From near death experiences to the devastation of homelessness, how and where do we find the will to overcome insurmountable odds? And when we do overcome these challenges, how do we pass that story of survival onto others? Life on the rocks is that place where these stories are heard from those who live to tell them. And now here is your host Kyle Miller.
(00:23): Alan folio. Welcome to life on the rocks brother. I'm so excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to get this thing started, man? Yes, sir. Hey Kyle. Thank you, man. I appreciate you having me on and thank you for letting me tell my story. Absolutely, man, I've heard just a little bit of it and already I'm just completely bought into thing and I can't wait to dig into the story of yours. Cool, man. I'm ready. Let's do it. All right, man. So tell me like where how's this whole thing start with you and like what you're kind of doing right now and then take me into that story of how you got there. Yeah. So grew up with a you know, a problem childhood, both my parents were drew drug addicts, heroin addict raised that way. Did I never graduated high school? I got into drug addiction myself for many years. And you know, then I had another thing. I had a, a massive heart attack and I have four stents. So that's kind of a little bit of my background where I am today is I live in Florida. I've got a real estate portfolio of a few hundred properties and we also do some BFI and sell. I think they call that flipping on TV house flipping and yeah, we do some whole selling too, so nice gist of it.
(01:37): Nice man. That's awesome. Like, all right. So growing up with both parents being drug addicts, how does that affect you? What was that daily life kind of growing up and seeing that Man? There's a lot to it, dude. I, I, I don't know. I just have a lot of a lot of memories of that. Right? A lot of holes in the walls, a lot of fighting, a lot of a lot of screaming seeing them shooting up heroin, you know, they would put like socks and stuff in the doors, they would try and hide, but obviously you knew what they're doing, but sometimes they'd forget to, to put the whole, to fill the holes up. So you'd see that or you'd come home. And, and I remember my mom one time had a needle sticking out of her neck. She was hiring a kite and forgot to take the needle out and they call it right. You get so high, you just kinda nod off. And yeah, man, just, just seeing a lot of that stuff growing up,
(02:32): I didn't grow up. I didn't have those experiences. I, I just, you know, it kind of sounds like one of those things off NCI, I S that you kinda watch and you see them do the kids coming home from school and seeing mom and both passed out. I saw that one video on online of that kid or the parents are sitting there, passed out both in the car and they're trying to get 'em to wake up and I don't think they did, but I mean, that's just gotta be, did you know that was wrong? Like growing up, did you know it was wrong? Did you know, like, why are they doing that? Or did you have any thoughts like that? Or it pretty much seemed normal man, to be honest. I mean, I knew something was up because like I, I hardly even went to school cuz they were, you know, they were either too high or they were looking for dope. So they didn't even care if we went to school, but they, it would, you'd never be able to get away with it nowadays, but it was a kind of a small town and right. People knew, knew my family there, not only my parents, but my grandma and grandpa and there was kind of a large family. And so I think they didn't get, they just didn't put their nose in the business. But yeah, I, I mean, I, I knew it wasn't right. Ma'am but it just becomes normal.
(03:39): Yeah. You just see it every day. It's like my dad coming home and grabbing a beer outta the refrigerator, you know, and drinking, drinking a beer, I guess. I guess if you see it over and over and over again, it just becomes kind of normal. All right. So you deal, deal with that. Right. And now you get into high school and you just say high school, I'm not into it. Yeah. So then actually so my parents went to prison when I was, I don't know, around eight years old, moved in with my grandma and grandpa and parents would get outta prison, get back in, get out, get back in. But I, I always stayed with my grandma and grandpa, but I think I was in the 10th grade and I just, I don't know, I just wasn't filling school man. And so I, I stopped, stopped going in in the 10th grade and actually went to work. So who did you, Who did you stay with? My grandfather and grandfather. Oh Your grandfather. Okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. They were both, both of Italian descent and yeah, so they, they pretty much raised me.
