How Military Discipline Shaped A Real Estate Empire

Stephen Schmidt (00:00.442)

Welcome back to the show where we interview the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs Welcome back if you’re joining us for the second third or hundredth time It’s your host Stephen Schmidt and welcome if you’re joining us for the first time I know that this is about to be a regular on your podcast listening schedule. I got a real treat with you guys It’s actually a repeat but you won’t hear the first episode because we actually were mid recording it when my Wi-Fi completely went out yesterday, so

Michael Moser (00:12.91)
you

Stephen Schmidt (00:32.206)
I got Michael Moser back in the house and we’re going to be talking about his incredible experience going from a very interesting military career all the way to becoming a developer and now he’s been in the construction space for over four decades if I recall correctly from yesterday. So just remember before we get started at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers and real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5x their businesses which allows them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted.

to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. That being said, Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Moser (01:05.933)
Thank you. Thank you for having me back. Yesterday was a crash, but I’m glad we have another opportunity.

Stephen Schmidt (01:12.366)
Likewise, sometimes it happens. So give us a little bit of a backstory for our guests on how you got to where you’re at today and what got you started.

Michael Moser (01:15.223)
Sometimes.

Michael Moser (01:23.918)
Yeah. The backstory is I started, I got out of the military in the early eighties, um, and didn’t really know what I wanted to do. So I ended up finding a guy that I knew was a real estate developer. And I said, I want to follow you around for a couple of years. He said, I’m a hiring. I said, I don’t want to be hired. I want to learn.

So I followed him around for a couple years and at the same time I needed I had Money, but I wanted to start something going because I had a wife and a kid to support So we started working immediately for AAA I knew somebody who worked for AAA AAA had their own contractors and I started working immediately for AAA and then I started following this guy around and We were doing

Within six months, we were doing 10 to 15 jobs a day for AAA, for our appointment today. then we were just slammed and we did a couple million dollars in the first year. It was crazy back then. So I’m following this real estate developer and learning everything he does while I’m doing the construction stuff. And then about six months into it, AAA says, oh, by the way, because nothing back then was computerized. By the way, we found this note, your contractor’s license.

I like, well, what the hell’s a contractor’s license? I’ve never had one of those. So I went and talked to my buddy, Gary Walton, who was teaching me how to be a developer. And I said, I a contractor’s license. How do you get one of those? you see, back then it was very easy to get a contractor’s license. And I got one. And then I continued learning under Gary for a couple of years. And then he gave me a project. And the project worked very well. And…

After that, I did one of my own projects, a small project. I didn’t have a lot of capital, but I enough for a small project and it worked really well. And then I heard about Sacramento and the lots in the Bay area at that time were running for a quarter of a million bucks a piece. When I could come up to Sacramento and I could buy a lot in a bad neighborhood for $3,000 and I could buy a lot in a great neighborhood for $25,000. So I came up here and I just bought a whole bunch of lots.

Michael Moser (03:40.3)
in the Sacramento central Valley. And we held those lots for a while. We doubled our price on the lots. We sold them off. And then I just kept doing projects in the Sacramento market. And I’ve been doing projects since 1983. Yeah, year 1983, April 83 is when I started. And I’ve been doing projects ever since. But in 1996, the cellular wave came.

I’m sorry, 86, the cellular wave came to the California. So I started a cellular company and became the largest cellular dealer in Northern California in the 80s and early 90s. And then I signed that company back to AT &T cellular. And so then kept doing real estate deals and then got into the Indian gaming, gray market market back in the mid 90s when

when the Indians weren’t allowed to have casinos in California. So we were all importing illegal games and helping them out until that passed. And real estate’s always been my love and my dream and it’s what’s always kept me going. But other businesses have happened, lot of consulting services. In June of 2001, I was hired by First Data Corporation, which was the largest data processing center in the

largest credit card processing center in the world. They’re a different name now. But I helped them. They acquired a $35 million business here in the Sacramento area. I helped them take control of those assets. And then I consulted them on moving shipping for the eastern half of the United States and the Georgia and the west half of the United States and the state and Rockland. And then we split the shipping responsibilities up between the states.

between the country we split it off at the Rockies and and did so I’ve had a bunch of stuff to do but real estate has always been my core value

Stephen Schmidt (05:53.198)
Now, what made you decide when you got out of the military to pursue this land developer? How did you get connected with him and what made you decide like, I should go do this now?

Michael Moser (06:04.715)
Gary Walton was a pretty big developer in the 80s in the South Bay area. And growing up, I’d always seen his signs and I had met him a couple times. And when I got out the military, I just went and looked him up and said, I want to learn. And he said, I’m a hiring, I said, I don’t want a job. just want to learn what you’re doing. I want to know how to do this. And I did that back then.

