Reaching Financial Independence with 5 Properties & Multiple Income Streams w/Kadeem Leslie

Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr, and I'm here with Tony J. Robinson.

And this is the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. Now, look, if you feel like it's too late to invest in real estate in today's market, you're going to want to listen to today's episode, because today we're going to hear a story that will make you believe that investing in real estate and reaching financial independence is still possible. So today we're going to be talking to Kadeem Leslie, who's a real estate investor that used Arbitra Garage as a way to build capital to eventually build his portfolio to five properties. So we're going to discuss ways in which he's growing capital to invest in real estate and scale his portfolio, how he achieved fire and what fire is through real estate investing, and how you can still be active in today's market and what the 1% rule is and why it still works. So, Kadeem, welcome to the show, brother. Excited to have you on, man.

It's excited to be here. I'm very excited, and thank you for, you know, allowing me to share with the audience.

Kadeem, to kind of start the show off, can you tell us how long you've been investing for?

My first ever entry into real estate was actually in college as a freshman. You know, not to date myself, but a little under a decade. So there you go.

Well, I imagine your freshman year of college was very different from mine, but kind of along that journey. When did you start to learn about financial freedom and the fire movement and that did that kind of inspire you to start investing?

I think I was not the typical 15 year old, because since I was 15 years old, I wanted to start in the fire movement and achieve financial freedom. And I wanted to do that before 30 years old. And so I decided I gave myself 15 years. If I could do it in 15 years, that'd be pretty cool. And so that was me as a 15 year old kid. And then what happened after that? I started to think more about how to go about that. I started thinking about investing, real estate and business. And then, you know, I think once I phoned Brandon Turner and the book on rental property investing, that set off a spark for me. And so after that, I said, okay, well, you know, I have to try this real estate thing. And that's why I got into real estate.

So, Kadeem, maybe just for folks that aren't familiar with that phrase. What exactly is fire?

So fire is financially independent to retire early. And so what my approach has been is to find out how much you would need to retire in terms of cash flow every month and then stack assets until you get to that income. But as a safety net, try to double or triple or even four times that income. So for example, if you know you need $5,000 a month to live, then get to $20,000 a month in passive income or income coming in from assets. And then when you get there, well, congratulations, right?

I guess you read the book and you listened to the podcast and you kind of went down that rabbit hole. But what made you believe that real estate investing was the best vehicle for you to achieve fire?

So one, you know, when it comes to investing, investing, you know, in like in mutual funds, index funds, that can take 40 years, right? And you come down the line. Real estate, I think can get you into fire in maybe 10, 15, 20 years, right? And if you think about the real estate industry, it gets you into, you know, the billionaires millionaire status. 90% of millionaires have real estate. And so, you know, as probability, if 90% of people are doing this and end up where I want to go, well, that seems to be a no brainer. And then you come down the line. Business can get you there fast though. But there's so many other, you know, there's so much uncertainty in business and you have something as certain or as well trodden as a path as real estate. Oh, it's a no brainer to try and, you know, see what you can do in the space.

So once you started trying, how long did it actually take once you started investing in real estate to reach that financial independence?

The first time I started in real estate, what I started with was actually one bedroom. So I'll tell this story really quickly. I was in college and I moved into a single family house, one bedroom. And then it turns out, you know, the typical college student, I had no money. So what I decided to do was to move out of that room and move into the couch of that same house and said, okay, well let me see if I can do something with this bedroom. Rent it out, you know, Airbnb, Craigslist, VRBO, HomeAway booking.com, right. And let me see if I can meet my rent because I figured, you know, New York, you know, that's somewhere that you want to be inside and warm, but the coach is still comfortable. Right? That's fine. So then what I did the first month I did it I was able to meet my rent. By the third month, I was able to double my rent. So now I'm making money by staying at home. And this is pretty cool, right? So then after that, what happened? I was able to get more bedrooms in that house, and I was able to get more houses because I was doing such a good job with that first house that developed the cash flow to get me into the first couple deals. And in that first house, I actually was put on the title of that house and was able to get that house into my portfolio because I was able to do such a good job. And so that was actually one of my first properties that I was able to do. And that's sort of unconventional because there was no getting the loan or going through the banks. It's really knowing the owner here. I think you should continue taking care of this property. So that was really cool place to start.

