Gary Wilson | Podcast

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody, to the NARPM radio podcast. And I have Gary Wilson here. And Gary, he was kind enough to have me on his podcast. And as he and I were conversing and having going through that podcast, he was telling me that not only is he this incredible coach and investor and realtor and broker, but that he used to own a property management firm. And so I'm like, oh my God, I would love to hear your story. Let's tell your story to all these folks here that are property management owners and property managers. So Gary, thank you so much for being here today.

Gary Wilson: You're welcome. Pete, I appreciate the opportunity. I love teaching and serving. So hopefully today people walk away with a big smile and some good ideas that they can implement, like right away, you know.

Pete Neubig: So take us through your journey, and with a little main focus on the property management firm. But take us through your journey because it's a pretty interesting one.

Gary Wilson: Yeah. Well, how it really all started. I mean, early on, I was eight years old drawing houseplants. I just was enamored by architecture and houses. And one of my best friend's dad was an architect. Turns out my grandfather taught architecture in college way back in, like, 100 years ago now. And he taught me how to draw real flower plants. And my mom bought me the whole kit and everything. The drawing board, T-Square, compasses, everything. And I was. I still draw house plants for fun, but fast forward, you know, I ended up going to school at Old Dominion University and Tidewater, Virginia. And it was really because I didn't get accepted in the School of Architecture at Virginia Tech. So it was like my plan B, it was by the ocean. I'm like, cool, let's, let's do that, mom. And the first person I met, dude named Socrates, his parents were both Greek. Obviously. His dad was a Greek immigrant mom, first generation in a fast forward, we were graduating and we were going to go out and just rent a place, you know, a block from the beach and live the life. And his dad, I can hear him on the phone yelling like, spit coming out. He's like, no, you're not. You're not going to rent, you're going to buy. Don't be stupid like other people. You're going to buy and you're going to get rich. And I'm like, okay, you know, so sign me up, man. So we bought a four bedroom, two bathroom rancher and Soc and I rented out the other two bedrooms.

Pete Neubig: And how'd you do this? You just right out of college. Did you even have a job yet?

Gary Wilson: Right out of college. Absolutely. So people freak out about this. But we assumed a VA mortgage. The owner was an active duty Navy. We informed, we assumed his first mortgage, But he had a second that we refinanced in our own name with stocks they had signing for it, and the remaining equity was the third note. And people said, well, you can't do that anymore. I said, yes, you can. We do it every day. VA, FHA, USDA, all three 100% assumable today.

Pete Neubig: They're all coming back now because interest rates are high. Right. So Assumable loans are kind of coming back.

Gary Wilson: Absolutely. Even a lot of variable rate mortgages have always been assumable. People just don't realize that. So in any case, we were initially investor slash landlords right off the bat. And I got married a few years later to a girl from Pittsburgh, and Soc bought me out. So I turned essentially a total of $3,000 right into it. You know what I mean? Like $50 a month was my contribution until it was required. And because the other guy's rent paid or everything else but the closing costs from the first purchase, all in 3000, two years later, I get 8000 out. And I remember his dad at the closing, like pounding his chest, saying, if you boys do what I tell you to do, you're not going to have to work for anybody else when you're 35 years old. Well I get married, move to Pittsburgh, start having kids and living the corporate life and hated it. I mean, I was not born to be sitting behind a desk, man. So 35 years old, Socs that have passed away. I'm thinking, man, I wish I'd listen to what he told me. So I went out that next year, thanks to Carleton Sheets. And I think about that place. So yeah, man. And that stuff still works today.

Pete Neubig: So I gotta ask though, when you when by the time you found Carleton Sheets, what was Socs doing? What was Socrates doing? Was he was he retired or did he.

Gary Wilson: Socs moved to Florida and was buying land right on A 1 A.

Pete Neubig: Oh wow.

Gary Wilson: And he was buying lots at 11,000 a pop. So he still has a couple. Just imagine what those things are worth today.

Pete Neubig: Oh, man.

Gary Wilson: So he got in right before the massive migration of people moving down there. And just he just bought a nice, beautiful, you know, million dollar home. Just spectacular. It's just a great story.

Pete Neubig: When you say Carlton, no money down the tapes, right? Did you buy?

