Podcast 222. Reach Financial Freedom Faster with Sam Primm

Hey, welcome back to the Average Joe Finances Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Sam Primm with Faster Freedom. And I got to tell you, I'm super excited to have you on the show, man. I follow your TikTok. You're crushing it out there, man. So thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate having him, man. I'm excited to have a good conversation. Absolutely. And a good conversation we will have. So to start things off, I'd like to ask you the same question. I ask everybody that comes on the show just to start things off and we want to know about you. If you, so if you could share a little bit about your background, your story, who is Sam. Yeah, no hopefully my story is a little bit different in a different way than most people think. I'll get to my story, but in general, I'm like super, super normal. The average Joe couldn't be a better name to describe me. I just didn't want to steal your names when I made my stuff. I'm as average as it gets grew up in Missouri middle class. My dad was was an engineer. Worked for one company his whole life, no entrepreneurial things going on there. My mom was a part time teacher. Got one pair of shoes every day or every year. Every day would have been cool every year before school. So just very like normal middle class lower middle class upbringing. You didn't want for anything, but didn't have a ton kind of thing. So like average as it gets, which you're not going to write a book about. I understand that, but the cool thing is, and what I've come to realize is that's how a lot of people grew up and that's how a lot of people, their situation is. I don't have. The rags, the riches Phoenix uprising story that you'd make a short film about or something, but my story is pretty normal. It's pretty boring. It's pretty average, but guess what? By the definition of those three words, that means that's how a lot of people are. So the fact that, we'll flash forward, I've been able to buy over 45 million worth of real estate without using any of my own money by over a thousand houses you 4 million followers on social media, all in the past several years without using any of my own money should be encouraging to those who are out there doing what I was doing. School real world job expecting your entire 65 and about two years in that real world job took it took a turn and started to invest in real estate on the side before came my full time gig so we can break all that down. I'm sure, but in general, pretty normal story up until I started investing in real estate in about 2015. All right on Sam. Yeah that's awesome. I do have a lot of real estate investors that come on this show and it's so interesting to see that there's so many different strategies to investing in real estate, right? Me personally, I prefer multifamily. That's what I invest in right now. I know you love to invest in real estate using OPM, other people's money, right? And the fact that you were able to. Grow up to 45 million in real estate without using any of your own money. I think somebody would say that's crazy. That's not even true. As a matter of fact, I think Dave Ramsey even said that about you, that you're lying as a real estate investor. I know you're not lying, right? Cause I know other people that do this too. So what is your preferred method for investing this way that you're not tapping into your own funds, but you're using other people's money? Yeah. And yeah, thanks for the Dave Ramsey shout out. That's always fun and entertaining. In general, I guess the take one step back, the whole reason I did this is because when I got started, I didn't have any money. I didn't have enough money to put 20 percent down on a rental property. I knew I wanted to buy rentals. I was convinced from, rich dad, poor dad, just reading and talking to other people that real estate's the wealth creator. Let's figure out how to get in there, but I need 20, 25 percent down. And I didn't have it. So that's the genesis of everything just out of necessity. Not out of Hey, let's do this. Cause it's be cool to say. And then I started to do it and then did it again and again. And it started, I started to see the scalability when you don't use your own money. So morphed in itself of necessity to scalability to Holy crap. And the method I kind of use is pretty commonly known out there for those that invest in real estate and it's the BRRRR method. It stands for buy, rehab, rent, refinance. And I changed the R from repeat to scale, but in general, you're borrowing money from a person or a company to buy a distressed asset and fix it up. Then you get it rented and then you take a bank note out on that property. And that's a check from the bank and you pay back whoever you borrow the money from. Now you owe the bank money, but that's a mortgage. And then the tenant's rent pays the mortgage. And I've done that with single families, duplexes, multifamilies self storage facilities hotels. So you can do it with any piece of real estate, or I guess any asset that you can improve the value in and that produces cash. So it's just very widespread. And it, yeah, obviously. There's some nuances to it that, we can get into, but in general, it's a principle that's used in business for the past 200 years. As far as the research I've done, every, almost every company that starts borrows debt and leverages money. I absolutely love that. I absolutely love that. You replace that last R with an S for scale like that. That's clever, right? Because yes, you're repeating, but at the same time, when you repeat this process, what are you doing? You're scaling, you're growing. Absolutely love that. You coined it, calling it out here. So yeah, #BRRRS. Sam coined that good and trademark it. Okay. So that's fantastic, man. Now. The fact that you went from starting off like with single families and duplexes, triplexes and you moved your way up a lot of people feel like you can't do that with bigger deals. You can't do the BRRRR method. So how did you wind up doing that with like self storage and some of these other commercial properties? How did you like, make that transition or do you still do both? Yeah, so we still do both. So one of the companies I have buys about 300 houses a year, and we wholesale and fix and flip. So naturally, it's a machine that's built. It's got 22 employees. It's our biggest company, a standalone company. And, they're buying houses. There's acquisition reps out there. They're refining these distressed properties. And when they're in my buy area, and they're going to cash flow, I tried I own that company too. So I just pick them off. So we're always going to be adding single family rentals. I love that asset class. It's super liquid. Yeah, it rides the market, but the tenant base is great. And I love single family rentals, but naturally you want to scale like we already talked about it. And the easier way to do that is either by a big package of single family rentals, which we've done that too, or an apartment complex, or you can get into some different, asset classes like some self storage. So I have six apartment complexes that. Total like 130, 140 units, something like that. So smaller ones, in the, high teens to upper twenties, low thirties kind of thing. And it's very similar to the single family method, but there's a