Master Your Mindset With Chris Salerno
Real estate is fun and rewarding, but success in this game is no walk in the park, so it is of utmost importance to master a mindset of unshakeable positivity. Chris Salerno has achieved some remarkable things in a short space of time and today we talk to him about what they are and the role of mindset in his success. Our chat begins with an introduction to Chris, his journey into real estate, and how he realized that multifamily was the niche for him. He talks about excelling quickly in his first job and then going on to start CQ Capital which now has over $55 million and 500 units under management. Chris gives us the lowdown about the markets and asset classes he focuses on and his efficient method of vetting deals to stay afloat in the competitive niche he has chosen. He also shares a few golden nuggets for how to plan and set deadlines to ensure that time gets used as efficiently as possible. In the next part of our conversation, we ask Chris about the habits he practices and the resources he consults to keep operating on such a high level. Here he drills down on the absolute necessity of taking care of the mind by meditating, thinking positively, and doing what you love! For a conversation packed with actionable tips from Chris today, be sure to tune in!
Key Points From This Episode:
- An introduction to Chris and his impressive growth in the real estate space.
- Why Chris loves multifamily and a window into the assets CQ Capital has under management.
- The different markets and asset classes Chris focuses on and why.
- Strategies Chris uses to stay afloat in such competitive markets.
- The passion Chris feels about competing in this competitive market.
- The importance of mindset for Chris and habits he uses to stay so energetic.
- How to nurture and nourish your mind and use it to grow your business and success.
- Master a mindset of positivity and how this brings in opportunities.
- How Chris prepares for his busy schedule by factoring in downtime with family.
- The value of intentionality and planning ahead for being more efficient and productive.
- Squeezing the most out of meetings and projects by setting time limits and deadlines.
- Why the most important question investors should ask sponsors is about collections.
- Pride Chris felt when he realized he was good at learning after finding real estate.
- Why Chris recommends Think and Grow Rich and Mistakes Millionaires Make.
- Final words from Chris about the main key to success.
- How to get hold of Chris and learn more about QC Capital!
Tweetables:
“I figured that multifamily was where I wanted to be. You have to play the game of Monopoly but in real life. The goal in Monopoly is to own the largest building. Because of economies of scale, you receive the most cash flow.” — @_salerno2 [0:05:00]
“Mindset is the strongest part of your body. Why? Because your mind controls your body.” — @_salerno2 [0:13:49]
“If you had to keep one car for the rest of your life how would you treat it? You’d treat it like a baby. Well, why don’t you do that to your mind? You only have one mind.” — @_salerno2 [0:15:43]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
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Contact me at kritter@birgeandheld.com.
My operating partner, Birge and Held Asset Management have a twelve-year track record creating sustainable wealth for over 2000 investors through high-quality multifamily investments.
Thanks for listening!
—Full Transcript Below—
“Mindset’s everything in my opinion, it’s the strongest part of your body because your mind controls your body. A couple of things is what I do to really nurture my mind. One, I meditate in the mornings and in the evenings, sometimes I need to do it during the day depending on my schedules, my meetings start at seven AM and I don’t finish meetings, some days, till like nine or 10 because we have some investors that are from Singapore. I have to stay up late to have a call with them on their morning. During those long work hours, you do get winded, you do get tired and you have to have that strong mindset so I meditate”
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:37.3] KR: Welcome to Ritter on Real Estate, the show about how to passively invest like a pro. On each episode, I interview real estate experts who give their top investing advice, strategies, and tools that I break down the insights and the 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, and I’m your host, Kent Ritter.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:00.3] KR: Hello fellow investors, welcome to Ritter on Real Estate. Where we teach you how to passively invest like a pro. Today, my guest is Chris Salerno, he is the managing partner of QC Capital and he’s an old friend of mine so I’m excited to have him on the show and be able to chat about multi-family.
By the time Chris was 24, he transacted more than 40 million dollars in real estate volume and helped lead the number one real estate team in the Carolinas. Now, as the founder of QC Capital, he’s specializing in acquiring large multi-family properties throughout the southeast. Chris, thanks for being here man, good to see you.
