Navigating Bad Deals and Career Hardships

This week we have Tate Siemer and Carl York from Green Light Equity Group share their recent experience with two deals gone wrong. Learn how to overcome and manage bad situations and crisis' in your business. Nothing ever goes exactly how you expect but how you manage the outcome will make all the difference. 

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Transcript

Ron Pippin: 0:32

Welcome to another episode of Agent Versus Lender. And today we have with us Tate Siemer and Carl York. Tate is a real estate agent but also a he's done some has done some house flipping and apartment flipping, as well as his business partner, Carl York, who has also done that same thing, so they have a great story, to talk to us today about adversity, and overcoming and how to overcome that adversity. And, you know, things don't always go as planned. And you don't always come out smelling like roses at the end either. So you want to stay tuned for the story and and hear how what they did to keep a little bit more focused a little more positive, through all the adversity that they had. So I'm gonna let Carl and and take take it away. Tell us a little bit about yourselves. And and then well, we'll we'll hear some of your stories. So go ahead.

Tate Siemer: 1:32

Yeah. Well, first of all, Ron, thanks for having us on today. We're really grateful and excited to join you. And talk, share a little bit of what we can hopefully it's a value to your listeners that may help people that are dealing with adversity is particularly in their business. We've had quite a bit of that in the last couple years here at our companies. And, you know, we will, that's what we're here to share with you about but a quick little background on us. Carl and I personally, we've known each other for about 21 years when I moved to Utah and in 1999, Carl hired me to be a photographer at for him at the Snowbird Ski Resort here in Utah where we live. And I was I worked for him for a number of years doing that. And we started a couple of side businesses and photography and a couple of other things. And we've been in real estate now together for about going on nine years. Flipping Houses during most of that time, the first seven years or so we spent pretty much exclusively flipping single family houses to with with with moderate success, I'd say. And, and then as we evolved over the last three years or so, our model and our focus has really shifted to to the multifamily space and in and most recently into apartments. In the meantime, in between we have done multiple land entitlement deals in the last two years, where we've bought raw land and entitled in these cases, townhome lots we've papered townhome lots on on these pieces of land and then sold them to develop other developers and builders. And we've done that a handful of times here over the last couple of years. And then we also got into two townhome projects, new build townhome projects in downtown Salt Lake City. They're modern, beautiful, really clean lines, tons of natural light townhomes that we have been building for the last two and a half years and right there is the start of the problem. That two and a half year, Mark. So yeah, we'll get into we'll get into how we got to here where we are now. We literally are finishing up the building. The last of there's a total of six townhomes. Right. So there's two developments, three townhomes at one development, three townhomes at another development. The first one is done, we've sold two of the units and the other unit is still for sale. And we're almost out of that thankfully and you'll hear the saga behind it in a minute. And then the second project we're literally finishing up construction right now our cleaners in touch up paint and all that stuff and going to be listing them probably next week.

Ron Pippin: 4:47

A lot of people will say oh yeah, flipping homes and flipping apartment buildings like that. What a great What a great way to make money and that's less like you're always I've heard people say you always Make money on this stuff. But it's not always the case.

Tate Siemer: 5:04

No, it's not the case. And it's an investment. And if it was, if it was a sure thing, everybody would do it right. And so there's risk in any investment. What we found, and this will be one of the biggest takeaways that I'll encourage your listeners to take is that there's this huge thing called construction risk that we really weren't in tune with. And basically, what that what I mean by that is the second you physically break ground on a project, there are a million moving parts, and there's so many different things that can start to go sideways right away. And that's what we found with both of these projects, is, if you have the wrong people in place, and the wrong builder in place, in this case, things can go sideways, really quickly, really, I mean, even before breaking ground. But once you do break ground, and you've got a product that's, you know, that's being built and in process, and you've got dozens of subs and whatnot, taking place, if that's not all, being really well coordinated, there, the amount of risk that that you take on at that point as as owners is, is huge. It's, it's, it's huge. So and we learned the hard way over and over and over again, with both of these, how much risk there is in breaking ground and construction. So

Carl York: 6:33

and bringing something else you know, you said earlier, Tate, that, that it starts before you break ground sometimes and you know, taking it back to the to the beginning of one of these two townhomes. One of the problems was buying a project and being told we would have the stamped plans ready at purchase. Well turned out when we purchased this lot. But the stamp, the plans were not stamped and they weren't done. We didn't get the stamp plans for another month and a half. That was the very first thing that happened on on one on one of these two projects. And then the second thing that happened on that one was that once we got the stamp plans, we were working away, we're at things actually this happened before the stamp plans, our contractor did not get it get ahead of schedule and get in contact with the gas company to shut the gas off. We couldn't demolish the house on this lot because the gas company hadn't physically cut the line and kept it. And when when our when our contractors said Oh, we've got to wait. I say well, how long? Well they're saying six to eight weeks, well, what is waiting two and two months due to your bottom line to even just start a project that's even just tearing the house down. So we had some adversity from square one, and then continued on from there. So it's sometimes it happens before you even before you even get going.

