How Recovery Homes Help Real Estate Investors Build Cash Flow and Change Lives

Pete Lustig (00:00)
Destiny has no wasted moments. So this breakup, this terrible moment, I was so raw emotionally. ⁓ I said, I can’t be in this house. I cannot be in this house anymore. And so I turned it into a recovery home. I found a mentor and she kind of taught me the ropes of how you set up a level one recovery home.

Quentin (00:07)
Mm-hmm.

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And when I tell you I’m excited to be here today, I’m excited. When I tell you I have a fantastic guest, believe me, I have a fantastic guest. I kind of feel like he’s like my brother from another mother. And I’m just not saying that because we black. I’m just saying because we literally have other mothers. So yeah, that’s what I mean by that. ⁓ And I just feel like there’s a lot of alignment.

Pete Lustig (02:03)
you

Hmm.

Quentin (02:21)
You know what I like doing this because we learn from people’s journey. And I just believe he has a journey that we’re gonna learn from. Y’all know me, he may not know, but y’all know I put a value on stories. I think everybody has a story to tell. And I believe today his journey in business and real estate and in life is really gonna be enlightening. And so I am so happy to introduce you all to Mr. Pete Lustig Mr. Pete, how you doing today, sir?

Pete Lustig (02:46)
Hey Q, I’m doing really good. Thank you for having me on here. I Appreciate it. I appreciate the nice intro. I feel the same

Quentin (02:51)
Nah, man, so glad you’re here.

Absolutely, absolutely my friend. I appreciate you being here, sir. And listen, I’m the type, I like to dive right in, right? So this is what I want you to do. I want you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days, like what you’re doing in business these days. I want you to tell people a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the space that you’re in, and then tell them what part of the world you’re in. People like to know where you are geographically. So again, like what you’re doing.

your origin story and where you are. Pete, take your time. My friend, got the floor, sir.

Pete Lustig (03:28)
Thanks, Q. So I guess I’ll start with, I don’t know if you wanted me to say it last, because you listed it last, but I’m in Southern Indiana. I’m in Columbus, Indiana. And so most of the work that I do in real estate is in the Indianapolis area, or south of Indianapolis. It’s my hometown, it’s where I’m from. And I started investing here locally when about

11 or 12 years ago. Right now, currently, I guess, I’ll jump to that. I own and operate a home services business. That’s kind of my main focus right now. I look at that as my engine that fuels my real estate portfolio. So in…

In parallel to that, I have a real estate portfolio that I started building 11 years ago when I was working in corporate America. I was in a marketing role. so I didn’t share this with you before, after college, I lived in China for five years. really wanted to learn Chinese.

Quentin (05:24)
Yeah

Pete Lustig (05:28)
And so I went over there to study Chinese. And when I came back, my wife and I had, we had to live somewhere. So we were staying with my mom for a little bit and they had this great house and great property. then my mom decided she’s gonna sell it. And I was really angry that she was gonna do that. But.

It turned out to be the greatest gift she could have given me because that’s when I started my real estate journey. So I was forced to, or I look at it as forced, I guess I could have rented or something, but I had worked a lot in China, so I saved up a good nest egg. And that was kind of my seed money to go get my first house. we, in 2013, we bought our first house.

was $100,000. It was a pretty simple deal. I wish I could buy the same house for the same amount right now. I’d be doing well. so I knew that I wanted to invest in real estate. Like I’m a motivated guy. like, I’m hard driving sometimes. I’ve always been like.

Quentin (06:23)
Yeah.

Pete Lustig (06:36)
dedicated and focused to whatever my focus is like that’s where my energy goes and like I give it all I got and I’m just kind of a driven person, you know, right wrong or indifferent. That’s kind of where I land. So I was driven enough that I worked hard when I was in China teaching English made made a good like saved up a good amount and that was my down payment and I told you earlier that

you know, that I wrote a book and that’s one of the things that I talk about in the book is that I love this idea too, that I was planting seeds in China, when I was in China, that I didn’t necessarily know I was planting for, you know, now that I’m still seeing the results from now here 20 years later, you know? And so, you know, one of that was that I worked really, really hard.

Teaching English I would ride my bike all over the city to different, you know students houses and stuff And so we had that money and we bought our first house and then I knew that I wanted to be I wanted to invest in real estate I knew that to build wealth, which is you know something that I have always Put value in like I think it’s it’s great to build wealth and to be wealthy

I’ve always aspired to that. And I knew that I wanted to do the real estate. we, I started looking into how you could do that. And I took out a home equity line of credit on the house that we bought. And my wife and I bought a different house and then moved out of our first house and rented it out. And that was kind of our first start. And I remember like,

driving away from it for the first time having gone through the closing and all that stuff and thinking like I want to do it again. I want to do it again. You know at the same time now I was a landlord and it was it was kind of scary. I was really scared and I would get really nervous like finding tenants. I’m not gonna find somebody in time. But over the next four or five years we rinse recycle repeat that process, you know, we paid the heat lock down then buy another one.

