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 33: The Construction Veteran Who Turned His Skills into a Thriving Investment Firm
Mark Schinski, CEO of Capital Companion, shares his journey from psychology and engineering studies to building a successful real estate investment firm with his business partner Joe. His background in construction combined with strategic partnerships has enabled him to tackle challenging properties that other investors avoid, turning the "worst houses" into profitable investments.
• Background in psychology, engineering, and 20 years in construction provides unique perspective on real estate investing
• Started as project manager for luxury custom home builder before launching his own general contracting company
• Met business partner Joe through a mentor who recognized their complementary skills would make a perfect team
• Uses his construction expertise to take on properties in terrible condition that most investors would avoid
• Emphasizes clear communication with contractors through printed materials and regular site visits
• Moving from individual fix-and-flips to larger multifamily projects to maximize efficiency
• Values his business partnership as a "marriage" where each partner brings different strengths
• Recommends joining industry groups and reinvesting profits into education and networking
• Uses CompanyCam app to monitor construction projects remotely and share progress with investors
• Credits "YouTube University" and Naval Ravikant's book for much of his business knowledge
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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'm your co-host, Nate Farmreiden. Allow me to introduce my counterpart, Cole. How we doing, brother.
Speaker 3:Nate, what's going on, man? How are we doing on this fine Tuesday? What's today, Tuesday?
Speaker 2:I don't even know what day it is. They all kind of like bleed together. It's like Monday hits and then somebody somewhere says you got like a two-day weekend. But it feels like that's never a thing for me, like I'm always in the office but it's fine. Enough about me.
Speaker 3:How are you man? Dude, I love it. I'm good. I got no complaints. Every day is a learning experience.
Speaker 3:We had one of our PMs today that we recently let go of more transferring, not delivering keys, and we're like, can you please give us the keys? And they miraculously don't have the keys. So I don't know how they've been managing a property that they don't have keys on. But I just never fails to amaze me the things that you go through these days. But you know, look, just another small hurdle, nothing big. So you know. Anyways, enough of me complaining. I'm excited for this interview. It's going to be great. But, as always, guys, I have one single favor that I would really appreciate if anybody listening to this could do for us, and that is leave us a review. That is the one thing that helps us keep growing. It's the one thing that helps us bring on more guests that you want to hear from. So help us, help you and leave a review wherever you want. That would be great. So, with that said, sit back, relax, enjoy the show. Dude, it's going to be amazing today.
Speaker 2:So, for those of you who may remember, we had an amazing interview last week from Joe, who is one of the partners and managing directors for Capital Companion, and now this week we're actually bringing on Mark, who is the CEO of the exact same company. It's two of them. They do a wheel that they do it all, as you guys remember from the last episode. If you haven't listened to the last episode, pause this, go back, listen to that episode, because it's going to all make sense now, as we're going to put a nice bow on this whole thing. They take care of so much stuff within the real estate industry, mark, come on stage, brother, we'd love to have you man.
Speaker 4:How are we doing guys?
Speaker 2:Doing good. How are you doing, man?
Speaker 4:Living the dream day by day.
Speaker 2:That's it, so please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 4:What got you here? What brought you here? So my background is in psychology, engineering and construction. So a little bit of an odd path, but I've been in construction for 20 years. I got out of school, went to a custom home builder project manager for about five years and then I started my own general contracting company. I wanted to be able to get into real estate investing and control some of the general contracting side of it, as I saw a lot of people were having trouble with the contractor side, labor side. So we built that out for five years. And then I met Joe and we've been doing Capital Companion for the last two years. So a whole load of investment.
Speaker 3:That's incredible. So, wayne, I got to dial in and dial back, I should say, to some of the beginning stuff. So that is an odd combo psych, engineering and construction. How did you focus on three very different things?
Speaker 4:How did you focus on three very different things? I started in psychology. I always had a curiosity for it, Right, you kind of grow up in chaos and want to understand the people around you, how they act, why they act. So I started there, did about two years of school and realized that the technical side of it wasn't really for me. I really just want to understand, you know, the base knowledge of how to interact with people and understand them. So I transitioned to engineering and I've been a builder you know building stuff forever with my dad and I just thought construction would be a good place to land. So I went into the engineering program and then the builder and investor sense.
Speaker 3:Okay, so follow up question. Nate, I know you got a question, but I got to follow that up, so that makes perfect sense. So you got into the custom home building first, is that right? Correct so what was it about that that drew you in? And I'm assuming I'm asking because you see this construction stuff. You said like you kind of grew up around it and so you went towards custom homes. Was there a reason you went there versus any other piece of construction or real estate or just did it.
