first real estate deal I did was in 2013 i was utilizing a tool that veterans

have called the VA home loan i found a house that could be a house hack so live in it while I flip it and I used my VA

home loan to do that when I moved from California I made about 130 grand off that first deal you’ve gone through

mentorship programs masterminds all that stuff and you mentioned it kind of folded the amount of time that it took to make that leap we’re talking big

numbers now we’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollar properties we’re talking millions and tens of millions of dollar properties so a tiny little

mistake can cost you six figures easily so to have somebody that’s been there and gone through that I think to me is

priceless to have that experience on tap for you

[Music] welcome back to the Hybrid Real Estate

Professional Podcast the show where we help you build a life of abundance and financial freedom through real estate investing without sacrificing what’s

most important to you today I have a special guest Vince Gings vince is a playbook in action he started his real

estate journey with a $0 VA loan and now he oversees a portfolio of hund00 million in multif family he operates six

businesses and leads a thriving family of five he’s not just a founder he’s a systems builder a community contributor

and a 16-year Air Force veteran who knows how to lead under pressure he brings the exact kind of story our

listeners need to hear vince welcome to the show thanks Aaron happy to be here

yeah so I went back and listened to a few other interviews you’ve done and

your story has quite a a long large spectrum but I do think the origin that

that kind of first deal that you did is a good place to start can you kind of trace that for us first real estate deal

yeah we’re going Okay cool first real estate deal all right so first real estate deal I did was in 2013 so 2013 I

was stationed at Travis Air Force Base California and I was utilizing a tool that veterans

have called the VA home loan if you’re a veteran listening to this and you’re not using your VA home loan you’re messing

up it’s literally the best benefit that you’ve earned for wealth building the whole time for you serving so use your

VA home loan so that’s what I did i found a house that could be a house hack so live in it

while I flip it kind of thing and I used my VA home loan to do that so from 2013

to 2016 I lived in this house used my VA home loan sold it when I got moved from

California and I made about 130 grand off that first deal and that from that

point on I was like real estate’s the like you know screw the stock market like real estate’s where it’s at because

up to that point I was doing some stock trading and and things like that trying to learn learn that market but the real

estate bug got me and that was my first deal and then I took from 2013 2016 to

2018 I reinvested that 130 plus I liquidated all my savings all my brokerage accounts and I started buying

rental properties small rental properties single families duplexes forplexes up into 2018 and then that’s

where I got my my first initial portfolio of 20 units all while working

my W2 job in the military station at this point I was in Hawaii so I was in

Hawaii buying single family and these small multifamilies in the mainland as

we call it and that that’s what started my journey uh for real estate investing

awesome yeah there’s a lot of stuff to peel back there so when you did the first one it was a house hack so you lived in it did you at the time like

have any idea that you wanted to hold on to it afterwards as a rental or or did you just buy it like hey I’m going to buy a house and I’m going to live

there at that point uh the idea was to flip it after I I PCS

so when I when I PCS is you know when they station you at a different place that was always the plan for that one is

you know I’ll I’ll live in this house and then when I the Air Force moves me to another base I’ll sell it and then

you know do something with that cash i don’t know what it was but by the time I was educating myself more as I was

living in that house from 2013 to 2016 by the time I was ready to go and sell that house I already had more of a game

plan i had more knowledge more education to you know buy the next the next ones

yeah makes sense and it sounds like kind of by virtue of the fact that you had to move around a lot you became a

long-distance landlord long-distance investor was that a hard shift for you

when it happened or or did you kind of feel like you like you said you leaned in you were learning you were building

all the skills and fall falling in love with real estate I suppose was that a hard transition when you had to start doing that from a distance instead of

you being in the houses yourself for for me it was kind of easy because

the markets I was in so I was in Cal Bay Area California first not a great place to own rentals and then I went to Hawaii

not a great place to own rentals so for me it was like if I want to do this I had to find a market that made sense at

the at the time the Midwest made sense based my my budget i didn’t have a a whole lot to work with so Midwest

provides affordable rentals so that kind of narrowed it down and then from there I found what we would call a competitive

advantage so for me it was Michigan as we as we spoke before we we went live my

ties to Michigan is actually my wife her family’s from Michigan and they live there their whole lives so I was like

well if I’m going to be overseas and I want to invest where can be some place

that is stable i’m always going to have you know roots in and someplace that I have people there I can trust on the

ground to help kind of help me look after things and not just a property manager that I hire so even though

Michigan itself is not a great market to invest in it’s kind of slightly

declining population job growth income growth not really there there’s much better markets but I had that

competitive advantage which was my wife’s family they can go check on my contractors check on my property manager make sure the properties are kind of

look after it for me a little bit so that kind of overrided some of those other KPIs and I chose Michigan as the

place I was going to invest in and I was in Hawaii buying these rental properties in Michigan so that’s kind of how I went

there and it essentially out of necessity because you know the the rental properties in California and