little bit of difference. So we'll just do simple math just because I'm a simple guy and don't have a calculator in front of me. So let's say I want to buy a million dollar apartment complex. It could be five units, 10 units, 22 carats. It's a million bucks. I get $200,000 for the down payment. That's not my money, though. I borrow money from a private lender and, we can get into, you can make them part of the LLC or just pay them a preferred interest, whatever. But you get 200 grand from private lender, 20 percent down payment. Then that other $800,000 or the 80 percent to get to that million is from a small local bank that I built relationships with the single families again, this is something that is a stair step that you build a relationship with over time and you gain trust from them with the lenders, both the private lenders and the small local banks. And then you have that property and I'm not going to buy it unless there's upside, either via rubs or rent raises, or a combination of getting efficient with expenses, whatever it looks like, mismanaged and then over a 2 or 3 year cycle. That I'm paying that private lender, they're just some interest only depending on the terms of the deal. And then I refinance in two to four years to three years, whenever there's enough equity built up, let's say the thing appraises for 1.3 million now there's, a little bit of no pay down. There's, five, 600 grand of equity built in. Then I do a refinance. And then I, pay the private lender back their money. And plus interest, they're happy. Now I own it with the bank loan and still cashflow and sometimes cashflow more depending on, if I can get better terms because of the bigger loan or I package it with something. So instead of doing the buy rehab, that, that quick little. Three, four month deal with single families. You're just doing it over an extended period of time. So I haven't coined it the extended BRRRS, whatever you want to call it, but it's just a way to, you have to buy at a discount of course, but it's just a way to create some equity on a bigger asset. Yeah that's fantastic. Cause like most people on an asset like that, especially these larger assets are, they'll do a real estate syndication, where they bring in a whole bunch of partners and they're pool their money together to make it happen, where you just go to that one private lender that you've already. Got this established relationship with and say, Hey man, I need 200 grand because this deal, this is it. Here's the numbers. This is why it works. And the bank's Hey, yeah, we'll lend to you because you've done this a hundred other times with these, single family homes. We know that you're going to do it with this too. So I think the other piece of that too, is as you were scaling, there was another R in there that you were working on and that was relationships. So you built these relationships up with these, with these private lenders, with these banks that are also lending you the money. They know and trust you now because they see what you've done. You have that resume, you have that track record, right? So it's easy for them to push the yes button when you just show them, you could probably show them the napkin math and say Hey, this is why this works. And they'll probably be like, yeah, okay, easy. Boom. So that's awesome, man. So yeah, it is an extended BRRRR, cause it's a couple of years, but for the private lender out there, man, they make out like a bandit because you're paying them interest over that two, three, four year period, and then you pay them back in full when you refinance. So they made out. Great. So everybody that's in that deal is getting a nice return. So that's, yeah. And by everybody, the three people, you, the private lender, and then the bank. Yeah, that's awesome, man. So now when it comes to how you've scaled cause you, obviously you started this by yourself. Now you have a whole team. Actually, you said two different companies, that you're running. What does that look like right now? What does your organization look like for Sam and for Faster Freedom? What is the whole entity that you've got going on? Yeah. So everything I do it's like when a comedian tells a joke, which I'm not gonna tell a joke right now, but when a comedian tells a joke, they'd say in first person, cause everything I own is 50, 50 with my business partner. Lucas, he's been my best friend since middle school. So it's really cool middle school, high school, college together kind of thing. Grew up being buddies and we do it all together, which, which makes it work. It's one of those things when it's the right fit, one plus one can equal 100, not two. So that's what we have done. So we actually have. At three main companies that we operate with, and there's about 46 team members or employees that we have working for us at this point. So we have my flipping company. That's our biggest one, 20 something employees there. So that has that's the one that buys 300 houses a year. We have four full time acquisition reps, marketing sales manager. Contract to close and actually have an analyst. We just hired to help us analyze and structure things so we can make real time decisions on that company as the market moves. So that's the biggest company. It's not the most profitable company though, but it's the biggest company that we have. So that's one, one side and that's faster house. We're here in St. Louis, all local. And then there is Faster Freedom, which you mentioned earlier, which is, how we got to know each other. That's my education brand. That's a couple million followers on social media. And I have a mentorship and things like that that some people want as well, but it's just growing that brand to get as many eyeballs, to help as many people as you can. Then eventually the bottom of the funnel will trickle some people that want to pay you. And that company has probably got. Six or seven employees at this point, that's the most profitable one. And then the third one is my favorite. I wouldn't say my favorite, but the most sick what the word, the most wealth building one, I would say, and that's my rental portfolio. So that's called Midwest property group. That's probably got eight employees as well. Somewhere along those lines. I don't know if the math has added up yet at all or not, but anyways, I know we have 46. Employees, so that, that company we manage our own rentals. We have a hundred or 200. I should know this, but 280, 290 rental doors between our single families and multifamilies. And then we got those self storage facilities on top of that as well. That are pretty easy to mean is we don't have anybody on site. It's all done virtually and phone conversations and such. So those are the three three big brains that we're working on growing and focusing on. And they're all under one roof, which is the building I'm at right now, actually. All right. Fantastic, man. Man that, that is awesome. I'm very surprised to hear though, that. Your social media is making more money than your house flipping business. That's insane. And that just goes to show the power of social media and marketing and building your brand and how important that is. That's actually how I found you. Was from Tik TOK. And I'm so glad that we were able to get connected, but that was all thanks to the power of social media. And then the marketing that you put out