Building a $1.8M Portfolio by Outsourcing Your “Weaknesses”

David:
This is the BiggerPockets Podcast show 803.

Andy:
I’ve been doing that for 20 years, but I didn’t know I was doing that. I was always doing it for clients. I’ve always like, if you’re going to do a renovation, it has to make sense. If you’re going to renovate something, people are either doing it emotionally or as to keep pace with inflation. So anytime you’re doing as a builder, you have, things have to be, they have to appraise in order to be funded.

David:
What’s going on everyone? It’s David Greene, your host of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Here today with my co-host Rob Abasolo, looking even more handsome than usual. If you guys are not following on YouTube right now, you are missing out. Or maybe you’re not. The distraction might be so great, it’s going to stop you from getting your key performance indicators done. So maybe listening on Apple Podcast or Spotify is going to be better for your productivity.
Today’s show, fantastic. We get into it with Andy Gil, who is a real estate investor who has slowly built a portfolio based off his strengths, not his weaknesses, at a pace that he’s comfortable with and has overcome some challenges that he had early in life and is very open and authentic about sharing what those were like that many of you listening may relate to. So before we get into this any further, I’d just like all of you to consider leaving us a comment on YouTube and letting us know if you can relate to anything that Andy, Rob or I shared about personal struggles we have that has stopped us from being successful in business and how we overcame them. Trust me, you are not the only person.
Rob, what do you think that investors are going to find most valuable about today’s show?

Rob:
Honestly, I think probably that it’s okay to be weak. It’s actually kind of fun to figure out your weaknesses. I think a lot of people are ashamed of the things that they’re not good at, and so they’re scared to really tell people about their weaknesses and stuff. But we kind of unpack this a little bit with Andy and really talk about, once you figure out those weaknesses, it’s actually becomes a strength because you can start delegating them out and outsourcing it to people that are better than you at those things. And I really feel like that’s when you really hit the turning point in your business. So we get into that quite a bit. We talk about the ADHD component of our brains, me and Andy’s, and yeah, I don’t know. I feel like we haven’t really ever gotten deep like that before, or not at least in a long while. So I really enjoyed this conversation with Andy. He is a rare mind and I love it.

David:
Before we get to Andy, today’s quick tip is if you’re procrastinating doing something that you hate, try body doubling. Rob, what is body doubling?

Rob:
It’s basically when you ask someone to sit in the same room with you as you do something that you don’t like, so that you feel supported doing the thing that you hate.

David:
That’s a very good definition. Let’s get to Andy. Andy Gil, welcome to the BiggerPockets Podcast. A quick review of your portfolio. You’ve been investing for 20 years, have done 10 deals and currently own 12 units all in eastern Connecticut. You have a strict no T. rex policy for your tenants, and you seem like a fascinating individual that I’m interested to interview here. So tell us about this. How is that no T. rex policy working for you?

Andy:
That’s funny that that came up first. Yeah, well, the no T.rex policy, well, first, I’ll just tell you, T.rexes have horrible gas. And not only that, they’re incredibly rude, which is why we don’t allow them. But when I was listing the units, I dug into marketplace and hated the way that people were presenting themselves as landlords, as like, “I’ll only reply if don’t…” Et cetera. And so I went to ChatGPT thinking I could… I was looking to curate a specific clientele or a specific group of people for these units. And I really like dogs, and I think that people that take… I found that people take very good care of their dogs also are pretty, like they’re going to be good tenants. They’re able to curate the life that they want. So ChatGPT came up with this no T. rex policy after several, and it’s working out pretty good. No T. rexes have shown up.

David:
Okay, wait a minute. ChatGPT came up for the idea of not allowing T. rexes in your home?

Andy:
It sure did. Yeah, I’m not that creative.

David:
Oh, that scares me that ChatGPT not only can be practical, but it can also be creative as well.

Rob:
Yeah, because you were skeptical. You’re like, “Oh, no, it’s not that good.” And then I was like, “Hold on, let me just write a BiggerPockets intro really fast using ChatGPT.” And then you’re like, “Oh, it can’t be good.” And then I read it and you were like, “Wow, that sounds just like us.” And I was like, “I know. It’s weird.”

Andy:
Yeah, it is. It’s creepy. Yeah, ChatGPT. But if you use it as a tool and just kind of keep on pushing, you’ll get to your own authentic voice, which is scary, right?

David:
It worked in your case. So basically what happened is you came up with a way of advertising your units to tenants in a way that was less threatening, less demanding, not, “No this, no that.” I always see those posts where they put exclamation points, “Absolutely no smoking, parties, dogs, fun, cooking.” Whatever the case would be. And I think landlords can get away with that because in general, the limited supply in both housing to buy and housing to live in puts the power in the hands of the landlord. Of course, depending on the state, the power can ship back into the hands of the tenant depending on what the laws are like. But if you’ve started the relationship off by kind of jerking them around that way, you’re increasing your likelihood they’re going to do the same thing back to you when they get the power. Was that kind of what was behind your thought process for why you wanted to show yourself differently?

Andy:
I wanted to show up as my authentic self. We’re a family business and I wanted to… I know that if you… I mean, a couple things. I know that if I show my real self to people, then they’re more likely to share their actual situations. And so we also wanted to be able to, it’s not just revenue producing. This is housing, which fulfills a community need. So I wanted to be seen as an individual and not so much as a corporate entity. So I thought that if I presented myself in the ad this way, then I would be able to bring some guards down and have real conversations, which has been really, it’s been great to be your real self, show up and people show up as their selves.

Rob:
What has the tenant reaction been? Because obviously, this is very different from the norm, right? Well, what do you hear from the people that are actually renting from you?

Andy:
Yeah, lots of LMAOs in messages and then, “Hey, let’s get on a call.” And so it brings guards down immediately and then you have real conversation. So really, if I’m me, people can be themselves. So it is very different, but I’ve created a career that way. Most everything I’ve done is a little bit outside box.

Rob:
That’s awesome, man. Can you just quickly, all right, give us a sentence of like in your Craigslist ad when you’re writing this out, what do you actually say?

