In this episode

Out-of-State Real Estate Investing with Soli Cayetano

In this episode, Soli Cayetano, a 26-year-old investor, shares how she built a portfolio of 40+ units in just 3 years. Soli reveals strategies for:

• 🏡 Building a profitable out-of-state real estate portfolio
• 📱 Leveraging social media to grow your real estate business
• 💰 Raising private capital for real estate investments
• 🏢 Scaling from single-family to multifamily and boutique hotels
• 🤝 Creating a thriving real estate investing community

Soli also shares how she navigated the challenges of long-distance investing, built a strong team, and used Instagram to raise millions in private capital. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced investor, this episode offers valuable insights for expanding your real estate empire beyond your local market.

You’ll also learn:

• 📍 Market selection tips
• 🏗️ Team building strategies
• 💡 Overcoming the fears of investing in unseen properties

Discover why out-of-state investing could be the key to achieving financial freedom through real estate.

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Chapters:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 01:27 – Soli’s Real Estate Journey
• 02:51 – Overcoming Challenges and Scaling Fast
• 04:44 – Building a Personal Brand on Instagram
• 06:28 – Community and Networking
• 10:39 – Raising Private Money
• 16:28 – Creating a Coaching Program & Community
• 20:44 – Importance of Local Investors
• 21:39 – Expanding Markets and Networking
• 23:51 – Raising Private Money
• 26:52 – Partnerships
• 31:47 – Building Relationships
• 33:53 – Future Plans

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Reach out to Soli:

• 📸 Instagram: @lattes.and.leases
• 🌐 Community: Hello Rentals

Introduction
0:00
25 properties in the first year I bought about 20 25 units my first year of investing it was very fast maybe a
0:06
little bit crazy I was 22 and I couldn’t invest locally where I live the properties around me are like a million
0:11
dollars plus for just a tiny little rental as investing rental properties are the best place to start a lot of
0:16
people will buy one deal in one year and be like I’m tapped out there is another way to grow your money that is backed by
0:22
real estate and a little bit less volatile than the stock market I ended up rising over welcome to the hybrid
0:28
real estate professional podcast the show where we help you build your own portfolio of cash flowing rental properties that you can manage in just
0:35
20 minutes per day from anywhere in the world I am your host Aon Amin my wife and I built a portfolio of eight cash
0:40
flowing rental properties across three states in 3 years all while working full-time and starting a family of three
0:46
young kids today I have a very special guest Miss so katano a woman of many talents soie who runs the popular lattes
0:53
and Le’s brand on Instagram has built an impressive portfolio of real estate including 40 plus rental properties the
0:59
majority of which are out of state soy also founded hello rentals an online community and coaching program for
1:04
investors looking to build their own portfolios her ability to build a strong Network and versatile toolkit of real
1:09
estate investing skills has inspired hundreds of new investors to get off the sidelines and start their own real
1:15
estate portfolios all right let’s get into [Music]
1:21
it so I’ve been a longtime admirer and follow of yours and also a happy member of your community but for those who
Soli’s Real Estate Journey
1:28
don’t know you can you uh introduce yourself to my audience here in your own words yeah know it’s great having you in the community it’s been so much fun and
1:34
hearing more of your story as well I’m an investor out of I guess depends where I’m at at the moment but Palm Springs in
1:41
the Bay Area and I had my start with out ofate real estate investing in more affordable areas like um Cincinnati Ohio
1:48
Augusta Georgia I was pretty young when I started so I was 22 and I couldn’t invest locally where I live so I jumped
1:56
into much more affordable areas and built my port folio through doing um
2:01
rental properties and burs and flips and eventually got into some bigger deals too so my latest deal is a boutique
2:09
hotel in Palm Springs I mentioned earlier that I was closing on a short-term rental here too and so while
2:14
I primarily teach out ofate investing it’s funny because I’m now getting into like instate investing but I truly do
2:21
believe that out ofate investing affordable rental properties are the best place to start no I love it one of
2:28
the things I appreciate the most about your story is that you’ve allowed yourself to evolve over time right you found the right entry point and then
2:34
you’ve let your own Vision kind of expand and now you’re taking down boutique hotel and you started the community which you’re passionate about
2:40
growing and you have all these kind of different areas of your life that you’ve watered and and seen grow in these
2:46
different ways but before we talk about the current state it’ be fun to talk a little more about the origin right yeah
Overcoming Challenges and Scaling Fast
2:51
so it was 2020 when I got started investing I was a senior in college and
2:57
it was the pandemic so my like spring semester at senior year when everyone was like trying to party were like
3:05
forced into shelter in place and I was going into at the time I was working at
3:10
a big commercial real estate firm and I had been working there for the last about three years I was thinking about
3:16
going full well I was going full-time and it was a commission-based job leasing office space and so as you can
3:21
imagine leasing office space was very difficult during the pandemic because nobody wanted office Spates and so I was
3:28
trying to figure out how could I set myself up to pay for my rent and
3:33
