The Future of Real Estate in 2025: Chris Stout’s Predictions and Game Plan

In this episode of Inside The Deal Room, Gabe Bowling talks with Chris Stout, founder of Stout Capital. Chris shares simple and smart ways to grow in real estate, even in tough markets. He explains why he focuses on improving existing properties instead of risky developments and how this strategy creates great returns.Chris also opens up about the challenges of running a business, setting clear goals, and balancing work with family. If you're looking for straightforward tips to improve your real estate game or just need some motivation to keep going, this episode is for you.

Links:

Website: thedealroom.io

Circle Community: Join here

Schedule a Call: Book here

Chris Stout’s Instagram: @officialstout

Stout Capital Website: stoutcap.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
All right everybody, welcome back to another episode of Inside the Deal Room.

(00:08):
I'm your host, Gabe Bolling, and in today's episode I have an incredible guest speaker
all the way down from New Jersey, came all the way down to Tampa, Florida.
Some of you guys might already know him.
Very good friend of mine, somebody that I trust, developed trust with over the last couple
of years, owns $70 million of deals.
We're going to talk about it.
Chris Stout, welcome to the office.

(00:29):
Thank you for, welcome to the office.
I like that.
Welcome to the office.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So, I think, let's just catch everybody up.
Some people might already know your story.
They might already follow you and stuff.
For everybody that doesn't, why don't we just start, big numbers, why do people, why
do you catch so many people's attention?
What are you working on today?
And then we'll kind of peel it back and figure out how you got there.

(00:50):
I guess the attention is from just doing it for such a long period of time.
We're not a group that's decided when this is the greatest thing in the world to do
in 2021 that we're going to start then.
So this has been going on for a long time now, since my mid-20s, when I purchased a
two-family house and I thought that one deal, two-family house, was going to be my retirement

(01:11):
nest egg.
And I couldn't wait to pay the loan off on that.
So 15 or 16 years later, we actually purchased that house before this guy in the studio.
My son, Aiden, came along with us, was even born.
His sister was just born when I purchased my first rental.
So we've had this stuff for a long period of time, and we've been in the game for a
long period of time.

(01:32):
So we amped up.
And I started all the way at the bottom from running two families completely by myself,
renovating them by myself.
My own hands, my mother would come and sit and bring coffee until 1, 2 in the morning
while I'm hanging drywall.
So that started from there, started managing my own tenants from the very beginning.

(01:53):
And then now we're here.
So the words coming out of my mouth are true experience.
They're not watching the internet and YouTube for four hours a day for three weeks, and
then all of a sudden, we're just spewing stuff that we just heard from others.
This is real stuff.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for sharing.

(02:14):
So today, Stout Capital, I know a lot of it's personal stuff that you built over the last
10 years, over the last four or five years or so, you've started to bring in some of the
investors that you already had relationships with, and your graph has gone through the
roof.
What are you guys at for today, a total number of units or assets under management?
And then where in the country do you own today?

(02:35):
Yeah.
So we're over 700 apartments.
I missed the exact number because it's constantly changing.
It's about 70 or over 70 million bucks worth of stuff.
What's important to me is that we continually acquire and we continually do deals and we're
continually in the middle of some form of action.
So sitting still isn't really good for me.
We've continued acquiring over the past two years when no one was buying.

(03:00):
My accountant actually who's an institutional level accountant, when I call him and bitch
to him that there's no deals going on, he's like, dude, your group is actually the busiest
out there, so you should stop complaining.
But to me, in my head, I'm always like, I'm sitting still.
Why am I not moving anywhere?
But I guess that's why we keep moving.

(03:20):
We've purchased a good amount of stuff over the last two years when no one else is buying,
specifically smaller deals actually.
And where in the country?
I know you have 300 in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
We bought from one family, three deals in a row in North Carolina, Fayetteville and North
Carolina.
We're actually discussing, disposing of those right now.
Really?

(03:40):
Yeah.
It seems like it just, it literally just happened.
It does, dude.
Hey, we just closed this, I think it was 60 units that you started with and it's like,
I got another 240 to follow.
And now it's like, all right, we're getting BOVs done and talking about Exidex.
It's insane how fast this stuff happens.
You know it really triggers it when you set milestones.

(04:01):
So when you open a deal, there's certain things that you run into, right?
So one of them is going to be expiration of something on the loan.
So for us, it's expiration of IO.
So two years, IO.
The loan's still good for another three years.
IO means?
Interest only.
Interest only.
So basically, when you get a loan on a multifamily property, so if you're doing commercial real
estate, it's important to know that you're not just looking at the rate.

(04:24):
So when you buy a house, everyone's getting the same 30-year loan and you just want to
get the best rate.
All right, so if I could save a quarter of a point on my 30-year loan, you know, that's
how you look at it as a residential buyer.
But in commercial, it's significantly deeper than that.
You actually look at the rate.
The rate is not at the top of the list.
The terms are at the top of the list.

(04:45):
So what happens over the course of the ownership of the deal?
So those deals, the interest only expires after two years.
So we don't look to pay our loans down.
We pay our loan down with the down payment.
So we go in, we buy a deal, we put 35% down.
That was us paying it down.
And then we want the bank to hold everything else for as long as they possibly would without

(05:09):
charging us any principal because we want to make the money now.
And the principal pay down really doesn't affect because you're a value add investor.
You go in, you're looking to force the value.
You're increasing value by like 30% or 40% of whatever you bought it at.
That's right.
You're not necessarily factoring, oh, well now it's principal pay down and we get to
pay it down by like an inch every year that we're in it.

(05:31):
For you, it's like, what are we buying?
What can we do to it?
And then the equity that you're building in that two to three-year period of time.
That's right.
So we're not looking to build equity by paying down.
We're looking to build equity by forcing value.
So the quicker we're able to force value by paying the bank as little as possible, the
most amount of money we'll make, which we're here to make money.

(05:51):
Yeah, very cool.
So we're going to talk about deals.
Especially today, well the last two years it's been extremely tough and you've been
one of the most talked about, most like seen guy actually doing deals.
It's very impressive.
From at least from my eyes.
Maybe I just watch you all the time.
So we'll talk about deals last two years and then moving forward, you know, crystal ball,
what's actually happening.

(06:12):
So before we do that, let's for everybody thinking, because think about people are starting
their year one, their year two, or maybe they're in single family looking the transition into
multifamily because they see the benefits of it.
How did you get started in the business?
And then maybe think about the ideal listener thinking, okay, I want to break in the multifamily.
You got in 15 years ago.

(06:33):
What should they be looking to do today?
And then maybe what should they not be looking to do?
Like syndicating a hundred million dollar deal.
Yeah, so if you're not 100,000% sure that you could handle a hundred million dollar
deal, that means you cannot handle a hundred million dollar deal.
So you know, I see a lot of people go into some groups out there and within 15 minutes

(06:55):
of doing nothing, they all of a sudden passing around 90 million dollar deal saying that
they got on an email with a broker.
Complete waste of time.
Something I always loved about Gabe's group is he pushes, if you're just getting started,
take a look at this 10 unit.
And if you go back to when I started, a 10 unit was like, that guy is ready to retire.

(07:17):
Like you do not have to start big.
So if you are just getting started, look at the small deals, two, three, four, five units,
you will learn so much.
And it doesn't take a long time to get to the point where you're able to buy significantly
larger.
Yeah, because most people stay in that, you know, they're staying in four units or less

(07:38):
for like 10 years and then something happens to them and they're like, okay, I stayed in
this thing for too long.
Now let's go ahead and scale.
It's start here and then maybe look at a 10 unit the next deal or maybe the 12 unit the
next deal and then maybe a 24 the next one.
You don't have to stay in this single two to four unit for like 10 years.
I see a lot of people make them a mistake.
I did that.

