Financial Freedom Fast
The FASTEST Way to Financial Freedom (co-living) w/ Sam Wegert
Download my FREE E-Book on Scaling Through Partnerships NOW
CLICK HERE
Apply for mentorship with Matt and the FAST FI Coaching Community:
APPLY NOW
Follow Matt online:
Instagram
Facebook
Youtube
Download my FREE E-Book on Scaling Through Partnerships NOW
CLICK HERE
Apply for mentorship with Matt and the FAST FI Coaching Community:
APPLY NOW
Follow Matt online:
Instagram
Facebook
Youtube
What makes the best co-living home the best co-living homes are 2,000 square feet and greater. They're 30 minutes from good employers in working areas. I say that mostly for Charlotte, because people like I just know Charlotte very well and people like to be within 30 minutes of where they work. It is the fastest way, using the real estate play, to achieve financial freedom in the marketplace. Right now I'm using someone else's money to create this and that's how guys like you and I can get to financial freedom fast. Through real estate, you change the game of financial freedom. You go fast. Leverage is the key.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Financial Freedom Fast Podcast, the show that teaches you how to buy back your time and live life on your terms. Learn how to confidently leave your nine to five from guests who've done it themselves. Whether you want to lay on a beach, travel the world or focus on your passions, this show will give you the tools to do what you want when you want. Now here's your host, matt Emmerbio.
Speaker 3:What is up? Financial Freedom FastBam Today we've got on Sam Weigar. It is such a good podcast today on co-living. If you don't know what co-living is, you'll find out today in just a sneak peek. Co-living is an amazing, amazing way to increase the amount of income that you can make on a single family property let's call it Something with five, six, seven bedrooms. Anyway, what we do in this podcast today is dig into how to find the best type of property, what the best type of property is for co-living, and then how you can use that property to maximize the potential income on that property and how you can give back to the community by doing the same exact thing. So excited for you guys to listen to it.
Speaker 3:If you think this is a unique investing strategy and you think that someone in your family, someone in your friend group should know about this strategy because maybe they have a big house that they could do this strategy with and make a lot of money with it, I'm sure they would appreciate it if you would click that share button and send this to your friends, to your family, that you want to hear this, because you want them to reach financial freedom fast, because that's what this podcast is all about my people, so without further ado, let's jump into the pod. Sam Wiegert. Welcome to the financial freedom fast podcast. My man, my dude, what is going on, brother?
Speaker 1:Dude, let's go. Matthew, I'm excited for this man. Let's dive in financial freedom fast. That's a cool ass name, by the way.
Speaker 3:Dude, I'm excited to dive in. I appreciate the comment on my name, man. All the love to you, bro, and the reason that you're coming on this podcast today and we were talking a little bit about this before is financial freedom fast, and you believe that one of the strategies that you're an expert in right now co-living you may not consider yourself an expert. I would say you are an expert in co-living right now might be the fastest way to reach financial freedom. Before we dive into co-living what that is, how you do it and how our listeners can do it what I want to do is dig into the beginning of your story and how you got started as an investor, as an entrepreneur, because I think the beginning of your story is so cool.
Speaker 3:How you got this. You got an actual business, sold you at 15 years old, man so I know the audience is probably listening and like 15 years old, how do you own a business? And then you built that into multiple different studios, man. So let's dive back to the beginning. Tell the audience what. Let's tell the audience right now who you are and what you've built up, and then let's take it back to the beginning, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man. So, first of all, thanks for having me on the show, thanks for that great intro. I have been very blessed in my life, for sure. I think, in addition to being blessed, there were some nuggets, some wisdom, some things that I did right, and hopefully we can share some of those nuggets today in this podcast so people can walk away with some strategies, with some ideas, the very least, just keep people thinking, maybe in a new way, about how they can get to financial freedom fast. But for me, man, I own a chain of martial arts schools. That was my OG business, if you will, where I started, where I cut my teeth out to entrepreneurship. Now for full transparency, as of this recording, at least where we're here in 2023, I have sold all of those schools except for two, and I'm fully into real estate coaching right now and co-living, which I'm sure we'll get into in a bit.
Speaker 1:I built a company of six brick and mortar martial arts schools. We had an online program with students in 25 stage, which, when COVID happened, it forced us to do that. We got really resourceful, we got really creative and we were one of the only ones at the time that came out with a live program that taught students all over the United States and even in Canada, which was pretty bad-ass to see us do that. We even had black belts earn their black belt through this online program, which is like very much looked down on and unheard of, because these students learned in their living rooms for multiple years, flew into Charlotte years later and tested for their black belt and we're bad.
Speaker 1:I remember just a funny little story. My brother told me that these people were testing and that they were flying in and none of us, as instructors, had ever met them because we're headquartered in Charlotte and so they were flying in for their black belts. It was the first time we were all going to meet them and I leaned over to him and was like, please tell me, these guys are good. Are they all going to fail their tests after flying in? So we got creative man, anyway, that was, and they were amazing. So we built that. I've just bought real estate along this journey of entrepreneurship and now I'm all in, and I'm all in on co-living. So we have a portfolio, probably close to 30 million, that my wife and I own. We have a commercial building for one of our martial arts schools that we own, but most of it is co-living, some short-term rentals, divesting from the short-term rentals and redeploying some of that capital into co-living. Because that's the thing, man, that's what we believe is the thing.
