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From Corporate Telecom to Real Estate Freedom: Building Cash-Flow Rentals, Systems, and Time Back

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Show Summary

In this inspiring interview, real estate investor Brian Biernat shares his journey from telecom engineer to successful real estate entrepreneur in Jackson, Mississippi. Discover how faith, resilience, and strategic focus shaped his path, offering valuable lessons for aspiring investors.

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    Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

    Brian Biernat (00:00)
    But at the end of the day, know, real estate for us was the mechanism that was escape W2 at 55. And, ⁓ you know, it’s all about time. I think I took…

    Someone was asking me like, how many days off did you take last year? said, I don’t know, 50 or 55 vacation days. And like, how do you do that? go, I did, we just decided to do it. I said, our business doesn’t stop when we stop.

    Quentin Edmond (01:53)
    Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I am excited to be here today. This guest, he probably, I don’t know if he intentionally did it, but he used a reverse psychology on me. Normally I’m the one that trying to make people feel comfortable. He just had a way to make me feel comfortable. He started asking me questions and I’m like, you know, wait, who’s the guest and who’s the host? Who’s interviewing you? Who? But no, I say that jokingly, but this gentleman.

    to me just so far has a way of just giving information and just sincerely caring about people. And I’m sure that’s going to come out. And he didn’t say that, but this is what I’m picking up on. with just his life, I mean, just well-lived. And again, I’m going let you guys just hear from him, all the different things that he do. But I just know this is going to be a great episode. And so I want to introduce to some, present to some, and introduce to others, as they say, Mr. Brian Biernat

    Mr. Brian, how you doing today,

    Brian Biernat (02:50)
    I’m doing great, Q. Appreciate you having me on.

    Quentin Edmond (02:53)
    Absolutely. I’m glad you’re here. ⁓ Love your personality, man. Just love just your whole spirit and your account in this, man. And it has sucked me in and I think it’s going to suck out listeners in as well. And so what I want to do, man, I want to dive right into it. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. Like, what are you up to business-wise, real estate-wise? Also, if you can give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got started. We love the hero’s journey.

    and then let them know where you are geographically in the world. So Mr. Brian sir you had before,

    Brian Biernat (03:24)
    Okay, thanks Q. So we’re in Jackson, Mississippi. So I relocated here when I was a telecom executive about little over 10 years ago. we got into real estate back in 2017, started researching some different things and we ended up jumping in October 2017, like most people.

    you know, ⁓ trying to find deals, ⁓ you know, wholesaling. ⁓ But anyway, was, it’s been a journey, but we started 2017. We ⁓ eventually got into short-term rentals in 2019, and that’s really where we found our niche. You know, they say, you know, go to these events and, you you have that shiny object syndrome. Everyone’s presenting all these different things and…

    Oh, I want to do that. Oh, I want to do this. And you’re like, can’t do everything, right? You got to figure out what’s you, right? What resonates with you? Some people want to be fine hold landlords. Some people want to do furnished rentals. Everyone’s doing something, right? They’re all doing different things.

    But for the most part,

    You know, we’ve been very, very fortunate. ⁓ You know, we’ve… ⁓

    We really kind of evolved our business ⁓ on the furnished rental side to more 30 plus or what people call midterm rentals, probably in the June, 2021, June, 2022 timeframe. ⁓ Our initial goal with getting into business was obviously we wanted to build something, create something that we owned. We could pass along someday to our kids. We really wanted our time back. I’ve been in the corporate world for 28 years.

    made four different moves across country back and forth and really wanted this to be the last stop. And so real estate, there was a couple of events in life that came up, medical situation for me and my wife and kind of got us really thinking about things and we’re people of faith, we have a lot of faith and we just believe the Lord was leading us in this direction. We ended up jumping in and as we started evolving our business, ⁓ we did,

    I like to do a lot of different things. I know that’s not a great thing, but we try to stay, our focus is on furnished rentals. We have evolved a little bit into the long-term rental side where we’ve picked up some long-term rentals only because we were doing turnkeys. For the last couple of years, we were doing turnkey rentals, selling to other investors in state, out of state. And then I said, you know, really need to start, we need to start holding some of these properties. There’s a lot of advantages from an accounting standpoint as well. So, you know, we also have a couple of co-living properties.