Donald Trump wasn’t confrontation or controversial and he had a real estate business and, and he had a good book out and everything seemed rosy and neat. And that seemed like a really good way to live. So I thought that real estate would be a way to do it. And that’s why it’s Chase scary Walton down and ask them to teach me how to be a real estate developer.

Stephen Schmidt (06:55.6)
I’m kidding. Now, so what do you think it was about Gary? What do you think Gary thought when he brought you on? What value was he going to get out of that other than you just being a mentee? What made him decide, like, hey, you know what? Yeah, I’m going to train my competition. What was it about you?

Michael Moser (07:14.154)
I think what it was about me is I asked. I asked him if he would do it and no one had ever asked him to do it. And if somebody asked me to do it today, I would do it. I mean, I think we all have responsibility to share. And he was about my age at the time. He was in his late 50s, early 60s. And getting ready to hang it up and it made all the money he needed to make. So he wasn’t afraid of the competition.

And he just, taught me a plethora of knowledge. You he taught me back then that real estate is not a real estate game. It’s a, it’s a, you know, real estate development is not a real estate game. It’s a political game. And, and you better understand the political side of it. Cause if you don’t, you’re going to get slaughtered. Um, I’ve always laughed.

Stephen Schmidt (07:57.21)
Hmm.

Stephen Schmidt (08:02.404)
Why is that? Why is it more of a political game? That’s interesting.

Michael Moser (08:06.248)
Because you need friends on the city council and you need friends on the planning commissions a lot of times to get your projects through, especially in the not in my backyard environment where everybody wants to help the homeless, everybody wants to help the poor people, but as long as it’s across town in somebody else’s neighborhood.

Stephen Schmidt (08:28.602)
Yeah, right, that’s like, no, we want the immigrants to keep coming in, but we just don’t want them in our neighborhood.

Michael Moser (08:29.332)
So.

Michael Moser (08:34.952)
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we take we take small pieces of property that are controversial projects that, you know, we put in multifamily and a single family project and argue that it needs to be changed for the good of the country or the good of the community. I wanted to I learned that development, you could make a big difference in the world. You can make a big difference in your community.

Stephen Schmidt (08:38.073)
Sure, not to get controversial, but.

Michael Moser (09:05.434)
I’m not only politically, but but in the landscape and it’s it’s it’s neat to carve out and and and make a name and make you know drive through town and say, you know, I did that. I did that. I did that. And there’s not a lot of places in the Sacramento area. You can’t drive without seeing a building that I’ve done. done over 400 buildings.

Stephen Schmidt (09:26.554)
So.

What are some of the ways that you were able to get those initial relationships to really help you out in the beginning? Because I think playing the political game versus just having a business throws a completely new factor in there because it’s no longer just I have a product or a service to sell. This is what I sell. Do you want to buy it? It’s I have a product or service that I want to build, sell, et cetera, but I also need approval from these other people before I do that.

Michael Moser (09:57.595)
Yeah. And we are talking about a guy built in ADU. Yeah, we are talking about a guy building an ADU or a guy who bought a lot, who’s building a house. You know, I’m on the development side. I’m where I’m buying farmland and, and the utilities in and bringing all the roads in. So those are very controversial projects. I mean, I had, I ended up having to move 45 burrowing owls because they were across the street from a preschool and

Stephen Schmidt (09:58.53)
So like, what are some of those things you did in the beginning?

Stephen Schmidt (10:07.321)
Right.

Stephen Schmidt (10:10.714)
Sure.

Michael Moser (10:25.025)
the city council got bombarded with phone calls. And, you know, because we had friends in, in, and on the community business back in the eighties and the environmental laws weren’t so bad. They allowed us to have some trappers come in and move the owls to a different location. Today, it would have been a complete environmental nightmare. but with, with those political contacts back then, and you could get things done.

Stephen Schmidt (10:44.676)
Right.

Michael Moser (10:51.465)
And you can get things done today with the political context. It’s just back then you were allowed to bend the rules a little bit more than you are today. And today the regulations are a lot stronger, but you still need those contacts and you still need those approvals and you still have to convince the city council that you’re right and the community is wrong. And that’s why this project is important.

Stephen Schmidt (10:59.6)
sure.

Stephen Schmidt (11:13.518)
And you’re obviously, I mean, you’re in California, which is one of the most politically divided, regulated states in the union, right? So, you know, having those are obviously super important. Really.

