441: House Hacking as an NFL Player? How Former Tight End Hakeem Valles Grew His Real Estate Portfolio
BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast- 1,234 views
- 7 Feb 2021
When most people think of professional athletes, they usually think of superstars being paid millions every month (or even every week). Most people don’t come to realize that for everyone on an NFL team, that pay grade isn’t as high. That too, is what Hakeem Valles found out after being signed on by the Cardinals.Hakeem wasn’t making a lot, and realized that he was essentially throwing away $2,000 a month on rent. After one season with the team, he decided to go on BiggerPockets and ask around for agents and leads in the area. Hakeem ended up with a LOT of responses and found a great agent who helped him close on a fourplex, which he house hacked while practicing with the team.It’s hard enough to house hack when your tenants know you’re the owner, but it can be even harder when your tenants know you’re an NFL player. Hakeem’s advice: be a tenant of your own property and don’t let the other tenants know that you own the place. Doing this can help reduce some awkward encounters you may have.After retiring, Hakeem went on to do bigger real estate deals and partnered up on a 40 acre farm! He also owns Perspective Global Media, where he counsels other real estate professionals on how to grow their reach through social media platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn. Hakeem drops some gems towards the end of this episode on how you too can use TikTok to gain followers, clients, and partners!In This Episode We Cover:Why even professional athletes need to have multiple streams of incomeHow a shocking event in Hakeem’s life changed his outlook foreverFighting income creep and keeping expenses lowWhen renting does and doesn’t make sense for your financial situationThe biggest mistake Hakeem made when living in his fourplexHow to fight the fear of getting into real estate (and making mistakes)Using social media to leverage your personal brand and grow followers and clientsAnd So Much More!Links from the ShowBiggerPockets PodcastBiggerPockets book storeBooks Mentioned in this Show:Rental Property Investing by Brandon TurnerThe Go-Giver by Bob burgThe 1 Thing by Gary KellerClick here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/show441
This is a bigger pockets podcasts show for forty one, and I credit overcoming that traumatic experience is why and who I am today. Like I'm not a day goes by where I don't think about it, but it allows me to frame my day to day against gratitude. Like you could lose a deal. It doesn't matter. You're not dead. You could get cut from a team. Doesn't matter.
You're listening to bigger pockets. Radio simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from bigger pockets. Dotcom, your home for real estate, investing online.
What's going on? Bring in Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here in the C shed with my friend, Mr. David Greene, joining me in the studio live in Hawaii. What's up, man? Well, the weather is beautiful. It is. Guest was awesome. Yeah, the conversation was stupendous. And I feel like this podcast is going to make a lot of our listeners some money. So I'm in a pretty good mood.
I'm good with amazing dude named Hakeem, chemos an NFL player, albeit his last name. Right. Cause I don't want to completely butcher Dallas, Dallas or Valy the Vélez Dallas Ballards Dallas. OK, we're Hakeem VALIS. Hakeem was an NFL player who got really into real estate investing as well as business. He does both real estate. He has some other really interesting farming activities. We'll leave it at that. You figure what that means. Later, he runs a social media consulting business and he's just super, like, mind set, solid, like he just gets it.
And everything we talked about today was so like, I feel like we can make a t shirt and a book out of every topic today. We make that joke later on today. You're going to love it.
But before we get there, let's get to today's quick move to today's quick tip is brought to you by David Greene.
You are going to at today's quick tip is to think about real estate. From a business perspective, it's easy to think real estate is a one size fits all thing. I buy a house, I rent it out, I repeat, and that does work. However, there's many ways you can make money with real estate. There's buying commercial buildings and renting out part of it to yourself and part of it of other people. There's buying a house that you live in and rent out the rooms, but you operate a business from your house.
There's a lot more options and people tend to think about and Hakeem has really kind of nailed that. He understands how to look at an asset and say what's its highest and best use? How do I take advantage of it? I think there's a lot of creative people that are not using their creativity when it comes to how to use the asset that we're talking about. So as you listen to this, as you think about your plans, ask yourself, what else could I use this property for other than just renting it out in a residential way?
All right. Good question. And now let's get to this show sponsors.
Today's podcast is brought to you by one of my favorite stores, the Home Depot and Home Depot pro, for more than 60 years, they've helped pros do more by providing professional grade products and innovative business solutions that address the challenges you face every day, making it easier to manage your business, find efficiencies and improve your bottom line. With more than twenty one hundred stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, you can access more than a million products and dedicated services for today's busy pro there your single source supply house for the products and services you use every day.
The know how you deserve. When tough calls come in and the technology you need to keep your business moving forward. Unlock exclusive benefits with extra. The Home Depot's free loyalty program built just for pros. Enjoy exclusive access to timesaving business tools and money saving programs. Save time, save money and get rewarded. Jointed at Home Depot dotcom such pro extra. That's Home Depot. Dotcom Stosz pro x t r a. Hey investors.
So Deal Machine is already your top rated RPI lead gen technology with four point eight stars and over two thousand reviews, and they're continuing to make it easier than ever for investors to scale their business individually. Each deal machine engine helps you dominate a specific type of real estate lead generation. It's like street engine helps you scale a driving force team to create the best niche list in the industry list. Engine Pulls Book List of scale of motivated sellers. Deal Machine CRM lets you skip trace any owner and manage targeted direct mail campaigns.
And now message engine lets you run text message campaigns from the same simple app together. Dial Machines Engines help you build an unstoppable Legion channel to scale your real estate business as big as you want to take it. Message engine also helps you keep on the right side of the texting laws with fully compliant design processes an unlimited litigator scrubbing, allowing you to stay focused on real estate deals. Instead of becoming a legal expert, bigger pockets listeners can go to deal machine dotcoms like BP and use the promo code BP to get a demo of message engine and manage five hundred thousand leads in deal machine CRM for free and start bringing new deals in today.
Again, this deal machine dotcom slash BP and promo code beep. All right, big thanks to our sponsors as always.
And now I think we're ready to get into today's show. And if you want to add, I guess we kind of covered it. No the scrapbooking and bring him in. All right.
All right, Hakim, welcome to the Bigger Pocket's podcast. Man, it is amazing to have you here. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Brandon, I'm excited to be here on the show. Good. Well, I'm pumped to talk to you. I've always talk about professional athletes. I mean, they're just cool people.
But you've got kind of a cool story. And I've been digging a little bit and we're excited to kind of introduce you to the bigger pocket's world.
So why don't we start at the very beginning? And how did you get into real estate? Like, why real estate? What what was your entry?
I think it takes a you know, I was always it's that lifelong entrepreneur kid. And my uncle had properties when I was like super, super young. And I was cutting grass at one of his properties. And I thought that was like the coolest thing in the world. And once I made it to college, I figured, you know, I wanted to get into real estate. And Monmouth University is one of the few schools in the country that actually offered a degree in business with a concentration in real estate.
And so that was my major. And by my sophomore year, the girl I was dating, her dad, had just started house flipping business. And I honestly called it it was a real life rich dad, poor dad relationship. It was like my schooling. Education was like poor dad. I was learning how to be an employee at a big Marcus Millichap CBRE type of company. And then in real life, my rich dad or my ex's dad was we were in the field every day.
I was putting in offers on foreclosures. I handwrote our direct mail pieces. You know, I was knocking down walls, putting down floors. One time I hired a couple of my teammates to come up because we were putting a master bedroom in an attic and the stairwell wouldn't fit through the front door, but it fit through like a second floor window. So we had to actually, like, you know, lift the stairwell through a second window. But that's where kind of my itch started in over about a three year period.
We flipped around ten houses. But when me and his daughter broke up, that relationship kind of early ended.
So then the the flipping business went went went away.
Surprisingly enough, actually, right before we broke up, he literally just started to offer me equity in this business. It was. Oh, yeah. And I messed up to you.
You had you messed up.
You don't ever get a chance to say that without it. I think you should have the right to be able to be calm. Don't worry about that question. I did I did think about that scene in Friends where they're trying to move the couch up the stairs.
And you're describing have you guys seen that one? Oh, you know what? I don't watch trashy shows. I actually know I have seen that episode where I keep saying pivot and they're trying to get the couch up the stairs. That's a really it's a mess. But, yes, that's exactly what it was like. But we're able to do it from outside, which was probably an insurance nightmare.
But someday they'll make it all commercial. That's awesome. But basically, you've got the real estate bug, right? And once you get it, we all know who have it, what it's like because you're not going to stop. It's going to take whatever it takes to get there. And something I think about your personality from what we know about you so far, is that you are definitely the type who, once you set your mind to doing something, it's going to happen.
Do you mind sharing a little bit about your background with how you got into the NFL? Basically like how you got into college and then how you transition that into the NFL and the what you did when you got there?
Absolutely. So my background, you even as an athlete, you know, I was a bench player, like in college, like you literally did not get my first catch until my senior year at Monmouth University. I made a move from wide receiver to tight end. The only reason why I made the move is because I knew I wasn't going to be granted a fifth year, which would allow me to get an MBA for free if I didn't actually play like they're going to pay for a mid-year.
