Passive Investing In Uncertain Times
Lisa Hylton Podcast from Patrick Grimes on Vimeo.
Passive Investing In Uncertain Times
Transcript
Patrick is a founder and CEO of Invest on Main Street. He has over 14 years of experience in active real estate investment, purchasing distressed assets, renovating and stabilizing for long-term cash flow. His portfolio includes controlling ownership over 2,729 units in the emerging markets across Texas and the southern United States. He’s also the co-author of an Amazon number one bestselling book, Persistence, Pivots and Game Changers. He’s inducted in the Forbes Real Estate Council and contributed to Forbes thought leadership articles in investing and commercial real estate, so super excited to have you on the show today. We are going to be talking about the topic of investing in uncertain times. I think it’s quite timely for where we are and chatting today, so welcome to the show, Patrick.
Patrick Grimes: Yeah, I appreciate it, Lisa. It’s been great getting to know you. We’ve been in masterminds here for many, many months, seeing each other almost every other week, I think.
Lisa Hylton: Yeah.
Patrick Grimes: I’ve enjoyed very much your contribution to the group, and I’m glad that I get to be able to join your podcast.
Lisa Hylton: Yeah, happy to have you on. I want to start a little bit, as we’re talking about investing in uncertain times, I want to share a little bit about your story of being in real estate and being in a time like this many years ago and how that impacts your decisions as you continue to invest in real estate today.
Patrick Grimes: Yeah, many, many years ago makes me feel like I don’t have hair on my head, which I now no longer do. Yeah. Yeah. So back in early 2000s when I graduated college, I was a snot-nosed engineer. I very quickly got some advice to, “Sure, engineering’s great, cognitively rewarding. You’ll have a lot of fun doing it, but it’s not going to provide the financial future that you need. Invest as much as you can as soon as you can into real estate.” I was a researcher. I did all kinds of research, dumped a bunch of my earnings, almost all of them, into a pre-development super-high returning, super high leverage, and this was back in ’06, ’07 when the market was never going to go down.
So I did personally guarantee all those loans and those properties did take a big hit. So I learned early on what it’s like to speculate and gamble versus the calculated investments that I do now. I learned about buying for cash flow with low leverage instead of leveraging to the hilt and personally guaranteeing everything and hoping for new developments and pre-construction to pan out. I think that led me towards a path of doing that in single-family, very calculated renovations, bringing them up to the nearby comparables, which naturally led to larger multi-family investments and learning about recession-resilient markets and how to do it to ride out downturns.
Lisa Hylton: Got it. Awesome. So from there, I want to just touch on quickly, you mentioned a couple of things. The first one I want to dive into is that single-family to multi-family transition, because some investors who might be listening are like maybe they are investing in single-family, and you have decided over the years to pivot from single-family to multi-family. Can you talk about some of the benefits, the pros and cons of doing that for yourself personally?
Patrick Grimes: Well, yeah. So me having done it before and seeing the way of thinking and listening to the books and the gurus and then what people say about, I beat my own path doing the single-family thing too. I figured it out and ran down. I didn’t know what BRRR method was or buy, renovate, re-fi, rinse, repeat. Now that I see the more sophisticated lower risk multi-family, I try to get the message out because I actually wrote two articles in Forbes just recently, my latest two, we’ll call it, in Forbes. One was, how can meet single-family on the race to retirement, but as part of that, it was asset management, oh sorry, asset protection and how you have less liability most legally and financially in larger multi-family than you do in single-family. I think comes it down to a lot of most single-family people, they don’t even know there’s another path.
Lisa Hylton : Right.
Patrick Grimes: All they see is on TV, these fix and flippers. So they’re drawn in and they see a quick win on the end of a rainbow of buy distress, renovate, and then sell. They don’t realize that they’re personally guaranteeing all this, which means so many trips and falls. You can get sued. If the market has a downturn, then the bank’s going to come after you. The legal and financial risk associated with those assets, I didn’t know that I was even taking them. Most of the single-family guys, they take a blind eye to it.
