From Real Estate Novice to Industry Leader: Grant's Story of Founding Stoic Equity Partners

[00:00:00] Welcome to The CRE Project Podcast, the show where we take a deep dive into the world of commercial real estate. I'm Clayton King, your guide through the complex environment of commercial real estate. So whether you're looking to invest, develop or simply understand how commercial real

[00:00:26] estate shapes our cities and economies, The CRE Project Podcast is your ultimate resource. Grant, thanks so much for joining me on The CRE Project Podcast. It's great to have you on the show. Thanks for taking the time. Yeah, thank you for having me.

[00:00:57] Sure. Yeah, this should be a fun show. So starting out, you know, obviously you're a well-known commercial real estate professional down in kind of the southeast part of the United States and kind of, you

[00:01:08] know, grew through the ranks through brokerage and now you're more on the principal side. But would obviously love to hear kind of the more detailed history of kind of your career journey. Share with us how'd you kind of get to where you're at today?

[00:01:22] Yeah, for sure. And again, thank you for having me today and excited to have a conversation. Yeah. So I grew up in Columbus, Georgia, which is about an hour south of Atlanta, and then went to college at Auburn University. I guess freshman year 2010. Yeah, War Eagle, exactly.

[00:01:38] And my business partner, Jeremy's, he's part of the other side. So we don't talk much around football, you know, but it's all good. But yes, when I was at Auburn, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Didn't really have a whole lot of direction.

[00:01:52] Family was entrepreneurial family, but wasn't going to go work for the family business. So I was trying to kind of figure it out. And it was like a lot of direction, not really spending a whole lot of time at school while I was in college.

[00:02:03] So I'm sorry, my parents moved full time to Fairhope, Alabama, which is down near Mobile, Orange Beach, Pensacola, Florida, that kind of area, which is where I live now. Back when I was at school, mess around partying and not taking

[00:02:16] class too seriously. So I guess the beginning of my junior year, my parents were pretty much like, look, we've tried this. Let's come home for a little while, figure something out. Came back down to Fairhope and didn't really know anybody.

[00:02:26] It was kind of working some odd job kind of things. And one of the jobs I had was doing landscaping for a home builder. This was 2012, I guess. So GFC, you know, wasn't that old. So there was a lot of just spec homes sitting on the ground still.

[00:02:38] So he had a bunch of names holding and I was just going around doing lawn maintenance essentially. And his wife was a real estate agent, like a residential realtor. And he was like, well, you might as well at least get your real estate

[00:02:48] license. You know, the market's starting to pick back up and, and, you know, you can sell some houses and that's not a bad living kind of thing. And so I did that. I guess I was 20, 20, yeah, 20, 21 kind of time frame.

[00:02:59] So I got my real estate license when joined the local Keller Williams realtor office and started slinging some houses for a few months. There you go. Really love, love that. I mean, it's residential real estate is an art and you know, more props people to do it.

[00:03:11] My wife's a realtor, but it was just not really my personality traits. So then someone told me about commercial real estate and kind of how that world works and just a little bit more of that industry.

[00:03:20] So I found a guy here locally pretty much say, Hey, I want to work for you. He's like, I don't know if I have time for you, but essentially it was like, look, I'll just cold call for you.

[00:03:28] And so we just started doing that and primarily started cold calling all limited service hotels across the Gulf Coast. Because the biggest thing was you have your big shops out of Atlanta, South Florida, Dallas, New York, wherever the,

[00:03:41] you know, the SmartGist or CB or JLL that are, you know, they'll sell a comfort suites in Navarra, Florida, but that's not really where they're located. So we kind of had more of a local edge there. So I started selling hotels for a while with the regional kind

[00:03:54] of Gulf Coast firm. Did that for, I guess about five years and was successful at it. That firm is also where Jeremy Friedman, now business partner and I met, he was a triple net retail broker. So in 2017, Jeremy left to go start Catapult Properties, which

[00:04:08] was his own brokerage house. I left him into Marcus and Mila Chap, National Hospitality all group to continue to sell limited service hotels, kind of broaden out the reach a little bit, started working with like some more P shops, some more reeds, that kind of thing.

[00:04:21] And it was able to really build out an understanding on underwriting how a reed looks at a deal versus, you know, an owner operator of a Hampton Inn or something like that. It also got introduced to like CNBS debt as well as

[00:04:34] Lifeco and just kind of different structures that, which is all really interesting because when I was selling owner Octopi hotel or owner operated hotels, it's all seeing our SBA loans for the most part, a little bit of regional bank debt. So it's just a little bit different.

[00:04:48] So it's a little bit more institutionalized, which was fun to learn. So continue to do that. But as I learned more about kind of more of that institutional side and learn more about what a GP is, what LP is, how you raise money, how you run a fund,

[00:05:00] how you run a syndication, I kind of decided I wanted to go further into that route. So 2019 really dug in on that. So reading a ton of books, watching every YouTube video I could find that explained what a IRR waterfall was and

[00:05:13] what typical fee structure of a private equity real estate shop looked like and really started chasing, you know, a deal, a small deal that I could do and kind of put together. Around that time, I had a small multifamily dealer here locally that I was looking at.

[00:05:27] And Jeremy also has a background in construction. So we'd always kind of kept up and I called him. I was like, Hey, how much is HVAC going to be to replace on this eight unit apartment deal? And he's like, why are you asking this? Like you sell hotels.

[00:05:40] Like, why does this matter to you? And so I kind of told him what I was working on. And he was like, I'm trying to do the same thing actually. And he had a building in mind. So we ended up putting the building under contract.

[00:05:49] That's kind of how Stoic Equity Partners, that was the kind of the precipice of it. But yeah, that's kind of how it got started. Very cool. So a couple of questions in particular, thanks for sharing that super detailed background and interesting journey.

[00:06:00] One part in particular that I think a lot of us deal with these days and in particular with capital raising and investment strategy, all of that. It's almost the abundance, but the oversaturation of education and gurus that are out there on how to do this stuff.

[00:06:18] So I found it interesting when you said in 2019, you really kind of dove into educating yourself on those types of items. Can you educate the listeners a little bit about what worked for you? What did you learn a lot from somebody in particular?

[00:06:35] I mean, you mentioned YouTube channels. I'm just, I'm curious on what worked for you. And let me look this book up real fast. I don't want to get the name of it wrong. Investing in Real Estate Private Equity, sorry, by Sean Cook.

