Ep775: Sam Primm – Be Intentional About What You Invest In

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen arm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank my listeners from Missouri today for joining fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with my featured guest, Sam Prem. Sam, are you ready to join the mission?

Sam Primm 00:42
I am ready to rock I'm here with bells and whistles. All

Andrew Stotz 00:45
right, let's do it. Well, I want to introduce you to the audience. So let me just give a little background. Sam founded faster freedom to teach people just like him to quit their job. Wait, what? And become successful real estate investors and achieve that same freedom and independence in life that really everybody deserves. Sam, tell us a little bit about what you're doing and the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Sam Primm 01:18
Yeah, appreciate it very much. So yeah, faster freedom. I founded that in 2020. With a mission of teaching people how to invest in real estate the right way, I have some experience that we may or may not get into, I've done a lot wrong and done some right as well. And I took like kind of pull of the landscape. And I saw a lot of people writing books, and teaching other people on something that they did not do very much or did not do very well. And that made me start to post about it on social media. And I posted about my real experiences based on stuff that I was actually doing wins losses and authentically, you know, told my story through social media. And that seemed to catch fire from people because look on social media, you're gonna see a lot of fake, you're gonna see a lot of flexing, you're gonna see a lot of Lamborghinis, you're gonna see a lot of a lot of people that are teaching or things that they didn't do or you know, used to do. So that caught fire. I have 3 million followers on social media now about three and a half years later, and develop faster freedom to teach people how to do it the right way, based on my real life experiences with no fluff, no BS, and just the brass tacks of how you can tactically try to create freedom in your life.

Andrew Stotz 02:23
I mean, it's amazing number of followers, and why do you think that those people are following you? I mean, is it about yourself, your style, your personality? Or is it about your method? Or is it about the community? Or is it something about real estate that makes people want to join? How would you describe that?

Sam Primm 02:40
I think you hit them all in the head, honestly, because I haven't quite figured it out. Honestly I don't, I never thought that'd be posted frickin tic TOCs I had no idea that I'd have this many followers. Um, I think that's part of it, though, the word I get for most people is the number one word that I get from followers or students or everybody is authentic. And authenticity is something like I kind of alluded to earlier is a little bit rare, especially these days with the fakeness of what you can pretend to be happy on social media, everybody's happy, everybody got the best life ever. And I'm not that, you know, I'm a happy guy got amazing family, but I show the wins the losses. And I'm actually doing it. So many people wrote a book 10 years ago, and are teaching on what that book teaches. And they're not actually actively investing. We buy 300 houses a year. So I'm able to cascade that into like, hey, Novations are working right now, or this strategy. And marketing is working, or here's how we got a few deals, and I bought them was $50 million in real estate using none of my own money. So the things that I teach, I am actually doing and I'm actively doing, I'm a real estate investor, that happens to coach and talk on social media. I'm not a guru that used to invest in real estate. So I think those are some of the biggest things, the authenticity and the the thing, I actually do what I say, and I actually teach what I do, and then you know, the fact that real estate is, you know, succeed everybody, they understand that it's a very, very good way to invest. They just don't know how to do it.

Andrew Stotz 03:59
Um, it's interesting, because I always use the word authenticity for this podcast, because I mean, like, you can't come on this podcast, and not be authentic, you know, I mean, it's about talking about, you know, loss and stuff. So I always tell people that you know, that's really the word, but I definitely don't have that number of followers. So it's something much more than authenticity. Let me ask you, what's the difference between what people get from let's say, if they're a keen observer of your social media, and they're following your posts, and they're learning from you, versus you know, working with you and in your products and services? What's the difference? I mean, obviously, they're getting some value in the social media, what's the additional value that they get from them you know, joining in? Yes, so

