30 Units at 24 Years Old!!! Soli Cayetano on Out of State Investing

YouTube, it's Christian Osgood. I am joined today by Soley. Soley, I actually first heard speak at BPCon. She is a fantastic investor like Cody, super young, but I will, I'll let you introduce yourself and welcome to the channel.

Thanks. Thanks for having me. That was a good introduction. I am Bay Area based, sitting in the Bay Area, and invest in Cincinnati and Augusta, which is a right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. So I ended up quitting my day job after 15 months of investing, built up a portfolio of about 25 doors at that time. And now I'm sitting at what you mentioned, 30 doors, combination of single families, duplexes, all the way up to 10 units in an office building, which is kind of fun and kind of a mixed strategy between long-term rentals, a couple of midterm rentals, and then 2 short-term rentals as well.

That is absolutely amazing. So what were you doing before you went full-time investor?

So I was a commercial real estate broker. So I basically, if you don't know what that is, I leased office space. So I started when I was 19 in college. I really needed a job. I didn't really like real estate, but just needed a paycheck type of thing. And I figured out I was pretty good at it. I managed corporate accounts. So our biggest account was AT&T. And we basically sold off a bunch of their real estate, land, buildings, data centers all over the country. So my first big deal was in Alaska. I sold land in Kansas all the way down in LA, and then we leased office space for a variety of companies. So when the pandemic hit, it was 2020. I was a senior in college. Obviously no one was leasing office space anymore. And that's kind of when I transitioned into thinking about like, okay, shoot, My job is going to be 100% commission-based. The whole office market dried up. No one wants office space right now. And how am I going to build a base of passive income for myself to just supplement my commission-based job, which was kind of going way downhill at that time.

Which makes sense if no one's doing office and we shut down the entire country. Not a fantastic time to be a commercial broker. I was working at CoStar when that all went down and every other call was, hey, I need to cancel because my business is going under.

Oh yeah, 2 years later and people still are not returned to the office, and who knows when people ever will come back.

Yeah, well, now you have all these companies doing massive layoffs with the economy, so I can't imagine it's a heck of a lot easier. I think you got out, had a fantastic time.

Yeah.

When you bought that first deal, you, you said you were 24 today, uh, how old were you when you bought the first deal?

I was 22, so I was at I closed in July, I think. So I just graduated college in June, um, and I live in the Bay Area, so obviously it's really expensive. A house here is $1 million, $1.5 million. I didn't have much money. I had about like $50,000 in my bank account from just working like full-time through college, and that wasn't going to buy me much. It might have bought me like a condo or something, and that wouldn't have provided me the cash flow I was looking for. And so I started researching, watching BiggerPockets Rookie, and talking to a couple of my friends who had out-of-state rentals and decided that it was probably the best option to start looking out of state to see if I could find a cash-flowing rental that was a lot more affordable.

That's awesome. And that's the next thing I wanted to cover. So out of state, that makes sense. Most of the people who call Cody and I or ask, you know, how do I get started when they're in California, their first question is how do we invest out of market? Because California is hard to compete. It's not that you can't play there, especially the creative finance thing where everything's made up, but it is very hard and it's very competitive. How did you choose a market?

Yeah, so I chose Cincinnati, Ohio, and I was— I went for work about a year, maybe a year or a year and a half before I chose it. So one of my clients was moving from the Bay Area to Cincinnati. And so I flew out there and was amazed by how good the food was, how nice the people were. It was really vibrant. And then I went on Zillow and it was like $100,000 houses and I was like, whoa, this is cheap. And I also met an investor while I was out there, just one of my local co-brokers in the commercial world who had assembled a small portfolio of residential investments. And we just started talking and honestly, I didn't think much of it. I was loving my broker's job at that point. I was all in on that. I thought I would be a commercial broker forever. But then when the pandemic hit, I was like, okay, well, what do I know? Like, what could I maybe build some side hustles on? What could I build some passive income on? And that's when I kind of remembered, like, okay, I know one investor there. Um, and I chose that as my competitive advantage. So I always tell people when they're looking for a market, if it's out of state, look for your competitive advantage. If you have a friend there who is an agent, or you used to live there, or you have family there, it's just because people get so overwhelmed about like, oh my gosh, there's hundreds of markets that you can choose from. And they get so decision fatigue that they never make a decision. So for me, I honestly didn't even think that it was weird to pick a market so fast. I only knew one person there, but it was good enough for me and the budget made sense. So I had $50,000, the houses were about $100,000. I could put $20,000 down and buy my first property. So it's like competitive advantage and then the budget worked for me.

