Achieve Financial Independence: Overcome Challenges & Build Wealth

John Harcar (00:00.923)
All right, hey guys, welcome back to our show today. I’m here today with Andrew Heymans. I hope I said that right. And we’re going to talk a little bit about his business and syndications. Guys, remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5x their business by providing the tools and resources to grow the business they want to grow, which helps live the life they want to live. So Andrew, welcome to our show.

Andrew Heymans (00:31.598)
Hey John, I appreciate you having me on. This is great.

John Harcar (00:36.337)
Awesome. Well, I’m super excited to talk about your business and kind of dive into some of the stuff we spoke about off camera. But before we do that, why don’t you give our audience a little background on you, kind of your experience of real estate and kind of what got you here?

Andrew Heymans (00:53.581)
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I’ve been dealing with real estate since I was very young. When I was in the military, I did a lot of reading on some of my downtime. So I was very interested in it, read a lot of books and got myself very excited. I love looking at property. I love every aspect about real estate. And as I was developing those skills of trying to understand the real estate world, I started to dabble myself into

you know, fix and flips, flip mobile homes, turn them around, make a little profit and build myself up to buying my own, you know, duplexes. And that’s where I kind of stood with that. And then I kind of jumped up to opening a whole mobile home park. And I ran a mobile home park for several years, 10 plus years doing a property management aspect of it, all the maintenance aspects of it. And of course, the operations and ownership of it.

and driving that into from about a $600,000 investment and we drove it to a million dollar investment after we were kind of sold that asset. And so from there, we’ve wanted to develop into more multi-family, more commercialized, a little bit bigger stable market into storage units and short-term rentals.

John Harcar (02:10.504)
Okay, and I know when we talked before, Young Cameron, you mentioned you were in the military and thank you for your service. Was real estate already present in your life? Did you have any type of influences that drove you to real estate? Did you read any books that led to real estate? How did that all come about?

Andrew Heymans (02:30.047)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I, you know, I did a lot of research through, you know, Donald Trump is kind of oddly enough now that he’s president, but I read a lot of his books and I was very interested in how he got into real estate and, I kind of dove into that and then got big into Grant Cardone, of course, and seeing how those guys handle their business and, Brandon Turner’s kind of the big players and those syndication type. So I’ve read.

you know all of their books, of their content and trying to understand you know how do you make real estate successful, how do you make that passive income and cash flow work for you so.

John Harcar (03:11.988)
Got it, okay. And once you started getting into real estate, what were some of the challenges in the beginning of finding deals, funding deals, those type of things?

Andrew Heymans (03:23.657)
Sure, yeah. All of those things, right? So funding the deals became difficult. Especially when I was starting out, I have a whole lot of money. So was like, I don’t even know how I’m gonna do this. That’s why I started, okay, I could buy a mobile home back then for, you know, 1500 bucks if it was in rough shape and I had enough cash to do that. You know, I’d stick three or four grand into it and then sell it for, you know, $10,000. And so the funding side, I kind of worked through that and built

money up to get myself into some duplexes and I used my TSB through my military to fund down payments to buy my own real estate. So I was able to borrow from my retirement account to build up more real estate for myself. And some of the pain points of going through that was operations, trying to figure out how to rent to people, who are the right people to rent to.

falling into eviction processes and learning some of those hard lessons. That part I didn’t dive into as much of understanding that side of the business. So when I got into it, I had some pretty hard lessons that I had to learn and I took some pretty hard licks with people trashing properties and going through that and really honing in that your operations are important when you start to get into owning.

real estate. So it’s just as important as any other aspect of that business. So yeah, those are definitely some things I struggled with in the beginning.

John Harcar (04:57.918)
Now, once you kind of got into it, I know you’re kind of learning through hard knocks, right? But did you seek out a mentor type of person, maybe some education, or did you seek something to maybe help accelerate your knowledge?