Gary Wilson: We did, man. Yeah, we bought the houses every, which way you can imagine. So I actually wrote a book on all the ways that I bought houses. But, for any case, I'm in Pittsburgh. And, of course, Pittsburgh is nothing like Virginia Beach, where we were living. And I ended up not really liking that too much either. But the people are awesome. Sports are awesome, culture, food, everything is great and it was an excellent place to invest. So I bought a total of 30 units in that next year when I was 35, and I literally was already. So actually there were multi duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes. They didn't start in on the single family until a couple years later. And the reason I started that was I realized, you know what? When I go to sell a single family home, I have a much bigger audience. I can sell it to an investors, but also owner occupants. So I bought like 22 single family homes in a row. And my logic, was I called it a long term flip. My logic was I would pick the areas where I knew the money was coming in from the county, the state, the federal government, you know, gentrification, money. And I just and you can guys anybody listening, you can find this stuff online. You can Google it and find out who's getting the grants. Where's the money going. And and go there because guarantee they're going to be building casinos and stadiums and stuff like that. And it'll it will over time increase your property value. They'll take neighborhoods and raise them and just rebuild them. So that's what I started doing. But my money coming in heat from that first year of investing, was already matching my income from my day job, and I was a corporate. I was an IT. I did mergers and acquisitions, and I guess I can tell you PNC Bank was where I was, and we were growing all over the nation, and I was doing well there at corporate. The corporate world served me well, I just didn't like it, you know? And the more I didn't like it, the more they promoted me. I was like, back on it. I'm getting ready to leave, and they promote me again, you know? So finally I left.

Pete Neubig: Especially it I think I think it pays you just enough. Doesn't make you wealthy. But it's it's a good living. And it's hard to leave that six figure plus job, especially when you're doing that in the early 2000, late 90s.

Gary Wilson: It was. It was a tough, very tough emotional decision. It took me six months to pull the trigger. I'd already made my mind I was going to do it, and it took me six months to finally walk in one day and say, look, guys, I don't need to work here anymore. And, my boss was actually... So he was just like, happy for me. He said, you know what? One of his best friends did the same thing out in Colorado and was retired at 40 years old, and I was exactly 40 years old at that time and retired. And I'll never forget, I'm walking out of there with a dolly with my boxes of personal belongings, and we just had a major layoff off about the time I announced that, you know, I was going to leave. And, um, so I'm out on the street corner in downtown Pittsburgh, and these guys came up on the street. They were like, man, we feel so bad. You got a resume? Maybe we can help you out. Can we help you take your stuff to your car? And I said, what do you mean? They said you just got caught up in that lift. I said, no, I just retired, man. Yeah. And they looked at me like they were startled. And then at that moment, it hit me. I'm like, I'm free. I bought my freedom. And so what happened is I got really frustrated trying to find real estate agents that knew how to work with me. So I built my own brokerage company and we worked with investors. That's what we did was called Win Realty Advisors, and we helped regular folks, too. But our focus was absolutely on investing, built up a big clientele, and guess what they needed. So all these people are investing. And what do investors need? And eventually...

Pete Neubig: Oh, management. Yeah.

Gary Wilson: They need management. Property management.

Pete Neubig: Can you manage a property? Can you collect the rent for me. Can you put a renter in.

Gary Wilson: So here's where the rubber hits the road Guys. Everybody listening? This is you want to start kind of taking notes unless you're driving and then do it later. But I started building the beginnings of a company. I didn't know it at the time. I'm building a team of electricians, plumbers, you know, kitchen people, flooring people, carpenters, roofers, you name it. And, so I started forming that, that stuff out first because I realized I was doing it myself, and I was taking a lot of time that I didn't have. I had two little kids, you know, I was still working prior to that. Right. And, so I started hiring out the things that I knew were skilled labor, like plumbing and electrical that I didn't have. I learned it like I actually wired from the street to my house and the weatherhead down to the meter and inside to the pen. I actually did that myself one time with a friend of mine.

Pete Neubig: I think you're supposed to have permits and be licensed, but I'm just saying back then probably.

