Category: Multifamily
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Today’s #RitterOnRealEstate guest is Rod Khleif. Rod is an entrepreneur, real estate investor, multiple business owner, author, mentor, and community philanthropist who is passionate about business, life, success, and giving back. As one of the country’s top real estate trainers, Rod has personally owned and managed over 2,000 properties.
Rod is Host of the Top-Ranked iTunes Real Estate Podcast which has been downloaded more than 10,000,000 times – “The Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing Podcast.” Rod is the author of “How to Create Lifetime Cash Flow Through Multifamily Properties” considered to be an essential “textbook” for aspiring multifamily investors.
As an accomplished entrepreneur, Rod has built several successful multi-million dollar businesses. As a community philanthropist, Rod founded and directs The Tiny Hands Foundation, which has benefited more than 100,000 community children and families in need. Rod has combined his passion for real estate investing and business development coaching with his personal philosophy of goal setting, envisioning, and manifesting success to become one of America’s top real estate investment and business development trainers. Welcome to the show Rod!
Key Points From The Episode:
- Rod’s humble beginnings coming to America.
- His mother inspiring him to get into real estate – buying the house across the street.
- How he went from $8k to $100k in 3 years as a real estate agent.
- Success is a mindset game.
- Rod’s networth going from being up $17,000,000 in 2006 to losing $50,000,000 in 2008.
- The importance of goal setting.
- Letting your WHY drive you.
- Recognizing that Real Estate is a team sport.
- The importance of giving back to the community. – Feeding 100,000 families.
- Owning 2000+ multifamily units.
- Understanding that what you give comes back to you in the long run.
- Why owning 800 houses wasn’t ideal. Multifamily being easier to manage.
Books Mentioned:
- The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
- Turning Pro By Steven Pressfield
- The One Thing By Gary Keller
- Miracle Morning By Hal Elrod
Text “rodinorlando” to 72345 for a discount ticket to Rod’s event.
Text “gpquestions” to 72345 for a free book of general partner questions.
Transcript:
[0.00:00.0] KR
Welcome to read around real estate the show about how to passively invest like a pro. On each episode, I interview real estate experts to give their top investing advice, strategies, and tools. I break down the insights and practical steps to avoid the pitfalls and make better investments. I want to help you passively invest like a pro. This is “Ritter On Real Estate”. I’m your host Kent Ritter. Hello, fellow investors
Welcome to another episode of Ritter On Real Estate where we teach you how to passively invest like a pro. I’m extremely excited to have our guests today. We’ve got some multifamily royalty in the house. I’m sure all of you have heard of this man. And it probably heard him speak. name’s Rod Khleif. So Rod, thank you so much for coming to the show today.
[0.00:46.0] RK
Thanks for having me, Kent. This is going to be a lot of fun. Let’s, let’s have a good time today.
[0.00:50.0] KR
Yeah. So Rod owns multiple businesses, and he’s a philanthropist. He is passionate about the real estate business and has given back one of the country’s top businesses and real estate, and peak performance luminaries and Rod has owned over 2000 homes and apartment buildings built over 24 businesses and his 40-year career. And he’s amassed a net worth of 10s of millions of dollars. And so we’re excited to learn from you here today, Rod.
[0.01:19.0] RK
Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. It’s 27 businesses now just to be precise. Now, you know what, it’s funny. It’s funny, I, I don’t call them failures, when they don’t fail. I call them seminars and several ways several of those 27 be worth 10s of millions of dollars, but most have been spectacular flaming seminars. But, you know, we fail our way to success, right?
[0.1:39.0] KR
That’s exactly right. And you’re out there learning each time. And that’s right. And you’ve made a long career of it. And it’s a good model, right for folks to be able to follow. So before we get into all the questions I’ve got for you, though, for those of people that aren’t familiar with who you are, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be where you are today.