Andy:
I think it said something along, I wanted to be dog friendly. I wanted, and so I wanted to have that displayed. It was something about fur babies and whatever, fur parents, something along those lines. Sorry, no T. rexes allowed. Something along those lines. So it was like a punctuation and it worked really well.

Rob:
That’s awesome.

David:
Now, Andy, we often talk about people’s why in real estate, but I want to know, tell me about the impact that you want to have on other people.

Andy:
Well, that’s a loaded question. There’s a lot to it, but I think that my why is I really love the conversations that have entered my… I’m actually, you’re on my kitchen table right now. I love the conversations that have come into my home and that I’ve had with my wife and my children as a result of real estate investing. I think that financial freedom, searching for financial freedom is the end goal, but the leadership that I show within my house and the way that we can intentionally do business together and grow as a family and then also bring along, create win-win situations for others to come along, that’s more, I mean, the why.
I’m in my mid-forties. A couple more decades and it won’t matter to me. So when I’m in my mid-seventies and eighties, it all is going to go to the kids anyway. So I think that if you enjoy the journey, if you enjoy the process of it and you’re able to do what you want to do with the people that you love and bring them along, that really is the why.

Rob:
Very cool. Do you think you’re going to teach your kids how to do this too? Is the idea to empower them? Because you said you’re leaving it to them, so I know that this is sort of a, I don’t know, 50/50 in the community. Some people are like, “No, my kids get nothing. They have to work for it.” And then there’s the other half that’s like, “Yeah, I’m doing this for the kids.” So yeah, tell me about that.

Andy:
Yeah, so I have two children. My son is 17, he’ll be 18 in a couple months, and my daughter will be 20 in a few weeks. And yeah, my son is… I have ADHD. He has ADHD, and he struggled in a similar way I did in school, but he really excels as an entrepreneur. I’ve known I was an entrepreneur well before they had a name for that. And so he wanted to run numbers, and so that’s his part of… We want to help him buy a home when he is, by his 19th birthday with an FHA loan or 5% loan, whatever and so we’re kind of putting the groundwork in place for that. Him running numbers has helped him in school. Just the other day, he sent me a text message saying, “Dad, thanks so much for helping me with this. I have never had a real connection to the work.” And he was able to actually pass math as a junior in high school because of this, because of us running numbers together.

David:
You mentioned that you had ADHD. I’m sure that that had an impact on you growing up. Tell us about your early life. Did you have someone in your life to play the role that you’re playing for your son to help him navigate some of these challenges? What was your life like growing up?

Andy:
That’s a great question, and I’ll acknowledge that. When anyone says, “That’s a great question,” they’re buying a couple seconds, so I’m buying a couple seconds. So.

Rob:
Hey, it’s what us ADHD people do though.

Andy:
That’s a wonder, Dave, David, that question. Wow.

David:
We say all the time, “That’s a good question.” What we really mean is, “That is a question I was not prepared to answer.” I had that thought a couple weeks ago. I heard someone say, “Man, that’s a great question.” What that you usually mean, “I don’t know what I’m going to say to that.” Because it often isn’t a great question. Sometimes we say that in reply to like, “I just wasn’t expecting that.”

Rob:
What does it mean when someone says it’s a bad question? “That’s a bad question.”

Andy:
Yeah, that’s a hard one.

David:
And now I need extra time to think about how to answer your really poorly-worded question.

Andy:
I will answer your question. So I didn’t know. I grew up in a… I was raised by a single mom for most of my childhood and there was a lot of… I grew up in a traumatic environment. A lot of stuff went was going on, and so ADHD was kind of secondary. My mom was struggling to keep food on the table and the bills paid. There was a lot of things going on. So it wasn’t until I was later teens that… I knew I had ADHD, but I didn’t, and I knew that I was… I’m also 45, so this was in the nineties and eighties, so it wasn’t what it is today. I didn’t have… And I think that the result of me doing this work and trying to bring attention to neurodiversity is a result of being what I needed when I was a child. So I’m a scout leader, I’m a dad, I’m a husband, and so a lot of the roles I play primarily is to be what I needed when I was a child.

Rob:
I get that, man. I’ve been there and it’s always really interesting to talk to a fellow real estate investor with ADHD because it feels like for me, the thing that is so clear that I need to do more than anything ever is just delegate because I just am not a detail-oriented person. I just get too scatterbrained. Is it the same thing with you when you’re managing your rentals? Are you a relatively organized person or does the ADHD side of things ever get in the way?

Andy:
Yeah, the ADHD thing gets in the way all the time for essentially everything, and I think that I spent a lot of my life trying to mask and to present myself as neurotypical in the different roles and the different… I’ve been an entrepreneur for my whole life and I’ve gone in and out of employment due to circumstances, but even when I was an employee, I was an entrepreneur. So hiding that from people, that I struggled with organization, took up a lot of my energy, and it wasn’t in the last decade where I start to have this self-awareness of what my strengths are, that I was able to let the curtain down a little bit and tell people where I was struggling and where I needed help. And so the organizational component of it, I rely heavily on different apps and outsourced accountability, I suppose is the best way to do that, which allows me to shine in the areas that I’m great at.

David:
You mentioned neurodivergence. How did you lean into some of these strengths that you just mentioned, things you found out you were really great at?

Andy:
So I’m an excellent… I’ve developed skills at different intervals of my career, and when I realized what had been going on with and the impact that neurodivergence or specifically ADHD has had on me, then I recognized that I’m strong in strategy. In due diligence, I’m a machine. And so the hyper focus component of ADHD has really, really helped me to rapidly learn and take on new skillsets, like the skillset of developing skillsets I’m a master at. So it’s like creating systems and processes so that I can forget that this stuff goes on in an automated way is crucial for me because I’ll move past and once I master something, I need to pass it off because I need to go conquer the next hill. That’s really the hyper focus component of ADHD has been, once I named it and called it out, it’s my superpower.

Rob:
And you did mention in your corporate life you were sort of hiding this and everything like that. What did you do before real estate?

Andy:
So I think it’s really funny and I’m going to say that’s a great question because it is a great question.

Rob:
Thank you.

