Just 2 Minutes - Interviews by Kamil Sarji

15-From Zero to Portfolio: How Brian Marzilli Built a Real Estate Empire and his own Property Management Company

Kamil Sarji Episode 15

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In this compelling episode, host Kamil Sarji sits down with Brian Marzilli, the founder of Smith Hill Homes, to explore the extraordinary journey of a self-made real estate investor who started with nothing and built an impressive portfolio of multifamily rental properties. Brian shares how his determination, grit, and strategic mindset allowed him to not only acquire numerous properties but also establish his own property management company to maintain and enhance his investments.

Brian’s story begins in the challenging neighborhoods of Providence, Rhode Island, where he saw potential where others saw risk. He recounts how he purchased his first property in a rough area, driven by a belief that the neighborhood would eventually thrive. His investment paid off as property values quadrupled, setting the stage for further acquisitions.

Throughout the episode, Brian delves into the nitty-gritty of real estate investing, discussing the importance of hands-on learning, making smart decisions under pressure, and leveraging resources creatively. He shares how he managed to keep costs low by learning carpentry, doing his own renovations, and even handling legal issues like evictions without a lawyer in the early days.

One of the key strategies Brian employed to scale his business was creating his own property management company. By keeping everything in-house—from pest control to maintenance and renovations—he was able to maximize his profits and maintain complete control over his properties. Brian explains the challenges and rewards of managing his portfolio, including the importance of hiring the right people, maintaining strong leadership, and developing efficient systems to streamline operations.

The episode also touches on Brian's background, including his unconventional path to success, which involved overcoming significant personal challenges. His story is not just about financial success but also about personal growth, resilience, and the power of believing in your vision, even when the odds are against you.

For anyone interested in real estate investing, this episode offers a wealth of practical advice, inspiration, and insights from someone who has walked the talk. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to expand your portfolio, Brian’s experience and wisdom provide invaluable lessons on how to navigate the complex world of real estate and achieve long-term success.

Whether you're a seasoned agent looking to stay ahead, a newcomer eager to learn, or a client seeking reliable real estate advice, "Just 2 Minutes" offers a wealth of information in a convenient and enjoyable format. Join us as we explore tips, tricks, and insights from industry leaders and professionals that can help you navigate the dynamic world of real estate.

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So you created Smith Hill Homes. Yes. And you're an investor. I am. I'm very excited to hear, cause you're unique. You know, I met you a couple months ago or last month and more, we were talking, I was like, wow, you created something really, really unique here. So when did you start investing in real estate? Welcome, everybody. I'm your host, Kamil Sarji, with Gold Door Realty. And today I have Brian Marzilli from Smith Hill Homes. That's correct. Hello, everyone. He's actually the first guest to be recorded in this room, which is my office. I feel special. It is special. I feel it. So this show is called Just Two Minutes, and it's basically me asking random questions for two minutes. And then after that, we go into real estate industry. So I got my timer over here. Here we go. Here we go. And go. All right. What was your weirdest pizza topping? Oh, wow. Okay. Weirdest. Um, I guess it'd just be anchovies. Um, I still find fish on pizza to be a little strange. If you were to pick two of these toppings for pizza, right? Hot dog, raw fish, peanut butter, or a chocolate bar? Yeah, I think peanut butter and chocolate would be very strange on pizza. So both peanut butter and the chocolate bar, those are the two? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you got me interested in that now, thinking. Um, if you were, if you were to work out, One muscle. Yeah. Group, or one muscle, what would that be? My top choice? Yeah. I love working back, deadlifts especially. Yeah. Rows, um, back for me is the most fun by far. Okay, interesting. Yeah. I like the, uh, chest, cause when you get older it starts going, going down. Plus the ladies like a nice chest too, I think. Yeah. Um, so what is, uh, what's your favorite dinosaur? Uh, T Rex. He's assertive, aggressive, uh, takes charge. Um, so yeah, definitely T Rex. Um, you're walking down the street, right? A homeless person comes up to you and he says, Hey, I want to tell you a secret. I just killed a person. Um, don't tell anybody. And then he walks away. What would you