Aileen: Okay, thank you for joining today’s episode of the, how did they do it? Real estate podcast. We are your hosts Seyla and Aileen. And today our guest wears many professional hats. Maurice Villa-Jean is a retired Lieutenant Colonel and federal agent, a current 23-year senior executive at a global management consulting firm, and a founding member of Quattro Capital. An investment firm focused on residential multifamily real estate. By the age of 30, he built a portfolio of 35 single family homes, achieving financial freedom via passive income. And in 2015, switched over to multifamily. He currently owns and manages apartment complexes and mobile home communities across eight States, where he is as passionate about travel and immersing in culture. Having been to 96 countries over 200 times, he coaches aspiring investors and professionals on how to achieve financial freedom and lifestyle design, and is active in his local community, serving as a senior police officer for a County agency. Very excited to have you on today Maurice, welcome to the show.

Maurice: Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m very excited to be here with you guys.

Aileen: So, can you please tell our listeners a little bit more about your background and how did you get started in real estate?

Maurice: Yeah, so I come from an immigrant family. My family is from Haiti actually. So, in the Caribbean and my brother and I were the first generation that were born in the United States. So, I was born in New York, raised in Boston primarily, and then ended up in the Washington DC area, because I went to the University of Virginia where I did mechanical engineering, football, and Air Force ROTC. That’s how I ended up in the military. Fortunately, for me anyway, the year that I was graduating from University of Virginia, the military said that they had too many officers graduating nationwide. So, they gave me the option of going guard or reserve. And that was a pivotal, I guess, fork in the road because it allowed me to get hired by the consulting firm that I still work for today. 23 years later, I went into the reserves where I served for 22 years and just retired in October. But the biggest thing was, and kind of how, I guess the base for why we’re speaking is, when I got hired by that firm, I became very, let’s say a little bit nervous about the concept of sitting behind a desk for the rest of my life. So, I started researching financial freedom, real estate, and what I could do to free myself from one location. And I ended up in real estate, the single-family residences, now apartment complexes and mobile home parks. And the rest is history, as they say.

Aileen: Also, thank you so much for your service.

Maurice: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate that.

Aileen: And then also, so you started at the age of 23 when you bought your first family home, is that correct?

Maurice: Yes.

Aileen: And then in that first year you were purchasing over 10, that first year after you started?

Maurice: Yeah. So, yeah, so what happened was, it’s not like I knew exactly what I was doing when I was 23 years old. I mean, this is now 20 years, but I just bought a place to live. And it just so happened, it was at the beginning of, there was a real estate boom between 2001 and 2008. And I bought in 2002. So, and it was just a condo, but three or four months later, that condo was worth $30,000 more because the one next door with the same floor plan sold for $30,000 more, which confused me. So, what do you do when you’re a punk kid? The way that I was, I called my father to ask for an explanation, and I knew nothing about the concept of equity. I knew nothing about the concept of assets at the time. So, he explained it to me. I ran over to the library because the internet was just kind of just getting going at the time. And, I got a real estate book. It captured me. And I ended up at that library, reading 9 or 10 books in one sitting, not kidding, never left, never went to go get food, just had water, because I was stunned that I was able to make someone’s full salary in one transaction. So, by the end of the year, I had bought 10 more. And then by the time I was 30, you know, it got up to about 35 or so, but that’s how, that’s kind of how the real estate journey started. It was me recognizing that I had purchased an asset and that asset could do something for me and for my life, which is the most important thing.

Seyla: Awesome. Maurice, will you be able to tell our listeners a little bit more of how you find your first deal, at the time? Where was it and was it in state, out-state and why did you choose to purchase that property? And how did you scale up to 10 pretty quickly? And how did you do it?

Maurice: Yeah, so the first property was, again, the first property was just a place to live in and I hired a broker to help me. That’s what you do, right? You get a real estate broker to help you find a place, but I backed out of that deal three times, by the way, because I was so nervous doing it.

Aileen: The same deal?

