Mark Schinski, CEO of Capital Companion, shares his journey from psychology and engineering studies to building a successful real estate investment firm with his business partner Joe. His background in construction combined with strategic partnerships has enabled him to tackle challenging properties that other investors avoid, turning the "worst houses" into profitable investments.
• Background in psychology, engineering, and 20 years in construction provides unique perspective on real estate investing
• Started as project manager for luxury custom home builder before launching his own general contracting company
• Met business partner Joe through a mentor who recognized their complementary skills would make a perfect team
• Uses his construction expertise to take on properties in terrible condition that most investors would avoid
• Emphasizes clear communication with contractors through printed materials and regular site visits
• Moving from individual fix-and-flips to larger multifamily projects to maximize efficiency
• Values his business partnership as a "marriage" where each partner brings different strengths
• Recommends joining industry groups and reinvesting profits into education and networking
• Uses CompanyCam app to monitor construction projects remotely and share progress with investors
• Credits "YouTube University" and Naval Ravikant's book for much of his business knowledge
Leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts - it helps us bring on more amazing guests and continue to deliver the content you want to hear.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Forget what you've heard.
Forged in Fire is where realentrepreneurs come to share the
untold truths of success thelate nights, the crushing
setbacks, the moments thatchange everything.
No fluff, just fire, ready tostep into the heat and unlock
(00:24):
what it really takes to build abusiness.
This is where legends are made.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another
exciting episode of Forged inFire.
I'm your co-host, NateFarmreiden.
Allow me to introduce mycounterpart, Cole.
How we doing, brother.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Nate, what's going on , man?
How are we doing on this fineTuesday?
What's today, Tuesday?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I don't even know what day it is.
They all kind of like bleedtogether.
It's like Monday hits and thensomebody somewhere says you got
like a two-day weekend.
But it feels like that's nevera thing for me, like I'm always
in the office but it's fine.
Enough about me.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
How are you man?
Dude, I love it.
I'm good.
I got no complaints.
Every day is a learningexperience.
We had one of our PMs today thatwe recently let go of more
transferring, not deliveringkeys, and we're like, can you
please give us the keys?
And they miraculously don'thave the keys.
So I don't know how they'vebeen managing a property that
they don't have keys on.
But I just never fails to amazeme the things that you go
(01:26):
through these days.
But you know, look, justanother small hurdle, nothing
big.
So you know.
Anyways, enough of mecomplaining.
I'm excited for this interview.
It's going to be great.
But, as always, guys, I haveone single favor that I would
really appreciate if anybodylistening to this could do for
us, and that is leave us areview.
That is the one thing thathelps us keep growing.
(01:47):
It's the one thing that helpsus bring on more guests that you
want to hear from.
So help us, help you and leavea review wherever you want.
That would be great.
So, with that said, sit back,relax, enjoy the show.
Dude, it's going to be amazingtoday.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So, for those of you who may remember, we had an
amazing interview last week fromJoe, who is one of the partners
and managing directors forCapital Companion, and now this
week we're actually bringing onMark, who is the CEO of the
exact same company.
It's two of them.
They do a wheel that they do itall, as you guys remember from
(02:23):
the last episode.
If you haven't listened to thelast episode, pause this, go
back, listen to that episode,because it's going to all make
sense now, as we're going to puta nice bow on this whole thing.
They take care of so much stuffwithin the real estate industry
, mark, come on stage, brother,we'd love to have you man.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
How are we doing guys ?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Doing good.
How are you doing, man?
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Living the dream day by day.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's it, so please tell us a little bit about
yourself.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
What got you here?
What brought you here?
So my background is inpsychology, engineering and
construction.
So a little bit of an odd path,but I've been in construction
for 20 years.
I got out of school, went to acustom home builder project
manager for about five years andthen I started my own general
contracting company.
I wanted to be able to get intoreal estate investing and
(03:10):
control some of the generalcontracting side of it, as I saw
a lot of people were havingtrouble with the contractor side
, labor side.
So we built that out for fiveyears.
And then I met Joe and we'vebeen doing Capital Companion for
the last two years.
So a whole load of investment.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
That's incredible.
So, wayne, I got to dial in anddial back, I should say, to
some of the beginning stuff.
So that is an odd combo psych,engineering and construction.
How did you focus on three verydifferent things?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
How did you focus on three very different things?
I started in psychology.
I always had a curiosity for it, Right, you kind of grow up in
chaos and want to understand thepeople around you, how they act
, why they act.
So I started there, did abouttwo years of school and realized
that the technical side of itwasn't really for me.
I really just want tounderstand, you know, the base
knowledge of how to interactwith people and understand them.
(04:07):
So I transitioned toengineering and I've been a
builder you know building stuffforever with my dad and I just
thought construction would be agood place to land.
So I went into the engineeringprogram and then the builder and
investor sense.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Okay, so follow up question.
Nate, I know you got a question, but I got to follow that up,
so that makes perfect sense.
So you got into the custom homebuilding first, is that right?
Correct so what was it aboutthat that drew you in?
And I'm assuming I'm askingbecause you see this
construction stuff.
You said like you kind of grewup around it and so you went
towards custom homes.
Was there a reason you wentthere versus any other piece of
(04:42):
construction or real estate orjust did it.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
I've always been fascinated with money, right.
So I had a bunch of interviewswith builders.
I worked at a commercial firmfor a little bit and building 15
million dollars houses seemedlike a good business to get into
.
Right, I wanted to understandthe clients with my psychology
background get into.
I wanted to understand theclients with my psychology
(05:08):
background just following themoney big houses, bigger deals,
understanding how to grow abusiness.
So it was a smaller company butI got kind of everything I
wanted out of it.
But it's always the curiosityabout money and how people spend
it, who's making it, what makesthem special.
So that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Okay, I love it.
We got to bang it gotta bang.
So many questions here I wantto dive into, but um, talk to me
just a tad bit about um.
This is usually the point whenI ask about trials and
tribulations, some of thestruggles in the growing phase.
But before we get into theactual expansion, the growing
phase, talk about.
Give me, like um, a snapshot ofwhat it looked like right after
(05:46):
graduation.
And then decided that youwanted to do like home building
on $15 million houses, because Iremember my undergraduate days,
by the time I finished, I wasmaking less than $30,000 a year.
Buying a home was nothing,nowhere near in my future, let
alone trying to figure out howto build one from the ground up.
So talk to me a little bitabout that.
(06:06):
And then, when you decided thatit was a good idea, to say,
okay, now I've seen what itlooks like to be able to build
these things, now it's time tostart adding them to my
portfolio.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
That's such a great question.
So when I left school and Ileft school a semester early,
which you know as a trueentrepreneur, the ROI I'm like
what am I going to do?
It's been another six months,nine months trying to get this
thing done Another 15 grand.
Let me go interview with somepeople and see if I can land a
job.
So I landed with a greatbuilder and you know, similar to
(06:36):
your point, I was making 35grand, 40 grand, right.
So they took a chance on me.
I was taking a chance on them,but what I had was Sally Mae
loans in the background, and youlearn pretty quickly what a 12%
loan looks like.
So I started digging into booksand trying to dig my way out of
like, okay, I'm making X amount,I owe Sally Mae more than that.
(06:59):
So how do I get out of thismess that I was in?
So how do I get out of thismess that I was in?
And that kind of fueled me asan entrepreneur to be like OK,
what's the game here?
I got to learn the rules to thegame so I can go out there and
play.
What are the chess pieces andhow do I get myself out of the
situation I'm in and I thoughtthat was a perfect connection to
(07:20):
be able to go spend time withwealthy people, to be able to go
spend time with wealthy people.
So it all worked out in the end.
But that was a true kick in theass to say you got some loans
that you gotta pay off.
If you wanna be where thesepeople are in 10, 15, 20 years,
you gotta start reading somebooks and start learning pretty
quick.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
It's awesome.
A couple of things I reallylike about that is one you went
through the steps and you youwent towards a direction that
you kind of had inherent valuein and liked.
So I, you know that makes sense, but I like that.
You recognize like, okay, Iwant to get out of this.
But you didn't stop there.
Because that's the thing is,most people stop there.
They go, wow, this sucks, Letme get a job.
And then that's it done.
And you're like, no, no, let'sdig ourselves out of this, and
(08:02):
not only that, then let's putmyself in a better position so I
can be like them.
And then you did it, which isawesome.
So fast forward back to you, gothrough all these different
pieces and steps.
You learn a lot of this stuffhow to run a business, all about
these people, et cetera and atsome point you start going into
the investment side and youstart the investment firm.
So what does that look like?
Meaning like, talk to us aboutthat transition.
(08:23):
How did you do that?
Was it gradual?
Was it sudden, Kind of?
How did that go?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
So it was gradual.
With the general contractingbusiness, we had the same
high-end clients.
We worked, you know, day andnight for years to build
relationships and it's all arelationship business, as you
guys know.
So we started getting interest.
As I was telling you know, someclients, I'm like, hey, I'm
going to buy some houses andflip them.
And one of my mentors, investors, one of my favorite people in
(08:51):
the world, he stopped me one day.
He's like what are you up to?
And I just kind of mentioned itand he said, all right, I'm in.
And I wasn't pitching him atall.
It just totally changed myperspective.
Yeah, right.
And as an entrepreneur, it'sthe roller coaster of like, oh
shit, now I got something elseto figure out, like massive win,
life-changing conversation.
They're like, oh, now I gottaperform.
(09:11):
So I always knew I wanted toget there.
But that conversation changedmy entire life.
Right, not not pitching at all,just like, yeah, that's what
I'm interested in, I'm in.
So that changed everything forme.
And then that same mentoractually hooked Joe and I up a
few years later.
So he knew that I was great atthe operations side and that Joe
was the tail wagger, could goout and raise capital and find
(09:34):
all the deals possible.