Lisa Hylton: Yeah, definitely. Then given that we are investing in uncertain times, that is something that people really should be thinking about if they’re continuing to acquire more assets directly. You also mentioned taking a more calculating investment approach as opposed to speculating. Can you also elaborate a bit on some of what that entails?
Patrick Grimes: Yeah, so I guess there’s probably maybe four components to it, some that you might wrap together. But first, you take a look at the prior trends and you see what markets and what their composition was in terms of employment, which ones fared well in recessions? What were the big boom and busts and why? Like the Las Vegas, the Tucsons, why did they grow and they fall and they grow? It took 12 years to recover and so why was that? Then what are the markets that did really well? Like Houston for example, which is why I was drawn to originally build a single-family portfolio there, and it only took just a few quarters of its strong growth. It took a few quarters of plateau for it to then start growing again. So what you find is that there’s a diversified employment base that is of a nature that is recession resilient.
That balance is something we look for, both the employment base and the proof through recessions in the properties we invest in throughout the Southeast and Texas, and that’s one side. The other side is to buy for cash flow immediately so I’m not hoping and praying that I can buy land and entitle it or improve it, that I can buy a construction that one day will be there and leverage it to the hilt. I’m buying day one, cash-flowing assets, which also are low leverage, So we’re using very low down payments in a way where the break-even occupancies are low enough to where they cash flow even potentially in a downturn. So you can look up the data for remote workforce housing multi-family, and it only dropped into the 80s in occupancy, ’cause the really nice single-family homes and the really nice apartments people move into the workforce housing, existing construction. So people, they still stay busy.
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes: So if you put enough down so that your break even occupancy is well below that, then you know even in a downturn you can ride it out. Then it’s about making sure that you can ride it out, locking in long-term debt or getting a rate cap with extensions for your debt products so that when you’ve looked at the peaks and valleys so that you can bridge that gap in the future.
Lisa Hylton: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Well, before I move on to that, one more thing is coming back to the leverage. So you talked a little bit about the ways in which people can structure that leverage, either locking in that long-term debt or getting the rate caps. You mentioned having lower leverage, so that’s loan-to-value. As people continue to go into more investments currently, is there a rule of thumb that you’re looking at as well when you are assessing deals in terms of a threshold for which you find is acceptable?
Patrick Grimes: Yeah. So really, the combination is how much you put down on the property, which most of the investors they think of a down payment. In multi-family, we call it loan-to-value. It’s just the reverse of down payment, so you look at down payment, but then there’s other things too. There’s your improvement because we buy properties that are under market, and then so we can force appreciation. We can drive those rents up and create value by going to work instead of hoping if the market goes up. So we want to start out cash flowing, but then with upsides, so we want to have an improvement budget. But we’re not going to get a loan for that improvement budget ’cause that would affect our break even occupancy, right?
Lisa Hylton: Mm-hmm.
Patrick Grimes: So if the market made it down through that would raise that, so we want to keep that low, so we’re going to raise all of that. Well, a lot of syndicators get a loan for that. Then we have closing costs, but then what about your reserve? You need a reserve account. A lot of the syndicators are like, “I’d rather have an 18 or a 20 or a 22 IRR. I’d rather leverage it 80 to 85% or 15 to 20% down payment, get a second because the bank will loan it to me.” Well, that doesn’t make it right for your investors, it just means the bank will loan that to you. So basically, what we’re trying to say is, “Well, no, let’s keep it real low. The deal we have right now is a 68% loan-to-value, loan to total cost of the project.” Sorry.
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes: Then which puts us at a 75% break even occupancy, which means even if ’08 and ’09 happen again, we should still be cash flowing. We’ll be just fine. Right?
Lisa Hylton: Got it. Yeah. You actually brought up a really good point here, because sometimes as investors, we are always, we’re looking at, “Oh, what’s the IRR? What’s the return going to be?” But looking underneath the hood at the reserves and the CapEx, and are they taking a loan for those? Is that included wrapped up in the loan or is that something where they’re raising capital for? If they are raising capital for that, and obviously it’s going to impact their returns, but investing in uncertain times, it can make it a more conservative play going forward into that particular investment. Can you talk a little bit about rent growth and supply chain? So as investors think about continuing to invest, whether real estate is a good play for them right now? They think about rent growth and supply chain.
