We have Ace Haggerty here with me today, and you can learn more about what Ace is up to by heading over to SuperHeroByDesign.com. And I'll make sure to have that as a clickable link in the show notes, but Ace has been in the real estate business now for 10 or more years. He also has a podcast of his own. So, again, head over to SuperHeroByDesign.com, and you'll find some links to that as well. But, Ace, I really appreciate your time here today. Hey, Jack.
The pleasure's all mine. I really appreciate being on your show. I've listened to your show. The guests you have on are fantastic. They just give such good information to your audience and you yourself are phenomenal as well. So I just hope that today I just show up and add some value. I think you can add some significant value because when before we hit record, you mentioned that you are about to become financially free after 10 years of doing this. And It sounded like there was a
winding road to this. Can you talk a little bit about what changed and the trajectory here. Yeah. No. I appreciate you asking that. That's a phenomenal question. It has been a windy road as being an oprenuer being a real estate investor. There's that joke. It's something like the shiny object syndrome where you see a shiny object and you run straight towards it, and that's how I was for a really long time. I started off in the business. Let me back up real
quick. I'm a structural engineer by trade. So I went to college, got my degree. I got a couple degrees, and went into consulting and then jumped into construction being a project manager and running crews and still doing structural engineering. But about 10 years ago, a realtor buddy of mine came up to me and at that time, there were just a lot of us going on and he found somebody who was interested in doing a short sale. They were about
to go bankrupt, give up the house, everything. So we did a short sale deal and he was like, hey. I've got this deal. Do you wanna fix it up? We can go in 5050, and we can flip it and sell it. And at that time, I didn't know much about real estate investing other than what Chip and Joanne gains did on fixer upper. I was like, oh, so we could do like a fixer upper type thing. And -- And it only does it's only done in 30 minutes. Right? Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly. And they're using some of my crews that I had at the instruction company I worked for and some subcontractors that I had met over the years. We did pretty much a lipstick rehab on this property, got it done within 3 months. And the only reason it took 3 months is back then when you're doing a short sale, when you bought the house, at least this wasn't California where I was born and raised. That's where I started all this out at you had to
wait 3 months. So within 90 days, we got it rehabbed. I did a lot of what people would call sweat equity. I did a lot of the work myself. with my guys, and we got it ready and flipped it. And we made after paying everybody and everything, we netted $90,000. So we split 45,000 each. My first flip, it was a lipstick flip. And you would have thought at that time, with that kind of money and that
short amount of time that I would have been like, oh my god. This is my golden ticket to creating the life that I've always wanted to create, but me being a structural engineer, I'm very conservative. I'm conservative with money. I'm conservative with my approach. And so I didn't learn from that first flip. And so I started off very slowly doing a flip at a time. then came across a property. How about we refinance this, pull all the money out that we put in, and get some tenants in back
then, there was no burst strategy. And but I was like, this is a really cool strategy. Like, I could put some of my money in Purchase it, fix it up, refi it, get renters in, or, sorry, get renters in, refi. That's it. and rinse and repeat. So I started doing that one at a time. I loved Airbnb's. So I was like, let me let me start working on Airbnb as well. And so I ended up doing that as well. Instead of making it a long term rental, I made it a short term rental.
And so you could see that I'm getting interested in all these different things, these different avenues because I was just excited. I was a young entrepreneur. I still had my w 2. So I was moonlighting at nights, weekends, and I the one thing I can say about myself is I'm a really hard work. I grew up in a blue collar family. So work ethic is not anything that's foreign in my family. And so it's not the best being a business operator instead of a business owner, and
that's one of the other things I I struggled with over the years. But You could see as my progression went through real estate, I was trying different things. I was being creative, being an engineer. I'm a big problem solver. And so I was always big on just different strategies. There's something that I think the bigger pocket guys talk about a lot now. It's not long term. It's not short term. They call it, like, midterm or middle term rentals month to month.