there, I was like, dude, this guy's videos are great. What he's doing, the message he's spreading is awesome because financial literacy is still something, even though you have a lot of gurus out there, you have a lot of people on social media sharing things, there's still such this big gap. When it comes to financial literacy and what people actually know versus what they're seeing on social media. Cause yeah, you could sit here and watch short Tik TOK clips all day. What are you actually learning from that? Nothing. You're just learning that this guy knows what he's doing, right? So what are you going to do? What's the next step? Are you going to do a course? Are you going to. Do a mentorship, get a coach, learn like that's a huge piece of that is, to take those next steps. Cause if you just sit there in the sidelines all day, man, you're gonna be sitting there all day and it's going to start to get cold and you're gonna be freezing. Actually, I don't have to worry about that here in Hawaii, but Rub it in, keep rubbing it. That's interesting though to see how your organization's made up and how these three businesses culminate and work together. Now I want to ask you, this is more of A personal preference thing, because I'm curious because you've dipped your hands into all these different buckets. What do you personally like better? Is it the flipping? Is it wholesaling? Is it doing BRRRR on single family homes? Is it doing BRRRR on commercial properties? Or is it running self storage facilities or the property management? Out of all those, which is your favorite? Actually, and I'll add social media in there too. Yeah. So the very cool thing that we've been able to do Lucas and I, when Lucas is my business partner is we've been able to develop these companies and hire an incredible people. So we have a COO that manages each one of those that does. Everybody reports to them. They do all the heavy lifting. They do, they make the decisions. Obviously we get referenced and talked to and we were in the loop, but we're able to sit at top and pick and choose where we want to go. Lucas inserts himself in, the financial end and dealing with the banks and dealing with our CFO and dealing with that side and the operation side. I insert myself in the flipping company where I'm most useful, which is with the marketing. So I help with marketing. I stay away from sales cause sales guys drive me crazy cause they're all spoiled. And they're all emotional. So I get to pick and choose. So I help out with marketing there. That's an hour long meeting a week with marketing team, and then just a check in meeting with the leadership team of that company. So that's it with that company. And then on the rental company, I don't really get involved in the operate. Property management is operations, to a T. So I don't really get involved in that. That's not my strength. I'm not good at it. I don't have a ton of value to add. So I come in when we buy a 42 pack of houses. Hey, Sam, help us raise the money. A lot of the private lenders were my originations that I brought in through my relationships that I had or built. Help us raise the money, help yourself or help us raise the money and then help negotiate on the apartment. So Luke will run some numbers on the apartment and say, Hey, we need to be at this price point. Go get it. And I'm like, Trust you buddy. I have no idea. Like I, I remember helping him underwrite these at the beginning, but I don't as much anymore. So I'm like, Hey, trust you. I'm gonna go negotiate this and try to get less than Les you said. So I love that I'm able to do that. And then the education's kind of, my baby started that in 2020 just on my phone creating tos and YouTubes and Instagrams and all that stuff. So that's my baby. So maybe that's my favorite, but that's what I spend, I would say 85, 90% of my time on is the education. Just building that brand building that awareness can, coming up with different ways. To help people and do things like this and create that. And you're able to have the be able to keep score with the video views and be able to go back and look and see what, why did that video do well? Why did that one flop? And there's the, everybody has it. You like when your podcast get views, and subscribes is the vanity of growing that in the, that kind of feeds everything can continues. I try to look at it more as like a motivational thing that you're growing and you're helping, and you're able to tangibly see the results. Especially with my students seeing the results of what they're able to do. I would say I like a little bit of all three and fortunately I'm able to insert myself where I believe is necessary and, or where I can provide the value. So it's a combination is bad as a depends or combination answer is that's the answer. That's the beautiful thing about the freedom aspect of what Faster Freedom is, right? Because you can actually insert yourself where needed because you don't have to focus on any one individual thing, right? Because you've got the right team in place. You've built a great organization where, you know, A lot of people will look at that and be like he's not even doing all that stuff. But you did you did do all this stuff and you had to build there and you've, you found the who not how for what actually works for you. And, you have a great business partner with Lucas, right? So you guys are able to put all this together. And then you have your COO that's running all the operations and telling you guys, Hey, here's what we're doing. And you're like, Oh, okay, cool. But that was something that you built, right? It wasn't just something that happened overnight. You just you don't wake up and boom, you've got 46 employees running three different businesses and doing what you want to do. No, it was a lot of sweat and blood equity that was put into that. I'm curious as you were building up, when did you know? It was the right time to start hiring a team. Yeah. So it was, it was one of those things that it just happens. If you're like involved and I guess part of the first part is if you take it seriously, you treat it as a business. A lot of people. Wholesale a little bit or treat it as a side hustle. And there's nothing wrong with that. And that's, they're going to always be that, but once you want to make it a business and you want to create something and go out on your own, and your goals are generational, not wealth, but impact, you want to impact people and help people and make a lot of money doing it. That's when you start to take it seriously. So we started to do that. In 2016 or 17 ish, we quit our jobs in 2018. So a couple of years in, and it was just one of those things that. As simple as this sounds, this may resonate with some people. Some people may think it's a shitty answer, pardon my French, but it's basically when you're, when Luke's and I were doing everything ourselves that we could every project, every, as much rehab as we could, obviously we're not experts at electric and plumbing, things like that. We had to hire out as soon as we're pulling out our hair art, let's hire a project manager that we can. Build their, their salary into the flips and wholesales and rentals that we're rehabbing. So it's, two, three grand per project to make up their salary. Okay. All right. Now we're managing tenants poorly. Or the property management company actually we had hired outsource was managing it poorly. So let's hire a part time property manager that just, had a kiddo and she was looking for some part time work and grew with us. And then, so just as everybody's pulling out their hair and wearing too many hats. You get another hat rack to wear some hats. So it just organically grew as our organization grew. And as we saw fit, and then in 2018, we ended up merging with another flipping company that was a little bit bigger than us that helped us springboard a little bit and add on some more people. We were big enough to, were able to bring on somebody beyond just a bookkeeper, a controller or I guess it was more of an accounting staff at that time. Now we have a controller and CFO, but you're able to do those things as you grow and looking back, This may seem fast eight years, but it didn't feel like that. Sometimes it seems like a blink of an eye. Sometimes it's like we were just in the weeds doing so many things for so long that it doesn't feel like fast, but you go back and look and it was one of those things where the years are short and the days are long kind of thing. So it it was just organically grew as we saw a need, a fit. And as we were profitable enough to forego profit to hire, that's what you do. When if Lucas and I did everything ourselves. Potentially we could be more profitable, right? I don't, we don't know any tenant management. We got a hundred to be missing out on because you're spending and everything. Yeah. Exactly. We pay a guy $110,000 to run a property management company. Very good living here in St. Louis. He absolutely crushes it. Former engineer as well, but. I'd be able to make way more than that because of the things I'm able to do. So as soon as you get a little bit longer of a view, a little bit bigger picture and forego some immediate profit for some long term wealth is when I see the people that I talk to two billionaires in my life, which is really cool. But the people that are up there, that's what they do. They're not worried about saving every single dollar and cutting this employee's salary or doing that, or trying to, worry about every little penny, most of them there, most of them are bigger picture thinkers and it all tends to work out. Yeah, I love that. It is. You do have to focus on the bigger picture right now as you were building right so you you're putting these bits and pieces together as you're growing and scaling. And you said that you guys left your job in 2018. Like how, what kind of point did you have to get yourself at to where you felt comfortable saying okay. I'm going to get rid of the security of this nine to five job to go all in, in real estate. Like how did you get yourself to that point? Cause a lot of people I've heard say I just want to jump right into real estate. I'm just going to quit my job and jump into it. 10 out of 10, don't recommend that. So how did you get to that point where you said, okay, I think we're comfortable enough. To leave this w two and go all in. Yeah. So I a hundred percent agree with you. Do not, I would not suggest doing that. I know sometimes that's maybe more click baity to say that at the beginning of a video or a short form video to get some views, but no I was very strategic about it. I'm the sales marketing guy, Luke's engineer, but he's the crazy one. I'm like more conservative one. So he actually quit his job a few months before me to help me in his projects. And do that, take on some of that salary and be like the project manager to help us grow. And I needed a little bit more than that. We had probably 30 rentals at the time. But again, I would not suggest anybody even living off their rental income. If you're trying to replace, Luke was trying to place a 65 grand salary. And getting, 35, 40 rentals to do that. And then what happens when a roof needs replacing or a couple of ACs go out in the summer, kick on and all that stuff. So I would not suggest that either. So we learned very quickly that you need passive and active income. So we still haven't touched any of our rental income. So that wasn't what got me over the edge. What got me over the edge was two things. One of them was, it was fear. And it was the fear of missing out. If Lucas, like having either him carry the basket while I was, working and traveling and doing things, not able to help and not holding my end of the bargain, it was fear of, him taking it and doing things that maybe I wouldn't want to and not be as consulted on things. And then the other side of it was, that was when we merged with that other flipping company that I mentioned that just gave me a little bit more of a security, a little bit more stability to make that leap because. Lucas hated his job engineer tied to a desk all day. I did not. I enjoyed my job pretty well and I was making 250 grand a year in St. Louis. That's a lot of money anywhere, but especially in St. Louis. So it was, I get some people that say that's very risky because it's really hard to replace a $250,000 job. If this. Didn't work out. It's a lot of, there's a lot more$60,000 jobs than $250,000 jobs. And I have some people that say, I don't feel sorry for you. Cause you know, you were making that much money. So I tend to lean to the former of, yes, I feel like it was a pretty big risk. I just felt like I didn't want to miss out. And if we were able to build what we were able to build with 10 hours a week, each, what happens when we can spend 60 hours a week each on it? So that, that kind of excitement and potential ultimately led to me making the leap. Yeah, no that's a great perspective to look at it to I like how you put that here's what we're able to do with 10 hours a week putting into it. Now, what can we do with 60 hours a week going full time into it? A lot more damage can be made right now. Okay. So we talked a little bit about how your business scaled, how you hired your employees as you were growing when you left your W-2 now, as you were building your organization, I'm curious, what kind of resources did you use or like any type of specific, like CRMs or anything like that, that you started with that you maybe have grown into something else. Like what did that transition look like as well? Yeah, so for our CRM for, as a technical word for it, but for our rental portfolio, we use Buildium. And that was something I think we were using spreadsheets and Google Docs and stuff for a while, until we were certain point. Then we got Buildium, which is property management tenant approval software that's worked out really well. There's other good ones out there, but that's just the 1 that stuck with us. And then as far as we do a lot of communications in our meeting. We have weekly meetings with all our companies. We have board of directors meeting every Monday morning with our CFO and our COOs from every company, Lucas and myself. And we just are able to do a lot of the agendas and meetings on actually on, on Google docs. So people can update them and keep up to date. And we follow the book traction the EOS model. So that's huge for us. And then as far as cRM for our for our flipping company, we use Podio for a while, but that just seemed to be clunky. So now we use now we use REI Simply which we really like we just switched over to them. And then for our education company, we just go high levels. So we just, as