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 47: Scaling From Zero to Almost 900 Units Starts With Taking the First Step
What happens when you trade a secure healthcare career for the uncertainty of real estate?
On this episode of the Forge In Fire Podcast, we’re joined by Lee Yoder, Founder & CEO of Threefold Real Estate Investing, whose journey from physical therapist to real estate syndicator shows the power of perseverance, partnerships, and methodical scaling.
Lee’s story began in 2017 with a single house flip while still working his W-2 job. That project revealed a crucial insight: flipping houses was just another job, not the passive income path he wanted. From there, he pivoted to rental properties — starting with a duplex and eventually building a 34-unit portfolio.
The turning point came at the end of 2020, when Lee sold all 34 units, quit his job, and went all-in on syndications. Starting 2021 with zero units, he scaled rapidly through capital raising and partnerships. Today, Threefold Real Estate Investing owns nearly 900 units worth about $70M across Ohio and Indiana, with a focus on value-add multifamily housing.
Lee also shares why he decided to vertically integrate property management, how his team tracks weekly metrics to stay on top of operations, and the mindset he calls the “compound effect” — momentum that builds slowly before accelerating into exponential growth.
Key insights from Lee:
- Why persistence is the most important trait of successful entrepreneurs.
- The role of strategic networking in gaining an “unfair advantage.”
- How to scale smartly without losing control of operations.
Lee’s journey is a reminder that ordinary professionals can achieve extraordinary results by sticking with it, surrounding themselves with the right people, and staying disciplined in their approach.
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 host, nate Farmer, eden, and today I am joined by the one and only Lee Lee. How you doing, brother, Come on stage man. I'm doing great, eden, and today I am joined by the one and only Lee Lee. How you doing, brother, come on stage, man.
Speaker 3:I'm doing great, nate. Thanks for having me man Excited to be here.
Speaker 2:Dude, the pleasure is all ours, man. So please tell me a little bit about yourself. I know that you were dealing in syndication. I know that you had a W-2 back in the day you decided to fire the W-2 job. Shout out to you. Hats off to you on that one. But then tell me about your trajectory, tell me about your journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, man. So yeah, I was a physical therapist going back. I graduated in 2012 with my doctorate in physical therapy, started doing physical therapy, got in with a company it was a startup company. I came in as a physical therapist but quickly kind of rose in the ranks a little bit and was not doing any physical therapy and said I was helping build a division within this company. And, man, love that, I love building a business, I love the entrepreneurial feel of it.
Speaker 3:So when I left that company I thought, man, I don't want to just do physical therapy anymore, I want to do something like this. And so I kind of found real estate at a buddy at church. It was doing. It kind of got more into it reading the books, reading the Rich Dad, poor Dad, listening to podcasts. Thought it might be something I wanted to do. So I started doing real estate on the side in 2017.
Speaker 3:Started by flipping a house. The next year we got a duplex. The next year we got some small multifamilies. The next year COVID hit and doubled our portfolio because of all the money that the government printed. So that benefited us.
Speaker 3:And at the end of 2020, I sold that entire portfolio. It was just three small multifamily properties 34 units total sold them all, took all my profit, put it in my savings account, quit my W-2 and jumped all in. My wife had already quit her W-2 just because we had young kids and she was going to homeschool. We started homeschooling in the fall of 2020 and so she had her w-2 as a nurse and I put my w-2 as a pt and we were all in on uh, homeschooling the kids and buying apartment buildings and we started syndicating in 2021. Um, again, I sold all my stuff so I had zero units heading into 2021. We bought a 45 unit as our first syndication just kept growing, growing, growing and today we have almost 900 units. We started managing them ourselves a couple of years ago, so now we have a property management company that manages all of those almost 900 units. So that's the quick story.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, dude, holy cow, and you sped through a lot of it. So we are going to deep dive into bits and pieces of this, but, man, first and foremost, hats off to you, salute to you on the success thus far. Man, that is huge, going from especially when you're talking like residential to growing, then selling, entering 2021 with zero units and now scaling, and I believe you're at what? Somewhere around 70 AUM, 70 million AUM.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hard to tell. Probably somewhere around 60 to 70, probably.
