Intro: Chris Wood ️

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hustlers, on today's episode of the Terms of the Hustle Podcast, we're joined by an entrepreneur with a powerful journey from serving 10 years in the Army to building a real estate business from the ground up. He started a new construction, moved into new home sales, got his mortgage license, opened his own brokerage, and eventually founded Home Lab, a company focused on modern property management and real estate solutions. This episode is all about evolution, discipline, and what it takes to build something real in this industry. On today's episode, Chris Wood. Welcome to another episode of the Charms the Hustle Podcast, where real estate investors and entrepreneurs show their stories, strategies, and mindset behind our hustle. I'm your host, Michael Giannis, aka Mr. Hustle. To my right, Scott or Moon. Let's go. And today's special guest, Chris Wood. How are you doing? Doing well, man. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here, man. Before we get started, this is the Charm of the Hustle Podcast. My hustle is real estate wholesaling, real estate flipping, and real estate subject to by taking over payments. When someone thinks of Chris Wood, what's Chris's hustle?

SPEAKER_02 1:06

I want them to think all things property management.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

All things property management. In this space, definitely need property management, right? So we definitely need property management in this space. And I believe you're hitting almost about to hit 150 doors.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

We are about to cross that threshold. We're just a few doors away.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

A few doors away from 150 doors. Man, I got I managed a few of my own as a headache to begin with. To manage 150 doors, I could assume the headaches. But before the 150 doors, who was Chris before all of real estate?

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Before all of real estate, I'm I'm prior military. So I joined the military at 17. Um I spent the first part of my 10 years of my life doing that. Uh all medical. I was in the medical field as a flight medic while I was in. And then when I got out, I fell into real estate on the new construction side. And then it's what branch? Army. So you're 68 whiskey? 68 whiskey. Yes, sir. 68 whiskey. Okay. What was your duty station? Uh first duty station, 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg. That's my that's my home. That's my baby. Um, and then of course I've been all over from there. But went to flight medic school and I ETS'd out of Fort Bliss.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

Fort Bliss out, El Paso. So I was a medic. I was a medic, I was a combat medic. And when we were in Iraq, man, the cool guys were always the flight medics, man. Because I was in, I was in the front lines with 82nd, to be honest with you. I was in the front lines with 82nd. Those flight medics, I don't know, was it what was the uh how would you become a flight medic? Like what's the the procedure if you recall?

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, so I was actually stationed here in San Antonio at Fort Sam. I had re-enlisted to come to Fort Sam. I was the NCYC for the Taylor Burke Clinic um and the Wounded Warrior Clinic to get some clinical time. I thought I was gonna be a PA. That's kind of the route I wanted to go. Uh good buddy of mine at the time, Kyle Chase, he he had talked to me. He wanted to become a flight medic, and we started exploring it, but it was a packet submission. So you submit your packet with your experience, uh the deployments, and then you're accepted or you're not. Um, I was accepted and then I was cut orders pretty soon after and off to Fort Rucker, Alabama to kind of complete that course.

82nd Airborne Pride

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I was a training for a flight medic. I I was I was a medic, so I went through the medical training. It was like what, 17 weeks? AI too before. Yeah. I was uh 91 whiskey before. Yeah. So far I was in. 91 whiskey, and then it converted to 68 whiskey. But that flight medical, I always thought it was so cool, man. When you guys came in on the choppers, that was cool. It looks cool, right? Yeah, it looks cool. Yeah. So 68 whiskey. You said 80 seconds you're home. Why 82nd?

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Uh that's where I started my career. You know, jumping out airplanes, you know, a lot of cool guys out of there, a lot of people I served with. I spent a lot of time overseas in Afghanistan. Uh, so you kind of build a brotherhood, something you can never you can never really let go.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah, it's uh Banner Brothers. So 82nd Airborne is like an elite unit in the army, right? It's one of the most recognizables, right? You got 82nd, you got 101st, and in my opinion, you got first calf. So I'll tell you this, I don't, you know, now that I'm talking to a veteran, right? So I can actually share this with someone. Out of 1st CAV division, which is at Fort Hood or Cavasos now, right? You got the whole cavalry division. Out of the whole cavalry division, there's four brigades. The army took one of the brigades out of the division, took one of the battalions, and took one of the companies, so you can see how granular this is, took that one company out of the entire division, took them out, detached them, and attached them to 82nd. Now, first cav, the one I was in, it was a tanker unit, right? So a bunch of tankers got detached from first cav and got attached to 82nd. And it was some type of special project that they did when I was in Iraq. They wanted to see how tankers and infantrymen will come together and work as a unit in Iraq. And it was cool to see. I didn't realize, being a medic, and I'm not really in the whole infantry world, I didn't realize the tankers hate the infantry guys, the infantry guys hate the tanker guys because out of infantry, they're on the ground and they're like, you know, very whole, is what you call it. And tankers, they just kind of sit in their tanks and just protected and covered. So there was always a lot of animosity. But when I did my 15 months of tour, I came back. There are a handful in army history of individuals that can wear a combat patch with 82nd or first calf. So I had the honor to wear both combat patches, 82nd or first calve, because of that special mission. I thought it was so cool.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah, it's a great, it's the best patch to have. The first cav one. Oh, yeah, right. The first cav one.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Right, right. Okay, so you're in the military, came into real estate. How do you fall into real estate?

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Um, a good buddy of mine uh who I've worked out with for many, many years, uh, his brother was he was a sales manager for Poulty. So there was a job opening for new home construction and talked to him because I was unsure on what I really wanted to do when I transitioned out of the military. It was kind of that point I think every service member comes to, whether they're gonna stay in that field or fall into like law enforcement or something along those lines. I kind of wanted to change. I was wore out from the medical side of things, uh, from the military side of things. And then I just went on a limb. I took the interview, I got the job. So I worked with uh Poulty for a few years. My wife became a real estate agent prior to I or prior to me doing it. And then after about three years, I felt my potential was capped. I just felt like there was so much more as I was first getting the experience in the real estate side. And I left uh Pulti, became a real estate agent, did the residential real estate stuff for a little bit. Um I'm always a guy that's looking for a little bit more too. So I dabbled in commercial real estate. Um, I went and got my mortgage license to be a loan officer as well. I just I wanted to absorb as much as I possibly could. And getting a chance in each one of those industries uh kind of, I think it set me up for where I am now and where I came to the point of, okay, I think I can do this. I think I can open up one. But I started looking into property management, you know, a couple years prior to me even taking the leap into it and doing a little bit of the whole RD research and development and figuring out because each jump that I had was it was a problem that I saw that I felt as though I could be better at or that I could fix or that I could change. And that's kind of what I saw on the property management side. And then I just went full, full force into it.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I don't get a chance.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

I'll deep into it. That's good.