things have morphed and grown, we've either customized things that we have, or we've just seen as technology, transforms and improves. We were able to hop on whatever makes most sense at the time. All right. Yeah. Fantastic. I appreciate that. And sorry if I'm asking you these silly questions, but because I'm the podcast host, I get to ask these questions that I want to ask and learn about how you did this. It's one of those selfish things I get to do. And also for my audience to understand how you grew. So if this is something they're looking to do, we're giving you guys the steps right here on how to do it and how Sam did it. And if Sam was able to do it that way, you most certainly can too. Okay, cool. Now. I wanted to also ask you, do you specifically just stay in the St. Louis market? Are you local or have you started expanding to other markets now? Or have you always been in other markets? No, we've always been local here in St. Louis, as far as our investing goes. So all of our flips, all of our rentals, we have a hotel that we brought down in Branson, Missouri. So that's four hours away, but it's still Missouri that we bought that we're turning into Airbnbs. And then so that's local, but my, my, brand and education stuff is national. We have students in every, all 50 States and things like that. So the education side is a national, but everything else here is local in st. Louis. Oh, that's awesome, man. You got St. Louis on lock right there. So that's great. So actually I'm gonna have to connect with you too, because there's a conference that I usually go to every year. They're actually going to be doing it in St. Louis next year. So I'm going to hit you up when I'm going to be out there because I usually speak at that conference. So yeah, that'd be cool. All right. So now. Since you stick with one particular market, I'm curious as to how you fared with the market fluctuations, over the past couple of years, right there, we had this really huge high and then we've had this kind of small correction going on. But how is St. Louis fared? Because I'm in a couple of different markets where I invest at. And. It's been different in every single market. So how have you fared with this this tiny correction that I don't even know if it's really a correction, but how have you fared with this fluctuation that's happening right now? Yeah, St. Louis is so it's not the most exciting city. You don't see a ton of growth in St. Louis. Some of the suburbs you actually do St. Charles County, which is where I live and where we do a lot of investing where a company is one of the fastest growing counties in the Midwest in the past, 2025 years. St. Louis has a little bit of name of a sleepy Midwest city and it is, but. You also get the advantage of being insulated. Things hit us. Last, from 2008 to 2012, St. Louis dropped like 14.5%. Some cities saw 60% right? Phoenix and things like that. So it's more insulated. We maybe we don't get the highs, but we also don't get the lows. And St. Louis is a really quality city to own rentals in. There's 72% home ownership in St. Louis, meaning 28% of people rent, meaning I have what's in demand. People always need a rent. When you can get rentals here they. Cashflow pretty well. And you also get appreciation. So it's a really good market. It's not the most exciting market, but it's a good market to own rentals. It's a pretty good market to flip and wholesale in as well. And as far as the market shift goes, yeah, we didn't really see it here in St. Louis, everything we put on the market is selling for asking or over still. Now we're not getting 30 offers, but we're getting multiple offers. Usually I think our average days on market for our flips this year is three or four. And that's usually just cause we're, waiting until Sunday to. To, counter or accept more than anything. So if we put out a good product, it's selling. And there hasn't been one year or one like year cycle where our houses prices have dip, from, we track everything. So from, July of July, it's still been up a little bit. And from, Jane, June to June. So over that 12 month cycle, we still have yet to see a dip. Now, I think July to July was like. 3, 2 or 2 percent appreciation. So not a ton over a year period, but in general, we're still seeing appreciation and growth here in St. Louis, cause we're still a pretty affordable city compared to a lot. 2 percent appreciation is better than some of the negative appreciation that some of these other markets have experienced. So that's great to know that you blanketed in there and a little bit protected. Now, do you feel like some of that strategy that you guys are doing is thanks to the analysts that you brought on board shifting how you're doing a couple of things? Has that kind of helped you stay on top of the market? Yeah, I would say so for sure. So he's his focus. So our our COO of our flipping company actually brought him over from, he was 17 years director of sales over at a local alcohol distributing company, decent sized company. He came over and he brought this analyst with him. Cause he said, I, if you want me to do this and do this the right way, I need. Somebody that can, show me the numbers and keep me up to date, especially a company. Our size is decent size, but most of them don't have analysts and things like that on the payroll. So he's getting acclimated a little bit, and he's mainly focusing on that flipping company, but. He's helped build spreadsheets and charts and tracking devices and things for all our companies, and one of them is helping it, making it very easy to keep track of the market trend. Every single week in our board of directors meeting Monday mornings, we go over the rates that are out there currently, and then the beginning of the month, we go back and look at the stats of the prior month of, days on market and, appreciation and average house price and all these things that we're able to analyze. So he's helped organize that a little bit, but I'm excited to see him. Dig into some of these other companies a little bit more and see where his analysis and real time decision making tools can help us because we can, we've just done it by feel. And I feel like that's how most small business, if not all do it. And some big businesses too, but if you can have real time data, just allows you to make those decisions, either with more confidence or maybe even pivot before you were potentially going to pivot, so I think it's going to be a huge asset for us going forward. And it's shown it as been so far. Oh, sorry. Looks like I was still on mute there. You were. Yeah. I was like, I can't hear him. Yeah. Hey so that's really awesome, man, because even before the analyst, you guys were handling it. But now that you have them on board, it's only making you stronger with how you're working your numbers. So now you can attack things a little bit differently. All right, Sam. So what I want to ask you now is, and this is more of a personal question for you is, a lot of people have their reasons for investing in real estate. I think I have the general idea of why you do it, just thanks to your social media and your presence online, but I'm going to ask you, Sam, what is your, why for doing what you do. Well, so originally, I feel like wise can shift in general, I'm going to cover it cause it's true, my family is my number one. And I know that is most people's and I'm not gonna, not trying to downplay that or. Push past it in my case, but of course, my family is the reason why I do what I do, but it's more than that. Originally, that was the reason, right? I want to be home more. I want to be able to provide a life to my kids that, maybe I didn't have everybody. I feel like tries to make to just a notch above their childhood for their kiddos because that's what they feel like, they've done their duty or whatever. So that was for sure my original thing and that competitive itch of, playing competitive sports my whole life and then not. Yeah. And, it wasn't a professional athlete, but, you do that for 15 years and then that's gone. And then you're in the real world. And so this being your own boss and being an entrepreneur, just scratches a lot of those competitive and entrepreneurial itches and, keeping score itches that I feel like, I probably missed there when in college and the first couple of years in the quote unquote, the real world, but then once I started to see the power of what I was doing, as far as impact on my family, my net worth, Luke's his net worth, our team members net worth. We have. We have over 500 rental doors owned in our building. Our director of construction he has 40 rental properties. Are one of our guys that works for the lending company then came over, works for education. Now he has 38 rental properties and, our CEO of our flipping company has five rental properties and our dispo guys too. So we're helping them build their generational wealth. Through that, and then the word that kind of comes back to me is impact. And, there's the helping side, the vanity side, the money side, there's a tons of different things that goes into it, but being able to impact people now and be able to have long lasting impact and knowing that the things that I'm doing are helping the people in the building and then the companies I'm building are going to help people. Even when I'm gone, it's just a very fulfilling feeling. It's almost like a high that you get from doing that. And I, hope that eventually that maybe gets a little satisfied, but right now I feel like I'm just getting started and I think always going to be grasping for more and just creating more impact. I love that. I word impact is so important. And there's some other podcasts hosts. I know that's one of the biggest focuses that they talk about is ROI, but it's not return on investment. It's. Return on impact, right? So the impact that you're making and what does that do for you in your life? So that, that is huge, man. I absolutely love that. Now I want to ask you, actually, I want to point something else out too, that you said that I thought was really awesome. The fact that people on your staff are, able to go out and buy rental properties just because of what they're learning, working with you. That's better than having a 401k being matched by an employer or anything else like that. You're helping them get to the point where they're building their own. Path to freedom. I same thing with me. I have my VA is amazing. And as she was been working on my podcast, she's been buying land in the Philippines and absolutely crushing it. And it's just, thanks to working on my podcast. So things like that. Mean more to me than anything else. When I get a message on social media saying, Hey, Mike, this episode with was really great. I learned so much from that. Thank you for getting this out there. That's better than getting like a five star review or anything else. I absolutely love that when you know that you're actually making a positive impact on somebody. For me, my goal was like, I just wanna help one person. I can help one person I'm satisfied. And now I'm at the point where I'm able to help thousands. And having a guest like you that, that has such a big impact on millions, right? Because you, your audience, you have millions in your social media audience. The fact that you can get in front of them and give them the tools to be successful is that return on impact that you provide. So with that being said, I want to ask you, Sam, You have this whole team, you have the staff, you and Lucas started everything together, right? What would you say is your superpower? I would say my superpower is creating TikToks. No, it's not. I enjoy that. Doing dances in front of the camera. I've somehow figured that out. But I would say my superpower is probably I'm going to use one where it's probably having perspective. So I have pretty good perspective on things as far as when the market shifts, when COVID hit, when things happen of taking a step back and realizing that. Interest rates have been higher than they are now and people still make money or things like this have happened. We're not going through anything that hasn't already happened. Yes, it may look a little bit different, but in general, it, history echoes itself if it doesn't repeat itself. So just having that perspective, not overreacting, just having a clear head and being able to take a temperature of the room, see how my actions are affecting somebody, see, and being able to read that situation and come to a good conclusion and quickly and succinctly be able to make. Pretty big decisions because of that perspective. And my judgment isn't clouded because I feel like I, pretty good at a lot of things and not good at a lot of things as well. But when you've gotten to the point where you're like CEO slash visionary, whatever you want to call it, and you're able to clearly make decisions based on the data that you're seeing and move on. And sometimes the decisions better sometimes just making decisions better than, no decision. Having that perspective, I don't know if I articulated that as well as I'd like, but I, that's something that I feel like has been my differentiator as far as in my professional life. And then now in the entrepreneurial world is having that perspective and not overreacting and realizing that everything, will work itself out and, the best case doesn't happen and the worst case barely ever happens and it's usually somewhere in between and realizing that and making. Business decisions based on that, not just talking that I think is what's been my biggest feather in my cap. Yeah, Sam, I think you put that perfectly. You said you weren't sure I'm telling you. Yeah, you put that perfectly. So perspective, what a superpower to have, right? I think that's better than the power of flight because, it's, it helps you in your decision making, but it also helps you, feel confident in your decision making because you have that perspective, right? You've got that experience behind you. And there was something that you said in there that I absolutely loved about history doesn't repeat itself. It echoes. Oh my goodness, man. Holy crap. How awesome is that? A lot of people say, oh yeah, history repeats itself. History repeats itself. I like the echo better because it's just an echo of what's happened in the past. It just keeps rippling forward that those sound waves, right? Absolutely amazing perspective. And there you go. That's your superpower right there. Perspective. All right. No, Sam, that's awesome, man. So many golden nuggets and great value, I think so far out of this episode. But what I'd like to do now is transition this into something that I call the final round. It's where