From Attorney to Real Estate Mogul: Vitaliy Volpov’s Inspiring Journey

Dylan Silver (00:01.486)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver. And today on the show, I have real estate entrepreneur who went from being an attorney to now having over 200 rental units using the Burr Strategy. He’s retired from the corporate attorney job and now co-owns a real estate brokerage and property management company. Please welcome Vitaliy Volpov, welcome to the show.

Vitaliy Volpov (00:27.972)
Thanks for having me, Dylan. Excited to be here.

Dylan Silver (00:30.742)
It’s a pleasure to have you. I always like to start off at the top of these shows by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Vitaliy Volpov (00:39.684)
Great question. Yeah. For me, it was about a year after law school, I started working as an attorney at that time, kind of starting as the low man on the totem pole at the time. And I was looking trying to decide, okay, you know, I’m starting to make some money. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to possibly buy my first primary residence. And so was trying to decide, do I do I do that? Do I just rent for a while? The time my wife

we were dating. So my girlfriend at the time, we’re also talking about moving in together. So was kind of like a transition period for me and a decision point. And I don’t remember how I came across it. But I started looking into real estate, real estate investing, being a being a landlord and a rental property investor. And I came across the concept, which it wasn’t called that at the time, I don’t think, but it was house hacking. And it was basically buy, you know, small multifamily property, move into one of the units, and then rent out the other unit.

to offset your living costs. And that appealed to me a lot. I thought that that was actually a great way to be efficient with my money and efficient with the real estate side of things. And that might give me a leg up to learn the business and see, do I want to pursue that any further than that one duplex? So in 2011 is exactly what I did. I hired an agent. We went searching. We looked at quite a few different.

duplexes around the area and I tried to stick to good school districts but ended up buying one and moving into one and that was my introduction to real estate investing.

Dylan Silver (02:16.258)
I want to ask you about the mindset and the mentality at the time. Because I know, and we talked a little bit before hopping on here, about how being an attorney, especially a younger attorney, is a lot of work. A lot of work. was it a thing where maybe you family in real estate and you thought it was a good investment and you’re doing well as an attorney? Or was it more of this like, hey, I don’t know if I’m going to be doing this attorney thing forever because

It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of hours. And you wanted maybe an alternative pathway.

Vitaliy Volpov (02:51.394)
Right. So I did not have anyone in real estate. In fact, I didn’t have anyone in the legal world either. just a quick backstory on me as I’m a first generation immigrant. So my family and I came from Belarus, one of the former Soviet Union republics in 1995 when I was 12. So we actually came here very poor and without any connections. And I didn’t even speak English at the time. So I had to learn English while going to school.

you know, then fast forward to going to college and then graduating law school. Then I was in a position where I’m looking at what are my options and how is this going to go? And real estate was not like a plan early on, but it was something that I always felt compelled to, you know, start certain entrepreneurial adventures, you know, and I felt like that was my thing. Like I never just got

satisfied or was satisfied with just status quo or doing what everyone else was doing. So that appealed to me at the time. And I just said, okay, well, I’m going to obviously put my best foot forward at with my career with my job at my law firm. But I’m also going to see how this thing goes on the side. And that’s how it started. And then from there, I tell the story a lot. But this it’s true. And for anyone who’s considering going to law school and becoming a private attorney,

this is something that you should consider and think about. So I think it was the second or third year at my law firm. we, know, private firms, their bonus structures that some firms have, right? And sometimes these bonuses are based on performance. Sometimes it’s based on number of hours you bill and other factors. So in our firm, it was a formula, basically, where they say, okay, you have a minimum baseline of hours you have to hit, billable hours to clients, right, for the year.

And then if you exceed that for every hour, every 50 hours you exceed, you would get X number of dollars and they factor all these different things in. So it was like second or third year. I’ve been doing great at the firm. Everybody loves me. I’m putting a ton of hours in more than the minimum required. And comes the time for bonuses. This was December of that year. And, you sit down with one of the partners, they go over your year with you and then they kind of like give you the good news and give you a check. Right. And so that year,

Vitaliy Volpov (05:16.64)
I had done, I had gone above and beyond, worked really hard, right? And I had an idea in my head based on this formula that they give you, like, okay, this is how much money I should be making as a bonus, right? And what happened was, it ended up being less than that. And the explanation was at the time from the partner was very nice and nothing bad to say about them. But it was, hey, you know, I understand, like, this is the formula, but we also do things. We have to look at the whole productivity of the entire firm.

