Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, my co-host. Let's get started. All right? Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Guys, we are going back back in the day to one of our first guests ever, I think, actually Ash Patel might have been our first guest, he's the second one, was he the second guest?

Speaker 1: 0:45

Behind Brian.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Oh, that's right.

Speaker 1: 0:47

By the way, I had a huge exit with this company.

Speaker 2: 0:48

He did, he did man years later now look at all these people.

Speaker 1: 0:52

We finally have our first official exit off of the podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:55

All the podcast, maybe more, maybe more, maybe more. Yeah, we did it. Yeah, we did do a damn thing. But Ash Patel back with us again. What's up, ash?

Speaker 3: 1:03

Hey, man, thanks for having me back. Guys, congratulations on all your success. I know this probably started out as an experiment and I know you guys wanted to motivate people to level up and, man, look at what you guys have done so amazing Congrats to both of you. I know it's a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of headspace, but you guys are making a big difference, man. I almost thought about buying a dumpster service and following in your footsteps. You guys are inspiring, man, so thanks for what you do.

Speaker 2: 1:34

Yeah, Well, you know, we had a guy come in an attorney and he crapped on our idea.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Tell him what he did Within like five seconds. He looked it up because he's a patent attorney, or what is he? He has patent attorney, so he looks it up within five seconds he goes oh guys, can't use his name, there's a company out of Texas doing it.

Speaker 2: 1:52

So you know we wanted to use take a dump Because that would have been the greatest name Take a dump trailer. I mean, that would have been perfect.

Speaker 3: 1:58

Well, hold on. Did you buy the dot com?

Speaker 2: 2:02

No, we did not buy the dot com. I was going to say you can call it takeadumpcom.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Oh yeah, but dude, I don't want any of those freaks coming on there like, yeah, like two girls in a cup or whatever.

Speaker 2: 2:13

Yeah, who knows what gets posted. What the hell is this? Hopefully our site never gets hacked, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:18

These guys are messing with my me time. I'm going to destroy their financial records.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Well, ash, welcome Once again. Guys. Ash was like the second guest on our show and he is coming back with more info. So last time you were on the show, Ash, you talked about commercial real estate. You talked about the commercial real estate game. I'm 100% bought in because, you know, some of my best returns come off of this building that I have and it's a commercial real estate. And people are freaking out right now about commercial real estate, you know, mainly in cities where you know nobody wants to be anymore. Just be honest, like you know, san Francisco is a mess. A lot of offices. I mean there's some buildings in San Francisco that are 60% empty, some commercial buildings, and people are leaving the mall downtown. The people just up and left and broke their lease.

Speaker 1: 3:03

They had a historic building that was sold like what, four years ago for 800 million or something stupid like that, and they were trying to sell for 630 million now or something. Some ridiculous loss.

Speaker 2: 3:12

Yeah, I mean they got to do what they got to do right now. But, Ash, you don't really invest in those kind of things. You invest in more like uh, yeah. Sell type space and things like that. Explain people your strategy.

Speaker 3: 3:24

Yeah, we've always been suburban driven real estate right Non-residential commercial. I just got very lucky. My first deal was mixed use. So I was exposed to a commercial tenant and my college kid residential tenants and just saw all the benefits of commercial right. So we look at anything that's extraordinarily high returns and close to 20, 20% cash on cash at inception is what we shoot for. But beyond that we just want big value add deals. I don't care if it's office, flex, industrial, retail, medical, mixed use, restaurants, whatever returns extraordinarily high returns is what we shoot for. And I had no idea what to talk about today. But you know, over the last 15 years we've had so many people become residential real estate investors because they bought the house down the street as a rental right. They dipped their toes in it. Well, why don't we try to next level that whole audience of people that either want to get into commercial real estate, want to get into any kind of real estate investing? Because you know there was a lot of fear of missing out over the last decade. People saw others getting wealthy in real estate. So again, a lot of people dipped their toes in the water and bought the house down the street so they can keep an eye on it. They can go make repairs when necessary. So let's maybe address those people, the people that are starting out in real estate, right? So my advice to them is look where no one else is looking. So that little dive strip mall down the street where you go to get your sandwiches, the pizza place where you go to get your nails done, where the dog groomer is, the insurance person is, look at those properties, right? The small suburban office buildings are absolutely on fire. Now, when you read headlines, you'll see spectacular demises of commercial real estate the large office buildings, the malls that are getting decimated, the big box stores the babies are us, kids are us, toys are us JCPenney all of them. Right-aid was the latest victim. They just declared bankruptcy. So a lot of chains and big boxes going out of business. But how often do you see the pizza place, the deli, going out of business, right? Have you ever seen a dog groomer close? A veterinary clinic, an optometrist? Those suburban businesses are here to thrive. First COVID, the millennials realized that they don't want to live in that small box in the city center, in the metropolitan downtown, so they started moving out to the suburbs because they didn't want to be locked in a box with a spouse and a pet, possibly some kids, so they were eventually going to move to the suburbs anyway. Covid accelerated that right. So now you have city centers that have avoided it, all those high-end apartments that people were flocking to. They couldn't build them fast enough and now there's just a move to go to the suburbs, and that's been fueled by all the latest bars, restaurants, boutiques popping up in suburban downtowns, not so much city centers. Right, when you look at the latest restaurant openings, you don't see them in metropolitan downtowns, you see them in downtown suburbs. As a matter of fact, unfortunately, there's been some incredible restaurants. You know some incredible operators behind them that are closing left and right in our downtowns. So look at suburban commercial real estate, right. Another effect post COVID was small offices. Now, look, you guys, you could have done this podcast out of your house. Right, you have an office and, granted, it's in Adams Building, the coworking building, but we have a lot of office tenants that will rent space from us. And one example is two guys that run a travel business. They do a webinar once a week on Wednesday evenings and they got so tired of telling their wives and kids hey, you know, dad's on a podcast. Everyone's got to keep it down for the next hour and a half. So for that reason they rented space in one of our offices. You have a lot of people continuing to work from home and you know, especially over the summers, they realize that when you have a spouse that's across the kitchen table from you working from home on phone calls, you've got kids running around, you've got pets running around, it's very difficult. And you got to do the laundry, right, you got to do the dishes, you got to go out to a nice lunch. It's unproductive working from home and people are starting to realize that. So if you can get small office, small retail in great suburban locations, they're absolute money makers and there's not that many people chasing them out of state. Investors will buy the three, four million dollar strip malls with the national tenants. They're not buying the local pizzeria strip mall, right. So there's so many opportunities there and I've been trying to encourage people over the last 10 plus years to invest in those types of assets. So you know, a lot of the times I hear the excuses it's too hard or it's too much money. Well, a lot of these assets can be purchased for the same price as a single family house.

