From Flipping to Building: A Real Estate Evolution

Mike Hambright (00:00.834)
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Today, we’re going to be talking about how to vertically integrate your business with Marc. My buddy Marc just drove down from Tulsa. We’re going be talking about his journey as a real estate investor. He’s been doing this for 20 plus years and has evolved like many of us. And I think there’s some great lessons here about how to basically get to a point in your business where you’re focusing on what you’re good at, what you enjoy doing, and you stop doing a lot of the other things that are just shiny objects. So Marc, welcome to the show. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you having me. Thanks for coming down.

Yeah, anytime. I enjoy it. Anytime? You want come back tomorrow? Not tomorrow, but any other time. I will absolutely come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Well, let’s jump into this. So I’m excited to learn about this. Because it’s interesting, over the past couple of years, a lot of people have pivoted. They’ve evolved or whatever. And not that you’ve done this over the past year. You do it over the course of your career, right?

It’s probably become more accelerated over the past couple years just because of COVID and interest rate changes and all that stuff. There’s been some dramatic changes in the last few years. I mean, if I look back to how I started, started with infomercial. I was watching late night TV. I remember very clearly because you got George Foreman selling grills. You had Tony Little selling exercise equipment. And Robert Allen says you could buy real estate with no money down, which was fantastic. was 21 years old. I didn’t have any money.

which is so that that that started my real estate career and I started with creative finance and you know the subject to deals the owner finance deals you know what I figured out real fast is how hard it is to get people to sell you something with no money yeah it’s hard enough to buy stuff when you have money so I started in the creative finance space and then I quickly figured out and I did some wholesale stuff but I’m a terrible wholesaler like if it’s whole sellable it’s flippable

If there’s enough margin, I can make more money if I actually fix this thing. Absolutely. So I’m a flipper by trade. I’ve been doing fix and flip for 16, 17 years out of the 20. That is my passion. I enjoy it. I love it. I love taking the old and making it new. And I actually built a construction company to support my flipping habit. Yeah. Well, that’s out of need, right? mean, that’s how we all evolve as entrepreneurs is like, I need something, and I’m tired of dealing with.

Mike Hambright (02:19.283)
I forcing this or finding people to do this. So let me just build something in house. Entire subs.

I’m tired of not showing up. I’m tired of them working on their schedule. Like, granted, you have a little bit better control of cost because you have a hard bid versus running a payroll and running guys on hourly. However, you know, when things are hourly, especially when you start running multiple projects, like, you know, I could move people around and like, okay, I’m running three or five or now we run 10 or 12 projects at a time. It’s like, you we can move you based on the needs of the business. But when you’re running a hard bid, it’s like, you know, they…

they are down to that project and they don’t want to pivot or worse they find somebody else is going to pay them some more money and they put you on hold. it’s interesting because I’ve flipped hundreds of houses and I had never built a house until we built our house out of the ranch and it’s far enough away from Dallas that I wasn’t using any of my contractors for the most part it was all people from East Texas which runs at a different speed than what I’m used to in Dallas as well because it’s kind of out in the

out in middle of nowhere. it’s a whole different animal, know, managing a new build. There’s a lot, I know that you’re going to talk about the efficiencies and I know there’s a lot of, but I was only doing one and I was an hour and a half away. Doing anything an hour and a half away is challenging. Yeah.

Especially when you’re not there to actively manage it, you’re having to rely on contractors you don’t know, or worse, you’re sending contractors from here, then you’re having to pay the travel time. just working, and that’s one of the things I figured out in chasing shiny objects, that getting, the further you get out of your backyard, the more costly and the harder it is to manage. I know people that manage and flip remotely all over the country, and more power to them, but…

Mike Hambright (04:06.604)
i don’t it doesn’t work for me just creates more problems the sauce yeah yeah so you’re you’re like i think you and i like in the sense that i’ve also plenty houses but i was really doing it to try to ultimately find fixin flips and ultimately to find some that makes sense to keep his rentals right so was it kind of a necessary evil like i’m throwing a wide net out there and i can choose what to do with them but i’m trying to buy wholesale and maybe i’ll sell some of them off

cherry pick my flips and cherry pick my rentals. one of reasons, I’m a terrible wholesaler because I keep more than I wholesale. You’re a collector. Then I have sellers remorse. like, man, I should have kept that. Now got to go find another one. yeah, I’m a terrible wholesaler. Now I’ve always wholesale because what inevitably happens is I buy so many because my eyes are bigger than my stomach. I can’t take them all in at once.