Patrick Grimes: So to fully answer that question, let me tack on a little bit to the last question, ’cause what I didn’t say was that other little bit that we raised, which is the reserve account, capital reserves like your safety. What does that mean? That means, well, what if it drops to 75 occupancy and then it drops below? Well, if we keep six months worth in reserves, that’s a million dollars extra just sitting on the sidelines, or maybe if what a tornado hits one of the properties? Well, what if that happens during a downturn and you don’t have the funds and you’ve got to float the capital to pay your bills while it’s being rebuilt before you can exercise your insurance? Well, what if you’re not insured fully?
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes: Well, we’re insured for replacement costs of the building as well as loss of rent. So we’re made entirely whole as long as we have the capital to ride it out. So that’s why we raise an extra six-month worth in reserves. So when people look at, “Well, in these uncertain times, we got to tackle it.” Well, what are the what-ifs? The what-ifs really are, “I don’t want to be in the situation that the people are in that I buy deals from.” We just bought a property at a 19% bad debt in Houston, and the owner neglected the tenants. He didn’t know how to manage and he didn’t have the working capital to survive COVID. He didn’t collect well. So we were able to get it at a crazy good discount. Well, we have vertically a management, we manage it better and we have reserves in place so if there is a dip, we’ll be able to ride it out so we don’t lose the building. Right?
Lisa Hylton: Mm-hmm.
Patrick Grimes: We have reserves so that if there’s a natural disaster, we had a property that had fire, so we got that under contract now, actually, a new deal. They didn’t have the reserves to float, so they were forced to sell. Well, the investors take a big hit. So in the uncertain times, and investors are looking, “Well, who’s got that fortified shell? Who’s built in enough reserves? Who’s built in enough lifeline to even survive a disaster in a downturn?” I think if you look at people, I’m talking to hundreds of investors all the time.
All the way, for the last 10 years I’ve been saying, “Hey, guys. I’ve been through a downturn. I know what’s going to happen, so this is how we structure our deals. This is where we invest. These are the cycles we invest in and these are the neighborhoods that we invest in. This is how we debt leverage ourselves, and this is the capital reserves. This is how we construct them so that you’re protected in the case that there’s a downturn.” But they’re like, “Oh, no.” Some of them are like, “Oh, no, my brokerage accounts and stocks are going up. I’m going to stay there.” But then here we are on the other side of it and I’m like, “Well, so you should have invested in our investments-
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes: … right? Because they’re stable, they’re cash flowing, they’re appreciating,” but they’re like, “Oh, I can’t, if only I could, but my brokerage account is down 30% right now, so I can’t invest today.” But I’ll tell you what that cycle does. The cycle means their basis is actually done about that much. But in our investments or in those investments, they’re not only now going to be affected by inflation, which is north of five 8% now. So they’re going to be hit by inflation, and they’re trying to get 20 or 30% back of their brokerage account. Even if they get to that break-even point, the dollar amount, the value of that, the spending power of that dollar when it gets there, is going to be much lower. In addition to that, they’re going to be paying taxes on every single piece of income that comes in from that, but in our investments, we’re the perfect place to be right now.
In fact, the smarter, more intelligent investors that come to us, they’re trading millions of dollars in our investments. Why? ‘Cause it’s a hard asset. It’s a cash-flowing asset on day one. Our rinse, which is another article I wrote in Forbes, is how multi-family income-generating real estate is a hedge against inflation. Our rinse track with inflation. In fact, our expenses are lower so they actually don’t grow at the same rate. So in an inflationary environment, we, at the very least, hedge if we don’t actually make money on inflation. So if you want to ride that 8% or whatever curve that we’re looking at, we’re the right place to do it. If your operator has all the fundamentals, has locked in interest rates, has these reserves, has low break-even occupancies, you can get into havens where you can actually make money.
