WS1066: Building a Process for Successful Renovation Projects with Van Sturgeon | #TechandTacticsTuesday

EPISODE 1066

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell. 

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:01.6] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I am your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Van Sturgeon. Van is a real estate investor, home build or renovator, general contractor, and a high performance coach with over 30 years of experience in the real estate industry, he’s a real estate investor in a semi-retired but enjoys helping people figure out the whole real estate investment strategy van is an expert in renovations, and he lays out many things as a general contractor that you need to know is the operator when working with general contractors, but from the process of having a goal, maybe the difficulty of that. But what happens when you don’t have a goal all the way down to having the scope of work and the details that need to be in that scope of work, whether you’re remodeling a duplex or whether it’s a 200-unit Department building, so he lays out in many details that are gonna be very helpful to you, so you’re prepared to have a successful renovation project.

[0:01:18.2] WS: Van, welcome to the show. I know you have an amazing background and experience in many aspects of real estate that many of our listeners are gonna need to know more about as well. So, give us a little more about your background, how you got to where you’re at now. And just the skill set in …

[0:01:35.6] VS: Junie a project of the 1960s and Robin, Chicago, and my family and I lived in a one Veera apartment, and my parents had the dream, like everybody has about getting enough money together to be able to buy their first home their first dream home, and in the process of doing that, they discovered that the apartment building, they’re living, who had gone up for sale, so instead of actually buying their home, they decided to become landlord, so they powered from friends and family and put enough scratch down to get the down payments and take over its purchase the apartment building, so that’s how it… Into real estate as a kid. And when they took over as happens or the late 1970s, where when they purchased the building was fully occupied and right there at the cusp of the late 1970, things started to turn around. I remember having to wait in line for gas, there was a gas shortages… situation, there’s inflation rate was bonkers. It was a miserable time. So this part of building that was fully occupied all of a sudden early 80s vacancy rate started to jump up on us, and to the point where it was 40 to 60% vacant during that period of time, and so as a family, we had to buckle down this is our sole investment, and we had to do everything that was associated with the actual terms of renovations and looking after things we had to do ourselves as a family, so whether it’s painting or doing roof repairs, replacing, changing windows, carpets, you name it, we did everything ourselves to save money.

[0:03:00.5] VS: And so he’s from that background, and we went through the 80s, and then I went off to university, graduated, and then I had an opportunity to become a lawyer, and I decided against that against my parents’ wishes. Every parent’s dreams after kids, walk around with a student tie and that kind of stuff, would be a lawyer or a doctor, and I walk away from that as I really was passionate, really enjoyed. I really wanted to get into renovations and draw contracting, so I opened up my draw contracting business in Chicago. It was a cooper time, and in the early 90s, late 80s, early 90s, and I just started going out there in the hustle and slowly grew my business networking, but I kept saying the same cats, the same individuals out there, these real estate investors who are flipping properties or purchasing, the rental portfolios, and that sort of exposed me to that side of the business, and that’s where I started to branch off in to do in my own flips, and because of the background I had in renovations to construction, things sort of escalated and so I have a thriving… I have businesses in the real estate industry, that’s our friend, property management development Latin acquisition, and got a portfolio properties of over 1000 doors, spread it out over four areas, so I’ve been very blessed, I’m very thankful for everything I’ve been able to accomplish over the last…

[0:04:16.1] VS: Over 30 years, and right now I’m at the stage of my life where I’m kind of semi-retired. I’ve got some really great people in terms of either partnerships or employees are running everything… I really wanna give back. I see it off and the biggest obstacle that biggest, but one of the biggest obstacles that new real estate investors, whether you’re on the syndication side, whatever facet is the whole renovation side of the business, and we’re all looking for that ugly duckling, we’re all looking for that diamond in the rough to get the deal, the deal doesn’t come up with a nice little bow tie, the deal comes in overgrown shrubs and line green carpet from the 1970s, that kind of real estate deal where you gotta get in there and you gotta roll up your seeds, you gotta do something to raise a value list up to rent scraps, and so that whole process is a process, it’s a system that you need to understand and owner of… Beta successful if you don’t have a system in place. What ends up happening is you put or here and you sputter there and end up losing a lot of money, and I’ve seen people being devastated financially and emotionally by taking on giving into the real estate industry, trying to become…

[0:05:19.5] VS: Getting into real estate investment than they fall because they don’t know how to carry out a renovation or rehab, whether it’s on their own or with his hiring, you’ve gotta know… And I’m speaking here as a general contractor myself, you gotta know how to plan and manage and how to deal with contractors and trades people, so that’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m out there spread into good word. I really feel badly for people when they start off and they lose such control over their investments, and I wanna be able to help them and put a system in place.