Michael Moser (11:25.385)
It’s really not that politically divided. California is extremely liberal. We have a super majority liberal in the Senate, they’re in our House representatives and our state Senate. We have a liberal governor. Every single elected constitutional offices is on the Democratic side in the state. It’s a very liberal state, but it is highly regulated.

Stephen Schmidt (11:31.866)
Really?

Stephen Schmidt (11:47.749)
Hmm.

Stephen Schmidt (11:52.43)
Right. And I guess that’s what I was getting at more so as a point is like the high regulations, because I think, you know, one of the things about liberals that I, or the liberal party that I really admire is they want everybody to get taken care of, right? So it’s like, you know, the spotted barn owls that, whatever, like, you know, there’s some nobility in that, something that I can look at and respect, right? Instead of just trying to fight about whatever I don’t agree with, right? But I think to the other point,

Michael Moser (11:56.241)
Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (12:21.398)
as far as the regulations and stuff go is how have you navigated especially that climate in the last you know 10-15 years let’s say let’s call it especially as things continue to get heavily and more heavily and more heavily related do you think that anything is actually possible if you have the right connections or do you really think that sometimes things just can’t happen because of the way the law has been written?

Michael Moser (12:41.65)
Cough

Michael Moser (12:49.904)
I believe anything can be developed to anything you want it to be. I don’t believe in no. I took a project in the early two thousands. it was a very controversial project. The city of Sacramento was in a flood disaster mode. The levies were, were threatening to fail. they put the entire city under the entire north part of the city under a.

flood moratorium and there was nothing to be built.

And I go marching into the, was nothing to be built and absolutely nothing to be built on the wet side of the levy, on the river side of the levy. So I go marching into the army corps by engineers with this project that I want to build on the condos. I want to build 12 condos on the wet side of the levy.

And they laughed at me and they said, four other guys, there are three other guys have come in, you’re the fourth to try to get this project done. We are not going to approve it. Well, I knew that I had the law on my side and stepping back a little bit, regulations got nutty at the end of the nineties. And I realized that I had to do something to keep up with it and understand it. So what I did is I put myself through law school and then I passed the bar.

Stephen Schmidt (14:13.286)
No way! No kidding.

Michael Moser (14:18.183)
I put myself through law school. passed the bar. I never became a lawyer. I didn’t want to become a lawyer. I didn’t want to deal with their regulations and rules. And I would have to do all kinds of disclosures when I took investments from people and politicians. And I wanted nothing to do with that. But I needed to know the law. And I didn’t know how to understand the law. I didn’t know how to read the law. So that’s why I went to law school and took the bar. So what I did was,

Stephen Schmidt (14:44.272)
So, technically, did you pass the bar?

Michael Moser (14:47.844)
Yes, they did. I passed it on the first time.

Stephen Schmidt (14:49.24)
So you technically, you technically are a lawyer then? Or were at one point?

Michael Moser (14:53.447)
No, and in order to be a lawyer, have to swear in, swear into the bar and say, promise to follow all your real rules. So did the bar, but I never swear in. And then swear in. Yeah. Yeah. You got to pass law school, pass the bar and then swear in. So I did two steps and didn’t want to do that. Yeah. Because I didn’t, like I said, I didn’t want to be involved with the rules and regulations. I didn’t want the disclosures. I just needed to know the law and didn’t know how to understand the law.

Stephen Schmidt (15:00.336)
So you have to like pass the deal then pass the bar and then swear it no kidding Wow

so you did all that butt swear in.

Michael Moser (15:22.414)
and how my business was changing. And that’s how I kept up with the industry and that’s how I kept with the regulations is I changed with the industry and said I have to learn this and how am I going to learn it? I go to law school.

That’s how you learn the law.

Stephen Schmidt (15:40.718)
Right. Can I ask you a question? Because this actually touches on something personal. Personal for me, actually, because I was literally just talking to my wife and I kid you not, three, maybe four weeks ago. And I was like, you know, I used to think getting rich was about being able to do, you know, all the blow I want to do as a, you know, 20, young 20 year old. And I’ve got four kids now, so I’m kind of past that stage a little bit. But I was like, you know, it’s all about partying and

Michael Moser (15:43.599)
Of

Michael Moser (16:08.262)
Yeah, hookers and cocaine in the 80s, right? Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (16:09.936)
Hookers and cocaine, right? Yeah, 100 % the whole tagline, right? All the things that trip us guys up, right? And, you know, I told her, like, you know, I’ve really been in a reinvention phase. And I’m like, you know, I think I want to get to a point where I don’t have to work anymore, but not so that way I just like waste a bunch of time. But I think maybe if I get to that stage here in the next few years, I might go to law school because like, I’m pretty good at whatever. And I think it would only benefit me.