Hawaii just one they’re out of my price point and two they don’t really cash flow so that’s where we we ended up yeah

makes sense and what one of the big niches that I do so I’m a longdistance investor too we own eight rental

properties the closest one’s a thousand miles away in Iowa and then we have some in Washington and Nevada too so uh big

fan of that strategy especially if you’re in a market where it doesn’t make a ton of sense to own rentals you know the big expensive coastal markets or

Hawaii like you mentioned so it sounds like you were you basically self-managing these properties except

you had like you said your wife’s family and you had some boots on the ground but did did you have a third-party property

manager or were you at this point I did so at this point I still had a third party property manager and I needed

somebody to kind of look after them to make sure that they were doing what they were supposed to do and that’s where kind of my wife’s family and my

brother-in-law sister sister-in-law kind of come in place actually I have a better analogy for you for and for your

listeners is the way I pictured it was like a ven diagram so I had the one

circle was the the property manager right they they kind of gave me their story what was happening then I had my

wife’s family who don’t don’t do real estate but they would kind of give me the hey this doesn’t look right kind of

thing like I don’t know what right looks like but you know your grass is a foot high kind of thing right so they would give me like that kind of stuff and that

would be one another circle in the vent diagram and then I actually found a

investor from Bigger Pockets you know and Bigger Pockets was kind of in its heyday during these during these years i

actually was like when I’m bigger pock say hey I’m I need somebody in Bay City Michigan to kind of help me out and I

would pay this guy Manny I’m still friends with him today you know we’re talking you know over 10 years later I still I still talk to this guy and I was

like hey Manny I’m I’m this guy I’m over in Hawaii I just need somebody to help look after properties for me that has

the I the eye of an investor I give you a hundred bucks every time I call you to go check on something he was like sure

that’s a no-brainer so we’re still friends to these day done deals together and then here’s the third circle that Ben diagram so I figured these these

three overlapping circles of each of their different perspectives and I’m in the middle and of that circle and I was

able to feel very comfortable with each of these different stories i can kind of put together what the real story is and

kind of checks and balances and I felt very comfortable you know being overseas essentially buying these properties and

managing them so that’s that’s how I solved that problem of being so far away but still confident that you know

business was getting done correctly yeah that’s a really smart approach and it validates one of my big beliefs now so

when we first did longdistance investing I was overly indexed and overly reliant on our property manager that was a thing

that like you know you basically have to take their word for it and unless you can go visit you you have no way to

really verify maybe they send you a picture you’re in and there or video walkthrough but like there’s always stuff that they could be leaving out so

having like another party or in your case two other parties that are unrelated to provide that check and

balance i mean that is really how you can be the most confident you can be you can never fully eliminate risk right but

you at least feel like you’re gathering enough information from enough sources that you can you know sleep easy at

night I guess and Hawaii is not exactly I mean that’s five time zones away right or six yeah well it depends what time of

year is because they don’t do daylight savings so it’s either five or six like Yeah yeah so it’s not like you could just jump on a plane and and be at your

rentals you know later that day or anything like that but Yeah exactly and it’s every property manager I’ve ever

had and it’s been a lot the these days you know if I look back probably a dozen property managers more maybe 20 30 and

it’s like they they always kind of leave something out you know or exaggerate you know the effort that they put in towards

something so it’s always good to have the checks and balances to make sure something’s getting done the way that cuz a lot of times they would just drive

by you know my my brother-in-law just saw they would just drive by on the way to the grocery store and they take a picture and like “Hey you’re you know

you got trash on the like side of the road here what’s going on you got a couch sitting out front of your property you know?” So that that stuff really

does help yeah and then you’re like “Why did the PM not tell me that why am I hearing it from you instead of my

property manager that paid Exactly.” So it kind of kept it pretty tight when I when I had that small portfolio yeah

very nice so I know that is only chapter one out of what has become a long journey for you but before we get into

the rest of the real estate I should have led with this but thank you for your service it’s amazing you’ve been you know in the Air Force and able to

balance all these other things but can you talk about some of So you were moving across the country sometimes like you said even overseas like you know

long distances you had this portfolio you also have kids like what were some of the things that you did along the way

to be able to balance all this stuff as you were growing i’m not really the best uh for for balance

you know definitely you know bit of that ADD or ADHD stuff so I I I don’t do well with the whole balance thing would I

have found a better I guess compromise would if you ever read the book The One Thing by Gary Keller phenomenal book but

he I think in that book he’s like balances a myth as well it’s you know you got to be all in on this and just

try to focus as much in the flow state on this one topic knock it out and then when that one thing is done then you can

go all the way here and then give your family 100% of your attention and and so I think yes it ends up my might my being

more of a balance but for me I think about it more like that like when I’m working on this task I’m going to try to give 100% on this task you know even if