(04:38): Oh wow. They, they took you in and started raising you and then at 16 you were like, I'm done. I think, I don't even think I might have, yeah, I guess I was 16. Yeah. So about 16. I, I was done with school, man. I went to work working for my uncle driving tractor and yeah, just working on the farm. Nice. So drop out. You're just working on the farm. You're doing that. Did you have any ambitions to ever be like an entrepreneur or anything like that or just kind of how, how did that come about? Yeah, so actually I, so I met my wife. She was 15 we're, you know, we're still together today. We have three year old daughter. I met her, she was 15, I was 17. I was working cattle with my grandfather and I met my wife, Jennifer. And so we've been together since she was 15. She know she was 15, I was 17. And that kind of progressed into me having some broken bones and getting in some car accidents and different things, which led me getting addicted to pain pills, Vicodin, Norco, those kinds of things. And so I've had two broken wrists, a broken ankle. My pelvis broken in four places, my collar bone broken three times. So just multiple accidents, one after another. And by this time, you know, my parents were outta prison again. And so my mom saw that I was sick from the pain pills and she was on methadone, which is, I don't know if you know what methadone is, but that's a, that's a legal synthetic opiate, basically.
(06:11): It's the strongest opiate. You can get one of 'em anyway. And so she said, Hey, well, I know, you know, your, why don't you take some of this methadone? And I was freaking hooked, dude. She freaking got me hooked on methadone. And if you've ever seen a methadone clinic, man, it's nothing nice. Like, like there's, it's heroin addicts, basically. You're down there with freaking junk. You're junkies, dude. They're down there with freaking junkies. So now I'm on freaking methadone and, and yeah, just years, man, years to get off of that and finally got off of it and was still working on the farm. And yeah, my wife asked me one day to circle back to your question about the entrepreneur. Are you gonna drive tractor the rest of your life? I said, well, yeah, it was pretty much what I was gonna do.
(06:57): Right. Why she said, because we don't have any damn money. Wow. All right. So that kind of led me on a path of trying to figure out how to make more money and also led me down the path of self improvement. So I, I started searching and I started coming across guys on YouTube, like Jim, Ron. Yeah. Bob Proctor grant Cardone before he was cool. Right? Yep. These types of guys. And I heard him start talking about goals, you know, you can do whatever you want. They just stuff that I never even, I, I didn't even know what a goal was. Dude. I didn't even know you could have goals. So I started immersing myself and all this content and basically started brainwashing myself, dude. And so what I did is I got my real estate license after that and why real estate? My wife was actually in real estate at the time working for a new home builder.
(07:53): Okay. And so she was making okay. Money. She was basically supporting us cause I was just driving tractor, not making right any money. And I'd been and all screwed up on methadone for years. And so this, by this time I was clean and yeah, so I said, okay, let's let me try this. So I got my license and I set a goal to make what they were paying me a year a month. That was my goal. And I still have the checks of this day. Dude made $40,000 a few months into real estate. Like I, I literally brainwashed myself, listening to grant Cardone, Bob Proctor, Jim, Ron, primarily Bob Proctor and grant Cardone. I mean, dude, I didn't listen to anything else, dude. I didn't listen to music. I didn't listen to damn news. I gave our TV away dude to the house. We had a, that would come once a month and, and just kind of dust and all that. And I gave the TV away to her. Like we still don't have a TV. I haven't had a actually there's TVs in the house we bought, but I haven't even turned 'em on. Yeah. So they came with the house, but yeah, we haven't had a TV for seven, eight years, so yeah, man, I just got really immersed and, and just got after it.
(09:00): That's awesome. Now getting off. So she changed your life. She's the one that just kind of like, she's the one that put that fire in you and said, Hey, are you just gonna drive tractor all the rest of your life? Or what? And you, you just had a aha moment there. Like, oh shit. Well I was, you know, I was, that's what I was actually planning on doing. I, I kinda liked it. Yeah. But yeah, I could see her point not having any money. Right. So then what, it just led me down this path, man, of trying to figure it out, which led to the self-improvement part. Yeah. And me and me coming across all these guys on YouTube and just hearing things that I'd never heard before, I never heard someone talk about goals and the way grant Cardone was talking back, then he used to have these things called grant rans. I don't even know if you've saw 'em, but this was like old stuff. Seven, eight years ago. And I would literally listen to those things he had. I don't know, maybe a few, maybe a hundred of them. I listen to 'em over and over and over. That's all I did, dude is just listen to that stuff in Bob Procer. So it was, that is really life changing for me, man.
