Deal Finding and the Investor Lifestyle
On this episode of Next Level American Dream, Abigail and Sean are joined by Tate Siemer. Tate is the visionary behind Greenlight Equity Group, and recently transitioned from Single-Family Real Estate to Multifamily, similar to Sean. Today their conversation will be the two of them chatting about Real Estate and lifestyle.
Key Topics
Real estate investing; Single Family and Multifamily
The investor mindset and lifestyle
The journey of a successful real estate investor
Connect with Tate:
The Apartment Guys Podcast
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Multifamily, mindset, deal, apartment building, people, project, American Dream, business, day, rents, single, flipping, work, unit, life, big, apartments, property, cash flow, Utah
SPEAKERS
Sean Thomson, Abigail Thomson, Tate Siemer
Abigail Thomson 00:00
Welcome to the Next Level American Dream Podcast brought to you by Thomson Multifamily Group. Your hosts, Abigail and Sean, will discuss how you can take your American Dream to the next level through real estate investing, business practices, and personal development. Join us as we share our experiences as a father daughter duo who are trying to accomplish our goal of financial freedom. We hope you learn more about how to define and achieve your American Dream. Here's another episode of Next Level American Dream.
Sean Thomson 00:35
On today's episode of Next Level American Dream, we're joined by Tate Siemer. Tate is the visionary behind Greenlight Equity Group. He recently transitioned from single family real estate to focus on multifamily. Today's podcast will be the two of us chatting about real estate mindset and the life of a real estate deal hustler. So hi, Dave, how you doing?
Tate Siemer 00:59
Sean! I'm great. It's great to be here. It's awesome to talk to you, man.
Sean Thomson 01:04
Yeah, it's been a long time. I appreciate you coming on the show. We we've been trying to connect for a while. And we just finally got it worked out. Now, I guess it took us a couple months, right?
Tate Siemer 01:13
Yeah, yeah. It's worth it, though, between friends to make it happen. Right?
Sean Thomson 01:21
So let's talk a little bit about you know, we talked about you and I talked a lot about real estate stuff all the time. But let's talk a little bit about your background in real estate. How did you kind of get where you weren't into real estate?
Tate Siemer 01:32
Sure, yeah. I started out professionally in sales, furniture sales. I was in Cutco Cutlery for a while cutting my teeth on sales and late in high school doing that. And then I became a professional photographer, which is very much a sales position, actually, and requires all of the sales skills that you can muster and make happen. And I was a professional photographer for 10 years, I shot wedding photography, portrait photography, and scheme photography as well. And really got to a point where I was shooting, you know, 50 weddings a year, and editing 50 weddings a year and looking and doing all the consultations and everything that goes along with wedding photography, which is a lot and a lot of behind the scenes. And just was not happy with the returns that I was getting with the income level that I had. And while I love the creative outlet and aspect of it, I loved working with people, that was my favorite part of it. I just needed a switch. So in 2006, a friend of mine guy didn't really even know very well was in a real estate investing course. And he basically suggested that I come down and check it out with him. It was down in Provo, Utah, which is about 45 minutes south of where I live, I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah. And this was just a very basic investing course that covered flipping single families cap rates, how to calculate basic value on rental properties, how to calculate fix up costs, stuff like that, and how to find money, how to use hard money, in particular, where to get loans, you know how to make it all happen. And I started flipping a few houses myself, I flipped my first flip was a duplex that was about 120 years old, literally. And it needed a whole bunch of stuff related to that, but it actually wasn't too bad. I did most of the work myself, I flipped one of the units and kept the other unit in place and sold it that way. And I think I made 10 or $12,000. And I was thrilled and kind of kept flipping did a few more between you know, in 2006 2007 and got my real estate license and started helping other people do the same thing. And long story short, the crash happened I was kind of I honestly wasn't real locked in I didn't love single family very much single family flipping for anybody that hasn't done it is quite a grind. And it's really a lot of work for often not very much money and at least in perspective or in relationship in relation. So I was at at the at the crash I was basically burnt out anyway and was kind of ready for a change. So I went back to photography for a little bit. I went to a yoga teacher and teacher training, but I was going to be a yoga instructor for a while. And my friend and now my current business partner, he was actually my boss at the time approached me and about flipping some houses he has a lot of skills and and you know handyman and remodeling skills. He's done a lot of it. He's a landlord himself. So he had a skill set and I had the business side of the deal finding deal making stuff skill set. And we started flipping houses in 2012. Again, and have done so ever since recently, we've in the last two years really spread our wings and tried a few different lanes so to speak. But the first one we tried was new build, we're doing two new build townhome projects in downtown Salt Lake City, their high end, luxury townhomes