i had a $373,000 check and i was like “here’s where the last few years of my life have

been.” and that just was the mind shift that just shot me off like a rocket you

have an entrepreneurial gene in you like you were always exploring instead of just like going straight into trades you

wanted to run a business that is a blessing and a curse cuz it’s hard to stay present a lot of times in the

moment so in the next three years we want to go from a $5 million to a $50 million portfolio

welcome back to the hybrid real estate professional podcast the show where we break down how high performers are building real estate portfolios without

burning out or blowing up their lives i’m your host aaron amin a full-time consultant father of three a real estate

investor balancing ambition with real life today’s guest is my friend hunter fuchia a general contractor turned real

estate investor who now manages over $5 million in assets including 30 plus single family rentals a multif family

property and self- storage deals across louisiana and texas he’s scaled fast using creative financing smart

partnerships and the kind of systems that actually buy back your time if you’ve been wondering how to grow your portfolio without losing your mind this

one’s for you so let’s jump in hunter how you doing man great to have you good man yeah really excited fresh into a new

move into austin texas just watched that texas sunset which i know you’re really familiar with yeah no kidding man i saw

you at the time of this recording i saw you about four or five days ago and you had just literally like two days before that moved to austin so i’m happy to

catch you on the on the cusp of this big change i want to hear all about it but uh before we get to today let’s start a

bit in the past and kind of talk about how you got your start you know in um as a contractor so i got my start like most

people broke college student looking for a job i was working at sears which i think went bankrupt at this point so i

was a back-end loader making minimum wage and had to find something more to afford to pay the bills and stuff so

started looking and uh got an internship at an insurance company i was going to school for business management so i was

like “yeah let’s take this internship go in for an interview see what they’re willing to pay what they’re willing to

offer.” so i go to the interview and it’s an old 70 plus year old man that owns a progressive insurance branch and

he said “this is an internship that means i’m not paying.” and i was like “oh this isn’t going to work for me

i need to get paid i need money uh things like that.” he was like “this is like a credit towards your degree.” and i was like “well do you have anything

else?” he was like “actually i own some rental property.” i was like “okay.” i didn’t know anything about rental property i’m 18 19 maybe years old at

the time so uh i was just willing to take anything outside of sears and corporate world so i jumped in at the

opportunity he had about 40 doors at the time and he was still surprisingly aggressively buying stuff at that age

just because he loved it kept him busy just your typical older guy that didn’t want to hang it up enjoyed it things

like that the dayto-day still so took the job with him eight bucks an hour and it was a mess everything from his

systems he was still physically collecting rent he was uh letting people get six plus months delinquent all the

properties were just super crappy maintenance guys doing tradesman work so

you could imagine how that was typical slum lord in the nicest way and i’m going to send him this video once we’re

done recording so he’ll we still laugh and we’re still really close to this day but uh started out working with him and

that lasted about two and a half three years the most i ever made was 12 bucks an hour so quite the jump from where we

are now and over the years me and him acquired about five or six rental properties did a few flips things like

that but really cleaned up his systems and more than anything what he taught me was not what not to do more than what to

do so i knew if i ever wanted to get into real estate that it would have be a completely different approach i

respected his like conserviveness and things like that when it come to only buying good deals but majority of

everything else the way he handled repairs the way he managed people and subcontractors the way he managed his

properties and didn’t really filter out like applicants so would get bad tenants things like that almost everything else

was a complete 360 from the way he done it and like most typical old stubborn

guys he didn’t like a young guy telling him how to do things until i improved efficiencies and helped out there so it

all started back then as like handyman style work and then a little bit of property management and then i got to

the point where i was ready to graduate school and i was like “oh i’m about to graduate.” like times flew i’ve

enjoyed this so what do i do now do i go into insurance do i go into like just business management like of whether it’s

like day trading or a bunch of different job opportunities i had there and to move out of state but found a home in

real estate and like really enjoyed contracting so started a small construction company me and a neighbor

of mine uh you could respect this as a big musician he was like a rocker punk rocker he’s a cool guy he’s in his 50s

and he was a truck driver and i talked to him and he said “yeah my dad was a home builder and me and him would do

little projects on the side and stuff.” so we formed a good relationship cuz i needed more money than the 8 to 12 an

hour i was making with the old man so we would go do side jobs when he wasn’t doing cross country trucking and then it

got to the point where i was like “okay i want to start to make more and like build a business.” so we had those

discussions and eventually left the older guy and uh still help him to this day with things cuz he still doesn’t

know how to list a property on zillow for rent so and i’ve created sops and they’re just over his head so uh started

that small construction company there where we primarily focused on failed inspections so it’s kind of a niche of

you know how it goes a failed inspection you can’t close a deal so we would go in and we were honeydew listers we could do

a little bit of everything we’d kind of come in save the day and what was so cool about that niche was we would get

paid a lot of times out of closing so we would be able to charge a little more for like your high demand and like

needing to get the job done quick save the deal type of situation we did that for a while a couple months and then

started to build a reputation with realators once we built that reputation we started to get some remodel jobs

things like that then got a bigger opportunity on a 16 unit or 18 unit i

believe it was full exterior renovation party siding windows doors bid off way

more than we could shoot so me young and hungry i’m like we could do it we’ll subcontract some of this out like this

is our first real big job and the partner was kind of like man this is way too big and he was right but he said man

this is way too big i don’t know how i feel about this so we kind of had a little spat there and he didn’t really

want to ever grow it into a big company he just wanted to like make ends meet he

just wanted a paycheck he didn’t want to do the truck driving anymore he wanted to be home with his family very simple