[0:01:36.0] CS: Kent, thanks so much for having me, we were chatting before this went live and you know, it’s been almost what, a year and a half since we’ve connected in person due to COVID and everything. It’s nice to finally see you virtually so thanks.
[0:01:49.4] KR: Absolutely man. Yeah, it’s a different world, right?
[0:01:51.7] CS: It is.
[0:01:52.5] KR: You just don’t have that conference circuit going on, we get to see each other every couple of months like it was in the old days.
[0:01:58.8] CS: I know, you’re seeing it open up more and more slowly, which is nice and I think those conferences are really getting packed out because so many people are itching to get out and network face to face.
[0:02:10.5] KR: Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, that’s a lot of our – I mean, on both sides, right? Wither you’re a sponsor or an investor, that’s the main place you go to meet people and network and find deals or on either side and so it’s – yeah, there’s just, I think there’s definitely a desire for people to get out, one, just to get out of the house but two, to find deals, right?
Find opportunities and so yeah, excited to get back out there and start networking again. Obviously, it’s something that I enjoy and something that’s a huge part of the business. Well Chris, let’s dig in man, why don’t you start with telling the folks a little bit about yourself and what brought you to where you are today?
[0:02:48.7] CS: Yeah, t hanks again for having me, very excited to be on and add value to everyone. I’ll give everyone a 30 second, 30,000 sky foot summary. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’ve been here over 14 years. I have a 15-month-old, his nickname is Bam-bam because he’s a wild one. I have fiancé and I’m a stepdad to an eight-year-old, going on 21. She’s a handful as well.
I started out in the residential industry selling residential homes for Keller Williams here in Charlotte. Very quickly, I then grew a company, became the top agent in Charlotte for Keller Williams at the time. I merged that company with the number one team within the Carolinas, with Keller Williams, we’re also number fourth in the world by unit count with over 775 homes sold just in one year and when I did the merger, I’ve always been intrigued with business, with mergers, acquisitions, why are companies filing for bankruptcy.
I want to know the reason behind it and so when I did the merger, Kent, I’m sure you know, going into a business with a 30 year old business owner who owned that business for 30 plus years, he’s been around forever, he’s got to be stubborn, he’s going to be very hard to bring some new ideas in because he’s so used to the old way.
When I joined, I saw so many cracks in the foundation and I was so intrigued and I asked, let me dig my head in the PNL. He gave me kick back, said “No, no, no, no” and eventually, he just said, “Here, you’re bugging me too much, here’s the PNL.
I started digging through it and I started filling up these cracks, allocating capital to certain marketing and reducing it on other expenses. Was able to make them 46% profitable and about a year and a half compared to their three years of being stagnant, no growth.
When I joined, they were around 92 to 93 million in annual sales. I was able to bring them up to 147 million just in a year and a half. When I did that, I felt like I hit a ceiling, it was the hustle, very similar to a W2 job but it was the hustle. You had a little more time freedom but it was still hustling. I started educating myself, listening to podcast like yours, listening to podcast like ours.
I figured that multi-family’s where I wanted to be. You have to play the game monopoly but in real life and the goal of monopoly is to own the land and put the largest building because economies scale. You receive the most cashflow. I started educating myself on the ‘08 market, realizing that multi-family is the strongest asset class, it recovered the quickest and it’s a necessity.
You cannot create an Amazon and take it away. We will always need shelter. The population is growing and will always be growing and we’re always going to need shelter to house everybody. I said, this is the asset class I’m going to be an expert in. I then started researching YouTube, reading books.
Like I said, listening to podcast and I came across my mentor and coach, which you and I have the same mentor and coach. I hit it off very well, very quickly within seven months, we have brought a little over 40 million, 364 units and after that, I knew I needed to build the foundation of the company very strong to poise for the growth I wanted to have.
It took about nine months to a year to build the company’s foundation with employees and the right individuals that fit the culture of QC Capital and the work ethic that I wanted them too. After doing that, we then went on a hunt for our next asset, we then recently just acquired an asset around three and a half, four months ago here in Greenville, South Carolina. Within two years, puts us a little over 55 million and 500 units and we’re substantially growing. That’s a little bit about myself.
