S1E11: Entrepreneur Stories - Balancing Risk and Reward in Real Estate: Patrick Burand’s Expert Advice

Patrick Burand is an engineer-turned-real estate entrepreneur from South Carolina. Despite his family's traditional views on careers, Patrick took a leap into entrepreneurship and has built an impressive portfolio of 165 doors and several upscale single-family rentals in Florida. With a background in engineering and a passion for real estate, Patrick has mastered the art of balancing a W2 job with his thriving investment business.

This episode stands out with its unique tone as we explore Patrick's transition from a conventional engineering job to becoming a successful real estate investor. Patrick shares his initial struggles, the pivotal moments that fueled his entrepreneurial spirit, and his strategic approach to scaling his business. We also discuss the importance of mental resilience, the challenges of rapid business growth, and his ambitious goal of building a $100 million portfolio in the next five years.

I believe that you will gain valuable insights into the importance of strategic partnerships, effective risk management, and the balance between cash flow and appreciation in real estate investing. Patrick’s story underscores the significance of leveraging both technical skills and relationship-building in achieving success. For those interested in real estate, entrepreneurship, and financial freedom, this episode offers practical advice and motivational insights.

Contact:
Patrickburand@hurricaneprops.com

References
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Trump University - Real Estate Book

Questions Answered in this Episode
1. How can I transition from a W2 job to a successful real estate investment business?
2. What are the key strategies for balancing cash flow and appreciation in real estate?
3. How do strategic partnerships contribute to rapid growth in real estate investing?

https://www.visioninmotion.co

Transcript

0:00

No one in my family is an entrepreneur. And actually they look at entrepreneurship as this scary, dangerous thing. I remember when I first told my parents I wanted to go off into business for myself and start a business. It was like probably the worst news I could have told them. Welcome to Motion Matters, where we shine a light on the entrepreneurial journey, sharing real stories of triumph and challenge. Guided by Jamie Tilka, we connect, inspire, and educate. This is Motion Matters. Hello, and welcome to Motion Matters. This is the entrepreneurial podcast where we talk about the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurship. And today I've got Patrick with me coming all the way from South Carolina. We met at a mutual mastermind and got talking to Patrick and heard his story about how he's still grinding at his day-to-day job, yet he's managed to build up quite a portfolio. And so I wanted to bring him on to talk about that and share his experiences with you. So with that, welcome to the show, Patrick. Hey, Jamie, thanks for having me. I'm excited. Awesome, thanks for being here. I appreciate you taking out the time. So yeah, wanna kick it off, same as I typically do. I'd like to just give you a second to talk a little bit about your background. Who's Patrick, where are you from, and what you do, and then ultimately kind of segue into what led you into entrepreneurship and kind of like a once-over of what you got going on. Sure, so I have kind of a, I guess an interesting story because I started off heavily, heavily in the W2 world. Parents, as growing up, dressed education above all else, get good grades, get into the best college you can, and then get your cubicle job and work for 40 years. It's the safe thing to do. It's what worked for your dad and I, and it allowed us to step up from our previous generation. So just do that, and then everything will work out and be fine. So I came from that world. If you ever read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I came from kind of the poor dad family mentality heavily, extremely heavily. No one in my family is an entrepreneur. And actually they look at entrepreneurship as this scary, dangerous thing. I remember when I first told my parents I wanted to go off into business for myself and start a business. It was like probably the worst news I could have told them. They were like, they were terrified. Every parent just wants their kid to go down like the safest path possible with the least amount of risk, right? They don't necessarily want you to have the most success possible if that involves a lot of danger and risk. So I came from that world where I wasn't really exposed to entrepreneurship much at all growing up. And so I followed the game plan. I got into a good college. I studied engineering. Actually got a graduate degree in engineering and mechanical engineering. And then I got a job working for an engineering firm in Boston. And then, so I lived there in Boston, working my cubicle job, getting in my car, driving an hour to work every day in bumper to bumper traffic, putting in my eight to nine hours in my cubicle, getting in my car, driving an hour back home. And it was a really difficult transition for me from college to that job because I thought, like I'm sure a lot of college graduates think like, oh, you graduate college, you've done all the hard work. Now the great, the reward comes, not necessarily fun, but the reward for all your hard work comes. And I was just not really seeing that reward. So I was kind of deeply unhappy with my engineering job for many, many years because I didn't have control of my life. I felt like I was just a cog in a machine. I had no freedom to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. And even though I was having some success