You WON'T BELIEVE Nick Giulioni's Journey from Tech to Real Estate

got addicted to the the rental game and had one of the worst experiences of my life right there you bought the wedding video off of Zillow 100% off Zillow yes that's where I first saw it that's crazy I had a boss asked me to do something which was illegal and told me that if I didn't do it they were going to find somebody who would I also got robbed for six figures all right guys welcome back to the roots podcast today we're with someone very special uh kind of a mentor in Max and I life Nick Giuliani Nick Giuliani has a background in the tech industry actually in Silicon Valley and he worked for Facebook which became meta before then investing out of state in Indianapolis Nick has touched over 200 properties with his personal portfolio and flipping business and now runs one of the largest Contracting businesses in Indianapolis um which has touched well over 400 properties so max what are we going to talk about yeah super excited to have you on um Nick is also the host of the Indie investors Speak Easy which Tyler and I both try to frequent as much as we can um as much talk you guys into it yeah as much as Tyler how much my wife will let me get drunk how much you can drink during the week um but yeah I mean as we just alluded drinking on there it's it's much more laid-back over at the Indie investor Speak Easy excited to have you on here and and really start to unpack that background um that's crazy 400 doors for offleash how how old is offleash uh so offleash construction has actually only been been around for a year now so we've we've touched a lot of houses and really really blessed that that we've had that opportunity wow um a obviously a huge partner of roots and helps us out in many ways I'd love to start to unpack how uh your time in the tech industry was in Silicon Valley also your time in the tech industry while being an out ofate investor yeah I think the best way to frame that up is I want to hear what actually LED you to move to Indiana yeah um my gosh it is such a uh a big story and a weird series of events and and what I'm goingon to hope everybody hears is like the number of just accidents the number of coincidences that have made my life here and and really have encouraged me to develop my roots here um yeah I grew up in La like I I have no real association with Indianapolis except for a couple of very distant cousins are are living out here some are in Fort Wayne some are in uh in Indie and I actually only visited Indie once before um before I began investing out here um yeah went to USC met the girl in my dreams uh married her and uh and really got into the the tech field pretty pretty early and uh we we ended up kind of doing uh doing the house hacking thing for anybody who's not familiar that's where you rent out part of your house it was really cool opportunity I got addicted to the whole rental rental game at that point uh I was was doing e-commerce sales wasn't even really in the tech field but got addicted to the the rental game and had one of the worst experiences of my life right there I had a boss uh a ask me to do something which was illegal and told me that if I didn't do it they were going to find somebody who would despite objectively being a top performer in my company I was basically told like hey do this otherwise we're going to fire you and I remember sitting there just crying in the conference room like trying to figure out how I was going to get out of this cuz you know we just bought our house and while half of it was being paid for by by tenants like how are we going to pay our mortgage how are we going to to put food on the table and I found a way out of that situation and it was really really bad but I knew I needed to find another solution and I KN knew that if that ever happened again I needed to have the self-confidence to choose to walk out the door rather than then you know have have that happen and so um began uh began doing a whole lot of research uh began listening to a million of these kinds of podcasts uh more around the real estate investing specifically and followed one one one influencer who was doing a lot of stuff out here thankfully I didn't begin working with him because you know there were uh a lot of a lot of Bad actors here in India at that time and he was one of them and it's still being tried for all that but uh did end up deciding Indie was the market for me yeah there were there were a lot of great great reasons and we can kind of go into that if you want uh a lot of great reasons why Indie was an awesome Market to begin investing in and so I began building my portfolio out here really uh really went well it began to accelerate but then December 13th 2019 happened and that I will always remember that day because my property manager told me that he had just robbed me for six figures he had basically stolen all of my security deposits and had uh had stolen multiple months worth of rent from me and I was responsible for making sure those tenants were made whole on their security deposits and there were a lot of lot of issues uh and for anybody who's not aware shortly thereafter just a couple of months later uh the um uh the the eviction moratorium went into effect and so all of these poorly trained tenants then didn't have to pay rent it was a really really bad uh situation now at this point in time my wife and I lived in the Bay Area and I was uh working at at Facebook meta and she was working at another company we got sent home to to go work remote for at least 6 months and so my wife said hey like I know things aren't going well there in Indie I know that we just got robbed I know we've got a lot of issues do you want to get out there just to get closer to the business and and really see if you can get control of it cuz you know we're still still very much in a recovery stage also we were paying $4,000 a month to live in a shoe box in the Bay Area um and so that you're were renting out part of oh no you know what this was actually a different house that we were renting at that point um no so that was all just going to to somebody else's mortgage um and so we ended up uh coming out here we got the two Golden Retrievers in the back of the car and my wife looks at me she goes six months and not a day longer she was the one who uh ended up changing that uh we we were walking around we lived in an awesome area of fishers the houses kind of sucked but we were listening living in an awesome part of fishers and we were in in um some some little Community where we were walking through and she goes how much is one of those new builds you know one of these like $4,000 or 4,000 ft new builds and uh that's when I knew I had her and so