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All right, guys, welcome back EYO Houston edition. Oh man, if you notice the backdrop is different, that's because you're.

On the road right now.

Yeah, took this one for sure. Show in the me in the great state of Texas, the beautiful city of Houston, so first and foremost shot to everybody in an We've only been here for them, like less than twenty four hours and we got shown so much love so far.

I mean, as soon as we got on the plane, right they gave up their seats. Shout out to Crystal for give it up a seat.

So we yeah, shot shout out to the radio station today, ye ninety seven, mad hatter. Yeah it was it was great. It was great. So we enjoyed ourselves and we're going to come back out here. We're going to spend some more time in is Real.

Yeah.

So we got a special, very special episode today. We have a special guest, Chris Senegal. Thank you for joining us. Appreciate it man.

Welcome to Houston, Senegalgue like the country, just like the country.

Shout out to Africa. So, yeah, we're going to talk about a lot of different things this episode. We're going to talk about everything from gentrification, real estate, investing, day trading, a lot of different stuff. Chris is a very interesting guy. He's a renaissance man. He does a lot of different guys, a lot going on, guy, lot going on. And this is one of the things that we try to do when we travel. We try to tap in with the movers and shakers and business people that are making waves

Man?

So eventually that essentially that was my escape to try to get out of corporate America, you know, because I was like, I was like the good kid, you know what I mean, straight a's in school, full scholarship to college, engineering job, got out there. I did it for like the first six months. I was like, man, I've been sold a dream. I hate this. That's how I felt. And so the first thing that came across my desk

So prior to that moment, did you have any familiarity with stocks.

I had no familiarity with anything but going to school and getting the job, you know what I mean. So I had no exposure to business, entrepreneurship, investing, nothing else. This was my my I high moment, you know what I mean.

And yeah, so what do you teach you about day trading? Like, what does like day trading one on one look like for anybody that's not familiar. Day trading is when you could really day trade anything. It's when so most of the time when you invest in something, you invest in whole right. Day trading is when you're dating. You're trading in the day. So you might buy a stock at eleven o'clock in the morning and then you sell it at eleven thirty, you're selling it at one pm. You're

And you kind of learned as far as day trading, mainly just the cycles of the day, you know, I think a lot of people that understand day trading, they're trained to look at the signals. So there's a lot of different technical indicators that people use, and there's certain

Level of somebody that's going to be day trading?

Man? I could imagine, right, Like I remember we were talking about cryptocurrency and we weren't sleeping, so I mean, we were doing that with money.

That we knew we could lose. But somebody who's doing that as a career, what's the stress level?

Pretty high?

Mean a lot of people don't survive. I got out of it after a year, honestly. I mean it is. I would say it's about thirty percent better than gambling, sports betting, you know what I mean, because at the end of the day, it's still a person on the other end of whatever you're watching that's making decisions, and it's big institutions that are buying stocks. Is it could be individuals, but if they own enough shares of that particular stock that you're watching, they make a decision, that's

Again, a lot of times that's not the case. Yeah, because there's a thing called technical analysis. So when you're looking at stocks, there's fundamental analysis and the technical analysis.

Right.

So fundamental analysis when you're looking at fundamentals, so that's like you know, when people actually look at like earnings ratio and how the company is doing stuff like that. But then the technical analysis is when you're just looking at all technical stuff, right, So these are things that really has nothing to do with the how the company

So you said, after you only did it for a year, I did it for a year. After the year, what happened.

Next, Man, I fell back for a minute. I started reading more and trying to figure out, you know, what other industry I could get into just to get out of that job, And so I started reading books in real estate kept coming up. At the same point in time, I actually decided I was gonna leave that job I had, and I moved back to Houston. I was in Memphis at that point in time. Moved back to Houston, but it was during the recession two thousand and eight, so

Can we talk about the franchise business that you had a little bit because you had it's called super week Express, Yeah, super we So what was the So all right, super We've expressed. I'm assuming it was weaves.

Hair extensions, hair section, the full service of their business.

So that's a billion dollar business. Right. We talked about the hair business, but not really in depth. But what made you want to go into as a man? What made you want to go into a woman's industry? Man? You know?

I mean it's it's it's a supplying demand thing, right, So as an entrepreneur, you know you got a supply a product and that if there's a demand for it and there's a spread, then you can make a profit.