Speaker 4:I've always been fascinated with money, right. So I had a bunch of interviews with builders. I worked at a commercial firm for a little bit and building 15 million dollars houses seemed like a good business to get into. Right, I wanted to understand the clients with my psychology background get into. I wanted to understand the clients with my psychology background just following the money big houses, bigger deals, understanding how to grow a business. So it was a smaller company but I got kind of everything I wanted out of it. But it's always the curiosity about money and how people spend it, who's making it, what makes them special. So that's yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love it. We got to bang it gotta bang. So many questions here I want to dive into, but um, talk to me just a tad bit about um. This is usually the point when I ask about trials and tribulations, some of the struggles in the growing phase. But before we get into the actual expansion, the growing phase, talk about. Give me, like um, a snapshot of what it looked like right after graduation. And then decided that you wanted to do like home building on $15 million houses, because I remember my undergraduate days, by the time I finished, I was making less than $30,000 a year. Buying a home was nothing, nowhere near in my future, let alone trying to figure out how to build one from the ground up. So talk to me a little bit about that. And then, when you decided that it was a good idea, to say, okay, now I've seen what it looks like to be able to build these things, now it's time to start adding them to my portfolio.
Speaker 4:That's such a great question. So when I left school and I left school a semester early, which you know as a true entrepreneur, the ROI I'm like what am I going to do? It's been another six months, nine months trying to get this thing done Another 15 grand. Let me go interview with some people and see if I can land a job. So I landed with a great builder and you know, similar to your point, I was making 35 grand, 40 grand, right. So they took a chance on me. I was taking a chance on them, but what I had was Sally Mae loans in the background, and you learn pretty quickly what a 12% loan looks like.
Speaker 4:So I started digging into books and trying to dig my way out of like, okay, I'm making X amount, I owe Sally Mae more than that. So how do I get out of this mess that I was in? So how do I get out of this mess that I was in? And that kind of fueled me as an entrepreneur to be like OK, what's the game here? I got to learn the rules to the game so I can go out there and play. What are the chess pieces and how do I get myself out of the situation I'm in and I thought that was a perfect connection to be able to go spend time with wealthy people, to be able to go spend time with wealthy people. So it all worked out in the end. But that was a true kick in the ass to say you got some loans that you gotta pay off. If you wanna be where these people are in 10, 15, 20 years, you gotta start reading some books and start learning pretty quick.
Speaker 3:It's awesome. A couple of things I really like about that is one you went through the steps and you you went towards a direction that you kind of had inherent value in and liked. So I, you know that makes sense, but I like that. You recognize like, okay, I want to get out of this. But you didn't stop there. Because that's the thing is, most people stop there. They go, wow, this sucks, Let me get a job. And then that's it done. And you're like, no, no, let's dig ourselves out of this, and not only that, then let's put myself in a better position so I can be like them. And then you did it, which is awesome.
Speaker 3:So fast forward back to you, go through all these different pieces and steps. You learn a lot of this stuff how to run a business, all about these people, et cetera and at some point you start going into the investment side and you start the investment firm. So what does that look like? Meaning like, talk to us about that transition. How did you do that? Was it gradual? Was it sudden, Kind of? How did that go?
Speaker 4:So it was gradual. With the general contracting business, we had the same high-end clients. We worked, you know, day and night for years to build relationships and it's all a relationship business, as you guys know. So we started getting interest. As I was telling you know, some clients, I'm like, hey, I'm going to buy some houses and flip them.
Speaker 4:And one of my mentors, investors, one of my favorite people in the world, he stopped me one day. He's like what are you up to? And I just kind of mentioned it and he said, all right, I'm in. And I wasn't pitching him at all. It just totally changed my perspective. Yeah, right. And as an entrepreneur, it's the roller coaster of like, oh shit, now I got something else to figure out, like massive win, life-changing conversation. They're like, oh, now I gotta perform. So I always knew I wanted to get there. But that conversation changed my entire life. Right, not not pitching at all, just like, yeah, that's what I'm interested in, I'm in. So that changed everything for me. And then that same mentor actually hooked Joe and I up a few years later. So he knew that I was great at the operations side and that Joe was the tail wagger, could go out and raise capital and find all the deals possible. So that was a unbelievable moment in my life and it changed everything for me.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, okay, back it up, because we're not going to speed past that, like you didn't just say it. Number one, first and foremost capital raising, something we talk about consistently on this show, and how fucking hard it is and to be. You must be an amazing standup kind of guy to be able to just normally in conversation, talk about what it is that you've got going on. You know what YOLO? It's go time. I'm in, here's the money, let's just go. So that's number one.
