Vince Gethings - $100M AUM & Owns 6 Business
Vince Gethings is the founder of Villanautics, LLC, a real estate acquisition company, and in total has over $100M in assets under management. He also owns 6 businesses, which include insulation, flooring, and property management companies. Vince also has over 15 years of leadership experience in the US Air Force, holds a Green Belt in LEAN Six Sigma Process Improvement, and is a licensed contractor in the state of Michigan. Outside of work, he's a private pilot, world traveler, husband, and father to 3 children.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the secrets to building financial freedom through real estate investments and unlock the path to diversified wealth.
- Uncover the proven strategies for a successful transition from military service to real estate investing and secure your financial future.
- Master the art of investing in multifamily properties and learn how to maximize your returns in this lucrative sector.
- Explore the transformative power of mentorship in real estate success and how it can fast-track your journey to wealth and abundance.
- Learn the insider tactics for scaling your real estate portfolio through strategic business ownership and take your investments to the next level.
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00:00 - Financial Setback and Shift in Perspective
00:04:31 - Transition to Real Estate
00:07:09 - Importance of Mentorship and Coaching
00:11:43 - Selecting Investment Markets
00:15:29 - Starting Small and Growing
00:20:23 - Integrating Business Ownership
00:23:56 - The Risks of Buying Businesses
00:25:10 - Foundation in Multifamily Real Estate
Follow Vince 👇
https://www.vincentgethings.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vince.gethings
https://www.instagram.com/vince.gethings/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-gethings-50420a137/
SUBSCRIBE IF YOU'RE LOOKING TO BUILD WEALTH THROUGH OPPORTUNITIES IN THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
✅ http://relfreedom.tv
GET STARTED INVESTING TODAY AND ACCESS OUR DEAL LIST!
📈 http://investwithelite.com
PARTNER WITH US ON BIG DEALS!
💵 https://eliteadvantagepropertieshq.com
BUILD YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT CAREER WORKING WITH INVESTORS
👨👩👧👦 http://eliteadvantageagent.com
LEARN ABOUT REL FREEDOM & HEAR MORE REAL LIFE STORIES
🎙️ http://www.relfreedom.com
FREEBIES: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE FREEDOM FOUNDATION BLUEPRINT
💵 https://www.relfreedom.com/blueprint
LOOKING FOR A REAL ESTATE AGENT ANYWHERE IN THE US? FIND A TOP AGENT IN YOUR COMMUNITY
🏠 http://www.eliteagentreferral.com
JOIN OUR FACEBOOK COMMUNITY
👨👩👧👦 https://www.facebook.com/groups/relfr...
SUBSCRIBE TO THE REL FREEDOM PODCAST
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
🎧 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5nXA5hL...
LET'S CONNECT
👉 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mswenson13
👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getrelfreedom/
👉 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@relfreedom
🏠 Minnesota Real Estate: https://www.eliteadvantageteam.com
Full Transcript:
Vince Gethings
But at like, you know, 24 years old, that was like, you know, a lot of money was like quarter of my years worth of pay back then or savings back then. So that, that stung really bad. So bad that I was like, I distrust Wall street forever. I need to have control of my money. I need to have control of my destiny and my wealth creation. So just that in retrospect, I was a little, little, little sting, but it, you know, changed the trajectory.
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the Real Freedom show where we inspire you to purchase, 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. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Real Freedom, Real Estate Leverage Freedom, where we talk about building time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. If you want to get started on your path to something in, in the, in the real estate space, building financial freedom, however that might look, check out our website, freedom through realestate.com. we've got great content on there, videos, obviously, all of our podcast episodes and content. And really the hope is for you to find something that you connect with, find a story that you connect with, maybe some past skill sets you bring into the real estate space and to be able to build and grow from there. Because it's all about getting in, building and growing and learning. And so I'm super excited. Today we have an awesome guest. It'd probably be easier if I started by saying what he doesn't do than what he does do, but we've got Vince Gethings on here. Background founder of Villanics LLC, co founder, Tri City Equity Group. You have six different businesses that you've owned. 16 year veteran in the Air Force, private pilot, father, husband, so many other things. Excited to dig in deeper and talk more about that, but welcome to the show. We're so excited to have you, Vince.
