if you’re someone that starts out building in multiple markets go get laser focused on one maybe two markets

and go hit it as hard as you can and watch what’ll happen if you’re doing your market research and your market

analysis properly you don’t need to diversify so the two biggest takeaways are that real estate is risk-free and

passive that’s right that’s right you just put some money in as a down payment and you’re guaranteed to collect rents

for the next 30 Years today I’m thrilled to introduce Michael Albom an engineer by day and one of my long long time

favorite Real Estate Investors and Educators by night this interview was extra special to me as Michael was

actually my very first ever real estate investing coach back in 2021 I even get to tell him how much that experience

meant to me live on air so stay tuned for that live reaction from his highest high to his most difficult trials

Michael is an open book in this interview sharing lots of wisdom and tactics for investors of all levels hope

you [Music] enjoy today I’m very excited to host Mr

Michael Albom Michael I’m very familiar with your story but I would love for you to just give a quick intro to my

audience here in your own words totally so I started in with real estate investing like probably so many of your

listeners I did all the things my parents told me to do I went to school got good grades got a good job and then

as soon as I got that first paycheck at that good job I was like oh this is not going to get me where I want to go fast

enough and I was living in the Bay Area California high cost living area and so I got a hold of that little purple

covered book Rich Dad Poor Dad and from that very first time I read it just made

sense to me real estate investing totally clicked from just a pure financial and mathematical perspective

because I was an engineer so numbers just made sense to me it was like a second language and so I spent about two

years getting self-educated consuming as much material as I could it was a bit frustrating because at the time like I

wasn’t so aware of podcasts and Bigger Pockets really wasn’t a thing at that time so I was just piecing together

whatever I could until I eventually bought this first deal and when that first rent check showed up I was like

I’m a genius I figured out the key to life which of course we all know people have been doing this for a long time um

but just totally set off this fire in me of that I could totally disconnect my

income from my job and it was no longer a function of okay how hard did I work

or how many hours did I spend at work it was like no I did the math I did the research so now this thing is going to

pay me day in and day out for the work that I did one time and again just as a

concept I was like totally hooked you read the book but you didn’t quite stumble into Bigger Pockets and

communities and coaching and all that stuff when was this when you had your first property so 2013 2014 is when I

purchased that first one and I said if I can do this once a year for 10 years that’ll be great because 10 sounded like

a good number of properties to have and it’s funny how so many of us when when we get our start we have these blinders

or this this is our purview and then the further along in the space we get access

and introduced to other Concepts and other ways of growing and scaling and so lasted for about 3 years and then I GLW

past that goal I was like oh there’s way more to be done here yeah one of the themes that comes up often on this show

and also people that I’ve worked with to help get started is when they think about the first deal it feels too small

to them the idea of buying a property is big but then when they say hey I put all this tens of thousands of dollars into

something and I’m only getting $100 $150 a month in net profit like how can I

String this together to toward Financial Freedom right and it’s like you said over the years as time does its trick

and as your goals and your skills evolve then it becomes more clear but I think for investors at the very beginning of

their Journey it’s really hard to visualize you know 10 years ahead what things could look like absolutely and

interesting too because I started young and so an extra $200 a month an extra 250 a month was really impactful to my

life just everyday living I was like holy crap that’s like a portion of my paycheck that I’m earning every two

weeks and so as we get older and as we start earning our income potential starts going up in our W2 or corporate

life that $200 becomes less and less impactful and so can seem might not be worth the effort so it’s almost the

younger you start the easier it is because it feels more impactful so you were working full-time as an engineer in

the Bay Area which is very expensive and sorry remind me your first rental was in California or was it long distance yeah

it was in California in a market like 3 hours south of where I grew up which at this point in time was like an eight

hour drive from where I was living got it because I just happen to know your background your thesis shifted and out

of state or longdistance investing became your core strategy yes at what point did you come to that understanding

or realization and shift out of state yeah so it was in year two year three

after that first investment and so I bought a second property in that same Market in Southern California because

again my goal was one a year for 10 years and so I said okay check off property number two and at this time I

was traveling all over the Western us for work for my job and so now because I was a big bad real estate investor any

time I would get to a new market I would look on Zillow and see okay what are property selling for and what are they renting for and in a lot of these market

like holy crap these things are selling for half the price of what I paid but are renting for 1.2 times what my single

family in in Southern California was I was like wait a minute the numbers make way more sense going out of state and so