[0:05:47.6] WS: Yeah, let’s discuss that in a big way, I wanted to ask you though, before we do that, do you also own that property evolved in the 70s…

[0:05:54.3] VS: Actually, we still do, it’s not a north side of Chicago, and it’s been a phenomenal investment, you cannot ever lose in real estate, I’ve got a diverse portfolio, whether it’s a real estate and stocks and all that kind of stuff, and you can’t be good or real estate

[0:06:08.0] WS: It’s incredible. Now, I just wonder if you also had it, I would imagine you wouldn’t wanna sell it now after having it that line… Now, that’s awesome, and it just need to… How you… At a young age, how you were an influence over those 10 years or so, just by your role and how the family work that property and made it happen. Right, even through those difficult times, you said 40% to 50% vacancy, and you all came together to keep it running and operating, sounds like in a big way to save all the money that you could… Anything you wanna speak there to how that shaped you, how that even at a young age or anything that even parents listening right now could get, how they could get their children involved in real estate? 

[0:06:44.3] VS: It’s a positive and a negative. The positive obviously, is that it exposes you to what you can do and to expose is you that a proper mindset that you have to get into and being able to move into other is real estate or what… They’re opening your own company. You really gotta little roll up your seats and you really gotta get into the weeds, and you gotta put in a hard work and effort to be able to be successful, and sometimes just by virtue, dissuade to our family out. Unnecessary had to do what we had to do. If we… I’m sure my father really would have loved to at that time, What a fully occupied building, just pick up the phone and call the painter, or pick up and call the electrician, but when you got 40%, 50%, 60% vacancy and remembers it can walk in through the building and vacant and you just walk in an apartment if there’s nobody there, I don’t know how they got through with it because it’s really a BSA investor now looking back on it… Wow, being have and that kind of vacancy and having that wrong your neck, it’s pretty troubling now that being said, that mindset is great, but in my evolution as a real estate investor, as a successful business owner, I have to get away from that mindset eventually, ’cause when you get to the point when you wanna scale, when you go on to get into that 20-50, 100 300, or…

[0:07:58.0] VS: You gotta get out of the mindset where I was in, where I was a micro manager, I had to do everything myself. ’cause I was the best in my process, I hit a wall where I was running a successful job contracting business who was growing and thriving, I was also doing a lot of this real estate flipping and buying, and then I was… Bernice, I was recently married, I didn’t even go on my own honeymoon. I was so focused on my business that it came to a head where I was sleeping on job sites, and I knew that this was the wrong way, and I reached out to a real estate investor who happened to be also a coach. He helped me put the systems, a process in place, and that investment was what really drove me and spurred me to be… To reach the highs that I’ve reached… (Now, that’s awesome.) Is that is really important in both of those sites. That could be positive, and also it could be a negative and that you can’t be a micro-manager, you gotta see the bigger picture and you gotta move on and you gotta grow as an individual.

[0:08:48.8] WS: Yeah, let’s all learn from that. You didn’t even go on your honeymoon… Sleeping at job sites. And we do not want to be there. Right, and we need those systems. We need those processes, and I like how you said it’s a mindset, and it is when you can really think about, Hey, let’s build a process and a system here versus just trying to go get it done kind of randomly with no system in place, and it’s a very different thought process. And will help us with that. Let’s jump in, renovations obviously, your specialty, and many of us are renovating hundreds of units at a time, in one form or fashion, trying to manage those tradesmen and general contractors and all kinds of people that we need on our team will get us started a little bit on how you’ve built that successful just system and how you’re helping others do that.