buy my groceries when there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t be making money in the next however many
3:40
months or years that the pandemic lasted I read some books I talked to some friends and they all talked about lying
3:46
properties out of state the properties around me are like a million dollars plus for just a tiny little rental property and the numbers just don’t work
3:54
like they just don’t cash flow and so talking to other people they’re like oh we bought this property in Florida or
4:00
bought this property in Ohio and I was like that’s crazy that’s really like you’ve never seen them before and
4:05
they’re like no we’ve never seen them before I was like how do you know they exist and all the questions that like
4:10
people ask me today about investing at a state seemed like super Out Of Reach very difficult scary super risky and I
4:18
felt the exact same way when I was learning how to invest too but because I had a couple friends who had done it I
4:24
just kind of followed in their footsteps read some books and just did it so I bought my first rental property and and
4:30
it was like July of 2020 really fast had no idea what I was doing or getting into
4:35
but I fell in love with the process and sharing the process on Instagram with my new friends and my new community and I
4:41
ended up scaring very fast after that yeah so you hit on one other thing right which is Instagram right and building a
Building a Personal Brand on Instagram
4:48
personal brand and using that to fuel your network so I think it makes sense
4:53
like you conquered a lot of that initial anxiety around hey this is out of state I can’t see it I can’t touch it how do I
4:59
know it’s real how do I know it’s going to operate a lot of that initial anxiety like you said that most out ofate investors encounter once you conquered
5:06
that hurdle it sounds like you really latched on and it resonated with you and you saw how powerful it could be so you
5:11
decided to lean in and even move towards fulltime is that right yeah I was about 15 months after I started investing that
5:17
I went full-time into investing but I scaled very fast so I bought about 20 25
5:23
units my first year of investing and it was really I I think like it was very fast maybe a little bit crazy I was
5:30
young didn’t really know what I was getting into but I feel like because of
5:35
Instagram you have to remember like this is during the pandemic like Prime pandemic nobody was going out like we
5:40
were just on the internet scrolling on Instagram scrolling on Tik Tok and because I had kind of curated my feed to
5:47
just be Real Estate Investors my whole life changed I went from going to college classes and going into an office
5:54
where I was working to just like 24/7 being inundated by investors delayed ground ification like people patting me
6:01
on the back for buying rental properties my whole friend group changed um because I made friends on Instagram with other
6:07
Real Estate Investors who kind of were prioritizing different things in life and so that was really key for me I
6:12
think a lot of people have struggle with that because their friends don’t invest in real estate and and it’s and now
6:18
there’s not some like big Global event that pushes you out of your friend group but that was like a really key thing for
6:24
me was being surrounded by other people who were doing it so how did you find that group Community or or start to
Community and Networking
6:31
build the network when you didn’t have all the units yet you didn’t have the personal brand what was what were some
6:36
of the early keys to building relationships actually all my posts are still live like if you scroll back 700
6:42
and something posts like you’d find my very early post they weren’t very good but I really came at it like I am super
6:49
new I don’t really know what I’m doing but I can at least document what I’m doing and maybe it will be helpful for
6:56
somebody and so I used it as a diary for myself and I’m really glad I did that cuz now I can go back and see like where
7:02
I came from and people have been following me since the very very beginning and I think that two things
7:08
came from it there were other people who were starting at the same time as me who now like were best friends we all have
7:13
we’re all full-time Real Estate Investors like we all go travel around the world together but they latched on to my story and I latched on to theirs
7:20
because we were doing the same thing and just trying to start and then there were a lot of people who became pseudo
7:26
mentors because they were watching ing what I was doing and they were very they
7:32
could see some of themselves in me and they were like oh I remember when I was doing that and I think it’s actually
7:37
very rare for people to actually take action and then do what they say that they’re going to do and so I think as
7:43
people saw me putting in offer as and analizing Deals and posting it on my story they’re like oh this girl like
7:49
actually serious like she actually wants to do something and then I bought my first property and and I didn’t know how
7:54
to do anything but because I had taken action and shown that I was the type to take action they wanted to pour into me
8:00
and help me get to the next level yeah I love that one other thing I want to highlight from what you said is that you
8:06
grew together with people who started around the same time as you I think sometimes when people are new and they’re getting into hey how do I
8:13
Network how do I build a personal brand they’re like how can I go meet and become Brandon Turner’s best friend
8:18
Brandon Turner started 12 years ago 14 years ago whatever it is and he worked his way up to ranks with other groups of
8:25
peers and maybe it’s the wrong question versus finding who are the people that are there progress at or around the same
8:30
stage as you or maybe one or two steps ahead and how do you get in those circles and grow together instead of
