WS1107: My Unique Strategy In Purchasing Over 300 Properties with Stewart Beal

EPISODE 1107

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0 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.

00:00:24.000

Whitney Sewell: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today our guest is Stewart Beal.

Stewart has an amazing story that I hope you all learn a lot from today. He purchased his first apartment building in 2002 at the age 19. Since then, he has purchased more than 300 properties in which there are more than 6,000 apartments. So I love some of Stewart’s stories because he started a business as a young teenager and sold it for a lot of money at 19. And there are some key things he learned during that business that I personally believe helped him grow a real estate business very fast and to do very well. And there’s some skill sets there that he’s going to share with you that I know are going to be beneficial to you if you can think this way. And he also laid out, like this is what I am expert in, like he knew exactly this is where I focus is, this is where I am best. Just some of the things that his mind set is top-notch. Anyway, and I encourage you to listen to the show, I hope you enjoy and take away a lot.

[INTERVIEW]

Stewart, welcome to the show. When you and I were talking right before we started recording, you mentioned this expertise that you had and I thought it was very unique. I don’t normally hear people say, “Well, this is my expertise,” what I thought was unique is that like you knew exactly what that was, it’s very unique, it’s very niche and I want us to dive into that and I’ll just go and tell the listeners like I was asking Stewart before the show like what’s your expertise? How can you help the listeners the most? And right away he said “You know what? My expert is buying properties from old men,” and I thought it’s interesting like he knows. “Hey, that’s where I shine, that’s where I developed a skill set.” Amongst other things he listed like winning bids against 10 other syndicators and even buying a single family house today if it’s a deal while still being able to buy a 450-unit apartment building or better. Just the skill set is quite vast but he knew these things which I thought were unique. Most people can’t just say “Hey, here are the things, this is where I shine,” and that’s what I liked about Stewart right off the bat. 

Stewart, how did you develop the skill sets? And I know you started, which I want to highlight is when you started at what most people would consider a very young age, but man, you have done a lot of transactions, you have a lot of experience since the last what 19, 20 years now, more than many people would have in a lifetime probably, but how did you do that? Maybe take us back a little bit at age 19 and get started, but then I want us to get up to how you built this expertise?

00:02:57.000

Stewart Beal: Yeah, okay great. So what I told you about my expertise was I specialize in buying properties from old men, or their families when that man can no longer manage the property that they’ve been managing for 40 or 50 years themselves. And I take that back all the way to when I was 19. I started going to Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan and when I enrolled I had just sold a landscaping company and so I had some money to invest and I started looking at properties that were for sale. I met a man who owned 10 multifamily properties, all two to five-unit properties and I thought, “Man, if I could someday own 10 properties like this man, that would be the ultimate pinnacle of a real estate investment career.” 

And so I met him, and he immediately took a liking to me. Basically, starting with the fact that I was young, and that taught me to use that as an advantage when purchasing real estate. So when I meet these folks, they remember “Oh, I was just like this guy back when I got started,” and you can use that connection to get a good price and convince that person to sell the property to you when they might otherwise look at other bidders.

And so that first deal I did he had 10 properties, he wanted to sell a few of them because they were too much for him to manage, and so he gave me the choice of all 10. And I picked the one I bought, because I wanted to do a house hack – basically a glorified house hack, and so there were five apartments in this building and one of them was vacant. And so, I chose that one because I could move into the fifth unit and house hack.

And so, we’ve successfully completed that transaction MNI, and that led me to my second transaction, which I use the exact same strategy. I was reading the news classifieds and believe it or not, people advertise real estate for sale on the classifieds and newspapers back in 2004. And, I saw that there was a 30-unit property for sale for $600,000. And so $20,000 a door back then was very attractive. I called and a man who was probably about 70 years old picked up the phone and I told him that I was driving to his office right now to get this deal done right now. And he took it immediately, liking my aggressiveness, my youth. And also he was an Eastern Michigan University professor, and I was an Eastern Michigan University student. So we thought that was really cool. 

