Nick Aalerud got scammed on his first five deals, investigated by the SEC, hit with two divorces, betrayed by his own COO, and had a heart attack — and after 20 years of chasing more deals, more units, and more money, he finally stopped to ask himself: who am I if I'm not chasing anything? In this episode, he shares why he went from 100+ deals a year to less than 10, and what it actually took to find fulfillment on the other side of every hard reset.
Episode 20: Real Estate, Resilience, and Learning What Enough Means with Nick Aalerud
When the goal is no longer to do more deals, buy more units, or chase the next big number, what does success actually mean? Zach and Mike dig into what it really looks like to step back, reset, and ask that bigger question with their guest, Nick Aalerud.
Nick has spent years in real estate, from single-family flips to multifamily and boutique hotels, then coaching, and now so much more. But after building businesses, scaling teams, surviving bad deals, navigating public personal challenges, and facing serious health scares, Nick is taking a very different approach.
Instead of chasing 100+ deals a year, he’s choosing fewer than 10 intentional ones that excite him and fit the life he actually wants to live.
Our conversation covers the highs, lows, and hard resets of Nick’s journey. He shares how a late-night infomercial pulled him out of banking and into real estate, his first real win, and how he slowly built systems, checklists, and a more careful way of doing business.
This episode goes deeper than real estate deals. Nick opens up about the impact of divorce, business strain, staff issues, betrayal inside his company, and the moment he realized he could no longer just outwork every problem. That shift pushed him into a season of reflection, healing, and redefining what fulfillment really means.
“Money follows excitement.”
“I didn’t know what enough was, so I kept going.”
“I wasn’t getting any happier. I wasn’t feeling really fulfilled at all.”
“I’m still here. So, if I’m still here, I’m still safe.”
A former banker turned real estate investor, Nick Aalerud has 20 years of experience in both UP and DOWN markets – across all strategies and asset classes.
Having run an 8-figure, multi-state wholesale, fix-and-flip, and rental operation in which the team did 100+ deals a year across seven states, Nick built a team and opened other company verticals in real estate brokerage (40+ agents), property management, short-sale negotiations, and an investment servicing division.
Nick helped begin and grow numerous networking groups regionally (Black Diamond REI Insiders & REI Unleashed) to over 1500 members, fostering a sense of community and teaching others the right way to help people and make money in the business.
His firms have syndicated, bought, and sold over $100M in real estate and currently manage $20M in assets across RV Parks, Multifamily Portfolios, Boutique Hotels, and Self Storage portfolios across the East Coast, with strategic partnerships.
Having been through his own short sales, a foreclosure, crawling back from $500K in bad debt, losing hundreds of thousands in rehab lessons, having built a large 8-figure organization with 40+ people across 7 states, undergoing a full burnout, burning everything to the ground… and two divorces, which left him homeless and even in the hospital… He’s learned what ultimately is the key to success – and it’s the pursuit of FREEDOM, in all its forms.
Now a best-selling author, speaker, and transformational guide, he helps people reach a higher standard in their own lives through multiple modalities, pushing them to see what's possible if they just let go of the bullshit stories they’ve had since birth.
Along the same lines, Nick’s passionate about overlaying a LIFE element to all those entrepreneurs who have taken a ton of courses or guru strategies, and can’t seem to take action or can’t seem to get consistent on their own success, especially for those who don’t yet feel fulfilled in their own lives.
Nick’s a leader in the REI Collab Community which fosters a go-giver group of folks who are holding each other accountable using specific frameworks for reaching financial freedom in 5 years or less using real estate as the tool, and is the founder of Life Unlimited Community, which guides burnt out or stale entrepreneurs back to abundance and passion in their lives, while showing them how to HAVE IT ALL in their finances, in their relationships, and in their LIFE by challenging the very fabric of who they were, and who they can be.
Nick is the host of the Journey to Freedom podcast, where he shares stories of other business owners and community members who overcame their challenges and found their paths to freedom. His mission is to profoundly IMPACT as many people as he can through his business ventures, coaching communities, charity and service work, and his efforts to be the best Dad, husband, creator, leader, mindset rebuilder, and transformational guide he can be.
Find Nick Aalerud on Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | X
For Investors & the Fund – Learn how the Fund works and book a call
For Borrowers & Deals – Get funding and support for your next investment
[00:00.1]
It was the first time in my life, after two years of this, where I couldn't just put my nose back into the laptop and just make more money and solve all the problems. That's when I had to find myself again. And that's when I stopped going to any of the masterminds. I stopped traveling. Focused on, who am I if I'm not chasing anything?
[00:16.4]
Who am I if I'm not a real estate guy? Who am I if I'm not coaching? Or what does it look like now that I've let employees down? We obviously lost money on, five of those deals that he had done, and I had to take responsibility for that too. Most people think saving money is the answer, but the truth is, saving only gets you to zero.
[00:35.6]
Join Mike and Zach as they flip the script from saving to earning, from zero to unlimited potential. Welcome to Save to Zero. Welcome Everybody, to episode 20 of the Save to Zero podcast.
[00:51.5]
Mike and I are here with Nick Allured, a real estate investor who most of the people we talk about, they're talking about growing the number of deals they're doing, but Nick is going from doing 100 plus deals a year to trying to do less than 10 and doing them intentionally.
[01:07.0]
So, Nick, what does that mean? Most people are trying to do 100 deals, buy 500 units, and you're trying to scale down why? Great question, Zach. Well, thank you guys for having me on. Super, psyched. I've known you guys and met with masterminds, and Zach's been in my home market for years and years and years.
[01:25.8]
You know, the answer to that is I had been chasing, right? More, deals, more units, more profit, more. Bottom line. I'd been chasing it for years and years and years. 20 years in the industry. And, I didn't even like talking to you now. I didn't know what enough was, so I kept going, even networking. High level.