do? Um, probably tackle him. before he get to you Uh, afterward, for sure. When he started to walk away, I would probably have to tackle him. Um, and maybe do a citizen's arrest. I mean, obviously you can't just get away with that. And, um, it's pretty serious. And, um, yeah, you should pay for that. Yeah. Uh, the guy ended up being schizophrenic and he didn't really care. I guess we'd have to find out later. Yeah, we'd have to find out later, I guess. Alright, awesome. So what'd you think? I think it's good. I like it. The peanut butter and chocolate threw me off a little bit, but Yeah, so that with cheese, that's gonna be interesting. Yeah. I've had it on a burger before, actually, and it's pretty good. And not chocolate, but peanut butter. Oh, arugas? I think it is, yeah. Yeah, I think I had that one. Yeah, I love arugas. That's a good one. Yeah. The food is good. You have crazy, crazy different burgers there. Yeah, and the peanut butter gets melty. I think you even have a fried egg on it, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty good, actually. Yeah. So you created Smith Hill Homes. Yes. And you're an investor. I am. I'm very excited to hear, cause you're unique. You know, I met you a couple months ago or last month and more, we were talking, I was like, wow, you created something really, really unique here. So when did you start investing in real estate? Yeah, I should say it was 2009. I had bought my first property in the Smith Hill area, mostly near Chad Brown. Didn't know much about Providence. I was coming from Fall River. The properties at that time were probably half the price of Fall River, so I decided I was going to jump in in Providence, not knowing much. Bought my first rental near Chad Brown, and if anybody knows anything about Chad Brown and Providence Not a safe area, not a good area, so it was definitely a challenge. Oh wow, so from that point, why did you decide to focus on that area? Yeah, so I've always felt like that area was undervalued. It's so close to the state house in Providence, that it was hard for me in my mind to believe that it wouldn't be a place that people would want to rent, at least in the future. It just needed to be cleaned up and people needed to have a vision for that. So my vision for that was to restore the properties that I was buying, mostly try to keep a lot of the nuts and bolts and the bones of the property. There's a lot of wood and detail to those properties. So we really try hard to keep a lot of those details. And I just always believed that that neighborhood would be up and coming. And since I first bought my first property, most of the properties Quadrupled in value at this point. Yeah, that area is awesome. You did a very smart investing in that. I mean, Providence is amazing. All right. So from that point you had your first multi family, you lived in it. And then when was the opportunity that you saw the other, the second? That's a great question. I actually had met my Girlfriend at the time, wife now, and I convinced her that we should buy a property together. This was before we were married. It was just a street over in the same neighborhood. We had bought our second property together. Her parents told us that we were crazy. About a year or two later, we ended up getting married, but my second property actually came with my current wife. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Nothing like sealing the deal, putting a ring on it. Yes. Buying investment property together. Correct, and we kind of did it backwards. Normally you buy the home after you get married, but we did it in reverse and we've been together now for 14 years and it's worked out. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it's been good. That's really cool. Real Estate has been great to my family. It's really blessed us and it's given us a lifestyle that we love and it's been good. So in your first home, what's your background by the way? Yeah, so that's if we're just being brutally honest and not good. It was, Sold drugs from about 14 till about 27. Cocaine, did some time in prison. I would say this is unorthodox, but a lot of what I learned in that trade helped me to do what I do today, as far as being a hustler and as far as being, having grit and perseverance. And a lot of that drug trade actually taught me what my ability to do what I do today, investing in real estate. I know that sounds like. To many, a far stretch, but I don't have a high school diploma. I don't have a col I'm not a college graduate. I'm a man of blue collar grit, perseverance, not giving up, not taking no for an answer, problem solving, and putting out fires. Damn, man. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. It's had a very rocky upbringing and grew up in Fall River. And at the time it was a pretty tough area and helped me to really where I am today. I believe that. God had a plan for my life and all of it was divinely inspired and I have no regrets and I am where I am today because of all of my life experiences. That's so inspirational. Thanks, man. Yeah, people are handed money, handed properties and you know, you actually built your empire. I did, actually. From nothing? From nothing. Wow. I actually started by living in a room, renting out a room and having roommates to, you know, having about 25 properties now. So, so as far as experience, what did you, uh, like work or background in that? Yeah. So that's a great question. Not a lot had a very small ideas of carpentry. I was mostly actually a car deal detailer for awhile, but when I bought my first property, it really didn't have a lot of money to hire people to fix the toilet and install floors and things like that. So I really was just learning a lot of mistakes and just getting better and better over time. And now I GC mostly. Of the projects that I do have a very good understanding of materials, how things need to be done, the cost, and that really just came from sheer, just again, perseverance and grit and just learning day to day on how to do things and a lot of trial and error. It's awesome. Yeah. It's good to, I mean, that's how I learned a lot of the stuff. I don't do anything now, but goodness. Everything I learned from having multifamily, my first multifamily, I did a lot of the, the stuff myself. Yeah. Because, I mean, you had to teach yourself how to, how to do all that. Honestly, I even did most of my evictions at the beginning on my own without an attorney. I learned how to Knuckles? I'm sorry? With knuckles? Yeah, that would've been nice. I wish you could still do it the old school way. It would've saved a lot of money that way. But unfortunately, just understanding the paperwork, how to fill it out, how to present it to the judge. I've had a lot of cases at the beginning that got kicked back because they weren't filled out right, they weren't presented right. So, just learning the eviction process, it's For years, I actually did most of them on my own, before I could even afford an attorney. Really just learning the nuts and bolts of everything. Wow. Not just construction. Correct. But, you know, the legal aspect. Correct. And just, again, not taking no for an answer. Just problem solving, figuring things out. Not willing, just not giving up. Just wanting it so bad that I wasn't going to let anything take that away. Awesome. So, uh, a lot of people are probably wondering this. But how did you buy your first property? That's good. That's very good, actually. I was working at a desk job for a company called Tower Stream, which sells internet. I was basically talking to IT directors and network administrators daily. But I was trading stock at my desk. I was learning and teaching myself how to trade stock. And I actually made my first property. First 4, 000 trading stock at my desk while I was doing another job, and decided to use that 4, 000 as a down payment on my first property. Wow. So, and I actually am still not a very good stock trader. It was more like, it was more like luck, actually. Yeah, luck. It's good that you know that. Yeah, I remember it was, the company was called Boston Scientific, I remember. And for some reason at that time, the price had skyrocketed, and I made a bunch of money overnight, and just, took that money. And put it as a down payment on my first property. That's awesome. Yeah. So, and that was a residential, I mean, not resident, but that was your primary residence, the multifamily that you bought. Correct. How did you do the second one? It was a, so my wife and I had a little bit of money at the time. We use it as a down payment on the second property. And then since then, mostly just been using equity from the properties that we buy. I have a Pretty good understanding of markets. I look at a lot of houses every day and my email is 25 to 30 houses a day. Really kind of understanding the market, understanding value, and just trying to find properties that are undervalued that will have some equity in it. And then once you turn around, you refinance it, pulling that equity out and then purchasing another one and just kept doing it that way. Wow. So, how many properties do you have? Right now I have 25. We're about to sell one, that's the Florida one I had mentioned. Yeah. And I'm in contract for another one that's supposed to actually close tomorrow, so that would be 25. About 24 after I sell one. That's amazing. How many of them are on Smith Hill? About 90 percent of them. I have some scattered throughout the city. I have a couple in Pawtucket, a couple on the West side, not much in South Providence. It still kind of carries that stigma, the South Providence that I still don't want to cross over yet. But the majority of my properties are in Smith Hill around the PC area. Wow. That's awesome. Before I get into what I really want to talk about, just was curious, have you dealt with squatters? Once she actually pitched a tent in my backyard on one of the properties, but it wasn't too hard to get out There's some ways around that as far as putting restraining orders and no trespass orders in place to kind of help remove people But I've been fortunate enough not to have to deal with too many squatters. Okay. Yeah, that's a huge