Steve Rozenberg and Alex Osenenko are joined by J Scott while in Nashville attending the Bigger Pockets Convention 2019.
J Scott is an entrepreneur, technologist, investor, and advisor. Host of the BiggerPockets Business Podcast. Author of four BiggerPockets books, including “The Book on Flipping Houses,” “The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs,” and “The Book on Negotiating Real Estate.”
Alex Osenenko: Boys and girls, welcome to the first episode of The Myndful Investor podcast Show. Your hosts here, Alex Osenenko and-
Steve Rozenberg: Steve Rozenberg.
Alex Osenenko: Steve Rozenberg. Good buddy. This might not be episode one, this is episode zero. Why don’t you introduce the series do.
Steve Rozenberg: Sure.
Alex Osenenko: So, very quick background. Steve and I have spent the last probably decade plus in real estate in various-
Steve Rozenberg: various forms
Alex Osenenko: various forms. We don’t have to dig in too much into it, but the takeaways is we want to still provide on this episode and this very, very first, first episode is, how do you deal with fear of getting started? This is something that I think is in the way of a lot of people’s success.
Steve Rozenberg: Sure. It’s sometimes it prohibits them from success because they just don’t take action. And I don’t think it’s just real estate. I think it’s anything that they do whether it’s we’ll talk about us making decisions to you know, join Mynd and leave our businesses and join our companies together. And all the things that we’ve done. But those are big things that lack of action would not cause us to be here.
Alex Osenenko: Huge. Or there’s risk-tolerance. So let’s start unpacking this.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah.
Alex Osenenko: So this is The Myndful Investor podcast show boys and girls. Our purpose here, our goal is to bring reality data, facts for real estate investors who are about to make an investment or can, will continue to be successful making investments, maybe pivot into different types of investments. We’re going to cover a lot of things here, but the underlying purpose for us is to make sure we provide you with data and fact driven stuff, but also in story format.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah. And you know, the one thing I think that a lot of people have a challenge with is when they, they want to get involved in investing and they want to see and seek out how to get wealth. I think the biggest challenges is that everybody shows you kind of how to get the deal. You know, the sexy, how I can make a bunch of cash on cash return and investments. But there’s nobody there that actually shows you what do you do on day two? Once you own that deal, like you get a deal that says this is going to be a 30% cash on cash return and this is going to be these numbers. But the next thing is what do you do on day five when the tenant says, I lost my job and I’m not leaving. And so we’re going to talk to the investors in my opinion and discuss how did you guys as investors get around those kinds of things and how did you work through those problems?
Because as investing, I always tell people this is the sandbox that we play in. We’re in a sandbox where there are a lot of challenges. There’s a lot of, the good thing about real estate is there’s no rules. The bad thing about real estate is there’s no rules. So it’s, good and it’s bad. And if you know, unfortunately when you’re in this industry, there’s really nobody there. There’s no guidelines to tell you whether you’re doing right or doing wrong.
Alex Osenenko: You know what Warren buffet said, which is like stays with me forever. He’s like, he’s never, he would never make an investment in the business or company. He does not understand. Completely. He’s a smart guy? He understands a lot of things. But this is kind of the… This show’s purpose is to help you understand. Whether it’s a specific vertical you want to get into. But even before getting like super educated on a particular vertical, let’s call it, buy and hold or-
Steve Rozenberg: Flipping [crosstalk 00:00:03:53]. Or maybe
Alex Osenenko: and within buying hold, there’s single-family, there’s multi-facets-
Steve Rozenberg: Absolutely there’s so many ways.
Alex Osenenko: There’s Houston, there’s Boise, there’s Albuquerque, right?
Steve Rozenberg: It cascades down. I mean it’s, it’s such a deep cavernous column. People don’t realize. And that’s a good point cause I think a lot of people, they want to get into investing. There’s all these people that show them how to get the deal, but there’s nobody to show you how to create the wealth.
And they never, and I think that a lot of people, they don’t want to take the time to slow down, to speed up. They don’t want to take the time to educate themselves on how to actually get the wealth. They just want the wealth. And I think all of us want that, right?
We just want to make it happen. And unfortunately there’s people that have hands in your pockets, they want to make money off of you. They see the a-
Alex Osenenko: especially in this business,
Steve Rozenberg: absolutely.
