Subscribe via:
Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros Podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Nick Aalerud, a seasoned real estate investor who has transitioned from traditional multifamily investments to focusing on hospitality and wellness retreats. Nick shares his journey of personal and professional growth, emphasizing the importance of self-care, redefining success, and learning from failures. He discusses the challenges he faced during his career, including a significant personal crisis, and how these experiences shaped his current approach to business and life. The conversation highlights the value of connecting with clients and the transformative power of creating meaningful experiences in the real estate industry.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Nick Aalerud (00:00)
So I guess people now are knowing me as the guy who made eight figures in real estate, had everything, had all the things, lost it all three times, and then finally burned it all to the ground myself because I needed to do that to learn who I really was and to learn what success and identity really could become for me. So thank you for letting me share the whole story. I hope you had time for that today. But that’s it’s a question all the way around like moving into the hospitality space.Michelle Kesil (00:24)
Yeah.Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone that I’m looking forward to connecting with, Nick Aalerud who has been making serious moves as a real estate investor in value-add multifamily storage, mobile home parks, and boutique hotels. Currently also working on a wellness retreat project, so excited to have you on the show today, Nick.
Nick Aalerud (02:33)
Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. I’m stoked to be here.Michelle Kesil (02:36)
Absolutely. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching asset management, value-add multifamily, hospitality, and connecting with your clients. So, excited to dive in with you.Nick Aalerud (02:54)
That’s it, when you say it that way, it sounds really boring, but I’m hoping to make that a little less boring. So, let’s, we can go for that.Michelle Kesil (03:00)
You’llit in a way that gets people excited.
Nick Aalerud (03:05)
Sure, yes! Happy to do that.Michelle Kesil (03:07)
Awesome!So first off for those not yet familiar with you, can you share what your main focus is right now?
Nick Aalerud (03:18)
Sure, yeah. So I am based in the Boston, Massachusetts area. ⁓ We have been in real estate since 2004. ⁓ We have covered the gamut with all the strategies. We did wholesaling, we’ve done rehabbing, we had construction and design, property management, brokerage. We were a truly vertically integrated organization and ⁓ accumulated a lot of deals, experience, failures, challenges, and lessons over the years. ⁓And that’s how learning from every single one of those, and they call me the comeback king here, because I have so many of those experiences to share. And now, fast forward 20 years later.
Michelle Kesil (03:55)
YouNick Aalerud (04:03)
I’m trying to do, instead of trying to do 300 deals a year or having another 1,000 units under our belt, I’m trying to do less than five deals a year that are really, really meaningful to me. And we’ve shifted, we still have some value-add multifamily, we still have self-storage assets that are quite big.but we’re really focused on the hospitality, like boutique hotel space, ⁓ RV parks and campground space, and like you mentioned, like super stoked about the wellness side. Like almost micro resorts and creating experiences for people. Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (04:39)
Amazing. What made you want to shift from more of the standard real estate processes into this more ⁓ unique field of those micro retreats and wellness facilities?Nick Aalerud (05:45)
Yeah, yeah, well, the non-sexy answer is that I was in value-add multifamily from 2010 until 2019. And we had a big, huge off-market team. We were really good at finding off-market deals. We then would raise the capital. We would then go into and do a takeover. We had all the checklists and procedures as to how to do it the right way, right? And our team, I have statistics from 2016, we were analyzing about 100 multifamily deals.like between 60 and 120 units or so to get to one closing. And our returns were anywhere between 18, 22, 24%. Then fast forward to 2019, our team was doing twice as much work. We had another KPI, it was about 204. We were analyzing, negotiating, trying to get to the closing table, going through due diligence just to get to one closing and our returns had gone way lower than that. We were talking 14, 15, 16%.
and at the time the interest rates were going up. So I had to pivot, I had to find a new asset class. And that’s the non-sexy answer, is that I literally followed the yield and a couple people here that were already into RV parks begged me to help them with their first acquisition and be a key principle and help them raise some capital and help them with asset management. I was very not comfortable.
