This is Roker that I've been talking to online.

we've been charting. I just call me and listen, we're coming to the city. We'd like to meet with you. I went there.

Me and my partner went there. He took us on a drive, took us along. This dude in Texas, and he went to a particular neighborhood. He sold about 21 properties in that neighborhood.

So we we're just driving. He was like, I sold this property. I sold this in this year. That one was this year.

This one was that year. So he owns that whole neighborhood. He owns a whole bunch of owners of that property. Same thing with Charlotte.

That's one of our primary market right now since in the Durham-Trapola area. The guy in Charlotte, I just called him up and said, listen, I'm interested in properties in Charlotte. I'd like to meet you up when I get down there. And he said, fine.

We set up for dinner, went and had dinner, shared with him what I'm trying to do. He said, man, I like you. Yesterday, he sent me a deal a 17-year deal and 125-year deal, off-market deal that is directly with the seller. And again, if you build this relationship and you continue to build it, it's not one big thing.

Some people think that you just Yeah, it's a relationship thing, like you said, calling people, having that relationship because they do have opportunities. It's just, and you know what I have found, and maybe you can tell me if you find the same thing, you can establish that relationship, you can go and have dinner with this broker. But if you don't continue contact with that person and stay on their. Mind, they're not going to necessarily think of you when they get a deal, you know, you meet with them and then a year later, they have something good come across their desk, but they haven't heard from you in a year.

The chance that they're going to pick up the phone after a year of not having any contact with you and you're not showing any interest in them at all, it's probably pretty slim. So establishing that contract and maintaining that connection in a professional way, right? Not to bug them, but to keep that connection going. Yeah.

And what we continue to learn and build on that is just be a human ask about them, how they're doing, how the family is doing. Not every time you call, you want to look for a deal. My broker, he said he was sending me a deal and I begin to know about him, his family, his daughters and everything. So when we have a call now, we talk about what's going on with our families and everything before we start talking about business.

They just go right into business. So I encourage anybody that wants to do business, these are human beings, they're not robot. They want to real relationship and relationship doesn't start one day. It takes time not to cultivate a relationship.

Again, we're not perfect. We're still building it and one other way that we look for brokers. This is a method that me and my partner with coin is basically looking for broker through property management. Management company.

Now, this is the psychology behind that. Every property management company wants your business. They want to manage your property, right? Yep.

So the best way to way for you to approach them about brokers and say, Hey, listen, I'm looking to buy a property in your market. I'm looking for a deal between this and this, and I would like you to manage it when I find it. They're like, Oh, that's interesting. I would like to learn more about you.

He says, sure. Let's have a meeting. So we set up a meeting between me, my partner and we have a meeting and say, Hey, listen, we know. We're interested in working you guys.

We see that you guys are one of the great property management company in that market. And we're interested in that market. Meanwhile, if you know of any asset class that's this type that we're looking for, and you know that's in the market, can you send it out588 or can you introduce us to the broker that have it? I always ask them, do you have any relationship with the top brokers in the market?

They'll be like, oh yeah, this person, this person, this person, this person. You might not do an introduction. more properties to manage, you're looking for properties and you're giving them the, why wouldn't they point out the best brokers in the business, that's true, that's a good point. I like that, smart.

It's smart and it's all relationship space and it's not just like one time call, hey tell me if you got anything comes across your desk, buy, you know what I mean, it's like it's gotta be deeper than that, you gotta mean it. Yeah, absolutely. Cool man, well listen, what are you excited about right now, what are you working on now? going on with you?

Yeah, we just continue to build our brand, continue to build our company. The name of my company is XSITE Capital and Investment. XSITE is X as in Xylophone, S as in Samuel, and I as in Indigo. T as in Tango, E as in Edward.

Capital Investment LLC, that's the name of my company. What we're basically doing right now, we're just building our brand, making people know that we exist. And this is what we do. This is our philosophy.

Our philosophy is basically working with a group of people for growth, in our financial, in our wealth, and of course, personal as well, that's our philosophy. And presently, we just presented with an opportunity with one of our partners, we have a 49 when you get this kind of opportunity is kind of rare. So if anybody's interested in investing in any deal at this point, just reach out to us and then we can give you other details, for sure. Okay.

Perfect. And how can they go? How do they get a hold of you? Where do they go to get This isn't free stuff that you can get on our website.

We have 11 exciting reasons why investors invest in multifamily. So that's an ebook that we created for any kind of investor that want to just understand why a multifamily is a good asset. So if you go to our website, exactcapita.com, you can download that for free. And also, you can reach out to me directly, my cell phone number is 2025695072.

