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The Real Estate Investing Club
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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Club
1:34 Joel's cold call that launched an industrial career
4:48 Surviving 2008 and why Brit Properties buys debt-free
6:18 Taking action with door-to-door seller outreach
13:41 The magic number of seven touch points
16:42 Why industrial real estate thrived while multifamily struggled
21:24 No debt, no bet: protecting your downside
27:58 The three Fs that destroy real estate investors
32:05 Picking the right Chicago towns to invest in
35:52 The development lesson that cost Joel dearly
38:28 How to connect with Joel and get mentorship

🏭 DEBT-FREE INDUSTRIAL REAL ESTATE INVESTING EXPLAINED
Can you build real wealth in real estate without leveraging yourself into trouble? In this episode of The Real Estate Investing Club, I sit down with repeat guest Joel Friedland of Brit Properties, a Chicago industrial real estate investor with 45 years of experience, to talk about a strategy almost nobody else uses: buying commercial properties with no debt. Joel shares how his no debt, no bet philosophy protects investors, produces steady cash flow, and keeps him in control when the market turns ugly. If you want to invest in industrial buildings, syndications, or passive income deals, this conversation is packed with lessons on risk management, cash flow, and long-term wealth building that apply in any market cycle.

📞 COLD CALLING, MENTORSHIP, AND TAKING ACTION
Joel's story starts with a cold call at age 22 to a Chicago family that owned 80 industrial buildings. That one call turned into a decade of leasing, property management, and brokerage experience. We talk about why learning from a mentor beats making every mistake yourself, and how Joel still goes door to door meeting building owners. He explains his seven touch points rule for building relationships with off-market sellers, and I share my own story of a seller who said no for three years before finally saying yes. Consistent action is how you find deals when competition is fierce, and it is also how you stay motivated when a deal falls through.

#RealEstateInvesting #IndustrialRealEstate #DebtFreeInvesting #RealEstateSyndication #PassiveIncome

Want to learn more about our guest? Connect here: https://www.britproperties.com

Want to learn more about the REI Club Podcast, how to invest with Gabe at Kaizen, or join our community of active real estate investors on Skool? Visit the podcast website at https://www.therealestateinvestingclub.com or click here: https://linktr.ee/gabepetersen

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:05all right welcome back to another episode of the real estate investing club i hope you guys are
00:11having a great day great week wherever you are and whatever day it is for you as always it is
00:17friday on the podcast we're bringing that good friday energy to you and man it is i know i said
00:23this on the last episode but we do two episodes every single week and so it is still the second
00:27of october and uh we're i'm really excited because we have a small kind of uh um like you know
00:35family
00:36owned uh movie theater here in the town that i live in and they are doing free halloween kids
00:43movies on tomorrow on saturday and so we're taking our three-year-old daughter there it's going to be
00:47a lot of fun it's kind of like a kitsch kind of theater so we're excited for that um we're
00:51also
00:52going to be going to the every year we get a glass pumpkin we've been growing our pumpkin patch our
00:58glass pumpkin patch i think we almost have 13 pumpkins or something crazy like that now so
01:02we're doing that tomorrow so yeah i'm excited i love the fall um but it is a good day for
01:07a second
01:07reason because we have joel friedlin with us on the podcast uh joel is a repeat guest from brit
01:13properties they do industrial so if you guys are interested in industrial this is the episode to
01:19listen to um i'm excited to jump into it again joel thanks for hopping on gave it's great to see
01:25you and i love talking about industrial but i'd really like to talk about all the problems people
01:32are having including us in the real estate business these days yes yes and that is the topic that we
01:40will definitely be broaching on um for people who did not hear your first episode why don't we start
01:46them off with a story we always like starting the stories we like to hear how people got to where
01:50they are um so take us to the beginning of your story in real estate and just tell us how
01:55how you
01:55got to where you are today i cold called at age 22 i graduated from the university of michigan i
02:02cold
02:02called a real estate family in chicago that owned industrial properties looking for a job
02:10and the father with the three kids in the business they owned 80 industrial buildings i didn't know
02:16anything about industrial but i knew they were in real estate and i knew how to make a cold call
02:21i said to them i'd like to talk to you about coming to work for you and the dad said
02:25can you come over
02:27today i said sure so i got in my car and i drove to his office and a half an
