Jason Hartman hosts Ross Wordon to discuss his property plan. Ross discusses how he started at an Etsy store in today’s client case study. Ross Worden started a fast-growing business from an Etsy store. His early interest in real estate sent him on an investment quest. He discusses how he became educated by listening to over 500 episodes and after purchasing his first investment property, created a 10-year plan to get to 93 properties. Jason and Ross look at his current portfolio and his plans for growth.
Announcer 0:02
Welcome to the creating wealth show with Jason Hartman. You’re about to learn a new slant on investing some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world’s most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine self made multimillionaire who’s actually been there and done it. He’s a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who’s owned properties in 11 states had hundreds of tenants and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to your financial independence day. You really can do it. And now here’s your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.
Jason Hartman 0:54
Welcome to Episode 1531. You know, I’ve been talking to you about how we’ve been working on developing some handy dandy calculators for you. Of course, we have a software company, property tracker, and real estate tools, you know, great, great software apps, iPhone and iPad apps Mac app available to you as well. But just some little calculators to do some quick stuff. Well, the one we’re going to talk about today is not a little one, actually, it’s a it’s a spreadsheet really more than a calculator. But it is super handy and powerful. And we are going to endeavor to make this one public. But this time, I can only say that your investment counselor will have this calculator available. What we did is we we took the calculator that our client, Ross Warden was nice enough to share with us and we elaborated that’s not the right word, Jason. We didn’t elaborate on it. We expanded on it. We improved it. We took his great idea. And we embellished it. I don’t know, what’s the right word? I don’t know. But anyway, we made version 2.0. Okay, so as our client our Ross is describing today, in his case study of how he plans to get to 93 properties. And that’s a pretty awesome goal for a young guy like this. I’m just so, so proud of him and what he’s done so far, and what he’s going to do, when he says, something’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen because this guy is a Dewar. And that’s great. He joined us for our venture Alliance trip in Hawaii about a year and a half ago, and shared that this spreadsheet with us, we presented it at meet the masters. Since then, even we’ve made a few more modifications and improved it more, and your investment counselor will have this available to you. If you don’t have an investment counselor with our company. Reach out at Jason Hartman calm COMM or by calling one 800 Hartman, again, that 800 number only works in the US I understand we have, of course, listeners in 189 countries worldwide. If you are outside of the US, just go through the website, Jason Hartman, calm and inquire anywhere, any form on the website and we will get you an investment counselor who can run this calculator for you. They can do a screen share meeting with you and really show you the visuals and it’s just, it’s really awesome, I must say. But ultimately, the plan is to make this available on our website so that you can go plug in your own numbers and play with it. So that will come it will come. A couple of quick announcements before we get to this great client case study number one for meet the Masters VIP ticket holders. Remember your two bonus implementation sessions. The first one is this Thursday night. It’s Thursday, August 20 at 8pm Eastern 5pm Pacific. And then the second one is the following week, we sent you all an email today with the secret link for that. And then the for those of you who purchased the meet the Masters recordings, those will be done very soon. We’re just putting the final touches on them now. And we’re going to have a really nice portal for you to go in and access those and also an audio download. So you have the videos and the audios we really wanted to do this nicely have it indexed for you, you know, lots of others would have simply shared the link and not edited it cleaned it up. Chapter rised it if that’s is that a word chapter rising? I don’t know. Where’s that word? Jason chapter rise. I think chapter rising as a word. Yeah. Chapter rise, we’ve chapter it. Boy, that applause just goes on too long, doesn’t it? So and then we’ve got our live stream coming up on Sunday. on our YouTube channel and facebook, as well. So our live stream is there on Facebook at the Jason Hartman comm Facebook page. And on YouTube, just type Jason Hartman and you’ll find our channel and you can join us for the live stream every Sunday. That’s coffee talk. That’s not ta okay. It’s tea. Okay, caught coffee talk. So join us for that every Sunday. We had a great one last week. And by the way, you can watch the replay on the YouTube channel, so or on Facebook as well. So that’s available to you. Okay. Without further ado, let’s get into this session with the client case study with Ross talking about the calculator, and I think you’ll enjoy this. So here we go. It’s my pleasure to welcome Ross Warden to the show. He is one of our clients and he is doing a great job. And I just love to see young investors with big plans and this is no good. exception. If you’re watching on video, we will be sharing a little spreadsheet for you. So you can see his great plan to take over the world as a real estate investor. And we’ll go into that, but if not, I will share it with you here on audio. And I think it’ll be very insightful and enjoyable for you. Ross, welcome. How are you? I am excellent. How are you? Jason? Good, good. It’s good to have you on the show. And thanks for coming on. You know, the listeners always tell me they love to hear client case studies. And anybody listening. If you are one of our clients, and you want to share your case study story, please reach out to us through Jason hartman.com or at one 800 Hartman because our listeners would love to hear from you and not only give you 15 minutes of fame, but probably 2025 minutes. As it works, you know the old saying 15 minutes of fame, right? Good stuff. Well, I Ross start off, give us a little background. Where are you located?