Man, I had no idea the weaves. Yeah, it was a physical brick and mortar store.

Brick and mortar store they had, They had a stylist there, and they it was a commission based salon, so they got a percentage of the commission, but they did all the marketing, They did all the advertising, and then they assigned clients to the customers that they came in. And they also supplied the hair. So they bought it at the wholesale price, sold it that retail.

So you bought a franchise, correct, Yeah, but a franchise. What's that process like? Because I think we spoke about that in one of our early episodes about being a franchise e.

What's that process like and how'd you get involved?

So the whole franchise model is basically, instead of you starting a business from scratch, you are identifying somebody that already has a business that appears to be successful, and you're paying them to use their branding, to use their their business model, you know, their business plan, and in exchange, you're going to pay them up front, you know, as a as a fee to get in and then monthly

And the thing.

That most people don't realize is that the average business is only profitable within the fifteen to twenty percent margin range. Right, So then when you're a franchise e, if that franchise says their royalty is what it's called, if it's forty eight percent, that's forty eight percent of your gross So they are a top line expense. They don't wait to

You said, that's the trade off. Can you can you explain that when you said the average business is profitable fifteen to twenty percent in the profit mark, can you explain that like what that means to the average person? I mean, no, understand that.

So the biggest issue that I see with a lot of us, a lot of the biggest thing that we have a lack of exposure to when we start businesses, we listen to what somebody clots is their revenue, right, and that's the growth. So that's every dollar you've taken in, But that doesn't include what your what your rent cost is, what your labor cost is, Yeah, what your what your

You said that was one of your biggest mistakes, is getting into a business based on that revenue and not their net profit.

That's it.

How did that come about? How did you realize, like this was a mistake that I made.

Well this business specifically, So when we opened, we hit a home run. You know, the first year we did four hundred and fifty thousand revenue. It's like sixty percent from the retail side and forty percent from the services side, which is a hairsalon. But the expenses were so high and we had to keep so much money tied up in it that at the end of the year what was left on the table.

Was about sixty thousand dollars.

Wow.

And then I had a partner, so now you're splitting that two ways. So now for all that work, you make thirty thousand dollars a year.

Oh that's crazy? Can you can you just go into that. You said that your your net was six hundred thousand, four hundred and you you netted sixty.

Thirty Yeah all right, yeah thirty?

How did that happen? Okay?

So Number one, we went we wanted to be in a prime area, so we went and got a retail space in a shopping center. We were like between a salad beauty supply and the SAMs and so that was like five grand a month right there off the top. Then since Neither he nor I were stylists or we knew how to run a salon. We had to hire a manager and we had to have an assistant. So that's seventy grand right there. And then you know the

Through the door.

You got insurance. So it's a lot of expense that's tied to that business.

And this is what this is twenty seventeen.

This was two thousand and fourteen, twenty fifteen. Okay, yeah, I'm glad you said that because a lot of times people don't fully understand a reason why most businesses fail, right financial issues. You don't fully understand what goes into making a business. So even if you make almost in your case, almost a half a million dollars a year, you still might be broke. You end up making thirty

More exactly right, And we were open seven days a week, so there was no days off, you know. Yeah, so even though you have a manager, and manager still looks to the owner and make final decisions on things, so you're.

On call all the time.

You know, I tell people a lot of times what you said is exactly right. You may leave the comfort of a job to start a business not really realize that you just created another job for yourself with less benefits, with nothing to fall back on.

You know.

So it's got to be the right decision. You got to really understand the business you're getting into.

Now, that's a fact. So what what would your suggestion be as far as an entrepreneur, an inspiring entrepreneur that is going out there, would you say that, you know, looking at expenses is just as important as looking at what they could potentially make.

Much more important, much more important, much more important. Yeah, and you know, and I highly advocate getting a mentor somebody that's doing it, and you know, because it's hardly a business, you're gonna find where somebody else isn't already

And also experience is always the best nature as well. I mean, no matter how much you're still gonna have to make mistakes and learn your own. Yeah, but like you said, you kind of curve the learning curve a lot if you actually have a mentor or you're working under somebody.

For it's not about what you what you make, it's about what you keeping.

Yeah, sure, yeah, And your school kind of conditions us to try to learn how to get it right on our own. First, don't cheat, don't copy off for somebody. But when you get in the world of business, your best bet is to copy the.

