Tyler Gerhold (02:35):
But after moving out here, I started grad school, studying astronautical engineering, primarily doing research right now, studying 3D-printed metal rocket nozzles. I initially started getting interested in real estate back in college, actually. After my junior year, I had an internship working on some torpedoes. This was back south of Pittsburgh. My time there, I spent through all my work, but I didn’t really find myself getting a whole ton of enjoyment from that engineering work. And I naturally found myself kind of gravitating towards zillow.com as funny as it may be and just looking at houses and all the different properties on there. And I loved it. I was like, I could sit here and look at these properties all day long. And I started watching some guru videos and whatnot. Well, one thing led to another, the summer came to an end. I went back to college for my senior year, totally forgot about real estate.

Tyler Gerhold (03:24):
And then I got through my senior year, me and my roommate, who’s now like my accountability partner in all of my financial freedom endeavors, him and I started. We’d stay up till two, three o’clock in the morning talking about personal finance and real estate investing, personal and regular stock investing, all those kinds of things. It kind of got me back on like, okay, I’m going to read all these different books after I graduate college. So I started reading. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in early 2020. That got me hooked back on real estate. There was one particular line in that book that really kind of drew me back in. And it was Robert Kiyosaki says in the book, he says he could look at properties all day long. He loves doing it and he could just do it all day long.

Tyler Gerhold (04:01):
So when I read that, I was like, wow, I felt the same way back whenever I was at my internship. I could literally look at these properties all day long. I really find enjoyment in doing this. I should really pursue real estate as an actual endeavor. So I was talking with my buddy from college. He was a finance major. He’s like, “Hey, I got this house hacking book. You should read it.” So he sent it over to me and I read it. And immediately I knew I wanted to house hack and get into real estate that way. And the rest is pretty much history from there.

Robert Leonard (04:30):
You can share as much or as little of the specific details as you’d like, but what was money and investing like in your household growing up? Was it talked about, or was it more of a taboo subject?

Tyler Gerhold (04:41):
I would say money was a little bit more of a taboo subject. It wasn’t necessarily talked about so much. I grew up in a middle-class family. My dad had a great job. He worked down in the city. My mom primarily worked from home, just like watching the kids. She watched some of the other kids in the neighborhood for a few hundred bucks a week, some things like that. So a typical middle-class family. My dad would ride the trolley in from the south of Pittsburgh all the way into the city, hour there, hour back, all day long, all year long. And that’s just not a life I want to live.

Tyler Gerhold (05:08):
He would come home. He wouldn’t be able to eat dinner. Couldn’t sit down with the kids. We would immediately get in the car and go off to hockey practice. I grew up playing hockey. And so my brother and I both played on two hockey teams. So his time was primarily taken up by running the kids all over the place and working his job. And that was pretty much it, getting home seven, eight o’clock at night, and then finally sitting down for dinner. And that’s just the definition kind of, of the rat race lifestyle that I just didn’t want to live. So, that’s kind of what put me on my path towards financial freedom.

Robert Leonard (05:37):
You’re a relatively new investor. You’re young. You fit the demographic of the show perfectly. So I think a lot of those people listening to the show today will be able to relate with you pretty well. Before you even did your first deal and you were just learning about real estate, how did you decide which strategy or asset class you were even going to focus on? How did you decide between flips and rentals and single-family houses and large apartment buildings?

Tyler Gerhold (06:02):
I know this can be a little tough for a lot of investors. I feel like this was actually pretty simple for me. I wasn’t going to be wholesaling. I wasn’t going to be flipping properties. I have a full-time job where I make a good income and I pursue my graduate research and stuff on the weekends. I didn’t need another full-time job. I didn’t need to clutter my life with all the details of conducting a full-scale flip when I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time and the holding costs were going to end up racking up. So wholesaling and flipping kind of were knocked out for me there.

Tyler Gerhold (06:32):
And then in terms of house hacking came across the table from that book. And as soon as I read it, I was like, this is a great way for me to get into real estate at a pretty low entry because I financed it with a 3.5% FHA loan. It was just really easy to get in, get started. Landlording I didn’t experience that way before I maybe jumped into like a larger apartment building. I didn’t want to go and start raising money for a property where I didn’t necessarily even know what the closing process looked like. How could I be confident in taking investor’s money when I’ve never even been through the closing cycle one time? So it just made sense to house hack. And then from there I can go on and pursue other real estate endeavors.