See, that's absolutely fantastic. And one thing that we really encourage people to do, because this worked really well for Cody and I, is once we found that market, we focused on that market. And over the last year or so, we bought more multifamily properties than the local housing authority and church combined, which is a whole lot of housing that we covered in one city. But what that let us do is we have a massive influence on rents in that market, especially after we opened up property management. That was our competitive advantage. That's something that I tell people to do. Anyone on our channel who follows Caleb and Chuck, and if you don't, you should. Their channel is Caleb and Chuck. They kept it really easy. Um, they chose an area in Texas. They, they went, we want to invest in Texas. They called almost every broker in Texas. Once they found that deal though, they focused up on South Texas. I think they're in McAllen, Laredo. That worked really well. Have you found any advantage in focusing in the one or two areas you're in, or is your plan to keep spreading out into different markets? Because I've seen different strategies. Curious how you run that.

Yeah, I was sort of all in on a couple different zip codes. And so all my properties, I bought maybe 25 properties, 20 units or 26 or so before I expanded into a different market. And so all of them are within maybe like 15 minutes of each other within a couple zip codes because that allowed me to really know this like street by street. So Midwestern markets are extremely street by street. You could be like Wow, that corner is great and that corner, don't go on that corner at night. And so for me, it's really tough if you like, one, it's tough if you get like shiny object syndrome and you're like in Cincinnati and Columbus and Cleveland, but they're all in Ohio, but there's so many different markets, like they're so different. How are you supposed to ever get any traction if you're jumping around all the time? And so I always tell people like focus, you know, Cincinnati, we're focused. West side or east side? I chose the east side. East side. Now, what 5 zip codes are you looking for? Maybe you can narrow it down to 3 zip codes that you're, that you're going to be an expert in that market so that when a deal comes up, you know what a good deal is.

Yeah, focus is really important, which is ironic since apparently I dropped my camera and it keeps going out of focus. So if I'm blurry, just focus on Sully. Um, but in all seriousness, uh, that, that concentration on the areas and becoming a master is Absolutely fantastic. Sole is one of the best operators in the space. She plays the game very similarly to Cody and I, which is why I have her on the channel. Um, your age that you did this at is incredible. Your focus and strategy is awesome. There's two deals that I really wanted to hear more about. So you did a 10-plex. That is a big deal.

The 10-unit's an interesting one. Um, it was a huge deal. It was a— it is deal, but it is a huge renovation. And so I'm still working on it like 15 months later. But it's an interesting one. So it's 10 units. It actually used to be— did you know you can pull building genealogies?

No.

It's super cool. I don't know if it's just Ohio, but I'm sure they exist elsewhere. But I basically paid like $150 for someone to do a genealogy on the building to tell me why it was built, when it was built, what it was used for, who lived in it, all sorts of things. And so they'll do a whole study. And I figured out it was built in like 1880 or something. And yeah, it was a Kroger back in the day, like way back in the day. And then they like transitioned the upper units into apartments. And that's why in the Kroger space, the ceilings are like 13 feet high. They're huge. And then they transitioned it into a church. And so there's like a baptism chamber. Up in the top and they used to have like church services up there. And then they even had like ads from the 1920s where it was like $20 rent. And so they'll dig all the stuff up for you in the records and give you a packet and tell you like all you need to know about your building. It's super cool. Very cool digression.

That is fantastic. So what drew you to buy a way over 100-year building? You have an old building. It's been used for just about everything. It's major renovation. What about that deal said, this is the next deal for Soli?