And basically what I do is I let these folks tell me their life story. So, I met him in his office I told him I wasn’t going to leave without a deal and he talked probably for three and a half hours about his life when I was just there to try to sign a person. It was actually all very interesting stuff. I’m not saying it’s a waste of my time, like it was fascinating what he was saying about his life and in real estate. And the reason I tell that story is because I got up from my chair and I wrote on a piece of computer paper a contract for this property and he signed, it was a one pager.

00:06:14.000

WS: You wrote it off by hand?

00:06:15.000

SB: Yeah, I wrote it off by hand, yup and it was a one pager and basically the idea was that this is the rough draft of the contract, you know, it wasn’t intended to be the contract but I didn’t want to leave the office without a contract, you know, so I hand wrote it. And as I was leaving his office getting in the car he came running out of his office, “Stewart, Stewart, there’s a man on the phone who’s offering the 200,000 more for the property than I agreed to sell it to you for,” and I said “I thought we have a deal, you know, we signed a signed contract” and he said “Yeah, you’re right.” And that’s because I gave him my time and used my youth in his old age to my advantage to get them to like me basically, you know, you want your sellers to like you, that makes the contract, it makes the transactions go much smoother if they like you.

00:07:03.000

WS: Still goes back to that relationship component, right? I mean, like you were patient, right, you listen to his story, you know that made him feel good just being able to share that with you. He probably felt like he was helping you as well and hoping you would learn from that. Like y’all built a relationship and those few hours right and enough that, man, he was willing to bypass the other offer of $200,000 more to honor that agreement on this piece of paper that you wrote out. I just think it’s incredible that you took the time to be patient, right and just listen and not have to be speaking the whole time as well. 

How did you learn that skill set? And I think most people who have not seen wouldn’t be thinking that way typically, right, and be that patient but how did you develop that skill set even at that age?

00:07:44.000

SB: Well, so my first dip into business was because my father was a contractor and he subscribed to all the business magazines. And when they got old in the office he would bring them home. And so I read probably $100,000 articles on business before the age of 13. And when I was 13 I wanted to start a lawn care business and I realized really quickly that why would my neighbors hire me as a 13 year old knowing nothing and I don’t have the fancy equipment, probably going to take twice as long. Why would my neighbor hire me over the competition, or why in some cases would they fire their existing lawn care company to hire me? 

And, it was all about relationships. And people really, really like hiring young people. They think that they’re helping them out and they really like that and so I was able to sign up over 400 customers around in Arbor between the age of 13 and 19 and then I was able to sell that business when I was going to go to college for $250,000 when I was 19. And the reason that that business was valuable was those 400 customers, those relationships and so the person who bought the business for me evaluated and underwrote the customers and determined that they were very, very loyal. And that is why I was able to sell the business. I mean lots of people start landscaping companies but not many people sell them for any amount more than the equipment’s worth, you know what I mean.

00:09:09.000

WS: Especially at 19.

00:09:10.000

SB: Right, exactly. So, that’s where I learned the skill of connecting with these folks and like, so when you’re 13, 14, 15, 16 and you’re doing a landscaping company, you know, you meet a woman who’s 70 years old, her husband’s 70, he’s mowed the lawn for 50 years, she’s like, “Okay, you know, he clearly shouldn’t be mowing the lawn anymore. Let’s hire this young kid.” And then you know, I mow the lawn and then she needs some boxes moved downstairs to the basement, we moved the boxes downstairs and then she says she needs her windows washed and then all you’re doing these little odd jobs around and, you know, all of a sudden, she’s telling all her friends and family around the neighborhood about you and it’s just, you know, if you develop a relationship with these folks you can really win a lot of business. 

00:09:57.000

WS: There’s so many ways we can all relate what you just said, so many other aspects of business, right. I mean, I was thinking about like our investors, people are not always about how to raise more money but they’re always trying to do the shotgun approach with their business cards or, you know, like, all those things, right? And you talk about you’re not only mowing the yard, you know, what if she needs some boxes moved to the basement, let’s just help her out, right, let’s just continue building that relationship. 

