From Zero to $50M: The Electrifying Journey of Sam Primm to Ongoing Real Estate Greatness

[0:00] Welcome to the REI Agent, a holistic approach to life through real estate. I’m Matthias, an agent and investor. And I’m Erica, a licensed therapist. Join us as we interview guests that also strive to live bold and fulfilled lives through business and real estate investing. Tune in every week for interviews with real estate agents and investors. Ready to level up? Let’s do it.

[0:23] Welcome back to the REI Agent. I am sick. I have been not on my deathbed sick, but I have been very sick. Last Saturday, the day of recording is Thursday. Last Saturday, I started feeling a little bit off mid-morning. I ended up getting a fever. And I’ve had a fever of anywhere from like 100 to 103 ever since. I’ve been on and off medication. I’m sorry, I’ve been alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol every three hours. And even with those medicines, I’ve still had a fever of often over 100. I don’t think I’ve ever not had a fever, even with the medicine that I’ve checked. So my son ended up getting it as well. My wife, bless her heart, Erica is here at home watching our son because he also got it.

[1:20] And the two of us are the only ones that have gotten it so far, thank goodness. But Erica’s had to basically solo parent this whole week, which has just been, you know, she’s been a trooper. But it’s not easy. And I feel bad, but I’ve been just knocked out. So we had heard from the doctor for my son that there’s been a flu going around that basically has a fever and like a cough. And it lasts about five days and then it’s done. And that’s about it. So I was very hopeful that I would have day five come around and be done. And so when I woke up this morning, I was feeling chilly. I didn’t have, you know, medicine in my system. And I took my temperature and it was 102. I just, I was like, I am so done.

[2:10] I’m so done with this. But the past two days, like I’ve been able to kind of get up and do a little bit more. So I’m definitely improving now. I’m not just laying in bed moaning. And Erica, if she was here, she’d probably say, you know, men are such wusses when they’re sick. But anyway, I was glad to be able to get this conversation in, to have this podcast still air to stay on track. But also since we had this awesome guest, Sam Prim. Sam is a rock star in many ways. He has mastered the real estate investing space. He has content out that you can follow him on all sorts of different social medias. He teaches. He has a book, has a course. But he, yeah, has really mastered the art of real estate investing.

[3:04] Syndications, he hasn’t done yet. Because he has, yeah, he owns everything that he has invested in. He’ll get into that a little bit more. But anyway, he is, was really good to talk to. And if you have any interest in getting into real estate investing, getting your first deal, learning how to really start accelerating the process, this is a great conversation to listen to. And Sam will be a great person to follow. So without further ado, Sam Prim.

[3:36] Welcome back to the REI agent. I am here with Sam Prim. Sam, I forgot to even ask you. Is it Sam Prim? Sam Prim. It is. You got it right. Okay. That would have been embarrassing. Sam Prim. We called it before. All good. Next day delivery. No, Sam, I’m super excited to have you on. You have your big voice in the investing space. So I wanted to hear a little bit about what got you into real estate, your journey, and how you, yeah, where you’re at now. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll kind of take you through the whole gambit. Yeah, it’s pretty boring slash normal. I don’t really know the exact adjective for it, but I didn’t have some like epiphany moment. I didn’t grow up in an entrepreneurial household. I grew up thinking I was going to go work for a company for 40 years and retire at 65 and do that whole normal societal path that we’re all put down.

[4:30] And there’s, again, nothing wrong with that path. That was the path I was going down. That’s what my dad did. That’s what, you know, his dad did. That’s just kind of the path that I saw myself on. And so, again, just that normal graduate college, get a job, 401K, invest a little bit, and, you know, be there for your family kind of upbringing. But a few years into the quote unquote big world, I read very, very cliche and boring and normal again, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And it just kind of opened my mind a little bit to the possibilities of assets and doing things differently and having a little bit more financial independence and control. And even after reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, my grand scheme was to buy one rental house a year for 10 years.

