Hunting For Mobile Home Parks with Miles Noland

Josh (00:00:02) - Good day, everybody. Welcome to the deal, Scout. On today's show, we're going to have a conversation with a guy who is invested in RV parks, mobile home parks and also looking to invest in local businesses. And he's just an investor and an investor mindset, so we'd love to pick his brain and learn from him. So Miles, welcome to the show.

Miles (00:00:21) - Yeah, thanks for having me.

Josh (00:00:23) - Absolutely. Now looking through your LinkedIn, this is a great place to learn. You know, quick headshots and and overviews of people. And I see that you were a baseball player. What position did you play back in the day?

Miles (00:00:34) - Yeah, yeah, mostly. Mostly center field. I could play all the outfield positions, but I played at a small college. I actually coached baseball in college for six years, so loved it, but worked. Worked every day, all day and made very little money. So I finally got out of it. So yeah.

Josh (00:00:52) - So center fielder means you got to be fast, but you also have to read the whole field, right.

Josh (00:00:57) - Like this is something that's the position of like it's almost like pitcher of the outfield right.

Miles (00:01:02) - Yeah. Yeah. You're like the general. So you know, if you call the left or right fielder off or the shortstop or second baseman, they have to get out of the way and let you let you catch it. So yep.

Josh (00:01:15) - Could you throw it from centerfield to home plate. Have you ever could you get it there or maybe on the.

Miles (00:01:21) - Arm wasn't great. I had an elbow surgery when I was 18 and after that things weren't. I had an average to below average arm. So yeah.

Josh (00:01:30) - Cool. So how did how did you go from coaching baseball into the world of syndicating deals? RV park investor, mobile home park investor? Like how did that happen? Take us through your journey man.

Miles (00:01:40) - Yeah, yeah. And I'll try to keep it short because it is a long journey. So I'm 41 now. So I, I got in the, you know, right out of college and started doing that and taught taught high school for year health and and didn't didn't really like that very much and coached baseball and honestly learned you know, how to work and a lot of it was recruiting so learned how to sell basically, even though I didn't think about that at the time and just the the no excuses mentality, it's like, here's 35 guys and this tiny little area, and you got enough weights for five people and you need to figure out how to make a good workout for 35 people, you know.

Miles (00:02:23) - So and it was like, it doesn't matter that it's cold or our field isn't great or that we have we have a tiny town where our schools. So there's a lot of having to figure things out. And I had some really good coaches that I worked under, so I feel like that helped me a lot. And then I was I finally got out of I was hitting 30, getting married and came back to Lexington, Kentucky from was where I was from. And we're, you know, still still hanging on the coaching thing part time and a D3 school and working at a physical therapy place. And I it was funny. I was on a bus, I think I was 28 and I just I started reading this book and it was toilet paper entrepreneur by Mike McCullough.

Josh (00:03:04) - Yeah.

Miles (00:03:05) - And like it was like fireworks were going off in my brain because I was like, because my, my mom was a professor and my dad was an attorney. And like, all grown up, get good grades, get a good job.

Miles (00:03:16) - And like, I didn't even know you could actually own a business like that was so foreign to me. Um, but, like, it's just like I'm reading this book and I'm like, this is me. Like this. I'm an entrepreneur. Like, I just never put it together. And then. And then from then I always like to read. So I was just devouring things on how to. And so I'm like, well, you know, I like working out, you know, I got these certifications. I'm going to start my own fitness fitness company.

Josh (00:03:42) - Yep.

Miles (00:03:43) - And I start trying to train people and I get a sight and and six months goes by and I cannot get one client like, it was so bad. And so then I just start buying all these courses. I signed up for coaching. Um, and then like I learned, every, you know, wow, this is really like a sales and marketing game here, you know? And I was terrible at it first, but I got better.

Miles (00:04:07) - And, you know, I started off renting it just cut me off. I'm going too much detail here, you know?

Josh (00:04:13) - Just keep going, man. I will cut you off if it goes off. But so I love the story of the entrepreneur, but it's unique that you started from the from a financial book. Right. Mike McCullough which is known for, you know, profit first and he's very financial first education. So it's interesting in that but continuing the story and then we'll go back to Mike McLeod's.

Miles (00:04:36) - Yeah. And so so we just rented out this place, this old church like warehouse to No Heat. And I bought $300 worth of bands. And I went out and talked to every single person I could find. And I had a little niche with the baseball kids. So I started training these youth baseball players. And then winter was hitting and I was like, I got to figure something out. And then I found this place and it was probably 7000ft², and it was like a little bit above, like what I could really afford, but.

Miles (00:05:01) - I went for it. I signed the three year lease and then the pressure was on and but you know, I was able to get it like, you know, to about $10,000 a month recurring revenue, which was pretty good. But then you have all these expenses, you know, with the facility. So it went good for a couple of years. It brought my wife into it. She was a nurse. And then there are a number of things that happened, but it just kind of went downhill to where, like all the schools could practice year round, they change the rules. So a lot of the kids didn't have time to come to me. And just a number of things happened to where, like the business just started going down. And so I was able to find a job with the franchise that I worked for, like coaching these fitness business owners and helping. And I learned on the side how to run all these Facebook ads because I, I started a like a business selling baseball information products and, and I made enough money to like, pay for all my ad costs, but I didn't really make enough money to actually pay myself.

