Wyatt Simon currently owns and operates a $20 Million vertically integrated real estate portfolio thanks to the BRRRR strategy. He was able to quit his W2 job at the age of 27 years old thanks to his real estate investing. He is the author of the book "0-100: A Real Estate Investor's Guide to Scaling A Rental Portfolio" and helps other people ditch their W2 job and transition to multi-family freedom.
In this episode, you will be able to:
The key moments in this episode are:
00:11:45 - Embracing Learning and Growth
00:13:32 - Deal Acquisition Strategies
00:14:28 - Importance of Business Partnerships
00:16:43 - Challenges of Property Management
00:18:47 - Lessons in Scaling and Growth
00:23:44 - The Value of Good Coaching
00:27:00 - Connecting with Wyatt
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Wyatt Simon
It took me six months after work. It was my 46th offer. And I have went through several real estate agents because no one wanted to work with a 22 year old. That was like, you know, lowballing everyone. But I was going to put in offers until I got something accepted. And if you just, it's the law of averages. If you just do enough, it will pan out.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL Freedom show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities and real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson.
Wyatt Simon
Let's get some REL Freedom together.
Mike Swenson
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of REL Freedom, where we talk about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. If you want to get started on your real estate investing journey, check out our website, freedomthroughrealestate.com. we've got articles, videos, podcast episodes, all of that to be able to help you get started on your journey because we know everybody comes from a different path, different set of skill sets, different strategies, and we just love sharing and telling people stories. So today's story that we'd love to highlight is Wyatt Simon. Wyatt comes from really a background of doing burrs single family, predominantly sharing his story of how he's doing that in Nebraska. And so we'll let Wyatt share a little bit more about his backstory. Do want to share for those people? If you're listening to this, he does have a book coming out, your first hundred units. We're going to hopefully talk a little bit about that too. Going through starting books and writing them as a way to build your client base, as a way to grow, as a way to help us others. You also do some coaching on the side, so a ton of stuff going on. Wyatt, excited to hear more about your journey and your story. So welcome to the show.
Wyatt Simon
Thank you for having me. I love the teaser, the book teaser at the end. We'll cover a little bit more on it, but for sure probably want to know who they're talking to. So I'll give a little bit of background on me. So as I approach my thirties here next month, I have built a $20 million real estate portfolio. I did it since 2018. And no, I don't own all of it. So I own about 40% of the portfolio spread out between nine different entities. I used primarily single family to start, eventually got into multifamily for a while, and then actually pivoted back to a single family here and started focusing more on business rather than real estate and kind of a hybrid of both. So that's me in a nutshell.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And mentioning, too, you also integrated doing property management as well. So I know a lot of people probably are curious to hear about that, about kind of the early days, the early journey, you know, what inspired you to get into real estate versus what you were doing before. Obviously, you're still very young, so you still got a lot, lot ahead of you to just kind of talk about that. Why real estate investing? What was it going to do for you and go from there?
Wyatt Simon
So, like most people, I'm sure, I read the book rich dad, poor dad, and that taught me that assets can work for you while you sleep so that you don't have to work forever. And I had a boss that I did not like working for. Um, back in college, I was playing college basketball at a really small college called Doan College. That's where 511 white guys went to play basketball. Um, but anyways, I was playing college there, uh, basketball there, and I was interning at a place called Sandhills Publishing. Well, uh, I would drive 49 minutes into the internship, wear a full suit and tie to sit at a desk. Rows, just picture rows and rows and rows and rows of open desk seating with your manager sitting in the back staring at what you're doing. And I was literally talking on the phone to farmers. And so I was like, why did I have to wear a suit? And why does my manager have to sit right behind me and do everything? And then there was one day where my manager tapped me on the shoulder and said, Wyatt, I've got to talk to you. And I said, okay. So she takes me to the back room. She goes, okay, where's your belt? And I'm like, oh, no, I forgot my belt. And she's like, well, you're going to have to fix this. And so by the time I would have got there and gotten back, it would have been almost 2 hours, and the shift would have been up. And so I was just like, this is so stupid. Like, corporate is not the way. And so at a very young age, I was like, I do not want to work for the rest of my life for someone else. And that shaped me into finding rich dad, poor dad, to buy assets. And then that started the real estate journey. I think everyone kind of naturally gravitates to real estate once they read Rich dad, poor dad. Yeah.
Mike Swenson
For me, it was my optometrist when I went to college, came back, I think it was my first time coming back home after my first semester of college and was talking about, you know, being a business major or whatever, and he's like, oh, have you read Rich dad, poor dad? And so I was like, no, I haven't. So, yeah, obviously a very inspiring book in terms of getting started into real estate. Obviously, people have mental barriers, actual barriers, reasons of why they can't do it. So just talk about some of those things early on and how you were able to push through them to get to getting started and getting your first property.