issue It's been crazy the last year or two with that. So you said so how did you deal with that? Yeah, so in this case, I dealt with it. I just put a restraining order because she was unfortunately making threats. So I was able to go in front of a judge and say this woman is making threats and I need to put a restraining order and it started with the restraining order once I got that I was able to put a No trespass order on her and then when she came back, I was able to remove her with the police. Wow. Yeah, why did you pick your place? I only can speculate. I mean, with COVID and what was happening with a lot of rent relief, a lot of people, unfortunately, will lose in their places. And so I, in my opinion, that's why there was an increase in squatters. And I really don't know why she picked my place. Smith Hill has also been known for, you know, a lot of vagabonds or people roaming the streets there. And she just picked my place because I actually think she may have known one of my tenants and just randomly picked it. Wow. So having all these properties, What did you think it would be a good idea to have a property management company take care of it? Yeah, so I guess in some sense, maybe I like to do everything ourselves. We try to do everything in house, including our property management. We do our own pest control. We do our own construction. My theory is always, it's been about margin. And I prefer to, instead of paying some property management company 10 to 15 percent, I would prefer to just keep that in my own pocket. So, we manage everything ourselves. We have our own employees. I have just six people that work for me now. I'm sure there's guys out there that'll listen to this that are much bigger than that. But, I have, you know, six employees that help me manage the properties and it works. Wow. So you kind of created your own property management company. Yeah. So basically the idea of what I do is renovate and rent as opposed to renovate and flip. So what we do is we have part of my crew helps to renovate the property and part of my crew helps to maintain and manage the property. So we kind of have a three and three almost, so to say. Three people work on the construction side and three people work on the property management side. So after we're done renovating, From that point, we go and we rent it out and then, and manage it ourselves. Wow. So you don't have to hire a construction company and a general contractor. You have the construction people and you're the general contractor. Yes, correct. So through the years, I had a lot of problem with some contractors. They were either overcharging you or their schedules didn't line up. They couldn't come out for a couple of weeks. And I was, a lot of what I do was through hard money, through hard money lending. And when, as a lot of people know, when you're hard money lending, you're paying the carrying costs every month of holding that loan. So you need to get in and renovate as quickly as possible, get the place rented out as quickly as possible and get the lender paid off as quickly as possible. So being at the beckoning call of a subcontractor sometimes would hurt you. They couldn't get in for several weeks before they could even start the project. And once they did, they wanted to overcharge you. So I just felt like over time it was better just to have my own crew and keep them on a salary and just hopefully find enough deals out there to just keep them busy and be able to pay them. Awesome. Wow. Goodness. From going from nothing to not just investing in real estate, getting a lot of real estate, you're also, you created your own property management company and pretty much do everything in house. Correct. Everything in house. We even take care of our own bed bug problems. So, we even have our own heaters that set up for bed bugs and we really just try to solve any problem that comes at us. And that's really what the name of the game is in real estate is just being, learning how to problem solve. Have you had any fires? No, I haven't had fires, I guess to keep it interesting, we've had several people that have died in the properties, unfortunately. Especially in the first few years, we had heroin overdoses. And unfortunately, we had some tenants that died in the properties. And that's been a, those have been tough moments. Dealing with the families and the removal of their things. And it's just hard. It's hard on the other tenants when someone dies in the property. And it's hard renting it out after that because someone has died in the property. So that has been a big challenge at times. Wow. Death is just, uh, I, the last episode I interviewed Jonathan and he worked at the coroner's office. Yeah. And I had to mark that episode, you know, viewer discretion advised because it was really graphic talking about it. And at the end I was like, you know, before we said goodbye to the audience, I said, Oh, you, you need a hug after this. And then we were done, turned it off and I gave him a hug and he looked at me, he's like, are you okay? And I'm like, damn, I think I'm the one who