Should you leave your W2 job and pursue being an entrepreneur?
This is a tough question… but very important. Only you have the answer…
While we can’t give you that answer, we can help guide you there. Are you currently unhappy in your job? Is it unsatisfying, are you looking for something more gratifying? It can be difficult taking the leap from a secure job to the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship
Being an entrepreneur and business owner is not as glamorous as Instagram makes it out to be. It’s not all private jets and luxury cars. Especially at the start… it can be a really rough ride. If it’s the path you wish to choose, you need to be sure of it.
The best way to see if you’re ready… start a side hustle!
How does that all work?
Find out on this week’s episode of Multifamily Investing Made Simple.
LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!!
Tweetable Quotes:
“I just wanted to build something, and real estate was the really obvious choice. Like there’s sky’s the limit.” -Anthony Vicino
“It could be great for the right person to house hack something with an FHA loan. Low barrier to entry.” – Dan Krueger
Keep up with the podcast! Follow us on Apple, Stitcher, Google, and other podcast streaming platforms.
To learn more, visit us at https://invictusmultifamily.com/
**Want to learn more about investing with us?**
We’d love to learn more about you and your investment goals. Please fill out this form and let’s schedule a call: https://invictusmultifamily.com/contact/
**Let’s Connect On Social Media!**
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/11681388/admin/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/invictuscapitalventures/
YouTube: https://bit.ly/2Lc0ctX
** Transcripts
[00:00:00] Anthony: Yo. Yo, yo. Hold up the chair. Sit down. Have a beer. Actually, no, don’t do that. Cut that. Are we good? Is this not for new? I’m try. I’m experimenting with
[00:00:25] Dan: something. Are they? Nineties rap.
[00:00:30] Anthony: I do think I kind of hit my peak in the nineties. Crisscross, though. I think a flavor, flavor, flavor of flavors are great, man.
Yeah.
[00:00:36] Dan: Too bad. I was like
[00:00:37] Anthony: seven. I was too young to appreciate the nineties, right? Truly, I’m, But I was Super Ninja Turtles, Uh, saved by the bell, Doug. I wish
[00:00:48] Dan: I had to go back and wear more neon. I, I should have leaned
[00:00:51] Anthony: into that trend. Dude, I feel like acid wash would’ve been my jam. I would’ve looked so good in acid.
I’m still trying. [00:01:00] Occasionally I’ll put some acid wash. You’ll just look weird. It immediately makes you look like you are trying to, as a nearly a 40 year old man, if I put on acid wash now, it’s immediately like, ooh, where do you even look? Um, I, I like to, I, I, I do my own acid wash at home, you know, while I’m, I’m, you know, tripping my acid and doing my.
Um, I put them in together sometimes and sure, sometimes I do it, but I don’t even tell Jamie that I’m doing it. And like some her stuff gets in there, so like, all our clothes are acid washed. Mm. Yeah.
[00:01:31] Dan: Mm. That’s unfortunate. I don’t know what to, what to
[00:01:34] Anthony: say. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you’re interested in this, um, I do have a YouTube channel called Acid Washing with Anthony, so go check it out.
Um, I’m really big in the DIY world of acid washing. Yeah, I was gonna say like small population. Small fan base, not so much, but they’re ravenous . There’s five people, but God love you, but they just push refresh on the, Anyway, Okay, so enough facet wash. [00:02:00] Let’s talk about something less esoteric like I was hoping you would fill in the blank.
Oh, I mean, I let us down this path. I, I what? Damn, Daniel. I brought us down this avenue of acid wash. What makes you think I have the, the capability of getting us out of this
[00:02:20] Dan: alley? I mean, I, I could try, I could try to pull
[00:02:22] Anthony: us out of this mess. Somebody’s got to, This is why, This is why we have partners,
[00:02:26] Dan: All right, let’s do it. So you’re probably here to hear about real estate. So maybe today we are gonna talk about, um, how you could transition. And I’m gonna be speaking for personal experience on this cuz. Didn’t even do like a corporate W2 thing ever. I don’t think. Maybe you tried being employed a couple of times, but we’re gonna talk about how we transitioned from like part-time kind of side hustle and re real estate maybe while we’re at a corporate job or while we’re doing other things into full on.
This is all we do 24 7. The
[00:02:56] Anthony: closest I ever came to what I would consider a corporate job, [00:03:00] and the only reason I consider it the closest thing to a corporate job is cuz it was the only job I ever had that required me to wear like a polo and khakis is, That’s rough. Can you guess what I did?
[00:03:11] Dan: Um, parked cars?
Uh,
[00:03:13] Anthony: no. I was a printer salesman at Staples. Okay. And I was actually a really good F house. I’m
[00:03:21] Dan: pretty sure that’s what Michael Scott ended up doing on an episode of the Office when for some reason like he got fired or something done. Oh, that’s right. He did Staples or Office Depot or I, Oh, Dwight. Dwight did.
Okay, nevermind. I’m sorry. Yeah, I imagine it looked exactly the
[00:03:35] Anthony: same. So here’s here, I, I wanna share this cuz I haven’t thought about this story in a long time. I was, uh, it was my sophomore year of college and I was working at Staples, which suck to you, where like this ugly red polo and khakis and like khakis are not a good look.
Okay. If you’re on YouTube right now, um, these are not, Dan’s not wearing khakis. I just wanna spec, like those are look stone washed. These are chinos. Chinos, Yeah. [00:04:00] Not khakis. So if you’re on, if you’re on YouTube and you’re like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Dan wearing? No, Dan would never, No, These pants look good.
Anyways, so I was a printer salesman and I knew nothing about printers. All the moneys made on the ink and what the, what Staples would always have you like, their big thing was like, you gotta get people on the protection plan, you gotta get people on the protection plan. It’s a complete rip off, right?
It’s complete rip off. But I was really good at selling it in my, The reason I was really good at selling it is because we had like a hundred printers and people would come in and I was literally just like, , 98% of these printers are complete garbage. There’s really only two that you need to choose between like, and, And for most people, they’re just trying to, like, back in the early two thousands, they just wanted to print off photos.
And so it was like, you need to go with this Epson printer if you wanna print photos or this other HP or whatever. And so I’d take them and I’d be like, These are, these are really just your two printers and they’re not even the most expensive. They’re just like middle of the Range Lake, but they’re best like by far.
Just save you a ton of time. If I was you, I would just go with this. The, these others are just crap. And when people are like, [00:05:00] when you’re just like kind of crap on all the other products and just like, this is the one you want. Like, people go, Oh, cool, thank you. And then when you’re like, Oh, by the way, you’re gonna want this protection plan because.
Like this thing, it’s the best of the best here, but like it’s a printer and these things break, and so you’re gonna get your money’s worth out of this protection plan. Guaranteed. So were those two legitimately
[00:05:19] Dan: like the only two good options, or were you just making that up to Well, here’s
[00:05:22] Anthony: the interesting thing on that is, and I I, I reflected on this, um, after I left that job, is I knew nothing about printers.
So I am not even a qualified. Uh, professional on which printer was best. All I was going based off of was the first week, and I was trained in, The guy that trained me in told me these are the two best printers. I never dug any deeper, never did my own analysis. I just, I just took his word and I was like, I’m convicted.
He says, Dirt to best. There you go. These are the best. And, and a year later I, I looked back and I was like, Man, I really knew nothing about those printers. Those could have just been too [00:06:00] pulled at random. That guy might have just. chosen them based off of the, the way they look. So that’s probably doing the same thing.
And you,
[00:06:06] Dan: that you were, I mean, were you even incentivized to care?
[00:06:08] Anthony: No, a hundred percent not commission any kinda, I was, I was getting minimum wage hourly, and then all the money I was making was on the protection plan. Yeah. I didn’t, And truthfully, So you get a cut of that? Yeah. Oh yeah. That was making good money.
That’s where I made my good money. I get it. When I was making my skrilla. Hmm. People still say that. Yeah. No. Damn. Anywho. Let’s talk about. How we transitioned from the corporate world. I was corpo staples. Yeah, I mean . I sold my soul. Yeah, did my time. How we transitioned from that W2 world to real estate.
Cause I just asked you a minute ago in the kitchen before we got in here, um, Cuz I wasn’t even clear on your timeline. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s actually kind of interesting cuz you, you like built side hustles on top. You stacked. Yes, before you jumped. Yes. So maybe tell us that story.
[00:06:58] Dan: I’m always a multi jobb [00:07:00] kind of guy, so.
[00:07:01] Anthony: Oh, I’m so sorry guys. I almost jumped, I almost jumped a shark. We almost skipped a segment. We did. We did. Okay, Rewind. Put a pin in that. Dan’s gonna rewind. Dan’s gonna share his story of how he jumped from W two to side hustle, to side hustle, to real estate. Actually it wasn’t quite like that. Um, kind. I guess real estate.
I was gonna take the second side hustle out, but I guess real estate was kind of a side hustle. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. We’ll get to that. Cool, cool, cool. All right. So what’s your bad investing advice for the week? All right
[00:07:28] Dan: guys. Oh damn.
[00:07:31] Anthony: You put your
[00:07:31] Dan: daddy voice on. Serious. Sit down and listen. , um, keeping your finger on the pulse of the market by reading Wall Street Journal or watching CBC is the best way to find great opportunities to invest.
[00:07:45] Anthony: I, Full disclosure, I never read a Wall Street Journal. Sometimes I look at it and I hold it and it makes me feel fancy. Exactly. It makes me
[00:07:55] Dan: feel really fancy. Amazing people do it because it’s not a cheap newspaper. I think about 150 bucks a year or [00:08:00] something like that. Yeah. But yeah, if you go to business school like.
You get it? Just because you feel like, Oh, okay, I’m professional. Yeah, a hundred percent. But yeah. Um, the point I wanna make here is that, uh, you don’t need to feel like you need to consume all this information about all these, you know, day to day news events, because honestly, it’s. It’s noise, right? Um, cnbc, Wall Street Journal, pretty much any kind of publication like that, even though we’re not even talking about print materials really anymore, they’re all just trying to get views, clicks, eyeballs, engagement.
So everything’s really sensationalized That is not really what a good investor does. All right. Buffet’s not sitting there watching cnbc. Uh, the grades do not have their head in the weeds like, You don’t wanna go out there looking for things like that because you’re gonna end up doing way too much, the best of the best, wait for those really extremely asymmetric opportunities that are so obvious that they’d be stupid not to do them.
And so what you wanna do is you wanna spend your time understanding markets, [00:09:00] markets cycles, the really, really big picture about how things work. Maybe start by reading, um, the most important thing by Howard Marks. I mean, that’s full of the kinds of information that’s actually gonna be valuable to you.
And then every so often it’s not gonna happen that frequently, but every so often something’s gonna be in front of you that is just incredibly obvious, and that’s where you wanna start to take action. Buffet has said that the most important rule of investing is to not lose money, and that’s also the second rule he has.
And so really you want to try to. Focus your energy on just those really good opportunities that are gonna be few and far between. So no matter how much work you do, how many things you invest, and you’re probably gonna have a handful of really great investments over the years. And the key is to eliminate all those subpar or crummy investments from the equation.
So turn off the news, close the newspaper, think big picture, and wait until something appears that you really understand. And it might just be a handful of things for your lifetime. Just do less
[00:09:59] Anthony: but [00:10:00] better. That’s Marcus Real right there. The, um, this reminds me, so I I, I posted a video the other day and somebody commented, cuz it was a video of something like, you know, about my journey of like, going from super broke to not being super broke.
And the video talks a lot about like high level strategies, concepts and frameworks. And the, the, the comment was frustrated. He’s like, there’s no details. and I was like, well, the thing is that details are super specific, whereas concepts and frameworks are universal. Mm-hmm. . And so if I can teach you this concept, this framework, and this way of looking at the world, this mental model, perhaps that’s going to serve you much, much better than me just getting into the weeds and telling you the details of how I did it.
And I know, and like I know from personal experience, I much, I like hearing the details from people, but that’s not actually the super useful. Like when you hear like the details of Howard Marks or Charlie Monger, how they did the deal, that’s fun and interesting, but that, that doesn’t like stick with [00:11:00] me years later and it doesn’t influence how I then move forward in the world.
So my, my approach is that frameworks and concepts not details. And when you get into the news news, one of the, the hallmarks of like making news newsworthy is that it has to be immediate. Like it has to have an immediacy because nobody wants to read news about something. Been taking place over the last 70 years, like, or that’s going to be happening over the next 50 years.
It’s like, what’s happening right now? Oh, this war in Ukraine, or, Oh, the, you know, the, the, the rising sea tide is like crushing Florida right now or whatever. And some hurricane, I don’t even know. Um, thoughts and prayers go out to everybody living in Florida, even without the hurricane. What are you doing people, What are you living there for?
Texas. Um, but the, the takeaway then is, Focus on learning the big macro concepts. You can get that from Howard Mark’s memos, Warren Buffet’s memos, Jeff Bezos memos. Like focus on those things and don’t [00:12:00] get so much in the details. The news, this is details. Honestly, I know nothing. It’s, it’s frightening.
You’re not missing much. It’s frightening how little I know. Yeah. Cause like a couple months ago, everybody’s talking about the war in Ukraine and how that was gonna have this big effect. I know nothing about it didn’t affect anything that I did, Didn’t change any of my perspectives on the world or how I moved.
and here we are months later. It hasn’t really manifested into anything meaningful for me. Gas, Gas, again, like not super meaningful to me personally. It’s big in Europe. I don’t live in Europe. If you’re living in Florida or Europe, you’re making mistakes that’s
[00:12:31] Dan: probably worth known about. So you’re missing a lot on that one.
But I think the point you’re making here is that like if you get a really detailed description of a thing, like you were talking about that post, that’s really only useful in that one circumstance. So unless someone encounters that one circumstance, It’s of no use, but you learn the fundamentals. Those could be applied to anything you encounter, and that’s actually useful.
[00:12:51] Anthony: Mm-hmm. . So, yeah, so broadly speaking, I know there’s a war happening out there and I know what happens macroeconomically when there’s wars. So that’s about, [00:13:00] that’s about the extent of it. I got nothing else into podcast. Get outta here guys. Now we gotta get, we probably wanna talk about the thing that we came here to talk about.
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s
[00:13:11] Dan: talk about real estate. ,
[00:13:13] Anthony: how about you tell me a story? Take me back through time. Yeah. Paint me a picture of young Daniel Kruger. Oh geez. Cer . Do you remember in the first episodes where I kept calling you Kruger? Yeah, everyone does that. Yeah. Um, sorry about that. It’s okay. It’s either
[00:13:30] Dan: Kruger or Kroger.
Kroger . Almost nobody nails it with Kruger.
[00:13:34] Anthony: Well, nobody wants to like tie you in with Freddy. They’re like, Ooh. Surely it’s not with Freddy, right? It’s my uncle. So take me on a, take me on a magical. Story ride through time. Tell me about the time. Six months before. You left corporate America and your W two to go full-time into whatever it is that you left to do
[00:13:55] Dan: Six months before I left.
Okay. So corporate finance, I was an analyst. Uh, it’s kind of [00:14:00] like the generic job you’d get if you go to school for finance. Um, basically that means you’re managing operating expenses, doing internal reporting and analysis. And after five years of that, I just fell asleep. Exactly.
[00:14:11] Anthony: Moly. Moly. So did I. So just saying that made me fall asleep.
So did I. Wow. Now
[00:14:14] Dan: it was useful. I definitely use a lot of that kind of stuff with what we’re doing now. was not engaging at all. I could work twice as hard and I wouldn’t see anything out of it. Might get a raise, a little promotion, but you know, you, you couldn’t just double your inputs and, uh, double your outputs from it.
That’s just not the way the corporate world works unless you’re in sales or, or something like that. But I realized that this was not scratching an itch, um, that I needed scratched. And, uh, I had already started a side hustle there. I was doing nutrition coaching and I realized that the entrepreneurial, uh, approach was actually really.
Engaging and exciting, and I loved it. I could work, work, work and, and actually see the fruits of my labor. And so, you know, before six months, um, you know, I’d say probably about a year, [00:15:00] 12 to 14 months before I actually ended up leaving, I was going hard down the, uh, entrepreneurial. Rabbit hole, The self-development rabbit hole, the sales rabbit hole.
Really just trying to figure out how can I grow this side hustle and make it better. So pretty much all day at work, it was podcasts, audio books, and then in the evenings working on the side hustle. But I was very much like mentally checked out of that. I was a hundred percent focused on all this other stuff.
So it was, it was a massive phase of, of consumption for me, and learning and curiosity, and it was, It was fantastic. I didn’t sleep much, but it was just massive amount of learning and I had, uh, probably about a year before I left, started to do, uh, some research on the whole real estate thing and that really perked interest cause I looked at a lot of things and that one.
Really got me going. That was the one that stuck. Mm, It was so simple. I mean, I’ve said a million times on the podcast, like I could wrap my head around that. The economics made sense. It was very [00:16:00] scalable. I looked at a bunch of small businesses. I looked at car washes, buying gyms. I looked at all these rinky dingle operations that you can buy on, you know, various business, uh, uh, brokerage sites and everything just felt like crap.
Mm. But then looking at the real estate thing, I was like, Oh, this, I could see how this scales. It makes sense, top to bottom and it’s incredibly lucrative long term, and it’s been proven out for
[00:16:25] Anthony: centuries. Were you, were you scared, uh, when you left the corporate world? Cause I know you had like your side hustle with the nutrition coaching and that was like pretty comparable income, so you probably weren’t taking a big hit there.
But there is still always like the, the fear of the unknown and stepping into, stepping away from what you dedicated your, your education towards and being like, Oh my, I went to school, got all that debt, now I’m gonna move and use, not use that. What am what am I doing?
[00:16:53] Dan: Yeah. Well, when I left, I knew, uh, the, the real catalyst was okay.
I was like, this, uh, this coaching business is [00:17:00] great. I make it about the same as I am for my salary. But it’s not scalable. Mm. Okay. I’m selling my time for money. It was, my service was very customized to people, so I had to put a lot of time into all my clients, which was great. Made me feel amazing, but I couldn’t
[00:17:13] Anthony: scale it.
Well that this is, that’s really important. I wanna pause there real quick cuz we talk a lot about entrepreneurship and how important it is, but not all businesses are created equal. And you had a service business that was tied to you. So in a way it was like a really glorified, well paid job. Absolutely.
And, and you could have scaled it, but the, that would’ve required you transition. into a model that you didn’t want to do. Exactly. I
[00:17:34] Dan: would’ve had to go cookie cutter, and that was my whole shtick was like, this is not cookie cutter, this is a specific program for you, Joe Schmo. It’s based around all, you know, your life, your schedule, your, your, your likes, your dislikes.
Um, and that was at the heart of what it was all about. Mm-hmm. , I was like, unless I wanna, you know, just do away with that and do all the cookie cutter stuff that, you know, all those fitness influences are doing. That’s, it would just be going against. [00:18:00] My morals, basically. Mm-hmm. . So, but he knew it wasn’t scalable and like I mentioned, real estate, uh, one of the reasons it clicked was it wasn’t just simple, but it was incredibly scale.
Yeah. And so that helped a lot. I had that kind of short term income figured out. I knew I could keep doing the coaching thing while I built up the real estate thing because, you know, despite what you might hear, um, it takes a while for that thing to really spool up real estate and actually start producing a meaningful income.
It’s not gonna happen in the first year, probably not the second year. The only reason it really got going, uh, around year two for me was I started working with partners and, and scaling up even. Yeah,
[00:18:34] Anthony: I was gonna ask about that too, because a lot of people get it. There’s a guy on social media just the other day who was like, Oh, you know, two years ago I syndicated my first deal about my first real estate thing and now I’m retired.
I’m like, Yeah, that doesn’t happen. That’s not accurate. Um, this person also, um, I’m not gonna go there. just not gonna go there. You’re about, That’s not, I was about to rant. I was about to get my soapbox, but that’s not a thing you can rant after the [00:19:00] episode. I’m kinda curious. I just want, I want people to set their expectations more, uh, in alignment with reality.
Like two years to retired, having done your first, it’s not, no, don’t set that as the expectation. But for you, like stepping out, you had the nutrition, which you started scaling down pretty quickly, if I remember correct. Like by the time you and I. joined forces. You, you had pretty much backburnered it almost entirely.
Uh, yeah. I think there was like
one
[00:19:25] Dan: or two clients I was working with just because. Good relationships, good friends. It was, it was not the, the
[00:19:30] Anthony: income, but at that, at that point, you were making a good enough income from the few buildings that you had acquired at that point, and that was like 30 units I think by the time we had met.
You had, you were up to 30
[00:19:38] Dan: ish. Yeah, it was 34, 36, something like that. Without actually doing the math. Something around there. Yeah, So, so it was starting to produce, there’d been, uh, two refis, um, decent amount of cash flow. These were small joint ventures. So it wasn’t like the typical 75 25 split. Mm-hmm.
where the general partner, which was me, is getting 25%. I was more like 50, 60%. So the cash flow [00:20:00] was actually starting to get pretty good by that point. It wasn’t, you know, uh, gonna be earth shattering or anything like that. . But as we started to scale into this syndication model, there’s, you know, other income streams that start to come from there, and there’s a little bit of fee income, stuff like that.
So that’s where it really starts to become a going concern. But I mean, I went fast and it was by like year two to three where it started to actually be. Something that, uh, that you could actually live on.
[00:20:21] Anthony: Yeah. And something else that’s worth noting here I think is like your wife Liz was also working during this time, right?
Like that ups the story and making pretty good money too. And no kids. No kids, no kids, right? And so I think like when you hear these stories, it’s really helpful to have context of like a hundred percent. You know, my story, I’m single, I don’t have kids. Um, I.
[00:20:41] Dan: Health insurance from her. So that piece was, that’s a big one.
That’s a big expense. If I had to go out and buy that for myself, if I were single, it’d be completely different. Mm-hmm. and on those first couple of deals. Um, not having a W2 income, even though that doesn’t, that’s not a big factor in commercial real estate, but when you’re doing like your second deal ever mm-hmm.
[00:21:00] um, your track record really short and it helps to have some income. So being able to have her. , uh, on that personal financial statement definitely helped the story on those first two or
[00:21:08] Anthony: three deals too, so, Yeah. Yeah, and for me, I know like my, my journey was very much aided and by having partner who was making money as well.
Mm-hmm. and so like to, to get started on this journey, I think number one is go find a partner. Go find your sugar mama or sugar daddy. I mean, it’s an underrated way of getting rich. I’m just, . Yeah,
[00:21:29] Dan: I mean, I think it it, it, it works, it works. I dunno if it’s for you, but I mean, this could be different for everybody if you’ve got a decent amount of cash pulled up, that, that might be less of an issue if you’re coming in with, you know, some, some net worth if you’re a little bit older, if you’ve got some, some assets already or something.
But I was coming in bare bones.
[00:21:45] Anthony: Yeah. And, and for context too, timeline wise, you had early thirties, probably 32. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:50] Dan: Yeah. And uh, you know, my net worth was, was negative. Really? Yeah. Um, the only reason it wasn’t negative was cuz we had a life insurance policy and that was bringing it to about break [00:22:00] even.
And
[00:22:00] Anthony: isn’t that cra that’s like one of the craziest things, like, I just did a video on this, how like it went from ADK in debt to, you know, multimillions and just a few years. Um, but that’s, that, that’s one of the crazy things about real estate or just entrepreneurship is like that number can like flip real quick.
Yeah. Really quickly. But then also I wanna,
[00:22:18] Dan: that’s, I wanna do video paying the bills. That’s, that’s like, uh, your balance sheet. Yep. It looks good on paper. It’s paper gains. So the bank looks great, but you can’t pay your bills
[00:22:27] Anthony: with, with equity, Right? So I want, I wanna do an episode or a podcast, a podcast episode on this later where we talk about like the differences between all the different ways that you can be a millionaire between being like a net worth millionaire, a liquid million.
Um, an income millionaire. Like there’s a lot of different ways and I think this is something that people get confused and so like when, like full disclosure, we’ll use like clickbait titles all the time because we’re trying to get views so people get consum, like, They come in the door and then we can grasp them with our awesomeness.
So hope. But we’re getting kidnapping people. [00:23:00] Sometimes we do if they’re, But we’re trying to get ’em in the door. So we will use like, Oh, the millionaire tag, because people click on that. But there’s a lot of different way, lot of different things that can mean. Right? Like it took me only a couple of years to become a paper millionaire.
Yeah. But in reality, like that wasn’t super helpful? No. At that point because it was all tied up in equity and a business and in real estate. And it’s like, unless you can do something with that, it’s not problem. It feels good,
[00:23:23] Dan: you know, It’s good ego boost. It’s cool. But I think when you say millionaire, the majority of people, unless they’re like in real estate, are in this kind of stuff, they probably either think you make a million dollars a year.
Mm-hmm. , or you have a million dollars sitting in your bank account. That’s what most people think. And generally speaking, when people say they’re a millionaires, that’s, those first two are not the case. It’s they’re worth a million.
[00:23:44] Anthony: Yeah, largely. Yeah. Yeah. So let, we’ll do a deep dive on that. I think cuz it’s a, it’s a super interesting one, but, um, you know, my story is a little bit different in that, um, my first, my first business was the result of [00:24:00] just getting fired.
And not even from like a glorious job at all. Like, it was like staple. That was not Staples. Okay. Um, but I did get fired. Did I get fired from Staples or did it stop showing up? Probably I would’ve fired you. I stopped showing up, so I think that’s a quit. Um, oh, this is fast. This is funny. This is funny.
This, this tells you what kind of person Anthony was in his early twenties. Uh oh. Um, Staples, uh, still has this, still owe me a pay. And every now and then I’ll get a message from the state of South Dakota saying, Hey, to claim this paycheck, you need to go through these hurdles. And I’m like, I just can’t be bothered to jump through those hurdles for $150
Oh, geez. Anyway,
[00:24:39] Dan: so
[00:24:39] Anthony: what’d you get fired from? Um, I was working at a climbing gym, so this was like during my professional climbing life. Um, and and truly like that. That sounds really. Really just means that I had, um, some sponsorships that paid, uh, you know, a little bit of money for me to go and live in the dirt and climb and stuff.
But a lot of my money was coming in, working at a climbing gym as a professional route setter. So I would travel [00:25:00] around the country to the competitions for like, ,
[00:25:03] Dan: What’s a root setter? I mean, you’ve already told me once. Yeah. But most people are like, what the heck’s
[00:25:06] Anthony: a root setter. So, so it’s the person who puts the holds on the wall and each in a climbing facility.
They, they create a root or a path, and there’s a particularly sequence. It’s um, it’s vertical, it’s vertical storytelling. Hmm. So that’s the way I thought about it. It’s like both physical and both art. Um, and to do it at the highest levels you have to, like, for competitions like Nationals, Olympics and like world championships, you have to be a pretty damn good climber yourself, but you also have to have this pretty esoteric skill of visualizing and then realizing movement onto a wall through plastic blobs.
So that’s what I did, and I was doing that for a long time. I got fired because I, I nearly died. Um, because in rock climbing there’s this culture of smoking. Weed and drinking alcohol. And one of the guys on the crew showed up high. He was the guy who was in charge of like setting the anchors. He did not set [00:26:00] ’em correctly.
And my anchor snapped when I was at the top of the wall and I almost fell onto a, like fell 30 feet onto a ladder. I got really, really lucky cuz I got the reflexes of like a mongoose and I happened to like, reach out and catch a hold, like as I fell. Um, the company didn’t do anything about it, so I filed an osha.
And then as soon as OSHA came in and they got fined and all this stuff happened, I got let go. So that’s a long, that’s the long and glorious story. There was a lot more going on there, but at its core, I wasn’t a great employee, so I got fired and suddenly I was like, Okay, what am I gonna do? A buddy had a, a window washing company.
He’s like, Come, do, maybe try this with me. I learned everything about washing windows from him, and then when I moved, I, I started my own and that’s when I started investing in real estate like a buddy. Shortly thereafter, I was making good. He’s like, Hey, I’m buying these quads. Do you wanna do this together?
And it was like that joint venture where you were doing it. It was like 60 40. And I was like, Yeah, but I don’t want to do the work. Yeah. So I was the other guy in that equation. I’m like, You do it. Like I’ll give you [00:27:00] money. How do you do? I was we, we did. We did fantastic. Like, yeah, we still have those buildings.
We bought them like in Oakland, California and like 20 13, 14, like we’re doing pretty good. That’s a good time to buy. So he’s a good partner. He’s a great partner. Well, Different
[00:27:15] Dan: episode.
[00:27:16] Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a, that’s a hard question to unpack. Okay. With only an hour on a podcast . Um, he’s great. He’s awesome.
I learned a lot from that. Dad. Dude was really, We should do a podcast on that dude. Yeah, he is fascinating. This dude, I had no idea who he’s, so he, he just gets onto like, he’s such a diy. He’s like, I’m gonna build a bicycle. And then he goes and learns how to like, actually cut the aluminum and weld and like all the things.
And he builds literally his own bike. He got into knife making. Uh, rad dude got me into surfing, taught me a lot. He made his own surf. So really cra really crazy dude. Anyways, so then fast forward a number of years and then I decided to get into real estate myself. Um, this was now I was, um, I had partnered with my buddy Ryan at Escape climbing the manufacturing, and we’re [00:28:00] making the plastic blobs now for the rock climbing walls.
And, um, that was fun. I loved it. It was really awesome. But I was just getting that itch to do something else that could scale because that business is very, very hard manufacturing import. It’s very, very difficult. And the, the worldwide market for rock climbing holds is only 50 million. And we had like 10% of that.
And I was like, Well, at best we, we get every, every market share and then we are 50 million, right? And I just wanted to build something. and real estate was like the really obvious choice. Like there’s sky’s the limit. Exactly. Yeah. So then I did a plex, um, did an FHA loan where I had to live there for 12 months.
But in reality, I just rent, I, I lived in the two bedroom. I rented out one of the bedrooms. I lived in the other bedroom, like that’s my address. But like, I was sleeping at my girlfriend’s house every night. Jamie. Um,
[00:28:52] Dan: Quote unquote live there. But
[00:28:54] Anthony: yeah, it was my home. It was my residence, but I never slept there.
Yeah, I got mail there. That’s the big one. [00:29:00] I kept, I kept some belongings there, but I, I wasn’t there very much. Um, and then that was really the start where I was like, Oh, this is a thing. Cuz like nine months later I was able to refinance it, get some capital, and then it really wasn’t until, you know, a couple, like a wa maybe like a year later where you and I met and then it was.
We started Invictus, I think we did a full year before I finally decided to like take a step out. Is that right?
[00:29:26] Dan: No, I think I did. I think it was more like six months from when we like Yeah. Cause well, until you exited. Exited, yeah. So yeah, it probably was more like a closer to, I don’t think it was a full,
[00:29:36] Anthony: So yeah, we joined, we, we did our first deals in 2020.
Yeah. In the beginning of 2020. And then I left Escape. It took a, like a step back and more of like a board of a director’s role, um, at the end of 20. . And that was a really easy transition at that point. Cause we had good traction at that, at that juncture with Invictus. Um, and more importantly for me was escape.
Making sure that we had teams and people in place so that as I started to [00:30:00] exit the, the, the, the system would continue to, to move. And so that was the bigger concern for me. It wasn’t about having money in the bank or anything like that. Cause at that point I was like, I was okay on that front, but I needed to make sure that that business was good to.
Um, and then in 2021, we’ve been going hard since then. Mm-hmm. and, and I had no regrets. .
[00:30:21] Dan: Yeah. So I guess you were passive, passive, passive first. Super passive. Yeah. Then active in a TriFlex with an FHA loan, which I think, you know, we’ve talked about on previous episodes. Is, is a really great way. I mean, it could be great for the right person to house hack something with an FHA loan.
Low barrier to entry. Cause I feel like you got into that for like 7,500 bucks. Yeah. So as far as real estate goes, that is a really low barrier to entry.
[00:30:48] Anthony: And you look at the return on that, right? Like, I got in for 7,500 and then a year and a half later I think I sold and walked away with over a hundred K.
And I was like, Did you refi in there somewhere or was it just I did do, I [00:31:00] didn’t do a refi, I, I leveraged it into, So I went to do the re. But instead of doing that and having to hire, um, debt placed on it, I just took a HeLOCK so I could, I could loan against it as I had opportunities. Okay. So that’s what I did.
And then I decided, as I started drawing on the HeLOCK, then I just sold the building, paid off the HeLOCK, which I’d use on some other things. So then it was good to go. But that’s, that was a cool case because there were so many different, What you start to realize is when you have equity in a building, You have a lot of options.
Mm-hmm. , you have a lot of things at your disposal, but when you don’t own things, whether that’s a building and or, uh, a business, you have fewer options for, I’m not gonna say manipulating taxes, but getting around, like reducing your taxes, Also getting access to lines of credit. Yeah. Right. Like just the start opening up to you as you start having equity in things.
It’s way
[00:31:51] Dan: more efficient. Way more efficient, because. , you know, you could have your equity double in a year. Mm-hmm. , and that is [00:32:00] capital that you have access to and you could tap into with a helo, you could do a cash out refinance, um, but you’re not gonna get taxed on that. Right? Where if you had, let’s say you had a hundred thousand dollars in a building over the course of a year, it increased to $200,000.
That’s, you know, a hundred thousand dollars that you have access to, that you could get, uh, tax. But if you had made another a hundred thousand dollars, you’d have to have Uncle Sam. Mm-hmm. a good chunk of that. So it’s incredibly efficient way to accumulate wealth without getting tax along the way. That’s the one downfall to having a, a job is, you know, every dollar that you earn in that job, tax man comes in, takes something, and then you get what’s left over.
Mm-hmm. . So it’s really powerful. Um, not quite as accessible as cash. Right. Sometimes you can’t get into it sometimes. Lenders just aren’t gonna give you helos or do cash out refis, like 2008, 2009 would’ve been tough to tap into equity if you had it, I think. But the markets are pretty dried up, so it’s not always there.
But generally speaking, this is, this is what, you know, the really wealthy people [00:33:00] do. Mm-hmm. , they don’t pay themselves a big paycheck. Uh, they borrow against their assets. Like must does this, um, Bezos, when he bought his mega yacht, um, you know, he’s not just taking a big paycheck, you know, he’s getting a loan against his shares.
Buys he yacht with it. That’s how Musk is getting Twitter. See if it does, but theoretically that’s how he was going to do it. Mm-hmm. with a loan.
[00:33:22] Anthony: So Yeah. And that’s the, the most interesting thing about this whole journey is just seeing like, as you rise through the different levels of wealth and like, we’re not even in the grand scheme of things, like we’re not super wealthy.