And I’ve done both where I bought so many, like I sat there and I had inventory. Like there was one point going into COVID, like I was very lucky in a way, is going into COVID. I had dozens of houses just sitting there that we hadn’t got to yet. when you’re, so, you know, we kind of take you through the steps here. So, you know, we’re, flipping heavily 2012, 2016.

you 2016, you know, back then you remember you could buy, you could buy houses on the MLS, you could flip them. mean, it was, and they were like cosmetic. I mean, you could paint and carpet and just kind of do some fixtures. They’re easy remodels. then the foreclosure market started drying up. So we kind of, got into the more of the full gut and now we’re doing mechanicals, now we’re doing foundations and roofs and whatever. We’re doing the whole, we’re doing the whole thing. So we’re making more money, but it’s harder to find flips. So we kind of pivot into the rental space. Now,

Part of that is Uncle Sam motivated me because I got a tax bill. You’re making too much money here, buddy. You’ve got to give us some. Yeah, So that’s when I learned. find a way to say no as much as possible. Depreciation is a wonderful thing. I went, and because we had the construction company and we had the resources, I just went full in on Burr. Man, I would buy in on Burr.

Mike Hambright (06:19.31)
we model and rent and refinancing, mean hundreds and hundreds. I mean, I went through North Tulsa. Now in North Tulsa is kind of the other side of the tracks. It’s not the nicest area. So we literally bought hundreds of houses for five to $10,000. So when you have $5,000 in a house, it can sit there for a few years. You’re not losing anything. You get little sloppy. Right. So, but you when you’re buying, you know, you’re buying a flip, you’re spending a hundred thousand dollars and you’re paying interest on it. know, time is money. So

you know, when I’m when that’s how you know, the wholesalings, when I would buy stuff that was really a value, it made sense that I can jump on it, wholesale it, make a little, you know, make a few extra 510 $20,000. And just keep moving. But you know, when we were buying the North Tulsa stuff, and you know, just $510,000 and hundreds of these things, I could, I forgot I bought so many houses, I forgot they’re there. Wow. So, but

you know, that that really helped us go through the COVID spell. And then reading the writing on the wall, one of the things I’m really good at is pattern recognition. It’s like I can I kind of see what’s going on. I have my pulse on the market. And this is one of those things, you know, about staying in your backyard and knowing your market, understanding where you’re working.

like you start noticing changes. like, I see the inventory driving, driving up. I see that, you know, the foreclosures aren’t happening and there’s a lot more competition because, you know, now you have the virtual wholesaling that didn’t used to be a thing. Yeah. So you’ve got people in your market that you don’t even know who they are. Yeah. And then since they don’t know the market, they’re overpaying. Right. Anyway, I actually know of a couple of people. I know somebody very specifically that, was buying in Tulsa and they lived in California.

And they lost their shirt. Because same thing you said. They’re buying. It just seemed too good to be true, and it was. Even though they were overpaying. Being involved in the local community. And I’m a big believer in networking and just getting involved. I was part of the RIA for a decade, and then I ended up actually inheriting the RIA, running the RIA. But if there is an investor in Tulsa,

Mike Hambright (08:38.21)
we’ve at least met like we know of each other. Like we may not be friends, we may not communicate on a regular basis, but we’ve interacted at some point. And what people don’t realize, especially when they’re coming from out of state, that yeah, you can get it under contract and the numbers are great. But in Tulsa specifically, you only have a handful of people cash buyers are really buying. It’s not like Dallas or Oklahoma City or some of the other bigger markets where you just have people coming out of the woodwork.

And Tulsa, you’ve got five or 10 buyers. And if you don’t match their buy box, you’re not selling it. I can tell you dozens of people who came in to market like, hey, I’m going to wholesale in your backyard. Good luck. And they get all these contracts. That’s the easy part. Now you’ve to move them. That’s always the easy part. When people are in, well, not the easy, but a lot of people that get pulled. This happens in Dallas. People are like, hey, I’m going to start going out in some tertiary market an hour from here.