And man, that’s building loyalty, right? I mean she’s going to be so stuck on using you, she’s not going to ever want to fire you, even if you mess up like she’s still going to want to use you, you know. And so there’s so much there that I just want the listener to think about too. Even as they’re trying to network and build a business and relate to investors and build those relationships. I talked about it often, that loyalty component that I always feel is missing. Everybody talks about knowing who I can trust but man, when you can build loyalty, things change and you are a prime example, I mean at 19 selling a business that you’ve built over the four or five years before that for $250,000 at 19 that is just incredible. 

So then, did you go to college then or what did you do next?

00:11:01.000

SB: Yes. The reason I sold that business is I enrolled in the University of Colorado and had to move across the country. And I was in that school for a year, I got homesick, I came back and enrolled in Eastern Michigan University and that’s when I bought the first property and I did graduate from Eastern. I met my wife there and we still live in Ypsilanti, still today, and we do a lot of investment around here. But it is at the end of the day a pretty small town of 20,000 people in the town not including the college. So, I’ve branched out into doing business in about 35 other cities within an hour driving distance of here.

00:11:37.000

WS: Good for you. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts behind your ability to scale like you have? Even in 35 different cities, like most people aren’t going to be open to that, right? It’s hard to even think about investing outside their hometown, much less 35 other cities. To speak a little bit to your ability to scale how you’ve done that, what’s been some key points there?

00:11:56.000

SB: Yeah, so I work with a lot of first time real estate investors because we run a third party property management business. We’ve managed several thousand units for people that we don’t own, and a question that they asked all the time is scale, and so I explained to them that I had a full time employee when I only had 35 units because my goal was to scale. 

So if you want to scale you need to hire people that can do things that you can’t either because you lack time or because you lack the skill. So the first person I went out and hired was a skilled maintenance person. I did sweat equity on 100 transactions but I never learned the skills. So I was the guy cleaning, trashing out, demolition, painting, caulking, I would go get the materials from Lowes, delivering back to the job site. 

And so my first time employee was a skilled person, he was the one doing all the skill work, so that’s where the scale starts. And, I have 62 direct employees now and that’s how we’re able to manage 3,000 single-family homes, office spaces, and apartments. And I work a lot, work a lot of long hours but these folks that work with me are very loyal and, you know, this morning I sent about six of them a 30-point to-do list that I developed over the weekend. And I said “these are our goals for the week.” This is what I want to accomplish in this short week coming up. I want to keep it very organized for these folks, and they’re going to do amazing work while I’m on this podcast.

00:13:30.000

WS: Love that. Even that thought right there of “Hey, I developed these 30 points that we want to accomplish this next week” so it’s very clear to everyone. “Here’s where we’re going to focus,” right, and these team members can focus on that. I love that. 

And just for time’s sake, I want to push to one of the other things that you’ve mentioned that you’re very good at and that was winning bids against 10 other syndicators, and just dive into some of the strategies or your thought processes behind that.

00:13:53.000

SB: Okay, great. So, I have completed about 300 real estate transactions in my career on the buy side, and then I’ve sold 100 properties or so. So I’ve completed about 400 real estate transactions, and most of them have been off market transactions with old men or their families, like I have mentioned. 

But I also have been an aggressive bidder, representing real estate syndications that my partners and I have worked on. On larger transactions where you’re bidding against many folks, and the sellers of those properties really, really value the certainty of closing because they’re doing 1031s, or they’re selling because their lenders are on their neck or they’re selling because their partnership isn’t working out or their investors want to sell. I mean they have to sell a lot of time. 

Now there are some people that are just throwing out the property “Oh, it’s for sale,” not really for sale but most of the time when someone lists a property for sale they want to sell it to someone who is going to close the transaction. So, we would bid on nationally advertised apartment complexes, basically so well advertised that not a single person buying that type of asset class would not be aware of it. So, when we went to purchase a property we eventually called Arbor One in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It’s about four miles from my house. It’s 468 apartments. It was 83% occupied. They had a fire. The seller and their property management company were not getting along. They listed it for sale and there were 14, what I would consider to be qualified bidders and we came in third place on the price.