[5:10] So I didn’t have these schemes of owning 50 million in real estate or coaching people on how to do it or flipping 250 houses a year like I do now. My plan was still just to kind of keep a job and do this on the side and just have an additional income stream slash retirement plan when I did retire. But after I actually got in the business and started to invest while I had a full-time job and saw the power of just one property, one flip, one rental, and really caught that competitive bug of, wow, I can really do something financially impactful for my family for generations to come. And just reading the stats of real estate, 90% of the millionaire, all those things that you kind of read and hear about.

[5:51] But when you’re in the trenches doing it and you see the power of it, and 2014 was a pretty good time to start investing. That was lucky as well. I kind of saw the upswing and was able to take advantage of a lot of things. And then from 2014 to 2018, I invested in real estate on the side and was able to do some pretty cool things. In 2018, I quit my job and went all in on real estate and haven’t really looked back since. And I’ve been pretty much stepping on the gas, no brakes there for the past several years, just going all in and enjoying the entrepreneurial struggles of growing businesses and companies and team members and all the things. And that’s awesome. I have a couple of comments. I think we have a pretty similar timeline.

[6:33] I started with real estate sales. So that’s kind of when I bought my first house, 2014, and got into real estate sales afterwards. My agent did such a good job. She walked me over. I was like, I can do your job. But yeah, that’s kind of a similar timeline to me. It’s amazing what that house, what I bought that first house for. But one of the thoughts I had as well as we’re talking is one house a year for many people would just be a huge, unfathomable goal. And you’re talking about it like that small fish. I mean, what really got your mindset to shift and change? Yeah, I mean, a couple of different things. So yeah, one house a year was a huge goal for me back then, right? That was like, holy crap.

[7:19] I’m doing one house a year for 10 years, especially because I didn’t know about the BRRRR method and I didn’t have enough money to buy rental. So my plan was to flip a house and use the profits for 20% down on a rental. So I was actually going to have to buy two houses a year to keep one rental. So I didn’t have the money to put 20% down on a rental and I didn’t know about the BRRRR method or anything like that at that point. So I think just initially just that goal was ginormous, like you said. But I think once I saw, I think we ended up doing like six or seven in the first calendar year and was just like, wow, this is going to happen a lot faster. When I say we, I have a business partner, Lucas, in everything that we’re going to talk about today.

[7:58] So that’s why I use the word we. So me and him own everything. We each own 50% of everything. But we started investing and just saw the power of it. And then I remember setting a few goals and then I remember there was a goal that I wanted to own $25 million in real estate by 2025. And then, you know, I think early 2021, we hit that goal. So it just was, I kept setting these goals that seemed outlandish. But the fact that we had processes and plans and we went and actually attacked it, we were crushing those goals. So I was like, all right, now I got to actually start to think bigger. And that’s when we kind of started to expand our goals and not limit ourselves with what we write on paper that we want to do.

[8:35] Yeah, that’s awesome. I guess maybe we should talk to people about what the BRRRR method is. I know when I first learned about it, I was so hyped. This is a magic trick. How is this even possible? So you want to explain that one to us? Yeah, the BRRRR method, it’s very simple and it is kind of like a magic trick. So I’ll just give a quick example of quick numbers so people that don’t understand it or that kind of know it can fully understand it, hopefully. So it stands for buy, rehab, rent, refinance, and repeat. So what you do is you borrow money to buy a distressed property. So you’re not using any of your own money for the acquisition. There’s private lenders, hard-money lenders, lots of sources.

[9:15] We’ll get into that. Just you’re using somebody else’s money, let’s say, to keep it simple, to buy a distressed property at a discount. Then the next step is rehab. Using somebody else’s money to rehab that property and increase the value and make it livable and rentable for the next step, which is rent. So you buy it fixed up with somebody else’s money. You get it rented. You start to collect income. Now, the person you borrow from the money from wants their money back. So then you go to a bank and you get a loan and you take that loan and you pay back your initial lender, their money plus interest. And then you owe the bank money, but you use rent to pay back the bank. And then you repeat that process.

