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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, Kristen interviews Brandon Waters, an entrepreneur with a diverse portfolio in real estate and digital marketing. Brandon shares his journey from a small farming community to becoming a successful investor, discussing the importance of hard work, integrity, and adaptability in business. He emphasizes the significance of identifying needs in the market, scaling businesses sustainably, and the value of mentorship. The conversation also touches on current market trends and the importance of networking and communication in real estate.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Brandon Waters (00:00)
one of the things as a business that we do as a module is we will not sell a facility under a 10 % cap rate. So the ROI has to be above 10%. All of our clientele that we had across the country, none of them were under a 12%. So we had some guys that were at 32 % ROIafter purchase, day one after purchase.
Kristen (01:54)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Brandon Waters. He is an investor and entrepreneur with a diverse portfolio spanning real estate and digital marketing. He has a lot going on, so I’m excited to get into it. Thanks for being here, Brandon. So you have your hand in a lot of different things around real estate. How did you even get into the industry to begin with?Brandon Waters (02:07)
Yes ma’am, thank you for having me.So growing up, I grew up in a small farming community in Dixon, Oklahoma. And a lot of people say, where is that at? And it’s in between Ardmore and Durant, Oklahoma. ⁓
but growing up there was a lot of businesses so because it’s kind of a poor farming community you have several trade works HVAC electrical plumbing my uncle owned a plumbing business fourth generation it’s now in its fifth generation and when I was 13 I worked for him and learned a lot about business so going out on the job side at 13 you know the customers would look at you they go hey what’s this kid doing here and and they would be formidable about information they would say
Kristen (02:41)
Wow.Brandon Waters (02:57)
you know, what are you interested in? Why are you working at this age? And it gave me the opportunity to learn about residential, commercial, because every time the conversation was, hey, make sure you invest, whether it’s the stock market and real estate, invest in that. So that got the real estate bug going right there.Kristen (03:15)
Interesting. mean that’s really early 13. I I feel that’s hard to even at that age soak in informationBrandon Waters (03:17)
Yeah. You knowIt was, but when you’re surrounded by so many different people and entrepreneurs, it just kind of starts clicking because it’s the same information over and over again. So you retain it. And so it was just repetitive information. And I think that’s what they were trying to do is be like, hey, we can build this repetitive.
Kristen (03:37)
Yeah.That’s incredible. So then when did you kind of go off on your own and start building everything?
Brandon Waters (03:46)
So my first business, ⁓ I was 16. I ⁓ was working at a car wash. Yeah, I was working at a car wash and the owner of the company, was partners in a construction company.Kristen (03:50)
Wow.Brandon Waters (03:59)
And in this construction company, he was a foreman and he came to me one day and he said, Hey, I’ve got some cleanup that needs to be done in this, on this house that we’re building. And, and I’d like for you to come out and do it just to make some extra cash. And while I was there, I saw a need and in that need, I saw there’s all these homes and there’s, you know, trash laying around shingles, sheetrock bricks, you name it. And everybody wants to show their family and friends, the house from foundation all the way to the finished product. And so keeping it clean.in my mind showed me like, if I go out and I talk to these companies and I say, if we keep it nice and tight and everything else, they’re gonna see a turnkey product. And they’re going to see that, hey, we keep everything clean all the way through. So it helps their business, but it also gives me business. And I can share a story about how I had to persevere in that as well, if you’d like me to.
Kristen (04:48)
Yeah, please.Brandon Waters (04:49)
Soone day after school, there was the biggest residential builder there in Ardmore, Oklahoma. And I went to his office right after school. I was in a school t-shirt, shorts, walked in, talked to the admin and I said, hey, can I visit with the owner? And she said, yeah, I kind of laughed, know, and I walked back there and told him what I needed. And he said, when you’re serious, come back and I’ll give you business. So, you know, most people would walk away, take that no, be deflated.
But I went home, I asked my dad, I said, hey, can I borrow 20 bucks? He said, what for? And I said, well, I’m trying to get some business. The guy told me to be serious. I got no sleep that night, building a plan in my head. Next morning, my mom said, hey, I’ll build you a flyer. I’ll help you out in that aspect. I went to Salvation Army, bought a suit, tie, some nice shoes, went the next day, took my dad’s briefcase, walked in, gave him the information, and he gave me all his business. And then…
Kristen (06:09)
Yeah.Aww.