Right cat Toad's that's a good you know, that's a good point.

That was excellent.

That's actually a really good point. Never really thought about it like that.

Well, I mean, and that's something I teach too, like because I mean, so many people in corporate America that are trying to get out and I just tell them, Number one, you got to retrain the way you think about everything because school now only school teach you not to cheat. School teaches you that if you're wrong more than ten percent of the time, you are not the best. All A students got to be writing ninety percent of time or more consistently to stay to stay up up.

On that pedestal.

Whereas you got a lot of people that were seeing these students failed, they comfortable feeling twenty thirty percent of the time all the time, and at the end they got the same diploma you got.

You know, Jack mad said something interesting. If anybody that doesn't know who that is, that's the head of Ali Baba. He's one of the richest people in the world. And he said, he told he tells his son that you don't have to be an A student. It's okay to be a C student because those are the only people that have enough time to be well rounded and to

That's one of those questions we used to ask ourselves, right, it was like, should we know a lot about a few things? I know a little about a lot of things, right, because that makes you more well rounded when you're versed in a lot of things. Right, Like I don't have a background in business, but I'm willing to learn in these areas.

Right.

I might not know medicine, but I'll research on it, you know what I'm saying. So we got to keep ourselves well around it. That's why I always stressed, like, education doesn't stop in school, right, Right, it goes beyond the four walls of the or the building of school. It goes in the living environment, it goes in the home, it goes in the communities.

It's all over, it surrounds.

Us, all right. So all right, so that was that was actually really good information as far as for anybody that's looking to get in the business and business owner. But now we're going to go into some more stuff. You're going to glose thing. We're also going to go into your career as an engineer. I think that that's interesting something I.

Think we've touched on that.

Yeah, we haven't really spoke about that, but all right, So We're going to that in the next segment. All right, So now we want to talk about all right, so you're you're an engineer my train and you you worked for the railroad company, right right? Can you explain that, like what you actually did, because that what you did that for twelve years? Right? Yeah?

So I started while I was in college, like working for in part time. But what I did was so design rail terminals. I mean it's pretty it was pretty simple as far as the engineering because you're not building

That kind of stuff. And where were you doing this at?

So I started off working for ce In Railroad. So I was covering between Chicago and ben Ruge, Louisiana.

Wow, because we seen in you know, the past few months, these railroad systems the subway stys, especially in the New York where we're from, that are completely outdated. They're running on systems that are from like nineteen ten, right, and we're like, how is this even possible?

Yeah, technology has not changed and they just they do the minimum maintenance to keep it up. So I was on like the freight side, so it wasn't any passenger rail. So a lot of it's behind the scenes, you know that they didn't get a lot of exposure unless that's a big derail me somewhere.

Yeah. So merchandise and product is moving through your.

Life right exactly, And like eighty percent of anything that moves somewhere in the United States, if it comes in on a cargo ship from China somewhere, it moves by rail at some point in time. It only moves by truck when it gets closer to its destination.

Yeah, I think people realize how big of a business trains are because the vast majority of the country probably don't. They don't ride trains like we're kind because we're from New York, so we're used to riding trains, subways and trains, it's pretty normal. But most of America they don't really ride trains like that anymore. So people might not fully understand that trains is a big business. And even if you don't ride it, like you said, a lot of cargo rides and trains.

Yeah, And what people don't realize is that the railroad is basically what helped build the West. Like when everybody went from the East coast to West coast, everything was moving by a rail. There was small trains, great expansion, right, yeah, the great expansion. Yeah, everything was done by rail And people always wondered why the railroads in the hood that

Everything came in by rail.

So one of your job, not titles, but responsibilities is designed Are you designing the actual tracks?

Like what what does that mean?

Yeah? Designing the actual tracks? You are? Yeah? Oh well, I mean that's what I did. Now.

I did that for the first four years I worked for the railroad. But like I said, I wanted to get out of engineering. So and once I started getting into reading the real estate and entrepreneurship stuff. I realized I needed to learn more about business, so I kind of took that opportunity while I had the corporate blanket over me to try to get into other departments. So I went into operation. So I ran freight terminals.

For like four years.

And that was crazy experience because I'm like twenty four to twenty five guys that's forty fifty making twice as much money as me. Another union guys make over one hundred grand a year. I was making like fifty sixty. So I learned a lot about managing people in that role. Then I got out of that and I got into the marketing and sales side, and I was lucky enough to get into industrial products, which is chemicals and oil

But what's one of the things you learned when you was working on that side of the fence.