[9:52] For simple math, you borrow $100,000 to buy a distressed house. It needs $50,000 worth of work, so you borrow another $50,000. So you borrow $150,000 cash to buy it and fix it up all with somebody else’s money. Then you get it rented for $2,000, let’s say. And then you go to a small local bank and they’re going to do an appraisal and give you an 80% cash out refinance. So the properties now were $200,000. You bought at a discount, you approved at $50,000 equity, all pretty reasonable. So it’s a $200,000 house now. Well, they’ll write you a check, a.k.a. give you a loan and a mortgage for 80% of that. What’s 80% of $200,000? $160,000. Wow, magic. $160,000 check in your bank account that you directly send over to your private lender, someone else you borrowed the money from.

[10:39] You borrowed $150,000. You give them $160,000 back. Two, three, four, five months later, they made 12%. On their money, they’re good. Now you owe the bank that $200,000. But again, or you owe that bank that $160,000. I apologize. But again, you’re taking the rent and paying that back every single month. So it’s just a way to back into that 20% equity. It’s a way to creatively bring that 20% equity to the cable without having to do it cash. Yeah, it’s so awesome. So I did it with equity lines. I mean, so like I said, we bought a house right when we got married, 2014. Sat in there for a couple years, ended up buying another house. We got that at a pretty good deal because it needed some work. And we’re able to get equity lines on both properties that would allow us to start being able to do this method.

[11:26] So we just didn’t use other people’s money. We used equity. But if I had known about it, if I had understood this better, I mean, I could have been on this game a lot earlier. And to think about if I had five other, you know, or way more properties appreciating through 2021, that would have been amazing. Yeah, for sure. It doesn’t have to be. It can be when I use the term none of my own money. It’s obviously a good hook for a social media post. But it just basically means none of your own, like, personal checking and savings account. It can be a home equity line of credit. Like you mentioned, you can. We have people, you know, that are self-directing their own IRAs through a business. So there’s IRAs, 401ks, home equity lines of credit.

[12:08] See, there’s a lot of different ways. I’m just, none of your own money is just you’re not digging into your personal checking and savings account. So there’s a lot of creative ways, like you mentioned. So that was a good call out. Yeah, no, I mean, it’s, I think that the, this hard money or private money, the word hard money has this kind of bad connotation to it. It sounds like it’s like you’re going to get your, you know, your shins broken or something if you, if you’re defaulting or whatever. But it’s really just people charging a bit of a higher interest rate, right, to produce, to finance something that you wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage on traditionally. Yeah, 100%. That’s a big question that people get is why don’t you just go straight to the bank?

[12:47] If I just explain that method and that’s the first or second time you’ve heard it, you may say, just go to the bank and you hit on it. Banks will not lend money on distressed properties, especially to new investors. So you need somebody to lend you the money. You need some other source besides the bank to buy and fix up the property. If you have your own cash or line of credit, great. But most don’t. That’s where you have to go the private money or hard money route and understand the art and the skill of raising money from somebody else and giving them a great return. But banks just aren’t interested. And the risk is too high to lend you money on distressed property. So it creates a gap and a demand and a need for that short-term funding.

[13:27] And that’s where these other creative funding sources come into play. So it’s a necessity. Banks won’t do it. That’s the main reason why you need it. Yeah. So, yeah, tell me about you said you’ve built businesses and teams. So what came after just doing this, you said, with a partner for a while, right? How’d that grow? Yeah. So I remember we did everything ourselves. We did as much work as we could. But obviously, we hired contractors what would need be for the first handful of projects. And then we outsourced property management because we each had full-time jobs and didn’t like that. So we ended up hiring somebody to work part-time as a property manager that had been in the space, that just had a kiddo and was looking for some part-time work.

[14:08] So the first hire was a property manager to help manage and maintain the properties. And the next one was a project manager. I remember we would just pay him out of the profits or the equity that we pulled out from our flips or our rentals. So we didn’t have to give him cash while we have jobs. We just, you know, it’s a $50,000 rehab. So we’re going to borrow $57,000 from a private lender and, you know, throughout the process, pay them $7,000 and pay the other $50,000 for the actual rehab. So those were kind of the first two hires. And that was mainly what got us until we quit our jobs. And then when we quit our jobs and went all in, we had, you know, been developing processes. We ended up partnering with another person for a short period of time where we had teams.