Kadeem, I just want to make sure that I'm actually understanding what. What the story is that you just shared. So you're saying that you were renting a room from a landlord, and then because you did such a good job managing that asset for the landlord, that they eventually added you onto the title of the property?

Exactly, exactly. And that actually, so from that, I was able to get other properties, not by owning, but rental arbitrage, and able to expand that rental arbitrage portfolio. And then we expanded into Atlanta, and then that's when really things took off to a different level.

So, Kadeem, I know we talked about arbitrage. You mentioned that phrase. But for our rookies who maybe aren't familiar with that, what exactly is arbitrage?

So arbitrage is taking a property that you don't own, renting it from a landlord, and then putting people in there. And so this can be done in several ways. You can do midterm rental, which is, you know, like one month to six months, and you can do long term rentals with rental arbitrage, too. But what's really, I think the most popular part of people is doing short term rentals a few days, maybe a weekend, or one week or two weeks, and then doing it that way. And here's the thing. If you're thinking about rental arbitrage, the wonderful thing about rental arbitrage is that it is. It can have a lot of cash flow. And so for someone who is thinking of getting into real estate, it can be a really good way to start without risking, you know, a heavy down payment. But on the other hand, if you are thinking about rental Arbitrage, you can learn that the ins and outs of the real estate portfolio really well. For example, getting into Atlanta, we started with rental arbitrage and then which we'll get to, I think at the end of the show getting into ownership. And that's how we were able to learn the Atlanta market so quickly. So really works.

So, Kadeem, me obviously, being an Airbnb guy myself, I have an idea of how short term rental arbitrage works. But I think usually when you hear that phrase, arbitrage, people think about renting out the entire space. But it sounds like your, your approach is slightly different because you said you were kind of sleeping on couch. I guess maybe break down how you think about arbitrage in terms of whole space versus renting out sections of the house.

That's a great question. Because I started buy room by room. I think I saw the power of room by room before I started to see the power of renting out the entire space. Then what happened for me is that room by room became so consistent and predictable because in any market, for example, during COVID people always need rooms to stay in because people always want to save money on where they're staying, right? In great markets, rooms get booked, but in bad markets, when luxury Airbnb go down, room by room will still work because people are still traveling, you still have students, etc. And so what it is is that I understood based on doing rental arbitrage room by room. First I knew what numbers were predictably. And so then when we went to Atlanta, I could predict what those numbers would be, and it wasn't a surprise. And so then we went to buy, it was the same number because I had been doing it for so long, it kind of got boring. But then that's what you want in terms of predictability.

I want to ask if someone is like, okay, you know what you've sold me? I want to do room by room. How do they actually go about it? What's the best way to actually rent out your room?

So it would be through Airbnb, right? So Airbnb has three different types of listings. You would be shared rooms, private room, and entire home listings. And so what actually happened in those 20, 23? I think it was winter release of Airbnb. They actually started to prioritize and get back to the original roots of Airbnb, which was having an extra bedroom or an air mattress that you could rent to people. And that was the original purpose of Airbnb. That's how the founder started, right? And so Airbnb I think will always have that advantage of being able to do room bedrooms. That's the sort of unique arrangement. And so I would recommend everyone would start in Airbnb in terms of room by room. But then you also have things like Facebook Marketplace. Very vibrant community on Facebook Marketplace, people looking for rooms. You also have, you know, Craigslist. Now, you know, Craigslist sometimes gets a bad rap, but if you're looking for the right people, you can do really well on Craigslist. I found some amazing people from Craigslist myself and so those are some of the examples I have.