that are around 750,000 to a million dollars apiece. And so we took on we kind of went big on those and and to be honest, those have been a little bit of albatrosses for us they've they, we let's just say that the one of the big takeaway lessons from those has been that we don't want to be doing new build construction. There's there's a huge thing called construction risks that we weren't super aware of when we started and we've gotten really stung by that. But and then just to finish up, kind of get us to where we are today, we've done a couple of land entitlement deals where we bought raw land, and had it entitled for developments. And then we settled, we sold that entitled land off to builders. We did that twice in the last year. And we've also done some multifamily projects, including a 12 unit apartment building that we bought, and took down basically almost to the studs and rebuilt from the floor to the roof basically all the mechanicals and windows and everything else. And restabilized that property at higher rent levels and sold it. We did that last year. And the right now we're under contract on a 20 unit here in Utah and working on a few more. So we've really chosen to go after the multifamily properties. Specifically, we're really looking for stuff 50 units and higher in some progressive markets. And we're also looking in Utah at really anything that's a commercial multifamily property that's even five units or more, but preferably, you know, 12 to 12 to 15 units in Utah, we would consider doing as well. Because Utah's a tremendous value add opportunity, and it's right in our backyard. So, so that yeah, that's kind of a long way around to, to kind of how how I got started and how I got to where, where I am today, I'm still a licensed agent, I do very little with that. My passion is finding deals, working with brokers, working with my with my business partner and, and executing our deals. And I really love being able to impact people's lives on a real profound level, especially resonance, it means a lot to me to to improve communities and make them safer, and cleaner and more welcoming, and more conducive to a higher quality lifestyle. So that's really my big lie in this business. And believe it or not, that's like what I wake up for every morning is is to go to work in this in this space. I love it.
Sean Thomson 08:04
Yeah, that I think that principle, I've talked about that with other people. I think that principle as a fundamental principle, and doing multifamily is critical. I think if you're not even improve the communities in the life of the people that live there, then you're you're probably not operating on the right foundation. But we'll just leave us went over a lot of stuff there. If you don't, yeah, I'm gonna unwind a little bit. Sure. Rocks. So when you went from single family and started doing these other projects, was that out of a sort of frustration of how you're progressing your single family business? Yeah, it
Tate Siemer 08:37
was absolutely you hit the nail on the head, we we basically didn't do the single family flipping game very well, because ironically, we knew how to do too much ourselves. So we did too much of it, the work ourselves and we never leveraged our human resources. In particular, in retrospect, we should have developed a crew long time ago and develop the project manager, and really driven the business from the front. And instead, my myself as the driver. Basically, our approach was get a deal, use as much of our own capital and as much of our own time and money and resources as we can, so that we don't have to leverage other people's time, money and resources, and do is do as many of those houses as we can at a time well, you can really only do two, three houses at a time if you're doing a lot of the work yourself. And we just kind of didn't get smart on that until recently. And you're constraining your scalability, they're hugely, hugely so you know, if you're doing three, four projects a year that are maybe averaging $40,000 a year, that's just not, you know, for the amount of work that those require and the amount of risk those require in particular, like that's a kind of a big deal. You know, the payoffs just kind of mediocre in itself. It's a one time paycheck, you know, it's not you're not creating cash flow, residual income. And so yeah, we were frustrated, for sure,
Sean Thomson 10:10
looking for the next deal too. So you're always having to hustle that next, the next project, if you're, if you're cashing out on all your assets, every time you do acquire one, you're constantly re hunting for more assets to do the same thing over and over again. So absolutely your income, your income doesn't really, it's a it's a very volatile way of doing it. But so how did you go from, because it sounds like you almost went into a riskier segment or secondary, from flipping single family, which is not that difficult, into, you know, higher end, like the tunnels that you were doing your burn rate on that stuff is so phenomenal, trying to build seven or 50,000 more condos, your burn rate. So if you're if you're late on anything, you know, it just starts it starts to eat that capital that you have reserved, pretty quickly.
Tate Siemer 10:59
We could spend an hour on all the things that have gone sideways on those jobs. And a lot of a lot of it was stuff that went wrong with stuff we couldn't even foresee. So that's what I kind of mean by construction risk is, you start peeling back the layers of an onion on a job. And, man, there's so many moving parts and one moving part out of place messes up all the other ones timeline and everything else, it's it can really, it can really be a mess,
Sean Thomson 11:29
Every day is a high price tag on it with those things.
