Transform Your Business Journey: Co-Living and Property Management Tips

John Harcar (00:01.897)
All right. Hey, guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Aaron Lambert. And what we’re going to talk about, you know, besides his journey in business and in real estate, we’re going to talk about his passion about co-living and his journey to get to 100 doors. Guys, remember, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers. mean, really all real estate entrepreneurs, to 5x their business.

We provide the tools and training to grow the business they want to grow, which in turn helps them live the life they’ve always dreamed of. So Aaron Mann, welcome to our show.

Aaron Lambert (00:38.082)
Yeah, thanks for having me, John. I appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:40.373)
Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you. I hear a lot lately about co-living and I know the pad split thing, there’s that, but I’m excited to learn more and then your passion for it. But before we talk about all that, tell our audience a little bit about your background, how you got into business, real estate, and what kind of got you here.

Aaron Lambert (00:59.566)
Yeah, so I have a background. I’m born, raised in Louisiana. I moved to California when I was, I don’t know, like right out of high school, 02. And yeah, was out there for 14 years and I had started a career in the oil refineries, something that you can make a lot of money and not have to be too educated or at least have like decorated education. So I started working there. ended up…

John Harcar (01:18.485)
Mmm.

Aaron Lambert (01:28.385)
Worked through a couple positions and I found myself doing a pipe fitting fabricator. So I was really good at fabricating things. Building some of my hands. I did that for like 15 years and then after that, yeah, like in 2016 I had went on what I told you earlier, a little mandatory vacation for like four years. It was fun. Big learning experience.

John Harcar (01:51.915)
Hahaha!

Aaron Lambert (01:54.958)
And then in 2020, I moved to Vegas because my wife is out there and started a business. That was right when COVID happened. COVID shut down the world. I’m like, what the heck am going to do? And

I started a business, I opened up LLC, didn’t even know what the heck I was doing. And I started like calling people trying to find like masks and sell masks, trying to find anything COVID related because some guy hit me up. He’s like, Hey, man, I got these masks and everybody needs them. I’m like, okay, so I’d start cold calling everybody on in the phone book. Long story short of partner up with this. Yeah, the face mask. Yeah, yeah, the face.

John Harcar (02:30.826)
Like you’re talking about the masks, right? Like just the regular doctor. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.

Aaron Lambert (02:38.016)
I partnered up with a gentleman named Ash, he’s a doctor, and he kind of joined forces into my LLC and then we got a part, sorry, a distributorship with a test kit company in New Jersey called AccessBio. we did, from there we went on to do about $30 million in revenue selling COVID test kits. Yeah.

So that was like, went from like zero dollars to like the most money I’ve ever seen in my life. And I was a little fast, but super like wild, wild west. Like we didn’t even know what we were doing. I’m sitting here typing up invoices like manually. We have no CRM. We have no nothing. We’re literally million dollar drop shippers.

John Harcar (03:10.336)
Yeah.

John Harcar (03:26.857)
Wow, that’s incredible.

Aaron Lambert (03:26.968)
People would me money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I would then put the order in and wire it to the distributor. And we’d get a truck, pick it up, and drop it off. We sold to government agencies, McDonald’s, all kinds of schools and hospitals, just anybody and everybody, pharmacies. Yeah, it was pretty hard.

John Harcar (03:42.762)
Wow. How did you find this company with the kits?

Aaron Lambert (03:50.2)
just, so you know how we network?

And well, weren’t networking in like physically, we were networking on like WhatsApp was a huge communication channel and you get thrown in these chats with like hundreds of other people and all of them are like looking and trying to find supplies or they have something to sell. And you know, we just got connected with somebody that had a connection over here that had a connection over here and we ended up, you know, striking a deal and started selling test kits. So yeah.

John Harcar (04:06.257)
Right.

John Harcar (04:20.49)
Nice. I mean, not a bad little thing to fall into. So where did real estate come into play?

Aaron Lambert (04:26.488)
So I would say like mentally.

