Forged In Fire
Hosted by Nate Pharmer-Eden and Cole Farrell, Forged In Fire is where real entrepreneurship meets raw, unfiltered stories. This isn’t your typical business podcast—we skip the fluff and dive straight into the heat of what it really takes to build, run, and grow a business. From late-night doubts to game-changing wins, we explore the trials, setbacks, and breakthroughs that entrepreneurs experience at every stage of their journey.
Whether you’re a seasoned business owner navigating new challenges or someone with a burning desire to launch your first venture, this podcast offers powerful insights and practical lessons for everyone. No sugarcoating—just honest conversations about what it takes to forge success through the fire.
Get ready to be inspired, learn from real-world struggles, and gain the tools you need to make your entrepreneurial dreams a reality. This is your front-row seat to the highs, lows, and everything in between. Are you ready to step into the fire? 🔥
Forged In Fire
Episode 30: Brian's Freedom Formula is Trading Paychecks for Property Ownership
Brian Briscoe never imagined he'd become a multifamily investor with $35 million in real estate holdings. After earning degrees in mathematics and serving 20 years in the military, his path took an unexpected turn when he realized the power of real estate investing.
During a military deployment with limited outside communication, Brian found himself alone with a computer and spreadsheets, calculating what it would take to achieve financial freedom. The sobering discovery? He'd need 60-80 single-family homes to replace his income – a pace that would leave him "really, really old" before reaching his goal. This revelation pushed him to explore multifamily syndication, a strategy he once thought was only for sophisticated investors.
The journey wasn't without obstacles. Brian describes the psychological challenge of shifting from $500,000 properties to multimillion-dollar complexes as "more difficult than it sounds." Even more daunting was the prospect of raising millions in capital when he couldn't immediately identify millionaires in his network. His solution? Strategic partnerships that divided fundraising requirements into manageable portions.
After successfully acquiring approximately 700 units through partnerships, Brian experienced both the rewards and challenges of co-ownership. When internal dynamics eventually led to a company split, a mentor asked him a perspective-shifting question: "Why do you need a partner? Why don't you just hire somebody?" This simple inquiry transformed his business model.
Since launching Streamline Capital Group in 2023, Brian has acquired 150 units in his hometown of Salt Lake City worth $35 million. The key to his success? Implementing the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS) to create clear accountability through weekly scorecards, focusing relentlessly on controllable metrics like occupancy and collections, and overcoming the fear of failure that keeps most aspiring investors from taking action.
Whether you're just starting your real estate journey or looking to scale your existing portfolio, Brian's straightforward advice rings true: "Figure out what you want and then chase it. Nobody's ever going to hand it to you." Connect with Brian on LinkedIn or through his podcast, Diary of an Apartment Investor, to learn more about his approach to multifamily success.
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Forget what you've heard. Forged in Fire is where real entrepreneurs come to share the untold truths of success the late nights, the crushing setbacks, the moments that change everything. No fluff, just fire, ready to step into the heat and unlock what it really takes to build a business. This is where legends are made.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another exciting episode of Forged in Fire. I am your co-host, nate Farmaridon. Allow me to introduce my counterpart, cole. How we doing brother.
Speaker 3:Nate. What's going on, man? How are you today?
Speaker 2:Bro, I don't know what's going on. So last week, you know, the whole family was gone. Everybody was in Florida. They left me and Ray, my three-year-old. So she caught a bug and I thought I was fine, like everything was good the entire week. Everybody came home. Weekend was great, last night not so much. So today I'm sluggish, I'm struggling, but we here, man, because business still got to get done.
Speaker 3:But enough about me. How are you Dude love it? I guess that's a kid's thing. It's always someone sick. But we're good over here. Everything's peachy. Switching management software is on my end and it is a disaster, but you know, that's kind of how it goes.
Speaker 2:It's just got to take it one day at a time, right.
Speaker 3:Oh, we still there, still here. Yep, you're still rolling. All right, look. Anyways, I'm excited for this interview. This is going to be fantastic. We have somebody that I was a guest on their podcast and it was just an awesome experience, and we'll go into details there. However, before we jump into the interview, I have one favor to ask all of you, which is please leave us a review. If you want to go in the comments and leave a review, if you can go into the actual review section and do that, that would be even better. But this is what helps us grow, this is how we educate more people. So please do that one single thing for us. But besides that, sit back, relax, enjoy.