Which means that if other associates at my level maybe weren’t performing as well, weren’t doing as much, the love still had to be spread from those that were to those that weren’t. You know what mean? So while I was getting a bonus, and you’re never guaranteed a bonus anyway, it’s kind of like, you know, it’s a little extra cherry on top. But they basically told me that, hey, yeah, you work this hard, but you only get this much. And that was a very eye opening moment for me because

you realize at that point that, well, it doesn’t really matter how hard you work because your income is not directly correlated to your effort. It’s more, there’s a bigger process, bigger machine involved who makes all the decisions. And so at that point, it became very clear to me that the only way to kind of succeed and get ahead further would be to be my own boss and be my own entrepreneur and make those decisions where

the effort put in is going to be rewarded on the other side. And the way I kind of pursue that was through real estate.

Dylan Silver (06:54.614)
I wanna ask you about that year. That year that you worked hard. Walk me through maybe a day or a week. How old were you at the time?

Vitaliy Volpov (07:02.372)
Yeah, so I was just, I think I would have been maybe 29 at the time. and yeah, the daily life. So I’ll explain a little bit about what billable hour, how billable hours are for attorneys. So normal person goes to work, even if they’re salaried person, right? So you’d work nine to five, maybe some people work longer hours, nine to six, whatever the case might be. And that’s like the time that you put in for your employer, and then you’re done on the weekend.

and that’s your week. Maybe you work 40 hours, maybe you work 45 hours, whatever that is. And obviously there are people who are hourly, who get paid directly for the hours that they work. With attorneys, first there’s no real like nine to five or eight to six or any of those. There’s not a real, in the private world anyway, not a real number of hours, a set number of hours. It’s basically, hey, the work needs to be done. We got this deadline coming up. We got this court appearance. We got this motion to file.

And just whatever needs to be done has to be done. Like I even, I pulled all-nighters that year. Like there were times where we had to stay there till midnight because the filing was due next day and you just have to get it done. There were times when I worked on the weekends. There were times when I would take work home all the time. you know, that despite kind of like the glory and things you might see on TV about that profession.

It’s a very noble profession for sure. And the people that are in that profession are very well educated and they’re intelligent. But the problem is for them is that they do work very hard in very long hours. However, not all those hours also translate to what are called billable hours. Billable hours are only reserved for things that you would put on an invoice to your client. There are all these hours in between that you’re still there, you’re still at the law firm, you’re still working. And it might be you might be doing

some additional research or some research that’s not billable to any specific client, or there are internal meetings, there’s all kinds of things that know, continuing education, like all these extra hours that you’re working that the firm is not getting getting compensated for. And so the compensation for you and everyone else comes only from the billable time that gets paid by the clients. So there’s always almost like, like extra that you’re working over and above what’s billable. So so yeah.

Dylan Silver (09:20.578)
Yeah.

I wanna ask you about that and give my own anecdote. So why I got into real estate was because I was, I think I actually did, yeah, at least once. So I worked for Nissan, but before that I worked in the automotive space for a number of years. And there was at least one instance where I literally slept at the dealership. There was multiple instances where I barely slept at all.

And people are sometimes surprised to hear this, but car dealerships, the big ones, the top performing ones, in many cases, will just stay open based on business. So there were so many nights where I was there till one in the morning, which is nuts. But that is a common thing, actually. And one of the things that I noticed was I didn’t have full control, even in a commission heavy job.

over how I was paid and it would just change and it was completely out of my hands. It was sometimes even out of the dealership’s hands. It would be up to larger Nissan. And I was seeing this and I would see my effort and my time put in not be the same as far as money that I’m receiving month to month. And it was so jarring for me. Eventually I kind of got used to it and I was seeing how other people were and people 15 and 20 years my senior.

And it just got to a point where it had happened once again where basically I put in so many hours, sold so many vehicles, and was making like half of what I had made before there was a pay plan change that I just said, know, this is very challenging. This is tough to kind of cope with. And so I decided I gotta do something else and I started looking into real estate. But one of the things that stuck with me from that time period

Dylan Silver (11:19.474)
is when people talk about like the uncertainty of real estate and people talk about the uncertainty of being an entrepreneur. You can probably relate to this Vitaly. I felt like there was tremendous uncertainty in what I was doing even though I had a W-2 job because I’m like I’m putting in all of these hours and truthfully I don’t know. I know on paper how much I think I’m to get paid but at the end of the month or at the end of the quarter it’s not up to me.

Vitaliy Volpov (11:32.964)
Exactly. Yeah.

