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Welcome to The Legacy Investor Podcast, where we talk money, investing, business, and what it means to leave a legacy for generations to come. Hosted by Cameron Philgreen, this show dives deep into the intersection of entrepreneurship, investing, and legacy-building, all while keeping God at the center. Whether you're a seasoned investor or just starting out, you'll discover how to align your financial journey with your faith, grow wealth with integrity, and create a lasting impact for generations to come. Join in, as we explore practical strategies, real-world stories, and timeless biblical principles to help you honor God in every step of your journey.
Woo, baby. Okay, Justin Ferguson on the pod today. Love this conversation. I just love talking to people that are just consistent. You can tell this guy's just disciplined and consistent and has endured and just like puts in the work to become 1% better every day. Yeah, I just feel inspired by this guy. You know, he's doing big stuff up in Virginia and he puts in the work. He does cold calling. He's put in the work to build his muscle, to learn how to taste wine better. We'll talk a little bit about that. You know, I was inspired. I'm going to go find a tracker to track what are the consistent habits that I'm doing each day to push the ball forward just a little bit. You know, it's not about the big 60K win. It's about what are the consistent activities that I'm doing to push the ball forward. You know, multifamily investor multifamily broker does a lot of big closer to six million dollar deals up in virginia so i hope you get a lot out of this episode with justin ferguson let's hop into it bye-bye all right justin ferguson welcome to the legacy investor podcast how are we doing today sir i'm well i am well how are you doing Doing great, dude. It's a cold day here in Waco, Texas. Believe it or not, it's cold in Texas. Where are you out in the world? And catch us up to speed on your story and how you became an expert in the multifamily real estate world. Yeah, well, I'm in Richmond right now, so It's cold. There's no snow, thankfully, but it's a cold, sunny day here in Richmond. I've been in Richmond now for about 10 years. I'm from Pittsburgh, born and raised, so I'm not afraid of the cold. Then I moved to Alabama and got accustomed to the heat. I was there for a few years, and that's where I saw a commercial broker and the guy was good. He was, he was sharp. He was doing fun stuff and had a good work life balance. Uh, it was cool about commercials that you work nine to five, you know, whereas residential, you're usually five to nine in the weekend. So it was just like the dynamics and the structure of the day was pretty cool working with other people who do real estate all day versus, you know, everyday people who have a job and they want to buy a home at after hours, which makes sense. That was a cool thing I noticed. So, I was in the South and was doing property management at the time, saw a broker and said, I want to try that. Then I moved to Richmond, where I've been now, and jumped head and over heels about real estate and multifamily. Pretty active, one of the most active guys here in Southern Virginia. For your listeners in Virginia, you have NOVA in DC. Most people know where that is. And we don't touch that. That is a different area. That's a different beast itself. And our team does everywhere else in the state. So now, 10 years in, full time, and during that path, mainly COVID, I was afraid of the world like most people and was already consuming a lot of alcohol, mainly wine, and decided to go down the deep end of wine education. And now I'm a wine director. And now I've got two things, right? Nine of a nine to five brokerage and five to nine with wine education and a wine concierge service. So, you know, I like doing things and it's been good. Dude, that's awesome. You said you're one of the most active people in your area. How did you get there? What makes you one of the most active people? And what drives you to put in the activity you do? Yeah. I mean, cold calling. There's a part of the world, like a lot of people don't like sales. And when you can cold call it, and the idea of cold calling, I think a lot of people are get scared, right? People don't hear no. And once you get in your mind that people, it's not that they don't know you, it's not personal. They just don't know or believe that you're worth the time. So part of the idea of cold calling and being extremely consistent is making sure when you talk to people, you add value to them, which gets lost. You know, if I call you every week, I called you every week and say, hey, you want to sell? You're like, hey, stop calling me. Then you ignore me, then you block my number. But if you knew that I'd call you every week, sharing something important, the value that you may have not seen or want your opinion on it's just like how can you be a human right versus a salesperson so doing that consistently week after week hearing no and then i have a deal closing today knock on the weapon talking this guy for nine years and you know every every four i've been calling him every 45 to 60 days for nine years and it's like It's not an if, right? It's called a cycle for a reason. So not being pushy, just making sure you're top of mind. And by the time people are ready to sell, it's like, Justin's been good. He's not been pushy. He's