[14:49] And then we had acquisition reps, marketing manager. We had contract to close people on staff and accounting needs. And then that kind of morphed into a property management company. So we started managing our own properties in-house. So then you’re going to need maintenance techs and property managers and things along those lines. And then that morphed into an education business. But, yeah, just kind of slowly. I always tell people there wasn’t a technical process. It was basically whenever we’re pulling our hair out, we just hired the thing most in need. And then three of us would be pulling our hair out. And then whatever is the next thing that’s most in need. So it was just kind of just working hard and grinding and pushing and whatever we felt like we were dropping the ball on or that didn’t suit our skill set, then we hired that role out.

[15:32] And I think that’s different for everybody. So I do think, I don’t know if there’s an exact plan everyone should follow. But in general, kind of what your weakest skill set is or what’s taking the most of your time away from revenue generating activities, work on bringing that person in. Yeah, that can be something that a lot of real estate agents struggle with, too. Oftentimes people think that they have to do everything themselves. And it seems that in real estate sales, often people think that, you know, that’s basically just a one-person show. But there’s a lot of things you can outsource. That transaction coordinator, for example, you mentioned contract to closing. It’s probably one of the first things people will consider and the easiest thing.

[16:14] But there’s definitely other areas you can hire out and you can get specialized. And exactly what you’re saying, if you’re focusing really on what you’re good at, what brings you energy, and what brings the most money in, that’s the sweet spot, right? Yeah, no, for sure. And one of our agents, Shelly, who’s in our brokerage that we have, she hired somebody. She’s, you know, in her mid-30s, let’s say, we’ll leave it at that so we don’t give an age. But she hired a young person that she came around, a young lady who was 20, to, like, kind of do all the work, like, you know, manage all the paperwork online, you know, do any open house if need be. And they just split the profit. So, like, they literally split everything down the middle.

[17:01] You know, Shelly will bring in the business, do kind of the client meetings, those types of things, but the listing, the paperwork, the closing, the inspection reporting, a lot of those things, along with, like, open houses and running signs around, they just split it up. And it’s enough of, you know, it’s a good enough, you know, kind of connection and, you know, relationship that they just split the profits and everybody does more by doing less. So it can definitely, you know, the right collaboration can really, really excel you. Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, we wondered, I was curious, too, you talked a lot about other people’s money. And we talked a little bit off air about, I asked you if you did syndications, since that is probably one of the first things people think about when you hear about using other people’s money.

[17:46] I’d be curious why you haven’t gone down that route, or if it’s something that you might do in the future. Yeah, I could see myself going down the syndication route in the future. There’s a couple reasons. One of them, I just haven’t put in the time and effort to become, like, an expert at exactly the flow of things. I understand the raising money thing. I understand, you know, getting accredited investors. I understand the documentation that’s needed. But it just hasn’t been a core part of my business. I have been able to raise enough money to buy $50 million in real estate and owning 100%, or I guess 50% because I have a business partner. But we own 100% of everything. Yeah. I don’t like the idea, and I know it’s cliche of, I don’t like it as much, let’s say, of raising all this money, doing all this thing, and going to get a big deal.

[18:32] I love that. But retaining 5% ownership or 10% ownership. Right. I know you can, you know, formulate it to where you’re owning more as a syndicator and everything, and you can charge syndication fees. But I have active income through other things, and just trying to not be an expert at everything is just something I haven’t quite tackled. I could see, you know, with the social media following, I could probably raise a decent amount of money relatively quickly. So I think I might do that in the future. But right now, if I can buy everything I want to buy and retain 100% ownership and be able to retain 100% of the tax write-offs, 100% of all the benefits that come along with owning, you know, 20 to 50 unit apartment complexes, as well as single families and a small hotel, that’s why we went down that route.

[19:12] But if I ever am shooting for $50 million apartment complexes or want to really scale and maybe go out of the St. Louis metro area, then I think syndication would be an option. So it’s one of those things where I don’t fully understand it, like owning everything, and, you know, don’t want to put in all the work for a syndication fee and 5% of something. And then all that to be saying, I probably will do it in the future if I really want to grow it. Yeah. No, I mean, it’s an interesting model for sure. And what you said is exactly right. I mean, you’re not going to be owning everything. And that’s, you know, an advantage, again, for somebody who is a passive investor that just wants to put money in and not think about it, but actually get all the benefits of owning real estate because you do actually own.