(07:58):
Yeah.
What do you mean by that?
So I stayed in the sub 10 unit category for 10 years.
That was my time.
I didn't think the others were possible.
And actually I didn't realize I started raising capital from my development company.
So we were building homes and I was raising capital to do that.
But I never for some reason it never clicked in my head that I could do that with apartments.

(08:23):
And as simple as that may sound to everyone who's listening, I had a goal and every room
that I walked into, I was a successful young guy.
And I was like, oh, I'm on the right track.
I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing.
And I never realized that I could be bringing in people into the apartments.
And it just, it just, it just never dawned on me.

(08:45):
Yeah.
And if you had that piece of information, you know, in year two or year three and you
were able to take action on it, then versus year 10, it'd be a completely different.
Completely different game.
So that's where all the juice lies.
So it doesn't lie in being able to take down your first 60 unit, 60, 80, 90, 100 unit
deal, first deal.

(09:05):
It's just knowing that, okay, I have to get started, but there's a very good, clear path
to where I want to go.
That's where it all lives is right there.
Yeah.
Because without, with the exception of the people that do the first deal and lose a
lot of money, maybe they're missing for them, they do a bad deal, they shouldn't have gotten
into.
But let's say they do an okay deal for their first one.
How many times have you ran into people that said, I got into real estate and I did a good

(09:28):
deal and that was it.
I stopped.
Probably none.
Like they keep going and doing the next deal and the next deal and the next deal and the
next deal.
Yeah.
The part is getting started.
So really, the hard part is getting started, absolutely.
And if you never get to the point where I think you and I, there's definitely a certain

(09:49):
amount of, that we take for granted that we could raise capital.
There's a lot of people out there that can't, they just haven't built their life properly
to be able to raise capital.
You have to build your life very specifically to raise capital, whether you knew it or not.
What's behind you is, sure there's people who recover from bad things, but whether

(10:14):
knowing it or not, you have to strategically execute your life to be able to raise capital.
And it really goes back to how you treated people for the past 20 years, like legit.
Because people are writing checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars and it has a lot of
money.
It has nothing to do with the deal.
Like I went out to eat with an investor last night and he was talking about a bunch of

(10:37):
things and I'm like, I actually, I don't know if this is good enough, but I do this.
Sometimes I'll interrupt the conversation.
I'm like, guys, just so you know, like if I'm no good, this is no good.
Like nothing matters.
So you could, you know, you could look at this spectacular deal.
Oh my gosh, just class A deal on the water in Tampa and it's the most beautiful deal
ever.
If the guys running it suck, the deal sucks.

(10:58):
So, you know, you have to form that.
Trust.
Like over such a long period of time.
And I forgot where that question started, but if you want to remind me, I get off track.
But it's okay.
We're weaving.
Yeah.
We're weaving in and out.
Right.
As long as you get back to the beginning like Trump, right?
So let's, I want to keep it, let's go back high level.

(11:18):
Yeah.
What were you doing for the first 10 years?
Just so people can think like, okay, how are you making my...
Oh, so you're right.
We were talking about what do people usually get one deal and stop.
Yes.
Okay.
So, you know, people, this is how that would happen.
You save up every single dollar you have and you buy your first two family.
I actually do know a lot of people who have done that.

(11:40):
Interesting.
Yeah.
And it's because they did not do it 100% properly and it was nothing but a nightmare
for them and they said, I'm just going to do something else.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll keep this two family like in Brooklyn, you know, New York City, probably more than
here.
I mean, it's a very small real, like very small real estate outside of where I live.
But New York City, you would get a one, two or three family in Staten Island, Brooklyn,

(12:04):
Queens, Manhattan, right?
A lot of people have got into that space.
It was a very difficult time in their life.
And they, then they got it to work.
They said, I don't ever want to go through that again.
And it's because they actually never took the steps to learn management, hiring contractors.
It's okay to go, when you buy something, you go a little bit underwater for a minute

(12:25):
because you have to do the things.
You know, you have to get the bad tenants out, put good tenants in, do the work that's
required, do all the stuff.
So you get your head beat in a little bit and especially your first one because you
have to learn.
And then when, you know, when the dust settles and you're like cruising along, it's kind
of like people have one kid.
Yeah.
Like if you don't forget about, you have to be able to forget about how terrible was

(12:46):
the first year or the first six months.
If you don't forget about a terrible was the first six months, you'll never have another
kid.
Yeah.
It's a good trap.
Interesting.
So if you have a good experience and you learn the stuff and you're like getting, you get
into this growth mindset of like, okay, I want to do it more.
Those people don't ever stop.
Like will you ever stop buying real estate deals?

(13:07):
Never.
Okay.
Cool.
But the people that go through it and have a bad experience and just don't get either
the right information or maybe they bought a bad deal, those are the people that like,
I don't want to ever do this again.
And then if they do continue to invest in real estate, it's through investing with guys
like you or me passively.
Yes.
I actually have a lot of people who are in my investor circle is a lot of people who

(13:29):
are in real estate.
That's actually my largest investors.
They were in real estate for a certain period of time and they're like this, I'm done, bro.
I'm done with the calls.
I'm done with the stuff that's just not going right.
I understand the reason that those are the best investors for us is because they're like,
no, I know real estate is a good thing.
I get it.

(13:49):
I get the tax benefits.
I get that, like the guy last night that I went out to eat with, the investor, he's
like, how many times have you lost?
This guy, he's investing 200 grand.
He's like, how many times have you lost, say like someone's 100,000?
And I'm like, lost 100?
Are you nuts?
The only, this game is, if it's done properly, it's not losing 100.

(14:14):
It's not losing the money.
The worst that happens is we don't hit our target in the right period of time, but if
something's not going right, the solution is just wait a little longer.
So instead of a 20, you had a 14.
Instead of a 18, you had a 16.
If I told you, Gabe, I got the best stock in the world, bro.
It's going to do 20% this year.

(14:36):
And at the end of the year, it does 12.
You're like, all right.
Yeah, still up 12.
Yeah, I mean, I made 12.
That's great.
People are so used to investing, there's a great possibility you lose money.
And real estate, fortunately, real estate bought in the right spot, because if it's
in a bad market, it doesn't matter, bought in the right spot, handled by the right people.

(15:00):
It's not, if you're going to win or lose, it's how much will you win?
Over what period of time?
Over what period of time, right?
That's the functionality of the business.
It's not like car washes.
It's an operational business versus we're just leasing space to people.
It's a supply and demand thing.
All right, so let's fast forward through the 10 years in a fairly quick period of time.

(15:24):
What are you doing for the first 10 years?
Because it's very, people, I think, with the invention of social media, nobody ever wants
to do anything for 10 years.
They want to do it right now, the second.
What are you doing through this period of time for active income and then the formula,
I guess, that you were using to create the wealth for yourself, just make as much money,

(15:46):
dump in the real estate.
Make as much money, dump in the real estate.
Can you talk about that?
Because I think it's important for people to see.
You know, it's a very surreal thing to actually, I was, this will sound so kind of silly,
but the other day I was sitting at my kitchen sink, filling up my cup of water, we have
the filter next to it, and my kitchen sink has this 10 foot, it has this 10 foot wide

(16:13):
by 9 foot tall window overlooking the river in New Jersey.
It just happened right before I left for Florida, and these things pop in your head, and I'm
like, what did it take to get here?
Like holy shit.
You start thinking back at all the things you did, and you hear online constantly, like
no one's willing to do the work.
And then once in a while, while you're doing the work, it doesn't feel like you're doing

(16:36):
the work.
Your head's down, you're just on the phone.
Yeah, and I'm like, I almost feel like you're not doing the work.
You're like, I'm not doing enough.
And then you look back, and it was constant.
I will keep grinding as hard as I possibly can to make that active income as much as
I can, and dump it into real estate without letting the lifestyle creep hit me.

