Aileen (00:02):

Thank you, everyone for joining today’s episode of the, How Did They Do It? Real Estate podcasts. We are your hosts Seyla and Aileen and today’s guest, we have Lee Yoder. Lee was a practicing as a physical therapist when he realized his true passion was building his own business and investing in real estate. He has taken this passion to quickly build a portfolio with several small apartment buildings. He is the founder and visionary behind threefold real estate investing. And he’s also the host of an exciting new podcast, threefold real estate investing, which focuses on multifamily real estate investing while also focusing on pursuing better relationships with family and a better walk with Christ. We’re excited to have you on the show today, Lee, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing?

Lee (00:42):

I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me Aileen and Seyla. Glad to be on your show.

Aileen (00:46):

Thank you so much. So we really want to get into it a little bit more. So then let’s start off by providing a little bit more information about your background and just how did you get started in real estate?

Lee (00:57):

Yeah, sure. So I was a physical therapist, like you guys said working full time. I left outpatient physical therapy, which is like, you know, the physical therapy. Like if you guys were injured, you would go to an outpatient clinic. I was doing that. But I went, got into home health, physical therapy where I go to people’s homes, mostly treating elderly and it’s very flexible. You actually get paid a little bit better. So my wife and I were starting our family, so she loved it because very flexible, not that many hours, honestly pay was good and all that. So she was like, man, we’re set. Well, I was bored out of my mind. I mean, just not a challenging job, just it’s just, honestly, I felt like I was like an assembly line worker where I’m like, I just, I can’t do the same thing every day.

Lee (01:41):

So the company I was with actually was looking for somebody to come in the office and be like a clinical director and start managing all the other therapists. So I started doing that and just got more and more involved on that side of things. And it really became more like a director of operations. And I soon got to the point where I was doing no physical therapy and I was in the office. Full-Time running operations, managing people, hiring, firing, but like a lot of forecasting and whatnot too. And, and I’ve always known I love numbers. But I didn’t know how I was going to use that. So I was loving this work probably now my wife hates my job because now like very involved, so very challenging, very fulfilling. So now I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum, right? I mean, it wasn’t working like as many hours as some people, but starting a young family, she was staying home full time with the kids wanting to be home more for more help.

Lee (02:30):

So you know, so I’m kind of looking for something else. I’m also kind of get to the point. I think maybe a lot of people get to in the corporate world where the dream that they were selling me kept getting farther and farther out. And like, Oh yeah, you know, you’re still a few years away, still a few years away. So it’s like, man, I’m sacrificing so much. I thought I was going to like reach this point. And it just kept, you know, the goalpost kept moving further and further away. So it was kind of looking for something else. And that’s when a friend of mine turned me on to just investing in general. And so I started kind of down that rabbit hole, read rich dad, poor dad like a lot of people. So it kind of got turned on like, okay, this could work.

Lee (03:08):

I met with a friend of mine from church who was doing real estate full-time, you know, had like 35 rentals at the time was doing it. Full-Time managing them themselves. And he said, Lee, is there any way you could do what you’re doing from home? He’s like, because the way I got started was I was in a sales job and I really was working kind of from home. And then, you know, doing the sales calls. It’s like, I got to the point where I could do my job in like 20 to 25 hours. And then I was building a real estate portfolio on the side until I build it up enough to where I could leave. Well with my current job, I couldn’t do that. But what I started to think about was what if I go back to the home health physical therapy, where I’m going to be bored, I’m going to have plenty of time, but on the side, I’ll start doing the real estate stuff.

Lee (03:47):

So that’s what I ended up doing. I left, it’s been four years ago now that I left I took a very big pay cut. I was making better money, you know, with that company running things than I would ever make just as a physical therapist. So I took a very large pay cut, maybe 25% but just knew it. And that was still plenty. I’m not saying, you know, Hey, we were poor. All of a sudden, you know, nothing to complain about plenty of money. We were living far below our, you know, our income and all that. But took a very large pay cut, but also very big time kind of like the time I was going to have to put into my job. So that allowed me more time at home, you know, much better work-life balance that way, wife, much happier, but then I started getting into real estate from there. And then, yeah, I can tell you how I got into it, but yeah, that’s how I transitioned into real estate.

