if you’re willing to think outside of the box don’t protect what you have because that’s usually where the pain comes from and my experience is

everything I left it behind was the right decision investing journey is not as linear as a lot of people make it out to be because your life circumstances

change you can’t solve a complex equation without a complex equation in front of you if you are willing to do

whatever it takes you actually tend to build more creatively and with more upside potential outside of a job i

think too that there’s a concept I’ve come to label it own your upside the ability to make quick decisions even if

they’re incorrect is often the most valuable skill set you can have

[Music] welcome back to the Hybrid Real Estate

Professional Podcast today I have my good friend Luke Gilbert joining me he was a previous podcast guest and he has

an incredible backstory i want to make sure we link to that podcast episode but ever since we met we hit it off really

well and we actually formed a small mastermind group as part of Luke’s community and we meet every other week

and we text pretty much every day trying to help each other advance in our respective businesses and we came up

with a cool idea today that we’re going to try out which is essentially some hot seat coaching luke is a very talented

coach and there’s a lot of stuff going on in my world that he thought let’s let’s set up some hot seat coaching let

him ask me some questions see if we can uncover some stuff i’m a coach myself but I always seek advice and perspective

from others and Luke is someone who I deeply respect his opinions so Luke excited to have you on the show thanks

for coming man thank you for that warm introduction Aaron and I think what’s exciting about this conversation today

is our mastermind is specifically about personal brand and then consider what

you’re going through a rebranding i think it’s more of a refocusing of your personal brand which it’s like this

scary place nobody wants to go i’ve been doing this thing forever how can I pivot it’s really like you pivot because you

as a person are the brand and the growth requires pivoting

100% and you know that I’ve faced a little bit of resistance personal like friction in myself as I try and figure

out how to present what I’m doing compared to what I have been doing before and so it’s definitely been a a

point of friction and a point of growth that I’ve had to really work on so yeah definitely a lot to peel back there yeah

and I don’t think that’s unique to you that’s the beautiful thing about it everybody watching this is going to relate to that like we’re all trying to

build a brand and the mistake we always make is we call it something else and try to grow it without a focus of

personal brand so then it’s like personal brand gives you permission to do other things too in fact it’s

expected of a personal brand so that hey I’ve been working on this thing for a long time i don’t want to just leave it

alone that’s a trap right you’re going through that growth right now of actually you you have to level up

100% where do you want to take this let me ask you this what we’re prefacing we’re I’m just assuming everybody knows

you and what you got going on bro how what is it that you’re in the middle of

yeah so just some context for anyone who might be listening for the first time we my wife and I own eight rental

properties across three states the foundation of our real estate investing background came during a very busy

season of life we’re both working full-time we were entering the family building phase which we’re right in the

thick of right now means building a new family literally building our family so as we were building our rental portfolio

we also started having children in rapid succession and we had three kids in a in less than a three-year period and so how

does that work that’s twins right yes if you’re if for anyone doing math out there

Yeah aggressive there were there were twins in there so we had our daughter in 2021 and then we had identical twin boys

at the end of 2023 so our to answer your kind of question about like context and

what I’m working on now our lives changed dramatically during the course of that transformation of bringing kids

into the world our financial profile changed our household monthly expenses

and also just like our financial goals shifted too as we really tried to

understand and grapple with what will it take to live the type of life that we want to live with three children set

ourselves up for success set them up for success and all that goes into that so I think there was a personal evolution a

bit of realizing that we’re very proud of the portfolio we built and the manner in which we built it and all the lessons

we learned but there was this shift of we have to solve a different problem now and because of that it moved us towards

looking at different asset classes for a while we were exploring commercial real estate self- storage like trying to

follow the traditional evolution of a lot of people move from single family into commercial real estate but none of

it was really clicking or resonating until we found this residential assisted living which is now what our our kind of

big bet on ourselves is on a groundup development for two residential assisted

living homes in the Houston area where we live and so there’s plenty that went into that but that’s the evolution that

we’ve been working on over the past 9 10 months and the way we talk about it and

how that influences personal brand is also a big that’s honestly one of the things that I’ve struggled with the most

because it feels so disconnected from what we were previously focusing on so two things you

said there one the first I want to hammer is like solving a different set of problems can you describe those i

experienced that in my own life but I want to hear from you like what what was

the problem that shifted like specifically if you can yeah the majority of it was financial to be

honest when I say that cuz obviously anybody logically knows when you have children a lot of things change but what

the magnitude of that change and the window of time the narrow window of time in which all that change occurred was

what was really jarring for us so one kid we could start to figure out how to balance that in with our budget we were

both still able to work full-time my wife did take a little bit of time off but that was something we were able to do but then she went back to her job and

but then when you throw two more kids on top of that the the constraints that you have on your time your energy your

