I wanted to write out a post about my career in business and investing to recap my background and experience that fits well with moving into apartment syndication. Enjoy!
I’ve successfully partnered on two separate painting businesses. Both became licensed despite the first owner not securing a license for over 40 years and the second not having a journeyman painter in the company to start. The first business hadn’t ever realized it's potential until we partnered and re-positioned it. It hadn’t ever done more than $60,000 in revenue and by the end of the first year of partnership we’d done over $113,000 in revenue. The following year we were a few hundred dollars short of $500,000 in gross revenue. Unfortunately the owner of that first partnership passed away and so the business closed down. I started my own painting business in another partnership and despite not having a 40 year track history and customer base to work off of we did over $300,000 in revenue in our first year while also landing big commercial clients like Costco, Walmart, and the VA, which we hadn’t done previously in the other company. We also implemented an exhaustive intake and retention marketing campaign that utilizes email marketing campaigns, live answering services, and videos that introduce us to our customers. This has been systematized and would be similar to how we’d operate updating investors on the status and progress of an investment as well as revamp the intake process for new tenants seeking to rent from us. I’ve since trained up the right resources and put systems in place to turn that business into passive income where it takes very little of my time now, but still spits off reliable income each and every month.
I’ve successfully partnered on two separate painting businesses. Both became licensed despite the first owner not securing a license for over 40 years and the second not having a journeyman painter in the company to start. The first business hadn’t ever realized it's potential until we partnered and re-positioned it. It hadn’t ever done more than $60,000 in revenue and by the end of the first year of partnership we’d done over $113,000 in revenue. The following year we were a few hundred dollars short of $500,000 in gross revenue. Unfortunately the owner of that first partnership passed away and so the business closed down. I started my own painting business in another partnership and despite not having a 40 year track history and customer base to work off of we did over $300,000 in revenue in our first year while also landing big commercial clients like Costco, Walmart, and the VA, which we hadn’t done previously in the other company. We also implemented an exhaustive intake and retention marketing campaign that utilizes email marketing campaigns, live answering services, and videos that introduce us to our customers. This has been systematized and would be similar to how we’d operate updating investors on the status and progress of an investment as well as revamp the intake process for new tenants seeking to rent from us. I’ve since trained up the right resources and put systems in place to turn that business into passive income where it takes very little of my time now, but still spits off reliable income each and every month.
During college for my internship I managed an 82 unit apartment complex. While initially there was a learning curve my key take away from my experience there was that it wasn’t as hard and daunting as I first thought it would be. It is also about providing good customer service, and I learned that it is about systems and just following those systems and being firm, but fair when enforcing rules, policies, and evictions. In fact the times that the owner was lenient on late payments or continued noise problems more often than not those tenants and units ended up being the most trashed and payments weren’t collected or delayed in collecting through collections services. That experience was a huge confidence builder in demystifying what it takes to run a top notch property, that was large, run well, and provided great housing for people. It gave me experience and the direct knowledge of good and bad practices when it comes to owning an apartment complex. I knew after finishing my internship that this was something I was going to do later and be more successful at than my competition because of my experience there.
I’ve also consistently shown results in my professional career and been promoted several times in the tech industry despite not having a degree in computer science. I did that through hard work, boot camps, courses, earning my MBA, ongoing meetups, and certifications. Currently as a Product Owner I help the team know what to work on next, resolve roadblocks, find ways to improve the team and output, and communicate directly to my stakeholders on the progress of projects and any issues we’re having. If they need to be resolved I am forecasting those ahead of time in order to bring on additional personnel resources or software/hardware resources. This of course is similar to communicating with investors on the progress of projects, forecasting capital and human resources to turn over vacant properties and upgrade them as well as giving progress reports monthly or quarterly to investors via email newsletter.
Separate from apartment syndication I’ve helped raise over a quarter million dollars for doing flips. This is partially from my own funds, but also through lines of credit for businesses, HELOCs, credit cards, and three outside partners. The very first flip that we completed was hands on, but profited well above projections at a gross profit of $34,000 before taxes. During the first flip we realized that we wanted to scale the business and so we rolled profits from that first flip into the second. We hired a general contractor that we vetted after interviewing several qualified general contractors. He has been great to work with, but as we projected he is faster and ahead of schedule, cheaper, and doing better quality work than what we did on our first flip. This has largely taken the partnership out of the day to day and I am almost completely passive in this venture now as well.
I also run my own real estate mastermind group once a week. In this meeting we follow a format to update the group on what we’re working on, any problems we have that the group can resolve, and set goals and hold each other accountable for said goals. This group has been insightful for different niches of the real estate investing sector and learning things about said niches. Being accountable and taking action is the core of the meeting and will be beneficial to myself and others going forward.
I am enrolled in a syndication school, am voraciously reading blogs, books, and listening to podcasts that are strictly related to syndication all of which will lead to me acting as General Partner on an apartment syndication.