Aileen (04:39):

So then as you’re making that decision, like what kind of puts you in that mind set to ready to like to just cut the cord and just be like, I’m going to leave this job and I’m going to go back to working in the homes with people and then spending some additional time that I have on real estate. Like what, what made that transition for you?

Lee (04:59):

Well, it was kind of two-fold, I mean, one was just how the corporate world was going. I was successful, you know, doing well, enjoying it, like I said, but they were really grooming me for a director of operations role. So I was a clinical director, but doing more director operations stuff, but they were grooming me toward an actual director of operations role. It was kind of a start-up company, which made it even more fun. But kind of more time consuming, I guess. But I had a meeting with the vice president and I said, okay, you know, I’m getting here a little before eight, 07:45. And I leave by like 05:15. A lot of people stayed a lot longer than that. I mean, I was not, I’m a very competitive person, so it’s very difficult for me, but my wife needed me home because they’d be home and I would get up.

Lee (05:47):

I started at this time, I still do this today, but I started getting up at four 30 in the morning, sometimes even four. And I would work in the morning when no one was awake so that I could get more work in, but not take time away from my family. So doing, say, if I went to my vice president, I said, if I get into this director operations role, can I keep my same hours? And he said, no, you can’t. When you’re the director of operations, when other people under you are staying until six 30, you got to be here till six 30. Well, that was just unacceptable for me and for my family. So that really helped me know that I, and that’s, I really couldn’t stay in the role I was in. I was almost working myself out of that role. As we were growing with a start-up, we didn’t need a clinical director anymore and I don’t need to get into why or whatever, but I needed to move into this role.

Lee (06:30):

So that was kind of, it was a deal breaker. And like I said, again, it was like, oh yeah, you know how we told you, and you were going to make $300,000 as a director operation. Yeah. That’s not for like another two years, maybe three. Okay. So I knew I wanted to leave. And then when I read rich dad, poor dad, I mean, it like somebody will say, like, it was like, yes. Okay. This fits me. Like, this is more me. And I didn’t have entrepreneurs in my life. My grandpa kind of was, but I just was never old enough, you know, and working with them don’t really understand it. So I never thought that I would be an entrepreneur. That wasn’t something that I that I really thought about. My dad’s in construction, so the real estate, and I did residential construction on the summers when I was in college.

Lee (07:15):

So it just, it really fit. It was like, okay, this is, this is really the path I should go down. The corporate world, the job I’m in is not going to work. I’m not willing to put in that many hours away from my family. I want to work really hard, but I want to be home as well. And real estate just really makes sense. I’m a numbers guy. So I love it. I mean, once that world got opened up to me, like running numbers, underwriting things, I just ate that up. And I was like, you know, this makes it, I’m also really into like economics, macroeconomics and studying outside, been listening to podcasts. And I’m like housing. Like, it’s not going anywhere. You can’t take away housing with technology. So everything does fit for me. I was very confident that this was the path.

Seyla (07:54):

So when you first started did you start with a single family home or multifamily?

Lee (08:00):

Yeah, I flipped a single family home, bought a home on an, on, on auction and yup, yup. Flip the home. You know, we wanted to start small and start say, I mean, especially my wife, she’s very she read the rich, I finally got her to read rich dad, poor dad. And she was like, yeah, I, I get why you would like this, but this is not me. I mean, that was her take. So or, and I have been, you know, a little bit battling, but also like, I think God put us together for a reason we’ve really grown together. But yeah, we wanted to start small a week. We knew with that single family house that we bought, we could afford the mortgage on that and our house at the same time, we actually did buy it for cash, but we use the home equity line of credit.