Lisa Hylton: Right. Actually, can you just recap there on the importance of the operator, their structure, because someone who’s listening is like, “You know what? I could see the benefit of investing in real estate.” As they’re continuing to look at so many different deals, they’re like, “Okay, well, I’m jaded by the returns. What are some of the things I need to be looking at underneath the hood to make sure that this is a really good deal that I should be investing in?”
Patrick Grimes: Right. Well, the one’s soft topic is I ask them were they investing during a downturn, and what does that mean? It’s not dissimilar from me, that I came from the high-tech machine design automation robotics space. I was educated in Silicon Valley with my masters in engineering and MBA, the executives out there are looking for people that failed and they’re looking for how they responded and how they reacted through the failure. That is a lot of venture capitalists won’t invest until you failed maybe once, maybe twice. Now, I’m not saying that that is what you want to do as a requirement, but when I fly around and I talk to different groups. They show me different deals. They look at underwriting.
I ask questions about stress testing and things they don’t even understand because they don’t understand why I would think that way because they’ve never gone through a turn a downturn. So my recommendation always is find an operator that has gone through a market correction and ask them what it took to survive that, what you learned on the other side of that. Then these investments are long-term investments. You want to have somebody that knows how to ride out time and knows how to ride out an investment that can withstand the cycles of time ’cause it’ll happen. That’s generally what I say. I think vertically-integrated property management is important. I think when they say conservative underwriting, ask them what that means. Right?
Lisa Hylton: Mm-hmm.
Patrick Grimes: Ask them if their interest rates are capped or fixed, and ask them if they’ve figured out what the maximum tolerable interest rate is. Ask them what their exit projections are and try and get a feel for if they’re articulating responses to you that’s like they’re going into battle. I think one of my favorite quotes is, I can’t remember who said it now, but it was, “I never won a war that went to plan, but I never won a war that I didn’t plan thoroughly.” I think that’s part of the essence of being an analyst and being a multi-family survivor, is that you’ve got to have that plan in place. You got to have the experience to know what that plan needs to be.
Lisa Hylton : Yeah, definitely. Definitely, especially in the times that we are currently in, because it’s more than more important than ever. One other follow-up question on the loan and cap rates … Sorry, rate caps. As investors think about investing and the investment might be a bridge debt and they’ve decided to purchase a cap, the Fed is continuing to say that they are going to continue increasing interest rates throughout the rest of 2022. Are there scenarios ever where that rate increase could surpass what you’ve paid for a cap where people could then be in a situation where they … Do you get where I’m coming from?
Patrick Grimes: Yeah. Yeah. No. Well, so-
Lisa Hylton: Is that a risk?
Patrick Grimes: Well, interest rates are a risk for all deals unless you’re managing it. Okay?
Lisa Hylton.: Right.
Patrick Grimes: It always has been a risk for all deals, it was just people considered it a reasonable risk. Even in the best days, we were doing long-term fixed interest or we were buying a rate cap. Rate cap means that even if you have a floater rate, you’re buying an insurance policy that maxes out your rate so that if it ever gets there, that’s as high as it’ll go. And it’s just another insurance policy. It’s similar to us spending an extra million dollars, which is six months worth in expenses. In fact-
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes … rate caps last year used to be $400,000. This year it’s 1.2 million, 1.4 million. So those numbers seem big, these are current deals that are all around $50 million. That’s like the numbers that we’re looking at, but it’s a lot, but it’s an insurance policy. So if you buy that policy, then there’s two things you want to look at. A lot of the deals have a refinance and then a sale. You want to understand, well, the refinance may only work if the interest rates are a certain number then. If they’re buying a rate cap, they’re not buying a rate cap that applies to refinance. So you want to say, “Okay,” for example, right now we have a four and a quarter interest rate, and we bought a rate cap that’ll max it out at about five and a quarter. But we looked at the deal and said, “Well, we need to have an assumption for an interest rate at refinance so that we can still make our returns.”
