Co-Living & Cash Flow: A Game-Changing Real Estate Investment Strategy with Sam Wegert

Sam Wegert: [0:00] So I rented rooms. Big time banker friend of mine, very successful. His name was Jason. First friend I ever had in Charlotte pulls me aside and is like, hey, know you're like renting rooms. He's like, I'm just curious because he's a numbers guy. He's like, how much are you like how much is the whole house renting? And I like did some math and I was like, don't know, man. This house is like I guess if I count myself as a renter, I'm in the primary bedroom, I guess it's like 2,850. And for whatever reason, just kinda blew his mind. He was like, man, it's so cool. Like because I would tell them how easy it was to fill up with tenants. And I told him how much fun I was having, like hanging out with my housemates and stuff. It just kinda blew his mind. And it blew my mind that it blew his mind, because he was like, that house would only rent for like $1,300, normally. Yeah. And so I just, being crazy and obsessive, and you know, I like to make money too, I was like, well, I wonder if I could do because I only had four. It was me plus three people. I said, I wonder if I could do five people in

Speaker 2: [0:47] the house. And then I

Sam Wegert: [0:48] was like, I wonder if I could do six. I was like, what if seven people could share a house? What if eight people what if and again, there's a longer story here, but like, what if nine people and then I'm like, what if I could just go back to my roots? Eight siblings, two parents, 10 people in a house. Last two houses we launched were 10 were 10 rooms. Right? So it's like Wow. Oh, wow. This is shared housing at a little bit of a different level. Welcome

Speaker 3: [1:09] to the Collecting keys podcast. The show where you'll learn how to use real estate to create massive income, not just passive income. Real estate doesn't have to be a get rich slow game. Listen to the country's top real estate operators, and you'll have all the tools you need to replace your w two income and go beyond in under twelve months. Ready to take things to the next level? Let's jump in with our hosts, Mike DeHaan and Dan Austin for today's episode of the collecting keys podcast.

Mike DeHaan: [1:46] What's going on, guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Sam Wegert, who is an incredible entrepreneur and a massive owner of these co living rental properties that you've probably heard people talk about, you know, on social media and different things. But he is a very legitimate operator with hundreds of homes and hundreds more under management doing these, like, sort of rent by the room co living model. And, you know, people when they hear these kind of things, they typically think about it's like a halfway house, so there's, like, people that are sort of, like, down their luck or or lower class that are living in some of these properties. But he talks about explicitly how he builds these things out to be, like, a co living experience, and he really optimizes these kind of properties to be for high quality people who just wanna save some money, wanna collaborate together. He goes into how he operates them, how he screens tenants, how he finds and builds out these properties. And it is just a really awesome conversation overall. You know? And then before we even get into the co living stuff, he talks about his experience growing and scaling and exiting from a martial arts studio that he actually sold just seven weeks before recording this podcast. So this dude's like a total entrepreneur.

Mike DeHaan: [3:00] His passion really comes to the show, and he has so many incredible pieces of knowledge about how to exactly be an entrepreneur, grow these kinds of businesses, and scale these co living opportunities. And as we get through kinda like the end of it, he talks about some of the numbers of these deals. Let me just put it, like, super briefly. Some of these houses, he can make 4 to $5,000 of a net cash flow from a single property, and this dude has, like, 200 of them. So you can do the math there. This guy definitely knows what he's talking about. So anyways, guys, you should definitely reach out to Sam after the show. He is a really, really awesome resource, and he would love to connect with you about how exactly he sets up these homes. He actually has a whole sort of, like, service and additional group where he helps people find these kind of properties of some of the insurance to pursue him. So head on up there. And then besides that, everybody, go to collectingkeys.com, and you can check out our own group there as well. Our new scale community where we teach people how to scale their off market acquisitions so they can grow their real estate portfolios. Go to collectingkeys.com/scale. You can check that out there. Besides everybody, shares with your friends.

Mike DeHaan: [4:06] It's a great one to share to people that are trying to find their next phase of real estate and enjoy this really awesome show with Sam Wegert. Alright. Sam Wegert of Charlotte, North Carolina. My man, I'm super excited to have you on the show. You are kind of one of the the folks that I've met over the years where I'm like, dang, this guy is like doing some stuff, like some big stuff. So super excited to dive into that today. Uh-huh. So for people who may have not heard about you before, let's give like a high level overview of exactly who you are and what your business looks like.

Sam Wegert: [4:38] I love that intro, I've never been introduced that way before, like, hey, this guy, he does some stuff. That's cool. Actually like it. It's one my favorite ways I've been introduced, so thanks for that. Yeah. Yeah, guys. Super honored Dan and Mike to just be on the show and to share a little bit. High level view of me, and I can go as deep or as little or as much into my story and my background as you guys want, but built, scaled, and as of like seven weeks ago, fully exited a chain of martial arts schools. So that was my main gig, that was where I cut my teeth on entrepreneurship, trained martial arts, I'm a fifth degree black belt, I can kill you with this finger kind of stuff. Oh. And through that period of time, started investing in real estate, and kind of fell into this idea of shared housing. Co living is the new hip up and coming term that people are using, but it's really rent by the room. And so I've scaled that model and have teach people that model and am working on some ground up development of that particular model and manage those units as well. And so kinda all in on this model, it's a it's a way to solve affordable housing, and so that's what I do right now, and I think that's what we're to talk about, as well as real estate in general.

Dan Austin: [5:39] Absolutely. There's a martial artist I follow on Instagram where I used to, his name is Master Ken. Have you ever met this guy?

Sam Wegert: [5:45] Yeah, I've met him. Oh, you have? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Austin: [5:47] Oh man, awesome. Go look him up for our listeners if you haven't seen him, he's a real martial Is that like one of those

Mike DeHaan: [5:53] fake old dudes that pretends to block people? Is that what you're talking about?

Sam Wegert: [5:57] Got this video that's like a 100 ways to strike the groin. Yeah. That's the video everybody should start with. It's He's actually a damn good martial artist. Oh, really? But he makes Like, yeah. He's like super good. He's like ranked in all these styles, but he makes so much fun of martial arts.

Dan Austin: [6:12] Yeah.

Sam Wegert: [6:13] First I hated him until I met him, and then I was like, alright, the guy's okay.

Mike DeHaan: [6:16] Yeah. He's like going so over the top with the gag that he's behind that you're just like, you can't take him seriously.

Dan Austin: [6:22] Super over the top.

Sam Wegert: [6:23] Yeah. Yeah. That's that's funny.

Mike DeHaan: [6:25] I think I've seen like those videos get shared around, but Well,

Dan Austin: [6:27] you don't usually see that a lot like martial arts, right, where that gets seems to me like a very serious discipline, right, like that you're following when you're when you're practicing these things and so like he's definitely antithesis of what you'd expect.

Mike DeHaan: [6:38] I mean, can get behind that. Honestly, Dan, it's kinda like us with property, you know, and and real estate investors. We're around here like Totally. Telling crude stories and like getting weird about some of the things. As opposed to some people that are so like straight laced with their suits.

Dan Austin: [6:51] Right.

Mike DeHaan: [6:51] We've had dudes that like showed up this podcast that have on like a button up and like a tie, and I'm like, come on bro.

Sam Wegert: [6:56] Like what are you doing?

Dan Austin: [6:57] We should have instead of like, there's like Bigger Pockets, which is like the straight lace version, we could just call our podcast the dirty pockets from now on.