Lee (08:39):

So we had a monthly payment on that. So it was like, hey, worst case scenario, we’re paying mortgage on two houses. We could rent it. But we got into that. It ended up being a horrible house to flip, I mean, needed so much work, but and it took nine months. I like track my hours. Because I just want to know, I put in, well over 500 hours on it, myself still hired out a lot, but we put like 70,000 into it over nine months did well financially, but it was almost like I was back in the corporate world putting in tons of time on that first flip. So we made like maybe 30,000. We were very happy with that. My wife thought we were going to lose money. She was just hoping we break even so financially. It was good, but time-wise, it wasn’t like the dream that I sold her on. Like, hey, we’ll just do real estate. And I can just work on it whenever I want. It was like, you know, very time consuming as, you know, as a lot of people find out that flipping is.

Aileen (09:31):

Yeah. So after that first flip what, what did you do next?

Lee (09:35):

So that took nine months. And three months later, we got a duplex that we bought at the County auction and we basically flipped that, but because of the experience I had and then also making that extra money because I was still working full time. So now we felt like we had a little bit more of a cushion. I hired out a lot more of the work. Also this dude, even though it was a duplex, it was just a basic ranch. Duplex didn’t need windows, didn’t need roof. We only put 25,000 into that. So it was just a much better property to flip. We actually got that rented out. And then I sold that in under a year. So it was basically a flip of a duplex. It was just I found some good contractors that ended up doing most of the work. So my wife was thrilled with that property. With that, with the outcome financially, we did, I think even a little bit better, maybe he made a 40 off of that or something. So did even a little bit better? But so much less time involved. So we’re moving in the right direction as far as the real estate.

Seyla (10:31):

That’s good. So at what point did you discover the multifamily?

Lee (10:36):

Well, I think say like, I think I knew from the beginning, that’s where I wanted to go. And like so many people, maybe I had some of those limiting beliefs of just, well, I, I can’t do that yet. I’ve got to do some of this first and you know, maybe, maybe some of that’s good. I mean, I did gain a lot of experience, but with the duplex, like I said, we did rent it. We probably only rented it for like three or four months before we sold it. But just, you know, getting that taste of wow, we’re taking in, you know, what I think at the top make maybe like 1600 bucks a month because we rent in both sides for 800. And I think our payments were around 800, including the mortgage or whatever. So like, Oh, $800 a month, you know, it’s not setting the world on fire, but you know, that’s, that’s great.

Lee (11:17):

And it was probably a little bit less than that. We put some away for reserves, but let’s say 600 bucks a month. Like, you know, this is, this is what everybody talks about. Like, this is what it’s all about the past. It didn’t come in. Like I told you, when we flipped the first, the first house we made good money, but it was just another job, you know, once in this one, you know, it took some time to renovate it, even though I had other people doing the work, I was very involved. So again, another job just not very demanding. So it was okay. But once we had it rented, now I was doing almost nothing and I was actually managing it myself. I learned very quickly that I didn’t want to do that. So yeah, just, just even that experience and everything I read.

Lee (11:54):

I mean, everybody, I listened to the people that that I really, I don’t know, respected in the real estate space just seems like, everybody’s like, yeah, you’re going to, you’re going to learn that you want to go bigger that you want to get into multi-family. So I knew that was the route I wanted to go when I had the duplex and had it rented. I’m like, yep. I kind of proof of concept here. This is what I want to do, but I don’t want to own a bunch of duplexes. I actually, I’m almost like job shadowed a couple of guys in town that had like 50 units, but it was all duplexes and single family homes and maybe the biggest would be a quad and watching them in their schedule. Mike, this is, this is not what I want. I do not want to be a landlord slash project manager running around town all day with just the full-time job, because what I’m interested in is finding properties, finding investors, you know, like working on the business from kind of a higher level building it, not being like right in it every day, all the time.