Speaker 2:Man, buckle up, because it's going to be a hell of a ride. You used to say that all the time. You used to get me so pumped so I just had to throw it in there.
Speaker 3:Love it, love it.
Speaker 2:Today we have the honor, the pleasure and the privilege to bring to the stage Brian Briscoe, who is the founder of Streamline Capital Group, and they invest in multifamily. In Salt Lake City We've got roughly about 1,500 multifamily apartments. But enough from me. We want to hear from him. So, brian, come to the stage. How are we doing, brother?
Speaker 4:Hey, doing very well. How are you guys doing?
Speaker 2:Doing good.
Speaker 4:Thank you, so great to have you so. So please tell us a little bit about yourself. What got you here? What brought you here? So, born and raised in the Salt Lake area, you know, and so you know, looking at why I'm investing in Salt Lake, it should make a lot of sense to people. You know, went to University of Utah, got a couple of degrees, you know, from there, went on a service mission for the LDS Church in Chile, south America, for two years during that, and my initial career objective I wanted to be a college professor. You know, looking back, I think I'd probably be miserable with that, that line of work. But I enjoyed teaching and I was good at math. You know I wasn't passionate about math, but I was good at it. And so, bachelor's degree in math, master's degree in math, and, you know, then I leave Utah to do a PhD program and three weeks into the program was September 11th and at that time I decided to put my studies on hold, always, I mean.
Speaker 4:At the time I had intended to go back and finish them, but I ended up spending 20 years on active duty and, you know, during that time started picking up. You know, single family rentals. You know, there were few and far between I mean three over roughly a 16, 17 year period. And then eventually, you know I liked that enough. I was making money. I saw the equity, you know, in those properties grow. I realized at one point that I had invested far less in those properties than I had in my 401k equivalent military they call it a TSP but I had put more money into my TSP and I had more equity in the properties. And that kind of you know started got me thinking about you know, how to, how to invest better you know and what to do. And it turns out I found out that I was passionate about real estate it's something that I was, you know, always going back to, always learning more about and so went on a quest to figure out how to do more you know and how to do it faster and how to eventually, you know, have have it be my full-time job, essentially, how to eventually replace my income, my military income, and be something that basically keeps me going financially. So, long story short, I got into a coaching program.
Speaker 4:Story short I got into a coaching program. Realized early on, you know, after stumbling around trying to buy apartments by myself, that it was a little bit more difficult than I had imagined Got into a coaching program, found a couple of partners, started the first company and then from there we purchased roughly 700 units in Carolinas and Georgia. Yep, yep, those all, except for one of those properties have come full cycle. We sold them, made good money. And Second partnership I mean this, this is kind of ad hoc. You know, we, we partner when things made sense. We didn't really create an entity, but I partnered with a lot of people. Just, you know, somebody called me up and said hey, brian, I need X or Y or Z to get this multifamily property across the finish line. Can you help?
Speaker 4:I was doing like a lot of partnerships, of opportunity for roughly the next year and then I decided that, you know, I really wanted to buy and own properties in my hometown and so, you know, 2023, I decided to form Streamline Capital and you know slightly different instead of partners. Fortunately, we did well enough on our exits that I had, you know, money burning a hole in my pocket. So, instead of partnership on Streamline Capital 36 million total purchase price across the board, and in Utah that's only 150 units. There's a lot of places where 35 million buys you a lot more hundreds or maybe a thousand units in some areas, but Hundreds or maybe a thousand units in some areas, but that's probably too much. So that takes us up to today. We recently closed. Let's see, three weeks ago, yesterday we closed on our most recent acquisition, full value add, and that one's ready, we're ready to start breaking ground on renovations. Congrats, yeah.
Speaker 3:That is incredible. I mean, the story so far is so exciting, and it's cool to hear all the different places you've been, and I think a lot of people honestly follow a similar trajectory, in the basis of they get into something, they end up in real estate one way or another, they realize it's powerful, and then they double or triple down on it. I love that. So one of my first questions is, though it sounds like from your whole journey you were in multis to some degree, whether it was small or large, and predominantly large. So what about multifamily brought you in? Why not go to a different asset class? Why not go with a different size?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I started with a single families. I had three and I was on a deployment and I had a lot of extra time on my hands. You know, they, this particular deployment, they cut out, cut off, you know, all exterior communication. We didn't have Wi-Fi, you know, and so you know I basically had a lot of time alone with a computer and I did a lot of spreadsheeting, you know, and it was basically I took, you know, the homes that I owned and I use them as a representative case. You know it takes this much down to buy a property. I didn't bake any creative financing into it because I didn't understand that at the time. But, you know, I essentially said how much money do I do? I need to live off of passive income? And, like I said, I looked at the properties that we had as our representative deals and I said, okay, how many of these properties am I going to need to be able to hit that number?
