3 Degrees of Freedom

Ep 156 - Persistence as an Unfair Advantage for Freedom Building with Taylor Loht

• Derek Clifford • Season 3 • Episode 156

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In this episode of 3 Degrees of Freedom, we're joined by Taylor Loht, a prominent real estate investor specializing in multifamily and self-storage ventures. Taylor's mission is to guide busy professionals in creating passive wealth without the hassle of property management. As the host of The Passive Wealth Strategy Show, his podcast has garnered over 300,000 downloads.

Taylor's journey is a testament to persistence, his superpower. With a portfolio surpassing $250 million, he's mastered multifamily and self-storage real estate, residing in Richmond, Virginia, alongside his wife Sandra. He elaborates on his preferred "degree of freedom" and how vision influences his approach.

Discover key lessons from The Passive Wealth Strategy Show, Sunbelt market insights, and Taylor's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu-fueled mindset. Join us for "Persistence as an Unfair Advantage for Freedom Building" to glean wisdom from Taylor's expertise, empowering you to embark on your own journey to financial freedom.

Connect with Taylor thru the social links below and learn more about her business:
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-l-3416b627/
Websites: passiverealestatecourse.com, investwithtaylor.com

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Derek Clifford:

And today we've got Taylor Loht, a real estate investor specializing in multifamily and self storage investments. How are you today, Taylor?

Taylor Loht:

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on today.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, absolutely. It's gonna be fun and thank you so much for coming on the show. For those who don't know Taylor he is on a mission to teach busy professionals how to build passive wealth through real estate. He's mastered the art of creating income streams without the hassle of dealing with tenants toilets. And termites. And he imparts the wisdom of expert real estate investors on his highly popular podcast, the Passive Wealth Strategy Show which so far has garnered over 300,000 downloads. I don't know as of when Taylor, but that's probably more than that now. And as a founder of NT Capital, Taylor focuses on multifamily and self storage real estate in the thriving Sunbelt markets and Taylor's involvement in commercial, real estate ventures has surpassed over $250 million in assets. And alongside his wife, Sandra, Taylor resides in Richmond, Virginia cherishing their life outside of real estate pursuits as well. So Taylor, like I said, it's a pleasure to have you on the show, buddy.

Taylor Loht:

Thanks so much. I appreciate you having me. I love your, read of that. I can't remember. I, I don't know who wrote that, but it sounds new to me.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, no, it is new. And I can tell you who wrote it. And I can tell you that the initials of the person who wrote it is AI.

Taylor Loht:

Ah, okay, nice.

Derek Clifford:

Anyways, let's go ahead and get going here. As one of the first questions that we'd like to ask all of our guests is about the three degrees of freedom itself. That's the name of the show. And so we want to know which of the three degrees of freedom you think that you feel you're most ahead of versus the other two. And then, I would like to understand which one of those you want to continue developing or which ones you see a biggest opportunity for you to develop and why.

Taylor Loht:

Sure. Absolutely. So I would say the furthest that I've progressed on the three of those is financial freedom. I. And in my mind, that is the one that enables the other two the most. Once you achieve financial freedom, then the other two, again, in my mind are not automatic by any sense but they can fall into place a little bit more easily. If, you're to ask me what the. Second most important one to me would be if that's my, if my interpretation of the question is correct. To me time freedom is more important than location freedom. And I based that on, so I, over 10 years ago now, somewhat early in my career. I spent a lot of time traveling. I was on a plane just about every week flying across the country to for my, job at the time. And and that was a good, it was a good time for me to do that in my life, to spend a lot of time traveling, but I. At the end of the day, one of the, probably the most important thing that I learned at that time as a, much younger man with no obligations, no wife, no, I didn't know my house at the time, and no nothing that I had to be at home for. But I was deeply unhappy and that deep unhappiness preceded preceded the high travel percentage part of my life. But, The big lesson that I took out of that is wherever you go, there you are. Now, I didn't, certainly did not make that up. There's a whole book, wherever you go, there you are, you take yourself with you when you travel mentally you take all your hangups and baggage and everything like that along with you traveling. And ultimately that I, learned that. That the kind of happiness that I thought I would get or the satisfaction I thought I would get out of traveling a lot. Now granted it was for a job. It wasn't traveling where I wanted to, but it still was like not being in an office all the time, which was great. I loved that part. I just found that the life satisfaction that I was seeking was not to be found. In a plane going somewhere new. Now the opportunity to do that was fantastic. I'm very glad that I did learned a big lesson out of it. But I think the, I don't mean to rag on social media too much, but I think the kind of glamorous Instagram lifestyle that a lot of us think we want at least in a certain sense I did. Now, granted, I don't. Even remember if Instagram was around at that point? It was more than 10 years ago. I certainly wasn't on Instagram at that point. I think we think that'll bring us satisfaction in life when in reality, at least for me, I can only really speak for myself. That type of thing doesn't bring me satisfaction. Now, I love traveling. I love going and seeing new places and being able to be where I want to be when I want to be there. But ultimately I like my creature comforts. I own a my wife and I own our home. I love working on the house. I love doing stuff around the house. Much more than I ever thought that I would. Honestly, I thought I'm I'm not gonna be that boring guy obsessing over his yard, and yet here I am. That's what I do. I obsess over the yard. I don't know why, but I do. So that's, a long-winded way of saying that's why time freedom is, more important to me than location freedom.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah. I, love that. And, I appreciate you making that distinction for us because the way that my story unfolded was I actually had location freedom first, and then that was able to, I. Help me lower our expenses because we were living in a very expensive part of the country and I know that's not the case with everyone. So I really love that distinction because not everyone is me and I like to hear that. Because the world would be a very boring place if it was, I. And I, appreciate you, and your honesty as well saying that all this full-time travel is not really cracked up to what it's supposed to be especially if it's for a job. So I completely understand that. That being said, can I ask you then, because right now obviously you said that financial freedom is the lead domino. That's the most important thing.'cause it does enable the options that you can have in the other two degrees of freedom, your time freedom, and your location freedom. Between financial freedom and time freedom, which one do you want to continue to work on the hardest? What is the most important to you right now? Because I know that everyone's always working on financial and ev all the three at some degree. But I'm curious your take, whether financial is the way you want to go or time.

