From Struggle to Strength: The Power of Living Recovery Centers

Brett McCollum (00:00.529)
Alright guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Brett McCollum and I’m here today with Jim Boad. Today we’re gonna be talking about sober living, recovering housing. Before we do guys, at Investor Fuel we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Jim, how are you man? Doing good man, this is good getting to talk to you, catching up. We

Jim Boad (00:23.086)
I am doing amazing, how about yourself?

Brett McCollum (00:29.733)
Got to know each other a little bit about what you do and I’m really excited for this one. We haven’t had lot of opportunities to talk about this subject matter, but before we do, can you do us a favor Jim? Kind of rewind a bit, catch us up to speed. Who is Jim Bogue?

Jim Boad (00:42.862)
All right, well, I’m a real estate investor for about 25 years now. I really cut my teeth in the fix and flip world. I started fix and flipping, gosh, the late 90s. I just got out of the army and I really had no clue what I was gonna do, but I had a guy in the army give me some Carlton sheets. I think they were videotapes that I watched.

Brett McCollum (01:05.68)
yeah.

Jim Boad (01:06.254)
Yeah, so kind of didn’t really jive with that method, but then I found a book that I jived with, Buy It, Fix It, Flip It, Profit. And that kind of just set me down a really cool path. I bought one house with a hard money lender, paid ridiculous fees and ridiculous amounts because I didn’t know any better. But it got me into a house and I fixed it up. It was me, my best friend at the time, my wife helped, my mom, my dad.

Brett McCollum (01:14.833)
Uh-huh.

Brett McCollum (01:22.865)
course.

Jim Boad (01:31.086)
Whole family kind of helped me remodel this first home. We sold it made a really good profit I made more than I made the whole time I was in the army for three years off one house and Wasn’t that much it was only 40 grand. I didn’t make a lot of money when I was in the army so But and then we just rolled that in and we just kind of kept rolling and I got myself in the Phoenix area to where I was running about 10 to 15 houses at a time and I think we cranked out about 500 homes in the metro Phoenix area before the market crash

Brett McCollum (01:41.691)
Wow.

Jim Boad (02:00.608)
And that was pretty devastating. Kind of shifted us in a new way. And ultimately we ended up in the Metro Seattle area and we started, started back up again as a real estate team and then got back into investing and then got into that BRRRR method to where we were buying them, renovating them, renting them, refinancing them, and then repeating it. And right as that really started kicking off, I had about 25 houses rolling and I was collecting rent on them. COVID came in.

Brett McCollum (02:04.731)
Sure, I bet.

Brett McCollum (02:23.665)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Boad (02:31.008)
And it devastated me. I honestly didn’t know how I was going to make it through that. Most of my people stopped paying rent and, you know, I talked with them and said, what can I do? How can I help you? And they said, no, we just don’t have to pay rent. There’s nothing you can do about it. And they were wrong. There was pretty much nothing I could do about it. So I was I was honestly thought I was about to lose.

Brett McCollum (02:32.305)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (02:47.195)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (02:51.611)
Yes.

Jim Boad (02:53.536)
Everything I’d worked so hard for up to this point in my life, I’d been putting 20 plus years in at that point into my retirement, to what I thought I was gonna do, and I thought I was gonna lose every one of my homes. Until I stumbled upon a small little blurb for a coaching program about group homes. Didn’t really know what group homes meant, didn’t really understand it, but it just, looked like a possible escape patch. The guy was talking about how he was thriving in this market, making money, and it was a recession-proof market with rental properties, so.

Brett McCollum (03:10.406)
Hmm.

Jim Boad (03:21.506)
I already had a bunch of rentals and quite a few of them were getting vacant now because I kind of started figuring out how to get people out of them, but it still was a slow process. And that’s what put me into the path of sober living because there’s quite a few models within that group home module you can run, know, assisted living, can run, you youth, you know, coming out of foster care. There’s different levels of, you know, like elderly care that you can do. But what really resonated with me was the sober living because I come from a pretty

Brett McCollum (03:22.705)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (03:30.757)
Yeah.

Jim Boad (03:50.998)
hard drug background from my parents and a lot of friends and things like that. I kind of grew up around drugs. I was blessed that I got to see it and it didn’t resonate with me either. So I got to stay away from drugs, but I really watched it devastate a lot of lives. So it kind of became this personal mission, not only to save my whole retirement in my career, but also it gave me a pathway to really try to help people in the community that I’ve always wanted to help. So that’s kind of what put me into that. And then

Brett McCollum (03:56.977)
you

Brett McCollum (04:16.581)
Yeah, no doubt.