[00:06:45] And that was a really good resource. It kind of walks through from LP's perspective, exactly how all that is set up to break into CRE YouTube channel. It's a good one. Those are a couple that I watched, but it is hard because you do watch,

[00:06:57] you know, a video about whether whatever strategy you want to just say, and it seems so easy. And at that time it's, it is really easy to be like, well, I'm just going to go do the BRR method because it works everywhere and it's going to be great.

[00:07:09] I'm going to make hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. So you got to have to work through some of those and kind of understand like, oh, this guy, nothing gets anybody. But some of those people are marketers more so than real estate.

[00:07:19] So you got to be, be sure that those people have real track records and you're listening to people that have done a few hundred million dollars real estate deals. Not somebody that's that's done one house hack. Yeah. Genius. You know? Yeah.

[00:07:31] It's a dynamic in today's world on how many coaches are out there. So yeah, when you mentioned that it kind of, it kind of caught my interest. So, um, I think finding a mentor on that, not, not necessarily, I mean,

[00:07:43] reports are obviously great and I'm sure I don't know when in particular, but I'm sure there's some great ones out there. But I mean, most people pretty open. A lot of people helped me coming up. I've had people, I do a lot of podcasts and have people

[00:07:53] reach out and ask me questions. I'm always happy to help people. I mean, most people will help you if you ask for help. So find somebody that's doing what you want to do and just reach out and talk to them.

[00:08:02] That's probably the easiest way to learn as well. Yeah. What I always tell people too is if you can add value to people, they're more than willing to help you out, you know, most of the time.

[00:08:12] Um, so, so going back to your first deal, um, I want to kind of, kind of dive into that a little more. So you identified the property, you engaged with Jeremy from that point. Did you guys put it under contract and find additional partners or

[00:08:29] did you guys close on that one? Just, just the two of you. And is that yes. So it's a little bit of a complicated deal actually, that little multifamily deal I was looking at. Jeremy was like, they'll do that. Come do this office building.

[00:08:42] Cause this was pretty COVID back when you could do office. And, um, and so I guess it was beginning of 2020 and it was a 45,000 square foot grocery store that had been converted into an office like call center type user.

[00:08:56] Um, it was a nationally traded or publicly traded company. It was the tenant. They had three years left on their lease. Um, and it was for sale for like a 10 cap. Um, so our whole idea was get it under contract, negotiate

[00:09:09] a lease extension and then flip out of it for like a seven cap. And so we're like, even if we don't have to close them, like we just signed this contract and there'll be a huge one for us.

[00:09:17] We put it under contract, I guess, like the first week of March, 2020 fast forward two weeks, COVID was really starting to get in. We'd meet with the tenant. We're like, Hey, we want to do this. Like, well, you know, we have this COVID thing going on.

[00:09:28] We're all working from home. We'll come back to you. And so you see where that's going. So three weeks in they're like, no, we're, we're all going to work from home. We don't need this. You know, we don't want to do that. So we dropped that building.

[00:09:38] We went and chased, we did a land flip. We did some of those things. We're still brokering at the same time to make a living, but fast forward to that next winter. So it'd been like beginning of 21, the building came back around.

[00:09:52] The tenant was fully gone work from home. They didn't want to be there anymore. They again, two or three years left on their lease. And we negotiated a buyout from that tenant. They paid us close to a million dollars to get out of the rest of their lease.

[00:10:06] Wow. And we took that building and so our basis then it was like 50 bucks a foot and we took it and turned it into self storage. So it was very cool. Uh-huh. It's been an interesting one. And, um, and so yeah, it's good.

[00:10:18] So it's your local and fair hope. Um, so it was right down the street from us. So we did that. Yeah, it was a good deal for us. So that was in 2020. So how long, I guess, did it take you from basically kind of your, I

[00:10:29] guess the point that you identified the first property and you engaged actually closing on your first deal. So we, we put that deal originally under contract in March, 2020. We closed on it actually in July of 21 because we dropped it and then it came back around.

[00:10:45] Uh, no, not that bad. We did in between that have a piece of residential land that we put under contract and we were going to try to do, um, like a lot of elements, like a deal Horton type.

[00:10:55] We ended up selling that piece to a partner of ours who really does that business. So that was more of a flip. You know, we didn't close the line or anything, but we did do that in between too. Very cool.

[00:11:06] So you kind of mentioned, which is a common part of our business, at least for some people, not all people, but you mentioned that during these first couple of deals, you were still brokering talk to us a little bit about that balance and how that looked.

[00:11:20] And when did you decide that you were going to make the full commitment towards just being the full time principle? It's hard to do. It's hard to balance. Obviously being a principal is awesome and running your own shop is great.

[00:11:32] And I feel like a lot of people get really excited about that. And then we'll focus all the time on that. I'm that person a hundred percent. I don't do well with balance. I love running one direction really hard.

[00:11:41] I will say I did the best job of that. Fortunately, I had a lot of really good clients that I worked on for many years. I was able to continue to work with, but it was definitely one of

[00:11:49] those where I had to work hard to kind of block off my time to make sure like, Hey, are you still calling your clients? Are you still doing the work that you need to be doing? So I guess 21, we were really still brokering 22.

[00:12:01] I had one legacy deal that had been kind of hanging out there that I've been talking to the guy for like six years about selling this hotel. So the Florida Pan handles super nice deal. So I knew it would sell easy. So I did that one deal in 22.

[00:12:11] I knew I was about done at that point. I had a guy reach out to get hit me to help him on like a B O V on a hotel and to be frank, I was just all pulled the numbers.

[00:12:21] I just, I just kind of realized I didn't really know the numbers as well as I should have anymore. And so at that point I was like, I need to need to go full time and end of the other.

[00:12:30] Um, I I'm sure there's a lot of people that have better balance than I do that are able to kind of do both for a longer time. Uh, because brokering is great. I mean, that's a, it's a great income.

[00:12:38] It's a great, I mean, if you, you have good clients, you have good deals, like that's a great, great industry. Yeah. Um, but for me, it was just one of those things where I just couldn't, I was not a two track man to kind of gap. Um,

[00:12:50] So how did that, how did that psyche work with you with your income and your finances? Yeah. So fortunately we've done well for the brokerage world coming out of COVID. Uh, 21 was a good year. 22 was a good year. And, um, but it's definitely been different.

[00:13:04] I mean, as a broker, cause you're mainly in the brokerage business. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And so a lot of the brokers, especially on the investment sales side, I mean, we were doing, I guess five to six deals a year. So like you were always living off saving.

[00:13:15] So it is kind of different because I never had a W2, never had a paycheck. Well now at Stoke, I have a paycheck. So like every month I get the same amount. And like you have to like look at a budget, like which you always have to

[00:13:25] look at a budget, but it's a little bit different when you just have like a pot of money and you're like, all right, I just can't spend all this between now and the next closing. So it's definitely a different feeling.

