Seth Teagle - From Firefighter to 1500 Units
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Seth Teagle worked physically gruelling jobs as a firefighter & paramedic during his career. He knew that his body wouldn't be able to continue to hold up, so he turned his attention to real estate as a way to build up a passive income on the side that he could grow for the future. Using some of his own funds and partnering with a mentor, he decided to dive into a 50 unit building back in 2015 that he was eventually able to refinance and pull his money out, leaving him with a yield of $1M. He's now continued to build and grow his portfolio into a total of 1500+ doors and $186M of assets in real estate. With a passion for helping others, he's founded The Firehouse Bros, a multifamily coaching & education platform to help others learn how to get into multifamily investing as well.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- In finding a mentor. Find somebody who is doing what you want to do whatever it take to get in the same room with them
- Eliminate the mindset of limiting beliefs
- Focus on specific items that generate revenue
- If you are with the right people, you get credibility
- People who are highly motivated are tend to move faster
- Passive investing into syndication is a great alternative because you can put your money to work in real estate
- Real estate can be a vehicle for passive investment wherein you're not doing any of the day to day work
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro to Seth’s Career
1:44 - First Deal
9:43 - Analyzing Properties
12:23 - Coworkers Perception
13:52 - Growing Leverage
15:51 – Seth’s Biggest Advice
22:50 – Selecting Locations
26:27 - Burn the boats mentality
29:42 - How to find Seth
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL Freedom Podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. All right, welcome everybody to another episode of The REL Freedom Podcast where we talk about building wealth through opportunities in real estate. And today, we have a really awesome story. A former firefighter and paramedic now turned real estate investors. So we've got Seth Teagle, here, and a little bit about Seth. So he is now resides in Columbus, Ohio, formerly from North Dakota. And he's passionate about creating generational wealth for the stream group where you serve as CEO. And the stream group currently has about $186 million of assets under management, apartment complexes, different class properties, and that sort of thing became a lieutenant.
Mike Swenson
And now you got into the real estate industry as a way to build wealth after being in a physically demanding job. And being able to have you know, some opportunities in the future. Your first deal you did was a 50 unit acquisition, we'll get into that in a second that helped yield you a million dollars. You also work on educating people. So you're passionate about helping others through the firehouse bros a multifamily education platform. So that is in a nutshell, you welcome. And we're so excited to have you on the show.
Seth Teagle
thank you very much for having me.
Mike Swenson
Why don't you just share a little bit? You know, we were chatting offline about the 50 unit deal, how you got into starting real estate, why don't you maybe just back up a half step, share about your background, and kind of what drove you into getting into real estate? And then we'd love to hear specifically kind of that first deal and how it got going.
Seth Teagle
Yeah. Oh, appreciate it. So I grew up in North Dakota, was graduated high school there was looking to get into doing something different or get get out of that environment. I grew up in my dad, my brother was like a one of like the rock star baseball players, everybody knew him. And you know, I lived under his shadow for a long time. So I was ready to besides just the extremely cold winters, I was ready to get away from that. So I packed up and moved to Florida was at a friend of mine who his parents were at the mountain air force base, and then they got stationed down in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. And so after high school, I moved down there, lived there for eight years. And while I was there, I did I went got into college, wasn't sure what I wanted to do got into the fire service and just loved it loved the whole team aspect of it. And you know, helping people and it just it just hit a lot of things that I enjoyed.
Seth Teagle
So I did that 22 years, I should say fast forward from then until now I just got out June third was my last day in the fire service and and ultimately, I retired for real estate in the in the work, we're doing the company but I also had two back surgeries in the last six months. Basically the job related. And so, you know, thankfully, I had real estate, right? So I'm not just like talking about it, I've lived it out where real estates really helped me continue to not have any kind of like lifestyle changes. But I was so we were in Florida until about 2007 2008 ish, moved to Ohio, and was left the career I had there moved up here got on full time in the department. And you know, was just working, you know, working hard. We did 24 hours on two days off. Road, the medical the time did you know engine ladder, tech on our station kind of touched everything.