That is 2025695072. you want to give out your number? Absolutely, reach out to me, I'm a business man. All right man, you might get blown up but that's all right, that's cool.

I've never had anyone give out their personal cell phone number on this show before and I'm in a podcast, multi-family. If you want to be a part of our community, we share content and just share concepts, resources that can help you build your business as well.....ocally. And then in the DC area we have a meetup as well., again, try to create that synergy in the DC area.ally, and if you want to be a part of that, the meetup is called the exciting world of multifamily as well., so you can check it out..... Okay, and we'll put all you're driving or whatever, and you can't write all this down, just go to the show notes and we'll have links to all this stuff.

And we'll have his phone number on our website too. So if you didn't write that down, he gave it to us, we're going to give it out. So his phone number will be there. All right, man, Tenny., listen, this has been awesome.

It was cool, learning about your background. I always find it. Fascinating people like yourself who've come from another country and in a situation where you land here and you have nothing and you know no R1 and you build yourself into the person that you are, I think it's impressive and it takes away all the excuses from people who were kind of born right where you landed. They were born there, no excuse, right?

So, I think that that's amazing. It's an inspiring story and you're a cool guy. I really enjoyed this. If there's anything else you want to say, this is the time, otherwise man, I just think this was a lot of fun.

It give back. People are depending on-. Alright, that was a fun interview, guys. work ethic into Tenny and it all paid off.

I mean, he came here and he we you're gonna do it. It's not by sitting on the sidelines. It just sitting around thinking about it. You have to get out there and just start the secret formula for a almost anything you want to do?

You want to get in shape, just start. You want to get an education that you didn't get when you were younger, maybe, just start. You want to build a business, you want to be a rehabber, you want to be a wholesaler, do you want to buy multi-family like 10y, just start guys. You have that you have to get out there and just start that is the mantra of this show, and it will continue to be the mantra and the message that I pound into you every single episode.

Get out there and just start, and make it happen for yourself. All right guys, have a good rest of your day. Okay, you're still here, that's super cool. And because you're still here, I know you're serious about your business.

You listen to the whole episode, you're obviously trying to get more information to help you in your business. And because of that, I have a very, very special offer that I wanna share with you. for a very short period of time, there is a video series. It's actually a vault of videos.

that have been created over the last six to eight months by me, by some friends of mine who are really crushing it in real estate investing. Wholesalers and flippers who know they're doing high volume, they really have this thing dialed in. We put together some videos and I wanna share them with you now. Normally these videos sell for like 4,600 bucks to get all of them.

Right now they're on sale for $14.97 and I'm telling you as I'm recording this, I have no idea when that special is gonna be up, we're kind of extending it a little bit right now, we announced it a little bit ago, we're extending it because of the interest in it, but I don't know when it's gonna be back to its normal price, I really don't. But in this video vault, there is everything you need to know to run your business from A to Z, everything from finding motivated sellers, finding buyers who are dying to buy properties from you, How to find and manage contractors. What kind of paperwork should you have in place? What kind of contracts do you need to work with these guys?

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And like I said, normally this is, it a little bit expensive. It's R1ly around $4 but right now it's 1497. And like I said, as I record this R I don't know when that price is gonna go up, I really don't. So go there and at least check it out.

You owe R to yourself to do that. Go check out these videos and here's how you do it. you go to juststartrealestate.com forward slash vault.

Again, that's juststartrealestate.com forward slash vault. And that will take you there. And you can see all the videos that are in there. I mean, I'm scrolling through them- Right now, marketing strategies.

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This is a time to take advantage of it guys. The price will go back up. I promise you that the price will go back up, but for now it's super inexpensive. So at the very least go and look, go see what videos are in this vault.

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All right. See you guys.

Because as we grow as a person, our business grows and since we started this business, we have achieved tremendous amount of personal growth. This is not just about making money. It's about growing as a person and that is one of the fundamental things we love about the multi-family business.

It's time for the Creative Real Estate Podcast, your source for out of the box real estate Investing Strategies, brought to you by RealBlueSpruce.com. Welcome back to the Creative Real Estate Podcast. I'm your host, Adam A. Adams.

Leslie, let me tell you a little bit about him. He and his partner, Tenny, recently invested, well back in 2017, they invested in a 192 units, as LPs, as limited partners. So they put money into that. So now they own a little piece of 192 units, which is amazing.

