EP 688 - Gabriel Petersen On His Strategies And Experiences As A Commercial Investor

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property. For panties on the dollar, get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson.

How's it going, everybody? This is Gabe Peterson from the Real Estate Investing Club. I'm on here with Scott Carson on We Close Notes and I'm super excited to tell you my story. Going from broke, no idea where I was going, to owning multiple commercial real estate properties. So hope you enjoy it and see you on the other side.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Nutcloser Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to have you here today and really excited to have our special guest today. Our rock star guest today is doing a lot of amazing things out of the sunny Pacific Northwest, out of it's always sunny in Seattle. But he is the owner of Kaizen Properties and Honeycrisp Self Storage. And he's also the host of another popular podcast that you guys should also check out called the Real Estate Investing Club Podcast. And I was honored to be a guest on his show a couple weeks ago and obviously we had such a great time. I had to have him on ours and share some of his knowledge and experience and help pick his brain because I know many of you guys are out there not only investing in note and distressed debt, but looking for other properties. And I think we are going to see a lot of opportunities here in the new year. So I'm excited to have the man, the myth, the investment legend, Mr. Gabe Peterson join us today. What's going on, Gabe? How you doing today?

Awesome, Scott. That was quite the introduction. I appreciate it.

I'm available for voiceover work if you need some.

You know what I mean? You made me sound very rosy. I love it.

Well, that's the idea, brother. Right? We don't want to have no slap dicks on the show here. You know what you're talking about? Come on now. Pardon my French there, anybody. If you got offended, tough.

I love it.

But, Gabe, tell us a little bit about yourself. How'd you get into real estate messaging? What were you doing beforehand? And we'll kind of go that route and wander along this crazy episode.

Sounds good, man. Yeah, my story is very nonlinear, which I feel like many people's story is people that are in real estate, they start out in one direction, they make A turn here and make a turn there and end up in real estate. And that's exactly what happened to me. I'm going to go way back to college. So I graduated UW with a degree in philosophy, which is the one degree that has absolutely no value once you get into the real world. And so the goal was to go to law school. I had some family, friends who were lawyers. I followed them around, I did some shadowing. I did not like the work. Just didn't see myself going down that route. So I made a decision. I was like, no, I'm not going to go to law school. I'd even got flown out to colleges, checked them out. But I ultimately decided it wasn't for me and I flew home very proud of my decision. And then I realized, shit, I don't have a plan, I don't know what I'm going to do.

Philosophy had just faded there instantaneously. About was there an area of law that you were. Before you did these follow alongs that you were excited about or thinking about pursuing?

I had told myself human rights law. I was interested just in many, many areas in that field. But honestly, once I'd gotten into it, who knows where I would have gone? And I just didn't. I saw myself as more being out. When I, when I shadowed the people that work in a law firm, much of their time was just spent at their desk. And that just didn't seem like something that I was excited about. And so I decided not to do it. But you're 20 something and you make a decision, you're like, that was the best decision of my life. You don't really think through every step along the way. So I was stuck there, you know, no next plan, no plan B. And so I started, you know, I got a job. I was bartending for a bit. Shoot. I did pretty much every job out there. Eventually, probably about a year later, a friend of mine was working at Accenture, which is a big consulting firm. He showed me consulting. And I was like, all right, that sounds good, I'll try it out. And then I went into consulting. I got a job as a project manager over AT T Mobile up here in Seattle. Well, not AT T Mobile, T Mobile is the client, but I was a consultant. And so I started down that path. Ultimately didn't really like it. The work, it didn't really fit me. Commute was like an hour, hour and a half each way because traffic in Seattle sucks. Did not like that. But I didn't know what else to do. I knew I wanted to do something, but I didn't know how to make money. And that was the big problem. I was kind of chained to that job. Ultimately. It took me seven years to get out. That's a long time. Right. But the whole time I was just trying things. I was like in my mind I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to start my own business. I really had that kind of mindset and I just didn't know how to do it. Didn't have anybody in my family who knew how to do it, who was in that or anybody close to me who was a business owner. So I didn't really have a model to work with. I started the E Commerce store. They actually did pretty well. We did 20,000amonth, but it was just sitting in front of the computer screen, just clicking buttons and it was just horrible. So I did E Commerce. I started my own marketing firm, quote unquote marketing firm. I had like maybe two or three clients, but I went down that path. So it was a lot of false starts, a lot of moving from here to there. Eventually I read the bible of real estate investing, rich dad, poor dad, and it kind of clicked. I was like, this makes a lot of sense. I like it. It's physical, I can see it. There's a structure there. And so I liked the idea of rich dad, poor dad. Obviously most people's, their influences in this is things like HGTV. And so I was like, I can do that HGTV, go in there, spend $1,000, flip it for a million dollars and make.

