Networking & Mentorship: Key Strategies for Real Estate Success

Dylan Silver (00:00.76)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver, and today on the show I have Tiffannee Boss, Tiff Boss, real estate syndicator and specializes in commercial properties and self storage with over 600,000 square feet transacted. Tiffannee, welcome to the show.

Tiffannee Boss (00:20.558)
Thanks for having me, Dylan. Glad to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:23.175)
Before we hopped on here. I think you mentioned are you in Colorado?

Tiffannee Boss (00:27.514)
I am. Yep.

Dylan Silver (00:29.058)
Alright, what’s it like over there in Colorado? In Dallas, it just got warm. And no one told me when I moved here, like September of last year, that it was gonna be ever cold. But how is it up there in Colorado right now?

Tiffannee Boss (00:35.462)
Thanks

Tiffannee Boss (00:39.888)
It’s perfect. get all the seasons, all the weather, quite a bit of rain, but it’s starting to warm up into spring. So I do like the diversity of the seasons that you don’t get sick of it. Right when you’re ready to switch, it starts to change on you. It’s great.

Dylan Silver (00:53.292)
Are you a lifelong Coloradian? Okay.

Tiffannee Boss (00:55.76)
I’m originally from Utah, so very similar climate, which made it easy for me to transition here. We got the mountains. We have all the outdoor recreation that Utah also has. So it feels a lot like home being that it’s very similar in that way.

Dylan Silver (01:09.346)
i think that there’s a lot of good skiing up there i think i when i was a kid there was a lot of lot of skiing that we did up there in colorado and in you but let let let’s talk about how you got into the real estate space

Tiffannee Boss (01:12.081)
Mm-hmm.

Tiffannee Boss (01:16.24)
Yep. Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (01:24.1)
Yeah, how I got in, really wanted passive income and something that, you know, most people think of retirement, like, I got to save, I got to save, I got to save. And then when I have this nest egg, I’ll start chipping away at it. But the way that I always looked at it was if I could just achieve a specific amount of passive income, that’s when I can retire. Hey, I’m comfortable with this amount per year coming in. I’m good to stop my nine to five. So I kind of flipped that paradigm and

And real estate for me was that the easiest way to be able to passively have income for retirement.

Dylan Silver (02:01.334)
So you saw you had a job and then you said well when my income from the passive exceeds the income that I’m getting from my job or matches then I can go and I can leave the job.

Tiffannee Boss (02:11.868)
Correct. Yeah, and that’s exactly right.

Dylan Silver (02:15.074)
So I actually like this approach. did not this way. They said I had some buddies who were successful, very successful, and they said, you just got to go in full time. And I said, I don’t really know if I can do that. Like, I was working for Nissan at that time, and I’ve said this before on earlier podcast that…

I didn’t know anything about anything when it came to the real estate space. didn’t know people. didn’t know I’m in Texas so we have like Trek promulgated forms. I couldn’t tell you anything about these forms. Now that I’m a real estate agent, I realized the forms are actually kind of complicated. There may be some real estate agents who don’t know everything in these forms, but when I hopped in, it was just jumping right in. I wish I had done it a slightly different way.

Tiffannee Boss (02:48.146)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (02:59.682)
But let’s talk about how you were able to maybe ease into that process and what did it look like going from being on the outside looking in to then having enough passive income that it’s replacing your full-time job.

Tiffannee Boss (03:13.51)
Yeah, so obviously there’s the different asset classes. So you can go into multifamily, single family. I did not want to go into the real estate where people are actually living in my units. Therefore, I like the commercial piece of it. I like the self storage piece of it. Especially one thing here in Colorado is there is quite a bit of government regulation when it comes to having a tenant that actually lives in your space. You don’t have as many rights as a landlord.

You know, you take all the risks, but yet somebody can come in and take over your space. So I really like the commercial spaces, particularly industrial and self storage. think these businesses are the backbone of America. And to me, they’re most likely to stick around longer. And so to me, that stability, if you think about hospitality hotels, they’re very up, very down the highs, the highs and lows and lows. I really just wanted something very, you know, a little bit of high, a little bit of low. It’s very stable.