Gary Wilson: Yeah you did. Yeah, that's long and long. They're not going to come after me now. But yes, you're right, you needed permits and everything. But at the time it was kind of loosey goosey. They ended up cracking down on all that stuff eventually. But in any case, what I realized was I can get a lot more investing done if I spent less time managing the property. So then I took one of my tenants and I had a vacancy next door to her. I called her up and said, hey, Brian, I can't get there in time. Do you think you can open up the door for this guy? The keys, whatever the wherever I hit the key. And, uh, she not only opened the door for the guy, she showed him around. He took out her copy of the application when she rented for me and the lease to show him what was all involved. But first of all, you really can't do that because she's not an agent doing that, you know? Actually, you can do that. You can manage for one person in every state. You can manage for one owner without a license. As soon as you add a second owner, you need a license. But in this case, I called her up. Later, she interviewed the guy, screened him, had him fill out the application. I'm like, are you serious? She said, yeah, I love you, I love renting from you. And I wanted to do a good job. I said. Are you looking for work? You know. And she said, yeah. So I had her start to show my vacancies. So I'm building this team. And as she knew, a cleaning crew, like an in-law had a cleaning company, they did all of her cleanups. So all of a sudden, I've got the beginnings of a business model, and I'm loving life. I'm buying more properties. And then what happened is my clients started asking me, hey, can you manage my properties? Where I used to say, no, I wouldn't. You couldn't pay me enough to do that for anybody else. Well, finally I realized God's trying to hit me over the head with a two by four. Actually, a 4x4. And I finally started saying yes. So I took on eight clients for a total of 40 additional units. And it went like a charm because I just literally took what I already had built. The team, you know, electricians, the plumbers, cleaner crew, the whole nine yards. And I incorporated it into an LLC. And then those people paid the LLC. And by the way, what I did, Pete genius move. I didn't know it at the time. I decided I'm going to run on my own properties through that same LLC. So I would receive everything that my clients were getting notices, emails, anything that had to do with the properties, I would get them and I would pay. I paid actually two. I paid my own company to manage my own properties because I didn't know what I was. I thought, I don't know what I'm doing, I better figure this out. So I thought, if I'm a client, I'll see it firsthand. This is exactly what I did. And we started growing. So, that grew. That business grew, dude. We went from 40 units to 700 units in less than three years. And guess how much money I spent on advertising?

Pete Neubig: I want to say probably zero.

Gary Wilson: Zero, not one dime, because Peter would tell Paul, Jane would tell Mary. And it grew organically. I mean, we had to grow too. We were still doing things the old manual way. I had to buy our system, Propertyware.

Pete Neubig: You were spending money investing in your investment group like finding deals because you got to get the leads somehow, right. And then as you get the leads, you find more people. So were you spending money or investing money in marketing to find properties and buy properties or on your brokerage side.

Gary Wilson: Actually, I'll tell you exactly what happened so early on. Long before I launched a brokerage, uh, I had something like 40 something units, and this guy had a local, we call him Guru's, a local guru, had his own training program, and somebody told him about me. Somebody that I knew was I was investing, he was investing. He said, you got to meet this guy Gary Wilson. And he's just a regular Joe. He's working a job and he's doing this on the side. He's coaching softball and soccer. Just a regular dude. This guy called me up and said, hey, can you come to my Saturday morning business program? This was in radio, was still pretty big, and it was on FM too. So I thought, hey, this is pretty cool. And it absolutely. I went in at 8:00 on a Saturday morning and you know, and I get passionate about this stuff because it bought me my freedom. So he called me the next the next week and he said, Mr. Wilson, I sold more programs after your interview. He said, would you please come in and just meet some of these guys? And by the way, what I mean, say, guy, I mean guys and girls, guys, you know, everybody come in and meet them. Just come in for lunch one day. And when I'm teaching a class and you can go to lunch with them, I said, sure. Went out there and I thought this was awesome. And he and I, and he said, would you like to teach a segment? And I said, I'd love to. Man, I didn't know what. I never taught a thing in my life, but I loved it and I found out something about myself. I love teaching, I still do it today. It's just I get excited, just like I did all those 20 years ago. But what happened is the students started asking me, hey, can you be my agent? And I'm like, oh no, no, I don't want to do that. Of course my wife's like, are you stupid? People are trying to give you money and you're saying no. So finally I went in one day. This is the funny part. I knew nothing about marketing, I went in and I said, I know you're going to ask me, so I'm going to tell you right up front. I can take two of you guys on as clients. Okay. Every one of them raised their hand. There's like an average of 25 people. And then that one. Thankfully, my my Irish brain kicked in a lot more quickly this time. I thought, oh, I see a business model coming up. So that's when I started the brokerage. And what I did is to, the only clients I took, were the ones that I taught. So I had this instant funnel, right. They're already being taught by somebody else. I'm helping to teach them. I knew who was going to succeed and who wouldn't. Right. And I take them on. And that was my client base. And I had people by 40 or more properties with me just by. So everybody if you're anybody out there listening as an agent and you got that mindset, I don't want to work with investors or crazy and blah blah blah. You are leaving money on the table, brothers and sisters, I'm telling you, a lot of money, especially in a recession when you're your owner occupant business drops off the cliff, the investor business goes through the roof. So you just need to learn the lingo, learn the methodology and the terminology. You'll never have a shortage of clients. And by the way, you may start investing yourself. So that's really my funnel that I mean that's in a nutshell. So still I was on Facebook, but I didn't I mean.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, there's there's a lot that there's a lot to digest here. And you kind of said it really quick. So I want to really drill this down because a lot of folks that are listening, they're, they're, they're trying to figure out how to get leads. Right. That's like every time I do a growth episode, I get double the downloads. And so people are always looking at growth, right? And what you just described is you've basically connected with an investor group. He was a guru, but he was a real estate investment company group inside, inside of Pittsburgh. And you basically became a you taught for free for him. Right? So I think that's important. Right. So you don't make money when you get paid. You make money by the things you do for free. And then you basically developed the following. And what I love is that you only took clients where you actually bought the properties. And I've been telling people, I actually when I saw my business, I tried to create the Empire Investment Club, like I was going to create an investment club because I knew that if somebody bought a property from me, the trust was already built and the chance of them leaving because we're you're going to screw up in property management. We all do. But if they have that trust, they're not going to leave. So I gotta ask, your retention rate was pretty high?