Buy a million dollar house and a bartender salary, you know, bartender tips and things. But I love what you shared before we dive into this is because I think a lot of Americans are going through that pivot aspect that we got the great resignation. And people are tired of doing things they dislike. Especially last year where they've working from home in from the laptop, not that interaction. I think your story resonates with so many people out there. I'm glad that you're sharing. This is part of what I wanted to talk about. That is because we don't always have the answers. In a pivot, in a chaotic environment, you've got to kind of find your way through it and nobody can really help you except yourself. But as you said, you took a job to pay bills. I got to do something. Three hours round trip commute. Yeah, that'll kill you. But did you start turning that commute into an education aspect of driving and listening to tapes and CDs and stuff like I Imagine you did. You're shaking your head. Yes, Touching. Tell us about that.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was always kind of a big fan of podcasts. Like, we're on one right now. And back in the day there was Entrepreneur on Fire by, I think his name is Sean Lee James.

Jld.

Jld. Yeah. He's the grandfather of podcasting. But I listen to his podcast all the time and he has many different types of guests on there, which is kind of why I went down the E Commerce route and then the marketing route. I don't know how far you want me to go into it at this point. I basically decided to go down the route of real estate. Yeah, I mean, I'll just keep going. I decided to go down. I've read that book. Decided to go down the route and then you have to take it for your first step. Well, actually it took about a year and a half to find a flip and I was still working at this point and so I had walked all these shitty properties and I didn't know what I was doing. Everything is just. When you're starting out, it's just really hard because you don't have a framework to work with.

It's like everything is in Latin. You've got to have somebody literally dissect it and translate. What does this mean? Like, I was doing that this morning. I got a student buying a note and he's like, what does this mean? Address for notices. Well, that's where you want the notices mailed to you in case of something happens. Like, oh, I didn't know that.

I'm like, small things like that it matters.

Exactly. But you started. So were you just walking stuff? Were you starting to spend time in your local real estate club or anything like that? Or just trying just, hey, I'm just going to willy nilly and fly by the seat of my pants.

Yeah, at the beginning, I was just flying by the seat of my pants. I would go on Zillow and I'd look at properties, I'd go and walk them and I would. In Seattle, even at that time, the prices are pretty high. So I was walking them, but I didn't have a plan of how I was going to buy them. And this is one thing that I wish I had done earlier. I did do eventually. But anybody who's starting out, I would highly recommend, you know, getting a mentor, buying a legitimate course, getting some kind of formal education that has a framework that you can work with so you don't make all those, you know, you just waste time. If you don't have something that can kind of guide you down that path. I believe you have a course too, so I'm gonna plug that right there.

There you go. We have three day course find fun and flip. You gotta have a path. But that's. And that's the same thing. When I started learning, I hired a coach and mentor as well to help me out there. So, so critical, especially when you're starting out and then when you dive into different niches. So you buy your first flip. Then it sounds like you finally found one and went that route.