And I had a project in Georgia that I did where it was an 11 unit complex, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom units, almost like efficiencies, and they were making about $700 a month and they were really crappy. Maybe, actually less than that $500 a month. And people didn't like it. It was infested with bats and roaches and just nasty stuff. And I was like, what if we did like an Airbnb thing? But instead, we go on to a website like furnished finder. and get nurses
in there. There was a lot of hospitals in that town. I never had done it before, and this was a few years ago as well. And we turned those 11 units into these beautiful they look like Airbnb's, but we rented them out to nurses, and it was Cash flow was insane. They went from $500 a month to $1200 a month, and we ended up selling the property making a boatload of money off of that. And it was just we had this problem with this problem property And it was like, okay. Let's take this prop, and
let's try to get creative with a solution. Let's not just fix it up half ass. Yeah. Sorry for cussing. I don't know if you have cussing on your let's take this really rundown property in fested nastiness, and let's make it something beautiful and get some tenants in that would absolutely love this and work with their schedule. And then, yeah, now I I know the bigger pockets guys push it a
lot, but that's, like, the new sexy big thing. And It was just me trying to, at that time, just solve problems, and that's what I love doing. And I know I'm going on about this, but a business I started, I thought it was gonna be a fix and flip business, and then it becomes a turnkey rental business. We're fixing these places up We're getting them rented out and that now we're we've found a connection that the business partners and I have people who can offload properties very quick and
easy to investors as turn keys. And so we started a turnkey business. As of today, I'm in Nashville, Tennessee, I love this town. It's a booming town. It has been. I've been here for the last 5 years. And more recently, I had purchased some land development is huge here, and I was interviewing contractors. And I have 15 years of engineering and construction experience. And I was interviewing the contractors, and I was like,
man, they're expensive. And the workmanship in this town for the majority of the builders out here isn't very good. In my opinion, I'm very conservative, and I build a very good product no matter what I do. And I remember one of the contractors told me he's, hey. Like, he was joking because I was doing some engineering work for him. He was joking. He's yeah. You
probably know this stuff better than me and could build it better anyways. I was like, thinking in my head, I was like, 1, that's not a very good sales tactic. But but, 2, like, his fee for this development was a 125,000. I was like, Man, that's like half of what I make doing my engineering business every year. Like, why don't I just do this myself? And then COVID hit And I was like, I'll just take my test and start building myself. So fast forward to the last
year. That's what I've been doing. Now I'm a ground up developer building single family residential homes, multifamily townhouses and all of that. So it's been a pretty long journey for me. And I know I think Robert Kersaki talked about him becoming financially free. I think he said it took him 10 years. And so I'm about to follow that path, but I know this in this day and age, it can be done a lot faster. And I feel like it was a long windy road for me but
I gained a lot of knowledge. I learned a lot about the different parts of real estate investing and I learned a heck of a lot of lessons because I didn't make a lot of mistakes. I did have a lot of failures on this journey, but I feel like it has made me it's gotten me to where I am today, and it's definitely made me a better investor, a better person, a better manager of people, And I don't recommend it to everybody because it was a hard road, but at the same time, that's what I
went through. That's what I had to go through. Yeah. Before we hit record, you alluded to the fact that, you know, what is the old saying? You if you chase multiple multiple rabbits, you won't catch any. Right. Is that the situation there? You mentioned that you think it could have been a lot shorter? Was it because you've you were pursuing so many avenues that you think that Yeah. If that was the downfall there? Yeah. It took me a while to quit my w 2, so to speak, and go
into real estate investing full time. I was still very conservative, and I didn't wanna just jump feet first into it even though that first flip you would have thought, oh my goodness, but you hear a lot of people's stories. Like, they get that taste and then that insatiable taste of real what real estate brings to you when you pick up that property or you sell that property, like that feeling is so
amazing. And one of the biggest lessons I learned in the past 10 years is really the importance of focus. What is it you want? What is it that you really want? And then figuring out whatever that is, how to get to it and also obviously having to why to back that up and really reverse engineering it. You would think maybe in an engineer, I this would have been second nature to me. Where do I wanna be? So when I talk about being financially free, what does that mean in in
terms of dollars? how much money do I need to be bringing in on my investments so that I can be financially free and and then reverse engineer that. Okay. if it's single family homes, how many do I need? How many what's the typical net that you're gonna be bringing in on the type of residential home. So is it what classes it is it in? What part of the country? Is it long distance, short term? And really just taking those steps and evaluating, okay, what
do I wanna be doing as well? Do I wanna be doing single family? Do I wanna be doing commercial? And then learning everything you can about that niche that specific part of real estate investing because I always tell people, I one thing I love about real estate in general and real estate investing is you're only as good at real estate investing as creative as you can be.