I was on scholarship for my four years, but I obviously redshirt at my freshman year because I was a bench player and moved a tight end. First game. I had my first catch, second game had my first touchdown, started every game after that. And that offseason soon is that that colleges and ended my little brother first. He got drafted because he dropped out of UVA as a sophomore, twenty years old, and got drafted sixth round to the Oakland Raiders.
And that was like the one motivator of all right, that's my little brother. We used to share bathtub and if he can do it, I obviously can do it.
If you can tie into the big brother doesn't want to get outshined by little brother aspect of your brain, that's where you're going to become a superhuman.
Oh, my gosh. That's that's a that's a that's a that's a real life autopilot like drug of like no shot. Even though I have three touchdowns in four hundred yards, I'm making it to the freaking NFL and got granted a fifth year that offseason.
But what really changed for me that offseason honestly changes my mindset. Moving forward with everything I do is that off season, I actually went on a missionary trip to Haiti and our mission was to give out medicine at different churches and orphanages across the country. And while we were there, essentially to make a long story short, our compound was ambushed by eight guys with guns they shot through the front door. I was shot at point blank range, hog tied, blindfolded, came to peace with the fact that I was dead like it was a wildly traumatic experience that happened May.
Twenty ninth of twenty fifteen and the. And on Thursday, like Monday, we started grad school and like summer sessions of workouts for football for my next season and like I was a mess, you know, PTSD out of this world. And I credit overcoming that traumatic experience is why and who I am today. Like, I'm not a day goes by where I don't think about it, but it allows me to frame my day to day against gratitude.
Like you could lose a deal. It doesn't matter. You're not dead. You could get cut from a team. Doesn't matter if I'm working out and it's a hard workout, like it's not as bad as being tied up in a third world country. So it's a once I got that mindset shift, it's easy for my mind to go there with any type of adversity and kind of bring me back to like back to center and back to, like, my true north.
But that's what I credit to making it to the NFL and making it to the person who I am today.
Any advice you can share on how you switch that from a debilitating experience into an empowering one? Two things.
One, therapy. You know, I say in twenty twenty, mental health is the real flex. You know, most people are looking like if like if you can be cool in between your ears, like if you figure out what your true north is like, that's what's going to help you essentially get through everything but therapy for me, like when that happened, that's what helped me adjust and reframe that mindset. But when you can just try and frame I think everyone has not their version of that story, that's pretty extreme and intense.
But I think we've all been to the bottom. And I think in a twenty 20 world, a lot of us have been close towards the bottom, especially in a mental state. Just considering what everything is like right now, I genuinely believe that if you can, you know, I meditate on things, but if you can meditate to the point of understanding that for me it's so simple of just like, oh man, this client is pissed off.
They just fired me. We just lost six thousand dollars of red on a monthly basis. But it's like I can still breathe, I can still eat, my child is safe and I'm still not dead. And like for me, like whatever your experiences, that's how I like talking to a group of college students last week. I'm just trying to challenge them like we all have those moments. But if you can kind of it's hard because we try and suppress everything that happens to us that's bad.
But if you can kind of flip the switch and turn a bitter experience into something sweet that helps your mindset, it's super valuable for me.
I feel like you need to write a book called I'm Still Not Dead and that that's why I started writing a book. But I. That's your book title right there. I like that credit you. And if you have something to that, there we go.
I'm still not dead. Is that art. Sure would be a little easier, but I still like that teacher. So I'm going to make a T-shirt of that insanity. I guarantee it now. That'd be like fifty people do it.
That's that's that's a crazy story, dude. Like, I don't know, we could spend an hour just talking with that, but we'll go on to real estate. Man Got it. Wow. OK, so you got into it. You got in the NFL, you got you got yourself a hood you start playing with.
So I started off with the Arizona Cardinals. And from an NFL standpoint, I actually got to take you back six months to wear bigger pockets actually comes into the picture I found when I found you guys.
I'll be honest with you, I was pissed off like that because I didn't find you three years earlier when I was actually in the dirt handwriting, direct mail letters, doing stuff like looking for properties on Zillow, like for hours, on hours, on hours, and like not knowing all these different tactics, all this knowledge or information was out there. But when I started training for the NFL, I made the decision. I literally watched my little brother when he was on the Oakland Raiders.
He got cut from the Raiders and signed to the bills like overnight, but was still locked in for six months, like a three thousand dollar month lease and like eighteen grand, like, poof, going to air. I'm like, that can happen to me if I make it. And when I make it to the NFL, I'm figuring out how to get involved in real estate some way, some shape, some form.
And that was when I found the podcast like super, super, super early days of the podcast. Like I remember your Hawaii trip was like a journey that all of your Oggi podcast followers, I'm sure, followed you along that entire journey. But that's I literally had 12 hour days of training and four to five hours of downtime every day during that time. I listen to every single episode of your podcast. But then I also downloaded the audio books that every guest recommended, like during your famous for and literally listen to the audio for six months, no January through April for months straight.
That's all I consumed. And I was like, whatever city I make it to, I'm doing real estate. Made it to the Cardinals. It was twenty sixteen in Phoenix. I'm like, this is a perfect city to do real estate in, but then quickly realized you don't get paid until September comes around. And like I also need to actually make the team you know, a lot of people have a short cup of coffee in the NFL meeting just April through September and not actually play.
So I need to focus on making the team and then figure out what my angle was into real estate. Yeah, OK.
So I want to make a point here real quick about a lot. People are listening like, oh, NFL player, you probably got drafted in making forty million dollars a year the first year or one hundred million dollars. You know, like that's the numbers that we hear on the news. But what is it like? What does the average athlete like actually make when they get in and maybe for the people that are not familiar with the sport world, like, how does that work?
I mean, like a lot of people get drafted, only some of them end up playing and some of them only make a little bit of money, like, what's that like 100 percent?
So it's when you get in in April. So for me, for example, I went as an undrafted priority free agent. My signing bonus was seven thousand dollars, which was really like four thousand dollars after taxes. And I then had a stipend of everyone gets a stipend of you get your signing bonus of your first round draft pick. You're getting anywhere from 15 to five million dollars as a signing bonus, like all the way until the seventh round. You're getting a fifty thousand dollars signing bonus.
But then if you go undrafted, some people, they'll give a signing bonus because you have the like I had the decision to choose between teams as a priority free agent of what team wants to give me an actual contract. But the Cardinals gave me a bonus to incite me to come there. Seven thousand dollars and then a thousand bucks a week until September. So this is April. And with that, you know, once you actually make the team so you're on TV, you're doing all that type of stuff.
People think you're living life. And it's hilarious because there's some people who like now try and conform and fit in to the guys, like there's a massive wealth gap in professional sports and September comes around.
If you make the team, you're going to be making a minimum of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. But if you also make the practice squad, that's actually one hundred and ten thousand dollars a year after taxes. After all of that, honestly, we can go into it. Why most players go broke and what the outside doesn't realize is most professions, people get paid 52 weeks out of the year. The NFL, unlike any other any other profession, unless it's a lottery winner, you're getting paid only 17 weeks out of a 52 week year.
And when you're giving a twenty to 23 year old who's never had a relationship with money because of NCAA rules, they weren't hustling and flipping houses like me when they were in college. They've never had a relationship with money. So now you're given that twenty to twenty three year old, twenty six thousand dollars a week. It's very easy to spend ten thousand dollars a week and think that you just saved sixteen and do that for 17 weeks straight. And then January 1st comes around and you're making nothing.
But you have those types of spending habits.
But there's just a massive wealth gap. A guy like me is making twenty six thousand hours a week. The guy the locker over for me is making seven hundred and twenty one thousand dollars a week. And it's like the guy next to him is making one point three million dollars a week. And it's just like when you see that and when you're in the same circles and you're going to the same places around the same crowds, it's easy to conform into doing the wrong things.
I would imagine, you know, that keeping up with the Joneses when you're in a locker room with the person making that much money versus you, how the pressure you feel, plus how quickly you burn through your hundred and ten thousand dollars trying to keep up with the guy who's making fifty million.
It's real. I mean, it's it's it's the real estate thing you witness because people are everyone wants to keep up, everyone to hang out. The most popular guys are also making the most money. So everyone wants to hang out with those guys as well. So it's like, damn, now we're at the club. Who's paying now? We're at dinner. Who's back now? We're at this place. You're saying now it's. But then it's just like this guy's wearing these these type of shoes.
Like, I've never I can't believe how much people spend on shoes. Shoes.
Yes. Like, have you read an Instagram account? Preachers'. I think it's preachers' and sneakers. I have so funny. It's all they do is just take pictures of like of like Preachers' and then they show pictures of their shoes and how much those shoes cost. It's still there.
It's twelve thousand dollars shows that this, you know, pastors wear and it is wildly incredible and watching that happen and there's a lot of gambling that goes on in the locker rooms as well, where it's like I watch guys, one of my buddies, he was the same same same pay grade as me, went over to a gambling circle with like four hundred bucks and turned it into fifteen grand in fifteen minutes. And literally I, I bought his first car like when we were rolling.