Sam Wegert: [7:04] That reminds me of an Instagram video I saw literally, I think it was just yesterday, where this guy was guy like gets out of his BMW, and he's like, how you know an agent is brand new and will not sell your house? And he's like, start feeding And your then he's like, how you know the agent's gonna like sell your house in two days? And he's got like stuff all over his shirt, he's like shorts and a t shirt, he walks out. Oh, true, man. So true.

Mike DeHaan: [7:27] Yeah. But that's awesome, man. So obviously, you wanna dive into your real estate stuff.

Sam Wegert: [7:31] Yeah. But really quick, let's talk about your martial arts studios and what like, sort

Mike DeHaan: [7:35] of scaling that and exiting that from an entrepreneurial side stand. Because, you know, obviously everyone listening to this show is interested in the real estate part.

Sam Wegert: [7:43] But Yeah. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [7:43] A big part of what we dive into, you know, and what we teach in our community and these different things is how to be a business owner. And the crazy thing about business is there's a lot of stuff that translates whether you're trying to grow a real estate business or a martial arts studio. Yeah, for sure.

Sam Wegert: [7:57] So first off, I'm assuming

Mike DeHaan: [7:59] you got into that because you did it as a child.

Sam Wegert: [8:01] Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [8:01] Right? And then growing and scaling and exiting that, like what was that process like? Because especially when I think of like a martial arts studio, I'm usually thinking of Johnny, what's his name, in Cobra Kai, who's like Cobra Kai, let's go for the win. So he's like a washed up guy who goes and gets a place in like a strip mall, and then like just wants to see kids kick each other in the head but doesn't actually know how to

Sam Wegert: [8:23] run a business. I'm drawing a massive blank though. Who was like the really rich guy in Cobra Kai? The guy that set up the really nice chain of studios?

Dan Austin: [8:31] Oh, yeah. What's his name? Yeah. He was what? Gosh dang, I'm drawing a blank too.

Sam Wegert: [8:35] I think it was big right now. We'll figure it out. There's the guy who opens in the strip mall and that's kinda like back in the eighties and nineties, right, when martial arts wasn't a commercialized kinda thing. Yeah. It was people teaching out of their basement. Terry Silver. Terry Silver. So Terry Silver would be more I mean, it's terrible because they kinda make them look really bad in the show. But that was probably more applicable to what we do. Like super nice studios, it's a little bit more of a commercialized product, but we're still trying to teach really great values. And again, that show is probably the worst analogy I could make for what we used to

Mike DeHaan: [9:05] do right now. Just it's most people's level of context, so I assume that it's fiction, know? Yeah, totally. So

Sam Wegert: [9:12] ultimately, martial arts was the business that really Sorry, I was. Training I when I was young. I was homeschooled, big family, eight kids. I always tell this as part of my story. And so I really I lacked a lot of confidence. I was home a lot I was home a lot with my with my family. Just just my family. Like, we lived in the country, and my parents were like, we don't want the government to educate you, so we're gonna homeschool you. You know mean? The school system actually like sued my parents. This was probably, you know, 30 some When my parents started homeschooling, this was probably closer to forty years ago, thirty five years ago, when it was like, wait, you can't do that. My parents had to be a lawyer and they fought and they were like under this religious exemption thing. And so, obviously now with COVID, like homeschooling's taken off and it's like a thing now. Right? I was about to

Dan Austin: [9:45] say, you're what we would

Mike DeHaan: [9:46] call a progressive. Right.

Sam Wegert: [9:47] Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And my parents were that before it was cool. You know what I mean? Before it was And they were really, really, really ahead of the game. And they were also doing crazy stuff. They were like, parents were straight hippies when I think about it now. Like, they were juicing, like before there was a juice thing on every corner now, and it's like all kinds

Mike DeHaan: [10:03] of stuff. But they got

Sam Wegert: [10:05] me in martial arts for confidence, for discipline. I was just kind of a wild child. I got into a ton of trouble. I just had tons of energy, always bouncing off the walls. And big shout out, martial arts changed my life in so many ways, that's why I dedicated fifteen years. I'm still involved in the staff members that have purchased the schools and things like that, but martial arts changed my life. It made me, I don't know how else to explain it other than it gave, it made me somebody. Know? Homeschooled, introverted kid, 13 years old, a little awkward, that was like, oh, I can protect myself, I'm learning to strike hard, I'm learning to beat. It was just so so so so good for me. So I highly recommend it for anybody, adults and kids alike, but definitely for kids. That's really what our chain of martial arts schools focused on was we found a niche. There's really two ways you can go in the martial arts industry. You can go like MMA, pound, ground, we throw you in the cage and then get you ready for the UFC. And you can go that direction. Problem with that is your demographic is gonna be people between the ages of like 15 and 30. Right? So when people have the least amount of money in their life, when they're the most transient in their life. So from a straight business perspective, that has challenges, is just the straight truth since we're on here and we're talking just business, not just martial arts. And the other thing is that type of training is a lot more intense.

Sam Wegert: [11:16] You're gonna get hurt. It's not if, it's a matter of when you're gonna get hurt. And when you get hurt, you don't come back unless you are very dedicated to getting into the UFC, right? And that's a very, very, very small percentage. So our model was parents with kids between the ages of four and 13 that want their kids to have more respect. Say yes and no sir, yes and no ma'am. Get along better with their teachers and parents, stand up to police, have some self respect. And then we would rope the parents in and be like, actually we're a family academy so all of our parents train with their kids. And of course it blew their kid, the parents minds at first, but a lot of these parents, know, maybe they haven't worked out in a while or they have some sort of routine. And so we just really built a chain around this family concept that was families all training together. There's no age segregated classes. I could have a six year old and a six year old in the same class. And martial arts was the means to the end. It was what got them hooked, having fun, but really it was a personal development program. Now granted they got a black belt, we still trained joint locks, arm bars, and head locks, and and pressure points, all of that.

Sam Wegert: [12:19] It just wasn't the difference between us and the MMA schools, we didn't then go get in a cage and we'll see you in ten minutes. Like, you get to train it and practice it, but you could still be a doctor and a lawyer and go home, go to your work the next day not have a black eye.

Mike DeHaan: [12:32] Yeah. That's cool. So so you took the no mercy part out of the Cobra Kai

Sam Wegert: [12:36] saying Exactly.

Mike DeHaan: [12:37] It was just strike first to strike fast. Yeah. Right?

Dan Austin: [12:40] Swipe the leg. So, okay. This is interesting then. You you I'm assuming you started with one studio. Did you start ground up all five? Or did you buy then build? Or like, what was the model there to get to five? And like, I guess why as well?

Sam Wegert: [12:53] I bought the first one from my instructor when I was 15 years old actually. Parents bought for 15 bought it for $15. It was in a small town, Amherst, Virginia, 2,000 people. School had about a 100 students, had a big lease, big space, 6,000 square foot space, way bigger than was needed, but that's what he had. He just thought if I built it, they would come. And like, we all know like sales and marketing. If you're in business, you're in, you know, he would always tell us, you're in the business of sales and marketing of martial arts products, services, and supplies. Know, he'd be like, what business are you in? And he'd like, well, I think I'm in the business teaching classes. No. In business of sales and marketing. If you don't do a good job of that, nobody comes, right? Yeah. Hey. So really drilled that lesson in from a very early age about sales and marketing. It was very, very valuable to start my business career off with a mentor like that. But I bought the first one, then I moved to the town of Charlottesville, Virginia, is where UVA is, University of Virginia, very popular school on the East Coast here. And then that one I started from the ground up. So that one I literally rented a 20 so this proves my concept about sales and marketing. I went to a hotel and I said, hey, will you rent me one of the little space, smallest meeting space they had?