emotional bandwidth just Luke I know you have you did this twice right you have I think it’s a nine and a 10-year-old and

then I’m just going off memory here but you had two kids yeah backtoback two separate stints and so there’s a very

intense kind of pressure and adjustment of making sure that you’re able to be a

good parent while also trying to make ends meet and so the biggest change is the financial equation we went from dual

income no kids being able to save aggressively and even build some of our rental portfolio just by saving and then

snowballing all of our rental profits into more rentals and that strategy evaporated when we had kids because we

couldn’t afford that anymore there were disruptions in our work and then we even moved across the country once we found

out we were having twins because in Washington state where we were living before the cost of child care alone if

we wanted daycare was going to be about $7,000 a month dang which is more than

like double that’s probably two additional mortgages in addition to the actual cost of living there and so I

think that landscape changed and it just forced us like the math for what we needed to get out of both our jobs and

our side income was completely different so the strategy had to change to fit

here’s what I love about that is I meet people all day long and they’re like “We’re going to have one kid because financially or we’re going to have two

kids because financially.” And what I’ve learned is like you can’t solve a

complex equation without a complex equation in front of you and so many people play it safe and the reality is

okay so you had to move to where’d you move to houston you had to move to Houston was that good or bad good in a

lot of ways in the sense that I do have family here so we have family in Washington too though so it was a there

was a lot of tough personal dynamics honestly 2023 was probably the hardest year of our lives second only to 2024

after the twins were actually born is that because you had to make yeah very high impact very personal decisions so

when we talk about the life cycle of being an investor yeah it’s in if you look chronologically at the order in

which we bought and sold real estate and some of the decisions we made from an investment standpoint what you don’t see

on those timelines is the emotions that went into making these high impact personal decisions a lot of the

circumstance of our investing journey was driven by our personal lives and so I always like to say investing journey

is not as linear as a lot of people make it out to be because your life circumstances change and in our case

like that decision to move across the country has largely been good but there’s not without trade-offs we left

one part of the family to be closer to another and to be able to afford to live

where we live right right so that was the calculation is where can we actually plant roots and live out the next 18 to

20 years in a place that we can afford that has the conveniences and access to everything that we need so again it was

a personal decision that also then had ripple effects on how we approach our investing journey too yeah i think that

the old adage focus on your income not your budget comes to mind here’s what I learned is we had our first kid in San

Francisco and then we had our second kid in San Francisco in very close succession and so it wasn’t twins but we

were 13 months apart or something crazy like that and I wasn’t planning on either one of those babies so the

realities of life set in and then it’s like all right if you’re willing to think outside of the box don’t protect

what you have right don’t protect what you have cuz that’s usually where the pain comes from is how could I possibly

leave this behind and my experience is everything I left behind was the right decision and moving forward like I I

ended up in Idaho for all the same reasons you went to Houston and California didn’t work for us anymore

but the reality of moving with the same circumstances was also a challenge for me because no matter where you are your

job’s probably not enough and then also what you think is a lot of money probably isn’t and then if you’ll blow

that stuff up and just let it be the infinite possibility arena have as many

kids as you can because the pressure that it puts on you makes you rethink your business and like for me the answer

I wanted to hear from you Aaron and I’m not saying it’s the right answer it’s just my answer is time because yeah

financially oh the financial part sure but that really comes down to a time equation it’s like if you had more time

you’d make more money and like for me I’ve had to rethink about how I do everything because with four kids like

we made the decision to move where no family was like that was because I made

an opportunity decision and we decided if we were willing to remove the constraints of where people we know

already live what would that look like and the upside opportunity there was enormous so

it’s a good call out and I think too the underlying kind of backdrop here is that

I’ve worked full-time this entire time like I took a couple breaks for paternity leave when the kids were born

for the most part like I’ve held a W2 job through COVID i even switched industries right so I worked in the

concerts industry for about 10 years and then COVID shut that down very quickly even during that stretch like I had

about two months between jobs and I full-time all day every day was applying for jobs working my network right in the

middle of COVID work for the consulting company that I work for now and have maintained that across multiple other

big personal moves and through all the children and so I think to your point on time has always been my biggest

constraint even more so than financial but it’s one of those things where I know you and I have worked through this

in the group we’re in but which avenues whether Whether it’s real estate whether it’s my coaching business whether it’s

leaning more into my W2 whether it’s this new project like which of those avenues is my time getting the best

return without sacrificing the things I’m not willing to negotiate on like family time that has been the ever

struggle ever evolving struggle that I faced is to figure out the answer to that question because there have been

different times where I placed my focus and my marginal effort outside of work on certain things that did not

necessarily pan out the way that I intended and so I’ve had to make those pivots and try and be conscious of of

how I’m spending that time you are right time is the ultimate resource more so than money but I think they are

unfortunately linked more than we can separate at least at this chapter in our

life i think in your life specifically because I think at the end of the day that is a decision and I think that hats

off to you first of all for being stability in your family because I know how hard that can be and some to to my

men out there with W2s you get a lot of pressure to quit but at the end of the day you’re doing what you got to do and