Dylan Silver (03:58.734)
Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (04:11.122)
smaller ripple effect there when things hit. And so to me that is industrial. Historically, if you look at default rates on industrial properties over the last hundred years, we’re talking like one or 2 % industrial properties default on their loans. So I really liked how risk averse it is and how stable. And that’s specifically why I went into that. And as far as your question on the transition, well, you just start little. Start with one property.

get another, get another. And depending on where your number is, if you’ve got, hey, I want a hundred thousand a year coming in before I’ll quit my job. You just, you do sometimes have to be doing both at the same time in order to get there. And rather than, like I said, most people, 401k dumping it for retirement. That was dumping everything to these properties to become my retirement.

Dylan Silver (05:04.878)
Tiffannee, were you getting into these deals when you were starting out by yourself? Did you have partners? How did you acquire storage facilities and commercial properties?

Tiffannee Boss (05:14.386)
Yeah, we did both. So I read every book. tried to listen to every podcast and I joined some partners and mentors really was what it was, was, Hey, I want to go in a couple of deals with you so that I can then pick your brain and make sure I’m doing this right. So our first deal we did with partners and that main partner became my mentor.

in acquiring my own storage. have since done the pivot more towards heavy industrial distribution manufacturing, and I’m trying to get him on board, but you know, he’s like, no, I’m to stick with self storage. I still have a lot of self storage and I love it, but it is a business at the same time. So you are a little bit more hands on with that. Whereas these triple net commercial leases, there’s never really like an emergency, I guess, unless your place is burning down, which is so few and far between.

Dylan Silver (06:05.251)
Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (06:06.02)
It’s something that you can be flexible with. I have five kids and so I can get them off to school and then get back to an email or a phone call that isn’t an urgent matter. Hey, my toilet’s overflowing and everything crap is hitting the fan.

Dylan Silver (06:23.374)
Yeah.

That is not something that the tenants, the toilets, right? That’s a lot of reasons why people do alternative asset classes. I know for me in my journey, it just seemed impossible looking on the outside, looking in. When I was selling cars working for an Eson, I thought, I don’t know how I’m possibly gonna have rental properties if I’m just getting in. Like this seems like a huge barrier to entry. I was looking at cash for keys, probably read and listened to lot of the same materials that you

listening to and when it really started to click for me was when I started to just get around and into some of the rooms. I call it like guerrilla networking or like being a networking junkie and it’s interesting because I was really like

Tiffannee Boss (07:04.368)
Yes.

Dylan Silver (07:10.38)
trying to educate myself, almost over-educate myself, but once I started rubbing shoulders with people, I kind of think real estate is like a contact sport in that regard, that’s when I started to kind of get this growth by osmosis. Did you have a similar experience or was it you got all the knowledge from reading?

Tiffannee Boss (07:23.74)
Yes.

Tiffannee Boss (07:29.07)
No, 100%. So you know what Confucius says is if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. And I love that because then everyone else said, yes, surround yourself with the five people that you want to become because statistically you will become those five people that, know, if you’re surrounding yourself with people who have less income than you or similar income, you’re never going to grow.

Two things that bring up when you bring that point up, getting relationships is what’s gonna get you further in real estate, getting in those rooms. You call it guerrilla, what did you call it? Guerrilla networking? yep, getting in the rooms and in some of these niche businesses, asset classes, there isn’t a ton of information. Up until the last year or two, there really isn’t a ton of industrial.

Dylan Silver (08:06.104)
Gorilla networking, being a networking junkie.

Tiffannee Boss (08:21.87)
information out there. And I’m like, man, maybe I need to write a book. There’s starting to be more coming out, but you have to learn by doing. And one of the scariest thing is why people settle with single family is because the low barrier to entry, just like you talked about, and lower risk. And so people are like, yeah, that’s easy. But in my opinion, it’s actually more work to do that deal with that one single family than to just go big sooner, go bigger sooner.

And don’t go in blind. Yes, the books helped for me to know what to be aware of and having mentors. Hey, can you look at this? What should I be looking out for? But until you actually make it happen, I’ve learned more actually doing the deals and going through them than reading all the books, listening to all the podcasts and all the mentors. Cause you know, even my attorney, he’ll look through my contracts and there’s a lot of reading. said you’re a real estate agent. So you got, you’ve got all these contracts.

