RealPropPro Podcast Ep 12 - Stephen Lee-Thomas | June 5th, 2025 - RealPropPro Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We're going to give you almost all of your money back.
OK. You get to stay in the deal,
We're going to keep sending you checks, and then we're going to
hold it another five years, and then we're going to sell it.
And then you're going to like quadruple your money.
Like it it. It's the coolest thing ever.
Welcome to the Real Prop Pro podcast, where strategy,

(00:21):
innovation, and wealth converge to redefine real estate
investing. Hello and welcome to the
Realprop Pro podcast. I'm your host Ian Detler,
Sacramento based real estate investor.
This show is about unlocking freedom through real estate by

(00:45):
hearing from people who are living it.
At Realprop Pro, we train peopleto take action with tax deed,
tax lien investing, fix and flips, creative financing, and
so much more. If you want to build your income
and learn how to do real deals, please visit realproppro.com.

(01:08):
Today's guest is Steven Lee Thomas, a multi family investor,
podcast host and mentor who helps people escape the W2 grind
and live life on their own terms.
He teaches others how to think like an investor, scale into
apartment ownerships, and reclaim their time through

(01:28):
systems and smart investing. Steven, welcome to the show.
And thanks for having me man, it's nice to be here.
Thanks for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.
We, you know, can't wait to talkto you about all these multi
family deals you're you have been doing and all the stuff
that you're teaching your students.
So again, thank you for so much for coming on the show.

(01:49):
Let's start with some questions about kind of where you were
born and where you grew up. Yeah, So I live here in
California, not too far South ofyou.
I grew up in a town called Visalia.
I think it's a little over 100,000 people now.
It was smaller than that when when I was born there.
As a type of town, you pretty much knew most people's names.

(02:13):
I remember leaving when I went to college and when I came back,
you know, showing up at the mallor something and people
remembered me. It was always, you go back and
run into lots of people. So I grew up in Visalia and just
in a normal, you know, normal neighborhood.

(02:35):
My, my dad, neither of my parents had a college degree
when I was born. My, my dad went back to school.
He got his A A they worked real hard for a very long time.
And I watched them do that. And I always thought to myself,
I don't know that I want to do that.

(02:55):
So I mean, we always, we always had everything that we needed
and had a great life growing up.And I was always told go to
school, get a, get a job and, you know, retire.
And I remember one time I was, Iwas going to junior college, but
I wasn't really going. I mean, I was enrolled and I was
living at my parents house. And I remember my mom opened the

(03:17):
door. She's like, he didn't get your
ass out of bed. He need to go to college and or
you need to go to school. And I was like, so I did, I went
to school, I got the I got the degree.
It took me about twice as long as it should have.
I got, I have about twice as many units as I needed to
graduate, but eventually I did it.
Eventually I got into a full time job and then eventually I

(03:41):
quit the full time job and all Ido now is real estate and that's
where I'm at now and that's why I'm talking to you.
Awesome, I love that story. I had similar experiences with
my junior college experience. You know, mom, yell at me, get
out of the house, get a go to school, all that stuff.
And definitely took me twice as long as it should have to just

(04:03):
to get an associate's degree. So same college path there.
I love it. I also tell people that I had
dreams to become an electrical engineer.
That was until I took calculus and they're like, there's about
four more years of this to get your electrical engineering
degree. And I said I'm done with this
so. Calculus is calculus was when I
was done with math. I'm like Nah, I'm good.

(04:25):
Yes, I don't think I finished the that semester of calculus.
Yeah, I got to C and I was extremely happy to get.
That's the most happy I've ever been to get to C in my whole
life. Was for calculus.
I believe it. I believe it.
Yeah. So what kind of what kind of
work were you doing outside of outside of college before you
started to get into real estate?So I, I think my very first job,

(04:50):
my mom, my mom, you know, workedin medical offices.
She was basically a, a medical assistant office manager.
And so my first job was cleaningoffices, cleaning doctor's
offices. My mom worked in this little
like strip, not a strip mall, but like this strip of doctor's
offices. And so where I was, I was
janitor. I was my first, first job and

(05:13):
then, you know, got a job working at a pizza place to
impede the deliveries, work my way up to to manager.
And then from there I left and went to work at a burger joint
called Red Robin. And I started as like a host in
a server. And I went and I and I told the

(05:34):
managers, I said I want to be a bartender.
And that's what I want to do. I want to be a bartender.
But that was intentionally, I wanted to be a bartender because
I wanted to talk to people, I wanted to sit and I wanted to
just get an opportunity to talk to people and understand why
they were at, where they were intheir life.
Like that was what I wanted to do.

(05:55):
So anyways, you know, eventuallyI was able to work my way up to
a bartender. It was great because I asked so
many people, what do you do and how did you end up in this
position? And like 100% of the people
like, well, I never really thought I was going to do this,
but life kind of happened to me and I still was like, that does
not sound cool, but I get it. I get it.

(06:19):
Right. So I'm a little older this time.
And so I from there as a bartender, I, you know, then I
went over to the university. So I was in junior college.
I went to the university workingon my 4 year or my 8 year,
whatever you want to call it, and was still bartending,
working nightclubs and so still bartending.

(06:39):
But I loved it because I got to interact with people.
I just love that the people partof it.
And then I graduated college andI was like, well, shit, I have
to get a real job now. I, I like to work this 40 hours
a week. Like that's not cool.
But I was like, well, I mean, and so my, my first job out of

(07:00):
college, I was making as much money as I was bartending.
I was like, so it was rough. You know, I went, I went to
school for a very long time to make the same amount of money
that I was bartending. I was like, oh man, this is
rough. But it was always what I've been
told to do. And eventually started working
my way up and then went and worked in IT, started working

(07:23):
for a software company. So I worked in, in IT and then
from there I worked in a healthcare, healthcare company
in IT and operation. So I have a, a background, I
worked in IT and operations for probably at least 15 years, if
not longer 1517 years in in IT and operations.

(07:43):
So but I was able, I, I leveragea lot of that everyday.
So, so you I combine a lot of mypeople skills, the IT skills and
the operational skills and I fold all that into to real
estate. Yeah, absolutely.
I'd like to talk a lot about that once you kind of get more
along that journey, because I think it's great that you, you
know, you've been developing these people skills, trying to

(08:05):
talk to people, figure out what makes them tick.
And then at the same time, you're kind of getting some of
the systems and processes down for making a successful company.
Oh, what was what's what first got you wanting to get into real
estate? Was there like a spark or was it
a moment or was there any type of influence?