Vitaliy Volpov (11:46.242)
Right. That’s exactly right. And to add to that, to that uncertainty and the things that people might not realize, when COVID happened, so many people found out when businesses had to shut down, people had to be laid off. This was a reality for so many people that before that they didn’t even conceive of. Your safety is an illusion when you’re talking about your job.

because your job depends on the boss and the boss is only there while the business is open and all those economic factors that go into it that you have absolutely no control over as an employee. And if you’re not investing, if you haven’t been saving and most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, know, a single car payment, car expense of car breaking down would send them into negative territory in their finances. those people who are in that position, that’s a devastating thing.

Dylan Silver (12:39.192)
Yeah.

Vitaliy Volpov (12:43.554)
And so, yeah, when people talk about, it’s risky to get into real estate investing or investing of any kind, I think it’s more risky to stay working as an employee and not have any backup whatsoever. And I’m sure you agree with that.

Dylan Silver (12:55.362)
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I my hat goes off to anyone who’s able to be, you know, attorney and then also be a real estate investor because it’s totally time consuming, really on one hand, and then to learn about real estate may be time consuming as well. I want to pivot a bit here and ask you about

when you were able to go full time with real estate. What year was that? What was that like? Was this a joyous thing? was it a focused goal that you had? Or was it a series of events that led you to go on full time in real estate?

Vitaliy Volpov (13:32.004)
Excellent question. Yes. So I stuck with it probably long with my job longer than I should have. Like I said, I started in 2011 and I didn’t really start scaling seriously until probably 2019, the beginning of 2019. So from 2011 to 2019, I owned somewhere around nine units, give or take. You know, I bought a couple here, sold one, bought another one, that type of thing. But

In 2019, I think we bought, I don’t remember, it like 30 plus units in one year. And that was when I started using the BRRRR strategy and we can get into like the details of that more. to stick in with the question. So 2019, my portfolio goes from like nine units to close to 50. And then 2020, before COVID starts, we buy a couple more.

Right? Small multifamily there. I’ve always been buying in somewhere between four units and like 10 units kind of in my sweet spot with my business partner. So we buy a few more. So I’m at like 60 something units when COVID happens. And then when COVID happened, everything shut down and including our law firm, we all went remote. and the work even dried up a little bit. We started, you know, the firm started pivoting to things because a lot of the clients, we represented a lot of businesses.

weren’t operating and they were kind of operating on like emergency basis and dealing with, you know, government assistance and all those types of things. So I actually ended up having more free time at the time than less because I wasn’t, I didn’t have to go to the office. And I also didn’t have the same workload that I had before. And so it actually gave me breathing room to like, think and like, try to assess where I am with my rental portfolio. And the another weird thing that happened during that time,

you know, once we figured out that, okay, the world isn’t going to end and no one, know, like, we can still continue operating in the real estate industry, our local industry, real estate industry started booming. So even so like, COVID, I forget what is March of 2020, April 2020 really hits. And then May, June, July, like, we’re buying more properties, even though now not in the office, I’m basically working, you know, full almost full time on my real estate investing. And we’re just

Vitaliy Volpov (15:55.044)
picking up all these deals, whether because landlords were scared or they wanted to sell or I don’t remember exactly how we were getting deals, but we were getting them at pretty nice discounts and it was all moving really well. And then also banks were cool with refinances. So we were doing the private financing to buy, we would turn the property around, increase the rents, and then we would go ahead and refinance. So we were doing all of that even while COVID was going on.

And even though there were restrictions on evictions at the time, New York State was pretty heavy in that, where they restricted landlords from evicting tenants. But then again, you also got the government assistance that supplemented it. like, things were happening at that time, where, again, my workload was lower, but the real estate side of things was just ramping up. And pretty quickly, I think by like August or September of

2020, I was approaching almost 100 units at that point. And I looked at everything at my sort of businesses, I had the real estate brokerage going, wholesaling side of things, the rental portfolio, and then my law firm job. And I just was coming to the realization that, hey, like I don’t need it. Like I really don’t need to go back to the office and keep putting in those hours and doing all that stuff. I

you know, I had a decent amount of money saved, invested. had rental income that was pretty steady. We had brokerage income that was coming in from just commissions from real estate agents that were selling real estate through our brokerage and we were getting a piece of those. I looked at it like, it would be pretty difficult for me to like lose right now to for me to go bankrupt or for me to not have enough money to pay for my mortgage and my own personal expenses. So at that point, I felt like I was pretty secure.

But what really kind of was the final nail in the coffin or the final straw basically was when in September, I think of 2020, the firm announced to everyone, all the attorneys saying, hey, okay, we’re going to come back in office part-time. Two or three days a week, we want to have you guys all come back and we’re going to start doing that. So you’ll still be doing some work remotely and some work in firm. And so I came back, it was like the first week back.

Vitaliy Volpov (18:18.518)
And I sat in my chair that morning, was like Monday morning or whatever. And I just felt like, I don’t know if it was, I wouldn’t call it depressed. just felt like I don’t want to be here. Like it was just a burden to sit there, to be there looking at a nice sunny day outside, know, one o’clock in the afternoon and just sitting there. So I walked right over to the managing partner’s office. It was, you know,

Dylan Silver (18:35.426)
Yeah, I do know.

Vitaliy Volpov (18:45.41)
really nice guy and you know, we have a very good relationship still. And I said, Hey, you know, I think I’m gonna leave, I’m gonna quit. And that whole conversation was was, you know, very interesting, because he kind of knew that I had some real estate investing things on the side, but he didn’t know like the extent of it. And he didn’t, you know, he didn’t, no one expects you to just leave a six figure law firm job.

with where you have a law degree that you worked for so many years and so prestigious and like, you know, the biggest firm in town and all that stuff. And so, but he was very gracious and nice about it. And he listened to me and he understood, I think. But, you know, most of my peers who are still there, still working, you know, some of them have become partners and more power to them. It’s great. But I don’t know if their lifestyle and their quality of life is

you know, the same as mine and most of my workaholics anyway, so maybe it doesn’t matter. And I guess I am that way too, but I have that entrepreneurial bone in me. But I just don’t know if they’re, if they’re thinking of it in the same terms, you know, if they think they’re just getting from week to week, month to month, year to year, and that’s kind of their, their approach to, to business and money and employment, where mine wasn’t.

Dylan Silver (20:06.326)
My perspective on that, having seen this before, I’ve spoken with actually an attorney in Arizona who was a younger attorney who kind of, I think he was a couple years into the job and he said, you know, I’m not gonna do this forever. And I’ve spoken with medical professional, I can give you an example. There was a dentist that was a surgical dentist who got vaccine injured, could no longer be a dentist.

Vitaliy Volpov (20:34.859)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (20:35.862)
relatively early on in his career and what do you do, right? And when I think about all of these circumstances, what really comes to a point is that entrepreneurs are overall and in general concerned with their well-being, not just how successful they are, not just how much money they make, but it’s also about like an identity outside of work. And that’s funny because

as an entrepreneur you would think well you’re totally focused on work and working for yourself. But what I’ve seen is that in so many cases there’s these people who you could easily your whole identity could be I’m an attorney I’m going to make partner I’m in this area and I do this and you know everyone knows me as being an attorney. But then the other side of it is is to as well you know what am I outside of this. If this were to all end tomorrow what do I have outside of this and.

high level entrepreneurs, high level real estate operators, I think are more concerned about that than other people. And so where other people might be content with kind of being a workaholic and scaling a corporate ladder, think real estate entrepreneurs feel like we previously said that there’s some lack of security in that. I do want to ask you,

about the brokerage. I’m in Texas and one of the interesting things that I found out going through real estate school is I believe in Texas, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe in Texas you don’t need a real estate license if you’re a practicing attorney. Is that the same thing up there in New York?

Vitaliy Volpov (22:12.42)
So yes, I think it’s similar. don’t know. I’m not familiar with Texas, obviously. But in New York, you as an attorney can command or demand a commission if you acted as an agent in a transaction. So in fact, when I did my second deal, I represented myself. So the second purchase after my duplex, when I started as a house hacker, my next one was a non-owner occupied multifamily purchase.

and it was on market. And then I just went in when I wrote up the offer, I put myself in as the buyer’s basically agent representative to get a commission that was being offered. So in that respect, the answer is yes. But if you then want to have people working for you or actually open up a brokerage, you know, set up set up your brokerage license, then you do actually still need to get a license.

what you get as an attorney in New York, if you wanted to do that, and it’s what I ended up doing, is you don’t have to go, it does not require any minimums of experience, which normally would be required. So normally, if you wanted to get to broker status in New York, you have to start as a salesperson first, and you have to put in X number of hours or X number of sales or credits or whatever, however the credits are calculated. And then you would get to like,

your broker license and then you can open up your brokerage and then you can have others working underneath you. Because as a salesperson, you can’t keep commissions for yourself, they have to go through a broker. Brokers who’s kept, and I’m sure it’s the same in Dallas, I’m sure it’s similar in your state. So, but what it does, if as an attorney, it actually allows you to skip the testing requirements and the experience requirements. It kind of just give you like a pass like in Monopoly, you you just go straight to, you know, go.

