Growth Through Strategic Relationships

Mike: This is the flipnerd.com Expert Real Estate Investing Show, the show for real estate investors whether you’re a veteran or brand new. I’m your host, Mike Hambright, and each week I bring you a new expert guest that will share their knowledge and lessons with you. If you’re excited about real estate investing, believe in personal responsibility, and taking control of your life and financial destiny, you’re in the right place.
This is episode number 327 and today’s guest is Stan Gendlin. Stan is a South Carolina-based real estate investor and totally crushing it in his market. But he really cut his teeth in acquisitions for CT Homes and Fortune Builders before going out on his own. Learned a lot there and has taken it to a whole another level. Stan recently moved into a new market where he knew nobody and out of the gate is doing almost a hundred homes a year including new builds and even new developments, which can really soak up your time. In order to grow your real estate investing business you have to grow your team and build strategic relationships with others that can help you.
And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk today, how to grow through strategic relationships and really kind of key relationships in your business to take it a whole nother level. As they say, it takes a team to build a dream. If you’re looking to grow your business, then you don’t want to miss today’s episode. Please help me welcome Stan Gendlin to the show. Hey, Stan. Welcome to the show.
Stan: Hey, man. Good to see you. Thanks for having me on the show.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. I’m glad you’re here and I’m excited to talk about this today because you and I are actually in a mastermind together, a lot of high level investors. And we talk a lot about partnering or how to bring other resources to grow your business and none of us could be doing 40, 50, 60 or more houses a year without finding people to help you with that, whether it’s like structured as like true partners or just the right kind of contractors or team members. And I think that’s where a lot of real estate investors get stuck as they try to do everything themselves.
Stan: That’s right.
Mike: So I know this is an important topic. Yeah.
Stan: Yeah, it’s absolutely important because trying to do everything yourself, I mean, I have several friends that I work with in this industry and I can see they’re just stuck trying to everything from A to Z. So bringing the right people in your business can really take you to the next level in really a heartbeat if you’re bringing the right people on.
Mike: Yeah. You know, truthfully I think most people are taught early on to just . . . most people if they’re leaving a job or they’re trying to leave a job or whatever, there’s a lot of reasons why people are lean and mean and just try to do everything themselves to save cost and be able to justify leaving their job or doing things. But it gets to a point to where you’ve just created another job for yourself if you try to do it all. And you can never get passed maybe a couple of deals a month unless you are wholesaling everything and keeping it a simple model then you could probably do a few more deals. But even then, if you’re doing everything, you can’t take vacations or get away or any of the things that you kind of probably started to do that for. You’re still chained to the day to day stuff, right?
Stan: Well, specifically for the work day what someone taught me was look at what you make in a year and break it down to your actual working hours or what do you work per hour. For me this year it’s going to be about a little over a thousand dollars per hour of actual working time. So if there’s something that I have to do that I could pay someone less than that to do, I will not do that. So if a contractor calls me and says I need something from Home Depot, I’ll either call Home Depot and pay them $20 to deliver it or pay the contractor money, go deliver it. Because if you’re working at the top of your game and you’re actively running your business, you should be able to be worth a lot more than a lot of these little tasks that we spend all of our days getting stuck with.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. Well, hey, Stan, before we dive into this topic, tell us more about you, your background and even what you’re doing now. I know you’re having a killer year so tell us more about that.
Stan: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so this is my eighth year, going to my eighth year in real estate. I started out humbly in Trenton, New Jersey. The capital of New Jersey, not a very fun place to live or work. It’s very depressed. And I came in right after the market crash in 2009 and a buddy of mine who I knew in the marines was flipping houses and he’s like, “Hey, man. I’m flipping houses. I know you’re in public relations.” I was just fresh out of college. He’s like, “I’m making $20,000, $25,000 a month flipping houses that really needs your help. I want you to come help me grow this business.” I’m like, “Flipping houses, that’s some late night TV scam. What is these guys trying to sell me?” So I go down to his office and see what kind of money he’s making, what he’s doing. I was just blown away.