Military Transition ️

SPEAKER_00 7:05

I don't get a chance to talk to me any better, and so I kind of want to go back real quick. Yeah. What made you decide to get out of the army? Because that was it's tough for a lot of people, especially when you said you passed 10 years?

SPEAKER_02 7:14

Uh right at 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

So you're right right at that mark where it's like, hey, you're gonna re-enlist forever, or you're so the way it works in the army or in the military, you do your terms, right? And typically it's four years. Four years and depends on how you re-enlist for your second term. But if you pass 10 years and you want to re-enlist again, they make you do the entire 10 years remaining. That's a big decision. So for some people, or for a lot of people, they're kind of stuck in what I call that military rat race, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

That's all they know. When you say they make you, so if you want to get out, you're like dishonorably discharged.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

No, no, so I let me rephrase that. So you can get out if you like, but if you want to do another uh term, it's not four years no more. You gotta sign up for the you gotta sign up for the remaining ten years. And if that's a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

For some reason you change your mind, or what how does that work? Oh, you can't once you're in, you're in.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Yeah, once you sign up a line. Yeah, once you sign, because if I did 10 years and uh five months, right? If I did 10 years and five months and hey, I want to re-enlist, you gotta re-enlist for another dedicate another nine and a half years to the army. That's a long time, right? Yeah. And for some people, once they get to that way, it's a real fork in the road because do I get out or do I stay in? You're gonna get a lot of people in a year because I was in that same position. If I get out, what do I do? I mean, I'm the military's all on you. I joined at the age of 17 just like you did, or do I stay in? Because I mean, stay in, this is the best thing for me. I'm halfway through retirement. So it's a lot of it's really hard for people to ETS, and that's what you did, right? Yeah. What made you do that push as a hustler, as an entrepreneur for yourself? Like, why not stay in and that remaining 10 years?

Family Decision ‍‍

SPEAKER_02 8:39

It was it was a compilation of things, but at that time, so I was I was married when I was in the military previous, um, and then I had my first daughter. For me, the the choice to get out at that time was I did not want to stay on the regular army side of things, just like you've you've kind of seen based on what I've talked about on the civilian sector, on I want to keep taking those leaps. That was my goal in the military. Um, so going from the regular army, you probably know, you know, I being deployed, I got to work with a lot of really cool guys overseas. Uh, special operations in in many different facets. And I got a taste of that serving with the 82nd because a lot of times those guys would be out with us. Um, so I I had made the decision that that's the route I wanted to go. I wanted to do something in the special operations community and I wanted a soft entry. I looked at CA Civil Affairs. Okay, that's there's many different things you can do, but on the Army side, started training with the uh there is a SF, I think it's a guard unit. It's out of Camp Bullis here in San Antonio. Um, that was my first taste. I got to train with those guys. They had an entry program that they would put people that wanted to try pre-selection to go through. Um I did very well at that program. And they were like, hey, Chris, you know, if you want to do this, we're not gonna let you go CA. We want you to go 18 Delta. It was in the medical field. They were like, this is the route you need to go. And uh talking to my spouse at the time, you know, it was going back to Bragg because that's where everything starts. And I was like, you know what, let's do this. So I had my selection date. Unfortunately, um, at that time, whenever I got my selection date, things had kind of fallen apart. Um, Jody got me while I was overseas, man. And it just came to light a little bit later. When I say Jody got me, that means that my spouse, unfortunately, was uh not faithful while I was deployed. Uh so anyway, that came back to me and that opened up a whole can of worms where uh I had a choice to make. Because on the SF side, they're like, Chris, you need to get your crap together. Like, make sure that's fixed. We're not gonna send you until that's done. And that process is not that quick. So we had separated, she had relocated, she came back to San Antonio. I was like with my daughter. So at the time being in service, it's quite difficult. And I had made the decision that my daughter was more important than going that route. And I finished my term, got out, and that's how I came back to San Antonio from there.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

A lot of memories, man. 18 Delta, I haven't heard that in a minute.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Uh yeah, I think it'd be really cool. Uh would be cool, yeah. But it's a blessing. Everything happens for a reason. I'm a firm believer of that as well. So I'm I'm happy, I'm blessed.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

18 Delta, you haven't heard that in a while. 18 Delta and then the whole Jody situation, same thing, man. So definitely understood the whole situation, and that's very military lingual. But let's get past the military. Yep. Uh so we talked about real estate, right? So you got in real estate, you got your work for new builds, you went to become a realtor, you got your loan officer, and then why property management out of all the ones? Because you did them all, right? You did new builds. And for everyone that's watching, do you need a license to work selling new builds?

SPEAKER_02 11:42

No, you do not. If you're working for a builder, you don't have the real estate license.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

What's the thought process behind that? Because a lot of realtors or a lot of beginners, like, oh, I want to work for this builder, but I don't have my license. What's the thought? What's how does that work with the new build?

SPEAKER_02 11:53

So the the builder themselves, it's a completely different entity. Okay, they operate by many, many different rules. They're governed very differently. So when you go and work for a builder, you're a sales consultant at the end of the day. Um, we we throw the throw around the term agent, sales agent, but that's a real estate agent. So you're a sales counselor, you're just working for a corporation, you're selling new construction homes, you're just dealing with the construction side of it, and you're going off of a mandated builder contract. Um, so yeah, you don't have to be licensed at all. You're not bound by the same fiduciary duties as a licensed real estate agent would be.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

And of course, your your goal is to benefit the builder.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

At the end of the day, yeah. I mean, your goal is to That's who you're working for, right? That's who you're working for.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

How does that as a new build sales rep, what's the commission structure? How does that look?

SPEAKER_02 12:35

So every builder is a little bit different. Um, for for Pulti, it was two percent, I believe, of the sales contract is what you would make. Um, but I've seen everything in the industry from a half a percent to that two percent mark, and that's been adjusted since I worked for Pulti. That was many, many years ago, so I can't even vouch and say, hey, that's still the same today.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

And I'm sure it's similar, right? It depends on the market, all that good stuff. Once you're with Pulti, is there anything type of like sales training? Is it a basic sales training, or is like, hey, go and figure it out?

SPEAKER_02 13:06

No, no, they're I think their onboarding, their their training program is great because they, I mean, they even sent me to Georgia, where they have headquarters out of to get some training there. Um, then you come back and you're with a a field training manager and you do that for quite a while. You go through some testing before you're even allowed to be thrown out into a community where you're actually going to sell homes. So actually their training program is great.

Sales Opportunity

SPEAKER_01 13:29

That sounds like a great, great way for anybody who maybe has had prior sales experience, whether you're a car salesman, whether you know whatever you sold before, high-ticket sales. I mean, that sounds like a fantastic because I'm a my kind of like go-to is sales and marketing. I've got a really good sales and marketing brain. Um, and so I'm hearing you say this for the I've obviously I've bought from guys like that before because I've bought a house that was a KB build. And so, but I never put two and two together. It's like, dude, there's probably 50 to 100 homes, 50 to 150 homes in each community, more or less, typically in San Antonio, and they're basically just handing you the product, and you typically have people that are just walking in on the weekends, and so I mean it seems like such a good opportunity for somebody who's got the lingo, knows how to talk, or it's not necessarily lingo for real estate, but knows how to talk as a salesperson, right? Knows the psychology behind sales. If you've got any kind of inkling towards sales, it seems like a really good place to start out. Uh for I mean, what's your opinion on new people jumping into that? Maybe new people to the real estate side, like he was talking about. But if you've got if you were a past car salesman or something, you think those people succeed pretty well?

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Yeah, I I think so. The the cool thing, I I can contribute my success in the general real estate to many different things, but I believe me starting a new home construction and taking those stepping stones kind of prepared me because when I left the new home construction, I had the general real estate knowledge and book of business even of past clients that made it a little bit easier to transition. Because I've seen both, you know, real estate agents that go to the new build side and new build to real estate agents or civilian side. I keep saying civilian, but regular people that go into you know new home sales, I think it's a phenomenal starting point in your real estate career for sure.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Cool. So after Poulty, when did we get into uh property management?

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Uh property management came years later. Uh so going from new construction to general real estate sales, um, that was probably almost four years of getting kind of my experience there and then those different areas before I decided to take the jump into property management.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Now, did you do the lending before you said you did so you did that? How did that go?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

I don't like being stuck behind a computer. Uh, I'm a very field type of guy, uh, even now on the property management side. So I think it was a phenomenal experience to have, and it did help me a lot on the residential real estate side because I can cut through a lot of BS that exists. You know, when I see something, I already know what it is. And I'm the type of guy that is very much like that as well. And I can give you one example. When solar became a big thing in the industry on the real estate side, and we start to see homes with solar panels, and then people don't have a general understanding of what that does when you're selling a house or when you're buying a house. Because I didn't know the industry that well, I went behind scenes and I went and worked for a solar company so I could get the knowledge and I could bring that into the real estate side. While I still did real estate, I just wanted to know everything that was there was with solar panels, and then I brought that back into the real estate side. So I do that all throughout, um, which I think is again, it's been beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

All right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

I mean like I said, you I see you as a true hustler because you don't want to just stick in one place, and that's it reminds me a lot of his story. His story, he was in the military, and he was trying to do better and earn that more, earn more money, but in the military you're stuck at the same pay rate, whether you're waking up extra early and doing extra stuff. So it reminds me a lot of y'all's stories, very similar, where you want to not just, you know, you're not content with the status quo, you want to keep moving forward. And so that's awesome that you not only just learn about it, but you deep dive into it by you actually going into the industry, getting first hand knowledge. Uh so that's pretty cool. So, anyways, you go from the lending side, solar, and you said how many years was in between all the way till about four years.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Okay. About four years.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

And how'd you stumble into that? How did that come about?

Property Management

SPEAKER_02 17:11

So, property management for me was from my experience. Now you have you have real estate agents that do so damn good in this industry across the board. But for me, in my mind, I was always looking like, how can I build a true sustainable business or sustainable income? And with real estate, yes, you can make a ton of money and you are going to be at the mercy of the market in general and even on property management. But for me, with real estate sales, you know, you get your commissions. You might have some downtime, you get your commissions, you have some downtime. Very responsible with my money. So it was never an issue of, oh my gosh, I'm gonna run out. But the predictability of it is something that I didn't really like. And I know when I mentioned earlier I had one daughter, now I have four daughters, and my oldest is about to be 15. So anything that I do in my life, it directly impacts them. Um, so for me, the decision to move was property management is a little bit more predictable. The rental industry is not going anywhere. If anything, in this industry that we're in now, it's more prevalent. So I can predict my income for long periods of time as I'm starting to scale this. And this is a true company in my mind where you know I have my employees and I have this business that I can scale and operate and expand into other regions or cities. And for me, it's always been about the growth potential. Like where can my growth really go? And that's why I decided to jump on that side of the fence.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Definitely uh a needed uh feature, right, for when it's when it comes to real estate investors. A lot of real estate investors that we do, they do a lot of sub twos that are watching this podcast. And the majority of them, at least in my opinion, we do a wraparound. Um so I really like doing wraparounds just because like dealing with the headaches of the tenants and you know, tenants, taxes, and toilets, and plumbing issues, and AC issues, and phone calls at X amount of uh whatever time of the night. So when it comes to property management, what's the name of the property management company? Home lab. Home lab. There's quite a few hard management companies in San Antonio. Why home lab over the other ones? What's the difference?

Resident Programs

SPEAKER_02 19:19

So everyone is going to have their own little business model or structure. Okay, that's pretty similar across the industry. When I first launched this company and I talked about the research development, like why home lab, like how did I get to where I'm at? Is when I truly launched this, it was resident-centered. Like you won't ever hear me really say the term tenant. I always say resident. Somebody, it's their home at the end of the day. So treating them as a person, I mean, most of the time with tenants, it's somebody when they call them a tenant, somebody that pays rent or doesn't pay rent, they submit a work order, they don't submit a work order. Um there's when I built this as a resident-centered company, just like in third quarter this year, I'll be launching our nonprofit. So we have resident rescue, which is a specific nonprofit that'll be funded solely by my company to start. And it's built around helping those residents and in many, many different levels. Uh, so much so, like even at the company level, we have free credit repair for residents that are going to be looking at becoming future buyers. Because it's not about just capturing the renter and keeping them there forever. It's like, how can we better their life? How can we take them to the next levels? Because home ownership is something that everybody wants to obtain. Um, so there's different programs that we have available to them. We have 33 different resident programs that are built into the company, which is, you know, more than anyone around. So that's really, really important and a differentiating factor to home lab. Uh, secondarily to that, because we're so resident-centered, one of the things that is kind of controversial when I talk to people is the fact that we don't have a minimum credit score for a renter whenever they're looking at renting one of our properties. Um, and a lot of people are like, you know, how in the world can you do that? And the way that I've built this company, we have a tiered system, essentially. But there's there's ways to combat the credit score aspect. And I use the example because most property management companies will have a standard screening tier. Okay, you need to make 620 or have a 620 credit score, make three times the rent, have no broken leases or evictions in the past three years. They let an automated system typically do that screening. It spits out a green thumb or a red thumbs down, they move on to the next and never really get to talk to a person. Every person for us is live screened by a person. We go through and we look at every aspect of it. And I kind of bring in a little bit of the mortgage side into it as well, because a good credit score is not indicative of somebody that's necessarily always going to be the most credit worthy. You know, what is their DTI? Are they a 760 credit score, but a 95% DTI, and now they're trying to rent a property at this level? Like, can they really afford it? Are they more high risk? Versus somebody that might have a 550, but they're 22 years old, they just got out of college, they don't have any debt. They don't have any credit. That has got them to an established point to where a system would read that. But their rental history is flawless because they rented the past three years and never missed a payment. So it's things like that where we're analyzing them and placing them into those tiers, and it enables us to place renters a lot faster than other companies too. But those two key things alone, as many others, are kind of some important things that I like to live by.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

That's really cool that you offer the credit repair because that's smart. Because obviously, like you said, they're going to be one day homeowners, you know. Hopefully, so that's really cool. What are some of the other benefits, I guess, that that you guys offer? So far, it sounds like it's that's an awesome differentiator between your normal because most people don't like from both sides. Most landlords don't like it because they're eating part of their profit, and most tenants don't like it because they get turned down or have to deal with. So I mean it sounds like you've really created something special. What are some of the other benefits, I guess, that you guys offer?

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Yeah, so of those other benefits, so we have the free credit repair, and then we have affiliations and connections with different other entities. Um, and we can talk about you want residents' benefits or because we have owner benefits too. But on the resident side of things, any connections that we have in the industry are they're basically given over to them as well. It doesn't matter if it's when we talk about the whole credit approval system or the credit repair system, the mortgage finance advisors, the CPAs, the accountants, things like that are all things we make available to them. And it's at the cost of the company a lot of the times because we're trying, they're enrolled in a program and there are milestones they have to meet to be able to be enrolled in this program and stay in that. Um, so that's that alone. And then at the same time, when those residents become buyers, that's another aspect to my company, having the real estate brokerage side of things, is we can funnel them right into the real estate side. And because they're going through our programs, they're saving a lot more money and we give them a lot of credits towards their closing costs and things like that when they're purchasing a home. Um, so another added benefit on them just being able to move into those different tiers.

Owner Benefits

SPEAKER_00 23:54

What about the uh owner side, right? So, me as the owner, or uh I guess the because you'd be the landlord, if I said, hey, I have 10 houses I want to give to you guys, what feedback are you getting from the owners? Like, oh yeah, we accept 400 credit scores. What are the owners saying about that?

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Yeah, I mean, I actually every single one of the owner meetings I do, because I personally do them in person, I I use that statement there. We don't have a minimum credit score because we have a screening criteria portion that I'll review with all of my owners. And what I talk to them about is, you know, behind the scenes being able to offer something like that, there's different insurance policies and programs that exist. Um, things that we're going to back and guarantee a security deposit, for instance, for our owners, in the event that there's any kind of a default. So there is different loss of rent coverages, malicious damage coverages, eviction cost coverage, all that stuff we build in and we have affiliations where my company has paid for it on behalf because of the still the risk that's there, although everything else is looking good. So I've already built the protection in for my owners in the event that we're gonna face something like that. But I can also to this date tell every single owner that I every resident I've placed at the company level, I've never evicted any resident we've put in, never had to.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

100% track record.

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yes, 100% track record.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Wow, I can't beat that.

unknown 25:03

How?

SPEAKER_00 25:05

How do you do these days? If you have that bad credit and they're known for I mean, I get the college kid, right? The college kid, yeah, I get it. I'm talking about the one that, hey, we had bad uh financial history, of course our credit score is bad. How are you determining, even though they have that bad credit score, to still get that 100% approval rate?

SPEAKER_02 25:20

So with no not a hundred hundred percent approval rate for the reds in the right. 100% um was that what detention or if somebody has a really, really bad credit score, okay, there's going to be underlying factors to that bad credit score. There's gonna be other disqualifying pieces to the bad credit score because you can't bring me a bad credit score and then have bad rental history and then have an eviction or then have a broken lease or not have solid uh employment or things like that. So there's still those other factors that have to be analyzed. We don't just screen based on the credit score alone, we're gonna have all of those other tiers we have to screen and the stuff that meets the barrier of entry for these, we just don't make our barrier of entry an automatic decline because your credit score is not 620.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

For example, so if you owned a home in the past and you paid off your mortgage after seven years with good history, you've purchased three cars in your lifetime and paid all those off, but you were late on three of your ATT wireless bills, that would probably qualify you, I would say, for a rental, right? But your score may be in the fives because of those three payments. Absolutely. You're just deeper deeper diving into, like you said, doing the research. That's pretty cool because I know a lot of people uh would be very appreciative of that. There's so many people that are in that situation, especially right now when things are high and inflation's high. You know, they may have a paid-off car where they paid it all five years, you know, they've had you know good rental history, but they made one late payment on their cell phone bill, and it really does, it screws up your credit. I know a lot about credit, and it really does screw up your credit 100, 150 points sometimes just from one or two late pays. That makes a lot of sense. That's really cool that you're doing that.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

Yeah, I'm treat them like humans. I mean, that's what we're doing, just treating everybody as a person, like really hearing their stories. Because sometimes we'll request letters of explanation, just like you would with a mortgage. Like, hey, we understand that this happened, what happened? And sometimes we need proof of those things. And just one example, there was um, there was a young lady here. She was the eldest sister of three. Uh, she had a broken lease when she applied with one of our properties two years prior. And that tanked everything because you had a broken lease and now a judgment. And we're like, okay, well, why? Well, the letter of explanation was the eldest sister of three, her mom had terminal cancer back in Florida. She was the person that had to go and actually take care of her. You know, what are you gonna do in that moment? Are you gonna say, oh, my lease is more important, or are you gonna go and take care of your family? That's what she did. They didn't let her out. You know, it's an unfortunate event. And she came back after everything happened, and we had that record of what, you know, what she had gone through. And it's a simple, a little bit of a deep dive having the open conversation with that renter and then being, you can tell when somebody's forward enough about something that's happened and providing us proof of whatever may have happened, one of the best tenants to date. But if she would have applied to somebody else, they would have saw a recent broken lease and a judgment to uh another apartment complex, deny every single time. So it's things like that, just really looking at the whole picture, not just looking at somebody as a credit score.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

On the owner side, if we can break down, how does it work cost wise?

SPEAKER_02 28:11

So, cost wise for homeowners, it's 10% for base management fee. You have your initial leasing fee for my company, which is 100% due at property management signing. Those two fees, uh, if you're a military or first responder educator, it's 9%. Um, investors that bring me properties five or more have a tiered system, so down to 8%. And then it's 90% of the first month's rent for the military veteran, uh, first responder educator. We don't have any interim fees, like you'll have your initial lease fee and your property management fee. And then in property management, there are honestly 200 other different fees that exist, but we don't even charge a management fee until a renter is in place. So no vacancies, no setup, no coordination, no nothing. Okay, that is hey, my promise to you. I make money when you make money. I'm gonna get a renter in place. That's when you start paying me, not outside of that.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

That's pretty cool. And from a business standpoint on your side, are you making any referrals? I know you said that you're running them through free credit. Is that in hopes to get them approved for a loan later and you get a kickback?

SPEAKER_02 29:13

Okay. Well, yeah, well, just if they get approved for a loan and they weren't an agent referral, because my agents are, you know, I love them, and 95% of my business is referral-based alone from agents in the industry I've worked with. As long as that person didn't come to me referred by another agent, then yes, we would push them through the brokerage side of things to help them buy, and then we still get the commission side of that right at the company level. If they were referred by an agent, you know, that's just an incentive for an agent to bring us a client because if they decide that they want to sell, they go right back to my agent. If they decide that they want to purchase another property, they go right back to my referring agent. Um, if an agent brings me a tenant and we convert them over to the buy side, well, they can go back over to that agent.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Hustlers, real estate investing doesn't have to be overwhelming and you don't have to do it alone. If you've been watching from the sidelines, scrolling past deals on Zillow, or binging YouTube videos, but still not taking action, this is for you. That's why we built Hustle Academy, a community designed for new and experienced real estate investors who want to learn, network, and grow. Inside Hustle Academy, you'll get weekly live calls, QA sessions, and step-by-step classes on fix and flip, wholesaling, creative finance, and my favorite subject to deals. Everything you need to know to build real skills and start closing real deals. You'll join a powerful group of like-minded hustlers who are sharing wins, breaking down deals, and all pushing towards the same goal: financial freedom through real estate. If you're ready to level up, no matter what stage you're starting at, join Hustle Academy today, tap the link in the description, or visit hustleacademy.com and let's trump the hustle together. What's the goal right now? You're at 150 or almost at 150 doors. What's the overall goal? Like when you first started off with HomeLad, what was your mission? Mission obviously was to help the residents, but do you have like a goal in mind? Like, hey, this is too many. How does the team structure look like?

Business Personal Touch

SPEAKER_02 31:07

For me, something that's always been really important to me that you guys have kind of like heard me talking about the personal side of things, is not becoming so corporate where we lose that personal touch. Where now I have a call center in another country that my residents are calling in hopes that they get to talk to somebody at the office level or my owners are being referred to 15 different people. If I want to continue at the level that I'm at, to where because every single one of my staff members, they have a cell phone. I have no office phone. So, like whenever you get contact, you're getting direct to someone. Um, so I want to keep that. If I get to the point to where I can't keep that personal touch, that's my limit.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Where do you think that if you had to put a number on it, where do you think that's at? Knowing what you know about the business today after having been in it.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

My teams are so damn good. Um that, you know, I'm taking it a milestone at a time. Like my next milestone is 250 doors. Um, and then the milestone after that is 500 doors. I don't know where it's going to be. You know, I see some of the bigger property management companies that are in the industry and how many doors they have and still kind of how corporate it gets. So in my mind, I I see where people get to 500 doors and now it's corporate or now it's franchise.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

So I have a feeling that I'll have a bridge to cross at that number to figure out how I'm going to be able to translate this business and still keep that personal touch.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

What about on the investment side? You buying some houses for yourself?

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Should be. Yeah. Right. Um, no, I'm not. And it is something I I've explored. Um, even on the DCSR side, or you know, I have some of my clients that come to me like, hey, Chris, I need to offload this house. I don't want it anymore. And it's already in my portfolio. So now I've looked at another structure within my company that I haven't fully launched where I will open that up and be able to buy homes from my current clients that are looking to offload. Rather, it's something like what you're very familiar with, the subject twos and wraparounds and stuff like that, which I don't have a lot of experience in. Um, but it is something that I think I would love to kind of add to the business structure.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Would that be a conflict of interest? Uh maintaining your own properties management and then buying them out?

SPEAKER_02 33:20

You know, I don't I don't think it would be just because of how that's all structured. Um, but then again, I'm a big risk-adverse person, so I'd have to analyze that to the granular level to make sure I wasn't doing anything that I wasn't supposed to.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

What are some of the horror stories you've seen as uh rentals? You get there, you know, everyone's a person because you're you're going on this process of no tenants aren't out of number, right? They're not a number, we're not looking at a credit score, we're looking at the person as a resident, we're doing credit repair, we're doing what we can, and then you get to the house after they moved out and the house is trash or something.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

Well, I've been blessed enough to not have that issue. Um, I've only got a handful of stories where we run into a couple issues. I had one recently and it was an identity theft side to where a renter had gone through all the systems, all the showings, all the biometrics, everything, but they were using someone else. And what they were doing was using a family member. It came to find out. So it was a family member that was doing the application process for them, doing all the correspondence, but that's not the person that moved into the home. Um, so although we didn't have to evict that person because once we found out about it, that person was like, Oh, I'm screwed, and they just dipped and they left. Um, luckily they didn't, you know, and in a situation typically where you're getting into evictions, you you have people that are getting a little bit, I don't know, they they want to destroy stuff, they want to cause damages, you know, they feel like you're already causing damages to them, but that person did not cause a damage. So that's just kind of like one of those things that exists in this fraudulent world. Um, but yeah, I don't knock on wood, man.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Even in your early days when you're first figuring this business out and trial and error, you never had any horror stories.