Andy:
Because I didn’t realize that I wasn’t actually in the game until recently. I didn’t realize that real estate, like owning the asset, the cash flowing asset was the end game. So I’ve been a builder for over 20 years. I was developing the skills around. I’ve been a remodeler and a builder. I’ve built, I don’t know how many homes from ground up, getting the permitting in place, zoning, designing the plans and selling the contracts and doing all the project management and et cetera, et cetera. But I never… And we did flips and we bought some different properties, but never with the intent to hold. So I guess before… I would now say the real estate component of my career is more recent, but it was like this, we talked about Jim Carrey before, Finkle is Einhorn, Einhorn is Finkle. It was like this aha moment for me where I was like, “Oh, I’ve been sharpening the ax and I didn’t…” A lot of people get into real estate and try to develop the skills. I had the skills already and then realized that I wasn’t in the game.

Rob:
Yeah. So tell us about that. Tell us about your first deal. At what point did you actually get into real estate?

Andy:
Well, I’ve owned a lot of different things, but this most recent… I mean, my first house, I guess my first house hack, we’ll talk about, so which kind of gives mindset. I bought it in 1999, and so I was a nurse at that time, and the lady at H&R Block told me that I was paying way too many taxes and I needed some write-offs, so I either needed to get married or buy a house. And this was in 1999, so I said, “I don’t have any credit.” Or I told her I had bad credit, and then some mortgage broker somewhere told me, “No, you can qualify for a 3% loan.” And so I didn’t want to pay rent anymore, so I found a house in Rhode Island and I bought it, and I rented out the rooms and actually rented out the basement, which was, when you talk about a basement, I’m talking about a stone foundation that was wet. So I house hacked, and I rented it to my brother, which was horrible of me.
But yeah, that was my very first. I bought it for $83,000. It was 7% interest. I went from $133 in rent to $750 mortgage. I remember being terrified. I didn’t know how I was going to do that, but then the little boom happened and we made some money.

David:
When you paid $83,000, was part of you thinking that you were paying too much?

Andy:
Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yes. Yeah.

David:
Never goes away.

Andy:
It was… I was like, “Are you crazy? $83,000?”

David:
It’s funny because when we hear that, we’re like, “Well, I’d have bought a house for $83,000. I’d have felt comfortable buying it for $83,000.” But at the time it was $83,000, you were probably wanting it for 71. You’re like, “This is just way too much.” And now we’re looking at $500,000 house saying, “Half a million dollars for that?” But 20, 30 years later, we’re going to look back and it’s going to be worth 4 million. We’re going to be like, “What? You could buy a house for under a million dollars? How’s that possible with that? It’s a million dollars to use a payphone.”

Andy:
Yeah, it probably will be. You’re probably not wrong about that. Yeah, they’ll probably bring them back as novelties and they’ll be a million dollars. Yeah.

David:
You just got to remind yourself all the time. Things always seem expensive at the moment you buy them.

Rob:
That’s true, man. So many people will, they always like to say, “Well, yeah, I mean you got in easy and blah, blah, blah.” And I was like, “You could literally say that about any real estate investor 10 years ago relative to the time that you said that.” Everyone looks like a genius in real estate when they do it for 30 years because they just kept buying it. Yeah, it’s like stuff is a lot more expensive than it was just like you said, but yeah, we’re going to be so smart in 20 years and then it’s like, “Man, I can’t believe you got that house.”

Andy:
Yeah. I mean, if listen to this podcast, if I go back 10 years from now, or if I listen to this in 10 years, the perspective I’ll have then will be so much different. I mean, I’ll listen to this and I’ll think, “Wow, that kid had so much to learn.” And it’s true.

David:
You look back and see a lot of things you wish you would’ve done different. The number one thing is I wish I’d have bought more of it. At the time I was buying it, I thought it was too expensive and I shouldn’t buy it. Now I look back, I’m like, “Man, why didn’t I do that every year? I could have house hacked. I didn’t have kids. I didn’t have a family. I could have went gangbusters.” But all right. So you mentioned hyper focus is one of your strengths. Is there an example of a time that this has paid off for you specifically within real estate?

Andy:
Oh, yes. Oh my gosh, yes. I mean, we could talk about the deal I just did or there’s… So due diligence is fun for me. Anytime that there’s, if you ever want someone to solve a problem and you’re in my proximity, you just go like, “Hmm, that’s weird.” And I’ll just jump in and I’ll come in and do all the research. I really love, I love tracking planning and zoning commission meetings. I know it’s really weird, but I hyper focus on… I actually, I love zoning because it’s what you can do with land. So I read zoning regs. I read planning and zoning commission meetings like they’re a romance novel. Actually, I see the storyline in it. And it’s funny because I was just telling my wife like, “Hey, this guy’s an (beep). Watch what happens in this next month.” We’ll talk about the different… Oh, I probably wasn’t supposed to say that.
But following things from month to month and the storylines in them, the hyper focus of getting into and immersing myself in something to find, to rapidly learn has been very helpful.
I’ll say actually for this property that I just bought, I went into hyper-focused mode and learned everything there is about. They give the tenants, we look up who’s in there, we look up what’s going on. I had to actually reconstruct the… I bought this fractured condo association, so I was buying them as individuals, but essentially owning a majority percentage of the HIA. So I had to involve myself in the… I had to reconstruct the business model of the HOA without actually having access to it. So that hyper focus, rebuilding their business with certainty certainly paid off.

Rob:
Did you know that it was a fractured HOA when you bought it? I don’t think I’ve even heard that term specifically, but yeah. Was that not a scary thing?

Andy:
Not for me. So your careers are built upon different pillars, and so as I lost my shirt in the great recession and learned to be financially… I learned financial literacy through necessity. And then at the next place I really was, I had this mentor at my last job that really, really instilled in me solid business principles. And so the specific component that I did, I ran a construction department and we did about $6 to $8 million a year, and so I was always hunting repeatable bit. I always knew that if I could find something and in large quantity, it gave me enough rope to make some mistakes and correct it. So I was always looking for repeatable ways to lean out the process. So when I was looking at this business model, it’s essentially 12 units of kind of the same thing, and that HOA is just a business that has income and expenses.
So it really, it wasn’t… A fractured, it wasn’t scary for me and I didn’t, when I originally decided to do investing, I bought, David, I bought your book. Actually, a friend sent it to me. I’d never heard of you. And so I listened to it all and our intention was to buy single-family homes. But then once we got into it, and then with my experience in commercial construction and estimating in the type of construction I did, it became pretty apparent to me that multifamily was the way that I was going to be going and where my strength was.

