Connor Gross (03:26):

So we took that property back in, pull up the numbers here, September was doing $4,000 a month and now we’re doing about $9,500 a month with it. And I do think that there’s actually even still decent ways to go because we still have some units that just like still need to go and get fixed up and replace the doors and whatnot. And we’re actually still in the process as well of, we have a little bit more room to squeeze in terms of driving revenue with it. So still a couple average people in my mind, like the win is going to be getting into a little north of $10,000 a month on that property.

Robert Leonard (03:59):

When it comes to residential properties, it’s pretty easy to find somebody to come fix something. You just hire a handyman, a plumber, electrician, whoever it is for that specific property. But who do you call when you have a self-storage unit that needs to be fixed?

Connor Gross (04:12):

So at the new properties that we’re buying, the most recent two properties that we bought, I’ve been calling some of their owners and they’ll at least have some relevant people that can go and help. The first property we had no idea and we also never did it before. So I was like, it was just literally calling so many people. Basically most of the stuff that has to get fixed in a storage unit typically comes down to roll up overhead doors. And it’s sometimes tough to go and get somebody out there when it’s like, “Hey, I need four doors fixed.” Right? Because from their standpoint, that’s a decent amount of driving and work for not a crazy paycheck. So the way that we actually got these first, I want to say 12 units fixed back at the Dallas property, was we called a bunch of overhead door spots, they’re all like, “Nope, not going to do it.”

Connor Gross (04:52):

And then I ended up going on YouTube and be like, “You know what? We’re going to just install these doors by ourselves.” And I went on and I found out, basically a place that will go and sell us the doors and it’s like an 8 x 10 foot door. And I was like, “We’re going to pick these up and we’re going to install it by ourselves.” And so we go over, we drive like an hour and a half away into the middle of Texas. We’ve rented U-Haul for the day, pick up one door to make sure that we can actually do it and it’ll work before we pick up the other 11. And I come back to the property and I’ll be honest, I’ll just say it straight up, I am not the most handy individual. Tools and all of that kind of stuff, not my forte.

Connor Gross (05:23):

And so we spent probably nine hours trying to put up this door and it got to the point where it was late at night, mosquitoes were out. I remember being just so tired because we had to redo the railing three times and we basically get this door up. And then finally we realized, we saw the frame a quarter inch too close in and now the door won’t pull down smoothly. And at that point I was incredibly frustrated. And so I just remember going back to the hotel that we rented that night, I was like, “We can’t do this 11 more times. It’s going to be terrible.” So we wake up the next morning and I’m rewatching that video of how to install it because I was like, “Well, you at least have to fix this door.”

Connor Gross (05:56):

And I see a logo on one of the guys’ shirts who’s installing the door and I search up that company. I called them. I was like, “Do you guys do doors? How does this all work?” And they’re like, “Yeah, we have doors.” And I was like, “All right, I might be interested in buying close to a dozen, but how does the installation work?” He’s like, “Let me transfer y’all over to the sales team.” We talked to the sales guy and he’s like, “Hey listen, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’ve got my guy, Leo is his name.” He’s like, “I’ve got my guy, Leo, he kind of works off the books for me in terms of being able to go and install the doors. Here’s his number.”

Connor Gross (06:24):

So I call Leo and he is like, “Oh, yeah and order them through me too and I’ll even get you a discounted doors.” Leo shows up three days later, installs 11 overhead doors in a matter of probably two hours. And it was a decently reasonable price. I was like, “This was amazing.” So I think with stuff like this, when you don’t know how to do it, just keep on trying to search and call different people because eventually someone a lot older and more experienced than you will maybe point you in the right direction.

Robert Leonard (06:47):

Why didn’t the overhead door companies that you called want to do it? It just wasn’t worth their time or…

Connor Gross (06:52):

I think it wasn’t worth a time or they charge a crazy amount to install each door. Like they would charge a thousand dollars per door installation. I’m like, “Okay, I’m not going to pay 12 grand just for installation.” Plus, I think we ended up spending six grand on the doors or something like that. So I was like, “It’s not worth the time.”

Robert Leonard (07:10):

And then Leo comes and does it for what? In two hours at 12 grand in two hours?

Connor Gross (07:15):

Dude, much less than that. Yeah, we got-

Robert Leonard (07:17):

Right, but if you had paid the 12 grand, it would’ve been like, “Oh my God, I just paid 12 grand for two hours worth of work.”

Connor Gross (07:22):

Exactly. Meanwhile, now we got the doors for half off because of his connection and they’re like his installation costs weren’t crazy and now I’m like, cool, this whole thing cost me like, I want to say doors and installation together cost five grand. And so I was like, “This is a huge win for us.” The perfect part is now we have all of these new units that are filled up now through the spring of season that we’re making money off of which is sweet.

Robert Leonard (07:44):

So did you fly into Dallas just to do that? I know you’re always all over the place, staying in different places. Did you happen to be in the Dallas area at the time or did you have to fly in for that?

Connor Gross (07:53):

So when we first bought that property for the first couple months we were living down in Austin and so it was a lot of three hour drives back and forth. And so frequently we like every other week we would drive up to Dallas for a three or four day stint and then just drive back down to Austin. And so it was probably the first three or four months that we were just on site a lot. Now we’ve actually gotten a lot better with these two properties that we just bought and being able to manage a lot of the stuff remotely. Still it stresses us out a little bit, but we’re getting more comfortable with it.

Robert Leonard (08:21):

Did I read correctly? Did you buy that property in all cash?

Connor Gross (08:24):

Yeah.

Robert Leonard (08:26):

Are you planning on putting debt on that to get your capital back out in the near future?

Connor Gross (08:31):

Oh, yeah. And actually, I’ll share this story because it’s definitely the not fun side of this part, but our expectation was going in. So we bought the first and second property, all cash. Third one we finally used some kind of financing and thank God we did because we just started run out of money, but we basically bought it all cash. And now we’re actually in contact about refinancing a lot of this stuff with these banks. And what I’m realizing is banks have just really strict criteria on refinancing. I’m like, “You guys would finance this if I was buying it for the first time, but you’re not willing to go and give me my money back if I’m trying to refinance.” So just yesterday, actually we got a notice from one of the banks that we thought were going to be able to refinance both with.

Connor Gross (09:08):

They said that they wouldn’t refinance this one because A, we don’t have enough experience in the field. And I was like, “All right, I don’t know if that’s a super relevant reason. We just showed we more than doubled the revenue and we’re trying to do this at a couple properties.” So I was like, “Okay, dumb reason.” And the second one was because we haven’t owned the property long enough. And I’m like, “So if I own this for another six months, will you do it?” It is very weird and vague criteria. My understanding is if after talked to the mortgage broker too, he basically said if I hold onto this for another like eight months, I should be able to refinance and pull all of my money out of both of those first two properties but for now I kind of just have to sit tight. So my response is basically like, okay, I’m going to approach 20 more banks and see if anyone else will do this. But yeah, the plan is to pull the money back out.