(10:04): So, and I, I tell my kids this right now, I was like, listen, if you, if, if you're not gonna be like a doctor or an engineer or something that has this extensive study, like you don't need to go to college. Like there are people out there that's teach you what you need to know to be able to get to where you want to be for way less. And you can get there a lot faster. And Hundred percent The grant Cardones of Bob Proctor, Jim ROS, I've listened to those guys a lot as well. And it's just, it's amazing. You can trick your body first. You don't believe it, but then you, you start, start listening to that and then you go, okay, you get this, you kind of get some borrowed belief that if he said I could do it, I could do it. And then you start doing it and you get real belief, like I'm making this stuff happen. And then, then, then the confidence pours on and then it's just like, let's go and it completely can change lives. But I mean, it's just like, you gotta wanna do it. Right.
(11:00): Yeah, of course. And I think once you start seeing results, then's like, man, it's like, it was really on for me. I'm like, wow, like I can really do this. So that's it was, it was pretty cool man. Thinking about it now. So you were making 40 K a month, a couple months into real estate. You that's what you were making the whole year before just driving track. Yeah, I was making, yeah. Not even 40. It was like 39 and some change, but my goal was to make 40 a year. Yeah. Yeah. And I still have the checks, man. I, I saw 'em on, I was going through a bunch of my old phones the other day. And the first week I think I made, this was my first week of real estate checks cuz I had 10, I had 10 listings as realtor. My first month, because all I would do with the was they notice the defaults that people were behind on payments. I was knocking on their doors. Okay. Anybody who I saw on Craigslist or Zillow that was trying to do for sale by owner dude, I was freaking hounding him. So like, it was just like, that's all I was doing. And yeah man, I led the 10, 10 listings. So my first month That's awesome. And where, what market was this in at the time? That was in Fresno, California. All right. So now you're, you're, you're cranking away. You got your state deals going. You're moving along. You're doing well. I'm assuming life's good. There's there's no issues that you have going on.
(12:19): No, by that time, man, I, I got my act together and was, was pretty much hammered down, man. So the, the way I got into the, the investing side of it was my wife said, well, I wanna go on the, because we'd never been on a vacation. We didn't have any damn money. All right. Well, where do you wanna go? I wanna go The Bahamas. All right. Book it. So she booked the trip to the sandals resort. And when we were at the sandals resort, I met a guy that changed my life. Dean Garland from he's a older man. He's in his eighties now Dean Garland from long beach, California. And I got to talking to this old man at dinner and asked him what he did. He said he was in real estate and told me he was a real estate investor. And you know, very successful guy had a bunch of properties in long beach and basically told me, Alan, whether I'm here in The Bahamas or I'm in long beach, I'm making the same amount of money because I have investment properties. So the money's coming in, he said, you're a realtor and you're not making any money being here. Right. I said, damn man. So basically I convinced this old man to become my first mentor. And he didn't have any kids and yeah, man, I, I went home and I totally changed my strategy dude. And I, then I went full bore and do the investing side of it.
(13:39): So you got your mentor, he's from long beach. He's probably in, you know Spain when you were talking to him at some times. So he was telling you about how the reoccurring income come in. And so he was buying re single family residential, or was he buying commercial stuff or what was he buying? He, he had all residential, but he had multifamily and you know, he had some stuff that was like 70 units all the way down to single family houses. Gotcha. So he had, he had a nice mixture when I met him. You know, he's already like, kind of at the end of his career. Yeah. And you know, he was in his seventies when I met him. He's in his eighties now late. He was probably mid seventies. Now he is in his eighties. But yeah, he just, he, he like, you know, you, you talk to someone, man. Like people can really, they can like drop an idea. Something maybe you've never heard before. And if you can comprehend it and it resonates with you, I think it can be life changing. And that's, that's kinda what happened for me with him.