Vince Gethings
Thanks, Mike. That was an awesome intro.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, for sure. So what did you do? I mean, obviously you're, you're a pilot in the Air Force, but talk about kind of why real estate? Why business building? How did that start for you? And we'll just take it from there.
Vince Gethings
Clarify. I was, I was not a pilot in the Air Force. I was in the Air Force and then I became a pilot. I don't want to get no stolen valor and get my knees checked on the way, on the way to the VFW here, but no, absolutely, yeah, we can, we can get into that and go as far Back as. As we want to go, as time will allow, and. And see where we go from there. But, yeah, what questions you got? What can we jump into thinking about?
Mike Swenson
You've got a path in the military. You know, I know that we've had quite a few, you know, military folks that are on here before that dabble on the side when they're in the armed forces, do other things. So kind of, how did that start for you, pursuing other paths?
Vince Gethings
All right, well, absolutely. So I was always big into saving. So very, very early on in my career, I was always the guy in the. In the dorms or the barracks, whatever you know, we call them these days, that was always like, you know, not going out, not, you know, not spending all my money on food and drinking and things like that. So I was a very big saver early on in my career. And then, you know, I started getting into the stock market. You know, this is like 2006, 7, 8, 9, 10. Around that time, I was getting very big into the stock market. I started getting into value investing. So we're talking, you know, Warren Buffett's book, Benjamin Graham's book, you know, things like that. Like, you know, just mainly stocks and stuff like that. And then I got burned pretty bad somewhere around. I don't remember the exact year these days, but somewhere around 2,000, maybe 12, I was investing in the stock market and invested into a company that was clean energy. And it turned out that the CFO and the CEO was, like, fraudulent. They were, like, submitting, like, false documents to the investors and prospectuses. And this was like, not even, like, pink sheets or anything. That is like, before crypto, right? Which is like, that stuff's normal now. But, you know, back then, it was like, this is like a huge, like, the company was called Sun Edison, I believe. And at the time, it, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't a lot of money at the time. Maybe it was like, you know, 5 or 10 grand. But at, like, you know, 24 years old, that was like, you know, a lot of money was like quarter of my year's worth of pay back then or savings back then. So that. That stung really bad. So bad that I was like, I distrust Wall street forever. I need to have control of my money. I need to have control of my destiny and my wealth creation. So just that, in retrospect, I was a little, little, little sting. But it, you know, changed the trajectory. So from there, I started going back and, like, all right, if Wall Street's not. If I don't Trust them. If we can't even trust that the information that we're getting is true. And it's all kind of just. To me, it started seeing like a big kind of casino of moving money around. And the only people that are making money are the, the Wall street fund managers and the ones that are moving the money around and all this stuff as they collect their fees. So I started getting into, you know, what else is out there. Then I read, you know, the rich dad, poor dad, right around 2013ish or somewhere right on there, 2013, 14. And then I was like, all right, well, let's try real estate out at 2013. I was in California and I decided I'm going to use my VA home loan. One of the best benefits veterans have is their VA home loan to create wealth from literally nothing. You can, you know, have a pen and start your journey to financial freedom. So I bought a house with my VA home loan and I did a live in, flip a house hack on that. So bought the kind of the worst house and a good decent area. And we flipped that from 2013, 2016. I ended up moving out of that house. And I think we netted, I think it was 130,000 is what I netted off that house in 2016. And again, I was still fairly young at this point, so I was like a big chunk of money. And then from there I was like, all right, this is it. Real estate's where it's at. Let me see if I can duplicate this again. So from there I liquidated everything. I took the 130 grand, liquidated all my brokerage accounts, all my savings accounts, all my retirements accounts, and had, all right, this is it. This is my, you know, my shot here. So I took all that and I started doing some more education. At the time, I didn't really know about, like, larger, multifamily. All I knew is like, kind of the resources out there, very, you know, the common ones. Everybody, you know, finds and started buying single family and duplexes and fourplexes. And I chose Michigan, even though I was stationed in, I was in Hawaii at this time. So I bought 20. I took that, that kind of nest egg. I had all my, all my money, life savings set point. And I bought 20 units, all duplexes, fourplexes in Michigan. And then that's when I was like, all right, this is the wealth I can create, the cash flow I can create in this compared to the track I was on in the military. I was like, that's, you know, not even, can't even compare. I'm gonna, if I, if I put my, you know, effort here, I'm going to