Man, I just learned how money really works. And how people really make decisions because energy runs the country, you know what I mean, Like without without coal, without oil, without gasoline, everything shuts down. And so they know that they basically have monopoly on everything, you know, and the profit margins are crazy.

That in the world, what's the profit margins are.

Three hundred percent on a lot of stuff?

Wow, like gas and oil and stuff. Yeah, so let me ask you this. Then a lot of people are saying that we should move away from that, going to solar energy, wind energy, electric energy. You're you're an engineer and you worked in the space. Hey, is that realistic? And what's your thoughts on that, like as long term? Can we continue the way we're going now or do we have to make a change.

I mean eventually there there will have to be a change because there's a limited amount of fossil fuels out there, so we're gonna have to find other energy sources that we can use that are renewable. So it's definitely feasible, it's definitely plausible, and like wind, sunlight, water, that stuff's

You got to make sure they keep their money.

I remember when Hillary Clinton was running for president versus Trump. I think, yeah, so they were saying, I think Chase Chase put like ten million into Hillary's campaign, but they put nine million in the Trumps campaign. No matter who won, they won, it doesn't matter. I mean, that's what people don't fully understand either. It's like you're playing a political game based off of emotion, but these people are playing a political game based off a strategy. It's two different things.

Yeah, they're playing chess.

Yeah, they're gonna give money to Republicans, Democrats, and independence because at the end of the day, they need what they need done and money talks.

And whoever, whoever's the decision maker, either red or blue, is gonna help them.

Right. Yeah, so you started a business the erail commerce. Can you talk about that?

So basically something else I like to teach entrepreneurs, especially the ones that's coming out of corporate world. Everybody feels like I got to create something new, Like I got

So you get like the relationship, man, I am.

I'm basically broker, basically broker in and I have everything set up with with my clients to where whatever contract that helped them get I get paid.

But so email is not the only.

Form of consultation that you're providing, right, Don't you have a few other consultation things that you do well.

I mean, in general, I just try to help entrepreneurs get started, you know, because I mean I was so lost when I was trying to get out out of the work world. I was like, man, nobody was really here to guide me and teach me. So I use my social media platform and you know, I use that network and that audience as as my way to give back, you know. So anybody that has helped wants helped with it getting started entrepreneurship. I try to teach them the basis the kind of stuff is we're talking about.

Now, you know what I mean.

I get them as far as I can, and then I try to network with someone that's actually in their field and try to get them to get under that person.

So you're providing the mentorship by consulting. Right, Okay, gotcha.

Consulting is something that we also haven't spoken about yet in this podcast, but it's extremely important and it's a very profitable business as well. Consultants. You have consultants in school industry, you have consultants in political industry, have consultants and all kinds of stuff. Right, can you explain the importance a lot of times, especially for small business owners. This is the problem with small business owners us compare

So there's only two ways you're gonna learn. You either gonna bump your head and you're gonna lose time and money, or you're gonna pay for the knowledge period. There's no other way you're gonna learn. Right, So you hire a consultant. A consultant as someone that's an expert in that field that's already got experience doing what you're trying to do. Or they can help you with a particular area of the business that you can't fulfill.

Like if you have a great product.

But you don't know how to get it in front of enough people, you need a marketing consultant to come in and help you get it in front of the right people. And so it's basically a way for you to you can add This.

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At a whole department to your business without actually having a hire un employee, it's a consultant.

You know.

That consultant can neither be somebody that's paid by the hour, or it could be somebody that I always recommend you get performance based consultants, which means they work off a commission.

So if they don't.

Produce for you, they don't make any money, right, so that that gives them a vested reason to get in there and work hard and get something done. And on the flip side of that that, like you said, that's a very lucrative business too, because it's a business where it doesn't require you have to invest a lot. You can work from home and be a consultant and people actually paying you just for the knowledge that you already have.

And that's something that anybody can do. Like, as you're saying it.

I'm thinking of like, especially in the education field, and especially in the restaurant field as well. It's like people always try to figure out how can they make passive income, right, and they don't realize that they have a skill set already. They're just overlooking it, right, They're not maximizing their potential.