Robert Leonard (09:53):

I was just going to say, “Keep calling banks” because there’s just like you found with Leo is as long as you go to these smaller banks, if you just call Bank of America, Chase, they’re all going to be the same. But if you talk to these smaller banks, you’re going to find that they’re going to have all these different reasons or programs and one might be willing to do it. I mean, you just mentioned two that had two different reasons. So you might find one someday that has no reason, right?

Connor Gross (10:12):

Right. That’s my exact thought. And also man, the nice part is theoretically you can, I had a tweet about this other day where like net worth is down because anyone can say their property’s worth something even when it’s not worth that based on how you value it in the cap rates and whatever. But like, okay, this Dallas property, with the fact that we’re going to maybe potentially be doing 10 grand a month on it as early as next month or the month after, let’s then assume $120,000 a year, let’s assume, let’s say 70% margins on that. So rough math on that I think comes out to $84,000 and then just conservative they call that a 10 cap, it’s $840,000. You just give me a 50% LTV, give me a 50% LTV and I’ll go home because that’s all of my money back. So I think banks kind of get caught up with that purchase price number or it’s like, wait, they bought it for 400,000 cash and they want all of their money back. It’s like, it’s not how you should be thinking about it.

Robert Leonard (11:04):

I was just going to ask you, has all of the cash that you’ve now generated because of the increased rental income and just all the other stuff you’ve done to the property, has that doubled the property in value? You’ve doubled the revenue. So went from 4,700 to about 10 grand. So have you seen it go about double in value?

Connor Gross (11:20):

When you state have I seen it like have I gotten it appraised?

Robert Leonard (11:22):

Are you confident that you’ll be able to get about you think that’s about what it’s worth now?

Connor Gross (11:27):

I would argue that it’s worth a lot more, yeah. I think that’s typically with commercial real estate, you’ll value it based off cap rates in a multiple of EBITDA, right? And net income. So in my opinion, if we grew the revenue by, I don’t know whether math comes out to on 4,000 to 10,000, I think it’s like, would it be 150% growth or something like that? If we grew up by that, I would assume the value goes up linearly as well. So yeah, I would argue that it’s worth a hell of a lot more now and that’s kind of why I’ve been getting really obsessed with a lot of these value add equity equation deals because you see with cap rates and whatnot, you’re able to go and increase the value of a property so much where if it’s at trading at a 10 cap and you increase it by $1 in the NOI, now that property’s worth $10 more, you know what I mean? It’s a pretty powerful multiplier with real estate.

Robert Leonard (12:12):

Is that property in Dallas proper or is it in a smaller city outside?

Connor Gross (12:17):

Oh no, sorry. I keep on calling Dallas because I don’t think anyone would recognize the suburb. It’s just outside of Dallas. It’s a 15 minute drive from downtown.

Robert Leonard (12:25):

How big is the city?

Connor Gross (12:27):

Like 40, 50,000 people, I want to say.

Robert Leonard (12:30):

How much due diligence did you do on that city before you bought that property?

Connor Gross (12:35):

None and I know that’s the totally the wrong answer. Did we not talk in the last podcast about what it went from when we found the deal to when we closed it?

Robert Leonard (12:44):

I believe you had it semi under contract. You had to fly down there and the guy kind of pulled the rug out from under you, something along those lines, right?

Connor Gross (12:52):

Yeah, basically the long and short of it’s like we found it. And then from the day we found it to the day that money was sent and we closed was seven days so it was unreasonably quick. So in terms of the actual city itself that we’re in, we didn’t do that much diligence, but we were very confident with the City of Dallas and just kind of assumed that being in the general vicinity of that city, we’re very confident in like Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, really the whole Texas market as a whole for being able to kind of grow. And so the more I look into the city, like do I love it is my favorite city in the world that we’re in? No, not really. But do I still feel confident in our decision based on being close to Dallas and being able to have some of the tailwinds that come from Dallas growth? Yeah, I still feel really good about it.

Robert Leonard (13:37):

I’m glad you mentioned your experience with financing. Because you had mentioned you bought the first two properties with cash and then you mentioned you were going to finance the third. And I was like, oh I wonder what his experience has been. Because I know financing is just a nightmare compared to just buying something with cash. So how much did you buy the first one for? It was about 400,000, right?

Connor Gross (13:55):

Yeah, after all the fees and prepaid rents and stuff, I think the total came to 393.

Robert Leonard (14:00):

And so I think people listening are going to know that you’re relatively young. They’re going to want to know how did you come up with almost $400,000 to buy this in cash?

Connor Gross (14:09):

Yeah, I had an e-commerce business in college that I sold and then got really lucky with the tailwinds of COVID that a lot of when we sold the business was a month or two before COVID. I was sitting on a pile of cash based on that sale and basically the entire market, everything from stocks to crypto, whatever, it all crashed at once. And I was like, “Hey, I’m not trying to time the market, but this seems like a decent time to start buying stuff.” So I started buying things and everything started going up and now I’m at the point where most of my net worth or whatever you want to call it, honestly is now mostly in these buildings and I’m starting to liquidate more stuff that is out of my control of like I’m not as big into crypto as I was six months ago. I’m not as big into stocks and equities and all that.

Connor Gross (14:50):

So most all the cash and stuff like that I’ve been using to buy these deals and buy these businesses with has either come a result of current businesses that I’m running or has come a result of the business that I sold back in college.

Robert Leonard (15:01):

Why aren’t you into equities and crypto as much as you used to be?

Connor Gross (15:05):

For me, dude, it’s just not as fun. And it’s a couple things, right. I guess the big thing is honestly that I want to have more control over things, right? Like don’t get me wrong. Still think crypto’s probably got a big future ahead of it, but I can sit here for the last two years and just open the Coinbase app and look, let me like there’s Bitcoin, but I’m not influencing that, I’m not doing anything there. And so for me I would rather say, Hey, can I buy this building? And because of my operations and business and all of that kind of stuff, can I go and make this cash flowing and make it bigger, more profitable, better run and then maybe sell it for double, triple my money in a year or two? That is way more fun for me.

Connor Gross (15:44):

And I think the other thing is like, I still have, I think you use an M1 Finance account and I’ll still put a little bit of money into that on a monthly basis just because I feel like from my parents’ standpoint, they’re like, “Please just start doing some investing from a retirement standpoint.” And think about it because I’m super against the like 401ks and all of that, rather taking most of my money now and use it to buy more businesses because it’s way more fun for me, but I’ll still do a little bit of that. But for the most part, like every dollar I make that’s not being spent on my personal life or going into an S&P index fund is going into trying to buy more businesses or trying to buy more real estate.