Andrew Heymans (05:11.589)
Yeah, I did. absolutely did. When that was going on, I had a friend of mine that owned, you know, probably a thousand doors at that point. And he, you know, he coached me through it. you know, he told me many times, he’s like, here, my time is very valuable. I learned that lesson too, that when he talked to those folks that are at that kind of next level, you really got to respect their time. And so I some lessons in that, but he did, he was, even though we had some

Issues with trying to figure out hey, you know, I don’t have time to teach you the whole entire business You need to come to me with some pointed questions some pointed direction that you need me to and i’ll help you get there but i’m not going to break every step down for you and so I had to go back from that and reread some material bone up on some Of that skill set that I needed but yes He did help me develop into hey This is what you need to set your operation up to especially as you grow past 10 doors

You know, owning five doors is kind of easy to manage by yourself, but once you kind of get past 10 doors and you get past 40 doors, it’s a different beast that you have to navigate. And there’s different things you have to put into your business to help you navigate those waters. So yeah, I did have a few mentors in those processes.

John Harcar (06:30.036)
Awesome, awesome. What kind of mindset shifts and things that you have to kind of, you I guess you say reframe as you grew up to five, 10, 40 doors, a whole mobile home park.

Andrew Heymans (06:44.089)
Yeah, for sure. The mindset is probably one of the biggest keys as a personal person just getting into business as a whole. If you’ve always got that scarcity mindset or that survival mindset, it’s not going to make you successful. You have to learn how to be in your own head and know what you’re going to do is going to be successful and you’re willing to take any action on that to do it. And I think a lot of people fall into those traps where they kind of

get reserved on taking action. Sometimes that’s just the most important thing is take that very first step or take that immediate actions that’s going to push you next forward to that next day. it’s key for your mindset to have that clear mind and understanding where your path is and where your vision is going to be.

John Harcar (07:31.112)
Yeah, and I think that’s important with the action part, right? With the amount of information out there, it’s super easy to fall into that analysis paralysis type of situation. So you got to just start moving the needle. Were there any moments, whether in the beginning or any time, where you maybe took a hit, right? You made a mistake. You did something where you’re just like, you second guessed yourself. You maybe second guessed what you’re doing.

Andrew Heymans (07:38.852)
Yeah.

Andrew Heymans (07:58.977)
Yeah, for sure. There was a point where my real estate side of business was going very well. And at that point we were like, hey, let’s diversify. Let’s have more streams of income. And so what we did is we did a fundraiser and we funded a restaurant. And so we had to build into our protocols how to handle the operations of those restaurants. Now I did a of research, like I did real estate, how to run a restaurant.

what needed to be done. Of course, this was a franchise, so they gave you training as well. But what I didn’t realize at the time is you need to understand what kind of business you want to be in. So when you pick those different streams of income, you need to make sure that that stream of income is still a passion for you. And if you don’t, you’re going to lose and it’s going to be tough. I did it for a hard seven years juggling.

everything with the mobile home park and all of the maintenance and check ins and check outs and doing it by myself trying to learn the whole business. I didn’t want to hire a property management company. I want to teach myself what do I need to know to run a property? And once I knew all those skills, I was okay going to a property management company. But during that time of owning the restaurant, I was doing it all. And so my time just got ate up and

And you know, I didn’t realize how precious time is or how precious your time is. And it was just the wrong business to get into. And I had to get out of it. And you know that that there were some pain points there with lost income and figuring that out and get myself back up on the right side there. So.

John Harcar (09:42.75)
Did your real estate business suffer as you trying to put more focus on this restaurant, getting it going?

Andrew Heymans (09:49.499)
No, not really because I did have two other business partners at that time for some of the bigger projects. So they were operators as well. So they helped cover down and you know, we were juggling both actions. The restaurants just took so much more time than I was anticipating.

John Harcar (09:54.329)
okay, okay.

John Harcar (10:09.148)
it. All right, so you told me you did mobile homes, you flipped properties, you’ve owned some duplexes, you’re now dabbling, think, in short-term rentals, some multifamily, and even storage. Which one do like the best?