Is that right? Yeah. I eventually got a course actually and that it was Matt Tiriel from California. He's this big time flipper down there. I think he's in multifamily now. But I bought his course. 5,000 bucks. Best 5,000 I spent. And then I finally purchased a property. My first property was a triplex. It was a nightmare. One person was a hoarder, One person was growing weed in their apartment and their electric bill was a million dollars. And then one guy ended up evicting him. He stuffed, I can't remember what it was. Something down the drain and turned on the faucet, flooded the place. So we had to deal with that insurance thing. So it's a good introduction into flipping houses.

Learn everything that's trial under fire or learning by drinking out of a fire hydrant, literally for the most part. But I think you learn more from this tragedy sometimes than the successes, huh?

Yeah. But that was eventually a success. So we held it for, I can't remember, maybe a year. And we sold it for 80 something thousand dollars. And at that time, that was the most money. I was like, all right, I'm done. I retired. That was all I need to do. That got me going. Once you have that first success, you're really like, okay, this works. I can do this. Let's keep going. And after that, started doing a lot of off market marketing. I was doing mailers and stuff, did some wholesales. And then I did another flip. I'm going to fast forward here a little bit. Another flip. I bought a duplex. I rented that out. Fast forwarding, fast forwarding. Eventually we came up to about 2ish years ago, maybe three years ago, no, two years ago. I knew I wanted to find a way to have very sizable cash flow. And I was tired of doing the flips because flipping is a job, first of all. You have to have very specific knowledge because you know contractors. If you don't have the best contractor, you might get Screwed. So you really have to have specific knowledge on how to do a flip.

They're not the most ethical bunch. Kind of like attorneys, right?

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. You got burnt out in that and decided, hey, I want to go in the cash flow game.

Yep, yep. So I turned my attention to commercial and met a partner. We bought a mobile home park. Three months after that we bought a second mobile home park. You know, those were doing really well. They were doing a combined like 25,000amonth. And then from there I, you know, looked at the field I had, you know, I started my podcast and started talking with a bunch of different specialists in different asset classes and ultimately decided to go self storage. So I bought 4 self storage last year and we're rocking and rolling.

That's awesome, man. So how many units over the four do you know?

It's probably around 250.

So we're talking. These are huge. They're kind of average small size. What's been kind of your niche to find the self storage facilities so far?

Well, the ones that I've bought, they've all been on the smaller side, some where institutional investors are not putting their money, which is big if you're getting into an asset class. If you don't have a million millions and millions of dollars to spend, it's really good to go low. It's good to start low. I would not Recommend Starting below 100 units or 150 units in self storage because then you can't have a dedicated property manager. But it is nice to start small because you get amazing deals. Every single deal that I've bought has been, you know, a 15 cap plus. They're just crazy deals. They work really well.

Do you find that the owners of them are flexible and what they want to get out because they didn't want to create another job for themselves? They're gay.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so two of them were from one owner and he was, he's in his 80s. He actually had just had a divorce unfortunately, and he just didn't want them. He like literally did not want them. And he, I said, are you willing to do seller financing? And he said, for sure. That's not the words he used. Those are my words. But he said, right, of course.

Most people, and I want to bring this up here because most people are scared to ask and you never get what you don't ask for. And how stressful was it? I mean, you were a little bit more experienced now and maybe use owner financing in the past for some of your deals, but the first time you're asking a borrower or a potential seller, hey, would you mind carrying paper? It can be a little stressful. But is it worse up here in between, between the two years, or is it worse in real life?

Yeah, well, I mean, I would say it's worse in real life or it's worse when you're actually going through the process. The first one, I actually got seller financing on one of the mobile home parks. That was the second time I negotiated seller financing. It can be stressful if you don't really understand why it's a benefit to both parties. If you can communicate why it's a benefit to the seller, then it's not stressful because you're like, hey man, you're going to make more money. I mean, come on, this is something that benefits you. So that kind of takes the stress away when you know you're on their side as well. Both parties are benefiting from it.

