Bob Murray helped grow someone else's staffing company to a $75M sale — then walked away with pennies and vowed to never build someone else's dream again. In this episode, he breaks down how he and his brother went from zero real estate experience to 160 doors, and why he's now gunning for 500 more in just 90 days.
Episode 8: Real Estate Growth, Mindset, and the Right Team with Bob Murray
Most people spend their lives saving money, but the real opportunity comes when you learn how to make money work for you. Real estate investor Bob Murary joins Save to Zero hosts Mike and Zach to talk about building a growing property portfolio, creating systems that scale, and learning how to think bigger.
Bob shares how he went from helping grow someone else’s business to building something for himself through real estate. He talks about buying his first properties, growing to more than 140 doors, and making the shift from real estate investor to building an in-house property management business.
This episode is also about mindset. Bob opens up about being raised to save rather than invest, and how that way of thinking held him back at first. He shares the moment things started to change, why masterminds helped him grow faster, and how his wife's support has made a huge difference as he builds for the future.
“Masterminds have taken me to a different level of thinking, a different level of what my capabilities are. I’m all for masterminds. I think they’re a huge thing.”
“You’re always going to be chasing money if that’s your one goal.”
“Don’t take advice from people who aren’t where you want to be.”
Bob Murray is a partner and founding member of KB4 Property Group LLC, a real estate investment firm based in New Hampshire.
With a strong passion for personal finance and wealth creation, Bob is dedicated to establishing a solid foundation in the real estate sector. Drawing from his extensive experience in sales management, leadership, and business operations, Bob has successfully elevated a company's value from $6 million to $75 million. Motivated by his entrepreneurial spirit, Bob decided to venture into the multifamily space, betting on his own skills and expertise.
Bob's fascination with real estate began in 2014 when he rented his first family home. Since then, he has been captivated by the endless possibilities and has fully immersed himself in the world of real estate investment. With a clear vision for the future, Bob sets ambitious goals to continuously expand his portfolio, aiming to increase the number of units tenfold each year.
Find Bob Murray and KB4 Property Group on Instagram
bob@kb4propertygroup.com
Text Bob at 603-818-1793
For Investors & the Fund – Learn how the Fund works and book a call
For Borrowers & Deals – Get funding and support for your next investment
[00:00.0]
It's kind of like a saying that don't take advice from people that are not where you want to be. Bingo. And that's, that's kind of my, big thing that I think of. Like, if I'm getting advice from this guy, is this guy where I want to be? Because he's not, you know. And the first house, everybody was crazy telling my whole family told me, sell it. Other than my brother.
[00:17.7]
My brother always had it. Just, he was different. He was always like, do it, do it, do it. But I didn't want to sell my first house that I bought. And my dad and everybody else in my family. Oh, you need to sell that. You need to sell that. You're not going to. It's only going to go up by 3%. I can tell you right now I said no. And that's the first time I said no to them.
[00:33.8]
And that is one of my best cash flowing assets and the most equity I have in the, in, in my, in my portfolio right now, I'm one of them. Most people think saving money is the answer, but the truth is saving only gets you to zero. Join Mike and Zach as they flip the script from saving to earning from zero to unlimited potential.
[00:56.2]
Welcome to Save to Zero. Hi. Welcome everybody, to episode nine of the Save to Zero podcast. I'm, Zach Richards, here with my business partner Mike Seidel. And today our guest is Bob Murray.
[01:11.4]
Bob, before we started recording, you were just telling us how one of your first jobs was growing, helping somebody else grow their business from three employees to 80 employees. Tell us a little bit about that and how that worked out for you guys. Yeah, so before this, actually my brother and I, who I'm still in, who I do business with in real estate, we worked for a staffing firm, out of Manchester, New Hampshire.
[01:37.1]
When I first got there, I think there might have been like may say eight, say eight employees. I said three, but I would say like about eight to 10 employees. And we place doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists around the country. And I hustled every day, 9 to 9 in the morning or till whenever the heck I went to bed, you know, 10 at night, 11 at night, every single day.
[01:59.9]
We grew that company for this other, for the owner. We grew it for a sale in 11 years to 8 to 75 million dollars he sold it for. And, and every. Towards the end, I was, I was making money. I was in my 20s. I was making great money for myself.
[02:15.4]
What I thought was a very good accomplishment. I Was able to buy my first house and at 20, 27 years old, was able to buy another house. And I didn't know real estate, but anyway, I always said to my brother, like, we have to do something for ourselves. We are making this guy multi millions came in one day, he gave us a little heads up.
[02:33.8]
But we came in one day, he shook our hand and said, the business sold. Here are your pennies on the dollar and good luck to you. And yeah, we were acquired and Billy, my brother, left, probably within six months after acquisition and I left six months after.
[02:49.9]
And I said to myself, dang, if I knew, if I knew what I knew now, I would have used that money to buy a lot more properties of what I'm doing now in my business. Wow. So did when you, when you like, was it immediately after he sold that you said, yeah, we gotta figure this out.
[03:07.4]
I mean, what, what, took you to real estate or how, how'd you, how'd you go about that? Yeah, so what I did was the last two years there, I knew something was just changing. You know, we were big. I was a vice president of sales at that time.
[03:25.6]
We were just, I just knew that the writing was on the wall, that this guy was older. He wasn't going to sell it to us, nor could we afford it at that time. So he just. I just said to Bill one time like, yo, we have to do something. And Bill started taking the jump and started reading all the real estate books and understanding real estate.
