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Show Summary
In this episode, Stu Grazier shares his journey from Navy pilot to successful real estate investor, emphasizing the importance of networking, team-building, and learning from failures. Discover practical tips for new investors, the value of community, and future plans for growth.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Stu Grazier (00:00)
Yeah, I think the one nugget is jump before ⁓ you’re ready. Don’t be scared to get into the deep waters and go try. And if you have the team and the relationships and the people behind you that you’ve built out, ⁓ you’ll have some backing there. So jump before you’re ready. ⁓ The first time you do it is scary. You might fail, ⁓ but you’re going to learn from it, I promise.Cody Crabb (00:07)
That’s good.Hello and welcome back to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I am your host, Cody Crabb, and today we have Stu Grazier with us. He’s an investor operating across multiple markets. He’s doing…
brrrr deals and flips and he’s built several businesses. He’s a great person to talk to. I’m really excited to share this conversation. ⁓ Stu, thanks so much for joining us.
Stu Grazier (02:22)
Yeah. Thanks Cody. I appreciate the, uh, the opportunity to come on the show, man. That’s a, it’s a privilege and honor just to be a part of this incredible podcast.Cody Crabb (02:31)
Thanks so much. Yeah, so for anyone that’s kind of just meeting you for the first time, like, let’s give us the quick version, a snapshot of you. You know, who are you? What are you focused on in real estate right now today?Stu Grazier (02:44)
Yeah, thanks, man. I’ve been in the business for a long time, ⁓ but I was in the Navy for 20 years. ⁓ Joined right out of college, went to the Naval Academy, joined, and I was a pilot, flew helicopters, and ⁓ then transitioned, flew Boeing 737s for a while. But along that entire journey, I was very interested in real estate and got started really ⁓ pretty early in my career, really just kind of like as a side hustle, ⁓ you know, going to different conferences.learning new things, trying different strategies and asset classes wherever I went. And then eventually about the 15 year mark in the Navy, my college roommate and I decided to ⁓ go into business together and through just some failures along the way, we decided to start a quote unquote turnkey company out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And ⁓ we just grew from there over the next like five or so years.
We were doing about 40-50 houses a year, ⁓ flipping houses in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, turned them into rental properties. Along that journey, we ⁓ gathered quite a few up ourselves. So we still have a portfolio of single family and duplexes. But we also were forced to have to start learning how to raise money. And so we raised a lot of money along the way. That led to ⁓ building out a fund and doing more private lending. And that led to syndications and to the commercial space.
Short story is, you know, learned a lot along the process, along the way, failed a lot along the way, but it’s been a fun journey. Now, primarily.
Cody Crabb (04:19)
See, now that’s what I want to hear about.The word failure, I love the word failure because that means you learned something. So I definitely want to dig in there. Do you remember the very first deal you ever did or maybe even just the first big like, definitely shouldn’t have done that mistake that you ever did?
Stu Grazier (04:23)
⁓ man.Lots of failures.