Well, it helps in a couple ways. One, it gets the, as you can say, the proverbial monkey off their back. They don't have to start showing up to their job every day and start getting a monthly thing. It's also a huge tax savings to them. So they don't see any type of big capital gains tax, whether short term or long term because it's now on a deferred sale process. They're getting a little bit each month. They're not being taxed on the whole thing, just what they're coming in as ordinary income for the most part. And then obviously it gives you the flexibility to be able to do more, to be able to step in, take this off without having to go jump through the hoops of getting bank qualified and all that good stuff. Right.

What I love about seller financing is it allows creativity. You can really make it work for whatever situation you're in, whatever situation seller's in. In this situation, he gave me 10% down, which is awesome. I gave him a better interest rate. I think it was 5 or 6%. And so, you know, it was a win win. I don't have to put a lot of money up front. He gives me a good interest rate. And this was already a super high cap, cap rate purchase because he just didn't want the property, didn't want to list it, just didn't want to have to think about it. So, yeah, I mean, it worked out really well. I'm a huge proponent of seller financing. If you can get it, definitely go forward with it.

Now are these properties, RV parks, these self storage Facilities near where you're located or are there different places?

Not at all. So I live in Tacoma, which is just about, you know, half hour, 45 minutes, depending on traffic south of Seattle. So this market is absurd. Things are going for like 4 caps and you just can't find anything. And so the mobile home parks are. They're in Washington state. They're across the mountains in very much smaller metro. So one's in George, one's in Moses Lake. The self storage. I just looked outside of Washington. I was like, screw it. I'm not even going to do it. I'm looking elsewhere. I looked for growth markets. So three of them are in Texas. Texas is great. The prices are lower than here in Seattle. Well, Austin it's not lower, but in some areas of Texas, they're lower than here in Seattle.

Keep Austin weird. It should be Keep Austin expensive is the slogan for real estate. So in Texas, three there in Texas. Without giving away your secret sauce, where are they at? Like Houston, Dallas, rural areas.

Yep. Two of them are just outside of Dallas and then one of them is actually downtown Lubbock.

Ah, very nice college town there. That's a good thing.

We are just a few blocks away from Texas Tech. And I actually just painted the facility in Texas Tech colors. And some. I felt really good about that. I'm like, there you go. It's part of the local culture.

Simple marketing. Paint something the color of the local university. It'll add a lot to it there. So you're buying these. How'd you find these? I'm sure that's one of the things, folks. You're sitting there in Tacoma. Are you just looking in different places? Are you contacting brokers? Are you direct mail? You flying out and knocking on doors, driving for dollars? What's kind of your plan or how have you found these, Gabe?

Yeah, so this is where I kind of had a leg up. Because I mentioned earlier, before I got into real estate, I was a marketing consultant for people out there. And one of my clients was actually a realtor. And so I had experience marketing properties. And so I actually did a lot of things every way works, but it's better to have multiple avenues. Once you get one down, you set it up and then you move on to the next set of that. Move on to the next and leads will just start coming. Obviously, we did direct mail. Direct mail is a great one, especially for mom and pop owners because they tend to not do the technology as well, especially in mobile home parks. Mobile home parks is a lot of mom and Pop owners. So direct mail is killer there. So direct mail, text marketing, ringless voicemail, online ads. So we did pay per click, we did social ads.

How many deals did you look at before you found these? 4. If you keep up with that. Is an idea of knowing your cost per lead then and stuff like that.

I was keeping up with it at a time but I've since. I haven't done it since then.

Too busy. That's okay.

So ballpark, it was about, I want to say it was 50 ish dollars per lead and then per close I think it was about 2,000. So the ones that I bought were, I also did wholesale. So it comes down my pipeline and it's a deal. I'm going to make a move. I don't want to. It benefits both of us. I get the fee. The seller gets to sell his property. So I'll wholesale it if it's not a fit for me. And I think it was like 2,500 or something like that was the cost per acquisition.