Speaker 2: 8:43

Exactly my building. I mean, there's people in the suburbs that paid more for their stuff than I paid for a 20,000 square foot commercial building that spins off tens of thousands of dollars every month. So, and you know what, osh, the funny thing too, is is you know, what we've gotten is people. There's companies that have to have an office with a locked door and a file cabinet. I didn't know this was a thing, but there are literally I've got two businesses. One of them is publicly traded and they have offices in my building. They never come in. They've come in probably three times or two or three times in the three years four years that they've been here, and it's just because they need a—and every once, while they'll come in, they'll mess around with some paperwork or something, but it's just locked door with a file cabinet, and they pay you money every month for a 10 by 10 room with a file cabinet sitting in it.

Speaker 3: 9:38

Yeah, it's amazing how many offices we've seen where you know, if you go to look inside their office, there's not even a desk in there. All their mail is thrown under the door just piling up. But yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that. You know car dealerships, some logistics companies they have to have a physical address right, or there's a lawn service that wants a presence in this particular neighborhood. So, on Google Maps, they need a place to get mail.

Speaker 2: 10:05

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 10:06

And now they can verify their address. So yes, they are in fact local. It's hilarious Ghost kitchens, right? Same thing.

Speaker 1: 10:12

It's hilarious. You say logistics companies, because I had a guy that—a company that ghosted me on a load and I couldn't get ahold of anybody. So I looked up, I was trying to find their address and I called up the owner of the building and he said I don't know why they say that they're here. He goes I've got a pile of mail about 18 inches high from these guys. They just use that guy's address as their place. I don't think they're paying rent either. So you guys are making a great point and I'm going to throw you a huge softball here, buddy. Where would someone say like myself who's— interested in something like this? They hear it. They're like oh, this sounds way better than going and cleaning and then unclogging the toilet at two o'clock in the morning down the street. Where would they get this information Like? Where would they find this education that they would feel make them feel confident about taking that next step?

Speaker 3: 11:05

Well, I'm glad you asked. We have a conference coming up in a month, october 11th through 13th, in Cincinnati, and the conference is a lot of people that are interested in commercial real estate. There's going to be investors there that want to invest in assets besides multifamily or self-storage, and a lot of my mastermind members will be there as well. So I started a mastermind a few years ago. It wasn't by choice. It was a group of apartment investors that came to me and said Ash, we'd love to learn commercial. We have apartments and we have tenants that won't pay. The laws are not in our favor, so we can't evict them and we can't find any good deals because it's so competitive out there. So can we learn commercial from you? Sure, spent two hours and 40 minutes on a Zoom call, actually with about a half dozen people. At the end of the call they kept insisting that we continue these conversations and I had no time. So I said look at some point in the future, love to start a mastermind. I'm so inundated I don't have the time. They just kept pushing, pushing, pushing and finally I started the mastermind and we took 20 people and it was amazing to see after a few months the transformations that went on with mindset, with people getting into commercial real estate. We just wrapped up season three a few months ago and I had a guy in there who young kid, 30 years old, he was a general contractor, no real estate experience at all, no real estate investment experience, and bought his first mixed use building $420,000, a praise, that $1.5 million ARV. We had another friend of mine you probably know, robel man. Look, I've known this guy for years, been trying to get him to level up. He went through the mastermind, bought a $1.2 million office building and it was maybe 15% vacant. Within the first month he leased it all up, 100% occupied. Since that time We've got a surgeon who's a young urologist who quit his job. It's life changing man, you know a urologist, quit his job, rob. Yeah, young guy out of Wisconsin.

Speaker 1: 13:26

Yeah, I know how much urologists make I know how surgeons make, so he must have replaced it. He must have found a gold mine.

Speaker 3: 13:33

Well, just a month ago he announced that he's going part-time and end date is by the end of this year. Oh yeah, and so that was within one year of him getting into commercial real estate. But you know, the thing is, everyone looks at single families, then they look at duplexes for plexes and small multifamily properties and historically that would have been a great way to level up. The returns are just not there and you're competing with people willing to overpay all cash to satisfy a 1031 or just to keep their deal flow going. So like I'm begging people to look at non-residential commercial right. The returns are so much higher, the competition's so much less, there's never bidding wars on strip malls or office buildings and even the brokers they don't encourage that right. With apartments it's yeah, we're going to wait till best and final. And then they have several best and finals With commercial real estate. You make a fair offer, it's accepted, the deal's done right. Brokers are not the type to say, yeah, but we're going to do another round and see if anybody can come up. It's just a much better asset class. And then we deal with people like you and Adam that are business owners and not residential tenants, where toilets and sinks and water leaks and furnaces breaking. Oftentimes it's the tenant's responsibility when something goes wrong within their four walls, right? So managing commercial if you have a full time job is much more attainable than managing a bunch of residential properties where you can get a phone call any hour of the night and have to react to it.

Speaker 1: 15:14

With FlexSpace, let's say warehousing. Are those because I'm familiar with like commercial, where you're bringing in, you're in an office building of some sort and you know you can pretty easily negotiate a triple net lease where they're paying for basically everything? Is that the same thing with the warehouse, or are you? Are you more on? Is there insurance that you have to cover, as opposed to, like if the commercial space like, what are you looking at when you're negotiating that?