Sam Wegert: [13:54] It was like 20 feet by 20 feet. And I rented it two nights a week, and I think it was like $75 a night. And I only did it for like two, three hours to teach classes. But it was open twenty four hours, so people could come in. I left my little sign there. And I built it from literally scratch. I'd go out into all the parking lots of all the grocery stores, and I would just walk up to people as they were putting groceries in their car. And I would stop, and I would bow, I'd be in my full karate uniform. And holy man. Straight out of Cobra Kai now that I'm I love it. I'm like, excuse me, I'm doing a survey. Would you mind answering three quick questions for me? And I give him this little survey. I don't wanna go too crazy deep into this, but that's how I built this second school. And that school, I'm really proud of. It went on under my brother's leadership who when I left, put him in charge to become the top 1% of all schools in the nation in terms of income produced, students it had, and just in the black belts that it produced. And it produced some some great champions as well in the sport karate world. And so really proud of what that one would become. That was a ground up. People were coming to this little school, enrolling pain in full for three years just because of the vision that I set and of charisma.

Sam Wegert: [14:54] So then I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. I bought two schools here. I bought three schools here over time, and then I built three more here. And so from the ground up that we kinda started from the ground up. So yeah, was kind of a mixture of everything, and that that's a challenge. He said, how do I build? I mean, built it painfully. It's a brick and mortar anything. I like, some people can make it work really well, it was a very difficult think it set the stage for the difficulty of being an entrepreneur for me, in a lot of ways. Yeah. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [15:24] That's so awesome though, man. Because like, you did what I think most newer entrepreneurs need to do, is you figured out how to make money first, and then you worked on kind of like growing it and everything after that. So you had the vision, you went and you sold that vision to people, people bought into that. Yeah. And that's really no different than any other service or business. So many people when they try to be a new entrepreneur, they go and they like find the person on Fiverr to make their logo and their website and all sort of thing. Like, and now I'm gonna sell these widgets. But no one wants your freaking widgets. Like, sell some widgets first. Sell a service first and then do it. Mhmm.

Sam Wegert: [15:56] Right. Just like we see it with with investors,

Mike DeHaan: [15:58] you know, you have so many people that they will go and they will announce that they are starting their brand new investment company. They've never even made an offer on a property yet. They've never, you know, they've never like analyzed a deal, they've never walked a hoarder house, they've never been cussed out by a seller. Like how can you honestly say that you wanna start this business if you haven't experienced it? And I mean, you did like the epitome of guerilla marketing dude, of like getting out there in

Sam Wegert: [16:21] a ghee and bowing people Yeah. In a parking

Mike DeHaan: [16:23] old are you even doing this, 35? No.

Sam Wegert: [16:25] I'm kidding. So dude, started when I was 15 doing the Oh, bowing and wow. And I would when I first started, I would have tears. Like, I would cry. I'd go in. So I'm an introvert and I'm just like, people were rejecting me, rejecting me, yelling at me. I'd go back into the office

Mike DeHaan: [16:37] and

Sam Wegert: [16:37] be like, just have to regain myself emotionally and be like, go back out because I had to get five appointments a day. I love it, dude. My instructor, who was also like my business mentor that I was paying at the time, was like, yeah. You don't leave until you get five appointments. If you're at CVS, like I was like, how long do I need to stay? He's like, you can stay an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, or you can stay all day. You gotta get five appointments, buddy.

Dan Austin: [16:56] Just get five appointments.

Sam Wegert: [16:57] So I'll tell you what that does though, man. That makes you insane at persuasion. Like, you need the appointment and that person's giving you one. You have if you've already been there three hours, like that next person that comes out is giving you an appointment. So many good business lessons from that just in terms of persuasion and necessity. But to your point, Mike, I think people major in minor things. Think Tony Robbins says that a lot. When you major in things, my instructor had a comment. He would always say, Sam, you're spending too much time on busy work. And I'd be like, well, is busy work? I don't know. How do you know it's busy work? I'm actually really busy. He goes, I know it's busy work because I look at your numbers. He goes, busy work is anything that won't make you money today.

Mike DeHaan: [17:33] Good. Good.

Sam Wegert: [17:34] That was his kind of extreme definition of like, otherwise it should be done after 9PM was what he would because our schedules were always a little later and so our prime time was like anywhere from 1PM to to nine. That's when we could sell memberships and people would come to school. He was like, you do all that crap. You run credit cards and send emails and open your inbox. He would always tell me too. He had this funny saying. He'd be like, if you get back to me during prime time too fast, I know you ain't working. He's like, if I text you at 04:00 and you get back to me in thirty minutes, I know you ain't working. You should not be getting back to me. That is busy work. Go sell some memberships. So just these like hardcore kinda like straight up no holds barred business lessons that were like, really made you think. And he was very old school, so not all of it I think applies a 100%, but those things that I just shared, I've definitely kept with me, you know, even into the real estate business.

Dan Austin: [18:22] I mean, what you're saying from what I understand about business is, I mean, I've learned this kind of the hard way over the years, is like marketing and sales are business.

Sam Wegert: [18:30] Okay.

Dan Austin: [18:31] Yeah. That's what is the lifeblood of it, so you need to be doing those at a high level. And I really love this, like, this sounds like your coach, your mentor, what I can't remember, he the owner of the the first studio, is that how you get, right?

Sam Wegert: [18:43] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [18:44] He's driving some seriously good lessons in you into you.

Sam Wegert: [18:47] Yeah. Yeah. It was invaluable. Which plays right into this point of, I know you guys mentor people in real estate. I mentor people in real estate. It plays right into this point of like anybody listening to this like, step one, do not pass go. Do not collect $200 unless you have a mentor. Like I would not even Mhmm. I wouldn't have gotten past one location if I didn't have someone driving me this last

Mike DeHaan: [19:04] I was 15 for god's sake.

Sam Wegert: [19:06] And a lot of us are fifth We might not be 15 by age, but we're where I was. If you're starting real estate investing where we don't have that knowledge, whatever it is that keeps us back from scale. And so by far someone that's willing to tell you the freaking truth and like rile you up a little bit, that's the best person to have on your team. Right? So definitely a step to scaling for sure. Can't can't talk about it enough. Absolutely. I think Can I share one lesson that I learned along the way though on that business that I think would help people? Sure. It came from a seminar I went to, but it's You know, Gary Vaynerchuk is big on I had an opportunity to meet him a couple years ago, and the number one thing he drilled into my head was like self awareness. He's like, man, you gotta know yourself, otherwise you're gonna be out there just spinning your wheels not doing shit. And I said, okay, well like how do you know? You know, how do you get to self awareness? And he goes, well, gotta try a lot of things, you gotta fail a lot of times, you gotta really take that time to reflect. But I think in business, the self awareness comes down to knowing three things. What like, I would say business personality are you? And this has helped me a lot. I think there's three. One, there's like the artists in business. And I think the artists, I'll use the football team as analogy.