[00:13:33] I think it's better in the long run, but it is weird not to have like huge liquidity events all the time. Cause that's kind of what I was used to, uh, brokering stuff. But financially it, um, we had some other investments that have been

[00:13:44] running just like rental house kind of stuff and a couple of those and that kind of thing. So, and the Stokes done well, so it's made money. So fortunately we were, we've been able to make that transition, but yeah, it's definitely different. Yeah.

[00:13:56] I just want to highlight it because there's a lot of people that have trouble transitioning, you know? And like you said, a lot of people have, you know, hard time balancing, but a lot of times it's just hard to have the courage just kind

[00:14:09] of take that leap, you know? Yeah. And that was also part of like how Jeremy and I looked at it starting out is that we wanted to, you know, we had, I had a conversation with ourselves of like, we could have been like

[00:14:19] brokers still the same, like there's plenty of guys in every market. That like the syndicate, a couple of deals, them and a buddy might buy something, but they're also full-time brokers and they kind of need a little bit of everything, which is great.

[00:14:30] Like I would kind of categorize that more of like a deal shop. Like maybe they have like an assistant, but it's like mainly like them and somebody's just throwing together deals, which is a great way of doing it.

[00:14:38] We really wanted to go out and start, you know, I have analysts have in-house asset management. I started real enterprise around Stoke equity partners. Some days it's, you know, we're like, we should have just been a deal shop, but yeah.

[00:14:53] So I think that if you're going more that route, staying a broker and staying active in the brokerage world, it's a little bit easier just because it's kind of all. Yeah. A lot of those guys are also doing local stuff, you know, we're

[00:15:02] doing stuff all over the Southeast. So it's a little bit different. Yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that. So, so let's, let's talk about that a little bit. So let's who, who is stoic and kind of give us a background on your, on your company.

[00:15:16] I mean, you've kind of alluded to your start date, but what's kind of like when you guys officially kind of dove in, you know, what do you guys look for in deals? What's kind of your criteria? You know, what is your team? What does your platform look like?

[00:15:27] Just kind of give us an idea of who Stoke is. So we registered the LLC and summer of 2020, when we were still kind of playing with that office building, we put together the name. We had registered it at that point.

[00:15:41] It was kind of like one of those like, Oh, maybe we'll find a deal or two to do together as we chase deals over the next year. Before we closed our first year, we kind of took a little bit more seriously as like an actual company enterprise.

[00:15:51] So again, did our first self-storage deal in July 21 went on to do three more self-storage deals throughout 21 and beginning at 22 around that time, saw self storage. It's a great asset class. Just got really, really hot. And it was just hard for us to make numbers work, especially

[00:16:07] the beginning of we were just starting our company. There was a lot of guys that were out there raising a lot more money than we could, and we just couldn't compete our, our equity was a little bit more expensive. And so we transitioned into multi-tenant flex industrial as

[00:16:19] brokers and just, as we looked at markets, we just kind of always saw it as an under supplied asset class. And then just, they were always full rents were lower, but they were, you know, rents were pushing in the market.

[00:16:29] So we just saw that as a good opportunity. So we kind of really started identifying deals and underwriting deals, I'd say in Q1 of 22 close our first deal at the end of Q3. So spent quite a bit of time really learning how to underwrite those

[00:16:43] and just figuring out what we do and don't know about. Unfortunately, Jeremy has with his background has a lot of really good leasing experience, so which is important in that. I mean, you got to know exactly how all those leases read.

[00:16:56] And if you're buying a deal, it has 20 leases, you know, it has hundreds of pages of legal documents. You really got to understand. And so started buying flex industrial ball, I guess, nine of those deals, we have 13 assets total on our portfolio.

[00:17:07] We had not sold anything that we've bought thus far. We've placed about 87 million of debt and equity, about 30 million of outside equity, primarily our equity comes from a high net worth individuals and fund to funds, family offices. And this is kind of where where our money comes from.

[00:17:21] We do syndicate as well as we have a fund that buys flex industrial solely. It's closing the fund that we're raising for right now. And then we'll do we'll kind of have our fun, go pair pursue and do JV deals with direct investors as well.

[00:17:35] Just sometimes larger family offices, they want to do a single asset. So they want to write, say, a two million dollar check directly into one deal. So we'll do that and then bring in, you know, a couple of million from the fund

[00:17:45] and kind of do a JV deal that way is kind of what we're currently doing on the team side. Jeremy and I run the operation. We have Matt Porter, who's our asset manager in house. So we use all third party property management throughout the southeast

[00:17:59] just because we're pretty diverse spot on locations. And so self-managing really just doesn't make sense. We don't have the scale. And also there's experts in those markets and, you know, they know who the best landscape company is in Jackson, Mississippi.

[00:18:10] That's going to take us a long time to figure out. There's just no reason for us not to outsource that. But Matt works on managing those managers, which is hard work. We then have our in-house accounting.

[00:18:19] So we have Haley West, who's been there, been here for a while. She's actually transitioning out. And Brittany Calmetty just started with us last week. And then we have an analyst, Sam, who works under me on the acquisition side.

[00:18:31] And then Chris McCoy, who runs we have a retail development now that just started a few months ago, we're chasing some some coffee users, some build suit kind of retail as well, just because that's Jeremy's background. So he knows that space really well.

[00:18:43] And then Chris has done a lot of that. So it's been a good asset for us. But that's kind of a different vertical than our than our normal for the industrial world. Yeah, very cool. So let's talk about raising capital, because it's an interesting subject.

[00:18:58] You mentioned that a lot of your capital comes from high net worth individuals. I mean, talk to the audience a little bit about how do you how do you do that? Like, how do you gain the trust? I mean, it's obviously a very competitive environment.

[00:19:11] I mean, everybody has a better deal, a better path to take. You know, so talk to us a little bit about how you established and kind of fostered those relationships and, you know, kind of that path. Yeah. So it's really hard.

[00:19:27] I'll say that for the equity is really hard. Still to this day, that's our biggest lunch band of growth. I think that's everybody's, you know, we always have thought we'd get past that. But I talked to people that have a billion dollars in assets and they're still like,

[00:19:38] yeah, I mean, day in, day out, we're trying to raise equity. That is the game. But we started out with friends and family. So you start out with people that invest that know you. We had a lot of kind of local real estate clients just from being brokers,

[00:19:49] especially Jeremy did, that knew some guys like to buy a small, you know, couple hundred thousand dollar office deal. So that's a good fifty hundred thousand dollar check to buy a self-storage deal. You know, so people like that that we kind of started out with. It's been interesting.