Well, this is one of the things you talk about multiple streams of income. That is that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. That doesn't mean they has seven jobs or even seven businesses. Is that they're maximizing their skills maybe one or two businesses. So, as you said, you can be a teacher, right, but you're an expert in that field. If you're a really good teacher, Now you can be a consultant to school districts, right, curriculum

And the amount of time it doesn't require as much right, right to say these are my hours.

You dictate the hours, and you dictate the fees, and a.

Lot of times you're helping different customers and clients with the same problem exactly, so you already know it like in and out.

You know your business. How did you market yourself to your customers or clients?

How do you man The most powerful tool I use is linked in okay, And what I liked about LinkedIn is because when when you put yourself on there as a business owner, you give yourself whatever title you want. You know, so I gave my it's just it's me and one partner, but my title is executive VP. So that puts you in a whole different arena. They look

We got an execut that wants to meet you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's all it is is positioning, and it's it's all about you know what you post. I post. I repost a lot of Wall Street Journal type articles that are related to the industry. Any type of insight that I get from anybody else that's in the industry, I'll make a post about that. So then you kind of

The link with me?

And then like my network on LinkedIn is like seventeen thousand, it's all industrial products, supply chain people from all these big companies.

That's a lot of that's LinkedIn. You got to accept every single person.

Right yeah, well yeah, the person has the person has to approve the connection.

But if your page.

Is set up to where it looks like, oh, this is somebody that I might want to my network, then you're good. And that's the whole purpose of you know, making sure that you set yourself up right on there with.

The right titles, you send and you send Uh was it in mail? Right? They send you in mail? So you could both.

I guess something both. Yeah. I met with a guy matter of fact, he flew in from Arkansas last week because he's working with a private development group that does industrial development and they're looking for new locations to build new rail terminals. And that's part of my job when I working in railroad, so that's part of my consulting too. So he literally reached out to me because he had been seeing me make these posts on LinkedIn about railroad

You are using your resources efficiently.

And a lot of times people don't realize that they're just on LinkedIn, or they're just on Facebook just to put pictures up, not networking, and not realizing how powerful a tool they have at their fingertips.

Well, LinkedIn is only for networking. But I got to get a better I go actually got to do a better job on LinkedIn because I don't know, I just don't feel too comfortable with it. I feel like it's some kind of boring.

It is boring, but it's like Facebook, but it's for business only.

Yeah, it's powerful, Yeah, it is, it is.

I mean you can you would be surprised that people that don't have a lot of LinkedIn followers that are like powerful people like I mean like producers, executive producers at these big stations. They may have five hundred, one thousand connections and you go requested and it's approved the

So when you need it's like getting you past all those.

Stings exactly, like all the gatekeepers. Yeah, you pass all the gatekeepers if.

The person's on LinkedIn.

If they're on that, but every everybody's on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn is one is the most powerful search thing too, because like so when you search somebody's name on Google, the first thing that comes up is LinkedIn. That's like the first thing. It's like it's like your online resume pretty much, it is. And so I don't know how they how they work that with the algorithm, but they always are on the top of your thing. So you kind of have to have a LinkedIn page if you're

Yeah, agree, I gotta upject man.

Yeah, all right, so that was good in for so now in the last time we want going to real estate, we're going to talk as sting real estate.

That's things going on.

That's so yeah for sure. All right, so in the last time, we're gonna talk about real estate, right, So, okay, what made you go into real estate first and foremost?

Like I said, I kind of fell into it with the court, with the with the corporate job and leaving. And I had bought a house at the first gig and when I moved back to Houston, I couldn't sell it, so I had to get.

A property manager.

Property manager rented out. I was making like four hundred bucks a month and I wasn't working at all for it. I was like, this is this seems like something lucrative. And you know, the more you research real estate, it's like eighty percent of the first time millionaires I made in real estate.

But this is at a relatively young age, right, like your first property was at twenty two.

Yeah, twenty two, that's pretty young. Yeah, twenty man, So that was that was kind of a blessing. Through having worked with the railroad while I was in school, I had enough tenure with them to actually qualify for a moving package. So when you work with a corporate company, when they move you, they either give you a stipend or they give you like a down.

Payment towards the house.

Oh yeah.

And so they gave me the down payment and instead of meeting apartment and pocketing the money, just.

Had to get a house.

But you could have took the stipend, I could have took the sype. He took the long term place.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

I mean you're not an engineered by mistake.

