Discover How CJ Calio Left His W-2 Job to Build his Real Estate Portfolio with BRRR Strategy

Welcome to the Building wealth through Commercial.

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Here is your host, Jonathan Way.

Welcome to the Building wealth with Commercial Real Estate podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Way, and I'm the founder of Grace On Capital Group, my investment firm. If you're interested in passively investing with us, please visit greystonecapgroup.com and join our investor network. Okay, and now onto the show. Hello, everyone. Today I have a very great guest. I'm very excited to announce that CJ Kalio is on our show and I appreciate him coming on the show and, and tell us a little your background.

Yeah, Jonathan, thanks for having me on. So prior to real estate, I started working at UPS at a very young age.

I.

And that's where I chose to have a career as a UPS driver. And it was a very good job. It paid well, it provided good medical, good benefits, and it, it allowed for me and my wife and my family to have a comfortable life. And then there's this one, one particular time of year that UPS drivers get, get requested to do a lot more. And that's usually during Christmas, right? We put on the brown Santa suit and we deliver all your packages.

Yeah.

So I, there's this one Christmas that I remember in my UPS career where it was crazy. It was a lot of deliveries, a lot of packages, a lot of time spent away from family. I don't, I don't recall having a Christmas that bad over in my career prior to that Christmas. And I found myself five, six months away from my family because of the hours I worked. I was working seven days a week, 12 hour days. I'd come home, they weren't, they were sleeping, I'd wake up and they were gone. And that was my routine for about six months. And I realized very quickly I wasn't satisfied with where this career was going. I wasn't wanting to continue to trade time for money. Something needed to change. So with all that emotion and frustration that pent up over the six months, I talked to my wife after the season was over, I was like, can, can I quit? And she said, sure. Let me ask you one question. How are you going to replace your income? Because we're not changing our lifestyle. And she kind of caught me off guard because I wasn't expecting her to be like, yeah, you can quit it. And I also wasn't expecting that question. So when she posed that to me, little did I know that the entire six months that I was working those hours, she was looking at options for me to get on my job. And one of the things she came across was real estate. Now, initially, I wasn't a fan of it. I was actually resistant to it. I didn't know anything about real estate. I don't have any trade background. I don't come from a family of, of people that, that knew real estate. So I was very resistant to him. And I went off and I tried to create businesses and they didn't work. You know, most startups, they don't work. And when I got to a point where I, I got to eat the humble pie, I came back to her because she was still focused on real estate. And I said, okay, I think I'm ready to be on board. So she started taking me to some meetups and you know those co boat meetups that you go to with the rei?

Yeah.

And you hear people sharing their stories. Well, that, that's where I, I got first introduced to real estate. I wasn't the guy that wanted to talk about it. I was still battling with my thinking that I'm a newbie, I don't know anything and I don't want to look stupid asking questions that maybe everybody should already know. And the cool thing about going to these meetups was over time, I started to pick up on the lingo. I started to see and experience people who have had lessons learned or perceivable failure and still overcame them by pure, pure action. And they would continue doing their strategies to. Till they found success. And it really motivated me to look into it more. So me and my wife eventually picked buy and hold out of state.

And what year was that, C.J. that you went to this when you first started re meetups?

2013 was the year that we first started going to meetups. And I believe in 2014, um, we, we really pulled the, pulled the trigger on our first, first rental property out of state.

Okay, great. That's great. I'm very glad that you made that change. Kind of like rich dad, poor dad, he always tells you to, I guess, do something different. And real estate was a vehicle for him. He loves multifamily. He loves this stuff. So I'm very glad that you took that step because I can't imagine being a UPS driver delivering boxes. That just doesn't seem too pleasing, you.

Know, so it takes a toll on your body. I still have some, some side effects from those years of, of working as a driver.

Right, right. So then I guess that sparked your Interest and I guess you grew to love it, I guess kind of motivated you. So maybe that is a path to financial freedom. Maybe, maybe that can work for me. Right, but, but you were learning, I guess you were trying to do some kind of buy and hold. Was a buy and hold strategy, the first one?

Yes, correct.

Okay. Okay. So do you still have that today or.

No, we actually just released it. That was our first property. It was a little sentimental, you know, the first property that you ever bought and we just, we, we sold it about a year ago and we 1031 into another commercial asset.

Oh, okay, great. So what you did was you did a strategy. You, you sold it, you got, got the money and you got into a bigger asset because you had the proceeds from that one.

Yes, correct.

Now let me now what was a bigger house? What do you, what else did you put it into the 10:30, this was.

A, a large commercial vacant building. And it's designed for like a office retail space. And we actually just got it leased up for, with a university about a month ago.

Okay, good. Congratulations. So you got into commercial, sort of build office building, office space for commercial tenant. It could be anyone who wants to rent that commercial building.

Okay, yes.

Great. Congratulations. Congratulations. Great.

Thank you.

So that's a, that's a strategy for my listeners. If you have a house or something and you have a lot of equity, maybe you sell it. Then you identify a certain time period, identify these, and use a quality mediary to do a 1031 exchange. And that's how you go bigger and you pay no taxes, you defer taxes until you sell the other one. So that's great. You got bigger. That's great. I love that. Then what else did you do after that?

Basically, we continued building our residential portfolio after that first property. And one of the strategies we fell in love with early on was the birth strategy. So you buy rent, rehab, refinance, butchered it. But we did a burst strategy and we were able to accumulate a large portfolio of single family and multifamily homes, which then got us positioned. Well, scale into commercial. Sure, yeah. So we, we started building our residential portfolio and we fell in love with the strategy called the brrrr. So you buy rehab, rent, refinancing, repeat, and it allowed us to scale very quickly to a large portfolio of single and multifamily homes. And that was our base. That got us to financial freedom. And from there we started playing in the larger deals like commercial assets.