[00:20:03] We've kind of been in a transition period here lately that you start out with friends and family and then that network kind of grows. You really have to like foster that, make sure you're doing a good job for everybody, but then also getting referrals from those people.

[00:20:14] But eventually you have to kind of break out of that because your friends and family, even, you know, you have a really big network and a lot of wealthy, affluent people in your network. But once they get into three or four of your deals,

[00:20:27] they might be tapped out. I mean, our average check size is one hundred hundred fifty per deal. So I mean, if you have four deals, half a million bucks that they got with you. I mean, they only can run so long.

[00:20:36] So we've been really focusing over the past really year on new avenues to be able to build up a database of high net worth individuals as well as kind of larger check writers. Well, as we've gotten bigger, we've kind of found that world a little bit more.

[00:20:49] One struggle, just to be frank, that we're dealing with is like traditionally a lot of our deals are in the four to seven million dollar range. So check size of equity raises be like a million and a half to two million bucks.

[00:20:59] Well, your larger equity checks are going to be three, but they really want to write five million dollar plus equity checks. So you're kind of in the same between. We're like, we have a lot of properties at this level, but our equity checks are too big.

[00:21:10] So it's been interesting to kind of marry those together and try to build portfolios or some way to be able to match up that equity. So what are the main questions that you get asked from these high net worth individuals when you're

[00:21:24] asking for their commitment to a well, whether it's a fund or a syndication. What are they qualifying you? I mean, I think the biggest thing is, are they seeing if you actually have a plan? Have you really done the due diligence? Do you really know this building?

[00:21:38] Do you really understand? But do you really have a strategy? You know, there's tons of good deals out there. There's tons of great multifamily deals out there. I don't know anything about multifamily. So I'm the wrong person.

[00:21:47] So it can be a great multifamily asset, but I'm the wrong person currently to run that. Eventually, we might hire somebody. We'll start doing multi today. We don't do that. They really want to make sure that you have a plan, that you have a strategy.

[00:21:56] This property fits into your strategy, that you can articulate what you're going to do to the property and that you have a again, a budget to be able to do it. I mean, you can go out and say, I'm going to go renovate this this flex industrial portfolio.

[00:22:09] We're going to be able to bump rents, you know, 40 percent. OK, well, do you have the lease comps to say you can bump up 40 percent? What's your budget going to be? How much renovations are you going to do?

[00:22:18] You do think about such you do everything to the exteriors? Are you anticipating your TIs and the roles? How many how you know, what does your lease up look like? What's your stabilization period look like? Just making sure that you're really in the details.

[00:22:31] I mean, usually most LPs are not really going to get that deep into it, but they're going to ask some qualifying questions to make sure that you have those answers, whether they ask it or not. Yeah. What's been the biggest challenge for you

[00:22:43] when it comes to raising capital thus far? Capital, you get really tied up in doing deals. I mean, doing real estate deals is really hard. So it's one of those where you're focusing on due diligence, you're focusing on combining assets, underwriting assets.

[00:22:55] Insurance is a huge issue, you know, just the typical day to day of running running a portfolio. And I mean, raising capital is a full time job. And so making sure that you're talking to those people, that you're reaching out to your network,

[00:23:08] that you talk to your current investors has been something we've really had to refocus ourselves on because it's really easy to kind of do a deal and then kind of move on. It's kind of the same way in the brokerage world, right?

[00:23:17] Like you can do one deal and then you're like, oh, no, I got to restart from the beginning. But if you keep talking to your clients the whole time, you don't really have to do that. And so it's kind of the same thing that we're really trying

[00:23:26] to try to focus on that. And then also we're in a we're in, frankly, a pretty small market where we live. So it's important for us to really be able to get our name out there, let people know what we're doing. We love our strategy.

[00:23:36] We think we have a really good niche and doing really well with it. But you got to make sure that people know what you're doing or they can invest with you right. Yeah, yeah. I want to hear one success story and one story of, you know,

[00:23:49] a learning experience. Just on a deal level or raising money? Yeah, yeah, that's fine. I mean, you're a young company. I mean, you know what what's gone right and what's gone wrong thus far. Yeah, I will start with what's gone wrong.

[00:24:05] So our second self-storage deal that we're going to come out with was a ground up development in Pensacola, Florida. And we used a engineering firm that was not local to that market. And we went out and our whole idea was we were going to demo the whole site

[00:24:21] is about three and a half acre site. We built 50,000 square foot single climate control buildings had very well designed buildings in the middle of the site. You could drive all around it. Just super nice class, a self-storage facility.

[00:24:33] Well, we did not realize and did not know that they had shut down the ability to be able to take down heritage trees. I assume that that's everywhere, but essentially big oak trees that are over a certain size traditionally in a lot of these markets.

[00:24:45] You could pay five grand a tree or something like that. And I think we had we had four of them. So, OK, we'll build $20,000 into the budget. We'll cut all those down. We ought to worry about it. We did not realize that while we were under contract designing,

[00:24:56] they shut that down and you could not keep you couldn't do it. So we went to go get our permit. They're like, well, if you have four heritage trees, that's not going to work. Yeah, we'll pay into the bank. Like, no, that's not going to work.

[00:25:05] And so we had to fully redesign the site. So we ended up we knew we had a great site. We had a great price on a buyer from an older gentleman who lived there. It's like this old country area that was currently blowing up.

[00:25:15] We were right behind a brand new public shopping center. So it was like primo piece of property. So we're like, we cannot let this thing go. So we ended up having to get a loan on it.

[00:25:22] Just Jeremy and I to take down the land about a year before we actually because we then had to redesign the whole site. So we owned the property at this point and redesigned the whole site. Took us an extra year to get to market.

[00:25:34] And then in between, we had somebody else come and build on top of us. They've got properties open now. It's doing fine, but we would have been the first to market in that little sub market.

[00:25:42] So really know your local codes and use really good local engineers as the market there. Love our engineers that were used to just like we all miss that.

[00:25:50] So so is that was just a new code that went into play or a new law or it wasn't even really that it was more so just like I think the law is still there that you could buy it. You can pay into the tree fund.

[00:26:02] So essentially you pay a fee, you know, then they go plant more trees to subsidize you cutting down that tree. But there was a big lawsuit about that that it was actually another self-sourced

[00:26:11] developer on the other side of the county was going to tear down this like 80 inch huge water. A lot of people came out against it. And so by kind of the perception of being able to do that really easily kind of went away.