That's why I love doing a short term rental for rent by the room compared to having a long term tenant, because you can pick and choose when you actually want to have your booking window open. So, you know, if your family wants to come visit, you can block those days off. And you're not having some random person stay in your house while your family is there at Christmas time. So I love that option of taking house hacking, but doing it short term rentals so that you can kind of, you know, pick and choose when you want to have someone here, whether you're doing house hacking or arbitrage in an apartment. I'm very curious. What was your cash flow number and how did you determine, you know, how many properties you needed to get or to arbitrage before you could reach it?

Perfect. So I love talking about this. For me, it was, I determined, and this was 15 years old, I determined that it was $2,000. The reason why it was $2,000 for me is because I wanted to travel the world. And if, you know, the, you know, the global numbers of most people, most places around the world, if you are traveling solo, $2,000 a month is plenty. You can go anywhere in the world for $2,000 a month. You can live like a king in most places. And then, you know, I think if you're going, you know, for a family that you want to go maybe four, $6,000, but for me it was $2,000. Right. So then when I hit double that, I knew that. Okay, now I can say I've hit financial independence now, you know, we're beyond that, but I think that was the minimum for me. And so that answer your question.

And then when you started, since you started arbitraging the first property, how long did it take until you hit that number?

Three years? Yeah, yeah. So it took, you know, so the first one, that was a really wonderful situation. So that already passed $2,000 a month. And so after that, you know, it took maybe until 20. Well, I don't want to date myself, but it took during the pandemic, it took during the pandemic to really expand and, you know, start to get into more midterm and long term rentals to start to say, okay, cool, now we're approaching five figures and you know, that is a bit more secure. So. Yeah.

Well, Kadeem, I mean, what an amazing story to start this episode. I don't know of anyone who's kind of gone through that process in that same way. So I'm excited to keep digging in, but we do have to take a quick ad break. But for all of our rookies that are listening, if you want real estate deals like what Kadeem found, and who knows, maybe you'll find that landlord that if you do a good enough job managing, they'll just hand the property over to you in some way. Visit biggerpockets.com agent finder where an investor friendly agent can help you find your next real estate deal.

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So welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. So let's jump back in. So, Kadeem, what are some of the ways that you've optimized properties to get even more cashflow?

So one of my favorite ways has been rental arbitrage. But then what I actually found, you know, during, for example, the pandemic, we were actually able to get even more creative with rental arbitrage. Right. So before the break, we had talked about getting and expanding into Atlanta. And here's what happened. During Atlanta, we expanded in a time which was in the middle of a pandemic. And so, you know, the market was really weird and you had to be a little bit more creative. But then what we found is that rental arbitrage, especially short term rentals, a spike, but then it was coming out of a decline and then it saw a decline again. So it was all up in the air. But then you still needed to make fairly consistent revenue. And so there are a couple of things that we did in one property, I really love this, talking about this story is that we set up a podcast studio in the finished basement. And that was really awesome because we set it up to repair space. Instead of renting per night or per month or per week, you get to work per hour. So you know what you happen, what happens when you're renting a podcast studio is that, well, you don't, you know, have to deal with, you know, headaches or stuff like that. People come in, they leave within the hour, they rent for that time. And so it actually one of those things that I think many people don't talk about. If you have the space available and then also preventing parking spaces because we were in Atlanta, close to the city, parking is expensive downtown. But if someone, for example, is coming into Atlanta or, sorry, they're living Atlanta and they're leaving Atlanta for a long time, they perhaps want to leave their space, their vehicle in a space that's safe. So then, hey, can you watch my car for $2, $300, you have three extra parking spots, that's an extra $500 a month. Now that could be the difference between, you know, staying afloat or going on, though. And so, you know, stuff like that we did during the pandemic. That was really fun to do.

Kadeem. So one follow up. I know Peerspace have heard of that website before, but how are you facilitating the rental of the parking spots?

So that's an app called Neighbor. Great question. So Peerspace would be the event space. Neighbor is an app that you can rent parking spaces. It's really super simple. You go, you put it on. If you have a covered space, it works better than just having an open driveway, but you have to have something that's off street parking.