needed to hug. Yeah. Not you. Yeah. He's seen all this stuff and it's like he's trained in his mind to deal with it. Have you walked in on like? Yeah, we have, you know, I don't want to get too graphic, especially if the person's family's listening or anything, but there was, you know, they were blue at that point and there was no question that they weren't coming back. And it's hard because at one moment it is a business, but at times you have to put that aside and recognize that. You know, death is tough and whoever's family is involved in it, it's really tough for them. And you have to put aside business and be sensitive to what's happening. Yeah, man, that just gets me like, you know, because it's a soul in that body. It's not a vessel. It's like, Oh, okay. It was hard. All right. So how about floods or like natural disaster? Yeah, mostly what you deal with in Rhode Island, at least here is a lot of wind. So we deal with a lot of, you know, roof issues, shingles flying off, vinyl siding coming off, flashing. You just really deal with it. It's mostly wind problems. I haven't had any floods or any fires like that, thank God, because one of the tenants like to use space heaters, and that can be an issue at times, because a lot of these houses are wired for, you know, 120, and they're all on the same circuit, and you plug in a space heater or two, and it's tripping the breaker constantly, and so that always worries me that you're gonna have a fire issue. But thank God that hasn't happened to me yet. Yeah, knock on wood. Yeah, correct. I'll You gotta do that one. Oh, that one too. Okay. Okay. Alright. Good. Cause then you gotta rotate, like, the wood. So, what's the longest project that you worked on? Yeah, so we're actually in one right now that's going on. It's eighth month, but we're about to do an appraisal on it, actually, in the upcoming week. So we're getting close. About eight months is a while in my business. Again, we use a lot of hard money lending and we like to get out of those loans in six months. In Rhode Island, they have some seasoning laws where you have to be on title for six months before you can go to the bank and refinance it. So we really like to try to get the project done within six months. So once it starts to go outside of six months, then you know it's kind of gone too far. So we're doing one right now. It's actually a nine. And it needed everything from the foundation to the roof. It really needed everything. Nine bed building? Like, yeah, three family, nine beds, three family, nine beds, but it was in rough shape and it needed everything. We got a good price on it and I would consider it a grand slam. We made a lot of money in a very short period of time. So not to get political here, but what's. That's the toughest town to work with as far as just permits. Permits and things like that. I haven't dealt with many other towns except for Providence and Pawtucket, so, and it's really been quite easy, quite honestly. It hasn't been that hard. You apply for a permit, and sometimes they drag their feet, and I hope no one's listening to that, but if you stay on them and you can just keep pressuring them, you usually can, the permit will come through. So, I've been fortunate again. It hasn't been that hard to get a permit. They do the things we need to do. They happen pretty fast. Yeah. No, I think once, once they know you, once they know your work and they know you do quality work, I think that helps. But people who are updating all these, you know, Broken down homes, it's great for everything. Yeah, we try to focus on the things that don't require permit while we're waiting. So from the closing, we actually try to get my crew in there the very next day to begin construction. So we don't hesitate. There's been days where we were in there working on the property the same day we closed on it. Hours later, we already had a crew in there. And we just try to focus on the things that don't need a permit right off the rip. And then while we're waiting for the permit, we can also focus on the other properties that we, we can go back and, and fix things that we may have missed or that need updating in the meantime. So goal is six months or less correct, for me, yes. Six months or less. There's a new program that my broker had noticed that's you can three months seasoning. So we're looking into that now. We're trying to see if we can maybe hold the property for only three months and that would be a, you think you can do it? That would be a game changer. In my world. My broker's telling me she's got a program now that. Three months seasoning, 90 day seasoning. So in my world, that would be a game changer. Wow. Yeah. We'd save on three months of points. Wow. What's the fastest you've gotten? Yeah. So just like turnkey properties, sometimes we'll pay, you know, I hate to ever pay too much, but we'll pay at the top of the range. And usually when you get to the top of the range, if you understand the market, well, most of those tend to be turnkey. So there's, you know, usually we can get somebody to get it rented out in the first