(14:33): Well, sometimes we have to put in those positions, like we have to get away from the day to day because you, you, you had to talk to that guy where you're sitting there at a, a restaurant or something at dinner with in Fresno, right. You that might have not have came across the same way. Now you're in The Bahamas at sandals and you, you, you talk to Dean and Dean's like, Hey man, I'm not making money while I'm here. And you're not. And you're like, what? It, it, that, and I truly believe life happens for us not to us. Right. So your wife set it up. Hey, we're sounds like to me that she's a pretty incredible person. It's got, had a good head on her shoulders too. Yep. To stick with me, man. I would have to say so. Cause I put her through some, some serious BS dude. Most people have been gone, so
(15:19): That's awesome. But yeah, we came home and so what I started doing is then I started figuring out they were ha at this time they were having the, all the foreclosure cells at the Ratin, what RA had hotel. And so I said, all right, what Year go? This is what, oh nine. This was probably a year after I started. So I've been doing this about eight years. So it would've been seven years ago, whatever, however long ago that was 15. Yeah, somewhere around 15. Okay. Yep. So I, I was started going down to the RAs and trying to figure out how I'm gonna get these cheaper, proper. So first day I'm down there. I sit down, they're having the auction. There's a guy next to me. He looks like a gangster. Right? He's got a freaking Raiders Jersey on, he's got freaking baggy pants. I'm like, who's the no mind you. I used to wear like suits and, and nice clothes. Cause that was the projection I thought I needed when I was driving tractor, I was dirty all day. And then I would go home and change and put on these nice clothes and I would go out door knocking, cuz I thought, you know, that's what a realtor did. Right. Anyway. So make a long story short. But at the end of this day, this guy had bought over a million dollars worth of property.
(16:23): I said, what the hell? So then I got to talking to him, right? His name was Kyle. And I got to talking to him. I said, well, how do you, you know, how do you guys know about these auction? How do you know where the, the, what pro, what properties are coming? He said, oh, it's easy, man. I have this app right here. It's called foreclosure radar, which now is called property radar. But okay. He said, yeah. And it just, it just gives me a list of all these properties that are coming to the auction. I said, Hmm, I'm already door knocking. What if I just get ahead of these guys and just start going to the houses before they get to the auction? Yeah. And so that's what I did. And so then I started I didn't have any money to buy 'em at the time. I didn't have that much money, but I started putting him under a contract, which Dean kind of helped me with. He was kind of an old school. Like he had done some quote unquote wholesaling back in the day. Right. Who knows when, but he, he helped me with like just a two page agreement. And I was basically putting these properties under contract. And then I was making connections with the guys at the raison cuz they were having these options all the time down there. And then I was putting the two together and that's how I started making like, like decent money, you know? Right. More money than I was making for realtor.
(17:36): Yeah. So you, you, you were already doing the work you just got ahead of 'em and that's that's your marketing. Right? Right. And so the that's that's considered the marketing right door knocking is part of a marketing channel that we do what? And then, so you're doing this, you're building up some cash. And then now when do you start buying them yourself? Yeah. So the first property I bought 14, 17 north Berger I think was address. I still remember it. I had, I don't know. I think $65,000 saved up. We bought that property, had tenants in it. And as soon as we closed escrow, dude, these suckers stopped paying rent sign of the gun. And so it took us months to get these damn people out. And when we finally got 'em out, dude, they were like tweakers. They took every single piece of metal in that house, talking the hinges, the screws, they ripped all the wires out of the walls. It was a freaking nightmare man. And so that sent me into figuring out how to renovate a property. Right. Like it was, it was a freaking nightmare. So yeah, that was my first. That was my first rental property. And now I had to figure out how to put this damn thing back together.
(18:51): Right. Cause we didn't have much more money, man. We, we really only, I had enough saved up to buy the house. I think we maybe had an extra 20 or 30 grand or something, but we were like, we didn't have a lot of money. I was not planning on that. Right. And so, yeah, that was our first rental. I got that thing fixed up and got it refinanced. And I think it appraised for the, I don't know, 140,000, something like that. I did a podcast with the guy back in the day guy back in the day and he said, oh, so you do a lot of the bur method. I didn't even know what the hell he was talking about, you know? Yeah. The buy REFA I'm like, so he explained it to me and I said, yeah, that's, that's what we've been doing. But anyway, that was my first that was my first deal where I did that. That's awesome. Did you do the work or you, you did all the work on the house?