Alex Osenenko: there’s a loosely say, there’s no rules-
Steve Rozenberg: there’s no rules. That’s the problem.
Alex Osenenko: You can put a syndication. You can announce syndication on this show and there will be people who will-
Steve Rozenberg: Absolutely [crosstalk 00:04:47]. absolutely. And you know the whole, like you had said, the whole goal of this show is not to talk about the glory of some of these investors that we’ve had on the show and going to have on our show-
Alex Osenenko: cause their shows like that. Everybody’s just coming in and-
Steve Rozenberg: everybody showing me how broke they are, how much money they make. I don’t want to know that. You know, we want to know and I want to know personally, like first of all, how did you get to where you are and how do you continue to drive yourself to be a better person, better?
You know, because a lot of people on the show are going to learn that a lot of the people that we talk to, the one common thread that you’re going to find with a lot of these investors is the balance of their personal life and how happy they are on a personal level, not just a fine, it’s not just a numbers thing of owning investments. They’re doing it to create a lifestyle for them and for their family. And it’s very interesting to see how people that are creating wealth and being wealthy, how they actually will continue to do it. They’ve already made the money. They don’t need the money. They’re doing it to keep the lifestyle that they want to have and the balance with their family, which is totally different than a lot of other fields and investment, industries that I’ve ever known of.
Alex Osenenko: But it’s also a gain.
Steve Rozenberg: Absolutely.
Alex Osenenko: Once you get-
Steve Rozenberg: it’s the thrill of the hunt.
Alex Osenenko: We spoke to Jay and we’re about to sort of J Scott, we’re about to announce like what this first series is going to be all about the first season I should say. But like the J Scott and I, he’s the thrill of the deal.
Steve Rozenberg: Oh yeah.
Alex Osenenko: he’s, well, he’s fine. He’s very happy like they, but like what are you going to do if you are not, if you’re not, if he is just sit there and enjoy me. I guess some people can go to the library and ski all day.
But the folks that will listen to the show, I think will find thrill of the deal. But also that, as you said, not just the deal thrill of the deal is like step one, but then it’s the day to day management.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Osenenko: Of your portfolio. It’s-
Steve Rozenberg: It’s the all encompassing. It’s almost like you’re, you’re living not a mantra, but you’re living a lifestyle.
And we had a doctor, Dr. Steve on, right.
Alex Osenenko: Is an interesting-
Steve Rozenberg: [crosstalk 00:06:46] he’s a doctor and he owns a lot of real estate. Has no desire to quit being a doctor. Very successful. And so-
Alex Osenenko: wait, wait, no, no, no, no. He wanted to quit. That’s why the whole episode was about, don’t you remember? He actually-
Steve Rozenberg: I thought at the end he said he didn’t want to quit. So we got him there.
Alex Osenenko: But, so this is very interesting episode and look forward to that episode.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah, that was a good episode.
Alex Osenenko: There’s the MD, like legit one of the best doctors- [crosstalk 00:07:09]
Steve Rozenberg: Put himself in medical school [crosstalk 00:07:10] on his own.
Alex Osenenko: Oh yeah, Oh yeah. Is this fascinating story. And what happens is he now wants to go real estate full time just because he loves-
Steve Rozenberg: he loves it.
Alex Osenenko: He loves the dynamic of it, he understood it. He is the kind of guy, like he went through the pilot school. He’s the kind of guy who put his mind to something and just get it done.
Steve Rozenberg: Did it.
Alex Osenenko: He’d be like a top 1%.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah, absolutely.
Alex Osenenko: But he wants to quit MD and be… So eventually I think where we got with him, I’m not going to give too much away.
Steve Rozenberg: Don’t give too much.
Alex Osenenko: but there’s an opportunity for him to continue practicing medicine and a lot less intense way.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah, because he doesn’t need the money. Cause he does it. He’s doing what he loves doing and money’s not a problem. And so that’s what you’re going to learn with a lot of these people. And what we’re trying to extract from the show with a lot of these guests is that you’re going to find, there’s a lot of people that have different work life balances that are very successful. Some that money is not the driver, but they are successful, but that doesn’t drive them.