it's been four and a half years uh we bought our Dreamhouse and it's actually the longest we've ever lived in any house that we've uh we've been living here in uh in our house in in uh in Caramel now so um how did I uh how did I get here gosh I don't know it's just a series of weird accidents but uh but the best possible accidents I can imagine peel back two things one you mentioned you picked I imagine you just like looking at a map of the US and being like where do I want to invest and build this portfolio the middle of cornfield you know us bu's Eyes straight in the middle why why did you originally decide to get that first deal in Indianapolis of all the options I'm just oh yeah um so you know I I could say that I had done all the research and I'd really done the comparison between every single Market um um that's not the case I'd be lying to you guys um I I did have a good enough criteria I think that's something that a lot of people that get analysis paralysis don't don't have that like hey I'm going to find good enough and then stop doing research at that point in time so I was looking for a good enough cash flow I also didn't have this is an expression my grandma used to use I didn't have a pot to piss in at that point in time and so I you know didn't couldn't afford to go and buy more in California I couldn't Buy in Colorado I couldn't Buy on the East Coast I needed to find something that was affordable so my first deal I think was $74,000 to purchase I think it was like $155,000 down or something like that and so I needed needed good enough cash flow I needed um it to be affordable and I wanted to have some idea that it would grow and then also I was like all right I got some family out there so if I get to go visit them and count it as a business expense that's a win in my book as well mhm I'm curious on house hacking in California was that out of an interest in real estate investing or had a necessity did you stumble into it yeah totally stumbled into it wasn't even really listening to podcasts at that point in time my wife and I were living in a tiny little house we were paying somebody else's uh mortgage again it was like a a Triplex fourplex kind of thing and I just saw what this guy was doing and I'm like one and my landlord also lived in the house he was a big old weirdo and not uh not the nicest person in the world I'm like well if this dummy can do it why can't I um and so figured it out figured out the the math wasn't going to find like a fourplex it was in kind of a shady area but you know we ended up paying the same on net of of the um the rental upstairs in in the house to live in a much much nicer area that there's no way we could have afforded to live in with Laguna Hills without the house hacking completely changed what was possible for us and honestly probably uh probably set us on a path that was much more expensive because our quality of life expectations went up big time by doing the house hacking thing right I'm I'm always curious on that cuz you I feel like you also kind of stumbled into it um not really looking at it from a place of investing but like necessity or um the disgust of paying somebody else's mortgage not wanting to pay rent like for me that's how I stumbled into house hacking is apartment had a terrible experience flooded four times paid way too much money for a 19-year-old to live somewhere and I'm like why don't I just go get a house where like I could deal with these problems on my own agenda and not have to rely on somebody else so which led into investing from there like oh you've done it once now you can do it at scale but doing it at scale from such a distance that is what I don't get that's what always stumps me um and I think you hit on a little bit it's because it was 74k right it was affordability to be here there's that piece of it and I think that's an important piece like I don't want to you know underestimate that cuz yeah I was 26 years old I just spent all my money on the house we had in California despite doing like an FHA type of low low down I still had to replace the there were so many things wrong with that house like that that was an absolute disaster for a lot of reasons but it got me on the path so yeah it was it was cheap but the other thing you need to consider is that house we purchased uh which was a a not a duplex but it was had a mother-in-law suet above the garage we bought it for $648,000 and we ended up having to invest probably another 50 into it so we were all into it for $700,000 let's say for the sake of conversation that place would probably rent out between both sides at most at at most 4,000 I think that's a little high and so that rent to Value ratio just wasn't there uh and there was no way to actually cash flow on one of those things like you could here in in the Indie Market or any of the Midwest markets where at that point in time that rent to Value ratio was sitting closer to that 1% Rule and so I I was buying that $74,000 house I think it rented for 700 or 750 when I bought it and immediately cash flowed on that sucker so there was that factor as well and more importantly to me the appreciation was greater in Indie I'm sure and what I don't know I I'd be curious to see if you compared uh the two houses side by side which one has gained more in equity the California house or the Indianapolis house from a percentage perspective I I would bet Indie has actually won fairly substantially with cash outlay and everything yeah should should be or else we're all doing something wrong yeah no kidding right right what was it that changed your like why you were here for those six months kind of picking up the pieces your property manager stole your money you're figuring out your kind of investing strategy in Indianapolis what changed for you from this is a short-term thing visiting Indie yeah to this could be our home what was it what were the one to two to three things that you're like I really like this life here yeah there are about a million things love about Indie and there are million reasons why I'll never go back um when we first moved here we were actually staying in an Airbnb just off of um like Keystone area and it was fine uh I I think it was totally A Fine Place to to stay for about a month this was while we were purchasing actually another house hack that we did in uh in Fishers it was two houses on one lot really cool really cool property but it was once we got there into Fishers into that property where we had three acres and um yeah just absolutely incredible the space um there was something about um yeah just having having square footage that like all right I can like spread out a little bit like California always felt like I was you know all all jammed