Gary Wilson: Oh, yeah. I don't think anybody ever left. Quite frankly. I mean, it.

Pete Neubig: Never left your management company unless they sold, right? Like, that was like the reason.

Gary Wilson: Some people did so. I'll tell you what, there's a lot of golden nuggets in that whole process too. Because remember these investors are buying and they're trading up. They're buying and selling. We got all the business on the brokerage side. And I'll tell you something else, guys, definitely write this down. When you're in property management, you're going to be engaging with a lot of other people from different industries. You're going to be engaging with the city employees. You know, you know, occupancy inspectors, zoning officers. You're going to be dealing with lenders, attorneys, inspectors, appraisers, pest control, lawn care, snow removal. It just goes on and on. And you have all their direct contact information, names, numbers and emails. So we started in a very subtle, um, what to say, passive. But it was not we were not aggressive. We're not salesy. We would just say, hey, I just wanted to show you this because it's an area. One of our clients just flipped a home right down the street from you. How would you like to flip a home and make 75,000 bucks like this guy did? That's what we did. And we got all kinds of business from. We would even get the sales of their own homes. The inspector would sell his home, you know, the the the attorney would sell her home. We got so many Deals from the vendors that supported our property management business. I mean, it just is like everywhere we turn, it was there was gold under those rocks. Every rock we turned over, there was something that we could offer. And, uh, and that's exactly what we did. We just we just did it, you know, because we we had the people. We had the skills, you know?

Pete Neubig: That's brilliant. So I want to talk a little bit about, when you, you know, you got the 40 doors, you had about 40 yourself. Then you had a couple, you had about eight clients came in, they had 40 doors. You doubled right then and there. How many, you said you got to about 700 units. What year is this about? Because I think we talked, I think this is in the early 2000s, mid 2000s.

Gary Wilson: I started investing aggressively in Pittsburgh in 1997, late '97. And then with my license, that was like real estate license. That was around 2002. But remember, I had no intention of being a typical real estate agent at all. That was like two. No, that was 2002. And then by 2007, I think I had 150 units myself. Then I bought a big building, a 90 unit building, actually. It ultimately had 250 some odd units when you shake it all out. But, um, the brokerage I launched in January 2008, and within like three months, we were like launching the property management because it was just way too. I love the fact that you.

Pete Neubig: Launched a brokerage firm during the darkest time in the history of real estate, but that just shows you that investing, it's it's always around. So in '08 you basically start your, your management firm and then you, you start third party in 2009-ish.