Seth Teagle
And I, the year that I really made the decision to get into something different was I had worked 1000 hours of overtime that year. And my wife and I figured out at the end of the year we're like man, like that was just like a rough year. I was tired of crabby, like we're just having, you know, I wouldn't say issues but you know, I mean, just there's a lot of things going out. And we're like, Well, what is the what's the root of this thing. And, you know, when we actually sat down and thought about it, I had spent six months out of the 12 at the firehouse like 24 hours was gone, like being deployed. And, you know, I realized that my body was gonna be able to continue to do that my mind wasn't you know, I was getting burnout. At that time. We had one child with two we had twins on the way. And you know, I was working, trying to get ready for that. But it was like this is just not sustainable.
Seth Teagle
And so I was trying to figure out like, how do I create a side gig or a hustle where I could have some some income coming in? Preferably passive and I ran into are connected via you know, it was kind of like that MySpace timeframe. Facebook was kind of taken off with a gentleman that I had gone to college with, and we were roommates for several years and I went to the fire service. He went into real estate. He was originally going to be a realtor, and when I reconnected with him, he was a multimillionaire, he was doing wholesaling, flipping hard money lending, you know, all these different things. And I was like, what, how did how did he go from where I knew him from to that like That was crazy. And at that time in my life, you know, a million dollars just seemed like a pie in the sky number that like, you know, I couldn't even fathom and
Seth Teagle
So I reached out to him and was like, you know, hey, what basically like what happened? How did you get from where I know you from to this? And so we had a conversation and he gave me some actionable steps to take. And basically, when I would do one, then I would go back and say, Okay, I finished that one. Now what, and I didn't realize at the time, but he was gauging my seriousness, you know, and I do the same thing now to others, because I have a lot of mutual people that will reach out and they all want to do, like, I want to know about what we're doing, or how we did it, or how did you get from here to there, but when we actually, you know, when they realize it's work, they shy away, or they like, oh, you know, and or they're there, they get hooked on the you know, you can become a multimillionaire overnight kind of thing or, you know, real estate to an easy, get rich quick situation and, and it can happen, but it's also very, like long term and thinking for the future and those kinds of things.
Seth Teagle
So that's kind of how I got into real estate or why I got into it. You know, that was, I think I talked with Matt that I'm one of the action items that he gave me was to find a local person that was was in real estate because he was like, I'm in Florida still, he because I had moved to Columbus and he had stayed there. But the steps were easy. I'll just go it was read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So if any of your listeners haven't read that they should check that out. Robert Kiyosaki changed my whole outlook on it was the first time I'd ever heard about assets and liabilities and cashflow and all that stuff. For me.
Mike Swenson
That was my my doctor. My first appointment back when I went to college was the one that told me to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. So really, yeah, yep. Yeah, it's it's funny how that gets introduced into people's lives and how it changes it.
Seth Teagle
yep. And so it was that then he he sent me an mp3 via email of this, like Seven Day Course that he did on house flipping. And just listening to that, and you know, kind of a ton that I learned it was my, my first like, kind of behind the curtain look at like, what real estate investing is really like and that there's a system to it and how you do it, and how you can be successful and scale and, and, and then once I got that done the call the back I'm like, Okay, I'm done with that now what he was like, okay, find a local mentor, that you can kind of learn from or ask questions, or kind of be the training wheels for you to kind of help you get over the analysis paralysis that most people feel when they're trying to get into real estate investing, or if it's their first big investment, they're super scared of like, well, what all the bad stuff, right?
