WS1488: Leaping into Multifamily and Raising Millions | Bronson Hill

Episode 1488

[INTRODUCTION]

Bronson Hill (BH): A lot of people just kind of were really wondering what are you doing? Why would you leave this great job? Especially, times are tough. Why would you do that? Again, it’s worked out and I kind of like got to the place where I got in an entrepreneur’s group, and I think this is the thing that’s amazing. If you want to go to the next level, think we talked about this before, when you gotta get around people that will push you to the next level and you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So, If you’re only around people that are kind of where you’re at, you’re never really gonna keep growing beyond.

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. We have a few segments of shows with our next guest that I know you are going to enjoy. I’ve enjoyed getting to know this individual actually, just through a series of shows with him and hearing his story first, his path that took many different pivots to get to real estate success, I know you’re gonna be encouraged by his story and what happened. Numerous different changes he had to make in making some hard decisions, right? And taking that leap into real estate and multifamily, and doing it big and doing it well, which he has done so I know you’re gonna learn a lot from him.

His name Bronson Hill, he’s a managing member of Bronson Equity. Bronson is a general partner in 2000 multifamily units worth over 200M, and he’s the host of the Mailbox Money Show and he understands the investor mindset, having spoken individually on the phone to over 1200 investors and having raised over 25 million for real estate. He’s the author of How to Use Inflation to Your Advantage. He has a YouTube show and blog that he’s very active on as well. He’s also a capital raising coach at Kingdom REI faith-based group that helps investors find deals and raise funds for large real estate deals. You’re gonna learn a lot from Bronson today in this series of shows.

[INTERVIEW]

WS: Bronson, welcome to the show. 

BH: Honored to meet you. Hey, Whitney. I’m really excited to be here. I’ve been following you for a while and I just love what you’re doing and I’m really excited to be a part of this today. 

WS: Yeah, awesome. Well, I’ve enjoyed our conversation even up to this point, so I’m definitely looking forward to learning more about you. There’s not many pastors who go and develop a big business or pursue something like that, right? And so I’m looking forward to hearing your story and less jumping into that. I know I think you were into single-family homes as well and did some other types of investing. And so I think there’s been some pivots you have made, right. Which we all have, but I love learning from people who have made those big decisions and typically very hard decisions, right, at the time. And so give us a little more about Bronson and, you know, go back a little bit. Let’s jump into your investing career. How did you move into that? But what was before that?

BH: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve lived several different lives. So I think like some of us, I think the average person, they say switches careers like six times in their lifetime, and I think it’s even increasing even more. So I started out, I was a youth pastor for a number of years, lived overseas for about six months in college in Africa. Did some work there, really thought I’d be a pastor, a missionary, long term. I was a youth pastor at mega church, and then this through a series of events. Kinda had a pivot where I shifted into sales, which to me, when I started, I just didn’t even know, can you make any money doing sales? And so I had this path of going into medical device sales, and there was some real kind of moments that led to that as far as, okay, I think this is what I’m supposed to do.

So I did that for 10 years and was in surgery selling medical devices to doctors, and I was making good money. I was making over 200,000 a year. I was working, you know, I did very well in that job, but I just wanted more control over my time. And so I started doing, I had been doing single-family rentals for a number of years at a small, single-family portfolio with relative, and I had a plan to get 30 houses in the Cleveland market, which was, is in a great market in general in no offense, in anybody in Cleveland, but really low cost kind of, you know, d class C plus kind of neighborhoods, kind of rough area.

And I just wasn’t really, you know, the numbers looked good on paper, but when they actually kind of worked out, they didn’t really kind of work out the way that I had hoped. And so I had a cousin who I hadn’t seen in years who said, Hey, this single-family seems like a lot of work. Why don’t you do multifamily? And I said, Well, I’d love to, but I don’t have the money. And he said, Well, you can raise the money. And so he taught me about syndication. Said, Listen to this podcast, go to this event, read this book. I just did everything he said. Ended up starting a local meetup in Pasadena, California. At our first meeting we had 60 people, cause we promoted a lot.

And a guy came up to me, I’d never met before and said, hey, I invest, I’d invest in one of your deals. And I was thinking, Well, II don’t have any deals. But I thought, you know, okay, well let’s get coffee. So I got coffee with him and I showed him a sample deal. He said, I’d be excited about something, you know, and maybe putting a hundred K in, something like that. So I basically introduced him to another guy I met at that same meet up. Now I’ve got some general partner experience from bringing somebody who has some money to a deal. And then that path led to just a lot of growth, a lot of learning. And now, you know, four years later, I quit my great corporate job and we’ve raised $30M to buy over 200M in multifamily assets. It’s been a lot of fun.