Taylor Loht:

That's it is an interesting question. And I, it's hard to separate the two because I think they're, somewhat intermixed and especially with my particular method of investing in real estate. You can't necessarily just invest more of your own time to grow your business. That is definitely part of it. But growing in, say multifamily and self storage, it's more than just your own time because then you're just working in your business. You need to be working on your business as much as you can. So they're somewhat joined together, but honestly, To me right now, working as hard as I can on the financial freedom aspect of that is most important. And I'll tell you why. So I've been, my wife and I have been married for, as we talk just about, just under two months, just a couple days, shy of two months. And we're both working hard on our own respective things, but we don't have children at this point. It's probably gonna happen, right? That's been a conversation. We talk about it it's probably gonna happen down the road. And at that point, my time priorities are and life priorities in general are really gonna shift, right? That time is no longer gonna be mine. If you ask people who have kids, they're gonna tell you, you have no time anymore at all. And I, understand that. So right now I see. My opportunity given my age I'm, 33 and we've done all these real estate deals and everything. My long-term opportunity to create the life that I envision and also assuming we, we have children, which is certainly the the plan. By investing my time in my financial freedom, I can create a, life and a level of wealth in the future that. I wouldn't be able to otherwise, if that makes sense. And it's difficult to really pin that down because I have a vision in my mind in some ways. But to me financial freedom or financial independence, I don't dream of having an amazing car. I have a nice car now, but it gets me from A to B. It's comfortable. The sound system's good, but. It's not the nicest thing in the world. If you were to quadruple my, net worth right now, I can't really, that would get me to financial freedom for sure. No question about it. I'm not that far away, but I can't tell you with a straight face that I would go and buy another car. I probably wouldn't. I don't really care about that stuff. So investing my time in creating that level of financial freedom so that down the road when I don't have that time to invest in the financial freedom. But I have the financial freedom to, if we do wanna travel at that point, or just be a provider in general that kind of thing. So that's, the way I think about it now.

Derek Clifford:

It sounds like an approach from someone that is a deep planner it's given, gives lots of thought to, to, where you want to go. And I think that's that's just a point that I want to make is that by thinking about these three degrees of freedom and what options you want to have, it's giving you a vision for the future or maybe vice versa. Maybe you are using a vision that's in your mind or you and your spouse's mind. To decide like how you want to grow in life together and using that to help craft where you're going to put your energy and what priorities are important to you. Because if your priorities are travel and recreation having a good time, then your life is gonna look very different than if it's. If it's specifically on the investing side and trying to work on your business systems and stuff like that. Just a, small offshoot question to this is what does your vision look like and is your vision, does it inform this decision that you're making or what does your practice look like around that?

Taylor Loht:

Yeah, it's a great question and I would say I try to have, I. Long-term plans and visions, but also not constrain them too terribly much because if you would've asked me again 10 years ago, what do you want your life to look like in 10 years? I would've been so wrong because I didn't know about, frankly I, don't think I had the knowledge of the world that I have today. In many ways, I didn't know myself that well. I think most men in their early twenties, I'm a reflection of anybody. We don't know ourselves that well. You gotta go out and continue to participate in the world. And I was learning and right and learning more about my own priorities. And if you asked me 10 years ago, do you wanna be married in 10 years? I didn't have the life design at the point where I thought, I just couldn't envision that being a part of my life in many ways. So I might've been wrong about that. So I try not to be too constrained with those things. I have visions in my mind of what I want my real estate portfolio to look like, but I couldn't tell you that I wanna own a certain number of buildings in certain market or anything like that. It's, more broad than that. It's a certain level of cash flow and all that kind of a thing that, that the goal is to create the. Vision is with regards to the business in terms of having people, having more people in place than I do now to run the deal pipeline, run our investor pipelines, run marketing, that kind of a thing. There's certainly a vision there that's growing with time on a personal life note. I think the speaking of, planning, one of the things that kind of leads me back is. This is a question that I had thought to myself in my mid to later twenties at the time when my now wife and I weren't quite together yet. And, I couldn't really see myself being married in a certain way 'cause I hadn't met the right woman yet. I, ultimately did, and I'm very happy now, but until I had the right the right fit. I just couldn't, see it. In my mid late twenties I, was asking myself wondering, what does my life wanna look like in 20 years? Do I want to be someone in 20 years who hasn't had children? No, I don't. I think I do so great. I need to set my trajectory to, to hit that target. But if you're over constraining, then I think you in some ways miss the mark. And you also miss. Opportunities along the way, if that makes sense. And it's hard to have a vision of what those look like. So yeah, we do have themes and goals and, visions, but again, I think it's important to not be too constrained about that. And so when I was half my age that I am now all I wanted maybe not all I wanted, but really wanted A B M W, right? I like bmw. I still like BMWs today. I can afford A B M W today. I don't drive A B M W today because my vision, my goals, my priorities have changed. And frankly, I know what it takes to earn the money to buy one because I have done that many times. But I also know what happens with that money. When you put it into a car, it goes away. But if you put it in cash flow in real estate, then it continues to add and snowball to your life. You have to be open to change. Think about your priorities or long-term, long-term vision. Think about themes, but I think not get too. Laser focused on one specific constrained.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah. Yeah. It's important to realize when setting plans. That's why usually for Sophie and I, we set three to five year visions because that's right about in the timeframe where you can achieve something amazing or more than you think. A three years is a long, time. But on paper it doesn't seem like that long. Just is it's a great. Unit of time that you can use to be able to predict what your current self would want to achieve. And I love that you said that things change and you have to be open to change because different circumstances change the way you approach your life, right? Like you may have different people come into your life, so it may be different. You may have different circumstances you may have a health if something happened with your health. Things evolve, right? And we become different people based on what we allow into our brains and what happens around us. And so I think that it's, really great that you said that thing, that things move and you didn't know who you were back then. I didn't either. And honestly, I have a feeling that. 10 years from now we're gonna be looking back and saying, man, I didn't know who I was in my thirties. It may be a little bit better than the difference between the 30, looking back to the 20, but I know that there's always gonna be some aspect to that because as you achieve your goals, you become a bigger person. You start growing and then you look back and you're like, oh man, that goal of the B M W, that was nothing. That's something that like, I've got down pat now and I've learned how to do that, and now I'm a different person, so now it's time for me to build a portfolio or it's time for me to build a house on every continent or something. Something amazing. Something that will compel you and move you forward. That was just, quite frankly, not even in the sphere of recognition of what you could. Put in as a possible goal in your twenties. So I think that's, that. That's amazing. Now I do wanna shift gears here. I want to talk a little bit more about your superpower, which is persistence, because that, if I'm correct, may be the common theme that has stuck with you ever since from ever since you started your career. Let's talk about your superpower. How has your superpower fed into or played a role? In your current journey towards creating all of this freedom and your success so far?

Taylor Loht:

Yeah, absolutely. In the investing world your listeners are gonna know, you're gonna know that real estate doesn't happen overnight for anybody, right? You might be able to point to one or two, but they might be juicing the stats a little bit. So just doing that first deal can take a long time, but, Even once you've done that first deal and you go to number two and so on, there are gonna be setbacks along the way. Maybe a deal falls through, maybe something doesn't turn out to be as profitable as you want, or a business partnership falls apart. That kind of a thing. And me personally we say persistence. I when people ask me, I say persistence to me. I might just be stubborn and a little bullheaded, but I think they're one and the same. Just stubborns, maybe a little more pejorative. You you. set a goal and, a target and you just keep working at it. The thing that you can't be too stuck on is your method, right? Because as you learn and grow, especially in the real estate investing space, you find that there are other possibilities, but. That then you gets you into the realm of shiny object syndrome where, you're bouncing between one and you know the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, so you're not staying consistent. So for me, I. I went through that period of struggling to do that first deal and then experiencing shiny object syndrome because I still wanted to work at things, but I didn't understand, I think at the time, the power of persistent focus on one thing. Then once I started to recognize and learn the power of persistence and stick to one thing, It all started to fall into place, but even that first deal doesn't happen automatically. You need to keep going. And yeah, that second deal doesn't happen automatically. You gotta keep going and moving forward, and there can be setbacks. So I think that's really, persistence is so, important. And it's, hard to do. I think even for me, I say it's something that I can do. I have good days, I have great days, I have less good days. I don't wanna say bad days, but days where there are setbacks or don't move forward. But ultimately still staying focused on the goal and working on it every day helps. Yeah. Yeah