That's great. That's great. So anyone knows, bigger pockets, as I'M sure you, you heard bigger pockets. The bird method is very, a famous method that you saying buy re the hose. That's a way to. When you begin, you know much money you can do that and you can house hack too. You got duplex, you rent one side and live one side. You can I guess pay for your mortgage. So that's another way to house hack and then bur it and do that stuff. That's great. That's what, that's how I know the guy. The guy, Brendan Turner did all these things and he got very successful in that he built a very common name, Bigger pocket. So if you don't know what that is, check that out. It's very famous for like a single family fix and flip and burr methods. Great, great. That one. So glass. So how many homes do you have now do you own?

We got to a large portfolio of around 90 doors and then we started to take what we learned in Monopoly. You know, you buy green houses, eventually you run out of spaces for greenhouses. We started trading them for red hotels like we were talking about just a few minutes ago. 10:31 exchange. So we've, we've been piecing apart our residential portfolio and starting to shift into more commercial based portfolios. Slightly diversifying our real estate portfolio.

Okay so the things I know, I'm sure you've seen this triple net which I like because then there's not much exposure for you. There's a multi fan which is more capex, more, more risk in that sense. But it could be, it could work out if you're not executed properly. And I also do storage so that's another avenue and it's a mobile home parks and RV parks. So there's many different avenue you can play and dabble in. Now you tried triple net and office and those kind of things right? As we did. Right so far.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

Long releases, stable assets, working with businesses versus necessarily a person directly. So you have like those entities that you can look at more of a financial sound qualification and really be choosy with who you put into your space and knowing that they're going to want to stay for a long haul.

Yeah, yeah. So you want someone Chase bank, one of these very, you know, established corporations has good credit. That's a long, long term credit. Not someone who's like riskier profile. Right. Someone like Mary Mom Pop selling donuts. That may be, you don't know if they're really going to make it or not, you know, in your, in your, in your place. So that's that's what I'm saying. So you look at the risk profile, the credit worthiness, you got to see the background and they've. How they've been doing. And you have to really be selective because once you have a good tenant, it'll be there for long, long term. And it's, you know, so it's good.

Yes.

So that's what I call stabilize, but a stabilized cash flow, but a lower yield. But if you want high yield, there's always higher risk. You do this, you fix and flip at a higher level of multifamily, but it's more high risk that comes with that as well. So. Yes. So good. Good. Great. That's. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you did that. And you're able to take that into. And now, you know, you reach financial freedom is great. And I guess we want to help others. Obviously now you're kind of a point where, kind of like me, where we realize that it's more than just money. Right. It's more about time giving back. You know, the spirituality piece of it. Right. Want to talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah. I mean, some level of success when, when you achieve what you set out to do and you have all these people watching you, all of a sudden they become interested in, why did you do that? And that's kind of.

Exactly.

It's what happened to me and my wife when we reached financial freedom in five years and actually hit the goal. We set out to quit both of our jobs.

Yeah.

People start taking notice and interest. So they asked us, would you be open to. To training and teaching us how you did what you did? Because I want to have what you have.

Right.

And that, that's where that. It goes beyond money now I have a deeper purpose of helping others achieve similar goals and, and guiding them along the way.

Yeah. That's great. It's so like me. I'm a mentor. I, for my company, Michael Blanc, help students, you know, buy apartment building. That's. That's his forte, apartment buildings. But you're wonderful. You know, you different. Different things. You help, you help your students grow and be successful as you. Because you want to give back to the community. It's also a higher sense of purpose. Right. C.J. i think it's more like we're humans. We're sent in with good people and we want to help people along the way. It's so like. It's sort of like your big brother. Right. When your big brother helps you when you're young and teach you the ropes and you want to teach them ropes so you, they're successful too. Because when it says you're successful too, you know what I'm saying? That's a winning form.

Yeah.

So that's great. So how people want to reach out to you to maybe learn about your mentorship program and, and see, you know, if that's a good fit for them, you know.

Yeah. If they go to our Instagram page at WNN Properties, they can go and fill out a link and we can get a call scheduled with one of the advisors who would want to make sure that this is a good program that f. You know, we want, we're not here to just enroll people. We want to work with people who are doing what we do to have what we have.

Right. So someone who's passionate, who delicate time, it's hard work. Obviously, it's not easy peasy. But once you set your goals, your intention is real focus. So what you really need is mindset. You need intention, focus and goals. Kind of like Tony Robbins and something like that. Then you have a mentor like you who can actually take, you take the operational stuff. Say, listen, this is how you do it. Step one, step two, step three, I'll help God to be a Big Brother. And this is how you actually get to the way I got to it. That's, that's the goal. So, and I, I, I, and I advise that. So I really advise a mentor. So if you're looking for what he did, the bur method this and this at the triple net or office building, go see him. He's done it. So in my view, he definitely proven to me that he can guide you to that, to that level.

So thanks, Jonathan.

Great, great. Thank you. And so, yeah, so we will have audience reach out to you. You know how we'll just put your contact information, emails in there, your website, and then they'll reach out to you to ask you more questions, see if they fit. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks for listening. For more information, you can find us online at www.greystonecapgroup.com. check back weekly for new episodes. See you again next time. Sam.