I said okay California is all fine but I’m going to focus my attention elsewhere and so it just happened to be that wherever I was for work wherever I

found that the numbers made sense I would buy a property and part of it was because I was turbocharging my savings

because I had a bit of a life hack a cheat Cod if you will and that work was paying for all my living expenses while

I was on the road and I was constantly on the road single person made it much easier to be on the road and I lived

with five roommates and so I very much continued this college style lifestyle into my adult career and so I was just

saving a ton of money dumping it all into real estate as much as I could as fast as I could buying much more

affordable properties out of state and so I was able to acquire a fairly sizable portfolio in a fairly short

number of years when I look back on it you mentioned that you bought in multiple locations how many different

markets did you invest in in that early phase I was in like five or six different markets just because I didn’t

care where it was I was numbers driven and didn’t really I wasn’t doing a bunch of market research too Aaron like I

bought in a property in ketan Alaska which most people unless they happen to been on Alaskan cruise have probably

never heard of that town and so I was like the numbers make sense here who cares about this other stuff I’ve since

learned to get a little bit more scientific about it in my Approach but in those early days I was like wild west

whatever I get my hands on that I could afford I buying yeah no I love that and

I have some parallels in my journey too we invest in three markets and I remember actually and I guess we’ll get

to this part of your story now I joined the program the coaching program that you used to teach in and I had been

working on entering a new market and it was the first time where I joined a program that was specifically geared

towards long-distance investing long-term single family and it was niched down to exactly what I was trying

to do and I started learning and going through all the courses that you were teaching and we had a couple calls and I

realized how unscientific I had been in the past about deal analysis mark Anis building a

team I winging it and once you learn some ofs and the ways of looking at it

and you realize how inefficient it can be to have three or four markets going at once it makes you think about things a little bit differently I think there’s

something to be said for just having bias re action and getting in the game and following the passion that you had

for it totally you can clean up and rearrange and trade out of certain markets you can look at what you have

the pieces on your chessboard and then rearrange it to to fit whatever your strategy is as you refactor it

absolutely can you talk about so you had that first phase before you really got

into the kind of coaching education community space where was the turning point to where you became more I don’t I

don’t know if academic is the right word but a little more structured in how you thought about yeah there you go yeah

yeah it’s funny I ended up getting some coaching I got some coaching from someone who’s become a very good friend of mine over the years and he’s dude

like you’re running yourself ragged go get laser focused on one maybe two

markets and go hit it as hard as you can and watch what’ll happen it’ll blow your mind I was like I don’t know man that’s

like kind of counterintuitive to everything thought I knew about investing in terms of diversification

and spreading out the risk and because I come from the insurance world that was always something that was top of mind for me is okay if anything happens in

Market a I’m in B through F so not a big deal but what I’ve since realized is that you’re running yourself you’re

chasing cats trying to chase these different property managers for all these various markets and you can

diversify within one particular Market every Market most markets not every Market but every most markets have

submarkets and sub neighborhoods and suburbs that you can diversify within and so the other thing I realize is if

you’re doing your market research and your market analysis properly you don’t need to diversify I think you need to

diversify if you’re investing in the Detroit michigans of the country that have a single sector economy where if

steel mill or that auto manufacturer closes the Market’s going to evaporate if you’re choosing markets that have

multiple legs to stand on that risk is eliminated and so therefore I would argue the need to

diversify yeah that makes sense and I think so there’s a couple elements there right one is the more markets you’re in

the more teams you have to keep track of the more teams you have to build yes and I also think of it this way if you’re

planning to hold a property for 20 years the chances that your property manager and your agents are going to be in

business that entire time without any turnover or any drama is pretty low so

you have some churn to prepare for on your team in addition to the property

level stuff and it can just become a lot to track and that’s something I feel like that can only be learned if you

actually set up teams and and invest in multiple markets and you realize firsthand you know how much maintenance

that can be you had a full-time W2 I have a full-time W2 and now I have kids

and you’re about to have a kid and you start to recognize the lifestyle cost of all these different things and

layers of complexity in a portfolio and to your point you can even have one core team and one core Market if it’s a

diverse enough market and you can either do different strategies or even different areas within the same town and

still leverage the same teams and the same systems without having to spread

yourself too thin and basically be a part-time manager of managers which has

its own kind of emotional cost yes absolutely and it’s funny because when I

first got started in all these different markets and I was setting up my teams and my system I was like oh yeah this is sexy this is cool this is fun I’m in all