[00:26:24] So I don't think it was a law and so change or code change, but just really making sure that you're staying in tune to the local news, the local happenings because that's when that changed. I love stories like that.

[00:26:34] That's why and I appreciate you, Sharon, because that's like commercial real estate to a T. Think you got everything figured out and then something totally random like that happens and just throws your whole project off in that situation.

[00:26:51] You know, talk to us a little bit about the weight behind the decision that you made to close on that piece of property because hearing you say that were you getting a lot of pressure from the seller to close on it when you still had open eye,

[00:27:03] you know, like obviously open issues going on. What were the internal conversations that you guys were having and at what level were you comfortable to say, hey, we'll go ahead and close on this piece of dirt? Did you have it fully designed again or where were you?

[00:27:19] I don't know. It was not even it was not designed at all. We just knew we had a good basis on it. So we were just kind of like it's a little bit of a cowboy move. They were just like, it'll work out. It'll be OK.

[00:27:27] I mean, the public's just being built at the same time. We're like worst case scenario, we should be able to flip this, be able to get our money back. Cool story on that, though, was a much older gentleman who owned the land.

[00:27:36] His wife actually passed away during our under contract, but it was really cool. We needed some extensions through all that. Obviously, we were a young company trying to figure it out. And we went to him like kind of hat in hand one time.

[00:27:46] They're like, hey, we'll pay you an extra 10 grand. But I need like four months of due diligence. And he was a Vietnam net bet. And he told us a story about when he came back from Vietnam,

[00:27:55] he was like, man, if I can ever help anybody, I always will. It was super cool. It was definitely one of those moments where he was just like, however I can help you, I'll be here to help. So we were like, man, we got to close this thing.

[00:28:04] We got to do right by that guy as well. But it was a really cool story. He's a really cool guy. Yeah. I find when I'm doing my projects, I mean, communication is just key. I mean, when people know that you're genuinely working on a project

[00:28:16] and you run into these issues, more than likely they're going to work with you on it. Especially if you let them know where you are. I mean, if you try to go in there and act like you're the biggest development company

[00:28:25] in the world, they're going to be like, how did you not catch this? But if you're like, hey, it's me and my buddy and we're trying to figure this out. They're going to be like, okay, well I can respect your honesty and your transparency. Yeah.

[00:28:34] Honesty is always key when you run into issues. Where is that project today? So we opened it in, I guess, January of this year. It is 27% occupied. So it's leasing up really quickly. Thousands of homes coming in right around it has one competitor

[00:28:51] and that competitor is now filled up. So we're the only one that lease up in that little sub market and it's doing great. Turned out to be a great project. We just ended up having to, so we had four trees on like one side.

[00:29:00] So we originally were going to put the building right in the middle of the site. We had to shift the whole building over to protect those trees. It's not as good of a layout as we would like, but it still works pretty well.

[00:29:09] You have a very shaded parking area, I'm guessing. Yes, very nice trees. Eventually they're going to probably fall on our building during a hurricane. So it'll be great. Is it still just you and Jeremy on that project or did you guys refi and bring partners in? What were...

[00:29:22] So a lot of our first deals kind of go back to partnerships and that kind of thing. We're done with the regional brokerage that I talked about when I first started my career. The general about four to that was owned by a gentleman named Nathan Cox

[00:29:35] and he has a huge land development company, had a big home building company sold to D.R. Horton. But when we were first starting out, we're like, we can't guarantee this much debt. I don't know how we're going to do this.

[00:29:45] Like we're a couple real estate brokers, but we didn't have a balance sheet. And so we went to him asking him his advice and how he got started. He was like, well, I'll go GP some stuff with you.

[00:29:53] So we paid him a piece of our fees to go on the debt with us. So we did our first deals with him. So he's still on that deal with us as well. We have that and probably I guess 12 LPs on that one.

[00:30:04] Tell us about success that you've had. What's been your biggest win thus far? It was our biggest one, but kind of our... We hit a lot of a lot of doubles, singles and doubles. We haven't had any, you know, grand slams. Nothing wrong with that, man. Exactly.

[00:30:16] I'll tell a story. We bought a deal in regional Mississippi. One of our second flex deal that we ever bought, which was, I guess, November of 22. And our play on it was the fact that it had too much office space in that.

[00:30:27] We've done this since then as well. It's a good strategy, but essentially buying a flex part that was built out as 80% office or 70% office over the past couple of decades. Ripping out that office, turning it back into 50-50 office warehouse suite to be able to drive up occupancy.

[00:30:41] So we bought that deal at 74% occupant. Again, November 22. We've done a few hundred thousand dollars for the renovations, putting the roofs on, redid the parking lot, built out a few suites and ripped out a bunch of office.

[00:30:53] And so we've taken it from 74% occupancy to we just signed a lease. So put us, I think at 94.5% occupancy in 18 months. Wow. Great. Yeah. It's fantastic, man. Good stuff. Well, congratulations on that. I want to talk a little bit about how are you structuring these deals?

[00:31:09] You don't have to talk about anything specific, but I'm curious for like a lot of people out there that are again kind of dipping their toe into, hey, I want to do a syndication deal. I want to raise capital. How do you go about structuring your first deal

[00:31:25] or your second deal or your 15th deal with partners? When you guys are kind of the lead players, the GP, and then you have a bunch of LPs, what's kind of like equity expectations? How do you handle all of that typically? How does Stoic kind of structure that?

[00:31:43] I know about that. Yeah. So first off, I'll say I'm not an attorney. Seek legal advice elsewhere. But we have always structured it with three entities on each deal we've done. So we have an entity that actually owns the property.

[00:31:53] Then we have a holdings company, which is an LLC that has... Sorry. So you have the ownership company, holdings company LLC, and then a sponsor entity. The sponsor entity will be us with whoever's co-sponsoring us. We'll be in that sponsor LLC.

[00:32:07] That sponsor LLC and all of the LPs are then members of the holding LLC that then own the ownership. So it makes it bankruptcy remote, which is important when you're dealing with a bunch of other not related investors.

[00:32:22] But as far as doing your first deal, I find a good partner. That's the biggest thing because you're not going to be able to guarantee the debt in the way that you want to. And if you can, you're going to get really bad terms

[00:32:29] if it's your first deal probably. So a lot of people out there that'll go GP deals just find somebody who does something similar or maybe even a different asset class. So they know how the GP LP relationship works.

[00:32:39] But if you can find a really good deal, get it tied up, bring in a partner, they can also potentially help you raise equity on your first deal. So partnerships is how I would get started. Then from the legal standpoint, we charge typical kind of fee structure

[00:32:52] that the most P shops would charge normal waterfall. What's Jeff now have is don't overcomplicate things. When we first started out, we had a three tier waterfall system like an eight IRR and then add a preff over that 12 IRR, 15 IRR. It was pretty complicated calculation.