I have to burn some midnight oil work work some weekends and then I can give my family you know their 100% attention

so the balance is is a little is a little hard there’s definitely some sacrifices if you’re trying to build the

wealth and you know keep your W2 job maintain a good relationships with your family but I think I’ve done pretty well

doing it but a lot of it’s just night nights and weekends until I can hit that critical mass point where I can you know

jump out of the W2 so to speak yeah no I appreciate your cander there and it’s a really important point because people

talk about balance as if it’s this somehow like permanent equilibrium where you’re just like constantly like always

giving everyone exactly the right amount of attention you’re always getting exactly the right amount of sleep and exercise but it’s never that clean right

it’s always an ongoing struggle and a lot of the entrepreneurs and the and the highly driven you know high performer

types that I’ve talked to they say something very similar to what you said which is like there’s there’s periods of intensity there’s periods of like really

like you know late nights and weekends and finding time you know in the the margins of your schedule so after your

W2 after the kids are in bed whatever it may be and having to use that right and making those sacrifices like there’s no

easy button especially when you have kids and a demanding job so I appreciate that that candering response

i think more of the balance comes into focus and maybe it’s more that I’m getting a little older now but being

aware of how my body is reacting to those periods of intensity I think that’s a little bit more kind of

forefront these days of like I can notice a lot more when I’m like approaching like burnout like and I’m

like “All right I got I got to pull back a little bit for for a couple weeks and and stuff like that.” So it’s it’s a

little bit more on that spectrum of when I when I’m actually try to force balance

into my schedule or force like kind of those down times is because I can you know sometimes I can go you know all out

for a period of time and then I my body starts telling me hey slow down and then I I going to pull back a little bit and

then drive drive up again so but I also do a lot more than than most you know we have six companies so it’s it’s not

common you know what I normally do yeah so let’s let’s go there next right so 2018 I think is when you said you

stopped or that was when you had built your duplexes and and you you shifted towards the 20 unit did did I get that

right the no the the 20 units I made up of the of the single families duplexes forplexes made up the 20 units that I

had before I jumped into multif family okay so let’s talk about I guess the pivot where you started shifting towards

multif family yep so the the people to kind of put a bow on the the the earlier

stage the first stage of 20 units is when you’re getting into that space the single families duplexes forplexes it’s

it’s a great place to start you know the properties aren’t big you can make mistakes you’re not going to go bankrupt

making a mistake on a duplex things like that so it gives you the kind of the the sandbox so to speak of you to kind of

explore the multif family or real estate game and build your systems processes figure out you know that that kind of

stuff before you want to jump into the large larger multif family the the downsides of that is going to be one

you’re you’re in mostly conventional properties so you’re doing the 20% down getting conventional loan and then those

run out after a time like the bank’s just going to stop giving you conventional loans plus they all go on your personal credit so you end up just

tapping out on the DTI or debt to income just ends up tapping out and then you have to force yourself to be you know

the the real the real investor which is like once you start jumping to commercial and you have to start getting b business loans you know they they joke

with you on is like now it’s time to become a real investor is the joke they gave me which is like all right now I have to go figure out how to get

business loans and commercial real estate loans all right so that was kind of where I was at so a lot of people hit

this plateau with they hit a couple rentals and they then they hit they hit a ceiling and they can’t figure out how

to get over it it’s very very common a lot of it is like I said the DTI they don’t know how to get business loans and

and talk to those lenders or brokers and and whatever a lot of it is they’ve kind of tapped out because they already spent

all their money on the the first rental so where do I get the money for the next ones and then there’s just the sophistication of the investor of how to

underwrite find these commercial properties how to underwrite them how to structure them how to manage them so it’s a lot more intimidating once you

start getting into you know the the large apartment complex so a lot of people hit this ceiling the way I got

out of it was and I hit the ceiling in 2018 the way I got out of it it was I went and got coaching and mentorship

through a program and I was like “All right I’m going to researched a lot of them found one I I resonated with the

most.” Jumped into that one within 6 months I found a 52 unit apartment building i went to my local real estate

meetup out in Hawaii found three guys that was passionate about real estate as

I was and and apartments and had money and were willing to give it to me so we we all partnered up the four of us we

each put in 25% and we bought this 52 unit and that was the start of Tri City Equity Group which is the company now

that is you know 100 million in assets we’ve done 17 17 18 deals together seven

seven or eight of those have gone full cycle so it was a great start in 2018 but that point was when you hit a

ceiling on the single families and you want to make that leap that was 2018 i I

I shortened that curve by getting coaching and mentorship group and that was that was the thing that changed it

all for me yeah I was going to like probe into that a little more so I obviously you and I are both we’re in a group together like you’re I know you’re

in several other you’ve you’ve gone through mentorship programs masterminds all that stuff and you mentioned it kind

of folded the amount of time that it took to make that leap but like what So you said you looked at a few different

groups and programs what was the deciding factor that made you you go with who you went with and do you feel

like you could have done it without that type of support the factors I was going

through so there was there was a couple big ones at the time there’s there’s more now it’s a little bit more competitive in that space and you got to kind of watch out for like the kind of

the fake guru type stuff but the guys I went through now the reputation was was like flawless like they they had a great

reputation and they were actual operators vertical integrated operators meaning they they own all of their

properties themselves and they manage all their properties themselves and for being somebody that is a very hands-on

person I I appreciate it that they focus so heavily on operations and not just

brand building raising money and you know buying property cuz I’ve owned a couple properties so I know that managing these things are hard so I

