The Keith Andrews Podcast

The Secrets to Being a Happy Landlord | Paul Berger E19

• Keith Andrews • Season 1 • Episode 19

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In this inspiring episode of The Real Estate Junkie Podcast, Keith sits down with Paul Berger, aka "1 Happy Landlord," a seasoned real estate investor and business owner from Anchorage, Alaska. With over 30 years of experience, Paul shares his incredible journey from house hacking a duplex to owning and managing hundreds of units, a bar, and a coffee shop. Discover how real estate enabled Paul and his family to embark on a decade-long adventure sailing the Pacific and living in New Zealand.

Tune in to learn valuable tips on successful landlording, the philosophy of real estate as a tool for financial freedom, and the importance of balancing business with life's greatest adventures. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting, Paul's insights will inspire you to create a life of freedom and adventure through real estate.

Join us for a conversation packed with practical advice, heartwarming stories, and the secrets to being a happy landlord. Don't miss out on this episode that's sure to motivate and educate!

Connect with Paul:
https://www.1happylandlord.com/

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YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@iamkeithandrews

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But you buy these small starter homes, you fix them up to a standard that's reasonable, but you may not particularly want to live there. And then the tenants don't care. They don't care about the tile backsplash. They don't care about the fixtures, the carpet, the flooring, the matching, all the rooms, whatever. What they care about is they have a cool landlord and they, and a tenant will inevitably get in a situation where they're in trouble. And at that point in time, you have a choice. You know, you can evict them and not deal with them be done with them or, my philosophy is I work with them. What's going on, come up with a plan. And then if you get them through that situation, they are never gonna leave you. Welcome to another episode of the real estate junkie podcast. I'm your host Keith Andrews and today we have a truly inspiring guest Paul Berger aka one happy landlord Paul is a 30 year real estate investor and business owner from Anchorage Alaska who currently owns and manages 60 units a bar and a coffee shop Married with two daughters Paul and his wife Rebecca balanced business with extensive travel including a 10 -year adventure sailing the Pacific and living in New Zealand. In this episode, we'll explore Paul's journey from house hacking a duplex to living a life of a venture on the open sea. We'll discuss how real estate can be a tool for financial freedom and share tips on being a successful landlord to enjoy life more fully. So sit back, relax, and join us as we uncover the secrets to balancing business with life's greatest adventures. Hey, good morning, Keith. Can you hear me? I can. I'm so happy that we could make this happen today. Same here. I've taking a little hiatus from posting a whole lot and I've had some family stuff going on and I've been focused on that and I need to change gears. Yeah, I've been doing the same thing. We just had a huge family reunion at my house. We hosted it here. we had just like, the house was packed full for almost two weeks straight. And then we ran off after everyone left and went off and stayed at a little cabin at Grand Lake. And it was a nice just like getaway change of scenery. And now I'm back at it again. What got you into the, I mean, the whole podcast side, I mean, I've tracked through you through the different platforms and Spotify and Instagram and YouTube. Have you figured out how to monetize it? When was that the goal or how'd you learn all this stuff? It's tough. don't know if you know my backstory, but all of our kids are adults now, except for one. We have one last one in the house and he's 11 years old. You know, while our other kids were growing up, both my wife and I like literally worked our lives away and I felt like I barely saw them grow up just because I was always connected into work. And now with this last kid, I really made it a conscious effort to be there and real estate enabled me to do that. But when I drop them off at school in the morning, you know, I'm sure I'm managing my portfolio of rental properties and I also help other people, you know, rehab and buy rental properties out here. But when I'm not doing that, I'm kind of like bored. And so one of the things I love doing is talking about real estate. So that's really why I started this podcast. Originally was I had friends and family saying, hey, you should start a podcast. And I'm like, well, I don't even know how to do that. And then I listened to a podcast about creating a podcast and I said, you know, it doesn't seem that hard. I think I could do it. I've gotten better at it as I go. Like my setups better now than it used to be. You should see my lighting set up right now. It's a joke. Yeah. Well, if you watched my first podcast, it was pretty bad. and I think, know, I've, definitely gotten better at it, but the great thing is I get to talk to people like you. Me and you can have a conversation and then my listeners, can tune in and, and learn from both of us. I have an old blog. It used to be sailing Ohana, but now it's one happy captain. I got kind of a theme going here, but if you go there, there's one article called the best advice. And that's when you should And it's about this idea of spending, spending those years, you know, when they're young with your kids, know, there's so many of us, and I was falling into it. I was falling into the whole, you know, I was up to 120 units going 24 seven. She was home, you know, materially wise, we were doing great, but, know, if I had stayed on that track, I'd probably be dead by now. I mean, you can't maintain that level of movement and, you get a strange from your kids, you know, just things just don't work. And that, think that's something. You mentioned in your, one of your emails, you know, let's not talk about material things so much. And that's never been the focus of my content. call it. It's always been the philosophy of real estate and, how to live a life around. There's a lot of, and I own two businesses as well. And there's a lot of things that apply to business, to real estate, but also to, to, to the whole package to life. And, you know, and I don't know I'm going with that short of. It's important for guys, particularly young investors get so spun around the axle on make and make and make and make it. they forget the other side of the equation. How they're deploying what we know, what God's provided them. And then, know, it can be a blessing or a curse. Absolutely. And I think that's a good place to start. I believe right after high school, you joined the Coast Guard, right? Yeah, I went to the Coast Guard at 17 years old. I was out by. One and a half. got out a little bit early because I got a job at the radio station as an engineer. Got out of the guard and went into radio. I was an electronics technician in the guard. Got my first class FCC license, which was I was the youngest person in the third Coast Guard district, third district, whatever, to get the thing. And you have to have one of those to operate a radio station. So