Powerful Lessons for Life, Business, and Real Estate Investing from Pancreatic Cancer Survivor Josh Cantwell

Speaker 2

00:00

 This episode is sponsored by the Integrity income fund, which is managed by yours truly and my team at Labrador lending, the Integrity income fund is for accredited investors. It aims to pay an eight percent preferred return and an 8.5% preferred return for early investors. It aims to pay out monthly distributions. There's a 25 thousand dollar minimum and only a one-year lockup. If you are an accredited investor and you're looking to get away from Wall Street, looking to beat inflation and looking for an asset class that is backed by hard physical real estate then look no further than Integrity income fund, check it out at Labrador Lending.com. On this episode. I got the chance to speak to Josh Cantwell of free land Ventures. Free land, Ventures.com. Josh has been an entrepreneur for 25 years, I think it is, and he's very well-spoken. Super easy interview. The only tough part with this interview is, he has so much knowledge and so much to a story that, you know, there's, I would love to have them on for four or five episodes. This one's jam-packed with Very valuable information and the primary adversity that Josh faced. At least the that we focus on is he is a pancreatic cancer survivor which is quite rare and you know and one of the things I for me what struck me with this episode a couple things, one is the advice. His father gave him heading into his surgery. Hurry about well, I will just leave it there. It's fantastic. Advice for how to prepare and how to mentally get ready for challenges in life. And I really, really like that advice. And then, just the fact that Josh has, he's spent a lot of time kind of pulling out principles as to principles. He learned through from going through that adversity and print. He's well articulated and can Clearly lay out principles that. He personally applies in his business. He's got nine or ten of them. We only get the chance to knock out four or five of the really big ones. But if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a real estate investor, he's primarily a multi-family syndicator at this point, but he's done residential all that stuff. If you're an entrepreneur real estate investor, if you have had health challenges, if you're a cancer survivor, you know, this episode is for you. It's a great one.

Speaker 1

02:53

 Inspiring stories of real people overcoming incredible odds to live life. To the fullest. We are all guaranteed to face. Hardships, how will we handle the adversity? Join us to be moved by every day, people who have turned poverty into prosperity and weakness into wealth Be Inspired as these relatable Heroes, get vulnerable and former counterintelligence investigator Jamie Bateman puts his interviewing skills to the test.

Speaker 2

03:20

 Store your faith in humanity as you experience. True Cinderella stories of average.

Speaker 1

03:24

 People turning surreal struggle and deep despair into.

Speaker 2

03:28

 Booming, businesses and financial Fortune. Take ownership of the.

Speaker 1

03:32

 Life. You are destined to live and turn your adversity into abundance.

Speaker 2

03:41

 Welcome everybody to another episode of the form adversity to abundance podcast. I am your host Jamie Bateman, and I am super excited today to have a special guest on. Josh Cantwell of free land Ventures, free land, Ventures.com. Josh has a really good story that we're going to dive into and pull out some lessons learned. So I am this is on paper, you're a the ideal guest Josh. So I am really excited to have you. How you do today?

Speaker 1

04:08

 Josh, I am fantastic. I, you know, it's been a fun day already working with my broker on a building that we are selling, we extend our call for offer date last week, and so we have got seven offers to sort through. So we did that with that this morning I have to have that we're buying next Friday which is a six and a half million dollar acquisition. It's kind of on the smaller side for us, and so we're just buttoning up the final closing for that. Going through the final closing checklist and where I should be closing about two weeks ahead. Ed of schedule. So, that's exciting. And tonight, I am going to watch my daughter play some volleyball. So, I am like, nice and my daughter's, a nice. Well, so cool. Even some varsity volleyball. So I am going to go watch her. So, that's full fun day for yeah.

Speaker 2

04:55

 Yeah, definitely. That's, that's a packed day. That's cool. My daughter actually just started playing volleyball in high school as well. She's in 10th Grade. She's really taken to it, so, yeah, I am excited. It's a.

Speaker 1

05:09

 Great. For time. It's so like, I grew up playing football, basketball baseball, right? And then, I even played college football, and there's no sport that I have ever played, or coach, or watched, that is truly a team sport like volleyball. Like you can't have one person that's just your Superstar. Like in football, you can have an unbelievable quarterback like Joshua on it. Last night, the bills and points you could have one basketball player, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant that dominates the floor. Volleyball is truly needed all six kids. Floor. So it's my favorite of all the sports of a reporter. So yeah, fun stuff.

Speaker 2

05:44

 That's really cool. Yeah, so other than what you have going on you know, this week and next week what kind of tell our audience who you are today as far as this year. You know what, you have, who you are and why we should listen to you.

Speaker 1

05:57

 Sure. So, um, so I have been an entrepreneur for 25 years I guess we start with that. I have never had a job. I have never had a boss. I am 46 years old. I graduated from College and went immediately into Financial Planning and had no salary. No, no regular. Paycheck.

Speaker 2

06:18

 Commission ever.