At that time I was making like $7.75 an hour, minimum wage, fresh out of college. I’m like, “This is the American dream. This is why my parents immigrated to America for.” So I quit my job Monday, went to work for him. He paid I think $10 or $12 an hour. I was making $150 a week for like six months. It was tough. I was eating 99 cent microwavable dinners, that’s all I can afford for lunch. So I just work my butt off. I was there all the time just learning as much as I could. After about a year and a half, he made me a partner in the business. I just started learning a lot about how to find houses, market houses. At that point I got recruited by CT Homes from Andy’s show, Flip this House, to come out to California where they just moved to and help kind of re-launch the CT Homes brand as Fortune Builders was taken off.
So I told my guys, “Hey, it’s been a great experience. Thank you guys.” I gave him 45 days’ notice and just picked up everything and left to San Diego. And they told me, “We don’t know what you’re going to do here in CT Homes. We don’t know what we’re going to pay you but we’ll figure it out, just make it work.” So I went out there with a little bit of savings and just started trying to figure out how do I make money with this brand new market. I don’t know anything about the market. They brought me there to do acquisitions of marketing. I’ve never done acquisitions at that point so I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it.” So I got out there and I was just working seven days a week sitting in the office, calling every realtor I could. Try to get deals and then after about six months, it really took off.
I started building relationships with realtors. These deals were just flowing into me. And then within the next couple of months, I built and got a team quickly of interns because I didn’t get much of a budget to hire anyone. So I brought on all of these free interns from college, taught them how to do this, and then within six months they were all trying to quit college because they’re making so much money doing so many deals with the same MLS strategy that I was using.
So two and a half years there, we’re doing really well, a hundred deals a year. Decided it was time to, as I said before, unleash the power within and start my own journey. And my wife and I just picked up and moved across country to Greenville, South Carolina just because there’s a lot of jobs coming here. No family here, no friends, don’t know anything about the market. Just picked up, move across country and started my best trying to figure out what we’re going to do.
Mike: Yeah, and you specifically, I know we talked about this before. You specifically picked Greenville, South Carolina to go run your business there, right?
Stan: Right.
Mike: I mean you strategically kind of picked the market where you thought you could go do really well.
Stan: Yeah. I mean one simple reason, there were a lot of jobs coming here. And we know when jobs come to an area, those people that are taking those jobs typically need housing. And those jobs create usually two to three times more jobs than other industries. So we know there’s a multiplier effect every time jobs are announced in an area. So that’s how we pick Greenville.
Mike: Okay, okay. So one of the things that it’s interesting because you talked about how you build a team, you brought interns in. You started to build relationships with realtors or other people that could help feed you deals and that’s the basis of a lot of what we’re going to talk about today is how you can build a team around yourself to kind of grow your business beyond what you’d ever be able to do by yourself. So, where do you kind of get started if you, because again let’s just associate the average person listening to this is a newer person, smaller. They’re trying to get going or they’re doing a deal here and there but they get stuck because somebody calls and says, “Hey, do you own this house? Somebody kicked in your front door.”
And they’re like, “Okay, I got to go drive across town to deal with that now or they’re also a realtor so they’re listing their own properties.” They’re like doing everything and you just can’t grow. So where do you kind of get started to realize that, “Hey, I need to outsource some of this. I need to find somebody else to do these things.”?
Stan: Absolutely. I mean the biggest bang for your buck in this industry is definitely finding opportunities. And that’s kind of where always the starting point is. If you enjoyed doing the rehabbing maybe that’s something you keep in-house. If you don’t enjoy doing the rehabbing and you’re having to run across town. You’re meeting subs morning, day, and night like I used to when I moved here, I said, “I am not doing this anymore.” It was freezing outside. I was having to meet these subs at 8 in the morning and I’m like, “This is miserable. I hate this. I don’t want to do this.” So basically I just look at the things that I didn’t want to do and said, “How do I focus on what I enjoy and I’m good at and get rid of the other things or find someone who loves doing this and bring them in.” So it’s really starting at the acquisitions because that really is where we make plenty of real estate at buying homes.