Speaker 3:That's the thing that's going to help us reach financial freedom fast, man. So if we think about that first business, right, you built it up six brick and mortar facilities and then you had this online business. You end up selling it. Now you own two of those and you've sold off a good amount of what you did own. If you had to distill all of that time into one or two important lessons that you took from that facility I know you've been practicing martial arts for a very long time, but if you had to take that business experience that you got from building up that business and distill it into some main important lessons and topics that you took from that, what would that be? What's the first thing that comes to your mind there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the first thing that comes to my mind is that your intentions don't have to be noble as long as your actions have integrity. And I think that's something that I learned early on is that I believe in a higher power. So a higher power, I believe that kind of. As I've gone through this life, I live a spiritual life as well, and my intentions got upgraded over this time. Let me explain what I mean by this. It's like when I first started entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting around this group of what I thought was my friends I was probably 13, 14 years old at the time and they were all sharing one thing they wanted to accomplish in their life that was meaningful. And I was the runt of this friend group, and so I was always looking to impress them and get more on the in-crowd. And so when it came around to my turn, I thought we lived in this very small town. Average income was like $30,000 per year, and so none of my friends really had money, none of them were really successful financially, and I thought if I could be more successful than financially, I'd get their attention, I would be more in. And so when it got to my turn, I said guys, the thing I want to accomplish in my life is I'd like to be a millionaire someday.
Speaker 1:And instead of thinking that was cool, they thought it was the worst thing I could have said. It was like oh Sam, that's so stupid, you'll never accomplish that, that's not important. And I just remember feeling in that moment, as a 13-year-old, feeling so much anger, like physical anger, like heat in my body, and realizing and it was in that moment I decided I will show you. Is that the most noble of intentions? I don't know, but it sure as hell drove me and made me hungry to prove that I could be somebody. And what I learned is that life is a funny way of I remember becoming a millionaire and then calling that friend and being like I did it and you were like did what? What the heck are you even talking about?
Speaker 3:That conversation meant nothing to them whatsoever and you have been holding this grudging for so long. Exactly I've been proved to these mobs.
Speaker 1:They say resentment is like taking the poison and hoping someone else dies. That's kind of what this was like. It was like me me taking on this burden and then hoping that it would stick it to them. And let me give it a f. But I think the truth is that my intentions got upgraded over time.
Speaker 1:So first I got in business to prove that I could be somebody. Then I got in business to make a ton of money. Then I got in business to make more money than my friends. And then I got in business and I always tell that my journey in business has been from income to impact. And then I got in business to say you know what? There's more to this? Making money is cool, it's a way to keep score, but if I'm not involved in income, if I'm not involved excuse me in impact based businesses, I don't even want to be in business. I will not invest in a vape shop, not because I have anything against vaping, just because it doesn't fit my values. So that was a huge lesson.
Speaker 1:You asked for one or two lessons. That was a huge lesson. I learned is that your intentions don't have to be noble as long as your actions aren't like breaking the law, as long as your actions are the right actions, which my actions were the right actions. I was hungry, I worked my ass off, I got up every morning, but my intentions had to be upgraded to something that was more noble and I feel a little more. I'm not saying this to put emails down. I'm just saying I feel like I'm in a more noble place. I've had to upgrade that throughout the years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I like that. And so you said an act with integrity. Was there a time along that journey where you found yourself conflicted with one decision coming one way that might have been a little bit more lucrative for you or a little more attractive? You had to decide against that with your decision to act fully with integrity. Did you ever run into anything like that where you were tested and had to sit back and decide who you really are, who is my true character, how do I live the truth out in myself and how do I make the best decision for me, my future and my business right now? You ever run into any of those issues, man?
Speaker 1:you're asking the hard questions.
Speaker 3:Damn, that was the time where you did act with integrity. That was a deep question for the second question of this podcast.
Speaker 1:I love it, though, and I'm glad we're going here. I think it's so important because this is the foundational stuff we're talking about that allows you to get to financial freedom fast. I hope your listeners really hear this and then f-ing, keep it. Keep financial freedom. Not get there and end up in jail or get there and whatever and lose it because of because you've made too many enemies or people hate your guts or whatever, whatever. So I think that this is really key and this is the foundational stuff to financial freedom over the long term.
Speaker 1:To answer your question very directly yes, every day I honestly feel like I'm presented with those little things every day. I have thought about this many times. I constantly am having to course-crack. I'm not even sure I've been this honest on the podcast before. I'm being straight honest with you I'm scrappy man. Like I'm scrappy, I love to. My wife calls me the limit pusher. Like, if there's a limit, I want to push it. Just to see if there's actually a limit, see how you could take it. Man, yeah, this has gotten my family in a lot of trouble. I'm being a limit pusher.
Speaker 1:One of my dear brothers is in jail because he pushed the limit and, by the way. When that happened, it eft with my head because I was like I'm a limit pusher too. What's the difference between me and him? And oh my gosh, am I him? And so that I think of it like flying an airplane, and everybody probably has heard this analogy before. When you fly an airplane, it's not like you just set the autopilot on the airplane and forget it. You constantly the airplane is constantly course correcting, like a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here. It's trying to stay on that path. So for me it's like that path is having good friends, that path is going to church, that path is listening to the pastor. They're doing like crazy shitty stuff, and then the course correction is okay.
Speaker 1:I think I was a little too scrappy. Okay, I think I got a little. Okay. I think I told that person off when I shouldn't have done that. That wasn't needed. So I wish I could say like I'm a person of integrity. I've always been integrity, but no man like today. Today I was like yelling at someone.
Speaker 1:And I was like what, and I just had to catch myself and be like Hannah, this is not your fault, I'm frustrated and frankly I'm frustrated with a couple of things in my life right now. I'm sorry, just that was a course correction, and so what I found, man. So here's maybe the second lesson that in something that I do feel like at least other people have told me I do well at, I constantly do self-audits. Am I on track? And of course we do that in our business, or in our business Am I on track for financial freedom, my financial freedom number, which, by the way, remind me to talk about financial freedom numbers.
Speaker 1:I have a cool distinction that will help a lot of people there. But my financial freedom number is four grand and I'm at two. What am I going to do to get the other two Like we course correct in that way? But are we course correcting with our integrity? Are we course correcting? Am I on track with who I want to be in my life? Not to make this crazy deep, but I'd say that self-auditing, that checking in that constant that you asked about, integrity, but like that constant course correction, dude.
Speaker 3:Dude, this is the goal that I usually don't get to until we're like 40 minutes into the podcast and we've already built up like a deep amount of rapport. But I love that we're diving into this because you are so right, man. Like this is the foundational stuff. A lot of people think you don't really get into that until deeper in life, when you're like when you have time to think about it and all that. And it's almost true. Like once I reached my level of financial freedom, where I'm at, and I got the time freedom back.
Speaker 3:All that I had now, all that I had was myself to look in the mirror every single day and say what do you want to do?
Speaker 3:And when I look at myself in the mirror and I'm saying, what do you want to do today, I have to be fully honest with myself.
Speaker 3:And when you're saying that it could be the things you actually want to do, you want to go out on a walk, you want to go for a swim, you want to go to the gym, you want to go out to dinner, whatever it is.
Speaker 3:But then you start to dig a little bit deeper levels, deeper, like how do you want to act today when you see someone in public and you're talking to them, and you're talking to that person behind the register. How do you want to talk to them? How do you want to act with them? Do you want to be a dick? Or do you want to be the guy who's sitting there acting like you're being polite and you're being someone that people admire? And when you are building your business based on these laws of integrity and truth, that is the foundation that will hold that business up. And, as you and I have seen in some scenarios, there have been some business builders that have not acted with integrity and their businesses have fallen apart and it's put them in a very precarious position, a bad position to be in their businesses and their lives.
Speaker 3:And I was like yeah, well, the one that came directly in my head yeah, in jail, but okay. So love that we started there, man, and love that we got a good idea of the beginning of your career. So you actually mentioned that you wanted me to bring up the financial freedom number. Let's just dive right into that. Before we dive into all the co-living, what is this distinction that you have between the financial freedom number?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So this is something I teach in my courses and it's just a distinction that I think will help people just wrap their head around Really. I think it'll help give people clarity, and one of my mentors always tells me that clarity is power. Right, it's being successful. If we talk about what success means that person's successful, what does successful mean? Successful means you hit a target is really what it means. I aimed at something and I hit it. That's success.
Speaker 1:So if you think about it this way, then financial freedom is a big term. There's the fire movement, financially independent, retired, early movement. There's all these movements out there talking about financial freedom, and I think it's really important, if someone that's listening to this podcast has not specifically identified what that number is, that they take the time to do that. Now, when I was initially teaching this, people would throw out these numbers. They'd be like they wouldn't even do the actual math on it. They'd just throw out this number oh, it's five grand, it's 10 grand, 20 grand, it's 30 grand a month or whatever it is right and I'd be like, yeah, but how do you know? So A you don't know until and I love for your listeners we can put this in the show notes. We have a really cool budget that lays this out, where people can just figure out that financial freedom number in 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:But then I started to realize this Some of the reasons that people don't start on this path of financial freedom is because it's too overwhelming to start. It's especially people who make a lot of money. Now here's the thing If you make, if you're living already off of two grand a month, it's okay, I can get there. But if you're a doctor and you have debt and you live off a 15 grand a month, that's got really. And so what I started to coach people with was three levels of financial freedom, and I think this is really and here's how I here's how I call it. One is called your base level, or what we call the ramen noodle. The ramen noodle is basically like your housing, your transportation, your insurance, your food and your taxes, like those things are covered, and what this is. It creates a smaller target for most people, like, literally, people who have told me their financial freedom number is 30 grand a month.
Speaker 1:I have them figure out the basics of their ramen noodle number, like no big vacations, their kids aren't going to private schools, they're not driving a Rolls Royce. This is just to kind of like basically maintain. Then their number comes down to seven. Then here's the thing they can achieve it. Number one and number two it gives them a target and what it does is when they reach that level of financial freedom. So they have path, they have income coming in that covers that number they can celebrate like crazy because they, if they don't work another day in their life, they will not be going on Disney cruises, but if they got sick or something crazy happened and they could not make another dollar, their family is at least taking care of Not living high, but taking care of, and that I'm trying to shift the narrative from these big numbers to what's your ramen noodle number? Hit that and celebrate.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, after that you've got your, what's your current lifestyle number Number? Okay, I'm living off of 15 grand a month right now, or 10 grand a month. So that's the nut I have to crack to just maintain my current out to eat, travel, education, cool trips, blah, blah, blah, and so obviously that's going to be a different number, it's going to be a higher number than the third number is is yeah, what's we call it your baller number Like what's the number where you are for me for when I am flying private? I want to fly private twice a month. What does that look like? Okay, private flight. We just took one last month. It's 20 grand. Okay, I got to calculate that in. So that's going to be a bigger number, right? Bigger number Nope, that's a distinction I want people to start wrapping their head around. If they can break it into these three levels, it makes it more achievable. It gives them clarity, which gives them power and allows them to move towards a faster.