Tate Siemer 11:32
Yeah, one of our projects is 500 bucks a day in interest right now. So I would say this, you know, to listeners that are, you know, Shawnee, I know you're a multifamily apartment guy. And so probably a lot of your listeners are oriented that way. Maybe some of them are single family, folks. Now, I would say that, if I could go back, this is just me, right. But if I could go back to 2012, and give myself some advice back then I'd say number one, keep whatever you can, you know, do do twice as many deals and keep every other house, because we had the most aggressive bull market in the housing market over the last eight years that we've had for a long time. And we kind of missed it, quite frankly, because we didn't hold on to assets through that. And the reason for that is we you know, we just kind of went over it, we really couldn't because we weren't doing enough scale. So I would say, you know, go back, develop a project manager if you're going to flip single families, but only flip single families until as far as you absolutely have to, and really look at this apartment building space, because it's a lot easier than you might think it's a lot less daunting to get into than you might think. And it's a myth that you have to graduate from single family, to do Plexus to for plexes to small multifamily to large multifamily, you don't have to necessarily go through that progression. So it's possible to jump right into multifamily, whether it's small apartments or even larger apartments. And there's lots of ways to do that. So that's the advice I'd give to myself, I certainly would never advise anyone to do anything related to new construction. That's just you're hearing somebody that's been stung by by it, and and has found much, much better alternatives, much less risky, much more risk mitigated alternatives, specifically with existing apartment buildings have cash flow, that have a proven financial history, and are inherently valuable because of that you're not speculating that someday This is going to be a certain value. You're buying profit right now, which is so much less risky than going out and do on a speculative new build project with million dollar townhomes.
Sean Thomson 13:59
I think it's more about education and network than it is about anything else with apartments getting started, at least, of course, you know, it's always gonna end up about time and money. Right. But to talk about a little bit about your transition now from where you were you weren't the construction site to going into multifamily. Yeah. Was that was that driven by again, it's probably a little bit of frustration of what you're doing. But I think ultimately, for me, it was I had a goal of income, right? So my, my business history has just been I just want to earn income, you know, a monthly balanced income. And with flipping houses, like you said, it's just too volatile, you're selling them off, you're not able to have a continual monthly check coming in. So I did a lot of rental properties over the last few years. Like you said, you didn't get a chance to hold it a few years but right even doing as many as I could, I found that I had to sell four houses to keep one house you know, so your volume has to be such that you can you know if you want 10 houses a year, you know, you've got a Sell 40 houses to get those other 10, which means you're putting you're putting 50 deals through your pipeline. Right? So doing that is a that's a, that's a Monster Machine to do that many properties every every year. Yes, absolutely. I was finding I was looking for a way to have stable income. And multifamily is is really the way to go. Because you can you can scale immediately you're buying 100 plus units right away, and you've got k cash flow coming in, around the gate. Is that kind of what you all along was really kind of your goal to begin with? And then are you just now sort of landing in a spot that that you feel is going to achieve that for you?
Tate Siemer 15:39
Yeah, so I our path to multifamily was a little different, I kind of have tended to find my way through life, almost playing it by ear a little bit, and improvising and kind of going with the flow a lot of times and what happened for us was a developer that and a wholesaler that we have done other deals with, brought us this 12 unit deal that he had under contract, and said, I think you guys can do pretty well with this, why don't you give it a shot. And here's how you, you know, here's how I would do it, if I were you, here's how I'd finance it, etc, etc. And it was the first time that we looked at something bigger than a small, you know, a duplex four Plex kind of scenario. And, and I remember when we sat down to analyze it and underwrite it, and which to be honest with you, we didn't know much about underwriting a multifamily project, but we knew a lot about underwriting a single family project. So we were able to, since it was gonna be a flip model, business plan that we were doing, we were able to underwrite it well enough to at least get some understanding around what the outcome might look like. And that was incredibly eye opening experience for us. Because when you do analyze a property that has cash flow, or has cash flow potential, it just gives you so many more options than then if, you know, if you're dealing with one exit strategy. So we, we kind of looked at each other at the time, we were up working in the office on the whiteboard, and just going through the deal. And I remember us looking at each other and go on, you know, can you shoot a hole in the steel, like, it's, it's almost like too good to be true. Like, you know, your your thought we