And it’s like, well, let me tell you what’s going to happen. Acquisitions, you’re not going to believe how easy it is. Dispositions, you’re not going to believe how hard it is. Exactly. You made acquisitions easier, but you’re still buying them for like Dallas, at 65%, 70 % of ARV. That’s not deep enough for out there, because it’s a lot harder, certainly to wholesale. If you’re going to buy stuff and owner finance it off, that could be great. But do you have deep pockets to do that in a meaningful way?

I learned pretty early, and I say early, mean this was 2010, 2012. And I was working with a hedge fund group and I was doing acquisitions and I was helping them with the buying. And I worked in Tulsa and I knew Tulsa. But they also worked in Oklahoma City and Dallas. And each of these markets are different animals. Like, they’re nothing similar. Maybe geographically they look about the same, but…

Somebody on one of the coasts, they think it’s all the same, yeah. Completely different animals, completely different numbers. Like I was killing it in Tulsa. I did OK in Oklahoma City. I was being slaughtered in Dallas because I didn’t understand how differently the market moved down here. anyhow, so my advice, and this is only worth two cents, is to know the area that you work in. mean, if you can live in it, great. You don’t have to live in it, but you have to know.

Mike Hambright (11:02.274)
the area, you have to know the players. But back to you know, I back in, you know, COVID hits and I’m watching I can I’m reading the writing on the wall and I see what’s happening is like inventory is drying up competitions increasing, things are getting harder and harder and it’s like if getting a deal that makes sense, and not not just buying a deal to have a deal, buying a deal to make money was getting harder. So I’m looking around and I’m I’ve always been the type to

pivot early. Like I see the trends, and we change direction. It’s like, if it’s popular, I don’t want to do it. I’m either the first one in or the last one standing. I’m not competing and I’m not bidding against you. I don’t like competition. I mean, I do, but I don’t. I I come in and I want to dominate my niche, what I’m doing. So that led me into new construction. I figured out no one’s buying a lot.

and I say lots, infill lots specifically. These are lots that have existing infrastructure access to water lines, sewer lines. Development’s whole different ballgame. I mean, not that development’s bad, not that you can’t make money developing. You can also lose, how PG are we? You can lose your shirt in development if you don’t know what you’re doing. Ask me how I know. I went and bought 50 lots.

because I found a deal and it was amazing price. Well, I didn’t know it wasn’t a sewer line. Had to install the sewer line. That’s a whole other story. So I had save that for another show. But this is where you understand what you’re doing. I saw, this is where, I learned in the construction, it’s like, know, in the new construction, there’s no one buying lots. And if you buy the lots correctly, you build your buy box, it becomes very simple, becomes very…

What was the word that we used? It’s uh. Well, it’s predictable because you know, you know what you’re, you know, you’re kind of just rinsing and repeating the same thing over and over again. Right. Well, and so we, we, we buy the infield lots. I like the infield lots because we can throw up a house from permit to CEO. So you just go from start to finish 90 to 120 days. Wow. It’s not as quick as a 30 or 60 day flip, but.

Mike Hambright (13:30.254)
And these are affordable. These are entry-level houses. workforce housing, build to rent kind of. the 1,200, 1,500, 1,800 square foot houses. And we actually evolved into duplexes. the reason that we went into new construction is there’s virtually no competition. There’s no one buying lots. Maybe two guys. Everyone and their dog is looking for existing structures. And were you also doing this right where you had other rentals in the north side of Tulsa?

We actually pivoted West Tulsa and the Sand Springs just because of the numbers, the values, the appraisal values weren’t there in North Tulsa at the time. Ironically, they’re there now and we pivoted back. Most of what we do is on the west side of Tulsa. Now we’re kind of working on the north side of Tulsa. So we have our area that we work in. We work it very specifically and then we also work off of zoning.

zoning codes because you know, the zoning for building a house and existing neighborhoods versus a zoning for duplexes, which is written, you multifamily zoning. Yeah. So, you we, we, we play by the codes, but we, have our, you know, our target areas that we, hunt, we comb and we don’t like when, when I work in an area, I stalk, I mean, I’m a stalker. Like I know everything that’s there and everything that moves. Like, you know, somebody, if a rental goes empty or something goes for sell by owners, something’s for rent.