That needs to be conservative enough so that even if the interest rates do grow, we can still meet our projections. If they’re projecting the same interest rate, then doesn’t make sense. So we said, “Oh, well.” Actually, we plugged in at eight and a quarter. So we stress tested our deal to eight and a quarter, which is very, very conservative. In the residential world, they have much higher interest rates than us in the commercial world. So you may be thinking, “We’re already there now.” Well, in the commercial world, our assets are a lot lower risk. We get a lot better rates than you do, which is part of the benefit of being in a multi-family. So basically what we’re saying is, “Yeah, let’s check. Let’s make sure that we’ve rate capped it, and then if we’re assuming a restructuring of that debt, let’s make sure that we have a high enough interest rate to plug in for that.”
Then you may say the what-if scenario like, “What if you don’t get to the refinance? What if interest rates go high and you can’t refinance?” Well, is your debt extendable? So you want to make sure that they have extensions built into the long term so that they can keep carrying it forward ’cause nobody wants to be caught without a seed like I was in 2006 where all of a sudden the interest rates are high. There’s a recession, you can’t sell the property, so you end up selling at a discount, which guts the equity of the property. Go to an operator that understands things don’t go always to plan, locks in enough of a runway to ride out that dip. So we have extensions built in to our debt products so that if we need to exercise, then we’ve pre-negotiated our extensions.
Lisa Hylton: Awesome. Awesome. Then another hot topic is executing value add in an environment where you have inflation and supply chain struggles. What are you saying to investors in that area as well?
Patrick Grimes: Yeah. Well, so we like to buy properties at cash flow and keep them that way, which means we’re not going to empty out any buildings and destabilize the income and start paying out of pocket for our expenses. We very slowly renovate. So typically, it’s over a 24-month period, which means we’re renovating like five or 10 units a month. Now, the supply chain issues that are very challenging are potentially much more critical for new construction because new construction, you may need 300 appliance sets all at one time, right?
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes: Because you’re building and you’re going to build it all. You’re going to come in, attach them all, but we can buy ahead. We can buy from different suppliers and we can work towards bringing containers of things like hard countertops. We can be very agile on our feet because we’re not in a race to make an occupied building. It’s already occupied, it’s already income producing. So we’ve executed our renovation plan all but except for the floorboard kickboards or for the ranges, or for the range hood, or for the backsplash on some. We have the ability in our market ’cause we’re doing it slowly and over time to be able to do what we want and then come and backfill the easy pieces that we can do while the tenant’s still in the building. So that’s been really helpful for us. So in general, the advice that I say is, don’t try and sign up for a business plan that’s too aggressive.
Allow yourself time and allow yourself flexibility to execute all or part of the business plan over a longer period, and you should be fine. Now, we used to say basic in the southeastern Texas, and when you’re doing it at scale in hundreds of units, our budgets were four grand to do an entire kitchen, six grand to do an entire kitchen, eight max, right? Well, sometimes now we’re putting in 10 and 12,000 because we know things are going to cost a little bit more. Things are changing, like stainless steel, all of a sudden appliances are the same cost as black appliances. How did that happen? Quartz now is a little more expensive, so we’re getting containers from Vietnam like, where did that come from? So it goes back to it is true, so you just plug in more of a safety margin into your expenses. You got to be a little more agile as to what you do, ’cause you might as well be stainless now ’cause black and stainless are the same.
Lisa Hylton: Right.
Patrick Grimes : Right.
Patrick Grimes: So you got to be careful as an operator, but at the end of the day, it just comes down to how much you really plugged in and gave yourself runway and leeway and buffer into your budgets.
Lisa Hylton: Got it. Nice. Then given the current market environment, can we talk a little bit about return expectations? As interest rates continue to increase, what would you say to investors when it comes to IRRs, cash on cash, those kinds of things? What is the reasonable expectation right now in the multi-family space?
