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
How an Engineer Pivoted from Single Family to Multifamily Investing: Breaking Down Doors with Stephen Predmore
What happens when the security blanket of a 20-year career gets ripped away in an instant? For Stephen Predmore, a seasoned engineer in the automotive industry, that shocking moment became the catalyst for an extraordinary transformation in his financial future.
Stephen's journey begins with a gut punch—his entire department walked out after two decades of service, shattering the illusion of job security despite working on cutting-edge electric vehicle technology. While devastating, this moment accelerated a path he'd already been exploring through real estate investment education.
Like many newcomers, Stephen started with single-family homes in Baltimore, purchasing properties for around $65,000 with modest renovations. These investments crushed the coveted 1% rule on paper, but reality struck hard during COVID when his tenant stopped paying rent. The subsequent six-month eviction process in tenant-friendly Baltimore taught him a crucial lesson: "Just because it works great in a spreadsheet doesn't mean it works well in life."
Rather than giving up, Stephen adapted brilliantly. He first pivoted to Section 8 housing for more reliable government-subsidized rent payments, then gradually transitioned to larger multifamily deals. His approach was methodical—joining real estate masterminds, becoming a limited partner in syndication deals to learn the mechanics, and eventually taking more active roles in joint ventures.
Perhaps most fascinating is how Stephen funded his first investment: by taking a loan against his 401(k)—not a withdrawal with penalties, but a strategic loan against 50% of the value. "Your first deal is always the hardest," he notes. "Once you do your first deal, the juices start flowing."
Today, Stephen maintains his W2 engineering job while running a side handyman business through TaskRabbit, channeling all those earnings directly into his next real estate investment. His portfolio spans seven syndication deals across multiple states, focusing on "red states" with landlord-friendly legislation.
Stephen's most valuable insight? "It's really the operator, not just the deal." Rather than chasing markets or property types, he emphasizes partnering with trustworthy, experienced operators who have boots on the ground.
Whether you're contemplating your first investment or looking to scale your portfolio, Stephen's journey offers a blueprint for combining W2 security with real estate wealth-building. As he puts it, what separates successful investors is being "willing to get up after they get punched in the face."
Ready to learn more? Visit talbotinvestments.com to explore Stephen's current opportunities and connect with him directly.
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 Farmer Eden. Let me introduce my counterpart, Cole. How are we doing, brother?
Speaker 3:Nate doing good man, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Doing good. Doing good man. No one else is going to really understand this, but we have to change that intro.
Speaker 3:We do need to change that intro. We got a lot. We got a lot of changes going on. We'll update the intro. Maybe next episode they'll hear. It Depends when this releases, I guess, right.
Speaker 2:Dude, you get me so excited, man. Yes, we've got a lot of cool things going on, but before we dive into all that, man, how are you doing? How have you been? What's going on with you?
Speaker 3:Good, good, good. It's so funny. Yesterday, right, like three days before I do bookkeeping. I do bookkeeping once a month, right, and I go through all accounting, every single transaction. I like to know where every fucking cent goes in the business and it's super important. Yesterday is like three day or the day before, right, I'm having a meltdown because I'm like, where did we spend $65,000 this month? Like, where's all this money going? And obviously there's rentals and there's stuff going around. But I just finished going through every transaction and now I feel so calm. I'm like, oh, it makes perfect sense. All that's well and good and fine, but it's just so funny that day before, oh my God can't sleep. So, anyways, that's exciting. What else you got going on? Anything crazy?
Speaker 2:Not much. So, you know, we, on average, probably at least once a quarter, do an episode where it's just you and I we're talking. And something that hit me being a parent, being an adult of a 12-year-old boy who's going to be a teenager. He wanted to get into business, so him and I I'm like the only way that I can really teach him about business is start a company. So I did, and the reason that we did this one was to be able to teach him financial literacy, financial education, financial responsibility, because he had none. But also, we've been doing this for about a year and I wanted to take all the information from our amazing guests, put it all into just a huge kind of YouTube and on social media, and I'm like you know what? Let's take all the stuff that we've learned, all the things that we've taught our students, and let me see if I can teach this to the youth. And so I'm excited to be able to say that, after like a month and a half roughly, we have gotten just about out of the red.
Speaker 3:And that's exciting. That's so awesome and it's funny because there's so many friends, colleagues, just people in general that we talk and work with, that have this challenge of like, how do you teach your kids to learn this stuff? How do you raise them in all these different ways to factor it in? And I'm not a parent yet so I can't answer that question, but it's so cool to see you doing it, figuring it out, making it work. I mean, that's insane. So I'm sure everyone's going to be curious about how that goes.