Speaker 2:Number two talk to me a little bit more. Get into some of the nitty gritty onto what that looked like. What did it mean when he was like all right, I guess it is go time now At that point, were you acquiring fix and flips to be able to just say, okay, these are the ROIs on this, this is what we've been seeing, not pitching it at all? And he's like okay, your next one, I want to jump into that deal. Or was it more like, hey, I kind of have an idea of something that I'm trying to build. Later on down the line maybe this will become a company, I'm not sure. So fill me in a little bit more on that aspect of it and then we'll dive in a little bit more into some other areas.
Speaker 4:So I had not done a single deal. I had been looking for a year, a year and a half. It was COVID. So you know, the world kind of shut down and it was just an idea. You know, I had the background and we built a really good relationship with these people and I had actually at that time joined a fund group. You know I wanted to build a real estate fund and I joined and I took every dollar of profit that we had made for two years and dumped it into this thing, went through the program, learned how to raise capital. So it was kind of adjacent to what the mentor does for a living.
Speaker 4:So he understood what I was kind of getting at and we had done so much work and showed up for them, you know, in the middle of the night to help them out all kinds of stuff. So he was like and I want to invest in you, right? And I think that's a huge point in building relationships, where they know you're not going to quit, right? He see me We've got a beautiful basement for them. And he see me go through a bunch of struggles and trying to figure stuff out and he's like dude, you won't quit Like I got to be on your team so that that in the background really set it off. But he saw more in me than I did at that point. Right, I had aspirations, I had some things that I wanted to do, but you need mentors, you need people around you that see you in a different light than you see yourself sometimes. So that was a huge jumping off point for everything.
Speaker 3:Such a powerful point, just like you said, having a mentor that recognizes your potential. Again, like you said, a lot of times, especially when you're getting started and you're venturing into new things, they can give you that push and that can mean the world and change everything. So it's awesome that you had that and awesome that they also push you to do that. So tell me more about then go through that. That all makes sense. And then what about the first deal? So what did that look like? How did you source it? How did you fund it? Was it just you? Did you partner at this point? What did that look like?
Speaker 4:So the first deal was with Joe. So our mentor you know that was between us hooked us up. We had looked at a ton of deals together, you know, starting our we call it the marriage right and figuring out if we wanted to get married or not. And we looked at a ton of deals, turned a lot of stuff down which was hard at the time but in retrospect, you know, I'm happy that we did. But we found a few on the MLS. You know it was local to us, about 30 minutes away to you know, side by side units, and it was a lot of growing pains. We, I think, broke, even, maybe even lost some money, which is totally fine because we got a lot of systems and processes built along the way. But that was pretty organic. Yeah, we just found out on the MLS, we attacked it and kind of went after it and went on to the next one.
Speaker 2:So good, so many things. Let me rewind first, just in case somebody did not catch this Again. Pause this rewind, play this thing all the way back, because, mark, you had said something and Cole echoed it, and I want to make sure that we're driving this home. Capital raising is no joke. This shit is fucking hard as hell, but the deal is secondary, right, I'm trying to hone in on this, I'm trying to harp in on this. I want to make sure that I'm driving this home for all of our listeners. The deal is secondary. When somebody is interested in trying to invest inside of the deal the numbers and all that stuff, they should align. It all should make sense that way, true, but it's who they know, they like, they trust. It's establishing that relationship. It's establishing making sure that you've got the credibility. It's making sure that you've got the support system and the support team around you and making sure that you're fucking going to show up every day. Right, that's how your mentor was able to find that trust that was inside of you. I'm sorry to let me get off my soapbox, but I want to make sure that we're driving that home for all of the listeners that are thinking that, hey, tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up, I'm going to raise $2 million, because that's what I'm going to set my mind to do and it's just going to happen. It doesn't fucking happen like that. So, again, enough about that. Moving forward Now talking about now that we've got this deal and may have broken, even may have lost a few dollars, doesn't matter the relationship from the dating phase to now, what you like to refer to as the marriage, everything's solidified.
