September 2026

When new creative employees join Oatly, the onboarding starts with a single instruction: “Unlearn everything you know about marketing.”

According to Oatly creative director Michael Lee, that’s the only way to build a truly distinctive brand voice: You must operate without the guidelines that bind most other companies — including how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and how the brand voice is even defined.

For example, most big companies have a “brand book.” It’s a style guide that defines how the brand looks and speaks, so that every touchpoint is consistent. But Oatly does not have one.

“We’ve always kind of refused to do kind of brand books,” Lee says. “Whenever we work with a partner, they’re always asking us about our brand book. And we don’t have one because as soon as you do one, you feel like you have to stick to it, and we’d rather have the freedom to just do something completely different if we felt like it.”

For a company that’s grown into a global provocateur beloved for its packaging and relentlessly human tone, that freedom matters enormously. Here’s what Lee’s approach reveals about what it actually takes to build a brand with real perspective — and why it gets harder, not easier, the bigger you get.

The Oatly origins

Oatly launched in Sweden in 1994, originally positioned as oat-based alternative to dairy. Its branding was quiet and boring.

Things began to change in 2012, when Toni Petersson became its new CEO. John Schoolcraft him joined him as chief creative officer, then eliminated the entire marketing department and rebuilt it with creatives at the center of the business. Their goal: Transform Oatly into a brand with personality and international appeal.

Schoolcraft’s new model was unusual. Oatly’s creative team (which named itself the Department of Mind Control) would operate largely on its own. It would write its own briefs, set its own strategy, and execute its own work.

Schoolcraft departed in 2025, but that structure still remains.

“No one really can veto what we’re doing,” says Lee, who joined as creative director in 2017, the same year Oatly entered the U.S. market. “It’s not like we’re presenting to any marketing director or sales guys.”

This is a genuinely rare setup, but Lee believes it’s a vital one. If you want a distinct brand voice, he says, you can’t just hire creative people and hope for the best. You must remove the layers of approval that instinctively sand down anything provocative, and empower creatives to truly own and operate their work.

But with great creative power comes great creative responsibility.

“When things go well, great. But you also have to take it in the chin when things don’t go well,” Lee says. “Then you must have the wherewithal and courage to continue being at that edge.”

Oatly’s creative director, Michael Lee.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Oatly

A Brand Voice is a Feeling

That unusual corporate structure has produced an unusually voice-driven product. Oatly is full of creatively distinct decisions, and speaks in a funny, often provocative way that helped turn the brand into something beloved and distinct.

Here are a few of those unusual choices:

• On the front of its carton, the name Oatly appears like this: OAT-LY. Why the hyphen? Just because it looked cool.

• The side of its oat milk carton is full of dense, self-referential, constantly changing text. One version began: “Before we wrote this sentence, there was a lot of empty space on the side of this package and we didn’t know what to do with it…”

• Its marketing often follows suit. One billboard said: “Why do giant oat-milk ads have to ruin cool neighborhoods?” Another said: “Maybe a social media celebrity will take a photo of this poster and you will see it on Instagram and like it way more than you do right now.”

• Oatly once described oat milk as “like milk but made for humans.” That prompted a lawsuit from Sweden’s dairy lobby, which Oatly then (ahem) milked for a lot of public press and sympathy.

But despite Oatly’s distinctive voice, Lee says he can’t exactly explain what’s “on brand” for this brand. Nor does he want to.

“There is an Oatly idea, and there is… that is not an Oatly idea,” he says. “How do you know? I don’t know. It’s just you develop a feeling. You develop this sense for what feels Oatly and what doesn’t feel Oatly, and it’s hard to wrap words around it.”

This might sound frustrating for anyone seeking a repeatable process. But Lee’s point is that a real brand voice resists being reduced to a checklist. It must become a fluid, ever-evolving thing.

“A lot of what I’ve spoken about — a company acting human and doing human things — is easy to say, and it sounds kind of normal,” Lee says. “But the reality within corporations and businesses it is extremely difficult. Because as everyone knows, when you go into a company, suddenly it’s company speak. You talk like you wouldn’t talk at home.”

As a result, he says, brand leaders often become police officers: Their jobs are to create guidelines that feel safe and prevent bad ideas. But Lee thinks a creative leader should do the opposite, by building enough shared instinct for everyone to recognize a good idea. That way, they can collectively reject ideas that are safe but don’t feel true to brand.

Courage Gets Harder As You Scale

Startup founders often lament: If only I had the marketing budget of the big guys…

But Lee says startup founders should take advantage of their size. When you’re small, it’s easier to take large risks. “It is much harder to be disruptive and courageous with your brand at the $100 million level than it is at the $10 million level,” he says. “That, I think, is the most difficult challenge — to maintain that edge and continue to be disruptive.”

At scale, every campaign faces more scrutiny, more internal stakeholders, and more pressure to protect what’s already been built. This is when most brands quietly sand off their edges, he says. They trade their original voice for something safer.

So how do you preserve that creative integrity? Lee says it all goes back to fundamentals: How are you structured? And is the company truly built to support creatives? Commitment must come “not from just the creative director, but the entire company, from the top all the way down,” he says.

That’s one more reason he’s grateful for the structure at Oatly.

When there’s no brand book, the creative team must constantly shape and refine the brand itself. When there’s no layers of approval, the creative team feels a deep obligation to get it right. And when a new team member is told to “forget everything you know about marketing,” they can start to define a new way for themselves.

When new creative employees join Oatly, the onboarding starts with a single instruction: “Unlearn everything you know about marketing.”

According to Oatly creative director Michael Lee, that’s the only way to build a truly distinctive brand voice: You must operate without the guidelines that bind most other companies — including how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and how the brand voice is even defined.

For example, most big companies have a “brand book.” It’s a style guide that defines how the brand looks and speaks, so that every touchpoint is consistent. But Oatly does not have one.

We have all been to traditional events — trade shows, in-person meetings, client gatherings. Sure, they play a significant role, but they are no longer the only way to build relationships and move opportunities forward. The world of business events has changed — permanently. The question isn’t whether to use virtual events; it’s how to use them effectively to build trust, create engagement and close business.

Done well, a virtual event can position your company as a trusted advisor, deepen relationships and accelerate the sales cycle. Done poorly, it becomes just another ignored webinar, a “non-event.”

Why virtual events fail

The biggest reason that virtual events fail is that companies try to simply produce them as a replica of an in-person event. That doesn’t work. I know this from firsthand experience.

I worked with a large customer during Covid-19 on a virtual presentation. It was a flop. They had planned an in-person event and just thought they would run it, as is, for a livestream. I tried to explain why that would not work but I could not get through to the key decision-maker. At the start of the event, things seemed to be fine, but it did not take long for attendees to start to drop off, and by the end, there were just a few diehards still there.

This experience illustrates some key learnings.

You cannot command the same attention virtually as you can when you are standing face-to-face with your audience. The content must be altered to be consumed virtually. And do not try to cover the same amount of information in a virtual presentation as you do in person.  Companies often choose presenters that are not “camera- friendly.” They might be passable with a live audience, but they put the virtual audience to sleep.

My CONNECT framework

Over the years, I have helped produce a variety of virtual events for global giants and smaller, innovative companies. The ones that really made an impact were packed with content, highly produced and fun. Yes, fun — not the dry, training type of presentation, but personal and interactive. To make virtual events repeatable and effective, I developed a simple framework called CONNECT. That is because the real goal of any virtual event is to create connection at scale. So, what does the acronym stand for? Here is the brief explanation.

C – Clarify the outcome

Every successful virtual event starts with clarity. Before you think about content or speakers, define the result you want. If you don’t define the outcome, the event becomes unfocused — and your audience will feel that. Clarity drives alignment. When your objective is clear, your message becomes stronger and your audience response improves. What do you want this event to do?

• Generate new leads or qualify prospects
• Move prospects further down the funnel
• Move stalled opportunities forward
• Create buzz for future efforts
• Strengthen existing relationships
• Position your team as the trusted advisor

Each of these outcomes requires a distinctive style of presentation. A focused objective will guide every decision you make—from content to speakers to follow-up.

O – Observe your audience

Your event should not start with what you want to say. It should start with what your audience needs to hear. Today’s customers expect relevance. They want to feel understood. Ask “What would be genuinely useful to them right now?” When you answer that well, your event becomes valuable. Use what you know about your customers to build an experience that makes them feel understood.

N – Narrow the content

One of the things I often say during my trainings is “less is more.” In this case, less content is more impactful. Content that works in a ballroom or the showroom does not work on a screen. That is why you must carefully design the content. Get to the point quickly, build in interaction and do something fun and surprising. I have lots of ideas, but spoiler alert: I won’t share them here.

N – Nominate the right presenters

Not all great presenters translate well to virtual. The best virtual presenters may not be immediately obvious.  You need people who can connect through a screen. Look for presenters, and most importantly — test and prepare them. A strong presenter builds trust. A weak one loses it quickly. One of the most overlooked factors in virtual event success is the presenter. Here’s the surprising truth: Some people who struggle on stage or in person thrive on camera, and some dynamic in-person speakers fall flat virtually.

E – Engage throughout

In a virtual event, engagement is not optional, it’s essential. There are no casual passersby and no room energy to rely on. You must create interaction intentionally. Engagement creates attention. Attention creates trust. Think beyond the slides and presentations. Try to break content into shorter segments and include live interaction. Ask questions early on and maybe use polling features or other technology tools to keep people engaged.

C – Communicate the value

If people don’t attend, nothing else matters. Your promotion must clearly answer: “Why should I spend my time on this?” Don’t sell the event. Sell the value of attending. Some people try to do cheesy giveaways. A discount on a product. A fifteen-minute consultation. A template for a process. A giveaway is fine, but it must have perceived value.

T – Take action after

The event is not the finish line — it’s the starting point for sales conversations. This is where many opportunities are lost. Have a clear follow-up plan because sales happen after the event.

Your event should lead naturally into the next conversation. I have seen clients do a great event and then walk away. Without follow-up even a major event loses momentum and value. Have a clear follow-up plan that includes an immediate thank you, a way to share the resources and a clear next step.

Here is the bottom line. Virtual events are not going away. They can be a great tool for your business, but virtual events don’t succeed because of technology. They succeed because they create connections. And when you consistently CONNECT, you don’t just host events… you create opportunities.

We have all been to traditional events — trade shows, in-person meetings, client gatherings. Sure, they play a significant role, but they are no longer the only way to build relationships and move opportunities forward. The world of business events has changed — permanently. The question isn’t whether to use virtual events; it’s how to use them effectively to build trust, create engagement and close business.

Done well, a virtual event can position your company as a trusted advisor, deepen relationships and accelerate the sales cycle. Done poorly, it becomes just another ignored webinar, a “non-event.”

Why virtual events fail

The biggest reason that virtual events fail is that companies try to simply produce them as a replica of an in-person event. That doesn’t work. I know this from firsthand experience.

Anyone thinking about launching a startup will quickly discover there are a lot of rules. Find a cofounder, raise venture capital and go to Silicon Valley — stat. If you want to succeed, you’d do well to follow the playbook, or else face total, humiliating failure. 

I was aware of those rules back when I was starting my business back in 2006 — and I ignored them. As the acclaimed author Toni Morrison wrote in her 1992 novel, Jazz: “What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?” 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are actually a lot of ways to build a successful startup, and I’ve pursued more than a few of them. Here are three choices I’ve made that have bucked the trends, and why I’d make them all over again.

1. Play the long game

From its earliest days, I wanted to make sure Jotform wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan startup that entered the world with a VC-backed bang before quietly fizzling out. In other words, I always viewed my entrepreneurial journey as a long game. 

For me, this took a few different forms. For one, Jotform entered the world as a free product. That’s right — I didn’t earn a single cent on it for the first two years of its existence. Why? Frankly, I just wanted to see if people would use it, without the obstacle of a price tag standing in the way. 

Shortly after its release, I got my answer — a resounding “yes.” Giving Jotform away for free provided invaluable information about the features users wanted, so by the time I was ready to introduce a paid version, I knew exactly what direction to pursue. 

I also didn’t go to Silicon Valley. In fact, I went the other way. After I quit my full-time job in New York City, I hopped on a plane in the opposite direction of California’s land of tech, back to my parents’ home in Turkey. If I was going to be giving Jotform away for free, I needed to save money. 

Was it glamorous? Hardly. But I was far less interested in creating the appearance of success than I was in actually succeeding. I had faith in my product and my long-term vision, but as a bootstrapped founder, I didn’t want financial stress to cloud my creativity. Now, San Francisco is just one location of Jotform’s seven global offices — and yes, I did eventually move out and buy my own home.