Miles (00:05:59) - But I was able to get about 10,000, over 10,000 leads, you know, like online through all 50 states, because I figured out Facebook ads and so, so anyway, long story short, I kind of did that for this company and learned a system on how to coach business owners and talk to some very interesting people like Norway, Kenya, Australia, like all these people that have their own fitness businesses. And and so after a while, I just wasn't getting paid very much. And I got a job in medical sales and, and that that went pretty well. But the whole time I'd started that was like around 2016, I was working to study in real estate, and it took me about a year to figure out that I really like mobile home parks for a number of reasons. With with the the moat that Warren Buffett talks about, they're good, you know, supply and demand metrics because they're most counties and cities won't let you build them. And then it was just a process of, again, like reading.

Miles (00:07:01) - And then like I still can't figure this out. I got to pay a guy in the Philippines to build this off market list. I got to figure it because the only thing I own was my personal home. I never bought a duplex or anything, and so it took me a while to figure out all the pieces. But it took, you know, it took me about three years before I close on my first deal, which was June 2020. And then after that first one hit and I made thousands of cold calls and it just kind of all it just started flowing and like we went pretty fast and, you know, and then the next two and a half years, I think we bought, you know, probably about $30 million worth of real estate like in that two and a half years or so. And it was just solving problems like, you know, whether it's finding money or finding financing or finding investors or, you know, operate. It was just it was a flurry, but it was it was fun, you know, and I learned a lot.

Josh (00:07:52) - So yeah, I love the story. So typical entrepreneur I'm very much the same. Try everything out to figure out what we want to do or don't want to do in life, right? Resume is very long with lots of spider marks in it, right? But when you find something that you're passionate about that you enjoy, then everything gets piled into that bucket and then you're all in, right? Like, I'm going to figure this out. Along the journey, you figured out what you'd like, what you don't like, but it all started with a book for you. Why did you read that book in the first place?

Miles (00:08:27) - Yeah. You know, I always, always would read a lot. So I just found kind of a formula of like, if I, if I'm on the know something, it's really easy for me to go to the library and check out a book or buy $10 book on Amazon. And I would, you know, I'd read five books on the subject. And I felt like, you know, I'm not an expert, but I know more than like 98% of people on that topic.

Miles (00:08:48) - So when I did that, when I was coaching and I felt like I got good at, like coaching the mental side of baseball and the hitting piece of it, and then I did that, like in fitness, to wear the same thing and then, um, and then so when it came time, you know, early on. So it took always I just felt like I wasn't where I was supposed to be, like, I was coaching baseball. I'm working 55, 60 hours a week doing all these, like, side jobs, just trying to make, you know, at the end of the year, I look up and I've made like 37 grand and I'm working 55, 60 hours a week and I'm like, there's like, I'm doing something wrong here. And so I think I was just searching, trying to find like, you know what? What really fit me.

Josh (00:09:34) - So man, while I was doing that, I built a, I started as a fitness technology guy. Right. Okay.

Josh (00:09:42) - I retired from the fire department early. Like, I took a cash out my pension, put it all on black and failed miserably. But I got into fitness and became a guy or Nasm. Sorry. Anyway, I get all my acronyms messed up, but the fitness industry is good. But it's hard.

Miles (00:09:59) - Really hard.

Josh (00:10:00) - It's really hard because not only do you have to sell the gigs, you have to do the gigs and you have to live the gig, right? Is like, nobody wants a fat trainer. Nobody wants someone who's like, you know, like, so it's just like, that was that was tough for me. But I learned the chops, which now parlaying into real estate, it really was beneficial. Like I couldn't go back and remove any of the failures to get to where I am today. So in your journey medical device sales, recruiting, staffing, all those things put piled together, syndication and putting these deals together. It's like the perfect storm to create a great syndicator.

Josh (00:10:40) - Out of all the skills that you learned, which one do you think was the most valuable skill set you've learned in your journey?

Miles (00:10:49) - Yeah, I think it's fine. And deals so mean. You know, it's it's like a lot of people say I make a lot of cold calls, but like, I don't think a lot of people really do.

Josh (00:11:01) - Yeah.

Miles (00:11:01) - Because like, even I'd done a lot of in-person sales. But when you pick up that phone, it's different. You know, I think it's almost harder because you don't have that face to face human connection and mean. I just did it solid just about five hours a week, you know, for about 9 to 12 months. And then the the momentum started adding up. And I probably tried to wholesale like seven deals and they all fell through. And like I just didn't know what I was and I picked the wrong deals and then the wrong buyer. And then finally I was like, man, I'm just going to try to buy this.