I get it you’re a dangerous young man Aaron you unemployed would be probably a higher earning potential than you

employed so the decisions we make around safety sometimes ties time to money and

I I’m going through some of that myself as I build out a coaching business i’m very involved in that it is hour in

dollar out scenario it doesn’t have the same scalability as some of the other businesses I’ve been successful in but

mine is also in order to create some stability and figure out how to level up in an environment like it’s we’re going

to solve that problem i’m rambling a little bit but we’re not solving the problem that you described as much as we

are assessing today’s variables and working with what we got because your dynamics are going to change man and the

reality is you don’t just set it and forget it in this world with growing children yep no and this is where I know

you and I have had many conversations about this i think it’s a great topic to spend a couple minutes on but the idea of like where does a W2 job and a a

steady standard paycheck fit into the equation and kind of one of the pieces

that has been a I don’t know if surprise is the right word but an outcome that I

wasn’t expecting was that essentially by taking on the project we’re taking on right now it eliminated the need for my

wife to go back after multiple pretty rapidly recurring disruptions in her

career happened when she had her she she took some time off with our daughter then she went back to work then she took

time off with the twins and then she was faced with the decision do I go back to work or do we lean into something bigger

and I’m grateful that by taking on the project that we’re taking on assuming all continues to progress as planned she

won’t have to go back to find a steady W2 corporate job so in this in the grand

scheme of our plan for our life and our family the optionality of not having to

go to a W2 to if you don’t want to is a very high priority especially while our kids are young because we do recognize

too that right now that they’re three and a half and one and a half and there’s a window of time probably

between age five and let’s call it 12 where they’re actually interested in being around us and we still are their

default people that they want to spend time with yes they’ll have friends but it won’t be the same as when they’re teenagers and they probably don’t want

as much to do with us and so we’re conscious of trying to be accessible and available during that time so the place

that W2 and all that fits into providing that flexibility and freedom I think it is a bigger part of the equation than

like we’re considering it as an asset that stability and dependability versus a liability but I also want to

acknowledge your comment that by occupying the majority of your time during a Monday through Friday with a W2

it also puts a cap on the potential of your ideas outside of that so like if

you unshackle and you want to build a side business and you can spend that 40 hours doing outreach and collaborations

and other things that could grow that business I agree that there is um you do cap your potential as well those are

just some kind of loose thoughts I have on it no I like it and I just to touch on it with you like what I noticed you

doing there is a framing of things as assets or liabilities and the reality is

like we all do that your W2 is what you label it to be and if it’s what you need right now then it’s what you need right

now but that’s a decision you make too because a guy like you with sales potential an organized approach and the

experience you have in real estate like you could catapult past your current level of income and I think that’s the

risk most people aren’t willing to take and family makes it very simple to point back to that risk and say actually what

we need right now is stability and I would say that’s not always the right answer because to your point scheduling

time with your kids is not the same thing as being infinitely available and beyond 12 they probably need you as much

or more than they needed you when that you were they were kids and I’m running into that personally of like my kids got

simple for a minute my older ones and I thought we had come through something together and like the next chapter was

going to be easier but it was just different and then I also then went back in to have more kids with my wife

because we were like wow this does become manageable and the reality is it

doesn’t and we multiplied into four and I’ve got babies that need something and I’ve got these pre-teens that need

something different but it is not as simple as well we’ve moved through the heavy lifting of time a a lotment to

children like and I’m not saying you’re saying that Aaron this isn’t a push back on what you said it’s just as I relate

to what you’re going through it you can be careful with the way that you frame

opportunity and liability because the reality is you could be making a million

dollars a year instead of a salaried job and that would be a much better allocation of risk and time and I think

that I will add to that cuz I agree with the sentiment 100% and by labeling it the I am i also think that there’s a

re-evaluation of that has to occur pretty regularly especially when things are moving as quickly as they are we’re

launching this project of extreme magnitude where in theory in two years from now things will look very different

in many ways both financially operationally like our vision our connection to our family’s purpose the

all these things aligning where 24 months from now I if I’m reflecting

exactly the way I’m reflecting right now that would be a disservice to myself right we have to start acknowledging when variables change how does the

framing change so I think that even though right now I perceive that it’s a bigger asset to be in my W2 at this

exact moment that we’re recording this but that doesn’t mean that has to be the case one year from now two years from

now five years from now and I do think that kind of acknowledging that point this is one of the blessings of having

an entrepreneurial inclination is to see where those different thresholds are

like when can I have enough flexibility through real estate or entrepreneurship that I no longer feel that way and then