No Horror Stories

SPEAKER_02 34:59

Oh, I mean, if other people tell me horror stories for sure, where they just destroy homes. Like you can see people walk in and you know, drywall is off the walls, all the appliances are missing from the house. But as far as like me at the company level, from the time that I've taken my first property to even now, um, all of my move outs, all of my, you know, inspections, everything's been good. I mean, you get the normal stuff, you know, maybe the lawn isn't being maintained to the best of their ability, or carpet stains here and there, you know. But uh I think another thing that helps me whenever we look at the types of properties I take. Uh, if you were to look in my portfolio, traditionally you would consider something in my portfolio an A-rated property. I do a lot of new construction, a lot of new homes. Um, the average rental price for my homes is around 21.25 on average, too. So I don't have a lot of those what you would call high-risk properties and high-risk areas, which I think helps me with some of the ways that I run like that credit score portion.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Man, I got a lot of questions now. So for the viewers that are watching, especially if you're an investor who's doing Burr method, DSCRs, hit this guy up because I have a very limited uh history in doing rentals. I don't like rentals. I'm what because of all the nightmare situations. I don't even think I've told you this before. So I used to own a fourplex down in Laredo, Texas. I previously in a past life was a huge sprint retailer. I owned a bunch of sprint stores across Texas, and Laredo was one of my markets and was making good money. So, oh, I'm gonna do the rental. That's before I met him. I was this is like 2016, 17. Oh, I'm gonna buy a fourplex, and it's it was like a newer build, and the the lady who owned it just needed to get out for whatever reason, and so I was getting a good deal on it, and I was gonna be, you know, a virtual landlord from San Antonio because my staff that ran all the stores, they could, you know, one of the managers could help me manage it. Um, the lady who was doing all she was representing me on the commercial side, she also did residential, so she can do my screening for me. She's not a property manager, but they own their own little, you know, four or five rentals down there. And so, okay, I have my little team set up, right? No, dude. It was the biggest nightmare of all time. We had such high turnover all the time, even though they went through credit and even though they went through the application process. So it makes a huge difference, guys, as an investor, who you have doing your pre-screening, who you have doing your property management. Because I had in the I probably didn't even own it two years, and I finally just saw, I was like, dude, get me out of this crap. I want to be done with it. And so I ended up selling it. But while I was there in those two years, I mean, I had people putting concrete in the toilets, I had people, the whole house, first floor, and the stairs going up or tile, break all the tiles on the stairs. I mean, crazy stuff. We had tenants that didn't want to be there, they would complain. Some lady had her car lit on fire. And this is not like a terrible neighborhood, like it's not some ghetto, it's it was a nice, decent, like four-year-old Fortplex, and uh, I don't know, I had a horrible experience. Like, dude, I will never do a rental property ever again.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Yeah, it sucks. I mean, I have a owner rescue program, uh, which is basically owners that have dabbled in or doing this on their own when they've encountered that issue where somebody's not paying rent or um just a lot of complaints, or they've just gotten to the point to where I can't do this anymore. Uh, we evaluate that and we see if they're gonna be eligible for the owner rescue program, and we'll bring them in and we'll bail them out and get them back on track with where they need to be. Granted, they sign a property management agreement and we're gonna manage that property moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

How does that work? So I use a property management company. Um, one of the ones that really uh turned me on to them, and this was years ago. I haven't I haven't switched over in I don't know, five, seven, six years. Um, but one of the first things they told me is that, hey, we screen all our tenants, we do what we do. Uh the tenants don't pay uh rent, whatever, they'll cover one month of rent and they'll cover the eviction cost. That's I would assume is a lot of um I guess not if you're doing proper screening, but I mean you can't do what you don't know what you don't know. How does that what do you call it the owner's rental or what do you call it?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

My the owner rescue program.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

So what exactly is the owner rescue and how does that benefit the company?

Owner Benefit Package

SPEAKER_02 38:58

So with what you're mentioning or something that even my company has, you know, you you'll hear the terminology owner benefit package or program. Um like we have two different versions, but they're specifically insurance programs and it's through an insurance provider, it's not from my company. And one of those things is like your loss of rent, how I mentioned earlier. Um, owners can elect that coverage early on, or a company at my level, we can elect to pay for that for any properties we deem necessary. So we know that if the owner gets in that position, although the I am going to eat the cost of that because you're protected, I'm gonna get that money back on the insurance side.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

So from an investor standpoint, so we do have a lot of investors that watch this podcast, from an investor standpoint, if they've got a property that they wanted to do as me, for example. I go out by a property knowing I'm gonna fix it and I want to hold it as a rental, which I need to for tax purposes or whatever. Do you guys partner or because I know you have a brokerage as well, will you guys actually go find tenants? You have a list of tenants who are always ready looking, or are you just doing strictly management? Or do you also help an investor, or if you have an existing investor that has 10 properties, they want to add the 11th, do you go, do you have a program that helps benefit them, find renters, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Uh so tenant placement services, resident placement services, there is an aspect to the business that I have that I don't actively promote per se. Uh, but for my close clients or some of the referrals, yes, when they come to me and they strictly want me to find them someone and they want to handle all management outside of that. Yes. Now, with that being said, they still have to fit into my criteria. They still have to, I do an inspection for every single property before I'll take it on. So I'll walk it and I'll decide, you know, based on the condition or based on the recommendations or a number of other things, do I think that this is a good fit for my company? Am I going to do you a good service? Because there's been occasions where I've offered that program to investors or somebody else. It just, hey, I need somebody, I can't get them in. And I'll walk the property and be like, you know, you know, listen, this is why you're not. This is why, or what you need to do in order for me to feel comfortable enough to have a certain guarantee for you. Right. Because I don't want you pissed off at me in three, four, five months because I haven't placed a renter, but I already knew I wasn't going to because I know what the market's like and I know all the things you don't want to do. And we do run into that with investors sometime, unfortunately, where um they they don't want to do some of those things. And that's okay. I mean, you're eventually you're gonna place a renter, but for those things like what's different. Um, I had a property that I walked recently. It was an investor looking, he came to us, and the house was built in the early 90s, who it still had some carpet and had carpet and bathrooms, like the primary green carpet in the bathrooms, mildewy, like super, like bad. You could walk in there and smell it. It had been on the market for quite some time. That is an example of a property. Obviously, when a renter walks in there and I can do a competition analysis and find 20 other properties that are like yours, but don't have these issues. I had made the recommendation in order for us to be able to do this, we need to really, really consider making that change and decided that he didn't want to do that. Mark the house is still on the market to date.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

You said your average rental comps are 21 to 2500. Yeah. Do you market for those rentals? Is that kind of word of mouth?

SPEAKER_02 42:12

Or how do you it's all word of mouth? Um, I I do have some rentals that are around like that 1700 mark or 1600 mark. Traditionally, they're they're just all gonna average more. I have rentals up to 4,000, so it really just depends. Because we do cover areas all the way from Bernie, north to Spring Branch, Bulverdi, out to New Brumfels. We just branched into Austin, which primarily the rental rates out there are a little bit higher. Um, and then we kind of teeter that line in South San Antonio.