(08:26):
Like what made you realize, hey,I should start to look into this
real estate stuff? I think I was born that way.
As long as long as back as I canremember, I always wanted to be
an entrepreneur. I always wanted to be a business
owner. And you know, growing up like I,
you know, watched it, I was never around it, but always, and
what I always knew about what I always heard heard about was

(08:49):
single family rentals kind of a thing.
After my wife and I had gotten married, we were working real
jobs. We started to have some cash.
That's I was like, well, let's get into, into real estate and
started, you know, looking into the single family, whether it
was rentals or flips and starteddoing a lot of research that

(09:10):
way. And so, and that's, that's how I
got started. It was, it's just always been in
me. It's always something I wanted
to do. And when I got to the point
where I had enough cash, I was like, now I'm going to do
something with it. That that's how I got started in
it. OK.
So what did that, what did your first deal look like?
Did you first start off with single family homes?

(09:32):
I did our, our first, our first investment was a, was a flip
house hat kind of a thing. It was a, it was a house that
was just shy of just shy of 100 years old.
And it was a, it was a place my wife and I first moved in
together. We had lived in that area in
like a, in a, in a fourplex little flat there in a four

(09:54):
Plex. We're like, well, let's move
back down there. We'd like to be like the
community. We like the area will be part of
the revitalization. We'll flip this house and and
then we'll either sell it or we'll rent it at that same time.
I had a three like 2 1/2 going on three-year old and then my
wife got pregnant. We had sold our other house and

(10:18):
we were living with my in laws and that lasted like 6 months.
And that was a nightmare becausewe had two cats with us at the
same time and A and a baby, you know, so we had a little kid and
then one on the way and we're just chasing, chasing
contractors and it just sucked. And I remember like we got to

(10:40):
get out of this house. Your in laws are great, but we
got to get out of here anyways getting into this house and so
then we lived in it for a few more years and and took us a
while to get it finished. We went to sell that house.
The real estate agent, we decided that we just said we're
not going to keep it as a rental.
Let's just, you know, flip it and and get the money from it.

(11:02):
The real estate agent told us that man, you guys did a great
job, but you over improved the house.
I was like what? He said, yeah, He said nobody
else in the neighborhood fixed up their house as nice as you
have. So you're not going to get as
much money as you want to get, but you're going to get, you
know, pretty good money. And so that's when I was like,
Nah, man, I think I'm, I'm, I'm cool.

(11:22):
Like, I'm not really interested in this.
And so at that point, I'd already started, I'd already
started learning about the apartment investing.
I'd already started being a passive investor.
But that was kind of like the icing on the cake for me.
I was, I had felt really burnt from just trying to get this
thing done. And then when we finally went in
to sell it, it was I had done too much, which was a tough pill

(11:46):
to swallow. And but here's the flip side of
it, Ian, was what I learned about multifamily was you're
buying and selling businesses. So the valuation is different
with single family homes, you have comps in the neighborhood
and multifamily, it's a business.
And so it's really numbers based.
And the more I can improve it dollar for dollar, like the

(12:08):
opportunities there and that's, that's when it became a much
easier decision for me. Still a long journey, but that's
going to became an easier decision.
So was it was that first single family home, was that the only
home that you tried to fix or try to?
Yeah, that was it. That was.
It that was it, that was that was kind of like my one and

(12:28):
done. It was really from there.
I'd already done some passive investing in apartments and I
was like, no, dude, I'm good. I'm going after like I'm full on
going after larger multi family deals.
There's no reason for me to hangout in this space.
If if I if I don't enjoy it, then I'm not going to do it.
OK. So how did that develop?
How did you get into your first multi family?

(12:50):
What did that deal look like? How many units was it?
Did you have a coach kind of walk us through that very first
multi family deal? Yeah.
So I had around that same time and we were, we'd already bought
this house for flipping and around that same time I had
heard about a multi family investing.

(13:13):
So I went out, Long story short,joined a program and at that
point I was going to, I was going to be all in, but I was
just so busy with the family. My, my work was extremely busy.
We were, we were growing very rapidly.
We were going from like a Fortune, Fortune 458 when I left
a year and a half ago, a year ago they were a Fortune 20 or

(13:35):
Fortune 25 S, just like crazy growth.
I was like, I joined this program.
My full intention at that point was like, I'm going to go into
being the general partner in theactive role, but I was just so
busy, started doing the passive investing.
What that did is it gave me the opportunity to learn and earn
and build relationships with a lot of other people.

(13:57):
And it was those relationships and what I had been learning
along the way that got me into my first deal.
So say a little bit different. I didn't do a multi family deal
on my own. I did it with other people who
had some experience and people Ihad built some relationships
with. And it was just showing up
continually and being in that environment because it's like,

(14:20):
it's like anything, it's anything new.
If you, if you're going to do it, my advice is commit.
And when you commit, all the sudden you're next to people who
are doing it and you can, you know, move a lot quicker at that
point. So I built these relationships.
So my first deal was 184 units. I'm just shy of $29 million and

(14:50):
you know, we're in the process right now.
We still have that one. We got some other deals that
we've we've had and gone full cycle, but we still have that
one right now. And operationally it's it's
doing pretty well. So my first deal, I'd only done
one very rough flip, which took a while, but my first apartment
deal was a very large multi family deal and it was me and

(15:12):
three other partners that that did that.
That's a pretty big deal. And first start off the gate
with that, you'd kind of mentioned that you the first
deal, you'd kind of took more ofa passive approach to invest
into that deal. Can you kind of talk, can you
explain to the listeners what you mean by that and kind of
compare that to more of an active role in apartment

(15:34):
investing? Yeah, absolutely.
So it's a really good question in, in the, in the world of
apartment investing. So a lot of people don't even
know about apartment investing. They're familiar with
wholesaling, flipping short termrentals and go family rentals.
Or maybe you buy a duplex or a fourplex.
But there's there's a way you can go buy large multi family

(15:57):
deals. You get a commercial loan, but
the way so, so there is a loan that comes in and you know, you
get, you know, 70% of the of thevalue you get that from the
bank. But if sale prices comes comes
in from the bank, but then you have to close the gap like so
you might have to raise 10, twelve $15 million and I say
raise. So where does that money come

(16:19):
from? You can.
So what I did is I met people who were going and doing these
deals and they said, hey, we've got this deal.
Would you be interested in investing?
All you got to do is invest. You don't have to do anything
else. We're just going to send you
money. And I was like, what?
And they're like, yeah, we're just going to send you money.
Like just invest. We're going to send you money.

