What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe, gathering the king's podcast. Today, I've got Osh Patel here on the king stage. My brother, how you doing? Chaz, I'm doing great. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Absolutely, man. I'm excited for this conversation. You know, we were just kinda chatting offline about being being busy and going after it. We're gonna get into some of this because I know a guy at your stage doesn't have to, but he chooses to. What kind of business did you have?
I am in real estate now. I do nonresidential commercial real estate, but that was after a 15 year IT career. And multiple side hustles. I finally found my calling. And honestly, I choose to work instead of sleep or really just about anything. So very passionate about what I do and just focused on commercial real estate. I love it. Give us give us just a half second on on what what did the 15 years in tech look like?
You know, grew up with very strict immigrant parents, and they kind of dictated my path. Told me I'm gonna major and I and, essentially, you know, I went into IT because I didn't have the ability to do what I wanted to. I had to follow their rules. Right. Chaz a 15 year career that I progressed at, went up the ladder, but I would lie to myself and say, man, I love my job.
But in all honesty, I hated waking up, hated going to work, and always had a side hustle to try to get me out of it, and it wasn't until, you know, 15 years later finally made it. But yeah, man. It was, you know, I wish I had had the courage earlier Yeah. To make some hard decisions. Yeah. I love it. Well, we'll definitely get into some decision making.
I wanna know before we kinda get a little bit more into your your history and some of the decisions that you made, why what's what's the bigger play for you? Like, not necessarily why commercial real estate, Why are you doing this thing? Why have you been doing it? Why do you keep doing it even though you don't have to? You know, I struggled with that earlier with my side hustles, I thought I was doing it for the money.
And then when a little bit of money started coming in, it didn't really motivate me. So I I honestly didn't know why I was spending all this time working my 9 to 5 and chasing side hustles, but finally it got to the point where I wanted the time freedom. Right? So that's been what I've been chasing. And then it just seems like it's an elusive goal that keeps moving. So, yeah, the why though now is because I absolutely love what I do, and I love teaching other people what I do as well.
It's just it's way more fun doing commercial real estate with other people. Right? And for years, I was a silo Chaz a one man shop And, god, it's so much more fun when there's other people to bounce ideas off of. And, you know, if you wanna go far, go together. Right? Yeah. That's right. Oh, and I love that about real estate in general. You can be pretty creative, but even in the commercial state space at another level is that it's it's usually made up of a team.
It's usually made up of JVs, or I'm usually made up of multiple hands in the in in the pot making the stew. And so you're right. There can be a camaraderie that doesn't exist. In in some other businesses for sure. Talk talk about maybe the transition. Like, you obviously were, you know, Side hustles, but then you you made this leap into real estate. Tell us what that was like at the beginning before kind of things got started. Yeah. So the LEAP initially wasn't in real estate.
It was starting an IT consulting company. K. And it was probably safer move. You know, we had a young daughter, I'm married at the time. So I quit my IT career to start an IT consulting job. And I thought that would be my way of working for myself and getting that time freedom, but it ended up being a lot of work, a lot of travel, a lot of late nights, So that didn't cut him. And that was, you know, a lateral move, if anything. I just didn't have to go report to somebody else.
Right. And I always heard that real estate was a great way to offset taxes. So I bought my first property. It was a mixed use building in a college town. It was it was kind of a dump. And my mindset at the time, Chaz, was I bought it because the bottom floor was a grocery store that basically sold a lot of beer to college kids, There was four apartments above it. And my dumb self at the time thought, okay.
When the store leases up, I can manage the store as well and have another source of income. And it wasn't until I was there renovating the college apartments. I was unclogging the attendance toilet, actually. I look out the window and I see on top of the rooftop of the store, an HVAC company replacing all the rooftop units for the store so I go downstairs to inquire what's going on The store owner tells me that their AC went out so they're replacing their entire HVAC system on their dime.
So here I am, you know, fixing holes and walls and unclogging toilets from college kids that are destroying my apartment, and the commercial tenants are actually improving it And that was a pivotal moment where I essentially dropped everything that I was doing and became a full time commercial real estate investor. Yeah. That's incredible. There's that moment in time where you have these realizations.