[0.01:57.0] RK
Sure, sure. Sure. Well, let me go way back because I think it’ll end the framework to what we’re going to talk about, so I immigrated to this country. I was born in the Netherlands and Holland, you know, wouldn’t choose windmills, and came over when I was six with my brother Albert, my mother’s Vanya. We ended up in Denver, Colorado, and we really struggled growing up. You know, I remember drinking powdered milk with our cereal in the morning because it was cheaper than real milk and eating expired food. And, you know, I work clothes from the goodwill and the Salvation Army all the way through junior high school, till I could lie about my age at Burger King when I was 14 because I was tall, and I got a job flipping burgers, so I could buy my own clothes and ultimately buy a car. You know, and I’m sure other people, you know, listening, maybe even your listeners have had it harder than I did or have it harder now with all this COVID Nonsense. But, you know, I knew I wanted more back then. And luckily, my mom had an incredible work ethic. So she babysat kids. And she was a bit of an entrepreneur, we had always had a house full of kids, but that’s how we had enough money to eat. And with her babysitting money, she invested in the stock market successfully. But she also invested in real estate and the first house she bought was right across the street from us from some neighbors and she paid about $30,000 for it when I was 14. When I was 17. She told me she made $20,000 in her sleep, and I’m like, what? I’m getting into real estate screw College, I’m doing real estate. So I went and got my real estate broker’s license, right when I turned 18, which you could do back then with education. Now they got smart, you need some experience before you can actually be a broker. But I was a broker and I was gonna be rich selling other people’s houses. Well, my first year in real estate, I made about eight grand second year, maybe 10 grand, but my third year I made over $100,000, which back in 1981 was pretty decent money. So what happened between year two and year three? Well, what happened was, I met somebody actually dated his daughter and worked with him that taught me about mindset and psychology, and how 80 to 90% of your success in anything is just that your mindset and your psychology only 10 to 20% the mechanical information, you know, that we talk about on our shows. You know, if it was just knowledge, there’d be a bunch of wealthy librarians and college professors out there people actually have to take action with the knowledge and so, you know, fast forward to today, as you said, I’ve owned a couple 1000 houses, I’ve rented long term 1000s of apartment units in 2006 my net worth went up to $17 million while I slept. And you know, that’s about $8,300 an hour over a 40 hour work week and I thought I was a frickin real estate god okay, I could do no wrong. My head got so big. I could barely fit it through a door. You know when that happens, God or the universe, whatever you believe we give you a nice little smack Well, that was 2008 I lost $50 million in 2008. I lost everything. And so, you know, what I’m known for on my podcast, and at my live events is you know, helping people through the mindset component of this business or multifamily business and You know, I talked about the mindset, it took that 50 million to lose in the first place in the mindset it took to get back to the success that I enjoy today. But anyway, yeah, and I’m blessed. My podcast just broke 11 million downloads, which I’m super proud of, and I’ve got, you know, 1000 students across the country, and it just I absolutely love what it is that I do. You know life is amazing. So,
[0.05:24.0] KR
yeah, that’s fantastic. So, thanks. So so that’s a really good segue, right? Are you talking about mindset? And I wanted to get into that with you a little bit because I know you’ve spent so much time working and teaching others about that. So I’m, let’s start real basic. When you say mindset, what are you talking about?
[0.05:43 .0] RK
Sure. Well, there are a lot of components. Obviously, there are lots of components. In fact, I do you know, our long presentations and just scratched the surface. But I will tell you, you know, one of the questions I get a lot is, How did you recover? You know, some people and people killed themselves in 2008, 9 for losing less than I did, and back in the Great Depression, threw themselves all buildings and stuff. And so how did I recover? Well, there were several components to that. But the biggest one was really associating with what I wanted, and why I wanted it. And so you know, if you come to one of my boot camps, I, in fact, was supposed to have 800 people in Orlando in May of 2020. And we all know what happened with that. So I went virtual, but one of the first things we did, and now we’re about to have a live event, again, I was mentioning to you earlier in December in Orlando, but one of the first things we do at my event for the first hour, maybe hour and a half are we do a goal-setting workshop because How the heck are you going to get anything if you don’t know what the heck it is you want. And with clarity, clarity is power, and then more importantly, why you want it. And so we do a goal-setting workshop and