guy simple life so we uh took on the job

and he quit working with me he was like “okay well i think it’s too big we’re not going to do it.” so hired a buddy of

mine who’s still to with me to this day so that’s crazy five years later now so hired a buddy and then a couple other

friends like to sub out part-time to help tackle this job we ended up knocking the job out i think it was

about a $60,000 job i think i lost probably 5k by the end of it so almost all the money i had at that time but it

taught us so much and then we had our showpiece so we had something we were able to start presenting to investors

presenting to realators and it was something on a main street small multif family that you would drive by and be

able to tell people hey i did that and that’s one of the main reasons i love construction also because you could kind

of drive by you did that it’s a good sense of feeling inside too so we

knocked that project out and then uh fortunately for me we got hit by a category 5 hurricane not very fortunate

for the rest of louisiana and east texas but we got hit with a category 5 hurricane and then that was all she

wrote at that point we scaled up to 12 full-time employees took my mom on board

as like an operations manager and office manager my younger brother joined the team who are both still on the team to

this day and uh we just started crushing it i mean it was a long 16-hour plus days a bunch of us were living together

cuz our houses were destroyed and we just grinded for years rebuilt part of

southwest louisiana and lake charles and just really found a passion in helping people like navigate insurance claims

rebuilding the city kind of and that all kind of led to investing eventually so

that’s kind of summing it up from how the whole construction company started like a little three-year timeline

amazing sorry that all happened in three years yeah maybe a little less than that so it happened quick and i was i was

like you i can only imagine how you are with all the things you juggle working some pretty long days to say no that’s

definitely enjoyed it i know i’ve talked to you quite a few times i know a lot of your story but i love about this

interview that i’m going to get to ask you all these questions that i haven’t got to ask before but let’s start i’m going to rewind to the beginning of what

you were telling me so how did you come in and have and know what to improve on

the property management with the with the older gentleman you mentioned who had the you know kind of tough systems and and not the best screening processes

like how did you come in and know what to do yeah so i tell people this a lot i had on the bluecollar side so on the

maintenance side i was going to school for business management but had a phd in youtube so i was a guy that just figured

it out when it would come and grew up bluecollar i would have been a third generation plumber and then on the other

side of my family military background but we had carpenters electricians so grew up being hands-on able to build

stuff and was raised with a background of like figuring stuff out for problem solving on the property management side

i had a phd in bigger pockets so got really big into bigger pockets at the time and kind of followed in the

footsteps of a couple other people that i knew that didn’t go to college friends of mine that went straight into being

real estate agents and real estate professionals and kind of learn that way books education just anything i could

get my hands on outside of school and outside of work just to fully submerse myself and educate myself and just kind

of i mean it couldn’t get much worse than it was is what we would always say so it was a lot of trial by fire for

sure how cool though that you know right from the get-go you saw like you said a bunch of stuff that you wouldn’t want to do with your own properties and then you

also got to help improve you know you’re getting paid i know you said it was eight between8 and $12 an hour but still

you’re getting paid to learn and um that isn’t always true in internships of any type whether it’s a blueco collar job or

whether it’s even um you know there’s unpaid internships at fortune 500 companies so the fact that you got to

get paid learn on the job do the hands-on part like you said which already kind of ran in your blood and then the the businessman management side

the property management side that sets you up really well for what we said during your intro which is now you have a big portfolio of properties across

multiple types of asset classes and um i’m sure starting with those fundamentals was really helpful and i

think you also um you know are are kind of tapping into something here where you have an entrepreneurial gene in you it

seems like clearly right like you’re always exploring or trying to instead of just like you said going straight into

trades you wanted to run a business you were studying business management you were learning through bigger bigger

pockets and all that like how can i treat this like a business did you always have that inclination like when you were growing up or like what where

do you think that came from that just sparked something that’s really funny before we moved down here last week we

went and visited a lot of friends and family and stuff like that and i went to my grandmother’s house who lives a

little further away from where we did and uh we were sitting talking around family and she told a story that kind of

reminds me of the entrepreneurial journey and kind of back where it started they own a farm and i would go like stay out there on the farm with

them they had cattle horses everything like that and i love staying out there as a kid well one day the grandpa is a

carpenter after military and all that we go out and uh he’s building a little fence and he’s setting post and i’m a

young kid and i’m like “i could set these post.” and he was like “all right give me a price and you’ll set these post or i’ll pay you whatever.” and i

said “okay wellundred bucks.” just figuratively i was probably 10 years old so many moons ago i told him i’d do it

for a hundred bucks or whatever and i sit there and dig those posts all day long for a hundred bucks but instead i

went down the road to a relative of ours that lived nearby who i knew had a tractor with an augur that like digs

post holes so i went to him and i said “hey uncle bill uh i need you to do me a favor let me borrow that tractor will

you come down here and dig these post for me?” he said “you’re not driving my tractor but yeah let me come help you out.” he’s an old guy too so retired no

work just use that to bush hog the fields and have fun so he come down and he said “uh what are you going to going

to pay me?” and i figure like how much i’m getting paid and i said “i’ll give you five bucks a hole.” and he’s like