What was the startup cost for the podcast studio? How much did you spend getting all the gear and getting it set? And then what did you actually charge per hour?

So it started at around 15. We got up to 50 per hour. And then, you know, we kind of just switched back to short term rentals when that market picked back up. But the startup cost, I would say a few hundred dollars, you know, because I remember, for example, the microphone I think was like $100. We had some spare furniture, so that wasn't really too expensive for us because we're already in short term rentals. One of the cool things that I think that we did was that we set up lights and we had this grass background. I wish I had pictures. You'd love it because it was really nice. Right, because you have to make a podcast space because of course, you know, podcasts today are also visual if you're going to put it on YouTube. So then we had a nice background, you know, nice colored lights that were neon and actually changed colors throughout the show. So it's pretty nice. So, you know, I really like this. The microphone was another 100, so maybe I'd give an estimate around $500.

Tony, is this generating any ideas for you for your podcast studio you're sitting in right now?

I was literally just about to say that. Right? Like, there's so many times and hours of the week where this is just sitting empty and it's like, could I just rent this out on. On peer space and maybe cover the cost of my office space, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

And then what about the parking spaces, too? What did you end up getting for the parking spaces? What were you charging?

So I don't think in any month we had three parking spaces. But I know for perhaps one person, they stayed for with us for six months and that was $200. So you can think of the LTV instead of just the per month. But again, you know, whether it's two or three or $400, that, that's a good chunk of change. Right? And that was because that place had a really long driveway and so we could fit many cars. And so then for that place, you know, having two cars didn't disturb anybody else that was coming to that location. So really great place.

Kadeem, just one, one follow up to that because you're, I love how you're getting creative with different ways to generate revenue. Like you're, you're renting out the podcast space, you're renting out the parking spot. I've, I've heard of apps where you can rent out your swimming pool by the hour. Uh, I just found out about an app yesterday where you can rent out your backyard to people who have dogs. They want like a place to like let their dogs run free. I've never heard of that before.

That's awesome.

Just think about, for all the rookies that are listening, that if you have a property that, you know, you're doing short term midterm or maybe you're in between tenants and you have some of these amenities, could you potentially offer those out to, to generate additional revenue? So I love the creativity there, Kadeem, but I guess beyond getting like creative, how are you kind of growing your capital to continue to invest in actually buying the estate?

So one of the things that I, which is, I think what you alluded to just now is that being entrepreneurial minded first has always been a part of my fiber. And so I have a property management company, have a short term rental company. That's great. We also have a merchant processing company that processes credit cards for businesses, help them save on fees, cash discount program. And so that's a really cool company. And that also similar to how real estate works in terms of residual income, you get paid per month and you get paid a fraction of the value that you provide to the people that you serve. And so I really love businesses set up like that where you can have that type of income that's on a recurring basis.

So after you started doing these other little side hustles and implement them into your business, was it actually beneficial to you to do these things and kind of what was the outcome?

Absolutely. So the, the purpose of using side hustles to increase that cash flow is to pour back into long term strategy. Right. And so the side hustles are meant only really to speed up the rate at which you can Grow your portfolio. And so, you know, let's say, for example, you know that you have to put 5% down, which changed November last year, which is fantastic, Right? So then if you're looking for a million dollar portfolio, a million dollar portfolio, you know, is going to cost you $50,000. Well, how many times can you get to $50,000 in, for example, one decade? And so then, okay, can you do it in two years? Great. Can you do it in one year? Great. Can you do it in six months? Great. And then that's what the purpose of the side hustles are. And so rental arbitrage, for example, is another method to speed up the cash flow with which you can get more properties. So that's a great way to think about Kadeem.

It almost sounds like you did a vertical integration with your business by picking up these other little side hustles, as you call him, to add more cash flow and more profit to your primary business of rentals.