Sam Primm 04:42
social media I take that as like the top of the foam approach is help as many people as I can provide actionable value to get a you know, a number it's all it's all a numbers game and it's all fungal. So I do my best to provide as much as I can. I don't hold anything back. But once you get inside the community as well, I like to call it it used to be a coaching program used to be mentorship used to be a program No, it's a community because with technology with where AI is going, I have that in the community, it's information is going to be completely devalued, everybody's going to be able to do anything they want very, very quickly. That's accurate in detail with just access to the internet. And it's already that way, but I think it's gonna get more and more. So that's replicatable. What's not replicatable is implementation, it's holding your hand, it's having a group of like minded people together, all working towards your common goal, it's being in a room with other people that are going through stuff that you don't even know you're getting ready to go through. So you're able to kind of bob and weave, when stuffs coming your way that you didn't know was going to come your way. So it's the community, it's like minded people, 1600 students now in two years, they own over 200 million in real estate. So the proof is in the pudding, we're able to teach people how to do it, and the fact that they get their handheld, they get all the resources they're going to need, they get my growing issues, my growing mistakes, my growing strategies, they get that implemented to them, because I'm on the forefront of buying three houses a year and buying, you know, 47 million in real estate using none of my own money. So I actually do it. And I think that's the biggest thing is they get that community feel, you get access to other investors that are right, where you are, right, where you're going to be where you want to be. And we're all together helping each other. And we really cultivate that.

Andrew Stotz 06:15
I mean, I think a lot of people dream of having that type of community. And I know myself, it's not easy to do and maintain. There's different components of community, you know, there's first of all, you know, one component is a dialogue, or let's say, a discussion, a video call, or you can ask anything. There's another one of just being in the group and having communications people sharing things. There's another part, it's like, there's a learning journey, okay, you can take these things, and some communities are just simply learning journey. And then it ends or whatever. How would you describe the different components of your community? And like, what, what do you think is the most valuable part of that? Because I mean, you've already mentioned the implementation. I think that it's critical for everybody that information is just just information. But implementation is the part that's the real value, but maybe you could just explain a little bit about the community.

Sam Primm 07:10
Yeah, for sure. I appreciate that. So it took me a couple years to get to this, if anybody's paying attention started social media 2020, doing posting, and then this version of what we have started in 2022, basically, December 2021. So you know, I started and tried a few different things and tried a few different self guided courses and coaching courses. And it did, okay. But what really caught fire is when I introduced what we're still doing today, and that is, it's like 350 videos that I recorded over an eight month period, they're all three to five minutes long. So if somebody nobody wants to learn about how to go find a wholesaler and have to watch an hour and 10 minute presentation in their evening, they don't have the time, energy, or free space to do it. So if they want to learn something, I have three to five minute videos that they can just specifically go to and we have aI incorporated in it. There's a search bar, you type in how to find wholesalers, how to find private money lenders, gives you four or five paragraph answer. It links, the videos that I recorded that the information came from, and it gives you new questions to ask. So there's just a lot of information, that part of it. That's super, super user friendly and efficient. You don't have to waste a ton of your time to learn something, I tell them, use your limited spare time wisely. So you can have unlimited spare time. So that you know the information, the videos is one thing, and that is that the Facebook community 1600 people I'm inside I pay 100 grand a year to be in masterminds of people that are where I want to go. And those those you know, Facebook groups are three 400 people there's a question a day maybe. But my group you go there, there's five or six questions a day, most of the questions are answered correctly by other students before me or one of the coaches even get to them. So we have that community feel of you have a ton of people to bounce ideas off of. Then there's one on one coaching one of the coaches they have options for and then there is the group coaching. There's seven group coaching calls a week, there's one women lead woman only call because there's real estate's a male dominated space, I have two daughters, I want to help change that. So we have that side of it. And then we have the seven weekly group coaching calls, there's 25 to 30 people on it, maybe 15 to 30 people on it. And that's an hour. It's every single day of the week, couple a couple on Thursday, and it's an hour long hour, 20 minutes, where people are bouncing ideas off each other. We're teaching on something we're asking questions. So it's a lot and I tell people on the onboarding call site during from a firehose of events or the pressure gets turned down. But I mean, it's all there. And we're continuing to add to it. I just added a 82 video module on how to buy midterm rentals because I'm a big midterm rental guy. I think that's the future of you know, it's like short term rentals 15 years ago. So anyways, that not to go into too much of a rabbit hole here, but there's just a lot if anybody, introvert who wants to just watch videos is fine. Some of them wants to go out and connect and do things in person that we have that for them. Some of them won't be on calls, some of them wants to sit on the call with their screen off and just be a fly on the wall. That's fine too. So every single person that has the same goal of freedom and is willing to put you know a little bit behind it, it's got it's got something for them

Andrew Stotz 09:59
And I'm just curious. I mean, you've talked about how it's different from when you started, like, you know, maybe started with coaching or other things that maybe aren't scalable. And all of a sudden, you realize, I've got to make some changes here. You also talked about the idea of creating a lot of short videos, which, you know, some people who run groups are good at that some people aren't, you know, it seems like, Okay, that's a skill that you've got. So make sure that you maximise on that. I'm just curious that if you forget all that you've done up to this point, let's imagine that you were at time zero, to start a community and I'm asking this for myself, and for my listeners, that you are going to start a community from time zero, you know, you're not gonna have a, you're not gonna have a huge volume for the first six to 12 months. And then after that, it grows, knowing what you know, now, how would you start that community

Sam Primm 10:51
I was started pretty similar to how I started this rendition of what's working, right, because I turned look took kind of all the failures that we talked about. So I would probably started out with I liked those bite sized calls, people love those, they're able to, you know, it's like wholesalers, right? You know, people that sell real estate, there's like eight videos on his what is a wholesaler? How to find them how to make work from you how to negotiate. So that's those videos, so they're broken up into bite size, so you can watch for an hour, but you can watch sections as you go. So I will do that make it bite size, make it so people actually use it, if they're an hour long videos, or like people are gonna watch part of it, they're gonna forget. And the key to being successful. Is your students winning, right? Your students actually being successful in buying real estate and telling their friends and posting about it? So and that's the whole purpose was how can I make them win? How can I make it so easy for them, they can search anything, they wanted to get my brain 24/7 inside AI, they get short videos. And then we started with two weekly calls that were 10 people were attending each, then we as we grew, I want to keep it intimate. And I want to keep 15 to 2025, like I said earlier, so I just pay more coaches have more calls and make it worse, always call volume is not an issue, you're never not going to have your answers heard. So that's the biggest things that I feel I kind of repeat myself a little bit, but that's what I would do. And that's why because I want to make it. So my students, when we hired a community Success Manager, they have 3060 90 Day check ins with the students. So it's, it's something that it's took a long time to get here, I used to try to sell this dang thing for 2500 bucks one on one coaching with me and I couldn't even sell them I was the sales guy. So it wasn't it took a while to get here. Now, obviously, I'm not in the sales calls, I do a little bit of coaching, but I have coaches hired. So I think it's one of those things, the key I think is keeping it easy to access, keeping it bite size, but keeping it intimate as well as it grows. Because I tell the people, all the people in there, the bigger this gets, the more value there's for you, there's going to be more people in your city, we have students in all 50 states like 180 in Texas. So like the bigger the bid more students in Texas have, the more they're going to connect and do deals together. So keep it intimate, but grow it and scale it to add more value.

Andrew Stotz 12:50
That's interesting about the localization because as an international guy, I have people that come to me and ask me, okay, I'm in France, how do I follow your investment style here? And okay, it's a little bit more complex, like, you know, related to taxes related to ETFs, related to all that. And so if I have another student in France, they can say, Oh, I've already gone through that. " And here's some of the options that I've found. So that, you know, as a student who can contribute into a community like that, is really feels like they're part of that community so that I can definitely understand that. I like what you said about, you know, students must when I wrote that down from because I think one of the big mistakes is that you just can't dump people in a room and say, All right, figure it out. There's got to be a pathway, there's got to be winning, or else people just won't hang out for long. So that's interesting. What are people paying? What if somebody wants to learn more, they want to go and see more? Where do they go for that? Yeah,

Sam Primm 13:50
so faster freedom.com They can email or they can send me a message on Instagram is the best way to message me that because I still answered the DMS and I'm still in there, I got, you know, almost 600,000 But I still answer those DMS, that's the best way to do it. And, and I used to like, kind of shy away from the prices 9500 bucks, it's a lot of money. But it's 9500 bucks to efficiently learn the best way to do this. I tell people and I 100% believe it, you probably do too, to a certain degree, you're gonna pay for the education, either through inefficiencies, and maybe not making as much profit as you could or maybe losing money or not making much cash flow as you could you're gonna pay for it either way. This way, you're paying for it up front, so you can be a little more efficient and follow that group pass. So 9500 bucks, lifetime access was everybody tells me not to do like we throw the whole kitchen sink at it because I want them to win that is so just real quick. You didn't ask but I'm gonna tell you real quick. Like so I started and I was trying to make money. And that's part of the reason why it failed, right? I was trying to create another income stream, and then my other income streams took off and I was like, alright, let's focus on helping people. That's the only goal. Help them be successful. That's my goal. That's all I care about. If they want a refund, I give them the refund if they like if they aren't happy, then I don't care. I want you to win. then. And that's when I started to make more money. Not that I knew what to do with, I'm not that I'm not like fu money, but I started to make more money than I ever thought I would when I stopped chasing money and started chasing solutions for other people. And it only got to that point, after, you know, I failed at trying to make money. So anyways, I think that's a good lesson for all businesses, honestly. Um, so I just want to throw that in there. I know, you didn't ask sorry. No,

Andrew Stotz 15:21
no, I mean, I'm interested to learn what you're doing, I think my audience to one of the question is, what are the tools, I mean, tools have evolved so much, you know, I use a lot of tools like Slack, and I use Thinkific. In my case, for courses, and I use kartra, I use a lot of different tools, but what would you say is like the indispensable or the best tools that you use.

Sam Primm 15:42
So the number one I kind of alluded to, so won't go down too much is that AI software, we spend a lot of money and energy on that. It transcribes all the videos, all the new ones, and, and makes it all Super. So that's huge. It's called same chat is what we call it. So. So that's a huge one. So and we have like calculators, we have a we do a lot on just simple stuff. For newbies, they don't be overwhelmed a lot on Google Docs, you know, where they can Google Google Sheets, where we can create a you know, calculator, they can download and use for themselves with all the functions of, hey, every single part of a house, we have a sell for it, and you put something next to it, if it doesn't need put next to it, it calculates it for you at the bottom with some fluff in there with some holding costs. Oh, that that transfers over to? How much is the house worth? Okay, here's what you should pay for it. Assuming your numbers are right, you should be okay transfers over to what should the cash flow be obvious, you have to enter in, you know what the taxes are, what the fees are, but you enter in just like six or seven things, and it does it for you. So we have done a lot of that through Google Sheets. And we're talking about trying to create like our own software that we kind of own through it. But it's just works so simple, and everybody can get a Google sheet. So those are some of the main things we use, honestly, is the AI software in Google Sheets we hosted on go high level, which is basically I think, like a Kajabi, white label kind of thing. So we have a few things that we hosted on general we try to make it as easy and simple as possible. Because confusion doesn't sell and confusion doesn't lead to results. Usually.

Andrew Stotz 17:02
I'm going to ask the last question on this. I know I've asked a lot because I love it. I'm interested in it. But let's talk about top of the funnel, you know how to because all that great work to build a community bring your knowledge all together, there's a lot of people listening, who have a lot of knowledge, and they love putting that knowledge together and putting it into a system and divining a community. I'm not talking about myself, maybe you know, we love putting it all together and all that but you know, top of the funnel was the hard part for everybody. And again, let's go back to kind of Zero Based Thinking you know, everything you know now where would you focus your energy knowing that you only have limited energy at the top of the funnel? What would be 123 things that you would say, this is what I've learned, this is what I would do.

Sam Primm 17:53
Yeah, and I started out so I screwed at the beginning I started out with YouTube, it's a good long form platform, right but it's really hard to grow. I'm not very good at long form content, I've realized that I go down too many rabbit holes like I do here. But anyways, I never got to YouTube I started that for like six months and was getting you know, 40 5080 110 views kind of thing. Then I started with the short form stuff, which I found out I'm better at and the whole goal is to push them to YouTube. So that's what I did for like six months because I wanted my videos to make you know 500 bucks a month and be like rental properties. That's kind of what I initially wanted was to grow YouTube channel that was it. So I probably would have started on the short form stuff a little bit more and created a monetizable tool outside of just YouTube that was my monetization for the first year probably. But in general talking about top of top of funnel like like my so my advice to somebody who wants to create social media and create a following this the top of the funnel is it's not gonna work for everybody because not everybody is a lunatic like I am and the cycle like I'm like I legitimately spent 30 hours a week or three now going on three and a half years, not you look at my screen time, 30 hours a week on social media posting, analyzing, I'm not super articulate, I slur a little bit in mumble like I'm not your prototypical that kind of leads into my you know, my brand I didn't I just grew the brand around who I am. But I'm not like super buttoned up. But just posting and constantly putting out stuff and seeing what works like I know, just quick social media thought I know 25 videos that will go viral. So I created hub and spoke. I know the cop, I know the concept. And I have to create spokes around it that are deliverables. Now I can't overuse them. But I know if I say I'm in $26 million worth of debt, which cost me $135,000 a month, but brings in 315,000 of rent and allows me to own real estate worth 40 That's going to I just did it two weeks ago. It got 9 million views on Tiktok and Instagram so I just can't do it every time right so I learned that over three years of trial and error putting stuff out nobody watching seen what people like so it takes like concerted effort from one person like you. You can't enter you can't hire it out like So many people try to hire on social media and it's not them. It's not their brain, it's not authentic people see right through it. So you have to be committed to do it. Because I think social media, I get 76% of my signups from social media 24% from paid ads. So it allows me to have great margins allows me to like be connected with the community, they hop on a call, they've been following me for a year, sales guys can close them pretty easily, as opposed to paid ads when they're cold. So anyways, it all has worked together, unintentionally and intentionally all at the same time, because our program is one of the best and bigger ones in the country, especially owned by me, not by a bigger company. So we've gotten pretty lucky. And it's been pretty intentional as well, because it's, I appreciate you asking questions, because it's, it's scalable, and it's good, just getting started. So it's a pretty cool thing that we've done, and I'm pretty proud of it.

Andrew Stotz 20:44
That's a masterclass for all of us, you know, in a very short amount of time about community. I've been a financial analyst all my life. So I've been analyzing companies analyzing stocks, thinking about, is this worth investing in and that type of thing. And if you are a company that I was considering investing in the one question I would ask you, that, that would matter the most to me is, what is your number one constraint to growth? In other words, I want to invest in something that's got 1020 30 years of growth ahead. What is it that constrains you at this point?

Sam Primm 21:24
I think it's myself probably. I'm involved in everything. And I know that and I'm, and I'm working on building up that's why my on social media started this from day one, though, it's not saying Prem, it seemed faster freedom. So I intentionally put my name, so they know me, but then faster for him. I want to build the brain. And that is my goal to have the brain be bigger than me and have other people underneath the brain and not have it all be about me, I'm not that I'm not I don't need attention that bad, right? I would like to not have to do this forever. So I think the biggest constraint is myself, it's built around me, it's built around my brain. If I go away, the company goes away. And that's not a good thing. That's not a brag, that's a bad thing, actually. But we are few years old, we're working on getting away from that. So I think as we grow, and I have, you know, people putting out content about other things that grow up to our brand, they roll up with great deliverables based on what we kind of have experienced, I think that's gonna allow us to grow because I do think, you know, we're gonna hopefully knock on wood will approach. You know, what will that be close to eight figures this year? Gross, not not net, we're not talking to him. But I think we have a lot of a lot of a lot of headway ahead of that with what we're doing in the brain that we're growing because I have, you know, Speights 500 words, I don't know 60 Something 1000 on Instagram, but 280 of them are from US based around the country. So like, I have so much more room to grow my audience and my brain just inside the US. So there's we're just scratching the surface. It may seem like a lot, but take a step back and have that perspective we talked about before we went live, and it's not really that much.

Andrew Stotz 22:52
Right. Have you read the book clockwork by Mike McCalla wits?

Sam Primm 22:57
Clockwork? No, I know, Mike. He did a profit first. Right? Isn't that who did probably first Correct. Okay. No, clockwork, I haven't read that one down. It's good one. That's

Andrew Stotz 23:05
his newer one. And it addresses kind of exactly what you've just described. How to get yourself out of the business. Also, for the listeners out there. clockworks a great, definitely a great book. And you can listen to Mike's my interview with Mike. He was episode 618. And it is such a frickin inspiration about getting out of our business, you know. And so that's really, and I love his tagline. It. He's on a mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.

Sam Primm 23:36
I liked that. No, Mike's awesome. I heard him speak at one of those masterminds that I'm involved in. I heard him speak a couple years ago with that. And I love that book we do. We do book clubs. So I have four companies, we have CEOs of each of them. And me and the other owner and the four CEOs meet every Monday morning. And one of the things we do is a book club, we read a book and we discuss the chapter. So I'll put up a clockwork on there. Yeah, definitely,

Andrew Stotz 23:55
definitely worth it. Well, fantastic introduction. Now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Sam Primm 24:12
Awesome, I appreciate it. So yeah, my worst investment ever is a self storage deal that we put together. And it was, it was there's a lot that goes into it. Obviously we'll break it down. But it was just it wasn't the best timing. And it was and I just did a presentation on this actually on my top four biggest mistakes at our local meetup here in St. Louis. And this was one of them. And there's just so much that went wrong with this deal. So you know, to round it out, then we can dig into details. It's just a self storage deal that we bought, that we did some development on, that we didn't raise enough funds for that we didn't manage properly because our mind was focused elsewhere. And it's costing us quite a bit as far as lack of income, lack of money, and then the property's not growing in value like it should for us to have our exit plan. So I mean, I'm sure you get bit You've never sewn around, I don't know for sure, my guess is this deal is probably going to cost us I would say, maybe three to 500,000 of potential like loss, and then probably more than that a potential what we could have gained. So it's a, it's a messy deal that has fingers and all of our other companies that have had a domino effect of all of our other companies. So it's quite a doozy.

Andrew Stotz 25:21
And what was it that was attractive to you? I mean, obviously, you don't go into something, you know, that you realize is going to fall apart or have a problem? Why were you so attracted to it?

Sam Primm 25:32
pubers probably, I don't know. I feel like I don't feel like we're cocky. But like overly confident. It was a, you know, we weren't even intentionally searching out self storage. I own apartment complexes and I own single family rental properties and self storage, I believe in the asset class. But we weren't looking for somebody brought it to us. We prices said no, COVID hid they said, Yes, we'll take it, we want out, we don't know what's happening. So we took it. And then we just, you know, we're like, alright, the numbers are, okay, let's let's, you know, get this property fixed up a little bit. And then hey, let's build a couple more facilities because there's some open land on top of it. So just one of those things and we'll get into the details. And I can go as detailed as you want. But we just basically I think just thought were decent and managing single family houses and apartment complexes. How hard could Self Storage be? There's no tennis there's no toilets, let's do it. Or you know, there's no like tenants on site and there's no toilet. So let's just get into and let's diversify even more. And then we completely lost sight of the ball and completely lost sight of the deal.

Andrew Stotz 26:31
So let's summarize the lessons that you learned. How would you summarize them?

Sam Primm 26:36
Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a ton of lessons learned. So the biggest lesson learned for this one is Be intentional. Be intentional about what you invest in, you can't be good at everything. And we don't want to be good at everything. Like just to kind of run you through the deal quickly here. We bought it. And we decided to kind of rehab what was there it was, you know, pretty junky, add to small buildings perfect. No big deal. We threw those up, it was pretty easy, like putting together you know, you know, like putting together like Legos almost. And then there was some laying next to it. So we were going to do outdoor, you know, just gravel, lots, boat and RV storage. So we thought let's, this two buildings went so well. We did market research for geniuses, let's do indoor boat and RV storage, let's to put a 255 foot 20 foot tall building on this land. And we did it and we didn't do it right, we put the middle stuff in first it created wind tunnels, the building blew down the back wall, the two and a 55 foot wall blew down one time, and then it blew down two times. And then it blew down three times. And it blew across the road. And we ended up scrapping it losing 150 grand just on the materials and labor and be like, alright, we'll just get our insurance money called the insurance agent. Yeah, you insured the first two buildings. But you did the third one after the fact we didn't You didn't tell us so this not insured. There's no act of God insurable of this building. All right, there's 150 grand down the drain. And then at that point, this was, you know, probably 2022, we bought 180 $5 million worth of real estate in 13 months, and we scaled our flipping company to 312 flips in one year flips in wholesales. So we completely let this go. We didn't manage it. Well, we didn't hire the right people for it. And you know, it's sitting at 75% occupancy, not produce enough income barely to cover the construction note. And you know, interest only payment, we're not adding any value for us to get our private lenders money back. So we go into all those details. But the biggest lessons learned were, we grew too quickly. And our other businesses, we lost sight of this one, we didn't manage it well, that we tried to be good at too many things, it's hard enough to be good at one thing, we're thinking we're experts at three or four, and we're just stupid, and just overconfident. And the market shifted a little bit at the end of 2010. Two as well. So learned a lot of lessons. But in general, the biggest one I learned is, I don't want to or can't be good at everything. And I need to understand that and realize that and stick in my zone.

Andrew Stotz 28:58
Those that's quite a list of lessons, and I'll maybe I'll share one of my observations and that is like, creating a cash flow that is low risk, and does a good job at producing what you want is like, so hard. And it's like gardening, you know, it's like you got to, you know, fix the soil, you got to be in the right place, the sun's gonna shine in the right way, you got to put the right plant there. You gotta you don't want it for, you know, three days and it's all over debt, you know, whatever, or, and so, sometimes when I look at business, like this type of storage, as an example is like, you really want to cuddle that cash flow, you know, you want to, you know, you really want to take care of that because also remember that cash flow is beyond, you know, it means getting recouping what you've spent to get into this thing, too. So the idea of minimal investment. Maximum cash flow is really where we're at. We want to be at something that they can do that. And then also the idea to that you talked about, you talked about expanding. And that I think all expansion has to be thought through very carefully, number one. But what you talked about is expanding beyond what the existing cashflow was coming from, into a different structure a different way that unfortunately wasn't proven. Whereas the existing way had a certain amount of proof there. So one of the lessons from my side is, don't confuse a new project with a new offer to the market. The app doesn't confuse that the evidence you have of the existing success has any relationship to the new idea, even if it's right next door. And it seems like it's the same type of thing. That's not proof. And I guess that would be my main takeaway, would you add anything to that? Yeah,

Sam Primm 30:58
I would agree. And I would add a little more to make me look even more dumb. We didn't even really have proof of concept in storage. Personally, we had proof of concept in flipping and wholesaling, and buying rentals and buying apartments, we were just, we were just, I mean, we were flying 25 million real estate, it's a lot of real estate in that 13 month period, this was right in the middle of that. So we were doing well, and that other stuff. And we just kind of assumed that would translate over to this. So this makes it even worse. So we didn't have proof of concept, we bought this property. And while we work on this property, before we even stabilized and prove that it worked on its own, we decided to do the expansion and buy another self storage facility about 10 miles away from it. So we hadn't even proven at once. First off, we didn't we weren't even intentionally going after it. It fell in our lap. So we didn't have any intentionality there. And before it was proven, the fact that everything else was going so well in the market was I mean, wind at our back after 2020. Are you kidding me? That was insane. We, you know, just assumed that it would translate into that asset class and then also doubled or tripled down on that asset class before he proved at one time. So yeah, a lot, a lot. A lot of lessons learned.

Andrew Stotz 32:01
The wind literally was at the back of your building. Yeah,

Sam Primm 32:07
exactly. The back of it. You're right.

