From Football Coach to $20,000,000 + Financial Freedom w/ Ben Kall

Ben call, Hey buddy, what's going on? How's it going, Brian? I'm super pumped to be here today. This is a big milestone in my real estate and financial freedom journey. All right, everyone listening. So this is Ben's first podcast this is awesome. I'm honored to be the first show. And for everyone listening, I I wanna just demonstrate, right? So I want first off, this is gonna make people listen to the entire show, like five times second off. This is, this illustrates a point. So I have. Probably to the tune of 40 to 60 people a week, message me to come on the show, which is awesome. And I love it. And I would love to have everyone on the show, but I can't, I can only have two per week. And right now I'm back logged until freaking August already. And this is June Ben texts me out of the blue. And he says, Hey man, I know your show is packed and you're crushing it. But I went ahead and wrote my show description for you. When I get on the podcast, he goes description, creative financing, help me achieve a personal portfolio of 20 million by the age of 32 in less than four years. And then we go through all the creative financing strategies tune in next week to see how Ben quit his job of coaching division one football. Packed up his entire life in a 12 foot U-Haul and moved across the country to become a real estate agent in his hometown. In six short years, he went from $6,500 in net worth to a 20 million plus investment portfolio. Ben call. Welcome. I had to get your attention, man. My get it into my backstory a little bit, but I I hired a coach about six months ago and he keeps listening and we do our 30 minute calls every week. And he made a challenge to me. He goes, Ben, you're not even on social media. You don't tell anyone what you do. Your story's pretty cool. And I really challenge you to start getting on social media. And I think it's just awkward. And I don't like it. And I'm a lot better at talking because I am in sales as a real estate agent and broker. And I said, how am I gonna get some of these guys attention? And I took a little break and went to Hilton head and Charleston with my wife to set some goals for the middle of the year. And I typed this up and I got scared and I couldn't send it. And so then I was out in Boise a few weeks ago at AJ Osborne in Brits investor girl Brits event. And I'm sitting around some super powerful and impactful people that have made massive changes and influenced my life. And I'm just sitting there with. Mikey Taylor and investor girl, Bri and Brandon Turner and all these guys. And I'm like, you know what copy send, copy, send. And I sent it out to you. And a week later, I'm on your show. Let's go I love it, man. , this is awesome. And this is gonna be a massive value. And also illustrates the point that I actually just posted an episode today for people listening. It's Thursday, June 23rd, Brennan schlog mom's episode, just posted a day where he was a big four CPA Deloitte, golden handcuff, six figure salary. He leaves to do a Twitter and Instagram account about budgeting and personal finance. He's making seven figure. Brandon Turner sends a text message. He raises $4 million. It's lubricant to everything. It's the social media and the personal brand. And we'll get to that. And we'll birth that with this episode, but first Ben, take us back, man. So division one, college football coach. What made you hop into that? Sports were my entire life in high school. I was a four sport athlete and one of my high school coaches told me something. When I got brought up to varsity for the first time, he was like, you gotta set goals and put them somewhere where you can see them every single day as a reminder to go to chase 'em. And I think I was a freshman and on my mirror, when I brushed my teeth every morning before school, I had goals that said, I will play division one football or baseball, and I will go to college because as a kid. I had really massive learning disabilities and it was a huge struggle for me. And so sports are what kind of carried me through my education and took me to college. And so when I got recruited to play football, I said, I want to do it at the highest level possible if I'm gonna put my body through it. And I ended up walking onto the Kansas state football team. And I didn't get to play as much as I hoped. But I learned a lot. We were the number one team in the country. Period of time, I got to play with the Heisman trophy runner up and we got to go to enormous amount of ball games. And I got a degree in kinesiology at minor in leadership. And I, long story short, I got a master's in student development, but I was on the track to be a strength conditioning coach for guys gonna the combine was my goal. And after I graduated, my football coach goes, Ben, I think you'd be a good coach. You wanna stay around and work here. And so I got hired as a assistant recruiting coordinator at the university. And as a young college kid, getting to stay in your college town at your university with your girlfriend, dream job, you're sponsored by Nike breakfast, lunch, dinner, laundry, your gym. Everything's at our facility. Wow. Couple years later I ended up getting married and Awesome. Didn't I be sponsored the wedding. I wish that would've been pretty sweet. Yeah just I do it. Yeah, just, I do it right. Y'all can log off now. I'm sorry. I