still active, which is a big part. He still sees my name on closing deals. And it's like, yeah, Justin's the obvious choice for me here. There's no secret sauce as much as I really wish there was sometimes, but just doing the basics over and over and over again. Yeah. How do you add value on these cold calls? I mean, usually these are 30, 60, two-minute calls. How are you adding value? How would you encourage other people to add value when they're cold calling? Yeah, the idea of cold calling is I like so when you're section out your database. Right. So let's say, you know, our average deal size is like six million. So understanding who you're calling and why you're calling them and what they're thinking of, you know, if I'm talking to a mom and pops, right, they get a 10 unit. This is their only deal. This is their day job, right? This is their business is managing their small portfolio. They may not care about what's happening in D.C. or national markets. The only thing they care about is what's happening on their block, their street. So when I call them, it's like, hey, did you know that, you know, so-and-so is getting a stronger price per square foot on your rents? Would love to share what we're seeing. Don't mention selling or buying. Just say, hey, something's happening locally. I know you're busy. But I just want to give you some information. Do with it as you see fit. I know this business, this property is important for you versus calling the institutional guys who are like, hey, you know that, you know, the feds drop the rates and next year Jerome Powell is going to be out. So let's start thinking about what that could look like and who might be put in place to navigate you for the next thirty six months versus like quarter by quarter. So just understanding who you're talking to and what they care about. That's super cool. I think a lot of people could learn a lot from that. We get cold calls all the time. Everybody gets spam calls. And with this Apple update, my spam calls are getting blocked a lot more. And if I do answer, I want some value to be... If I don't immediately sense this person is going to help me and not just take from me, I'm hanging up. I think most people are that way. And so if you can... not just figured out how to manipulate people into staying on the phone but but like truly add value teach them something update them on something you know give to them that's what i hear you saying and that's really cool yeah absolutely um what so you talk about multi-family real estate as a calling and not just a career for justin what does that mean and when did you realize this was a calling on your life yeah i think the The you get into real estate, especially commercial, you know, selfishly like, hey, I want to make a lot of money. Cool. Like a lot of people do. But I think when you look deeper into what this business is, you know, the day in and day out, the hard ups and downs, understanding the cycle. And I got in. we've hit a true cycle like my first cycle right you always hear about the old guys with my gray hairs and we do of like oh this is nothing from 2008 oh you know 2002 oh 1990 right you hear all these guys who've been through several cycles and they're like we're okay let's figure it out um and this has been the first one and having this you know with children and being full commission i think valuing what you're doing every day and your time and now i have two small children the last five years right so I think we look at multifamily and what it does is being mindful that I am somewhat of a person who sees people every day in their homes and how that's changing the trajectory of their lives. So making sure that I can help someone build their own net worth and get people in the business. And as well as how do you just take real estate, which is one of the most valuable commodities, right, and help other people grow and double their income for their families while still being ethical and reasonable owners, because at the end of the day, right, they're owning and managing where someone else lives. So it's been a really nice combination of like personal and really I'm helping a lot of people in different ways. Love it. Justin, you have, I imagine you have a pulse on the market, like not many people do. You know, you just talked about Jerry Powell, our man upstairs. Tell me, like, look into your crystal ball, sort of, and, you know, the next 12, 18, 24 months, what moves would you encourage investors to be making, even in the single family space? multifamily, the $6 million deal down to the $600,000 deal. What moves are you encouraging people to make right now? Regardless of where you're at with the size of your deal, I think the conversation of politics has been such a taboo subject for a long time. Now we can't not talk about politics very recently because Before there was so much of let's keep politics and policy kind of separated. But now the way things are moving, they're getting much more blended. So the honest answer is like, hey, what is the president doing? What are his views? Where does he see things happening? Right. And also, you know, again, what I mentioned, Jerome Powell, right. He is going to be gone. So who do we think he's going to get replaced by? Because that trickles down everywhere you go. We've seen more and more buzzwords, affordable housing, which I think housing should be more affordable. Then you look at the next potential idea of what happened