(16:59):
What do you mean by that?
So I have some pretty wealthy friends, and I have some pretty friends that look very
wealthy but aren't.
And I'll go to events where there's three, four, five million dollar cars.
Love these events.
You have a Lamborghini, we have on Gabe's table over there, he has the Lamborghini book,

(17:23):
and at his event he brought it.
These cars are just unreal.
Anyway.
So go to these events and there's million plus dollar cars, or call it half a million
to a million dollar cars, and a lot of them.
Some people, we say, how much money do you need to buy an $800,000, $700,000 Lamborghini?
Some people the answer is $700,000.

(17:44):
Sorry, some people the answer is $100,000 down payment.
I need $100,000 to get that car.
And some people is, I need 10 million before I spend a half a million on a car.
6, 7, 100 grand a year, massive, not even touching the principal.
The investment income pays for the stupid stuff.

(18:05):
That's right.
So in your life, when you decide to start to make that switch will determine your acceleration
over time.
So the longer you could delay, for me it was, I mean arguably the only thing I have that's
very valuable is my personal house, which still to me isn't.
And you built it.
I built it.

(18:26):
Yeah.
I was one of the first wife's chops the other day.
I'm like, you're in your third custom built house.
Your butt has never touched a tub that someone else has used.
But I build my own homes that I live in, third one, and we've made good money on every single
one.
I was just going to say that ax almost is more of an asset than it does liability.

(18:46):
Yeah, $500,000 tax exemption, tax free money.
You can't beat it.
That's like the biggest, and it's not the biggest hack in real estate.
It's a pretty big one though.
You'll be able to carry that house.
It goes up for $500,000 in value.
You just get that check.
No one taking a dollar from you.
I hope you guys are listening.

(19:06):
All right, we can talk about this forever.
So at what point, what happened for you to go from the $10 million, you built the entire
portfolio with only your money and you're here, most people are chilling on their boat
not doing anything because they've made it.
But over the last four years, I've seen you go from 10 to 70.

(19:28):
That doesn't happen accidentally.
What happened, either people you met, information you got, what happened for that to transpire?
What actually really happened was I realized that my current business, which was building
custom homes, wasn't as scalable as I'd like it to be.

(19:49):
And I started thinking what I really wanted out of my life.
And I asked that to a lot of people, what do you really want out of your life?
And what I was doing wasn't going to get me there.
So I look back at my $10 million worth of real estate that it took me 10 years to build
and I'm like, this is not going fast enough.
Like I do not want to, have you ever gotten in a Lambo?

(20:10):
Dude.
What?
Do I need to?
Absolutely need to.
And what it will show you is even at your age, you're like, this shit is hard to get
into.
Yeah.
Physically.
You can't wait until you're 60 to get a Lambo.
You won't be able to get out or you'll make a disaster out of yourself.
You won't bring it to a restaurant because you live like an idiot getting out of it.

(20:30):
So it's not going fast enough for me.
And I have to get to the point where I could buy one of these things and still look sophisticated
and classy by getting in and out of it.
You almost have to crawl into or fall into it.
So I realized stuff wasn't going fast enough.
So then it forced me like, what should I be doing to, what should I be doing to accelerate

(20:51):
what I currently got going on and not go from like real estate to I'm going to own a chain
of hair salons.
Completely different.
Yeah.
Whatever you're doing, how can I make maybe a chain, maybe a different vehicle within
real estate?
And you obviously did that.
That's right.
Using your skill set.
So walk us through first couple of deals.
I think it was that 60 unit deal where you're not doing it alone.

(21:12):
You go out, you're raising money from investors.
I think you find out that you already had tens of millions of dollars in your phone book
just waiting for you to ask it.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
That's where you want to start raising capital.
You're like, I don't know where to start.
It's right in your cell phone book.
Like don't ever delete your contacts, ever.
And you know what I started doing?
There's a program sales message.

(21:35):
And I know there's a bunch of them out there.
It's basically a program where you could upload your contacts.
Because I mean, you could start going to your phone book and you start texting people.
It's simple and free, right?
It's always the best way to start.
You could upload your contacts.
I'm going to pull that back for a second.
The best way to do it is to start texting people just directly.
Then you could scale up a little bit.
You could start inputting it into a software that will blast text people.

(21:59):
But you have to first, step one is say, I don't care what anyone thinks.
Because 90% of that blast is going to say, look at this idiot.
Who's going to give?
Who's going to write this guy a check?
But the 10% is like, oh, this guy's been good for a long time.
Like I've watched this guy.

(22:20):
I've wanted to be a part of without even telling you.
Because humans naturally want to be around other successful people.
If you're doing cool shit, whether I say it or not, you pull up in an awesome car or you
have $10 million worth of real estate, saying it or not, I want to know what you got going
on.
And I want to be a part of it.
Especially if what I have going on is less.
So people will raise their eyebrow.

(22:43):
You don't care about whatever percentage it is that doesn't care what you have going on.
And that's where your capital raising starts.
I want to make sure we covered what you asked in the 0 to 10.
Because I know that's an important topic.
Did I hit everything you wanted to hit on that?
So you get into, do you just jump in the construction?

(23:03):
Because I know that's been your thing.
Oh, I jumped in head first.
So construction was I started with a market tier ad.
I had no tools.
My first job, I can remember it, someone needed a cabinet door fixed.
And I show up and I'm like, 300 bucks.
And they're like, OK, deal.
I actually had that required some very, very minor tools like I'm talking like a screw

(23:24):
gun and that's basically it.
Fixed it, then next job.
And grew basically a market tier ad all the way up to kitchens and baths.
Now you do kitchens and baths.
Now you can do a whole first floor.
You go a whole first floor.
Now you get your GC license.
What I did, I got my general contract as license in New York City.
And then I was able to do an addition on a home, small addition, like a mud room.

(23:48):
You walk in, small little mud room addition, small.
Like you walk, you know, that's it.
It just coats.
A door and coat rack.
You know, then you blast some pictures of that out and all of a sudden you could do a
kitchen addition.
Then a second floor and now you could do custom homes.
So that's how that business took.
And I went all in for 10 years every single dollar I made went into real estate.

(24:09):
So that's like the important, people want to know like, how did you grow it?
It was focus and I'm not putting my money anywhere else.
Like it's just going into real estate and every deal I did was all I have to do is save
another $100,000.
So for me, the market was 100 grand.
The first 100 grand I saved, bought a first two family, then I saved, saved.

(24:33):
And my goal was buy one house a year with $100,000 saved.
Keep it going.
But now that you start doing that, like I was saying, like you don't have to go, it
doesn't take too long to accelerate as long as you know where you're headed.
So now you can start selling or refinancing these deals and that's when the speed kind
of picks up on its own.
The graphs typically look something like this for a long period of time and then it goes

(24:53):
up and then it's got rockets.
And then it's got rockets.
And the mind shift is what happens right there.
I think it's important that you mention you were all the way in.
Because a lot of people like to dip their toe in, try it out for 90 days.
If it doesn't work, they'll move on to the next.
Yeah, I don't know if you curse on this podcast enough, but it's all the fucking.
You go as hard as you possibly can and you do not stop.

(25:14):
And it's the only way it happens.
I feel like Gary Vee right now.
Like there's only one way.
People have gotten soft on social media.
They don't love this agreement.
But all right, so I think that was good for the first 10 years.
Most people, they see it and they're like, okay, I'm going to take his 10-year thing
and compress it down to like three months.

