From a $35K Salary to $500 Million Real Estate Portfolio: How Todd Dexheimer Built a Real Estate Empire

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] Real quick, guys. If you want to take your real estate investing business from 6 to 7 figures in the next twelve months, and you wanna do without being a slave to your business, then you have to check out our scale community. You can get the full details at collectingkeys.com/scale. But very basically, it is a community of like minded investors who are working to become the absolute top tier investors in their market. Along with three coaching calls per week led by Dan and myself, we also have a whole bunch of videos and materials that go into all the different SOPs that we use to run our business on a daily basis. This includes how we manage our sales team, how we hire, how we do our marketing systems, how we get the best assignment fees possible, how we do renovations, how we do all the different kinds of creative financing. And if you are serious about taking your real estate business to the next level, it is absolutely something that you should check out. So go to collectingkeys.com/scale, see all the details, and see if you're a good fit. When people look at these alternate investment styles, see, like, the rehab facilities people are doing, the assisted living stuff, see a lot of people doing even, like, section eight or some of the income driven things, There's this extra level of complexity that comes with it. That's just gets ignored by all the podcasting gurus out there.

Mike DeHaan: [1:24] What is going on, guys? On today's episode of the collecting keys real estate investing podcast, we have Todd Dexheimer, who is a very, very, very successful investor, as you will find out super early on as we dive into the show, and he goes over what his portfolio looks like. And he's been doing real estate for about fifteen years, but man, he has hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets. And he started accumulating all of these while he was like a shop teacher making 35,000 a year. And the way that he grew his business is super, super awesome because it's very repeatable. It's driven on hard work and seeking education and just doing the right things over and over and over again and watching the correct results come in. As you get to the end of the show, we go into a new endeavor that he's really started to delve into that he actually lost about $500,000 in the first show that he tried it. And so he's not all just, you know, hosting big wins, but he has taken his licks as well, and he has a ton of lessons he has learned along the way. He also has his own podcast called the pillars of wealth creation. You should definitely go and check that out. I've been a guest on there in the past. He's a really, really sharp guy, and obviously, he's very good at what he does. So you can no doubt learn a lot from his show as well. And besides that, don't be afraid to reach out to him. Send him an email.

Mike DeHaan: [2:36] Hit him up on the social that he drops at the end. Because remember, people do come on these shows because they want you to reach out to them. Anyways, we appreciate you guys listening, and enjoy the show with Todd Dexheimer. Dude, I'm super excited to have you on the show. I know I was on your podcast. It was quite a while ago now. Maybe like over a year ago. It's been a while. Been it's been quite a bit. But you are absolutely crushing it in what you do. So to give everyone a little bit of understanding, give us

Todd Dexheimer: [2:59] a breakdown of exactly what your business is and what your current assets look like. Business is called Endurus Capital. So we've, I don't know, owned about 500,000,000 in assets. So mostly mostly multifamily. We're talking like 100 to 300 unit buildings. And then we have some assisted living. Also, have about 400 units of assisted living. We've got a retail strip center. We've an industrial building. But again, mostly multifamily is where our bread and butter really lies, value add, and we syndicate those deals. It's funny. Before we

Mike DeHaan: [3:36] were talking to the show, you mentioned your assisted living stuff, and you said that it's not really something you're focused on. But you said you own 400 of them?

Todd Dexheimer: [3:42] Yeah. 400 units. Right.

Mike DeHaan: [3:45] I mean, I'm not that interested in this. I only own 400 units of of this particular asset.

Todd Dexheimer: [3:50] Well, that's what I'm not interested in. It's just not like where we're putting all our effort into. We were putting plenty of effort into it because we have 400 units, but it's not like that's our daily focus. We're not underwriting a ton of assisted living deals. We do look at a few deals if they they look really interesting, and we feel like there's a good opportunity there, but that's not, like, our big focus.

Mike DeHaan: [4:13] Yeah. That's awesome, though, man. Like, you you have a lot going on. And, I mean, it's not very often to we get people that have assets, like, portfolios of your size. Like, very regularly, people come in. They have 50,000,000, $60,000,000. You added a zero onto that with with every entry of going on. And so how long have you been in the industry for?

Todd Dexheimer: [4:32] Boy, it's it's been sixteen years now. I think it's sixteen years that I've been in the industry. So it's been a while now.

Mike DeHaan: [4:42] I mean, it it funny thing is it's been a while compared to like a lot of people, but Yeah. Over the course of life, like that's not insane amount to of accumulate what you have. And so like how did you even start going after that? Right? Like, when you started sixteen years ago, was your goal to acquire $500,000,000 in assets, or did that just sort of come around as you just were getting after the grind?