up and and everybody was right up against each other the other thing uh that I'd say that was really a a standout thing for us was um and we we took Co very very seriously uh during that time my wife is severely asthmatic and so um that was one of the reasons why we moved out here cuz we weren't going to see friends we weren't going to see people anyway because of how seriously we were taking it until we were vaccinated and we had an issue here because everybody was so darn nice like my wife would go to the grocery store all masked up and ready to go and she'd get out to the car and people would be coming out trying to help her load the car like like it's that Midwest sens yeah Midwest sensibility Midwest charm and um which I know you well like that's more like you you're way too nice even for Indie you're so nice you'll give your time to anyone and everyone and that's not a California thing oh my God it's not a California thing um and so everything's felt a little bit slower it felt a little bit more like hey you get to know your neighbors you look out for each other and and there's something that and maybe it's a Hamilton County thing uh I don't spend as much time actually in Indianapolis as I probably should but like when I'm out walking the dogs when I'm walking my kid everybody waves at you if they're driving by they wave at you it doesn't matter like if you've never seen that person and there's something to that um you know and then I I do think that there's also just a ton of opportunity here on top top of on top of all that that um it feels a little less overrun it feels a little less um a little less overcrowded to uh to to have an opportunity to to start something and to grow something MH the stat I like to pull from is we're the fastest by growth rate uh City growing in the midwest I didn't know that yet we're like the 20th most affordable within the top 20 most affordable metros yeah so like the way my our Mentor Rex kind of frames it is like we punch above our weight class mhm like it's like you think like Austin and Asheville will they punch above their weight class with regards to the United States in terms of tons of California transplants going there but locally regionally Indianapolis punches above its weight class I have friends of mine that literally live in California that I went to college with who are like I will never be able to own a home yeah they like they fanatiz about moving to Indie in fact many of them will travel and like pass by and they want to see homes and try it on which kind of bugs me cuz like I know they're not actually going to buy something cuz they like the life in California but they are like my future is so like barricaded yeah with regards to you know finances yeah you you just said something that was really interesting and it really took a while to explain it to to our parents why we moved out here uh but you know my my parents weren't well off when I was a young kid neither I think Diane's parents were were probably a little bit better off but um they were able to to build one heck of a life in California they bought their first house in California and 1996 for I think it was like $250 $300,000 and like that house is now worth 2 point something million like it's absolutely silly what what has happened and so we looked at the lives we had growing up and we knew that we wanted a child we knew we wanted our daughter and we didn't see a path to giving our daughter the same lives that we had growing up and so when we moved out here we saw that path we saw that hell we might actually be able to make a better life you know we live in an area that has the top five best schools in the country like we can actually give something really special to our our family that we wouldn't have been able to in California I feel like I mean I know you all I've heard your your background in your story many times and what always Sparks in my head is the moment you decided to move here and plant roots in Indie is a second that you started being able to unlock ability to build wealth which is heartedly agree to me that like like you were a little more on a treadmill before like maybe making in it but like witnessing you I mean you've created generational wealth I would presume I hope so at this point yeah I mean like why don't you share a little bit about your business today because I know you have wedding venues you have off leash like share a little bit about where you're at today and where you're going yeah so at any given point in time I've got somewhere between 60 and 70 rentals uh that number does tend to change change by the week or so but it it tends to hover in that number a couple years ago actually in 2022 when I left uh I left Facebook I began doing a whole lot more flipping um I had an opportunity to sell a decent chunk of my portfolio and did that and ended up buying like you were indicating um a wedding venue down in Bloomington the Wilds wedding venue for anybody who's local and is looking to get married I don't think there's a nicer one out there um and did that and uh what I've continued to find through throughout my my life is that I just go and I I find the the next great opportunity and then incredible accidents happen so like for instance when when I sold that chunk of my portfolio I didn't know what I was going to do I was not looking for a wedding venue um I I saw yeah that I needed to spend north of $3 million uh based on my 1031 exchange uh which is a tax-free exchange um with a whole lot of rules talk to your accountant before attempting it yourself um but uh so I just went on Zillow cuz I didn't want to go buy 15 crappy houses and fix them off I was like that's just going to be so much work to get done in the time frame so I just was like all right I'll just find an apartment building and I just went on Zillow and put the minimum up and stumbled across this incredible incredible wedding venue you bought the wedding venue off of Zillow 100% off Zillow yes that's where I first saw it my agent there are deals on the market my agent made out like a freaking bandit in that that I I found that one and then he so I mean I've I've been to the Wilds I'm familiar with the Wilds The View where you get married is absolutely astonishing are they selling it as a house no uh they were selling it as a wedding venue but uh it did have the two attached houses as well wow um yeah it was a weird weird transaction it should not have been on Zilla I was going to say that's I was trying to rationalize but I forgot that there's the there's the Str strs up front right there one of them is an Str Str okay that makes more sense yeah can we go back to something said about where you're at now that I've been hyper curious about I