(25:35):
I'll go work at the construction job and then I'll go syndicate deals.
The period of time where you go from 10 to now 70, let's kind of move into the deal side
of it.
What are you doing at like year nine or 10?
Is it 50-unit deals or it's 60-unit deals?
And is it you're doing the same thing now you're just inviting new people in?

(25:57):
Or do you change the model and say, I'm going to go towards these bigger apartment complexes?
Let me see if I can actually do this thing.
The start of it was a 16-unit with my own money.
So it went from two to three's to I'm taking down a 16-unit deal.
And 16-unit deal is where I learned all the juice.
If you know how to operate a 16-unit, like a two family, a two or three-unit, we'll get

(26:20):
you to kind of be able to handle a 16-unit.
But a 16-unit is very difficult to manage.
Where was that at?
I mean, since Staten Island.
It's very difficult to manage.
And it's a rent control building.
So not only do you have the tenants to deal with, but you have the horrific regulations
that come with it in New York City.
So you're balancing that too.

(26:41):
So that has to be, if you can manage a 15- or 16-unit building, you could literally manage
anything.
Because it's too small to just hire a manager and let it go.
And it's too big or you work extremely hard to make sure that it stays on just you managing
it.
So with that education is when I was like, OK, I'm ready to shoot it up.

(27:04):
How do we shoot this up?
What is a great deal for Chris Stout, and Stout Capital?
Like you're making this change.
OK, I'm going to go bigger.
How do you define what a great deal is for you?
A great deal is...
Is it more about the deal or is it more about like an investment thesis of what you're
trying to accomplish for the investors?
Like buy money or buy an apartment complex, force the value, refinance, and then send

(27:28):
the investor's money back so we can create wealth over a long period of time?
Or is it I need to hit a 15 IRR so I can do this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?
Yeah, so the number one thing is the number one thing about a good deal is you have to
make sure you're in a good market, the right market.
And the reason that's important to know is as we turn into 2024 to 2025, a lot more

(27:49):
deals are going to start coming on the market.
As more deals come on the market, there's going to be more of an opportunity to buy
deals that look OK and look nice, but they're in a bad market.
And what's going to happen is you're going to start seeing people buy deals in bad markets
and when the market makes a shift in the other direction again, like it typically does, meaning
goes back up because commercial real estate has been pressed down for two or three years,

(28:12):
you're going to be left in the dust because you didn't buy in the right market.
So it's very important for us because really typically the returns on real estate at surface
level aren't like, oh my god, these are the greatest returns ever, right?
You want to make sure you catch the swings correctly.
So sure, we go to the typical 15 IRR, we want to double the money in five years like that

(28:35):
whole thing.
But really what we want to do is we want to buy in a great market on the right part of
the swing to make sure that when we go to exit this deal, the market is in a better
place than when we found it and other things happen that we didn't predict.
That's kind of what we're looking for is.
So we're looking for deals that could potentially have effects and pressures on it in the upward

(28:59):
direction outside of what we originally expected.
Things went better than we planned.
Let's dig deeper because I know this is happening in a market that you've entered, the Arkansas
market, let's quantify what you actually meant by that statement.
So specifically I could say a market that we're in now, we're buying heavily, like I'll
invest every last dollar I've ever made in my life here, Northwest Arkansas.

(29:21):
So it basically goes from Fayetteville, Arkansas to Bentonville, Arkansas.
And then people like they message me online like, what about XYZ, Arkansas and Little
Rock?
No, do not.
I am not saying that any other part of Arkansas is good except there's one sliver of land.
It is, it's only about, I don't know the exact dimensions, but it's probably about 10 miles

(29:44):
wide and I just know by how long it takes me to get from the bottom to the top, it's
probably 30 miles long.
This one sliver of land getting dumped on by the Walton family.
And what's happening is billionaires cannot build 100 to 300 unit multifamily building
and feel like they did anything.

(30:06):
It's probably more trouble than it's worth for them.
But they can build an area or a neighborhood.
And these areas and neighborhoods to get going, because if you think about any other area
throughout the country that isn't going, and I'm holding up quotations for anyone who's
not watching the video, for any area that's not going yet, it takes a tremendous amount

(30:29):
of capital injection to get that area to turn the corner.
So areas that are just chugging along 150, $200,000 homes, a renter, $1.25 a foot, not
too many jobs going there.
To make that area make the flip and actually start building an infrastructure to handle
new and people want to go there and then the jobs start going and start this dustball of,

(30:55):
what's the right word, this dustball of action.
It's very difficult.
So that's why if you fly from New York to California, you're flying over farm the entire
time and it's an occasional city that you see.
So what's happening in Northwest Arkansas is the Walton family is injecting billions
and billions of dollars, Walmart is injecting billions of dollars, did the largest employer

(31:18):
in the country in the world.
They are the richest family in the world.
Individually they are the top richest people in the world.
This area is set for explosion for many reasons that being the top one.
John Gray from Blackstone was there the other day running on LinkedIn saying if you haven't
been here you got to check it out and Blackstone enters the market forget it like game over.

(31:42):
So it's almost like get your hands on anything you get on there.
And it's already in action too because you're able to go there, see it and I think you were
there before the campus was fully built and then you were there as it was being built
and you saw it come to life.
You didn't underwrite in your projections Walton family to inject billions of dollars
of development inviting hundreds of thousands of people in and new jobs and all this stuff

(32:04):
and more rent for us.
You just wrote it like a normal deal and this is like that lucky thing.
So if nothing comes true that facts are all pointing in the direction that I said.
If none of that happens the deal will perform as we said.
That's it.
So like I said earlier if I told you this deal is going to do this and it does that

(32:29):
you're like it did exactly like you said.
But the goal is to get into it.
What does a great deal look like for Chris?
Is get into a deal that I could say something's going to happen and if it happens fine meaning
if it goes away I said fine but if this external force pushes us up then we really hit the jackpot.
I think that's important because a lot of realtors and brokers try to sell this whole

(32:52):
thing about there's talks about a potential development potentially happening potentially
here so you should buy it now get in early enough.
There's got to be a mark for you.
It's like all right this amount of action is already taking place and I have indicators
that it could keep going so we're going to underwrite here.
Worst case scenario it performs here and if we get lucky.
That's the biggest lesson.

(33:14):
That's the big you know how many times I've heard like oh this mayor got elected in this
town he's going to turn around the mayor.
The mayor has no input.
He could be have you ever heard a politician jump into often say I'm going to be terrible
we're not going to do anything.
Every mayor or any politician that gets elected says they're going to be the greatest mayor
ever this town has ever seen.

(33:36):
So you've seen too much of people jumping on board of something that may possibly happen
because one or two people said so.
No.
You know people say like I want it.
How do I buy and if you're from New York or the area you know Bushwick Brooklyn or Williamsburg
Brooklyn it supports Williamsburg is right outside of Manhattan.
So you could go there 20 years ago you'd be you would walk out with your clothes off like

(34:01):
they would have robbed you of everything.
Now you can't you can't buy a square inch of the place.
So people like I want to buy the next Bushwick Brooklyn.
No you do not.
You do not want to buy that spot.
You do not want to buy the next Newark New Jersey because people the funny thing about
Newark is it's still like it's still like stuck in the mud but like the tires starting

(34:24):
to grab the edge of the rock to get it out.
But really the funny part is is my brother my brother 16 years older than me he laughs.
He's like dude my boss he worked for a home building company when he was younger.
He's like my bosses when I was in my late teens and I was sweeping homes were talking
about buying a Newark and it's about to turn.

(34:45):
You do not want to be the guy who jumped into a place that's a complete shithole and it
makes the turn because it only looks pretty when it's finished and it could be finished.
It could be finished after your dad bought it he died past it to you and then it turned
your dad never got to see it.
You want to get into an area that's already already made the ride up and then you jump

(35:09):
in Steve Schwarzman you know me.
I love that guy.
He says be okay I'm missing the first five to ten percent of the people that go in and
get the bigger scores and you'll ride the last ten to a hundred percent.
And the number could even be bigger than that like fifty to a hundred.
Like you want that ramp up to happen already.