(19:36): No, I actually tried. I, I, I tried, but I was actually screwing so much stuff up that and I would have to go to home Depot so many times, like it was, it was freaking ridiculous. So I actually found some Mexican guys and yeah. And I started kinda building the crew from there. There's A lot of technicians that disagree with me and there's a lot of contractors that disagree with me with this. But as the investor, you, you can't be the one working on the house. You have to hire the guys to come in and do it because they're gonna do a 10 times better job than you. But we're good at is marketing and finding things and putting stuff under contract. I feel like that is the job of the real estate investor and not contractor.
(20:18): I, I totally agree, man. And, but Dean told me, Alan, you need to do everything one time. Because if a guy tells you he wants $500 to change that toilet you've changed the toilet. And you know, it's not worth $500 was to change that toilet. So that made a big impact on me. So, you know, the first, probably 3, 4, 5 projects, I was probably in their way more, but I was, I was working alongside the guys I was hiring just trying to figure it out and see what was actually on And just learn it. Yep, exactly. Yep. So that that's, that's how it went in the beginning. And so that's how you acquired a hundred rental properties is through door knocking or how did you grow from there? Yeah, so we, I just basically kept doing that. I start kept doing more wholesaling and then what really, let me take off man is I bought a duplex that was a junky duplex on the market. And it had been on the market for a while and nobody wanted this piece. And so I got ahold of broker and I said, Hey, I'll take that thing. I'll give him full price. If he'll carry the, I looked it up. I saw you didn't owe any money on it. If he'll carry the note for me, you know, with a minimal amount down, I think I told him like a thousand bucks or something, they came back, they wanted 10, 10 grand down. And I said, shit, I only got five, man. I knew the tenants were problems. So I give five grand down. He ended up carrying the paper and sure enough, they didn't pay rent either.
(21:43): I had to get the, the people in the back out. So that was, you know, more renovating. But through that process, I would go make this guy payments every month. Dude, my clockwork early every month I would go to his office. He owned a big company. And through this process I built a relationship with the guy and he would start talking to me a little bit more and a little bit more. And I was doing a lot of things, had a lot of, was doing a lot of wholesaling and kind of a little bit of flipping with the limited money I had. But he said, Hey, if you need to borrow some money, I can loan you some. And so when that happened and, and that was my first private lender, he started loaning me money, man. I took off like a damn rocket because now it was like, I've got the, the money man. And yeah, I was already out really hustling. So yeah, that allowed me to really take off there. It's amazing. Once you got that support behind you and you know, you can go out and do it and you got the funding there. You can go make any deal happen.
(22:41): Yeah. For, for, for sure. I mean, anybody can do it right. Anybody can do it. It's just, it's it's through the process. It may not be the same process as mine, but everybody has to go through their own process, whatever process that is. If you want something bad enough through the process, dude, I guarantee you'll figure it out. I guarantee it. Absolutely. All right. So you're going along, you're getting properties. You got this guy funding deals for you. You're doing the bur method. You're flipping a few I'm G I'm guessing wholesaling. A few renting
(23:10): A flipping. Yep. So whatever leads would come in, I would obviously look and see what, like, what was the best model? Hey, can we make big spread on flipping or wholesaling? Or is this one better for a rental? Right. If I already owned property close to it, I would try and keep it for rental. I was trying to keep as many rentals as I could. Yeah. But you still have to have money to live and do the things you wanna do. So. Exactly, exactly. Yep. So then I built an office California, so got started doing enough stuff where I bought a commercial building and built an office out. Yeah. And started building a team. And one thing led to another years go by and one day I'm checking on properties, just like I do and had a heart attack. And so I, I didn't know. I had a heart attack. I was at a property and it felt like Selman, man, just let me have it in my chest. And then this arm, I really couldn't move it. It was like, it was like all numb my left arm. And I didn't, I would never even thought I had her there. I just thought, man, my, you know, something's up, but I didn't know what, right. So I sat down for a little bit on the ground. Then I got back up and I drove home and I walked in the door and my wife said, Hey, what?