And so it’s going to be a way that you as an investor or aspiring investor or experienced investor, whatever it is at your… Wherever you are in your stage of your career. You’re going to look at that and maybe do some self reflection and kind of go, Hmm, I wonder how this applies to me. I wonder if there’s some things that I could do better. I could do different. Maybe I can’t do any of these at all, but I think that you’re going to do some self reflection on that from these people that we talked to. I’m very unassuming but very successful and I think you’re going to get a lot of very good takeaways from that. Just like you and I did because you had a business, right? You owned a business, you removed yourself from that business and joined another company.
There a lot of self reflection that has to go on before you do something like that. Right?
Alex Osenenko: I mean it’s incredible. So let’s shift, let’s shift to that part of the conversation. By the way, those of you folks listening or watching, if you’re watching, thank you. You can just go into the next episode, if you want to get dig into the content and stuff. But Steve and I will talk about next is very quickly talk about how to actually get started. So I think those of you who have not, maybe you want to stick around a little bit, there’s a mental shift that has to happen. Like I didn’t use to believe in any of that Voodo sheesh, right? To me it was all, it was just like-
If you are smart enough if you work hard enough, you get there.
Steve Rozenberg: Right.
Alex Osenenko: You get there, you work hard enough. You’re smart enough, you’ll get there.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah. It’s not always the case.
Alex Osenenko: No.
Steve Rozenberg: I know a lot of smart people that make [crosstalk 00:09:31] no money and they’re not happy either.
Alex Osenenko: It’s not even about money. Right? It’s like, you know what the doctor wanted to… Dr. Steve wanted to make a move. I think, I mean I clearly remember there’s a lot of administration stuff.
With his profession [crosstalk 00:09:46] that he just doesn’t… With real estate frees him up to do what he loves. With doctoring, he wants to cure people. He loves that.
Steve Rozenberg: He loves it. He loves… He was saying, he loved being there when a baby is born and even when somebody passes on, he feels like he’s a part of that. It’s something almost holistic. He said that you’re a part of this whole cycle of life.
But if you’re just sitting there trying to get a paycheck. You’re not even paying attention to that part of the job. Which is probably why you even got involved in being a doctor in the first place. Or you know, Jay Scott, right? He’s, got race horses, right? He spends so much time with his family. Brandon Turner, you’ve got all these people that we know that are just so focused on doing what they want to do. They can enjoy their family because they’ve taken those, I don’t even want to say calculated risks, but they’ve been so smart and understanding what their next steps are because they’ve watched shows like this. They’ve educated themselves. Sure, they’ve made mistakes. We’re all going to make mistakes.
You know, it’s not a failure unless you learn from it. If you learn from it, then it’s a lesson, right? I mean, but it’s just one of those things. And I think what we want to unpack in these shows is why these people are being successful and how you are just like these people. And you can be successful too. You’ve just maybe have to change your mindset and think a little bit differently. Would you agree?
Alex Osenenko: Yeah, I would agree and the passion plays into it. I’m just wondering like I want to first step this out or point 0.01 episode. I want to introduce our behind the scenes guy. Dan, I’m just curious, Dan, are you passionate about the video? I mean, you out there fill me-
Steve Rozenberg: You look passionate.
Alex Osenenko: You sipping on a Corona. You look a little passionate there Dan. Anyways, so Dan is our… You’ll see the quality of what we produced.
Steve Rozenberg: Yes, absolutely.
Alex Osenenko: That will be his top-notch quality.
Steve Rozenberg: It’s going to be top-notch quality. It’s going be the level of people we have, the thought processes we have, the access to educational levels that we’re going to be able to bring in. I mean, I think it’s going to be bar none, one of the best, if not the best shows that are out there with current constant education at a ground level. I think.
Alex Osenenko: Let’s talk about this. Let’s… we promise this, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about your move that you made.
Steve Rozenberg: Why am I first.
Alex Osenenko: I don’t know cause I’m the one speaking.
Steve Rozenberg: Okay, fair enough you be first.
Alex Osenenko: I’m the one asking the question. And so you’ve made a significant move. So I’ll give a quick pre-story.