have I think six rentals and right now I don't draw any of it to pay for groceries or living expenses like it's all saving up I feel like for like the next roof for the next Calamity that's going to strike smart play I mean a smart saying is you can't buy groceries with Equity yeah like it's the equity has been great we're talking 20% annualized growth like when I look at it however you have 60 to 70 rentals are you like essentially printing money that you're using to live off of is that all reinvested I've never takal I've never taken a dollar um yeah thankfully I've been well employed throughout my entire career uh my wife is is well employed so uh that's a super privileged thing to say but yeah I've been rolling It Forward uh rolling It Forward into the next opportunity rolling it into the next flip and all of that and um so no I I actually haven't taken a single dollar out of my rental portfolio do you know off the top of your head your average uh home value uh there it's somewhere between 100 and 200 uh somewhere in that range I'd say probably about 145 if I had to guess have those continue to increase over the time not just because of natural appreciation we're only talking about two years there's not a ton of natural appreciation but just uh as you roll it Forward are you selling one's worth 120 getting rid of that one replacing it with 180 yeah that that's interesting that you bring that up I'm actually trying to do away with my lower-end units on a regular basis uh I used to write down on a daily basis that I wanted uh I wanted a th000 doors like that was something that was really important to me and what is the vanity metrics oh yeah yeah total vanity metric and that was a waste of time that was a mistake um because I thought that that the door count was what was important but what actually is important is the return on your time invested at least for me I I value the return on my time invested much more than the return on investment and so those lower end your time is more valuable like it's increasingly more valuable spending time calling a contractor is you're losing money it sucks yeah also running and chasing after rent checks getting calls to Brick been thrown through your window while you're on paternity leave with your wife not personal experience never happened currently not dealing with that as you've gotten into better properties that are worth more has your cash flow taken a hit yeah absolutely um in some ways uh but then there are alternative ways to to make more money on those things so like for instance we just launched an Airbnb another Airbnb um those things Crush for me from a cash flow perspective uh and if you've build systems enough in place you can do it with management without management but your cash flow you know we've got one that just appraised for 340 that pulls in north of $5,000 a month we got another one that's probably similar price point and similar similar rent we got one down in Bates Hendricks it's doing similar so you can significantly outperform those rent to Value ratios I think where people struggle is on like the lowend airbnbs you don't tend to actually get the the same kind of rent to value that you will on the the higher end so um I think that's an opportunity the other opportunities are turning that Equity into like we now have two wedding venues so we bought a second one and we're utilizing all those same systems to um to grow and continue to uh to employ more people and and throw a whole lot more awesome parties yeah selfishly I I want to know more about the wedding venue business in general um I mean that was my wife's goal was to own a wedding venue like when she went to college that's what she she went for event management tours and wanted to be able to own a wedding venue and then we you know fast forward she gets out of college and we go even buy a wedding venue um it's hard what is the it's just so saturated for me when I look at Indiana like if you look up wedding venue in Indiana there are so many how do you uh how do you stay competitive in that Marketplace and how do those perform if you know it all or do you just have business management running it and you're removed and just see the reports no I definitely don't just see the reports I I'm not a part of any of the individual weddings anymore that hasn't been something I've done for over year now which is something I'm really really you're not passing out the flowers uh no so one of the rules uh stand in best man funny say I have officiated a wedding at the Wilds but I have not um I haven't had rent to best man yeah rent you can rent me um I'm not that expensive but um one of the one of the things my wife said uh when I came home and I told her hey I think we're going to buy a wedding venue she just looks at me she kind of you know put her head down shook her head and she goes okay I trust you but you can't talk to any of the brides that's what she's thinking about she's just like I know that uh I know that you're going to think that uh that their problems are too small and all that so uh thankfully she just puts her head down can just she's like oh my God this is this guy doesn't know what well also like I know nothing about wedding she she did look at me the other thing she said is you were barely involved in your own wedding what are you doing um and so I I'm really really incredibly blessed I uh three full-timers who work for me at the Wild and Laurel Mill who are absolutely incredible like I don't need to manage them on a day-to-day basis they know what they need to do and they go and they execute at a high level where I add values from the business perspective I go look at the new opportunities I help to focus them from a resourcing perspective um but I think my involvement with the wedding venues is maybe four or five hours a week so pretty pretty darn light given the fact that we do I think we're going to do about 150 weddings this next year um so really lucky you know we we've got liquor we've got probably 25 we've got probably got 25 part timers who work for us so doing quick math between if you're doing weddings on Friday Saturday and Sunday you have Mondays sometimes Thursdays yeah yeah you're you're running two to three weddings week at each or two to three at each venue a week or between the two uh no I'm saying between the two we're going to do 150 okay uh so you know we've had a couple six seven uh weekend weddings or wedding weekends so I have to ask then if you have have a full-time person who I know you you've shared this they're paid pretty well yeah um does it uh what does that p&l statement look like for you like is it is it profitable or is it you know yeah it's profitable um now we do have quite a bit of of debt