wanted to find somebody that was like who’s going to help me with the management piece and that was that one thing that kind of set these guys apart

besides the reputation was they weren’t just teaching how to how to find and raise money but also how to close the

deal and manage and execute a business plan on a multif family asset and that’s

what resonated me with them so I joined them and that that changed everything you asked if I could have done it

without it probably not to no I’d be nowhere near the scale I’m at now may maybe I’d

probably be a fifth of the way I am now and I’d probably would have lost tens

hundreds of thousands of dollars in mistakes that I’ve made just count countless mistakes bypassed by having

you know the coaching and mentorship like Vince don’t don’t do that like you know here here’s why you know everything

from writing an LOI and missing something doing due diligence and missing something doing underwriting and

missing something like there’s so many things when the when you’re in the larger multif family commercial assets

so many kind of trip wires and and things that could get you caught up that could cost you you know we’re we’re

talking big numbers now we’re not talking hundreds of thousands of dollar properties we’re talking millions and tens of millions of dollar properties so

a tiny little mistake can cost you six figures easily so to have somebody that’s been there and kind of gone

through that that it’s I think to me it’s like it’s priceless to have that experience on on tap for you yeah i

think a couple things you said really really resonate with me one was when you’re talking about the single family and the duplexes and the small multif

family you used the analogy of a sandbox right it’s a place where you can go explore you know you can make some

mistakes you will make some mistakes and you can do it without taking yourself down taking your family down at that

point it sounded like you were using largely your own money so if you made a mistake it wasn’t at the expense of an investor who trusted you right so that

by the time you got to these bigger deals and you had your mentors and and you had you know the experience that you

had you were a much probably better steward of people’s money than you would have been if you tried to jump straight into that on your own so I like the

sandbox analogy that’s a lot of people that I interact with today you know that have that similar journey where they

start with the single families and then they’re trying to you know maybe graduate into some of these bigger asset classes or or on the or on the other

side of it and which is completely okay as well is they realize that they don’t like this and it’s like you know it’s

like hey this isn’t for me i’m going to go back to the stock market or or just give my money to you know my my fund

manager or whatever because I it’s just too much for me i just don’t have the the the stomach for you know some of these problems that come up and and

that’s okay too cuz like hey you tried it out and and it’s not for you the worst thing is like you get these people that they get these kind of the visions

of grander or whatever and they like they jump out first deal 100 unitit property that they syndicate and they’ve never done real estate before and then

they’re like imploding under the pressure of it and I’m just like oh man like like hopefully we can untangle this

and you know get get your money back and you can come out unscathed but I definitely shy away from from that side

of it and like hey let’s just start small and then and then you know scale up from there once you figure out what

you’re good at what you’re not good at what you like doing what you don’t like doing things like that and you can really start kind of build you know what

angle of this game are you going to play in maybe it’s just the money raiser maybe it’s just the boots on the ground

maybe it’s investor relations something I don’t know but do it on a small scale where it’s nice and you know easy easy

to manage yeah it’s a really good point because a lot of people love the idea and then when it gets down to it they’re not actually interested in doing that

type of work even if they know that the long-term you know benefits might be great it just doesn’t gel with their

lifestyle or their interests and then you also like a really really good point is that the skill of finding a deal

underwriting it is totally different completely different than the skill of executing a business plan and managing

for a 5year life cycle doing renovations value ad and then finding you knowations and stuff like that like

that’s something I know is a weakness for me like yes I can raise money and I I do kind of hold my own in my deals but

my I have like partners that like they thrive on it they have no problem you know whining and dining doing the investor dinners and all that stuff and

and you know they have the charisma for it and all this stuff and I’m just like you know that that’s their strength

mine’s operations and and I’m completely okay with that you know yeah acquisitions and capital raising

investor relations that’s sales and marketing is what it really is and those are critically important when you’re building a big business but it

definitely you need the integrator you need the operator and I saw in your kind of resume and some of the stuff I listened to before that like I think

you’re you you’re trained in six sigma and process improvement and like you just I think you’re you’re naturally

gravitate towards operations and systems thinking is that is that also born from kind of some of your experience in the

air force too uh yeah that’s I got those in in the military i was I was in aviation in the military in the air

force so I was in aviation maintenance so it was very like very regimented very you know buy the book run the process

you know lean you know get efficient was kind of like our whole thing that we did for you know 16 years so that was

definitely from that and so I just gravitate to more of the hands-on you know side of the business i I like the

problem solving i like the taking the pieces and I was like I can figure this out that’s that’s where I thrive that’s

my kind of genius area yeah no it’s and every company especially if you’re going

to scale the way you have needs somebody who thinks like that and so you mentioned you have two was it two

partners that you started and that you’re still with i had three so the original Tri City was four people so me

and three others out of those we still have all of us but one so we’re all

still together all these years later except for one guy so I have one question about that so partnerships

especially when you’re scaling and creating you know tons of value and expanding into different types of verticals partnerships are really hard

to architect in a way that will last for a long time usually when people start them they’re really aligned everyone’s

excited they’re on the same page you know usually you rally around a certain idea but then if you you know fast