02:31hour later i was being
02:32interviewed and he hired me to do leasing property management and brokerage in industrial in the
02:42chicago market where they had all their buildings it was the best mentorship that i could have gotten
02:48the two sons and the daughter were fantastic and the other people who worked there took me in like i
02:55was
02:56a member of the family and i learned everything that i could about uh real estate the industrial
03:04market syndications investments good ones bad ones they did well on some they lost money on others
03:12and after 10 years i said to them i love you guys but i don't think you're going to make
03:18me an honorary
03:18member of your family so i and three other uh real estate brokers started our own company and
03:27i stayed very close with the family i'm still incredibly good friends with the oldest son steve
03:34and i haven't talked to him since yesterday and that's from i'm 67 so that was 45 years ago and
03:41we
03:41are still very very close and he's still invests with me after all this time nice i love it and
03:48we
03:48we've talked about that um that scenario so many times on this podcast that the best way to get
03:55into real estate is to learn from somebody who's already done it um you can go out there you can
03:59make all the mistakes yourself but i'm telling you it's not the way it's not it's not the way it's
04:03the way i did it but it's not the way i wish i i wish i could have done it
04:06differently i wish i would
04:07have had an opportunity like yours or at least i look for an opportunity like yours where you go in
04:12and
04:13you you work alongside somebody who's actually out there who's had success who's achieved what you're
04:18looking to achieve there is no way to replicate that it is the best best way to learn um yeah
04:24in
04:24fact uh just to give you this uh statistics uh over the years i have mentored i i've been lucky
04:33to
04:34have these great mentors i have a mentor right now who's 99 years old and i still have breakfast with
04:38him every saturday and we talk real estate every week and he's still active in real estate at age 99
04:45and so for decades he has been one of my other mentors i have been in the teaching and mentoring
04:52position for about 150 uh folks who've come to work for me either as summer interns or as full-time
05:01newbies uh experienced people so i am still mentoring in fact uh this summer i had seven
05:09summer interns and i taught them just from soup to nuts everything that there is to know about
05:17industrial real estate and making real estate investments and finding tenants and leasing and
05:25what we do by the way i i think you know this we don't do loans we we buy our
05:30properties debt free
05:31because in 2008 uh i had the the devastating experience of owning 50 buildings with a group
05:39of investors and having 70 million dollars in personal guarantees at seven banks yikes so i made a
05:48decision after we straightened all that out which took some time and by the way we still own 12
05:55buildings from before 2008 with a group of about 100 investors and it was terrible i mean i went into
06:06a depression i you you know i've told you this before uh psychiatry didn't help me medication didn't
06:12help me counseling didn't help me nothing did the only thing i could do is go back to work
06:18yeah and that's what got me better yeah but i went back to work i want to hover on that
06:24just for a
06:25second because i uh i i really like that advice you know this is not uh medical advice or anything
06:32like that but i've also been through periods in my life where you know i felt really down because of
06:36circumstances i was in and i tried all the things but the only thing that works is action at least
06:43for
06:43me the only thing that works is going out there and taking action and uh you know i don't know
06:49i i don't
06:50want to put advice for people out there who do who are going through a serious situation in their life
06:54but i'm telling you if you if you do feel down in your life action is the solution going out
06:59there
06:59one working out and then also just taking action um to to take control of whatever it is that you're
07:05facing and so i just wanted to point that out because action really is the uh in my opinion or
07:10at
07:10least in my life it is the cure for for difficult um you know emotional states that you're going through
07:16it's work i i think it's work i think it's being creative and and strategic and then doing something
07:24about it i was feeling kind of down last week i had some things that happened one of our deals
07:29that
07:30we thought we were going to buy fell through and i was disappointed and we had spent some money on
07:34due diligence and we had already brought investors in and we found out that the seller who had told us
07:40that the roof was relatively new um either didn't know that it was actually not really new or he
07:48told us a fib uh i hate to be mr cynical but the first three rules of real estate are
07:55everybody lies
07:56everybody lies and everybody lies and after 45 years of doing this i'm even more sure of it than ever