if you want to run a radio station, you need to employ a first class FCC technician. And this is this is a tip for young landlords. you know, how do get the experience? I was only 20 somebody years old. I went to radio station and I actually met the engineer and said, Hey, what do you do? Got to know him talk. Hey, can I volunteer? Can I help out? He goes, well, you know, sure. Yeah. Come by on the weekends. So I go out there on the weekends, Joe Jajaro. I'd hang out and help wire stuff and fix stuff and tune stuff. And time went by and I didn't get paid a penny. And this went off about a year and we became friends. And then they bought a radio station in Jacksonville, Florida. And the owner The company, Larry Justice, goes, Hey, you know, we need an engineer for now and their first class FCC guy and they're, they're expensive. And what about this kid? I was in the guard and they actually traded justice called up the coast guard, traded some advertising to get me out six months early. I moved down to Jacksonville. was wildly unqualified to be a first -class FCC technician. I mean, I knew the book. they made one mistake. They asked me my salary requirements. And I said 17 ,000, because that was what I was getting paid in the coast guard. And then they sent me to a luncheon with engineers from around the city. Cause we don't, they, don't meet and they were all in their fifties and I'd sit there listening to them and all they would talk about the entire time where their salaries, I'm getting underpaid for this job, but I didn't last long. I was absolutely miserable. And a buddy of mine said, you know, are you happy? And we were sitting on Bay Meadows road in South Jacksonville. goes, are you happy? And I go, no, he goes, what are you going do about it? And I quit, you know, two weeks later, moved to Daytona beach, Florida, started college. Got a job as a yacht broker, got my captain's license. I collect licenses and stuff. And, you know, I kind of stumbled around, you know, South Florida finished. I've worked at the yacht brokerage again. I was very persistent to get in the owner. Bill Bagley did not want me as 22, 23 years old, but this is before cell phones. I would, I went in for an interview. said, no, no, I don't think so. You're too young, whatever. And then I, I, but maybe that's all I needed. You know, it's like from dumb and dumber. So you're saying. Maybe. And I'd call him up. If I left the house, he'd Bill, I'm going out of the house for an hour and a half. I'll be back at four o 'clock. You need to call me. This went on for like a week and he finally broke, hired me. We became good friends. I became a partner actually in the second office he opened in South Florida. And I was probably 23 at that point in time. You know, I learned a lot about business, you know, and, you know, it's, it's funny time around him. He was an awesome salesman. And I would say for young investors, you know, sales training, you know, these days college. Yeah, I I ended up going to Florida state, actually back up a little bit. was one of those serial nighttime college guys. So all through the uproar days, I was going to Palm beach junior college, you know, somebody actually graduated once and I'm like, people graduate from this. And I got the associate's degree and I finally did a graduate and I finally, and I said to myself, you know, I got to get, I got to commit to this education thing. So I went on Florida State, I wanted to get the broadest Vegas liberal arts degree conceivably possible. And I already had a trade. Nothing else. Young investors get a trade first, you you can plum electrical carpentry, roof, whatever it is. Once you have a trade, you're always going to eat. And after you do that, get your education. But I went on, I got an international affairs degree, a double major in geography, went on and got an MBA. And, you know, at the end of the day, was all that worth it for what I'm doing now? I was probably wired for all this in the first place. And I've had guys say, I'll show you, you know, I'm kind of hogging the conversation here, but should I go become a realtor? Should I take this class, do that class? And, you know, my advice is just go buy a dang building. Yeah. Real estate is hard, right? And if you don't like hard, then real estate is not for you. I know my first dabble with real estate, it was a horrible experience. And I've said this before on my podcast. I basically said real estate is not for me. I'm just going to concentrate on my career. I don't want to do anything with real estate because I bought a house that I thought I was going to flip the market crash. is, you know, 2007, 2009. I couldn't sell it. I rented it out to basically so I wouldn't go broke paying that mortgage. I didn't run a background check on my tenant. The tenant second a rent payment bounce. And then from there, it was like six months of no rent payments, trying to get them out in California, which was extremely hard. sorry. It hurts. So once I finally washed my hands of that, I was like, I am done with this. But then I basically got the nerve to do it again, because you know, like you, I and I think a lot of real estate investors, We're at in our heart, we're an entrepreneur, right? So I've always been very creative, you know, creating new businesses and all different types of stuff from from an early age. So I was I was ready after, you know, I don't know, I took a pause and for about almost 10 years and I was ready to do it again. And this time, though, I got educated first and I was able to pull it off and build out a profitable portfolio. and I found a niche that worked. And which ultimately enabled me to unplug from my nine to five. And basically now I just, you know, I have my time back where I can spend it with my family. And that was my, that was my real like, why I got into it I saw that I was just getting sucked away with work. And if I could do real estate, if I could get it so it was profitable enough, Yes, sure. I still need to work at it, right? There's always going to be work. Let me ask you this. Do you? Is it passive? You know, I hate that word. It's not passive. It's not passive. That's a lot. Okay. But, but it does enable me to more freely live my life. Right. When everything's running and it does it there's months, there's six months that will go by and everything's flawless. No one's skipping rent payments. Nothing's breaking. And then we'll have a month like I did last month where a big storm goes through, rips off a roof on one house, knocks down fences. Then I have another tenant that's basement flooded out. it's just, then you have those types of months. But if, and if you're not prepared for them, if you don't have reserves, if you don't have the right insurance policies and the deductibles and everything else, you're going to go broke pretty fast. I've learned how to basically ensure that I'm, I'm ready for the storm, You stepped into a hurricane in 07, 08. I did. Your most valuable assets, not your net worth. mean, that net worth is important. You get to a certain point in time though, it doesn't matter. I mean, once you get over a fairly large number, you're going to eat, you're going to go to hotels, you're going to fly in a plane you want to fly on, you're going to drive a nice car. You forget about all that. What you're really buying is time. Yes. And from 92 to 2002, and one of the objections I think I'm going to get from newer