The more creative you can be, the more likely you are to break yourself away from that herd because as real estate investing gets more popular and mainstream and you get bigger pockets and chip and Joanne and all those people making everybody think that they can be the next big real estate investor. It is just vital to know what you wanna do and where you wanna go.
And so I think, yeah, the biggest lesson for me over these past 10 years is I should have and hate to use the word should, but I really feel like if I had focused on something more specifically, then this 10 years would have been condensed a lot a lot more, and I would have gotten to where I am about to be a lot faster. Yeah. I have a buddy who recently said to in order to get multiple streams of income, you you must 1st master 1. Yep. And that's very true.
And the more I've been doing this, the more I every like you said, every entrepreneur has this where you're constantly fighting the urge of change chasing the next shiny object. Yeah. It's just it's a curse if you it's much more than anything else. When I was doing my turnkey rentals, so I'm in Tennessee, and we started down in, like, middle Georgia. Columbus, Georgia specifically. And we started buying rentals there, fixing them up, had a whole crew down
there, started selling them to investors. Then we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio after that. Me being the hands on person that I love to be, and that's it gets to a point that it's actually a detriment. I was driving down to Georgia, which was about, I think, 5 a half hours and then driving up to Cincinnati, which was another 4, I think, 4 hours and doing that about once or twice a week in addition to running my engineering business, which was me
because I'm the structural engineer doing it all. And then starting these developments at the same time, you can see yourself, and that's been a repeating theme throughout my history as well. It's not only I was going for different things and not focusing. I was stretching myself way too thin. I was being the business operator rather than the business owner. And I had employees.
I had contractors. So I wasn't literally doing all the work myself, but my time management wasn't where it needed to be I think that's a huge aspect too is once you focus on something, you gotta figure out what your time management is gonna be, what you're gonna actually spending your time on day in and day out, and are you maximizing your time? Are you maximizing your skill set and then everything else can go to somebody else. And that was something that I had
learned over the years as well. Sure. You just a minute there. You said that, you know, That's something that I've always struggled with too is that you frankly, you nobody you employ seems to care as much as you do. So you it's hard to let certain things go What type of strategies have you used to learn to rely on more of a team? One strategy I learned is finding the right people my assistant right now, she is absolutely amazing.