[19:59] 100%. Yeah, you’re right. If it’s for somebody that doesn’t want to deal with the headache of the acquisition, like if, yeah, for 100%, for somebody to just make a really good return on their money and own part of real estate. Right. And, you know, they have an extra 100, 250 grand laying around and they don’t want to really be involved, but they want to own. They want some tax benefits. I mean, it makes sense for a lot of different people that don’t want to do that, you know, that aren’t full timers into real estate investing. Right. So, yeah, I think syndication is a very powerful thing. Putting your money in somebody’s syndication fund that knows what they’re doing, there’s probably not a better use of your money if you’re not going to be doing it yourself.

[20:32] So, yeah, nothing against syndications for the general public, but for me it’s just something they haven’t done yet. Yeah. What are you doing for deal flow? How do you find your deals? Are you actively marketing to areas, to lists, et cetera? Yeah. So we do probably, I would say we do about 400 leads a month, I would say, three to 400 leads a month between some marketing as well as between like networking connectors is what we call it. So we have eight full-time acquisitions reps, and this is on the investing side, and obviously some of that can translate over to the listing side. But we spend a decent amount of money every single month on everything from, you know, driving for dollars to, you know, direct mail.

[21:16] Do we do some TV? I’m getting into some radio. Just kind of, we’re the biggest home buyer in St. Louis for distressed properties go faster house. We are our flipping company in St. Louis, so, you know, 250 to 300 houses a year. That requires a crap ton of leads, real estate investing and just real estate even on the agent side. It’s a numbers game. You’re not going to get every listing you go to. You’re not going to get every deal that comes across your plate. If you want to do this, you have to create a funnel above it to, you know, just it’s a numbers game. So, yeah, we kind of do a little bit of everything. Our kind of secret sauce is that networking. We’re, I think I just saw the numbers.

[21:49] We’re going to buy like 140 houses this year from $0 in marketing spend for networking with other agents, other wholesalers. I mean, insurance agents bring us their deals. You just, you have to just get around people with big spheres of influence, explain your benefit, or just making their client experience easier and being able to get deals. Like we buy houses from a bowling alley owner. Haven’t done as much recently, but we bought, you know, several, make several to a dozen in the past from a bowling alley owner. On the small bowling alley, it says Ben buys houses above his bowling alley lanes. He’s in the drinking leagues with everybody. You know, there’s a few hundred people that come through the bowling alley that he’s friends with every single week through the leagues.

[22:29] And they see that sign and they have a relative or a friend or hear of a house that’s getting foreclosed on or somebody passed away or somebody needs to go into an assisted care facility. They need to sell their house. And they call him. He calls us. We go look at the house together. He gets paid five grand every time we do it. And we just build that into it. So that’s obviously a little bit of a unique example, but I think it rings true in that like anybody, insurance agents are a great example that has a big sphere of influence. They know a lot of people professionally. Get their ear. Let them know you want to invest. Let them know they can either, again, most lawyers don’t allow you to pay them.

[23:01] So you just make their client’s experience easier if it’s like an elder law attorney or something like that, that they’ll help bring you the house and the person sells that house. And then they can put their elder law attorney or like a senior care facility. They have to get quotas and they have to fill that facility. A lot of, you know, boomers that are getting into that age right now that are needing to go into those, their biggest assets, their house. So they need to sell their house. It has been updated in 40 years. It’s going to be a pain in the butt for the agent to sell. The marketing director of that senior care facility can say, hey, call them. They’ll give you cash offer. No pressure.

[23:34] And then we do it and they can move in. So anyways, those types of things, it doesn’t always have to be we’ll give you a referral fee. It can be, but you can just make their life easier and just figure out how, you know, your services can benefit them. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And having that reputation of being a consistent source of cash and actual closings, I’m sure it goes a long way. At that kind of scale, I mean, there’s a lot of analysis going on. Are you doing manual analysis for each deal? Imagining you have people that do that for you at this point? What’s that look like? Yeah, for sure. So like, you know, our eight, I think we have seven now actually, but seven acquisitions reps.