[0:09:29.9] VS: Well, it starts with setting out a goal, and that goal is you need to actually physically write it down the sheet of paper, what it is you’re looking to accomplish with this physical property, so if you’re looking to flip it, how much money you’re looking to sell it for or make, if you’re looking to rent that out, how much you look in the gaps in the syndication or apartment building, kind of multi-family kind of sphere.. If you’re looking to raise rents for 800 to 900, 800 to 1200, you need to write that goal out, and once you have that goal, then you gotta get out in the market place to validate that call, you gotta go look at comparable properties out there to figure out and understand what it is that you need to do in that particular unit and are able to get those types of reds and you gotta be really honest with yourself about what it is you can realistically get… I see a lot of times, new real estate investors will walk in and think that they can sprinkle a bunch new things and spend lots of money in the particular unit, then not get that kind of run because the IT ending 50 square feet and 12 square feet as much as many do, does I can sprinkle on that 500 square foot apartment, I can’t get the same radar and a 1200 square foot apartment can…

[0:10:29.7] VS: So we have to be realistic in what we can, we gotta validate, but then once you get in there, then you gotta figure out what your budget is, and there’s a bunch in terms of word of source of funding is gonna come in oftentimes, a lot of folks struggle with that because we only have so much cash in the piggy, and so we need to get out there and find other forms of money, and there’s a traditional sources, of course, going out to your local financial institution, established some sort of a line of credit or a loan, but there’s also other options that a lot of folks aren’t exposed to, or in terms of hard money lenders and other bodies, there’s also government grants sometimes that you can tap into A… Or one particular property, I had the miscible reach out to me saying that because the property was in a flood plane, they’re gonna give me X amount of dollars in terms of improvements that I can make to my property with the sanitary storm series. We’ve been told things of that sort, so you gotta look at all those sources to be able to put a comprehensive plan together, a budget, and then you move on to…

[0:11:27.7] VS: You just want to understand how much money you have, you gotta then go through the actual property and create what I call a needs and want list, and what that is is… Need is something that needs to happen. Needs repair. So if you got a leaking roof that’s a need, you can’t sort of brush that off, I want is something like that shaggy green carpet from the 1980s where it’s ugly as heavies, you wanna get rid of it, but if it’s still functional, it’s not a trip hazard, that’s something that’s a want that you like to really replace, and if there’s money in the budget to do that, great, but that there isn’t that… You leave that alone, once you’ve established that, you understand what it is, you’ve got what you need and what your wants are really the biggest one, white that folks miss is the creation of the scope of work, but a lot of folks out there on the… Definitely in a residential side, in fact, on the residential side is non-existent, as I mentioned earlier, I’m a general contractor, if that’s where my bread and butter was as always has been, I love general contracting.

[0:12:30.4] VS: I’ve literally gone through in thousands of renovations from apartments all the way to office buildings, one of the things that I find that on the commercial side, there is hardly ever a project that’s ever provided that’s tendered out that doesn’t come with a scope of work, or you have a detail that put a scope of work is for listeners out there is an actual document that provides the detailed specifications and the processes associated to what that renovation, which wages removed, which appliances are specified, the Harwood, the tile, everything is put in that document, so that whenever you tender it out to a general contractor, or you tender it out to individual trades, where you act as a general contractor, where you’re hiring electrician, plumber, individually, you have a body of work. You have a document that everything is based off of one of the difficult, especially in a residential side, there isn’t that document that’s created, and this is merely driving a contract or a GC and walking through a property pointing at things saying, Yeah, we’ll do this, and I wanna do that? Do you have any different types of how many… How many different types of toilets here, there’s a 100 to a thousand dollar photos, the only different types of pain qualities or types of pain, unless we invite process where I can crawl into your head as an investor and figure out exactly what it is that you want, it’s always testing for problems, and that’s the reason why our industry, the contractor in industry has got such a bad name, we all see the DIY shows and the disasters, and there’s a whole child dedicated this kind of stuff where contractors, these bad contractors.

[0:14:03.9] VS: And there’s a lot of bad contractors out there, but there’s also a lot of bad owners, not bad in terms of it’s just they’re not prepared to that’s the reason why we have such a difficulties out there is because we don’t have clear lines of understandings of communication. Understand what is ever try and accomplish in this particular renovation project.