Miles (00:11:34) - This is dumb. Doing all this work and getting to the end and getting nothing out of it, I got one to go through. I mean, that was it. But um, so yeah, and I think, I think just kind of my background with that stuff and just honestly just trying to truly be interested in like the other person's story. I think that kind of shines through. And almost being like the anti sales person, like just being really curious like about their life because everybody has a story. And then once I'd make that initial connection, I'd try to go meet them in person, further develop rapport. And then I would find like, well, maybe the terms are now a little bit more favorable or the price. Now that they got to know me a little bit because they had a lot of people calling them, but nobody else was coming to see them. So I think that was that was big. And what we've kind of done, I mean, like, for example, we had a couple deals that were pretty big, you know, relatively speaking, that we just we hadn't developed the capital raising to really take them down.

Miles (00:12:33) - So we partner with bigger groups that kind of already had that established, but they didn't have the deal flow like we had. So, you know, finding ways and now whether we took an acquisition fee and then we took a small chunk of equity, we would do that. But like just finding if you have the deal, you can make something out of that opportunity. So that's really like that's where it all starts. I think for me.

Josh (00:12:59) - It sounds like you're your superpower is knocking on doors, cold calling, getting a deal, finding the deal because you've had to learn how to do that. As a fitness guy. Like if you didn't bring in a client, you didn't eat right. Give us some tips on cold calling mobile home parks or RV parks. Give us give us a few tips. One you said is getting face to face, belly to belly, right? That's a tip, right? Susan, let me go take a look at the property if there's an interest. So that's a tip.

Josh (00:13:28) - Give us a few others.

Miles (00:13:30) - Yeah. Mean think you kind of have a have to look at it like a whole ecosystem. So there's like different ways to to go about it. But I put a significant amount of money into building out this list. I mean, probably in three years I'll probably put 20 to 25 grand like in the building out this list. So like that was an investment. And I looked at that like it was gold because, you know, once the broker gets a hold of it, if you're not established, like brokers aren't going to talk to you and they're typically aligned with the sellers. So a lot of times the prices don't make sense. So that was really like, hey, this is this is the route I have to take. I don't really have a choice. And um, and so I think, yeah, just just making those calls and like being consistent about it. And then eventually I was able to kind of outsource a lot of that. But the problem is, is nobody is going to do it as good as you're going to do it.

Miles (00:14:23) - Like my guy in Pakistan has a little bit of an accent, like it's just not going to be the same feel for a lot of these older sellers that are in their 70s and 80s. They may not like that. So you can outsource, but it's it's hard to find somebody that's actually good at it. But yeah, I think just a consistent follow up. And you got to realize that it's going to take a lot longer than an on market deal. I mean from like first contact to actually closing every single one of my I think we did like 13 deals. Ten of them or 11 of them were off market like direct to seller. And the average time frame for all of them were from first contact to closing was like 9 to 18 months. So you got to realize that, like they're not sure. So yeah, thinking about selling and then they come back a month I don't want to sell. And then like two months later, well, you know maybe I can sell and then and things happen.

Miles (00:15:17) - But if you just stay consistent like with the follow up, try to build the relationship, they're going to be the one. And I've had so many frustrating situations where I just wanted to strangle the seller for, for like saying one thing and then doing another, or changing their mind or like changing the price at the last second, you know, and just so it gets frustrating. But like at the end, if you get a really good property at the right price, it's worth it.

Josh (00:15:46) - So we as a cold call calling into and I've done this door knocked and such like that getting to the price, getting to like the value of something is is so hard because this person might have been building this mobile home park or RV park, you know, they're in their 70s or whatever, building it, managing their whole family. Their kids grew up there like everything, and they've been doing it in their mind. They have a perceived value based on their pain or based on what it's done for them and their family, versus what it actually is worth.

Josh (00:16:12) - How do you cross over the price? Is it he who speaks first loses, or how do you approach dollars?

Miles (00:16:18) - Yeah, I try not to bring up the price in terms of, you know, just real casual like, well, yeah. Were you thinking about how much you want for it or, you know, I would say that and a lot of times they can't tell me, um, or maybe they do have a number, but they don't. They know that rule and they don't want to tell me. So, um, you know, and I could so I try not to bring it up, but because I typically lose if I bring it up. But typically they do have a price in mind. So, um, you know, and if it's really above to where, um, that the properties were, sometimes they just have to get they have to hear it from multiple people. So I had one guy telling me, well, you know, I'm asking like 4.4 million. And I'm, I said, well, you know, in your area based on your lot rent, how many of you have occupied, um, everybody I think would tell you it's probably worth 1.5 to 1.7.

Miles (00:17:10) - You know, he didn't like that, obviously. So he's the guy. I'm like, look, if you change your mind. So that's not even within the realm of possibility. So I'm not going to waste the time to go see that guy. So he may have to get beat down for a while before he realizes how much it's worth by other people. But, you know, if I think it's worth one 5 to 1 seven, you know, just rough numbers and they say, oh, you know, maybe like 119 like then then I'm like, ah, well, it's worth going to visit this person and like spending my time driving a few hours to, like to really to really learn more. But, you know, I just try to keep it surface level on the first conversation and kind of and once you close one deal, the credibility kind of goes up. So like, it's hard when you don't own anything. But I bought I drove five hours to Fairmont, West Virginia, and this guy, he said he was going to sign it.