You’ve been an investor and I’m going to move out the chair for a second cause I want to grab your book. Oh, we’re using it as a coaster.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah, They threw it on the floor. [crosstalk 00:12:16]. It was on the way and they threw it on the floor.
Alex Osenenko: So there was kind of-
Steve Rozenberg: A lot of respect-
Alex Osenenko: [crosstalk 00:12:21] to throw it in my face.
Steve Rozenberg: for my workings.
Alex Osenenko: Hey you sign my book, we’re not selling any books.
But the idea is, he was a failed investor, Steve, because it looked good on paper and they kept on buying it and when it didn’t work, you know what was a good idea?
Steve Rozenberg: Buy more of them. Buy more, why not?
Alex Osenenko: Buy more and so from there he said he couldn’t manage it. So started a management company, very successful Gouda company to 900 properties that can manage.
Steve Rozenberg: 900 doors. Yeah.
Alex Osenenko: In Houston and all of a sudden the things like he’s one of the fastest growing companies in Texas.
Got like 500s of five-star Google reviews. I mean, absolutely dominating. And guess what happened? Steve decided to make a move and partner with mine. So in other words, essentially sell his company to mine. In order for a chance to join and become host of this show. That was a big deal, wasn’t it?
Steve Rozenberg: Absolutely. It’s to me again… I’ve always learned in my life and this is something I think a lot of people can take away. What gets you here is not going to get you there. You and I have had these conversations and I think life and someone told this to me one time and it really resonated with me that life is like a book and you have chapters and there’s a chapter that could be a great chapter, but at some point that chapter ends and when that chapter ends, a new chapter begins and you don’t go back to that chapter again. And the company, Pete Neubig and I built and the team that we had. It was a great chapter and it got us to the next chapter and the next chapter is going to be better chapter.
And that’ll be a chapter after that. And I think that’s life. And I think that a lot of people never flip that page and they never move on to the next chapter. And maybe they slide backwards. And so I think the biggest challenge, the thing that I learned was this is just part of the growth cycle. It’s like leaving high school, right? We all know friends in high school that never left high school. They’re still, they’re mentally talking about the days of high school. They’ve never left there. And so a lot of people, same thing in business, some people just do not want to leave the comfort zone of their business. And look, you read these books, you do the audios and you hear like, you know what, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable and that’s all well and good until you really are uncomfortable.
And now you’ve got, it’s like the rubber meets the road.
Alex Osenenko: That’s growth, that’s when the growth happens
Steve Rozenberg: It’s growth. You have to be okay. And at some point you’ve got to say, you know what? I’m going to trust the process. I’m going to trust my education. I’m going to trust everything I’m doing. I’m going to shut this chapter and I’m going to move onto the next. And that, that’s kind of what I did. I just… I trusted the process. I trusted you. The people at mind, everybody that was involved in helping us come over. I trusted it and I said, you know what? Based on educated calculated decisions based on everything that I think that mind will be able to provide for me and where the future is with mind. It was a no brainer. But there’s still that risk. You’re leaving your own company that’s doing fine. That’s very successful.
Alex Osenenko: No brainer. People say that in a rear view mirror, it’s no brainer. When you in the-
Steve Rozenberg: When you’re in the turn, it’s not as easy.
Alex Osenenko: Remember we talked about your role, so now you’re VP of investor education. We’ve talked about your role. We had a lot of back and forth. Those emotional moments. It’s difficult guys and girls it’s definitely difficult.
Steve Rozenberg: Not easy.
Alex Osenenko: Can I unpack something you said?
Steve Rozenberg: Sure.
Alex Osenenko: You said there’s a chapter. I love that, by the way. You always teach me new things. Oh, it’s mine now.
Steve Rozenberg: Dan quote that.
Alex Osenenko: So it chapters, how do you know this is, I sometimes have problems with this. How do you know when the chapter is coming to an end? Is it when you see a new opportunity, and it’s like, Whoa, you know, it’s it. Like how do you know when the chapters ending, how not to hold on for too long [inaudible 00:15:58].
Steve Rozenberg: You know, I think that’s different for everybody, but I think sometimes the chapter closes already and you don’t realize it. Like your chapter… you may have a chapter that’s already closed and you are just not accepting that it’s closed. Sometimes when we’re… When you’re in the heat of battle and you’re kind of in the weeds. And again, this chapter this… The books over the book, the movies over, right? The, the credits are rolling and you’re still sitting there not leaving the movie theater. Right. And so sometimes we may not want to it accept that that chapter is over in our life.