Ross Worden 6:55
I am in Columbus, Ohio.
Jason Hartman 6:57
Excellent. And you joined us for our prophets in paradise event in Hawaii, just about a year and a half ago, I guess that was right.
Ross Worden 7:05
Yeah, beautiful. I was there for the conference and for the kind of mastermind retreat after that. So it was it was a fun time
Jason Hartman 7:11
that that’s what I was gonna say you were there for the venture Alliance retreats. So thanks for joining us for that. And that was a lot of fun. And I tell you, I miss travel. It’s who knows when we will be really traveling again, in any real way. I was looking at the TSA statistics this morning. And it it’s shocking, travel is coming back. And that’s encouraging. But it’s literally only 17% of what it was this time last year. And and that’s with a comeback. So travel is increasing for sure. But way, way way down, but you know, let’s talk a little bit about your business and background because I think it kind of relates to travel and, and that’s why I wanted to talk about it. So before we get to business, a little background. Did you grow up in Columbus, Ohio?
Ross Worden 7:59
No Actually, I’m from Findlay, Ohio, the northwest part of Ohio. I came down to Columbus in 2005 went to school at Ohio State University and graduated in oh nine with a degree in Industrial Design. Okay. And then did you do a Masters in Germany? Because you said you studied in Germany as well? No. So Germany is well known for their product design acumen, I guess. And I studied there for three months 2008 I believe it was and that was just a short stint was in my undergrad. Got it. Got it. Good stuff. Okay. So you did industrial design and then for your did you start your business right away out of school or no, it took me a while to figure out what I was doing with my life. And who really does figure it out. Right, right. No, I I worked in an industrial design or product design consultancy here in Columbus for about six years, but about two or so years into that I discovered that I had kind of an entrepreneurial gene, I suppose. And started pursuing just kind of a side gig to start paying down student loans and that sort of thing and hopefully, you know, get out of debt and kind snowballed. I turned out that I really, really enjoyed entrepreneurship and had just a passion for growth and personal growth and business growth and wealth growth and just kind of everything associated with that lifestyle. And so I really went deep into that I ended up quitting my full time job to pursue my own business full time in 2016. And that’s, that’s where I am now. That’s the path.
Jason Hartman 9:21
Okay, great. So tell us about your business. You know, I’ve been to 87 countries and, and you’ve traveled a lot and your business relates to travel. So now we’ll circle back to that. And then let’s talk about real estate investing.
Ross Worden 9:33
Yeah, very much so. So I think your observations about everyone wanting to travel but they can’t travel right now is very relevant to my business. So my business is called conquest maps. We make high quality pinnable travel maps that you put up on your wall, put pushpins on to keep track of where you’ve been where you want to go. Very simple concept. There just wasn’t what I was looking for when I wanted one for my wife and I so just given my skill set, I decided to figure out how to make it myself had a lot of criteria. For my business intentions, I guess and so I made a handful more, put them up on Etsy. And they sold and I guess long story short, I kind of reinvested all of my profits for the next four or so years. So now we just help travelers who want to see more of the world. We help inspire their, their adventures, and, and that sort of thing. And all through travel maps and travel related home decor. So it’s been a really fun thing. But particularly right now, nobody can get out. And so they’re thinking more and more about all the places that they want to go. So of all of all businesses, I think we’re in a fortunate spot, because while revenue took a serious hit, when the stock market was taken a big hit there, things have come back a lot and people are really they got the wanderlust right there. They’re really hoping to get out and they’re thinking about where they want to go. They want to put those pins in the map. And it’s been an interesting time. We’re struggling to keep up right now, in all honesty, so the best problem to have,
Jason Hartman 10:53
right, yeah, yeah, I was just gonna say that. I think people really do have serious wanderlust right now. More than Normal I mean, your generation millennial generation and you’re 33 years old, has very much wanderlust much more into experiences over things. But that travel has just been halted. So I would imagine a lot of people are dreaming of places to go when when, when times changed a little bit for sure. But with your background, in your degree in Industrial Design, and in here’s a stereotype, but it’s a positive one, you know, your age, it’s a surprisingly like low tech item. What do you think about that? speak to that if you would, it’s not a piece of software. It’s not a website. It’s a map that you hang on the wall and stick tacks and do right.
Ross Worden 11:42
Yeah, exactly. It’s a simple thing. But you know, regardless of all the tech things happening at the end of the day, people are always going to live in a home much like you preach right. And when you have a home when you have your, your own space, you want to put things up in it that represent you your lifestyle, your your desires. In life, and I think this is always going to be relevant, it doesn’t really matter if there’s a better or different or whatever, whatever solution out there, you can track your travels in 100 different ways. But at the end of the day, it’s just really, really awesome to see that map hanging up there to be thinking about it all the time. It’s when people walk into your house, you automatically have a way to discuss something interesting. Hey, I’ve been there, or Hey, I wanted to go there today. It’s just super interesting and super easy. And it just, maps are just cool.
Jason Hartman 12:28
Yeah, good. Like maps? I think so too. I think so too. What other kinds of products do you make? Besides the travel maps? You travel it related decor you said?
Ross Worden 12:37
Yeah, sure. So like Canvas prints, that sort of thing. Travel related artwork. We do like wall decals, vinyl decals, by far and away. The most popular things is our pinnable travel maps, though. So that’s that’s the leader. All right. And we’re known for is Etsy your main outlet for sales or is Amazon not at all? Not at all. That’s where I started. It was a very different landscape back there today. 2013 when I launched the store, now our best places our Shopify store our website, so conquest maps calm. Okay, so
Jason Hartman 13:08
that’s good because that means and you know, we’ve had Carmen on the show talking about Amazon being an Amazon seller and so forth and all the massive, terrible, disgusting abusers that Amazon and other big tech companies just abuse people like crazy. So you have your own store and your own distribution channel, which is great.
Ross Worden 13:27
Yeah, good. I would say yeah, I’d say I don’t know. 60 70% of our sales, especially now are coming through our website. We are on Amazon and we are on Etsy but we say own the vast majority of our customer base, which is far better, it’s better for them and it’s better for us. So it’s it’s a good thing.
Jason Hartman 13:44
Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. Okay, let’s switch gears to real estate investing. So when did you become interested in real estate investing?
Ross Worden 13:53
To be honest, I would say sometime in high school. Oh, just like me. I was 16 book. Yeah. Yeah, I think I stumbled across a book called guerilla real estate investing. Hmm. And I read it. And I was just really interested, I never really understood the stock market like really, I mean, I get it. Now I’ve researched and all this stuff, I get it now, but it never quite clicked to me. It didn’t resonate. And so I just real estate just made sense intuitively. So I always kind of had it lurking in the back of my mind. But you know, the time when I started my business, I started this particular business because I started it with $500. I didn’t have any money I needed to get out of debt. And so real estate was a very far off dream. But now that I’ve got, you know, some revenue coming in, and I don’t, and I liquidated my 401k. There was not that much in it. I have nothing in the stock market now except, like probably $1,000 in a Roth or something. Right. And yeah, it’s just like, this was the goal I was working towards. I met you at a conference and I think, I don’t know, maybe three or four years ago. I just wasn’t ready for it. At the time. I was mostly interested in only building the business figuring that out, but it’s like, I locked that in the back of my mind. Like I need to circle back to this And when I found that it was time to actually start thinking about investment and retirement, which is not totally a philosophy I subscribe to anymore, right? I was like, Okay, now it’s time to really listen to Jason’s podcasts really dig into that. And that’s totally what I did. I’ve probably listened to 500 or more of your podcasts. Wow. Yeah.
Jason Hartman 15:15
That’s fantastic. Thanks for listening. So, did we meet at one of our conferences or someone else’s conference?
Ross Worden 15:22
No, is actually so you just had Ryan Moran on your podcast. So I joined the tribe for a while there. Actually Carmen was at that conference. I think I don’t meet her there. But yeah, you heard that and so
Jason Hartman 15:33
good stuff. So so we met at one of Ryan’s conferences, then. Yeah,
Ross Worden 15:37
yeah. It was a great
Jason Hartman 15:38
conference. Richard. Good stuff. Good stuff. So you’ve got five properties now. And you’ve got big plans to get to well on the spreadsheet, 93 properties, which is an ambitious goal, and I think it’s awesome, but you’ve spaced out very nicely over time to where it’s doable, you know, As the old saying goes, goals. should be just out of reach, but not out of sight. They should be a stretch, but still realistic at the same time. And I think that’s what you’ve really done. You’re exactly the philosophy. You’ve got a I mean, listen, you’re in the business of maps. Okay? And here you’ve got a roadmap to get to that hundred property goal. Why don’t we share screens now? And you can show us the spreadsheet and let’s take a look at that. This is really exciting.
Ross Worden 16:28
Yeah, sure. So this is obviously a dramatic oversimplification of what’s happening happening but this is this is basically my plan. So after that conference are the conferences that I went to back in 2018. I got my feet wet there in December, just dove right in got a property 2019 I bought two this year, I bought two and the goal is to buy one more and you can see the pattern here. 12345 basically every year, I’m increasing my quantity goal for target every every time so next year, I plan Do for the following year five, the following year six and so on. Around this time, that’s about year seven, my hope is to start
Jason Hartman 17:07
which is, which by the way, I got to translate this to audio. So this is now the chart starts from 2018. And now we’re at 2025. So this is seven years in. And as listeners may know, when I teach the refi till you die concept, we talked about the seven years based on the rule of 70 twos, the portfolio goes up in value by 50% at a modest 6% appreciation. So you could do a refinance there. You could do 1031 exchanges. There are lots of options here. But what we’re looking at is we see one property purchased in 2018, two in 2019, three in 2020. That’s this year, by the way, if you’re listening to this show, two years hence I just want to understand This is 2020. Now, for next year in 2021. And you know, four properties a year is a modest goal, people can do that they do it all the time through our network, five, in 2022, you’re just increasing it by only one property each of those years. Okay, so now, so seven in 2024, eight in 2025, your seventh year in as a real estate investor. And then what happens because now you’ve added a row to the spreadsheet, and and there’s a one underneath the eight. What does that mean? That means, in theory with that appreciation, or, you know, that’s the point at which I feel like it’s either a 1031 exchange or a cash out refi. So in theory, I should be able to with the money I’d previously invested in that first property in 2018, extract enough out in some capacity to buy an additional one that I’m not putting new capital into the system with. So that’s basically taking by one in 2018 and adding another one to represent that in 2025. Okay, and the same thing will happen in your saying you can buy the extra property, because you’re simply refinancing or doing a 1031 exchange on a on maybe a two for one, you might, you know, by then Ross, you probably be able to do a couple of two for ones. So a lot of your increase in purchase, like if you’re saying you’re going to buy eight properties that you’re which is two per quarter, you know, you might be able to just simply do that out of the portfolio without even putting in extra money. It’d be amazing. It’s very
Ross Worden 19:39
much like your how you explain the goals. I feel like this is kind of the well, I won’t say conservative roadmap, but relative to what it is. It’s a fairly conservative roadmap. And then yeah, if it gets better than all the better, that’ll accelerate the process. But
Jason Hartman 19:53
the nice thing I like about your your roadmap is that you’re growing at a rate of only one property. per year on that top line. And that’s very modest. You know, I see people, investors come in and they got these crazy goals. And, you know, I wish him the best, I hope they achieve it. But you know, they’re just not very realistic. This is a plan. That is, you know, it’s based on smart goals. It’s simple, and it’s attainable, like you, you could actually do this. Now, it’s the properties don’t depreciate very well, then you’re gonna have to rely on some income growth from your business to support your habit, if you will.