“all right i’ll do it.” so he digs all the post and i end up making 20 30 bucks at such a young age which feels like

thousands now and he dug all the post and of course he says “no you don’t have to pay me.” and then my grandparents

that i just visited with were reminding me of that story and i was like “man i kind of remember that.” and they were like “that’s kind of where it all

started kind of i think.” and then a lot of my grandpa also owned a flea market to where i was used to growing up

bartering and trading like after he retired so i’d hang around his flea market a lot and watch him like sell

things he would basically go to garage sales and flip stuff so one of those typical stories of liking to hang around

the old people a lot and kind of learning the old conservative ways of negotiating and doing things and buying

and selling and bartering work like as a labor and bluecollar and just learned

all those principles at a really young age and then they all went full circle i thought i was going to be some doctor or

nurse as the course i was initially on so a complete different path than what i ever expected well a 30% margin on your

first business uh taking $100 and someone else to do it for 70 that’s not bad i’m sure a lot of people would kill

for 30% margin in just about any business and 100% once he didn’t make me pay for it so i was really excited that

that went a long way back then that probably bought me a lot of baseball cards yeah so i can’t just breeze past

the comment you just made that you thought you were going to be a doctor or a nurse where did that come from and then what happened uh my mom actually

worked in the healthcare industry which we kind of talked about the other night with you getting deep into residential

assisted living which she’s super passionate about and she worked her way up to be a corporate business manager

they own seven facilities before i pulled her into coming and working with me a much less stressful i mean which is

hard to believe working for your son who’s very high ramped up at the time with uh construction work that that

wouldn’t be a stressful environment property management which is uber stressful itself but uh pulled her out

of the residential assisted living and nursing home space but that’s where that had came from growing up i kind of did

some little maintenance work up there and would just hang around the facility as a kid a lot that she worked at

primarily and like have conversations with residents and just loved helping them out doing like activities with them

things like that to just make them happy a lot of them didn’t have family you know how those places are usually you’re

putting your family member in those and you’re living further away so you’re not seeing them as much and every scenario

is unique but kind of grew fond of a lot of the different residents at the home and built relationships with them i was

like man i kind of want to do this and i would see the nurses and lpns and cnas and what all they did and i was like i

kind of want to climb that ladder and help people and get get as far as i can into that field but that all shifted

pretty quick when college started partied a little too much and was like “okay being a nurse is a little more

than i’m cut out for in terms of the clinicals and responsibilities there and stuff like that.” what a wild fork in

the road though right obviously look at look at what you did end up doing and imagine how how different those two

paths are i think about it all the time and where like especially if i would have took it

all the way and went into like some form of practice probably would still be in school i mean i’m 28 years old currently

so i mean it would be close to just getting out of a practice and into a career instead of where we are today so

it is a big big difference i was contemplating joining the military when i was in high school and i always think

about what a crazy different path and different life i’d be living right now if if that had happened so there are

those fork in the road moments that uh it’s interesting to reflect back on but i’m sure another one of those like you

said was was the hurricane i’m trying to remember what year was that i believe that was 2020 2021 hurricane laura that

was a category squad that hit us direct hit to lake charles where i’m uh from

born and raised at fort johnson fort pulk which is about an hour away military family so moved down to the big

city of lake charles population about 50,000 uh to go to college and stuff and

that’s where we got directly smashed we’re about 20 miles off the gulf of mexico/ america whatever you want to

call it now yeah off the coast and got absolutely destroyed and the second we

did literally called up the guys make sure everyone’s good took care of like friends and family’s homes first like

getting a couple places livable and then i remember i think at one point there was seven or eight of us living in one

house together so my house got hit pretty hard moved to my brother’s house and we just built a little hub in his

house of as many guys as we could stockpiled on materials and kind of went and took care of people first before we

started focusing on like rebuilding so tarping roofs putting out sandbags for

the water just different things like that to prevent any further damage then started to formulate a plan of like okay

this is real let’s gear up how old did you say you are right now i’m 28 just turned 28 last month so you were 23 24

in this timeline and and you took on all that responsibility and you know i always i’ve been part of i’ve been

living in cities during crisis times different types of crisis not necessarily category 5 hurricane and

it’s always interesting to see how the the community rallies and supports each other in ways that are really beautiful

i mean it sucks that it takes crisis to create that type of environment but how cool is it that you were part of the

solution of rebuilding the city i remember watching that hurricane on tv i don’t know why i can’t help myself

sometimes when i see those giant hurricanes forming i just can’t help but watch it and i i saw it was like lake charles boom and yeah it was really neat

it was really neat and help foster a lot of relationships like at your local building supply stores you start to know

all the other contractors you’re kind of divvying up work between you all because just couldn’t take it all ourselves so

everyone was kind of winning but more than that everyone was kind of helping like you said coming together and like

we didn’t even look at it as like how much money can we make or never even slowed down enough to realize that until

it was all said and done and the smoke had cleared and we were all just focused on getting people back in their houses

as quick as we could and saying getting back in our own houses and stuff yeah and you were able to think with that

mentality of how can we repair how can we get people back to safety get them back to habitable environments safe

environments to live in and all the while like you said i think you scaled your company to 12 people

so and it was all three it was all at first the first initial weeks like i said you have fema coming into town

they’re giving out tarps they’re giving out like waters cases of water supplies and we’re going and tarping roofs just

as quick as we could get tarps we weren’t even thinking like profit first we were literally going and knocking

those type of things out first and then we started to okay let’s form a plan let’s go start capturing like all the

people we had already worked for and did well by would calling us up where we just had a roster a list of okay here’s

who we’re helping first like family and friends and then here’s our clients we’ve previously worked with who aren’t

having to wait for insurance that we could go jump on immediately so it was pretty cool and then everyone the bad

part of it was though there was a lot of like people from out of state come in stormchasers that are just there for a

buck and we would go behind a lot of those guys and like well yeah they come and did the demo but now our house is

completely demoed and all our stuff’s gone and they ran off with that big demo or mitigation check or whatever that

case may be and then you’re dealing with a battered homeowner also who just got

railed and that was the really shitty part of it outside of going and telling people like your house is just a total