Miles (00:18:03) - And we get there and he's like, I can't sign. And we're like, what do you mean? I drove all this way and it was the most frustrating thing ever. But he was like, hey, my friend has a park he wants to sell. His his friend was on. None of my list wasn't on Google. Um, so I went called this guy and he was like, well, you know, 17 years ago I paid 180,000 with like 20 grand down sell finance. Do you want to just do that? And I was like, well, yeah, let's do that. I saw and it was, you know, it was probably worth two 5275 like day one. So, um, but I never would have found that first deal. And it was small. So then like once we got that, it was I could say to all these other owners, hey, like, I already own a park, I know how to close and all that. And then like, then they listen to you a lot more if they their confidence in you and the ability to close goes way up.

Miles (00:18:58) - Because if you haven't done it before, it's, you know, it's a process and people get scared and there's a lot to it and you're much less likely to close if you if you don't own, own something already for sure.

Josh (00:19:10) - Confidence and credibility. So credibility is how people view you. Confidence. You know their confidence in you of course, but also your confidence in yourself. When you don't own something and you're trying to, you know, call the by in your head, you're going your fake, your fraud, your phony. You know, the imposter syndrome is firing off, but, you know, you have to make a thousand phone calls before you're going to get a deal. How do you overcome that?

Miles (00:19:36) - Yeah. The guy I knew actually was a grad assistant at a University of Kentucky, and he was a player there, and now he's like big in the space of mobile home park. So when I got started, I reached out to him.

Josh (00:19:47) - Is it Ryan?

Miles (00:19:48) - Brian Sphere okay, he's in Tampa.

Miles (00:19:52) - So I said, uh, he's like, listen, if you do not quit, you will get a park. And it sounds so simple, but like, there's so many times you want to quit, like when you're making these calls or like a deal falls through, or you're just like, I'll just put so much money into this thing, and I haven't I don't know the deal yet, but I just had that in the back of my head. Like, if you don't quit, you will get a deal. So like, I would, you know, put it in my calendar and I would and stuff would want to creep in like, oh, I could do this. I could do that because everything's more fun than making a cold call. Right? So, uh, so like, I got really, like, strict about it because there were probably 3 or 4 months where I was just feeding myself lies because I didn't want to make the calls. Yeah. So and I finally when I did it, it took a while, but it was just commit so committed to the process rather than focusing on the result.

Miles (00:20:45) - That was just like, I have to control what I can control and take the steps even though I don't want to. And I'm scared and I'm a fraud, like I have to do the right things and then we'll see what happens with the results. I just really try to tie it to the process and not quitting, rather than like whether that day was successful or not making calls. So the.

Josh (00:21:10) - I knew. I used to. I used to have to do cold calls. I also had to sell, you know, stuff door to door. So I've had to pick up the phone. It's terrifying. Right? I'm a tough dude. I was a wrestler. I was a firefighter. I ran into fires and I've experienced some very dangerous situations. I would rather do that than make a phone call. Seriously. The like. The amount of rejection you get for a man who on the outside people would say I'm secure, but on the inside, man, you're battling insecurities or whatever. Cold calling is tough, but when you have babies to feed, diapers to put on their butts, a wife that's going, what the hell are you doing with your life? Right? Like that kind of stuff will motivate you to get over the fear.

Josh (00:21:51) - Cold calling works if you stick with it, but it sucks when you're in a down and dump and you got it on the calendar. I need to make some cold calls. I haven't closed my first deal. Talk us about the the phone call right before your first deal. Right? So the first deal that you got, you closed right like that, that the 1 or 2 calls right before that. Tell us about those calls.

Miles (00:22:14) - Yeah. And you mean, I know I went and visited that guy in person, but you mean the, like, the original? Uh, the original?

Josh (00:22:22) - Yeah. So because, you know, you've made thousands of phone calls. If I don't quit, I'm going to get a deal. Yeah. And then finally that call where they're like, okay. And you're like, what? Right. Like it turned into a deal. Talk me through that.

Miles (00:22:35) - Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had a number of them that we're we're kind of wholesale. And so I kind of felt like I was playing both sides, and that wasn't always a good feeling.

Miles (00:22:44) - But in terms of the one that worked, I drove by it and it wasn't very nice. So was kind of like, but then the price was so good. I was like, I just need to do it and get in the game. We sold that one about a year ago. Yeah. It was, it was like it was like 300 K and we didn't really do much with it. I mean, we just kind of raised the rent a little bit, but like and you, you know, you. Yeah. Yeah. Like you know so it worked out I mean it was like three x on the money or more than that, you know. And two and a half years. So yeah it's first deal like it's good. And we lost. We probably lost money while we owned it. But um, but yeah, honestly, I can't even remember the calls. But I do remember, um. There, you know, like some days it'll just be a big fat zero. But I felt like every time I was getting too down, I'd have a good day where I got like three, three leads or four leads, and then then you're kind of like, lift it up for the next week or so, you know, like on that on that day.