Speaker 3:Ask more questions, but without further ado, I know we really got to get into this interview and I'm super excited to have this guest on. Before we do that, I have one quick favor. The one thing, guys, that helps us tremendously, that helps us grow, and if you help us grow, then we can bring on more people that you want to hear from. So that one thing is just please leave us a review. If you go on, wherever you're listening to this Apple, spotify, whatever platform it is, just leave us a review. Whether you like it, don't like it, don't care. That'll help us. So thanks so much.
Speaker 2:A thousand percent, dude. I'm so excited Out of like all the episodes that we do not saying that those aren't like top for me as well, but I love talking to folks that have partnered with us, and this gentleman right here, stephen Predmore, amazing CEO of Talbot Investments. He is an amazing man. All right, let's go ahead, bring him on stage, see how he's doing, stephen, how you doing, brother.
Speaker 4:Hey guys, good to be here, excited to share my story with your audience.
Speaker 2:Dude, the pleasure is all ours. So please tell us a little bit about yourself, man. What got you here? What brought you here?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I'm a W2 guy. I'm an engineer. Yeah, so I'm a W2 guy. I'm an engineer, very technical, grew up in Western New York, I went to school in Buffalo, got sick of the snow and so I moved down South with the family. And so I'm down here in Baltimore, maryland, and working for automotive industry for 20 plus years.
Speaker 4:Uh, I thought my job was secure. Um, you know, we, we had just opened like a brand new facility here in Baltimore and it was all like electric vehicles and battery stuff, and so, you know, I thought we were golden. I never thought that, uh, the day would come when, uh, I would walked out the door. Uh, after being there 20 plus years, uh, they walked the entire department out. It was a total punch in the gut. So when that happened, you know I have a degree, so I mean I ultimately got another job. But, you know, your whole idea of this whole security was just shattered in that one moment. It was just shattered in that one moment.
Speaker 4:And I had been listening to BiggerPockets, you know, for I'd say probably about six months. But that was kind of like the impetus to start investing and, like a lot of people, I went down the single family route. I bought a couple of single families here in Baltimore. Baltimore is a very cheap market. Bought them for $65K, put about $,000 in and renting for about $1,400. So you know I was crushing the 1% rule. But you know, just with all single families there's this one little thing can go, and it happened to be during COVID and the one thing that went was my tenant lost her job and stopped paying rent and the one thing that went was my tenants lost their job and stopped paying rent. And Baltimore City is very challenging, very blue state to get people out. Took me about six months to evict her and yeah, it was just a learning curve and I just started looking at other avenues and so that's kind of when I pivoted to larger deals. So that's kind of just in a nutshell how I got started. Oh my.
Speaker 3:God, I'm scrambling to take notes here. I got to say I love talking to all guests, but I get so fired up when we talk to people that are in real estate specifically, and so I got a million things I just want to highlight there that you talked about. So one you talked about being in the auto industry and working there for 20 years. That's a long ass time and then, like you said, that security blanket gets shattered and we hear this story time and time again, and so you, thankfully, were prepared, like you said, you got another job, but you already had that kind of inner workings or the learnings like, okay, what can I do? So you started buying Question real quick. You mentioned 1% rule For somebody listening going like wait, wait, what was that? What is a 1% rule?
Speaker 4:So it's based like the amount that you put into the deal versus how much you're getting out of the deal. So I put in 65 plus 40, that's 105. And 1% would be getting $1,050 in rent per month. Well, I was getting $1,400 per month, so that's like 1.3. So that's like a really good cash flowing asset and in certain markets are better at cashflow Some of the like older markets like Baltimore, Philly, Cleveland or some real high cash flowing markets and that really attracts a lot of people, especially new people, because it works really well in a spreadsheet. I mean the numbers are great. But as I've learned and I try to teach people is that just because it works great in a spreadsheet doesn't mean it works well in life, because it was a C minus asset and there was a lot of unforeseen expenses and just you know, just rent, rent, late, late rent and, like I said, ultimately an eviction.