And I'm I'm sad to tell you this because I've had that same realization about commercial real estate. From the tenant's perspective. So, obviously, I've owned lots of retail businesses over the years, and I've I've been in that scenario. Where we're replacing the HVAC, and I'm going, wait. I so I gotta replace this thing, and I pay for that dude's taxes, and I pay for that dude's insurance. And I pay for the parking lot snow removal. What does he pay for? He doesn't pay for anything. It sucks.
Being a tenant. But, you know, for for all of those residential investors out there, I've been trying for the last 10 years to educate them, push them to at least look at commercial real estate. Right? Take the blinders off. Don't say it's too hard. Don't say it's too much money because Listen, I did it and I started with really crappy properties and moved my way up. So just open up your horizons a little bit and look at other asset classes. Yeah. Love that perspective.
Okay. So I wanna know when you when you finally started to, like, get some things rolling, maybe not, like, full momentum like you are now, but wonder of a good decision that you made, Osh, of something you Chaz look back on moment in time. You're like, yep. Typical moment. The decision was just being relentless looking for properties.
Five times a day, I would look at every commercial property Chaz popped up in a hundred mile radius, and that first mover advantage was often what caused some of these big winds. So it's just relentless work ethic trying to beat the competition. Yeah. I love the perspective there because it's such a simple principle. Of speed, really. Yeah. I'm lazy. Listen. By nature, I'm lazy. I make a lot of mistakes. I always learn things the hard way.
So maybe it's because I absolutely love doing this and searching for deals. You know, it's it's like somebody window shopping or shopping for cars online. I'd rather look at buildings versus configuring a sports car or something. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think Chaz, you know, the the It's almost like it's like you like you solve you you like to solve problems. So, you know, you you you kinda create them sometimes out of the the the laziness.
But You know, I what you said there first, the speed. Let's go back to that because you're right. Searching, shopping, whatever you wanna call it. The first mover advantage is what you said. Right. That applies to every industry. Speed. Speed is your friend. And so for you in commercial real estate, it's filling the pipeline with new deals. That's the shopping part. You gotta you you can't grow the business if you don't have new deals. We know that. And for you, looking on a system?
Do you have a process of, you know, connecting with other people in them? Like, how how does this really this first mover you know, advantage, the speed really play into just I'm looking at at properties constantly. Like, give us give us what the actual looks your last comment on my laziness causing a lot of problems is very accurate. And that probably didn't take any offense to that. Oh, no. For the listener. Chaz, you hit the nail on the head.
You know, again, I'm telling you, I've made every mistake out there, and I learned things the hard way. And because of that is why I'm putting systems in place and why I have put systems in place. Love it. I was doing everything wrong, man. You know, 2018, I had to replace a a toilet in a girl's bathroom in an office building. Got a tenant, said it was running. No problem. I'll replace go to Home Depot, buy a toilet, and I looked at the sign that says we'll install it for $99.
And I thought, no, listen. I can do that. So But the kids to bed 1 night, 10 o'clock, go out there, and I'm there till 1 in the morning replacing a toilet. Right? And it's every Everything that I've learned in terms of systems and efficiencies, I've learned by failing and making mistakes.
So In terms of first mover advantage systems, I hired an assistant, which was an absolute game changer because I was getting inundated doing everything myself And what I realized was where I made all of my good decisions and money was searching for deals. That was my forte. And I didn't have time to do that anymore. I was paying bills, doing leases, just a bunch of nonsense. Right?
And I was insecure in that I didn't know if I hired an assistant, if I can keep them busy enough, if I can create an adequate work environment for them, if I'm so chaotic that they would just leave. So a lot of those insecurities kept me from hiring an assistant And I'm telling you when I, yeah, when I hired somebody, man, it was like a drug because you can give them something and they get it done. And then they ask for more And it's like, oh my god.
Like, there's a human that you can give all your work to, and they love doing it. They love learning. Yeah. And you're adding value. It's incredible. So for all of your listeners that are inundated with whatever business they're in. Even if they're working a 9 to 5 and they come home, they've gotta cook, they gotta clean, they gotta, you know, do stuff with the kids, man, figure out what you can offload, right, because it's a it's a game changer.