Miles (00:23:43) - So I felt like there's enough. But it was just really about like being consistent and doing it. And sometimes I would even like trick myself like, oh, I'm really not feeling this today. It's like Friday 3 to 5 p.m. and I got to make like, I'm just going to sit here and drink a beer while I'm like, make the call.

Josh (00:23:59) - Then you don't care if they say no. All right, cool. I'll have another beer.

Miles (00:24:02) - Yeah, but I feel like it's so important to, like, take the, um. And sometimes this takes, like, a little bit of personal development where you've done the work to, like, work on yourself, but, like, if you can really detach yourself from the results. So like, whether they say yes or whether they say no, it's not an indictment on me being like a good person, a bad person, a good sales person, a bad. It's like, I don't care. Like my job is to show up, make the calls, yes or no.

Miles (00:24:28) - I just don't care, like I'm detached from the results. So I think if you can get to that point, um, the detachment is like key for just like I'm making these calls, like it doesn't matter what happens. Like, that's that's all I'm worried about. Yeah.

Josh (00:24:43) - I found the best success is when I was detached. And I'm just like, if I. If I needed money, I had that commission breath, and that's all they smell. And they're like, this guy's desperate, right? But if I'm like, you know, calling someone up and I'm like, hey, I see this building, what the heck are you guys doing with it? Like, what are your plans with it? Man, I would love to love to hear about it and maybe even participate. And they're like, oh, well, we're doing this. And then I got that and I'm like, oh, cool. But before you know it, like, we're in the deal together. And I was just like, why do I put so much like emphasis on trying to get a deal rather than just be curious? And you mentioned that earlier, is that curiosity is super helpful in sales, right? Just be curious.

Josh (00:25:19) - Hey, what the heck are you doing with it? Like, why? Why? You know, hey, we saw some new renovations, you know, how can we? I think.

Miles (00:25:24) - You're right. And you kind of feel people feel that vibe. Like, if you're if you're desperate or pushy and it repels them, you know? So it's kind of like you're walking into a store and somebody says, how may I help you today? And you're like, oh, just looking. Well, like you walked in the store for a reason. Like you're obviously interested in something, right? So, um, you know, but it's like the automatic, like.

Josh (00:25:48) - I don't want to talk to a salesperson. Yeah. I don't want to.

Miles (00:25:50) - Talk to the salesperson. Like, it's just like, even though you're interested in buying something, you're in there, you know? So I think people just naturally have that. So it's like, whatever you can do to, you know, I would try to talk with a lower voice and talk really slow.

Miles (00:26:05) - So I'm like, hey, this is Miles. You know, I was just trying to see what you guys, you know, have you thought about selling or like what, you know, saw your property, you know, and so I try to be like, like real quiet and slower because I know when people are maybe, like, selling or pushy, they might be loud or like talk faster. So like I'm trying to do the opposite of like a high pressure sales person would do.

Josh (00:26:29) - So see, that's a good tip because when you're selling your you're afraid, right? It's a natural fear that we have of rejection or something like that. So like your blood pressure is going to be up, your heart rate is going to be up, you're going to talk faster because you're nervous. So if you could just force yourself to just kind of sit back, maybe even have a beer and just be like, hey, just seeing what you're doing, you know, like it puts them at ease and it puts you at ease because that's how they communicate with their friends, right? They don't talk to their friends.

Josh (00:26:56) - Hey, buddy, you want to go out Friday night, right? Like so. That's a really good piece of advice is slow down, chill out, maybe have a beer like Scotch and make a few phone calls. We should do that sometime. Yeah, just have a scotch here in our office. Let's make some cold calls together. Let's close some deals. Right. That would be fun.

Miles (00:27:15) - Yeah. Awesome.

Josh (00:27:19) - So, Miles, so you got into this game you guys have acquired. You know, here you are in your 40s. You've acquired $30 million in deals, and you're cranking. And, you know, at the state of the market right now, you know, like inflation hit, the cost of real estate went through the roof. Interest rates are high. What are you finding because one of your superpowers is finding deals. But like, what are you finding right now?

Miles (00:27:43) - Yeah. And honestly, I mean, we bought so much so fast. Um, I think we have about 1400 pads now.

Miles (00:27:49) - We're operating right around 909, 50 somewhere around there. So we really kind of needed to slow down and just work on our building our team and training them and our internal operations. So because it just hits so fast to where it was, like me and my partner were just kind of doing everything and all of a sudden we're like, oh, we got to build out this company, you know, because like, you don't want your collections to suffer. And it's harder to find third party management in our space just because the deal sizes are a lot smaller than, than multifamily. So you kind of have to you're almost forced to manage it yourself. So, um, so, yeah, I mean, we've, you know, now we have 8 or 9 people in Southeast Asia through Upwork that kind of help us with whether it's websites or SEO or online advertising or customer service, social media stuff, just just so that's that's helped out a lot. And then we have property managers. We have an operations person.