Speaker 1

06:19

 Got was two thousand bucks and it was a commission for selling Financial Services products like IRA rollover is life insurance estate planning stuff like that. I remember sharing that check with my girlfriend who at that time was still in college. And we were both like freaking out about how. This is a huge two thousand dollar paycheck and It was my first entrepreneurial paycheck and it's always, it's been entrepreneurship for the last 25 years. Today we own three thousand units of Apartments. We have done 19 Apartments, indications, we have owned as many as 44 hundred units. We sold off about thirteen hundred units last year, and we are one of maybe the two largest buyers owners. Operators of apartments in the Greater Cleveland area, Cleveland Ohio. We also buy in Columbus Cincinnati. In Dayton, and we're an owner, operator, meaning we buy them, we acquire them, we Syndicate them, we manage them, and we do the cat box from Soup To Nuts. A to Z, we don't Outsource any of it. I have an incredible team and I built multiple, you know, 89 figure businesses. And, so I have been very blessed to be an entrepreneur for 25 years and I have a ton of knowledge around that subject. Some of it, I will be able to share today, so. That's.

Speaker 2

07:40

 One of them. No, that's yeah. Unfortunately after we have to gloss over so many things that I would love to dive into but maybe bring it back and have it picks your brain, some more if you have, if you have a few minutes, but yeah, that's fantastic. So obviously the, you know, the focus of this show is from adversity to abundance, you know, we all have we're all guaranteed to deal with adversity challenges obstacles, some kind of hardship. In life. And you know what I found is often times entrepreneurs. I haven't defined. I haven't figured out the exact relationship yet, but it seems like entrepreneurs have this knack for overcoming adversity, getting through adversity. And a lot of, you know whether it's the entrepreneurship leading to the ability to overcome that adversity or probably conversely getting through that adversity, creates the ability to apply Lessons Learned in business, which I think, is what we want to drill down on today, for the listeners out there. Let us go back and, and kind of you can pick it up wherever you'd like, as far as, you know, age or circumstances, but like to kind of lead us up to your major example, here of adversity, that you have dealt with, which I know is a big one.

Speaker 1

09:03

 So, yeah, absolutely. So look, I think the first thing, too. Think about Jamie when it comes to entrepreneurship is that you are essentially, when you say that you want to be an entrepreneur when you define yourself as an entrepreneur. If you identify this word, identifies popular, now identify as an entrepreneur. You have basically said that you were going to forego all the security of a job W to job. Security of working for somebody else in exchange for personal freedom. Okay, sure. Not you're not signing up to make more money. You're not something you will do you? That's your part of the goal. You're not signing up to have control of your time. Although that's part of what you're trying to do. What you have ultimately done is say, I am going to be an entrepreneur, going to chart my own course. I am going to chart my own path. And I want to do that because I want to have true, personal freedom to be able to make all my own decisions and defined who I want to be around who I want to associate with. You know if I want to go borrow money, invest money, if I want to build a business and who I want on the team, all of that. Now becomes your own choice. But what you have foregone in exchange for that freedom is a lot of what people view as security of a regular day job with benefits of 40. 1K a W-2. And so, I was very fortunate. That my dad was an entrepreneur. My dad had done both, my dad had worked in a big Fortune. 500 company had worked at Sherwin Williams and my dad caught, the bug as an entrepreneur when I was in grade school. And my dad, actually, the reason why he became an entrepreneur is that when we were in sixth grade, my dad filed for bankruptcy because he was fired from his job. So as fired from his job, he couldn't land another job. This is in the middle 1980s. The economy was you remember back then, it was still a lot of inflation. The economy was moving slowly, this is before Ronald Reagan, kind of restarted, the economy, and my dad couldn't land a job. So for a year, he went without a job, and he filed for bankruptcy. So my personal entrepreneurial Journey actually starts with my dad's entrepreneurial journey and bankruptcy, that's where it begins.

Speaker 2

11:17

 So, yeah, that's unfortunately an additional layer of adversity, that had to happen, I guess? Yeah. So.

Speaker 1

11:26

 Was no Facebook, there's no Instagram. Like my dad was very private. So I didn't even know that my dad had filed for bankruptcy, until I was well into my 20s, like, 15 years later, why did they call me? I was like, why was Dad home that whole summer, the grass on a Tuesday at 1:00 in the afternoon? Yeah. And because he had been fired and because we had filed for bankruptcy, which means we literally had no money. We have like a thousand dollars in our bank account. There was five of us in the family. And what my Dad decided to do after that bankruptcy, was he decided to become an insurance salesman and then also decided to get into Financial Services than my dead end up, getting a job in an insurance brokerage. Then he ended up taking over a division, then they spawn off that division, then he bought the division. So within 10 years now, from the time we went from bankruptcy, not my dad owned the company, and they what, what he, what he ended up, buying and spinning off. An employee benefits company. So that employee benefits for major companies that one time. My dad's biggest client was Advanced Auto Parts. Fortune 500 company with 30,000 employees. Wow, my dad went from bankruptcy to having the condo in Hilton Head the third or fourth car, you know, all of these things within 10 years.

Speaker 2

12:45

 Because your ship right and you're seeing this all firsthand. So you're.

Speaker 1

12:50

 Exactly. So super unfortunate Jamie to be able to have it at in my own house. So when I graduate from college, it was natural for me to say, hey I have been watching my dad, do this, not my deadweight losses as he was leaving the house at 6:30, 7:00 in the morning was getting home at 7:00 at night, right? You know, it's the.

Speaker 2

13:07

 Part I think people like to gloss over, you know, it's not. Oh yeah, it's just yeah. Great. This side gig and then it turns into a full-time job. But it's easy, I get, you know, it's like no, there's a lot of (Blood), Sweat, and Tears, that went into your dad's success in your own. So.