I had been studying and reading on my vacation for probably like three years. I had like mentally whenever I got to Vegas, I’m like, okay, I want to do real estate. I started researching. I found Jerry Norton. This is like early 2022 or 2020 before like the COVID really kicked off. Like it was starting, but it hadn’t kicked off yet. And I made an offer like the first week. I made an offer on my first property and didn’t get accepted.

John Harcar (04:47.616)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Lambert (04:59.898)
and I’m like, okay. And then shortly after that is whenever I started doing the COVID thing and that just ate up all my time. So didn’t really do much in real estate, but always wanted to do it and had a lot of like head knowledge of business and real estate. Cause I started my journey as most with rich dad, poor dad. then I… Yeah.

John Harcar (05:19.264)
Okay, there’s there it is. Well, I usually ask folks like, is there something that you know, from your past that got you into real estate or planted a seed for real estate and probably 75 % that purple book?

Aaron Lambert (05:33.634)
Yeah, it’s crazy.

John Harcar (05:35.283)
Nuts.

Aaron Lambert (05:35.438)
Somebody said, somebody was like, hey, you gotta read this book. I’m like, what? And they like, I read it. And I’m like, oh wow. So then I went on to read every single book that was in the back of the cover. I told my mom, these books. And then I would get those books and they would have more books in the back. And I said, buy these books. And I just read all of them and just getting a lot of knowledge. But I didn’t take the leap into real estate investing really until the pandemic slowed down in the beginning of 2022. So when I bought

a condo in Baton Rouge. turned it into a, well the plan was to turn it into short term. It ended up being midterm because I didn’t know anything about the HOA rules.

John Harcar (06:14.784)
Hmm.

Aaron Lambert (06:15.672)
But it worked out because it’s a great midterm. Then shortly after that, I bought four town homes in Baton Rouge, all connected. Over the course of the next two years after that, I turned three of them into short term. As the tenants cycled out, I started turning them into short term. And they’ve done great. They’ve done great.

John Harcar (06:36.168)
Okay.

And this is why you’re in Vegas.

Aaron Lambert (06:42.814)
I did all of this while in Vegas, Yeah. I’m from Baton Rouge. And it was cheaper. So I had X number of dollars and I needed to make X number a month. So the only way to do that was to buy, I could buy double in Louisiana what I could in Vegas. And I didn’t have all the STR restrictions and all this other nonsense as I do over in Vegas.

John Harcar (06:44.83)
Yeah, okay, very cool. Why did you choose Louisiana? that’s where we’re you’re from. That’s right. That’s right. Okay. Well

John Harcar (07:03.444)
Very true.

John Harcar (07:10.96)
What were some of the struggles you had or you ran across as you started?

Aaron Lambert (07:16.59)
Well, not knowing anything, really. Like hands-on experience. You know, when we bought them, I bought them. Okay, great, bought it, got the loan. We put 25 % down, I think. One mistake that I made was not escrowing taxes and insurance into the four properties. That was one mistake I found out. I’m like, dude, I got freaking $8,000 bill, $8,000. was like, what? A year later, I’m like…

John Harcar (07:41.376)
Yeah, that’s not a good thing to get.

Aaron Lambert (07:44.426)
Yeah, so I’m like, okay, so we incorporated that and then through the Airbnb. So me and my wife both rehabbed the properties ourselves and designed them ourselves, furnished them, set them all up. Took us about a month on each one. We would go to Louisiana and I would stay down there and then she would come down and help and we’d set them up. But yeah, I would say.

I didn’t know how to underwrite as well back then. I barely knew anything. Somebody had my CPA actually. She was actually I found her through Robert Kiyosaki’s team of

John Harcar (08:25.866)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Lambert (08:27.694)
advisors and people on his team through Tom Wheelwright was a big guy with Robert and he has a CPA company and I’ve had a CPA through her. We did a whole tax strategy and all this jazz and she gave me a calculator for figuring out if the property cash flowed and how much cash flowed, how much appreciation, what I’m gonna get. So.

John Harcar (08:51.231)
Nice.

Aaron Lambert (08:51.754)
is that and yeah it worked out. I mean we do like I said we do really well on those considering the location you know Baton Rouge is not super desirable although it does have LSU and it is a decent sized city so so we do well there yeah.