(35:30):
People still make it New York City is in a tough spot but you go to Manhattan and make
a ton of money and it's one of obviously one of the hottest real estate markets in the
country.
Cool.
All right let's move into you said actually before we go into the future what defines
a great market for you.
What is you say great markets locations the number one most important thing.

(35:53):
It's so I get pitch deals every single day from a bunch of people in their year one and
they know the underwriting inside and out of nothing about location.
It's on the corner of the worst city in the worst block and even like Tampa people say
I have a great deal in Tampa.
Like what street in Tampa right the street matters and a mile to mile thing.
It's either growing or dying and we need to know which side we're on.

(36:14):
So what in your eyes are like metrics or things that you're looking for in a market.
You can't take three percent rent growth put in your spreadsheet for anywhere in the country.
That's what people do.
But really it's for me the number one thing I look at if someone says an area I go I go
on Google and the reason I'll talk about we use obviously more sophisticated software

(36:35):
will go a cost or an honest but but really all the information we get on these sites
is readily available elsewhere with a little bit more work right.
So anyone listening like if you don't have these softwares like I'll tell you anything
that comes out of my mouth is a freeway.
So the freeway is you go on Google you type in really you're right in Tampa it's street
by street but you type in a market and say population and you want to see what's been

(36:58):
going on in a population the last 10 years.
So not post COVID or pre COVID specifically but just over the last 10 years.
And usually if people are headed somewhere it's headed in a good direction because people
go places that typically have low crime and high jobs.
If they could go and people move for money.
So some people I mean you know South Florida being a small exception just because it's

(37:21):
so beautiful on the coast people just go there that already have the money.
But you want to look for population movement because people looking typically families
are looking to better their family.
People in charge of a family are trying to better their family so they're going to move
to an area that they think is the best for their family.
And if a large amount of people are doing that there's a good chance that they think

(37:42):
that there's a good chance that it is.
If population is declining in an area there's a great chance that it's not the best place
to live.
Crime is in the wrong direction.
Jobs are not growing.
Companies are not infusing money.
You know and this is where you could get a little political and say you know that's
why it's so important in this country to make sure that companies are incentivized to grow.

(38:05):
And you want to make sure that companies are able to spend money on the right things.
And sometimes the wrong thing for companies to spend money on are taxes.
So if the companies are instead of able to spend money on taxes they're able to spend
money on you know growing an area or adding another million square feet to their warehouse
building or XYZ build that office building they have to build then you know people head

(38:28):
to a certain direction.
And some reasons really depend on the way the state votes.
You know why people do things.
But we want to see growth and we want to see how much money is behind that growth.
And that's the biggest enter new market thing.
And the reason it's good to talk about this is if you guys are looking to enter real estate

(38:52):
so we're not looking to enter real estate.
We're in real estate already.
So now we're looking to expand real estate.
But if you're looking to enter real estate the best place to invest no matter where you
actually where no matter where you live within is what some will say to I say an hour of
your house.
Yeah let me get my car let me go see it.
Yes.
Feel it.
No question about it.

(39:13):
And until you've owned and managed that real estate for a long enough period of time
you have to you won't be able to leave your area because you won't understand that block
by block block actually.
And most of the time there's enough inventory in your backyard to hit whatever financial
goals you have.
Like you don't need to go out to another market to be able to get to the place you want to
go.

(39:33):
Unless you live in which I was actually like sheltered to this stuff like you've seen these
small towns in the middle of country.
A couple of times.
Oh my gosh.
So a question.
Have you ever like gone back and this is just general.
Yeah.
I'm kind of a nerd with chat GPT.
Yeah.
And I've been studying a lot of things like currency money the creation of money and the

(39:53):
gold standard all that stuff.
Have you ever studied like the growth of cities and like from the minute that Tampa was founded
and like 1910 and like all the real estate was built here and then like as they got into
the 1940s they just went this way.
It's like have you ever studied the market and like the growth of it so you can see this
is exactly where the hottest part of the town is right here all the new money all the new

(40:16):
developments going right here not over here because I've done that now with Tampa and
it's become like if you just look at it it will it will tell you exactly where to go
where the best spots are.
I haven't and that's super interesting.
That's a little too much chat.
Yeah.
It's through chat.
Yeah.
Wow.
We've named him Chad my wife and I.

(40:36):
Chad.
Who's Chad.
Chad.
Chad.
Chad is so hard to pronounce.
I just want that.
GPT.
Yeah.
Yeah.
AI.
I've done everything like deals, research, Steve Shworkman.
Yeah.
I know like everything about the guy from his book I take surface level comment and I hear
it.
Hey Chad.
Chad.

(40:56):
Let's go into chapter one.
He states this.
What does he mean about that?
He told me about an edge comb deal.
Let's go study this edge comb deal.
How was it financed when they bought it?
What type of debt did they put on it?
What went wrong?
It's like I go deep whenever I choose to study something.
And most of the time, that's where all the gold is.
Wow.
That's cool.
I'm going to look into that.
I'm a freak.

(41:17):
Our entire staff uses AI.
If they bring me something and it's like,
if I'm one search away, I'm like, guys, we didn't try that hard.
Let's go down the rabbit hole.
Let's use AI.
That is great.
Yeah, that's what you just heard from him.
Like data and understanding, that's
where all the money's made.
That's where you get certainty, too.

(41:38):
That's why Blackstone.
They don't even, like for me, I have
to go to other apartment complexes and see what rents are.
They just pull up their portfolio and we own this building.
OK, here are the rents.
Yeah, the deal works.
Good.
So it's the more data that you have, the more confident
that you can be.
Yeah.
Certainty behind it.
All right, let's move into the future.

(41:58):
One year out.
2025, what is from the real estate side?
What are you doing?
Because I think it's evident more activity will happen.
Breeds come down, couple of eight cuts.
Treasuries are at 470.
I like that.
I made a post on my story earlier.
People call me crazy because I think
today is the perfect time to buy.
Do you agree that today is a really good time to buy?
I think it's a superb time to buy.

(42:19):
OK, my reasoning is insurance is high in Florida.
Love it.
I think insurance is cyclical.
I think things will go down.
I love that people say don't buy because insurance is high.
I know.
Like you're a real.
Well, it dings.
Like if you're an owner of the property, you're selling.
And I'm a buyer.
It deems you're T12 and a Y.
That's right.
I just underwrite it to $2,700.
If the insurance doubles again, I would buy even more.

(42:40):
Yeah, me too.
So insurance is high.
Rates are high.
And like, OK, great.
Values are down.
I want that.
Bad headlines.
Supply, that's a real issue.
Are you starting a bunch of projects throughout 22 and 23
for if you're a developer or your pencil's down?

(43:02):
You built a lot 2020, 21, which is what everybody sees today.
Million units online over the next 24 months.
OK, great.
How many development starts happened in 22 and 23?
And even through 24?
We're looking at, so I'm building right now.
And I'll tell you what, just separately, building

(43:24):
is superb for content.
Oh my gosh.
Like if you, and I don't know if Alicia said she saw it,
but look at, check my Instagram out.
Look at the last 15 posts, like almost a million views
on a bunch of them.
That's insane.
It is so good for content, because it's so visual.
And I try to make, we try to make rent.
Like everything we just spoke about in this podcast,

(43:46):
we try to make it interesting for Instagram.
And you guys on Instagram just don't care.
No one wants to get rich.
Like everyone just wants to look at shit and comment.
And I'm like, all right, yeah, that's what you guys want to do.
Let's do it.
And actually, I find that a little juice
is when you're talking about something in building,
if something is subjective, it is the best content ever.