Andrew Heymans (10:23.552)
I’ll tell you I like storage units really the best it is probably one of the better assets It’s low overhead meaning doesn’t really take a whole lot to manage them and it can be you can almost put that whole entire business digital with check-ins with guests and there’s platforms out there that you can have them sign the contract you can give them the gate codes they can drive into the unit and you you almost don’t need to meet them period

And in some cases we’ve done that. And so, you know, it’s a big deal. And I think that asset alone, and I think even research, if you look back, you can see storage units through COVID and some of these harder times, they were really a proven asset. You know, that multifamily, you’re always going to need multifamily, but I think storage units really are, are where you need to go. Now I will say they’re, they’re a little bit harder to find a deal on. People have noticed that storage units are.

kind of a nice cast flowing asset so you really got to look out what you’re looking for and location matters on storage units so you got to pay attention to your locations you can’t just you know pull a trigger on a storage unit think it’s going to be successful you really got to watch out for some of those key indicators but definitely storage units

John Harcar (11:26.281)
Right.

John Harcar (11:43.252)
Okay. And what are some of the, you what are those key indicators to look for? Cause I know storage units have been a big topic on a lot of my different podcasts. What are some of those indicators that people need to look for for storage units to be a good deal?

Andrew Heymans (11:56.072)
Yeah, for sure. One is population. You want to be able to know that you can pull into a population that’s healthy. Storage units, I don’t really like to go anything under 250,000 a population. You know, know a lot of people will go into that 80 or 40,000 and they’re successful. And I think you can do it, but I think the more population you have is going to be a lot better for you. Now, granted, there’s going to be some more competition, but

you know, marketing, doing some different marketing strategies will help do that. But once you’ve kind of got that location with that population that you can pull from, and I kind of focus on, because I was military, a lot of bases, Air Force or Army bases, those guys rotate every three years and they always need storage units. So that’s kind of where we were starting that initial is that’s where we were kind of drilling down to, hey, where are these big bases?

John Harcar (12:41.652)
Okay. Yeah.

Andrew Heymans (12:53.885)
Where was the military moving? Kind of looking at, you Uhaul.com, looking at the data where everybody’s moving to those bigger cities and trying to understand that. And then of course from there, understanding your locations. Is this location, you know, feasible for someone to drive to and be able to get to or from wherever their home or residence or rental is within, you know, a short amount of time? If they got to take 20, 45 minutes to get to their storage unit, kind of, you know.

makes it little harder to get them all rented out. That’s the one thing storage units struggle is getting 100 % rentability. Not that you can ever do that in any asset, but that’s the goal, right?

John Harcar (13:23.038)
Yeah.

Yeah.

John Harcar (13:35.976)
Right, are you, and I know you mentioned you have that kind of threshold, 250,000 people, are you also too kind of focusing on maybe if they have smaller populations but they’re growing populations?

Andrew Heymans (13:46.403)
Yes, absolutely. think as you dive into the data, you know, we’re always constantly looking at areas of interest that we like. and within that we watch those cities and read into those data and see, Hey, where are people going? Cause there’s times like even some of these smaller communities, like I’ll even point out like Muskogee, Oklahoma, nobody would even remotely even think about that city to invest in. it’s like, it’s a town of 40,000 people, but they’re putting a lithium plant into this town.

which is going to bring about 2000 jobs to that community. They also passed like, I think, a $150 million initiative to grow that town back to what it was back in the 80s, bring businesses back into that town. So I think you want to pull in that data and look at that. You want to know that that community is investing in it and starting to grow. Those are definitely key indicators that, this is going to start to be a solid investment.

John Harcar (14:45.214)
Yeah, well it’s like out here.

Andrew Heymans (14:45.464)
And sometimes, yeah, you have to go ahead.

John Harcar (14:49.416)
no, I was just going to say like, live in Boise and you we have an air base and mountain home and you know, and they’re starting to bring in, know, all these big micron and all these other big data processing centers and all this stuff. So yeah, I see what you mean by that type of growth and in those types of areas.