Speaker 2:So what does it look like now, now that we got the first deal underneath our belt? So what would the next couple of deals look like? How do you source them? How do you fund them? What does that look like? Number one, and then number two, thinking about the whole picture, about doing the renovations and the rehabs, did you have a team at this point, when you came in and you did that first deal? Was it just you boots on the ground, what we like to joke around and call like a five to nine five o'clock in the morning, nine o'clock at night we heard this from another podcast episode that we had done or did you have a team underneath you that you could just go ahead and say all right, you guys handle this, I'm going to sit back in my office and you guys just come back and report to me some of these KPIs.
Speaker 4:Yeah, great questions and I think to hammer home the partnership aspect of that is we went out and met with realtors, right, and we're talking to wholesalers, we're talking to anybody who's seeing deals in our neighborhood and trying to provide value to them. So, having the construction background, hey, call me with any questions that you have on your deals. If your clients have any questions, happy to help you. Guys, I'll provide as much value as possible and in turn we'll build this partnership out where it's. You know both sides are benefiting. So we found a couple of deals to realtors. Joe did a really good job on a few deals door knocking. We bought a property two houses down the worst house on the street looked it up. Who owns it? It was the lady next door. He knocked on the door and that's one of our best projects. So we source them through a lot of partnerships um and also, you know, just boots on the ground.
Speaker 4:And as far as general contracting, building out a team goes, we used a um a team outside of mine. So my, my team is more geared towards the um custom, you know, $500,000 basement type deal. So we needed somebody to go in and do a flip and not overbuild. So we thought, if we're going to do a bunch of deals, we got to go find some general contractors.
Speaker 4:It was very difficult to get scope across and to nail down some of the dollars and cents and to get to a contract, and that was a very tough process. As an entrepreneur, I want to have control over everything and when my guys are there, I know everything's being done to a T. But to trust somebody else to go out and bring the vision to life was a tough process and we don't necessarily work with that person anymore. But we learned a lot and we brought some guys into our team that could do this level of finish. So we do have a team that we work with now in-house, and then we have other general contractors that we're working with on some projects as well.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad you brought that up because there's so much I want to dive into there. So you know, with anybody that's in real estate you're working with contractors, whether it's subs directly, whether it's a GC that handles it. You know there's the same kind of things the scope of works, the timeline, the money Right, and most people you talk to it's a disaster and they don't know what they're doing. They're trying to figure it out. The contractor tells them one thing it doesn't get done, it costs more, et cetera. We've all been there. So what are things that you found that change that that work? Because, coming from somebody with your field, that you know how it should work, you know how to do it correctly. What would you advise people that are getting started? Don't do this, do this instead, or et cetera.
Speaker 4:I think if you have a vision printing stuff out, bringing it to the site, putting it on the walls, if you want to design the kitchen yourself or help those guys you know configure the house to your vision, if you're not able to get that across through conversation, then they're just going to assume and they're going to do what they've done before and as they should. So what I do is I print out as much stuff as possible and now that we have a couple of jobs under our belt, say, hey, this is what went right, this is what went wrong, but let's follow this same spec. And you lean on them too to say what materials have you used and do you have a plumber, do you have an electrician? All that. It should be a partnership in the end. But they need to understand your vision for each property to a T, so it doesn't get overbuilt, so things don't get missed. And you walk in at the end and you got a whole different product than what the market actually wanted and what you had a vision for.
Speaker 4:So, implementing, printing a lot of stuff out, making it very, very simple for them to know what I want where, answering questions ahead of time, just trying to think of what questions they might have.
Speaker 4:I understand, you know, when you're just getting started, that's hard to do, but trying to anticipate the next step and making sure that you're stopping on site and you're working with these guys, you get to see what's going on and that you're in the mix, to be able to learn along with them, because they know that it might be your first time, your second time, but they've been doing this forever most likely these general contractors. But they don't necessarily understand the difference between building somebody's dream home or building something that you need to flip for a certain margin. So keeping them in the loop with hey, these countertops are great, but this market doesn't call for it. So they get to learn along with you and hope you can build a partnership, but giving as much of your vision to them and you know, like I said, print it out, show them, so you're not just telling them. I think it helps a lot.
Speaker 2:So what I'm hearing is communication is key, just making sure that it's open dialogue walking through, you said you went as far as to make sure that you're either bringing pictures or some kind of material on site to say, hey, this is what the finishes look like, this is what it is the vision that we're trying to get in full totality. This is what we're working towards, and then just frequent check-in with communication, correct?
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Communication is everything.