John Harcar (09:07.944)
Right on. So what is your team, your business, what does it all look like today? Like where are you buying? What are you buying?

Aaron Lambert (09:15.694)
So the team, I started a team of, well, me and my business partner, Ben Alvarez. He is acquisition manager, specialist, know, whatever you want to say. The head acquisition on Gator Capital Partners, which is our wholesale company.

out of Las Vegas and we’ve done a few flips in that company but mostly it’s wholesale. Right now we have a few, like two VA’s, a TC and we have like three people that are like the state side and they’re working on commission like appointment centers. So that’s cool and then.

John Harcar (09:55.988)
Lead manager, like a lead manager type of deal.

Aaron Lambert (09:59.118)
No, they’re more like banging the phones every day and if they get an appointment and we set and we close the deal then they get the commission Yeah, so They came from like yeah

John Harcar (10:07.53)
Nice. OK, very cool. What is your? Now, what is your lead gin look like?

Aaron Lambert (10:15.694)
So we do, I would say 90 % is direct to agent.

for the wholesale company. Yeah. We, yeah, good.

John Harcar (10:22.976)
Okay.

So, no, so let’s talk about that a little bit. So you’re not doing off-market stuff, you’re finding stuff that is more on-market or pocket listings?

Aaron Lambert (10:35.202)
Yeah, well, actually just so what I was talking about earlier is like I wanted to move towards cash. We do get pocket listings like we build relationships. I say we been mostly build relationship with agents and agents send them deals or pocket listens that could be cash or creative. I would say 90 % is creative. Although I think we’ve made the most money on cash deals and.

We just haven’t really mastered the art of off-market. Yep.

John Harcar (11:08.234)
Cam, have you guys tried any type of like cold calling or texting or anything like that to try to maybe capture some on markets or off market stuff?

Aaron Lambert (11:16.366)
So, I’m gonna…

Yeah, when we first started, got some VAs.

they in our opinion, they were not they didn’t work out for us. We were burning a lot of money and we weren’t getting any results. So got rid of that. We’ve tried so many different things. I think we’ve we’ve switched gears, in a sense, and switch CRM so many different times. I think that kind of slowed us down. It’s like trying to find the right one and

you know, just trying to find the right strategy that fits what we’re trying to do. And we haven’t really found it yet. I mean, we found it in the sense of we can lock up on market deals that are creative. But other than that, yeah.

John Harcar (12:06.72)
So are you buying all in Vegas? You still buying in Louisiana? Were you looking for properties?

Aaron Lambert (12:11.534)
Yeah, so funny enough I haven’t bought anything in Vegas I’ve been looking And it seems like when I find something that I think will work It’s either in a HOA or the entries way too high or just a number of different thing because you know Vegas You know you’ve lived there It’s like HOA 11 bro Yeah, like 80 % of the neighborhoods are HOA I would say another 50 % of those are gated

John Harcar (12:28.56)
I’ve done lived and done business there, yeah. I know, it’s terrible.

Aaron Lambert (12:40.228)
And, you know, it’s like a number of things.

happen if I do find one. You anything I do in Vegas, you know, it’s, it’s me and my partner, right? Well, we wholesale all over the country, but like, if I want to hold something, you know, I need to be ready with the cash and that’s sometimes an issue. I don’t have the capital right there ready there through a partner or PML to grab it. So we end up trying to wholesale it because you know, wholesale game, you got to move quick, right? Especially on market deals. not going to sit around and wait for your month for you to, you know, find a buyer for the property.

John Harcar (13:07.552)
Yep, yep.

Aaron Lambert (13:14.096)
So that’s another challenge I have with trying to find properties in Vegas is, know, we got to move quick because, you know, my company still has to get paid. I got employees and people that work for me and, you know, bills that come in every day or every month for that company. that’s just another challenge in Vegas and just the shortage of inventory, I would say, as it pertains to stuff that actually fits the model that I’m trying to do, which is the co-living.

John Harcar (13:36.714)
Yeah.