Maurice: Same deal. That first time, that I was trying to buy a place to live. I backed out of it three times, but that broker kept it all together. So, I give her a lot of credit to this day. But the rest of it, the other 10 that I purchased that year, I’m not kidding. I [inaudible 05:07], I really got a book, read about the content. It just, you know, it’s funny, you will do what your environment gives you the information for. And it just so happened, I picked up a book called, I think it was financial freedom via condominiums, or something related to condominiums and real estate investing. The fact that they were very small, the maintenance was low because you pay for a condo fee, et cetera. So, I just decided since I had bought one to live in, that I was going to search for additional ones to rent. And you know, when you do the numbers on a single unit like that, it’s fairly easy. It’s how much can it rent for? How much would the mortgage be? How much will the condo fee be? How much is the insurance and how much has minimal expenses? And then you can figure out if you’re going to cashflow the property. So fast forward, just a different broker gave me a piece of advice, which was; “Hey, Maurice, if you’re going to go down this financial freedom track”, because I was trying, I was starting to think big. And I was like, man, I should buy the biggest thing that I can get my hands on. She gave me the idea of, Hey, don’t buy the big Dodo egg, go out and buy a dozen small eggs, right? That way it’s easier to get, you can mitigate your risk. You’ll have more, that type of thing. So, she helped me buy the 10 additional that year, all in the same area. So, this was Northern Virginia, like Arlington, Alexandria, Virginia, just South of DC. And DC was a bit expensive at the time. So, I went into Southern Maryland, or Southern Prince George’s County, Maryland, where you could, buy condos at the time, anywhere from 70,000 to 150,000. And that’s where my focus was at the time.

Aileen: Do you still have all those properties today?

Maurice: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I got up to 35 places within seven, or eight years and it was a lot, I was self-managing. Here was, the, I guess the life arc that started to happen. I recognize at some point that if I started to pay these things off, they weren’t a salary, right? So, if you, I had a, I still have it. I had a place in Oxon Hill, Maryland. It rented for about 1200 or $1,300 a year, maybe 1500, but all in, at the end of the year, if it was paid off profit, it would be anywhere from 6,000 to $9,000 a year. And in my mind, okay, if I’ve got one asset, that’s paying me 6,000 to $9,000 a year, all I need is 10 to make 60 to $90,000 a year. All I need is 20 to double that right, to get up to 150 hundred, 6,000, $70,000 a year. So that’s what I did in 2003, I made the decision that I was going to buy these things. Let some of them appreciate, sell the ones that appreciated and pay off the other ones. Right? So, I got up to 35, paid off a bunch of them, and then I would take my corporate salary from my jobs and the rent from other ones. And I just kept going down the line systematically and paying these things off until in 2014, I realized that I had more salary coming in from these condos, that I did from my corporate job. So, technically I was free. But yeah, I still have of that original set, I probably still have 18 of them.

Aileen: Wow.

Maurice: I don’t plan on getting rid of them anytime soon.

Aileen: That must have been a great feeling. When you realize that?

Maurice: You know what, it was a great feeling in a way it was kind of anticlimactic as well because you start to recognize, it was never about real estate in the first place. And it was never about money in the first place. It was about freedom. It was just about the ability to be able to move around, to build the ability to make your own decisions. I wanted to live life, kind of my way, and in the manner that I wanted to live, which includes a ton of traveling. So, when I got to the point in 2014, where I realized I had created something, I was happy, but I was also at the end of that arc of development. Like I just wasn’t growing anymore as a person. And I knew that, and that’s how the shift into multifamily, into apartment complexes and mobile home parks came about because I wanted to start thinking about things from a larger scale and from a legacy perspective for my family, so…

Seyla: When you realize that you have passive income more than your active income, what, what went through your mind at that time? How did you feel?

Maurice: Don’t get me wrong? So, it was in 2014 when I kind of realized it, because I did my tax return and my tax return was showing more income from real estate than I was making from my corporate job. And I was making a pretty good salary corporate job wise. It was definitely a good feeling. I felt in control, but it’s not like I wanted to jump from my employers and just go, I don’t, sit on a beach, or not do anything. That’s not the type of person I am, you know? And it just, it brings you right back to life is not about money. Money is a tool, so you can live extremely well. I still work at that corporate firm because it challenges my mind. And I like the clients that I have. I still stayed in the military all those years because, the stuff that I was doing as a, as an officer and a Lieutenant Colonel and a federal agent around the world, most people will never experience what I’ve experienced in the United States and Turkey and Africa, in Germany and Switzerland and Norway and all the places that I went. So, yeah, I got there per se. But all it did was give me additional options for me to go live life, the way that I wanted to. So, it’s not like, you know, I achieved some level of financial wellbeing and then I just stopped everything, that wasn’t the case at all.