Quentin (08:22)
Yeah.

Pete Lustig (08:42)
pay the heat lock down, buy another one. And that was back when the interest rates were like three or 4%. It was awesome. And so I got to, I think, 14 properties. And then unfortunately, my wife and I got divorced. So like my, and I don’t know if it was four or five years ago, you know, of course, you know, the going through a divorce is tough, but

I lost half my stuff too, you know? So had 14 properties and now I’m down to however many, I forget exactly what the split was, but that was tough, man. That was a tough blow and kind of led to some of my struggles that came after that, which I talk about in the book. But since then I’ve been rebuilding my portfolio, my life.

I left my job in corporate America to, I wanted to bet on myself and start my own business. So somewhere along the journey, so my wife and I had done those houses. At some point I said, I wanna learn how to flip, flip a house. I think that would be really fun. So in 2022, we did our first flip and

I loved it so much. My uncle was on the job because I didn’t know anything about repairing houses or rehabbing houses. This is four years ago. I didn’t know a thing. And he taught me a lot. Other people taught me a lot. And from that, that’s when I started to get really interested in like home services and operations when it comes to real estate. And so that’s what led to my business. And so when I left my job, my nine to five job, I said,

That’s the type of business that I want to start is rehabs, remodels, maintenance, things like that of that nature. So that has been a struggle early on, but a good struggle, a challenge struggle. And I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m really excited about what I’m doing there.

So, I don’t know, I said a lot.

Quentin (11:28)
Brother.

No, man, you said a lot. And I’m glad you said every last piece of what you said, man. So definitely thank you for taking us through the journey, showing us what you do now, showing us the journey of how you got there. Brother, I too got divorced after 14 years of marriage, 15 years of marriage. I’m remarried now, but I sympathize with you. You said divorce is hard. Yeah, how you said it takes you through a lot.

Pete Lustig (11:52)
So as am I.

Yeah.

Yes.

Quentin (11:57)
Yeah.

I feel like I’m still rebuilding after my first, you know, after my, you know, divorce, you know, like I’m remarried, but still rebuilding, right? Cause it’s like, it just affects you in so many ways. You know I’m saying? So, thank you, man. Thank you bro for sharing, man. Thank you for the gift of your vulnerability, brother.

Pete Lustig (12:07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Of thank you, yeah.

Quentin (12:16)
Yeah. So listen, man, I was actively listening as you talk. So what I’m going to do, I’m going to kind of summarize what you said to me. And then I want to make a statement to ask you a question. All right. I’m to love asking you this question. So in Columbus, Indiana, you started investing locally where you are 11 years ago. own your own and operate your own home services business. You have a real estate portfolio that you started building.

Pete Lustig (12:34)
Mm-hmm.

Quentin (12:42)
at the college you moved to China, man. You wanted to learn Chinese, but also you were teaching English. When we came back, you and your wife, we a place to live. So you moved with your mom. Your mom wanted to sell the home, which you was not too happy about, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, right? And so you wrote a book. Now 20 years later, man, like you are just watching how Seeds was planted then, how it really shows kind of

Pete Lustig (12:49)
Yes.

Now, yep, absolutely.

Quentin (13:10)
what you’re doing now. So is that a good summary of what you said?

Pete Lustig (13:14)
That’s

a perfect summary. That’s a perfect summary. Yeah. I left out one piece, but maybe we can get to that. I don’t know.

Quentin (13:21)
Gotcha. Well, listen, let me say this and you probably going to be able to put that piece right into it because this is what I say, Pete, every podcast, say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning that no matter what we’ve been through in life, we borrow from each moment that we’ve been through. We borrow from the losses. We borrow from the success.

Pete Lustig (13:34)
Hmm.

Quentin (13:47)
Like all of it has been building momentum to the people that we are today. And so, man, I love your journey. I love hearing your story. So I would love to know throughout your journey, what has the moments, what has destiny taught you about yourself, man?

Pete Lustig (13:48)
Okay.

That’s a good question. You know, in the book I wrote, or the point of, the key message behind the book that I wrote, it’s called the comeback path, is that your worst mistakes don’t disqualify you from your best life. You know? Yeah.

And so I think like what you said, we borrow from those experiences, the painful ones and the good ones, you know, cause it’s not all, it doesn’t all have to be painful. It doesn’t all have to be a grind, you know. We borrow from those things that, and that’s what makes our life rich and beautiful. And it allows us to be compassionate and empathetic with others and share our story, you know.