you know, really drill down I call it goal setting on steroids. And, by the way, if if you want to have me guide you through this process, whether you like you know, want to come to join me at a boot camp or not, I, if you DM me on any social channel, I’ve got a whole team that helps me, I’ll send you the link because I did it on I did on January second on my Facebook official Facebook page. And it’s with music and a guide you can use to guide you along and it’s just an incredibly powerful process. And, you know, I’m proud to say, you know, I’ve been teaching this business now for under four years, and my students own about 46,000 doors that I know of, I just got an email from somebody today that got 600 doors I didn’t know of so so at least, uh, probably in excess of 46,000 doors. I’m super proud of that. But the reason for that is because of this mindset stuff. And you know, so So again, if you want me to help you guys guide you through that just DM me on any social channel, it’s a really awesome little segment I did I do it every year or the year before I did on the first this year. Saturday was the second I think and I did it then but yeah, so goals, goals are supercritical. Secondly, your peer group is so freaking important. I mean, you know, you’ve got to be around people that want more out of life. And so many people default to the people they work with or the people that went to school with and, you know, and if they’re not motivated like you are through their fear, their jealousy, you know, their fear of losing you, they’ll hold you back, you know, you’d show me the three people that that are the most important to you in your life. And I’ll show you who you are, because you are those people that really, in every aspect not just financially, but your health, your energy, everything. So your happiness. So peer group is huge. And there are so many components I could go on and on about this. But the bottom line is, I find the most important piece is you’ve got to create that burning desire, like Napoleon Hill talks about in his book, Think and Grow Rich, you’ve got to want it. You know, that’s how you push through fear. That’s how you push through limiting beliefs. You know, maybe you’re comfortable in the comfort zones, a warm place, but nothing freaking grows there. Right? So you’ve got to have that burning desire to push through and the way you create that is really figuring out what you want, you know what’s going to juice you and then and then why you want it, you know, the Y will drive you. And you know, in my goal setting workshop, I also incorporate some negative reasons why some pain if you so you’re going to list not just the positive reasons why you must achieve the goals, but you’re going to put some pain in there. You know, so I don’t feel like a failure. So I don’t, you know, fail my kids so I don’t fail my husband or wife. You know, so I don’t live with regret. You know, tell you there was a nurse in Australia, a hospice nurse, you know, so she took care of people when they’re about to die. Her name was Bronnie Ware. And she asked him a question Kent, and the question was, Do you have any regrets she wrote a book about it’s called the Five Regrets of Dying. You wonder what the number one regret was not living the life I could have lived living somebody else’s life not doing what I know I’m capable of. I can’t think of anything worse than that. And so again, knowing what you want, why you want it, you know, through my goal setting a workshop or doing it on your own is so freaking critical. To help you push through all of those things. So anyway, long answer, but that’s, that’s a big piece of this. And then, you know, for me, I put pictures of the things that I want around me I’ve got, I’ve got a planner here. And in the back of this thing, I’ll show you something, it’s kind of funny. I’ve got pictures of the things that I wanted this, they’ve been in here for 20 years. The first pictures are my gratitude pictures because everything starts from a place of gratitude. So, you know, I’d like I’ve got vision board that’s just around gratitude, but then the things that I wanted, and I’ve gotten, when I tell you, I’ve gotten almost every single thing in this book, I mean, you know, millions of dollars worth of stuff, you know, financially, but, you know, my relationship with my beautiful wife, all these things, because I, you know, I got pictures of what I wanted around me to motivate me. And so that’s really important as well, pure group, visualizing. And I can drill down on this if you want more, but that’s, that’s a lot of this.
[0.10:57.0] KR
Now, I think that’s a really helpful overview. So you know, starts with goals, right? Talks about goals, you talked about who you surround yourself with, right? So kind of what, what information are you taking in day to day, right from those people? Are they bringing you up? Are they pulling you down? That’s right. And then our and then and then you said, visualizing, right, visualizing what you want really picturing that and having had a very clear
[0.11:22.0] RK
Get pictures around you of what you want. Like, I’ve got my planner, your screensaver on the wall. Above me here. I’ve got pictures of things that I don’t know, I’ve got vision boards for each of the items that I want. I don’t put it all on one. I get too confused. I like one for each. And super powerful.
[0.11:35.0] KR
I love that. I love that. I think that’s a great place for people to start. And obviously, you mentioned your boot camps. And you mentioned the ability to DM Yeah, and get some more info if folks want to dig deeper there.