in New York with Mamdani. And that politician really changed a lot of perceptions of things. So what happens in rent control comes your area, right? So when you look at what the big guys are looking at. It's really look at policy. Who's your politician? What do they believe in? How is that trending? What direction? Because that affects your rent growth, that affects your leases, that affects your your tenant landlord conversation. It really affects a lot of things, which and therefore affects how much you can increase rent or not increase rent. I mean, you know, coastal area insurance, right. Insurance has gone up 25, 50 percent in a lot of places. So a lot of I think a lot of people want to look at factors that they think don't really involve them but when you look at what's happening from the large scales and i'm in a tertiary market you know waco is a big market texas is a a booming market these days because right the the state and the government policies for construction are amazing that's why there's new apartments every five feet you know around there so those zoning laws i mean there's so many things that go into what you do and you think you have control of, but you can see these laws play out well before they hit you, depending on where you're at. So the short answer to what you said is look at policy, take a really holistic idea of like, okay, if this happens, like if then statements, if this changes, then therefore this is going to happen. It's going to trickle down to my market and I need to be prepared to handle whatever happens. Interest rates for multifamily, you know, if you're modeling during COVID in my area, rent growth was like 20 percent. So if you're still modeling that, you're probably in trouble. Right. Yeah. Project those kind of things, because in the day, if you're in retail or office or various things, look at look at people's buying power. Can people afford to have more money? So why are you why is your pro for or have more rent? Right. If you're performing showing mass rent growth. Well, where is that? You know, so like those are the things that I really miss, you know. Yeah. So you mentioned affordable housing. I mean, that's a huge thing right now. Like we've got to figure this out as a nation and even as a, you know, the state of Texas is working on it. And I know that me as an investor, even like a single and small multifamily investor, I'm thinking about how can I make, how can I help make housing more affordable? So we, We just did our first pad split this year, which is a co-living, basically like six different people, complete strangers to each other, and they all live in the same house together. And it's affordable housing for them and also a pretty darn good cash flow for a single family home for us and for me. What other trends do you see in the affordable housing area? And what would you be encouraging investors to look at these days? Yeah, so I think defining affordable housing is obviously really relative to your area. So it goes down to medium income. I think at the end of the day, there's the delta between how much it costs to live in your region and your neighborhood versus what their landlords charging, because I think a lot of landlords got really greedy during COVID. Right. When you had interest rates at two and the stimulus check, I think a lot of people really get hurt with trying to get too aggressive. Right. And it may have been a little bit more okay then because people had stimulus checks and there's more money flowing everywhere. Everyone was happy. Right. Remember those days as COVID days. But now on the other side, if you're a landlord, your insurance went up 30%. Your taxes adjustments are going up faster. There's not as much juice left. So we're at a nice, very real slim point between landlords just aren't making as much money as they were and they can't push rents anymore. So with affordable, what ways as a landlord can you cover the Delta and make money and be worth being a multifamily owner, dealing with the risk and the headaches potentially of being an owner. So I think the idea of affordability is understanding what delta between cost of living makes sense for you. And also petitioning and talking to your, again, politicians for zoning, right? We're at a point where density, we know that more inventory is positive because it keeps people honest on how much stuff should cost. I think with the rent restriction, the data is not supporting that really works because it directly disincentivizes landlords. And you see places like New York where sometimes it's easier to keep places vacant, which sounds absolutely backwards. So I think rent restriction is still really a touchy subject and hard to work. But if there are certain income requirements for a building, there's places in D.C. that have a blended where some people are paying market rent. and they're living next to people who are paying 50% subsidized. And there may be some friction there, Who's doing that? Like the city of D.C.? Who's subsidizing rent? Yeah, so there's like Section 8 and various programs with subsidies that way. There's veterans programs. And we know from data if one building is all subsidized, that's not the best living environment. And what we're seeing is a more blended approach. So like, you know, 25, 25 and various income levels. And it's actually working out extremely well. So... It's just being more open-minded to people and how can you vary up the