Gary Wilson: Yeah. We started getting a lot more professional about it. So we got Propertyware. It's a great, great, property management software, but there's a lot of I'm not promoting properly. We're just telling it. That's what we had. There's other programs and we started off just using QuickBooks Pro. That's how we started, you know. But the what we started doing is requiring our contractors to be licensed and bonded when the, when the industry that was the norm, like electricians, you'd want to have them be bonded because if they screw up, a house is going to burn down, you know, so they had to be insured and bonded. And then some of the, some of the guys like handymen or carpenters, they really didn't need bonding and they probably should have had insurance. I don't know if they did or not, but we required them to set up LLCs for themselves and then get business insurance and things like that. And one of them we actually own, we actually own one of the crews, but we had five crews. So we started getting really strategic and business wise about it to to play defense. See guys, when you're building business your focus is initially on offense scoring points, putting points on the board, making some money. But I'm going to tell you, if you don't watch your back door and you don't have a defensive plan, just like in football or the Army, you're going to you're going to get taken advantage of something's that going to hurt you. You're going to hurt at some point. So, you know, we had 1 or 2 little things happen. People slip on the ice and stuff like that. Nothing major, but insurance took care of it. And I realized we need to play more defense. So that's what we started requiring more of our vendors and separating ourselves from them, like through through LLCs. And we still disclosed if I had like a partnership, I would always disclose, hey, I'm part owner of X, so I'm like, they don't have to worry about anything. Anybody coming back and saying, you know, Gary misled me because I never did. But the bottom line is, when it comes to lawsuits, it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong. What matters is if you understand the rules of the game right? And the person understands the rules better, just like in baseball, they don't have to have the star player. But if they play by the If they use the rules to their advantage, they're going to win. And that's what happens in business. You got to be aware of that guys. Make sure you have a defensive plan. So when it came to the third parties, a lot of them we actually helped them create their businesses. We showed them what to do. And then very rarely did I ever end up in court. I mean, we were taking people to court to collect rents and stuff, so if we had to. But as far as lawsuits against us, there was only two, and they actually were both. After I sold the emergence of businesses they came in much later from one was a flip that the contractor screwed up on some structural stuff, and the other one was one of my agents. Helped her daughter buy a three plex that ended up having the zoning only for a duplex. Nobody. The municipality. The inspector never disclosed it. The title company didn't discover it. It came up much later. That was it. Those are the only two suits, guys. But it's because we did a good job. We were good owners, right? We had proper property insurance on the property. So us and our clients, and we hire good people. And we made sure nobody was doing stupid stuff in our units. You know, we played good defense. And as a result, I when I merged my businesses, I mean, I still get paid for one of them all these years later. And it's been 12 years since I sold the brokerage. I still get paid for that because it was such a good deal for them and for me. The property management company, I got a payout for like three years, and I was supposed to help them stick around and consult. They never needed me because it was so dialed in so tight that they didn't need to call me. I mean, they could have, but you know, we had the systems down literally. You could see everything, documented policies, procedures. It was a real full blown business. We probably in hindsight, I would love to have kept them, Pete. But I wasn't from Pittsburgh. You know, I've always been around the beach. I went through a divorce and I'm like, I just want to get it over with. So that's when we started selling things because I wanted to get out of Pittsburgh. Again, I love the people, but Gary Wilson needs to have his toes in the sand and the sun on his face, and not shoveling snow and scraping salt off the undercarriage of my car, you know. So that's my that's my philosophy now. You know, there's a lot in there. I know there's probably a lot to unpack. I mean, anything you want to know, just ask me. I'm happy to share it, you know?

Pete Neubig: So tell me how many people did you have working for you in the property management company?

Gary Wilson: It was probably, you know, we internally, we probably had six people, like actual full time W2 employees internally, like one person. All she did was manage all the incoming, um, you know, maintenance and repair costs. Another person, all she did was deal with the owners. She dealt with the owners. Right? Another person, all they did was the showings. So we had somebody we had a full time bookkeeper. So those were the roles. And I actually cross train them. So I would have them learn another person's job so that they could go on vacation. And I didn't have to worry. And ultimately I still stayed involved. And when I always met with the owners, I'd go meet them, go to lunch, go look at the properties. So I was kind of hands on. I wasn't doing the the administrative work, but I was maintaining relationships with the owners because I also was a client. Remember, I was paying my own company to run my own properties so I could speak the language. I knew what they were getting, what they were going through. I could offer advice, like if they had a property that just like an industry, would leave town, for example, that all of a sudden that neighborhood, you know, is taking a hit. And, um, and I would say, well, here's some strategies you could do for selling. You could repurpose it. There's all kinds of things. And they love the fact that I could offer that type of advice, or most of the property management companies, they weren't doing that kind of service. They were just trying to fill doors and collect rents, you know?