[01:44.0]
Mastermind. Mastermind. Mastermind. Putting in new strategies, new implementations, new team members, and we would get bigger and bigger and bigger. But I wasn't getting any happier. I wasn't feeling really fulfilled at all. And it took we joke and talk about all the hard resets that we've had.
[02:00.7]
I know you guys have had a couple, right? And going through hard resets, I had my fourth and biggest one and it gave me, you a one and a half year break where I had to just really go internal and figure out what is success to me. What is happiness, what is fulfillment?
[02:17.4]
And real Estate will always be a big part of my life. So I just said, you what? Instead of doing 150 deals this year, or 300 more units or cash flows, I'm going to do less than 10. And they're going to be very intentional. Something that excites me and gives me passion, because that's really all that matters now at this point in my career.
[02:33.8]
And money follows excitement is what I've been finding for sure. So then what is exciting to you? Is it a single family fix and flip or is it something different? I always will. As Mike said earlier, I there's always an addiction with the fix and flips.
[02:49.8]
For me, I have an addiction to that. I love creating ugly spaces and making them beautiful. Right? Period. We're creators, we're manifesters. That's what we do. So even though I made a commitment never to do another single family fix and flip two years ago, I've done at least 15 to 20, which is still more than I wanted to.
[03:05.8]
But I love it. And when how to deal with contractors, right. How to deal with rehabs and budgets and overages, it kind of becomes easy. But I think it's that part of taking ugly things and making them beautiful. And we still do that, right? With our hospitality assets and broken down RV parks and boutique hotels.
[03:24.6]
And that's kind of what we're into now, along with still the multifamily, still our bread and butter value add. Multifamily is a bread and butter asset. Yeah. Okay, so I gotta jump in here on the addiction. Yes, man. From one addict to another. Let's go, Mike. No, I feel your pain.
[03:40.8]
You sometimes you just tweak it. When I sold my first company, part of the time, we spent 16 months driving around the US in a motorhome. And I was always looking for new companies to buy. We'd be in Arkansas, east nowhere, Arkansas.
[03:57.5]
And I'm looking at companies in the area. I have no intention of moving to Arkansas, but I still would. And this was going back a few years. I still grab the newspaper or bizbysell.com and I'm looking for. And I'm visualizing. And every couple times I drove by and I brought Lois with me, and she's like this close to buying a pizza place in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas for some dinner.
[04:20.2]
I'm like, yeah, wait, I can make it the next Domino's. And I just gotta do this and this and I get all this stuff together. So, man, I hear You. And then I wish you had driven by the, Moonshine Incorporated illegal thing and tried to franchise that model.
[04:35.6]
That would have been really cool, Mike. In Arkansas, No, I'm telling you. But no, I feel you're paying for the addiction. So now when I get stressed out about something and Lois is just chilled for the day because she could have retired years ago in 2017 when I sold my second business, she just said, yeah, that's it, I'm done.
[04:54.6]
You want to come with me, that's fine. If not, I'm not working anymore. And now when I get stressed out, she'll say, I can't help you. It's your choice. What do you want me to tell you? There's nothing I can. But I'm going to die. Hey, it's your choice. Sell the business.
[05:11.6]
Give everything this act, just move on. What do you do? Self affliction. You said earlier. Another good term. Yeah, it's self afflicted addiction. I like it. Definitely self inflicted addiction. Absolutely. I can see myself, I'm going to be in my deathbed, I'm going to be like, but we can do one more deal.
[05:31.5]
Hopefully you'll be known for more than that, Mike. I'm pretty sure you will be. No, but, oh, no, it's addicting. Absolutely. Okay. So my understanding is that you were in banking for 20 years. I, was banking. What were you in banking?
[05:47.1]
Oh, banking for about five years. Mellon bank in Boston. And then from, banking, went into real estate for the 20 years. Yeah, I got you. Okay, I misunderstood. So what was it like working at such a big organization? Because Mellon is big. To Mellon was huge. Running your own company sounds really sexy, right?
[06:05.7]
You guys I got to call myself an investment banker. And ultimately I was pretty much a glorified sit in your cube for 10 hours a day and be a teller. Right? Just for the bigger institutional clients. So, one of our clients was Fidelity Investments. And that was the number one client of Mellon Bank.
[06:23.0]
And everyone bowed down to the almighty Fidelity, right? And I'll just never forget, they, because they had so much clout, would have our team, they would have seven custodians at once. And every quarter they'd get out a report card of who the best custodian was and who the worst one was.
[06:38.7]
And if you were in the top three, they'd pull all the accounts from those bottom three and give them to the top four. And that impacted payrolls, it impacted salaries, bonuses. So it's the stress Was unbelievable. And to give you a sense of how high end and prestigious the job was, I was promoted, four times in the first three years.
[06:59.4]
Oversaw a team of 25, and I was still making under $52,000 a year. Wow. And working, 60 to 70 hour work weeks. It was horrible. Oh, Nick, I got a job for you, if you're interested. 53.
[07:18.0]
What's interesting, though? You're right. Save to zero. My first salary at Mellon. I was so proud of myself for negotiating. They gave me an offer of $31,000 a year. And I kid out of school, I'm okay, wait, I'm gonna get more, right?
[07:33.7]
So I will you take $32,000 a year? They said yes. I'm ha ha. I got. Boom. And then, as a contrast, you guys know, being in this business, I mean, God, what's that?
[07:49.1]
One fifth of, what a single family rehab fix and flip could make. It was just an unbelievable shift of, opening up, a contrast of living bigger. Yeah. Goes along with your podcast. What made you say, yeah, I'm done with banking.
[08:04.7]
What was the straw that broke the camel's back? I was already. The long story short is I lost a board game, Zach. So I'm in a dining room table, me and a bunch of the other politics majors, because that's what I was. We had no future whatsoever.