these different markets and then when I realized when I went deep into a particular market like the second deal

that I did in the same Market that I had since focused on I was like wait a minute this is way easier I don’t have

to go meet the property manager I don’t have to go call to call agents I don’t have to go learn about this market and it was just so much easier to build this

flywheel of momentum that I was like oh yeah get going into a new market if you have to great if that’s something you’re

into awesome but like I found my market and I was like oh I going to go super deep here exactly like you said when you

realize how much time energy and effort is involved in setting up a new operation elsewhere you’re like no way

forget it but I would say that I always like to think of I wouldn’t change anything that I’ve done because I know

that’s been formative in getting me to where I am now yes and the skill of

going into a new market and building new teams even though it’s cumbersome and and it takes a lot of energy and effort

the fact that you went into five different markets and had to do that exercise over and over again it probably

gave you the confidence that if you had to go do it again or in your case also you teach other people to do it the only

way you can really master that skill is to do it right so if you’ve only ever built one team in your backyard it’s

hard to necessarily map that over to a new market but if you’ve entered and built in a few different spots then

that’s a skill you can Bank on for the rest of your life no matter how things play out each of those individual

markets absolutely no 100% Aaron I think only to further that point too and this

is counter to what we were saying previously is if you’re someone that starts out building in multiple markets

you then get the opportunity to go identify which is the best performing Market that you have versus if you only

have invested in a singular Market you have no idea if you could be crushing it 10 10x in in another Market because you

don’t have the experience so I totally am with you I wouldn’t change anything um from a market diversification

perspective yeah and plus as a coach and as an educator it gives you the perspective to be able to share with

other people I remember when I joined the program that you used to be in and we had a call I was all excited about

looking at all these different places and I remember one of the Nuggets you gave me was helping me reain in a little

bit and deliver that message that you said about Focus right hey what about the places you already are what about

the two markets that you already have that have momentum and have you know you have people on the ground and you have teams and it’s just it’s so easy to get

excited especially when you’re new in the game and you’re just hooked on the thrill of growing yes that you can you

know easily ignore some of the stuff that’s right in front of you and I feel like that perspective is gained and that’s where some of the value of a

coach comes in is like someone who’s been around a few different Corners maybe made some mistakes that could

easily be avoided and all it takes is like one well-timed piece of perspective

and advice that can save somebody else a year or two of committing to something that might not make sense for them so I

think that’s the other benefit of having that perspective regardless of how it

played out financially in that little period of time but totally you’re gonna make me blush man this is I appreciate

that no it’s I mean it it’s always interesting especially now I started doing some coaching a couple years after

I went through your program and I I always like to think of what are the things that I can tell somebody that

will maybe help them avoid some of the stuff that I went through because there’s some mistakes I made and I think

anyone can teach the sequential skills and lay it out here’s a road map you go

you research Market you pull these metrics here’s the team members you need to hire like anyone can create a checklist but the perspective and

experience that you share with other people is individual to that person and so you never know when um you’re saying

something that feels obvious to you but it totally blows somebody else’s mind right and that’s that’s the Fulfillment

side of being a coach and an educator as well as helping people who are maybe a

couple steps behind where you are so yep I’ll always remember it that’s awesome that’s great

yeah it’s fun it’s fun to be able to tell you that on the air too yeah totally the the live reaction is great

there you go but since then so you were full-time engineer then you had you had

a job within the old company where you did education and coaching and then did

you have some time in between or after that as like a full-time investor or what has your journey been like since

then yeah so actually it was it was a full-time investor prior to to working at that tech company where where you and

I met and so it sucks but so I I lost my dad and during that first job I was

working at and I also got married and I said to the company I said look I just need some time to get my head right I

need to go do a mental reset give me six months unpaid like just I’ll come back and I’ll start working for you I’ll pick

up where I left off and I like ah we can’t hold your job for you I’m sorry I was like but I guess I don’t need this job see you and so cuz I had spent the

last six seven years building up a rental portfolio and my wife and I decided to go travel internationally and

she was working full-time remote and so between her job and the portfolio income we were able to earn dollars in USD and

in American dollars and go spend in Colones or pesos or whatever the currency the country we happened to be

in was and do an Arbitrage that way and so we were able to have an awesome time traveling around the world I was doing

some Consulting too on the side which was a ton of fun and we were funding our lifestyle that way and so I took on a

massive project before I left for this these travels and it went totally

sideways like so sideways and so that’s about the time that I ended up going full-time with that tech company and helping them do their education program

and then since then I’m now back in the insurance industry working full-time as an engineer so a lot of ups and downs in

between no kidding okay a couple threads to pull on I’m trying to draw which one to go first yeah how about the sideways

project with whatever you’re willing to share about that experience a totally open book because it sucked the whole

time so I I in hoping to help others avoid the mistakes and the pitfalls that I fell into so basically to give you

I’ll paint this picture for for you and our listeners bought a 20,000 foot mixed use building in a historic part of town

and the town was giving away money to Developers for creating additional housing units above commercial

storefronts so think of typical mixed use building you have street level commercial space with residential above

okay okay so the building originally had four commercial spaces and four residential units my plan was to come in

and split one of the residential units in half create an additional unit end of

story simple project and get some money to do it along the way what turns out is that as I got a little bit further into

this project turns out that I should have I needed to create additional housing units out of one of the other

large commercial spaces okay so add on five additional units to the scope of project further along i g turns out that

okay now in order to avoid having to install an elevator in the building I needed to convert the ground level five

additional units so this life took on this Project’s gone a life of its own needless to say and so I was able to get

the funding for it I got a construction loan for each Progressive phase not a problem and I was getting money from the

city not a problem but during the course of construction I was in Costa Rica and I get a call from my property manager on

a Sunday he’s you’re probably wondering why I’m calling you on a Sunday huh and I go yeah I am maybe you can help he

goes there’s been a fire at the building and a thousand things ran through my head at once and I was like I’m first

off a licensed professional fire protection engineer in California so this is embarrassing I’m never going to be able to show my face in the fire

protection space again but secondly was are people injured is anybody hurt thankfully nobody was hurt happened over

a weekend but a significant fire department put it out okay so now I got this insurance claim going all right

fine insurance is on it we’ll figure it out a week later I get another call from my property manager he goes Michael

you’re not going to believe this there’s been another fire in the oh my God I’m like exactly oh my God like the

statistical likelihood of having a fire in your property is already quite low but having two and a week apart is like

guineas Book World Records type of thing so I was like this is unreal so short

story long insurance was raking me over the coals they like weren’t cooperating weren’t responding I had to get a public

adjuster involved all the while I had to tell my construction crew a don’t make

any progress don’t touch any of this stuff which essentially affected the entire building because it’s an active Insurance investigation if they make

progress on the build the insurance say we’re not paying for that it’s the damage isn’t there so I had to play this

waiting game of okay stop working here go Focus work on this other part of the building all the while having a purchase

loan to pay for when I bought the building and having a construction loan to pay so I just like gushing money into

this thing and there’s no return and no sight of when it’s going to get fixed oh

and then to to top it all off this is September 2019 you’ll remember what happened in March April of 2020

worldwide pandemic so like I had to go to court with this insurance company and the court date kept getting delayed

because of covid and then material prices started skyrocketing and so I was like this is insane so it was about

three years that I was locked into this insurance battle and just got totally hosed at the end of the day was not made

whole for the losses I incurred and so a lot of lessons learned from that uh a

lot of stress a lot of sleepless nights a lot of extra gray hair because of it now it’s finally turned a corner and is

producing and I’ve gotten out from the loans and it’s in a much better place as am I mentally but like it sucked for a

long time sucked for a long time most people think I’m full of crap when I say that I can operate and grow my portfolio

in an average of 20 minutes per day so instead of asking you to take my word for it I sat down with my business

partner Nathan and 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 control of our portfolios so we can focus on what

matters most to us you can watch the entire workshop and download our workflows for free at 20min investor.com

again that’s 20 minutu investor.com and back to the show so the two biggest

takeaways I’m taking away are that real estate is risk-free and passive that’s

right that’s right you just put some money in as a down payment and you’re guaranteed to collect rents for the next 30 Years it I’m so glad we see ey and

you get it that is wild man I I knew about that building but I did not understand the

depths of that story so couple questions to cap that one off how did you make it

through that someone asked me that question a few months ago and the answer that they came back to me with was like

you made it through because you had to like and part of what made this circumstance so unique is that the money

that I got from the city was in the form of a forgivable loan 0% loan that turned

into a grant and I don’t make payments on the loan and it comes becomes fully forgivable if I own and operate the

building for five years so even if I wanted to sell the building and just walk away I would have had to pay back

all this money to the city so it just wasn’t like getting rid of the building wasn’t an option and so thankfully I had

spent several years building up this real estate portfolio prior to taking on this project and so I had equity and so