Ross Worden 20:37
Yeah. And that’s, that’s very much part of the equation. You know, I’m going to continue building the business or businesses as time goes on. And so while I don’t exactly know totally how this is all going to come to fruition, it’s all mapped out within part of that plan and the business continuing to grow and to support this. So yeah,
Jason Hartman 20:55
in the end, you know, that’s the other thing I want to say about investors with goals or people with any sort have goals. You never know how, at the beginning, you will never have all the answers at the beginning. Nobody ever does in any venture in a relationship, a marriage, a business and investment portfolio. You just don’t know. Nobody knows. We all have to, to some extent, throw caution to the wind, jump in with some degree of blind faith and just work through it. Obstacles will come up that you’ve never imagined. The world will throw stuff at you that you’ve got to overcome. But you know, that’s really good for someone’s intellect, their character, their self discipline. Yeah, that’s, that’s great. Okay, so, on the top line, we’re still growing at only one property per year. Very modest goal, okay. But on the bottom line, it 2025 we add that extra property we talked about Then take us through those last four years there of the of the plan, because you grow at it two properties the following year to what we’ll call extra properties. Do you have a name for that? Or, or maybe self funded properties? Yeah, we’ll find all that portfolio funded. Exactly. Yeah. So so the thought there is, if I can split my properties, after seven years, one property into two properties, my 2018 property, as we just discussed, becomes another property. So I add that in down here, my 2019, both purchases, those become two additional properties. So I still have those two, and then two more because I refined or whatever the case. And so all of those are getting essentially split and added added back in for these last four years. So 2026 there’s an additional two on top of the ones that I’m funding from actual investment, I guess I’ll call it outside investment of my own cash, three in 2027, for instance, To 2028, and five and 2029, on top of my sequential incremental increases, I guess throughout that time period as well. So at the end of 2029, represented over here is 93 properties, the monthly I’ve made the very simple assumption of $200 in cash flow per month on property, all of all of those properties and again, realistically, by the end of all of this, I should be doing a lot better on many of these by then probably with an annual income of this 220 or $223,000. Basically, the total investment required to do this is 2.3 million for all of these, it does not include the portfolio funded properties. Can you hover over the total investment so I can see your formula? Mm hmm. Okay. So that is you’re basically saying $30,000
Ross Worden 23:55
through acquisition, right,
Jason Hartman 23:58
so $30,000 per equity. position, right? Okay. Now in reality, you can get properties for 20 25,025. You can do pretty good downpayment and closing costs 20,000, you’re getting some more marginal properties, and we’re talking about downpayment plus closing costs. That’s the number, and he’s going with 30,000. So that’s nice and conservative. Now, I would say Ross, that you go from 2018 to 2026. I would say you can probably get all the way to the 2026 number, possibly on a self funded portfolio where meaning and this is rough, so forgive me on this. I’m just looking at this for the first time today with you. But if you can make it to buying the to getting to eight properties per year, yourself in other words with your own investment, I bet that one in two Thousand 25. And the two extras we’ll call this self funded in 2026. I bet you can pick up those, almost undoubtedly having the portfolio portfolio funded properties, meaning so no extra money out of your pocket to actually acquire those properties.
Ross Worden 25:18
Yeah, that would be amazing. So what I’ve calculated here, I just deleted those, you can see all of the properties $200 a month cash flow should spit out just shy of $90,000 a year. So that tells me I can at least buy about three properties with my assumptions per year with just the cash flow.
Jason Hartman 25:36
Wow, that’s fantastic. This, you know, you know what you’re really showing our audience Ross is the incredible compounding effect of just staying the course. Compound compound. You know, Einstein said that compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. We’ve all heard that quote. And this is really an example of that compounding effect. Many of us have heard Heard, or seen the little illustration where they show? If you take a penny, I think that’s how it works. You take a penny and double it every day for just 30 days, you have over a million dollars. But the amazing thing about that is that on day, like 28, you don’t have much money at all. You know, and you really get to that amazing leap that exponential growth in just the last couple of days. And that’s that’s sort of what you’re showing us here. So
Ross Worden 26:32
that’s exactly it. I’m gonna pass on quite an inheritance. Yeah, if I can, if I can follow through with everything. Yeah. Well, you got it. Give Kids Yeah, two, two right now and one on the way actually, congratulations.
Jason Hartman 26:43
Yeah, those kids are pretty lucky. Yeah. Thanks. So 93 properties in 10 years. That is just an awesome plan. And I really appreciate you sharing that. Tell us more.
Ross Worden 26:56
Yeah, sure. Here’s a really cool tidbit about what I’m working on here. Right here around the the 2025 2026. Mark, that should be approximately the financial freedom mark. Basically, unless I choose to reinvest it, I could cover in theory, all of our living expenses around 2025 2026 with a reasonable, quite reasonable lifestyle as well.
Jason Hartman 27:21
So in seven years, on a very conservative portfolio growth, you’ve reached Financial Freedom Day. Yeah. And tell us what that number is, though. What’s the revenue? I believe I use the assumption of about $12,000 a month or I’m sorry, not even. So with bass living expenses, that sort of thing. It was like right around 7000 or something is, is our expenses seven 8000, right. And so you can see right here in 2025, our monthly revenue is $7,400. Right? But wait, there’s more. Because what we didn’t say is number one, you didn’t project any increases in cash flow, right? There’s no this is again, there’s no risk. To increase, okay, which is which is great. You’re being super conservative here. And at that point you have 37 properties in seven years. Yeah. Yep. That’s awesome. Really, really good setting.
Ross Worden 28:13
Yeah, very, it’s where so maybe it’s worth mentioning this is basically my only investment philosophy at the moment, but much like you’re well aware of with Patrick Donahoe, for example, I work with his team. I layer in whole life insurance policies. And as you mentioned, it’s good to keep 4% at least as backup cash reserves for these. And that’s where I store all of that. So it’s growing it, maybe 5% or more. Yeah, especially if we see all the inflation here pretty soon, right? And that’s where I keep all that liquidity and so it’s going to be my safety net for all of this as well. That’s a very important thing to keep in the back of one’s mind when they’re investing in this I have to be very safe. Yeah. And so I keep at least 12 months you know, that’s that’s way more than is necessary, but with the business and all of my liabilities on being as you can guess can Conservative with that approach. Sure. Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fantastic. Ross.
Jason Hartman 29:03
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing this. What else would you like people to know? Or say? Or? I don’t know, if I asked you the sort of fundamental question you may have sort of answered it another way. But But why real estate, you said you never really related to the stock market. Any other things you want to say about income property that makes it
Ross Worden 29:22
makes it the choice for you? So to be honest, I’ve dabbled with, you know, the only only possible stock or mutual fund or whatever type of approach would be dividend investing. And I actually did that I put about $30,000 or so into the stock market a couple years ago, just to start seeing what that would be like, and it just, it wasn’t very good. And I think it was, I don’t know, a couple years ago, but the stock market started to taper off a little bit and it lost value. I’m like, this is absolutely terrible. I’ve never been a gambler in my life. I never even like playing $5 poker games with my friends. I’d be the dealer, right? So I just bailed. I totally pulled everything out. And I’m like, nope, this is this is what I’m gonna put into it. properties. And so I think especially getting to know it far better with how you explain things and just sticking with a philosophy. I mean, there’s a lot of investing perspectives out there, even within real estate. But I’ve just stuck with your philosophy. It’s just, it’s too good to argue with, you just really can’t argue with that there’s always an offense with with what is it the five or so facets of the benefits of investing with real estate? You just absolutely can’t beat it as far as I’m concerned. Now, I will be the first to admit that, you know, I’m 33. I’m a young investor. There’s a lot that I haven’t been through, there’s a lot that I don’t know. But all we can do is make the best option with the information that we’re given. And I’m making what I feel is a very, very good decision for the future of not just, you know, my life, but my family’s life and the generations to come within my family. So I feel very confident and very excited. I mean, this just makes sense to me. Obviously, I built this simply in a spreadsheet, but the numbers resonate. I understand what’s going behind. going on behind the numbers, but it’s it’s tangible stuff, right? It’s actually a property with people living in it. And it’s an it’s a thing. You can look at numbers with stocks and everything, but it’s just, they’re totally arbitrary to me. You don’t have any control, right? Either way. It’s always scary to me. I’m typing. I’m a business owner. I’ve got to control things. And this also works for
Jason Hartman 31:19
good. Yes. commandment number three, thou shalt maintain control. And that’s that’s really good. Ross, what, what markets are you invested in?
Ross Worden 31:28
So currently, I’m only in Memphis. And right now is about the time that I’ll be branching out just because of how complicated 2020 has been already. I may just go ahead and buy the next one this year in Memphis, but moving past that I’m looking at, Oh, I can’t remember I’ve been talking with Evan on a couple of markets, but I’ll probably branch out to somewhere else. I’ll just have to get the next LLC set up and there’s just a little more complication that is not really that big of a deal. It’s just things are busy, right.
Jason Hartman 31:55
It’s a crazy time we’re living in but you know what, if the end of the day All those protesters need a place to live. At the end of the day, you know, the commercial properties have been shut down. And the home has become the center of the universe. And you’re in a low density market. I was just talking to someone about, well, it was a actually a tech support person with Apple. And I asked her if she was helping me with my computer. I said, Are you you know, I’m curious. Rebecca, are you are you? Are you at home now? Are you working in the office? And she said, only a few people are in the office. I’m at home. And the people that this was interesting, by the way, you’ll you’ll appreciate this because one of the things I’ve talked about in my pandemic investing presentation is and we’re going to talk about this in our upcoming meet the Masters conference in depth is how elevators and mass transit are the two danger zones, but the and she mentioned the elevators specifically, she said I don’t want to get in an elevator and she was talking about that a little bit. But she also said that the people that couldn’t work at home, the apple employees that didn’t have the option to work at home, or those who had roommates, because they couldn’t provide the security, this, you know, it’s not just a secure connection, but it’s a secure computer. And you know, I signed up a few years ago for like a data service for real estate that, you know, would be helpful to us. And they sent an inspector to my house. And they said, I have to have an office with a locking door locking file cabinet, a paper shredder, not that I ever print any of this stuff anyway, but you know, it’s just kind of an old fashioned thing. And I can imagine like, if I had a roommate, they probably would have turned me down and said, No, you can’t have our service. And my mom did that, you know, for a tenant screening service that does credit checks because she self manages all her properties, and they came to her house. And that was the same thing you know, do you live alone? You can’t have a roommate and subscribe to some of these things. And that that was interesting. So literally you’ve doubled the amount of housing demand in the world if roommates have to split up like double double the market right right there so
Ross Worden 34:19
yeah about the divorce is hot
Jason Hartman 34:21
right? Don’t you don’t even need any divorces just roommate divorces? Yeah. And I think this is just an amazing time for us as real estate investors, investors following this specific plan that we’ve you know, we’ve outlined and you’re you you’ve bought into it and and thousands of other people have, thankfully so. Yeah, I think I think we got good years ahead. And in boring suburban real estate and linear markets, right? Yep.