(24:18): What's wrong? You look terrible. I said, I don't know. I don't feel good. But I got this appoint. I just stopped by her for a minute. I gotta, I gotta go locked this house up. She said, no, you sit down for a minute. You got, you need to rest. Right. So I laid down for, I dunno, five, 10 minutes. I said, I gotta go. I got up, got back in my truck, drove across town to this property, locked it up, put it under contract. And then I drove back home and walked in the door and my wife said, Hey, you still look terrible. You're going damn hospital. And so went to the hospital. They said, Hey, you've had a massive heart attack. You're you have clogged arteries basically were rushing into surgery. So they rushed me into my first surgery, put two stents in and then had another surgery after that, where they put some more, You're just a badass man. You have a massive heart attack said, no, I needed this deal. Go get the deal.
(25:08): But I didn't know. I had a heart attack too. If I, if I knew I had a heart attack, I probably wouldn't have done it. Well, you probably never been around anybody who had had a heart attack. No, I just thought I had like, my chest was hurting and yeah, something was up with my arm, but I, I there's no way I, that was like the last thing on my line that I had had a heart attack when they told me that I couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I had a partner about five years ago. He had a heart attack and he, he was a little older than me, but that's when I really he's like always pay attention to this stuff. He called me. He was like, I think I'm having a heart attack. Can you come here and pick me up and take me into the hospital? So I went down there, picked him up and then took him into the hospital and sure enough dropped him off. He, he walked in, he said, I think I'm having a heart attack. And they said, yep, you are. And then they were rushing him to, to the surgery or whatever, the stints and stuff. Yeah.
(25:55): It's not cool, man. It's definitely not cool when it happens. It's it's scary for sure. Yeah, definitely. But just guys listening, always and guys, the pain that you have, like you said, you get the shooting down the left arm, right? Or, yeah, it's mostly the left arm shooting down the left arm. You get the chest pains. Those are signs of heart attacks. Make sure you make sure you like, don't play around with that. It's it's not Alan. You're L you're lucky as shit, dude. Like, cuz that, that takes out so many people. Yeah. To honestly dude, if it wasn't for my wife, I'd be dead because I wouldn't have I'm unlike my grandpa I'm go the damn doctor. So I would've just wrote it out and yeah, I would've would've died man. Cuz my, my arteries were all clogged up and I didn't even know it. Yeah. Just don't be too proud when that, when you feel that pain go to the hospital. Yep. I agree, man. Nothing to be nothing to play with. Nothing at all that guy's, I mean, he's still kicking. He's still doing great as are you, but I mean it, you know, you don't want to, you don't want, I don't want to experience that.
(27:00): Me neither, man. I don't want ever have to go through that again. So had the heart attack was any, did you have any thought, like when you come out of the heart attack what's life, like what are you thinking about? Mostly. I don't know, man. It's it really screwed me up. I basically like was not taking care of business. I just kind of let my office just fall the shit and told all my employees basically like whatever I bought a freaking 45 foot motor home and I just took off. So you were just like, you know what? Life is too short. I wanna experience. Yeah. So that put me like on another journey. My wife and I traveled around the country for a few years with my, oh my wife was actually pregnant dude. Like I don't know, eight, eight months pregnant when I had my heart attack with our first, with our daughter, our only daughter. And so yeah, I bought that motor home and I loaded them up. My, my daughter was about four weeks old and we rolled out man, so that we, we just traveled all around and yeah, I just tried to spend some quality time with them. And from there I ended up in Oregon, I settled in Oregon and then I started flipping property there and I still had, I, by this time I kind of put my office back together a little bit. I had two girls working there, just managing my properties. And then I, I set up in Oregon and yeah, we, we did our thing there for a few years and fires and everything started happening and yeah, about eight months ago, nine months ago, last summer I told my wife, we're not gonna do this again because the fires were just so bad.
(28:34): Plus the smoke, you couldn't go outside. And so I thought we were gonna move to Indiana cuz we, we do a lot of business there and we went there for a month, checked it out. I said, we ain't staying. We ain't staying here. This is too Gloo. So we started heading south and here we are man. Parkland, Florida is where we ended up settling. So Now are you still in the you're in the house now? You just bought a house? Yep. Yep. Just bought a house here and yeah man, we're just I, I feel really settled. I, I didn't feel settled in Oregon for some reason. I don't know why man, but I just didn't feel We're. Were you living out the motor home or were you living out? Did you have a house in Oregon as well?