David:
Well, especially if you love analyzing things, right? Multifamily is a playground for people that love to a analyze things. I understand that you recently did a deep dive for your sister on one of her properties. Can you tell us what you did there?

Andy:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it’s actually my wife’s sister, my sister-in-law, but I consider her my sister for sure. Have you guys ever heard of Mystic, Connecticut? You guys ever spent any time over here? Foxwoods Resort Casino? You heard of it? Yeah?

David:
No.

Andy:
Wow.

Rob:
Not yet.

Andy:
Yeah, well, come on down. You should. You guys should come to Foxwoods. Yeah, so Mystic, Connecticut is an appreciating little mecca, little town in New England, and so the real estate is going crazy. My sister-in-law loves the area, and a house came on the market that had been neglected, and it was like anything that goes up in historic Mystic is gone in days regardless of its condition. So I had to jump in and really learn the specific zoning laws.
So she wanted to acquire this property. We were going to rehab it, and then we were going to build an ADU in the backyard, and really we just had 24 hours to do this, and this is where I excel. I came in, learned the zoning laws, learned quickly if it needed a special permit and not a special permit, but the definition of special permit or not, or if it can be done administratively, what that criteria was. And I was able to say with certainty that yes, we could do what she was planning to do to project a realistic ARV of what that would be and how much income that Airbnb or short-term rental could generate in a very short period of time.

Rob:
Up to that point, how acquainted were you with that process in general?

Andy:
I’ve been doing that for 20 years.

Rob:
Okay.

Andy:
But I didn’t know I was doing that. I was always doing it for clients. I’ve always like, if you’re going to do a renovation, it has to make sense. If you’re going to renovate something, people are either doing it emotionally or as to keep pace with inflation. So anytime you’re doing as a builder, things have to be, they have to appraise in order to be funded. So I was always doing that and learning how to… I see the episodes on how to kick back on an appraisal since the crash. I have a PhD in that. We’ve been trying to get loans funded on things that aren’t yet built is… I’ve been doing that forever.

Rob:
Yeah. Well, that’s good. That must have helped. I remember the first time I ever built an ADU. I submitted the plan. I mean, it was a six-month process to get the plans ready and submitted to LA County, which they don’t have a lot of regulations there. Just kidding. It was awful. And so I’d submitted it, and I remember they gave me the plans back three weeks later and the entire, I mean, it was 10 pages that were all just redlined, just so many comments, and it had never done anything like that before. And I remember just that is one of the moments that I felt probably most defeated in my real estate career. I wanted to cry. I was like, “I cannot believe I don’t understand any of this.”
And I remember going to sleep and waking up the next day, and then I read it again, all the marks. I was like, “Okay, that actually makes more sense than I thought, but I still don’t get it.” Then I went to sleep and I read it again, and then all of a sudden it really wasn’t that bad, and it’s like you don’t really realize it, but sometimes you really need to take it incredibly slow, sleep on it, come back to it because the stuff really does start to get easier once you realize that it’s not as scary as it seems on the surface.

Andy:
The thing of these things, so when you’re getting these things through zoning and you’re getting permitting in place for different projects, you have to think of it as playing tennis. You’re doing a volley, so if you’re expecting a home run right out of the gate, you’re going to be disappointed. So realistic expectations on this in timelines, so you’re going to go back and forth on some different things and you’re going to learn the specifics of each town and county and what they’re looking for. So no one gets through on the first time.

David:
That’s a great, great point. Yeah, and that could cause a lot of frustration. If you’re the type of personality that says, “I just want to look at it, make a decision, be done, move on, check the box.” That’s not a box checking thing. That’s almost like you’re sending scouts to do recon. They’re coming back and they’re saying, “This is what the other side has.” You go, “Okay, how are we going to strategize here? What could we do? Let’s send out that and see how they reply.” It’s much more of a game like that. So your brain likes that type of stuff?

Andy:
I love that stuff. I love development. Yep. I love, yeah, anything that if you can change the use of land and you can value add, I’ve been doing this stuff for a very long time, and I love the strategy of it. I love creating the relationships and going back and forth and creating something that previously… God’s not making any more land, but what we can do with that land is still up in the air and how much revenue you can generate with it. So that’s where I love zoning.

David:
All right. So what about some weaknesses that you outsource? What are some things that you don’t enjoy doing or don’t like that you outsource to other people?

Andy:
So this is like, these are… David, that’s a great question. Yeah, so I have the propensity to be a poor manager, and I’ll clarify that. The difference between leadership and management in my brain, and I don’t know what the actual definition of it, but management is executing the plan and then measuring that. So if I don’t have breadcrumbs along the way or notifications or accountability for what the original business plan was, then I can lose sight of that. So I have to create external accountability. So I do that with, I work as a consultant as doing some commercial estimating still, and I do three or four different things, but my wife is my partner, not just in life and in business, and so she really, she’s like my metronome. And so I’m not going to remember any recurring event that doesn’t have structure or accountability around it is in the danger zone for me, and I know that I have to externalize that and vocalize. I’ve learned my brain, and so I know that I don’t need to be, I don’t have to shine bright. I don’t have to be the center of it all in the… We can shine the light on other people, and the more we do, that’s leadership.
And so for them to grow, you’re trying to get people to where they’re going. That’s how I view leadership and the different…. I can’t, differentiator. I’ll leave that there. Yeah?

Rob:
Yeah. We’ll trademark it if it doesn’t exist.

Andy:
Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. Hashtag Andy Gil. Yeah, so I outsource routine accountability and management things. So I do that through notifications, through different apps on my phone, through having people check in on me, through creating body doubling. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this or not.