[00:33:07] We did it because we thought it was cool. The big guys do that. And then one of our biggest LPs who's like really sophisticated was like, can we just do a single tranche? Waterfall, like it'll be way easier.

[00:33:17] And we're like, well, yeah, we thought we were helping you out, but sure, we'll do a single. People, it's more simple than you think because being complex doesn't always actually work better. And people don't really want complex. It won't simple people invest in stuff they understand. All else.

[00:33:33] No doubt. So, well, cool. Yeah, thanks. Because I think a lot of times people have an issue which is where do I start? That's my first couple of deals, which has been a couple of years, well, probably three, four years ago now, but same type of thing.

[00:33:47] I just went to, I identified a deal, found a couple guys that were in the real estate business, just said, hey, I got this deal. You want to do this with me? And that's how we did it. You know what I mean? But it's interesting because like,

[00:34:01] I always ask that question because I don't raise capital for a living. I don't structure the investments like you guys do. I'm more of just on those first couple of deals, I just structured it at equal share. You know what I mean? And that's how we did it.

[00:34:17] And I guess there's no real wrong way to do it. I think it's just something you learn over time because, like any partnership, right? You do a couple of deals and you find that you're doing a lot of the work

[00:34:28] and you're putting a lot of sweat in and other guys, the signature on the deal. You know what I mean? So how do you weigh what that's worth versus you putting a bunch of the equity into the deal when you're a younger individual,

[00:34:42] to your point that doesn't have a balance sheet. You know what I mean? So it's just an interesting path to kind of navigate as you kind of grow in the business. But there's really no wrong way to do it.

[00:34:55] I always tell people the only wrong thing you do is just like not, just to not get started. Yeah, get started somehow. Yeah, get started somehow. If you don't make everything on the first couple deals, it's fine. I mean, you're not supposed to. Those are resume builders.

[00:35:11] You're paying for your resume for a while. I mean, you definitely want to do right by your investors above all else. But if you as a GP don't make a ton of money on your first few deals, as long as your LPs are making money, that's fine.

[00:35:22] That's all you're trying to get in the game. And I think again, finding a good partner on that. Everyone who's in the real estate business, especially on the fund manager or P shop, whatever you want to call us, we're all deal junkies. Everybody wants to see a deal.

[00:35:34] So if you can find a good deal that no one else knows about, you can find a good partner for that deal. Yeah, they're out there. I agree. And I mean, to that end, I'm curious, like how do you guys,

[00:35:45] do you deal with anybody that is what I guess I would call not a real estate professional or relatively unsophisticated when it comes to commercial real estate projects? And as far as on the investor side? Correct. Yeah, as a limited partner.

[00:36:01] Okay. So on that, how do you explain the risk to them? Because I think that's important for the audience to know when raising capital, because there is a lot of attorneys out. There's a lot of doctors out there, surgeons that have, again, high net worth,

[00:36:17] but they just don't know where to place it. And they have a lot of options. How do you relate to them? Hey, this is our plan, but it doesn't always go as planned. So here's your risk. How do you guys kind of handle that?

[00:36:31] I think just being extremely transparent. Hey, we know we can do this. We don't know we can do this. We think we can get to, I'll just use an example, like we're underwriting rents on the deal at 10 bucks a foot.

[00:36:43] You want to be transparent like, hey, down the street, they're getting 9.50, but we think we can push the market and get 10. There's a chance we can get tapped out at 9.50. You don't really know until you actually sign a lease at that rate.

[00:36:54] I think just kind of going into more detail than what people usually want. I do feel like sometimes we'll really kind of dig into like, this is what could go wrong. People are really investing in you though, at the end of the day,

[00:37:04] and they want to know that you have a plan. And I think it's important to say it and say what the risks are just so, it's very clear like, hey, we did talk about this just in case. But at the same time, if you're pitching somebody,

[00:37:18] they're probably not going to not invest because they don't like the fact that you're trying to push rents by 50 cents. That's really not it. It's because they didn't think that you really had a good plan or that you didn't really know your due diligence.

[00:37:30] But they invest because they're like, I don't really know what the market rent of Flex Industrial is, the McDonald Georgia. But it seems like you spent ad nauseam at hundreds of hours figuring it out or tens of hours figuring it out.

[00:37:42] So I'm going to trust and go in with you kind of thing. Yeah, I'm curious, do they just based on what you said, do your LPs typically ask for a lot of detailed information or is it just, hey, these guys? It depends. Some guys do.

[00:37:57] Some people like to invest as an LP. I mean, it's investment obviously, but also as a hobby. Like they are maybe a doctor or lawyer or whoever. You were just giving an example of, but they are real estate junkies at heart.

[00:38:10] And so they love to look in deals and they love to get the numbers. And we'll do that. We'll get on models with them and walk through how we're modeling deals, how they'll get in there, play with the model. We'll do a lot of that kind of stuff.

[00:38:21] But you will have other people that are just like, hey, yeah, I like your thesis. I like what you're doing and where are we going? I don't care. So you have both ends of the spectrum for sure. Yeah, it's interesting.

[00:38:34] Well, I think that's important for the audience to hear because it's so true. People invest in you ultimately. I mean, it could be the best deal out there, but if they don't have confidence in you, then they're not going to move forward with it. And that's just...

[00:38:50] I do think it is one more point on that. I would always say that you will get in those investor conversations and people will kind of pretty quickly be like, I'm in. I've invested with you before at this kind of thing. And we have made a point.

[00:39:02] We did this as brokers. So we definitely do it now. It's like, all right, that's great. We're so happy that you're in. But I want to finish the rest of the pitch so that I can go through. If there's half way through the pitch, I've heard enough.

[00:39:12] I'm going to be like, okay, well, I need to hit the high points because you really need to understand the risks of this. Amen. And that's great that you're in. But I'm going to go ahead and finish my pitch real fast

[00:39:20] so that we hit all the high points so that there's never a discrepancy of like, we didn't talk about that. I was like, well, you invested halfway through the pitch, so we quit. That's not the way to do it. I don't know. Yep. Yep. For sure.

[00:39:30] Yeah. Excellent point. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for sharing all that. Let's pivot a little bit. Let's talk about kind of where is the market at today in your mind and where do you kind of see it going? Have you guys adjusted your investment strategy at all?

