You need to have partners that are willing to put the time into you. So first, just lead off by putting the time into them and the team. First of all, figure out what you want, what your why is, why you’re doing it, what your whole purpose is, because if that’s not clear, it’s not going to be clear to anybody else. The top operators have the best teams and the best systems. The main thing is the team. When you meet them and you realize that these guys are going to go, they’re going to do whatever it takes. One of the main things to build a good team is to train somebody to take over your position. Success for me is pretty easy. It’s just happiness. If my family’s happy and healthy.

What’s going on guys? Welcome, Scott. Thank you so much for taking the time. I know you’ve been in the business for about five to 10 years, from residential to commercial. So first off, thank you for taking the time, but I kind of want to take a step back and kind of see what your life was like before investing. And more importantly, what drew you to investing in the first place?

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. The thing that drew me into real estate and stuff is because I’ve been a yacht captain for over 20 years, been on yachts for 25 plus years. And it’s an unstable business here today, gone today. It’s that type of thing where having a family and stuff, you really need to have some kind of fallback or long-term strategy to backstop that because it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when the job or career goes away. And I imagine that’s not unlike a lot of other industries these days. And I’d always had some kind of side hustle or extra business or something that I was always working on. And real estate seemed to be a good fit that I bought into the whole idea of passive investing, which ended up being a lot less passive than I thought it ended up being. But eventually it led me to syndications and funds. And we are launching a fund because it can be passive for people. And I wish that I’d known about those opportunities a long time ago because I probably would’ve invested more of my time and energy into those.

Awesome. Awesome. What was your life like before investing and what’s been the difference in before to after? Well,

Before was just really the main thing that’s changed is the education process is really that I’ve learned a lot and I still have a lot more to learn because each deal is different. Each scenario is different. Each market is different. Each asset class is different. And now that we’re launching a fund and we’re mostly focusing on ground up new construction development, that’s a different thing than the value add that I was doing before. But it has a lot of similarities, but the main thing would be the learning curve. It starts to flatten out initially. It was very steep and then it all kind of comes, not to say that I know everything because I don’t. I’ve a lot more to learn, a lot more experiences to gain, but it gets easier. The more you learn, you can kind of see more about that. And I feel more secure now that the future has a lot more options because before it was tough jumping from one job to the next and things just didn’t seem like, well, if I lose a job, then especially with a family, it’s like, well, what am I going to do? But now I know when the job goes away, because there’s a certain amount of time out with every one of these jobs that I have plenty of stuff to work on.

And what does your business on the investing side look like today?

Well, I’m working with a great team now today that focuses ground up construction, new development in the Texas Triangle Dallas medical offices and stuff in Kansas City and some hotel projects in St. Louis, which are going nationwide. And me, what I focus on mostly is on the capital side or finding the right partners for the deal with co-development or capital partners. We’re always looking for great team members and great partners that can help us scale and just people that we want to work with because it makes it so much easier. And that’s just something that I really enjoy about this type of business is that it’s a very people business and team building business that I have been doing for decades on the yachts and stuff that I really enjoy because finding the right person for the right seat. When you get things lined up, it can be really exciting.

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What was the main problem that you were trying to solve when getting into real estate?

Yeah, basically the main problem I was trying to solve was just overall financial security going forward and just wanted to make sure that I have something for my kids and my wife. If anything happens to me, I want to make sure that they’re taken care of. And the real estate’s really been a great thing for that because it’s just opened to my eyes to all the other options and opportunities.

As someone that’s doing this as somewhat of a side hustle, the yacht being your main focus, can you share maybe a couple strategies for anyone else that may be doing this with another gig that kind of helps streamline things for you?

Find the right partners. Find the right people you want to be involved with and find people that are further ahead of you that are willing to give you a chance, bring some value to them by taking some stuff off their plate and focusing on what you can bring to the table to help get the deals going. And your growth and stuff will be … And your learning curve will flatten out really quickly because these people will give you a lot of guidance and help you along the way because there’s a lot of times, a lot of things that I did that I tried to do myself and I tried to do a lot of it myself instead of finding the right partners and finding the right people that would’ve probably given me the time and helped me move further ahead because there’s just so much to learn. And you can’t do it all yourself, especially when you get to commercial real estate or you’re building a team, you need to have partners that are willing to put the time into you. So first, just lead off by putting the time into them and the team.

Gotcha. Gotcha. What mistakes do you see investors often make that you think could be really easily avoided?