08:05so i was feeling a little a little down i was i was in the doldrums and i said what
08:10am i going to do
08:11to feel better about the fact that we spent all this time trying to buy a building and now we're
08:16not
08:16buying it and i raised money and i was ready to go so i said i'm going to go out
08:21door-to-door canvassing
08:23and meet owners of buildings and i took a ride to a town called addison illinois which is right near
08:28o'hare airport and i got out of my car and i went door to door from building to building
08:34and i met the
08:36owners of the buildings and i met the owners of the companies the tenants and i ended up in that
08:44one day
08:44spending three hours and i had seven meetings with no appointments walking in the door and getting
08:53invited in and the next day based on those walkthroughs of those buildings i made three
09:01offers and i'm in touch with all three of those sellers and i'm going to get at least one if
09:06not
09:06two of those deals done that's going back to work to get over the doldrums yeah yeah it reminds me
09:13of
09:13the quote it's like i don't know if it was benjamin franklin or thomas jefferson or whatever i don't know
09:19who said it but it's basically like the more the more work i do or the more times i do
09:24a thing or
09:24the more work i do the luckier i get yeah that's a great one just gonna say that you know
09:30you feel
09:31it always feels when you're taking all this action and you're not getting results that um it's it's for
09:36not but you're really looking for that one percent uh that will actually turn into something and so if
09:41you just keep taking action keep taking those steps forward something will fall through something
09:45will fall into your lap it'll feel random it always feels random when you do get deals when you do
09:49get
09:50opportunities but it's not random in the sense that you are taking consistent action and that's what
09:55is so important so um yeah i got home gabe i got home that first night and i said to
10:02my wife
10:03by the way she's uh just in in a recovery period from a very serious uh cancer um
10:11i would call it journey and so she likes it when i come home with fun stories sort of cheers
10:18her up
10:18so i came home and i said stace today i went door to door and i found three buildings that
10:25i'm making
10:25offers on tomorrow and she said how does that make you feel i said it's it's an excitement level
10:33that totally turned me around from being down from losing that building over in bensonville
10:38and she said that's great so i went to the office the next day and i wrote up the three
10:43offers and i talked
10:44to all three of the owners of the properties and of course they're all going to say the same thing
10:50oh we got a higher offer from someone else oh we think we can do better but i know how
10:54to handle that
10:55because i've done it before and i say well why don't you call some brokers and find out what they
11:00think
11:00it's worth and maybe try to get some other offers and do your homework take your time i'm in no
11:06rush
11:06and call me back if you want me to buy the building my my offer is serious and it it
11:12takes time but i'm
11:14setting in motion all these possibilities by doing the work and taking the action that you're talking
11:21about and it just made me feel better and i did it today i did it again today yeah this
11:26morning i went
11:28door to door in the next neighborhood over from where i was earlier in the week and i got in
11:34to see two
11:35people today and one of them said joel how did you know that i was looking to sell my property
11:41and i said mike i had no idea but i stopped in and thank you for seeing me and we
11:48had about a half
11:49hour conversation and by the time we were done he was looking to invest in one of my syndications
11:56that was he's i brought i brought it with me i print up i still print up the uh ppm
12:03you know these
12:03are the the the uh private placements i still print them up so i can carry them around and hand
12:09them to
12:09people it's supposed to saying here go to this website and i handed him this one ppm which is
12:17our most unusual deal and he said are you telling me that this is a deal where i'm going to
12:24get
12:24seven percent cash flow right away and maybe double my money in the next three to five years and i
12:31said
12:32that's what i'm telling you he said well i just went from uninterested to now i'm interested
12:38and that was a cold call i never met this mike never never met him and i said i'd like
12:46to talk
12:46to you about buying your building as well and he said i'm open to that nice yeah and that and
12:53that
12:53i mean that just goes to show um when you're talking with sellers it's a no is never a
13:00it's never a never it's always just a no right now you just have to approach them on the right
13:06day i'm telling you i've i've had deals where i followed up with people for years and it was
13:10always no it was always no they're they're cordial they're just like no i don't want to sell
13:14and so i just keep checking in with them and then uh one one deal i think it was three
13:18years that
13:19i had been talking to this guy and then he said um yeah now's the time let's get it done
13:23and and
13:23we got it done and so whenever you're if you get disheartened about reaching out to sellers uh just
13:30know that it's it's not you can always close the deal it might not be right now but you just
13:35need
13:35to continually um check in continually talk with them and then you need to call them on the right day
13:40and one day it might be a yes and that's when you get the deal done so yeah i don't
13:44know if you
13:45remember me saying this but the magic number is seven oh seven seven touch points with somebody
13:51before you actually have a relationship you're getting close when you do five you're getting closer
13:56at six but when you have met with them spoken with them on the phone had lunch with them had
14:03coffee
14:03with them gone back to their office taking them on a tour of a building have them take me on
14:08a tour
14:08whatever it is the number seven is magic when you've met with and talked to someone seven times
14:17you know them and they know you and if anything's going to happen you're out you're the first one
14:22on their list and today was number seven earlier in the morning first thing i did this morning my
14:28cousin is a single man in his 80s who has a dog and today's his birthday and it just is
14:34a coincidence
14:34that this morning one of my tenants came to see a building we're thinking of buying and he would
14:40move from the building that he's in where we're the landlord to the new one because he needs a bigger
14:45building and i found this i didn't find the building i have a an intern working for me right now
14:52dennis who's in college at northwestern graduating in december and he cold called this guy last week
15:01today was our sixth touch point with him and today we walked through our tenant
15:09through his building to maybe lease it when he sells it to us and he moves out and he moves
15:15his business
15:16so today was number six so we're not quite there but i showed his building today to this big corporation
15:25that's our tenant and he had to feel like this joel has credibility he must he must know something he
15:34brought this really major corporation as a tenant that he would buy my building and lease it to them
15:40that's a credibility point and so number seven is coming next week there you go just keep following
15:48up i love it um so while we're kind of on the top i mean this all started we were
15:53talking about how
15:53you get out of the doldrums by taking action a lot of people because of where we are today because
15:58of
15:58where the market is because of how difficult it is to get deals you know people are feeling down so
16:03that is very timely um you know timely advice but i want to talk a little bit more about how
16:09you're
16:09seeing the market how you're seeing things play out interest rates have gone up they just continue
16:14to go up and you know you and i were talking before we got on the show i'm still on
16:18a deal that a year
16:19ago i had thought about selling and i i i almost got you know almost 30 20 20 25 percent
16:25more than
16:25what it is people are offering today at the time i was like no i'm gonna get more i was
16:30being greedy
16:30i should have sold then but um i didn't realize about you know where interest rates were going and
16:34now people's expectations are people what they what they're willing to pay is going down pretty
16:39significantly so let's talk about the current market um and what is your crystal ball showing you
16:45so i'm in a very unusual market industrial has been thriving and hot through the last
16:54i'd say 15 years and the values of industrial buildings have held up and the demand for industrial
17:05buildings is very very high which is different than let's say multi-family in chicago in particular
17:13because it's a mature market and there's millions and millions of people here and we have 16 000
17:19industrial buildings chicago is mammoth so there's always a lot going on so i'm i'm in a little bit of
17:26a different position than some of the folks who bought a bunch of multi-family stuff before rates went up
17:33if they had floating rate debt and now they can't afford to pay their debt service too many people
17:39piled into that all at the same time and one of the reasons that i think that happened was because
17:46all these people who teach the courses uh are essentially grooming their competitors
17:53and there are thousands of people that didn't know squat about multi-family real estate who have
18:02listened to watched bought courses from or participated in some way to learn that business thinking that
18:10they could go do that and pick it up quickly and all of a sudden it's it sam zell used
18:17to say
18:18everything is supply and demand if there are 200 multi-family uh developers and or syndicators
18:28in the market then there's a lot of competition but if there's 2 000 of them there's immense competition
18:39so what's happened and i'm using examples like best ever you know they they they teach they have
18:47courses they teach uh ryan paneda used to constantly be offering courses and what happened was these guys
18:54they weren't really doing real estate they were doing marketing they weren't operators they were
19:00salesmen and they didn't really understand that if you buy properties when interest rates are at three
19:06percent it is very likely that they're going to go up because that's not a normal thing
19:11so all these new people who didn't know anything became competitors of each other became competitors
19:17of the long-time people who are in it and they were buying stuff at a three cap and a
19:21four cap in a market
19:22where if you buy for anything under a seven cap you're a moron and they didn't know they were
19:27being morons so that's because they were being taught what to do and they said i'm going to go do
19:33it now they took action but the problem was there were too many people taking action all at once
19:38and they were unaware of the long-term nature of real estate where you need to be prepared for a
19:44downturn and they they were they were light on reserves they were heavy on debt and they got in
19:50trouble and that's why there's so much devastation there was too much built if you go to nashville
19:57if you go to phoenix austin these were markets that 10 years ago it was wide open but with all
20:05these people doing the 506 c's which is crowdfunding raising money from learning how to raise money from
20:12investors all these people went and did it and they brought in people who didn't know that the
20:21syndicator that was bringing them in just didn't have the the length of experience of decades of
20:28experience and yeah they're gonna make a mistake it's like i wouldn't want to go to a doctor my wife
20:33had surgery for her pancreas cancer we went to a doctor who has been doing this for decades who does
20:39hundreds of these a year and knows everything that can go wrong and go right in a pancreas surgery
20:45which is called the whipple procedure do you think i would go to some guy who's like yeah i just
20:50learned
20:51it i took a course no that the answer is no so this man saved my wife's life because he's
21:00an expert
21:00who does one thing he doesn't sometimes do orthopedic he doesn't sometimes do it in a different hospital
21:08in a different city he's got his team he's got his nurses he's got his specialists he's got his
21:14anesthesiologists i look at what we do the same way focus understand the long-term trends
21:23and the only thing i can tell you that i do different is besides knowing my market very well
21:28and being laser focused and in one town is this thing where we don't do debt yeah because i got
21:34so
21:34burned that is uh i love that strategy i i i wish i was what's the word here i don't
21:44want to say
21:44disciplined enough but i i wish i had the cash to do that because well that's not even no no
21:50that's an
21:51excuse anybody can it's just leverage does give you acts it does give you access to deals that you
21:58wouldn't otherwise be doing um but buying properties without debt it eliminates so much of the risk
22:08that it it you know real estate you're always gambling it's always not gambling but you're it's
22:13there's always risk that's a good that's a good word that's a good word it is gambling there's there's
22:18always risk on the table um but if you eliminate the debt then you eliminate i want to say 50
22:26of the
22:26risk because that is the same yeah everything is cash flow and all that cash flow can be put back
22:33into the property if something goes wrong um you you said something really interesting you talked about
22:38gambling and gambling in real estate uh is bad it's bad if you're really young and you're just a
22:49just a big swinger you know like you go for home runs every time and you're in your 20s or
22:5630s you
22:57can take a lot of risk and start over if things go bad but don't tell investors that it's a
23:04safe deal
23:04when what you're really doing is gambling and don't tell yourself the lie that it's a safe deal if what
23:10you're doing is gambling and i have a saying that i'm using right now which is no debt no bet
23:18i like that when somebody says when i read these articles in some of the online magazines and
23:25whatever the the biz now and all those things and it says so and so developers making a bet
23:33by buying this property i looked at and i say no one's ever going to say about me that i'm
23:39making a bet
23:41a bet is gambling and when somebody tells you i was watching i don't know if it was on on
23:45your
23:46podcast at some point but somebody was patting someone else on the back and saying oh yeah you
23:55know um you are a deal junkie i see that you're a deal junkie listen i know a lot of
24:02people with drug
24:02problems and i actually have a family member that went through that and i go to a 12-step meeting
24:09for
24:09families of people who have chemical dependence problems and other issues and we talk about
24:17many things in these meetings many many things and it's it's the best thing that my wife and i do
24:24we
24:24love it and what we found out is that there are a lot of compulsive gamblers who also have alcohol
24:34problems and drug problems and i think a lot of people who say uh i'm a deal junkie really are
24:42you
24:43don't want to okay if you went to your doctor and he's trying to save your life and he's going
24:49to do