I’ll start with the first deal. And that was in flight school. I was in Pensacola, Florida, right after college. And a friend of mine, ⁓ his father was in real estate. They had been investing. And he told me that they were buying raw land
and essentially just buying it, sitting on it for a while, and then selling it once it increased in value, kind of like flipping land. So was like, that sounds fun. I’ll go and try that. And I’m kind of one of those guys that just like,
takes action really early on. I’ll learn a little bit and you know it’s kind of like the ⁓ ready fire aim kind of mentality. ⁓ There is. Yeah it’s gotten to me. There’s some good and some bad with that. But so I went over to Mobile Alabama ⁓ met with a realtor. He started showing me some some properties some just some raw land. Show me a ⁓ piece of land and a new development. And it was fifty thousand dollars. So
Cody Crabb (05:57)
There’s something to be said for that, yeah, that can get you into trouble a little bit sometimes. Yeah.Stu Grazier (06:19)
figured out how to put like $5,000 down. was young, I was like 24 maybe, and financed the rest. And that was my first deal and I sat on it. And then quickly afterwards, a huge hurricane came through the Gulf Coast and wiped out a ton of the area. And I was like, oh man, there goes my investment. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. So again, just kind of sat on it, started through flight school. And then about nine months later, that same realtor reached out to me and he was like, hey Stu,⁓ Your piece of property, you they’ve redeveloped they started building again. Your your lot is the last one in this development That’s that’s not built on and someone wants to buy it. It wasn’t for sale. Like it wasn’t listed It’s like but someone wants to buy it for $95,000 I was like sold. I love real estate ⁓ Yeah, ⁓ but you know, so like, you know really having no idea what I was doing
Cody Crabb (07:04)
That’s great. Yeah, no kidding. That’s a heck of a first deal. Yeah, no kiddingStu Grazier (07:15)
thought it was going to be huge failure because of the hurricane. It ended up to be really, really awesome. That got me hooked. That started down the process of just really learning and diving into self-education. And moved out to San Diego. Long story after that of my journey, but that was kind of the start of the real estate.Cody Crabb (07:35)
Yeah, it sounds like you were like, at that point you were like, this could be a business thing. Like I could actually do this as a business. Was that like when you realized it or was it a different deal? Was there like a deal that was like more consequential for you where you were like, this is the big one. I’m doing this now. Like we’re all in now.Stu Grazier (07:42)
for sure, man.Yeah, well, I mean, I think it was kind of slow and steady. I got into self-education mode. I went to the three-day guru conference, where they teach you just a little bit to kind of get your feet wet. And then they tell you to run to the back of the room and buy the 30-set DVD for half the price or whatever. So I did all that. ⁓ But yeah, that got me kind of into self-education. I got really busy. ⁓
in the Navy learning how to fly helicopters and then eventually kind of deploying and stuff. So there was kind of a pause for a little bit, but I still had that itch, right? And I was just continuing to self-learn. And what I realized, kind of in the younger days of when I was in the Navy, I couldn’t do the active investing just because I just didn’t have the time and the capacity for it. But I did learn through that stage of ⁓ self-education that I could put my money to work in more passive ways.
Cody Crabb (08:39)
Sure, yeah.Hmm.
Stu Grazier (08:49)
And so I actually kind of did the opposite of what a lot of like investors do. I started private lending very early on. I connected with ⁓ an investor actually in the Dallas market, which is where I’m originally from. And he was looking for private investors to lend capital so he could go flip houses. And so that’s what I started doing.So I would just save up, live below my means, go on a deployment, go on a long mission or something to save a bunch of money, and then I would just use that to do private lending for a flipper. So that was kind of learning that stage. And ⁓ again, more self-education, more learning. Then I got into mortgage notes, and so I tried a bunch of different stuff.
Cody Crabb (09:23)
Gotcha.Sure,
yeah, I found that if you try to map out where you wanna go, you’re probably wrong. There’s no real way to know where things are gonna go. Things are just gonna take turns you don’t expect. I mean, I’m sure that if your younger self had heard that you were gonna get into all these other things, you probably would have been like, really? Okay, yeah.
Stu Grazier (09:36)
YeahYeah, yeah,
yeah.
I think that, you a lot of times using a baseball analogy, a buddy of mine recently said like, hey, you just got to keep on getting up to the plate and swinging the bat, right? Some are going to be home runs. Some are going to be strikeouts. Some are going to be singles. But you just keep on getting up and swinging the bat. And eventually, like, you’re going to find your niche. You’re going to find your strategy. You’re going to figure out what’s best for you. ⁓ And then you can kind of start to focus in and hone your skill a little bit more.
Cody Crabb (10:34)
Yeah.Yeah, see that makes me think of kind of, you know, mentoring people that are kind of newer at this. ⁓ Right now, mean, the markets are, everything changes and everything’s different, know, nothing’s gonna be exactly the same as when you first started. But when people are getting into investing now, what is something that you, a mistake that you see them making that’s like red flag, not red flag, but like just don’t do that. Like that’s a huge issue right away.