were about for the first time in our careers, we were buying something and doing a project that wasn't speculative in nature, in that again, it had, you know, a history of financials and it's, it's providing something that everybody needs in the way of housing and it's very affordable. These were 600 square foot units that were renting for like 600 bucks and Salt Lake City. And we just about doubled that, by the way when we renovated it. So that was really our path. And to multifamily was having an actual deal come along, that was attainable. That was something that we knew that we could do, because we could we knew we could get the hard money for it. And we had the other resources to make it happen. And from there, I started studying hard, and really learning what I could from all the audio books and podcasts and digital mentors, and then eventually hired an actual mentor and Corey Peterson. Who that's how you and I met Sean was through his mastermind. And, and Cory provided kind of a framework and, and a foundation for us to move forward and pursuing larger apartment buildings and markets outside of Utah, which we've spent about the last year doing we've worked in San Antonio, Austin, Columbus, Ohio, a little bit Oklahoma City. And with COVID. And, and kind of the way that landing has gone and the unpredictability of rents and unemployment. We've just refocused on Utah, because it's just a tremendously strong market fundamentally, and the supply and demand factor here is through the roof. So that's we feel real comfortable here. And that's kind of how we ended up back here. But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, what what's happened is, you know, you can only do what you believe is possible, right? And it's mindset to me is 80% of this game, at least. And so as I listen to the audio books, and the podcasts and people's stories, and how they got started, and everything else, I started to project myself into their shoes, and say, you know if these guys can do it, I can do it. And I know that I can know I can make this happen. And so it's it's really, we haven't landed the big fish. We've had a we had 156 unit under contract in Oklahoma City. We're very close on closing and We got out did at the very last minute by almost a half million dollars. So we but we were like I said we were actually under contract, are we under LSI, we were under accepted LSI. And then we got out there. But yeah, we were we almost close to 44 unit now, but querque earlier this year, and then COVID hit and the loan for that one got kind of fouled up due to COVID. So we're, we're very, very close. And we've got some great broker relationships that are bringing us really good deals, we've got some capital, you know, we've got capital raised and ready to go. So we're just, you know, like you, Shawn, we're every day we're up hustling. We're looking for deals, we're we're talking to our people, we're talking to brokers, just letting people know that we're still out there and that we are in the market, and we're ready to pounce on something that's a good deal.
Sean Thomson 20:53
So I'm gonna say, always hunting for things for new projects. So I was gonna touch on one thing, one of the things about multifamily also, that you sort of alluded to, is that you don't get in single family, you know, with single family, you really have a limited upside, the property's gonna appraise for what it appraises for, doesn't matter how much money you spend on renovations, or how much rent you get, it's only going to, it's only going to sell for or have a retail value of x, because that's what the neighborhood is going to allow you to have work with multifamily in, like your 12 unit experience. If you come in and renovate the place, and I mean, there is a limited upside to it, of course, but your hard work can really give you a multiple of return, right? So you can come in and do a massive renovations on a great property get at least up at, you know, high rents. And the thing is just way more valuable than when you first picked it up, you know, and you can do that in multifamily, where you can't so the person like you, who is willing to put in the work and do the repairs and put in the work and get you know, get the operation. running smoothly, can really reap a much nicer reward on cash flow and on exit if you decide to do that. So that's one yeah, multi family. I think that you know, guy like you, who is not afraid to get out there and get dirty, and get things running smoothly. To really win in that in that arena. And like you said, a lot of that is mindset is just convincing yourself that, hey, I'm willing to put in this time and this effort and this energy and this work to educate myself to learn this, this project or property to get out and you know, and do what's necessary to make this work. I think that's a big part of being successful. In single family or anything you know, anything you do as an entrepreneur, really making yourself believe that you have the capacity to do it is number one, but then going on and taking massive action which is what you what you're consistently doing. I think that's that's going to lead to your success, you know, just getting those properties as far as you've gotten them, you know, in your process, every step that you that you get for them for their longest is a win for you. So how much? How much of mindset for you, you started talking about it a little bit, but how much of mindset for you is, is what do you do every day? Is it something you work on all the time? Is it something you've been doing for a few years? Talk a little bit about how mindset has sort of set the tone for what you do today?