And so, the first bidder entered into a contract and they dropped out at some point along the process because there had been a murder on the property, and their lender became spooked. So then they came back and said “Okay, why should we sell this property to you?” And so what I did is I put together a 40-point PowerPoint presentation focusing on the fact that I live four miles away, and could handle the types of things that are happening on the property that we’re making a challenge to sell. 

First of all, 83% occupancy on a 460 unit apartment complex and then she got over 100 vacant apartments. And so, this 40-point PowerPoint presentation addressed everything: how are we going to get insurance on this property, because we can’t buy your property without insurance and that was a major challenge that people had; how are you going to borrow money on this property, it’s not Freddie ready, no one’s going to be able to get financing; how are you going to manage this property, you know, who’s gonna want to manage the property, and so we put together this very long presentation and we gave it to our insurance company, we gave it to our lenders, we gave it to the seller, we gave it to the brokers and said “Look, we got this on lock.”  And that was able to, even though we were third place on price to jump over the second bidder, and win the bid. 

And then, on Jamestown apartments, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, bought an apartment complex in Toledo, Ohio called Jamestown, one of the nicest apartment complexes you’ll ever see. But he got into a dispute with his property management company and he interviewed a bunch of other property management companies and decided it would be best to sell as opposed to trying his third property management company. 

So, it was again nationally advertised. It’s the most beautiful class of the property you ever see – all brick, all private entrance townhomes, it’s got a pool. The only reason that’s Class B and not Class A plus is because, you know, it was built in 1970 or something like that. So we bid, and there were 14 or 15 other bidders, and we were basically tied for first with four other bidders. And so we went into an interview process, and were able to convince the seller to sell to us because of the certainty of execution and that we did the same thing we put together a presentation and were able to convince them that we were able to close. And we, together as a team had closed a couple hundred apartment complexes at that point, so we have the track record but we also have the go forward plan.

00:17:59.000

WS: That’s awesome. I love that approach. I love just the organization, and even putting together the PowerPoint to just represent “Hey, this is our plan. This is how organized we are. This is how we’re ready to come in here and make this happen.” All those things just represent you all very well, to say the least. 

You mentioned, you know, you’ve done 100 transactions before that, I mean you’ve been in 35 different cities, what’s been the key to finding that kind of deal flow and growing that kind of business? I mean as far as a deal flow and funds, was syndication something that was just a necessary thing to you or was that always this dream of being able to scale like you have?

00:18:32.000

SB: Yeah, so I started in 2002 and bought a property a year until the foreclosure crisis. And then in the foreclosure crisis I had a very successful construction company so I had some cash on hand, everyone else had no cash. And we were able to buy 50 properties in Ypsilanti, Michigan in the span of two years because there were so many foreclosures. 

But what happened is the foreclosure crisis just dragged on and on and on in the Midwest, and then Ypsilanti in particular. It didn’t really end until 2014 or 2015, I mean it went on for a good five, six years. And so, what happened is all of my cash that I personally had got trapped in all those deals that I did, I was not able to execute any cash out refinances, I wasn’t able to sell any properties. I bought good properties but the foreclosure crisis just kept dragging on and on and the appraisals actually were getting worse each year. I mean I got better appraisals in 2009, 2013, just because the appraisers hadn’t really caught on and the banks weren’t forcing the appraisers down. 

So, in 2013, 2014, I was out of cash personally. It was all invested. And I kept still seeing deals that were coming up. Distressed deals were still being listed for sale for the first time, things like that so I started putting together what I call One Asset LLC and inviting three, four other investors to come in on a deal with me. And again, I didn’t have much cash so what I did is I said I hate, “I’ll do all the work, you guys put in the money, I’ll do all the work, I’ll manage it.” 

And so, I did a dozen of those until a couple of people that had invested in those said “Hey, let’s do some official real estate syndication blind pool-type deals,” and so we set those up and did those over the past few years.

00:20:16.000

WS: Were all those people like friends and family in the beginning, or these people you knew that already knew you were having success in real estate?