I basically refinanced to the hilt every single other property that I had equity in and just had to dump money into this

thing which sucks there’s no other way to put it it’s just an ultimate bummer so that was able to float me through to

finishing the project talk about resilience though right and I think there’s a lot of investors that I look

up to my parents invested in the early 2000s all the way through the recession and they held through some pretty tough

times where they were underwater on certain properties there’s coach Carson someone I look up to a lot like he had a

similar story where he scaled up a ton right into the recession and right I think about folks who

earn the resilience by having to weather some of these difficult situations and they’re not just banking on it being

Rosy Good Times all the time and look at you you’re still investing you’re still teaching you’re still coaching and

you’re still in it right and I think that sometimes that stuff is horrible to go through I can’t even imagine like

that that one in particular for just for the duration of how long it lasted yeah but but you’re still doing it right and

that in and of itself is a statement that it’s obviously powerful enough you believe in it enough as a long-term

wealth Builder something that’s going to set your family up well that you’re still doing it pull the rip cord do

something else hopefully that’ll be the low point of the interview on the bummer scale the bummer scale yeah but but ever

since then you had a chapter where you were doing a lot of coaching and one of the things too that I how I came into

your ecosystem was through your guys podcast and because I remember I had heard like real estate on I had heard

some real estate adjacent podcast but I had never heard one that was speaking directly to the single family investor

especially long distance right and I’ve got to imagine first of all I remember you specifically as a host you’re very

good interviewer inquisitive and and you were good at drawing information out of people thank you and now I’ve run a

podcast for 16 months and I realized how valuable of an asset it is to be able to

sit on the other end of a microphone and ask people questions and and and learn all this stuff so I guess my selfish

podcast host question for you is what kind of impact did that have on you and your trajectory do you feel like that was a big kind of Turning Point into

this phase of Michael or absolutely absolutely because it did a couple

things like coaching someone and creating educational content for people like it forces you to get better right

because now it’s just not the decisions and the things that you’re saying don’t just impact yourself but now they’re

impacting other people both positively and negative so there’s responsibility that comes with that is it power comes

responsibility right so hearing people hearing the things that you’re saying and then going and make decisions that

are going to impact their lives and their family lives having to do with money is a big deal and so made me get

more scientific to use your word which I think is is a great way to to put it made me get a lot more intentional and

it reinvigorated this idea of how much I love investing because I got to celebrate the wins and share those with other people but then I got to see other

people sharing their wins from the content that we created and so that was really powerful and to your question

specifically like about interviewing people 100% uh it’s funny we had a guy on the podcast who was a public adjuster

I had another fire in a building that I owned next door to this building like

months after I interviewed him he was the first person I called and he and I have become good friends since and he’s

a phenomenal public adjuster and I was like that wouldn’t have happened if not for the podcast and so love that you’re

getting to glean personal insights and benefits from being a host because I think getting to chat with people that

have done things and seen things that you personally haven’t been able to do as a podcast host is like one of the

biggest benefits to to having a podcast out there for sure yeah I mean I think it’s a win for hopefully everyone right

especially the interview shows like obviously I get to sit and have deep conversations with people that I respect

and admire and the and then bring that to whoever is what shall I say I’m

grateful to have the audience that I have and whoever chooses to listen to this right they get to benefit from that conversation too yeah and and I do think

it’s alln Ed right and being a coach makes me a better investor and being an educator and and building out courses

and trying to like reverse engineer the things that didn’t go well in my journey and help other people avoid them and

then also try and double down on the things that did lead to success and highlight them and accent them and it’s

a very rewarding phase and so you’re still involved in all that correct I believe you have you now have your own

Academy correct yeah so I went out and built my own when when they s shut the doors uh on their program okay tell us

about it so it’s called myi Academy my financial Independence Academy so myfi

Academy it was it’s exactly what you’re talking about it’s all of the things that I saw work well from the prior