So that was a unbelievablemoment in my life and it changed
everything for me.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Holy cow, okay, back it up, because we're not going
to speed past that, like youdidn't just say it.
Number one, first and foremostcapital raising, something we
talk about consistently on thisshow, and how fucking hard it is
and to be.
You must be an amazing standupkind of guy to be able to just
normally in conversation, talkabout what it is that you've got
(10:04):
going on.
You know what YOLO?
It's go time.
I'm in, here's the money, let'sjust go.
So that's number one.
Number two talk to me a littlebit more.
Get into some of the nittygritty onto what that looked
like.
What did it mean when he waslike all right, I guess it is go
time now At that point, wereyou acquiring fix and flips to
be able to just say, okay, theseare the ROIs on this, this is
(10:25):
what we've been seeing, notpitching it at all?
And he's like okay, your nextone, I want to jump into that
deal.
Or was it more like, hey, Ikind of have an idea of
something that I'm trying tobuild.
Later on down the line maybethis will become a company, I'm
not sure.
So fill me in a little bit moreon that aspect of it and then
we'll dive in a little bit moreinto some other areas.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
So I had not done a single deal.
I had been looking for a year,a year and a half.
It was COVID.
So you know, the world kind ofshut down and it was just an
idea.
You know, I had the backgroundand we built a really good
relationship with these peopleand I had actually at that time
joined a fund group.
You know I wanted to build areal estate fund and I joined
(11:05):
and I took every dollar ofprofit that we had made for two
years and dumped it into thisthing, went through the program,
learned how to raise capital.
So it was kind of adjacent towhat the mentor does for a
living.
So he understood what I was kindof getting at and we had done
so much work and showed up forthem, you know, in the middle of
the night to help them out allkinds of stuff.
(11:26):
So he was like and I want toinvest in you, right?
And I think that's a huge pointin building relationships,
where they know you're not goingto quit, right?
He see me We've got a beautifulbasement for them.
And he see me go through abunch of struggles and trying to
figure stuff out and he's likedude, you won't quit Like I got
(11:48):
to be on your team so that thatin the background really set it
off.
But he saw more in me than Idid at that point.
Right, I had aspirations, I hadsome things that I wanted to do
, but you need mentors, you needpeople around you that see you
in a different light than yousee yourself sometimes.
So that was a huge jumping offpoint for everything.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Such a powerful point , just like you said, having a
mentor that recognizes yourpotential.
Again, like you said, a lot oftimes, especially when you're
getting started and you'reventuring into new things, they
can give you that push and thatcan mean the world and change
everything.
So it's awesome that you hadthat and awesome that they also
push you to do that.
So tell me more about then gothrough that.
That all makes sense.
And then what about the firstdeal?
(12:28):
So what did that look like?
How did you source it?
How did you fund it?
Was it just you?
Did you partner at this point?
What did that look like?
Speaker 4 (12:35):
So the first deal was with Joe.
So our mentor you know that wasbetween us hooked us up.
We had looked at a ton of dealstogether, you know, starting
our we call it the marriageright and figuring out if we
wanted to get married or not.
And we looked at a ton of deals, turned a lot of stuff down
which was hard at the time butin retrospect, you know, I'm
(12:56):
happy that we did.
But we found a few on the MLS.
You know it was local to us,about 30 minutes away to you
know, side by side units, and itwas a lot of growing pains.
We, I think, broke, even, maybeeven lost some money, which is
totally fine because we got alot of systems and processes
(13:16):
built along the way.
But that was pretty organic.
Yeah, we just found out on theMLS, we attacked it and kind of
went after it and went on to thenext one.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
So good, so many things.
Let me rewind first, just incase somebody did not catch this
Again.
Pause this rewind, play thisthing all the way back, because,
mark, you had said somethingand Cole echoed it, and I want
to make sure that we're drivingthis home.
Capital raising is no joke.
This shit is fucking hard ashell, but the deal is secondary,
right, I'm trying to hone in onthis, I'm trying to harp in on
(13:51):
this.
I want to make sure that I'mdriving this home for all of our
listeners.
The deal is secondary.
When somebody is interested intrying to invest inside of the
deal the numbers and all thatstuff, they should align.
It all should make sense thatway, true, but it's who they
know, they like, they trust.
It's establishing thatrelationship.
It's establishing making surethat you've got the credibility.
It's making sure that you'vegot the support system and the
support team around you andmaking sure that you're fucking
(14:13):
going to show up every day.
Right, that's how your mentorwas able to find that trust that
was inside of you.
I'm sorry to let me get off mysoapbox, but I want to make sure
that we're driving that homefor all of the listeners that
are thinking that, hey, tomorrowmorning I'm going to wake up,
I'm going to raise $2 million,because that's what I'm going to
set my mind to do and it's justgoing to happen.
It doesn't fucking happen likethat.
So, again, enough about that.
(14:33):
Moving forward Now talkingabout now that we've got this
deal and may have broken, evenmay have lost a few dollars,
doesn't matter the relationshipfrom the dating phase to now,
what you like to refer to as themarriage, everything's
solidified.
So what does it look like now,now that we got the first deal
underneath our belt?
So what would the next coupleof deals look like?
(14:56):
How do you source them?
How do you fund them?
What does that look like?
Number one, and then number two, thinking about the whole
picture, about doing therenovations and the rehabs, did
you have a team at this point,when you came in and you did
that first deal?
Was it just you boots on theground, what we like to joke
around and call like a five tonine five o'clock in the morning
, nine o'clock at night we heardthis from another podcast
(15:18):
episode that we had done or didyou have a team underneath you
that you could just go ahead andsay all right, you guys handle
this, I'm going to sit back inmy office and you guys just come
back and report to me some ofthese KPIs.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Yeah, great questions and I think to hammer home the
partnership aspect of that is wewent out and met with realtors,
right, and we're talking towholesalers, we're talking to
anybody who's seeing deals inour neighborhood and trying to
provide value to them.
So, having the constructionbackground, hey, call me with
any questions that you have onyour deals.
If your clients have anyquestions, happy to help you.
(15:51):
Guys, I'll provide as muchvalue as possible and in turn
we'll build this partnership outwhere it's.
You know both sides arebenefiting.
So we found a couple of dealsto realtors.
Joe did a really good job on afew deals door knocking.
We bought a property two housesdown the worst house on the
street looked it up.
Who owns it?
It was the lady next door.
(16:12):
He knocked on the door andthat's one of our best projects.
So we source them through a lotof partnerships um and also,
you know, just boots on theground.
And as far as generalcontracting, building out a team
goes, we used a um a teamoutside of mine.
So my, my team is more gearedtowards the um custom, you know,
(16:35):
$500,000 basement type deal.
So we needed somebody to go inand do a flip and not overbuild.
So we thought, if we're goingto do a bunch of deals, we got
to go find some generalcontractors.
It was very difficult to getscope across and to nail down
some of the dollars and centsand to get to a contract, and
(16:58):
that was a very tough process.
As an entrepreneur, I want tohave control over everything and
when my guys are there, I knoweverything's being done to a T.
But to trust somebody else togo out and bring the vision to
life was a tough process and wedon't necessarily work with that
person anymore.
But we learned a lot and webrought some guys into our team
(17:20):
that could do this level offinish.
So we do have a team that wework with now in-house, and then
we have other generalcontractors that we're working
with on some projects as well.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm so glad you brought that up because there's
so much I want to dive intothere.
So you know, with anybodythat's in real estate you're
working with contractors,whether it's subs directly,
whether it's a GC that handlesit.
You know there's the same kindof things the scope of works,
the timeline, the money Right,and most people you talk to it's
a disaster and they don't knowwhat they're doing.
They're trying to figure it out.
(17:51):
The contractor tells them onething it doesn't get done, it
costs more, et cetera.
We've all been there.
So what are things that youfound that change that that work
?
Because, coming from somebodywith your field, that you know
how it should work, you know howto do it correctly.
What would you advise peoplethat are getting started?
Don't do this, do this instead,or et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think if you have a vision printing stuff out,
bringing it to the site, puttingit on the walls, if you want to
design the kitchen yourself orhelp those guys you know
configure the house to yourvision, if you're not able to
get that across throughconversation, then they're just
going to assume and they'regoing to do what they've done
before and as they should.
So what I do is I print out asmuch stuff as possible and now
(18:34):
that we have a couple of jobsunder our belt, say, hey, this
is what went right, this is whatwent wrong, but let's follow
this same spec.
And you lean on them too to saywhat materials have you used
and do you have a plumber, doyou have an electrician?
All that.
It should be a partnership inthe end.
But they need to understandyour vision for each property to
(18:55):
a T, so it doesn't getoverbuilt, so things don't get
missed.
And you walk in at the end andyou got a whole different
product than what the marketactually wanted and what you had
a vision for.
So, implementing, printing a lotof stuff out, making it very,
very simple for them to knowwhat I want where, answering
questions ahead of time, justtrying to think of what
questions they might have.
(19:17):
I understand, you know, whenyou're just getting started,
that's hard to do, but trying toanticipate the next step and
making sure that you're stoppingon site and you're working with
these guys, you get to seewhat's going on and that you're
in the mix, to be able to learnalong with them, because they
know that it might be your firsttime, your second time, but
(19:38):
they've been doing this forevermost likely these general
contractors.
But they don't necessarilyunderstand the difference
between building somebody'sdream home or building something
that you need to flip for acertain margin.
So keeping them in the loopwith hey, these countertops are
great, but this market doesn'tcall for it.
So they get to learn along withyou and hope you can build a
(20:00):
partnership, but giving as muchof your vision to them and you
know, like I said, print it out,show them, so you're not just
telling them.
I think it helps a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So what I'm hearing is communication is key, just
making sure that it's opendialogue walking through, you
said you went as far as to makesure that you're either bringing
pictures or some kind ofmaterial on site to say, hey,
this is what the finishes looklike, this is what it is the
vision that we're trying to getin full totality.