Brandon Waters (06:34)
Three months later, he called me in and he said, I thought I was getting fired, and into my contract. And I come in and he slides some keys across the desk and he said, I’ve added you to my insurance, any equipment you need, anything for your business, I’ll help you out because you have pride, honesty and integrity. And that’s what’s carried me through my business ⁓ since is those three things.Kristen (06:56)
Wow,that’s incredible. You were 16 at the time? Wow, I mean that’s also, it’s so great to find someone that would take you seriously at that age and actually see the potential in the drive.
Brandon Waters (07:00)
16.Hard work, hard work and honesty, pride and integrity will get you a long ways.
Kristen (07:15)
Amazing. So this, mean, started very early for you. So as you kind of get a little bit older, how do you pivot in the market or keep, you know, how do you get into investing?Brandon Waters (07:26)
Absolutely,so it took me a little while. after after high school I closed that business. Yeah, so I closed that business down. I couldn’t keep it up with going to college After college I went into the oil and gas industry and I really started to learn because you’re around in my field I’m in safety. So in my field
Kristen (07:30)
I think that’s okay. Yeah.Brandon Waters (07:46)
I was able to work around a lot of land management guys and those land management guys mainly had real estate licenses or they, you know, as a secondary. so visiting with them about ground leases and about just leases period really started to kind of fuel that for me. And then when I was 32, I ended up getting my real estate license. And then that’s when I went full force. so yes, ma’am.Kristen (08:08)
Amazing. all.Brandon Waters (08:11)
And I’ve flipped homes before andKristen (08:11)
Came back. Thank you.Brandon Waters (08:13)
just kind of obtained that going forward as the momentum.Kristen (08:17)
that’s so cool. yeah, kind of like, yeah, you rounded out your experience. So what after you got your license you started building all these companies. Tell us about that. ⁓Brandon Waters (08:26)
Yeah, yes ma’am. So ⁓ once I got my license, I started selling residential homes. Everybody says, you you got to cut your teeth in residential because that’s where you learn your negotiation skills. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. At first, you know, you’re kicking and screaming going, no, I don’t know, but you really do. And so with my clients, they could see that, hey, you know, he has negotiation skills. I would like for him to help me in certain areas. And that led to me working on a client’s portfolio in West Texas.And it was, you know, dollar generals and a bunch of restaurants and things like that. they hadn’t had an, CPI index on any of the leases. So there was no increases in like 10 years. and so we went in and we increased him $12,000 a month within two weeks. ⁓ and it was just, they hadn’t had any lease structures that led to my clients seeing that success and going, okay, find us something else. So becoming a SME subject matter expert and just whatever you’re working on, the
that’s successful will continue that success. so ⁓ storage was one of them. Storage is a big one. We started obtaining storage facilities for our clients. Then they came back to us and they said, we lack storage. We got a great ROI, but we hate it because it’s not passive income. So we took that and we said, how do we make it passive income? And we created a storage management company.
Kristen (09:44)
Mmm.Wow,so what you’re really good I mean from a really young age is identifying needs and identifying what the problem is and creating a solution. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Brandon Waters (10:01)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know…with my mentors in the oil and gas industry. So a lot of them own businesses because of the success and, know, that market in the oil and gas is kind of a, a, it’s a pendulum. It swings back and forth. You’re either doing really well or you’re not doing well. So most of them, like the firefighting community and, things like that, where you have people that can have some days off to create businesses on the side, they inspired me and said, Hey, find the smallest thing, whether it’s installing gutters on the side, whether it’s doing roofing on the side, something form a business.
so
that when the market does take and you have to, you know, have some side money to provide for your family, that’s what’s going to be important for you. So being a good listener, I would recommend anybody to read the book, you know, How to Win Friends and Influence Others, because it’s learning how to be a good listener and pick up on the keys with your clientele and saying, okay, this is a necessity they need. If I can’t provide the necessity by being a subject matter expert, then let me find
Kristen (11:25)
rightBrandon Waters (11:38)
the subject matter expert because then you’re the go-to guy for that information. They’re always going to come back to you and refer you to their friends and family.Kristen (11:47)
Right, absolutely. And then with this storage business, you guys scaled fairly quickly, correct?Brandon Waters (11:53)
Yes,so we grew immensely. We did not anticipate. We started out just within the first year. We started out at like $500 a month. Within six months to that, were sorry, the second year coming in, we were at $6,000 a month. Towards the end of the second year, we had signed a contract for $38,000 a month. And we just we couldn’t handle it. There were three of us, two of us were contract, one of us full time.
