Cut Costs & Take Charge: The Revolutionary Solution For Landlords w/Tiffany Mittal

Welcome back to the Money School podcast, where you learn how money really works. You'll hear the inside story of wealthy investors and entrepreneurs, from how they think about money and how they use money, to how you can take back control of your life and your finances by changing just one thing, and that's where your money goes first. I'm your host, Chris Naugle, and on this podcast, we have one mission, and that is to show you how money really works so you can reclaim control of your life and your finances. So, let's jump in. What's going on, everybody? I'm Kris Naugle, and welcome back to the Money School Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about some really amazing things when it comes to multifamily. We're going to talk about a journey, a story from my guest, and one that goes from the West Coast all the way back to the East Coast. You know, I say this all the time, you know, I'm the bank now, you know, the ultimate in real estate is being the bank. Well, some of this story really relates to mine, and that is in certain states, being a landowner, being a landlord can be very difficult. And sometimes it requires hard decisions like picking your family up, 4 kids, and moving across the country to Florida. So, we got Tiffany Mittal on today, and Tiffany Mittal's got a company called Utility Rangers, or Utility Ranger, no S.

No S.

Okay. And I want to really spend some time today helping all of you understand the story behind this company because she started getting into it and I'm like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold it for everybody because this is good. Because sometimes you gotta find the holes to figure out the solution to your problem. Tiffany, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. Happy to help people just like me and hopefully your listeners as well.

Awesome. Well, one of the things I love to kind of bring up is just your stats. You and your husband have 130 units. You've been doing this for 13 years. And then I had heard you say that your father-in-law was also in real estate and had 3,000 units. So let's just talk a little bit about how did you and your husband get into real estate? Like, what did you do prior? And what was that calling that brought you into wanting to be a landlord? And not just a landlord, I believe you started in California, beautiful state, Not a very landlord-friendly state.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, it's really funny. I'm a second-generation San Diego native. Never thought I would leave. I love San Diego, but it's definitely challenging there to be a landlord. My— I kind of fell into the business. I actually started off right out of high school, became a hairstylist, opened up a hair salon, did that for about 10 years. And then right around the '08 crash, sold my salon, went back to grad school. My husband, grew up in the business. He would always say, you know, his friends were off going to Club Med during the summer. He was cleaning apartments. So for him, you know, his father immigrated here from India, you know, kind of started everything from scratch, grew a portfolio of about 3,000 units. That family office we broke off from to really focus on our own kind of journey and kind of what we wanted to do with our lives. And part of that was Starting our Utility Ranger PropTech company, kind of re-swiveling. Where do we want to live as a family? I think everybody kind of retook a hard look at their life during COVID and said, I want to be happy now. I can't live like this. It's hard to be a landlord in California. We always wanted to live in Florida, living that kind of on-the-water lifestyle. And we said, why are we waiting for retirement to be happy? I want to be happy now. So we moved our whole family out to Florida late 2022, actually. Yeah, pretty much. No, not late. Mid-2022. Just got our PropTech company launched earlier this year in '23, focusing on transitioning our properties out of California, moving our properties to Florida. It's been quite a journey along the way and could not have been happier with our decision. Hard decisions to make, but I think when you have to put you and your family first, you know, you make decisions that are best for you. And Florida was one of those. And so, we're pretty happy. Never looked back yet.

I love that. Now, I got to ask, and I'm sure a lot of my listeners are thinking this, because your husband comes from a background where literally all he ever really knew was real estate. And then, when you guys decided to get into real estate, do you think that really helped you a lot or do you think it might have actually hindered you in getting into real estate? Because I think it could go both ways. A lot of times people grow up in a household or a family where real estate's what the family does, but then all of a sudden they get into real estate and it's actually a hindrance. So how did that work out for the two of you?