Sam Wegert: [20:08] The artists are the guys playing the football. They're playing the game. They geek out about the craft. And we all know people like this. I was listening to a podcast by Tom Bilyeu. Tom Bilyeu is a great business guy, but in his core, he's an artist. He geeks out about how to ask questions and how to respond. He's an artist. He's a creative artist. So that's the guys that geek out about how play a game. And then there's the second business personality, you will, is manager leaders. And manager leaders are the guys that geek out about two things, or guys or girls. Systems and people. And they're just like, they like to play chess with. Well, if I move this per and there, of course, if I use the same analogy, are like the managers of the football team. They're like, I'm gonna trade that guy for this guy. I don't really care about the emotions. I'm just trading him because I need to do this, and then I'm put here, here, and then that's gonna build my team. And then you have the third personality type in business, which is like I call the Donald Trumps of this world. They're just they're pure entrepreneurs. And I don't mean a lot of us are entrepreneurial, but in our core we're not entrepreneurs. Right? We're just like, they would sell any business in a heartbeat. There's no emotional attachment. It's about the money.

Sam Wegert: [21:12] Know? That's it. And that's the guys that own the teams. Mhmm. Right? They're selling them. Mark Cuban just sold a big piece of his team. Like it's not like so it's less of an emotional game. And I think if you can understand, the e myth talks about this so well. Artists all of a sudden decide to become entrepreneurs and they're like, wait, this doesn't work. I think understanding who you are in your core lets you know who you need on your team. And I'm an entrepreneur in my core. I like to make money and I like to make deals. I'm not really an artist. I never was the best martial artist. I didn't geek out about the kicks and the punches and the things like a lot of my guys would geek out about for hours. I was like, they go to these seminars, they're like, that's cool. Like, that's a punch. What do you want? Yeah. And I wasn't a good manager leader. Like, I I had to bring people in that were like, hey, let's move this person here. Let's move him to that. I just wanted the thing to make money.

Dan Austin: [22:00] Think when

Sam Wegert: [22:01] you understand that, you can really play to your strengths, you're way the free cappier, and you know who to go out and get to partner with.

Dan Austin: [22:10] Yeah. That's some great insights. That was that's very valuable. That's super valuable. Know you

Mike DeHaan: [22:14] gotta be here thinking like, well, which one am I exactly? I know I'm I know I'm not the artist, but am I the making money one or am I kind of the manager one, probably somewhere in the middle? But Yeah. Yeah. That's that's super interesting, though,

Sam Wegert: [22:25] and I appreciate that. Awesome, man.

Mike DeHaan: [22:27] So so you grew that chain, you sold the business, you said, seven weeks ago. Congratulations on that too, by the way.

Sam Wegert: [22:33] I personally would love to dive into that, but a lot

Mike DeHaan: [22:34] of people here wanna hear about the real estate. Yeah. So we can chat about that offline about your your exit, what that looked like. Mhmm. But along the way, you got into this co living, rent by the room style of real estate investing. So first off, what exactly drew you to that initially? Because I feel like that's a pretty new concept.

Dan Austin: [22:55] I know you've been doing it for a little while.

Mike DeHaan: [22:57] Yeah. And how exactly did you do it in a way that's allowed you to scale like you have? Because I know that you have a very successful business doing that.

Sam Wegert: [23:04] The origin story in like a minute or less is basically, I rented rooms, keep in mind I come from a big family Right. Because I didn't wanna live alone. Okay. Like I wasn't used to living alone, I'm always used to my siblings picking on me, right? So I rented rooms, big time banker friend of mine, very successful, his name was Jason, first friend I ever had in Charlotte, pulls me aside and is like, hey, know you're renting rooms. He's like, I'm just curious because he's the numbers guy. He's like, how how much are you like how much is the whole house renting? And I like did some math and I was like, I don't know, man. This house is like I guess if I count myself as a renter, I'm in the primary bedroom. I guess it's like thousand 850. And for whatever reason, just kinda blew his mind. He was like, man, that's so cool. Like because I would tell them how easy it was to fill up with tenants and I told him how much fun I was having like hanging out with my housemates and stuff. It just kinda blew his mind. It blew my mind that it blew his mind because he was like, that house would only rent for like $1,300, normally. Yeah. And so I just, being crazy and obsessive and, you know, I like to make money too, I was like, well, wonder if I could do because I only had four. It was me plus three people. I said, I wonder if I could do five people in

Speaker 2: [24:06] a house. And then I was

Sam Wegert: [24:07] like, I wonder if I could do six. I was like, what if seven people could share a house? What if eight people what if and again, a longer story here, but like, what if nine people and then I'm like, what if I could just go back to my roots? Eight siblings, two parents, 10 people in a house. Last two houses we launched were 10 were 10 rooms. Right? So it's like, oh, wow. This is shared housing at a little bit of a different level. And I know that sounds insane and crazy to some people and there are lots of systems. So I usually get two things when I tell people that I help 10 people share house together. I either get like, a, how do you keep all the tenants from killing each other? A. Right. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [24:39] Right.

Sam Wegert: [24:39] And then the second thing I usually get is like, that sounds like the worst product ever. Who would ever wanna live in there? And so, demand is higher than it's ever been. And we can talk about all kinds of affordable housing stats for that. That's number one. Number two is the product that we produce. If you were to walk into one of our co living homes, you would think it's a five star Airbnb. And I wish I could I can even show pictures, you know, at some time or send you guys pictures or whatever. But like you walk in

Mike DeHaan: [25:06] You should send us some photos and we'll put them in the show notes. We will just see.

Sam Wegert: [25:08] Yeah, for sure.

Mike DeHaan: [25:09] Be great.

Sam Wegert: [25:09] For sure. I can show you some common areas that you're just like, what? And so that, know, when you have an amazing product, people wanna live there and it's a reduced rate. It's about half of what, you know, half to 75% of what they would pay, you know, at a studio apartment. Or for housing in another area, in a nicer area. You know, maybe it's a little higher than that. Maybe it's closer to 75%. There's utilities in there you gotta work out because they get utilities included usually on their co living rent, but then if they just rent a studio apartment, they gotta add utilities onto it. So there's a little little discrepancy there. Cool. And then we keep people from killing each other by having this amazing vetting process where we share with them a vision of creating community housing where people are just encouraging each other. It's a positive place, and it's safe, and it's quiet, and it's clean. Those are, by the way, the three key things you have to do in co living to scale it. You have to be able to do safe, you have to be able to do quiet, and you have to be able to do clean. So if you can vet for those things, and have systems around keeping it safe, you know, door locks on the doors, obviously full background checks for someone coming in, no weapons in the common space, things like that.

Sam Wegert: [26:10] If you have systems to keep it safe, you're gonna win. If you have systems to keep it clean, we now have professional cleaners go into the common spaces once or twice a month. Have a checklist that everybody has to support with or they can opt out for a fee. Right? Systems like that. And then quiet. Head headphones hours after ten on weekdays, after eleven on weekends. So everything goes to Bluetooth. You can watch your TV. No TV's in the common space. We used to do that. We thought it'd be really cool. Now we don't, because like it just causes commotion. And then obviously things like taking care of parking and making sure it's in the right neighborhood. You're not putting these in A plus or even A minus neighborhoods, right? You're putting these in C or B neighborhoods. That kinda fits the neighborhood. So we can go into the weeds on that with any questions you guys have, but I just wanted to kind of address maybe some of those big things that I know or know get asked when I say 10 people sharing

Dan Austin: [26:53] a house together. Are these 10 bedroom houses then? You're converting. You're converting garages, basements to get the 10 bedrooms, and do you have to add additional bathrooms? I'm curious of what the transition, like if you could maybe go through what a typical acquisition would look like, and what you do to prep, it would be really cool.

