EP6: Achieving Financial Freedom w/ Michael Mnatsakanian

I raise money from capital partners or leverage creative financing. And one of the things that I specialize in the most is the co living rental management strategy, which is basically we get a property, nice, big, beautiful property in a great location, and then we start renting that property out by the room to provide affordable housing for people who have been priced out of the communities that they live in.

Tell me about your Mount Everest. What are you looking to achieve over the next five years?

My Mount Everest is is getting into RV parks, setting about sett the date.

Provide safe and affordable housing for 1250 people transitioning out of rehab centers. Welcome to the Discovery Mount Everest Podcast. I am your host, Mundo Sanchez, two time CFO of the year and Forbes featured Entrepreneur. Every week I sit down with powerful voices from owners club to uncover their personal Mount Everest and the bold visions they're chasing over the next five years. This podcast gives you a rare front row seat into the mindset of elite entrepreneurs and investors. What drives them, what challenges they're navigating, and how you might play a role in their ascent. So whether you're scaling your own peak or seeking to support others and theirs, you're in the right place. Let's begin the climb. All right, welcome back, everyone. Today I am in beautiful Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. As you can see in the background and what a beautiful weekend it is, I hope everyone out there is enjoying their Memorial Day weekend. If you're watching this, and we have a special guest today, Michael Manatsakani. And thank you for coming to the show. Pleasure to have you. Man.

Man, you crushed it. You said it like you're a professional, like you practiced my last name a few times.

It's the mic. When I pick up the mic, I feel like it has some special powers, but if I put the mic down, I sound like a fool. So it's definitely the mic.

You crushed it.

Welcome to the show, man. I'm super excited to just dive into your journey. Obviously, we're going to talk about your Mount Everest and just learn a little bit more about you. For anyone that doesn't know who you are, they will know after today. Super excited to hear about all the crazy, amazing things you're doing. So feel free to just give us a background about who you are, how you got started and what you're doing.

Yeah, for sure. Hey, guys. Michael Manatskanian. You heard Mundo crush it. So he knows how to say it. It's awesome. I'm a real estate investor. I started real estate investing in May of 2020 is when I bought my first property. Currently now in May of 2025, I own over $22 million of real estate. I purchased the majority of that using none of my own money. I raise money from capital partners or leverage creative financing. And one of the things that I specialize in the most is the co living rental management strategy, which is basically we get a property, nice, big, beautiful property in a great location, and then we start renting that property out by the room to provide affordable housing for people who have been priced out of the communities that they live in. So that's in a tiny nutshell, real estate investor with a lot of results in a short timeframe, but it came with plenty of challenges and obstacles throughout the way, that's for sure.

Amazing. So if someone's looking to get started in real estate, where do you even start? Like, how did you even get into real estate? Like, you obviously didn't just get born out of the womb as like a superstar real estate investor with all this knowledge, right? Everyone had to start from the beginning. Everyone has a page one, chapter one.

So for me, it was less about real estate. When I started, it was always about financial freedom. I was raised by a single mom and first generation American, and she worked multiple jobs just to barely make ends meet for us. So when she was available, she was present and loving, but the majority of time she was at work. And I am very passionate about family and spending time with my family and just enjoying this beautiful world that we live in. So I knew that one way or another, I had no idea how, but I knew that one way or another, I was going to become financially free as early as possible, so I can be as present for my family as possible. And so at the time, it was not real estate. I did what you were taught, right? I don't even know. Not everyone was taught personal finance. But what I did was I learned online, which is essentially your income minus your expenses are your savings. You take your savings, you invest it in the stock market over 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, it grows in value. Once it hits a certain dollar amount, you can live off that for the rest of your life. That was awesome. At least now I had somewhat of a path. But then I started learning about real estate investing because as some when you're in the world of learning about personal finance and investing, real estate is going to be one of those assets that come up. And when I started learning about real estate just through bigger pockets, forums, YouTube, podcasts, it blew my mind. Because not only do you get similar benefits to the stock market, stocks Appreciate in value. So do houses, but you also get the benefits of cash flow, right? So you're getting rental income that's coming in from your properties and you get. Your tenants are paying down your debt every single month. My tenants are paying my mortgages for me. I get the extra profit right as my cash flow and they're paying down my debt. My properties appreciate in value. And if you do real estate investing right, you're paying no taxes. So it was just this thing that made so much logical sense. But it takes a lot more work than investing in the stock market and I'm happy to talk about it. Not only takes a lot more work, there's a lot of mindset stuff that goes in with real estate investing that you don't really think about when you're starting out. No one talks about it in the, in books or anything, but there's just a lot of stuff that there's a lot of benefits to real estate. It is more active and it require higher risk tolerance and you can learn basically everything you need to online. All the information is out there. But, but for most people it's not information they're missing. They're missing a couple of things and it tends to do with their own limiting beliefs, their own mindset. It tends to do with maybe they don't have a very straightforward strategy, maybe they're trying to follow someone else's blueprint. That's not in alignment with what took things to the next level was when I really started thinking about the ownership benefits, the appreciation and debt pay down. Because for every dollar I get in cash flow, for the most part I'm getting five times that in ownership benefits. That really is the wealth builder, the debt pay down and the appreciation. But most people are not really taught to consider that. I'm not saying make investment decisions based off those benefits, but understand how valuable that is because that is compounding even more quickly than your cash flow is benefiting you. And that is what's going to make you wealthy 3, 5, 10, 20 years down the line. Especially because at a certain point your debts are paid down or you're building so much equity you can tap into that and get a bunch of tax free money that you can do whatever you want with. You can use it for yourself, you can reinvest it. I think that was one of the biggest things in my deal analysis journey was really not just focusing on cash flow like a lot of people talk about, but then also really considering the ownership benefits. My mentor had me really consider that because I was Always like most people, cash flow. Let's start thinking about the long term benefits of ownership of real estate. It's like, holy crap, I see why I don't know what it is. Like 90 plus percent of multi millionaires own real estate and real estate is part of their investment portfolio. It makes sense because there's so many benefits to it.