Seyla: And then after [inaudible 11:03], you mentioned that your transitions to multifamily and mobile homes, could you elaborate a little bit more on how you made that decision and what steps did you take to transition to the multifamily?

Maurice: So, I’m a very big proponent of self-development and investing in self-development, meaning investing in yourself. I think, look, we have been brought up to go to CA you know, go to high school, go to college, and then we pay an absorbent amount of money to, go to a university and get a degree, right? So, someone may pay $80,000 over the course of their college career to get a degree in English, or something like that. Meanwhile, you recognize that there’s some external business venture that you can get into, but people won’t take $40,000 and invest it in themselves to go learn that. But I recognize that it was, it made sense to invest in that education. So, I tracked down a seminar, actually, a seminar just came across my face, maybe on Facebook or something in 2014 or 15, I went to that seminar and had to deal with buying multifamily. It was a one-day seminar, which was like three hours long, within a half hour of being there. I left and I knew I was going to go to the next seminar. Because I just knew what my path was. The next portion was a three-day seminar, related to how to do diligence on multifamily, financial, physical, looking at the building, making offers to the sellers, raising capital, all those types of things. I did that. And then I hired a mentor, for a fair amount of money. And, but that was an investment in me. That was an investment in my education. And it took me, even though I made the shift, the mental shift that I was going to multifamily in 2014, early 2015, I didn’t buy my first one until early 2017. It just, there was a limiting belief there that I don’t know if I can do this. Why don’t I just go back to doing the condo stuff? It just made sense; I was successful at it. In disbelief [inaudible 13:09], and then I have done, you know, I don’t know how many deals now, maybe 15, or 16 of them since that time. So that was the shift. It was recognizing I needed to invest in myself, going to a course, hiring a mentor. And I’m all the better for it.

Aileen: So, can you walk us through the first multifamily deal that you did? And how did you do that? And was that on your own or did you have some partners?

Maurice: Yeah. So, I’ll walk you through two, because they’re there, they have different aspects. The first one was not a deal that I did. The first one was someone that I met, who was syndicating a property in Texas. And I decided to invest in his deal, not necessarily for the financial gain. This is what I’m trying to tell people. I invested in his deal for the education. I needed to understand how he did the diligence and finding out, how did he even find this property? How did he even put in an offer? How does the property package work? The property placement, memorandum, the subscription agreement. And if you guys don’t know what these things are, these are just legal documents associated with investing in a multifamily property. So, I invested a hundred K in somebody else’s deal and it went phenomenally well. He bought the, or that team bought the property at four and a half million and 18 months later, they sold it at 6.2 million. So, you know, I made a fair, fair return, but the return was not, for me was not the monetary return. It was that I had been exposed to the process. I saw the positives and negatives of how that team was dealing with investors and other people. Sometimes the communication was good. Sometimes the communication wasn’t that good, but it gave me what I needed. It gave me a foundational knowledge.

So, if I fast forward and this was happening, maybe two or three months after I invested in this one, a friend of mine who was a former neighbor, and I had a relationship with a seller of a mobile home park in Pennsylvania. We are very, like-minded from a freedom from the rat race, freedom from kind of the nonsense, taking care of family, living your life to the fullest mindset. He asked me to be his partner. I jumped right in full board. Didn’t really understand mobile home parks, but he did, educated myself to the extent possible. And I took a risk and I jumped in and I’m glad that I did it. We’ve certainly made mistakes, but that park is extremely valuable at this point because of the development around it. But I think that’s the key. Like there was no plan B for me, I was going to invest in multifamily. And even if I made a mistake and I lost money on one deal, I didn’t care. I was going to keep going until I found a systematic way by which I could be profitable and not just profitable, but also helping people along the way and sponsoring people along the way, which is what I do now. So those are my first two deals. And then for the most part, I’ve been on my own doing those multifamily deals since, but just in the last year, I partnered permanently with several, they’re my partners, but I call them family and we have formed Quattro Capital. Like I mentioned to you guys, and actually we’re formally launching the company on Tuesday. So, I’m excited about that.

Aileen: Oh, Congratulations.

Seyla: Congratulations.

Maurice: Thank you. Thank you.

Aileen: That’s great, investing, starting to invest as passively first with a well-known syndicator. Who’s already doing it and learning from them is a great way to get the education first, before jumping in and doing your own.