2. Teamwork as a business strategy

For a long time, Jotform was run by an incredibly lean team. But as it began to grow from just a small handful of employees, I noticed our productivity was stagnating. 

Building a healthy company culture has always been one of my chief priorities as a founder, so this sudden drop in morale was deeply troubling. In order to get my growing team back on track, I took a hard look at how we functioned when we were smaller, and discovered that the secret to our success had actually been our size. 

The solution wasn’t to scale back, but to replicate the environment we had when there were only five of us — a team stocked with different roles, each bringing unique strengths, all in the service of a single product.  

Not only did I break our then-15-person company into groups of three teams; I doubled down on building cohesion by designing an office specifically to accommodate the new structure. I hired an architect to build rooms that could hold a maximum of six people, furnishing each pod with its own whiteboard and glass door. Each person’s workspace was visible to the others on their team — they didn’t have much individual privacy, but that wasn’t really the point. My goal was to make them feel like their own unit, working toward a common goal. 

It worked. Creativity and productivity immediately spiked, and from that point forward, I’ve preached the gospel of cross-functional teams to anyone who will listen. Now, we have 130 such teams, and I credit this structure to Jotform’s continued ability to grow and innovate, even after 20 years.

3. Saying ‘no thanks’ to remote work

In the years after the pandemic, working from home became the rule rather than the exception. As grateful as I am to have had the flexibility to allow our teams to WFH in 2020, these days, everyone is back in the office. 

It’s not that we weren’t able to function as a remote-first office; we were. But something was missing, and I noticed it most acutely with new hires. They’d be onboarded from their home offices or kitchen tables, without the warmth of in-person introductions or the ability to ask a nearby colleague about the ins and outs of the intranet. The disconnect was palpable. 

And so, once it was safe to do so, everyone returned to the office. Almost immediately, productivity increased and morale shot up. We resumed our tradition of weekly team lunches and product launch celebrations. Working from home may be an attractive option for some companies, but for us, it’s a no-go. Our company culture is simply too intrinsic to our success. 

I can’t tell anyone else how to run their organization, and I don’t intend to try. That’s the thing about being a founder: You get to make your own rules. If something isn’t working, change it. Build the business you want to be a part of.

Anyone thinking about launching a startup will quickly discover there are a lot of rules. Find a cofounder, raise venture capital and go to Silicon Valley — stat. If you want to succeed, you’d do well to follow the playbook, or else face total, humiliating failure. 

I was aware of those rules back when I was starting my business back in 2006 — and I ignored them. As the acclaimed author Toni Morrison wrote in her 1992 novel, Jazz: “What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it?” 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are actually a lot of ways to build a successful startup, and I’ve pursued more than a few of them. Here are three choices I’ve made that have bucked the trends, and why I’d make them all over again.

You’ll probably recognize this person. Technically exceptional, deeply knowledgeable and trusted with the company’s most important work. Whenever a difficult challenge arises, they’re the person everyone counts on to solve it.

Then they’re promoted into a leadership role and something changes. They begin to create problems for the people around them. They might interrupt, overcorrect or take over. They may overlook others’ contributions or communicate in ways that leave team members feeling diminished. Eventually there’s fallout: Talented employees stop speaking up, avoid them or leave the team altogether.

This leader isn’t the bad guy. Most of them are relying on the same strengths that have served them throughout their careers, because that kind of clear right-or-wrong, black-or-white thinking was essential. Calculations are accurate, or they aren’t. A system works safely, or it doesn’t. After all, no one wants a building that only “kind of” stands up.

But people aren’t buildings. The skills that made this person so successful are not necessarily the ones they need to be an effective leader. The challenge is helping them recognize that this chapter in their career depends on something new — bringing out the best in others.

Understand the hidden cost of ineffective leadership

A technically strong leader may continue producing excellent results, but a person’s individual output is just part of the story. 

What happens to the talent? Pay attention to how strong employees respond to the leader. Do they want to join the team and stay there? Or are they transferring, leaving or finding ways to work around the leader? When people stop raising concerns or contributing ideas, the team may still appear productive, but it is losing something important.

What happens to the team’s capability? Consider whether people are becoming more capable — or less capable — under this leader. If the leader always supplies the answer, corrects the work or steps in when the stakes rise, team members don’t get to develop their own judgment. That leads to a culture of dependence rather than confidence.

Stop treating high performance as an exception to leadership standards

While behavior belongs to the leader, tolerating it belongs to the organization. A company may spend years rewarding expertise, responsiveness and heroic problem-solving. Only when the interpersonal cost becomes impossible to ignore does it expect different behavior. The leader is responsible for changing, but the company also needs to own the pattern it reinforced. 

This matters even more when the organization says it values collaboration, respect or developing people. If an influential high performer is repeatedly exempted from those expectations, employees understand the real message: Results matter more than how those results are achieved. Employees learn what the organization truly values by watching which behaviors it rewards, excuses and addresses.

Require a broader definition of performance

At higher levels, success can’t be measured by personal output alone. Do talented people want to work with this leader? Can the leader influence without controlling? Does the team become stronger because they lead it?

Technical expertise still matters, but readiness for a higher level also depends on whether the leader can strengthen the people around them. It’s up to the organization to help make this happen. 

Build an honest diagnosis in 3 steps

That kind of change requires more than telling them to work on their people skills. It’s showing them where the gap is. There are three key steps to make a hard conversation as clear and productive as possible:

Step 1: Define the true cost of the leadership gap. Look at turnover, engagement, HR time, workarounds, succession risk and dependence on one person. Labels such as “This leader is difficult” or “This leader needs more emotional intelligence” don’t actually identify what needs to change.

Step 2: Provide a reason to change. High-performing experts often see themselves as protecting quality and keeping the work on track. Change becomes more compelling when it connects to something they want, such as greater influence, a larger role or a team that can perform without constant intervention.

Step 3: Show the gap between intention and impact. Give the leader specific feedback they can observe and practice.

• You intended to move the meeting forward; people stopped contributing. 
• You intended to protect quality; the team became dependent on you. 
• You intended to help; others experienced it as taking over.

We all know that change is hard. And it doesn’t happen all at once. Learning a new behavior is much like learning a dance: At first, the leader may not notice a misstep until they have stepped on someone’s toes. With practice, they catch themselves slipping back into familiar habits and adjusting in the moment. Eventually, the new steps feel natural, and the leader can pay attention to how others are responding. That’s when lasting change begins to take hold.

Help leaders become value multipliers

We’ve seen why technical expertise and individual performance aren’t a substitute for leadership. The opportunity lies in organizations expanding the definition of what value is. When leaders develop new skills and take greater responsibility for their impact on others, it becomes visible in the confidence and capability of their teams. Only then can a leader’s expertise become a value multiplier — for themselves, their people and their organization.

You’ll probably recognize this person. Technically exceptional, deeply knowledgeable and trusted with the company’s most important work. Whenever a difficult challenge arises, they’re the person everyone counts on to solve it.

Then they’re promoted into a leadership role and something changes. They begin to create problems for the people around them. They might interrupt, overcorrect or take over. They may overlook others’ contributions or communicate in ways that leave team members feeling diminished. Eventually there’s fallout: Talented employees stop speaking up, avoid them or leave the team altogether.

This leader isn’t the bad guy. Most of them are relying on the same strengths that have served them throughout their careers, because that kind of clear right-or-wrong, black-or-white thinking was essential. Calculations are accurate, or they aren’t. A system works safely, or it doesn’t. After all, no one wants a building that only “kind of” stands up.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 was an enormous moment for small businesses connected to sports and live events, including stadium vendors, sports bars, jersey shops, parking operators and hospitality businesses near arenas. Sales jumped 4.1% in June for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in host cities, compared to just 1.8% for comparable cities that didn’t host matches, driven in large part by a 16.7% spike in spending from non-local visitors. The NFL season brings another huge opportunity for small businesses, provided SMBs apply the operational and technological lessons learned from the World Cup. 

How fans engage with sports has changed dramatically. Today’s fans don’t just watch; they also browse, stream, share and purchase in real time, both in-stadium and from their couch. Direct social media links drive instant impulse buys. Mobile apps handle food and merch orders without the wait in line. Digital drops and inventory alerts create urgency. The commerce surface has expanded, and for small businesses willing to meet fans where they are, so has the opportunity.

A challenge as big as the opportunity

Small businesses in FIFA World Cup 2026 host cities saw a substantial increase in sales, but those sales didn’t come without challenges. Handling surges of online volume and foot traffic was a test of preparedness, especially of one’s connectivity resilience. Nearly 500 terabytes of data moved across all World Cup hosting stadiums throughout the tournament. That’s the equivalent of streaming HD video continuously for more than 30 years.

While network providers, venue operators and local governments started planning years in advance to upgrade infrastructure for the World Cup, small businesses discovered they too had to beef up their own networks and connectivity solutions. The ones that did were ready when it counted.

Turning World Cup wins into NFL season wins

The small businesses that succeeded during the World Cup are heading into the NFL season with a smarter playbook, one that hinges on effective use of technology to capitalize on spikes in foot traffic and online visitors.

Those same tools and strategies can carry them through the NFL season and sustain the momentum the World Cup created.

AI-powered point-of-sale (POS) systems can alleviate the pressure of sales rushes, using pattern recognition and predictive analytics to anticipate spikes in demand, optimize supply chains and keep inventory levels in check so small businesses don’t fall short when it matters most. Smart POS systems also automate administrative tasks and enhance product look-ups, freeing owners and staff to focus on the customer in front of them. 

Beyond the register, contactless and mobile payment options keep the line moving – because with fans on the go and every second of game-day momentum counting, the last thing a small business needs is a bottleneck at checkout.

Meeting customers where they are

The World Cup also proved that the opportunity isn’t limited to whoever walks through the door. With 20 billion video views across platforms, fans were watching — and shopping — from everywhere. A well-built digital storefront or digital platform that loads fast, handles traffic spikes and integrates with social commerce channels lets sports-adjacent SMBs tap into that remote fan base, turning a local business into one with national reach. 

Anwar Dougsiyeh, founder of Lotus Rosery, an events and brand experience company in Atlanta, experienced this firsthand while coordinating a large-scale World Cup watch party and festival that welcomed more than 20,000 guests. Using AI to audit his festival’s digital customer journey, he discovered that visitors were dropping off before completing their RSVPs simply because the button wasn’t prominent enough. One design tweak later, RSVPs increased by 70% — a reminder that a great digital presence isn’t just about getting people to show up; it’s about making it easy for them to say yes when they do. 

More transactions bring more risk

An uptick in foot traffic and transactions is great for business, but it also attracts unwanted attention. The volume of financial activity that comes with large-scale sporting events makes SMBs a target for hackers and scammers, and most small businesses can’t afford dedicated IT or cybersecurity staff to fight back. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) has lowered the barrier to entry for cybersecurity solutions that can automatically flag anomalies and identify fraudulent activity, giving SMBs an always-on line of defense. 

The right tech stack is a non-negotiable

Small businesses have more opportunities than they’ve ever had. They can even compete with larger competitors in ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago. Technology has evened the playing field and lowered the barrier to entry. For small businesses, that also means having the right tech stack is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity.

Mario Jaramillo, founder of The Robot Agency, a creative and experiential agency based in Houston, used the World Cup as an opportunity to show what a small agency could do when backed with the right technology.

When a World Cup contract came his way with a razor-thin turnaround, his team used digital research, rapid prototyping and AI-assisted ideation to go from concept to visual prototype in just a few days – work that would have taken weeks through a traditional creative workflow. This allowed Mario’s agency to present something the clients could see, react to, and ultimately experience, rather than asking them to imagine it. It’s a mindset shift as much as a technological one, and it starts with having the right stack in place to move fast when the moment demands it. 

Think of it like a sports franchise: the best roster in the league underperforms without a strong coaching staff, a solid game plan and the infrastructure to execute. For small businesses, connectivity is that infrastructure. It’s what allows every other tool — AI, mobile payments, digital storefronts, cybersecurity — to perform when the pressure is on. Build that foundation right, and the rest of the playbook follows.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 was an enormous moment for small businesses connected to sports and live events, including stadium vendors, sports bars, jersey shops, parking operators and hospitality businesses near arenas. Sales jumped 4.1% in June for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in host cities, compared to just 1.8% for comparable cities that didn’t host matches, driven in large part by a 16.7% spike in spending from non-local visitors. The NFL season brings another huge opportunity for small businesses, provided SMBs apply the operational and technological lessons learned from the World Cup. 

How fans engage with sports has changed dramatically. Today’s fans don’t just watch; they also browse, stream, share and purchase in real time, both in-stadium and from their couch. Direct social media links drive instant impulse buys. Mobile apps handle food and merch orders without the wait in line. Digital drops and inventory alerts create urgency. The commerce surface has expanded, and for small businesses willing to meet fans where they are, so has the opportunity.

A challenge as big as the opportunity

Small businesses in FIFA World Cup 2026 host cities saw a substantial increase in sales, but those sales didn’t come without challenges. Handling surges of online volume and foot traffic was a test of preparedness, especially of one’s connectivity resilience. Nearly 500 terabytes of data moved across all World Cup hosting stadiums throughout the tournament. That’s the equivalent of streaming HD video continuously for more than 30 years.

Your online presence gets your potential customers curious about your business. But the moment they walk through your door, the real story begins. Every glance, every greeting, every scuff on the floor tells your customer something about you before you say a word.

That is why the in-person visit is the second half of my client assessment at Fix Your Search. Once I know what the internet says about you, I go and feel the experience for myself, exactly the way a first-time customer would. Let me walk you through what to look for, room by room, moment by moment.

1. Start with the first 30 seconds

Before anything else, examine your own welcome. Stand outside the door of your business, walk in cold and count the seconds until someone notices you. This tiny window sets the entire tone.

When I do this for a client, I start a quiet clock the instant I cross the threshold and then I bring you back the stats. I have stood at store counters before for two full minutes while the staff chatted among themselves, making me feel invisible and a little annoyed. I have also been greeted by a warm hello called out from across the room before I even reached the counter. Both stay with me. One feels like being seen. The other feels like being tolerated. Decide which one your customers are getting.

2. Read the room the way a guest would

Next, take in the whole space and ask what it is quietly saying. Is it clean? Is it organized? Does it feel considered, or does it feel like nobody has really looked at it in a while?

When I step into a client’s business, I hunt for the small things owners stop seeing. A smudged glass door. A flickering bulb. A sign held up with peeling tape. A holiday promotion still hanging in the spring. On their own, these are tiny. Together, they showcase neglect, and customers feel that unease. Walk your space slowly as if you have never been there. Fix the three things that make you cringe first.

3. Put your signage to work

Now study your signage and promotional materials carefully. Is your specials board visible right where customers can see it to make decisions? Are your prices easy to read? Is everything current and clearly laid out?

I once worked with a café owner frustrated by a low average sale. When I visited, I spotted it in seconds. His specials board sat behind the ordering counter, only visible after customers had already ordered. We moved it to where people actually paused and decided. His upsell rate climbed within two weeks, and it cost him nothing but a little repositioning.

4. Sweat the small, sensory details

Here is where good becomes unforgettable. Tune into the little things that shape how a visit feels. Is the music at a comfortable volume, or is it so loud that talking is a chore? Is the WiFi password easy to find? Are your menus and brochures clean and current? Do your people look pulled together? When I assess these details for a client, I am reading the atmosphere like a mood. 

5. Make the journey to your door effortless

Before the greeting even happens, the arrival has already begun. So test the path a customer takes walking into your business. Follow your own directions. Check that your map pin lands on your actual entrance. See whether parking, entry points and accessibility are clear online and in real life.

When I assess a client, I do this before I even arrive. I have followed a listed address only to have the map drop me half a block from the real door. I have circled blocks looking for parking with zero guidance anywhere. A customer who arrives flustered is already starting the visit at a disadvantage, and none of that is their fault if you are not making it as easy as possible for them.

6. Watch your people in their element

Your team is your experience in motion. So observe how they move. Do they seem engaged and confident? Do they know your products well enough to answer questions naturally? Do they actually seem glad to be there?

When I watch a client’s staff, I am reading the culture on display. A flat, disengaged team communicates something even when nothing technically goes wrong. An enthusiastic, knowledgeable one makes customers feel certain they chose the right place to spend their hard earned dollars. This is where I get honest with clients, even when it stings. Culture shows up on the floor, and if your team is not reflecting your values, that is a leadership conversation worth having with warmth.

7. Finish with an honest debrief

Last, gather everything and tell the truth. After every in-person visit, I sit down with my client and share what I noticed, what I felt, and what a first-time customer would likely carry away.

Most owners find this eye-opening, not because their business is failing, but because they simply stopped seeing it clearly. Familiarity creates blind spots, and those blind spots are exactly where customers form their most lasting impressions. The good news I share almost every time is that the fixes are practical and low-cost. Reposition the sign. Refresh the materials. Brief the team on greetings. Correct the map pin. Deliberate, not expensive.

Your experience is the message

The best businesses I have ever walked into are rarely the flashiest. They are the ones where someone cared enough to think about the whole journey, from the parking lot to the goodbye, and kept caring, honestly and often.

Your online presence gets your potential customers curious about your business. But the moment they walk through your door, the real story begins. Every glance, every greeting, every scuff on the floor tells your customer something about you before you say a word.

That is why the in-person visit is the second half of my client assessment at Fix Your Search. Once I know what the internet says about you, I go and feel the experience for myself, exactly the way a first-time customer would. Let me walk you through what to look for, room by room, moment by moment.

1. Start with the first 30 seconds

Before anything else, examine your own welcome. Stand outside the door of your business, walk in cold and count the seconds until someone notices you. This tiny window sets the entire tone.

I built my first website in 1999. I was just an art school kid teaching myself HTML in a bedroom. My competitive advantage was very simple: my sites looked better than the ones the programmers were making.

Back when most business websites looked like spreadsheets with hyperlinks, one that appeared professionally designed communicated authority. Traffic and revenue followed.

Between 1999 and 2005, I bought more than 200 domains and launched over 60 websites. Some became real businesses, and a few made some real money. Clearing the “does this look serious” bar was truly difficult, but I did it.

That advantage expired a while ago, but most business owners still haven’t realized what replaced it.

I’m now the CEO of Builderall, a marketing platform that’s hosted hundreds of thousands of small business websites. I get to watch patterns play out at scale, in real-time, across every industry and country. A huge number of operators are still running on a concept of the internet that stopped being true years ago.

They think, “If I get a website up, customers will find me.”

That was accurate in 1999, and it was still reasonable in 2015. However, it’s not applicable today, and pretending otherwise costs people their businesses.

Here’s what the actual internet looks like right now. According to Netcraft’s March 2026 Web Server Survey, there are about 1.43 billion websites online. Around 208 million of them show signs of active maintenance. The other 85% are parked domains, expired sites, redirect-only pages and abandoned projects. The internet is a graveyard of websites that nobody visits. AI is building lots more even as you read these words.

I’ve watched the barriers to putting a website online collapse through three distinct eras. Every time a visible limitation gets easier to overcome, the genuinely competitive advantage shifts.

First era: Hand-coded, 1999–2010

The first restriction was access. If you could get a site online at all, you were ahead of most of your competition. Once you cleared that barrier, the next question was quality. That was scarce because HTML was hard, and design sensibility was rare.

My art school background gave me an edge over programmers. Their websites worked, but mine looked like magazines. Guess whose phone rang?

The lesson was that professional design was difficult to produce, so it functioned as a meaningful signal. Pretty design was evidence that an actual operator had invested time and thought in the business behind the site. It wasn’t the reason the sites worked. It was the proxy for something harder. Once almost everyone could clear the visual bar, that signal lost most of its value.

Second era: No-code website builders, 2010–2022

Then no-code platforms and increasingly sophisticated content-management systems arrived. Wix, Squarespace, Builderall and better WordPress themes let anyone produce a site that looked professional without touching code or hiring a designer.

By 2015, WordPress was powering roughly 24% of the web. By 2025, it powered more than 40%. The floor moved up, and design became table stakes.

What separated businesses that grew from ones that stalled was whether the messaging was sharp and the audience was clearly defined. The offer answered a question the customer was asking. Positioning became the new scarce resource.

I watched this happen from the platform side. Two customers could launch the same template in the same industry on the same day. One would build a business, and the other would sit at zero. The difference was that the successful operator understood who they were selling to and what that person needed. They knew why their offer was different enough to deserve attention.

Now: The age of AI-generated everything

Today, I can open an AI tool and describe a business in one paragraph. It will generate a credible website in under 60 seconds, with no learning curve and no designer or copywriter needed. The site will look good.

15 years ago, this output would have been indistinguishable from a $10,000 agency project. And the speed keeps compressing. According to Wix’s first State of Websites report, the average time to publish a website on its platform fell from 8 days in 2025 to just 4 days in 2026, which is a 50% drop in a single year.

AI automated the entire visible surface of running an online business. Anyone can now generate a website, a logo, landing pages, a hundred blog posts, a social media presence and an email sequence in an afternoon. The barrier to appearing to have a functioning business is approaching zero.

Here’s the shift that most people are missing. AI is generating more content and websites than ever, but it’s not sending customers to them. Wix’s own data shows that large language models like ChatGPT currently drive less than 1% of website traffic. Search still drives 42%. Direct still drives 40%. The gap between AI-generated supply and demand is enormous, and it’s still widening. Which means the barrier to creating a meaningful business online is higher than ever.

The pattern nobody is naming

Every time this shift happens, the reflex is the same. Business owners rush to clear the new easy bar. They launch a site and then wonder why the phone isn’t ringing. Clearing the easy bar has never been what produced results. Value came from scarcity.

In 1999, a professional-looking site was a proxy for whether you were a serious operator. In 2015, sharp positioning was a proxy for whether you understood your customer. Today, having a website is a proxy for nothing. It’s the ticket into the room, and that room is packed with 1.43 billion tickets, most of which were free.

Having a website today tells the market roughly what having a phone number told the market in 1995. It’s a prerequisite, but not a business.

The website is no longer the business — it’s the front door

What distinguishes the businesses that are winning right now? The website is now the front door, and the business is the system behind the door.

Operators winning in 2026 have stopped thinking of their website as a completed project. They think of it as one node in a larger system, whose job is to earn attention and build trust until the customer is ready to buy.

The gap is huge. Research from RAIN Group and others puts the average B2B purchase at more than 62 touchpoints across 3.5 different channels before a deal closes. Even simpler SMB deals take 5 to 12 direct touches. Forrester has found that 82% of customers view five or more pieces of content from the winning vendor before making a purchase. 77% of B2B buyers won’t even speak to a salesperson until they’ve done their own research first.

If your website is your only touchpoint, you’re bringing just 1/62nd of what it takes to convert someone. AI can now generate that 1/62nd in 60 seconds. It can’t generate the other 61/62nds. Here’s what the system behind the front door should look like.

Capture attention before it disappears

Someone who lands on your website and leaves is worth almost nothing. If a site visitor gives you permission to reach them again, through email, a phone number, a follow, or a text opt-in, that person has started a relationship with your business.

At that point, your job is to give the visitor a compelling reason to continue the conversation. The job of a small business website in 2026 is to convert anonymous traffic into an identifiable audience. Almost every AI-generated site I’ve seen skips this entirely. It has a generic “contact us” form and treats the job as complete.

Build trust after the first visit

Once you have permission to be in someone’s life, most businesses waste it. They might send one automated welcome email and disappear, or they blast out promotions until the person unsubscribes.

Trust is built by showing up consistently and being useful before you ask for a transaction. You have to produce evidence over time that you can deliver what you promise. The ongoing relationship is the asset. The website is just one place where that relationship begins.

Convert at the moment of readiness

Most purchases don’t happen the first time someone encounters a business. They happen on the fifth touch, or the tenth, or the twentieth, when the customer’s situation finally lines up with what you sell.

If you don’t have a system for staying in the conversation between touch one and touch twenty, you don’t have a marketing system. All you have is a nice business card that AI can generate in 60 seconds. That’s not the same thing as building a business.

Good news for operators with depth

Here’s the part most people miss when they read pieces like this and get anxious. This shift is good news if you have real depth.

For 15 years, operators with genuine expertise were drowning in a sea of tactical bloggers and template site builders who could produce enough surface-level content to compete for visibility, even if they lacked substance underneath. 

Depth was hard to see through the noise. Now the noise itself has become free and infinite. AI can produce more surface-level content in a day than a human could produce in a decade. The reader has already learned to scroll past it. Real depth is winning again for the first time in a long time.

The operator who has done the work and understands a specific customer better than anyone else now stands out more sharply against an AI-generated background than they did against a human-generated one. The customer’s ability to sense authenticity in all this noise has gotten sharper, because it had to. The signal they’re now looking for is a real person doing real work.

AI can imitate the language of expertise, but it can’t manufacture your track record or the trust you’ve accumulated over years of showing up. The depth behind your system is one thing AI can’t fake.

What to do this week

If you launched a site with AI recently, or you’re about to, stop treating the launch as the finish line. That’s not even the start of the race. Ask yourself these questions.

How does someone who lands on this site give me a way to reach them again? If the answer is “they don’t,” fix that before you spend another dollar on traffic.

What am I sending to people I have permission to contact, and would I actually want to receive it? If you can’t answer this, you don’t have a nurture system. No amount of new traffic will fix that.

What proof of depth do I offer that AI could not credibly fake in five minutes? If the answer is “nothing,” you’re competing directly against free infinite AI slop, and you’ll lose.

Could a competitor slap their logo on my content and have it still make sense? If the answer is yes, your brand lacks a unique viewpoint. Content that’s “safe” enough to be viewed by anyone will be ignored by everyone.

I’ve watched this pattern shift three times in more than 25 years. The tools got easier every time, but the businesses that won never did.

AI didn’t eliminate the barriers to building an online business. It eliminated the visible barriers. That forced the competitive advantage deeper, into systems, relationships, trust and proof. The businesses that recognize this shift and build for it are about to have an easier time than they’ve had in a decade. The businesses that don’t will find themselves parked next to the other 1.2 billion sites nobody visits.

Here’s a number that should bother anyone earning a good income: on every additional dollar of W-2 earnings above roughly $200,000, you’re paying close to 40 cents to the government when you factor in federal and state taxes.

You worked for that dollar. You earned it. And nearly half of it is gone before you can do anything with it.

Now here’s a different number. Many passive real estate investors who are collecting real cash distributions from their investments… quarterly checks showing up in their accounts… are paying close to zero in taxes on that income.

Same country. Same tax code. Completely different outcomes.

The difference isn’t a loophole or a gray area. It’s a set of provisions in the tax code that were deliberately designed to encourage private investment in real estate. Most people never learn them because the financial industry that profits from selling stocks, bonds, and mutual funds has little incentive to explain why real estate is treated differently.

Here’s a plain-English explanation of how it actually works.

The government wants private capital flowing into real estate. Housing, commercial space, industrial infrastructure… these things require enormous investment to build and maintain, and the government would rather private investors do it than taxpayers.

So Congress created a set of incentives. The most powerful is depreciation: the ability to deduct the gradual wear and tear of a physical asset from your taxable income, even while that asset is actually holding or increasing its value.

In practice, this means a real estate investor can collect real cash flow from a property while simultaneously reporting a paper loss for tax purposes. The building generates income. The depreciation offsets that income on paper. The investor pays little or no tax on distributions they’re actually collecting.

It sounds counterintuitive. It’s perfectly legal. The IRS wrote the rules.

When you invest passively in a real estate syndication, the operator depreciates the asset over time according to IRS schedules. Residential properties depreciate over 27.5 years. Commercial properties over 39 years.

As a passive investor, you receive a K-1 tax form each year that reflects your share of that depreciation. That depreciation becomes a paper loss that offsets your share of the income generated by the investment.

So even if the deal distributes 8% annually to investors, the K-1 may show little to no taxable income… or even a net loss on paper… depending on the depreciation in that year.

That paper loss doesn’t disappear if it exceeds your investment income. It carries forward and can offset future passive income from other investments. Over time, a portfolio of passive real estate positions can generate significant paper losses that shelter real cash flow from taxation.

Standard depreciation schedules spread the deduction across 27.5 or 39 years. Cost segregation is a strategy that speeds that up considerably.

Here’s the idea. A building isn’t one uniform asset. It’s a collection of components: the structure itself, the electrical systems, the flooring, the landscaping, the parking lot, the appliances. Each component has a different useful life under IRS rules.

A cost segregation study, done by an engineer who specializes in this, breaks the building into its components and reclassifies shorter-lived items into 5, 7, or 15-year categories rather than 27.5 or 39 years. This front-loads a significant portion of the depreciation into the early years of ownership, when the tax benefit is most valuable.

For a $5 million apartment building, a cost segregation study might reclassify $800,000 to $1.2 million of the value into accelerated categories. Instead of that deduction trickling in over decades, a large portion hits in years one through five.

For passive investors in a syndication, the benefit flows through on the K-1. The operator typically discloses upfront whether they plan to do a cost segregation study, and in our experience, quality operators almost always do.

Cost segregation identifies which components can be accelerated. Bonus depreciation determines how much of that accelerated amount you can deduct immediately.

For several years following the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, bonus depreciation allowed investors to deduct 100% of certain accelerated components in year one. That provision has been phasing down: 80% in 2023, 60% in 2024, 40% in 2025, 20% in 2026.

Even at 20% in 2026, this is still a meaningful benefit. And there is ongoing legislative discussion about restoring higher levels of bonus depreciation, so this is worth watching.

The practical effect: in the first year of a syndication that uses cost segregation and bonus depreciation together, a passive investor might receive a K-1 showing a paper loss that substantially offsets their distributions. Sometimes the paper loss exceeds the distributions entirely.

Ashley Kehr:
Buying a first home in a market like Los Angeles already feels out of reach for many rookies. Rick Albert did it with a $225,000 condo that had been occupied by a heavy smoker for more than 30 years. He put 10% down, fixed it up, and rented one room for $800 a month.

Tony Robinson:
And that first house act eventually helped Rick fund a far more ambitious second one, a renovation he expected to finish in four months that ended up taking 12. And today we’re breaking down the financing, the warning signs he ignored, the unusual living decision that helped the numbers work, and how those two Los Angeles deals became a 17 door portfolio across three different states.

Ashley Kehr:
This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kerr.

Tony Robinson:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let’s give a big warm welcome to Rick. Rick, thanks for joining us today, brother.

Rick Albert:
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Ashley Kehr:
So Rick, take us back to before real estate investing. What was your career? What was your life like before you even knew real estate investing was a thing?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So December 2009, I was still in college, didn’t know what I wanted to do. A good friend of mine convinced me to come down and visit and I met with actually his dad and we just talked business and he happened to be really big into real estate. So I was like, “Hey, I kind of like this. You can exercise both sides of the brain, creativity, financing.” And he’s like, “Cool. You want to come down here? I’m happy to help and mentor, but you had to meet certain criteria, which was work on getting your real estate license. Here’s three books you got to read and get an internship.” And so that’s what I did. I started studying for the real estate exam, got an internship at a commercial real estate office, just helping property management. And I started reading the books, which was Gary Keller’s Millionaire Real Estate Investor, Gary Keller’s Millionaire Real Estate Agent, even though at the time I didn’t know I wanted to become an agent.
And then The Richest Man in Babylon, which is a fantastic book if anyone hasn’t read it yet. That’s my favorite.

Tony Robinson:
I have not read that book yet. Yeah. I hear it a lot, but haven’t dove in.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. No, it’s basically the basic fundamentals of financing, like only talk to experts, things like that, but it’s more like storytelling.

Tony Robinson:
Like a fable.

Rick Albert:
Exactly. Exactly. It’s like a hundred pages. So yeah, I did that. Then my friend said, “Hey, I’ll give you cheap rent. Just bought a place, but you got to move down here to Southern California.” So I moved down here the weekend I graduated college and I worked for him in his IT office doing some stuff on the back end. But then primarily for his dad, I helped him buy foreclosures because they were flipping properties. So I was the kid at the courthouse steps with cashier’s checks bidding on –

Ashley Kehr:
How fun. With someone else’s money

Rick Albert:
Getting

Ashley Kehr:
To bid.

Rick Albert:
It was wild. And then there’s also different strategies, right? Because people, what they’ll do is they’ll bid up properties they actually don’t want. So that way other people spend their money so that way they leave so money spent and the properties are left for them. Oh,

Ashley Kehr:
Interesting.

Rick Albert:
Or what I would do is I would do different dollar amounts when I would raise. So if let’s say my cap was a million and the property started at 800, I might be like, “All right, 50,000 more, 5,000 more, 10,000 more, 100,000 more.” And I do that because what they noticed is if people started shrinking how much they were willing to bid up, it gave the impression that they were hitting their max. I didn’t want them to know what my max was. Whether it worked or not, I have no idea, but it was a lot of fun.

Ashley Kehr:
So once you got comfortable with your decision to start investing, what was the first property that you decided to buy?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So one of the great things about house hacking is you do look at the numbers, but you also have to do look at your lifestyle because you’re going to be living there. So I knew I wanted to go with the condo route because it was the low barrier to entry. I also didn’t have to worry about the roof, the sewer line, those risks were kind of taken off the table. And a lot of my friends and clients that were house hackers started with condos. I’m like, “Well, if they’re doing it, so should I.” And so I found a great condo that had really good walkability. It was 10 minutes from the office and she was a heavy smoker. It was a major fixer. Imagine the condo complex was motel style where everything was outdoors. So you could open the door. She was on the second floor, you could smell the smoke from the first floor.

Tony Robinson:
Man, that smelled like a deal to you, right? Right. I

Rick Albert:
Was like, this is so bad. I have cologne that smells worse.
And so yeah, we went in, it was actually me and my girlfriend at the time. She wasn’t buying it with me, but I valued her opinion and we were just looking. It had vaulted ceilings. It was fairly private with the balcony. I’m like, “This is a cool place.” And with condos, the cost of renovation isn’t as big a deal because you’re dealing with smaller spaces. You’re not really dealing. Yeah, we had replaced the electrical panel. That’s not that big of a deal. It’s a sub panel. New kitchen, updated the bathrooms a little bit. Re-glazing goes a long way, changing up floors, things like that. And so yeah, that’s how we bought it. Bought it for 225, put about 18 grand into it. Then later on when it was a rental, we ended up replacing the HVAC and there you go.

Tony Robinson:
I think a lot of times people hear house hack though, they think of small multifamily, but you said that you bought a condo. So how did you house hack a condo?What did that process look like?

Rick Albert:
Sure. So I bought the condo, bought it for 225,000. The previous owner, she had lived there so long. So what people don’t know necessarily about LA is a lot of these condo complexes used to be apartments. So she was there when it was a rental and then she ended up just buying it.

Tony Robinson:
She’s like, “I’m not moving.”

Rick Albert:
Right? That’s super efficient. You don’t have to move. So she was just a heavy smoker and she just lived there for over 30 years. And so we decided on a condo primarily because of budget.
It was budget and location was really the big ones.This was very much before ADUs came into play, the accessory dwelling units. So it wasn’t like I could buy a house and add a second unit. Some of the multifamily was kind of expensive and I only had so much money to play with in terms of down payment and the renovation costs. So that’s why I went down the condo route and I knew a lot of my friends who started house hacking with condos. I mean, when I first moved down here, he had owned a condo and was just renting out the second bedroom.

Tony Robinson:
Can we talk a little bit about 30 years of smoking? Because I feel like for a lot of people that would immediately turn them off. And Ash and I talk a lot about things can seem like maybe red flags on the surface level that turn a lot of people away. We talk about mold. Mold, yeah. We talk about even foundation issues and people always walk away from those deals. I feel like smoking is one of those other issues. Why didn’t that scare you away?

Ashley Kehr:
You’re also a heavy smoker. I’ve been

Rick Albert:
Able to pull up not coffee once and here we are.
No, so it’s funny because it was one of those condo complexes where it was almost like motel style. Everything was outdoors. It was an upstairs unit. You open the door and you could smell the smoke from downstairs and I’m like, “This is a good one.” I’m like, “This is good. This is good.” It didn’t scare me because I was like, “Anything can be fixed.” I don’t really have the belief that properties can be money pits. Yeah, they might be expensive, but at some point there’s an end to it. And so I saw it and I did a little bit of research and I’m like, “It’s not that big of a deal to get rid of cigarette smoke.”

Ashley Kehr:
Do you remember what you did? What was the exact process?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So air purifier, which I’m pretty sure broke at the end of it. And then you do what’s called TSP, tri-sodium phosphate. And it’s like a chemical you just buy it at Home Depot. And so the guys just scrub the walls with it to clean it off. And then –

Ashley Kehr:
Is that like a Kill’s paint?That’s

Rick Albert:
The second step. You’re getting ahead of me. Thank you. So yeah, Kill’s is the. They actually have one that locks in nicotine. So I think we had to do two or three coats of that.

Ashley Kehr:
Wow.

Rick Albert:
And then you just paint over it and then you just try to forget about it.

Tony Robinson:
Did that actually work?

Rick Albert:
Yeah, it worked. Yeah. You smelled it for a little bit afterwards, but you leave the windows open, stuff like that. And eventually, yeah, it actually got rid of it. I was super nervous because I had also heard sometimes you have to replace drywall.

Tony Robinson:
That’s what I though you were going to say, like replace the drywall.

Rick Albert:
Did you have to replace the

Tony Robinson:
Flooring?

Rick Albert:
We did that anyways. It was carpeting. I mean, everything seemed original. When the furniture was moved, you could see where the outlines of all the furniture was brand new remnants of carpet. But yeah, no, I mean we did anyways. We got rid of the kitchen. We just re-glazed actually the tub and countertops and painted the countertops for each of the bathrooms. So it didn’t do a lot there. It didn’t have lighting in the bedroom, so I just did ceiling fans so that way we wouldn’t put a lot of work onto the AC because we didn’t replace the AC until years later.

Ashley Kehr:
How much do you think you spent altogether for the rehab?

Rick Albert:
Initially spent about 18,000. And then later on when it was a rental, I had to replace the ACs. That was like 13 just because it was on the second floor, so you had to do the whole bring a crane up and do all that.

Tony Robinson:
I just want to break down the numbers a little bit, right? Because you said the purchase price was how much?

Rick Albert:
225.

Tony Robinson:
And what was your down payment on that?

Rick Albert:
10%, so 22,500.

Tony Robinson:
And then closing costs, maybe another.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. I mean, I used my commission to help cover some of that, but yeah, it probably would’ve been a couple thousand bucks.

Tony Robinson:
So you’re all in for like 25K to get into this condo. And then you said another 18 to get it renovated. Were there any other costs associated getting into the deal and getting it ready? I mean, because that’s what, 18, 35, 40-ish thousand bucks that you spent to get into this condo.

Rick Albert:
That was about it. With these condos, one of the reasons why they’re a good start is because they’re smaller. So you have economies of scale when it comes to renovations, but it was 938 square feet. So it was like flooring wasn’t bad. It was also 2015, so costs weren’t as high. It didn’t cost as much to do those type of renovations.

Tony Robinson:
Was it listed on the MLS or were. Yeah.

Rick Albert:
Yeah, it was listed for almost 250. But again, the smoking I think turned off a lot of people because properties were still selling back then. So that didn’t scare me.

Ashley Kehr:
And then what did you end up charging someone for rent? Was it 800? Yeah. And then what was your

Rick Albert:
Expenses? Yeah. It was about 1600. I included utilities because I didn’t feel like going through the effort of splitting on a condo when it’s like $8 for gas and 25 bucks for electricity. So I’m like, “Oh, I’ll eat that cost. I’ll take that one.” And then I actually did include twice a month house cleaning. Oh, cool.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay.

Rick Albert:
I learned that my best use of time was not to clean the place, and so I didn’t want to have the fight over who’s cleaning what. And so I was like, look, I think it was like 60 bucks a visit or something for someone to come clean. I was like, “Let her come.”

Tony Robinson:
How did you find this person? Because I think for a lot of people, when they think about house hacking, especially when you’re sharing the same actual living space, for a lot of people that turns them off because they’re worried about, “Hey, who’s going to come live with me?” So how did you source this person? How did you get to a point where you felt comfortable living with them?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So I actually reached out to my own personal network of people I knew, and I had a friend of mine who was already renting a one bedroom, and I already knew he was paying more. So I’m like, “I already know he’s well qualified because I’m going to offer him way less.” I’ve known him for. Oh, it was 27, so most of my life because our moms were best friends. So I actually just asked him. I was like, “Hey, I’m buying this place. Are you interested in renting? 800 bucks. It includes everything.” And he was paying 1300 at the time. So he’s like, “Yeah, done.” He was a little nervous because he would come by when I was still under construction and I’m like, “It’s going to be ready. Don’t worry. I got this.”

Ashley Kehr:
Did you ever worry that you wouldn’t be able to rent it out? You’ve already got it under contract. Did you worry that you wouldn’t be able to find a roommate at all? No. Or what made you confident that you would?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. I do a lot with networking, just with friends. When I was in college, I joined a fraternity. So there was chapters nationwide, so there’s multiple chapters. I could always reach out to one of them and be like, “Hey, does anyone need a room?” And so you do that. Obviously there’s Facebook groups, things like that. So I wasn’t really concerned and it was a good area, so it

Ashley Kehr:
Was more desirable. I think that’s a lesson right there is you didn’t just wait for somebody to come to you. Oh no, not at all. You started putting it out everywhere as to Facebook groups. You had all these different networks or these ideas of where to go to find someone instead of just thinking. Because I see that commonly as people are like, “Well, I don’t know if I’ll find someone. I don’t know if I’ll get a great tenant.” Well, you’re not even doing the things to try and put yourself out there. It’s like you got to do some marketing, especially if you’re house hacking, you got to market yourself and the house. I’m a great roommate.

Rick Albert:
I agree. I mean, there’s two reasons why, I guess three reasons why a rental doesn’t rent, right? It’s either the price, the marketing or the rental criteria. So if you’re not doing the right marketing, maybe you’re just not reaching out to enough people. To your point, you just can’t post it online and hope for the best.

Tony Robinson:
I’m glad that you found someone that you knew, but then that kind of opens up a different can of worms where it’s like, well, now there’s this personal relationship, but there’s also this tenant landlord relationship. How did you navigate being the landlord to a friend who you’re also right next door to?

Rick Albert:
Who’s also a paralegal? Yeah. Yeah. Let’s talk about that.
So there’s a couple things. One, we did have a sit down and I always like to explain, look, we’re friends. Our mom’s have been friends for over 60 years, but I got bills to pay. So that’s the relationship here. And then we kind of went through scenarios of like, okay, what would happen if this happened or that happened? And we just realized it was a good fit. And to be fair, we were both super busy professionals, so he was busy going to work every day. I was busy out and about. So I knew it was going to kind of work to begin with just because we wouldn’t be doing a ton of hanging out in general anyways.

Ashley Kehr:
I think sometimes too, it gets over complicated as we get adults because think about as college students, so many, not necessarily house hacking, but you’re living with roommates, you’re living with your friends, you’re each expected to pay rent. So a lot of times it’s not that much different. If one friend doesn’t put in their pool of money to pay the rent, you’re still going to have the same conflict you would if you’re the landlord and living with your friend. 100%. I think that we sometimes over complicate real estate investing with that fear of analysis paralysis or that you’re not doing everything right and you got to do it by the book and do it this. Sometimes it’s not that hard.

Rick Albert:
What I love about real estate is you can stumble as long as you’re stumbling forward, you’ll be fine. You’ll live. Just don’t buy a house on a hillside that might be slipping, that’s an exception. But generally speaking, most deals eventually work out if you give it enough time.

Tony Robinson:
Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would’ve done differently with the lease or just anything with that first house hack tenant to make that process gone a little bit smooth for you? Or was it just simply smooth enough where it’s like, “Hey, I nailed it that first time?”

Rick Albert:
We did pretty well, I will say. And part of that was because I talked to my friends who were also already house hacking. So things like, because I included the utilities, I still had to put a cap on the utilities to make sure the AC wasn’t being blown all day. So we did a lot of that. I guess in hindsight, again, with him it was fine, but typically now with leases, I’ll put quiet hours. What are those quiet hours? Is it from 10:0 PM to 70 AM? Something to kind of more like, “Hey, we’re all living in the same community. Let’s have some guidelines.” I probably could have had more of that. I didn’t actually need it with him, but I did add that in my leases going forward.

Ashley Kehr:
We’re screening your tenants, managing them. Are you using any kind of software?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So in the beginning I didn’t. It was a lot of spreadsheets, things like that. We did use, there was a website called mysmartmove.com for the tenant screening because they also did evictions, full on background checks, things like that. And then for the leases, being in real estate, I can use the realtor forms with all the disclosures and all that.

Ashley Kehr:
You’re probably already paying for all those anyways, right? Exactly. With your license.

Rick Albert:
Right. So now that we do investing out of state, me and a business partner, we actually own two properties together. One, we do self-manage. I handle more of the front end stuff, so dealing with tenant relations, vendors. He does the backend stuff and he’s using more of the property management software. I think he uses Tenant Cloud, which has no been bought out by TurboTenant. So we’ll see how that plays out, but we

Ashley Kehr:
Still – I love TurboTenant, so you’ll like it. I’m

Rick Albert:
Excited. I’m super excited. But yeah, so we use some of that software. And then for the leases, because it’s out of state, I don’t necessarily have access to those. There’s a lot of trade organizations that have leases. So the latest one we used was the American Apartment Owners Association. They have those. And then we just add our own addendum to kind of fill in the gaps.

Tony Robinson:
So the condo sounds like it worked out well for you as a first house hack, but you didn’t stop. Obviously you’ve grown your portfolio. So explain to us how that $225,000 condo funded your next deal.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So I had a roommate, he got engaged, moved out. So I had my own place. I was going to get another roommate, but then I knew I was going to propose to my girlfriend at the time.That’d be kind of awkward. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to not have not house hack for a couple months, proposed.” And then we did a HELOC, home equity line of credit. So it was like a second on it. What I like to do yearly is review all of our properties, determine values. So what’s the property worth today? Is there anything I can do with that equity? Does it mean selling? Does it mean line of credit? Whatever. At the time it was like they had good rates. I went with actually a big bank on that one and it was up to 80% loan to value. So I pulled out the.
It was like 80,000, 84,000, and then used that as the down payment and closing cost for the second house hack that we did.

Tony Robinson:
Define HELOC for folks that aren’t familiar with that phrase. How is that different from a refinance or even selling your property?

Rick Albert:
Sure. So a HELOC is a home equity line of credit. It’s like a loan in a second position behind your main loan. So sometimes you don’t want to refinance the first one because it could have a really good interest rate, some other good terms. But then also more importantly, with a HELOC home equity line of credit, you only pay on the money you use. Imagine a credit card. So why would I do a cash or refinance, get all the money out, and now I’m stuck with this high payment, but I haven’t bought anything yet. So it gives me that more flexibility on what to do with it. And so we use that to go buy the next one.

Tony Robinson:
It’s a great tool. And for all of our rookies, if you live in a house right now that has a good amount of equity and you’re thinking about moving, get the HELOC before you move because it’s significantly harder to get lines of credits on traditional rental properties than it is to get it on your primary residence. So get the HELOC first, then move, move on to

Ashley Kehr:
The next one. And there’s nothing in most documents and most lenders, there’s nothing wrong with you getting the HELOC and then moving. You’re not violating any kind of fraud

Rick Albert:
Or

Ashley Kehr:
Anything. There’s no requirement that you have to live in the house like there are with a lot of mortgages, like FHA mortgages and stuff like that.

Tony Robinson:
But this little condo gave you $80,000, which is incredible. So what’d you do with the 80? Where did that go next?

Rick Albert:
I convinced my now fiance to house hack again.
Bless her heart, if she’s watching. And originally actually the plan was to buy another condo. And then it was 2017, so ADU started coming into play, which is the accessory dwelling unit. So you can convert a garage or build from scratch. Most people build from a conversion of a garage and it’s basically a rentable guest house. So it has its own address, it could have its own separate utilities, and you can legally rent it out. And so we’re like, “This is cool.” And I had clients who had done it where the garage is already partially converted. I was the first in my group to do one from scratch. So I had to explain to my fiance that we’re going to be a guinea pig.

Tony Robinson:
Let me ask, why did you decide? Because I’m assuming the reason that people are doing the garage conversions first is because it’s easier, right? The structure’s there, it’s more cost efficient. Why did you lean away from the garage conversion into actually building something from the ground up?

Rick Albert:
So building from the ground up is very expensive. There’s different building codes you have to abide by, different fees for construction. The permitting fees might be different. There’s probably school fees, things like that.

Tony Robinson:
You’re not selling me on the reason why to build from the ground up yet, although sound like reasons not to.

Rick Albert:
Well no, but to be fair, the rent’s not going to be that much different.

Ashley Kehr:
If you already have the garage there.

Rick Albert:
Exactly. So the only advantage to doing it is if you want to keep your garage, maybe you want to build on top of it, but even then you’re basically rebuilding the garage anyways because the garage skipped leg day, can’t support the weight. Or if you just want to build bigger, if you’re going to build bigger anyway, sometimes it’s just easier to scrap it and start over. So at the time people were doing more of the garage conversions. Now we’re seeing more of the new construction, 1200 square feet, building a couple of them on a property. We’re seeing a lot more of that now.

Tony Robinson:
But sorry, let me clarify. You did do new construction or you did not? Oh,

Rick Albert:
You didn’t. Sorry. My apologies. I did the garage conversion.

Ashley Kehr:
They did the garage from scratch. His other friends bought them partially. Yeah, they

Rick Albert:
Were already partially converted. So they finished the process. I was the one who –

Tony Robinson:
I misunderstood. That’s why I confused. I was like, tell me why you didn’t just listed all these bad things. I was like, that is not selling me on why we should do it that way, but it makes sense.

Ashley Kehr:
When you bought this next property then, how did you calculate into your numbers what the cost would be to do this renovation? And was this cash you had saved up? Was this part of the HELOC?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So really good question. And it was really tough because not everybody really had an idea of what the actual cost was going to be because not everyone hadn’t even heard of it yet. So we did what was called the FHA 203K loan. That is where you put three and a half percent down of the purchase price plus construction costs and you finance everything else. So we did an addition on the house, we remodeled it, and then we did the garage conversion. I

Tony Robinson:
Just want to pause you there because a lot of folks know about the traditional FHA loan, but you’re saying there’s another version, the 203K loan where you can fund both your acquisition and the renovation costs.

Rick Albert:
If it’s your primary residence, yes.

Tony Robinson:
I would assume that there’s probably some stipulations around that, right? They’re not going to let you maybe take a house that’s worth $500,000 and spend another $500,000 building up. So how do they put a cap or put guardrails around the type of renovation you’re allowed to do?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So right off the bat, you can do additions, but you can’t do something brand new. So you can’t add a pool. I couldn’t do an ADU from scratch. So you had to work with what you had. And I think part of that is also because they’re probably assuming that the people who are getting these loans don’t have that kind of experience. And then in terms of the calculations, it all has to appraise for the after repair value. That’s all they care about. What makes this interesting, especially in my case, because the challenge with ADUs at the time was there are no comps. People hadn’t been building them. They hadn’t been selling them. So it was a little bit of a shot in the dark. With the FHA 203 loan, they’re allowing you to. Basically they’ll lend up to 110% of the appraised value. So you got that little extra bump, which worked out for us because our appraiser gave the value zero because he’s like, “Oh, $10,000 for the ADU.
Oh, but you don’t have parking. I’m going to take away $10,000.” Oh my God. I’m like, “This is hilarious, but whatever, we got the loan done.” And it still caps out at your county’s loan limit. So at the time it was like 700,000, I think basically all in.

Tony Robinson:
So you’re saying that when you did yours, the person who appraised it literally did not account at all for the fact that

Rick Albert:
There was no loan. Basically, yeah it basically canceled itself out because I talked to him on the phone. He didn’t know what it was. And I’m like, “It’s a rentable guest house. You’re an appraiser. You should be doing your research. Just throw that out there. That actually

Ashley Kehr:
Happened to me on a property. It was a single family home with a guest house and we completely finished it into, they counted it as three bedrooms. It was one bedroom and two lofts, and the lofts each had a closet. And so it was three bedrooms, one bathroom. But since it wasn’t the primary home and it was just the guest house on the property, I mean, brand new kitchen, granite countertops, beautifully redone. They only counted it for $20,000 because it was just the guest house. It’s painful. Yeah. And it was like, oh my God. So we actually fought it and they brought it up a little bit more, but not by much. Yeah. But that was a big lesson is we dumped probably, I want to say $80,000 into getting this to where it was, and then it only added $20,000 in value. Well,

Tony Robinson:
Your situation is probably even trickier because you had to do the work first, right? You have to do the work first and then go back and get the appraisal. But yours is done beforehand. Yeah. So was that done while you were in escrow? Yes. Gotcha. So you knew before you even closed if you were going to have enough to actually execute.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So that was the idea. We ended up. Well, I guess I should backtrack because I think you guys would appreciate this. We were one of 17 offers on the property.

Ashley Kehr:
Wait, and this was in 2017?

Rick Albert:
This was 2000. We ended, I think, 18, 2018 by then. 18, but

Ashley Kehr:
Still.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. Because the agent was smart. I’ll give him credit. He purposely priced it low to –

Ashley Kehr:
Smart or annoying? That’s happening in my market right now. Fair enough. Everyone is raising so low. And just list

Rick Albert:
All properties for a dollar and just let the market decide, right? Why do we go do this dance?

Ashley Kehr:
There was a guy that did that in my area. It was a national news he made or whatever. He listed it for a dollar. A dollar, yeah. There was

Rick Albert:
One in Oklahoma

Ashley Kehr:
That did it too. I

Rick Albert:
Have a flip. But sellers are doing that now. I heard of someone who was a developer. He couldn’t get his property sold. He dropped it to a million, which is cheap for new construction. He ended up getting close to 1.4.

Tony Robinson:
I literally have a flip right now. We talked about this in the podcast. My listing agreement just expired yesterday, so I don’t even have an agent. I got to find an agent right now. But we’ve been sitting on it. It’ll be two years this fall. It’s in mountain town in Idlewild. Who knows? Maybe I’ll list it for a dollar and just see at this point what else can’t get any worse. You

Rick Albert:
Don’t have to accept it.That’s the part that I think people don’t get is you don’t have to accept the offer that comes in. But yeah, so in this case, he didn’t list it for a dollar, but he still listed it low. My wife liked the property. I was like, “Sure.” And so we did an escalation clause, which basically said we’re going to pay, I think, $2,000 over any bonafide offer. Most people put caps on it. I did not. I think caps are kind of silly because just like a seller doesn’t have to accept, a buyer doesn’t have to accept.

Tony Robinson:
So actually I didn’t know that. So if you add an escalation clause, it’s not an automatic acceptance. You still have to come back and sign that final –

Rick Albert:
Yeah, because they get to tell you what the number is.

Tony Robinson:
I never thought about that.

Rick Albert:
So our thought was, my wife’s like, “Well, should we put a cap on it?” I’m like, “No.” Because if it gets way too high, we don’t have to buy it.
And so it went really high and I’m like, “There’s no way this is going to appraise. The buyer did this intentionally because they know it’s not going to appraise. I want that benefit.” So I said, “We’re going to accept it.” So it was listed for 499. We were in escrow at 567. The guy was selling because his wife had passed away, so he was just selling it to move on, get it accepted. I’m on my way out, flying out to Peru. My broker who was representing me at the time called me, he said. Or no, I was in the office and he’s cracking up. He’s like, “The listing agent got a call from a lady saying, Why are you selling my house? She was not dead.

Ashley Kehr:
Oh my God.

Rick Albert:
And so I called my fiance and I’m cracking up. She’s like, “This isn’t funny.” I’m like, “Well, it’s better than the alternative.” So I’m like, “This is fantastic.” She’s like, “What do we do?” I’m like, “Nothing. We’re going to go to Peru. We’re going to go to the jungle with no reception.” I lined up all the inspections, let them figure it out. And once we had a reception, they figured it out. We entered escrow and then we renegotiated the price down to 525.

Tony Robinson:
So did it not appraise?

Rick Albert:
No, that wasn’t the issue. So what we did, there was actually two reasons why we did price reductions. The first one was from inspections. So everybody negotiates differently. What I do, and I’ll say it on the podcast. So basically what we do is we do personal letters with the request for repairs, because the problem is you don’t know what’s being communicated between brokers.

Ashley Kehr:
Oh, it’s like playing telephone. It’s

Rick Albert:
Awful. Exactly. So what we do is we have the request for repairs form and it says, “See letter attached.” Therefore, the seller has to read the letter to determine what the request is. And that way there’s no confusion. We’re not being jerks. So we did that. That’s how we got the first price reduction.

Tony Robinson:
Let’s pause there though because I’ve never done that before. We almost always ask for some sort of concession when we do inspections, but I’ve never attached a letter to that. So is this an emotional appeal or a logical thing?What are you writing in these letters?

Rick Albert:
Both. So because it’s a house hack, it’s still primary residence. It’s still about my home and my wife and I, we’re going to start a family. It’s so sweet. We’re so excited. But the sewer line’s shot and the fireplace doesn’t work. And there’s all this work that needs to be done. And also, by the way, it’s California, so any disclosure, any reports you have, you have to pass on to the next buyer. So you kind of have to play ball. So we negotiated that. And then the second round was there was an addition done that was clearly. It was done without permits, which we knew. It was done pretty poorly, but I knew I couldn’t necessarily ask for both because that would’ve been too big of a bite for them. And I was like, “Maybe we can make the numbers work.” Well, we realized we couldn’t make the numbers work with the loan because the cost to tear it down to be built.
So then we had to go back and say, “We need another like 20 grand because we got to tear this thing down.” And they’re like, “Well, we already gave you based on your due diligence.” I’m like, “This isn’t due diligence. This is the lender requiring me because it’s the FHA 203K loan. The lender, they’re the bad guys in this, not me. The lenders are requiring me to tear this down and rebuild. And the only way to make the numbers work is if you give me another price reduction.”

Tony Robinson:
We talk about this on the podcast a lot too, where it’s sometimes the. And obviously you were the beneficiary here, but a lot of times the highest price isn’t necessarily the best offer because had someone come with a non two or 3K loan, because you had what, a 2K escalation clause? Yeah. Had they just accepted the offer that was 2K cheaper, they might have saved the 20 grand from the lender requirements, right? So just as on both sides, just be aware of that for the rookies that are listening because you can use that to your benefit or I guess to your disadvantage maybe. I had a deal like

Ashley Kehr:
That too where I was the buyer and I offered them, I will take it as is. Leave everything you want in there. I will get rid of it, whatever. It was like
Quarter house or whatever, not too bad, but bad. And they said, “No, no, we need this money and we need X amount.” And I said, “Okay, fine. But I want to do an inspection. I want the whole house cleared out, broom swept, and I will pay the full amount.” After the inspection, after the repairs that needed to be done, after the FHA inspection, after all of those things, and then it delayed closing because we were doing the FHA loan, we did the inspection, they had to make the repairs, get that all done. On closing day, the basement flooded and then we got a 20K closing credit for the HVAC and the hot water tank. But if they would’ve accepted original offer back and then, because literally we spent months negotiating, but they would’ve been better off accepting that first offer of just a quick close, taking that price reduction than what ended up happening over time.
I see

Rick Albert:
That a lot.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was a happy camper.

Tony Robinson:
So just so I make sure I understand the sequence here. So for the two or 3K loan, is there any additional qualifications that you need as a borrower as opposed to a traditional FHA loan or is it –

Rick Albert:
Good question. No, they still look at your credit, your debt, your income.

Tony Robinson:
Not like construction background or you don’t have to do anything.

Ashley Kehr:
You have to have a licensed contractor though approved by them and stuff?

Rick Albert:
Correct. So the process, my understanding was fairly easy. I worked with a contractor I’ve used on the development side. So obviously he has it. So they look at I think their reserves, their license, all of that. And then once they’re in the system, in theory, they could be an FHA 2-3 contractor for whoever else they want. But yes, it does need to be a licensed contractor. There are little nuances to that where they might make some exceptions, but generally speaking for most people, they have to have a licensed contractor.

Tony Robinson:
So you have to submit both the contractor and the bids during your due diligence period to make sure that they approve both of those.

Rick Albert:
Correct. And that’s usually the biggest delay is getting the bid in time. So what I did, and I’ve even done one of my clients did the same loan, is we just kind of created the bid upfront and then sent it in immediately. Because really for the contractor, a lot of them, not all, all they care about is really that bottom number. What’s the total? So they don’t really care how it’s broken down as long as they get paid. And so that helped in getting the process moved a little bit faster.

Ashley Kehr:
So you actually built out the scope of work and then assigned the dollar amounts.

Rick Albert:
Exactly.

Ashley Kehr:
Then you

Rick Albert:
Broke it all up. And then the lenders want, oh, split it between materials and labor, which no contractor will do. And I’m like, this is ridiculous. So I’m like, whatever. Because again, you just kind of figure it out. And again, as long as the contractor’s cool with it, then it’s

Ashley Kehr:
Fine. You do the work for them and they say, “Yeah, that’s okay. Hand it in.”

Rick Albert:
Exactly.

Tony Robinson:
So what was your closing period? Were you still able to like a 30 day escrow? About

Rick Albert:
45.

Tony Robinson:
Okay. So not that much longer, right? No.

Rick Albert:
Typically they’re 45 to 60 days.

Tony Robinson:
Okay. I just want to talk a little bit. So once you close, how is it actually getting the money from FHA to pay the contractors? Do you get a big lump sum at the beginning or are they doing draws or there’s inspections? What is that process?

Rick Albert:
Real good question because it’s super annoying. Not the question, the process. So you have what’s called a HUD consultant and the HUD consultant, you can kind of pick your own, but typically they just assign one and their role is to basically represent the lender. So they’ll come out, do an inspection, see what work’s been done and then cut a check accordingly. That process takes a while. And that was one of the issues we had was it was taking, in the beginning it would take, I think one check took three weeks and then one took six weeks. I had to start threatening the lender to get on it. And so eventually they’re supposed to typically do it within 14 days. Was

Ashley Kehr:
This a small lender or – No, this was a

Rick Albert:
Nationwide lender. I was livid, livid.

Ashley Kehr:
Which I guess kind of makes sense. Smaller banks would probably be better about paying

Tony Robinson:
It.But did you have to come out of pocket at all for anything on the renovation or did they cover all of those costs or were you floating anything in the meantime?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So we ended up floating some money in the meantime because just like how I told my fiance that we were the guinea pigs on the garage conversion, I also told her we were the guinea pigs on the FJ 203K loan. Yeah. Fun fact, we’re still married.

Tony Robinson:
It worked out. Yeah.

Rick Albert:
She hasn’t killed me yet. So we learned a lot in that process because they were taking so long, my contractor’s like, “I got to get paid.” And then it got to the point where I was like, “Hey, good news. I got a check coming your way for like 12 grand.” He’s like, “Rick, you owe me like 60.” I’m like crap. So we had a conversation. I was like, “Look, the lender won’t let me not finish this project. They’re not going to not let me. They check in all the time, which means you’re guaranteed to get paid. It’s just a matter of when. So what I’m going to do is I have some money saved up for our wedding. I’m going to front that to kind of float you along.” And then he was willing to work with us on that and that was extremely helpful.

Ashley Kehr:
Was there anything that was signed between the lender and the contractor agreeing on timelines or a draw schedule or anything like that?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. And most contractors will just sign off on it. Yeah. And

Ashley Kehr:
Not realize that.

Rick Albert:
Realize how long it’s really going to take. So yeah, there are certain agreements between the contractor and the lender to get all that squared away. And then sometimes the HUD consultant will participate in that process. You do pay the HUD consultant to come out usually as part of your bid. It probably depends on the scope of work, to be honest. I think ours, we had five visits. So then what we started doing is we actually paid extra for him to come out more often to cut out smaller checks. So I’d rather spend, at the time it was like 350. I’d rather spend extra a couple thousand bucks to come out more often to get smaller checks going to prevent the contract because it’s also not fair to the contractor to be fair. I get it. They have a business to run to and being a contractor is tough.
They’re fronting a lot of money.

Ashley Kehr:
That’s still quite a bit of money to have them come out and do their inspection.

Rick Albert:
I know.

Tony Robinson:
I know. So I mean, aside from the payment delays, how long did you initially project this renovation to take and how long did it actually end up taking?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So part of the problem was the inspector for our area, he had fallen off a roof, not ours, a different property and broke his back. So then the city and all their glory was short staffed. So it was taking, every time we called the city for inspections, it would take 10 days for them to come out. So what was supposed to be a four month project took a year. Yeah, it was rough.

Tony Robinson:
Were you guys living there during that timeframe? So what happens to the loan? Because I’m thinking about a traditional hard money loan or a renovation loan, there’s a cap. And if you go beyond that timeframe, the debt gets more expensive, there’s penalties and fees. Does that same thing exist on the two or 3K loan?

Rick Albert:
Yes and no. So it depends on how you have it set up. In our case, we were making monthly payments over the course of 30 years, so they didn’t really care in that sense. They did care that they wanted the project done because in theory, if I foreclose, now they have a half built property. So in that sense, they didn’t care.

Tony Robinson:
So your mortgage payments started on day one, your full mortgage payments.

Rick Albert:
What you can do, we didn’t have it in the budget, but what you can do if you have the money in the budget is you can finance some of those payments. So I think it’s up to 12 months. So you can not have payments for up to 12 months if you finance it.

Tony Robinson:
But only if your ARV after the fact is hig enough, right? And you guys just didn’t have that budget to –

Rick Albert:
Exactly. We maxed it out. Yeah, exactly.

Tony Robinson:
Interesting. So you guys carried the mortgage for a year?

Rick Albert:
Yeah, we carried the mortgage for a year. And then as I mentioned earlier, we were the guinea pig, so we actually under budgeted for the garage conversion. And part of that was also like building codes change. So it needs its own sewer line. We knew that. We’re like, okay, we budgeted when I called the sewer company like 3,000 to go from the back house to the main house and just connect. Nope, we closed. Building codes change. They wanted us to run a line all the way down the driveway and then connect. So I was like, well, that sucks. So that was around 7,000 at the time. What we did do to get creative was we actually had them cut the driveway in the middle of the driveway and instead of pouring new concrete, I just had to put a gravel. So it looked aesthetic and people are like, “This is so pretty.” I’m like, “Thank you.
I saved $1,000.” So you get creative very fast, very, very fast. So we did that and then a year later, it was actually right after our wedding, the house was basically done.

Tony Robinson:
If you were starting this renovation project over today, now in everything that you know, having gone through this process the first time, what things would you do differently? On day one starting, what are the differences you would change?

Rick Albert:
So I’m assuming I was in the same financial position, which was no money, then I would’ve paid extra for the draws. I would’ve been like, “Look, contractor, you may still be behind, but I’m going to pay extra. That’s my contribution to have them come out faster on a regular schedule. I’ll pay the extra few thousand dollars if it means you get paid on a more regular basis.” And that would’ve helped because there were times when I went by the property and he either didn’t have guys there or he’d have two guys there and they’re barely working, which to be fair happens regardless if you’re not checking in on it. But I also understood because we weren’t paying him fast enough, he had to work other jobs that we’re paying. So that’s probably the biggest thing. If I actually had money saved up, I would’ve fronted the money and then just get reimbursed.
There are some other nuances. At the time you could buy actually materials and get half the money. So let’s say you buy the flooring ahead of time, you get half that money back and then you’d pay the difference once the flooring’s installed. So that’s another way to kind of speed things up as well because at least the materials are there and then you just don’t reimburse yourself. You give the money all to the contractor to keep them ahead.

Ashley Kehr:
Now once that was finished after the year, you rented it out. So what did the numbers look like?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So the payments all in were about 4,600 and we had no money because the project took a year. We also slightly under budgeted for the garage conversion. So I told my then wife, I said, “Hey, I’ve been doing research. There’s something called the streamline FHA refinance, which is basically if you have an FHA loan, you can just do a refinance into a new FHA loan, but it doesn’t require appraisals because I knew there were no ADU comps and the FHA 203K loan naturally is a higher interest rate because they’re taking on more risk.” So she’s like, “Oh, that’s fantastic.” I said, “Ha ha, but to do that, we got to move into the studio ADU.” And she just took a second. I’m like, “This is the only way it’s going to work.” So she’s like, “Cool, let’s do it.”

Tony Robinson:
Why was that the restriction there? Why couldn’t you stay in the main house?

Rick Albert:
We couldn’t afford it. So I was like, “Look, if we move into the ADU and rent out the main house, that’s a bigger chunk of our mortgage paid and it’s still considered to be owner occupied.” The lender doesn’t care where I’m living. I just had to pay movers to move a couch with the receipt that showed the main address, which the movers looked at me like, “Why did we just pay to move a couch?” I’m like, “Not your problem, that’s mine. Just take my money.” And so yeah, we actually moved into the studio ADU and rented out the main house at the time.

Ashley Kehr:
And what did you get for

Rick Albert:
Rent for that? Just under 3,299, which was actually about $400 more a month than what the comps are showing. But I looked at it and said, “Well, the house isn’t quite finished yet, so we technically have time.” And two, we originally designed it for ourselves. So we knew that it was a slightly higher level of floor plan and things that you wouldn’t typically see in a rental. Funny enough, we only got one application and they were the ones that got it. Oh, perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Things happen for a reason. And then they came from Facebook Marketplace is how we ended up finding them. And then we didn’t know if we were going to move into the ADU or not until I learned all that stuff. And then we ended up moving back there. And we actually designed the garage conversion to have its own washer dryer.
And because it was detached in the back, it had its own backyard. We fenced off the front, so it had its own front yard and there was no windows pairing into the yard. So it was actually very private because we did two glass French doors on the back and then the front door had a built-in window. So we still got natural light without having to see anyone. It was as close to a little casita as you can get.

Ashley Kehr:
And what would you have gotten for rent for the ADU?

Rick Albert:
At the time? Yeah, do you think you would’ve? Probably 1400.

Ashley Kehr:
So a big difference from what you could get for the main house. Exactly.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. It was definitely worth it. And then so we did the refinance and then later on when rates really dropped below 3%, then we did the big refinance. And then at that point we were living there for about 600 bucks a month was our portion before eventually moving into the main house. So we lived back there through quarantine and through all that for about two years.

Tony Robinson:
I don’t know if we’ve had anyone who’s leveraged the two or 3K loan. Maybe we have, or maybe it’s been a while, but definitely haven’t gone to that detail because I learned a lot about the 203K loan. Do you recommend it to people? Because you work as an agent in a very expensive market. Do you recommend that as a loan product that makes sense?

Rick Albert:
Yeah, it’s tough. You have to really navigate through it. And I tell people that. I’m like, look, it’s annoying, but it works. And to be fair, if it’s the only way you’re going to get the job done, then it’s the only way you’re going to get the job done. Things are a little bit trickier now, right? ADUs for a long time haven’t really appraised out. Back then it cost us, we thought it was going to be closer to like 40 to 50,000. It ended up costing about 75,000 to do the garage conversion. Now it’s about 150, but appraisers aren’t giving it 150,000 in value. So we just have to kind of navigate that a little bit more. One of my clients, she did do it, but what we had found, which was great, was it was an illegal conversion and it was already two bedrooms.
So really she used the FHA 203K loan to convert it to a legal unit. So it cost her about 100,000, but it would’ve cost her 200,000 to actually do it. So I actually would probably encourage people to consider that loan for unpermitted work. That way you’re not going through that whole. It’s still a headache, but it’s –

Ashley Kehr:
Not as much.

Rick Albert:
Exactly. The kitchen’s there, the plumbing’s there, that sort of deal.

Tony Robinson:
Can you, because we have friends who invest in Seattle, like Dave, the Thatch Wind does this a lot too, but they’re doing the same process, but then they’re actually separating it out as a new parcel. That way they have to appraise it separately because it’s its own now home.

Rick Albert:
They talked about doing that here in California, right? I think the first one finally sold in San Jose or something. It sold over 500,000. I haven’t really seen it here. I mean, on a practical basis, it’s a little awkward just because how do you access it? But also, and I’d be curious, maybe you guys could do the research, how much value does that hurt the main house? Because now you don’t have a garage.

Tony Robinson:
Well, more so for the detached areas. For the detached? Yeah.

Rick Albert:
I mean, I just haven’t really seen it much yet.

Tony Robinson:
I feel like that almost solves it, right? Because for your specific example, you already fenced everything out and if you can just get an imaginary line drawn on the map, now it becomes its own thing.

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So then yeah, then he’s like, “Well, if a condo would sell for a few hundred, why wouldn’t this?” Yeah, it might be.

Ashley Kehr:
Would you have to get two different mortgages then because they’re two separate parcels? Would

Rick Albert:
You piss off the lender? That’s a good question.

Ashley Kehr:
Because I’ve parceled off pieces of property and when you survey it and divide it, the lender that’s on the current property has to sign off that you’re releasing that property from the mortgage. Or if you do a portfolio loan where you have two or three properties under it, you still need to get the lender’s permission if you’re selling one of them. So if you already had the loan in place – What does that look like? Yeah, how does that look like to separate?

Tony Robinson:
If you have these answers, let us know. Yeah, seriously. I want to know. I

Ashley Kehr:
Mean, the only thing I could think of is you’re going to go and get a new loan for that new parcel, but then it’s like you’re buying it again. And

Rick Albert:
Also then wouldn’t you be technically underwater on the main house then? Yeah. Because it was purchased with the expectation of an ADU and now you’re a hundred grand short. So yeah, it’d be interesting to look at.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, let us know if you’re watching on YouTube, but let us know in the comments.

Tony Robinson:
So how did living in the ADU for you and your wife, you said you were there for how many years?

Rick Albert:
Two years.

Tony Robinson:
Two years. How did that change, if at all, the way that you guys think about design, living, renting, managing your tenants being so close? What did it change for just you as an investor in general?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. So there’s a lot of things because a lot of people build out these ADUs and never live in them, and so they’re designed horribly. So there’s three things that I’ve noticed with a bonus four. So with ADUs, privacy is super important. Oftentimes I see investors, they’ll pop a window that goes into the yard. Nobody wants to see each other. That’s the whole point. The fact that ours was very private was a big deal. We couldn’t see them. They couldn’t see us. Washer/dryer is a big deal. You’re already doing the plumbing. So we actually had it set up to where you could put a stackable, but we ended up putting it all in one unit. I guess you kind of see them in Europe. They’re expensive. They’re

Ashley Kehr:
Becoming very popular now. Yeah,

Rick Albert:
But they’re really high maintenance.

Ashley Kehr:
Really?

Rick Albert:
We ended up swapping our first one out after. We lived there for about two years. Then with the next tenant that ended up moving in three years because it cost, I don’t know, 500 bucks to get it fixed. So for 2000 bucks, after so many times you’re

Tony Robinson:
Better

Rick Albert:
Off just swapping it. But we did do it to where it was, and I should probably preface, the entire ADU was all electric. We did do that, so we only had to separate electric. We didn’t have to worry about separating gas. So yeah, it was one 10 volt, plugged it in because it was in the bathroom, you could just turn on the exhaust fan there so we
Didn’t have to vent out. So that made it a little bit easier. But yeah, privacy, washer, dryer hookups. If you can have off-street parking, great. If not, that didn’t seem to be a big deal. But yeah, living there, even little things. We had a light and we ended up swapping it out with a ceiling fan because we realized that, oh yeah, it gets kind of warm in here. You don’t always want to run the mini split. And then also some sort of yard space was huge for us and it helped us get it rented out much faster than the competition because people might have pets or they just wanted to be. I mean, Southern California, right? We kind of pay this premium to not have to deal with some of the other stuff. No offense. So to be able to hang out in the backyard is a big plus.
So there’s a couple of things. And you can do that for pretty much any property if you convert the garage. Even if the garage is attached, you could do it in the setback kind of credit yard space. You can do something.

Tony Robinson:
Interesting. Yeah. I feel like we should spend more time, especially for the high cost of living areas, just talking about the ADU as a strategy because we don’t a lot. How

Ashley Kehr:
To navigate it.

Tony Robinson:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s go back to the condo because you end up selling it.

Rick Albert:
Yes.

Tony Robinson:
Walk us through. I mean, it was the golden goose that helps you get into the next deal. Why’d you decide

Rick Albert:
To sell it? Yeah. So I had the same tenant there for four years because he was another friend of mine reached out through my network and I was like, “Look, I’m going to cut your deposit in half because we all know they’re going to trash the place anyways, but I’ll give you a two year lease.” That made me feel more comfortable going into the second house hack. And then we had COVID that hit. So anyway, they were there for four years, they moved out. So we had to make a decision. We’re like, “Do we continue to rent it? Do we sell it?” There were a lot of factors. It did have some good equity in it. So it was like, “Okay, is there a better source of equity?” Unfortunately, the ultimate decision was in 2022, LA still had the eviction moratorium in place because of the COVID.
And so we could put in the most perfect tenant and literally the next day they could stop paying and there’d be nothing we could do about it. So my wife, God bless her, she puts up with a lot. So when she says something, I listen and she’s like, “Is it really worth the risk?” I said, “Probably not.” I mean, it’s still a condo, right? So there’s still HOAs to deal with, which have its pros and cons. So we just decided to sell at that point. And it took about three weeks and then all of a sudden we got three offers over asking and got it sold. Yeah. It was a little lull, but we got it done. Yeah, we sold it for 453,000.

Ashley Kehr:
And you had bought it for 225,000.

Tony Robinson:
Wow. But now you’ve got a $200,000 problem of what are you going to do with that capital that you just made, right? So what’s the next move once you sell the condo?

Rick Albert:
So the next move was we wanted to try out of state. He’s actually my brother-in-law. We talked about him earlier. I moved in with him, worked with his dad. He’s also one of my biggest clients, and he started investing out of state. So he was like, “Hey, do you want to go fifty fifty because now we have our properties?” I had my house, he had his house, so we did the HELOC, home equity and the credit. At the time we found a credit union, they were willing to do up to 90% loan to value, fixed rate for five years at 4.75% interest only payments. I’m like, “This is a no-brainer.” So we “bought that property cash.”
So we ended up going fifty fifty on a fourplex in Nashville and bought that. So that was part of the exchange. And then on our own, because it was my first time investing out of state, so I try to be more risk averse if I can. So I was like, “Okay, I’m reducing risk by having a joint partnership with someone.” So we’re both sharing in that risk. The next one is like, “Okay, what are some of these lower cost markets that still have a decent population, different job opportunities?” And so that’s where Alabama came up, very landlord friendly. There was a triplex. It was listed for 180,000. It didn’t have hot water heaters in it, so it couldn’t be financed. And he got full price offers, but he wasn’t taking them. I’m like, “I’ll buy it.”
So I paid cash because I had the sale of the condo. We ended up negotiating it down to 90,000. Yeah. My wife now has this expectation that I can get any property for half off. It’s really tough. Even my realtor, who’s great, he was even surprised. I’m like, “He didn’t want to.” So yeah, we end up buying it for like 90,000, put the hot water heaters in. We ended up spending around 55,000 or so. And that was my first introduction to the Burr method and did that. We put out of our own cash about 55,000 and we were able to do a cash out of about 120,000.

Ashley Kehr:
And then are you just going to keep rolling that capital into more burrs?

Rick Albert:
That’s kind of the idea. Right now we’re taking a little bit of a break. I don’t know what you guys experienced. I’d love to get your feedback, but we’ve been experiencing really high vacancy rates lately. Things are taking longer to rent and that’s happening across multiple markets. And so this year has been much slower in terms of getting stuff rented. We’re almost there and having 100% occupancy again. Once that’s done, then I’ll start buying more. I really want to explore the five to 10 unit apartment space. I think the economies of scale are becoming more and more important with the rising cost of construction and things like that.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. In my market, I’m seeing the opposite, but I’m also very small rural areas. I’ve listed three units in the last 45 days and one just got listed yesterday. The other two rented within three days. We had over, I think, 70 leads for each of them. We had to take the showings and do an open house because we had so many people requesting, but they rented so quickly and I think this third one will, but I just think that’s that very specific small market. I can’t say for a nationwide scale, but Tony’s about to find out pretty soon what this market is. You can

Rick Albert:
Tell

Ashley Kehr:
Us

Rick Albert:
How it

Tony Robinson:
Is. Ask me in three weeks and I’ll let you know. We got a rental coming up.

Rick Albert:
I mean, I’m noticing it more. We are noticing in LA, we’re actually at a four year low for rents. Part of that’s because a lot of the new construction that started years ago are finally getting finished. But yeah, markets like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, because it’s easier to build and all that, all those projects are coming online. We almost wrote an offer on a place just outside Austin, and right before we signed off on the offer, we took one less look at comps and we’re like, “There’s a new construction apartment complex.” We can’t compete except on price, which means I’d have to offer so low to be offensive.

Ashley Kehr:
Yeah. See, I don’t have any of that in my market. There’s no new construction rentals. There’s probably been one in the last 10 years. I would say one in their patio homes. So we have the garage, everything, so they’re still not even comparable to a smaller apartment unit. That’s

Rick Albert:
Fair. No, I will say here in LA, I rented out my ADU twice. The first time took about two weeks. The second one took about three days. It’s pretty fast here because inventory in general is low when it is super expensive to build. When you do have rent control and all those things, it actually keeps inventory low. So things typically rent faster, so it just kind of depends.

Tony Robinson:
I mean, you’ve got a really unique perspective, Rick, because you’re an investor, house hacker, agent also. So for all of the Rickies that are listening who live in a high cost of living area and they maybe want a house hack, if you were to kind of button up the best practices of Rick’s story, what would that be to the person that’s listening right now?

Rick Albert:
One, look just outside desirable areas, because the desirable areas are super expensive. As people get priced out, they have to go somewhere. My condo, part of the reason why I appreciate it so well is I was surrounded by more expensive markets. So I’m like, “Hi, I’m your only option.” You all of a sudden become the prettiest girl in the room. So there’s that. Don’t be necessarily afraid of townhouses and condos if that’s all your budget can allow. You just have to really look at the HOA docs because a lot of HOAs are getting hit hard right now. But I’ve had clients do it and what we’ve been looking at is actually three plus bedrooms because it becomes a house alternative later on as a rental. So if a family can’t afford a house, but they need the bedroom count, that’s where you kind of come in.
So we are looking at those in terms of high cost of living. And with house hacking, you get all the benefits of being an expensive market. So a 3% appreciation on a $100,000 home is three grand. Do that on a million dollar home, you just made 30 grand in appreciation. So you’re actually developing wealth arguably faster in these higher cost markets than you might elsewhere. So it just depends on what your goals are.

Ashley Kehr:
Okay. So before we wrap up here, I’ve got to ask, is there one thing during your investing journey or maybe your career as an agent that you think was maybe unique or different than what most other investors do that you could share with us?

Rick Albert:
Yeah. Tony, when you asked me earlier about the closing costs for the condo and I hesitated, it’s because I actually forgot. And the reason being is most people know about buying points. So you pay the lender money to lower your interest rate. What you can do is the opposite. You can actually raise your interest rate and then the lender gives you a credit. So the reason why I hesitated on that question is because I remember raising my interest rate and the lender gave me the money to cover part of the closing

Ashley Kehr:
Cost. Okay. So let’s use numbers for this example because I didn’t even know this was a scenario that happened. I just did it

Rick Albert:
Last year.

Ashley Kehr:
He’s a lender saying it’s $1,000 and we’ll lower your interest rate by half a percent. If you pay that, we will lower it. You’re saying instead they’ll raise your interest rate half a percent and pay you a thousand dollars.

Rick Albert:
Correct.

Ashley Kehr:
Interesting.

Rick Albert:
So because I knew it was a fixer, so I already knew I was going to refinance and get the PMI taken off and do all that. So I was like, “Fine, I’ll temporarily have a higher interest rate.”

Ashley Kehr:
So that money was almost like you think of it as a seller credit

Rick Albert:
Where

Ashley Kehr:
It just goes onto your closing statement and decreases your closing costs.

Rick Albert:
Exactly. But it came from the lender.

Tony Robinson:
I’ve never heard of that. Do most lenders offer that or is that – All

Rick Albert:
Of them do.

Tony Robinson:
Interesting.

Ashley Kehr:
You just got to know to ask.

Rick Albert:
It’s because people don’t think about it because they’re like, “Well, I don’t want my payments higher.” But if you know you’re going to refinance, I’m in the middle of refinancing my current house because I raised my interest rate to have some of my closing costs covered because I knew it was a fixer. So once we refinance, if all goes as planned, knock on wood, we’ll be saving like 900 bucks a month because it happens to be a higher price point. But yeah, you can raise the interest rate. And to be fair, it barely moves the dial. I had a client do it once because it didn’t appraise, which we actually knew going into it wasn’t going to appraise, but we’re like, “Hey, let’s use a negotiation.” Interest rates were already ticking up, so she raised her interest rate to match what the rates It would’ve been anyways had we canceled and the lender not only gave her enough to cover the $5,000 difference in the appraisal, but an extra 1,500 bucks in her pocket.
And her payments went up like 70 bucks a month. She’s like, “I’ll live.”

Ashley Kehr:
Well, Rick, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate the opportunity. The drive out here. Where can people reach out to you and find out more

Rick Albert:
Information? Yeah, so I try to be active on Instagram and on YouTube at @RickBalbert. I have started a podcast myself. You’re both welcome to come on as guests. I would appreciate it called The Key to the City of Angels, where we do explore all things real estate. And then we try to tie it to Southern California because it’s such a unique market.

Ashley Kehr:
I can talk about my experience in the airport today.

Rick Albert:
There you go. Hey yeah, the building codes are probably just about the same, long and rough. I could imagine.

Ashley Kehr:
Well, thank you guys so much for joining us on this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley He’s Tony and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.