Todd Dexheimer: [5:06] Well, it's always evolved. Right? So my goal when I first started was just to buy something. Like, that's that was the goal. And then as it evolved, I remember sitting in a we had a local real estate Ria. Guy brought in a ton of speakers from all around the country, and all these people spoke about different things. Flipping houses, wholesaling, you know, all kinds of stuff. And the one guy that really resonated with me was David Lindahl. Your listeners might know that name. He's a multifamily guy. He's wrote three multifamily books, at least I think three, maybe more. After I got done listening to him, I'm like, I'm gonna own a thousand units. That's my goal. And I now own a thousand units and far surpass that, but but that was my big goal. That was, like, a year, maybe six months after I started. That's ambitious, dude. Like Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [5:57] To be be making that decision so early, especially nowadays, most people

Todd Dexheimer: [6:01] I didn't know I was gonna get there.

Mike DeHaan: [6:02] Yeah. When I started, my goal was to, I think, own like 10 properties in five years. Right? And you said a 100 x that. Right? That that's awesome. And so leading into that, you start with multifamily right away, or did you play the residential game first?

Todd Dexheimer: [6:17] Yeah. Residential game. Because I didn't know how to go and buy a multi I didn't have money. I was a teacher. I was a high school industrial tech teacher teaching woods and metals and architecture and stuff like that. So, like, I'm making 28 to I think my last year I was done teaching, I was making $32,000 a year. Right? And so I didn't know how I could go buy a, you know, $5,000,000, $10,000,000 building like that. That just didn't compute to me. I didn't have the connections. At least I didn't think I did. And so yeah. So I started buying single family homes. So kind of to start, I purchased a single family home that my wife and I ended up moving into as a foreclosure. We fixed and flipped that one while we lived in it. And then we also, at pretty much the same time, we bought a single family home to fix up and then rent. And then also pretty much at the same time, we bought a single family home to actually flip. So I did all three of those. I don't remember which one was bought first, second, and third, but they're all bought within a few weeks of each other. And we used every last penny we had. We got an FHA two or three k loan on our house, so that didn't take much. We used all of our liquid cash to buy that rental property. And then to buy the flip, I actually partnered with a guy, and he brought the money in. He actually brought money from somebody else in to the deal, and and we flipped that house together.

Mike DeHaan: [7:51] Nice. And so were you just, like, doing the labor on that as the shop teacher?

Todd Dexheimer: [7:55] Yeah. I was, like, working my butt off day in and day out. It was summers you get time off, but I was trying to pay the bills. I already committed to a construction company that summer. So I was working construction full time in the summer, get done with the construction day, go work on my houses, and then school started. I'm doing the same thing, you know, like, I'm just working seven days a week and just grinding away and and working every hour I could. So

Mike DeHaan: [8:25] Yeah. I mean, that's how you get started, though. Right? And so many people try to skip that part. But even if you have, like, the financial ability to do so, you know, I I like how you outline that with your with your teaching position and breaking down those hours because I feel like there's people that come in, they have a good financial position. Like, I don't need to do that hard work part. I can just sort of spy them away past it. The problem is they don't develop the work ethic. Right? Like, your the rest of your life is completely different because you can reflect back on that period of time, and realistically, nothing that you're gonna do is gonna be as, like labor intensive as that ever again.

Todd Dexheimer: [9:00] Yep. I think it's so valuable to to put in that time and to grind. Look, work smarter, not harder is a great saying. I think it's sometimes taken too much to people's, like they just go, oh, I can't do that work because it's too hard. Somebody said to work smarter, not harder. I gotta figure out how to be smarter. I agree with that. You should try to do that as quickly as possible, But when you first start, you just should be grinding, and that's what you should be doing for a period of time. It doesn't mean it's ten years, it shouldn't be ten years. Read the book Shoe Dog by Sill Knight. He was grinding for like decades, not days, you know, and a lot of entrepreneurs, when you look at their journeys, you know, Elon Musk seems like he probably doesn't work as hard anymore, but I guarantee he was putting in crazy amount of hours, right, when he was trying to build everything. He wasn't just doing four hour work week. This is not how it is. My daughter was born in 2009, and I was grinding away then. Mean, literally would, like, go to work six a six a. M. I would get up to get ready to go to work, go to work all day, go do the house stuff, and then I'd get home, and it's like 02:00 in the morning, my daughter wakes up, I give her a bottle, go to bed, and I get up at six. You know, that but you're gonna have to do that for a period of time. It's not forever, at least it better not be. Otherwise, you're doing something wrong.

Todd Dexheimer: [10:28] But be willing to do it. Sacrifice.

Mike DeHaan: [10:31] Yeah. People wanna work smarter, not harder, but they don't know what harder means yet. Right? Their definition of hard isn't isn't correct, and you kinda need to go through the list to figure that out. So you said, obviously, don't do that for ten years. How long did you do that for? And then after you kinda got out of that phase, you stay in residential for long, or did you make the transition to multifamily pretty quickly?