Speaker 2:Sheesh man. That is a short amount of time to do large strides man. That is awesome. So just hearing some of your story even though it was kind of the abridged version I noticed a lot of similarities. I got started in real estate, so my background is in social work. I still work at W2Job, but I house hacked my first duplex in 2017. So we both got that similarity where we got started around that time. And so tell me a little bit about some of the struggles and some of the trials and tribulations. What it was from deciding that you want to jump into real estate and then let's let's break it up into bits and pieces. One, what it was looking like trying to get into residential and then going from residential into now. I've got to learn this whole new beast at syndication. So talk to me about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, the first one doing residential, just doing the house flip. You know, I had kind of sold my wife after reading and listening to stuff on like this passive income and investing and it was going to improve our lives and just all this stuff, and we did a flip and it wasn't that she's like yeah, this isn't what you explained to me, because the job I left kind of climbing the corporate ladder, very busy job, lots of time in the office, lots of time away from family and my wife and I, you know, didn't feel like that was kind of the life God was calling us to. So I left there. I go back to doing home health physical therapy, which was a very laid back job, probably barely working 40 hours a week, and I took a pretty big pay cut. But then I added this flip on top of it and we made money on it. But really all we did was make the money back that I took in a pay cut and then my hours were about the same because I yeah, while the home health physical therapy wasn't that busy, I added a house flip on top of it and so I was just as busy as I was before, made the same amount of money, as I was, as I did before, and then once we were done with it, it was over, right.
Speaker 3:So it was just like this perfect picture of like, okay, flipping is not investing, it is real estate. It may be a great way to get into real estate, I think. I mean I'm glad I did it, but it's not investing. You don't have any residual income. You don't get done with the project and go okay, now we can sit back and, with very little work, collect rent, pay the expenses and make a profit. That's not what this was. This was, yeah, we made a profit, but we put a ton of time into it and now it's gone and we've got nothing.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I jumped right into the duplex next, and then we got to see that proof of concept, nate, where we did kind of flip that duplex. I mean, we gutted both units, renovated it fully, and that was a lot of work. It was like flipping. But once we were done with that, now we had two renters and the amount they were paying us in rent was enough to cover all of our expenses, including a mortgage, and then have money left over each month and while it was a small amount, certainly not life-changing, not gonna allow us to quit our jobs. It was something and it was gonna be that every month as long as those units were full and so. So that was kind of like, ok, this is now technically a duplex, is still residential, but it's that rental real estate. It's getting into multi units where that proof of concept of like, ok, we're going to make money every month into eternity as long as we hold this and do well with it and keep it rented versus what we experienced with the residential flip.
Speaker 2:Jeez, jeez, I love it, I love it, I love it. I think it's awesome that you're able to do it in bite-sized increments, to where you were able to first do the flip. And I know a lot of people who jumped in the world with fix and flips and they're like you know what? I just traded one job for another one, and it's one of those situations to where you're on that kind of like that circular motion of until I find myself another flip, I'm not getting paid, I'm not making money. And you were able to get out of that race and you were like you know what, instead of doing that, we're going to buy, we'll hold this for a little bit of time, we're going to do the proof of concept model and we'll see if it actually works. And so, with that one, did you burr out of it, or how did that all pan out?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we actually sold it, so didn't even own it a year. I mean, the market was still, you know, going up. It was a good time to buy and sell. So we bought that one in 2018, sold in 2019, didn't even own it a year.
Speaker 2:Did really well on that, but I wanted to take the profits and keep going bigger, so we sold that one. Take the profits and keep going bigger, so we sold that one. Lee, I love that in you, brother, I love that man. So and maybe this will tie into the second piece to some of the trials and tribulations of scaling from residential or small multis into the larger ones, like the 40 plus unit that you closed on first. But what was it like also trying to build a team, because you had mentioned you decided you're doing the pay cut. Did the pay cut traded that in, brought in the fix and flip? Were you also the one swinging the hammer and doing the late nights? Were you just on like the more of the analytical side? Or how did that work? And then, what did that translate into moving forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, going back. You know, start with the flip. I was swinging a hammer, a ton. I kind of kept track of my hours. I put in over 500 hours on that flip.