Speaker 3:Dude, 100% man. The ramen, ramen noodle lifestyle and baller numbers, guys. So keep that in mind. It's similar to like how most of the community talks about a lean five, regular five and a fat five number. Right, we want to get to these numbers. What is our bare minimum that we can live at? And if, guys, if you don't ever experience the thing that silent killer called lifestyle creep, you will never. Your lifestyle number won't be different than it might be a little bit different than your ramen noodle number, but it's not going to be much different. You're going to have things that you spend, you have that are value to you. So, like for me, I've got my housing covered, I've got my food covered, I've got my insurance is covered, I can feed my dog, I can go to the gym, I can go on a trip a month, I can do all that fun stuff. Like, I still keep my the things that I value are covered. I could pay for the software and the things that I need to do this podcast and have fun and have these conversations and build that out, and I love that.
Speaker 3:You said you're trying to shift the narrative, right. So I just made a podcast to put out on the financial freedom fast podcast, a solo podcast, and it's labeled this is a movement because this is like financial freedom fast is not a brand, realistically, it's a message. It's a movement that we can reach financial freedom fast. But you need to figure out what is that initial financial freedom number? Then, once we reach that financial freedom number, we could get out of the job. That's our financial freedom basis, right? This ramen noodle number could be our basis, but now we just unlocked an extra 40 hours during the week. And those extra 40 hours if we built out $7,000 a month in passive income while we were working 40 hours, well, now that we have those 40 hours back, we could definitely build that up a whole lot quicker Now and we could get to that $14,000, $15,000 a month cash flow.
Speaker 3:Man. And it's a movement, bro, it's. We got to shift the narrative, change it up. Dude, I love that you dive through that in your coaching with your students and it's amazing to see how much one small mindset shift like that could change. Now that you have a target to shoot, lower, we can shoot and we can actually get success by hitting that smaller target. $30,000 a month that's over, that's overwhelming. $5,000 a month. $7,000 a month. That is doable, bro, and we want to call living houses that's. And that's a perfect transition to where we're headed to now, man, co-living. You made the bold statement saying that this might be the best way to reach financial freedom fast, which, as we know, is what this podcast is all about, man. So let's talk about what co-living is and how we rock with it. How do we do that, bro?
Speaker 1:I stand by that statement, by the way, like I do believe in the markets today, with and especially with what I believe is happening in the future. It is the fastest way, using the real estate play, to achieve financial freedom in the marketplace right now. And look, I was on stage a week, I was more than that, but three weeks ago giving a talk to 150 real estate professionals, and I got on stage and I said hey guys, how many of you have ever had a roommate? And they all, everybody, raised their hand Right At some point we had a roommate. I said, and I just I said okay, that concludes my talk. That is co-living and thank you guys for inviting me.
Speaker 1:First of all, co-living is not a hard concept to explain. It's as old as dirt. People have been living with other people where tribal in nature, where community oriented people in nature, and so co-living is nothing more than shared housing. There's another way to say it, right by the room. Another way to say house hack a lot of times is I found people use that term when they are living there it's unpacking this house because I'm and I'm living for free or I'm making money to live for free. Co-living, I think, is when you make that transition to. I don't live in any of my kids. That are 28 co-living homes, but I have 150 tenants that do, and just that's. I think the difference is when it turns into an investment strategy that you're investing so co-living for me.
Speaker 1:Look, we all know the statistics on affordable housing. We're 7 million affordable housing units short in the United States right now. I think it's 48% of Americans and keep in mind there's like 300 million Americans Like 150 million Americans spend at least 30% or more of their income on housing, and I think 24% spend 50% of what they make or more on house, and not only that it's. We've seen the challenges with income growth. I was in Miami Dade County the other day and Miami Dade County in this one year span I think it was like 2021, rents increased like 27% on average in Miami Dade County Don't quote me those exact numbers, but it was a buddy of mine was telling me about. It was like it's just freaking insane Incomes haven't risen 27%, but rent has. So we're facing a problem. Right, we're facing a problem. It's an affordable housing crisis and so co-living and I'm bringing this full circle. So we started off this podcast talking about values and what fits our values.
Speaker 1:So I invest in things that I believe make a difference. I bought a three bedroom, three bath condo. I lived in a house, acted I lived in one room, right. So the two rooms didn't think anything of it was just like this is cool. Moved to Charlotte, north Carolina, bought another house, was gonna live in it by myself but then realized it was just too quiet. I'm one of eight brothers and sisters. I got a big family. I'm used to noise, I'm used to commotion, I'm used to being picked on all the time, right. So I was like I need some roommates. So I just started renting out rooms.
Speaker 1:And one day one of my friends who was a high up banker at SunTrust at the time they merged with Truist now but SunTrust at the time he comes to me he goes how much are you renting that house for? And I said, let's see, I got my roommate John, and then Evan and then me, and then, just so, I guess, if I, it's $2,850. He was like, and this was not a nice house and a nice neighborhood, it was not. He's like that house would only rent for 1300 if you rented into a single family. And I was like no, I didn't know that that's crazy. So my banker friends started putting together these numbers and I said I'm doing it with four rooms. What if I bought a little bigger house, used a primary, more primary residence mortgage, put down 3%? I had a day job at the time, I was a good saver I said what if I just buy another house, rent out the master bedroom, the one I'm living in, and I'll do it with five bedrooms? And the long story short, as I said. And then it worked. Problems, of course, but I fixed them. I created systems. What if I do it was six. What if I do it was seven? What if I do it with eight? What if I do it nine? Could 10 people share a house together? And the answer is yes, man, it's happening. And what you get to provide is a place that people can live that's more beautiful, that's more amazing than they would normally be able to afford, and they get to pay $800 and everything's included. It's just one set fee.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure everybody on here has heard of HUD, the US Department for Housing and Urban Development. In January of 2021, they came out with a statement and there was an official like recommendation to all public housing authorities in all the United States. They said this is our strong recommendation that every single municipality and every housing authority start to look into how shared housing they even called it co-living in this notice you can Google this. You can Google co-living HUD. It'll pull up the documents that they put out. And they basically said we believe that shared housing is a fix, a solve for affordable housing in the United States and municipalities need to start looking at this. And so that was a really big approval.