Speaker 3:So oh my gosh. Okay, nate, before you jump in, I got to finish this thought out. So I love the explain, the 1% rule, and I just want to highlight again that's such a good baseline metric. We use that all the time to see if something makes sense and just as a baseline, like you said, for cashflow, because if it's under 1% you're not making money, at least not cashflow, and I like that. You talked about the single families, the challenges that you ran into. So my question is you did the single families? You saw the challenges a lot of people do, especially when you're starting with only a couple. So you said you got into larger deals. Why into larger deals? Can you go more into that? And what did those larger deals look like? Like, what are the advantages of that?
Speaker 4:So actually I'll take a step back. My first, my half step, was I went into Section 8 after the first division. Well, the US government can pay for the bulk of the rent. So I went down that route as kind of an intermediary step and that went a little bit better. For example, the government was paying $1,000 and the tenant was paying $400. So, like clockwork, I was getting that $1,000, you know, in the first of the month, which is great. But even though the rent was only $400, they were still falling behind, which is very frustrating. Because you know I would go to the property and I, you know I was, I was, I'm a handyman, so I would be doing all the maintenance and I would see they were not struggling for an extra $400 a month. It's just rent wasn't a priority.
Speaker 4:So why did I pivot? I don't know. Again, an engineer mindset looking at the spreadsheets, looking at larger deals, the numbers just make more sense. Buying, you know, 10, 20 unit properties just makes more sense. So I joined some groups. You know this is a scary thing to kind of do by yourself, kind of how. You know, how am I going to come up with these millions of dollars? It's just a big mindset shift to go from single to multi. It's just a big mindset shift to go from single to multi and so you really need to surround yourself with people, with mentors, that have done it and kind of coach you through and so you're not scared about these bigger transitions. And it helps to have people that you that also join the mastermind, that kind of lift you up and you kind of do it together.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I love this. Okay, this is the point where everybody hates me. Pause, rewind, play this whole thing all the way back. So many gems were just dropped. One of the biggest things is that real estate is a team sport. Don't try to go it alone. You don't have to go it alone. Find yourself mentors, find yourself coaches, find yourself a support system that can be able to help you out. Hope that you guys are driving that point home. So, fred Moore, what I would love to be able to talk about? You talked a little bit about some of the struggles when you had a tenant stop paying. But what were some of the struggles that you had right before that? What was any struggle that you had? Maybe trying to get into the market, and then also struggles that you had trying to get from. Hey, I need to now go and pivot into larger multifamily, a lot bigger. What were some of the struggles on both sides of the fence for that?
Speaker 4:Well, obviously the biggest struggle is money. Your first deal is always the hardest. How are you going to come up with money? It's just a large mountain to kind of come over. I ended up taking money out of my 401k. I'm sorry I took a loan against my 401k, so that's how I did. There's no penalty when you take a loan. I was able to take 50% of the the value and use that as a as a down payment on my first deal and that kind of got me over the hump. I tell you, once you do your first deal, the juices start flowing and you start thinking, well, how I can get money and how you know it's it's.
Speaker 4:I've met a lot of people in this industry that have done zero deals and I've met a lot of people that have done a lot of deals. I don't think I've met somebody that has done one deal. So it's the rule of the first deal is getting that done. And again, I took a 401k loan. Some people wouldn't want to do that. So, yeah, it is challenging to do that first deal, even though it was only $65,000. Property you know was that. So you know, 20% down to that is like $13,000. It wasn't a huge amount.
Speaker 3:But when you're you know a working person with two kids, raising two kids. Coming up with that kind of money is scary. Absolutely love that and I think it's so funny. I've never heard it said like that. I've met a lot of people that have done no deals so correct. I've met a lot of people that have done a ton of deals. Never met somebody that's done just one. That is such a good line and it's so true when you think about it. So I want to back up a quick second. You said you took a loan from your 401k.
Speaker 4:Is that work? Can somebody do that? What does that look like? Is that illegal? Because that's amazing. So I mean you need to have a balance. So, yeah, I mean this is again, this is my active job, so it's my active 401k and you're able to. I mean, I just went into my Fidelity portal and I was able to take a loan against that 50% value. Now you're paying that back slowly to yourself and while that money is out of the stock market, you're not making any type of returns, but you are using it on your own. Now I've also done the self-directed thing from with, so that's an active 401k. You can also take an old 401k, roll that into a self-directed account and put that into another deal, and I've done that as well invested in near deals actually with some self-directed funds.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Okay. So two again golden nuggets dropped. One if you happen to have a career that you are working, if you're chilling on the couch right now still working the W2 job and trying to figure out how can you get into your next venture and you would like to get off the couch, here's an opportunity for you. This is something to be able to look into. For Steven, he was able to utilize Fidelity to be able to borrow against a 50%. He gave you the whole spiel on that. It's an amazing opportunity for you to be able to find a little bit of that capital that you might need, some of that seed money to help you for whatever the endeavor is. The other option is if you have an old job that you've transitioned out of for an old 401k, you can roll over a self-directed IRA.