Speaker 1

13:25

 Let us not be able to afford, right? For me to go to private high school and then for my brother's to all be encoded in put us through college. Yeah. A very short Tanner 15 years after filing for bankruptcy. It was like amazing. That's a real success there in a very short amount of time. Absolutely. And so for me, it would but so my option was when I was getting out of college, like, did I want to follow my dad's path? And I want to work for my dad, right? For me, it was Like, I just wanted to be working on my own, so when I got an internship in financial services, that allowed me to set my own schedule. Work, late hours. If I wanted cut out early, if I wanted earn my own paychecks a hundred percent commission, my dad flipped out. He lost his mind. He was so upset, really? Because he's like, dude, I just spent how many tens of.

Speaker 2

14:16

 Thousands more are. Yeah.

Speaker 1

14:19

 And now you're not, he's going to have a salary.

Speaker 2

14:21

 Sure, right?

Speaker 1

14:22

 Only that. But then at 24 I became a landlord and I bought my first piece of real estate in my moms. Like, not only do you not have a job, not only do you not have a salary, but now you think you can be a landlord to like, what is wrong with you? And so, it's I looked at my Des example and said, hey like, what did you expect me to do, right?

Speaker 2

14:43

 Right. Exactly, iMac. I actually was a little bit surprised that he was. I get the college expense in hindsight, that makes sense, but the fact that he had fought the secure job had ended the way it did and then entrepreneurship went much better. Yeah. Yeah. I would have thought. Maybe he'd just seen the, the upside there the potential for you to be an entrepreneur, but and maybe he later changed his mind. I am not sure. But yeah. So 24, your landlord and then pick it up from there.

Speaker 1

15:12

 Yeah. So well, then, it became okay. Financial Services was really good to me, I became a fee-based financial planner, I am 22 23, 25 years old, but I recognize Jamie that a lot of my most successful clients own real estate, they didn't have all the money stock market. So I saw firsthand when I did what was called a fact-finding appointment with a new potential client and I learned about all their financial plan and what they owned in their net worth. The most successful guys owned buildings. They want apartment buildings, they own retail strip centers. They owned buildings. And they the least amount to restaurants they own real estate. That was the biggest part of their portfolio. So I started going to the week. Warrior boot camps. I started learning everything I could about real estate while I was still doing financial planning started buying up real estate. I bought my first duplex, I bought a rehab about another duplex, I bought another rehab, I started acquiring a rental portfolio and doing some flips on the side. And then in 2000, I graduated from college in 98 by 2005. I was like, I am out like I have the real estate bug. Like, I am 100% going to do this and I forgot I was making about 150 to 175 Grand. A year in financial planning and left it all behind because I just was like a hundred percent. I was just, I was so drinking the Kool-Aid Jamey I wasn't when that I am like I don't want to do this financial planning thing anymore. So like most people I got into residential high, I was flipping houses and I needed still even though I had some money and I had some success with my financial planner. I still didn't have a lot of money where I couldn't just put down 40 Grand on a house and then 40 Grand in another house and $49, I needed to do things with no, Down right, no income, no asset, no money down type of stuff. So I got into wholesaling, I got into flipping, I got into that kind of thing, and we had an unbelievable run from 2005 to 2011. We started doing pre foreclosures, short sales notes, discounted notes, that kind of stuff, much like you did with your former podcast, and we were one of the big National Speakers. We were doing events in Vegas and Dallas and over 3 4 500 attendees there. Because Was there were foreclosures in Cleveland about three years before the Foreclosure crisis nationally, mmm like 10 publicly traded companies. Jamie that folded that went bankrupt or merged that all were in Cleveland. So there was a glut of Housing and a lot of people without jobs, and so we got into pre foreclosures and short sales in negotiating notes, and discounted debt and all that kind of stuff. That's awesome. And it went good.

Speaker 2

17:49

 One thing. Sorry, it just it touches on the That if you're willing, if you're paying attention, you're willing to roll up your sleeves and work hard and Network. Real Estate is a very inefficient, you know, I guess economy or part of the economy. If you will sector, where you can really make some good money, if you see that, you can see the opportunity coming. If you know what you're doing in other words, yes, you can make money in stocks, but in general, real estate is a much more slow-moving asset class, right? And so if you had, You know, this knowledge way before anybody else did nationally or maybe not anyone, but before the national media and most other people were talking about it and you were able to use that and see that as an opportunity and profit from that sounds like is that fair to say? I am .

Speaker 1

18:37

 Sure. And I know quite a Jimmy not only that back then. But even today with Apartments like the building I am buying next week is a forty-one unit but it's actually in downtown Cleveland so it's a premier trophy, an Asset and lots of other people would look at that deal. And now everybody has a different business plan. So when you look at the yield or the spread between what we're paying for and what it's going to be worth, you're exactly right. That there's a tremendous amount of inefficiency in the marketplace and somebody that is trained that executes that is networked well that has access to a lot of private Capital they can take advantage. Vantage of these in efficiencies, that's basically what we do today still, with just, we just now do it in the commercial space, and we have been doing it really, really big time in the commercial space for the last seven or eight years. So, but those were those efficiencies back then and it was a fun business, but it was very transactional. Like it was flip a house, it was wholesale a house, that was negotiated short sale, flip a property, make a five thousand dollar check or a 50 thousand dollar check, and we met. We once made at 500,000. Our check. But then you had to go back and.

Speaker 2

19:55

 Get it. Got to go out and do it.