I see it. Like I’m driving the neighborhood. I’ve just been this way.

Well, my whole career is like I just an old school drive. I drive for dollars. Yeah. So I think especially probably as a builder, like when you when you’re a fix and flipper or a wholesaler, like you kind of go wherever the opportunity is. Right. But as a builder, you you have the ability to target an area. Right. And you probably are not picking areas that are so random. It’s just a one off. Like you probably like to do, you know, a fair amount in the same rough area. Well, and I’ve I figured out one when you get

Mike Hambright (15:29.602)
spread out.

There’s more travel time. more disconnects. it just makes it. Yeah. And if you’re more concentrated, it’s a lot more efficient. You can build upon it. You do more efficiencies. You have more bulk. You can kind of have everything. I have my warehouse. I cut down my travel time. And from a GC standpoint, it’s a lot easier for me to get around all the projects when they’re in the same area of town versus going from side to side to side to side. So it’s more efficient.

to stay plus. I also learned in my rental, my North Tulsa experience, how to kind of, you build your comps upon each other. Like, you know, we sold a couple hundred houses in North Tulsa, more…

anything was to build the values because when we started, you know, we were getting appraisals in the 50s. So I sold for 50, then I sold 51 and I sold for 52. And then I just I kept inching it up to where, okay, now we’re able to sell for 100. Now those same houses that were worth 50,000 today appraised for 130,000. Now granted, the market has helped, but yeah, it we we build upon our comps. So if we’re building in the same areas and we’re using the same comps, like I am my own comp. Yeah, like that how that house I sold a year

ago or six months ago is now my comp and I can bump up. We can bump up and I can build up. what the institution, the hedge funds, the institutional guys were doing too, is they were just driving the market up with.

Mike Hambright (16:58.946)
their own cops. Yeah. Now you got to be careful. You can’t artificially inflate it. you know, you take small steps and you really you really are improving because you think about it. You go into an existing neighborhood that’s not necessarily the nicest and has empty lots and run down houses because we like to buy tear down houses and tear them down. You build a house on that block. You change that block. Yeah, for sure. You know, or in my case, we build a whole block. We change the neighborhood, you know, and slowly but surely you’re

changing that community. And it just it builds upon like, you know, my aspiration is like, you know, I want Tulsa to be better for us having been there. I don’t know exactly what that looks like. But I do know that every house that we build improves the neighborhood or the street that we’re on. Yeah, absolutely. We’re contributing.

So, but new construction. Even if nobody ever gives you credit for that, which they probably won’t, you’ll know the truth. I think the important thing is when you’re on your deathbed or when you’re laying in bed at night, are you proud of what you’ve done? I nobody will ever give you credit for that because people are just like that. But you’re doing a good thing, Yeah, and well, I…

That is part of my motivation. mean, I’ve always been I want to do good while doing good. I’m here to make money. Yeah. But I want to I want to make a difference. Yeah, for sure. I want to improve the neighborhood. I want to get people better quality housing options that they may or may not have had had we not been there. Yeah. So that’s that’s part of our mission. Yeah. And then, you know, the new construction. We like new construction because it it.

when you first start new construction compared to flipping,

Mike Hambright (18:43.534)
it overwhelming like there’s a lot of steps like you have a lot more inspections you’re much more involved with the city and you you have to do all these things but once you understand it new construction is actually easier because it’s the same thing over and over and over and you know we have a handful of floor plans like we’re not out here building hundreds of different custom houses yeah they’re all you’re using a few different floor plans and just doing it over and over again right? Right you know it’s not like it’s not like when you’re flipping and

house is different. Yeah, it’s not like flipping where you can get in there and you know, you don’t know what’s behind the wall until you open up the wall. Right. Well, I put the wall there. know what’s there. Sometimes you don’t open up a wall because you don’t want to know. And then the inspector pokes screwdriver in there. Yeah. Yeah. But not to hide anything. But it’s like, well, if I don’t, you know, I’m not lying about anything, but I don’t know where exactly. Well, yeah, there’s some things that you don’t want to know. And then there’s some things once you know, you know, yeah, and then you got to do something. That’s right. But

it.