[0:14:20.2] WS: I was talking about the scope of work a little bit, I appreciate you elaborating on that and how most people, and a lot of listeners may be thinking, Now, wait a minute, I know van, I’m not qualified to do a scope for, I don’t know which will needs to be removed, I don’t know which paint is the best, or which toilet we should really purchase… Do I need that 1000? Most likely not, but they may be thinking about, Well, how do I even begin a scope of work to be that detailed? Or do I hire somebody? Do I have the general contractor? Help me do that. What does that process look like?

[]0:14:50.8] VS: Well, you could always hire the contractor. Or an issue is that, how do you compare apples to apples, unless you have some type of a document that you can give a general contractor to three, five, seven Cajun contractors for them to be able to price out the same thing and the scope of work in creating it, yeah, it’s not an easy process and you have to have experience in it at have a knowledge to be able to create that document, but it is dual ball. If you do the research, you have to do it one way or another, you have to figure out what type of hardwood for install in that particular unit or laminar or the type of campaign, and if you expect the Dean contractor do that for you, he can… Or she can. But you’re gonna pay for that. And speaking as a general contractor, I just give you an example, and you can then extrapolate from that, if I were to come to you Whitney said, I’m gonna charge you 50000 for this renovation to your property, whatever that is, my profit margin on that. For me to spend two, three months on that particular homo-ers that you’re on 5000…

[0:15:47.7] VS: My profit margin is gonna be 10 to 15000. I need to make that kind of money as a GSO supervisor or a course or two… Three months, I need to make that kind of money. So what I’m saying is, if you want to save that kind of money and really learn a new skill set also, and being able to then handle future renovations or handle the future purchases and have that background to be able to walk in the properties and understand what you need… And how long it’ll take in, how much I… The cost… And I think you need to do that. And that’s one of the reasons why I have a competitive advantage over many, many other real estate investors that I’m able to walk into any property in North America and be able to survey the scene and have a good sense of how long it’s gonna take and how much is it gonna cost? And I can make an instantaneously, I can make a decision whether I can make a deal on the spot with the owner of that particular property or not, is it that pretty powerful stuff?

[0:16:38.7] WS: That is powerful, for sure.

[0:16:41.0] VS: With regards to a scope of work, if you wanna put in the time and effort to do your due diligence and figure out all this stuff, you can… And then you create that document that you have to have a basis to be able to go comparison whether you do the renovation yourself or you sold it ouat, a general contractor, you have to… That’s where sophisticated real estate investors like yourself with… I’m sure when you’re looking at your site, Mize things, you have to… You don’t have systems to… If you don’t have systems, you’re always into unique and no can take you down some really difficult rabbit holes.

[0:17:16.4] WS: How can you improve… I can even know if you’re improving, if you don’t have a documented system…

[0:17:20.5] VS: Absolutely, and I know that their success, Real estate investors that have know exactly the type of toilet that they put in, the type of paint, the color, the paint, everything is systemic, so that all you gotta do is spit it out and you have a collection of contractors or trade people that know exactly what they’re supposed to deliver time and time again, is just a cookie cutter, boom, boom, boom. But before you get to that point, you gotta have that scope of work, you gotta have that body to be able to get to that point, and you make it disparities along the way to perfect it, but you have to have that document

[]0:17:54.4] WS: Will like, Hey, you just started with a goal too, and I think some of that goal should begin before we even purchases a property, what is your going with this property, or talk about what is your budget, should be thinking about those things before you ever… Ever put the offer in, and then your needs and wants list, hopefully you do know a lot of that three due diligence, and then thus creating the skip work and is such a great tip to do that… Anything after that or anything that helps you to think through this process, or do you just create a master checklist? How do you do that? Now, I recommend others to do that so they don’t make big mistakes.