One thing I learned about myself, even though I'm an engineer, I'm not a very organized person, And so my assistant organizes my life. From my calendar, she does most of my bookkeeping. I have an accountant and a CPA, but she does, like, the day to day stuff. so that she can keep me in the loop with what's going on with where we're spending because I'm doing 1,000,000 of dollars of
development right now. And if I didn't have the right people in the right place, it would have blown up at this point and shoot from what I'm learning development, it's hard enough. without all of this. So it's, I think, finding the right people, but not only finding the right people, making sure they're in the right place. because not everybody is gonna be a great
assistant. Not everybody is gonna be a great project manager. I had a project manager for that turnkey business who was a phenomenal person, a hardworking person, but he wasn't a great person manager, and it all just fell apart eventually because He hit what's called the Peter principle, and he got up to a certain level that was his ceiling, whether he realized it or I realized it or not. And so finding the
right people. There's a book, who not how. It's finding the right whose and making sure they're also in the right position. Yeah. You're not the only one who's brought up this book recently, the this concept. And just to remind everybody, again, it's superherobydesign.com. Take a look at ACE's
book and the links there for his podcast. It it actually sounds like you've taken the concept of niching down not only on your business level, but your personal level, where you're you finally have realized where your shortcomings are and filling in those gaps with those appropriate. Who's? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. What happened in this past year. So you had mentioned the book. I wrote a book back in January from about it I did this thing called the
100 day challenge. And it's for anybody listening, if they know Andy forsella and 75 hard, take 75 hard, and put it on steroids, and this is what the 100 day challenge is. So for a 100 days, what I ended up doing was I did everything from waking up at 5:30 in the morning to taking cold showers to exercising 5 days a week to really getting my diet in line the project I wanna do to do was write a book in a 100 days. I've never written a book before. I've tried, and I
failed. This time I wanted to complete it. So I did all these things and I just was just up early, stayed up late and just got at it for a 100 days as far as my business was concerned. I stopped. I took myself out of the engineering business. The turnkey rental business, I my partners and
I made the decision to buy me out. And so I was focused solely on 1, the 100 day challenge and everything had to do then, but from a business standpoint, I was focused on the development business, and it's crazy because from January, 2022 to today, January 2023. Interest rates are absolutely insane. and the housing market is slowed significantly because of that. Now from the outside looking in, it's, oh my goodness, doomsday. worse thing possible. What the heck's going on? And
I'm finishing up my developments. I've already had ones that have finished a couple months ago. We put it on the MLS. Everybody else around us. Not everybody else, but a lot of people were dropping their prices because they were freaking out. Fire sale so to speak. And my partner and I, we looked at each other where, like, construction costs have gone through the roof. these developments have taken a lot longer than we thought they would have taken.
What are we gonna do? And I was we looked at each other, and we're pretty in sync with our values and our mindset. We're like, we're gonna bet on ourselves. We're gonna keep our price hold to our price and loan behold, some of the houses we've built have sold already or are under contract, for full asking in a market that most people are terrified at, but we knew the product. Like, I'm gonna say this again. our product is so important to us. We want the best product for what
we're working on. And so they're not the cheapest houses around. They're actually higher end, not country music star, high end, higher end houses, and we bet on ourselves And these developments, I'm gonna keep
some of them. I'm gonna sell some of them. This is the vehicle that's gonna make me financially free because I've been able to focus on one thing as far as real estate's concerned and also really just bet on myself and make decisions from a position of power rather than a position of weakness We had a just for an quick example, there's somebody a block away from us. Same exact house, a 1000 square feet more. than ours. He dropped his price. He's losing money on
that development. We were priced $30,000 more than him a 1000 square feet less. He sold his. We got under contract and sold ours for our price because they went through his house, didn't want it. It was a duplex. Ours was a duplex, so they went through the other available unit. And even though it was a 1000 square feet more a block away, gorgeous finishes, the guy did a great job, but they wanted our house.
and that was a testament to us standing strong to what we believed was right and what we believed was a great product and that was priced appropriately. We did not need to play the game of take it down and just beg for somebody to take this off because the interest payments right now are ridiculous for these construction loans. Anyone that knows about construction loans, they are heavy at the end because they the interest is based off of the money you've
used that you've taken out of the loan. So all the money has been spent and more. And so at this point, we're paying a ton in interest, and that's where investors really lose their money at the end of a project for a
development like what I do. But, yeah, we held strong, and that's what we're continuing to do through this crazy time right now, and it's getting me all the results that I never got before even though for the last 10 years, things have been going great with real state minus COVID hitting for a couple months, but everything else just keeps going up and up for the last 10 years. And now in what has been the hardest time in the last 10
years, I'm seeing the best results. It's interesting that you remind me the concept that, you know, acting out of confidence in the value you bring versus acting out of desperation. Yep. And typically the when you have that type of stance, it's almost I hate to use the word, but repulsive in a
way. In this situation, you gave the example where that fella had a house, bigger house, maybe similar accommodations, but him doing dropping the price and doing some of that, there's some signaling there to the marketplace that there might be something else wrong with the house. There might be something that that they're just not privy to, and you staying strong in the value that you bring. it it really is telling us to how that can impact
