Aaron Ameen - Hybrid Real Estate Professional
Aaron had prided himself on being a hybrid real estate professional. Over the last few years, while living and working in 3 different states, Aaron and his wife were able to build up a portfolio of 8 cash-flowing rental properties in 3 different states. Oh, and he's been able to do it while working a full-time job and raising 3 kids under the age of 3. Aaron is also the founder of The Hybrid Real Estate Professional Podcast and co-founder of the Remote Real Estate Academy, as he's very passionate about helping the next generation of investors build their portfolios.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Find out how Aaron is able to unlock the path to financial freedom through real estate investments.
- Discover the lucrative potential of transitioning into residential assisted living investments.
- Gain valuable insights from the experiences of Aaron and his wife being long-distance real estate investors.
- Explore effective strategies for successful ground-up construction projects.
- Learn how to effectively balance a full-time job with real estate investing.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Identity Shift and Financial Planning
00:09:00 - First Rental Property Experience
00:10:36 - Unexpected Opportunity for More Properties
00:12:37 - Long-Distance Investing Challenges
00:17:13 - Lessons Learned and Growth
00:21:56 - Transition to Assisted Living
00:25:44 - Time Commitment and Roles
00:30:01 - Overcoming Self-Doubt
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Full Transcript Here:
Aaron Ameen
We went from not owning any rentals to having three properties in about six months. And that's where that identity shift really kicked in. And it was like, okay, this isn't just some tiny thing we're doing on the side. This is actually like going to be a big part of our financial plan for our future and our family's future.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom show where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Aaron Ameen
Foreign.
Mike Swenson
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom Real Estate Leverage Freedom where we talk about different ways that people are building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your real estate investing journey, check us out at free freedom through real estate.com that's freedom through real estate dot com. That's where we have all of our episodes resources really for you, it's just finding a story that resonates with you, finding something that you can connect with and digging in. And as we learn our real estate journey changes. Whatever we're doing, wherever we're started isn't necessarily where we're ending up. And that's certainly true today. And so we just want you guys to find a path, find a person that you resonate with and be able to do something where you can take action. So today we've got an awesome episode for you. We've got Aaron Ameen. He's a hybrid real estate professional and so him and his wife have a portfolio of eight cash flowing rental properties in three states that they built in three years. Excited to hear how that happened. As well as working a day job and raising three kids under the age of three. That in itself is, is enough to, to keep you busy. Also voice on the hybrid Real estate professional podcast and runs the Remote Real Estate Academy. And now you're working on a residential assisted living project. So certainly have your hands full with a ton of stuff. Excited to hear you talk about how you're able to navigate it all and do it well. So thank you, Aaron for coming on the show.
Aaron Ameen
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Mike Swenson
So start with a little bit about your background, kind of why real estate, how you got into that and then kind of your balance of being able to do that and work a job and kind of your decisions on that and we'll just take it from there.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start by sharing that, you know, my parents actually invested in real estate. So they were the early inspiration for me. And so it's not an original idea by any stretch, but they invested while I was growing up. So they actually embody the same archetype that I now call the hybrid real estate professional. So they worked full time, both, you know, corporate jobs, they were in tech and software. And they were doing that while raising me and my sister, who's 12 and a half years younger than me, and, and building a real estate portfolio. So I kind of got this by osmosis. Saw how they approached real estate and how they did it kind of as a side, a side hustle without having to compromise their relationship with us and their success in their career. So that archetype was instilled in me at a very young age. But as far as my journey goes, my wife and I were living in Las Vegas. We hadn't been married at the time, and uh, and we were. My first stint of my career was in the entertainment industry. So we, I worked in concerts, I was working five days a week in the office and was out probably three or four nights a week at shows. Sometimes in Vegas you could go two or three shows in a, in a night. So I was running and gunning real hard, working, you know, sometimes 80, 90 hours a week, and pretty much burned myself out into the ground. You know, picked up a bunch of bad habits, vices. Long story short, I found myself in. Found my way into an inpatient rehab in 2019 for alcohol abuse. I had pretty much, you know, bottomed out and was as burned out as can be and needed to do something different with my life. I knew my wife and