Maurice: Yeah, 100%. I’m glad that I did it.

Seyla: So as of today, where have you invested so far and how many is in your portfolio, for the multifamily space?

Maurice: Yeah, so, I’m in eight States at the moment. Right now, Quattro Capital, we focus primarily on the Southeast with a little bit of Texas. So, we’re heavily focused right now in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, but we do have holdings in Texas as well. And then prior to forming up with Quattro Capital, then I was just legacy properties that I own in Pennsylvania, West, Virginia, Maryland, DC, Virginia itself, and Massachusetts. So, it’s been quite a bit. And you know, as far as size, I’ll skew that question a little bit because I think the number of units that someone owns is a metric. It does show a bit of track record number of units is not something I’m concerned with at all, what I’m concerned with, what I hope other investors start being concerned with, or people who are trying to get into the business it’s not the number of units, but it’s how much passive income those units are generating for you, such that you can go live your life. What I’ve found is when I’ve been asked to speak on stage at real estate conferences, or speak on podcasts, that’s like the number one question that people get, but it is no indication at all of the impact of that portfolio, on how you live your life and what you do. So, I’m pretty sizable. I’ll put it that way, but what I’m most proud of is the original passive income that I generated back from 2014, which freed me to do all these other things. And now with the number of complexes that I’ve acquired over the last seven years, you know, all that is for the benefit of my family, the benefit of the investors that I’ve have on certain number of those deals and just overall legacy, because I’m kind of moving into this philanthropy space, where I want to give back as much as possible to local and international community,

Aileen: Now that you’re able to, be able to do all these things that now you’re passionate about doing and serving the community. Oh good.

Seyla: Okay. So as for me, it is that I just want to ask how have you grown and structure your business to be able to scale up, as quickly as you can?

Maurice: Yeah. Look, the first, when I was doing single family, I did it all on my own. I was self-managing 35 places. That was insane. That’s just insane. I wouldn’t change it, but I the one thing I would have modified is, I would have hired property managers earlier, because you, as an investor, you don’t, once you learn the ins and outs of it, you shouldn’t be focused on the smaller activities that the day to day activities, you can hire people to do those things. And then you can focus on the money, making activities and scaling and the processes for your business that automates it, or what have you. Where I got better over the years. And this is more of a life thing than it is a business thing, but it attributes back to business is I started to get very smart about employing systems and automating everything that I do. So, I don’t receive mail anywhere. All of my business mail personal mail comes into an online interface and I can see it wherever I am in the world. I can see my balance sheet for all my properties, just by going to my phone and pulling up my bank, actually two, or three banks. And I can see everything going on. I get alerts if certain transactions happen, that I don’t authorize. I have set meetings with property managers to do certain things, so that those, taking the time to set up those processes and leveraging tools has allowed me to scale. But the biggest thing that has allowed me to scale is my partners. I was very much used to doing everything on my own. And in October of 2019, last year, a current business partner of mine, Erin Hudson called me and said, “Hey, Maurice, I’ve connected with these amazing people. Kim, Wendland and Chad Sutton, and they needed a sponsor for their deal in Tennessee. Which I happily obliged after I met them and got to understand them as people, because they’re phenomenal and won’t do business. I have such an integrity lever, inside of me that I’m not interested in money. I’m interested in integrity first. And then we can see where we go. But we did that deal together, it was a small 35-unit building or 35-unit building in Tennessee. But what we recognized was all of our skills are complementary to each other. So, we decided to formalize. We’re like, you know what, screw it. Why don’t we join forces, create an entity? Chad is extremely good at diligence, whether it’s financial, or physical, Kim is extremely good at program management and negotiating for deals and a bunch of other things that she does. Aaron is extremely good at investor relations and working with brokers and property, like everybody has their skillset, right? So, we all joined forces. And then later Tammy Sutton, who’s actually Chad’s mom joined and just made us that much stronger.