This is what we're workingtowards, and then just frequent
check-in with communication,correct?
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Absolutely.
Communication is everything.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Love it, love it, love it.
So my next question, then iswhen we're speaking with Joe, we
talked a little bit aboutstudent housing was like one of
the next avenues that you guyswent down.
So, in terms of the fix andflips, the student housing, is
it always like value add thatyou guys are doing?
And then also, let's moveforward a little bit more in
terms of where do you see itgoing in the next one to three
(20:59):
years from your perspective?
Speaker 4 (21:02):
So the student housing was a one-off.
Joe had been to Geneva, newYork, before he loved it.
There's a great universityright there.
The value was in.
Somebody had to get rid of it,right?
So most of the time we do havea value add proponent.
But sometimes people you knowthey need to cash out and go to
another investment, or you knowdivorce is all kinds of shit,
(21:24):
right, and you can't sit thereand anticipate it or like, oh,
why is this on the market?
Cause people just got to getrid of deals.
So we found that one and thatwas.
We didn't really have to addmuch value to it.
So that was great, um.
But everything else that welook at there's a value add
proponent.
Um, and that could be.
(21:45):
You know, we do full flips thatare more on the custom side and
we do flips that are more on therental side.
But what we kind of aim for,what we tell our guys in the
field all the time, is like thisis going to be somebody's dream
house, right.
They're moving up fromsomething that they didn't have
before and they're going to bethrilled with this product.
You might not live there, right?
You might not like the paintcolor, floor color, don't worry
(22:07):
about any of that stuff, butjust dialing in kind of you know
what the market actuallyexpects.
And, going one to three years,we want to be in more
multifamily type deals, biggerdeals.
So now that we have you know,everybody starts and there's no
capital, there's no deal flow.
So you go out there and youmarket yourself and you talk to
(22:27):
as many people as possible,you're hitting the streets and
then now we have great potentialpartnerships with tons of deal
flow.
We have great capital partners.
So we're trying to do biggerdeals.
Instead of doing 10 flips ayear, let's do four bigger deals
and just concentrate on that,because you can't work any
harder than you're alreadyworking.
There's only so many hours inthe day.
(22:47):
So you try to get as you growand as you learn and there's a
little bit of safety in that.
You try to get bigger dealsthat you can take a bite out of.
But that's where we're headedin the next one to three years
is raising a lot more capitaland doing bigger, better deals.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Cole, you mind if I jump in with another question,
so I wanted to ask I should askthis earlier when you got
started up till now, what doesit look like in terms of like a
buy box for you, especially withyou having the construction
background?
Is there a certain like I don'tknow buy box is probably the
best term for it that you'relike, hey, yeah, this will be a
(23:23):
home run for us.
And then where and how do youisolate that from another deal?
Because I know you mentionedyou had relationships with
different realtors that you werekind of we scratch your back,
you scratch ours type ofsituation, but you guys are also
sourcing deals yourselves.
So what is like a home run foryou guys and what's too much to
take on?
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Honestly, the worst condition, the better for us.
So within our team we have, youknow, 200 years worth of
construction experience.
One my brother actually workedfor Servpro, so he understands
how to do mold, smoke mediation,right, all that stuff.
So what most people are walkinginto and saying like, uh, it's
way too much for us, like, thisis perfect.
(24:03):
So we just picked up a deal sixmonths ago.
We walked in and you know, itsmelled like cat pee and there
was some smoke stuff.
And most people are like thisis above me, but we're like
perfect, took us two days to getrid of everything and we were
off to the races.
Um, so I don't think there'sanything that we can't
particularly take on at thispoint, because we do have the
(24:25):
construction backgrounds and andthe guys in house to take it on
.
Um, but it comes to the pointwhere, uh, we have a deal where
it's a skinny lot.
We had to go to zoning to makesure we get all the approvals
just to put a little additionoff the back.
So I think you get to the pointin the game where it's not just
tearing down walls and doingsome framing and throwing in
(24:48):
some kitchens, it's.
Can you develop this intosomething that somebody is going
to want?
Can you develop this intosomething that somebody is going
to want and are you willing totake the six, nine, 12 months
and thousands of dollars andhours worth of effort to be able
to get that through the door?
So a lot of people see thosedeals and, like I don't know
anything about this, I can'tfigure it out.
But when you have a team aroundyou and you have educated
(25:10):
realtors, we have attorneys, wehave everything that we need to
be able to lean on these peopleto say, hey, this is a good deal
for us collectively.
Right, we're all going to makemoney here at some point.
So that, to me, is where youkind of bridge the gap of yeah,
there's hands-on stuff, we canknock stuff down, we can paint
it, we can build it again.
But if you want to developsomething or it's in a tough
(25:31):
position where it stands, thenthat's the next layer and it's
just a learning opportunityevery time, right, we get our
asses kicked a lot, but thoseturn out to be the best deals
and then you know how to do itthe next time.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
That's awesome and I love that.
You mentioned about the team,and that's really what it comes
down to is, the more you grow, Ithink when you start you have
this thought of like, what if Irun into a problem I can't solve
?
Or what am I going to do?
Blah, blah, blah.
And that's just an inherentthing I feel like most people
probably have, just based on, Iguess, how we grew up or school
or whatever it may be.
But anyways, as you get intothe entrepreneurial world, you
realize it's never a problem youcan't solve.
(26:06):
It's just what does it take tosolve that problem?
There's always a solution.
Is it time, is it money?
Is it something else?
But the solution is usuallyright in front of your face one
way or another.
It's just what does it cost you?
And it costs something,unfortunately, but I love that
you brought that up.
One of the other things I wantto dive into is we have the
pleasure, obviously, to speakwith both of you.
So how does your partnershipwork?
(26:28):
Meaning like you guys arerunning something successfully
and a lot of people people,unfortunately get into
partnerships that don't workthat way.
So what are things that workfor you guys?
Is it roles, is itresponsibilities.
Just like, talk to me aboutyour partnership and what does
and doesn't work.
Maybe.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
It's a great question because we well, I can speak
for myself.
I struggled with a partnershipfor a long time and what I was
doing wrong was I wantedsomebody like me.
Right, like type A this is whatI'm good at Construction,
building, a back end of abusiness, systems, processes.
Like.
I need somebody like minded.
I met Joe.
I'm like this guy is the totalopposite.
(27:07):
Right, we go out to dinner andhe's up at the bar and he's
wagging his tail and he'stalking to everybody.
I'm like, oh shit, all right,that's what I need.
Right, because I like what I doand I love the chessboard of
building, you know, building abusiness.
And here's this system andhere's this process.
We need to add this piece.
And he's like, fuck that, Idon't want to think about that
at all.
Let me go over here and meetpeople and network.
(27:28):
And he's amazing at it.
So once I saw him, we had onespecific meeting and I walked
out of there.
We were still kind of datingeach other.
I'm like, dude, we're stillkind of dating each other.
I'm like, dude, it's over.
Like I don't need to hearanymore what I just saw you do.
Like I know you're going toprovide so much value to this
business in the long term.
Like I, will hunker down andbuild this thing in the
background, do all the stuffthat people don't like to do,
(27:50):
but set you free and go do whatyou're great at.
So it's really finding somebodythat fills the gaps that you
don't fills your gaps right.
So who can do it?
Who loves what they do?
Joe loves what he does.
He gets energy from doing thatright.
Going out and networking andyou know, walk around the bar
(28:10):
and meeting people and I'm likesitting there eating my sandwich
.
I'm like man that looks soexhausting.
So it's the perfect combination.
But you do hear a lot of horrorstories about um partnerships.
But you really just have totreat it like you're going to
spend the rest of your life withthis person and you got to like
their family.
You got to like everythingabout them because it really it
(28:32):
really is a marriage.
We spent a lot of time together.
We pull each other through upsand downs in the business.
It's really difficult and if wedidn't have each other, I'm not
sure either of us would be inthis position.
So it's filling the voids ofwhat you don't have and getting
somebody that really likes to dothose things that you don't
necessarily like to do or thatyou're not good at.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I love this so much.
So much of this resonates soheavily with some other
partnerships that I may havebeen a part of, so I just want
to say it's awesome to hear fromother folks, so I want to say
hats off to the both of you.
I'm proud of you all.
The stuff that you guys haveaccomplished thus far is truly
amazing, and I think I mean withthat Cole.
(29:19):
Do you think he's ready?
Speaker 3 (29:20):
He's definitely ready .
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Okay, all right.
So, mark, we got a surprise foryou.
Maybe, All right.
So what we're going to do is weare going to ask you six
questions back to back, to backto back to back.
I don't know if that was enough.
Back Seems like it.
I don't know, doesn't matter.
Either way, our goal is to tryto ask these.
You can answer as long or assuccinct as possible, and we're
not going to interject, we'renot going to say a word.
(29:47):
We fail every fucking time, butthis time I feel like we might
be able to not say anything andjust rapid fire this all the way
through.
So, without further ado, let'sjump in.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Keep our hopes up.
All right, here we go.
What separates top performingentrepreneurs from the rest of
the crowd?
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Great question.
I think it's persistence.
I think it's a lot of peopleget bogged down and they get
tired, they're overworked.
But you really have to trulylove what you do so that you can
show up every day and you canbeat anybody else because it
feels like play to you, which is, you know, nabal ravikot says
(30:21):
that all the time nobody's goingto beat you if you're playing
and it feels fun to go out everyday and work really hard.
You got to love what you do tokeep the the train rolling I've
already failed.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
So good, so good.
Mic drop moment.
Anybody that's listening.
Pause it, play this, rewind itall the way back from the top.
All right.
Next question what is a dailyhabit that's contributed to your
success?
Speaker 4 (30:51):
I think it's zooming out.
I think that's a thing thatgoes through my mind all the
time.
Everything's on fire all thetime.