It was the craziest thing to witness, like in first person. But the wealth gap, the wealth disparity is staggering and it's hard to for everyone to be on the same type of playing field because you got one guy who's making four grand a week because he's on the practice squad, another guy making this much a week and another guy. It's it's a lot. It's definitely.
Yeah, well, let's take this and talk about it in terms of like people listening to show they might be thinking, well, I'm not an athlete, I don't have that problem. But let's let's be honest. Right? Like, we all do the same thing, right? Like, oh, look at that guy's got a really he's got a new truck. I mean, I got a nineteen ninety seven truck. I'd really like a new truck.
And so they go and you know, up their lifestyle a little bit. We call it the income creep a bigger pockets.
I wrote that in the book, How to Invest in Real Estate. It's about this income creep is like you just got to make a little bit more because that's what the next person does. And you spend that much money, then you make a little bit more than you spend that money and you're always trying to keep the Joneses. So before I just as a word of warning to people, listen to the show right now, don't just think, oh, NFL players like look at them idiots that are trying to live this extra lifestyle.
It's like we all do it just to different degrees, right?
A hundred percent. I mean, eighty percent of America lives. Paycheck to paycheck, whether they're making six figures or whether they're making minimum wage, it's it's so simple, not simple, it's so easy to slip into that type of gap or I mean, you just think of I just always think of think of the lottery winner. No one feels bad for the lottery winner when they lose all their money or not feels bad. Everyone understands how or why it happens because someone who does not have financial literacy has now assumed a lot of money.
And if you don't have financial literacy, you will inevitably go broke it.
So and but there's so many people that are going through the grind and they think they're doing something wrong because it's hard. I see this all the time. I've literally heard people say I don't think God wants me to do this thing because there's obstacles that keep coming in my path.
And I'm thinking like, OK, assuming that, like, God is good, he would have to make it hard for you so you could carry the weight of what you're asking for. You know, like this applies to everything in nature. If you want to get a big body and you just go juice up on a ton of steroids and you can pump up your muscles really big, but your joints didn't actually keep up with that. It's only a matter of time before going to rip something.
And that big body is not to be able to hold it.
What wealth comes with weight?
There's a gravity to that. You know, it's very that's why you see these people that come across money so quickly and they never keep it. Professional athletes. That's a good example of that. No one's trained them how to how to handle this. Incredible. I don't know what you want to call it, like having a great weapon that you've never been trained how to use. Right. You're going to hurt people and you're going to hurt yourself with that.
So when you're going through the grind, you've got to be grateful for the grind because that if you don't have it and you're a great example of that, you're someone who you weren't the first round draft pick that just stepped in there and said money was showered upon you and everybody was kissing your butt. OK, so like you had to work to get in there. You had to strategize how to get in there. You had to go through some bad experiences that unleashed a piece of you that you probably didn't know that you had that made it so you could do that.
And you're the guy that if I could buy stock in a human, I'm like Biden, Hakeem right now, where he's going, he's he's ready to hold that weight. And I know there's so many people that have that toxic attitude that if it's hard, it wasn't meant to be, that life should always be a downhill road. The winner should always be at your back. In the minute that the wind's blowing in your face, you should stop.
It means you shouldn't do it. And in my experience, it's almost the opposite of that. When it's coming too easy, you should be very afraid because you're not going to have it for long.
That's when you're most vulnerable is probably when it's when it is the most easiest. It's definitely when you're the most to. I feel like, oh, man. Like I think the most issue the biggest issue is that people haven't really developed their TrueNorth like my true north is happiness. So like I don't need a million dollars a month, but if I'm happy and as long as my inner circle is happy, then I'm OK. But it allows me to now with everything I'm doing, be wildly patient because I don't like I can work as hard as I can.
I can set up my days to be as efficient as you want to be. But if you don't adjust your TrueNorth, your TrueNorth is I need to make X amount a month like I think people got it backwards when it comes to reverse engineering, you know, what their process and what their process is leading to. Because when you put money or objects or the next step on a pedestal, you know, the top is not that fun. If that makes sense, the process is what you look back on as the dam.
Like that's when it was that was the best, I'm sure, the greatest days of probably this podcast with those super, super, super early days.
Like you guys are rock stars now. But the process, I think, is what we need to start putting on a pedestal.
Yeah. Oh, put the process on a pedestal. Yeah.
It was like that's another I don't have a lot of books coming out, a lot of a lot of T-shirts being made. You can get even bigger pockets like that book. No t shirt. I don't know where the door store.
Maybe we have T-shirts. I don't know that's all.
Make these t shirts but we need some T-shirts. All right. So let's get back to your story a little bit. Do you decide you're the NFL, you're making all this money in Phoenix, but for the Cardinals in Phoenix and the Cardinals, the baseball team, they are they were St. Louis.
They are St. Louis. Isn't it weird that you took an animal as innocent as a little red bird and said, we want to make that multiple teams, mascots? I why?
There's a lot of lions and bears, but the cardinal inspires fear to the hearts of birdwatchers everywhere.
All right.
All right. So you are playing for the little red bird and your desire to get a real say what that journey looked like. How did you get what's your first deal either then?
Yeah, so it was as soon as that season ended, literally, I got to look back on the dates, but it's got to be anywhere from January 1st to January 3rd. We didn't make the playoffs and like the last game was New Year's Eve, I believe, against the Rams. And I literally put a post on bigger pockets in the Tempy new member introduction forums saying, Hi, my name is Hakeem Vali's. I'm a tight end for the Arizona Cardinals interested in multifamily real estate and house hacking, looking to learn more networking with other like minded investors.
It's probably pretty close if someone wants to pull that up at some point and look at it verbatim. That's exactly why I said and I 60, 70 people is. Bonded to that and all wanted to meet for coffee, all wanted to take me on their property tours. Half of them wanted me to pitch me some B.S. product or something to invest into.
But it was I literally spent January 3rd or 1st to mid-February every single day. I spent like four hours at the same Starbucks with literally people rotating in and out. And just like all these people just pouring value, bouncing ideas back and forth. And then I finally met my, like, investor slash realtor, which was awesome. Ryan Swan is unreal. He took me around his property tour of Phoenix and Tempe and got me set up on the MLS.
And we got that set up in March. Marcus had properties coming in and out, got pre-approved for an FHA loan, and I knew I was going to do a house hack. And it's so funny. It's something so small. I didn't really go foot on the gas like I was getting. I was getting all the pieces in place, but I was not executing until I actually talked to my dad about it. It seems like it's so small, but like I had to throw this in here because it was honestly was my unlock.
I was doing everything. I just felt like until my my dad's kind of like my super hero, like to me personally.
And when I called him, I was like, Dad, I thought, I don't know what he was going to say because he's always, you know, making sure I'm doing the right things and whether it's investments, whether it's opportunities. But I like, told him like, hey, dad, I'm doing I'm trying to do some real estate. I think I'm in a house. I already got pre-approved, already found the properties or I did like I did everything, but I wouldn't put the offer in until I had a conversation.
And I didn't tell him about anything that I was doing, literally head down for two and a half, three months. And then I told him and he was like freaking out, like super excited. I was like, oh, my gosh, he's excited to put the offer in. It was a back and forth process. We didn't get the first property but an offering. But the property we finally got was a two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars fourplex in North Phoenix.
I had to I had to commute fifty five minutes a day to the practice facility. I had Section eight tenants living in the building with me and I got the house like a property. And it was my first property. Was it was it was it was awesome.
Did they know you were an NFL player when you made that mistake?
I did not listen to you in your rental properties book you, you and your wife out of hiding.
The fact that I tried to hide it honestly at the beginning. What happened was my car was like I had I bought a used car, but I married it out black. So it looked pretty cool. It looked like a like a Batmobile as a Camaro. And people and I I would come back from practice and I'd have my gear on. And a kid like a kid ran up to me and like asked me about it. He told his mom that on top of that, every morning, like when the bus came, all the kids would sit out like I was on the second floor with like fifteen kids sitting out on the balcony, like waving at my ring camera, like, all that time because, like, they knew who I was and I would like talk to them through it.
Sometimes I go out and sit out there with them. But that was honestly, it was the biggest mistake because that didn't screw me long term. But it it puts so much stress on me in the long term like I have looking in retrospect. And I tell everyone that I give advice to the House. Acting or buying a fourplex is a factor in property management. Act like you don't live there and literally just be a tenant of your own property because that one day when you decide to move or something happens.
What exactly happened with me was I was doing cash for keys with the tenant and that same week, I mean, honestly, it was like everything came crashing down at once. Literally, the mother of my child and I, we had a miscarriage, which was awful. It was terrible. Was one of the hardest things, the hardest thing I've ever been through. Then I got cut from the Cardinals after getting cut from the Cardinals. I was doing the cash for keys with the tenant as well.
The very next day I get signed to the Detroit Lions and now I'm literally in a it was a workout for the Lions that I went to Detroit with a backpack. My mother my child is dealing with all the madness going back on in Phoenix. Plus, you just had the surgery from the miscarriage and then that tenant who were doing cash for keys with you tried to kill herself. And I literally get a call from her daughter saying, my mom tried to kill herself.