(16:39):
I'm like, OK, so I did. And that's, you know, that was
when my kids were little. I wasn't sleeping through the
night. And that's when I was, you know,
changing diapers and getting mailbox money.
I was investing in, I had invested in my first deal was a
deal in San Antonio and then I as a passive investor and I
invested in some, some a portfolio deals in Houston as a

(17:02):
passive investor and then a couple of other deals.
And so, but all of that was, I didn't have to do anything other
than I educated myself. So I knew enough to say, Yep, I
feel it's a good deal or not. I, you know, I took the time to
learn who the operators work andthey execute on this or not, but
my involvement as a passive investor was not much.

(17:25):
I invested money, I got checks and I jumped on some webinars
and I read some emails. That was it.
So what's great about that is there's a whole world of
investments out there. There's these alternative
investments. So if somebody wants to, they
can invest passively in apartment deals.
The other side of that is you can, and that's called a limited

(17:45):
partner. The other side of that is being
a general partner. And a general partner is they go
out and they build relationshipswith brokers.
Then they start looking at dealsand they underwrite these deals.
They learn how to submit offers on deals, and then they build
relationships with potential investors who just want to
invest passively. Like I was in corporate America,

(18:05):
I was a perfect person making good money, very busy, didn't
have the time to do it. So that's why I invested.
So as a general partner, you're doing all those things.
And then when you own the property, which is generally 3
to five years, you're doing the asset management.
So it's general partner is very active, you're doing the work,
limited partner is very inactive.

(18:26):
That's the best way to describe it.
So you can choose to do either way.
The returns are really good either way.
So that's that's the difference between limited partner and
general partner when it comes tomulti family or apartment
investing. Great explanation.
You know, like you said, a lot of people don't know or

(18:47):
understand the apartment investing world.
So that's kind of one of the goals of this show is to
highlight some of the different possibilities out there.
You know, we've had multiple guests on here, we've talked
about apartment investing and commercial residential
investing. I I really like highlighting it

(19:09):
because it is so powerful. And if you're able to create so
much wealth so quickly with these type of vehicles.
Earlier you were talking about how you'd flipped your house.
I would assume you probably whatmade 100 maybe $100,000 or less.
So. You know, so you can spend all

(19:29):
of your time and all your effortand stress and like you said,
chasing down contractors to try to flip one house.
You know, let's say you get thatone done in a year.
And if you were to make say for instance, 65,075 thousand that
year and flipping, that's a pretty good payday, especially
if you have your a daytime job. But what I try to get people to

(19:50):
start to think about is what if you took that same effort,
energy and put it into apartmentinvesting and purchased, you
know, a 30 unit and after that one year of improvements.
Now all this now all of a sudden, this thing has gone up
by 1 million, 1.5 million in value.
And that same year that you spent flipping that house, you

(20:12):
made 60,000 and over here on theapartment you've made a million.
So I mean, just kind of looking at the different side of how
much more money can be made. Can you talk a little bit about
that, about what type of paydaysthese types of deals can really
actually pay off? Sure.
So the the easiest explanation is on the passive investor side

(20:36):
and we'll start there and then I'll jump over the general
partnership side. And I was having this
conversation with someone earlier educating them on being
a passive investor and they decided they were going to move
forward with it, which is great.And and there's a reason why.
So they're busy professional andthey're like actually sounds
like a pretty good deal. Like you mean I don't have to do
the work and I can, I can make this money and I can payless in

(20:56):
taxes on the money that I'm going to make.
And I was like, yeah, all that'strue.
So as a limited partner, passiveinvestor in apartment deal, the
way we structure our deals, our goal is to get you at least an
80% return on your investment over five years.

(21:18):
So to simplify that a little bit, that would be a 16% average
annual return. If you invested $100,000 at the
end of five years, you're going to get back your initial
$100,000 + 80,000 dollars. The stock market on average will

(21:42):
go with 10%. So it's outperforming the stock
market, which and then when you get around that, that 1516%,
you're able to double your moneya lot quicker.
So there there's that piece of it.
So that's that's our goal in five years.
We can generally do that in like2 1/2, three years.
We can hit this mark where we'regiving you, you know, 80% return

(22:03):
within every 2 1/2 years. So that's like a 36% average
annual return, which is really good.
So that's that's what the returnlooks like.
Here's another cool point about it is unlike the stock market,
the only way I can really get money out of the stock market is
if I had to go sell my stocks. OK, So they can appreciate in

(22:25):
value, which great, I can look at it.
My computer. Oh my gosh, I've made all this
money, but not really the valuesgone up.
But the only way I can get that money is I've got to sell that
stock. Whereas with real estate, guess
what, someone's paying you everymonth, you don't have to sell
anything and someone's paying you every month.
So you have cash flow that comesthrough.

(22:46):
So you have cash flow that comesthrough, which is nice and you
have appreciation and, and you probably talked to us about this
on your show before, but you have forced appreciation.
So I can go and I can make an improvements and I can make dig
a property that was worth $5,000,000 and I can now make it
worth seven $8 million. So not only are you getting cash

(23:06):
flow, but you're letting me do work on it to increase the value
by millions of dollars. And so you're going to get paid
while we own it and you're goingto get a really fat payday when
we sell it. Then the other really cool part
about it is you get to leverage something called depreciation.
We are buying and selling businesses and it's real estate,

(23:30):
OK. So because of that, there's
depreciation. What that means is as a limited
partner, you get a tax document called AK1 and you are going to
get a sometimes a negative number on paper, even though
you're getting money. So my, my CPA has always said, I
never want to see your checks. I never want to see how much

(23:52):
money is going into your account.
I just want to see your K1 document.
So because of the depreciation, those losses, I pay way less in
taxes on the money that I make through my investments then I do
through, you know, 4O1K, Roth IRA, whatever it is through that
kind of stuff. Because I'm paying, I pay myself

(24:14):
first in that case and then I pay whatever minimum amount in
taxes has to be done. So there's, there's multiple
layers to it. So that's as a passive investor,
you can basically double your money every three to five years.
That's it. On the general partnership side,
if you want to be active, I don't know, like three to five

(24:37):
times that amount, but there's more work.
So one is I can keep my corporate job.
I can make all kinds of great money.
I can grow my wealth faster thanwhat my company's offering me.
And I worked for a place that didn't even match.
They always said they would, butthey never did.
It's nice to be able to have an investment that gives you those

(25:00):
types of returns and it doesn't have, it's not directly tied to
the stock market. So the, the last example I'll
give you is one of the things that's always been hard for me
about the stock market is I don't know what's going to
happen between the morning and the afternoon with the value of

(25:20):
my money in the stock market. Somebody like the president or
Elon Musk can do a tweet or an X, whatever it's called now, and
the value could go up or could go down in the single day, but
it does not have the impact on rental income, doesn't have the
impact. So, so there's a, there's a

(25:41):
pretty good overview multiple pay days along the way for years
as long as you own the asset. Can you explain a little bit
more of how the, the active sideright the general partner, how
how much money could they make if the deal works out like super
well for like let's just say a 30 unit apartment complex?