Rob:
Yeah, yeah. It’s effectively… So I tried this one time and it works well. It’s basically you’re asking someone to effectively sit in the room with you while you work through something just so that you feel like there’s camaraderie or support in that moment. Is that right?

Andy:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah. Tell someone what you’re doing and sit with you, and you’re like, “All right, I’m going to do this thing that’s hard for me.” So I mean, I may have the skill set to do it, and as long as I externalize and say, “Hey, this is what I’m going to be doing this time period,” that time period passes, and then state what you were able to accomplish. So for the hard things that are boring or that I don’t want to do or whatever. So that really is, and to be able to say vocally that I have the propensity to be a poor manager if I don’t plan well and externalize my weaknesses like that, that’s so empowering because I can say it and now we can all shine and move forward.

David:
I think when we see examples of success, we see LeBron James, we see Michael Jordan, we see Tiger Woods. We only see the strengths. This person can jump higher than everyone else, run faster than everyone else, does something better. What you don’t see, but is maybe even more important is the coaching staff, the general manager, the other players that see the weaknesses in that person’s approach and are actively going to fill that in, right? The coaches are probably spending more time thinking about weaknesses of their best players since the strengths are obvious. You don’t have to wonder what someone’s good at. That jumps out at you right away, but we hide our weaknesses. Owning that we have a weakness allows us to sort of coach ourself. That’s what I hear you saying, right? I know I operate best in these environments, so let me bring someone in to do it.
I know that I will mess this up. Let me put a person around me. It doesn’t matter how well you do at something, if you go crush it at your job and then you forget to pay the mortgage every month, like you said, it’s a reoccurring thing, and you’re like, “What does it matter?” And it gets foreclosed in two months. It doesn’t benefit you, right? You have to know what your weaknesses are if you want to be able to capitalize on your strengths.
And I know that there’s a trend right now, which is good and positive of people seeking to understand why am I like this, right? There’s a lot of podcasts, there’s a lot of books, there’s a lot of self-help stuff that talks about things we went through in childhood. The word “trauma” gets thrown around a lot, which is nothing against people that have legit trauma, but now it’s like, “Oh, my husband forgot to put the trash out” and now we call that trauma, right? But understanding why there’s a problem is not the same as coming up with a plan to work around that problem, to become more successful, right? It’s like, “Once I know why I’m like this, then we stop.”
We’re like, “Okay, job’s done. I understand what happened in life.” No, now you have to take that knowledge and you have to come up with a framework that will allow you to be successful, which it sounds like is something that you’ve done. I’m going to guess growing up, you didn’t have a whole lot of examples or people that were coaching you in this way. Is this something you sort of had to stumble into yourself?

Andy:
Yeah. Yes. When you grow up in an environment where everyone’s trying to survive and we grow trying to get to the next thing, there’s not a lot of thought process on future planning. And so even though I was around and even in my career, I was around a lot of real estate, we were building a lot of it, no one was investing in it and keeping it. So it didn’t occur to me to do that. So I didn’t have an example. I had, well, I had great role models in my life as a young man. I joined scouts early and my mom did the very best she could, and I’m at peace with that, but I didn’t have the growth that I’m able to afford my kids. And to be able to really, at this point in my life at 45 years old, legacy is very important to me. And that I’m able to provide for my children the framework to be successful in how they define that. And that in turn makes me successful.
And as a byproduct, we’re going to generate revenue and generational wealth. So it’s really, as younger man, I wanted to get away from poverty and I wanted to get away from, to be anything but the poor kid. And so it was ego driven. And at this stage in my life, I really could give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks about me. If I’m not your cup of tea, that’s cool. Move on, scroll and get to the next thing. I really just want, I have my why is really clear at this point.

David:
That’s fascinating. Rob, what are you thinking as you hear this? Because I feel like you can relate to Andy, you just haven’t said anything yet. You are a detail person. We had this experience buying the property in Scottsdale where we each got to bring up our individual strengths and weaknesses. Seeing how you work with decor. I mean, I was literally thinking some of the things Andy’s thinking, like, “If I had to pay attention to this much detail, this thing would’ve been screwed up in the first 12 minutes of doing.” I never would be able to hold my focus on Bed Bath & Beyond and thinking of, “How would this look in a picture?” Your whole brain processes information completely different. What would this look like? Would a guest want to book on it? Would they likely complain about it?
I’m at a 30,000-foot level from so many things that I need the people like you. I’m curious, is that a thing you’ve always been like? Is that part of why you have such a big YouTube channel and why you worked in marketing is you have this angle to see details that other people miss? And how has that served you and how has it worked against you?

Rob:
Yeah, so there’s this funny thing that was going around a couple years ago, I want to say. It was like a meme. And so basically, it was saying that there are two types of people. There is someone who their inner monologue is dialogue, and then the other type of person is their inner monologue are abstract thoughts. And so a lot of people saw this and they’re like, “Wait, what? Not everyone thinks in dialogue and not everyone…” And then the other half was like, “Wait, not everyone thinks in abstract thoughts?” I think in abstract thoughts. I’m scatterbrained. When I walk into a place and I’m analyzing it, I’m not like, “Oh, the couch would go here, blah, blah, blah.”
I don’t have that inner monologue with myself. So it, for me, I walk into a place and when I’m inspired, I can definitely focus on one thing, but it really is like I’m grabbing stuff out of the air and basically pulling it down. And so as much as I love that aspect about my creativity and what I do, I mean, my YouTube channel is very… I don’t script it out. It’s all ad-libbed. I have five bullet points, and it’s ADHD madness.
As much as I love that side of my creativity, there are times when I’m like, “Okay, it’s time to grow up and own some of these things.” I complain a lot about how I don’t have enough time in my day, and this has been a big business failure for me. It’s like I close my laptop at 6:00 PM, frustrated that nothing got done. That’s what it feels like. And so at a certain point, I have to just kind of own up that, yes, I have my strengths and weaknesses, but I can’t always use, for example, my ADHD as an excuse for why I’m unorganized or why I’m not able to advance. And so I’ve been making a lot of changes to my life in the last two months.
I’ve kind of talked about it a little bit on air, but I’m not a morning guy at all. Waking up at 9:00 would be the best version of myself, but I’ve been waking up at 5:30 every day for the past two months. And it sucks, but it’s this, an action step that I needed to take to actually be successful. I have employees now. I have 20 or 25 people at this point that are on my payroll, everything. I have a family that I have to support, and so I have to just keep myself accountable. And payroll keeps me accountable. So I’ve just sort of, I don’t know, I’m changing in a lot of different interesting ways.