Todd Dexheimer: [10:52] Well, I stayed in residential for relatively long, so I was fixing and flipping houses, buying and keeping houses, and I did that for, boy, what was it like seven, eight years? I flipped and and bought and sold, like, 100 plus houses, duplexes, some triplexes, stuff like that. And so I built my rental portfolio up to about a hundred hundred units, mostly of single family to four unit buildings. And then I just realized I couldn't keep on going that route and scale the way I wanted to. And so that was kind of that push into the multifamily space. As far as the grind goes, and there's different levels of grind, right? The crazy hard grind was probably for, honestly, like a year to probably like a year to two max, And you then I don't wanna say I stopped grinding because I was still putting in a lot of hours. We were flipping houses. I was still going crazy. But at least a little bit less spending some more time with my family, realizing that's pretty important and taking a little bit of time off here and there. But I was still probably putting in, you know, sixty to seventy, maybe eight hours a week depending on the week for quite some time.

Mike DeHaan: [12:10] Yeah. And then you said you wanted to scale, so did you maintain your residential portfolio? Did you basically just liquidate all of that and then start going into multifamily?

Todd Dexheimer: [12:20] Yeah. I actually believed that it was a smart move for me to keep most of that residential portfolio, kind of sell off maybe some of the bad eggs, the ones I didn't like as much. So I sold off, like, a chunk of the properties, but it wasn't a huge chunk. I I don't remember right away sold off maybe four or five properties, I think. And I also had a business partner at the time when we were flipping and buying those, and so and when I went the apartment route, we split, so he got some of the properties. I got some of the properties. So that was split some of that chunk too. Yeah. I thought it was just smart to keep them, because I liked the cash flow, and I didn't wanna give up that income. Didn't see, here's what I I'm a firm believer in creating a business, grinding hard, creating a business that you have a baseline of income on your business that allows you to live. Okay? Not necessarily allows you to buy, you know, Lamborghinis and Ferraris and go on extravagant vacations and all that kind of stuff, but it allows you to be a baseline to live. Okay? And so we have that, then we're not forced to do bad deals. And I think this is especially important with the investor type, but I think in any business, like, we don't wanna be forced to have to do bad deals.

Todd Dexheimer: [13:40] And so I didn't wanna force my I wanted to buy apartments, but I didn't wanna force myself to buy apartments that were maybe too risky. And there's quite frankly, look, there's good and bad about that. Like, I also like the idea of, well, you could pay burn the ships, man. Just you gotta jump all in. I think there's validity to that. But for me, at that point in time in my life, I had two kids, I wanted the stable cash flow, and I wanted to be able to not have to not have to do deals because I was gonna start taking investors too.

Mike DeHaan: [14:14] For sure. Yeah. And that that base level of financial freedom, right, is such an understated thing that people tend to overlook, I feel like. But if you like you said, if your basic lifestyle is being paid for, it reduces your general overall perception of risk. I mean, obviously, there's always risk. Right? If you have that cash flow that comes in and it's really barely paying for anything and also you have to replace your roof on one of your properties, that's problematic. Yeah. But, you know, it totally allows you to just fully focus on whatever the next thing is. And so when you made that transition to multifamily, I guess, how did you start learning about that? Right? It's a properties are analyzed different. They're purchased differently. The debt structures are different. The project management itself, once you acquire it, is different. Like, it's real estate, obviously. Right? But it's not necessarily one to one similar to residential.

Todd Dexheimer: [15:05] Yeah. Honestly, I said, who do I need to know in order to go to the next level? And so, and I look back and it's like I talked to a ton of people, a lot of people gave me okay or maybe iffy advice, and then some people gave me really good advice, and so it was all about sifting through some of that advice and trying to, you know, make sense of the advice. But I I didn't hire a coach. And I I'm not saying you shouldn't. I actually think most people should. I think I would have been better off hiring a coach doing that. So I think there's I think you should hire a coach and do what I did, not just one. Okay? So I called a ton of mortgage brokers. I called a ton of banks. I called a ton of property management companies that were managing those type of buildings. I'm calling appraisers. You name it. Like attorneys, CPAs, like everybody that deals with these types of buildings. I'm calling. I ended up wanting to buy properties out of state, so I'm doing a ton of research on what makes sense and why and coming up with kind of my philosophy on what markets to invest in. I'm calling the municipalities. Like, I'm calling the city and talking with people, the building inspectors, talking with them about the properties and the codes and stuff like that and the rental housing authority. And so you just right?

Todd Dexheimer: [16:27] You just start diving in and calling people that are in the area that are experts at that field. And you're gonna get again, you're gonna get some okay advice. You're gonna get some iffy advice. You're gonna get some bad advice, but then you're gonna get some really good advice. You just have to be able to sift through that. And I think anybody who has got some common sense can figure out how to sift through most of that stuff.

Mike DeHaan: [16:51] Yeah. Yeah. You'd think so. But I don't know. Well,

Todd Dexheimer: [16:54] it starts adding It's up, not like I get this bad piece of advice, and then everybody else gives you that same bad piece of advice. Yeah. You know, you get the one bad piece of advice, and then everybody else says something that just as so it's like that first person or that third person, like, that doesn't add up. Like, I'm just gonna push that to the side there.