Just crazy is that, that does that Pace Morbi guy. Who, who is that guy? Good guy, so powerful. I get people that they'll make comments about me, they're like, bro, like, how are you so rich? You're just buying all these properties. It's not that I'm like crazy rich, it's I, I understand how to raise capital, I understand how to structure deals, underwrite, operate. Like putting all those pieces together. It's not like I'm just printing money. Right? No one can just sit there and print money. But yet leverage is such a powerful thing if you use it correctly.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's absolutely true too on the other end. Right. You can leverage. Using a credit card to buy shit that you shouldn't is also leverage. That's just bad, you know that's bad. Right, right.

Yeah. As far as leverage, it's. Oh, it's credit card debt.

If anyone else's money to buy something is in essence leverage, well, Mundo very clearly talking about is good debt, good leverage. You're getting debt whether it's from the bank, whether it's creatively financed, whether it's from capital partners, you're getting that you're leveraging their money to then be able to take over an asset that produces you a bunch of awesome returns. On the other end of the spectrum is the worst case scenario where you're using other people's money to buy crap you shouldn't that you cannot afford or as a waste of your money. And that's where I think personal finance is like number one. I think for you it was natural coming from the finance background and for me it was natural coming from the personal finance background. So understanding how compounding works, you want debt, you want the leverage of debt to benefit you in compounding in the good way, not in a bad way. So I'm glad you highlighted specifically your take on leverage as well, because. Yeah, yeah.

So how do you specifically in your business, you know, getting to 20 plus million dollars in real estate, how do you utilize leverage in your business?