excel and achieve my goals much, much faster. So then I had 20 units and then after that my money was all gone and I was like, all right, so all my, all my money's deployed. I have some cash flow rolling in, but how do I continue to get to the next level? And that's where you, a lot of people hit their first kind of plateau. Their first ceiling is, you know, you use your savings and everything that you buy your first couple units. But then how do you really get to that next level? That's when I saw mentorship and coaching because a lot of that time you can probably figure it out on your own. But I really want to shorten my learning curve and really want to avoid making big mistakes. So I thought mentorship and coaching was the right way to go. It was. So 2018 I joined a mentorship group and within like six months I had a 50 unit apartment complex under contract. We closed that in 2019. And then from there it's been off to the races. With that was the formation of Tri City Equity Group with that first 50 unit property in Michigan that I found. And then from, since then we've done probably close to 20 transactions together as a team. Seven or eight of those have gone full cycle and I think we currently maybe around 80 and 100 million and assets under management now with that company, all from a zero down VA home loan in 2013. So it's, you know, this stuff works, it's a real deal. And so that's a quick, quick rundown of, you know, that real estate background.
Mike Swenson
Well and I think it shows too, you know, a lot of people think that maybe they have to jump to the big stuff first. You certainly can. You kind of learned one step. The next step. The next step. I also hear, you know from your story, the mentorship coaching piece, that's really important. You know, I know a lot of people feel like, well, everything that I need to know is online so I can just go watch some videos and know what to do. But there's so much there knowing like when to do the right thing, to be able to bounce ideas off of each other, get that specific coaching and guidance versus kind of just general information too I think probably allowed you to, to make the right moves versus just making a bunch of moves.
Vince Gethings
Absolutely. And there's a lot of nuance to it too. When we talk about, you know, the difference between like coaching or like Online programs or just like that. And then like mentorship is, you know, your mentor is going to give you such more detailed information when you need it because they've been there, they, they've walked in your shoes, they can see the potholes that you're going up against before you even know they're there. Where coaching is useful, you know, you can, you have the curriculum, you have your videos, you have your, you know, workbooks and stuff like that. So, you know, when I think of, when I think of coaching is you buy a program and yes, it's going to get you the information, a lot of the tools, but it's not going to have that like nuance of experience that that mentorship has. So I thought that that was very important, you know, distinction there and jumping into a program like that. And I, I definitely agree that there is a lot of people that want to jump in and go straight to the big things like, oh, I'm gonna, you know, haven't done real estate or I did a house flip and now I want to go syndicate 100 unit property because that's like the hot thing or whatever. And it's like, I definitely discourage that for several reasons. One, there's so many moving parts on the bigger properties as yes, you can make a lot of money, but there's also a lot of risk in that as well. So I normally, you know, we'll tell people like, hey, if you, if you're not sure about this, go buy, go buy a 5 unit, go buy a 10 unit. See how this business works. You know, sit in all the different seats that it takes to run a multifamily property. And because a lot of things are going to, going to come out of that one is, you know, you're going to, you're going to learn the entire life cycle of a deal because you're going to have to do everything and you're going to really just understand how multifamily works is it's not going to be that much different from a 5 or 10 unit than a 50, 100 unit. It's all the same things. It's a commercial real estate property. The benefit of starting a small property first is that downside risk. If you mess up on a, you know, a 10 unit property and something bad happens, yeah, I might sting a little, but you're going to live to fight another day. You mess up on 100 unit property, like you're probably going bankrupt. Like it's going to be catastrophic, you know, hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of dollars, mistakes so you really don't want to mess up on the bigger property. Start small, really understand the business, figure out what you're good at, figure out what you're not good at, figure out what you actually like doing and figure out what you don't like doing. And then on the next property, I'm not saying sit there, don't, don't sit and just do sit at a five unit or 10 unit for five, 10 years, go do one. And then, you know, maybe six months later, a year later you might have a better understanding of the business and understanding what kind of role you want to fit in a team. And then, and then you can scale to the next one and have a better team, put together the better pieces of the puzzle put together and then you can scale from there. I like that version a lot better to grow in a nice and safe way.
Mike Swenson
Now talk a little bit about Michigan. Why Michigan? Or kind of what, what criteria did you have in mind when selecting where you're finding deals?
Vince Gethings
Oh, great idea. And it's, it, it has changed drastically since then. So, so this is how I thought about it from this is, this is a unique perspective for, for people that are in, you know, not accessible markets. At the time, again, I was in, I was in California, not really great place to invest in rentals. And then I was in Hawaii, also a not great place to invest in long term rentals for, especially for people just starting out because you're, you know, the price per door and you know, things like that is just outrageous. So the way I thought about it was like, okay, so I'm not going to invest in the market that I'm in Hawaii, where can I invest? And then I was all right, I'm on the mainland. That's what we call it when we're in Hawaii. It's the mainland, right? So you know, I'm on the mainland where, where can I invest? What areas do I have a competitive advantage in? And I chose that metric over just a standard KPI like population growth, job growth, income growth, Fortune 500 companies that come to the common ones people use. And my wife's family's from Michigan and she's from a town called Bay City, Michigan. And from a KPI perspective, it's not that great of a market. You know, it's kind of flat population growth, flat income growth, probably declining population actually. And the metrics aren't great, like very similar to a lot of Midwest type of towns. But I had a competitive advantage which was I had her entire family there that has Been there for, you know, a hundred years. And they know everything about that town, you know, inside out. They know every good street, every bad street, you know, they know half the people in the town. So I chose that over, you know, just standard metrics of population growth and job growth with the limited knowledge I had as an investor when I was starting out. So the way I did it was I found a property online, you know, LoopNet or you know, Zillow or whatever, and I said, hey, you know, real estate agent, go go to this property and give me your perspective on, you know, the area, the comps, the value of the property. At the same time I sent my mother in law or you know, sister in law, brother in law, whoever, over to the property as well. And they don't know anything about real estate, but they know what's a good area and what's a bad area and they're not going to, you know, BS me, right? So I sent them over, I'm like, hey, let me know what you think of the property. Let me think the area and everything like that. And then I sent my property manager over who I found on forum or something and I sent him over and I said, all right, let me know how this property is from your perspective as a property manager. You know, the tenants, the area, the rent comps, things like that, how hard is going to be to manage, you know, what can we get rents up to. And then they all report it back to me after the showing. And I pictured in my head like a Venn diagram. So the real estate agent had their circle of their story, my mother in law or whoever had their circle of their story. And then the, the property manager had their circle in their story. So all three of them giving me their perspective of what they thought of the property, the area, whatever. And then in the middle is, you know, the true story, like the true picture of this property. And I was comfortable enough using that type of kind of analysis that I, I bought my first 20 units without ever seeing them. I never, never saw. I bought and sold most of these properties without ever seeing them in person because I was just confident in that type of analysis that I did. And yeah, so that was my competitive analysis of how I picked mid Michigan for my first market, of how I got started.