Mike DeHaan: [17:13] Yeah. And again, it goes back to putting in that work, though. Right? Because I love how you broke through the different people that you talk to, because you're right, they will all give you their own perspectives. And after a while, you start to see patterns. Yep. Right? And I feel like most people's version of like research right now is they talk to like one person that read like one blog post. And I cool. That's what I do. And it's like, that that could be the most incorrect person because you have no contacts because it's only one. I mean, look,

Todd Dexheimer: [17:37] I talked to every single real estate agent and broker that was selling the type of properties I'm looking for in the markets I'm looking for. And they're giving me different feedback than some of the other people. So because, hey, they're they're selling properties.

Mike DeHaan: [17:54] They're Mhmm.

Todd Dexheimer: [17:55] Optimists, you know. The bankers are pessimists. So you're getting different kind of feedback, and you gotta massage those together and go, okay. What's the truth? Mhmm.

Mike DeHaan: [18:05] Yeah. Do you remember the first

Todd Dexheimer: [18:07] property you bought? Well, I'll say first property I bought after I decided to fully be done with flipping and small properties. Yeah. Yeah. The first multifamily. Yeah. Yeah. And I bought I had bought some some multifamily prior to it, but this is like I consider my first. Right? It was a 22 unit building in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Mike DeHaan: [18:29] Nice. Do you remember how you how you found it and how you put together the deal since it was a new thing to you?

Todd Dexheimer: [18:35] Fun deal. So okay. So found it. It was listed on the market. I think it was just listed on the market. He had a 22 unit, and I think he had an 11 unit, and I put an offer on both of them, ended up just getting the 22 unit. But this guy, he owned the property, but he only had he had nine of the 22 units occupied. He was retiring. He wanted to get out of the gate. And so I made an offer on the building, got it accepted, and then I started doing the due diligence and stuff and calling these banks, and the banks were like, fuck, man. Know, like, can't give you a loan on this, or this is what we can give you. And I was like, this this sucks. Like, I can't do this deal. So I went to the guy, and I through the agent, I asked the agent, can we set up a meeting with this guy? And we set up a meeting with this guy, and I showed him an amortization table schedule. And I said, here's what I'm proposing. The banks told me, you're nuts. I can't buy this property. So I'm like, I can't buy this property for this price. Here's what I'm willing to do. I need to lower the price down to $4.35. I think I was at, like, $4.50. And then you need to finance it for me. And here are the terms you're gonna give me. And by the way, I'm gonna do renovation to the property, and so we're gonna set up a renovation fund, and so I'm not gonna really pay you a down payment.

Todd Dexheimer: [19:52] That's just gonna go into an escrow account that will set to the side, and then I'll put draw I'll draw on it. So it was like a bridge loan. Right? Like a construction loan setup. And the guy's like, this is awesome. Yeah. I wanna do it. Because my monthly payments to him were better than the cash flow that he was getting from these properties because he only had nine units out of 22 occupied. So he was actually making more money on this property than when he was running it himself. So That's great.

Mike DeHaan: [20:18] Yeah. When what was the ultimate exit for him there? Like, did he carry the debt for you long term, or did you did he have a balloon at, like, five years or something?

Todd Dexheimer: [20:25] Yeah. There was a balloon at five years with some extension, pretty easy extension clauses on there. He wanted the debt like he didn't sure he wanted to keep he wanted me to keep that property for twenty five. I think it was a twenty five year I am. And he's like, yeah, keep it the whole time. Yeah. So he he was retiring. He just wanted the cash flow. Like, he's like, this is a great deal for me. But it was just a conversation with this guy to see figure out why is he actually selling this building? What's his motivation? His motivation wasn't wasn't that he just wanted cash. His motivation that he was he wanna spend more time with the grandkids.

Mike DeHaan: [20:58] Yeah. That's such a great way to approach it though. Right? Because, you know, the guy obviously wants to sell. And the just traditional approach to the price he wanted wasn't possible. And though I putting in that extra legwork of like saying, how can we reach something that truly is a win win for everybody, it ends up being a win win for everybody, right? And it gets the deal done because he wants to sell it, but no one's gonna be able to buy it at his asking price unless they go and bring a fat check, which probably most people weren't gonna do back then. But that's perfect. Right? And then allowed you to sort of get into your first one. And so after that one was wrapped up, how quickly were you did you start scaling into more properties?

Todd Dexheimer: [21:37] Yeah. I'm pretty basically right away. Just continue to look and to buy, and that same year so I bought a 22 unit. I bought an 11 unit. I bought a 10 unit. I bought a 20 unit all within, you know, the same unit.