Jim Boad (04:19.222)
My first year I ended up getting 12 sober living homes up and running. And now I have 30 lots that I’m getting ready to build on and all of them are gonna go into my sober living recovery housing portfolio.

Brett McCollum (04:25.157)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (04:33.553)
Wow, dude, we got a lot. I’m gonna take a breath for a second, because there’s a lot. Yeah, that’s a lot though. Let’s back up a little bit. So you were in the army, is that correct? How long were you in the service?

Jim Boad (04:38.136)
Perfect, me too.

Jim Boad (04:47.651)
Correct.

Jim Boad (04:51.298)
I did a three year contract. I met my wife when I was stationed in New York and if it wasn’t for her I would have been a lifer.

Brett McCollum (04:58.703)
Yeah, wow. Well, thank you anyway for serving. That was we always appreciate and love all of our veterans. So thank you for that. Were you in the army? Because it’s funny that the people that I know from that are successful and I always say this in this show is ex-military is.

Jim Boad (05:06.328)
Absolutely.

Brett McCollum (05:17.609)
absolutely one of the highest performing people in real estate success. It’s a, there’s so many people that like, yeah, I like, yes, yes, it’s just what it is. So you met your wife. How long have you guys been together now?

Jim Boad (05:31.982)
Well, we are flying out of town Sunday for our 25th anniversary. So we’ve been together for 28, 29 years now.

Brett McCollum (05:37.819)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (05:41.276)
Good for you, man. That’s incredible. I love hearing people’s quote unquote origin story of where they started. And please don’t take this the wrong way when I say this. You aged yourself a little bit, though, when you say Carlton Sheets.

Jim Boad (05:58.966)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (06:01.721)
Yeah. And I was like, man, because a lot of mentor figures of mine that I like, they got their start from Carlton Sheets. And I’m like, you’re not that old, by the way, just so you’re not like the 80 year old guys in the 75 year old guys that are like, yeah, I’ve Carlton Sheets and I met Carlton when he was, you know, just stuff like that. But yeah, when he said that, that’s cool.

Jim Boad (06:12.184)
Wow.

Jim Boad (06:22.286)
That’s fantastic.

Brett McCollum (06:27.855)
What year was it when you did that first transaction that did? When was that? Do remember?

Jim Boad (06:32.686)
I was 2000. I started it in 2000 and I sold it in 2001. I still remember the house. was in the Metro Phoenix area.

Brett McCollum (06:40.077)
Okay, well even then.

Wow, even that, well, Phoenix wasn’t then what it is today, huh? I mean, I’ve heard the, yeah. We don’t need to talk about it, but that’s a whole different conversation. The 2000, 2001 market, though, even with the dot com bubble and things going on, you kind of now, including the one we’re now, been in three different cycles.

Jim Boad (06:48.576)
no.

Jim Boad (06:54.702)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (07:12.561)
Really you could call it six because it was out and out and you know you really call it that but three different downturns you might call it that And that’s where you cut your teeth

Jim Boad (07:16.546)
Yeah.

Jim Boad (07:20.27)
And it made it through. Yeah, I was literally just talking about this the other day on a walk with my wife about the knowledge that you gained from coming through these turns in the markets and how you can become so bulletproof over time.

Brett McCollum (07:37.454)
Well, I want to that’s we’re going to definitely get to that part of it, because that’s definitely something that when you were talking and sharing that that I wanted to touch on, because there’s a lot of people listening to this that need to hear something from you, Jim. OK, so you do that. You start on your first flip, though. Were you full time in real estate at that point? Were you doing something else for you or what was life like back then?

Jim Boad (08:01.486)
I was not really, I was blessed that I was using my GI fund. I was going to college. I was not a scholar. I joined the army out of desperation. I mean, if I wasn’t a reasonably decent athlete, I wouldn’t have graduated high school. So, I mean.

Brett McCollum (08:15.281)
Yeah.

Jim Boad (08:19.886)
I didn’t read, you know, I didn’t read my first, the first book I ever read was that Buy It, Fix It, Flip It book. I’m not proud of that. It’s just, I didn’t come from an education background. I didn’t get it. I was a latchkey kid. So, you know, and I don’t know if I’m dating myself again. I don’t know if people even know what latchkey kids are anymore.