coached for almost four years, so three full seasons in four years, and it's an absolute grind at that level. You're working 80 to a hundred hours a week, year round. You're in the office at six 30. You're lucky if you get home before 10 or 11 at night. And the first six months that I was married, I literally got home one night. I brought a boxed meal home and my wife set her alarm. She woke up to have dinner with me at 1130 at night, and we just looked at each other and we're like, what are we doing? This just is not the lifestyle that we imagine is like a newly married couple. And like the future. Once we have a family. And we just looked into some other options. And I had a buddy back in my hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, who was the best man in my wedding who was crushing it in real estate sales. And he was starting to flip house. I was like, huh, that sounds fun. Let's do it. So I got my license in less than 30 days and we packed up the U-Haul, like he mentioned at the beginning and drove back to Rochester and just dove straight into real estate. So what made you choose real estate? Just my best friend from growing up was having success. And I thought it was something that could hold me over until I found a new passion. So it really was a holdover job. feel like that is the catch phrase for all people entering the wonderful world of real estate and or sales, right? Yeah. It worked out for you buddy. So what happens next? We'd moved. We had nothing, we were living in my parents' basement. We ended up buying our first house a couple couple weeks later. And I read rich dad, poor dad, and we were doing the live-in live-in flip and my wife and I are in the basement with a circular saw and a garden hose for the window, Jack hammer in the floor to, finish our basement. And then I was trying to meet clients. I was purely just a residential sales agent and we just had a really good family friend open a pizzazz in town. So he is bang, come on down. You'll meet everyone in town. You can help me put together lights and tables at my grand opening. And he actually introduced me to somebody. He goes, come on over. I wanna introduce you to someone. This guy owns real estate. He it'd be good for you to know, walk over there. And long story short. And the guy's yeah, I own some buildings in downtown. I got 500 acres of land. You'd want to take a look at it. I might develop it. I'm like, sure love to. So I run back to my office. And I'm like, where is there 500 acres of a land in Rochester, Minnesota. That's this guy that I just met, wants to develop. And long story short, I figured it out. I called him and I said, Hey, I wanna meet with you. I have a plan to develop your 500 acres of land. He texts me his address. It's three hours away in a different state. And I'm like, all right, see you tomorrow. And I with Noah development background, none, I'd never even built a house. I just bought my first house for 170 grand. Okay. And so I drove down there and I just pitched the hell out of him and he says, all right, let's keep working on this. It sounds like a good plan. And so this guy he would call me and he goes, why aren't you in commercial? Why aren't you in commercial? Why aren't you in commercial? And I had no idea what he met. And then I finally realized the power of investing in real estate because I was learning and trying to develop this land. I read three super impactful books during this is rich dad, port, dad, start with why and millionaire next door and ever since classic then. And ever since then, I made it a point that we needed to buy real estate because I couldn't rely and sleep good at night. Once we have a family that my phone was gonna ring and I'd be able to get a commission check. Wow. So let's, I, the, I would keep thinking back to young Ben riding his goals on the mirror and like what a small snowball rolling down the hill. Because that is huge. That's something that you still keep up today. It is, in, in sports. You could probably call me crazy, but in sports, playing baseball, I'd step into the batter's box and I'd put this like mask on that. I'm Mark McGuire, and then I'd go behind the plate as I was a catcher and I'm like, I'm Pudge. I have been Rodriguez with the Rangers and in football, I'd put this mentality on that. I'm Mike all stop. And so getting into real estate, I didn't really have a mentor at the beginning other than this guy who challenged me a little bit and pushed me. And so I would set very attainable goals for the first few years and I'd have a very concrete plan. Like I'll make an extra a hundred bucks this week. I'll buy this property and very attainable. And it wasn't just till recently that I've started really pushing my goals to a whole nother level. Yes, absolutely man. And that is such a cool observation because I don't think anyone's brought that up on the show before about having to assume this identity. And I feel like a lot of the top athletes they have like different personas, like the top performers. They go into different modes like Michael Jackson, wasn't Michael Jackson, until he was on stage. Prince wasn't prince until he was on stage. You know what I mean? You flip a switch. Like I just saw that new Elvis movie, like you flip a switch for me to be on this show and have normal average conversations with dudes on a random Tuesday that are billionaires. I have to put myself at that