Tate Siemer 23:28
Yeah, it's everything for me the adversity of these of these townhome projects has really shown me what I'm made up as far as mindset technique and chops, if you will, right around maintaining not just a powerful or not just a positive mindset because I think positivity is something i mean it's it's huge right? And we all love being around positive people which is why positive people when a lot of the time, but I think it's also about having as powerful a mindset as possible so that when adversity does come along, it doesn't knock you on, on your back and and hold you down. It's you know, you develop a certain resilience once you've developed some mindset chops so to speak. And so for me personally, I meditate every morning. What that does for me is and it's sometimes it's even 10 minutes of meditation. And what that does for me is it kind of First of all it grounds me and just kind of centers me and starts the day in a way that's that's quiet and calm and solid. The other thing that it does is it it I don't want to get too deep in the in the weeds with meditation, but it helps you identify your thoughts as thoughts and you discern that they're not who you are. They're, they're just thoughts that are going through your mind and you have a you have the choice of whether to listen to them and take them seriously or just kind of brush them off and when Pass. And so we all have fear based thoughts. And in real estate, there's a lot of things that can evoke anxiety and panic and, and fear. You know, whether that's uncertainty about a loan or uncertainty about an investor coming through or a mere inspections, there's a myriad of things that if you don't have your head, your mindset dialed in, that stuff will eat you alive. And if you do have your mindset dialed in, you can deal with it and you can process it and you can solve the bigger problems. And you know, the only difference between us and the Ilan us and or any of the listeners and, you know, any any big huge, influential person is, we've all got the same amount of time. And every single day, those guys, Elon Musk has the same amount of time as I do every single day, he just has a way of, of solving huge problems in a way that I haven't been able to access just quite yet. Not that I even aspire to be an Elan Musk, necessarily. But, you know, to me, the definition of being an entrepreneur is being able to solve problems and solve big problems. And the bigger problems you can solve the better. And if your mindset is dialed in, it's going to give you the ability to be a problem solver, which allows you to create a lot of value for a lot of people out there, which is how you make a lot of money in this business. That's coincidentally, you know, that's coincidental with just having massive impact on people around you and providing a lot of value. Yeah, hey, Shawn, if I could just real quick, just accentuate or highlight what you had to say about the value add aspect of apartment buildings. If you've got 100 unit apartment building, and you raise the rents 50 or 100 bucks a unit, you've just created at least seven, you know, seven figures plus of equity in that building, just by having your net operating income that much higher. And it's there are so there's thousands and thousands of apartment complexes around the country that the rents are too low on because they've been poorly managed. And rents haven't been updated in quite a long time. And they've also been poorly physically taken care of. So that just creates a massive opportunity for building wealth in a way that I have never seen in any other asset class, where you can go in and basically do a reasonable amount of work with a reasonable amount of money and create exponentially literally exponentially more value. And, you know, like I said, I just don't know of any other vehicle for investing that that even comes close to that.
Sean Thomson 27:53
Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of operators that are asleep at the wheel, they've been sort of cashing in on this cash cow for a while and they haven't kept the property up, they've just sort of let management kind of wander off into mediocrity, you know, and they're just happy with the text they've been getting in. But you know, what ends up happening eventually, is that the property just can't exist any longer. In that state, right, you're going to have to make renovations and you're going to have to improve your management and your and your the processes that you have there to be competitive with department, the other apartment businesses around you. And a lot of times people that own those places just are not willing to put that capital out and effort out. So if you have a capital infusion that you can bring into a project and the effort in fusion, really, that's really that's the bigger part, I think, is the willingness and the effort to take on the project and and make it work again, that's where that's where, you know, that's where the wind is in apartment development. Right. So you know, and then like you said, it's a matter of what do you you know, it's a it's a exponential growth, right? It's not like a single family house, if I put an extra $10,000 in to repair it or get an extra hundred dollars a month, if the value doesn't go up with apartment building, it's based on an income level. So if your noi goes up, your value goes up. It's it's a multiple of a cap rate at that location. So yeah, your efforts can really be rewarded heavily, I think, if you find it right, so yeah, what you're saying is exactly what I look forward to in projects is just people asleep at the wheel. That better bet if on the project for a while they've got all the tax depreciation they want out of it, they've got the cash flow they want out of it. They're just not they're just not willing to put anything, any extra effort into it at this point. And someone like you are making come in there and go, Okay, well, we'll put the cash in, we'll put the time in, we'll put the effort in. We'll make this what it will make this place where it can be. And then you know, we'll reap the rewards from that. So that's that's a big part of why I like apartments as well.
Tate Siemer 30:02
You know not to be repetitive, but you name anything else out there that's like that, you know that, that you have such a tremendous amount of equity upside. And you have essentially dividend checks coming in every month or every quarter, depending on how you pay it out. And you know, you're making other people a lot of money, you're making yourself a lot of money and you're making communities better. Right now what? What better work to be doing really?