Pete Neubig: Yeah, a lot of them didn't have the capacity or the or they didn't have the knowledge or a little bit of both. I really think it's genius that, you know, you really brought all your clients in through the investor program. We'll call it, for lack of a better word. And then you got to meet and you got to build that trust. And so that trust carried through three, four, five years later, they're still reaching out to you, um, for, you know, for, for solutions or. Hey, you know, I'm, I'm guessing most people bought multiple properties from you as well?

Gary Wilson: Oh, yeah, I mean, usually the average was probably I'd say the average was ten units. I mean, some people bought way more than that.

Pete Neubig: So it's 700 units. You still owned about 200. Is that fair?

Gary Wilson: I ended up settling in about 250 units, and I held on to that for years. I eventually did sell out and, I mean, hindsight, I can tell you. Well, this was a big lesson. You know, I did it because it was a strategic move for me and it worked out what I did worked out. I here I am today, I'm going to live anywhere I want to live, travel whenever I want to travel. And I still teach my class every Monday night called Monday Night Live. I still teach it all these years later. I've got people in there who've been with me for 20 or more years, and we're friends now. We actually literally, I've had people have me stay at their houses when I'm traveling, you know, and, and pay for me to go skiing the Vail, Colorado with them and stuff like that. Because it's the relationship and what you just touched on, Pete, is very important when you lead with education, when you teach, people don't just don't just do the what. Teach them the how. Teach them the why. Teach them all the little nuances. Because the teaching student relationship is probably built on trust. They they get to know you, like you, and trust you, and they get to see the authentic, real, genuine you. So an education is worth far more than any one duplex or triplex or fourplex. I mean, knowing what I know now, I had mastermind groups I was in. It cost $100,000. I probably spent over a million just on my own education. But I would do it ten times more than that because of what it's done for me. But a lot of people new, they don't understand that they don't have that mindset. They're just trying to pinch pennies. And I get it. I've been there. I know what that's like. Just know this. You have to take inventory of who you are, who you know, where you are, what you know, and what you have, and you start there. Be realistic. Don't go for the Huntington Building right out of the gate. If your inventory tells you you should be starting off with a duplex or like I did, half of a house, I didn't even own a whole home. When I started, I bought 50% of a house, right? I literally started with almost nothing because I had almost nothing, right? So start there and I'll tell you what, guys, the journey you're going to hit a tipping point. So you're going to find out somewhere between 10 and 20 units on average. You're going to have the cash flow that's allowing you to accumulate and you bank it. Don't ever take money out until you build a machine that's feeding itself. So I got to the point where my cash flow was paying for my new units. You see what I'm saying?

Pete Neubig: Yep.

Gary Wilson: And then when I started, when I hit that tipping point, it's like a hockey stick. It just went up. And then the banks were calling me. I never call banks again in my life. They called me to see if I needed to borrow money. You know, I was buying properties. It's extremely strategic. Creative processes and procedures like the nine unit building. I didn't put one dime out of my pocket in the building. The bank gave me all the money I needed. Even the remodeling cost. And by the way, the bank was owned by investors, by the way. So they knew what I was doing. They knew what I was doing was smart, and it worked because I had a huge portfolio. Right? And I wasn't going anywhere. They knew I was, you know, here's the thing. I know this is off the subject of property management. It's so important. Banks, look at the four C's cash, collateral, credit and character. In the beginning, it's all about your credit score and how much cash you have, right? As you gain experience and you go through a couple ups and downs, they're looking at character. Character means when the poop hit the fan, you didn't jump overboard and let your ship crash into rocks and run for the hills and declare bankruptcy. Foreclosure. Right. They're looking to see do you have the character to make it through the storms? And if you do, you will never have a problem borrowing money. You could have the worst credit score on the planet, but if you've got a history of making it through the good times and the bad times, every lender on the planet is going to lend you money. The good ones, you know.

Pete Neubig: Smaller lenders too. Right. You're looking at local banks.

Gary Wilson: Yep. Community banks.

Pete Neubig: I want to hit on a couple of points. Then we're going to hit a commercial break. So number one thing. A lot of people listening to this like 700 units, six people. That's not a lot of people per, you know, for the units. So remember Gary owned 250 of those units. One owner, he said that the owner's average 40 units, he had about 15 owners. So he didn't have a lot of landlords that he had to deal with. He had a lot of tenants, but he didn't have a lot of landlords. So that that's important. And then number two is if you can create an investment group or a meet up and you can help investors and teach them, and then you can help them by your stickiness and the churn rate will go down. And my guess, Gary, is you had investors selling properties to other investors right inside your portfolio. And you were and you were getting the brokerage on both sides.