Ross Worden 34:47
Yep, absolutely. I try to I try to get my my family members convinced. And you know, I’m pretty gung ho on it. Yeah. It’s exciting for me, and I think I understand it reasonably well at this point, too. So I love to kind of explain it and answer questions about it. My family and friends asked so well, yeah, Randy trying to spread the message. I guess after listening to 500 episodes of
Jason Hartman 35:05
my podcast, you’re probably a pro.
Ross Worden 35:08
You know, you know, it’s funny, Jason is I listened to them at one and a half or two acts. It’s actually weird to have this conversation here you at normal
Jason Hartman 35:14
speed. I’ll talk faster. Just for you. I’ll talk faster. That’s funny. That is weird. So are you self managing any of your properties?
Ross Worden 35:24
Not yet? Not yet. I do fully intend to eventually. But yeah, I’m, I’m self managing a business. So I don’t really have the time as well as you know, two to three kids shortly. So right, but financially, it probably will make sense. Evan turned me on to stessa. And I use that for a lot of the financial tracking and stuff that’s been really helpful. So I don’t I don’t see it being too complicated. Yeah, I mean, I do want to transition to that eventually. You know
Jason Hartman 35:48
what, and like I’ve said before, and everybody has to get their own comfort level with self management versus having a manager but I literally think it takes less time self managed. Now that may not always be true, because you never know what What’s gonna come up, but, you know, the tenant just doesn’t bug you that much, you know, because they’ve got to maintain that sort of relationship with you. And the tenants are so appreciative, like, I just, I just replaced an air conditioner in one of my properties, which, that wasn’t cheap, but you know, but it’s amazing. The tenant helped me, like, they went and found several contractors, they had them, come over to the house, give bids. And then I said, Who do you think we should go with that, you know, the prices are a little different, but they’re not that much different. Just tell me who you felt comfortable with. And they said, Oh, I don’t remember the name of the vendor. So I’ll just call it ABC air conditioning. They were much more professional. And they showed up on time and you know, they were neat and clean and they just seemed like they were running more professional operation and coincidentally, they were the cheaper one. So we went with them. And I also, you know, I asked the air conditioning contractor, you know, are you going to include a thermostat A new thermostat with the air conditioning replacement. And they said, Yes, we’ll include that. And I said, you know, I’d really like to upgrade the thermostat and get a Wi Fi connected thermostat for my tenant. And I thought this is going to the tenants will love this, right? It was like a nice surprise gift for them. But what it also does Ross is it lessens the wear and tear on my air conditioning unit. Because when they’re away, they don’t have to run it, they can control it from their smartphone. And so it won’t run all the time. It won’t run as much. And it won’t, you know, because they can set it to start running at a higher temperature. When they’re ready to come home. It doesn’t run in big heavy spurts, which put a lot of wear and tear on the unit. So I think that’s good for everyone. And I literally ordered the thermostat on Amazon. I shipped it to the tenant, I have all my tenants addresses in my Amazon account. I shipped it right to them. They said Oh, we got it and we’re gonna have a guy install it and then I got $100 off from the vendor, because I didn’t use their thermostat. And so literally, it was a $35 additional expense. The tenants love it. It’s got a real cool screen on it shows the humidity, the temperature, and you know, it’s all smartphone Wi Fi controlled. So
Ross Worden 38:17
solid investment. Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So good stuff. Hey, thank you so much for sharing your plan with everybody really appreciate it. And anything else you’d like to say? Just to wrap it up? No, not other than I appreciate how genuine and transparent you are. I’ve learned a lot from you and your show. And you know, it’s really good to actually go and meet you in person. There’s there’s a lot of as you literally say yourself a lot of shady real estate people here tonight. So, you know, I really believe that you’re in it to actually help people and I feel like you’re a very trustworthy person. And I just appreciate all that you’ve done to help people and help me and on this journey. So I’m excited for the future. Good stuff. Well,
Jason Hartman 38:55
thank you so much. I’m honored to be your guide and you know, Our team will be here to help you through life and death through 93 properties. So all right, Ross, thanks so much and happy investing.
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