So the first one is when I get a loan from a bank to buy a property, whether I'm putting 5, 10, 25% down, they are I'm leveraging their 75%, 85%, 95% debt to buy an asset. That's the way the majority of people will do it. The way I started was leveraging really low down payment options to buy two to four unit properties, live in one unit, rent out the other. That was my start. And then I started learning how to leverage creative financing. So basically, instead of going through a bank, talking to sellers that own their properties outright, or pretty much own them outright, and structuring a deal with them, that I would buy their property and. And instead of going to a bank to create a loan, the seller was now creating the loan. So that was the next big shift was when I realized I don't need banks necessarily. I can either leverage the seller, their equity to then create this loan through the seller. Which is great because it's not like the bank tells you 25% down payment, 10% interest rate, or whatever they say. With a seller, you can structure everything. You can structure how much is the down payment. Doesn't have to be a specific percentage, just whatever they feel comfortable with. What is the interest rate, what are the monthly payments, how long can you pay this loan off? Everything is negotiable with seller financing. And that was this massive cheat code. Because now it's leverage that you guys have control over. Doesn't mean just because I want 0% down payment, 0% interest, it's always going to happen. No, that's the best case scenario. But with a seller, you guys have the opportunity to negotiate together. If it works for both parties, you move forward. And then learning another creative finance strategy subject to buying properties that other people have previously bought. They took out a loan and now I'm buying the property from them. I'm the owner of the property, but the debt still stays in place in their name. Why is that advantageous? Lots of people bought properties in 2020-2022 or even like 2018-2022 when interest rates were super low. We're talking, I have some that I bought that are 2.25% interest rate. It's unbelievable, like from a bank to get that kind of stuff. And you can't get that today. But I'm able to buy these properties from them, keep that phenomenal debt in place, which makes my debt pay down even faster because the lower the interest rate, the faster the debt pay down. And I'm able to take that over usually with little to no money. I do it with, you know, three $400,000 properties. I do it with multimillion dollar properties, that same strategy. So those are like some of the key pillars of leveraging from the acquisition side. The next big thing that I leverage is every time you buy a property you have to cover the costs for acquisitions, right? You got closing costs, you got cash to seller, you got maybe there's an agent involved. Whatever those acquisition costs, then you typically have renovation costs. You're going to have to renovate the property, maybe furnish it. The way that I do it, I'm doing these co living or by the room property, so I'm furnishing these out and then you want to have some carrying costs or some reserves for that property as you're getting an operational, getting it rented out and just in case something comes up. So you need that every single time you buy a property. Acquisition costs, the renovation and furnishing costs and the reserves. So then what I do is I bring these great investment opportunities to people with money that want to be part of these deals. And that's the number one way I've been able to scale. Basically if you think about it, I have around like 19 to 20 million dollars of debt, maybe a little lower, but let's say 19 million dollars of debt between banks and sellers, like all this creative financing and bank debt compared to my 22 plus million dollar portfolio. But I've had to raise around $5 million from capital partners to acquire this portfolio. That $5 million has gone towards acquisition costs, renovations, furnishings and reserves for these properties. And what I do is I find the deals. My job is to find the deal, analyze it, make sure it's a good investment. That's going to work for the strategy that we want. The numbers make sense and then bring that to people who have capital that want to be part of the deals. They work with me, they bring the money to fund the deal, I find the deal. And my team and I own and operate or like we operate the properties. And if they're a private money lender, they're lending me money for a fixed interest rate return. The number one benefit for capital partners. They're lending you money, you're just, I'm borrowing money from them, I'm going to pay them back that money for a fixed interest rate return, typically between 10 to 15%. However, you can also have capital partners that want to co own these assets with you. So instead of giving you, let's say $100,000 for 12% interest rate, what they are doing is giving you the funds so that they can co own this asset with you. They can own 20 30, 40, 50% of this property with you or I guess with me. So not only do they get the return of, they get some return based on their ownership. They get ownership benefits, they get to take part of property appreciation, the debt, pay down the tax benefits, they get all that. And a lot of people partner with me because they also get the third benefit of learning. They tend to partner with me and fund my deals so they can learn throughout the process so that they can then also do the same thing I'm doing at some point in the future once they're more comfortable with the process. And what better way to learn than to actually own. Hopefully that was really in the way. I don't know if anyone's done that in the weeds about leverage between banks, creative financing, and the actual acquisition costs. Hopefully that was useful.

Yeah. That's amazing. You just laid out like three or four ways that you don't even have to have credit, right? You don't have to have this huge resume because now you obviously can. You've outlined a couple ways in which you can do that. But you don't have to have money, you don't have to use your credit, you don't have to have a bank involved. It can just be you and the. But let's touch on the not having money part real quick. Right? Because it's really cool to be able to just work a deal out with a, or raise capital and not have to prove your credit score or liquidity or net worth or debt to income ratio. All that stuff that banks ask for, that's cool that you can bypass that. But that doesn't mean you can be financially irresponsible in your personal life. And if you have zero money to your name, that it's a good idea for you to go and buy real estate. Because you mentioned something specifically that you raise capital for reserves, right? Stuff is going to happen. This deck right here is going to cost me $35,000 to repair. I didn't have a plan to rebuild this whole deck, but I had the capital. The capital was in the plan, but I didn't say, oh yeah, when we did the inspection, we're gonna have to tear this whole thing down. So you have to have surplus funds, rehab money, whatever to be able to do that. Whether you're doing it with your own personal money or raising capital. Talk a little bit about what, how important it is to partner with people that have that credibility.