[0.11:50.0] RK
Yeah, yeah, let me just say, let me just say this, about the boot camp. So I’ve got a three-day boot camp coming up Orlando in Orlando, December 3rd, 4th, and 5th, that’s three, it’s not a sales pitch, big sales pitch. I spent 45 minutes in those three days talking about my coaching, if you’re interested, no pressure, but the rest of the time is full-on training. And, let me give your listeners a code. So they can literally come for about half price and half-price means about I think a buck 50, 150 bucks 147 I think so if you go to Rodin orlando.com or text, the words Rodin Orlando is one word to 72345. And then use the code rod friend, you’ll be able to come I think it’s for 147. I mean, it truly it’s a no-brainer for three days of training. And I’m going to tell you, I don’t get complaints on my court. Let me show you something. Here’s the manual for it. It’s like, I mean, this is not some fluffy, you know, little, you know, a teaser to try to get you to buy a bunch of stuff. I mean, you will your you better bring your A-game because I’ll be bringing minus drinking through a firehose, but you know, if you’re interested in this business, even passively and I wanted to mention this because I, now can’t you appeal to passive investors, for God’s sakes, if you’re going to give your hard-earned money to someone to invest in anything, you know, the stock market, bonds, real estate, for God’s sakes, learn that business, at least at a high level. So you know, have some understanding of what you’re investing in. Right? Can’t I mean, you agree with me on this?
[0.13:19.0] KR
Oh, 100%. I mean, that’s one of the main themes of our show is passive investing is kind of a misnomer. Because, you know, you’ve got to be active in the fact you got to keep educating yourself, right? I love that you’ve got a resource to do that. You kind of brings it all together in three days for people. And like I said, Let them drink from the firehose, but
[0.13:38.0] RK
it’s a lot of fun, too, because I bring in a lot of mindsets, I mean, you’ll, you’ll get emotional, I bring in a lot of really cool stuff that really juice you, you’ll meet incredible people. I’m shooting for 1000 people at this event. So so, you know, I think it’s very possible we’ll get there even with COVID. So it’ll be a lot of fun. But again, that text Rodin Orlando is one word to 72345. We’ll send you the information. Remember the code rod friend, so write that down.
[0.14:04.0] KR
Perfect. And we’ll make sure all that’s in the show notes. So, people, can people have easy access to that we want to make a simple get that offer. Thank you for offering that, Rod. So just thinking about, you know, you’ve developed this coaching business, right, you’re teaching a lot of students, these so they have 46,000 Something units, they’re having a lot of success.
[0.14:25.0] RK
Yes. general partners, by the way, that’s all GP. Yeah.
[0.14:28.0] KR
Great. And then, but if you’re boiling, boil it down to what’s important. I mean, what is the most critical thing that you’re teaching these students that it’s allowed them to get beyond their limiting beliefs and have all this success and take action?
[0.14:43.0] RK
Sure. Well, there’s a couple of things actually, and I can’t just do one, but I’m going to tell you the number one thing in this business that I’ve seen is if you’re going to be an operator if you’re going to be active, not passive, if you’re going to be active, is recognizing that it’s a team sport. And you know, when you bring And I’ve mentioned my podcast hit 11 million downloads, I’ve interviewed the best people in the business in this country that I’m aware of. I mean, there’s maybe a handful I haven’t. But I’ve just about everybody and I start to see a pattern. And I noticed that most of them are a partnership between someone that’s analytical and someone that’s outgoing. And because both components necessary actions so that’s, that’s on the active side, I’m answering your question there. Now, on the passive side, on both sides, it’s really knowledge. You know, I tell people, and again, this kind of ties into active as well because that’s what I’m used to teaching about, but you’ve got to build your competence first. Okay, once you’re competent, then that will equate to your confidence, okay? Which you’ve got to have to influence people. And then, and then and that confidence will allow you to influence people. The other thing I will tell you, actually, you know what, I can boil it down to one thing, the most important thing is that you love it. Okay? Because it Yeah, and you can learn to love anything, okay, you just associate pleasure with it. You know, I tell my students equated to hunting for buried treasure, and because that’s really what it is when you’re looking for deals, or maybe you’re looking at him as a passive you’re looking for a great operator knows what they’re doing, but you’re hunting for buried treasure. Now let me say this if you can’t learn to love it, then for God’s sake go do something else Life is too short. But when you love something, not only do you know isn’t enjoyable and you’re in you’re like like right now I freaking love what I’m doing it’s funny I started my podcast over a little over four years ago and I used to say I’ll never sell you anything because I never intended to I just wanted to help people you know and talk about what happened to me in 2008 why I lost $50 million and just add value and then now I’m a liar because I’ve sold every you know courses coaching you know you name it but I never intended to I truly didn’t but anyway if but now I freaking love it like on the wall behind me. You can see some of the hundreds of thank you cards you can’t even see him all the whole walls covered back here from people’s lives have been impacted by my work and the greatest gift I’m sure you get that feedback as well can I mean it’s such a joy to get positive feedback because you’re adding value to people so you know and that’s that comes from loving it and then of course then you have that passion and that passion attracts people anyway long answer again, but that’s
[0.17:17.0] KR
no, I love it. I mean I love your enthusiasm for it obviously you’re passionate about helping others and coaching them and that comes through and I think that the point that you said about you gotta love it thinks is critical you know I have a lot of people come to me and ask about being you know wanting to be a sponsor right maybe they’re investing passively now maybe they want to become a deal sponsor and that’s one of the things I tell them is like look like it you know, you really have to love real estate you got to love multifamily. You got to love putting the deals together if you don’t then the premium on the return you’re going to get from being a passive investor to becoming that that active sponsor I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze. Now you’ll be probably doing it just for the money Yeah, you’re gonna get burned out and I think that people should you know people need to focus on their highest and best use and that’s often the thing that they love. And so if you don’t love real estate, I mean I think that’s why passive investing is a great opportunity for a lot of people if you don’t really love it if you don’t want it to be your full-time thing. I think where people get in trouble is when they try to make it a part-time thing.