Well, I think it came really natural to my husband. I mean, this is all he's ever known. And I think once you get into real estate and you really understand that passive income, side of it. People, I think, in my generation had this do what you love and the money will come mentality. And so that's all he's ever known, and he loves it, right? But really doing what you love, meaning that you have enough financial freedom to have your main expenses paid for, right, through a passive income stream. So then you can spend your time doing what you love to do. And so I think we saw that as a mechanism of how do we create enough passive income so we can focus on spending time with our family, traveling the world, doing what we love to do on top of also enjoying it, right? So when I transitioned from— I started helping him after I sold my salon business. I started helping him while I was in grad school and realized you may love this, but operations is hard. If I have to deal with your bedbugs, And your tenant disputes and your maintenance manager. Like, this isn't my life. This isn't what I want to do. I didn't realize that real estate operations is hard work, and I wanted to deal with investors and people like my husband. And so I identified really quickly that operations wasn't my cup of tea. I understood what it brought to the family as far as passive income. So then I pivoted into property technology so that way I'm still in the real estate world. I identified a problem that we had in our portfolio, tried to get people to help us. No one would help us. So I said, you know what, I'm just going to create a product to help ourselves. And then I realized there were so many other people out there like us who had the same problem. And that's when we took it more seriously and developed the product. To service every other small investor like us who, you know, pretty much gets ignored from the PropTech companies unless you have a kind of institutional-style portfolio. And so now we're both in real estate. I'm in PropTech. My husband's owner. Now we're third-party managers. Now we're asset managers because you can't manage from a different state very easily. So that's helped kind of transition our roles a little bit. But We kind of each have our own swim lane, uh, that we do what we love, but we're still both very much kind of overlaying into what each other are doing.

So I think, you know, what we need to do is just take a step back and describe what does prop tech mean, because I think a lot of people hear that. You know what it means, I know what it means, but I don't think a lot of my listeners will. So can we dive into what is prop tech and what is it that your company does?

So PropTech basically stands for property technology. Think of like fintech means financial technology. It's basically a technology platform that helps people with property operations. So landlords, property management companies, anyone who's operating a property, software that helps you do that. Property management software is a PropTech company. So anything that helps your property management operations is what PropTech means.

Perfect.

Yeah.

And I know when me and my wife had 91 doors, you know, it was a nightmare. We didn't have PropTech. We had a property manager, and I'm sure they use some type of technology, but they, you know, the problem that we had with the property manager is it just seemed like we never made any money. Every month something broke. Every month the property manager would send their crews out, fix things, send a big old bill, and we We managed them and I would have to go down there and sit and audit and they never had all the records. So, it was just like this chasing the tail kind of game. So, with technology, especially your technology, how would that have helped someone like myself, a small real estate developer, you know, or sorry, a small real estate owner with 91 doors, or even if I only had 5 doors? What does the software do that helps with efficiencies? And just helps you focus on what you are actually good at doing instead of, you know, now all of a sudden you're managing property management companies that you're paying and they're not doing their job.

Yeah, exactly. So, well, let me even go back a little bit further to the problem I identified and then kind of why we started it, because no one would help us because we weren't big enough. So for example, we had about 100 units at the time. in San Diego, and actually probably had about 65 units at the time in San Diego when we first started doing this back in 2011. Our water bills were astronomical and they were going up year over year. We were just including that with rent. Of course, our tenants would sign up for their electric with the electric company, but the water bill comes to the landlord, sewer bills, pest control bills, trash bills, that all comes to the landlord to pay for. So unless you kind of unbundle that from the rent, You know, the big Class A apartment buildings, they do it all the time. You know, my rent's $1,300 plus utilities. I think I'm at market rate. I'm renting mine $1,300, but my utilities are included. It wasn't until one of my residents called one day complaining that her neighbor was leaving the water on. So we sent our onsite manager in there. She wasn't home. She comes back from work. We're like, what are you doing? Her shower's on all day. She said, well, my dog has anxiety. And so when I leave for work, she barks and upsets the neighbors. So if I leave my shower on all day, she thinks I'm home and doesn't bark. And I went, oh my gosh, do you realize?