Speaker 2:Listeners, I hope that you guys are taking notes. I hope that you guys are jotting this stuff down, because this is amazing. So moving forward just a little bit then. So then, thinking about when it got into one roof, to one roof with multiple doors underneath, what was it like? I know you love analyzing spreadsheets. I know you love numbers. You've got the engineer mindset. So when you saw that in front of you, looking and trying to underwrite your first deal, what was that like? What were some of the struggles, some of the trials and tribulations from thinking, okay, 1% really here, is it still applicable here? What then made you decide you want to jump off and go into the deep end?
Speaker 4:Well, I didn't jump off. It's a slow transition. I joined the mastermind and then I started just by being an LP, just by being a partner in somebody else's deal. Somebody else has already done the heavy lifting and I think that's very important. I think to kind of get your feet wet and see the mechanics of how a larger deal works. Now, as an LP, you just basically send a large check, a wire, to the operator of the deal and I've done that. I've done that several times and then you start getting more and more comfortable and then you start looking at deals that you want to take on yourself. So it's a gradual transition and I wouldn't have done it without that type of slow burn.
Speaker 4:If I would have gone in and just tried to buy a bigger deal, I don't know how I would have done. I wouldn't know how to structure it, I wouldn't know how to talk to an attorney, I wouldn't know how to set up the operating agreement, all these things that are just it's a big mountain to go to, to, to get to go out and get over, so having coaches and mentors and kind of walking through it slowly and slowly. And now I'm at the point where I am looking at those deals, nate. I am looking at those spreadsheets. And now I'm you know, I have a big, bigger network.
Speaker 4:I can now approach people offline and ask them hey, would you be interested in this opportunity? And that's how you got to phrase it. This is like hey, I don't need $50,000. It's hey, this is an opportunity. Here's the returns. This is the reason why I'm selecting this market. Do you want to be part of it? And if not, that's fine. I kind of have that attitude like I'm giving you an opportunity and whether you want to get into it or not, I don't beg for money. I was just saying friends and family not a lot of friends and family get it. Not a lot of friends and family understand it. So that's fine. I've offered it to all of them. Most are not interested. That's fine. There's plenty of people that I met that are so, so good.
Speaker 3:I'm about to pull a Nate here and say rewind that, because that is fantastic, fantastic info. So question for you um, as you advance into the larger deals, your opportunity opportunity opens up, and what I mean for that is you no longer have to stay local, necessarily, right, because you're no longer the one doing the management yourself right there, so you can go partner with different people all over the place. So when you're looking at deals, how are you choosing markets? And I guess you could, if you want to brief that into how are you choosing people. But right now I'm curious how are you choosing markets? Like, what are you looking for in a deal? Like, should I invest in the South, the Midwest?
Speaker 4:the East, like what are you looking for? It's really the operator, and I mean I generally not looking in blue states, blue cities anymore just because I had a bad experience in Baltimore City. So I've been branching out into West Virginia, red State, north Carolina Red State, south Carolina Red State. I have a 30 unit deal in Alaska Red State. So that's kind of it's not one particular thing, it's the operator and it's people that I have relationships with. I want to make sure that you know, I know I can trust them and that there's boots in the ground in these cities, because I'm not traveling to all these places all the time. I do want to, you know, I do want to get a little bit closer, like, at least initial, I want to go visit it and meet the people with boots on the ground. So that's one of the big things. Also, you know growing markets, carolinas are booming right now. So those are some of the things, but again, the biggest thing is the operator.
Speaker 2:I love that a thousand percent Before I get into my next question, if any of our listeners are anything like me which is a scary thought if anybody is like me but I read the title and I put on a podcast when I'm driving in. I never read like the bio or the description because I'm just on the move. So one thing that we haven't yet dove into is we talked about your start, but where are you today? What all do you have on your belt? What asset classes? Talk to us a little bit about your firm and what you've got going on.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I'm still a W2 engineer. I work in the aerospace industry now. I have a high demanding job. I got calls right after this call. So where I am right now is one of the things that I like to do is help other engineers like myself figure out how they can invest in real estate. A lot of people turn on HGTV and see something and say, hey, I want to flip a house or I want to buy a cheap rental. So I try to coach Coach is not the right word, but I provide content. I have a lot of outreach on LinkedIn to kind of connect with people that might be interested in investing and just give them some feedback.