Right? You hit one of my most important pillars when it comes to educating anyone in detail. Like, I have a Community called super investors, where I quite literally help them with the step by step blueprint and capital raising, increasing deal flow, co living, all that stuff. But one of my biggest filters is what's your personal finance look like? You need to, in my opinion, you should not be raising other people's money to buy and hold real estate unless you have your own personal finances. Right First. And one of the best ways to know if that's the case, you got to have some money, right? That's the number one way to know. Do you have some savings that you can then have some set aside for investing in your education and mentorship? That's one thing. I think education and mentorship is the best thing you can do. Do you? If your goal is to follow a proven, efficient path as opposed to spending time and energy trying to just figure it out all on your own, like, you have either choice, you can always do it yourself or learn from people who have done it ahead of you. But one of the biggest things is you need to have money for that education. We also need to have money set aside because when you buy a property, like you said, it's not if, it's when things will always go wrong. This is real estate. It's not like the stock market. You put in money and you don't have to put in any more. Even if it goes up or down, doesn't matter. It is what it is for real estate. You're going to have a deck that you don't plan on rebuilding. You're going to have a water leak that you didn't expect to happen. And right now we're dealing with it. Thankfully, we have the capital and I raise the reserves for this. But it's like we had a water leak. They test it as asbestos there. So then what that means is it's going to cost even more money to clear things out, to dispo it correctly, to get the right tests, to all that stuff. You don't want something like that to be the end of your entire journey. And I say that less because it'll destroy you financially, more because it'll really affect your reputation. Because then people start questioning, why did you raise money to buy and hold real estate if you cannot sustain some of the lows that come with real estate investing? Real estate investing is serious. This is not monopoly on a board game. We're talking about real houses, real estate, real people, real money. And if you're doing it the way that I do it, the way that you do it, where we are leveraging bank debt Seller, debt, other people's money. You better take that crap seriously. Because that person who's bringing in that money, they earn that money, they save that money, and now they're investing that money in you because they trust you. So you better do everything in your power to protect them. One of the best ways to protect your partners, get your personal finances straight. I'm not saying you have to have a perfect credit score or anything like, get your personal finances straight, have some savings set aside for if and when things go wrong, and be a good person, try to take care of them. I've went, unfortunately, when I was starting out, I was also lending money to people, and I lent money to someone who completely ghosted me. And at that time, I didn't know what to do about it. Fortunately, we're trying to deal with it now, but, like, this happens. And what I realized is he's just a serial bad borrower, but this happens. So you got to be a good person. In my opinion, it. Does it mean things won't get hard? Of course they get hard. Does it mean there'll be. You'll be in a situation that you didn't want to be in. You'll potentially be in those situations. But are you going to at least communicate with your partners and keep them in the loop and try to take care of them? That should be the goal. So the way you maintain credibility, the main way you maintain reputation, is to take care of others. And the way to do. One of the best ways in real estate, have your own personal finances straight first, before you try to use other people's money to buy and hold real estate. And that's one of the core things, at least in super investors, is the goal is that you have solid amount of money set aside for yourself. But instead of using that money to buy and hold your next deal and depleting that whole thing, how can you raise the money to buy that? But then have this in reserves now, essentially? So you still have to have money to start, but instead of deploying all of that into your deal and running out of money, you're going to learn how to raise money and have this set aside for your reserves, like I said, for if and when something goes wrong. Because this is real estate and things go wrong.

Yeah. I think it's so important to first get your house in order before buying real estate, because the greatest indication of the future is looking at the past results. Right. I think there's a saying out there that says it a lot better than I just did. But if you really look at it. It's okay if you can't. Let's say you've been living for 35 years, 40 years, whatever. If you haven't figured out in that 35, 40 years of your own personal situation, which is probably the most important thing to you, right? Making sure you're taken care of and things are in order, how on earth are you going to do that? Raising other people's money, managing an asset if you can't even manage your own life? That's. I never thought about it that way. That's amazing. Especially as a filter, if you are a lender, to really look at that individual and their track record and their history. And sometimes people just check the box of, oh, you have three properties. Oh, you have 10, 20, whatever. How are those properties doing? Are they just like losing cash flow on every single one of them? Are they all vacant? What is their actual operation look like? Not just, oh, here's my REO schedule, and it's, oh, you got properties, Cool, check the box, here's my money. It shouldn't happen that way, but I have seen a lot of people do that, unfortunately.