WS: Wow. Okay. Well yeah, you’ve hit what the six or seven jobs or paths like you were talking about already. So you should be stuck where you’re at now. No, it’s interesting just the path the Lord takes right for us and leads us to one way or the other, and I just appreciate you being willing to share that. Speak to some challenges maybe. I always like to hear too about the pushback people receive, cuz I know we received some and I know other people do from family members or other people that, hey, they love you, right? They care about you, but they’re saying, hey Bronson, you know, are you crazy? Like, why are you leaving? You were gonna be a pastor and now you’re doing something else, but now you’re okay. Now you’ve got this job and you’re making over 200,000 a year. It just doesn’t make sense to most people to say, I’m gonna go do something else now, right? Any pushback, any advice for those who are fixing to make that step as well?

BH: Yeah. Well I think, and we talked about this a little bit before the show, I think when you have a desire to follow God in your life, you have a desire to. You know, there’s a divine purpose for my life, and I think when you’re a person of faith. Whatever your faith background. I think it’s just, you know, is everything random or is there actually a purpose and a plan? And when you believe there’s a purpose and a plan, when bad things happen or difficult things happen, or you face challenges, you gotta believe that there’s something good that’s gonna come out of it. There’s always a silver lining. There’s always something good that can happen. So I’ll give a little more detail about when I was a youth pastor. 

You know, I had done it for about six years. I was at this mega church in Montana of all places. So I grew up in Seattle, but was at this church in Montana and just out of the blue after being there about a year and a half, I mean, our numbers, you know, I kind of follow this as a little bit of the detail, but I followed a guy who was a local rockstar, just you know, had 250 high school students come to this group. And so I took over. There was about 200 and in this church it was basically numbers. How many butts in seats, Like that was success. That’s what ministry looked like. That was success, you know, to me. and so they came to me on a Friday and they’re just like, you know, we just don’t think you’re a good fit and your last day’s, Tuesday.

And it was just very shocking. And I bought a house to the area. It was very personal. It was just really challenging. And I went through this kind of dark net of the soul of, you know, what am I supposed to be doing? What is my life supposed to be? Ended up moving back to LA, did a lot of kind of soul searching through some real experiences got into, you know, medical sales and that was a whole journey. But the medical sales process, I went from, you know, basically being fired from a job, which if everybody’s been fired from a job, like that’s a very difficult thing to go through. The only time it’s ever happened to me. And then I went, I ended up being number one person in this medical sales company about two years later out of a hundred people, and just felt really a place of honor.

So it’s amazing how that can change and things can change. And so I went from being, you know, again, this great sales rep and doing it for a number of years. And if you’ve read the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, his poor dad is in education. And it’s funny, my dad’s a college professor. he’s awesome. Like, you know, he invest in some stuff that we do and he’s amazing. But the education mindset, meaning the professors and the teachers and everybody, I could go down the list. There’s like 10 teachers just in my family lineage. And it’s just all about getting a safe, secure job. So it’s, if you have this great job, Bronson, you’re able to do it in, you know, toward the end it was like 20, 30 hours a week. Like, why would you ever wanna leave that? And so everybody kind of thought it was crazy, but I saw it was possible that I could get control over my time. I could travel, I could spend time, you know, in causes I believe in, such as really fighting human trafficking in the world, which is a huge cause to me.

So, yeah, I mean, a lot of people just kind of were really wondering like, what are you doing? Why would you leave this great job? Like, you know, especially, you know, times are tough. Like, why would you do that? But again, it’s worked out I, andgot to the place where I got in an entrepreneur’s group, and I think this is the thing that’s amazing. If you want to go to the next level, I think we talked about this before, when you gotta get around people that will push you to the next level and you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So, If you’re only around people that are kind of where you’re at, you’re never really gonna keep growing beyond.

So it was this group of five other entrepreneurs. We get together once a month and my whole family and friends were like, You don’t leave your job. All these guys were like, Yeah, you should pretty much leave your job as soon as possible. And then they said this, they’re like, you know, It may not work out, but if it doesn’t work out, you could always go back to medical sales and I was like, oh, that’s really, you know, it’s really true. could go back. I’d done, well, I could always go back. So it kind of gave me just the idea of, I have options here. And I think a lot of people are really worried about, well, what if it doesn’t work out, but the chance to look, well, what if it does work out? What if it works out phenomenally well and you can do all these things that you only dreamed about?