Mike: Okay. So for you, you enjoy acquisitions, you become proficient at that and that’s obviously the foundation of our business. And you kind of go from there to say what are the highest value tasks that have to be done in this business and what are the lowest ones and start to realize that, “Hey, I need to get rid of driving across town to put a lock box on the door or take it off.” I mean because what you do is kind of look at tasks and say, “These are kind of below my pay grade.” Is that what you’d advice people to get started?
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Mike: Because what you is you kind of look at tasks and say, “These are kind of below my pay grade?” Is that what you’d advise people to get started?
Stan: Pretty much. I mean one of the best things to do again, starting with acquisitions. Because if you’re good at acquisitions, you don’t have to do rehabbing or retail sales. You could just wholesale and make money all day. Once you get into, decide to do rehabbing, that’s when you need to look at the rehabbing part of the business and the sales side, and figure out what you enjoy and what you want to do. So, again, coming back to acquisitions, that’s where it starts and really just like I started just two years ago in this market. So I’m almost as new as a lot of other people listening to this.
The number one thing to do is plug into your local market. I met the top realtors, all the top investors, property managers, anyone in town that I can add value to me, I tried to meet them as soon as I got here to add value to them and that’s where you realize like, “Hey, this person could be a great team member. This person can be a great team member.” And you have to plug into your local investing community when you’re starting out.
Mike: Sure, sure. And so would you say, because I want to kind of extrapolate on that a little bit or hear a little bit more. When you’re meeting realtors one of the challenges is when you meet realtors and property managers. For example, there are well-known group of people to go after that do exactly what you’ve done. Can you kind of give any tips on how to stand out because every realtor in town has been contacted by investors saying, “Hey, we really like to work with you”? So how do you stand out from everybody else?
Stan: Sure. For us, I mean we’re at a point now where we do enough volume to be the number one company in town. But if I was starting on new again, it’s basically we tell realtors we want to grow with them in the sense that you find us opportunities. Number one, you’re always representing us. So you’re getting a commission. Or if it’s your listing, you’re getting two commissions on the front end. And if you’re bringing us deals, you’re getting to relist it as well, so you’re getting a third commission. And I’m going to market the heck out of you all over my social media and everywhere else when I go to sell the house. So it’s really coming to a realtor as if you’re looking to build a long-term relationship.
Most investors call them and say, “Hey, I’m looking for a deal.” Yes, you and everybody else. But I’m not looking a deal, I’m looking to build a relationship with you to do 20 deals over the next one or two years with you and keep going. And that’s where we’ve really stood out is to focus on relationship building rather than looking for deals with them. That’s the number one thing that stand out from other investors.
Mike: Yeah. And I’ll pick your brain a little bit more on acquisition. So you and I both know it’s extremely important. Most real estate investors or certainly anybody that’s successful knows that. But sometimes there are people that are in this business that really want to be a real estate investor but they’re not. You know, typically I would say if you’re good at acquisitions, you probably have a sales person orientation. You’re probably not an extreme introvert, let’s say. I’m not saying you can’t be introverted but you have a mentality about you. You enjoy meeting people, you enjoy talking to people, you have no problem picking up the phone if there’s a problem instead of like hiding behind email or whatever. So that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful as a real estate investor.
And so sometimes people just truthfully, they just need to outsource the acquisitions even though it’s an important part. But what are your thoughts on that because I think some people say, “I know it’s so important so I’m going to keep in-house.” And then their business doesn’t do well because they’re just not that good at it themselves. But any kind of thoughts there?
Stan: Yeah. When I first moved here I teamed up with this guy. I mean he was super outgoing. He just loved being on the phone and talking to people. And I basically told them, “Hey, man. Like I will do all the marketing. You take all the calls. You talk to all the people, you lock it up. I’ll wholesale and we could split profits. Or I’ll buy it from you as a rehab. You’ll take it wholesale fee on every one.” That’s a really easy way to get rid of that. You find a wholesaler who is really, really good at on the phone, who loves being on the phone. And you just do the marketing part and maybe the rehabbing and sales and you let them do all the talking. That’s a really easy thing to outsource.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. And I think the important thing here is just to be true to yourself as an investor and just say, “Look, I’m not good at this.” Sometimes people like, “Don’t you want to admit it because it’s like an ego thing.” But it’s like there’s just some things that you just have to say like, maybe you are good at it but you’re better at other things. But it’s just like you have to be comfortable. If you kind of do an inventory of all the things that have to happen in your business, what do you like doing? What do you not like doing? Sometimes people are good at things that they don’t like doing, right?