I know she was moving out of the property, blah, blah, blah. I'll help. You know, your fiance fiancee helped move out the stuff of the property we go into the property didn't even know this. She had a dog living in a back room that knocked over a candle room caught on fire. There's soot all over. It was madness. But having to deal with the weight of all of that. Plus, moving to a completely new city, plus learning a completely new playbook.
Plus just the social dynamics. It's like going to a new school as a high school kid of the new team. And like all of that was so much weight. Like, obviously I got through it.
But, man, I would recommend if you're going to house hackle fourplex, get a property manager and act like you don't there.
Wow. Wow. All right. There a few things that are interesting to unpack there. First of all, let's go back to there's a ton of it I want to go through. But talking to your parents, why does that matter as much as your dad? Why that matters so much to you?
It was like I was always an entrepreneur, like I was the kid in college. I used to I was the iPhone repair guy. I got fixed for iPhone four is a. But like getting that, my dad's also my dad's a former state trooper, but he also has an entrepreneurial startup background. He's been in New York City selling roses and flowers on Mother's Day and stuff like that.
But getting that nod of approval, I don't know.
But that kind of cool feeling that I can tell, like I can like I'm thinking about it right now, it gives me goose bumps, like thinking about it of him, like being excited over the fact that I was about to make this jump into real estate. But I was also anticipating that he was going to almost say be cautious and like, slow down. Like you're doing too much because maybe subconsciously I felt like I was doing a lot and should be just focusing on football.
Once he said, like, go, it was like I could care less about what anybody else says like that. That's a hundred and fifty percent. What was going through my mind when that happened? That's cool.
Now, Brendan, have you had experiences where people realized you were and knew you were managing the property and it made it harder?
Well, many times, yeah. But yeah, when I got started, I tell everybody, the reason I say today that you shouldn't do it is because it makes it an emotional decision later on.
I mean, I had people like I did people like when I was at home, like tennants, like angry times stopped by pounding on my door. I talked to my wife because they were upset about getting a three day notice to pay rent because they didn't pay rent and things like that. And then like me feeling bad for them and thinking like I'm going to see them uptown later at the store. That's going to be awkward.
I think it's self-awareness. Yeah, it's all I think if you're good at that, I think you should do it. I know I'm not good at that type of radical.
And the David David is good at it. I feel like you see your credit at the store. You'd be like, yeah, why didn't you pay me that? I would try to make it so my tenant was more afraid of seeing me because then I was afraid. It makes sense. What I love that you said, is self awareness. That is massively important in any business, especially real estate. If you know you're not good at it, just don't even start it.
Just find the person that is good at it and double down on this stuff.
Because I was little. I mean, once once they once once the people knew I was on the cardinals, like then asking for two weeks later on rent, it's like you're like a super jerk if you're not going to give me two weeks, like, you know what I mean. So it was like, oh yeah, yeah. Self-awareness is everything that's I mean, you learn that on a football team. Yeah. Football team is designed to operate at peak performance.
It possibly can. You could save money having your linebackers kick field goals. None of them do that. You just play the same guy. You get a specialist to be a linebacker versus a defensive end versus a safety. And then even amongst the linebackers, you have specified types. You've got a middle linebacker, you've got an outside linebacker.
If that's how the best teams in the world run their stuff, we should be mimicking that same philosophy with our own. That's very well. That's that's a really good point.
Another question for you. We want to get on with the fourplex, what came next here. But I want to tell a quick story and then relate it to yours and ask you a question about it. I was at Costco yesterday shopping at Costco and some guy all wear masks, whatever, but some guy comes up, hey, you're you're you're brand from bigger pockets. I'm like, yeah, I am. And I said, you know, you live here?
He said, yeah, I lived on Maui because they had like we have a lot of tourists that come through, obviously. And he's like, I live here. And he said, we had chatted for a little bit. He goes, Yeah, I do jujitsu, I do Brazilian jujitsu. I just got my black belt. And I said, That's awesome, man. I do jujitsu as well. I just got my white belt. It was like a joke, right?
And he said these words that, like, I feel like it's another book title. He said, though, and maybe this is like a thing I don't know about in the world. But he said, yeah, man, the white belts, the hardest belt. And I was like, oh, that's so good. The white belt is the hardest belt. In other words, like just getting there the first time is the hardest thing, the white belt.
And it's the hardest belt, which is now going to be a book title by like that. Yeah, it's not good but so like getting that first deal is the hardest deal. Yeah. Right. The first deal is the hardest deal. How did you why are you different.
A lot of people talk about real estate, want to get into it. I lot people. But listen, this show now for one year, two years, five years, they've not yet taken action. Why were you like, you know what? I'm doing it.
I'm I'm in I think, one, it definitely helped witnessing my brother and what he went through. I knew I didn't want that to happen.
And then I was paying because to to mitigate that happening to myself of being locked into a lease, I was paying two grand a month to live in an apartment a month to month. And I'm like, man, I just did the math like I'm a math, my favorite subject always.
And now I was going to spend twenty four grand that year on air and I'm like now doing the math of this.
Two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars for three and a half percent of that was like nine thousand. I was like I can put down even more and still I'm going to save money and have an asset that I can sell years later for more money. And it was just like that being logical and practical. And then my thesis is shoot first and aim later. Like just just like the wife. That's the hardest. But I think once you get that momentum going, once you get it going, like it's just like a snowball.
When you try and build a snowball, it's hard to build the base. Like I was I was in Jersey this past weekend with my daughter and we trying to build a snowman. I remember like, once you got the base of it going, once you start to roll it, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
That momentum, momentum is everything in my. I tell everyone is like you say, everything you're trying to do about getting into real estate. You say you want a house and you say you want to do all that. You still haven't gotten pre-approved like that is a 15 minute conversation. Go do it. And like, that's where it's if you're not doing that, then let's have a deeper conversation as to why you're not maybe you're not ready, maybe you're not educated.
Maybe you don't really want to do real estate. Maybe you see everyone else doing real estate and you think it's the cool thing to do now and that's why you're hopping into it. But you're not confident that you're going to be successful in it. I genuinely think it's a do shoot first name later.
Well, I think it's the same thing that keeps me from getting into like a jujitsu gym. I don't want to show up on my own, not knowing anybody, not knowing what. I don't know. But you go with a friend completely different. I go with you to the jujitsu gym. I work out with your person. It's way different. So if you're in that spot, the Hakeem's talking about trying to figure out, well, I'm just scared to even call the lender, find a friend who's done it, have them make an introduction call and have them just sit on the call with you.
So would you like I'm too scared to ask this person the question whispered to your friend and your friend can whispering get that momentum going? Because I think I can. What you're mentioning when you're talking about building momentum, I don't know that in today's environment there is a better way to do it than house acting. I just I helped so many people getting started in the Bay Area with house acting because it's massive to building momentum. You get in for stupid low down payment.
You're going to get a better interest rate. You're already spending money on rent. That's another thing. People don't realize that two thousand dollars a month that you mentioned is just dead weight. You're getting nothing for that. And it's dead weight that increases every single year. Your rents are going to go up. You get into buying a house. Not only did you take that two thousand dollars a month that you were spending on rent that you can actually included as income and what you're doing right, it makes your ROIC projections skyrocket when you do that.
And it's even better than income because you're not getting taxed on it like it was normal income and it's two thousand dollars you were spending and now you're not. That's better than making two thousand dollars that you would then get taxed on. And then every year, that two thousand that you're now getting paid by the tenant, it's going up for you when it was going up on you. So you're getting like a double win and then you move out and then you can rent out that space.
And now you're making there is hardly any way to make an argument against house stacking other than it's less convenient. That's it. That's the only thing that you're giving up to do this. So if a guy in the NFL can house, I don't see who doesn't have a who can possibly make an argument against it. It's very true.
And it's I didn't spend millions of dollars I could have spent I spent thirteen thousand dollars and never paid a dollar again. Every repair funded itself. Everything funded itself and then sold it years later.
Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And really good stuff. I mean it's kind of summarized three quick points here. I feel like this could be like maybe a YouTube video we make eventually some our whole solo show. But like why do people not get started? Like why do they not take that first step? Why why do the fear stop people? I mean, it's kind of lay out three things you just said. Number one, I wrote down here, start small scale house hacking is what you did.
It's a very easy thing to do. It's a very slow transition. So how is that get is a good way to start? It could be. Also, I'm going to partner with somebody in a real estate deal. I'm going to invest in somebody else's fund. I'm going to be a private lender to them.
I'm going to just find little ways to like Flosse one tooth.
You hear that analogy, right? If you want to get in the habit of flossing every day, floss one tooth, it's like a little thing, little step.
And number two, it's starts everything. It start small. Number two is take a friend with you or partner with somebody like find a way to do that. Just going what you said about jujitsu, right. When you and I do it together, it was a lot easier. And then number three is the most when I call Min's most important next step, which is identify what that next thing is. And how come you just mentioned that a second ago, how you like like it's a 15 minute conversation to get pre-approved, but most people just they have not defined what that next step is.