Robert Leonard (16:17):

So outside of just the asset classes of equities, crypto and real estate, I know you do e-commerce businesses as well. How do you think about real estate versus e-commerce businesses? Do you like one better than the other? Can you see yourself getting away from e-commerce and more into just real estate because you like it that much?

Connor Gross (16:32):

No, I think I need both honestly and this is just my personality. So I think anyone listening to this and trying to decide their own path, think about what you really like. From my standpoint, I think I really enjoy the real estate side of things because I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re competing against and big caveat here, there are some really smart plays in real estate, but on the large of it, you’re competing, it’s sometimes not the most sophisticated operators, especially in the storage world. And so what I really like about that is these things are predictable, there’s a lot of institutional players in the space that makes it easy to go and get debt on things like this. You know, you’re competing against the mas and pas of the world who are running these like small self-storage facilities.

Connor Gross (17:10):

And what I like is if you just use a little bit of tech and a little bit of automation, you’re light years ahead. So that’s what I really like about the real estate side. It’s predictable, it’s kind of boring, but like it works. And you can take down some pretty big deals and make some serious money with it without having to totally invent some crazy product to do some crazy marketing campaign. So that’s what I like about that. With the e-commerce stuff, I really like it because I just know that I personally have a creative muscle I like the flex a lot. And in the real estate world, I feel like that can often get lost. Don’t come around like you can always do some creative marketing stuff to find off market deals.

Connor Gross (17:41):

You can always go and do creative financing to structure things that both benefit you and the seller of the property. But for the most part it’s pretty cut and dry whereas like e-commerce I can create some sexy brand campaign for an upcoming holiday or I can do these cool marketing funnels. And what I also like about e-commerce is that it’s incredibly direct. With real estate you’re in a deals business. And so you maybe have, I guess it totally depends on your scale, right? But at a smaller scale, you’ll have a couple [ad 00:18:06] bats a year of like I bought three properties this year, four properties this year.

Connor Gross (18:08):

With an e-commerce standpoint, I’d be like, I actually think I know a new way to position this product. What if I sent out an email blast this tagline or launch this ad campaign and use this as the offer and you’ll know in two days whether or not that worked and that for me is really fun. So I think I sometimes overdo it on load up a little bit, too much work on my plate, but I think I would rather have a little bit too much work than just do one thing and get stuck doing that same thing the whole time.

Robert Leonard (18:33):

What are you doing in the e-commerce space right now? I remember last time we talked, you were doing cars and boats I believe something in that realm. Are you still doing that? And if not, what are you working on?

Connor Gross (18:43):

Yeah, same realm. And I sold one of the last ones a month or two ago. Basically that’s a little niche site that we had on the side. But no, right now it’s still primarily the car, boat space, just doing different things there that can basically scale up. What I like about it is that we’re selling a lot of different products to both of those markets. And what I also like is that they often overlap a lot. So you can cross sell between a couple different brands.

Robert Leonard (19:06):

Can you give us examples of the type of products that you’re selling?

Connor Gross (19:10):

Oh, totally. Yeah. So like, like the company’s called Respoke Collection, R-E-S-P-O-K-E Collection. And we’ll do like custom automotive artwork and things like that. And so it’ll be like total custom designs where like, if you’re really into your car, your boat, we can do a custom portrait or something like that of it. That makes a pretty good father’s day gift, things like that.

Robert Leonard (19:27):

How do you get those made?

Connor Gross (19:29):

Right now, we pretty much work with a couple 3PL’s throughout the U.S. and then also some like U.S. based designers. So how it works is you’ll go, you’ll submit a photo of your car, we’ll go and make a graphic rendering of it. And then like, it makes a great gift for your garage and things like that. And they’ll print it on like canvas or frame prints or whatever.

Robert Leonard (19:46):

And so you’re not doing any of the fulfillment, you’re really kind of just the front end marketing engine of it.

Connor Gross (19:50):

A 100%, yeah. Trust me that my friends would phone me all the time where they’re like, “Connor’s just out here drawing cars.” No, it’s a lot more of, we do the ads and email blasts and things like that. And then we work with different partners to kind of go and fulfill the actual products.

Robert Leonard (20:04):

What are you finding that works for marketing? If you’re not building a personal brand, which I’d follow you on Twitter. So you’re not really building a personal brand in the sense of like, “Hey, I’m a car expert, follow me for all this car stuff.” And then driving those people to this e-commerce site, it’s more organic just through the branding of the e-commerce site. So I’m curious, what are you finding that works for that?

Connor Gross (20:23):

For that, so the best things honestly have been partnerships and one small note before getting to that too, I do think that there’s a lot of people who build a personal brand with the intent to sell something. And from my standpoint, almost nobody who pays me money today comes as a result of me posting stuff on Twitter or posting stuff on my own podcast, whatever. Those are all like they are buying from the company and they don’t even know I exist kind of thing. And I actually genuinely like it a lot more that way. I have friends who will do the opposite and they make all of their money based off their name, their image, their likeness, things like that. And I’m not saying there’s one way that’s right or wrong, I just personally prefer it my way, because now it’s like, I know that when things are working, they’re working as a result of the brand not because Connor said something and I kind of like the separation of that.

Connor Gross (21:05):

In terms of what I personally find working a lot today with e-commerce marketing, I think what a lot of people talk about right now is Facebook’s getting really hard. All of these paid media ad platforms getting really hard. It’s much harder than it is in 2015. That’s just a fact. But the reality is too like Facebook, Google, even at TikTok, a lot of people are seeing it, have the best ad engines that we’ve seen in our lifetimes or I’ll speak personally, my lifetime turning 25 next week. And so from my standpoint, it’s still consistently spending a lot on paid media, but the bigger thing there as well too is like if you want to get more creative, people are trying to buy more from a community focused brand these days.

Connor Gross (21:42):

And so the brands that I see that are crushing it that go beyond just like the, we spend money on Facebook and Google and we get a serious amount in revenue. They’re the companies that are able to go and say, “Wait, let’s also go and start a YouTube channel and make a ton of content in that space. Or let’s go and keep all of these different influencers on retainer, pay them $500 a month and they’ll make a ton of content for us. And as a result then like they’ll post it on their TikTok, it’ll go viral organically. Like I’m chatting with a lot of e-commerce operators who basically just have these influencers on retainer and they know how culture works and so they’re getting content made consistently. And that’s the reason why you have like these million dollar brands from like, is it Khloe or one of the Kardashians has their own makeup brand, right? Because people follow their content. And the makeup’s probably not better than any other makeup that you’re finding on the shelf in CVS, but you know their content and you trust that brand and that you’re willing to go and buy from it because they make a ton of content.

Robert Leonard (22:32):

What you just described about the content pieces, I think exactly why people do the personal brands because then it’s easy to take that and then sell whatever they want to sell.