Speaker 1

19:56

 Again, right? Yeah. And so we were kind of getting sour on it because it was so transactional. And at the same time, is really one adversity. Really hit me in my family. Big time in 2011, I will never forget it. Jamie I came home from work. I was doing the business of pre foreclosure, short sale investing. Foreclosure investing I came home. I had two young kids, two years old and one year old my wife. It was eight months pregnant with our third. So we were knocking out our third kid and for years and I came home, and I was playing with my two little girls and just like, any new dad would be doing and I laid on the floor in my living room. I looked up at the ceiling fan. I crossed my hands across my stomach. And just like that, I felt this giant lump on the left side of my stomach, and I was like wow that's big and it's kind of on a the only one the one side it's kind of like in a weird place like below my rib cage kind of. And I was like, hey, honey come here. I told my wife Lisa I said, come on over here. Check this out. Just kind of poking around. And it's kind of against kind of odd shaped and kind of thinking hard like a rock. And she like, wow, like that can't be good. Like it's in a weird place. I said, I know, I have never seen that before. I have never.

Speaker 2

21:20

 Said there was no pain or discomfort or anything. It.

Speaker 1

21:23

 Was just widened back pain. I had about three years leading up to then and I had been, it turns out it was misdiagnosed for three straight years by three different doctors. One guy said all it was, you know, it was, it was arthritis from football college football. Another guy said it was like some sort of inflammation. Something sure they prescribe like, Z-Pak steroids and like, you know, physical therapy and none of them ordered a CT scan and a CT scan, would have told everybody that it was Advanced pancreatic cancer, it wasn't pulled muscle. It wasn't, you know, those kind of things. It was Advanced pancreatic cancer and I quickly learned that right about the same time Steve Jobs from Apple computer had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, huh? And I had just learned that Luciano Pavarotti, the Great opera singer had died of pancreatic cancer. And I would learn very quickly at Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer. And all of a sudden, I read that survival rate for pancreatic cancer was about six percent. Wow. And I thought to.

Speaker 2

22:36

 Myself, I can't even imagine.

Speaker 1

22:39

 This is not good.

Speaker 2

22:43

 What? So what's yeah, what else is going through your mind at that.

Speaker 1

22:46

 Time. So what happened was when I, when I felt this lump in my stomach, my wife's eight months pregnant and I went to my buddy across the street, you know, my buddy look tool phero Dr. Lu tool Pharaoh with the Cleveland Clinic friend of mine from college because he's an orthopedic surgeon. So he's not an internal medicine doctor, but he's an orthopedic surgeon, I go over to him. He's like you know, Josh that's in a weird place is not a hernia that's not a sports injury. You need a CT scan, they got to go check that out. So my wife and I decided because she was eight months pregnant, we're going to wait till after my son was born. Okay my son's born some complications with that, but he had a surgery. Shortly after he was born, he had some kind of cyst in his neck. That was taken out. He was fine. So about 10 days after his surgery, I finally went and got checked out and Doctor pulled it up on screen. Showed me my insides from the CT scan and said Josh see this big gray Mass here. You know this isn't supposed to be here. I am sorry to tell you. You have advanced pancreatic cancer and my son was actually still in the hospital recovering. Covering from surgery, my wife had just had an emergency C-section about three or four weeks before that. So my wife is recovering from surgery. My son, just had surgery. And now I have been told that I have advanced pancreatic cancer. And I, by the way, I still have a three-year-old and a two-year-old at.

Speaker 2

24:13

 Home. It's gonna say right? Your other two kids went through my mind. Like, where, where are.

Speaker 1

24:17

 They? Yeah, yeah, this all happened. Actually, the day I was diagnosed. It happened on my, my oldest daughter her first day of school, ever her first day of Real preschool and so will never forget like sure when your daughter goes off to school. It's supposed to be great. Just wearing a little dress, and a little shoes and goes off to school. And by about noon, that day, I had found out that I was like deathly ill. Very, very, very sick. So.

Speaker 2

24:49

 Quick question. Now you hate to second-guess of course, but it just curious had the original, you know, three years prior. If they diagnosed it correctly, you know, maybe this is a dangerous line of questioning mentally. I don't know. But with were you Advanced at that point or, you know, would it have been a, how would things have been different if you is it had been caught two or three years prior?

Speaker 1

25:12

 Yeah, I mean, nobody's ever asked me that. That's a great question. That's it. I have got a lot of interviews and I have talked about this. Nobody's ever asked me that, but to think three years prior, so, You know, three years prior, I had just met my wife, like, you know, we dated for a year, we got engaged, we waited another year to get married, and then we got pregnant, like literally a month after we got married. So that all that happened with my wife within three years for our first child. And then we had another child right away after that. So within four years of meeting my wife, we had dated engaged, married and knocked out two kids. And so if I had been diagnosed three years earlier, it would have been like, Only maybe had our first child, right? And Nadia, I wouldn't have had my second. Maybe I would be going through all these medical procedures and surgeries, my family Dynamic might be totally different, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker 2

26:09

 So well, and I do believe personally that everything happens for a reason and, you know, we're getting philosophical here. So just, you know, I was just curious. What if you thought about that? But so that's obviously not the way things played out. So, so how did things play out?