Academy that I built reduced down into the mus haves and got rid of some of the fluff and I said okay we want to make it

accessible and on demand for folks so we did audio based only so they can listen to it on the go there’s visual aids to

assist the visual Learners such as myself uh and then there’s access to all these resources and tools that I wish

that I had access to when I first started investing so it’s how to have conversations with property managers real estate agents uh CPAs attorneys

contractors what are the questions you should be asking and L what are the answers you should be expecting and what does that mean because what I found over

the years having done this for a while is that people can ask the questions you can give people the questions to ask

then they go ask the question and they get an answer back and like okay now what do I do and oh this is the answer you should be expecting to get back and

if you don’t here’s what to do there so really just taking away of the guess work for folks and it’s the people that

are going from Zer to one or one to four or trying to get involved in some different asset classes that I enjoy

working with the most because they’re the hungriest they don’t already have bad habits and they’re excited so the

people that are well on their way typically don’t need the handholding assistance so it’s the newer folks that

I really enjoy working with I love it and so is it still focused primarily on real estate or I know fi is a pretty

broad category do you do other stuff outside of real estate as well so not now but in V2 and V3 so my goal is

essentially to build out the udemy of financial Independence education and so I’m going to have courses created by

financial advisors talking about stocks and crypto and bonds and all the different financial instruments that are

out there is the the ultimate Genesis of what I’m hoping to build over time got

it and are you so you mentioned other asset classes is that within real estate so do you look I know you’ve done multif

family like you said you’ve done mixed use commercial do you work with people or do you have education on how to like

make the shift or Evolution from single family into other parts of real estate yes exactly because that’s so seemingly

so organic of the progression that so many folks go through is okay I did ones twos threes fours now I want to do 5 six

plus and then getting into some commercial stuff I’ve got an experience of background doing double and triple net lease commercial properties as well

we talk a little bit about that and I’m happy to help folks go down that path that’s what they’re looking for because

that is but bit more P say quite a bit more passive if someone’s looking for a truly passive investment via direct

ownership trip net is the answer yeah not the mixed use project that took

three years and shaved a bunch of years off your life no you could go that route and I I could tell you to some Pitfall

super boy but I would say no if you’re looking for Passive I wouldn’t go down that road yes I’m very reserved with

call it the p word I try not to use that in any of our marketing or anything because I think it’s it can be misleading totally course it does exist

and it can be achieved to Mo to a large extent but I don’t think it it’s pretty

darn hard for something to be truly 100% passive and the fact that most people’s

perception of real estate investing in rental properties is that it’s passive is a pretty big misconception and I

think it’s a rude awakening when people get into it and they assume that’s going to be the case and especially from day

one like you mentioned it can be but there’s all these steps on the road to get there for it to be passive you can’t

just buy a property and and sit on your laurels and think okay great it’s going to be passive and I think the industry has done everybody looking to get into

it a disservice by calling it passive income and leading with that as opposed

to earned income you’re earning it not from a taxable perspective it’s passive but you’re earning it for sure

definitely there’s two more topics I want to hit we have time first is since you work and and came from the insurance

world what is your kind of perspective on this last couple years have been pretty rough for property insurance and

the landscape ahead looks pretty unclear as well and there’s not a lot of promising signal that things are going

to improve yeah what is your overall take the landscape of the insurance

industry right now such a good question AR it’s funny three years ago people would have laughed at that question

because sure is one of those things that who cares you buy you just Ren it every year exactly

exactly not to my own horm but I’ve always said guys we need to be paying attention to Insurance like this is

something because I’ve been through these losses I’ve seen what not having great Insurance looks like and feels like it is super important now people

are waking up because it’s an economic driver in the decision-making process it’s no longer is Insurance 3% of my

budget in terms of my expense ratio it’s 8 n 10% 15% and so you’ve got to get it

right and so I agree the lands signals are not great it does not like storms

are not getting less severe on the coasts and in the gulf and flooding is

not becoming less severe in flood zones flood maps are changing and becoming more aggressive so it’s just something

to be aware of and I think one of the hard things about insurance in general

and specifically with natural catastrophes is that we’re now seeing things occurring in which five 10 years

ago they didn’t occur we have earthquakes in Oklahoma now right that wasn’t a thing 105 years ago and so how

do we forecast and how do we be mindful of engineering against or being

cognizant to where we’re investing because of Insurance uh challenging for

sure and so personally I don’t invest in flood zones I’m not comfortable with it it adds a ton of cost and again they’re

only getting worse and so I try to to invest in markets that just don’t have a

super high cost of insurance and that could change over time right no one has a crystal ball um but it’s something

that’s definitely on my mind definitely on my radar uh because it’s killing deals like I’m I’m chatting with

insurance brokers and lender colleagues and they’re like yeah we can’t refinance this property because their insurance

went up 120% they got to bring money to the table to because they’re underwater on it oh my gosh so and I was there too

like I felt this on this this particular project that went sideways people what I think a lot of people don’t realize

about insurance is when you have a claim it’s a demerit it’s a mark your health record so to speak and if you go try to

change insurance companies a lot of carriers won’t touch you if you’ve got this stain on your record and so I had

this horrible fire I had these insane claims and then the insurance went through the roof and so I was like I got

to go somewhere else and everywhere I try to go said no we don’t we’re not going to touch you until you’ve had five

years three to five varies based on on insurance carrier three to five years of clean bill of health I was like oh my