Speaker 3:Now I hired out like the skilled stuff so plumbing, electrical work, had a guy put in the windows for me and the siding, but I re-roofed the whole thing myself. I re-sheeted all the drywall myself, did have a company come in and finish that, did all the painting, refinish the floors, did the kitchen myself put in cabinets with my father-in-law. So did a bunch of that duplex. Hired out a little bit more help. Had a, had a guy and a girl, uh, two man crew, two man and woman crew come in and help me. So they took a lot of work and it was like, oh man, that was a lot better.
Speaker 3:And then the next one we did was a 16 unit and I hired third party management for that and so they were doing a lot more of the work. And then I was kind of running as a GC on those projects, still doing some of the work myself. But now I had that same guy and girl that helped me on the duplex. They came and helped me in the 16 unit. They brought in a little bit more. So just slowly moving myself out a little bit. But really until we started syndicating I was still very hands-on at the properties, a lot swinging the hammer, a lot, but progressively doing less swinging the hammer myself and more managing those doing that, while still being pretty involved.
Speaker 2:Holy cow, I'm loving this story thus far. Anybody that's listening. I know you guys are going to hate me for this, because I say it on every single episode, but I need you guys to pause this rewind, play this whole thing back, because the information that Lee just dropped is pivotal and vital to anybody's success. What he's explaining right now is bite-sized chunks that he was able to take and be able to figure out where you can sort of scale, when it's applicable, when it makes sense to be able to scale and when it's OK to be able to say you know what. Right now is not the time for me to go ahead and sub everything out. I can handle this and I want to say hats off to you again, man. That is awesome.
Speaker 3:Thank you. Thank you, yeah, it was. It was a wild ride and we just I mean I enjoy doing that stuff. That's what attracted me to real estate to begin with is I enjoy doing that part of it. But yeah, you can't scale if you're the guy swinging the hammer every time, right? So I knew that and I wanted to scale and wanted to build a team and it's fun bringing people in and letting other people benefit from the investments and all that. So I enjoy that part of it. I'll still do it every once in a while now, just because I enjoy getting out and getting dirty a little bit. But yeah, I spend a lot more time managing the team now.
Speaker 2:So now, where I want to take this and I know that this is a topic that a lot of our listeners would love to be able to understand what was it from like a monetary standpoint point and what I mean by that was one you had mentioned after you sold off the 34-unit portfolio. You took that and then dropped that money in to be able to go. But where we haven't yet gone and where we haven't yet ventured is. Syndications also come with quite a few different hats, one of which is raising private capital. So what was that like? Were you raising capital beforehand? Were you just using your own money? What was it like trying to tap into OPM or other people's money? For those that are listening, fill us in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, on the flip and the duplex, we basically just did that with our own money. We used a HELOC from our house because we had purchased our house in 2012,. Right, so by 2017, our house had an increase in value a lot. We did a lot of work to it as well, so we're able to use a HELOC for those. Once we got the 16 unit, we needed a hundred thousand dollars, so we went out and got one investor that was my in-laws and then we the next one we did we put up half the money. A buddy from church put up half the money. Then the next one we did my parents put up some. That same buddy from church, they put up all the money and so we would just split it 50-50. Someone would bring the money and we'd do a joint venture partnership and they were involved, but I would do almost all the work. I found the deal put it all together, did all that. So it's basically I'm doing all the work for 50%, they're bringing the money for 50%. But truly, they were doing some of the work, they were involved, they were active. You have to be active if going to do a joint venture. So those small ones were joint ventures. So then when we went to do our first syndication now it's like, okay, now we need to that first one, we need to raise 550,000. So the most we had ever raised on those joint ventures was, I think, 130,000. So we're stepping way up right, you know, more than four times the amount that we needed to raise for this one, going all the way up to 550,000.
Speaker 3:So then we brought in seven investors into that one and it was still really family friends. The local RIA here in Cincinnati, the Real Estate Investors Association, got a couple investors from that because I joined that and actually I joined that a couple of years before and was a part of the apartment focus group there, so got some attention, some others that wanted to get involved. Yeah, so we did that. And then the second syndication we did we actually had to raise 1.3 million. So another huge jump did bring in an extra partner on that one. He was the guy running the apartment focus group at the RIA and so he had a lot of connections. So he raised a little bit, but we raised most of it and it just, you know, you just grow organically, like you keep telling more and more people about it. So the circle of investors keeps growing. Sometimes they tell other people about it, so they're bringing in, the circle grows, and so that's really how we've done it, from you know, going back to those joint ventures, to the syndications that we do today.