Is, like I just alluded to, trying to do it all yourself or trying to take it all on yourself because you’re not going to be good at all of these things. That’s one. And just getting a little too emotional or maybe too excited about the deal. Get somebody else to look at it that’s got more experience in you because I’ve gone down that rabbit hole as well and just got really excited about a deal and then it didn’t work out and ended up losing some. And several months later, when I looked back at it again, I was like, “Okay, well, I missed this. I missed this. ” Get somebody else to put some more eyes on it and take criticism. Don’t think you got to figure it out because you don’t.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. When it comes to top operators in the capital raising department, what are some key strategy you use on that side, capital raising? Because I think a lot of people struggle with that. So what do you do? What are some techniques that you do and where do you go to find people for that?

First of all, figure out what you want, what your why is, why you’re doing it and what your whole purpose is. Because if that’s not clear, it’s not going to be clear to anybody else and makes it more difficult when you are talking to people. And focus on getting those things out there, social media or conversations. Do things that are going to attract people to what you’re doing. Because if you just treat it like a sales job where you’re just going to start calling everybody you know and build the relationship first, tell people what you’re doing. “Hey, I’m doing this. What are your thoughts on that? ” Get feedback from people and gravitate towards the people that are, “Hey, that sounds interesting.” And what’ll help is you walking them through it, because then it’ll help you build confidence in everything to where you know all the ins and outs of it.

Yeah, for sure. What do you think separates the top operators in investing from maybe the people that are doing one or two deals a year?

I would say the top operators have the best teams and the best systems. The main thing is the team. When you meet them and you realize that these guys are going to go, they’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure that everything is done right and that they realize that, especially with multifamily or any other rental properties, that it’s about the resident experience and the resident experience builds the investor’s experience because without happy residents, you don’t have happy investors and you can have happy investors and unhappy residents, but that’s going to go wrong at some point because if the residents start moving out, the tenants in your commercial building start moving out, they’re not happy. There go the leases, there go the income, there goes the NOI, and you’re probably sunk. But the best teams know how to have that high retention ratio.

When it comes to the team, and you said the teams that really just go after to make sure everything’s good, do you think that’s more on a leadership standpoint, a culture standpoint? What do you think makes the team act that way or really believe in it that much?

I think it’s because of the culture, but the culture comes from leadership. If the leadership is strong and said, “This is what we’re doing and that certain things won’t be accepted. Certain things the way you treat people won’t be accepted.” We have to make sure the residents have the best experience grant within the budget and the overall business plan and you build that culture out to where certain things will not be tolerated and certain things that we have to do things a certain way that enhance the resident’s experience or the tenant’s experience. Simply put, that’s kind of what it is, but there’s a lot. I know in some asset classes it’s a lot more complicated than that. But if the leadership builds that culture that knows that, hey, one, we can make mistakes, but we can correct them and we can get better, then we’re all growing together and we’re all doing something together, doing something bigger than each of us individually.

When it comes to painting that vision for them, or even just like you talk about culture, you talk about finding people with the same purpose or the same goal or a goal that aligns with your goal. Do you think that all comes down to the hiring process or do you think that you can align goals later on? Because I feel like a lot of people hire for that and then figure a position later. What’s your-

I think you want to naturally get somebody in the right seat immediately that’s aligned with the goals, but over time, that person could grow out of that position. So you have to be ready to grow them out of that position or find a new place for that person to replace that. On the yachts, a lot of times one of the main things to build a good team is to train somebody to take over your position that way. And then also you cross-train so that everybody knows a little bit about everything in case somebody drops out that you can all bind together and somebody’s sick because somebody always gets sick or somebody might be having a really bad day or just kind of struggling. So you have to be able to pick up the slack for that person and building that type of culture to where it’s a team effort, like no one’s going to hold it against you that you were sick that day and just going to say, “Hey, all right, we got you. It’s fine.”

Yeah. When it comes to the word success, I feel like everyone’s got their own definition for it, their own way of striving for it. How would you define the word success and how do you strive for it every day?

Well, success for me is pretty easy. It’s just happiness. If my family’s happy and healthy, then I’m successful already. And that’s the main goal. And a lot of people say that, and I know I’ve been guilty of this in the past, is that I’m working 80, 90 hours a week and saying family first and stuff, but am I really putting my family first when I’m working 80, 90 hours a week and not seeing them? But if you focus, if you really say family first and you schedule all the family activities first and then you build your work around it, it’s easier to be happy when you do that because you know that that’s what you’re actually living for and that those things are really driving everything and it makes the drive easier.