level. Because otherwise it'd be a weird conversation, right? It'd be tell me about the time where you crossed over the mark. It'd be weird for everyone and so it's what I do is I think about the eight figure version of Brian, that guy. And I asked myself every morning, I say, what is that guy doing? Is what's he eating? What's he wearing? What's he listening to what's he. How would that guy handle it? And I just try to bring that guy into my present day reality to where I am that guy. It's just the only difference between me and that guy now is just a time horizon. And that's it. So I love that you said that man. And the one thing I would just add is that getting started in something that you've never even considered, it's really overwhelming to set goals and get advice. Being young and fresh outta college, you've never really talked about investing. You've never talked about finances. It's always taboo. You sit down at a bar at a happy hour and no one's talking about investing, so it's really hard to find a circle of people that gets you excited. And you can talk about these goals cuz a lot of times when you're in circles, it comes off like you're bragging about something, this one of the big things for me is that the text that you read. Other than my wife and my family and my financial advisor and my lender, no one has, nobody knows about it. No one has a clue about the portfolio that I've built for my passive income. No. So when this airs, I got a lot of people to answer to. I'm gonna purposely make the title, like really in your face. Yeah. for that reason. So this is gonna be a really cool experiment, right? Because I talked to you, I was the one that talked to you to convince you to do the. When you started with Joe and now, also this man's about to join GoBundance here soon. So I'm curious to see how this guy, Ben goes from a guy that was making, having goals to make a couple hundred bucks extra, to getting the mindset right. To then hopping in GoBundance and then that tribe, to your point, that's the kicker, right? So you post what you sent me to GoBundance there's no emotional reaction. Because it's just numbers on a page. And then, so you have AJ and all those guys in there and they'd say, oh, okay man congratulations, great job. Like what's next and then you say what? Huh? Instead of people saying, oh man, must be nice for you. you trying to rub into my face? No, we're trying to win together. It's not a zero sum game, but before we move on, I'm curious as someone that's coming up on your probably six months of coaching, cuz you use Jason dries. Like I do what have been some of the takeaways. What have been some of the biggest mindset shifts because this was your first coach. First coach, I was a division one football coach. I have a degree in leadership. I have a master's in student development, so I'd put this stuff off. I'm like, coaching's not rocket science. I have a huge mind. That's always thinking and always wanting more. What is a coach gonna do for me? And it was actually this past winter. I got COVID and just quarantined locked in my bedroom and I'm sitting here just bored outta my mind and reflecting on my journey from coaching until now. And that's when I realized I was like, wow, I've achieved a lot in a short period of time because I always beat myself up that I'm not doing as much, a lot of these people that I read books or listen to on podcasts or even sell deals to on, in commercial real estate. And, just being bored on a spreadsheet in Excel, I was like, wow, I've literally achieved financial freedom and I could retire for the rest of my life. And I need to now change my mindset to figure out what's different. And fortunately, I reached out to you and I got hooked up with Joe Moffitt and he has been so impactful on the rest of my life. And I'm so excited to see what happens next, Joe buddy, I know you listened to the show. You need to come on, man. But so what, in the terms of goal setting, what have been some of the big shifts that you've made with your goal setting in specifically from this? Because I'm curious, because this is the first time that you and I are talking about this as well. So it's just really cool for everyone else to be able to get impact from this as well. Everything was so small thinking, and when I was a, just purely a residential real estate agent, just saying yes to anything and everything and figuring it out and hopping on Google and staying awake and drinking coffee until my meeting to of figure it out. So I didn't sound like an idiot. My goals were small and I actually D early in my licensed career as an agent, I started a property management company and it was by default because I sold a a town home to a clinic patient here at Mayo. And his nurse told him it good, be good to keep it. And my thought with a property management company was like, wow, I can manage other people's real estate. And this will be my passive income without having to risk debt. . And so I was the DIY I'd paint, people's apartments, I'd snake, their toilets. I'd mow the lawn. I'd plow the snow. And one night at two in the morning, I lift my snowblower outta my truck, and I'm just sitting here putzing around in the wind. And I'm like, this sucks. Like I'd rather be this guy who owns this stuff and hire me to come out here and plow the snow at two in the morning. And that was a huge shift for me because the guy that I'm managing