Speaker 3: 15:43

Yeah, that's a great question. So when people think commercial real estate, they often think mailbox money, triple net. You know, sit back on an island, collect rent. That's possible if your properties are indeed triple net and what that means is the tenant is responsible for taxes, insurance and all maintenance. Right Now, if you give somebody a 30 year old metal building and tell them they're responsible for everything not going to happen, Because if the roof starts leaking a month into their lease, you can't expect them to pay 20 grand to cover that cost, right. But if you give them a newer facility, it's quite possible you can have triple net leases. It also depends on the caliber and how. You know what's the word I'm looking for, how not smart it's, come on, guys, how experienced I guess they are Experienced yeah there you go. So you know, if you tell a mom and pop machine shop small business owner that they're responsible for maintenance taxes, insurance, they may not understand that. You know you're going to call it CAM common area maintenance. They just want to pay a flat rate every month. If you have savvier tenants, that's what I'm looking for. If they're a little bit more savvy you've been around multiple locations, they'll understand that right. And you can always start tenants out with a gross lease, meaning one price per month, and eventually add in taxes, add in insurance and add in maintenance, right, Because once they're established there, a lot of times it's difficult for these tenants to move If they've got a machine shop or if they've got customers that go to this location. They don't want to get up and move Now. Flex is one of the hottest assets right now. There's such a shortage of it and for anyone that doesn't understand what Flex is, think about, you know, a thousand to maybe three, four, five thousand square feet, ideally a 14-foot garage door and a man door to come in. 16-foot ceilings is ideal as well. But anything any derivative of that can be considered Flex-space, and they're so in demand because we've got thriving small businesses in America right now and there's just no space for them.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Well, also, ash, I mean we've talked about this with my kitchen and some other things. You know these really niche spaces that I have, but also the upstairs. I mean I've got 22-foot ceilings up there. I've got elevator access. I had a guy that comes in that works for the Film Commission. People don't even think about this, I didn't think about this. But he said you know what? These movies come into film in Cincinnati and it's raining outside. They need a space to go inside that's quiet, that they can film inside of and there's nothing. And he said you've got these 22-foot ceilings, it's quiet up there. He's like you could totally just rent this out for you name the price per day and I'm like what? I didn't think about this. But to your point, flex-space right, who would think about that? Who would think, oh, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to rent this to the Film Commission. You know, I'm going to rent this to some Hollywood people that are coming up from Atlanta or LA and they want to film something in Cincinnati. I'm going to rent this to…. Nobody thinks about that because you just don't know that's a need, because you're not in that industry.

Speaker 3: 19:12

That's a great point and actually, Adam, for you, there's like two or three prominent websites where film companies go to scout locations. If you don't have that, I'll email it to you.

Speaker 2: 19:23

Oh, email that over. Yeah, heck, yeah.

Speaker 3: 19:25

Yeah, it's basically when they're looking for a location. They scour these sites and find what it is that they need. I love it.

Speaker 1: 19:33

That's good.

Speaker 2: 19:34

Yeah, send that over to me because I want to use that. And then you never know what you're building is going to turn into. Like sometimes, when you got this Flex-space, it's like, hey, I want to use it for this, I want to use it. Somebody comes in and then next thing you know they want to negotiate a long-term lease with you. Hey, look, I really enjoyed the Flex-space, but I need a more permanent space. What would you do? I've got 8,000 square feet up here. You've got 8,000 square feet. What would you rent that to me for? And then you make them a deal. And it's one of those things where you never know what you're going to get into. But one of the things that you do that I really like the strategy of is you've got these spaces. They're sitting half empty. Commercial real estate is based on the money coming in, so it's not like a house where you can base it on comps because you're in a suburban neighborhood. The value of the building, the value of the building, yeah, so you buy a building, nobody's in it, just like my building. You know they tried to list it for one thing and I ended up buying it for a third of what they had it listed for because they had no tenants in here. Well, now I got a bunch of tenants. Now the price of the building goes up, right, and I've got a space upstairs that I could still, you know, turn into something and make money off of that. So the value of the building is always going up and you, you know the best use case for the building.

Speaker 1: 20:46

I know you could use it for if you're going to give a studio.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Oh, you want to use it for wrestling.

Speaker 1: 20:50

No, I say, I say you just, you put it out for only fans. Dude, I want to start I just have people come up there and just do their only fans up there, Dude Osh, look at these hands.

Speaker 3: 21:01

Osh, hold on, you can use your ghost kitchen for only fans.

Speaker 2: 21:04

Yes, oh, with the food and stuff, Look, look. So my wife says I got pretty hands right. So I said why don't we start an only hands?

Speaker 1: 21:13

We can just do only fans with your hands. Only hands there's one girl making like 250 a month Only hands guys With her feet, just her feet. You don't even see her face, you don't see anything. She's fully clothed, she just has her feet and people pay her shoes.

Speaker 2: 21:25

People are on it, she's making 250k a month. Now there's a foot thing. I looked it up because I was like, maybe there is money in only hands. So I looked it up. There's a lot less hand fetish people than there are foot fetish people though, but it's market, huh, but they're willing to pay more that bed. They're willing to pay more because there's not a there's, they don't have anything right? Oh so let me see them. Hands, man, you want to make an extra 10 grand a month? Yeah, look at those things, look at those nails. Whoa, oh wait, oh look he is a.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Those are beautiful you can tell this guy's been making money, look at stop, they're not even.

Speaker 3: 21:53

I've never had a pedicure. Yeah right, do you put your hands, that you put your hands on that bowl with the fish that eat all.

Speaker 2: 21:58

Eat away all the dead cells, oh look at this, look at this stuff going on here. No, I've seen him put in some work. I've seen him walk it through some construction sites I know he's doing it.

Speaker 1: 22:07

The first time I ever talked to the guy he was on a ladder fixing something at one of his office buildings.

Speaker 2: 22:10

This is what happens, man, when you own property.

Speaker 3: 22:13

So hey, yeah, so you remember that phone call many years ago yeah, it's cost you a lot of money so far.

Speaker 1: 22:21

So, uh, you, you started your mastermind and it's a raging success. I mean, if anybody's interested, I'm sure they can go into the just on facebook just to look at the invest beyond multifamily and see just how much success everybody's had. And you're not just in senate. Your sister's killing it in atlanta with her group too. Right same, yeah, it's my sister-in-law, and then childhood friend in jersey.