[08:19.8]
We're playing that game of risk and, you global domination, Right? All these dudes. And, I was really good at it. Yeah. Yeah. And I was really good at the game. All five of them gang up on me and get me out the first hour. So I'm out, and it's my house.
[08:36.5]
So it became a joke. I turn on the infomercials. It's one in the morning, and the infomercial pops on. And I'm just sort of watching it, and I'm making a joke about it. See what you guys made me do. What? I'm just gonna wait here for you guys all to leave. What the. Wtf? And, Buy real estate.
[08:54.3]
Pennies on the dollar. John Beck's tax lien free and clear system came on the infomercial screen. And as a joke, it was a complete joke. It was $49 to get more information. I called it in just to show to my buddies what a mess I was that I just lost the game.
[09:10.7]
And that was that binder that showed up in the mail. I read through it. I'm this is interesting. Is this real? And said. So if you're serious about real estate investing, call this 800 number. Well, I guess I'm serious. I paid 49 bucks for the binder. And the best salesperson in the entire world talked me into my first, $6,000 over the phone coaching bootcamp thing for deal flow.
[09:32.5]
And, they got me to read the Purple book, the rich dad, poor dad book. And it was all over from there. Everything I learned about finances had been completely flip flopped after I read that book. Completely and utterly. The Purple Book. I've never heard it called that. I haven't either, but I like that.
[09:49.7]
Yeah, I'm going to use it in the future and I'm not going to give you any credit for it. Who else use that on, I think our show? Yeah, I know. It was like everyone has read it, right? In our industry, it seems like everybody has read that book. So, yeah, it's amazing to me, how many people in the industry who are successful who have read that.
[10:07.3]
And then I've met people who are not successful who haven't read it. Do the math. Yeah, figure it out here. So what made you choose, what asset class you were going to go into? Because you've got single family, you got multi family, you can do.
[10:26.1]
Was it co living spaces? Now what made you decide? Fix and flip? Oh, yeah. That was just kind of where I saw everybody else. I bought those first binder, got the first coaching thing. They were teaching me how to find off market motivated sellers. I didn't even learn much from that boot camp, but they got me to read the book and then that got me launched into let me buy every program, course and guru thing available.
[10:51.1]
So 2005 is when all that happened. I went buy crazy and invested in Apartment Rich's Boot Camp with David Lindahl. And Trump and Kiyosaki were at this thing in Boston called the Learning Annex. And I did it all. I bought all the things. And, I got angry, Mike.
[11:08.7]
And I don't know if you guys have heard the story before, but even then I was a person of action. So I was mad at myself for having bought all these courses. And then a month would go by, a second month would go by, I'm I gotta do something. I gotta do a deal here, get my money back. And my first five deals were with the guy out in Minnesota.
[11:26.9]
He saw me on that old forum, reiclub.com, way back when the tech just came out and he's. So I was hey, you're looking to get into real estate. I have access to under market real estate here in Minnesota and I also have these tenants that have below average credit.
[11:43.7]
They want to rent 20% above market rent, right? Rent to own to, to live in here for three years. And then they're going to buy, they're going to sign a pianist to cash us out at 20% above what we're paying. And, and he said, but the best news is you can make money at the purchase closings because you can finance them 90 to 100%.
[12:03.5]
Let's say you contracted $500,000 for a property, the seller gives you a check legally that was financed at the closing for $90,000 as a thank you and good luck check that passes across the closing table all on the hud. So we'd make money finance money at the purchase closing with rent cash flows for three years and I'd make money on resale.
[12:24.4]
This is too good to be true. Let's do it. Sign me up. He said he needs a credit partner though. This guy, my partner needed someone to sign on the mortgages, which was me. So I'm let's not do one of these, let's do five in one week. I was also a first time home buyer, so my first time buying a home was as an investor.
[12:41.5]
And I bought five in one week, all 90 to 100% financed. And the next week we had our meeting with him to move the tenants in and everything's going to be all peachy keen. But he, he didn't show up to that meeting. And then we sent him some emails where are you dude? We gotta get the rent coming in.
[12:57.5]
And he didn't show up. And turned out he took 40% of that upfront cash. And the tenant applications he showed us were not real. The resale, purchase and sale agreements were not real. But the mortgages that I signed were very, very real.
[13:13.4]
And I could only float at the time nine or ten loans for about five months. Property manager to try to manage the things and attorney to try to chase him down. And my first five deals went to complete 04 short sales and a foreclosure is how I began my journey in real estate. Wow. Wow.
[13:33.5]
Yeah, it's humble pie, man. And I thought I was going to die. I literally thought I was in my 20s, but I, all of my friends watching the contrast right of them still with their 401ks and had their jobs and all of my family friends told me I was nuts for jumping into this. And now they're all loving to share their opinion on how right they were. Oh, yeah.
[13:52.2]
And yeah, how's that real estate thing going? And just kind of. Yeah, yeah, that was rough. But it was, it was a huge, collection calls. I became a motivated seller. I just need the certified mail to stop. I need the calls to stop. Please help me. And an investor in Minnesota.
[14:07.6]
These are all out of state in Minnesota. He was a short sale specialist, so he took them on and I get to see how he worked. And he made the call stop. And, I'm sure he got amazing deals on them, which was great. But I had to relearn real estate. You said, why single family? I didn't know what else to do.
[14:24.3]
Now I had no cash, no credit, but I still knew real estate was my way out of the corporate grind. So the only thing I had was to learn to pick up the phone, overcome the fear of talking to people and start to make them use the phone, door knock, and start doing things grassroots to try to get, understand how to do deals again, to get back on my feet. Yeah.
[14:44.2]
Well, that's amazing that you got kicked that heavily. I mean, let's be honest. You got, you got the shit kicked out of you. And yeah, you did. You got really. But you got back up again and you kept going. I mean, what did they say? I've heard this multiple times.
[14:59.8]
The only way to lose is to stop playing the game. Then you've lost. If you keep going, you keep going and you have a chance of coming out the other side. But you not doing anything, just standing there, that's when you have the problem. Yes. Amen.
[15:15.2]
And that became the first of five resets, Mike. But that was. It taught me that I wasn't dead and it taught me to take responsibility. Right. Instead of being a victim like that taught me the whole master program of, how quickly can I learn from this? And then put it into practice. Right? I'm not dead.
[15:31.6]
So let's keep moving. And we started SOPs, started checklists, started being ultra conservative on what we bought. And then we start to systemize every single aspect of our business. Off market deal flow, deal analysis, deal. Just like as a lender, what you guys do, right? Every single model, we had to model as conservatively as possible because I didn't have any more money left to lose. Sure.
[15:53.3]
So tell me about the first one that you bought that was a success. Yeah. So wholesaling was the only strategy that I could do for about the next nine months. And it took me, three months of really hard work to get that first assignment check. But after eight months of that, I got into a flow with that, found, two really solid buyers, and I would just lock up. Triple deck.
[16:15.0]
Zach knows the areas. Triple deckers in Somerville, Massachusetts. We were buying them. We were buying them back in 2006 for about $325,000 a piece. Mike doesn't know the numbers now, and we were selling them for maybe 550 to 625, after rehab.
[16:32.9]
Those same triple deckers, Mike to purchase right now are about 1.1, and you put in X amount of dollars, and they have 1.8 to sell. Yeah. So, wow. That was my market. And I just found two really good buyers. And eight months later, I had enough.
[16:49.2]
I found out what hard money was. Didn't know what that was before I went through my stuff and, with a local hard money lender, I had enough for my down payment on my first triple decker in Somerville because I knew the numbers, I knew what I was doing, and did the whole thing, did most of the work myself.
[17:05.4]
Learned a crap ton. One that I shouldn't be doing the work myself. And I broke even. And that was the biggest win I had had in real estate up until that point. All the learning. Didn't have to lose my shirt. It was a fantastic win. That was 2006.
[17:23.0]
And then from then, we, put that into a system and a checklist, okay, how can we do more of these? And, the thing, the next year we did six, and the year after that was 10. And then we started to really scale to get to that 100, 120 mark, which was a sweet spot for us over time with lots of lessons learned.
[17:40.8]
What made you, mindset wise, persevere? I feel making up a stat. 80 or 90% of people getting their teeth kicked in on those first five deals would have said, yeah, I'm out. And then if they somehow stuck with it and did one more and broke even, they probably would have said, yeah, I'm out. What made you.
[18:01.3]
What made you believe in it or yourself? That's a really great question. What I think it was? This isn't a great answer, but I think at that moment, now looking back, I was just trying to prove people wrong.
[18:18.0]
That I could do it. Is a powerful motivator. Yeah. Right. The naysayers. And two, and I mentioned now, looking back, hindsight's 20 20, but getting out of the bank was a big motivator. Getting out of the corporate world knowing that I was completely unemployable.
[18:34.3]
I was really good as an employee, but I hated everything about it. And, that was a big one. But chasing something. At first it was chasing the million dollars, right? Then the million in net assets, then million in cash flows, and then I, was just going for whatever the next target or goal was.
[18:51.1]
Getting bigger without really having an understanding why I was getting bigger and continuing. Yeah, that makes sense. It does, yeah. That's kind of complete sense. It does, yeah. So when did you switch from wholesaling, flipping? When did you get into.
[19:07.0]
I understand you've done multifamily. I know you've got some, hotels, boutique hotels. What made you switch to that asset class? Yeah, yeah. Well, 2009 came, and I'd gotten really good at rehabbing in the Boston market. So I knew, though I wasn't building wealth, it was all just transactional, right?
[19:26.3]
It was all just money coming in, money out. So I knew I was supposed to build a rental portfolio, but I couldn't do that because I didn't have good credit right. Until, 2014 or 15. I'd be dangerous again. So, we found this little Amish town out Western Pennsylvania, called Newcastle, Pennsylvania.
[19:43.4]
A bunch of us Boston investors went out there, found out we could buy these houses all in. We could buy them for 10, put 15 into them. 20, $5,000 they'd rent for 500 bucks a month, single family rentals. So we. I would do four rehabs here, Take some money, go out there, buy one or two or three more.
[20:02.1]
And sometimes we get lucky. There's a tax deed sale. There was just a little market that I could do as a cash market. No financing needed. And that became, my foray into, rentals and, testing out property management strategies and how to work with tenants. And then in 20, 11, since we're on your podcast, if you're cool, my next big reset.
[20:19.9]
Yeah, it was whatever you guys want to hear. Whatever helps your audience. 2011, I'd taken all the David Lindahl stuff, big apartment house riches, and don't just buy a six unit, buy 150 unit. Right. Regardless of your experience, just go for it.
[20:37.1]
And I liked thinking bigger, so I was hustling. And, just when I was in a single family, I Was marketing to South Carolina and Kentucky properties like emerging marketing motivated big commercial owners and trying to make deals work and structuring them and due diligence and raising capital.
[20:53.0]
Nothing was working because I was a one man show. So I had three individuals reach out to me from Boston that were coaches for Lindahl, the organization. And they said, hey, I see you all hustling. Why don't you just come work for us? We have the assets down, we have the asset management down, we have operations down.
[21:12.1]
We've already owned 600 of these units. Help us raise capital and we'll bring you in on our team. So that was 2010. I was still going to those. They called them RIAs back then, right? Not meetups, but going to the investor associations.