Newer listeners, people are getting into it now is they can't find anything. And we'll talk about that in a second. But from those years, from 92 to 2002, you know, I was buying, you know, two or three, four buildings a year. Alaska was coming out of a major depression. You know, every third house was for sale. If you had a pulse in a hundred bucks, literally you could buy a fourplex. and, and you know that when you're young and you have, can deploy a lot of risk and you can put the time And you're curious and the thing about real estate is it's not just one. You can be an engineer. You can be a lawyer, whatever these things are. And you can learn one skill, very specific in real estate. Now you're the jack of all trade master of none. You gotta be able to do all of it. And these guys are, you know, and I'm speaking to listeners now I'm thinking about the one who says, Hey, I'm going to buy out of state properties. I'm going to hire a contractor. I'm going get a property management company. I'll tell you if it succeeds, you one time out of 10, which I think is being generous. I'd be surprised. And I talked to the horror stories. You know, the truth is for this, and I focus on small investors, one to 100 units. You so you get above a hundred units, you're in a totally different world. Now it's a business. Your returns are going to drop down to standard business returns, eight, 10, 12%. You're going to have your staffing goes up. I never wanted to be involved in meetings and have, you know, I do have, you know, three managers right now. one for the real estate, one for the, I own a bar, which was an accidental purchase and one for a coffee shop. all three are stars. You know, I spend very little time with them. You know, they know what they're doing. I just show up to give support, but, but I, I need to know. I'm an, I'm some of an expert in all the fields that need to be covered to run these operations. And if you don't have that, the gurus are kind of my, you know, where I get a little. you know, burn my bonnet. You go to a look at it. I did one video on putting a kitchen in a countertop and I got to push back on you. Why are you wasting your time doing that? And you mentioned earlier being bored. Yeah, I've got more time than I than I know what to do with. And part of the reason I started doing this whole thing was I said, OK, we want to go sailing again. And I know how sailing works. You're all like, you're out in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, and I've sailed all over the world. The Bahamas is one of the most beautiful cruising grounds on the planet. But you're out there and after, you know, three or four weeks, you can only anchor in so many beautiful languages, swim in so many beaches, kayak so many things, you know, you're diving. So I said, I can start, you know, sharing some of this experience I've had. My daughter encouraged me to do this. And my father passed away a while back and I tried to find old videos of him and nothing existed. So that was part of the genesis for why I was doing this. But getting back to the, you know, why you're putting that countertop in, A, it's fun. B, I know how to do it. C, I've got people working for me. And when I show up in my work truck, I don't drive a Porsche. could, I used to drive a BMW M3 when we lived in New Zealand, never drive a car like that up here. When I pull up on my truck and I grab out the tools and I walk up into the unit and I'm, you know, know, slopping away up there. You know, the guys are coming in. I'm speaking to them. My Spanish has gotten better with some of the guys that work for us. My rednecks pretty good. And we all have a good time. And when you walk away, you're setting a tone. And then, you know, kind of bouncing around here, you're setting a tone for the whole property and everything starts from the top down. There's been times when my businesses have kind of like slumped off. I've got one right now that I need to pay them more attention to. And at the ultimate, the end of the day, it's because of me. You know, not putting the energy in, you know, that my energy is a darker light, whatever you want to call it. You know, I can shift that energy. So as a small landlord being involved in your properties, getting into the tenants units. And physically, you know, knocking the door, come on in a lot. Most in our, in our 40 plex, very few people know that I'm the owner. So I'll just knock on the door, go on in maintenance. What do you got? And start talking with them, look around their apartment. How are they being treated? Get a vibe. And then I've got information, you know, that I can bring back to the manager. Generally it's positive, which is great, you know, or if it's a negative, how you deliver that this gets back to sales. And management and leadership. all these things, you know, it's not a simple, you're going to buy a section eight property out of state, hire a manager and make a millions. I think you know what I'm talking about. I've seen a of new investors make that mistake. And it's the biggest financial mistake that they've ever made. I do like buying, you know, Locally like most of my portfolios all here in the springs. I self manage it at some point I won't But as of right now I do and the great thing is is even if I'm away I have a great network Yeah of contractors handyman and all that that like even when something does go wrong I might not be the first one that shows up. Usually I'm not I'll call my hand man. He'll be the first one. He'll say hey Keith Here's what the problem is. This is what we need to do. And then I might go over there, right? It just depends. So I wouldn't have that luxury though in a city that's far away. Maybe the numbers look good on paper, but I can tell you in the long run, it's gonna be very difficult. Not to say it's not possible, but it's gonna be difficult. No, I'm a big fan of, you know, keep all your babies in one basket, you know, watch your basket really closely. And you mentioned, you know, on the property management thing, you know, everyone's like, I'm kind of opposed to professional property managers for a couple of reasons. And I had a conversation with a realtor buddy of mine, a big realtor up here, and he goes, you know, they take their four or five, six percent, then they're also up charging you on all the repairs. Then there there's a disincentive to raise rents because if they raise rents, you know, they got to fill vacancies, which they don't want to do. So fundamentally, I don't think that model works. But there is a hybrid when you get to a certain point. And that's where I'm at now is, know, you can hire a property manager who works for you. They don't have to have a license or do anything else. Just a human being. If you have a building, you know, a fourplex is very common. I know I'll get to my thoughts on fourplexes and larger complexes in a minute, but in a fourplex, you just tag one, one apartment, you know, and there's a husband and wife in there. You give them a small discount on their rent. Yeah. And then, and then you get in, it's very important. You give them mental ownership of the building And you go by you encourage them and they'll collect rents. They'll watch. I've had couples manage buildings for literally decades and under that model. The one thing I would done different early on, you know, I started with a fourplex, a 12plex, then duplexes and houses and all this