That's pretty good, man. When you think about what people are spending on fix and flips and I've seen people say well it's going to cost me five or ten grand for closing in marketing to find something in a competitive market out there. That's ridiculous. And you're getting commercial appreciation, cash flow and not having to create another job for you. Right. That is awesome. So you're looking in some of these smaller markets or smaller properties, stuff like that. So are you setting up the self storage facilities online? Are you hiring a part time property manager? What's kind of the gun in there so that you don't fall in that same trap with the existing owners had.

That is the great benefit of smaller properties that are owned by just mom and pop owners is I mean none of them, absolutely zero of the self storage that I bought were online. They were all older sellers. Literally the only marketing they were doing, they had a sign on the side of the building, whatever storage, here's the number. That's how they marketed their properties. In the modern day and age that is the easiest way to see that appreciation to, to add value to the property is just market the property appropriate. One of the properties I bought it was a guy, he had a moving company, he went out there and he helped people move. And so he had this giant warehouse and then he had this big self storage behind it. And so he was running the self storage as a self storage but he hated it. It was like a business. He didn't like running it he liked running his moving company. So we subdivided the property. I bought it. It had zero customers in it when I bought it because he wasn't doing any marketing and he was downtown. This is Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was downtown, but he just didn't market anything. He was kind of tucked behind things. So his sign was never seen. All I did put it on Google. Google business. I mean we're already, I bought that one probably 3ish months ago and we're already up to like 30, 40% occupancy. And so, you know, we're just going up, going up, going up. It's a. Marketing is one of the easiest things you can. Terms of adding value.

Well, that's the thing. We're all in marketing. No matter what type of deal, whether you're in apartments, RVs, selling, tiddlywings online, we're all in marketing. You have that marketing first mindset. Yeah. Unfortunately, you get folks that have been operating there, not the most up to date on marketing tactics. Sign and let's put some flyers out in the yellow pages to sell spots. And that doesn't work these days. You got to evolve with that. With that being said, did you hire a mentor to help you out with self storage or a coach take a class on it? Still learning that process?

Surprisingly, no. So, you know, at this point, I had already done a bunch of flips. I had done single family rentals, I had done mobile home parks, all this stuff. So I had experience behind me, I knew kind of how it worked. So I was able to figure out self storage. Not on my own. You know, I did some research. You know, I joined groups, I asked people. It was easier for me to transition into self storage than it would have been if I had been completely new. And I really like self storage because it is more retail than it is something like multifamily, which people live in it. It's a house. And self storage is a little bit more retail. It's a product that you're offering people. So I really like that you can manage them without having people at the facility. So you can buy three or four small facilities in the same area, have one property manager who supports them all. So it's really nice that way.

That's the thing too. You add some technology, I've got some friends, they've got an ATM there that manages everything from buying the lock to signing the lease, collecting rent on a regular basis. Plus it's nice too. Like you said, you don't have the drama of people shoving a potato or something. Down and sinking, turn the water on your overhead is somebody was, I was talking with somebody the other day about multifamily has a 45 to 50% upfront cost basis. Susan, the self storage is what, somewhere between a 28 and 35% cost basis overhead to it for the most part.

You mean opex? Yeah, yeah. So I mean I've seen some properties I've underwritten, they're running at like 20% opex, which is absurd, but I usually underwrite 30 to 35% if you're into consideration, third party property managers, stuff like that. And so 30 to 35 is usually what I underwrite.

Nice, nice. That gives you some underwrite at that. That gives you a little cushion there to save and not say pad your bottom line. But you know, you're underwriting, make sure.

I don't lose money.

That's exactly the most important thing. Now are you fighting now with owner finance on some of these other ones? Did you have to go get financing, use cash OPM with some of the stuff, what have you used to help when you couldn't get favorable terms.

So luckily I was able to buy all of them up until these last two with my own cash had pretty favorable terms. I got solar financing, so I did very little down. And the mobile home parks, I had partners there with me. And so we all went in, we had, we put our money into it. But the last two, I. Well, okay, no, it's only the last one. The one before that I actually did buy with my own money. The last one, I raised money just for my family and friends. I had the deal. I'd been posting on Facebook, on LinkedIn, not obnoxiously, but just, hey, check it out. I bought this property. I did this little thing to it. It looks nice for now. I'm not trying to sell anything, but people see it and then over time they're like, okay, Gabe, sell storage. This is what he does. And so I got to a point, didn't have enough money to buy it. So I went to my parents, my sister, my friends, you know, my, my very close network, friends and family network.

