From 0 to 75 Units and $750k Revenue in Six Years w/ Casey Denby

[00:00:00] Casey Denby: Always been motivated not necessarily by money itself, by the reward that comes from hard work.

[00:00:22] Intro: You're listening to the real fi podcast where we discuss time, tested tricks, techniques, and strategies for pursuing financial independence today so that we can enjoy a better tomorrow financial independence isn't about getting rich quick. It's about cultivating a foundation to grow financially, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Let's figure out how to kick the nine to five. Here are your hosts, Patrick and James. 

[00:00:37] Patrick McGrath: All right, how's it going out there, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of the real fi podcast.

[00:00:43] I'm your host Patrick McGrath with my co-host James. Rippy on. How's it going out there, James? Good 

[00:00:49] James Rippeon: man. Hanging in there. Nothing too serious going on. We're about to kick off a good conversation here with Casey and Looking forward to it. 

[00:00:56] Patrick McGrath: That's right. That's right. Casey, how are you today? [00:01:00] 

[00:01:00] Casey Denby: I'm great, gentlemen.

[00:01:01] Thank you very much for having me snowy out here in Denver, Colorado, but here we are. 

[00:01:06] Patrick McGrath: Yeah, we're we're really excited to have you on the podcast today to talk about financial independence, your journey, how you got there, what your goals are this year. So James, let's kick it off and get this thing rolling.

[00:01:23] Casey. 

[00:01:23] James Rippeon: How's it going, man? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, where you came from where you got started in your investing career and kind of just fill us in a little 

[00:01:32] Casey Denby: bit. Absolutely. Thanks both for having me on today. I'm part of the rental property dudes, which we'll probably get into, I'm only half of the dudes.

[00:01:41] Austin couldn't be here today, but I'll represent us proud. He'll be tuning in. So I grew up actually in a suburb of Seattle, Washington currently in Denver, Colorado right now. And my fi journey has become a very popular term. These days started when I was pretty young. And I [00:02:00] say that because I was always interested in money.

[00:02:02] I was the guy that like my son now, I actually have four kids and my six year old took his power wheel and stocked it up with goodies from my pantry and sold them to neighborhood kids this past year, I thought that was pretty cool. And that was me as a kid. When I was really young, I was doing anything I could from an entrepreneur standpoint to make a buck.

[00:02:27] And when I was 11 years old, I actually illegally worked as a paper boy. And back in the day, people actually had papers delivered to their door. I was the one. Racking the papers on my bike over my shoulder every day of the year, including Christmas Christmas and Sundays and Thanksgiving, those were the biggest days were the biggest papers.

[00:02:48] Right? And I was there grew up with five siblings, so one of six and, we weren't rich, but we weren't poor. And needless to say, I didn't have any allowance. So as a [00:03:00] result I had to of buy my own way to the movie theater. I had to buy my own way to hang out with my friends and to go buy things that I wanted.

[00:03:05] And so I was always out there getting it rolling and fast forward a little bit. My real estate dream we'll talk about this is was born around the end of my high school. Moving in. I actually did a couple of years of service in a third world country. I lived in ECU and had this pipe dream of starting a hotel chain.

[00:03:26] I know it's a big deal, right? , I don't know if it was Marriott or what it was that inspired me, but real estate always seemed cool to me. And then obviously when I saw the realities of the financials , it's a little bit of capital required to get into hotel ownership.

[00:03:44] So I scaled that back a little bit to something that I could actually manage. And I jumped into real estate in 2016. 

[00:03:52] James Rippeon: Gotcha. Tell us a little bit about growing up, you started slinging papers for the newspapers and doing that growing up. Did you have any role [00:04:00] models that kind of pushed you to become an entrepreneur and pursue those kind of things?

[00:04:04] Or was this something that just naturally transpired inside of you? 

[00:04:08] Casey Denby: It was more natural. My dad instilled a work ethic in. It, it was the situation growing up. I didn't get an allowance. I didn't even get paid for chores. Like we were out there in Seattle rains a lot. So we would on Saturdays get a bucket like those home Depot or lows buckets.

[00:04:26] And we had to fill those with weeds and on a good day, if we could fill one, we were done. If my dad was armory, it was two buckets, man. Or if we complained or whatever, and let me tell you I can't get my kids probably to fill a 10th of that bucket. But it was just something that, was instilled to me early on.

[00:04:46] But as far as the financial piece, like I mentioned, I wanted a 13 inch TV man. Back in those days, you guys, aren't probably much older than me. About the same age it looks like. And yeah, it was a 13 inch [00:05:00] TV VCR combo. 

[00:05:01] Patrick McGrath: I was just about to say that it had the VCR on the bottom, right? You dang.

[00:05:05] Casey Denby: It did. And when I was a kid, I got that the original Nintendo, like I was alive when that thing came out, which is we weird to say we have a switch now, anyways. So that was my first taste. And then I realized, man, like we only had one TV as a family one and I wasn't even allowed to watch what I wanted.

[00:05:24] And I know I w knew I wasn't gonna get cable in that bedroom, but I could play video games and I could put a VHS tape in there. And so I'm pretty sure happy Gilmore was one of my first first VHS tapes that I put in that sucker. But I worked my tail off to get enough money to buy that TV.

[00:05:40] And man, that was like this huge milestone. It was this sense of gratification that. I don't think I ever got sick of, and in fact, I had to reschedule on you guys yesterday, and I apologize for that because my wife and I just bought a range Rover. And so that kind of tells you where I started and where [00:06:00] I'm at now, but the market is crazy for anything right now, for cars, for housing, et cetera.

[00:06:05] And we found one and had to jump on it right away. And I was at the dealership till 8:30 PM, closing that sucker last night. But always been motivated not necessarily by money itself, but, by the reward that comes from hard work, 

[00:06:20] James Rippeon: I've almost found that it's like conquering obstacles is a great way to describe wanting to build wealth.

[00:06:25] It's not necessarily for the sake of money and what money can get you, but, conquering those goals is gives you a big sense of satisfaction along the way, 

[00:06:34] Casey Denby: a hundred percent. Let me tell you what. 

[00:06:37] Patrick McGrath: Yeah. It's the art of the deal, and the journey behind it, that's what I always feel like when I accomplish, these huge goals is that gratification.

[00:06:45] And then once you finally hit it, You have that moment of excitement and then it's onto the next thing you're chasing the next dragon down the rabbit hole. As we all say that's huge. I love that too, because I was an entrepreneur just like that with the lemonade [00:07:00] sand, doing the paper route trying to flip like Pokemon cards and PS all day, PS, baby, get them big, old, triple slammers.

[00:07:08] That's right. Trying to sell those all that stuff. Yo-yos that, that was huge in like middle school and everything. So I was on the same boat and then in high school I went to an all boys private school and we would. I would always sell candy and chips outta my book bag. So I'm one that I've always been on that same grind with you.

[00:07:25] So I really love that. Give us a little bit of background on how you really got started in real estate. I know you, initially were thinking, let's go big. Let's get a hotel. Wind that back a little bit and tell us how you really got started investing in real estate and where that journey is now.

[00:07:43] Casey Denby: I'm a lifelong learner and you I've actually been head of two global learning organizations at major companies. And learning became something that when I was a kid, I hated books. But I always. Was absorbing [00:08:00] knowledge and information. So I was always seeking out mentors, always learning from what was on the TV.

[00:08:05] Always watch, movies, Richie rich, right? Anything I could take advantage of. I was absorbing that. And then eventually as I got older, I started to actually enjoy books. And now I have read so many but they've helped me along the way. And as a result of this, I started to learn what it was to make money, what it meant, how to make money what money actually mattered.

[00:08:26] And I always kept coming across a similar theme that millionaires have in average of seven income streams also. If money's not working for you while you're sleeping, you're just working for money. So these things would just stick in my mind, cuz I'd read 'em or listen to 'em or hear 'em over and over again.

[00:08:46] And I thought to myself, what could I do. To make money work for me. And so as I started to think and think about, the hotels and all those, grand ideas, I was like I'm, [00:09:00] probably not gonna be a professional athlete, even though I had aspirations that, I loved sports of all kinds.

[00:09:04] That's like crazy money. It's stupid money. And I was like, yeah, I'm probably not never gonna get to that point. Should I start a business? And I kept thinking, what could it be? And so just kept coming back to real estate. Every time just kept coming back to real estate because I was like I could figure this out.