Sam Wegert: [27:10] Yeah. So I mean, for a 10 bedroom, you you need at least The formula goes like this. If you have a 1,500 square foot house, it's gonna be four rooms. I've looked at thousands of houses, you you guys have as well, so you know there's just like some themes that start to play Every 250 square feet you add to that house, not as in like an addition, but if you find a 1,750 square foot house or 2,000 another house, that's you're gonna add a room. So 1,715 square feet is five rooms, 2,000 is six rooms, twenty two fifty is seven, twenty five is eight, twenty seven fifty is nine, and then 3,000 would be 10. And I know that just unless it's like this huge open concept with 30 foot ceiling that's just like really hard to break up. Looking We're for more of these houses that are a little bit more boxy. They've sat on the market a little bit longer. They're a little bit older. And yeah, you're converting dining rooms. You're putting walls and doors. And then you're trying to keep at least a three to one bedroom to bathroom ratio. Never higher than that. Lower than that is fine. If you have a two to one, I mean, a perfect world, some of the development projects I'm working on right now, it's private bath.

Sam Wegert: [28:05] Everybody gets a private bath. That's perfect. Wow. Oh, nice. But it's really hard to do in a single family house that you're converting. Right? I mean, could, but it'd just be odd. So we just try to make it kinda still flow like a house. We want it to feel like a house, you know. Home, home is a better word because we really do a great job on the interiors and make it really, really, really pop. And then, so we'll put the money into the doors. We'll put the money into the bathrooms. And then, one of my favorite things to do right now is to take the garage and convert that to common space. Because it's cheaper to do, you know, I can stick a little heater in the window and have a heater AC and it's good, at least in North Carolina. Right? And then I convert almost, excuse me, almost all the space that's in the house that's already heated and cooled very well into bedrooms, except for the kitchen, obviously. Now, some companies will tell you don't have a common space. Some of the biggest companies will say, we don't want a common space, this causes issues. One of the ways that I separate myself from those companies is by making this model more about community. Mhmm. I require, for my company to manage a property like this, I require a a common space. And we put desks in there, so it becomes a co working space as well. We make it really nice. We'll put some quiet games in there, and just a space where people can kinda connect. That's a big piece of what we're trying to create versus just room, room, room, room, and it becomes a little bit more like a rooming or a boarding house.

Sam Wegert: [29:23] That's not what

Dan Austin: [29:24] we need seems like there's probably two models here. One is like you just said a rooming boarding house, and one is more lifestyle community driven.

Sam Wegert: [29:30] Very good. 100%. 100%. Great great way to describe it.

Mike DeHaan: [29:33] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like more of a hospitality business at that point as much as like a rental property. And I think that what a lot of people in traditional real estate investment think about this, they are trying to view it strictly as a long term rental where you just, like, have this giant house and you're putting a bunch of people that may or may not be crackheads in a house together and hoping they don't stab

Dan Austin: [29:53] each halfway houses. Right. It's like half.

Mike DeHaan: [29:55] So we call halfway house. But like, with what you're providing, we know where you're making the living area sort of enticing. Yes. You know, you're having a cleaning service that does it. You're having a list of roles and responsibilities you'll have to volunteer to do. You know, you are having a level of community around it. It's funny. It almost sounds like a like an apartment complex or something that

Sam Wegert: [30:14] you live in, like, in college. Mhmm. Get like

Mike DeHaan: [30:17] a theme house, you know, or is that that's a thing that people would do. But in the right areas, I could totally see that being desirable. It's it's funny. Even like thinking about myself when I graduated from college or I was younger, I would have totally been into something like that. It would have saved me money and it would be a great way to like meet new friends, especially if you were new to a

Sam Wegert: [30:36] Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You're a 100% right.

Mike DeHaan: [30:39] With this style of model, like I know for a fact this would be something that would vary in success based off of the town that you're in. Because for example, in more rural towns or like where we're at in in Spokane, there just isn't like a I would say, a culture around that. So it'd be kind of a weird thing to sell. But like more specifically, how do you deal with I assume there's like density restrictions or things around like these style of houses. Like, can't just throw up 10 adults with 10 cars living in a house in a single family residential neighborhood, or at least I wouldn't assume that you can. Like what sort of challenges do you deal with on that end?

Sam Wegert: [31:19] It's a great question. And we could spend every second talking about this. I'm gonna give a high level overview of of how the big tech companies are are doing this, and how we're modeling, my company is modeling after them. I think they recently changed these rules, but when you walk into an establishment that doesn't have an ABC license to sell alcohol, but they do serve like beer and wine, they make you buy a Have you ever done They make you buy like a $1 membership at the door. Now Really? You're a member, they can kinda skirt around this restriction, and they can serve you beer and wine. So that's one example. I'm gonna tie it in a moment. It's one analogy. The other analogy would be similar to what you said, Mike, about, you know, being in college. Like, be a fraternity house. Mhmm. You know, you've got members of a club, and these members of a club have access to this house. Right? So in essence, the way that this is working And and I had a call, I got on There's there's a company out there, the largest cold living company in America right now is called Pad Split. And they're they're just a management. They don't own the properties where I help people actually find and acquire the properties. But they I got on the phone with their head legal counsel and said, how many times have you been shut down by a jurisdiction? And they're in price they have like 10,000 rooms in like 35 30 cities or something like that. And they said that we've never been shut down.

Sam Wegert: [32:28] And I was like, okay. Tell me, what's going on? And so we kinda copied our legal model after theirs. And in essence, it's this membership based model. It is, you know, I have a company I'll try do this in the Camry. I got a company that owns the property, and it's gonna rent an LLC in The United States that's considered one entity, one person. Right? I'm gonna rent it to one person, and that's gonna be another LLC. And this LLC happens to have a bunch of members, and those members get access to that. Right. That's the simplest way I can explain it without going into details. So instead of me signing leases with all of my people, I'm signing membership agreement. They're members of this company, and then they get access to in that home. And then you could say, well, you know, hey, like you've got too many people living here. But I really don't. I don't. I have members that have access to an asset that they're somewhat a part of that they're renting as one person. And there's more nuances to that, if you maybe have some specific questions, can go into it. But basically, that is general high level view of how some of these things are being restricted.

Mike DeHaan: [33:18] So they're a member, how does this start to affect things like landlord tenant laws? Can like, do you have what happens if have to evict these people? I assume it's a different process.

Dan Austin: [33:28] Uh-huh.

Mike DeHaan: [33:29] Is there any more rules and regulations that you need to follow around, like Yeah. Allowing them to have, say, like pets or, like, service animals or kids, or like dual occupancy if it's a couple, like because now, like a lot of the traditional rules that we have as a landlord tenant relationship are going to be completely out the window if they're just like a member of your club.

Sam Wegert: [33:49] If you're a membership based organization, and do not quote me, I told someone the other day I was gonna find this, but I do know there is I'll have to do some research on it. But there's a US code. There's a federal law that basically allows membership based organizations to not be restricted by fair housing laws. So you're technically exempt from fair housing laws, if you are a true membership based organization. Interesting. Because you have to be able to like choose who you let in and who you let out. So yes. And then if you're a true membership based organization, in essence, yeah. If someone, if you terminate their membership or they terminate their membership, then they're trespassing. You can move

Dan Austin: [34:23] the shit out. Then you just go get the cops.

Mike DeHaan: [34:25] Yeah. So why would I not just turn all of my rentals into a club?

Dan Austin: [34:30] I was thinking the same thing. Right, they're all clubs now.