    Quentin Edmond (06:44)
    Yeah.

    Yeah.

    Brian Biernat (06:59)
    That’s

    kind of a new thing going on right now. And our market is very untapped. So we do have a couple of co-living properties where you’re renting rooms by the week for a set amount of weeks to start. But anyway, that all be said, we’re really zeroed in right now on all things cashflow. We’re only buying and cherry picking in certain areas that make sense for us. We’re not really ⁓ where we were before. We were buying in multiple zip codes in the area. Now we’re kind of honed down to maybe three or four.

    And then just, you we’re not doing a lot of deals. We’re just focusing on, you know, spec, good houses, good areas, specific purposes. Um, we are, we do have a digital asset we’re working on. We’ll talk about that later. Uh, that’s under construction. You know, we’re going to have that come out here in a week or two, but that’s pretty much where we, you know, that’s pretty much where we came from. We, we actually bought our first two properties in Indianapolis, Indiana.

    Quentin Edmond (07:50)
    Wow.

    Brian Biernat (07:50)
    I won’t

    get into details beyond that, but there was a very public figure that was on Fox News. We got, we followed him. We, we, we jumped in with him and you know, it went sideways, but even though I went sideways as my friend said, you gotta, you gotta, you got a very expensive seminar, but it worked out well. And I really wouldn’t change a thing because through those trials and there’s adversity is how we got plugged into the network room today, how we learn.

    A lot of the things we’ve learned today and being a, being an engineer, telecom engineer, like I could do my job in my sleep. I, I was really very good at it. You know, different things, project management, engineering, planning, estate was something that, you know, I had to learn and I wanted, I wanted to learn it all like today, right? I didn’t want to wait. It was a little impatient. I saw, I saw the benefit and meeting all these young bucks down at this first function in January of 2018.

    seeing people half my age making two and three times what I was making a year. I’m like, whoa, what do they know that I don’t know? Right. And honestly, it gave me a burn. It gave me a burn because I was like, I’m in the office and I’m like, I’m seeing these messages. Man, this deal, that deal, I can’t respond. I’m in a meeting. I’m on a call. So it was a burn for me. You know, we worked lunches, we worked after work.

    Quentin Edmond (08:50)
    Yeah. ⁓

    Mm-hmm.

    Brian Biernat (09:09)
    You know, we closed during lunches, we saw properties at lunches, we did stuff after hours. We always gave our employer 100 % of our time, ⁓ firmly believe in that. We didn’t rob them of our time. We gave them an honest day’s work, an honest day’s wage. But at the end of the day, know, real estate for us was the mechanism that was escape W2 at 55. And, ⁓ you know, it’s all about time. I think I took…

    Someone was asking me like, how many days off did you take last year? said, I don’t know, 50 or 55 vacation days. And like, how do you do that? go, I did, we just decided to do it. I said, our business doesn’t stop when we stop. So, you you asked about bottlenecks, you know, we pretty much have a lot of things in place. We’re not perfect. We’re continuing to continuously improving. Anyway, that’s kind of our start and we’re in the Jackson, Mississippi Metro. Someone said, why, why Jackson? said,

    It wasn’t my idea. said the good Lord opened the door down here in telecom. I thought I was coming here to finish my telecom career. And in fact, that’s a true statement. I did. just didn’t end how I thought it was going to end. Probably better.

    Quentin Edmond (10:46)
    Yes, sir. Mr. Brian, you said so many great things, man. One of the things, of course, stood out when you started talking about your faith, your belief in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, man. And so, and how you just ended said, you know, you came to Jackson for one reason, and it actually played out the way, you know, it played out just not the way you thought it was going to be. And so it just reminds me, it reminds me of the scripture where it says,

    Brian Biernat (11:09)
    Well.