in my W2 job, you know, I was getting the promotions. I was getting the, you know, the good performance reviews. And from the outside looking in, everyone was kind of looking, oh, Pat's doing a great job. He's doing exactly what was supposed to be, what he's supposed to be doing. He's following the plan and he's succeeding. But I was just deeply unhappy doing that. And that unhappiness was actually, and the thing about my situation was I was actually making a lot less money at my job than a lot of my other friends and graduates that I went to college with. And that really was upsetting to me because I thought, you know, I work so hard. I consider myself kind of a hard worker, smart person. How come I'm not getting the reward? And so that kind of compounded the unhappiness. And I kind of went through a long quarter life crisis in my 20s, you know, and the quarter life crisis was kind of like, well, the path that you were told was the right path. You're kind of realizing is not all it's cracked up to be. And it's not gonna fulfill you the way that you thought it was. And so that unhappiness was really like fuel. It was a blessing. It really was a blessing because if I'd made a little bit more money, if my job had been a little bit more enjoyable, maybe my commute had been 20 minutes instead of 60 minutes, you know, I would have just been content to live that life and continue along that path. But I was just so unsatisfied and unhappy that I was always kind of searching. I was like, there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be a better way to live life than to just, you know, spend two hours in my car every single day, sit in my cubicle and listen to my boss tell me what to do. And so that unhappiness really was like a blessing in disguise because it was the fuel and the motivation that forced me to, at my lunch hour, look for opportunities to try and make money with a side hustle or on the weekends, you know, instead of hanging out with friends, like, you know, trying to research how to make money in the stock market. The first thing I did was, you know, I'm an engineer, I'm good with numbers. Let me just try and like day trade. So like I tried doing that for a couple of years and pretty much got my lunch eaten by the sharks out there. And, but that was just one of the stepping stones to like actually having success as an entrepreneur. So I was always, ever since I really started my W2 job, always looking for something where I could build on my own and be an entrepreneur and kind of, just because I was so unsatisfied with the normal path of, you know, get good grades in school, get into a good college, work your cubicle job for 40 years and then retire. The thought of that to me was like facing down a 40 year prison sentence, to be honest. And so that unhappiness, like I said, really was a blessing in disguise and forced me to kind of look for different opportunities to start my own business, to take control of my time and to really write my own dance card for life. You know, I think one of the things that is the best part of being an entrepreneur is the fact that you have control of your life in terms of your time, your schedule and what you kind of want to work on every day. And that freedom, I think was what I was really, really looking for. And I just really wanted to be able to, you know, if I wanted to, you know, take a Tuesday off and go golfing, I could, you know, if I wanted to, you know, go to, you know, Mexico with my girlfriend and work by the side of the pool on my computer, I wanted to be able to do that. So that was really kind of what was pushing me to look for something else. And it was like that deep burning desire and that unhappiness that gave me the motivation to put in those extra 15, 20 hours a week on top of my normal job to kind of look for the right path. And so when I was in that kind of quarter life crisis phase, I was living with a group of guys, you know, typical bachelor pad in Boston. And one of them actually started his own digital marketing company. And he was a little bit younger than me, but he had a lot of success creating this company from scratch. And I remember I would just every day, I would look at him and be like, I could do that. How come I can't have something like he has? But seeing him be able to start his own business from scratch and have success in it, it was the first time I was actually exposed to a successful entrepreneur. And it was someone I was living with. And that really made the possibility real to me that it was something I could do. So I kind of had this burning desire for something else. And then I saw someone who had kind of achieved that. And that was kind of a catalyst for me to start actually going into real estate. And I kind of always wanted to dabble in real estate. I remember my, believe it or not, the first real estate book I ever read was a Trump University book. That was, I think, in grad school. I still have it on my bookshelf, actually. And I just remember having this fantasy of owning a bunch of apartments and living off the passive income. That was always like a little kernel in my brain that I wanted to achieve. And kind of all those factors lined up in my mid-20s to kind of push me in that direction and kind of plant that seed and kind of let it grow into a business. There's so many things that I wanna ask you. I'm actually frustrated because normally I have my little pad. I forgot my pad to write down some questions while you were talking. But I got a couple of them in my head. Can we go all the way back to you mentioning about your parents and their push, right? I think what's great about everything that you've said is I feel like you have the quintessential case study, if you will, on the struggles where