I can make an informed decision at that time whether it’s still the right move for me but I’ve made it no secret I

think for right now like work optional is my goal it’s not a burning desire to

make a change right as soon as humanly possible the other element which sounds like a boring copout when we’re talking

about all this cool mindset stuff but bankability i think that’s something for real estate investors to really remember

and especially as we go after this gargantuan commercial SBA loan you have

to make the bank itself want to lend to you and then you also have to comply with SBA requirements and the criteria

they look for we’re trying to get groundup construction and a startup business funded in the same project with

several million dollar loan components and the W2 your

relevant experience and history all that stuff is a factor and the W2 is a big

one so I would say even if I wanted to make that decision right this second at the time of this recording it would

pretty much single-handedly tank our project if I did totally get that and I guess the sill you’re successfully

selling yourself on the variables because should you have had experience in this space already that probably

looks better than your what your W2 income cuz there’s this moment where your ability to borrow against your

income is its own cap and you break through that at a certain point in any investment circle where like all right

it’s no longer about my earning potential it’s the project’s success that they lend money for so the cycle of

I hear you and I also agree that you’re safely stepping through chapters of your

investment career which is fine dude i’m not even criticizing and I’m just making clear that the way that I see it is the

variables are and you’re allowing them to be and it’s not that it couldn’t be any different it could be very different

and anybody listening to this don’t set small goals because you’ll get them and I’m not even saying you’re doing that

Aaron i’m just like W2 is historically the worst way to earn because of

taxation it may feel safe but I’m not saying that it is yeah I feel you and I

think it’s all a choice everyone has that ability to make a choice i just know that they’re particularly

within the average listener to this show and then the program that we run we try and make it a choice that you don’t have

to make you don’t have to leave your job to find success in real estate especially if your job is something you enjoy and if you do want if you do want

that path I don’t think there’s anything right or wrong it’s all individualized and I think that’s part of the point

you’re trying to make too is that Well I appreciate you saying that because I want to touch on that piece if you’re

doing the job you have because the organization allows you to be fully yourself then stay with your job if you

are framing it as a safe asset I would argue that the safety of a W2 position

is questionable and what feels safe sometimes is a very low ceiling if not

you could be fired tomorrow so this idea that I couldn’t earn without I’m like my

experience is this if you are willing to do whatever it takes you actually tend

to build more creatively and with more upside potential outside of a job make

somebody else rich or make yourself rich bet on yourself that’s what I and that will always be my encouragement to you

Aaron and I’m not trying to break your audience’s mind around should you have a job or not the answer isn’t clear i’m

just saying the frame of stability is often the wrong an incorrect lens

because there is no stability in job you could be fired tomorrow and then the qualifications as a employee are not as

valuable as the qualifications as a business owner even if the bank is looking at you success in the space

you’re moving in is easier to lend against than you’re a W2 distracted person trying to take on a multi-million

dollar project as a side hustle yeah no and that’s a really good dynamic too to call out right is that we basically

carved out my wife’s primary allocation of her time towards this project and we

have my W2 as a financial backs stop so from the bank’s perspective we’ve created a successful setup for this

business to grow if we were both full-time W2 to the point you just made

it would be really hard to say that we could succeed in a business that’s going to require at a minimum one person’s

full-time effort and energy if not multiple so there are definitely

trade-offs i would also say too that I think about being overindexed on any one income stream whether it’s your W2 or

anything else is a dangerous proposition so to your point if you’re all in on W2

and you’re a dual income household each person’s making 150 grand you might be in a great position at that moment but

the second one of those gets disturbed or eliminated or whatever may happen it

creates a huge issue and if you’re overly indexed and overly dependent on those one or two income streams the

effect of one going away is much greater so that’s one of the reasons that for the last six seven years we focus on

building a stream of income through rental properties we focus on spreading out some of our wealth and the where

it’s held and where it’s preserved and where it’s growing in different channels that are not just our 401k i’m a huge

believer in that even if you have a W2 that you enjoy never become too overindexed on it and that’s part of why

real estate and small business like those are great vehicles but it’s finding the right ones because it’s it

is challenging at some point you run out of hours in the day it is challenging to succeed at all those things at the same

time and I think the final point I’d make on it is that there will come a point at which it is undeniable that

your W2 is constraining your potential more than if you were not in it and you

could bet on your potential by making that decision before you have evidence of that like you could say what you’ve

told me which is that Aaron if you didn’t have a job I think you could not only replace but exceed your income in a

relatively small timeline just by repurposing all that effort and energy and maybe that’s true but there’s also

you can build things slow and steady to where you have proof of concept and that if only I leaned in further into this

existing thing that I’ve already built then it will achieve that have a more direct line of sight into when that