Connor Gross (22:41):

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yep, I completely agree. It’s the trust element.

Robert Leonard (22:45):

But I tend to agree with you in the sense that I’d rather sell something under a business brand than under my own personal brand. Mostly just because I think if I were to ever start a business like that, I’d want to sell it at some point and it’s much harder to sell it when it’s tied to you personally than it is if it’s just a brand.

Connor Gross (23:00):

That’s a great reason. I also think the reason I personally enjoy it more is, I’m not saying that this is the case for a lot of people, but I always feel like when there’s somebody who’s selling something and it comes as a result of their personal brands, sometimes I feel like it can be a little disingenuous where it’s like are they talking to me because, would they just want to have a genuine conversation or is there an angle at the end of this? I just find that when you totally separate the two, you know that every conversation that you’re having they’re on after is very genuine and organic, there’s no edge.

Robert Leonard (23:31):

Yeah, I completely agree. And a lot of people that build personal brands often sell only the certain types of products like coaching online courses, eBooks, things like that. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I have a couple of those myself. Like I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but at the same time, I think if you want to build a real e-commerce business, it’s tough to do with just a personal brand, at least the way most people do it right now.

Connor Gross (23:50):

Totally agree. Also on all their coaching and course stuff. This is three years ago if you asked me to buy a $300 course from somebody who’s a great real estate investor, I’d be like, ah, it seems like a scam. Meanwhile, I’m paying a quarter of a million dollars to go to college that teaches me nothing. So definitely there’s two sides to that coin. Now I think if you asked me, I’ve taken more courses and bought digital products from people in the space that I really do trust. And I’m like, okay, I spent $300, but I also just saved three months of time because I immediately know how this works now. So I’m actually way more into it than I was before. But I just don’t know if it’s for me personally in terms of like starting and launching one.

Robert Leonard (24:27):

What are some of those resources you’ve bought that you found valuable?

Connor Gross (24:30):

The one that I’m specifically thinking of is Steph Smith. She has two books called Doing Content Right. And Doing Time Right, I think, on productivity and creating content. And then the other one that I bought was from Daniel Vassallo kind of talking about the nuances of how to go and grow and scale up your Twitter following. Both of those I found to be really valuable.

Robert Leonard (24:51):

I’m surprised you mentioned those two. I’m actually familiar with the Steph Smith one. I’m not with the second one, but regardless, I’m surprised that you mentioned those because they’re all about growing content and building your audience. And we just talked about how that’s not something you’re trying to really do for a business perspective. So I’m curious why you pick those and why you want to grow your audience?

Connor Gross (25:09):

For what it’s worth, I think they apply beyond the personal side of things too. Like I’ve taken a lot of that kind of stuff and I’ve applied it to different businesses and whatnot where like now I know a little bit better on how to actually go and rank for things in SEO to go and optimize some of the e-commerce brands we have. And also specifically on the personal brand side, I guess the easiest way to describe it is building a personal brand on any of these social platforms is the biggest indirect ROI you’ll ever see period like point blank. What I mean by that is let’s take it back to the e-commerce stuff for an example, I spend $1 on Facebook. Facebook gives me $2 and 40 cents back, right? So that is a super attributable ROI. It’s why marketers are getting lazy these days because they can see it being like very cut and dry.

Connor Gross (25:49):

And they think this is good marketing, spend $1, get $2 and 40 cents back. What they don’t see are the long tail impacts of how to go and scroll brand. I was doing actually another podcast a month ago and I told the guy, I said, “Listen, if I wanted to, for one of my brands, I could go and make a hundred thousand dollars in the next 10 days. The way I would do it is I would send two emails a day to the next 10 days.” And on the surface, on paper, you’re like, Great. This is an amazing ROI. Let’s keep on doing this. What you’re not realizing is you’re pissing off thousands of people by just consistently going and spamming their inbox every single day. But I could do it. It would work. It would suck for the long term, but it would work. When I say that social media has an indirect ROI, I mean that when I start looking at some of these deals that I’ve done or some of the partnerships that I’ve made and some of the conversations I’ve had, a lot of them have actually been influenced by advice that was given to me from some of the people that I’m meeting on social and from some of the tactics that they’ll go and share with me. And you don’t realize it at the time, you’re like, it’s not like great making this one tweet. And now I earned $17. No it’s like made this one tweet, got me into this Facebook group, met two people from that Facebook group. One of the guys introduced me to this other buddy and now he’s investing in my next deal. That’s what I mean by it’s super indirect and not really attributable, but it, hands down, has a crazy long tail effect.

Robert Leonard (27:05):

You and me met on social media.

Connor Gross (27:08):

Yeah. And I will say as well, anyone listening to this right now, I’ve been on a bunch of podcasts. I host a bunch of podcasts. Like this is also what that podcast. I think I message you afterwards. I was like, “More people have reached out to me as a result of this podcast and any other podcast I’ve been on, which has been pretty cool.”

Robert Leonard (27:22):

Yeah, kudos to everybody that’s listening. Connor did text me or tweeted at me after and did say that. So kudos to everybody that’s listening. When you were going to get started into real estate, what resources did you use to learn? Why did you decide on self-storage? What resource did you use at point view to that direction? Was it Nick Huber on Twitter? What got you there? And then when you decided on self-storage, how did you even learn about it before you did it?

Connor Gross (27:43):

Yeah, so a lot of the stuff wasn’t [accrued 00:27:46] Twitter. So the way we started was we basically sat down and this my partner Gio and I and we were like, we want to do real estate. Cool. What do we want to do in real estate? Like what asset class, what location, whatever. And we basically started thinking, where should we go and invest? I think we started geographically first more than anything. And neither of us were super tied to a state, but we started doing a bunch of criteria around like, okay, we don’t want to be in a place that’s crazy declining growth. We actually, this is a weird metric, and I hope it doesn’t offend anyone, but we totally wrote off any Democratic states just from day one. We were like, we’re not going to go ahead and invest there. We’re going to go in all Republican states. Because like-

Robert Leonard (28:20):

The reason is because it’s landlord friendly in Republican states, not really within the political piece, it’s just the landlord-tenant friendly laws.

Connor Gross (28:27):

Right, exactly. Yep. That’s exactly right. So we basically just cut out like, all right, all blue states are off the table. Any place that is red, but like not growing is off the table. And so it basically gave us 17 states. And if you actually look at it, they’re like some of the most popular states. So it’s like this isn’t rocket sciences here. It’s like Florida, Texas, Nevada, South Carolina, all those states that are blowing up anyway, that was where we were kind of looking. And so we narrow it down to that and we’re like, “All right, cool. Here’s out of all of these, do we have just a personal preference?” And it really kind of mostly came down to Texas and Florida. I’ve done a deal of Florida yet, but not opposed to it. So once we did that, we were like, okay, now what asset class do we want to go into?