And as soon as you define what the very like, the most important next step is a big part of the whole intention journal thing. We sell bigger pockets is like everyday like what's the goal? Oh, yeah. You got to then your hands. Yeah. Every like what do you what, what's the goal. What's your objective. What's the next big thing. Like the weekly objective. And then what is the most important next step. Like is it picking up the phone and calling a lender.
Is it, is it going to Facebook and saying, hey, does anybody know a good lender or is it calling up a real investor friend if they need a lender? And it's a literally a five minute in fact, I would say that's like most tasks in life can be boiled down to a five minute or less thing, like it's a series of five minute tasks and that's it. And so those three things, the overcoming fear is the third small.
Take a friend with you or do it with somebody and then that identify what the most important step is. That's three things I kind of pulled out of your story. How can anyone add to that now?
I love that. And I think something that helped me honestly with reverse engineering, things like that. I think I don't know if you had them on the show or not, but the one thing I don't know, you guys recommended that so many times on the show that we had Jay back on a little while ago.
Yeah. Such a great concept of reverse engineering things to simplify. We have these I want to buy a fourplex that seems like a daunting task. But putting on a Facebook post saying who knows a lender takes you could do it while you're pooping like it's not that hard.
Or you could just email me or message me and I'll say, hey, this is the lender I'd use. There's so many easy ways to get started. Yeah, especially when it comes to that.
People totally overthink this whole real estate thing. That's hard. So maybe like, you know, we've been talking about we've covered a lot of stuff today, but I want to make sure people always get an idea of your overall journey through real estate now. So what came next? Like what the next few years up to today look like? Yeah.
So from there I went to the Detroit Lions and same exact thing happened. They had me in a an extended stay hotel in Detroit. And I quickly realized that, you know, it was did the math. It was like twenty two hundred bucks a month of paying daily because you could pay rent by the day there, because I didn't know how long I was going to be in Detroit, then realized I was going to be there. Actually, I didn't realize I was going to go for a long time.
Crazy thing happened. First I put out the post on bigger pockets of savings, like probably exactly how that Arizona message look on a house here in Detroit. Any brokers and whoever. 30, 40, 50 people responded, met with all of them, went to all their meet up groups, did all that type of stuff, and finally found a broker who was also an investor, found a duplex about 10 minutes from the practice facility and lived in one side and Airbnb, the other side.
The rent in that market wasn't going to work to actually counter the mortgage, but Airbnb brought in significantly enough, more because it was more or less longer term tenants like two to three weeks at a time of people staying there. And with the Airbnb, if people are on there, you can sometimes bang out a nice a better price by doing that. And it's a lot less of a headache of the daily constant changing of the sheets and all that type of stuff.
So we bought a duplex out there and it was was crazy because I bought a close on that property on a Tuesday. And on Friday of that week, the Arizona Cardinals just left. The Cardinals was on the Lions, the court. Somebody just got hurt on the Cardinals on a Thursday night football game. Very next morning, I literally got to meetings and I got like 10 calls from my agent saying, hey, the cardinals want to sign you to bring you back on the team, on the 53 man, because I was on the practice squad on the lines and teams can poach you, but some GMs give you the opportunity to say no and you can negotiate to see if you can get a higher salary.
And I mean, I just close on this property on Tuesday and I'm like, man, like it's like I can obviously make it work without, you know, but I want to make this I want to see this through. And I really love my situation. Detroit My agent was able to negotiate a 53 man salary while I stayed on the practice squad, which is super nice and allowed me to, you know, kind of play that whole lot.
That's cool. Yeah. So that's one reason you want to have long distance real estate investing in your back pocket because you never know. You may not even plan on buying somewhere else, but you may buy somewhere, then have to move somewhere else. And the principles are the same. And as you were talking, I thought, you know, what this sounds like to me is a lot of the time I'll make an offer on something for myself or we'll do it for a client and we'll lose someone else.
We'll get the deal. And we always make a task in our CRM to remind us once a week to call that agent and say, hey, are you still in contract? And 15, 20 percent of the time, I'd say that they fall out unless it's a super hot house and we are the first person to get that phone call. That's the same thing to happen with you. I came right. You were on the Cardinals. They let you go.
Some get hurt. Get that guy back here. We need him right now. Like you guys ready? That person where we're supposed to close the buyers just backed out. What are we going to do when they come back to you and you're like, I can close in two weeks, can you guys knock twenty five grand off the price? And at that point, that may make sense to them to do so. Don't give up when you get cut.
Don't give up when you don't get that deal. It doesn't hurt you to come up with a plan and say, well, let me just call that agent every week and see if there's any trouble in paradise.
That's real. That's a that's super real nice.
So what what next? And so you did not you did not end up going back to Arizona, did not go back to Arizona State and Detroit, negotiated a higher salary in Detroit, stayed there that next upcoming offseason. I bought a forty acre cannabis farm in Michigan. So we were hedging that cannabis was going to go wreck in November of twenty eighteen. So this is early twenty eight. This is like January, February, super early. Twenty eighteen.
And it's so funny. It's back to those broker relationships that David was just mentioning, somebody who I got into the cannabis space because of bigger pockets, like an introduction through bigger pockets. That same broker who sold me my duplex when I had my initial meeting with him. I always tell people if you want to get into an industry, put it out in the universe, start talking about it, don't act like you know what you're talking about, but just say you're interested in whatever you're interested in.
And I told that broker at the time, like, hey, I'm super interested in the cannabis space. I want to learn more about it. I know the real estate side of it's going to be very interesting as well. And I literally just out of the serendipity of it all, get a random call from him. And I just happened to be close to his office and he was like, hey, I've got this. This is cannabis guy here.
If you'd love to sit down, you know, we'd love to chat and talk X, Y, Z, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, wow, cool. And we sit down. Everything kind of just makes a lot of sense. Was about a four hour conversation and they needed to buy this land with cash because you just couldn't buy it with the mortgage, with our intentions buying cannabis. And you know, I wound up coming in as an investor on the group.
And eight months later, when cannabis went wreck in Michigan, you know, we got an offer on that same patch of land for seven million dollars. And so we decided, you know, we have all this leverage as investors like why would we sell the land? We know what the opportunity can be. Essentially had the capacity to put forty to twenty thousand square foot warehouses on the land and grow up to two thousand plants within each warehouse.
So we kind of saw it as a real estate play and have spent the last two and a half years touring the country of some of the best facilities in growers across the country to partner with and grow our land crazy.
I mean, we've never talked to cannabis here on the show before, really at all of the real estate side of it. But how does that how does that work in terms of like for those of us who are not familiar with the industry very much, I mean, like the land you grow it like where does the money come from? How to get paid? You sell them. Yeah. So we really are in the process of breaking ground and development right now.
Just got our our site plan approved by the town. Essentially, it's it's multifaceted, like you can get like we own 50 percent of the first company that's growing on our land, so that money that's coming in, like we're able to essentially with the market rate of, what, a triple net per that square foot of a space, we can get that in actual clean rental, triple net type of money. And then the other 50 percent, the rest of the 50 percent of that money essentially will come in a lot of loopholes.
I'm not a professional, not an accountant, not a cannabis accountant. You know, you got to put all those disclosures out there, a lot of loopholes with credit unions and things like that, and how all the investors have to be a part of the same exact bank. But we're looking long term like, yes, there's going to be a lot of revenues, a lot of cash flows to make out of this. You know, we've partnered with a private equity firm on the the development side of it with the intentions of, you know, when we get our revenues to a certain level and when it does go recreational nationwide, we plan on going and intend to go public.
Wow, so why not? So would you buy it for half a million and you wanted to offer you seven million? You said no. Explain that logic again. Like, why would you not take that and run?
I know you're long term thinking that because one largest one of the large patch of land of cannabis land that zoned for cannabis in Michigan, I mean, just the people we got on his every for every warehouse we erect on the land, the value will go up by four million. And we've got the capacity. Forty two of them on there. And then when you're thinking when it goes recreational nationwide, you know, that value is going to I don't know what that X or that multiple is going to be, but it's going to be more than seven million in that sense.
And back to my initial comments is entrepreneurship is a forever game. And I've always been interested in the cannabis space. So I own a media agency now as well. We do a couple of different things, but we're actually doing the digital side, the branding for the cannabis space. So it's super interesting to almost double dip. And I'm an investor. Plus, we're now like I'm interested in the cannabis space in the industry and the different verticals and the opportunities that are within it and real estate being able to be that initial avenue instead of just getting the land and cashing out a few months later, like not having a cool win.
But now the opportunities, the introductions, the different brands that we're working with now and the people that we plan on working with in the space, like we have the leverage by owning land.
That makes sense. Yeah, it's kind of it might be a little bit of like flipping houses versus like rental. Like you can flip a house or dombra. Right. You can flip a house, make the make the quick 30, 40, 50 grand. Yeah, I did it. Pay the government half their money in taxes and then you're done or you're like, you know what I can do, I can burn this or I can hold it as a rental and then keep it for the next 40 years, 30 years, 50 or 100 years.