Right, you're going to wake upand you say, here's my calendar
and today's going to be great.
I'm going to hop on thispodcast, I'm going to hit this
call and then 40 people call youand say, hey, this is wrong,
this is wrong, this is wrong.
Something's always going to beon fire.
So, zooming out andunderstanding that everything is
(31:14):
OK, okay, nothing is reallygoing to be, you know, ruined in
the long run, it's you playingthe long game.
It's just zooming out, taking adeep breath and saying, all
right, this is just chaos andthat's, that's part of the game.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
It's so good and I got to say real quick it's so
funny because Nate and I startalmost every one of our podcasts
talking about one of the firesthat's going on and I feel like
people probably jump on.
They're like man, all theseguys do is complain or life's a
shit show, like I don't know.
But it's just kind of theinternal joke of just that right
, like we all just unpredictable, crazy things happen.
(31:49):
But part of the fun is justtalking about.
I'm like yo, I can't believethis new, weird thing happened
to me today.
Every day is some weird newevent and you just kind of I
don't want to say come to loveit, but Just kind of I don't
want to say come to love it, butkind of just learn to deal with
it.
And it's entertaining in oneaspect.
So I love that.
What is a piece of?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
advice that you'd give to yourself if you were
starting again.
I hate this answer.
I think it's kind of oversaid alot.
I watched a lot of podcasts.
You know YouTube mentors butit's be patient, right.
I mean when you're in it andthe things that they're going
wrong and you're not seeing themoney and you're not where you
(32:26):
want to be with your lifestyleor whatever it is.
It's just a long game.
Real estate is a very long gameand the people who are willing
to endure that pain the longestare going to win.
So you just have to staypatient, you have to zoom out
and, like I said, I hate thatadvice because I've heard it a
million times.
I'm like, if we talk like, yeah,that's cool for you to say
(32:48):
because you're, you know, 60years old and you got a hundred
million dollars, I'm like I'mstruggling here, right, but you
got it.
You're in the fire, right, it'sthe origin of fire.
It's time under tension.
You just have to go through itbecause you're never going to be
I don't know how to deal withtoday, right, I don't know what,
what next challenge is going tocome up, but, like, you just
(33:10):
got to figure it out.
You're going to learn, you'regoing to grow, and that's what
this whole thing about being anentrepreneur is about.
It's about growth, right, and um, alex hormosi says that.
He's like.
You know, when you start it'syou have one arrow, right, he's
like.
But then you get a partnership,you get this person, you start
to solve some problems and nowfighting a dragon doesn't seem
(33:31):
so hard because because you havean army behind you.
But listening to that, it'slike, yeah, if you're in the
shit and you're feeling like youcan't do anymore, you're in a
great spot.
That's exactly where you shouldbe.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Such a good answer.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I'm trying to think back.
I don't think we've ever had ananswer top this one when it
comes to advice and being ableto look back and give it to you.
And on top of that, I don'teven know, cole, if you caught
it, but Mark snuck in, forged infire into his whole analogy of
how to do it.
He did oh my gosh, all right,yeah, we have not done well with
(34:13):
not answering, talking duringthis call, absolutely failed.
So the next question we got foryou is what is your favorite
business book?
Speaker 4 (34:22):
I got it right here.
I keep it right next to me.
I just brought up Naval, right,so I spent two years.
This is the almanac of NavalRavikant.
It's kind of you know, he's theentrepreneur whisperer.
It's kind of all over the boardas far as you know business
advice goes, but these are justa lot of his thoughts.
He might have a Twitter rant orX rant and you know it would
(34:45):
break it more down into deepdetail in here, but it's
something that I go back to allthe time and you can see it's
dog-eared like crazy.
I think I've given this bookout to 20 different people.
I'm not sure anybody's everread it, but I'm proud to have
read this book.
I spent two years.
I read a book a week.
Most business books are dogshit.
(35:07):
There's one takeaway and Ithink if you treat books as kind
of like, there might be onetakeaway in here great, but this
one, it hits for me in so manydifferent ways and I go back to
it all the time.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
I love to be over right next toyou.
It's awesome.
What is your favorite part ofowning your business?
Speaker 4 (35:31):
I think it's growth.
It's growth for me, it's growthfor my partner.
It's growing together, growinga team, bringing guys in and
saying, hey, you want to be aproject manager?
Like, let's go through this,I'm happy to to dig in and give
you all of my time and energyfor you to grow.
I want to see people get totheir highest potential.
I think it's the most powerfulthing as an entrepreneur is
(35:54):
building a team of badass peoplethat you're stoked to wake up
to and go into the office everyday and say let's go to war.
I think it's the coolest partis building a team for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I've got to say again , this is the mark of a selfless
person.
The question is designed foryou to be able to take a moment
to be selfish, meaning what isyour favorite part?
We're asking you, and youranswer was I like to watch other
people win, like dude.
That's up to you.
That's fucking amazing.
I love it.
So last question on thissegment what is something new
(36:32):
that you've implemented that'shelped drive your business's
success?
And it can't be QuickBooks.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
OK, honestly, I'm yeah, I'm three months into
QuickBooks.
I'm like, oh, this is great,I'll use another app, companycam
, so you basically take all thephotos, all the videos that you
need in the field.
We have the guys take picturesevery single day so we can
update investors.
We have investors come in, weinvite them to the job so they
can keep up with it.
But that's been huge gettingstuff off of your phone.
(37:03):
You can't just walk into aproject, take a picture.
Say, I'm the only guy with thispicture.
Hey, who's got this picturefrom six years ago when we did
this renovation?
It's all on the web.
It gets it off of your phone.
You can communicate through it.
That's been a game changer forus.
The guys take pictures everysingle day and I, just before I
go to bed, I just check in on.
Great, I don't have to go outto the site, you know, twice a
(37:25):
week anymore.
I go out once a month when theyneed me.
But other than that, I seeevery single thing.
You can update your schedules.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It's, it's amazing it's called company cam and it's
an app yep, awesome, I'm gonnatry that.
That's great.
It's a gameCam and it's an app.
Yep, awesome, I'm going to trythat.
That's great.
It's a game changer.
Yeah, that's cool.
I love the useful tips like that, the useful kind of stuff that
people haven't heard about.
Mark, this has been awesome.
I mean, it's cool hearing yourstory dialing all the way back
to the beginning, talking aboutyour beginning starting in site,
(37:53):
going to engineering, toengineering, going to
construction first going intocustom homes, learning how to be
a GC and learning the businessworld, and then meeting a mentor
, having that first investor,that mentor becoming your first
investor, meeting your partnersthrough these programs and then
joining other programs to learnhow to fund, to raise, just
generally learning and growingyour business, then getting into
(38:15):
that first deal and growingtogether, and then all the cool
things that we talked aboutleading up to just general
growth.
And there's so much more I'dlove to go into and
unfortunately we can't for time,so I have two final questions
for you One, where can peoplefind you?
And two, any final advice?
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Find us on Instagram at Capital Companion and any
final advice.
Find us on Instagram at CapitalCompanion and any final advice.
I think it's like I said, beingpatient.
I think it's a.
It's a annoying thing whenyou're just starting, but
joining the groups reinvestingcapital back into joining groups
(38:58):
so that you don't have to findlike-minded people has been huge
, because I grew up I didn'tknow a single business owner, so
I've been steering blind.
I didn't know anybody inprivate equity or that had a
hundred million dollars thatwanted to invest.
So I joined a couple of groupsand you're buying into access to
people who are doing the sameexact thing as you.
(39:20):
So if you can reinvest some ofthe profit or, you know, even if
you do take capital and it'spart of building your business
and you can get into the rightrooms it really is worth it.
The numbers feel big.
You know it could be 10, 15, 20grand.
Sometimes you will get thatback immediately.
You'll get it back on yourfirst deal.
(39:40):
You're going to have 100 peoplethat you can reach out to when
you have a problem or when youhave a great deal that you want
to raise capital from.
So I think it's reinvesting.
It's reinvesting time, andYouTube University has been a
big thing for me too.
I spent a lot of time onYouTube.
We built this whole businessoff of YouTube.
If I spent a lot of time, onYouTube.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
We built this whole business off of YouTube.
If you don't know something,somebody's already put it on the
Internet.
Mark, this has been amazing.
I don't say this lightly, I'mgoing to speak for the both of
us.
This has been a ton of fun.
It's one of those kind ofsituations where when you, when
you, jump into these podcasts,you never know what you're going
to get on the other side.
But we get authenticity, we getreal stories, we get real
person that has been throughreal struggles, real trials,
real tribulations.
This has been fucking amazing,and I don't know if I'm supposed
(40:23):
to say this.
We can edit it out, probablynot going to, but for your very
first fucking podcast.
I would never have guessed.
Dude, you are one of a kindwhen it came to getting to the
stage.
Man, not shy, upfront, fullyhonest, fully transparent.
Hats off to you, brother.
This is awesome.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
I appreciate it.
Like I said, I've watched somany podcasts.
You have mentors.
If you can't find mentors, goon YouTube.
Watch Alex Hormozy, watch NavalRabicot there's so many people
in real estate giving awayunbelievable content for free
and get the YouTube premium appso you can put it on your phone
and when you turn your phone off, it doesn't shut off.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
It's a total life hack put it on your phone and
when you turn your phone off, itdoesn't shut off.
It's a photo life hack.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
Your name is going to be rightup there with the man you have
given us so many gems.
We appreciate you For thosethat are listening if you're
driving, drive safely, get homesafely.
And we want to thank you all somuch for coming through hanging
with us in Forge and Fire.
This has been an amazingepisode, mark, and for Joe as
(41:20):
well.
Our house is your house.
We want to watch you guys grow.
We want to watch you guysthrive.
Whenever you two want to stopback in here, pop in on us.
Let us know some of the amazingthings that you guys have just
tackled.
All you got to do is say theword We'd love to have you back.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Amazing.