They're on track to score 500 units in 2020. So in 2020, their goal is 500 units, and I think they're going to get there. He is a listener of the show. He really appreciated one of our episodes, episode 242, and if you haven't heard that episode yet, you got to, because I brought the force on episode 242, and talked all about getting into different markets and what to look for in those markets.

And let's talk a little bit about Leslie, he's originally from Cameroon, Central Africa. And some 20 years ago, he came into the US to pursue the American dream. That's how he got started and he wanted to do multifamily. So he did that first LP deal and I'm excited to have him on the show.

So Leslie, one of the things that I'm going to have you do since you are coming into your first GP deals upcoming, I want you to think of one or two questions to ask me on this podcast. Anything at all, anything about meetups, anything about a podcast, anything about due diligence, whatever you want and you'll have a free coaching session. one or two questions and anyone who's listening who also wants to get into their first GP deal is going to get that value as well. So make sure that you can think of one or two questions to ask me in the middle of the episode today.

But I'm going to start asking you some questions. So Mr. Leslie, you're about to do your first GP. Where's it going to be?

You listen to episode. 242 with Nell Bawa. You know how important it is to have a solid market. So what markets are you looking at?

So we're currently looking at the rally during Chapel Hill markets, looking at Charlotte, North Carolina as well. My partner and I have done a heavy research in that market to build our teams down in that market. So that's going to be where we're going to R looking to do our first GP deal. Awesome.

Awesome. went buy there, haven't been purchasing there is because the flight is going to take too long. So we want it to be a little closer. So I'm not questioning you, I'm not saying, oh, what's, what is it about that market?

I know it's amazing, but I want to know what about those markets attracted you to select that versus, you know, the second best market, which was you let me know. All right. So primarily for the North Carolina markets, one of the reasons is proximity because who were looking for a market where we could be down there in a single flight or could drive down there. The other reason is some familiarity.

I went to school down in Greensboro, North Carolina, about 10 years ago. So I still go back down there to visit every now and then. I see some of the growth that's happening. I see the changes happening over there.

to that to the raw data using the same system that Neil Bauer thought that I heard for the first time on your podcast. By the way, I just wanted to say thank you for all the value you guys provide to this space for people like yourself and Neil Bauer. We've gained a lot of useful insights from listening to you guys. So we use that same system and use a lot of the systems thought by Neil to zero down to these markets and see all the growth that's happening in this market, the job growth, the population growth, and the projected rent growth over the years coming.

My partner and I do a lot of reading and research. One of the books I recently read was the Big Shifts Ahead, which talks about the demographic changes that are coming to the US in the next few years. And from that book, we learned about the huge southern migration that is happening with the population moving south. And those markets are some of the areas that are going to benefit a huge seal from this migration.

So we look to be in this market Do you have a full-time job or are you full-time doing real estate right now? Yes, I have a full-time job. I'm a nurse and a status. Okay.

All right. So, and so how many hours a week is that for you? I've reached 36 to 40 hours a week. Okay.

But with a full-time, you know, 40-hour work week, how are you and Tenny able to get into this multifamily business? Is it hard? Are you spread thin? Is it stressful?

Or is it something that's fairly easy? For me, my perspective might be different from a lot of other people's perspective. For me, it's something that I'm passionate about so it's not as difficult. When you find something that you're truly passionate about and enjoy doing, you will find the time to do it.

So for me, it doesn't seem as work. I find time in the middle of a break at work, I'm listening to podcasts, I'm reading books. Whenever time I have that, it's free. Like today, I have a day off and I'm talking to you on the podcast and after this, we sit down and we go over everything that we need to be done and work on our business.

So it's easy to find time when you're passionate about something. So we make time however way we can, early in the morning, late at night, whatever needs to get done. And to me, it doesn't feel like hard work because I really enjoy doing it. Awesome.

I know you've taken a couple of coaching programs you've learned from some people that are doing really well in the business. How important is it to somebody who's just getting started to follow that same path? I guess what I'm asking, in another way, is if somebody's listening And they have heard that some of these coaching programs can cost 5,000, 15,000, 25000, 40,000, 60,000, if they're hearing all of this, and they're like, you know, they might say to themselves something like, well, I don't want to spend my last whatever amount of dollars, like learning from somebody. Because wouldn't it be better for me to just kind of learn on my own and spend the money if I lose money, that'll be a good education or whatever, like, what would you say to somebody who's a few months or a couple of years behind where you are right now?