And it's going to help my family. It's going to help I'm going to get contacts in the industry. I'm going to get it become a better investor. My skill sets getting up. So it's similar to the real estate. I mean, it is real estate, but it's similar to the small level. What you're doing on a large level just with the hundred percent.
Yeah. What it makes, you're kind of combining business with real estate. And I think that's a mistake a lot of investors make is they just get at a single track. I'm going to buy a house, rent it out. I collect revenue in this one way. There's nothing wrong with that. But you're getting into element now where we use the real estate to generate revenue through a business. And you've got this hybrid where you become much more efficient.
You have economies of scale and you have more than one way to earn revenue. So I think that that's a good thing to point out is there's ways to make money in real estate that are not just by building rented out to tenants, have a property manager move on to the next thing. That that's a great strategy. It's a really easy way to get started to learn the business. But once you've got that down, there's so many possibilities that open up to you like this one.
Absolutely. And that's exactly what's kind of come out of it. And it's been like I said, it's been two and a half year journey now of like really navigating the space, meeting some of the biggest players in the space and now being presented even more opportunities in different markets that are also in the space, like potentially get involved in New Jersey, potentially get involved in Massachusetts, potentially get involved in the whole bunch of different verticals, like just investment decks that I don't think I would even have the opportunities to see if I wasn't in the space, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.
Hey, let's take a quick break from this episode. We'll continue in just a moment. But first, let's hear a word from our sponsors. Hey, everyone.
Are you interested in investing in out of state properties? Safely passive investing in real estate is one of the fastest growing segments in investment real estate. And there are ways to invest safely, securely and passively and out of state properties. Chris Clothier has contributed to bigger pockets for a long time through blog posts and is four times here on the Bigger Pockets real estate podcast. He's also an owner of REIT Nation, formerly Memphis' Invest, and has written an excellent forty two page ebook and record an audio book laying out the specific steps that smart passive investors follow to invest safely and securely.
You can download the ebook and audio at RIAA Nation Dotcom Such Bigger Pockets podcast again are Etai Nation Dot Com Forward Slash Bigger Pockets Podcast. Horia Nation and Memphis Invest have worked with passive investors like you for the past two decades. Building portfolios well, the value of over a billion dollars. Today they are managing over sixty three hundred properties for passive investors and would love to share with you the steps those smart passive investors take to protect their investments. Download your free ebook and audio today.
Add Our Nation Dotcom Such Bigger Pockets podcast. That's Ari Nation Dotcom Slash Bigger Pockets podcast for your free ebook and audio on safely and securely investing in passive real estate today.
So what's your rest, your real estate look like the rest of your journey? I mean, obviously today's show is about a lot more than just real estate, but what's the rest of your investing story look like? And then I want to move on and ask you about the media business and a few other things.
Absolutely.
So as soon as I retired from the leagues, I retired from the NFL after, you know, I couldn't be the investor in an entrepreneur who I wanted to be. I had my daughter the morning of a game. And that really put things in perspective for me. And I couldn't be the dad that I really wanted to be and play in the NFL at the same time. So I. I walked away unemotionally, you know, soon as soon as the twenty eighteen season ended, I walked away from the game and just tripled down onto what I wanted to do in the real situation was actually right when this came out.
Yeah, that's awesome. I bought that while I was playing for the Giants. And within 90 days I actually bought my my last property that I that I bought, which is a smaller seven unit property in Des Moines, Iowa. It was a quick in and out type of property where we didn't actually make anything off of it. We have to wound up breaking even. We had a few issues kind of going in with the historical district and couldn't do the repairs that we needed to do was like a super small quick value add.
And what the things that they wanted us to do, we're going to it was going to completely destroy our budget. So we wound up we had replace prior relationships with other investors in that market who knew what the best way to actually do what they could do with that property.
And we wound up selling it off to them. And, you know, since then I've been from a real estate standpoint, I've been on the sidelines. I think that a lot of bull predictions are happening right now. I think we haven't seen the true residual effects yet of covid. Yeah, my thesis of what I want to do with real estate is raise capital to buy larger value and apartment communities in different markets. But I don't like back to what I said.
I don't think the residual effect, like we just had our worst day in the United States every day, like every day is the worst day. So far, it hasn't slowed down. So the bolder predictions that come out every single day still do not logically make sense to me. And I'm a math guy. And like I said, like I've been saying that, you know, real estate entrepreneurship is it's a forever game. So if it's five years from now is the next time I deploy capital, I'm super OK with that.
But if it's 12 to 18 months, I'm also OK with that. But I've been on the sidelines watching.
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. OK, yeah. And I, I don't disagree. I don't think we've seen the full effect of the of the covid mess. I think that it's a crazy world and it's just going to get crazier here. So what I find interesting is that you're doing so many things in terms of like the cannabis farm, you got the some real estate stuff going on. You still have some properties, right?
It's still still in the duplex and still own the the cannabis farm. We sold the fourplex in July. Somebody was ten thirty wanting and I couldn't say no to that offer. I was surprised that I even got an offer that that's when I realized this is a damn seller's market right now.
Yes. Yeah, I really admire you. Cash in on those ones and then you have the media business. So let's talk. What is that first of all, then I want to ask you just how you manage that.
Your whole world there, 100 percent. So it's perspective global media. One of my biggest regrets when I was playing in the NFL is I did I was insecure, was wildly insecure. The content, like no one knew I was buying properties. No one knew I was doing what I was doing in real estate. I was head down when if I just simply just documented what I was doing. I know what brought a lot of value and the attention that would have been garnered, that would have brought value to all the things that I'm doing today would have been wildly amplified.
I regret it. You know, I could've got hit by a bus if I actually did it, you know, just considering how the universe works. But when I retired, I tripled down on my personal brand and got to quickly, quickly realized what the effects of it was and what I did, you know, in real time, like I like October of twenty nineteen, I think when we started the LLC. But how I did it and where it's transition into what we do today, we started off just bringing value to real estate professionals, investors and helping them with digital content, whether it was creating content for their LinkedIn or Facebook, their Instagram and running ads to whatever realm they were working in.
But I wanted to prove a thesis to myself that I could create an actual event out of thin air by doing so. One of my best pieces of advice for everyone on this list, on his podcast, I don't think anybody's, like, really broadcast it out in the world right now. The best way to meet somebody in a twenty twenty digital world is sending a video via LinkedIn video message. Most people don't do that. Like that's for myself, for my company.
That's our number one sales metric is the people we want to meet. CEO Simoes, of some of the bigger companies, if you can get them to actually accept your connection request, if you actually say, hey, Brandon, love what you're doing, so you're crushing on the bigger pockets, notice your on ticktock. I would love to show you a couple of tactical things on how I could bring some value to your business, because the rest of your inbox on LinkedIn is a bunch of copy paste, BS and automated software of everyone trying to scale their thing.
Videos just it's pattern disruption at scale and it's just wildly incredible. So what I did was I sent four hundred videos to real estate professionals in Detroit and was able to get about forty people to show up into an event up in and out of one spot in Detroit and presented my thesis on the digital state of real estate and out of that event, got about four clients to come out of it as the journey kind of continued. This is October of twenty nineteen.
covid obviously came around by February, March when covid came around. We actually made a pivot and actually started to do a podcast production work for real estate. Professionals and financial advisers, I realized personally that one of the best one of my best piece of advice is for people getting started in real estate outside of going on bigger pockets and making action happen is starting a podcast. I like podcasts for the networking effect and the effect of everyone has a story and no one's listening.
And when you're the person who actually provides a platform, you know, that person tends to love you forever. I say you're not going to be the next Joe Rogan, the next Gary V, the next bigger pockets of the podcast space. But if you want to learn how to invest in and buy apartment buildings in Phoenix, Arizona, it will be wise for you to start a podcast and interview every single developer in Phoenix, Arizona, because it's going to be 10 times harder for you, especially in a covid world, to sit down for coffee, walk their properties.
But hopping on a zoom car for 15 minutes, it's the not so invasive way of picking someone's brain. People don't like to get their brain picked. People don't like to get a message saying, hey, Brandon, I love what you're doing in real estate. I love to pick your brain over coffee.
Probably not going to happen, but if that same person maybe said, hey, Brandon, I've got this show called the Hawaii Real Estate Network, we'd love to have you come and tell your story about the things that you're doing. Like that person has a 50 percent more of a chance of actually sitting down with you and I. From a tactical standpoint, that's what I was hacking and reverse engineering, and that's what we were providing as a service as a media company.
Well, I'll just wrap the podcasting then with this is like the reason why is because when you have a podcast, you are now providing value because, like, I want to take you out to coffee and I want, like, the only value you're providing is a three dollar cup of coffee. I want you to be on my podcast so that you can tell your story. Now, you're providing an ego building. You're providing the ability for them to raise money, then they to connect with people, to bring them deals, potentially.