I appreciate you guys.
This is great.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Of course, our pleasure.
Everybody take care.
We're looking forward to seeingyou all on the next episode of
Forged in Fire.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in
Fire.
If you enjoyed today's raw,unfiltered stories, don't forget
to like, subscribe and leave usa review.
Your feedback helps us bringmore real-world insights to
entrepreneurs like you.
(42:04):
Be sure to join us next timefor even more lessons, struggles
and breakthroughs on the roadto success.
Keep forging ahead.
Forget what you've heard.
Forged in Fire is where realentrepreneurs come to share the
untold truths of success thelate nights, the crushing
setbacks, the moments thatchange everything.
No fluff, just fire, ready tostep into the heat and unlock
(00:24):
what it really takes to build abusiness.
This is where legends are made.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another
exciting episode of Forged inFire.
I'm your co-host, NateFarmreiden.
Allow me to introduce mycounterpart, Cole.
How we doing, brother.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Nate, what's going on , man?
How are we doing on this fineTuesday?
What's today, Tuesday?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I don't even know what day it is.
They all kind of like bleedtogether.
It's like Monday hits and thensomebody somewhere says you got
like a two-day weekend.
But it feels like that's nevera thing for me, like I'm always
in the office but it's fine.
Enough about me.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
How are you man?
Dude, I love it.
I'm good.
I got no complaints.
Every day is a learningexperience.
We had one of our PMs today thatwe recently let go of more
transferring, not deliveringkeys, and we're like, can you
please give us the keys?
And they miraculously don'thave the keys.
So I don't know how they'vebeen managing a property that
they don't have keys on.
But I just never fails to amazeme the things that you go
(01:26):
through these days.
But you know, look, justanother small hurdle, nothing
big.
So you know.
Anyways, enough of mecomplaining.
I'm excited for this interview.
It's going to be great.
But, as always, guys, I haveone single favor that I would
really appreciate if anybodylistening to this could do for
us, and that is leave us areview.
That is the one thing thathelps us keep growing.
(01:47):
It's the one thing that helpsus bring on more guests that you
want to hear from.
So help us, help you and leavea review wherever you want.
That would be great.
So, with that said, sit back,relax, enjoy the show.
Dude, it's going to be amazingtoday.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So, for those of you who may remember, we had an
amazing interview last week fromJoe, who is one of the partners
and managing directors forCapital Companion, and now this
week we're actually bringing onMark, who is the CEO of the
exact same company.
It's two of them.
They do a wheel that they do itall, as you guys remember from
(02:23):
the last episode.
If you haven't listened to thelast episode, pause this, go
back, listen to that episode,because it's going to all make
sense now, as we're going to puta nice bow on this whole thing.
They take care of so much stuffwithin the real estate industry
, mark, come on stage, brother,we'd love to have you man.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
How are we doing guys ?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Doing good.
How are you doing, man?
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Living the dream day by day.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's it, so please tell us a little bit about
yourself.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
What got you here?
What brought you here?
So my background is inpsychology, engineering and
construction.
So a little bit of an odd path,but I've been in construction
for 20 years.
I got out of school, went to acustom home builder project
manager for about five years andthen I started my own general
contracting company.
I wanted to be able to get intoreal estate investing and
(03:10):
control some of the generalcontracting side of it, as I saw
a lot of people were havingtrouble with the contractor side
, labor side.
So we built that out for fiveyears.
And then I met Joe and we'vebeen doing Capital Companion for
the last two years.
So a whole load of investment.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
That's incredible.
So, wayne, I got to dial in anddial back, I should say, to
some of the beginning stuff.
So that is an odd combo psych,engineering and construction.
How did you focus on three verydifferent things?
Speaker 4 (03:43):
How did you focus on three very different things?
I started in psychology.
I always had a curiosity for it, Right, you kind of grow up in
chaos and want to understand thepeople around you, how they act
, why they act.
So I started there, did abouttwo years of school and realized
that the technical side of itwasn't really for me.
I really just want tounderstand, you know, the base
knowledge of how to interactwith people and understand them.
(04:07):
So I transitioned toengineering and I've been a
builder you know building stuffforever with my dad and I just
thought construction would be agood place to land.
So I went into the engineeringprogram and then the builder and
investor sense.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Okay, so follow up question.
Nate, I know you got a question, but I got to follow that up,
so that makes perfect sense.
So you got into the custom homebuilding first, is that right?
Correct so what was it aboutthat that drew you in?
And I'm assuming I'm askingbecause you see this
construction stuff.
You said like you kind of grewup around it and so you went
towards custom homes.
Was there a reason you wentthere versus any other piece of
(04:42):
construction or real estate orjust did it.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
I've always been fascinated with money, right.
So I had a bunch of interviewswith builders.
I worked at a commercial firmfor a little bit and building 15
million dollars houses seemedlike a good business to get into
.
Right, I wanted to understandthe clients with my psychology
background get into.
I wanted to understand theclients with my psychology
(05:08):
background just following themoney big houses, bigger deals,
understanding how to grow abusiness.
So it was a smaller company butI got kind of everything I
wanted out of it.
But it's always the curiosityabout money and how people spend
it, who's making it, what makesthem special.
So that's yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Okay, I love it.
We got to bang it gotta bang.
So many questions here I wantto dive into, but um, talk to me
just a tad bit about um.
This is usually the point whenI ask about trials and
tribulations, some of thestruggles in the growing phase.
But before we get into theactual expansion, the growing
phase, talk about.
Give me, like um, a snapshot ofwhat it looked like right after
(05:46):
graduation.
And then decided that youwanted to do like home building
on $15 million houses, because Iremember my undergraduate days,
by the time I finished, I wasmaking less than $30,000 a year.
Buying a home was nothing,nowhere near in my future, let
alone trying to figure out howto build one from the ground up.
So talk to me a little bitabout that.
(06:06):
And then, when you decided thatit was a good idea, to say,
okay, now I've seen what itlooks like to be able to build
these things, now it's time tostart adding them to my
portfolio.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
That's such a great question.
So when I left school and Ileft school a semester early,
which you know as a trueentrepreneur, the ROI I'm like
what am I going to do?
It's been another six months,nine months trying to get this
thing done Another 15 grand.
Let me go interview with somepeople and see if I can land a
job.
So I landed with a greatbuilder and you know, similar to
(06:36):
your point, I was making 35grand, 40 grand, right.
So they took a chance on me.
I was taking a chance on them,but what I had was Sally Mae
loans in the background, and youlearn pretty quickly what a 12%
loan looks like.
So I started digging into booksand trying to dig my way out of
like, okay, I'm making X amount,I owe Sally Mae more than that.
(06:59):
So how do I get out of thismess that I was in?
So how do I get out of thismess that I was in?
And that kind of fueled me asan entrepreneur to be like OK,
what's the game here?
I got to learn the rules to thegame so I can go out there and
play.
What are the chess pieces andhow do I get myself out of the
situation I'm in and I thoughtthat was a perfect connection to
(07:20):
be able to go spend time withwealthy people, to be able to go
spend time with wealthy people.
So it all worked out in the end.
But that was a true kick in theass to say you got some loans
that you gotta pay off.
If you wanna be where thesepeople are in 10, 15, 20 years,
you gotta start reading somebooks and start learning pretty
quick.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
It's awesome.
A couple of things I reallylike about that is one you went
through the steps and you youwent towards a direction that
you kind of had inherent valuein and liked.
So I, you know that makes sense, but I like that.
You recognize like, okay, Iwant to get out of this.
But you didn't stop there.
Because that's the thing is,most people stop there.
They go, wow, this sucks, Letme get a job.
And then that's it done.
And you're like, no, no, let'sdig ourselves out of this, and
(08:02):
not only that, then let's putmyself in a better position so I
can be like them.
And then you did it, which isawesome.
So fast forward back to you, gothrough all these different
pieces and steps.
You learn a lot of this stuffhow to run a business, all about
these people, et cetera and atsome point you start going into
the investment side and youstart the investment firm.
So what does that look like?
Meaning like, talk to us aboutthat transition.
(08:23):
How did you do that?
Was it gradual?
Was it sudden, Kind of?
How did that go?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
So it was gradual.
With the general contractingbusiness, we had the same
high-end clients.
We worked, you know, day andnight for years to build
relationships and it's all arelationship business, as you
guys know.
So we started getting interest.
As I was telling you know, someclients, I'm like, hey, I'm
going to buy some houses andflip them.
And one of my mentors, investors, one of my favorite people in
(08:51):
the world, he stopped me one day.
He's like what are you up to?
And I just kind of mentioned itand he said, all right, I'm in.
And I wasn't pitching him atall.
It just totally changed myperspective.
Yeah, right.
And as an entrepreneur, it'sthe roller coaster of like, oh
shit, now I got something elseto figure out, like massive win,
life-changing conversation.
They're like, oh, now I gottaperform.
(09:11):
So I always knew I wanted toget there.
But that conversation changedmy entire life.
Right, not not pitching at all,just like, yeah, that's what
I'm interested in, I'm in.
So that changed everything forme.
And then that same mentoractually hooked Joe and I up a
few years later.
So he knew that I was great atthe operations side and that Joe
was the tail wagger, could goout and raise capital and find
(09:34):
all the deals possible.
So that was a unbelievablemoment in my life and it changed
everything for me.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Holy cow, okay, back it up, because we're not going
to speed past that, like youdidn't just say it.
Number one, first and foremostcapital raising, something we
talk about consistently on thisshow, and how fucking hard it is
and to be.
You must be an amazing standupkind of guy to be able to just
normally in conversation, talkabout what it is that you've got
(10:04):
going on.
You know what YOLO?
It's go time.
I'm in, here's the money, let'sjust go.
So that's number one.
Number two talk to me a littlebit more.
Get into some of the nittygritty onto what that looked
like.