Speaker 1

26:25

 So, I was very fortunate. My oncologist, Dr. Ali referred me to get a little emotional about this, but she referred me to Dr. Matthew Walsh at the Cleveland Clinic is a miracle worker. So I will never forget when I went in was diagnosed. I met with him. I got a second opinion. Went back to Dr. Walsh and, I will never forget he had this 1500 dollar pair of Peruvian shoes on. I love shoes. Like I like one thing I really enjoy is like cool different shoes. Uh-huh. And we were talking about issues, and so I am sitting there and very sick. We're talking about the surgery, and I am like, wow, those are incredible shoes. And he's like, yeah, I got them from Peru. Like, dude, let me ask how much our own pair of shoes like that is teen hundred box. I was it can I talk to her? Like, I love shoes. We made this little And action. And, so I ultimately like, you know, he's the guy like I he just and I have heard from many people, he was a miracle worker in the operating room, and so we scheduled the surgery. It was the week of Thanksgiving 2011 and I decide to have the surgery on a Monday because the week of Thanksgiving nobody would now like other than my immediate family, nobody would know that I was out of work. Nobody would ask questions if I took the week off. So I prep my team. I told my real estate team that I was going to be out for possibly a very long time, and they'd have to run the show and I went in for surgery, the surgery was as complicated as it gets that's the cancer Mass was as big as your head. It was as big as a basketball. Wow. It was wrapped up in all my other organs, Dr. Walsh took out my not only The cancer Mass but also took out my stomach, my gallbladder, my spleen, most of my pancreas most of my liver, he had to reconstruct the veins, and the arteries leading to my liver because they were smashed and crushed by the, by the cancer Mass. I was in ICU for three days. I woke up about 36 hours after the surgery started. I lost 50 pounds in three weeks after the surgery I do. To relearn how to eat all? While my wife was at home, taking care of three very, very small kids. I didn't work for nine months. I didn't work for three or four months before the surgery, just you, if you added up all the accumulated time off for reparation, doctor's appointments, my son, my wife having a child, my son's surgery, I took nine months off of work, And my business, totally fell apart and I realized after the surgery was over that I had made a major mistake. Is that even though I was in real estate, now the fact that I was so transactional and came back to bite me in the butt big-time and selling products or Selling Houses. Flipping houses, it was very much dependent Jamie on me going in and making the phone calls and talking to people and coordinating and being, you know, a transaction engineer. There's a lot of training programs in Guru programs out there. That tell you be a transaction engineer, that's very real, that's very true. It very many works, right? If you don't go and be that transaction engineer that day, right? Do you have a team that can transact without?

Speaker 2

30:10

 You? And do you really have a business? I mean, I mean, in reality, it's another job. Yes, you don't have a boss, but you kind of do because you can your, your kind of enslaved. At that role, right? I mean got to put food on the table. It's really not. At least the type of business. You probably want it. So.

Speaker 1

30:33

 Just.

Speaker 2

30:35

 I know we're going to get into some lessons that you learned and you have got those pretty well ironed out. It sounds like, so what's the transition there? I guess as far as you know, and to be clear, the risk with this show is we gloss over all this pain and hardship, and we you know that's not the intent. We understand. This is very real and was a very Human Experience, but we do have a limited time, and we do want the audience to benefit from the show, of course, right? So transition us, what was the transition like kind of from a mindset standpoint from say when you woke up in the hospital to, you know, Reinventing Your Business at. How did that application of Lessons Learned?

Speaker 1

31:16

 Go? Well, I think it started back to my father, right. My aunt. A real Mentor but very wise, man. He said to me before the surgery, he said Josh listen, there's going to be so many lessons that come out of this that, you know. I hope you make it. We all hope you make it. You were going to assume that you're going to make it and this is a major life event for you. He would tell me, and he would say there's going to be some major lessons that if you really pay attention. Ian in the second half of your life, all the lessons that you learn from this experience, we're going to have a major impact on the second half of your life.

Speaker 2

32:00

 as soon as I got. That's fascinating. I mean that really is you know and that's you start comparing different peoples adversity with other people, right? And in this case, you did have some time to prepare, right? So, yes, you were surprised by the condition, but you had time to prepare for the surgery and That is just wise beyond words.

Speaker 1

32:24

 That's, that's the reason why we're here Jamie talking and smooth because and I want to, I want to just want to recognize the fact that I got very Sage wise advice from my father to say, make sure you pay attention to what you learn. Don't just go through this and survive it, right? Go through it, survived it, please, son survived her hair, so he very close attention to what you learn along the way and use that in the second half of your life. Because he said it would be a shame if you weren't a totally different person after this, huh? And you are to.

Speaker 2

32:57

 Do good. That's, that's, that's phenomenal advice. That's just, that's awesome.

Speaker 1

33:03

 So yeah, that's me. And, so I started listening, I started really paying attention. And then so, one of the things I want business-wise Jamie, was that? I hadn't really invested for cash flow. I thought I did, I thought the business was producing cash, which it was, it was throwing off a lot of income, it was producing. Passive income. And so when I look at now fast-forward, 11 years, one of the things that I think Elite entrepreneurs do eight-figure nine-figure investors do we have a 300 million dollar portfolio? Now we have over twelve thirteen, fourteen million dollars flows into our business every year in rental income and just that alone is a massive amount of cash flowing through our business. Sure and I don't talk to a single tenant. You know, we have like 8000 people that live on campus of our different properties and I don't talk to a single one of them and so what I realized in the mistake that I made is that I didn't invest for cash flow now and do things to create true passive income. What many entrepreneurs make the mistake of is they invest their own cash in their own business, but the business still needs Sweat Equity to make money. Well, when you add in The Sweat Equity, you have eliminated, true passive income.