[0.18:28.0] RK
Oh, no question. You cannot dabble. Yeah, dabblers. Get their butts kicked. No, Don’t dabble in this or anything, frankly, you know? Find what it is you love to do that you can absolutely invest passively. That said, you should have a basic understanding come spend three days I promise you’ll be glad you did. Again, the only complaint abrogates that the rooms are too cold or some stupid like that. So you’ll absolutely love it. And I’ve had 1000s and 1000s of people attend Mike stuff. So
[0.18:55.0] KR
yeah, so Rod, I took notice of something here in that. I mean, we’ve been taught maybe we talked for 15 minutes or so now. And you know, in that whole time you’ve been talking about your students and how you’re helping your students and kind of what how you’ve developed this company now like to give back and to educate we haven’t talked a whole lot about the actual multifamily you’re acquiring and the units you own and all Oh,
[0.19:20.0] RK
yeah, no, I just closed on a 296 unit in San Antonio. Yeah, but I bought 2300 doors for my students in the last couple of years
[0.19:28.0] KR
now. And that’s awesome. That’s awesome. But, But where I was going with that is I think, because where your passion lies is in helping the student Oh, no, no, and that’s where we go. So, to that point, I have a question. You know, I know just reading your history. You obviously mentioned it, but you know, you were in a pretty bad place. I think maybe even before you lost the 50 million of just being successful but not really feeling fulfilled, right? Yeah, no, let’s talk monetarily. It was successful but you weren’t right filled. So I want to I want you to talk about the importance of giving back. Oh, yeah, how that’s changed.
[0.20:07.0] RK
Let me give you a great example. Yeah, no, great. I’m really glad you cued that up. I always like to bring that up. It’s so freaking important. So, so I lived in Denver, but I knew I wanted to live on the beach. Okay, I lived in Denver for 30 years, there’s no beach in Denver, but I would visualize the palm trees in the sand and the surf and you know, and 20 years later, I built this incredible $8 million mansion on the beach at the beach on one side I had my boat lifts on the backside it was like called the Gulf to Bay like a slice through an island which was unthinkable by the way when I was 18 Making my goals so keep that in mind when you make your goals Okay, make them big do not don’t limit yourself it’s so freaking important because again that was unthinkable that I could actually achieve that but I mean this mansion was incredible I had you know giant waterfall from the second-floor balcony into the pool you had to walk through the waterfall to get into the pool was a magazine so spectacular. I, you know big spiral staircase up through the middle of the house. Elevator wine cellar I mean just spectacular home but on the second island the plane with this the second floor there was an aquarium had custom made the cost me almost 200 grand that went wrapped around the spirit staircase that gives you an idea the house Well anyway, I work for this thing for 20 years, two months after I moved in my family’s inside sleeping. And I’m in the pool and the pool is changing colors at night, I got fiber optic lighting, I’m looking up at this testament to my ego, just really what it was I built it to prove the world I was good enough, you know. And, and, and this is literally two months after I moved in, worked for it for 20 years. And I’m looking up at this thing and I got depressed. And I don’t mean just a little bummed. I mean, I was really freaking bummed. And I’m like what the hell, I’ve just cheated to achieve success. I mean, I had the Mercedes and the Maserati in the garage, and all the stupid shit I thought was important. How could I possibly be depressed? Well, when I look back on it, there were several things going on. And one ties into goals. The first one is don’t achieve big, a big life-changing goal without having other goals lined up behind it. Like the Good Book says, without a vision, the people perish, you need a vision for your future. So I didn’t know what I was going to do next. The second thing that I’ve discovered since then is Happiness doesn’t come from goals. You know, they say, the happiest days of a boat owner’s life of the day, they buy it the day they sell it. It’s just it’s you need the goals. You got to have them to get that burning desire. But happiness comes from progress and growth. And I didn’t know what I was going to do next, well, how am I going to continue to grow. And so, you know, I teach my students I give them a planning process. And part of that planning process is celebrating what you did the previous week, no matter how small it consciously pats yourself on the back because you’re going to have setbacks, you’re going to have delays. But if you’re celebrating even the littlest bit of progress, you’re going to be happy. Okay, so that’s, that’s the second thing. But the third thing was I had been totally focused on me, Rod rod, Rod, show the world I’m good enough, you know, and it to the, to the detriment of my family and in my health and everything else. And so I went out and bought some books when I was depressed there because I was going to get back and one of them was Tony Robbin’s book. And so I decided I was really impressed with the book, and I decided to go see him live. This is 21,22 years ago. And I was blown away by how much he does to help other people and feed them. It feeds them for the holidays. And so I’m like, you know, what a concept do something for someone else. I’m embarrassed to say I had to be 40 or 39 to get that memo. But so I went back and I decided, I called my brother and I was flying to Denver for Thanksgiving from Florida. And I said, Let’s feed five families while we’re there. And so we went to his church and said, who really needs help, and we got these five families. Third, the third family changed my life. So we found out this woman had kids, so we bought a turkey, a frozen turkey, a big basket of food, toys for the kids. And so we deliver it and get there and she comes out and she sees all this stuff. And she starts crying. And then her kids come out and the older ones start crying, and then I start crying, and I’m freaking hooked. And I’m blessed to say, since then we have now fed over 100,000 kids here, with my foundation in Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida. We’ve done 10s of 1000s of backpacks filled with school supplies for local kids astounding. We live in the greatest country on Earth, and kids don’t have supplies for school. We’ve done 10s of 1000s of teddy bears for local police departments for their officers to keep in their vehicles if they encounter a child that’s been traumatized. And please know I’m not bragging about the magnitude of this. I just want to inspire you to do what’s possible. And I’m so glad you asked the question can’t because, you know we’ve been taught to achieve to be happy, right? Let’s achieve and get to that goal so we can be happy. I’m going to tell you that if you incorporate giving back right now. You will be happily achieving. Not only will you be happily achieving on the path. But you’re going to get there so much faster. Now you don’t do it for that reason. But it’s the truth, success will come faster because what you give comes back to you tenfold a hundredfold. I don’t care if you’re religious or not. That’s just the way things work. That’s the way the universe works if you don’t believe in God, so so the point is, is, and if you’re sitting here listening to Kent saying, Yeah, I’ll do it want to have the money, big freaking mistake, because you’ll get the money faster if you do it now. So find a cause. I don’t care if it’s kids like mine, the elderly, animals, the environment, whatever it is, do something towards that cause right now, and you will be happily achieving and you will, I will tell you, out of the students that I have the most successful ones, and many, many have retired, and so on and so forth. With their passive income. Every one of them gives back in some fashion because power moves to those who serve power moves to those that want to help other people. So glad you asked the question, Kent, thank you for letting me rant about that. It’s something I’m very passionate about.
[0.26:00.0] KR
Yeah, no, I love that message. I think that. Yeah. And the idea that you have to be rich first. Isn’t true, right? It’s like
[0.26:09.0] RK
you can get our time 50 of your time. If you don’t have money find to give your time by the person behind you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. What that does is it gets you into that frame of mind. And I’m going to tell you, you will get the succeed much faster. Yeah. And you’ll feel better.