I love putting myself in hard positions. No, it was a— it was a— this has been like maybe the biggest learning experience so far. So I, at the time, I was like doing single family, single family triplex, single family 5 units, single family And so I was gradually saying yes to bigger deals. Like the 5-unit was right before that, and that one is already done and stabilized and good. And then a 10-unit popped up off market from a broker and walked through, and it looked like a cosmetic renovation. And so we had the great idea to vacate all of the tenants at once because our property manager at the time was like, if this is going to be quick and easy, Let's just like vacate all of the residents, get it done, and lease it back up. Because yeah, we're a year later and the holding costs are ridiculous. So but it's okay. It's a great learning lesson. But we figured out in, in like in vacating some of the units or the residents, we found them a new home. We tried to be as good as possible to them that the floors were rotting out. There was so much mold all over the place. Um, there was like— people fell through the floors twice in the beginning. So yeah, it was literally like texts from contractors like, someone fell through two floors today. Um, because it was so rotted, like it wasn't a good place to live. And so the inspector had missed all of this.

Oh no.

And so the renovation has doubled. And, and like, thankfully, um, like we've made enough money from like flips and other things to just kind of like put Let's just finish the project. And it was a good enough deal when we bought it. So we bought it for $560,000, I believe, and it should be worth about $1.2 million. So we have quite a bit of room. The area has really gotten nicer. There's a bunch of flips in the area. You can turn some of them into midterm rentals. And so it's not going to be a bad deal, but I think we bought the deal right and we did everything possible wrong. On it, but it's gonna be okay.

So those are the best learning lessons. Our, our 38, no one fell through the floor because it's all single story, um, concrete, uh, base, so that would be hard to fall through. But everything else that can go wrong— septic tanks, uh, homeless kept moving in, um, even our electric room, uh, we're not allowed to lock it because the city needs to get in there, and we would just have people sleeping in our electric room all the time.

That's terrible.

Really rough. Uh, we did our capital raise really dumb, so our money was way more expensive than it was supposed to be. The design was a 2-to-1 for 5 years, and we ran in a scenario where we actually really wanted to buy out everyone in 6 months. That negotiation was pretty hard. Most people were like, well, I'd rather just kind of wait the 5 years. So we ended up I think our— in 6 months, our cost of capital to buy out all of our investors was a 50% bump. So annualize that. We borrowed at 100% to buy that building. It was 15% down, but still, I was like, oh my goodness, that was dumb. We made a lot of the mistakes on our biggest purchase. Yeah, that were— they're learning lessons. It still made a ton of money. We bought for $2 million, it appraised for, uh, $3 $1,041,000. We just brought it into bank debt today. So we actually did a cash out refi.

I saw Cody got his first bank loan.

I know he's an adult now. Cody also went shopping for clothes for the first time in his life. He bought— he bought shoes. He actually had me go with him. He's like, I don't know how to buy shoes by myself. I haven't had to do this.

Buy them.

He's just— I mean, he's gone once with me to grab shoes, but yeah, it's always been like Christmas presents. He's 22 and all he's ever learned how to do is real estate. He's the best buyer I've ever met in real estate. Fantastic mathematician.

You don't even know how to buy shoes.

It was just so funny when he came over, he's like, Christian, I bought shoes and clothes. I was like, cool. He's like, I've never done that before.

I'm like, oh my goodness, what an important life skill. But I think, I think stories like that are what make people scared to invest out of state though, is like, you— one thing to be in your backyard and to be like walking in, like, I see the homeless person is in my electric room or the septic person and to like have eyes on it because I feel like that's a certain level of comfort. Even though things are going wrong, at least you can see it and fix it and like feel some level of security. But a lot of people like freak out because for me it's 2,500 miles away. Sure, I could get there and probably like there's no nonstop flights, so it's like 8 hours of travel. But I don't do it because it forces me to problem solve like a business person. And like, I don't want to be the person— I don't even know how to fix a toilet if someone asked me to. And so it wouldn't necessarily help for me to like be there at the building and see things falling apart. Like, it forces you to find the people that you need to fix things. So like, for example, on this project, it was getting really hard to manage contractors. Went through different— couple different contractors because it's really hard to work on a 140-year-old building. Like, it's not everybody's specialty. And the floors look like this, like they're just like They're wild. And so what we had to do was find a project manager who has a lot of construction experience and pay them like a project management fee on top of a general contracting fee that we paid the general contractor to be an extension of us there. And but to me it's okay because I can spend my time doing things here in California, whether it's finding deals, raising money, making content, teaching people, whatever. And then delegate that responsibility out to someone who's way better at construction than me. Because if I was looking at those things, I'm not even sure I'd exactly know how to deal with that. And so it's just kind of working on delegating and building out a team, which is like the main component of out-of-state investing.