Miles (00:28:48) - She's now to the point where she's like leading the meetings with our managers, going over collections and issues. And then so it's been a real process the last year, year and a half to kind of build all that out. And so we feel like we're at a lot better place than we were. And we're kind of built for, you know, possibly taking something on right now. But like we feel like we're another six months away. So there's some things we more things that we want to implement to kind of get it to where we want it to be. So there's like a period of sprinting and then now it's like just working on our internal stuff. Because if your internal, you know, like if it's not profitable, like there's not really a point to like at buying more and adding dysfunction on top of dysfunction. So that's kind of where we're at. But also I mean, even people that do it all the time and big companies and have built out deal flow, they're not finding much at all right now just because in our space, there's a big delta to where sellers will just hold on to their property.

Miles (00:29:53) - Like if they're not getting the price that they want with the interest rates, you know, the deals just aren't penciling like they used to. There's a few deals that I've seen go through have been like all seller finance deals. You know, it hasn't involved the bank. And so it's really hard right now. And so I mean, I think a lot of people are where we're at. But you know, I'm certain people that have funds, it can be a little scary because you have all this money you're supposed to deploy. And then if you can't deploy it, you know, there can be there can be some problems there. And even us, I mean, we we took on investor money because we didn't really start out with hardly anything. So we kind of had to and just try to be scrappy about it. But you got to have you got to you got to have fees to like pay your people. And when you split up equity, or maybe you partner with a bigger company, take on investor money like your equity is a as a just get so diluted that you look up and you're like really not making very much money here.

Miles (00:30:53) - So that's kind of the catch 22 that people don't that people don't always talk about. You know, it's a lot of people talk about unit count. Well, like if you own 100% of 200 units like you, you're probably doing better than than the guy or gal that owns 1500 units and owns 10% of them, you know? So it's interesting, like how it how it works and you have additional responsibilities in terms of reporting and communication with your investors and things like that. So I know I kind of went off on a tangent, but no.

Josh (00:31:25) - But let's point out some of those topics because so there's benefits of buying it yourself, maybe even putting together some, you know, friends and family money or, you know, partner money. But when you have a fund, there's different types of pressures that you have. One, you have a pressure to raise the money. You have the pressure to account for the money and keep it compliant. You have the pressures to deploy the capital and you have the pressure to, you know, keep your own lights on.

Josh (00:31:51) - Right. There's a lot of things with the fund. The good thing about it fund is you got the money sitting there ready to rock and roll when something happens when. But the on the GP side, I've heard syndicators and fund of funds say that they will not invest in a in a good project. If the jeep or operator is not paid well, because then they'll take their foot off the problem and then, you know, off the project. And then now you have to, you know, find another operator, another, you know, guide to run it or whatever. So there's there's so many. This is the beauty of all the different deals is each one has their own nuances and benefits and values. Right. So you got to find out what's best for you as you're doing this right. You guys have your own stuff and you're building it. You've syndicated. Do you think that you'll ever go the route of raising a fund and deploying it that way?

Miles (00:32:40) - Yeah, I think it's a really a long term commitment.

Miles (00:32:43) - I think you got to really commit to ten years of doing it. And and so for us, I mean, we've always been so focused on finding off market deals and operations that we haven't. We almost need a third member of our team to be a capital raiser, because it's it's you almost need a person like in each one of those roles. So we, you know, we haven't been as good as we we've been scrappy about it, but like, we just haven't. And honestly, me and my partner aren't I'd much rather go hunt deals and like, raise money. So, um, I don't think that we will. You know, we'll just have to see, honestly, like the simplest I like simple things. And so, like, the simplest way is like doing a joint venture and I. Can be tough with bigger deals. But like, if I could, you know, retain more equity and do a smaller deal with less people, I think that would be my my preference.

Miles (00:33:37) - And you know, people can do it like if they just buy slower. So let's say they buy 100% of a deal or 50%, and they hold on to it for four years and they do really well. And then they roll that money into another deal. And then maybe, you know, maybe they're buying a deal every 2 to 4 years, not buying 13 deals and two and a half years, you know. So like the time frame has something to do with that too. Like you're not going to have that money to buy that much that quick either. So there's, you know, there's just different ways to doing it. But I don't see us doing a fun.

Josh (00:34:11) - If you can meet any baseball player living or dead like, like your hero and hang out with them, who would it be?

Miles (00:34:19) - You know, it's funny. I haven't really thought thought about that a ton, but, you know, I don't know, like Ken Griffey Jr he's Cincinnati guy. So like I think that'd be pretty cool to.

Miles (00:34:33) - To hang out with him.

Josh (00:34:35) - Hang out with him. Maybe him and his dad, you know, like. Yeah.

Miles (00:34:38) - Everybody's got some good stories.

Josh (00:34:39) - So for sure, man.

Miles (00:34:41) - For sure.

Josh (00:34:41) - Ken Griffey man. Awesome. So as you're as you're building this out, you know, your wife was nurse and she dove into the the fitness company for a little bit. Does the, you know, what was her what was her views on you getting into, you know, investing in commercial real estate and mobile home parks? Like, what were the thoughts in the conversations there? I know it's a little personal. So you could always say pass and we'll go to the next question or we.

Miles (00:35:06) - She's been really good about just kind of trusting me on my different things that I want to do and just saying, okay, well, we'll see what happens, I guess. You know, and I think it helps that she's not really like a big numbers person. It's kind of like you handle that, you know? And so so that kind of helps.