Tate Siemer: 7:57

The worst part of the process as far as where things were, we were I couldn't really point a finger to things going really horribly wrong is and who we chose to hire as a builder. We're actually the first let's say this, the first place, the first thing that went wrong was us doing these deals to begin with, quite frankly, and we'll talk about that. And you know, it's okay to like, admit when you've done something that you shouldn't have done, right? Like,

Ron Pippin: 8:28

What would you say doing these deals? Are you talking about? Just building in general? Or are you just saying you just got into the wrong this was just the wrong deal?

Tate Siemer: 8:40

Well, yeah, it ended up being the wrong deal. And here's why in a nutshell. So along with the plans, the land, the recommendations and everything else, we were given a builder recommendation by this developer. And we were given a budget for the building of the project by this developer. And it turns out that we didn't have the background and kind of chops that we needed to really vet both of those things as well as we should have. Because at the end of the day, what's wrong, what was wrong with these deals to start was that the buildings were way too expensive to build for per square foot. And that wasn't reflected in the in the budget that we were given. And that really, really hurt and I'm talking like probably 3040 between 30 and 40% difference between what the buildings actually cost to build. And what we were told that they would cost to build

Carl York: 9:49

one of these projects. I'll I'll just add this in. For one of these projects. The main reason that the building was so expensive to build is because it was in a Historic Landmark District which we were We're aware of, but we were not aware that you could not change the plans at all. And so it called for very high end, very expensive windows. We were trying to get our budget down because the builder really deflated the budget to get the job. And then we, we cut these expensive windows out, but then we had to go replace them with the ones in the plans because they were not the right windows.

Ron Pippin: 10:28

So you paid for Windows twice.

Carl York: 10:30

We paid for Windows twice. So that's another thing too, that is historic landmark districts there. We we assume that oh, well, the historic landmark must just apply to the historic side of it, this new build project here, we're going to build this there's the plans. Let's make a few adjustments. Well, that doesn't go over very well. So that hit us so. So you know, lots of unforeseen for sure.

Ron Pippin: 10:56

Yeah, we had a past podcast from with Jeremy Peterson. And he talked about historic homes. He's like, he's up in the Ogden area. And he talked about historic homes and historic landmarks and some of the things you have to be careful on. So yeah, that's the historic districts are very, very careful and very picky about what you do.

Tate Siemer: 11:20

Yeah, at the end of the day, you just don't mess with what they approve of, you know, you can't change your plans. When it's taken a year and a half to get approved plans. It's it's very difficult to get them to get their heads around anything else. And especially when you just went ahead and built something totally different than what they approved. We tried to get them to. So yeah, like Carl said, in a nutshell, we just we didn't put the right windows in the building that were called for in the plans to and it wasn't just the material, it was the sizes. So we changed sizes. and and the the commission just at the end of the day wouldn't go for it. We had multiple presentations in front of them. Were out I'm giving PowerPoints on why they should accept our plans as is and are building as is. And yeah, we went to an appeals hearing in front of an appellate officer and and lost there. And, you know, at the end of the day, it was in that those processes took eight, nine months, you know, so we didn't know whether

Ron Pippin: 12:30

Had you even broken ground yet. With all that.

Tate Siemer: 12:34

Oh, yes. Yeah. So this was like in the process of building? We decided,

Ron Pippin: 12:39

yeah, because you had already replaced windows. So right. Our

Tate Siemer: 12:42

Yeah, our builders are that we hired that, that ended up and I'll get back to them in a second. They ended up they were the ones that kind of talked us into this idea of changing windows and saving money in the budget. And it just

Carl York: 12:59

sorry, mostly because their budget wasn't accurate. So they had to find a saving for us.