I did attend Winthrop University, ran division one track, I also attended Wharton Business School, specializing in marketing and business entrepreneurship. That’s a little bit about myself in the company.
[0:06:35.8] KR: Great Chris, yeah, appreciate the background and really impressive growth, so congratulations.
[0:06:40.5] CS: Thank you so much, yeah, I appreciate it.
[0:06:43.5] KR: Yeah, you are based in the Carolinas, you’re focusing in the southeast, right? Primarily. Tell us a little about the market you’re in and what’s attracting you to those markets.
[0:06:53.7] CS: Great question. We focus very heavily on the Carolinas as I’ve lived here in Charlotte, it’s in the middle of the Carolinas, Charlotte’s in the middle of the east coast, which is great so when we travel to assets, we focus heavily here because it’s our backyard, we know it very well and it’s a very hot market. I mean, Raleigh’s ranked number one on multiple rankings when it comes to tech, when it comes to employment, cost of living, where people are moving to in the southeast, same as Charlotte.
Charlotte’s the second biggest financial district in the United States right after Manhattan. A lot of people don’t know that and right now, they’re in talk with the Nasdaq, moving the Nasdaq to either Dallas or Charlotte North Carolina.
We’re home to all of the – your large banks, we’re headquarters to all of them but we have so much diversification and that’s another thing we like to look at in our markets and the Carolina, so it’s Raleigh, Charlotte, Greenville South Carolina, Winston, Salem, Greensborough and Charleston.
All of these markets we focus on specifically here in the Carolinas at the moment have very strong diversification and employment and we like that. We’re not relying on just one employer. We’re relying on multiple employers that are necessity type of jobs, necessity type of employment where we’re going to need it even through COVID.
That’s why these assets have been performing extremely strong during COVID. Greenville, South Carolina got ranked the number one city in America that people are moving to during COVID. Then we just required an asset there. We’re also looking in Atlanta, Georgia as you and I discussed a little bit about Atlanta before the show.
Atlanta is a hot market, a lot of people are moving to Atlanta, job growth and we really follow the jobs, we follow the large employers and where they’re going. Because if they are going to large cities, they’re going to need a hire people, we’re following that on where they’re going and why they’re going there.
We also like Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa. Those are some Florida markets and some of the South Florida cities as well. We’re looking at, those are some of the markets that we really would like to get into. I’m originally from Florida, Fort Lauderdale and I’ve lived around four and a half years in Orlando so we know those markets fairly well. We’d like to break into those markets this year.
[0:09:05.1] KR: Got you, very good and as you’re looking at properties in these markets, what type of properties are you focused on?
[0:09:11.7] CS: Yeah, we are mainly focused on assets between 1990 and 2020. Reason being is from the research I’ve done, the research our company has done is I strongly feel the demographic of tenants have very strong employers that live in that type of product from 1990 to 2020. When you start getting into 1960, 1970s and 1980s, that’s when you’re going to find a service-type of employers, not a higher to middle class.
We’re really focused on the 1990s, 2017. Ideally, we would like to be between, 150 to 350 units, that’s the sweet spot in those major markets that I said earlier.
[0:09:56.3] KR: Got you, interesting. 90s to kind of current, so that’s going to put you in really B to A class assets, are you focusing on A as well?
[0:10:04.7] CS: Yeah, B and A, we also like a little core plus. Currently, we’re looking at a 2015 type of product, that needs a little love where you can go in, you can put a nest thermostat, you can kind of make it the smart home, you can add a couple of things like trash valet, washer and dryer rentals, which are not charging and slowly get rents up that way as kind of like a core plus type of hold where you can hold it for seven to 10 years and increase organically and then also add some of those type of amenities to also increase rents and it’s this nice cash flowing property that is an institutional quality asset.
[0:10:39.6] KR: Got you. All those markets you described are pretty competitive markets, right? How’s the market landscape been and how are you guys continuing to find deals to pencil out in the market and markets like that?