Lee (12:46):

Like I liked doing some of that stuff, but not all the time. And those guys that I saw managing a bunch of little ones themselves, they were in all the time. I don’t know how they found time to go buy more because they were so, you know what I mean, working in the business, how do you work on the business? So I knew that’s not what I wanted to do. So I knew, you know, started to really know that, yeah, I want to go a little bit bigger because I want to have somebody else to manage them for me. And the bigger you go, the more, you know, the numbers make sense doing it that way.

Aileen (13:12):

That totally makes sense. So what were some of the steps that you took when you were purchasing your first multifamily? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Lee (13:20):

Absolutely. So I think networking, everybody talks about networking when I was wanting to get involved with that family. I realized, okay, I can’t do this on my own. This is bigger than me. And so I joined the local XO, the Cincinnati Rhea, the real estate investment association and they had a, an apartment syndication focus group. So led by, you know, led by a local guy and great guy. I mean, you know, obviously he’s leading this group, you know, for free, like he’s you know, willing to give up some of those times. So what I ended up doing was just jumping on LoopNet, you know, getting on craftsy.com where they say, you know, deals go to die. And I’m like, well, these are probably the only B going to be the deals that I have a shot at. Right?

Lee (14:01):

These are the deals that nobody else wants. So I’ve got to make, you know, find a way to make these work. So I just started underwriting going to that apartment focus group, Mark that led, it gave us a pretty simple, but you know, pretty good underwriting template. So I think you need something like that. And I think you just get on, you know, LoopNet will often give you the financials, if it didn’t, I would end up reaching out to the broker and at least pretending like I’m interested, I get the financials and I just start underwriting. And because I had more, I could say, Hey Mark, look, you know, look what I came up with. This, does this look right? I mean, I think this looks like a good deal. What do you think? And you know, he’d say, yeah, that does look like, you know, call that broker.

Lee (14:37):

So I, you know, call the broker and most of the time, yep. Sorry. We’re already under contract, but even just doing that I think you guys agree. It gave me confidence, like, okay. I found a good deal. Somebody else got it. I probably wasn’t ready to take it down yet. Anyway, this okay. I’m getting it because this was a good deal. He said, you know, especially times like, Oh, we already had 10 offers on that. Okay, cool. I thought this was a good deal. I must’ve been right because that many people offer. And then eventually guys, I just found one on LoopNet that nobody else wanted and went in and offered really low price. It had been sitting on the market for like a year and a half and he did a lot of work. They had a resident managing it. They had been under contract and fallen out of contract twice already. So they were a couple of older guys. I think they’ve had the property paid off, living out of state and just ready to be done. It was a 16 unit, you know, about 20, 25 minutes away from me. So I just put in a low offer and they countered and I said, no, that’s my offer. And they ended up accepting it.

Seyla (15:38):

Oh, wow. That was really great that you found a Deal on LoopNet. That’s [inaudible]

Lee (15:45):

I found two. I got my third deal like that as well.

Seyla (15:48):

Oh, wow. Congratulation. So at what point did you decided to start up the three pole real estate investing company and who, who have been the people who actually help you along the way?

Lee (16:03):

Yeah, sure. So I already mentioned more, he was a real mentor for me running that that group he’s helped me a lot. Those soy, I took down the 16 unit a friend of mine from church that I’d been talking to for like a year about investing in everything I’m doing. And, and he’s a guy, you know, he’s the type of guy you want to find, you know, he’s 52, I think work has worked you know, tech job. He, his, his company’s actually based out of San Francisco. He’s made a really good income. He does not have time to invest actively, but he’s like, I believe in you, I want to do this. So he actually found through a friend of his listed on the MLS and eight unit. And I don’t know if you guys would agree with it, but a lot of times you can find, I think multifamily properties listed on residential MLS, like on realtor.com and they don’t, they’re kind of priced wrong.