Tate Siemer: 13:04

Right. Right. So Exactly. So, you know, really, like aside from doing the deal to begin with, the worst thing that we did was hire the builders that we hired. And at the end of the day, we ended up having to fire them for multiple reasons. They were kind of like the worst combination of of, and anybody that knows me, well will be surprised to hear me talk this badly about somebody. But it's really the truth of the story is that they were a combination of dishonest and absent from the job. incompetent, had never really done anything to this degree before they built single family houses, but nothing like this. And and just mal intended, quite frankly. So

Ron Pippin: 14:00

like, it sounds like that. There was lots of problems are going on. But really what a lot of it comes down to is that to be quite frankly, you guys probably didn't vet these people very well. And so you really working with exactly. And that, comes down to basic rookie mistakes, right? Totally.

Tate Siemer: 14:27

Yeah, is a huge rookie mistake. What we did was we decided that if these deals were worth doing, they were going to be worth doing because we could trust the guy that we were buying them from. Right and we figured that either either what he was telling us and showing us and and pitching to us was good and true. Or we were quite frankly, you know, screwed at the end of the day to begin with and That's what ended up happening. It was it's, it was a trust, but verify situation. For sure we did that the builder, we went and saw some of the work that they've done. But they had never done anything like this. So we didn't have anything to show for what they could and couldn't do here with this piece.

Ron Pippin: 15:20

So tell us about some more of the adversity things. So you've you've, okay, so you, you have the builder, realizing you have the wrong builder, you've Have you knows that you've had to put you've had to pay for two sets of Windows one, that one that were a little cheaper, and then you end up with this expensive one, you have historic landmark people that you're dealing with, that won't let you change anything.

Tate Siemer: 15:46

What else? Well, not only that may not make it let us change anything, but actually the fact of making us go back and change 50 windows out of a building that costs$250,000 at the end of the day to do so. Yeah, as far as I'm concerned. This is this is truly a situation where we made numerous mistakes, and a couple of them pretty fatal mistakes. Because, you know, we'll get to this more in a bit, I'm sure. But at the end of the day, we're hoping to maybe breakeven on on the first project that we've sold two units for but probably not. And the other project that's still in construction, basically bout to list. Kind of same scenario. And in reality, I mean, there's, there's a very real chance that we'll lose multiple, six figures between the two of them, there's also a real chance that we, it won't be quite that bad. And we may be getting some help from our developer friend. Let's put it that way.

Ron Pippin: 16:57

Okay. So there's, there's several things that you've said here. Yeah, really important. So, at the end of the day, you're evaluating what went wrong, so that you can learn from it. So you don't make that mistake again. And that's, that's really, you know, they call that the school of hard knocks. And it's an expensive school to go to. But it's really important that, you do that. And, and unfortunately, you have like apartment buildings, and you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. And most of us, at the end of the day, we're talking about Facebook marketing, or we're talking about, you know, the amount, you know, Zillow marketing, or you're talking, you're talking about something that we're talking about hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands of dollars. But even so, it's really important to evaluate the evaluate what's going wrong, so that it doesn't happen again, at the end of the day, you have to take responsibility, because, you know, the buck stops with those that are that are in charge. And even though that maybe got in over your head, you know, it still stops there. And so in our business, as a realtor, or as a, as a loan officer, we each have our own business, and it stops here. And if we don't evaluate on a daily basis, or weekly basis, or monthly basis, at least monthly, then you know, we could be losing money and just not realizing that the return on investment just isn't there. And so we have to tweak something. And if the consequences that are that, you know, we're losing money that maybe we could have maybe mitigated at some point, maybe earlier in the process. So what I want to hear is because I really want to get to how you guys dealt with this adversity. So take me really quick, just like really quick through all the different things that you guys had to deal with, because I know there's a lot of them. And, you know, so I kind of want to really quick just go through those. And then I want to delve into because I think you guys probably dealt with each because you're different people so I'm sure that you dealt with it and maybe one dealt with it better than the other but how did how do you guys deal with the prospect of losing that kind of money and how do you keep going so that's kind of what I want to talk about

Carl York: 19:39

it's tough it's tough dealing with with an adversity like that. You know, I it's interesting as you said, you know, what have you dealt with it better than the other clear picture came into my mind that Tate handled it a lot better than I did. And I'm not afraid to say and, but But yeah, one of one of the many adversities that we had was was firing our GC. So you've got a contractor on the job doing their thing and to fire one and bring another one in. You know, sometimes you're talking about lawsuits. And we had to deal with that. So this contractor thought that they had, they had the right to sue us for the money that they would have made had they finished the job. And which wasn't the case. But we had to hire another contractor. And in the meantime, we have to, we had to switch the bank loan, we need we realized that we were out of we're we're quickly approaching being out of money on the job, because the first loan we got was based on a faulty budget. So that faulty number being so low, we're fire, our contractor had to go get another loan, well, that adds up. It's like starting your entire job again, you got to get a job aid, and you got to get a bank in there, and you got to get everybody merged again. So we doubled our workload. In the meantime, somebody has to run the job site and make sure things keep going. So in our business, that's mainly My position is to be down on the jobsite as much as possible. So dealing with it was very difficult, because you've got subcontractors who were working for somebody else. But now they're working for me in the interim, until we find the new Jgc. So it got very complicated for about three or four months as well. We're jumping through all these hoops to get a job to keep a job going while we were shifting everything. So you got all these moving parts, but then you put them inside another box that's got all these moving.