[21:27.8]
I rebranded. I'm I'm now part of this group. I'm now doing big multifamily properties. If you're interested in what we're doing, come and talk to me. And I was helping raise capital. I was worth them for three months. And I got a call from one of the partners. It's, like a 6pm on a Tuesday night.
[21:43.8]
I remember it really well. He said, hey, listen, just got a call from the sec. Not a big deal. Oh, God, totally. We're totally complying. We're cooperating, giving them what they want. But, they're going to call you next, so I just want to give you a heads up.
[21:59.8]
I'm sure the SEC calls you and everything's fine and you're perfectly compliant. Hey, next Friday. Call you. How your days going? What do you got going on this week? Oh, my God. Oh, God. I gotta be honest with you. I'm thinking SEC sphincter line.
[22:16.8]
Yeah, yeah. Accurate. So we can't say sphincter on your pod. That's even better. We'll go there. What could possibly go wrong, right? Yeah. It was a three hour phone call. It was all nines asking me, where'd you get this information from?
[22:32.6]
And this flyer and this disclaimer, and who did you send this to? And I was answering all their questions. And I finally asked, do I need an attorney? And they said, do you feel you need an attorney, Mr. Allarud, to answer these questions? And at that moment, I, locked up, got terrified.
[22:48.8]
I'm in my late 20s, remember? And Hung up the phone. And I lawyered up. And 2010 into 2011 became one of the next hardest 10 to 11 months of my life. I had just bought those Edible Arrangements franchises. So I had they subpoenaed everything I had.
[23:06.6]
Seven businesses, all sorts of email communications, flashed my computer, and they didn't tell me. No one knew why they were investigating. No one knew what they wanted. And so my lawyers were don't talk to the partners. You're locked up. They're locked up. If it's not them, they're gonna put something on you.
[23:21.9]
I'm I know these people. They were like, my friends. Nope, doesn't matter. And then 11 months later, I don't even find out until it gets the press release and the news that these guys, whether intentional or not intentional, had commingled funds from one asset to another. There was evidence that one might have bought their personal vehicle with investor funds.
[23:41.1]
Right. Once the investigation starts. Investigating, they're going to find shit. Right. Sorry, I can't. Can I say stuff on your. I don't know if I can say that in your podcast, but yeah. Commingled funds, bought personal vehicle, you potential family trips. And so when one of them was an attorney.
[23:56.2]
So he was disbarred. All three of them were barred from doing business in Massachusetts again. Wow. And I was just a witness the entire time. After spending 50,000 in attorney's fees, after spending a, year of my life, not doing anything because I was terrified. And my first divorce came of that whole situation, though. It was a rough year.
[24:15.4]
That was nothing compared to the Minnesota stuff, Mike. No, I'm thinking that was much worse. Because as soon as they see. Yeah. The bottom line is for something like that, the government, they have nobody to answer to, and they have all the authority, and they just keep coming because their resources are unlimited.
[24:36.8]
You if it's a private party legal situation, somebody's gonna run out of money at some point. Yeah. Depending on how long you play the game. But when it's the government. Oh, no, they just keep coming. They keep coming. Oh, my gosh.
[24:53.6]
It taught me a lot, though. It taught me so much what not to do. Right. It taught me a lot with, What stuff they were putting on their marketing. Even though they said they had SEC attorneys. Of course, that SEC attorney went dark when it came time to come and testify. And, it taught me a lot to just what it all, you guys running a fund is no joke, and I've never run a fund.
[25:14.6]
Nor do I intend to. So you guys know all that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm getting nervous just saying those words. Yeah. Just. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We had five of those.
[25:31.3]
We don't have to go through all of them but those eventually, to answer your question, I guess. Mike. Right. So rentals, the SEC thing, you know, big, big multifamily. Then we shrank down a small multifamily because every one of their brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles jumped into multifamily in 2016, 2019. Everybody jumped in.
[25:47.8]
Cap rates compressed. We were looking at four states. My KPI, we were at, 89 deals to get to one closing in 2016. And in 2019 we were at 227 to get to one closing. Same amount of. Way more amount of work, lower returns.
[26:04.3]
And so we just sort of, we were going to pivot in 2019. I think this might have been where we were at, family or. No, that was. I was at collective genius. And that's when. Well, we don't have to go through the whole that, but that's when I had my next reset, my next divorce, which is a really, really tough one. And that's what got me to question everything.
[26:22.1]
And hospitality was the only next asset class where I had another bunch of guys here, great operators just like me. I trusted them. And they're hey, we need you to be a key principal to help us buy this RV park. I'm I don't. I've never owned an rv. Never been to I hate campgrounds.
[26:37.6]
Don't like them, I'll hike, but that's it. I won't do any of that stuff. And they're no, no, we're going to move on site. If anything happens, we'll fix it. They're handy, we'll take care of it. So, I was I did trust them, because I can tell operators. And they moved on site and they handled every issue.
[26:54.6]
If there was an overage, they handled it. We Learned all the SOPs, learned the checklists, and that became one of the home run deals we've ever done, was those two. We did an RV park then and another one the next year and we found out it was scaring at the time. That was less competition, right, because people were afraid of the management intensity of a transient, campground.
[27:17.5]
And then boutique hotels was the same thing. I wanted to stay away from short term rentals because I didn't like the zoning risks or HOA risks of 30 day rentals only. So we. Boutique hotels was always the thing. People show up happy, they leave happy, hopefully. And so we started doing smaller boutique hotels in the white Mountains, which has been pretty cool. Yeah.
[27:38.5]
Interesting. So you're not doing RV parks anymore? Yeah, we are. If we, you got. How many deals do you have to kill every day that hit your desk? RV parks became the next hot commodity after multifamily did so. Yeah, yeah, we just. If they make sense, great.
[27:54.7]
And if a multi family makes sense, I'll be all over it. But we haven't found many that make sense in the last couple of years. I think the co living space is now the big thing that everybody's jumping into. Yes. Which one? Oh, co living. Yeah, the co living spaces. Can we just.
[28:10.4]
What is this different? How is this different than rooming houses? It's a rooming house. Can we just say it's a rooming house? What I'm going to say is when I was in college in New York City, I, lived on Staten island and I would take a bus to the Pathmark, which is a supermarket there.
[28:29.2]
Take a bus to the Path mark, you step outside and there are a bunch of people, half a dozen cars lined up in the no parking lane and they were called gypsy cabs, which then became Uber. Yeah. So I'm thinking.
[28:45.4]
Oh, absolutely. So I'm with you. I think co living is a rooming house. It's just got a new name to it. It's been going on a new name that sounds better. That's all. Yeah, that's all it is. It sounds better. Yeah. What a great reframe of the story too.
[29:02.8]
Gypsy cabs to Uber and now co living to roommates. That's great. Good work, Mike. I can relate to that 100%. It's true. And I see these things and people think that the guy who started, short term rentals was a genius. Well, when I was living in Massachusetts after I got out of college, Lois and I would want to go to New York on the weekends.
[29:24.0]
So what did we do? I grabbed the New York Times and there was a guy there, AAA something. And you would rent somebody's apartment for the weekend because it was one of two things. Somebody who couldn't really afford to live in the city, so they'd stay at a friend's house for the weekend so that they could raise rent money for their rent.
[29:43.4]
Or it would be somebody who lived in Jersey, but he worked, he or she worked in the city and they didn't want to do the hour and a half, two hour commute every day. So they'd rent their apartment out through this guy who was a property manager short Term rentals have been around for hundreds of years, but it was.
[30:00.4]
It wasn't called Airbnb at the time. It was called AAA Weekend Rentals. It was the same thing. They just repurposed it and added tech to it. So, Oh, well. So just on that same note. Hold on.
[30:16.3]
Just because you're letting me vent now and I can vent freely, brother. Go, go. Can we reframing. I'm just going to say this. I'm going to say it loudly. And now I'm trying to remember what I was. It's. Was it called. I think it's novations. The hot new word. Right.
[30:32.1]
And I love Eric Brewer. He's a big friend of mine. Love him. And Novations, we've been calling them seller partnerships or seller equity. JV splits for the last, 20 years, and all of a sudden novations come out and it's this big new thing. But they might be illegal because we're doing all sorts of things.
[30:47.4]
Just make them a seller. JV agreement. It's been done for 20 years. Sorry, that's all I had to say. I'm good reframing. Okay, well, all right. Now we're going to go. What about this? Creative Finance. Oh, man. That's what I was going to say. Oh, here we go. Yeah, same to Zeal. Let's do it on this podcast. Come on, Pace.
[31:03.2]
Creative Financing has been around forever, but now you got these people that are going to create Creative Finance. And what they want to do is they want to get a property that has zero equity. They put. They pay the mortgage for the person, and then they can't pay the mortgage and the person loses their property.
[31:23.6]
So talk to me about, it says here that you had a real estate brokerage and. Tell me about that. You had 40 plus agents. When did that fall in? Was that before you got to see, Uncle Sec? Or was this after Uncle Sec? It was. It was during.
[31:42.1]
It was. I was in transition to moving. I was. 2009 is when I got my real estate license. Because I didn't know why I, why I felt bad. I was putting this poor agent through all these comparables, right? This poor agent, I'm an investor. They were making offers that didn't make sense. And I felt bad.
[31:57.3]
So I'm I'm going to become an agent. Told the broker at Century 21 in Chelmsford, Mass. That I was never going to do uptime. I was never going to be a retail person. Would he still take me? And he said, I'll take you if you do calls and uptime and take these leads out. So I said yes.
[32:13.3]
Was with him for two years and it was in the second floor of that office. I'd already given my broker notice that I got my broker's license and was moving out. That's when I was pacing the second floor on the SEC call. I remember it really clearly. And, that's a good story though.
[32:28.4]
So I get the broker's license, super excited, you get the LLC together, get the E and O. And I go in front. At the time, it was the Boston area. The Boston area, right. The, Waltham, Massachusetts REA Group stand in front of the room.
[32:44.8]
And I said, all right everybody, I am going to have the first investor friendly brokerage in Massachusetts. I want everyone in here to come on board. We're going to make this all investor friendly. We're going to analyze rentals, we're going to do flips. And I had it on. That was a Thursday. By Monday, I had 38 real estate agents, in my firm, on paper.
[33:05.9]
And the worst three months of my life began.
[33:12.5]
I realized I had no back office, I had no administrative staff. I didn't know what administratives were supposed to do in a real estate office because I'd never done one before except, on investment stuff. And I would meet with them every week, give them all coaching. And how many of them do you think did anything that I asked them to do? Right. A 38.
[33:30.9]
The answer's three.
[33:34.6]
So I'm stressed out, I'm freaked out, I'm mad, I'm angry, I'm resentful. And then, Zach, a colleague of ours, it was Anne, right? The first person who got me into the business. Yeah. She and I were having lunch and she said in her very direct way, well, you don't pay these people.
[33:51.7]
Why don't you just fire them? And this, what? I can fire these people. I can let them go. How is that possible? And I had a really tough conversations with all of them. But, I kept 3 of 38, sent them all the KW and Century 21 and places they could get real support because I certainly couldn't give it to them.
[34:12.1]
And we restarted with three. And then over the course of the next six years or so we built it back up to like 40 retail and investor friendly agents that, I was proud. We were the first investor friendly brokerage in Mass. I think now there's nine or ten of them. So it's kind of cool.