Sam Wegert: [34:33] I think depending on the state, there are some states that have tried to claw some of that back and still apply tenant landlord laws to that. I'm in a very, you know, I'm in a very landlord friendly state here in North Carolina, so we don't we haven't had any issues with it here. I haven't had to do that. But that's you know, if we're talking letter of the law Right. That's how it's written to work. So I I have like

Mike DeHaan: [34:54] a totally in the weeds question that I have people learn

Sam Wegert: [34:56] nothing about.

Mike DeHaan: [34:57] With this sort of setup, is this still considered passive rental income to the IRS, or do you have to pay active income on this as basically business revenue, or can you use passive real estate losses to offset this revenue bank? Keep in mind,

Sam Wegert: [35:14] I am renting my home to the LLC.

Dan Austin: [35:17] Yeah. So you're still ownership for that.

Sam Wegert: [35:19] Renting, man. I'm just getting Right? All of the And that that's what they're paying.

Dan Austin: [35:23] Your fixed rent is all the expenses are the same. All that.

Sam Wegert: [35:26] Okay. Yeah.

Dan Austin: [35:26] That's it. Oh, cool.

Mike DeHaan: [35:27] That's freaking sharp, man.

Dan Austin: [35:28] That's awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [35:29] Let's still get people excited, give us some numbers on this so people kinda know what exactly you can make in these houses. Because I know Yumi talked about this a little bit on Instagram and

Sam Wegert: [35:37] it gets it can get pretty wild. Before I talk about some numbers, I think when people say, because I think people are really interested in this model. Mhmm. That they'll be, they'll kinda like hear some of the things we've just been talking about. They're like, okay, like, it's a little nuanced. Like, I'm just gonna buy a single family house and I'm gonna let it, you know, break even or net a $100. Right? Yeah. Because it's like, oh, I'm at least in the game and I'm binary listed. And so I think when I start to talk about numbers and people are like, okay, wait a second. Maybe I'll maybe I'll do some nuances. Right? Like, maybe I'll handle some nuances. And we've created a lot of systems to handle the nuances for you. And then my last like little pitch for people, my little spiel is like, when you think about this model, you'd add two things to your thought process. Number one, you're going into something that's a blue ocean. So think Airbnb back in 2011, when it was getting up and going. Blue ocean is, there's not a lot of people there. Not every system has been solved yet. But that's a great time to be in something if you want insane cash flow. Right? You're you're at you're at the forefront. And then the second thing I like to tell people is you need to be thinking about what this solves. This is definitely a social entrepreneurship type thing. You are solving affordable housing.

Sam Wegert: [36:36] That's just not me saying this. That's US the Department for Housing and Urban Development came out in 2021, 01/15/2021, and said we believe affordable housing can be solved by co living. And not only that, we will allow housing choice vouchers to now be used, if you follow this formula, for rooms. So I can get some someone that's got a voucher, I can be like, yo, I can rent you two rooms. I'll take your guaranteed government rent. And you may not wanna do that. You gotta follow their little Yeah. Frankly b s formula on how to value that room. Yes, sir. But it is what it is. Right? And like that's pretty cool. So, yeah. So in essence, I'll give you numbers from the last one I launched. It would have normally rented on the open market for probably $2,400. We filled it in thirty days and it rents for $8,550. Wow. So you are more than tripling Yeah. Right? The rent on this particular home. Mhmm. We're seeing in the market right now, depending on where you are, we're seeing double, triple, or quadruple even sometimes if you get these little niche markets of what you could get for rent on a home. So you're actually able to cash flow on single family homes with people in the homes that are And they're not like Airbnb where it's like I get in a guest every weekend. We've had people stay ten years. Had people with me for ten years living in the home.

Sam Wegert: [37:44] It can become to the right demographic, it becomes old. Yeah. This is where I'm gonna live. Right? A service worker or someone who's making Damn. You've been

Dan Austin: [37:50] doing this for ten years. Holy smokes.

Sam Wegert: [37:52] Yeah. I mean, I bought my first one in 2011.

Mike DeHaan: [37:55] Wow. Yeah. I told you, dude. He's like a OG. Yeah.

Sam Wegert: [37:58] It was a real slow burn for a bunch of years because I was building my martial arts schools and whatever and we've been really focused on it now, but What do you

Dan Austin: [38:05] do from an underwriting standpoint? Do you underwrite it as if it was a single family home, so you're not like, I guess what I wanna get at is, do you overpay for these houses and then put a bunch of money into them, so then the ROI's a little different? Or is it like, hey, no, I could sell this house for the value, whatever, I'm buying it up the MLS, this is it's value, and then you have to put some more money into it to modify it? Yeah. How do you come up with this?

Sam Wegert: [38:26] Me and my students, we represent about a thousand, maybe a little bit more now, but about a thousand doors kind of around The United States, thousand co living doors. And you know, we're buying just about everything on the MLS. Which is pretty crazy to think like, I can get a deal that's still cash flows Uh-huh. 15 to 25% cash on cash. On a deal, I'm putting 10 to 20% in. And then, yeah. So we're buying on the MLS. We're paying, I would say, market rate. Like, obviously, we're trying to negotiate, it's on the MLS. It's gonna be, you know, it's fairly market rate. Right. And then we're putting in whatever money we need to to convert. So if have to add a bathroom or could take a take a half bath and add a full, we're doing that. We're adding the doors, we're adding the the walls as well. There is a marketplace for Cold Living Homes Now that's just starting. And we did get one bank to commit, a local bank albeit, but they did commit to us and say, we will value your these homes at a cap rate. Instead of this is a bank, frankly, be honest, I've been working with them for the last like eight years. They've given me millions of dollars to buy these homes. So they kinda get it. They understand the model.

Sam Wegert: [39:27] They've seen the numbers for a while now. And they're just like, yeah, we'll start evaluating your single family homes based on a cap rate and refinance them based on that. Mhmm. Which is insane. Because like, if I don't go comp based value, my home, the home next is producing 2,200, mine's producing 8,500. Like, I'm gonna get an evaluation that's gonna be insane based on that. Right? So I guess what I'm saying is I think there's some value in not always having to think, oh, I've gotta convert this back to a single family home. I think there is a marketplace to sell it as a cash flowing asset. And if we can get more banks to recognize that, then I think we'll be headed in the right direction. Yeah. But the truth is, it's way more stable than Airbnb. And banks underwrite based on Airbnb right now. So it's just a matter of time when they're like, wait, We've been underwriting based on Airbnb. Let's underwrite on these guys that are living in these homes for years and paying it as rent for for a long time.

Mike DeHaan: [40:14] And so Absolutely.

Sam Wegert: [40:15] That's what I think will come down the pipeline in the next year or two.

Dan Austin: [40:18] Yeah. There's so many opportunities for this business, Tudor. There's there's a have you heard of crash pads before? Concept of pilot crash pads?

Sam Wegert: [40:26] Yeah.

Dan Austin: [40:26] There's so many niches, right? We've talked

Sam Wegert: [40:27] about like,

Dan Austin: [40:28] and I would love to get your opinion on this, we've been doing like midterm rentals for traveling nurses, but is there maybe even just near hospitals, the need for medical professionals to have a crash pad essentially, or or something like that because they're traveling, and it just seems like there's a lot of different industries out there now that this would cater to.

Mike DeHaan: [40:45] Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting too because, like, you're talking about having the banks sort of sort of recognize it. The reason it hasn't happened yet is, like you said, it's still in, the Blue ocean phase. They're acknowledging Airbnb now, but they weren't doing that a couple of years ago. Right. You know, it's taken forever for them to be able to do that. And then it's only a matter of time where they did this too. So people that are like in your position, when banks do start to acknowledge it and agree to finance these appropriately, you're gonna be Take making off like a freaking bandit, man. You're by able to Right. Offload all those to some hedge fund for like a massive multiple or even just a local operators that, you know, wanna do the Cody Sanchez buy a business. You'd like, hey. You wanna buy an entire group home So true. For a five x multiple because this will be the return on investment. I mean, that's that's gonna be a great place to be in. That's the play. Totally.