potential point is again that’s just another way that I think about that yeah and I liked it you’re building through

chapters in your life which is healthy man it’s And it’s a good segue into the actual conversation we’re supposed to

have today so you’re in the event space and COVID shows up and you pivot and you

go into consulting because what you learned in the event space was an applicable skill set that brought you

into consulting around organization and maybe it still has a very event vibe

whatever it is that you’re doing but rather than focus on what it that is I’m like you also acknowledge that by

building another income stream like semi-passive income stream on the side

you had an opportunity beyond a W2 to create wealth for your family and actually maybe the most stable thing you

own is the controlled asset of your portfolio is that about right yeah it is

and I think too that there’s a concept I always I’ve come to label it own your

upside and it was based on this idea that in the entertainment industry I was doing really cool high impact things

high impact is more important to me than cool i was working on some of the biggest shows in the world i had a very

behindthe-scenes look not only just at the venue that’s not the part I care about but I was in the contracts like I

was the one helping redline contracts i was the one at the show talking to the tour managers i was reconciling these

multi-million dollar ticketing audits looking through expenses like even doing some real-time negotiation like tons of

incredible skills that served me very well in the context of my current W2 job

and have served me well in real estate and so I think it was actually I know you like to make the point of like when

you’re uncomfortable is when you usually make some of you most groundbreaking change in your life but when co forced

me to find a different career track it also forced me to evaluate I had felt

like in my head like all my skills were hyper specialized to the music industry and nobody would ever value those the

way that a music industry job would but it forced me in that two or three months between jobs I had to go and basically

do an audit of all my skills what do I have that I can add value to other people in the world and in the

marketplace right what can I what skills and personality whatever it is can I

exchange value with someone else for a paycheck and opportunity to grow and it led me towards consulting and it was a

very non-obvious transition at the time but in hindsight now I can see the through line so I think the point I’m

trying to make here is that people don’t always realize the skill set that they’re already sitting on and how that

might attach to a new chapter or a new venture and so that was a discovery

element when I switched careers yeah and it it took the disruption of co for you to make that move and it could have been

you clung to the safety of where you already were without that kind of disruption i guess that’s tying it back

to the children piece every time I have a kid I can’t imagine what it’s going to do to my life i just know it’s going to

be crazy so if it were to if we were to have another child I would prepare less and I would react with more agility to

the current circumstance because I learned with the fourth kid what my time constraints were going to be and I don’t

get to just grind it out anymore the challenge I have is the stability I built as a real estate agent is uh very

sporadic timeintensive activity with a high yield but the challenge there is

you when you don’t have control of indefinite availability is a currency of

real estate agency so as that shifted I had to shift my focus but what I’m

excited about is the next like tectanic shift like when the when it gets so

disruptive that you can’t do like you there is no way to do what you were doing before you tend to rebrand you

tend to find you you take inventory of what you have and where you’ve come and

then you move into the next space and it’s like a rebirth it’s like the energy that comes from that it’s not as simple

as now I’m successful in this next thing in fact the growth is really the most exciting part of any journey anyway

there’s if there’s no arrival it’s I want meteors to hit me on a regular basis so that I can have to grow through

that because at this point like I I joke all the time that I don’t need a job

until I can’t get one like the skill set I’ve built in sales and business ownership dude I wouldn’t take any

position period but if you were to offer me one it would have to be CEO because

it’s the only place I feel like I get to be fully exposed in growth and as a

creative professional here you got your W2 you’re building this side project

which is an eight property portfolio with significant momentum you did that quickly the velocity of that move was

appropriate with market timing and I think one of the things you cling to now is I learned how to do this i want to

teach that’s a coaching platform that you’ve built with marginal success there because the industry shifted on us and

it became entry-level investing became a lot harder because it’s capital intensive and the cost of money just

doesn’t that problem doesn’t want to solve itself against stubborn pricing and rather than rather than stay there

and wait for the next wave you’re leveling up what did you learn building

that eight property portfolio that qualifies you for this next crazy thing you’re doing yeah so I I guess kind of a

couple things there right one is we did I built alongside my partner Nathan we built the remote real estate academy

which is something I’m very proud of it encapsulates all the lessons that I learned all the lessons he learned we

have very aligned philosophy on again this idea of the kind of hybrid real estate professional archetype you can

work you can have a family you can balance it together and still make enormous consequential wealthb

buildinging decisions for you and your family so I feel fully resolved in

having spent the time to encapsulate all that into a package that is now available if people want it we have a

course we do still have our community platform and then we have a more intensive kind of one-on-one or

two-on-one in this scenario coaching program and thankfully yourself the

other two gentlemen in our mastermind group and a lot of other people that I love and trust have told me that no

nobody can ever take that away from me the experience of having gone through it and the ability to have served the