[24:12] I mean, that’s what their full-time job is. All day, every day. They’re spending 40, 50 hours a week, evenings, weekends, buying houses. They find them, you know, through the leads we give them as well as their own networking. We have, you know, CRMs and software that they enter and everything too. And we have, you know, a sales manager that manages them, that underwrites the deals with them and helps them come with their offering and negotiating tactics. And spoiler alert, it’s usually not about the numbers. There’s usually some other reason why. You sell the house, I’d say half of our houses we buy. We don’t, or at least when I was more involved, we weren’t always the highest bid. We were close, but it was the other issues we uncovered that we could help them solve.

[24:49] So, yeah, it’s, you know, just a collective that kind of does the underwriting on the deals. And this is kind of good, kind of bad. I mean, I focus more on the education, social media, the branding side of things. We’re going to buy, I think, 260 houses this year, and I couldn’t tell you the address to one of them. So I have that, my business partner, Luke, so I mentioned earlier, kind of the head hot show over in that division of our companies. And so it’s kind of a cool thing of delegation and having a partner you trust. So I couldn’t tell you how many exactly the details of everything. I just see the profit and the numbers. Oh, that’s awesome. How many people are employed at this point? I mean, how many people?

[25:27] Oh, we have about 45 total between our four main companies. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really, I mean, that’s a lot of growth since 2014. I mean, that’s a lot of growth. We’re kind of crazy. I mean, mainly since 2018. Yeah, we’re crazy in all the good ways and all the bad ways, too. So it’s kind of one of those things where you get both sides of it. Growing fast is really cool. It’s been really fun. It’s been great for the net worth. But, you know, we bought $15 million in real estate at the end of 21 into 22. That’s cool. But, man, that was in like eight, nine months. That’s fast. And a couple of the apartments we bought aren’t cash on like we thought because we just rushed. You know, we’re figuring out.

[26:08] I’m glad we own them. But, again, it’s one of those things where I’m glad I have multiple streams of income because of the four companies, we’re not perfect. There’s rarely instances where they’ve all four have been crushing at the same time. So you have one doing good, one crushing, one absolutely bleeding cash for a few months, and another one doing okay. So there’s just the balance of the multiple streams of income. And, you know, we’re like let’s grow, let’s hire, let’s figure it out afterwards kind of thing. And there’s benefits again but drawbacks to that like accounting and all these things that we’re catching back up with now. Like now we have a four-person accounting team. Wow. But we should have had that like five years ago.

[26:41] So, anyways, it’s just playing a lot of catch up and seeing a lot of inefficiencies. But I’m never going to be bad about buying a piece of real estate. Obviously, I don’t want to overpay too much. But as we’re becoming quote-unquote real companies and figuring things out, we’re discovering a lot of inefficiencies in growth. But I think it’s normal. I don’t think many people are going to grow relatively quickly without the back, without, you know, the, you know, kind of, you know, back steps and issues that you come along with that. Yeah, I don’t know if this applies to a company your size. But I’ve often talked to people about how you can be so cash poor as a real estate investor. You can, I’ve got, you know, everything tied up in like three deals right now.

[27:21] And I, you know, it’s going to work out great. You know, we’re going to have hundreds of thousands of dollars from this all at the end of the day and or, you know, a new rental. But, man, it’s like scraping pennies at this moment. Oh, I get it, man. I mean, my, I mean, yeah, not, I mean, I guess we can get personal. I don’t get too personal. So my, like, take-home income in 24 was about 60% less than 23 just because the companies and, you know, if gross profit, revenue, let’s say maybe, revenue dips 15, 20%, doesn’t sound like the end of the world. But if your margins, you know, and all businesses aren’t ginormous, that’s most of your profit probably, right? So obviously doing fine. Got plenty of equity, plenty of businesses and, you know, not all hitting.