    Quentin Edmond (11:11)
    We make our plans, but the Lord determines the outcome. And so go ahead.

    Brian Biernat (11:15)
    Exactly. Yeah. Well,

    I was going to say like, you know, we knew, we knew back in 20, we knew back in 20, 2014, a friend of mine, put me in touch with a friend of his for a CTO position with a company in North Carolina. And that kind of started the ball that started, you know, both Amy and I felt like Amy’s my wife. We all both felt like, okay, God’s getting ready to do something. Our oldest son was going to college in September of 2015.

    We had a senior coming up and then our youngest was going to be going in eighth grade. So we knew God was working. We knew things were in motion even before really probably early 2014. Anyway, long and short is when he opened the door to come down here, it wasn’t a surprise. We were clearly ready. And then we were kind of in a season of waiting. And then all of a sudden, God said, OK, it’s time.

    Quentin Edmond (12:08)
    Yeah.

    Brian Biernat (12:08)
    And like

    all these things happened and people were like, I don’t know how you did all that. I decided to do a thing, man. God opened all those doors. God did all that. I said, I I’m not that I’d love to take credit for it, but I’m just not that good. I mean, it’s just, he moved to lightning speed. In fact, my, both my, my two older boys are in the process right now of, of the Lord’s movement in their life. And they kept asking me, well, how’d you, how do you know when I said you’ll know, because I said,

    you know, as you read scripture and pray, God will give you peace about things, but he’ll put people, should, you know, everyone should have their three or four people they can confide in, you know, like all my prayer partners, you call them your tribe, whatever it is, but you have people that, that, that put porn to your life, that pray for you, that you can counsel with. And I always was big about talking to them and just, just pray about it and them what God’s telling you, know, tell, you know, tell me if you feel like, and we always try to make moves. We try to always be led. We didn’t want to force.

    Quentin Edmond (12:44)
    Yes, sir.

    Brian Biernat (13:01)
    We don’t want to kick open the door that God closed, right? We didn’t want to kick it open. we’re like, we’re not kidding. And that’s why I told my boys, just trust the Lord, make sure it’s His doing. And you know, they’re learning and they’re 29 and 27 and 23. So I said, they have to figure that out, right? They have to, their own journeys. I told them how it worked for us. And anyway.

    Quentin Edmond (13:18)
    Yeah. Yeah.

    Yeah,

    Nah, man, you said so many things that kind of, you know, parallels and kind of gets my mind working, especially with alignment. And so I’ll say this, Mr. Brian, I say once every podcast, I say to my guests that destiny has no wasted moments, right? No matter what we go through in life, there are moments that kind of make us who we are. You know,

    We noticed that all things work together for our good, for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. So it’s like everything is compounding and working towards where you are now. And so I would love to know, throughout your journey, I mean, you said you had four different moves across the country, and you landed in Jackson. You was a former telecom engineer. These are different moments that kind of made you who you are today, that led you to where you are.

    So I would love to know, what did you learn about yourself? Did you learn discipline? Did you learn humility? Did you learn, like me, sometimes you can be stubborn when your wife say something and you don’t want to hear it, and you’re like, man, like I was stubborn the time. So what has this journey?

    Brian Biernat (14:28)
    Yes to

    all. In the words of Jim Carrey, yes to all. Got on my. ⁓ So I would say for me. ⁓ So, yes, I all those things apply, but I would say that probably the first one of the most pivotal points in our life, Amy and I were married. We had just had we were getting ready to have our first child. I was very concerned about.

    Quentin Edmond (14:34)
    Yes, we did.

    Brian Biernat (14:56)
    How am gonna do this? She’s gonna stay home. I would make him a 30,000 a year. I came out of the military, I was in the Air Force eight and a half years. I came out of the Air Force, transitioned into telecom with a local provider and I threw papers for 18 months so she could stay home with my wife. So we could make an extra $800 a month, okay? So we figured that out and we got going real well and I told the person I worked for, my route manager, this is temporary. Now I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but it was 18 months is what temporary meant, okay?