Brett McCollum (08:28.859)
Wow.

Brett McCollum (08:36.399)
Yeah. You did. I’m old enough to know what it is, but you just dated yourself again for sure. Yeah, that’s funny. Yeah. you start, if you do that, how many you ran for and through until like 2008? Is that correct when you were doing, like you said, how many homes?

Jim Boad (08:43.127)
Hahaha

Jim Boad (08:56.814)
Well, I did about 500 fix and flips in the Metro Phoenix area.

Brett McCollum (09:01.263)
Yeah, that’s a lot in an eight year swing.

Jim Boad (09:04.566)
Yes, well, it kind of ties into something you were just talking about. mean, going through all these markets, one of the biggest keys to my success has always been coaching and training, finding mastermind groups, you know, finding seminars. I mean, I really just I dove in and just chewed those up. And it’s what really helped me through all of those things. I was I, you know, if I could have been at a higher level mastermind at the time, I would have done even better.

just because I would have gotten those better strategies, but the strategies that I got come through it. right, 07, I stopped investing and I built a real estate team and we started getting REOs. So we started working with the banks about six months before the market really crashed. And it’s just because something that the guy at one of my masterminds was talking about. And I’m going to tell you, I hated my life, but I made loads of money when the market crashed because we had hundreds of listings.

Started a prop. I made more money doing property preservation changing out locks for the banks than I did in real estate We killed it in the market downturn, but not in but not in the way you would think it’s and it sucked I really it made me almost want to leave the real estate business because I I hated being a Property preservation guy and just it just wasn’t it was a garbage. It wasn’t fun It wasn’t enjoyable is literally twice the work for half the hour, but we we got but we but we survived it and That’s purely education

Brett McCollum (10:20.101)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, I mean, I was just talking to somebody else. Yeah, I was just talking to somebody else that said the same, that’s saying the same things of like, you know, in down markets like this, you tend to work twice, twice as hard for half the money. And that seems to be the case for a lot of people. But what’s in what you said was, it’s the people we surround ourselves with, because you were able to make a pivot before everybody else lost their shorts.

Jim Boad (10:48.51)
Absolutely. I had investors I begged to not buy more homes, please stop investing. And they just told me, Jim, if you don’t find me more properties, somebody else will. So so I found more properties.

Brett McCollum (10:50.321)
and

Brett McCollum (11:02.437)
Yeah, yeah, just think it’s hearing that is an encouragement to so many people like to say, know what, you’re gonna learn lessons, but you don’t have to learn them as hard as some people have had to. And it’s unfortunate that sometimes it’s out of ignorance too. It’s not even out of, like, that you knew better. Sometimes we don’t know better, but you are blessed to be able to be surrounded by people that maybe did see things coming and you were able to make a pivot before it became a…

much larger issue.

Jim Boad (11:34.476)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (11:36.604)
Yeah, I think that’s special. really do. I’m back, like, because I’ve not been in the real estate space for nearly as long as you, but looking back over the things that I’ve been through and seen, it’s like, I just have been blessed to have people like Jim in my life where you’ve been through a lot of things and seen a lot, and then just simply just going, I don’t want to have to learn that lesson. Please tell me what not to. You know, because I think that’s more.

Jim Boad (12:01.196)
No, absolutely.

Brett McCollum (12:04.525)
And it’s more important to ask, what do I not do versus what am I supposed to do?

Jim Boad (12:08.675)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (12:10.129)
Yeah. So, all right, 2008 comes and goes. You’re in a, you’re doing the preservation thing. When did you, lead me up to 2020, what was going on?

Jim Boad (12:24.322)
What was happening up to 2020, so when I joined the Army, I had graduated high school from outside of the Metro Seattle area. So that is where my roots back to this area come back to. Phoenix was because I grew up as a child in Phoenix and my family moved there right before I graduated high school. So when I got out of the Army, I went back to Phoenix. So that’s what took me there was my mom and dad were there. And then my wife followed shortly after she graduated high school, not high school, college.

But what ended up happening after the market crashed, we ran for a while in the Phoenix area, but we also started a real estate team doing the same thing with the REOs, the bank owned homes up in the Seattle area, because the market was a lot better. We were selling average price down in the Metro Phoenix area, about $80,000 a home, where they were still in the twos and threes and fours up in the Seattle area. it just, I was getting 25 % commissions from Seattle for my team that were bigger than my full commissions in the Metro Phoenix area.