Mike DeHaan: [21:51] Are these all in Cincinnati, or are you going to different markets? Those were all in Cincinnati. Hey, we really appreciate being a listener of the collecting keys podcast. Did you know that we also are on social media and on YouTube? You should go and shoot us a follow on those as well. You can find both Dan and I on Instagram. I am at Mike underscore invests. Dan is at investor man Dan. You can also find short clips from the show at collecting keys podcast on Instagram. And if you wanna see our faces talking while listening to this show or you wanna check out some of our crazy animated adventures, we've been putting together into some funny little web cartoons that sort of show the crazy stories that guests tell on the show, then you should go over

Todd Dexheimer: [22:30] to YouTube and check out the collecting keys channel. Shoot us a subscribe over there. It really helps continue to grow our audience. We really, really appreciate it. Well, anyways, enjoy the rest of show, you guys. We appreciate you all. And so I bought all those what would that add up to? Like, 66 units or whatever it was. And I actually at that point in time, I I was working with a mentor because I wanted to figure out how can I scale bigger? I wanted to get to that thousand unit level. I wasn't there, and I was disappointed that, look, I'd already been in the industry for this long, like, why am I not there? What do I need to do differently? So I hired a a mindset coach and kind of a business strategy mindset coach. And I was talking to him about my portfolio, and I was talking to him about a guy who I just met who he knew. And I said, look. I wanna do what he does. I wanna get to where he's at, but I don't know what to do next. I need to just continue to buy these, you know, twenty, thirty, 40 unit buildings. Eventually, I'll get there. And he's like, why not just buy a 100 unit building right now? And I'm like, look. You've got more experience than this guy. You have more knowledge in the industry. There's no reason you can't you can't do this. And I'm like, you're right.

Todd Dexheimer: [23:43] And so it's just that simple conversation. Like, there wasn't much more to it than that. And I said, you're right. I'm gonna go do it. And so I ended up putting an 84 unit under contract, another 120 unit under contract, 204 units under contract, and closed on those probably like well, I think I put them under contract within, like, three months of that conversation. So probably close on about six months after that conversation. And then I was off to the races from there.

Mike DeHaan: [24:09] Nice. And so I imagine when you scaled up like that, that's is that when you started raising money? You started buying those larger assets?

Todd Dexheimer: [24:15] That's when I started raising money at scale. Right? Yeah. Prior to that, I always used private capital. So my flips, I I had private capital. My rentals, I used private capital. The 22 unit, I used some private capital. Every deal. Most most not every deal, but most every deal. I was using private money and so raising money, but on

Mike DeHaan: [24:37] a small scale basis. From, like, individual people and not necessarily, like, compiling into a fund?

Todd Dexheimer: [24:43] Maybe two people at the most.

Mike DeHaan: [24:44] Yeah. So when you you start made that transition into starting to, like, really raise money, how did you start that? Right? Because I think that's one of the biggest thing that always gets people, especially if they don't have a platform, is how do you even begin that whole process? There's the legal implications of it. There's the fact that you have to actually build the business case around why they should invest with you and not your competition. You have to be able to be confident enough with the deals and understand how it's going to be affecting your outcome because you're giving up a large portion of it as well, typically, with these general partner limited partnerships plus the people do. So the real estate technical side of it can all be learned. But the actual part of, like, having that conversation and building that network to be able to raise money, what were, like, kind of the biggest things that you had to overcome for that to be successful?

Todd Dexheimer: [25:36] Yeah. So the biggest thing I had to overcome to grow and scale and actually raise substantial amount of money was that the fact that I didn't like talking about what I did to people. When people would ask me what I did, you know, I'd say, oh, I'm a real estate investor. And they half the time, probably three quarters of the time, they'd go, oh, you're a realtor? And I'd go, yeah,

Mike DeHaan: [25:56] sure. Mhmm.

Todd Dexheimer: [25:57] I didn't want to talk about what I did. I just I thought I would be bragging about what I did or sound arrogant or whatever. That was a big hurdle is to say, well, if I'm gonna raise money, people have to know who I am and what I do. And what ended up actually being very convenient so so first of all, the first deal that I did, I raised for my own network that I already had. And I got that network through flipping houses and doing single families and and still being quiet about things. But, know, when you do that many deals, people start to see that you can only hide so much. And so I had those investors, and I had people that trusted me, and those people I basically said to anybody who had had invested with me in the past, like, here's what I'm going to do. Like, are you in? And they all said yes. Right? All those investors stuck with me. So I was able to, you know, raise on that first deal. But what ended up happening conveniently is I was actually in Cincinnati, and I was at a meetup. And we went around this round room, and people were talking. And one of the guys there had a podcast. And I'm like, what's a podcast? And and after I talked about what I did, because I that time, I either had 66 units or I was just buying, and and I'm like, said what I am doing, he's like, well, do you wanna be on this podcast? I'm like, I don't even know what you're talking about. You know? Like, I don't know what a podcast is.

Todd Dexheimer: [27:15] Well, join you know, join us, blah blah blah. So I ended up going on this podcast. I was like, this is super awesome, powerful. I got phone calls from it after and talked to the host and and decided I'm gonna start my own. And that was 2017, and I started my own podcast and got invited on BiggerPockets and got invited on, you know, all kinds of different podcasts at that point in time. And that was what really blew up my investor network and really my understanding of social media and the power that social media provides. And not even just social media too, but getting out in front of people and understanding them like you can't you're not raising money if you're just hiding behind a curtain. Like, you've gotta get out in front of people. Gotta talk about what you do. Gotta have a presence both in person and online.