week. Without, with very minimal construction. Yeah. Fix the floor, paint the wall. Yeah. Very, very small, minimal things. Change the locks, you know, change, update some of the lights, just simple stuff. So, okay. That's the project aspect. Now, as far as collecting rent, do your employees or your people go and collect the rent? That's a great question. So I believe in streamlining and make things easy. I believe in technology. So most of my rent comes in through digitally. We take PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Cash App. So pretty much any one of those we take. One of my requirements that I try to give to people that I interview is say, listen, you have to have a digital format payment set up in order to pay your rent because we just have too many tenants now to run around, collect cash, money orders, go to the bank. I mean, that stuff takes up a lot of time. So if you really get, in my opinion, when you get to a certain level, you really need to do most of your business digitally in order to continue to scale and grow. What advice would you give to a new landlord or someone new who's, who has that, you know, who has tenants and how to deal with collecting rent? Yeah. I love that question. I've been mentoring a couple of people. Again, I would tell them to try to do everything they can to streamline and scale their business as quickly as possible by putting, they call them SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures in place. Try to simplify things and make them easy. So, collect your rent digitally. If something needs to be fixed, I tend to use a tenant. which helps a lot. Um, as a handyman, especially at first, my first handyman actually lived in my property and they got a discount on their rent. And so try to find someone within your network or with someone that's in that could be a tenant of yours to help you really help with the project. Try to do everything from within. So maybe find a tenant that could help you fix that toilet or change that lock streamline as far as collecting money digitally. Just really just trying to make things easy. Also, I mean, as far as like hiring your tenants, it's super risky. I mean, in my experience, because you can't guarantee that they're going to do the work, especially it's good that you give them money, but still expect rent back. Yeah. So that's important. So I think people should be careful. Yeah. And so no question. The truth is it's hard at the first, it's hard to gain momentum. And that's why a lot of people fail because they are not willing to persevere and go the extra mile and do the hard things. And so at first, there's no question, it's hard. There's no silver bullet to that. My first tenants were heroin addicts that were falling down the stairs. And I needed to think in place and figure out how I could file an eviction. To answer your question, it worked for me at the time, it doesn't work for everybody. But if you can find someone within your network that's willing to help you out, or do it for you at a discount, or if it's a tenant of yours, I really just try to, my opinion, just try to find the resources that are closest to you. Yeah. Find their strengths and then hire them. Yeah. And then it has to do with leadership skills and learning how to extract things from people and seeing what they're good at. And my company has grown that way. Most of my intendants at this rate all work for me and it's worked well. Wow. Most of them. That's cool. All six of them are tenants of mine. Wow. That's awesome. Wow. So you definitely have to vet them and make sure that you'd work together. That's really cool. You said something about mentoring. Are you starting your own mentoring or? Yeah. So. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's official starting like it's just people that I believe in that are close to me They're mostly good friends that I've grown up with that I believe in what's really important to me is what they're going to do with it later. I have a strong faith I believe in serving and giving back and if I'm mentoring somebody I don't want them to just build up their own castle and just Sit on their gold throne. I want to know that he's a good person and he's going to make a difference with his newfound wealth or a success. And so it's very important to me when I'm mentoring somebody that I believe that they are going to use what they learn in their success to give back. And the two friends that I'm mentoring right now, are great people. I know their hearts and they're not selfish people. That's awesome. How far do you help with, as far as mentoring? Very far. Yeah? You go and look at the property? I look at the property, I use my lenders, I work with them side by side and teach them how to renovate. How to GC, because one of the biggest things is to be what to do. What I do is learning how to, to GC and to summarize that is understanding product, understanding markets, understanding how things need to be done, understanding how much they cost. So when I mentor, I get alongside of somebody, I use all my resources, all of my network, all