a sale. Yeah. I think it's one of the things I've learned in this past 10 years is setting the right on the front end. One of my biggest mistakes that I continued to make over and over again is I wouldn't set up the right expectations with my employees I wouldn't set up the right expectations with my subs and how you do that. It's a quick conversation. You could literally say I expect this and this. or you could just present yourself
in a certain way, bring that confidence and say, alright. What's the time frame for this? What's the budget for this? Okay. I expect you to do y and z, and it's very and then all you have to do after that is just follow-up and make sure and be like, hey. Remember that conversation we had a week month ago, however long,
let's just stick to that. It doesn't have to be a fight, an argument, anything like that, but if you're presenting yourself in a strong, confident way, And at the same time, you're setting the right expectation for everybody around you and the right expectation for yourself and upholding that things tend to work out a lot more than they don't once you do that. Yeah. That's a great lesson. Setting expectations. We've even got to the point where we set expectations even when we're
going to a property and and talking to the distressed seller. It just having those they know the next step and what's gonna come out of it is it's meant to change the world when it comes to doing that type of work. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And you hit on something too. Like, we're talking about strengths and weaknesses. almost for a full year within that time frame, I was I had this goal to get a house on my own. because traditionally, I would find my flips through a realtor or
a wholesaler or somebody like that. So for a year, I was like, I'm gonna get my own deal myself. So I studied. I practice sales and marketing and talking to to clients and all this and that. And, one, lack of confidence back then. I'm sure the people could see it when I approached them. I wasn't confident in my offer or anything like that. But, 2, I wasn't very good at that. I was very good at the construction side of it. picking the right finishes, making sure things are structurally
sound. If there's issues in the field, I could fix them immediately. That's my superpower. is the construction, not the front end or the back ends. Over the years too, I would find people and be like, front end people that are able to do what I am not really good at and back end people selling the property things like that. So my development partner, he's really good at the front end, finding the deals, finding the land, and he's fantastic also at selling the
product. But then my strength is in the middle, and that's where I need to be. And once I did that as well, got in my own lane, so to speak, and let my partner be in his own lane and understood who was responsible for what. That changed everything as well. If you wouldn't mind, let's just spend a little time on your book and what you did regarding this 100 day challenge. I was glancing through the table of contents here And it almost reads like you you're another I shouldn't say you're
another. You it almost reads like you're doing something like Tim Ferris if you're familiar with him. Oh, yeah. -- these extreme challenges just to see what results he's gonna get. because you're looking through this and you got you talked about sleep, breathing, dopamine, cold water immersion, thoughts, anchors, healing, prayer, habits, and rituals, there's a lot to uncover here. It's a relatively it's a relatively short book. It's
would be easy to digest for most people. Out of everything you experienced during those 100 days, what was a couple of those things that you found were the biggest benefit. The best part of writing the book, and I told myself at the beginning of this, if I wrote this book and I never published it, That's fine because just the exercise of the countless hours that I put into research, the countless hours that I
put into writing this thing, I did this thing in a 100 days. I was writing about, I think, 600 words a day, minimal, and I was doing about an hour to an hour a half research every day, 7 days a week for a 100 days. So I told myself at the beginning, you know what? Worst case scenario, I never published this book, but that's That's not my mission. That's not what I'm here to do. And so the book essentially,
it does a couple things. 1, it catalogs my life prior to the 100 day challenge, who I was before that, my journey in the 100 day challenge, and then who I became and what I'm doing after that 100 days, So it talks about personal stories of my life at that point when I was younger and I tie in the whole super superhero aspect of it because I grew up a comic book fan. I love watching Marvel movies. I grew up watching the X Men movies and Spiderman and Batman just love those. And I also have
this belief. I've had this for years that people have this inner superhero? Why are people like Tim Ferris able to do these incredible things with their lives? And I've all I feel like everybody is born with a special gift and a special ability. We just need to know how to find it and how to train it and how to design it. That's why the book and the podcast actually are called superhero by design that we're able to design ourselves from the inside out
of the type of life we wanna have and who we wanna be. So as I was going through this 100 day challenge, I was doing crazy stuff too. Yeah. Cold water immersion. So ice baths, cold showers every day. I was a big fan of the ice man, Wim Hof, and learning about the Wim Hof method, his breathing techniques, and what it does for is breathing techniques keep you from they boost your immune system. They keep you from getting sick. And so I was doing all this crazy
stuff. I was working out 2 hour workouts 5 days a week. I was with a trainer, not even a local trainer. I did a teletraining from a guy in Miami, and I was taking in only 1800 calories a day while doing all this exercise while stay getting up early, staying up late, cold water. I wasn't getting sick. I had tons of energy. I kicked. I wasn't doing any bad habits anymore, so I stopped drinking alcohol. I even stopped drinking caffeine. And so I went
with through caffeine and sugar withdrawals. At the beginning of the challenge, I did a I started with a 10 day cleanse, and I was able to do all this extreme stuff to prove I I didn't realize that at the time, but I was proven to myself that you can do a lot of things in such a short 100 days sounds like a lot. And when you're in it, it's a lot. But a 100 days just goes by like this. We just finish this year. That's 365 days. This was only the 1st 100 days of 2022.