Speaker 2:Love it, love it, love it. So my next question, then is when we're speaking with Joe, we talked a little bit about student housing was like one of the next avenues that you guys went down. So, in terms of the fix and flips, the student housing, is it always like value add that you guys are doing? And then also, let's move forward a little bit more in terms of where do you see it going in the next one to three years from your perspective?
Speaker 4:So the student housing was a one-off. Joe had been to Geneva, new York, before he loved it. There's a great university right there. The value was in. Somebody had to get rid of it, right? So most of the time we do have a value add proponent. But sometimes people you know they need to cash out and go to another investment, or you know divorce is all kinds of shit, right, and you can't sit there and anticipate it or like, oh, why is this on the market? Cause people just got to get rid of deals. So we found that one and that was. We didn't really have to add much value to it. So that was great, um. But everything else that we look at there's a value add proponent. Um, and that could be.
Speaker 4:You know, we do full flips that are more on the custom side and we do flips that are more on the rental side. But what we kind of aim for, what we tell our guys in the field all the time, is like this is going to be somebody's dream house, right. They're moving up from something that they didn't have before and they're going to be thrilled with this product. You might not live there, right? You might not like the paint color, floor color, don't worry about any of that stuff, but just dialing in kind of you know what the market actually expects.
Speaker 4:And, going one to three years, we want to be in more multifamily type deals, bigger deals. So now that we have you know, everybody starts and there's no capital, there's no deal flow. So you go out there and you market yourself and you talk to as many people as possible, you're hitting the streets and then now we have great potential partnerships with tons of deal flow. We have great capital partners. So we're trying to do bigger deals. Instead of doing 10 flips a year, let's do four bigger deals and just concentrate on that, because you can't work any harder than you're already working. There's only so many hours in the day. So you try to get as you grow and as you learn and there's a little bit of safety in that. You try to get bigger deals that you can take a bite out of. But that's where we're headed in the next one to three years is raising a lot more capital and doing bigger, better deals.
Speaker 2:Cole, you mind if I jump in with another question, so I wanted to ask I should ask this earlier when you got started up till now, what does it look like in terms of like a buy box for you, especially with you having the construction background? Is there a certain like I don't know buy box is probably the best term for it that you're like, hey, yeah, this will be a home run for us. And then where and how do you isolate that from another deal? Because I know you mentioned you had relationships with different realtors that you were kind of we scratch your back, you scratch ours type of situation, but you guys are also sourcing deals yourselves. So what is like a home run for you guys and what's too much to take on?
Speaker 4:Honestly, the worst condition, the better for us. So within our team we have, you know, 200 years worth of construction experience. One my brother actually worked for Servpro, so he understands how to do mold, smoke mediation, right, all that stuff. So what most people are walking into and saying like, uh, it's way too much for us, like, this is perfect. So we just picked up a deal six months ago. We walked in and you know, it smelled like cat pee and there was some smoke stuff. And most people are like this is above me, but we're like perfect, took us two days to get rid of everything and we were off to the races.
Speaker 4:Um, so I don't think there's anything that we can't particularly take on at this point, because we do have the construction backgrounds and and the guys in house to take it on. Um, but it comes to the point where, uh, we have a deal where it's a skinny lot. We had to go to zoning to make sure we get all the approvals just to put a little addition off the back. So I think you get to the point in the game where it's not just tearing down walls and doing some framing and throwing in some kitchens, it's. Can you develop this into something that somebody is going to want? Can you develop this into something that somebody is going to want and are you willing to take the six, nine, 12 months and thousands of dollars and hours worth of effort to be able to get that through the door?
Speaker 4:So a lot of people see those deals and, like I don't know anything about this, I can't figure it out. But when you have a team around you and you have educated realtors, we have attorneys, we have everything that we need to be able to lean on these people to say, hey, this is a good deal for us collectively. Right, we're all going to make money here at some point. So that, to me, is where you kind of bridge the gap of yeah, there's hands-on stuff, we can knock stuff down, we can paint it, we can build it again. But if you want to develop something or it's in a tough position where it stands, then that's the next layer and it's just a learning opportunity every time, right, we get our asses kicked a lot, but those turn out to be the best deals and then you know how to do it the next time.