And that is so cool. I, I tell Kayla and Chuck this all the time. They have a better business model than us. I think the hardest thing that we do is run the property management company. And while I'm not as involved in the day-to-day, hiring for that, uh, dealing with the major crises when they come up, coordinating teams, basketball— it's so much work. I spend a lot more time on the property management company, which, granted, it makes all my properties work, but like, I've never got a paycheck from that company.

It's a hard job. It is an unappreciated job where people only call when they're upset. Yeah, they never call and say thank you for being a good property manager. Um, it is definitely— I've done it before. I self-manage some of my properties and from 2,500 miles away. So, wow. Yeah, I probably self-manage, uh, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5— 5 of them, um, units, just because a lot of— so some of them are like midterm rentals and it's a little bit tougher to find management for midterm rentals. And so if you have the right systems in place, though, they're generally like very nice tenants. And so it's not, it's not like crazy hard to self-manage them either. Yeah, but buildings all have property managers and I wouldn't want to deal with those anyways because they're just tough.

Yeah. Our solution to management was to start a property management company so we don't have to self-manage. But then when you manage your property management company, it's like, well, I mean, we basically self-manage now.

Internalizing property management a little bit different.

Yeah, you get to add some more systems and you build out your team, which you just have to do once you hit— at least for me, it was once we were over 50 units, that's where I really had to start building a team because it was, it was really sucking a lot of time managing 50+ units. Then you get to 100 and you add a resort and you just end up getting more and more employees, more and more systems, and it starts to get a little easier as you scale.

But how many do you have?

How many employees do we have? I have, I have 14 employees. And then we have, yeah, 14 employees. We have 4 people on staff who are just owners who aren't technically employees. They're just, they own various pieces of the businesses. And then we have 4 independent contractors that work exclusively for us. So they're not W-2, but They help with our course sales and wedding venue bookings.

And do you have 14 W-2 employees?

Yes.

That is so stressful. I— no one ever talks about like the, the transition into being a like the boss. And I've had like various 1099 assistants and like now I have a full-time VA and now I'm trying to onboard my like first W-2 person and it's it is like a whole nother skill set than like just owning a couple of rental properties and kind of treating it like a— like, well, just accumulate a couple of rental properties to like, I'm going to build an empire and have a bunch of people underneath me. It's like such a different skill set.

It is. And learning to— learning to hire is hard. I had the gift of getting to do it in a call center where I got to hire 10 people at a time. I had to fire almost all of them, hire people back, and then they shut down the call center. So I had to let everyone go. So, uh, hiring is very difficult. Firing is also very difficult. And having to make those decisions very, very quickly and rely on other people. Uh, biggest takeaway I've had from that is you have to be okay with, you are the business owner, other people are going to make mistakes that you wouldn't. And you just have to realize that like, hey, they provide more benefit than, uh, they take away. But it is really hard to give up that control.

So, Yeah, no, I'm a control freak and a control freak who invests out of state. But it's literally, it's the exact same thing with out-of-state investing though, because yeah, you might paint a property better than someone who you'd hired out for, but it's not scalable.

Exactly.

It's a scalable business, and some people don't want to create a scalable business, and that's okay. But if you do want to create a scalable business, you have to outsource things.

You have to And I'd make the argument that to be a business, it needs to be scalable. It can be a hobby, you know, a side hustle doesn't need to be scalable, can be what you want. But if it's really a business, you're either growing or you're contracting. I've never seen a business just hold still, have no change at all. You're either expanding or contracting. And what you're doing is building a business and scalable and important.

10 units at a time.

So cool. The one other deal I wanted to hear about. So you said you did a little office deal. Deal, which, which is really cool because you went from, uh, being an office broker to buying an office. Now, is that an office that you use for yourself? Is that leased out? Tell us about that deal. That's different.