[0.26:28.0] KR
Yeah, I love that lesson. I appreciate you sharing that with us. So let’s switch gears, let’s talk about multifamily for a little bit. You know why in all that you’ve done, you know, why is it that that multifamily investing has become kind of your vehicle choice? No, no. So what you’ve started really teaching about,
[0.26:48.0] RK
yeah, no, let me tell you why. And this is again, this is why I started my podcast just to get this message out there. Again, I used to say I’ll never sell you anything listen to the first few episodes of my podcast and embarrassing but, but you know, when I hit a million downloads, I’m like alright, knucklehead, you probably ought to do something with this and so I wrote a book I gave away first I just gave away 20,000 copies of the book. And then finally my you know, I got talked into doing a course and it all went from there but anyway, um, why multifamily? Because in 2008 I had a Yeah 2008 I had 800 houses two hours north of me two hours south of me everywhere in between and I had several apartment complexes it was the houses that pulled me down. Here’s why. Now I can you make it with houses? Yes, if they’re geographically tight, but I still wouldn’t do houses because it’s the same frickin amount of work to buy a house as it is to buy a 20 unit or a 30 unit or a 40 unit you’re going to get the scale much faster you’re gonna have the logistics let me explain what happened with me. First of all, Florida has no state income tax. So you know the property taxes are higher, I add properties in wind and flood zones insurance is higher which of course both impact cash flow. But what killed me was if I had a maintenance issue at one of my apartment complexes, you know, I Everything’s the same you know, the plumbing parts, the electrical, the HVAC, the appliances, the windows, the doors, everything’s the same so you can stockpile parts and they’re in and out in an hour. If I had to send someone to a house that’s an hour away or an hour and a half one way they have to get there see what’s wrong. To find a Home Depot or Lowe’s you know, where are we have an account which could be another hour round trip and I don’t know if you’ve ever fixed anything at your house can’t but me I usually end up going more than once to Home Depot or Lowe’s because you get into it you forgot you forgot some it’s the same thing with maintenance guys. And so So what took an hour at one of my apartment complexes to call day one of my houses. And then the last thing kind of the coup de gras as it were, as I didn’t pay attention to demographics back then. Hell, I couldn’t even spell demographic back then it just wouldn’t have you know, at houses. And you know, I hadn’t gone to any courses like I teach or anything like that. It’s all self-taught made every possible mistake. You know, in fact, I sell T-shirts because a student got me a T-shirt says lb asked me how I know or what is it hashtag asked me how I know. Because I’ll say yeah, don’t do that. Ask me how I know cuz I’ve made every frickin mistake. But anyway, what I discovered was, it was again the houses that oh, the last thing, the coup de gras. All my residents were contractors. They were either retail or contractors, plumbers, electricians, drywallers painters roofers who fell off a frickin cliff in 2008. So didn’t have work. This is what’s interesting. I was at a 30% loan to value I only owe 30 cents on the dollar and I see and I actually still crashed and burned and I went upside down. The market crashed here more than 70% of my portfolio which is just astounding to me. We were ground zero for that depression. But you know, what was interesting is my multifamily did just fine. It pulled back some but I could have easily survived if I hadn’t cross-collateralized my apartments with packages of houses to save a few basis points and interest. You know, I thought I was brilliant. And Lauren, my payment Well, no, I would still have those apartments if I hadn’t cross-collateralized so that why I tell people if you’re gonna buy and hold or invest passively, for God’s sakes do multifamily, even more than other asset classes? Because I’m going to tell you, the government didn’t help retail owners in this last COVID crisis didn’t help office owners in this last COVID crisis. They helped multifamily where people live. So and I’m going to tell you this, in three years after the big crash, rents, and multifamily exceeded pre-crash levels, that’s how fast it bounced back. Okay. And that was the biggest crash we’ve seen in our lifetimes. So anyway, that’s why the long answer, but that’s why
[0.30:39.0] KR
no, I love it. I mean, you break it down, you break down all the components. And I mean, that’s exactly why I wanted you to share that. Well, Rod, you know, I love, I love that you’re on the show today, you’ve brought a ton of inspiration and value you got me all pumped up over here. No, thanks. I love the energy. Before I let you go, I want to run you through our keys to success. I got four questions I want to ask you. The first one is you put your investor hat on, if you were a passive investor, what is the one question If you could only ask one that you would ask your deal sponsor?
[0.31:16.0] RK
I’ll do better than that. I’ve got a free resource. I’ll give you guys listening of a whole bunch of questions you should ask a GP before you invest in a deal. And so if you text GP questions as one word GP questions, to 72345, I’ll send you this book. And it’s got every question you can possibly think of, you know, you know, who’s managing the property? How well had they ever worked with the management company? And, you know, what’s the experience of the team? How much money is the team putting in the deal? How are they going to report how often do they distribute? I mean, you name it every possible question you can think of. So yeah, just GP questions, to 72345 I’ll send it to you. And then there you go.