of my people to bring this person along and sometimes. They're not able to come along financially, they don't have that kind of capital or resources, but I will still allow myself to work with them and help ramp them up. That's great. That's really good. Because I believe in what they're going to do later. Super important to me. Yeah, that's awesome. So it seems like you're growing. What's your plans for the future? Yeah, so I always have a friend that asked me is like, when is enough enough? Like you have 25 houses and what's the number? And like, There's no real number as long as you have good help. And so if you can hire and bring in good help and good people, there's no real number. So the plan to my future is to just continue to scale the company, continue to buy more property, continue to bring in good help, continue to mentor others that can do the same thing. And then obviously leave a legacy for my family. What's important to me is that when my kids come are of age, that they'll have something that they can tap into and maybe not have to work as hard as I had to work. So there's no number. It's just, it's really no number. Yeah. Keep doing what you're doing. Yeah. And you really enjoy it. I love it. Yeah. I love real estate. I love everything about it. It's really hard at times, but it's a good hard. It's a hard that I enjoy. I like problem solving. I love real estate. I love looking at houses. I like driving down the road and looking at architecture and I like looking at the details and I love your flooring. I mentioned to you when we came in here, I love that you restored your flooring and you notice all of those things. I love it. Thank you. What other business or whatever? Like career, Yeah. That you can dress up like this and be yourself. Yeah. So I mentioned this to him at the beginning. I'm sorry that I'm not in a business suit. I just, I love to just be myself as much as I can. I rarely put a suit on unless I absolutely have to. I'm not really focused on any other business. There's, I try to shift gears as much as I can at the end of the day and try to spend as much, be as present as I can for my wife and my kids. And I care about my health and my fitness. I start every day off with my morning routines and I try not to let much get involved in the way of that. So business is important. It's not everything. Quality of life is important. I try to buy my time back. So I'm able to be where I am today and take care of my health and because of my company and my business. Very cool. And, you know, you can, sometimes you're like, you know what, I don't feel like driving anymore. Yes, correct. And do what you do. It's funny that you say that. When Brian came in, I was like, wait, there's a car outside. We're both looking and he's like, yeah, that's my driver. And I want to say for the camera, whoever's watching, it's not a Maybach or anything like that, I'm not, there's no champagne bottles in the back. But you wouldn't, would you do that if you, if you could? Would you buy a Maybach? No. No, right. I wouldn't. It's not my style, I am serious. I'm blue collar at the, at the core. I love getting my hands dirty with my guys still. I like being on these projects. I like, you know, I'm flipping a property in Florida right now. I actually leave Sunday and I'm doing everything that they're doing. I'm painting and installing floors and doing dump runs and demo. And I still enjoy getting my hands dirty and the Maybach's not for me. I'd rather have a pickup truck and be low profile. That's mad respect. I appreciate that. It's not for everybody. Some people want to, they're all about the bravado and showing off. And especially in today's world, everybody's trying to say, Hey, look at me, look what, look how successful I am. And it's not my style. It's awesome. Yeah. You never know. You see all these people at the grocery store. Yeah. The person you least expect is a millionaire. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a lot of respect for that. The humble man. Humble man. Yeah. That's really important to me. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it was very inspiring. Thank you. I appreciate that. The way your whole thing, how you created your own crew and property management, and you're still growing and hungry and your background, like all this is great. How can people find you and how can people get started with the mentor program? Yeah. I'm sure you want to interview them before you, uh, I mean, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, um, it's pretty easy to find my phone number out there and email. But I am very, very selective about who I mentor and walk alongside with. I have a lot of people that are reaching out, family members and, you know, my children want to be mentored. And so I have to be very selective with my time and who I choose and I'm not that hard to find. You can find me. Awesome, Brian. Thank you very much for stopping by. I really appreciate you having me here. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you.

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