I wouldn’t even say myself like mildly wealthy. Like, just like peaking according to Richard Dennis, where I mean, We’re not even like the first team. He says like, We’re comfortable com,
[00:33:46] Dan: like . We’re like a little above poor in his eyes. Yeah. Yeah. I, I forgot what he called our, our
[00:33:51] Anthony: level. But, and honestly, like, that’s how I think about myself still.
Yeah. Like truly like as I think about like the different levels, I’m like, no, we’re still the beginning of this
[00:33:59] Dan: journey. Like, [00:34:00] say the way he laid it out. At first it was kind of jarring, but I was like, That actually is pretty accurate. I think a lot of people jump to the point of feeling really wealthy too early and they start to just get loose.
[00:34:09] Anthony: Yeah. So, yeah. But the thing that’s interesting is like as you go through these levels, and I would say you and I are probably, I, I don’t know your exact numbers, but I’m just getting gas north of five sub 10, right? Somewhere in there. Yep. Yeah. And so like we’re getting to that point where it’s like we’re starting to see much more how the game is played at those next levels.
And it’s just stuff. Isn’t widely known until you get into it and do it In a lot of cases, I
[00:34:37] Dan: mean, it’s, it’s not intuitive, right? I mean, the average consumer hears it from Dave Ramsey. That’s bad. That’s, that’s bad. That’s bad. But like, you know, the people who are incredibly wealthy use it quite a bit. Like, you know, they don’t put a TV on a credit card necessarily, but it’s an incredibly efficient way to.
To access your wealth and, and not lose it to the tax
[00:34:59] Anthony: man. [00:35:00] So h Hermo said something really funny about this. He’s like, It’s, he’s like, now that I don’t need it, he’s like, When I needed the money, nobody would give it to me. Now that I have all the money, they want to give it all to me at like the most ridiculous rate.
It’s like sub 1%. He’s like, I don’t need it now. I’ve, it’s like really funny world. I’ve
[00:35:15] Dan: been noticing this for like the last year too. Like during the deal we’re working on. Yeah.
[00:35:19] Anthony: Um, like bank, just like through. You know, lines of credit. Yeah. And it was like, Cool. Couldn’t get this before, but Neat. Exactly.
Don’t need it now. Really? . Yeah. I mean, that’s what I helped five years ago, .
[00:35:32] Dan: Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. But yeah, to your point, if you don’t need it, like you’re not gonna really use it, which is probably why they feel comfortable getting it. Giving a hundred percent. You’re not just gonna go by a a Ferrari or something.
Ferrari,
[00:35:44] Anthony: I have been looking at the Ferrari. not to buy, but I just like looking at it. I think it’s a really beautiful piece of machine. Well, I was
[00:35:50] Dan: listening to Leno bitch about Ferrari’s. Really? You know, they, they’ve got this weird thing where they make you purchase, um, [00:36:00] kind of like the crappier cars first.
I mean, obviously they’re not. Not a crappy Ferrari, but kind of like the, the entry level ones before you can start to get like the really nice ones. Like he really, they make you work your way up. A lot of luxury brands do that actually, no. Uh, really? Her maze does. I believe they won’t. That’s amazing. I think her maze has got this like really kind of popular like bag that everyone wants that makes, and you have to have already spent X amount of dollars.
Like you’ve gotta prove yourself to the, you gotta get into the club, dude. That is
[00:36:26] Anthony: just really. That’s a really brilliant strategy because it builds like exclusivity all through the levels. It does. There are people that buy into
[00:36:34] Dan: that shit. Yeah, a lot
[00:36:35] Anthony: of people do. A lot of people do. That would not work on me.
I’d be like, Yeah, you’d be up there. Like, I like I want that car. And they’re like, No, no. You must buy these car and these car first. You must spend these. I’d be like, I’m just gonna go drive my Prius. Fuck it. . I don’t even know why I came in here. I wanna
[00:36:50] Dan: say Ferrari might be like one of the only, uh, car manufacturers that does that.
Okay. But as far as like luxury brands, like apparel and, and stuff like that, I think it’s my coach. Coach doesn’t coach just say [00:37:00] anything. ? I don’t know. I don’t know the person world luxury brands like, uh, clothing that they’ll do that. I think
[00:37:06] Anthony: so, man. But that’s, I’ve never heard that before. I’m gonna do some digging, cuz that’s interesting.
Mm-hmm. , We, we need to do that into our. figure out a way where it’s like, Oh, you want to into our deals, but first you must buy 10,000. Passive investing made
[00:37:19] Dan: simples. Yeah, we got the shack. We got the shack over here. We’re gonna invest in, You gotta do that first. You gotta, you
[00:37:24] Anthony: gotta do our, you gotta invest in our crappy deals before we give you the good deals.
just, we’re not just kidding. We’re not gonna do that. We don’t have crappy deals. We don’t only have good deals. Uh, like that shack. It’s a good shack. Burger Shack, that Shake Shack, that Radio Shack. What would you do if I. To you tomorrow. And I was like, I got a great, I got a great deal. Dan Radio Shack. I’d
[00:37:47] Dan: say, You’re getting ripped off cuz I’m pretty sure they went bankrupt
[00:37:50] Anthony: decade ago.
Okay. What if I came in the next day and I was like, Okay, okay, okay. Radio Shack. Bad idea. Better idea. Blockbuster. There’s one I got, I got the one left, I got the one owns [00:38:00] still operating. What if I could get ’em to sell to us? I’d
[00:38:03] Dan: buy it because people go there just because it’s nostalgic and that’s amazing.
And I, I honestly wouldn’t mind walking back into a blockbuster because it would be, I mean, we’re just talking about the nineties, like I’d feel like,
[00:38:13] Anthony: wow, that was an experience that I haven’t had in decades. And now that you just said that, I was like, I kind of
[00:38:20] Dan: kinda like to do that again. It’s got the, It’s, Yeah.