forward 5 years people have kids their parents you know stuff people move whatever may happen in life it’s really

hard to stay together keep a core together for 5 years so my question is when you guys formed did you guys have a

framework for like the long run or or did you guys start and just kind of like build build the ship as you went today’s

episode is brought to you by the Remote Real Estate Academy the community I launched last year where I personally

coach investors and empower them to buy rental properties anywhere in the United States my business partner Nathan and I

have a collective 15 years experience with over 20 cash flowing outofstate rental properties we provide a

step-by-step playbook on how you can build your own portfolio and start accessing the life-changing benefits of

real estate investing starting today go to remoterealestateacademy.com for more

info or better yet shoot me an email at aaron@aramine.com with subject line ra

and I’ll throw in a special bonus for podcast listeners who join the academy now let’s get to the show i got really

lucky and I actually have an entire presentation specifically on intentional team building i can kind of give you the

cliff notes for real quick but I think I got really lucky because I didn’t really do a whole lot other than just like

who’s passionate about this thing and like you know so most of the people that

I that I mentor or I coach I try to caution them heavily on this part because this is a part of the business

that people kind of gloss over and they get in this honeymoon state with their you know their partners and usually they

usually ends up call me i was pretty surprised at five years because usually the calls I get is like six to eight months they’re they’re calling me like

Vince I hate this guy he’s never showing up like all the meetings I’m having to do 80% of the work now but he’s getting

25% you know the 50% of the equity so the way I I teach intentional team building

now I’ll give you the cliff notes of it so first you have you have to get really familiar with the seats that need to get

filled in this game you know f you know for me it’s five seats I boil it down to five seats you have your deal finder

Right your risk capital which is your earnest money sunk cost for legal fees inspection fees all that stuff you know

that could be 50 grand 100 grand sometimes higher but the risk capital money you have to find the equity raise

like who who’s going to put the downstroke for the the the down payment the working capital the capital

expenditures where that where’s coming from or who’s raising it then you have the KP the key principal who’s signing

on the loan who has the net worth and liquidity to to satisfy the bank requirements and then you have the asset

manager boots on the ground person that’s actually going to execute the business plan right so in the deal any

deal those five seats need to get filled what I need to uh what I usually see and

and this is the first mistake I see new investors make is they they meet you know me and me and Aaron meet up at a at

a meetup at you know some kind of social thing and you know like “Oh you want to do real estate in Houston i want to do

real estate in Houston let’s go.” And then next thing you know we’re under contract on a 20 unit or 50 unit or 100 unit whatever it is and then we sit down

like “All right who can raise money?” Like “I can’t raise money i’ve never raised money i can maybe raise 100 grand.” And like “Well it’s like a

million bucks like where are we gonna get that?” Like “Well what’s your balance sheet look like?” Well I got this much and I got this much well well well we need that person too so and then

next thing you know it’s like we have we have all these gaps in our team and like all right we’ll bring more people in and then we’ll bring more people in and then

next thing you know that your your team for JV or syndication or whatever you’re trying to do is like 10 people deep and

it’s like wait why are you even doing this deal that we’re so diluted here that it’s not even worth doing and

because they weren’t intentional on building your team so the first thing you need to do is figure understand the

five seats that need to be filled in then you have to look at yourself be really honest with yourself what are my strengths and weaknesses what am I good

at what am I not good at what am I like what do I like doing and what do I don’t

like doing right and get really good like almost like a SWAT analysis on yourself like what are those seats can I

sit in and what can’t I sit in and you know what again what what are my strengths and weaknesses then the part

that everybody kind of breezes over is getting really clear on your goals your

what your vision is right this 5 year 10 year vision is your timeline to achieve

that and your core values and it sounds like the fufu stuff like what does that have to do with real estate investing

that’s like a you know the inspirational Tony Robbins stuff i’m telling you this matters more than anything else when building a team because what’s going to

happen is two two failures on this point is one you get to grinding and you grind

for years and then you you start climbing this ladder for using the Steven Covey analogy here you start

climbing this ladder and then you get to the top of the ladder 10 years 20 years from now and you realize it’s leaning

against the wrong wall you realize that you’ve just been grinding for something and you weren’t even clear on what you

were trying to achieve and then you get to the top of ladder and you’re like I’m I’m leaning against the wrong wall here i was working for this goal I didn’t

even want so you have to get really clear that vivid vision that clarity on what your goals are what your timeline

is to achieve those goals and what your core values are what like the integrity

whatever service before self whatever they are your core values are family trust whatever those are you have to put

those down then now when you’re networking right so now you’re networking now you’re going

to these networking events you’re going to these these meetups and these conferences instead of just you know

grabbing business cards and finding people that have you know that oh they’re you know Aaron you know he’s a good you know we had a couple cocktails

he he seems like a good guy let’s go do deals together you have like this checklist in your head now where you’re

just going down like interview mode like you’re like “All right so does this person compliment my weaknesses does

this person like doing the things I don’t like doing in the real estate game can they sit in the seats that I can’t sit in on of those five seats and then