income levels while still making a decent profit for yourself. Yeah. Do you think Section 8 and affordable housing is going to, sorry, do you think Section 8, there's like a new name for it though, right? But do you think that those vouchers are going to grow and grow and grow? Are there more people applying for those? I don't know. Well, I think the current administration wants to really reduce that. I mean, it already started. I mean, the big the the last 90 days when it was Thanksgiving and they cut it off, we get the world, the American reality check on. I thought what would happen was in your own social media, we got to see how people really felt about the subsidies and what demographics may have been using it more than others. And I thought it was a real idea of how people view it. I think there's value to it. I think the current administration wants to really cut back on where the money goes. I don't think it's going to go away because a lot of these big owners are still making a lot of money with that money. And as you like, there's, there's a circular effect, right? This, this guy pays that guy who pays that guy. And everyone kind of went to the very top. If the people in the middle and the bottom were the ownership would kind of get messed up sometimes. So I don't think the Section 8, they're trying to rebrand it because of stigmas, but I don't think the government subsidy is going to go away. I think if anything, they'll start being really particular like they're doing about where you can spend your money and how long you can be on the program. Interesting. Yeah. So, Justin, let's talk about how investors, there's a lot of investors listening to this Um, you know, how are people going to win? I kind of already asked this, but I'm just going to ask a little different ways that you interact with a lot of investors. You go to meetups, you, you know, uh, you meet a lot of developers, private investors, um, you know, both limited partners and general partners. I'm sure you meet all sorts of different people. What are the traits, the mindsets, the, uh, maybe even the, um, activities that those people are involved in that are the people that are winning. You know, what are they, what are those people doing? What do you notice is different about them? They're disciplined and consistent. That's the easy answer. I think your listeners probably know, right? But the let's dig in, right? So discipline is underwriting, you know, broker underwriting every deal that you get across because as a buyer is a buyer. If I say, Hey, listen, the owner wants 5 million. You're like, I only think it's worth three. Well, tell me why. Let me underwrite the deal. Help me understand why it's worth my time as a broker to talk to you. Listen, I get it. People want to get the best deal. But if you're not disciplined enough to say, let me share my numbers with you and underwrite this deal and be honest with the broker who's essentially the middleman between you and the seller, I want to get to sell the best price. I also want to get you the best price. So if I can't communicate, hey, the buyers are underwriting vacancy at 15 versus 10. And that buyer you discipline when they have those conversations looks extremely great in person and in paper about, OK, I can trust this buyer is going to be worth the time. Consistency is the same way. Are you still going through it? Are you being active? The power of social media these days commercial getting more and more stronger i think people miss that um yeah so it's just being consistent going these meetups but instead of going to the meetup looking for deals it's understanding how people view their business right vendors um in my area value add was extremely heavy and you know what like the lynchpin was We can't find contractors with the cost of labor rising. It was hard to get stuff done at a price that makes sense when you underwrote it. So the people understand every part of the game. When you talk to a broker or seller like that's the guy who I want to talk to, not the guy that's just going to throw a number and disappear. The guy's going to say, Justin, here's what we're doing. Here's how it works. I've met with three property managers. This makes sense. I know vendors who can do this and the you know right now with debt you know the the pre-approval letter just doesn't do it anymore it's like i spoke to this lender here's exact quotes here's his name give him a call like it's just a level of just discipline and um and just being transparent and then my favorite part i call them you know The Internet kind of the bigger pockets was really big when I was starting and they were great. Nothing negative about them whatsoever. I think they had a beta spreadsheet. Right. And 80 percent of our deals go to people not from Virginia. So my thing is, if the underwriting for Richmond, Virginia is probably a little different from Waco, Texas, it's probably a little bit different. So be mindful as a buyer that if you're looking for yield across the country, Your cookie cutter, I call it bigger buckets spreadsheet is going to get you so far, right? Like, be mindful that, hey, vacancy is never 1% anywhere in the country, right? So be mindful. But to be credible as a buyer and the plan forward, really do your research on the area and what's realistic and where you want to take your deal. Yeah. And if you're listening and you're confused, what does the word underwriting mean? Justin's just