Connor Gross (29:01):

And we dabbled in everything from the mobile home parks to contractor base, to single family, like everything short term rentals. And the two that we decided that would probably be the easiest part throughout is self-storage and apartment buildings, not even necessarily duplexes, like apartment buildings more so. And then the more research we did into it, like I bought, what was the book? I want to say it’s called Multifamily Millionaire. I think that’s the book, I might be wrong. So I bought that and read it. I found that really interesting. I read a bunch of like the [burn 00:29:29] books from BiggerPockets. And then I also read the best self- storage book out there’s, I want to say it’s called like Growing Wealth through self-storage or it’s the most generic name possible for one of these real estate books. So I bought that and I think what it came down to is like, we got somewhat lucky in terms of finding the deal, but why we picked self-storage over apartment buildings, is it came down to do we want to be responsible for where somebody is living 365 days out of the year?

Connor Gross (29:51):

Or do we want to be responsible for securing somebody’s old couch that they don’t have in their place right now. And we just determine like we’d rather be responsible for a couch, not human lives. We don’t want to get those calls that your pipes are broken and you want some new paint job done in your house. When we go into these properties, we are adding lights, cameras, maybe a new fence, new coat of paint, something, nothing crazy. And people are thrilled about it. Whereas you can never do enough to make somebody happy enough with their apartment, they’re always going to want more. So basically filtered down by geography, went to self-storage and we’re like, “Let’s just do Texas, because we’re going to be in Austin for a little bit.” And we liked the market. And that was kind of like basically how we started getting into where we’re going to be focusing where our minds at.

Robert Leonard (30:32):

I love how you explain that because a lot of people will pick their asset class in real estate by how much money they can make. They’re like, “Oh, I’ll make way more money in short term rentals than on long term rental so I’m going to go there or whatever the case is. Or a lot of people are going into self-storage right now because of the money piece, they see people making a lot of money there. So a lot of people are heading into that asset class, but you didn’t mention like, “Oh, we picked this because I know I can make the most money here.” You aligned it with the type of lifestyle you want. You know that you don’t want to be responsible for these people’s living situation and so you pick something that doesn’t apply to that. And I think that’s a really good way to think about it and not what a lot of people, especially newer investors are doing.

Connor Gross (31:07):

Yeah, I think one more note on the money piece, because owners are doing the selfish for the money too which is a factor. The one other piece is the difference between institutional investors between those two asset classes that I was describing is night and day. So when I’m going, like let’s say we want to buy an apartment building, we would have to compete against people with a lot of money because a lot of people want to buy apartment buildings, right? There’s very few people who own one apartment building. If you’re buying apartment buildings, you have a lot and you’re trying to build out a portfolio, compare that to self-storage. And I know it’s a really hot asset class in the last three or four years, but 90% or so of the operators in self-storage are mom-and-pop businesses. And so they actually do only own one. And so you’re typically dealing with maybe like a less sophisticated seller. You’re not competing against as many people when you’re going and try to buy these properties. So it’s just like a different competitive landscape as well.

Robert Leonard (31:58):

I saw you posted a picture on Twitter. It was a before and after picture of some exterior painting that you did on one of the self-storage facilities that you own. Was that your first one in Dallas or was that your second or third one that you did?

Connor Gross (32:08):

That was the second one. We bought it over in Midlands, very big oil town in Texas. So I’m learning a lot about West Texas, but yeah. What did you think about the paint?

Robert Leonard (32:18):

It looks awesome. So I wanted to ask you, we mentioned this before we started recording the show, but I’m looking at some self-storage stuff and I was looking at a car wash too and I think it’ll be similar in terms of paint. I was curious how much did it cost to paint a self-storage facility?

Connor Gross (32:31):

That was 20 grand. So it was, I think the total is like, I want to say 21,000 square feet. I forget the linear, they measured all based on linear square feet, but yeah, it cost about 20 grand and that also included… Like the big thing with paint is like how they prep it. So the guys were out there, the whole project took three and a half weeks. I want to say the first two weeks was just prepping. So it’s pressure washing down the facility, scraping off flakes of things like filling in cracks with caulk and whatnot. And then the paint itself only took like a week. So it was a decent investment, but like, it looks so much better compared to what it looked before. If anyone wants to check it out, just go tweeted it somewhere at, see underscore grow. And it’s literally went from puke yellow to not puke, like gray and blue. It just looks decent now.

Robert Leonard (33:16):

I’ll put a link to the photo in your tweet, in the show notes for anybody that’s interested in checking it out. But yeah, it looks like an entirely new facility basically. And I’ve had my personal residence painted a few times and I’d leave in the morning when the painter gets there and I’d come back and it looks like he has nothing done. And I’m like, “What the heck is he doing all day?” But what he’s doing is prepping. He’s prepping the walls, he’s doing what they call cutting. They’re getting all their lines set in. It looks like he’s basically done nothing. And then I’ll come back from dinner like two hours later and everything’s done and I’m like, “You just went…” It’s so exponential. They go from nothing to everything done so fast.

Connor Gross (33:49):

Yeah, exactly. It’s all in the prep. I will say as well anyone who’s in the process of renovating any property facility they bought, the biggest learning that I’ve had in this entire ordeal is any references, that’s gold, but also just try to get as many quotes as humanly possible. So I told you it costs 20 grand. The reason I went with these guys is because the previous property manager really vouched for him and said that he’s a really good guy. And I’ve met him a couple times, had a phone call, really liked him. But as we were getting quotes, we got nine quotes on this paint job. The quotes ranged from $14,000 to $34,000 so pretty drastic range. We ended up going with the guys in the middle because they had great references and whatnot. And I’ve also learned the hard way to just not always choose the cheapest thing every time. But yeah, I would definitely say get quotes because if you get one quote and it’s coming back at $34,000, you’re like, “I guess this is the only thing that we can do.” You know?

Robert Leonard (34:38):

Did you get those quotes before you purchased the property or was this afterwards?

Connor Gross (34:41):

Oh man. Okay. This is actually a pretty good story. So we all, before we purchased, like the closing got extended by like an actually seven days on this property. And so not only did we get the quotes before, we agreed and told them to get started before we even started closing and we didn’t totally even check in on that with the previous owners, we were just like, “Nah man, go ahead and get started.” Which in hindsight we should have communicated way better. So the downside is if anyone owns a self-storage facility and then in the process of getting all of their units pressure washed, make sure you’re using tape or sealant on the units because on day one of them going around, we got a phone call from the previous owner like, “Hey, are you guys pressure washing the facility?”