[00:09:19] If all these dudes could figure this out, I could figure it out. And then there's the crazy stat, which everybody's heard that 90% of millionaires actually became millionaires through real estate. And what's cool about my story is I became a net worth millionaire through real estate. And we'll get into that a little bit too.

[00:09:36] But when this just became a decision for me and I got married young. I was 20. Shoot, how old was I? 23 years old. When I got married 25, when I started having kids, I was still in college when I got married, put myself through college, working at a pizza shop as a full-time manager, where 55 hours a week full-time student year round to pay off my school.

[00:09:55] And so I left college without any debt. So I was in a decent financial position, [00:10:00] but I still wasn't making much money. You know what I mean? And so when I got my master's, I finished with that and I said, I'm going to invest in real estate. And so I took the measly bonus that I got from the company I was working at the time.

[00:10:13] And I managed to scrape up like $15,000. And to me, 15,000 bucks at the time was pretty good chunk of money. Turns out it wasn't a good enough chunk of money to do much with. But this was back in 2015. And so the end of 2015 I start actually midway through. I was like I'm going for it.

[00:10:30] We're like, we're gonna make this happen. Found a real estate mentor who had done hundreds and hundreds of flips actually has a base of 250, maybe 300 plus rental properties that are like the cash cow of his business. And I sought him out, went to his office, sat down with him, asked him a bunch of questions.

[00:10:48] He gave me some assignments. One of those was to go read Gary Keller's book about, millionaire, real estate investing. So I did that went back a week later, it was like, boom, I'm ready to go. He's oh my gosh, this guy's crazy. He actually told me now, [00:11:00] reflecting back, he's I've had hundreds of people come to me because like same situation as you wanting to invest, wanting to learn more wanting to get my knowledge.

[00:11:08] And he's you're one of about 5% that have actually done anything. I said, oh, that's crazy. I don't like investing my time if I'm not actually gonna go out and do it, exactly. So I went out and did it with 15 grand that I have, I literally put everything I had into my first rental property.

[00:11:24] And I found the deal found a realtor and one that actually sold us our personal house. And I took him to a town about an hour and a half away from my house where I could afford property. And we started looking in the first house I walked into. There was a dude in his underwear on the couch.

[00:11:41] He was a renter smoking a CIG in his house. And I'm like, what the hell am I doing? That was my first thought. I was like, what the hell am I doing? That was the first house we walked into. Oh my gosh. Luckily it got a little bit better from there. Like this house was a disaster instead of doors, they had draped carpet or [00:12:00] like.

[00:12:01] Curtains. It was unbelievable. Oh my gosh. It was like 

[00:12:05] James Rippeon: textbook value. Add right there. Yes. 

[00:12:07] Casey Denby: Yes. But at the moment I couldn't value add anything, James. I was pretty much broke. If you think about going, dropping that money in. And so we looked at like 20 properties that day. I had a list of like 40 narrowed it down to about 20 narrowed it down to about 10 after the visit that were potentials, narrowed it down to three.

[00:12:27] Boom, my top one, I made an offer on undercut. 'em a little bit just seeing what I could get and they accepted it and it was crazy and I was blown away and I was like, whoa, this is too good. This is awesome. And then I was like, what do I do now? Yeah. Now what now? What right now, what they've accepted this.

[00:12:44] So boom, next 30 days as I'm getting through the financial process, I have a full time job. I have two young kids at the time. And we just started going. I just started looking. And one of the things that I couldn't really find is how to be a kick ass landlord. And so I [00:13:00] actually, over the time, over the years now grew my portfolio.

[00:13:03] People step back, kept asking like, dude, what are you doing? Like share with your tips with me, blah, blah, blah. So I actually wrote my own book, which you could see up. Woo. There we go. It's up here in the corner. I've actually got a copy here, but it's how to win and rental real estate after the deal, because guys, I was in this situation, I was like, how do you manage a rental property?

[00:13:23] What do you do when you close? Everything's about get rich, buy a thousand rental properties and you'll be great, but they don't tell you that it is not passive. For anybody that thinks that rental real estate is passive income, you have heard wrong. It can be passive if you get to the point where you're completely just the owner, you've got people managing everything underneath you, but guess what?

[00:13:45] 90% of people that get into this business, that's not the situation. You're the one managing the door. And what I ended up finding out is a lot of people suck at this. So if I could be a little bit better than them, I can succeed. [00:14:00] And then I started buy. Investor properties because they're like, I hate being a landlord or I'm so terrible.

[00:14:06] And that's how I started to build my portfolio. And so how my business partner Austin comes into the mix, the rental property dudes, after I bought that first house, actually, I wasn't even closed. I wanted her contract and I called him the next day. I'm like, dude, you're not gonna believe this.

[00:14:19] Cuz we had, I met him in Ecuador. We became best friends. He lives in actually orange county, California. And so I was like, dude, you're not gonna believe this. Like this deal. We talked about going to the business together 10 years ago now, are you still interested? He's absolutely. I'm still interested.

[00:14:36] Tell me more. And it was like three or four weeks later he came out and we went looking at a second suite of properties and we put that down. I think six weeks after we went a contract on our second property and then we bought two more together that year. So four in the first year, all single family homes and boom.

[00:14:59] Just from [00:15:00] there, we just kept adding and adding. And as I told you guys just before we started, I doubled the portfolio last year in one year, we doubled our portfolio. So we went from 30 doors in one state, Colorado to 60 doors in two states and growing. So 

[00:15:18] James Rippeon: what do you think was the biggest contributing factor to that exponential growth that you're experiencing with your real estate?

[00:15:25] Because you, a lot of people think that they can just get into it and it's gonna happen overnight, and it's gonna be the quickest thing ever. You sound like you're seeing a lot of quick success. What do you think contributing to that? 

[00:15:37] Casey Denby: Nothing's quick in the world of success ever, right?

[00:15:41] There's no overnight success. I think we can all agree on this podcast. Nobody became an overnight success. Sorry. I got a dog over here. For us, it was door by door. So the focus was the next deal. And so what actually happened was we started just going after kind of those single families.[00:16:00] 

[00:16:00] And then we kept racking and racking. I think we got 10 single family doors, and then we decided let's go to multi. And so our first multi deal, I've been looking at this property for, I think a year and a half, maybe two years. And it came back on the market, cuz I missed out on it the first time.

[00:16:21] This investor didn't even hold onto it for more than two years. And I came around at the same time cuz we were always looking James, always looking Patrick for deals, right? Always on the MLS, always asking our realtor and then actually what happened was one of the deals we closed was my mentor was selling one of his properties, sold it to us.

[00:16:41] His realtor that he was using locally. We started chatting with him. He met us at the property and he started to do off market deals for us. And that's really how this took it to the next level. Cause we were just doing straights, like what's on Zillow, what's on realtor.com. What's out there and at the [00:17:00] time, like you could make it happen.

[00:17:01] And we made it happen and we were able to get, more bargain basement type deals. But we had a criteria and that was important. We didn't just buy anything. We bought two or three, particularly three bedroom. And it had to be close to a thousand square feet and it had to be. Rent ready.

[00:17:18] Like we had to be able to buy it and rent it. Now that didn't mean that it was in Christine condition. It just meant that it wasn't a piece of crap, right? It meant that we didn't have to put 10, 15, 20,000 into it before we could make a dollar . So our critical point was it has to fit this criteria, period.

[00:17:34] It can't be in the gangster part of town period. And number three had to cash flow day one, and our biggest deal was efficiency. So time to VA or time to occupancy was a big thing for us. I would go and Austin, and I would sit there and we would do open houses. We would do appointments personally, fill these properties again.

[00:17:56] We managed these ourselves for five years, right? Like we didn't have any property [00:18:00] management at all until last year. That's a whole different story. We learned along the way and we rented most of these properties within. I'm not even kidding you. I think our average was probably seven days to fill a door.

[00:18:12] That's amazing. This is from, I showing like marketing, showing application you're in the house. 

[00:18:20] Patrick McGrath: I love that. I love that. And there's so much to take in there, but I think one of the biggest things is, alright, so you're buying these properties. This is during 2016, 17, so 18 around that time. Yep.

[00:18:36] Around that time, there was plenty of foreclosures on the market. So you could get the pick of the litter of a foreclosure, most likely that didn't need that much work now, but how were you financing, buying all these properties in a year, cuz you're saying you, you didn't wanna do heavy renovations.

[00:18:54] You wanted to get it in. Clean it up, maybe throw some paint, [00:19:00] do some very light re and get it rented like right away, or if not rent it right away. So you weren't really value adding any of this or really doing the Burr method. I'm assuming. So where were you getting all this capital? 