Patrick Grimes: Yeah. Since we’re so leveraged, we have tons of reserves. We assume on access property. Our returns are not flashy. They’re 5, 6, 15, 16, 17, 18% IRRS. It was more that we had more 18% internal rate of return or annual average returns on our deals. But now, I’m bringing a 15% IRR to the market. Now, why is that? Well, we had a lot of things we changed in the underwriting that’s not today, but it’s wondering if it’s going to happen tomorrow. So we want to project today that we still want to be able to meet the returns we’re sharing today, even if the market makes a correction. But at the same time, I’m looking at other deals which are really short, one- year and two-year holds, and they’re much higher returns. But at the same time, those are structured in a way where you might lose it all too.
They’re not underwritten cash flowing. They’re race to the finish line with short-term debt. They haven’t paid the extra for extensions. They don’t have the insurance policies and they don’t have the reserves. So I got to caution, if you’re trying to get out there and get rich quick, I was in 2006, then sure, don’t go with a group like ours because we’re going to give you a reasonable return. Now, if the market goes north, we’re going to give you a much higher return. But if you’re looking for stable long-term appreciation and cash flow and capital preservation, then don’t be scared of the 15% returns. Don’t be scared of the six or seven or 8% cash on cashes today because those operators, they may have better deals than the flashy ones. They also might be safer and they might return a lot better. At the very least, you may not lose it all along the way.
Lisa Hylton: 100%. Then this now brings me to one of my final questions here, which is retirement. You did an article about how multi-family syndications beat single-family for accelerating retirement. I want specifically this question, given that article that you’ve written, given what you just talked about, which is the returns, can you talk about if people are seeking to invest in multi-family for the idea of being able to retire? In terms of timing and timeline, what are some of the level setting of expectations that are necessary given the current return environment?
Patrick Grimes: Level setting and expectations, well, I guess that comes to a one-on-one conversation. I’d be happy to have that with anybody that wants to chat. But level setting and expectations, so what I say is with single-family, you often have to trade off your time with your family, friends, and hobbies because the deals aren’t big enough to support experienced operators and third parties to come and do a lot of the heavy lifting for you to find deals and renovate deals. Then maybe you found one good deal, which got you really excited, but you didn’t realize that was a job. The minute you did that good deal and you finished it, now you have to go back to work and you have to do it again and again and again, because the longer you hold that asset, the lower your return goes, your IRR goes down over time, right? Sure, you made a big leap, but now it’s just following the natural appreciation.
Having a group like ours that can jump in there and about time every, call it two or three years, analyze hundreds of deals, find the deals, get them under contract, then asset manage and property manage construction, manage the renovations, and then get to a point where we can do a refinance and pull your capital out, and if you can find a group that can continue to do that every two to three years, then by getting the return of your investment through a re-fi while you sell cash flow, and then reinvesting that into another deal, the capital you got back, maybe invest it with them again in another emerging market, not downtown, but in another market where people are moving to, it’s tax advantage and landlord-friendly where they’ve found an undermarket deal and they can drive it again, so by that sixth year, by the third year, maybe you’ve got a second property. By that sixth year, maybe you’ve got a third property, now you’re cash flowing in three deals.
If they’re long-term focused operators, then if they sell, they’ll do a 1031 exchange with you. For example, we bought a property at 27 million in March last year, and then we sold it at 37 million in December. Now we had that underwritten and on the deck as a five-year hold and an 18% IRR where we exited in less than 10 months, and it was a 100% IRR. But 1031, those individuals into a Houston deal, and they all stepped up their basis without paying any taxes. So they collected all the cash flow, and then one day we took their appreciation, we moved it to another deal. Now they’re collecting cash flow while we drive that appreciation higher, but they’re catching cash flow on a higher amount. So that’s the idea is that if you get into one of these investments where you constantly have a team keeping the velocity of your capital high, then it depends on, well, how many times do you need to circulate $100,000 investment?
If it’s a 4, 6, 7, 8% cash-on-cash return, do you need to cycle that once, twice, three, four? Maybe you have another 100,000 you can add to the puzzle, then how many times you need to circulate that, so that kind of conversation and what your needs are and where you want to be in retirement. But at the end of the day, what happens is, unlike annuities where they give you cash flow and then one day it disappears and you don’t give anything to your heirs, what happens is you find you can retire earlier ’cause you know you’re in these safe cash flowing investments that are growing over time. Instead of dwindling your 401ks down, you’re at your basis is growing. So you can live off that cash flow knowing that you have a safety net for yourself and are leaving something to your heirs, that results in people retiring earlier. That’s why, in addition to the fact that it’s all tax advantage along the way, that’s why it does accelerate that.