Yeah yeah. So all right, so then how did that transition to you doing what you're now as far as you're developing?

So okay, So when I moved to Houston, I decided I wanted to go really hard on the in the real estate game. And so one of my my line brothers, my frat brother, worked for home vestors that we buy ugly houses people, and he was their property manager in the hood. And so I kind of told him what I wanted to do, and so he ended up plugging me with one of the contractors that Home Vestors using. This guy was flipping twenty thirty houses a month for them,

In two thousand and nine.

I would sell some of them, I kept some of them for rentals, and I was doing that for about five years, but then I got tired.

Of having rental property.

I mean, I know everybody says that's supposed to be supposed to buy the home of living and have rental property, but man on the rentals sucks.

The downfalls.

Okay, so a lot of people, it's a good profit margin on a rental properties three or four hundred bucks a month, right, but you have one month, say like a tenant moves out, and then it takes you a month to find another tenant's And if your mortgage payment is twelve hundred dollars, that's literally three months of your profit gone.

If you got to make a repair that repairs.

One thousand dollars. That's another two and a half months of profit gone, you know what I mean. And so for me, it was like and then you have this debt. I was own like one hundred, one hundred and twenty on each house, and so now you got debt and you got these small profit margins, and it's like, Okay, I can see how long term I can continue to do this and make money slowly, But dealing with tenants, tennants, tearance stuff, fuck, you know, it just wasn't.

It wasn't something that I enjoyed doing.

What type of properties were you looking for? Was it single family homes or yeah family or yeah property.

Yeah, at that point in time, I didn't qualify for anything like extravagance. So I was just buying a little single family homes and I'm saying, there's nothing wrong with it. You know, everybody can make money in any industry. But for me, it's just like, I want to do something bigger, and so I guess I continued to flip. I started realizing, you know, this narrative about gentrification happens over and over and over, and I was like, man, I.

Know a few of us that are flipping.

I don't know anybody that's really trying to get into the development game, and you know, kind of change the narrative so we have some control over that. So twenty thirteen, that's when I decided to kind of get off into that.

So would you buying land in twenty thirteen? Was that the next step?

I didn't know what I was going to buy. I just knew what I was gonna do is stop flipping and try to figure it out. Okay, So I just started talking about it, and man, it came full circle. That same my same line brother that helped me get into the game. He had an old tenant reach out to him that used to be in one of the properties and say, hey, I'm over here in Fifth War and the landlord over here isn't taking care of the property. I think he's on drugs. And so you know what

He watched it.

Yeah, yeah, So so this was the one he had, and he still wasn't taking.

Care of it.

So I offered him owner finance scenario where it's like, I give you ten percent now with the finance. So that's when the instead of you instead of going to the bank, the owner that actually doesn't have any debt on the property will let you make payments over time to buy the property from them. So I gave him ten percent of what we agreed to the four hundred thousands, so forty thousand dollars which came from me selling one

There was something that they could afford because the type of jobs they could.

Get, you know, they didn't have much income, or they like a halfway house pretty much like a halfway house.

Yeah, they call them sr row houses. And then so the state pays you that right.

Sometimes sometimes if it depends on what program they're in, they get some type of housing assistance, but most of the time, no, they had to go get a job. So that's what made it really good because you talk about a low risk tenant, you got somebody that's happy to be out of prison. They was in prison for non violent offense. I didn't do violent people. They had to keep a job and they had to keep somewhere to stay, and ninety nine percent of the places wouldn't

The wind is built in and they were just happy.

To have somewhere to live, you know. So yeah, so that worked out. That was a win win man.

And then that was twenty thirteen, fourteen fifteen.

I did that.

In twenty sixteen, redevelopment kind of started in the area that I was in Something else that I always watched too, even when I was flipping, is what the city's plans were. And you can go to the planning Department's website and it'll tell you what they're planning to do five years, ten years down the road. And that's a lot of the game that we don't pay attention to, but you know, the other group's pay attention.

Where can you find that information that Usually you.

Can just google it, like Planning and Development Department or Urban Planning for whatever city you're in, and it'll pull up on that website. You know, it's usually a dot gov type website, and they'll have all their information. A lot of us talked about the city council meetings, so you can look up city council meeting minutes and they'll tell you about anything big, any developer that's proposed to do something in certain area.

All that has to be public publicly announced.