I'm going to ask you the same four questions. I ask everybody that comes on the show and it helps us get a better perspective on you when it comes to being asked a tough questions or being put in a tough spot. So if you're ready to go, we'll get that party started. Let's rock it. Okay. And I say tough, it's really not that bad. It's really not that bad. Is this like lightning round? Do I need to give one word answers or can I. You can take your time with the answers just not too long. Okay. So first question of the final round for you, Sam is what's the biggest mistake. You've ever made when it comes to your finances, investing, real estate, or business in general. I would say aside from the financial mistakes that everybody makes, the biggest mistake I made was when I got started, I didn't pay for help. I thought Lucas and I, when we were each other's like mentors or masterminds, but I was that, that, that naive, that, that stubborn, whatever it is, ego, that I can figure this out on my own. And, even if it takes me a little bit longer, I'm not paying that person three grand or five grand. If I would have done that from the beginning, I'd be much further along because take somebody a little bit of money to show you the growth path just gives. Infinite return to stay in the fast lane and out of the gutter. So there's my quick, not too long answer. I just wish I would have gotten over my ego a little bit earlier in my career. Yeah. I love that, man. I did the same thing. I was like, I could do it by myself. I could do it by myself. Until I realized I was losing a lot of money doing it by myself and realized once I hired a coach and joined masterminds, it completely changed everything for me. It's actually one of the things that changes. Your superpower, right? Cause it helps you give you perspective. You're going to pay for that education either way. You're either going to go get a coach or you're going to pay for a course, or you're going to join a mastermind, or you're going to do it yourself and you're going to F around and find out. That's and that's usually a little bit more costly than if you would have paid for the education yourself. Okay, cool. Next question for you. Sandy's all kind of tie into each other, but what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first got started? Something that I learned when I, so I didn't know anything when I got started. So everything I've learned, it would have been good. But I would say the biggest thing I wish I learned when I got started was, and it's a little bit different than paying for a coach, but it's hiring other people to do the things that, that I'm not good at. Like I remember in, summer of 2018. Lucas and I were doing going over January bank statements from 2017 January to try to get our books called up to file for already late taxes. So things like that, we're trying to do too much. And I wish I would have hired things out again, maybe ego driven at first to hire things out. It would have made a world of difference to hiring somebody out because there's a lot of people out there that are way better at something. A lot of things than I am. I just need to let them do that. I absolutely love that answer. Cause outsourcing is so important. Finding the right person for the job is so important, the who, not how of it, because I've learned that lesson a couple of times myself too, when I thought, Oh, I could do my own taxes. I could do that, and after I'd started investing in real estate and then I got audited. So it's Whoa, hang on a second. So yeah things people. Have specialties for a reason, and if you find the right person, the right specialty for what you need, it's good to have them on your team. So no I love that. Okay. Next question of the final round for you, Sam is, do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started out today? And I'm talking about somebody who's in their nine to five job. They paid off their credit cards and now they want to start investing. Maybe it's real estate. Maybe it's something else. What would you tell somebody like that today? The average Joe, I would say there's a step one A and one B and one A would be get a base level of knowledge in whatever you're looking to get into. It does. You don't have to become an expert. You're only going to learn 20%. By sitting on the sidelines and getting cold. As you mentioned earlier, the other 80%, even with the best coach in the world, you're only going to learn 20 percent sitting on the sideline. But it's important to get that base level of knowledge so that you know the difference between a double close and an assignment, how to figure out ARV and what a rehab budget kind of looks like, just get a base level of knowledge. That's one a, and then one B is you have to get involved in your local community, whatever community investing. And even if you're doing it virtually, you cannot do this alone. Go to your local meetups, lean on other investors that have been there. You can go to one meeting and 90 percent of the markets that are listening and you will meet contractors, real estate agents, wholesalers, private money lenders, hard money lenders, property management companies, insurance, like everybody you need to meet your Rolodex will be immediately up, but you have to go out there and meet these people. And again, one a would be. You feel more comfortable talking to them if you have a little bit of knowledge. So get some knowledge and get involved in your community. I guess no matter what your industry is, and you'll be light years ahead of where you'd be if you just try to figure it out on your own. Again, fantastic answer. And I think you dated yourself by using the word Rolodex because I used it the other day when I was interviewing somebody and they were like Rolodex. I haven't heard that in so long. And I was like, Oh, I guess I'm dating myself here. So I had to explain what a Rolodex was just to make sure, some of the younger people listening to the show, they understand. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, a Rolodex is one of those little it's like a little thing where you would have business cards or contact information. You can just flip through it really quick. It'd be sitting on your desk. AKA it's the contact list in your iPhone now. Okay. But yeah, again it's about networking, right? Building up that network. That's huge. I. Absolutely love going to real estate meetups. I host my own out here in Hawaii as well, every second Wednesday of the month, because getting around people with the same mentality, with the same goals, the same vision only makes you stronger. And then again, you're going to meet the people that you might need in the future. You're going to meet that contractor, that lawyer, the real estate agent, the insurance salesman, right? That's going to give you that whole life insurance policy for you to go do infinite banking. If that's the way you want to go, there's so many different people that you can add to your network, right? Or Rolodex. So Sam, absolutely love that answer, man. Okay. The final question of the final round is, do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both? Yes, quick backstory. So we read, we do book clubs and in our leadership, our board of directors, meaning we read books and we had a few chapters of a book and we all talk about it right now, or we're