[0:10:51.2] CS: I mean, we are analyzing anywhere from the 30 to 60 deals a week and we have a very strict criteria and some of them don’t even pass our stage one criteria, we have three stages that a property has to pass and I’d say, 95 to 97% of them won’t even pass stage one.
After that, there would probably be only – I have to say 97, there would probably be 2% that will go ahead and not even pass into stage two and then 3% is where it’s that one to 2% of the assets we look at that actually pencil in where we’re submitting LOI’s on. It’s been extremely difficult as it’s a very competitive market.
The one thing I love about this industry is that it is competitive so it gets me up, I wake up at 4:30 to five every morning. It gets me up out of the bed and ready to go. I enjoy it and I love it and it’s not going to stop being competitive.
Those individuals that may be scared or hesitant, if you’re an operator after listening, you may be scared or hesitant to try to break into a new market, you’re going to have to break it. You’re going to have to get off your feet, get off the couch, break into that market, find out how to think outside of the box, be unique with terms, do whatever it takes to get into that market because the competition is not slowing down. It’s just going to heat up more and more like we discussed at the beginning of the show, there’s capital out there and there’s an unbelievable record amount of capital sitting on the sideline, ready to deploy it into physical assets like multi-family.
A lot of these large institutions are mainly parking their capital in multi-family because they’ve seen how strong it’s been during COVID, depending on the city. Yeah, it’s very important to jump out there, make sure you have unique terms but it’s always going to be competitive. I love it because it wakes me up in the morning and then I just enjoy it. Yeah, it’s very competitive right now, with that asset class and that type of unit count.
[0:12:48.1] KR: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you guys are – have a system in place to churn the volume you need to churn and also quickly analyzed deals. I think it sounds like you had a good process involved so awesome. I want to switch gears a little bit because I know you personally, I know you’re a big believer in mindset, being a former athlete and talking about already talking about getting up at 4:30 in the morning and out there hitting it, right?
[0:13:14.0] CS: It’s hard with a newborn, you would know.
[0:13:17.3] KR: Yeah, you know, it’s tough when you’re getting three, two, three-hour chunks of sleep at a time, right?
[0:13:22.5] CS: It is.
[0:13:23.4] KR: that’s why you got to stay positive, right? I think that’s why we’ve done so well is you stay positive, you’ve kept your mindset, I think that’s so important. I think that can help a lot of people. Talk to me a little bit about just maybe one, what is your mindset, define that for me, then how do you approach that and let’s talk a little bit about tactics to maintain that high level?
[0:13:43.8] CS: Yeah, I appreciate it. Mindset. Mindset’s everything in my opinion, it’s the strongest part of your body. Why? Because your mind controls your body. Your mind controls how you move, how you speak, how you analyze, how you think outside the box. Your mind controls all of that.
A couple of things is what I do to really nurture my mind. One, I meditate in the mornings and in the evenings, sometimes I need to do it during the day depending on my schedules, my meetings start at seven AM and I don’t finish meetings, some days, till like nine or 10 because we have some investors that are from Singapore. I have to stay up late to have a call with them on their morning. During those long work hours, you do get winded, you do get tired and you have to have that strong mindset. I meditate.
Even if it’s 15 minutes to decompress. Get Apple iTunes up, type in meditation music, just that calming meditation music, turn that on and just decompress. Go into a room by yourself and set a timer for 15 minutes. I love this Apple watch because it vibrates so you don’t have to listen to that crazy sound, it will just vibrate and you can stop meditation.
When you meditate, let your mind wander. Find out that place you also want to meditate. I meditate – I love meditating in the shower because of the steam, the sound of the water soothes me and just let your mind wander. Think about business, whatever comes to your mind, just let it come in and flow. Doing that really helps me clear my mind and prepare my mind for the day when I do it in the morning and to achieve the day that’s ahead of me, so I highly believe in that. One individual I love, his name is Warren Buffett, I’m sure a lot of people know about him.