Speaker 3:That's awesome and I love that. You mentioned about the team, and that's really what it comes down to is, the more you grow, I think when you start you have this thought of like, what if I run into a problem I can't solve? Or what am I going to do? Blah, blah, blah. And that's just an inherent thing I feel like most people probably have, just based on, I guess, how we grew up or school or whatever it may be. But anyways, as you get into the entrepreneurial world, you realize it's never a problem you can't solve. It's just what does it take to solve that problem? There's always a solution. Is it time, is it money? Is it something else? But the solution is usually right in front of your face one way or another. It's just what does it cost you? And it costs something, unfortunately, but I love that you brought that up.
Speaker 3:One of the other things I want to dive into is we have the pleasure, obviously, to speak with both of you. So how does your partnership work? Meaning like you guys are running something successfully and a lot of people people, unfortunately get into partnerships that don't work that way. So what are things that work for you guys? Is it roles, is it responsibilities. Just like, talk to me about your partnership and what does and doesn't work. Maybe.
Speaker 4:It's a great question because we well, I can speak for myself. I struggled with a partnership for a long time and what I was doing wrong was I wanted somebody like me. Right, like type A this is what I'm good at Construction, building, a back end of a business, systems, processes. Like. I need somebody like minded. I met Joe. I'm like this guy is the total opposite. Right, we go out to dinner and he's up at the bar and he's wagging his tail and he's talking to everybody. I'm like, oh shit, all right, that's what I need. Right, because I like what I do and I love the chessboard of building, you know, building a business. And here's this system and here's this process. We need to add this piece. And he's like, fuck that, I don't want to think about that at all. Let me go over here and meet people and network. And he's amazing at it.
Speaker 4:So once I saw him, we had one specific meeting and I walked out of there. We were still kind of dating each other. I'm like, dude, we're still kind of dating each other. I'm like, dude, it's over. Like I don't need to hear anymore what I just saw you do. Like I know you're going to provide so much value to this business in the long term. Like I, will hunker down and build this thing in the background, do all the stuff that people don't like to do, but set you free and go do what you're great at.
Speaker 4:So it's really finding somebody that fills the gaps that you don't fills your gaps right. So who can do it? Who loves what they do? Joe loves what he does. He gets energy from doing that right. Going out and networking and you know, walk around the bar and meeting people and I'm like sitting there eating my sandwich. I'm like man that looks so exhausting. So it's the perfect combination. But you do hear a lot of horror stories about um partnerships. But you really just have to treat it like you're going to spend the rest of your life with this person and you got to like their family. You got to like everything about them because it really it really is a marriage. We spent a lot of time together. We pull each other through ups and downs in the business. It's really difficult and if we didn't have each other, I'm not sure either of us would be in this position. So it's filling the voids of what you don't have and getting somebody that really likes to do those things that you don't necessarily like to do or that you're not good at.
Speaker 2:I love this so much. So much of this resonates so heavily with some other partnerships that I may have been a part of, so I just want to say it's awesome to hear from other folks, so I want to say hats off to the both of you. I'm proud of you all. The stuff that you guys have accomplished thus far is truly amazing, and I think I mean with that Cole. Do you think he's ready?
Speaker 3:He's definitely ready.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So, mark, we got a surprise for you.
Speaker 2:Maybe, All right. So what we're going to do is we are going to ask you six questions back to back, to back to back to back. I don't know if that was enough. Back Seems like it. I don't know, doesn't matter. Either way, our goal is to try to ask these. You can answer as long or as succinct as possible, and we're not going to interject, we're not going to say a word. We fail every fucking time, but this time I feel like we might be able to not say anything and just rapid fire this all the way through. So, without further ado, let's jump in.
Speaker 3:Keep our hopes up. All right, here we go. What separates top performing entrepreneurs from the rest of the crowd?
Speaker 4:Great question. I think it's persistence. I think it's a lot of people get bogged down and they get tired, they're overworked. But you really have to truly love what you do so that you can show up every day and you can beat anybody else because it feels like play to you, which is, you know, nabal ravikot says that all the time nobody's going to beat you if you're playing and it feels fun to go out every day and work really hard. You got to love what you do to keep the the train rolling I've already failed.
Speaker 2:So good, so good. Mic drop moment. Anybody that's listening. Pause it, play this, rewind it all the way back from the top. All right. Next question what is a daily habit that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 4:I think it's zooming out. I think that's a thing that goes through my mind all the time. Everything's on fire all the time. Right, you're going to wake up and you say, here's my calendar and today's going to be great. I'm going to hop on this podcast, I'm going to hit this call and then 40 people call you and say, hey, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. Something's always going to be on fire. So, zooming out and understanding that everything is OK, okay, nothing is really going to be, you know, ruined in the long run, it's you playing the long game. It's just zooming out, taking a deep breath and saying, all right, this is just chaos and that's, that's part of the game.