Speaker 4:As to this was my journey. This is what I learned. I wouldn't do it again. There's better ways to invest. Honestly, my passive investments have well outperformed my active investments. So that's just. You know. That happens to be me, so maybe I can impart that to somebody else.
Speaker 4:Where am I at? I have about seven syndication deals that I've done. I still have one single family in Baltimore that I'm holding on to because it's just working out well and it's a great tenant. So I'm not going to rock the boat. But as soon as that tenant moves, I'm definitely selling and putting it into a larger deal. But again, like I said, I'm not going to rock the boat. But as soon as that tenant moves I'm definitely selling and putting it into a larger deal. But again, like I said, I'm I'm I'm in a lot of red States. I do like some smaller JV deals as well. I do like to get a little close to some of the action. So I have a 23 unit in West Virginia that there's just six of us in on it and we really can get involved. Jv deals are smaller and you can actually do some of the value add stuff. I I like that. So I'm looking at other smaller deals as well as looking at bigger syndications with larger operators love that, and I have a two-part question.
Speaker 3:part one is based on what you just said where do you see the next couple years going, so like? Where does it look? Where do you see the next couple of years going, so like, where does it look? Where do you want to go? And that could be next couple of years, that could be next 20 years, whatever. Where do you want to go? And then part two is I want to go back to that Alaska deal and talk about that. So we'll go there after, but go ahead.
Speaker 4:I would love to walk away from my W2. I would love to, but honestly, I'm finding that I'm finding investors by wearing both hats. By being a W2 employee, I have like street cred that really speaks to them, I think. So I kind of go back and forth on that. Again, I would love to be able to walk away and have my passive investments be what I need, but honestly, a lot of these passive investments are not get-rich-quick schemes. They're slow burns.
Speaker 4:It's a cashflow type thing and you're kind of banking on the exit or the refi is when you kind of would get a bigger pop. So you know, at this point I'm just stacking assets. I'm going to continue to buy one or two deals a year, or at least involved in one or two deals a year, and in a few years I haven't gone full cycle on any of these deals. So you know, I haven't had any of those big pops yet. But you know, in a couple of years they're going to start to come over and so at that point I'll probably re-evaluate whether whether I need to keep working my w-2 love it, absolutely love it, and I want to go into this and it's going to shoot me because I know he's got more questions.
Speaker 3:But tell me about alaska, like why, where, how did that come up? And I asked this just because it's, I feel, like such a unique place to invest. I'm sure it has all the fundamentals, but what does that deal look like? How'd you find that? Give us some just info on it. I think it's super cool.
Speaker 4:Yep Found it through people in a mastermind, people that actually live up there, and I had money that I wanted to invest and this came up. It was JV opportunity which intrigued me. It was also kind of pitched as a JV on training wheels which really spoke to me because I had done the LP things and I wanted to take the next step. I wanted to be more involved, so I got involved in this deal. It's a 30 unit multifamily in Anchorage, alaska. It's right across from two military bases, j-bear military bases. I'm going to say there's like 5,000 or 6,000 active military right there. So the setup was great. The problem was and we're actually selling it, let's see this week or next week the execution We've had problems with property managers up there and we've had problems with sense of urgency, meaning that turns were taking 60 to 90 days, and it's just been a struggle and I don't know if you folks have ever gone through like a property management changeover.
Speaker 4:It's really tumultuous and we've had a lot of damage to the property. People have damaged the property, so our turns have been really expensive. It just hasn't worked out like we wanted. We're hoping to get our money back, but certainly not like the 2X equity multiple. That was kind of forecasted. But you know, just like any type of education, I learned a ton. I learned a ton, and I think a lot of the folks that did as well. I would never do something that far away again. I wouldn't do something that. I don't personally know that it was kind of a one-off type person, like an acquaintance, so. But again, I learned a ton. It's just one of the things you got to learn. As you're doing, you're going to have some bad deals and some some home runs.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad that Cole asked this question on so many different levels, and the first and most important is I've been in the industry for a handful of years now and one of the things that I've come to realize is that not everyone deals in full transparency. It's sad, it's a shitty situation, but not everybody will talk about some of the nitty gritty and some of the hard points of things that they go through. Everybody is all talking about the shiny bells and the whistles and all the other things, but the fact that you're willing to come on and willing to talk about, hey, this is some of the stuff that went wrong, speaks volumes to your character, speaks volumes to everything that you just said prior to where you're just like, hey, I like to be able to dabble using the street cred and I'm able to talk to folks about stuff that I've done and that you should never fucking do. And so I just want to give you your kudos, give you your flowers now to say, dude, that's awesome, and the fact that you can say hey, yeah, if you guys want to go left, that's cool. I'm going to go right over here because I know that this is going to be a little bit better, on that same note, talk to me a little bit about, or talk to us in our audience, what it would be like for somebody thinking that they would like to get into it.