    But that was like 4 AM wakeups during the week, go through the route, shower, go into my job as the air force. And then eventually, you know, with the local wireless company I was working with and Sunday morning was a 1 AM wake up, go down there, get loaded up, get home by 5 30, get back to sleep, go to church for nine o’clock. So anyway, we did that for 18 months. We rented a, you know, three bedroom, small three bedroom, one bath house and in the Northern, North part of Oklahoma cities where we were, I stationed at Tinker.

    And I would say that when, know, so God started working on us, you we were new Christians and, know, I’d found, I’d gone out and when I went to Southwestern Bell, I guess I shouldn’t have said the name, but well, they’re not around anymore. They’re now part of AT &T again. But anyway, when I was, I was putting my feelers out there for opportunities and God opened the door in Virginia. And I would say that was probably one of the most pivotal

    know, directions, things he opened up a door to my telecom career. And when that door opened, you know, we went through it. We relocated to Virginia. And I would say, you know, our growth as believers, the church we went to, the company I worked for, I was there for years, ended up going to St. Louis. And there was another pivotal moment where I had lost, I had gone to one employer and then I

    Like within a year, I’d gotten a severance package for 40 weeks after only being there 10 months. And God opened, you God kicked the door, slammed the door shut, I lost the job ⁓ for no fault of my own really. Just got caught up in a situation and I was a, you know, was ⁓ collateral damage. And it was, and that was substantiated later on, I found out someone told me, but the long and short is God opened that door to go back to Virginia.

    And that was pivotal. I went back to Virginia and then, you know, was there the next 12 years got promoted as a planner, went all the way to senior director. And, but those were pivotal moments for us. And then of course, you know, the time between 13 and 14, eventually 15, when we were, we were looking at possibly going to Orlando, then possibly going to North Carolina and then got open the doors out of the blue to go to Jackson. So, you know, those are.

    Pivotal moments of my telecom career and real estate really never entered into my mind. I’ll be honest with you. We moved here in September of 15. I went and had a physical in December, followed up with my urologist in January and then found out I had prostate cancer. And so, you know, God took care of all that. That was in March, took care of that, was good to go by May. And then my wife on our anniversary, two months later,

    couple weeks after anniversary or celebrating late. Now the next morning she’s been, she’d been riding her bike while she was riding on the trace on the north side of the trace and she got hit on her bicycle by a car. And so when those two events happened, it was like, okay, God, we hear you. You know, we need to do something different. Didn’t want her to go to work. Didn’t want her to get a job. She was pretty much staying home. So he kind of led us to this real estate thing. And that’s kind of how it all got started.

    Quentin Edmond (19:11)
    Yeah. Man, Mr. Brian, thank you, man. Thank you for what I call the gift of your vulnerability. And I know you talked about having prayer partners, accountability partners. And I believe that healing happens in community and healing happens through the things we talk about through confession. James 5 16, one of my favorite scriptures, it says confess your faults one to another so that you can be healed. And so I believe, you know, just

    the gift of your vulnerability, having community around you, those two components, it brings the element of healing. And I say that to say, thank you, man, for the gift of your vulnerability. You are my brother in Christ, so I consider us community. And so what you’re actually giving to our audience is a real healing component. By showing people how, when you trust in God, when you trust his plan, but then you listen to what he tell you to do next.

    no matter if it’s cancer, if it’s getting hit by a car, you still want to be okay. Healing is still going to come because you are being led and you are leaning into what God is telling you to do. And so I say all that to say, thank you, man. Thank you for sharing your story because I believe right now it’s causing healing for somebody. And they never would have imagined that it would come listening to a real estate podcast, but I really believe you sharing.

    Your testimony is starting to heal other people that’s listening. So I just wanted to say thank you for knowing that.

    Brian Biernat (20:37)
    Welcome. Amen. Yeah.

    Quentin Edmond (20:38)
    Now, let me

    ask you this community corporate housing. What’s the next goal for you guys? What are you looking to solve next?