John Harcar (13:42.848)
Okay, awesome. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the co-living and how many, first off, tell our audience what is co-living.

Aaron Lambert (13:52.942)
Co-living, to me, is an umbrella term. You have so many different, mean, co-living to me is any properties that have multiple unrelated people living in it. And that could be in the form of veteran homes, like sober livings, assisted living, independent living, which is kind of like assisted, but it’s like 55 plus, just not really needing assistance.

You have like some people do like these like homeless kind of shelter things and then there’s the main one which is PadSplit and PadSplit is more or less just a brand name on something that’s been around for a long time which is Rent By The Room, Rent By The Room. Yeah, that’s nothing, you know, earth shattering or brand new. They just kind of packaged it up and now they have a platform like Airbnb. So co-living is that.

John Harcar (14:35.892)
Yeah. Or house hack.

John Harcar (14:45.896)
Give it a cute little name. Give it a cute little name. Pad split.

Aaron Lambert (14:48.246)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. All right, pads split. Yeah.

John Harcar (14:52.202)
Like I’m splitting the whole pad right on. So why did you decide? Why are you so passionate about that? Why are you kind of leaning into that?

Aaron Lambert (14:54.638)
Yeah.

Aaron Lambert (15:00.12)
Well, I’m leaning in for, know, selfish reasons because it’s really good cash flow. A bigger picture which, you know, fuels the cash flow is the…

The that housing is just not affordable nowadays. It’s really hard for people to purchase their own home. Even people that pre the interest rates, you know, we’re buying homes now can’t because they can’t afford it because of the interest rates. you know, wages aren’t going up fast, fast enough. know, prices aren’t going to come down maybe a little bit, but not enough to mean anything. And the housing prices where they are, although they might decrease in some areas a little bit, it’s still

really high. unless so the fix for that is to create affordable housing, create. And then nowadays, you know, you got so many people that are single, they don’t want to get married. They don’t want to have kids, you know. So there’s a larger population that are just out there running single and just, you know, they have jobs and whatnot, but they just don’t make enough money to own a property or even rent a $2,000 apartment because what comes to $2,000 apartment?

John Harcar (16:08.256)
Mm.

Aaron Lambert (16:10.134)
Well, you got first and last month rent free deposit. You got to furnish it and you got to pay utilities Co-living kind of all that and you need Rainer’s insurance Yeah

John Harcar (16:14.922)
Yep. And have an, and have insurance.

Are you are you targeting any specific areas a lot of what I’ve heard like people with pets but you know they do very well whether it’s like maybe next to a big industrial area or even a you know a big you know office area Students, know by schools, you know that type of stuff like those are where those things really excel a lot

Aaron Lambert (16:40.94)
Yeah, metros, you know, no more than I’d say no more than 30 minutes out of a metro, like a big metro, you know, and something close to public transportation. Nothing too nice, but definitely don’t want to get out.

You do want it around where they have large employment type, know, Amazons or Walmarts or something that’s around, you know, if you can get close to downtown, that’s good. Definitely schools and colleges, that’s really good. So something that’s real transient, you know, people moving in and out and just, you know, it’s really close to a lot of stuff. Yeah.

John Harcar (17:20.33)
Got it. Are there any other regulations, things that you may be running across with pad split? I mean, I know I’ve seen on the news things about pad split and all that. Are you running into things that are coming down the pipeline as far as regulation type of stuff?

Aaron Lambert (17:37.09)
I haven’t personally, I have done my research and there are cities that.

So from my research, every city is different. Every city has the maximum allowable of unrelated people that are allowed in one address or property. You know, like I think over here in Florida where I’m at, like 10. I think I looked the other day at Fort Worth, they didn’t even have a limit. In Dallas, right next door, had six. So it all depends on where you’re at. Just do your research. And you know…

I don’t know the full parameters or the information around what I’m about to say, but I was watching a YouTube video with Jamil Damji and he was talking about a situation in Florida. I’m not sure where at in Florida. Might have been here in Tampa, but there was a company that was doing something similar to Pathsplit. And they had…

I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you how many people they had in the property. they didn’t ever have any violations, they didn’t ever have any disturbances, they weren’t bothering nobody, they didn’t have the cops coming over there, they weren’t cutting up. But somebody in the neighborhood just decided they wanted to be a Karen and go call somebody. Well.