Speaker 2:Kind of on the risk mitigation side, you mentioned the importance of getting in on the operator. So they have the deals cool, the numbers are awesome, the spreadsheet's cool. That's what's up, but what really is is about the operator. So if you were somebody, or you're talking to somebody that has no operators no, no one what kind of questions do you want to ask? How do you want to get to know that person? What? What does it mean to be able to say, hey, I want to get to know the operator? Is that like, hey, just a handshake and take their word for credibility? I don't know. Let us know.
Speaker 4:No, no, it's obviously much more than that and you know, I want to be with operators that I'm actually paying. Like I said, pay for my friends, but I want to pay to be in a mastermind where there's other people that are doing it. I don't think very rarely I would just kind of find somebody on the street or find somebody at like a local meetup. I want to know somebody that's actually like paying money to be doing this and investing in their education. And you know, with these groups you meet weekly and so there's lots of there's also like in-person events. So that's something that I would, you know, insist on. You know, somebody may have a great Facebook or YouTube channel and just be talking the talk.
Speaker 4:I'm sorry, I'm not going to invest in that type of person like a Grant Cardone. I'm not. There's too many unknowns and you know I don't want to be paying for some fancy website and that type of stuff. I want to be paying for people that actually put the work in and are doing it. So that's kind of my advice is don't fall for these fancy courses online. I would pick my mastermind. That's maybe smaller, that maybe you can shake hands with this person on a regular basis, which I've done. I think that that's the kind of deal that I operator, that I would look for and, obviously, looking at their track record, like how many full deals have they done, how their returns been, what type of asset classes are they looking in? Those are the things I would go for so, so good I'm I was watching your facial expressions.
Speaker 2:This we're only like 30 minutes in and I know you've got a hard stop, but I just want to say again this is phenomenal.
Speaker 2:I I love everything about this interview. I love the fact that it's just like we were chilling on the couch, having having a conversation, having a beer, having a cigar and just relaxing man. So, thank you, thank you for that. We're going to get into a few other things here shortly, but I want to make sure that we have time for this. So I think, cole, it might be time. What do you think?
Speaker 3:That's what I was going to say is, don't make sure and cut you off. So let's do it. All right, stephen, here's the deal. We're going to ask you six questions. We ask these to every guest, um, and our goal here is just to ask you the question and then you just give us your thoughts on it and you can answer however you like. You can give us a one word answer or, preferably, you can give us kind of more your thoughts behind it. Um, nate and I always get super excited, though, and kind of interject and then start having a whole separate side conversation with you about it, and we're going to do our best to not do that. So, anyways, let's get into these. Nate, you ready, let's do it. I'm ready, let's try it. All right. Question one what separates top performing entrepreneurs, investors, whatever, from the rest of the crowd?
Speaker 4:Willing to get up after they get punched in the face. I know real estate's a great avenue. Lots of people have made, you know, a lot of money on it. Just can't get demoralized when you get punched in the face. You know I had an eviction. I lost a lot of money but I got up and started doing more deals. That's what it takes.
Speaker 2:So freaking good. Okay, hold it together, nate, okay. So what are the daily habits that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 4:I'm a handyman so I work my W-2. So after my handyman business kind of pays for a lot of my real estate stuff, I mean obviously my W-2 does well, but I take all my honey handyman money and I put it all into my next deal, my next syndication. So I'm always working on it, and if I'm not doing that I'm going to the gym. So one of those two things I'm always doing every day. So that contributes to my success.
Speaker 3:Wait, wait, wait, wait. We're just not going to gloss over that, because you're saying that like it's nothing, and I know that there's a hell of a lot more to that. So can you tell us more about that? What does that look like? How'd you get into that?
Speaker 4:It's one of those app things where people can go online. It's actually through TaskRabbit, and I've just been doing it for years and I hang TVs, hang curtains, hang ceiling fans, lights, that kind of stuff, and I do that after work every day and I make a couple hundred bucks every day and just just just adds up and those all go towards my syndication fund, so it's just a skill set I have.