Robert Leonard (07:11):
Did you know which type of house hack you wanted? Did you know if you wanted to do a single-family house hack where you just live with some buddies and you rent out the bedrooms? Did you know if you wanted to maybe do a duplex? Where did you want to go? Did you have an idea or did you kind of just approach it optimistically and opportunistically so that whatever popped up you would do?

Tyler Gerhold (07:30):
So initially I wanted to do a single-family home and get like a four-bedroom, three-bath house. I just like lived down in the basement or something like that because I can live pretty simply and then rent out the other four bedrooms, but that’s not really a popular strategy in the Dayton, Ohio area. The rents here are relatively cheap for a one-bedroom apartment. You could get something pretty nice for about 600 bucks. And single-family homes rent here, three beds, two baths for around $1,000 a month.

Tyler Gerhold (07:55):
So I knew it was going to be kind of difficult to get people to want to room with you. So I shied away from that a little bit. I started looking into two to four-unit properties more so, and I analyzed probably between 30 and 50 deals, single-family, all the way up to four units and found that for my market, the Dayton area and the surrounding area, that the four-unit properties were able to provide the most cashflow. And I wanted to get a property in particular with two-bedroom units and I instead would move into the two-bedroom unit and then find just one roommate for the other bedroom, as opposed to having to rely on potentially three roommates to meet my projected cashflow goals.

Robert Leonard (08:35):
Yeah. One of the problems with the single-family house acts as well is that when you’re going to apply for the loan, they don’t take into consideration the income for the bedrooms, which isn’t always an issue, but if you’re relying on the income from the other units to qualify for that house, that’s not going to work for a single-family house. Whereas if you buy a duplex, triplex, quadplex, they’ll take into consideration, they being the lender, they’ll use the income from the other units to help you qualify for that mortgage. Was that a factor at all for you when you were looking at the houses to buy?

Tyler Gerhold (09:07):
No, not in particular. The houses are pretty cheap here. Within the city, you can get a three bed, two baths for 50, 60 grand. The place I was living north of the city prior up in Huber Heights, you could get a three bed, two baths for 100 grand a couple of years ago. Those properties have appreciated now to about 140, 150, but there wasn’t going to be an issue with me getting a loan, especially in particular like in FHA.

Robert Leonard (09:30):
Once you decided which path you were going to go down, what did you use to start learning? I know you mentioned at the beginning of the show that you listened to podcasts. Did you do anything else? Did you enroll in a program at a university? Did you read books? What really gave you the most value when you were just starting out so you could buy your first deal?

Tyler Gerhold (09:50):
So I actually, I think I get enough formal education. I didn’t need anymore for real estate pursuing the master’s degree and all. I actually have kind of developed a strategy over time that works good for me. And it’s, I set a time period and I call it the knowledge expansion phase. And in that phase, I pick a particular topic that I want to learn a lot more about. So I guess it was about last springtime, March, April timeframe, I decided that was going to be house hacking and rental properties. So over the course of two months, all I did was focus primarily all my free time on learning about house hacking and rental properties.

Tyler Gerhold (10:23):
And throughout that knowledge expansion phase, I would listen to podcasts, and particular podcasts gauged towards maybe house hacking or rental properties. And then I would also be reading books. So I’d read The House Hacking Strategy. I read Brandon Turner’s book on rental properties. I was also reading articles. I was buzzing all around the BiggerPockets Forums. One super underrated thing that I think a lot of investors don’t think of, just type into Google whatever your question is about real estate, tag BiggerPockets on the end, and there’s probably 15 people before that asked that exact same question. Anytime I had a really specific question, just typed it into Google with BiggerPockets on the end. And that helped me find people that would post the exact question that I posted before.