most importantly are their goals vision timeline and core values aligned with mine i if once you start going down this

checklist and they start they start hitting that you’re going to find a team where you’re you’re in alignment and

you’re rolling in the same direction another failure that I had and this is a failure in my team that I had was we all

started in alignment but then what happened was after the second or third deal somebody didn’t start they stop

showing up to meetings they stop putting in the effort and this is at first the resentment starts building like what the

heck you know I’m I’m having to pull all this extra work I’m going have to do this like what’s with this guy not showing up anymore and the resentment

and the hatred and like and you know and they’re getting the same equity I need it I’m getting and all these things start bubbling up and really after after

looking back and reflecting being honest myself it’s my fault because we never talked about this and the issue boiled

down to our goals were so misaligned that he was just working at the level of

to achieve his goal which was much lower than mine and my goal was way up here so my work ethic my commitment to the team

my commitment to these to doing deals was like I’m I’ll work every weekend because that’s I need to achieve my goal

where he was like golfing right because his goal was so much lower by the third deal he had already achieved his goal

and and and so he’s like I’m I don’t need to show up to meetings anymore and it just his work ethic and commitment started wavering and waning off because

he was satisfied i was still hungry so all of that could have been avoided if we were just in alignment at the

beginning so having those crucial conversations upfront and being honest with yourself and and these possible

teammates I promise you will will will yield much better long-term more fruitful relationships that are you know

not resentful you know you’re building resent and you’re growing together so that’s what I that’s my two cents and both of those lessons are are personal

mistakes I’ve made that have cost me very uncomfortable conversations and probably a lot of money yeah no that’s

incredible well thank you for sharing that because I think a lot of people do enter partnerships haphazardly and even

if they’ve had a couple conversations maybe they’ve had a coffee meeting and they’re like “Hey we want to you know

get rich do you want to get rich?” “Yeah okay cool let’s do a deal.” But like it’s never only about money first of all

and second like obviously like you have to be able to grow together i think in some ways it’s the same principles as a

marriage right if you meet someone and you’re young and you like doing the things that you do when you’re young can

you also picture growing with that person over the different phases of life and obviously a a business partnership

doesn’t have to be forever like a marriage might or should be uh but you know it it still has to be built to last

through through different growth and phases so thank you for breaking that down and I think we we kind of buried the lead with this interview right

because and I did that intentionally the hund00 million plus portfolio is is a nice headline but I think the the leadup

to that is really important to outline but now you mentioned you have six companies you have $100 million you know

plus under management what are the six companies and and how do they all kind of relate to each other absolutely so I

have my real estate company i have two the two real estate companies which are the holding companies vast majority of

that that number then I also I do home service companies as well so I have a

insulation company like spray foam cellulose insulation home insulation and then I have a flooring company that’s

four and then I have the property management company we went vertically integrated last two years ago so at a

separate entity so now we self-manage all of our properties under another entity black sand property management we self-manage through that entity as well

have a you know staff and everything for that and then I have the coaching and

mentorship company as well so that original coach and mentor I told you about back in 2018 i was a student back

then then I came back as a coach in 2020 and then recently this year I ended up acquiring the company so now I actually

own the original company that taught me and and literally changed my life and you know my kids’ lives and their kids’

lives for you know this generational wealth i ended up acquiring that company as well so kind of kind of crazy turn of

events there but I think that was six i think that added up to six yeah that’s amazing so for you did you acquired the

coaching and mentorship company what about the other services companies the flooring and the installation did you

buy them or did you build those companies both so I for the installation company it’s a franchise i started the

first one i scaled it up to 12 12 territories and I scaled it through both

purchasing more territories and acquiring a competitor so there’s a little bit of M&A there for a period for

about two years I was the largest in the country for size so I have 12 territories but I have since kind of

toned that one down so I we’re down to seven now so seven or eight territories now in that franchise and that was both

from so I started and I also acquired one of my competitors my neighbor competitors for that company the Floren

Company was also an acquisition as well that was actually a real estate play that I was buying the real estate and I

didn’t know that they were you know interested in selling the the company as well and that kind of came out through due diligence and you know later on

after we were looking at the deal that they were just going to close the the store and so I you know we started

talking about that and ended up acquiring the flooring company as well and I really like home service companies

they’re very simple to to understand to build your systems your processes and

once you kind of figure out one they’re all pretty much the same so like the insulation the flooring the plumbing

HVAC they’re all like 80% the same so I can have the this template now I can just kind of copy and paste as I find

more of these opportunities to kind of bolt on to the portfolio yeah that’s really cool and there’s a framing that I