Mike Swenson
Well, I think it's, it's great because like you said with, with the three different stories, the three different perspectives, very helpful. You've got boots on the ground also you have family there. So in a pinch, hey, I need somebody to go there to help me out or to get eyes on it or whatever. May or may not have used that, but at least I guess in the planning stage or the picking of property stages you did. But I think that's the thing for people too is you got to start somewhere. You got to pick something and so pick with what you know. Right?
Vince Gethings
Yeah.
Mike Swenson
You didn't necessarily know it firsthand, but you had people that did know it. And so that's going to teach you kind of that first round of lessons that you can then grow and scale off of. So talk a little bit then as you continue to grow and scale, maybe how those location parameters, you know, changed.
Vince Gethings
Absolutely. The. I definitely want to double down on what you said. Pick what you know, I see a lot of people, especially going through like my program, stuff like that, where it's like, you know, they, they see online or see on social media or they see an article and they're like in, you know, Phoenix or something like that, and they're like, oh, I hear North Carolina is an awesome market. I want. Or they're in Tampa and they're like, oh, I hear, you know, Scottsdale is a, or whatever. Phoenix is an awesome market or Scottsdale or whatever. And I'm like, like you're in an awesome market. Like, just stay in your backyard. Like they keep thinking the grass is greener and they have to go jump on, on these, on all these other markets because of, you know, newsletters or articles or social media or something like that. But I think even, you know, always start in your backyard first. You know, draw a radius, you know, maybe one or two hours around your house and then fully exhaust that circle before, before you even think about getting on a plane because it's way more inconvenient than you could think about. And I've owned properties and we can get that in a second. I've owned properties and you know, half a dozen states and when the property is inconvenient to get to, I always had reasons why I didn't want to go visit that property and you don't want to do that. So. All right, so where I went from there. So as my investment. So I got, I got the real estate bug joined, joined my mentorship, started getting into the larger multi family and then I would decided to move back to the mainland around this time. So one of the mistakes we made was kind of what I was alluding to just then is I was like, all right, let's go wide. You know, if I have to get on a plane, I might as well just go to all the markets. And so we ended up finding ourselves growing very wide. We cast a wide net and that helped with deal flow. And that's a mistake a lot of people make is they want deal flow so they'll look at properties and you know, North Carolina and Florida and then they'll go to Huntsville, Alabama or Dallas, Texas or whatever and. And then they start looking everywhere and then they end up scaling really quickly. And that's what happened to us is we scaled really quickly up hundreds and hundreds of units. But then what happens is you become your own bottleneck. And that's what happened to me is I scaled, we scaled fast, we went wide and then we became on bottleneck because I have to fly to all these locations. Five different property managers needed to manage, that's all these contractors I needed to manage. So we scaled fast and then we decided that we wanted to right around 20, 22, that we needed to narrow this up. And if we want further past this, this kind of constraint that we were in, we needed to go a mile deep. So we picked one market and we became, you know, absolute experts in that market. And now we're in the process of selling off last couple of properties here. So that is kind of how one of the mistakes we made when we scaled and it's very common one I see and I try to caution people against that is going a mile wide versus a mild pick. You know, start in your backyard first and if you fully have exhausted your backyard and there's no chance you're going to find anything, just pick one or two markets that, that are good and, and invest in those.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, and I think too the importance of having good property managers that you know like and trust and you can feel comfortable and not lose sleep at night wondering what's happening. And so yeah, just fewer relationships to manage and building good trust with those folks too, for sure. 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, 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 Freedom through Real Estate Dot 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. You know, we don't have a, have a ton of time left but talk about because you also own other businesses. So when did that piece kind of come into your picture and how does that work together with all the stuff that you're doing in the real estate space?