It’s a lot of reading. have to be willing to read through it because even you in this life are the only person that has your best interest at heart. No matter who you’re paying, what you’re paying them to do, you Dylan have the most responsibility for the way things turn out. and I learned this when, you know, I read through a contract, my attorney will read through it, but even the attorney, they read the main points, right? And then

Dylan Silver (09:22.178)
Not a reading.

Dylan Silver (09:30.988)
Yep.

Tiffannee Boss (09:49.362)
they’ll kind of summarize it for me and I go, well, hey, what about, what about these little details here? Those, maybe they’re not a huge deal, but I want to make sure all my bases are covered. So doing your due diligence. And at the end of the day, you’re the one that’s the responsible party. If something goes wrong in that due diligence.

Dylan Silver (10:08.066)
That’s exactly right. We need some AI attorneys, right, Tiff? We need some attorneys that gonna, will prompt it, will say, hey, review this, find the flaws where I might be on the bad side of this deal and tell it me. But,

Tiffannee Boss (10:12.506)
Tiffannee Boss (10:20.369)
Yes.

Dylan Silver (10:21.542)
I wanted to ask you about syndication. I saw that in your bio and we talked briefly about that before hopping on here. I’m familiar with this concept and I’ve been interested maybe even doing something like this on my own. Being that you’re in the commercial and industrial space, I think it’s maybe more common perhaps, I don’t know necessarily, but you’re now on the syndication side yourself. How did you get into that space?

Tiffannee Boss (10:47.804)
So you can only go so far with your own money, right? And if you want to grow bigger sooner, you got to start using other people’s money. And some people have, they put a bad connotation to that, but think about your house. You’ve got a mortgage on your house, right? You’re using other people’s money. People think, they think it as a physical person in most cases with a syndication. Yes, that is true, but they don’t think, the bank that’s loaning me money for my house, for my car, that is other people’s money because…

Dylan Silver (11:01.742)
Other people’s money? Yup.

Tiffannee Boss (11:14.81)
You couldn’t do that on your own if you didn’t have that bank’s money. And so the way I look at it is it’s helping me grow, but I’m also giving investors a return. so, so the first way to start out is with the friends and family doing like a joint venture. hear the term syndication and it sounds really scary because there’s all these filings that have to happen. SEC filings, making sure everybody’s accredited, accredited. Well,

You don’t have to go full blown syndication. You can do partnerships and joint ventures with friends and family, people that you know, people in your network. Hey, you know, I got a deal I’m closing on next month. I had a broker who’s going to help me, me sit up. And after talking with me, he emailed me and said, Hey, we actually want to partner with you on this deal. And I was like, okay, unfortunately it’s been grabbed up because it’s such an awesome deal. But somebody like that, maybe a broker wants to go in on it because I do know some of these brokers.

You’re asking, well, how do you get into syndication? Well, the same way the broker wants to get in and be on the GP side of a deal. They’re like, well, I’m going to start by being a broker and maybe that will lead me to being on the GP side. So guerrilla networking, making these connections and starting to just talk to people where you can find others who also want to invest and they trust you because at the end of the day, the day there’s so many deals out there, but there’s not as many people you’re investing in a person.

Dylan Silver (12:22.2)
Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (12:39.79)
Even though it is a physical asset that you’re investing in, every single deal, you are investing in that person. So if you are that person that they want to invest with, they will invest with you because the money is easier to find than the deal itself.

Dylan Silver (12:55.254)
I think on a micro level people can do this even if they don’t necessarily I think people can do this in so many different asset classes too. The thing is, is there’s some skills and some tools which I’ve actually used very recently to raise some capital and was shocked because I said, well, I’m going to put this out there. We’ll see if this happens. I ended up putting together a VSL. I approached my warm network and a couple of people that were, you know, friends of friends. And I was trying to raise money to possibly do a rehab on a short term rental.

or a fix and flip out here in Dallas or maybe Houston area. And I got so much positive feedback from it very, very quickly. also think it was due to a lot of the marketing that I’d done up to that point for other areas within the real estate space. So people kind of knew who I was and who I am. But I had an investor from Wall Street who ended up becoming a capital raiser in real estate tell me that if you want to raise money, you just got to tell

Tiffannee Boss (13:42.064)
Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (13:47.026)
you

Dylan Silver (13:55.11)
everybody what you’re doing and you gotta feed everybody.