I gotta say something. This is so absurd with all the technology, like, you know, Amazon Echos and everything. Can't you just be like, hey, uh, hey Siri, or hey Alexa, play the sound of a shower, and it would play all day long. But she remembered, like, when there's 2011, it makes me so mad because there's people that can't even like get water to live. I mean, and give their children—

I mean, something, right? But this is 2011. Like, the iPad had just come out if you think about it. So this is still early. So we were like, oh my God, I'm looking, sitting around the kitchen table with my husband saying these water bills are Really eating into our profits. We need to do something. And his father, being a little bit more advanced than we were, said we should do this RUBS on the platform. And I was like, what's RUBS? And they said it's Ratio Utility Billing System. And so I'm Googling RUBS, find all these companies that will do this where they basically take your utility bills, they rebill them out to your tenants for you on your behalf, and they act as the Utility company to your tenants, and you start billing out water, sewer, trash. And I'm like, brilliant, this is what we should do. I went to every single one of them and I said, ready, take me, we're ready to go. Let's start billing our tenants for their water. Maybe only then will they understand what the cost of water is. You know, bottom of the barrel in San Diego, our water costs are crazy. And, you know, all of them looked at me and they said, I'm sorry, You're too small. We don't take anybody unless they have 1,000 units or more in their portfolio. We have 1,000-unit minimums. We can't help you. Called everywhere, turned away. And I said, how am I supposed to do this? How am I supposed to help my residents become more accountable for their usage if no one will help me? And so my husband knew at the time, like, I know you don't like the operations. You know, I'm struggling, you know, dealing with all the managers. This is not my cup of tea. He said, well, why don't you go? You just got out of grad school. Why don't you go work for one of these utility billing service companies, kind of like backdoor the service? And I said, oh, that's a great idea. So I got a job at a local one. It was a startup. They were maybe making about $100,000 a year at that point. I was employee number 4. I helped grow that company over 5 years to $20 million. And—

Wait, they went from $100,000 a year?

$100,000 to $20 million in 5 years. I mean, we were a rocket ship and I learned everything there was to learn about utility billing. I understood why firsthand why they wouldn't take people like me on as a client because we had employees, we had billing departments of people who were hand-entering this information into software that we were licensing from a third party that's way too complicated for anyone to do themselves. You know, so there's no reason that that same biller that I'm employing is going to spend time on somebody with 10 units When they need to focus on people who have, you know, 200 units, 500 units, thousands of units in their portfolio. It's just time value money thing. So my sister who's in LA had about a dozen units. And so we started doing this on our one property. Before I get into that, our first property we tried this on, my husband's like, oh my gosh, all of our tenants are going to move out. They're going to be mad we're charging them for water. I said, no, I've done this enough. They're not going to move out. This is not uncommon. We're just going to start doing it. Instead of a flurry of move-out requests, we got a flurry of maintenance requests of people who are like, oh, my toilet's running. Oh, my faucet's leaking. Maybe it's been leaking or running for months, but I haven't told you because I'm secretly hiding a cat in my unit that I don't want you to know about. Or maybe I had extra tenants who've been staying longer and I don't want to tell you about it, so I don't want you in my units. But all of a sudden they get a bill for their water, sewer, trash. You better believe it. They're calling you every time that toilet runs. So immediately our overall consumption at the property went down by about 20%. My husband was shocked. But on top of that, that's not even the secret. The secret behind utility billing, it's not about billing your tenants for utilities and taking that 3rd largest expense and increasing your NOI because you're basically moving it onto the income side. What the secret behind it was is when we went to go get that property refinanced by Fannie Mae, they valued our property at $1 million more just for our additional $36,000 of additional revenue that year, which is about $80 a month per tenant, about $1,000 a year per unit of additional money. So your utility money that is typically your expense, Divided by your cap rate for caps in California, $36,000 divided by 0.04 is like $900-something thousand. They gave us a cash-out refinance of $500,000 that we were able to use that money and buy more properties. And I was like, ding dong, like, this is what it's about. It's not about the billing. It's not about just giving your tenants a bill. It's about forced appreciation. It's about forcing the appreciation of your multifamily property by ticking up that NOI, by transitioning your tenant's responsibility from landlord-paid utilities to tenant-paid utilities for free. I did nothing other than that, increasing the value of your property to be able to access that additional capital and grow your portfolio. And I was like, nobody will help the small guy. My sister, 12 units, she saw what we were doing. She said, Sign me up. I have a duplex. I have a triplex. I have a quadplex. Like, sign me up. I said, I can't. You're too small because I worked for one of these companies. I said, but let me build you this, like, side calculator, and I'll do it with mail merge so you can do it yourself. And I built her a calculator. She started doing it herself. And then I said, you know what? I could do this myself too. And why am I sitting here? And these small guys, even if the companies do take them on as clients, you're treated like a tier 5 client. They don't want to talk to you. You're lucky if you get a callback. Why give my service to someone who's going to treat me bad? I just need a tool to do it myself. So I said, you know what? These guys don't need these companies. They just need a tool. So I'm going to take this service model. that I know everything about because I've scaled these companies now. I'm going to turn it into a software model. I'm going to give the software model to people just like me, the underserved community of multifamily. Like, think of how many multifamily units there are in the United States. 50% of those units are owned by mom-and-pop guys who have under 1,000 units. So you have this total, like half of the market is completely underserved. Because unless you're an institutional player, the prop tech companies won't pay attention to you. And I said, no more. I'm going to change it. I'm going to create it. And so that's what I did. We created Utility Ranger, which is basically a software platform to help you bill your tenants yourself, make the money yourself. It totally is free for our users. And it's insane because now you're creating asset value increase. It's like another tool in your tool belt. For your value-add strategy, right? I don't have to dump a bunch of capital into my properties like counters and flooring. I can just change the tenant responsibility, instantly value-add, and then use that capital to even maybe upgrade my units or use that capital to grow.