Speaker 1:And then they went. They actually took it a step further. They said not only do we approve it, we will now start allowing government vouchers to be used for co-living homes. So if someone wants to rent a room, you can take a government in H, where they call a housing choice voucher, and you can use it and you can get guaranteed rent from the government. So it's that it's been legitimized in that way now in a big way, and it's just, it's taken off. It's going gangbusters. The company Bungalow owns no real estate, is just doing these room rentals all of the United States.
Speaker 1:$400 million valuation Like Pat's, pat's, pat's yeah, that's the second biggest. So anyway, don't get me started because I'm rolling on this, but we can dive into whatever aspect of this you want, but I just want people to understand the social benefits of this, because I get a lot of flack. People be like oh, you're just, this is I. Got written up in the newspaper one time after a talk they said you're just the. This is just the latest scheme by greedy landlords to make more money from their housing. And I'm just like no, guys, you don't understand. I lived in co-living homes for 13 years and saved money. And then my wife met me and I had six roommates and she said yeah, I think we might need to get a place of her own.
Speaker 3:I said, okay, well, I like it Dude, and you see the value in being able to bring someone else a valuable home.
Speaker 3:Now I don't do the co-living method. I haven't dug too deep, honestly, because I'm a bit intimidated by the systems of going in and building this out, which we are going to dive into. If, if I was going to because I have looked at it before the rent would come out right around the same as where my area is coming in right now. So from a rent perspective and from an operational perspective for me it's just easier actually for me to rent out the the apartments as a two bedroom or one bedroom apartment. But once we go into three bedrooms and more, it starts to get more lucrative. But I know the sweet spot is most likely somewhere. I would say probably six plus bedrooms. I would say at a minimum you would want five bedrooms, but I would say probably six plus is where you want to be at to really make your biggest bang for your buck on these places. So let's dive into what is the target property that our listeners should look for if they're considering going into a market and using the co-living strategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that's great. And you're right, it is like six plus I don't, I wouldn't look at anything less than seven. And you're also right in that it does take some operations. There's an operational side to it that most people are scared of, similar to how there was an operational side when Airbnb first came out. People were renting their personal alms but investors weren't doing it Cause it was just like oh, how am I going to manage that? 24, seven room service. Basically, there was systems around that. That's where co-living is right now and it's and it's so it's beginning. That there's systems, there's implementation, there's these companies coming out that are beginning this process.
Speaker 1:But to answer your question, so what makes the best, what makes the best co-living home? The best co-living homes are 2000 square feet and greater. They're 30 minutes from their 30 minutes from from good employers and working areas. And I say that mostly from Charlotte, cause people like I just know Charlotte very well and people like to be within 30 minutes of where they work, but it's a big city, meaning I don't mean biggest in people, even though got a couple million spread out, so you got to know your area, but for us it's 30, 30 minutes of good, strong employers. And when you think of employers, think about it doesn't have to be like major employers, like lawyers and doctors and things. No, this is like when you go to 7-Eleven who's working there and how much are they making? 40 grand. Where do they live? They can't spend $1,500 a month on an apartment at what it costs here in Charlotte for a studio. Like, where are they living? When, who's repaired? The guy that's repairing your car? The guy that's putting your tires on your car? Who's doing it? Who's living?
Speaker 3:like in, like the airplane, like I know, my area here has three Amazon facilities coming in. That's going to bring, I think, 2,500 new employees to the area, so that is a solid demand that they're going to be making $15, $20 an hour, so that's probably right around that $40,000, $50,000 range. That these that's going to be the target market for these types of properties.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you need a home that has a common area. You know a place for people to eat in their kitchen. We usually take a kitchen and one living room will convert the dining rooms and any other extra living rooms or bedrooms to any other extra rooms, two bedrooms. You want to stay away from HOAs and you want to make sure that your parking is such unless you're close to public transportation or you're in a city that just everybody doesn't need a car.
Speaker 1:In Charlotte, like most people, if they work, they got a car. This is how we roll here. It's because public transportation sucks, so it's if the parking checks out, the square footage checks out, and then, of course, we're in fact, we are investors, so we're going to run the numbers, we're going to make sure the numbers actually work on this property for what we're buying, if we know we can rent a room for and all of that. So those are some things off the top of my head. We have a whole, we have a whole module, we teach on this with all the specific criteria, but those are the big ones, honestly, like square footage, number of rooms, did the numbers check out? Is parking good, is it in a non-H way neighborhood and is it within, is it in an area where people will actually live?