loss like i don’t know what else to tell you my apologies but it’s it’s done for and that built a muscle itself that was

pretty tough seeing some of that yeah so between the experience you got with the property management right at the

beginning and then going through that type of crisis learning how to not only this isn’t just like going in and

remodeling a kitchen you’re talking about rebuilding we’re talking we’re talking trees falling through the middle

of houses and it’s funny i went and looked at a house for a friend a couple months ago as a foreclosure and he’s

like “hey man can you come take a look at this with the realtor and i and i said “sure.” he used to work with me and

i was like “yeah let me come take a look at it.” and the house is all moldy couple walls are gutted and uh i just

walk around with my camera i take a couple minute videos how i do things and i go back and analyze and like work up

numbers and i walk it probably 5 minutes and i walk out and the agent didn’t want to come inside because of mold and stuff

so me and him had walked in i walk out and the agent’s just standing there looking i was like “ah it’s not that bad.” and he was like “not that bad.”

and uh i said “were you here during the hurricane?” and he had moved from somewhere up north the agent did and uh

he was like “no.” i said “our version of” he was like “what’s your version of that?” i was like “my version of bad is a 40ft pond tree laid through the middle

of this and us chopping that up and removing it and then literally rebuilding this from the ground up.” i

was like “that’s my version of that.” or a couple feet of standing water like stuff like that or the roof literally

ripped off laying 30 foot from the house that’s our version of that 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 a 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

20minutinvestor.com again that’s 20inutinvestor.com now back to the show

yeah so this is all really good context to show just like you were forced to grow up really quickly you put in a lot

of work you you were around people that gave you the opportunity to learn from both mistakes and best practices uh and

so all of that set you up and you then you all of a sudden had a a pretty wellestablished business and i’m sure

you had a lot a good reputation having gone through all that so where does your investor journey start with the sing the

30 single family homes like yeah where where did you start rolling the snowball down the hill so that started when the

smoke started to clear from all the storm work and we had that good reputation like you said but everyone’s

house is remodeled then and new so the work wasn’t in renovations and the market was still really good for like

flipping because a lot of people were displaced a lot of apartments and rentals were high in demand because

people were displaced as well and instead of jumping right into investing ourselves we started to work with

flippers in the area so we had a few friends and people from our local meetup that would flip so we became their

contractor and i like working with investors cuz you’re all we just went through the storm work where you have no

clue when or if insurance is ever going to pay you a lot of these insurance companies went belly up and we never got

paid like we had receivables in excess of 50 grand and we had payroll over 10

20 grand a week sometimes so it was tough during that time floating money when you’re not sure when you’re going

to get in getting paid and all of that had left a bad taste in our mouth from the storm to where we’re like “okay

investors this is a lot easier we’re dealing with bank loans and draws and things like that where this is

guaranteed income investors are not as picky typically because we’re really experienced so we’re kind of bouncing

ideas off of each other versus a homeowner paint this wall pink this wall purple let’s go to the store together

and pick out the backs black.” stuff like that where it’s very cookie cutter let’s rock and roll here’s my paint

colors for the project you have full control knock it out as quick as you can cuz that’s how i get paid so we enjoyed

that we did probably 20 or so projects like flips and then one day a light bulb

just went off and was like “holy the smoke kind of cleared.” like i said all the checks started to clear too from

all the storm work and we actually slowed down for a minute and looked at it like “we could do this.” and i think

it was one of my guys who even had told us that he was like “well why don’t you do this?” i was like “man i’m so busy

and like in the weeds of things.” and that’s how i’ve always been in business until the last year or two so in the

weeds of things that sometimes you have to zoom out and look at it from a different perspective and start working

on the business instead of in the business and then comes like a vision and a plan to invest and started having

conversations with those investors like how are you guys financing these deals like what does that look like and we had

a stockpile of cash so i didn’t know anything about hard money lenders

construction loans things like that i just knew how to build a house so that’s what we did started to go and there was

still a good bit of storm work so we would go look at a house and we were mixing in our personal projects investor

projects but we would go look at a house and it would be a situation where i would tell the people “hey this is going

to be about 50 grand for example.” they’re like “enurance only paid us 30 and we don’t have 20.” and i was like

well i could buy it and that’s where that notion had come from and that thought of like holy there’s a lot

of these where me purchasing the house might help these people out they could still collect their insurance funds and

then move on from it and get a fresh start elsewhere because otherwise there was no plan b for them they didn’t have

20 grand to cover it they didn’t have access to credit or a lot of these loan programs and fema and stuff like that

like rental assistance government assistance had been filled out to where it’s like get in line and we’ll do

another realm soon and until then you’re just out of luck so we were providing i like to think of it that way

at least we were also providing an alternative to that for them to just sell their home so that first year post

completing most of the hurricane work we started to shift into the investor pool flipping with investors and then that

first year i think we bought five single family all cash so these were little

cheap 30 40 $50,000 houses i think the cheapest we had bought was probably 25ish and the most expensive of the

first five was maybe 50 60 these are your typical two bed one bath three bed

one bath piers house on pierce thousand square foot or less re’s going to be 800

to a grand like typical sweet little cash flow but not going to appreciate style of deals but that was kind of our

bread and butter smaller houses your renovation costs per foot aren’t going to be near as high and we could jump in

there and knock them out quick and we could get them rented really quick too because the demand was so high so that

first year i did five of those and we were still mixing in all of the labor and work we were doing with other

investors and still a little bit of storm work keeping our crews busy and was just funneling cash into these boom

purchase cash rehab cash i’m getting paid from aaron and i’m paying tom over

here for the work he just done on my stuff so just kind of co-mingling it was organized but co-mingling everything

getting paid paying out and then the smoke cleared again to where the end of the year came and we had the five paid

off houses all five fully renovated and i was like “holy i’m almost out of cash.” i was like “i still have like 15