[00:39:45] Is Industrial Flex softened? I mean, where do you see everything and where do you see it all going? Yeah, so high level. Obviously, Don and Chris, I'm going to be completely wrong on my interest rate

[00:39:56] assumptions, but I think the interest rates are going to stay higher for longer. I feel like the economy is pretty strong. Everyone you talk to is pretty flush with cash, if you like. I mean, I just don't see a world where that starts to get covered.

[00:40:07] That's just about two cents. I'm probably wrong. So don't take that with any advice. But what we do in the multi-tenant flex industrial world is all value add. So our whole thesis is that there's been very little of this product built over the last 20 years.

[00:40:19] These are in growing markets, so supply has stayed stagnant as demand has risen. A lot of rents are still those old 10-year ago, 20-year ago kind of standpoint. So we go in and we buy those assets.

[00:40:30] We roll the rent roll to market by being able to increase value. Supply is staying constrained because you cannot build these products in our markets to be able to cash flow it. Our average portfolio rents are anywhere from $8 to $12 triple net.

[00:40:44] I looked at trying to build one last week and it was $182 a square foot. Your rents would have to be $18.50 to be able to make those numbers work. So there's a big delta there before you're going to see new supply come in.

[00:40:55] So that means that we have a lot of tailwinds to be able to continue to push rents. So where we sit today, our game plan is we buy deals that have undermarket rents. We do some renovations. We roll the rent roll. We make the buildings nicer.

[00:41:06] We might tear out some office, as I was saying. But overall, just getting those properties to market, continuing to push rent as we hold them. We do think that long term, there is so much demand for flex industrial in the

[00:41:17] Southeast and these kind of secondary markets that people will start building it. Eventually somebody will be like, look, the vacancy factor is one. Even though we're going to be $4 more square foot, we really feel like we can make this work,

[00:41:31] which should actually be great for us because we'll own a few hundred thousand million square feet of stuff that's sitting there at $10 to $12 a square foot. The guy down the street is having to be at $17, $18. We can push to $14 and increase the value of our properties 20%, 40%,

[00:41:47] while still being able to undercut the new product. That's really where we see it going in the next five to 10 years. You're starting to see it now. I mean, we talk about how Dome can build it and you're starting to see stuff come up.

[00:41:57] People are starting to build it. The demand is just there. I was going to say, do you see rents just eventually getting to a point where new construction pencils? Yeah, I think so. And I mean, you're seeing it in certain markets. You have to.

[00:42:10] Eventually, construction prices I don't think are really going to come down. If you look at construction prices, long-term trend over even the GFC, I mean, they don't drop off a cliff. It's just not going to get back to where you can build flux for $80 a square foot.

[00:42:23] It's just not. You can buy it for $80 a square foot, which is a good deal. Yeah, agree. I told everyone on my end, I just think that there's two metrics that can move relatively faster than others and one of them is debt with interest rates,

[00:42:39] which I'm in your camp. I think we're going to be here for quite a while just given with where the economy is at and the other one's rent. If retailers have the, I guess I'm in the retail space, users have the ability to increase their pricing overnight.

[00:42:57] And unfortunately that gets passed through to the end user. It kind of all builds on itself and it's just more and more. And I've said time and time again, I don't think we're as a consumer and consumer,

[00:43:08] I don't know if we're really at the end of seeing the burn of inflation yet, because we're on the front side of it with real estate and rents. You're starting to see a few users to your point that are stepping up to these,

[00:43:20] what I'd call the new rent that we're at kind of post COVID here, but I don't see construction prices going. Supply is relatively similar. The biggest thing is just labor. All my contractor buddies that I talk to, they're just like labor's just killing us.

[00:43:37] I mean, once you give it, if you can't take it back when it comes to labor. Especially labor rates too. I mean, it's one thing you don't have enough people, but I mean, the hourly rate of what used to be, I'm just making up numbers here,

[00:43:49] but $12, $15 an hour is probably $22 an hour now. And that doesn't go backwards to your point. You can't say like, oh, that was COVID time so we paid you 22 an hour, we're going to get back to 18 now. Yeah, once you hit that high mark, you're going to stay there.

[00:44:05] But I totally agree. But you're saying just because there's no supply. I mean, in the retail world, we always kind of look at service-based retail strips are kind of similar to Flex Industrial just because no one's really built any of them. They're high demand now, low supply.

[00:44:19] And you can buy them for way below replacement costs. But like, for instance, we bought that deal in McDonough, Georgia. In-place rents are like $5 a square foot modified gross. We're signing renewals. So in-place tenants at $12.50, triple net. It's four times more.

[00:44:33] But at the end of the day, it's, I mean, that's the market. It's not predatory. It's just, hey, you can either pay us $12.50 or you pay 10 grand and move down the street and pay that guy $12.50. Yeah. Yep. Yep. This is where it is. Yep.

[00:44:43] It is where it is. So to that end too, it's interesting just in our market. And I'm not super familiar with your area, but I'm not in a large market either. We got a lot of guests that are on, that are in kind of core primary markets.

[00:44:56] So it's nice to kind of talk to a guy that's in a smaller market. But one of the biggest questions I have for you is in today's environment where everyone's kind of chasing the second gen rehab just because it does pencil. I mean, how are you finding deals?

[00:45:10] I mean, what is your main source to finding deal as a former kind of broker? Are you reaching out to people yourself and just calling owners? Are you building brokerage? And I know it's probably all the above, but what has been the most effective for you

[00:45:27] for finding deals? Yeah. I probably need to quit telling people this because I say it on podcasts all the time. So sure. So you're going to see all this. Fine. We've done a really good job of making our broker relationships.

[00:45:37] So we have our top 10 to 12 markets that we want to play in the Southeast. We play in more secondary cities, so we don't really invest. Like we have some stuff like an outskirts of Atlanta, but for the most part, we don't go to South Florida.

[00:45:49] We don't do Orlando. We don't do Austin. We don't do Nashville. We'd rather do Little Rock, Arkansas or Mobile, Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, places like that that are a little bit more stabilized. They're never going to explode in population, but they have growing pockets in that market.

[00:46:02] Birmingham, Alabama, for instance, has little hot pockets that have new publics, there's new Chick-fil-A's and there's an old flex building there. That's what we want to own. But to define that, what we've done is we've gone into the markets we like, we database all of them.

[00:46:13] So we have a list of say 50 buildings in Birmingham, Alabama that we'd like to own. We find the local brokers who run with Flex Industrial because it's a very localized market still. It's not like self-stored. We have one guy sitting in Atlanta selling all over the country.

[00:46:25] It's local. Like the guy who leases Flex in Birmingham also sells Flex in Birmingham. And so we've gotten close to all those guys. And so they know exactly who we want to buy. They have a list of what we want to buy.