on it because you know they were big big purchases but yeah they're definitely definitely quite profitable for us you know our expense ratio uh it's funny I was talking to somebody about this today sits at about 55% before we end up uh paying the ownership wow I uh in debt that just knowing the I know some about that industry just from her experience going in working places that's uh that's really cool um that to me is I I like finding the unique I see a lot of Real Estate Investors that don't just own real estate I mean I own a GNC and then have roots and just different companies that are evolving the wedding venue that's that's uh I think we need to buy a wedding venue you need to let me in on the next one all right hey I uh funny enough I had had an ins track but I decided to pass on it and you know and maybe that's something that um that might be interesting to everybody but I've really gotten to the point now where I have more opportunities come into my world than I have capacity to do it um you know my my time is my my number one most constrained resource by by a mile and I'm not willing to you know Rob Rob my my family I'm not willing to rob my daughter uh from from my time to go and and pursue new opportunities in a lot of situations so uh I'm kind of in the mentality that if it's not a hell yes it's a no at this point in time and uh really actually on a third venue that would have been a lot more work a lot more uh to go into it I ended up uh passing on that opportunity simply because I it wasn't a hell yeah where do those habits get created what habits knowing when to say no the habit I think saying no is should be a habit and uh knowing when it's a hell yeah is that all gut no no uh it's usually my wife uh I wish I could take the credit but uh if if she tells me like is that is that your one thing is that your big thing uh is that your your big rock that you're going to move today um that's usually an indication that she's not super excited about it and that's her way of trying to get me to get to that that place I'm a person who gets excited about stuff very quickly and very easily um and I can you know sit down I can put together that uh Excel spreadsheet that's going to make it look like the best deal that's ever been done but um but then I need a little bit of that realism to to bring me back and so she's an incred partner for anybody who's out there like I do recommend having a partner somebody who if you're the dreamer have somebody who's kind of the realist that can can help ground you a little bit and make sure that you're focusing on on the one thing because and and we haven't talked about it too much here yet today but you know I I started a construction company I think that that could have the opportunity to be the biggest thing I've done by a mile but it takes so much time so much attention and when when I lean into it I see it do really well and when I pull away if I for whatever reason I see it struggle and so um so you know she asked me there in that situation like is that going to take away from the construction I was like yeah it will so that that immediately made it a not a hell yeah and because she knows exactly how excited you get to wake up in the morning and go work for the construction company yeah it's going to be in the way get it out of the way I love that I think all of us are dreamer sitting at this table we all have really um probably should listen to that voice more at home uh that doesn't need to see the Excel sheet just knows like in instinctly yep that's not going to work out get whatever yes is a no to something else yeah wholeheartedly in agreement yeah I would have been saying no to spending more time on uh on the construction business I would have been spent you know saying no to all of the people who've partnered with me all of my employees all my you know my co-owners of that business uh to helping them on certain things so yeah I'm wholeheartedly in agreement with that yeah let's dive deeper into offleash we spent a lot of time talking about the the background in the passive um I would love to understand more of off leash's Vision how like what excites you what's the mission with offleash besides building the biggest construction company like actually the work that offleash does is what I'm curious on yeah um so it offleash is another accidental business uh that I think is is is pretty darn cool um when I went full-time in 2022 to um to real estate I realized that contractors really suck uh they were unreliable um similar to my property manager often times they'll steal uh they're over budget over you know overtime all that stuff and I found one good contractor who was good on his budgets he did great work and he wasn't great on the timing that's still something that I think is an opportunity but uh his name's Paul and he um he came and I I convinced him that he should just come and work for me as a project manager and at that point in time I was doing 10 to 12 flips at a time I said all right Paul like just go around yell at the contractors just go be present and make sure these projects get done on time on budget and they started doing really well and I'm the most micro of micro celebrities within the small crazy niche of out ofate investor Community for Indianapolis and once that started happening all my friends started asking well can Paul project manage for me too so I see you know ding ding ding somebody else is going to pay for Paul's salary this a great opportunity what I didn't realize is just how much more seriously I was going to take somebody else's project than my own I didn't realize um I'm watching that happen with a separate client right now yeah who's done 10 to 12 flips this year starting to lean into the project management yeah and watching the I mean I'm seeing the final product compared to listing his to listing the ones that he's helping others on yeah and I was like why hav we been doing this the past year this thing's so much easier to sell yeah um and it's that but you just said that's crazy yeah well we we took it seriously but when you're a project manager you don't actually have enough margin in those situations to take it on the chin when a contractor goes bad there's just not enough uh the 10% doesn't cover the salaries plus the the um the risk factor right so a year ago just over a year ago we decided we were going to GC everything ourselves General contracted all ourselves there's a little bit more margin in there for us to do that um and it's it's been been good for us it's allowed us to grow um we started doing maintenance for different people um different property managers around the area so we actually started hiring W2 employees um and so what initially started as 