Sam Wegert: [41:31] That's the play. I like it, man.

Mike DeHaan: [41:32] Nice, man. That's that's super cool. So so going into this, where are all your properties based out of? Are they are they all

Sam Wegert: [41:38] in Charlotte? My personal ones are in Charlotte and then a town called Asheville, which I was gonna address that because you mentioned Spokane being a little rural. So I launched one. This model works anywhere there's a need for housing. Yeah. Obviously, if you know your market.

Mike DeHaan: [41:52] But Asheville's like bougie rural. We know Paul Xavier down there. Actually did some marketing stuff down there for him. I'm trying to find some off market stuff. And it's like nice. Spokane's more like, so so the the joke about Spokane or like thing you see on people's bumper stickers is, keeps Spokane kind of gross. Like that

Sam Wegert: [42:10] is Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [42:11] That is where we are.

Dan Austin: [42:12] I think too is we don't have like an a part of town where people desire to live close to, because like our downtown metro people are actually like leaving. And so it's not like you know what I mean? There's not a proximity thing, but there is definitely a lot of need for rent by the room housing, and we've seen it. It's just not like cool people doing it. Yeah. They're doing it for the community, they're doing it because they have to. You know what I mean? So that's where I would be skeptical of all of this, but I do think there's probably a growing opportunity.

Sam Wegert: [42:42] What do you mean doing it because they have to?

Dan Austin: [42:43] Child molesters, drug addicts, special needs people.

Mike DeHaan: [42:47] Oh yeah.

Sam Wegert: [42:47] Got it. Like they can't get a normal place because they've got something on their record or what, I gotcha, gotcha, I gotcha.

Dan Austin: [42:54] Or they're required to live there. Yep. So we do have that and there are landlords that cater to that. But I could see a potentially a growing need location based, depending on location in Spokane where this could work.

Sam Wegert: [43:07] Here's my question, like Sure. What is the average studio rent in Spokane for a studio apartment? And this this is I think a lot of times what it boils down to.

Mike DeHaan: [43:17] Probably 900, $10,000.

Dan Austin: [43:20] That's a nice voice. Yeah. 1,000. Yep.

Sam Wegert: [43:22] Okay. So in Charlotte, it's almost double that. Okay. For a nice voice, right? Yeah. I think there's some like, if you think about like where does everybody that works at Target and Walmart and the gas station and put your luggage on the planes and put your tires on your car that are making between 25 and $60 a year. Right? Where are they living? And then they're not paying 2,000 or they're not in Charlotte at least, they're not paying 1,800 plus utilities to go lift. It's just not happening, right? Yeah, totally. And so, but they probably could afford $900 for a decent place. Sometimes, I

Mike DeHaan: [43:57] mean, used to live in a place called Camp Hope, was a homeless camp, but they shut

Dan Austin: [44:00] it down. No. Here's what I would say is we do have a do have a large, a very large university presence for adult learners in Spokane, because we have a medical school here, we have basically I think two or three schools that are offering medical training and stuff like that. So when I say location based, I do think for some of those more transient type people that have to be here from an education standpoint, wanna be near a university, but they're an adult, they're not a college kid anymore. Right. I think you could rent those rooms for 400 to $600 each in a four to six bedroom home, no problem. I do this rent by the room for a college student, so I have a couple student rentals and it works great. But there's always still a weird demand when they graduate, but they decide to stay local, and they wanna hang, they still wanna live with three of their friends, but they're like, what rent's $2 for this place? You know what I mean? And so, they're looking for a three bed, two bath, and they don't want it to be in a bad neighborhood, but the prices for that, for a college student who's maybe doing an internship, but just graduated or starting whatever, there is that need. So I'm trying to bridge that gap, I see what you're saying, and it could work potentially anywhere. We just might not be seeing the exact same numbers you are in a really popular metro like Charlotte. Right, exactly.

Sam Wegert: [45:11] Yeah, so The thing is, we very rarely cater to college students at all. That's just not our market. There's whole companies that just they focus on that. They can give those people exactly You know, they can give college students exactly what they want. Right? The proximity, the amenities, the all of that. Mhmm. Are And I would highly recommend anybody going into this model to not niche down too much. I get that a lot, I'll be like, well I'm gonna do nurses, I'm gonna do this, I'm do this, I'm do this. Like if you vet the tenants well, you can just open it up for working professionals. Mhmm. And you'll be more full, and I think that is the biggest need to be served through this model is Mhmm. Working profe We're actually seeing two big groups. We're seeing the people you just mentioned, Dan, of like, they're out of college, they have some debt, they can't really afford, they're in their first job, they're in their second job, they just haven't been able to like crack to that 75 k a year job yet. They're still at 50, and they don't wanna live with mom. They're still at 50 k, but they wanna live with Okay? That's that's a whole bunch of people unfortunately in The United States right now between the ages of, you know, 22 and 40. Unfortunately, 32, 35, 37, you know? Yeah. Like that's a big group of people.

Sam Wegert: [46:18] More and more with just with incomes not increasing as much as housing costs. So that's number one group. Number two group we're seeing is fixed income, 55 plus.

Dan Austin: [46:27] Interesting.

Sam Wegert: [46:28] People that are like, am I living with someone? I got a fixed income. I live on social security. I live on this. And I can pay $850 a month. Right here. You know? By the way, that's cheap for Charlotte. Sorry, you guys are doing Studio Apartment nine hundred, but like So I think there's something to that of just like, I think the more open you are to that whole demographic of working professionals, we've found that we just get more leads, we stay more full, and it just creates a better product overall. That's my 2¢.

Mike DeHaan: [46:56] That's awesome, man. I love it. Well, I feel like we could sit here and talk to you forever on this.

Dan Austin: [47:01] You're Yeah. This is a great topic.

Mike DeHaan: [47:03] I love your energy around this. You're obviously so passionate about it and you've built something that's super super awesome. Thanks, brother. Thanks. So I guess really quick before we dive into the end of show questions.

Sam Wegert: [47:13] What'd you say your total portfolio size is now? My wife and I own 200 properties. Properties? Oh shit. We met 200 doors. Doors. Okay. Yeah. We Not including like short term rentals and some commercial spaces that we own, that I rent to my martial arts schools. But we manage a 100 more. Mhmm. And we have a 180 in the pipeline right now to come live in the next that are either under rehab or closing or whatever. My company helps people acquire these. Yeah. And then I run a mastermind that we probably between in that mastermind, we probably represent about a thousand to 1,200 doors around The United States. Yeah. Dang. So yeah, I think it's small. I mean in terms of the need, we're very very small.

Dan Austin: [47:55] That's still a lot of tenants really is what that is. I'm hearing When you say doors, I'm hearing tenants. That's a lot of tenants that manage. That's a big time.