Stan: That’s right.
Mike: My wife is like really good at the CFO side of our business but she doesn’t really like it, but it has to happen, right? But you just have to kind of identify those things and kind of break them up into what do I need to get rid of and what do I need to keep, right?
Stan: Right. Yeah, I mean, honestly real estate is a people business. You have to be outgoing. If you’re an introvert, I mean you’d have to break out of that. And I’m kind of dealing with that with one of my acquisition guys right now. He was on the phone yesterday with a seller and he just, I could tell he was beating around the bush before he gave his guy an offer. I’m just looking at him and I’m like, “Just give him an offer.” So he finally gave him the offer and he liked the offer, so that was good.
So I told him, “What are we going to do today?” And for the next couple of days, I’m having him go on Craigslist and calling a lot of sellers that are making the most ridiculously low offer. So he gets as many no’s as he can get to get comfortable with getting no’s. You just have to get over it and that’s an easy way to do that. But in this business you can’t say I’m an introvert, I’m not going to talk to people. We’re in a people sales business and you don’t have to do that job but you have to be comfortable talking to people.
Mike: Right, right. Even back to relationships or strategic relationships or partnerships, if you know that you’re not, then you probably just need to find a partner that can handle that side of the business, right?
Stan: Exactly. But even building those relationships, people are not going to build a relationship with you because of the numbers. They’re going to invest in you. Like our builder partner who does all of our rehabs with us, we have nothing on paper about splitting any profits or protecting him or I in terms of who gets what. It’s all handshake and that’s what I see a lot of the industry is. So again, I sold him on me and what value I’m going to bring to him. And that, again, that comes from being outgoing and pursuing those kind of opportunities.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. And if things go south, it’ll happen on one deal and then you move on. I mean, not that anybody wants to move on but I think a lot of times people get hung up on the legal agreements and contracts and all that stuff. And then it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth anyway sometimes because you kind of went overboard on it.
Stan: That’s right. I mean, if you don’t feel comfortable working with the person to the point of you got to have everything written out. And, of course, you should have agreements on some bigger deals and things like this. But I mean you have to feel comfortable with the other person regardless. And we kind of have a mutually assured destruction set up where he gets all the rehab money upfront to do the projects and I basically get all the profit at closing. So I could give him none of the profit of our sales and he can basically, I guess, keeps some of the rehab money. So we’d really, we have kind of a mutually assured destruction position that we couldn’t really screw each other over with. So, yeah.
Mike: Well, let’s talk about funding the right partner. So I know that it’s one thing to say, “Hey, I’m not good at this and I need to find a way to outsource it.” But how do you find the people that are the right fit? Maybe we can go through kind of role by role. So I know you have a good relationship with your contractor. I know you do a lot of new build stuff and also rehabs. So what advice can you give on finding the right fit for a contractor?
Stan: I mean, it doesn’t have to be a contractor per se, can be just a really good project manager. And that can come into a form of investor. So if maybe you’re in your local market and you see one investor consistently listing houses but not a lot of houses but they just look great. It might be worth reaching out to that investor and say, “Hey, man. You do a great job on your projects. Let me flood you with deals and I’ll bring some capital and you do all the work.” And that’s one way to do it.
Another way is just look around for people that are doing a lot of projects in several neighborhoods that you want to work in. And you see their signs in the yards but they’re just contractors, they’re not involved with the project and we see they have great quality and basically just reach out to them. So driving the neighborhoods was the fastest way I picked up contractors when I first moved here. Once you know what neighborhoods you want to do work in, just driving around and taking phone numbers.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely.