stuff, you know, as we grew. OK, I do want to I do before you go. I do want to know this because this is the most important thing is where did you start that first? Okay. First building that you bought, you lived in it, right? Yeah. It was a duplex and you know, I had it in my mind. Your real estate was the thing. I told it. I've told the story before, but I met a lady in California and I was in the coast guard at Ameri Island and my buddy was Steve Newby was looking for an apartment and we, drove up to this apartment building and we met this lady in the parking lot and she was your classic California white suit with the gold, with a cigarette, with the hair, the whole bit. And she walks the sunglasses, you can picture it. And we walk in this apartment, we look around and you know, whatever. And we get back out the parking lot. And I said, you know, what's your other tip? You know, I what's your advice? know, you look like you're really successful. You know, what would be your advice? And she goes, son, people need three things, food, clothing and shelter. I pick shelter. And it stuck with me. You know, I said, you know, those are the three things. And so I in my head that real estate was the way to go. And when I was in Florida, I I I want to buy a duplex. didn't have a lot of, I had almost no money. My parents actually loaned me, they gave me 7 ,500 bucks to buy a place. I had a VA option. The first 12 realtors I went to, I said, want to buy a duplex. I want to rent one side. I want to live for free. And they go, and literally laughed. mean, I've literally, I've been, you you walk out of an office, you know, they're pretty mean actually. And I got to the 13th guy, this is an encouragement to everybody. He asked, how do I get started? go, just start going to realtors and you're going to hit one that's going understand what you're talking about. And the 13th guy, Tim Wingerski, he was like, yeah, we can do that. And he was a like you, you know, he was, he was down the track a ways he had his properties, he'd done it. And we found a little duplex in Hope Sound, Florida on the wrong side a one a, and had two bedrooms. So I, you know, I did what I could to fix it up and had a tenant P in hindsight, I would have moved P out and started fresh with a new tenant. Especially if you're young. because an older guy in the apartment sees you come in and you just don't get the gravitas or the respect that you really you can't push. So but lesson learned by rented to Howard. It had a large pantry off the kitchen. Very big. So I kind of cleaned that out, had a window in it and I put a little bed in there and the gal rented it. She was great. And so I lived for free for two years and I sold the thing. I paid something in the 60s for it. I sold it for, you hundred maybe or so I think I made 30 or 40 ,000, which, you know, to me was unbelievable. yeah. I took that and that's what I used to go to college, fat and credit cards and student loans to get through school and came out of all that dead broke the negative net worth when I started in Alaska. So so you already had that first venture in real estate and you're like, wow, I live for free and I sold it and I made money. And then and then he went to school. But then you got back into real estate again, right? And you built it up to a point where you and your wife were able to say, Hey, let's travel to Florida. Let's take our time for the next two months and live in this, this motor home, right? And I want to know about how you got to that point. Like tell me a summary of how you built up a portfolio that enabled you. to even do something like that? Well, it was, this is over a 10 year period and that particular trip, you know, and I'm real quick, you know, the, four plexus versus 40 plexus. And part of what you got to do if you wanted to live the life that we wanted to live is figure out how to remote manage this stuff. So for a number of years, we went to Hawaii for about eight months and live there. Well, I tested out my systems. And had a guy working for me and the internet was kind of new. had cell phones sort of, and I was able to communicate and a whole bunch of things didn't work. And I got back and tweaked it. What I learned was when you have, had 120 units at that point. So it was a lot of property and it was spread over. Most of it, probably 75 to 80 % was in one neighborhood. And the other ones were little outliers all within about a five mile radius. And I couldn't get a person to get in their mind to get in their truck in the morning, drive literally property to property. You know how it is. And just check them out, walk in the laundry rooms, make sure the lawns are tidy, have a little list of the things that need to get done. There's usually not much of your maintaining stuff, a little deferred maintenance, you know, meaning you walk in the knobs loose on the front door, tighten it up, you know, just check the furnace rooms. I couldn't get anybody to do And a 40plex came available out in the Valley out in this little town called Palmer North of here. We were driving by one day, my wife says that looks like a job for Berko. And this thing was obliterated and my buddy had looked at buying it five years earlier. Actually it sold for a hundred and eighty some odd thousand dollars back in 2000. It was, it was obliterated. Bought that. What I learned It's a lot easier to manage a 40 plex than it is to manage a four plex. Everything standardized. can, I can, you know, land a manager in the building. can land a maintenance person in the building. They wake up in the morning. They go to one office. All 40 bathrooms have the same faucet, same fixtures. Kitchens are the same. Cadmums are the same. Carpets the same. You get the idea? One roof, which I have replaced, which was very expensive. So if you're starting out and you get to a certain point and you want to live that lifestyle, consider going larger, faster. It's scarier. But what I found was when you get to four units, you're fighting with all the FHA guys because they can get qualified to buy up to four units. Once you get to five units and better, that financing dries up. in the 20 % range for financing. And so the pool of available buyers shrinks dramatically. Now that affects two sides of the equation. On the one hand, you can get a better deal, but it's harder to sell on the exit. So on the exit, you can find owner finance deals in those situations. If you get a good relationship with the bank and I had fairly decent equity in all the other properties I had, I could go in and buy a building, whatever it happened to be, for 50 cents on the dollar, because it was destroyed. The bank knew me, which gets back to why you should just go out and buy a building if you want to get educated. That's your tuition. Because once the bank sees you do it once and they do get to know you, then the next time around it's easier. then you go in buy you recommend to our listeners? to find a local bank or credit union or something like that to start off with? Absolutely. Yeah, several. would go with, you know, I started with a local commercial bank, First National Bank Alaska, and I have had a great relationship with them over the years. And I have actually probably trained about seven loan officers over the years. I always get dropped down to the new guy, because when the old guy gets promoted to whatever, and I've gotten to know these guys over the years, all great guys, get