[03:44.9]
And he came up to my desk one day about a year before we got acquired and said, hey, I got this 13 unit, do you want to purchase it? And we're going to need some money, let's do it. So I just said, yeah, I guess it doesn't make sense. How does it look? Didn't know anything about real estate really, other than single family houses that I bought for my family.
[04:03.7]
I was like, all right, Manchester seems cool. We work in Manchester. I see it developing. I know there's a heck lot of homeless, so how can we make money here? You know? And, I said, let's go. So we bought the building and then I started seeing how it works and that's how we jumped in, you know, with the real estate game.
[04:21.2]
But about a year before we sold Zach to circle back is I was ready to do it for myself. I was sick of taking orders. I was sick of being a 9-5-W2. I was sick of seeing the money that I was billing out these do these nurses at and these respiratory therapists at. And knowing that he was making a hundred dollars an hour, well, maybe I was making five on top of each person, you know, that's how it was. Wow.
[04:42.6]
So how many doors do you have now? Once, once we're fully stabilized, we'll be at about like 160, I would say. I think we have about 142, 143 right now, give or take. Awesome. Now with these here, if I'm not mistaken, when we were on pre show, you indicated that you guys actually own the doors.
[05:00.6]
You're not syndicating, you and your brother own them yourselves, correct? No syndication, Just my brother and I. Correct. No JV right now? Nothing like that? No. Awesome. So your long term, are you getting community banks or are you using a national lender? So it's a mix.
[05:17.1]
I do anything, Mike, from sellers financing. I do anything from hard money. I do anything from, traditional, traditional financing. I use any option. I do national, banks. I also do. When I first started, I did local banks in my area of New Hampshire. Correct. Gotcha.
[05:34.8]
So do you have, are you self managing or do you have a property management company or one that you own or that you sub out to? So excellent question. We started with our first like 20, 30 units, learning how a property manager worked by hiring a property manager.
[05:52.3]
And then we said, hey, why don't we do this ourselves? So we grew out an internal, our own property management company. We're growing that out now. At the first year it was definitely a revolving door. Finding that right maintenance manager. Finding that right property manager. Finding that right leasing agent.
[06:08.4]
But right now I would say that we have a team and I call it my A team, but it took me about a year and a half to find them and I'm growing in house property management team. I handle all my own properties myself or ourselves. That's interesting. Are you guys considering it all at some point in the future, do you have any of the plans to go vertical and take on other people's properties as well as.
[06:30.4]
I think that is definitely a discussion that we've had a few times. We are not ready for that right now, by any means. We are learning and we are growing fast. Like anything. But yes, to answer that shortly, I am because I see the opportunity out there, especially in New Hampshire where a lot of other landlords may have 20 or 30 units and need that help.
[06:50.6]
So yes, I'd love to grow that part of the business. Right now we are really focused on growing our own portfolio very heavily to keep everybody. Well, they're busy enough at 150 units, say. But yeah, only ask. Have you ever considered having somebody come in and giving them a chunk of the business to grow the property management side for somebody who already knows how to run a property management company, but they're stuck in a situation like you were with the staffing agency, where you bring them in and don't necessarily have them sign on a piece of paper, but they have full access, to the financials, and you say, okay, you will get 10% of net profit or 25% of net profit.
[07:28.7]
And that way they're running it. Yeah. And you're out. I think that's an excellent idea. I think that's something that we are not needing, or should I say, we have not thought about in detail yet, Mike. I think that's an excellent thing because that would definitely help us out and excel us.
[07:43.9]
Depending on how fast we buy and how quick we're buying this year. We have certain goals to hit this year, and I think that definitely is something that. That really we should look into a little bit, Mike, realistically, Because that was a very smart approach. Okay, well, what you want to do is, like, when that guy sold the business for 75 million, once you sell the property management company, if you do that, show a brother some love that he gave you the idea.
[08:08.2]
Yeah, you know, I'll think of that, man. I'll put pennies on the doll like my last guy did. You can't do to me what he did to you. Show brother some love. Absolutely. Absolutely. We have. We have big. We have big ideas and big plans.
[08:24.0]
It's doing the right steps to get there, you know, like. Like, we definitely have. We definitely want to get there. I definitely. We have thought about something, similar to that of giving equity on certain. On certain projects or certain parts of the property management company.
[08:39.1]
We have thought about that. To show them. To show them love. Like, you're not just going to be. Because that was what hurt us. You're not just another guy that. That's just gonna work your life away. There's gonna be some type of advancement for you that you can say, oh, I'm working towards this end goal. I'm working towards something that I can cash out or be involved in growing this business in a different aspect than just getting a bonus at the end of the year, you know?
[09:03.1]
Well, I know a guy out of Missouri, and what he does is when he hires employees, if they stay with him for 10 years. He guarantees them $100,000 bonus if they stay for 10 years. There you go. That's awesome. Do they have way to do. So how did, how does he. How does he. If someone just sits around for 10 years, hopefully he has a, process for KPIs to know if they're hitting it.
[09:23.0]
I am 100 positive that he has KPI. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So you mentioned, what, 90 days you're gonna, you want to get to 500 units? Is that what you said? That's our BHAG, which means big, hairy, ambitious goal.
[09:38.8]
You, you know, that's a stretch goal, but yeah, I want to get another 500 units on my portfolio, in the next 90 days starting, starting January 1st. Give me some break in December, but that's what I want to do and. Wait a minute. I'm sorry, did you say you have a buck 60 now? I have a. Yeah, a buck once after stabilization, once we've done our rehabs.
[09:56.4]
Yeah, we'll have a buck 60. Correct. So you're going to more than double your size in six months? Yep. In three months. That's what I want to do. 90 days. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. 90 days. Okay. Wow, that's going to be. Do you have stuff in the pipeline? Is that right? 90 days is three months, right, guys?
[10:12.1]
Yeah, I'm looking at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do have some stuff in the pipeline. We need to, we need to think bigger. That's what we're thinking. Like, we got to think bigger. Like, our goal was to get to 200 units by the end of this year. We hit 160. But if our goal was 500, we would have set up different structure of our business to get to 500.
[10:30.2]
So we need to, we need to think bigger. We. You know, my coach, catching Mike catch, and he, he's really training us to think bigger. And I got to get that mindset as well. So if I look at it this way, I will hit 500. I'm going to get to 500. How do I set up my SOPs and my procedures, of course, to get there and to be set up for my business to be able to hit 500.
[10:52.8]
That's how I'm starting to think. You know, it can't be my, Myself. You know, maybe we don't have any partners. We don't have any. We don't do jv. And it's our own buildings. I mean, it's our own. It's our own money. But at the same time is do we have to JV to get a 200 door portfolio?
[11:08.3]
You know, how do we get there? Like you said, with the property management company, that was smart. Like, how do we get to that so they can really take us to the next level and go from there? Sure. Well, it's interesting you hit upon something because you said you working with Mike Ketchin as your coach as part of his mastermind, I assume. Yes.
[11:26.6]
Are you in other masterminds? Because I know for me, and I think this pretty much holds for people, is you get into the frame and you can't see the picture. When you're inside the frame, you need to get out and do two things.
[11:41.8]
Have somebody else look in and see things that you don't see because you see things in a certain way. But also there are certain things that you may not have thought was possible and somebody's doing. You're like, man, I never thought of that. That's brilliant. So do you find yourself running into that with masterminds? Absolutely.
[11:59.7]
Mastermind is the best thing I've done. Even in my last business, I was in certain groups that brought me to the next level for somebody else at the end of the day. But absolutely. Like, I met Zach. I met Zach at this Matchman. I've learned a lot from Zach. You know, I've learned a lot from Zach about funding, about how he does his stuff, how he's helped out people.
[12:18.3]
Mike has brought in Zach. Mike has talked excellent about Zach. It's really being around the right people. I made friends that. I've made some of my best deals just off somebody that, hey, I don't want this. Do you want this? Absolutely. I'll take this and vice versa. Give and take. You know, the mastermind has taken me to a different level of thinking, a different level of what my capabilities are, you know?
[12:40.9]
Yeah, I'm all for masterminds. I think it's a huge thing. I think you need to be around. You need to be. I shouldn't say the dumbest, but you need to be the. You can't be the most. The smartest person in the room, if that makes sense. It's an old saying. Everybody knows it, but it's true.
[12:56.1]
I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I want to be out there and I want to get things rocking with people who've been through the weeds, people who hit their head against the wall so I can get through that damn wall faster, you know? Yeah. I got to tell You. I've never had a problem with being the smartest person in the room, so I'm good with that.
[13:12.5]
You're here with this room, so don't make me do a spelling bee, okay? I'll fail.
[13:22.0]
No, but I'm with you on masterminds. I think when I think of the masterminds that I'm in, plus travel and so on, I probably spend six figures. I know I do. I spend six figures a year being a mastermind and the growth that it gives me. And, you know, and in my other. My business as a lender, I don't do any advertising, and I have people lined up to borrow money from us, as does Zach.
[13:44.0]
So, yeah, masterminds every day of the week. I'm with you 100%. Now, how did you find out about them? Actually, he was just a local on Instagram. I know my brother, when he jumped, like I said, six months before me, he met him somehow.
[13:59.2]
And, then Bill was talking about him. I said, oh, I'll give it a try, you know, let's do it. He took us under his wing, and we started doing really well. And he showed us when he actually first met me, he came in, some suede shoes or something. He thought I was just a handyman at the property.
[14:14.6]
I found this great deal. It was in a location that we love. And I'm sitting there like, you know, sweatshirt, and just. He thought he was. He was talking to my brother, walking around the property, and I'm walking behind him, and he's like, okay, so is this your maintenance tech? I said, no, I found the property. I'm the owner of it too, you know.
[14:33.3]
So, yeah, it was. That's. That's how it was. But we built a good relationship. It's a strong relationship. So he's teaching us, and, he's seen us grow. So, yeah, we're really doing it. You know, we're really trying to get up there faster. That's cool. Well, what kind of.
[14:49.2]
I mean, if you're trying to do. That's a huge goal. And so what, like, what kind of systems do you need to build? What kind of changes do you need to make? Like what? Because you got to do some. You got to pull some pretty big lever levers to hit. To hit that goal. So. So right away, I need to think bigger.
[15:06.8]
And with that is the levers I'm pulling is the property management team. I call it my A team now. They have to be able to run every project locally they have to be able to. I don't want to get a call for or look at our, our system, our CRM system and see these tasks or work orders coming in from my tenants and even have to look at it.
[15:24.2]
I want it just completed because that's going to give my time and buy my time back to get on the acquisition side. And then I also want to hire another acquisition person because I like the sales aspect. Okay. And I feel that's where my strong point is. Okay. So I want to hire another person under me that I'm training.
[15:40.9]
I want to get out there with my, my brother and I to do acquisition, to do, brokers, relationships, you know, who is funding el check, who knows the market. You know, I have to buy, for example, CoStar. We have to think bigger because all we have is a thing called Crexi Intelligence right now. And I hate it.
[15:56.7]
I got sold it. You know, sales guy gets sold, of course. So, so I need. So CREXI Intelligence was giving us data and comps of all the properties that sold and what their mortgage is, what their interest rate was when they're due, all of that. But CoStar can give me better stuff, is what I'm hoping for when I get my training on that, to bring it to the next level so I can find more deals, more brokers, more relationships off, off market sellers.
[16:22.1]
If I'm on the phone every day, that's what I got to do. And Billy can focus on more the financials, the underwriting everything to a T on bigger units. That's where I'm going at. We have to focus on get off the road, get off the evictions, get off the small, you know, changes of this, that and the other thing and get right into acquisitions.
[16:40.2]
Cause you only, you're only going to grow if you're really getting out there on the phone and building relationships. I feel absolutely, you guys need to make it rain. You can't be cleaning up the rain when it rains. You're going to make rain. Exactly, exactly. And you told me you're looking at other areas in the country too, right? You do.
[16:55.9]
Beyond New England. So we are now, we're about to sign something else in New England right now. It's a really good deal, for us, but other than that, if something great comes open in our area that we already have properties in New England, I'll buy it. But I'm really trying to focus on like 50, 100 units.
[17:13.8]
I'm trying to focus on like, I'm not going anywhere. If I don't, if, if it's less than 50 units, I just have to, I have to buy a 50 unit portfolio or more. It's not gonna make sense for me to go just say in South Carolina, say, to only buy 20 units. What property management company out there, you know, because I'm going to have to hire a property management company to start off and get my wheels running to that's only going to want 20 units.
[17:36.2]
They're going to want, they're going to look at me and say, what are you doing? I'm not just going to give you all these great prices for 20 units, but if I do 50 or 100 portfolio, maybe I spark some interest, you know. Yeah. So do you know how you're going to get those deals funded? I mean that's going to take a lot of money. Even if you're getting, say you get 80% of the loan from a community bank, like you got to build now a whole strategy for correct raising capital or raising capital.
[18:00.3]
So, so talking to you, Zach. So there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that we have a plan for the financials and how we're going to get there. For example, we have a lot of equity in our buildings. Do we, are we going to do a cash out refinance and pull some money out? You know, we're doing a cash out refinance right now that's closing on the 30th of December.
[18:19.6]
We're taking out, I actually wrote down the numbers. We're taking out 775,000, 700,000 actually 700,000 about around that tax, free. So we're going to have 700,000. I've also done friends and family raising, so I don't have any JVs, but I've done a debt fund, with my family and friends and we have raised money on that as well.
[18:43.4]
So we're sitting on a nest egg to really deploy some of this capital that we have. That's what we're, that's how we're doing it. That's. So to answer your question, that's, that's how it's going down. And then with the funding, if we have to do hard money, we have to find national banks, we have to find national hard money guys that are willing to, to give us the hard money for say a certain percentage down and then we're going to force appreciate everything in eight to 12 months, refinance and Keep that money rolling.
[19:13.8]
That's how we're doing it in New England. That's how we're succeeding. So I'm just wondering, if you're going to go into different states, what management systems do you have in place other than the property management?
[19:28.9]
Because I would think that's difficult in, you know, a thousand miles away versus it's right down the street. And I don't know, I'm just curious. No, absolutely. So the systems that we have, obviously we have to buy something for acquisitions to find the right properties. Right. We have to find brokers, we have to find agents, we have to find everybody in the market that really wants to work with us.
[19:47.2]
But in addition to that, we have a system where people automatically pay online. It's called door loop. So we use door loop, which tracks everybody's work orders. Tenants pay online. They keep track of our buildings. They say, where our most problems are.
[20:03.0]
Is it plumbing, is it heating, is it, structural or leaks? It keeps track of every property and how much percentage we have to kind of budget for that problem of that building. Building. Okay, but outside of that, if we do go somewhere else and buy 50 to 100 units, Mike, I feel that we're going to have to use a system that is running from a property management company themselves until we finally get boots on the ground.
[20:27.3]
Because our goal would be to develop an area. We're not going to be scattered around. If we find 100 units, we're going to start working in a, say, 20 mile radius in that area. So we can then build our boots on the ground as well. Well, have you considered. Because what you're explaining to me is all digital as far as, tracking the work orders and so on and so forth for each of the doors and the properties, et cetera.
[20:53.1]
Do you really need a property management company in town or do you need Chuck with a truck in town? Yeah, well, and you know, he's your boots on the ground. And you're actually running everything from New Hampshire. But you've got some local boots on the ground, so you don't need a full fledged property, management company there.
[21:10.5]
Yeah, that's right. That's excellent thinking, honestly. I think that we really do need more maintenance managers on the ground because we have our systems in place. We need someone to get out there and serve evictions, meet our tenants, which tenant is good, which tenant is bad. We need to get.
[21:25.9]
We're going to have to fly out there ourselves is what I'm thinking to start with. Until we get real big, but I'm going to have to look at the properties. Where can we add value, where can we add units? And we're going to have to meet somebody with boots on the ground. Of course, I think a property management company to get started, to really see how they run things out there and to see what, they bring to the table with their software systems may be a little bit more beneficial.
[21:49.8]
So I can still focus on my acquisitions as I go. Because if I'm going to try to get boots on the ground, I've done it here and I've done it here in New Hampshire. And it takes a while to really make sure you have the right team and the trust and making sure when you're buying the product that they're picking it up, they're not skimming off the top.
[22:07.2]
Maybe, you know, and, and maybe that's a trust issue for me. So maybe that's a, maybe that's a, downfall on my side. But at the same time, it's going to take a while when I want to buy that property and then go right to the next and go right to the next. And I think a PM company at the first year is going to help me be able to keep on calling.
[22:23.7]
Cause I'm not gonna hit 500 units if I'm digging down and finding Joe Schmoe who can bang a ham rather than really look at the value of everything else with evictions and all that good stuff. Fair enough. Okay, that makes complete sense. So do you have an ultimate goal on how many doors you wanna have and how far you wanna go with this?
[22:39.3]
I have an ultimate goal of financial freedom, Mike. I just wrote down my goals in the last week from a seminar or from a training I went to. I have a financial freedom number. I have a financial, goal that I want to hit. I, I, I don't care if it's a thousand doors.
[22:54.5]
I don't care if it's 200. Well, now I don't care if it's 500 doors or 2,000 doors. I care about how much each of that door makes for, for, for, net operating, you know, so, how much it makes, you know, cash flow. Because I can have somebody can have a thousand doors, but only make zero on them, say, or $2 on them.
[23:13.8]
I want to make 500 bucks a door, you know, so everyone will say, like, when I first got into this, it was scary. People, like, I have 200 doors, and then I find out they're only making 20 bucks. 20 bucks a month on that door when I could be making 500. Unless, trust me, they. People scare you in this business when you first get in. I'm like a deer with headlights. When I first got.
[23:30.2]
And I still am in many meetings, but these guys, I thought they were rich as ever. They have 200 doors. Wow. You know, that's not that. That's not the case. You start to find that out. But, my. My financial. My financial freedom. I have a financial freedom goal to be with my family more. I'm working around the clock right now. I can't say I'm not.
[23:46.1]
You know, I want to see my girls by the time, you know, they're five and two, I want to be able to really, five days a week, check in maybe two hours a day and just keep on moving, you know? Gotcha. Understand. Yeah. But what I can tell you, having started my first business in 1987, this is my third one.
[24:05.0]
Is it can be addicting. Yes. So to be able to pull back and not get addicted to the dopamine rush of closing that next deal. We're gonna do a thousand more. Yeah. And it can get very exciting. Yep, exactly. And there's a letdown. There can be a letdown.
[24:20.2]
When I sold my first business, I took five years off, and I just wasn't having the mental stimulation. So I've got the financial freedom, but I need the stimulation. So I'm not. I'm still not 100% sure what the balance is. Yep, absolutely. And I think you figure it out, and it's. You know what?
[24:37.9]
It's so true. I made a certain money on W2, and I was like, oh, when I make this, I'm going to be very happy. And then I needed to make 100 more then, whatever, 100 more, you know, And I was like, oh, wow. But now I can do this and that. And then all of a sudden, you can never go backwards and live off of, say, you know, whatever it was at the beginning.
[24:53.2]
When you're 25, I could never live off that again. It's crazy. But you thought when you were there, you could live off that forever, you know? Yeah. If I just make this, I'm Set. I don't have to have any more goals. I'm done. Exactly. And I think you touched on a really important thing that it seems like for you, and this has been a very common theme, is that financial freedom.
[25:10.8]
It's not about the money. You said you wanted to spend more time with your family and all that. Yes. That's huge. Correct. That's what a lot of people think. That, oh, people are just chasing money. And I mean, there are some people that definitely do that. Absolutely. Now, don't get me wrong. Not really.
[25:26.2]
There's a certain amount of money that I need to make in the back of my head. And I chased money. I chased money. But at the end of the day, it's gonna be infinity money for always. You can always go to the next level. The next level. You're always going to be chasing money if that's your one goal.
[25:42.3]
And I have learned that you, you're never going to be happy. I was at this. I was at that. Oh, I still wasn't happy. I, really want to be better, dad, you know, better. Better everything I can with my family. That's really what I want to do. Yeah. It's interesting.
[25:58.4]
When people don't have capital, they don't have money, or they choose to stay as a W2, they always, It's common for them to think people who want more money or growing their business and their capital, all they care about is money. And they're not able to see the other side of it that.
[26:15.3]
Wait a minute. Money buys your way out of a lot of problems and fixes a lot of problems, fast. And it gives you the freedom so that you can choose what you want to do. For example. I'm not going to do that. Well, it's going to pay you X amount of dollars. Yeah. I just don't want to do it.
[26:31.4]
I remember, hearing a story one time about Richard Branson where somebody offered him, and I don't know the exact number. So just. It's the story, not the exact numbers that I'm focused on here. They offered him, say, 250, 250k to speak for an hour. And it went back and forth like five times.
[26:48.5]
And they offer. Ultimately ended up offering like a million and a half dollars for 15 minutes. And his assistant finally came back and said, sir Richard Branson wants to thank you one more time. But he wants to let you know that he only focuses on one thing at a time. And speaking at your event is not his one thing. Yeah.
[27:05.9]
So thank you. Have a nice day. Yeah. He just had to say no. Right, right. 100. That. That. That's how you can choose it. Yeah. Financially easy to get distracted. It is. And you can choose what you focus on. 100. I'm all over the place, you know, and that's where I got to dial it in.
[27:23.5]
You know, it's kind of like they talk about in real estate. Your buy box. Right. I'll try to buy anything I possibly can, but if I'm focused on a duplex, I can't be focused on a 40 unit, you know. And if I'm focused on you know, it just depends on what your buy box is. At the end of the day, you, there's a hundred different ways to go.
[27:38.9]
I want to open up a bagel shop at one of my commercial buildings, but is that going to make sense for me? You know, I want to do that right now. No bagel shop. You're just looking for discounts. Don't be cheap. Buy the damn bagel. How many duplexes is it going to take you to get to 500 doors? Right.
[27:55.9]
It's not going to happen. Exactly. Not only that, the amount of time it takes you to find an underwrited duplex is probably not much less than what it would take you to find an underwrite. Find 50 or 200 doors. Absolutely. And the, the, the the wind that you're going to have from that and the windfall is going to be much greater.
[28:15.1]
So yeah, I'm with you man. If it takes a think about. My God, can you imagine find 50 duplexes versus one 100 unit. Exactly. Because then you have one roof to fix. Well, you'd have multiple property, multiple buildings, but nonetheless.
[28:30.4]
Oh yeah, yeah. Think big. Find property managers for a 50 unit building versus. Yeah, 50 duplexes, one building. That's, that's what we're looking at. Like how do we make. So we're growing, right. Like we ask ourselves, what would a property management company want?
[28:48.2]
Would they want seven or eight different buildings? Would they like one big building? You know, how can we go for what we're going for and then what they're going for, they're going to, if you call them up and say, hey, I have 100 units and they're scattered throughout a 30 mile radius or you're going to call them up and say, I have one big building right here. This is it.
[29:05.1]
They're going to love that, you know. So how do we make everybody's life come together and get it going, you know? Yeah. And it's much cheaper for them because their, their overhead costs because they're driving one building for the day instead of driving around town. Correct. Definitely. Much more appealing. It's all around, it's more appealing all around.
[29:22.4]
Everything from even ordering material from a guy who was ordering material for the first two, three Years in this. It's one building to get delivered. You're not going to have too many mistakes. Take us a little bit. We talked about this again before we started recording, but a little bit back to your background. Like, were you.
[29:38.4]
Did you grow up as a saver, or did you always have an investing mindset? Or how. How did. How'd you get there? I grew up with a whole bunch of family members that were naysayers. I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that. Oh, why would you spend your money on that house?
[29:53.5]
You are saving so much money. Buy out your house. Buy off your house. I was a. I was an extreme saver, Zach. I'm talking coupons, Coupons before I go to the grocery store. I'm talking, if I couldn't get a deal, I wasn't going for it. In a saver two, I was not an extremist.
[30:12.6]
I'd spend money here and there, but I was a saver. I was. If I knew how to use my money, if I knew how to make percentage on my money, if I knew how to invest, if I knew anything about that, I would have. You never. You know, you can't beat inflation, per se, other than real estate.
[30:28.0]
I feel realistically, you know, I was an extreme saver, Zach. I can tell you stories. Like, for example, when I bought my first house, right? I'm 27 years old. I was making decent money for myself. Okay? There was two houses that came in my development, and I'm in a good area of New Hampshire, Salem, right on the border. Right?
[30:48.0]
30 minutes from Boston, 30 minutes to the beach, one hour from the mountains. And there was two duplexes that came open. And I was like, oh, Dad, I should really get them. I have the cash. I have the cash. Well, no, no. Pay off your house. Pay off your house. No mortgage. No one can take anything from you.
[31:04.1]
You can tell everybody to pound sandbob. Pay off your house. Pay off your house. So I was like, okay, so, I wanted to pay off my house. I didn't end up paying off my house. But he also got me out of not buying those duplexes. They were for, like, $250,000, right? Now, I drive by them every day, every day, and I just want to hit myself.
[31:23.3]
They're easily 800 to 900,000 less than six years later, you know, and they're. They would cash flow. I kept my first house, so. Yeah. And that's how I thought. So everything I want to do. No, don't do that. No, don't do this.
[31:38.7]
You know, hey, I'm going to put my money over here in this investment or even. No, just deal with the 401k. That's all you should be doing, dude. What? What? Yeah. You know, I noticed when I want, when I was going to start lending, just talking about it with like friends and family. Way back before I even did my first loan, a bunch of people tried to talk me out of it.
[31:58.6]
And then I realized that all these people trying to talk me out of it, nobody had any money. It was just people that were broke were trying to talk me out of it. Then I said, wait a minute, I'm going to do the opposite of what all these people are saying. It's kind of like a saying that don't take advice from people that are not where you want to be. Bingo.
[32:16.5]
And that's, that's kind of my big thing that I think of. Like, if I'm getting advice from this guy, is, this guy where I want to be? Because he's not, you know. And in the first house, everybody was crazy telling my whole family told me, sell it. Other than my brother. My brother always had just. He was different.
[32:32.6]
He was always like, do it, do it, do it. But I wanted to sell my first house. And I mean, I didn't, I didn't want to sell my first house that I bought. And my dad and everybody else in my family. Oh, you need to sell that. You just sell that. You're not going to. It's only going to go up by 3%. I can tell you right now I said no.
[32:48.8]
And that's the first time I said no to them. And that is one of my best cash flowing assets and the most I have in the, in, in my, in my portfolio right now. I'm, one of them. Well, there you go. That's a clue. If you want to know what to do, ask those people and do the opposite of what they tell you.
[33:03.9]
Yeah, there you go. There you go. Exactly 100%. So was there a moment then you felt your mindset, like, change? Did one straw break the camel's back? Yeah. You know what's been positive lately?
[33:20.0]
Actually, I can tell you something that really wants me to take off now is my dad was always a naysayer. And when we first got into real estate, my brother and I full time and left our jobs because we could have stayed after acquisition, you know, we could have definitely stayed. But he started all of a sudden seeing the, writing on the Wall.
[33:40.4]
Maybe it was his friends from his diner that he's at every day, you know, the locals. But, but he started seeing the writing wall. Now he's like, oh, yeah, this makes sense. This makes sense. Hey, do you guys need this? I can help you out, do this, you know. So now he's seeing, all right, these guys are full time and they're putting in the work.
[33:57.5]
I see what they're doing. We had a building that we bought, on a seller's financing deal. And we bought it for an extremely low percentage, extremely low money. And we made. In two years, I think we pulled out around a million dollars or, $500,000.
[34:13.5]
And plus it's cash flowing well over 100, well over six figures, you know, or should I say 100,000 or more? Cash flow plus $500,000 out. So he started to see that and he started, like, putting that together. So to turn his mindset. That's when, like, the bell switched on me.
[34:29.7]
I know, but I was like, okay, I can just keep on going and keep on doing this. Then he started investing us. And really, I, I don't know, like, maybe it's boyish of me or, or, or, or weird. I just. Once I had my dad on my side, I'm like, all right, let's go, let's do this. But even when I was younger, Zach, to answer that question, is when I was bought my first house.
[34:48.5]
And that was when a bell clicked and I said, okay, I said no to these people. Now I'm cash flowing, I have equity in the building. And these people were wrong at what they were telling me. So that was another, like, I just didn't know how to use that power at that time to keep on building it.
[35:04.4]
Yeah, that's cool. Then when you finally convince your dad to invest with you guys, right? That it was working. Yeah, exactly. So, that's really got us moving. And, you know, that was one of many things, that's happened in the right direction.
[35:19.7]
So people start, you know, everybody hating on you until you start seeing, Seeing success. And everybody's hating on until all of a sudden they say, wow, this kid's actually doing something that he said he was gonna do or working. Yeah, like, yeah, no shit, I'm a beast.
[35:34.7]
You know, we're gonna be both. Has anybody said to you, man, you're lucky? Oh, I hate that. I absolutely. Oh, yeah, Mike. When I'm working at 11 o' clock at night some nights, trying to, trying to close this deal or trying to make Sure. I get everything in line. Yeah, you're lucky. Okay.
[35:51.3]
Okay. Yeah, exactly. Or they say, man, you're an overnight success. Wait a minute. Where were you for the last six years? Yeah, get out of here with that. What's up with that? Exactly. Exactly. Something we've talked about. I know, I've said it to Mike Catching a few times. When, when somebody says, oh, must be nice. Yeah.
[36:07.0]
Mike Hay. That's another one. Must be nice. Yeah. Listen, not every night I'm sleeping on the pillow dreaming of, oh, wow, I'm so rich. I'm not rich, buddy. I'm hustling like everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. So the only response to that is, yeah, it is.
[36:23.6]
What do you even say? 100. Must. Must be nice. Must be nice. What, like, you know. Yeah. That you worked, how many weekends and nights you worked and all the stuff you missed and the vacations you didn't take and all that. Yeah, real nice.
[36:39.0]
Yeah, 100. I agree with you on that one. I agree with you. It's kind of like people are always, like, kind of looking at, oh, well, I wish I was that. Well, take the jump and try to make it happen. You know, the people who take the jump sometimes, sometimes hit it right. If they have the right structure, you know? Yeah. Well.
[36:55.5]
Yeah. What I've said to people before and to family members, listen, you're sitting home watching Netflix on a Saturday. That's cool. I'm in the office. Yeah. So you got the benefit of watching reruns of Cheers 15 times. And I built a system that. That's going to create more capital.
[37:12.0]
So you got joy out of what you did. I'm getting joy out of what I did. So was I lucky? No, we just went down a different path. You want to watch reruns of Cheers? Go for it. I'm going to build something so that when I'm flying first class, isn't it nice?
[37:27.4]
Damn straight it is. Because I work for it. Exactly. See, I love it. And, yeah, 100% I agree with you on that. And that's the thing that people don't understand is they don't see, like, I do enjoy work. I just have to work. That's when I talked about the financial freedom earlier, of course.
[37:45.7]
But I know at the end of the day, I just like to work. I do. I like accomplishing the next step. Or did I have a productive day or was it a busy day? Because if it was busy, that means I was 8. I used my ADD all over the place, but it was productive. I Go home and be like, all right, today was a good day. I made some progress, you know.
[38:00.8]
Well, let me ask you a question, though, because you just hit upon something like that, because I think all entrepreneurs have that issue is the chasing. The. Chasing the bunny rabbit. Oh, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. Maybe I can do this. How do you keep yourself focused? I have a mentor that tries to keep me focused. Simple as that.
[38:17.7]
I have a mentor that tries to keep me focused. How do I stay focused? Is I just kind of draw on my vision board. I have a mirror every morning when I wake up. What's my vision for the day? You know, what's my vision for the month? What's my vision for the quarter? So I have to remind myself of what am I trying to get at right now?
[38:33.9]
It's 500 units in the next 90 days. How am I gonna get there? You know what's gonna happen? It's gonna stop me from doing that duplex when I should be going for 40 or 50 units. How am I gonna get there? Vision board. Every morning. Every morning I wake up, I have vision board on my bathroom mirror where I brush my teeth. And that's how I run. What I do is I have pictures that you can't see around my computer. I'm sorry.
[38:54.2]
They're on my screen. And there are things that I wanna do. And what that does is that keeps me focused. So if it's the end of the day and I'm tired and I look to the right here, and I see a picture of Mount Everest. Cause I wanna walk. I wanna trek to Everest base. And I look at that and I go, okay, so I can do X or I can work a little more, and I'll get.
[39:15.7]
I'll be closer to my goal. So, yeah, I'm not going to watch Netflix. I'm going to work another hour so I can get closer to my goal. There you go. So I keep myself focused. That's a great point. Great idea. But I got to be honest with you, it doesn't work 100% Listen, you got to have a light.