Speaker 2

34:21

 Sure.

Speaker 1

34:22

 This is one of the things in this is my number one characteristic that I learned in the number one mistake, I made 11 years ago. And the number one thing that I focus on every day now is, how do I add more top-line? Gross cash flow in the river in the department this will call the GPR gross potential rent. How do I add more of that to my portfolio, Every day, by renewals turning units adding more Property stored portfolio you know selling off anything that's underperforming or things that are optimized where I can exit that deal take the profit and then invest as a limited partner at it as a passive, truly passive investor to build the passive income because the last thing you want to have is what happened to me when you get ripped away from your business for nine months and you have no true passive income coming in. Then you almost have to work while you're trying to survive, like, literally trying to just make it another day in stay alive, and make it through the surgery and then make it through the recovery. And then imagine having to think like, how do I care for my wife and three kids still? So my bank account was dwindling down quickly. We were spending way more money, the business had expenses that we couldn't pay that were then going to fall on to me personally. All of that was the mistake. I made 11 years ago and I vowed that I would never make that mistake again.

Speaker 2

35:51

 So, what was the difference? It just quick with the business, you know, nine months. But you know between those nine months across the nine months, what was the difference before and after if you did a quick snapshot of your.

Speaker 1

36:02

 Business. Yeah. So before we were easily in like generating between the flips, we were doing some of the coaching programs and the seminars that we were doing our business was floating in For 25 million a year of gross income with about a 20% margin. So I was making 800,000 to a million bucks, a year of personal income, how we went with in that nine months because I couldn't do any seminars coaching, I couldn't really flip any houses or do any wholesale deals. I had to completely learn a new way. I mean our income, the next calendar year thereafter way under 2 million, with still similar. Expenses. So now Not only was I not making personal income to 800,000 to a million of personal income or you were bleeding — about three to four to five hundred thousand dollars that next year. Wow, is a million five and swing right a million to the positive to about 500,000 to the — and the cash that we had of both in the business accounts on my personal accounts was disappearing.

Speaker 2

37:10

 Fast right which is the last thing you need from a personal standpoint to get healthy And right from a family standpoint, all the other factors facets to your life. So I can imagine just mentally, it's all feeding on its each other. So, you know, the business is hurting you personally hurting your family and it all works together. So, how did you, how did you pull yourself out of that?

Speaker 1

37:36

 So one of the lessons, I learned right before the surgery is, I was able to get involved in a couple of deals truly passively. I was able to Here's the deal and arrange the debt recruit the private money. But I had an operator that we knew I was sick that he was going to do the deal while I was sick. He was going to basically fix the property up, and we were going to flip it and sell it, or we were going to keep it, and he did the day-to-day operational work and I arranged most of the private money and help find the deal and structure it. And then so my surgery was in November in April. Six months later I we got trucks for about a hundred thousand dollars from these two deals about 50 to 60 thousand of it was mine based on our split and I never saw the property more than two or three times that's all. Yeah. And I was like okay, what did I just learn from that? Well, what I did was I was specifically focused on finding the funding through private money, not family office money. Not in that from Banks, not institutional capital or Venture Capital money but true private money from private investors that I had relationships with that, were able too willing to put up the money even though they knew the circumstances with me that aha moment for me was like, hey Josh, the money, the freedom is in the funding if you Josh focus on relationships, with true private investors. That can fund that last piece of the capital stack, like, you know, debt for the first piece from a bank, or from a private lender, you know, this company. But the don't get or fail to get. I am going to focus on getting that. That was the aha moment I became fanatical about it. What are the SEC rules? What's 506 B? Once 506 C, how can I raise Capital? Can I create a fun? Can I create a funnel? What are all the things I can do relationships? How do I create it? Pitch book. And all, while I was still recovering, I was literally in my sweatpants up in my master bedroom because I could still barely go out. I could barely eat, I became fanatical about learning about private Capital so much, so that today we have raised over a hundred million dollars. When I say 100 million dollars, Jamie I am not talking about a hundred million dollars from a family office or from an institution or foreign Capital. It's a hundred million dollars from private investors. Like the mom-and-pop private investors that have between 100 Grand in two million box. A lot of guys with 200,000 300,000 100,000 50,000 a half a million in that range and I just said, look if I could get access to that type of funding, I could go buy any asset. I want.

Speaker 2

40:32

 Sure that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1

40:35

 100% of my focus. And so, one of the other lessons I have learned. Yeah. In fighting this is that the super Elite entrepreneurs, the Nine-figure investors, including myself and guys and girls that I know they have one superpower, they have one super Niche skills, one super Niche talent that they're unbelievably, good at they recognize it and that's all they.

Speaker 2

41:04

 Do. Okay, that's what they focus on. Interesting. Now, do you think your time because you were recovering you had more time to figure that out? I mean I.

Speaker 1

41:14

 Mean much time.

Speaker 2

41:17

 Yeah.

Speaker 1

41:17

 I had way too much time to think I was literally spinning in circles you often know many days thinking about like what am I gonna do? What am I gonna.

Speaker 2

41:25

 Do, right? So and that was more born out of. Hey this is what actually, what I am really good at is Raising capital and relationships or how did you make that decision? That's what you want to focus on.