Nick Huber if anyone knows him he’s runs a sweaty startup is his brand and he posts a lot online i’ve listened to a

lot of his stuff he’s probably not the first person to say this but he did a similar thing where he was buying companies that were adjacent to the the

real estate you know that he was using and he he has this thing called you know turn your cost centers into revenue

centers so he was spending a ton of money on cost segregations he was you know spending a bunch of money on VAS and he just started acquiring those

companies so so the way that it’s actually really funny and I’ll add to it so the way I look at it because I’m the asset manager for Tri City so I’m

looking at the P&Ls and I’m like going down i’m like which one of these contractors are getting all my money oh plumbing all right looking for a PL i go

you know go on go on Bisby now look for a plumbing oh landscaping you’re next so very very similar is I’m kind of going

down the P&L of my real estate portfolio and looking like who’s getting the biggest chunk of our money and how can I

acquire that bring that in house yeah no it’s it’s incredibly smart framing and it makes sense so some practical

questions and maybe logistical questions here were you still in active duty like W2 when you were doing all this i I got

out of W I left the military at in 2021 so we had I’m trying to I don’t know

exactly the portfolio size off the top of my head but I probably had maybe 3 400 units at that point in

Tri City Equity Group and then I was just starting the franchise so the

franchise actually became came because I got Oh great lesson here so I was

leaving my W2 and I had enough passive income to kind of replace it like I hit

that critical mass where I you know I can make the jump but I’ve been denied

for loans before even though I had the income but it was passive and banks

don’t like passive income so if you’re if you’re if you’re listening to this and you’re like “All right I’m going to

go get some rentals i’m going to have this passive income and I’m going to you know live my life and everything like

that.” It’s gonna become an issue at some point when you want to go get like a loan like a car loan or a house loan

or something like that and all you give them is a bunch of like you know K1s or something like that right or you know

your apartment passive income or your house passive income what’s going to happen a lot of times it happened to me

was I got denied for a loan even though I made way more than enough because they’re like “We can’t take passive

income we only take or we we take it but we discount it by like 50%.” Or whatever their underwriting you know model is at

that particular bank or credit union i didn’t I wasn’t aware i was like I didn’t know so I had to figure out was

like all right if I get out of the military how am I going to replace my W2 income even though the passive income’s

there I know that if I you know a lot of the banks won’t use all of it or they’ll discount it so that’s a problem that

you’re going to have to deal with and have a plan for so hopefully that that helps some some of you out listening so

what I did that’s where the franchise came from i was like well I’ll just go buy a franchise they you know the

absentee owner type model which is kind of a joke so no such thing as absentee

owner franchise definitely just marketing BS because it was definitely hands-on a lot of work but that was the

idea was I’ll buy a franchise i’ll give myself a W2 out of that as the owner CEO whatever and now I have a piece of paper

if the bank asks for it here’s my pay subs here’s my W2 if I want to go get a loan because otherwise it takes so long

for them to underwrite like a real estate portfolio of like trying to figure out your creditworthiness and

stuff like that you know rather than just giving them a W2 so that’s where that initial business came from

otherwise I would have been all in only on real estate at that time because that’s what was working for me yeah

there really is an ongoing trick especially if you have a decadesl long real estate journey of remaining

lendable and I think there’s a lot of people maybe don’t think about it or or they love taking tons and tons of write

offs which you know uh obviously that’s a benefit but then if you go to apply for a loan and you’re showing huge

losses then they don’t like that yeah exactly then it’s like well it was depreciation and they’re like “Yeah but

you know you were still like negative $800,000 last year.” I’m like “Yeah but it was like depreciation.” And you add

it back so it’s Yeah you’re exactly right it’s definitely a balance between you know you know getting the best tax

treatment through you know through the laws that are out there that we can take advantage of and then also being lendable and that’s also what what will

stop your your smaller properties as well doing conventional loans because that’s the hardest to get once you start

getting into these you know the commercial loans and stuff like that is is the conventional loans are are start

getting much harder to get yeah and I want to double back too to what you were saying about when you first got

mentorship and avoiding mistakes a lot of people have a hard time with the idea

of whatever whatever the cost for that mentorship was was whether it was $1,000 $5,000 $20,000 people are like “That’s

expensive i’m spending too much money.” And it really is it’s it’s an investment

and the fact that you could avoid a $100,000 mistake and it only costs you5

or $10,000 right it’s like that these tax things are an example of something where someone with a you know seasoned

mindset and understanding and experience could see that around that corner for you and help you you know think things

through before you take a $800,000 write off just cuz you want you know a a quick refund that year right it’s like all

those little all those dimensions to this whole wealth building journey that you might not be able to think of as

you’re carving your own path that’s why in my mind it’s it’s important to have people who have been there done that so

they can see the the things that you might not but as far as you mentioned in the book the one thing and obviously six

companies it’s hard to have one thing you you said earlier that you know sometimes what you do is you take one of

those things and you put your intensity and all your focus towards that until you build it into where it needs to be you’re a systems guy you’re an

operations guy so my guess is that’s what you did right is that you built these things individually you got them to a point where they were systematized

enough that you could then go on and focus to the next one is that accurate or was there more to the story no that

that’s that’s the idea so that’s that’s pretty much what I I built the hard part

now is kind of keeping them at that at that level and making sure they don’t start degrading because systems start

degrading as soon as you and process as soon as you start taking your attention away from them so making sure you can

build the system process but also get the key people in place that have you know that that sense of accountability and ownership to to keep them operating

and say close enough by that if they start wavering you can kind of you know jump in and and get them back on track