Speaker 3: 22:46

Um, we all partnered up a couple years ago and it's been a great thing, man, having two strong women on my team that are probably a lot smarter than I am. Uh, are, it's a. It's a blessing to have them. Yeah, we've got students all over the country and canada, um, but we only take 20 people at a time because I want everybody to be able to build close connections with each other and get the attention that they need 20 seems like a lot.

Speaker 2: 23:14

I shall be honest with you, like that's, that seems like a lot to manage um, it is because everyone also has my cell phone number.

Speaker 3: 23:23

So if they find a deal, um, we got to jump on a call and if it's a good deal, get it under contract, right? yeah, so it's a huge time commitment. I mean, look, it's the same thing that you guys are doing. There's nothing that's been more satisfying professionally than seeing other people level up. Right, you guys are doing that at scale. I'm doing it at, you know, at a small level, um, but it's amazing. When somebody quits their job or somebody has a life changing deal right and they get it, it clicks, uh, the number of people that you guys have inspired. It's amazing, right.

Speaker 2: 23:59

So that's probably one of the greatest things that we all do I was down at the high school yesterday and my mom, a moderate downtown cincinati, and the kids are sitting there and we got a little panel going and there's a guy there, he owns his uh photography business. There's a lady there who's a talent agent, uh, and here I am and you know they say what they say. And I say, you know, give my little background or whatever. And I actually quoted jz because I knew they'd like it, right? So I'm like, oh, let me just quote jz here. Well, I told him. One kid said well, how do you get how? You know, you grew up in poverty. Like how did you get out of the whole thing? And I said, look, your network is your or? Yes, how much do I charge for my time? And I said your network is your net worth? Right, your network is your net worth. I said you're not charging for your time like you're gonna. You make your money, right, you need to be able to leverage people, you need to be able to leverage assets. That's how you get paid, right. And then I said, I said and you need, your reputation needs to stay strong, because you know these kids are down there being bad. I was bad, right. And I said look, you need to keep your reputation strong. I said if your reputation is strong, you're going to get paid accordingly. Just like jz said I'm not a businessman, I'm a businessman and I not explained what he meant by that. Right, like if he didn't have such a good reputation in music, he wouldn't have a brand. He is a brand. And I said these people, they the kids like you need to be a brand and and you obviously have a brand already. Hospital people know, people know who you are. You're on all these podcasts. But at the same time, like now, you're like look, I'm going to take my brand and my reputation, I'm going to turn it into this invest beyond multifamily. I'm going to teach people, I'm going to go back and and it doesn't hurt you, I tell people all the time money is not finite. Just because somebody else has money doesn't mean you don't, you can't have money. There's no reason that you, me, you and in in kyle here are going to hoard money. Like we don't need to hoard money. If I can, oh, yeah, yeah, but but what I'm saying is is we don't need to hoard the knowledge about how to make money. We can share that. We want to see other people succeed because we been broke me and ash, we're in. You know we were. We were living in aspen village back in the day. Dude, aspen village, any, any apartment complex with village after it.

Speaker 3: 26:06

You already know where that is by the way, were you giving this talk at a school? Yeah kyle told me you're not allowed within 500 but that's kyle, that's kyle.

Speaker 2: 26:17

He's trying to, he's trying to push that off on me.

Speaker 3: 26:19

No yeah uh, yeah, too much. Um, look, I, I get this a lot where I'll do a free webinar podcast. I give away everything, right, and people like man, why are you telling everybody? And it's like, come on, man, like you're worried about hoarding knowledge, like you know the more and I I probably learned this from joe fairless, right, this guy wrote a 400 page book that really gives away everything, step by step, on what he's done, and he's done this for almost 10 years, just giving away as much knowledge as he can. And you know, I'm sure that had an effect on me. Um, so I followed in those footsteps where give away the knowledge, right, if anything, you become known as a thought leader, subject matter expert on whatever it is that you're sharing. But, man, anytime you help somebody, I promise you it comes back right. And you know, kyle, look, a great example. Kyle called me uh, I I pick up my phone a lot and I was up on a ladder uh, he calls me kyle. How long was that conversation that we had? oh, about an hour yeah, talk to him for an hour and got nothing out of it or had no expectations, rather, got absolutely nothing out of it.

Speaker 1: 27:35

Waste, killed, time.

Speaker 3: 27:37

We're just fixing this stealing fan yeah, look, I uh, you know I was on site, at this job site, an hour longer than I needed to be, but it was a great conversation. It was a fun talk with kyle, um, but I had no expectations of anything out of it other than love learning about different people and what they have going on. And if you can you know so many times, man, I'm very blunt I'll just come at people and be like, no, look, you're doing that wrong. This is what you need to do, and if you can get the wheels turning in somebody's head, it is awesome. But just that conversation that I had with kyle we've become good friends, um, we've done some investments together. Kyle's opened up a lot of doors for me and that was never the expectation, but that's the byproduct of helping people well, kyle knows everybody in the state of kentucky.

Speaker 2: 28:24

That's what that's what happens when you're the forest gump of nor the greater sincennadine, you just like wander into places, meet people if I ever decide to move across the river and be in kentucky and run for public office. Guess who I'm calling kyle steve, that's right I'm a guy that knows guys. Yeah, he knows the people. Kentucky is very incestuous, but not in the way you think. Kentucky is incestuous in the way that nobody ever leaves. Nobody ever leaves. Everybody knows each other. Everybody went to school together. If you didn't go to high school together, you went to u of l or you went to uk together, right like it just seems to be what it is. Or you worked on somebody's house at one point or something. You know it's just, it is what it is and everybody kind of you know it's. It's very much a family. I would say almost the entire state of kentucky, outside of maybe the you know. Louis yeah, well, but but yeah, the entire state of kentucky is pretty much a giant brotherhood. It's everybody knows everybody, but it's still old. It's like old world genteel. All they want to do is drink bourbon and watch horse racing. They're much more fancy than I think people give them credit for. They're very fancy, I would say yeah yeah, you know one.