Speaker 2:Dude, I love this so much, so help me bridge the gap on this one as well. So it all really stemmed from reading a couple of books in the very beginning. But then, once you decide you want to get into syndication, into that world outside of, like the, the RIA that you're associated with, were you involved in any masterminds? Or was there any other like circles of friends that you could lean on to be able to say hey, because I remember when I did my first syndication that I didn't know what the heck I was doing.
Speaker 2:Shout out to my partners on the deal. But, man, it was one of those situations where we were like, yeah, we got a 12 unit, we need to raise just a 600,000. Let's figure this thing out. And we just kind of bootstrapped it, but shout out to the masterminds that I was a part of. But we were able to have coaches and mentors to be able to say, hey, all right, mate, calm down, reel it back in, take some deep breaths and here you go, here's that bite-sized chunk, and this is what you need to do consistently, day after day. So did you have folks like that in your corner, or how did that work?
Speaker 3:It was really just the RIA. So the guy that was running the apartment focus group, he had joined those coaching programs, he had gone through them and, you know, kind of gotten the material, gotten the paperwork. So on that first multifamily, the first 16 unit, he really held my hand through the whole thing. I gave him 10% of the deal. He said here's an LOI, you know, send that in. Okay, let's look at the PSA, the purchase sales agreement. Let's go through that together.
Speaker 3:He came out and did the inspection with me. He introduced me to the professional inspector and so, while that wasn't a syndication, he helped me through buying a multifamily. Then, when it came to the first syndication, I said, hey, you know, do you have syndications? He goes oh yeah, go talk to these guys. And they put all the paperwork together. I got on some calls with them. They explained it to me, walked me through it, you know, took me through that whole thing. So I was really just him. I thought about joining masterminds. I think they're awesome. There's some great coaching programs out there. I just I had him, he had done it and he was just handing it to me, so I didn't feel like I needed it. If I had not had him, I would have joined one for sure.
Speaker 2:Dude, I love it, and I mean in all honesty. You got the best of all the worlds. You know those kinds of situations where you found yourself not only somebody that you can learn from and guide from, but also partner with. He's like. You know what you do, all the work you take, all of this. I will do the 10% and I will make sure that we do this thing correctly. You learn from it. Again, salute to you, man. That is awesome.
Speaker 3:I was blessed with him. I was blessed by him.
Speaker 2:So tell me a little bit about and this is a two-part question. It's going to kind of tie together, but what does it look like in terms of what deals you're going after? Is this value add strategy? Do they fall underneath, like the 506 B's or C's? And then the second piece to it is markets. How do you choose markets? Are you only playing in your own backyard? What does that look like today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, basically Nate we just play in your own backyard. What does that look like today? Yeah, yeah, basically, nate, we just play in our own backyard. So I started real close because I was so hands-on so the first few small ones we did were within 20 minutes of my house and I was there a lot. And then even that first syndication, you know it was about 35 minutes from my house. Second, syndication, maybe 45 minutes from my house. So syndication maybe 45 minutes from my house. So yeah, just just, I've always stayed really close because I like to be hands-on and I know the market and their value add, their C-class workforce housing value add.
Speaker 3:You know started with 60s and 70s product. You know trying to move into 80s and 90s product now, but just very much workforce housing value add stuff. We put a lot of money into them, a lot of time into them. We make the properties. I'd say probably, nate, we're taking them from a C to a C plus to a C plus to B minus. We're not doing anything crazy, I can't tell you. We're taking them to a B B plus type property. We're not. They're still just very workforce housing, very affordable, so that you got a good market for that right. People can afford it and we've just stayed in our backyard. Now we've expanded but we're still right here in Ohio and then our neighboring state Indiana. Those are that's where all of our properties are.