people that we did serve and I’m not in any way shape or form shying away from that or slamming the door but to your

point I am trying to give myself permission to evolve into a new exciting chapter where we are focused pretty

clearly on residential assisted living i know we barely talked about that as an asset class and I don’t think that’s

really the point of this conversation but suffice it to say residential assisted living comes with a whole new set of challenges it’s a business

there’s a real estate component but it is largely a business you’re operating 24/7 in most cases you’re serving

vulnerable populations we have two houses in Vegas that are leased to a company that provides services for

adults with developmental disabilities and then the two homes we’re building here in Houston are going to be licensed

for memory care serving people with Alzheimer’s and dementia so to even equate those to a standard single family

rental property there’s not a ton of direct parallel on the business side with that said I have also gained a lot

of experience dealing with and understanding how to work with banks building relationships across the

country hundreds of people that have been built into my network over the past six seven years I’ve been doing this

including mentors people I’ve looked up to that have made the graduation from single family rentals into commercial

deals i’ve invested in other people’s deals where I’ve gotten visibility behind the scenes into how these kind of

syndicated offerings work and and then I’ve also worked with a series of coaches myself to prepare me for this

moment i’m in multiple mastermind groups luke and I are in a group together i’m in a residential assisted living

specific mastermind group we hired a mentor who’s built these exact two buildings who’s going to work the entire

project life cycle with us from development to actually booting up and operating the business they’re going to be invested as minority partners so we

if anything almost have too many perspectives versus not enough like

we’re absolutely trying to recognize what we don’t know and where we need help but also balance that with the bias

for action which I think Luke and I you and I share that where we are pretty good at taking action and you know

sometimes if anything you just got to figure out how to calibrate so that you’re not being too hasty but you’re

also not getting caught in analysis paralysis probably one of the hardest skills in investing entrepreneurship

whatever it is is to not get caught in that messy middle where you know what you want to do but you haven’t done it

and you’re just looking for constant validation in order to make a decision so I think that’s we’ve followed the

signals where we’ve seen them we’re drawing parallels from our past experience where applicable but we’re also not trying to draw parallels that

don’t exist there’s a lot of new stuff that if we draw exclusively on our prior

experience it won’t apply and if anything it might mislead us into the wrong decisions i don’t know there’s a

roundabout answer to your question but that’s beautiful and I think it’s uh worth touching on in there is this idea

of the fourth dimension which is time cost because I’ve run into this in a lot of areas of my business the ability to

make quick decisions even if they’re incorrect is often the most valuable

skill set you can have and why some entrepreneurs thrive and some fail because there’s the time cost but

sometimes time actually has a cost like other than I wasted my time on that you

can be holding a project bleeding financially and having to make fast decisions to move the project to

completion for the refinance or the exit strategy of some kind so I can appreciate that probably your consulting

builds you for that as well but coming out of like how the bridge I heard

between where you were and where you’re going is residential real estate and then you specifically mentioned the

differential in business plan like why I think if I could identify one of the

things I see as a talent of yours it’s same reason you built an outofstate investment portfolio and a coaching

platform around that is assessing opportunity and moving into those markets maybe that’s the bag of tricks

that brings you over into assisted living but how did you choose that

yeah so a few things one there’s a personal connection so my wife her grandparents both had Alzheimer’s my

grandmother had dementia her father had early onset dementia and in all these

scenarios they were in these big smelly facilities that were everyone was overworked underpaid pretty unhappy

environment and not somewhere that you felt good when you left you went to visit your family member you’re glad you

got to see them but then when you’re leaving you’re like “Oh my god I wish there was something better.” And so I think that personal experience really

combined with learning that there’s residential assisted living which is the antithesis of that big box big smelly

facility that idea in and of itself ignited a passion especially my wife who has a very deep personal connection she

was in her 20s when what happened with her dad and that stuck with her and so having some fire behind the idea is what

it’s going to take to succeed in an industry that’s 24/7 has all these operational challenges and complexities

so the first element is the personal connection and the second is trend behind this industry is undeniable the

population is aging faster than we have the capacity to serve them there’s already a million bed shortage across

the US for memory care and residential assisted living and that trend is only

set to worsen over the decades to come there’s 77 million baby boomers I believe is the number in the US and

we’re in one of the more populated cities in the country and we’ve done a ton of research to validate that the

area that we plan to build not only currently has the demand but that demand is forecast to increase and so we spent

nine or ten months all I think we’re coming up on 10 months of pre-arch before we even went under contract and

then since we’ve been under contract all the different steps to validate not only

the demand but the viability of the project right working with builders architects civil engineers all that

stuff and so it’s been a combination of things that have gotten us to the point where we feel like you had an idea you

work as hard as you possibly can to validate that idea we’re also socializing it and getting feedback from