If you guys want some cheat code on how most lenders like how they vet a deal, for the most part, it starts with trust. Do they like you as a person? If they don't like you, they're not going to invest in you. Like, the very rare case, will they invest with you? If they don't like you at some level as a person, they don't find you relatable. So the first thing, like in that scenario, typically for people, is it's a vibe check. Do I vibe with this person? Is this someone that I want to be a partner with? That's the first thing most lenders are looking for, number one. Number two, does this person's previous history, like, they evaluate your. You as an operator now, right? First vibe check as a person, then you as an operator, as a borrower. How do you perform as a borrower? And then it's about the deal itself. Does this deal make sense for me? But most people get so stuck up on the deal that, like, the borrower, me trying to borrow money, it's, oh, here's this deal. They should want to work with me. People are checking your vibe, your experience and then the deal, so to say, all that. That's why it's so imperative to share your story, have your own stuff in order first, and understand that people that want to lend to you, they want to. They're working with you, they are partnering with you, they're checking your vibe, they're your operator experience, and then the deals as well. So I guess I just say that because I don't know if many people talk about that specifically, but one of my mentors says people lend to people that they know and trust. Right. And that's basically the same thing. And then the deal afterwards. So for anyone who's out there wondering why they have deals and they're trying to raise money and it's not getting funded, that hopefully just shines some light on you, you need to make people know and trust you more. And I say that as this might be one of the last tidbits of capital raising that we talk about. So I want to make sure to get that one in there as just a practical piece of advice for people. Start building your reputation online. Start helping other people. Start being this generous expert. Start building relationships genuinely. Right. It's not just posting on social media. It's getting on calls, talking to people, actually engaging with them, and then understand people are trying to know and trust you before they work with you. They're trying to check your vibe, your operator experience, and then making sure your deals make sense for them. Hopefully that shines a little bit of light for anyone who's wondering why they have deals are trying to raise money and it's not working out for them. Because now I don't even think people care about my deals. They're like, hey, we know you, we like you, we trust you, you have the operator experience and this deal should make sense. Or obviously the deal should make sense, but for the most part, that's like, way low on the totem pole for most people. However, when you're starting out, it's harder. If I was going to talk anything about capital raising, right now, I talk about the origin story of I didn't raise a single dollar until early 2023, when I realized that made sense. So if you don't mind, maybe we'll take it back to some of the obstacles that I faced throughout my journey. Cool with that?

Yeah, I would love to hear that for sure. Let's get into it. What are some of the challenges? Because looking at you, it's cool. Like you said, if no one really cares about your deals, it's, oh, Michael's buying millions of dollars of capital and buying deals, that's just another Saturday afternoon. But it didn't start that way, right?