Sean Thomson 30:31
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's good. Yes, I want to go back to the start talk about mindset a bit, I wanted to go back and unwind. And just, you touched on fear, you know, I had, I've been in my business for a few years, and I just wasn't able to really kind of reach my, what I felt was my potential. And one of the big issues that I had, and I didn't even realize that I had to get I'm an older guy, you know, I just kind of run through life, I think as you know, kind of the males of the family, we're just, we're not expected to have problems, right, we just kind of run through and take care of business, right. And fear, for me was something I didn't even think about, like, I didn't realize I even had any fears, you know, I mean, I know I don't like snakes very much. So I'm not really comfortable flying,
Tate Siemer 31:18
I hate snakes! Oh, me too, snakes and flying, those are two that get to me, too me man.
Sean Thomson 31:23
I know I had those types of things. But a friend of mine, Gary Harper puts on these events, you know, for CEO's and COO's of their small businesses. I went to one of these events, and one of the guys talked about fear and anxiety. And as he's talking, I'm thinking, I kind of have that problem. For like, two years, I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with you, Sean, you know, you, I know, you can do better than this, I know, you got more to put out there. And I still, as he's talking, I'm thinking, you know, have these issues, but I was still wasn't thinking that was a problem for me. And they did this exercise where they just they said, just write down your fears, you know, and I got to, I got to like three or four fears, and I just had to stop, it was just too overwhelming. So what had been happening was, I was you know, I'm 50 years old. And I've got a lifetime of anxiety and fears that I've just been carrying around. But I didn't even realize I didn't even have that, in my mind. So a lot of times things are happening in your life that are holding you down, they don't even realize, you know, and so it takes that it takes that recognition of an issue. And then I've spent the last two years dealing with how to kind of overcome those things. You know, so I've got a I've got a methodology now, where if something's bothering me, I go through a process, and then I can put I can put that away, you know, so I think mindset, you know, sometimes you don't even realize what's holding you back, or what's holding you down, or what's keeping you from taking that next step, you know, and you it's a constant exploration of trying to figure out who you are and what you want, and where you're going. And being open to, you know, realizations, that that may be helpful to you, you know, and so I've been, literally the last two years, I've been doing everything I can to improve me, educate me on what I need to be doing what I should be doing, you know, taking care of my health better, you know, trying to work on my diet, all these all these little nuances. So that when I do get to work every day, I'm the best version of myself that I can be for that day, right? Yeah. And so I think that's a, that's a big part of what we do. And you know, every day as an entrepreneur, I think, you know, just getting up and convincing yourself, hey, this is gonna be a good one, you know, let's get let's get going. Is that's a struggle in itself, you know, because you're always constantly getting pretty beat up, beat up. You're not getting that deal, or, you know, this deals costing me money, you know, I lost, I lost 10 grand in the day, and I was just like, Well, you know, just, the day's gonna go, you know,
Tate Siemer 33:59
And it's just spilt milk, right? I mean, you got it, you got to have the Spilt Milk technique and internet, I dropped the I this is less than losing 10 grand, but I dropped to just a measuring cup, that kind of thing on the ground the other day, and, and I immediately just went, Okay, no big deal. Just got to clean it up. Right. And that's something that has, I've developed over time, the non reactivity and it's, it's now it's pretty automatic. But, you know, in relation it just in reference to the last two years that you've been through and working through and, and specifically the realizations that you got, and that that CEO event, you know, to me, that level of work is like the highest level of work that we can possibly do, because we're basically looking at, and again, not to get like too into the weeds with like woowoo stuff, but for me personally, I look at it as like being aligned with my soul's purpose. is where my, where my power is gonna come from. And if I truly have that going on, everything else is really going to fall into place beautifully. So I think personally, that the work that that the kind of work that you're doing, and I do this sort of work to where you're really getting, you're really digging deep. And you're getting belief beneath the layers of superficial reality and, and kind of putting on the mask that we may be put on every day as entrepreneurs, and getting down. So like, number one, what constraints are causing me to not have what I really want to have, and working on working with those. And number two, just figuring out what it is that makes your heart sing. And that's going to make you really successful. Because if you're doing what makes you happy, and you're doing what you're doing what you're good at, and you're going to have success when you're doing that. So, man to me, like doing get in getting doing that work that you did, and getting down to discovering what it is that is, you know, that's causing fear that you even have fear to begin with. That is that's high high level work. And whether or not people believe that's professional work, it totally is because it affects every part of your life. And if you don't have that piece in place, where you can handle, you know, whatever comes your way, and in the way of adversity, it's you're not going to last very long as an entrepreneur and that's okay, not everybody's necessarily meant to be you're cut out to be an entrepreneur, but I my feeling is most of the people listening to this probably are. So, you know, mindset if you don't have some really good coaching or mentoring, I mean, the best way in my opinion, for it to really work on mindset is to hire a coach, or a mentor. Those are, that's the most effective way of some of getting in there and really working on you, somebody that has a fresh pair of eyes that is trained and knowing how to get the best performance they can out of you. That's really the best way to start. But there are literally hundreds of books on mindset. There's there's dozens and dozens of books on mindset related to real estate, and even some related to apartment building investing. Lance Edwards has a great book called How to make big money in small apartments, I believe it's chapters nine and 10. He goes through mindset, and it's really a beautiful outline of kind of what he feels like you need to have in the way of mindset to be successful. And to him. mindset is 80% of the deal. So 80% of being successful.