Exactly. And so they are interconnected. And so, for example, what happens in Atlanta now, which I love talking about, is because we have an sort of ecosystem, right, Is that we have, you know, in one place, we have property managers, we have, you know, electricians, plumbers, people who can work on H Vac in one place. Now we're also growing our portfolio there. So we have the same people that work, you know, or general contractors that would work in or rental arbitrage space, but we also have them working on our properties that we have there. So it really works nicely in Atlanta together. And then the cash flow is one pool. Everybody can, you know, take from that one pool. So it's really cool.

Yeah, I love the idea, Kadeem, of kind of leveraging the ecosystem you've already built to help continue to grow the business, man. So I guess on that note, Kadima, I'd like to shift to what your portfolio today actually looks like. So with the side hustles, with the couch surfing, with the renting by the room, what does the portfolio actually look like today?

Right, so in New York, New Jersey. Right. Well, in New Jersey, that's two properties, one owned, one rental arbitrage. In Atlanta, I think we have six, seven right now. Two of those is a duplex in Atlanta, and then we have three in Jamaica, one international.

That's awesome, man. I guess just really quick on that. People, like, for a lot of people, Kadeem, the idea of investing remotely is somewhat scary for them. And you're in the States, obviously, in Atlanta, and you have a property in Jamaica. What gave you the confidence to go across country lines to. To pick up that. That property. And I guess, what advice do you have for someone that maybe wants to invest remotely from where they live?

Before you go, Kadeem, I also want to mention that he's also in Brazil right now doing this recording. So he is remote from all of his properties at the moment.

And so that's, I think, what I would rely on family and friends for. And I really have to, you know, I know they're going to watch this. So I love you all, and I really depend on my family and friends to a really great extent. Right. And, you know, what's in it for me? I get to grow my portfolio. But what's it for them? Of course, they also get to be a part of what we're building, right? And they get cash flow and they get equity, and they get to be, you know, homeowners. And so it's really, you know, instead of one person doing this and, you know, working 24 7, it's, hey, can I give you a piece of this? And this will be your piece, and then we can build this together. And so that's what's happening in all of these places. And so I prefer to split and grow something, you know, have 50% of $10 million than to have 100% of 500,000.

You know, Kadeem, we should have had you write a chapter for our book, Real Estate Partnerships, to kind of go through how you were able to structure all of this. I think that would be really interesting. And talking about how you're able to manage those partnerships with your friends and your family while maintaining those relationships.

And I would say, you know, one. Lots of phone calls. You know, lots of. Lots of phone calls.

So good communication.

Exactly, exactly. And you have to be upfront. And people also have to trust what you're saying, you know, so trust what you're saying. And so you have to be able to just know a lot, right? People will ask you questions, and if you don't sound like you're sure, and that's probably going to be a problem. But then if you lay out, hey, this is the information I have, this can take us from here to here. This is all of the facts. This is the data. This is where the economy is going. This is where it has been. And if you present that to people in a really solid case, it kind of becomes hard to say, you know, I'm going to pass.

One thing I am curious about is, you know, when you're going to buy these properties, before you even find a partner. What is your actual buy box for the properties that you're going after?

So mostly family 2 to 4 units right now outside of this rental arbitrage, owning would be 2 to 4 units using of course the FHA 5% down. Sorry, FHA 3.5% down or conventional 5% down. Either one is fine. I or plan is to go for 4 units, 4 properties over 10 years, convert that into apartment buildings and then from there that's when we can start talking about refinancing and buying back. But for now, the path would be multifamily for in a decade one every two years.

All right guys, we got to take one final break but more from Kandim and his journey to strive for financial freedom through real estate investing Right after.

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All right guys, welcome.

Back to the show. So Kadeem, maybe tell me about a real deal that you've completed.

Right. So recently we were able to acquire a duplex, wonderful duplex in Atlanta, that the closing price was 425k and that was I think 5, 3%, 3.5% down. And I've said that wrong twice so far, but that was 3.5% down and so it was around $15,000 with the seller concessions coming in. And so it actually came back when the appraisal came back that we had built in 50k in equity and so the value of that property is already at 475. So that was really awesome.

Yeah, already having that $50,000 of equity baked in is great. You mentioned the word seller concessions. What is that?