Speaker 3:The only other thing I'll say about where we're buying it is we've been very tertiary, like beyond tertiary. So you know, I live close to right next to Cincinnati, ohio, and Dayton, ohio, and then right at the road is Columbus, three great markets. I don't really own anything inside those markets, it's like outside of them. So we're like a half an hour or an hour outside of any of those cities, right, so it's just there's so much competition in those cities I just can't find good deals. So we're kind of pushed out where we're like, hey, our people might work in those cities but they're going to have a drive and we're in a smaller town and honestly I like the government better out there. There's lower taxes, lower restrictions, things like that.
Speaker 3:But yet we kind of feed off of those cities but you're just not going to have the same competition. So we get in a little better price. Now we're going to sell at a lower price as well, so you're not going to have the same exit pop that you wouldn't if you were in Cincinnati or in Columbus, but we're getting it at a much better price. So that's kind of what we're looking for. And you asked about 506B or C. We do B, so I won't come on here and advertise a deal. You've got to get to know me first. So we do some advertising just in general and then we ask people to set up a call with me. They would have to get to know me before we would let them in on a deal that we're doing.
Speaker 2:Dude, I love this so much. Same thing for us. We do the 506Bs, and you had mentioned something a little bit ago yeah, vertical integration and being able to bring in property management in-house. You spent past it that. I want to make sure that we are not speeding past, because that is something that is a huge accomplishment. We were able to bring stuff in-house ourselves and boy oh boy, let me tell you for our listeners that are out there and those that have listened to some of our older podcasts. You guys have heard me talk about the struggles of finding good property management. We we went through three of them within like the first. I think it was the first six months of one of our recent deals and it's just, it's hard to find, but when you're able to get to that point to be able to bring everything in the house, it's like a breath of fresh air because you're able to control so much. So what was that journey like and what made you guys hit that point to say you know what we can do it now we got it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, initially I had no interest in doing property management. I had no interest in it. I wanted to outsource that and never do it myself. Overall okay, but like you, we transitioned, I guess twice we started, yeah, I guess we kind of transitioned twice. And the last they're big and they manage a lot of properties here in Ohio and in the neighboring states and they're good.
Speaker 3:I'd say it was twofold. One we felt like we weren't getting as much value as we wanted. You know the price we were paying for the property management. We didn't feel like we're getting enough value for that price. So it's just too expensive for what we felt like we were getting. We just didn't feel like we were getting enough of their focus, where we kept thinking, man, if it were us, if it were our property management, we'd be all in because we'd only manage our property. So we'd be all in on our properties. Where with them it was like obvious that they were managing tens of thousands of units and we were just a few hundred of those. Right, so they're not, they're not going to focus on ours that much.
Speaker 3:And then we felt like we were understanding it better, like early on. I'm like man, that's so scary, I don't know how to do any of that. Somebody else needs to do that. And after a few years of working with professional property management companies, you start to understand it better and you learn and go OK, this isn't so scary anymore. I've been around this, I've been a part of this for a few years.
Speaker 3:I think we can do it in-house, I mean, another thing I realize as far as that goes is, like you know, most of what we've made is around 100 units.
Speaker 3:So we'll hire a full time property manager and a full time maintenance tech, and so the girl sitting in the office and the guy running around fixing stuff, like they're the ones running the property, and so at one point we realized, well, if we just employed them instead of the property management company, it really would kind of be the same thing. Right, it's still those two running the property. Yeah, you have to provide back office support, but if you got those two, they're going to handle all the calls and all that stuff, right, so that made it less scary. Now it's. It is a ton of work building out the back office support in order to support those people and other people and manage those people and all that. So it's a lot. I don't want to ever start another property management company, but I am glad we started the one that we have today management company, but I am glad we started the one that we have today.
Speaker 2:Oh man, dude, I love it. And, without spilling all of the secret sauce, can you talk to us a little bit about some of the structure, what the team looks like now, and maybe a little bit about some of like the KPIs and like weekly meetings, like some of the markers that you guys are trying to?
Speaker 3:hit. Yeah, that's really important for us. So we have a meeting every Friday with all of our property managers and they report to us the occupancy, the average rent. So when we're doing value add, we want to see that average rent going up slowly over time. We want occupancy to be up around 95% and then we go through a sheet that we call the rent ready and that's the sheet that talks about all the vacant units. So where are they at?