100% subcontracting everything out we're now getting to the point where I think we're about 30% inous which I'm so thrilled to to say and we're continuing to to grow that side of things because again you get to up the quality that you do you get to to be more price competitive in a lot of situations you get to control when projects actually get done it's a um it's a very different type of way of running a business and um it's probably a lot harder but getting back to your question like what's the mission we want to help people stop getting screwed over by bad contractors and we're going to make mistakes I I promise I promise the world that off Le she's going to make mistakes but we promise to actually back ourselves and and and back up the clients when that happens happens whether that's an investor whether that's a retail client whether that's a tenant the number of times that we've we've had to protect tenants from Bad owners has been quite high so um our objective is to essentially make incredibly safe nice homes for people to live and we've been really lucky to to have that opportunity to do it so far I think you and I share uh common interest and our favorite uh introduction to somebody which it's our favorite but also our least favorite it's when somebody's come to us with pain because they've gotten screwed over yeah help me fix this so it doesn't happen and the reason why I say that it's our favorite uh client is because from that point forward they know that if we do a good job on this one they trust us forever yeah and that is like we can get over that hurdle of them thinking that we're screwing them over because they have firsthand experience of being screwed over absolutely it's my least favorite because the way they had to meet us is they had to have a bad day um it's heartbreaking and I wish I could say it was uncommon but I would say about a third of the um the jobs on our board today are somebody who in some cases they they came to us and they decided not to to work with us because we were too expensive they went with somebody cheaper ended up getting screwed over came back to us or hey they found us after working with somebody bad um but yeah literally Pro north of a million dollars worth of of business on our board today is simply just winning from other bad contractors from those other terrible situations and i' always like I I love to have the opportunity to save them like you were saying in those situations but it's one of the worst things in the world knowing just how much money has been lost and has gone up somebody's nose or has uh has uh funded some some great parties well yeah in first hand all I mean the biggest struggle I think contractors have is they don't do what they said they would do they overpromise and underd deliver yeah and I feel like that's the competitive advantage that you guys are really directly addressing yeah which is that issue of communication I honestly think yeah and the standard of more like white color service and a blue collar industry which is glaringly absent I think Nationwide yeah um and Ian I felt that um I do want to kind of switch gears though um I think a lot of people listening will be like that's really amazing what Nick has built but I'm here I have some money in my I have some money in my Sofi money market I maybe have one rental two rentals I have a very specific question to you which applies to to me selfishly which is let's just say you had like 50,000 in a bank account maybe you live in Silicon Valley maybe you live in uh Caramel Indiana yeah and you're you're you're listening to this podcast you're listening to Bigger Pockets whatever H how would you get started yeah what would you do I'd call Tyler lingle and I would find a house hack as many times as you can do that once a year until you know you decide that you've got a family you don't want to house hack anymore whatever that looks like I would house hack every single year I think that's the single greatest Roi type of of opportunity that you can have pretty high Roti as well uh return on time invested so I would say that you know if that's what you're looking to do fantastic like go for it run it do it um and that 50k for a step one being to house hack I mean you can you can get you get a lot of house place 15K is like the starting like if you have 15K you can go get a house hack 300K 3.5% down like it's and a $300,000 house can be really really nice depending on how you want to house hack it I think you well heck my uh my house hack in Fishers was we bought it for $300,000 so um now granted that was four years ago so I know the market just shifted but you don't even need a duplex roommate situation works that's how Tyler and I got started I like uh I like the approach of house hack I want to take it one level up yeah and go more towards probably where Tyler's at and where I think a lot of viewers will be at because it's we've taken polls that are Master Class of like how many houses do people own and the average is like two to three yeah and it was that scalability of okay I've in 2025 I'm going to invest $50,000 into real estate and my goal is to increase uh wealth and to take that next level up maybe not necessarily cash flow so if that's increasing doors what would you do how would you approach it all right if house hacking is off the table and and what I'm looking to do you already have the house you've got three doors 50k um so I think the direction I'd go is one you you want to be a lot smarter than I was when I started doing this you want to network with everybody that you possibly can um there are a lot of reasons for that first is uh you're going to meet people who are in your field which will give you a ton more perspective on what works what's not working for them uh when you're just starting out just reading it on biggerpockets.com or reading a couple of uh or watching you know some YouTube videos or whatever that's going to be nothing by comparison to networking whether that's the roots events whether it's diarrhea uh doesn't matter but like get involved in your local community to really understand it that's going to be step one so sign up for the next master class in the description below y absolutely um the next thing that I would say from that perspective is talk about what you're doing with everybody in your world I'm not even talking about people that uh that are inin the real estate world but I would talk to your friends your family about what you're doing because real estate's sexy guys like most people own if they're lucky they own the house that they live in they might own one house that they moved out of if they or like inherited or something but like very few people own two three four 10 properties and so