Brett McCollum (13:23.59)
Mm.

Jim Boad (13:24.298)
So we ultimately ended up closing up shop in the Metro Phoenix area and my wife and I moved back to the, well moved up to the Seattle area. And we ran that for a while with the real estate, but like I said, it really burnt me out. I didn’t enjoy what I was doing anymore. I am addicted to real estate investing. I would fix and flip homes for free. I just, and I have a couple of times. But I just, totally different story.

Brett McCollum (13:48.933)
Maybe I’m playing, but yeah. Yeah.

Jim Boad (13:54.2)
But I love it. It gets me out of bed in the morning. It still does. I love investing in real estate. Just really because I’m a developer. I’m a developer of properties and people. I love to make something out of that and nasty properties or raw land. And I love to help develop people to be able to do the same thing. it moved us up here and then I started reinvesting. About 2014 is when I started reinvesting in real estate again.

Brett McCollum (14:11.473)
Yeah, no doubt.

Jim Boad (14:22.534)
It was kind of like starting over just because the market’s so different up here. You’re dealing with such different environmental issues where you’re dealing with mold and rot and really different pitched roofs than you are in the metro Phoenix area where it’s stucco and pools were my hardest thing in the Phoenix area. know, we’re up here, it was just earth. And I mean, just so many, so many different issues that I ran into up here. I had a pretty stiff learning curve because I didn’t re-tap into that market right away. It took me about a year to tap back into it.

the real estate investor groups and all of the things that really, I get my biggest spikes whenever I’m in those types of things. So that’s what kind of started us kicking us off on that. And gosh, I lost track up here at about 200 homes. I worked a bit slower up here too, different labor pools from Washington to Arizona. Arizona had a much richer labor pool with a lot of skilled labor. Where up here, it was a much more expensive labor pool.

Brett McCollum (14:59.121)
Yeah, for sure.

Jim Boad (15:18.892)
and they tended to have less experience. It was a lot of learning curves up here. But now I’ve got a solid construction crew, and they just rock and roll for me nonstop.

Brett McCollum (15:32.465)
Yeah. Well, then we hit 2020. Yeah, that’s okay. And then we hit 2020 and we all know what was happening in the world. you know, unfortunately, for, you know, not pay rent, you know, and you mentioned that it like almost took you out. was happening there? What was going on?

Jim Boad (15:33.41)
kind of jumbled up through there.

Jim Boad (15:54.838)
Well, over half of my rentals at the time literally just stopped paying. So, I mean, and I finance these things. I get to keep a lot of equity in them. I keep about 30, 40 % equity in without putting down payments down because I use the BRRRR method and I buy heavily distressed homes or I build new. So,

Like I had a lot of equity, but I still had mortgage payments on every home. And, you know, those didn’t stop. And I still by law had to keep utilities on on these homes for all the people because I mean, it’s just, and then when you’re not paying for utilities, you use them freely. And then they were trash in the homes and it, and it cost about five to eight grand a house to get people evicted with my attorneys up here. And they weren’t evicting them. There was only two ways you could remove people from a home at the time. It was if you were going to sell it or if you were going to move into it.

So I did start selling homes in the market wasn’t great for it at the time and it wasn’t my plan. I just kept putting money out. mean, it just felt like I woke up every morning and just threw hundred dollar bills everywhere because I was just bleeding. I was bleeding to death and quickly.

Brett McCollum (16:56.602)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:05.179)
Yeah, I get that. Don’t I? For sure.

Jim Boad (17:06.132)
So, yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:12.879)
and then you stumbled into a, is that a course of sound? Like what and when was that?

Jim Boad (17:18.698)
I did. Do you have issues if I name their course? I don’t, I’m not an affiliate or anything. Cool. was a group home riches. They’re still out there. They’re still rocking. They market a lot. They had a really, they had a great course. It really put me on the proper path to where I wanted to be. When I got it, it was just an online course. They didn’t have any like one-on-one training.

Brett McCollum (17:22.137)
Not at all. no, no.

Jim Boad (17:38.222)
And it was really good. It was lacking quite a few things because I really I needed more help because because they would they go pretty general they kind of go for group homes like I said, they’re not really niche down like here’s how you run a sober living home where it was they kind of gave you the formula where you could go out there and start a sober living home an elderly care home, whatever they kept it pretty broad where you know.