(44:08):
Yeah, can you get the comments below?
Oh man, like we had a part where, I know,
we'll get right back to developing a second.
But I walked around the house.
I was walking around one house, which my team is so good.
Like I only go to because one, it's fun.
And two, because content.
I looked up and I'm like, that plumber cut out

(44:29):
that entire choice to put that toilet there.
So really, it is, it couldn't trick.
Everything's my fault, right?
But then really, the framer should
have known that a toilet's going there,
because all toilets go in the exact same place.
It's on the plans.
So talking about that the plumber cut out a choice,

(44:49):
and it's the plumber's fault, and he's got to pay for it,
forget it.
Like the amount of comments are, it's your fault.
It's the framer's fault.
And then just to, if you could put something online that
could be contrary to what you're saying a little bit,
and everyone has an opinion, Sky Rockets.
So you guys are going to see me seeing more development stuff
on my Instagram.
But the largest focus for me is not development.

(45:13):
Development takes too long and is too risky,
compared to other things that we're doing.
Finding things that could, and I could give you
a couple examples, find a thing that you could do something to,
and now it's worth more.
Take something that's already existing,
it could get something done to it,
whether it be management or work, and then exit.
And something we're on deal three about

(45:34):
is we're buying large batches of townhomes,
parceling them out individually through a kind of regime
or whatever the state requires.
Every state's a little different.
And then selling them off individually.
So we're basically taking something
that's a rental facility of some sort,
we're making it purchasable by someone
who wants something 13-ish, 100 square feet,

(45:56):
and we exit on a retail side.
So now we'll make almost developer returns
without doing any development.
Another thing that we just found is
we found an old corner piece in Northwest Arkansas
that was an old car dealer.
If we install two walls down the middle,
it is perfect for three store fronts.

(46:19):
Like that stuff, that is the best.
Because you're waiting no time for approvals,
because it's already, it's zoned,
we need, everything's done.
No foundation digging, no soil testing, nothing.
We're going into this building
and we're altering this building as it sits a little bit
by putting in a couple walls,
put a couple walls, do some electric work,

(46:39):
show the electrical inspector comes in
and we're done, out.
So that kind of real estate to me today
is the best way to make money.
Although developing one and two family homes today,
like should be a very good business.
My brother actually sent me a post,
I think Patrick Bet David was the author of the post on X.

(47:05):
He just sent to me today that the amount of homes
being developed in like 1970,
there was a half a million 1,400 square foot or less homes
being developed a year in the United States.
Right now there's only 50,000 1,400 square feet
or less homes being built in the country.
So really with that data, building small houses

(47:27):
should be very good going into the future.
Very interesting.
But then it comes down to what market you are in.
Yeah, very cool.
Thank you for going deep on that stuff.
Yeah.
All right, 2025.
Feel free to interrupt me at any time.
If the alarm's going off, you're ahead.
No, it's good, no, it's good.
Just go like this.
No, I want you to go as deep as possible.
Because nobody ever goes deep.

(47:47):
They just make a statement, sounds really good.
And everybody's like, I wish Gabe would have asked this thing.
So we could have actually learned something and taken away.
So I could try to go out and apply it and do it myself.
Yeah.
I saw Joe Rogan.
It was interesting on his podcast.
He's obviously a very good podcast.
He asked Trump three times because he wasn't answering it.
And I wanted to know the answer to it.
When you become president and you show up to the White House

(48:08):
like on day one, I need to know what that's like.
And he kept, he was going off into the Lincoln bedroom
is unreal.
He's weaving.
He's weaving.
But I mean, I don't know why you wouldn't answer that.
But he wasn't giving us the answer that we wanted.
I still need to know when you become president and you show up,
you're like, so the first day is obviously

(48:29):
a bunch of saramotas and everything.
Day two, we should say.
You wake, all right, so you're in the White House, you wake up.
What does that day look like?
So all right, 2020.
So Trump winning is a good thing for real estate.
Yeah, of course.
Great.
He's a real estate guy.
Bottom line.
That should do well for the purpose of this.
So 2025, what are you doing?
Because it sounds like you didn't really

(48:50):
stop doing anything like a lot of people did.
They slowed down acquisitions.
What are you doing from the Stout capital side?
I don't know if that was a mistake or not, by the way.
Do you think it was?
I don't know.
So how many deals did you acquire?
Between March of 2022 is the first rate hike hit.
And we've pretty much been on a limbo since it got to a point.

(49:13):
Probably six.
Six deals?
Yeah.
How are you happy with all?
Yeah, they're good.
They're good deals.
You know, what I have, I could say during that period of time,
we were doing a lot of head ramming.
Yeah, what do you mean by that?
What is head ramming?
Imagine just running full speed into a wall
without putting your arms out.

(49:33):
Just ramming your head into a wall.
Saying yes to a lot.
No, no, just ramming your head against the wall,
showing up to work every day, working all day,
and then being like, I don't think anything happened today.
Like doing a lot of that.
I know what you mean.
Yeah, so was my time best used, you know,
doing the deals that we did?
Alternatively, like could we have been focusing on something

(49:54):
else in real estate during that time,
like knowing that the market would be locked up?
You know, the jury's out on the answer to that.
Like I can't say like I was, I totally
made the best decision by acquiring deals
over the last two years.
I mean, time will tell.
But I honestly think the time could have been spent better
doing something else.
What would you have done?

(50:17):
What would I have done?
That's a great question.
Maybe push a little bit more into education.
A little bit more of like.
So does this stem from you knowing what type of opportunity
or how active the market will be in 25?
And maybe, because I'm going through a similar thing of like,
shit, it's going to happen.
Like deals are going to trade.
And we can raise a certain amount of money right now.

(50:37):
What if I would have taken all the time
that we spent the first, you know,
we did 30 million bucks deals this year in two events
and fired a bunch of people, hired a bunch of people.
It's been fun.
We've been stretched.
What would have happened if we said no to everything
that we said yes to, to prepare for what's coming in 25 and 26?
I go through that all the time.
So I could come for you a little bit and say,

(50:59):
I think you were definitely doing the right thing.
Because you're building, you know, I'm on your podcast now.
You were building, you're building a beast behind the scenes.
So I look at what I did and I'm like, sure,
I got a lot of budget deals done.
You know, in hindsight, like, will it be good when we exit?
Sure.
Now I, like you build some really good investors.

(51:21):
Like, you know, you, I did get that,
that, that bull continued to move.
You know, could I have done other things that would have
produced more and been better for the future
during that period of time?
You know, I always look back at construction too.
Like, you know, should we have focused,
should we have shifted a little bit towards maybe some kind
of real estate service instead of being actually

(51:45):
the acquisition guys, like provide some service,
whatever it might have been, fix and flip loans,
or one of the trillion services on the real estate.
So, you know, and again, I'm not sure how we got here,
but, but me acquiring good real estate over the past couple
of years, I'm not entirely sure if that was the best use of time,
to be completely honest.
Like, I like being open and what's going on in my head.

(52:05):
And we will find out.
I'm sure the deals are good.
That's the baseline.
You did good deals.
We're significantly better than people who did bad deals
before us.
Yeah.
Now, the deals are great.
There's no complaint about the deals.
It's the time, like, the time that I spent,
but we learned such a tremendous amount.
There's a lot of value in,

(52:27):
there's a lot of value in seeing the market go someplace.
Cause we did go to NMHC conferences,
where the brokers, we met the brokers in person
and they were like, we're doing a ton of BOVs,
brokers opinion of value.
That's like, when you want to sell a piece
of commercial real estate, you do a BOV,
you basically go to the broker,

(52:47):
you hand them all your financials,
and the broker will say, this is what our opinion is
that it's worth.
So it's not an appraisal.
It's just what the brokers think it'll go out the door at.
Very detailed.
They actually do a very good job.
The big groups, especially if you're serious,
they do a great job.
So the brokers at NMHC,
National Multi-Family Housing Council meetings,

(53:08):
they were in Vegas, we would go,
and they were like, December or January, the new year,
we're doing a ton of BOVs, at the end of the year,
when as soon as the year breaks,
there's going to be a ton of deals on the market.
So we listened and we're like, great,
let's keep looking and keeping these guys' pockets
and all that.
You know, we've done two years of that so far.

(53:28):
I was just going to say that NMHC was probably late 22.
Everybody, first rate hike hits,
everybody's like, when does this stop?
They started to cool down on rates.
The head came out and said, okay, we're done.
They weren't done, but we're done for now.
We're just going to listen to the data.
And then brokers are like, okay,
it's about to get very active again.

(53:48):
Everybody's, hey, get ready, get ready, get ready,
get ready.
And then January turns around and SVB collapses.
We just face a bunch of new stuff.
Never happens.
Interesting.
So, okay.
So when is it going to break?
We still don't know the answer to that.
And there's been two declines in rates.
Right.
It still hasn't broke.
Yeah.
When do you think it does?

(54:09):
I don't know.
You know what?
Because if you would have asked me any time over the last
two years, my answer would be wrong.
Like everybody, even myself, when's the first rate cut?
As soon as the first rate cut happens,
it's going to light on fire.
Right.
There's been two.
The Treasury's gone up from 350 to 470.
My interest rates were at mid-fives to low-60s last month.
They're at mid-sixes, low-sevenths today.

(54:31):
There's been two rate cuts.
So what are you focused on?
The problem is, real estate owners are too cool, man.
Yeah, yeah.
No one panics.
Yeah.
Everyone's like, yeah, man.
It's almost you dealing with real estate, large real estate
owners, like California surfers.
They're like, yeah, man, whatever.
Like, nah, I'm good.
I don't want to sell.
Like you talk to guys worth $50, $80, $100 million

(54:52):
personal net worth.
And they're like, yeah, I don't know, I'm good.
Yeah, the cash flow time.
You're good.
What do you?
And then you talk to them.
You're like, yeah, I completely agree with you.
Damn.
You sure you don't want to sell?
Just so a young guy like me could make the money you
was supposed to?
So what are you focused on in 25?

(55:14):
I kind of want to break it in two parts.
With the deal side of it, what are you focused on?
Because it sounds like you're doing a lot.
It's great deals only.
And then the whole social media side, why are you doing
this thing and bringing your son down to Tampa to Sears?
Because I was like, I never got to go and see my dad do
podcasts.
It was kind of like, it's an interesting thing.

(55:34):
So I want to kind of hit on both topics from the deal side
of it, just so everybody can see what you're doing actively.
And then we'll wrap up with kind of some personal Chris
stuff.
Yeah, so what was the first part?
Deal side.
What's like, OK, it's Monday.
How many deals you got in your pipeline?
Do you have offers going out?
Are you super active?
Super active, looking for sub $5 million deals at the moment.

(55:59):
So basically, and I learned this term at your event,
adult flipping.
So we're focusing strictly on adult flipping at the moment.
I will coin that.
Is that yours?
Well, I called it adult flipping.
Nobody else is pushing it.
Yeah, we're doing adult flipping.
So we're doing what?
I'm sorry.
We're doing a lot, man.
We're closing on a shopping strip.

(56:19):
We're closing on a strip center.
Where are we?
The middle of November.
We're closing on a strip center at the beginning of December.
We're buying a bunch of townhouses to isolate.
I'm building eight houses in New York in Staten Island,
so we'll be exiting those in 25.
So we got the townhouse isolation.
We have the acquisition of the longer-term hold stuff,

(56:41):
which is right now is we just acquired an industrial piece
under the same fund.
We're closing that strip center.
Exiting the development stuff.
If development stuff falls on my lap,
completely falls on my lap, I will do it.
Am I looking for it?
No.
I'm focused more on that middle stuff.
So that's what's going on today.

(57:02):
Right this second, do I have that big monster goal
of acquiring 100,000 apartments?
That goal is shelved for a moment.
And I probably should personally,
I do have to reanalyze my goals.
I know that's on my list of things to do.
You have to constantly shift because, well,

(57:25):
it just hasn't been a great time to be doing that.
It's a juggler.
You have to constantly set goals,
and you have to constantly work with them.
It's a difficult thing to do.
My goals in 21 would have been much different than my goals
today.
Yeah, I know you're huge on this stuff.
What's your goal today?
We want to do 20.
Well, I think in 12 months, and then I think big term.

(57:45):
So big term, we want to be bigger than grand.
And the machine that we're creating.
We want to be the largest person online for multifamily
internet apartments.
Short term, we want to raise $25 million next year.
Got it.
Yeah, 12 month goal, $2 million a month.
200 phone calls, inbound booked on our calendar
with people that know who we are, we have the IR.
So that's our short term.

(58:06):
$25 million of equity raised, partner with,
like I showed my goals with you.
You did it.
That's my fault.
I take four responsibility.
I was waiting for that.
That's my fault.
Instagram.
You said, I'm sending this to you.
You're in it.
And then I blame Mark Zuckerberg.
I actually haven't slept since that day.
So you are in my goals.
I was like, we want to do $100 million deals.

(58:28):
I don't really care.
It's $75 to $125, because I can do half the equity with you.
I can partner with different people.
We can take on the whole deal and do it ourselves.
We want to raise $25 million and place it into the best
possible deals period, whether it's with operators like you
that I trust, which today is like one out of one, which
is you, and then do the deals here in Tampa, Orlando,

(58:51):
Daytona.
That is our thing.
I get very lost in year 2, 3, 4.
I have this big thing.
I know where we're going long term.
And then I know that the next phase of our life
is going to be cranking out this $25 million.
Like the deal I'm training, the circle community, the free,
the 97, everything that you've seen us doing.

(59:13):
And I've kind of shared a lot with you, too,
about behind the scenes stuff.
It's all around this $25 million.
What are we doing to raise $25 million a year next year?
$2 million a month.
That's how I think with goals.
$2 million a month is a good target.
That's 200 people.
Yeah.
That's $100,000.
That's 20 people.
20 people.

(59:34):
Yeah.
20 people, 100 grand.
Yeah.
$20 million a month would be 200 people.
Right.
Right, total.
Yeah.
That's a yes, so we've got to go through a lot of people.
Yes.
They say no.
Right.
Right.
That's 20 yeses a month.
Yes.
So that's how we're setting up our goals.
And we build.
They are there.
We make some very uncomfortable decisions.

(59:55):
Alicia and I, Alicia does a whole lot more than she actually
gets credit for.
We make very tough decisions around the goals that we set.
So it's like we can get very comfortable.
Oh, we like this person.
They're our friends.
We knew them from when we worked at Carton Capital.
But it's not the best fit for the company,
for where the company's goals is going.
Right.
We've learned a tremendous amount through mistakes on our end

(01:00:17):
and then hiring bad people.
It's like we fucked up and we make those mistakes.
But we always come back, Alicia and I sit.
It's like, where are we going?
What are we doing?
Hiring bad people, you have to go through that.
You have to.
Because you're not big enough where
you have enough of the payroll to afford the people
that you actually want.
Right.
So you have to deal with this first or second or third batch
of people to get it off the ground.

(01:00:38):
It's a very uncomfortable thing.
And nobody ever talks about that.
But they are the last.
We could do a whole podcast on starting a business
and hiring bad people.
The last three years since leaving grants office.
It's been psych.
I sent this video to Alicia.
Have you ever watched the movie Troy?
No.
OK, you need to.