Dylan Silver (24:07.213)
Yeah.

Vitaliy Volpov (24:08.632)
pass right to right to the start and you get your $200 or whatever it is.

Dylan Silver (24:12.43)
The Texas exam, Vitaly, for real estate is actually quite hard. Some people disagree with me on this. I think there’s more people in agreement than disagree. We have all these interesting laws out here, specifically, we’ve got ranches and land and oil and all this interesting, and I want to say even to be a real estate attorney out here in Texas, it’s a slightly different exam than it is in other states.

What I learned going through real estate school is here’s all the laws, memorize them, don’t ever use them, you’re not an attorney. So then I’ve always thought, know, what an interesting thing. I don’t know if attorneys are generally aware, and maybe they are, but I don’t know if attorneys in Texas or New York are generally aware that they have this pathway to sell real estate that’s kind of, you know, another vertical that they could get into.

Have you along the way met other attorney brokers?

Vitaliy Volpov(25:12.31)
I have. It’s not that common. to sort of answer your question, most attorneys are aware. The thing is, they just kind of look at it as it’s beneath them or it’s, you know, they’re a little bit more like they turn up their noses to stuff like that. Well, I’m an attorney. You know what I mean? It’s more of the white shoe mentality. I’m like, I’m a higher profession. I know more and I’m, you know, my

The things that I do for clients are at a higher level, they’re more important. And I wouldn’t stoop myself down to making money on commissions, that type of thing. And at least that’s the sense that I get. Obviously, this is totally anecdotal for me. And then other attorneys who know it, who know they can do it, it’s just they see it as a lot of hassle too. And they say, I don’t want bother. I already went through law school. I’m already doing this thing that I’m good at.

Dylan Silver (25:52.451)
Yeah.

yeah.

Vitaliy Volpov (26:10.666)
or I kind of know how all the different parts and pieces of it work. Now I have to learn something else. I don’t want to do that. And that’s, that’s how most of them look at it. And they don’t see the opportunities there. But I think it takes a certain type of person and personality to want to pursue those opportunities also.

Dylan Silver (26:26.318)
It’s huge. mean to give it an example of how big it is and tell me if I’m wrong here. Real estate agents of course who are not licensed attorneys can’t write their own contracts. Brokers can’t write their own contracts without going through an attorney. If you’re an attorney and you’re a real estate broker you can write your own contracts and you know everyone who’s got like legal questions or if you’re doing creative deals or if you’re involved in any way in anything

with an element of urgency regarding foreclosure or any type of creative deals subject to seller financing that require attorney involvement. It’s just this huge opportunity. I would love to see more people in that space in general, and I think we are seeing, but specifically attorneys. I’ve often asked myself, how come…

there’s not more people in this space, you kind of answered that question there. We are coming up on time here though, Vitaly. Where can folks go if they maybe want to learn more about your business or to reach out to you, get a hold of you in any way?

Vitaliy Volpov(27:30.158)
Yeah, so I’m actually on YouTube and I have a couple of channels. So the one that I recently started where I’m most active right now, it’s called Chalkboard Real Estate, which is basically where I share my knowledge and kind of break things down using this, you know, doodly format. So essentially I’m breaking down real estate investing concepts and strategies and all that stuff, but it’s, you know, faceless. Essentially I’m off camera, I’m narrating it and you know,

you get to see kind of the details, the equations, the formulas, the concepts displayed on the screen. So Chalkboard Real Estate on YouTube, that’s one. The other one is Succeed REI, which is my kind of like original main YouTube channel, where I’ve been posting videos like this, interviewing guests as well, and kind of doing talking head videos. So yeah, just, you know, if anyone’s interested, they can find me there.

And Reach Out, I also have, I run my own kind of group called House Hack Mastery on school.com where people can come join for free, doesn’t cost anything, ask me questions directly, connect, those types of things.

Dylan Silver (28:43.398)
Well, it’s been a pleasure having you on here. I’m going to join the school community. I’m on school myself. But congrats on all the success and to your future success. Thanks for coming on here, Vitaly.

Vitaliy Volpov (28:49.527)
Awesome.

Thanks Dylan.

Appreciate it. All right. Thanks a lot. Have a good one.