Seth Teagle
Every person they've ever known, has always told them negative things about rentals or long term real estate holdings or whatever. So I did that I found a guy locally, it was a contractor met through just a random circumstance. And I ended up when I met with him, I ended up hearing what his needs were was somebody who manages projects, and somebody trustworthy to run the manager's rentals. And I thought, well, shoot, I'm at the firehouse 24 hours a day, and then I've got two days off, I've got time, I have no experience. I've got time. So I gave him my time for free. And I wanted on the job training, like basically, he'd pick up my phone call, or we would, you know, get in the same room with him. And so now we were here, we were in the same room, we're meeting regularly, we're doing leases, you know, I'm learning all these things.
Seth Teagle
And I had none of my own money at risk. And did that for about a year. At the end of that year. You know, I realized I wanted to do multifamily. having as many doors under one roof was the biggest way to scale. And at the time i i always thought I'd still be in the fire service. So I basically looked for the biggest building that I could afford. And I had no money I didn't have a lot of money saved. What I did have was equity in my home. So we did a HELOC on our house pulled out about $100,000. And then I went to a another investor that I had met that had an older guy that had single family rentals and like duplexes and some small multi. And he had not refinances for years and he had held him for I think at that time, he had him for about 12 or 13 years. So I kind of pitched him on the whole idea. And he did a cash out refi on his properties. And then we took his money and my money, we went and bought the 50 unit. And so I gave him 50% equity, I took 50 and then I ran the deal, ran the property and did everything for the first year. And that's how I got the first one done.
Mike Swenson
So in terms of picking that property, you know, number one, I think there's a couple of things to learn here. A lot of people like to start out single family duplexes, something like that, you were able to see the bigger picture and go plunk down a 50 unit building. And I also don't want to gloss over the work that you had to get up to that finding a mentor working with people building relationships. So I think like you said, a lot of times people think real estate is could be get rich quick, but you spent a lot of time put in a lot of effort. And I've talked with a few people who have kind of had that same mindset of instead of doing the small stuff, let's just leap into something larger. So what was it as you're kind of analyzing the properties? What was it about this 50 unit deal that spoke to you to where you were really to kind of push your chips into the middle and move forward on it?
Seth Teagle
Yeah, so two things. One, the reason I wanted to skip the small stuff was because to me it was an other job, right, and it put me in the same place as I was, I was working overtime, or I'm doing, you know, I'm renovating a house, it was another job for me. And I had to get big enough to where I could have enough money to pay people to manage or pay people to do construction or, you know, to kind of help. So that's a big reason why I wanted to go big, but this specific property I, I went, it took a bind, I created a buying criteria, like, here's kind of what I'm looking for. I took it to all the real estate offices in my local area, because there's no like, in the county I live in, there's not a lot of commercial brokers, there are like Columbus, and you know, whatnot, and, but, you know, locally, like getting started, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know who to call, I didn't know, I didn't know the lingo well enough.
Seth Teagle
And I took the buying criteria to the real estate offices, and I said, Hey, this is what I'm looking for, if something comes up, let me know. And so the person called me and what I what I, you know, the limited amount that I felt, like I knew was that you could force the appreciation that the value of the property was based on the net operating income, and as long as you could increase that, then you would create value. And so I this property I found it was you know, it needed a lot of renovation, so I knew was gonna be a heavier lift, which I was comfortable with, because I had construction background, I had fire, you know, I've done player inspections, building inspections, I knew the codes, like I knew what to do. And so I just and then I went on and found like, what do we use?
Seth Teagle
Rent ometer back then of, you know, trying to find out, like, what are the what are the rents in the area and, and the guy was like $200 under market, and if he would have renovated himself, he would have got that extra $200 a unit like I so I knew there's a lot of upside. And then we also knew that we were buying it right. For the price, you know, the cap rate was, I think they said it was like seven and a half back then in that area. And we you know, he wanted like 2.1 million for it originally. And we were able to negotiate down to about 1.7. So, you know, we were buying it right. And I just that was it, I just believed in the upside, I believed in my skills and abilities, you know, betting on myself, because I knew I was a sure thing that I would die before I let it not work out. And then you know, we were putting it all on the line.