Brett McCollum (17:39.312)
Mm-hmm.

Jim Boad (18:04.504)
But it really put me on that right path and I just jumped in. I jumped in quick and fast. like I said, I ended up having 12 of those up and running by the end of the year. And I was a little ahead of where most people start because I did already have properties. I got to stop selling my properties and liquidating my assets and losing all of my wealth. So it really gave me a big life preserver. Not just get my head above water, it took me out of the water.

because we’ll get into it a little deeper, but like the cash flow on these is insane. But yeah, that program really, it’s what jump started me into where I’m at now.

Brett McCollum (18:47.269)
Yeah, what year was that, ish? 21?

Jim Boad (18:50.606)
That was just about four years ago. So yeah, right around there.

Brett McCollum (18:56.817)
Yeah, and you were hemorrhaging every day from everything you were telling me about. what is, because here’s my question, and obviously we’re glad that you did, or else you’re probably not on the show with me today, but what is…

the mindset, because I mean, at this point, went through, you you were brand new, you know, once you didn’t really even know what a down market was even at that point, but then you went through the weight stuff. And now you’re going through this and yet, to be honest, yet you still have, we still haven’t hit the downturn yet at that point, but something was still funky and weird and you’re losing money where, you know, a lot of us were making great money at the time when you were losing the most money, just because the rates changed and you you couldn’t get a house on the market fast enough, you know, kind of thing. But

the mindset of losing and hammering and going through and just not you dreading every day. I don’t know about you, like dreading. I’m imagining dreading every single day before like you go to bed worried about the next day when you saw something in the in the group home space, did something just go? Yes. Or what was the mindset of like, how do you make that decision of like, I’ve got to do this? What was happening there?

Jim Boad (20:05.262)
It was the combo. It did hit my heartstrings because I’ve always tried to help with drug addiction things. It is a passion for me to help in that field. once I understood that this was an option in that model, and then once I saw, I mean, once I saw what it could do, like the cash flow that it could generate off of a single renter property, because…

Brett McCollum (20:17.51)
Yeah.

Jim Boad (20:28.962)
I did well off my rental properties for what most people make off of rental. I made about three to five hundred dollars a house where I know a lot of people when they finance out they’re making a little bit less than that because your cash flow is not really why most people get into rentals. It’s more of that long-term growth for the most part because I mean if you’re buying a rental with 20 % down you’re not bringing in a thousand two thousand dollars a month off that house in the most part. But where I was able to turn these houses to where on average I clear about two grand a house running the sober living homes.

where when I have my bigger homes like the homes I’m building now, like I have homes that that single home will generate me $9,000 a month in cashflow. And my output on it’s only about three to four grand, depending on time of year, because I pay utilities. So I mean, I have houses that I can make over $5,000 a month on in cashflow. And the way that I’m changing, I mainly run men’s sober living homes because my area of the higher demand for men, that the life changing stories that I have and just the things that I get to see.

you know, people that are in their late 30s that haven’t been sober since they were a teenager. You know, I had a guy come in missing all of his teeth and he was just beat down and wears hat low and wouldn’t look at you. We, you know, we ended up working with him and we got him into the denture clinic and he got his fresh mouth of teeth and he stopped wearing hats and had the biggest smile. And I mean, he got a car and he got a job and he ended up moving across the country to go work at a company where he’s making really good money. And he’s like, I, I’ve been, I’ve been high and living on the streets longer than I’ve been not.

Brett McCollum (21:31.153)
Hmm.

Jim Boad (21:55.886)
because he hit the streets as a late teen. I mean, the guy jumped trains around the country, I mean, he was a hell of a story, but like to watch his life transform, that’s what really gets me up on that. But then the fact that I to make good money doing it, it’s that one-two punch.

Brett McCollum (21:59.132)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (22:08.689)
There’s passion, Yeah. No doubt, no doubt. I love that. All right, I’m ask some questions about sober living stuff, because I’m just not as familiar with it. I understand the concept of a group home, that sort of thing. But specifically to your niche of what you do, let’s say, all right, let’s start here.