quickly that’s the that’s the balancing act so to speak now for me is is making sure that the assistant processes I

built are being maintained and I got to just kind of keep the checks and balances in place or whatever we want to

call it and that’s mainly what I do now i have GMs in all my companies so I’m not I’m not the one in operations the

day-to-day operations i’m kind of just looking at KPIs and and reports and

stuff like that and doing my my normal weekly check-in calls and you know trying to catch trends and stuff like

that before they become big problems do you use EOS or any other type of Absolutely yeah so why don’t we maybe

just I don’t care if you run a lemonade stand like you should be doing on EOS like you know let’s let’s do the like 30

second explanation of what EOS is sure so so Gina Wickman created this process

called entrepreneur operating system the book is called traction you can get the the this smaller book I think is called

get a grip if you want like the click the quick hit of what this process is called get a grip then you go into

traction and then you have rocket fuel is the so those those are the three books you got to get they’re very digestible reads and what it is is it

gives you a framework to pretty much run any business efficiently and more

importantly with accountability so it has everything into you know all of your

you set your goals you you turn your goals into kind of quarterly we call them rocks and then your quarterly rocks

you kind of identify your your strengths weaknesses or your your your things that are going to kind of obstacles in your

way for that and then you start attacking it and you do it on a daily and weekly pulse and it’s essentially

non-negotiable like these things like the these daily standup huddles non-negotiable your weekly pulse level

10s non-negotiable You’re going to go go through the numbers every every number the big part of this is accountability

that’s what that’s what we’re getting for is not just going through the motions of stuff but every target is

assigned to somebody and they’re accountable for that that number that KPI that process and that’s what really

is the secret sauce of this thing is getting people to buy in get ownership and and being able to have crystal clear

accountability of who’s supposed to be doing what and I think that is you know that’s pretty much the secret sauce of

the of the EOS yeah it’s such a it’s founded on such a simple idea that people should know what they’re

accountable for and it’s it’s kind of crazy how many people have jobs that they don’t know what their primary

responsibilities are or they don’t know what they’re being measured on and it is an interesting kind of weak spot in

especially big corporate environments where they kind of think they’re measuring you in a certain way but but

you ask somebody what their job is and they can’t give you a super clear response so I think EOS and that whole

system both all the books you mentioned are incredible and it just it it feels

obvious once you actually read it but it’s interesting how it’s not obvious in a lot of contexts out there so I I would

say it’s one of those things that’s it’s really easy to understand extremely hard to implement and stay consistent on and

I’m not even like I’m I if I was honest with myself I’d probably rate me as like a C++ on actually implementing and I

still do I do I do my weekly calls and we but I know I could do more but it’s one of those things you’re just always

trying to get better on and things like that but just doing it even at my level is still like huge leaps and bounds

improvements over not having anything in place yeah and it’s the same principle you were explaining earlier where like

you can underwrite a deal you could build out a proforma for a you know big complex real estate deal and then when

it comes to actually executing it’s a totally different skill that has to be practiced and learned with repetition

mistakes all that stuff right so coming up with the plan and the framework going and reading traction is very different

than actually implementing it in one of your businesses so I’m sure you continue to learn and evolve you know as you as

you get further in your ownership journey and one of those things you know kind of tie it back to an earlier

concept we were talking about the strengths and weaknesses and after reading traction US all that stuff the

and then especially rocket fuel rocket fuel was the the book that I was like wait a second I I maybe I’m not the

integrator I thought I was because I I have trouble sometimes being consistent

on on things so rather than me trying to sharpen that tool I’m like I’m going to go find an integrator that like thrives

on the consistency and like the process of just doing things where I can be more

that that visionary type role that I I find myself sliding sliding into so that

was a big a big kind of aha moment too where I was like I was trying to force these things i’m like wait a second

maybe I’m not the best person to to to run this the day-to-day stuff and that’s where you know we made a pretty big

pivot on that too yeah and just being self-aware and putting some thought up front can save you like so much time and

heartache and arguments and inefficiencies in the future right so it’s just like encouraging people to

think along those lines ahead of when they’re actually doing something so well

I’ve learned a ton from this conversation i I we could probably go another hour just because of the depth of experience you have and I know I

certainly have a lot of follow-up questions but in the interest of time I want to get you out of here on time but where can people find you if they want

to learn about your coaching or or just learn more about your journey yeah I’m on all the socials so Vincent Gings

Instagram Facebook LinkedIn you reach out to me on there and if you want to learn more about the the Wheelbell

Profits Academy that’s that coaching and mentorship company I acquired you know we put up some pretty big numbers you

know we got 1,400 people i think five billion we’re over five billion in assets acquired 80,000 units from our

from our community so we we put up some pretty big numbers.profits.com or just reach out to

me and you can ask me Vince at our profits i’ll give you more information on that and yeah I’m open to talk to

anybody that’s interested awesome well I’ll make sure we include all of those links in the show notes and reach out to

Vince i like I said I I learned a ton and I looking forward to staying in touch so thanks for coming on the show

man thanks Aaron 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

could take 30 seconds to leave my show a 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