Lee (16:50):

Like they, they’re almost doing it off of comps. Right. And they’re not necessarily running the income. So we found a really good deal that way and close on that. And then I found a 10 unit on LoopNet. So I took all of those down last fall and really spent the next few months getting the property management in place. We did a lot of work on those and I was kind of almost like the project manager. So that took me out of like the buying for a few months. Once those kind of settled down, I realized, okay, I I’m going to run out of family and friends money and I want to keep doing this and I want to keep going even bigger. Because I even like with just those three properties, I’m like, I’ve got three different LLCs, three different bank accounts, and you know, three, three different groups of investors, three different sets of spreadsheets at home.

Lee (17:34):

I just started rushing already. Like, I don’t want to have 30 properties. I mean, at least not, not before I build up a team that can manage that. Like I want to go a little bit bigger and I just realized, you know, in doing that, I’m going to need more help. Do you guys know of Joe Fairless? Yes. Okay. He’s a sense that he lives in Cincinnati. So I grabbed his book and basically just started following his playbook. Okay. If you want to, if you want to build up an investor base you need to kind of build a brand. You need to have a website start a podcast. So I thought, well, this, this is what I want to do. This would interest me. So I really bought his book. His book is not an easy read. It’s like a textbook. So I, you know, it’s called the best ever real estate syndication book by Joe Fairless.

Lee (18:16):

And I started just going through that you know, hiring people off of up work to help me build my website. I’m not tech savvy at all. So, you know, getting help in that area. And then finally I ended up partnering with a guy that worked at that corporate job with me. He left that company pretty soon after I did. He actually started a land business where he buys and sells land. And he’s kind of still going there, but we’re partnering together in the apartment syndication business. Because he’s, he’s full time, you know, investing in that. And he’s got a lot of time, so partnering with him. So yeah, that’s kind of how it came together and we’re still in the beginning stages. You know, we haven’t even done an apartment syndication yet, but we have generated some interest from some investors and seem to be getting our name out there just a little bit. And, and getting ready to do that.

Aileen (19:03):

Yeah. That’s a really great resource Joe’s book has all these step-by-step guides. And if you just follow that, it gives you incredible information on how to do the apartment’s indication piece of it. So, yeah,

Lee (19:13):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. He, I mean, he is obviously you know, top of the class and yeah, he, he, he did it just like he lays it out in that book, so yeah, I totally agree with you. I mean,

Seyla (19:25):

So Lee, would you be able to give our listeners a little bit more details about your company three-fold real estate investing and what is the current focus of the company and what is the goal?

Lee (19:36):

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, I, my experience with one thing that really kind of launched the idea was that 16 unit, my in-laws invested with us in that property and they, my wife, like I said, very conservative. And that’s because that’s how she grew up. Her parents, you know, they totally went the route of the poor dad works at a border, but they’re smart. I mean they had their mortgage paid off and they have a lot of money in the savings. I just think its unfortunate that today. And I don’t want to get political, but the way, you know, the fed has things set up, like they are losing money by having their money in a savings account. Right. I mean, they’re not even keeping up with inflation, so it was neat. They actually did invest with us a little bit in the flip and we gave them a little bit and they’re like, oh, well, this is cool.

Lee (20:23):

And so they were interested in investing the 16 and my wife was shocked by that. She’s like they don’t invest in anything and we’re under contract now to sell it. And they’re going to make a really great return and seeing that for them, you know, like, you know, we’re going to make a great return for our work as well, but just seeing for them, like you had this money sitting there doing nothing, you know, you’re it’s actually wasting away with inflation and you put it to work for you. And so now your money’s working for you and getting to see that for investors, whether they think like, okay, I’m totally sold on apartment syndication now, because I believe in it as a financial vehicle in a career for myself and my family, but it really can impact those that invest with you.

Lee (21:02):

So that’s, that’s kind of what it was born out of. Threefold, you know, the reason we chose that deck that’s comes from a verse in Ecclesiastes in the Bible that talks about one person, you know, can quickly be overtaken. Two can stand a little stronger, but a threefold cord is not easily broken. And in threefold real estate investing that the way we think about it is it’s, it’s us, my wife and I now are my partner, Kevin, we partner with our investors, but we also partner with God. And that may mean different things for people, you know, we’re Christ followers. But what I, what I want that to mean to me is like we get into real estate and, you know, multifamily, especially to, to build wealth. But the reason we do that, right, guys, just like to have more time with our family.