Speaker 3:It's so good and I got to say real quick it's so funny because Nate and I start almost every one of our podcasts talking about one of the fires that's going on and I feel like people probably jump on. They're like man, all these guys do is complain or life's a shit show, like I don't know. But it's just kind of the internal joke of just that right, like we all just unpredictable, crazy things happen. But part of the fun is just talking about. I'm like yo, I can't believe this new, weird thing happened to me today. Every day is some weird new event and you just kind of I don't want to say come to love it, but Just kind of I don't want to say come to love it, but kind of just learn to deal with it. And it's entertaining in one aspect. So I love that. What is a piece of?
Speaker 4:advice that you'd give to yourself if you were starting again. I hate this answer. I think it's kind of oversaid a lot. I watched a lot of podcasts. You know YouTube mentors but it's be patient, right. I mean when you're in it and the things that they're going wrong and you're not seeing the money and you're not where you want to be with your lifestyle or whatever it is. It's just a long game. Real estate is a very long game and the people who are willing to endure that pain the longest are going to win. So you just have to stay patient, you have to zoom out and, like I said, I hate that advice because I've heard it a million times.
Speaker 4:I'm like, if we talk like, yeah, that's cool for you to say because you're, you know, 60 years old and you got a hundred million dollars, I'm like I'm struggling here, right, but you got it. You're in the fire, right, it's the origin of fire. It's time under tension. You just have to go through it because you're never going to be I don't know how to deal with today, right, I don't know what, what next challenge is going to come up, but, like, you just got to figure it out. You're going to learn, you're going to grow, and that's what this whole thing about being an entrepreneur is about.
Speaker 4:It's about growth, right, and um, alex hormosi says that. He's like. You know, when you start it's you have one arrow, right, he's like. But then you get a partnership, you get this person, you start to solve some problems and now fighting a dragon doesn't seem so hard because because you have an army behind you. But listening to that, it's like, yeah, if you're in the shit and you're feeling like you can't do anymore, you're in a great spot. That's exactly where you should be.
Speaker 3:Such a good answer.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think back. I don't think we've ever had an answer top this one when it comes to advice and being able to look back and give it to you. And on top of that, I don't even know, cole, if you caught it, but Mark snuck in, forged in fire into his whole analogy of how to do it. He did oh my gosh, all right, yeah, we have not done well with not answering, talking during this call, absolutely failed. So the next question we got for you is what is your favorite business book?
Speaker 4:I got it right here. I keep it right next to me. I just brought up Naval, right, so I spent two years. This is the almanac of Naval Ravikant. It's kind of you know, he's the entrepreneur whisperer. It's kind of all over the board as far as you know business advice goes, but these are just a lot of his thoughts. He might have a Twitter rant or X rant and you know it would break it more down into deep detail in here, but it's something that I go back to all the time and you can see it's dog-eared like crazy. I think I've given this book out to 20 different people. I'm not sure anybody's ever read it, but I'm proud to have read this book. I spent two years. I read a book a week. Most business books are dog shit. There's one takeaway and I think if you treat books as kind of like, there might be one takeaway in here great, but this one, it hits for me in so many different ways and I go back to it all the time.
Speaker 3:Awesome, awesome, awesome. I love to be over right next to you. It's awesome. What is your favorite part of owning your business?
Speaker 4:I think it's growth. It's growth for me, it's growth for my partner. It's growing together, growing a team, bringing guys in and saying, hey, you want to be a project manager? Like, let's go through this, I'm happy to to dig in and give you all of my time and energy for you to grow. I want to see people get to their highest potential. I think it's the most powerful thing as an entrepreneur is building a team of badass people that you're stoked to wake up to and go into the office every day and say let's go to war. I think it's the coolest part is building a team for sure.
Speaker 2:I've got to say again, this is the mark of a selfless person. The question is designed for you to be able to take a moment to be selfish, meaning what is your favorite part? We're asking you, and your answer was I like to watch other people win, like dude. That's up to you. That's fucking amazing. I love it. So last question on this segment what is something new that you've implemented that's helped drive your business's success? And it can't be QuickBooks.