Tate Siemer: 21:31

Yeah, totally what Carl was saying is, there was a period of probably six months where it felt like literally every week, we were turning around and getting slapped in the face with some huge just new piece of adversity that we didn't see coming. And it Yeah, like Carl said, it really did start from day one, with the first project, we broke ground, and we found a foundation that we didn't know was below the ground about 1520 feet down that we needed to remove that put our budget back 50 grand right out of the gate. So, you know, that's not a great place to start. And it really seemed to go that way, with bad news for a long period of time. And we really like, I mean, we had some things happen there that I mean, with I there's there, let's just say there's some things that actually happened on the job site that I won't bring to the podcast because they were, dark. But, but it was almost like, there was a feeling as with that one for a while, like, there, we were up against some sort of curse or something like that. Not that I even believe and stuff like that, but necessarily, but there was definitely an enter, you know, like it was like we were swimming upstream as hard as we could and fighting as hard as we could. Especially once we realized what how bad a situation we were in with that first contract or that was when we really like had to really had to jump in and and start swimming really, really hard. And it was like the ship was so far off course at that point in so many different ways. From the the GC on down through the subs and the bank, and we had a horrible relationship with the first bank that we worked with. couldn't have been more difficult. There was adversity at every there wasn't a single easy part of that particular job. For the majority of it, we've had some things go pretty well I think during the sales and disposition of them. They've gone pretty smoothly, and we've gotten more than we thought we would get for them. They've been two of the three condos to three townhomes that we've sold have sold for over a million dollars in downtown Salt Lake that's pretty close to a record. So we're we're building beautiful homes, and they're, you know, getting a ton of attention and that sort of thing. But we're we're unfortunately not doing it to have a whole lot of profit. Yeah,

Carl York: 24:32

yeah, there definitely is definitely some satisfaction in the finished product. You know, when you talk about Okay, there's adversity, but ever out of every adversity comes something good and we create these wonderful pieces of real estate. And the other thing that I wanted to add in there, if that happened that that helped is that well, two years into a pretty booming real estate cycle and that has propelled those prices. Hire, you know, we're getting 100 to$150,000 more per unit than we originally expected. That gives you an idea of how much we lost because we're still probably gonna lose some money.

Ron Pippin: 25:10

Right? So,

Carl York: 25:11

but having that being buoyed up a little bit on at the end by the price by the market has definitely been a boon.

Tate Siemer: 25:18

Right? Hey, Ron real quick to just answer one of the questions you just asked as far as how I dealt with it personally.

Ron Pippin: 25:27

I want to know how you guys are dealing. So you know, at the beginning there can let you can less like Oh crap, you know, but at some point, it's got to be start messing with your head.

Tate Siemer: 25:40

Oh, yeah, hugely. So basically, I've said to people, many times to many different people that this is the hardest thing I've ever dealt with professionally. Like, it's hands down the hardest thing I've ever been through, as a business person, as an entrepreneur, certainly in real estate, and that's saying a lot, we've had some, we've had some other projects that have been very challenging, I've had a lot of adversity, I think, whenever you're in the spec business, which is flipping houses or building new houses, you're going to, you're going to wind up with a lot of adversity. And it's just the way that it is. So as far as how I dealt with it personally like, the the best thing for me, and this is, this is truly like, I mean, this, with my whole heart, like, the best thing that's come out of this for me is that it's like showed me what I made of as far as resilience and stamina and mental mindset, chops. And it's taken every bit of like the person any personal development work that I've done, whether it's coaching, or professional education, like landmark education, or things that I've learned from, from books, and personal development books. It really like all my tools, it took everything to deal with the super, super dark days and weeks and months. And there were there was a there was a lot of that and there is it really became it becomes this thing that's just always hanging over your head, no matter where you are, what you're doing, you can be at a party, and all of a sudden, these things will pop into your head. And it's it, you can just feel your vibration shift. And you can you can feel your heart sank when you think about them sometimes, and you got to manage that you got to deal with that. And so to me, like, you know, you talked earlier about taking responsibility and personal responsibility, like that's, that's emotional intelligence one on one, as far as I'm concerned, like, being responsible and treating, treating everything that's going on in your immediate world as your responsibility, including your emotional world. That is, like I say, emotional intelligence or emotional maturity. And if you're going to be an entrepreneur and take risks at any level, but especially if you're going to play big, which we do play big, you have to have a tolerance. And this definitely showed us the limits of our tolerance, you know, the the, our tolerance for pain, quite frankly,