What did it mean when he waslike all right, I guess it is go
time now At that point, wereyou acquiring fix and flips to
be able to just say, okay, theseare the ROIs on this, this is
(10:25):
what we've been seeing, notpitching it at all?
And he's like okay, your nextone, I want to jump into that
deal.
Or was it more like, hey, Ikind of have an idea of
something that I'm trying tobuild.
Later on down the line maybethis will become a company, I'm
not sure.
So fill me in a little bit moreon that aspect of it and then
we'll dive in a little bit moreinto some other areas.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
So I had not done a single deal.
I had been looking for a year,a year and a half.
It was COVID.
So you know, the world kind ofshut down and it was just an
idea.
You know, I had the backgroundand we built a really good
relationship with these peopleand I had actually at that time
joined a fund group.
You know I wanted to build areal estate fund and I joined
(11:05):
and I took every dollar ofprofit that we had made for two
years and dumped it into thisthing, went through the program,
learned how to raise capital.
So it was kind of adjacent towhat the mentor does for a
living.
So he understood what I was kindof getting at and we had done
so much work and showed up forthem, you know, in the middle of
the night to help them out allkinds of stuff.
(11:26):
So he was like and I want toinvest in you, right?
And I think that's a huge pointin building relationships,
where they know you're not goingto quit, right?
He see me We've got a beautifulbasement for them.
And he see me go through abunch of struggles and trying to
figure stuff out and he's likedude, you won't quit Like I got
(11:48):
to be on your team so that thatin the background really set it
off.
But he saw more in me than Idid at that point.
Right, I had aspirations, I hadsome things that I wanted to do
, but you need mentors, you needpeople around you that see you
in a different light than yousee yourself sometimes.
So that was a huge jumping offpoint for everything.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Such a powerful point , just like you said, having a
mentor that recognizes yourpotential.
Again, like you said, a lot oftimes, especially when you're
getting started and you'reventuring into new things, they
can give you that push and thatcan mean the world and change
everything.
So it's awesome that you hadthat and awesome that they also
push you to do that.
So tell me more about then gothrough that.
That all makes sense.
And then what about the firstdeal?
(12:28):
So what did that look like?
How did you source it?
How did you fund it?
Was it just you?
Did you partner at this point?
What did that look like?
Speaker 4 (12:35):
So the first deal was with Joe.
So our mentor you know that wasbetween us hooked us up.
We had looked at a ton of dealstogether, you know, starting
our we call it the marriageright and figuring out if we
wanted to get married or not.
And we looked at a ton of deals, turned a lot of stuff down
which was hard at the time butin retrospect, you know, I'm
(12:56):
happy that we did.
But we found a few on the MLS.
You know it was local to us,about 30 minutes away to you
know, side by side units, and itwas a lot of growing pains.
We, I think, broke, even, maybeeven lost some money, which is
totally fine because we got alot of systems and processes
(13:16):
built along the way.
But that was pretty organic.
Yeah, we just found out on theMLS, we attacked it and kind of
went after it and went on to thenext one.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
So good, so many things.
Let me rewind first, just incase somebody did not catch this
Again.
Pause this rewind, play thisthing all the way back, because,
mark, you had said somethingand Cole echoed it, and I want
to make sure that we're drivingthis home.
Capital raising is no joke.
This shit is fucking hard ashell, but the deal is secondary,
right, I'm trying to hone in onthis, I'm trying to harp in on
(13:51):
this.
I want to make sure that I'mdriving this home for all of our
listeners.
The deal is secondary.
When somebody is interested intrying to invest inside of the
deal the numbers and all thatstuff, they should align.
It all should make sense thatway, true, but it's who they
know, they like, they trust.
It's establishing thatrelationship.
It's establishing making surethat you've got the credibility.
It's making sure that you'vegot the support system and the
support team around you andmaking sure that you're fucking
(14:13):
going to show up every day.
Right, that's how your mentorwas able to find that trust that
was inside of you.
I'm sorry to let me get off mysoapbox, but I want to make sure
that we're driving that homefor all of the listeners that
are thinking that, hey, tomorrowmorning I'm going to wake up,
I'm going to raise $2 million,because that's what I'm going to
set my mind to do and it's justgoing to happen.
It doesn't fucking happen likethat.
So, again, enough about that.
(14:33):
Moving forward Now talkingabout now that we've got this
deal and may have broken, evenmay have lost a few dollars,
doesn't matter the relationshipfrom the dating phase to now,
what you like to refer to as themarriage, everything's
solidified.
So what does it look like now,now that we got the first deal
underneath our belt?
So what would the next coupleof deals look like?
(14:56):
How do you source them?
How do you fund them?
What does that look like?
Number one, and then number two, thinking about the whole
picture, about doing therenovations and the rehabs, did
you have a team at this point,when you came in and you did
that first deal?
Was it just you boots on theground, what we like to joke
around and call like a five tonine five o'clock in the morning
, nine o'clock at night we heardthis from another podcast
(15:18):
episode that we had done or didyou have a team underneath you
that you could just go ahead andsay all right, you guys handle
this, I'm going to sit back inmy office and you guys just come
back and report to me some ofthese KPIs.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Yeah, great questions and I think to hammer home the
partnership aspect of that is wewent out and met with realtors,
right, and we're talking towholesalers, we're talking to
anybody who's seeing deals inour neighborhood and trying to
provide value to them.
So, having the constructionbackground, hey, call me with
any questions that you have onyour deals.
If your clients have anyquestions, happy to help you.
(15:51):
Guys, I'll provide as muchvalue as possible and in turn
we'll build this partnership outwhere it's.
You know both sides arebenefiting.
So we found a couple of dealsto realtors.
Joe did a really good job on afew deals door knocking.
We bought a property two housesdown the worst house on the
street looked it up.
Who owns it?
It was the lady next door.
(16:12):
He knocked on the door andthat's one of our best projects.
So we source them through a lotof partnerships um and also,
you know, just boots on theground.
And as far as generalcontracting, building out a team
goes, we used a um a teamoutside of mine.
So my, my team is more gearedtowards the um custom, you know,
(16:35):
$500,000 basement type deal.
So we needed somebody to go inand do a flip and not overbuild.
So we thought, if we're goingto do a bunch of deals, we got
to go find some generalcontractors.
It was very difficult to getscope across and to nail down
some of the dollars and centsand to get to a contract, and
(16:58):
that was a very tough process.
As an entrepreneur, I want tohave control over everything and
when my guys are there, I knoweverything's being done to a T.
But to trust somebody else togo out and bring the vision to
life was a tough process and wedon't necessarily work with that
person anymore.
But we learned a lot and webrought some guys into our team
(17:20):
that could do this level offinish.
So we do have a team that wework with now in-house, and then
we have other generalcontractors that we're working
with on some projects as well.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm so glad you brought that up because there's
so much I want to dive intothere.
So you know, with anybodythat's in real estate you're
working with contractors,whether it's subs directly,
whether it's a GC that handlesit.
You know there's the same kindof things the scope of works,
the timeline, the money Right,and most people you talk to it's
a disaster and they don't knowwhat they're doing.
They're trying to figure it out.
(17:51):
The contractor tells them onething it doesn't get done, it
costs more, et cetera.
We've all been there.
So what are things that youfound that change that that work
?
Because, coming from somebodywith your field, that you know
how it should work, you know howto do it correctly.
What would you advise peoplethat are getting started?
Don't do this, do this instead,or et cetera.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I think if you have a vision printing stuff out,
bringing it to the site, puttingit on the walls, if you want to
design the kitchen yourself orhelp those guys you know
configure the house to yourvision, if you're not able to
get that across throughconversation, then they're just
going to assume and they'regoing to do what they've done
before and as they should.
So what I do is I print out asmuch stuff as possible and now
(18:34):
that we have a couple of jobsunder our belt, say, hey, this
is what went right, this is whatwent wrong, but let's follow
this same spec.
And you lean on them too to saywhat materials have you used
and do you have a plumber, doyou have an electrician?
All that.
It should be a partnership inthe end.
But they need to understandyour vision for each property to
(18:55):
a T, so it doesn't getoverbuilt, so things don't get
missed.
And you walk in at the end andyou got a whole different
product than what the marketactually wanted and what you had
a vision for.
So, implementing, printing a lotof stuff out, making it very,
very simple for them to knowwhat I want where, answering
questions ahead of time, justtrying to think of what
questions they might have.
(19:17):
I understand, you know, whenyou're just getting started,
that's hard to do, but trying toanticipate the next step and
making sure that you're stoppingon site and you're working with
these guys, you get to seewhat's going on and that you're
in the mix, to be able to learnalong with them, because they
know that it might be your firsttime, your second time, but
(19:38):
they've been doing this forevermost likely these general
contractors.
But they don't necessarilyunderstand the difference
between building somebody'sdream home or building something
that you need to flip for acertain margin.
So keeping them in the loopwith hey, these countertops are
great, but this market doesn'tcall for it.
So they get to learn along withyou and hope you can build a
(20:00):
partnership, but giving as muchof your vision to them and you
know, like I said, print it out,show them, so you're not just
telling them.
I think it helps a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So what I'm hearing is communication is key, just
making sure that it's opendialogue walking through, you
said you went as far as to makesure that you're either bringing
pictures or some kind ofmaterial on site to say, hey,
this is what the finishes looklike, this is what it is the
vision that we're trying to getin full totality.
This is what we're workingtowards, and then just frequent
check-in with communication,correct?
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Absolutely.
Communication is everything.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Love it, love it, love it.
So my next question, then iswhen we're speaking with Joe, we
talked a little bit aboutstudent housing was like one of
the next avenues that you guyswent down.
So, in terms of the fix andflips, the student housing, is
it always like value add thatyou guys are doing?
And then also, let's moveforward a little bit more in
terms of where do you see itgoing in the next one to three
(20:59):
years from your perspective?
Speaker 4 (21:02):
So the student housing was a one-off.