WS: That’s incredible. I love that you probably went to, hey, who am I surrounding myself with? Who did they say, you know, this group of guys or whoever, guys and gals that potentially were where you wanted to be or ahead of you, You know, right? And you’re seeking advice from them and they’re like, Well, you know, leave your job. It is like this small thing, like it’s no big deal, right? It’s like such a right, such a mindset. 

BH: It’s clear job. 

WS: Yeah, from the way most of us are raised or you know, taught to think about security and all those, you know, leave as soon as possible and then made it seem so simple, well, you could always go back to, you know, that was probably a major mindset shift for you, right? I mean, just to think that way. 

BH: Yeah. Yeah, it really was. I think that I’m a big mindset person. I’m sure you are as well, but it’s just, it’s amazing how if we just kind of reframe conversations or we just get in our head, you know, we get, so for me, you know, afraid of failure. What happens if something doesn’t work out or what happens if, you know, for me it was a big deal to actually start putting myself out there and start creating, you know, podcasts and videos and YouTube, you know, all this stuff. It feel, it can feel very vulnerable, but I think it also gives the opportunity for clarifying my message as well as, you know, people hear it and they’re like, you know, I just really love the way that you share these stories, and I’m sure you’ve had, you know, many listeners as well that have really resonated with your content and just with who you are and when we put ourselves out there, one of my favorite authors, her name is Brene Brown, and she just talks about in her book that The Gifts of Imperfection, which is an awesome book.

Talks about the power of being vulnerable, right? When we put ourselves out there and we’re creative, it’s very vulnerable. Or when we take a risk and we try a new career, or we do something that’s out of our comfort zone. But what it does is it really produces just an outsize amount of growth in us, and it also gives other people permission to actually want to pursue their dreams as well. And I knew that, you know, if I were 78, 70 or 80 years old, I would’ve regretted not quitting my job and going for it, you know, I would’ve regretted not just going a hundred percent for it. I think the older I get, I turned 40 a couple years ago. It was just like, you know, life is just too short not to go after the things that you’re put here to do and that you dream about. So anybody’s listening, I just encourage you to just, you know, if there’s something in your heart, if you possibly can go after it, because life is very short. 

WS: Yeah. I’ll never forget, I wish I could remember who said this or said it to me, but it was like, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Yeah. You know, here in America, you know, you, let’s say you do lose your home, well, you’re still prob most likely or most, the majority of us are still gonna have a warm place to sleep. And food to eat, right? Or we’re gonna have family members that can help us, or we’re gonna find a way. There’s, we have so many options here. I mean, worst case, right? But if you never try, you never know, right? What you might like. You said, What if it works? So anyway, I just appreciate the passion around that too, and just helping people to open their eyes and reframe that question and really the risk, right? Think about the reward, right? Anyway, I don’t wanna live in fear that we’re not supposed to live in fear, right? So, speak to like the meet up. To, you know, millions in multifamily. Like what was, give us a few of those steps there that you took. I mean, all of a sudden you hold a meetup and which highly successful sounds like to have 60, what, five people or more show up to your first meetup, you know, and even have somebody approach you and saying, hey, I would invest with you. That’s pretty incredible. But what were some of the things then that happened for you, or the steps that you took to, hey, you know, to get to where you’re at now, to where most people that are trying to get started would love? 

BH: Yeah, so in single-family, it’s interesting to me, my single-family journey was, you know, there were people that helped me out in the, since I had a real estate agent or a wholesaler bought houses from, or I had my property manager cuz I was doing outof state, you know, single-family. But it felt very much like it was my thing. I was kind of doing it on my own multifamily altogether. It’s a, it’s very different than single-family in this, that it’s very much a team sport. There’s really nobody that I know that can go by a hundred unit apartment complex by themselves and kind of run it by themselves. Some people do it. 

But being able to involve other team members is awesome. So even from the meetup, even starting the meetup, I had a meetup that I had been going to in Pasadena and there was a woman who’d been running this for years, very successful meetup, and I just, I had approached her, I’d been a part of one of her like little coaching things that she did, little multi-week thing that she had done. And so I had a lot of, I had a relationship with her and I said, hey, you know what, If we started another meet. And you know, it would just be on multifamily and I’ll do all the work and you just show up. And she said, that sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it. So, so part of it was I leveraged her brand, I leveraged her experience, I leveraged, you know, her existing meetup to be able to start this.

And then of course I did other promotion and stuff like that. But just that theme of finding partners has been huge. So, you know, I raised that a hundred k, that was like September of, like I said, it would be 2018. And then I just went to a lot of events, tried to network, and I had been following a well known syndicator. And I basically was trying, I wasn’t sure am I gonna raise money or am I going to be somebody who finds deals? I really thought, hey, maybe I’ll be somebody who finds deals. Even though of course I’ve had, you know, 10 years sales experience and I’ve had all this, and of course, you know, it obviously is a much better fit for me, I think in general.

But over the next six months, been going to events and things and I went to this event where I approached a very successful syndicator who had a huge, you know, 40,000 people on his email list been teaching people how to syndicate. But my cousin that I had mentioned that who was very experienced in real estate, he’d been listening and a lot, I know a lot of people had been listening that were not, were never gonna go buy their own building, right? These maybe were business owners or doctors or lawyers or whoever, and they didn’t wanna do it themselves. So the idea of a passive, having passive investors that may wanna invest. So I kind of saw the opportunity. So I approached him and I said, hey, can we talk about this part of your business? And he, first, he kind of blew me up and he said, okay, let’s talk about it.

So then I pitched him, I said, Hey, what if we did something together and we created just more the podcast and videos and this kind of whole kind of pipeline and you know, I could either myself or someone else could do calls to help facilitate this. And so we created an agreement and over the next 18 months while working my full-time job, I started taking, you know, these Zoom calls and some weeks it was 30 calls and some weeks it was, you know, 10 calls, but it was 15 to 20 calls a week.

And I just, I got a lot of experience and that helped me to be a part of the team to help qualify people into these deals. So over the next 18 months, we raised $15M together. So I had wanted to actually start my own thing, but there was this opportunity that. And I was kind of in the right place at the right time, and I got all of this experience both on marketing and working with investors and having, you know, a thousand one-on-one phone calls over 18 months. And so it was awesome. So I just, I think that’s what really was really a catapult to get me going. 

WS: Wow. So you found this guy, you spent, what would you say, 18 months with him?

BH: Yeah. 

WS: Yeah. What a great experience. What were a couple of the biggest takeaways from that time with him though, that have helped you after?

BH: Yeah, so I had started to build my own kind of platform in the beginning, and I had a podcast. I had recorded a few episodes we never launched, really launched a bunch of anything. But with him, he was just doing things at such a high level. And I remember even after working with him for a year, I was like, How are you doing all this? Like, what’s actually, how is this working? And just learning about the idea of an online platform and also, you know, paid ads and just kind of how do you get people in and how do they find your stuff and how do people do this kind of in the internet marketing world? And this is a guy who’s really well known in the multifamily space. And I said, you know, I started asking a question. He said, Well, I spent about 80% of my time doing internet marketing related stuff, like learning about this stuff and doing courses and podcasts. And I was just kind of blown away. Cause that’s not the way I thought of him or I kind of saw him presented.

And so to me, I think of the idea of really scaling a business. A lot of people wanna know, well, how can I raise millions and millions of dollars? it was almost like I got to see like the Wizard of Oz, like pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Right. I was seeing actually how all this stuff was happening, kinda like the behind the scenes. So it was just incredibly valuable. So, so when we actually stopped working kind of more directly together and II was able to, you know, kind of how it worked is we raised 8 million in 24 hours for our last deal together and they realized like, man, I’m making more money in this just in my acquisition fee than what someone would make if they were just a full-time investor relations person. So they kind realized maybe we should just hire an investor relations person. But it was a natural segue for me to go off on my own. So I got this great, you know, almost paid internship to go learn from somebody who’s highly successful and it was awesome.

WS: That’s incredible. I just have that encouraged listeners to think about a path like that too, or mentorship or learning under someone for a time like that, cuz that just, man, what a university that was for you.

BH: Yeah. 

WS: You know and how that has paid you forward in such a big way. Man, any thoughts on like meeting somebody like that? I get questions like that all the time. You know, it’s like, I wish I could like help everybody, right? I wish, you know, I could like allow everybody to do an internship or help, you know, But it’s not possible unfortunately right? But what was the ticket for you to get in with this guy? Or how can somebody build that connection like that with somebody that can help them and teach them in that way? 