Speaker 3: 29:28

One thing we don't talk much about is kyle's building, his commercial real estate investment yes I mean, this guy went out and bought a beautiful old building that looked great on the outside, but man did it need work on the inside and it was almost fully vacant when he bought it. It's a deal that even today I would probably hesitate doing. Um, and all honesty, man, that was a huge lift. Um, he didn't have all the pieces put together, went for it, refused to fail, gave up whatever he had to and just made it work because failing was not an option. Right, I mean an elevator that had to be rebuilt on a how many story building?

Speaker 1: 30:14

uh, it's actually turning from a sixth story elevator to going to the basement and all the way up to the rooftop. But we knew that going in we had a budget in.

Speaker 3: 30:22

Look um you know, a seven, eight story building added a rooftop bar, restaurant, um, on your way to getting a fully leased. That was an incredibly ambitious project and again, so many opportunities to fail or bail. I would. You know many people would have been like all right done, let's just get this off our books, get this off our hands. This can bankrupt all of us, but instead you kept pushing forward and got this done. It's one of the most beautiful buildings in northern mentucky and it's in the ideal location yeah, that's the only reason we did it.

Speaker 1: 30:58

If it would have been five blocks close to adams building, or, you know, south of adams no, I'm being serious or south of adams building, the money wouldn't have made sense yeah yeah, now dude listen.

Speaker 3: 31:09

Good for you, man. That was a bold move, an incredible project, and I'm glad you're at the finish line now.

Speaker 1: 31:18

I hope the elevator went out again.

Speaker 2: 31:22

Hey, otis just sent us a bill for $100 because they need to update their fleet.

Speaker 1: 31:25

I'm like what's that got to do with me? It was a notice. It was a different one. I don't want to even say their name on here, but it's been a shit show. So once everything's fully leased and I stop paying investors out of my pocket, I'll be happy.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Well, asha, I always said I wanted two things. I wanted an elevator, because you get an elevator, that means you're doing things right. You need an elevator, right, you watch them. I don't want any more elevators. Yeah, you see some of these rich people their houses you just never know the way God's gonna put it like give it to you. So and I said I want a castle. What did I get? I got a Knights of Columbus building in Covington, kentucky, that looks like a castle, and then I got an elevator inside of it. I didn't get like a castle on a lake in Switzerland with an elevator, but whatever, I got a castle with an elevator Right next to the Dollar Tree. Now I need an island Asha. We need an island man. We should get an island.

Speaker 3: 32:17

By the way, we haven't interviewed you on the Real Estate Podcast. Why don't we do that, Adam?

Speaker 2: 32:22

I'm down man, I love it. Yeah, the best ever.

Speaker 3: 32:24

We gotta do that.

Speaker 1: 32:25

I do a few podcasts. It's like one of the most popular real estate podcasts in the world. Yeah, I've been on twice.

Speaker 2: 32:31

Oh, look at you, I know. Oh, man, that's cause you're good looking. See, look at this, look at this. See that Dude look how sharp you look now See that. I had to go argue with a politician earlier, so trying to sell out our city, the poverty pimps Osh, they're at it again. Yeah, the railway. Yeah, it's not cool man.

Speaker 3: 32:51

Yeah, I'm glad people like you are fighting though.

Speaker 2: 32:53

Well, I built a website and you know I had my boy build the site up. I designed it out real quick, in a day. I did a whole bunch of math on it and put it up there in a day and put the numbers out there, because the city wasn't putting numbers out there. They're trying to push this vote to November 7th, right Without giving people information, and they haven't even hired a financial advisor yet, so they can't technically tell people what the return's gonna be, because nobody knows. So I had to speculate. And now they're telling me oh well, that's not right, that's not right, so I just justified it.

Speaker 1: 33:23

Why is your guess better?

Speaker 2: 33:23

than my guess. Yeah, why is your guess better? We're both speculating, right, so you know. Why are we giving up a guaranteed return of $25 million a year from a lease for a? Maybe?

Speaker 1: 33:35

That's why you're not a politician. Yeah, because I just made so much sense. You just don't get it For your audience.

Speaker 3: 33:40

Cincinnati is looking at selling off the railway and not a great decision. Not at all. Not a smart decision.

Speaker 2: 33:48

No, you're selling. So in real estate terms. If you had a income producing property, you owned it. What do you get paid on? You get paid equity, right. You can get paid in equity, or you get paid in rent, right.

Speaker 3: 34:02

Yeah, it's a lifetime annuity. That's exactly right, that's generational.

Speaker 2: 34:07

That's right. You've owned this rail line for 150 years, something like that. So not only are you enjoying the benefits of a 6% return on the asset value increase that you could borrow against If you wanted to issue a revenue bond, you could issue a revenue bond against the rail line itself or the lease. You can actually borrow against a lease a 25-year lease. So you're getting $25 million a year from the rail line and you're increasing your equity at the same time. Instead, they want to sell it, put that money in a trust and lose it to inflation over time, which is ridiculous.

Speaker 3: 34:42

Yeah, Adam, you just put that in a great perspective. So imagine I owned a building that produced $250,000 a year in profit and I know my kids have a good chance of blowing that money if I sold it for $5 million. Right, I could sell it now, get $5 million, and there's a good chance that money won't last a generation. However, if that stays in our family through generations, it will continue to produce income forever. Right, A very simple way to look at it, man. Do you really trust the people that are going to receive the money today, or would you rather it be around for generations to come?

Speaker 2: 35:22

That's a great way to put it. I'm going to actually use that. I'm going to use that in my next debate and Ash Patel, here we go. Ash Patel said I'm not going to do that. They'll be looking him up and yeah, they said.

Speaker 1: 35:34

I'll call him Dirty as capitalists.

Speaker 2: 35:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 35:37

Here's a backhanded way to put it. Say imagine your kids are crackheads. Would you want to sell this building and give them all the money? In reference to the current politicians, right.