20 grand a week in payroll like i said earlier and i only have 30 grand in the bank what am i doing?” so that’s when i

got introduced to like masterminds and stuff before action academy had started i was in a group of younger goundance

guys called nextgen and might have had to cut that out cuz we weren’t supposed to be affiliated with go abundance

necessarily but i don’t think they care but that’s where me and brian luben had met who’s in charge of the mastermind

you and me had met in action academy and uh we were in a mastermind and i come to a trip over here in austin it was like

25 30 guys and i get around these guys and i’m like damn they’re doing bigger deals whether it’s wholesaling a million

dollars buying small businesses stuff like that where they were still at like level one of like higher level investing

i guess you would say but they were doing bigger deals and i didn’t have experience in like i still was buying

deals cash not using hard money construction loans anything like that and i explained myself to them so i come

in i drove over a lot of these guys flew over i drove it’s about a 4-hour drive and i walk in late and uh they had

already started they had a guy up there presenting that they had flew in that was like a coach and he was in charge of the whole weekend so it’s pretty cool

and i walk in and they’re like “introduce yourself.” they put me on the spot i was like “i’m a general contractor i’ve just got into investing

i’ve got five single family homes and uh that was it i was like “that’s me.” and i thought i was hot boy was i wrong

but i was in the right room so like 30 minutes later we do a little breakout and you just partner up with one guy and

i was like “so yeah there’s what i do.” and i thought i was like “mr cool.” i was like “i got it going on doing really

well for myself these last few years.” and he was like “yeah i net over a million dollars last year in wholesaling

in kansas city missouri selling to black rockck or something.” i was like “holy shit.” i was like “i’m in the right

room.” and he’s one of the upper guys in that 30 but still i was like “okay i’m in the right spot.” so all weekend i was

just consumed with telling everyone what i had going on soaking up in just pages

of notes it was my first like revelation to the whole like business and coaching

and masterminds and the speaker just had wowed me i’m sitting there just pages full and everybody else is just sitting

chilling like this is their normal and they’re used to these personal development trips and stuff like that

but i’d uh got a lot of good advice there and come back to lake charles on an all-time high and the best advice i

got was man if you want to like what do you want to do next like clearly you need access to your cash you need to cash out refi and i was like okay what

is that like i’ve heard of it a little but i’m so like i telling you man i was so in the weeds of just working every

day just grinding long hours rebuilding the city starting to build our own

portfolio that i was just dumb to anything but cash so they were like “you need to cash out refi.” i was like

“okay.” so i go start looking into it bigger pockets episodes with like david green he’s huge on burst and something

i’m huge on now and have almost done every deal by that method but i uh get

back to town and i’m like asking buddies at our local meetup and these guys we do these flips for i’m like “who’s your

banker?” stuff like that so i start dating bankers i go to lunch with a couple guys and see who i could like get

a vibe with called a vibe with one banker who i know he’s going to listen to this he’s my right-hand man still to

this day called a vibe with him and he’s like “man you need to come in and let’s get these properties appraised and let’s

see what you’re looking at here.” and mind you i had a 2001 tacoma with like 200,000 miles on it i’m super cheap

great credit no debt no anything like that didn’t even have a primary residence at the time so had the five

rentals before i even bought a home myself like traditionally so go to him and i’m like “here’s what i’m looking

like creditwise incomewise the last few years have looked great from all the storm work.” and he’s like “man you’re a

bullet we’ll get you approved we’ll get you 80% ltv or whatever you want to be let’s get these things appraised.” and

i’m like nod my head yes what’s ltv i have no clue and i’m just i’m just going with it i’m like “yeah yeah yeah.” kind

of fake it until you make it and i’m i’m listening i’m like going back on my phone every couple seconds like “okay

what does that mean?” and uh so we get all the appraisals done and all of that and ironically enough the next

mastermind with that same group of austin guys rolls around a couple months later and we go all meet again and when

i showed up i told him i was like “here’s what happened last week to me that was life-changing.” and i showed

him a picture of it it was a check the properties appraised for $5.65 we refied for $380 i had a

$373,000 check and i was like here’s i was like here’s where the last few years of my life have been and that just was

the mindset shift that like just shot me off like a rocket i was like holy

now i have $400,000 at like 24 years old what do i do now and how do i scale this

and how do i retain it make sure that i’m not buying everything cash again i’m

being strategic and i’m making this money work for me so i have a question you were talking about at the beginning

you’re working for eight dollars an hour you’re talking about how making that 20 $30 margin on um the tractor and

drilling holes like that felt like a lot of money to you at the time um so the relativity of money right you go from

thinking 2030 bucks right when you’re young you’re growing up and you’re doing uh you know like the the entry level

type roles that does feel like a lot but then you go from that in a very short amount of time to getting a $370,000

check i think most people especially in their 20s would like lose control and

they would not have discipline and they would not be able to you maybe they might make a few good decisions but um

you know for the most part it’s pretty hard to hold on to money they always say right like making money is a different skill than keeping money so how did that

like transformation and that relativity you started adding zeros to the type of money you were getting how did you deal

with that and and were there any kind of mistakes or or learning moments as you evolved to a different level so i would

be lying to you if i said there wasn’t a little bit of ego plate so as a former las vegas guy you could get this we went

on some trips we partied we did the whole nine took the team to denver colorado for a ski trip like we did some