[39:31.4]
You got to have a life, too. Like, when I'm in the truck, something similar to that is something that takes me to the next level, is I want to listen to music. I want to jam out to J. Cole. I want to jam out to all of the good stuff, country music. But I. I have to listen to a podcast I make myself. You have to listen to a podcast, you have to listen to a A book. I have to be.
[39:49.9]
I have, because I drive a lot, you know, not. Not as much anymore, which I haven't even drove at all in the last, you know, four or five weeks, which is great. But always listen to a podcast, shut off the music, listen to podcasts. Unless I got the kids in the car. I'm listening to Elmo, but we're all good with that. You know what I hate is if I'm in the shower and I apologize for the visual, but I'm in the shower and I listen to a podcast, and they say something that I want to take a note on. I go, damn.
[40:16.4]
And I actually get out dripping wet, and I take a note on my phone, and I jump back in the shower, and Lois will come in. What the hell happened to the floor? And now she's figured it out. She said, oh, you had a couple of good points, And I have to dry the whole floor because it came up with some good ideas. Yep.
[40:31.8]
Yeah, I'll be in the car with my wife and something. I'll be listening to a podcast. She's just sitting there, and then. Yeah. Oh, there's a good thing. Can you text me that so that I can remember when we get to where we're going? Like, I need you to write that down for me. Yeah. Lois sits with her phone now, and she's waiting.
[40:48.7]
I'll look at her go, oh, that was a good one. Did you get it? Yeah. I'll see.
[40:55.1]
I agree with that for sure. That's hysterical. Yeah. Well, let me ask you a question. How does your wife do, as far as, you know, support you in your goal, in what it is that you're working on, to create a life for yourself and your kids and her? Great question, actually, great question.
[41:12.4]
I would not be able to do this without her. She is a chief operating officer of a marketing firm in Boston. Wow. She is, a machine. True machine. She has more dedication, and she has a work ethic that I would say I can match anybody, but I can't match her as much.
[41:30.9]
She's really good at what she does. She, helps with the house or really runs the whole house and the kids. And she works in Boston from, every day, but she's in the W2 grind. She loves her job. So, That's awesome. She loves her job. She's very good at her job. But, she is 100% dialed in.
[41:47.6]
It's actually funny because I fell in love with her, actually. Plymouth, New Hampshire. Back in college. Days. And, her family was so different than mine. They were all about, You know, her father was into real estate a little bit. He, invests.
[42:03.3]
He's one of our biggest fans, too. One of the first deals was sellers financing through him. But, she's all on board. To answer your question. She keeps me focused. She's like, keep on going. I have my nights. Like, every business entrepreneur maybe has, like, what the hell am I doing? I can go just. I can just go back to W2 and be fine.
[42:19.4]
I can go jump in and work where I'm trying to grow right now. And she's like, dude, just stay focused. Just keep it going. Keep it going. We're fine. You know, everybody has those worries. Oh, come on, let's. What do we gotta do? And she's like, dude, keep it going. Keep it going. So she's the biggest. Cool. One of my biggest, in the three businesses that I've had in my first business, we grew it big enough, we sold it to a public company.
[42:40.8]
For me, my secret weapon has always been my better half. She and I have been together for 37 years. It's gonna be 38 years in June. And when I was in college, I mean, it was great being single, but choice between being single and being stupid and being in a relationship and not being stupid.
[42:57.7]
I'll take it every day of the week, 100%, to have them there when you hit the wall and they're there to, pick you back up. Because as an entrepreneur, there are days where I've just had it and everybody can off. And she's just right there for me the whole time.
[43:14.0]
She's like, okay, let's talk about it. I agree. Your biggest win is. Your biggest win is your life partner. And I. And I. And I. And I definitely get it right. You know, I think that's. I think that's very important. A lot of successful entrepreneurs definitely have a good. A good, significant other on the other side, you know?
[43:29.6]
So, definitely. I think that's very important. And, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more on that one. Yeah, it's a great reminder of why you're doing it. Yeah. You know. Yeah. You know. Oh, yeah, it's. I remember when. Yeah. When we decided to start flying first class because I didn't grow up with money either.
[43:50.2]
So I let Lois fly first class first because I wouldn't spend the money. But I felt wrong not letting her, not agreeing to have her fly first class because we had the Money. I just had to get over it in my head and I had to break that mindset that, no, no, you can fly first class.
[44:11.5]
It's okay. How many times did that take? Well, it took a few. Yeah, I'm a little hard headed, but the first time I sat in first class, I looked at her and said, what the hell? Why didn't you tell me? It was like.
[44:28.2]
And she just did what she always does, bop on the head. Oh, that's funny. Exactly. Well, I'm a guy. It takes me a little bit to get there. I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes, especially when it comes to the money. Yeah. And the mindset, so.
[44:45.6]
All right, Bob, thanks for, thanks for coming on. Can you tell people how they can get a hold of you? Yeah, absolutely. So my phone is always open. But most importantly, we have Instagram. Our handle is kb4property group. That's, kb4property group. Let's see.
[45:04.6]
We also, we also can, you can email me anytime at bob@kab4propertygroup.com and also give, us a follow on Instagram. That's going to help us. And if you have any questions, you want to talk, just, 603-818-1793 is my number.
[45:21.3]
Always text me. I may not pick up if I don't know the number at first, but if you text me, I promise you I'll get back to you. Okay. And anybody who didn't get that, you can certainly rewind, but we're going to put it in the show notes as well so you'll have all that information for you. Yeah, put the Instagram on there.
[45:37.1]
I'm trying to, trying to blow that up. We got to get better at marketing, though, that's for sure. All right. Hey, thanks guys. I appreciate it. You have a good day.