Sean Thomson 37:47
What helps me is I'm surrounded by I've just been fortunate a friend of mine, you know, sort of mastermind invited me in I never thought about being in a mastermind he invited me in and this turned out to be just a phenomenal place. So I'm surrounded by other people that are in similar situations that I'm in that are dealing with the same issues and you know, we're helping each other, just improve every day. So you know, I have friends that I can call upon that hold me accountable on things or that I can ask advice and things like that. So, you know, these these types of things, being vulnerable with how you how you truly are and things like that it takes you know, it takes good friends to surround yourself with people that are either in the same situation that believe in, you know, what they're doing and what you're doing. And it takes good friends to have those conversations with. So I'm lucky in that I have that in my life now. And that's just been the last couple years too. But yeah, so I agreed mindset is a big, you know, thing to go to the next level. I mean, you know, you can you can kind of get by, but if you're wanting to excel and you want to just hit peak performance for yourself, you've got to deal with, you've got to deal with you, you know, who you are, what you want, and how you're going to get there. And then build those habits every day that are gonna get you you know, headed on the right path for sure. So,
Tate Siemer 39:10
yeah, and it's, it's a it's a full it's the big picture, right? You mentioned nutrition, you mentioned exercise being in shape, like if you if you feeling if you're feeling good in your body, you're feeling physically fit, you're feeling stretched out and loose and, and, and free and freedom of movement in your physical body and you're eating food that energizes you. You're not I have all but quit drinking just because it takes a lot of energy out of me. And not that I don't like it but it just for me, it's I'm committed to a level 10 life and in all areas of my life and it's out of that commitment that you know, the things like meditation, exercise, nutrition, those things really are, you know, do fall into place and are important when you're living from your purpose and your commitment.
Sean Thomson 39:59
You know, think we're asking a lot of a life that what you and I are asking to achieve is a is a massive ask out of the universe, right? or whatever you want to call it. I think I think what we're trying to do, it takes all you'd have, you know, it doesn't, you cannot have ask your way through this, this type of business successfully, you're just not, it's just not going to work. If you're, if you're only trying to get by on the easiest path, it's just not gonna work. You've got to, you got to give everything you have, because you're asking so much of life, right? So you want to achieve this, you got to give everything. So if you're working on yourself to do that, you're just not. That's, that's my, that's, that's how I feel about it. But you know,
Tate Siemer 40:42
yeah, yeah, another way of saying it really concisely is as within so without, you know, Earl Nightingale talks about that, I believe that, you know, basically what you have inside of you is what's gonna manifest outside of you. So if you're in a, if you're in a mindset of abundance, and giving, you're gonna, you're going to get, and you're going to have abundance reflected back towards you, because that's your focus. But, you know, ultimately get what you give, you know, and you talked about giving it your all because it is a big ask of the universe. But it's the law of the universe that, you know, no energy is wasted. There's always an equal and opposite reaction. So if we're out there hustling, man, I, in my opinion, we can't lose.
Sean Thomson 41:27
Massive, I could just keep Nice. Yeah. Yeah, let's, I need to, I need to get you going. So you've got more stuff to do today. We always like to wrap up the show. You know, I think the old the old American Dream of getting education and working for a career for 30 years and retiring with a nice, beautiful family. I think that is just, you know, it's almost impossible these days. And I think the American Dream has kind of been redefined. In a lot of ways for almost everybody, that's, that's out here. For us, and that's why we call the podcast next level American Dream, we want to talk about how people can take their America page to the next level. Yeah, I always like to ask everybody, you know, what is your American Dream? And then and then what are you doing kind of on a daily basis or on a regular basis to take your American Dream to the next level? Is it first of all professional, whatever it is? Yeah. What is it that you think is for you anyway, the American Dream?