other people by sharing about this project and hearing how personal of a connection there is just about anyone

has had some experience with family members in old age growing to have to

require medical attention or some accommodations beyond what they can offer and so it just it hits close to

home if not at home for just about everyone we’ve talked to so the validation is coming from all directions

which then gives us the resolve to make such a concentrated bet knowing that it

also has long-term potential in the future if we get this off the ground right now we’re being viewed as first-time operators totally

understandably and so there’s a big uphill battle to just prove that we’re credible enough to the outside world

whether it’s the banks investors whomever but once we can get this up and running and prove our operational track

record then we can also scale this to continue to serve that ever growing

demand and do it in a way that fits our family’s vision and I think it just it

combines all the things that we love which is being able to make an impact and also have a financial opportunity

that can afford us all that flexibility that time freedom everything we’ve been talking about it just checks all the

boxes in that regard if that makes sense yeah it’s really exciting to hear like where the idea was birthed so if I like

to game it out it’s like you guys were talking about the challenges of your own experiences in this particular space and

then my guess is your opportunity gears started turning and you started doing some research on the subject which

showed your wife that there was better than an opportunity for you guys to get involved here is that about right yeah

and if you think about it I mentioned earlier that I explored self- storage larger multif family like I was I had my

eyes open for a strategy that could work given the new constraints of our lives

three young children her not working a full-time W2 so instead of dual income no kids we had a new landscape and so I

explored a bunch of different stuff but none of it clicked the way this did because we didn’t have the personal tie-in we didn’t see that overwhelming

demand like the barriers to entry were a bit lower in some of those other spaces where I actually believe that by

committing as hard as we have and if we’re willing to do what most other people aren’t willing to do it gives us

a greater chance of success especially if we have passion behind it so there’s just a lot of stuff sliding into place

that makes this the obvious path for us given all the circumstances yeah yeah

and I would say it’s an interesting thing too because you do point back to family constraints but also single and

family investing and investing in single family rentals it lacks luster at this point too so it’s almost like

economically the circumstance of opportunity have changed and your willingness to to move forward anyway

has you looking for opportunity cuz I think storage has happened already too i know a good guy who owns who manages

storage and they’re having issues like everybody is because of the cost of

money and vacancy rates so like it’s an interesting thing to hear you tie it

back to your family but also you’re moving with economic tides to some

degree like you’re aware enough to know that you can’t just do what you’ve been doing and agile enough to identify an

area where the business model is currently working especially around demand yeah I agree wholeheartedly the

tide has shifted and there’s a lot of things that worked five six years ago that don’t work as well now the only

thing I would add to that though is that right now we need to make a change in

how we’re pursuing our real estate journey due to some very specific individual circumstances in addition to

the macro changes i still believe wholeheartedly that if somebody is planning to work 20 30 more years in

their W2 they have a stable income and a career path that they like and maybe they already have stock holdings and

like they’re stable and feeling good and they’re not looking for real estate to be the answer to every one of their

problems single family real estate especially long distance when you can build it in a market that fits your

goals and maybe stack a few of those for a period of time and then hold them for the long term that’s still an incredible

strategy i don’t care if their interest rates are 9% or 3% there’s still a lot of merit in that strategy which is why I

still believe that it’s important to work with new people that are entering the space teach them those skills

because if you cut straight to trying to do some crazy project with a ton of moving pieces but you have no background

I do think that it’s easier to make the rookie cost of entry mistakes when the

stakes themselves are lower than if you were to try and unfortunately make some of them i think some mistakes are

unavoidable some are avoidable but the unavoidable ones come with experience of just doing and if you the first time you

make those mistakes is on a $10 million project where you have a bunch of investor capital that’s not going to be good if you make some mistakes with your

own money on a $100,000 house in Ohio not that I have anything against those houses but like the stakes are lower and

you might be able to absorb that lesson and arm yourself with it for the future so that when you are stewarding other

people’s capital and you are taking on bigger projects you don’t have to make the mistake then so that’s just the

nuance I would add yeah and I love it cuz to qualify too I am currently investing in residential real estate as

a small investor it’s not that it’s the wrong time it’s just that it is also

there are bigger plays out there in and the business model around residential

can be reconsidered i knew a lot of people moved into the short-term space it didn’t make sense to me i wasn’t

doing that and I’m not saying it was the right or wrong decision i’m just like you always got to be looking at the

opportunity that you’re focused on and see if the yield is worth the squeeze and I think there is this moment where

you’re moving into another business model because potentially you need higher yield for your time in you’ve

qualified at a decent hour rate I’m sure and now it’s like it needs to be better than that for us to pursue it so that’s

a leveling up but also tying it back to the circumstance it’s like babies show up and you got to rethink the way that