people, like you said, you had success. And then not only that, but your parents were pushing you in that direction. And so a lot of people listening are gonna listen to this and say to themselves, not too dissimilar than what happened with you with the guy. I mean, you saw live in your person, but hopefully by people listening to you, this will resonate and inspire them to move past that. So anyway, the question that I have for you is from your perspective, why do you think it is that our parents are so specifically for pushing in that thing about like, hey, just get a job, get a great job, save your money and stuff like that. I mean, why is there not the revelations that we've had? I think it's because they grew up in a different world than we're living in now. They grew up in a world where that plan that I outlined, study hard, go to college, get a job, that really worked for them and gave them a lot of success and allowed them to take a step up economically from their parents' generation. The American dream of going to college and getting your job and working it for 40 years, that worked for them. Both of my parents had the same job for their entire career. And they were able to, they were the first generation to go to college. And so I think they looked at what they did as I'm advancing, I'm taking a step beyond where I came from. And I think now every generation kind of wants to push beyond where they came from. You wanna have more economic success than your parents and kind of be pushing the family name forward, so to speak. And so I think looking at what our parents did and just kind of doing the same thing that they did is not as satisfying to a lot of people in our generation. So I think there's that desire to go beyond what our parents did and not do the exact same thing that they did. And then also the world is different now. There's not as much reward in going to college and getting your job and working your same corporate job. And there's a lot less stability, I think, in the corporate world these days. I don't think there's anyone in our generation really that works the same job for their entire career. I mean, there's constant layoffs, and then if you get laid off, you have to find another job and maybe you have to relocate across the country and you kind of are at the mercy of your employer these days. And that happened to a lot of, and that was one of the things that actually drove me to want to be an entrepreneur was I saw these very successful older vice presidents at my company that their family lived in California, but they were flying to Boston every single week to work Monday through Friday at this job because it was the only job that fit their skillset and they'd been laid off from their previous job and for no fault of their own. And so I think it's great if you can work a job that you know you're gonna work at for 30, 40 years and you build a family in a location and you know that there's a lot of certainty around that. But nowadays, there's a lot of uncertainty in the corporate world. And you could be a five-star employee and get laid off for no reason and have to move your family across the country just to take another job to support yourself. So I think all those factors kind of go into our generation wanting to kind of go beyond what our parents did and then having that stability and control in your life. It sounds kind of crazy, but I believe that by being an entrepreneur, I actually added stability to my life. My parents think the opposite. They think, oh, Pat's an entrepreneur. He's taking a huge risk. His life is like on the precipice. He could fall off a cliff at any time. But I look at it as I actually took control of my life because I still work as an engineer part-time, but if I were to get laid off from that job, guess what? I'm not gonna have to go look for another job in Seattle or California and my wife and I won't have to move for me to go take another job. So now I have an income that I have control of and that's not gonna go away unless I screw up badly, whereas someone could be very successful at a corporate job and because there's layoffs or restructuring, they're out of a job. So I actually look at entrepreneurship and I think as having stability and control and actually being a safe option now for your income compared to being in the corporate world. So you actually answered that and set me up perfectly for this other question that I wanted to ask you. And so from somebody who did take that route, I mean, more and more repeatedly, I have, we have a handful of young people that work for us and then I have other people that have reached out to us. I have five kids. They're all out into the world minus one, but what's your response to somebody that comes up to you and ask whether or not you think it's relevant if they go to college? I think that college is great for some professions. Like I think for engineering and certain medical professions, you need that because there's a high level of technical training that you need, but I think the vast majority of people, the benefit of college is networking and I don't think the actual education that you get in college is applicable to the real world. And I think that it's a lot of college is a waste of money. I think you can get good deals in college. You go to a state school, then it's probably a good idea to go to college if you are going into one of those technical fields, engineering, some of the sciences, medical field, but I mean, you really don't need college to be a successful entrepreneur by any means because you don't really learn anything in college that you can't learn on the job. And I mean, for me, for example, even as an engineer, I learned 99% of my skills at my engineering job from being on the