Tyler Gerhold (10:59):
Also, real estate meetups. I had actually only gone to one real estate meetup before the pandemic hit and everything got shut down, but it was actually really beneficial because I connected with another individual who wanted to house hack as well. And him and I are actually great buddies now and we’re actually partnering on our next property together. So there are a lot of ways that you can get information through the articles, the books, the podcasts, but I’d say the most important piece is I actually…when I moved out here and moved into a house hack and I didn’t even realize it at the time, but it was a guy I knew from Penn State, he bought a single-family home out here because he’s working on his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering at the base here.

Tyler Gerhold (11:36):
And I moved in with him and he had owned that single-family home. And I started reading these books. I was like, “Hey, do you realize what you’re doing here?” He’s like, “What do you mean?” And I was like, “Your house hacking.” “You pay for like most of my mortgage. Yeah, whatever.” And I’m like, “This is like an extreme wealth-building strategy.” And I don’t think he really realized what this is actually doing for your financial future.

Tyler Gerhold (11:55):
So I started reading these books more and more and the pandemic hit and all, and he does his Ph.D. research all day long. And he’s like, “You know what? I’m bored. I can’t even go visit my girlfriend. I can’t do this. I can’t do that.” So he actually decides, he’s like, “I’m going to buy something.” So he pulled a HELOC out on his house because he actually, he bought it on a VA loan and took like 25% to the table. And I was like, “What are you doing? You didn’t need to take any money to the table.” And his property actually then appreciated even more on top of that. So I was like, “You should take a HELOC out on this property, 80% loan to value. And then you can use that and go buy like a four-unit property if you really wanted to. So he’s like, “You know what, that’s a great idea. I’m going to do that.”

Tyler Gerhold (12:32):
And he doesn’t mess around whenever he wants to do something. He’s all action. Sometimes a little more action than I would be comfortable with. So he doesn’t like to read, but he listened to podcasts. He listened to this podcast. He would watch a lot of YouTube videos and he eventually found a property and put an offer on it. And I was sitting out in the living room, still reading my books and it turns out my roommate’s buying a four-unit apartment building in the other room. So I was able to learn from him and kind of shoulder surf. And that was really beneficial to me getting into my first deal, especially since I didn’t even see my property before putting the offer in.

Tyler Gerhold (13:08):
So him being there, being able to guide me throughout the process and being that mentor is I think the most crucial part to a new investor. And a mentor doesn’t need to be some real estate mogul that has 50, 100, 1000 units. It could be someone who’s done one deal, one deal that you want to do. And that could mean all the difference in the world between you taking action and getting that property versus sitting back and listening to podcasts in your car on the way to work for the next year.

Robert Leonard (13:36):
I forget where I heard it, but somebody that is quite successful once told me that you only need a mentor that’s one step ahead of you. That’s all they have to be. They don’t have to be 10 steps ahead. They don’t have to be a billionaire. They don’t have to be the CEO of Amazon. They just have to be one step ahead of you to help somebody behind them. And so I think that your point that you just talked about illustrates that exactly. And I mean, even me, I’m not ultra-rich, I’m not a real estate mogul by any means. I’ve done quite a bit of deals and have some small portfolio built up, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a super, super successful investor, but yet I think I’ve had a decent impact on a lot of people that listen to the podcast. I mean, I think I’m also an example of that mentorship principle in play.

Tyler Gerhold (14:20):
Yeah. I would totally agree. It also comes back to who you surround yourself with. So I was locked up in a pandemic with one other person working on his PhD and me working on my master’s. You eventually become very similar to the person that you’re really locked up in a single-family home with. So he bought a four unit and guess what, a month and a half later I had a four-unit under contract. So it just goes to show you how important it is to surround yourself with the right people.

Robert Leonard (14:46):
Looking back to when you were just starting to learn and knowing what know now, would you have approached different resources differently? Would you have maybe started with something else more specifically knowing now what you know?

Tyler Gerhold (15:00):
I don’t think so, to be honest. I dove in, like I said, with that knowledge expansion phase and I sat two months, two months, I’m going to do nothing but learn about this topic. And then after that, I cut myself completely off, no more podcasts, no more books, all-action networking with lenders, networking with agents, talking to other investors in my area. So that was pretty helpful for me strictly defining this is the period where I’m going to learn. After that, I have to start taking action. I think the mentorship from my roommate at the time was key in getting me that first property. No book or podcasts could have helped as much as he had.