Connor Gross (35:20):

And we’re like, “Oh yeah, just wanted to get an early start we know we’re closing in two days. So wanted to get a jump on this thing.” And he is like, “Yeah, our biggest customer just called saying that you flooded their unit.” And I was like, “Oh, no.” So the car dealership down the block, he has like five or six units with us and basically said that like we flooded their unit because it went through one of the back units or whatever. So we took care of that. Like we had a call like we you’re comping them and stuff like that we’re taking care of it but yeah, as a result, it basically led to like, we got started a week earlier, which meant like that was great because now we can start marketing this facility and filling it up more as like this brand new renovated unit and facility. But yeah, when we first started, I was like, “How did this possibly happen, day one?”

Robert Leonard (36:02):

So was that painter not experienced with self-storage? Like should you have maybe picked somebody that had a little bit more experience? Should they have known that like, “Hey, this might get into the unit?” Or was it an issue with the property itself?

Connor Gross (36:14):

I just think, no, I didn’t really fault him. You know, he was a cool guy and understandable, these things happened. He also wasn’t even aiming at the cracks either it’s just pressure washing so that stuff kind of just slips through and it happens. We fixed it for the rest of them. It’s good to know and it’s definitely something that I’ll keep in mind anytime I hire someone in the future. But it’s tough to find a very niche painters, just paint self- storage facilities. I would imagine most people don’t deal with overhead garage doors that often.

Robert Leonard (36:38):

Did you build in the quote for this painting into your acquisition price and kind of your business plan before you bought it?

Connor Gross (36:44):

Yeah, we’re thinking it’s going to be like 50 K, CAPEX something like that. So in my mind, we bought the second facility, a 600,000 estimated about 50 K, CAPEX. What that basically looks like, rough math is what do we spend so far? We spend, it’s going to be 20 grand for the paint, five grand for all new lights, another five grand for all new cameras and that includes installation too. So that’s 30 grand, about 15,000 for an installation and automatic gate and about 5,000 for landscaping. And so far, we’re pretty much on the money for all of that so far. Trying to think if anything ran over that we weren’t expecting. Not really, like we didn’t even have to replace a bunch of doors or anything like the structural part was in pretty good shape. They just got a new roof. So once we spend that 50 grand, it should be pretty easy after that. The last big things are, we just finished the landscaping last big thing is really just the gate now.

Robert Leonard (37:29):

You mentioned that the previous property manager kind of vouched for the painter. So are you guys self-managing all of these self-storage facilities now?

Connor Gross (37:37):

So we have a call center that we use who goes and basically handles all of the inbound tenants. We have an in house virtual assistant who’s based over in the Philippines and she basically coordinates any kind of boots on the ground operations that need to go and be taken care of. And then we’ll have a boots on the ground higher at every property where they’ll go by once a week and they’ll basically say, these four units need to be turned over, verify that these tenants have locks on their unit. Maybe like somebody missed a payment. Okay. Put an over-lock on that unit. So there’s three roles of customer interaction, facilitation between customer interaction and boots on the ground and the actual boots on the ground person. So right now we’re doing pretty much all the management in house with those three resources.

Robert Leonard (38:18):

How did you find the boots on the ground person?

Connor Gross (38:20):

Oh man, that one’s been tough. So the third property, most of the time we try to default to who the previous owner was using. We’ve gotten kind of burn on that once or twice now at this point. So right now the third property, we’re still using their boots on the ground burst and they’re great and we love working with them. Those first two properties, I ended up just going back to Craigslist and just posting Craigslist ads and trying to post in like Facebook groups and things like, it’s tough because I’m paying somebody for like, I’m not hiring a full-time job. So you can’t post all around hiring for can you be available for five hours a week? And in reality, I’m like, “I’ll pay you every week for five hours a week” In reality’s going to take like two or three hours a week. So that part’s kind of tough because it’s like such a flex thing. And so it’s been a lot of Craigslist interviews, calls, references, things like that.

Robert Leonard (39:01):

You should go on like Care.com or Thumbtack or something like that and look for stay at home moms.I know there’s probably a ton that would easily do that and they’re probably relatively affordable and they have the flexibility most importantly.

Connor Gross (39:14):

Yeah, that’s a super good idea and yeah, because it’s not crazy work either. I’m not like, if somebody moves out and leaves all of their stuff behind, like whoever I hire, isn’t the one going to be responsible for that we’ll call like a trash removal person anyway. So that’s really the thing, all the units then DaVinci Lock on top and they’re off to the races. So yeah, I definitely, that’s a good idea. I got to look into that.

Robert Leonard (39:34):

How many units do you guys have now? Like what are your facilities would look like? How many are at each facility?

Connor Gross (39:40):

So right now it’s basically we have 279. The first facility that we bought has 68, the second facility we bought has 117 and the third facility we bought has 94.

Robert Leonard (39:52):

Now knowing what you know now, would you not go lower than any number? Like if you had to do it again, would you not buy the 68 now that you’ve done roughly a hundred or would you still go lower than 68? What if somebody’s listening to this, they want to buy a self-storage facility maybe they don’t have enough capital to buy something that’s 50 or a hundred units, but maybe they get 25 unit, little self-storage facility. Is that something that’s even worthwhile or should they just wait till they can do something bigger?

Connor Gross (40:15):

Definitely not 25. Yes, 68 is small, but it’s in a decent market with decent rent. So we’re able to make it work. I for sure would not go anything lower than that in the future. And I’ll be honest, I don’t regret it at all. Because I think if I bought something bigger, I would’ve been way more nervous and anxious the whole time. And this was good because a good value idea, whatever. You just have to recognize that the smaller you go, the smaller your margin becomes because at the end of the day, whether you’re running a 300 unit facility, a 500 unit facility or like a hundred unit facility, they pretty much all have roughly the same cost. Obviously the property taxes are different and there’s probably some different insurance costs, whatever. But like they’re all still going to go and need some kind of boots on the ground higher.

Connor Gross (40:54):

They’re all going to need some kind of CAPEX. It’s mostly the same cost throughout. The difference is that with the bigger facilities, you have a lot more revenue coming in to go and offset some of those costs and so your margin increases. I’d say if it’s your first real estate deal and you’ve never done anything else, I really think that 68 unit facility we bought that was 10,000 square feet. I think that was a great first deal, I’m really happy with it. Now ideally we’re not doing anything that’s a less than 25,000 square feet is the threshold that I’m realizing is like, it’s just more worth the squeeze.

Robert Leonard (41:25):

I found a very small car wash. I’m interested in car washes too. And only mostly the self bay, not the really drive through automated and it’s really cheap, but it’s in a really small town and I’m just like, I don’t know if the squeeze is worth it. I just don’t know if it’s going to take all my time and it’s going to be actually worth what it gets out of it. And so I’m kind of thinking the same thing with this self- storage asset class.

Connor Gross (41:45):

How much would it make?

Robert Leonard (41:48):

So it would make like, so it’s only going to cost 60 grand total, the acquisition costs. And it would make like…

Connor Gross (41:53):

Are you seller financing? Are you seeing debt or like an SBA loan or?