Carl York: 28:37

tolerance for risk as well. Yeah, you get you get into these deals, and you're weighing your risks, and we really didn't have a firm grasp on our risks. Yeah, so I just know that.

Ron Pippin: 28:48

So what have you learned from this? I mean, you've got I mean, I can go into so many different directions with this. Right? But have you learned from, from this experience, what, in your personal life and your business life? What have you learned?

Tate Siemer: 29:11

Well, for me, again, it's been a, it's been as much learning about myself and kind of like, showing, like, almost like holding a mirror up to myself to show me what, what I've gotten what I don't have, like, when you're pushed to your limits, you know, what you've got and what you don't. And those are both good things to know. So, so to me, I've used it as a piece of personal development, leverage, quite frankly, like it, you know, I'm, I'm just committed to taking whatever positives I can away from it. And so I would say that as far as you're right, this could go a lot of different directions because you can talk about what you've learned from a developer standpoint or what you've learned from you You know, an entrepreneurial standpoint or what you've learned from a personal standpoint, but to me, I think they think

Ron Pippin: 30:05

I would rather learn on like, personal because Yeah, because I think that's what we're most people are at to say, You're, you're a developer and in flipping big houses, but some of us aren't doing that. But we still have, we still have these challenges. And it messes with our head. So, how do you, I want to tape so I want you to tell me, and then I want to hear from Carl, because I know that Carl said that he didn't deal with it as well. And so I kind of I kind of want to talk to him a little bit about that, too.

Carl York: 30:35

Sure.

Tate Siemer: 30:37

Yeah. I guess. And there were, there were times that I didn't deal with it well, to you know, I look at myself as a leader, and I went as a leader, you have to be on your A game. most if not all the time. And being on your A game, when you're getting your ass kicked, is means showing up in a way that you're not a victim, that you are basically doing what you can with what you have, and and doing the best you can with that. And, and moving forward. And that, you know, that's what leaders do.

Ron Pippin: 31:23

How do you do that? I know. I mean, it sounds great that Yeah, you just got to move forward. But dude, how do you do that? I mean, you can't just go, Oh, Mom, I'm going to move forward.

Tate Siemer: 31:34

Well, I mean, honestly, that part of it is okay. So here's the probably the biggest take another big takeaway. I'm glad you asked that question is, I really stayed focused on the front of the business, meaning that I kept looking for deals. I was in Oklahoma City and San Antonio, and Michigan, like looking at apartment buildings, Albuquerque, making offers, negotiating, getting partners together, putting other deals together, Carl is involved in all that too. And he traveled some and, and was a huge part of making those deals happen. But my day to day was much more focused on the front end of the business and where we were headed, as opposed to this mess that we were in, currently. And yeah, to Karl's credit, Carl has dealt with so much more of the the day to day ins and outs of these two projects than me, as far as, you know, relationships with our subs relationships with our current GC, who's turned out to be very disappointing as well, unfortunately. But, you know, again, Carl's been just an incredibly strong, powerful guy through the whole thing. He's definitely had his moments, for sure. But

Carl York: 33:02

I'll get into that, for sure.

Tate Siemer: 33:04

You know, and I'd say this, like, I, I'm 47. And I feel like somewhere around age 41, or 42, I really grew up and meaning that I like, kind of got a grasp on, like, my own Bs and like, the, the hang ups that I might have had in my life. And I mean, I still have stuff for sure. But largely, like, if this had happened before that process, I would have killed me. Like, I don't I cannot imagine having survived, like, how I would have survived. I don't mean like, maybe literally killed me, but it would have significantly derailed me and and I wouldn't be where we are right now. You know, here's