reading five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Concioni just to help our team gel. So we love books, big on books, usually more mindset and business books. And then my like active advice is from podcasts and like what's up to date in the market. So a book that. I'm going to try to throw out there that maybe not everybody talk about, people talk about the same, rich dad, poor dad and thin girl, rich. I'm going to throw out eat that frog is one of my favorite books. It's about getting the worst thing out of the way at the beginning of the day, quote unquote, eating the frog and just the physical, the mental, the emotional things that come along with that high of. Everybody pushes the worst thing off of the day till the end of the day. And then guess what? It gets pushed to the next day and the next day. But if you get that thing you're looking forward to least done first, the rest of the day is a breeze and you're, they've done studies. You're so you're X times, whatever, more productive because you did it. So love that book. And then as far as podcasts go, I like a mixture of podcasts. My favorite podcast is actually I listened to the herd by Colin Cowherd because it's the only time I'm not thinking about work is a little bit of sports talk. So I like to, that's my one getaway is that so I'm not, that's not going to help anybody on the business end, but it's a little bit of a mind break for me because I'm sure like you, my mind's working 24/7. Yeah, no, absolutely. Love that. And that book. Eat that frog. It's funny that you mentioned that and how you wanted to share something that's different. I've had one other guest share that book with me before. And, but only one out of the 210 people that I've interviewed so far, only one of the persons recommended that book, but it's, it was so unique that when you said it, I remembered that, that particular book. So I absolutely love that mentality about get the hard stuff done, get the crap out of the way. First thing. So you can go and take care of the rest of your day. Same reason why I think it's so important that, Admiral McRaven said in his famous speech about making your bed first thing in the morning when you wake up and why it's these little things that will carry on and help you just in the long run, just be a better person and do better at life because you don't want to go to bed at night to an unmade bed and it's just all disheveled and a mess, right? Do you want to go back and be able to. Pull the covers down and know that you have a nice, crisp clean made bed and go to sleep, right? And that all starts with how you start your day. So absolutely love that recommendation. And I'm talking too much about that because I just think it's amazing. So thanks, Sam. Okay. That is it for the final round. Pat yourself on the back. You survived. It wasn't that bad, right? But yeah okay, Sam. So this was fantastic. A lot of great golden nuggets, a lot of wisdom from you. You're doing some amazing things and I have one more question for you, and this is going to be the most important question I ask you throughout this entire interview, because the people that have been listening right now are saying. This is what Sam's doing is great, how he built his businesses are great, but I want to know more information about him, maybe some of his programs I can get into. So can you share with us, more information about you, your website, your social media profiles, where people could follow you, where people can take your courses. That would be phenomenal. For sure. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. fasterfreedom.com is the website you want to visit. That's the, place I would go. The faster freedom show podcast is a podcast. We're a little bit behind you guys, but Lucas and I started that. That's the only piece of content we shoot together. So it's a lot of fun for me. It's my favorite thing that we do. But we're just getting that ball rolling. So those are the first two places I would say and whatever social media app you're on, @samfasterfreedom. My name is Sam faster freedoms, the brand go find me there. If you're not on Twitter, don't go follow me on Twitter. I guess they call it now, but whatever platforms you're on any regular, give me a follow. I'm on there trying to give out as much free advice as I can. I mumble. I'm not, always articulate and I have 2.4 million followers because I give away really good free actionable advice. So go find me on there. And if you're jiving with how I do things, then just shoot me a message on it on Instagram. I'll give you more information on the mentorship. It's something that, I don't want to come out swinging with, make sure you like myself, make sure you're jiving with it. We can chat about it. I still answer my own DMS, which some days it gets overwhelming. Some days it doesn't, but just shoot me a message and we can chat about it. I do have 1300 students that own over 200 million in real estate. So it does work, but I just don't want anybody in it. I want people that are bought in are willing to take action. So do the other stuff first that hit me up and we can chat. Absolutely love that, Sam. So thank you so much for sharing that. I'll make sure I have the links in the show notes. So people could find you both on your social media and also faster freedom. com. This has been phenomenal. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. However, you know what? I want to ask you one more question just because we've got a little bit of time here. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners? The one thing that I would tell your listeners is if you want to avoid, failure, you're going to avoid success. There is literally not a path to success that doesn't involve failure. It doesn't exist. I've tried, I've looked, I've asked. The only way you're going to create success, and that can mean your whole money, it could mean how it could mean anything. The only way you're going to actually achieve success is by failing. And the beautiful thing about it is the most successful people I know didn't come from the most money. They didn't have the most this or that they're not the smartest. They just continue to get up that's all it is. Elon Musk, he's failed more times than he can count, I promise. And that's gotten him where he is. He doesn't avoid failure. In fact, he probably leans into it. So as long as you're okay with failing, then you're going to be successful. But if you're not okay with failing, you have to get over that and then lean into that success. Because I promise you, you will not be successful unless you fail and fail hard. Absolutely love that. Thank you so much. That was phenomenal. Failure just needs to be another one of those steps in your ladder towards success. So absolutely love that, man. So again, Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. This was phenomenal. I had a great time. I learned a lot from you and this was just amazing, man. Thank you so much for coming on today. Awesome. I appreciate you having me and I'll see you in St. Louis next year. All right. Awesome. And Hey, to my listeners, I want to thank all of you so very much for listening to the average Joe finances podcast with our special guest today, Sam Primm, go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Sam. Aloha from Hawaii and have a great rest of your day.