Andy:
Are you guys familiar with EOS? Entrepreneurial Operating System? Yeah? Yeah. I worked at, the last place I worked at was where I was introduced to it, and we ran the company on that. I was on key staff and there was about a hundred employees there. And the difference between the visionary and the integrator are really, it’s really remarkable. So what I’m hearing you say, Rob, is that you’re a visionary and you are trying to become the integrator as well. And so I’d love to see how that turns out in the way because it’s really hard to hold space for both and to be successful in both areas. Your creative mind is what created your empire. And so executing that business plan, how you hand that off is really… And you’re able to, because you have to be, the product is you. And so as you release that and be able to chunk out different parts of it, I can’t wait to watch your story unfold.

Rob:
Yeah, it’s been fun, man. I think it’s, someone convinced me just under a year ago to hire a COO. They’re like, “You need to hire a COO. You can’t, you’re doing everything, and it’s obviously spreading you thin.” And so I did. And when I did that, I was like, “Okay, that’s great.” It really was a source of empowerment, but I still find myself failing the COO for what he needs to do by not getting him what he needs to run the business and stuff. Yeah, I mean, it’s like I can stay very comfortable at where I’m at, but where I want to be in a couple years from now is I want to have thousands of units that are very cool, unique places. And the only way I’m going to do that is I have to sort of hunker down and get in the weeds a little bit with my own business versus always trying to delegate it out. So it’s probably not the correct way. I don’t know. I’m trying to figure that part out.

Andy:
I mean, the wording that you used, the verbiage that you used along the lines of not using ADHD as a crutch as an excuse for everything, and that kind of accountability is really, it’s really empowering to… Once you own it and say like, “All right, well, this is an excuse, it’s a reason.” And then you fill in around that to be successful in the way that you define it. Really, I love the way that you described that.

Rob:
Yeah, man. Well, honestly, I feel like we kept this together pretty good for a couple of ADHD blokes. And David, you’re keeping us on the path.

David:
Yeah. And on that path, we are going to transition from ADHD to DDD. The next segment of our show is the Deal Deep Dive. In this segment of the show, we dive deep into a particular deal that our guest has done. And Andy, I understand that you’ve got a 12-unit property to talk about, is that right?

Andy:
I do, I do. Yes.

David:
All right. So we’re going to fire these questions at you. I’ll start. First question, what type of property is it?

Andy:
It’s a fractured condo community. 18 units, and we bought 12 of them.

David:
And before Rob asks his question, do you mind repeating what the definition of a fractured condominium?

Andy:
A fractured condominium complex is one that was intended to be single, owned by individuals with an HOA, and at some point turned towards investors and became majority investor owned. So there’s a lot of potential upside, yeah, as I see it.

David:
So the complex was owned by the people, sorry. Every unit of these 12 was originally owned by someone different, and then they had an HOA they governed to make sure your neighbor didn’t paint their house, Pepto-Bismol pink or played loud music or whatever. Then the people who originally owned them, sold them, investors came in and bought them. Then they started renting them out. So the HOA rules had to be adapted to accommodate for the fact that a lot of tenants are going to be involved. Is that basically?

Andy:
Not really. Yeah. So that’s where the opportunity was, is I don’t want to… Is that as a majority owner, I essentially get to dictate what the bylaws are and if at some point to change the declaration, the condo declaration. So yes.

David:
You own all 12 units that were originally owned by individual people?

Andy:
We’re closing on the 13th next week, but yeah, we’ll own.

David:
There we go.

Andy:
Yep.

David:
Okay. So 12 units in a complex that has more than 12.

Andy:
Yes, 12 units in a complex of 18. I’m sorry.

David:
All right, there we go. All right.

Rob:
How did you find the 12 units?

Andy:
Through a real estate agent that is a friend of mine, and he was posting a completely different property that I engaged with, and we got on a call and it was a pocket listing, and which essentially meant to me that the seller was not willing to commit to any particular agent, and I was correct about that. And-

David:
Commitment issues.

Andy:
Yep, commitment issues.

David:
That’s right. I bet you that’s part of why you got such a good deal on this thing. It doesn’t always serve you well to try to be in an open relationship with your agents. All right. So how much did you pay for this thing?

Andy:
$1.2 million for the 12 units.

Rob:
And how did you negotiate it?

Andy:
So this is really hard to buy actually. The seller who is, I still talk to three times a week. We’ve become good friends. He had it teed up for a cash-out refi through a local bank here. And so he really didn’t care if he sold it or not. So I offered asking and he said no. So then when we got into the details of it, he didn’t want anything, any item less than $500 was on me. And I was like, “Let’s get to a definition of item.” And then he was like, “No.” And so then I couldn’t see it. And so I said eventually like, “Hey, let me see the units and I’ll buy them as is.” And so we were able to meet, he’s a builder like me, puts his pants on one leg at a time. We became fast friends. He realized that I wasn’t going to lock him up in a P&S and then start chipping away. I intended to pay what we were. And we did that.
And the negotiation was tough. It was, but once we got in, I realized it wasn’t a real problem that we were fighting. And once we got into, if I could get him into the room to have a conversation that we could learn if this was a good fit or not, and I was spot on.

David:
I like what you said about it wasn’t a real problem. He was trying to prevent something that he thought could happen that you didn’t have any intention of doing. That’s beautiful.

Andy:
Right. Yeah.

David:
Rob?

Rob:
Oh, is it me? Sorry, this was such a great conversation. This is the ADHD. How did you fund it?