God so I’m married to this insurance company that did me so dirty in the claims process that is now charging me

an arm and a leg to provide me coverage this is awful and so as you’re out there

looking for insurance make sure you’re with a reputable company make sure you’re not going with the cheapest

option more expensive doesn’t NE always mean better but it’s something to be thinking about and then chat with other

investors out there in your market and find out who they’re using find out who they’re using and find out who’s had a

claim with those companies because you need an insurance company that’s going to be there when you have a claim that’s

the whole reason you have them yeah there’s a lot of tactical stuff that people need to probably pay more

attention to on the insurance side don’t just have the it’s this default assumption that it’s going to be there

that you’re going to be able to get the coverage that you want at the price you want there’s an active process of shopping there’s a strategy even around

when to file claims of course the areas that you invest in and the types of risk in those areas those are things to

consider instead of just looking at hey this house pencils out and it makes 200 bucks a month in cash flow it’s no what

are the other factors at play not a good outlook for the city I’m sitting in right now Houston which is half of it’s

in a flood zone and right our insurance policy on the house I’m sitting in right now went up 44% last year and there’s

never been a claim on this house some of the stuff’s just totally out of your control now shame on us because we brought the bummer scale almost all the

way back down to the previous story so we’re gonna have to round this out positive yeah yes so the last topic I

have for you which hopefully will be positive you’re about to welcome your first kid into your family congratulations you’ve traveled a lot of

road as an investor as a professional as a human leading up to this what do you anticipate if any changes you’ll have to

make to your approach as an investor or or just your overall lifestyle as you enter this new chapter man it’s a

really great question Aon I think the the biggest thing that I’m excited about

and looking forward to and also plan on having a big impact on how I’ve lived my life is just when it comes to like Risk

tolerance and risk mitigation swung for the fences and ended up doing a 360 and

clocking myself in the back of the head with my own bat on this project that went sideways and so I’m like yeah enough of that I did been there done

that didn’t work out real well for me so I can be a lot more strategic and precise with my investing a lot more

intentional with the reason behind my investing and I’ve already started implementing this and integrating that

into my life the last couple years having had so much heartburn from this project is like I’m investing for my

family and for my life and for my lifestyle whereas previously I was Investing For Cash Flow I didn’t really

care I had the energy I had the bandwidth that has all since changed I’m anticipating a a whole lot less

bandwidth with a newborn at home and so I said if I’m going to be investing it needs to align with my value and My Life

vision and cre and be addtive as opposed to subtractive that’s really what I’m looking forward to I love it it’s a

great answer I’m excited for you I I was joking before we hit record last time I spoke to you oneon-one I didn’t even

have one kid yet and now I have three now you have three it’s only been a little over three years so things can

escalate pretty quickly when you start adding children to your family but it’s a beautiful thing and I applaud all the

work you’ve done leading up to this and the foundation you’ve laid for your family and wish you guys all the best as you enter this new chapter thanks so

much Aaron I appreciate it I mean this a world to me man you bet it’s been such a pleasure to have you on I know we

already talked about your Academy a bit but where can people find you the academy if they want to stay in touch or

learn more ah thanks so it’s myi academy.com like I was saying myfi academy.com you can find me on Twitter

or X I’m Michel Albom on LinkedIn Michael Albom on Instagram never

something I thought I’d say myi Mike and we host a podcast too the remote investor so we’re on everywhere you find

your podcast love it it was a pleasure having you on we’ll have to do it again sometime soon absolutely thanks Aaron

talk to you man thanks thank you for making it to the end of today’s episode as you may know podcasts are very

difficult to grow organically if you’re getting value from today’s episode I’d deeply appreciate if you can take 30

seconds to leave my show five-star rating and review this will go a long way to helping me reach more listeners

just like you thank you so much in advance