I love that. I always talk about money. I mean, that's the space I'm in, and I'm always talking about how do you get wealthy? And I always just tell people, you solve a really big problem for other people. And it's unique because all the companies companies that I've created, whether it's Money School or Private Money Club, they were companies that were created to solve my problem. And I love that's what you did. You saw a problem, you then kind of literally infiltrated like the company, learned the ropes, came out and created a solution to your problem. And then you realized, wait a second, this is a problem for my my sister, this is a problem for 50% of, you know, America. Holy cow, that's a lot of freaking problems to solve. And that's how multibillion-dollar companies are created. They just solve a problem, a common problem for a lot of people. Now, let me— you had mentioned something and maybe I heard it wrong, but it's free?

So we charge $3 per— we have 2 models, a $2 and a $3 model. A $2 per unit model is like, I just have one utility I want to bill with rent on the bill. $3 is like all in. Like, I have water, sewer, trash, pest control. Maybe I want to get WiFi on the property and give out WiFi codes. Maybe I want to have a cable contract and subbill out the cable, whatever that is, right? So it's an unlimited subscription. So most people choose our $3 Cadet versus Commander. Everything's kind of Space Ranger themed. And so our Commander module, but because you become your own utility billing provider, you can charge the admin fee on the resident's invoice. Of course you can. So that's where that $3 goes. It goes to your resident. So on their bill, they get their rent, their utilities, their $3 admin fee, and we actually allow them to increase that admin fee up to $10 in certain areas, all regulatory dependent upon where you are. In Texas, it can't be more than $3, but mostly everywhere you can go a little bit higher than that. So maybe it's $5. Or a $6 admin fee. Now I have a revenue generation tool on top of the money that you're paying for your subscription. So maybe I'm making $2 or $3 extra per month on top of the utilities that now I can use that money to pay for other sunk costs. Think of like property management software. You can't recover that cost, right? It's a sunk cost of a couple of bucks a month. Now you're covering that with your admin fee. So not only have I made my software free, you've made your property management software free because you're collecting all that back, which is just every dollar on that NOI has that cap rate multiplier, shows the value of the property. Your NOI divided by your cap rate is how multifamily properties are valued. So every single dollar that you can get on there has a massive multiplier once it's divided by your cap rate. So we tried to make it very simple. It's free. So not only do you get your tenants reducing their use, Right? You have conservation at the property level because just think about when you go to a hotel room, right? You unpack, your clothes are all wrinkly. What do you do? You have to go somewhere. You shove your shirt in the shower, you turn it on hot water.

Never done that.

Shut the shower door and you let it go. And it's because it comes with the cost of the hotel room. You don't think about it. You just think, I don't want to pull the iron out of the closet and try and do this myself, right? But our tenants think the same way. Unless they're actually paying a bill, you can't just flat fee them. That's just a rent increase for them. Unless they see that bill fluctuating each month, they're not going to modify their behavior. You want them to modify that behavior because they, I'm going to turn off the sink while I'm brushing my teeth. I'm not going to do a load of laundry with one piece of clothing in there or do the dishwasher with one dish in there because now I have a bill coming to me Each month. So you have tenant responsibility, then you have NOI increase, property value increase, and now you can not only do this for free but make more money to cover your other costs. So it's like win-win-win across the board. And so I just try to make it as easy as possible for people like us just to win and level the playing field. These institutional investors have had all the control in the market, and it's about time the smaller investors You know, get that same advantage the big guys have had for years.