Gary Wilson: Yep. We sold entire portfolios and we would not only get all the commissions, but we would keep the properties under management.

Pete Neubig: Yeah, that's a beautiful that's we call it we love that. That's that's like a triple win right there. Yeah.

Gary Wilson: Hey by the way, I do want to mention that the six people were internal. So guys, when it comes to the outside people, the electricians, plumbers, painters, cleaners. That is not scalable. You just got to have enough people for every so many tenants that you have. You know, the it's the inside people that's very scalable. If you have the right software and the right systems and you train them well. Six people is like a Navy Seal team. How you can take down a thousand units, maybe, you know.

Pete Neubig: Well, these days you can get remote team members through VPM Solutions, and you can even have assistance to those people, and they can even ten X what they're doing. Just saying.

Gary Wilson: that's exactly right. That's another golden nugget there.

Pete Neubig: Tons of nuggets, man. Tons of nuggets.

Gary Wilson: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: All right. We're going to hit a commercial break. We're gonna put you on the lightning round. We'll be right back, everybody.

Gary Wilson: Sounds good.

Pete Neubig: All right, we're back with Gary Wilson. Gary, thanks so much for your story. We're going to get you on the lightning round. Are you ready?

Gary Wilson: I'm ready, man. I have no idea what's about to happen, but fire away, you know.

Pete Neubig: Alright. What is one piece of advice you'd give somebody that's just starting out in the property management business?

Gary Wilson: Wow. Alright, well, I'll tell you what. It has to do with screening of tenants, because when you're in a property management business, whether you're an owner or manager, that's like the scrimmage line on the field of football, you got your offensive linemen, defensive linemen, the people that control the line win the game. So you've got to control the line of who's coming into your units. So here's something we did. We would we would never do individual showings. We would set up all of our showings on like a Saturday morning from, like we would be at one unit from nine to 9 to 11. And we would schedule appointments, you know, every 15 minutes. Now there would be some natural overlap. Some people are going to be late. Some people are going to be early. That's okay. What it did is allowed people to have time with me individually where my at the time. You know, later on, the manager or the showing officers. Excuse me. Um, but also because of the overlap, somebody would show up before the last people left. It created competition among the applicants. So we never had a problem with getting applications for our units. Then we go back and we might do another unit from like noon to two and then 3 to 5. But we did it all in one time, so we're only driving in one place once. We're not going there all days, and the week and hours of the day, we would run all the applications, right? And we would compare the applications to the phone interview. So when we first... I'm sorry, I should have mentioned this earlier. We would always start with a phone interview. First, we would fill out this intake form on the phone interview. And then when we got the actual application at the unit, we would tell them, if you want to rent this unit, you've got to give us the security deposit check right now, we're not going to cash it, but we're going to take that. You're going to give us a fee to run your background check. We would take that went from 25 to 75 bucks over the years. And then what we would do is when we get back, we would compare the application to the phone intake form and make sure that they matched each other, because if they changed their story like they tell you over the phone, you know, they've been working such and such a place for for ten years and they make all this money. Then you get the application and it's something different. Huge red flag. But also don't just call the current landlord who is renting from now. Call the prior landlord because the prior landlord has got nothing to lose. The current landlord does. And by the way, we will sometimes ask the prior landlord, can you share with us the application that you received? And they would do that and we would call their prior landlord.

Pete Neubig: I don't think they're allowed to do that, by the way. You're not allowed to share their application. Yeah. Don't do that, people.

Gary Wilson: Don't do that. Sorry about.

Pete Neubig: You know, I used to do that back in the day, and then we then moved to self showing. We used Tenant Turner. But the self showing was really, really solid. All right. Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Gary Wilson: Pineapple on baloney pizza, you said?

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Gary Wilson: Oh, in certain cases it does. I used to have an employee. He loved pineapple and anchovy pizza, and I couldn't stand it. But I would buy a pizza when we go to lunch because he liked it, you know?

Pete Neubig: What was your first job?

Gary Wilson: My first job was delivering papers. Paper route back in the days when Bigfoot was the big thing, like in the early 70s. I was scared 4:00 in the morning, freezing cold, and Bigfoot was going to get me. That was my first job, man. You know.

Pete Neubig: What's your favorite fast food restaurant?