Speaker 4:And I think the number was between 60 and 80. I'm scratching my head thinking, wow, 60 to 80, that's a lot. I mean, that's a lot that I have to find 60 different properties, I have to fund 60 different properties and I have to manage 60 different properties. And I mean, my next step was try to figure out a way to start doing it. You know, and at the time I was thinking, okay, I could probably, off of my current salary, figure out how to, you know, save enough money for one down payment a year. And then, as things start building, you know, I can start snowballing and you know, maybe three years from now I could, I could save up two down payments per year. And I kind of built that in and I started realizing, okay, now how long is this going to take, with this snowball effect going in? And the answer was I was going to be really, really old until I was, you know, financially free. I'm just like crap, this isn't working either.
Speaker 4:And eventually I stumbled upon multifamily, you know, and that was just just fortuitous, it was just kind of a lucky thing. I had always assumed that apartments were too difficult for me to handle and for me to get into. I'm a fairly simple person, I guess. I mean my, my dad didn't have any investments to speak of. My, my mom never worked outside the home when I grew up, you know. So I figured that was for people who, you know, knew what they were doing.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, I finally read a book that kind of made apartments sound accessible and that's really that solved all the problems with a single family. You know it was basically the problem with single family is now I've got to buy 60 different units and I realized that you know, if I can syndicate, you know I can really accelerate that, because the biggest, the biggest thing that would hold me back was you know my own bank account. You know how many, how many properties can I buy per year putting the down payments, payments down. But once I start syndicating, you know I can own more faster by learning how to raise money, and that that really appealed to me. Honestly, the the raising capital part scared me, but the idea of syndication appealed to me and so I started diving in deeper into that and I started learning more about that, listening to podcasts and reading books and, like I said, eventually got into a coaching program that taught me how to syndicate, and from there the rest is history.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, dude, I love this. Sully Nuggets dropped. But something I want to dive into. Let's back it up for a second. You talked a little bit about some of the fears about capital raising. Then you talked about realizing very quickly hey, I'm going to be old before I'm able to financially retire if I keep going out on these single family homes. So you change paths. Now talk a little bit about some of the other trials and tribulations, some of the other struggles, and you can take this in whatever direction, from partnerships to doing it solo, to just growth, maybe capital raise. All of those avenues. I want to hear from you on that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, everything new is difficult in a certain way, right, and so that was. That was really what it was. I had three single family homes and there are some carryovers from single family to multifamily, right. I mean you buy a place, you put a tenant in, you collect rents, you pay your expenses and you know whatever's left over you keep, you know and that's. You know that that's kind of like the, the idea, the, the idea behind it is is similar, but everything was new. Lending was new, the whole contracting thing was new.
Speaker 4:I didn't even know how to put in a good offer at the time, and so the coaching program is was absolutely necessary for me. Like I said, I started looking at a couple of properties here and there realized I had no idea what I was doing. And when I started thinking about that, I was looking, I was 40 at the time, 40 something now I'm not going to but I was right around 40 years old at the time and I knew I didn't have a lot of time to waste. You know I wasn't in my twenties anymore and I was thinking. You know I was also itching to get out of the military, right. So I knew that I could retire within a couple of years. And so, you know, my, my goal was to try to accelerate that as fast as possible. And you know, one option was just, you know, keep reading books and figure it out, which I, which would probably take me a couple of years. And the other option was get coaching, you know, find somebody who knows how to do it and have them show me how to do it. And that was, that was my decision, and I think that that really alleviated most of the issues that I had up front. But I mean, there's still a lot of things that were.