So we had an interesting strategy on getting this property. So it actually a strategy that we had tried with a previous deal but that fell through. But then we tried to get on the second one and then they accepted. What we decided to do was, yes, we know that we have the 3.5% down, but if we went to the seller and we said, hey, we did cost analysis of all of the repairs that we think that this property needs. If you look at this, it adds up to about $35,000. Now we can do that and we're going to put that into the property. However, we want you to accommodate some of this $35,000. Of course, $35,000 was done by a general contractor and so it had all the quotes, it had all the pictures. This is what's needed. So then when we went to the cello, hey, okay, cool, we see that we're going to give you 10, $12,000 off in the down payment. That's what we're going to cover for you. So then when they came back and said, okay, cool, we can cover for you $12,000, we said, great, that's no problem. And then so that's how we got the seller concession.

So how much did you actually put into this deal for your capital?

Around 14 or $15,000.

Sorry, I just wanted to highlight really quick, Ash, like I, I don't want that to get lost in our rookie audience that he's talking 14 or $15,000 to control an asset that's worth almost half a million. You know, it's like, where, where else can you do that? You know, real estate investing is uniquely qualified to do that. So I'm sorry, I just want to add that in before you jump into the next one.

No, that's okay. I was just wondering kind of the outcome of the property. Now you're in it for very little money. What did, what did the property end up cash flowing? What are you renting the units out for?

So it's a five bedroom house and using the same strategy. So this is actually interesting. I stick to the 1% rule religiously and, and I learned the 1% rule from the book again on rental property investing. That's the third time I think I've rented that book. But the 1% rule really means that if you can rent the property for at least 1% of the purchase price, then it's probably going to be a good cash flow deal. Probably not. Yes, but probably. And so what we did was, I understand the numbers going back to my room by room rent days, and my minimum is in any major city. I know I can do $1,000 per bedroom. That's what I know, minimum. Now, other cities can do more. If you're in New York city, it's probably $2,000 for a bedroom. Right. But I know I can do $1,000 in any major city in the US per bedroom. And so when we went to the 1% rule, we know we have five bedrooms, we have four of them rented out, then we can make $4,000 minimum per month. And so the property is actually classifying between 1,000 and to $1,500 right now, and the mortgage is around 3,000. So it's great.

So, Kadeem, basically crushing it, right? Is what it is what it sounds like.

Appreciate it.

So with this property, how did you even find it? You said the 1% rule is really big for you. What market is this in and how did you source it?

So this one was Atlanta, though. This one was Atlanta. We found it through an agent. What we actually did, and I would encourage anyone to do this, is that we looked at maybe three dozen properties before we found this. And remember that we had one deal before this that fell through, so we did three dozen to possibly close on two. Right. And just the scale of numbers, right, it's not. We went for five. And we like this one, we looked at a lot because we had to find one that really worked for our strategy. And I'm sure picking up, based on what I've talked about, we really do stick to our strategy, because if you stick to one strategy that works, then it will work. Right. But if you switch strategies, you have to start all over. And so we found this one agent, found the right property, found everything that met our criteria. And then once we did, we said, okay, we'll proceed with this one. As long as it meets the numbers, we can go for it.

So, Kadeem, I guess you said you worked with an agent. So you're saying that the property was just listed on the mls. It was on, like, a Zillow or Redfin.

Exactly.

So I guess that. That leads me to my next question. And there. There's a lot of people, Kadeem, who feel that real estate investing is impossible to be successful at right now. Right. With rising interest rates, with rising purchase prices, like there. There are no deals out there that make sense. So I guess what. What would your response be to those people that feel that the market has been just been Too hot to get into.

So I would say that having an agent makes all the difference. Right. So, I mean, think about my story, right? Our agent was able to go to bat for us. Having a really good agent is actually cheaper when you're thinking about investing, because our agent was able to go to bat for us, get us seller concessions, saved us $12,000, you know, on the back end of this deal. And so I would say just having a really good agent makes a world of a difference.

Yeah. And if you need help to actually find a good agent, you can go to biggerpockets.com/agent finder as just a starting point to kind of meet agents that are in your market, that are investor friendly, and then do what Kadeem did and take the time to actually vet them, ask questions, work with them. And just like when you're buying real estate, figure out what your buy box is. So find out what your agent box is. I guess I don't even know what to call it, but think about why you need an agent. I need an agent to do the paperwork to set up my showings, and that's basically it. Okay. Kadeem, he needed an agent to help him negotiate, to have those creative ideas. Okay. You may need an agent to help you with the market research, knowing the area, because you've never even been there before, and you need help with that, or maybe you actually need help with the deal analysis, too, and you want an agent that is also an investor who invests in that same market that can help you. So really figure out what you want from the agent. And make sure when you're interviewing and asking questions, instead of saying, you know, do you work with investors? Ask how many investors are you currently working with? Something like that, where it's a, you know, a number they have to give back. Because anybody can say, yeah, I work with investors. But asking them specifically, how many are you working with? And it's like. Like, well, I did one a couple years ago, you know, or actually I have 10 right now that I'm working with. So kind of tailoring your questions that way can be helpful when doing the interview process, too.

Absolutely. So just to add to that, I actually had a specific question when I went to meet with real estate agents, and it was, have you closed any multifamily in the last 12 months? That was my question. That was my opening question. And so if they said, no, well, no problem. Happy birthday. And so that was my qualifying question because it fit our strategy. And so something to think about, definitely.

Well, Kadim, that's a great piece of advice. And I guess that kind of leads me into my last question here. But what would be your biggest piece of advice to all the rookies who are listening to this podcast that want to achieve financial independence but are maybe hesitant to pull that trigger? They're stuck in analysis paralysis. What is your advice to them?

Well, you are going to be 10 years older in 10 years anyway. So what you actually have to decide is whether you want to be 10 years older in 10 years, having tried stuff, or, well, where you are right now. And if you're happy with that, that's fine. However, if you do want something different, you're going to be 10 years older anyway. And so then you can have one or two or three or four properties in 10 years or you cannot do anything. And so the difference is really action. And so then just decide, well, in 10 years I want to be this and then go for that.

It's almost like working out. Like, you can start now or you can wait six months and then when six months come, you're just going to wish that you would have started six months ago.

Exactly.

So, Kadeem, thank you so much for joining us today and to giving us an insight into your journey, learning all about arbitrage and how you've been able to reach financial independence. And again, congratulations on your success.

Well, thank you for inviting me and you know, or allowing me to be on your platform because, you know, Bigger Pockets has been really inspirational to me. I've been watching, you know, since I was a teenager and so it's really awesome to be here. I will tell you, I've read and watched and I just really inspirational what you guys do, you know. And people are watching you from all over the world. You know, I'm here in Brazil still watching. So, you know, kudos to what you.

Guys do well, we really love to hear that and we appreciate you coming on to give back to others so that they can also learn from Bigger Pockets. So if you want to learn more about Kaneem, we'll link his information into the show Notes. We also did mention a few books throughout this podcast. You can go to biggerpockets.com bookstore and you can use the discount code Ashley or Tony and get 10% off. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I'm Ashley and he's Tony. And we'll see you guys next time on the Real Estate Rookie podcast.

This BiggerPockets podcast is produced by Daniel Zarate, edited by Exodus Media, copywriting by Calico content.

I'm Ashley, he's Tony and you have been listening to Real Estate Rookie and.

If you want to be a guest on a biggerpocket show, apply biggerpockets.com guest.

Hey rookies, if you're watching this, we want you to apply to be a guest on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. That's right. Ashley and I are looking for amazing stories just like yours to be a part of our Real Estate Rookie Podcast. Now look, you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to have done thousands of deals. Even if you've done one deal, your story could help inspire the next listener.

As a rookie investor. Especially if you just got your first deal. It is all fresh in your minds and you are the best person to tell your story. Give your experience on how you got it done to help someone else get their first deal.

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