Ron Pippin: 33:51

my takeaway from this it is actually really important to invest. This applies to everybody that's in business. It's like, you guys are getting your butt kicked. Things are not going right. From start it all You haven't even finished yet. And it's you're still having issues. But I asked how you keep going. And what you said as you keep finding deals. And the problem that most of us have is like we get stuck. So I'm going to take this back to the real estate side. And, and or the mortgage side, either way, we get stuck on one deal. That is like really hard and we're and and we kind of get stuck and we're trying to work that one and work that one and work that one and somebody maybe has some credit issues or they went and bought a car or you know, there's some problems that come up, and it's like killing this deal. And instead of instead of just going forward and finding some more deals Like we get stuck on this, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't, we shouldn't solve that. I have a team, that they solve that stuff. And, but sometimes I get sucked back into those. And they're trying to say, Ron, get out of my way and let us solve it. Which is, which is why I love my team. But, but it's really important to know that, to to get past some of these issues, you got to still move forward in your business. And finding more deals is like huge therapy. So like, you're stuck on this one, and you're trying to get this one closed. But there's six more out there that are waiting for you to come and get them to see what I mean. So if you, you spend 100% of our energy on this one that's sucking the life out of you, and you're not going out and getting the rest of them, then you're never going back in. Does that? Does that make sense?

Tate Siemer: 35:58

Absolutely, no, it makes total sense. If you got it. Like, there's, there's two takeaways there that I see. Number one is, it's like momentum is your friend, you know, and it takes there's the whole analogy of how much it takes what at least half the fuel that an airplane has just in the first minute of flight or whatever, just to get it off the ground. Like, if you let another way of looking at it as if you're a mountain biker, or a Jeep or whatever, if you let that one rock that, that really stops you stop you, then you got to regain that momentum, again, from from square one. And so the best thing that you can do, in my opinion, is keep your feet moving. And finding new business finding volumes, your friend, like, you know it, the more deals you have, the more deals you can mess up. I have a friend that lost money on 40 deals, but he's done 400 deals in his life. So he's losing money on 10% of his deals. That's, you know, that's about how it goes. Or in general I think so. Yeah. And, and, but it's all it really is all about mindset. I mean, we could have, we we, in the meantime, we one thing we didn't talk about is we flipped a 12 unit apartment building. And that's how we got into apartments. And we're now on a 20 unit up in Clearfield, Utah, and moving forward with it and renovating it, and then we're doing a land entitlement deal. That's part of it as well. And, you know, if I had had the mindset that we were not like, a failed development company, or failed house flippers that went big and crashed and what and, you know, and that was it, like, we never would be in where we are now. And in the current deals that we're in, and even even a couple of the ones that we've done and since you know, gotten out of so yeah, staying staying busy. And, and, and, and really tending to your mindset. And, you know, we use techniques, gratitude techniques here, in our company will, will, will will journal, write down list of affirmations, we do vision boards, you know, we kind of bring all of the, the tools that I've learned and continue to learn or, you know, over the course of my searching and learning, and try to really, like employ the magic and power that is behind what having having your mindset, right, you know, knowing who you are, knowing what you're about having a clear mission, having a clear purpose in the world, and having a plan of attack and, and executing on it showing up every day. And it's it's every single day, it's wax on wax off. And, you know, it's, it's work so it's but you just keep you just keep working. And and I think that's really that's, you know, and it's at some level, we just didn't really have a choice, you know, you just gotta keep going.

Ron Pippin: 39:16

You do you just like you said, if you don't keep your feet moving, then then you're just basically go throw your hands up and go, I'm just gonna go do something else. I can't do this anymore. But when in reality you can, it's just like this one may not make you a lot of money, but your other ones are, the other ones are going to make you money. And but if you evaluate, we go back to what we said at the very beginning as you're evaluating where you're at and what you learned. And hopefully you can apply those things to the next one. Carl, what So tell us a little bit about you know, you have mentioned that maybe you didn't handle it as well or you took a different approach and and so what was going through your head and How did you handle it?