is actually a business partner in mine now. Wow. Okay, God. I was so excited for you before we even get into this, like the rest of this show, because you've accomplished big things, but like you there's just different levels. And Jason talks about the the different level, like level 10 mindset level, a hundred mindset. And I was just listening to Alex tomoey and he said Russell Brunson, the guy that does ClickFunnels, he went to his mastermind and the reason Alex homo became Alex homo was Russell said, dude, you are running a level 10 mindset and you're operating a level two business. He goes, get outta the business that you're in, teach others how to do this, get on social media and blow up. And now look at Alex formo. So I feel like you are like at that precipice, right? And it's just freaking awesome. And even where I'm at today, I don't like risk. Like this whole journey for me has never once been about money. It's literally just being able to sleep at night without any concerns. If it's finances, if it's being able to go to the grocery store to afford gas, I just want that freedom that basically your show talks about. And so it's never been about money or wealth or CA or passive income. It's just about the freedom of being able to sleep at night and have a family where I can be in tune with everything that's going on without concern. Exactly. So let's go back to you. Just going and creating this land deal. You're networking, you say yes to something, you have the balls to just go for it. And then this guy says, okay. Yeah. I'm open to developing all of this land with you. Is that how you began the self storage? What did y'all end up doing with that? No. So that was a three, four year journey. I flew down to Florida once to the national builders convention to try to meet engineers, to try to learn quickly on a weekend before another meeting. And we got close multiple times. We had meetings with the city. We talked about zone changes, phase one, phase two, and the guy's smart and I don't, I'm not Upset at all, but he ended up selling it to a developer out of the east coast, the entire 500 acres in one shot. And he called me and he goes, Ben, should I take this price? And I look at him like, it would take us 15 years to get that amount of money. So yes, you should sell this land. And so I never got to do it, but I learned a ton. I'm in my home office right now and we actually developed our own land and parceled off a couple lots. And I'm sitting in the house of some land that I developed. So I got a lot out of it. But to answer your question about storage the gentleman that I told you that I was, plowing his snow and I put him up on a pedestal. I'm like, wow, this guy owns like 13 doors. He's got a couple buildings that I manage. Like I want to be this guy. And I would just start sending him ideas like, Hey, you want to do this? Hey, you want to do this? And we just came across an opportunity through a banker that we had worked with and it was a $1.5 million storage deal. And me and this guy had never even consider storage, but we looked down at the numbers and we're like, whoa, these are pretty crazy. The lady sits in the office. She hand writes. Invoices. She hand writes receipts. Her answering machine says, sorry, I'm outta the office from November to March. Please call back when winter's over. And in my head, I'm just, these light bulbs are going off. Like this is gonna work. So literally we were under contract in 24 hours and closed 30 days later. What? Yeah. And looking back at it, it's been the best deal that I've done. . But when we get into creative financing and how to do bigger deals, it was probably one of the dumbest deals I'd ever done because the bank just said, yeah, you gotta put 25% down. We're gonna give you a 20 year am. Let's do it. And when you're putting that amount of cash down into a deal, you blow through cash really quickly when you're really early on and you don't make a ton of money. So exactly. One of the big things that we did in real estate is being scared all the time is all of my commissions went into a savings account. And then the next year we would use 'em to pay myself a salary. So for my wife and I to take this jump, to scratch up the money, we basically drained our bank account to get into this deal. And it was one of the best things that we'd ever done. What a shift for you? What do you think? What do you think got you over the edge? If you're talking to someone right now, that's a compulsive saver and is super risk averse. What made you pull the trigger on that? Because now that changed the fabric of your life and the direction of your life, what do you think it was? I think it, it was the confidence of, being a pretty starting in real estate as a salesperson. I did pretty well my first year and then starting a management company and growing the management company. And I was like I could tell you the price of almost everything in home Depot. I know what renovations cost. I know how to look at deals and invest them now because I literally do the books for people that I manage multimillion dollars of real estate. So I know everything. And this guy that I had put on a pedestal in my management portfolio says, you're a fantastic operator. Let's do this together. And just that one sentence to me gave me the confidence to do it. and that speaks to you being valuable to him too. So it was like, you're always one