fun stuff but it was all like deserving i didn’t really splurge on anything except for i’d be lying to you if i

didn’t say i did buy a corvette too now and got over that really quick so it’s it’s weird it’s a blessing and a curse

i’ve always been a guy that’s like a delayed gratification and always like striving for more and stuff like that to

where nothing like that really ever seemed too big for me like i’m always ready for that next level and that is a

blessing and a curse cuz it’s hard to stay present a lot of times like in the moment and enjoy those fruits of the

labor and it’s tough being a visionary and a boss to people too who think that you should splurge and they think that

you should treat them and things like that so it was all about finding that balance of like okay how do i reward my

team how do we scale smart though and not blow through this and for me it was easy just because i’d always had those

principles instilled of being hyperconervative and always thinking like bigger picture delayed

gratification what’s next things like that but like i said could definitely be a blessing and a curse because it’s hard

to stay present and really enjoy instead of just immediately that next thought

clicks of okay what’s next what how can i turn this 300 into 3 million like stuff like that yeah absolutely and i

have one more question about the story you were telling earlier so you go into the go abundance room or the the mastermind group you start surrounding

yourselves with people that are doing things on you know what you would consider to be a different level at that time and you start to have this

comparison trap right where you’re saying i think in my opinion you should be proud of the fact that you had five

houses in you know that you paid off you bought in cash you had done a ton of work you’d built a business you had a

lot to be proud of but all of a sudden in that room you felt like you were you know maybe um on a different level than

everyone around you i think there’s like um it’s almost a problem when you start to think that what you have done is not

enough just because you’re around other people who have done what you consider to be more so i i and i believe you have

a really good attitude and mindset in general about all this stuff but i just want to like for people who are listening to this who maybe haven’t

joined a mastermind or been in those type of rooms i think there’s like a perception that it’s just it’s all ego

it’s all ego so i just want to get your like thoughts on on that and and how you dealt with like the comparison part in

particular i mean honestly it’s tough and you know this being in the mastermind together in action academy we

have our pods and that’s our accountability groups my favorite part of every week is getting to hang out and

talk with my guys like my five people and you almost feel like you just said like comparison is the thief of joy or

happiness or whatever you want to say the quote there but it’s true cuz you get into this higher level in this

higher room where you want to bring something to the table and it’s not just every trip now like we see each other

twice a year internationally and that’s awesome so you want to bring that to the table like yeah i’ve done this this and

that but now it’s every week so you start to break it down even more where it’s like a weekly occurrence of like

okay who’s coming to the group with a new deal and you feel like you’ve got to live up to this standard so that is

really tough but i’ve always enjoyed that like i’ve always been like in athletic and sports and a competitor so

i’ve always got a kick out of that and i really don’t have the answer to like how to combat it but just stay in your own

lane like figure out what you want like everyone’s desires are different and for me i want a lot like i want to go big i

don’t have anything really tying me down like i didn’t have kids at a young age like i know is a big thing i didn’t get

married or have a divorce where i had a big hardship in my life or anything crazy like that so i’m kind of full

steam ahead and love that next level but at the same time one thing i like i heard someone say recently every level

there is a new devil and that’s super true to where things just get harder like mentally things get tougher like

financially earnest money deposits on huge deals that you might not get you might lose been there done that so it’s

just finding like your like figuring out your gauge like risk or whatever that

looks like risk lifestyle like time with your family for example and like how far

can you push that needle before you need to tone it back so instead of like trying to compare yourself because like

we said it’s tough not to and tough not to come in on a higher level just find that inner piece and then that needs to

be where your goal is set and where your bar set and once you hit that you’re good all the other stuff is just extra

all the other stuff let people have that let them have their own happiness because i know a lot of those guys that

are not happy so that is a fact no that’s that’s so cool man and that’s kind of what i was hoping you would say

because sometimes i feel like people think that oh i don’t deserve to be in this room or if i’m if i don’t have the

flashy car if i don’t have the private plane you know it it’s too far out of reach it’s unrelatable but you know you

don’t have to want the same things that other people want but there’s always something you can learn from somebody else whether they have you know $20

million or whether they you know living in the house that they grew up in that they inherited from their parents and

they’re doing something else like there’s something you can learn from every single person that you encounter and putting yourself in rooms like that

though it gives you a better chance to kind of uplevel your skills and and often your mindset too so i want to you

were talking about bigger deals so we talked about the 30 single family i’m sure that five you figured out how to

continue to snowball that you you learned about debt you learned about cash out refinance you learned about burrs so now let’s talk about you got

into you got a multif family property and you got a storage so let’s unpack those yeah so uh that all kind of come

to fruition through the masterminds and through like higher level thinking and seeing people in other asset classes

doing bigger deals because where we’re at and one of the reasons i’ve now moved to austin is like getting uncomfortable

again like i love being uncomfortable i love being the new guy i love starting over and starting fresh with like no ego

involved no reputation and just go for it all over again so i’m really excited

about being here but it started in the first trip where me and you met in costa rica i come in a few days early an

action academy trip i come in a few days early and there was a couple guys there that i had no clue i was uh like fresh

on the scene not very active in the facebook group and all that and uh ben call was one of the guys who’s a coach

for you and i both right aren’t you with him yeah him and his wife michaela are great love them but and they encouraged

me to come on the show and stuff too they were like “man you need to go on aaron’s show.” things like that so it’s cool how it all goes full cycle but met

ben on that trip and uh he never talked about money he never talked about like what all he had done those first couple

days before everyone got there we just had a great ass time we’re in the costa rican jungle we went and scuba dived