Carl York: 40:01

Well, I think a lot of it just kind of came down to my position in the company, which was, you know, dealing with contractors dealing dealing with subcontractors dealing with the transition of one of one on one GC to another, it was so intense, because there was a lot of, you know, billing issues I, you know, I do all the all the book work for the, for these two, these two jobs. So I was the guy giving out checks, I was having to try to get contractors back who hadn't finished their jobs, or if, if, you know, if a contractor got paid, but they've made some mistakes, trying to get them back. So I was on the ground, trying to minute manage all this stuff. And like I said, before, it's like, it wasn't even necessarily weekly, it was like daily, it was like coming in and it was coming in and walking into a boxing ring every day. And just knowing that you're going to get beat up, you're going to end the day with a black guy. And it came it was it was literally like I felt for a while I was trudging into work already beat up before I even got there. So what I had to do, and and Tate helped me with a lot of this because he was a little bit more, you know, tuned into the mindset stuff before I was and it was a lot of getting into a routine where I was supporting myself in the morning, getting up working out, doing some meditation, possibly some journaling, spending time getting into myself before I got into that boxing ring, or had to put my armor on. And, and, and supporting myself and the only way that I could take and I are fortunate enough to be partners in a yoga studio. So I was going to three days a week to a six day yoga class, getting getting grounded before I went in and to the fight every day. And that's what it felt like it felt like a fight. And, you know, it's really only been the last couple months since we've, since we've sold the two of the units in our in the historic landmark building, that things have really lightened up. We just really I kind of didn't know what was coming every day because of the landmark commission and other things. So so it's really just you know, getting that mindset staying true to it, I have to say it was a roller coaster, the weeks where I didn't get up and do those things for myself. Were the were the weeks weeks where I was really struggling. And so you know, like Tate said, keep keep the engine running, Tate was pushing the business forward while I was like just moving these rocks along. And so it was it's been great because we have had other projects to at least put other energies into and not be always in a project that's just horrendous and sapping your time and money. So, so having tape pushing the business forward, while I was trying to make things happen, it's it's it became the partnership where we had to rely on each other to get all these things done. And so in the end, we're stronger because of it, we have a lot more knowledge of where we want to be what we what we did do where we don't want to be, you know, we don't like the risk involved of new builds, so we will stay in multifamily. Or we will still flip some high end properties here and there that have nice margins, and then the land and title of deals. But, you know, we're gonna, we've really honed in on what we really like to do. And that's the important thing. I mean, you got to try a lot of things. We in one year we had to land entitlement deals, the two townhomes and the 12 unit apartment that we flipped all that came to be in existence within 12 months. And then we've got the land entitlement deals done. We've flipped departments successfully. We're very happy with that it was a beautiful project at the end. And here we are still getting rid of these these two behemoths. But you have to, you have to be able to take a hit here and there to understand what it feels like and understand how to avoid it. vetting people betting that now we're into vetting. Our property managers, we're having really good experience now because we're really a lot more careful in our vetting. So when you look at it like that we've set ourselves up, we've got all this adversity out of the way and learn from it now. It's really just going to open up because we can avoid things that we know how to avoid and we're in a place where we have experienced so so that's that's really the you know, the bright note at the end is that we're getting out of these projects. We have a clear focus, and we're moving forward.

Ron Pippin: 44:33

That's awesome. Yeah,

Tate Siemer: 44:34

if I could just highlight real quick what one thing or theme Carl hit on there for a while for a while was self care. Like, if you're not taking care of yourself, and hard times, and by that I mean eating well like like really eating well exercising, drinking a lot of water. You know, I'm big on like, Spinal Care, like whether that's yoga or whatever, just like taking care of Your body so that it's working the best that it can, your brain is going to respond better, you're going to feel better, you're gonna have more energy, you're going to have more confidence. You know, and then just, in general, just taking care of yourself, pampering yourself here in there. And, you know, I just bought a mountain bike. And it was because we basically with close the deal, and, you know, it was, it's, to me, that's like a, an act of self nurturing and self care. And, luckily enough for me, I was able to do that, and, but, you know, there, I just, I think that any any of your listeners, your agents and your lenders are, are going to be running up against days that they're just not feeling on their game. And, I think you can really look to that, like inequality of sleep is huge, too. So, that's another one where I think Carl's had some sleep challenges in the past. And I think that put him in a position.

Ron Pippin: 46:05

I cant blame him, I mean, you know, with all these things going on, and just like, yeah, asleep, that would have, just throw me

Tate Siemer: 46:13

at, you know, it's, an art taking care of a human being, and you taking care of yourself is an art, and it's so key to being an entrepreneur, being healthy, and being energetic is key. And so, you know, success, I think, is, is determined by the standards that you set in your life. And I think, you know, for us that the, we're very intentional about that, about that, in particular, the things like just being on time, punctuality, just those standard, I, you know, things like that, you know, looking, showing up with, we have branded clothing and our company gear and, you know, when we show up at a property and, and uniform, so to speak it, it just Garner's a little different level of respect. And I think we've, you know, that he reflect that, when you go into a, you know, into a situation, you know, how you dress is, is huge, and all that stuff. So anyway, you know, there's, that's, for me been a, another big takeaway is just the value of self care, the necessity of self care, it's crucial when, especially when you're really up against it.