relationship away from completely changing the fabric and course of your life. And you reaching out to that guy over and over again with those ideas, like that was just plant seeds. And then eventually when it was time, you were the obvious choice. Wow. And yeah, that was gonna be my next question. Before we transition into the financing world, which is I know is your bread and butter and your forte here. So you put 25% down to that 1.5 million between you and the partner. Oh my God. And so we three, 312,000 3, 3 12 0.5, plus, closing costs and title fees. So it was about $375,000. So you essentially both went in like 200. Yep. And keep in mind, I just bought my first house for 170 grand and put 3% down on that. So like we were strapped yeah. Oh my God. Okay. So then how did, so y'all go under on the self storage deal and then so self storage is more. Business than real estate for people that are listening we'll have, AJ and all of them on and they'll talk about it. And it really is just, it's more the business side. It is a business you need to have the people in place, the systems, the technology, walk us through that transition. Now that you have this. And I'm sure like you're freaking out after dropping that cash. Walk us through stabilizing that asset. And then how you moved into creative financing moving forward after that? Yeah, so storage, we didn't have a clue. I was just like, we can get a 10% cash on cash return as is, and just hope it gets better and being super conservative. Me and my partner made a, an agreement that we weren't gonna take any distributions or any cash out. For probably five to seven years, just cuz we were both scared of doing it. It was the biggest investment either of us had ever done. And so being an operating partner, I was like, huh, I don't know anything about storage, but I got a couple buddies who own hotels. And I was like, I just went and talked to them and I was like, Hey, how do you guys operate a hotel? I'm gonna do the same thing for storage. And they're like, you gotta get a website. You gotta put things online. You want people on auto pay. You want to try to get everything streamlined. You want to collect rent on the first of the month. I'm like, okay. Okay. Okay. I can do that. And so I just Googled like easy storage software and sure as shit there's easy storage solutions is the software that I use. And the first three months were an absolute headache because the lady who owned it prior to us was in her seventies and been doing it that way forever. And so within about six months, we increased our rents by over 25% and got close to 70, 75% of the people on auto pay. And it made our lives so much easier. And we had the thing stabilized in six to eight months when we thought it was gonna take five to seven years. When you purchased it, I'm sure that her record keeping was just abysmal. Like how did how far off. To be honest it wasn't too bad. Really. She was too detailed. She did everything with a pencil, but it was pretty detailed. The thing that was off is the rents. Someone who moved in 1994, she hadn't raised the rent since, and we bought this in 2018. So we knew that there was room to grow and there wasn't any competition in the market. And then how many pads was this for the self storage or? This first one was 255 units, 255 units. Woo. Okay. So then goes from being a residential real estate agent to having a couple of conversations to saying, ah, yeah, let's look at this development deal that completely falls through you get some confidence. You move up to that next level. You. Hey, I'm gonna add some value. And then this guy goes, Hey, you've been adding a lot of value to me, Ben, let's go ahead and knock out a a 1.2, $5 million storage deal for 250 units. You're like, yeah, sure. Oh my God. Literally. That's how it happened. That's insane. That's really cool. Especially after you're 3%. So what was the, so you've got this stabilized now, what was the switch that flipped for you to start moving into all these creative financing opportunities? Because I really wanna learn about this and dive deep here. Yeah. We bought this storage deal and as we were stabilizing it, I was like, whoa, we just spent all of our money. I gotta make some more money quick. So my mindset went from, I have this 1.5 million deal. I gotta go right back to residential where I'm comfortable and it's a lot better. So my mindset went back to less risk. But I ended up getting a hard money loan to buy a house. And so I got a hard money loan to buy a house, to flip it and do the typical Burr method that you hear about on bigger pockets and everywhere else. And it ended up working out, you pulled a paneling off a wall and your foundation's about to fall over and you blow $8,000 and there goes your budget for a contractor. So now I'm waking up at four in the morning to go renovate this place myself. And at the end of the day, it worked out, I bought a house for free and I got $5,000 cash back. So I just got a house for free and $5,000 in my bank account. It worked out great, but it was the worst thing that I ever did. And I wanted to stay outta residential. I had too many mistakes during that process that I didn't want to do it anymore. And I had too many clients who wanted to buy residential homes and I didn't want to be the broker that cherry picked the good deals. And I said, you know what? From this learning experience of flipping this house and doing a hard money loan and being able to sell all these residential properties to my clients who are wanting to. I'm just gonna focus on commercial, cuz I got this one deal and through all of that outta nowhere, there's a hailstorm that comes through and hits our storage facility. So we get an insurance claim and couldn't find anybody to put a steel roof on the storage deals. So I just look up and I call tracky who's the storage building provider. And they say, Hey, call this guy. He builds all the buildings in Southeastern Minnesota. And he owns a couple thousand units himself. I'm like, I'm gonna call this guy and you have my attention. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't care what he is gonna charge. I want him working in my buildings. And so we looked at the bid, but it just hired him. And I'd stop by every morning and help him carry the steel panels up to the roof and bring them bolts and start to talk to him. And fast forward, I'm like, Hey, I want to buy the rest of your portfolio. And so we worked him for a year and built a relationship and he finally agreed to sell us another facility that was a couple miles away from our. And again, this happened so quickly within about a year's time. This one was 1.7, 5 million, and me and my storage partner are like, whew, we don't have the money for this you're strength. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm like, all right, how do you buy something with not much money, go to Google again. And I start learning all about contract for deeds. And so I pitched this guy. I'm like, Let's do a contract for deed with 10% down, a low interest rate. Amateurize over as long as we possibly can to help with our cash flow, cuz we need the cash. And so we negotiated for quite a while and he said, yes, so we're under contract and then he calls me back and he goes, Ben, I wanna sell you our other facility too. And I'm like, oh my God. And we're under contract and it's now 1.9 million on top of that. So it's almost $4 million and me and my partner are like, we can't do this. We don't have the money. And we both agreed that we wouldn't have an opportunity like this again. And between our portfolio, we'd have close to $6 million in storage. And 5, 6, 700 units with the ability to expand even more like this is our career. This is like all we need to do. So we just got a little bit more creative with our contract for deed, put it under contract and closed it. Okay. So what did you wrap this all into one purchase? Or how did you finesse this for the, with the contract? Cause I'm not entirely familiar with that kind of. Yeah. So essentially a contract for deed is essentially the seller is the bank. So there, so it's like seller financ. Yep. Seller financing. Okay. Yep. Got it. So seller financing. So we put 10% down at a 4% interest rate with no prepayment penalty. And we're able to stretch theorization out over 30 years, which is fairly rare in commercial real estate. But what that did for us is it really helped our cash. because these were, it's 60% occupancy. They had gravel parking, lots weeds growing didn't have security. And so we knew again that we have a five to seven year plan here where we're not gonna be able to take any money, but it will be worth it long term. Ooh. Okay. So did you still do that 10% down for the entire buy? So 600? Yep. So 300 each. Where'd you come up with that? We were scraping pennies again. So I fortunately my, as an agent things continued to, in that business, things continued to double my management business. Things continued to double every single year. And so again, we live a very private and modest life. So we were just savers. We were able to come up with the money and close this man. Holy crap. Okay. So now. We've been prepping for like the what's the time, what's the time horizons between this. So you've got your first deal. And then a year later, all of a sudden you take down a 6 million deal. So the first one happened in the fall of 2018 and the second two happened in the summer of 2019. So people listening, you're telling me. What you're aiming for and I'm not knocking you. You tell me what y'all are aiming for is doing, I'm gonna buy a house, then I'm gonna buy two units the next year. Now I'm gonna buy four units the next year. I would challenge that because Ben correct me if I'm wrong. But now within what, three years you went from buying a house 3% down for 175 to now you own over $6 million of storage. Wait. No, that's more like what, like nine. So when we initially bonded, it was worth six it's worth substantially more now. So like I said, with the reason that I also love commercial real estate is not only can you get creative, but the tax benefits are substantially more so as somebody who is a commission based agent or has active income, I don't pay taxes. Cost segregation. Exactly. So all the money that I'd always stored away for taxes, we do a cost segregation study, and now I had a big chunk of money that I could continue to reinvest. And so not only is it powerful, commercial real estate's more powerful for tax purposes. But you can also get creative with financing to make things work for you. I just had this deal that I mentioned, and it was harder for me to get a $400,000 loan on a personal house than it was to get a multimillion dollar loan on a commercial property. The irony of that is not lost on me. oh my God. So you have to be what's qualifi, classified as a real estate professional, right? and then what are the parameters for that? Because right now that's probably something I need to be looking into cuz I'm out of W2 and now I've got a bunch I've got 4, 10 99 sources of income coming in, but I also do real estate. So I need to be conscious of how I'm structuring this. So is there's a time allotment or something. How do you classify? So essentially to qualify for reps or real estate professional status. And you need to qualify for reps in order to do cost segregation and bonus depreciation on properties. So there's a little bit more that goes into it, but you essentially need to spend 750 hours in real estate or working on essentially your properties and 51% of your time needs to go towards real estate. Okay. That's good to know. And can you give before we move on? Cause now I know you had some acquisitions after that, correct? As well before we get into that, can you talk a little bit more about the seller financing and of walk through what you learned? Like go back to that. Ben, that was Googling essentially seller financing and talk to that guy. That's listen or guy or girl that's listening right now. That's okay, I've heard Gabe Hamel talk about seller financing. I've heard a couple people in the show. Talk about it. How do I go and approach a deal to discuss this creative financ? I think I need to use a baseball analogy here that, oh, run it, man. Run a brother. Yeah. A 300 batting average will almost get you to the hall of fame. 400 you're in the hall of fame. And so with seller financing, you're gonna crash and burn a lot, cuz you have no idea what you're talking about and how do we even approach and educate a seller on. And a lot of the times you have to educate brokers that you're calling to explain why you're offering this and why it's in the seller's best interest. And so essentially the high level pitch that I have. Have for sellers that I work with that, especially if they've owned it for a long time and don't have a loan at it anymore, is that they're gonna get absolutely pounded with taxes and capital gains upon a sale. So if you sell a property for $2 million, they could pay 30, 40, 50% in taxes. And so I basically just educate 'em and I geek out an Excel sheet and kind of show them if we sell it on a contract for deed, they become the. and I say, are you tired of being a property manager or a landlord? Why don't I teach you how to be the bank? And I say, how much money have you paid to a bank over your lifetime? I want to make you the bank. And so now I show them that over five to 10 years, all of the interest that I would normally pay to a bank goes to them. . So if I'm gonna do a 10 million deal over five to seven years, they could make another couple million dollars in interest and they get to spread out their capital gains because I'm paying them monthly and yearly. And they're only paying taxes on that. So it's really beneficial for a seller and then cash flow, everyone's looking for cash flow. You say, Hey, you're in your seventies. Like the lady in the beginning. Be like, you don't want to sell this and go through the process of trying to reallocate this capital, do a 10 31 or whatever. Have you like, how about I just pay you? You're getting like five, $10,000 a month here, like straight up, like I'm paying you every month. You're having your cash flow right here and you're not paying the taxable event. Oh my God. That's a win-win. Were there any resources in particular that really stood out to you learning about seller financing that you can direct people towards? Or is it just being in the game? I think just being in the game, beating out at this conference a couple weeks ago, one of the guys that I've met that I'd never heard of is pace Morby. Oh yeah. He's did you go to the C CRE circle? Is that where you were? Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Yep. And so pace is the king of creative financing. So now everyone that I've talked to since that event, I just go, Hey, follow him on Instagram. You'll learn more than I can teach. There we go pace Morby, which by the way, need to message you too pace. You're coming on the show anyways. so for the sake of time, walk us through. So now what does your portfolio look like today? What's the valuation and what are you printing out? Cash. Flow-wise. So at this point I have three storage facilities. We're currently working on a pretty large expansion of one of those facilities. I own an APL apartment building. I'm currently working on a development of 12 town homes across the street from the world's largest hospital. And I've recently gotten into retail. I found that retail is something that, that can help me push myself away from being the DIYer. And it's a little bit more hands off. And so I force myself now to invest in other states because I'm the guy, if there's a problem, I'm out the door to go fix it. And so I'm trying to change my mindset. So I'm purposely trying to invest outta state and also into other asset classes that are a little bit more hands off the systematize it. Yep. Got. Okay. And then you've hit your financial freedom. So what, so for people listening that aren't quite sure about like how lucrative a self storage facility is to actually own, what does that look like to where you can actually take it home? Financial freedom for me and my wife, we don't have kids