It was the exact opposite. And like many of you, you asked about my origin. I knew it was going to be through real estate investing. However, and I mentioned, oh, I bought a two unit property, lived on one side, rented out the other. What I didn't mention is for 18 months before that, I was already committed to leveraging real estate to become financially free. But for 18 months I was stuck where most people are. And I'm actually an engineer by trade. So this is very in alignment with what people get stuck with, like with this type of mindset. But I was stuck in something called paralysis by analysis. I was learning. I was reading books, listening to podcasts. I knew my market, I knew where I was living at that time. I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska with the military. I knew I was going to house hack a small multifamily, a two to four unit property, live on one side, rent out the other. I had a pretty clear buy box at that point. And then what I did was I would analyze deals and analyze deals, analyze deals and analyze deals and analyze deals. And then I had no actual real estate to show for it. I would just sit there analyzing deals. Felt like I was doing the work because I was doing some work, but I was not doing the work that was necessary to actually become financially free. And what it took after 18 months of this and frustration was going to a local real estate investor meetup. Other investors in my local market. Connecting with actual investors was a proof of concept for me. Wow, look, other people are actually doing the thing. Hey, that guy ended up buying the property that I analyzed. And look, comparing numbers. Because what I wanted to do is say, oh, let me see if my numbers were in alignment with your numbers. That was a huge chico to compare to an analysis between someone who's done the thing, actually owns it versus what you're doing. And I was, dang, I'm really good at analyzing these deals. I analyzed way more thoroughly and better than they did, in my opinion. I was looking at it from way more perspectives and I thought I did a better job at analyzing than they did. But the difference was they're the ones who had the real estate. They're the ones who had another property that was generating them cash flow, pushing them that much closer to their financial freedom. For me, I had numbers on a spreadsheet, and that's cool, but that's not making me financially free. So at that point, I basically gave myself an ultimatum. I reverse engineered very quickly. What's the difference between what they're doing and what I'm doing? If I want to be financially free, I need to generate cash flow. I need to own assets, to own a property, I need to close on it, to close on it. I need to put it under contract. To put it under contract, I need to make an offer. To make an offer, like an educated offer, I need to analyze the deals to. Before I analyze deals, I need to find deals that fit within my buy box. Before that, I need to actually have a clear buy box. So where I was getting stuck was like, step three of 10, I was getting stuck. I was analyzing deals. I wasn't making offers. It seems obvious now. Of course, you want to buy real estate, you got to make offers. But you forget that when you're stuck in this grind mode. It's like, hey, I'm doing the thing, I'm spinning the wheel, but I'm not getting the results that I want. Yeah, the difference between the guy who owned the property and me who was analyzing the properties, they're making offers, then they're putting on a contract, then they were doing their due diligence and they were closing, renovating, and then renting it out and generating cash flow. That's where I was stuck. Analysis or paralysis by analysis? And I gave myself an ultimatum. I said, bro, you're like 25, 26 years old. You are spending one to four hours a day, every day looking at deals, analyzing deals. But I'm not getting the results that I want. I'm not owning assets. So either I'm going to stop pretending to be a real estate investor, or I'm actually going to take the action that's necessary to move me past just one step. I didn't even say to become financially free or the cash flow where I was stuck was analyzing deals. I was doing that. What I wasn't doing was making offers. So the only thing I need to do is just make an offer on the next deal. That made sense. That's all I told myself. My goal is at the top of this ladder. I just need to get to the next rung. I just need to make an offer so I can keep pushing myself forward one step at a time instead of overwhelming myself. Because maybe that's where I was stuck. I don't know. I'm not a huge mindset guy. I reflect back and think now, oh, that's probably where I was stuck. Especially talking to hundreds, if not thousands of investors up to this point and helping tons of them is. I'm realizing, okay, now I could learn about my. Where I was stuck and how that relates to them as well. It's. I was overwhelming myself with everything as opposed to I'm stuck on analyzing deals. I need to just Start making offers. And I gave myself an ultimatum. Either stop pretending to be a real estate investor and wasting one to four hours a day because I have no real estate to show for it, or actually make that offer because I can enjoy that time. I was in Alaska, I loved it. We could just go do fun stuff. I go fishing anytime. So that's what I did. I gave myself an ultimatum, made that offer on the next property that made sense, Put my first property under contract right at the end of March 2020. Covid started it was a little bit of a slow closing. Closed on it in May of 2020, and five years later with a very similar mindset at that point, just one step at a time, one rung at a time, one skill at a time, one offer at a time, one everything at a time. Just consistently put in work one to four hours a day, five to seven days a week. Just moving myself one step forward at a time is essentially how I've been able to become one of the best people at analyzing creatively finance deals, structuring a lot of these deals, raising millions of dollars to buy these deals, and owning this massive portfolio. But it was really just one step at a time. Every stage of that, every skill you unlock, every new thing that you do, high mindset issues and limitations, which for me, one big one that came after paralysis by analysis. At that point I was doing the thing. I was buying properties, house act, my next one. I started doing off market deal finding. I was wholesaling deals. I combined off market deal finding and seller financing structure. Some cool deals. A Morbi method, something Mundo is very known for. I did a really cool Morbi method on some seller finance cabins or some more B method cabins. But then I needed another mentor essentially at that point. So my first mentor in essence was these other real estate investors. Because they showed me proof that this was real. And I was able to compare numbers with them. Then I was drowning in my real estate portfolio. I didn't know it at the time. I thought, hey, I'm doing what real estate investors do. I'm doing everything. I'm finding deals, I'm analyzing deals, I'm making offers, I'm buying them, I'm renovating them personally, I'm furnishing them. If I'm furnishing them, I'm renting them out, I'm doing it all, I'm doing my bookkeeping, which means I was not doing bookkeeping. I was supposed to be doing my taxes. I don't know what the hell I was until I met Mr. Pace Morby, who within minutes identified what my issue was. My issue was, he told me, quite literally for a short conversation, the reason why I decided at that point, hey, I'm going to retire. I have $7500 a month coming in in cash flow. I'm good, I'm good for the rest of my life. What else? Why would I need more? And he realized the reason why I was making that statement was because every property I now bought, I was creating more work that I did not enjoy doing. So the easier option was just stop and say, it is what it is. I don't want to grow those things. I don't want to grow more work that I want to do. And he even clarified to me very specifically, you analyze deals, Michael, with property management, but you're not paying property managers to do your work. You, you analyze deals for these renovation costs, but instead of spending the money to get a contract to do these renovations, you're doing a lot of it yourself. That's not sustainable. And you honestly don't enjoy that piece, especially bookkeeping. One of the best things is, like, for like 300 bucks, 350 bucks, they do all my bookkeeping, right. Like for multiple properties. And he identified quickly. The reason why I don't want to scale is because I don't want to create more work that I do not enjoy doing. So the best thing for me to do is to identify what part of the process do I enjoy the most. Double, quadruple, 10x down in that area, and offload and outsource everything else. Am I going to reduce my cash flow from 7,500 to 5,000 or 4,000 in the short term? Sure. But what if I spent that time focused less on things I do not enjoy doing, focus more on things I do enjoy doing. And at that point, I had around a $2 million portfolio. This was end of 2022. I was able to scale massively from 2023 till now because of that mindset. I enjoy finding deals, analyzing and structuring them, and then raising money for those deals. That's not true because at that point I wasn't really raising money for those deals, but I knew that I needed to raise money for these deals because as active duty military and then government employee afterwards, I was not going to have the money that I needed to accomplish the goals that I wanted in the timeframe that I wanted to do. So that was a big part of it. Identifying money and deals was my core focus. And offload the majority of everything else that I can offload it to people that enjoy it, that do better than I can, and I could just pay them to do that service. And I could focus on the only thing that I can focus on. Like, the only. I can't really offload people getting me deals and raising money for me. For the most part, it's not really sustainable. What I could do is focus on that area and an awful lot of things that other people could very easily do for me. And basically, that was this huge mindset shift. Once again, when you're in the thick of it, you don't realize that this is what's holding you back. You think, holy crap, this is great. I'm doing the thing I'm. And I'll tell you, I remember after that conversation with Pace, I actually wasn't very excited. I was actually pretty. I was a little frustrated because it was like this identity shift. Dude, what are you talking about? I barely knew him at that point. My complete mentors provide so much guidance and so much valuable insights and inputs to my life. Well, we're gonna be going golfing together next month, right? And fishing and all this good stuff. But I was upset because he challenged my identity, in a sense, because I'm the guy who always does everything. That's why I'm successful. I'm not. I have no problem doing the work. I will always do the work to a fault. I will do the work. And at that point, I didn't understand leverage to that extent. Right. It's not just leveraging other people's money or, like the bank's money or seller's money. It was also leveraging other people, paying them what they deserve for the work that they do to free up my time so I can focus on things that only I could do. And this was this whole identity shift of I got to do it all. What are you talking about? I'm 27. I got 27 rentals. I'm making this much money. Like, I'm killing it, right? Like, I'm doing objectively great. But then when I took time to reflect, I was like, dang, this guy is just a decade or two ahead of me. He's seen the thing. He knows how to escape this and take it to the next level. And it was that mentorship, that learning from someone who's already done the thing, that helped me massively fast track and all the different things he's mentioned. Like, some people join the sub2 community that we are a part of, and all they do is they come in once a month, they choose a deal that they want to buy. They just buy deals from the community. Realized maybe I should stop wasting my time wholesaling or finding my own deals directly. I could just buy other people's deals and pay them a fee for buying their deals. Why wouldn't I do that? That's more scalable. And the amount that I pay them is much more predictable. And my plan is to raise the money to buy those deals. So why don't I just raise the money to fund that? And that's what I did. And that allowed me to get way more deals than I would have if I just did all the work myself. For going to the market, talking to sellers, talking to agents, and all the work that was necessary, I just started buying other people's deals. I pay a wholesaler their fee, 5 to $20,000, buy their deal, and the capital we raise covers the cost for that. Beautiful. The next big thing was Pace mentioned. I don't know if he does it often, but I heard him say one time that if he was to go back to the very beginning, the number one skill he would have developed was raising capital. How to raise money. Because you can apply that to literally anything, to businesses, to commercial, to multifamily, to single family, to whatever you're doing. Raising money is one of those fundamental skills. And he said, a lot of people just come in and they raise a lot of money from our community and they buying deals using other money. So once I realized, okay, my job is to find deals and raise money, but I can leverage that, right? You only need deals and money to buy real estate. I can leverage that component through other people's deals and raising other people's money. That's when really things starting to take off massively. But it wasn't this linear thing. The first time I tried to raise money, I was so focused on the deal, no one knew who I was at that point. This is why I highlight back to the thing I mentioned in the beginning. I thought, great, I have this pre foreclosure deal. It's gonna be a sober living home. It's gonna make over a thousand dollars a month. I'm gonna give them 50% ownership. Who wouldn't want to do this thing? It didn't work that way because they didn't. No one knew who I was. This was early 2023. They didn't know who I was. So it was harder for me to raise the money. Eventually I was able to raise the money, but it was not this beautiful easy path. And it made me realize, you don't start raising money when you have the deal, it's already too late. At that point you start raising money weeks, months, years before you ever need it. That's how now, as a lot of people have seen, I've been able to raise millions of dollars, live within days, right? $800,000 in 72 hours for a huge co living portfolio in Georgia. Wow. A million for a portfolio in Texas, all within days. But it didn't start that way. It was because the mindset shift that you raise money way before you ever need it and then it starts paying dividends over the long term. Just like investing in stocks, like investing in real estate, it all compounds and grows with time. As long as you're consistently taking action. And a lot of lessons there, hopefully that was somewhat beneficial. But it is hard at the beginning. It is hard. And each of those have their own identity shifts. One of the biggest being I was so stuck on and I think this might be a first generation American thing, immigrant thing. I don't know. I felt like I was asking people for something. I need your money to buy this real estate. And once I made a huge mindset shift, I'm not asking or need anything. What I'm doing is I'm providing someone a great investment opportunity to own this property with me. My job is to find the deal and operate it successfully. Their job is to fund the deal and then we get the benefits together. Once I made that mindset shift and stop felt like I was asking things from people or that I needed things from people, that was a big one. That helped me overcome some hurdle of never wanting to ask anyone for anything, to realizing I'm not asking for anything, I'm providing someone else a great opportunity. That was one of the big things there because I was very, I was stuck on that piece. And then the revelation that you don't raise money when you have the deal, you raise money well before that. And that really, that's all I've done for the last two years. I went from 2 million to 22 million. Buying other people's deals, raising money for those deals. That's really it. Oh, that's wild. Delegating, investing, delegating the operations part of my business, hiring an operations manager when I got overwhelmed. Property management, bookkeepers, cpa, fractional cfo. Now I'm bringing in a fractional COO to help with some systems and all that. And especially because now I coach and educate other real estate investors who are basically stuck where I was. You have a few deals, maybe you've used Traditional financing, maybe you've used your own money, but now you know you want to scale because that's not. You can either take 10, 20 years to do it, or you can do it in a shorter timeframe just by learning from someone who's done it ahead of you. So I need more support on the operations of real estate. And that's another thing. I'm freeing up my time there so I can help other people. And I've taken a lot of these lessons learned and just implement them. Sorry I didn't give you a chance.