That's the financial friends as well. Yeah, right.

And I just showed them like, hey, these are the numbers. This is what I hope to get you. And you know, I have confidence in those numbers. And so they said, let's do it. And there we go. Yep, awesome.

I love it. So big goal. You close on basically average one a quarter last year. What's the goals for 20, 22, 40k?

So I switched to Self storage in April and it took me about three months to do the first deal. And then I did three deals within the next couple of months. I got some good momentum. I don't want to do anything less than 20 to 25,000 square feet going forward. And so I think the smallest one I did last year was 7,700 square feet. And they still make money, but I want to go bigger. I want to have a property that really is able to support a full time property manager. So I'm looking at a few right now. They're in the two to $3 million range and I'm hoping to take those down.

That's awesome. You need to put me on the list for stuff here that you don't want here in Texas. All right. I don't mind paying wholesale fees, everybody. Definitely now. When did you start the real estate investing club?

I started that right when Covid happened. That was about the time that I was really driving up my networking because I was just getting into commercial and Covid happened. I couldn't network, couldn't meet people. I was thinking, what else can I do? Podcast is a great idea. And so started the podcast. It's been awesome. If anybody's thinking about it, podcasts are a great way, not even to market, but just to meet other investors and get knowledge. Like Scott with notes. I don't know anything about notes. I got to talk with Scott for half hour on my podcast, learn a little bit about notes. And so, yeah, it's been a great, great experience.

Yeah, that's the thing is you never know who's listening and somebody reaches out to you, you're like, oh, I've been listening and live streamed all your podcasts. I know everything. I want to do something that's always exciting. Besides obviously building the camaraderie and the network. I think a lot of us real estate investors, we were like minded in believing there's plenty of deals to go around. That's why we're sharing information, that's why we're talking to people. Because, hey, it's, it's. I think it's one of the best ways to network these days because if you can't travel and most people are listening, they listen to the entire thing. I do a lot of YouTube videos, but it's much better than, you know, it's just something interesting about. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. What's been the biggest surprise from the podcast? Anybody reached out to you or you raised any capital from it or any deal flow?

Yeah, I have gotten deals through there. I have had people reach out and ask if they can invest in my projects. I haven't taken them up on it yet. I honestly don't know how to do syndications yet. That's going to be the next thing. And so I just really like when people reach out and they're like, hey, I listen to your podcast. That's cool to me just hearing that people actually listen, they're taking in the information. So yeah, I've just kind of enjoyed it.

I love that you've taken your podcast and treated it like an investing club. I think that's such a great thing without the word and hey, I'll interview.

Folks on there and get the knowledge.

Out there versus trying to meet in a meet a hotel or meetup or stuff like that. You really expanded, really your audience because of the podcast. We've seen that tremendously as well with our different shows. But what's thinking back here? What's one big thing that you learned? It was either came from a mistake or a failure or like, ah, crap, I shouldn't have done that. Over the last two years, since you've moved into the commercial space with the mobile home parks or the self storage facility, what's been the biggest learning thing?

Let's see the biggest learning, I mean, it's probably the size. I think I already mentioned this point, but buying smaller facilities, I first started kind of focused on the smaller side because I wanted good deals and I wanted kind of put my foot in the door and just know that I understood how to run the type of asset. Small deals, they do have better numbers. But there's a downside when you have smaller deals. You can't, as I said, hire a property manager to be specific to that property. And not being able to hire someone for that property just makes things more difficult for you because then you have to do boots on the ground. You have to have somebody kind of piecemeal together, your help versus just having one person you go to say, hey man, you're property manager for property A over here, tell me all about it. And so the biggest lesson I learned is I started small. I wish I had started big.