Andy:
All right. Yeah. So he had it teed up for a cash-out refi at the local bank. So the appraisal was already done. I didn’t know this at the time when we were negotiating it. So I have a partner in this deal. And so we went to the bank and we essentially, there was already a commitment letter that was issued to them. So we just requalified it within two or three days and we got a commitment letter and we went off to the races.

David:
All right. Now, this is probably the most fun question. What did you do with it when you bought it?

Andy:
Well, it had tenants in it, so the seller and I hit it off really, really well. So I really take my head off to the agent because he essentially stepped aside and allowed this to just happen because we were going to solve the problems together. And a lot of people, their ego get in the way of that, and he really did a great job by taking them back. And so we filled the units. There were a few empty units, but he really wanted me to, he knew that this was going to be my launching of this, and he really wanted that to be successful for me. So he filled the thing up, and so we took it over and was able to introduce myself to the tenants. Not everyone was happy I was there. And we’ve switched over a few of the tenants. I think at this point we’re going to be, I think we’re up to five that we’re qualifying ourselves.
But yeah, it’s a really great property because it’s one bedroom, one bath. It’s in, are you guys familiar with Electric Boat, the submarine capital of the world? Connecticut? I don’t know if… So we have 20,000. The EB is, the government is launching a new submarine line, so they’re doubling down. There’s 20,000 employees and they’re adding another six, 7,000. So any units within a 25, 30-mile radius is pretty much insulated from this recession that potentially is coming because all the trades people are being picked up there. So we’re kind of being propped up in that way. So I know that there’s a huge shortage of these rentals and I’m marketing to professionals that will be buying in the next two years. So I understand there’s going to be a lot of turnover.

Rob:
Wow, that’s good intel. You’ve just ruined that market for yourself. I hope you know that. Everyone at home’s like, “Oh yeah.”

Andy:
Well, no one listens to this podcast, right? You guys have a small-

Rob:
It’s pretty, it’s up and coming.

Andy:
It’s a small niche thing, yeah.

David:
What lessons did you learn from this deal?

Andy:
What lessons did I learn? I learned that, so this is deal probably put me on a path for multifamily. I learned that if I take on, like I took this property on and the rent roll was 13,200. It’s currently at encroaching 15,000, so that’s like a 12% increase. And I learned that anything over five family, I can generate my own… I can increase my valuation, I can create wealth this way. I learned about the five-year arm. That can be a bit scary, but if you are super analytical, I learned this is where I want to be. I’m going to do renovations and flips and things like that to fund these multifamily deals. I learned that this is where I want to be.

Rob:
That’s awesome, man. Well, final question. Who is the hero on the team for your deal?

Andy:
This would be my wife. I have this squirrel brain, this crazy, and I mean it too. We’ve been together for 23 years and we met as kids at 22 years old. And we’ve been through an awful lot of ups and downs, and we have a child with cystic. My son has cystic fibrosis. We’ve really been through it all. And she is the timing for me. She sets the pace, she sets the standard for our children, for myself and her belief in us, in what we can do together really, none of this would happen.

David:
Awesome. I mean, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone say that their wife was the hero of the deal, but that’s very cool to hear. Especially because if you think about it, in order to keep you operating at your best, she’s got to figure out, “Well, what are the weaknesses that we talked about? How do I cover for that?” Right? So that is what heroes do. That’s awesome.

Andy:
Yeah. I don’t know. My wife is a therapist, a mental health therapist, and my daughter. So it’s great to have a live-in therapist. That’s awesome.

David:
I need to marry a live-in masseuse. My body’s always sore all the time from all the various sports injuries. Now you got me thinking here.

Andy:
Yeah, no, you put that out to the world. Hey, all masseuses. David’s looking.

David:
All right. So what’s next? You mentioned that you have some tenants in the pipeline that are contracting for work and you recognize there’s going to be turnover. Have you already started thinking about systems in place that you’re going to use to handle the vacancy that you know should be coming?

Andy:
Yeah, I mean, as we grow, I think I don’t have a specific quantity of units I want to get to in the next couple years, but as we grow the systems, we’ll probably outsource that to agents to fill those vacancies. But I think that a really well, I have a pretty good following on Instagram, and that’s from being relatable. And so I think that if we reach out to people and advertise the units, well, like really show them creatively, then I think that they’ll fill. I’m not really all that concerned about vacancy as long as we act. If we don’t know they’re coming, communicate with the people that are leaving, make sure that we have our runway and people in place to do that in a timely way. I don’t think that we’re, I’m not that worried about vacancy from the experience I’ve had so far.
And as far as what’s next? Like I said, I really love zoning. And I have a couple deals in the pipeline right now that are potentials but no contract. Connecticut has this 830G law for affordable housing where it essentially overrides local zoning to allow for zoning rechange for affordable housing. And actually today I think they announced almost an 8% increase of what, 80 to a hundred percent affordable housing income levels are. So that expands the amount of people that fall into that. So we’re looking at a property potentially to develop into 20 to 30 units. I don’t know that it’ll go anywhere, but this is the pipeline along that I’m thinking. We want to eventually get to a short-term to mid-term rental hosting to get to a percentage of that to kind of… And that’s where my wife wants to come in. But yeah, we’re looking. We’re looking.

Rob:
So Andy, before we wrap up, can you give us a general idea of your portfolio numbers and where you’re heading with your current portfolio? How fast is it growing, all that kind of stuff?

Andy:
Yeah. We’re currently at 12 and we’re going to be adding the 13th unit next week through a creative financing deal. And my goal, I don’t have a goal number, but I have an aspiration. I think we’re going to get to about 30 units in the next 18 months or so if things go well. I think depending on what interest rates do, they pause today, but they’ll probably come up a little bit, a couple more times. What cap rate is attractive is to be seen. So I don’t really know exactly. I’m going to stay in touch and connected to it and move fluidly. We will find the deals, the value-add deals in my local market. I’m not quite comfortable reaching out yet to outside of this area, but I’m starting to play in that.

Rob:
And what would you say your total portfolio worth is now after years having built this thing and expanding it?

Andy:
I think about 1.8 I think is where we’re at right now.

Rob:
Nice.