because I never owned an RV. I had never even been to an RV park. ⁓ These two partners, there’s three or four partners now, they were just awesome. Everything they said we would do, they did. They moved onto the park, they turned it all around, we implemented all these strategies, and then I learned how cool it is to have people who come to a place that you stay and they leave happy, they come happy, they’re happy while they’re there, you can do so many more levers.
you can put a dog park in, can have retail s’mores shops, you can have firewood, you can have cool experiences. That became an added bonus where the yield was there, but also now creating these experiences for people. We took that from the RV park, brought it to the boutique hotel space. ⁓ That’s been magical. We’re now taking the boutique hotel space and creating a micro resort, experience-based, transformational space for people.
Cool, less than six deals a year, they have to fire me up and I think everyone should live the exact same way.
Michelle Kesil (08:18)
Yeah, I love that. think that’s so cool that you were able to pivot in a way that gets you excited when you were, you know, in your previous routine, I guess we can call it, more focused on those different types of deals. Like, did you have this idea of wanting to shift or were you like really focusing onI’m just growing a real estate business in the way that it was already structured, if that makes sense.
Nick Aalerud (08:54)
Yeah, yeah, you telling the story right so Yes, So I think the question right so we I we had a very very successful real estate operation we were making over Eight figures and net profit a year across the seven companiesEverything we opened we had a way to kind of move like the brokerage was started because when motivated sellers didn’t want us where they weren’t motivated we could go to the brokerage right property management started because we wanted to manage our own assets and Everything was working so well so well in fact that Whenever I was having any challenge personally like in the family life or I mean I was just so good at work that I could just Open up my phone open up my laptop
And I was really good. I could make money, I could make deals happen, I could do partnerships. We were building a team to the point where I was so good at it, it almost became an addiction. Where I could lean in and if I was having a fight with my wife at home, ⁓ I could just lean into work thinking, well, I’m producing for the family. And by producing, I had value, I had worth.
And I kept doing that and kept doing that until ⁓
Gosh, I don’t think we have time on this podcast, but you for massive awakenings and failures later. Well, I’ll tell this one. This was important because similar to investor fuel I was on my way to you know a Mastermind just like investor fuel where they had me doing a keynote speech is in 2019 and I was at the peak of my business. We had the seven companies going we were making over the eight figures in revenue
We had 24 W2 employees, we had over 40 virtual assistants, we had over 40 real estate agents in our firm, and that was the epitome of what a lot of us try to get to in this business. And I remember driving to the airport, and at the time, I was still living in the same house as my wife, but we had been separated for a few years. And I remember driving, and I’m about to give this keynote all about how we,
how we hold ourselves accountable and our whole team accountable and we buy into this culture and we have all of our core values all laid out and this is like our routine that we do every single day that keeps us all motivated, that keeps us all on task, that makes us all excited to work every day and as I’m driving to the airport I get a call, said Mr. Allerwood this is so and so, I’m the attorney representing your wife in your divorce and to me this was a surprise because we hadn’t made an agreement, we were just gonna live separated under one household.
and do it for the kids. And I’ll never forget the call and when it came in saying, you know, I just wanted to confirm, you know, when you’ll be leaving the marital home, you have two weeks to leave. We can’t confirm when you’re gonna see your kids again and you will have to pay for everything while everything gets sorted out. And it didn’t even occur to me then, Michelle, like it was like, I’m still driving like, okay, whatever. And I almost shelved it. I compartmentalized it because I was so good at that.
and I get on the plane and now I have like three and a half hours to just to myself, wait, what does this mean? my God, you I own $20 million in real estate, I’m gonna be homeless in three weeks? like what was all this for? And that became the next year and a half, two years actually became the hardest two years of my life. Where besides being battling, she was very angry divorced, there’s a lot of.
drugs involved and having to navigate that, having to navigate who I really was versus who she was saying that I was, having to just go through this really, really horrible time, it took a toll on my body. But before that, I’m just kind of going through the whole, since we’re here, Michelle, before that, ⁓ even had a whole tagline. I was known around here, the Shut Up and Do It Real Estate podcast was the old podcast. Shut Up and Do It was my tagline.