Yeah. The new thing is AI. How are you using it if you are using it and how do you think it’s going to change the way that we operate in the next five years?

Well, I would say that it’s already changing the way we all operate. And for the overall task management and stuff, the efficiencies have gotten a lot better. Granted, you still have to trust but verify and check everything because some of the data that it’s given might not be that accurate and stuff, but I’ve used it a lot to optimize plans and stuff, just really well thought out logistical plans that might have taken me a couple of weeks before can take me maybe a couple hours or maybe 30 minutes now because you can keep asking yourself the questions and asking the AI the questions. And then overall analysis I know is already being optimized where it’s much, much faster. And I see people doing that. And actually I have a friend of mine, he’s building out a commercial property analyzer and he’s in the beta version right now. And you basically plug in the address and you can do a quick analysis, like a napkin analysis. And I’m seeing a lot more of those, which those are really helpful because I analyzed deals for hours until I got it to where I could do one in about an hour or do a quick one in about five minutes. But they’re analysis tools now, you can probably analyze about 20 of them in 10 minutes. And then you can compare the whole area rather than just, you can even go block by block. It’s going to be pretty amazing. I think just all the things that once we actually optimize for what our purpose is, because I know residential real estate is quicker, the general public has been quicker to optimize and adapt the AI tools. Commercial real estate is a little bit slower because it’s a slower, it’s a lag indicator and it’s a larger task and smaller … A lot of the data is not available or not. I would say it’s like the government, all the departments don’t talk to each other. So to get all the data into one house to where you can actually do that analysis is going to take a little more time, but once it does and gets onto the blockchain and everything is transparent, I think we’re going to see transaction volume go up as a result of it.

Awesome. Awesome. What drives you to keep innovating on that front and helping in the success of the business? Well,

Before I got onto the yachts, I was in the tech field and I’ve always liked tech and I see a lot of stuff happening with data centers and just smart optimization of the grid and a lot of things. And I find it pretty fascinating that we can optimize and make things much more efficient and cut out a lot of waste that we have in building and in our energy consumption and just overall. And that can also help to create more efficiencies where prices go down for a lot of things, which AI I think is going to bring a lot of optimization that’ll bring a lot of prices down for a lot of different things.

When it comes to the fund and the new syndications that you’re going after, I want you to talk about it a little bit, but in a sense of maybe one, who would be a good fit for it? Two, do you have a minimum that they can invest and then what you are going after as far as assets for that class?

Okay. Well, for the first part, it’s basically for people that are okay with ground up new development construction, people that really want to park capital. And we focus on the equity multiple in three to five years, 2X to 3X. 2X I think is realistic for what we’re doing. We focus on a 7% yield loan cost. And we focus a lot on some of these deals or some institutional capital and we do have some retail capital as well that with a lot of ultra high net worth individuals that are already seasoned investors that understand real estate and also some new people as well that like the advantages of ground up new construction because a lot of these, once it’s stabilized, it’s all brand new and everything. And then to answer the rest of your question, the assets we’re putting in there are medical office, hotels, multifamily, town homes, single family. So we have a range for a lot of different type of people that like different types of asset classes. Some only like medical offices. A lot of doctor pools, they understand it. So that’s what they go after. A lot of retail investors like multifamily because they’ve all at some point lived in an apartment or lived in a rental house and stuff. So it’s going forward, it’s a customizable fund that’s going to be able to retain a lot of different asset classes for a lot of different users. And we’d like to have something to offer for a range of people. But for the most part, it’s going to be people that are okay with development and ground up new construction because they have to be ready to park the capital for year, two, three, five years, because you probably won’t get any returns for quite some time. And most of it you’ll get on the backend.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. And if someone is interested in being in the fund or maybe just reaching out to you to learn more or connect with you, where can they learn more about you? Where can they connect with you if they’re interested? Well,

It’s pretty easy. My website is investwithscotkid.com and I’m there. All my social media stuff is there, email, contact information, podcasts, and feel free to reach out. Love to talk to people, love talking about yachts and real estate. So I’ll probably talk your ear off if we go too far.

Awesome. Awesome. Any final advice for investors that are looking to grow, scale, or maybe simplify?

Just keep going, keep doing it. And keep finding more people. Just get out there and network and keep meeting more people that are doing it, and it’s going to give you a lot of energy. So just keep networking and hopefully you’ll find the right people that you need to be around.

Awesome. Awesome. I appreciate you coming on and taking the time today. Scott, thank you so much for your time. Everyone, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time. Thank

You so much.