you’re doing business and the economy shifts and you got to rethink the way that you’re doing business it could be

you’re so stable in a high paid W2 position that the money coming out of

that project buys you a single family home every year no matter what no matter your market but I would say that’s not

necessarily an exciting thing and that’s not necessarily the most efficient way to

build wealth in real estate i’m in Detroit right now working with Travis you should get him on this show he does a very unique product in a very

compelling market i bought a duplex for $45,000 i was legitimately minimizing

risk by capital in I’m lending money in Ohio to Nate i don’t know if you’ve met Nate he’s on X crushing it out there and

a very hardworking young man but same thing the amount of money he requires is low enough that it’s it’s worth the risk

and I’m learning in these low-risk environments after having built a management company and a stable

investment base here in Idaho so I’m not saying stay away from residential i’m

just acknowledging the fact that you are leveling up my friend you are you’re going through the growing pains of

moving up in your investment career and you reluctantly almost because you want

to help those people get started and you don’t have to stop doing that but I think kudos to you because as you lead

into this next business model it will it’s like music translated into

consulting it’s like single family translates very well into an understanding of how to navigate that

next space and you’re pioneering for your coaching group yeah no I I have always appreciated that

perspective it’s been hard what I realized is that I basically wasn’t giving myself permission to evolve in

that regard at least as a personal branding and how I present myself in public and that was something that I

know we’ve talked about in private a lot is the way I talk about my experience

the way we are sharing our journey as we go it has been interesting and more

challenging than I thought mostly due to my own head than anything else to lean

into the narrative change because it feels random in certain ways but for all the reasons we discussed on this show it

was born out of opportunity it was born out of circumstance it’s born from a genuine desire to have the impact we

want to have in the world like there there are plenty of reasons why we’re

doing what we’re doing and the more I get out there and talk about it and the more I get comfortable with talking

about it the easier that is for me to see but it did start with actually giving myself permission to evolve

instead of just trying to constrain myself to the narrative that I think I should be talking about which frankly is

an ego thing anyway and I whether you think of it that way or not which of course I wasn’t that’s what it boils

down to so I think it’s release releasing myself from the pressure of my own ego and then giving myself some

permission to evolve yeah and here’s what I say to everybody who’s watching this you do not need permission to

reinvent yourself you don’t need it and the reality is if you’re living in some version of you that has already existed

like it’s time it is time and nobody like people are not paying attention the way you think that they are and a pivot

is sometimes the most interesting thing you’re going to do it might be the reason people start paying attention so

to sit there in some old clothes acting like it’s the only way anybody would recognize you I think is a really it’s

undervaluing your actual person and your evol your evolution is the only thing that interests me and I’m saying that to

you Aaron but I’m saying that to everybody else like the only thing you’re doing that’s interesting is

evolving so you don’t need permission to make a drastic change in your life and if you’re employed and you shouldn’t be

or you have a business owner you should be employed like do it you know what I

mean like the fourth dimension is time man if you’re wasting time you’re wasting a lot of valuable resources so

stuck is a choice it’s not a position it’s a damn choice amen my friend it’s been a lot of

fun being on this side of the hot seat i have always appreciated you as not only a friend but as an incredible coach you

bring you’ve always brought great perspective especially when I’m struggling with stuff and so it’s fun to

do this on air and I’ll be very interested to hear some feedback if anybody learned anything either about me

or my situation or maybe something that they connected to their own personal situation from this episode would love

us people could drop a comment or reach out but Luke where can people find you if they want to connect with you I’m

currently focused on building my personal brand on Instagram so lukew is my handle and I do as much as I

can to share my growth and help grow people on that channel but you could always find Aaron he’ll put you in touch

with me i love talking real estate and I love talking investment so if there’s anything I could do to help any of you

guys out there please get in touch and for whatever it’s worth Luke and I met through Twitter DMs like what a year and

a half ago probably that that started a great friendship and a great relationship so don’t discount the

quality of relationships you can build on social media you just got to have a little bit of courage and initiative to

reach out yeah and don’t undervalue your network the people you know right now might be big players in your future and

I have a principle of focus on the relationship aaron and I have gotten to know each other that way there’s no

exchange here as much as an exchange of ideas and an exchange of appreciation and an exchange of vulnerability so give

that you can’t buy community you can’t join community without giving community

so if you’re out there banging your head against social media you’re probably either not being generous or open enough

and start doing those things because literally I’ve made some of my best friends in the space online which was a

surprise for me i was a door-to-door salesman I believe an in-person interaction but when you can that was my

own stuck place that was my own personal brand evolution that I’ve had to go through so you don’t need permission and

lean into the network you’re building like a real human being and you’d be amazed at what happens i love it man

thanks again for coming on we’ll have to do it again thanks for having me yeah I’m counting on it take care 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 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