I love it, I love it. Now, have you seen on some of your properties the ability to expand adding units to what you're doing? And that's one thing you're looking for now, maybe a little bit more than this Smart. You look at, hey, I can actually add 20 or 30 things to it to help with cash flow too.

Yep. Actually two of the facilities are on bigger parcels. One's on a much bigger parcel. And so there's a lot of opportunity to expand. I'm still trying to decide if I want to do that. I mean, eventually I will, but you know, one of them is probably about 45 minutes outside of Dallas. And it's, it's a drive through city. It's Millsap, Millsap, Texas. And so it's smaller, it has a lot, you know, there's things going into there. But I don't think the local economy can support additional square footage. And so I'm waiting for. That's the direction of development in Dallas is, you know, that direction. So I'm waiting for development to kind of catch up and then I'll do the build.

I've got a friend, Stacey Rossetti, who's out of Georgia who does self storage facilities and she loves that too. In the path of progress, what she does, she turns basically without doing any construction. She sells parking lots basically for storage. You know, get the car out, the RV out, the boat out and helps to put those things in place to bring in capital. Then as things progress, as she gets close to 100% or more, so then she starts looking at, okay, let's add a strip of new doors to it and go up from there. But if you've got a big parcel, I mean that's especially here in Texas. We love our boats, we love our RVs, we love the old car sitting on the cinder blocks in a lot of cases, you know what I mean? Maybe the HOA or the next door neighbors I don't like so much.

Yep, yep, yep.

Let's sit down. And you're looking. You said you love Texas. Who doesn't love Texas? It is one of the bigger states when it comes to RVs and self storage out there. Florida is also really good too. What other markets are you looking in? You mentioned Arkansas. There's. Is one. Any hot spots that you like or love?

I've just been kind of been focusing on the Sunbelt. Texas. It's great. The problem with Texas is that most metros already have high square foot per capita. And so there's just, you know, there's not a guarantee if you find an unoccupied or a vacant property that you're going to be able to fill it.

Right.

There's already a lot of options out there. And so I've been looking at the Sunbelt. I really like Charleston in South Carolina. I just like the city. I think it's an awesome city. And so I've just recently I've kind of Been focusing on trying to find self storage in that area just so I could fly out there and have a reason to chill.

Yeah. Did you just take a trip out there or is that. Not yet.

We were.

This was. I remember this from our last conversation. You're pretty excited about.

Yeah, no, so that was changed. It was a cruise. That one changed. Yeah. True. Cruises are just crazy right now with all the, you know, a lot of changes going on in the cruises. Me and my girlfriend went to Charleston last year and we went the year before that. It's awesome. If anybody hasn't gone to Charleston, So good food there. I love the food. So I'm trying to find something out there because I would love to have a reason to go out there more often.

There you go. Exactly. Best where you want to travel to make it a write off. Yep, sure. We'll go to Charleston. Honey, it's a write off to fly out there.

It's business. Come on.

It is business in a lot of cases. And that's what's so great about your story and your journey, Gabe, is you've had twists and turns. As we all know, every entrepreneurial journey is never a straight and narrow lane. It's ups and downs and back and forth and trying to figure out what the heck we want to do and how we implement that. So just kudos to you, man, for having an amazing journey and going out there and really kicking ass and taking names and just kind of like I'm, you know, you're not trying to do things too crazy. And you're not definitely the tortoise. Obviously you're out there somewhere in between that hare and that turtle, making things happen and, and doing things on your own there. Do you still looking for rehabs or rentals? Are you like, screw that, I'm done for that?

Hell no. No, I'm out of slips. I've had people actually give, you know, send me flips that were good deals and I was like, nope, not doing it.

Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent. Exactly. Well, that's the thing is once you evolve, because I think all investors evolve, we. We fall in love with those fictional TV just flip this house. Hgtv. Oh yeah, we can do that. And then, oh, no, we can't do that. You evolved to doing bigger things in the rentals and landlord, and now you're really just in the commercial space and eventually in the lending space. Therefore, you're using lending terms to help you get better deals out there. Have you set your sight on any goals for what you want to acquire.