Andrew Heymans (15:06.755)
Yeah, absolutely.

John Harcar (15:08.98)
So what does your team and your business look like today?

Andrew Heymans (15:13.208)
Yeah. So there there’s two other partners of mine in our dream ventures capital. And right now our main focus is like multifamily syndications, dealing with multifamily and storage units and short-term rentals. That’s where we’re really focusing on. And so I kind of run the company, you know, and kind of the visionary of it. And then Nori, my other business partner, she’s kind of

financing, running all the background and ensuring when we pull off a syndication, all the paperwork and the taxes and all of that get done. then Josh, my other business partner, he really runs the operations. And then between the three of us, we really spent a lot of time investing into researching deals, know, areas that we want to invest in areas we should invest in. And we try to pick some areas that aren’t

saturated already with a lot of syndication deals. Your Austin’s, your Nashville’s, some of those areas are hard to get into because everybody wants to buy into them. Your Phoenix, Arizona’s, there’s just so many syndications trying to go into those areas. So we really start to apply more effort into maybe secondary areas that are really going to be good cash flow properties, but maybe not ones that everybody’s thinking.

John Harcar (16:32.03)
Sure. And just for some of the folks that maybe might be newer in the industry, explain to them a little bit about what a syndication is.

Andrew Heymans (16:51.992)
I think I lost you John. Are you there?

John Harcar (16:54.868)
Seems like we might have lost him. Yeah, are you back?

Andrew Heymans (17:00.764)
do you? I’m there, I’m here.

John Harcar (17:04.38)
I can, okay, yeah, yeah, that’s not a problem. We can have this, we can have it edited out. yeah, I was gonna say, tell folks what a syndication is that might not know what it is.

Andrew Heymans (17:16.374)
Sure, so syndication is a way to invest into a real estate property. There are different kind of classes. You got your class A and class B. So your accredited investors which have a certain threshold of income you gotta meet. And then you have your other class that doesn’t meet to that threshold of income. And the point of the syndication is to invest your money passively.

So those investors that come into those syndications get to be a part of a real estate deal, but not have to deal with all the operations, the understanding of construction and having to rehab a property. You know, they just need to to claim that check either monthly and quarterly, depending on how that syndication is set up. And they get that positive cashflow and they have that asset working for them. And you know, it’s good way.

invest you know we try to tell those investors all the time that especially if they’re new to it and you know they’re used to your traditional 401ks or something like something to that adventure it’s like hey real estate is is a good way as you get your passive income just through the rents and you also get your appreciation values that you’re building having that tangible real estate in your hands and of course

when you exit the property and you have an exit strategy, you know, the ROI for them. And usually we’re averaging, you know, 18 to 25 % return on their money. So it’s a good way to invest passively.

John Harcar (18:54.77)
and how are you finding your investors?

Andrew Heymans (18:59.068)
Yeah, so right now, you know, it’s it’s we we’re in several circles through people that are in this community that are passionate about real estate. Even just people around our own personal circles we’ve gone to. And, know, you start those networking and that’s kind of where we’ve gone. You know, that’s one area that is a little more difficult right now is finding folks that want to invest. And so it takes a lot of effort into that. And it’s really

trying to do stuff like this, podcasts, get your name out there and grow your circle so that you can start to show individuals what you’re about, what your business is about and give them an opportunity to be able to invest.

John Harcar (19:42.804)
Awesome. Do you have any deals that you’re looking for investors on now?

Andrew Heymans (19:48.208)
Yes, absolutely. We have three deals right now that we’re analyzing in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area and then out of the Houston, Texas area. And then we have one in Memphis, Tennessee that we’re looking at right now. We’re flushing out all the details with the broker, trying to make sure that these cash flow. And then once they cash flow, we’ll start our investment run.

to get investors excited about these projects and then get a deal closed. Hopefully, we’re looking to try to get a deal closed by August.

John Harcar (20:23.828)
Awesome. And what kind of asset class are these?