Lee (21:47):

And so many people say that and then they kind of get caught up in and they lose sight of that. I really want our focus of our company to not lose sight of that keep our priorities straight. So continue in my podcast three-fold real estate investing podcasts. We say real estate, faith and family. And I really try to focus on real estate, but then I talked to my guests about, well, how has real estate effected your family? How has real estate effected your faith? Because that’s important to keep those things in mind. Why are we working so hard and building, you know, this, this maybe real estate empire. Sure. It’s going to be financially beneficial. But the reason we wanted to do that was to have a better life, to have more time with those we care about.

Lee (22:27):

So that’s really the focus of the company. We’re partnering with people that are interested in doing that. And you know, for them, they maybe have a good job. Maybe they, with their job, it is a pretty good work-life balance. Or maybe it’s not. And maybe I think, okay, if I can put some of the money that I’ve saved up with Lee and his team, and they can make my money work for me, maybe I can scale back at work a little bit. Maybe I can retire a little bit earlier. So that’s the idea behind apartment syndication, not only for the operators like us, but for those that invest with us is that if you’ve worked hard and you’ve saved some money and you can put it to work for you, you can build up your wealth. You can, at the very least, I think at the very least you’re going to have a better retirement, but hopefully you can retire earlier. Or maybe you just scale back quicker. Maybe you work part-time maybe you don’t have to have two incomes, right. So maybe it’s just the husband or the wife decides to go part-time one stays full-time. But because you’ve got some residual income, you know, some passive income from your apartment investing maybe it allows you to do that. So that’s, that’s kind of the dream behind three-fold real estate investing. It’s just threefold, rei.com is where you can find that website and you can connect with us.

Aileen (23:32):

No, that’s a really great mission and very inspiring. So how do you maintain the balance between you know, your faith and your family? Because like you said, sometimes you can kind of get inundated everything in your day to day activities and you kind of kind of lose focus of it. So what are some of the ways that you are able to maintain that balance?

Lee (23:53):

Yeah, one thing I really try to do you know, if you guys have heard of like the miracle morning and stuff like that, I think the morning is very important to focus yourself. The way, you know, when I wake up I’m ready to rock and roll some, you know, most mornings like, you know, by the time I get my coffee, I’m like, I’m ready to start work. And I try to force myself to spend time in the word first to spend time in prayer. A lot of times in the morning, my wife and I will walk together. So to do that first. So I think that’s, that’s a real key because yeah, when I was working at that corporate job, I started getting up early to do more work and it was frustrating because I was getting up so early, I had so much time in the day and I had no time to read my Bible to pray and really focus because it was all going to work.

Lee (24:43):

And so I said, when I go to real estate, you know, I’m going to keep the schedule, but I’m going to spend that time doing that. So it’s still hard for me sometimes when there’s something going on, I want to jump right into it. I want to jump right into underwriting, a deal. I just got sent or something, you know, but I try to put that off and spend that time in the morning. And then the other thing is just having a great partner. So my wife she, like I told you, she’s not in a real estate. It’s not what gets her excited. So she just helps, you know, pull me back. Hey, you know are you going to go jump on the trampoline with the kids? You know, they’re out there waiting for you. And you know, so it kind of pulled me away, making sure we, you know, spend time together. And so she’s a really good partner to help me in that

Seyla (25:24):

So Lee, How has real estate investing impacted your life so far?