SPEAKER_01 42:38

So I'm on my second go-round as a landlord. I don't even know if you know, I just rented out my second house. Um painted wagon 9415 painted wagon. So I bought it as a flip, but and it will be a flip eventually. But the right at the entrance of the neighborhood, it's off of Petrenko here in town, right at the entrance, they're doing construction. It's probably gonna take them six, eight months, maybe a year, and so that obviously hurts the resale value because people, when they're going to look at a home, the first thing they pull in and there's freaking uh, you know, trucks putting cement or uh asphalt down and stuff like that. You don't really want to do that, right? And so plus there was a lot of listings that were set. I looked up the research, but I got a great deal. And the house is worth, I guess we got an appraisal for 436, bought it for 250. So I mean tons of equity. So I said, you know what? Let me rent it for a year or two, see how this construction goes, see how the market is, maybe it even appreciates a little bit more, and then I'll turn it into my flip later on. So I have it as a rental, and I just moved in the tenant, and it's actually gone through a really cool program. Uh I didn't even know Bear County offers obviously Section A, I know that. And I've done Section A in Laredo in that fourplex. So I'm familiar with that program, it's really good. But there this Bear County also offers a VA program for veter for homeless veterans, or I guess veterans that just don't currently I don't know. I guess you could technically be renting a house and you're kind of homeless, I guess. I don't know how they go through the whole process. I didn't really pay a ton of attention to it. My realtor helped me out with it. But so there's this tenant, she's homeless, I guess, and needs a place to live. So the city actually pays. For my rent there is$2,550. They're paying, I want to say$1,700 a month, so pretty much a big portion of it. And then she actually doubled down with Tunnel for Towers. What did they say? Or Tower for Tunnels or something like that. You heard of them? I had no idea. They're a huge nationwide. Anybody who watches Fox News has seen it. They're a huge nationwide nonprofit out of New York, the towers or 9-11 towers. So they started primarily with firefighters and they expanded out to people in the veterans, first responders, police officers, firefighters. And so she partnered up with them, and so they actually paid the remaining balance. They paid her entire deposit,$2550, and they paid the remaining balance that the city didn't pay. So she moved in for free, no deposit, no uh first month's rent. Now she is on the hook for I think it's like$1,100, whatever the difference is, every month. But do you partner with any other programs? Like I had never even heard of this. My realtor came to me and said, hey, we've got this tenant, you know, she has pretty decent credit, um, but she, you know, she's going through this VA program. I had never heard of it. My realtor had never heard of it. She actually did shout out to her, halal. She did a really good job going down to the city, getting all the paperwork, having me fill it out, and stuff like that. But are there any programs you work with specifically for veterans that help them get placement and and uh moving to houses? Or do you do any of that?

SPEAKER_02 45:13

Great question. Uh so specifically with any one company, no. There's a ton of outreach, like veteran outreach type programs that do things like you're mentioning there. Uh, a lot of insurance companies will do that too, with property management companies and with people that their houses have burned down or dealing with repairs. Um, there's military vouchers as well, even for some some people that are um transitioning out or a number of other things. We will work with all of those. Absolutely. We just don't have any specifically that we work with that do that. And a lot of them they'll they'll vet you. That they want to vet the company, they want to see if your the properties you have are gonna be suitable. I mean, the VA, even when you purchase the house, you know it's they're pretty strict on certain things.

Voucher Program Value

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Yeah, and so that's why I was inclined to do it. So because my realtor said that she'd been working with this client and they went to tons of rentals and nobody wanted to touch it. But me having done section eight in the past, even though this is different than section eight, obviously, I had a great experience. They pay on the first of every month. The tenants who have those benefits typically take really good care of them because if somebody's willing to pay almost$2,000 a month on your behalf, you don't want to lose that benefit. So I actually enjoyed the program really, really well. Out of all the tenants I went through in those two-year period, the one that was a constant every single month, and always when she had her inspection every year, super clean house, because they have they have requirements they have to meet too, right? They can't have trash everywhere and knock holes in the wall. So, anyways, for me it was a no-brainer to to give it a shot, and I think it's gonna end up being a good tenant. We'll see, see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Yeah, it's great to keep those because those people hear the word voucher or section eights, and they immediately their perception is somebody that's just not qualified or somebody that's not gonna be a good resident. And that's not even from my experience, not the case. Those are the people that protect those benefits with everything they have because that's their livelihood, that's their housing.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Yeah. You're building a business and you have almost 150 doors you're managing. What's some type of lesson or something you learn the hard way? Like, man, I wish I had known this mistake earlier that can really help someone that's watching this podcast or help yourself now back in, I don't know, five years ago, 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

Delegating, um, not being not being afraid to let go of control. I mean, even ask my wife now. I have control issues over this company. You know, this is something I've put my blood, sweat, and tears into. It's been really difficult for me to, you know, hand off the responsibilities of my day-to-day with dealing with owners or residents. I just, I feel a certain pull to it. Uh, so if I could tell somebody looking to scale, looking to grow, you know, you're never gonna replace you. No one is ever gonna work for your company as hard as you're gonna work for your company. But it's understanding that if you're trying to run a business, you're trying to scale a business, then you don't have a choice. You're going to have to bring in the help. The help is what's going to help you grow and scale. That was a hard lesson for me for the first two years of this company was very, very slow methodical growth, which I wanted, but it was a hindrance because I didn't have the help that I needed and I was very restrictive on not taking on too much. I would not, I would only take on so many owners per month because I needed to be able to handle those systematically. Um, and then once I started to add the personnel and get my personnel trained, you know, the company is just kind of starting to open up and scale. So not being afraid to let go and delegate. Speaking of delegating, do you have any VAs in your company? Uh I do not. No VAs. So I have my my leasing coordinator who's absolutely phenomenal. I have my my office admin, my assistant, who was actually the first person I brought on who took on a huge workload for me. Uh, myself, and then my wife is taking on the role as the marketing director for the company. And then, of course, we have our maintenance teams and make ready teams and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

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Family Motivation ‍‍‍

SPEAKER_02 50:14

I I can't think of just one thing that has told me I needed to turn it up. It's literally I wake up and stuff's gotta get done. I just I see so much growth, so much potential. Uh for me, you know, maybe it's waking up and walking out in that living room and seeing my my beautiful, wonderful wife and my four daughters. That's I mean, people talk about being rich, right? Everybody talks about that, the family. That's what makes me rich. That is what makes me get up and grind and be in the office if I got to 16 hours a day. You know, there's some sacrifices you got to make running a company and looking to build and grow something, but my daughters are my everything. My wife is my everything. So that that is my hustles every day. I mean, it's it's turned up to the max now. I don't know how to remember.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Yeah, pretty much answered my next question. My next question was this is the Trump the Hustle podcast. And Trump the Hustle, for me, it's not a it's not a motto, it's not a slogan, it's like a way of life. I believe we just answered your question, but we can rephrase it if needed. What does Trump the hustle mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 51:13

Yeah, it it it's that. Turn it up is getting the grind, it's the discipline, it's putting in the work when everybody else won't do it, it's putting in those long hours when everybody else won't do it. There's there's so much out there that you can capture and gain and take over because you can outwork so many people by just buckling down and doing it, even when you don't want to. And that's why, like for me, the hard part is turning down the hustle, turning off the hustle. I just don't have that ability.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

So I say this to many people I have this conversation with. I don't think you can teach the hustle. I don't think you can teach that driving motivation. However, today I have discovered one exception. I think if you go through the military for at least however many times you guys go through it, I feel like that's a common theme. I think that that is probably drilled into you, right? Because I know a couple people that I can think of that went into the military who needed the military, right? They, you know, were off track, you know, their lives were kind of not really going anywhere. And then the military does enforce that structure that you need, that discipline that you need. And so I think in turn you kind of gain the hustle. I was, I don't know if you can being, I haven't been there, but being going through the military, I don't know. Obviously, I'm sure there's some people that you know just want to do the minimum and get in and out, but I feel like you probably have a better chance of gaining that entrepreneurship drive, or not just entrepreneurship, but the drive in general to do better. I feel like you probably can gain some of that in the military. So, anyways, just another uh observation. But motivation. Yeah. Real quick, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

Yes, sir. I judge a lot of people based on their movies. What's your favorite movie?