So by bringing people on to a podcast. Yeah, you're providing actual real value. And it's just kind of cool and unique. Like most people are not invited to be a guest on a podcast, like it's not a very common thing. And so when there's that and again, we're not talking about trying to like land Grant Cardone or Hakeem here on a podcast, it's like, hey, that guy that owns that apartment building down there has been doing it now for the last 12 years in this town.
He owns two hundred units, like get that guy in a podcast specially. I go do it in his garage. Maybe you'll set up everything. I think that's an interesting strategy and actually try to get Jim Carrey right now. He lives well. Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler both live within a mile of me. And I'm like, I will come to your house. I will set up in your studio like, you know, you can come down in your underwear.
I don't care the. Yeah, working on it. If anybody knows you guys, let me know. But yeah, I think there's such value there and building relationships, the connections with people 100 percent.
It's a way to exponentially grow your network by just asking the questions that you genuinely want to know. But that's what we were essentially reverse engineering.
But being self-aware AI in order to produce a lot of podcasts that scale, I had to hire a lot of people and I felt like I was becoming an H.R. rep and micromanaging every stage of the podcast production company and not doing what I do best.
But at that same exact time, I was actually starting to post a lot on Ticktock as a platform and as opposed to on tick tock testing out a bunch of different businesses.
What's working in every single niche? I slowly started to realize what I really liked it. But two, I was every single person in my network every week. That was my business value I could bring to anyone. And quickly. But surely I was on an hour like three one hour resume calls a day showing other pro athletes, other real estate people, other startup founders, business people just how to get going and get going on. Tick talk. And just after having a serious convo with my admins, we I've made a pivot.
That's one thing I'm not scared to do, is pivot as a business. And one got became much smaller. And now we focus on ticktock consulting. So we work with larger brands to smaller individuals on helping them launch on talk and get going on Tic-Tac, whether it's from just strategy or some people, we actually do the actual talent and post produce and put out all their content on their Tic-Tac account. But yeah, it sounds wild. It sounds crazy.
But man, tick tock. I just started an internal podcast with my with my company called Don't Sleep On. Tick Tock. That's probably my favorite thing to say to everyone right now is don't sleep on tick tock. Yeah.
Yeah I'm twenty, twenty one is my is I'm emergent in tech that people have been hearing out here on the podcast forever, that I like joking about it. And then I was like, am I going to do it.
Then I'm like I can tell it from my phone. But just cause I don't want to be obsessed with scrolling for hours at a time doesn't mean I shouldn't be posting and reaching people. And so I'm going to be hot and heavy.
I wouldn't consume. No. So my only piece of advice for Tick-Tock is take five to ten hours, only consume real estate content on tick tock and then never consume again. Understand just the nuances, the ins and outs of what matters, what the content like. How do I post contextually? The tick tock is like my first six months of tic tac. I did terrible. I went from zero to fifty five followers by posting my best content from LinkedIn and Instagram.
Just downloading and uploading download. I had never. Watched anything, just download, upload, doing terrible, and then I took five to ten hours, understood the ins and outs of of like real estate, sports and entrepreneur type of content. Then a month I went from fifty five to eighty two thousand dollars. And what's the secret there?
I mean, let's do some consulting right now. I was a girl, I got, I got I think one hundred followers on Tic-Tac right now and I want to grow this now. The reason why let me just first say for the people like I don't care about this thing, the reason why is a couple of reasons. One, it's fun to just teach people stuff, too. That is, I wish I would have been on Instagram earlier. And today I've raised twenty million dollars in the past year and a half and a lot of people listening right now are in my fund.
But the reason why I've been able to do that is to take stock because I can I can tell you I'm sorry, Instagram. So I did it through Instagram. But what could I have done if I had a million followers on Instagram right now versus having one hundred and seventy thousand? I would be ten times whatever, five times more ability to raise money, to find people, to work on my teams, to find deals for me. I mean, we have the whole bring brand deal thing.
So in other words, I, I harness Instagram very heavy right now and it's been a game changer for me and I wish I would have started on Instagram earlier. And I believe Tic-Tac is the next Instagram and if it is, I need to build that up. So that's just your lesson is going. I don't care. I take time to turn off this podcast.
Now, there's a reason why there's a logical reason why this might be worth listening to. So that said, do you agree? First of all, I didn't want to add to that. And then what do I do?
What's the biggest punch line is I shouldn't have more tick tock followers than you have on Instagram right now.
I think you're way bigger than that. That's the number one punch line. But two is the like I see tick tock as real estate, as real estate investors, if we all could be putting a time machine and go to the nineteen thirties and we're now in New York City, we have the opportunity to buy New York City real estate in nineteen thirty. You're emptying your bank account, you're borrowing your money from your parents and you're buying it all. But I'm telling you, this is the same opportunity except this real estate is free and I.
If I'm posting about real estate, I'm taking away your market share of being the Brandon Turner of Tock, if that makes sense. And the beauty of Tick-Tock is there's 100 million daily active users just here in the States, 40 percent are over the age of twenty five. And now after having this internal podcasts with my company called Don't Sleep on Tock, it's given me contextual spots of what's working in different niches. We had a guy come on last week who's a financial adviser and he sells a like a compound interest life insurance type of product.
He is legit, like he legitimately has revenues going from five million to 30 million in this past year and he's getting a thousand inbound leads a week. And his average client is thirty nine years old, investing eighty five hundred dollars a year into their life insurance product annually. And he's literally hired thirty five people. He spends nine hours a day now and Tick-Tock, because it's his most important KPI throughout his entire day. And like people are missing out on that opportunity because your target audience is there.
The opportunity is no one's posting. I say audit your top 10 20 friends who have a tick tock and audit how many are actually posting. We think of algorithms. It's just supply and demand of your eyes. How many eyes are on the platform consuming and how much content is being put in front of those eyes. And if you compare right now the data points of platform, the platform, the platform, Facebook's daily average consumption time is twelve minutes a day.
Instagram's daily average consumption time is twenty two minutes a day. And tick tock average daily consumption time is eighty five minutes a day.
And Tick Tock has an unlimited infinite for you page. So that's like the opportunity is that if you posted fifteen times a day on Instagram your followers would like Brendan. What the hell are you doing. That's too much. You're clogging the pipes. Ticktock. Eighty percent of your content is being consumed on the four you page. So if you can post five times a day, you should. If you can post ten times a day, you should because you're like when I post five times versus two times a day, I'm ending the day with more followers than not.
I can show you the data analytics of that post at five times a day. Two thousand new followers today posted two times this day. Two hundred new followers today because you're putting your valuable content in front of more people. And when it comes to real estate and it comes when it comes, it just tick tock as an algorithm. I was just on a call two weeks ago for the public figures strategically as a platform to talk, has adjusted their algorithm to sway away from dancing.
Tick Tock has been known.
It's been generalized as a platform is why would I go there? As many teenagers dancing that they did not want to be generalized is that in strategically adjusted their algorithm to focus more on informational, educational and compelling storytelling type of content?
I think that's hilarious. Like your job is to find all the dancers and downgrade their videos.
I think that I don't think there's nothing wrong with the dancing. I think that you're for you, Paige is going to look like whatever you consume, the things that Tick-Tock has done better than any platform is their algorithm has created this unlimited for you stream of content that is so wildly tailored to the things that you like. So if you do watch for girls, do dances and watch it from top to bottom, you're going to see a lot more of that in your Invid.
If you watch real estate three times, four times, five times a day, that's what you're going to see all day in your own feed, which which is exactly the danger of tech.
Talk about it as a consumer we've been talking about is that it knows you and it knows exactly what you want. And it gives you amazing bits of that over and over and over, an unlimited amount designed to hook you and keep you coming back and back. So that's the danger as a as a user and as a creator. It is a nice opportunity. It's it's it's I don't know if you remember five years ago on Instagram when our our timelines went from seeing everything in chronological order to then at the snap of a finger, it literally went to stagnated type of content.
That's the like the opportunity is right now. We're in the phase of seeing everything in chronological order, like on Instagram when you can grow organically. What's going to happen in the next eight to 12 months when there is a mass exodus of people? There's already people are 100 million people. A third of the United States like has happened. So there's no questioning that. But when everyone starts actually posting it and people actually realize what's happening there, it's like my two hundred and twenty thousand followers are going to be more valuable a year from now than they are today.
If that makes sense, it's just back to real estate.
So let's say you're listening to the Bigger Pockets podcast. You don't really like that tick tock Snapchat stuff, but you hear Hakeem talk and he seems like a smart guy. OK, maybe I'll give take take a chance, but I don't want to get stuck into watching dancing videos. How do they know who they should be following and what type of content is worth consuming?
If you want to learn about real estate, I would bet the guys I follow is Mikki Taylor, former professional skater. Yep. Check out his Tic-Tac.
He's got over two hundred thousand. I just had him on my podcast. He runs a private equity fund called Comune Capital, someone who raises capital model, his style of content. He's. Putting out, but also consumers contend he's a very smart dude, knows what he's talking about when it comes to real estate. I would follow people within that type of realm. I would follow when Brandon starts posting his account, I thought I put out maybe one every three weeks some type of real estate type of content.