Speaker 3:You know, this one just came vacant. Ok, when are we starting to rehab on that? When are we renovating it? Ok, this one is a middle renovation. When should that be done? How can we get it done? Do we have it pre-leased yet? Ok, these are finished. Do we have it pre-leased yet? Okay, these are finished. Do we have them pre-leased? Why aren't they getting leased? Let's get these filled right. So just kind of the progression of these units. We talk about delinquency and we talk about upcoming lease renewals and then anything else going on with the property, any other CapEx projects, things like that. So those are the things we want to run through and that's me and a regional manager going over that with our property managers each week to keep up on everything.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it so much. Well, there's a segment we have to get to that I refuse to skip over, but there's so much I want to dive into, but I digress. I know we're going to have you back, I know we're going to do more things here, but, with that being said, can you talk a little bit about some of the future outlook? What are you, what are you seeing for your company? Where do you want to see your company going? How do you want to continue to grow? Because, from where you started even from let's just take it from 2017, you first got your hands on the property and you're like, hey, let's try this out. And then it kind of just washed. It was one of those trading the time for money, the money for the time did it? You're like, okay, now we're going to expand. And then you just sort of hockey puck, it was just one of those. It just took off. Now you guys are crushing it.
Speaker 3:Where are you guys going next? Yeah, probably more of the same Nate. I've loved to. I see the benefit of building a portfolio where you can achieve economies of scale right, where you can have some more purchasing power, maybe purchase in bulk the team can. You can share the team. So you got a couple properties close together. Those maintenance guys can help each other out. You know one needs help putting in a sliding glass door or hanging some cabinets. You can get some help from your maintenance tech that's at the property down the road or one of them's off. Well, now you got the other guy that can cover his emergency maintenance requests if he has any. So just seeing the benefits of that.
Speaker 3:We'd just like to do more properties. Now we're pretty spread out because we haven't just focused on just inside Cincinnati, so that's kind of a downfall of our portfolio. So I'm really looking to add more properties close to our other properties so that we can see those economies of scale and so we'll stay C-class value add. We'll stay more tertiary markets in Ohio, indiana. We want to be close to our properties and be hands-on, but just keep building the portfolio so that those economies of scale can make our properties even more profitable, which helps us improve our returns to our investors, and we just want to continue growing our investor base. We've enjoyed doing that, bringing more people in to benefit from our properties and the property management company we've built, and all that. So really just continuing to grow it Nate, that's the goal for the coming years.
Speaker 2:Dude. I love it. I have zero arguments, no complaints about that one man. I think you guys have proven time and time again just how successful your model is and just how strong your team is. So salute to you guys on that. Now the next piece. You're very welcome. The next piece. We do this for everybody. I've got a series of six questions that I want to ask you, and you can answer as succinctly as you like. You can be as long-winded. My goal is to not. I'm not supposed to respond. I fail every time, but I'm going to try this time to not do so. So let me know, are you ready for this?
Speaker 3:All right, all right.
Speaker 1:So, I'm ready.
Speaker 3:Question number one what separates top performing entrepreneurs from the rest of the crowd? Man, I'd say, just sticking with it. I think it's maybe easy for some to get excited and jump in, but it's just, it's going to take some time. I mean, you might have success for a long, but it's going to be small and then it doesn't necessarily lead to more. I mean, you just got to stick with it. If you do, you're going to make it. You're going to do well if you stick to it. But that grit, that perseverance, that's what separates people that do really well.
Speaker 2:And those that kind of flame out or just get disappointed, frustrated and just drop out. I fail already. Beautiful answer for anybody that's listening play this back, because what Lee is talking about is you only actually fail if you quit. As long as you stick with it. They're just lessons and you just turn those lessons into just learning strategies and how to figure out, and, heck, you can be as blunt as just saying once you figure out what not to do, it's not going to do that again, and just that simple.
Speaker 3:That's right, yep.
Speaker 2:Next question for you what is a daily habit that's contributed to your success?