talking about basically analyzing the deal using your own spreadsheet, doing your own due diligence, talking to people, talking to banks, figuring out what market rent is and what you might be able to raise it to, if that's even possible. And I want to I'm a pretty big believer that you actually shouldn't use those calculators that people give out. There's a guy who his main lead funnel, lead source, is giving away or giving people a spreadsheet, which is another form of calculator. And I totally get it. I'm sure those are great. Maybe they're awesome. I'm a pretty big believer you should be building your own spreadsheet and underwriting deals yourself. As long as you know everything that goes into a pro forma or a spreadsheet. Yeah. You should build it yourself so you know what it's doing. It's like there's the game. Have you played the game Cashflow? Kiyosaki's game Cashflow? I know of it. I haven't actually played it myself. So funny story. Well, not a funny story. Fun fact is that he actually wrote the book Rich Dad Poor Dad so that he would sell more of this board game. And then the book obviously took off and like no one knows about the board game. But he mentions the board game a lot in the book, great board game. And they tell you you're not allowed to use the app. They have like an app where you can do all the calculations for the board game because it's very numbers driven. It's like very real life. So you're underwriting deals literally during the board game. But he's like, you cannot use the app. Your first few rounds of this game, you have to write everything down with pencil so that you understand. You have to understand the math. If you don't understand what the spreadsheet's doing and what the formulas are doing, then it's pointless. What's the point? You're not going to actually understand what it's doing. So anyway, huge fan of that. It's great. Anything else you wanted to say on that? No, I think it's... The spreadsheet is a starting point. And a lot of time, a lot of the people who are getting into the business, they're looking for a place to start, right? It's like, hey, some person made me want to download something and I saw it. They have credibility enough on the internet that I feel like it's great. You got to start somewhere, but take it five steps deeper. And as you're suggesting, it's a starting point, but it's not end all. A lot of people play just playing to win, playing not to lose. And a lot of the guys who are actually doing deals or underwriting a little bit more aggressively because they want to get in. But a lot of people who I've been talking to for 10 years now have never bought a deal because they've never penciled that spreadsheet ever. I'm like, well, you know, I'll see you the next cycle. Right. So just everything is a grain of salt. Let's be mindful of that. a starting point, but you got to get your hands dirty, talk to people, get perception and go from there. Yeah. On the flip side of this, what are the biggest mistakes you see people making? What are some of the bigger fumbles you've seen? Syndication is a really interesting game these days. I think it's, it's, it's great. It works. There's plenty of hundreds of models, how it works, but being extremely clear on what that looks like. Again, if you're a new investor and you're a syndicator and it's like, Hey, give me your money. I'll give it back to you in two years. Like be very, be overly OCD about what that looks like. Um, what happens, you know, capital calls, what does that look like? How does, how are things, how was equity raised? Who are we raising it from? I had a guy, his first deal raised money from 37 people. Like he literally asked every person he knew, give me some money. And then the guy who gave, you know, 10 grand versus 200 grand, the guy who gave 10 grand wanted to go to Lowe's with him and pick every outlet. It's like, no, you know, be very clear with syndication that you can make money. A lot of guys do win, but being very important of who you're working with, even though there's kind of a degree of separation on how you get paid and everyday stuff. So syndication has been a really good one where I'm seeing people lose GPs, LPs. Why are they losing? And explain what syndication is for like 30 seconds and then what's what's making people lose? What's the problem? Yeah, so a syndicator is a person that finds deals. They put everything together, you know, the... Put it under contract. Under contract, the due diligence, they do all the work. And they, depending on how it's structured, they usually put very little of their own money into the deal. They ask everyone else and other investors to put their money. And that's how they come up with the down payment. And one of those potential syndication people are LPs, GPs. LP is limited partner, GP is general partner. They put their name on the loan potentially to say, hey, I'm the most credible buyer here. So the syndicator is just getting paid a fee for their time of sourcing the deal. Now, the general partner may run the deal, maybe an asset manager who's in charge of actually making sure the asset makes money. And the limited partners get money at a higher rate of return, but they're usually putting more money in to the deal. So that's kind of one on one. And what word loses is if you're syndicated under again, underwriting rent growth too aggressively. Right. If he says we're going to push rents 20 percent and you're the LP, you say, sure, I believe that. That's how you lose. Oh, then a year later, say, hey, we didn't get our 20%. We can't cover our bills. Then that's a problem. So losing with syndication is you, the LP, the guy or girl with a lot of money that say, hey, I heard real estate's a good place to put money, which it is. You're not doing your own homework on where the market is going to hit or any of these numbers that the syndicator is telling you works. So that's a big loss for everyday people. 