Here in the new year 2022, I want to do 100,000 square feet and that's the goal. Pretty easy. Doesn't matter if it's 10 deals, one deal, just a hundred thousand. That's what I put my number on.

There you go. Now, when you acquire a new self storage, how much boots on the ground are you there initially? Are you there? Quite a bit. Very hands on in the first, what, 30, 60, 90 days or what's the kind of the timeframe for that, Gabe?

It varies. The one that I bought in Lubbock, I'm doing 100% remote. This is the first time I've done it remote. It's just like it's in the heart of the very, very downtown Lubbock. And so I've been able to find contractors to go out there, boots on the ground to help me out. So I'm doing it all from my computer. I bought it, I painted it, I got electrical out there, I got Internet installed, getting the security cameras installed next week, getting the gate installed or fence and gate. And so I've been able to do it all from the comfort of my home, which is great, but that's, I mean that's not something that I would recommend. Definitely think you got to go out there, be boots on the ground yourself for a little bit, especially for bigger facilities. That's not something I do with, with anything, you know, bigger. I'd want to be out there and, and help it along as it onboards.

Does this one have a good major in place already or good staff already that you took over or anything?

Somebody who helps out? Yeah, it's not. Again, it's a smaller facility. You can't have an actual person, staff member, but it's somebody who comes, you know, once a month, once every other week to kind of clean up the area, Check locks, do lockouts, stuff like that.

Awesome. Good stuff, man. Well, hey man, congratulations on your success. We hope that the new year is even more rocking for you and just thanks for coming on and sharing your journey and sharing your knowledge here for you if folks want to reach out to you. Gabe, what's the best way for people to reach out to you besides obviously listening to the real estate investing Club podcast?

Yeah, no, for sure. That's way. It's probably actually just going to the website, the Real Estate Investing Club. So it's TheRealEstateInvestingClub.com check it out. Yeah, I'm just writing an ebook because people have asked about self storage and so I'm writing an ebook. It will be at therealestateinvestingclub.com ebook and just kind of tell you how my journey went. And yeah, I'm looking forward to helping people get to where I am because, you know, anybody can do it. There was a point at which I had zero money and in fact I was dreading the next mortgage payment because I wasn't making enough money in E commerce. So I was there. I was broke. You can get out of it. Anybody can get to wherever you want to be. So looking forward to helping people out, helping get to whatever their financial goals are.

Awesome. When's the ebook come out? You about done with it or you're. Just get started, man.

I so I, you know, I'm so. This is one. One piece of advice. I'm not big on like giving out advice, but one piece of advice I would give someone is focus. I have a problem with kind of the shiny object syndrome. And so if you can just focus on one thing, even when it comes to self or real estate, just focus on one asset class. You know, I've done mobile home parks, multifamily single family, blah, blah, blah. It's really great if you can just focus. So I'm trying to focus. I just bought a facility, closed on it last month and so I'm still doing the rehab there. So I don't have a date. I'm not gonna. This is definitely secondary to my.

That's good. When you get it, let me know. We'll put the link and then go back and put the links in the chat, roll in the description, stuff like that for it to help you out there. But so honored. Good stuff, man. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on the podcast, Gabe.

Yeah, Scott, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Anytime. So hey guys. Love this episode. Listen to what Gabe. Listen to the nuggets that he shared. You know, if you're struggling, you're not alone. Reach out, talk to people, listen in, get educated. If you got to make a pivot or switch, do it, do it. Probably sooner than later if your budget can afford to, to make things happen. And don't be afraid to say no to things, as Gabe said he wishes he says a little bit more no to things versus saying yes all the time. Because we as entrepreneurs, we love that squirrel syndrome or that shiny object syndrome. So go out, take some action, everybody. And we'll see you on the top, everybody.

Bye.