So, what has happened? And because you asked about scaling, since January, 2020, we’ve already acquired five complexes and we have two more under contract now that we should be closing on in the next 30 to 40 days. And then there’s a third additional in Texas that we should be closing on sometime in November, right? So that will be eight complexes in one year. There’s no way. There’s no way I could have ever accomplished that amount at that speed on my own. So, when it comes to scaling, I think the biggest thing is finding people who have complimentary skills to yours, that way you can grow your business. But I will say one thing I know it sounds like the business is getting bigger. It is, but it’s not. It’s honestly not from the perspective of, I want to have this massive business, or many employees or anything of that nature. Contrary, that is not something that is not something I want. What I want to do is, align with these amazing people at Quattro Capital, we bring in new investors, or folks who are professional, who are getting into the investment business, and we will sponsor their deals and kind of coach them and wrap our arms around them. We call them affiliates. And we, you know, we have the benefit of coaching and developing other people, all that does is like give you additional top thumbs, or fingers out into the industry where you can do much more. You can go much further, faster. So, scaling to me is all about people and secondarily systems such that you can do things more efficiently.

Aileen: So, can you talk a little bit more about your partners and how did that conversation go? How are you able to determine that they were going to be a good fit for you?

Maurice: Yeah, so, you know, it should be said that my partners are, my partners, but they’re my family now. I don’t, I mean, we’ve talked about the financial freedom step in 2014, so I don’t need more money to exist. I don’t raise my standard of living every time I make another dollar. It’s just in my mindset. My mindset is to live well, not to buy a lot of stuff. My background, especially the solid family background that my family gave me, as far as getting my education. I’ve always had to struggle on my own. So, placing myself around like-minded people, was something that was really important to me. I have had other people ask me to partner and you’re in a meeting with them. And you can see all they care about is squeezing another dime out of a dollar. And fine, that’s you, but that’s not me. But when I got around people who wanted to help people’s lives, give back to the community, provide safe, affordable housing, they have their own life goals. That real estate will allow them. These guys, my partners know that travel is huge to me. So, for the past three weeks, I was in Lebanon and Cypress volunteering and looking at property.

So, they allowed me some free space and some time to go. That’s the kind of thing. And so, we did have that conversation. We did kind of do a trial run at it, and we’re just blunt and upfront with each other about what each other’s goals are. And then the other thing that we did, because we’re all professional and successful in our own rights, one way or the other. Because we hired a business coach to help us understand the lanes of, you know, the categories of improvement we needed to work on within the business who was going to be responsible for what, how we were going to operate, who owns asset management, who owns investor relations, who owns finding the properties, negotiating? Like we totally understand our roles and responsibilities, and that has been fabulous. So, the conversations were difficult and they remain difficult if we have a disagreement, or something, but I have family there. And that’s what I see them as. Yes, it’s a business, but they’re my family at this point. And I’d much rather be in that framework, than some monstrous framework where I’m making $700 million a year and I’m unhappy. Happiness is my real ROI nowadays. Not necessarily how much money I make for myself. I do care about the return on investments, from my investors. But yeah, so we, you know, we did have that conversation, that’s kind of how it all formed and it’s been good.

Aileen: That’s great. And then it sounds like everybody is very open to communicating and just very honest and about their needs and their wants and what their goals are. So that sounds very, very important when working together

Maurice: 100%. Yeah. And everybody has different perspectives. Chad just left corporate America at 32. I mean, he’s living his dream. I’m 45. I’m more focused on traveling around the world and giving back to people and mentoring people on financial freedom. I’m living my dream. Kim has a goal, has a very lofty goal. I won’t put her personal goal out, but related to generating a certain amount of revenue because she wants to give back to society in a huge, meaningful way, that’s her dream. You know, it’s just like when I hear my partner’s having a dream now or having a particular goal, I get up about helping them achieve their goal. You know what I mean? That’s the right type of partnership to be in where it’s, everybody helps each other out, for the greater good. So, it’s really working and you can kind of feel that on the website. And I hope you guys, or maybe you guys did get a chance to check it out?

Aileen: Yes, we did.

Seyla: We did.

Maurice: But we’ll let folks know about it too.

Seyla: I want to ask a personal question. You mentioned about traveling and how many countries have you traveled so far?

Maurice: 90, 96 countries so far.

Seyla: Wow. That’s really impressive. And I’m talking to you, you know, I can feel the passion that you wanted to give back and give back to the community. And there’s no doubt that you are able to scale, you know, especially now in COVID-19 situation. And a lot of operators, cannot even find one deal and your group closes eight, like found eight deals and it will be closing, especially doing COVID-19. That’s really impressive. So just want to kudos to you.

Maurice: Thank you.

Seyla: And your team on that. So, what has been the most instrumental influence on your journey to financial freedom and self-fulfillment?

Maurice: From a personal level? It’s Tim Ferris, do you guys know Tim Ferris? I don’t know if he has a show in his podcast and stuff. I bring him up all the time in my interviews. The reason why is because I read the four-hour work week, 10 years ago. And in that book, there is a formula. Well, in that book, he was espousing this concept of the new rich, and it had nothing to do with money. It had to do with the ability to control your time and also exposing yourself to new experiences and environments on a regular basis. Because when we were all in first grade and second grade and high school and college, everything was new and we were constantly learning. And for some reason, you know, we get out of college, we go into the corporate world and then this rat race thing starts to happen where you’re pressing repeat every single day. Well, he gave a formula in that book. Freedom equals time, plus mobility, that stuck with me all these years. And what it is so time, you can create time by creating passive income, because you don’t have to physically be anywhere for money to come in. Right? I mean, there are five types of, there are a lot of types of time wealth, but that’s one way to do it. I had a conversation with my employer about how I wanted to work. I didn’t want to physically work in an office. I wanted to be mobile, but I would achieve the outcome that they wanted no matter what.

So, I had that conversation with my employer. It gave me time; it gave me geographic freedom in a way. But if you could create time through passive income, the mobility part, I kind of just talked about it, have a conversation with your employer that you want to be able to work from anywhere. I virtualized all my mail, like I told you guys about so I can get up and leave for four months at a time. And there was no problem. All my business systems work, I just need a cell phone and a computer to do it. I travel hack, which means all my business and personal expenses go through two credit cards, which give me United miles, which means I can generate a business class ticket probably once every three or four weeks. So, I rarely pay for travel. So, that book has been so influential on what I have become because I consider myself. Part of the new rich, and it has nothing to do with money, it has to do with the fact that I have the ability to get up and go and go experience different people, different cultures, different places at any time that I see fit. And I am constantly learning. When you, the reason I’ve gone to so many countries so many multiple times, like Lebanon, for example, I’ve been there five times in the last eight months. I think when you land in a place that is not your own, you have to learn how to get around your brain fires in a different way. You have to understand the culture, the food, the money, the dynamics, where to hang out, who to have fun with, all those types of things. And it’s just such a joy to go back to being a kid again and kind of learning from the beginning. Right? Like, I know how to do Washington, D.C. I get it. I’ve been here a long time. I get it, I know where the grocery store is and all that. But being out and about in the world is a huge passion. And Tim Ferriss and the four-hour workweek have had a significant amount of impact on that for me.

Seyla: Yeah, that totally makes sense when you’re talking about travel and learning different cultures and exploring different things, at different countries. That’s aligned with what we’re trying to do, is we love to travel as well. And, you know, going to like Philippine, going to quite different countries out and just seeing different ways of how people live. You know, like sometimes people take things for granted. When you live in the United States, you see all the stuff available for you, but you go to a different country. You know, you experience different things.

Maurice: You knew, and the other thing is when we talked about the financial freedom’s sides and by the way, that’s why I have this map here with all these pins and places that I’ve been or where I’m going. But you do, and when you when we talk about the financial freedom stuff, you know, I have friends who listen, financial freedom, or at least when you have passive income and you have expenses, the way you can make this gap bigger, you can get more passive income, or you can lower your expenses, like either way works.

So, I always tell the story of a buddy of mine who learned what I was doing with condos back in the early 2000s, jumped on the bandwagon, bought four condos in the District of Columbia. They all appreciated significantly, so he sold one and with his job, paid off the other three. Now, those three condos rent for roughly two thousand dollars a month. You take the property manager at 10 percent, which is 200 bucks, and maybe some taxes will have you. You know, that’s fifteen hundred dollars profit for a property. That’s 4500 dollars coming in without having to physically go to work. Well, he left corporate America and he moved to Thailand. And he’s a bartender. He’s a bartender. Right. And he met his wife and he has two kids and he’s just living it. Meanwhile, there are CEOs in the United States who make 12 million dollars a year, who are dying to one day when I’m done and I retire, I’m going to go to a bar. I’m going to go to Thailand and be a bartender. Like it’s just the perspective on what happiness is in life, I think is a bit skewed. You know, this passive income stuff can really and that’s why I’m saying it’s not about money. It’s really about what the income can do such that you can go live your best life now, because in general we have about twenty-eight thousand days to live. So why are we wasting time doing things that we don’t want to be doing? I’m not saying don’t work hard. That’s not what I’m suggesting. What I’m suggesting is know why you’re working. And for me, say one of the reasons is traveling and experiencing culture like that. And I never travel as a tourist. I don’t see tourist attractions. It’s always meeting people, going to local events. I don’t think there’s a place I would go today where somebody wouldn’t pick me up at the airport, or something like that. So, travel has definitely been a good thing for me.

Seyla: [Inaudible 33:41] What has been the most difficult challenge you faced so far when building up your business?

Maurice: Peer’s, People. I think just like in corporate America, or grade school, we’re taught to compete with each other. You’ve got to get the number one trophy. You’ve got to be the valedictorian. You have to be the president of the company. You got to move up the corporate ladder. We are constantly competing with each other, where we should be creating with each other. There’s nothing wrong with working hard. But if you’re working hard for the sake of beating the guy or the woman next to you, I think there’s a problem. So, when I did get into the syndication of the multifamily space, what I started to know and this is why I had that reaction to the question about how many units, or whatever the question was. Because people are competing with each other for a number of units. That has no impact, none. Well, it’s a measure, but it is not the only measure against your success or, what that revenue is doing for you. So, I noticed that as soon as I got in, I would see people on LinkedIn, or go to conferences or whatever. I have a thousand units. I have five thousand units. I have ten thousand in my mind was going towards well, I got to do better. I got to catch up to these folks. No, I don’t. I was already free. I was already living like a millionaire or billionaire. But by my standard of living and how I travel the world and the people that I associate with.

So, you know, the biggest challenge that I have is I would see peers saying what mattered to them. And I started doing exactly what society tells us to do, started competing. When I stopped that maybe two years ago, a year ago or so, and realized that I was starting to make a mistake and shifted. I just have tons of happiness. What is going on with me and my family on a day to day basis? Like my family’s good. I mean, it’s always family challenges, right? But we have what we need to live. We can travel wherever we want to go. I don’t need to compete with people. In fact, I would say because I’m not competing and I’m creating with people, but specifically my business partners now, we’re giving more people affordable housing. We’re not selling properties that we could be selling because if we sell it, then that land like one of the mobile home parks I have, the land is extremely valuable and other developers offered us two million dollars above what we paid for it, to take it from us. And we said no, because the fixed income families in that community would have nowhere to go. There are people living in that community on Social Security income, right? So, they would just be kicked out. As soon as I stopped competing and started focusing on constantly helping people, whether it’s volunteering in Lebanon, buying more property for fixed income families, policing, because I mentioned to guys, I’m a police officer in my local community, as long as I’m focused on other people and giving back. And that’s where my happiness and joy come in. So, the mistake that I was making, the challenge I was having, because I started seeing what other people were doing and started copying them. Buttkuss that’s gone. I don’t give a rat’s patootie about what other people are doing. All I care about is helping people, helping my partner and building a legacy for my family and living and ultimately living life extremely well, which is what I feel like I’m doing now.

Seyla: Maurice, thank you so much for all the information and resources, I learned so much from you and so inspired by you. So, I have four more questions as our closing questions. Are you ready?

Maurice: Yeah, I am ready, go ahead.

Seyla:

Okay, how has real estate investing impacted your life?

Maurice: Freedom. Real estate investing has given me and my five freedoms, it’s given me financial freedom, it’s given me time freedom, it’s given me geographic freedom, where I can be anywhere in the world. It has given me freedom of purpose. I can focus on the things that matter to me. So, when there was a terrible blast in Lebanon on August the 4th, considered the third worst blast in human history, one week later I was on a plane with eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of buying power to help as many people as I could. The real estate has given me freedom of purpose and I’m still a police officer because that’s a purpose for me. I don’t have to be there. I want to be there to help the community. And then lastly, freedom of relationships. I know so many people and real estate has connected me to people like you who are now in the industry for the right reasons, especially as a family, which I think is amazing. I’m connected with my partners now. I’m connected with a good friend of mine who lives in Cyprus, who does real estate development there. And because real estate is a common thread for us, maybe I might be able to do work with him in the Mediterranean, which is a dream for me. And then, of course, the passive income has allowed me to travel a lot. So, I have relationships with people all over the world. And then one more thing. Negative relationships, the I need you at work right now. You’ve got to be here. No, I really don’t. But let me know how I can help you in the future. So real estate has helped me in those facets.

Seyla: What is one thing that you know now about real estate that you wish you knew when you first started?

Maurice: Scale, single family, I am very happy that, you know, my path is my path and I spent those 14 years attacking single family real estate, but when you have one unit that is empty, you are one hundred percent vacant. In a one-hundred-unit building that I have. If I have one unit that is vacant, I’m still ninety nine percent occupied. In addition, on the single-family side, the value of your property is based on costs on comparable sales in multifamily. The value of your property is based on the revenue and how efficiently you can run the building. Right? So, it’s the scale of what multifamily can do. I don’t think a lot of people understand. So, if I would have known that sooner, then I would be much further towards my goals, much further towards my partner’s goals, because I care about their goals, like I mentioned to what Kim is trying to do. But scale is what I now understand a bit better.

Seyla: So, if someone wanted to start up this real estate investing business, what is one thing that set those successful people apart?

Maurice: Education. For some reason, we are averse to spending money on ourselves to educate ourselves, yet we’ll drop eighty thousand dollars for college education on a music degree that we may, or may not use at some point. I don’t understand it. Let me not say that I understand it, because I grew up in the same thing. But it’s been a while since with COVID and everything. I haven’t really gone to any seminars or what have you, but I would say between 2016 and 2018, I spent very high six figures on self-education so I could do things right for me and my investors. Education, I am also learning, for example, this has nothing to do with real estate. I enjoy spending time and in Africa and in the Middle East and I’m learning more about the historical side of what has occurred there. So, I’m starting to take classes related to them. I’m really wanting to understand the political dynamics, not education. That’s the number one thing that successful people do, is they educate themselves, because even if you lose on a real estate deal, the education can never be taken away from you ever. Right? So even if I lost all my money today, I would know how to go back, do this again, and ten years later, I’d be back in the same place. Education.

Seyla: What tools or techniques have you used to improve the efficiency of your business, or personal life?

Maurice: Yeah, so we talked about it a bit and I was pushed by Tim Ferris in the four-hour work week. But all of my business processes for the most part in my own solo business have been automated. I told you, I don’t get mail. I can see, you know, dashboard everything that’s going on with my properties. I have set meetings with set property managers at particular times, or I ask them for an update. My reports are automated, but even more so for Quattro Capital. And I give credit to my other partners, not me. Everything we do, our pipeline is automated. Our statuses on each one is automated. When we set up meetings with particular investors, it’s automated. So, we have reoccurring meetings with certain people and we’ll use a CRM, or something like that. Everything is automated to the extent possible; Automation creates capacity within your business. So, it’s like having 50 employees. But I don’t need the 50 employees, I have three computers that do the job of 50 employees. Right? So, automation makes things much easier for sure.

Aileen: Awesome, thank you so much for sharing memories, really enjoyed our conversation today and definitely have learned a lot. And we want to take some of your passion and apply it in our own real estate lives and our personal lives as well. So, if our listeners wanted to get a hold of you and learn more about you and your partners, where can they go?

Maurice: Yeah, and it was my pleasure to be a part of it and be a part of talking to your audience as well. I just want to say I love talking about this stuff. Yes, I’m all for talking about real estate, but I’m more so for talking about financial freedom and lifestyle design and how to live your best life now. And real estate can really be a tool for that. The best way you can find me is, our website is up and running, although the company is officially releasing on Tuesday, it’s the Quattro Way. So Quattro, like the number four in Spanish with two Ts, thequattroway.com, go to my link under team and then you can learn a lot about me there and connect with me there. You can also hit me up on Instagram at Maurice Philogene, way more personal stuff, more about the travel, more about life philosophy. And then of course I’m around on LinkedIn at Maurice Philogene, as well. And then one last thing is, you know, part of the mantra at Quattro is working with up and coming investors and wrapping our arms around them and stuff. So, if you guys are there, hit us up. If anyone listening needs some assistance or thinks that they really want to attack this industry, well, hit us up. We’re always willing to take a look at folks and what they’re trying to do, and they can see that by going to the website and clicking on team. And then they will see the story of how we are helping what we call affiliates, get their careers rolling in the space, but more so get their life rolling how they want it to be, because we only have one life to live.

Aileen: Thank you so much, Maurice.

Maurice: My pleasure.