So, I mean, I would I wouldn't bother me for real estate. I'm not going to plug myself for that. But I genuinely believe that you type in hashtag real estate one, learn for yourself, because there's a lot of people in there who are doing really good, who don't know what they're talking about. And that's another opportunity for guys like you, Brandon, like you, David, to like watch out real quick. The expert is here essentially because that's exactly what's going to happen when you guys come to the platform, because everyone knows you want to talk, but you're not there yet, if that makes sense.
So that's why I was asking that question is if you're vulnerable because you don't know a ton about real estate and there's this really good looking twenty five year old telling you I can teach you how to make millions. It quickly turns into I follow this person thinking I'm getting an education, but all you're getting put into is a funnel where someone's going to upset you on some program. You Iike what you said. Is it should it be the only place you go to for real estate investing?
You you kind of have to know a little bit about it outside of that and then find the people that are giving you the same type of education and content when you're there so that you don't get sucked into the I bought a house and I rent out the rooms to my friends and now I'm a real estate God and you should be following me and they're giving you bad advice. I would go as far as saying this.
If you're a new investor, just consume on bigger pockets. I would use ticktock talk right now. I would say it's dangerous because that can happen very fast. It's more advantageous if you're a creator and you already are doing things or you're documenting your journey in the real estate space. I wouldn't I, I only give advice that I take. I do not consume Tic-Tac content at all, like the fifteen seconds I have after I post a video and it's uploading is like the fifteen seconds I'll consume before my video comes up.
And then I just live in the comments all day and I think that that's cool that I don't consume like because of that danger of you will be, you will get put down a funnel, you will get sold some type of coaching product. But if you are a good genuine type of person only, that's between you and God at the end of the day, put out good content because you're going to get found. I think it's an accelerant to the truth.
It'll be an accelerant that you're a snake oil salesman or you're an accelerant, that you're putting out valuable real estate content and give opportunities for people to actually work with you.
Well, here's another another reason why I think creating, again, people are is go, why would I? I'm not going to raise a bunch of money necessarily right now. And I'm not I'm not that good at talking on camera. But just to throw this out to people like your ability to communicate like everyone, listen, your ability to communicate is like directly proportional to your level of success in life. I really, really believe that people who are really now are there are there people who are not going to communicate and that are successful?
Yes, of course. But by and large, people I know that are most successful tend to be good at communicating their points. And I always wild and crazy, like I might be on a tick tock video, but they can present their points in a way that makes sense. It gets other people on board, gets people fired up. That's how you get employed. That's how you get team members. You fire people around you. It affects every area of your life, from dating to real estate to business to whatever.
So if you're posting on Tic-Tac, you're going to suck at it. Go watch my early, big or pocket's videos on a bigger package YouTube channel. They're horrible. I'm stroking my cat literally in my hands and I'm sitting on a chair slouching and I'm like whispering because I'm a realist.
Yeah, exactly. It's terrible. Yeah. I'm like, yeah. And I don't know anything. But you know what? Like, if you post on Tic-Tac every day, it's a very quick way to get your reps in, to communicate your points and then you get better and better at it. So then when you're sitting at a meeting with a private lender and the guy says, well, I don't really understand what you're doing with this whole birthing, you're like, well, let me tell you about the birth strategy.
And you've already had your elevator pitch perfected on Tic-Tac and on Instagram or wherever it is you're putting out content. So just to throw out there people, if they don't think their creative content, you should be a creator of content because that's how you you know you know what my best unlock was for content was that after having a child, it was legacy.
Like, I care about the audience because I want to bring value to the audience. But to be as honest as God, honest as possible, I could care less. I'm thinking about my kids, my kids, kids, kids, kids, kids and their kids, because our grandparents, our parents never had this opportunity. Like right now I'm waving Hi, Lucy, because that's my daughter's name, because one day she will watch this. I can guarantee it, because if you could watch your parents on every podcast they were on or your grandparents, every podcast they were on or their great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents and every show, every piece of content they put out, you would watch and watch and watch every second of it.
Yeah. So when you're putting out content, think about everyone else like this. How I put my blinders on with everybody else cause I don't care because the legacy you guys some of you guys are leaving, you're leaving a very wildly PR insecure version of yourself that your great, great, great, great, great grandkids will never know who the real you were. So I say, just like Gary V's document, don't create style, I love it because it's document journey because you're going to be you're leaving lessons for your kids and your great, great, great, great grandkids that we could never leave before.
I get the chills every time I say that, because I know for a fact if I could see my great grandpa what he was doing when he was 28 years old, I would arguably what I would do all day trying to learn more about myself. But that will be your unlock to now being so wildly unemotional about every piece of content you put out. I could care less if this gets 12 views because my kids are going to watch it.
That's the punch line.
All right. Well, that was that was. We could talk about it all day. But I want to move on to the last segment of our show, and this is our famous father.
All right.
So famous for the part of the show. We ask every guest the same four questions. You've heard our show before. You know what's coming. Zakim, let's get to you, though. Real estate related book.
First question, the famous for what's your current or all time favorite real estate related book?
Honestly, the OGE, the original blue book of the book on rental property investing. I have so many extensive notes. I've given it to so many, like I've given that book to 15, probably 15 different people. I've gifted that book to like NFL players I've given to. I've copied my notes on that book and given it to so many different people because it is that powerful. The book of I'm just getting started. I just I was flipping houses with my ex, done flipping houses on my ass.
I know. I want to do real estate. Where do I go in real estate? Here's the seven or five or X amount of spots I could get into. And here's an actual real life practical deep dive of how to get started. And that was that's still to this day, my my my best favorite book.
That's awesome, and I appreciate that. What's the link for that, but bigger pockets, dot com slash rental?
Look, I think rental book, top selling, real estate investing book in the world might be right and sadly, no longer blue.
Now, I've actually changed the cover and now it's like a white, but it got a little blue on it.
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I know I missed the blue actually, but I designed the blue one on my on myself, like and I'm not a designer.
So now they have like a good looking cover. That's much better. I do. I never too David.
So I can upgrade like when the Power Ranger goes to the white Power Ranger. It's a better Power Ranger, I guess. So you're a huge Power Ranger fan, so that makes sense. All right, Hockey. My question is, what's your favorite business book?
The Go Giver, Bob Bird. Oh, yeah. Oh, man.
It's one of my that's I probably read that twice a year. Maybe I love it. It's it's my thesis on life. It's such a quick and easy read. But I think it means so much. I think a lot of people don't understand giving what your intentions are behind giving. How do you give with no expectations and what can give and do as a business business tactic at the end of the day?
Yeah. OK, well, what are some of your hobbies? Oh, playing with my daughter and playing the saxophone. Hmm.
Oh, saxophone really was my biggest purchase. Besides, my used car in the NFL was an alto sax. It was like two or three grand. I always wanted to play I play the drums and piano. Growing up, I can never afford a saxophone. And that was probably my one of my first purchases. And the guy I lived with when I first got to the league was really good at the sax. And every day when we got we got home, we literally just put on some music on YouTube, whether it was Kenny G or whether it was like something that was new and tried to play like sax behind it.
And then when I left the Cardinals and went to the Lions, I started to actually get like lessons in Detroit.
Hmm. Yeah, that's that's awesome. Very cool. All right. Well, my last question of the day then. What do you think separates successful real estate investors, those who give up fail or never get started thinking about this one?
And honestly, I think it's following up. The best piece of advice I've ever gotten from anyone is the fortune is in the follow up, I think were presented hundreds, if not thousands of opportunities every single day. Whether it's and I always used the example of at the end of your episodes, like I've done so many of your guests that you've had on your shows to see if I can get a conversation with them, see if I can learn more about them, because they say if you want to hear more about me, shoot me a text on so-and-so or reach out to me on this or this email or that.
But how many times are we actually doing that when we're listen to the episode? Like, man, it'd be really cool to actually talk to that person. Do we actually follow up? How many business cards do we follow or how many stacks do we really have? I think that's where that separates a lot of people. Some people like the idea of going to networking events and doing all that type of stuff. But are you actually going to follow up and take action?
Yeah, well, on that vein, for people that want to follow up with you, where can they find out more about you?
My website is prospective global media dot com. Outside of that, LinkedIn is a great place, just Hakeem Valley's first and last name. The social tech talk is hard because it's it's accelerating so fast, it's hard for me to give you. Follow me on tech talk. You know, you can't message people. You don't talk unless they both follow each other, which is kind of something that they need to figure out. But LinkedIn is probably the greatest place to reach out and find awesome man.
Well, I appreciate having you on the show today.
It was phenomenal. I love the advice of everything we talked about. We've got like four hundred books to right now and a bunch of t shirts to make.
So good show. Thank you for being here today, Brandon.
David wildly enjoyed the show. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Thank you. Great job man. This is David Greene for Brandon, the Oji investing book Turnour signing off.
You're listening to a bigger pocket's radio, simplifying real estate for investors, large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing without all the hype, you're in the right place. Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from bigger pockets. Dotcom, your home for real estate, investing online.