Michael Moser (16:17.093)
Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (16:39.172)
to be able to understand and know how to use the law, not that I’d ever want to become a lawyer. And now I’m sitting here three weeks later and somehow I manifested you on my podcast of doing the exact same thing that I was just telling my wife I’m considering doing at some point in my life. What was it about that? Like, like when you went through that process, have you seen it like truly and legitimately really benefit your business in a major way from doing that? And did you get like,

Michael Moser (16:55.716)
Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (17:07.748)
Did you have to get straight A’s and all that kind of stuff? I mean, somebody that still passes with C’s is still a lawyer at the end of the day, right? How does that work?

Michael Moser (17:15.481)
I didn’t care about my grades. I didn’t care about my grades. I cared about learning the law. I got C’s and B’s. I wasn’t trying to get A’s. I was still working and doing all my businesses. But I learned the law and, you know, I didn’t spend a lot of time studying because I have a very absorbed, absorptive brain. And when stuff goes in, kind of doesn’t get out. So I see all these guys cramming for the barn. It’s like, dude, you should have learned this in year one.

Stephen Schmidt (17:25.103)
Right.

Stephen Schmidt (17:40.218)
Yeah, yeah.

Michael Moser (17:45.343)
You should learn this in year two. You know, so I really learned the law for each year I was going and I sailed right through the bar. I graduated. actually left law school, graduated six months early, took the early bar, the December bar or the January bar instead of the June bar. So I took the bar six months in front of everybody else. And the school said, you don’t want to do that. So this whole six months, next six months is about passing the bar. I said, I’ll pass it. Don’t worry about it. And I passed the bar.

Stephen Schmidt (18:14.242)
No kidding, that is so hilarious.

Michael Moser (18:15.862)
So, but what scared the crap out of me was I started, I had a question about how to get an issue done on a map. So I started reading the subdivision map back and I couldn’t understand what the hell the thing was saying. And going to law school just teaches you to think like a lawyer.

It teaches you to read this law and understand what the law does, why it is there, how it works, why it works. You know, I used to remember the law when the lady.

Spilled coffee in her crotch from McDonald’s got a ridiculous amount of money.

Stephen Schmidt (18:56.046)
because of how hot the temp was. Like everybody said, this is a whiner. I read so far into that story. Yeah. I mean, it made actual total sense to be honest.

Michael Moser (19:05.24)
Yeah, it was a law school case and we studied and we read it and we understood it. And I said, well, that makes sense. And what the press didn’t tell you is that five other people had been burned by that same coffee pot and McDonald’s had been warned that the thing was putting coffee up too hot and they didn’t bother to fix it. And this last lady got hurt seriously. So if the press would have told the whole story,

It wouldn’t have been a story because people would have understood it. But Lady Spills Coffee and her cross and gets $40 million. Yeah, and gets $40 million. How ridiculous is that? And her award was McDonald’s profits for one day of coffee sales was $40 million.

Stephen Schmidt (19:36.272)
Because they would have been like, she suffered severe burns.

Michael Moser (19:54.369)
And that’s how the jury came up with her award was, was McDonald’s profits for one, just profits for one day of coffee sales was $40 million across the company. Profit. Yeah.

Stephen Schmidt (20:01.422)
Not revenue, profits, by the way, right? Like that’s what’s the other piece, just to be clear for people listening that are interested in this total tangent we’ve gotten on. That’s just their profit of one day out of 364 other days.

Michael Moser (20:15.383)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It’s how billion dollar companies do it. The you know, and I’ve always looked at I think people try to oversimplify the real estate game. I mean, what are the three rules of real estate?

Stephen Schmidt (20:20.676)
Right? Absolutely nuts.

Stephen Schmidt (20:29.616)
Hmm.

Stephen Schmidt (20:33.902)
You tell me.

Michael Moser (20:35.881)
Location, location, location, right? That’s what everybody says. That’s the three rules of real estate. That’s all you have to know. And if if if that’s what you believe, then you’re going to lose on 98 percent of your deals. Because any time somebody says the three rules of real estate or location, location, location, you need to beat the crap out of them because they don’t know what they’re talking about. The three rules of real estate are location, demographics and timing.

Stephen Schmidt (21:01.508)
Hmm.

Michael Moser (21:02.716)
And all three of those items have to line up and they have to line up in a certain way. And they have to line up properly in the universe has to come together in the buying public has to come together and sheds happening again.

Stephen Schmidt (21:19.567)
Think we’re good.