(26:04):
I mean, what type of returns could they expect?
Millions. Yeah, that's, that's the short
answer is 1,000,000 and it's kind of tough to factor because
the you start getting into how many people you partnering with
and, and you know, how many, howdo you split the pie up?
But what I can tell you, I mean,I look at deals all the time.

(26:24):
So there's like a $4 million deal that we were looking at
earlier and we decided not to put an offer on it, offers to do
today. We decided not to.
But when, when we you know, did the numbers to make it work,
there was a $2,000,000 upside onthat deal with within five
years. There was you know, so we would
have, we wouldn't have put 4 million in because right, we

(26:49):
would have got a loan for it. But there was there was
$2,000,000 in that deal. There was another smaller 24
unit deal we were looking at earlier this year.
And that would have been our money that we would have put in
as, as a general partnership would have been, I don't know,
like $100,000. We would have raised some
capital. And at the end of it, there

(27:11):
would have been like a $1.5 million paycheck.
Like there's this huge disproportional upside to it.
You're doing a lot of work, you're putting a lot of work.
And so as a general partner, there's basically 3 paydays.
When you close the deal, you getan acquisition fee.
It can be 1 to maybe 5% the acquisition fee, 11 to 5% of the

(27:35):
purchase price. The acquisition fee is you work
hard for a long time before you find a deal, before you get an
offer accepted. And when I find the deal, I got
to put money down on it, I got to pay the fees, I got to do all
the stuff. So I have to have a lot of cash
to put into it. I will pay myself back with a
capital raise, but there's a lotof risk involved.

(27:56):
So I give myself an acquisition fee payday #1 then I do because
I'm running it. I get the asset management.
So anytime I do a distribution to the investors, I pay myself.
I get asset management fees, plus I generally invest in the
deal. So then I also get payment from
that. So I get an asset management fee
that I get paid as an investor. And then when I sell the deal, I

(28:19):
pay myself as a general partner and I pay myself as a limited
partner. So actually we stack all that
up. There's five paydays.
There's a lot of different ways you get paid as a general
partner a lot. And that's what's really
appealing about it. But I do have to like put the
footnote in it. You know, I get, I talked to a
lot of people about they're like, oh, it's apartment
investing, it's passive. And if you're a general partner,

(28:41):
no, it's not. One deal does not mean you're
working 60 hours a week. That's not what I'm saying.
You can easily do four or five deals and, and, and you know,
keep your life normal 40 hours aweek.
If you're doing four or five deals, you're making a shit ton
of money. I'm not gonna lie.
Like you're making good money, but it's not passive.
Like you have to make sure that the property management company

(29:02):
gets the support they need. You have to make sure there's
investor communication. Like there, there's a lot that
happens every week you're meeting with the property
management company. If there's issues, you got to
solve it. You're working with insurance
companies, There's fires at the properties or stat like there's
things that happen. So you've just got to be able
to, to deal with that. So it there, there is a pretty
big reward. It's not 100% passive though,

(29:24):
just footnote. Not 100% passive, but it is a
fun, fun path to be on. Yeah, one thing too that's
really cool about investing in apartments is once you kind of
get so you know, if, if the property needs improvements or

(29:44):
it needs some of the tenants need to be updated or or
replaced, basically improved thethe tenants and the and the
property at some point it gets stabilized and then at that
point the investors able to refinance and pull some cash
out. Can you talk about that process
and and make sure to explain that that's a tax free money?

(30:09):
Yeah. How detailed do you want me to
get on that explanation so? Just what that process looks
like and and what kind of paydaya person could expect on that.
Yeah. So you can definitely refinance
it. And and so the way we handle it
is we will go to our investors and we'll say, all right, guys,

(30:29):
here's the position that we're in.
We've been able to implement ourbusiness plan.
The market conditions are good. We can A sell the property, B,
do nothing and just get the cashflow out of it or, or C, we
could refinance it. And in the, in the event that we
refinance, we take a look at it.And in order to refinance in, in

(30:54):
commercial real estate, there iswhat's called a debt service,
debt service coverage ratio. And generally on the refinance
on a traditional agency loan, they wanted ADSCR at least 1.25
or better. And So what that means is 125%.
So you've got to have enough, you're, you're making enough
that you can pay your mortgage and then some.

(31:17):
So what you do is, and here's here's this is like, this is the
coolest thing about it. So they look at what the
property is valued at and and they do that by evaluating your
cash flow. So if the market's really good
and you have really good net operating in operating income
and you've got millions of dollars of equity you put into

(31:40):
this, you have millions of dollars of equity you can take
out. So here's here's when it gets
really cool is you do a cash outrefinance and give investors
almost all of their money back and hold the property and cash
flow it. So then you're almost like
infinite returns. And that's like this magical
moment. And there was about four year 4

(32:05):
or five years ago that was much more prevalent in the space.
The market shifted right now. So we're in a fantastic spot to
buy. And then I think in another four
years, we'll be in another fantastic spot to refinance and
say, guess what we're going to do?
We're going to give you almost all of your money back.
OK. You get to stay in the deal.

(32:27):
We're going to keep sending you checks and then we're going to
hold it another five years and then we're going to sell it and
then you're going to like quadruple your money.
Like it it it's the coolest thing ever.
So yeah, we can you, you there'sthere is a lot of and this is
where I say how much detail you want me to get into.
So there's a lot of you have to understand cap rates and what's

(32:49):
going on in the market and you have to understand the DSCR and
you've got to understand interest rates.
And when you have a good intersection of all of those
things, that's the right moment to refinance.
So does it always happen? No.
Can you do it? Absolutely.
And, and, and you make a ton of money doing that.
And you, like I said, you get like almost an infinite return
on your investment. And that's like the best

(33:11):
scenario you can get. That's great, Steph.
I love hearing about all these magical moments in multifamily.
You'd kind of just mentioned just now in your response that
sometimes it makes sense to do it and sometimes it doesn't.

(33:34):
What are the things that may? What are the things that line up
to where you probably won't wantto do a refinance?
Yeah. So in market cycles, there is an
upside and there's a downside inany market cycle, you could buy
a property. We'll just we'll just use round
numbers. I can buy it for 10 million.

(33:55):
If I don't do anything to it, everything stays the same.
But there's more demand for the property because there's more
demand. There's now it's worth 1213
million. In that case, it makes sense to
refinance because I have equity in the deal.
I can pull out that two, $3,000,000, just pull it out,
boom, it's mine because there's more demand.