Speaker 2: 35:46

Yeah, oh no, that's what they're doing. It's like they just stole a carburetor or they stole a catalytic converter and they're running around places trying to sell it off real quick for a lot less than it would cost to replace it. Right, this is what they're doing. So, yeah, it's kind of funny, but yeah, it's bipartisan, though it's a nice little thing. And we've even got the Democratic Socialists, believe it or not. I was on the call with them yesterday. I'm like I never thought I'd be hanging out with the Democratic Socialists, but they're young kids, they're idealistic, they're the Bernie Sanders fan over here. Yeah, bernie Sanders, they want people to live together in peace and pick berries and not pay rent and stuff like that. So I don't know if they're our biggest fans because we own property and stuff, but I try to own a rental property one of these days, guys, I even told the kid yesterday at the school. I said buy a four family. I said look, what you need to do is you need to get rid of your debts. Like you have debt, you have liabilities on your balance sheet, right, you have assets, you have liabilities. These two girls, they came up to me afterwards and they were like explain the real estate thing. And I said look. I said do you want to pay rent? Rent keeps going up. No, I don't want to pay rent. Buy a four family. Move into one of the four family units, rent the other three out. Not only are you going to live for free, but you're going to make an extra, say, $500 a month. It's going to go to your bottom line. It's going to go. The bank is going to look at your income if you want to invest in anything else in the future and they're going to say how much money does this person make? Well, now you've got rid of a liability completely in a way, right. I mean, you still got it on your. You know the debt is still there, but every month you're not paying rent, or they call it the good debt. There's good debt, right. And then I told them put your car on tarot, go get you a nice car, put it on tarot, rent it out one week out of the month and you'll make that'll be your car payment, right? Well, now you just got rid of your two most, your two largest liabilities that you have to that most people have to pay for every month. Now take that extra money that you're saving or making and put it into more investments.

Speaker 3: 37:45

Yeah, another way to put that is you know, when kids graduate high school, first thing they want to do is buy a car, whether it's a hoopty, a new car, whatever, it is right. So get four friends three other friends that were also going to buy cars take your car money and put it into a four family, rent it out and the profit that you're making can go towards your car. Oh, slick, look, that's how you relate to them, right? All these kids, man, when I got out of high school like when I was young always wanted a car, right yes. And when you finally put your money towards it, how long does that satisfaction last? A week that you got a new car, you got a cool car and then it's done right, and then you're worried about it getting scratched and hit and rained on Screw, all that man. You know you don't get that much satisfaction and pleasure out of a car that you think you will, and it's very short lived.

Speaker 1: 38:40

It's exactly right, well, I was just learning that right now because he got a job and he bought I mean, it's reasonably priced cars like $25,000. And he was learning how to drive a stick shift because he didn't have to drive one and I don't know if he's the one that did it or the previous owner did it, but the clutch went bad, like he bought it in January. So he's got to replace the clutch now. And now he's starting to realize, holy shit, I've got to pay for the car payment, I've got to pay for insurance. Now I've got to replace the clutch. And he has no money because he goes out every weekend.

Speaker 2: 39:11

Like why put yourself in that position?

Speaker 1: 39:13

Real world buddy.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Why put yourself in that position? You know you don't have to put yourself in that position. If you just make a couple Different life moves, that it's not even that much harder. I mean, and look at us. He's like a guru sitting here. Look at his attitude, look at his face like, look at just how he presents himself. He's a guru. He's a guru. Look at this. So you know ash isn't worried about these things. No more, ash doesn't have to floss and around the city and act like he's got all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 39:38

You know you're you're content, let me put it this way he's at the point now where he can go wherever he wants that's right Dressed in a t-shirt and like cut off jean shorts if he wants, wearing cracks, and people are going to come up to him and say, hey, can you help me? I've been looking at this. I'm thinking about getting into this real estate. Can you help me out? That's right. Well, yeah, that's, that's what you know. You've made it.

Speaker 3: 39:56

Well, you know, you listen, man. That was a lot of years wearing suits to meetings and look, I refuse to wear suits now.

Speaker 2: 40:04

I know I was at a country club. I had to.

Speaker 3: 40:07

Yeah, and you know. But you look, I would love to buy an exotic car, right? Luckily, I've got a wife who would just call me a dumbass. Every time I'm like, hey, look, I thought about buying this. Yes, you know she wouldn't just say no, even though ultimately she would. It would be like, what are you gonna do with that? Like you're gonna look like an idiot driving that I said. But I really want it. Oh, I mean like, yeah, like the kids don't fit in there, like I don't know what you're gonna do with it. But again, you know, I know I don't buy it because it would be a week's worth of gratification. And then, what right, you're paying a lot of insurance. Um, you're, you're putting a bunch of liquidity into something that's going to lose value. Um, and like it's just a flex, that's all it really is straight, it's like right.

Speaker 2: 40:54

That's right, well, well, and the thing is is like you're sacrificing your future, you're sacrificing your freedom for that car. So, if you think about it, you go out and you want to buy one of these cars now. Well, what's the opportunity? Cost of money? What could you have done with that money? That got you closer to your real goal? And the real goal isn't to have a bunch of money in the bank. Your real goal is time freedom. Your real goal is to not have to be, you know, be hold into anyone, get out of the rat race, get out of indentured servitude.

Speaker 1: 41:23

Yeah, like this, like going back to our guest here, like I, the ash is the example. Ash and my old neighbor, nick, and I'm the guy who's their company just Opened up there. They have one of like 20 Uh, not per se a prescription marijuana dispensaries in the state they got they just they just opened up a 35 million dollar facility, facility up in northern, up in northern sinsenay I forget where exactly it's at. But those guys, those guys are guys that you know they can do whatever they want with their time. He owned a roofing company. He's made a lot of smart investments with his money in terms of going in the real estate with the smart guys, and now they have. Now he's got this on the side. It's, I mean, his side project is going to make him almost, I'd say, million dollars a year, whatever it's going to make. And he's got a lake house in Williamstown lake. He does what, what? Every once with his kids, whenever he wants to do stuff with his kids. And I say, look at, look at nick, you live right next door to him. You saw all of his, all of his friends, you saw everything that he did, how, how much more enjoyable his life is compared to, like mine, what mine was. And then you have ash, who went to different when, a different route. He was married, had kids and he worked his ass off. And he's got all this free time now, if he wants it, or he can go and he can tour all these different properties wherever he wants, all over the country because of the networks he's built from being a fucking awesome person and he spends his summers At his, at his place, with his kids. He gets experience, they get the, you know, he gets to enjoy the 18 years he has with them, if not more. And that's that's like. That's what you want out of your life. You want to be able to have the money so that you have a piece of mine, yes, but you want to be able to enjoy the money that you have and the time that you have it. And so what came in? A lot I've said look, these are the two guys that you have to model yourself. It's falling on deaf ears because they want, they see the flash and the bullshit, but I'm like these are the guys that you need to model yourself after. These two guys Do, do it, do it, do it the way they did it, because they're doing, they're living the right life right now.