And so I did all these incredible things. I wrote this book and as I was writing it, I found what is the ultimate superpower of anybody and every chapter breaks down the same basic superpower, and that's our nervous system. So I started listening to guys. Amazing podcast, HubermanLab, Andrew Huberman, He's blown up recently this past
year. Great neuroscientist. And I was like, all these superpowers, breathing, cold water, neuroplasticity, habits rituals, and you could read books like atomic habits as a phenomenal book about micro habits. and all of this stems back to our nervous system. So once I realized that and I started leveraging and using the tools that's that are already inside of me. All this stuff's free. All this stuff is at our fingertips. We just need to know how to use it and to take the day
that's the great thing about the 100 day challenge. It's daily discipline doing all of these things. It was an incredible journey. in the past, in a 100 days, I completely turned the script on my life. And now I'm living a life that is completely different If you had talked to me a year ago, you couldn't you wouldn't even write you'd recognize actually, I was £45 heavier. So you might not even physically
recognize me, but you wouldn't recognize the per and who I am today. In this book catalogs that it teaches people the tools that I used personally, but it also teaches them the principles of our nervous systems there's tools that haven't even been created yet that people can figure out for themselves. And so this is a great book. There's a lot of good stories about it. And then from that sparked the podcast. The buddy of mine who has his own podcast was like, let's sell the
book. You need to build an audience. So why don't you start a podcast? And I was like, a pod what? I know Joe Rogan does this show online from time. I didn't know what a podcast was. And so I started a podcast and you know what? Starting my podcast has been one of the single greatest things I've done in my
life. I'm really proud of the book and the book that I wrote, and I think it's gonna add tremendous value to anybody that reads it, but the podcast itself has become a passion project for me because I get to interview people that I consider real life superheroes that are just doing amazing things.
It's not a real estate podcast. but it's a podcast to hear good inspiring stories to empower people and just really promote people taking control of their lives and taking control of their destiny and learning a lot of cool things that they can do to become a superhero and really just change the world. Yeah. I've had some people ask me, I don't run very many ads on the podcast, and it's really for a reason. Most people ask, why do you continue to do this? like, why?
What are you getting out of this? And it's I find it a main the mindset getting out of it equals strictly some sort of cash transaction that they the you there's a lot more value in talking to somebody like you and making this connection, building the network, learning from each other, and having this conversation that's worth far more to me than any kind of direct monetary gain that you may or may not get. I agree with
you a 100%. I had said this from day 1 when it comes to the book that anybody that purchases it a portion of the proceeds goes to a nonprofit that I support and am a part of. I've become a part of recently in the past few months. It's called Operation Rescue Children. And, essentially, it is an 501c3 nonprofit that trains seal team 6, the Texas Rangers, like, not just the elite groups, but the elite of the elite groups, and even down to local police officers and all that. Yeah.
They train all of these people to go into these op these illegal operations for sex trafficking, and they bust up those operations free these slaves. And then get them the right help that they need to get them back into society and get them jobs and and all of that. So it's just it's something I never thought I would specifically be a part of and do, but now that I'm in it, I can't see my life without being a part of something like this. I have no experience with sex trafficking. I was not
trafficked. I don't know anybody that was traffic, but it is a huge problem. And for years years, just like becoming financially free and all of that, I I there was always a part of me that wanted to do more and give more, but then I looked at the 1st 38 years of my life. And I was like, I provided. I worked hard, but
really did I give back? Did I do something meaningful? If I died today, is there something that I could point at and say that I really made a change in this world that this world is now different after I'm gone, then when I first got here, and the answer was no. And that scared the hell out of me. And so part I love working with ORC, but part of what you were talking about, the book, obviously, I want to sell a lot of books, not for money, because that's not important to me. What's really
important to me is changing people's lives. I know this book can do it, and so that's why I put the money where my mouth is and every book that's sold, a portion of those profits go directly to ORC. Oh, that's awesome. It's coming full circle. You're in the trenches now helping the actual superheroes among us. I appreciate you saying that it There's 2 pillars that I live by in my life now, and that's growth and contribution I love
learning. I've always loved learning. I'm a structural engineer by trade. Like, I went to crazy universities and studied my butt off because I absolutely loved it. but then I got caught in the 9 to 5 and the w 2, and I lost that love of learning. So this past year too, being able to learn about the nervous on being able to learn from all these amazing people in the world has just reignited a fire. And so part of my daily rituals are to study every day. I read more now than I've
ever read before. I'm going online. It's so cool today because you could watch YouTube videos you can listen to podcasts. And so I'd love the nonstop learning, and I also do it for the second part because if I can be more then I can do more. And I feel like learning is great, and it makes me feel great, but now I can transfer that to other people. And since I've transformed my life, people have been coming to me asking for my help, and I've been able to empower, inspire, and help other
people. And that, to me, game over. I'm living the best life. ever, and it's because of my growth and my contribution. So, well, that's just so great to hear. I just wanna remind everybody one more time, SuperHeroByDesign.com for links to the book and podcast and a few other resources. Check out Ace's podcast, superhero by design. I'll make sure to have all of those direct links, clickable links in the show notes. But to hate to do this to you, Ace, but we're gonna close out with
some of those rapid fire questions I warned you about. I love it. Bring it on. So first off, what is a real estate investing myth you'd like to bust here today? One of the myths that I had, and I would call it a limiting belief as well, is when I first started out in real state. I thought you had to have money to make money in real estate. So all the deals I was putting my own money in, I was never borrowing money, I was, yeah, other than, like,
bank loans. But from the turnkey property, the turnkey business that I was in, I didn't put any money in. We raised money, and we had happy investors. and we were able in just a span of 2 years by, I believe, over 150 houses, not using a single dime. I did put some money in eventually, but what I had learned was the power of other people's money. And the cool thing is you can get as creative as
you want. Like, when you have private money, you can really make the terms whatever you want as long as it works well with whoever's lending you the money. And I'm also a very moral person too, so I'm never one to take advantage of anyone, but I had these limiting beliefs that borrowing money from other people was bad, but you know what? We made money. They made
money. Everyone was happy. And once you start doing that, your mindset completely changes and using the power of leveraging other people's resources, whether it's time, money, doesn't matter. Like, that accelerates the growth of your business and your mission. It it was absolutely incredible to break that old mindset. What book would you recommend, or what are you reading right now? Alright. I'll give you both right now. Literally right next to me. I'm reading
David Goggins new book, never finished. Love that guy to death. I want I don't wanna be him because I don't wanna run ultra marathons. but his tenacity with how he attacks life, I respect so much and me doing that 100 day challenge. I feel like putting myself in the fire every day is makes life come alive. One of my favorite books of all time is the compound effect by Darren Hardy. And that's that that goes back to the 100 day challenge too. Just
small incremental changes every single day. atomic habits talks about that as well, but I love the compound effect and the principle behind it of that accelerated growth at first. Every day, it might be mundane. You don't wanna do it, and you don't really see any changes, but man, that exponential curve he talks about, those results just shoot you into the moon after that. It's absolutely an incredible book.
Yeah. Goggin, you would bring up Goggin. He he has a fluidity about his cursing that is unraveled and just unbelievable. Yeah. I I love following him on social media too. Every other word is a mother effort. It's he's an incredible, credible person. Yeah. But his mindset is unbelievable. What is your biggest real estate investing mistake and what did you learn from it? I think we
got we went over quite a few mistakes that I've made. I would say one of the worst I came to Nashville thinking I'd be the next big flipper, and I picked up a property within the 1st month and a half And I just made so many mistakes because I had flipped houses in California before I moved here and I was very successful. Never lost money. And so got into this flip. I found the wrong who's wrong contractor, wrong realtor, I didn't know my
numbers. I didn't do enough research to figure out my numbers well enough. Shoot. I didn't even know the right formula for flipping at that time because I relied on my partner in California to figure all that out, but now it was on me. So I didn't know my numbers very well. I didn't have enough oversight. I didn't set the right expectations with my crew my contractor and my realtor on the front end. And during the project, I didn't keep track of my numbers as well as I do now. I
didn't have my assistant keeping me organized. And so I lost a significant amount of money on that flip. I did the scared thing because choice of weakness I the realtor was like, let's drop it. Okay. 2 weeks later. Let's drop it. Okay. And I sold out of weakness And the worst part of that selling out of weakness is the people that bought it were pissed off at me because there were some floor sloping that went
on. And we did some foundation work that I ran and engineered, and we did some phenomenal foundation work on that house, but it was still sloped and they thought that I had sold them a poor house, and they were telling me they wanted to sue me They were saying some pretty horrible things behind my back to my contractor friend who was out there trying to help me fix the situation. And you know what? If I had stuck to my guns, didn't
reduce my price, said this is the price. This is what you're gonna pay. It's worth this is a good product because it was I would never have had that backlash at the end. It I never thought about that till now until we talked about this earlier as absolutely insane. what people think they buy depending on how you sell it to them. That's a really interesting perspective. So what if you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would
that be? It would be focus focus. I wish I would have focused on something accelerated my growth, accelerated my expertise. Like you said, what you said earlier was phenomenal. Focus on one thing. get that going. And then you can add something else in, but until you get that dialed in, don't just try 3 or 4 things at the same time and give them partial focus because that's
what I've been doing the last, not 10 years. I guess the 9 years prior to that, and it was showing mediocre results for a ton of work, a ton of stress, and it was not worth it whatsoever. Okay. You have 60 seconds. You gotta give everybody a tip or trick that they can implement in their lives today. What would it be? I would say there was a documentary that doctor Dre had done That was phenomenal. And the lesson learned from Doctor Dray's career
is he always bet on himself. And at the end of the day, you said it earlier, no one's gonna care about your business or what's going on with you more than yourself. You gotta be looking out for your interest. And then when it comes like my development example I gave where we got our price we were betting on ourselves, and that changed everything. So if you don't bet on yourself in life, by default, you're already telling yourself you're not a winner because why would someone not bet
on a winner? So if you're betting on other people to help you get to where you need to go. That is the wrong way of approaching life. Business doesn't matter. So bet on yourself because you are a winner And once you start doing that and making your own reality, everything's gonna follow that. Please, this was a great conversation. I hope you come back again sometime. Again, it's superherobydesign.com, but is there a question or concept you wish we would have covered here today?
Oh, man. I I think we covered it all as far as, like, mindset and and potential miss. I know there's a lot more mistakes out there, but I've made a whole slew of them. but it's, like I said, I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't gone down that journey. It would have been nice for it to be a little more condensed, but you know what? I'm not in control. There's already a plan set out. I just gotta follow the path. Thanks again. This was great. You're welcome back. I hope
you'll take me up on that. Last time here, superherobydesign.com. Thanks again. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.