Wyatt Simon
Yeah. So I I was committed to doing whatever it took to get what I wanted in life. We'll say that, like, I was committed to my goals, and I knew that if I tried hard enough that something good would happen. It doesn't mean that it would be the right thing. It just means that I could course correct after I did it, and then I could just keep taking action. Um, and so kind of the ready, fire, aim approach. Right. And so after I knew that real estate was the right thing, what? I was actually living in Colorado for a brief stint after college, and I failed at my first job, and I tried buying a duplex and living in one side and renting out the other, but I couldnt find a duplex, and no one would give me a loan because I didnt have steady income. I had a 1099 job that I failed at. Then I ended up moving to Omaha, which is where im at now, because of a girl I was talking to at the time now, my wife. Um, and I got a w two job that was also sales. Uh, it was also plus commission, salary plus commission. And that was huge because that allowed me to get a loan. And so once I got approved for a loan, now I could buy a duplex. And that's what I did in. In 2018, is my first ever property. Bought a duplex, lived in one side, rented out the other. I ended up, uh, not only did I save money every month, I was actually making money on top of everything every month because I rented out my master bedroom to another friend, and then I built another bedroom in the basement, and I just really lived lightly, and that really helped stem the ball to get the money flowing in the right direction. Now, the next thing that happened was, naturally, you run out of money. And so it's like, okay, well, you can get started, but then you got to wait because you can only have one fha loan, right, where you have three and a half percent down. So then the next issue I solved was, okay, how can I buy buildings with little to no money? And that was when I came across the Brrrr strategy. And for those of you in the audience that haven't heard of it yet. It's brrrr. Stands for buy, rehab, renovate, refinance, repeat. And you can repeat that if you didn't get it too quick. But David Green wrote a great book on it. And essentially why that strategy is so great is because it allows you to recycle capital. And so the last thing that I had to solve was, okay, well, now I know how to recycle capital, but how do I get capital in the first place? And so then what I did is I said, I went to, you guessed it, mom and dad. I said, hey, hey, guys, would you please, I know you guys dont have any money, but you have your house paid off in cash. And so my parents are in their seventies. That was the. Oops. So I was like, would you please let me take a home equity line of credit on your house and use it to buy real estate? And they said, absolutely not. But after nine months of me working on them, they eventually agreed to it. And at that point, I found a deal. It was my 46th offer on the market. And finally we got a property. I did all of the work on that house myself. I pulled my back out on that property. It was just, it did all the things. But I learned a lot, and we were able to eventually refinance our capital out, place a tenant, and boom at that point. Now, I had a strategy. I had a duplex, and I had a brrrr. That was successful. And I was like, this is it. Now we start rocking. And then here we are. I've done, I don't know, 60 plus brrrrs on both single family and multifamily.
Mike Swenson
Being able to recycle the capital is key. I've worked with a lot of investors, and they focus a lot on, you know, what's the cash flow, what am I going to make? And really with the burr, it's focusing on how little of cash can I leave into the deal and can I get out of this deal with no cash put in at the end of the day, can I get all my cash back? Because, yeah, once you can do that, it's just continuing to recycle. And that's the beauty of the burr, is once you have a pile of cash somewhere, you can continue to, to redo that. And so, yeah, like you said, it's easy to run out of money unless you do that strategy to get your capital back.
Wyatt Simon
And let's talk about market conditions, too. I want to be very transparent for your audience. Like, the burst strategy was amazing. When interest rates were going down, its a lot harder to do as interest rates go up. And so when youre taking out extra debt against the asset, it still has to cover debt service. And so something to keep in mind is you do have to stress test and actually underwrite to see if this is actually a viable option. Its been a lot more difficult strategy to do at this point in the market. So what worked at one point doesnt always work at another.
Mike Swenson
Talk a little bit about doing the work on the property, you know? Cause obviously you've got to buy it at a good price, have what your exit price is going to be, roughly, and then be able to, to do that work on the property. What kind of work did you do? Did you do it yourself? Were you able to find people, network and find people to do the work on the property, be able to, to add the value to it?