Speaker 4:Everything was difficult, you know, so getting, I think, at first that the numbers were intimidating, you know, and so I mean, one of the homes that I bought was, you know, a $500,000 home, you know, and so I could conceptualize what it took to buy a half million dollar property. But, you know, I couldn't quite conceptualize millions at the time, you know. You know, and it was just like, okay, we're, we're, we're buying million dollar properties, and that that number, for some reason, was difficult to to just wrap my head around and say we're buying a $5 million property or an $8 million property, we're raising, we have to have $2 million to purchase this and things like that. So at first it was just getting used to the idea of buying larger things. I mean, that was more difficult than it sounds, but I think I think a lot of people. It probably resonates with a lot of people.
Speaker 4:And the next thing was, you know, I had never seen, I didn't know anybody. Well, I knew people that were millionaires, but at the time I couldn't point my finger to anybody and say I know they're worth at least a million dollars. You know there's probably a couple of people, but for the most part, you know, I didn't think I knew a lot of people that had money, and so the idea of raising one or two or three million dollars was was really difficult too. And so how to get past that, you know partners, you know for part of it. For the money raising thing, for the deal size, I mean I just had to get used to the idea, and I mean looking at more and more properties with you know, seven figure price tags started getting me used to a seven figure price tag, right.
Speaker 4:And then the the raising money thing. I knew that well, at the time I thought that I wouldn't be able to raise 2 million and so I started looking for partners that could help out with that, you know, and it was just, I was going to lots of different events, I was going to conferences, I was networking, I was very active in the coaching program that I was in trying to make a name for myself. But the way to get over that capital raise, or that we've got to find a million or $2 million, was I'm going to find a couple of partners and then if we're raising 2 million and there's four of us, that's 500,000 each. That's a lot more palatable than you know two million dollar raise to me. You know I could probably find 10 people to pitch in fifty thousand, as opposed to, you know, 40 people who all put in fifty thousand to reach a two million dollar mark. So I mean, everything was new but you know, a lot of it was just coaching and partners to overcome it.
Speaker 3:So good. There's so many things I want to dive into there and just kind of highlight One. I love that you talk about the coaching stuff. Nate and I met through our coaching programs. I had a mentor that showed me how to buy my first duplex. I had a mentor that showed me how to do professional management and construction, and then I had a mentor that taught me how to raise money and buy a million dollar property, just like you mentioned. Like you said, you can spend all your time researching and reading and that's just well and good, but you want to save time, hire someone that's done it and it's very rewarding. So I love that you brought that up.
Speaker 3:Another thing is about raising. It's so funny, I agree with you. I mean, in my experience, it's one thing, even, like you know, look at properties, you look at LoopNet, you're looking at some deals. It's a couple million bucks. You're like that's a lot of money, but you know I'll figure it out. And that's another thing. When you start getting loan amounts and closing statements and you're like that's a lot of commas, like this is kind of crazy and it's different. Like you said, it's very relatable.
Speaker 3:And one last thing that you said earlier that I love is you said when you started raising, you were a little scared and it was a little fearful. And I think that's such a good thing, because if somebody is not afraid to raise money, I'd be very apprehensive. It's just you should be kind of scared, it's you know you should be nervous. That means you care. So I love all that stuff. One of the things I want to dive into, though curious of your experience, because I hear this trajectory from many people as you went from the singles, then you went into the larger and you syndicated, but then you hit a point where you said, hey, I want to actually go back to my hometown and I want to start using those profits that I made and buy myself. So what was that transition like and how did that go from syndicating and having partners and all these different things to hey, I'm going to kind of just do my own thing and go, you know, completely in house.
Speaker 4:You know it started when I broke away from the first company that I, that I co-founded. You know there's four partners there and you know, three years into it, you know we weren't. We weren't growing. You know, and part of it, part of the reason we weren't growing was internal dynamics. And so one of my partners, kind of out of the blue, said, guys, I can't do this anymore, we're kind of broken. And I started realizing, gosh, he's right. And so we both left the company.
Speaker 4:So, like I said, there were times where I was just kind of doing these like partnerships of opportunities. I was raising money for a couple of deals, I was loan guarantor for a couple of deals and things like that, and I really wanted to get back into Salt Lake City. I really wanted that's something I'd wanted to do since the very beginning. I was at a conference and I was talking to somebody who has been an informal mentor to me over the years. I was talking with him. He's like so what are you doing now? I'm like I'd really like to start buying properties in Salt Lake, really like to start buying properties in Salt Lake, but I live in Idaho Falls. It's a three hour drive. I need to have the right partner before I think I can be able to do this. And he just looked at me without skipping a beat. He's like why do you need a partner? I'm like well, because I can't do everything. He's like why don't you just hire somebody? And my mind came up with a million reasons not to hire somebody. But over the next couple of weeks, you know, it's just like why don't I hire somebody, you know, and I started thinking like all the partnership issues we had and I mean it was, it was enough that we split up, you know, I, but all the partnership issues we had would be completely solved if I hired somebody. You know, but all the partnership issues we had would be completely solved if I hired somebody. You know. It's like okay, I am the boss. You know I don't have to have any fights with other partners.
Speaker 4:Obviously, employing people is a different kind of difficult. You know it's not. You know sunshines, unicorns and rainbows, but you know it's just a different, it's a different kind of difficult. And so it took me a couple of months to really come to grips with that and I'm like, and I started liking the idea and finally it was just like I'm going to hire somebody, you know. And so, so I did, you know, I hired, you know, hired a guy to do acquisitions. And so I did, you know, I hired, you know, hired a guy to do acquisitions and, um, you know, the first hire stayed with me for about a year and then, um, my second hire stayed with me for about seven months and, um, you know, I think I've hired five different people and I've got I've got two right now that have been with me for a while. Um, that, I think, are going to be kind of long term core members of the team. But, you know, looking at, yeah, just just looking at how that that's kind of how that came about was, you know, kind of telling somebody this is what I want to do, I just need to find the right person and then just hire somebody. Okay, yeah, I guess I can do that. So, um, first hire was march of 2023. Um, you know, within two months, we had a deal under contract and, you know, raised, raised five million for that one brought in a bunch of co-gps, um, partners if people don't know what that means, you know. So a bunch of people who are partner with us to help us run the property and raise money. And then, you know, mid middle of 2024, we brought about another two properties. You know, those together were roughly 18, 19 million dollars. And then, like I start, like I said early on, we just closed on another one three weeks ago. So that's what we've done since and you know, it's been through hiring instead of instead of trying to find partners. And I think both, both are valid. But you know, in my head, I was, you know, fixated on partnership, because when I started, that was my only option was to find a partner. You know, I didn't have, you know, the money available to be able to go out and hire somebody. And by early 2023, when, yeah, when I started Streamline Capital, we had a couple of exits, you know, and with these exits I had reinvested some of the money, but I still had still had a pretty good chunk left over. So that's, that was like seed money to start hiring people. And then, you know, from here we eat what we kill and it's, it's been fun.
Speaker 2:I love this so much, I keep saying it, and one of the things that I should probably preface by saying is Cole and I we do this strategically, where we love to bring on people that are a few steps ahead of where we are, so that way we can learn. So first I want to say thank you so much for giving all of your insight and all your guidance on these kinds of things, and my question is now one on mindset, two on KPIs what metrics and things were you tracking when you had the partnership and then? What shifted or what changed, or what metrics do you track now, as you're trying to grow internally and hire folks in? And then the second piece to that would be what role, then, do you play now that you're hiring folks underneath you? Do you just hand off the job that you don't want to do or do you just stick to the things that you're good at? What does that look like?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so. So part of the reason that I left the first company is that there weren't really KPIs that we were tracking, you know, and that that was something that you know we were trying to to get you know that we, we didn't have a clear picture. You know that we didn't have a clear picture, you know, and part of it was, you know, the person in charge of managing the assets wasn't really good at it, you know, and you were trying to get a clear picture of what's going on and it was, you know he didn't want us helping him but at the same time, he couldn't answer our questions, you know, and so there was a, you know that was a big part of the issue is, you know, we essentially had no control because of the partnership dynamics, you know. So that there weren't really KPIs that we were tracking, you know. Now, you know our KPIs are a lot more, you know, robust, we have a bunch of we follow the entrepreneur operating system. It's EOS. It comes out of, you know, this book right here.
Speaker 3:But you know, just in case anybody's not watching.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, traction by Gino Wickman, right, but essentially on a weekly basis. We're tracking. You know how many investor calls we've had. We're tracking. I mean, we're tracking everything as far as KPIs, you know, on a monthly basis on our properties. Vacancy, vacancy and delinquencies are the two things that we are, you know, most focused on, you know, but we're obviously looking at our total NOI and whatnot. But yeah, I mean, as far as individual KPIs, everybody has their own jobs, right, everybody has their own duties and assignments, assignments and we've kind of sat back and said, hey, if we want to reach our goals, you know what does each individual week need to look like for us to get there? And so we do have weekly KPIs. We have quarterly goals that everybody has to hit and the quarterly goals end up with having milestones around them. So, yeah, internally we have a lot of different KPIs, but it's based on what are our goals for the quarter and what are our long-term goals. But yeah, we are tracking things like how much money was soft committed last week, how many investor calls did we have? How many new leads came in through our funnel did we have how many new leads came in through our funnel? So, a lot of our internal KPIs are around the capital raise.