Speaker 3:You know I don't do that good of a job, but time blocking really helps. I heard guys and girls talk about that and that really does help me. So if I decide, hey, when I get up these first couple hours I'm going to do this, or hey, you know, I'm not going to schedule meetings until the afternoon, because my morning block is for this, afternoon block is more for I'm going to have lunches and that's what. I'm going to meet with investors or brokers or things like that, and then after that, man, I'm kind of worn out, I don't feel like doing deep work. That's what. I'm going to take phone calls and do podcasts, because that's easy for me.
Speaker 2:And I enjoy that. It's not like the deep, hard thinking, so time blocking has been, has been a good one. I need to do even I need to do a better job of it because it's been, it's helpful.
Speaker 3:When I do it, I love it, I love it. What's a piece of advice that you give to yourself if you were starting over again, man? A lot of things that you know. The stick to it would be one thing. I'd say just, but I kind of knew that back then. I would just say the importance of networking, man, when you find people that are already doing what you want to do, it's just, you're going to hit a speed burst, you're going to skip steps because it might take you, you know, years to figure out something that somebody that's already done it could teach you in months and hold your hand and get you there maybe in a year, where it would have taken you three to five. So I mean you, man, you can just skip, you can skip ahead. It's kind of an unfair advantage. If you, you know, can get around people and learn from people that have already done it, they're going to help you skip ahead. It's a huge advantage.
Speaker 2:I love it so much, but, nate, you told yourself you're not going to do it. Okay, so what is your favorite business book?
Speaker 3:You know, one that goes along with what I talked about is called the Compound Effect, by Darren Hardy and man. It pertains to any area of life, but certainly business and certainly entrepreneurship and real estate. It's like it's just. It just talks about the compound effect of, like man, if you stick with something and you build up momentum, you can see this, this hockey stick, exponential growth, more than just a linear growth. Um and man, that's to me that's what entrepreneurship is. It's like you're going to do something for a long.
Speaker 3:If you, if you can stick with it and do something for a long time, you may see little growth and it feels like you're just grinding, just pushing so hard and you're not seeing the fruits of all your labor. Man, you're building up momentum. If you stick with it, it's going to take off at some point. You're going to. You're building up all this momentum that's just going to blast you forward. And that book is just. It's really helpful to help people. I think it's just encouraging. If you're in this space, if you're an entrepreneur and if you're getting frustrated, man, read that book.
Speaker 2:I think it'd be really encouraging to you. Thank you for that. I love it. I'm in. What is your favorite part of owning your own business?
Speaker 3:Man, yeah, I love a lot of it. It's, it's challenging, but I I love um, getting to like, I love getting to control my time, um, so I really enjoy working and I do work a lot, but it's it's when it makes sense for me and my family. Uh, so I love that piece of it. But I mean, I don't know as much of the ad or even more, I love that Like we control the outcome and like and then we kind of control our own destiny financially. So that's, that's daunting and that can be overwhelming at times.
Speaker 3:But if we work really hard and we sacrifice and we risk a lot and we invest a lot, we're going to benefit from that. And sometimes if you're at a company, you might feel like you do all those things and you really don't see a reward for it. Probably the guy or girl you're working for sees more of a reward for that, like right, you're building their dream, you're building their company. So the fact that, like all this work we put in, all this risk we take the way we're investing back in the company you know it takes years, so hang in there, it takes years. But years later it's like, wow, we're really benefiting from that now Like it feels like we're benefiting as much as we should, given all the work we put in, all the stress we had to take, all the risk we took on, the benefit is is is real and I love that payoff.
Speaker 2:So well said so, well said, so, well said so. Final question for this part of the segment what is something new that you've implemented that's helped drive the success of your business?
Speaker 3:something new. Nate is uh, I hired an executive assistant and I had some guys recommend I do that. I read a book about it and and that has been awesome. Man, she's been awesome. She's transformed the business in a lot of ways, helped me out so much, got me organized, got me in the right direction, got me cleared up and allowed me to really focus on more of the high level, just the stuff I enjoy, the stuff that moves the business forward.
Speaker 3:So, man, if you can, if you're at that spot I mean, you know, I couldn't have done it a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have been ready for her, wouldn't have enough work for her, but I didn't know if I did now either, and I did. I'm glad she stays busy and she, because I got the right type of person. She finds stuff to do. I mean she, she keeps herself busy. I don't have to constantly tell her that she knows enough of the business now to like, well, hey, I'll just do that, hey, I'll do that, hey, I talked to someone, so I'm doing this, you know.