Seth Teagle
And I really just, I didn't know any other way to do it. You know, because that's the, I kind of feel like you you either kind of go big or you go home, the old saying goes, you know, and I could stay small. But again, I'm stuck in that rut of another job. And going bigger was the only way I could really scale and get to where I wanted to go. So yeah.
Mike Swenson
And what year was this again?
Seth Teagle
Ah, that was 2015 2015.
Mike Swenson
So what what did your coworkers think as you're doing this stuff, in addition to your job? Are they did they know a lot of what was happening on the side? Or they didn't necessarily know what's happening on set. I'm just curious to see, as they watched you grow and you know, morphed into now you're you're getting into real estate investing. I'm just curious what their perception was.
Seth Teagle
Yeah, so some of them were like super supportive. There was other like, there's one guy who his dad had been in apartment investing for a long time. So he was he thought it was great. A couple other guys that had like, tried it before, but got burned, because they had bought in like D class areas or rougher areas because of the dollar amount per house. And they had really bad experiences. And so they, you know, we talked to them, but a lot of people didn't say anything. I mean, obviously, they knew, I mean, I was I was showing up with, you know, scuff marks and cuts and bruises and, you know, glue on my hands and everything. Because again, that first deal, I did a lot of sweat equity, and was right there alongside the team of contractors I had trying to get to be successful. And so, you know, I, I had an interesting dynamic, some were happy, and then others got really jealous, you know, and it was not as well received as I would have thought. And so I got to a point where I didn't even talk about real estate at the firehouse because, you know, there's just not everybody is happy for you. And things go well, if that makes sense.
Seth Teagle
I mean, you I always I always am careful, like who I who I call and celebrate something with because you tell the wrong person and they're negative or they immediately turn it around or like you said they secretly get jealous over your successes. And, and I saw a lot of that. So
Mike Swenson
yeah, so now you've spent the time you've done the work, you've increased the value. You were able to get a million dollars cash out, right. Yeah. And then how did that leverage into kind of the next property and how did it grow from there?
Seth Teagle
Yeah, so we refinance, pulled out the million we paid ourselves back. So we got all of our initial capital out, we paid everybody else back that had done additional capital for renovations and whatnot. Because I again, I got in undercapitalized. You know, I didn't know any better when it was able to raise some private money. So everybody got their money back and the remaining amount that we had leftover, we wouldn't bought another apartment complex. And that next one was a 38 unit. did the same thing there refinanced and, you know, kind of like towards the end of that deal in the getting close to the refinance period. I thought, well, you know, I've got so much money in these deals now. Like, I want to keep buying them.
Seth Teagle
But my money was tied up and so I had some but I didn't have enough to go take down another big complex and I'm just like, this is such a scalable, like I wanted to keep doing it and I bought in and so that kind of led me to syndications and creating a company and then I met with my main partner Tim, she All which he's also a firefighter here in the Columbus area. And he was in a commercial real estate, but he was doing broke, he was brokering things and kind of on the transactional side of things, contracts. But he's very, very knowledgeable, like one of the smartest guys I've ever met. And so when we finally sat down to talk, we were like, you know, we could, we could really explode this thing if we team up together and go, because I had the knowledge of like, kind of on the ground running it.
Seth Teagle
And he had a lot of the, the acquisition knowledge, the underwriting knowledge, like more, you know, we both do, but the way we have it set up now is I kind of, I do kind of like back of the napkin underwriting, I find the deals I do know, I work with the brokers and whatnot. And then as long as it meets our criteria, I sign off on them I get this was a good deal. I sent it to Tim and then he does the deep dive into the underwriting and, and, you know, does the contract stuff and puts our loi together and and deals with that's, you know, the side of things.
Mike Swenson
So you had mentioned early on, about getting a mentor talk about that, like, so as you're advising people on, you know, getting into real estate, what advice would you give them in terms of, you know, finding a mentor, or even just getting familiar with the industry, that sort of thing? What would you say?