We all know those mantras, like, time is your most valuable resource. Right. They're just cliches. They really are because until you put that into practice, man, it it it's just one of those things that you've gotta do. Do it for a week. Hire a nanny for a week, hire an assistant, a virtual assistant for for 30 days. Just try it, man. Get out of your own way. Yeah. Right. I I love how you because the reality of it is is that even though entrepreneurs are, you know, driven. We wanna get more.
We have these bigger purposes. There's a laziness factor to all of us. It's not just you. It's me too. And or some of these things that that play into getting in our own way. So whether it's like, okay. In this realm, it's laziness or self sabotage, right, that gets in my way, it causes problems.
Or over here, actually, you're if we're gonna dub this word laziness, actually probably lent to, well, like, if you Chaz get over with that fear of hiring somebody, now you're like, well, this is great because they get to do it, and I don't. It feeds into Chaz, at least, or at least if you can have the vision of going, okay. If I can keep things organized, then then then there's that there's there's a team doing it, and I don't necessarily to wear the ego of doing it all myself. You're right.
And there's a famous question asked of Bill Gates. What kind of person would you hire? And he said someone that's lazy because they'll find efficient ways to get the job done. Right. And in reality, that is the case. Right? I either procrastinate or find efficient ways to get things done. There's not much in between. I appreciate the vulnerability. I think that think that if the listener's being honest, there's skill sets or maybe go tos that they have.
Like you said, your skill set is looking for deals. You enjoy it and on top of that, you're good at it. So you just get rid of the other things and Chaz maybe don't bring as much life, or in this case, that you wanna be lazy with. So I wanna know I'm gonna flip the coin here. We've given already just incredible insight from your story that's been it's been valuable, but Tell me about a bad decision that you've made.
Yeah. So, you know, after maybe 5 years, let's say, 2010 to 2015, those years, it was very easy to make money in commercial deals. I would buy vacant unfinished buildings and somehow turned them around. Right? So started getting a big head, and a lot of my friends were patting me on the back and it really did go to my head. So there was an auction in the state auction for a bunch of commercial properties in a town that was dying. And I I had such a big head, man. I was out of town.
I had one of my tenants go to the auction and bid for me I couldn't even hear him on the phone other than every so often. Ugh. Do you wanna keep going? Like, yeah. I have no idea what the number is. But whatever I bought maybe a half dozen properties. And just like all the other ones, no problem. I'll figure it out. I'll rehab them, get tenants in them. Wolfe this turned out to be an insurmountable task because the town was dying.
It was ravaged by drugs, job losses, the politicians that were running the town were in fighting. But, you know, all along, my friends were like, oh, don't worry. He'll find a way to turn this into a golden nugget. And I I'm just now in the process 5, 6, 7 years later of offloading that last property, So I needed that. Right? I needed that kicking the ass to let me know that not everything is gonna be a win, not everything I touched, turns gold, So it it cost me a ton of time.
I don't know how much money, but a lot of aggravation So important lesson learned, man. Get that ego and check, and you're gonna have failures, you know, and and be happy when you fail. Yeah. Yeah. I I I consider them dues. Right? Like you said, like, you you needed it. Well, the only reason you would say that is because it gave you something. A 100%.
Yeah. Yeah. For you to be able to come out on the other side and and now know what you know, you've obviously, I'm sure, changed some some procedures. And some decision making, but I I wanna press into that just a a little bit because the ego, the ego man, it gets it get it It gets us all. It is probably the biggest thing that maybe we don't even talk about a whole lot. Maybe Chaz maybe I should talk about that more.
But just from a from a half perspective there, like, you're you're reading your own press clippings, you're making these decisions, even in the midst of you struggling. Your friends are still saying in your praises. So it's like a bard. Yeah. Because I'm not I'm not sharing that I'm failing. It it's not until now. That, you know, people ask me about that, and I'll share the story. But, you know, you talk about your wins. You don't talk about your losses. Right? And I I wish more people did that.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. How do you think like, so for the listener, you know, today, they're they're you know, maybe where you were back then or or and maybe a smaller version of that. And the reality is is that they're struggling. Is there value in the listener finding someone to say, hey. I'm struggling.