Speaker 1

41:37

 I think like most entrepreneurs Jamie. It's a combination of its combination of reflection of what am I really good at like if I look back at my last day week month year, 10 years, what was I really, really good at what? That I really enjoy. Sure. And in this is so critical because this goes all the way back to my private practice. When I was a financial planner, like, that lesson that I got, from being a financial planner coming out of college and doing that. Calling my dad's lead as an entrepreneur into financial planning. Is what led me to be comfortable around money and I thought like when I was really in my joy, when I was really in my wheelhouse and having yeah I was meeting with a client, or I was on the phone with a client. I was talking about money. I was helping them plan their future, or I was talking to a private lender. Like I got off on that, I loved. It was fun. It wasn't really in like doing the deal like buying an apartment. It wasn't really in the D like buying a rental. It will or flipping a house. It wasn't getting the money to do.

Speaker 2

42:46

 It. Yeah. Now that's four. That's interesting. Yeah. So and it's really relationships and dealing with the money and talking about money and so that sounds like that's what.

Speaker 1

42:55

 You're gonna see me was. It was out of desperation like well yeah, that kind of adversity which yeah. Show. Right. You are facing adversity and you are desperate. You get really freaking creative. Like you try to find ways. Mmm-hmm all problems faster quicker because you freak have to.

Speaker 2

43:17

 Yeah, your backs against the wall. I mean it's you have no other options writer.

Speaker 1

43:22

 Makes a lot of sense. My dad's you're gonna learn a lot of lessons. I was like, okay, well you know I am learning too many here like I do but I learned wow. Like the comfort of being successful making that 800,000 to a million dollars. Actually made me less created that made me less flexible. It made me less, like I wasn't as good at solving problems because I didn't feel like I had to because I was making this big income, right? Sure the desperation the adversity. I became really creative out of pure desperation. Right. So when I recognize I got to solve problems and what am I really good at raising money? What do I really like? Raising money? Talking people out money. I am like, all right, let us focus on that. Yeah.

Speaker 2

44:07

 Makes sense. So the first one is first lesson was you essentially were two active or remind me exactly what the first lesson was.

Speaker 1

44:14

 Really the first lesson in it to turn this into a positive, right is invest for cash.

Speaker 2

44:19

 Flow now right, right. Invest for cash flow now but at that ties into your you were too active and to transactional in your business. So invest for cash flow now. And then the second one.

Speaker 1

44:29

 The one major one Jamie, is you? This is part of the desperation lesson. I Has talked about is that entrepreneur successful entrepreneurs people that come back from adversity, realize that they're all hundred percent responsible for their own life. Nobody is coming to our rescue. Like I realized that even though if I was going to survive I was gonna have a major physical recovery from this major surgery. But I also realize nobody was going to come and fix my business. Nobody was going to come and fix my income problem. My debt problem, like I had a major problem and nobody's going to come my rescue. So I had to get really creative like I just talked about that. Desperation made me realize I am 100% responsible, right? I can't blame anybody else. I am the one that got sick, like, so let us go fix the problem. That's the second major lesson. The third one is, you have to realize that most successful entrepreneurs are really only good at one or two things. They have a major superpower that they're good at, and then they leverage it, and they focus on it, and they think about it, and they execute on that most entrepreneurs, including me Jeanne have major faults major things. We do terrible, major things that were not good at but this huge portfolio that we have built. Now, this income that's coming through, Business is because I focused on one superpower which is I am going to be really good, understanding the rules, understand the laws, talking to the attorneys, networking with investors and raising capital, and then I will figure out where to park at all. Is it going to go to our fund? Is it going to go into an apartment building? Am I gonna buy self-storage? Am I going to buy retail? Am I going to do a rental portfolio? That didn't matter what I was going to buy didn't matter as much as I was going to go get access to all the.

Speaker 2

46:20

 Cash. I think that what would that really?