Seth Teagle
Yeah, so I think that the biggest thing that you can do if you're trying to get started, and you don't know a whole lot is to find somebody doing what you want to do, and get in the same room with them, whatever that takes. And that's what partially why we created the firehouse Bros is because we want to create that environment where, you know, if you're a single family house flipper, and you're like, Man, I'd love to get into commercial real estate, but I just don't know, again, it's making the leap into real estate investing in like, the first one, like the first home purchase is super scary. But it's also scary for people that have been in real estate for a long time. And they've kind of got their niche, you know, they've maybe they flipped 20, houses, 50, houses, whatever, but there's just like a mental block with knowing that they are believing in themselves that they can go into a bigger property and run it.
Seth Teagle
And, you know, I think for, for me, the time I spent working for Steve, managing his properties and running and stuff, like I learned a ton there. But it gave me the confidence I needed to, to make the jump into actually buying something. And so that's part of it. The other part of it, of finding a mentor or getting in in a in a into the room of folks doing things bigger than what you're doing is it just eliminates the mindset of the limiting beliefs, the mindset where you can't do it, or you're not sure. You know, and for me, it's iconic compared to like, if you go to like, I mean, obviously, Disney because I just took my kids to Disney in February.
Seth Teagle
But you know, we don't you go there, and you pay for a Fastpass or whatever it's called now Genie plus, you know, it's expensive, but what you're buying is time, right? And you're, you know, if you don't buy it, you're gonna get on that same ride that I went on, but you're just going to be two hours behind me. And while you're waiting in line to get on that ride, we've been on that one plus five others. And so that's the way that I view it.
Seth Teagle
And I always kind of tell people is like, look, you can get where you're going by yourself, for sure, you can figure it out. But you know, you can either pay somebody or jump, you know, get into like a mastermind or get into a group of people that are doing already doing what you want. And you'll get to the level you want to 10 times faster, with less mistakes, less money lost, because you're you've surrounded yourself with people that are already doing what you want to do.
Seth Teagle
And, you know, if I could have found somebody back, you know, in 2015, that was buying apartments, that would have taken me under their wing and said, hey, you know, they could have told me before I close the deal at your undercapitalized. Hey, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that, hey, what about this, you know, maybe they look at the property and they're like, Hey, you missed this and the capex budget, it's gonna, you're gonna be way under, you know, you're not gonna have enough money or any of those things.
Seth Teagle
And that's really what I think finding a mentor does for you, you know, on whatever level you're trying to get in, whether you're just trying to break into the industry, or you're in it, and you're trying to get to a new level, you know, finding somebody that's doing what you want to be doing. And then doing whatever it takes to get in the room with them, is super important. And it's and it's led to our growth. I mean, we went from, I went from no real estate, to $186 million, that we oversee 1500 doors, you know, we have a management company. Now we have a construction company, we employ about 20 people, you know, how do you go from that, from nothing to that in seven years?
Seth Teagle
Well, that's how I was getting in the right rooms with the people doing more than I'm doing. And I learned from them. And some people I've had to pay, you know, it just it doesn't matter. Like I knew where we wanted to go where I wanted to go, it's led to complete financial freedom that got me out of my w two, you know, all the things that we've ever wanted, we've been able to do, and it's just because like I said, the taking a chance and being in the right room is super important.
Mike Swenson
And you hit the nail on the head about you have to pay for it, or be willing to pay for it. Because I think for some people, they see, oh, that person's just trying to sell me something. And when you find the right person, like you had mentioned somebody who's doing what you're already doing, you want to find a place to invest that money wisely. You could go blow all your money tomorrow on coaching and training programs and mentoring and all that. So there's plenty opportunity out there, but it's finding the right people and vetting out the right people and it's worth investing your money. You have to look at from their, from their perspective to, they're giving you their time. They're giving you their knowledge that they've spent years and years building. So they shouldn't be able to charge for that. Right? And so don't look at look at it as an expense into your education and investment in your education. Not necessarily like, oh, that person is just trying to get me when you choose the right person. Right, right.