Lisa Hylton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so powerful. I think that one thing I’ll add to it is that I really believe that investing through real estate is a multi-year strategy to the extent that you are not coming in with whatever, millions of dollars to invest, which is the case for many investors that they can write million-dollar checks. But for an investor that’s writing their first 50 or their first 100K, I think it’s important for them to recognize that it is a multi-year, but the benefit is that consistent investing and working with really good operators that have some of the structures and discipline that you mentioned here that can help them to protect their capital, grow their capital with time, and be in a completely different place much faster than they anticipated. So, awesome. This was so good, Patrick. I finished all my interviews with my Level Up questions that I ask all my guests. The first one is, what are you grateful for in your life right now?
Patrick Grimes: I’m grateful for our new baby that’s coming up here soon. That’s going to be the next exciting thing in our life. My wife, I’m grateful for her and what she’s bringing to our family.
Lisa Hylton: Aw, congratulations. That’s awesome. What do you now know that you wish you knew at the beginning of your journey?
Patrick Grimes: I wish I knew to take the more steady tried and true path than to go the ride the quick win and high-returning, high-risk return trend. I think that’s it.
Lisa Hylton: Yes, definitely. What would you say you attribute your continuous success and growth to?
Patrick Grimes : Well, so one of my first jobs was actually at a Toyota plant, and I learned about Kaizen and all the Toyota ways and continuous improvement. That resonated with me, and I think I carry that forward. I’ve been called a high performer. I work very hard. I even got two master’s degrees while I was working full-time, but I constantly think I’m lazy, but it’s hard to imagine, I know. But somehow I’ve got over 3000 units, 300 million, and I’m somehow lazy. But even the book here is-
Lisa Hylton: Yes.
Patrick Grimes: Oh, did you have another question?
Lisa Hylton: No, that is my final question.
Patrick Grimes: Okay.
Lisa Hylton: So at this point, how can my listeners get in touch with you if they want to get in touch with you? You also have an awesome freebie to give them as well.
Patrick Grimes: Yeah. So [email protected], I’ll spell it out, [email protected]. If you go there on the Contact Us page, set up a meeting on my calendar, happy to chat with you. We do have a new investment. Currently, right now on the top of the site, you can take a look at, really exciting project in Atlanta. Yeah, so if you do set up a meeting with me, I did participate in a book with some great co-authors and we’re just saying, Persistence, Pivots and Game Changers is the title of the book, Turning Challenges Into Opportunities. I am here wearing a wig, just kidding, so one day when I had hair at the beginning of this one.
Some other really, really cool people around here, Def Leppard, a lead guitarist, Phil Collins, Russell Gray from The Real Estate Guys, NFL, NBA, players, coaches, artists, just was an amazing, fun project, Persistence, Pivots and Game Changers. I’m happy to believe in the content, lots of good stories. I’m happy to provide a free signed copy of this Amazon number one bestselling book to anybody who would like to set up a call. We’ll chat about your goals and what you’re trying to do and see if I can contribute to your journey. This tells all about that journey from high tech back and forth to pre-development to single-family, high tech, and then the multi-family journey as well.
Lisa Hylton: Yes, so good. So good, highly recommend it. I’ve definitely read it as well. So thank you for that. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Patrick. I really appreciate it.
Patrick Grimes: Honored to be here, Lisa, I look forward to seeing our next mastermind.
Lisa Hylton: Hi, there. Lisa here again. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember, if you have not done so already, please rate and provide a review for this podcast. It enables us to keep bringing on amazing guests and producing content that helps you in your business and in investing. If you’re watching on YouTube, please hit Subscribe, like and leave a comment. Thank you so much for listening and keep leveling up.
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