Mike DeHaan: [28:12] Yeah. It's funny. I I feel like people that come from humble beginnings kinda like you did always have the biggest challenge with that because you face judgment. Right? Or like you're it's like almost embarrassing to sort of show that you figured it out. I still have a little bit of that. Yeah. It was funny. Like, I've known you for a little bit. I've seen you at some the go bonus meetups and stuff. I had no idea you had as much going on as you do. So you definitely keep it under wraps pretty well. So that's awesome. So you went there and you scaled to, you know, your 500,000,000 in assets over the next couple of years. And that's obviously you have your system down at this point. Then at some point, you decided to also go into assisted living. Right? And so what was that transition and what sort of, like, spurred that interest?

Todd Dexheimer: [28:55] Yeah. So, actually, a guy who I flipped a few houses, and he represented the buyer on those flips. I think he maybe wholesaled me a house. I can't recall exactly how we but anyways, we've done some deals together, and so we we known each other and for a while, and he wanted to get into assisted living, and so he called me out and said, you interested? I ended up at that point in time, I I just sold some properties, so I was sitting on a lot of cash. And I basically said, no. I don't I'm not interested. And what he said so, yeah, he sent me this information on this these two properties that he wanted to buy with me, and and I didn't look at them. Yeah. He calls me back off, like, couple days later. Hey. Have you taken a look at them? No. I have not. Okay. Well, yeah, like, call call me in a couple days. Calls me in a couple days. Hey. Have you what do you think about this? I have my I have an email to tell him.

Mike DeHaan: [29:53] Like He's doing his follow-up, though, man. It's important.

Todd Dexheimer: [29:55] He's doing his follow-up. Like, he was doing his job. Right? And so finally, I'm like, you know what? Like, I don't wanna keep blowing, you know, adjusted off. I'll peek at these deals. I peeked at the deals, I'm like, wow. These look actually really good. Let's dig in. And so we dug in more and underwrote them and ended up writing an offer on them, went to see them, looked at the industry a lot and decided let's try. So I ended up diving into those. And once I bought those, I made some really good money the first year. Think, you know, it was like $280,000 investment. I think the first year made like $200. Wow. That's crazy. So I I bought a bunch more, and then we really, really struggled. And so then Interesting. I made $200 the first year or so, $22.50, whatever it was. And then the second year, I lost, like, $200. And then the third year, I lost, like, $500, And I'm like,

Mike DeHaan: [30:50] Where's the loss coming from on this? Is it

Todd Dexheimer: [30:53] So these assisted livings have low margin, high profit. Well, if you lose a resident, which is easy because they die, if something happens, the state is really into these properties. We had some bad employees, and so they wouldn't allow us for a time to admit new residents. And so all of a sudden, our occupancy goes down and we're losing money. And it's just like we can't get out of this hole. We move two people in and three move out, you know. And so we kept on just losing money. We have bad employees, and we get to some profit here and there. And so yeah. So like I said, the first year, I lose, like, 200 k, and then I didn't lose 500 k. So I lose 200 k, then I lose 300 k. So 500 k total. Yeah. And then we finally got it figured out, and we got some really good staff in there and some really good leadership in there. And, you know, now we're sitting, we're completely full on these buildings, and we're doing really well on them. We bought this big portfolio too, and and that was a distressed portfolio to start with. And so we're still kinda digging out of that. So they have light margins, and that's the trick. And that's what people gotta be careful if you're gonna buy assisted living. Understand, first of all, it's a very high touch industry.

Todd Dexheimer: [32:21] So you have to have a business partner or be that person yourself that's going to be spending a lot of time in the business. My business partner is the one that's doing it. And so you gotta make sure that you're you're willing to put in the effort. You're running a team. Like, we have 400 beds, and we have almost 300 employees.

Mike DeHaan: [32:45] That's crazy. That's like a That's I mean, that's like a organization. Right? No wonder your overhead is is massive because all those people, I'm assuming, are full time on-site.

Todd Dexheimer: [32:54] And these employees, by the way, now a lot of them are part time.

Mike DeHaan: [32:57] Okay. Part time.

Todd Dexheimer: [32:58] But these employees are not in one single office.

Mike DeHaan: [33:03] Mhmm.

Todd Dexheimer: [33:03] Right? They're all over. They're in every single house. So, man, it's it's not like you've got this, hey, we're gonna have a big office meeting and like that that that doesn't happen. And they work twenty four seven, so you've got we can't even you can't even go into one building, Mike, and just have a conversation go, hey. This is our plan and blah blah blah, because you're missing half your staff. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [33:30] Yeah. Right.

Todd Dexheimer: [33:31] We do it in, a shift change, and so the one shift comes in early, the other shift stays a little bit late, and you do a meeting. But you're also you're missing the night shift.