Wyatt Simon
Yeah, great question, Mike. So I am zero handy. I am not handy at all. I did not know how to do painting, carpet, flooring. You know, we, we had to do a total cosmetic upgrade, and I didn't know how to do any of it, and I didn't know anyone who knew how to do any of it. So what did I, what, what I did know is that the center on my basketball team grew up in a country town, and he was very handy. And so I called my buddy Nate, and I said, hey, Nate, I got this house. I'll pay you dollar 25 an hour if you would work on this house with me. I'll work underneath of you. I'll be your grunt. You just tell me what to do. And then I bought him a tool set, too. And so every day after work, me and Nate went to the property after work to then work on it and on weekends. And we had a whole lot of, there was a Lowe's and a chick fil a and then the property. So there was, it was a lot of Lowe's, chick fil a, and then go work on the property. And because of Nate, I was able to do that. That allowed me to understand rehab costs. And then I'll share this story, too, eventually. My third deal I bought, and I was starting to work on the property, and the city inspector came by and said, what are you doing? And I said, im bettering the community. What do you mean? He said, wheres your permit? I said, whats a permit? So he educated me on what a red tag was, which means he shut down me working on the property. And so my rehab ended up going nine months longer than I anticipated. And it went $40,000 overdose. The budget that I had anticipated because I had to and was forced to hire licensed contractors. And that was a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to learn how to delegate and find these people, to then be able to scale and not just do one at once after work, but be able to do four at a time. Delegating out to people, that's awesome.
Mike Swenson
I, I love how you're not afraid to take something on, right? Because I think a lot of people that listen to podcasts like this like to listen. They like to read books. They don't necessarily like to do as much. They feel like they have to learn it all first. And so you're willing to get your hands dirty, learn through mistakes and grow. And then, yeah, you found out the hard way to be able to go find contractors that ultimately will help with your success, to be able to grow faster. So in terms of then identifying properties, what were some of the ways that you were able to find these properties, especially early on here, you know, off market, cold calling, door knocking? What, what was that like for you to be able to find those first few opportunities?Wyatt Simon
I'll answer that question here in 1 second. I want to touch on what you just said, too, which is the learning, the learning curve, right? Like, yes, I was willing and able to do whatever it took to pay the learning curve, but I don't recommend it. Like, there's different ways to pay the learning curve. You can either, a, go through it yourself, or b, you can partner with experience to have less of a learning curve, or c, you can pay for experience to tell you what to do and have no learning curve and sitting on one way or the other. Like, at this point in my life, I will pay all day long for someone to help me do the right thing. First, measure twice, cut once, rather than the opposite approach. So sidebar on that. But to answer your question, as far as deal acquisition, I was finding my first property was my first two properties were on market with a real estate agent. And what people don't talk about was it took me six months after work. It was my 46th offer. And I went through several real estate agents because no one wanted to work with a 22 year old. That was like low balling everyone. But I was going to put in offers until I got something accepted. And if you just, it's the law of averages. If you just do enough, it will pan out. And then eventually, I started buying from wholesalers later on. And then I would say, after about three years of doing real estate, it was in 2019 where I got tired of buying from wholesalers. And so that was when I set up a direct to seller system and I purchased a course and I tried setting up a driving for dollar course and I got one deal from it, but I was super inconsistent. And so it was like, to give you an example, mailers landed on my honeymoon and it wasnt supposed to, but it got delayed. And so now my wife, im getting all these fu calls on my honeymoon and my wifes like, what are you doing? And so anyways, it just wasnt great. I wasnt a great systems guy. I was a sales guy. And my coach at the time, he said, dude, youve got a partner with someone has complimentary skill set as you. And that changed my life. And again, that was paid consulting. That changed my life and my trajectory because I did what he said. I partnered with my partner, Sean French, and we're still partners to this day. Um, we set up a direct seller system company and we buy between 20 to 50 off market deals a year. All because of that advice right there.
Mike Swenson
Talk about finding a business partner. I know some people have the strategy of I want to do it all on my own. Obviously, you've talked a lot about learning from others and building relationships with others. But for some people that want to maybe have a business partner, want to be able to kind of spread out that workload or like you said, find people that compliment you. What was that process like for you in finding him?
Wyatt Simon
So I have a framework that I say, if you're going to partner with someone, there's really, you got to go through these things. Okay. The first thing is you got to make sure that they're a character fit. So impeachable character. Number one, do not partner with anyone who's just has any question of integrity because it inevitably will happen. You're jumping in bed with them. Right. Number two is after they do pass the character check, you got to make sure that they share your vision. If theyre 65 and they want to sell the portfolio in five years and retire and youre 20 and you want to acquire as much as possible for the next 30 years, thats not the same vision. It might work for two or three years, but then something is going to happen. You want to make sure that youre on the same vision from the get go, from the start with that. The next thing is what I mentioned earlier, which is complementary skillset. Right. Like, you don't. And I, I learned this from, from experience. My first partnership was another sales guy, and we tried doing our off market thing. And, like, none of us wanted to do the tech, none of us wanted to do the systems. We just wanted to go meet with sellers, and it's like, okay, well, what, what value do we actually bring each other? None. But we didn't know it was just blind leading the blind. And so, um, Sean, my partner, was very much a complimentary to my skillset. And then the last thing that you really should know is a prenup agreement. And, like, I don't care how great they are, you should still have, in your operating agreement of your llc, when you form it, what it's going to look like. If we were to dissolve this entity, exactly what it's going to look like, and agree beforehand when trust is high.