Andy:
And half of, I have a partner on one of those deals. So I think that will be to… My goal is to be, and it sounds, I hate to say this out loud, but I think it’s important too, because the relationship people have with money is important. I think that a lot of listeners, it’s a dirty word. I think in the coming two to three years, I want to have a net worth of $1 million. I want to cross the $1 million mark in the next two to three years on my personal financial statement. And I don’t even feel like that’s aspirational. I didn’t think that something like this was available to a person like me. I didn’t think that… I knew I knew how to build, I knew how to run a business, knew how to do all the stuff, but I didn’t think I could get in the game. So that’s where I don’t really care about the unit count so much.
I think that’s where I want to be, but it’ll create some freedom. And honestly, if it’s available to me, if a guy like me can be doing this, really, if you just add on one skill at a time, develop the skill of developing skills, I feel like almost anyone can do this.

David:
And you’re still working for a builder while this is going on?

Andy:
No, I’m a consultant. I work as a consultant. I don’t have a… I’m self-employed. I do ADHD coaching. I’m a contractor. We do rehabs, remodels, and then I also work, do a bit of consulting for estimating and development, staff development in that area.

David:
What I love about, I mean, there’s many things about this show that are awesome, but one of the things that I love about it is that you didn’t feel this need to jump in and work 90 hours a week just trying to accumulate assets without picking your head up and looking around and asking, “What is the point of doing this?” You just stayed in the race like the tortoise, just slow and steady. I know what I like. I know what I don’t like. I know I’m doing this for my family. It makes no sense to sacrifice my family to get all these units and then brag to my kids about how they’re going to own a portfolio that they never wanted and they end up screwing it up because they didn’t get enough time with dad to learn how to manage it once it was handed to them or that was never their dream.
You didn’t overly stress yourself out from what I’m hearing, right? You weren’t like, “I don’t know how I’m supposed to handle all these rehabs that I have.” It can get easy to become obsessed with real estate, but real estate is not a asset class that really favors or rewards the people who sacrifice everything else just for this. It takes time to do. It is a get rich slow scheme. It is. Every property becomes more valuable every year that you have it, as inflation does its thing and rents continue to increase and you build better systems and you predict problems better. So you have to run the marathon. This is not a sprint.
And so many people, they listen to these shows and they say, “I just want the information in 12 minutes. I don’t want to listen to an hour-long podcast of a story. Just give me the answer.” Because they think that they’re just going to work really hard for two years and then be done and never work again. And this does not work that way. And I think you’re a great example of the right way to do it. What are your thoughts on that?

Andy:
I think that anytime someone apparently appears as a success overnight, so I got a lot of…. When we were posting, “Hey, we acquired this thing.” A lot of people didn’t think that we were in a position to do something like that. So I think that anytime someone appears to be a success overnight, there’s a lot of, there’s years and years and years of background work to get to that. I really… the Great Recession really scarred me, so I was really… I mean, we took a huge hit during that and I used to be called a gun slinger, and then I became extremely conservative to where the strategy, the strategic component of me, which is my asset, was refined. So yeah, I 100% agree that these things, your skills are developed day over day, one item at a time and until you become technically competent, technically on various different skills and that just builds.

David:
Thank you for saying that, Andy. Thank you for acknowledging building skills is important. You have to do that if you want to be good at this. It is not a secret backdoor to success that doesn’t involve having to get good at something. You got to build skills here just like you had to build skills at the job you hated that you quit to get into real estate. I mean, that’s some great advice. So many people get in and they’re so angry and they’re frustrated and I get the hate hateful DMs or they come to a meetup and they just want to, like, “You said that I was going to get passive income and I was never going to have to work.” I said, “Well, first off, I didn’t say that, but you have heard that. I don’t know why you believed it. There is no diet where you can eat a bunch of donuts and they’re not going to go to your hips or whatever the case is. It doesn’t work that way.” Right?
Rob’s waking up at 5:30 in the morning because that’s the only way that he can do it with the circumstances he has. He’s building skills. So thank you for being honest about that and not portraying it in a way that makes people want to go pay for your course or pay for whatever you’re doing because you’re selling a dream that they’ll never accomplish.

Andy:
No, it’s not real. Yeah, passive income is not passive.

David:
Yeah, it’s a great. It’s passiver is what I tell people. It is not passive. That’s it. It’s better.

Andy:
Passiver. I like that.

Rob:
It’s passish.

David:
Passish. There you go. The Passish Investment Podcast. All right, Andy, if people want to find out more about you or even if they want to connect, I’m sure your story’s going to inspire a lot of people. Where can they get ahold of you?

Andy:
Well, on Instagram at Coach Andy Gill. That’s G-I-L. A-N-D-Y G-I-L.

David:
Awesome. Rob, what about you?

Rob:
Yeah, you could find me over on Instagram and YouTube at Robuilt, and if this story was inspiring and you’re like, “Wow, I’m going to take action.” Or like, “Hey, I’ve been dealing with ADHD and I didn’t know that I could do this real estate thing.” If that was something that resonated with you, consider leaving us a five star review on the Apple Podcast platform. That way we can get served up to many other real estate entrepreneurs and help them achieve financial freedom. How about you, David?

David:
Find me on DavidGreene24.com or DavidGreene24 at all the social media profiles and let us know what you thought about this interview so you can DM any of us. Let us know what you thought. Definitely reach out to Andy and then leave us comments on YouTube if you’re watching there. We read those.

Andy:
I appreciate you guys.

David:
Andy, you did great, man. I really appreciate you being here. You have a great story. Thanks for being so authentic and sharing what really goes on in the real world of real estate investors. Not the glamorous, shiny TikTok videos where people are being taught how to become millionaires in a seven-second video.

Andy:
No, it’s just a lot of scars. I love, listen, it’s really a… It’s surreal to be meeting and talking to you guys after the amount of hours I’ve listened to you, to both of you and-

Rob:
Awesome. Man.

Andy:
… so I super appreciate the…

David:
Of course. Rob, what about you? Any last words here?

Rob:
That is a bad question.

David:
This is David Greene for Rob, the bad boy of real estate Abasolo, signing off.