Vince Gethings
Absolutely has grown organically as our strategy has changed. You know, we started in Michigan, then we learned a little bit more and then we went a mile wide. We learned that it wasn't the right idea. So we picked the best market that we, that we were operating in which was ended up being in Texas and we're going a mile deep in Texas. And then now our strategy is to, I'm sure you've heard this before, is the conveyor belt, right? So we have this five year long conveyor belt that our goal is now to be absolute experts at this market. We're vertically integrated, means we have our own property management company that comes with scale. It's not something you want to start off the gate and just say, all right, I'm going to be vertically integrated. Just you know, add that on later, you know, when you have scale. So we're vertically integrated and our goal is to every 90, 90 days, 100, 120 days, something like that is to put an asset on our conveyor belt, fill it up for a five year long, you know, timeline and then have those capital events either sale or refinance and just keep doubling our money every three to five years. That's our real estate, you know, very high level. That's our real estate strategy. Where the businesses come into this is I have a partner that came on, we partnered up in 2020 and he was in franchises and he was scaling franchises and things like that. And that really piqued my interest because of the amount of cash flow that those can throw out when you get it right. So now, you know, since we've been teamed up for the last five years now I've since bought some several companies and he's has his companies and we're continuing to acquire companies and where our strategy is at now that this next level that we're at is we buy these Cash flowing businesses that kick out a surplus amount of cash flow. And we use that and we kind of supercharge that conveyor belt system because now we're putting more money down on our, on our real estate and we can have more, you know, hot bigger buy boxes. You know, right before we were going after, you know, five $10 million properties. Now we're going after 20 to $30 million properties because we can put down more capital onto our deals and we're doing so in a safer way because with that excess cash flow and our investors with, you know, putting money down with us, we can do lower leverage debt. So we're doing lower leverage long term fixed rate debt and you know, getting really good debt in place because we get a lot of cash flow from the real estate or from the businesses. We can buy down the, the debt on the real estate and just have it really good long term, safe portfolio. And that's while still getting a lot of cash flow because the businesses are, you know, kicking it out. So that is our strategy now and that's how the to this is. We, we really like the cash flow that those kick out and it's actually building our portfolio of real estate better because we can go after higher quality assets, bigger purchase price and lower, lower risk debt.
Mike Swenson
Now how does that work? You know, for somebody? So obviously kind of the disclaimer here, like you've done a lot and grown a lot, so you don't have to try to chase all these shiny objects. But for somebody thinking like, okay, you're doing real estate, you're doing real estate really well now you're doing business ownership, like how do you feel like sometimes dividing yourself or your attention versus doubling down on what you're doing? Well, like kind of talk about that piece, like how you were able to still buy and grow business as well, while also doing real estate well at the same time and not feel like your attention is just getting fractured.
Vince Gethings
But my attention is fractured. Like I'm not, I'm not some superhuman or anything like that. So if, if I were to give some advice based off of my experience and not just like just throwing out advice is, is my experience is that a lot of people, especially now, is like kind of that attention herd is going toward like buying businesses. You know, I was doing businesses before that I would say that the, the risk and stress level of buying of you know, kind of buying a business is way higher. In running a business is way higher. You have way more employees, way more liabilities things to think about. So I don't want to sugarcoat. There's a lot of people out there sugarcoating this. So like, oh, just go buy mom and pop businesses. Because the silver wave and all this stuff, like, yes, it's true, yes it's there, but it is way more work required and way more riskier than any piece of real estate. So I don't, I don't want to sugarcoat that and say, you know, this is the next big thing. If somebody was going to get started, I would still stick to my original kind of thesis of like, hey, go find a 5 or 10 unit or maybe you can go up a little bit, maybe go to 15 to a 20 unit, you know, jump in, buy something like that, learn the multifamily business. Because even though I am doing all these other things, multifamily is the foundation of my company. It's the foundation my family wealth. That's where all my excess goes to. That is for my, my family and the creation of my generation wealth. And it is what's providing me financial freedom is the multifamily. So learning that business first and doing it probably on a small scale, you know, some property that you can get in pieces, real estate works, figure out how you like to interact with it and then maybe jump on the business later. But I definitely don't want to sugarcoat saying it's, you know, that it's easy to do all this stuff and you just need systems and processes and all this stuff. Like a lot of that stuff's kind of foo foo stuff. It's hard work and it really is. And I think, you know, some people can do it and you know, have the stomach for that kind of level of activity and stress, but, you know, it's doable. I did it. I don't think I'm special, but I do, I would say start with the real estate first and then, you know, later on, you know, you can, you can do the business first and then don't, like, don't go, just quit your W2 job and you know, I'm going to start a business right now, like figure out the real estate piece first and then maybe you can add that on later.
00:26:25 - Speaker B
And to clarify, so the businesses that you have are these already established businesses with some sort of general manager leadership ownership in place where you're kind of coming in and providing leadership guidance versus taking on day to day type stuff or maybe talk about that too.
Vince Gethings
Absolutely. So the, the area that I focus on is home service companies. So like we're thinking, you know, insulation companies, flooring companies, things like that. I'm looking for like a plumbing company. Those are the ones that I like. I understand kind of those businesses inside and out. And my business plan is to. And I've done both. I've. I've bought a franchise, I've started a franchise from the ground up. I've acquired another franchise and then I've also acquired the mom and pop. You know, the, the mom and pop that's looking to retire after 50 years. Whatever. I think the, the acquiring a business that has a reputation, kind of establishment in a community is way easier than starting something from scratch if the reputation is good and things like that. So I. And kind of focusing on that now and the normal structure I have is home service companies generally making A million to 2 million a year is, is kind of where I'm at right now. And maybe that'll scale in the future, but that's where I'm at. So I'm comfortable at. Because the downside of risk is not, you know, a whole lot on those companies. And I look to place a general manager right away. Usually somebody that's in the business, that has been in the business for a long time and you know, and then they would come with a couple of salespeople, a couple installers, things like that. Just your typical W2 and 1099 employees or 10, nine contractors, W2 employees that come with those types of businesses. And I'm at a point now where it's like I have the back office kind of set and structured like we're talking marketing, bookkeeping, things like that. So every time I add a new company, I benefit from economies of scale because I don't have to set up a whole new marketing team. I don't set up a whole new back office team. They just kind of absorb it. So I'm actually hitting a pretty good pace right now with the efficiencies of the back office. But the first, like two companies were not great. Like it was a lot of work, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of stress, a lot of cash flow burn that I didn't really know how to stop. And then I just kind of learned through that process and you know, get better on the next iteration and the next iteration. Now I'm just getting better and more selective at the companies I buy. So absolutely doable. The opportunity, you know, is there that, you know, the opportunity. The, the baby boomers retiring and a lot of these business are going to close that it's absolutely there. I just don't want to sugarcoat it. Cause a lot of people are that, you know, oh, you can just go buy, you know, these companies and start cashing checks. Like, it is a lot of work and it's a lot more people work, which, you know, is not. It's not always fun doing, you know, having a bunch of employees and stuff like that. So it's. It picks a completely different mentality and level of grit than. Than real estate does.
Mike Swenson
Conceptually, all that makes sense to be able to diversify, utilize the cash flow that you're building, put it into the real estate. The real estate builds and grows, and so that's genius. It takes a lot of time and a lot of sweat. Sweat and blood and tears as well.
Vince Gethings
Yeah. Yeah. You nailed it.
Mike Swenson
Vince, thank you so much for, for coming on and sharing your story for people that want to reach out to you, learn more about what you're doing, connect, how can they do.
Vince Gethings
So, you know, I'm on all the social medias. I'm probably the only one around for Vince Gethings. LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, have a website. Vince Gethings.com or if you want to check out what we're doing in the real estate space, check out wheelbarrowprofits.com to learn about that program as well.
00:30:03 - Speaker B
Well, thank you so much for coming on, Sharon. Excited to hear all that you've built in not that long of a time. I'm excited to hear what you continue to build. So best of luck to you in the future and what you're doing.
Vince Gethings
Sa.