Speaker 2: 43:25

That's right and and people don't want to hear it because they want to believe what's on tick talk. They want to believe what's on us. Can you believe these freaking people like I? I get on there and I'm like these people are freaking, these people are lying to everyone. They're lying to these kids. Oh, I'm 24. How did I become? How am I worth 20 million dollars? And I'm 24 years old? I'm like wait what?

Speaker 3: 43:43

Yeah, crypto, yeah, this stock day trading. Look, we've been around long enough to know that that ain't true and that doesn't work. No, right. And look, I'm so glad you guys talked about time freedom. Now, look, keep in mind man. Look, today I'll work a 12 hour day, right, I mean, we still work our ass off, but we still have some time freedom. But that's what you brought up is time freedom. Everybody has their Future plans. Their vision boards are popular now, right, and on their vision board they put down the private plane, the cars, the house on the island. Come on, like, get realistic. What you're really after is time freedom. You know that living on an island by yourself and you know one other person how, how, how long is that going to be fun? Right, driving a Lambo where everyone looks at you like what's the deal with this guy? Um, that that's not fun for long. But you know what's incredible is when you talk to people and they're like yeah, man, like, I woke up this morning, I wanted to play basketball, so I went, I wanted to work out. Uh, I just wanted to Go here, I wanted to go to Miami for the weekend. Having time freedom to do whatever it is you want to do is really the ultimate goal that most people should focus on. Right, the money, the, the cars, the houses that's a fictitious goal and once you Accomplish that, it may not be meaningful. But being able to do whatever you want with your time, your days, being able to spend the time With whoever you want, wherever you want, is the real flex man. That's, that's what everyone should be chasing Not being obligated to go to work. Right, if I don't want to set the alarm tomorrow, I don't have to If I want to stay out late tonight awesome.

Speaker 2: 45:28

Well, the crazy part is too, people actually resent you. They don't. They don't envy you, they resent you like. You know what? I get cut off in traffic more in my nice car. Then I do my crappy truck. I got a truck from 2007. It's all blacked out. You know it looks gangster, right, but it's, it's from 2007. It's got, you know, damn near 200,000 miles on it. But when I drive that truck, people respect me. They get out of my way. They don't cut me off. But if I drive the nice car, I've got crappy cars cutting me off and I could tell you they're cutting me off on purpose. They're trying to be dicks. Yeah, you know what people do not. They don't. You know, when they see you they're like look at that douche right, or 100, especially in places like Cincinnati, maybe not in Miami or wherever. You know you got everybody, but those are rental cars. Those aren't even like people. People buy those, those lambos and stuff you see in Miami. You can rent those. Those are tourists that just rent a lambo and it's it's it, but it is it's. People will resent you. They'll actually not like you. If you flex too much and you flex all this stuff that you got, they're actually going to be you. You're actually not going to win friends and influence people. Let me put it that way Ash.

Speaker 3: 46:33

Yeah, you're 100% right in granted, south Miami other pockets Scottsdale are Are exceptions to this. But if you are trying to do business with somebody and you roll up in a 200,000 car Right away, they've got preconceived notions of who you are and what you're all about, right, uh, and people don't respect that. People with money don't respect that, because they could do the same thing, but they choose to not live a super loud lifestyle, right? But you know, what I really would want your audience to do is anybody who is envisioned Having that house in the island. Whatever picture in your day Sorry, picture in your sleep when you lay down to go to bed at night. What an ideal day looks like, where you get to curate your entire day. What time do you wake up? Where do you want to wake up? What would you want to do and with whom? Right, the whole day. Plan it out in your head on what would be the perfect day and when. You can do that whenever you want. That's when you've achieved time freedom.

Speaker 2: 47:36

That's it. And also, what about, like, if you have a nine to five job? The hardest thing about Having a nine to five job when we talk about on the show the whole thing is is how do you turn your side hustle into your main hustle? And you, if you're at a job, it makes it so much harder to go to events. It makes it so much harder to have lunch with somebody who might be able to change your life. There's a guy writing a book right now. It's called the seven million dollar lunch. He met with an attorney one time that put him on to this apartment complex. He ended up finding out a way to buy it and next thing, you know, he turned around and he made a seven million dollar profit off of it when he sold it. And he's over here in northern Kentucky. But you know the guy wants he's writing a book on how valuable this one lunch was that he had with someone. If you have a nine to five, you don't have that lunch. You can't, you can't escape To to have these opportunities to go to like an investment, investing on multi-family event. Right, you're nine to five. How do you get to one of these things? How do you, most of the time these are going to be during the day. You know you got to get away from that. You got to find time to do something on the side that's going to help you eventually break away from that full-time gig.

Speaker 3: 48:50

Yeah, I had a 15 year IT career. I had multiple side hustles, right, some failed miserably, some did okay, but, um, it wasn't until I found real estate that I was able to quit my job. But, no matter what, do the side hustles so many side hustles that you guys have talked about on this show Are attainable, or you're able to start them while you're working at nine to five right, you've got to want it, man Assemble, a team of people that are like-minded that have nine to five, and you all want to get out together. But it's certainly possible. I've had so many side hustles. Granted, you've got to put a ton of time into it and know that some of them may fail, but they don't take a lot of money, a lot of them. All you need is time and hustle. There's no excuse to not start the side hustle.