Ron Pippin: 47:34

That's a great summary, I think. I think when when the chips are down, a lot of people do start, they start, stop, or they start forgetting about themselves. And that's when it's really almost more important is to remember yourself, I think service and, and, and getting into other things is really important and moving forward. But don't forget about yourself. And I think that, that probably helps. I know, it helps me when you know, I get out and do some waterskiing or I go out and do do something, just to get my mind off of where I'm at today, just because that helped me refocus or first thing in the morning, do a little quick workout. So anyway, any any final thoughts?

Tate Siemer: 48:28

You know, I, to me that, I guess the only other thought that I'd have is the importance of being in the, in the boat that you're in with the right people, you know, and Carl and I are lucky enough to have a partnership that is there's kind of a just a natural friendship beat that we've always had between us. And it's, we don't get hung up on petty stuff generally. And we just treat each other with respect and goodwill. And and those those are like, I think it's, it's really unusual for partnerships to work in general, I think that that's a pretty unusual thing. Most of the ones that I've seen in real estate in particular don't last very long. And so I think, you know, we feel blessed to have that partnership. And, you know, so back to when you're up against it, like it's your team that you have around you. I mean, you were talking about your team, Ron, and how they support you and how you just need to get out of the way and that sort of thing. We're building a team right now. We're bringing it we've just brought on two new team members ourselves, and he leaning on those people that are there in your life that are there for you that want to be leaned on you know that that want to help that want to offer advice or counsel or just a listening ear, you know, really, you got to you got to utilize all your resources. Sometimes when when the when the stuffs hitting the fan, it's you, you really got to step up. And sometimes you got to step up in a way that you've never stepped up before and, and show up in the world in a way that you never have before. And I think for me personally, that's, that was the biggest takeaway is it was just a massive period of growth. You know?

Ron Pippin: 50:33

Carl, anything you want to add?

Carl York: 50:36

Well, just kind of to kind of catapult off of Tate's idea there, I think, you know, you have a team, you need to really lean on your team, but as well, you've also got relationships, you know, you'll hear a lot of people in real estate talk about, Hey, this is a relationship business. And it really is, you know, one of one of the things I I realized, you know, as I was working with a lot of contractors is I built relationships with certain contractors that that, that worked really well. And we found, we found the people who, who we build a relationship, and we can trust that they'll show up, you know, you get this, you get people around you, who you who you can say, hey, I've got this going on, will you do this? For me? Yes, I will. And they show up. And there's these days, it's very rare, especially in contracting. So you know, you, you build your team, you build your relationships with those people outside your team. And those are the things that propel you forward. And you have to be very discerning about who you have on your team and who is one of your, you know, the people that you rely on out in the field. So, you know, build those as well as you can and, and, and build really build good relationships, build rapport and build a great team, and that will always prevail and take you through those adverse times that's helped us a bit. Yes.

Ron Pippin: 52:02

So if somebody needs to get hold of you, is there a way that they can get hold of your your group your team, your company? Yeah,

Carl York: 52:13

absolutely. Yeah.

Ron Pippin: 52:14

Yeah. Tell us how that helped. Tell us how we can you reach you.

Tate Siemer: 52:18

website is www.gl equity. group.com. So g as in George Ellis, and Larry, equity. group.com is our website. You can go there and actually sign up for our investor list if you want to start getting seen and deal opportunities by chance. If you're interested in learning more about the multifamily opportunities, space, that's a whole different podcast. But I we certainly could could make a podcast out of talking to you guys about how, how and why we have made the shift into apartments, why we think that there's aspects of it that are actually a lot easier than spec opportunities, like flipping and building and why there's a lot less risk in apartments than there is with single family flipping. So really, yeah, we're here to help. We're big on adding value I have a podcast called the apartment guys. So you can find that podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you whatever server you use the apartment guys and and I have basically really high level guests that are not usually nationally known authors and speakers. Come on and talk about how they've, you know, put 6000 unit portfolio together and yeah, it's it's pretty cool stuff. So love to have anybody reach out to us anytime we're here to help. All right,

Ron Pippin: 53:55

thank you I want to take thank tait seamer and and Karl York for joining us today on agent versus lender. As always, you can find us on Apple and on multiple different Spotify and in multiple different podcast hosting, or you can find us at agent vs lynda.com. And you can get hold of me or my team at 801-628-7667. And if you can leave us a positive review. Of course we love the positive five star reviews but we just ask that you jump on and give us a review. And we will catch you next next time on agent versus lender.