If you don’t, I’m sorry but you need to. I watch documentaries about him and one documentary Warren said, “Kent, if you can have any car in the world, what would it be?” Let’s say a Ferrari, okay?
[0:15:38.1] KR: Sure.
[0:15:38.7] CS: How will treat – the caveat though Kent is that you have to keep that car for the rest of your life. You can’t trade it in, you can’t do anything, you have to keep it for the rest of your life. How will you treat that car?
[0:15:47.6] KR: I will take great care of it, right?
[0:15:49.7] CS: Like a baby. You would treat it like a baby. Well, why don’t you do that with your mind? You only have one mind, you can trade in a car. There is 365 days in a year, you can have 365 cars in a year if you wanted to but you can’t change your mind. You can’t replace your whole mind. You need to nurture your mind. You need to fill it up with positive information, you need to nurture it in the business and the career you’re in.
If you’re out there as a passive investor let’s say, and you are trying to create that mindset, what you first need to do is educate yourself. You are doing the right thing by listening to Kent’s podcast, YouTube, read books, educate yourself on multi-family investing and once you keep educating yourself on multi-family investing, you need to start getting embedded, eat, sleep and breath it and that’s how you start to build your mindset around it.
Then you grow it from there by networking like we discussed earlier. I do a lot of that to keep a positive mindset. Another thing I always do is I always try to find the positives out of any negative situation. For example, it’s overcast here in Charlotte. We have a storm coming, I think it’s a beautiful day today. I believe in that laws of attraction, so having a positive mindset also brings in that laws of attraction, which will really truly change your whole way of investing, change your whole way of operating a deal, you name it, so those are little tips.
[0:17:13.9] KR: Yeah, I mean a couple of things. I am a big proponent of meditation myself so you know, I can’t say enough about the value that’s brought me. I think just being a business owner, being extremely busy, doing the podcast, also having three small kids, right? There’s just a lot going on, you need that time to decompress and I think that is similar to what you’re saying. It has allowed me to kind of maintain everything and continue moving.
Understand what is important and not get stuck in just the minutia of the day, right? I think taking that time to step out is huge. Something else that you said though was you’re just talking about how your kind of nurturing this positivity, right? Continuing to focus on that, so what are other things that you’re doing in your day to just maintain that perspective? Because I think that is so critical. I notice when I don’t do my routines, you know it could almost seem like at times you’re kind of fighting through the day, right?
You’re kind of slugging through it, you’re just getting from one thing to the other and you’re just like, “Oh I can’t wait until I get this done” versus the ability to have a completely different perspective to the same situation and approach it as opportunities, right? This is a great opportunity, this is a great opportunity and just be much more open to what comes and I think that that – like you said, that just opens up opportunities, right? Because you’re just focusing on your mind is conditioned in a way that you notice things.
You notice opportunities and you’re in a position to take advantage of them at that time and not just say, “Oh, I’ll put that off to another day” right? How do you condition, you know we talk about mediation but particularly like the positivity and just how you’re approaching a very busy day, right? What are things that you are doing?
[0:19:01.2] CS: Yeah, I know that’s important because I am an exclusive assistant and there’s sometimes she looks over at me and she says, “Your day is outrageous” because I have meetings back to back on every hour or sometimes I forget to eat lunch because I’m just go-go-go and my employees kind of relate to me as an Elon Musk because I work so many hours during the day and I think what really helps me and helps me focus truly on my career is as you know Kent, on the weekends real estate kind of dies down.
Brokers don’t message you back, lenders, unless you’re in a deal and you’re raising capital, it really dies. I’ve learned to really have my weekends dedicated to family and in the evenings dedicated to family and that has helped me prepare for my long days during the week. Sundays before Monday, Sunday I prepare for Monday so I always try to prepare a little bit in the evenings for Monday so I am ready to go for that next following day and that helps me prepare my mindset and prepare what I know is coming at me.