new construction, it’s much more predictable. Like I know my build cost. I know my dirt cost. I know my appraisal value. Like I know all my numbers going in and I don’t have the change orders. I don’t have surprises because well, I put the wall there. There’s nothing. There’s nothing behind it. Yeah, I put it there. New construction rents for more rents faster for more money. It’s you don’t have any major capital expenditures for five to 10 years. Everything is new. That’s right. Everything is under warranty. Yeah. So

You eliminate a lot of the guesswork like once you you know if it becomes because it is more predictable it becomes more repeatable and becomes more scalable and then you know you you’re able you know you build that you build this house when I can build two houses now you can build five houses and it really

Mike Hambright (20:33.62)
isn’t any more complicated. You just take that process, and you go through it again and again. Are you selling anything? Or these are all have pretty much been built to rent either for your own portfolio or for other people too? We build to rent. So we do turnkey. So our mission, our purpose, is we help other investors, primarily with tax shelter, because with interest rates, cash flow is not what it used to be. mean, we went from single family to duplexes.

because the numbers are better on the cash flow. But really, we help those high-income, high-net-worth individuals providing tax shelter, utilizing cost segregation, and accelerating depreciation. We are creating, long-term wealth creation, and we actually have a seven-year process, whereas we’ve worked with the CPA. It’s like, we take the, we accelerate the depreciation. At some point, things wear out.

And you I you know, when you bought when you have any buy these old houses, you got a 1990 water heater, that thing’s gonna last longer than the 2021 hot water heater is crazy. But these things will break like when you start having big ticket items. So, you know, somewhere between five and 10 years, what we suggest is you you exit 1031 and go to a new one or something bigger. Like you take you take all the depreciation you can get. You take your appreciation.

Roll up to the next one.

Like, yeah, that’s how we’re planning In seven years, because you’re going to avoid the looming repair costs that are coming. That’s you’re saying. So it’s kind of like buying a new car. There’s a lot of people that trade it in when their warranty ends, just because I don’t want to. Absolutely. Same thing. Well, because here’s, yeah, we’re like, OK, hang on to it forever. That’s great. But 10 years from now, AC goes out. 15 years from now, you’ve got to replace the roof. mean, you make a large repair. Your ROI is just done.

Mike Hambright (22:31.664)
Well, I wish in Texas or Oklahoma that roofs lasted 15 years. People are like, this is a 30 year roof. I was like, not when it gets hit by a hailstorm. It could be a 30 minute roof. Yeah. And then so we built a construction company. We’ve leaned all in on the turnkey.

When we figured out, I hate to say this, but we make more money servicing the investor than being the investor. And I say that because we wholesale houses to investors. We train investors how to flip and how to build new construction. In the course of building and integrating, we own the excavating company. We own the plumbing company. We are affiliated with the electricians and the HVAC. We are the general contractor. We have a property management company because, well,

you

we have our own feelings about property management. I’ve tried five different companies. Not one of them have performed in a manner that I consider acceptable. then, no one handles your money like you do. Right. And you know, granted, I don’t do property management. My wife oversees it. We have a full time property manager. We have a full time leasing agent, maintenance guy, but they work for us. So we have an element of control or illusion of control. It’s more like it. But we know what’s going on. So we,

we take it from acquisitions, we go through all the building, and then we do maintenance, management, maintenance, we handle the entire process. And as things were shifting, it’s like, what resources do we have of value, and what can we do with those things? I’m like, okay, turnkey makes sense, because most people…

Mike Hambright (24:13.58)
don’t have access in the experience education in the real estate market to build it, to do all these You’ve earned your overnight success 20 years in the making, Exactly. Glad somebody sees it. Dude, I hear it all the time. Somebody said to me a while back, everything you touch turns to gold. I was like, dude, you’re not watching close enough because I’ve touched a lot of turds. I’ve kissed a lot of frogs. I’ve kissed a lot of frogs. Anyway, again, nobody will give you credit for.