Joe had been to Geneva, newYork, before he loved it.
There's a great universityright there.
The value was in.
Somebody had to get rid of it,right?
So most of the time we do havea value add proponent.
But sometimes people you knowthey need to cash out and go to
another investment, or you knowdivorce is all kinds of shit,
(21:24):
right, and you can't sit thereand anticipate it or like, oh,
why is this on the market?
Cause people just got to getrid of deals.
So we found that one and thatwas.
We didn't really have to addmuch value to it.
So that was great, um.
But everything else that welook at there's a value add
proponent.
Um, and that could be.
(21:45):
You know, we do full flips thatare more on the custom side and
we do flips that are more on therental side.
But what we kind of aim for,what we tell our guys in the
field all the time, is like thisis going to be somebody's dream
house, right.
They're moving up fromsomething that they didn't have
before and they're going to bethrilled with this product.
You might not live there, right?
You might not like the paintcolor, floor color, don't worry
(22:07):
about any of that stuff, butjust dialing in kind of you know
what the market actuallyexpects.
And, going one to three years,we want to be in more
multifamily type deals, biggerdeals.
So now that we have you know,everybody starts and there's no
capital, there's no deal flow.
So you go out there and youmarket yourself and you talk to
(22:27):
as many people as possible,you're hitting the streets and
then now we have great potentialpartnerships with tons of deal
flow.
We have great capital partners.
So we're trying to do biggerdeals.
Instead of doing 10 flips ayear, let's do four bigger deals
and just concentrate on that,because you can't work any
harder than you're alreadyworking.
There's only so many hours inthe day.
(22:47):
So you try to get as you growand as you learn and there's a
little bit of safety in that.
You try to get bigger dealsthat you can take a bite out of.
But that's where we're headedin the next one to three years
is raising a lot more capitaland doing bigger, better deals.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Cole, you mind if I jump in with another question,
so I wanted to ask I should askthis earlier when you got
started up till now, what doesit look like in terms of like a
buy box for you, especially withyou having the construction
background?
Is there a certain like I don'tknow buy box is probably the
best term for it that you'relike, hey, yeah, this will be a
(23:23):
home run for us.
And then where and how do youisolate that from another deal?
Because I know you mentionedyou had relationships with
different realtors that you werekind of we scratch your back,
you scratch ours type ofsituation, but you guys are also
sourcing deals yourselves.
So what is like a home run foryou guys and what's too much to
take on?
Speaker 4 (23:42):
Honestly, the worst condition, the better for us.
So within our team we have, youknow, 200 years worth of
construction experience.
One my brother actually workedfor Servpro, so he understands
how to do mold, smoke mediation,right, all that stuff.
So what most people are walkinginto and saying like, uh, it's
way too much for us, like, thisis perfect.
(24:03):
So we just picked up a deal sixmonths ago.
We walked in and you know, itsmelled like cat pee and there
was some smoke stuff.
And most people are like thisis above me, but we're like
perfect, took us two days to getrid of everything and we were
off to the races.
Um, so I don't think there'sanything that we can't
particularly take on at thispoint, because we do have the
(24:25):
construction backgrounds and andthe guys in house to take it on
.
Um, but it comes to the pointwhere, uh, we have a deal where
it's a skinny lot.
We had to go to zoning to makesure we get all the approvals
just to put a little additionoff the back.
So I think you get to the pointin the game where it's not just
tearing down walls and doingsome framing and throwing in
(24:48):
some kitchens, it's.
Can you develop this intosomething that somebody is going
to want?
Can you develop this intosomething that somebody is going
to want and are you willing totake the six, nine, 12 months
and thousands of dollars andhours worth of effort to be able
to get that through the door?
So a lot of people see thosedeals and, like I don't know
anything about this, I can'tfigure it out.
But when you have a team aroundyou and you have educated
(25:10):
realtors, we have attorneys, wehave everything that we need to
be able to lean on these peopleto say, hey, this is a good deal
for us collectively.
Right, we're all going to makemoney here at some point.
So that, to me, is where youkind of bridge the gap of yeah,
there's hands-on stuff, we canknock stuff down, we can paint
it, we can build it again.
But if you want to developsomething or it's in a tough
(25:31):
position where it stands, thenthat's the next layer and it's
just a learning opportunityevery time, right, we get our
asses kicked a lot, but thoseturn out to be the best deals
and then you know how to do itthe next time.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
That's awesome and I love that.
You mentioned about the team,and that's really what it comes
down to is, the more you grow, Ithink when you start you have
this thought of like, what if Irun into a problem I can't solve
?
Or what am I going to do?
Blah, blah, blah.
And that's just an inherentthing I feel like most people
probably have, just based on, Iguess, how we grew up or school
or whatever it may be.
But anyways, as you get intothe entrepreneurial world, you
realize it's never a problem youcan't solve.
(26:06):
It's just what does it take tosolve that problem?
There's always a solution.
Is it time, is it money?
Is it something else?
But the solution is usuallyright in front of your face one
way or another.
It's just what does it cost you?
And it costs something,unfortunately, but I love that
you brought that up.
One of the other things I wantto dive into is we have the
pleasure, obviously, to speakwith both of you.
So how does your partnershipwork?
(26:28):
Meaning like you guys arerunning something successfully
and a lot of people people,unfortunately get into
partnerships that don't workthat way.
So what are things that workfor you guys?
Is it roles, is itresponsibilities.
Just like, talk to me aboutyour partnership and what does
and doesn't work.
Maybe.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
It's a great question because we well, I can speak
for myself.
I struggled with a partnershipfor a long time and what I was
doing wrong was I wantedsomebody like me.
Right, like type A this is whatI'm good at Construction,
building, a back end of abusiness, systems, processes.
Like.
I need somebody like minded.
I met Joe.
I'm like this guy is the totalopposite.
(27:07):
Right, we go out to dinner andhe's up at the bar and he's
wagging his tail and he'stalking to everybody.
I'm like, oh shit, all right,that's what I need.
Right, because I like what I doand I love the chessboard of
building, you know, building abusiness.
And here's this system andhere's this process.
We need to add this piece.
And he's like, fuck that, Idon't want to think about that
at all.
Let me go over here and meetpeople and network.
(27:28):
And he's amazing at it.
So once I saw him, we had onespecific meeting and I walked
out of there.
We were still kind of datingeach other.
I'm like, dude, we're stillkind of dating each other.
I'm like, dude, it's over.
Like I don't need to hearanymore what I just saw you do.
Like I know you're going toprovide so much value to this
business in the long term.
Like I, will hunker down andbuild this thing in the
background, do all the stuffthat people don't like to do,
(27:50):
but set you free and go do whatyou're great at.
So it's really finding somebodythat fills the gaps that you
don't fills your gaps right.
So who can do it?
Who loves what they do?
Joe loves what he does.
He gets energy from doing thatright.
Going out and networking andyou know, walk around the bar
(28:10):
and meeting people and I'm likesitting there eating my sandwich
.
I'm like man that looks soexhausting.
So it's the perfect combination.
But you do hear a lot of horrorstories about um partnerships.
But you really just have totreat it like you're going to
spend the rest of your life withthis person and you got to like
their family.
You got to like everythingabout them because it really it
(28:32):
really is a marriage.
We spent a lot of time together.
We pull each other through upsand downs in the business.
It's really difficult and if wedidn't have each other, I'm not
sure either of us would be inthis position.
So it's filling the voids ofwhat you don't have and getting
somebody that really likes to dothose things that you don't
necessarily like to do or thatyou're not good at.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I love this so much.
So much of this resonates soheavily with some other
partnerships that I may havebeen a part of, so I just want
to say it's awesome to hear fromother folks, so I want to say
hats off to the both of you.
I'm proud of you all.
The stuff that you guys haveaccomplished thus far is truly
amazing, and I think I mean withthat Cole.
(29:19):
Do you think he's ready?
Speaker 3 (29:20):
He's definitely ready .
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Okay, all right.
So, mark, we got a surprise foryou.
Maybe, All right.
So what we're going to do is weare going to ask you six
questions back to back, to backto back to back.
I don't know if that was enough.
Back Seems like it.
I don't know, doesn't matter.
Either way, our goal is to tryto ask these.
You can answer as long or assuccinct as possible, and we're
not going to interject, we'renot going to say a word.
(29:47):
We fail every fucking time, butthis time I feel like we might
be able to not say anything andjust rapid fire this all the way
through.
So, without further ado, let'sjump in.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Keep our hopes up.
All right, here we go.
What separates top performingentrepreneurs from the rest of
the crowd?
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Great question.
I think it's persistence.
I think it's a lot of peopleget bogged down and they get
tired, they're overworked.
But you really have to trulylove what you do so that you can
show up every day and you canbeat anybody else because it
feels like play to you, which is, you know, nabal ravikot says
(30:21):
that all the time nobody's goingto beat you if you're playing
and it feels fun to go out everyday and work really hard.
You got to love what you do tokeep the the train rolling I've
already failed.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
So good, so good.
Mic drop moment.
Anybody that's listening.
Pause it, play this, rewind itall the way back from the top.
All right.
Next question what is a dailyhabit that's contributed to your
success?
Speaker 4 (30:51):
I think it's zooming out.
I think that's a thing thatgoes through my mind all the
time.
Everything's on fire all thetime.
Right, you're going to wake upand you say, here's my calendar
and today's going to be great.
I'm going to hop on thispodcast, I'm going to hit this
call and then 40 people call youand say, hey, this is wrong,
this is wrong, this is wrong.
Something's always going to beon fire.
So, zooming out andunderstanding that everything is
(31:14):
OK, okay, nothing is reallygoing to be, you know, ruined in
the long run, it's you playingthe long game.
It's just zooming out, taking adeep breath and saying, all
right, this is just chaos andthat's, that's part of the game.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
It's so good and I got to say real quick it's so
funny because Nate and I startalmost every one of our podcasts
talking about one of the firesthat's going on and I feel like
people probably jump on.