Lee (25:29):

Yeah, what it’s you know, it’s really opened things up and in my wife she would agree with that. She, she’s definitely on board now, now that we’ve gotten into multifamily real estate and the multifamily side it’s allowed me to consider leaving my I’m actually very close to leaving my full-time job. And I’ll still, you know, work full time, but just in real estate, but the flexibility is awesome. And because w when I was in the corporate world, I had very little flexibility. I mean, you know, at the work same time, you know, you got to be there every day. You can take vacation, but even with the home health physical therapy that’s very flexible. I can, I can schedule my patients whenever I want, but like I said, I would have been bored real estate allowed me to have that flexible schedule, but also, you know, be fulfilled, be challenged, you know, I just love building something.

Lee (26:22):

So I’m getting to do something exciting and challenging. I get to work, you know, with a partner now and in our investors, do something exciting and challenging and be fulfilled, but also have a lot of flexibility. I can be, you know, we actually home-school our kids three days a week. They’re going to school two days a week. And I’m home for a lot of that. If I need to be home more, I can, I just, I have a lot of flexibility, so I’m still working a lot. And I say a lot, I mean, and, you know, not as much as a lot of people do in corporate, I’m not working 60, 70 hours a week, but I still, you know, get to work and get fulfilled, but just, just the flexibility, just, you know, to command my schedule, to work at what works for our family instead of, you know, working our family into our schedule.

Seyla (27:05):

So what is one thing that, you know now about real estate that you wish you knew when you first started? I think

Lee (27:16):

You know, one thing I would say for sure is the networking piece of it. I think the quicker you can meet people, you know, it’s very cliché, but everybody says it because it’s very true, but like the quicker you can meet people and get around people that are doing what you want to do. You know, you’re just going to shorten the curve. And I really did do a pretty good job of that. Like I was telling you guys, my wife and I are very different and I think God put us together, you know, for a very specific reason. And what she’s really done for me is slowed me down. But we’ve gone so much faster and so much further quicker because she slowed me down. So for an example, like when we did the flip, I said, it didn’t go very well. I was still ready to jump right into the next flip, you know, I just want to keep doing it.

Lee (27:58):

And she’s like, no, we’re not ready. Well, in slowing me down, I was like, okay, maybe I don’t want to do another flip. I want to get into multi family. That’s why everybody talked like, let’s go ahead and just get into multi-family. And we did one duplex and like, I could’ve just kept doing more of that. And I was like, no, you know what I mean, again, she’s slowing me down something that let’s keep thinking about this. I don’t want to jump into another one right away. And in that time of slowing down, it was like, I want to jump in into the next one. So yeah, I think what helped me also to make that to make those quick leaps and get into multi-family, you know, after only doing two deals some people will do a lot more than that. Getting most of them was just meeting people that were doing it. It would say, yeah, you can do this. Like, you don’t have to do another flip. You don’t have to go from a duplex to a quad, you know, to a six unit, to an eight units of 10. If you find a 50 unit, you can do that and be a part of that group. Not only with Mark helping the underwrite it, but there were people in the group that would invest in the deal with me. So just that group alone just gave me a lot of confidence, like, okay, I can, this is what I want to do. I’ll just go ahead and do it now. So yeah, the networking piece, I wish I would have started that even earlier. I’m glad I started it as early as I did. And that would be my advice to other people is to join those groups.

Seyla (29:11):

So what is one thing that sets the successful people apart in real estate investing business?

Lee (29:19):

I always say I like that question, and I say you got to have two things to, to be a successful real estate investor. And I’ll reference two books. The first one is the 10 X rule by grant Cordoned. And I never read the book because honestly, that part of it’s not hard for me. I can, I’ve got the 10 X mind set, and just God gave me that. But excuse me, I think the other you really need is I’ll reference a book by Darren Hardy called the compound effect. And to me, it’s almost like, kind of the opposite. Like what he says in that book is he talks about an exponential growth curve. And if you really want to have success, I believe in real estate, you’ve got to follow that and know that you’re going to put in a lot of time and energy and see very little results for a long time.