Should they be hiring a coach or not? The question I'm going to ask that person is how much are you willing to invest in yourself? If you value yourself highly, you're going to be willing to invest in yourself highly, whatever it takes for you to get wherever you want to get, and it depends on how much you need. I would definitely recommend having a coach, having, somebody that holds you accountable, somebody that has been in the business before that you could learn from and get a few things from.

moves you ways ahead in different aspects and being part of a coaching program also helps you being part of a bigger network. So but our philosophy is we invest in ourselves, we eat business, do whatever it needs to take to help us grow because as we grow as a person our business grows and since we started this business we have achieved tremendous amount of personal growth. This is not just about making money. It's about growing as a person and that is one of the fundamental things we love about the multi-family business.

One thing that I've noticed about, most high level a CEO's and just the top level executives in bigger companies, is the real thing that makes them stand apart from many of the employees is that they spend more in personal development. They have morning routines with exercise. They read and they invest in business coaches and personal coaches as well. So it makes sense that within entrepreneurs, the ones that are going to be the most successful are the ones that are really investing in their business, investing in their selves, investing in their personal growth.

And I love this quote that I got from you. If you value yourself highly, you're going to invest in yourself highly. I love that. I'm going to remember that forever and I'm going to always tell everybody, this is a quote from the famous Leslie Awasom.

If you value yourself highly, you're going to invest in yourself highly. So I have tons of questions for you. and I wanted to find out what was like your very first venture into anything real estate. I know for sure your first venture into multifamily real estate besides the education with the two companies we discussed in the pre-interview.

With the multifamily, I know your first real investment into it was that passive investment with 192 units. But I wanted to find out, were you investing in real estate prior to this 192 or was your first deal just, you went straight to 192 units? Actually, my first active deal was in 2017. I bought a single family with myBother, Kondo, I did the BRR model.

After spending some time reading one of Robert Kiyosaki's book that pushed me into real estate. the experience I had doing those two, it was enough to tell me this is where I need to be, this is what I need to be doing. So we did that model, it worked really well, and so I was looking to expand and I go further. That's when I met my partner.

We read a great book and that just sparked that interest in multi-family. We're looking at what areas to get into in the real estate business, came across mortar family and it met like everything that we're looking for the business that want to be invested in the long term. So we dove in dip and here we are today. I love that.

I would agree. I've been a part of self-storage. I've been a part of mobile homes. I've been a part of all sorts of things.

Land, tax deeds, tax liens. My experience from 2005, I've seen it all, I've tried it all, I've experienced most of it myself personally and invested in almost every asset class available and multifamily is the one that checks all the boxes. When you read that book, Big Shifts Ahead, were you thinking about the different asset classes available, and which one would be more appropriate for what the book was saying might happen in the upcoming future? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

I actually sent a page to my partner and said, maybe in the future we need to be looking at some kind of housing for those for the seniors because of the baby boomer generation that is a lot of them are getting into that age where they're downsizing according to what is written in the books and we have met a few investors that are focused in that space as well and also it's the data supports that business model and for someone I have come coming from the healthcare background too that helps you know from what I'm seeing on my nine to five on a reading that book. Okay I heard you say that the data supports multifamily being a great place to be in and some of us are you personally more on the data side or on the intuition side? I'm data or data analytics, data. Okay, perfect.

Okay, well then, that makes this next question really work well for me is for somebody who's spends a lot of time making sure that the data makes sense first and foremost before they jump into something a while others are just jumping into it because it feels right or they're hoping that it'll work out. It sounds like you're more on the side of, before I go there, I'm going to make absolute certain that I'm going to do the right thing, is that true? Correct. Okay, so on top of reading big shifts ahead, listening to Episode 242 of the Creative Real Estate Podcast with Neil Bawa, what else have you and your partner done, Tenny, you and your partner, Tenny, done, to make sure that the data is there for getting into multifamily investments in this year.

And the reason I say that is because it's polarized. There's some people that are saying that it's a bad time to get into real estate. it's overinflated, like multifamilies has low cap rates compared to before, but you in your research, you've seen the opposite. You've seen what a lot of other people have seen, which is that the population's growing, et cetera.

So if you could just give us the specifics on the data that makes you really excited about purchasing 500 units in 2020? So, it goes down to the same fundamentals. Yes, the cap rates are compressed all over the U.S. and ideally, based on the historical data, it might not be the best of times to get it if you don't have the experience and don't know what you're doing.

Part of our strategy is aligning with experienced groups as we walk forward and that is why we focus on this top markets like the markets that have the huge numbers that can support the changes that are coming in the future. Got it. I love it. Thank you.