They're like man, all theseguys do is complain or life's a
shit show, like I don't know.
But it's just kind of theinternal joke of just that right
, like we all just unpredictable, crazy things happen.
(31:49):
But part of the fun is justtalking about.
I'm like yo, I can't believethis new, weird thing happened
to me today.
Every day is some weird newevent and you just kind of I
don't want to say come to loveit, but Just kind of I don't
want to say come to love it, butkind of just learn to deal with
it.
And it's entertaining in oneaspect.
So I love that.
What is a piece of?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
advice that you'd give to yourself if you were
starting again.
I hate this answer.
I think it's kind of oversaid alot.
I watched a lot of podcasts.
You know YouTube mentors butit's be patient, right.
I mean when you're in it andthe things that they're going
wrong and you're not seeing themoney and you're not where you
(32:26):
want to be with your lifestyleor whatever it is.
It's just a long game.
Real estate is a very long gameand the people who are willing
to endure that pain the longestare going to win.
So you just have to staypatient, you have to zoom out
and, like I said, I hate thatadvice because I've heard it a
million times.
I'm like, if we talk like, yeah,that's cool for you to say
(32:48):
because you're, you know, 60years old and you got a hundred
million dollars, I'm like I'mstruggling here, right, but you
got it.
You're in the fire, right, it'sthe origin of fire.
It's time under tension.
You just have to go through itbecause you're never going to be
I don't know how to deal withtoday, right, I don't know what,
what next challenge is going tocome up, but, like, you just
(33:10):
got to figure it out.
You're going to learn, you'regoing to grow, and that's what
this whole thing about being anentrepreneur is about.
It's about growth, right, and um, alex hormosi says that.
He's like.
You know, when you start it'syou have one arrow, right, he's
like.
But then you get a partnership,you get this person, you start
to solve some problems and nowfighting a dragon doesn't seem
(33:31):
so hard because because you havean army behind you.
But listening to that, it'slike, yeah, if you're in the
shit and you're feeling like youcan't do anymore, you're in a
great spot.
That's exactly where you shouldbe.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Such a good answer.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I'm trying to think back.
I don't think we've ever had ananswer top this one when it
comes to advice and being ableto look back and give it to you.
And on top of that, I don'teven know, cole, if you caught
it, but Mark snuck in, forged infire into his whole analogy of
how to do it.
He did oh my gosh, all right,yeah, we have not done well with
(34:13):
not answering, talking duringthis call, absolutely failed.
So the next question we got foryou is what is your favorite
business book?
Speaker 4 (34:22):
I got it right here.
I keep it right next to me.
I just brought up Naval, right,so I spent two years.
This is the almanac of NavalRavikant.
It's kind of you know, he's theentrepreneur whisperer.
It's kind of all over the boardas far as you know business
advice goes, but these are justa lot of his thoughts.
He might have a Twitter rant orX rant and you know it would
(34:45):
break it more down into deepdetail in here, but it's
something that I go back to allthe time and you can see it's
dog-eared like crazy.
I think I've given this bookout to 20 different people.
I'm not sure anybody's everread it, but I'm proud to have
read this book.
I spent two years.
I read a book a week.
Most business books are dogshit.
(35:07):
There's one takeaway and Ithink if you treat books as kind
of like, there might be onetakeaway in here great, but this
one, it hits for me in so manydifferent ways and I go back to
it all the time.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
I love to be over right next toyou.
It's awesome.
What is your favorite part ofowning your business?
Speaker 4 (35:31):
I think it's growth.
It's growth for me, it's growthfor my partner.
It's growing together, growinga team, bringing guys in and
saying, hey, you want to be aproject manager?
Like, let's go through this,I'm happy to to dig in and give
you all of my time and energyfor you to grow.
I want to see people get totheir highest potential.
I think it's the most powerfulthing as an entrepreneur is
(35:54):
building a team of badass peoplethat you're stoked to wake up
to and go into the office everyday and say let's go to war.
I think it's the coolest partis building a team for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I've got to say again , this is the mark of a selfless
person.
The question is designed foryou to be able to take a moment
to be selfish, meaning what isyour favorite part?
We're asking you, and youranswer was I like to watch other
people win, like dude.
That's up to you.
That's fucking amazing.
I love it.
So last question on thissegment what is something new
(36:32):
that you've implemented that'shelped drive your business's
success?
And it can't be QuickBooks.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
OK, honestly, I'm yeah, I'm three months into
QuickBooks.
I'm like, oh, this is great,I'll use another app, companycam
, so you basically take all thephotos, all the videos that you
need in the field.
We have the guys take picturesevery single day so we can
update investors.
We have investors come in, weinvite them to the job so they
can keep up with it.
But that's been huge gettingstuff off of your phone.
(37:03):
You can't just walk into aproject, take a picture.
Say, I'm the only guy with thispicture.
Hey, who's got this picturefrom six years ago when we did
this renovation?
It's all on the web.
It gets it off of your phone.
You can communicate through it.
That's been a game changer forus.
The guys take pictures everysingle day and I, just before I
go to bed, I just check in on.
Great, I don't have to go outto the site, you know, twice a
(37:25):
week anymore.
I go out once a month when theyneed me.
But other than that, I seeevery single thing.
You can update your schedules.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It's, it's amazing it's called company cam and it's
an app yep, awesome, I'm gonnatry that.
That's great.
It's a gameCam and it's an app.
Yep, awesome, I'm going to trythat.
That's great.
It's a game changer.
Yeah, that's cool.
I love the useful tips like that, the useful kind of stuff that
people haven't heard about.
Mark, this has been awesome.
I mean, it's cool hearing yourstory dialing all the way back
to the beginning, talking aboutyour beginning starting in site,
(37:53):
going to engineering, toengineering, going to
construction first going intocustom homes, learning how to be
a GC and learning the businessworld, and then meeting a mentor
, having that first investor,that mentor becoming your first
investor, meeting your partnersthrough these programs and then
joining other programs to learnhow to fund, to raise, just
generally learning and growingyour business, then getting into
(38:15):
that first deal and growingtogether, and then all the cool
things that we talked aboutleading up to just general
growth.
And there's so much more I'dlove to go into and
unfortunately we can't for time,so I have two final questions
for you One, where can peoplefind you?
And two, any final advice?
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Find us on Instagram at Capital Companion and any
final advice.
Find us on Instagram at CapitalCompanion and any final advice.
I think it's like I said, beingpatient.
I think it's a.
It's a annoying thing whenyou're just starting, but
joining the groups reinvestingcapital back into joining groups
(38:58):
so that you don't have to findlike-minded people has been huge
, because I grew up I didn'tknow a single business owner, so
I've been steering blind.
I didn't know anybody inprivate equity or that had a
hundred million dollars thatwanted to invest.
So I joined a couple of groupsand you're buying into access to
people who are doing the sameexact thing as you.
(39:20):
So if you can reinvest some ofthe profit or, you know, even if
you do take capital and it'spart of building your business
and you can get into the rightrooms it really is worth it.
The numbers feel big.
You know it could be 10, 15, 20grand.
Sometimes you will get thatback immediately.
You'll get it back on yourfirst deal.
(39:40):
You're going to have 100 peoplethat you can reach out to when
you have a problem or when youhave a great deal that you want
to raise capital from.
So I think it's reinvesting.
It's reinvesting time, andYouTube University has been a
big thing for me too.
I spent a lot of time onYouTube.
We built this whole businessoff of YouTube.
If I spent a lot of time, onYouTube.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
We built this whole business off of YouTube.
If you don't know something,somebody's already put it on the
Internet.
Mark, this has been amazing.
I don't say this lightly, I'mgoing to speak for the both of
us.
This has been a ton of fun.
It's one of those kind ofsituations where when you, when
you, jump into these podcasts,you never know what you're going
to get on the other side.
But we get authenticity, we getreal stories, we get real
person that has been throughreal struggles, real trials,
real tribulations.
This has been fucking amazing,and I don't know if I'm supposed
(40:23):
to say this.
We can edit it out, probablynot going to, but for your very
first fucking podcast.
I would never have guessed.
Dude, you are one of a kindwhen it came to getting to the
stage.
Man, not shy, upfront, fullyhonest, fully transparent.
Hats off to you, brother.
This is awesome.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
I appreciate it.
Like I said, I've watched somany podcasts.
You have mentors.
If you can't find mentors, goon YouTube.
Watch Alex Hormozy, watch NavalRabicot there's so many people
in real estate giving awayunbelievable content for free
and get the YouTube premium appso you can put it on your phone
and when you turn your phone off, it doesn't shut off.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
It's a total life hack put it on your phone and
when you turn your phone off, itdoesn't shut off.
It's a photo life hack.
I love it.
I love it.
I love it.
Your name is going to be rightup there with the man you have
given us so many gems.
We appreciate you For thosethat are listening if you're
driving, drive safely, get homesafely.
And we want to thank you all somuch for coming through hanging
with us in Forge and Fire.
This has been an amazingepisode, mark, and for Joe as
(41:20):
well.
Our house is your house.
We want to watch you guys grow.
We want to watch you guysthrive.
Whenever you two want to stopback in here, pop in on us.
Let us know some of the amazingthings that you guys have just
tackled.
All you got to do is say theword We'd love to have you back.
Speaker 4 (41:32):
Amazing.
I appreciate you guys.
This is great.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Of course, our pleasure.
Everybody take care.
We're looking forward to seeingyou all on the next episode of
Forged in Fire.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in
Fire.
If you enjoyed today's raw,unfiltered stories, don't forget
to like, subscribe and leave usa review.
Your feedback helps us bringmore real-world insights to
entrepreneurs like you.
(42:04):
Be sure to join us next timefor even more lessons, struggles
and breakthroughs on the roadto success.
Keep forging ahead.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.