[00:46:37] We don't do a lot of cold outreach. We were brokers for a long time, but at the same time, I just don't see that being the best use of our time. You talk to groups that will have like a team of cold callers and they're out there.

[00:46:48] They're calling local owners and that's great. It works for some people, but for us, we kind of recognize that one of our brokers in Mississippi, his name is B.B. B.B. probably knows owner Bob and has known him for 10 years.

[00:47:01] So he can just pick up the phone and say, Hey man, I got this group out of Alabama that wants to buy your deal. Or I can try to call Bob and it's gonna take me three years to make a relationship with him.

[00:47:10] It's kind of a waste of time. I'm curious when you say you're doing a good job at building your broker relationships, what does that look like? Do you fly to their markets? Give us a little more meat on that. What are you doing in particular?

[00:47:26] Give really good feedback on why you're not going to buy something. As a broker, there's nothing more frustrating than thinking that you got a great deal and sending it to somebody in the building. No, thank you. And you're like, why? I just don't like it.

[00:47:35] It's like, well, can you tell me why? It's fine that you don't like it, but that's going to help me. So being able to give really good feedback. If you go after something, go after it earnestly. Don't just go drop deals and don't go tie up stuff.

[00:47:46] Just tie up deal stuff. And then also just, I think being a resource for people. I mean, we have brokers call me all the time. Hey, what do you think exit capital is going to be? And I'm like, well, first off, why didn't I get to see it?

[00:47:58] But whatever, you know, I think it's going to be this. Yeah. Just being friends with people, right? Just being in your network. And I think being really clear on what you want to buy, what you don't want to buy. It's a big thing for brokers.

[00:48:08] Brokers will find you what you want, but you can't just be like, oh, I want to buy industrial. So, okay, what kind of industrial do you want to buy? I'm like sitting up. Well, that's not really true.

[00:48:15] You have something in your mind of what you want to buy. Communicate it and they can find it. Be really clear and concise. Yeah, it's always my favorite when I talk to, I get calls from guys and well, I'll buy anything anywhere that makes sense.

[00:48:30] You know, that's always, okay, this conversation is over. But yeah, to your point, I mean, I think having clear and concise feedback is critical because a lot of times you won't even get a response as a broker.

[00:48:42] And like that's an immediate turnoff or like you said, then it's just like, yeah, not interested in it. You know, can you tell me why? Because as the broker, you want to know that too. Is that pricing off? Is it the locate?

[00:48:54] What is it about this deal that you don't like? It's obviously your sophisticated individual that's acquiring this type of property. So why wouldn't it work for you? So you can learn and adjust on the brokerage side as well if need be.

[00:49:07] So yeah, that's kind of the reason I asked that question is, I think a lot of times people have a hard time building relationships with brokers because brokers are certain personality. I mean, they just are. And in an environment where everyone's trying to get access to deals,

[00:49:22] it's like, what are people doing different? And it always boils down to relationships. It always does. You have a good relationship with and you're upfront and honest with people. They're going to be more prone to coming to you with a deal.

[00:49:37] And more importantly, most importantly, as a broker, you know that you're going to perform. I mean, that's what's important. So and also getting face to face with people. You're saying as far as like flying out those markets, we do do a lot of market.

[00:49:49] Like we'll go take people out for drinks or coffee or dinner or whatever. That's really important. I mean, if you we've all gotten calls out of California and they want to buy stuff in Alabama, that's great. And we've sold stuff to people like that.

[00:50:01] But at the end of the day, it is really nice to be able to sit down, know people, have made connections. You're going to get a lot better service doing that. I think. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Well, great, man.

[00:50:12] Kind of the last segment kind of rolling into wrapping up our show here. But I always like to kind of ask about what I always call kind of the three, two, one. But you know, what are three resources?

[00:50:25] And we kind of tapped on earlier, but is there any books or podcasts or radio, whatever? What are the other three sources that have really worked for you historically throughout your career? I would definitely say investing in Private Equity Real Estate by Sean Cook. That book was great.

[00:50:40] Good to Great was a great book. Trying to build a company. I think everyone's read that one, but it is a good one. Atomic Habits. I like that one a lot. Like Small Day in and Day Out. So that's another one that's helped me.

[00:50:50] Again, nothing earth shattering being good at what you do isn't that hard. It's just doing it consistently every really long period of time. That's really what it gets balls down to. But yeah, so I'd say those are my top three.

[00:51:00] Yeah, I know great books, all three of them. What about two people that have impacted your career and how? I would say obviously Jeremy, my business partner. That's huge. Finding a good business partner is everything. It's like your work marriage, right?

[00:51:15] Got to make sure you got a good partner in life on that. And then I would say another person is probably Nathan who co-gped our original stuff with him. Finding somebody who's willing to take a flyer on you and being willing to kind of

[00:51:27] go out there with you and be like, oh, let's go figure this thing out together. It's pivotal for success and finding those relationships and making those relationships are really important. Yeah, no doubt. And then what's one piece of advice that you would give

[00:51:39] to a guy out there that's going into commercial real estate? I would say talk to as many people as you can. Tell everybody that you can talk to what you're doing and how you're doing it. We do that all the time.

[00:51:52] I don't care if you don't invest in private equity real estate currently. Love to tell you what I'm doing just because you never know how those change will come back to you. I've had people that I've mentioned that I sold hotels five years ago.

[00:52:04] They called me and said, hey, yeah, that was a completely random conversation. But my brother-in-law actually owns this Hampton Inn and wants to sell it. Can you help? I mean, just you never know where it's going to lead you.

[00:52:12] So always be willing to tell people what you're doing, how you're doing it, how they maybe can help you in the long term. And those relationships will come back to you. Excellent piece of advice, man. So well, this has been great.

[00:52:24] If someone has a deal out there that may be a good fit for you, what's the best way to get in contact with you? Yeah. So our website is stoicep.com. So it's stoicep.com. My email is greeves, so G-R-E-A-V-E-S at stoicep.com.

[00:52:42] My email is also all on our website. That's the best way to get in touch with me. I'm also on LinkedIn. You're welcome to connect with me there and reach out. Yeah, that's the best way. Awesome, man. Well, thanks again for being here today. This has been great.

[00:52:55] Yeah, man. Thank you for having me. Good talk. Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Commercial Real Estate Podcast. I hope you found today's conversation with our guests both insightful and inspiring.

[00:53:06] If you have any questions or comments or would like to connect with me or our guest, you can find all the relevant information and links in the show notes. I encourage you to reach out, share your thoughts, and continue the dialogue.

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