Tate Siemer 42:20
Yeah, I just say, for me, what my American Dream is, is, is is freedom, peace, inner peace, peace in my relationships, and in my business, and anything that I that I affect, my big why, as far as wanting to be significantly successful, is to be an example and ideal for people that that want to also be successful and want to make the most they can out of their lives. So for me, I'm one of my long term goals, or even a shorter term goals become a coach performance coach. And that is just massively motivating. To me for some reason, it just that aspect of giving back and doing my podcast as well, just really lights me up. And so believe it or not, like is as much as money and abundance is nice, like, it's not really at the it's not the top motivation behind what I'm doing. Of course, money allows for so many things. And in particular, I think it allows for us to fully self express, like be fully self expressed in the world, when we can support the charities we want. When we can start the businesses we want that are going to make an impact, when we can help our friends and family out. I want to buy my mom a house for her, you know, the last 20 years of her life or 50 or whatever that ends up being. And you know, I just want her to be limited and and comfort and and you know, abundance herself.
Sean Thomson 43:59
Part of it is that as you excel in your life and learn things and grow, you want to be able to reach back and pull somebody up with you. Is that kind of what it's like for you?
Tate Siemer 44:09
Yeah, absolutely. That I mean I don't know if that's the American Dream I For me it is it has become much more about giving than anything else that of course I've got the vehicles that I want to drive and and the vacation house that I want to on and you know, those sorts of things, but they're because honestly, that stuff is becoming less and less important and, and being successful for the sake of making a difference in the world and making a difference in people's lives. Like a real difference to me is is what it's becoming more and more about. As my my business and my career progresses.
Sean Thomson 44:49
What is what is one or two things that you do that kind of helps you level up your American Dream. What is the book that you recommend, or is there sort of a practice that you recommend for people?
Tate Siemer 44:59
Yeah, I'd say, you know, what we've already talked about today, whatever it looks like for you to go deep and into discovering who you are at the very authentic core levels. And making you the best version of you that you can be, is gonna basically make everything else kind of take care of itself really. And, and and then I guess the other the other thing I'd say to other things I'd say is find a mentor. And we can talk about that for a while, but go work for somebody for free if you have to. I think that's a great way to break into an apprenticeship type program. And then also just surround yourself with digital mentors and friends, mastermind type people that are going to hold you accountable that are going to inspire you and are going to show you what's possible.
Sean Thomson 45:52
Well, it takes so thanks for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I mean, yeah, man, it's fun to talk to someone you know, you and I are we do things pretty similarly. And we have pretty similar aspirations, I think in the world. And it's, uh, it's fun to just kind of have a quick conversation with you and I haven't talked to in a while, so it's good to catch up. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about you know, you have a podcast and website and things like that. So someone wanted to reach out and sort of, you know, get more information from you and hear more from what you have going on. Where would they go to do that?
Tate Siemer 46:22
Sure. Yeah. The podcast is "The Apartment Guys," it's the name of the podcast, the Apartment Guys Podcast. You can find that anywhere that you can find podcasts. And then my website is Greenlight Equity Group. So it's actually www.glequitygroup.com So we're apartment building buyers and syndicators. And and we're always that we think we know that this is a team sport. And we're always looking for partnerships and people to work with. So feel free to reach out to me.
Sean Thomson 47:04
Yeah, that people can check out your podcast for sure. That's a good place to go to. Yeah, it is coming on the show. I appreciate it. It's, it's like I said, it's great. Good to talk to you again. I was talking a while. I know. We took a little while to get schedules cleared so we could bolt together. But thanks for coming in. And I will talk to you hopefully pretty soon! Okay?
47:24
Sean, thanks for what you're doing. I'm really stoked for your podcast, man! This is great. I knew you before he started the podcast and, and I know that it's that starting a podcast takes some courage and a lot of work. And so congratulations and keep doing what you're doing, man! You're doing awesome.
Sean Thomson 47:45
Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah. Luckily, I have Abbie. So you know, she does a lot of work!
Tate Siemer 47:50
Yeah, she's pretty awesome.
Sean Thomson 47:53
She's traveling today. So she was able to be with us on the show with us. But yeah, she's she's really the catalyst behind getting this whole thing going. Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. It's It's good that it's good that you know, some of those that you have.
Tate Siemer 48:14
Thank you! It's good to be with you.
Abigail Thomson 48:17
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Next Level American Dream. If you would like to learn more about what we talked about today, want to contact the team directly, or are interested in passively investing and being a part of our deal room, head over to our website at www.thomsonmultifamilygroup.com Before you go, please leave a review! Your comments help us create more episodes for you to enjoy.