together with freaking sharks like totally out of my comfort zone like stuff i’d never done in money or

anything it never came up once and then come to find out he’s one of the bigger guys in the group as you know and he’s

wellversed in triple net multif family storage and uh he had just on that trip

kind of put a bug in my ear about storage primarily and first and foremost but about storage and i just loved

everything he said about it just the passiveness of it compared to rental properties and all the that i deal

with as someone who self-manages all of our own properties and things like that and uh just kind of fell in love with

that asset last and then multif family that was just kind of a given like you usually go single to multi whether it’s

small multi large multi even in whatever your market you’re in that’s kind of your stepping stone but storage was just

something so outside of anything i had ever known or done so i give him credit for that and just the room in general

getting a different vibe of like okay there’s more than one way to skin a cat is what i call it so there’s a lot of

different ways to get to that end goal of financial freedom in single family is where i’m at currently and it’s going to

take a hell of a lot of those to get to where i want to be so how can i skip the line is what i tell people and people

what are masterminds about i was like dude you get in here you pay to be in these rooms you get all these knowledge

from people that are super ahead of you and i call it skipping the lunch line like as a kid the cool kid would get to

skip the lunch line so that’s what i call it like you have friends that are in the front of the line that you know

and you get to come in and skip a lot of those steps you get direct access to different resources like lenders or in

our case different models for like underwriting different methods different niches stuff like that and i was like

okay we’re skipping the lunch line again just in adult form so got into the rooms and started to skip the line i was like

okay and then i always tell people this i just like the way it tasted like the grass was greener on the other side and

i just like the way that first storage deal tasted and everything he had said and others had said rang true of like

okay it’s a lot less overhead you build these systems and kind of automate things and then you could do that at

scale and it was something i wasn’t very familiar with and something that you’re not physically putting your hands on

like the 30 single family every single week with the repairs and maintenance it was something that was a lot different

and new to me and love the way that it tasted essentially yeah it’s amazing yeah that concept of kind of speeding

things up i i know brian luben he calls it folding time right if you had a if you had an idea that you wanted to get

somewhere in three years it’s like asking yourself the question well what would it look like if i wanted to get there in six months or one year and then

you have to you know kind of adapt your strategy towards that and i’ve actually like that’s something that my wife and i

have been through recently because when we had three kids in three years go figure our life changed quite a bit our

financial world you know our our uh amount of income that we brought in and the expenses like totally flipped right

so the math of our lives and the strategies that we need to do between our w2 our investing that all changed

dramatically so we had a different version of folding time where it was like it was no longer an option to just

start you know keep stacking single family rentals and we were saving up for our down payments so like we couldn’t

save up like that anymore and then the cash flow generated from those wasn’t big enough to snowball into the type of

income that we need to support our our long-term goals so that’s how we ended up shifting strategies towards you know

in our case it’s residential assisted living which uh we’re going to start a business and then also you know develop

commercial real estate and uh it’s it’s interesting when you make those big leaps because it is a different set of

skills and it’s also a totally different mindset you mentioned ben call you know he is he’s one of our mentors and um you

know the way he navigates these kind of what to me feel like these big crisis moments like oh the lending you know the

terms change or you know this expense ballooned by $150,000 if you’re not accustomed to those type of swings and

those type of u you know speed bumps it’s enough to knock you out and uh i think one thing i like a lot that i

heard is uh from someone recently was once you get to this level or the next level or whatever level you want to deem

it like bennett said there everything becomes a line item and i was like what do you mean and he was like you just

have to just bypass all the negativity cuz it’s going to balance back out and at the end of the day it’s only a line

item and i was like man i like that everything’s just a line item it’s true that’s really good and i think you know

you only build the resilience to get through those things by surrounding yourself with people who have already done that type of thing and can hold

their composure together you can work with them directly as mentors or you can just be near them and through osmosis

we’re in action academy there’s 400 people in there and a good chunk of them are already doing deals at or above the

kind of level that we are trying to do and so just by osmosis and by watching people and people aren’t afraid to be

vulnerable there people are sharing you know we have a what we call wednesday wins where every wednesday people go and post you know something cool that they

did and it’s not like you have to close on a $5 million property in order to post a wednesday win you post anything

hey i i went for a walk with my kids yesterday and it was beautiful or you you started this uh episode by saying i

watched the texas sunset for one of the first times in my apartment it’s like that’s a freaking wednesday win but what

we also see are people sharing like the lessons they learned through the tumultuous and tough times and how they

dealt with that and i think those are that’s when you really feel the most out of the group you mentioned pods too so

these accountability groups but it’s so much more than accountability right and people can support and celebrate

milestones as they go but it’s when you feel like you lost something or you hit

a really really hard moment of resistance or you’re losing motivation like that’s when these things really get

called into play and i think that’s where on the investor journey whether you’re doing single family or whether

you’re doing bigger deals like you’re going to hit those speed bumps so it’s like how can you build the defense

system and the support system to get through those and i love what you said about the line item that’s a really good

way to think about it because if you just account for the fact that sometimes things are going to suck and you know

that in the long run you’re going to get through it you’re going to solve the problems even if you suffer a financial

loss in the long run you will win if you stay at the game and you keep solving problems and surrounding yourself with

good people i feel like that’s how you that’s how you you know outlast those who you know give up in moments like

that so you talk next just like stress and just like everything it’s a muscle

you build so the more reps the more times you take the losses the stronger you get to be able to adhere those

losses and they don’t affect you as much and that’s when they become normal and then the benefit of the groups like we

keep saying is like people on these higher levels those higher levels also come with higher level losses too and