Speaker 4:OK, honestly, I'm yeah, I'm three months into QuickBooks. I'm like, oh, this is great, I'll use another app, companycam, so you basically take all the photos, all the videos that you need in the field. We have the guys take pictures every single day so we can update investors. We have investors come in, we invite them to the job so they can keep up with it. But that's been huge getting stuff off of your phone. You can't just walk into a project, take a picture. Say, I'm the only guy with this picture. Hey, who's got this picture from six years ago when we did this renovation? It's all on the web. It gets it off of your phone. You can communicate through it. That's been a game changer for us. The guys take pictures every single day and I, just before I go to bed, I just check in on. Great, I don't have to go out to the site, you know, twice a week anymore. I go out once a month when they need me. But other than that, I see every single thing. You can update your schedules.
Speaker 3:It's, it's amazing it's called company cam and it's an app yep, awesome, I'm gonna try that. That's great. It's a gameCam and it's an app. Yep, awesome, I'm going to try that. That's great. It's a game changer. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3:I love the useful tips like that, the useful kind of stuff that people haven't heard about. Mark, this has been awesome. I mean, it's cool hearing your story dialing all the way back to the beginning, talking about your beginning starting in site, going to engineering, to engineering, going to construction first going into custom homes, learning how to be a GC and learning the business world, and then meeting a mentor, having that first investor, that mentor becoming your first investor, meeting your partners through these programs and then joining other programs to learn how to fund, to raise, just generally learning and growing your business, then getting into that first deal and growing together, and then all the cool things that we talked about leading up to just general growth. And there's so much more I'd love to go into and unfortunately we can't for time, so I have two final questions for you One, where can people find you? And two, any final advice?
Speaker 4:Find us on Instagram at Capital Companion and any final advice. Find us on Instagram at Capital Companion and any final advice. I think it's like I said, being patient. I think it's a. It's a annoying thing when you're just starting, but joining the groups reinvesting capital back into joining groups so that you don't have to find like-minded people has been huge, because I grew up I didn't know a single business owner, so I've been steering blind. I didn't know anybody in private equity or that had a hundred million dollars that wanted to invest. So I joined a couple of groups and you're buying into access to people who are doing the same exact thing as you.
Speaker 4:So if you can reinvest some of the profit or, you know, even if you do take capital and it's part of building your business and you can get into the right rooms it really is worth it. The numbers feel big. You know it could be 10, 15, 20 grand. Sometimes you will get that back immediately. You'll get it back on your first deal. You're going to have 100 people that you can reach out to when you have a problem or when you have a great deal that you want to raise capital from. So I think it's reinvesting. It's reinvesting time, and YouTube University has been a big thing for me too. I spent a lot of time on YouTube. We built this whole business off of YouTube. If I spent a lot of time, on YouTube.
Speaker 2:We built this whole business off of YouTube. If you don't know something, somebody's already put it on the Internet. Mark, this has been amazing. I don't say this lightly, I'm going to speak for the both of us. This has been a ton of fun. It's one of those kind of situations where when you, when you, jump into these podcasts, you never know what you're going to get on the other side. But we get authenticity, we get real stories, we get real person that has been through real struggles, real trials, real tribulations. This has been fucking amazing, and I don't know if I'm supposed to say this. We can edit it out, probably not going to, but for your very first fucking podcast. I would never have guessed. Dude, you are one of a kind when it came to getting to the stage. Man, not shy, upfront, fully honest, fully transparent. Hats off to you, brother. This is awesome.
Speaker 4:I appreciate it. Like I said, I've watched so many podcasts. You have mentors. If you can't find mentors, go on YouTube. Watch Alex Hormozy, watch Naval Rabicot there's so many people in real estate giving away unbelievable content for free and get the YouTube premium app so you can put it on your phone and when you turn your phone off, it doesn't shut off.
Speaker 2:It's a total life hack put it on your phone and when you turn your phone off, it doesn't shut off. It's a photo life hack. I love it. I love it. I love it. Your name is going to be right up there with the man you have given us so many gems. We appreciate you For those that are listening if you're driving, drive safely, get home safely. And we want to thank you all so much for coming through hanging with us in Forge and Fire. This has been an amazing episode, mark, and for Joe as well. Our house is your house. We want to watch you guys grow. We want to watch you guys thrive. Whenever you two want to stop back in here, pop in on us. Let us know some of the amazing things that you guys have just tackled. All you got to do is say the word We'd love to have you back.
Speaker 4:Amazing. I appreciate you guys. This is great.
Speaker 2:Of course, our pleasure. Everybody take care. We're looking forward to seeing you all 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.