Stu Grazier (11:19)
Yeah, so it’s a similar mistake that I made, think, early on was just trying to do it all by myself. I truly believe that the real estate industry, the real estate investing business ⁓ is a team sport. And you have to start.building your team early on because you can’t do it all. I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. ⁓ and so you gotta start like networking and meeting people and learning who they are and like putting yourself in the room with other individuals. Maybe it’s joining a mastermind group, maybe it’s going to meetups, but you know, that, that really is important is like building the foundation of a team and like knowing, you know, who in your, in your, Rolodex can help you in certain situations teach you
in certain situations and be there to kind of be a part of your team as you grow. So early on it’s you know it’s it’s getting in this in the room with people, networking, asking questions, and figuring out who can be there to help you and join your team.
Cody Crabb (12:20)
Yeah, I like I love that line about it’s a team sport because I think the more Everybody tries to do everything themselves until they can’t and you knowing when to make it not just yourself is that that’s the really hard part Where do people typically go? I can do that where they shouldn’t like where’s where do people underestimate? Their the difficulty of something at like what a point in the scales what I’m trying to say Like where should someone look first that what’s the first sign of like maybe I shouldn’t just be doing this by myselfStu Grazier (12:44)
Yeah.that’s a great question. I think there’s a couple different answers. think one of them fits over me. ⁓
I don’t ever wanna have to manage my own properties. So I think maybe you manage your first rental property, but after that, if you actually wanna grow and scale, again, kinda building out a team, maybe I would recommend finding a property manager if you wanna grow your portfolio to more than one or two, right? So I think that’s one definite situation that you kinda really need to build out as far as a team member’s property management. Because at some point, you can’t manage
Cody Crabb (12:59)
Sure.Stu Grazier (13:26)
20, 50, 100 rental properties. It’s just not possible, right? ⁓ The other is… That’s right.Cody Crabb (13:31)
Yeah, yeah, it really is. Especially if you’re trying to do all this other stuff. That’s the point you’remaking is like, maybe you could manage it, but then that’s all you’re doing. That’s all you’re gonna be able to do, so.
Stu Grazier (13:38)
Yeah,that’s right, I think the next big one is money, is finding money. At some point as a real estate investor, you’re going to run out of your own money. And more often than not, it’s sooner than later. Once you buy your first property with your 20 % down,
Cody Crabb (13:51)
Yeah.Stu Grazier (13:57)
you’re going to run out of money quickly. so learning the skill of raising money, again, kind of networking and building your team and kind of building that larger network, ⁓ the faster you kind of start that process, I think the better off you’re going to be ⁓ as a real estate investor. Because at some point, you’re going to have to raise money from either a bank or from private money. And so kind of get used to having those conversations about private money.Cody Crabb (14:23)
⁓ So about that team, know, ⁓ I’m curious, know, what should, if someone is looking to, ⁓ I really like the, I really like the thing you bring up about kind of these meetups and networking and things, because ⁓ that’s really crucial to what we do. ⁓ But you know, you’re investing across multiple markets. Like how does networking work when you’re in like a totally different.place than all these people that you’re trying to network with. You know what I mean? I, don’t even, how does that work? If is it, is it all online? Is, there other ways to do it?
Stu Grazier (14:52)
Yeah.Well, so one of one of the beautiful things about COVID was that it opened up a lot of opportunities for kind of these online mastermind groups. And ⁓ that was something.
Cody Crabb (15:46)
Mm-hmm.People just got used to the idea.
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
Stu Grazier (15:51)
Yeah, you justkind of got used to the idea of being on Zoom or being on a virtual meeting. That kind of became like the norm. And before that, it wasn’t. Every time that I would move to a different location in the Navy, the first thing I would do is try to figure out where the local meetup is, the local REA, ⁓ and try to go to those meetups. But a lot of times, for me, in my case, why we chose Milwaukee, Wisconsin was because it was affordable, it was cheap, and the numbers made a whole lot of sense. And being stationed in San Diego, California,
as a rental property the numbers like just didn’t make sense for us and it was way more expensive of a market that we couldn’t afford as like a young 25 year old so you know
When you’re local, most of the other investors were local and investing locally. And so sometimes like being in the virtual room, you expand that network of people outside of that area where you’re at. And so I think that was really a positive thing that came out of COVID. And so with that, think getting in, ⁓ locations, meetups, masterminds, where there is potential for you to meet somebody that is out of state, that is it in a different market where maybe the numbers do make a whole lot more sense, ⁓ than, know, what you are locally used to.