Speaker 4:It's actually a blessing and a curse because you know I'm also a landlord and so you know I I can do stuff. But you know, should I be doing stuff is the question is like well, I can pay somebody you know 30 bucks an hour to do that, or I can make $100 doing something else. It's a blessing and a curse.
Speaker 2:We told you all. I know you guys hate me on this, but we were going to fail. We did fail. Here we go. Cole and I both are going to talk on this. Did you listeners understand and comprehend what just happened? This man works a W2 job but he's like hey, no, I got the W2. That's fine, that's. Over here I have started another entrepreneurial spirit, started another hustle that allows me to fuel this other passion over here. That is mind blowing hats off. All right, let me be quiet. That is amazing, so good.
Speaker 3:All right, I'm sorry, that is amazing, so good. All right, I'm sorry I'm confusing myself because I got so excited. Nate, are we on question three? All right, thank you. What is a piece of advice that you would give to yourself if you're starting over?
Speaker 4:Well, starting over younger, I would house tech, house tech young guy, as opposed to renting. That would be the biggest piece of advice. And I have a 24-year-old son and that's what he's going to be doing. He's looking at houses now. So that's the biggest piece of advice to get started early. I started late in this game. I started in my 40s and so I feel like that's like lost time that I had as far as owning real estate and he can get in owner occupied house, hack and live there for a year and move out and then he's cash flowing more, and so that's the biggest piece of advice. I tell it to all my young young friends and people I meet at meetups.
Speaker 2:So good, I love it. What is your favorite business and or real estate book?
Speaker 4:Who Not how, who Not how. I've read it a couple times. Every time I read who Not how, I end up hiring another VA. So I've read it twice. I got two VAs and yeah, it's just been a game changer. I can't recommend that you got to. If you want to grow, you need to kind of give up some of the low-hanging fruit and social media and social media outreach and commenting and posts and stuff like that. That's low-hanging fruit.
Speaker 3:Love it. What is your favorite part of I'm trying to think how to describe, I guess cater to you. What is your favorite part of your investment portfolio? What is?
Speaker 4:your favorite part of your investment portfolio, the smaller JV deals where there's value add, where we can be creative. Again, with the larger syndications you don't have that ability at all. You send your money and then they handle everything and that's your whole role. In a JV deal four or five folks you can get very creative on the financing and types of extra income that you can add, which is a huge lever. That you really can't do in single families Adding laundry units, charging pet fees, submetering the electric some of those things that can really drive the value.
Speaker 2:That's probably my favorite part. Following Cole's lead on this one, I'm going to change up my last question just a tad bit. What are some of the KPIs and the metrics that help you feel as though you've hit success?
Speaker 4:rather be on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. What do you track? Oof, that's a tough one. That's a tough one for me. I feel like I got so many pokers in the fire KPIs that I track. I don't have a great answer for you on that one, nate, I don't.
Speaker 2:It's okay, that's all right, I'll rephrase it what are things that you care about that help you feel as though you're waking up and moving in the right direction, that you're moving the needle forward?
Speaker 4:Looking at deals, looking at a couple of deals per day. Yeah, that's a broker. Outreach is another one. You know, honestly, actually this is what it is. It's more LinkedIn connection requests. So, my, I have my VA, um kind of you know, um targeting my, my target avatar, which is like a senior level engineer who is thinking about doing a real estate, who might have money to invest, and so, um, you know, we try to do like a hundred connection requests a day and then so, that's kind of what I've been going for. So I guess that that's probably it.
Speaker 2:We kind of go First off, you're doing it. Secondly, that answer just knock it out, grand slam, knock it out of the park. Those are metrics that we were looking for. Like that is awesome because it gives us something for the viewers to be able to, or listeners to be able to sort of envision and see what they can be able to do, to write down, to see what can I strive for. So I think that's awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and a shout out to LinkedIn Sales Navigator. I don't know if you guys use it. Huge, huge, great. It's a great way to be able to target your audience. So you can target people that have recently changed jobs. You can target people that have recently changed jobs. You can target people that have posted on LinkedIn. All these things that you know help your connection request. So if somebody hasn't posted on LinkedIn or hasn't touched LinkedIn in 10 years, well, don't even bother sending it to them. Somebody who's recently changed jobs on LinkedIn with the last 6090 days, they have potentially a self directed IRA that you can tap into. So there's certain things that we like to go after.