[00:19:15] Casey Denby: Great question.

[00:19:16] So we started with a pretty good financial base or foundation in the sense that both of our credit scores were good. And both of us had a little bit of cash. Now that little bit of cash kind of kept piling onto itself. So what we did at first was a hundred percent of our own money, went into buying these properties.

[00:19:36] And then as we got two and three, we started to use a little bit of our rental cash to buy the properties, but I'm talking like 80 personal, 20 rental. Like we still couldn't buy a full property based on the money we were getting, cuz we were trying to grow quickly. And what ended up. Happening is we got down to 50 50, and then, the pendulum [00:20:00] swung a little bit.

[00:20:01] And at some point it was a hundred percent of our rental investment money was going back into the properties. And actually last year we did put some personal money back in because we, we had our biggest deal. It was over a million dollars, our first million dollar plus deal. And we definitely had to put some personal money into that, cuz it was a big chunk of change.

[00:20:20] But to answer your question very short, it was all conventional my in all conventional financing at the time, 20%, 25%, even 30%, depending on the lender, cuz we had to do some portfolio lending and they require 25, 30, percent down. And so we did this for a little while and then last year we actually jumped into.

[00:20:43] More unconventional financing, where we're actually able to do portfolio loans. And we've also done a couple of cash out refis at this point because the market, as in the past six years has gone gang busters in the right direction for us sucks for the first time home buyers, but it was great for us.

[00:20:59] And we're in the [00:21:00] same challenge everybody else is right now. Like how do you find a great deal to be an investor, but that's how it went. So it was conventional first and then it was cash out refi in then this past year and now moving into 2022, we're moving into more the construction loans.

[00:21:14] So we are doing rehab on some units. We've changed as we've grown, we've been able to grow out of the baby phase. I would say of investing, but we did on every property. We did capital improvements on every single. Every single one we've done. We've been able to turn rent, increase rent.

[00:21:32] As our tenants have turned we've enhanced, like we, our first apartment building was an eight unit apartment building that I get three or four messages a day from people trying to buy that place we bought it for I think it was $416,000. This was four years ago, $416,000. Every unit that turned, we renovated it one by one, cuz they were, it was rented out.

[00:21:57] It was a hundred percent rented out, but guess what? They were renting [00:22:00] each door out anywhere between $425. I'm not kidding. 4 25 bucks. Now these are one once. So moving away one bed, one bath, I mean we're talking anywhere from five to 700 square feet, so much smaller, different economics. But as we renovated these in the market turn, now we're actually like the rent that we started was like 3,200 bucks for all eight doors.

[00:22:22] Now we're getting $5,700 out of that building a month. It is a cash cow for us because we improved each unit and got it up to this point. And then, obviously raised rent on, on tenants that are there and the building is three of the existing tenant or the original tenants are still there.

[00:22:40] The other five have gone on and we've refilled it, but that's how we've grown over the years. And there's so much more to that, but to keep it at high level for the listeners. 

[00:22:50] James Rippeon: That's great. So when you were getting new tenants in there, was it stressful for the ones that you had that were staying there when you were doing these [00:23:00] renovations?

[00:23:00] Were you shifting them around from unit to unit as they were, you were going through this renovation process? How did you manage that specifically? 

[00:23:07] Casey Denby: Yeah, so literally one door would open. So there's four units on the bottom four units on the top, we would just Reno, the unit that was vacant. Didn't cause any problems with the existing tenants?

[00:23:18] We're not talking about like the Ritz Carlton of eight unit apartment buildings here. They were used to, to this kind of stuff happening and we turned them quick. I'm talking less than two weeks. We would renovate an entire unit when you got five to 700 square feet. It doesn't take a whole lot.

[00:23:31] And we did actually a couple times renovate a unit and an existing tenant would actually say, Hey, I wanna live in the new one . And so we'd be like, okay, great. But it's a hundred bucks born rent. . so we did that twice with two different tenants that actually have stayed. We tried it with a third didn't work, so well, we actually had a tenant die on the couch in one of those apartments.

[00:23:51] Oh, wow. We that's a whole different story. You guys like in my book, I throw real talk, right? Like real talk about what it's like to. [00:24:00] Business rental property business. Let's talk about 

[00:24:02] James Rippeon: that a little bit. What motivated you to manage your own properties? Cause I, I know a lot of people are gonna look at that and think it's absolutely insane cash flow CA well, there you go.

[00:24:12] Cash flow, but you've got these trade offs, got these trade offs. Now you were on the opposite camp of passive income. Yep. So talk about that trade off between passive income, quote unquote, passive income with real estate and the benefits you're getting from not paying a property manager.

[00:24:29] Cause I know, fees are gonna range, depending on the type of property and maybe in the area that it's at, but you also have these O other benefits that I've found, which are hands on control and a lot of opportunity costs that you're able to account for. So why don't you talk about the motivation behind 

[00:24:45] self-managing 

[00:24:46] Casey Denby: yeah, that's a great question.

[00:24:48] And it's actually why I was able to write a book because I self-managed for five years. Up to 30 doors, right? My business partner. And I did, and I own some by myself. So of the 60, 10 of those doors are [00:25:00] mine by myself. And then 50, I share with the other dude whose name is Austin? And we're at a contract for two more single families right now, outta state.

[00:25:08] The motivation literally was cash because I was like, if I hire somebody out, number one, I'm not gonna have as much money coming in. I can't grow my business. And number two, I'm never gonna learn. So it was starting as a paper, boy, I knew, Hey, I gotta start somewhere. If I have to mop the floors, dude, I did that at a restaurant when I was 16, 17 and 18, I did the worst of the worst, cleaning up after people eating. The restroom's dude, whatever, but it paid my way through at that time in my life. And now I don't have to do that. Now. I actually have cleaners that come to my house every other week and clean my house. But I went through the fricking ringer. Okay. My wife and I went through the ringer, my business partner.

[00:25:50] And I went, we went through the ringer, like hands on experience. One of the things that I learned just from a general statistics standpoint when I was learning [00:26:00] executive is 70% of what people learn is by doing 70%, do the fricking math on that. So if you're just reading a book, I'm sorry, you're not going to become an expert in that there's a reason they say 10,000 hours or whatever the thing is, to become expert at something like it's true.

[00:26:17] You're not gonna become a pilot or a great pilot until you get in the simulator and then you're not gonna become great until you get in an airplane and become, becomes a co-pilot. And then you become the pilot and you grow from, a smaller commuter jet up to a 37, then to a 57, this, you get it right.

[00:26:32] And the reality is you cannot become an expert landlord or an expert business owner, unless you are in it. Doing the job, whether it's cold calls as a sales professional, which Patrick, you could resonate with that, your mission and that to me earlier, or whether it's managing the property and getting the phone calls at 2:00 AM, which I was actually able to avoid.

[00:26:55] Because there's some things that you do that you can get to that [00:27:00] point where you manage your tenants and you manage your business and you are proactive with these things and, that's just how it rolls. And over time we learn all of these things, all of these tips of trades, and then we realized, Hey, we're doing okay.

[00:27:18] And, we can get to the next level. But it wasn't until we went through the grind and we built the portfolio, we built our own cash cow. And some of these rentals that we have, you guys like. We are going to be doing well off of these for years and years now, it doesn't mean you're not gonna run into crap.

[00:27:36] Okay. We had a $25,000 foundation to repair a couple years ago. That hurt, that took all of our, like capital that we were using to grow. So we couldn't grow for a few months until we raised some more capital and work that direction. But we've actually never gone for outside capital. It's always been us. It's always been the business. It's always been what we're trying to do. And I've had a lot of people reach out and say, Hey, would you mentor me? Or [00:28:00] would you invest with me, et cetera, and have entertained a few deals, but just never had to do it. And until this moment, my business partner and I like we're focused, we're locked in together and we're growing together and things are working.

[00:28:11] So that's how we went from, we gotta learn, man, gotta be in order to be the boss, you gotta do the work. And so we now truly understand what it takes to be a great landlord. And I can tell you that I don't have to take those phone calls anymore. I don't have to take the anger tenants, like screaming at me anymore, but I still hear the stories, right?

[00:28:28] Like I'm still the boss of the business. So we have, weekly calls with our property managers sometimes worth need be, but to get a status update and you hear the craziest things, what's so nice about it is I'm not hearing that during the week, I'm not getting a 2:00 PM call when I'm, I still work a full time job.

[00:28:43] I don't get a 2:00 PM call saying, I'm in this tenant, call the police or they're freaking out, or these tenants are fighting or somebody's in jail or whatever it is. So it's been a nice kind of growth and evolution for us. So I 

[00:28:53] James Rippeon: know a lot of the people that are gonna be listening to this are gonna wanna start off with the property manager.

[00:28:58] They're not gonna have [00:29:00] maybe the grit or the desire to maximize cash flow that you had. And they're gonna want to pursue the more passive. You've gone through the process. Now you've been in it, you've done all the work and now you've selected a property manager or two to do that work for you. So you can outsource that.

[00:29:15] What are some of the key considerations that you had when you were interviewing these property managers and what were some of the things that you saw that were just terrible with these property managers that were just unacceptable? Cause I know, some of the property managers I've had have been great and you come across those that just don't give a shit about your properties.

[00:29:34] That's right. And you just wanna collect that 10% check. So what were some of the due diligence things that you went through to go find that great property manager? 

[00:29:43] Casey Denby: It's such a good question. And it's actually one of the reasons why I hesitated so long to, to go property management route, because I've heard stories, read books, listen, podcasts that nobody's ever gonna care about your property, as much as you do.

[00:29:55] Totally true. Check the box. Also nightmare stories about property managers were [00:30:00] like. You're thinking you can get away with it or you're gonna do better with your business, but turns out you're actually losing in the long run because they don't, they're not caring. They just put anybody in. They're not doing due diligence, you name it.

[00:30:11] So for us it actually came through a repairman. We were hiring out a repair work that the number one and most important hire for us was a handyman that could be local. That could be there quickly on the, we trusted could get the job done, et cetera. We actually hired a few fired a few along the way.

[00:30:28] You're learning. And we through a tenant, believe it or not, who was in a rock band? Yes. This story gets weirder. And this tenant was not young, right? We're talking like probably late fifties, early sixties in a rock band with this guy who did repair work and Hey, cuz our other repair guy was locked down with some other jobs.

[00:30:49] We're like, fine. We'll bring this guy over and what our strategy was. And James, I think you can appreciate this is we always have somebody do a tryout always before we hire [00:31:00] them. So we're like, okay, one job, not a big job, but one job. And if you do a good job, we'll give you another job. And if you do a good job, we'll give you more jobs.

[00:31:10] And that's how this happens. So this rock band guy long hair love to talk but super kind of cool dude, he did a couple repairs for us and we're like, oh my gosh, this guy's amazing. And he's cheap. Is this real? So we used him for a few more jobs and guess what he did. He plugged in on, as he would call us on the phone, tell us how the job went.

[00:31:30] He was very thorough and I'm like, whoa, this is way better than my other dude. So already we're on a good start. And then he would be like, Hey, by the way, my full-time job is actually managed properties. It's my full-time job. Okay. Tell me more. He started selling me in Austin separately, right? Like different phone calls cuz we're not in the same place.

[00:31:50] And so he would call us and update us and Austin and I would split doors. So Hey, these are yours. These are mine, that was the responsibility of our management. And. [00:32:00] It was about, we used him for over a year, doing repairs before we finally considered hiring him for property manager. And his rates were lower than anybody else in town, any shop that was like a professional business.

[00:32:13] It was him and his wife. They worked as a partnership and she did all the paperwork and the cleaning and dealt with the tenants, like move in marketing, things like that. He did all the grunt work. He had to deal with the tenants when they were upset, or disobey, he would go by and be the hammer.

[00:32:33] Are you ki, are you kidding? You're not gonna have a couch on my patio. Like dude was for real. And he would bring it. And like he cared about the properties and we would see it and he'd tell us about it. And he's I told these people, I'm the property manager now where I'm gonna be.

[00:32:47] And the owner doesn't like this and boom. He was better than I was at that crap. So I realized, okay, maybe it's time to let go. Maybe it's time to give him the opportunity. Again, we didn't give him our whole portfolio at once again, [00:33:00] same strategy. We said, okay, we'll let you manage this building.

[00:33:02] It was our eight unit apartment building that was biggest pain in the ass for us because eight tenants in one roof, trust me, you're gonna hear complaints. I hate this tenant. And four is a piece of crap or this tenant and five came home naked. And this tenant and six slept on the fricking patio with their boyfriend.

[00:33:20] Like this is real things. So we're like, okay, this is the biggest headache for us. We're gonna give this one to you and give you a trial. And it wasn't more than a month or two in before, like it's worth every penny. And then we were still keeping all of our single families and of managing that.

[00:33:39] We've worked out a deal with them and given 'em our whole portfolio in Colorado now because we were able to find a pro a good deal, cuz we're like we hate to get, fleed on 10% of our money coming in for these single families. So we're able to negotiate something with them for the whole package of single families, which are less work right than an apartment building for a property manager as well.

[00:33:58] And then we [00:34:00] invest in Arkansas, out of state and in Arkansas I actually had connections that I had built through my real estate network and trusted a guy to the core. And so started to find some off market properties. He had a brokerage and a property management business and I was like, whoa, great.

[00:34:20] So I was out there on a business trip. We went out and looked at properties together. He said, here's, the situation was able to negotiate where, Hey, like we'll pay you X percent, but we're not gonna pay you to turn each door. That's on you guys. So we're able to work out a good deal there, and they've been managing our properties.

[00:34:37] We actually had to fire the first set of folks there and hire a new set. It's better. But again, you're gonna learn as this goes and you have to stay in touch with your business. If I'm gonna give anybody advice today, it's listen. You can't just set it and forget it. Even when you have property managers, like you have to be in touch.

[00:34:55] You have to look at every expense. We had a water heater bill come in this week for [00:35:00] $2,200 because the water heater was like in a really random place. And we're like no. We want a second opinion on that. That's ridiculous. Like even if it's in a crazy place, we gotta get a second opinion.

[00:35:09] And same thing with the mailboxes. Apparently we bought this we bought a 15 unit and an eight unit building. So 23 units in one deal. And apparently the previous owner didn't have mailboxes mailbox keys for the tenants. And we didn't find out about it until months in cuz we're not managing.

[00:35:25] And they're like, oh yeah, they would just wait for the mailman to get their mail and I'm like, this is the weirdest shit I've ever what is happening right now? And so that's crazy. I know. And it's like almost a year in, we're just figuring out about this, but they wanted to charge us like $1,800 to re-key 15 box.

[00:35:44] Of males and I'm like no, that's not happening. It be cheaper 

[00:35:46] Patrick McGrath: just to buy 

[00:35:47] Casey Denby: mailboxes. That's what I said. So we got the quote on buying the mailboxes and then we got another guy who could rekey him for 800 bucks. But that's what I mean. If you just let the property manager do whatever it's not gonna work.

[00:35:58] So we actually have a [00:36:00] routine and we tell him, Hey, anything above $250 in expense, you gotta run it by us fun. 

[00:36:06] James Rippeon: It's a really important thing to do. Cause I know property managers are gonna have their relationships and their go-to contractors that they rely on and it's just super easy. And know, it might not be necessarily their fault, but they have that relationship going and it's just easy to fall back on that one contractor.

[00:36:21] They know that's just gonna get the work done, not withstanding the price I definitely see that a hundred percent. You guys gotta be following up with your property manager, making sure they're getting a good deal for you because you gotta look out for your own interest. 

[00:36:35] Casey Denby: That's right.

[00:36:36] Patrick McGrath: Always. And I also want to tie in there. So this is interesting, cuz what you just said is exactly where I'm at in my kind of real estate investing particular moment in my life where we're about to hit 23 doors and I'm been contemplating going back and forth the last two years, the first week of January, I've called and had conversations with property [00:37:00] managers.

[00:37:00] And I'm at that point where when's it gonna be worth it. And to tie back into what you first said is I think around that 30 door mark is the mark, but because my wife and I have been managing all of these for the last three years now we know what the expectation is. We know how long it should take to rent one of these properties out.

[00:37:22] We know what it costs to get a hot water heater fixed. I know how much it costs to replace a fan like and do all that work and have our. Contractors and you have your own systems in place, so you can easily tell if someone is gonna pass the smell test right off the get go.

[00:37:41] And I think that's really important for the people out there that are getting started. And also, like you said before, the whole reason that you didn't go with property management in the beginning was the cash flow. So in the beginning you don't know anything. So you're entrusting somebody [00:38:00] else to manage your portfolio.

[00:38:02] You're taking that 10% in the beginning. So if you would've started with a property management company from the get, go giving up that 10%, how. Do, where do you think your portfolio would be now in relation to that in re in relationship to that? Because that would give up so much of that cash flow and equity and everything else in the beginning, I feel like that would've really stunted your growth.

[00:38:31] How do you think you'd be where you are today? If you would've started with property manager from the beginning, do you think you'd be further along break that down for us? 

[00:38:39] Casey Denby: No short answer is no a again, I think you need to learn it. You need to go through it in order to be great at it.

[00:38:46] And for us, it was just something we were able to do. So it was a sacrifice we were willing to make. Austin would fly out here multiple times. Sometimes more than once in, in a couple month period. And we would market the properties ourselves. I would go [00:39:00] on the weekends with, I'd take my whole family with me guys, and we would market properties.

[00:39:05] I made it a family business and experience lots of driving. Lots of nights, lots of weekends lots of phone calls, but I knew that I had to do it. I knew that eventually I wouldn't have to do it as a result of doing it. And so Patrick, what you just said about you're doing it yourself, and you know what it takes, like I know that it, it costs between 20 $505,000 to do a sewer, a main sewer line replacement, including excavation, backhoe, digging rental of the backhoe, all labor, all tools, cost, et cetera.

[00:39:45] Now, if somebody comes and tries to charge me 7,500 bucks, I'm gonna call 'em out on their lie. Or go find somebody else and be like, no, sorry. And that's the beauty of learning through experience. And so now I know and now I know what kind of [00:40:00] tenants you don't want on your property.

[00:40:02] Right? Like at the beginning, the rental market, wasn't quite as crazy as it is now. In fact, I just posted something on my Instagram today. It's the highest rents have been in my lifetime actually 12% year over year increase. Think about that 12% year over year increase. Now the housing market's kind of going the same way as far as prices.

[00:40:24] So if you've own a house, your mortgage, isn't going up, like you're in good shape, but that's just not the reality for most people. And so what I'm saying is it's a ripe time to be an investor, but you have to understand the game. And so people like us, we have a leg up on those who, don't, what I've told people over and over again, as I say, Hey, listen, you know who I'm primarily buying from is landlords who couldn't cut it.

[00:40:48] Exactly. Me too. I'm come. Yeah, I'm coming in and I'm doing a better job and I'm actually charging market. Whereas some landlords are like I'm afraid, they're [00:41:00] not gonna find a, good renter or whatever. If you price your property at 400 and it's market is 6 75, the only one losing out is you right.

[00:41:10] And by keeping it so low, you're also attracting a lower quality tenant. Sorry, just the truth. Exactly. So what kind of tenant do you want your property? What kind of business? What kind of cash flow do you want from that door? Are you going to do what it takes? And so Austin and I actually balance each other a little bit I'm more of dude, you gotta raise rents.

[00:41:31] We gotta go up 50 bucks. That's the market. We gotta go up 75. We used to do longer term leases longer than a year. Not anymore, man. Like that bit us in the ass so bad. When the market took, just took off, we thought it was. It was at the time, but then we realized, shoot, now we're under market by a hundred or $150 and we can't do anything about it legally because we screwed ourselves.

[00:41:53] But guess what we learned from that and that's okay. Like it happens and it's okay. You just gotta gotta swallow it. And over time [00:42:00] you get better and you tweak and you get there. And then, actually wrote it in my book about what you should look for when you hire a landlord, what you should look for when you hire a handyman, what you should look for in a lender, what you should look for in a business partner, because all those things are critically important.

[00:42:14] If you choose the wrong person, you better be able to be ready to move on and fire 'em and get to the next person. Otherwise it's gonna be you that's hurting. And so my growth. Exponentially was because I did it myself. I learned, and also by doing it myself, Patrick, I was able to go around and look at other properties.

[00:42:33] And that one's for sale or whatnot, and find a few deals that way. So it was beneficial more than one 

[00:42:38] James Rippeon: way. They've gotta saying hire slow fire fast. That's right. And it sounds like you employ that with, people that you're doing business with. So that's great. You've been building your real estate business since 2016.

[00:42:49] That's six years in now tell us give us a breakdown, what your portfolio looks like and tell us some of the numbers. What's the whole portfolio worth. What kind of cash flow is it bringing in? What's your LTV? What kind of [00:43:00] equity do you guys have in it? Give us a little bit of details about where you're at 

[00:43:03] Casey Denby: now, 60 doors.

[00:43:05] And it's a combination of single family. Multi our biggest property is 15 units. So we have a couple of eight plexes. We have, quadplex a couple of plexes duplexes, you get it. We're actually under contract for two more doors right now. And we might do our first short term rentals, which is exciting.

[00:43:25] We've been thinking about it for a while. And so we'll be at 62 here in February, cuz we wanted to contract the first week of January and we're looking at another fourplex right now. So moving on, moving up and moving on. But as far as gross rents we did just over 600,000 in annualized revenue in 2021.

[00:43:45] And our goal for this year is 7 25. I think we're gonna go past that. But what I was telling Patrick is I'm actually not looking for as many doors of an increase this year as I am cash flow. So I'd rather have a higher cash flowing [00:44:00] door than just buy a building. That actually, yes, it's good in some senses guys, but my experience is the more people you have under one roof, the more of a pain in the ass it is, and the harder it is to manage.

[00:44:12] And and more and more people with, everything that's happened in the world the last couple years, they want a house, they want land, they want a backyard. They want a office. You're not gonna have an office with a one bedroom apartment or a two bedroom apartment with three kids. Okay. So we're trying to get something that is gonna be higher value kind of ticket in rent a little bit more going in maybe, but cash flow per door is better.

[00:44:35] And our gross a net income is about 20%. And actually Patrick, one of the things I wanna circle back on is how we grew also so fast is because we put a hundred percent of the profits back into the business, literally a hundred percent. And it, we just said, we're not gonna live off of this money.

[00:44:52] This is not our money. This is a business. We're gonna run it as a business and that's how we've done it. And literally the only time we've taken money, [00:45:00] the only time we've taken money is last year, we put in a big chunk of our personal money because we didn't have enough business capital to buy those doors out of state.

[00:45:09] And so we decided, Hey is gonna be a big personal sacrifice because we're doing better in our careers. We got, we each have four kids and families and goals and things like that. And so we started to say, Hey, we're gonna put, X amount in, and then we're gonna pay ourselves back over the next year from the business.

[00:45:26] So it's really like still the business money going in. And so that's how we've grown it. And we know that at some point it's gonna be, really beneficial for us in a long term, standpoint, but we look at those numbers, all the. Occupancy is a big deal for us.

[00:45:39] We're a hundred percent occupied in Colorado right now. We've got a few doors that we're still trying to fill in Arkansas. But that's our number one focus because we really want to hit those goals of 700 plus, revenue. 20% of that approximately should be net income. 

[00:45:53] Patrick McGrath: That's that's huge.

[00:45:54] And what I'd like to hear and like to see is how strategies [00:46:00] change over time. You started with single family, cuz that's what most people do. You got a fourplex, you got an eight Plex, you got 15 units here because you're trying to grow and grow and get that cash. And then you're still acquiring single families.

[00:46:14] And now you're like, Hey, look, we want more port, more per door. Excuse me. And so you're thinking Airbnbs now, right? How can I get the most cash flow out of this single asset? And it's because you've shifted your business find what makes the most sense for you two. And now your business is at a point now where you can really look at it and go, okay, how much a headache comes with this 150 $200 a month, cash flow, $400 a month cash flow.

[00:46:51] And, where's the best use of our capital. And you're at a point. Point now. What I think you said, I think is over $8 million in real estate, [00:47:00] is 

[00:47:00] Casey Denby: that correct? Oh yeah. I didn't actually mention that part. I forgot all the things James was asking me. We have over 6 million in equity, like owned real estate right now with multiple millions.

[00:47:12] I couldn't give you the exact number. I'd have to go look it up in, in equity, in those properties. So if I were to say like ratio, we probably have 35, no 40, 40 to 45% equity in our properties, which is awesome. That's amazing. 

[00:47:27] Patrick McGrath: And that gives you the opportunity now to really look at your business. Like you said, you're looking at those key performance indicators and really seeing.

[00:47:39] Instead of continuing to just grow and grow. Let's really focus on the things that we want to focus on. The things that make the most sense for our business, because you're at a point now where you've built a really solid business. Four or 5 million worth of equity in six or seven years at just being two dudes [00:48:00] is period of huge.

[00:48:01] So that's really amazing. What's the ultimate goal, where are you guys trying to go with this in the next three to five years? 

[00:48:09] Casey Denby: My ultimate goal is I'm gonna never stop. just have this mentality. I'm like, people are like, whoa, you have 60 doors. I started.

[00:48:16] And it's people wanna get in. They want to go. But they never really do. It's like the dude that's on the bench. That's oh, I'm gonna get in the game. I'm gonna be the all star. But he doesn't put in the practice. Doesn't actually get off his butt and stop bitching Netflix. And so for us, there is no cap, Patrick and James, but we do have a goal this year to hit 75 doors and 725,000 in gross revenue, gross rent revenue.

[00:48:40] And I think based on how the year started, we're under your contract with two, we're looking at four boards probably gonna happen pretty soon. We might just soar past that, which is amazing. However, Boston and I have talked about this a few times. We're like, what is the goal? Like what is success?

[00:48:58] And we talk to each other, like [00:49:00] if each of us. Are bringing in a quarter of a million dollars in net income, not gross, but net income. Each that would be considered like a true success, because guess what? We could literally live off of that money forever. Like you got that money coming in and then you're still gonna have enough money to invest and reinvest the business.

[00:49:25] And like I said, we don't take a penny outta the business right now. And could we have absolutely we could be doing that every month. We could take a few hundred, few thousand here, whatever we needed, but we don't because growth is still the number one objective. 

[00:49:43] James Rippeon: So working up until that point.

[00:49:45] Do you guys have a timeline in mind because I'm sure you guys have tried to do the math where you're both gonna be taking that 250 K home and buying your Lamborghini and living in your big house and doing all the cool stuff that people want to do with their financial independence. Do you [00:50:00] guys have a timeline in 

[00:50:01] mind?

[00:50:01] Casey Denby: I'm 37. So is Austin actually we have same birth year, same birth month. Believe it or not by the time we hit 40, we would both to be clearing at least like 150 each. Now that doesn't mean we're gonna be taking it, but if we can get to that point, like that's a huge deal for us. And then what we'd really love to do, I is just I'm an entrepreneur man.

[00:50:27] Like I wrote a book and I didn't ever think I would write a book. I hated books. If I sat down and wrote a book during 2020, everybody was, watching TV and complain about crappy. The world was like, the world did suck, but you know what? Didn't stop me from growing my business. Didn't stop me from making more money.

[00:50:42] It didn't stop me from chasing my dreams. And I think it, it just comes down to the ultimate. Success is enjoying life with my family, hitting new milestones, improving to my kids that hard work over time, every single day through the grind. And my [00:51:00] wife is working too, she works from home.

[00:51:02] She is a network marketing business. She's amazing. She's hitting milestones herself. Like we're proven to our kids this is how you do it. You guys, they don't like, we don't need our kids. Don't need to have jobs when they hit high school. My oldest just turned. But I got him out there cleaning trash cans with the fricking pressure washer.

[00:51:21] He doesn't get allowance because he's not gonna be a spoiled brat growing up. He needs to learn. And so to me, you guys, it's all about the purpose of life, which is family. It's freedom. It's free agency. It's the ability to grow and improve and all those things. But money comes into that.

[00:51:36] To me, it's not a dollar amount, but I will tell you this. When I started investing in real estate, I calculated it and I was worth like $67,000. If I sold everything I owned at the time I paid off all my debt. So I was worth $67,000. Now it's over two and a half million in six years. And that's huge.

[00:51:57] I contribute that to real estate. Period [00:52:00] real estate, and I'm gonna hit 3 million plus that's one of my goals this year is I wanna hit 3 million net worth. And I don't share that to brag. I Frigging, there are so many other people that blow me outta the water, but for me, it's about tracking progress.

[00:52:14] I actually have a file on my computer that shows I do it like every few months I do my net worth and it shows growing, I haven't receded once over this period of time, it's about paying off the bad debts. It's about, it's more than just real estate, and I know this is a financial of podcast, financial append podcast. I didn't write a book to become rich, but it's another source of income, not a big source of income, right? Like I'm no New York times number one, selling author, but. I do appreciate what comes with it. And there's pride that comes with that milestone because I never thought I'd write a book.

[00:52:48] It's really cool. And all those things that kind of go into it. And so we've actually made money off of our personal houses as well. And we're looking at buying a mountain home, actually, let me throw this out there. We live in Colorado, right? [00:53:00] You ever been to Breckenridge? You've ever been to VE you've been to Aspen.

[00:53:02] You know what mountain living like luxury mountain living is it's been a dream of my wife and I for years and years. And we knew that if we did this, we could eventually get that. So of course I'm an investor and I'm thinking like, so delayed gratification. Yeah. Like I'm not gonna buy this just to let it sit there for however many days outta the year.

[00:53:22] I'm gonna turn this into an ANTR short term rental baby. 

[00:53:26] Patrick McGrath: So Airbnb, baby. 

[00:53:27] Casey Denby: That's ready to go. That's right. So we're almost to that point. That's one of our two within two year goals is to buy like a multimillion dollar. Incredible sleep. 16 people, bunk beds, everywhere. We can go whenever we want, we book it out 200, 250 nights a year break.

[00:53:48] Even if it's at that, what a milestone that would be so gratifying. And so that's of what we're looking at. That's what we're looking to do. There's no stop point for us. I love 

[00:53:57] Patrick McGrath: all of it. Those are great [00:54:00] nuggets all around. So while you were talking, I was doing some quick math and it looks like what you're saying is your goal by 40 is to double your current business and to hit those 250,000 a piece numbers, you need to three and a half times your business based on the 725,000.

[00:54:26] Gross 

[00:54:26] Casey Denby: revenue. Look at this guy doing math, like on his iPhone while we're chatting. I love it. And you're, I love it. 

[00:54:32] Patrick McGrath: 20% cash on cash, return, revenue of that. So in your pursuit to that, what is the biggest obstacle to get you there? Myself 

[00:54:47] Casey Denby: limiting beliefs myself in the sense that it literally has hinged on me.

[00:54:54] And my business partner, obviously, but I don't view him as a dependency. I'm the [00:55:00] dependency. What do I mean by that? It's action, man. If you're not taking the appropriate action to get to your goals, that's on you. It's not on the economy. It's not on anything else, but you and learning through experience again, like that's such a big deal.

[00:55:14] But it's also lack of discipline. Am I putting in the hours? Maybe not. There was a couple of months last year where I was a little bit lax in making sure that I was cash flowing on certain properties out of state kicking myself guys, but it was busy time and I just didn't want to deal with it at the time.

[00:55:35] And I've made up for that. But it's on me. It's a, it's about following up. It's about no, like this is not acceptable and we fired those property managers and we moved on. But in the end, Patrick it's me, man. If I want to go and grow to a certain extent, I'm gonna have to go seed capital from somewhere.

[00:55:52] If I don't have the capital myself and go seed it and go get another business partner. I got somebody who's trying to get me to buy into a pizza franchise right now. Like I may do [00:56:00] that. Who knows. But the reality is. It is up to me. I'm actually doing a you're gonna like this. You're a numbers guy.

[00:56:06] So a couple of my first deals that I bought for under a hundred thousand dollars. Okay. I told you I had 15, you probably did the math of how I was able to get into those properties. They're now worth 200 plus. Okay. So I'm doing in the process right now of doing a cash out, re five, three of my personal properties that I've purchased over the years that I haven't touched one of 'em.

[00:56:29] I only owe $40,000 on, 

[00:56:30] Patrick McGrath: there you go. Pretty good. There you go. 

[00:56:33] Casey Denby: But I wanted to keep the cash flow again. I was growing and it was important to me and I didn't need that cash. I could use other cash, et cetera, but I'm at the point now where I'm like, I could reinvest this cash. Still cash flow over $500 on each of these doors, which is amazing 

[00:56:49] Patrick McGrath: cash 

[00:56:50] Casey Denby: flow.

[00:56:50] Incredible. Which dude, I'm getting like 800 on one of these doors right now. It's insane because like I said, rents are record high. And I'm just taking advantage of the market, but the reality [00:57:00] is the market's telling me I need cash. The Fed's telling me interest rates are jumping this year, the stock market's telling me the same thing.

[00:57:06] Patrick McGrath: And your numbers are telling you that your return on equity is looking extremely 

[00:57:12] Casey Denby: low that's right. So if I can take this cash out and then repurpose it to grow, and now I have more cash. Revenues coming in, more lines of revenue coming in. Each door is a line of revenue, by the way. If you guys don't look at that, it is, it's a line of revenue.

[00:57:29] You could have one door, that's bringing you a hundred bucks. You could have another door. That's bringing you $10,000. Literally depends. It's probably a short term rental by the way. exactly. And that's why we're jumping into that route is literally our property managers are telling us, Hey, this is a great city for Airbnbs.

[00:57:46] I wouldn't have known that. Like I do research, but not that, not to that extent, help me out here. And I'm like, will you manage it? Yes, we do those too. Boom. Nobody I knew before was doing that. So instead of [00:58:00] getting maybe $400 in cash flow for one of those single family houses, I'm buying our realtor told us that we could get up to 2000.

[00:58:09] By sting it, there it is. Boom. So it's all about repurposing what you've got and figuring it out from there. And like you said as I grew, I was very particular. I'm only buying this. I'm only buying this because it's what I knew. It's what I knew would work. It's what I knew would be successful. Cuz I had experienced blah, blah, boom.

[00:58:26] I highly recommend that for anybody getting in the game, do not diversify yourself to the point where you don't know what the hell you're doing. You have to become specialized in an niche you have to, and then you can expand. Exactly. Like apple started with computers. You guys many years before they did the tablets before they did the phones before.

[00:58:45] I mean think about it. But they became a brand name because of X. They became expert in X and they expanded to Y Z w you name it. That's what we're, that's really 

[00:58:54] James Rippeon: important. Cause you're gonna get people who think they can try everything and accomplish flipping [00:59:00] wholesaling St R single family.

[00:59:01] Multi-family commercial. But what they're gonna end up finding out sooner or later is that they're not actually doing any of those things. That's, they're trying to teach themselves. And they're being, they full of analysis by paralysis by analysis, whatever one it is. So I think that's super important.

[00:59:16] Casey Denby: Heck yeah, man, you said it. I could go on forever. You guys, but that's literally what we're focused on right now. And I want to get into the short term market. As far as short term rentals and see how we do, but again, listen, we're starting with two doors. We've got our base of 60. If these fall flat, we're good.

[00:59:35] It's okay. We can rent 'em out long term and still cash flow. 400 a door, I think was what they told us. Or next year 

[00:59:43] Patrick McGrath: you could sell 'em to somebody else who would that's right. Be for a premium 

[00:59:47] Casey Denby: that's right. And do you know what we haven't done yet? You guys, we have not sold one of our doors, not one. We have not done a single 10 31 exchange.

[00:59:55] We haven't. Even, we've considered it now in the last couple years, but that's [01:00:00] something that we are considering as we move on is can we sell this and then buy up? That could be another strategy we jump into this year. 

[01:00:09] James Rippeon: I game of patience. 

[01:00:11] Patrick McGrath: Yeah. So it's blown my mind a little bit here of how you've been able to do all this and how diligent you guys have been on just buying and holding and keep holding now five, six years down the road, especially with the appreciation in the market.

[01:00:31] You're and what's nice is you didn't do anything too early. You didn't cash out refinance. When you had 50 or 70,000 bucks in a deal. You haven't sold anything off. Back in 2020 when the pandemic first started and 10 31 exchanged anything too early. So now you're sitting on this huge nest of equity and you have all of these different strategies that over the years, I'm sure you've done your [01:01:00] research on to learn about.

[01:01:01] So now you have all these tools in your toolbox that you can use to, for that next adventure and which could be one of multiple different things. So now you've opened yourself up after time which is wonderful. The 10 31 exchange is such a huge asset for investors that I think you'll definitely be able to to do that in trade up.

[01:01:25] I've actually done two so far on, about to do a third one. Nice. So I highly recommend. Highly recommend that. But that's something that I do all the time is looking at my return on equity inside of a property. And like you said it's compounding those dollars to make you more dollars.

[01:01:41] And if they're tied up in a property that's cash flowing three or $400 a month, and you can turn that into a property that's making three or $4,000 a month. So no brainer. 

[01:01:51] Casey Denby: That's right. Hey, let me plug one more thing in right now. Another thing we're doing is I actually went to our we have a lender that, that has lend again.

[01:01:59] We have, we've had [01:02:00] multiple, we've tried out a lot of different things, but one lender has almost all of our doors in Colorado on, and I went back to him and I said, Hey, Tony help us out with the rate. And we're getting a rate drop down with a very small fee into this. It's not a refinance per se. It's a rate adjustment.

[01:02:19] Did you know banks could do that? They can, I didn't really know that now my mortgage bank, isn't gonna do that for me on my personal house. Hell no. But on an investment property when you're not using a big national bank. Okay. And that's another thing I'll tell people local, they're the ones that are gonna help you get into properties that a chase or a Wells Fargo or somebody like that will never help you get into avoid Fanny Freddie, as long as you can, or as much as you can.

[01:02:46] However, it is nice to have a 30 year term I will say that. So we have done that on a few properties, but you max out at 10, everybody probably understands that. Leverage that. And we're going into the like 3.9 from one of ours was like [01:03:00] 4.9. Another one was 5.2. Some of our other ones were at three nine.

[01:03:03] I'm like, dude, you got us at three nine for these and frigging we're come on. Like 

[01:03:08] Patrick McGrath: we're the same bottom at the end of 2018, that's it? Interest rates were 5%. I 

[01:03:14] Casey Denby: was there too. And so now we're doing that without actually taking any money out we're saving on our payment. And that means, guess what? Our cashflow increases.

[01:03:24] Boom, sorry. I forgot that until I'm like literally going back and forth with him right now, an email like, Hey, let's figure this out. 

[01:03:30] Patrick McGrath: that's huge. When you have, a million. Plus at a local bank, 

[01:03:35] Casey Denby: 3 million with this guy, 

[01:03:37] Patrick McGrath: 3 million, 3 million with one guy. So then you're not a, you're a not so little fish.

[01:03:42] Yeah. Instead of $300,000 mortgage who would've thought, okay, I've got tons. But it takes time. Yeah. It takes time. I think man, I think all those things are great. And you're the first guest to really bring that one up. I hope to be at a point to be able to do that down the road, especially with all these interest rate hikes that are supposed to be 

[01:03:59] Casey Denby: coming.[01:04:00] 

[01:04:00] That's why I'm buying now. That's why I'm refining. Now. That's why I'm doing some things that I'm doing right now. Again, it's you gotta be strategic and that's part of the strategy and you 

[01:04:08] Patrick McGrath: gotta know what's going on. I think that's a perfect time to transition into our last segment, which is called the big 

[01:04:18] Casey Denby: picture.

[01:04:19] Oh 

[01:04:21] Patrick McGrath: so James do take it away. 

[01:04:25] James Rippeon: Yes, sir. So Casey, and everyone's financial independence journey. They're looking for their shortcuts to how to get there quicker. What's something that you do or know or implement that feels like a financial independence hack. That just is just one of those things that just seems to make everything simpler and happen quicker or better.

[01:04:47] Casey Denby: I'm gonna give you three. Number one is marry up. 

[01:04:50] James Rippeon: That's that? Yeah. There you go. 

[01:04:51] Casey Denby: Never heard that one Mary up Barry up. Damn I could elaborate on that. You guys, but let me just tell you my wife is crushing it into her business right now, [01:05:00] but for years and years, it was me. She was the mom.

[01:05:02] She wanted to be the mom. She kinda lost herself. She started her own business. She fricking loves it. She's an amazing, incredible woman human leader. I look up to her, we share an office right now. I'm working from home full time. It's awesome to see my wife dominate her business. Gives me a little bit in emotions here.

[01:05:22] Second rental real estate, man. Like we've talked about it, but without rental real estate, I am not worth over two and a half million dollars today. I'm just not, I'm sorry. I'm not. And number three is never carry a credit card balance. So I use credit cards. I leveraged the points. I actually had so many credit card points.

[01:05:43] I got an iPad pro an iPad pencil, or a apple pencil brand new watch. I like cashed in on apple when it was 10% off through, through the rewards points because of points. But it helps your credit. If you stay out of. Big debt. And that's definitely helped me along the way. I think what you 

[01:05:58] James Rippeon: said right there, when you [01:06:00] were talking last about, owning the small credit union or bank $3 million made me think of a saying, and it applies to this credit card thing.

[01:06:07] When you owe the bank a little bit of money, it's your problem. Yeah. You owe, owe the bank a lot of money. It's their problem. That's right. You don't wanna keep you happy. So avoid the credit cards, open own the banks, these stupid little amounts of money. That's not doing anything for you and make sure that the bank is working with you on $3 million real estate, where they're gonna be reducing the interest rate because they want to keep you as a good client.

[01:06:28] So I think that's fantastic 

[01:06:30] Patrick McGrath: and they want you to pay that 

[01:06:32] Casey Denby: back. Boom, and I have a line of credit that I carry with one of my banks, too, that we, instead of refinancing, we just did a line of credit. And so we have a $96,000 revolving line of credit that we just pay down, use to buy more properties, as you get more cash flow, and guess what it gives you access to that 96 K if you need it. And then if you don't, you pay that sucker down and then you've got money to use in the future. Sorry, another hack. 

[01:06:57] Patrick McGrath: All right. That is the hack right [01:07:00] there. Oh, that's the hack. Everybody I've heard multiple people talk about it.

[01:07:04] I've had conversations with my bank trying to get a line of credit, but I just don't have enough with them yet for them to be willing to give me one. Yeah. That's the key that, that opens up so many doors right there. And that's how you get to 60 doors and double your portfolio in a year, for sure.

[01:07:22] With something like that. All right. So are there any books, podcast, or resources out there that You use or you would recommend for people on their financial independence journey besides the number one answer, which is rich dad, poor dad, 20 books, podcast people, 

[01:07:45] James Rippeon: rich dad, poor dad. That's number two number one's behind him on his left shoulder up there.

[01:07:48] Casey Denby: That's number. Oh. That's right. You throw this down. 

[01:07:51] Patrick McGrath: Number two, most answered book. What do you say out there? 

[01:07:58] Casey Denby: All right. So I will, I need to [01:08:00] plug this fully okay. Of how to win and rent a real estate. After the deal it's on Amazon, you can buy a Kindle or you can buy the hard copy of you. Prefer the hard copy.

[01:08:08] I just like touching things and reading. That's a thick 

[01:08:11] James Rippeon: book, man. You put some pages in there. This is 

[01:08:13] Casey Denby: almost 300 pages, man. And it's nine or 10 point font. Like I killed this book guys. Somebody told me, they're like, dude, you wrote three books in one. I said, I didn't know, first time author mistake.

[01:08:22] Apparently. I was gonna say how big's the font? Geez. It does have a lot of nuggets in there. You guys I'm telling you in some really funny stories about the FBI we'll link it. 

[01:08:30] Patrick McGrath: We'll link it down below in the podcast description to your Amazon. 

[01:08:34] Casey Denby: Awesome. But to answer your question for me it's having a real estate mentor.

[01:08:38] Number one, his name is Doug. He was a major blessing to me. He guided me to early success. You guys, early success is critical. Don't get into something and fail. You need to get into something that you can succeed in. Nothing's guaranteed. But guess what [01:09:00] you put in the research you put in the time you read all those books, of course you read rich port ed, you read all of them.

[01:09:06] Okay. You get to a point where you're not gonna be falling flat on your face out the gate. Doesn't guarantee success. Nothing does a lot of it has to do with you. But knowing those things and jumping in my mentor, I'm telling you, he really helped me succeed and I will be forever grateful for him.

[01:09:24] And then the second is probably my business partner, Austin he's kept me in line. We've worked together. We're 50 50 partners. Without him, I wouldn't be where I am today. Truth. And so I highly recommend the people you work with are super important. The team that you build is really important.

[01:09:42] Patrick McGrath: All right. I love both of those answers, extremely thoughtful, but do you have any recommendations that are listeners would be to go out and follow or pick up to help them out on their journey since [01:10:00] sure. I don't think Doug and Austin are gonna be readily 

[01:10:02] Casey Denby: available for no, they're not. And I'm not giving last names cuz they don't want you to look them up.

[01:10:08] no, but Gary killers re real millionaire real estate investor. If I hadn't have read that book, I wouldn't have been successful out the gate either because although I got mentor advice and I'm telling you, I have up on this shelf probably 15. Real estate books that I've read. And every one of them has been great in one way or another.

[01:10:32] Again, I felt filled a need writing my book because I felt like nobody prescribed how to be a successful landlord period. I was like, there's nuggets here. There's nuggets here. There's one chapter out of 20 that was dedicated on how to manage a rental property, but nothing that was like a full book.

[01:10:48] So I just wrote one. And, but Gary Keller's book you guys. It's probably a book, many people have read. But that one is amazing. 

[01:10:57] James Rippeon: Awesome. So Casey, [01:11:00] it's five years in the future. Okay. You're looking around you, you're looking at your business. You're looking at your personal life. You're looking at your Villa in Colorado on the mountain.

[01:11:11] What do things look like to you and what does financial independence mean to you? And just tell us a little bit about your life five years from 

[01:11:18] Casey Denby: now. Financial independence to me means stress free living. And to me it means I don't have to worry about that $500 Costco bill, because yes, every time I go to Costco, it's 500 bucks.

[01:11:33] You have four kids, you have two big German shepherds. It's a lot of money, man. But you know what? Not having to worry about that $500 grocery bill, not having to worry about how much my cell phone bill is not having to worry about where I'm gonna get the capital to buy my next property. It's about finding the next property.

[01:11:50] It's about where I'm gonna go on vacation. Not can I go on vacation? It's about which car am I gonna drive? Not can I afford that car [01:12:00] bottom line? Grant Cardone, everybody knows who grant is. And yeah, he's bombastic. He is out there talks about his private jet all the time. But dude knows his stuff and I'll tell you, he preaches to people like you and me and most of the listeners don't buy a personal residence.

[01:12:19] And then he just buys this like beach on Malibu if you've been following his Instagram. Yeah. But he has 

[01:12:24] Patrick McGrath: a billion dollars. So 

[01:12:25] Casey Denby: exactly. But that was his message was, listen, I sacrificed until now it doesn't matter. Like I've got so much money. It doesn't matter. And that's what I'm going for now.

[01:12:36] I didn't take that route. And in fact, my personal home has blessed me cuz I bought my first house guys in 2010. So all I'm gonna say, you can imagine how much I paid and how much of equity that has benefited me now, two houses later as a result. But that's what it means to be guys stress free living.

[01:12:54] And I gave a few examples of what that means. Love it. And having [01:13:00] that mountain home in Breck, hopefully Breck love Breck 

[01:13:02] Patrick McGrath: Touche. All right. I know I've enjoyed this talk. I know James has enjoyed this talk, so break it down for us. What's the best way for our listeners to reach out to you, tell you that this was great.

[01:13:18] Tell you that you sucked by your book. , let the people know, how did they get in touch with you? Yeah, 

[01:13:23] Casey Denby: absolutely. So we are on Instagram at the rental property dudes. I started this account, I think LA I think last years during the pandemic, we started this account. I thought it was before I, I released the book.

[01:13:33] I just wanted to. I just wanted to share, and that's what I did with the book as well. So find us at the rental property dudes on Instagram and link to my book is out there. You can also search my name, Casey DBE in Amazon. You'll find my book that way or search the title, how to win in rental real estate.

[01:13:49] After the deal, you can reach us there. You can DM me. I respond all the time, actually doing some collaborations with some people, including you guys through Instagram, reach out, and say, Hey, you wanna be on our podcast? You are on Evans [01:14:00] podcast. I love doing this stuff, I'm not getting paid for this.

[01:14:02] It's prime time. So yeah, you heard my kids, you heard my kids and my dogs, like this is life you guys. Like I literally worked from seven to four, four o'clock today. Usually work a little bit past that and jumped on this podcast and it, when you do something you're passionate about, it's awesome.

[01:14:21] And I'm passionate about this. And at some point, James, even though you're not a big golfer, I can go play TPC, Sawgrass, whenever I want to. Boom. How about that? Great. 

[01:14:31] Patrick McGrath: Love it. Love it. All right guys, James, send us away. 

[01:14:38] James Rippeon: What do I say now? I 

[01:14:40] Patrick McGrath: dunno. He's gonna have to cut it real. Nice. Real nice. We'll leave this in here.

[01:14:45] James Rippeon: We'll leave this in here. Yeah, that's okay, man. I thought you were doing the exit, man. Cool. All I wanted to throw it to you. Glad for joining us, man. We had a good conversation. We'll catch you guys next time. 

[01:14:55] Outro: Thank you for listening to the real fi podcast where you learn from the investors that have lived, the hard lessons for you to connect with us during your pursuit of financial independence.

Be sure to join our community by following us on Instagram or emailing us at info@therealfi.com. If this content made you financially, mentally, physically, or spiritually richer, please make sure to leave us a positive review on your preferred content platform. Cheers to kicking the nine to five.