Miles (00:35:26) - But but yeah, she did a good job. Like she developed a women's program and our fitness business and was like super cool adult women doing a lot of fat loss stuff. And so she really liked that. But like once our first child came along, she was like wanted, you know, she was all over that so that she kind of faded out, you know. And so now we have a two, four and eight year old. So we're we're definitely busy. Um, but but yeah. And then since then she's just been focused on staying home. And who knows, she might be involved in the business so far. But, you know, it has been good that she's not, like, super. Um, I don't know, just like in terms of the safety, like, her dad was always an entrepreneur and had different trucking businesses. So I think she kind of saw some of that growing up where he, he busted out a couple times and then came back, you know, so she kind of saw the the roller coaster of it.

Miles (00:36:24) - But but yeah. No, it's been it's been good. So I don't know what that would be like if, if it was a constant fight on everything.

Josh (00:36:31) - God bless the spouses of entrepreneurs. Right. Like my wife deserves a trophy. Anna, you get a trophy today because you're married to Josh, you know. So so Miles, when you're when you're looking at I love how you said, you know, sometimes buying slow and slowing down the acquisition because sometimes as dealmakers, we go just another deal. Just another deal. How many more deals? Just one more deal. Because in our head, we think that the next deal will fix maybe some problems of the past. But you're taking a different approach, saying no, we need to invest now in operations and profitability. Mike McLeod would be like, that's what you should be doing, right? So like you guys are investing in that. What's the hardest part of that for a hunter like you?

Miles (00:37:17) - Yeah, it is hard. We actually hired it's called a profit first for real estate investors called simple CFO.

Miles (00:37:25) - So about a year ago we hired a fractional CFO. And it's been transformative for us. I mean, just my partner, he majored in finance. But like, that's you know, this guy has been our CFO. He's been really helping us. And it's over the past year, I feel like I don't I don't think we've been able to do it on our own. Like just his expertise. And then we have a weekly call and we go through. And because it gets complicated when you're talking about splits for investors and like all the little things, and when you have multiple properties, it's like it sounds crazy, but it's it even gets hard to pay bills because like, you have so many bills, you know, we have a third party company that does that now called avid. But, you know, just something simple like that gets hard. But so he's really helped us out.

Josh (00:38:12) - David Richter Riker right.

Miles (00:38:15) - Yeah. He started the company. Yeah. But they have like think they have like.

Josh (00:38:19) - I don't know if.

Miles (00:38:20) - 4050 CFOs like under their umbrella now super.

Josh (00:38:24) - Smart. I interviewed him in the in the past. He's he's a smart cookie. Yeah he's a smart dude.

Miles (00:38:29) - And I'm like guilty of it because I'll read a book. I'll read his book. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. You know? So it works right in those books. But I'm sorry, I forgot. What did you did I answer your question or.

Josh (00:38:42) - Yeah. What was the hardest part in your in your, you know.

Miles (00:38:44) - Yeah. So many of. Yeah it is hard because like my partner is kind of taking more the lead on ops, but I just feel like we're not gonna be able to grow anymore unless we really stabilize the, the foundation. And so we, we are open to, like, doing deals, like we're, we're in the middle of one right now or we kind of found it, but we don't we like, don't have the bandwidth or don't want to operate it because it's a it's like eight different properties and they're all in this one thing.

Miles (00:39:14) - And like there's going to be a lot of moving pieces with that. And so we we connected with a group that we know well that, you know, has a fund that's bigger. They got more money than deals. And so like we're going to, you know, just take a small, um, we'll probably just do like a wholesale deal on it. So like that's what we're kind of, you know, trying to make a little money while we're not, but we're not operating it. So that's kind of what we're doing now. So like just trying to be really careful. We had another deal and the seller's gone dark on me, but I've been dealing with him for like two years. But we're gonna if we have that one ever goes through, we'll we've already found somebody that we know that's already in that area that's built out to run it. We'll take a small equity percentage, put a a little bit of money in it and just own like a small piece of it, but they're going to operate it.

Miles (00:40:03) - So that's that's kind of how we're like looking at deals right now. So we're doing a little bit. But um, you know so we'll see. And then I've also I see a big opportunity and you know, a lot of these small businesses too. So I've been learning about that the past year. And see some see some opportunity there. Just because I see like a lot of people who do really well, like they'll own a business that, you know, typically a lot of times they'll spit off more cash than, than real estate does. They'll put that cash into the tax advantage, real estate. And it's like this whole flywheel they got they got going on. So we'll see.

Josh (00:40:39) - Yeah man. Super cool. So you have a podcast show. Tell us about your podcast show.

Miles (00:40:44) - Yeah. And I haven't done a great job of advertising this. But honestly my my main motivation was to almost because I'm not like a journal or and I just there's no way. And I'm like, I don't have enough time right now to write a book or anything, but it was almost like something that like a diary that I wanted for my kids when I grow up or they grow up, that I'll have like some record of like what I was thinking and what I was doing at the time.