Stan: Yeah, for that role those are the top two ways I would say.
Mike: Yeah, that’s great. And true, we’ve done that many times before too where there’s a lot that can happen. So when you’re actively investing and you’re going out to neighborhoods, there’s lot of stuff that you can’t . . . Well, I’m not saying you can’t find deals in your office but stuff happens. When you’re in a neighborhood you might be able to find contractors. There aren’t many. The types of neighborhoods that we buy houses in, they’re usually older neighborhoods and somebody else is rehabbing at least one house in that neighborhood. If you drive around for a few blocks you’re going to see guys with trucks that are that are working in the house and stuff. So a lot of times you can find out.
And truthfully that’s going to be your competition too when you go to resell your house. It’s like what are they doing here, right? But yeah, absolutely.
Stan: I got to tell you go into the neighborhood and especially when you buy a project and you speak to the neighbors, that’s been one of my best sources of leads this past year. I’ve gotten some home runs just talking to a neighbor who happen to want to sell. And that is the easiest, cheapest way to get opportunities. And it’s such a warm open, just go talk to the neighbors and say, “Hey, I’m working on this house next door. Just want to let you know there will be some construction going on here, some noise. You know, if there’s any issues please give me a call. Here’s my number. Hey, by the way, have you thought of maybe selling?” if the house looks like it needs some work. And we just picked up a home run, unbelievable home run just two months ago with doing that.
Mike: Yeah, that’s a great tip. One thing I want to talk about is scale. So I think one challenge that a lot of people have with forming partnerships is, I mean I think you would agree with me. When you form a partnership with somebody, the best partnerships are the ones where you’re dependent upon them and they’re dependent upon you, right? And I’m not talking bad about people that are doing let’s say even like a deal a month, okay. And let’s say you’re wholesaling half of them so you’re only rehabbing one house every other month. I’m not saying anything bad about that person but that person has a hard time building a meaningful relationship with a contractor because they are not kind of mutually exclusive, right?
They’re still dating other people, if you will. So, on one hand, it’s like, hey, there’s some reasons now for you to try to scale your business up because you need to get to that point. But kind of share your thoughts on that issue because it’s a real issue, right?
Stan: Yeah. I mean if you’re going into a relationship like that or you’re only doing one deal a month. And especially when it’s for the contractor who can handle multiple, multiple deals, I mean that should really free up a lot of time for you to find a lot of opportunities and really have no excuses why you’re not bringing multiple deals for this person per month. Because I know rehabbing several houses and managing everything myself when I got started, that is such a time suck. So the amount of time that freeze up is incredible. So you need to go into that relationship knowing you can deliver those results and really being focused on bringing multiple deals. I mean if you’re in that situation that you mentioned, I mean there’s no reason to go into a strategic partnership if you don’t plan on quickly scaling and focusing on doubling, tripling what you’re doing.
Mike: Yeah. It’s even true with like an admin in your office or something else, right? If you’re buying even a house a month, they’re going to be twiddling their thumbs half the day.
Stan: That’s right.
Mike: You got to find ways to keep your people busy. It’s like chicken and egg, like you got to scale up and sometimes you might have to pay somebody that’s a little inefficient. Your business is inefficient but you just kind of make that plunge if your goal is to grow, and not everybody’s goal is to grow.
Stan: Right, right. I mean I think we can run our business with my wife and I and there’s probably a lot of people watching this that are maybe themselves or them and one other person. And with two people, you can probably do 20, 30 deals a year to make plenty of money and be happy. But as far as scaling, I mean, again business as a team sport and there’s no way to do it without partners.
Mike: Right, right. Well, hey, I’ve got kind of a question of the week I wanted to ask you. I know you’re pretty proficient at buying off the MLS which truthfully for me, I’ve never been an MLS guy. I mean we just started direct marketing to sellers and never had a lot of luck with MLS. Part of it is my market, the Dallas-Fort Worth market. It was never a big market for REOs. Just Texas generally wasn’t as bad as a lot of other markets around the country. But what’s the best advice you can give for buying off of the MLS like today let’s say? Because I know things are changing.