Speaker 4:When we're in deal finding mode which we're not it's how many brokers have we contacted per week? And there's a minimum amount, a minimum threshold that we expect every week, you know. So we're in when we're in deal finding mode. You know five brokers is the right answer. All right, we need to have at least five broker conversations every single week. You know, looking for new deals, you know, and such so. You know, so that's just that's kind of how we do things. It's just kind of like let's, if we want this to work long term, what does each and every week need to look like? And so that's, that's how we set up those KPIs.
Speaker 4:And then property level you know we try to focus on what we can control. I can't control market rents. I can't control concessions. I can. I can control occupancy, you know by. You know how hard we work to put people in. Setting rents helps that as well. Advertising helps that as well. I can control delinquencies to a certain extent.
Speaker 4:There's some that are unavoidable, but we focus on the metrics that we can control and that usually what I've found is is the times that we've gotten in trouble with properties is where our occupancy has gone down and our income has gone down and, realistically, most problems you have with multifamily can be solved with money right, and if your flow of money, you know it's like the hose, you know you crimp a hose and you know if that water flow is interrupted, you know you don't have money to solve your problems. And so, yeah, our focus is typically, you know, make sure to keep occupancy above 95%. You know, make sure we're doing everything we can to maximize collections and that's really what we're focused on. Obviously, the NOI is what's important. So we are also looking at expenses and try to minimize expenses and not waste money on things we don't need. But those are typical KPIs that we're looking at.
Speaker 3:That's awesome and I think they're great because they're very ground level. You're not giving some crazy metric where someone's like I've never heard of that. Let me start tracking that. It's vacancy, occupancy, et cetera, and I think that's awesome. Someone told me way back when I first started that vacancy is the only killer in real estate. It's really the only thing that'll put you hardcore very quickly underwater, and it's so true. If you don't have high occupancy, you're in a bad spot. It's just kind of how it goes. You cannot sustain high vacancy for very long. It's just time game, right? So one last question for you before we transition to a different segment, and that is, since you have people on staff and since you're working under the EOS system, what do you do if they don't hit their rocks or they don't hit their metrics Like, how do you reinforce it? How do you lead them in your specific real estate industry? Because I always find that's a challenge in our world.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, it's once again what can we control, what can't we control, right? Um, you know. So, we, we missed one of our rocks for this quarter it was. I mean, we just finished the quarter yesterday and we missed one of the rocks and it was the amount of money that we wanted to raise. Okay, and we, we actually were, um, a lot short of the amount, right, and so do I, do I fire the person because he didn't hit his rock and he didn't raise a certain amount of millions of dollars?
Speaker 4:No, we, we look at it and I mean, essentially, we're talking about it every week. Essentially, it's what factors were we controlling? Did we control the factors that we needed to control? You know, we may have had an overly ambitious goal based off of our capabilities. So a couple of things that we look at is exactly that it's like was that goal really out of reach? Was that something that was just an impossibility from the beginning? And in that case, you know, impossible, no, very difficult, yes, but we go back to the weeklies. You know, hey, were you hitting all your weekly numbers, you know? Did you make 100 investor calls last week, you know? Did you make 100 investor calls, you know, and so a lot of it is, you know, making sure that they're doing everything they can, they can.
Speaker 4:And in this case I mean, maybe that was a bad, maybe that was a bad goal because, you know, is it 100% within, you know, his power to raise a certain amount of dollar amounts. Well, the investors have a vote. You know and I'm just thinking out loud right here, I haven't really thought this one out yet, but yeah, with the tools that he had with you know where he started, that might've been just kind of a Herculean task. So I mean, with the tools that he had with you know where he started, that might have been just kind of a Herculean task. So I mean, really, the enforcement comes on a weekly basis on our weekly calls where we go over our numbers and it's like did you hit your numbers, yes or no, you know, and everybody's got to say yes, I hit my number, yes, I hit my number, I hit my number. And essentially, you know, there it's not a zero defect mentality.