[34:29.6]
I Tell you, Nick, seriously, you are the epitome of get your ass kicked, get back up, and keep going. Yes, from what I heard so far, you got hosed by. Let me see if I got this straight. Yeah, sum it up.
[34:47.2]
You got hosed by somebody in Minnesota, which totally ruined your credit. You got divorced. You got the SEC knocking at your door, paid 50 grand in attorney's fees and hadn't done anything wrong. Somewhere in there, you got a second divorce.
[35:03.5]
You started a brokerage, and you had no idea what you were doing. Hired all these people over the weekend and then got rid of them all. Only kept three. Then rebuilt it up. Somewhere in there, you made some nice money on an RV park. Rv. Two RV parks you've done single family, which you're addicted to.
[35:23.6]
Multifamily boutique hotels. Dude, you're like a freaking buffet of craziness, which is why less than 10 deals a year, right? Okay, there you go, everybody. The answer to the question I asked at the very beginning is right.
[35:40.6]
Right here, 35 minutes in. That's why. And honestly, guys, we didn't even. For another episode. We didn't even remotely go through what happened the last four years. That's a whole different episode conversation for why I had the biggest reset ever. And that's why I'm, simplifying my life is really what I'm focused on right now.
[35:59.2]
Okay, wait a minute. You can't say, guess what. Guess what. Never mind. Part two. Yeah, lay it on us, bro. We got, five or ten more minutes here for our. Let's hear it. I think that's good for your audience. Tune in on episode 48 of what Happened to Nick today.
[36:17.8]
Oh, man. I know. No, I had, Well, yeah, I'll try to do as quick as I can. I met you guys again at a, I've known Zach again for years. And, Mike, I met you at the mastermind, that we were part of, and I was really proud, right? I was really part of three or four of these masterminds, and I was a member of some of them, and some of them had me flying around the country doing talks and coaching.
[36:38.7]
And I loved coaching, I loved teaching. And, I'll try to make this a quick story. So, in the past, whenever there was a problem in my life, one thing I could do is I could outwork anybody, right? So I would just put my nose down, I'd do more deals, I'd make more money, I'd buy more units.
[36:54.3]
Whatever it was, I'd do it right. And money usually could solve all problems. There's a couple problems I couldn't solve. One, I'm driving to the airport to go to my collective genius meeting in 2019. This is kind of like the peak of our real estate business.
[37:11.0]
And, I don't know, we had 29 W2 employees. We had a huge overhead, but we're doing lots and lots of deals. Residential, commercial, investor servicing. We had all the things happening. Then driving to the airport, I got a call from a 617 number. And it said, Mr. Allard, my name is so and so.
[37:26.3]
I represent your wife in the divorce. And we had been living separately under the same roof, though from 2016 until then, under a co parenting arrangement that she and I had drawn up, for the kids and thought everything was copacetic.
[37:41.5]
And it became. It was so sick. I'll share this with you guys. I had been with someone who money was all they really cared about. So if I was going to go to collective genius or go to even a trip to Mohegan Son over the weekend, as long as I paid her $1,000 per weekend. That was our agreement. Watching the children. So.
[37:57.6]
And for me, I was okay, I brought this down to a money thing. Interesting. It worked. And I got this call from a 617 number. She said, I'm going to need you to vacate the house in seven days. We're going to have. We can't confirm when you're going to see the kids again, and we're going to need you to pay for everything in the interim while we finalize all this stuff.
[38:17.7]
And didn't even hit me, you guys, right? I'm I'm busy. I'm doing a keynote. I got to talk. I'm doing this thing and I'll talk to you later. Get on the plane. And it hits me like a ton of bricks. Like a ton of, oh, my God. I have, at the time, I don't know, 12, 13 million in assets.
[38:33.6]
I'm going to be homeless. I can't move in anywhere, and I'm not going to see my kids. That's what really got me, right? Not going to see the kids. And that whole thing put me down a road and collected genius was the first time I had a very, very public, ego and identity death in the midst of, as you know, 50 super high players, a list people.
[38:57.0]
And I go up there to do this big talk on how, this, this is how we keep our team together and core values, and we do these, these daily huddles and these weekly things and the checklists, and everyone's happy. And this is how we recruit and train. And I get up there to say to start the presentation, and I just crumple.
[39:14.9]
I literally bawl and go on my knees and start crying, saying, I don't have anything. My shit together, none of this is real. My personal life's falling apart. I just want to see my kids. I'm, crying in the middle of collective genius before I even do my talk. And some of the.
[39:31.0]
As you now know, there's so many amazing people in that room where I thought I had to. Everyone in there was puffing egos out. But I got some wonderful, loving support. And people who gave me, you go, here's a men's group. Here's this, here's that. And over the next two years, which became the divorce, it was the biggest battle I'd had in my life, and it was really all about the kids.
[39:54.7]
I didn't care if I kept businesses or money or didn't matter. I allowed a person in my company who I would just checked out, and I allowed another person in my company to step up, who had been wanting to step up for years, to take up over department at the department department.
[40:10.2]
Because I couldn't show up emotionally. I certainly couldn't show up physically to my own office. I was just spent for two years. And, two years later, divorce is finalized. Everything, of course, worked out so beautifully. We have a joint household.
[40:25.8]
My kids are very happy. They're so well adjusted. Businesses are intact. She's still happy. I made sure she was taken care of. And, I come back to work and all of. And he, big welcome back. And he shows me all these numbers. He's look, look, while you were gone.
[40:41.6]
Look at all this success. He shows me all these numbers. I'm maybe I was the bottleneck. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was super controlling. And so. But something just didn't sit right. Something didn't sit right. And, it took about six months, and I was at home, and he came in the middle of the night, this guy who was in charge of all these departments, my COO who.