The other thing is, again, you got to kind of just throw yourself out there. Find opportunities to connect with people that are doing stuff in other places, you know.
Bigger pockets is an example. If anyone in the investor world knows about bigger pockets, there’s forums, right? Get into the local forums where you think there might be an opportunity for a better location and start connecting it and get on a phone ⁓ and just start making phone calls, Zoom meetings, whatever you can to just kind of start building out that team.
Cody Crabb (17:32)
So ⁓ let’s, what has, I’m trying to figure out a word this, what has being in a team, can you give me an example of something that like doing, ⁓ being in a network, let me rephrase this again. ⁓ Can you give me an example of something that you accomplished that maybe if you hadn’t done these networking things or an opportunity that you had that may not have come across if you were not trying to do things in a team or.Stu Grazier (17:48)
Yeah, yeah.Cody Crabb (18:01)
through a network.Stu Grazier (18:03)
Yeah. so, you know, I’ve been pretty intentional about trying to kind of put myself in rooms where I’m surrounded with other individuals that are doing things that I’m not doing yet. Right. So whether that’s, know, that typically means like you’re paying money to be ⁓ in a mastermind group of some sort. for a long time, I had this mindset that I would like never pay for that kind of stuff. But I think again, kind of stepping up to that next level, you really have to put yourself there. Right. And that often requires you, you paying money to get in.the room. I did that with with a group of, specifically it was veterans, it was military veterans that were interested in investing. ⁓
come to find out there was some members that were not too far ⁓ from me. They were probably about 30 minutes away locally here in Colorado. They were in the army. I didn’t know them before. But as I got to know them more online, we ended up deciding to meet up in person. ⁓ Those conversations led to hanging out a whole lot more. We went to a real estate conference together, got to know each other a little bit more, figured out we had very similar
you know, styles of investing. had the values aligned really well, which I think is really, really important. And eventually that led to a conversation where like, Hey, you know, we’re doing, ⁓ this type of investing in a certain location in Colorado. It’s kind of a tertiary market. We see that you’ve been raising money for a long time. What if we kind of like did that, the asset management side of things we brought you guys on, ⁓ you helped raise money for a syndication. ⁓ and we ended up coming together on a
and figuring out how to syndicate our first ⁓ commercial mobile home park. And that was out of just an initial online meetup that I had joined in a real estate group. That then led to us, you never know, that’s right. And then we had to go raise money. And so where did we raise a bunch of money from? Other people in that group, other people in our network, other friends, other family, and that all came from joining a group and it pushed us to
Cody Crabb (19:57)
You never know. You never know who you’re gonna come across in these things. Yeah, that’s true.Stu Grazier (20:14)
kind of level up to a place where we didn’t really ever think that we would be.Cody Crabb (20:19)
Definitely, wow. So that brings me to my next question. So fast forward to today. This is what’s brought you up to here. What does the present and future look like? What does your business look like right now and then over the next few years? Where are you going? Where are things gonna go, hopefully?Stu Grazier (20:25)
Yeah.Yeah, so over the last couple years, we’ve kind of just been a little bit passive on and ⁓ kind of honestly sitting back on sidelines a little bit, just kind of seeing what’s going to happen with our current portfolio. We haven’t grown as far as ⁓ scaling, expanding the asset base. ⁓ Honestly, I’ve kind of been focused a lot more on being a present husband, being a present dad, being, you know,
Cody Crabb (21:03)
Don’t think anyone’s gonna faultyou for that, yeah. ⁓
Stu Grazier (21:05)
Yeah, I mean, soI retired from the Navy after 20 years and 20 in 2022. And I said to myself, like, hey, I’m going to take the next couple of years, just be present.