Mike Swenson
In terms of property management, you talked about being vertically integrated, being able to do that. Obviously, that's been key for your success. What were those steps to taking over the property management yourself? Was that something you just did from the start, or eventually you, you took it over, or did you hire somebody and it was failed, or how, how did that process work for you?
Wyatt Simon
Great question. That was one of the hardest things. That was, that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life was build a property management company, um, rather than just work, doing what I was good at. And so, I don't know, have you ever. A lot of people listening, if you've read, uh, Michael Gerber's emyth, he talks about the technician, the, uh, manager, and the entrepreneur when there's three roles within a business. Well, I was a good technician at my job, and I was an entrepreneur as, like, a mindset and skillset somewhat. I was a terrible manager. And so I give you that preface. So I tell you, when I was, I was doing 15 units on my own while working my full time job, managing property managing. Eventually I got a 23 unit, and I was like, there's just no way I can do all of it. So I, we used the third party property manager, um, that was back in 2021. And then my portfolio grew, um, to 76 units at the end of 2021. And I, um, we were using, we had fired the first one, we had hired the second one. They were still doing a really bad job. And so we said, okay, we're going to put our money where our mouth is and just make sure that these assets perform like we know they can. And that was when I then stepped away from my cushy w two job and created the management company and started smashing my head against the wall, figuring things out that I never thought I'd have to do. Um, there's just so many more skill sets when it comes to starting a company. And so I, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. But, um, now we have full control over our portfolio and we can, you know, perform, just outperform a lot of things. When you, when you can move people into places and schedule them and have control over them, it's, it's just a lot. You can cut down vacancy and you can cut down costs for turns.
Mike Swenson
To talk about scaling, you know, being able to do one, do two. Now, you said you guys are doing, was it 50 properties in this last year or whatever. What are some of the lessons you've had to learn in terms of scaling? Right. There has to be a piece where you've got to let go of some stuff. You have to allow other people to do the work for you. So what's been important for you guys in terms of scaling your growth?
Wyatt Simon
So the hardest thing that I did, the most important thing I would say is picking the right people. And unfortunately, when I was starting my property management company, I was muscling things forward with the wrong people in the wrong seat. And that's easy to say, but when you don't know how to hire and you don't know how to train that well and you're just like grateful for anyone that'll work for you. Your classic, like, oh, my cousin who's 19, he wants to come work for me that has no skill sets. Great. You're actually just like, you're going to be such an operational drag trying to lift them up rather than just find a qualified person and pay them well. And so the hardest thing that I did was I muscled it forward with unqualified people until eventually I worked with a consultant and they're just like, take an inventory of your team and figure out what the right seat looks like and then just higher experience in that right seat. And so that has completely changed the trajectory of my life because past that, then you put the systems in place and you have the KPI's key performance metrics and the systems, but if you don't have the right people in the spot running the systems, it just doesn't matter.
Mike Swenson
Well, yeah, and now as you look at it, you've got your acquisition system right, you're able to find the deals, you're obviously now able to take care and manage those assets. And so you've really vertically integrated in a great way that just allows you to control every step of that process. And so congrats to you on what you're building. What does the future look like for you? Where do you guys want to continue to take this?
Wyatt Simon
Yeah, so our goal is to build our single family acquisition company to a point where, you know, right now we're. I'm still involved, and the goal is to be able to take three months vacation and still have everything run. And so we've got property management there, and the next step is getting single family there, and that means hiring, you know, an acquisition and disposition person. Um, right now, we've got six full time employees that run things between, uh, mostly management and a little bit acquisition. Um, so it's just building that from small business to big business. Right. Um, that's. That's on the business side. And then what I've loved to do is I'll still work, right? Like, I'll still be self employed. I still love what I do. And so I've started coaching as well, like you mentioned. And, uh, that's kind of the purpose of the book. Right. I just want to, like, give back to people that want to shorten the learning curve because I've, like, I passed out four times from stress in 2023. Like, it was. It was hard, man. Like, so I get how hard it can be when you just don't know the unknowns. And so if I can help someone out there, that's. That, you know, not pass out four times from stress and have that impact their family and all the other things. Like, man, that's. That's what I really would love to do. That's. That's what I love doing.