SPEAKER_02 52:39

Man, that's the last movie I even watched.

SPEAKER_00 52:42

That might be another question, too. That might be uh some people have a hard time, especially if they're not to say all, but if they're you know highly motivated, full entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

You pass the test.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

You watch movies.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

Like TV shows or movies? A movie. It has to be a movie.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

Yeah, like a movie that movie of all time.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

So the one that I can think about that I've probably watched the most, man, I don't even judge me on this or not. I don't know. But Law Abiding Citizen was always one of my favorites. Gerard Butler is one of always one of my favorite actors. I think he's you know a multi multi-talented person in a lot of his roles.

SPEAKER_01 53:13

So yeah, great one.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

Yeah, like Den of Thieves, right? Yeah, but what about military? Um I would assume you're a flight medic. I would assume Blackhawk Down.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

Okay, so uh you served, so you've watched tons of military movies. I pick those damn things apart every single time. It's just the stuff, yeah. Yeah, the practical the unrealistic viewpoint of those movies. So you have to go back to something like a legend movie, like Blackhawk Down. Obviously, that is such an iconic military movie.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Yeah, Black Ock Down. It had to do a lot with the medic. Uh, what's the other one with Garfield? Uh, somebody in the comments put it. The one with uh the guy that played uh Spider-Man Garfield. Um he was a medic in that movie. But when I think of whenever someone asks me, I always I don't always prefer Blackhawk Dan. I think it was really good. Of course, there's a lot of little differences you're gonna find if you actually served in the military, but you watch and understand just the movie. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

Well, we appreciate you taking the time. This has been a very fun conversation. I think it's for us, especially. We have a lot of questions, natural questions, because we're interested. Most investors uh do not really like property management. Most investors don't go into the property management business for that reason because they think that there's so many issues, so many uh, you know, people gonna be trashing the house.

SPEAKER_00 54:39

One more question. One more question. So this uh property management company I work with, it's very limited communications. They only call me or email me if they need to spend money. Do you what is what does Home Lab do to because I don't have I know I have over, I don't know, 15, 20 of them. Uh with this property management company all the time, it's never this or that, it's always hey, tenant at least expiring, we're gonna raise it by whatever they suggest. And AC went out, so we need this to be uh serviced. Here's the the invoice, need your approval, need your approval, and they just keep hounding via email. What does Homelab do? What does Home Lab do different um when it comes to owners?

HomeLab Proactive Care

SPEAKER_02 55:18

That I think it's a great question on the communication piece, which goes back to me, you know, having everybody having a cell phone, the direct lines of communication, not having to put in and say, hey, I need this done or I have this question. Okay, let me get with this person, let me get with that person type of thing. Um it's not it's proactive. Everything we have is proactive. It's not reactive. It's not, hey, you know, there's this problem. Hey, Mr. Owner or Miss Owner, we need money from you. Uh, it's the complete opposite to that. It's, you know, I want to reach out to my owners, which I do all the time because we add new programs. One of the new programs that we're we're we're adding is a proactive home maintenance plan, okay, that is paid for by my company. And essentially what that is, is, you know, two exterior inspections per year that include minor repairs because one of the things that tenants neglect the most is what? The roof, the siding, things they're not gonna pay attention to. So you get a property back a year later and you're like, well, damn, now I have all these different damages and repairs. So we're proactive in the event of like, how can I? That's where home lab comes from. All of my staff, they're property scientists. Even my signature line says chief property scientists. My truck has property scientists on it. We're in the lab, we're experimenting, we're trying to figure out where we can better this industry, which is where disrupt, innovate, and change come, which is the slogan for my company as well. Um, so my owners get those things from us, like, hey, we just have we have this new program, we're gonna be adopting and launching. These are all the new cool benefits that you're going to get, versus always being a pain point in the owner. Like every time they see Chris's name ring up on their phone, well, damn, what's the issue now? It's more of like, cool, I wonder what he's got going on now. Uh it's not to say that obviously we we don't have to reach out for those things like you mentioned, but it's it's being a resource too, because my owners can reach out to our company and say, hey, Chris, I need a referral for this, or hey, I need this. You know, do you have the CPA or a number of other things? So we're we're also the resource. We're the the Google, the Angie's list, or whatever you want to call it for our owners. We want them to come to us for everything versus only us going to them with problems.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

That's awesome. No, and first of all, thank you for your service. How is you too? Um, but kudos to you for building such a cool business in an industry that seems to be slow, boring, annoying, nobody wants to be in, right? So I was saying is most investors, I don't know, I know of one other guy. He does big Tom, he does big flipping and big wholesaling, and he also owns his own property management company. Um I don't know any other investor besides him and you that actually want to be in property management because it does have such a bad stigma and a bad name to the to the industry. So kudos to you for building an innovative product, an innovative company, company, and uh, you know, I would say leading the forefront of innovation and in uh property management. So kudos to you for that. Um any last words you'd like to give to our viewers, people maybe who just discovered you for the first time, where they can find you, what's the best way to connect with you, and any last words you want to give?

SPEAKER_02 58:03

Yeah, absolutely. So our our website, um homelabpm.com, all of our socials are homelab, homelab PM. Uh you can reach me directly at any time 210 426 0511. That is my direct. Great man. Yeah, my cell phone I'm putting out there for everyone. Uh that you can always reach out with questions, concerns as well. And I, you know, I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

For shout out to Sherry the Barber for connecting us. That was a great, great connection.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

If you need a barber, that's the one to go to. Yeah. Um, no, thank you guys for everything. I appreciate you, really.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

Well, guys, that was another great, great episode of the Turn Up the Hustle podcast. As always, we are trying to provide you with a ton of value. So we hope you got a ton of value out of this. If you do need any property management service, you already know where to go. And as always, as always, turn up the hustle. We will see you guys on the next one. Peace.