Speaker 2: 49:37

Well, ash, tell us about opportunities that you've got coming up. So, guys, you're listening to them on the podcast. We are very personable with each other, so we're going to talk about a bunch of things and joke around and stuff, but we really wanted to add more value somehow. So, ash, tell us about any upcoming events or whatever that you've got going on where people can learn more about your strategy and how they can eventually turn whatever you help them create a side hustle into a full-time hustle.

Speaker 3: 50:04

Yeah, adam, thank you. So go to investbeyondmultifamilycom. We have a conference in Cincinnati October 11th through the 13th, 11th through 14th, sorry and you'll meet a lot of people that started out where you did right, had a nine to five, and you'll see how they leveled up. We have a full day bus tour where not only will you hear the stories and meet the people behind it, but you actually get to visit the properties. Some of them are in progress, where they just bought it and here's what they're going to do to make a lot of money on it. But that's it, man. My passion revolves around commercial real estate Anybody looking to level up. We've got a mastermind as well, but that's it, man. There's a ton of free content that we put out. I just like you guys, man, I want to see everyone level up right. There's no reason to be miserable in a job that you don't like. There's ways to level up Well and you've got everybody there right.

Speaker 2: 51:09

You've got commercial residential. I mean, I know Nate I think Nate's coming and Nate was on our podcast, nate Barger, big time residential commercial real estate investor, but you know it mixed it up, he leveled up to doing the apartment.

Speaker 1: 51:22

He's doing the apartments in hotels.

Speaker 2: 51:25

But you need a mix, because you know what Residential is oversaturated in my opinion. I went to this fund conference and everybody's got the same thesis they're all trying to buy multifamily building, they're doing syndications, but nobody's talking about commercial man. Nobody's talking about what Ash is talking about. And there is a guaranteed I mean practically guaranteed strategy. Nothing's guaranteed, but there is a really good, solid strategy that Ash's team has put together that I mean, when you hear it, you're like that totally makes sense. Why don't I start doing that? Right? And I mean I call Ash all the time because I, you know, I got questions about my building. He knows commercial like no other. So who am I going to call? Like I'm going to call Ash, right, he just knows it, but he's going to teach you a class, guys. I mean it's in Cincinnati. You know there's a lot of real estate investors in Cincinnati, believe it or not? This is like I don't know, almost like I guess we can make an argument that this is probably one of the best cities in the country for real estate investors, outside of maybe Miami and I don't know, la, maybe.

Speaker 3: 52:21

New York. It's one of the best cities for cash flow, right, we don't have the crazy appreciation that South Florida does, but when the economy tanks, our asset prices don't go down like theirs do as well.

Speaker 2: 52:33

Well, I'm just mean for mentors, for people that have done it like just regular folks who've leveled up, and I mean you, nate Barger, joe Fairliss, kyle, you know we I mean we built a software for real estate. I mean you could argue that Cincinnati, a lot of innovative real estate stuff and innovative people come out of here.

Speaker 3: 52:52

That's a great point. Never thought of that.

Speaker 2: 52:54

Yeah, well, you just you put an entire conference together of people from pretty much Cincinnati, right that? I mean Joe's originally from Dallas but he's lived here for a while with his wife, his wife's from here. But I mean, yeah, I mean it's it, is it actually. I mean we can make an argument for it. It's only growing. And now that we have this, this conference, now I can tell people well, we got this person, we got that person, we got this conference that comes here every year. I mean it's great.

Speaker 3: 53:15

Yeah, and I'll tell you, you know anybody that's still scared of commercial real estate. With multifamily, you have a lot of syndicators that are pausing distributions or they're doing cash calls. We've never, and none of our students, have ever, lost money on a commercial real estate deal and anytime that they have investors, they've never had to pause payments to investors, right. So commercial real estate still has a lot of opportunities and the deals that we teach and buy have so much meat on the bone that even if things go wrong, there's you know, you're not going to lose money. Now, granted, you know I've lost money myself on stupid things that I did coming up, but when you look at this versus multifamily commercials, by far the way to go.

Speaker 2: 54:04

Well, Ash, thank you for jumping in the pool first. I feel like you know I like to do that sometimes. I mean I did it with my Miami condo just to see and you saw a post to something about it the other day but I'm just trying to show people like, look, this is possible, Like I did it, because nobody takes your word for it. You literally have to do it and then show them, and you did just that. I mean, this is what you do.

Speaker 3: 54:25

Yeah, and I made every mistake you can imagine, and the goal is to keep people around me from making those mistakes. So, yeah, awesome, and listen, thank you. I know you got to run, but we'll put all that we'll put everything in the notes.

Speaker 2: 54:37

We'll put your website in the notes and a little bit about the conference and a little bit more about Ash. So, guys, if you're listening to the podcast, go to side hustlemoney and check out the description of the podcast and you will find links to the conference.

Speaker 1: 54:52

And, and, and, and, and and. Our boy here is one of the co-hosts of I guess he's considered he he hosts by himself, but it's him in Slocum host the best ever.

Speaker 3: 55:03

It was the best ever investing what yeah best ever commercial real estate podcast.

Speaker 1: 55:09

Yeah so.

Speaker 3: 55:10

Joe Fearless's podcast.

Speaker 1: 55:11

So you can go in there and you can listen to a whole bunch of guests with a whole bunch of scopes of work, what they've done and what they've been involved in.

Speaker 2: 55:19

And they play poker.

Speaker 1: 55:21

Yes.

Speaker 3: 55:23

We all lose a lot of money.

Speaker 2: 55:24

That's right, All right guys. You guys are insane.

Speaker 1: 55:26

Yeah, Like blind raises is just like don't don't ever play, don't ever play poker with Joe Fearless. He does not care, Ash doesn't care either.

Speaker 2: 55:37

Well, you get those guys at a table. I don't want to be there.

Speaker 3: 55:42

Awesome guys. Again, thank you for what you do, man.

Speaker 2: 55:44

All right guys. Thanks, ash, awesome, see you, buddy. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.