8:36
trying to cut all the way to the top of the line so I think that’s a really good highlight and he probably gets like thousands of messages per day where the
8:43
people I was talking to and I honestly had like hundreds and hundreds of genuine conversations on Instagram where
8:50
it was like what are you doing this is what I’m doing do you want to talk on the phone want to get on a zoom call and I had like hundreds maybe thousands of
8:56
damn conversations with people very early on which which helped me create those relationships I think it’s tough
9:03
when people come into social media wanting to just become an influencer but they don’t really like the process of
9:09
growing they approach it as they want the end results of the money and the deals and the connections but they don’t
9:15
want to go through the process of building relationships like the good oldfashioned way so I would I did it
9:20
because I truly loved it and it it was it gives what you put into it too yeah
9:26
and I’m sure it’s a ton of work right especially as you scale and you start to have tens of thousand or in your case you have almost 150,000 followers just
9:32
the volume alone of communication yeah can be overwhelming I’m sure it’s hard to filter and and
9:39
even if you’re interested in talking to somebody it’s like how much bandwidth do you have to answer yet another DM after
9:45
a full day of doing it and all that so I’m sure that that’s an interesting um Dynamic to balance as well but um so you
9:52
mentioned that you what did you say 25 properties in the first year yeah something like that and I people when
9:58
they hear that like w you either had a trust find or an inheritance or like you’re just Rich independently and I
10:06
spent actually all of my money on my first property and so I remember thinking I remember sitting in like a
10:11
very early goal session and thinking I want to buy multiple properties in my first couple years but then I was like
10:17
but shoot I used up all my money on one property and I think that’s actually a a
10:23
problem that a lot of people run into and I coach a lot of people and that’s actually what they always come to saying
10:29
I can’t even buy my first one because how am I going to buy my second one and I’m like you don’t worry about that you just buy your first one and we’ll figure
10:35
it out because what people don’t realizes there’s a million ways to fund deals after you get your first one and kind of builds that credibility I ended
Raising Private Money
10:42
up learning how to leverage private money hard money Partnerships a whole lot of different things in order to buy
10:48
those 25 units but I think if I had let that overwhelm of where am I going to get money round for that first deal I I
10:55
may not have ever started no it’s a great point and I think the headline of 25 units is only part of the story and I
11:02
think it’s more yeah the means to get there how resourceful you were it’s important to tell that story too of
11:07
course if you had $10 million in in liquid funds available then you could probably go buy 25 houses without having
11:14
to use all those extra tools but the fact that you’re learning along the way and I think one of the skills that I’ve seen you use most effectively is Raising
11:21
private money and that’s something that I know is doesn’t come that easily to people the skill of sales this the skill
11:29
putting yourself out there and presenting an opportunity even the mindset around taking money from other
11:34
people and putting it into an opportunity I think there’s a lot of mental barriers that people hit myself included around you know how you feel
11:42
about kind of being beholden to investors as well everything you says I will validate it because I also teach
11:47
people how to raise money and there’s so many like mind it’s a lot of mindset work that you have to go through to be
11:54
able to carry I don’t want to say the burden but maybe the responsibility of other people’s money but I think that’s
11:59
a really good thing because it helps you make better Investments I think with your own money my own money I’m a little
12:05
bit more risky with it because if I lose it it’s my money but if it’s someone else’s money I’m very careful about the
12:12
deals I buy and I think it’s actually made me a better investor so my first private lender was my mom and her
12:18
partner and she was watching me on Instagram and granted I don’t come from a money family with money so I would
12:24
never ask my mom for money and i’ never even thought she had money to invest but she was watching me on Instagram she
12:30
flew out and saw my first rental property and then she messaged me like a couple months later she texted me and
12:35
was like Hey if you ever have something to invest in like I’d be interested in talking and so that was my introduction
12:40
like she’s not in the investment world like she was a professional violinist and so it’s wasn’t her world wasn’t my
12:45
world and so I went down the rabbit hole of reading books and watching YouTube videos and I’m like well what does it
12:51
mean to have someone invest inside your deal with you and I figured it out just by watching YouTube videos and a reading
12:57
and she invested in my second deal which was a triplex in Cincinnati and so after
13:03
that though I was like I wasn’t really a professional private money raiser I was just like that was fun like I figured out how to buy one more deal that’s
13:09
great and but I still didn’t feel like I was experienced enough to raise it from strangers I didn’t really I wasn’t
13:15
familiar with that concept and so I ended up using like a a combination of partnership and and hard money to fund a
13:22
variety of flips that I did the next six months and people were wondering like how are you continuing to scale that was
13:29