    Brian Biernat (20:46)
    So it’s actually convenient, convenient corporate housing. No, no, you’re fine. No, no, you’re fine. We just met, you’re good. So Convenient Corporate Housing is our first housing company. So we are working on a digital asset. ⁓ We have a gentleman we’re working with ⁓ and we’re gonna be doing some coaching. So let’s leave it at that. Probably, you know, I think we’re a week away from our first live on Facebook. We’re gonna do some things.

    Quentin Edmond (20:49)
    Please, I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry. Sorry about that.

    Yeah.

    Brian Biernat (21:15)
    One of the other things we do is, if you notice my shirt says Dealmaker. So we host a meetup, Dealmaker Jackson. It’s part of the bigger dealmaker, elite dealmaker that was founded and started by Jim Ingersoll, one of our mentors, great guy, godly man, biggest go-giver. If you’ve never read the book, The Go-Giver, highly recommend you read that book. But Jim’s a great guy. started, someone planted a seed with him and now I think there’s 30 plus.

    Quentin Edmond (21:18)
    Yes, sir.

    Yeah. Go get it.

    Brian Biernat (21:40)
    dealmaker meetups across the U S we’re getting ready in three weeks to go for the big one. I called it. I called the Godfather Godfather, a big daddy dealmaker is what I call it. But anyway, he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like praise. He doesn’t handle. He wants to be just, you he’s not, he went, it’s all about everybody else. The man is very humble, but anyway, we, host that meetup here locally, my wife and I, and, ⁓ you know, we bring other investors in, whether they be lenders, we have

    Quentin Edmond (21:51)
    Yeah. That’s.

    Brian Biernat (22:08)
    other people that sponsor the meetings for us. But that’s something we were, two people, Jim and another person came to us and asked us, we pray about doing this. We said yes. And the reason we did it was, people poured into us and they still continue to pour into us as both believers, as investors. Nobody has it all figured out. You’re constantly, enjoy the journey, right? Because it’s the journey.

    Right. It doesn’t end right. It doesn’t end until God calls us home. Right. So enjoy that journey, the journey. It’s all about the journey. Right. You look back and no one wants to hear about the person that never made a mistake and everything went perfect. They never had a problem. You know, if that exists somewhere on planet earth, please let me know because I have yet to find it. I’ve yet to meet that person. But, you know, we all go through stuff and it’s

    Quentin Edmond (22:44)
    Yeah.

    Brian Biernat (23:02)
    It’s through those valleys and trials that we earn our stripes, our faith grows, and we can look back and go, God, look what God did here, look what he did there. So, you know, it’s like I used to tell, like I heard someone say, you know, you don’t get a Goliath, you don’t get a David moment without a Goliath, right? So if you don’t have any Goliaths in your life, you’re not going to have those David moments, right? And you got to have that faith like David and like Daniel, right? And the lion’s den. But anyway, ⁓

    We, I just lost my train of thought. Anyway, so we’re focused on, we’re focused on growing this little community here locally. We want to be able to help people find deals, fund deals. It’s a place where, you know, people can buy and sell houses in the meeting. We have all different speakers from all different backgrounds. I don’t give them the agenda. They asked, I said, speak on whatever you feel you need to speak on. I don’t, you know, it’s like, I would never tell my preacher.

    You know what the preach and you know what the preach on a Sunday morning or or my life group teacher, what to teach. I said you, you, you speak what’s on your heart. You teach what’s on your heart. So we have a guy coming. He has a lender out of Texas. He’s coming this month. We had my friend from California or way, way Idaho, and he didn’t even have a PowerPoint, but he gave a tremendous presentation, tremendous testimony on things in his life. And he’s just, he’s just about helping people. So this is really about helping.

    investors, helping young investors. Somebody said, well, what’s in it for you? I said, well, you know, sometimes when you, you you go to be a blessing, you go to be a blessing to others, and then they end up being a blessing to you. used to go to, in Virginia, when we lived there last four years where they’re my, my, uh, my son’s father and all, I used to go preach in the prisons in Greenville. Uh, you know, five to eight, you guys are on five, eight year stretches for drug type stuff. And I always said, we go in there.

    to be a blessing to them, to preach the gospel, to pray with them. And then we turn out, we turn around, we walk out of there, we’re just like, man, you hear these guys testimony about generation after generation after generation making the same mistakes. got grandpa, dad, and son all in the same jail, right? And you’re like, you know, there, but by the grace of God, go I, right? We’ve all made mistakes.