Robert Leonard (41:56):

You could do, there are debt options for it. You could do an SBA loan or it’s only 60,000. So I could just pay cash and it would make, right now it makes $4,700 profit a year. But I think I could get that to 10 grandish. So, but then the problem is, I don’t know if I could sell it. It’s in such a small town. It’s like, who’s going to buy it. It’s been on the market for like three years right now.

Connor Gross (42:16):

Okay. So my original question was like, I didn’t know if the whole acquisition costs 60 grand-

Robert Leonard (42:23):

60.

Connor Gross (42:23):

Or if that was your down payment.

Robert Leonard (42:24):

No 60.

Connor Gross (42:26):

Yeah. That’s not worth it. Like the other thing that nobody talks about with car washes, because everyone’s talking about car washes and Laundromats and all that kind of stuff. Now car washes have 10,000 moving parts. Like things break there every single day of the week.

Robert Leonard (42:38):

Even the self bay ones?

Connor Gross (42:39):

My dad owned a self bay one. One of my buddies, parents owns a self bay one stuff breaks all the time. I understand that the tunnels you go through have more moving parts, but it’s all about the water hookups and where that all comes from. And they are always breaking, you’ll have a pump break or whatever. So you’re going to have to hire a handyman who lives in that area who’s able to go in and know what to fix and when to fix. The other thing that like, that’s just the downside. I would probably not do it if I were you. It just seems like it’s going to be more headache than it is fun. The upside of it would potentially be the fact that there is a lot of people rolling up car washes and moving them over to subscription models where instead of paying for like $10 for one wash, you get somebody on like $19 a month and they get limited washes because the marginal cost is so little.

Connor Gross (43:20):

So could be a cool idea. But in this specific example, it’s like you can get a return on your money. I just think that you’d probably be if you have to spend all like some time of your time on that and some time of your time trying to find ways to buy more RVs or buy more rental properties, I think you’ll get way more enjoyment, fulfillment and money out of the latter.

Robert Leonard (43:41):

Yeah, I agree. That was the exact kind of thought process that I went through. I was like, I can rent my RV for two or three weeks and make more money than that car wash will make in the entire year and my big concern. So I just don’t think that the juice is worth the squeeze, but also my biggest concern was I just don’t think I’d be able to sell it. Even if I made it worth on a, we talked about the valuations and cap rates and NOI, even if I made the NOI significantly higher, kept the cap rate steady and double or tripled the value. Nobody’s buying it at 60,000 in this town. Definitely nobody’s going to buy it for 180,000, you know?

Connor Gross (44:11):

So maybe like and is there additional land to kind of like do stuff on?

Robert Leonard (44:16):

So I thought about that. I was like, oh, maybe I added like a little self-storage, things like that. There’s not really enough land for that. And the town is really, really, really small. Like 2000 was the population [inaudible 00:44:28]

Connor Gross (44:27):

All right, this is actually decent transition as well. The third property that we bought the town is like 1800 people. And we’re like, “Oh my God, we’re so nervous to do this. Because that’s just not enough people for a 94 unit facility.” But the perk is next to a town that’s significantly larger. And that town that it’s next to is also a very big lake and boating community. And so they need space to store, their RVs or their boats or their jet ski, toys and all that kind of stuff. And so surprisingly the call volume has been as high at this one because there’s no competition in the area either. It’s been as high as this one as it has in the Dallas one, despite being a tiny little town.

Connor Gross (45:02):

So, yeah. All in all, but this one as well, the third deal, we just kind of started driving revenue a little bit on that one and that one should probably net let’s call it like 60K a year at the bottom of it all. So it’s still a good deal. And it’s like, I’m fine with a few headaches for 60 grand a year. As of right now, maybe we’ll go and sell it in a little bit. But I’d still think it’ll be worth it for even if you three X your revenue or your net income on that car wash deal that’s not, you’re making 12 grand a year. Like you’re not going to [inaudible 00:45:32]

Robert Leonard (45:35):

How much did you buy that third facility for?

Connor Gross (45:37):

450.

Robert Leonard (45:39):

450. And in the town of like 1800?

Connor Gross (45:42):

Yeah.

Robert Leonard (45:43):

So Nick Huber actually, it is interesting. I don’t know. I would be nervous too, but Nick Huber actually buys a lot of his properties. I don’t know if he still does today, but when he first started, I know he was buying a lot of his in like really small towns in New York and Pennsylvania. And I don’t know if he went as small as 2000, he was on the show a few months back. We didn’t talk about these specific size of the cities, I don’t think, but I know some of them are really small.

Connor Gross (46:07):

Yeah, I was really nervous. I’m surprisingly delighted at how much call volume we’ve been getting on so far. And even like, we’ll have some people move out whenever we raise rents or anything like that. But people who are calling back in and want a spot, they’re fine with the new rates and we’re getting good call volume. So I still feel good about it honestly.

Robert Leonard (46:23):

So one of the properties you purchased, I believe was the second one you did the painting on. I noticed in the pictures that basically the way you get to the units doesn’t look that great. And this isn’t really your guys’ fault, but it’s just like a dirt road, basically with some grass, it’s kind of patchy and it just doesn’t look good. And I have considered some self-storage facilities that looked just like that. And I’m like, I don’t even know where I would start to fix this problem. I’m not paving it because I’ve gotten quotes to pave my driveway at my house and it’s ridiculously expensive. So I’m definitely not paving this self-storage facility, but I don’t know what the solution is to make it look better and also just so the dust isn’t like blowing up everywhere, all over everybody’s stuff. So I’m curious, what are you guys doing to remediate that if anything?

Connor Gross (47:01):

All right, I’m going to give you a short answer then I’m going to give you the long answer. Short answer nothing, but we’re keeping it exactly how it is. The long answer is so you’re from New Hampshire, I’m from Jersey lived up in Boston, partner’s from Rhode Island, all Northeast boys, right? So the thing that we’ve realized is very pampered and for all this kind of stuff to look super nice. And so when we see stuff like that, we’re like, doesn’t look too great. Like we talk to tenants, we talk to old property managers. We’re like, “What do you think about this?” They’re like, “Oh the ground. That’s no big deal.” We’re like, “Yeah, but what about dust?” They’re like, “Bud this is West Texas, no matter what you do, you’re not getting this dust out of here.” And so we’re just like, “Okay, so you’re saying you don’t care.”

Connor Gross (47:39):

They’re like, “Absolutely not. I drive over that thing with my Ford F-150 and like, it’s no problem.” And I’m like, “All right, I guess I’m just going to leave it.” And we talked, like I thought this was going to be a huge project and I’m again, all these quotes and things like that. And yeah, they’re not cheap that’s for sure. You can do some gravel stuff to fill in some potholes if there’s potholes and whatnot. But like for the most part, no one in Texas or any of these states that [we were buying 00:48:00] this stuff in seems to care at all.