BH: Yeah, so it’s interesting when I actually connected with this person, it was through an event we met at one event, and then I kind of kept in touch with his team and then I went to this expensive event. It was a $6,000 event on a cruise. And so some of these high end events, people, you know, are leery to go to, especially if you work a W2 job and you’re like, man, this is like 3% or 5% or 10 whatever of my total take home. Like, why would I spend money to go do this? But you know, when you spend money to go to a high-end events, there’s only two types of people that are there, or people that have a lot of money. And people that are highly successful. And so being around both is really powerful. So if this cruise was $1,200, you might have 5,000 people there, or 3000 people, but there were only 170 people on this cruise. So it was a very focused group of people. And then while it was there, we kind of did these round table things, was very educational, and somebody at the table said this quote, they said, you know, it’s like that quote from that guy Jim Ro, who’s a motivational speaker or was a motivational speaker.

He said, make yourself valuable to valuable people. And he said this quote, make yourself valuable to valuable people. And that kind of rung in my ears. I was think, wow, that’s really, I’ve never heard that before. It’s like, make yourself valuable to somebody who provides value or you found value from, or is a high value person. And I thought, Well, who’s a high value person? I was like, well, it’s this person that I’m thinking of. Like, I’m gonna go there at this event. I’m just gonna go and find out. In what area of their really think about their business? Can I help in this specific area? So I think that when the approach, or just like you’re talking about people that are listening, how do I do that? How do I create that with someone? Is you have to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who’s highly successful and think about what could be the biggest challenge they’re facing. 

And so, you know, for you and your business buddy, I’m sure you’re going, you’re doing, you know, awesome stuff. You’ve got this show, you’ve got all kinds of stuff you’re doing multifamily, different areas. Think about things that you’re wrestling with in your business. A lot of people come up to you and they’re like, hey, I want you to mentor me, or I want you to coach me. I want you to help. But how many people come up and actually say, hey, I really wanna help you in your business. You know, what about this specific area? It’s not just like, how can I help you? Which is like, I get that sometimes too, and I’m like, well, I don’t know. Like, how can you, I don’t know you, but they come up like, I have a background in sales, and how is it going in this specific area of your business that I might be able to help with? That’s a whole different type of thing, right?

And so that really, I think, is something that can set you apart. And I still do it now in my business, where I go to people at the next level. I try to figure out is there a way that I could potentially help this person? Who’s two or three levels ahead. And I think if you’re constantly thinking about that, there will be a door that will open, maybe you won’t even get paid for it initially, but over time you create value for yourself in that. And when you create value, that’s how people get paid. So maybe you don’t get paid right away, but I really think it comes from instead of like, You know, it’s almost like it happens in churches, right? Oh, I go to this church because I’m getting fed, right? This church feeds me. It gives you what I need. It’s like, no, It’s about how can I serve, right? What are the ways that I can serve in this way? So I think it’s just a reframe that’s really the reframe that helped me to get that partnership. 

WS: Yeah, we could do a whole show on that right there. 

BH: Yeah. Yeah. 

WS: No, I appreciate that, Bronson, no doubt. I love the thought process of, you know, somebody that, that already shows they’re motivated, right? Already shows that they’re wanting to contribute and actually already shows that they have contributed some time and effort cuz they’ve done research about you. They’ve really thought about how they can add value to you as opposed.

Just coming and saying, hey, what can I do for you? How can I help you? I’ve tried that in the past years ago too, when I was getting started, and then eventually you figure out you get some no’s, right? And it helps you to up your game a little bit to do this. But Bronson, incredible just hearing your story, I mean, just all the past the Lord’s taking you to finally now, you know, being where you are now. I just hope it’s, I know it’s encouraging to the listeners to think through that. I hope they’re encouraged by even how you learn the multifamily business and hopefully it changes their mindset, right? Just a shift on, hey, I can try this thing. It’s not the end of the world if it flops, I hope it’s just a learning point, right? You know, you can always go back to that W2 more times than not, and so I hope that encourages them to step out a little bit. 

Before we move into another segment for tomorrow’s show. How can the listeners get in touch with you and learn more? 

BH: Yeah, so I love connecting with anybody about, you know, passive investing or active investing. I wrote this report called How to Use Inflation to Your Advantage. It’s 52 color pages at my website, bronsonequity.com. Just give some strategies, multifamily, other alternative assets, precious metals, using debt, just all kinds of different ideas that you can actually make inflation your friend, rather than being hurt by it. I’m also on social media, on Facebook and LinkedIn. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[OUTRO]

WS: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I hope you’re telling your friends about the real estate syndication show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to LifeBridgeCapital.com and start investing today.

[END]