Speaker 4:I mean, looking in like the EOS in traction book, I think. I think they use the number 90%. You know people should be hitting your, their, their weekly targets 90% of the time. You're going to have bad weeks, you're going to have other things come up, you're going to have other priorities. But yeah, really the accountability comes in on a weekly basis where we have a company to-do list, there's dates assigned with the to-do list, there's the weekly scorecard that we're going over, and it's just a weekly basis. And if people are doing what they're supposed to be doing every week, you know the big goals should eventually fall into place. But yeah, that's really how we do the accountability.
Speaker 4:And you know, I did end up firing somebody and looking over his scorecard, there there wasn't a whole lot of, you know, green on the scorecard. It was, you know. And I mean we used a program where green was yes, red was no. I probably didn't have to explain that. But uh, you know he had a lot more red. He was at like 11%, you know, getting his weekly numbers in. But you know it's just. You know we look at it individually every week and then once a quarter we sit down and we talk about performance and there's a lot more to it. I mean people have to be hustling they. We want them to hit their numbers. But you know, there's a little bit more to it than just that love it, I love this, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Okay, so many things I want to dive into, but I think it's time that we move into our next segment cole. What do? What do you think?
Speaker 3:I think he's ready. I think we do it.
Speaker 2:Brian, we got a surprise for you.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right. So here's how it goes. We're going to ask you the same six questions. We ask every guest, and we're going to do our best not to interject, and so you can answer succinctly. You can answer at length, whatever you want to do, but whatever you want to do. But here we go. What separates the top performing entrepreneurs?
Speaker 4:or investors, from the rest of the crowd. They just take action. I think everybody feels fear, but you have to kind of push past the fear and take action, and they're not afraid of failing is really what it is.
Speaker 2:What's a daily habit that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 4:You know this. This is a spot where I'm not awesome at. You know, the daily routines have never really synced with me. But you know, I've got my, I've got the, the weekly scorecard that I have to make sure that I do, and I've got my weekly to-do list from that EOS process and I don't want to show up at any of the meetings saying, whoops, I didn't do that. So I mean, really, it's just, I get up, I'm focused. I have a lot of things that are kind of pre-baked into my calendar, like this is what I'm doing today, this is what I'm doing. So yeah, I don't think there's a specific one daily habit, but you know it's the overall focus. I know what my, my long term focus is and I know where I want to get to, and so you know every day, it's just OK, I need to take a couple of steps in that direction, or as many steps in that direction as I can take in a given day.
Speaker 3:Awesome. What is a piece of advice that you'd give to yourself if you were starting again?
Speaker 4:Yeah, don't be afraid to fail is really what it was, because at first that's really what it was. I think I was people talk about analysis, paralysis. I don't think it's an analysis issue, I think it's a. It's a fear issue more than anything else. But of course I mean everybody's going to say this, start earlier. But the reason I didn't start earlier is I was afraid to fail number one and number two I didn't think that I'd be able to do it which are very related.
Speaker 2:So good. Everybody listening knows that I do this. This is just amazing when it's a mic drop moment. Pause, rewind, play this whole thing all over again. So many nuggets have just been dropped. But moving forward. What is your favorite business book? It can be real estate related or not. You choose?
Speaker 4:Probably the traction. Actually. I mean it's it's a guidebook for how to run a company and, um, I mean, little fun fact, um, before that partnership that I was talking about split, you know that the first partner that left introduced us, introduced me in the entire partnership to the book and said, guys, this is what we need. You know, I read the book and I was like, yeah, this is what we need. And the uh, I read the book and I was like, yeah, this is what we need. And the the other two partners were like, eh, you know, and that was kind of that was kind of it.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, traction I mean just going back to the book is it shows you how to run a company and the type of company it doesn't matter, you know it. It shows you how to run a company and how to you know, know how to set your goals, how to run meetings, how to do everything you need to do so, um, I mean, that's the one that's been the most effective for me. Um, because that's that is how we run our company right now what is your favorite part of owning business?