I was thinking about that the other day. I had a friend recently who was having some mental health struggles and he texted me about it and my heart immediately, like instinct was like, how can I help him? And I was able to help him because I had been there myself. I had experienced it. And don’t think I would have had that sense of compassion and empathy had I not experienced the struggle.

so I say all that and I say, life has given me a lot of gifts like that. a lot of, a lot of struggles that have shaped me and challenged me. and I guess the one piece that I left out, which is a powerful piece and it’s a, it’s really, active and heavy in my life right now is, so I guess it was a year and a half, two years ago. I.

I had just been through this divorce. My older brother, so I have two older brothers, both of them struggled with addiction, been in jail and out of jail and in prison. ⁓ And my oldest brother, he’s my best friend, his name is Jake, and he’s in recovery now and is doing wonderful.

⁓ amazing story him but has not struggled a lot and We lost our the brother that’s between us he passed away two years ago, so I was dealing with the the loss his loss My divorce and then the kick that the cherry on top was I went I was after my divorce I was dating someone that was really serious. I was I really loved her a lot, you know and

We broke up, like, and I am the one that screwed it up. I’ll just say that I screwed it up. But I was dealing with the pain from these losses and the divorce and stuff. And so I give myself some grace and compassion, but like that’s where my life led me. And I had bought this house to live in so that my daughter and I could have a place. I’d have a good stable place for my daughter.

And so we’re living there and I was living there with my girlfriend at the time, who, you the one that I’m referring to and we break up, we go through this breakup and it is like devastating. I, know, it’s devastating because of the whole thing that’s going on in my life at that time. I, my oldest brother had said to me before, he’s like, Pete,

You know, when I came out of prison, I stayed in this sober living house. I stayed, you know, I had to go to this recovery place and those people are really doing it business-wise. You know, that’s a big business. It’s a whole industry in and of itself. And so for a couple years, he had been planting that seed in my ear and I had another friend who mentioned the same thing. know, Pete, have you ever thought about, you know,

utilizing a portion of your portfolio for sober living or recovery homes and You know, there’s a great need for it and I and I’ve always had it right there. So What was it that you said earlier about death, Thany?

Quentin (19:04)
Destiny has no wasted moments here.

Pete Lustig (19:06)
Destiny has no wasted moments. So this breakup, this terrible moment, I was so raw emotionally. I said, I can’t be in this house. I cannot be in this house anymore. And so I turned it into a recovery home. I found a mentor ⁓ and she kind of taught me the ropes of how you set up a level one recovery home.

and you rent it out, you have a certain amount of rooms in your house and you rent each kind of resident gets their own room. You set them up in a program. They have like a program guide. It’s no alcohol and drugs, obviously. Structured living, not too structured, not like we don’t force rules on people, but there’s a good culture of recovery and support and…

It’s really popping now. But at that time, it was all new to me and it was, you know, I just, it was amazing to see the feedback that I got from it from, you know, I went from trying to convince people, hey, come and rent this place. And, you know, usually people are nice to their landlord, you know, but in the recovery space, they’re like grateful to you.

And that’s so rewarding, like, man, thank you so much. You saved my life. And I’m like, all I did was rent you a room, But I get that feedback. So it’s really rewarding. And on the business side of things, it’s allowed me to grow my portfolio. It’s allowed me to maintain cash, like good cash flow while…

You know, you’re basically taking, know, I have a couple different apartment buildings, smaller apartment buildings. It’s like turning your five bedroom, single story house into a five unit, you know, and making on rent essentially, you know, two or three times what you would if you just rented it out as a single family. It does come with…

the more work that you have to do. But anyways, I share all of that just to say that, know, destiny has no, forgot what it was, destiny wastes no moments. Yeah. You know, because that was a seminal moment in my life that from pain, like something beautiful could come from pain, struggle and heartache. And that was the same period of time where I wrote the book.

And so now it’s kind of, it’s really cool now to see, you know, where those seeds were planted. Now, like every time there’s a new resident who comes into the house, we have, we have two houses now and looking to expand, looking to expand, there’s like 10 total residents now. So we, and it’s, there’s always demand for it, you know, but whether you look at that as unfortunately or fortunately, I mean, it’s,

hate to see people struggle, but we all need help here and there. And so to be able to be a part of that industry, it’s really locked me into the recovery industry. And like I told you earlier, I think I have a good friend who says that we are all in recovery of some sort, whether it’s from drugs and alcohol or whether it’s from whatever, you know. And so it’s great to be to be

a part of the support system for people and then to be able to build your business at the same time. So it’s kind of opened up my world and expanded my mind in terms of what you can do with real estate, what you can do in recovery, you know, in the recovery world and how you can help people, how you can serve and be in business at the same time and how you can just impact lives and be both mine because I guess

Growing up, also grew up in a very religious home and going to church, Christian family. I went to a Christian school all the way up through high school. like, hey, what’s up? Yeah, and so I had it from every single direction and had to walk my journey there to get back to where I am now. And I certainly relate to what you talked about earlier with your experience.

it’s been a great experience doing that with the recovery houses.

Quentin (23:23)
Pete, man, thank you, sir, man. Thank you for, man, just to get to your vulnerability, transparency, integrity. Thank you, man, just being reflective on the way you answered the question. Man, I appreciate you so much. know our viewers are gaining some amazing insight. I do want to ask you, you kind of alluded to it, but I want to ask you flat out, what’s next for you? What’s the next real goal with your business? Like, what are you going to do next, brother?

Pete Lustig (23:51)
Yeah, I’m gonna build my home services business. I wanna expand that. I wanna learn how to scale a business. That’s what I wanna learn how to do. I wanna learn how to hire people and then take that path. I read a book called The Three Simple Steps and they talk about you set your intentions and then you rely on

Quentin (24:05)
Mmm.

Pete Lustig (24:17)
the way of the winding staircase, how you’re gonna get there, that’s the winding staircase. It goes to where you’re gonna get, you don’t necessarily know how. So I’m following the way of the winding staircase now with my home services business, the recovery homes, sober living and recovery homes, and then my real estate portfolio in general, and how I’m gonna build that and expand it and serve the community and…

build a business and that’s where I’m at, know, continue, you know, the book as well, it’s called the comeback path. I want to continue to, I want to continue to grow that. ⁓ We talked about, you know, ecosystem earlier of that. It’s there. I wrote it for a reason. I wrote it because I needed it and I hope that it can help others as well. So that’s also a part of my

the future vision that I have for my life.

Quentin (25:16)
Yeah,

yeah, yeah. ⁓ man. Man, I appreciate you so much, bro. Like, I’m actually kind of getting emotional, man, just thinking about your journey and just thinking about how many people you are affecting because of your intentions. Like I know you said the book says set your intentions, right? And then work the way of the winding staircase. One of my mentors, he told me,

He says, disruption always follows intention. So when you start getting intentional about stuff, you gotta be prepared for things to get disrupted because now you are learning a new skillset, you’re learning a new way to grow, you’re learning a new mindset, you’re building up new muscles, you’re tapping into areas that you’ve never been before. So whenever you get intentional about something, you gotta know disruption follows.

And I’m so glad bro, you got intentional, but you are not less letting disruptions detour you from where you need to go. And even if they do detour, it’s only just finding a different way, a different path to get to where you need to go. And so, man, I’m just, I’m excited for you, brother. I’m excited for what you’re doing, man. I really am.

Pete Lustig (26:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate it and I appreciate your ⁓ encouraging spirit. I I love that. love you from when I saw your video message you send out. I’m like, that’s a very genuine guy. That’s a very, very genuine, I can feel your spirit from that. So I appreciate that Q.

Quentin (26:49)
No, I appreciate that. I appreciate you, man. Hey, listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, man, how can they get in contact with you,

Pete Lustig (27:01)
Sure. Peter Lustig, so L-U-S-T-I-G, first name is Peter, on Facebook. Facebook’s probably the best place to get a hold of me. I’m very active on Facebook. I have a page for myself and then I have a page for my business, Lustig Home Services. Lustig Home Services, so you could search for Lustig Home Services too. The more people I can meet,

I’m all game for that. love to learn from others and I love to make new connections and just like we made today, man. Yeah.

Quentin (27:34)
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, my friend. So man, listen, I want to say three things to you. I want to say them to you sincerely, So first, thank you for your time. You know, I think time is our most precious commodity. And so thank you for giving us your time. Secondly, thank you for your story, man. Thank you for, I’m going say it again, the gift of your vulnerability, the gift of your transparency. This is what I know about stories. Stories have a way of planting seeds in people.

You wrote a book, you get it, you know, you got a way of pleasing people. We may never see the growth, but the seed is still there. So that green, that seed may grow next week, two years from now, five years from now, but the seed is still there, man. So thank you for coming and planting seeds, bro. Lastly, man, thank you for your mindset, bro. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on,

Pete Lustig (28:02)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, thanks Hugh. really, really appreciate it. It’s been fun and a great opportunity to share. So thank you so much.

Quentin (28:36)
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, listen, everyone, you heard Pete, look into the show notes, get in contact with him, get in contact with him so you can get the book. mean, listen, I know his book is going to touch so many lives as already is. And in those that’s watching, I’m sure it’s going to touch you. So get in contact with him, contact him on Facebook so you can find out the channels. Everything is in the show notes. So what he mentioned is in the show notes. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue.

to bring up amazing people just like Pete. So sir, I say thank you again and everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.