[28:09] But we, again, it was a tougher year in 24 just because the growth, the growing pains, the catching up, the everything. And fortunately, we own enough real estate where whatever we take home, we don’t have to pay taxes on. But, yeah, it’s just one of those things where, like you said, it’s sometimes it’s like, goodness gracious, I own all this real estate, have all these employees, and that’s my check this month. But then some months it’s like, oh, that’s nice. So it’s just what you get when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re crazy like me. Yeah, no, totally. Like, you’ve got a lot of stats you can, like, you could brag about, right? But at the end of the day, it’s like, right now, this just feels tight.

[28:42] Oh, yeah. But, yeah, no, totally. It’s all worth it in the end. And it is fun to see those numbers grow and, you know, milestones that are achievable. Again, I’ve personally, I’ve just recommitted to a new syndication as an LP. Very cool. Nice. And, you know, I was actually, we traveled to Switzerland this past summer. And we got, like, our third distribution, I believe, from the one I invested in earlier. And I was, like, sitting on a lake overlooking, like, the Alps. And I got a distribution check. And I was like, man, this is amazing. I haven’t done anything. I’m a gangster. No, I guess, yeah, the real estate investing and being an agent and being an entrepreneur, all of those things, they can really puff you up and they can really humble you.

[29:32] So that’s the main thing is staying steady with it. Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, that’s really fascinating stuff. You have some courses and you actually have a book, right? You wrote Own Your Freedom? I did, yep. I wrote a book, Own Your Freedom. It’s a good book. I’m not an author, but I think it’s pretty good. It’s $10 on Amazon, so it’s just called Own Your Freedom. Look it up. You know, I don’t remember. I don’t know. I’ve sold, you know, 4,000 or 5,000 copies. So a decent amount in the last year, half to two years. So I think people enjoy it when they read it. It comes with like a video course I created with it to help. So yeah, I mean, it’s a little plug for that. But yeah, it’s just a book kind of about my journey.

[30:13] It talks about like how I started and how we scaled and the strategies we’ve used. And I spent a lot of time writing it. And for not being an author, I’m pretty proud of it. So for $10, it’s worth the read for anybody that’s interested, I think, in real estate and maybe getting some motivation on what can happen if you take action. Because as we talked about at the very beginning, kind of full circle in this, I didn’t come from money. I didn’t inherit anything from my parents. You know, hopefully they pass away in the far, far future and maybe I inherit some of them. But I haven’t inherited anything from them besides, you know, the work ethic and them being great parents. And I’ve been able to do a lot of really cool stuff just with understanding leverage and taking a risk and understanding what a good process can do.

[30:53] And I think it’s just kind of should be encouraging to people that, I mean, I know everybody says it, but like if you listen to me talk for a few minutes and mumbling and talking too fast and all the things, I promise if I do it, if not everybody on here can do it, most of you can do it. No, it’s awesome that you took the time to share that and to empower people really. Because like you said, I mean, anybody can, it’s possible. And, you know, it’s just, it’s often just a lack of knowledge. Sometimes it’s fear. But like I said, when I learned about the Burr Method, I was like, is this real? Like, I mean, what? I can basically just kind of repeat. For me, again, it was the equity lines, right?

[31:34] I can just, I’ve just been sitting on this, you know, house for a couple of years. It grew in value. I haven’t really paid it down much, but it appreciated. Now I have, you know, some money to play with in equity lines and I can just kind of repeat, create new equity, get new rentals, have it cash flow well, better than I could if I just bought it off the street. And then I got a, you know, multiple equity line over all these rentals that I, after I accumulated a few and was able to get even a bigger bucket to play with for these deals. So like, that’s just a knowledge thing, you know? I mean, and so that’s awesome that you were able to put that out there for people to learn. Yeah, no, that’s the goal.

[32:18] People learn it’s make a few bucks a book, but not a ton. So it’s more about just building the brain and getting the name out. Sure. Yeah. No, I totally understand. Well, speaking of books, do you have one that you, you know, think it’s a fundamental read for everybody or one that you’re currently really enjoying? Yeah, I think there’s several. So we, we read books as, you know, we have these four different companies and be my business partner and there’s a COO over all of these companies. And we are constantly reading books four to five a year where we read a few chapters and discuss it at our Monday morning meeting. So huge into books, I guess what I’m trying to say. There’s several, there’s a couple of quick ones.