00:20:23.000

SB: Yeah, so, my weakness for sure is raising money, as of we talked today. Even though I’m on a team that’s raised $130 million from 984 investors, selling shares in our syndications at $25,000, each. That’s one of my weaknesses because when you form a team you want to put people on the team that are better at things than you are, right? So I was the boots on the ground, I was the property management, I was the “let’s convince all these people to sell to us” guy, I’m very good with insurance, pretty good with financing. 

One of the pieces I was missing was raising money. So when we went to form this team officially we sought out someone who raises money, professionally he worked at Goldman Sachs. And when he worked at Goldman Sachs he worked at a level of Goldman Sachs where he had 800 co-workers that all earned more than a million dollars a year. So, when he came to join our team he had a deep roll of people to reach out to that could easily invest 50 to $100,000 into a real estate syndication. 

Where I live in Ypsilanti, it’s a much lower income situation here so when I meet with people, most often they’re not accredited, most often they could invest 20 or $50,000, definitely not the hundred thousand. So, when we formed our team we did it very intentionally. We got a finance guy, we got a CPA on the team, we got the money raising guy in the team. But, now I’m doing it myself, so the reason we’re on this podcast and I’m promoting myself now is I’m the fundraiser in 2021 and 2022. I’ve raised $1.9 million since May 1, 2021 to put into a syndication I’m calling Beal Fund One, and I’m learning how to raise money and I really enjoy it. It’s a ton of work. From May 1 to August 15 approximately, I did 97 phone calls and meetings to raise that $1.9 million. 

And even though I was on a team that raised so much in the past, when you form a new team, they say “Oh, you’re on a new team now. Well tell me about that,” and you’re only as strong as your weakest link so you have to explain your new team and start the ball over again. But the reason I’m doing it myself is, I just decided that I didn’t want to have partners on the spot and I wanted to do it myself to see if I could do it and it’s going pretty well, we’ve purchased for properties with the $1.9 million – 60-unit in Monroe, a 37-unit in Dundee, and a 14-unit and a 25-unit in Toledo and then we have a 24-unit Toledo under contract and then our six property in this fund will be a property in Michigan, so we have a nice balance between Michigan and Ohio and I’m searching for that property now.

00:23:00.000

WS: One more quick question, and I was gonna say also to that, the amazing thing is you have those track records, right? You have all this experience, all these transactions, all these deals. I see your path to being able to raising money letting people know who you are, right, at this point like you have the track record which most people, they get started raising money, they have no track record. 

So that’s their big difficult hurdle to get across, and man you have a track record already. It’s more so the marketing piece now that you’ve got to get going right for yourself, so people can know who Stewart is and what you’ve done. But how do you continue that kind of deal flow?

00:23:34.000

SB: Yeah, so the deal flow is very challenging right now, and it’s the most challenging, it’s ever been in my career so I’ve been doing this for 19 years and it’s the most challenging. And you need to focus less on people that are selling for distressed reasons and more on people that want to do 1031s. 

So, you need to first of all educate a potential seller on the possibility of what they have, you’ve got a lot of debt equity in here, you’re not maximizing your equity potential. You could sell the property for me at a fair price, you don’t need an excellent price, you know, because I’m not going to pay you an excellent price. But you could sell for a fair price and do this with the money, do that with the money. I had someone who sold me a property and then reinvested the proceeds in my fund just because they wanted to turn their equity from a very management intensive equity to a passive income investment. 

And so, right now it’s convincing people to sell, and just doing the deals that the sellers want. Okay, so last week, out of the blue, a guy named Jack who I’ve known for 30 years investing in real estate around here, called and said “Stewart, I want to sell my last two properties in Ypsilanti. It’s a six-unit and a three-unit. And I’ve got a dozen people that want to buy these properties but here’s the deal that I want, and if you say yes, you can buy the properties.” And I said, “Well, tell me about the deal,” and he said “I want you to pay a high price, put virtually no money down and pay me a land contract over 30 years. You never have to refinance the land contract, I’ll give an attractive interest rate. I want to sell these properties, and I just want this money to go to my kids, you know, after I pass,” and I was like “Well, it’s a really high price, Jack.” And he was like, “Well, okay, fine. Here’s this list,” he actually showed me, “Here’s the list I’m calling people next.” He said “I’m calling your competitors Barnes and Barnes, I’m calling your competitor Mauer, I’m calling your competitor Colani,” and I was like “Oh no, no, no, don’t do that. I agree to your deal.” 