a good relationship with the local bank, a local credit union. Credit unions are great. And I wouldn't go with personally with a Wells Fargo or all the other national mortgages type of thing. It's just, I like to move fast. I use credit lines at this point in time. So I can buy something, you know, with a check. Then I just go fix it up, refinance it, pay off the credit line, put a little bit in your pocket and move on to the next deal. And I'm not really doing deals anymore. just, I'm tired. I'm 60 and it's like time for the next chapter. But I still love You know, if a deal pops up, I'm, working on one right now that I've been working on for a long time, adjacent to the bar that we own. And, know, it's just going into the, it's just being run into the ground and they're, they're, they're still driving. I've been trying to get that, but short of that, I'm not really, I'm not really hunting deals at the moment. and look, you're back, back to your, how do you, the travel thing. If you have your mind around how you're going to organize your business and you kind of run it like a mobile business and you get in that routine. And it gets real estate is very, very simple. know, it's the same transaction every month to the same customer for the same price. You know, not much changes. once you get that position, you can go for long periods of time. And my other thing was we would, I would like to work really hard. We go for three to four months to flip that 40 plex. You know, we did a lot of work in a very short amount of time. I told my wife, you know, when we're done, we're going to take off and then we got finished. We refinanced it. We got a chunk of change. We bought a net I can also tell you how to buy motor homes and make money and have long trips. You know, that was something else. So I just, have to say, so my wife and I, we aren't done with your, your wife's book yet. We're actually on, chapter 26. We're, reading this together and I can tell you, I literally, we, we, seriously feel like we've been traveling with you guys throughout your story. And so, you know, we were driving back from grand Lake and you know, we, my wife put the book down and goes, Yeah, you know, we live in this big house and our youngest son is growing up so fast. It would be great just to like take off and just travel for several months. then the wheel started spinning. like, you know what? We were looking like, should we rent a mobile home or rent an RV? And then I said, you know what? Maybe we should buy an RV because I like what you did. You bought an RV. And then you, at the end of the trip, you sold it. And I'm like, could actually work. just, maybe we could even sell it for what we paid for it or more. Here's the trick. We actually bought one and we were down in New Zealand and we wanted to this trip across the country. And, on eBay, I bought a motor home in California site unseen click buy now met, met the guy at the airport. He picked us up, took us to to the coach got in shows around and we took off. That was the hurricane. We sold that in Florida. That was the only one I think we paid 64. I sold it for like 55, but still, you know, for $5 ,000, we had a three month road trip in a pretty nice motor home. But the real trick is to purchase motor homes at the end of the season, one part of the country and do a trip to another part of the country where the season's beginning. So Alaska is perfect because They all drive up here. They're all 70 years old. It's their dream trip. They get here and they bought their dream motor home. They get here. They're tired. It's a long ride. The drive back doesn't look that appealing. Mom, this is the grandkids. They sell it at a discount. You drive the thing down to Florida and then there you go. It's, fall. Snowbirds are coming down off you go. And I've done that. I think we're on our sixth. I actually have two motor homes right now, one in Nevada and one here. And, that's just the way that works. That's, that sounds really fun. and, and just what a life experience. but what's even better than that is when you guys decided to basically take off and sail, and you, you, you were gone basically. What for one decade years, but you ended up staying in New Zealand and I didn't get to that part in your book yet. So I don't want you to ruin it for me or the audience because everyone should definitely pick up a copy of this book. I don't care if you're a real estate investor or not. These guys went out on an adventure of a lifetime and real estate is really what enabled them to do it in the first place. But it's an awesome journey and awesome story. So go check it out. know, I always talk about on my podcast What book inspired you? What books would you recommend? I recommend this book, seriously. It's a great read. It's not a long one. Read it with your wife, with your husband. If you have a family, if you're getting into real estate, or maybe you already have a portfolio, it just kind of opens your eyes. I'm sitting in this nice, big, 4 ,000 plus square foot home, and we have nice things, but I think experiences so much better than anything that you can own. I'll add, know, they're going to find if you go to the one happy landlord .com to the store, it's there or and you can find a lot of landlord parts there. Shameless plug or just on Amazon just put sailing Ohana book. And I really appreciate that. Very nice. Nice plug there. You she did a lot of work on that. She probably spent four years, you know, putting that together. I'm really very proud of her, you know, for doing that. It was a it was a labor. So can't you about New Zealand. know it is. literally, just got done writing a memoir, which I'm on my like my 10th edit on right now. And it took me a year to write the rough draft another year to think I was done. And now I'm on my third year of just editing and editing and editing it away. But I love hearing, you know, other people's experiences and that journey you guys took with your two little ones at like the perfect age for them to really just have for the rest of their lives, that experience, it's like, you can't beat that. The one re, I wouldn't probably regret, but our youngest, you know, she was one when we started and she doesn't really remember the Pacific crossing so much, which was, she had been a little older. It's really difficult. I think taking your kids out younger is, is much easier and it's just a better deal than when they're in their teens. You know, when they're in their teens, they're already, you know, finding their way, making their friends, doing their, it's just a different don't want to pull them away from that part, And it, no, people go back and forth with different opinions on it, but just in my experience, when those golden years from, you know, one and three to, you know, six and nine are just magic. And those are the years where they're focused on you. You can have that conversation. You know, there's not distractions being on the boat or in an RV. I want to add one thing. One thing I learned was, or I we learned It sounds great. We're going to sell the house and go away and do all this stuff. It's really for us a hybrid. I'm fine. Two or three months doing something. It's going to wear thin. it's nice to have the business to go back to. That's what I like about real estate. And then you're going come back to the business. You do that for a couple months and then you take off again. we were