Mike DeHaan: [48:01] Yeah. It's I mean it's small relative to something. It's very very impressive relative to most things. Right? So Thanks, brother. Yeah. So that's very very awesome, man. And then if that doesn't give all the listeners a sort of like belief that you're a true operator, I don't know what does because that's that's pretty wild. Thank you. Awesome, man. Well, Sam, I really appreciate you sharing all this information, dude. It's been super, super enlightening. We are going to dive into our end of show questions here. The same questions that we ask every person that comes on this show. And the first one, which is always the group favorite, is what is your craziest real estate investing story? It's gonna be a big win, big loss, crazy transaction, you know, with 200 properties, I'm sure that you have some good stories hidden in there. So I feel like

Sam Wegert: [48:47] this is where I should like queue my property manager, and like she would rock you in here with some solid There you go. I launched an episode of my podcast with her, her name is Jess, we were we were hashing out some stories. Yeah. I don't know, man. I I think one of the craziest that I personally experienced though was just when I was living in these homes, this was, you know, eight, nine years ago when I was kinda building the systems and building the model, I lived with this one guy. I I just raised the rent and he said he could pay it. And so I was like, okay, you can pay it. I like, didn't have paperwork. I didn't have these membership agreements. I didn't have any of these rules or reg things that I was telling you guys about earlier. And he just became kind of a crazy person. And I was really the Tony Robbins at the time, and so he would knock on my door. I would like do my bouncing on my trampoline and do my incantations and say my affirmations and stuff. And he he would say the craziest things to me. He'd knock on my door at like 2AM, and I didn't vet him, didn't do a background check, it was like the worst. I never This guy never should have rented. He would be like he'd say the weirdest things. He'd be like, I know what you do in your private time. Your vice is going to kill you. And I just feel like, what the?

Sam Wegert: [49:48] Like this guy was like That was weird. I don't know if he was high or drunk or whatever and then he would and they'd be like, I know you're trying to be that Tony Robbins guy. You will never make it. And it was just like this weird negative thing and I would like start recording them and stuff. It's this weird ass story. I'll never forget it the day I die. He was just like the negative his negativity was insane. So that's probably the craziest like tenant story I ever have.

Mike DeHaan: [50:08] So did you end up

Sam Wegert: [50:09] like what casing him out or Yeah. But I didn't have a lease or anything. So like it was very difficult to like try to evict him. Yeah. Eventually he left. Took him like three weeks but yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Dan Austin: [50:18] Dude, that's kinda weird. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [50:20] I was always the weirdos. That's part of the part of the real estate game unfortunately. Yeah,

Dan Austin: [50:24] They're out there.

Mike DeHaan: [50:25] Alright. What is your number one tip for a small time investor looking to scale their real estate business?

Sam Wegert: [50:31] Yeah, mean, think we've kinda hit on a bunch of them. I would just probably go back to some of the things we've shared, and that is that you finding someone that It's so cliche to say, but it is the thing. Like it's cliche because it's true. Like if you don't have If you right now do not have somebody that is like steps ahead of you in the process, whether that's you guys, or someone doing co living, or someone doing wholesaling, or whatever, then like you're trying to do it on your own, and you're just wasting so much time and money by not having a mentor and someone to guide you on the path. And so that's always my biggest tip is like get a mentor first. Absolutely.

Mike DeHaan: [51:03] I mean

Sam Wegert: [51:04] I've got like three coaches. I got like a Tony Robbins like mindset coach right now. I've got I'm coaching with Matt King, CEO of GoBundance. So another mindset coach in our real estate course, it's just you know, having that is just so key to look at different different places if you really wanna play this game at a scale level.

Mike DeHaan: [51:17] Yeah. I mean, picture, I don't think I know anyone that I would consider successful that hasn't had some kind of mentor. Mentor or coach or something. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, it's just it's a necessary thing. You have to learn from somewhere. And the easiest way to get to a higher position is find someone that's doing what you wanna do and do whatever you can to Okay. You know, bring that person value and learn from them. So Yeah. Absolutely agree.

Sam Wegert: [51:41] It's great

Mike DeHaan: [51:41] to awesome, Sam. And then last question, where can people find you, follow you, and reach

Sam Wegert: [51:46] out to you? Yeah. Real simple, easiest is probably just Instagram like at Sam Wegert, w e g e r t on Instagram, or we do these free events once a month. There there are these five day challenges where people can kind of find out more about co living, dive into some more of the nuances of it. So if someone's interested in that, you just have to register, get on the wait list for the next the next one with you go to scaleyourrealestate.com. Scaleyourrealestate.com.

Mike DeHaan: [52:10] Awesome. And you said you have your own podcast as well?

Sam Wegert: [52:13] We do. We lost a podcast called Scale Your Real Estate. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Perfect. Right on. Easy to remember. Call Living should be in the name. Don't think that was a mistake that I made, but it's basically like Scale Your Call Living is really what it's about.

Mike DeHaan: [52:23] You you can always rebrand it. We rebranded our show after episode like four. But especially when you're starting out. Three used be

Dan Austin: [52:29] the No BS Real Estate Podcast, which was a total BS Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [52:33] Like four episodes.

Sam Wegert: [52:34] Yeah. Yeah. Wait, that's a good name. Why did you why did you change it?

Mike DeHaan: [52:37] Because there were some other white dudes that had it. We don't wanna be associated with them.

Dan Austin: [52:42] The same podcast?

Mike DeHaan: [52:43] Yep. We didn't even Google it, we just started rolling with it and then we changed it after like episode four.

Sam Wegert: [52:47] I'm totally rebranding. Thank you guys for that encouragement.

Mike DeHaan: [52:49] Yeah. So, yeah. Absolutely. So, awesome Sam, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show dude, you dropped an incredible amount of knowledge and I really enjoyed your enthusiasm approaching it. And honestly dude, you got me thinking, I'm like, doesn't exist here in Spokane yet, but why?

Sam Wegert: [53:03] Maybe it

Mike DeHaan: [53:04] needs to. Maybe it needs to. Exactly. Honestly, we need to go and we have another conversation about that

Sam Wegert: [53:08] as well. So what we can do, hey real simply, we can run some test ads before you buy any properties. We can send some This is what I encourage everybody to Absolutely. Do on a new Like, we run some ads. You can run it on Facebook marketplaces where Honestly, we get most of our leads from Facebook marketplace. And you can just Don't have to put in an address. And you can When people respond, we'll send them this Google form and be like, actually, we're creating a waiting list for this home. Fill out this info, you'll be at the And top of the waiting it asks them like what their budget is, and do they know this is co living and not the whole house for $700 And then like what their date of move in is, who they are, like little little in And anyway, you can get so much data in an instant by creating kinda what looks like a real ad, but it's really just you trying to create a rating list for your first home. A great way to test a market.

Mike DeHaan: [53:51] Love it. That's right out of the four hour work week too, which is like my always sort of go to book. He talks about how to test these business ideas before you spend too much time on them. But, I mean, it makes perfect sense, dude. I love it. So another tip, right to finish off. Very, very awesome. So awesome, guys. Well, I really hope you enjoyed this show with Sam Wegert. If you didn't, don't I tell you. Please just unsubscribe from our show because that was about as good as it gets. So there was so much incredible knowledge there. And definitely reach out to Sam. He does some awesome stuff on social media and check out his new podcast as well. And if you have any questions about co living or you are interested in this in your market, he's your go to guy. So don't be afraid to hit him up. You know, people come on these shows because they want you to reach out to them. So don't be shy. We're all nice. Everyone that Dan and I associate with has some level of credibility, unless it would be on here. So don't be afraid to hit up Sam. But beside that, everybody, we appreciate you all, and we'll talk to you next week. Yeah. Thanks

Speaker 3: [54:47] for listening to collecting keys. Drop us a five star review on iTunes and send us a screenshot to Mike@collectingkeys.com for your chance to receive a free collecting keys t shirt.