Andrew Heymans (20:26.193)
These ones are specific to multifamily. They’re right around 30 to 40 doors.

John Harcar (20:30.035)
Okay.

John Harcar (20:34.99)
nice, awesome. Okay, well very cool. Do you also, do you do any coaching for folks on this? Do you teach people how to do this type of stuff?

Andrew Heymans (20:43.373)
I have in the past, yeah. I have taught some folks to get into real estate and it’s not something I’ve poured a lot of energy into as I’m trying to grow my business. It takes a lot of energy. It is something I like doing. I like teaching the military background that I have, teaching OCS candidates. that’s younger soldiers trying to become officers in the military.

You know, so I love the mentoring and teaching aspect of it. I just haven’t had a whole lot of time as we’re trying to grow our own portfolios and do that. But I’m starting to get to that place where I’d like to get my name out there and start maybe going to that level.

John Harcar (21:28.608)
And if someone that’s listening on our show today, you know, they, you know, they want to get into doing syndications or mobile home parks or multifamily real estate, I guess, as a whole, what type of advice, what, what, one or two things or three things you think you might, you know, you might give us as, you know, a way to, Hey, do this to better set yourself up for success.

Andrew Heymans (21:48.836)
Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot of people that we’ve invited to investor meetings to have some of this. The one thing I always tell, especially if they haven’t really gotten into real estate before is take some time, understand, watch some presentations, try to understand the lingo. Don’t jump right into investing into it. Make sure you understand what’s going on with the assets and then I usually will provide them some resources.

for them to kind of get themselves educated on that lingo. And so that when they’ve either had three or four presentations, they kind of understand what’s going on. Cause there’s a lot, especially when you break into not only just giving the money, but you get into the tax advantages of it and how does that work? And you know, that aspect. we spend a lot of time trying to give them resources and you know, we have a lot of

I guess what you call white papers that we can send to folks to get them educated on that. How syndications work, the principles of understanding real estate as a whole, the different asset classes to understand. We have all those type of documents that we hand out.

John Harcar (23:04.148)
Awesome, awesome. Is there any other advice or anything else you want to share with our audience?

Andrew Heymans (23:10.114)
Yeah, absolutely. Hey, one thing I would like to say is, you know, we are always looking to help people get into real estate. That’s one of my passions is I want to try to get as many people in the real estate as possible. It’s a great way to build an investment wheel for yourself and for your kids. It’s a great way to build wealth for

you got little ones at home and trying to build that college fund and you don’t really want to get like a 529c and you want to be penalized just in case you want to be able to use that asset there’s other vehicles for you to be able to do that and the one thing I would say is don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and join some of these groups and kind of join and just listen and just observe for a while

That’s usually the best way to kind of understand that and then you’re gonna pick key things that are going on in podcasts or YouTube or Just even reading, you know PDFs yourself and then you’ll be able to bring those questions to these type of investor meetings and and Get some more clarification

John Harcar (24:21.374)
Awesome. Awesome. Man, great advice, Andrew. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing all that. If there are folks that want to invest with you, that maybe want to reach out and just talk with you, get some information, maybe have you help them, how can they get in touch with you?

Andrew Heymans (24:37.386)
Yeah, so I’ve got my business cell phone and my business email that I can provide to have those conversations. Absolutely. Right now, we do have a website. It’s under construction. We’re revamping a few things, so that’s down right now, which is unfortunate. But that will be back up here in probably the next few weeks. But definitely email and phone.

is the best way right now.

John Harcar (25:09.044)
Cool, and I think I have that information and I’ll put it in the show notes. So, you know, guys, if you want to reach out, if you have money to invest or you just want to kind of learn about syndications, mobile home parks, multifamily, whatever it might be, you know, reach out to Andrew. I appreciate you sharing all this information once again. And, you know, guys, I hope you enjoyed the show. I know I did. And, you know, I forward to seeing you on the next one. Cheers.

Andrew Heymans (25:32.725)
Thanks, John. I appreciate