That included the people who would have these things called panic attacks or anxiety attacks. Just deal with your shit. sorry, can I not say that? Deal with your stuff, just go with it. And I had very little sympathy for people who didn’t own their own stuff. And all of a sudden, one day, I’m in the parking lot of my chiropractic office and I lose all the feeling in my left arm. And then I lose all the feeling in my left leg. And I remember thinking, my God.
40 years on this planet, all the things that I’ve done, all these achievements that I’ve made, and I’m gonna go in a parking lot with like a heart attack? This is it? And that became one of the scariest moments of my life. And I woke up in a hospital, and that’s when they discharged me. I literally had felt before I passed out, I remember feeling like someone had just dropped a thousand pound weight plate right on my chest, like if you’re at a gym and boom, like that.
And I just felt like I went into like a seizure and then I just passed out. And I remember they diagnosed me and gave me a letter saying that I needed to learn how to manage my stress. I was like, you’re gonna tell me this was all stressful? No, no, no, no, there’s a problem here. And it was then that I realized, it was not even then, it was later that I realized, my God, like even if my brain was so capable of just deflecting and going into business and going into success and going into achieve mode.
my body would feel everything and it would store everything. And even then I’m like, okay, well, I don’t know when the next one’s gonna happen. I started to live in fear around that. And that is when I guess I ultimately realized looking at my entire life, looking at what I thought was a great thing, all these things that we had built together and this big team and all these deals and all these rental units and this, all this became like it felt like a huge prison.
had closed in around me and seeing my Google calendar with like, I think it was, was it 43 Zoom meetings a week? Like 43, like accountability and hiring and team building and asset management, like all these things. I’m like, what am I doing? And that was the long answer, but it’s the powerful answer to, right? Like having to realize what does success even mean?
Like, who am I when I don’t have all of these things and I’m not a national speaker and people aren’t, I’m not on other podcasts, I’m not sharing things about real estate and how to make more money here. Like, who am I when that’s all gone? And that became my new journey. And I was called at a really, really, really deep meditation retreat to shut it all down, except for the two companies. And …
So I guess people now are knowing me as the guy who made eight figures in real estate, had everything, had all the things, lost it all three times, and then finally burned it all to the ground myself because I needed to do that to learn who I really was and to learn what success and identity really could become for me. So thank you for letting me share the whole story. I hope you had time for that today. But that’s it’s a question all the way around like moving into the hospitality space.
Michelle Kesil (17:37)
Yeah.Nick Aalerud (17:43)
I had to take the opposite approach with my calendar. What am I gonna calendar around my self-care time? If my brain says I don’t have time to go to yoga or to journal or to meditate, that means I have to do the opposite of what I had been training my brain to think for the last 40 years of my life. So, okay, don’t have time to go to yoga, then I have to try this. I don’t even know my butt, I’m not stretchy, I’m not mobile, I’m not that person, but I have to do this.I hate to journal, I hate to write, but I have to do that because it’s non-productive. If I retrain my brain the opposite of what I was planning to do, I would slowly get to learning who I was. I guess that’s with the units and the cash flows and the counting your net worth balances every quarter. There’s a place for that, but there’s also a place to really remind ourselves, why did we even get into self-employment or real estate in the first place?
Right? And financial freedom, location freedom, time freedom being all freedoms. And really getting back to that. You know? Do we have big companies just to say we have big companies just to put our numbers on paper and go in front of a big group and tell everybody how great we are? Or do we literally live a life where I get to hang out with my kids, go to yoga, have two really great business meetings?
and push a transformational wellness space, right? Because if it’s not a ⁓ hell yes, it’s hell no. And that’s where I’m at these days. Thank you for letting me share the whole story here on the podcast. I didn’t know we’d go there. ⁓
Michelle Kesil (19:20)
Yeah, I think that’san amazing perspective to share because maybe people are listening and their mind is on the hustle and the grind and they lost sight of why they’re doing that in the first place. And to hear your story and your perspective of kind of what can really happen when you go too much in one direction and not like nourishing yourself in another direction.
It’s like an important wake up call for people to pay attention to and to come back to like, why am I doing this at all? yeah, finding that balance in your life.
I feel like that is very valuable information because someone might be listening to the show and they’re starting their real estate journey. They’re getting all excited and they’re focusing on the cash, on the end goal of the money or the numbers. But maybe they haven’t really connected to why they’re doing that or found the balance in themselves of
nourishing their own life and it’s all about balance in the end. Like of course we want to create success, but the point of the success is to nourish ourselves. So if you’re missing one piece, then what’s the point of it all?
Nick Aalerud (20:39)
beautifully said, and you know what I don’t wanna take away from, if you’re a newer investor or newer self-employed, newer entrepreneur, the beauty and the benefit of starting and having the failure. I don’t think I wouldn’t have these lessons if I didn’t lose everything four times. You don’t have to, you don’t have to do all of it, but just getting started and whatever the fear is, the fear isn’t real.So many people have lost so much and if it’s money, it’s money. It’s the lowest vibrational energy that we have here. It’s about learning who you are in the process. that’s what I really, structuring your life around your business and knowing that the business that we create, whether it’s real estate, flipping, wholesaling, property management, brokerage, or you’re lender, how does this show up as a mirror for me to f-
Michelle Kesil (21:18)
Yeah.Nick Aalerud (21:34)
Understand who I like I’m triggered by that. ⁓ interesting. Did you grow up in a household where money was a huge issue? Right like I have to live in fear because I don’t know where I’m gonna get my next check from well, that’s a program Right. I know you relate ⁓Michelle Kesil (21:47)
Yeah. Yeah, because moneyis neutral. It’s just a way that we exchange in our world. And we are the ones that place the meaning on it. So of course we need it to survive. That is our, you know, exchange system right now. But back in the day, was goats. So the money can also change to something else. But it’s all about how we assign the meaning to it. If we put the pressure and the stress to it.
then that’s what we’re amplifying. But if we are, you know, being loving and gentle and doing it for the journey, for the learning, for the experience, for the self-fulfillment, then the money is a byproduct.
Nick Aalerud (22:31)
Amen. Amen. love that. Coco beans, goats. What else do we have? ⁓ Seashells, tulips. A lot of it.Michelle Kesil (22:42)
Exactly,maybe tomorrow it’s, I don’t know, crypto, I don’t know.
Nick Aalerud (22:49)
And real estate, right? Real estate pros, like real estate for me is still one of the easiest and fastest ways to build that financial freedom, for sure, hands down. And with like, my first five deals in real estate, if you are newer listening to this, like my very first five deals ever, like when I was still working W2, before I even got into knowing what I was knowing or didn’t know, I lost everything in my first five deals. Didn’t know what I was doing, parted with somebody out of state.Michelle Kesil (23:00)
course.Nick Aalerud (23:18)
The partnership wasn’t real, like there was some fraudulent rental applications that he had showed me that I thought were real. Doesn’t matter. But losing everything in my first five deals, what a horrible and beautiful gift for me to start my journey and learning that I’m the only one responsible for me. Learning that I’m the one, right, no one’s coming to save me. I need to learn more about me, I need to learn more about the business, I need to learn more about what I’m supposed to be doing, who I’m trusting.Michelle Kesil (23:22)
Yeah.Yeah.
Nick Aalerud (23:47)
Is there due diligence that can be done? And that became what the business was. And the more we kind of bumped through those obstacles and challenges and what we can and can’t do over here and this really made someone angry and that cost us X amount of dollars. Like it’s all about learning the people.Yeah, sorry, I love this stuff. Thank you so much. Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (24:07)
Yeah,thank you for sharing. think it’s a unique perspective that doesn’t get talked about a lot and it can get people back to their motivation and to feel like if they’re losing money or winning money, like that in the end, it’s all for their experience and their business will be a byproduct of their experiences.
Nick Aalerud (24:33)
Yes, and no matter how bad you think it is, no matter how alone you think you are, right? Like the first time I lost money on the deal or lost everything, first time I had my first divorce and a second divorce and like losing it all again, like you always think it’s the worst thing in the world that no one understands what you’re going through and so then your ego’s going through a death and you just want to burn it all to the ground or quit. And the beauty of that is, like,you’ll never get anything in this life that you are not supposed to handle. The whole point is the stronger you are, the more you’re able to handle. And I know the gurus say when you have the $10,000 business, ⁓ a $1,000 problem is a huge problem. So as you go up the chain, if you’re just using money, you have an eight figure real estate business, or in that case, a few hundred million in transactions. ⁓
You have bigger problems. So it’s really about how much can we hold, right, with money, but also with emotions, with stress, with learning how to solve other people’s problems, making them feel heard and understood, and that their problem matters because it does. That’s how we are in real estate. That’s all we are as problem solvers and connectors. And if we can do that first, before we get done on the podcast, you asked me one of my strengths, right?
And I’ll share this, it was a strength and a weakness because in my fix and flip and wholesale business days, I would almost always get the contract. But my seller appointments were like three and a half hours long. When you go to scale a business, that wasn’t great, but that also showed how much I was connecting. Whereas anybody else who came in behind me, or if anyone did come in after me, most of them just wanted to get the offer signed. If they don’t go for the offer, then you leave. No, we even started …
Here’s a tidbit too, again, because it’s the Real Estate Pros podcast. We shifted our incentivized plan in our office for when we had our acquisitions team, our whole roles, and we gave them a huge bonus. We tracked how many seller reviews they would get, testimonials over the offers. So if they went to a seller appointment, their main goal was to get a testimonial review showing that the seller felt heard, understood, cared for, acknowledged.
and then the offers were secondary. Because, right, leading indicator, if they could make the seller feel heard, understood, and acknowledged, chances are they were gonna get an offer signed. So it was like this entire different shift of let’s actually care about people. That’s what we’re really here for. And everyone can make money and you’re helping someone start a whole fresh start in their new life. And the more we go through, the more I went through, right, with my divorces, with my losing everything, with short sales, with ⁓ being homeless, like I could connect.
with anyone in their trauma. It’s a big deal. People over six hundred years. Yeah.
Michelle Kesil (27:33)
Absolutely. Yeah,thank you for sharing your story and your expertise and your experience. I think that people can take away a lot from it.
Nick Aalerud (27:48)
Yeah, thanks for having me Michelle, this was awesome!Michelle Kesil (27:51)
Of course!Yeah, so before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more from you, where can people find you these days?
Nick Aalerud (28:01)
sure, yeah, they can ⁓ on a YouTube channel, Nick Aalerud, my first and last name, I’m also on Instagram. I’m really old, so I’m on Facebook sometimes more than Instagram. you can connect with me on socials, and we do have a website nickaalerud.com ⁓ where I’m posting different kinds of things, but still very much involved in real estate, still involved in entrepreneurship, and it’s really just a matter of structuring what success and identity look like now. It’s been really cool.Hahaha
Michelle Kesil (28:32)
Well, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. Thank you for being here.Nick Aalerud (28:39)
Yeah, thanks Michelle, appreciate it. From California to Boston, I guess you have better weather and better oceans than we do. But thank you so much.Michelle Kesil (28:46)
⁓ Yes, of course,my pleasure. And for those listeners tuning into the show, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations with operators like Nick, who are building real businesses, and we’ll see you on our next episode.