And because I’m putting virtually no money down, and can refinance at any time, or I might not have to refinance, and I got into the properties and realize “Wait a second, maybe this isn’t such a high price because we can do this, we can do that” and really got into it. Basically, I agreed to his DLC lay down and I’m sure, and he in fact after we got the deal signed up told me this that he had talked to some other people before me, and they kind of were screwing them around on the deal that he wanted to do. And so, that’s why he got me to do the deal that he wants. You know price is very important for sure, but if you’re trying to do deals out here you’re going to have to occasionally flex on that a little bit more than you might otherwise to get the deal.

00:26:15.000

WS: Yeah, you’re getting creative. Now that’s interesting, yeah, he called you and laid out this is what I like to have and you found a way to make it work. 

To change gears just a little bit before we run out of time, I want to get a couple more questions in the number of transactions you’ve done and doing this over the last 19, 20 years, what are your thoughts, because I know too and we didn’t get to talk about it much but you’re doing single-family up to, you know, 450+ unit apartment complexes, what’s your thoughts on just being prepared for a potential downturn?

00:26:42.000

SB: Yeah, so right now it’s just the wildest economic environment, ever. I mean, you’ve got all the government money, you’ve got the section eight vouchers flooding the market, you are reading in the newspaper about how everyone is in danger of eviction yet when you’re advertising for employees that you want, you get no resumes, whatsoever. 

And so it’s like, I understand how you can be reading in the paper that everyone is lacking money, but at the same time, no one wants money. And I just don’t really understand what that does to apartment complexes because right now, because no one’s getting evicted because the government’s paying the rent and the market has been flooded the section eight vouchers occupancy is skyrocketing, therefore rents are skyrocketing and so the liberal policies that the politicians put into place are actually the very reason rents are going up, very high. 

And so, when they realize that and try to correct that what does that do, and I’m not an economist, but, what I have a firm belief in is that we will always need an abundance of workforce housing, middle housing, and that’s what I invest in Class B and Class C apartment complexes. 

So, if you said “Hey, run through really skyrocketing store, let’s spend $200,000 per unit to build apartments in Ypsilanti, Michigan that you can run for $3,000 a month,” I would tell you “Well, that’s probably not a great idea,” because what if a recession happens or what if the government stopped supporting all the things that they’re supporting, there’s really going to be no one that rent those units. But if you said “Hey, Stewart let’s buy a 100-unit apartment complex at $50,000 a door, well half of what it would cost to build and let’s rent them for $1,700 dollars a month,” would say that sounds like a really good plan because no matter what happens there’s going to be people that are going to rent those apartments.

00:28:38.000

WS: No, that’s some great thoughts on understanding your market as well, right yeah understanding who are my renters and what they can afford even in hard times. What about, Stewart, any daily habits that you are disciplined about that have helped you achieve success?

00:28:51.000

SB: I credit a lot of my success to an intensity of work. I work an intense amount of hours. I keep it very organized though, so I have my property management days, I have my acquisition days, I’m always reviewing and auditing everything that I do. 

So, this Saturday, we have our properties organized by database. So this Saturday I analyzed 1,110 tenant accounts just to make sure my property managers are doing a good job with lease renewals, collections, and maintenance requests. So, I clicked on every single account and right manager in “Okay Joe Smith, lease expires September 30th.” Okay as the leasing property manager offers them a lease. Okay they have n’t paid us right? Yes. Does he have any maintenance requests? No, good. Moving on to Sally Smith, pop up down the line. It took about six hours to review 1,000 accounts. 