Alex Osenenko: Do you have an example, by any chance, can you think of an example of someone you know. You don’t have to name names. Or maybe yourself where you sort of overstayed your welcome per se? I mean-
Steve Rozenberg: I never overstayed my welcome.
Alex Osenenko: You wheeled in a bag today, your airline bag into my house
Steve Rozenberg: Yes, yes, yes to my house. And he said, are you staying here tonight?
Alex Osenenko: You did not tell me anything. Maybe we’ll cover that. But is there a chapter?
Steve Rozenberg: I don’t know that I have a chapter, I mean maybe I do that I don’t know about. But I think at… My thought… I’ve learned… I’ll give you a perfect example where I made a decision, a lot of indicators. So you know my, my being an airline pilot, right? So that chapter 9/11 that chapter ended, right? So for me now, I still stayed as an airline pilot, but after 9/11 there was a new chapter I didn’t want to… A lot of people did not want to accept it. So what did a lot of people do? They went down to South America to fly. They went over to Asia and they flew airplanes at a quarter of the income that you are making as a U S airline pilot. Why? Because they didn’t want to accept that things were changed and they didn’t make the decision to flip the page and start a new chapter.
I said, you know what, I love being a pilot. However, I’m not going to let this dictate me anymore and what I’m going to do is I’m going to take control of my future and start learning about real estate. A lot of other people said, I’m going to Korea. I’ll be there for three years flying small planes until this thing weeds itself out. To me, that’s not accepting that the chapter has ended. So that’s the best way I could describe how a chapter can change and you not accepting that it’s changed. Because all the indicators were that the airline industry as a whole will never be the same again.
Alex Osenenko: That’s very good.
Steve Rozenberg: So that, that’s how I would basically essentially say that’s how you know it, but enough about me. Let’s talk about you Alex.
Alex Osenenko: Dude, I can’t believe like, I can’t believe how like we’ve done podcasts in the past, but I can’t believe like how this is connected because I was just going to say, Dan, stop the recording for a second. Steve, why don’t you ask me about me now? We only have 20 minutes to this 0.01 episode. We want to be respectful to the audience. They don’t want… us yammer for 20 minutes. They want to get into the meat of what this is all about. Which is top-notch education validated with a couple of guys .
Steve Rozenberg: So based on this conversation, we’re talking about people making a decision and moving on and things happening, right? So you had a company, right? You had a very successful company, still do, still have the company and you made a decision to basically essentially remove yourself and join mine. Right? Essentially he’s my boss, so I got to be somewhat nice to him, I guess. But you know, basically you, you made a decision, right? And calculated or not the chapter ended, right? Some chapter ended and again, it’s not just you, right? You’ve got a wife, you’ve got children, there’s a whole trail behind you that are affected. There’s a ripple effect, right.
Alex Osenenko: There’s also people in the current, in the company I left
Steve Rozenberg: in the company left. Yeah. The allegiance going, Hey, where’s Alex? Alex, you know, and so there’s, maybe a guilt factor at some level to go, man, how do I do this? Am I doing the right thing? Am I being selfish? Am I being, am I doing the right thing for my family? How did you unpack all that and go through those iterations mentally?
Alex Osenenko: Definitely a lot of guilt. Definitely a lot of sort of second guessing yourself. That’s, I think that’s all normal. But like you will laugh. Maybe a stoicism is something that I am sort of investing in right now. My sort of mental resources and Tim Ferriss is my favorite podcaster and he’s big. He wrote this book, the Towel of Seneca and anyway, it’s very interesting philosophy on how to sort of deal with change. But the way I think about this is, one life. I think I learned it from you. Like you only have like 4,900 whatever however many-
Steve Rozenberg: 4,400 weeks is the average person lives.
Alex Osenenko: Yeah. 44 that’s it?
Steve Rozenberg: 4,400 weeks is the average person [inaudible 00:20:29].