then you’re quickly shook back and you’re like “okay that wasn’t so bad i could have flooded my 20 unit today or

whatever.” and all i did was had a tenant wreck one single family so it’s just a different perspective that you

get on things and that you get on life by being in these groups yeah and i think a category five hurricane slamming

into and destroying your town probably uh put things in perspective when you have these problems that pop up and they

they might not feel good but you know you can you can always hearken back to that memory and just think like oh god

well at least it wasn’t that right yep exactly awesome well you know we could probably go two full hours on this

because i know you got a lot to unpack in your story and i definitely want to have you on again soon but but i want to

round it out by just kind of sharing like you you’ve you’ve traced a lot of your story starting from that very very

early moment like eight bucks an hour you know solving problems helping someone redo their sops to now you’re

taking down storage facilities you just moved to austin so you’re clearly like trying to put yourself towards the

center of some of these networks of people that you’re um you know want to be around and you want to level up so

what is next for you what are what are your goals over the next you know one to two years so what we’re focused on i’ll

give it to you in a threeyear because that’s really how we have it casted out right now so in the next three years we

want to go from a 5 million to a $50 million portfolio so 10xing where we’re currently at and what that’s going to

look like is only focusing on bigger deals so one of the themes i set for the year was seven figure deals only we’ll

still buy a single family here or there to keep guys back home busy things like that that aren’t distractions anymore

because we have good project management we have good subcontractors to where investing in single family or flipping a

house is pretty passive now where that used to consume a lot of time so the focus is seven figure deals we’re under

contract right now on three storage facilities it’s a portfolio of three units we should be closing in the next

two weeks and it’s ironically enough a 1 million even deal so that ties in with

the theme there for the year and just stay in focus we wanted to close that in quarter 1 and then close two more two to

three million purchases over the next nine months of the year so we’re a month or two behind but we’ll catch up quick i

see how this game goes it’s definitely always a snowball and when you revisit these goals really frequent i’m big on

goal setting and like revisiting your goals and realigning your kpis and things like that it just so happens to

always happen like whatever you put in you’re going to get out and here we are right on in line with where we wanted to

be with the move to austin with this first big purchase of the year and it’s all because we stayed focused on that

one thing and or those few things and uh that’s where we’re going we’re going to continue building our team our next hire

will be a operations manager property manager assistant to maintain all our single family and then the operations

manager will be solely for storage and we’re trying to get a good footprint of where we could take down at least 5 to

10 facilities this year and over the course of next year in a certain region

so this person will be able to go around to each and do some of those weekly operations and things like that and kind

of have a hub but the other thing i like about storage the most is like now to where we built the systems and we’ve

built that muscle and i’m over here in austin now and things are going very well it’s given me the confidence that

we could buy these deals remote in pretty much anywhere and through action academy which we keep relating back to

guys in my storage pod they’re doing it so the proof of concepts there the confidence is there we’re all sharing

and really abundant when it comes to these similar systems we’re using these similar softwares all these similar

aspects of that particular asset class is right there and there’s people doing it so why not me at that point so that’s

kind of where we’re headed and that’ll be between storage and multif family and we’ll probably eventually get into some

triple net and development because of the construction background that’s one reason i love storage and these three

facilities we’re about to close on all have expansion opportunity and the thing i like the most about storage expansion

and development from my contracting background is when we build a house we’re dealing with typically 30 to 40

subcontractors from the dirt that gets laid in the yard to the cleaner that’s cleaning the house you’re managing and

dealing with 30 to 40 people versus four with storage your foundation your

electrical your mechanical and hvac and your metal and that’s it and then you’re dealing with all of your site planning

and engineering and things like that but that’s that’s my cup of tea so you’re

dealing with four versus 40 essentially so a 10x difference and also something

way more gratifying than just building one single house for me something that fulfills me a lot more so really excited

about growing that storage portfolio over the next three years that’s so cool man but i also want to call out that

it’s you know it’s the experience that you had at in the early running and the lessons and the foundation that you built everything you described in this

interview that led you to the point you’re at now where you can take that you know 10x vision and go from 5

million was it 5 million to 50 million is that the number yep that’s where we’re at yep amazing well i’m excited to

root you on i had a lot of fun sitting down and getting inside your head for about an hour here and i i’m sure the

audience did too if people want to find you and stay in touch with you or reach out and ask any questions where can they do that not super active on social media

but you could hit me on facebook at my name which will be in the show notes and then instagram is my last name fujier

fru ha legend l e g n d and i’m like fairly active on both but i’m quick to

respond to messages and something i always give you a lot of credit for in closing and i talked to you about the meetup the other night and i told

someone this before before i told you i was like i want to be more like aaron where i’m really active in engaging with

the community and like giving back cuz this community in action academy has given so much to me so i want to start

to get to the point where even if it’s just little wins like we post each week just giving feedback and then giving a

lot of these principles that i could instill in some of the newer comers that want to get into development or storage

or build a single family multif family portfolio just being able to get more active and post in there so that’s

something we are starting to do on both facebook and instagram we’re trying to put out daily content like small

financial tips like this week i have a series of why i moved to austin and it’s all about changing my environment

changing my perspective and that’s something that uh my coach and other people have challenged me to do is start

to post and like give a little more of this knowledge and kind of spread these seeds so you could catch me on both of

those and would love to get on a call with anyone and do a round two with you also love it yeah you’re welcome back on

this show anytime cuz there’s plenty of different directions we could take it from here uh but thank you again so much for coming on the show and um and we’ll

talk to you soon awesome man thank you 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 a fivestar rating and review this will go a long way to helping me reach more

listeners just like you thank you so much in advance