The arrow wounds in your back, but I know they’re there. Yeah. Now, I mean, as long as Tony Robbins put it best, a true definition of an entrepreneur, somebody who makes enough money to pay for their mistakes. Yeah. That still gets expensive. I’ve made some doozies. Yeah. Let’s share some lessons learned. You don’t have to share mistakes of like, we screwed up this electrical. But just like, I think you’ve

All of us have. This is the reality. You’ve chased some shiny objects, I’m sure. You’ve done some things that you know I don’t like to do that anymore, so I’m not going to do that anymore. If anyone tells you they have never lost money in real estate, they will lie about other things. They haven’t done enough deals, yeah. So, well, due diligence, like buying 50 lots without checking for a sewer line, for example. That was actually a million dollar mistake. That was one of my larger ones.

know the delay cost, actual infrastructure like installing it and then the engineering and then the way that it went down because it wasn’t just I got to install infrastructure is we somehow got five houses built.

before the city caught on that the sewer line wasn’t there. Even though we had the IDP meetings and development meetings, like we had five houses standing. You we got such a good deal on the land. Like if I would have known going into it, what it was going to take to do it, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Yeah. But I was naive enough that I just went, I just went full head, head in full for full throttle and we got five houses built.

Mike Hambright (26:25.218)
you now I’m sitting I got a million dollars on the ground I can’t walk away from million dollars like you know I can walk away from a couple hundred grand and I’m I’m pissed off and I’m limping but I walk away from a million dollars that’s gonna be devastating so I like I have to see this through yeah at the end of the day yeah it was a seven figure mistake like but now it’s one of those things mistakes are good mistakes are evidence of trying mistakes or education and it’s how you know what to do what not to do

Now I know what to do. I’ve never repeated that mistake. I’ve learned how to check for those things. Another thing is the chasing shiny objects. I’ve spent my career in single family. And a few years ago, I decided that bigger was better, just because evolution, right? Sounds cool. Yeah, sounds cool. Well, if I can do houses, I can do apartments.

And it turns out, no, no. I spent a lot of time and money learning how to invest in multifamily, do the syndication thing, and put together these big old deals. it’s not me. I’m so ingrained with single family. I can walk in a house, and within 15 minutes, I can tell you what it’s worth, what the repair’s going to cost, what I can give you, and write you a check.

I got it down. Now part of it is just years and years and years of overnight success deal. multi-family, the level of due diligence, the underwriting, the information, the numbers, the details. I’m not a detail guy. I am a visionary. am a big picture. Details make my head hurt.

you know, and chasing those bigger deals. The thing about, you know, go big or go home, if you go big and you win, it’s fantastic. You go big and you lose, it hurts. You know, we bought an apartment deal that was an hour, about two hours out of Tulsa. By the time that we got through it, you know, I bled money for probably a year.

Mike Hambright (28:46.934)
And then I sold it for $250,000 loss. because, and this was actually, I was all 10x’d up. I went to 10x, I went to Cardo, I’m just, yeah, I gotta buy something. I bought something. Yeah, I shouldn’t have bought something. And then I really think,

There’s an ego stroke. you’ve got to be with the ego. My ego has cost me so much freaking money. It’s unreal. Well, you’re not alone. You’re chasing those bigger shiny objects. But you know what I figured out? Boring is profitable. I try to expand. like, oh, I’m going build this. I can build these apartments. I can build these bigger houses. I can build these custom homes. I can. But at what cost?

Like, if I build the same thing over again and over again, I know exactly what we’re spending and I know exactly what we’re making. And the best part is, because we do it so well, I don’t have to spend a lot of time on it. So not only are we making more money, I’m spending less time. And at this point in my life, I’m in my early 40s. I have a four-year-old and an eight-year-old. I don’t get this time back with my kids. And I have allowed my…

My boring life allows me to take my kids to school every morning. It allows me to pick them up from school. I take them to dance. I take them to cheer. take them to gymnastics. I don’t miss events because I have a boring life. But it’s very profitable. So, but there’s a lot of, there is a lot in the niches. Like, find something, you don’t want to be okay at everything.