you doing this is a really cool thing that most people can't really conceive of they just know throwing their money on the stock market so talking about it has a lot of advantages first a lot of people want to get involved you might be able to turn that $50,000 into a whole lot more from a a private money perspective you might be able to to get them to to be an equity partner with you or a debt partner with you on something but just talking about it and not not asking for anything just talking about what you're doing the amount of private money out there is extremely extremely high you just need to unlock it in your world and then the third thing I'd say is value ad real estate um I would say going and finding that ugly house you can go buy with that $50,000 you can probably go buy between $200 and $300,000 worth of of real estate in that ballpark if you just buy it as a finished product if you instead decide to go do the the Burr strategy if you decide to go flip with that money I think you can do a whole lot better uh you can go out and buy the $100,000 house that you go sync 50 $60,000 into then it's worth 200 on the back end you can then make the decision whether you're going to refinance it or List it with Max and and get that thing sold off and use that cash to go and do it again um and so so I think finding those opportunities to essentially find an Arbitrage play and fundamentally what we're talking about here is is it's an Arbitrage between the purchase price plus the cost of the renovation and what that after repair value is and if you're really good at it you don't even have to renovate the place you can just stick it on the market uh like Nick does occasionally I get lucky and I find an off-market deal that that I pass on to you guys and then you guys help me so um yeah there there are definitely opportunities to to do that and you would recommend that to someone in Silicon Valley uh I would uh but you're going to need a great partner in order to do it or um if if you know someone thinks that that's a little too risky and I do think it's hard to do that from a distance uh it's hard to identify enough deals to and get get your contract I see about 50% success rate with value ads from out of state yeah just because of the attention rate I mean it's the uh I think what would you just alluded to something that I've never unlocked in my brain and I'll probably regret saying this but the difference is not going out of yourself having a partner that is boots on the ground that probably is a deeper relationship than an agent or a uh contractor partner it's like an actual we're doing this together I could see that and whether that's should just be the money if you're I I firmly believe if you're working for meta and you're making Buu bucks yeah I'm sorry don't go GC a flip in Indianapolis I believe that's a terrible idea that's how we get we get into situations where we list them they have a hard money note do and they're frantic I we do that all the time really they should partner with someone like you who can GC it well but maybe even it's finding someone that's already doing it that needs to raise private money and then do Noe investing yeah like you can get a big ball of money 300K and make it 600k in like two to three years or even just be the money partner and let them use their experience like for me I would rather I would rather do that on a lot of the out ofate flips that I've represented in the past 18 months if I was the equity partner on it I feel like the experience everybody would have made more money yeah can see that because I'm not getting paid to check in on it constantly Le is doing their thing and doing stuff really well but also I know how much more rocket feel I can put behind off Le pilot a uh Equity agent deal yeah a lot of people have asked it's just been too messy for me to want to do you right that's why I said I'll probably regret the sleep deprivation um no that's that's really interesting I I have to ask though how I mean you had a bad experience from out of state yeah and if you are going to do this from out of state you're going to add value in real estate mhm what are the alarming signs people should look for yeah uh bad communication is the number one thing um when the communication stops that's when you know you're in trouble um consistently whether that's an agent whether that's a property manager whether that's a contractor uh you need regular planned communication and now you know shooting shooting your contractor a text and expecting you to respond in 15 minutes unfair expectation hell I can't even overly to Tyler that fast he texts me often times worst client yeah I think I think oftentimes it takes us days to get back to each other but um like having some some way of um having some way of of checking in on a regular basis making sure that you know when you're going to get communication from these people and uh them them hitting those dates is going to be key so you alluded to a couple of of important things yeah I got screwed I still won in the grand scheme of things I didn't need to move out here for that it was a happy happy opportunity that I did that and I was l uh again uh coincidence or or accident that got me out here but um what what I think people need to do is they need to work with grown-ups if especially if they're going to do it from a distance um you know going and working with the agent who just decides hey I want to start a property management company I was the idiot who who did that and granted my portfolio grew substantially because of that but I also got robbed for six figures um I'm going to start a property management company because I'm not selling enough in real EST state or so there's that piece of it uh but I think a lot of Agents get into the I like the annuity of it like I like the consistency where you know you guys might sell four houses a year and in Industry that is going like this they want they want the consistency but there are grown-up companies out there um you know tnh who I know has been a sponsor at Roots events is a grown-up company they've got they've got systems in place Intrigue you know what to expect from them like it's not they're not flat by night yeah they've got they've got business processes um yeah absolutely um you know they've got hundreds and hundreds of doors it's probably a good sign that you're going to be well taken care of um you know same thing with a contractor if it's just a guy in a truck you're probably in trouble if it's you know uh in a truck or it's an agent that's a pro project manager just trying to make consistent income as if your agent's doing it all that must mean they're not great at any one of them yeah exactly like to be honest that's