Speaker 3:So one of the biggest questions that I would throw out right now that I would be wondering if I was a student out there trying to buy one of these for myself, is, one, how can I find out how much income I would be able to bring in? And two, how can I test the demand for this market for a rent by the room structure?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the income's really easy. You can do really two big strategies to find out what the income will be. You can run test ads. So I'll have students. Let's just say students want to buy in Madison, wisconsin. I'm just making up a city and I'm like I don't know anything about Madison and we don't know anybody that lives there. But they think it's a good market for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:So we'll run some ads. We'll use pictures of one of my homes in Charlotte, like just random pictures. We will not put an address on it, and then we'll actually run ads for a room and then when people respond to it, we'll type up our thing. We'll run a, basically, but we're not putting an address on it, or anything like that. And then when people respond to it, we'll just test how many responses we get. And then, when they respond, we'll send them back a little form and say, hey, we're actually just creating a waiting list for this home and if it would help us tremendously if you would just fill out this Google form with some information, that way we'll put you at the top of our waiting list. And they ask them like when are you looking to move? Do you understand? This is actually just a room, what's your budget? So we collect some data, so we'll run.
Speaker 1:We call that just our. We have a whole module we teach on that. It's called the. It's like the market testing formula or blueprint for market testing. And then obviously the best thing to do is also just look for rooms for rent. So go on Craigslist, go on Facebook Marketplace, go on Roomster there's all these sites now that have popped up to list your room Roomster, rumi's, zomper, there was another one just the other day, sharedroomsharecom. It's like all these sites right. Go to those and just see what rooms rent for and you'll get an idea of kind of what the marketplace is demanding, and then you can type that into your pro forma on your property. So that's a good. Those are my two strategies for figuring out how a property, how much it's going to, or if there's demand, and then wait. Well, your second question was how much it will make. How much it will make?
Speaker 3:No, you basically answered it right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Because if people are reaching out and telling us that they would want to rent this room at $800 a month or $900 a month, whatever it is, then you've got your income that you're going to be bringing in.
Speaker 3:And I know another big question that our listeners are probably thinking right now that they've heard on other podcasts, possibly when this subject is talked about, is local municipality laws.
Speaker 3:But, as you already talked about the HUD statement that they are in encouraging this type of structure when renting out properties, the old way that they used to do things at least how I understand it is they used to not want up to and it's different for each municipality it's three unrelated, four unrelated, five unrelated persons that are living in the same apartment or building or whatever it is, whatever that structure is that they have, but that was to discourage things like prostitution and all like different types of rings that they could be running out of these properties. So that is why this new HUD bill is coming out right To encourage these types of things and basically let municipalities know that we only add these laws because they were for this type of regulation to keep safety in the market. So you had mentioned that you ran into some problems and you built some systems out. What were those main problems that our listeners can hear about so they don't run into those same problems themselves, and what are the systems they can use to get around those problems?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do want to do just a little bit on the regulation side, because there is so you're exactly right the regulations, a lot of the zoning regulations that restrict, like, the number of unrelated people in a home, were built for prostitution houses to keep them out and undocumented immigrants from all living in a big house together or whatever. And in addition to that, like in Atlanta right now, here's how the zoning reads. It reads the zoning code. It reads unlimited number of unrelated people, up to four unrelated people and an unlimited number of domestic servants. You can guess what century those zoning laws were written at. So it's like a lot of these rules, regulations were just, they're just outdated as F.
Speaker 1:However, there are some legal strategies that we do deploy to get around that, and the simplest one is to create a membership based organization versus leases. So I could have you on a lease or I could just say, hey, man, you need to become a member of my organization and as a member, you're a member and you have access to this house and this organization rents the house. So that's, there's a. There is a technical way to get around it. I could. We could do a whole episode on that. The lawyers could get on and talk about that, but there is a way around that, so that it's not you're not leasing to all these multiple people, it's just you're leasing to one company and that company has members.
Speaker 3:I like that. So if you're listening and you're looking at how to do this a little bit more of a legal way, definitely talk to your attorney about the possibility of creating this membership type based company where these guys are members. They're no longer just your, your tenants, they're members of whatever you're doing here. I love that man. That is, that's so cool. All right, so your problems? What are the problems?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the problems were silly man, the problems were silly. I remember I got a call one time from my roommate. I was living in this house had six roommates. Hey Sam, what's going on? Yeah, john, what's up? Hey John, I'm just so upset. I was in last night and I got in the. I got open, open the cup, cup, cupboard this morning and Susie had eaten some of my peanut butter. I had three houses at this time and I was like to hell, if I'm going to deal with these calls and be a lent like this ain't working. So I had to fix stupid problems like that, and a lot of it was how to vet tenants, well like truly. How to make sure that they're just good people coming in and that they fully understand the models.
Speaker 1:We created this like badass little two minute super dynamic video. It's here's what co-living is. If you're this, we don't want you. If you just love to do these things, you're not a right fit. If you're. This was painted out in the video and it's a little like one of those little cartoon handwritten things to hand drawing. We watch you and you'll be a great fit for our community, and so that helped weed people out.
Speaker 1:That was a system that we overcame labeling everything, as silly as that sounds like labeling every cabinet with their room number. Labeling every. Labeling their space in the laundry room where they put their detergent and I'll use someone else's. Labeling their space in the refrigerator they have their own shelf. Like just making it easy, like that, dude, that those little things solved a lot of even labeling parking. Hey, like room one, parks here. Room two. Parks here, room three. Parks on the street. Room for parks down the street, on the run Down the street. Take a laugh, that's where you got to park, man, because we got too many cars here is. You got to park there and, by the way, you get a $10 discount on your rent because you got to park.