That's really cool. I love that. And if I'm not mistaken, did I hear something about Mr. Cardone taking a liking in that?

It's so, you know, what's funny is I, during COVID is when I left, I worked for a couple other prop tech companies, moved into fintech, realized I didn't like fintech. I didn't care if my payment went through a half a second faster. I was creating real value in prop tech, I felt like. So I looked at my husband, I said, I can't work another day on someone else's thing. Like, I have this calling. I want to develop this utility billing software. And so he gave me my initial investment of $250,000. But I'm a non-technical tech founder. I know what I want to create, but I can't cut code, right? And so you have— you're kind of at the mercy of these software development companies, and a lot of people get hosed. And I found a great software development company who started us off. Got us right on the right foot. They were an amazing team. They branded us Utility Ranger. Still, they're actually— I love them so much in San Diego. They had that same concept. How do you take a really complex process like utility billing? It sounds about as sexy as doing your own taxes. Nobody wants to do your own taxes, right? Doing your own utility billing does not sound fun. So the designer who designed our initial brand and our software Who's actually one of the contributors in TurboTax. And so we use that same kind of philosophy, like a TurboTax philosophy for utility billing, making it super fun to do and super easy to do. But a year later, I was out of money and they said it was going to be another $500,000 and another year to finish. And I said, there's no way I can go back to my husband after quitting my day job and getting a quarter million dollars, which I've spent. There's no way I can ask him for more money. So I said, you know, I need a partner. And I knew the reason because I've been in the proptech. The reason nobody reaches out to these small investors is because they don't know how to reach them. Most people like me and other investors, they're not advertising on LinkedIn, hey, I got 50 units, or hey, I have 100 units. You know, I have a day job. This is like my side gig, passive money, you know, passive income. But they all follow people like a Grant Cardone, right? These people are helping small investors, you know, like a Jake and Gino. They're helping these small investors grow and figure this out on their own. And I said, you reach these people by finding nodes, the nodes of who people follow to learn how to do this. So, you know, I pitched my company to Grant during one of his business boot camps in 2020, made it to the top 10. Totally bombed on stage because Zoom, you know, just was still new in infancy at that point. I had Zooms crashing and it just didn't go so well. So I kind of regathered myself and I said, he has to be my partner because his whole audience are people just like me, my target market, and they need just as much help as I do. So he partnered up with this guy, Jared Yellen, and they started 10X Incubator, which is we're gonna basically build, scale, and sell 10,000 tech companies in the next 10 years because, you know, these people, you know, non-technical tech founders are getting hosed by software developers. We wanna create a safe space for them to build a software company that's relevant and kind of get them to market, co-found companies with them. So I said, oh my gosh, this is my chance. And so I pitched my company to them again. And they said yes on the spot. They said, I'm going past all my due diligence that we normally go through. We love you. We love this. And they said, outside of our normal system, we'll acquire your company, half of your company on the spot. And they said, you can think about it. And I said, I don't have to think about it. Like, this is a dream come true for me. And so, yeah, so we went in, we partnered 50/50. They finished my software for me. They taught me how to raise my first round of capital. They've been my entire backend infrastructure in starting this company, which has just been an amazing partnership, the best thing I could have ever done. We launched earlier this year in 2023, about beginning of April is when we kind of had our full launch. And now it's just been building up clients that are just like me trying to say, okay, how can I do this myself? No one will solve this problem for me. And, you know, going around and teaching people how to do this. It's not hard. They just need a tool and they need someone to show them how to do it. And so that's what we've been doing. So we have amazing partners. We've been growing. We have some big partnerships that are coming out of this right now. We're definitely getting the eyes of the industry giants who are saying, oh, wow, I probably should have done this ourselves. And you're definitely onto something. And so we had a few big meetings, some acquisition offers we actually had to turn down. And we are, we're, you know, we're going to the races. And so we are, we're looking for people who need to learn how can I grow my portfolio and how can I use utilities as a value-add strategy.

Do you ever feel like you don't have control of your real estate business or your money? That's right. The big banks and the institutions, they're in control, right? I know you've felt that before. Private Money Club puts you back in the driver's seat. As members often tell us, it's a total game changer. Join the community of like-minded lenders and borrowers by going to private-money-club.com. Sign up. I think that's a really cool story. And, you know, I can relate. I mean, having a fintech company, Private Money Club, like, I know, like, our first developers hosed us good, you know, took $300 grand and built us a piece of garbage that barely worked. You know, it was kind of duct taped together. Then we threw a, you know, and, and some people don't make it past that. Luckily, when we did our launch, we had a lot of success. So that gave us the capital to go out and do the second round of development, which, you know, will be our next rollout 3.0, which is probably almost done. But then we'll go into, you know, it'll be technically be for us beta 3 for the new technology. And then we'll, we'll soft launch it in April and hard launch it in October. But it's ironic that you're talking about Grant Cardone because somebody that's very close with Grant came to me that saw our technology and is like, oh my God, you have got to pitch this to Grant. So I had a pitch deck because, you know, just when you have a tech company, you have a pitch deck, which is kind of one of the things. So we just last week sent our entire pitch deck over to Grant's, Grant and Jared and also his assistant. So we're still waiting to hear what'll happen, whether it works or not. It doesn't make a difference, but it's kind of, it's It's just unique that you just told that story. And I'm like, wow, this sounds really familiar because that's—

I will tell you, I've worked for software companies, right? A lot of software companies. It's hard to find people who are partners as great as they've been partners, especially people— I think a woman in tech is definitely even a little bit more of a struggle. They're like, oh, you're not being part of the team unless you're going out for happy hour. And I'm like, I got 4 kids at home. I can't go out for happy hour. And so people who really understand to put family first and not just have this kind of old boys club, these people who have been my partners have been the best decision I've ever made because they're true partners in my software. And I will say that it was amazing. So if you can get that opportunity to partner with them, I think that what they bring to the table is the expertise, You know, it's, it's just been one of the best partnerships and one of the best moves that I didn't think twice about. I just said, you know what, this feels right. This is exactly what I wanted. I know it's a lot of my company to give up, but, you know, I also know that you can't do it alone. You know, you've got to find the right team of people around you. And I can't suggest their team highly enough for what they really brought to the table to get us where we are today.

Oh, that's really good to hear. I mean, you know, I kind of, I sent it over just on the recommendation that I should. We'll see what happens. I mean, it's, it's kind of one of those things where I definitely realized what you did where I can't do it alone. You know, I know what I've got, like you knew what you had, you know, and when you have a technology that you know what problem it solves and you know the scale of how big it could be, then it's just a matter of like, how do I get this to the world? How do I build this to be simple enough where the, the, the average person can just take it and use it and have massive success? And, and that almost always comes with finding the right partners that have that skillset, that expertise to be able to scale and build and, and get it to an exit, you know, which is, I don't know what your goal is, but mine is to exit. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Every tech founder's is.

I think so.

At that point, I think so. You know, it depends on where you're at. You know, we wanna, you know, grow our line, do some brand expansion we wanna do, but at some point that's, that's the end state, right? Everybody wants to be that unicorn, you know, and we think we can get there and no one really is doing what we're doing. And I know, and I actually, I remember talking to you at that mastermind and I believe there's nobody doing what you're doing as well.

I'm literally, when you talk about red and blue oceans, we are about as blue as it gets. And even the regulators are just like, wait a second, are you a potato or an orange? Regulators don't even know what we are. Like the legal and regulatory environment of what we're creating sounds kind of like you got a little bit of regulation. But like the problem is like, because we are literally, one of the first doing what we're doing, the regulators just want to say, okay, well, we don't know what you are. So, you're this, you're this, you're this, and we need you to get licensed and all these. And I said—

Like, I'm a new category.

And then, I just— my SEC attorney was like, listen, the only way around this to not have to do all this is you just got to make this free for everybody. And I'm like, oh, now that's interesting. Make it free. Because one of my biggest mentors and best mentors told me many, many moons ago, he said, give your best stuff away for free. So, literally, like this new launch we're talking about, because right now we're a SaaS. But our new launch literally takes our technology and gives it to everybody for free, and we make nickels and pennies on lots of different things by, by controlling the data and the software. And that's the new model. But because it's totally free, there's no tieback to a SaaS, a membership. Like, a membership, you can't do more than a free. It's just like, it's all data. You're buying more data, more storage. So now all of a sudden, from a regulatory, like, they're Oh, it's free. Okay, well, if you're not charging anybody, I guess you're not a mortgage broker. Guess you're not an RIA, and I guess you're not a real estate broker.

So navigate that and find out how can I get in to make what I'm doing of value for others? It sounds like you did the exact same thing. How do I navigate this? And I think if you're a problem solver by nature, a lot of tech founders are, you're like, here's a problem. Well, if no one's going to solve it, I'm going to solve it. And when you come into these little issues like this, You know, you, you put on that same problem solver hat. Well, how do I navigate this, right? That's what makes, I think, technology companies successful is you just figure it out along the way. You have to navigate a lot of unknowns, but that brings me a lot of joy. I get a lot of satisfaction solving those problems that no one solved before. So I'm sure you're the same. So I, I feel like we're kindred spirits on opposite sides.

I agree. And it's like that movie Dumb and Dumber at the part where he's like, so you're saying there's a chance? And I feel like when you were kind of doing it and you're just like, ah, maybe. And when that attorney said that to us, well, the only way really through all this is to make it all free. And I'm like, so you're saying there's a chance? Anyway, but I think what you've got, I mean, And just being somebody that did own a lot of rentals, we only have 6 left, you know, because now all we do is just lend money. But it's got so much value. It's got so much scale value, which is what the unique part is. Because if all these companies, like that company grew from $100 to, what'd you say, $20 million? And all they were is a servicing company doing what your software technically does.

Yes.

I don't want to say for free, but for free, because you could pass that cost on. Like, what happens to that company's $20 million valuation when all their competitors find out about Utility Ranger, that they can just plug and play, hire a VA or a couple of staff to, you know, do whatever they need to do with the software, and they no longer need to pay this?

I mean, you know, I think you're onto something big. I think that there's a service model that is needed, what we are not. And I think when you have a software company, you and any company, You have to know very clearly what you will not do, right? And people say that, but they don't really know what that means sometimes.

But Tiffany, like you already said what you're not going to do. You're not going to do what everybody else is doing. You're not going to only take on 1,000-unit customers. You're going to take on the customers that are 5 units, 10 units, 130 like yourself. Like, that's the beauty. Like, you already know who your customer is not. So you absolutely know who your customer is. And I think that's brilliant.

But what we also are not is we are not a submetering company. So there's a big difference when you talk about utilities. Some people say, I want to submeter my utilities and I want to do RUBs or this ratio utilities, which is about basically a mathematical equation of the more tenants you have, the bigger your unit, you pay more than somebody. You can't just divide it equally across the property because you have the family of 5 in one unit and a little old lady next door. That's not fair, right? Some people use submeters and some markets require submeters are installed. But most properties, especially smaller properties, they were built in the '70s and the '80s and whatnot. Unless you're going to replumb your whole building, you can't necessarily put submeters on your property, right? So, or you don't want to dump the capital into putting a submeter on your property. You need to meter reading equipment, the batteries go dead, the calculations The regulations— this is where the tax kind of analogy comes into— the regulations around submetering are so challenging. You wouldn't want to put that on an owner because your lack of— your possibility for not complying with the regulations is high. So those service companies still do serve a need for people who want to submeter. We will not be that platform. We are the platform for doing that RUBS methodology for the people who just don't want to either dump the capital or who— I mean, you get back whether you're doing it from a submeter or you're doing it from RUBS. What you're getting back in return is kind of negligible. So for me, why am I going to dump a bunch of money into submeters on my property when I can get the same amount back in return? The response from residents is about the same. They all know they got to pay their bill. They don't really care whether it's coming from a meter or coming from a calculation. You just disclose that in the leases upfront. So, you know, we are not going after the larger market and we are not doing submetering. So there is a model for them. I'm not saying I'm putting anybody out of business. I'm just saying I'm capturing the market that nobody wants.

Oh, that's the problem you solve. And, you know, it was funny, you know, folks, right before we started this, this episode, you know, she was literally, you know, like talking to— what is a notary, right?