[0.31:59.0] KR
Perfect. So not just one there are 50 whole books the whole life. Alright, fair enough. What are you most proud about in your career?
[0.32:08.0] RK
My student’s man, I like I’ve shown you behind me I mean, I literally and the please no, this is not ego. I literally get love about a dozen times a day I’ll get a card in the mail. I’ll get a gift very extravagant gifts. Sometimes I’ll get a DM on social I’ll get an email and I get them every single day so I’m addicted. I mean, I’m who wouldn’t be right and so you know, it just it’s amazing when you can see what people are doing with their lives and you get that kind of feedback. So please no, that’s not ego. That’s just the truth of it. That’s why I freaking love what I do. I mean, honestly, I make a lot more money my, from my multifamily investments, but I love this so much. You know, I’m having dinner with a warrior tonight. And dinner tomorrow night with another warrior. I mean, I just love it. So any warriors are my coaching students anyway.
[0.32:58.0] KR
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. What’s a book that everybody should read?
[0.33:02.0] RK
You know, my love languages gifts, and that’s a great book “The Five Love Languages”.I’ve had the author on my show. And so I give books to my students almost every single month let me give you some of them. The Slight Edge is about those decisions you make every those little decisions you make every day that trajectory life up or down. Let’s see a turning pro Stephen Pressman about stopping being an amateur be a professional if you’re going to do this be a professional. Let’s see the one thing in Gary Keller’s book. Oh, hello rods Miracle Morning. I’ve had hell have had hell on the show. I’ve had the Gary I’ve had Gary Keller’s co-author pop us on the show as well. Pretty you know I love Grant Cardone’s book had him on the show a couple of times his stuff is great. You know it’s somebody it’s very sales oriented. But you know to influence people to do anything you’re going to influence your whole life that’s it’s a critical skill set. That’s enough I could keep going but that’s but definitely, the five love languages if you’re in a relationship definitely need that.
[0.34:06.0] KR
That is a fantastic book I’ve read it as well and it’s meant a lot for my wife and me but also as we relate to our kids Oh sure. And seeing our kids and starting to understand you know what their love languages are and how they absolutely loved and being able to change your approach so, So I completely agree with the five love languages and we’ll make sure all those books you just rattled off are listed down in the notes so people can check those out we’ll put links down well Rod last but not least, what is your number one key to success
[0.34:42.0] RK
passion love, love what you do like we talked about previously when you love what you do success is inevitable and it can be your whatever it because then work is play. You never work another day in your life when you love what it is you do. So if you’re you know if you’re listening to this and you’re stuck in the rat race for God’s takes get started investing passively if you want to be an active either one, come see me spend three days with me a promise you’ll be glad you did. But, but if you don’t love what it is you’re doing if you think you could learn to love it, you can associate pleasure with it and learn to love it. And if you can’t, for God’s sakes, this is not a dress rehearsal, go do something else. Life is too freaking short.
[0.35:22.0] KR
It’s too short. I love that. And that’s a fantastic perspective. Well, great. Rod, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know you’ve mentioned a few things throughout the show. Maybe just hit him one more time. So we make sure that you’re sure of that. So how can folks get a hold of you? Or where should they be going if they want to interact? And
[0.35:39.0] RK
sure, my name is hard to spell. So if you go to real estate with Rod it’s a direct link to rodkhleif.com but real estate with Rod will. There’s tons of material there. There are books, there are articles, there are videos, there are tons of resources, that real estate with rod.com. Again, the Bootcamp just text rod in Orlando to 72345. Remember the code rod friend and you can come for I think it’s about 150 bucks for three days. You can pay more and do the VIP thing with dinner and drinks and lunches and stuff. But it’s truly a no-brainer if you’re all interested in this business. Yeah, that’s enough. I mean, those two things are should get people going. Yeah.
[0.36:19.0] KR
Awesome. Yeah, you got plenty of stuff for people to digest and a bunch of free content discounts. So thanks. Thanks again, Rod. With that, we’ll wrap things up. Thank you again for being on the show. And
[0.36:30.0] RK
thanks. It’s great to meet you.
[0.36:33.0] KR
Thanks for listening to another great episode of “Ritter On Real Estate”. Hit the subscribe button to make sure you don’t miss out on the content that will make you a better investor. Also, visit kentritter.com For articles, videos, and tools curated just for passive investors. Until next time, this is Kent Ritter with “Ritter On Real Estate” and go out and invest like a pro.