Speaker 1:Yeah, be in playful with it, but right, figuring out how all of that works is really great, and then just painting a vision, like for me, I have this grand vision that that people want to do that people will prefer, like, even if they make a half million dollars a year, they will prefer to live in community Instead of living alone. So I think this will be the preferred method if people start to do it correctly, because it's fun, you still get your private space, but you can have a shared common area. I know a guy was doing co-living in Hawaii. He's got a waiting list out the ass for his place, he's got his food is in like a skyscraper, and he got this whole more, but the rooms are tiny and people come from all over the world to live in his co-living places, and it's in Hawaii, so he's got a little bit of a unique model. What I learned from him, though, is he's man. People come here, they connect. We have this ginormous common area. Rooms are tiny and I'm like that's a cool model.
Speaker 1:That's not exactly what I do. We give people pretty decent sized room and have a fairly small common area, but community living, so we actually provide a way that we solve the community aspect is we actually provide this manual, this journal. That's really like a. It's like a workbook. Imagine a personal development workbook written by Tony Robbins. That's basically what this manual is, which is actually how I'm going to describe it in the future. I like describing it that way. I like that and this if they finish this workbook and teach them budgeting, goal setting, meditation, affirmations, all this stuff, if they finish it, they get a $200 gift card that we give them for being a great community member, so things like that.
Speaker 1:We do events a couple of times a year for all the tenants. We send pizza once a month just to thank them for being a part of the great community. It's a house manager. We have a house manager that we give $25 off a month in rent and what they do is they handle a few little things in the house, but they become kind of the point person. Systems like that and processes and strategies have really helped us be able to scale this to. You know the level that we're at right now, which is 200 tenants and growing super fast in the Charlotte and Asheville areas and between me and my students and my course men, it's like we represent almost a thousand rooms across the United States, so there's not two houses. We're doing this in.
Speaker 3:Dude, this is pretty incredible. The systems that you've built are pretty awesome. If it makes me feel more confident, if I was to find a building that fit the bill for this, that was always my biggest thing. Who would want to go to a place and be sharing the fridge? No, you're going to need two fridges. You're going to have to label each individual shelf for each person. You need to have each cabinet labeled for each individual room so they know which is theirs and it keeps things separate.
Speaker 3:You feel like you have your own space. That is a much more breathable situation. That actually makes some sense to me. As to oh, this does actually have some viability here, and definitely the financial viability is there as well, and I love that. It's surrounded about building this community and building this impact. In a world today that we are getting so much further and further away from each other and away from society and trapped in our own individual places, if you can have a place that can connect other people and bring other people together and almost force a social connection, you could probably save some people as well from some situations that they were in prior. Man. The question go ahead.
Speaker 1:I just want to say this one thing we will hear that and we'll get thank you cards. From what we get to provide people Like it's like testimonials that we get that come out of these are just amazing. So that's all I wanted to say.
Speaker 3:Dude, I love that man and your tenants are loving it as well. So I'm going to dive into our last questions. Before I dive into the last question, the financial benefit of running these co-living spaces. What is your gross income a month right now with co-living? And if they weren't co-living, what would you? I don't know if you have those numbers, but what would you say they would be if they were not co-living?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I tell you what. I don't have accurate numbers for the whole portfolio on that, but I'll share with you one deal that we fairly recently did I say fairly recently, within the last year or a year and a half or so and we I went to go get a loan on this property and the type of loan I was using was this debt service loan, and the lenders ordered what they call a rent appraisal and the rent appraisal guy came to me and said hey, man, this house is going to run for $1,875 per month and it actually messed with my loan. But I said, man, and it was this whole process, because I needed that number to be higher to cover for this really particular loan I was getting. Anyway, I worked it out, but within two weeks we filled that house and it was renting for $6,450 to eight different tenants. It was at 2,500 square foot house. So we're talking two, four, six. You're talking more than tripling. So this is a three. By the way, that 300, 300, that we bought exactly for 300,000, about a 315, but they gave us a credit of 15 grand. So it's 300 grand house rent for 6450 gross.
Speaker 1:Now you have more expenses. I'll be honest. You have to pay. Your property management is going to cost a little bit more if you're not doing it, obviously like you got to get a little bit more involved. You're. You're going to pay utilities, because it's a one thing, but your net income is definitely way the F higher.
Speaker 1:And so there's just few things in life, man, not few. This is one of those things in life that's truly a win-win. Tenants are winning. They get a great transitional place or they get a great spot, or they just get a great long term place to live. And we have people stay for four or five, six years, not like it's not all transitional, it's not that at all. And you, as the investor, get to win. And here's the craziest part Imagine having multifamily income on a single family asset that you get to lock a loan in for 30 years. Can I get an amen? All those people out there that have huge loans right now 20 million that are that just went up, their five year lock is about to expire and their interest rates about to jump from 3.2 to 6.2 on $20 million? That's crazy. So I get to just put it in 30 year fixed go. Residential loans are easy to get. They're still easy to get stuff. It wasn't about that.
Speaker 3:We were head out that directly. No, I mean, it's 100% true that 30 year loan is such an asset to go after, like that is one of the assets in residential versus commercial. You could get a 30 year some loans. You could get a 40 year AM loan. It doesn't reduce your payment like that much more, but 40 year AMs are out there, man, and there's companies doing 40 year loans, which is a little bit nuts and a little bit crazy.
Speaker 3:But, dude, I love it and I think that number would be cool to see in the future if you have a chance, like I, even as a marketing thing for you just to see hey, we have all these buildings and they bring us in, call it, $200,000 a month, but if we weren't using this one strategy that we were, we are using now, they would only be bringing in $80,000 a month or whatever it is. I would love to see what that number looks like if you ever calculate that in the future. But to move on to our final questions here, man, it's really been a jointed. What is one actionable step that our listeners should take today on their path towards financial freedom?