fortunate in the first decade. I don't think she mentioned in the book, she may have a buddy of mine. was also, he's the one that got me started in this whole thing up here in Alaska. And we had very similar portfolios and we bought a boat together because I had experience in the boat buying stuff. We would go before kids, Becky and I would go sailing for two or three months. He'd run all my business and then I'd come back, he'd take off, he'd be gone for two or three months and we'd just keep doing this thing. the rule was, leave the boat better than you found it, leave the business better than you found it. know, if you can find somebody in your world that you trust that can, can do that with and trust in real estate is an absolute monster. You know, I've met guys that are just out to screw every contractor, dig every tenant, you know, you're just, philosophically in the beginning, I've, I've watched the arc of their careers and it all looks good at year five or year six. You know, they're driving a nice car, living in nice house. They're doing all this stuff, but it always fails. And when you don't have that relationship with your, with your vendors, with your customers and that, that kind of servant leadership mentality where, you know, it's a, it's a bottom up, you know, the customers are first, then your, your staff, you know, then your managers, and then it's you as opposed to you. You get the idea. Yeah. You bring that into it. And it opens up a lot of freedom because when, folks are empowered and trusted and they can trust you to do what you say you're going to and you do a little more, you know, and I called up a company yesterday that cleaned an ice machine for us and they, was, it was too much. So I'm not saying just roll over for everything. And my conversation wasn't, it was like, listen guys, I don't mind training people. understand, don't, don't train them on my dime. And this gets back to knowing what you're doing. I go, this is cleaning an ice machine. I know it takes three hours because I've done it. Yeah. You're charging me six hours and two of those are overtime now at a $1 bill for cleaning a$2 ,000 ice machine. And as I'm saying this, what I'm less than I'm trying to impart is that's why knowing how these systems work, how your electrical system works, your plumbing system, your roofing, your foundation, your sewer system, all these things. One thing I might've done earlier, and I don't know if I totally recommend it or not, but is starting businesses. You know, I might've gone more commercial real estate had it, if I had to do over. and storage and lots and things like that. I can't, you know, hindsight and, but, know, finding businesses was, was once you get everything stable, like you've done and things were kind of trucking along small businesses that are not particularly sexy are enjoyable. Cause then you can take, your up, your upside for revenue is infinite to a And you have the ability to do very creative things, very active. If you want a lot of activity, running a business is a very, it's fun. what real estate does, like with travel, it gives you the base. So even during COVID, everything went sideways. The bar actually did well because they airlifted money on Honest, but that wasn't the point. But the real estate just kept going, chonk, chonk, chonk, chonk, chonk, chonk. And that's what you're, how you get the freedom you're alluding to, go do what you want to do. you know, and basics, you know, keep your leverage low, rent's reasonable. Understand that good tenants are fundamentally irresponsible. That can be a controversial statement, but good tenants are fundamentally irresponsible. What does that mean? They're going to be paycheck to paycheck for their whole lives. hopefully not. And you have an opportunity to speak into people's lives. And if you see one that's got, you know, a little listen, you Move them on. I'd rather see them move up. agree. People over profits. My philosophy. I think what's more rewarding is being able to put a family in a nice home. I'm not into the large apartment complexes and all that. I I have owned a fourplex and a duplex, but right now, if you look at my portfolio, I am a partner on some large apartment complexes, but that's completely passive. Just a limited partner. Totally hands But my bread and butter is my single family homes that are all here in Colorado Springs. I have a couple in Georgia too. But it will in Georgia and in the Springs. They're all around, you know, military bases. Yep. So that's my 10. That's a model. Mostly very families and I'm able to give these active duty service members and their families a nice home to live in a lot of the houses that I've purchased were really run down when I bought them, right. watched a few of your videos. Yeah. And I get to clean them up and provide my tenants with a great place to live. so, it works. And like you said, during COVID was the, actually as a landlord, it was the best time of my life because interest rates rates went way down. So I'm able to refinance my entire portfolio and literally double my cashflow overnight. And that enabled me to basically quit my nine to five. I actually had enough. From those rentals where I was like, okay, I could just do this full time now, just the rentals, right? so it radically changed our lives. And at the same time, because all of my tenants are mostly military families, they were continuing to pay rent through this time. So I didn't have any hiccups whatsoever. And I hear the other side of the coin though, like I know I had a lot of friends that were just like their tenant. Maybe they had like one or two rentals, but not a, you know, not a huge portfolio. And, know, it just takes one or two tenants to stop being rent and you're hurting. Well, I mean, if you have a tenant move out and the unit's vacant for one month, that can be a year payback. It's rough. And I want to, you the other thing I want to, I think that the good tenants are fundamentally irresponsible, meaning they're going to stay for long periods of time So a good tenant stays for a long period of time. And there's this misconception out there that I want to buy a house in a nice single family home in a really nice neighborhood because I'll get really good tenants. I know what your experience has been. But when you go in that upper high end range, in my opinion, those are the worst tenants. You know, they complain about everything. They want stuff to be perfect. They stay for 18 months and then they buy a house. Then they buy a house. Yeah. Now I got to get back real before I lose my train of thought on the other side of the coin. This is You're not going to live there type of house, but you buy these small starter homes. You fix them up to a standard that's reasonable, but you may not particularly want to live there. And then the tenants don't care. They don't care about the tile backsplash. They don't care about the fixtures, the carpet, the flooring, and did it match in all the rooms, whatever. What they care about is they have a cool land. Yes. They, and a tenant will inevitably get in a situation where they're in trouble. And at that point in time, you have a choice. You know, you victim and not deal with them and be done with them or in my philosophy is I work with them. What's going on? It's come up with a plan. And then if you get them through that situation, they are never going to leave you. I mean, and you have