true absolutely splitting your time in all directions you're not giving enough time to any Direction they can't possibly be an expert in all them it's just not physically possible POS yeah that's why we we I get asked the number one question I get asked is why don't we have a prop Property Management uh I think I've asked you that question yeah you've actually tried to like push us into Property Management like get into the deep end and go yeah the reason we don't is because that hasn't been a necessity for us personally yeah we don't have our doors at a property manager we have in-house management but it's not a large enough necessity to have an engine behind it fa so when we do launch it it's going to be because there's collectively you know 30 to 40 doors that are under a roof and have been for a while and we have enough people in that direction that it's like okay like you did you built offleash out of necessity yeah you had enough business going on to pay Paul and then other people brought you money and that's where it scaled that'll happen for us naturally with uh property management and that is also how tnh started yeah um that's also how a lot of other really really good prop property management companies have started in Indie is out of necessity it's their own personal doors from an investment perspective yeah yeah um totally tanged from the Silicone Valley man we have covered a lot I hope people can follow this line um we could talk for for days and days and we'll definitely have you back we do have some last second questions for you a little bit of uh rapid fire speed incredibly important question coming out you which is what is your favorite dinner place in Indie oh that is a hard one all right so um rout bone in um root and Bone there in the broad R full area awesome I think they've got the single best uh Fried Chicken in all of Indie and that includes the eagle the Eagle's trash by comparison um that said uh I do have to say Anthony's up in Caramel is like if you're going to go for that upscale meal I was waiting for you to say a caramel restaurant I know this guy is I I got I got I got to rep both sides but it's between root and Bone and uh and Anthony i' say for for those that know Nick lives in the the let's just call it the bougie what all the of us it's fair he probably called it carel when he I did call it car when I moved out here all the out ofate investors moving here are going to move to caramel yeah can guarantee uh what's the number one habit that has led to your success yeah get up before everyone else uh get up and and take control of your day I know it's probably one of the most um most over over talked about types of of answers to this question but you know I'm up at 5:15 every single day uh doesn't matter what happened the night before I'm up at 5:15 I get up you know write out my what my goals are for the day what I'm thankful for get a workout then I go and spend time with my family and and let the day come to me after that point but I I prioritize me before I prioritize the world and I think that's really important for everybody I know he's about to fire the next question you take every Wednesday off oh yeah elaborate uh yeah so every Wednesday I I do I'm a a Serial entrepreneur as you guys have heard I've got a lot of different things going on this guy had like a crazy fever super sick the the most sick I've ever heard him and he said the words I'm an entrepreneur I'm still working today back to me and I'm like dude go home and take a nap um yeah I've been guilty of that before but um so I tend to work a lot of nights I tend to work a lot of weekends um and so one of the things I I made a decision and nobody believed me that I'd actually do it uh including my my wife my mom uh but uh before my daughter was born I said I'm GNA take every Wednesday and I'm going to uh going to go spend that time with her there was an old blog called uh waffle uh waffles on Wednesday which was a a fire type of of podcast and I loved the concept of why can't we have waffles on Wednesday like it's the kind of thing that you only do on the weekend why not waffles on Wednesday so uh every Wednesday is is our Bailey day and the two of us go and we we play at at the play gym and just just spend time together because I know that uh I only have 18 years I've her being in the house and I'm going to enjoy every single one of them yeah I love that you know my son's what 5 weeks old now um you GNA take Wednesday uh no I'm going to take the month of October off which is the same equivalent I love that I love that is this news I haven't that to him [Music] yet you talk about call me oob I love that uh last question for you what is an area of life you're currently working on growing oh that that's a hard one uh I'm kind of one of those all-in people and so right now uh off Le construction has gotten a little bit of of everything uh I've been been lucky enough that I've been able to build the habits around around my health I I could probably drink a little bit less uh very transparently but uh right now I'm leaning into um to creating the best opportunity for all of our employees at at offleash like that is what I am I'm really focusing on because I think this could be a hundred-year business if I do my my job right and um but that that only happens by by treating everyone incredibly well today making an incredible place to work that then they go into deliver for our clients so that's that I would say is my number one Focus we'd love to be right there with you I mean our goal with roots is to be the real estate side and you guys over there on the Contracting side to be there for 100 years I mean that's so rare in our industry like there's a lot that pop off for like five years and they disappear yeah completely like evaporate they just bought up that's the norm um yeah no I love that where're can uh where can people reach you or find you yeah best way to uh get in touch at is at off leash Construction on on Instagram or if they want to email me Nick at offleash construction uh the other thing I'll just say it's fun anybody who's local I I put this out there it's drinks withof le.com uh you can get on on our calendar and have a a drink up at uh at the speakes or the water bowl up in Caramel so you got to drive up to the north side but I promise I will pour good stuff for you we'll make sure to put that in the description thank you guys for watching this episode of The Roots podcast make sure to like And subscribe uh drop a comment DM us uh your next real estate deal on Instagram and we'll judge it on here in upcoming episode so look forward to seeing you guys at the next Indie investor master class uh link is in the description below peace peace [Music]