It is different. So the reason is because one of my partners— so I ended up— so the two things, I guess we can go into this later, that have really helped me expand are the private money raising and partnerships. And so this partner is based in Augusta, Georgia, which is how I was able to expand into another market. I was so hyper-focused on building my team, learning the market, being an expert in my space in Cincinnati, my like blinders on. That's all I was looking at. But when I found a partner who had a competitive, a really strong competitive advantage in his market and wanted to pair up, I was like, okay, you know, that's your competitive advantage and I fully trust you. And so he owns a a full-service brokerage company. It's agents, uh, he does property management for, I don't know, 400, 500 units, and then also has in-house project management. And so he can— the full system can go through him if we buy any properties in Augusta, Georgia. So we have 3, maybe I keep— I can't— I lose track, but maybe 3, maybe 4, uh, single families. And it's nice because they just all go through the system of his system, and I don't have to like deal with the renovation stuff. Um, and then the office building is because his His company is expanding and needed an office space, so it's in a really good— this is kind of the first like, um, somewhat appreciation play that I've gone into because it's a corridor that's about to, um, hopefully explode with mixed-use with like offices and more restaurants and whatnot. And so it's a really amazing location for a business, for appreciation, also cash flows nicely. It's like 8 different private offices and we got that seller financed. So it was $400,000 listed on the market for maybe a month, maybe a month and a half. And it was just sitting and I think people, it didn't really work for people because interest rates were skyrocketing and they're like, yeah, it's kind of weird. It's like an 8-person private office. And finally I kept on bothering him like, you got to go see it. And he did and he hit it off with the seller and negotiated, I think it was like 5.5% interest rate, like a 30-year term type type thing. And it just, it works. The cash flows, it's great cash flow. I think it's like $1,000 a month in cash flow. And so we're keeping a couple people, like there's an appraiser and whatnot inside some of the offices, and then he's going to take a portion of the building as his part of his office as well. And so it's nice because the whole, like, it integrates. Like, he's going to be the best tenant because he's a partner, he's an owner in the property. And if something, like, we can then pass through all of a lot of the maintenance items. And so if a toilet breaks, It's not our responsibility. He's got to fix it and he has the teams to fix it. So that's kind of the nice part about office investing is you can pass through a lot of expenses. It's not where people start usually, but they can be a little bit more passive investments if you can pass off maintenance to tenants.

Mm-hmm. Well, and this is a perfect transition, by the way, everyone, everyone watching, Solly is going to be joining us. We're wrapping up our Rules of Real Estate on Monday. Somewhere in January. I'll announce the date sometime soon after I decide what the date is.

My birthday. My birthday's on January 8th. We can wrap it up then.

Oh, there we go. But early January, around Sole's birthday, we're going to be on the channel. We're going to be doing a series where we get to talk about how she's raising private capital compared to how we raise private capital, structuring debt or equity. A lot of focus on out-of-state investing because Sole is one of the best in the game at exactly what she's doing. But we will be doing a multi-week series on Mondays with her. So welcome to the channel for our first video. We're just going to tease that here. The last thing I wanted to talk about, just a little intro into it. You had mentioned to me before this call that you, you did your first deal with your own capital and then you were out of capital, which means you're either raising debt or equity. How are you buying this much real estate without a W-2 job at 24 years old?

Yeah, so raising debt mostly. So all the projects that I do are, are BRRRRs or some sort of value adds that I can then refinance and pay back the investor. And so there's— it's like the way that it's worked so far is I have an equity partner who doesn't bring money. We're 50/50, but he has a great, like, He's 1099 too, but he has a great record of 1099, and so he always qualifies for our stuff because I have not as good of a 1099. And so he kind of is the person who bankrolls and stuff. And then we raise, uh, we raise debt from Instagram, from friends and family, from whoever, and we give them a fixed return. So maybe it's, you know, 8% or 9% fixed return, and we buy it in cash usually, and then we fix it up, we refinance it, we use my partner's usually 1099s to qualify, and then we pay back the investors. So that's kind of how I've done every single project since my second one, really, and that's how I've really grown. So it is in combination, private money and partnerships, because I utilize my partner's really strong 1099s and the private money to then finance the project.

That is so cool. That is so cool. That's a great way to raise debt. And if you're bringing it in 8 or 9%, that's, that's cheaper than most of the debt that I bring in. So good job on that.

You got to just keep going. So I used to give like 12% and then I, and then I was like, let's just test it and see like what happens when I say 10%. And then I was saying 10% and then there were still a bunch of people coming and I was like, what happens if I say 9%? And then like you just keep passing it down. So now I would say on average is probably around 9%. No points though, no fees, really no underwriting. It's more of a relationship-based thing, and it's way easier than something like private money because you don't have to go through draws and underwriting and pay like $7,000, $8,000 in fees. So it really helps us do more deals better because there's more room to buy the deals than if you were going to use hard money and have to pay $10,000 in fees.

So are you buying them with all private capital, or are you doing a combination of bank and private capital?

It depends on the deal. Um, if they're smaller purchases— so we just bought a duplex a couple months ago for about $180,000 or $190,000, something like that. And we bought, like, we bought all of that with private capital, 100%, and raised the renovation funds as well with private capital. For the office building, it's $400,000, and so it was seller financed, and so we didn't have to raise the full amount. And so it's kind of a combination. If they're usually like $250K and below, it's 100% private capital. Right now we're finding a lot of seller financing as well, which makes it really easy because the seller can carry the note and then we can raise the down payment. And so it really minimizes how much you have to raise because the seller will carry the note. And usually the seller doesn't really care at all where the source of the down payment funds come from, where the banks usually sometimes will care if you raise money because you're 100% leveraged. So that's kind of an interesting distinction.

That is every single deal we've done, save one, is structured exactly that way. Seller financed. The resort we bought is— we actually were supposed to be $0 down. The guy who recommended that we check it out was like, hey, I have a resort that is zero down, which is why we checked out a resort. It's not usually what we do. Turns out it was $1 million down. So there's a few extra zeros.

That's not a big difference.

It was a, it was a little bit of a difference. However, it did get us to check out the resort, and that was when my team decided this is the project that we want.

Yeah, they bait and switched you though. It was like, come check it out.

Yeah, well, to be fair, the owners didn't say that. The one of my friends said that they were working on a zero down deal. Yeah, so we get down there and it turns out they want a million down, which was a little bit more, but That's exactly how that deal worked. They seller financed $3.5 million. Like, that's a huge chunk.

Yeah.

Of your debt figured out. And it's at 4.5%, which is inexpensive money.

Even for the 10-unit, like, people don't really talk about what it takes to qualify for big loans, but you have to have, like, certain net worth requirements equivalent to the loan balance. They make you prove that you, like, have experience and things of that size. And so if you were going to a bank and saying, finance this resort for me, they'll probably say, well, have you ever like bought a resort before? And then you'd say no. And they would say, well, good luck. Like, we're not going to finance that. And so I think there's a million benefits to seller financing.

Yeah, well, we'll get into that in our, in our series. But that is actually how we do all the seller financing is we find people who've done something that we haven't and we meet with them only to learn how they did it. I've never asked anyone to sell a property. I've never written a letter of intent. It's all been relationship-based because we just learn from people who have mastered the game. The people who have that resort have run that resort for 25 years. We came in and said, we want to learn how to do this. And we actually moved Cody in for 30 days prior to closing.

Wow, that's cool.

Yeah, that's not— not everyone does that to close the deal. Um, it is a little different.

I heard you say— this is how we met in Fresno, I guess that's how I met you. I guess you met me before, but we didn't talk. But I thought that was like such a revolutionary way of doing things, like just reach out and ask how. And so I was talking to one of the partners who I invest with, and we were looking at like a little, like, I don't know, it's like a bed and breakfast type motel thing down in California somewhere. And so we tried that exact thing and said like, we just want to meet with you. And she owns it free and clear. So we'll see what happens. And she's really— Yeah, I don't think it's going to work out. I mean, she claims that there's other people interested, but I think it'd be really interesting and just try it out and see what happens. Like, worst case scenario, you learn a lot. Best case, they like you and offer to sell or finance it. So there's really nothing wrong.

Yeah, exactly. As long as you leave with the takeaway, you're a better operator than you were when you got into the meeting. And that's, that's how we play the game. Last question for you. You are absolutely slaying it. You're getting a lot of attention. If you guys haven't followed Sole on social media yet, you're one of the few. You're a pretty darn decent following. But how do they find you on, on Instagram, by the way?

Yeah, so it's Lattes and Lisas. Lattes.and.lisas. When I made the name, I didn't think that I'd ever have a following besides my mom. And Now it's just, it is my name. People don't know my name, they just think of me as Lattes and Lisas. So I get emails seriously that say, hi Lattes.