[32:57] I think I’d recommend for like most people, um, for someone that’s like wanting to like get a little bit of motivation. There’s a one that not, some people know, not as common that I like throughout there is eat that frog is what it’s called. Um, it’s just about doing the toughest thing at the beginning of the day, hence eating the frog and just the psychological and physical advantages that you get, getting the hard thing over a day at the beginning of the day, just the wind, the euphoria, the dopamine, and then how that can ramp the rest of your day as opposed to putting things off or not doing them and keep pushing them day after day and the toll that that takes on you. So it’s a really cool one there.

[33:31] And then my favorite, just like business, my mindset book to read is good to great by Jim Collins. I just, I just really enjoyed that and how he writes and how much research he does and, and the lessons that are, that are in that book. So those would be my two ones besides mine, of course. Yeah. Well, I was also curious if you have one that was really, uh, as you were growing your, your businesses and getting into leadership and, and, uh, finding the right fits and all that kind of stuff that comes along with, uh, you know, expanding it more than just you and a partner, uh, was there any good books that you would recommend to read from it with that in mind? Yeah. Um, um, you know, the, the book, um, you know, by Gina Wickman EOS, it’s, it’s a very, it’s a, it’s a incredibly, um, it just, it’s an entrepreneur operating system.

[34:21] When you have employees and divisions and things, there’s no operating system for that. So creating an operating system, um, around how to run a business was huge for us. We read that and implemented it from the meetings to the cadence to everything. So that was huge. And then, you know, being a leader, a dare to lead by Brene Brown was a really, really powerful one for allow us to build trust within our leadership team, build trust within each other so that you can have uncomfortable conversations that are needed to be had, that are usually avoided, that are impactful, that move the business forward, that you don’t get butt hurt. Pardon my French from having somebody call something you’re doing out or try to help.

[34:56] And just, that was a really good book to just allow for us to rumble, which is a part of the book to have those productive rumbles that would be tougher to have if you’re not understanding the power of them and reading a book together through them. Okay. Those are great suggestions. I don’t know if any of them have been on the podcast yet. So that’s, that’s great. I’m original. That crazy guy in clear glasses. That’s me. You mentioned a rich dad, poor dad earlier. That one has come up a couple of times. Just probably a couple. Yeah. Because I mean, that, that is, I wonder how many people that has gotten into real estate or how many millionaires that book has created. Like there’s just a start.

[35:34] Yeah. It’s crazy. Um, I actually am writing a book as well and actually reread that book. Just be like, you know what? This has been so fundamental for so many, for so many people. I should reread this and see why and try to pick up it again. But yeah. Um, anyway, so Sam, thanks so much for being on here. Uh, if people would want to reach out to you and, uh, you know, explore your course, uh, whatever you offer, where, where, where could they find you? Yeah. Just whatever social media app you’re on. I’m probably on there. I spent a lot of time on social media, creating content and have, um, you know, a decent size following on, on most of the main app. So whatever app you’re on, just look up Sam or Sam faster freedom.

[36:16] You can see my handle there if you’re watching on most of the platforms and just make sure to pick them off the blue check mark. Um, there are a lot of fake scheme accounts out there. I promise I have like, let’s say I on Facebook, I have like 500 and something thousand followers. I’m not going to create an account with eight followers and ask you for your crypto. I promise. So just be careful. I’m never going to ask you for anything. I’ll maybe introduce you a training or something like that that you want, but I’m not going to try to sell you anything, um, via DMs on any social media platform. So just check it out. Whatever platform you’re on the faster freedom show on YouTube and the podcast, and then, um, any platform, and then just, uh, reach out to me and I’ll be the one to answer your questions.

[36:51] And again, make sure it’s the blue check mark, not the scheme account. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on. This has been a great conversation. Appreciate it, man. Thanks for listening to the REI agent. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to catch new shows every week. Visit REI agent.com for more content. Until next time, keep building the life you want. All content in the show is not investment advice or mental health therapy. It is intended for entertainment purposes only.