Yeah. All the side hustles that I had I wanted to go to score, which is the service core of retired entrepreneurs, a free government organization, of retired business execs or entrepreneurs that help start ups and help young businesses. And, again, it was insecurity, man. I I you know, If they saw my financials on my little Excel spreadsheet, they'd probably laugh at me, and it was that fear of asking for help because I I thought I would get laughed at.
And that's what kept me from doing it, but I would have progressed so much more in the side hustles when I started in real estate, I I made excuses, you know, not many people do non residential commercial, like I do, And especially when I started, you know, the mom and pop businesses, the smaller strip malls, office buildings, I just didn't think there was a lot of people in that space, but All excuses, I should have sought out mentors, coaches,
other people, regardless of what asset class they're in in real estate, I really should have used their help, and it's not until, you know, recent years that I've networked more with other people and asked questions of them. And I've always mentored other people which has been great, and it's one of those things that I love equally as much as finding deals. I can have a desk full of to dos and paperwork for the day, if somebody calls me and says, hey. Will you help me evaluate this property?
And I'll drop what I'm doing and spend an hour because That's the fun stuff. Right? Yeah. But in terms of, yeah, man, seek out mentors, make sure you do it the right way. I I I had a rule. So after people found out that I was mentoring, I would get calls left and right and like, hey. You know, I I wanna do what you do. And I'd say, what is it that I do? Like, oh, you know, I wanna get paid. I'm like, oh, okay. I mean, that's what you want. Right?
But They don't wanna put the grind in, and they don't wanna come correct. Right? So I made a rule where the first conversation I'll have with anybody 45 minutes an hour long, and then you get 1 homework assignment because I would spend hours putting together plans for people that they never followed. So my rule was after our first call, you come back with 3 commercial properties. Tell me what you like and don't like about them. No right or wrong answers.
95% of the people I never hear from again. Yeah. So the few people that followed through, I would give them all of my time, right, because I know they're gonna follow through. I know they're gonna hustle, and they have a higher chance of success. So in more recent years, my time has become more limited. So I love the approach where people just call and say, hey. What can I do for you? Chaz I add value? Can I shadow you? Right?
And instead of I wanna learn from you, you know, be humble approach people with humility and try to add value. It's a lot of cliches. Don't ever ask somebody for coffee. You know this. Right, man? When you get to a certain level, you're busy. You don't have time to take yourself out to coffee, let alone, have someone else spend an hour of your time and not knowing what the agenda is. So just be very respectful of people's time. Yeah. It's I'll tell you a a half half story on Chaz.
It's kind of especially as the world transitioned to Zoom, you know, obviously in the COVID period. But the reality of it is is that if I'm gonna go meet you for lunch or even a coffee, is that there's a before and after to that. That I have to end what I'm doing.
I have to I have to dwindle down what I was focused on to be able to then leave the house to then drive to meet you, to then, like you said, have this unidentified time to then drive back and then to get ramped back up into what I was focused on. It's way more than just a 15 minute coffee. And when you have people like you and I, they calculate time like Chaz. It it makes it very difficult. And so what?
I remember a couple of people here in Kansas City, right, where they're like, man, we should da da da da. Hey. No offense, but, like, let's do a 15 minute zoom. And it it was like offensive. We're in the same city. What do you mean? Zoom? I'm like, No. It's not about Zoom or or in the like, it doesn't matter. I want you want 15 minutes with me. I want 15 minutes with you. I wanna get to know you. Fantastic. Let's make it 15 minutes.
Yeah. You know, I had a a a guy that I mentored, a young kid, actually, and he was a killer. He would find out what restaurants the person liked, and then invite give them a choice of 3, invite them out to dinner or breakfast, And I like that approach better because, you know, during the day, you can have the best laid plans of how your day is gonna progress. All of a sudden, one email or one phone call throws everything into disarray.
So doing lunches is difficult because you, you know, middle of the day, you gotta drop what you're doing. I love the breakfasts or drinks or dinner in the evening because it's downtime. Right? Before your day starts or after it's over, Man, getting somebody in middle of the day is a tough one. Yeah. It's funny. I had a guy actually on my show a couple weeks ago, and he told a story about how this investor was trying to get him to do certain deals.
It's like a snow snow plow contract scenario, and and he talked about all the the guy was like, let me take you to I took him to lunch, and he convinced him to do this this deal through lunch. And so I told him, I was like, so you're an easy prospect. I just gotta take you to lunch. Right? And he's states away. Right? So I'm like, What's your favorite sandwich shop? And what what what we'll schedule a Zoom, and I'll have a sandwich sent to you. We'll have lunch together. It was pretty fun.
We had a good laugh. It will help us to get that. That's cool. That's creative. Yeah. Run up. Right? I mean, we're not we're not gonna I'm gonna fly to to have lunch. Maybe. You never know? I love that approach. It's and now, of course, as soon as I asked, because I I did. I scheduled the time, and then I'm like, what's your favorite sandwich shop? And he's I'll get my sandwich. It's okay. Like, let's just have lunch together. That's awesome. Good for you. Yeah. Anyway, so here we go, brother.
I wanna know, is there a certain process or discipline to making decisions that you have now. Knowing that you've given us the good and the bad, the ugly type of thing, what how do you process decisions now? The biggest thing is evaluating downside risk. It's a mistake that a lot of people make now in real estate because we've had a long prosperous run. And, honestly, anybody under the age of thirty three hasn't really seen hard times or down economic cycles.
So there's this air of never ending prosperity out there where everyone knows. You just buy apartments and raise rents every year, and then you know, cap rates are going down and, you know, interest rates are not a problem. Well, all of that is gonna change at some point. So for me, decision making is always encapsulated by assessing your downside risk and time as well. Right? So evaluating how much time a project is gonna take and if it's worth the returns. So those are the 2 biggest factors.
Love it. I love the, take risks. But calculated ones. Yeah. And when a people That's what I'm hearing today. Don't stress test their deals. Everyone does their pro form a where the arrow is moving up into the right, Yes. But what if you can't increase rents? Matter of fact, what if you start having more vacancies? What does that do to your model? Yeah. No. The stress test.
We've talked about this recently inside Gavin, the king's, a mastermind, where you're building structures and things inside your business. Whether it's a a real estate business or a a garage door company, you're still building what's valuable on the inside that could potentially be sold. And and does it operate without you? And you can stress test that way as Wolfe. But what you're talking about as far as, like, do the numbers work.
You know, buying a business, buying a deal, you know, getting into it. Yeah. You gotta stress test the worst case scenario for sure because it could happen, especially Chaz you're saying, like, this this this bull run that we've been on, things are gonna change, but that doesn't mean that they have to that there's no deals. Yeah. Out of curiosity, why did you say if it works without you? Well, the that's a good question.
And I think that the common theme in entrepreneurialism and or even, you know, I I use real estate, but it's business. Right? You said freedom. I want I want time freedom. And so if if you have a system, Chaz works outside of your activity, then then that's time freedom. In real estate, it's called passive income. Right? It's called cash flow.
And and, of course, in the commercial space, because it's you're talking about the power of what you have, isn't dependent upon necessarily a more of a short term in and out, residential play where you've got, maybe, a longer contract of business that's in place. Know, so, like, I'd love to hear your your your take on that. I love that you said that because that was an epiphany that took me 10 years to learn. And I'll share a quick story.
I had a buddy of mine that was a home builder, and I asked him, you know, do you meet all of your customers? And he only built 15, 20 homes a year. And he's like, no. And I won't. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like, somebody spending their life savings with your company, you won't just go to a design meeting, pat them on the back, say, hey. My name's so and so owner of the company. Thank you for building with us. He's like, absolutely not.
He said, I got this advice a long time ago that If you have a business and you're gone for 6 months, it should come back better than how you left it. So he put all these systems in place from the get go. And I thought that was the dumbest thing ever. Man, like, I did I didn't understand that until I got my head so far at my butt, that I was inundated with things. And now I'm like, oh my god. This stuff needs to run without me. I should not be this integral to making things happen.
Right. So, again, like I said, I learned things the hard way, and that was an important lesson that I learned. It's good. Alright, Oshha. I wanna come at you in a couple different angles here. I got some speed round questions as we call them. Yep. First one is this. If you had to dwindle your entire business down to one trackable metric, what would it be? It is your personal balance sheet.
So however Chaz business affects your personal balance sheet, because we all are shooting for a certain number, we all have a finite amount of time If your net worth isn't increasing year over year, then you're not achieving forward progress. So, you know, Track your balance sheet, do your personal financial statement at least once a year, and see what kind of trajectory you're on. I love how you tied it to the personal balance sheet, the net worth, because there's a lot of times.
Obviously, the the business gotta make money in order for it to affect your no balance sheet positively. And so, yeah, net profit, sales, all those things need to be tracked, but But, really, what are we after? We're after it to affect us personally. Of course, the other people involved as well, but that net worth, that number, if if if I only had one, That's it. That's it. That's great, man. Okay. So what book would you recommend Chaz a 6 figure business owner read?
He hasn't he hasn't scaled to that 7 figure mark yet. I'm gonna throw 2 out there if I may. 1 is who not how. Love it. And the other one is rocket fuel For so many years, I thought me being scatter brain was a a a failure, right, detriment to me. Yeah. In reality, I learned that it's just being a visionary, and I'm not an integrator. An incredible book for anybody that starts things and doesn't follow through all the time Chaz great ideas and just, yeah, read that book. Love it.
Yeah. And who not how kinda pings off of our last comment here of not doing it yourself. Yep. Another phenomenal read. We'll put them both in the comments in the show notes below. What what do you think about networking or master mining with other entrepreneurs? It is probably one of the biggest factors to my success. Like we mentioned earlier, if you wanna go far, go together. This is a team sport. Most businesses are a team sport. Treat your competition as team members, right, not competition.
It's incredible how much networking opens up possibilities, brings more deals to the table, and helping others, always comes back to you. Right? The mastermind thing, I I looked for a commercial mastermind, didn't really find any that would suit me. Number of people came up to me wanting to learn commercial real estate about 6 months ago, started a mastermind, and it's been incredible because we all learn from each other. Yeah. So get involved in some kind of mastermind.
If there's not one that suits you, start 1. Yeah. And I love the I love the approach. I think that you and I took a similar similar step there. Okay. And in in the operations, kinda going back to the who not have place for just a half second. If you only had 1 hour, each week to work in your business or on your business. How would you use that hour to successfully run your business like you do now? I would develop people because that's the time that's time that's exponentially returned. Right?
I can another answer would be look for deals, but that's not enough time. I'd rather train other people to effectively do their job. So develop your staff, develop your people. Yeah. Because you can multiply. Looking for deals, whatever the task is that needs to be done, you could have 20 people learning how to do it. 200 people learning how to Absolutely. K. Last question for you, Ash. If you lost it all, what would you do?
You only need 2 things to get back to the top, and that's knowledge and network. Right? Love it. So by now, you should have the knowledge if you were in a position where you lost it all, hopefully, you had the knowledge and just struck out Chaz network is so important So just two things. I would get out there, network more, find deals, and use my knowledge, use the network, put the deal together. It's good stuff, man. How can the listener find you? Maybe they're in commercial real estate.
They wanna check out your mastermind. Maybe they just wanna maybe potentially JV on a deal with you. Maybe they wanna They wanna ask you for a a breakfast or a dinner. How did they find you? I'll give you my email address. It's ashash basinboypatel@gmail.com. I'm on bigger pockets. I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Osh Patel, Cincinnati. Not too hard to find. It's good stuff, man. We appreciate your time, of course, and not just to be cliche about it, but because we know how valuable it is.
So we thank you for that. Thank you for the value, and we wish you nothing but success and blessing in your business and all the things you have your hand to. Chaz, great job. This was a fun interview. Thank you so much for your time. Absolutely.