[0:18:25.1] VS: What of the things that I keep finding out there is this propensity to, especially nowadays, because everybody’s so busy is that both run out there and give these huge deposits and they are constantly paying more money than there should be to their contractors and trace people, what is of creating is a situation where contractors who are busy, there’s only a certain period that’s high and during the year that they’re busy or humming or moving or grooving, if they’ve already received more money and there’s a post on a particular project and they go to another project where that isn’t the case, where they’re gonna go work, they’re gonna go work where money is owed in a a place where money has already been… So one of the things I recommend to people as a kind… And I’m speaking as the general contractor is to try to preserve as much of the money as possible in terms of the duration of the contract, this is really a frank conversation you have with that electrician, but the Dell contractor’s saying, Okay, your particular job is gonna cost to say 50000. Okay. So it’s gonna take three months. Great, what are the milestones that we’re gonna hit so that we release funds, what are the milestones we’re gonna hit the Release for funds and make sure that the end of the kidney, at the end of the job, they’re a sufficient amount of money and ensure that that contractor, trace PE or finish.

[0:19:38.3] VS: Because oftentimes, what we find it, and again, speaking is a general contractor good in the beginning, you’re moving, you’re getting things done, and you’re at that 90% mark in that renovation, that rehab, and as the last 5-10% are the most difficult. You can see the later on all, you can see it, but it’s the cocking here, and it’s a little piece of trim over there, and it’s a piece of carpet that’s gotta be replaced. And these small things that add up to a lot of time and effort. Contractors or trace people wanna skip out on, but if you have money in hands that you owe them, trust me, they’ll show up and go, complete it. And oftentimes, I find that a lot of folks don’t do that and they crash your has wondering why, what happened to this contract outcome doesn’t come… Well, he doesn’t come because you’ve Herman them too much money. The only place that I paid money upfront before something is delivered as McDonald’s with me, when I go to McDonald’s, I give them my money and I order my hamburger and I stopped back a week for the hamburger to be produced, any…

[0:20:37.3] VS: Give it to me. None of these contractors with trace peoples are McDonalds, so be very careful and dusun amount of money you show out to be able to have control over your renovation, I got lots of… There’s lots of things that you need to do is the real estate investor from inserting clauses in particular agreements that you have with GCs or trade people, ensure if you utter a handle recently, what happened was one of my clients hired a painter to the next to your painting on their property, and as they’re spraying the property, his frames ended up on the neighbor’s car, now, who’s responsible for that? With me, it… Unless you have a some type of clause within your agreement that says, Hey, if you cause damage to my proper, somebody else’s… I’m able to duck monies from your pay to be able to offset the cost associated, you don’t have that, you can just arbitrarily take the side to take money away from that contractor ’cause a damage, a clash, because they have the right to put a lean on your property, if you do that, you can’t just withhold money, so these are our types of things that you need to put in to protect yourself

[0:21:36.4] WS: Is such a great point, like having some type of contract with the general contractor, this what’s expected. This is what’s gonna happen. This is how you’re gonna be paid. If you damage something, this is what’s going to happen, then it’s so smart, right? I think most people hire a general contractor never think about actually having a contract between you too, of what’s going to happen… Who should have that contract? Is that something you should come up with, you all go to your attorney to have something drafted… What do you suggest

[0:21:58.7] VS: There… I’ve been doing this for a long time, as a drill contractor knows, are mostly the investor, I have those agreements and contracts in place, typically the general contractors should be the one that should be writing a document and then you got to review it. If you have a scope of work, you will make sure that the scope of work becomes a Nadeem to that actual contract that’s presented to you, whether it’s by the GC or electrician or plumber, and you gotta read through that agreement and that it’s not necessarily to mean that you sign off on it, because I’m sure that the agreement is gonna be a one-side is gonna protect them. So these are the types of things that you need to be to keep in mind to insert on either your scope of work or the actual agreement itself, so that there’s an understanding, again, contractors are not bad people… Trade people are not bad people. It’s a matter of having clear line of your communication and having an understanding, and you know in what you’re doing, I love working with professionals. Everybody wants to work with professionals, and I have… My successes are the general contractors or most the investor was dealing with other professionals.