Speaker 2:And so, man, that's, that's been huge, if you if you think you might be in a spot for it I bet you are I would highly recommend you hire an assistant. Now, I'm not to dig in anyway. So the system that you hired, is this along the same wavelength as like hiring a virtual assistant, or is this somebody like in-house at headquarters, or how's that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, probably similar. She probably does a lot of similar things that a virtual assistant would do, but she lives in my town. I mean, I put up an ad on Indeed and I wanted somebody that was local. I wanted to be able to meet with them. So I do meet with her in person at least once a week. So, yeah, you could probably hire a virtual assistant that would be able to do a lot of the things that she does. I mean, she does like tangible things for us, like printing off a bunch of stuff and getting stuff ready, and we like being in person when we have our meetings. So, yeah, she's in person, actually here, local.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. Hats off to you and the team for that and congratulations to her and Jonathan. It's an amazing team, thanks, yeah. So with that and we've gone in so many different directions and I know we're closing in on time here, but I just have two final questions. One where can people find you? Because I want to make sure that we're going to pin it down below, but I also want you to say it verbally so that way people can go ahead find the links. And then number two especially for those that are too nervous to get off the couch somebody that's got a W2 job building somebody else's dream but has their own, just too scared to do so what piece of advice would you like to leave them with?
Speaker 3:Yeah, man, I appreciate that on sending people my way, because we love connecting with people that are interested in investing in real estate. So you can go to my website. That's threefoldrecom, so the number three spelled out T-H-R-E-E and then F-O-L-D and then R-E-I, as in realestateinvestingcom. We've got a bunch of free stuff there, a bunch of information there, and then I'm really only active on LinkedIn. So look up Lee Yoder on LinkedIn. I'll interact with you there, shoot me a message and then, yeah, for people that are, you know, thinking about getting started, I mean I would start going to some groups and get around people who have gotten started.
Speaker 3:I think that's very encouraging. You're going to meet people that are just like you, meet people that have no more skills than you have, and it's going to be encouraging to you. And then you hear a little bit of their story. I mean, you meet somebody like me, especially if you met me a few years ago, where I just owned a duplex, and you look and you go. I mean this guy, he's a physical therapist. He doesn't have any special skills pertaining to real estate, doesn't even seem to know what he's doing, but he just bought a duplex and here's how he did it.
Speaker 3:And I would have been happy at the time, like but here's exactly what I did. I bought this at the county auction. Here's how you get on the county auction and see if anything's for sale and then you show up here and bid on it. Here's what I did, and I took out a HELOC and I can tell you how I did that. So you know, get around those people, go, go, get around those people. I mean capable you are and how similar a lot of these people are to you and that'll be really encouraging, I think, giving the motivation to go okay, I can take this next step, I can take this first step. Just that he and she did, because they're just like me.
Speaker 2:I can do it too. Oh my gosh, lee, pause, rewind, play this last bit, play the whole episode over, and I love the fact and, lee, I don't even know if you realize what we just did here, but you connected all the dots from the very beginning and all of it really boils down to is making sure that you're just taking that next step. It doesn't have to be a challenge, it doesn't have to be those run and jump off a cliff kind of situations. Talk to somebody that's done it. Run and jump off a cliff kind of situations. Talk to somebody that's done it. Figure out what steps they took, see what works and what's applicable for your situation and then just start moving the needle forward. Lee, I appreciate you, man. This is awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks man, it's been a blast man. I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2:Well, the pleasure is ours, man, for those that are listening, if you are driving, if you are commuting, get home safely. Thank you so much for tuning in to Forged in Fire. Again, we appreciate you guys. Reach out to Lee. He's an amazing stand-up man. He's clearly a fountain of knowledge and he's more than happy to share it. No one's gatekeeping here. We've got years of experience underneath our belt. So, lee, thanks again. Brother, you are welcome. Our house is your house. Anytime you want to come back and bless us with your presence. We'd love to have you.
Speaker 3:Awesome, appreciate that Nate. Take care, man, thank you.
Speaker 2:Anytime you guys take care, we'll talk to y'all on the next episode, peace.
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.