[41:05.9]
And he dropped off the keys. He said, hey, listen, something happened in the office. I'm not really proud of it. But I'm really sorry you have to deal with it. I'm gonna take my paternity to Leave early. And he went to go on paternity leave. And in the meantime, I stepped back in. There was a huge staff issue, sexual assault, physical assault that I had to deal with in his absence.
[41:27.5]
But the biggest part was I started to get on the calls with the asset managers, property managers, and I'm hey, guys, I've been away for a really long time. Just want to let you know, he's out for a while. I'm stepping back in. Let me know about any issues. And I'm. I'm the new guy, so just let me know what's going on.
[41:43.0]
And we called. Remember one of them, this is one of many, called the Pennsylvania Property Management Group. And I had this conversation. They said, oh, no, we fired you guys eight months ago. We couldn't take your lying sack of shit, you partner there. You. You fired us as a client. Yeah.
[41:58.2]
So I said, who's been managing 75 units? Not us. And I looked at the numbers that he showed me. The numbers were great. What is going on here? And that led into a whole slew of HUDs that we found from Rehabs.
[42:14.5]
He had bought and sold because he had signing authority. HUDs were just not real. They were generated to show numbers. Loans that we had payoffs on were never paid. And that began. It was the first time in my life, after two years of this, where I couldn't just put my nose back into the laptop and just make more money and solve all the problems.
[42:38.3]
And that became from 2022 until 2024, that's when I had to find myself again. And that's when I stopped going to any of the masterminds. I stopped traveling, Focused on, who am I if I'm not chasing anything? Who am I if I'm not a real estate guy? Who am I if I'm not coaching or.
[42:55.1]
And what does it look like now that I've let employees down? And we obviously lost money on, five of those deals that he had done, and I had to take responsibility for that, too. And it took a lot, a lot out of me. And that was the biggest one.
[43:11.2]
And then I had a health scare with all that. I had a heart attack, that year. And, that ended up teaching me everything I needed to learn about bodies and minds. And that's when I jumped into neuroscience and what it all means and why we're all here and what's it all for, right?
[43:26.4]
Mike and Zach, all the deep questions, and I'm A little crazy now. I'm a little woo woo. But I've never been more on the track to fulfillment, I'll put it that way. Yeah. But Nick, I got to tell you, I know we've teased you a little bit, we've given you a little grief because that's what guys do.
[43:42.8]
But seriously, man, you're an inspiration. Yeah. No, because people get their ass kicked and they stop. You've gotten your ass kicked multiple times and you just say, okay, what's next? And you keep going.
[43:58.4]
Seriously, that's an inspiration. Good for you, man. That is a great journey. I'm sorry you went through that, but I think as you tell your story, you're going to get somebody who is about to do something they shouldn't do, either to themselves.
[44:15.5]
You know, they're ready to check out. And I used to work in a psych hospital and we had people that were going to check out. And people who are at the end, they don't know what they're going to do. They're not sure they want to get out of bed the next day and they're going to say, shit, this is nothing compared to what that guy went through.
[44:34.7]
This is nothing compared to what Nick went through. And he's on this podcast and he's smiling and he's talking about how great his life is. Seriously, man. Yeah, that inspiration. Seriously. I didn't know all this stuff. I knew you had some rough patches and stuff from what we've talked about, but, man, no. Wow.
[44:55.2]
It's not all bad stuff, but sharing the bad, like you said, this is kind of. It's a give back. And people hopefully can relate. Yeah. And can give people a sense of I'm still here. There's this past few times, I'm oh, shit, I'm not going to be here. But then I still was. I'm still here. Yeah.
[45:10.7]
So if I'm still here, I'm still safe. And if I'm still safe, I'm going to go towards that. Which brings me the most. Satisfaction, fulfillment, excitement. And that's why, money is now just a byproduct for me. But your. Everything about your podcast is exactly what it's supposed to be. Right. Is. Is.
[45:28.2]
Is unlimited. Living a life unlimited. And having just as big a conduit of cash as you possibly can. Knowing that it comes and it goes. We can't hoard it. You know, we can't save it. We can't put it in a bank. Account, because then it's going to want to leave us. Anything we try to trap, it leaves. Right.
[45:43.9]
So just having, allowing the energy to flow as big as possible, that's my new. I want to be the biggest conduit possible. Right. Charity expenses, adventures, experiences, and making more money for other people. That's kind of what we all do together. You guys, too. I love it. Yeah. Wow. I had.
[46:00.7]
Nick, I've known you for a couple years. I didn't know most of this, and I'm really, really glad we had you on the podcast. Me too. Thank you for having me, guys. Zach didn't want to have you on. I advocated to have you on because I said there's something about him I have to know.
[46:16.3]
So just so you know. So, Nick, if people want to get in touch with you, get a hold of you, how do they do it? Sure. Yeah, they can find me on Instagram. Nick Allard. I share a lot of. It's a lot of life stuff, so that I turn people off.
[46:31.9]
I'm real estate and life. And they can Also, NickAllured.com is the website that we're doing a rebrand on, so, happy to chat with anybody if anyone's in a tough spot. I feel like I've felt everything that needs to be felt. I'm happy to walk people through their own feelings if they want to do that, so. Awesome.
[46:49.0]
Well, we'll put your contact information in the show notes too, everybody. Yes, we will. So this is a good one. I'm gonna have to listen to this one again. This was fun. Nick, thanks again for coming on, man. I'm gonna refund. I'm gonna replay this one. I'm oh, my.
[47:06.3]
And on top of it, I haven't had a heart attack, and I still have all my hair, so I'm doing better. I'm okay. Knock on. Look at this guy. We do work for a psych ward, though. I didn't know that about you. There's always something else we learn about these guys. Wow. That's funny. Yeah.
[47:21.4]
All right, Zach, Nick, thanks again for coming on, man. This is awesome. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, guys. See you soon. This was a blast.