Ep#26 How a newbie successfully become an operator after buying a 42 units Apartment with Kyle Mitchell

James: Hi listeners, welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast. This is James Kandasamy and Achieve Wealth Podcast focuses on Commercial Real Estate Operators who are killing it in all kind of commercial real estate asset classes. Today, I have Kyle Mitchell. Kyle is from California who has bought his first deal of 42 units in the market of Tucson, Arizona and he's going to be sharing his experience on coming to that first deal. Kyle is also a co-host of his weekly real estate podcast, which is Passive Income True Multifamily Real Estate.

Hey, Kyle, welcome to the show.

Kyle: Hey James, how you doing? I'm happy to be on and thanks for inviting me.

James: Oh, it's an honor to see someone, you know starting to buy in this market, in this red hot market right now where it's so competitive; even though it's still the best time to buy just because of the climate of buying the deals. The interest rate is really good and there's a lot of capital looking for a place to park their money and make money as well but the biggest problem is finding the right deal. So tell me about your journey. I mean, when did you start looking for deals? I mean, when did you start even thinking about investing in real estate?

Kyle: Yeah. So I've been investing in real estate since 2013 and how I got started was even in high school, I invested a little bit of money in the stock market. I had a couple of thousand dollars invested in the stock market and I lost it in six months and it was nothing that I could do about it. And I just learned quickly that I wanted more control over my investments and I just started looking online and listening to some podcasts, reading some books. Like most people, Rich Dad Poor Dad was one of the books that changed my life and I just knew I want to get into real estate. So I bought my first single-family home in Long Beach, California, southern California and started building up a small portfolio of single-family homes across the United States. And from there, I learned quickly that I couldn't scale as fast as I wanted to single-family homes, and I wanted real estate to be my vehicle to provide myself and my family with financial freedom. And so I started looking at some other asset classes and that's when I found multifamily.

James: I got it. Got it. Got it. You just reminded me of something very interesting in my life when I went into real estate. I mean, the first time I read Robert Kiyosaki's book, maybe like 10 15 years ago when I was busy working and I never understood the book. I'm not sure, I know it changed a lot of people's lives when they read it. I mean, I recently read it again and now, it all makes sense. In the beginning, it didn't make sense. I say, what is this guy talking about? Because we are so busy on a W-2 job and especially me, I can never understand what is it he's trying to talk about? So what was the aha moment when you read that book, I mean, what is that?

Kyle: Yeah, to be honest. I did read that book and I reread it several times. The one that really changed my thinking was his Cash Flow Quadrant Book if I'm being honest but he really teaches you how to understand how your time works for you, basically. And so, being a business owner and an entrepreneur, you can have other people working for you while you make money. Otherwise, you're trading your time for money, being an independent contractor or a small business owner or W-2 employee. And so that was the biggest mindset shift to me is really purchasing assets not liabilities that cash flow while you sleep and having other people work on them for you.

James: Got it. Got it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, there may be people who are in W-2 job who have read his book and never get it and I was one of them. Because I think when you're working 9 to 5, W-2 job you're busy and suddenly when you get this knowledge about, hey, you can do business, you can do investment, it's like completely out of your arena right. I read a few pages and I gave up on it because it just doesn't align to me. So for the people who are in W-2 job just be aware, sometimes it may not align with you because you are busy working in your own job, but I think when you mingle with people in real estate or with the business people you get it but if you are just working in your table to job, you may not get it. Just to be aware, you have to change your network to really make a shift in your life.

So tell us about how did you choose to be an operator? Because you bought this 42 units recently and I remember talking to you like one year ago when I meet you in California or maybe six months ago when we met up there in Long Beach and you were like, I want to get into the game. I know multifamily is really good and you started your own meetup and everybody's excited. And you said, okay, I want to get started with the capital raising and we had that discussion about being an operator and what's your background.