The mayor of that city kind of came down really hard on the company that was doing it. And now they’re like in a lawsuit or something with the city. what Jamil was saying is if that company would have been with PadSplit instead, they would have kind of been protected against all those legalities and against the lawsuit because PadSplit’s attorneys would have stepped in.

John Harcar (19:04.928)
Hmm

Aaron Lambert (19:22.432)
So that was news to me and it’s actually really nice to know that because the way that PadSplit is set up is you’re not renting to tenants. You’re actually housing members of PadSplit. PadSplit has a lease with you for a year.

And their members, whoever’s in their company, which were these people you can call them tenants, they put them up in the room. And then they pad split. A payment comes from Padsplit every month for these people that they’re housing. It’s almost like your corporate housing to Padsplit.

John Harcar (19:55.038)
Right. Yeah. Makes sense.

John Harcar (20:02.43)
Yeah, exactly. No, that’s 100%. Yeah, you’re right. Well, but also to have that legal backing is huge. So in all this, your journey, your travels, since we’re running out of time here, but in all your journeys, your travels, you’re building, you’re starting over, all that stuff, what do you contribute, your keys to success?

Aaron Lambert (20:08.142)
Yeah.

Aaron Lambert (20:20.204)
My keys to success is, I would say, 100%. I mean, outside of Christ and God looking down on me and helping me out because my belief is in Him and all that He did for us at the cross. outside of that, taking action.

taking action, sometimes blindly taking action. you know, I’m more of a high risk individual. Like I’ve taken some actions that you probably wouldn’t want to take. Sometimes they work out good and sometimes they don’t. You know, the older I get, the more deals that I look at, the more deals that I do. I’m more strategic now, you know, the knowledge that I gain each and every day when I’m studying or listening to a podcast or whatever the case may be.

Now, you know, underwrite better.

you know, do a little more deeper dive. do, I do a really deep underwriting of the area of everything that’s in that, that wherever that property is to get the best, most accurate, underwriting numbers so I can make the best decision. And then of course, you know, I’m offering partnerships with a lot of people like an, like capital partners to come on and invest with me, not only to learn the model, but also to make really passive income because I’m doing everything. They’re just bringing

John Harcar (21:44.224)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. That’s awesome. I mean, I appreciate you coming on here today, Aaron, and sharing all this stuff. If there’s folks that are out there listening, they want to maybe get in touch, they have a deal they want to do with you or whatnot, how do they reach out?

Aaron Lambert (21:44.528)
Yeah.

Aaron Lambert (21:59.842)
Well, you can go to Aaron Lambert, A A Ron, not E R. A A Ron Lambert, underscore for Instagram. I think the same thing for YouTube and Facebook. It’s just my name. And, you know, before we started, you asked me if I was part of any other masterminds. I am part of Michael Minotsakian, super investor. And I would say

John Harcar (22:05.184)
A-Aron.

Aaron Lambert (22:27.234)
You know, he is more laser focused on one thing and that’s really something I needed. And since I joined, you know, I’ve started more on the capital raise side, focused in more on, you know, co-living and just getting really dialed in because that’s all he is. Buy and hold, buy and hold. That’s all he does. And that’s something that I have a real passion for, not only on the co-living side, but just to continue to grow my portfolio because I know the value of that, right? Know the value of that for freedom, for my

John Harcar (22:44.084)
Right. Right.

Aaron Lambert (22:57.408)
for the future value and you know just you know the the product itself is something I really like and enjoy. Yeah man.

John Harcar (23:05.789)
it. I love it. Well cool, all that information that you shared as far as your contact will put down in the show notes. Guys, I hope you’re out there listening, took some good notes. I hope if you have any interest to talk with Aaron, do deals, whatever, reach out. Aaron, thank you again for coming on here and guys, we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers!

Aaron Lambert (23:22.434)
Thank you, John. Peace.