100%. I feel like people like LPs should be, and folks that want to invest in real estate passively should be looking for the opportunities where people are, people have a deal and their thesis is like to push rents down actually, you know, like to provide more density for more people that's going to be more affordable and they're somehow going to like make more money that way. That would be amazing. And I feel like someone listening to this should start to look at, Hey, Where's the multifamily in the jurisdictions that are going to loosen restraints on density and allow us to fit more people, more units in this smaller footprint? I think that's where most people should be looking. But I digress. That's just my opinion. I think it's an interesting opportunity. What do you think, Justin? I think that's where things are going to go. It has to. There's only one direction it can go. yeah there's only one way at this point and how it can go i mean zoning and density is so important and so tough and everywhere in the country so i think if you have a a lot of like the really savvy guys even if the market's pushing at seven they're only ever going to model two percent it's very hard for anyone with rent growth right and being assuming you know with inflation and cost of business and cost of being an operator that Most people are never going to move out of their apartments for two to 3% growth. That's very conservative across the entire country. But if the market's saying I can get 7%, don't do that. But you need to be extremely disciplined on where you think it's going to go because Hey, you know, insurance can go up 30%, then you're screwed. So those kinds of little things of being, again, being conservative, knowing where to be and how to be conservative, you may not win. every deal, but in two to three years, it's just, you'll be saving millions of dollars. Love it. Okay. Let's take it down a notch. I want to get to wine also at some point, just give me like 10 minutes on wine. But before we go there, we're talking pretty high level. Not all my listeners are, are, you know, $6 million deal, $60 million deal like you. like what you're brokering and what you're doing. So take it down to single family level. What do you feel like people should double down on? What do you feel like people should be focused on in the single family space, residential space? Any thoughts there? Yeah, my first... business for years first few years and the deal was all singles on i never did single family or company wouldn't let us do less than five so it's always commercial but i only was working with deals 10 units and smaller so i've sold plenty of five and six you know a few quadruplexes you know rarely but i'd say with my my while single family isn't my specialty i think the idea is when you're buying a home Look at your exit strategies. Where are the rent? Who are you competing with? Obviously, look at the Class A and run comps, which is kind of an easy answer. But more importantly, look at your exit. Because what I do find is that the guys who own 30 houses, when they are saying, you know what, Justin, I'm ready to jump and go to multifamily, you get 30 transactions. And that's where people get really stuck conceptually of, okay, well, if retail value is 200,000, but if I package all 30 of these, it's only worth 150. Where is that? Are you willing to take that split? Because some people may know the 1031 exchange where it's a tax free exchange. Whatever gains you make on your cell, you can roll into another deal. So I think if you're a single family person and you love single family, obviously repairs and cost of labor and the standard thing, which I know enough about to be dangerous. But I say at some point, most people say I'd rather have more people under one roof versus 30 roofs 30 mortgages right and i think yeah understanding that just the scale going up to that first multi just be mindful of your exit strategy when you're buying those single families definitely love it yeah that's kind of the direction i mean you it sounds like you kind of started at this um you know higher level it's like i'm and i don't know if you're you know, just brokering these or if you're doing deals yourself, you can talk about that. But I'm trying to get out of single family and into them. So I'm trying to like offload. I'm trying to liquidate a couple of things right now so that I can, you know, kind of go to the next level. But yeah, what's your story with like investing? Are you... holding stuff? Yeah. I mean, the the the question you asked me where we got. So I went to school for architecture after that. I finished there and during the market 2010. So like the market was not great for architecture jobs. I did loan origination for single families, for everyday people. And then I went into worker Keller Williams for a little bit, um, way too much emotion and single family tone caves for me. It was great. Learned enough. Um, after that I did wholesaling, like