Stan: Sure. Yeah, I mean what we buy off the MLS even four years ago, even today, maybe 10% of our properties are REOs. So we’ve never even focused on REOs. You know, the magic is in the follow-up. We had basically a very simple formula. We would look at the MLS every single morning, look at any and all potential opportunities, call and get motivation first. That’s the number one thing you want to call and ask for. You know, a property might be . . .
Mike: Call an agent. Listing . . .
Stan: Call an agent, that’s right, and getting motivation from the seller. Regardless of what the price is. If the house looks like it needs the work, even if it’s priced at a retail, we will call and get motivation. And there’s many times where the agent said, “Hey, this couple is retiring, moving here and they got to sell this thing. You know, they’ll take a lower offer.”
And we’ve been able to get property $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 below list price within the first week of listing because of the right motivation. So that’s number one thing. You’re coming in, looking at the opportunities of the day, and then calling in every single one and seeing which ones are ready to make an offer on today. After that point putting them into a follow-up. You’re following up constantly on these properties that are sitting out there on the market. And every 30 days we’ll call and ask them, “Has your motivation changed?” Are they ready to lower their price now? I can’t tell you how many times those properties have come back to us. I think that’s kind of the secret of the follow-up. A lot of people will submit an offer, it gets rejected, they forget about it.
It’s following up on that property and having your pipeline full. And, again, building that relationship with the realtor and having them represent you because they’ll give you so much more inside info on the property than if there’s some other realtor calling because they’re going to get twice the commission. That’s really the process.
Mike: Thank you for sharing that. In terms of back to kind of partnerships and outsourcing stuff. So there’s stuff in my office that I have acquisitions people and I have admins in my office and then I have a virtual assistant team that does a bunch of stuff. Who on your team does that? Let’s just it another way, how do people outsource that to somebody else knowing that relationship building is an important thing? It’s hard to outsource that to a typical virtual assistant because they’re not going to be able to carry the same conversation that you might be able to have yourself.
Stan: Correct. And it was in a same respect as with the marketing. I did that exact same model with that wholesaler and I taught him how to talk to these realtors eventually. So he was just talking to all these realtors. I would send him all that I saw on the MLS. And he would just call and he’s a great talker. He loves chatting it up with people. He’s very Southern. I’m in the South, I have no accent to talk to these folks. And here, everybody loves college football. I don’t know the first thing about it so I have a hard time relating to people here. And he was very Southern and
. It was that, just find someone who’s great and loves talking to people and have them do that if that’s something you want to outsource. I would say admin, you have to keep that in-house and keep that close to the chest because a lot of times they’re managing your company’s secrets. Your kind of trade secrets, yeah.
Mike: Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. On that note, one other thing that people have a problem with scaling, let’s kind of get your thoughts on this, is that if I teach my people too well, then they’ll just leave and go do it themselves or go work for somebody else. I mean what are your thoughts there? Because that’s something that every real estate investor faces and you can either, again, keep it close to the vest and never be able to scale? Or you can take the risk or what are your thoughts there?
Stan: Yeah. And I have I think probably hired and trained about a dozen acquisitions people up to this point, and really I see the biggest thing that keep people on the team versus looking another direction in a bit of time is kind of painting that vision of where the company is going and what their role in that growth is. I mean if you’re bringing someone on and they think they’re going to be sitting at this desk pumping money into your pocket for forever, I mean yeah, they’re going to be mentally not challenged. They’re going to think of other ways to grow. But if you’re making it this is a stepping stone to the next great thing and we’re all going to do together. I mean, that builds loyalty and definitely keeps people on board. That’s what I’ve seen.
If you’re not kind of painting where that next step is and how we’re all going to get there and go together, people are just going to leave and go off on their own. So that’s the biggest thing. If people feel like they’re going to be stuck in this mundane role, cold calling year after year after year, you’re going to lose them.
Mike: Yeah, yeah.
Stan: You got to build that culture.
Mike: You know, I’m definitely not an expert in this space because you constantly are evolving, right?
Stan: That’s right.
Mike: Yeah, it looks like the sun popped right in your face there.