Speaker 1:I'm. They should just do something. I made a I'll end with this story. It's like probably a great story to end with. It's the little soap box I'm on right now.
Speaker 1:I was at a Tony Robbins event one time. In a live seminar with Tony Robbins there's a big motivational self-help guy and this lady needs to lose a ton of weight, ton of weight. And she gets up and she's Tony. She stood up in the seminar. She's Tony, I got it. Thank you for inspiring me.
Speaker 1:Here's what I'm going to do. I want to find the perfect personal trainer and so I'm going to interview a hundred personal trainers and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to whittle it down to 50. And then I want to do a workout session with 50. And I want to see, and then my friend's going to come along, cause she's worked out a lot before and she's helped me out, and she. Then we're going to whittle it down to 10. And we're going to go visit the gyms of each of those personal trainers and she just goes on this rant and then she goes on to. But I got to find the right gym in my city. She lived in LA or something. She goes to just four hundred gyms and she will talk through this whole process and Tony's up there and he's.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you and I'm no disrespect. You don't need the perfect strategy. You don't need the perfect plan. You don't need to do any of that. You need someone behind you yelling at the top of their lungs. One One, it made her laugh. She didn't take it personally. You need to lose so much weight. You just need someone behind you yelling. Right, and it's just.
Speaker 1:The soapbox I'm on right now is Don't worry about being perfect man. Actually, just go do something Like because momentum is the game and you create momentum by taking action. I don't care if you're the best decision maker in the whole world. Only 20% of your decisions are going to be right anyway. Don't think that's just how it's going to work. You're going to make a lot of bad decisions in life. That's how it works. Or wrong decisions, bad decisions, but wrong decisions. You're going to make a lot of bad calls, wrong calls. So just go do something. And better yet you want the cure all to financial freedom Just massive action. Cure all to solving any problem is massive action. So don't just go do one thing, go do a bunch of things and take action and move it forward, but don't focus on it all having to be perfect and you're having to find that perfect strategy. Co-living is this man do something, move it forward and learn and then adjust, adjust as you go, like the airplane analogy we said earlier.
Speaker 3:Dude, that's right man, figure out what the next step is, and then actually go and take this step. Cause a problem, figure out what is this problem that happens when I go and take the step If there is a problem, and then, whenever you have that problem, then take the next step after that to solve the problem, whatever it is. Just keep moving, cause if we don't move, we're going to what happens. If you don't move, you're going to be in the same exact place. So in life, you are not going to get anywhere financially. You're not going to get anywhere physically, if we're just staying in the same exact place. We're going to be in the same place until we start moving, until we start getting that momentum. And, sam, for our final question of the day what is one question that you wish I would have asked or one topic that you wish I would have covered, and how would you have answered that question or how would you have expanded on that topic?
Speaker 1:You're making me work now. I'm making me do both sides of this equation. You're making me think, man, I like it cause that's what I would have asked about. I would have, we could have, and my brain can go to a million different places, but I'll just go with this one, cause it came out to me first. Leverage, like, how do you use leverage? What you just did is you leveraged your question making to me to get me to think of the question and the answer, which is brilliant. I'm being playful by calling it out on it, but I think it was Archimedes, one of the famous philosopher, that said you give me a lever, big, long enough and the right focal point, and I could be worth. That's the power of leverage. And so leverage can be what you just did. Hey bro, what questions did I?
Speaker 1:Leverage can be getting someone else to do something for leverage can be relationships, leverage in a good way. We're all only as strong as we are. But when you start using levers financial levers, using money to work for you, using other people to work for you all, and that's all whole another conversation you change the game of financial freedom. You go fast, fast. Leverage is the key. Obviously, we know about leverage in real estate. I don't have to have $500,000 to buy a $500,000 house. I have to have $450,000 to buy a for the 500. That's leverage. I'm using someone else's money to create this and that's how guys like you and I can get to financial freedom fast through real estate. We use leverage. There you go, bro.
Speaker 3:Dude, you know how to close this show off. You gave leverage to me, bro. I had to, man, I didn't know what the last question asked was, so why not just make you come up with it yourself, brother Sam, man, it has been a pleasure really getting to dig into you, your business, what you've got going on in the tips and tricks and knowledge that you have Inside of your ad, and being able to pull that out, give it to the people and let them know some value. Man, if my listeners, watchers, want to reach out to you, follow you online, find you online when can they find you?
Speaker 1:Yep, pretty much everywhere. Man At Sam Weigert on Instagram is probably where I'm most active. Weigert is W-E-G-E-R-T. Or. If you're interested in learning more about co-living and getting to financial freedom using that strategy, scaleyourrealestatecom is where you can start your journey.
Speaker 3:Love it and we will tag those down in the show notes. I feel like I always say that, sam, I always say we're going to tag this down in the show notes, and then it gets to the show notes and I forget to tag everything that I should have. So I'm going to try to remember we tagged that in the show notes. I'll make sure I put that here. Thanks for how I appreciate it, man. I really appreciate having you on today, man. It has been a pleasure. And from the Financial Freedom Fast Podcast, I'm your host, matt Amobile. Today we add on Sam Weigert and we are signing off.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to the Financial Freedom Fast Podcast, the show that teaches you to buy back your time and live life on your terms. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and follow us online at Matt Amobile. That's Matt A-M-A-B-I-L-E. Be sure to tune in Monday, wednesday and Friday for our weekly podcast drops. Thanks for listening. Let's retire together.