24:49brain surgery would you want to go to a guy who's a junkie any kind of junkie like hi i'm
24:56doing your
24:56brain surgery and i'm a junkie like no no no no no no no no you run you run away
25:01so someone says
25:02says i'm a deal junkie what they haven't figured out is what they're really saying is that they are
25:06gambling in real estate with your money in theirs and no one should ever say that it's very very bad
25:16if you're what you're saying is i like working on deals and looking at deals say i like working on
25:23deals and looking at deals not i'm a junkie yeah and the uh the the gamble aspect is just that
25:30there is
25:31you can never have all data points there there is always things will happen outside of your control
25:38that are i mean you just can't control everything and that's why real estate you know there is always
25:43risk on the table but going back to it if you do deals without debt half of that risk is
25:50mitigated
25:50half of that risk is is controlled now because you do not have the cash flow that your bit that
25:56your property is producing is now 100 dedicated to the property it's well i mean to the investors
26:01obviously but if something does go wrong that cash flow can protect the downside um and that's
26:07really one of what i want to stress and why i really like your strategy is buying all cash a
26:12lot
26:12of people say yeah you don't get the leverage you don't get the the irr goes down whatever but
26:17that is true but it also protects the downside and in my opinion it's more important to protect the
26:23downside than it is to you know do a home run and get a 50 irr or whatever crazy number
26:29you're trying
26:30to get i do recognize and i think samir and you talked about this in in the most recent podcast
26:37i
26:37i watched of yours leverage is really important it real estate is a business of leverage so i'm an
26:44unusual cat and there's nobody else in the whole country who does debt-free deals if you could find one
26:50i'd love to talk to him and compare notes but there are none and it may be because i'm an
26:55idiot
26:55right maybe because i'm not going to make the kind of irrs and returns and and because real estate is
27:02known as it's an assumption that it's a debt leverage business it's an assumption there's nobody that you
27:10will talk to who says why would i do a deal without debt it's real estate's a debt business it's
27:16a leverage
27:16business that's how you make big returns i'm not against people doing that i'm not saying anyone
27:22else besides me should be dumb enough to just do deals debt free i'm the only dumb enough person
27:31to do that well like i said i i like your strategy it would it would uh i don't know
27:36i'm i'm a huge fan
27:37and uh if you can get good returns you know without debt that is um in my opinion even if
27:45i were an lp
27:45and somebody else's deal that is something that i would look for because it means that my
27:48my uh my cash would be more you know there'd be less downside less risk uh for the property i
27:54mean
27:54you just saw that thing with brandon turner i think is um i don't want to put a name on
27:58it because i might
27:58be wrong with one of the big names out there yeah yeah multiple people multiple big name guys so you
28:06if
28:06you don't if you if you go with very very low debt and and i do have deals with 30
28:11loans from way
28:12back and 20 ltvs but there's three f's the three f's that you avoid if you are cautious and you
28:22have enough reserves and your debt is low enough it doesn't have to be zero it just has to be
28:26conservative and you have to know what you're doing and then you avoid the three f's the three f's are
28:30the death of real estate number one foreclosure no foreclosure without debt very likely to have
28:39no foreclosure uh if you have very little debt or if you have enough reserves or if your business
28:45plan is good so foreclosure the next one is forced sale it may not be a foreclosure but the bank
28:55or somebody might force you to sell so there's three f's the last one and there there's hovering on
29:03that second one there's actually a lot of people think like if you don't pay your mortgage that's the
29:08only way a bank can force a sale if you if you look read any of these loan documents you
29:12get
29:12they're like 30 pages long there there are a lot of clauses in there and so a forced sale does
29:17not
29:17mean that you missed a mortgage payment um anyway it can mean you're into you're in default in some
29:22other way they have covenants they're called covenants so the third way excuse my language is
29:26you're just fucked that's the other f and when you are you know you go home and you just want
29:32to get
29:32in bed and put the covers over yourself and hide from the world because once you're in a position
29:39where things are in trouble it's incredibly difficult to get out of trouble so the way to do
29:45it in in the best manner in my opinion is to try to avoid it and so yeah i mean
29:51i've had i've had 10
29:52losses out of 108 buildings and i can tell you in each case what i did that caused the problem
29:59and
30:00every one of them was a forced sale everyone it was one of the three f's and i was fucked