a lot of people do to get into the game, then property management. And then made all my way up the commercial. So I'd say for you, again, the idea of people build a single family portfolio because the down payments are less, right? You can get in and get out faster. I like flips was a really good market because you're getting your money back at a great returns faster, 100%. When you go to multifamily, you're thinking much more of a long game like five to seven years and knowing all the tricks have a good CPA who knows all the depreciation and appreciation all the fun things because the value of the the incentives that having a commercial loan gives you so that it's a lot of a longer net worth tax play so if you're looking to scale up understand, you know, have someone do an analysis of what every home is worth individually, plus all the commissions and fees, or as a portfolio may taking a slighter haircut to have an easier transaction to go to your next step faster. And then me, I've had, um, I've owned apartments. We got in and got out. I think my next round of the economy, next wave of the cycle, I'll be much more of a buyer. But my previous cycle, I was just buying or just slinging deals, right? It's finding the right guy. One deal we did buy the owner, the buyer uses down payment. on another deal during our deal. So like you're supposed to close this deal and use your down payment on something else. And he couldn't get more money. So the owner reached out to us and said, hey, I don't want to do this again. Will you guys buy it? And we bought it. We did really well. That was a much faster turnaround. I think the average rents were like at 500, we upgraded, we pushed rents to 700, which is still like half. So we increased some, we made our margins, helping greedy landlords got in and got out. But next cycle, definitely looking for some more deals for myself. Yeah. Let's move on to wine. I just want to hear really quick. Give us like, I don't, I don't, I don't think people really, you know, want to hear what's Justin's. Maybe you can share a little bit of your story with wine, but probably people want to know how can I like improve my palate? So Justin is a level three sommelier wine. wine director for the underground kitchen and how did you get into this and then give us like some tips and tricks on wine this is not a wine or food podcast but yeah i love i love wine and i'd like to learn a thing or two i think the i got into wine a lot of the clients who were doing these deals really appreciated wine and i just i just didn't know why so i did it because i wanted to learn and be kind of a good agent right and broker um my clients i read dinners and i'm like hey give me a beer and they're like i want this old vintage wine so education i think it's been good for branding as well just hey i like real estate and i know wine wine is complicated one is you know you talk cap rates and all this high level stuff i like being able to take these very in-depth stuff of wine and real estate and be able to explain to everyone so that's like a cool balancing act that I like to do with wine. What a cool skill, man. Yeah, that's amazing. Making stuff complicated, easy, and approachable. So with palate, right, with wine and anything, like if you like hoppy beers, there's probably a wine for you. And your palate is a muscle, people think. So when you're enjoying wine and alcohol in general... Your nose and your olfactory nerves are where you really learn and smell. Tasting is really just to confirm that. So the short answer is just drink more. Smell more. I think really give them some smells. There you have it, guys. Learn more about wines by consumption and smelling. Go smell stuff because your nose and your tongue and your palate is like really in sync if you just practice it more. yeah i'm a cop more of a coffee connoisseur than wine um and as i've gotten better at uh tasting notes in coffee it affects everything else like you know bourbon whiskey wine even cigars i feel like i actually finally have like a palette like i know what i like and i know i can kind of know pick out the notes or at least pick out like the color you know and i do my best i'm still getting better i agree it's definitely a muscle you can you can build it's very much a muscle i think that's what people people assume like hey you just had a great palette no i just structurally and systematically tried to learn smells right and as part of my career is doing that and the more you just do that as you get better. Like you said, you're learning. I know enough about coffee. I start smelling the coffee grounds. I'm like, this smells amazing. Those little details and you take a moment to really enjoy what you're smelling just makes the food and the experience so much better. Man, I want to encourage you. You strike me as a very disciplined, as you've mentioned in this podcast, disciplined and I just feel like that, I've seen the movie, the documentary Psalm. I think there's a few of them. And man, those guys are so disciplined and just like, man, it takes so much practice and repetition and you with cold calling and with wine. And I don't know if you play sports, you look like you probably do. And I'm just like, man, way to go. I'm just really impressed. And I think we can all probably learn from you, Justin, on perseverance, endurance, consistency, systems. So give us a couple more tidbits on whether it's sports or wine or real estate. Give