Andrew Stotz 32:08
It's another lesson my mom said to me, you know, it said to us when we were kids, which is just because it's cheap, doesn't mean you have to buy it. And sometimes we have to be careful when people when we put out a price for something, it's refused, and then somebody comes back at a lower price immediately want to bite on that. But that may or may not be the right thing to do. So let me ask you based on what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn. Let's now imagine someone facing a sack, same type of deal in your community, you know, somebody out there listening in my community, what's one action that you'd recommend that they take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Sam Primm 32:49
I mean, I would say exactly what you said, don't just buy something, because it's cheap, I would have avoided this deal. We've been trying to sell it. But we're not producing enough income to sell it at enough of a profit to get our money back. Plus the private lenders money in the deal. Now we're still paying them their monthly fees, but we have to create enough equity to give them their equity back. I'm sure you understand that in too much detail for the audience. But you know, yeah, I would not have done the deal. I would have focused on what I know we're good at there's so much room to expand in single family and multifamily. What are we doing? Like, I own almost 50 million in real estate and I fly on a plane, and I were in the air and I'm like my wife, or one of my employees, or I'm with him, like he see our 50 million in real estate that's like those four blocks. It's nothing, you know what I mean? Like in the grand scheme of thing. So like, I just think, yeah, it's literally nothing. So what are we doing there? So I would say focus on what you know what you're good at. And if it's something like real estate, there's on literally unlimited potential. So that's the that's what I would tell someone is, don't even get into this like we we hired a company, we're spending a little bit of money to get it managed properly get up to 90% occupancy, with six months from now, I think we should read the numbers, knowing what we know, now we should be able to you know, get our money back and pay everybody back and be fine. Because you know, there's no like hammer to get everybody's money back. So we'll be okay. But it'll come at some cost of a lot of other things and constraints in our time focus here to fix this while we're not focusing somewhere else. So focus on what you what you're good at and what's proven

Andrew Stotz 34:14
scale. Yeah, scale, what, what you're good at, and what's proven because the scale is so enormous. And what's a resource, either of yours or any other resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Sam Primm 34:28
Yeah, I mean, I would just recommend everybody to just take advantage of everything that's out there. I mean, there's a ton of resources like, obviously I have I have, you know, my podcast Professor freedom show where Luke's and I, my business partner and I go live for three hours a week, an hour and a half, Wednesday, our half Friday, take advantage of all the free stuff justice doesn't have to be mine. But when I got started in 2014, there's bigger pockets podcast that was it that at least that I knew about. Now, there's so much information out there, take advantage of it and just I feel like when people have a base level of knowledge, they create a base level of confidence that allows them to take Action, they understand certain things, they're going to go to a meet up, they're going to ask questions, and they're going to be able to absorb the information. So use technology, use what's out there, just get a base level of knowledge, and then go out and take action. Because the best of the best might be like my communities, there's second to none, maybe there's other that are as good. You're only gonna learn 20% by watch, and you have to go do it, but you have to get the confidence to go do it. So take advantage of all the resources out there, this, I love this podcast, this is great stuff like this, and just, you know, you know, get that get that confidence built up to go take action, because obviously, no one's probably gonna take action if they don't have some confidence. And

Andrew Stotz 35:34
ladies and gentlemen, I'll have links to everything that Sam is doing in the show notes, so you can definitely go follow him. Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months.

Sam Primm 35:46
My number one goal for the next 12 months is to scale my education business, to where I have the potential that I think they can have. I'm going to create some reoccurring revenue things not just one time only things and, and really grow this business because this business has the highest scalability, the highest ceiling out of all the businesses, it's not even close. So my goal is to get this scaled, so then I can start to focus on other things. So that's my goal. Exciting

Andrew Stotz 36:12
Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, Sam, I want to thank you again for joining the mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Sam Primm 36:36
Not a ton. I think you're great at articulating. And the one thing I would say is, you're not going to be successful without failing. I don't know one person that has created success without failing multiple times. Failure is literally a stepping stone on the path of success. If you're not failing, you're not on the path of success. So figure out how to fail. Just don't do the same mistake again. Learn from it. So if you avoid failure, you avoid success.

Andrew Stotz 37:02
Wonderful advice. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your words podcast host Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside.