Building Wealth with Property Management

Mike Hambright (00:02.382)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. Today I’m here with Kyle McCaw, also here in the Dallas market. We’ve known each other for a long time, but haven’t spent a lot. We’ve talked together more in the past 15 minutes than we probably ever talked before. So it’s good, but I’ve known of you for a long time. But he has an amazing story. a property manager that manages about 1,200 units. We’re going to talk about how to take control of your own future, your own destiny, and why real estate or a business can help you get there. So Kyle, welcome to the show. Thank you, man.

Been to lot of events that you’ve put on. I’ve kind of watched you from afar, creeped you on Facebook and all that. You’ve built a pretty impressive outfit. you provide a really good resource for people that are trying to make a change in their life through real estate. And I think that’s very admirable. think a lot of people don’t realize that you can just make your money on your own.

You don’t have to be helping people, which you do. And I think that’s great. No, I appreciate that. Yeah. I don’t know. know. I like, I just enjoy. You know, we talked about, you just kind of said it here a few minutes ago, your network is your net worth, right? I mean, I know that a lot of people throw that around. But that’s why I do so much podcasting. That’s why I do so many things. Because the relationship piece of everything I do has impacted my life in ways I can’t even measure, right? And when you have that kind of experience, you want to share it. Because you’re like, man, this is so amazing for me.

I want to pull you along. that’s what’s great about real estate. And some of these people that I know that are outside of real estate, they’re like, why would you help somebody build a property management company? Because it’s been great to me. They’re not going to hurt me. It’s only going to help them. I’m all about helping people. Because I’m an abundance mentality guy, not a scarcity. And so the more people you help, the better. And I just.

You put good out there, and good comes back. I know you’re like me. You’re a corporate refugee, as I refer to it as, like, corporate America. I don’t say I left corporate America. I say corporate America left me. It left me, But one of the things that I realized about probably about a year into real estate investing, because my wife and I left corporate America and went all in on real estate in 2008, is I did miss, like, in the corporate America, especially when you’re younger. Like, at the time, we were younger with no kids or anything.

Mike Hambright (02:17.39)
Like, there’s always happy hours. There’s always somebody’s birthday. There’s a lot of social aspects to working for a big company. And then was two of us in a hole in the wall office at Farmer’s Branch. And we’re like, where are the people at? It can be very lonely. It absolutely can be very lonely. And maybe that’s why real estate investors are so good at networking at these group meetups and such. Truthfully, that’s ultimately why I created Investor Fuel. was like, I know a lot of people around an island by themselves. And we have an amazing community of people that kind of come together.

and do business and do life together, you know? And when you’re at your neighborhood get together potluck, it’s really hard to have conversations with people that have no under like they can’t relate to you because you’re in a different world. And it’s very difficult for you to still relate to them because they’re in a different world. It is hard. Yeah, we I always give this example is about a year or so ago. We’re we just you know, like you, we travel a lot. We’ve traveled the world. do whatever we want. Whenever we want, we try to. And we’ve done a lot of amazing things. And I remember we were at a

kind of a mixer in our neighborhood and with some friends that work in corporate America. And they’re like, what do you guys have coming up this summer, or whatever it was? And we’re like, we’ve got these trips going on. And they’re like, you’re going on vacation? They literally said, you’re going on vacation again? And I wasn’t bragging, but it came off as when somebody doesn’t have that freedom in their life, I could see how it would come off as bragging. And I just remember thinking, I can’t have this kind of. I’m just talking about It comes across.

braggadocious as opposed to like, it’s just not me. So yeah, I just had that conversation with a bit I try and associate myself with business owners. I just had a business owner call me he’s like, dude, I just can’t talk to anybody else. But you about this because yeah, we’re going to Hawaii and we’re gonna get to do this and we’re gonna do this and we’re like, I can’t talk about that to anybody else I know, because it comes across differently. And he’s like, you’re gonna understand because you know, you’re in an environment like, like me. So that’s where

your network is so important. got to be people. You got to be around people that are in a position that you want to be in. And you you’re the average year five people you’re around the most. So you want to be around those people. So yeah, yeah. Well, tell us before we kind of jump in, tell it tell us your story. Like how you run a property management company. have some other business. Yeah, yeah. So how’d you get there? I graduated A I couldn’t get into Texas University Texas, right? No, no, no, no, no, but that was my first choice.

Mike Hambright (04:41.198)
Like I didn’t have a plan B. Plan B was like be a truck driver. I don’t know. But A &M was amazing. It had such a great opportunity. I learned so much. I had so many connections that I’ve met there. I would never change it for anything. So I did the corporate world when I graduated. And I was good at it. I ended up, I was a fixed income broker for a big financial firm. Bought and sold structured products, CDs, bonds, preferred stocks.

Loved it. on the, I’m not going say I was top producer, but I was one of the more productive employees, I guess, in my department. And then when the market crashed, they let me go. I’m like, why would they let me go? I was one of the top performers. I’d make more money. Why would they let me go? But they kept the lower end guys. And you know, it’s because I cost more, bigger commissions, whatever, which makes sense as a corporation. then I had to like, well, wait.

So being really good at my job doesn’t mean I keep it. Sometimes it means you’re a target. And so at that point, I realized I needed to take control over my situation. at that point in time, I had a little hobby business of property management, but I was trying to buy rental houses because that was my long-term retirement plan was to own real houses and that would be my 401ks. But I could still be a corporate guy. But when they took it away from me, I was like, wait, that was a real, that was a shot. It really hit me hard.

wait, I was really good. But now I don’t work there anymore. So fortunately, a bunch of my friends got let go too. And we all went to consulting firm, did really well there, got promoted real quick when I worked there as a manager, did that for two years. First project ended and they’re like, hey, don’t come back after lunch projects done. But don’t worry, put your name in a hat and we’ll put you back on next project. I was back on another project in a week, not a big deal. But what’s funny,

During that gap, I made more money just doing some rental stuff on my own than what I was making per day at the job. So I was like, OK, well, that might be something. I kept that in my mind. So the next project ended. And they said, hey, project ends on Friday. Update your internal corporate resume, and we’ll get you on the next project. And I just said, no. I just felt it in my stomach. I was like, I’m not meant to do this.

Mike Hambright (07:06.892)
Like I had a great job today and it’s gone next week until they put me on another project. And I’m like, no, I’m just, that’s not, I got to have more control over my life. And so I just, and I my boss was like, no, I’m not going to update. He’s like, no, no, no, it’s not a big deal. Look, you’ll be on another project next week. We just got to update your profile so we can click your name, put you on it. And I was like, no. And I felt really comfortable about it. I don’t know why. Maybe I was young and naive or stupid. I don’t know. But I was like, no, I just can’t.

do this again. And so I went home and I just hunkered down, buckled up and like I’m going all in. And so I had this little hobby business on the side, didn’t make any money in property management. But I was like broke down an Excel spreadsheet. I figured out my Google ad campaign money. I’m like, for every $50 I put in Google ads, I’ll get a lead. Every third lead at least I’ll close and that’ll come into X amount of dollars per month.

If I lease it up, then I manage it. And I had all my life expenses and everything figured out. I’m like, OK, I can do this for, I don’t remember what it was, however many months. I think it was 9 or 12 or 13 months. And then I should be able to break even and then live. And so that’s what we did. Went through my 401K money, all that just to survive. Ended up, not because we had to, but we sold the house that we were in and bought a different house.

But I was able to take the equity out of that one, the other house we bought, no money down. And it was in a better situation location wise. Used all that money to survive. I hired employees and all I did was like sell. Like I was all about get property management accounts, flip houses, whatever I had to do. just, cause I didn’t have a choice. And then eventually got to the point where I was able to breathe a little bit. Got a little lazy for a little while cause I got comfortable.

And then I’m like, no, need to take a deep breath and like, let’s go back in. Let’s grow this thing. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah. It’s interesting when you bet on yourself, like, because nobody else is going to bet on you. I this all the time. Nobody else wants your dreams as much as you. Nobody else wants you to succeed as much as you. Even your immediate family, other than your spouse probably. Like even your family, like they wish you the best, but they’re not willing to do what you’re willing to do for yourself, right, ultimately. And I always, you know, there’s always this like,

Mike Hambright (09:28.386)
thought of like, I tell people, a lot of people have asked me like, should I quit my job to jump into something? And I’m like, I don’t like you have to feel that in your gut. Like I don’t want to, I don’t want to be responsible for telling you to your job. Having done, gosh, it’s gotta be 2000 podcasts now. And just knowing a ton of people, it’s like the people that I’ve known that have made that jump, burned the boats. Like they, they basically said,

I’m shutting this off and I’m turning this on and I’ll do whatever it takes to be successful. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that were in my same situation and ended up in the homeless shelter, like as opposed to being successful. cause your odds of really making it, they’re not super, super high. I, and, and it’s not that I’m smarter than the next guy. It’s just, I wasn’t going to give up. I was listening to Alex Hermosie. He’s another big podcast guy. I was like, the difference is in a successful, successful business owners, like they don’t

quitting is not an option. I get up every day like, this is what I do. I think there’s a lot of people that go out and I’m going to be a real estate investor. I’m going to do this. And they wake up because they think they’re going to have more flexibility and freedom. Like, yeah, I have the freedom to work whichever 80 hours a week I want. It’s not like what they are. You haven’t earned that Right. So it’s not like I got to sleep late. I got up every morning just like I did at Corporate World and put in my pants and went to work. I mean, there were days.

My wife didn’t even see me because I just worked all day, all night until it finally worked. So I think a lot of people don’t have that stomach. But if you do, if you have that stomach and you want to take control of your situation, I think it’s the best thing that you could ever do for you and your family and your generations behind you. And the thing is, is you need that structure, though. That is the problem with a lot of people that leave corporate America, is they’re used to working from 8 to 5 or 9 to 6 or whatever the hours are.

And you have a structure of meetings, and there’s things happening. But when you go out in the entrepreneurial world, there’s no structure. You have to define that. But if you don’t have the fortitude to say, I’m going to treat this just like a job, because it is. When you start your business, you’re not a successful entrepreneur. You shouldn’t even be putting CEO. I remember, literally, when I got my business cards printed, I put CEO on my business card. And I was like, I haven’t even heard a dollar.

Mike Hambright (11:48.942)
And then I realized, when I’m buying houses, nobody wants to think that I’m the CEO. I don’t know what I’m doing. So it was stupid. It’s funny how It was like ego. It is an ego. When people jump out at first, it’s a, look at me. And then like, I don’t even have a business card on me right now because I don’t either. Back in the day- I don’t give them away. Yeah, was like that was your validation at that point in time because you didn’t have anything else to validate you.

Now don’t need anybody to validate me. don’t need anything to validate me. It’s just I am what I am. But early on, you need those wins. There was another gentleman that was a mentor to me. And he once told me, when you go into sales, this is when I was in sales. He was like, when you come home, the best thing for your wife or your spouse to say to you is, did you make a sale? He like, was it a good day? Because not every day are you going to make a sale. But is it a good day? Because you got closer. You did more.

it’s that that validation isn’t a sell. It’s like what you was it good? Did you get farther down the path? Yeah, you’re making progress. Right. So that’s the thing is too many people focus on just they got to get those little validations. Maybe it’s a wholesale deal or something like, No, did you get step farther closer to your end goal? Right. And too many people forget all the steps to get to that goal. Yeah, I just want the goal. Like, well, that’s, that’s today. But you need we’re talking about 20 years of worth here. Like, don’t don’t give up 20 years of value for

a short-term decision. I say that all the time, especially with real estate investors. It’s like, everybody wants to buy a house or do a deal, but you don’t do those every day. Even the best guys don’t do those every day. So it’s like, need to focus on the upstream activities. Like, you make an offer? Did you make five offers today? Did you talk to 10 people? You got to kind of have the activities feed ultimately the goal, right? Yeah. And you never know when those deals are going to come. Like, it was a few summers ago.

I had a summer intern come in. I hire, I hire Aggies because I hired the best, right? So I had an Aggie come in for summer internship. Second best. Second best. Second best. So, so with with with him, he came in and he worked all summer. He’s amazing. He saw a lot of stuff going on in real estate world that we were doing, like rehabbing for other people or property management rentals or just whatever. And then he’s like, man, I was, I was hoping to see like buy a house and do all this and see how you financed it and all this and like, well, I just

Mike Hambright (14:11.298)
had a lot going on and didn’t, and then it just didn’t happen during that period of time he was there. And the week that he went back to A I bought three houses and I’m like, I can’t tell you when they’re gonna hit. It’s just, I had an opportunity, I snagged them and did it. And so you just never know, but you gotta be prepared for those opportunities. And that’s, I think a big deal. So let’s talk about, know that you manage a lot of rentals for other people. I know you believe in rental properties and you refer to them as like,

They’re individual 401Ks, right? So talk about your thought on that. Yeah, so that goes back to my financial service years. So when you buy, let’s say you’re in corporate world and you’re putting money in your 401K, you’re putting money in there every paycheck. And you put a dollar in, you have a dollar in. Your employer may match something or whatever. That’s what you got. But with a house, let’s say I put 20 % down or maybe I’d

luck out and I have zero down or 50 whatever. I put money in once and if you play your cards right and you don’t like trying to live off that income or whatever you just kind of keep it separate. You may never have to fund that again. And let’s say you have $40,000 invested in that. Well and it’s large leveraged of course. But if it goes up a little in value like it goes up significantly more on a return on equity piece because you have let’s say 20 % down but it goes up significant.

5X, you’re in between. 5X, automatic. People don’t see that. They don’t understand that. Financial service guys, sales won’t tell you because they don’t understand math anyway. And then I got somebody Well, because there’s not very many other investments that you’re leveraging debt for. Well, and then I’ve got a tenant in there paying my mortgage every month. like, who else? It’s like I’ve got an employee paying for my retirement.

What other options are there? What else does that? So I view those as every one of my little houses is a retirement plan in itself that self-funds itself so that when I wake up one day down the road, I’ll have a whole bunch of stuff that I’m like, wow, where did all this money come from? I don’t want to sound arrogant or anything of that nature, but I think it’s important that people understand that the long-term benefit of owning an asset, especially in real estate, is it’s

Mike Hambright (16:29.568)
It’s mind boggling if you really sat down and the math. Honestly, did the math. Yeah, And there’s real estate, obviously, that you’re using leverage, usually financial leverage. And then when you own a business, which you do, we were talking about the power of owning a business to help you ultimately have control of your life and live the life you want.

is you’re leveraging other people’s time. You’re hiring people. As a business owner, you’re taking all the risk to hire people to lease an office to do all those things. Taking all the risk. the sum of that team is greater than anything you’d ever be able to do on your own. Right. You’re a captain. You’ve got to put your crew together to make your ship go in the right direction. And sometimes a captain can take off for a day or two. But you’ve still got to be aware of what’s going on. You’ve got to chart the path, all that. there’s a lot that goes into that.

But I view being a business owner is that that’s my livelihood. And my rental houses, that’s my long-term wealth plan. That’s my retirement plan. So I think if I look at those two segments, you put those together, and there’s not very many other opportunities that match the benefit of that. Yeah. Yeah. And so why property management for you? So I.

know, in a few businesses, we talked about that. And what I look for is I like recurring revenue. revenue is going to hit my bank account every month, no matter what, or every year, whatever. And I like.

that it’s hedged for inflation. So if rents go up, I’m going to make more money on property management or what have you. So I like recurring revenue. I like hedge for inflation. I mean, property management does that. And my thing is, I don’t have to worry about because I’ve been in sales for years. So if I went out and sold something, that’s why I’m not really big on real estate agent world is like, yeah, I can sell the house and make a good commission today.

Mike Hambright (18:28.514)
But then I got to get up the next day and figure out where my next house is. it’s very transactional. And I’d rather wake up and already have the house done for me. And so property management does that. So it’s that reoccurring revenue model. There’s a lot of businesses out there. And that’s why they’re worth more to institutional investors, because they’re looking at businesses that have that reoccurring revenue model in them. And it may be pay subscriptions. It may be property management. It may be a pool company that has so many service contracts. Like, whatever that is.

you want that recurring revenue and you want something that you can, you know, have the ability to raise the price if, you know, if the environment allows it. Yeah. And, you know, the reality is, is home ownership is, I don’t know where it’s at today, but it’s generally going down. it’s just, housing is less affordable. And so when you consider that one in three or a little bit more houses in America are rental properties, I mean,

Home ownership’s around 65%, so the rest are rentals. I think the mindset of your typical American’s very different now than it was, let’s say, in the 70s or 80s, where it’s like, yeah, you’re planning on buying a home, and you’re going live there. That was the American That was. And I think a lot has changed in our culture. I think we’re a lot more transient community. you mentioned you lived in DC. DC is home family’s in Illinois. Your wife’s family’s here. So people are transient, and they don’t want to get locked down.

to a home of where like, we manage real houses in some very affluent neighborhoods that you’re like, there’s rentals in there? Like, wait, you got somebody paying $10,000 a month to live in this house? Like, because he’s a corporate executive and he’ll probably be in another location in three years and he doesn’t want to buy and have the transaction expenses and the hassles of buying and selling, you know, whatever. So we have rentals all day long, they’re four or five, $6,000 a month that you just wouldn’t think.

but I think the mindset of people now is it owning isn’t necessarily the goal. So what’s happened is we see a lot of people that live in, we have a lot of clients that live in expensive areas of the country, say LA or somewhere like that. And it doesn’t make financial sense for them to purchase where they live because their rent’s so low, comparatively. So what they end up doing is they’ll buy here and this is their home that they own, but they never lived in it. That’s just how they’re.

Mike Hambright (20:51.138)
getting the benefit of owning a home, but it’s a rental property. So we’ve had quite a few. They’ll hop on a plane, get off at DFW airport, drive around real estate agent, they’ll buy one, two, three, four houses, sometimes cash. And then they’ll hop on a plane, go back to work in LA. And it checks all the boxes of owning real house, like owning your home, without owning your home. You still get the tax benefits, all that. I think that’s really overlooked.

benefit of owning rental properties too is the tax advantages. for sure yeah yeah yeah and home ownership like let’s face it it’s not all it’s cracked up to be me it’s a lot of work I mean we this is a little bit of a different story I have my ranch in East Texas now it’s 104 acres and we’re like we’re like labor we’re like hard doing hard labor out there so but you know it’s hard to maintain a home when you have a you know maintenance issues and stuff like that I just think of like all these things that happen all the time

If you rent, it’s like, can just call somebody to fix this problem, because it’s not my problem. Certainly, that’s one way looking at it. Yeah. Well, I’m saying not everybody wants to own. I know people that are very successful real estate investors, they don’t want to. They own rentals, but they don’t want to own their own home, because they travel a lot, or they have a couple of homes, or whatever. And going back to people aren’t owning homes like they used to, or plan on it, and I think a lot of it, the affordability thing is huge.

rates have gone up significantly. And people want now. They don’t want later. So they want something nice now. So they’ll rent nice. They probably rent nicer than they should have because they weren’t thinking ahead about Lasakwe to buy something. So they’re going to rent these build rent communities that are like out there. It’s better than being in an apartment, but it’s not owning a home, but it’s still a rental. And that’s huge right now. I think that’s with that shiny object, like I keep getting bigger, better, but

I’m never owning. I think there’s lot more Class A apartments now than back in the day. When I grew up in East Texas, there was no Class A apartment. What are you talking about? There’s apartments or there’s not apartments? There’s no Class A. And so now it’s like, well, you graduate college. You’re supposed to be in a nice apartment. And so it’s a premium place. So that money just keeps coming out of their wallet. And they never get to financially plan for the future. And what happens, you end up in this sinkhole.

Mike Hambright (23:14.508)
because now they got payments on a BMW too, they’ll never be able to get all the paperwork for an FHA mortgage. Like that’s just too much. So I think what’s happened is like that they just kind of given up on the idea. I think corporate world coming in after the market tanked, coming in and bringing in single family homes as an asset class that didn’t exist previously. Now you got the big boys coming into town and they’re going to suck every penny they can out of people.

So where did you grow up in East Texas? Longview. OK. God’s country. Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you. I talk about my ranch all the time, but I don’t usually say exactly where it’s at. So I’ll tell you where it’s at. It’s in East Texas. So tell me a little bit about how do people, when you started your business, did you guys have kids yet? We did. And that was a huge motivation. my thing is, my daughter had just been born when I went all in.

My son was, you know, I guess, six, five, five years old. And my wife was a stay at home. She was a nurse. So she could have called the hospital and gone to work the next day. But it was very important to me to have my kids raised by my wife. And we had some medical stuff at home with my daughter that we wanted to make sure that my wife was there for. And I wasn’t going to trust somebody, you know, anybody else. So that was a huge motivator. So it’s like when you’ve…

when you’re like waking up every day, like, how do I pay for this? In my bank account, it went, right when it’d get to zero, I’d pray really hard that night. And for whatever reason, someone would pop the next day and it’d be back up. So I do think that the good Lord blessed me in a lot of ways. And we can get all deep on how I feel like the Lord helped me. there was a lot of times that you do it because you’re kids, you do it for your wife, you do it for you.

You got to have a lot of motivators in your life. And that’s why I think a lot of the, we talked about earlier motivation, like some of these young bucks that are like, I’m going to go do this. And then they’re like, maybe they want to start a little business on the side, but they don’t have that motivation to like get up in the morning. Like, well, when you got kids that need baby formula or preschool clad, whatever that’s motivation. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people that get started in anything today, the problem is, they, they expect immediate gratification.

Mike Hambright (25:38.824)
Like, they expect to be able to just like, started. I decided I’m going to do it, and I haven’t gotten a deal yet. It’s like, well, it takes. I mean, when I started in real estate investing, I haven’t talked about this a whole lot. it took us, we got an office. We decided to go big from the beginning. We got an office. We had an admin. And we were committed. We were spending a fair bit of money on paid advertising, mostly direct mail. And it took us four months to get our first deal.

But then we got two on the same day and then it just started rolling from there but not a lot of people are willing to Go all in on something for four months and just say I know it’s coming. I know it’s Usually they they give up quickly because I try and the truth is a lot of people are quick to check They want to check the box that I tried that and it doesn’t work. It’s like well the way you did it doesn’t work Yeah, so let’s say that first deal you did what?

Was that a long-term rental, flip, wholesale? What was that? So because we got to one of them, we fixed and flipped. And one of them, we wholesale. We fixed and flipped the one that was by far, even to the, I’ve flipped hundreds of houses here. And it was one of the worst we’ve ever bought, the very first one in hindsight. And we did everything wrong. And we still made money on it, fortunately. You learn. It’s all about learning. There’s no such thing as a free education. No. And so.

I view that as a business. so buying long-term rentals, that’s your investments. So you have people that go into business, and there’s people that are buying long-term rentals. That’s your investments. And I think a lot of people don’t distinguish between the two. So kind of like talking about wholesalers or flippers, that’s not a long-term game. Long-term games, you’ve to sock money away. So we were talking a little bit about just like when I grew up, my family was very blue collar, but like my dad, my grandparents.

They all worked for one company for like 30 years, our power of along, got a pension left and stuff. And of course, you know, that’s just not really how it works in the right, right? think even I mean, there’s a lot of concern about AI taking jobs. And, you know, if you don’t have a really, really solid, unique skill, like nobody’s really safe at this point. And so

Mike Hambright (27:51.436)
Like, what do you, I mean, that’s part of why you started your own business, right? That’s part of why we advocate people starting their own business or having another stream of income. And so when you’ve had a good job and it yanked away from you without notice, you’re always like, how am going to get screwed? How am going to get screwed? How am going to get screwed? That’s all you wake up and you worry about who’s going to take my money from me for a good while. And so that’s why I went into private management. And there’s a lot of these startups that trying to, you can manage your

house with this app or you can do this like, yeah, I don’t know. there’s a little bit more to it. And it’s really scary. A lot of these tech companies come in thinking, oh, this is easy. We’ll just have a algorithm does this. Yeah, it’s Excel spreadsheets are only so good until boots have to be on the ground and you can’t. They don’t value that piece of the equation. And unfortunately, or fortunately, that’s a very huge part of the equation.

So my thing is, and I’m aggressively trying to either buy or build other companies too. And I think we’ve kind of talked about that, but so I’m always looking for home service businesses or others that can’t be outsourced to overseas or to a program. So, right, I have a property maintenance company and I’ve got a general contracting company and I’ve got employees that are, you know, solid and they can do all the work, but you can’t outsource my

changing a fan to a guy in India. And you can’t, like there’s certain things, like the sewer backs up in a rental or your home, you’re gonna need somebody to clean that sucker out. So my thing is like, you can’t outsource that. I’m always like, how do I hedge myself for the future? And I think the trades are a lot bigger in the future than they are right now, as far as importance go. And especially if, yeah, I just feel that you gotta, you can’t.

make a computer program do what your hands do? Well, yeah, it’s interesting. mean, my wife just said something to me literally yesterday. She was like, she watched a video where I can’t remember if the doctor was in India or whatever, but he did a surgery in the US. I can see that. From India, like just using robotics and AI. It’s a crazy world for sure, but nobody’s going to build out something that expensive. But yeah, so I don’t know. That physician here would be making, I don’t know, $3.25 million year. And over there, he’s

Mike Hambright (30:14.35)
making $100, I don’t know. But you still had to have somebody prep the equipment and all that. there’s certain things that are always going to be here. And there’s always going to be things that, hey, I’ve got 10 employees that are overseas. So I’m like, how do I lower my cost structure but not give up on customer service? And so you’ve kind of always got it. But I have just, I’m running 13 trucks right now. So I’m like, I’ve always got guys here. But I have to balance.

my cost structure because I couldn’t function if I had all my employees here. wouldn’t make a living. get it. I get it. I get it. Yeah. So what’s the goal for you? I you’re building this business. We talked about this upside. Is this something that you want to bring your kids into at some point? Yeah, I think your goal today isn’t what your goal was last week. And your goal tomorrow is not what your goal is today. So when I started, my goal was to pay the bills. Because I just needed to survive.

It was a survival mode. wasn’t like, let’s go have some luxurious island vacation or something. It was like, just survive. And then I got to that point and it, I mean, it was a lot of blood, sweat and tears, a lot of stress. if I would, it’d be enough to put most people in a heart attack. Like when you’re running, like starting from scratch. And I made it. And there’s in these real estate meetup groups, you hear about all these people like lifestyle businesses and things like that. I’m like, man, that sounds great.

Maybe I can take the foot off the gas pedal and relax a little bit. And I did. And it was nice. I had a good home. I had a good environment. I had everything. OK, I can chill. And you can only do that for a couple of years before you get antsy. And so I hit all my goals. I could really just kind of sit back and post. But I was like, But there’s so much more opportunity out there. And I always see those. So then my next goal is like, well, let’s get this thing to, you know,

Texas A &M has an award every year. They give out the Aggie 100, the 100 fastest growing Aggie owned or operated businesses. 2019, I got number six. That was my goals. I want to be on the list. I don’t care where it, I’m be 100 or I’m be one. I don’t care as we’ll make the list. Give me that goal. And that was an amazing thing. Like unbelievable. I had such an amazing time with that. And then I kind of realized sometimes you’re

Mike Hambright (32:38.606)
maybe I got a little too aggressive. I had to swallow what I’d grown. And then I sat back and like, like, let’s take this thing, see how far we can go. Like, would you get 800 houses 1200 whatever. Since then, I’ve been on the Aggie 100 three more times and I had a blast every time I’ve gotten to some really great people through that. So what my next goal is, I used to this goal is like, I want to take off, I want to do a month long vacation. And I just figured it’d be December, because that’s the low season for property management. And

So I’ve done that. I did it in June, not in December. And like, well, that was fun. What’s the next goal? So I don’t know what my new goal is. I’ve got these kids at home that I’m like, I don’t know what they’re going to do. And I think the world that they’re going to grow up in is going to be a lot more difficult to get ahead than what it was for us. So do I want to have something where they can step in? Maybe. Do I want to sell it? I don’t know. I don’t think I’m going to sell it. I think I’m just going to keep growing and whatever opportunities are. So I’m trying to

build out my home service companies. I’ve got a couple. And I would like to see that. I don’t want to say numbers, because I don’t want it to what may be a big number to me or to you, may not be to somebody else or vice versa. But I want to be well situated well for I want to be immune to economic environments. Like, this is way to put it. Like, I want to be where they call it the FU money or whatever.

it’s not Elon Musk, but I want to be somewhere like, okay, well crap, this happened to our economy. That sucks for them. Like I want to be okay. And no matter what the situation is. plenty of cushion. I want to that cushion. So that kind of call it widening your moat. Yeah. Widen that moat up. And I want to be able to, our kids are very important to us, right? So I want to make sure that my kids, I provide

the trail for them to go down where they want to go. So like, I grew up in East Texas, small town, small school, whatever. And I went off to A And I’m like, well, there’s, there’s only like four or five professions, right? Like you could be a doctor, you could be an accountant, you could be a, maybe an engineer or a teacher or banker, maybe like, what else is there in the world? Because that was my world. Then I graduated A and like, wait,

Mike Hambright (35:02.422)
You did that. You’re dead. What? Like there’s all these other things out there and you know, start learning about all these other opportunities and I want it like, you know what? Had I known I would have gone a different route. And so my children, I want them to know what opportunities are out there. I don’t care what they do, but I want them to be able to have more opportunities to choose from. So my job as a parent is to like my son, he seemed to like finance. He likes the idea of money.

Okay, so what can I do? So I’ve tried to place myself into environments where I’d be communicating more with private equity guys, real estate by or people that buy and sell companies, things of that nature. And when it’s time for him to decide like, hey, you know, Paul has this really good business over here, they’re rolling up dentist offices, I think it’d be good for you to maybe see if you can get an internship with him over the summer.

Things that, so he could be exposed to things. So I’m trying to set my kids up to be able to make good decisions for them. I’m a big, you know, people say, well, I started from scratch. So my kids need to start from scratch. I don’t think that’s right. I think that’s a disservice. I think my kids should start where my sealants hits. So like they’re on my shoulders. So that’s what I’m trying to do. And so my daughter, think, you she’s really young. She’s in.

fifth grade right now so I really do see her, I can envision what she wants to do with her life. My job and my wife’s job is like, provide those opportunities like, well you like doing this, let’s put you in this summer camp or let’s go shadow somebody. I had a good friend of mine that lives in East Texas, really small town, his son is in high school and he wanted to come do an internship with me. I’m like, dude, you can’t even drive. And…

He came over and he had a blast. great. He really more shadowed us than internship, but he got to see what we do. His dad owns a good rental portfolio. And so he’s like, well, I’m just going to put him up in hotel near y’all. And I’m like, he could literally walk to my office. He walked to my house from the hotel that he is. And his grandma came with them and stayed in hotel. I mean, the kid was like 15 years old, 14 years. Yeah. 15 years old.

Mike Hambright (37:21.608)
And I was like, dude, that’s exactly right. His dad set him up in an environment where he got to see everything in action.

that he may want to do later. Well, I think those experiences are what I that’s when I grew up, we, you know, my family just, again, we didn’t really do a whole lot of vacationing. mean, uh, and we didn’t, it just didn’t have a whole lot of money. So it really, there were really weren’t a lot of experiences, you know, and now like, like you, like my, my son’s been able to travel the world. Of course, we often wonder if he’s appreciated any of it, but I think eventually they get so much more out of it than we think they do. And so we, when we first, as a family, our first trip to Europe,

my daughter would have been.

eight maybe, seven or eight. And we’re like, is it too young for her to really grasp going over to the country with all these people to speak different languages or whatever. And we came back, and that was a, I think we were over there for four weeks, something like that. And we came back and no, she got so much out of it. So much out of it. Like she got to see what it’s like just through a different lens than what we see. You’re like, America’s great. I love it.

But there are certain things that you get when you travel. you get to like, when you get to go, if you go to one grocery store your whole life, like you just know what to cook from that grocery store. But if you went to like Central Market and Sprouts and Kroger and like, well, they got this one here. got that. Then you get to your palate is big. Like you get a lot more options. So I think that with world travel, like you pick up on more. Like it’s just a different world. And my

Mike Hambright (39:07.16)
just little things like my son. Like that dude’s a problem solver. Like whenever we get somewhere, and we’re like, OK, we got to figure out how we’re going to get from here to there. He’s like, bus 15, third stop. Then we’re going to switch over, and then we’re going to take the metro, and we’re going to do the metro blue line to here. So he got a lot of those opportunities that he got. He wouldn’t have had that opportunity here. Yeah. Because it’s like, what’s Google Maps saying? You don’t take a bus in Dallas.

Yeah, exactly. exist, but I don’t know who rides them. Right. was very, you know, and over there, they appreciate life differently than we do. You get to sit in a cafe as a family and just relax, enjoy the music, people walking around. Like, it’s a lot more outdoor seating, family oriented and all that. like, they, what is it?

live to eat as opposed to eat to live. So it’s a presentation. It’s an experience. And over here, it’s like, so is it Freddy’s today? Or is it McDonald’s? It’s a different world. And I think that there’s something to gather from doing that. Yeah, that’s great. Well, and your business has allowed you to do that, right? It’s given you the freedom. I’ve been doing that. We’ve been very fortunate. We’ve able to take control of your life by having a business that supports that. Yeah. But it wasn’t always that way. No, no, no. And I’m going to tell you, like,

early on. And I’d look around maybe gentlemen that I graduated college with or whatever, like, man, there’s so much farther ahead than me. Like, man, he’s probably banking or oh, he’s got he’s doing so good. And like, I got this and I got that I’m like, we just need carpet in our house. Like, it’s just like we were we almost I want to say I almost felt like a failure for a long time, because I wouldn’t wear they were because the decisions I made. I wouldn’t wouldn’t quit out be a corporate guy.

But like the decisions I made didn’t get me farther ahead quickly. But they got me way farther ahead by being committed in the long term. And that’s the thing is a lot of people it’s like it’s time in the market, not timing the market. And it was one of those things where you just got to hustle for a long time and it pays off in spades. Yeah. Well, that’s deferred gratitude. Yeah. It takes a lot of discipline. Yeah. Because you know, there’s a lot of times you’re like, if I just sell a house, I get an extra 50 grand. No.

Mike Hambright (41:28.142)
I can’t do that. I need to re-invest that money. So Yeah, yeah. So Kyle, thanks for spending some time with us today. Thanks for sharing your story. I hope I brought value. sometimes I’m just inspired some folks to. You know, I think there’s a lot of people that want to start a business, or there’s a lot of people that have a business, and they’re kind of giving up. And I think a couple of the things that you said, which we didn’t really dive into, are like, you got to focus on sales. You’ve got to generate revenue.

got to get that business going. It’s discipline. Yeah, you got you can’t because that’s the fuel you need to keep things going. Yeah. And I think so many people get a win and they take the foot off the gas. Like, no, your foot needs to be on the gas hardcore for a long time. You got to stack the wins. It’s not one win or two. You got to stack them deep before you can afford to take off the throttle. Yeah. If folks want to get ahold of you, where do they go? Sure. So McCall Property Management, that’s my bread and butter company. Our job is to build wealth and income through real estate for people. So it’s McCall, property management.com.

We’re here for you. We manage rental houses, pretty much any major metropolitan area in Texas, our bread and butter is DFW. And our job is to help build wealth and income through real estate for people. since I think we got a little different angle than most in that we own like I own rental properties. So we manage everything like mine. So it’s not like, I’m a real estate agent, I’m going to manage rentals for you. Like, no, like I understand what really is needed. Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome.

Thanks again for joining us today. you. I appreciate this time. I love talking real estate. I love talking business. Yeah, me too. That’s how I do a lot of it. So I do a lot of talking to other entrepreneurs. So guys, hope you got some good value from today. Like if you haven’t started a business yet or you don’t own real estate yet, or for those of that do, just understand that it’s delayed gratification. Eventually those things will be worth way more. And if nothing else, they subsidize your income if you do have a W-2. Or if you have a business, you can start to stack businesses and generate a lot more.

not only cash flow but wealth. Appreciate you guys a ton. We’ll see you on the next show. Take care.