Now yes, you know as owning the business and you would know is that no matter, you’re going to get smacked or blindsided with a bunch of things and having that positive mindset will help you overcome those blindsides of those emails or any issues that just came up out of the blue that having that positive mindset will help you overcome it but I think preparing for the day ahead of time, you knowing what you are going to get yourself into helps tremendously when it comes to tackling a day that you’re just back to back meetings and you don’t have time to get out of the water and take a breath it feels like.
[0:20:41.2] KR: Yeah and I think what you are hitting on there and hitting on a lot of good stuff but I think I took away is this idea of like intentionality and that’s been a big – that’s my big focus in 2021 is just being intentional in everything that you do. I think you do that by taking the time to prepare, right? Even 10 minutes or even I mean 20 minutes in the evening to prepare for the next day and just think through the things that you have to do.
Think through the meetings you’re having and take time to have agendas, right? Know what you want to discuss and don’t just show up and let it happen to you, right? Being intentional is about knowing what you want to achieve and driving in the direction to achieve that. I think there is a lot of ways to time, right? With people especially if you have in my old W2 job, right? It was what you’re describing honestly. It was just back to back meetings, nine hours a day to the point where you’re like when do you get work done? You’re just meeting constantly and –
[0:21:37.5] CS: Then you got to check emails in the evenings and you know?
[0:21:40.4] KR: You just go through that and if you are not intentional about what you want to achieve in each of those meetings and the meeting kind of just happens to you, right? It’s a wasted hour, right? It’s a bunch for me just sitting around, so the intentionality of I think preparing for your day and spending that time and like you said, it doesn’t take a lot of time. 10 minutes of just sitting down and thinking it through I think goes so far in just making you –
Making me at least so much more productive and getting the important pieces because like I mean in every meeting there’s probably like one really important thing or one thing that really needs to get done and being able to focus in on making sure that’s what really keeps the ball moving forward I think.
[0:22:16.2] CS: Here’s a trick for that and I’ve learned it through trial and error is when I start a call with an individual and I know I only have 30 minutes, I tell them I only have 30 minutes. I have a hard start at 11:00 via my next meeting then and so when you give them and set that expectation upfront, I found that you tend to get things done very quickly within that 30 minutes instead of talking all over the place. For example, I had a call before this podcast.
He called me 10 minutes before, I said, “I have nine minutes before my next meeting. You only have nine minutes of my time before I have to hang up, what’s going on?” and he said, “Okay” boom, I want to respect your time and he just nailed it and when we started getting around two minutes ‘till he said, “I know I only have two more minutes of your time” so he was keeping track of it and that helps really to make that meeting, make that phone call more productive.
Instead of just you’re sitting in that meeting and you’re just being busy and you really want to be productive because there is a difference between being busy and being productive. I found that being extremely helpful, setting that expectations upfront. You only have 15 minutes, only have 30 minutes and you really get a lot done.
[0:23:27.9] KR: I think that is a great tip. I found that that is even helpful in my own work like just my – the stuff that I have to sit down and do the setting deadlines. I don’t know who said the quote but I saw this quote the other day around the work will expand to fit the timeline, right? Meaning that if you have two hours to get something done, you know it will usually take two hours to get that done. It’s amazing how it takes that amount of time.
Trying to for myself even just set half hour blocks and say like, “Okay, I’ve got half hour to get this done.” If I am sending out a newsletter or email, I get half hour to get this done. At the end, I’m sending it out so it is going to be as good as it’s going to be but it’s amazing how much you can accomplish in that time and so I think setting those time blocks and I like how you are talking about letting the other person know and just setting the expectation upfront.
Because I think what that would do for me is allow me to be focused in that time as well and not be concerned like, “I hope this doesn’t go long. I am going to have to cut this guy off, you know I’ve got another meeting coming” so I really like that tip.
[0:24:32.7] CS: Yeah, I know. It helps tremendously and to touch on that as a statement you made with the quote. There is a quote I re-shared on my Instagram or Facebook and it said that if I gave you four hours to clean your house, you would clean your house in four hours but if I gave you 30 days to clean your house, it would take you 30 days to clean your house. Setting that expectation upfront is extremely helpful to make your meeting more productive and to go into more detail and setting that expectation.