job. I hardly use anything I ever learned in college at my engineering job and I'm an engineer. And so I think there's this overvaluing of classroom learning as opposed to on the job learning and real world experience. And I think there needs to be a shift back to valuing that real world experience, just being out there and taking your lumps versus just reading about how to do it in the classroom. So I would say the quickest path to success is actually just skipping college, getting an internship with someone who is doing what you wanna do and just learning in the real world from them because there's no substitute for that. It's like the analogy of like you can read a book on how to swim all you want, but until you get in that water and learn how to do it yourself, you're never gonna succeed. Dude, I love it. This is something that I harp on all the time with my children and some other close people around me is I'm like, for me, I would take somebody that has two years of experience over five years of education every day. In fact, sometimes I say, I would take somebody that's incredibly motivated on a particular subject. Like if I legitimately knew somebody like was obsessed with, I wanna understand social media, I think it's the coolest thing since sliced bread. Like I bring that person on all day, invest our money into helping them develop their skillset and helping them get to somewheres because passion, I think people are gonna be... Then there's a lot of self inspiration, self motivation, if you will, to pursue that subject so that you can truly be an expert in that field. But no, I appreciate that answer because I think it's one of those things that's a little bit of a hot topic. I hear people talking about a lot, do I or do I not go to college? And I started entrepreneurship way late in life after my 24 years in service. And for me, I just think, I mean, I constantly ask myself, I'm like, why are more people not doing this? And I like your answer about why you think the generational mindset has shifted because I feel like more and more, it's gonna be commonplace that less people are going to college to get a skillset and more of it's gonna be back to practical application and or building it yourself. So no, that's super, super awesome. I kind of wanted to come back from that and then when you finish speaking on your little intro, I think, could you give us a little bit more of a glimpse into what is, so you have your W2 job and then you started off into the real estate. Talk to us a little bit about what your journey has been with getting involved in the real estate industry. My first dabble into actually owning real estate was an owner occupied duplex in Boston. And I think that was kind of like riding with the training wheels on. I remember my girlfriend was moving to Wisconsin, moving from Wisconsin to Boston. I had to get out of that bachelor pad. And so we were like, okay, do we rent an apartment or do we buy something? And me being in the mind state that I was in, I was like, this is the perfect chance to take that kind of first step into owning rental real estate. So I bought an owner occupied duplex, 5% down loan. So I didn't need a lot of money. I think I put 25,000, I had $25,000 saved up from like the five, six years that I'd been working. And so I put a 5% down on an owner occupied duplex in Boston and became a landlord that way. It's kind of like real estate investing for toddlers kind of, because the downside is very minimal. And the upside is that you kind of break through that wall of buying your first property, having your first tenant. So I would recommend anyone who is looking to get into real estate investing, take the first step as like buying an owner occupied duplex, triplex, quadplex, because with your first deal, you really wanna make sure that there's not a huge downside because if you do your first deal and you kind of get wrecked, it's very likely that you won't come back from that. If you're on your 20th deal and you get wrecked, you have the skillset and the mental fortitude to kind of come back from that. But the main thing with your first deal is you're not trying to hit a home run, but you just don't wanna lose your shirt. You don't wanna lose everything. And so an owner occupied duplex really minimizes the downside of that. I mean, the very end of the day, you're paying for a place to live and you have like one tenant next door that you're managing. And so I did that. I remember I got my first rent check from my tenant and I was like in disbelief. Like it was like a check for $1,800 made out to me. And I was like, I cannot believe that someone just paid me $1,800. And I have like on my phone, I have a picture of me like next to it, smiling disbelief. And that was like sort of the breakthrough moment. Like this is possible. Like when I got that first check, I was like, this is possible. This is something that I wanna do and that I can do. And so I, for the next six months kind of had this, I put together this plan of how many units I was gonna own and like by when and had these all kind of like, this plan in my head of what I wanted to do. But I kind of stalled out a little bit. I think, and I didn't buy anything. What year was that? That was 2017, it was 2017. And I think this is another problem with a lot of people who kind of start the entrepreneurial journey is you have all this fervor and this motivation when you first get into and you do your first deal. And then, but then you kind of get a little complacent, you know, and you start hearing from your friends and family, oh, you're doing so great. You have a duplex, like, oh, that's awesome. Cause they're just renting apartments or they have, you know, their own single family home. And so I kind of was like resting on my laurels a little bit, you know, my ego was kind of making me lazy in a way. And so I didn't buy anything for another six months. But because I had that reputation of, and it's funny looking back now, like, oh, Pat owns like a duplex, like among my friend group, they thought that was the greatest thing in the world. And so I had this one friend, Zach, who kept calling me up and asking me about different real estate advice because he wanted to do something similar to me. He actually had a single family house, but he wanted to buy like a duplex or triplex to supplement his W2 income. And so he kept calling me, asking me advice about financing, how to underwrite deals. And then I remember one day he was just like, Pat, why don't we just partner? Why don't we just partner and start buying properties together? And that was like an epiphany, like a light bulb moment. Like this was additional fuel, additional mental fortitude and mental strength to kind of like start actually buying more investment property. So I ended up partnering with him and then shortly after we brought in a third partner and we just started buying multifamily apartments out in Western Massachusetts and just kind of scaling the portfolio from there. After the first property we bought was a three unit property. So pretty modest out in Western Massachusetts, we bought it. It was listed on market. We bought it with a real estate agent and kind of cut our teeth from there and then bought a six unit and just kept rolling things into buying more and more multifamily apartment. What was the time between your duplex and that first triplex with your buddies? About a year. About a year. And I remember thinking when he approached me, do you wanna partner? Thinking, well, I don't know because this is gonna make me not learn the entire business. And for some reason in my head, I was like, I need to know how to do everything in the real estate space. And I was like, well, having him as a partner, he's gonna do a bunch of stuff and I'm never gonna learn that. But that was just a limiting belief because in the end he took on the skills and the jobs that I was actually not good at. So I'm an engineer, good at underwriting, good at kind of forecasting financials and he is a sales guy. So great at networking, great at building relationships which you need a lot in real estate. And so we kind of had a similar vision but opposite skill sets or I would say different skill sets. And because of that, that's why the partnership worked. We had this same vision where we wanted to both build a very large rental portfolio to give our families generational wealth. And we were willing to work our asses off and not take any money for like the first five, six years of the business. And we were both completely aligned with that. And that similar vision has gotten us through a lot of hard times but then we had complimentary skill sets where he was more of the sales marketing guy and I was more of the quant, the financial kind of analytical guy. And so that partnership, it kind of supplemented the skills that I needed to then actually take the steps to buy actual investment properties that were non-owner occupied. That's awesome. So where are you at right now? So you had the first duplex, then you got a triplex. And so how many doors do you have right now? Right now we have 165 doors. We've come a long way. We've come a long way. We've been in business seven years, just about seven years. We have 165 doors in Western Massachusetts and then we have four upscale single family rentals in Florida that are short-term rentals. And so we sort of have these two sides to our portfolio which is the apartments, the cash flowing apartment side of things. And then sort of this, it's more of an appreciation play in Florida in Palm Beach County where there's a lot of population movement into that area and a lot of money moving into that area. And if anyone knows what happened, what's happened to Florida in the last four years, it's just real estate values are going crazy. They're going through the roof. And so I like to have this kind of balanced portfolio where I'm not just cashflow or I'm not just appreciation. I think it's important for investors to kind of have both of those things because cashflow is great, helps you pay the bills but it's not gonna make you very, it's not gonna make you super wealthy. I mean, I think if you look at any person who's made a lot of money in real estate, they're gonna have made it from appreciation, not the cashflow of their apartments. The cashflow is great. It's like a foundation that then allows you to take those, I would say a little bit riskier moves of making an appreciation play. And so that's where we are now. We're looking to just build up both sides of the portfolio, the cash flowing apartments in Massachusetts and then the sort of luxury single family short-term rentals in Florida that kind of have more of an appreciation upside to them. Is it still just you three? Yes, it's still us three. And so we've actually been very fortunate to, a lot of partnerships don't last seven years, especially when you go through a high growth phases. Right, it puts a lot of stress on the partnership. And I always say the partnership is similar to, it's like a business marriage because you're gonna go through a lot of really hard times and a lot of very stressful times, a lot of great times as well. But those hard times really strain the relationship. And if there's not a solid foundation or a very strong shared vision there, the partnership's gonna break apart. And with a fast growing company, you really need to make sure that all those partners are growing at the same speed as the company, because if they're not kind of putting in the work to level themselves up and increase their skillset at the same pace as the business, they're kind of just gonna be like an anchor holding the business back. So that's why we've been able to last seven years. It's not just the seven years, it's seven years through going from buying a three unit property to owning 165 doors plus four other properties. That high growth, that fast growth can really break apart a lot of partnerships if there's not a shared vision and if those partners don't grow with the business. I feel like you just gave a great textbook explanation of the whole adage, do you want 10% of a watermelon or 100% of a grape? And when I first came into it, I absolutely wanted to maintain all the equity. So my whole play was like, I'll do 100% of the work and then I'll just borrow private money and then we'll maintain ownership. But what I realized is that one, it was a little bit more difficult to get people involved. I mean, I did, but it was easier if they had equitable stake. And then also, as you've already highlighted really well, is that each person brings in different aspects and as long as it's truly like a complimentary relationship, then the synergy and you guys can just grow. I mean, look, you guys went to what, you said 167, 165, right? Doors, that's amazing. That's awesome. I wanna ask you, we discussed briefly before, there's a couple questions I wanna hear just because I like how you're describing all your answers and kind of the process of things that went through. And so it's kind of connected to kind of what we were just talking about. So what have been, what's some of the biggest challenges you've faced in the entrepreneurial journey? And you can just highlight one if you want, but just something that was really a struggle and like, how did you navigate that? Sure, so, I mean, where do I begin? There's a lot of struggles in the entrepreneurial journey as you know. But I think that one of the biggest struggles for me was just dealing with the mental stress that comes along with being an entrepreneur and being an entrepreneur of a business that is growing. Because I always say this, that there's two reasons why businesses fail, two main reasons. One is you run out of cash or the owner runs out of mental strength essentially has a mental breakdown and is like, I'm done with this, I can't handle it. And so, I mean, obviously managing the cash is more of a nuts and bolts kind of numbers thing and more of the business sense. But I think a lot of people don't put enough emphasis on the mental fortitude that you need to be an entrepreneur and be an entrepreneur for a long time. Because there's gonna be a lot of struggle and a lot of times when you could lose it all. And one of my friends who's an entrepreneur said this, he's like, being in the W2 world, it's hard, there's stress but it's like boxing with boxing gloves on and headgear. Being an entrepreneur, it's like bare knuckle boxing. The stakes are just higher and your mistakes are kind of amplified. You don't have a whole corporate corporation to fall back on if you screw up. And so for me particularly, I would say navigating those really stressful times in terms of like keeping my mental health stable has been the toughest thing. Because there are days when everything is going sideways but you still have to get up and do the things that your business needs you to do especially as the leader of your business. And you need to be mentally strong and kind of be able to push through those tough times and still face those challenges every single day even when things are going completely sideways. So there've been a few times that that's happened and I think that there's, I had this myth in my head that when I was like three or four years into the business, maybe we had like 50 doors or something like that. I was like, all right, I made it, it's gonna be easy now. I made it through the hard times but I think I realized I was just getting started. And as long as you're in business, there's gonna be really difficult challenges that you face. And especially with a growing business, those challenges are kind of self-induced because I have kind of high aspirations and very large goals of how big I wanna get my rental portfolio. And if you're constantly growing, that means you're constantly living pretty far outside your comfort zone and you're taking a pretty large level of risk. Like say we own 50 doors at that time and I wanted to get to like a hundred doors in the next year and a half, two years. You're gonna have to outlay a lot of money. You're gonna have to start buying bigger deals, dealing with issues that a company that only owns 50 doors wouldn't have to deal with if you own a hundred. And so if you're trying to grow, you're like willingly taking on these huge challenges and they're just gonna keep coming. If you wanna keep growing and growing relatively quickly, these challenges are gonna come at you hot and heavy and there's not gonna be too long of just a time when you can sit back by the pool and relax. But that's why I love entrepreneurship is because when you make it through those times, it's like winning a race that you trained six months for or something like that. So the reward of getting through those times and the character that you build and the mental strength that you kind of callous your mind to have is extremely rewarding. But I would say the biggest challenges have been on the mental side for me and just continuing to grind and not letting those tough times kind of just wash me out of the business. I so resonate with everything that you just said. It's one of the reasons why I tell people we've got to where we are. I tell people very openly, there's tons of times where I legitimately woke up and I was like, what the F am I doing this for? Like, this is retarded. I can easily go out and have a multiple six-figure job, punch the clock and come home. But all the things that you opened up with on all the reasons that drove you to want to get into entrepreneurship, that was my reason for not turning back, right? It's like, no, don't do that because not only have you given up, but more importantly, you're never gonna get there. And I think you said it so well in the beginning. It's like, you really gotta be willing to play the long game. In fact, I think when I talk to other people moving forward, some aspiring entrepreneurs, I'm gonna really emphasize that. It's like, it is not a get rich quick scheme in any facet, right? Whether you're opening up a coffee shop, investing in real estate or starting some e-commerce business, it takes time and you're gonna get, like you said, bare knuckle punched in the face. And guess what? Those hit harder and it's harder to recover from them. But as long as you have the, as we like to say in the military, like if you have the intestinal fortitude to fight on, right, then you're gonna persevere. You're gonna get there. I think most of the success of being an entrepreneur is just staying in the game and not getting knocked out. And so on those like really tough weeks, you know, those really tough days, I just tell myself, just do what you gotta do to stay in the game. Just survive. Because there's times in entrepreneurship where you just gotta survive and do everything you can to survive. And then there's times to thrive, you know? And so that's what I tell myself during those hard weeks. Just, you gotta stay in the game because that is most of the successful entrepreneurs, they're just good at surviving and getting through those tough times. Yeah, Ed Milet, I went and saw him speak and I bought his book. He has a book called One More Day. And it's literally about exactly what you just said. It's just one more day, man. Just make it to the next day. Particularly when shit's really, really stressful. There's a couple of things I wanna make sure I touch on because I feel like I could have dug in a lot deeper into some of the other things, but I know we're gonna be running short here on time. I wanted to ask you, are you still working the W2 job? Yes, believe it or not, I still work the W2 job. And a lot of people, that makes them scratch their head when I say that because you hear the portfolio that we have and the success that we've had building our business. But so I will say this with a caveat. I don't work the same W2 job I worked seven years ago when I started the business, all right? Technically, it's the same company, but I'm in a completely different position. Back then, I was an engineering manager of 12 engineers running multiple projects, working 60 plus hours a week, commuting in my car two hours a day. Now, I work probably 20 hours a week or much less actually. I'm slated for 20 hours a week, but most weeks are actually much less than that. And I have no direct reports, I work fully remote. And I work on projects that are actually enjoyable to me. It's like the reason why I got into engineering was to have a job and work on stuff like I'm working on now. And I was able to do that because a lot of people tell, they have this burn the boats mentality. And a lot of my mentors have gotten on me. So Pat, you need to quit your job. Why haven't you quit your job? But I would say I transformed my job into something that was something I actually enjoyed and that's completely manageable. And then I still make a good salary from, but I would not have been able to do that if I didn't have kind of a successful business that gave me leverage to negotiate the position I want now. So essentially I negotiated the position that I'm in now and kind of put all my cards on the table to my boss, being okay if he said, no, we're not gonna let you do that. We're gonna have to let you go. And if that was the case, then I would have just fallen back on my real estate business and gone from there. But because I had the real estate business and sort of that safety net of the business, it gave me the leverage and the courage to then go to my boss and make these kinds of demands to transform the job from something that was completely stressful and ruining my life to something that I actually really enjoy now. And so I see myself continuing to work as an engineer, as long as the job stays what it is for the foreseeable future, because it's something that I actually enjoy and doesn't stress me out. So- Could you walk away if you wanted to? I could. Yeah, I could walk away and I make less money, good amount of less money as an engineer than I do for my business. Nice. But there are benefits to having a W-2 job. Yes. A lot of people don't talk about it. Finance ability. Exactly, bank ability. So if I go to a bank and I say, hey, I've worked at this company for 15 years, here's my six figure salary. Oh yeah, here's your loan right away versus, oh, I'm an entrepreneur and my balance sheet's chaotic because I'm growing and I'm putting all this money back in the business, but trust me, I have money and I'm gonna pay back the loan. Like, they're gonna say, no, take a walk. So there have been benefits to that. And it is kind of like, it is nice to have that check hit my bank account every two weeks. But like I said, it's something where if that job ever were to increase to the point where it actually interferes with my real estate business, I would walk away from it. So I'm keeping it because it doesn't interfere with my real estate business and the growth of that side of things. You and I had talked about that briefly and I said the same thing then, like, yeah, why not? I mean, because of the latitude, you enjoy what