(34:17):
It's assessed. That's what's going on.
There are times though that whenyou buy the top of the market
and I bought it at 10 million and now it's only worth 8
billion operationally, it's fine.
I can still pay my bills, it's not a problem.
But if I sell it right now, I actually have to sell it for a
loss because I'm at the bottom of the cycle at that time.
You don't want to refinance. So, so you, when, when, when

(34:41):
you're in it long enough, you start to understand the market
cycles and, and it's not like it's always a three-year cycle
or five year cycle. But, but, but, but there's
moments. So, so, and then that demand
translates into a, a industry term called cap rate.
So if and, and that's like an inverse of a, like an equity

(35:06):
multiple. So if the, if the cap rate goes
down, there's more demand in themarket.
Generally that's driven by lowerinterest rates.
Is a, is a big driver there or supply and demand.
There's just not a lot of apartments available.
And that's the case. And it's a seller's market.
When it's a seller's market, it's a good time to refinance.

(35:28):
When it's a buyer's market, it'snot generally not as good as a
time to refinance because you can refinance to change your
debt at any time. Like, well, I'm going to
refinance because I want to lockin a certain interest rate.
Maybe it's a, maybe it's a neutral refinance.
You're, you're not taking any money out.
You're not really putting any money in.
But I have this variable rate and I want to just lock it in a

(35:49):
flat rate. Sometimes you have to refinance
and it's a cash in Because of that, I've gone down in value.
Maybe I had a variable interest rate and I'm just tired of
dealing with this storm. We're going to cash in
refinance. So so there, you know, I just
like to paint the picture that there's both sides.

(36:10):
I you know, I think it's fair tosay there's a lot of rewards.
What's important is, and this isfor those people who are passive
investors, you want to work withsomebody who's navigated some of
that before because when it comes up, it can be a little
choppy. And if you have no clue what's

(36:33):
going on, it's, it's a really good opportunity to lose your
ass. If you, if you've been through
it before, you can see through that a little bit easier.
You can navigate like. Yeah, I'm glad you kind of
mentioned that because I kind ofwant to get a little bit into
the other side of apartment investing, right.
We've kind of really been highlighting the amazing things
and the cash flow and the winds and all that stuff like that.

(36:54):
But I've also kind of seen some some of the darker side of
investing in commercial residential, multi family
investing. I feel like kind of when the the
market has shifted recently, right?
I feel like a lot of people werejust kind of being very loose

(37:18):
with their underwriting, meaningthat they were just kind of, you
know, running numbers, like rates were going to always stay
the same. I think it kind of changed and
you could, you know, tell me if you agree with this.
I feel like it changed about a year or two ago to where rates
had shot up really quickly, almost overnight.
And I feel like that left a lot of people in a very bad

(37:40):
position. Can you kind of talk about that
moment when the market, when themarket shifted really quickly
and and how it negatively affected some of these
syndicators and some of these apartment investors?
It was March of 2022. That was the moment.
That was when the Fed started raising interest rates.

(38:04):
And So what led up to that moment was the market was hot
because of COVID. the Fed had dropped interest rates
significantly. Debt was cheap, but it was
variable interest rates and the market started pricing in very
inexpensive date based on very inexpensive debt based on

(38:26):
variable interest rates. So the only way you get deals
was to pay a lot for them, but the debt was cheap.
Then there's a huge pivot by theFed and all of those loans were
based on what's called the SOFR secured overnight financing
rate. And then it went up crazy, like

(38:50):
you said, the most and fastest it's ever gone up in history.
So the variable rates caused anybody that had gotten to a
deal, there's just bleeding out in these payments and, and
interest. And where people really, really,
really got upside down on it wasthere's this thing called a rate

(39:12):
cap. What that is, it's it's an
insurance policy for interest rate movement and it's basically
a ceiling. So what I can do is I can buy a
variable rate loan and then I can go buy on the market.
I can go buy this insurance policy that says if my interest
rate goes up, once it hits the ceiling, I'm not, I'm not paying

(39:33):
for it anymore. This insurance comes in and they
pay it. And lenders kind of did this to
themselves. They weren't, they had it in
their documentation, but they weren't enforcing it.
So it's a you got to go get a rate cap, but we don't really,
we're not going to ask if you got it.
So a lot of people actually got into these deals didn't have a

(39:54):
rate cap. And so when interest rates shot
up, they had no protection and they're just like, what do we
do? And and these are people that
just had to walk away from deals.
They literally had to walk away from deals.
So what that caused is. A devaluation of apartment

(40:17):
deals, there was less demand forit.
The people that bought it high, they didn't want to sell it low
because they're losing money. And and so that's where we had
this shift is. So to your point, yes, it was
last couple years, 2-3 years agowe had this shift and now we're
basically in, in the bottom of that.
So if you look at like loan maturities and such, we're,
we're kind of in the bottom of that.

(40:39):
And so deals are very much at a discount compared to what they
were three years ago. So if you can get into a deal
and, and this is like a nationwide thing, this is just
not market specific. It's, it's the, it's the
macroeconomics of the United States really is what led into
this. And so, so if you can get into a
deal now, fantastic. People that are selling deals

(41:00):
now, they've, they've had some issues and they've been
struggling. It hasn't been easy.
So I'll, I'll tell you. So like we were getting into
this deal and it was around thattime, end of 21, beginning of
2022, we saw the writing on the wall.
We're like we need to get this rate cap.
And when we got the deal under contract in December of 2021,

(41:24):
the rate cap was, I don't know, priced at about 40,000.
When we closed the deal in March, it was, I don't know,
like 250,000. It's like that's how much it
went up in a couple months afterthat, that same thing was valued
at over $1,000,000 because then at that point the, the analysts

(41:50):
are like these interest rates are not going to come down.
So we fortunately we got, we gota pretty good discount on our
insurance policy for the, for the rate cap.
But and that, and that's really saved us.
There's a lot of people who who really just got the short end of
it and just kind of lost their asses and had to foreclose on
it. And it and it's created some

(42:11):
turmoil that we're just about through that And interest rates
are pretty stabilized. the Fed is, is signaling that they're
going to slowly start lowering interest rates, which which
helps out on that stance. And then you don't ever know my

(42:33):
crystal ball I've learned is very cloudy.
So I don't know what shit show is going to happen and where in
the world that's going to have an impact.
But but overall, my my goal is like buy as much as I can right
now while it's as cheap as it isjust because of, like I said,

(42:53):
where we're at in the cycle. I kind of take a step back just
because I really want to highlight the risk here, right?
Like, again, this isn't all, youknow, rainbows and unicorns and
it's not all just winning, right?
Can you talk about what happens to those people that thought

(43:15):
they were just making a passive investment, right?
Let's say they invested $100,000into one of these deals and it
failed. And, you know, you'd mentioned
it just defaults or like goes back to the bank or whatever,
right? What happens to their money?
I mean, if you were a passive investor and you're, you're, you
know, syndicator if completely failed, what happened to all

(43:38):
that 100,000 you invested? You've lost it at that point,
you've lost it. That's, that's the short answer.
Yeah. Really, truly at that point
you've lost it and there's that,there's really no other
explanation to it. There's there's things you can
do with the bank like you can, you can you try to do loan

(44:01):
modifications with the bank, Youcan try to short sale, you know,
things you can do to try to try to salvage and, and get people
some other money back. But I do know people who
invested in deals and to be completely honest, didn't didn't
get any money back out of it. Yeah.

(44:22):
I've also heard that sometimes the syndicator can go back to
the investors and say, hey, we need more money to save this
thing. So, you know, that's another
option. But I mean, after someone just
told you you lost 100,000 of their money, are you really
going to give them another 50,000 to say yeah but it
doesn't? I'll tell you.
So it doesn't quite work like that.
So, but it but a good point. So what happens is you, you, you

(44:45):
go to the investors and say, heyguys, this is what's going on.
These are the, the, the circumstances we're under and we
have options. We walk away, everybody loses
money, us included. Or we've talked to the lender
and if we put in some more money, they'll let us

(45:07):
restructure the loan, for example, So we can get out of
variable variable rate debt, we can get into fixed rate debt, we
can defer interest. You know, we can bring in
somebody else to infuse some more capital into it.
Because sometimes it's just a matter of like we need working
capital for a short period of time.
So, and that's where, and that'swhere it goes to the experience

(45:30):
of the the general partnership team.
Because if you're brand new, like, you know, and myself
included, I was new at one pointand, and there's people who know
more than me. But but when, when you have, you
know, some of that experience, you know that like your best
shot is to pick up the phone andtalk to the lender because you

(45:52):
have an account manager and you literally you pick up the phone
and you're like, hey, bro, this is what's going on.
This is where we're at. We've talked to our investors,
we manage expectations. We can raise this much capital.
Will you work with us? That is a very powerful
conversation. But if you don't know what to
say in that conversation, then then you don't know because the

(46:15):
lenders not in a the, the lenders not in a position to
tell you exactly what to do. They don't want the liability.
So working with a general partner who has these some
experience, has a track record, will continue to fight through
whatever storm is huge as opposed to someone who's like,

(46:35):
yeah, I'm brand new. It's all rainbows and unicorns.
This is all going to be great because there are rainy days.
Yeah. And, and sometimes like recently
it's been like rainy years. It's just that's kind of where
the market cycle is at. So there there is, there is risk
and that's a lot of things. What I've learned this last few
years is how do you manage that when you underwrite a deal?

(46:58):
And it's it's really all about variables.
So think of this, think of like an Excel workbook and there's a
bunch of math in there. And in there it's all variables
as an underwriter and operator is to control those variables as
much as possible. So any place you leave an
open-ended variable, that's where you expose yourself for
risk. And So what you learn to do is

(47:19):
how much risk is there here? I need to have more control on
it. How much risk is there here?
I don't need to have that much control on it.
And that's that's a very high level.
But everything you're doing hereis a variable.
And when you put your business plan together, it's honestly,
it's your best idea of what might happen over the next five
years. And you've got to do your best

(47:41):
to make it happen. And like I said, whatever
headwinds come your way, awesome.
Thank you for sharing, you know.Both the good sides and the bad
sides, because it is really important for people to
understand and kind of like you mentioned before, you know, it's
really important for people to know and trust the people that
they're investing their money with, right?
It's probably not the best idea to invest with someone

(48:05):
completely new, like you said, because maybe they don't know
what the market conditions could, you know, could really
mess up all their projected returns.
Again, thank you for kind of talking us through both the very
good side and the very bad side of apartment investing.
And I think it's really important kind of switching
gears here a little bit. There was another part I wanted

(48:26):
to kind of talk to you about. I wanted to kind of talk a
little bit about systems and automations and 'cause you'd
said you'd work for IT company for many years and I want to see
if there was any ideas, systems or processes that, you know, you
learned from software and IT and, and and use in your real

(48:50):
estate investing business. Yeah.
Yeah. I use, honestly, I use more of
it in my in my coaching businessthan my real estate investing
business, but I handle a lot of the back end stuff.
And so where I can, I'll build systems and I like like
monday.com for like project management, for example.

(49:11):
It's very flexible. So we'll build that.
But within that there's some automation that you can do.
So think of that kind of like project management, we'll build
because of like standard, we uselike standard operating
procedures. So one of the things that I've
really focused on is those standard operating procedures
and building documentation for that and checklist.

(49:32):
So when it comes to underwriting, I have a very.
Detailed underwriting. Process and I turned that whole
thing into an underwriting checklist step by step by step
by step and then. Hired somebody.
And said, follow my exact process step by step by step by

(49:54):
step by step. And so for me as an operator,
what they did is it freed up my time from going and finding all
these deals and underwriting allthese deals because they can go
reach out to brokers, they can do that initial conversation and
then they can, you know, follow that exact process.
Now what we're starting to look into is using like AI to what

(50:19):
can we automate there? And we're just starting to
scratch the surface on that, which is really fun because what
you're able to do now is give AIA task and say, I need you to
go do this task. So if you can, if you can define
a set of parameters, then you can work with AI and say follow

(50:39):
these steps and then you can train it and you can tune it.
So while I haven't. Implemented it yet?
One of the things we want to work on is, you know, every day
we get deal flow from brokers. So one of the.
Things we're working on is an AI.
Agent that will see that e-mail,go access that information,

(51:05):
bring that in, evaluate it, do an initial underwriting of a
deal and then basically at the end of every day, it'll give me,
hey, these five deals came from brokers.
This is what the initial underwriting looks like.
So that'll happen during the daywhile I'm doing other things.
I'll have AI agents that are outthere doing that type of work

(51:27):
for me, which is pretty cool. Now it's, there's a lot to build
out in that, but, but that's, that's where I'm taking like
the, the, the IT background and the operations and folding that
into how can I be a better ownerand operator.

(51:49):
So, so that's where, like I said, that's where we're
spending a lot of our time now is learning the, a, the AI
agentic AI piece of it to handlethat.
So there's, there's still a realhuman component.
Like there's a lot of, a lot of things you can't replace.
You know, I have to have a real conversation with property
management company. I got to have a real

(52:09):
conversation with a broker for now.
For now, for now I for now I do give it a year.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Well.
We'll come back to the company Junior, but but yeah, let let's
have a follow up show in a. Year and see who's talking to
who Oh dude it it it's crazy I've seen a.

(52:31):
Lot of that stuff but but so with with all the AI stuff, my
goal is to as new stuff's comingout like play with it learn from
it because I my like if I can just kind of sort of keep up
like it's. It's already moving me.
And moving me forward in, in a lot of ways.

(52:51):
And even, and even ChatGPT, we use it, we use it all the time.
And so even for, you know, passive investors and building
investor profiles, we can leverage AI to score a potential
investor before we ever have a conversation with them.
Because people have so much information out there on the

(53:11):
Internet that we're now able to leverage that and say, here's
this person, go find out information about them, give me
a score and give me this information before I ever talk
to him. Yeah.
And and. So there's a lot of.
A lot of automation there and then operationally my, my one of

(53:32):
the things I really enjoyed in in corporate America was towards
the tail end of it was, was the leadership part of it.
So and that's fun. Like, you know, I've got a
couple of VA S that work for me and I'll be probably hiring a
couple more, but I really like teaching people, leading people
and seeing their growth there. So I, I do take a lot of my

(53:53):
background and fold it into what's going on.
I definitely don't want to like,you know, hang up my IT
background or my operational background.
I just, I just leverage it as much as I can.
And, and what's really cool about it is I just do what I
want. Like that's what's fun about it
is I want to play around with itand I just play around with it.
You know, I, I, that's the beauty of, you know, being your

(54:17):
own boss at this point. Like you want to go spend some
time figuring the stuff out, do it.
It's fun. You want to have someone on your
team try to figure it out, do it.
It's fun. And so that's another thing is,
is big for me with my team is I give them space.
I give them a lot of space. Here's what I need done.

(54:37):
I don't care how you do it. If if you're not happy with the
results, do it again. I'm not going to get mad at you.
Figure it out. Just do it to the best of your
ability. And if you get stuck, talk to
me. I will work through it.
So, yeah, we could talk about leadership and and all that
stuff for a long time. But but yeah, that's how I fold
it all in because I, I, I, I work with people, manage people.

(55:00):
And I like to leverage technology in in all of that.
And I like to build systems thatgo along with as many systems as
I can to make it repeatable and streamline it and do more with
less. Yeah, I really.
Like that you're trying. To use as much AI as possible,
but still have the human touch. I, I, I really like that.

(55:22):
I think it's important for a lotof people to stay ahead of the
curve as much as they can with AI because we already know that
the genie's already out of the lamp.
Like AI is coming, AI is going to do a lot of stuff for us.
So, so it's really good idea to stay ahead of it and try not to
just get left behind. I don't know if you're

(55:44):
comfortable kind of talking about some of the behind the
scenes stuff, but I know of likefor me and my company, I'm
trying to use chat GTP Premium, which is actually has an
operator on it. Have you used anything?
Again, if you feel like talking about it, what kind of stuff are
you using for like the bots or like communication or doing

(56:07):
those tasks that you were talking about?
So we have a teams. We have a team account, so a lot
of what we do is custom GPTS, sorepetitive task that we're
doing. So e-mail automations is an
example. We'll build a custom GPT that
does that. We leverage AI lot for social
media in in multiple levels. It'll create carousel content

(56:31):
extremely rapidly, single image stuff extremely rapidly.
But I don't like like for me on social media, I don't really
like, you know, sitting in frontof a camera and doing that kind
of a thing. But what I do enjoy is, you
know, more like a YouTube format.
So what we'll do is we'll do a longer recording and then we

(56:52):
leverage Opus Clip to swap things up.
And so you can go in there and tweak that a little bit.
Capka is another tool we use andit has some AI in it that'll
also do things for you. So a lot of the, a lot of the
like video editing is honestly done through AI.
The captioning is all done through AI.

(57:16):
ZAP Zapier. I think it's Zapier.
See the Zapier Zapier, but I think it's Zapier.
So that's where I started playing with the AI agents and
chat bots and they have some. Tools.
They're in beta. Right now and the chat bot and I
just put one together the other day.
It was just just what would happen and it was, I called it

(57:38):
passive investor Concierge's botand I so I run a free school
community and I said, hey guys, I created this bot.
You know, let me know your thoughts.
What was really? Cool as I.
Could see every conversation that it had had and all of the
keywords. So I gave it some parameters.
I said here, here's what I want you to do.

(57:58):
So somebody's going to come to you, they're going to ask
questions about passive investing.
Here's your here's your boundaries.
Here's here's what you can answer and you can feed it.
So you can feed it like information.
And when I say feed it, you giveit, you give it like resources
it can reference. So it could be documentation
that says, you know, this, this how to get a hold of me.

(58:19):
These are these are some past deals we've done.
Here's some case studies. So, you know, you give it this
world to live in, but then what happens is like, I went into it
the other day and I can see, I can literally see the
conversation. I can see what somebody's asking
and I can see what the keywords are.
So then what I can do is I can go in and say, OK, let me tune

(58:39):
you a little bit more because I see they're asking these
questions. I wasn't aware of that.
Let me feed you some more information.
So honestly, to get to the pointto where by the time I have a
conversation, somebody has already experienced me for hours
before I ever have a conversation with them.

(58:59):
So that's like, that's a lot of how I'm leveraging AI is, is
giving it my tone and my voice to get someone to experience me
before I ever meet that person. And that that's a big deal.
That's a really, really, really big deal because you're building
trust and I probably shouldn't be sharing this.

(59:22):
You know, there's a potential passive investors, but but but
that but that's really cool. And then and then, you know,
that's just an AI bot and then the AI agent, we're looking at a
tool, it's called N8N and that might be a tool that could do
the underwriting for us to say, here's an e-mail.
I got it. I'm going to go access the

(59:42):
brokers deal room. I'm going to download this
information. I now know how to parse this
information. I know what to do with it.
I can give you some of these initial results and then you and
then you know, I can score thesethings.
You know, I can give you a a summary at the end of the day.
So so ChatGPT, we use the teams account.

(01:00:03):
I haven't used the operator thing yet I've seen it available
to have codecs in there. We do use Sora.
I think it's called Sora. And that's just image video
generation. Yeah, I like.
So there's a whole bunch of other AI tools that are out
there. I haven't touched all of them
yet. Yeah, there's so many.
Yeah. I what are you using?

(01:00:25):
So I'm I'm kind. Of messing around with this
premium account, it is a little expensive.
It's 200 a month for chat GTP premium, but it has this
operator and it's really cool because what it does is it, you
know, you kind of use it like normal AI and you're like, hey,
you know, I'm trying to have this done.
And what it does is it pops up this browser that it literally

(01:00:48):
can like go and click and like type in stuff on your behalf.
So I can get it to log into someof my accounts.
I can get it to go literally loginto my e-mail, find all the
emails from that person. And and like it, like I said,
it's clicking on a browser, it'styping in fields.
It's, it's pretty mind blowing really of what it can do.