Mike Swenson
Three times, right. If it's only three times, that's a win, right? Yeah. Passing out three times instead of four, you've. You've done your job, right?
Wyatt Simon
Yeah, it's. We'll get there.
Wyatt Simon
Yeah. So why do it? I read all the biggerpockets things. I've listened to all the biggerpockets episodes twice through 350 because I was so engaged in the content to try to learn as much as possible. But you kind of have to pick up bits and pieces from each podcast. It's not spelled out in a clear line, linear line of go here, here and here and here and then you win. It's like, oh, I got step number two from here and I got step five from here, but I'm missing step two and if I can't do that, I can't move forward or step three, whatever it is. So anyways, what I did is I said, okay, im just going to draw everything out in a straight line. And the book is centered around, number one, how to buy real estate and the different strategies depending on what your goals are. Number two, how to manage systemized real estate. Its how to build the systems to be able to scale and then step three is how to scale. So the more advanced strategies that you need to be able to go from, you know, three properties per year to 20 or from 20 properties per year to 70 units, stuff like that.
Mike Swenson
Great information for people listening to this. Obviously you've, you've learned a lot through your process. You mentioned the coaching piece. You know, you talked about the value of good coaching, the value of paying money for information. And I think a lot of times people gloss over that because they think, yeah, I can get everything I want on YouTube. I can, you know, learn everything. What's been the value of, you know, good coaching or good mentorship type programs for you and then wanting to pass that on to others?
Wyatt Simon
Everything. It's been, it's been everything I've paid. I've paid more in private coaching than I have in college education. And my return in private coaching is 23. I was doing this actually last week. I was thinking about it. It's 2323 hundred x. What I have paid is what my return has been on the coaching. And so the coaching sticks with you forever. You get to keep it right. You're the asset. It's like, dude, if you can make 15% internal rate of return in real estate per year. Everyone's happy. What if you make 2300 in six years? Holy smokes, right? It's just a no brainer to do coaching. So that's, like, why I did it, because it was so helpful for me. And then how I help others is one thing that blew my mind. I was actually talking to my buddy, so ive helped 23 students buy over $3 million worth of real estate. And that was at the beginning of the year, so its been more since this year. But anyways, the reason I bring this up is I was talking to my buddy, hes like, in my last class, I was like, I had ten students and six of them bought real estate and four didnt. And I was just talking to him, I was like, dude, I dont know what I did wrong. These four people that werent able to buy real estate, he goes, do you know what the industry averages for coaching? I go, what? He said, it's 4% of students that pay actually succeed. And I'm just, holy crap. So it blows my mind. And so I'm not out there to do a big cash grab and not have people succeed. I built the program so that you actually win if you join it. And I'm not scaling it out to the masses. It's a lot of private consulting so that we actually get results.
Mike Swenson
So what, what would you recommend for people? Or what was, what's been helpful for you in finding good coaching? Right, because you mentioned cash grab. There's a lot of people out there that aren't great coaches, that aren't a great fit for you. So what has it been about coaching for you that has been a good fit for the people that you've worked with, either that have hired you or that you've hired yourself?
Wyatt Simon
I always look for experience, right. Like, are they doing what I want, and have they, or have they already done what I want to do? And if the answer is yes, then they have something to teach me. And is it them that's teaching me? Like, if I go pay for, you know, someone's program and I get Bob, who is has never, you know, he's just a student in the community that's helping out, it's like, well, cool. I didn't pay to work with Bob. Like, so you have to, like, if you're going to pay, make sure you get the person, because you're paying for experience, and so you gotta, you gotta pair the experience and then you gotta have effort, right? And if you pair those two things, you can just accelerate so quickly.
Mike Swenson
Well, Wyatt, thank you so much for for coming on and sharing your journey, your story, how you've been able to help others. Obviously a ton of value in your book. Your 1st 100 units comes out October 17 so for people that want to reach out to you learn more about you, pick up the book. How can they do so?
Wyatt Simon
Yeah so you can go to my website, it's www.Wyattsimon.com. i'm sure we'll put a link in the show notes along with the book for the folks and then I'll say special for your listeners on this. If you want to get a free chapter of the book you can email me and it's Wyatt. Wyatt f C as in full circle.
Mike Swenson
Fcequitypartners.Com thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I'm excited to see how your book turns out and best of luck as you continue to grow in the future. You've built a great path and excited to see how it continues to grow for.
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