Stan: That’s right.
Mike: You got to just ask people on your team, what . . . Because you sometimes expect that people, not everybody’s goals are the same, right? So like, what do you want? What do you see yourself in a year or two? What would you like to be doing? And not that you can always meet those goals but at least you have . . . I mean I’ve had people that like they’re just happy just plugging away. You don’t really want that from a salesperson’s standpoint but from an administrative standpoint. Hey, if you just want like a reliable job that is flexible, that helps you kind of have your family life and stuff like that, then I can give that to you, you know. That’s one of the tougher thing let’s say in an administrative role.
There’s not a lot of, I mean we don’t have like three layers of administrative people where you could like now you’re a senior admin. I mean it’s harder I would say to meet the expectations of administrative people if their goal is to just stay in an admin role because it’s hard to expand that role. I mean by definition, you want to keep it simple, right?
Stan: Well, yeah. You definitely want to keep it simple. We’re pretty big kind of share with the company as we do well, they do well especially if they’re a crucial part of the team. I mean if they’re not, they probably shouldn’t be working for you in the first place. So we’re big on kind of bonuses and as we do well we want to reward them and we’ll be very generous there because, I mean the goal is for anyone in this business I think a lot of the time is to get to a point where you can go travel the world, to be with your family and not have to be in the office every single day. Even though I know crazy people like you and I will never do that and work 80 hours a week even though we don’t have to. But I know that’s the goal, at least we tell ourselves that.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Stan, is there anything that we’ve missed out on about kind of building relationships? Anything that we didn’t cover that you want to talk about.
Stan: Well, I think it’s just important for people to realize I moved here two years ago not knowing a single person, how to rehab properties, how to market for properties. I knew acquisitions, that’s all I knew. And I was able to go from that to doing I think we have 28 projects right now and four developments, and a growing rental portfolio. So you can grow so quick by these strategic partnerships. But really the key is to get out there, make yourself known, tell people what you’re going to do. Even if you haven’t done it already, it doesn’t matter.
As long as you’re driven and hungry, and people feel that passion from you, they’re going to get on your team. And that’s how we’re able to get some of these great partners we have now that people have given us money. Our builder, our realtors we work with, they kind of saw the passion and where we’re going and so it doesn’t matter where you are today, it’s where you’re going.
Mike: Yeah. And I think for people listening and this is what I’m trying to convey more and more is like, the real estate investing and all those skills you learn is a tangible skill that you can take with you. I mean take with you into a new market, like geographic market or help you adjust in your current market as the market shifts, right? And so a lot of times people assume that guys like I said had bought hundreds of houses or have a ton of experience, like what did you do . . . People will say, “What did you do when this happened?” I’m like, “Well, that’s never happened to me but here’s what I would do.” You just start to get comfortable with like, “Hey, stuff is going to come my way that I’ve never dealt with before. But I want to be able to make a decision instantly on what to do just because this job ends up being, this is kind of not job, but these businesses of being problem solving, right?
Stan: That’s all it is. That’s really all it is.
Mike: Yeah, yeah.
Stan: So whether you’re solving the problems of the people that are calling you, problems that the contractors have that a lot of times you and I both know they should be able solve themselves like where is the light switch go, you know? We’re in a problem solving business. Yeah, I mean the faster you can solve the problems or teach other people to solve it themselves, I mean the faster you’ll grow.
Mike: Yeah, awesome. Well, Stan, if folks wanted to learn more about you or what you’re working on. Where should they go to find you?
Stan: Sure. They could always email me on my company email, that’s [email protected], that’s gendlinhomes.com.
Mike: Awesome. We’ll add that down below the show notes here. So, well hey, thanks for spending time with us today. Great talking to you.
Stan: Yeah. It’s a pleasure, man. I love giving back to people and I hope someone, a lot of people got some good thing out of this. I’m really excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mike: Absolutely. And everybody, thanks for joining us. This is episode number 327. So we’ve got a lot of content. We’re going to keep it coming at you so please stick with us. Everybody have a great day, have a great week. Thanks.
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