So but what I noticed about Houston was like everything was going to counterclockwise around downtown. And the fifth one neighbor that I was buying it was the last quadrant. So I knew eventually it was gonna come. I just didn'n't win, you know, And so yeah, So that's how I got into it, and twenty sixteen is another guy started building. So then I figured it was time for me to try to figure out how to get it done.

So what is your all, right, So what's your philosophy on gentrification? What's what's your how do you feel about that?

So gentrification has a very negative connotation in our community because we are never the ones revitalizing that neighborhood. And what happens is the people that are revitalizing or looking out for themselves or their own groups. It's not that they don't care about us, is that they have their own personal agendas that that that they're moving forward.

And so we can.

Either continue to watch it happen or we can participate, right, and we can participate in the way that we kind of control the narrative of what's being built, who it's being built for, and what happens to the surrounded.

Community that we're building in. Right.

So my goal with my project is, you know, most of the time when you hear about black builders in black neighborhoods, it's low income stuff. And I feel like that's great, Like we do need to look out for the low income people, but we got to attract the people that were successful to the people that made it out those neighborhoods, to back to those neighborhoods because we need that income, we need that demographic if we ever want a grocery store to come back. We can't sit

Right.

It's not because they don't want to move back, it's.

Because they have no options.

So my focus is, well, let me start building some market rate stuff, not low income houses and stuff, but try to attract these working professionals back to the neighborhoods with a high quality product that they know they're gonna pay the same price they're paying in the suburbs and in the city. Your value is going to appreciate a whole lot more, especially when that neighborhood starts to revitalize.

And that's kind of what you've done with you know, the land that you bought in twenty thirteen, right, which is the most recent development that you worked on, fourteen fourteen, Yeah.

Fourteen units individual house townhouses.

Yeah, you want to talk about that, how that came about.

Yeah, so it's the same property that I bought with the grocery store and everything. So twenty sixteen I decided to just tear everything down. When I saw there's another developer that was building houses deep in the neighborhood and he was selling them for two fifty before they were complete.

He wasn't even listing them on MLS.

So I'm like, so that tells me that there's a mindset, there's enough people out there are willing to save one hundred thousand dollars because everything else inside the city loop was like entire sixteen Loop was two three fifty or more so, but people would rather save that money and live in a neighborhood that was still pretty rough. So I was like, well, if he can do this deep in the neighborhood, I'm right on the feeder to the highway, you know, I got a view of downtown. I should

But that's what I did. So what's your what's your your plans now as far as how many projects are you are you working on? Like what's your what's your vision look like for the next five years?

Next five years, I want to finish this project, which you're probably finished next year, and I want to continue to build the same model in the same neighborhood. I kind of want to make this like a real world example that can be duplicated in other cities, like we can go in, we can buy the land. And I didn't mentioned my entire team is from the community too, so like my my builders, my real estate brokers, my insurance brokers, everybody, the contractors as.

Well contractors as well. Yeah, yeah, I'm working with a black builders.

So and it's not just anybody's people that got good reputations, but we kind of always silo ourselves and.

We never really collectively work together on stuff.

So yeah, and the goal and the most important part of all of this, whether you're flipping another industry a lot of people and it's whole selling or building new construction, is ensuring that you put the.

Product in front of the right end buyer.

Because if you're flipping, you call yourself buying a block, but if you're not watching who you're selling to on the back end, you're still gentrifying the neighborhood. So my goal is really to educate us on, like I said, the working professional on why it's better for you to buy over here. So I'm building the first three now, got contracts on two of them. Both of them are young,

At buying one, you know.

So it's all about making sure that we create that model because right now, that gentrification narrative is the only thing that that's real and for our people, we do better when we see examples of something that's actually working. And so when this is complete. I want to make sure that this model is as much exposed as possible. It's not about me making all the money. I want people in other cities to do the same thing, you know, to say it's possible, we really can't do this.

And this is the example. How do you evaluate like what area you want to I know, you say you look at it like the city plans, but do you have like a set formula. It's just kind of like you just know the area and you just kind of have a good feeling because you can't buy in some bad neighborhoods and they don't get better, right, So it's like, I mean, how do you know like this is this is probably going to get better.

It's all about your network because you got to be talking to people in the industry.

So a lot.

Of the realtors that I work with they work with builders, and you know, you gotta have a network of commercial realtors around you too, because they know where the commercial developers are looking at, what areas are looking at. So it's a lot of it's word of mouth in addition to what you see on the city plans, you know, But yeah, you gotta have your foot in the door. You got to be on the inside, understanding where they're moving, and you just kind of ride that wave along with them.

Yeah, a few years ago you had one of the most horrific hurricanes in United States history. What impact have you seen since then on the real estate in Houston, Man?

You know, for it was a period of time where the houses in the areas that did not get flooded, the values went up tremendously or they were getting bought up really really quickly. I didn't see too much of a negative impact. The only thing that I did see is a shift in ownership where the people that didn't have the proper flood insurance who lost their homes.

Had to become renters for a while. Right.

But at the same time, the investors who had the cash on the table were able to pick up a whole bunch of properties for a lot less than what the values were. Anything under like two hundred thousand dollars was still selling as it was rehabbed, but anything above that two hundred thousand dollars mark, a lot of it sat on the market, a lot of it's still here now.

Again in an area just flooded like that. So, so what is what's your outlook for for for Houston for anybody that's interested in and maybe coming in and investing. Optimistic for the city, Very optimistic man Houston.

On the next census, they're gonna announce that Houston is now larger than Chicago, So it's gonna be the number three, it's gonna be.

The third largest city.

Yeah, and Houston was least hit by the recession because we didn't have the big inflation and home.

Prices that other markets had.

When you look at like international investment as far as real estate in the United States, Houston is number one, whether it's coming from China, Australia, Nigeria, anywhere. Basically they invest here because if you're looking at the three or four biggest cities, the real estate is still cheaper here, like I said, and the economy was not hurt as much as the other big markets by the recession, So

And I think it's the biggest city land wise, Yeah, yeah, it is.

It is.

Yeah, so it's a lot more room for it to be developed. It is.

It is, And what it is is like as it's spreading out and it's consuming all the smaller towns around it and they're all merging into one big municipality.

You think part of that that population increase is due to the influx of people who were misplaced after Hurricane.

Katrina or I mean, we saw a wave of that, but I mean a lot of it. No, it's just business is just it's just it's attractive. You know, you got a lot of people that move from high high real estate markets like California.

They sell their house out here and you know.

It could be a regular, regular eighteen hundred square foot house in California. They sell it for one point two million. Come out here and buy a mansion. You know, so a lot of people transition down here because just the cost of living is cheaper.

Yeah. Sure, so thank you man, thank you, thank you for rocking with us. So how can people contact you? Many initiatives you got going on social media, handles all that stuff. Yeah, so social media.

My Instagram is underscore I N V S t R, which is investor with a lot of the vowels missing. And then my website is my name Chris Senegal dot com, c h R I S S E N E g A l dot com. It has a link to everything LinkedIn my email, my my websites, everything. So yeah, I use my platform to kind of do everything we're talking about now, just educate people on entrepreneurship, real estate investing, and you know, how to change understanding money and how money works.

You know, that's a point, that point, Troy.

Yeah, So we just want to give a quick call to Patreon dot com. That is our private paid program is Patreon dot compactsass Angelisia. There are five different tiers you can join that Each tier has a has a different feature. You know, we have bonus content, bonus video, we have video calls. Shout out to our new members Jason, Candice, Michael and Elliott Elliot. We reached out and we kind of got disconnected on our call, but we're definitely gonna

Also, go to earn leisure dot com.

We have our merch up there and we got a few other things that will be coming in September. September is going to be a big month, so be gonna look out for some new things from marinor Leisia.

Yeah for sure, and once again thank you to the City at Houston. By the time you guys here this, we'll be back in New York. But the network and then we actually got our networking event tonight, and I know it's going to be crazy. I know it's going to be amazing, so I'm looking forward to it. But you know, this is what we like to do. And Patreon is a way to financially support the podcast. And

We got to welcome Chris to the Alumni Club.

Yeah, appreciate it.

For everybody that comes on the show. After they finished the episode, they become alumni. Because the next time we come to use the know, we go to a city, you may say, yo, I want to come to the event too, So we just bring alumni to the event. Oh I love it, So welcome to the Alumni Club.

Well, he's gonna be he's gonna be at the event tonight. He's going to be the youngest alumni for sure, for sure, for sure. So yes, thank you for rocking with us. Well, see you next week please.

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