Michael Moser (21:21.128)
my site says, OK, I’m about that. And the buying public has to come together and everything has to work right. It’s just not location, location, location. And I laugh when I hear people say that. But that’s been what real thrillers have been saying for years and years and years. And location is important, but it’s not the only only point you want to look at. And since and as I get older, I’ve been doing a lot more expert witness work. So I do a lot of expert witness work.

Um, between yesterday and today, when we talked yesterday and your internet crashed, um, I had a gentleman call me from reading who has a map that’s ready to expire and he doesn’t know what to do. Um, his property is free and clear. It’s worth 4 million bucks. He’s got $3 a half million in the bank and a $6 million construction line ready to go on his map. It’s going to expire in three weeks and he doesn’t know what to do.

So he hired me last night to go in, fix that, take care of it and finish his final map form. And this morning he called me and asked me if we’d be interested in building the 350 such units. And so that’s kind of what I’ve been doing is I do some of my small projects. I do a lot of consulting for people. A new service I’m starting to offer is somebody can call me and say, know, I’m in, where are you?

Stephen Schmidt (22:49.808)
physically in Kansas currently.

Michael Moser (22:51.586)
You’re in Kansas and you have a problem with the construction and you don’t know what to do and you don’t know who to call. And you would be able to call me into a FaceTime and show me what’s going on. I could tell you how to fix it, who to fix it with, whether your contractor did it right, whether your inspector’s right or wrong. And do that for a small fee so people can have an expert when they need an expert. So that’s something I’m working on and figuring out to fire up. But with my small…

Stephen Schmidt (23:17.952)
So what’s really on the docket for you? I know that you say that, but what’s really next for you? Because you’re past the accumulation phase in life, right? So what’s really the legacy play for you now at this point?

Michael Moser (23:26.368)
Yeah, I’m doing, I’m starting to do a, just finished a tentative map and I’m starting a final map on a little nine unit project that is a rent to own rent to keep project. I’ll build and rent it in my retirement system. So I’ll keep those nine units. I have another eight unit apartment complex that I’m going to finish up. And then I, you know, I’ll see a deal that makes sense and I’ll do it.

and I do my consulting and I do my expert witness stuff and that keeps me pretty busy.

Stephen Schmidt (24:03.696)
Are you looking to continue growing in the real estate side of things or are you looking at doing other things now at this point?

Michael Moser (24:09.882)
you know, I don’t, I don’t say no to anything. So if an opportunity comes, comes to, to like, I was once, a lot of people have said that, you know, if I was at a soap convention and everybody was selling soap and they said, how much you want to sell this soap for? And the guy says, I’ll buy that soap for 10 bucks. And the other guy says, I need soap. I’ll buy it for 12 bucks.

The third guy stands up and says, I need a bomb. And the guy says, we don’t sell bombs here, we sell soap. And I stand up in the back and say, do you want a neutron or a nuclear weapon? What do you want? So if somebody wants something, I will get it for them. You know, that’s how we got involved in the union gaming. They wanted games. We got it for them. That’s we had to develop. I had to develop a, a.

very intense complex, the first player tracking system and a backroom casino accounting system that we built with a company that we started in the mid 90s called Cast Control Accounting Systems. And because we had all these games in Texas and South Carolina and California, we had to find a way to manage them. So we put player trackings on them. And then we had, we invented a system that would

feed all this because this is back before the internet was brand new. So we ended up with a wired system that would send this data back into the server and then we could dial up and pull this data up and see what each machine was making us each day. And prior to that, the only way you do it was to open up each game and just read the numbers.

Stephen Schmidt (25:39.438)
Right.

Michael Moser (25:55.039)
So when there’s a problem, try to solve it. If somebody has something they need, I don’t say no, I’ll get it for them. just, I’m a problem solver, I’m a builder. That’s kind of what I do.

Stephen Schmidt (26:10.0)
Well Michael, if people want to connect with you or learn more about what you’re working on, maybe learn more about you, where should they go for that?

Michael Moser (26:18.336)
I’m praying Moserdev.com, M-O-S-E-R-D-E-V.com, like developer. That’s my website. You can send me email there. You can contact me there. I know Michael Moser Development has a Facebook page and Michael Moser has a Facebook page, but I don’t really know the addresses to those. But I’m still trying to find them.

Stephen Schmidt (26:40.3)
Okay, that’s totally fine. So go find him y’all, go do some research, go find our new friend Michael Moser.

I hope you enjoyed today’s show and if you got as much value out of it as I did I know you’re gonna be off to the races and thanks for joining We’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks again for being here Michael

Michael Moser (27:01.182)
Thank you very much. Have a great day.