But what you're going to say, yeah, dude, that's amazing. So if you're watching this and you're stuck exactly where Michael was several years ago, you could just listen to his journey and his transformation from being right where you're at right now, right? Stuck analyzing deals to buying 20 plus million dollars of real estate. The cheat code is literally partnering with people that have been there, done that. Just as Michael did with Pace. Right. Because Pace has done more than really anyone. We're all learning from him because he's done the thing that a lot of people are trying to achieve. And how exactly do you climb? You don't just look at it something like whatever your goal is and just be like, okay, my goal is to buy 50 million or 100 million in real estate or whatever the number is, whatever people typically, most people have a dollar amount goal probably. And you're stuck at, I don't have my first deal yet. It can get really overwhelming to think about. This is what I want to be in the future, but here's where I'm at. I'm just paralyzed. I don't even know where to start. This is just like too hard, right? It's overwhelming. How do you climb a mountain one step at a freaking time, right? Just take one step. And you were just saying a few minutes ago, it's okay. What's that next step? Okay, cool. I learned this. The next step until you get to the very top of the mountain, right? That's how you break it down. Break your goal down into micro goals and just take one step at a time. And so while we're on the metaphor of climbing mountains, let's talk about your Mount Everest, man. I want to hear about your Mount Everest. What are you looking to achieve over the next five years?