a 20, 25 year tenant. What's that? What's the value of that? I don't raise, I don't jack rents up on regular basis. I just get to Mark. I just try to say right below market. and you had a let's go back to travel. When we left to go on the 10 year trip, I lowered rents across the Wow. Like a hundred bucks a month. Just lowered the rents. Well, your living expenses are going down too. I don't want turnovers. Yeah. I'm out of town. know, turnovers are expensive. And so I talked to all the tenants. Here's what my wife and I are doing. Now you're building relationship and not braggadociously like, look at me. I'm the big real estate investor with the fancy boat. No, we're going to take off, time with our family. And then, know, we're going to be out of the state for a while. And, you know, I really, I really appreciate your tenancy. you've been a great asset to this building. You know, I want to give you a little discount. Appreciate everything you do. If you could help me out, you got a problem, call me ahead. And all of sudden you've got, you know, 60 or 70 tenants that are all, you know, pulling for you. Yeah. As opposed to pushing against you. Yeah. And I, know, I did, I did something similar once it was Christmas time. I had just refinanced a property and I pulled quite a bit of cash out. And I said, you know what? It would be nice if I just gave all my tenants the month of December off. That's generous. And that honestly, like my tenants appreciated that so much. And it's like, I mean, I have tenants that have gone up on top of the roof during, you know, I had this one house, there was a leak, there was a huge storm and the tenant got up there with a tarp. We tapped it all down. and said, Hey, Keith, don't worry. I stopped the water from coming in. And then he took a picture and he had dehumidifier set up fans going carpet was pulled up. He was drying the place out. That was my tenant. I've had tenants replace carpet. Yeah. I've had tenants paint and I'll do all kinds of stuff. I've had tenants leave, like move out and the house is lit. And I kid you not better than I gave it to them. I know it's people give tenants a hard rap, but you know, tenants are They can be an asset or a liability. And it's going to be a function of you more than now placing them in the first place. And I think when you get to a certain scale, tenants place themselves, I don't go through the whole screening process, all that stuff anymore. It's, know, a tenant in the building knows this person, they know that person, you know, before you know it and the real estate market's tight as it is. And you know, you can find, you know, decent people. Yeah. Yeah. So that's thing. Anything else on travel short of Those are the big things. was just, know, I don't want you to give away too much because I really do want to encourage people to go out here and read this book because it's, really like some of the stories in here that you guys went through. you know, Pirates or what you thought were pirated your way, you know, your wife and kids hiding, so, so they're not, you know, they're not seen, some of the dark, you know, stormy nights. that you guys went through. mean, there's a lot of packed with a lot of great stories. do have one question on that. And then I want to get into something else. And that is, so you, when you were living in that sailboat and just, you know, basically Island hopping, you went through the Panama canal and then then off to the Pacific. And I think that was your longest like journey, right? 3000 miles was the longest nonstop nonstop section. So you or your wife always awake 24 seven, like 24 hours a day? No, I mean, the way it works is, the egg timer. can, I can see it in my mind's eye. We have a little egg timer and you're offshore and you're, mean, between the Galapagos and the Marquesas is 3000 miles. You're just, you're chugging along and, you know, the boat pretty much sales itself. You know, you're on autopilot, you have a radar on with a guard zone. if something enters the guard, you'll, you'll know I would just set that egg timer for 15 minute intervals and just kind of, you know, you're not sleeping. You're just kind of dozing and you wake up, you look around now. That's kind of how the sleeping routine works at night and the day you're pretty up. I just crossed the Atlantic two years ago. There were three of us on the boat and we had active watches awake 24 seven, but we were racing and we had a lot of other boats, you know, with us and, but with three people and not little kids, you know, it was a pretty simple four hour schedule. It was a four hour schedule. and I had the, the mid, the late shift, which I liked, cause I can just kind of relax and, watch the boat do its thing. So yeah, that's how that works. Okay. So, so you're not, but, but do you ever get like a full eight hours worth of sleep? No, no. All right. I just, I just had that coming. As I was reading this, I'm just like, wife and I were talking with like, yeah, so we're having to do like a fire watch. Like, you know, Chips back and forth don't fall asleep, you know, we might wake up where we don't want to be you know, or You know or run into something. So great so you guys have had an incredible journey and your your in where I bumped into you in the first place was on Instagram and I do want to thank your daughter from for encouraging you to make the post that you do because you really have Put out a lot of great information If you're a landlord, you're just getting into this and you want some really good tips. You definitely want to follow at one, the number one happy landlord on Instagram. He, you know, Paul is pumping out a ton of good information from, you know, of the problems with my Instagram account is that I'm learning how to edit as I go. I've got decent. I got decent titles now for the last 30 or 40 videos before that. They're just my face. You don't know what the heck I'm talking about. So, and my goal is YouTube. I post the same content on YouTube, but only been doing shorts, you know, and, and I just haven't had the courage yet to do a long form content on the courage. It's just courage. It's just fear. And, I've got all the videos in my head that need to be done. And I also want to do it in a way You know, Instagram is it's a, it's a feed. So, you know, someone's they see it, they go and it's gone as opposed to YouTube, which is a, like a library, you know, my, my, my hope or goal is to put together 10, 13, a course basically, but I never wanted to sell a course because it feels so cheesy. Yeah. But to, if folks do follow me on Instagram or tick tock, which is where I started. Or over on YouTube, you know, I do get emails. You know, I answer every email. I've met some really, and that's, I've met some really great people through it. What's interesting is, you know, out of hundreds of thousands of views, I might get 15 or 20 emails. And what that tells me those 15 to 20 people will make it. Yeah. Because they're curious. Yes. They're curious and, and they have the balls like you did to say, Hey Paul, would you mind coming on this podcast? You don't know me from a hole in the wall. And, you did it, which is a marker, which is a marker for your future success. you know, I didn't tell one, you one last story about, is a New Zealand, it's not in the book, but this is about creating a job or creating an opportunity. and so many young males I talked to, how do I learn