Robert Leonard (15:40):
If you could, would you go back and specifically focus on finding a mentor more than maybe listening to that extra podcast or reading that extra book?

Tyler Gerhold (15:49):
I think if you have a baseline foundation of knowledge where you can hold a conversation with someone who’s maybe done another deal or two more than you have, you don’t want to go in there and be like, I know nothing about real estate, but hey, how do I do this? How do I do all this? If you can go in with a little bit of knowledge and show that you’ve done your homework a little bit, I think people will really be open to having conversations with you. So develop that foundation level of knowledge and then go out and pursue other investors in your market. Ask them questions and just sit down and have a conversation with them.

Robert Leonard (16:21):
Let’s walk through your specific house hack. What do the numbers look like on that?

Tyler Gerhold (16:27):
This is my favorite part. I’m a numbers guy. I’m an engineer. Running deals is my favorite part. Pretty much I love everything up until closing. And then after that, I don’t want to manage it. I’ve learned that pretty quickly. My property was listed. It was in a suburb of Dayton. It was listed for 205,000. I offered 208 with 3,000 in seller credit. And that strategy there was brought up to me from my agent who was like, “If you don’t have a whole lot of funds to put down, your financing this FHA, we could request some seller credit so we could increase the purchase price. That’s going to look better to the seller anyway because you’re coming at them with that bigger number, even though you’re requesting that seller credit. So that’s going to decrease your initial investment.”

Tyler Gerhold (17:08):
So instead of me having to take 13,000 to the table, I only had to take 10,000 to the table. And actually my roommate who bought that four-unit, he also bought another four-unit and he’s house hacking a four-unit and he did the same thing and he requested the maximum amount of seller credit that you can get allowed on an FHA finance property. And he only took $2,000 to the closing table.

Tyler Gerhold (17:30):
So during the negotiation process for my deal, there were some things, there was some deferred maintenance on the property. A couple of the HVAC systems were original, which meant they were 40 years old. I don’t even know how they were still operating, but I requested for funds to replace at least one of them. And luckily enough that I did that, an HVAC system went one month after me purchasing the property. So I negotiated for $10,000 in a total repair budget, outside of closing. And after prorated rents, the security deposits, all that, my net worth actually increased at the closing table. So that was something that I found very interesting. I went and put that $5,000 into the HVAC system clearly. And then I also put $3,000 into all new electrical panels for the building, but that, in turn, is going to increase the value of the property. So overall my net worth actually increased from just purchasing the property, which was fantastic.

Tyler Gerhold (18:23):
Some of the other numbers on the property, income-wise, I’m pulling about just under 2300 a month, my mortgage payment’s 1500 a month. So I brought 800 leftover for any other repairs and things that I want to make. I put 200 away for CapEx, 100 away for repairs, 125 away for vacancy. And then from my initial estimates, whenever I ran the deal through my financial model, that myself and a buddy of mine made, I came to the conclusion that I was probably going to be cash flowing about 100 a month, which is about my target. I wanted to be positive cash flow. And when I analyze these deals, I factor for all these expenses the way you would kind of factor for a traditional rental property.

Tyler Gerhold (18:58):
So I actually went in and I gathered utility data. I reached out to multiple investors in the area to figure out what their water bills were. And I went down and broke their water bills down into the average amount, the average cost per month, per unit for water, for gas, and for trash on a property so that I can have accurate numbers when I would run deals.

Robert Leonard (19:19):
I love this talk about the seller credit specifically, because I believe I’ve had a seller credit on every single deal that I’ve bought in so far, and I’ve done seven or eight or nine deals somewhere in that ballpark. And I’ve had a seller credit on every single one because I think it’s such a good way to be able to reduce the amount of money you have to bring to the table. And as new investors, I mean, that’s the biggest hurdle for almost everybody. And seller credits are something that not a lot of people know about. When I bought my first house, everybody’s like, “How did you buy it in college?” Well, I utilized the seller credit. I think I got roughly $10,000 in the seller credit. So, that significantly reduced the amount of money that I had to bring to the table. And once I learned that, I mean, I’ve just leveraged that every deal since.

Tyler Gerhold (20:03):
Yeah. I mean, just like my buddy, he bought a four-unit for $2,000. Where else can you do that in real estate where you can acquire a four-unit property that’s pulling over 20,000 in income for $2,000? You just can’t find it. There’s no better way to get into that property. And remember he was also living in that single-family home at the time. So he moved out of that and he got his property manager to take over and start renting that out so he could get cash flow from that property.

Robert Leonard (20:26):
Yeah. My house hack that I’m in now isn’t as many units, it’s just a duplex, but it’s essentially worth 400,000 now. I bought it for about 350. It’s worth about 400. So I bought a $400,000 asset and I only had to bring $12,000 to the table. So if you think about that, that’s pretty crazy to be able to acquire and own an asset that’s worth $4,000 for only $12,000 in cash. Total, I would have had to bring roughly 25,000, a little bit less than that, but I, again, negotiated a big seller credit and was able to bring only $12,000 to the table.

Tyler Gerhold (20:59):
And if you think about it too, even after all expenses, if you’re breaking even, and not even bringing in positive cash flow, that asset is getting paid down over time by all of your tenants. So if you buy a $400,000 asset for $12,000, that’s getting paid down over time, you’re still getting a great return on your money.

Robert Leonard (21:16):
Yeah. So for me, I definitely don’t make a profit every month on this property. It’s a duplex. I live in one, I rent out the other. It’s a $400,000 asset. So it has a pretty big mortgage. And so I don’t necessarily make a profit, but what I do is I get to live for cheap. If I were going to rent something like what I live in now, it would probably be 1,600 to $1,800 a month, but I’m only paying $675 after my tenant has paid his rent. So for me, that’s a huge win. It’s not a profit, but it’s a huge win and it reduces my biggest expense significantly.

Robert Leonard (21:50):
But even more than that, when I move out, this property will cash flow roughly $1,000 a month give or take. And I bought that for $12,000 down. So in one year after I move out, I’ll have all of my money back just in net cash flow. And so I think that just illustrates, I’m not anything special. I didn’t do a crazy good deal or anything like that. It’s more illustrating the point of how powerful house hacking can be and using seller credits like you just mentioned.

Tyler Gerhold (22:18):
It really can be. And I wasn’t even paying a whole lot in rent. I was paying $425 a month in rent, and I still wanted to go and pursue a house hack. Yeah, I knew that was really cheap, but I knew that the loan paid out on the property, plus that cashflow, plus my rent savings, plus any potential appreciation on the property, the way sometimes I project the future appreciation on the property based on its previously performing over the years. So I’d go back and find an old sale price a while ago. Okay, it’s appreciated 1%, 2% annually since. I could maybe factor that into my calculations later. It was actually like $1,000 swing going from paying 425 to actually adding over $1,000 to my net worth every year, just by moving into that house hack.

Robert Leonard (22:59):
You work full-time as an aerospace engineer in the air force, which clearly if I had to guess isn’t a very easy job. I’m sure it’s probably pretty demanding. You’re attending grad school and you’re investing in real estate. How do you find time for it all?

Tyler Gerhold (23:13):
I really enjoy real estate. So it doesn’t really feel like it’s a job to me. I love doing this in my free time. So just to be clear, I’m not in the air force. I work as a government civilian just to clear that up. But grad school, I primarily spend about 20 hours on the weekends working on that. During the week, I typically work about eight-hour days. So it’s nothing too crazy. After that, I usually go to the gym. I go to the gym, try to at least five days a week. And then after that, I’ve come home and I’ll run any deals that I need to if I’m looking for a new property in the area. I’ll check up on email, reach out to any lenders, talk to my agent, whatever I need to do, the admin stuff that needs to be taken care of, hop on LinkedIn, talk with other investors, go to meetups sometimes in the evenings. Just take care of all those little things.

Tyler Gerhold (23:56):
Then I don’t have much time left in the day. And I sit down and read 15 to 20 pages in a book and try to relax for a little bit and then do it all over again the next day. So I definitely am busy. But I just moved to this area. Well, I guess I moved two years ago, but I still think I’m relatively new to the area. And so there’s not a whole lot for me to do. So this is great. I have tons of flexibility right now and I’d rather keep myself busy than not.

Robert Leonard (24:19):
Having attended undergrad at Penn State, did you graduate with student loans? And if so, how are you managing the dynamic of paying off student loans versus investing?

Tyler Gerhold (24:30):
I love this balance. I love this question. I get this question from a lot of my friends all the time as well. I graduated with $50,000 in student loan debt and I actually wasn’t even on target to have that much. So I started out college actually in Penn State’s Air Force ROTC program. I actually landed a full scholarship my sophomore year and went down to air force training down at Maxwell Air Force Base, came back for my junior year, actually injured myself at the gym, and then ended up getting medically disqualified from the program and my scholarship revoked. Luckily what had been paid until that time sophomore, junior year, I did not have to pay back, which I’m very fortunate for and very grateful for, but I did have to finance both my freshmen and senior year. So that’s where that 50,000 kind of comes in play.

Tyler Gerhold (25:16):
I have about 25,000 of that in federal loans, 25,000 of that in private student loans. The private loans I refinanced out to 20-year terms to decrease those monthly payments. The interest rates are a little bit higher than if you would go with the 10-year loans, but it decreases that monthly payment, which gives me the ability to save more, to then take all that extra money saved and move into investments like real estate and maybe put money into a Roth IRA and my retirement plans and all that good stuff as well. I wouldn’t necessarily want to pay down my 4% interest loan whenever I can go and buy a real estate asset that brings in 15, 20, 30%. For me, that’s what works best for me. And right now the government isn’t requesting payment for their federal loans and has 0% interest on them right now.

Tyler Gerhold (25:59):
So the way I look at that is as a 0% interest loan. So the government has given me this money. $250 a month is what my payment was. I look at it as $250 a month payment coming in from the government now to me, to fund my real estate acquisitions. There’s nothing better in the world than a 0% interest-free loan because you never have to pay it back. So once those payments do come back in place, I will be obviously paying at least the minimum. But as for right now, that $250 a month that would have gone to that is instead going into my real estate assets.

Robert Leonard (26:28):
What are your future goals with real estate? Do you have the vision or goal of getting to thousands of units or do you prefer on staying a little bit smaller and keeping more ownership for yourself?

Tyler Gerhold (26:38):
I want to build a syndication business. So, that’s where my main interests lie in real estate. It’s kind of why I got started. I love the idea of networking with other individuals, bringing on people who know nothing about real estate and explaining to them all the different benefits that it has to offer. So that is somewhere I want to definitely develop. A thousand units, whatever, I don’t have necessarily a unit count. I want to build a successful syndication business and then kind of go from there. Whatever the unit counting is that doesn’t really matter to me. Most people’s unit counts don’t even matter anyway, because they own like 0.1% of them. So I don’t even listen to anyone’s unit counts. I own four units right now, and I’m trying to put a five to 10 unit under contract here within the next couple of months.

Tyler Gerhold (27:16):
But guess what? I’m not going to own five or 10 units because I have three other partners on that deal. So I’m building this four-way partnership with some other friends. And we’re kind of using that as our foundation to then go and operate as the GP on a larger syndication and bring in other investors. And my favorite part about real estate is the networking. I love talking with other people in the industry. It’s really just the most fun part to me. I’ll go down with my partners. We’ll sit down at a brewery and we’ll grab a couple beers and talk about the way we’re going to set up our LLCs. That’s fun to me. That’s what I love most. And it was actually in Mark Manson’s book, The Subtle Art where he said, “True happiness is actually finding problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.” And problems dealing with real estate syndication are problems I love having and really want to solve.

Robert Leonard (28:00):
I also love that you mentioned that because I talk about that frequently, sometimes on the podcast, but frequently with my business partner, because when you hear Grant Cardone and all these other super investors that are taunting, that they own 10,000 units and I’m like, that’s great, but you own 0.001% of 10,000 units. So you personally don’t really own that many units. And of course, he’s super, super rich. And a lot of these guys are, and they’re far more successful than me. So I’m not knocking them by any means, but the investment doesn’t necessarily get dictated by how many units you own. And so you can be successful with less units. So for me, I own five or six units right now, but I own them with one other person. So 50% of all those units, that’s a much bigger piece than owning 1% of 100 units. So I think that’s just a missed dynamic that a lot of people in real estate miss. So I really like that you brought that part up.

Robert Leonard (28:53):
During this pandemic, how have you been approaching real estate? Are you worried about the market or are you still looking to make acquisitions? And what else have you been doing to better yourself personally?

Tyler Gerhold (29:04):
I don’t necessarily focus too entirely on the market at play. I look less at macro, more at micro. So I’m looking for properties that have flexibility. I want to have options whenever it comes to my property. I don’t want to buy something that in turn is going to force me to sell in a year or two because I can’t afford it or I miscalculated some things. That’s not what I want. I want the ability to, yeah, okay, if I want to sell a property in one to two, three years, I can, if the market is in line with the investment returns that we want to make. If that’s not the case, then maybe we can cash-out refinance. If it’s still not going to appraise where we want it to appraise, then we will hold it as a rental. And we want to make sure that our properties can be held as rentals in the long term. So having that flexibility is something that I’m particularly focused on right now.

Tyler Gerhold (29:50):
In terms of bettering myself throughout the pandemic, I’ve kind of come to this realization that like money, knowledge now is better than knowledge later. So I don’t want to be 50, 60 years old and come to all of these realizations that, oh wow, I should have done all of this in my 20s. Now, if I can read these books and get this knowledge and get the foundation now, I can put a lot of the work from these books, I can put that into place and get those compound effects over time from knowing all those different personal finance, real estate topics. And knowing all that now, I can really tap into the compound effect on knowledge.

Robert Leonard (30:24):
What is something you’ve purchased recently that has had a big impact on you or just been super helpful? It doesn’t have to be expensive or any type of product specifically. It could be a software tool. It could be a mobile app. It could be a peloton. It could be anything that has had a positive impact on your life or your business.

Tyler Gerhold (30:41):
So I don’t really purchase much besides real estate. I live a pretty simplistic lifestyle. I would consider myself a bit more of a minimalist. I don’t have a couch. I don’t even have a TV. I got one plate. I live pretty simply. And I find a lot of enjoyment in the simple things. And I’ve actually kind of found a little bit of this from a philosophy, I guess you could call it from Miyamoto Musashi. He wrote Dokkodo, which is 21 precepts on basically life and how he sees it. And one of the things that kind of comes into play in there is don’t really hold possessions longer than you need to. If it’s not of value to you, remove it from your life, give it to someone else who can appreciate it more. So everything that I have in my life, I really do appreciate. So anything that is there that is not really giving me any benefit, then I like to give it to someone else, donate it, whatever I can do to give that to use to someone else and kind of de-clutter my life a little bit.

Robert Leonard (31:39):
That reminds me of the book and I’m going to butcher the title now. I can’t think of the exact name, but it’s the book about tidying up your life. It’s one of the most popular books I’ve ever seen on Amazon and it reminds me of that exact principle that you just mentioned.

Tyler Gerhold (31:54):
So I actually kind of got that from Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin. That might be the book you’re thinking of, but she talks about like the enough and the fulfillment curve in that book. That’s kind of where I got that in the de-cluttering of the life kind of thing. But yeah, so a lot of these principles that I read in these books, I really try to incorporate into my life where I see fit. That’s the one thing that I really focus on.

Robert Leonard (32:15):
Yeah, the book is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. It’s a self-help book. It technically falls in the genre of self-help, but if you read it, it talks about these same ideas that you’re talking about and it can actually have an impact on your life in general, that helps with real estate, business. And that’s one of the things I recommend to people is don’t be so stuck on reading just business or just investing books. Think about some of these more abstract concepts that you could read books wise that could help you in your business or your life, that allows you to grow and be more successful without you necessarily expecting it.

Tyler Gerhold (32:49):
I definitely agree. Back to when I was talking about that knowledge expansion phase, where I’d primarily be focused on real estate books, after that, I still wanted to read, but I wouldn’t let myself read about house hacking and rental properties in apartment buildings. I cut myself off. So then I would focus more on some leadership books, philosophy books, or something in regards to personal finance, something a little bit different to help me create a well-rounded lifestyle and help me grow in all areas of life.

Tyler Gerhold (33:13):
Another interesting thing about me is back in 2019, I read one book. I hated reading growing up. I read one book in 2019, The Millionaire Next Door. And then I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in 2020. And then throughout the rest of 2020, I want to take advantage of the pandemic because I was primarily working at home and had a lot of extra time, so I actually read 16 books in 2020. And this year I’ve currently read nine already, and I’m on target for 26. But it’s not even necessarily about the book count. It’s about being able to take value from each individual book. So I do spend time rereading concepts, going through highlighting, taking notes, and making sure that I do grasp and understand concepts, as opposed to just speeding through books, to speed through books, which I don’t find valuable.

Robert Leonard (33:53):
I think that last piece that you mentioned is so important and I was actually a victim to that myself. I made that mistake and it kind of goes back to the same idea or concept that we talked about with the unit count, right? Everybody wants to say they have so many units, the same idea with books. People want to be able to kind of  “flaunt” that they read 50 books, 100 books, whatever it is. And embarrassingly, that was me. Two years in a row I read like 50 books or 60 books in a year. But then when I looked back on what I actually remembered or learned from those books, I was like, I didn’t take much from these because I wasn’t really involved in them. I wasn’t super focused on what I was reading.

Robert Leonard (34:30):
And so then the next year I made the goal of not reading any new books. And I told myself, I could only read books that I’ve already read before. And I had to really focus on what I was reading. And so now I’ll read through a book. And what I noticed was that I was highlighting throughout the book as I was reading, which was good, but I’d never go back to those highlights and I’d never go back to all the sticky notes I put in. So I’m like, well, what is the point? So now when I’m done reading the book, I force myself to go back, look at every highlight that I made. And I actually create a summary sheet of every single thing I highlighted. So now I have something that I could quickly refer back to that has a summary of everything I read and all the important points, but also by typing that all out, it really ingrains it in my mind. And it has been super helpful for me.

Tyler Gerhold (35:14):
Yeah. These books aren’t something you need to read one time and then throw on a shelf, never to look at again. I reference these books all the time. I go back to the house hacking book and be like, oh, I kind of don’t really remember the exact way to do something. So I go back and I reference it and I go through and I highlighted things and I’ll just skim through it. And I’ll just go through all the highlighted things.

Tyler Gerhold (35:32):
And I think going back to the…just trying to read as many books as you possibly can, comes down to the way individuals measure their own success. And individuals are currently, that may do that, measure it based on external factors, which isn’t necessarily the best way to measure your own personal success. You need to measure it against yourself. What actually matters to you, whether you’ve read 26 books or you’ve actually put them to use and gained something from them and positively impacted your life? So start measuring them against what you actually value as opposed to what others value.

Robert Leonard (36:03):
Tyler, thanks for being a listener of the show. And for also joining me as a guest today. For those listening that are interested in learning more about you and your journey, and might want to connect with you, where’s the best place for them to go?

Tyler Gerhold (36:15):
Well, Robert, this has been awesome. This is like a dream come true for me. So I really had a good time doing this. But the best place to connect with me would probably be on LinkedIn. So Tyler Gerhold there on LinkedIn or on Instagram. I’ve recently stopped using Instagram for a while, but I’m starting to pick back up using that and kind of documenting my journey and provide some useful tips to anyone that wants to get started in real estate. So you can find me on Instagram at _tylergerhold and those would be the best two places to go.

Robert Leonard (36:41):
I’ll put a link to both of those platforms for Tyler in the show notes below if any of you are interested in connecting with him. And if any of you are interested, who listened to the show, have a real estate journey that you’d like to share, and you’d like to consider coming on the show, feel free to connect with me on Instagram and shoot me a DM or shoot me an email and let me know your story. I’d love to hear it and see if we can possibly get you on the show next as a guest. Tyler, thanks so much for joining me.

Tyler Gerhold (37:06):
Thanks, Robert. This was a lot of fun.

Robert Leonard (37:08):
All right guys, that’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro (37:14):
Thank You for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.