And so, it’s just this is a lot of intensive focus on details because what you can’t do is you can’t buy 1,000 apartments, hand them off to an in-house property manager or a third party property manager and just set it and forget it, it’s not going to work at all. And if you do six months later you’re going to say “Oh my god, my occupancy is way too low, my lease renewals, why are people leaving month to month, when this maintenance is getting done?” 

And so you just need to review it and sort of operate at the scale that I am, it takes a lot of intensive work but one of the goals of my career, and in 2022, is to continue to hire and train people so that I’m paying a property manager, but then I’m also paying a regional manager who’s doing that audit on that Saturday. So that I don’t have to do that every month. I’ll probably do it every three months instead or something like that, so that’s one of the goals of my career and I’m working on that. I’ve got a couple of guys that have worked for me for 10 years now that I’m training to do that.

00:30:43.000

WS: That’s awesome. That’s all of our goals, right, to work ourselves kind of out of a job to some extent early to have some more time, you know. But, you know one thing you said early on those that like these days the week or this or acquisitions in this day of the week is that it sounds like you have a structure to your week so you’re like focused on specific things on specific days or something like that, is that right?

00:31:01.000

SB: Yeah, so a lot of people that I have come work for me they get overwhelmed and burned out. I try my very best to say there’s no reason to get burned out, this is the hour you’re working on this thing and so just do it in this hour. And don’t try to do a thousand other things in the same hour.

And it just takes a special person to be able to think like that, to look at the 100 things you got to do and just be able to do them one at a time but I really excel at that. And so, I just once a week sit down and write down a list of everything I think I need to do and then I tackle it. But, you’ve got to separate your businesses into different categories. And so, if you’re trying to manage properties it’s really hard to focus on acquisitions, if you’re trying to just get into contract who’s trying to get your financing. And so you gotta organize it really carefully.

00:31:50.000

WS: How do you like to give back?

00:31:52.000

SB: This year we basically focused on Ypsilanti where we live and we basically just say yes to anyone who asks for anything. And we just put it into different levels, right? So if someone asks for $5,000 but you’re not entirely convinced of their plan or they’re doing it for the first time say “Okay, we’ll do $500 this time and come back next year or whatever.” But we focus on Ypsilanti, that’s where we live so we’re sponsoring the Washington County Literacy Event this Thursday. We’re doing a big fundraiser there. Ypsilanti International Elementary School is a big school next to my house, we’re big sponsors of everything they do. 

Someone wanted to paint Black Lives Matter on the main street in Ypsilanti, I happen to own the Ace Hardware Ypsilanti so we donated all the supplies necessary to do that painting. And so, people come with all these ideas, we mentor youth bowling events. So people come with the ideas, and I let them drive that so I can focus on real estate.

00:32:52.000

WS: Stewart it’s been a pleasure to meet you and to get to hear your story. Even really before 19, I think it’s so impressive you starting the lawn care business and having such success around that. And the skill set so that you learned at such a young age or a teenager growing that business I think has helped you so much in real estate as well, right, it’s the people skills, it’s relationships, it’s building those relationships and you learning how to do that in your teens has obviously just had pushed you so forward in your real estate business as well, the grow just incredible story there. 

And then just to win those bids against other syndicators. It’s just an incredible story, so grateful for your time and sharing that with us. No doubt you’re going to have more success and just your ability in the teams that you’re building, so important. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

00:33:41.000

SB: Yeah, okay, great. So my email address is [email protected] – g-o-b-e-a-l dot com and my property management website is gobeal.com, and then my syndication fundraising website is bealcapital.com – b-e-a-l. And you can contact me through either website as well. And I will give pretty much anyone 45 minutes of my time if they want to talk about business, want to talk about real estate, and just send me a compelling email about why I should do that and we’ll hop on a call. And even if you’re not looking to put money in our fund, I like to network with real estate investors because it comes back around to three other different ways eventually in the future, maybe you know a great insurance agent, maybe you know a great lender, maybe you can refer me to someone who wants to manage property. Hey, let’s talk and let’s connect.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

0:34:36.0 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.

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