like the number one question that people ask me on Instagram because a lot of people will buy one deal in one year and be like I’m tapped out I can’t do it and
13:36
at this point I was maybe like nine deals in and they’re like well this is insane like you’re 28 at a time three
13:42
years old and you’re just like buying them crazy amount of deals how are you doing it and so I started to tell the
13:47
story of how I bought my second property and how that was using private money and then I think people just became like
13:53
very curious about that world it’s not and I talked to a a private money lender this morning and he’s he works in Tech
14:01
and he was saying that like up until recently he had no idea that this world
14:06
existed he just thought that the world was stocks bonds your 401k and that’s
14:11
really the only way to invest and then recently he was talking to one of our mutual friends and he realized that he
14:16
could earn a lot more money on his money by investing through private lending in real estate and so because of that I
14:23
think most of the world doesn’t know that this is an alternative way to invest it started to be almost like an
14:29
education to my audience of there is another way to grow your money that is backed by real estate and a little bit
14:36
less volatile than the stock market and then people started like pouring in and asking me so can I invest with you and
14:43
it was very weird to me because I was like oh I didn’t intend for this to be like a private money raise or anything I
14:50
just wanted to educate my audience on like how I did it and because of all of the inbound requests I’ve been sharing
14:56
my story from at this point maybe like a year and kind of sharing all of the deals I was doing and building my online
15:02
resume that to me my first like stranger private money lenders actually came inbound through Instagram DMS and I was
15:10
like whoa this is crazy I ended up raising quite a bit of money for over
15:16
the last three and a half years you probably raised like I don’t know over $10 million the only friends and family
15:21
really has been that like my mom from that second deal and everybody the rest of the people have all been through like
15:27
Instagram connections that’s amazing when you describe your strategy of how you tell your story and
15:32
how you put yourself out there the phrase that keeps coming to mind is attraction rather than promotion right
15:37
you’re not like out there trying to shove something down people’s throats you’re telling a story and you’re letting the people that are that
15:43
gravitate towards that reach out to you organically and it’s from a place of authenticity right you’re not trying to
15:49
angle them or manipulate them you’re just saying hey this is what I’m out there doing this is the mission I’m on
15:54
here’s some of the opportunities that I’ve learned about just by educating myself on how to continue to grow as an invest
15:59
and here’s what that could look like and then you I think another theme that I’ve Just Seen throughout your journey right
16:05
is you’re responding to the feedback that you’re getting from that Open Marketplace well people were interested in uh investing in your deals great so
16:12
you figured out how to facilitate that by finding more deals and building the the systems to to handle that I imagine
16:18
a good part of how you ended up starting a community was based on similar feedback right yeah you’re getting
16:24
people asking and interested so maybe talk about how that kind of Spawn yeah it’s a very similar concept and it’s
Creating a Coaching Program & Community
16:30
funny that you picked up on that because I was again like now I had I maybe 20
16:35
units in people were just like how are you doing this that’s crazy and a lot of people in California follow me too I
16:41
would say I have a very heavy California New York audience and they were like it doesn’t make sense like our properties
16:47
are a million dollar $2 million like how are you own so many properties and so
16:52
they started asking me to teach them how to do it and at the time I was like really like I am new I feel like I’m
16:59
just learning how to invest but I’ve always been of the mindset that if I can help someone who’s just one step below
17:05
me I can at least guide them to where I am today and most of the world probably
17:11
has zero rental properties and so if I’ve managed to buy 20 at this point I could probably help people like buy
17:17
their first one and share my lessons and get them there and share my connections and so in 2020 might have been like 2021
17:24
or 2022 I started my like first coaching cohort and then we just have so much demand that I was like maybe I’ll just
17:30
make a course like that seems like a logical thing to do and so I made a course with all my knowledge on how to
17:35
invest out of state and then people started asking for well what if I want to meet other out of state investors because everyone knows that your your
17:42
network in a market is actually more powerful than anything if you want a real estate agent then you find a local
17:49
investor and you say who’s your favorite real estate agent or where are you investing what are you being successful
17:55
in what strategy do you recommend in this market so that missing piece is like always that real estate investor
18:00
who helps guide you in the market that you choose and validates all of your numbers that’s what I had that’s what
18:07
really changed my life and so I started ending I was like oh okay well like people are looking for community and so
18:13
I ended up creating what was called out ofate investor Academy that’s now called hello rentals but as a way to kind of
18:19
connect other out ofate investors yeah no I love that and again it was in response to that you said you
18:25
had a very Coastal Centric audience Califoria New York these places where home prices are pretty wild and buying a
18:32
rental property just doesn’t make sense pretty much no matter how you slice it unless you buy it in cash and even then it probably doesn’t make sense because
18:38
it’s a poor return on your money so when you open people’s eyes to the possibility that they could go build a
18:44
network somewhere else where there’s more affordable houses that do cash flow that can still appreciate I’m sure it
18:49
blew their mind a little bit and so then following those signals and creating an outlet for people to explore that learn
18:54
the skills through your course and and some of the coaching you did then give them an environment to interact with each other which is honestly what a lot
19:01
of people really want is just a place I always think about it this way if you’re around your family or the friends you
19:07
grew up with and they’re not into real estate and you start talking about real estate and you see their eyes glazing over you feel like there’s a crazy
19:12
person in the room and you get into one of these communities and and you no longer feel like the crazy person in the room or they just tell you you shouldn’t
19:19
do it it’s too risky why don’t you just choose the more normal path why don’t you just get a job and stick with your
19:24
job and if you hear that conate over and over again then you’re going to believe it and so I when I look back at what
19:31
made me successful in the first place I like even when people asked me all the time like how did I pick Cincinnati as a
19:36
market as my first Market to invest in there was a local investor who I met on
19:41
a business trip who I ended up he ended up just mentioning casually I own eight rental properties and I was like what do
19:47
you mean you own eight rental properties at the time it meant like nothing to me because I wasn’t interested in investing
19:53
but fast forward nine months later when I was like well I can’t buy properties locally where am I going to buy I was
19:59
like well Mark owns eight rental properties how about I just give him a call and so when I gave him a call he
20:05
introduced me to the market he introduced me to a realtor he walked through the property for me and I was like if that wouldn’t have been for him
20:12
I would have never pulled the trigger like I would have never been confident enough to actually take action and so I
20:18
think a lot of people are like missing that like it’s lonely and it’s hard and scary to do things by yourself when you
20:24
feel like you’re operating within a bubble around people who just don’t get it and so that’s and if you’re you find
20:30
your community on on Instagram or in Facebook or in a different Community I don’t I mean I’d love people to join
20:36
mine but as long as you can find it I think that’s what really matters because that is what is going to change your
20:41
perspective of what’s possible 100% you mentioned a couple things which is like finding investors in each market I have
Importance of Local Investors
20:47
some pretty nasty battle scars from trying to go out of state the first truly out of state Market we invested in
20:54
Iowa we didn’t do that and we interviewed team members and we found an agent we found property manager we did
21:00
what we thought were the right things but we did not have that key component which is the local investor in that market to act as a check and balance and
21:07
it cost us in a few pretty bad ways and so now now it feels obvious but at the
21:12
time we were going out Lone Ranger style now I’m part of these communities and such as yours and and some of the other
21:18
online communities that are out there and you’re around people that are going through it and it’s much harder to make those mistakes when you’re regularly
21:25
engaging in conversation with people who are doing the same thing because call you out or they’ll maybe they’ll make a
21:30
recommendation they’ll either share a mistake that they made or they’ll share a resource that’s helped them and so like in every which direction you’re
21:36
getting pulled you know towards a more efficient path and that’s exactly how I expanded market so after buying I don’t
Expanding Markets and Networking
21:42
know 25 30 deals in Cincinnati there was a a local investor in a guesta Georgia
21:48
who was like I have a construction team I’m an agent I have property management firm do you want to expand into this
21:54
market and so yeah that makes sense and so ended up flipping a bunch of houses site it g to Georgia and and the same
22:01
thing is true for like how we ended up buying a property in Palm Springs because I was at a conference again like this all comes down to who you know and
22:07
you’re networking and I had put it out there that I wanted to buy a boutique hotel and I didn’t know how it was going
22:14
to work or what I was going to do but someone introduced me to a boutique
22:19
hotel investor who happened to sit next to me to at an event and and she said oh I have a property in Palm Springs if you
22:26
want my realtor and you want to walk around the market just like let me know and I’ll introduce you and so because of
22:31
that connection we found a property like 3 weeks later and the rest was history
22:36
so I think that if people are stuck and and trying to figure out like where they want to invest it’s usually like a a who
22:43
not a how problem who do you know who can get you to the next level faster than you trying to trudge through it
22:48
alone by focusing on like the what you have to do 100% that’s another example
22:53
of the attraction not promotion right like you put out hey this is my goal this is something I’m interested in and
22:58
you again let people come back to you with that introduction or that relationship I think there’s a lesson
23:04
too and it doesn’t have to be a 100,000 person Instagram account but just even there were three or four years that I
23:10
invested before I even told people I was investing in real estate because I was afraid of what the perception might be at work or what have you and I realized
23:17
that all the connection points I was missing out on because a lot of people that I I didn’t even realize we’re
23:23
investing in real estate once I finally shared that hey I’m investing in real estate at that time I had four rynolds it’s started a lot of cool conversations
23:29
with people there were some co-workers that reach out to me that’s actually how I ended up started starting to coach people as well and all because I just
23:37
finally had the courage to at least mention that it was something I was interested in I wasn’t trying to shove it down people’s throat or say that hey
23:43
you should do this I just saying this is something I do that I’m passionate about and I’m interested in and the the
23:48
different types of connections that opened up were were pretty eye opening yeah that’s actually one of the best ways to raise private money though is
Raising Private Money
23:55
just to start conversations a lot of people think that they have to know billionaire to raise money or they have
24:01
to have a lot of followers I’ve taught over 100 people how to raise money and they’ve raised millions of dollars that
24:07
a lot of it is actually just in like how you introduce yourself and what you say
24:13
during interactions and I have them try it out and anyone can try this out it is it’s very powerful if you at a
24:19
networking event and someone asks you what you do you’re at automatic reaction is oh I work at Adobe as a product
24:26
designer and identic it’s so wrapped into your identity what you do with your day JB but if you just for once said I’m
24:32
going to try out saying I’m a real estate investor and and my goal is to scale to whatever 10 properties next
24:38
year and I’m looking for someone to partner with me to help me what and it’s not asking for anything it’s just saying like what you do and if they’re
24:45
interested in hearing more then they’ll ask you and if they’re not interested then they say cool very cool but I feel
24:51
like at least 50% of the time they’ll start to ask more questions and then you’ll have all of these conversations
24:57
where you just never knew that someone wanted to invest or was interested and then you start to start educating them
25:03
on what the process is so it’s never really a sales pitch it’s more like an education because they’ll start asking
25:10
like well how do you do that like how does that work and oh I didn’t know that was an investment strategy how is the
25:16
money secured what’s the interest rate and then eventually you be like oh do you know anyone else who might be
25:21
interested in this type of opportunity you’re not really asking them you’re just asking for an indirect referral and
25:28
I would say at least 50% of that time they’d be like oh I might be interested in that too and so I think that’s a much
25:34
better way of kind of approaching private money I think that eventually most people run out of their own money
25:39
they have to find other ways to fund their deals and by just changing that one thing in your conversations you will
25:45
open up infinite more possibilities for private money than if you just identify as whatever your day job is yeah that’s
25:52
a great tip and obviously it depends on the context of what room you’re in but I do introduce myself as a real estate
25:58
investor part of I have this brand the hybrid real estate professional is that I work my day job I’m proud of the
26:03
career and the advancement that I’ve had but I’m equally if not more proud of the real estate portfolio that my wife and I
26:08
have built on the side so I appreciate having the opportunity to share that and the impact it’s had on my family and so
26:15
that’s the the kind of message that I usually lead with when I’m meeting new people and no that’s a great tactical tip on just how to navigate some of
26:21
those conversations most people think I’m full of crap when I say that I can operate and grow my portfolio in an average of
26:28
20 20 minutes per day so instead of asking you to take my word for it I sat down with my business partner Nathan and
26:33
we ran through our entire 20-minute investor strategy in free Workshop we go through all the different workflows software and tools we use to stay in
26:39
control of our portfolios so we can focus on what matters most to us you can watch the entire workshop and download
26:45
our workflows for free at 20min investor.com again that’s 20 minutu investor.com and back to the show so you
Partnerships
26:53
mentioned who not how a couple minutes ago and the whole time we’ve been telling your story
26:58
there are all these additional layers of complexity that keep adding up so first you scaled you got 20 plus um properties
27:05
then you started coaching you grew a personal brand and with each layer of complexity comes additional time
27:11
commitments probably additional stress too so who are the people that are on your team whether they’re Partners
27:17
Community managers and like how do you treat this whole kind of portfolio of activities that you have running all at
27:23
the same time yeah and that’s a great question because like we all have limited time to
27:28
focus on things but I after I started investing with Partners on the real estate side I realized what a gift that
27:34
is and now I don’t like I’ll ever go back to investing alone just because when I first started out I was like I
27:41
felt a lot of like pride in doing everything myself I was like oh I analy
27:46
the deal I apply for the loan I fund it like I manage it it’s my property and I
27:51
do everything and to me that was like a badge of honor that felt like really good for me and then after some time I
27:58
did everything for the first few properties and then I found a partner who handled more of like the prospecting
28:04
cold calling analyzing deals and I realized like I really didn’t miss it I was like oh even though I was a finance
28:10
major and I could do it didn’t mean that I like had to do it and it didn’t necessarily bring me a lot of joy and so
28:16
then I moved into construction management after some time I realized I didn’t really like construction
28:22
management and I much more preferred raising money and overseeing the product on a higher level than like day-to-day
28:28
talking to contractors and so that’s why that AA contact ended up taking over the construction management and running that
28:35
side of things and and I have a variety of Partners right now not that many of them because I feel like you get married
28:41
to your partners and I don’t want to get married to 50 people but in any given partnership I typically have someone who
28:48
handles finances and Acquisitions and then I have someone who does construction management and so those are
28:54
the two things like I’m happy to give up because it’s not my zone of and then I focus on more like investor
29:00
relations and highle project management to make sure that the concept is right and and the design is right of the
29:06
property so that’s like the real estate side of things I think that as you give up different things you realize what
29:13
your gifts are and then because I’ve been able to link into my gifts they’ve gotten more valuable for people and I
29:19
the only reason I mean I think a lot of people want to jump to that right away but unless you do quite a few things it’s hard to realize like what your
29:26
gifts are and what you don’t want to do and so I would recommend for people who are just starting out that they do the
29:32
thing and then be very conscious about what things are giving you energy and what things are creating your energy
29:39
that you’d like to give away and then when you’re looking for Partnerships find the people who really excel at the
29:44
things that are training your energy at the time it’s a great point and like you
29:49
said the different businesses that you have require different types of skills and so it seems like you on the real
29:54
estate side you’ve settled in pretty clearly into the role that you want want to play and it plays to your strengths
30:00
like you couldn’t exactly flip roles the people that are doing day-to-day construction management can’t all of a sudden just appear on Instagram and
30:06
start raising money and and Sh stories right because they haven’t put in the the years of work to build to that and
30:12
vice versa and it compound too so like the more years you do it the more people
30:17
trust you like the more people trust me the more they do construction management the better they get and so it is a
30:22
really beautiful thing to to find what you’re really good at and understand that you don’t have to say Lally need to
30:29
do 100% of it if you can find the right people to do it on the education side I I guess play like CEO role and so we
30:36
have six team members who do like a variety of like Community Management backend customer support my executive
30:43
assistant like copyrighting marketing like all that sort of thing that actually I feel like takes a lot more people to run
30:50
but I guess that’s how I choose to do it so that I can spend my time kind of program managing and thinking more about
30:57
the vision while the day-to-day tasks are handled on a lower level so I guess between those two companies maybe
31:04
there’s 10 people that I interact on a daily basis with but I wouldn’t be able to do everything I do if it was just me
31:11
trying to do everything yeah no thanks for peeling back the curtain there a little bit I know just the amount of energy and time
31:17
it takes to run a community and keep it alive and keep seeding it with ideas and engagement and events like that is a
31:23
full-time job if not multiple full-time jobs so it makes sense to hear that you have six people helping you out and then
31:29
you’re obviously present there always participating and running different workshops and stuff and then if I
31:34
remember correctly you’re still doing some one-on-one coaching as well right occasionally I will or we have other
31:40
coaches who do one-on-one coaching too yeah no it’s a great kind of service stack to be able to offer two more
31:46
things I want to ask you about one is the in-person event that you did I believe it was May of this year so that
Building Relationships
31:52
was spawning off the community right what gave you the idea to do that and knowing the effort and time and energy
31:59
you’d have to put put into that and and how did it go that’s the first one and I’ll save the second question oh it was
32:05
great it was very I guess fulfilling to see it all come together it was a
32:10
two-day workshop with 100 investors who were all focused on building their business in different ways and the idea
32:17
came up because people asked me for it which is again like the theme that comes up over and over again is you can have a
32:22
plan but Things fall into place and when people ask for something you’re like no
32:27
that’s a great idea it’s a great way to bring people together and I think it
32:33
went really well and it was a lot of work I don’t know if you’ve ever hosted an event before but that
32:39
scale it’s it was good though I think it’s to have people meet in person the virtual communities are great but where
32:45
a lot of relationships are made are in person and so from the events there’s been Partnerships made and I’ve seen
32:51
them kind of Blossom inside the community I’ve seen private money lending relationships made like two of
32:57
my good friends in in the community met each other and invested in each other’s deal which was really cool to see with
33:02
their self-directed Ira I ended up raising money unintentionally for the hotel but I just shared what I was doing
33:09
and we raised a couple hundred, and just like deepened relationships with people who I brought out so it was really cool
33:15
to it’s great brand building so to be able to host an event and invite really good speakers out and have them speak on
33:20
your stage is really impactful for both me and the people there I’d encourage you to think about it even if it’s on a
33:27
smaller scale no it’s awesome that it had such an impact not only on on you and it was
33:32
fulfilling for you but that you could see some of the longer term fruits of different relationships forming and then
33:37
obviously curate them within your community too I love that yes and the last question I leave you with was is a
33:43
little more open-ended is what is on the horizon for you in that 2025 and ahead you got the boutique hotel you just
33:49
teased maybe a joint Workshop you’re doing what else is coming up oh that is the big question I’ve been
Future Plans
33:55
doing a lot of soul searching because I do I have said yes to a lot of things as they come up but I think at some point
34:02
you take everything you’ve learned and you have to choose a path that feels the best for you and so I think I’m still in
34:10
modestly transparently like that sou searching period of is the hotel world what I want to pursue full-time do I
34:18
just want to continue buying out ofate rental properties I feel like you’ve caught me at a strange time where usually I have a lot of clarity on
34:25
what’s next but I also feel like it’s good to normalize periods of I’m not sure and
34:32
I’m being very intentional about where I want to go and sometimes that intentionality takes time and so youve
34:38
caught me in like the one to two months where I’m really thinking about it and trying to be very thoughtful about where
34:44
we go next but it would definitely be like in the real estate investing space just trying to focus on where I want to
34:50
set my intentions because where your F what is this phrasing as like your where your focus goes grows something like
34:56
that so like that I appreciate you being being transparent about that and I agree it should be normalized to be able to
35:03
search and think through and I also most importantly it’s celebrate what you’ve built already right you’ve built all
35:09
these different businesses they’re all doing well you have people that are benefiting greatly it’s not just you
35:15
that’s benefiting it’s the people around you the community you’ve built the different areas you’ve invested in you now got this hotel so I mean sometimes
35:22
you don’t have to change anything other than just do what you’ve already done right and so no I appreciate you being transparent about and giving other
35:28
people permission to feel okay with still wondering not having 100% Clarity every second of the day every month of
35:34
the year yeah I feel like people don’t really talk about it but as high Achievers as I’m sure you are too with
35:40
everything you do there is such a pressure of just knowing and moving and always going and going and going and so
35:46
I feel like I’ve gone and gone and gone really fast really hard for four years and I’ve never truly taken time to just
35:53
stop and think and so I’m I think I’m at the season my life now where I’m like
35:59
there’s so many opportunities and the more successful that you get the more you have to learn to say no and what you
36:05
say no to is probably the most important decision and I think you have to be intentional about where you say yes and
36:12
where you say no and sometimes that takes like quieting yourself and really thinking about what you want in life
36:18
because more is not always better sometimes this is better and I think that people lose track of that when
36:24
they’re comparing themselves to people on Instagram or like I’m also very guilty of that this person has this big
36:30
business and it’s buying that multif family and it’s buying that and like this and that and so the the achiever in
36:36
me is I need to do that too but really it’s like why did we get started investing in real estate in the first
36:42
place what it’s for more whatever your answer is more freedom more time with my family more this and that and at some
36:48
point you have to ask yourself like is this closer to that goal or am I just
36:53
like wanting more for the sake of wanting more so that’s what I asking myself lately is what is closer and what
37:00
is just more that I need to say no to those are great questions everyone could benefit to ask at any point in their
37:06
Journey whether they haven’t even started yet or whether they have a hundred you know properties across their
37:12
different asset classes so that’s good nuggets to leave us with and the other just highlight on that right is there’s
37:17
always something beneath the story right yes you did scale from zero to 20 plus properties in one year but that’s not
37:24
the full story right there was a lot that went into that relationship building hard work learning different skill sets just so much right and that’s
37:31
why we do these interviews and that’s why it’s good to get out there and tell the full story so I appreciate you spending some time with me today it’s
37:37
been a lot of fun where can people find you if they don’t already know Instagram is probably the best place my Instagram
37:43
name is lattes and L’s I created it in 2020 that no one would follow me and
37:48
it’s still my name or the community is Hell rentals so it’s hell
37:54
rentals.com love it well thanks again and hopefully we’ll have you back soon maybe in 6 months or so and talk about
37:59
the H of course thanks thank you for making it to the end of today’s episode
38:05
is you may know podcasts are very difficult to grow organically if you’re getting value from today’s episode I’d
38:10
deeply appreciate if you can take 30 seconds to leave my show five-star rating and review this will go a long
38:16
way to helping me reach more listeners just like you thank you so much in advance