you're doing and you're making enough money. And then not only that, but some of that money then allows you to continue to reinvest back into additional projects that you guys wanna do. I wanna ask you one more thing before we kind of get ready to close this thing out is you mentioned earlier, talking about your big audacious goals, if you will. And so where do you see the business going in the next five years? Where would you like to be at? So in the next five years, I have this, it's a pretty big goal, but I wanna have our portfolio. I wanna have $100 million portfolio in five years. That's definitely a stretch goal. We're probably about a quarter of that right now. So that's a big stretch goal that I want. And then I have sort of intermediate goals along the way. So what I like to do is I'll set my big five-year goal. And I don't like to set anything beyond five years because then it's kind of like a little more make-believe. There's too many unknowns. So I set a five-year goal and then I work backwards of how many apartment units I need to own a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. And so that's the big goal. Our end of year goal is to get to 200 units. But yeah, that $100 million portfolio is sort of like the pie in the sky, like that big goal that I'm like working towards. And again, it's gonna be a balance of the cash flowing rentals in Massachusetts, plus sort of these higher appreciating like luxury single family houses. So that's what I'm working towards. It's a big goal. And I'm gonna be cautious getting there. What I've learned is it's okay to set big goals, but don't be reckless trying to reach those big goals. I've learned some things by, there's such a thing as growing too fast in business. There really is. And the faster you grow, the bigger the risks you're taking and the more you're kind of exposing yourself to kind of get knocked out by an event, a macroeconomic event like a 2008 or something that catastrophic that happens to the overall economy. And so I have that big goal, but I want to, as crazy as it sounds, I want to kind of safely try and get there by not risking too much all the time. I think it's okay for short spurts to really take big risks and expose yourself and put yourself out there, but you can't be operating like that all the time because eventually something's gonna happen. The winds are gonna change direction and you're gonna get blown to the rocks. So hopefully we'll get there, but I'm gonna be careful and responsible getting to that goal. I love that. In fact, we'll have to have you back on maybe in a year or two and see where you're at on this journey. I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing this because I think you hit on some stuff that, I mean, the whole title of this podcast is Motion Matters. And I picked that name because I constantly tell people like, if you're not willing to take any actions, then how do you expect to change your circumstances? And I feel like sitting here, listening to your story, there's time and time and time after again, where you've contemplated, you've reflected, and then you've taken action and then taken action and then take some action. And now here you are sitting with 167 doors. That's phenomenal. So thank you very much for sharing that. Wanted to offer you an opportunity real quick to share with everybody, how do they get ahold of you? What are you looking for? Like, are you looking for more deal flows? Are you looking for a specific place geographically? And how can I get ahold of you? You can go to our website, hurricaneprops.com. I can give you the link for it. On that website, you can find out everything about our business. You can reach out to me via the email. There's forms on that website to do that. It gives you a history of our portfolio. You can see all the quarterly letters we give out to our investors. So one thing I didn't mention was we do raise investor money to fund a lot of our deals. And so if anyone's looking to make an investment in real estate and get some good and safe returns, hit me up, go to the website and reach out. And we're always looking for deal flow, but I think that's very specific. So I think right now we're mainly looking for some investor money to continue funding the deals. We have a lot of deals in our pipeline, believe it or not. Right now, everyone is kind of saying things are kind of barren out there for deals, but we're having some success finding deals. And we just are also looking for the money to kind of put together with the deal to close those things. That's amazing. So you heard it here from Patrick. If you want to reach out to him, we'll put his email contact down in the show notes. Are you on any social media platforms? Can they reach you through there or no? You can reach me through there, just searching Patrick Burand on Facebook. That is one of the areas where I need to kind of level up is my social media game. A lot of people have told me that. So that's probably one of the next things in the next year or two is to really start getting on social media a little more and building up that side of things. Yeah, no worries. I just want to offer everybody multiple opportunities or ways to get in touch with you. So Patrick, thank you so much. I love hearing your story. It's amazing. I'm actually really inspired myself about that. I probably should pick up some pace to follow in your footsteps. So no, man, I love it. Thank you so much. And I appreciate you taking the time to be on the show, man. Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate you letting me kind of share my story and some of the things I've learned along the real estate journey. It was really great. Awesome, man. You have a great weekend. Talk to you later. Thanks, you too.