Robert Leonard (48:02):

That’s hilarious.

Connor Gross (48:03):

That’s the best answer.

Robert Leonard (48:04):

Yeah, it is. It’s great. And I go through the same thing with my business partner, who I invest with from time to time is like, he is really like by turnkey properties when it comes to residential stuff, because he thinks of it like, well I wouldn’t even live there. So we’re going to get low quality tenants. I’m like, “Yeah, but you make at your job over $200,000 a year, you live in a really nice house. You live in a nice, very nice city in New Hampshire. Like you are a bit pampered compared to some of these different properties that we’re looking at across the country. Like you got to remember these are rental units in an apartment complex, not your single family house that you’re living in.”

Connor Gross (48:36):

We had a small leak on one of the roofs at the first property actually. And I called the tenant and I was like as soon as we were kind of turning over management, I was “Can we patch up that roof or whatever.” So it’s good now. But I called the tenant. I was like, “Hey, how things going? I just wanted to check in, make sure everything was good with y’all” and they’re just like, “Oh yeah, things are good like a little small leak in the roof, like getting some of my stuff wet but other than that, it’s fine.” I was like, Oh, like immediately response, like, “Oh I’m so sorry about that, we’ll get that fixed ASAP. Like you guys should not have to be dealing with that I’ll wave this months rent.” They’re like, “Ah, what are you talking about, man? It’s no big deal, just a little water.”

Connor Gross (49:05):

And I was like, “Dude, kind of our only job here is making sure that water and stuff like that doesn’t get into your unit if we can’t do that, I don’t even know why you’re keeping it here.” But so I think, yeah, from that Northeast mentality, you got to think like everything’s got to be super nice and look beautiful. Like, dude, it doesn’t like a lot of these other states just don’t care as much as you might think specifically in the places that we’re buying a caveat that like, if you are buying in New York or like maybe California or whatever like that, people care for sure. But rural Texas, they’re pretty cool with whatever.

Robert Leonard (49:36):

And that just supports your idea and your opinion as to why you chose self-storage it’s probably not going to be the case, right? If you buy an apartment building or something like that? Usually, I mean, maybe there’s a degree to it, but not like that.

Connor Gross (49:47):

Did I get a phone call from someone who’s like, “Hey, there’s a leak in my living room.” I’ve got two hours to fix this problem ASAP. With this guy, I was like, “All right man, we’ll just hold tight we’ll get somebody out there in three weeks,” he’s like, “Yeah man, like I said, don’t sweat it.” And I was like, “All right, if that’s what you said, sure.”

Robert Leonard (50:03):

So you had a conversation recently with a 20 year old who is interested in getting started in business. He told you that he read all the books and now he just needed a mentor to start his business. I hear this exact same thing in the real estate world a lot too. Why are mentors important, but not required to invest in real estate or even start a business?

Connor Gross (50:23):

In my opinion, one mentors are probably really important back in the day. And that’s also why you see like most skills and most crafts had apprenticeships, right? Because there was no other way to go and learn the skills that we wanted to learn. Specifically now looking back like 20 years ago, mentors are incredibly valuable because a lot of information is safeguarded from people and not put out in the public. And so as a result, like if you got an in with somebody who’s really good in their field, you had a competitive advantage to be able to go and do that job as good, if not better than your peers, right? Mentors, in my opinion today are still really valuable in terms of being able to kind of jumpstart your career and like get to where you want to be a little bit quicker, but by no means, in my opinion, are they as necessary as they might have been in the past.

Connor Gross (51:05):

Because the fact is, if you’re on Twitter, if you’re listening to podcasts like this and you’re subscribed to a few of the right email lists, you’ll get all of that information for free anyway. And it’s always nice to go and have that one-on-one FaceTime of like, “Hey, here are the specific details of this deal and how it’s different from maybe some of these examples that I found online, but by no means, is it a prerequisite for being able to go and achieve what you want to achieve. So I would honestly just say having mentors helps and it’s always a good gut check, mostly from an emotional standpoint but when you actually have to deal with like facts and logic and understanding and learning new things, they’re not as required as they were in the past.

Robert Leonard (51:41):

I mean, if somebody wants to get mentored by you specifically on self-storage, just listen to this podcast. I mean, you’re not going to get a 100% of everything right but you just got probably what? I don’t know, 70%. There’s probably a lot more you can learn, but you just got a 70% free mentorship on how to buy self-storage the way Connor does it.

Connor Gross (51:57):

Go read the same book I read, that’ll tell you everything that I know, right? We’re Building Wealth Through Self Storage. It’s a great book. Follow the guys I follow on Twitter. All of that information is out there and you don’t necessarily have to have this really formal mentorship. If anything, this is what I told the kid who reached out to me. I was like, “I’m all for reading books I’m all for watching YouTube videos and podcast, mentors, et cetera. A lot of the times, I would say nine times out of 10, it is just a really advanced form of procrastination. If you’re finding a mentor and you’re spending all of your time doing that, just get to work instead.” I think it almost reminds me of this Elon Musk quote that I heard where it’s something along the lines of like someone asked Elon Musk, like, “What would you say to inspire somebody who wants to go and start a business, but hasn’t actually gone yet.”

Connor Gross (52:36):

And this quote was basically like, “If you need inspiration to start the business, don’t start it at all because this stuff is tough and so like if you can’t even get excited enough to like do this starting part where it’s just fun, then don’t do it.” And I think this is the same thing with this example, right? If you need to find a mentor before you can start a business, don’t start it. Because this is should be the easy part of kind of getting your hands dirty and having fun in the beginning, the mentors can help along the way, like get you from A to B, but you don’t need it at all to get started.

Robert Leonard (53:03):

There are still so many other things I want to chat about. We’re going to have to bring you back for a third time. There are very few people who have been on the show two times, even fewer people that have been on three times. So we’ll have to get you into that exclusive category of people that have been on three times, bring you back soon. But Connor for anybody that’s listening today and wants to connect with you, where is the best place to reach you?

Connor Gross (53:24):

Yeah, so the best two spots for me are going to be on Twitter or my own podcast on Twitter. It’s just at C underscore, G-R-O at C underscore grow and my own podcast we even had Robert on before. Basically we interview young entrepreneurs all the time because I get super inspired when people my own age are doing cool stuff. And so I just like having those kind of conversations and that’s called the Next Generation.

Robert Leonard (53:44):

I will put a link to my episode on Connor’s podcast, his podcast in general, Connor’s episode that we did previously here on this show, his socials, everything that we’ve talked about in the show notes below for anybody that’s interested in checking him out. Connor, thanks so much again for joining me,

Connor Gross (53:59):

Man, it was a pleasure. I always love coming on.

Robert Leonard (54:01):

All right guys, that’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (54:07):

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