And because of the we went out and tried to get investors to come in, help with call centers and things like that. But we just didn’t have enough time because of all the clientele that we had already had established. So what we decided to do is we said, look, we’re going to find you guys, the clients that we had will continue to work with you until we can find a management company and process to help you that’s more equipped. And then we transferred out of that. But it’s.
jumping too far too fast and Being able humble enough to say hey and having the group around me because you know when you have a good group around you those contract Contractors that were working for me was my mother-in-law my sister-in-law and they’re very smart smarter than me and And they said hey listen we we need to shut this down because we are not
good enough right now to provide the services we need to. And we need to either learn or we need to step back and do what we know best. And so it’s a hard road to take that and say, man, you know, this is a lot of money, this is a lot of success, but you can lose relationships, you can lose clientele, and that part is not worth it.
Kristen (13:34)
Yeah, I think it’s good to have like a bigger picture. What would be some advice you would give people who are wanting to scale their company and how to kind of do that in a very sustainable way?Brandon Waters (13:45)
As soon as you know growth’s coming, as soon as you know this is something that you see on the horizon, like this is a niche either and you don’t want to continue it because in that business there was a lot of calls. mean, I missed a lot of baseball games. I was there, but I was on the phone. So, you know, in that aspect, you either have to learn to build it out in advance so that you have some help orKristen (13:59)
Yeah.Brandon Waters (14:11)
scale it up enough to where you can sell the business. That’s one thing that I wish I would have done hindsight was, hey, I can sell this business at this market and do really well. ⁓ But, you know, we still made success out of it even after. So we did the right thing. We did what we needed to do. But don’t give up. Don’t be beat down about it because there’s always something. There’s always tomorrow. The next day you can’t fix yesterday. You can fix today.Kristen (14:37)
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really good advice. So you were able to kind of restructure the business and then what happened from there.Brandon Waters (14:44)
So we went into wholesaling and we went into purchasing facilities ourself. The wholesaling became way better. mean, because of our clientele and the trust that we had built,one of the things as a business that we do as a module is we will not sell a facility under a 10 % cap rate. So the ROI has to be above 10%. All of our clientele that we had across the country, none of them were under a 12%. So we had some guys that were at 32 % ROI
after purchase, day one after purchase.
But most of them were at 12 % day one after purchase. ⁓ that right there alone brought us a ton of clients because they said, hey, when I’m buying them, I’m buying them at a six and seven cap and having to build them up over a year two or three and getting it to the 10 or 12 or whatever. our clients were day one, we’re making ROI immediately.
Kristen (16:19)
Yeah, I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about that because I think that that’s important where sometimes the first idea, even if it works, maybe that’s not the one you stick with. How do you pivot in those moments and stay, ⁓ I guess, motivated to continue it rather than just, you know, walking away?Brandon Waters (16:37)
It’shard. mean, it’s extremely hard and I would love to sit here and say that I’m perfect and I made no mistakes during those opportunities. You know, when you lose a business like that, it’s tough and you have to walk away and go, my gosh, and I’m sure I made a lot of mistakes. I know I did, but at the end of the day, it’s taking a breath. ⁓
Realizing what you’re thankful for and stepping back to zero. That’s the hardest part is going back to zero and remembering like hey Where was I before and where I came from before was was, you know, I grew up in poverty So, you know, I’m I’m not in poverty. I’m in a great opportunity I have a I am blessed with an amazing family. And so how do I pivot and again, it goes back to listening listening to your clientele listening to the small details and what do they want I want a great ROI and
and I want a great passive income. So what do we do? We go in and we look for those great return on investments, whether that’s storage or houses or whatever the case may be, industrial, and then we find a management company. So we partner with management companies and we say, even with the management company, we still have a high ROI.
Kristen (17:45)
Yeah, I think that’s also an important part, kind of outsourcing and relying on others because you can’t do everything yourself. What are your best tips for kind of identifying the right people? Because I think people waste a lot of money on the wrong people.Brandon Waters (17:59)
That’s, okay, so that’s a…Excellent point. ⁓ You know, my sister-in-law and my wife, I would say both of them are just extremely smart, could run a business and just, but you have to have the passion. So like with my sister-in-law, she’s not passionate about running a business. You know, she’s passionate about other things. And so learning your people, learning to say, how do I make them motivated, but also understand that this is not what they’re interested in. So how do I find something they’re interested in and then support that? And so yes, they may enjoy working because
we’re all working for something, right? We’re working to provide for our families and things like that.
Ultimately, the people are most important. And if you surround yourself with the right people, you’ll know and your business will grow. And that’s the thing is you may lose them. You may lose every single person you get because you’re growing them and mentoring them to a certain point and then they’re gone. But that’s okay because either they’ll come back or they’ll be somebody that you can utilize in business later on. And that’s where a lot of people mess up. man, you know, I trained them and they’re gone. But yes, but two, three years later, they’re successful.
Kristen (19:00)
Awesome.Brandon Waters (19:07)
business is a business that’s now providing for your business and it’s something you help nurture.Kristen (19:10)
Yeah.Absolutely, yeah. I think in this business any form of giving is a really good thing. It’s just good to, you know, provide value and hopefully it comes back. But yeah, that’s amazing. ⁓ So, you know, you have all these businesses going on. What are, like, how are you managing your time? How are you making sure these scale all at once? ⁓
Brandon Waters (19:36)
So yeah, it’s a lot, but I have great business partners. I have excellent business partners and a lot of these businesses that I own are very passive ⁓ and I still have a full-time job.Kristen (19:39)
youMmm, wow.
Brandon Waters (19:49)
But inmy full-time job, you know, it gives me the opportunity to do these things and allow myself the growth that I need to do because I can do my full-time job during the day and then outside of those work hours, I can do all the things that I need to on my businesses. Plus, I have the support behind me. And again, going back to the right people, when you find the right people and you know what their motivation is, then you can keep that and say, hey, I’ll carry this, you carry this. And we split those duties.
and their strengths and weaknesses. I’ve got some strengths that I’m really good at.
where my business partners have strengths that I’m not good at. And so that, that is the balance and the key. And I see so many clientele coming to me, ⁓ that’ll say, I’ve got several right now. They’re like, we’re selling our facility because our partnership is just on shaky ground right now. It’s terrible. And that’s horrible to hear, but it happens constantly. So reminding yourself to again, go back to zero and the partner as well, go back to ground zero. Why did you buy this in the first place?
Kristen (20:27)
Yeah.Brandon Waters (20:54)
together. Where were you at when in the in your point of mind and set ⁓ where you said hey we’re gonna buy this together and we’re gonna grow this and be successful. What went wrong? How can you apologize together and how can you sit down and have a meeting of the minds to make it grow?Kristen (21:11)
Yeah, amazing. Well, I mean, you’ve given such great advice on kind of the forward thinking abundance mindset. To kind of wrap this up, I would love to just hear your thoughts on the market in general, kind of what you’re seeing. ⁓Brandon Waters (21:24)
The market’s crazy right now. you know, storage has cooled off. I sat down with a ⁓ bank the other day and the bank told me, said, you know, well, storage is done. know, storage got saturated, it’s done, and I highly disagree. ⁓ What I would recommend to anyone is…Kristen (21:38)
Mm.Brandon Waters (21:42)
Go out and have conversations with lenders have conversations with real estate agents Even if you i’m a real estate agent i’m you know commercial is what I do But I still have agents that I work with on the residential side I just had a conversation with one two days ago That said they’ve had more influx in their foreclosure market than they’ve had in many many many years So when you hear the news and it says, know, we’re doing great as far as you know, the economy and everything elseWe’re not having a lot of foreclosures talk to the the ground zero agents It’s a different conversation and that’s what conversations need to happen because if you’re an investor You want to capitalize on the market? The only way to do that is to be in these conversations and go to these meetups and have the information
Kristen (22:30)
Yeah, absolutely. And not just taking one person’s advice as the Bible. Yeah, amazing. So thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation. Tell people where to find you and how to work with you.Brandon Waters (22:36)
100 percent.Yes
ma’am. So they can find me at rnbdigitalmarketing.com. That’s our email address is on there. Everything is on there for our digital marketing business. ⁓ And then for storage, they can reach out to me at [email protected]. That’s Crossroads Real Estate. And they can reach out to me there.
Kristen (23:06)
Amazing. Yeah, we didn’t even get into the digital marketing part of it. He’s got even that going on. So we’re running out of time. So that’s amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, I think you have a great story and hopefully, you know, motivated a lot of people. And thank you everybody for listening. Hope you got some inspiration for your own business and learned a lot. So we’ll see you back next time.Brandon Waters (23:10)
Yes ma’am. Yes ma’am. Thank you.Thank you.
Yes,
ma’am. Thank you.