[0:22:59.9] VS: One of the things that I’m fine, especially not in his heated real estate market where everybody’s running and running around and chickens what their has got up is that, Oh, I call the GC up, Oh, I call the nutrition up and they’re not returning my phone call, I just had that recently with a client that said, I don’t know why I’d call 23 contractors and I only four showed up at only four return my phone call. Well, the reason it is because you just… You’re not professional, you don’t have us by Scope of Work, you don’t have something that you’ve emailed them. You haven’t said, Hey, this is what I want to accomplish, this is what I want done. If you provide something like that, immediately you’re elevating yourself from everybody else, because I wanted the lord of professional… I can’t blame them for wanting to work with professional clients, right, and noise routine and has their act together and has a plan as a general contractor in curator, especially after you’re in the business a few years, you can see very quickly who’s prepared and who’s not, and all the headaches that you’re gonna have with somebody who has no plan, all the time wasted, all the questions, all those things that take time out of your day that ultimately you’re not being paid for

[0:24:00.3] WS: It, and so I can completely understand working with professional… When you speak to the milestones and payments you were talking to, is there any guidance there of how you would do that, you mentioned like a 50000 project, say over three months, how should the listener think through that, paying them… The general contractor along the way, but obviously having… Maybe I am some at the end. Well.

[0:24:19.0] VS: Definitely at the end, you should have a minimum 1% to 5% that you should be out going, and that would be the whole bag associated with making sure that your contract or trades people have pay their employees, that kind of thing, that’s usually… And then that’s also the money should be held back for the MOD that for making sure that everything is completed in your project, but every situation is unique, depending on if you’re going to hire a carpenter as an example, where they have to produce supplies in or for them to start, if you’re gonna have them purchase the material, then you need to give them more money as a deposit because they’re gonna use that toward the material, versus if it’s just a Peter’s gonna show up or the material is insignificant, but you need to structure it in the fashion or in a way that your services are rendered, then you pay and not the other way around, because if you have it the other well set up the other way around, you lose control of that individual… It’s natural, it’s natural. Trust me, as a general contractor. I’m telling you that if I have five jobs on the go, and if there are three jobs that I’m fat, meaning I’ve got enough, I got more than enough, cover my expenses, all that kind of stuff, but I got two jobs that are lean, meaning I gotta do work in here, get paid, and I wanna get paid, I’m gonna go to those two jobs if I gotta balance…

[0:25:35.2] VS: If I gotta juggle things around, I gotta go there, and so it’s natural for you, if you wanna make sure that contractors, trades people are on time, on budget, that you gotta control and you control them with money, unfortunately, that’s the only way you can’t control them, you can’t put a gun or a head, you gotta control in that way.

[0:25:51.7] WS: A lot of us aren’t controlled by money too often, I think here too much, but… Great points. Just some great tips. No doubt about it, anybody that’s looking to get in any part of the real estate business, you need to have a plan, a goal, a scope of work, thinking through those things, and really building that relationship with the general contractor on a professional basis. It goes so far, no matter if it’s the general contractor, the plumber or an investor, it’s, it’d be professional and understand your role in being professional in that, so a… Switching gears just a little bit while we just have a couple of minutes left, but

[0:26:22.0] VS: What about any daily habits that you have that you are disciplined about that have helped you achieve success again, as part of my life is getting into a system, so I have that through my day, so right now I have a set… A period of time when I wake up, I have a step here of time that I spend for myself, meaning a meditation, and then I moved through the day, we’re having certain established… Coal is a constant… Sabre goes throughout the day and I reached my goals. If you don’t have goals and you write them down so you need it, maybe sometime ’cause apportion you never get to those goals, if it’s just haphazard, I wanna do this, or I wanna answer a couple of emails, if you don’t have an actual goal, you’re never gonna get to that point. So that’s how I structure my life, and I recommend people… You need to get into systems and it becomes so much easier when you do and you have that

[0:27:07.3] WS: If you don’t have a goal, you’re never gonna reach it. I like that. What about the number one thing that’s contributed to your success…