(29:11): No. I started buying property like right when I got there and I actually bought, had two houses, like three hours from each other. Yeah. And was flipping and, and bend Oregon. I don't know if you know where that's at, but where that's we were, we started flipping property there And yeah, one thing that to another and I said, let's just get outta here and go, go find some clean air. So I thought it would be so cool. And, and it's on, on my list to do, is to grab the, grab the RV and go across the country. I have two boys right now and and just travel and just go see the entire United States. I think it'd be a
Lot. It's awesome, man. You'll you'll have a lot of great experiences, dude. It, but it's a, let me tell you, bro, it's a lot of work. I see these people in their freaking seventies, man. I'm like, I don't know how the hell they do it. You know these, see these seventies that they're driving this big boat. Hope totally a car. It's like, dude, it is a lot of work. I don't think people realize how much work it is. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. A lot of fun man. And you'll create some awesome memories. Yeah. But you'll also go through a lot of work too. So, but it's definitely, definitely worth it.
(30:14): I think it would be fun. Yeah. My buddy always says he's always like hard work. I mean having fun is a lot is hard work. You because think about it. Really. The fun things are hard work for, and those are the experiences and the memories that you remember And that's why they're worth it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Man. So now you're in Parkland, Florida running the business. You still have the hundred rentals and what do you I havee So I, I have a few hundred rentals. Oh you have a few hundred rentals. Yeah. You picked up more along the way. Yeah. Yeah. We, we picked up more. I started buying stuff in Indiana. I don't know. Six or seven years ago. Okay. And we've been growing that out and yeah. And I still have my California stuff too, but I'm getting ready to liquidate my California property. Okay. And I've been looking pretty, pretty hard in Florida, man. Cuz that love it here. Yeah. But cap rates are pretty low. So we're, we're doing some, some marketing for properties just direct to sellers now. So looking to, looking to pick up some stuff and get everything outta California, man. I'm ready to get the, get the heck outta there buddy.
(31:17): Absolutely. I, I, I don't know how you, I can see you getting out. California's beautiful. If you take all the politics and everything else out of it. Right. There's just, it's nothing else like California, but the politics for me is the one that that throws it for me that I can't do. Yep. But you but Florida, I don't know if I could live in Florida either. It's too damn hot. I don't care dude. There's say, oh, well there, no. There's like there's hurricanes here. It's humid, dude. I love it. I don't care. And I like to sweat, man. I like hard work and I like to sweat. So bring it on dude. Let's do it. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, cool man. So now like what's the plan? What, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to grow into? How do people like find you and connect with you, man?
(32:00): So I, I had Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff years ago. But when I, when I had that heart attack and I bought the Motorhead in, I just to be honest, Kyle, I just disconnected, dude. I like, I deleted all my Instagram. That part. I, why didn't I just put it on hold? I don't know. I deleted everything. I'm like, I've never doing this again. Right. I don't know. Right. And so yeah, I deleted everything. So I just started a new channel it, so my channel is the show up investor. Okay. On Instagram and yeah, just started just starting building that out, man. I hired a couple video guys that follow me around and I'm building that out and I'm getting ready to liquidate a bunch of stuff in California. I'm actually gonna bring a couple of the girls that work for me in my office in California. I'm gonna, they're gonna come out here and work with me and we're gonna start. We're gonna start building it out, man. We're gonna start doing some Airbnb stuff and probably build out an Airbnb management company as well.
(32:53): Oh nice. That's awesome, man. That is awesome. Well, that's exciting guys. If you wanna hit up Alan, the show up investor on IG hit him up me. And if the story like connects with you definitely reach out. Cause this is very inspiring. I mean, going from drug addict, parents who who gave you no, no direction at all and just to see where you're at now, man. That's awesome. Yeah. I appreciate it. Like I said, I think everybody's got, we've all got our struggles, man. We've we've all, we've all got our struggles, Kyle, but everybodys are different. But if anybody, you know, resonates with me that like reach out man, that anything I can do for anyone I'm an open book. So anybody I can help do just, just reach out. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you being on the show brother. And thank you so much for sharing that story. It's very inspiring and I can't wait for people to listen to it. Yeah, man. Thank you very much, Kyle, for letting me come on and, and share it, man. I really appreciate that. And thank you for your time. Absolutely brother.
(34:01): This is the podcast factory.com.