Alex Osenenko: Blink of an eye baby. So yeah, if you not like take an action now. Like when opportunity came about Mynd CEO and I had a great podcast on my previous show, The Property Management podcast, and we connected really well.
We’ve sorted started talking and we will find out this company is going to crazy things. Somebody is going to figure out how to do… How to become like the South West of property management. Zappos of property-
Steve Rozenberg: There we go. I mean I don’t fly for Southwest so [crosstalk 00:20:59], but I get it. I get your point. The Google of the search engine how’s that.
Alex Osenenko: Yeah… I like to be… Yeah… Okay… So yeah… Not we work. Different, but too soon. Yes. Somebody is going to figure this out. I loved the team, I loved the direction. I loved the company. They have access to capital. Smart people. Smart boys and girls work with us. And look, Steve and I have a chance to create amazing things and my passion is to teach. I love teaching, running company is, I love it. But the creative part of directing the strategic… I guess direction of the company and teach and coach the team.
And our future customers or just listeners or just audience. So anyway, that’s why I’m passionate and so for me like just let me take a quick shortcut cause I could talk a lot about this. This was very difficult decision but, and I left a lot of people behind. I don’t necessarily feel great about everything that I’ve done, but I think, I think to me the important thing is no fear. You can’t, you’ve got to remove fear and being more deliberate about this. That’s number one. And number two, it’s a game. It’s a game. You get 4,400 weeks to play it.
Steve Rozenberg: That’s right. That’s it.
Alex Osenenko: I will make the moves that I need to make for my family. But as well as I’m not going to be 39 to 40 again.
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah. You can’t go backwards and you can’t be afraid to step off that ledge. You educate yourself and you learn how to step, but you cannot be afraid to take that step. Now you’re going to have, critics are going to have criticism. You’re going people that second guess you. You’re going to have all of that.
Alex Osenenko: Just the comments on the show. We’ll show that there’s a lot of people really unhappy with my decision. A lot of people that wished me well and very, very happy but-
Steve Rozenberg: Yeah, I think more the latter. I think a lot of people want to wish you well. I think all of us, I mean, I think, you know, there maybe there’s some people that kind of go, man, I kind of wish I did that. Deep down. I mean I think there’s a lot of that. So, I think just to kind of wrap this up, I think what we’re trying to get across as Alex and I are really going to dig deep in these shows with these investors. We’re going to ask them those questions-
Alex Osenenko: Hard questions.
Steve Rozenberg: Hard questions. We’re going to ask them some self-defining questions and we are going to have some definitely solid industry players that are here. Maybe not here in this studio, but in our studio. We, we’ve got some, some bigger pockets content. We’ve got a lot of stuff that’s really going to unpack and really asked people, how do you do it, why do you do it, how do you keep doing it and how are you getting better? And those are the kind of concepts that we’re going to go through.
Alex Osenenko: So until then, enjoy the rest of the season. We love to have you as a listener to drop us a line or comments to this show. We’re always happy to hear if you… There’s any specific thing learn what’s our Facebook group.
Steve Rozenberg: The Mastermind Real Estate Facebook group. Definitely join that. Cause there’s a lot of people in there.
Alex Osenenko: It’s a private group though. So you got to go through a little bit of a quick here interview questions. I need to ask questionnaire. We want to make sure like real people-
Steve Rozenberg: We want quality people. We don’t want people selling stuff in there. We want people to actually want to learn or want some resources to answer some real estate questions cause that, that’s what it’s about.
Alex Osenenko: And speaking of selling that one thing, you can be assured, we’re not selling anything yet. The beauty to be funded by a large company and growing and thriving company like Mynd, we don’t have to sell anything. Nobody is going to sell you crap on this show. Mark it now and enjoy the rest of the season. Thank you very much for tuning in.
Steve Rozenberg: Make sure you subscribe to our show and make sure you go to our landing page. We’re going to have shows dropping all the time on Fridays is when our shows are going to drop. Make sure you’re paying attention. Join the Facebook group and you’re going to get a lot of good content information from all different walks of life and all different types of investors. So again, make sure you subscribe it, write it on your hand, do what you got to do, but make sure that you know, our shows are coming out here.
Alex Osenenko: Write it on your hands.
Steve Rozenberg: We’ll see you guys.
Alex Osenenko: See you late
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