(01:00:58):
I'll send you the seven minute video.
I shared it with the entire team.
It's just the killies.
It's a peaceful war.
You just go around killing people.
Nice.
Business is psychological warfare, at least in my head.
Yes.
And I mentioned this on the stage last time.
You came up to me.
Hey, it's OK.
We all go through this stuff.
Nobody ever talks about it.

(01:01:19):
It's psychological warfare.
Oh, it's the right.
Whether it's construction or the apartment thing
or raising a bunch of money.
The CEO of NVIDIA said that on stage recently.
He says, yeah, someone asked him,
I forget how he got to the answer.
But he was like, if I would have known what it would have
taken to get to this point.
Because people look at the CEO of NVIDIA
and be like, it would be awesome to be him or Elon Musk
or any of these guys.

(01:01:40):
And he's like, if I would have known the steps it would have
taken to get to this point, I definitely
would not have started this company.
And that is powerful.
Because you're on the path.
What's the alternative?
You commit to this whenever Alicia and I quit.
All right, we're quitting, making 200 grand a year,
working for a billionaire.
Arguably, if we just stick in it for another 10 years,
it'll be pretty wealthy.

(01:02:00):
Will you work for Alicia?
You work for Grant, too?
No.
Everything we do is what?
Oh, yeah.
She was making $2 million.
Oh, he said when we were working for Grant.
But I figured everything's worth it.
I forgot that about you guys.
Well, I've rewired the way that my brain works.
I does not really work that well.
We quit.
I'm like, man, this is going to be big feat.

(01:02:22):
But we made that commitment.
And so beyond that point, you have no other option
to just continue to go forward.
You don't have the option to quit.
And so whenever you make that level of a commitment,
you put yourself in this, you put your back up against the wall.
And it's like, there is nothing that will come across me.
There's no thing that will pop up that's like, man,

(01:02:43):
I'm going to have to have a tough conversation with this person.
I just told him two months ago that we're
going to try to create a career out of it.
And it's like, it doesn't really work.
So we got to let you go.
I'm like, that's a tough conversation.
Yeah.
And you develop and you become such a better person.
Yeah.
That period of time.
Man, so valuable.
Yeah.
So all right, I'm getting lost now.

(01:03:05):
Yeah, you just wanted to hit the personal thing.
Yeah.
So we could.
Why are you doing this?
Like you don't need to at all.
Like even the whole pathway that you were on was fine.
I'm sure it was good.
Like I'm sure life wasn't horrible for you.
No.
So arguably my mid 30s were my best years looking back.
Yeah.

(01:03:25):
So why do you put yourself through what you've gone through
over not only like the last 24 months, but the last five years?
Yeah.
Definitely.
You could actually say, why would I put myself through what
I did the past 24 months?
No.
36 months.
My mid 30s, my mid 30s were awesome.
Just the everything was great.

(01:03:46):
Like the cash flow was great.
The business was great.
Everything was great.
It was just that thing inside of me
that I knew had to be bigger.
And I didn't feel like fully fulfilled.
Interesting.
So the psychological warfare that I've put myself through
over the past couple of years, like to grow this bigger thing.
Why?
I don't know.

(01:04:07):
Like we could go down a rabbit hole here,
but my house is like the house is sick.
Like just broadside to the water.
It's the boats in the yard.
Full back houses glass.
Put it up here.
Yeah.
It's really cool.
And I could honestly tell you, and I
don't know if this is negative or not, but I go there.
You know, when I'm in the house, it's just the fucking house.
Like so why do we do all this stuff?

(01:04:28):
It's just, you know what?
We're all wired for something, and you just
got to follow that.
Because I know if I didn't, I wouldn't feel like I'm
hitting what I need to hit.
So I just want to hit bigger things,
like most people that push to the top.
So that's basically it.
And then the little guys along me for the ride,
I've learned that if we plan the trip well,

(01:04:53):
we could actually bake in some pretty good fun to jump along.
It just so happened that the first leg of the trip
was in Orlando.
So leave a little bit earlier.
Right, dude, we had a, how good was yesterday?
Like one out of 10?
10.
It's awesome.
So we only had to work for like an hour and a half,
and that was going out to eat with an investor.
So Grant said something very interesting the other day,

(01:05:15):
something I totally agree like, bring the kids
around the adults.
If your kid lacks hanging out with other kids,
but is hanging out with adults, that's a serious win, man.
Because the adults are the one with the power.
My other two, and I think the other two, they're good kids.
But any moderately, like anything that you would say

(01:05:38):
takes like a bad habit or a negative,
they're getting from their friends.
So this guy coming along and just,
he'll probably think back at this at one point in his life
and just remember this time that we did.
And also spend the time one-on-one,
like anyone who has more than one kid that's listening,
try, because we're a big family thing.
I love hanging out with my wife just like you.

(01:06:01):
I love hanging out with her.
But when it's me and her, we're kind of like, get out of here,
kids, don't do something.
That's why we had three of us.
Go play with each other.
Go fist fight in the parking lot.
It doesn't matter.
But hanging out with just one kid at a time,
there's a lot of value there.
So you kind of cheat, bring them.
He thinks he went on a Disney trip.
Meanwhile, we're on a work trip.
And then he gets to watch the podcast, which hopefully,

(01:06:24):
this will stick.
And he actually wanted to know.
He's like, are they recording with just phones
or like the real cameras recording?
And I'm like, no, dude, there's real cameras.
What do you think?
Is this a good setup?
This has got to be awesome for him to be a part of and then see.
Especially in five years from now,
when you have thousands of videos,
it's like the stuff that you wish maybe your parents could

(01:06:45):
have left, like the life lessons they taught you
as you were growing up.
But instead of it being told to you,
you have an entire library.
All of the stuff that you're working on.
Videos don't die.
It's cool.
Very cool.
All right, let's wrap it up.
Where can people find you?
I think a lot of people, every event that we've ever done,
you've always been a guest speaker.
And everybody comes up to him and says, dude, Chris,

(01:07:07):
he's got it.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So where can people connect with you?
What's the main spot you're sending people?
I like to, I'm most active on Instagram.
So I could always send you to the website, which
is stoutcap.com, but official stout on Instagram,
that's where the main, if you want to get to me directly,

(01:07:29):
that's where you go.
If you want to get to the company, stoutcap.com.
And I'm open.
Sometimes your message will get trapped and hidden.
And I'm sorry if I get it.
I'm not ignoring you.
I get to a couple of days later, because we're
getting solicited by many bad things that you have to sift
through to get to.
Can I set up your email?
Can I do all this?
Oh my gosh.
I've seen that in my day.

(01:07:51):
Hey, Chris, really impressed with your content.
That first line?
And like, guys, come up with something different, bro.
Someone sold the script somewhere and everyone bought it.
Yeah, so officialstoutcap.com and stoutcap.com
for the company.
Yeah.
All right.
One thing that you can leave, either a piece of device,
a saying that you heard this morning on Instagram that just

(01:08:12):
gets you a freaking lid up.
One thing that if anybody takes, I'm sure,
after an hour and 10 minutes, they took away a lot.
One saying or one thing that you'd like to leave everybody
that's listening.
I actually texted to a buddy of mine
right before I got out of the car,
because he said something to me that triggered it.
The world does not care if you're stuck in the mud,

(01:08:34):
stuck in a rut, stuck in the snow, stuck in anything.
The world doesn't care.
So just get out of it and do what you got.
Do what you know you should be doing,
because most people know what they should be doing.
Very cool.
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen, hopefully you've
enjoyed another episode of Inside the Deal Room.
Chris, thank you so much for coming.
We'll see you guys in the next one.
Thank you.