What is the typical? Residence, know, what is it a single-family home that you’ve transitioned? Is it a some kind of a building is it like let’s start there

Jim Boad (22:40.128)
Absolutely, it’s single-family homes are probably the the easiest and lowest barrier of entry to get into and they work really well So you can you can kind of start anywhere my bigger ones

The people don’t like them as much as my smaller ones, just because it builds a different level of community. But you can take a single family home. You really want more bedrooms because the reality is the way that these are done is you’re charging out per bed in a home. And most of my homes, I do two beds per room. So if I have a three bedroom home, I’m getting six guys in that house. So I don’t build anything under, what’s that?

Brett McCollum (23:16.325)
pays for this.

Who’s paying for that?

Jim Boad (23:20.846)
This is where the gravy really starts coming in on this thing. Almost all of this is funded either on the federal, state, or local level. There is a lot of funding for this out there right now. And there’s going to be for quite some time. We’re still in a huge drug epidemic and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. So I get pretty much guaranteed checks. Most of my guys come to me with their first three months covered when they come out of the whatever rehab center they have.

We have resources where we can get them anywhere between another six to nine months covered so we can keep these guys in our home and keep them paid for for almost a whole year. And we have a pretty long retention rate. We pride ourselves on keeping people in our homes long because recovery is not a short thing. It’s not a 30, 60, 90 day thing. It’s a lifelong battle. But the longer they can be in that good environment and be supported by that and be held accountable to that, the higher their success rate becomes.

Brett McCollum (24:17.787)
Yeah, is there somebody living in the home that is helping with the recovery process or are they all independent at that point? What does that look like?

Jim Boad (24:17.98)
Then there’s.

Jim Boad (24:26.274)
Well, all of our guys, when they first come in, we have a lot of homes. So we kind of, we have our homes tiered out a little bit different than a lot. We have a big building that we have. It’s a small apartment complex. It’s a six unit apartment complex. That’s where we, that’s where pretty much everybody goes at first because your highest time to relapse is kind of in your first 60, 90 days. So they come into that and then they kind of get to graduate up our housing, our housing chart. We actually have it to where we have single room housing. And then we actually have.

full on independent single housing that we try to offer to our guys as well as they progress in their recovery.

I hope that answered it.

Brett McCollum (25:05.125)
Yeah, no, yeah, I’m more was considering like because of the relapse in that first, you know, how is there somebody that’s checking in on them routinely to make sure that they’re okay, you know, that sort of thing.

Jim Boad (25:18.498)
Yeah, there’s two major models that people run when they run recovery housing. You either run a self-run house where like you put someone in charge in that home or you run it where I run it where I have a staff. I have a staff that daily goes around and checks on the homes that do, you know, we do your analysis tests and stuff. We make sure everybody stays sober. They’re making sure that people are on their chore lists. Cause these are very structured homes. There’s chore lists. They have classes they have to go to outside from us. We don’t.

We’re a non-licensed home. only run unlicensed homes, which means I basically, the way it’s looked at is I am basically just the landlord, but I’m never really a landlord because no one ever has a lease with me. They’re in a sober living program, which the value in that means that I never have tenants, so I can evict people. I can evict people instantly if they break our rules. we have a 15 minute leave the house timeframe and they all adhere to it. The police enforce this.

Brett McCollum (26:05.403)
you’re partnering with the program itself.

Jim Boad (26:17.934)
and it’s went through case law. So I mean, we’re able to actually get people out quickly when we need to.

Brett McCollum (26:25.809)
You’re partnered with the actual program itself, not directly with the person.

Jim Boad (26:32.568)
Direct correct and then We do move people into direct pay we have houses that are just full houses where it’s just people that are paying us directly Because it is a lot cheaper It’s still affordable housing too, which is another thing when they do get on to where they have to pay for themselves You know paying seven to eight hundred dollars a month with all utilities included. You can’t find that in my area There’s not a studio in my area for eight hundred dollars a month Period that with you know, and none of them pay utilities. So

Brett McCollum (26:34.897)
that.

Brett McCollum (26:47.835)
Yeah, no doubt.

Brett McCollum (26:55.899)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (27:04.305)
No, I like that a lot. it’s, love that you’re, you you get to wake up connected to a vision. You know, cause I know that a lot of us, you know, I mean, gosh, you know, just from what you told me, I’m like, I, 700 plus flips, you know, it all, you know, just from what you told probably, and you said you lost count of that, you know, and all of a sudden it just gets so transactional, you know, and you’re chasing, you know, I don’t know about you, but that volume, you know.

you probably ran it better than I did, but you flip one house to pay for the next house kind of thing. And that gets really, really defeating, because that’s not what we got into it for, a lot of us. So I love your connected division that’s actually also profitable.