[0:25:04.7] KR: Yeah, no very cool. It’s clear how you can stay so productive and get so much done and I appreciate you sharing some of that with us.
[0:25:12.5] CS: Yeah.
[0:25:12.9] KR: Digging into a little softer side, right? A little bit on mindset because it is so important and I think it is something no matter what you’re doing, you know, whether you are an investor, whether you are in your W2, whatever you’re doing it can make you more successful so I appreciate that Chris.
[0:25:26.6] CS: Very much so, yeah.
[0:25:28.3] KR: Before I let you go, I want to get into our keys to success and talk a little bit about and just ask you some questions. The first one is, what’s one question that every investor should ask their deal sponsor?
[0:25:39.4] CS: Right now, what are collections? If you are looking to invest in a deal, I don’t care what your occupancy is. I care what your economic occupancy is but your occupancy is irrelevant to me. If you are running at a 98% occupancy but your collections are 60% I’m worried and I find that out by researching a lot of deals that come through my desk and things like that. If I was a sponsor and I actually just got interviewed by a sponsor.
He interviewed 18 groups, thankfully we were top five, which he only pick top five to invest with so thankfully we fit in and I told them that same thing. He said, “Any questions I missed?” I said when you analyze deals, you need to ask, “What are your collections?” to make sure that it’s a good deal, also after that you know, just really dig deeper into the sponsor and make sure you fit well with them and you feel comfortable with them.
[0:26:30.5] KR: Great advice. What are you most proud of in your career?
[0:26:34.6] CS: I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that question. I would say the most proud I’ve been was the education I learned at such a quick pace and such a short timeframe. I am proud for that because when I grew up, I was always called dyslexic. I was always put in special reading classes and studying classes because the teachers said he had trouble learning here and that. Well, I think I had trouble learning because it wasn’t something I was interested in.
When it comes to real estate I just eat sleep and breathe it. There has been times my fiancé would wake me up in the middle of the night because I am sleep talking about a deal. I literally eat, sleep and breathe it. I would say the education that I’ve been able to gain in such a short timeframe and the individuals that along that way who helped me gain that education like yourself, so thank you.
[0:27:30.3] KR: You’re welcome. I think I played a pretty small part in that but happy to be involved in the journey.
[0:27:35.9] CS: Thank you.
[0:27:36.6] KR: What books should everyone read?
[0:27:38.1] CS: Think and Grow Rich, that’s it. Think and Grow Rich is a great book. Another book is Mistakes Millionaires Make. I love that book, I highly recommend it.
[0:27:47.7] KR: Awesome and lastly, what is your number one key to success?
[0:27:51.4] CS: I would say and I probably will always route back to this, never give up. Have a positive mindset. You need to have that positive mindset so you don’t give up but never give up and there’s been people that have I felt were personal friends of mine who has told me, “Chris, hey, you may not want to tell people your goals because it just seems like you know they’re to Mars. It doesn’t seem achievable” and I said, “Well, maybe to you they’re no achievable but I know they are achievable so you are going to watch me achieve them.” I would say never give up no matter what.
[0:28:25.2] KR: Yeah, that’s fantastic advice Chris and I think you’re a living testament to that and obviously those big goals were driving so much success. I think that is a great tool. Lastly, how can everybody get a hold of you if they want to learn more about yourself and QC Capital?
[0:28:44.0] CS: Yeah and thank you so much for having me on Kent. I really enjoyed having the conversation and talk about real estate, I have a passion for it. If anyone would love to learn more about QC Capital, set up a call with me directly. You can visit our website, qccapitalgroup.com and fill out the investor form. I will normally reach out to you within 12 hours. We can set up a call, we can see if we are a good fit for each other and where 2021 is going to bring us. Thanks so much Kent.
[0:29:11.4] KR: Awesome, thanks Chris. Wonderful having you on, glad we’re able to connect again and wish you the best.
[0:29:15.7] CS: Yes, thanks so much.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:29:17.4] KR: Thanks for listening to another great episode or 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 on Ritter on Real Estate. Now go out and invest like a pro.
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