Speaker 1

46:28

 Right. There's nine or ten probably won't have time to get to them all but one of the things I think, let me skip a couple in one of the things I think that I have learned over the last 10 years that's been critical to my success. Is that really successful entrepreneurs and big income earners, they're able to scale by using what I call the one too many concepts. The one too many, which is your one person. Jamie I am one person. Were speaking through this platform to many people And every major successful entrepreneur. Is never, you realize never doing like one-on-one stuff? They're not doing a one-on-one lunch to raise money. They're not doing a one-on-one training, they don't do anything one-on-one to do everything one, too many. So the question becomes, how can I speak? How can I teach in front of massive crowds? How can I speak? How can I teach instead of the one person to 10 or to 100 or 200 thousand? How can I get my message out to hundreds thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people, how can I write a book? That tells my master Chuck it, I host the podcast that can, you know, tell my message. How can I have a YouTube channel up on Facebook platform and Instagram page? Whatever that looks like a LinkedIn profile, whatever that is. There's so many great social media platforms from the written ones to the video ones to audio like this. You have to scale one or maybe two of those platforms. Really well, and create a following of people. Who believes in you, who will invest with you, who invest in you, whatever that is and every major entrepreneur. Like they have that type of one-to-many concept nailed. They have one plaque on it, they're awesome at, and they have a crowd that launches them that follows them, that listens to them. And as I got larger and larger into Apartments, I had to raise more and more money and my YouTube channel, my podcast, my different platforms, all became massively important. I When I put out one message, like this one podcast with you, there's going to be tens of thousands of people are going to hear this. And that allows me to have a thought leadership platform and a message. I want to deliver, but also rape tons of money because the people who are on the mic, they automatically get a sense of authority, right? If you read any kind of book, like Robert cialdini's book called influence, one of them is called one of the major influences, his authority. When you host some sort of one too many concepts, one platform. This is a big one and I realize back then I was talking. Having far too many like one-on-one trainings. One-on-one meetings with investors I had a little lunch. I had a little, you know, soup with somebody, forget all that. Now I barely leave my house. Right. But I am on these platforms and have a major following an influence now. We started a podcast of no clue what we were doing in 2013. Like 2014. I remember if you know Michael block from his apartment like Michael was on my show it was like the third Huey ever did and now he's massive, and he's got all kinds of great stuff going on and, but we just did it because I am like well we had a pretty successful (webinars) that we were doing, and I am like this podcasting looks kind of cool. So that was a big one. Another major lesson Jamie was listening every major Or an 89 figure, investor use this technology. As a weapon, like they use software, like we use Infusionsoft, we use a program Builder Trend we use a program called happy Co we use a program called. AppFolio is a program called mailer light. We have all these software's these Technologies, and I am not just you know, playing with Facebook and flipping through. We're using software as a weapon. So much so Jamie. At we tell our staff, if it's not in the software, it didn't happen. Patron. So, Yeah, yeah. So Skills the CEO. Like I don't have time to talk to people one-on-one and find out what the hell's going on Numbers, Never Lie, right? If I can see the numbers in these different software's, whether it's we send an email. What was our open rate? We sent an email. What was our click-through rate? We have a podcast. How many downloads do we get? If we raise Capital, if we did a webinar, how many people attended if we have a 300 unit apartment? And you know how many of those are occupied, how many are paying? What's the, what's the effective economic You can see, I can see all that. I pretty much do this. I work out in the morning and then I get in front of these softwares and I use them as a weapon and I can make decisions without talking to anybody, bro. Where's back before? When I was doing a very manual business it was like okay, let us have a meeting. And talk about these deals and how we're going to get them across the goal line and how we can make 40,000 dollars on a deal, and we had to have a meeting about it, you know, it cold, collaborate on all of our notes and what was in our head? Now it's on the software. It didn't happen. And so that's a major one, right? That's a major one that I learned. It's a real thing that like, technology is amazing, but the adoption rate of technology is terrible, so many companies don't adopt it. Well, we tell our people, like, don't tell me, don't call me, don't text me and tell me. Software, and I can see it right? Major one.

Speaker 2

52:51

 And suppose you want a head-on before we start to wrap up here? Wow. Yeah, because if you did that in the C Class neighborhood, it wouldn't support that much value, as right. So Sure. Right. So you weren't one of these investors who hopped in the last 23 years and kind of just rode the wave. Then Sure. Yeah. It's not in your bread and butter, right? Yeah. Hmm. That's, that's Now would you say that same thing applies in your business with raising capital and you know go ahead speak to that. Right. Right. Locked up. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. That's really good. You have decided where you want to compete and it's not necessarily on price, it's on over delivering on the service side. Yeah. Right. Right. Sure. Mix. Makes a lot of sense and you're very intentional about, it's not a one on one, call with your property manager or your tenant. It's your very calculated about how you spend that one-on-one time. It sounds like so. So Josh, I know. We're pretty much out of time. And do you have a thousand things to get to? I am sure, but I really do appreciate you coming on. Let me, let me ask you like a few really quick rapid-fire questions before we wrap up. What is a book or two that you'd recommend for my audience? Yep. Dan Sullivan, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, those are some good ones. Okay. It's a really good one. What's one question? You wish. I had asked that I haven't asked Anything you want to touch on that, we haven't covered. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I think, I think I learned that one from James, Clear Rota, Atomic habits. That's a really good recommendation. That's a really good book. Yeah. It's very practical. It's just about developing that, I think it's, you know, goals are important. He's not knocking goals, but it's really the implementation of habits is where you should kind of focus. Focus, your attention is his point anyway. Where can our listeners find out about you what? You have got going on? Where can they reach out? Where do you want to point people to? Awesome. Well, you're one of those guests. You have there's so much we could talk about that. The only challenging part with this interview is like I said before, there's so many rabbit holes. I personally want to go down and so that's a good problem to have. So this has been a fantastic show again, you know, obviously, sorry you had to go through the personal adversity that you did, and we kind of do just gloss over it, but I am very thankful that you spent this time and you were vulnerable with us. So that our audience can benefit and understand that I love the just your father's advice about going into the adversity. That really hit me because you know, then you can kind of see it as an opportunity, you know, and a blessing, if you will easy for me to say behind the Monitor and the in the podcast. Mike. But I think our listeners could take from that, hey, I am going to face adversity in the future. We don't know what it's going to look like but there are lessons to be learned and impact to be made and wealth and all those other things on the other side of that, if you're willing to have an open mind about what you can learn through that adversity. So that's that for me. That was my biggest takeaway. I think I will have several other big ones when I read, listen to this one. But so Josh, I know I rambled there but I really, really want to thank you once again for coming on. Really appreciate it. Absolutely to our listeners out there. Thank you very much for spending your most valuable resource with us, and that's your time. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Speaker 1

01:02:09

 Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the form adversity to abundance podcast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast that helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. Thanks again for listening, and we will catch you in the next episode.