30:04so
30:06two f's it was not foreclosure i had no foreclosures none but for sale is when you're not in control
30:14of
30:14your destiny and your banker owns you there's a biblical passage in proverbs and it says that
30:21the borrower is this is the slave to the lender and none of us want to be a slave to
30:26a lender
30:27think about that like go to bed at night yeah i'm a slave that that's not good not good yeah
30:35yeah so those are the three that you definitely want to steer clear of and like you said low
30:39debt is the way to do that it kind of solves all three if you have very very low debt
30:44or no debt you
30:44can um you can definitely uh sidestep a lot of issues that would otherwise come up but hey man i
30:50just took a peek at the clock we have completely crushed the clock down usually we're a 20 minute
30:55podcast we're already at 30 so i do need to move us on to the quick question round are you
31:00ready
31:00all right absolutely it starts with education it could be any form could be a book you've read movie
31:05you've seen mentorship program you've been a part of anything like that i just need two recommendations
31:09one for general life wisdom and then one for real estate general life wisdom is have a mentor in life
31:17somebody who's been through it all who can give you advice and someone who's really smart and
31:23capable that's had a successful life that's older i think that's really good in real estate i'm
31:28addicted to passive pockets passive pockets has a podcast that is excellent they put out all kinds
31:35of material they have a website it's a place where lps go to learn about sponsors and to learn about
31:43investing passive pockets it's absolutely fantastic nice i like it all right next question um usually
31:52we asked this question but you i know your answer uh it is about the u.s there's a lot
31:56of opportunity
31:57out there usually i ask what metro are you most excited about investing in today you're a chicago
32:03guy and so that is your metro so i'm going to ask what area of chicago are you most excited
32:07about
32:07investing in today there are 70 towns in chicago including chicago the city and then i live in
32:13deerfield and then there are towns that are way south and way west can't go east because it's the lake
32:19but uh there are 70 towns and we based on experience know that about 15 of them are good to
32:29invest in
32:30in the other 55 i would never invest in i've lost money there the taxes are too high there's a
32:39crime
32:40problem the buildings are older tenants and buyers don't want to go there so i avoid the 55 towns and
32:48when someone brings me a deal there's a town here called wheeling i've lost money in wheeling
32:53i'm not going back so when someone says joel i've got this great deal in wheeling my answer is i
32:57don't
32:58do wheeling so i have i have these very specific locations and i have reasons why they're good
33:05yeah and that goes you know we actually mentioned this on the on the last podcast we did that uh
33:11and
33:11there is a lot to be said for investing in your backyard that's not the approach i take because we
33:16we
33:16invest by asset class mobile home parks rv park self-storage facilities we do invest nationally
33:21but if you are if you are investing in your backyard that means you know exactly every street corner
33:27every area of the prop of the of the town which means you have a competitive advantage in investing
33:33there um there you know real estate is location location location if you invest in a bad area you can't
33:39fix that um you can't fix investing in a bad area and uh so you do need you know everything
33:44happens on
33:45the buy and so you do need to buy in the right area you can fix that by knowing exactly
33:49where
33:50you're buying which is exactly what you guys do moving us on to the next question this is for your
33:56younger self if you could go back to the joel who was just picking up that phone i don't know
34:01what
34:01year you said it was uh quite a long time ago and calling um uh your family friend go back
34:07to him
34:07look him in the eye give him one piece of advice moving forward well it's work work your ass off
34:16i
34:17don't i don't believe in uh life balance i think it's bullshit people who say life balance 90 of them
34:24are just lazy i'm not kidding you can have you can work really hard and still live a really nice
34:30life
34:31and have a family life and be with your kids and be with your grandkids be with your family be
34:37with
34:37your friends working hard does not exclude having a good life but that i would say whoever tells you
34:45you need to have a balanced life forget that no you want to be successful in your business you work
34:50your ass off that means you're not working 36 hours a week yeah that's just not that's just not true
34:57people who do that fail that's it yeah that that's like the uh the five hour work week or whatever
35:04that book was um oh my god that that is him harris or what was his name i don't know
35:09it's catchy it's
35:10catchy but it's bullshit yeah i always i read that and i was like oh it'd be so cool to
35:15get there but