I wanted to have kids, we knew we wanted to have a different path forward. You know, this was kind of the end of my twenties. And what I realized is that no matter how hard I worked or how hard I tried in the entertainment industry, the ceiling was always pressing against my head. And of course, like, I have myself to blame for some of that, but also it was a really competitive industry. And I realized that basically even if I worked as hard as possible and I generated a ton of profit for the company I was working for, I wasn't going to capture that upside myself. You know, maybe at best I would get some sort of merit based bonus, but even that bonus would not be commensurate with the amount of value that I added for the company. So that realization kind of led me to pursue something where we could actually own our own upside. Hence, you know, I all of a sudden started recalling all this Experience from my past and seeing what my parents did. And I said, well, hey, they made a pretty healthy income with what they were doing with their day jobs, yet they still chose to invest in real estate. Why did they do that? Led me to start asking a lot of questions. And as I was trying to come out of this really challenging stretch of my life and do a lot of inner work and reflection, I, you know, I started turning to them and figuring out what it was that compelled them towards real estate. And it's really that concept of being able to own your own upside and capture value that you can, you know, use for your own family and your own impact that you want to make in the world that led me to real estate. And, you know, you said it kind of in the intro. We ended up buying eight properties across three states in three years. There's plenty of story behind each one of those. But basically fell in love with the process. We bought our first rental about a mile away from where we lived in Las Vegas. And now we're kind of known as long distance investors. But I always like to share that the first rental we bought was about as low risk as possible, you know, right there in our backyard. So I'll pause there for a second, but that's kind of how we got started.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, that's really exciting. And I think for people, you know, that spend a lot of time trying to analyze, like, what's the perfect market. You know, what we always teach people is take action. Right. And in your case, it's like, okay, I'm in Las Vegas, we're taking, we're doing where we're, what we're going to do. And then life moves you across the country and you take action again. And all sudden you look up and you've got properties in three states. And so, you know, for some people, they might strategize or scale back or whatever it is, or if things are working well, you just, just keep moving forward with what you're doing. So talk real quick just for people to understand. Kind of your first deal. You know, I think for a lot of people there's that uncertainty of getting over the hump from not doing anything to now I have a rental. So I'd love to kind of hear just some of the, the inner thoughts that you guys had and your wife had as you're talking about getting that first property.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah. So part of why I share the story about the rehab and all the introspection and, you know, self reflection on what we want our life to look like is that was a really important spark, right. I think when you take a big action, especially one that feels like it has a heavy consequence. You know, most people, when they get analysis paralysis around buying rentals, it's because they're afraid that once they make that decision, there's no going back. And, and in some senses that's true. Right? You can't just like cancel a transaction once it's funded and you get the keys. But at the same time, in my situation, there's this quote I really like. You know, when the pain of staying the same is, is greater than the pain of change, then you'll pursue change. And in that instance, like I needed change. So for me, the first rental kind of symbolized that change and the growth that we wanted to experience so that we could enter this new chapter of our life. So that's the why behind that particular decision, but the how. You know, it's almost embarrassing to admit how little we knew back then. Everyone starts at zero baseline knowledge at some point. But when I think about what I know now, we never would have bought this deal the way we did. So we put 30% down. There's kind of a story behind that. We ended up getting married in our backyard and foregoing the big expensive wedding. And we used the money that we were saving for the wedding for to buy that first rental property. But it was brand new, rebuilt from the ground up. We put 30% down so that we could basically buy our way into cash flow. I did not know how to analyze deals, so in my mind cash flow was basically a positive number after you pay the mortgage. You know, knowing what I know now, I would view that deal very differently and we probably never would have bought it. But to your point, taking action and getting in the game and just starting to make some of those early operational, you know, mistakes. And also lessons, right, learn, learning some of the lessons, just kind of going through the growing pains of, you know, setting up the bank accounts, setting up the rent collection process. We self managed up until last year actually. So for the first five years, even across three states, we mostly self manage. There's only a couple that we use a third party manager for. So really all those kind of growing pains and the just learning the motions of what it takes to be a landlord. I'm glad we learned those. On a house that had relatively low risk. It was again new construction, so there wasn't a ton of like maintenance and hassle and we, we had put a high down payment so that we weren't overly leveraged and we Learned more from that house than we probably would have if we had, you know, tried to spend another two or three years reading books and just waiting for the perfect moment. I'm glad we jumped in when we did. Despite in hindsight, all the mistakes that I know we probably could have avoided with, with more time. So to your point, the action, just taking the action and getting in was what, what got us started.