Mike DeHaan: [33:41] That's super challenging. And I think it's something that when people look at these alternate investment styles, see, like, the rehab facilities people are doing, the assisted living stuff, see a lot of people doing even like section eight or some of the income driven things. There's this extra level of complexity that comes with it that just gets ignored by all the podcasting gurus out there, guys. If they don't tell you these things on purpose because they want you to buy their $7,000 course, these are complex business models that have human beings involved, and human beings are the most perfectly imperfect part of, like, every single business, and it it makes it very challenging. So I guess, in hindsight, would you do it again, or would you have just stayed in your lane with multifamily?

Todd Dexheimer: [34:23] That's so challenging because now we're doing well. Right? If you would ask that question when we are losing money, I would have said no freaking way. It's been a learning experience. Part of the reason why it's not a big focus of mine is because of the challenges of running these buildings, and I think there's a big challenge of running them at a bigger scale. So going from 400 to 600 to 1,200 to 2,000, I think, is gonna be very challenging. So I think the size we're at is a good size. Would we grow strategically slowly? Yes. But here's the thing with assisted living. It's very challenging to run it. I would suggest anybody listening to this, don't go dive into assisted living unless you've got a partner that has the knowledge already in the industry, that's an expert, that has ran these buildings, that knows what they're doing, and then and only then consider it and more on the passive side. I would say it's okay to be a passive investor. You could probably make some pretty good returns with the right operator. I think we've finally become a good operator, but it took a long time and a lot of pain to get there. And so, yeah, I don't know. Would I do it again? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.

Mike DeHaan: [35:37] It's funny. What what it kind of, like, reminds me of almost I talk about it is this current trend or fascination people have with, like, buying small businesses. And what you're saying is so true. Right? Like, you need to have that operator in place who knows what they're doing. Because there's all these people out there right now who are like, I have worked a job as a shop teacher, and I'm gonna go and buy an HVAC company that has 50 people. I'm gonna buy it on seller financing, and it's going to just pay my salary because I bought I bought this company. That's not really how companies work when you have the human element involved. Right? Like, you need to have somebody involved in the process, actually knows how to do the business side, or you're gonna have a bad time. Yep. I would think too that the fortunate place that you were in when you decided to take this leap is you had such a established multi family portfolio at this point that, sure, you lost, you know, 500 k over two years, and it did stung, no doubt, but you were able to weather that storm. You know, you weren't going into this first time and having to, like, go and pull a HELOC on your primary home to be able to survive. Right? Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [36:37] That you were gonna be taking massive debt on. At least I'm assuming that. But

Todd Dexheimer: [36:41] Yeah. Yeah. No. A 100% right. If this would have been ten years ago, it would have sunk me. I would have been done.

Mike DeHaan: [36:48] Yeah. So So awesome, man. Well, glad you got it figured out, and I have no doubt this is gonna be another massive endeavor for you. Awesome, man. Well, we are getting to our end of show period here. So the first question that we always ask, which is always the group favorite, is what is your craziest real estate investing story?

Todd Dexheimer: [37:07] Can I tell, like, 30 of them? Because I got a I got a bunch of them.

Mike DeHaan: [37:10] Oh, yeah. We we we We

Todd Dexheimer: [37:12] we could just keep going for this could be a twelve hour episode, literally.

Mike DeHaan: [37:16] We can have you come back and record more, because I don't know if you've seen We've been turning the best ones into animated cartoons on YouTube. And so, if you if you have some good ones, you'll end up as basically a South Park character on YouTube, if you're not.

Todd Dexheimer: [37:28] Oh, man. So, I don't know what is the best one. There's so many that are all like the top of my head. Do you want a poop story? Do you want a surprise story? Like, what do you want?

Mike DeHaan: [37:41] Let's do a surprise. I don't think we get a lot of shit stories, we get a lot of dead people stories.

Todd Dexheimer: [37:47] If you got a good Oh, man. Surprise

Mike DeHaan: [37:48] for those

Todd Dexheimer: [37:50] So one of my favorite ones is actually a triplex I ended up buying. This thing went for sale, and it was a foreclosure. It goes on the market and I see it. I'm like, I gotta go look at this place. So I go and look at it, and it's being listed as a duplex. That's right, it was being listed as a duplex. And so I go over there, and I walk through the building, and I'm like, something's wrong. Like, I don't know what's going on here, but I walked this whole thing, and I'm missing part of this building. I don't know. So I walk outside and there's another door, and I walk back inside and I can't see that door. What what the heck? You can't get into this door. And so I go back in to where I'm like, should be able to go through this wall right here to get to that door, and I see an outline of somebody drywalled over a door. So I'm like, I gotta get in there. So hopefully I don't get in trouble, but I kicked a hole in the wall. It was a vacant foreclosure, so nobody's know, who cares? Right? I take the hole in the wall, and sure enough, there's another unit in there. And I so I walk through, and it's a bedroom, it's a bathroom, it's a kitchen. I'm like, this is this is amazing. And so I end up running back, writing an offer, and I get the property, but I get this, I actually did get the property. The guy's like, hey, we went through all the offers. You got the highest and best at $88,000. And I'm like, why put my offer in for like 72, you know? And he's like, do you want it?