A notary.

Travel notary. And she's closing on a property with her husband right before. And I'm just like, what in the hell is going on here? Like, you know, she's signing things and talking to 2 people and I'm like, and then she tells me, she's like, I'm sorry, I'm closing on a property. But so like, you're, you're operating this PropTech company, plus you and your husband are, are, are buying and scaling your real estate. So you're, you're busy. Plus you got 4 kids. You just moved across the country.

Right.

You're repositioning all your assets from California to Florida.

Yep.

Wow.

We've got a lot on our plate.

Well, my beanie in this case comes off to you.

My husband and I probably both are a little ADD, so we like a lot on our plate to help keep us focused. And sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. And once you know that, hey, this model is flawed, it's hard to be a landlord in California now. You have all these requirements that make How are you going to survive when you can't evict tenants, when you have caps on how much you can increase your rent, and then the water rates go up 30%? How are you going to survive? We knew we wanted to be closer to our property, so we know, okay, we moved out here first. It's not like it happened overnight. It was a big plan. We said, okay, once you're mentally there, it took us about a year to find the place we wanted to move to. Took us another 6 months to get the house remodeled to live into. I think I moved in to the house on my due date of our last baby. We remodeled in 12 weeks to get ourselves into the house. I think we had some air conditioners that still weren't working the day I went into labor, but we were doing it all. And then 6 months later, we bought our first 30-unit deal out here in Pompano Beach, Florida, exchanged 5 houses in San Diego for 30 units in Florida. in a 1031 exchange with no cash out of our pocket. We weren't doing rubs. We immediately implemented it. We are, you know, a few months in on that property right now and starting to see the cash flow come in. So we're pretty excited. There's a lot going on, but, you know, you just got to do it all. And I think if you're a parent, you can, you can handle a lot. Wow.

Well, Tiffany, this has been just enlightening. I mean, I've kind of just sat back and just listened to your journey and your story. And I know my audience is doing the same thing, just going like, Wow. And I'm sure some of my audience, a lot of real estate investors on this show because it used to be the Real Estate Money School, we just dropped the real estate part. So how would they learn more about Utility Ranger and how do they implement that in their business?

Well, you can go to utilityranger.com. We're also on all the social media platforms. You know, it's pretty easy to do if you have units today that you're not billing for separately for water, sewer, trash, all those kind of common area expenses that are tenant dependent on the usage. There's no reason why you can't. So if you have more questions, you could book a demo right through our site. You know, I have full contact to me, like you can contact me, I'll give you a demo, show you what we've done, helping, you know, the little guy get ahead as much as I can. We can't wait to have more customers on our platform.

I love it. So folks, check out Utility Ranger, just go on there and that'll kind of one of two things. Maybe you need the service or maybe you're just like, Wow. How does somebody build a prop tech company? Well, go on and look at the site and start reverse engineering how that would possibly happen. You know, sometimes a worthy idea is all you need to get to see success, but you gotta also pursue that worthy idea every single day through the thick and thin of it. That's Mr. Earl Nightingale for you in The Strangest Secret in the World. Hopefully you are all listening to that and applying that in your life because success is easy when you have the worthy idea. that you are willing to literally do anything to achieve. And that's what Tiffany did. Tiffany, thank you so much for coming on. And folks, we'll put the links for Utility Ranger in the description so you can click it, check it, and go out there and start getting off of paying all the utilities for those tenants that simply don't care. Anything else in closing you would like to say, Tiffany?

I would just say Trust in yourself. You're never going to be more successful when you follow your gut, listen to your own intuition, and focus on how you can build a passive income stream for you and your family so you can focus on what you want to do and what you love doing. But real estate is the way to go. That's worked for us and highly advise it. And I'll help you figure it out along the way. Love it.

I love it. Well, with that With that being said, folks, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Money School Podcast. We will see you on the next one. Are you ready to master money? Then it's time to take the next step and become your own bank. Go to chrisknaugle.com and register for the free wealth webinar and get a copy of our latest book that teaches you how to get all the money back for all the cars you will ever buy, drive, and own. If you're enjoying this podcast, If you like this podcast, share it with your friends and your family, and remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so that you never miss an episode. We'll see you next time right here on Money School Podcast.