Find something and be good at it. I mean, so good at it that you can do if your eyes closed. That’s great. Personal opinion.

Mike Hambright (30:49.262)
Any kind of final words of wisdom with folks to I guess kind of be true to themselves and you know not get distracted by everybody’s gonna get distracted by shiny objects, but You know just basically kind of be true to yourself and do what you really enjoy versus chasing something that might seem like it’s got more opportunity, but Maybe it’s not what you want to do ultimately when I figured out personally and by watching others

And watching others is a big thing. If you can learn from someone else’s lessons, it’s so much faster, so much cheaper. That’s the point of the mastermind, the investor fuel mastermind, is how do you climb the learning curve way faster than what you would on your own because somebody else can share with you how to not do it. Exactly. Typically, those people who go so big, and it’s like, I own eight different companies.

it’s impossible to run eight different companies. I tried like I burnt I worked myself to death more than once. It’s not a good look. I don’t recommend it. But if you I mean, if you’re gonna do it one, got to build it correctly to where you’re not involved in the day to day stuff. But typically what we what I see is most people who are too that grow too big collapse. And I’ve collapsed. I mean, I’ve got I’ve

I’ve I’ve gone bankrupt three times. Wow. Like, fortunately, you know, if you know how to do it, you can just rebuild it. But I have I have done that mushroom cloud where I got so big. So grow. Build it in a way that’s sustainable. Build it in a way that you enjoy it. Because, you know, after setting all the goals, making all the money.

buying all the houses. None of it made me happy. What makes me happy is my time. So I was I’m fortunate in the fact that I have the experience and I somehow I got some leadership ability that people were willing to work with me and take you know, do the the the the day to day stuff and run these businesses for me. But

Mike Hambright (33:16.454)
it if I had to do over again, I could have saved myself a whole lot of stress, anxiety, bourbon by just narrowing my focus and really being intentional on what to do instead of trying to do everything because my ego and I want to be everything to everybody. It’s just there’s not

a there’s 100 ways skin the cat in real estate. There’s so many ways to make money. Yeah. Now, there’s not there’s there’s not a right way. There’s a wrong way. I there don’t I mean, you need to figure out what you’re doing. You need to know what you’re doing. But there’s not a right way. I mean, and the path is different for everybody. And there are so many ways that you can do it. But find what find what

what reaches you, like you said, what makes you happy. And get good at it. And then, you can kind of expand and get into other areas. And don’t, if you’re gonna expand, in a way that is complimentary.

Like, you know, I did property management because I had rentals and I did construction because doing flips. You know, we did plumbing because well, I got tired of plumbers. I’m not gonna lie. Plumbers are shitty. It just, you know, allow it to happen naturally. Don’t force yourself into a different business because what people fail to realize is, yeah, it’s similar.

but it’s still running another business. And that other business has to be run differently than this business. you have, now you’re running.

Mike Hambright (35:11.086)
both and you can only go so many ways. Yeah. Yeah. That was a long answer. No, well, I think, you know, it’s really just kind of being true to yourself. And maybe we, you we started this off by talking about vertically integrating, like in some instances, it just makes sense to do things that that complement each other instead of some totally different thing like multifamily, although I own a bunch of multifamily, but I’m, really fairly passive, like I, you know, I help raise money, I’m investor relations on some level, but I’m not involved in the day to

operations because I don’t want to do that I wouldn’t be good at it. But find things that that complement what you’re already doing and kind of you know I think is the big lesson here.

Awesome, awesome. Well, thanks for joining me on the show today. Thanks for having me. Great to see you. Thanks for coming down from Tulsa. Yeah, anytime. Not tomorrow. Not tomorrow, though. Guys, think this, thanks for joining us today. I think this was a lesson here in kind of being true to yourself and you’re going to evolve over time and some of the things that Marc shared that he doesn’t like to do. So there’s other people that love that. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be the same path, but find a path that kind of makes sense for you and allows you to grow over time.

allows you to kind lay in bed at night and be proud of what you’ve done. So appreciate you guys a ton for joining us today. We’ll see you on the next show. Cool, man. Thank you.