Todd Dexheimer: [39:29] And so I'm like, yeah, of course. Yeah. Before I sign the paperwork, I'm like, I gotta scramble here and figure out, is this thing really worth it? And I go and I start doing some like, okay, I think I can actually get these college kids into this place. So I ended up buying the place. It was a category two, which means it's condemned by the city, and you gotta do a ton of work to it. So I I still we start doing some work to this place. We're we blow the walls all, but connect like, do a whole thing to this. I mean, you put a ton of money into it. I think our rehab was well, in today's dollars, it would be like 250,000. At that time, it was it was much less. But I end up advertising this to these private college kids that are kind of nearby, but I didn't know if we would be able to actually reach them. I get showings, and I'm doing showings to these college kids, and there's literally a hole in this where I kicked open, like, as I'm showing these people. And I'm, like, showing I got a picture book of some of my previous rehabs. I'm showing them what it'll look like and stuff like that. And I get this whole thing, this triplex, all completely rented out for way more than I underwrote. I mean, I'm talking like thousands of dollars more than I underwrote. I got it fully rented out, and this thing's a disaster. The day they moved in, we have to get it out of to articulate an occupancy. We're like, I've got, like, tons of guys over there trying to finish stuff up.

Todd Dexheimer: [41:01] I got the inspector showing up while the moving vehicles are showing up to try to get this seal on. And he's like, hey, yo, this failed and this failed. I'm like, look, these people are moving in right now. You have to pass this. And he's like, okay. I'll pass it, but you've gotta get this stuff up. Promise. And so Nice. I still actually own that to the to this day. It it's a it's a great building.

Mike DeHaan: [41:25] Really? That's sweet. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, and we were able to get through the CO like that. Like, they're so nitpicky with like the dumbest things. I've heard some nightmare scenarios.

Todd Dexheimer: [41:35] It was just like stupid stuff. It's like, dude, come on. You're passing this right now. These these kids are here, and they're moving, and you can see the moving truck.

Mike DeHaan: [41:45] Nice. So did you ever figure out the scenario with, like, why they thought your offer price was higher?

Todd Dexheimer: [41:49] No. I didn't and I didn't ask. I didn't care. Some it was somebody else.

Mike DeHaan: [41:53] Shuffle the papers. Yeah. Exactly.

Todd Dexheimer: [41:55] A That's 100%. It was somebody else. Nice. Well, I'll take it.

Mike DeHaan: [41:59] I mean, play the game. Every now and then, you'll get lucky. Yeah. But nice. That sounds that sounds like a great one. So what what do you cash flow on that one now every single month?

Todd Dexheimer: [42:05] You know, think it's it's like a $20 a year type of deal.

Mike DeHaan: [42:09] That's pretty solid for one property though. That comes like a net net. That's great. But awesome. But when you buy

Todd Dexheimer: [42:14] it for, you know, $88,000, it, you know, works out pretty well.

Mike DeHaan: [42:18] Probably rents for $4 a month now if

Todd Dexheimer: [42:20] not more. Yeah. A little bit a little bit more. Yeah.

Mike DeHaan: [42:22] Awesome. That's great. Yeah. Alright, cool. That's a good one. Alright, so next question. What is the number one tip you have for a small time investor looking to take the business to

Todd Dexheimer: [42:31] the next level? You gotta take action. I mean, it's as simple as that you have to take action, you have to be willing to take risks and, and get over your fears. And so so you're gonna have these fears. They're gonna hold you back, and that's okay. I have fears still to this day, but you can't let them hold you back. You can't let them stop you from moving forward. And so get push those fears down and take action. Take those steps.

Mike DeHaan: [42:56] Easy enough. Simple. To the point. I like it. And last question, Todd. Where can people find you, follow you, reach out to you?

Todd Dexheimer: [43:03] So as you mentioned earlier, I've got a podcast. It's called Pillars of Wealth Creation. You could check me out wherever you're listening to this, you know, listen to this first, and then go check out mine. I also have my Endurus Capital. So enduruscapital.com, enduruscapital.com. You can reach out to me, Todd, at Endurus Capital dot com. And I do some coaching on limited basis. So if it's something you wanna buy large apartment buildings or even mid sized to large apartment buildings, reach out. We can see if we're a good fit. I don't take on a ton of clients a year, but the right people that are willing to, you know, take the steps and put in the work, I'm willing to put the time and effort in as well. Awesome.

Mike DeHaan: [43:46] Love it, Todd. Appreciate it. So anyways, guys, go and check out his show. He's got a lot of good stuff going on over there. And also shoot him a a outreach and send him an email and let him know that you enjoyed the show and that you wanna know more about what he does. Remember, guys, people come on these podcasts because they want you to reach out to them. If they wanted to just live in a hole and not talk to anybody, they wouldn't bother coming on the show. So when they share their information, don't be afraid to reach out because that is why they are here. Yeah. But we appreciate you guys listening. And Todd, thanks so much for coming on, man. Lots and lots of great information. I really appreciate your time. Congratulations on the success. And everybody else, appreciate you listening, and we'll talk to you guys next week.