Speaker 3:So good. There is so much here that somebody that is trained in listening and really is like in with this stuff is going to be obsessed with. And you're so dialed in staying with all your answers here and there's just so much that you're just on top of and you're so just smooth and confident with it and I just absolutely love it. I mean, we went through so many topics and all these varieties and you have every answer that we're looking for and I just think that's so important. I think people need to understand that if you want to be a successful investor, you need to be just like that. You need to have all the answers to what you think you're doing, and if you don't know, that's fine, but you're working towards it. I just love this episode, and so I have two final questions Before I well, hold on. Let me back up.
Speaker 3:I wanna go through some of the things that we talked about, cause there's a billion things. One I wanna dial all the way back to the beginning, when we just talked about your initial auto industry job, the kind of thing going sideways and, after being in all that time, you went into real estate. We talked about the 1% rule, single families, evictions, heading into larger deals. We didn't get to talk about C assets or the rougher stuff, which another day I'd love to dive into that. We talked about loans, your 401k, potentially IRAs, starting as an LP, all the different things with deals, what to look for, what not to look for, masterminds, kpis, and one other thing I just want to circle back to is that getting punched in the face, because a lot of people hear that and they're like, oh, like, yeah, everything's going to hurt, like it's just not that easy. When you actually get punched in the face, it really does hurt and so, like you said, your ability to recover is huge. Anyways, my two final questions.
Speaker 4:For you is one any final advice for somebody listening? And two, where can people get in contact with you? I'll start with the first. Linkedin is a great place. Also, my website, talbot Investments, that's with three Ts, talbot Investments where you can look at all the types of deals that we're currently involved in and any opportunities that, if you are looking to invest, we do have opportunities. What was your first question?
Speaker 3:Any final advice for somebody listening with all the stuff we went through?
Speaker 4:If you want to do larger deals, I highly recommend joining a mastermind. Meetups are great, even to this day. You know, if you want to do larger deals, I highly recommend joining a mastermind Doing meetups. Meetups are great, even to this day. I still find people who are just looking to offload properties. You know, now I'm also buying, so it's really it's an untapped resource. People are afraid to go out to meetups and shake hands. I've definitely gotten over that. I'm sure you guys are definitely getting over that, but you know that's something you got to get over. If you want to be successful in this industry, is you got to be open saying hey, my name's Steven. What do you do? You know that's a good piece of advice. Just go to meetups and just be open and you'll be surprised how many people are open it's definitely in the century who are open to share their story.
Speaker 2:Steven, this has been amazing. Brother, I want to say thank you bottom of our hearts. Having you here with us in Fortune Fire has been an honor, it's been a pleasure, it's been a privilege. Our house is your house. So, very similar to what Cole was saying, we haven't yet dove into like C-class markets and assets and all that fun stuff. So we got more to talk about.
Speaker 2:So you're going to be getting another invite. We're going to be bringing you back here Maybe when we hit season two, just so we can dive more into it and see how your portfolio has grown, see what's new in your world. So again, we want to thank you so much. If you are driving, if you are out there moving, doing your daily commute, get home safely, reach out to us. Cole asked you guys one favor in the very beginning. That was just to leave a review. Whether it's positive, negative, doesn't matter to us. Just leave us a review, let us know your thoughts, let us know because it helps us to be able to target other folks we want to bring in, so we can continue to bring you guys value every single week. With that being said, you guys, stephen, it looked like you wanted to say something, brother.
Speaker 4:No, yeah, so I do have a resource on my website for any engineer out there, any engineer who wants to kind of hear my story. It's tailbitinvestmentscom slash engineer. It's a free download and it kind of just goes over some of the a lot of the things that you know. Engineers, they love spreadsheets, they love opening sell-ins. There's a lot of things in there that go over that you're not thinking of. You're not thinking of the headspace. You're not thinking of all the things that could blow your cashflow a roof, a hot water heater Some of these things that you really should and maybe active investing isn't the best route for you. Maybe you might find an operator and put your money into a passive deal. That's a great way to get involved in investing.
Speaker 2:So, thank you, and, with that being said, I'm actually going to one up and do you one better If you are driving, if you're moving and he did say that and sped right through it we're going to put the link right down below. So all you got to do is, once you get to the office, go ahead, scroll down, click that link, reach out to him Steven Perpimer is an amazing man. Tell him we sent you All right, you guys. Take care everybody, we'll talk to you guys very soon.
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.