Have you ever
[00:38:23] Anthony: read, Okay, Reed’s been into a video store, just making sure. It. Yeah. I was worried there for a second. I was like, Oh, is he too young? Maybe OkayHow. Okay. This we got really, I don’t know if we even hit the topic. I can’t even remember what we’re talking about. What are we talking about here?
How we got a W two into, This was a rambling episode. I don’t know. Like, God bless you for being here. It’s really cuz you need it. Uh, you probably suffered some
[00:38:47] Dan: brain damage. Yeah. After this. Well, I mean, I think we said what we, uh, I said say about going from. Side hustle to full-time gig in real estate.
Cause that is a common question people have, like how do you transition? Does need
[00:38:58] Anthony: to, And I do wanna circle back real quick. I, [00:39:00] I know we talked about it earlier, but this is, I, I truly believe this is like the most important piece of the puzzle. I assuming that you have a partner, the most important piece of the puzzle is to have a supportive partner.
Who is willing to like enter into this world with you both
[00:39:16] Dan: significant other or
[00:39:17] Anthony: business partner? Uh, I’m, I’m, I’m talking spouse, significant like life partner first. Um, you can do this without a partner. Dan and I both made the jump before we had partners, right? Business partners. Business partners, right.
But not life partners. If you have a life partner, they’d need to be on board. A hundred
[00:39:34] Dan: percent. Yeah. That’s, I mean, luckily Liz was totally on board with this, um, this venture. Yeah. Yeah. She, If you’re single, trust me, I broke it down to her and I didn’t just do it. I was like, Here’s, here’s how this works.
Here’s what it looks like. And she’s like, Okay, I trust you.
[00:39:51] Anthony: If you’re, if you’re single, don’t let that be the thing holding you back. They’re like, Oh, I don’t have partner. Okay. But, um, because it pros them, you know,
[00:39:58] Dan: just explain it to ’em, [00:40:00] let them have time to understand it. Uh, don’t try to just shove it down their throat.
Um, let them be a part of the decision, I guess is my advice.
[00:40:09] Anthony: or just do it and don’t tell ’em. Ask for per ask for forgiveness, not permission. They, they’re stuck with you. I mean, if you’re married, they’re stuck with you til death sign his loan application. Don’t ask any questions. Yeah. For better or for worse, you’re like, Okay, this is for worse.
You signed up for it. So it is what it is. Don’t do that. Okay. This is not relationship advice . Okay, So what’s, uh, what’s a book that we, last week we deep dove into the book Basic Economics by Thomas Sell Soul. So, so, so, Uh,
[00:40:36] Dan: like your soul. That’s, you remember it in,
[00:40:38] Anthony: in my soul. Yeah. Usually when we do these book deep dives, and, and again, if you want the sophisticated investor notes, you go download ’em invictus multifamily.com/notes.
Get the, get the notes. They’re awesome. But usually when we do these episodes where we deep dive a book, the goal is to save you time and energy so you don’t have to read it yourself. You can get all the important [00:41:00] takeaways and just a fraction of the. I’m not certain that we succeed in most instances in saving you time cuz we’re kind of ramly.
We take a long time to get to the point. However, for this book, you definitely wanna listen to the podcast that we did last week and you wanna read the notes because it is a 700 page book that you ain’t got time to read, but it is well worth having read. So are you. I was trying, I was trying to ramble longer there cuz you started choking on your monster.
I’m just choking.
[00:41:32] Dan: I’m good now. I appreciate, appreciate the cover. Hopefully our listeners didn’t have to hear too much of that. Yeah. For
[00:41:37] Anthony: a second there. I was like, oh God, you, That last sip of Monster was, uh, bad, bad. We got through it. Any, any, any takeaways on basic economics that you wanna share?
[00:41:45] Dan: I mean, if you’re gonna, if you’re at all interested in econ, like this is the book, don’t be intimidated by how big it is.
You know, get the audio. It’s, Yeah. Um, if you don’t wanna actually read the whole thing, you don’t have to do it all at once. Did you listen? . I have it on audio. I haven’t listen. Oh, interesting. The whole thing. But, um, [00:42:00] I’ve, I’ve, you know, that’s, that’s how I try to fit some of these things in. I don’t always have the time to sit down and dedicate, so I get a lot of books in while I’m driving, while I’m working out.
It’s a big one. Um, but, uh, yeah, don’t be intimidated. You don’t need to read the whole thing. Uh, but this is, I think, the best way to learn about economics. This book, this should be a textbook in, in college for econ. It’s not, I don’t know why not, but I would agree with that.
[00:42:22] Anthony: It’s really good. It’s accessible, it’s fun.
It’s, there’s a lot of stories. Um, if you’re interested, mildly in economics, but you don’t wanna read it again, our notes are out there, the podcast episode. Um, I think we did a adequate job breaking it down. We did fine. Five outta 10. I mean, it’s
[00:42:39] Dan: fine. That’s passing right. You, I mean, It’s so big. There’s so much you could take outta that book.
I mean, we pulled out 10 things. Economics, there’s,
[00:42:46] Anthony: it’s a big topic. Much more. Yeah. So that’s the book from last week. Again, you can download the notes@invictusmultifamily.com slash notes or just go listen to that episode, uh, wherever you listen to podcast episodes. Presumably you’re listening to us right [00:43:00] now.
So, I don’t know, just go back in the library. It’s a couple episodes back and, uh, that’s gonna, That’s it. That’s it. That’s. Um, I’m all out of things. I’ve said everything that there is to say, and the fact that you’re still here listening tells me that you love us and we love you. Um, however, truly you’re listening for no reason because no more value will be imparted.
You should just probably turn us off at any point and it wouldn’t be a problem. If
[00:43:29] Dan: you’re still here, you might as well leave a review. You obviously enjoyed it, so
[00:43:32] Anthony: if you haven’t left a review, but you’re still here, like, come on, come on, come on. And or dope. All right, and we’ll see you guys.