Derek Clifford:

That's, really well said because I can completely relate with all of that. And I think that I also have a stubborn streak to me too, and I feel like I've got a, an ability to persist through things despite maybe even. It being even unhealthy for me honestly to, to persist through something. I'll be honest, like that's just the way that it is. Now, let's say that someone has recognized that persistence is something that maybe they wanna work on, so maybe they want to be more self-disciplined or more persistent, whether you define that as hardheaded or stubborn, however you want to call that. What would you give, what advice would you give to someone who want to become better at that? Which would then lead to business success or success in many different areas of life?

Taylor Loht:

So I think one of the things that has helped me a lot, and we haven't touched about on it yet, but we have, I have a book over here on my right, Brazilian Jiujitsu. I've been doing Jiujitsu since 2015. That's actually where I met what my now wife, she was not my wife at the time that I met her, obviously. But just the the, Process of going to the gym where, you know and, training with guys who are bigger and better at submission grappling than I am, which happens all the time, several times a week after we're done on this call. I am going to the gym and I'm gonna get beaten up, hopefully not injured. That's the one thing. It's not getting injured, but you're getting smashed, choked out, sometimes injured, but really uncomfortable situations and, scenarios and just. Progressively learning that when you start out, the first time you get choked out by somebody and just not, put out, put to sleep, but the first time you get put in an uncomfortable situation by somebody who's better than you, you freak out. You can't take it. But the second time it, you go a little further, you go a little harder. And I think that. Skill of seeing the gradual progression and showing up when you know this is gonna be uncomfortable applies to the entirety of the rest of your life. So if you can cultivate something like that, I'm not saying it has to be jiujitsu. I love doing yoga too. And you know what, if you get the right yoga program, it can be really stinking hard. Oh yeah. But you still have to show up and do it about. A little over 10 years ago prior to my, no, I was traveling a lot at the time. I'm a terrible swimmer. I, can float I can get across, I can survive but if you asked me to do laps I, can't do it to this day. And I couldn't at the time I. My sister, on the other hand, is a, literal champion swimmer. She was performed very well when we, when she was in high school, set all these records that still stand today. 16, 17 years later, she went to Princeton to swim at Princeton. Amazing. She's so good. And one day she said, I signed up for this triathlon. She, I don't know exactly why she signed up for it, but I said, I'm gonna do it too. And for your listeners that don't know, there's a swim involved in a triathlon, and it was in this lake, this cloudy lake, and I said, let's go for it. I can ride a bike pretty well. I can run if I have to. But the swim man, that freaked me out. That really, it honestly scared me. So I prepared for months and months I got in the pool, man, the first time, I don't even think I made it halfway down the pool. Like I, I could not do it. But you know what I got? Got on YouTube and got guides and learned how to swim laps. And eventually I was able to consistently sw swim laps. Now they weren't very good, but I could make it. I made it back and forth I could do it a half mile or something at a time. Wasn't that big a deal? Not fast, but I could get it done. And you know what? The day came, I ended up doing I got I think second in my. Age bracket. I was very pleased with that performance. My swim was awful, but I made it. I made it around. And I think that process of whatever it is in your life, especially for, a physical activity, continually pushing yourself and putting yourself in the, these uncomfortable situations that you have to push through those little experiences apply to the rest of your life. You might not be able to see it, but that. Again, persistence through these uncomfortable scenarios where I've committed to myself to do something, I'm not gonna drop out of this triathlon. At least the time. I wasn't gonna, I'm not gonna, do I ever do another one? Yeah. I, hated it, but I did it. And I think the experience of gutting through things like that, especially physically to me, helps a lot. And, I think cultivate something like that in your life and stick to your vision. Cultivate a physical activity like that in your life and you'll be disciplined enough to be persistent in the pursuit.

Derek Clifford:

I have to say that when you are looking to do something like this, there's something very humbling, at least in my mind as I'm thinking about what you're going to go through of you knowing that you're going to walk into a place where you're probably gonna get choked out you're probably going to get pinned and you're probably going to be in some level of discomfort, right? And you know that's going to happen. But yet you still do it. And I think that's something putting my mind in the mind of someone who isn't you. That's what I think is going through their mind is, I don't want to go through that discomfort. But I think what you're willing to do is take those little daily choices of knowing that little bit of discomfort adds up to building your character, right? It, makes you become a bigger person. And so if you can swallow it in bite-size chunks, right? Face your fears face the discomfort and just make it a part of who you are. So that. You facing discomfort is now just a daily event. It's just something that you do. I think that's like kind of key to that persistence in you saying, I'm not going to cut corners to hit my goal. So that's just something that I observed right there. And I think it's super helpful for people to learn from you in that regard.

Taylor Loht:

I don't know. Would you find that accurate? I think so, yeah. And I think making yourself uncomfortable in. In, in safe ways. Obviously I'm not I'm not telling anybody go jump out of a plane or anything. I'm not ever going skydiving. But yeah making yourself uncomfortable. To give you an example, one of the things I like to do, I'm not great about it, but I like to do intermittent fasting. I've been doing it for, I don't know, something like 14 years on and off. I'm very much not perfect about it. I've had times in my life where I'm really good and dialed in. And then I have times where I laugh slack and everything, and I have to come back to it and remind myself. Right now I'm 18 and a half hours in, I'm gonna, and this, I don't do this every day, but a lot of days when I train, I will fast all day, go to the gym, come home eat when I get home, hopefully cross my fingers, my wife make some awesome dinner tonight. But that experience of being uncomfortable, yeah, I'm hungry right now, but it's not killing me. There are a few times throughout the afternoon where I've Had the temptation to go get a, spoonful of peanut butter. I love peanut butter or just something, put something in my mouth and I have ways to trick it. I drink some decaf and drink water and everything. But those, I think those little bitty things where you're working on that discipline to push through and work toward your goal. Just help in everything and yeah. I have days where I set out to do a, 20 hour fast, which when you start fasting is not all that long really. But when I have days where I cave at 15 hours and I'm just so hungry, yeah. I feel like I've let myself down in some ways, but it's like I don't, I try not to hold that against myself. I try to understand why what, did it, what caused me to, really. Again, not fail, but to bail on my goal a little bit. And sometimes it's, relatively simple. I didn't sleep that last night. I feel crappy today. My wife and I were both sick for a couple of weeks. We got colds traveling. It's hard to, for me to do that when I'm sleeping terribly. I've, been sick for a week and a half, something like that. I think learning those things you can understand, you can help to control your environment, to enable you to be more persistent and disciplined and control some of those day-to-day behavior. So those are just some of the practices that I engage in. I love it.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah I, love that you put that in there as well, to put it more on the process side. And also give yourself some grace. Give yourself a little bit of room, because when you're trying to do something like this there's no right answer. And for all you know, if you're not listening to your body or your mind, you may actually be hurting yourself in some way. So I, think that I think that having that level of awareness is really useful and I love that caveat there. And the talk about the, process. I wanna switch gears because there's, there was so much to cover and we're running outta time.

Taylor Loht:

So I wanna make sure I hit a lot of, I, I'm longwinded.

Derek Clifford:

No, it's all good. So you have a podcast, right? The Passive Wealth Strategy Show. I wanted to ask you your collective thoughts on some key lessons and strategies that you hear over and over again when it comes to developing and reaching either the degrees of freedom or success or number of units, however you measure the, progress in life. I'm just curious what you have taken away yourself from being the host of that show.

Taylor Loht:

Yeah, absolutely. Wow. So there have been so many lessons. I think I've, at this point as we talk, I've probably done 570 episodes, something, and the vast majority of them are interviews. It's not just me talking, I do some of the me talking ones. I think the people who succeed have a few underlying traits. They all. Take action to some extent. Generally, on a day-to-day basis, they all prioritize education. So that's why at the end of my show, I ask all of my guests, what's the best investment you ever made other than in your education? And I didn't put that last caveat on there until probably a hundred episodes in because I realized that almost every successful real estate investor says, My education is the most, the best investment I ever made, and it's an easy answer. Sure. But they also do mean it. When you actually talk to them, they mean that education was so key to them. Taking action, setting a goal, not being afraid to get out there and network and meet other successful real estate investors. And just talk to 'em. Ask 'em what's successful what, helped you be successful? What do you need? Talk to them about a deal that they did. Something like that. Just being a constant learner, networker, building others up. I think those are all so very very important to folks. Success. That's amazing.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah. That's one of the side effects of actually being on a podcast, right? Yeah. Very often. Oh yeah. Is that you get to build your network and get to talk with incredible people and have your eyes opened quite often on the air, right? That's happened to me so many times. Like we've recorded, I think you're probably number 145 or something like that. And most of our podcasts have been, like you said, with guests on, so probably easily over a hundred maybe 120 in that realm. And. Every single person I've talked to, there is one takeaway that ends up coming in the title of the show that just helps me reinforce a fact or gives me a technique or just helps me create a connection for a resource that maybe I'll need down the line or something. That happens too. And so it's about building those relationships and all of those amazing lessons and, things that you're learning. And so I want to thank you just for a moment for. For giving us some of that advice and distilling all the wisdom down from all those episodes into just a few paragraphs. So I appreciate that. I tried. No worries. So last question I have for you, and I want to give you a chance to talk about this is your experience in the Sunbelt markets. For most people who are listening to the show, they're either familiar with real estate investing or know that it's a path for financial freedom. Or at least to be able to start to go down that path, which then, as you said, starts enabling some location and time freedom. For those who are looking for it. So if people were looking to invest in Sunbelt markets, right? What factors do you consider when identifying these real estate opportunities in that region? Are you looking for specific purchase price fundamentals? Are you looking for growth projections? Are you, do you stay in specific markets or work with po potential people over and over again? Just wanna hear a little bit more about your investing strategy for those who are interested.

Taylor Loht:

Yeah, absolutely. So our business model's a little unique that enables us to do deals in a lot of different markets and not have to sweat getting distracted by different markets. But for those out there who are looking to get started and go do your own deals, the more you can focus on one market, the better and get to know it really well get networked there really well. But as far as things that we look for in. The markets that we invest in. Number one, it starts with economic fundamentals, so not even looking at real estate. First off, we're gonna look at, again, economic fundamentals. What does the job market look like? Is it growing generally? Are employers moving there? We're gonna look at population trends and whether people are moving to the city or not, or they're moving away because there are. Many places that have generally people moving out of, and we don't wanna invest there because we wanna invest in scarce assets. We also wanna look at the general economic diversity. So if you have a market that is dominated by one major employer, that's not great. Or even one major industry that employs most of the people in the area. That's not what we wanna look for, we wanna look for a somewhat stable employment base. Generally, you don't see too much concentration in the bigger markets. So we're mostly investing in secondary, some tertiary markets, less so primary markets. We're not investing in say New York City or anything like that, although that's not the Sunbelt. We invest in the greater Atlanta area, things like that. Economic fundamentals come first and foremost because our tenants pay their rent with their jobs, right? If, they're not working, then it's gonna be tough to pay rent when it comes to looking at actual properties after we've examined the market, looked at the local area to make sure it. Fits our particular business plan and things along those lines. What do we actually wanna do in the area? Physical due diligence is such a big part of real estate investing, and it's tempting, especially early on, tempting to try to skimp on your physical due diligence because you think, Hey, I've got a potential opportunity here. And you don't, you might not wanna walk away from your first deal because you found a. What you might call a skeleton in the closet. Something with the plumbing that you say, oh, we can fix that on the backend once we own it. You get distracted from that. Thing's gonna be really expensive and it's not gonna add value to your building at all. So personally, I like somewhat newer buildings. I've been burned by 1960s purchases in the past, and maybe burned is overstating it, but it just winds up being a bigger headache than it needed to be and more expensive. And you have. Things that add to the cost without adding to the to the upside. I've seen other folks make those mistakes too. So investing in slightly newer properties now, not brand new builds because there's less of a value add potential in stuff that's brand new, but generally newer properties in what we generally call B class, somewhere between B minus and B plus class. When I first got started, I started as a C-class investor and that worked okay at the time. We made money in those deals. I. But as the market has matured and grown, especially with all these rising interest rates, but prior to that, through Covid, we had this huge growth in pricing, which was great if you already owned property. But really what happened was the spreads in terms of price between class C and say Class B or A properties really narrowed. And we're talking about multiples here. A class A property is still much more expensive than a Class C, but. Commercial real estate's valued on its income that we don't need to get too much into that. I think the case for investing in C class. Went away because it used to be so cheap to buy. It didn't you could make it up. But now the, since the spreads have narrowed so much, I think B class is really what makes a lot of sense right now. So that's a quick rundown of things that we look at. First starts with the economy. Number one, you drill down deeper and look at the local market the, neighborhood kind of things, because I've, seen folks. Dive into properties that on paper looked really good, but then when you zoomed out a little bit, the. Couple block by block area just didn't make any sense for buying a property and attempting to raise the rent. And then you look at the property itself, physical due diligence that kind of a thing. So top down.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then you're also looking at the tenant quality as well. And know when you have that shift from C class to B class the tenants get much better as, as well. And, they're the people that are actually partnering with You So if you have great tenants that are inside the property, it makes it so much easier on the property manager and then that trickles up to profits, right? So if the expectation is that people go in to pay rents and the people that are living in your building have that expectation also, then that's good. And it's really weird for me to say that because sometimes there are C class tenants and de class tenants that come in and don't have that expectation, right? They walk in, they're like, yeah, I'll pay rent for six months or something. Maybe they don't know it at the time, but that is their intention. It's not as serious as like a b or a class tenant would take it. And so all of that plus what you said, it's beautifully or articulated and I couldn't agree more with what you said there. So unfortunately we have run outta time for all our all of our main format questions. Oh, okay. But I do have, something that I want to. Ask you, and it's, the rapid round and it's six, five or six questions that I ask every one of our guests, and they're meant to be answered in a 32nd fashion. And so if you're up for it, we're gonna go ahead and ask them rapidly to you, unless you want to say something real quick about what, I just said before.

Taylor Loht:

And then we can go on. I'm sure I could, but I know we're, I've been talking a lot already, so please go ahead.

Derek Clifford:

It's all good, man. You, got it. Alright, let's head into the rapid round. Alright. Number one name, any resource that was or is essential in your journey to pursue freedom right now?

Taylor Loht:

That is a good question. I've been tracking my income, net worth expenses, everything financially. Since the beginning of my financial life, I think I was in college at the time, so quite a long time ago now, I've been tracking that meticulously in a personal a, a budgeting app. I don't want to really say which one, just for security purposes, but that is key. It doesn't take that long to do on a daily or weekly basis. And I can look back for, I don't know, 13 or 14 years and see what I spent my money on, where I made my money, everything like that. And it's just helpful to see, okay, here's what my net worth was three years ago, and I see that right now. Or what I earn right now. That kind of a thing. And seeing that growth. And then we don't always wanna extrapolate, but I do want to extrapolate. To me that's just so, inspiring. But also when you have a a stagnant time, it's okay, I can see 'em falling behind a little bit. I need to kick it up. What am I doing wrong? So really track your income, spending net worth everything. That's been really helpful for me.

Derek Clifford:

That's amazing. And it's it gives you the opportunity to measure what it is that you're trying to achieve in the first place, which is ultimately where every goal needs to start. I love that. Number two, if you woke up and your business was gone and you had$500, a laptop, a place to live and some food, what would you do first?

Taylor Loht:

Try to find my wife.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah. If your wife was still with you, let's just say that you, and your wife were okay. You had to start over, what would you do?

Taylor Loht:

Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, just the way I am, I know a lot of other people would disagree with this. They would try to find something to drop ship or something and through their laptop. My first priority, how do I get a job so I can make sure all my needs are really taken care of Because we gotta, I think about providing first in that way. Beyond that, if you want to. Succeed in real estate investing. If we're focusing on that, go to your local, a local real estate networking event, talk with people nearby and find out what they need. Personally. Wholesaling isn't exactly what I ever envisioned myself doing in real estate, but if you need, I. A way to get in and make money without a ton of money in your bank account. That can be a way to go 500 is not a lot, you're not gonna do mailers with that or any, kind of thing, but you could go do driving for dollars and go do some quick deals. So that's probably how I would attack it to get some capital in the bank. But to me, first thing to do, find a way to stop the bleeding. Get ourselves on a stable footing. And that might, I think you said that's built into the question, but to me it's hard to envision being in that scenario and not. Starting with the base level of something I heard, sorry, I'm not gonna go too long about this, but Grant Cardone people have different feelings about him. I go back and forth, but one of the things that I heard him say once that I, thought really made a lot of sense is that a job is a gift, right? Somebody's employing you, they're paying you for your time and expertise. They're doing something for you. You need to do something back for them in return, of course, in order to keep the job. But we've gotten the point where everybody wants to. Sell the next app or whatever. And, I think that's a little bit misguided.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah. Said. Said. Thank you for that. That's, good. That makes a lot of sense. And I think I would do something along the same lines as you if I, if my if, my business is vaporized right, at the very least, you could go to Arria. With an amazing story as to why your business vaporized, and a lot of people would probably want to hear about that. Alright.

Taylor Loht:

I would want to know. Yeah.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, Number three. Number three, what does your daily, weekly, monthly cadence for self-reflection and goal setting practices look like?

Taylor Loht:

So I've gone back and forth about this. Honestly, years ago I had a really strong meditation practice, and that was at a time in my life where I was less happy, not unhappy necessarily, but less happy with what was going on. It was pretty early in my real estate career. If you will, or real estate venture where I hadn't done anything lately. I, like I said I, do yoga, I do jiujitsu, so I think about that a lot. Like if I have a particular weekend where I'm not being disciplined about my dieting, if you will. I always try to bear that in mind and keep that. Another thing that I track, actually I haven't mentioned this, I haven't actually told anybody about this, but I have over a decade worth of. Weight data for myself, I, not every single day, but I need to count the data points. It's probably several thousand data points for what my weight was over the time. Over time. So I think just tracking things like that. Like I mentioned before I, track my money fastidiously. You can just look back and, see, okay, how am I doing? What's my trend? Whatever it is, and you can. At least for me, I think to myself, okay, what did I do that caused this trend to go in this way? Because you shouldn't just reflect about the ticks down in terms of whether it's your net worth or your weight. If you gain weight, technically, just don't. Don't just think about the negatives, think about the positive things. If your goal, obviously, to grow your net worth, okay, what did I do that made it grow? If your goal is to lose weight, I have times where I'm trying to trim a few pounds off because I haven't been taking care of it. If my weight goes down, okay, what did I do that put me in the right direction. So I think tracking things like that and reflecting really helps me quite a lot. Yeah, absolutely.

Derek Clifford:

And I think something real quick here, I wanna also add, I know it's supposed to be the rapid round, is that When you're tracking stuff, you should continue to track even if things aren't going your way, right? Yes, a hundred percent. You gotta have the discipline to do that because then you can look back and learn something from it. That's the whole point of you doing, of tracking something. And weight is a great example like you had said before. So I appreciate you with the with the transparency and the vulnerability there to share that with the audience.

Taylor Loht:

I love it. I stopped tracking in the first two months of Covid and it went way up because I was very unhappy in the first two months of. There you go.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah. Last question I have for you today is what are the core work habits that you attribute to your success?

Taylor Loht:

So I have, one of the things that's helped me a ton is I have, it's on my desk right now, clipboard pad of paper, and I write up to three bullet points of things that I either need to get done or want to get done today. And I restrict myself from making that list longer. The key is I need to write down the things that I have to work on. Now if I cross one off, I can add one more. That's okay. But I think that helps me personally stay focused in my personal life. I mentioned mentioned earlier that we have a house that I love working on, but. You're a homeowner and you like doing these things, you know that list can get really long of stuff that you're in the middle of. And I don't want to be the Joe Schmo homeowner with a bunch of 50% finished projects. I want a lot of finished projects, even if it's not all the projects I wanna get to. So I have a whiteboard over here, has up to three things. That is it on the list on the house that I'm working on. And I think. To me, having visual cues and indicators like that helped me stay focused. And you know what? I learned that through doing training Juujitsu, because I learned through juujitsu that I can only really work on one or two techniques at a time. If I'm trying to learn everything that I'm being shown and taught, I basically learn nothing. So being able to focus on a couple of things, just, it helps in every way. And if you practice that in your life, your business it, it, works wonders.

Derek Clifford:

Wonderful. Taylor, this has been amazing having you on the show. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of your wisdom and some of the inner workings of what happens in that noun of yours to keep yourself success and moti successfully motivated and move forward through to whatever it is that you're trying to build for yourself. Whether it's discipline a business. A, life or happy marriage, all those things. I know that you're going to be successful in doing that. But before we go, why don't you tell the listeners a little bit more about how they can find you what you have going on and just open floor in general.

Taylor Loht:

Yeah, absolutely. So as you've mentioned, my podcast is The Passive Wealth Strategy Show, which you've been on, although the episode has not been released at the time of recording. So that'll be coming out. Look for Derek on my show. If you would like, I have a free seven day video course on red flags in passive real estate investing, kinda short form videos that'll teach you seven red flags that I've found in my time as a real estate investor, passiverealestatecourse.com. Or if you'd like to learn about investing with us, investwithtaylor.com.

Derek Clifford:

Amazing. We'll also link to all of those plus your social media credentials if, you provided any in the production information. We're gonna be going ahead and dropping those also in the show notes. And for those listeners who have listened all the way to this point, we want to thank you as well. Please, wherever you're watching or listening this. To this please engage with us. Comment, subscribe, please. So that way we can get more exposure to more people just like you and also more incredible guests, just like Taylor as well. So thank you to everyone and once again, Taylor amazing to have you on.

Taylor Loht:

Really appreciate it. Great to be here. To the listeners, if you haven't talked to Derek, man, reach out to him. He's a fun guy to talk to. I think you and I talked for two hours when you came on my show. We did. So yeah. Hit up Derek. It was fun.

Derek Clifford:

Yeah, definitely. For sure. And I'm I, want to talk with each and every one of you guys, so please reach out. Want to find out more about all of you guys and how we can help more provide more incredible content for you all. And thank you guys for listening. We will see you guys next week. Take care.