Jim Boad (27:45.527)
No.

Jim Boad (27:50.304)
Absolutely.

Brett McCollum (27:52.699)
Yeah.

I guess where I’m looking for next maybe, Jim, is like, how does somebody, where’s this good starting position for somebody to get started? Like, is this is like something amazing? What’s the what’s the best way? Is it something you can do to help? is it what does that look like for you?

Jim Boad (28:05.038)
One more time.

Jim Boad (28:12.782)
It definitely is. I’ve got my program, Group Home Accelerator, and I teach people how to run through this. I really only work with people that want to get into the recovery housing, and I’ve just started doing the co-living model, but I’m not proficient on wanting to teach people that one yet. But really, there’s three key factors to getting up and rolling in this. First, it’s just your market research. You got to make sure that your area needs sober living.

which it’s really just jumping on doing a basic Google search, know, recovery centers in my area, inpatient drug clinics in my area, those are gonna be some of your biggest allies, but they’ll actually tell you if they have a need to, and they’ll tell you what their need is. So get online, Google search that, start calling those places, and they’re always in need for good housing. And then from there, once you’ve got your niche selected, okay, cool, sober living works in my area.

Then it’s just really figuring out where you’re get a house. If you already have one, if you’re already an active investor, you can just model one of your homes into that, or you can pick one up, or I even show people you can rent homes and get into this business. I’ve got a lady who I work with, she’s got five of these running and they’re all rentals. But the cool thing is, is as an investor, they’re all rentals with one investor. So this guy loves this model because he gets to rent to her, she has five of his rentals in long-term contracts and he makes a little bit above market rent.

He doesn’t have to think about anything because she takes care of all of the house repairs. It’s basically like a triple net lease to him. So this is kind of a cool tiered model. Even as an investor, you could just build out sober living homes and rent them to an operator. If you don’t want to be the operator of sober living homes. But then, then the final piece is filling up your homes and that kind of comes back to your research you did on the front end.

Brett McCollum (29:44.07)
Yep, yep.

Brett McCollum (29:52.709)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (29:56.214)
That’s incredible. That’s great.

Jim Boad (30:02.744)
you get those contacts, I’d say the majority of my people come to me through my connections with case managers at inpatient drug clinics. And then I would say about the majority of the rest come from word of mouth from like my guys will go to like narcotics anonymous or AA meetings. And they’ll talk about the house that they live in because we make our houses really nice. We keep them clean, we keep them updated, you know, because there are slumlords in this business too. It’s really easy to do. So but

Brett McCollum (30:20.337)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (30:28.731)
Sure.

Jim Boad (30:30.342)
But if you don’t have a passion for this and you’re just doing it for money, it’ll show and people get to choose to come to your house and not. So you want to run nice homes.

Brett McCollum (30:42.587)
Yeah, no doubt. I I think that’s, love it, man. It’s such a, it’s a beautiful vision, you know, and I like that it’s the, isn’t such a beautiful full circle of this is the vision that got you pulled out of the water. When metaphorically speaking, the people that are living in your homes were underwater too.

Jim Boad (30:43.672)
Those are the main three steps.

Jim Boad (30:59.479)
It is.

Jim Boad (31:06.991)
It is. It’s mind-blowing. My heart’s full every day from it.

Brett McCollum (31:08.389)
That’s pretty cool.

Brett McCollum (31:13.253)
Yeah, that’s pretty cool, man. I’m so glad we got to do this. If people want to reach out and connect with you, Jim, how can they do that?

Jim Boad (31:19.406)
The easiest way is just if they can either hit me on Facebook or even just my website and it’s Group Home Accelerator.

Brett McCollum (31:29.637)
Love it. Yeah, and we’ll make sure that gets in the show notes. Guys, this is… I appreciate what you said, Jim, like with that. And if it is something that sounds like striking a chord, I encourage you to reach out to Jim and see what that looks like. But man, appreciate you being here with us and doing this. It’s been great.

Jim Boad (31:32.557)
Awesome.

Jim Boad (31:46.412)
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. It was great. I love getting to share this.

Brett McCollum (31:51.666)
Yeah, no doubt. And guys, to you as well, thanks so much for being here, spending your time with us. We will see each of you on the next episode. Take care, everybody.