yet, so it's like, all right we wanna make just 50 grand this year. All right. Check. And then, we set these attainable goals. I'm beating around the Bush to answer your question, but my wife, I know I'm purposely asking it because of that reason. I knew you would because you're humble and you've never done this before, so I'm pushing you. , I've literally, if you don't anybody just to be very open, I now have close to a $20 million real estate portfolio. And by the end of this year, I'll have over $250,000 of cash flow a year. How'd that? I'm really nervous. oh man. Sorry. I had to push you there, buddy. I knew you didn't want to answer it. You did. It's okay. We can take it out if you, honestly can take it out if you don't want to. It really is a huge weight off my shoulders because again, going back to my coach, it, I was just a guy that coached football and played football and all of a sudden here in five or six years, If you focus on something, you can go get it. And I don't want investing or real estate to be taboo. And it's just one of those things that I hope I can be someone, that's an inspiration for just one person to get started in it, where they're comfortable and hopefully just snowball and my whole career in sports, or now in real estate, it's been that hockey stick approach where it was really slow. And then after you get the confidence, you can just take off. Can I offer some perspective? Let's do it. So I used to think the same thing as you, that's why I pushed you there because we're friends and then obviously, but yeah, before I was very quiet. About everything. Because when you first start out, you have so many people tell you all the RA all the ways and reasons that things will go wrong, that you get really scared about putting it out into the public, because a, you don't want people to shit on you and B you don't want to come across as arrogant or someone that's like boastful or bragging or any like that, because that's not us. Like you don't wanna be that person. And. I kept everything in the chest for years and years. And I did all this background work with, GoBundance with all these guys and formed relationships, and then I'm growing. And then finally somebody said, share your story. And I thought, I don't wanna do that because I don't wanna come across this way. But as soon as I did, and as soon as I did it with the intent of helping others, which is what you're doing, everything 10 X almost over. And you'll be shocked at how fast you grow and scale, because what you'll start doing is you'll post this people that, will listen to this and especially to this part right now, and they'll all of a sudden you'll be flooded. People will be like, whoa, almost like I've got a self storage unit. Hey, Ben, take this. be like, Hey, I've got this multifamily take this. And it's just, it's awesome, man. So this is a cool journey. It really is. Oh it's been fantastic. And like I said, It's something that I've truly reflect on, cuz I'm a guy who's got the pedal down all the time and just keep my blinders on and just go. And, being a fullback, I was just a guy who would run into people and drink Advil and just do it over again. Of course you're a, a full back. And so I was just a grinder and so this coaching journey has helped me slow down and reflect on. And I'm just super excited to see where it goes for me. And if I can help other people along the way, I'm super pumped to do that football guy, certified football guy. If you're a fullback, you're a football guy through and through. grab the ball block and tackle run through faces. Yep. That's a fullback and Hey, that's what you did, man. You grabbed the ball and you ran down the middle. Whenever you got the opportunity with every single deal that you did and you gotten rewarded for. So hats off to you. My friend, this has been very cool to listen to and very cool to learn from. You've provided a lot of value to people today. So where can people find you? Because now it's the time. So I don't have website. I'm barely on social media. I one of my last posts was from when I coached college football seven years ago on my Instagram. But I'm making it a point to get on there. So I'd love everyone to find me on Instagram. Ben underscore call K a L L. And hopefully I can get into the social media game. Ah, come on. I'll challenge you there. Hopefully I can get into the social media game. No, you're gonna murder it in social media. You're gonna be a social media king. You're gonna be the next grant Cardone, but more whole. No, I seriously if people reach out to me, I'm happy to talk to anybody about it. Like coaching is, my background. So I'd love to help people through the journey or answer any questions people have. So please do reach out to me. As an agent, you can find my email address, my phone number, call me anytime. Love it. Ben, appreciate you brother. Appreciate you for coming on, man. This has been fantastic. I've been honored to be the first public coming out of all of this. So this has been fantastic, brother. Thank you for texting me. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing your story and appreciate it, buddy. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks Brian. And with that, we will let leave you guys with. Go build a life that you do not need and escape or a vacation from. This has been Brian Lubin and Ben call with the action academy podcast. Sign it off.