Gary Wilson: Oh, wow. It's called, uh, I think it's called Culver's. Culver's? That's what it is. I ran into him in Michigan at first. They started spreading all over the Midwest. That's the best fast food restaurant there is called Culver's.

Pete Neubig: Really? All right. Uh, what is your ideal vacation?

Gary Wilson: Oh, man. I would say like Fiji, Bora Bora or something like that. Where you have a hut over the water with a glass floor. That's it.

Pete Neubig: Oh, man. That sounds cool. If you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?

Gary Wilson: Ooh. Anyone alive right now? Okay, I'm probably going to bring myself. I would love to have lunch or dinner with. With Donald Trump. After what he just went through. And I'm not saying I voted for him. I'm just telling you what I went through. I mean, I gotta have lunch with that guy, you know?

Pete Neubig: Yeah. What is a book that you're currently reading or one that's impacted your business or life that you would recommend?

Gary Wilson: Ooh, I've literally read, uh, in training courses and books combined and audibles over 3000. But I would say, and I'm not trying to preach a sermon here, but I gotta tell you guys, the Holy Bible, whether you read the Quran, the Gita, the Torah, the Christian Bible, or try to study Buddhism. Buddhism is hard to study. A lot of common themes in there. Start there, because some of the best business lessons you'll ever learn come from that type of material. And then, I mean, there's a million think and grow Rich is a good is a good second that I've read that book easily a dozen times. Classic. You know.

Pete Neubig: Which Disney character do you most associate with?

Gary Wilson: Um, well, I can't remember the the dog. The dog's name, was a Goofy?

Pete Neubig: Pluto or goofy?

Gary Wilson: I think it was goofy. Yeah. Because I people always tell me they don't know how it is. I've gotten to be so successful because of in person. I'm like a kind of a goofy person. I really am, you know? But I just wear it on my sleeve. I just tell it like it is and you get what you see is what you get. And I mean, I entertain a lot of people, you know.

Pete Neubig: You prefer dogs or cats?

Gary Wilson: Dogs. I love cats, but dogs number one. Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Gary, if somebody has heard this video or heard this podcast, and they want to contact you. Well, first tell us about your book real quick and then tell us how they can contact you.

Gary Wilson: Yeah, well, I've written eight books now, but the most recent one is called Global Investor Agent. And it takes you through the life cycle of me starting out all the way through building brokerage and property management and team building. Building teams, Guys. I gotta tell you, property management is a is one of the best businesses could ever have, but a brokerage is not. A brokerage is probably the least profitable thing you can do in real estate. But owning a team, man, you could... I have a team with team members in 38 states right now in my overhead is 15%. I personally keep 85% of all the money coming in the front end. That's an amazing business model to do it with a team. Do property Manager too, by the way, because you get a lot of leads from it. But that book Global Investor agent, you can get it on Amazon. The one, the next one after that is called massive passive cash flow method. It kind of gets granular, like with purchasing techniques and commercial and things like that. It shows you the progression on the academic technical scale those two books combined. I mean, anybody can do what I've done and I will tell you, don't be like me, be better than me, all right? Don't suffer the school of hard knocks like I did. Just follow what I teach, you know it works.

Pete Neubig: And what's the best way to contact you?

Gary Wilson: Um, my. I'll give you my my email. My personal email. It's Gary, gary@rewgw.com, but because of spam and all this stuff. Guys, the best thing is actually just go to globalinvestoragent.com and scroll down. There's a way you can leave your name and I think email or phone number, or maybe it's just email, and you'll be able to set up a call with me and literally a one on one strategy. Go! I do this all the time. Totally free. There's no hooks. I'm not selling anything. I'm not recruiting anybody. It's just straight up teaching and serving. Because that's how I benefit. Our Lord knows I did not get where I am by myself. I definitely had help. So I lived my life, my mission card. I don't know if I have it with me right now, but it literally says my life mission is to improve the life of every single person I meet. That's where I am right now. I have no debt. I have everything you could possibly imagine. I have all the fun in the world, and there's no more fulfillment greater than helping somebody else reach their dreams. And I mean that with all the sincerity in the world, you know?

Pete Neubig: All right. Gary, thanks for being here. If you are listening to this and you're not a member of NARPM, go to NARPM, narpm.org to join. Or give them a call at (800) 782-3452. And if you're looking for a remote team member, give us the opportunity to earn your business. vpmsolutions.com. Thanks, Gary. Talk to you later, everybody.