That's so funny. And on a branding standpoint, you have a, you have a fairly unique name, which is helpful. Cody Davis is apparently the name of a, uh, New England, uh, Patriots player. So you just can't find Cody by his name, you have to type real estate after it. Uh, that's cool that you have a, a Lattes and Lisas brand and you have a fairly unique name, which makes you a little easier to find, which is by me solely.

And my last name, Cayetano, it is very unique.

Yeah, that's— I, I don't think there's gonna be a ton of Sole Cayetanos out there. So yeah, look for her online, she's fantastic. My question though— I got distracted. My question was, what is the money for? What, what do you want to do with real estate? What is the ultimate goal of your real estate journey?

That's a great question. I was listening to a podcast recently and I don't remember who was speaking. I should probably dig it up, but he was talking about why you build passive income, which is what I'm doing right now. I'm on the quest to build passive income. But he says the reason why, which I really resonated with, is so that you can move from passive income to passionate income and have the ability to discover what your passionate income is. And so I don't think that a lot of people give themselves the time and the space to, to figure out what they even want to be passionate about. And I don't think I even have given myself enough space because I'm so invested in building passive income that when I move to passionate income, it's like, what will be my passionate income? And I think it's okay not to know exactly. But that's kind of why it's like to move from passive income to passionate income. And I like created a nonprofit when I was in high school and I'm really into giving back and I would love to help with like financial literacy and affordable housing. And so like those are some projects that I might think are my passionate income, but it's really giving myself the space and time to discover what that is so that I can further give back and impact. Oh, that's awesome.

And that's a big piece of it. I think when you're, when you're starting to scale, For me, a huge piece of it when I started was retiring my wife, and then I did that, and then I retired myself, and I'm like, okay, well, now I've owned my time, which was my big thing. And now a lot of it is I actually love scaling the business. Like, I, I'm a super nerdy board game player. I love board games.

What's your favorite board game?

Oh boy, this is getting— oh man, so nerdy. So right now I'm really enjoying Star Wars Outer Rim. It's like a 3-hour game.

Board game.

Yeah. Playing, you basically, you have the whole galaxy in front of you and you fly around as bounty hunters and you do a whole bunch of tasks. And yeah, when I say nerdy, I mean, I really like nerdy strategy games that take forever to play.

Risk or like Settlers of Catan.

I do like Catan. Catan's fun.

I've lost friends over that game. There's been—

it gets brutal. Catan's fun because if you are in real estate and you know how to negotiate and trade, kind of like Monopoly, you're just gonna usually beat your friends because you're gonna out-negotiate them.

I think that when I usually play— and this is such a tangent topic— I feel like I'm pretty good, and then people end up— and I get really salty about this— like banning up against me, and it's like all 3 against me, and they're like, do not trade with her, like don't trade, our goal in this is to beat her.

And then you can't win if 3 people are against you, so Yeah, the goal is to not do too good until you start doing very good right at the end.

Be the underdog. But if you play with the same people and they know you do that every time, then they're just— anyway, so that— I love that. And I love, um, Ticket to Ride. It's really fun.

Ticket to Ride is a fantastic game. If you guys haven't played that, I'm, I'm just gonna drop a link below to that because that is that good of a game. Very fun, very fun.

Rush at that game next time. If we ever see each other in person, we should play some Ticket to Ride.

I, I will Cody and I will bring you up to the resort.

Um, that'd be fun. We could play board games.

Yes, that'll be fun. I'll bring a whole bunch of board games. I'll keep them under 3-hour games. But, uh, the, uh, real estate plays a lot like a board game. Once you hit your initial goals, you own your time. And, and you're, you're there where, I mean, on, on your Instagram, it looks like you get to do a lot of cool travel and you have some ownership of your time, which is awesome. But it plays a lot like that. There's a lot of different strategies to learn. There's a lot of different ways to grow, and it just is really, really fun. So it's fun to see you adding systems. You have some systems that we don't have. Uh, good luck with the employee game. It's hard, but it's also worth it because you start to build your own community. So I'm excited to follow your journey. I'm grateful that we get to have you on the channel, um, especially as a recurring guest. Um, so everyone Give her a follow if you haven't yet. Like and subscribe to the channel because you're going to see a heck of a lot more of Solly here starting the new year.

Great. Well, thanks for having me, and I'm super excited to kick off the series.