    Quentin Edmond (24:56)
    Ha! Yep.

    Brian Biernat (25:15)
    We’re not going to share them on this podcast, but I’m sure there’s times where you look back and go, wow, I, yeah, I did something I shouldn’t have done there. And I thank God, you know, but yeah, I don’t know how I got off on a tangent there. I apologize, but that’s, but that’s where, that’s, it won’t be the first time that, but for us, we’re, looking at, you know, we’re, we’re looking to, you know, strategically, uh,

    Quentin Edmond (25:31)
    Yeah.

    Brian Biernat (25:41)
    optimize and add and really focus on the marketing aspect of of our Canadian Court Housing, and then also be able to give back through our coaching program that we’re going to release.

    Quentin Edmond (25:50)
    Yeah. I love it, man. I mean, I know you feel like it went on in tangent, but all of it tracked, all of it was sincere and all of it mattered. mean, and I just thank you, man. I feel like I could talk to you for another easy like 30 minutes because I’m like, man, I feel like there’s so much more I could ask you, so much more we can get started with. But let’s do this. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing.

    How can it get in contact with you when you’re depressed?

    Brian Biernat (26:18)
    So ⁓ we’re on Facebook. ⁓ I’m on Facebook. My wife and I are both on Facebook. We’re on LinkedIn. ⁓ I can throw my cell out there if that’s OK. You can text or call me at 769-209-7776. Feel free to hit me up any time. We can talk more. ⁓ You can hit me on the inbox. You can text me. Either those platforms we post pretty regularly on Facebook.

    Quentin Edmond (26:29)
    Sure is.

    That’s it.

    Brian Biernat (26:48)
    We do have a deal, if you want to check out what’s going on in Jackson, Dealmaker Jackson, we have a Facebook group. It’s open, it’s not private yet. ⁓ So you feel free to check us out there as well. So.

    Quentin Edmond (27:01)
    Mr. Brian, I got to say three things to you, sir. First, thank you for your time. You can be anywhere in the world. You have a family that I’m sure adores you, a family that I’m sure you are in sync with. So you giving us your time, I don’t take that lightly. So thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. I think your understanding is better than some people that I talk to. Jesus talked in parables. He spoke in parables. So he designed stories to really have an impact.

    Brian Biernat (27:16)
    Appreciate that.

    Quentin Edmond (27:28)
    And so I thank you for your story because I believe it’s planting seeds and people. We may not see the growth. We may never see it, but it’s still the seed that we plant that people, when somebody’s on the water and that it could actually grow. And so I’m sure you planted seeds that’s going to grow in somebody maybe even years later. So thank you for your story. And lastly, thank you for your perspective, man. Thank you for the way you think your mindset and bringing that perspective and that way of thought to this podcast. So I got to say again.

    Thank you, Mr. Brian, for being here. I appreciate you.

    Brian Biernat (27:58)
    Yeah, thank you for having me, Hugh, it’s been great.

    Quentin Edmond (28:01)
    Absolutely. So listen, you heard Mr. Brian, look into the show notes, get in contact with him, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here. I keep telling you, we’re going to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Brian. And I tell y’all, know, send a little comment in the link or send a little comment in the chat and be like, yeah, I don’t know if you did it this time, but you’re never going to do it because we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people. keep telling you. And so Mr. Brian, thank you again. And everyone else listening, y’all have a fantastic.

    day. All right, Mr. Brian, we are.

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