Seth Teagle
Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're, you know, if you see an ad on Facebook, and it's like, hey, buy seven days course, you know, and they send you a bunch of videos whenever, like, that's great, but there's no follow up, right. And there's no, like, people just need the I wouldn't say necessarily handholding. But they just need some people do. But they need training wheels, you know, they need an environment where they can learn and be safe. And they're not having a ton of stuff at risk. You know, like I said, if you like we've got a $300 a month program that people can join, and it just gets them in the room with us, right. And like you said, you know, I'm doing 1000 different tasks, and I have to dedicate time to each of those tasks, well, I don't have time anymore to go have coffee with people and go have lunch with people and just go do things, you know, like casually, because my time is so you know, there's only so many hours in the day.
Seth Teagle
And my focus has to be on specific items that generate revenue. And so for me to take an hour or two hours out of my time and give it to somebody there, you know, it's just there's, there's no other way to do it. And like, as anybody that's really doing anything, is going to require something I mean, to me, 300 bucks a month is nothing to get into the right room with folks that are doing what you want. And you know, whether you have a four unit now and you want to buy a 10 unit, you know, even just our network, you know, the network that you get exposed to, that you get involved with, because that's the other part of it that people don't think about is, if you get into the right room with the right people, then you're you're kind of vetted, or you get credibility based on their already, you know, they're already credible, and people in the market or area industry know them.
Seth Teagle
And for them to make a phone call for you or for you to just be able to say, Hey, Seth Teagle told me to give you a call. Oh, you know, so Okay, boom, you've already moved to the front of the line as far as credibility goes, where as you know, you call somebody they may not take your phone call. So it all of those things. But yeah, I mean, I have thrived on getting myself in the right room, you know, the company has exploded, because that's how we, we view things
Mike Swenson
talk a little bit about because you guys are now larger scale, and I don't want to gloss over for the person that's just getting started in investing. You know, they look at somebody like units like, oh, $186 million dollars, I could never do that. Or that's too big for me. So I don't want to gloss over like you did your time you put in a lot of work to get there. And like you said it's it's finding the right people building the great relationships. And you're a great example of you don't have to do a duplex, a triplex a four Plex to get started, you could. So now Okay, so now moving up, we're talking about your company 180 $6 million, under under management? How do you guys select your locations of where you're looking to, to buy properties?
Seth Teagle
So we've done a lot of stuff just locally here in central Ohio, because our market is very strong, its cash flows very well. You know, we have a plethora of Class A Class B, class C, like whatever we want to get into. And then, you know, that's not just the metro area. I mean, there's all kinds of tertiary markets around Columbus that are that are thriving, because Columbus is doing so well. So we could, you know, it trickles out into these outlying areas. And so, you know, we've done a lot of stuff locally, which is where our management companies based out of our construction company, but then we've done other stuff in other states, where people have called us and said, Hey, I've got a deal. And, you know, we had somebody calls with a deal outside of Minneapolis at six units, and they're like, hey, you know, we'd be looking to have somebody kind of code up with us, or I found this deal. I think it makes sense.
Seth Teagle
I don't really know what to do with it now that I found it, you know, can you guys help and so we've done that we've, we have gotten more assets under management that way, as well, where we can bring in the structure and the systems and the knowledge, we can get the loan done, you know, we can get all those things done those and remove those barriers, because that's part of the problem too is if you want to go in alone, it is going to take you a long time to get to that 50 unit or 100 unit or whatever, because they the lenders require a certain amount of net worth and liquidity that most people don't have when they're starting out or even when they have small, you know, they have small stuff. And so that's like I said, that's the beauty about doing syndications or bigger properties is you know, there's there's enough equity to go around for people that where it makes sense.
Seth Teagle
You know, and it really it only takes one deal, one apartment complex deal for people, you know, like to leave their W two like if, you know, because most of the time when you do them, there's an acquisition fee that's paid out to the people that you know, found the deal, pad all that risk capital they have and all they do all the upfront work, and then they present the deal to investors, people invest alongside of us. And then there's a fee that we charge for that, which is it's nominal in the grand scheme of things. But, you know, if you were able to do one deal that can be you know, like, I've always asked me what like, well, what's the dollar amount you need to leave your job? And if you could do well, you could put one deal together. One deal, you know, big enough could could eliminate that where, at least for one year, you're, you're done.
Seth Teagle
And I can just tell you that from even my own experience, right that I, I kept my job while we were building this company. But since I've left, I mean, just the amount of, of work we've gotten done, or the just a mindset shift to the, you know, the things that have happened since in the last 30 days for me is I thought I was already crushing it. And just to have that, like, you know, I burned the boats. I can't go back. I'm too old, I can't go back to the fire service in Ohio. My back is bad. You know. So again, had I not had the real estate, I'd have been really, I'd have been in trouble. You know, so that's the thing I want people to think about is that you know, you can you can, you can definitely do it, I think and just being around the right people is super important.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And I've heard that from a lot of people to kind of the burn the boats mentality, right? Like, you're never going to treat real estate, whatever shape or form in real estate the same way until you know that this is your all in moment. If you're still have your your plan be your backup. Now you were able to do that, because you wanted to move into real estate. But for a lot of people, it's almost like they have one foot and two different boats. So that's the problem that you have is you're you're kind of you're you're I mean, there's there's real estate agents, this is actually why I started the podcast to begin with is there's people that have been in real estate for 20 years as real estate agents, and they're like,
Mike Swenson
I really have always wanted to get into an investing like that in the market for 20 years, you have all the tools and resources, you have all the vendor relationships, you have all the market knowledge like what's stopping you, it's because they're not willing to take a risk. And so that's where it's it's the like you said, the burn the boats mentality of like, okay, this is where I want to go, I'm gonna be all in. Maybe you're not there yet, but you're willing to, to go all in to get there.
Seth Teagle
Yeah, and I think that it's, you know, it's, it's two things that people talk about, like you'll hear people talk all burn the boats, leave your W two, like, you gotta have a plan, right? And that's the thing is like, one do you want to leave it could have left earlier, but I love what I did. I love that with the guy that I worked with, like I didn't really want to leave, I didn't have a read, you know, I wasn't like in corporate America miserable, like, hate my job every day wake up. Like, that wasn't my feelings towards what I was doing. So, you know, people that feel that way are highly motivated to get into something else, I think that they're pushed into making the transition faster because of you know, the alternative is being miserable every day. But you know, I got the real the realtor example is, that's also a reason why, you know, passive investing into like syndications is a great alternative as well, because you can still put your money to work in real estate. But you can focus on being a realtor, right?
Seth Teagle
Because if you're kind of you're small, and you have, let's say you have five rentals, you may not be making enough cash flow to pay a management company, or to pay for maintenance, Vokes the way that you should. And so that's how either two things maintenance gets deferred, or now instead of, you know, instead of selling a house, you're stuck going over and like painting an apartment, or not, you know, whatever. And, and that's, that's where, like, to me, like the horror stories come from, or, like, if you're crushing it in the real estate world, as a realtor, why not take some of your money and put it into a path, you know, syndication, where you're, it's working for you, it's in real estate, it's hedging against inflation, it's, you know, you're in the vehicle of real, you know, using real estate as a vehicle for the investment, but you're not having to actually do any of the work.
Seth Teagle
And you can focus on what you do best, which would be selling houses, you know, and, and that's really like, a lot of the people that we have invest with us, that's just it, like, they love what they do.
Seth Teagle
They have a great business or a career. And they, they understand that real estate's a great vehicle, but they don't want to, like stop what they're doing to go do it. And you know, so there's, and that's what I love about real estate too. There's all kinds of different ways to get involved. You can be active, you can be passive, you can be small, you can be big, you can do whatever you want to, you know, my end goal for me was to bide my time back with my family that if we wanted to, if I wanted to go to Florida for a month, that my business would just keep on doing its thing, and I can work remotely from wherever, you know, like if I wanted to take my kids to Europe, or I wanted to go to Utah and go out in the mountains up there with them or whatever for a few weeks, like I could do that. And the business will just keep on going with or without me and you know, if you're if you're small and everything depends on you doing it, you can't do that. So you're kind of trapped.
Mike Swenson
chat a little bit here. You know, as we kind of wrap up, talk to me about you know, for people that want to learn more about you, we haven't really talked about kind of firehouse bros. Talk a little bit about the education that you're doing, how you're helping others and like you're already kind of referred to, you know, people can, you know, do coaching with you at 300 bucks a month or something like that, but talk a little bit about, you know, what you've got going on how people can reach out to and get involved if they want to learn more.
Seth Teagle
Yeah, so firehouse bros. We started because we loved educating people. When we were in the fire service. I was a fire instructor. So I did I taught a lot of classes at the Fire Academy and new people coming in the fire service. I was an EMS instructor. So if you went to medical school, you would have had me as an instructor Are and I loved like watching the light bulb come on for people that were getting into the industry. And we just, you know, Tim, Tim was doing the same thing. And so for us, it was a nice pairing where, you know, we have a lot to offer people as far as, you know, if you're experienced real estate person, but you don't know how to work bigger multifamily or commercial and you want to get into it, we can help bridge that gap. If you're new into real estate, and you're like,
Seth Teagle
Hey, I know it's a good opportunity, but I don't really know where to, like get started, you know, we have people on our team that can can work with you through that. And so, it looks to me, I think of as morons, like, we're, we're trying to be the training wheels for folks so that they're not, because once you put your money into the deal, if you don't know what you're doing, and you, you know, that's where it's at risk, you can lose it, you know, getting in the right room with people that can help teach you or coach you along and kind of be those training wheels, it makes it a safe environment for you to learn and learn faster than you going out and doing it on your own. So right now we have, it's a two day event.
Seth Teagle
The next one will be September 8 The ninth of this year, and it's 100 bucks, but it gives you like a 10,000 foot view of commercial real estate, how you can get involved, underwriting brokers, you know, we have all kinds of different people that kind of pop in. So it's not like just me talking for two days, and it shows you like our network and what the benefit is. And then if you're like, hey, I think that this is something I want to get into, then you can jump into the command center, which is 300 to $300 a month. And it puts you like on our weekly calls. It you know if there's specific things that come up, where you're, whether you're small or you're big, you know, we can help you remove the roadblocks basically, of, of what you're doing.
Seth Teagle
And sometimes it's just mental, you know, sometimes it's, I got this deal that I'm trying to close, I can't get the loan done. Do you know anybody that can get the loan done for me? Well, hey, let me connect you with this person. And again, you have that you're, you're vetted by me. So they know like I said, when you call them, they're gonna take your call, and they're gonna like, Okay, that's great. And so it's just, we wanted to create that kind of environment and create a culture of success, where, you know, we're just kind of putting it together, but helping other people that are wanting to get in or want to get bigger or, you know, whatever their end goal is help them meet that.
Mike Swenson
Awesome, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. It's it's an inspiring story to see how you got started and, and not to gloss over a lot of hard work along the way. A lot of challenges. So thank you so much for coming on. And yeah, for our listeners, make sure that you check them out, because two days for 100 bucks. That's a great value to be able to find out if it's something that's a fit for you. So thanks so much. I appreciate you coming on.
Seth Teagle
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