Thankfully our portfolio that we had built the businesses that we had created did create enough passive income to cover You the difference from you know active military pay and retirement and so that was that was a really nice place to be kind of in that you know financial freedom financial independence stage and so you know now I’m starting to get that itch again I’m starting to kind of like get the field of really like go back and do some more stuff So ⁓ I did start just a flip again kind of in the Midwest where it makes a little bit more sense kind of built out some new partners ⁓
and starting to kind of have more conversations about raising money. ⁓ we are kind of stopping or not stopping the end of the life cycle on our current fund is there. And so I’m starting back up a new fund to kind of start raising money again and kind of go do some more deals. So that’s really exciting. And then the thing I’m really passionate about is just that networking is that community piece. And so, you know, about a year ago, I started I kind of reinvigorated this community called the military.
investor network ⁓ and I’m really excited about that. Just a place where military members, veterans can kind of come together and do just that. Connect, you know, maybe it’s building out a team, maybe there’s partnerships involved, or maybe it’s just like educating and teaching each other ⁓ from all the lessons learned, have that we’ve learned along the way and kind of just kind of building out a virtual space where we can kind of grow together and ⁓ you know get better for each other.
Cody Crabb (22:41)
That’s great. I love hearing that. And in fact, ⁓ was just about to ask you, so if people want to like check it, check that out, connect with you, connect with the military investor network, where should they head online? You said it was virtual, so I’m guessing you can find it online. Yeah.Stu Grazier (22:53)
Yeah.Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, just a simple one page website called military investor network.com. Again, it’s just for military and veterans that are interested in investing and we have conversations outside of just real estate. You know, we, you know, I’ve kind of opened up the, the span of discussions into other areas of investing honestly, because selfishly, like I want to learn more about other investing strategies. Like I still don’t feel like I’m very comfortable with anything like crypto Bitcoin, any of that stuff.
So like I’d much rather like know somebody have their phone number talk to them You know either in person or on the phone or over zoom and like have a relationship with someone that’s in that space Then just kind of trying to go like, you know, read a book or listen to a podcast. So that’s that’s kind of the idea
Cody Crabb (23:39)
I know what you mean. Yeah, you can getall the information in the world, but until you kind of talk to someone that’s applied it and is really active and knows what they’re doing, it can be very difficult to actually gauge what you know. So you can know a whole lot on paper and then you get into the real life and it’s just, it doesn’t apply. Well, that’s really great. I’m so happy to hear that. We were huge on networking and masterminds and all that here. So that is wonderful. ⁓ And if people want to connect with you directly.
Stu Grazier (23:50)
Yeah.Cody Crabb (24:09)
If they want to reach out to you, how could they do that?Stu Grazier (24:12)
Yeah, I’m, I would say my most active platform, if you will, is probably LinkedIn. ⁓ so, you know, they can look me up on LinkedIn. I’m just, you know, Stuart Grazier, if you look me up, and, know, maybe you can put a link in that show notes, but, reach out to me there and, you know, message me and connect with me. And then we can kind of set up a call from there and, ⁓ yeah, connect and learn more about each other. And, you know, that’s really important for me. It’s just to kind of build out relationships. I think, you know, again, kind of back to that team.Cody Crabb (24:40)
Yeah.Stu Grazier (24:42)
you have to have relationships ⁓ and that’s where really think growth truly happens is kind of building out those partnerships, those friendships and helping each other out.Cody Crabb (24:54)
Yeah,well that’s fantastic. Stu, thank you so much for joining us today. ⁓ One last question before we end. I just want to get, if you had like one little chance to, let’s say you got the mic for one second in front of a bunch of new investors, is that the one thing that you would tell them? Just make sure you meet everyone you can, or is there another nugget that you would give them?
Stu Grazier (25:16)
Yeah, I think the one nugget is jump before ⁓ you’re ready. Don’t be scared to get into the deep waters and go try. And if you have the team and the relationships and the people behind you that you’ve built out, ⁓ you’ll have some backing there. So jump before you’re ready. ⁓ The first time you do it is scary. You might fail, ⁓ but you’re going to learn from it, I promise.Cody Crabb (25:23)
That’s good.Awesome, amazing. Thank you so much. This has been a great episode. really, I’ve, I’ve learned a few things. ⁓ go ahead and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already and we’ll see you next time. Thanks again, Stuart.