Lee (30:06):

But what you don’t realize is you’re building up momentum. And especially with multifamily investing, you can be building your investor list, building your brand, talking to brokers, underwriting deals. You can be doing that. I mean, if you listen to podcasts and you know, the people you guys have on so many people will tell you that story, they did so much for so long, and maybe they’re about ready to give up because they’ve done. They’ve had no success, right? They feel like I’ve done nothing. I don’t have a single deal, but what they don’t realize is everything they are doing. I mean, and they do realize that hopefully everything you’re doing is, is building up to all of a sudden, you do get a deal. And then have you guys ever listened to somebody like Michael Blank? He talks about the law, the first deal.

Lee (30:43):

It was totally true for me. I got that 16 unit. The day we’re closing is when we put the eight unit under contract. So, and then we closed the tenure at month and a half later. And so all of this I had done, it took so long. It felt like, you know, I’m complaining to my wife, we’re never going to get anything. And then boom, boom, boom. We’ve got three deals. And that’s what the compound effect talks about is you, you do all these things and the exponential growth curve will show you, there’s very little growth, very little growth, and then you take off and if you can just stick with it you know, Joe Fairless, as an example, you know, he started doing a podcast every day, just like you guys started doing. And I think he said, you know, it wasn’t something he wanted to do.

Lee (31:18):

His coach told him do it. And I think he said after three months, I mean, he had zero traction, nothing happening. And maybe it was, I think he actually, he said it was like a whole year before it really took off. And you looked at the guy now and you feel like, oh, he was an overnight success, but that’s not true at all. I mean, he grinded for a long time. If you’re not willing to do that, I think you’re going to really struggle to have success in multi-family, especially. But even I think on just investing in general, you’ve really got to be ready to be in it for the long haul. And you’re going to see massive success, but it’s going to take a long time to even see a little bit of that massive success. Probably.

Aileen (31:54):

Absolutely. It’s a real estate. It’s not a get rich quick kind of thing. It’s a get wealthy over a long period of time. Thank you for that. It’s really great.

Lee (32:03):

Absolutely.

Aileen (32:05):

So Lee, What tools or techniques have you used to improve the efficiency of your business?

Lee (32:12):

Yeah, I guess I’m not there yet. I mean, that’s definitely what I’m working on it and with my partner, Kevin working on that you know, I’m definitely using social media more. I’m not into social media at all. I didn’t have any social media before I started threefold. So, you know, got into Facebook and got into LinkedIn and, and just posting on there. I mean, I understand why everybody’s talking to, I mean, there’s a lot of power obviously. I’m sure you guys know that and I’m so posting on Facebook. So many people will see it at the same time. You can really get the word out to a lot of different investors that LinkedIn, same way as you start growing your network, you know, you put some material out there and, you know, the people that you’re connected with are connected with people and you just, you can really expand your network. And when you’re trying to syndicate, that’s what you’re looking to do is expand your network of people that would be interested in investing with your people that would be interested in partnering with you or people that might have lending options for you or deals for you. So definitely getting into social media has allowed me to expand my network a lot quicker I guess with less work,

Aileen (33:21):

Thank you so much. And if our listeners wanted to find out more about you and get in touch, where can they go, Lee?

Lee (33:26):

Yeah, absolutely definitely jump on our website. We’ve got to good material there. Probably by the time this is released, I’m going to have a free kind of a handout pamphlet or whatever. Talking about a little bit about the three deals I’ve done so far and how I’m going to we’re under contract to sell two of those. And I’m, I will pay no taxes on my profits on those. And I mean, we’ll, you know, we’ll be, you know, well into the six figures, probably over $200,000 in profits on those two properties and I’ll pay zero taxes because of long-term capital gains. There’s a, if you make less than 77,000 a year, you pay 0% taxes on your long-term capital gains. So that’s a really cool thing. And you can find that at my website, which is threefoldrei.com. And then if you want to email us, it’s just info@threefoldrei.com. You can find threefold on Facebook. Again, my name is Lee Yoder. You can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn as well.

Aileen (34:21):

Thank you so much for sharing your story today, Lee.  We really enjoyed it.

Lee (34:26):

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on.