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, absolutely. I think to your point, you know, you, you learn by doing and you learned not necessarily the hard way. Cause it sounds like it's, it's still working well enough, like putting 30% down, like, oh, I don't have to do that with every property. You know, I can analyze deals and find deals where that's not the case. However, you went off of what you knew best at the time and you found a way to make it work. And, and so learning those things, then it's hey, happy day when I learned I don't have to put as much down or I can find deals that cash flow a little bit more than that. Now your buy box kind of opens up a little bit more. You can see like, oh, there's some better deals out here as you continue to grow. You wouldn't have learned that had you not done the first one. Or like you said, waiting a year, two or three to find the very perfect property before you take a step and take action forward.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, I think the idea of like it was more out of the idea of wanting to get started and it was kind of an experiment. We didn't actually think that, oh, we would, it would catch fire and we'd fall in love with the process so much that we'd end up buying real estate. And now, now we're deep in it. I still work full time and I still plan to for the foreseeable future. But now real estate investing is a huge part of our identity. At the time we made that initial decision, I had no idea that would be the case. It was really just trying to validate this idea that we can build something on the side that we have true ownership of versus that mentality of feeling trapped by our career. So it was more of a symbolic thing almost than, than anything else.
Mike Swenson
Well then talk about kind of how you guys got your next move and kind of into your next property.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, so things escalated very quickly and not necessarily by our own doing. You know, we were just kind of settling into being landlords. We found a nice long term tenant, a great family that actually ended up living there for five years. So we really lucked out on that first house. Like I said, it was, you know, very low drama. All in all, the main drama was us learning the motions. But our agent that sold us that property four months after, after we closed, he called us and he said, hey, I've got these two properties also in Las Vegas that are currently leased to assisted living operators. And they're on these five year commercial style leases paying 40% above market rent. The operator has a lot of history. The previous owner, you know, set up this deal six years ago. So they showed tons of rent roll and, you know, credibility behind the lease. And it almost felt like manna falling out of the sky, like too good to be true. Right. And we had no intention, nor the means really to actually buy two more houses. Coming up with down payments wasn't really something we were prepared for. But once we really kind of wrapped our head around how unique this opportunity was and how compelling the cash flow was and how long term stable of an investment this would be, we kind of moved heaven and earth to figure it out. So we did a cash out refi on our primary home and we basically sold our entire stock portfolio just to be able to. And we found a lender that could do 15% down payment on an investment property. So we basically just rearranged everything we possibly could just to get into those. It was two houses. So we went from not owning any rentals to having three properties in about six months. And that's where that identity shift really kicked in. And it was like, okay, this isn't just some tiny thing we're doing on the side. This is actually like going to be a big part of our financial plan for our future and our family's future. So that was like, that was what kicked things into gear. And then, you know, I could retrace the whole journey to eight if you want. But I know it's, I know we got limited time here.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, no, that's fine. And, and yeah, I think for people to understand, maybe just touch on quick getting the properties in the other states, different market, different state, different regulation, different rental laws. You know, walk through that at a high level and then we can dig into kind of what you're working on today.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, yeah. So when I, when I say I own properties across three states, it makes it sound like 100% of that was intentional out of the gate. But a lot of it was circumstantial. Right. So we lived in Las Vegas. I worked in the entertainment industry. We bought those houses in 2019 and 2020. Well, 2020 Covid hit and a lot of decisions were made for us. My career basically evaporated overnight and you know, the entertainment industry shut down. There was no clue about when things would open back up. So I grew up in Seattle area. Most of my professional connections and personal network was up there. So we ended up moving to Seattle just to solve our employment problem. Right. My, my wife was able to thankfully keep her job, but I moved and switched industries entirely. So real estate wasn't the driver of our decisions to move, it was, it was career. But that forced us to become long distance investors. Unless we wanted to sell off all our Vegas properties, then, you know, we had to figure out how to keep them long distance. So we set up some systems in place. We, and again we self manage these. So we had one very close friend who we paid a small retainer to basically watch the properties and be our boots on the ground while we still manage all the leasing and tenant communication and all that stuff. So that was kind of proof of concept for this idea of long distance investing. And again, we made a lot of mistakes that I would probably hopefully be able to avoid with the perspective I have now. But we at least learned and every problem we faced, we found a way to solve. And so that gave us the courage to then invest long distance. While we lived in Washington, we bought two properties up there and you know, most, most of the three out of those eight rentals we actually lived in as a primary house before they became rentals. So that was kind of, you know, people ask, well how did you fund all these, how did you buy all these in such a short time? Well, we ended up moving a lot for circumstances that were totally unrelated. And when we moved, instead of selling houses, we kept them. So that was one big leverage. And then also leveraging the equity that we had to end up buying more properties. But the, the third state is the only one that we never lived in, which is Iowa, while we were living in Washington. Once we had built up the courage and validation that we could invest long distance in Vegas, we gained some more courage that hey, let's expand into a different market. And this one we treated a little more academically. We said let's, let's find a market where we can create a buy box. You know, it's a stable enough market where we can continue to buy properties at an affordable price that have the return profiles that we need and build out a team there. So that was one where we basically like we pulled up a blank map and we looked at markets all across the Midwest and the south, and we landed on an area called the Quad Cities in Iowa. We built a team from scratch. The less spoken part here is that we're on our fourth property manager there. So it certainly wasn't a smooth ride to land our land, our team and get all our systems in place. But once again, every time we were faced with the problem, despite some of the stress that it caused, we were able to solve it. And so the net of it is over that kind of three year sprint, we were able to buy eight properties across three states by leveraging those strategies. We also had three kids during that time span too. So that's where, you know, things got kind of complicated. And I would say what got us there is not going to get us to this next phase of our family's financial goals in future. And so that's how we kind of ended up in the situation we're in now where we're pursuing a very different strategy than just buying, you know, one or two rentals per year and stacking those over time. So again, I'll pause there and see if you want to click into any of that.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, I mean, I think for people listening, just understanding that you gain momentum as you go, you gain knowledge as you go, and you gain more strategic decision making and probably better decision making as you go. So it's, it's kind of this hockey stick growth for some people, maybe they don't need that hockey stick, but at least that, that momentum picks up, that strategy picks up, and you're able to be more strategic in what you do to find better opportunities. And so you went blind into a state that you didn't live in, purchase some properties and you know, obviously it sounds like there's, there's some stories there being on your fourth property manager, however, that's now helping you to make other decisions in other areas in your real estate investing journey. And so all these are good problems. I always treat it as, you know, these are education expenses. Right. I can go, go to school, get an mba, whatever that might look like. And for some people, they do. And you're picking up an MBA in real estate investing. And some of those decisions have costs and some of them have, you know, benefits. And hopefully the benefits outweigh the costs and you continue to make money, but you're going to learn by doing.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think, you know, Iowa, it's one of those things where I'm not sure if we would do exactly what we did again if we had it to do all over but at the same time, no matter what happens, even if we sell out of all those houses, you can never take those lessons away from me. And like you said, it arms us with perspective and experience that is now making us stronger as we go on to take on bigger deals with the higher consequence. So a lot of the. When I've said the word mistakes a few times, and it's because I want to acknowledge that, yes, like, there were missteps, there were things that we could have done better, but I'm sure glad that we did that on when the stakes were lower than on, you know, a big project like the one that we're tackling now.
Mike Swenson
So talk about what, what you're doing today and what you've got up your sleeve now.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah. So that that initial portfolio of eight rentals is something we're very proud of. We built using pretty much entirely our own money. The only outside money we took was we partnered with my parents on the two properties in Washington. But so we never, you know, ended up starting some big snowball of private money and capital and all that. But when you use your own money, eventually you run out of it, especially when you have three kids in three years. So our situation changed dramatically. We ended up relocating to Houston, Texas, where I live now. So our closest rental is now a thousand miles away. And we more or less put those houses just on maintain mode. Right. We weren't trying to continue to stack rentals. And the beauty of owning rental properties is that you can let them maintain. And as long as they have a good team in place, people are going to be paying down your loans. You'll benefit from long term appreciation, rent growth, all that stuff. So we kind of just let that strategy and that initial portfolio do its thing. Now, like I said, we had run out of our own money for these big hefty down payments. So we, we, long story short, residential assisted living, we got exposure in Las Vegas when we bought those two properties. Didn't think much of it because that kind of felt like it was just a lucky break that we were at the right place at the right time. But a gentleman that is in the mastermind that you and I are both in, Dr. Alex Schlo. I heard him come and do a podcast episode about how he was starting a mastermind group specific to residential assisted living. And the light bulb went off in my head and I was borderline, like, manic when I heard this, I was like, oh, my God, I own two properties like that. They are among the best properties and they're Making an impact in the community. All these things started meshing together of reasons why residential assisted living was such a strong not only investment, but just it's an impact investment too. And so I started talking to my wife about it and sharing everything I was learning and I ended up joining that group. And the more I learned about it, the more courage we gained about maybe we could actually run one of these businesses ourself too. So fast forward, my wife was also coming off of maternity leave after having the twins and she was deciding whether to go back to corporate job and kind of slog her way slowly up a career ladder or once again do we do something in service of our own family and our own future and legacy and the impact we want to have in the world. And so put all that together in a stew. And what was born was the project we're working on now which we're calling Everwood Reserve. That's a nod to our family's last names. But we're building two ground up development memory care mansions we're calling them, which is 16 bed, 16 bath, 10,000 square foot ranch homes on 7 acres of land in a suburb of Houston. And we're going to not only build those properties but we're going to run the underlying business and start the operations company for the assisted living home. And that essentially is our, you know, not only next 10 year plan but arguably the rest of our professional lives. We believe especially for my wife will be rooted in this project and eventually in the not too distant future. It should give us all the financial flexibility that we need to, you know, live life on our own terms. Which I know is the, the theme of your show.
Mike Swenson
Are you looking to get started or scale in real estate investing but don't know your next step? Are you overwhelmed thinking about finding deals, analyzing deals, deals, doing due diligence and managing properties on top of it? Go ahead and push the easy button and invest with us. Real estate investing is what we do full time. We've done dozens of deals with hundreds of doors. We have the knowledge and experience to hand pick the best deals that most investors can't find. We've at large off market deals all the time where you can hopefully find returns and economies of scale that you just can't find on your own. The best thing is it's 100% passive to you for less capital than you put down trying to acquire a property on your own. Don't let this year go by where you don't make the leap, add to your portfolio or you just sit in analysis by paralysis. To find out more, visit freedomthroughrealestate.com and click on Invest. You can book a call and learn more there. So get to scaling your portfolio now with us by your side. Yeah, so talk a little bit about. For people that haven't heard or looked into assisted living, obviously you indicated kind of some of the benefit with your property in Las Vegas. But for somebody that you know is looking at opportunities within real estate, looking at different spaces where you can land, you know, what is it about the assisted living that's attractive to you? And then obviously kind of talking through some of the risks associated with your project and that sort of thing.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, absolutely. So residential assisted living is the specific niche that I am most drawn to. And part of that is the idea that, you know, when I grew up, when I heard assisted living, all I could really picture in my mind was the big smelly facility with the overworked staff, underpaid, kind of unhappy environment, and not exactly somewhere that people are proud to drop off their loved ones. And even in my family and then in my wife's family, we had some pretty bad experiences with especially older family members towards the end of their life, having to spend a ton of their time there at the end in their final years. And that is kind of a depressing concept. But this idea of residential assisted living is that you create a home like environment. Sometimes it's literally just a single family home with caretakers that are there 24, 7. In our case, obviously we're doing a 16 bedroom home, but it's still built to feel like a home, not a facility. And every little touch and design that we're doing is meant to really preserve that environment so that people don't feel like they're just being sequestered in a room at a facility to live out their final days. So I think that like from the impact side and just the service and the alternative you can provide to that facility is something that resonates a lot with us. And that's not even talking about the investment side. The investment side, you know, these are pretty very cash flow heavy businesses. The going kind of market rates for things like memory care or even full time assisted living, depending on the market. You know, the low end is probably 6,000amonth and the high end in certain markets could be 10 or $12,000 a month per bed per resident. And so, you know, if you are willing to, you know, go through all the operational complexities and take on that risk, you know, it can have a very high financial Reward too, and I really don't mean for that to sound opportunistic. That's honestly the cost of delivering these services and there is a lot of risk involved. So that margin, you know, it's a high risk, high reward type of business with also high impact. So it's kind of a full throttle thing where if you're willing to, the barriers of entry are high enough that this kind of, you know, in real estate every year there's a new trendy topic. People get obsessed with Airbnbs in the late 2010s and then self storage and mobile home parks. And all of those are compelling in their own right. But the barriers to entry are lower for those than they are for assisted living. When you actually dig into these business plans and what it takes to launch one of these, it's like a 6 to 12 month minimum. If you're doing ground up construction, like what we're doing, it's going to be about two years between when we close the loan and when we're fully stabilized. And so I think most people, yes, they're attracted to the idea, but not as many people are willing to wait that long and put in that much work to get to the other side. So we do feel like it's a, you know, it's a competitive space. There's a lot of risk to be conscious of. But if you're willing to do that, then, you know, we should, you know, be able to build a business that lasts well.
Mike Swenson
And yeah, this is a business. It's not, you know, just providing housing. You're providing housing and services. And so for people, you know, to understand that, yeah, this, this is very much different than just being a landlord and finding tenants. Now you're providing services for them and you've got a lot to upkeep. So sounds like your wife then is going to be launching into this full time. And then what does your time commitment look like or when you kind of expecting to, you know, make that leap in? Because I know part of it for you is working your job and doing the real estate, you know, kind of on the side. So how does that transition work for you?
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, so I've worked full time throughout this entire timeline of everything I've described thus far. I'm grateful that I have a career that I'm, I'm happy with, a job that I'm happy with. I'm continuing to find ways to grow in that career. I work as a consultant by day, so I do business analysis, project management, financial analysis, and a lot of that really applies directly to all these different types of projects. Especially as we get into a giant development, having a lot of that financial background is really helpful. So my role in the business is largely as the cfo, right. And the controller and like really minding like, you know, how do we scope this project correctly, how do we go raise those funds, how do we secure the financing and then once we're up and running, how do we maintain and stick to the budgets that we need to, to operate effectively. So my wife will be a lot more embedded on the ground on a day to day basis and I'll be doing a lot of the, you know, kind of back end business operations and finance. And again, you know, hopefully this business will afford us the flexibility that if I did decide that I wanted to make this my full time thing, I could. But as of right now, that's not necessarily the plan. The plan is to land this business deliver for our investors. You know, this is, we have to first and foremost make sure we deliver on the expectations that we're setting for our investors. And once we have a track record as operators and have built out the actual initial business, we should be able to expand in a much more efficient way because we'll already have that, that brand and reputation. We'll already have the blueprints, we'll already have known, you know, any missteps that we made along the way the first time and be able to learn from it and be better in the future. And I think that's the point at which, you know, we could basically make this both of our main thing and you know, really lean in, lean into this as our, our full future plan for our family.
Mike Swenson
And out of curiosity then how did you. Because you know, we talked about the asset class, starting a business, but then you're also doing ground up construction development like that's another thing in and of itself to take on as a new. So talk about, you know, you hadn't done that in the past, so now finding, you know, builders or folks to be able to do that, walking through that process in a city that you haven't been in that long.
Aaron Ameen
Yeah. So just as I said at the beginning, how my parents were an inspiration for our rental journey. I'm a big believer in not reinventing the wheel when it comes to doing things that have been done before. And so we are working with a mentor. We're in the residential assisted living mastermind group. We're in another mastermind group where people are taking on deals of this magnitude. And there's other Developers. So we're surrounded with people where this is their normal like run of business, this is their normal daily life. And we're putting ourselves in rooms where we can absorb not only that experience and perspective, but we dedicate tons and tons of time to that personal development so that before we ever actually embark and close on a loan or end up in a big multi million dollar situation that we've prepared. And so we are working with a mentor who's built this exact building and he's run this entire project life cycle end to end from the development, finding the land, picking the contractors, knowing how to scope and value, engineer and make sure you're not overspending in certain areas or skimping in certain areas. So that whole construction side which is its own project, they're guiding us through that. And then once the business is up and running, they also own and operate homes and have done all the hiring and finding the right caretakers managers SOP software system. So believe me when I say we are not inventing this from scratch. We're using a system that we've seen and know that works from someone who's actually done it and they'll actually be investing alongside us too so that there's a lined incentive and then we have that partnership from them. Not just at the beginning when we're starting, but throughout the life cycle of the project.
Mike Swenson
Well, and I love, I wrote this down. The more I learned, the more courage we got, you know, Right. So you're, you're learning through others, you're building past experiences to give you the courage to move forward. Where somebody might look at this and say Aaron, that's crazy or that's too big of a step to take and you've put those pieces together, you've built those connections with other people, you've built those relationships to where you're excited to take something like this on and do it and, and build a future for your family. That's going to be awesome.
Aaron Ameen
I would be lying if I said there weren't plenty of moments of fear or wondering like if this is too big or if it's too crazy. Like of course there's self doubt. Everyone has self doubt no matter how much confidence they project. But I do believe that for the reasons we mentioned above, we're in the right rooms with the right people that can support us and help empower us in those moments of self doubt that you know, we will endure and we will, we will pull this off to the best of our abilities. Uh, we're hopeful that you know this will be as big, if not bigger than what we're expecting. But we're also prepared to weather a lot of adversity along the way because there's no way a project of this size and scope doesn't have choppy waters. So we're prepared and we're excited and you know, hopefully maybe next time we chat we'll have some exciting updates on on where things are.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, that's such a great project and excited to see how that goes for you guys and obviously going to be a ton of lessons that you learn and maybe, you know, build a blueprint to to do more of these.
Aaron Ameen
Yes, we're excited and appreciate you giving me the chance to share about it.
Mike Swenson
Well, thank you Aaron so much for coming on sharing your story. Certainly a lot of great lessons for people listening here to to take from it. If people want to reach out to you and learn more about that or what else you're working on, how can they do so?
Aaron Ameen
Yeah, so it's pretty easy to find me everything that you need to know about me, my podcast, any of the coaching I do. I have a bunch of freebies. It's all on my website at Aaron Ameen. I also have a breakdown of our portfolio, so if you want a little more detail about that story of how we got to the eight rental properties, including all the details and numbers and photos of the properties, it's on the website. So I welcome any engagement. I always I answer every single email and message I get. So if anybody has any questions or wants to reach out, I encourage you to do so. Love to hear from you.
Mike Swenson
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Aaron for coming on and sharing your story and best of luck to you guys as you continue to grow in the future.