35:16then i realized i actually like working it is it's something that um you know it gives me purpose it
35:20gives me energy to to get out and get things done and so it i mean i enjoy it and
35:26so and i do feel like
35:27it is kind of necessary i don't know how i could do what i do without working hard if i
35:31could fit
35:32everything i do into five hours i just don't see how i could do that so there is no way
35:37around that
35:38moving on to the next question this one is about lessons learned not every deal we get into goes
35:44the way we expect it in fact pretty much every time something's going to go wrong and that's when you
35:48get to learn a lesson so what was a deal that went a little bit sideways for you and then
35:52what was the
35:53lesson you pulled from it well i'm going to give you a more complex answer i figured out that there's
35:59about a half a dozen things that i did wrong on the the 10 deals where we lost money and
36:07i could
36:07give you uh just a glimpse of what i think the worst part of it was the worst thing uh
36:13development
36:14sucks that's the answer for me development is so hard every time i've ever developed buildings and i
36:21have developed a number of them too many things can happen over too long of a period of time and
36:27there's too many details if you're a developer that's all you should do is be a developer not
36:32buy stuff and then i'm going to be a developer i'm going to learn how to be a developer no
36:37no you're
36:37going to get killed killed does not work it's a bad that's the number one worst thing is to
36:44pretend you're a developer when you're not yeah i've uh i've sat down with friends that that do
36:50development and i've talked with them and i've every time i talk with them i'm like this is not
36:55something i will ever do i i more you know kudos for you guys for doing it if that is
37:00the path you
37:00choose right on we do need people to go out there and develop properties but it is uh there are
37:05there
37:06are other uh down you know downsides that that you really don't see from the outside and it is it's
37:12a
37:12hard hard path to to run for so yeah i mean to give you just quick uh examples i had
37:19a young
37:19partner i was 10 years older he was about 40 and i was about 50 and he said let's buy
37:24retail land and
37:25develop it and i said dave i don't want to do that and he said oh we're going to do
37:29great and because
37:30he was my partner i said yes well it never got developed it just got sold for a loss because
37:37it
37:37wasn't our business it wasn't what we were good at and we were industrial guys and he was trying to
37:41do a retail deal the second one that went bad was he bought a 10 acre site with an old
37:46beat up
37:47industrial building on it there was a coke uh an rc cola bottling plant that he was also saying we're
37:54going to develop this we also lost money on it we also had it for too long it was a
37:59disaster and we
38:01didn't even get any developments off the ground we just bought land and got stuck so that's that's
38:08what happened to me i'm not a developer i never want to be one i never want to try it
38:12again
38:12let's just buy stuff some value adds all right but let's let's just buy stuff let's have
38:19fair enough all right that leads us to the very last question you've given us a lot to think about
38:24i'm sure people want to reach out get in contact with you is a two-parter where can they find
38:29you and
38:29then what can they expect when they reach out uh website brit properties dot com b-r-i-t with
38:37one
38:37team brit properties dot com and uh i'm happy to give a few answers to anybody that has a
38:45mentorship question i've mentored 150 people in my career and most of them who are still in real
38:53estate are multi-millionaires and extremely successful because i made them work hard and i
38:58made them ask the hard questions and taught them a lot and i i've been helping people who i don't
39:04even
39:04know who occasionally call me and say hey i have a i have a situation for you can i explain
39:10it it's
39:10kind of interesting to hear what they're working on and the student learns a lot but the teacher
39:16learns more from the student so whenever anybody does this it reminds me of something that maybe i did
39:23wrong or might do wrong again and by giving advice to somebody and helping them it reminds me of what
39:29not to do there you go and uh brit properties dot com is that url so if you guys want
39:35to reach out
39:36to joel all you got to do is click that little more in the description it'll pull down his full
39:41the full description and in there you can find his links all right man that wraps it up thank you
39:48very
39:48much for hopping on the show thanks gabe absolutely everybody is with us today thank you guys for showing
39:55up you are the reason we do this so if you guys have any questions reach out to me gabe
39:59with the
39:59real estate investing club.com if you guys want to support the show just leave us a comment review
40:03anything like that other than that i hope you guys have a great week keep rocking real estate and i
40:09look
40:09forward to seeing you on the next episode

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