Thank you so much. All right. I have another big question.

What is your big why? What's your driving force behind real estate or multifamily? Like why are you even doing this? You're a nurse already.

Yes. You're doing just fine. So what's your- why behind buying 192 R When I started working as a nurse, It's a very rewarding job and a high paying job. a when realized that I come from a community where [inaudible] thought-leadership [inaudible] would be important when raising private capital.

can, is that true? Absolutely. Okay. With that said, I R that you're growing your meetup.

Are there any other parts of thought leadership that Yes, we have thought about several thought leadership on space because a lot of them don't even know that they r have access to this kind of investment. So we're looking to create like videos, kind of like YouTube videos to share as education to anybody interested in learning more. Okay. One thing that I teach my coaching clients, I teach people how to attract capital is that they ought to have this target market, this perfect ideal avatar, the ideal investor, someone in their mind that every time they create content they create it for him or her.

Every time that they create a Facebook post, they're thinking of him or her every time they have a meet up presentation, they're thinking like does this title of my meet up presentation, is it going to resonate with him or her, my ideal avatar? I want to find out, Leslie, do you and Tenny have an avatar? Do you have like this ideal person in mind that's going to be your perfect passive investor? work on it actually today and come up with a huge one because we've been hitting our targets to anybody that is really interested in investing passively.

So. Thank you so much for that. At this point, we don't have one, but I'm sure we're probably going to come up with one by the end of the day. So that's some huge value.

You just give out the item. Thank you. Thank you. I would say you're making me smile so big now.

Well, Well, I would say one thing that a lot of the folks that are starting a podcast or starting a meetup these days, you know, they are doing it, like ready fire aim. I just got to take massive action. I just have to have a podcast, right? But they'll create a podcast, but R they won't be thinking about their avatar.

They won't be thinking, does this serve my perfect investor? Does this help them come closer to me or not? And so what I've noticed with so many people when they're saying like this market is saturated with podcasts, they aren't specifically looking at those podcasts. Most of those podcasts have zero traction.

They have no conversion. They're not helping the people doing it. They're kind of like wasting their time with that podcast because not because it's oversaturated. That's an excuse, not a truth.

Not because it's over-saturated, but because they weren't thinking of the end beginning with the end in mind, right? They didn't start that podcast thinking specifically, what is this going to do for my business? What is this going to do for my investor? How's this going to help them?

And they're just throwing things out there, noodles on the wall, seeing if they stick, just hoping that a might stick. And oftentimes, they're not because they didn't spend the time ahead of time understanding that. So, that is a very important thing for anyone listening. If you're going to start a meetup, if you're going to start a blog or whatever, don't just do ready fire aim like you continue to hear, just take massive action.

I would prefer for you, just like I teach my clients, make sure that you spend the time and effort to understand who it is you're helping and how you're helping them so that you can convert them into paying clients, RKA passive investors, partners in your multifamily deals. So we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, Leslie is going to ask me one or two questions that are burning on his mind. And then we'll end with the final five.

We'll be right back. Stop paying too much in taxes. You're leaving money on the table, 6-10% of what you paid for the property available right now in extra cash flow. Let CSSI prepare a no-cost estimate, leveraging the latest 2017 IRS tax changes with engineering based cost segregation.

Then review the estimate with your tax professional and decide if you want this money. The audit proof benefit is for new and existing commercial properties and residential rentals. So scroll down to the show notes and look for or the best meetup in the whole world. What's the one tip that you can say that really transcended everything?

There is a lot of tips for meetup. I'm writing a book right now on meetup. I'm putting out a course on meetup and it's like there's several pillars. So the book's probably gonna be called the three pillars.

The three pillars are basically who is your audience and then what are you doing with them capitalizing with them, those are the three main pillars, but if I had to try to boil it down to something, I would say that it boils down to niche or niche. Some people say either way, niche or niche. The best way to niche is to A, do recon. Before you ever start a meetup or a podcast or anything, you got to do your recon.

So what that means to me is that you go out and you see what's available. What are the meetups R called? What time of the day. Do they, meet what day of the week do they meet?

What week of the month do they meet? How s many days per week? How many days per month? How many days per year do they meet?

Does it cost $200 a year for membership? Does it cost $20 a day to be there? $10 a day to be there? Is it just a donation?

If you would like to, if you wouldn't, is it completely free? Or are they charging $3,000 per meeting or per year? Once I've done recon, that helps me to niche better because I know what's available. and all I want you to do is be different.

So if all of them are around multif I family. Maybe an idea is to have something that's not multifamily. If all of them are about fix and flipping, maybe and good ideas to have something about wholesaling. If they're all about real estate and none of them are just about the overarching, generic investing, then maybe you select the thing that is missing in the market.

So I've read this book called, Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson. And he said this thing that's always stuck with me and it's exactly what. I've already been doing, but I never thought about it in the words that he uses in that book. He says, you have to create a niche, not pick a niche.

If you pick a niche, that's something that's already there and it's this red ocean, blue ocean thing. So if you just go and pick a niche that's already there, then you're just going to be fighting with people. But if you create your new niche, the thing that has never happened before, then you're able to start having people on your side. So first start by doing the real recon that you can and then start, r thinking about doing things that are out of the box, not ordinary.

If everybody's charging money, maybe you're free. If everybody's free, maybe you have to charge money. And then the second part of, after you've really selected the niche, it's important that you use that to your advantage. And so I actually read another book recently that was talking about this, about spinning.

The word is to spin, how to spin things. And that means that most things, there's always pros and cons to everything. Should I get into multifamily. Well, let's see, there's all these pros and there's also cons.

Are big windows or little windows better? Well, there's pros to little windows and cons to little windows. There's pros and cons, maybe you can't climb out of it, maybe you're heating and colding. Cold is different.

So whatever it is, there is, even if you're charging more money than everyone else, spin it into a pro and use that to establish yourself as different. So what I mean is with your own people that are attending your event or listening to your podcast, it doesn't matter, you want to say, this is the only podcast or this is the only meetupup that charges $3,000 a year. If you want to go to those $200 per year, that's cool. A lot of people can easily afford $200 per year.

And that's why you get so many different people in there. So many of them don't come back. You're never going to be able to see the same people. It's not regulars, but when you pay 3,000 for a year, it's going to be just regulars.

It's going to be people that are serious. Do you want to go with a bunch of randos or random people or do you want serious, wealthy people? and so that's a way to just distinguish it and again, you could if it was the opposite direction you could still distinguish it $3,000 are you kidding me $200 are you kidding me there is no reason that you have to pay for education. We believe that education boot should be free.

We believe that everybody should be included and that's why we do blank. So R-Wow. However you spin it, if you're the only lunch meeting, you got to talk about why lunch is so important. If you're the only Saturday meeting, you got to talk about why Saturday is so important.

If you're the only breakfast club, you got to talk about how serious you got to be to wake up this early and be here on this day. So, spinning, so it's all about niche. When you are starting your own meetup, if I could just give you the number one thing, it would be to niche down and to make everything revolve around niching. Okay, that was very powerful, Adam.

Thank you so much for all that value. My next question really is, you give a lot of value out to the world every day when you listen to you on your podcast and the different platforms I will listen to you on. How can we give back value to you? How can Leslie give back value or how can the listener give back value?

How can Leslie and Tenny keep back value to you? that from my listeners. Today, I was on another family like because of the podcast, just like when something that I say has an effect on you, I guess the best thing that you could do to really add value to me is just to make a testim. Reach out to me on Facebook, reach out to me on an email and just let me know that I've impacted you because I get a lot of value out and encouragement and fire just from knowing that what I do to stop.

But sometimes we feel like maybe we're not making an impact. We want to make an impact. So the answer to your question, if I'm making an impact on you, leave a 5 star rating and review on the show, email me, give me a testimonial video that I could use at an event. Those types of things really show me that I'm doing what I was put on this earth to do.

So that's how I think you could. Give back. Well, we greatly appreciate you. And we definitely going to be reaching out to you and supporting him in however way we can.

And again, thank you for all you do and really, really I appreciate you. Mr. Leslie. Yes.

It's time for the final five. All right. So the first question for you is what's the most creative deal you've ever done? The most creative deal I've done, I have to say, is probably the first purchase that I did in real estate.

I had read all these realistic books and went out and applied it. It was an estate sale and I had to negotiate all the way down and did some sell-off financing on the deal to get the deal closed. I love that. And so what I want to bring out is [inaudible] five years ago.

[inaudible] A-W-A-S- is this website. It's the letter notes. I mean, so, if you're listening now, just scroll down, you got it. Leslie, it was a super pleasure to have you and to see your journey, where you've come, where you're going.

I'm excited, I'm, excited. See you as we progress. Please accept an invitation to coming on the podcast 2021 and just talking about like how you got the 500 units. Absolutely.

I would love to come back and talk to you more. And I actually hope to see, you know, Colorado for the conference as well. Awesome.