Miles (00:41:07) - So that's honestly like it wasn't even that big of a deal. But I feel like whatever it is, it takes a lot of time and effort to get anything to go like really popular. So I'm like, I might as well start start now. And I didn't even want the hassle of like trying to figure out, like how to book people on my show and all that. And I'm just like, I'll just get on here and talk 10 to 15 minutes one time a week about about whatever. So it's called story time for commercial real estate, and it's on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Think I'm up to about almost. Yeah like 45 episodes now. So I'll just do like one a week and then. But it's just like a short tidbit of like whatever, whatever I'm seeing, whether it's like the financing or, you know, finding deals off market or like working with investors or, or just whatever. And so like hopefully, you know, I have had a couple of people listen to it and, and they were all ready to invest.

Miles (00:42:06) - And I hadn't even talked to him yet. So it's worked a little bit, you know, in that regard.

Josh (00:42:10) - So nice work man. Super cool. A lot of people don't get past episode one. Yeah, two. Right. There's if you look at the podcast like directories and stuff like that, the amount of people who get past episode ten or do it for, you know, is super low. So really good job man. Really good job. Thanks.

Miles (00:42:29) - You've done it, you know.

Josh (00:42:31) - Yeah I've done it, man.

Miles (00:42:33) - It's almost like therapy to me. It's like I can kind of get my thoughts out, you know, and like just just talk and whatever. Yeah.

Josh (00:42:40) - And there's just no way I'm going to sit there and just, you know, systematically write stuff. But I could talk about things. And I love the conversation. They are the conversation is one of my favorite things in this world to do. So it's like, why not do it and get paid a lot of money to do it, right? So that's why we do this.

Josh (00:42:54) - It's it's valuable, it's important, and we get paid for it. So we're going to keep doing it. Um, for people who want to connect with you and look at, you know, what you guys are doing and, and find out ways to work with you. What's a good place to do that?

Miles (00:43:08) - Yeah. Tree side capital. And then there's actually a free gift on there. It's it's a PDF I put together on how to what you should look for in terms of. In mobile home parks or RV parks and gives a little bit of our back story. So you just put your name and email in there and you'll be added to my email list. And I just send out an email once every two weeks. Just it's mostly education, but but I'll throw some deals in there to and then I'm also on LinkedIn and then also a podcast. Love for anyone to listen to it.

Josh (00:43:45) - Cool. Do you have any things that, like, I should have asked you during this interview that you're like, hey Josh, you forgot to ask me about, you know, fill in the blank?

Miles (00:43:54) - Uh, no.

Miles (00:43:56) - Well, I guess I think, you know, I think we went over it, but I think the hardest part of the journey is going from 0 to 1. Like, once you get one property, it's almost like the the gates of heaven open up, you know? And it's like. It's like things get so much easier because you've you've put in the time going through all the steps. And so, like, I think a lot of people just quit a little too, too soon. And I think the education is key. So I mean, like somebody told me once, like to to have a commitment you have to put time and money. You can't just do one or the other. You have to put time and money to show real commitment. So I mean, if if I have any advice, it's like it's going to be ten times harder than you think it's going to be. So like if you just don't quit and you're buying programs, you're hiring coaches, you're reading books, you're taking action.

Miles (00:44:56) - If you can get one, um, it's it can really, you know, accelerate after that. So I think there's a book on that. It's so true. It's like the lull of the first deal that I read. It makes a ton of sense, but but really, I look at the real estate thing, it's like, you know, even though my baseball stuff and my fitness, like, it doesn't seem very related, but like you said, like those skills like, help me do what I'm doing now. And I look at that like the real estate thing, like, you know, 20 years from now, if, if I'm, you know, just buying businesses and not even like, like doing as much real estate or whatever, I still have that real estate skill that I can, I can go back to so I can look at a mobile home park or RV park deal or, or we own a couple of small self-storage facilities. So I kind of know those a little bit too.

Miles (00:45:48) - But I can look at these deals and tell you, like, I would invest in this or I wouldn't. And so, you know, I think just stacking those skills, you're never going to lose that.

Josh (00:46:01) - Yeah. Nice work one more time. What's the website. Where can people find you.

Miles (00:46:05) - Yeah. Tree side capital.com and story time. Carry on a on podcasts.

Josh (00:46:13) - Super cool man. Miles enjoyed the conversation. That was a lot of fun. I laughed and had a had a good time with you, man. Ladies and gentlemen in the audience, as always, reach out to our guest, say thank you for sharing their story, sharing their knowledge. Their contact information will be in the show notes below. So if they if if they're saying something that resonates with you, like just connect with them, right? Like say, hey, I heard you on the show and want to have a chat. If you have a deal that you'd like to talk about here on The Deal Scout or one of our other podcast shows, you could head over to the Deal Scout, fill out a quick form.

Josh (00:46:45) - We're always looking for commercial real estate deals that we want to help finance or bring capital to the table with. Those are some of the things that we find great joy into. But you could head over to the deal, scout, fill out a quick form, maybe get you on the show next. So then we'll talk to you all on the next episode. Bye everybody.