(01:01:11):
And like when you first start a task, it's kind of slow and it
kind of asks, hey, am I doing this right?
And all this stuff right? So you kind of like, yeah, keep
going like, yeah, you're doing good, you know, maybe move
faster. And so it just kind of like
learns and like, as it goes, it gets smarter and it, it's really
weird. It in my, in, in my other jobs,

(01:01:34):
I, I've trained people, right? And you can kind of see people
maybe if they're unfamiliar withit, they're kind of slow and
they're, they're not sure. And so like this AI operator is
very similar to that and to where it's like, I don't really
know this yet. And then after like 1520
minutes, this thing is just zooming around and you're like,
Dang, you learned that super quick.

(01:01:56):
And so it's, it's really cool. And then you'd also mentioned N8
N, There's another one very similar to that that I'm also
messing around with. It's called Gumloop.
And it's kind of that same low code, no code for our listeners,
low code, no code is like there's a little bit of coding,

(01:02:17):
but not really. You're more so like setting up
like diagrams and workflows. It's more of like a grapher
graphic user interface more so than just like writing a bunch
of code. So this gun loop is very similar
to NAN to where you're like, OK,go to my e-mail and any e-mail
from this person, then send it to here.
And you just create these workflows and like it basically

(01:02:40):
just does all this stuff instantly and very quickly.
So, you know, if you're, if you're trying N 8 N, you know, I
also encourage you to check out Gumloop.
That's a pretty cool software aswell.
There's just so much to it. Those are some of the ones that
I'm using. It kind of leads me to a a good
book here if I can grab a book real quick.

(01:03:03):
This is one that I've been checking out.
Recently it's pretty good new automation mindset, pretty good
book here. And Speaking of books, each week
we do. A free book giveaway.
This is for all the listeners and and viewers of the show.
Each week we give away books so all the listeners have to do is

(01:03:25):
like the episode and comment which book they'd like to have.
So we have books such as leadersEat Last E, Myth, Outliers, The
One thing, 10X Rule, cash flow Quadrant.
So if anyone's listening and wants to enter to win, just like
and comment which book you'd like to have and seven days

(01:03:46):
after the air date, we will sendyou a copy if you win that's.
Awesome, I might have. To like and comment.
Yeah, I'm sure you've read a. Couple of those already.
Yeah, I. I right now.
There's a book I'm I'm stuck on,Well, I shouldn't say stuck on
I'm I'm like reading it the fourth or fifth time.
And it's called Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson.

(01:04:07):
OK, so it is. Have you read that one?
I I've gotten through probably. The first half of it, but I
haven't gone through everything,but now that you mentioned that,
I kind of noticed, I noticed that you use a lot of the stuff
that he talks about in the book,you know, frequent weekly
webinars and just kind of like bringing in new people as much

(01:04:29):
as possible. So that's really cool that
you're implementing a lot of thestuff from that book.
If there's something else you want to mention about that, you
know, go go for it now you know.You know, my, my journey as a
real estate entrepreneur, investor, it, it may be a lot
different than a lot of other people's, may be the same, a
little bit different. I am choosing a path right now

(01:04:52):
with a lot more visibility to it.
There was a, there was a while where I just didn't want the
visibility. I didn't want to be seen.
I didn't want my voice to be heard.
I, I can't tell you what it was,but but now I'm in a different
spot. I want to share my knowledge, I
want to share the, you know, this information with people and

(01:05:14):
how do you do that? You have to get your voice.
Out there. So I have, you know, spent time,
you know, reading a lot of Alex Hormozi stuff, Russell Bronson.
So I've really been learning a lot over the past few years.
More on the marketing side and I've been getting coaching more

(01:05:37):
on the marketing side. And so that's where I, you know,
refer more to Russell Brunson and helps me.
Also, be a better communicator. You know, back to way back when,
when I wanted to be a bartender.So at that time I one of the
books I read was, I think it's Dale Carnegie, How to Win
Friends and Influence People. And I think.

(01:06:00):
About it every day, like all thetime that I've read that book
multiple times, listen to it multiple times.
There's another book I read around that same time frame
called it was like how to flirt with anyone, anywhere, anytime,
any place. It was before I was single.
Don't tell my wife, but but it was, it was all about these,
these, these, these social skills and understanding people
better. And, and that's where, you know,

(01:06:23):
I like a lot of the the Alex Harmozzi type stuff or, you
know, Russell Brunson, but it, it helps me be a better
communicator. It helps me connect with people
because of the end, end of the day.
And what what are we trying to do?
We're trying to change people's lives.
And like, to me, that's a life well lived is when you have the

(01:06:43):
ability to change somebody's life and you take action on it.
And if I. If I have learned.
Something and I can help somebody out and it will have an
impact. Like I want to do that, but
there's there's no way for me toget my message out if I don't,
if I just sit on my hands. So that's the reason why I read
a lot of those books is because it helps me get my message out

(01:07:04):
because I truly have the abilityto change somebody's life,
hopefully for the better. But you know, right, for, for
the better. I, I have the ability to do
that. And and that's that's what's.
Really cool. About the journey that I'm on
and, you know, while we're in it, you know, a.

(01:07:26):
Big push to like just. Get Me Out and doing this full
time was I got little kids. I want to set a great.
Example for them. I want them to realize they
don't have to go down a very specific path.
They can, they can choose their own path and they should be able
to do that and, and not have anyregrets and, and look back and

(01:07:47):
say, you know what? I did it.
It was hard, but you know, I hada good role model that gave me
the support to get me there. So that is, I put myself in
difficult situations on purpose so that I can set a good example
for other people. Wow, that's great.
I'm so glad that you. Shared that with us and then the
listeners, you know, it's very inspiring for us and just kind

(01:08:11):
of wrap things up, you know. Stevens story reminds us that
success in real estate isn't just about the units, it's about
building a life with intention. When you own your own income,
you own your own time. And when you own your own time,
you own your own choices. If you're still feeling stuck in
a job you hate or chasing randomdeals, get focused, get

(01:08:34):
educated, and take control. Thank you for tuning in,
everybody, and thanks for joining us.
We'll see you next time. Thanks, Steven.
Absolutely man. Thank you.

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RealPropPro Podcast Ep 12 - Stephen Lee-Thomas | June 5th, 2025

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}RealPropPro Podcast Ep 12 - Stephen Lee-Thomas | June 5th, 2025