Speaker 4:Ooh, um, freedom to do what I want. I mean, um, even though I spent 20 years in the military, I never really liked being told what to do. Um, so, yeah, it's, it is nice. I mean, we've had like a couple of years of, you know, slim pickings in real estate, but, um, you know, it's like the eat what you kill mentality the better that I do, the more um I I'm very much compensated by how well we do, and that's that's not true in any other job. Um, in the, in the military, it didn't matter how well I did or how poorly I did. You know, it didn't affect my paycheck. But yeah, I've got the freedom to do what I want, to pursue what I want, and I get compensated according to how well I do.
Speaker 2:I love it. Sixth and final question in this segment what is something new that you've implemented in your business that's helped drive your success?
Speaker 4:EOS. You know, again I think I keep on coming back to that one I mean, that's probably the most important thing and once again, leaving a company where we didn't have real KPIs and we didn't have, you know, real structure. When I started a new company, it was just like, okay, I'm not going to have, I'm not going to make the same mistake again. And we actually hired an EOS implementer and paid a lot of money for them to come show us how to start and run a company on EOS. And so, yeah, I think that's probably the most important thing.
Speaker 4:Right, there is just, you know, and is EOS? I don't know, is it the best way to run a business? I know there's lots of other ways to do it, but it was in a box or in a book. It's just we have a guidebook and it's like, okay, this is the one we picked. I think any other way of running a company, there's several different systems like EOS. Other way of running a company, there's several different systems like eos, but I'm sure any one of them would have worked, but, you know, eos was the one that I was familiar with and it's the one we uh, we adopted awesome, so good.
Speaker 3:It was really cool hearing your whole story and I just want to recap some of my favorite things, like kind of talking about your journey. I liked hearing how you started in math. You started kind of academia, you went through this and then this major world shift happened. You said, hey, let's go to military route, let's change. And so you went down that road. But you bought some real estate and you kind of started to find a passion there and you said, okay, how do we do this more? And so you eventually got into coaching.
Speaker 3:You said let's expedite this, started your first company, bought 700 units with this crew, which is amazing Partner with people, learn the goods of partnering, learn some bads of partnering. And then you said, hey, let's take all this stuff, let's take some proceeds and let's take this knowledge, let's go solo, bring it in house. And you've now bought, over the last just couple of years, over 35 million and 150 units plus, which is awesome. So, with all that being said, I have two final questions for you. One, do you have any final advice for anybody listening? And two, where can people find you? Where can people get in touch?
Speaker 4:Yeah, advice you know figure out what you want and then chase it. You know, nobody's ever going to hand it to you right? So, and that applies to everything you know, figure out what you want and then go chase it. Best place to get in touch with me, I would say, is probably LinkedIn. I do a fair amount of posting on LinkedIn. I usually you respond to. You know, I respond to most messages. I don't respond to every message.
Speaker 4:If it's a clear solicitation, I was going to say I respond to everything on LinkedIn, but no, I don't. But yeah, if you send me an email or a message on LinkedIn and you're not, you know, cold soliciting something, I'm going to respond to you. So if you want to hear more of what I have to say, you know, follow me on LinkedIn or check out my podcast, diary of an Apartment Investor, and an episode with Cole Farrell. We released that one two weeks ago, I think, so hot off the press. You can hear his side of the story on my podcast as well. So LinkedIn, brian Briscoe, or Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast.
Speaker 3:Real quick, nate. Before you jump in, I just want to say I had a great time on Brian's podcast and I promised I'd mention this earlier. It was really enjoyable and a lot of his guests on there are really really awesome to listen to as well. So we're excited that you guys are here listening, but I want to recommend that you also go jump to Brian's, give it a listen and, if you feel up to it, check my episode out on there. We had a good time together.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I love it, and you know what fellas. I'm going to take it one step further. This is what we're going to do. For everybody that's listening In the description below, we will link all of it a direct link to the interview with Cole. This will take you directly to the podcast from Brian. Everybody's going to win. This is going to be amazing, brian. Thank you so much for being here today on Forged in Fire. It's been an honor, it's been a pleasure. It's been a privilege. Our house is your house. You are welcome back at any time. We would love to be able to talk to you after you make your next 35 mil AUM. It's going to be awesome to be able to hear the story. So if you are driving, get home safely, take care everybody. We'll see you on the next episode of Forged in Fire.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Forged in Fire. If you enjoyed today's raw, unfiltered stories, don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us bring more real-world insights to entrepreneurs like you. Be sure to join us next time for even more lessons, struggles and breakthroughs on the road to success. Keep forging ahead.