Tiffannee Boss (13:56.774)
Tell everyone exactly. That’s so true. And you’re right, because up until now, I, there’s that fear. If you let fear drive you, it’s going to hold you back. So letting go of that fear and telling everyone what you do, it’s right. And that’s what, Hey, what are you up to? My cousins? I’m doing, I’m doing industrial. say, and I bring on investors, right? Letting people know that there is opportunity for them to someday. It may be not be today. It may be not be in three years, but they,

you’re in the back of their mind knowing, if I ever get some money, that’s who I want to partner with.

Dylan Silver (14:31.67)
I also think too, I just had a gentleman on here talking about lead funnels and…

I that there’s a huge amount of overlap between lead funnels and raising capital. And again, even on a micro level, like if someone, I don’t really hear it very often, people talking about doing this, you know, their buddies coming together, you would think that that would be more common. But I guess it can be difficult to kind of convince your inner circle to do a deal with you. But if it’s not right now, it might be a year and a half from now, right? And then that year and a half from now, when this other person has proof of concept, now they’re bought in. So now you have

Tiffannee Boss (14:57.97)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (15:07.584)
people. Then now you can use their network. So it’s just this compounding effect. And I’m thinking like, okay, well, I kind of have just been word of mouth texting people, maybe an email, but there’s no follow up. How can I, what can I do to follow up on this? Do you have, I’m imagining some type of an approach with regards to follow up when it comes to capital raising.

Tiffannee Boss (15:07.654)
Yes.

Tiffannee Boss (15:31.228)
That’s a tough one because you don’t want to be pushy. You don’t want to sound like you’re desperate for the money, right? If again if the deal is good enough the money will come I have so many people they’re like, yeah, I’m interested. Okay I’ll send you the info and then they never get back to you in the meantime the deals filled up which is great at the same time It’s like I still want to keep them one I want them to know it filled up that quickly so that they know dang I missed out on this one so that they know that it is a

you are someone that they should invest in or to hey, follow up, put a sense of urgency, but not desperation. Hey, we are getting ready to finalize our commitments. need to know some people will just kind of give you a soft commitment. If they give you that soft commitment, there’s a likelihood it’ll convert into a hard commitment. But if they’re not even going to give you a soft commitment, some people will waste your time. You have to be able to recognize they’ll never close on a deal. They’ll never invest.

and whether it’s with you or anyone else. so sure, keep them in your list, your email list. But once they start to see other people around them who have invested with you and talking about how great it’s gone, that’s the fuel that you’re gonna need to get more and more investors.

Dylan Silver (16:46.304)
It really is. I think this is gonna be it. It already is. You’re in the space so you see it. But for folks like myself who are just getting into this idea of capital raising and it seems so impossible, like I feel like I needed a degree in this to do this before I started doing it. But now I’m getting some traction. I’m seeing that there is this compounding effect which you’re talking about Tiff with.

They see proof of concept from someone else. It’s working with them. How can I get in on this? Now it’s like, okay, we have multiple people, friends of friends of friends. And it’s, I forget what it’s called, but like five degrees of separation, everyone’s involved now. And you know, these deals like you mentioned, they’re filled up and now it’s like, I missed that one. So there’s even some urgency there too.

Tiffannee Boss (17:22.758)
Yeah, yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (17:30.928)
Yeah. So if you can just get those first one or two, and the scariest part is when you’re going to go under contract with the deal, am I going to have investors come forward on this, especially on your first one? Cause you’re like, well, what if, what if I get under contract and at the end of the day, I can’t get the money together. So that is probably the scariest part with that first deal. Once you get the first, the second, the third, then you’ll realize, okay, the money’s going to be there. If I have that network, that guerrilla networking of people who I can just send this out to.

Dylan Silver (17:56.899)
Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (17:58.588)
There’s also companies that can capital raise for you. So if you’re, if you’re either bringing the deals or the capital, there’s, there’s so many layers of dynamics here that, Hey, we’ll bring you the capital, but we get a percentage of the deal. So start networking with those kinds of people as well.

Dylan Silver (18:15.084)
I know if you can give away this gold nugget here, but I gotta ask anyhow. And maybe you can give away some of it, but not all the game here. So if people are making an offer on a deal, but they don’t have proof of funds to justify the purchase of it, there’s really no way around. I’m thinking as a realtor, like I’m not gonna entertain this offer if they can’t show me a bank account balance or a loan approval that’s gonna cover the amount.

Tiffannee Boss (18:39.632)
Yes, that’s a tough one. Creating a relationship with your bank. If you have at least some assets that you can have a proof of concept, right? So it’s like, Hey, yes, we are getting investors. However, I have, you know, this much in my bank encounter. This is my track record. you know, even if it’s, own my own home and I’m willing to second mortgage that like there, there are ways you can, you can do that. I’m sorry. I don’t know why that’s okay.

Dylan Silver (19:10.381)
the end.

Tiffannee Boss (19:10.416)
Yeah, that is a tough one. That’s a tough one to try to be. And sometimes, so I had a deal that the sellers wanted too much for the deal because of interest rates, right? And I go in, I say, well, listen, if you sell or finance, we might be able to get a little closer to your price and get what we both want. no, no, no. We don’t. just want out. We don’t want to sell our finance. OK, well, let let let’s meet you. They meet me. They fell in love with me. They realize my knowledge of the industry far surpassed theirs.

And they were very confident then moving forward with me managing this property with them seller financing it. And so yes, I still had to come with the down payment, but they were like, okay, we’ll sell or finance this. That way we get a little closer to our price. You get what you want. was kind of a win-win all around. And I was able to prove that by an hour zoom call with them, just getting in front of them. And when I left, they had had three other people that day that came to see the property.

Dylan Silver (19:47.17)
Mm-hmm.

Tiffannee Boss (20:09.658)
And when I left the broker, their broker was like, wow, like she was impressed. She’s like, you nailed it. I know they’re going to pick you. And after the fact, she kind of played her cards when she shouldn’t have like, she goes, they want you as the buyer. And so I had a little bit more leverage there as well. thought, Ooh, you probably shouldn’t have said that because now I’m going to use that to get a little bit, to be firm on what I’m offering, you know, so being personable, being a person that they.

Dylan Silver (20:33.826)
Yeah.

Tiffannee Boss (20:38.342)
the sellers, this to them is an investment. are seller financing this. It’s still considered an investment for them for the next four years.

Dylan Silver (20:46.922)
Absolutely, that huge component of a creative deal, seller finance deal, who’s gonna be managing it, right? That is a case in point. If you can show them, I’m gonna, yeah, you’re gonna get somebody upfront, but I’m going to also make sure that you get your money versus here’s a seller finance deal and I don’t have faith that I’m gonna be able to recoup the monthly premiums on this seller finance deal. It’s two totally different offers, right? It’s the person behind the deal. So, you know, to your point,

Tiffannee Boss (21:12.646)
Yep.

Dylan Silver (21:16.816)
you have to be able to have a compelling, I would say, experience with them before, when they’re just contacting you via email or phone, and then also when you have the opportunity to meet these people via Zoom or in person, and also show them, hey, this is why you should go with me. And that sells them in a way where they would otherwise have not previously maybe even considered an offer.

Tiffannee Boss (21:46.716)
Yeah, you have to be a person. And especially some of these older sellers, they’re that older generation. They want a handshake. They want to know that you’re just not an AI bot behind the screen just making hundreds of calls a day. Even if you are, you have to eventually become that person to them that they know that they are investing with.

Dylan Silver (22:06.594)
Tiff, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Tiffannee Boss (22:11.057)
Okay. So one quick thing is most people build their brand and then go big. kind of did the office. I went big and then started to, I guess I need a website. So you can go to stratusvp.com and you can find me on Instagram. It’s the storage boss, the underscore storage underscore boss. Um, or you can probably just look me up on LinkedIn. So I’m still getting the website going and all this stuff. I’m like, people really couldn’t find me until now because.

I just went big first and then decided to get professional after.

Dylan Silver (22:43.646)
Well, we like that too. We’re glad to have you on the show here today. Tiff, thank you so much for coming on.

Tiffannee Boss (22:49.988)
Okay, thanks.