[0:27:12.3] VS: The number one thing that contributed to my professional success in terms of being a successful real estate in Buster has been at the early stages of my development, reaching out at that time, I touched on the having that mentor, having that coach… If I spent a lot of money, and I’ve continued to spend money with me over to last 30 years, I must have been over 200000 in coaching and mentorship and retreat, some books, and you name it, I’ve done it, and there were success that that I am today as a result of all of that, it’s like it’s a into trying to learn how to play a musical instrument like a guitar, anybody could grab a guitar, start strumming it and try to figure it out to maybe in a couple of years you might figure it out but I wouldn’t it be nice to just to hire guitar teacher just right next to you, shows you how to hold it, how to do it, how to play it… What did you learn a lot quicker. Wouldn’t it be a lot more enjoyable? Would you see success law quicker and to way… And in our business, our business is really a lot of money that’s involved, and I’ve seen it, I’m sure you have, Whitney, where people have got in and gotten cleaned out, their clock has been wrong, and they have been devastated by the wrong decision…

[0:28:18.4] VS: Wrong move, it wouldn’t it be nice to have somebody that are beside you, they’re able to show you the way to help you along in that process, keep you away from making that devastating mistake as we’re dealing with hundreds or perhaps millions of dollars here, and I think that a strong encourage people, if you really wanna be… You really wanna up your game. You really wanna be successful. Go find something who’s done it

[0:28:38.8] WS: A… No doubt about it. And it’s no secret. It’s so secret. I completely agree. About having a mentor, I’ve also had many mentors. And often when I’m trying to learn something new, hey, it’s like, who’s the best at that? I wanna go talk to them. I want to go learn from that individual at speeds, that process up drastically gives you just confidence that you never would have had before having that person on your side as well, and I can see that in people I’m mentoring now as well. It’s just need to find those people in your life who are gonna help you and then you help others as well, as far as mentoring or what about… How do you like to get back from…

[0:29:13.0] VS: I’d like to get back to… And what I’m doing right now, I really, truly enjoy helping new real estate investors get into it and helping them through the process of planning and managing renovation and trying to set up their rules, take career, be on the groundwork and helping people… I really enjoy that process and helping, and that’s where I’m at Tenby stage in my life, I’ve got scars all over my body through the… Doing what I had to do is you get to the point that I am and a lot of sacrifices. And so right now, I’ve answered this stage in my life, or I really enjoy helping people, and there’s such a joy that I get… I’m sure you understand what I’m saying. There’s a joy when you help people out, then they come back a joyous thank you, and that thank you, it means so much is so genuine and so heartfelt that it just fuels me to go on and help more and more people I’m passionate about, I really enjoy it.

[0:30:00.6] WS: Man, it’s been a pleasure to meet you. You’ve provided amazing value, and as the listeners and myself, just thinking through this renovation process and even just the stressing of having processes and systems in a meteor innovation or acquisition or whatever it may be, man, even if it’s investor relations, you need to document process as our team is just, Uh, I’ve tried to stress it so much to our team like write it down, you build that process and we can improve it and just constantly improve it every time we do it, and so… Thank you for that. Even thinking through, or, do you have a goal for this? Do you know what the budget is? And where is that money gonna come from? And the needs and wants, I think that’s interesting to think through a roof, it may be a long or it may be a need, there’s a whole to thinking through that and creating that scope of work, so thank you again, tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

[0:30:46.9] VS: Probably the best place would be to go to my website that’s vansturgeon.com. I’ve got a bunch of information there from podcasts that I’ve been on to, articles have been picked up through… Yeah, who knows, talking really specifically about real estate investing and renovations, and I’ve got a free training video that I’ve created on my website that people more walk up to go, so more elaborates, the planning and measurement side of a renovation rehab and sort of lays the foundation for you being able to do it yourself successfully, I truly wanna help people, I truly wanna make sure that people… I’m sure you be have come across that situation with me, we all have, where you’ve hired a contractor, trace person, and they’re supposed to show up at one day they didn’t show up. Then you’re supposed to show up another… They didn’t show up, but they’re supposed to show, and every time you wake up every morning, there’s that pitted in your stomach, or you’re expecting that person to show up at your job site because money’s there, lots of monies are floating around and that person doesn’t show up in that feeling, I wanted to help people avoid that feeling and this by sending up these systems and processes and really how to successfully plan and manage renovation, then you can avoid all of that. And you get control over your whole renovation and your whole investment.

[0:31:50.4] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.lifebridgecapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]