electrical, let's say for example, and the way you do it, you just go find an electrician and say, Hey, are you wiring a house? Can I help? What do you mean? I just want to learn how to do this. I will do anything. I will sweep. I will pull wire. I will strip. All I want to do is watch you do it. And I did that on two houses. And I just worked for free. I I labored. And let me tell you, when you're done wiring two houses, you know how an electrical system works. Yes. And as a landlord, that is probably one of the most valuable things that you can Is it know how the electrical system plumbing is the most valuable electrical number to actually. Yeah, but but to have that skill set where you can change out a socket, you could put up a new ceiling fan. You could do these things without electrocuting yourself. You're going to not only save yourself a lot of money, not not not that you're going to do it every time, but if it's something small and you can do it, why I told the story of the people on another podcast I was on, you know, had a young guy recently bought his first fourplex and we're walking around with a realtor. Now this was managed by a property management company. The realtor worked for the property management company and we'd look at this thing while we're there, this woman, one of the tenants says, Hey, to the realtor, can I get a people in my door? And he goes, yeah, people. Okay. Yeah. We get that people for you. You need to call so and so, and she'll arrange it. And I'll leave it at He leaves. look at the kid that's buying this for a part of it. You know, I got a people in my truck because I carry it. I would come up, drill a hole, put the people and be done. And it would cost me seven dollars. I buy them on Amazon. Think about the cost. And there's two there's two costs. The first is you got to have the person answer the phone. They got to fill out a work order. Work order goes to the to the maintenance man. Maintenance man goes to the Home Depot, drives over to the place, installs the thing, fills out of completion. of the work order form that goes back to the property management company. They do an invoice and build the landlord. Yeah. Bang. That whole event cost at least 140, 150, 160 bucks. But the second thing is the tenant, the poor girl is sitting there. All she wants is the safety to be able to look at her door and see if somebody's in the hallway. This shouldn't be there. And she's sitting there for seven, eight, nine, 10 days. And let me tell you, every single day, you she's thinking, I hate this property management company. Yeah. And so that's why for small landlords, wonder 100 units do not be so full of yourself. You can't get out of your car and go fix a dang whatever. Cause let me tell you that if we had done that people that day, she would have been like, this new landlord is going to be great. Yeah, I agree. Sorry. I get passionate about that kind of stuff. It drives me I totally agree. There's just, that's the problem with these big property management companies. I I'm actually in talks right now with a good friend of mine about starting a property management company out here just because we have so many friends out there that own properties that are being managed by these big property management companies and they're just getting destroyed. Like there's long vacancies between tenants. The tenant calls and complains about something not working and they take weeks to get in there and fix it. And it's just, it's not good. It's not the type of service that, well, just maybe the property management company is not the company where you're to make any money. I, know the the company is the handyman company. That's part of the property management company. So that's, that's where you're, that's where the money is. And, that being said, I've told My daughter, said, you know, if I retire, said nothing else to do, got lots of do, but say I would retire to Arizona where they live. I would find a one square mile section of a community built in the 1970s. I would bring my truck down and I would be the handyman for that one square mile. I wouldn't go an inch off of that mile. And I would tell you, I'll make a thousand to $2 ,000 a day every day. Just driving around that neighborhood, fixing sprinkler heads, faucets, pool pumps. You know, and for the property management company, that's where they, and I'll find the property manager for that area. There's somebody and she'll be like, that's my guy. And she'll be pulling 20 % off everything I do. Yeah. Yeah. If you got no money and you want to get started, get yourself a truck and just go start fixing. The world definitely needs, I mean, you can't get enough good handyman. It's a, it's a dying It is it is you really have to be kind of like the jack of all trades. Those guys are few and far between. But once you find a good one, you never let go. I have two handyman that I use right now. And if I ever lost them, I'd be in big trouble. They hold so much money. How old are they? One guy 60. Yeah. And the other guys is, I don't know, 4041. Yeah, it's tough to find the 20 somebody year olds, you know, that are picking up, but I'll tell you, there's opportunity. If anyone's watching this and you're like 21 years old, getting out of high, even out of high school, just, and you don't have to do every everyone's like, I used to do the same thing. How do I start a business? You just start, don't worry about licenses and all this insurance. I mean, just start doing something and you will figure out what you need. to be fair, business license is a three minute event. QuickBooks ain't rocket science. You can If you need to get a handyman license in your local area, it's just a bond. And people are like, don't know what's a bond. You go online, you type literally 10 minutes later, you've got a bond for $280. It's not hard, but that's tuition. That's the cheapest MBA you are ever going to get. True. And having been through grad school in business, you know, all I learned from the whole experience was there's no right answer to any question. MBA is all about picking among. know, 10 worst answers or whatever happens to be and you just, do you choose? Now they've got tools to analyze, but even those tools, you just need basic math to figure most of it out. you know, real estate again is not, it's not hard if you just stick to the absolute fundamentals and they don't, those don't change. I don't care. know, the thirties, fifties, seventies, nineties, the fundamentals of real estate investing are the same, particularly managing tenants. Yep, I agree. There's a speech for you. Well, hey, Paul, you've definitely we've talked about a lot of different things and you've definitely dropped a lot of knowledge. Yeah, I'm down in Colorado Springs. I've played golf down there in the past. We'll look you up. Hey, just give me a call. I'm okay. Well, it's been a real pleasure. I want to thank you for the opportunity because I didn't seek this out. I mentioned earlier the fact you did is it's a very important marker and. This is fun. is what we're trying to do is get this stuff out to these young investors to, in the name of one happy landlord, isn't me being a happy landlord. I want you to be one happy landlord. Yes. Yes. Being a sad landlord is not fun. It's not fun. Yeah, it's definitely not fun. All right. All right. And thank you. bet. Adios. All right. Adios. Everyone out there, God bless. Until next time.