Ruben Dominguez, Founder of Totem Capital Group, joins us to discuss building a portfolio of single family homes while working full time and moving up to investing in apartment syndications via multifamily real estate. We also discuss real estate coaching, and team building to do bigger deals
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Transcript
Devin Elder:
Ruben, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. How are you?
Ruben Dominguez:
I’m great. I’m great. Thanks for having me Devin.
Devin Elder:
Awesome. So, let’s kind of dig in a little bit to your journey here for folks that don’t know you. And I know a lot of folks in our circle, we have a lot of circles that overlap, but for folks maybe out there listening to this podcast that haven’t met you or learned about you, what’s your backstory and how did you find real estate and make a go at it?
Ruben Dominguez:
Sure. Well, I was a corporate guy. I worked for a big IT company here in San Antonio and I was doing the corporate ladder thing. What your parents teach you to do. Go to school, get a good job and get promoted, keep working up that corporate ladder. So, I was doing that at a IT company here and I got to like a middle management and I started looking back and saying, man, I haven’t really accomplished a whole lot. As you start earning more money, you start spending more and it’s so crazy how your expenses match your income. Every time I get that next promotion, it go up a little bit and I’d spend a little bit more. And I started realizing like, man, I am working a lot and I’m under a lot of stress at work and I’m not really getting ahead. And funny thing is about, I think this was 2006, right before the crash, the real estate crash. My wife, she brought me this book. It was called Real Estate Investing for Dummies. You know those yellow books, the for dummies books.
Devin Elder:
Oh yeah.
Ruben Dominguez:
She brought that in one day and she bought it at the bookstore. And she was like, “Hey, I think we should buy rentals. And we should learn how to be in landlords and all that. It seems like a great business. I’m going to call my brothers over. We’re all going to have this meeting about it.” And so we did that and I was the guy in that were like, “Ah, man, I don’t want to be a landlord. That seems like a lot of work and tenants and plumbers and all the headache.” And so we kind of ditched that thought.
Ruben Dominguez:
And actually, it was probably a couple of years later, the family is growing. And we had our second kid, we had our first son and then we had a second kid and we were in this tiny house, 1,084 square feet, tiny house. And we’re like busting at the seams. And it was right after the market had crashed. I was like, ’09 probably. And there’s all these great deals on houses here in San Antonio. And I said, “I want to move into a bigger house. And there’s some up there. I’m making some good money at work. We can afford it.” I’m raising my expenses as my income goes up.
Devin Elder:
Right, every time.
Ruben Dominguez:
So, I said, “Hey, let’s go look at these houses.” And she basically said, “The only way that we’re going to buy another house is if we can keep this one and rent it out.” So, she was trying to get her way in there. And I was like, “Fine, let’s do it. Let’s try it.” And so we bought this house, I’m still in the house we bought back then. And we started renting that house out and it was really cool. These people were paying 13, $1,400 a month. And my all in expense was like eight or 900 bucks. And I was left over with some money at the end of the month. And we lucked out, I didn’t know what I was doing. We actually got a really good tenant in there by luck. I learned how to do that later. And so I was amazed. It’s like, how many times can I do this? So, I called up my banker, said, “Hey, I want to buy another rental house.” And he was the wrong guy. He was the retail, residential banker.
Ruben Dominguez:
He told me, “Yeah, you could do it. And it’s going to cost you $50,000 out of pocket. You got to have this like savings accounts to cover like six months worth of expenses.” And all these things, all these rules. And then he told me, “You can only do that four times and that’s it.” And I was like, “Oh, well I don’t have 300K to go throw into three more rental houses.” So, I gave up on that idea. I went back to the grind at work and a couple of years later, maybe even sooner than that, maybe a year later I saw this guy posting on Facebook. “Hey, I got another rental.” And so it was actually you.
Devin Elder:
[crosstalk 00:04:11] at the time.
Ruben Dominguez:
I had lunch with you. I said, “Hey, Devin, let’s go out to lunch.” We’ve known each other for a long time. I was like, I know Devin’s in a corporate job too. So, how is he buying these houses? My banker told me I couldn’t do it. And so we had lunch and you told me about the little trick, which was, you’re talking to the wrong banker. Talk to somebody who understands this business, the rental real estate business, and you’re doing it wrong. You don’t have to put 20% down. The bank just wants 20% equity. You can build that equity by rehabbing it. And so I found wholesalers, I was buying deals through wholesalers. And after I learned that trick, we went out and I did that as many times as I could. And then we started, while we don’t have capital to go buy more rentals. So, let’s do some flips to get some money for more rentals. And then it was like, the deals, I think you probably know this, in 2014 to 2016, the deals started getting tighter and tighter on those single families in San Antonio.
Ruben Dominguez:
So, we started wholesaling, started sending out letters direct to a homeowners and 90% of the stuff we get back, that was a deal wasn’t, and somewhere we didn’t want to buy. We wouldn’t flip it and we wouldn’t rent it. So, we’d sell those. And so we started this sort of wholesaling business and we started cherry picking the good rentals and the good flips off of those deals. And I think in 2016, at the end of that year, I was like, okay, cool, we acquired six rentals, six single family rentals that year. And man, I thought I was working a lot before, like trying to get out of that rat race. And it was like, I was going in the morning to make sure contractors did whatever they’re supposed to the day before.
Ruben Dominguez:
And sometimes I’d find out, man, you put white grout on dark tile. Like you got to come back out. All that stress. I was working two jobs and I was nowhere near getting to retire. And my income kept going up. So, I kept having to, oh, well now I need another four houses to replace that income. I need to have that five houses to replace that income. And so I was like at a, it was a scalability problem. So, I can’t continue to scale like this because I’m spending less time. The reason I’m trying to get out of my job is my why was my kids. I’m coming home and I’m leaving before they wake up in the morning and then I get home and they’d be asleep. And my wife would tell me all the cool things they did all day. Like, oh, they took the first step or I took them to the park and they did all these things and I miss it all.
Devin Elder:
That’s tough, yeah.
Ruben Dominguez:
Yeah. So, I was no closer after those six rentals in one year and all these flips and a bunch of wholesale deals. And I just said, “This is not scaling. It’s not scaling for me.” And it was getting harder to find deals back then. And in San Antonio, the markets started to blow up here. And so I started asking around and I was in a coaching group and they were kind of doing some multi-family stuff. So, I had been exposed to that business a little bit. And so I started asking around like, “Hey, what is it going to take to get into multifamily?” I heard a lot of different answers. A lot of them were, oh, you need 300K, you need to be able to qualify for the loan. So, your net worth has got to be pretty high.
Ruben Dominguez:
And so I’m looking at this, I’m like, man, I’m going to buy a 10 unit by myself. And then I heard about all the, there’s a lot of issues with 10 unit. Not that it’s bad. Not that it’s a bad investment, but you got to be ready to do some property management. And I was doing that already with single family. And the tenant type in a apartment is going to be a lot different than a single family. We were renting to families that have kids a lot of times. They’d stay in there for like, I think three years was the average renter, the lease term. And so I said, “I don’t know if I want to do 10 unit.” And about that time you were starting to do bigger deals.
Ruben Dominguez:
And I kept hearing from people like, hey, the path you want to go on is be a passive investor. See what it’s like, then jump into … if you want to go active, like go active, that’ll get you there a little bit faster. And then partner with somebody who would do that. And that third step is if you want to go and do a deal on your own, and by that time you might’ve built up the net worth and liquidity so you can go out and do a deal on your own. And so I put some money in a couple of passive deals and I was like, man, this is great. This is income coming in every quarter, I get that check. I get some really good communications and the best part is like, I’m not doing anything. I’m just collecting money. And I see the transfer in my account every quarter, like clockwork.
Ruben Dominguez:
And then I realized, well, I’m going to eventually run out of money. So, we decided to start looking at going active and how to get that done. And really it’s the way we got involved in that was like, hey, partner with someone. Partner with someone that knows what they’re doing so you should learn from them. And you’re going to learn a lot when you do that, you’ll make some money. You’re not going to get a whole bunch of equity in there, but you get a decent amount. And I had done books, tapes, podcasts, all that stuff. And I still didn’t really have a great grasp of the multifamily investing market. How do I go out and actually do this on my own? Wasn’t really until that I got exposed to that side and started partnering with someone there. I was able to say, okay, now I got a little bit better handle on it, but I think I need to do that a couple more times before I actually go out and try to get my own [inaudible 00:10:01].
Devin Elder:
I love it. Yeah. That partnership aspects really interesting and multifamily. And multi-family is kind of real estate investing for grownups. Once you get into that, a lot of the vendors are different. A lot of the players are more sophisticated and it’s kind of just refreshing to deal with some of these folks. But that partnership aspect is really critical because it is a big overwhelming business. Even if the fundamentals of it are relatively, simply have rents coming in and expenses and you can run your valuations kind of simply. But that partnership aspect is really big. And we say it all the time, but whatever deficiency you have a partner or a vendor can fill that in whether it’s underwriting or raising capital or sourcing a deal, et cetera. I mean, there’s somebody out there that can help plug that and the pie gets big enough where you can do that.
Devin Elder:
I mean, if you’re flipping a house for $20,000 profit target, you can’t bring somebody into that. Because that pie, it’s crumbs by the time you’re done with it. But if you’re doing a $10 million deal, that’s a different, that’s a different story. The deal supports kind of bringing on those vendors and partners. So, what is the target now that you’ve kind of had success in the single family world, obviously discovered the business model, went out and did a bunch of deals and then transitioned into multi-family. What type of a project are you guys looking to take down these days?
Ruben Dominguez:
We’re looking at specifically class B or C multi-family. It depends on the market, but like here in San Antonio, we’re looking at 75 plus units. And the reason for that is you can afford full-time staff. And I’m looking at the business from perspective of, I don’t want to work. I don’t want to be at the property signing leases. I’ve done all that stuff. It’s good. It’s great experience, but I’m not the best at it. I can hire someone that’s a lot better than I am and has experience, that won’t make mistakes, that they’re going to follow the law and I can spend my time finding more projects to do. And so we’re targeting a little bit larger properties for that reason. I don’t want to be there on the property if I don’t have to be. Obviously I’m going to be working with my property management team closely to make sure we hit targets.
Ruben Dominguez:
But that’s what I’m used to. That’s what I did in the corporate world. I’d rather follow up and make sure we’re hitting the targets and actually be out there on a weekend when the property [inaudible 00:12:35] off, signing a lease or trying to collect rent or calling a plumber in. And then there’s things you can’t do when you don’t have staffing. So, if you don’t have a full-time maintenance guy, expenses are higher. Every time something breaks, you’re calling a plumber or you’re calling an AC guy and in Texas in the summer if an AC breaks, and you got to wait three days on a repairman, like your tenant’s not going to be happy.
Devin Elder:
Yeah. That’s right.
Ruben Dominguez:
Bad experience. So, we’re looking for something that can sustain that. And it’s based off income. If there’s enough income, you can afford staff, then that’s the kind of property we want to look at. And there’s also things on the income side. Like, let’s say you want to increase income. The name of the game in this business is increase income, decrease expenses. You want the NOI up. So, if I want to offer some amenities at a cost like, hey, I want to offer door to door trash service, and we’re going to charge 20 bucks a month. We can have our maintenance staff do that. Hey, when you come in Thursday mornings, go pick up some trash and put it in a dumpster and that’s pure NOI. We don’t have an additional cost for doing that kind of stuff, but we get the income and it’s a benefit to the tenant. So, win-win. So, that’s why we’re targeting that class.
Devin Elder:
Yeah. That payroll number, I mean, it really gets tricky on these smaller properties, which is like a conundrum that I think about a lot. It’s in this kind of call it 50 units and under multifamily space. One, it’s attractive because people think they can afford it and that they don’t want to learn how to syndicate a deal or raise capital. And they think it might be easier. But when you’re paying one-off for maintenance service calls, that’s going to get expensive quickly. And then as an owner, if you’re inserting yourself into the operations, as like part of the operations, man, you just got a job you probably don’t maybe want as an owner. And so it gets tricky, which is too bad because I think there’s some opportunity probably nationwide finding some smaller properties that are mismanaged by these kind of mom and pop owners.
Devin Elder:
But you really got to take a hard look at where your role is in all this. And are you going to step in and sign leases on a weekend, like you said? And all the smaller properties you are and it’s going to be tough. So, you got to look at whatever your current situation is and is this a promotion if you’re going to be doing that or not. But the model as you get a little bit larger, really lends itself to being run like a business where you’re really the business owner and the oversight. And you obviously have to put the whole thing together and manage a team, but it’s much different than doing the operations yourself, for sure.
Ruben Dominguez:
Yeah. And I think a lot of people start just logical thinking and I was the same way, like, oh, I’m going to do single family. I got 10 or 15 of those. Now I’m going to move it to a 10 or 15 unit. And then maybe I’ll sell that in a few years, moving into a 30 unit so-and-so. And just seems logical. But I learned from mentors like, well, it’s the same effort to close a 10 unit as it is a 100 unit, yet, obviously you got to have more capital, but you can raise that. Or you can, like you said earlier, bring in a partner to help you with that. And you guys managed together and there’s enough of the pie to go around. And you could split that up instead of spending your time managing a property, calling plumbers, AC guys. Spend your time finding partners and increasing your ability to raise capital from investors.
Devin Elder:
Yeah, a 100%. I think that the focus on the dollar per hour activities is really important. And if people are out there doing their business, kind of look at your day and segment it and see how much time you’re spending on stuff that’s that really high dollar per hour activity. Going out and finding a $10 million apartment complex to buy is very high dollar per hour activity and scheduling the plumbers, maybe not so much. So, I love it. What does the team look like that you go out and put together to go take down one of these larger projects look like.
Ruben Dominguez:
For us right now, it’s a little bit of everything. I’ve got a partner that comes on and some of these apartment complexes we’re looking at, it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnest money. And so we’ll bring a partner in to help us with that. And also they help us qualify for the loan. We have someone that’s got some experience that comes on the team to help. Because one of the requirements of these loans are, do you have experience? And how much experience? And the more experience, the better. It’s easier to get the loan. And sometimes that equates to better terms. So, bring in a partner that does that, and we’ll bring in some people that can help us with the capital rates. If it’s a bigger property, we can’t do it all.
Ruben Dominguez:
All right. We’ll say, “Hey, can you come on? And you’re going to help us make the decisions. And you’re also as part of those, you’re going to come in and bring some capital to the deal.” And obviously a ton of vendors. Attorneys, title company, brokers, all kinds of vendors that you need. Insurance companies, people that fight taxes, CPAs, and all of them have a little bit of a worksheet. But like we talked about earlier, there’s enough of the pie to go around when you’re buying a $10 million building. It’s not like when I was doing these flips and there’s like sometimes 10K to split. There’s no waste, put that between four or five people. I mean, you could but you’re going to have to do a lot of deals.
Devin Elder:
Yeah, that’s right. It’s a grind flipping houses. Although, it could be good. We both done a few and it can be good, but I think it’s more of a short-term strategy. What are you guys seeing in San Antonio where you’re looking in terms of deal flow and prices and what’s going on with the market?
Ruben Dominguez:
It’s pretty hot. So, we get outbid a lot. We’ll submit an LOI and say, ah, you’re underbid by a million dollars. I don’t know how. I don’t know who’s buying those, but they’re making it work. So, it might be institutional money or something like that, but it’s a hot market. But there’s still deals out there. There’s a lot of people that tell me, “Oh, I don’t know how you’re finding deals. I don’t know what’s wrong.” And I always tell them, “It’s probably one of two things. One, you’re just not analyzing enough deals. And you got to put a lot of offers out there to get one that works. Or you’re not building relationships with brokers.” And that’s probably the one, because if you don’t have experience and the broker doesn’t have confidence in your ability to close, they’re probably going to send you a deal that is just a mass market deal.
Ruben Dominguez:
Like, ah, the seller wants a little bit too much for this, all my tight group of buyers that I normally send deals to, they didn’t want it because it’s too expensive. And so I’m going to send it to these guys. Maybe one of them will buy it or be interested in it. Because the name of the game in this business is, what’s your ability to close. And price is secondary. So, if you can close … I mean, price matters. If you’re way under and you can close, it doesn’t matter. But if you’re within the ballpark within a couple of $100,000 of the high bid and you’re a closer, that’s how you’re going to get a deal done. Or it could be, hey, I’m just going to bring it to you, because I know you’re a closer and let’s just get this deal done.
Ruben Dominguez:
No one else is going to even see this deal. And so I think there’s a lot of people out there struggling. And that’s probably why you’re not finding deals is because you’re getting these deals that no one else wants. Then you underwrite it, it doesn’t work for you either. And so a good way around that is bring in a partner. Bring in a partner that has that credibility in that market that knows the brokers and play the we game. We call it the we game. Hey, this team is buying this deal. And yeah, I might not have a whole lot of experience, but my team member does. He owns a couple of buildings here. And then when you go to that broker and you submit that LOI and they see the experience on the team, they’re like, oh, okay, maybe I’m going to send this deal to these guys. Because I hear a lot about that, I can’t find a deal. I can’t find a deal. It’s like, well, there’s deals out there. It’s probably one of those two problems.
Devin Elder:
I love it. Yeah, people really need to kind of break themselves to this. Because a lot of us start in a single-family world. I mean myself included. And you kind of almost need to break yourself of this lone ranger mentality. Because your first deal out, you’re just not going to qualify for a seven and a half million dollar loan on a $10 million deal. You might not have the $100,000 cash to put up and invest in the deal and do all this other stuff.
Devin Elder:
There’s just like countless things in the beginning, breaking into the multi-family world that you’re just not going to be able to do, but don’t let it keep you out forever. Because like we said, partners, partnerships and relationship is like the name of the game here. And if you’re in it for the longterm, then you can start building that stuff on your first deal. And then take on more and more responsibility, just like any endeavor. You kind of start small, start with a good group of people and grow as you kind of gain some competency. This business lends itself really well to that.
Ruben Dominguez:
I know it’s so different than the single family. I remember other guys trying to snake deals from me in a single family world and oh, I’m going to … Tell me the address of that house. And I tell them the address and they go to the house and try to talk to the homeowner. And the homeowner call me on the phone. It’s just totally different in multifamily. We actually had, we were bidding on a property and I found out some other guys that we knew were bidding on the property. And they said, “Hey, if we win it, maybe you can come on the team. And if you win it maybe we’ll come on the team.” And so it’s a totally different world. No, one’s trying to snake each other. Just different mentality. More of an abundance mentality in the multifamily business than single family. I never feel like anyone’s trying to pull something over on me or snake me or whatever it is in this business.
Devin Elder:
That’s true. I mean, it’s just a different set of players, different set of players for the bigger deals. And any real estate transaction has complexity of course. But it is refreshing when everybody involved has like a certain level of sophistication, whether it’s a broker, whether it’s the attorney, the seller, it helps. And it seems like the bigger the deal, the more sophistication there is there, which doesn’t always translate to, like I said, a smooth transaction, but it sure helps. And it sure makes kind of working on these deals more enjoyable to be dealing with more sophisticated participants.
Ruben Dominguez:
Definitely does. Definitely does.
Devin Elder:
So, what do you see ahead for the coming kind of year here? What’s on your agenda in terms of going out and working in the business?
Ruben Dominguez:
So, we’ve got some pretty ambitious goals. We want to try to do, well for us, we want to try to do two deals this year, the rest of this year. We’ve been looking hard, not a lot is penciled out, but we’ve got some, we feel like there’s some good stuff that’s come to our plate recently. And so we’re trying to do two deals this year and then next year, hopefully we can push that to three. So, not necessarily number of units, but we’re looking between 75 to 75 plus. Probably 300 units would be our max that we’d be able to pull off. But yeah. So, we’re looking at that and that’s going to require a lot of looking at deals. Because you’re going to look at, you’re going to make … I think it’s … A mentor told me this one time, he’s like, “You want these things to be routine. Like submitting LOIs, it becomes routine, not winning deals becomes routine.”
Ruben Dominguez:
Because I think when I first started, I’d submit an LOI and I’d sit by my email and my phone and I’d be like, ooh, what am I going to hear back? And I was just wasting time. It’s like, I should be analyzing another deal instead of just waiting for the phone to ring and waiting on the LOI, because most likely, statistically, I’m not going to win the … but it’s good practice. And so I feel like it’s a win to submit a lot of LOIs, go on a lot of tours. And if I can see a lot of things and that helps me build relationships with brokers and meet property management teams out there while we’re talking to people, that’s a win for me. So, just all those activities will eventually lead to us finding a deal.
Devin Elder:
I love it. Yeah, focus on the systems. I mean the outcomes will get there, but if you’re working that system on a regular basis, that’s going to lead to the outcomes. What would you say to somebody that’s got a single family project under their belt. They’re not entirely new to real estate, but they want to go do bigger deals. What do you tell that person that’s just starting out there?
Ruben Dominguez:
I would tell them to go do it. It’s so funny, the more and more success I have and I think back to when I didn’t even have a single family house. It’s just working a job. And even in my job, like there’s success there. When you get the next promotion and you do better. It’s all mindset. And it’s so funny. And I think about the next step for me, it’s my difference between me and the guy that’s got what I want is mindset. And so, read books, hang around with people that are doing the things that you want to do. And however you can do that. Go to meet ups. A good way to hang out with people is read their books. Listen to their podcasts. And you don’t actually have to hang out with them.
Ruben Dominguez:
Obviously, if you can hang out with them in person physically, even better, but try to get time with some of those people. If you have to pay for it in a mastermind group or whatever it is, I encourage you to do that because you will get so much from that. And it’s like your mother used to tell you probably like, “Hey, don’t hang around with those guys you’re going to be just like them.” It’s the same thing. Like if you’re going to hang around with some of them, you’re going to be just like them and eventually.
Devin Elder:
It really is true.
Ruben Dominguez:
Eventually going to have what they have. So, like go out there and start trying to hang out with those guys and you’ll learn so much. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience.
Devin Elder:
Totally. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been paying to be in groups since I started this and that’s the number one accelerator for me. You get in the right room of folks and go, man, they’re there just like me. I mean, they’re smart guys and gals, but they’re just … It’s just like you said, it’s a mindset thing. It really is a mindset thing. And you got people doing big stuff that are no smarter than the average person. They just figured out a different peer group to be around and figured out a different model to pursue. And it’s, I don’t want to say it’s that simple because look, there’s a ton of learning and a ton of experience that goes into it, but that’s a huge piece is peer group. Huge piece.
Ruben Dominguez:
It is. And I think about the people I’ve stopped hanging out with as well. So, I think it’s important also to take a look at, okay, who are the five people I hang out with the most? And what are they like, what are they having? I bet you, you’re going to look around and say, hey, they’re kind of like me. We’re kind of making around the same income, kind of have the same type of a lifestyle. And I think if you have someone that’s in your life that, not saying you have to get rid of everyone, but try to minimize your time with people that are going to bring you down. You want to be lifted up by people that are doing awesome things. And if you’ve got somebody in your … And a lot of times, that’s family and you can’t stop hanging out with family, but you can definitely minimize the amount of time to spend with those people. So, I don’t want to get negative, but I think that’s important to mention to people too.
Devin Elder:
Yeah, it really is. I mean, we are so influenced by our, I guess, fear of judgment from others. It’s such a huge thing. And I think unfortunately family does hold people back, but you get to … We’re in an amazing era here. When I was working my corporate job and I would not go to lunch with those folks because they would just complain about work and not have a plan to fix it. I mean, you’re complaining about this thing and you’ve been at this job for 20 years. I know, I guarantee you don’t have a plan to change it. You just want to. So, I literally, I just plug in real estate podcasts, go eat lunch by myself. For two years I did that. And just while I was focused on my business, and then I go hang out with people that were doing the thing that I paid some money to be in a group with.
Devin Elder:
And that makes all the difference. It makes all the difference. But we’re living in a pretty cool time to be able to connect kind of almost with anybody and to be able to spend time with people, like you said, even if it’s through an audio book or book or podcast or whatever the case is. So, the excuses are diminishing. For the ability to make connections and go do what you want to do, which is pretty cool. And the business is just hard enough, I think, to keep most people out. So, it’s only serious people that are making it happen, which is cool.
Ruben Dominguez:
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think when I worked in my corporate job and I was doing single family real estate, this is a crazy, this is totally true too. I would literally talk to someone every single day. It was a big organization, like 4,000 people that worked there. Just in that office. And everyone heard about, hey, I’m the real estate guy. I’m the single family guy, because I had a bunch of single family rentals and these other businesses. And they would come find me and put time on my calendar. And I talked to probably between the years of 2014 to 2017, I talked to probably someone every single day. You know how many people actually went and bought a single family house from those conversations?
Devin Elder:
All of them?
Ruben Dominguez:
Two, two people. Two people.
Devin Elder:
They just want to buy you lunch. You got a lot of lunches bought though. Right?
Ruben Dominguez:
I did have a lot of lunches bought, which is cool. And I got my, when somebody goes from not knowing anything to like, I’m going to try to teach you a little bit, because if you give them too much, then they, oh, it’s overwhelming. And you’d never hear from him. And I wanted them to be successful. I really wanted these people to be successful. I was trying to help them. Then I got to the point where like, this guy’s probably not serious, but you know, I’ll spend some time with him. And yeah, I was trying to minimize my time with those people too. But yeah, two people, two people bought single family houses out of all those people, probably hundreds and hundreds of people that I talked to. Crazy.
Devin Elder:
That’s wild. That’s wild. Well, listen, thank you for sharing your story. If somebody wants to learn about what you have got going on, what you guys are doing in the future, what’s a good way for them to connect with you?
Ruben Dominguez:
Either our website, that’s www.totem, like a totem pole, totemcapitalgroup.com, or you can email me direct. It’s ruben@totemcapitalgroup.com. And yeah, that’s probably going to be, you can get our newsletter on our website, that’s probably the best way to keep up with us. And we send out monthly updates on what we’re doing.
Devin Elder:
Perfect. Well, listen, we’ll link to that in the show notes. Ruben, thank you for coming on the show, sharing your story. I love it. And congratulations on your success. And here’s the future.
Ruben Dominguez:
Awesome, thanks for having me, Devin. I appreciate it.
Devin Elder:
All right. Take care.
Ruben Dominguez:
Take care, man.
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