Yeah. So my Mount Everest is to help 10,000 real estate investors achieve financial freedom through providing 700,000 co living rentals. So let me break the numbers down for anyone who wants.

Wow.

And it 700,000 co living rentals. The reason for that is because on average, a single co living property on average has seven bedrooms. So we take 700,000 divided by seven, that's 100,000 properties needed to provide 700,000 co living rentals. I want to help 10,000 real estate investors achieve financial freedom. So 100,000 properties, 10,000 people. I want to help people essentially buy 10 co living rentals, providing them all the step by step, blueprint tools, resources, everything they need to be able to scalably buy up to or 10 properties or more so they can be free through real estate investing. And then that will provide this phenomenal value to renters out there who literally just cannot afford, they just cannot afford to live in the communities that they work and serve in because the government's not doing, actually they're doing the opposite, the private equity and they're not. Wall Street's not going to save them. So it's this amazing thing that we can provide affordable housing. And don't get me wrong, I'm an investor. It also makes a lot of financial sense because when we're doing co living just looking at everything involved, looking at all the different strategies that are out there between accessibility, risk tolerance, cash flow, overall ownership benefits, kind of everything collectively co living is head and shoulders above every other strategy. And that's as someone who owns long term, midterm, short term and co living. And I own multiple types of co living, I rent by the room strategy, I own sober living homes, all that kind of stuff. However, the rent by the room co living strategy is phenomenal because it cash flows more than the majority of other management strategies. But it's also more stable. Short term rentals can make the same or even more, but it's not very stable. It's volatile, there's highs and lows and then if you get a bigger property that makes more money, that tends to be more risk because like people party, those two like the party places, but you get more cash flow more consistently, you get better ownership benefits. Because I'm buying properties like the best long term rentals get Section 8 rental for you bought for 60 to 80 thousand dollars in Kentucky, makes a thousand dollars in rent, you maybe keep a few hundred dollars of that in your pocket. Cool. I can make more through co living and instead of buying Hundreds of Section 8 rentals or small properties, I'm buying larger properties in nicer locations. Not some random part of, I don't know why I keep saying Kentucky, but Kentucky, Missouri, whatever. I'm buying majority of mine in Florida. Georgia, the Carolinas, Arizona. I do own in California and Montana and Washington. I even own in Puerto Rico and I started in Alaska, but at Southeast Co Living.