us a few mindset shifts that we could make to be a little bit more like you. Don't be like me. Be better than me. I think if you break it out, it's just the way I think about everything. It's really one step at a time. And I think where people really get lost is they want to make big jumps, right? The easiest thing is weight loss. I want to lose weight quickly. That's not sustainable. But if I lose one pound consistently, I build systems to help me lose that one pound consistently, then I will be better tomorrow versus the rapid roller coaster a lot of people do. So when I think, you know, there's a Russian guy, his name is Pavel, I do, the way, I forget his last name, it's a really Russian last name, with kettlebells and pull-ups, he's like, you could do one pull-up set a week or you could do 20 pull-ups a day over the course of the week how many pull-ups are you doing you know it's like over the week you're doing much more volume and your form gets better uh you know i'm sure everyone knows where mosier is like hey there's a the the japanese cup or japanese uh cup test where the the class had make the best cup they could or make one cup every single day for the semester. Who do you think did better? The everyday guy. So those little things, I think it's my, my answer is not super sexy. It's just to stay consistent 1% better every day, 1% every day and pick something and track it. I track calls. So I think that's the other part of it, right? If you can look and say, I'm doing one thing better every day, I wrote it down. Then you look back at the week and you have that visual the same way, again, a scale does, the same way your bank account does. It was like 1% better with real estate every year. So like there's a lot of growth over the course of a long time versus a medium. Do you use anything or a tool or an app or anything to track historical? Because I... I have a to-do list and I check it off and sometimes I'll leave it so that I can see at the end of the day and show my wife, here's everything I got done. But I don't have the historical data of here's what I did and here's what I set my hand to each day and stayed consistent. Do you have any tools or tips? I use my iPhone. My iPhone Notes app is bombarded with random tidbits. I have real estate CRMs that attract very well across the board. With fitness, every week I print out a fitness thing and I write it down. When I'm doing the set, I literally write down one set and it's just that act of writing and putting it out there that helps. I mean, you know, I think with what's AI is actually pretty something that, you know, chat GPT and everything, all the other AIs that track everything, which is really good. Cause you ask questions and you can do recaps or, Hey, over the last year, what have I done? What have we talked about? Is it really powerful? Yes. Like, what have we talked about in the last year? Then like, it's like, Oh, I asked this, these 3000 questions every day, you know? So just those little things of tracking, um, uh, it makes sense here. That's cool, man. He's adjusting the lighting. Yeah. Dude, this has been great. Anything else you want to share with the listeners? And then we'll wrap it up and share how people can reach you. I'd say for listeners who are in real estate that want to grow their portfolios, just meet more people. meet every player in your thing, the brokers, the managers, stay disciplined. I think it's really about doing 1% better every day. So the guys who have done the best understand trends and see it before it happens. So that's kind of just how it works. And I'm definitely someone who didn't grow up in the business. Um, my, my parents still barely know what I do. I'm like, I sell stuff, you know? So it's, you just do a little bit, a little bit better every day. Um, it's just, you know, you can do it. That's awesome. Where can people find you? My website is easywayjustin-ferguson.com. Also, YouTube has been really fun doing more long. I love short form and podcasts like this and just being available. I don't have anything to sell. I don't have a course. I just want to share information. I know my target person I work with is a little bit different, but I want people to get there. So if I can help as anyone grows your portfolio or real estate or anything, just reach out to me, website or YouTube. That's great. Love it. It's been a great one, man. Thank you for joining us. And legacy investors, have a great day wherever you are, whatever you're doing. Get 1% better every day. Use this advice from Justin and we'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye. Guys, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of The Legacy Investor. Hey, if you want to help us grow and support us, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. That really helps a lot. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Cameron Filgreen. It's still new and growing, but I am going to start posting on there more regularly. Follow me on Instagram at Cameron underscore Filgreen. If you know someone who should be on this podcast, Go fill out the form on my website. It's CameronPhilGreen.com slash podcast. Fill out the form there. I'd love to have more guests on this podcast. It's been a blast. And music is by Eric Lopez Villaverde. Reach out to him for all your music needs. On Instagram, he's Eric Lopez Villaverde. Hope you guys have a great day and thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye.