Devin (00:00.805)
Brock, hey, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. How are you, sir?

Brock Holliman (00:04.14)
Devin, thanks for having me, man. I'm thrilled to be on. I'm great. How are you doing?

Devin (00:08.133)
Yeah, doing real good, doing real good. Just getting the year kicked off here and a lot of different projects going and hopeful about 2024. So, you know, that kind of stuff. Want to dive in on you for our audience here, folks that you're out in Sarasota County, Florida, doing build to rent stuff, real estate entrepreneur, want to dive in on all that. But how about some background, man? How'd you, you know, what brought you into real estate? What was your journey getting into it?

Brock Holliman (00:33.152)
Yeah, yeah, sure. Um, thanks. So it started off in high school. Um, I had a lawn mowing business. So my, my average client wasn't like, you know, the, the Smith's next door. Um, it was more vacant property owned by the banks and foreclosure. Cause during that time, um, as you probably remember, and everybody does, like it was, it was hell for real estate. So, you know, it was like 50 % of the houses in America were vacant or, or.

boarded up or something and the banks, yeah, as they were trying to get rid of those properties, they were just sitting there and going to hell. So one of the little things that we did was, or I did was I had a lawn mowing business and started off and had about 40 to 50 lawns to do for one bank. And it, you know, yet it was because it's one client and that makes it easier. And that sort of mentality is kind of, I guess from that first little business deal has,

Devin (01:22.085)
Right out of the gate.

Yeah.

Brock Holliman (01:31.47)
has stuck with me throughout because you know, the more transactions you can do with one client, the easier these transactions are going to be, the more trust you got. And you know, you build a lot of rapport off of this kind of stuff. So as long as you do the right thing. So yeah, it started like that.

Devin (01:45.829)
So this is high school and how'd find this bank with 50 projects to work on?

Brock Holliman (01:50.958)
Yeah, so it was just, it was a small local bank. Um, you know, my father was a builder and I know that he banked with these guys. And anyway, I just go in there. I remember them helping me open my first bank account and it was with these guys as well. And, um, and yeah, so he definitely probably a plug from my, from my father, if I went back and dug into the details hard enough. So wasn't like some.

some young high school kid has got the smarts to think of that right out of by himself.

Devin (02:23.621)
But to that point, like use every advantage absolutely possible, right? I mean, as an entrepreneur, like you're looking for any advantage in any spectrum. And if that's one of them that a cardio adult, rock and roll, right? Get it done.

Brock Holliman (02:37.07)
I couldn't agree more. But at the time when you're young and you're young and ambitious and you want to, you want to try your best to sort of prove it to yourself that you can do it on your own. And if I could go back in time, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that. You know, that's one of the things. Cause

Devin (02:54.085)
talking about the lawn mowing in general or or what do you mean?

Brock Holliman (02:57.294)
Oh, I meant really, I meant just as, as you kind of evolve, like, you know, the higher paying stuff, you know, each step you take, you get more eyes that look at you and, you know, and more sentences that are judgmental about whatever or how you got into the situation you're in. And, you know, with my dad being a builder, we weren't, we weren't, we weren't, you know, the richest family. Okay. But we weren't, we definitely weren't poor by any means. We were a good middle -class family. We were well taken care of and.

Devin (03:04.965)
Right.

Devin (03:22.533)
Sure, yeah.

Brock Holliman (03:27.214)
you know, a solid income coming in. Um, but at the same time, I wanted, I w I knew I wanted to make something good out of myself. And when I did, I just didn't want people to think, Oh, he did it only because of this or only because of, you his father or this or whatever it is, you know, um, which better to be numb to those thoughts. I think, and like you just said, use every advantage that you can, but at the same time, it still made me strive hard.

Devin (03:41.509)
Bye.

Devin (03:46.403)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (03:55.212)
individually, but you fall on your face a lot more often that way.

Devin (03:59.173)
Yeah, I think about that for my kids. I'm kind of a first generation entrepreneur. Well, I guess my father wasn't, grandfather was, but I think about it for my kids. They're kind of coming up with this. And I'm like, hey, I want to give these kids a leg up or introductions, but they're also going to want to carve their own path, right? So we'll kind of see how that plays out.

Brock Holliman (04:17.966)
Right, yeah, you always want to feel like you earned it too. And it wasn't given.

Devin (04:21.349)
Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. So I mean, like, have you ever had a job? If you, that's not like a pretty good first start in entrepreneurship. Did you ever go get a W -2 job or was it business?

Brock Holliman (04:30.488)
Yeah, so I was in Memphis and the grass didn't grow all year round like it does here in Florida. So I was, yeah, definitely like money is always what interested me even in school. So as much as I could make the better I felt even though I spent it like water back then. But you know, I had a job at IHOP at the same time. So.

Devin (04:37.027)
Right.

Brock Holliman (04:53.452)
You know, the summer months were there and I had mo lawn mo's lawns to mow or whatever. I would pull up to IHOP with my trailer on the back of my car and, and the lawn equipment still on there and then walk in with my blue apron. Um, but yeah, so that's where that was the first, I guess it was the only real W2 job I had.

Devin (05:11.941)
Right. Well, that's a good one for the resume. Were you running crews on all these houses, or was it just you just hitting them all?

Brock Holliman (05:18.862)
It started off with me and I think they, they given me, you know, I don't remember the exact number. I think it was probably like 10 or 15 lawns at first. And then I, in school, um, I had like zero friends that were younger than me. And I always hung out with the older crowd and maybe I was sort of like a party animal and they, they, they kind of like enjoyed the young guy that was around and that would do crazy stuff with them. Um, but those guys, you know, they, they all could drive and.

stuff like that. Then like those first friends I had in high school, they started to graduate and some of them, you know, weren't, like I said, we were the party crowd. So it's not like everybody was going to Harvard. Um, so they were very, you know, open to, to working on my crew and going out to, um, mow these, these yards. And I'm glad you brought that up. Cause it's funny story. I remember one day I'm sitting in math class and, um, Ms. Frank, so if, if she ever hears this, you know, I love you, Ms. Frank. So you're one of the few that I remember. And.

She knew what I was doing and back then, you know, if you, if you get caught texting in class, you're going, you're getting suspended or something, like the cell phones were new back then. It pissed all the teachers off. I don't know what it's like anymore. I'm sure texts go off every second.

Devin (06:26.565)
Yep. Oh yeah.

Devin (06:32.165)
They have them, like my kids have them. I'm like, is it, you have that at school? Like, yeah, yeah, I have it. Yeah.

Brock Holliman (06:36.494)
It's no big deal now, huh? Okay. Back then it was a huge deal. Like you didn't want to be caught with it. And she didn't care. Like she knew I had this little lawn mowing deal. And, um, I remember the banker called me up and he sounded pissed and asked me to come in there immediately. Um, and I'm in school, like in the middle of the day, I was like, okay. And anyways, I just grabbed my bag. I left miss Frank's his class, went downtown, met with the guy and he brings out this book of all these pictures.

Devin (06:42.819)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (07:06.798)
And this was, I guess, my first real lesson of being a boss and trusting others. So they showed me all these pictures. It was like a scrapbook of all these properties. And at the time, remember I started like at 10 or 15 properties, then we worked our way up to 45, something like this. It was a lot of them for, for a little kid. And the, the pictures were of half mowed yards or some yards that had like two strips going down and then everything else was super tall. And it was just one after the other.

And that was the first time I had to fire people and it was tough because these were like, these were supposed to be my friends that I trust and all that. So it was like friendship or, or, or work or business. And that was the first time I was ever dealt that, uh, you know, that choice. Um, but that's what had to happen. So it was very disappointing.

Devin (07:58.053)
It is and also like a priceless lesson I gotta imagine, right? A priceless lesson that you know, you figure that out at some point so.

Brock Holliman (08:01.998)
Do what now? Oh yeah.

Yeah. And we're here 13, 14, 15 years later, I think. And yeah, and I still remember that. Yeah. That was the first, probably the first lesson in business. Yeah.

Devin (08:15.013)
Yeah. So what do you think now about hiring, you know, and friends and kind of relationships there? You know, what, do you have a philosophy or you just kind of hiring people as needed for the company? What's your?

Brock Holliman (08:26.19)
Well, so we've got a few people that are, that are family members in the company right now, but we've had, and, and, you know, that first lesson made me, I guess, more numb and, and I guess sort of like a callous over the, the feeling side of things. And if you ask the family member, family members that are in the business, they'll tell you that I'm a difficult person to be around when it comes to that very hard on them. And there's no, and I'm probably actually harder on.

Devin (08:29.861)
Yep. Yep.

Devin (08:39.011)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (08:54.35)
the family members are the people that are closer to me in the business than I am, you know, the people that we hired in the last six months. Um, and it's just because I, you know, the closer that they are to me, I feel like there should be a more attention, more focused, more effort on things. Um, just to, just to, just because you care, you know? Um, but I have definitely, if I had the option to hire Jim that has, you know, a great,

great resume or Joe who's my friend who's got an even better resume, I would always probably lean towards Jim with the lesser resume. And I just don't want that, and it's not like I don't like working with my friends or anything like that. I think that would make work more fun, but I'm afraid to jeopardize those kinds of relationships. I don't have a ton of friendships and what I do have is meaningful to me and I don't want to do much to jeopardize that kind of stuff.

Devin (09:51.653)
Yeah, it's such a fine line to walk and I agree with that. It's a...

Brock Holliman (09:55.182)
But I think being in business with each other would be that's sort of a little different way to think of it. Maybe as long as somebody can bring in their role and responsibilities and be different and better than what you can bring to the table, you know.

Devin (10:08.453)
Yeah, partnerships a little bit different maybe. So what was, you grew up obviously with a father that was in real estate and building homes. What was your sort of first foray into real estate? When you kind of start maybe thinking about investments or those kinds of things, what was your on -ramp there?

Brock Holliman (10:31.886)
Right. Okay. So, so yeah, so my father, a hundred percent genius, uh, on the construction side and all of this. And at the time when, when the lawns were being mowed, I remember him saying something. He had met a guy that was doing auctions, foreclosure auctions, um, in Memphis. And I remember him saying, son, you've got to, when you get out of high school, you should check out these foreclosure auctions. I think you can make money and look at this real estate stuff. So.

He told me that I think it was my junior year or senior year in high school. And it wasn't, it wasn't long after he told me that I was already looking up the auctions schedules and stuff like that. And I remember going downtown just to be in front of the auctions and the first auctions that I went to, um, was during a school day. And so that means I wasn't, yeah.

Devin (11:23.301)
In high school, playing hooky to go buy houses.

Brock Holliman (11:26.794)
Yeah. And, and if you saw my, I found my, my report card the other day or whatever, the transcript and it shows the percentage of days missed. And it was like, I mean, it's embarrassing. I wouldn't want my kids to see it one day, but you know, it was like 48 % of days missed. But at least I was doing something productive with some of those days. So.

Devin (11:38.499)
Yeah.

Devin (11:43.397)
You know, it's almost like a badge of honor, like an entrepreneur. I wouldn't want to show my kids that either, but that's kind of like a badge of honor, especially like doing something productive, getting out there, getting such an early start with it. I love it, man.

Brock Holliman (11:55.24)
Yeah, and turning out okay. And, and, and, but I remember that day doing that. My dad always, how does this revel relevant? You'll see, but my dad was always a fast driver and didn't care about the traffic law. Okay. So any police officers, I'm sorry, don't, don't pull them over. He's a nice guy, but they pulled him over, uh, recently before that auction. And I remember being on the steps of the courthouse and the auction's going.

Devin (11:57.605)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (12:22.926)
And I see something out of the corner of my eye and it's my father walking up the steps to go to his court date over his speeding ticket. And you know, the first auction and I run into him on a, on a school day. Um, I thought maybe he'd be upset and it turned out he was extremely proud and he was bragging to all his friends about where he caught his son that day. That was a huge confirmation. Like, dude, you're in the right spot. So that was my first.

Devin (12:37.379)
Yeah.

Devin (12:42.725)
That's yeah. Yeah. I know that's awesome, man. Did you end up buying anything or was this? Did you have like a coach or anybody with you? Are you just kind of making offers? What was that's gotta be intimidating.

Brock Holliman (12:56.558)
So the first couple of times, I don't know anybody. Just showing up, seeing what's going on, how it works. And those two times, it was the same people each time, which come to find out every day of the week that there's an auction, that same crowd is going up there. Some of them work together, some of them work against each other. Regardless, it's the same competition every day.

Devin (13:16.985)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (13:24.494)
And if you line these guys up who have been doing it, real estate for years, investing for years, I remember one of the, one of the guys there had over 800 rental houses and, you know, and, you know, just, and it's not like some syndication fund either. Like they're 800 at his rental houses that he just keeps collecting at these options over the years. And of course, when you first show up and you, you have a lawn mowing salary, like.

Devin (13:44.643)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (13:50.316)
you feel a little bit intimidated and you feel like, okay, where do I even start? Or like, what are they even going to think when I, when I say my, my first bid or something like that. Um, but I ended up, I ended up meeting a guy there, uh, Greg Griffin, and I love this guy. I still talk to him super, super successful dude. Um, and, and all kinds of different businesses, real estate is where he made his game, but, but he also grew up in Memphis and, and you know,

And probably a way more incredible story than what I've got as far as starting. I mean, because Memphis is a rough place and he grew up in some of the darkest areas with the highest crime. I mean, like it looks terrible in these spots. You don't want to go there without, without.

Devin (14:34.181)
Right. I feel like Memphis has got some tough, tough neighborhoods. I've heard that.

Brock Holliman (14:38.542)
It is and I'm proud to be from that spot. But at the same time I can say that all day long and it sounds like white noise compared to what these guys have seen and where they grew up in the same city. But super proud and super happy to have met him because we sort of teamed up. He was born in 1985. I'm born in 1992 so he was like the closest to my age at the time. I guess what am I 17 18 he's 24 25.

Devin (14:41.029)
Yeah, sure.

Devin (14:48.581)
Yeah. Yep.

Brock Holliman (15:05.39)
Still, he's not like some loaded up rich guy, but he had a partner at the time. But we worked together and we would get some of these houses and we would wholesale them. My first deals I did were buying them and he actually loaned me $29 ,100 without a contract, without anything. I still don't know why he did it. Handshake deal, then he rode with me to the bank right after that.

Devin (15:29.059)
Hand shake you.

Brock Holliman (15:33.678)
And I got him the money and yeah, I split that wholesale fee with him. And that was the first of many deals and now he's one of my favorite guys in my phone. But that's how that started.

Devin (15:44.101)
I love it. So this house, for 29, wholesale it right away, take your fee, pay your lender back. Pretty cut and dry.

Brock Holliman (15:50.966)
Yep. And that was one of the few deals where they would make you pay upfront. So back then there was such an abundance of property at the time that you didn't have to even pay upfront like you do now. You could sweet talk them and with 90 % of the trustees that were holding the auction, they would give you 24 hours to pay. So you come to their office, you dropped them a check off in 24 hours. And if you could build a relationship with these people that were in control of the deal, then you could really stretch that out. Oh, something came up today.

Devin (15:55.639)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (16:19.342)
So 48 hours, oh, something's coming up one more day, 72 hours until you could actually find that buyer that's going to sell or to buy the property. And during those cases, I would have the buyers, I would say, look, uh, we've got a house here and I see that you're buying in the area, but we've got to close fast. You're going to get a killer deal on this. I saw you bought this one, one block away. This one's going to be, you know, 20 % less than what you just paid for that. But I need you to close in three days. This is a, not a traditional closing.

They would wire those funds to the trustee's account. The trustee would then cut me the check for the overage. So if I want something for 29, I told the guy 39, then they would give me the 10K back and made directly to me. And it was like no big deal. They were paying me my wholesale fee, the actual auction trustee.

Devin (17:06.245)
Yep. So you're buying these houses. I haven't done auction stuff, but you buying them sight unseen. You just buying addresses at that point and then go in and check them out.

Brock Holliman (17:13.486)
I personally wasn't. No, I mean, like I'm too conservative for that kind of stuff. Yeah, I've got to at least drive by, walk around, try to back door, see if it's open. And enough time's passed now that I shouldn't get in trouble for this, but you got to do what you got to do. Back then, I mean, if it's vacant house and it needs work, and I know that I'm going to get it, or somebody's going to get it, and I want to get inside, and the only way to get inside is to maybe bust a hole out of the little

glass in the back door, then maybe that's what we got to do or use a credit card to get in or whatever. I mean, if it's vacant, if somebody's living there, obviously I'm not going to do it, you know? And I don't, I don't mean that as a vandalism play because whoever's buying this property is going to go in there and rehab it anyway. Uh, so it's an extra $20 worth of glass, you know, I'm not talking about busting the windows or anything like that. So yeah, I naturally didn't feel comfortable without seeing as much as I could of the property.

Devin (17:50.821)
Yes, of course.

Devin (17:58.469)
Yeah.

Devin (18:10.565)
Of course, yeah, it makes perfect sense. So that, you know, as a kid of that age, getting a 5 -10k wholesale fee, that's real money, man. I mean, that's...

Brock Holliman (18:20.11)
It was, I felt good. I was a surely stupid at the time. I mean, I would take it. And I mean, I remember buying, I remember bought some Gucci work boots to get wear out on the job. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? And traveling here and traveling there, you know, buying a booth at the club, get all my friends in it. Just, just stupid stuff, you know, um, blew all the money, but yeah.

Devin (18:36.165)
That's awesome.

Devin (18:47.237)
Yep. But priceless memories, I'm sure. And when you're 80 looking back, you wouldn't trade it, I'm sure. So.

Brock Holliman (18:54.574)
No, no, and priceless lessons too.

Devin (18:56.933)
Yeah. Time and a place for that. So that would, did that turn into a pretty good, um, business for, for a long time? Or did you get to a point where it wasn't scalable or what, you know, are you still doing that? How did that progress?

Brock Holliman (19:11.182)
Honestly, I wish I still was doing that in some sort of fashion, just to add another arm on what we do, but we're, we're so busy right now with what we've got going on and it, and it works and it's profitable and it's hard to keep your eye out, take your eye off the ball unless something, you know, everything's running perfect, which I've got some room to, to make that happen. Um, so no, I'm not doing that anymore, but it did that started in 2011 and I stopped that in 2012 or 13.

And I'm, you're probably wondering like, why so quick would you stop that if you're making good money? But I like, you know, we talked about how rough Memphis was and as proud as I am of that place, I was still as a kid always wanted to get the hell out of there. So as soon as I felt like I had enough money, I remember, I remember I looked at my bank account and I never made it to the Hunter Kay back then. I remember seeing my bank account. I was at a, I was at a club at a party, getting some money out of an ATM. And I remember seeing the balance was at like 99 ,000.

Devin (19:55.749)
Yeah.

Devin (20:06.725)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (20:10.506)
600 something dollars and I'm like, oh, I'm almost at a hundred. Yeah. Never mind. I made it to negative 5 ,000 before I ever made it to a hundred first. Um, but a big part of that was because I thought I could do the same stuff in a city that I had all the connections that I could, I could have at a young age, uh, as much as I could. And a city that I knew like the back of my hand, I can close my eyes and just get you anywhere based off of a zip code. Um, and you know,

Devin (20:18.629)
Right. Right.

Brock Holliman (20:40.654)
going from there to Florida, which I always wanted to live in Florida, but so do a lot of other people. And when a lot of other people want to live there, that means that there's probably a lot more money there than there is in Memphis or places like Detroit or these other Baltimore. And anyways, I just thought I could do the same thing. Came down here and just tried and tried and tried to do these auctions, but they needed cash for everything.

You know, in Memphis, I know I said 29 ,000, but hell, my first rental house that I bought was $7 ,200. And it's just like a different level. You don't find anything for $7 ,000 in Florida, even back then. And, you know, it was just, it was just tough. So I did that and I had no options to, but to make money. But so I got my real estate license and was actually,

Devin (21:21.509)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brock Holliman (21:33.742)
a traditional type real estate agent half the time where I would take people around and show them property and write their contracts or whatever. And then the other half, I was just trying to hustle and find that next deal that would make me a tick, a quick 10 K or a quick 50 K or something. I could wholesale a package or whatever I could do, which didn't work out in Florida, but it ended up leading me to the next, to the next step that brought me back to Memphis.

Devin (21:58.329)
Yeah. Yeah. So you're you're doing the real estate. Would you advocate people do that that are kind of breaking into the game? I get the question a lot, right? Should I get my license? Do you think that was helpful for you?

Brock Holliman (22:08.942)
You know, I think if you're going to get, if you're going to buy your own stuff, especially at first, I would totally recommend getting your own license. I hear a lot of people say, Oh, don't get it. Rely on real estate agents. But I think if you look deep under the covers with that, like they probably own a real estate brokerage where they rely on their agents bringing in commissions. Okay. But I personally think that having that license when you're going to invest, especially at the beginning is good because one, you get your commission back.

Devin (22:28.771)
Right.

Brock Holliman (22:39.054)
Two, you deal directly with the decision -making, either the broker on the other side or the seller. And they know that you're a professional, even if it's your first deal. On top of that, you get access to all, you know, the MLS, you can learn how all that stuff works, how the filters work, how listings work. You don't have to rely on someone else to show you new product. Yeah, definitely. You get the whole contract thing.

Everybody gets nervous with contracts like, you know, I could do them in my sleep. Everything is pretty much templated and you learn that and you learn the phrases and the lingo and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I definitely would suggest people do that if they're going to be heavy in the game. Maybe you don't do it forever, but at the same time, at the beginning, while your volume is not to the max, it's it definitely is beneficial, I believe.

Devin (23:23.237)
Yeah.

Devin (23:31.781)
Yeah, no, those are all really good, really fair points. And there's just so much to learn in the business and to do it before you start putting investment dollars in or raising other people's money. I think those are all fair points. So today, let's kind of fast forward to today. What's the company look like? What are you, what's your guys primary focus? What's a, what's a week in the life look like for you now?

Brock Holliman (23:41.462)
Oh yeah.

Brock Holliman (23:52.91)
Yeah. So, um, today we've split up into, well, not split up. We've, I guess we've expanded into three different companies. So I've got, you see this one on my shirt. This one's Brock one. So this is my construction company. Um, Brock one is, you know, fully licensed contracting company in the state of Florida that focuses on building ground up construction, uh, single family homes and some small multifamily, whether it be duplexes or like.

townhome buildings, um, stuff like that. 99 % of the product that is built by Brock one is either investor bought or kept by my second company, um, and used for rental purposes. Um, 1%, maybe it's a little higher than 1 % goes to the retail market. And really that's because I tried to keep our comps.

Devin (24:39.045)
Got it.

Brock Holliman (24:49.582)
comps up on our appraisals, because it helps out the investors that are purchasing. It helps them get, walk into the deal with built -in equity. It helps their balance sheet out. It helps the lending terms. It helps everything. So there's that. And when I say rental property, I don't mean to veer off or get too wordy here. I know a lot of people think, my mind thinks of Memphis rental property and stuff, you know, cookie cutter, you know, rental grade type product.

Devin (24:53.989)
Yeah, right.

Brock Holliman (25:18.35)
If you check us out and you look at the stuff that we build, it's completely sexy rental product. Like it's modern. It's, you know, quartz countertops, no carpet, high ceilings, all led lighting, chandeliers and tile in the showers, like actual designer look, not fiberglass. I mean, like you name it. I put a lot of energy and effort into the finishings on that. Just so the investments can pay off for the long haul and it can attract.

Devin (25:42.275)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (25:47.182)
great tenants with higher rent that want to stay longer. And if any of these investors include myself, which I don't see me wanting to do, if anybody wants to sell the product in the future, it can out -compete any of the retail product on the marketplace in that area. So you're gonna, you know, you're still going to stand out and people aren't going to be like, Oh, I'm buying a rental house. So anyways, that's proc one. That's one company. The second company is Holloman Capital Group. It's an investment company. No outside funds in this company.

Just purely me and my family's income that we make off the businesses go into that and invest 100 % into real estate that we build the same exact product in the same areas that we sell to other investors or some other investment trends. So, not that a lot of people agree with this, but Bitcoin, Ethereum, we invest in this stuff. We even take percentages of our cashflow and turn it into Ethereum and Bitcoin every month.

Devin (26:26.437)
Look.

Brock Holliman (26:46.702)
from the rental property. And then some stocks we'll invest in, but it's all trendy type things. So like when the Russian -Ukraine war happened, we went into some defensive stocks and did pretty well while the rest of the market didn't do anything, that kind of stuff. So that's the second company. And then the third company is mynewrental .com or mynewrental, which it's on my water bottle here. So if anybody wants to see what we kind of build, you can go to mynewrental .com. That's the property management company.

Devin (26:46.821)
Yep. Yep.

Brock Holliman (27:16.526)
So we manage everything in -house. It started with just my own investments that we managed. And then I had so many repeat clients that were buying product off of us and using other managers that they weren't happy with. They kept saying, man, Brock, please, please, please manage. I'm like, no, no, no. We finally opened it a year and a half ago and it's going very well too. So those are the three companies and the three things that we do here on the daily.

Devin (27:42.373)
I love it man. Construction company, capital investment company, all internal love that man. That's awesome. And then you gotta you gotta manage them right? We kind of have a similar structure across the board. We're not we're not doing a lot of construction ourselves with the management and investment stuff. A lot of it in house and you touched on it, but I want to ask you know that you hear a lot about built to rent and I'm seeing more of it out there. I'm seeing people I know do it and that I like your philosophy. You're building a nicer product.

Obviously, pencils for you guys, right? To go ahead and do nicer finishes out, nicer finish outs, nicer construction and everything, rather than just kind of bare bones type deal.

Brock Holliman (28:22.99)
Yeah, it does. And not that it hasn't been difficult the last few years, given where everything's at. It's been extremely difficult to make a pencil. But at the same time, when we put these nicer finishes in there, our pro formos, we're not looking at just year one. We're also expanding it out on the unit turnover costs and everything like that. The unit turnover costs are extremely low because of the way we design these things. Like I said, no carpet.

Devin (28:26.853)
course. Yeah.

Devin (28:50.533)
Yeah. Love it.

Brock Holliman (28:52.558)
We use an upgraded paint on the exterior for sure. Cause I know that's a huge thing in Florida. Like if you don't seal those block walls, which again, we do concrete instead of wood, we could do wood. It could be cheaper, but we want our stuff to last and it to be a better product and sellable in the future and appreciate. Just a lot of different things that we do, the quartz countertops, the solid wood cabinets.

they reduce the turnover costs when tenants move out, which really helps out our pockets and our investors' pockets. So yeah, that side helps the pro forma out, but it has been difficult with rates where they're at and where rents had run way up and probably a little too high in some cases where now they've kind of fallen off, but rates are, they are where they're at. So.

Devin (29:41.029)
Yeah, it's an interesting time right now for sure. But yeah, if you're listening, go check out the gallery. I mean, it's some really cool looking projects. So that's something to be proud of, where sometimes a single family rental portfolio, you're not that proud to try a buy -in show to your friends, but different approach with you guys, real modern look, really clean. You mentioned you're keeping most of them. I'm curious, just kind of as an entrepreneur, what is your focus right now?

Brock Holliman (29:57.038)
Yeah.

Devin (30:11.007)
And where do you kind of like to spend most of your time and how do you kind of structure that to stay focused on the things that are most impactful for you?

Brock Holliman (30:20.942)
Yeah. So I wish I could do better in this area. Okay. But I'll tell you, the last year, really the last year and a half have been a big question mark as far as economy goes. And me growing up at that time, like I said, during the lawn mowing stuff, I only got to mow those lawns for the bank because the real estate market fell apart and builders went broke.

Devin (30:24.421)
Yeah, you and me both.

Devin (30:37.411)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (30:49.966)
because there was too much inventory. Are we there again right now? I don't think anywhere close. However, when you see that kind of stuff and you see all the family friends and all the people that were in the industry growing up that used to have their boats and their fancy cars and this and their fancy houses, and then all of a sudden one day they're all bankrupt, it scars you as a, it scarred me all these years. Like I don't, I don't want to lose it.

Devin (30:51.653)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (31:18.542)
And I'll do anything I can to make sure that we don't, especially now that I'm like the honcho in charge and like my family relies on this stuff. I do not want to be those, be the guys that I'm talking about that lost it all got too overly confident. But at the same time, I'm not gonna scale back everything and just go no activity. So last year we did about a hundred houses the year before we did close to 200. So I scaled back volume.

and probably shouldn't have last year, but this year we are acting more aggressive. But what have we been working on? I've been super into the system side of things. So making sure that we've got, you know, checklists that, cause we got checklists out the wazoo. Okay. And that's how we build so efficiently and fast too. Cause our average build time in central Florida is like 68 days. Our average build time down in south Florida, which is unheard of is like 115, 120 days. We're still trying to capture that.

Um, but yeah, and that's, that's our average as we've grown and before, like when, when it was actually me running a job or me and my father running a job or him running a job. I mean, dude, we could do some incredible stuff. I've built them. I've built some in like four weeks. It's, it's, it's insane. And it was just like a game when you don't have that much money and you're, you're only limited to build what you can at that given time. Cause I didn't used to have any construction loans.

Devin (32:18.629)
68 days, huh?

Brock Holliman (32:46.446)
the only way to make money, make more money is to do it faster. So it was like, let's do it faster, faster, faster, beat the old record, beat the old record. So yeah, and you can do that with systems in 68 days. It feels like a long, a lifetime compared to 28 days. But when, when you're scaling it out and you've got project managers that are running it, that it's not their company, it's, it's, and you can still achieve those numbers. It's, it's incredible, incredibly successful, you know,

Devin (32:50.693)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (33:15.274)
statistic, I think. But yeah, so there's whole all these other different facets on the on these businesses that work hand in hand because these three, they're like three spokes in a wheel. And if everything can sort of turn perfectly, then everything can run like a well oiled machine. So that's been my main focus is making sure that all these systems and CRMs and software that we use all talk to each other and it runs like clockwork.

So I've really doubled down on my time like that. And this year, especially, it's like the first month and a half of just flown by, because I've literally spent every night doing this stuff. And not that I'm like a control freak, because I know I should be delegating this stuff out too, but it's extremely hard to delegate this system side out until I got the foundation built. Because nobody really knows how you want the system to work.

Devin (34:09.893)
Yeah, I agree. I think you have to build it yourself. I mean, it will be the mechanism that the delegation happens through, but the building of it, the architecture, that's got to be you, right?

Brock Holliman (34:21.422)
I'm glad you told me that, Devin, because everybody around me, they're like, just hire someone, just hire someone. But I've hired and fired, I think, like seven or eight people at that job. And it's like, nobody cares. Nobody understands all three businesses and how they work. And nobody knows in my brain, nobody can read my mind and say, oh, this is how he wants it to work. But.

Devin (34:38.277)
That's right. You could hire a consultant, pay him six figures for the rest of your life and they'd be happy to come along and tinker with it. But you know, yeah, I struggle with that a lot and that's, you

Brock Holliman (34:48.782)
So do you think once the foundation is built that it's smart to then hire somebody to come in and just maintain it or add features? Like once everything's complete, you know, the main parts in, what do you think on that?

Devin (34:59.493)
Yeah, for me where I'm at, you know, we've got a team of 75 folks and software systems. I'm still kind of like the CRM admin, you know, because to your point, I just like, man, I've got all these things. I know exactly how I want them. I don't want to sit in committees or meetings. I just want to build it and then hand it off and go, this is how it works. You know, and then somebody can do the task or the process 1000 times within that framework. But my philosophy is, or just experience, I want to build that framework.

you know, and so I just hadn't been able, I want to, like you, man, I want to hand this off to somebody, but there's, you know, there's things you can hand off and there's things that you just hold back on. They're just too critical, right?

Brock Holliman (35:43.338)
Yeah. I've been saying I'm so close for like a year. It's not like every day, Oh, I'm so close. I'm so close, but I really am close this time.

Devin (35:46.339)
Yeah, I know.

Me too. Yeah, I know it's always that way. Man, you guys doing 100 to 200 houses and you're keeping most of them and just throw them over the property management company?

Brock Holliman (35:59.722)
No, when the rates were low and it was like values have went up 10 % since two months ago when we started it, it was easy to keep most of them. But last year, our keep rate went way down, way down. The year before we were really close to 50 -50. This last year, we only kept like six or 7%. And I just had to keep...

Devin (36:06.821)
Yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

Devin (36:14.437)
Sure.

Devin (36:18.021)
Yeah.

Devin (36:22.469)
Oh wow, okay.

Brock Holliman (36:24.206)
But at the same time, we doubled our team and I needed to throw more money back into that construction side of the business instead of the other side. Even though we cut our production, we doubled the team, but we also improved our system so more people can run those, as you know, like, you know, different areas of the system and be responsible. So when we are ready to ramp back up, which we're starting to now, then things will ramp it up in a more organized manner that doesn't...

Devin (36:30.021)
Yep. Yep.

Brock Holliman (36:53.026)
need and require Brock to be there on every damn thing.

Devin (36:56.165)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Isn't that the eternal kind of entrepreneurial challenge, especially as you grow? What are some of your favorite systems? You mind talking kind of software and systems here? I love, I love getting into that stuff.

Brock Holliman (37:06.83)
Yeah. So I mean, I've built, uh, I tried to build stuff on top of a sauna and Trello and a couple, I forgot a couple other things and I spent so much time doing this stuff and it was like super buggy to me. And let's see, I tried to do pipe drive. That sucked to me. It sucked. And some people might say, Oh, this is the best thing ever. I fell in love and there's more that I tried and I failed, but I fell in love with Salesforce. Um, I think Salesforce.

I hear a lot of people talk crap about it, but I think it's the coolest CRM out there that allows you to really just anything you want to do. It's like you're coding your own system to work exactly how you want it to work. And I just find it, I find it very easy to operate. And although I have, I've got a ton of challenges with setting up some of the flows and some of the ways that, that things need to happen on there.

Once I do figure them out, everything works beautifully. The dashboards, I mean, it's just awesome. It'll connect to QuickBooks. It'll connect to everything you want, except a few of the things like AppFolio doesn't connect to, which is, don't get me started on AppFolio. We use AppFolio for our property management, which that was a, it is what it is. A lot of big companies use it. A lot of companies bigger than us, but I don't like it.

Devin (38:30.245)
So it's like, you know, it pick your poison, right? I mean, you got a third party property management software. You don't build your own. AppFully is missing this. So you switch to the other one and it's missing this other. I mean, none of them are perfect. That's for sure.

Brock Holliman (38:34.316)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (38:45.218)
Yeah. So I figured we just stay with that folio for a couple of years and then either they're going to come out with the stuff that we need or we'll switch to yardie and they'll come out with everything. I don't know. I have no idea. Um, yeah, but, but it would be great if at folio it's like they, they lock you in a jail cell and don't let you, you know, let your app folio system speak to any of your other softwares and like,

Devin (38:54.117)
Yeah. Yeah.

Devin (39:08.901)
Right, yeah.

Brock Holliman (39:10.51)
QuickBooks, that side doesn't work great, I don't think. Any of these software systems, if they want to compete in the real world, they should have an integration before they even launch with Salesforce. I think Salesforce is used by so many major companies out there that if you don't do that, it's very stupid.

Devin (39:31.109)
Just talk to Salesforce. They're the 800 -pound gorilla. Make it work, right?

Brock Holliman (39:34.542)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. But I would, I'm going to put this on that folio. I think it's their fault just cause they're so crappy at a lot of other things, but we use builder trend for our construction software. Which when we started them, it was, they were sort of a new company. They've come a long way. They've got a lot of cool features on there. There are, their, their system operates pretty poorly with QuickBooks the way we use it. So we can't let that, we can't let them to talk to each other.

Devin (39:45.829)
Sure. Yep.

Brock Holliman (40:04.878)
But you know, they did start in the last couple of weeks, they actually started a Salesforce integration, which I'm so happy about. Cause right now we're just having builder trend talk to like an email parser that then goes to Zapier and then goes to update Salesforce. And it's, it still has, it'll be buggy one out of a hundred times. So it's, it's kind of sucks, but super excited about that. Yeah, I know that we use some other systems. I'm just thinking.

Devin (40:11.717)
Cool. Yeah.

Devin (40:33.029)
You know, did you have an IT sort of inclination or you just learned this stuff because you had to because you're an entrepreneur?

Brock Holliman (40:41.006)
That's exactly all it was. I mean, everybody's like, oh, I don't know how to do it. Okay. Like, dude, I did, I barely got out of high school, man. You go to YouTube, I can learn anything on YouTube, anything. Like I didn't know anything about rentals before I listened to it. Back when I was doing my first real estate stuff for the first seven years until I was 25, I'm like, I'm like, rentals are stupid. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend all my money and then I'm gonna make 150 bucks a month. How am I gonna get rich like that?

Devin (40:51.845)
Yep. Yep.

Brock Holliman (41:08.206)
But when you actually dig in, you're like, okay, I don't pay taxes if I buy a rental, all that income's tax free. I can go get loans. I can cashflow. You know, I can go refinance and you know, all that kind of, and my net worth goes up and I get paid while I sleep. You know, you live and you learn. But yeah, that was one big thing. Like I definitely didn't grow up with a tech background. That was the last thing that my family knew about was tech.

Devin (41:34.181)
I think it's good for people to hear that. And it's kind of the difference between that owner mentality where you're just going to run through walls. And it's like, man, anything you want to know, especially right now, you can accounting, programming, IT, whatever, marketing. It's all out.

Brock Holliman (41:46.958)
Yeah. And when you're an owner, you act like your head's about to be chopped off if you don't learn it and then you pick it up. And that's the difference. Yeah.

Devin (41:52.389)
Yeah. That's it. Yep. That's the difference. What do you guys see? We're talking in January, February, 2024. What do y 'all kind of see on the horizon here is what you're doing really dependent on where the fed sets rates or you know, what's kind of your game plan for the next year, at least as it stands right now.

Brock Holliman (42:10.99)
If we were in one of those colder markets that you don't hear on the news every day, I think we would be a lot more relying on, we're going to be really slow until rates come down. There's with us dealing with investors, I think a lot there's, I mean, there's no lie. A bunch of investors are definitely turned off right now, but my best investments and best payouts, not just real estate have always come by purchasing when everybody is too afraid to buy.

Devin (42:24.451)
Yeah.

Devin (42:40.901)
Yeah.

Brock Holliman (42:41.198)
Um, so I think whoever does buy now is doing, doing themselves a great service because you see there's a ton of pent up demand. Like that phrase was used a lot over the last five years, but a lot of pent up demand right now, I think in real estate where they're waiting on rates to come back into a level that, that, that are, you know, two and a half percent, which does that happen?

Eventually, I'm sure it will just because you look at the historical chart, but will it happen this year? No way. I don't think it will. I mean, it could unless something super tragic happens, which it could in the commercial space. But I mean, it might be right now. Who knows? But, you know, with that being said, like whoever buys now, when that when those rates do come down, it's going to be a floodgates opening of people.

and it's going to be bidding wars again. And you can always refinance at that time. So are we slower now than we were a couple of years ago? Yeah, but do we have enough traffic to sell all of our inventory or that we want to sell? Yes. If we go, if we went full retail, would we still have traffic? Absolutely. I mean, we've got our offices are like model homes, even though we're due bill to rent, they're right next to like DR Horton.

LGI and Miranda and all these other public publicly traded companies. And they do great retail right now, even in this market. Um, but I, I, I see sort of a slow stagnant and wait mentality and all of the real estate and investing space until, until the dust settles and there's more competence in the air. I think, and I hate to be political, but from a political standpoint too, in this country.

Devin (44:16.207)
Yeah, must. Sure.

Devin (44:26.501)
Of course. Yeah, of course.

Brock Holliman (44:27.598)
Um, cause you see Joe Biden take the podium. It's not like all the investors get super confident and they're ready to go invest. Yeah. I mean, when Trump was on there, love them or hate them when he's on and we've got, we've got the news on in our office all day long. Like he comes on, I actually, I would quit work and I'm like, let me listen. Cause it's like motivating and we're going to do great things. We're going to, you're going to be the best ever. And you know, you're going to make so much money. And.

Devin (44:34.437)
So hard to watch. So.

Brock Holliman (44:54.63)
Everybody is a country when they hear this stuff, they feel confident, their blood starts pumping, their energy level gets up, they're ready to go invest, they're ready to spend money, they're ready to work harder. I mean, and I just feel like we're way better off as a country when that's the case. And I truly believe that that's coming back. And I think when it does, I think floodgates start to open again, regardless of interest rates. But I do know that that man would hammer the Fed chair every day about interest rates being too high, even when they're...

Devin (44:55.077)
Keep talking.

Brock Holliman (45:24.046)
It's like it's not fair. Obama had zero. They were close to zero rates and they don't like Trump. But I think all this stuff helps us going into 25. That's why I'm investing more now. I'm trying to get ahead of that.

Devin (45:31.789)
Yup. Yup.

Devin (45:39.109)
Yeah, it's interesting. I think, well, look, the debt service for the federal debt is, that alone right there is kind of going to put pressure on interest rates long term. But yeah, I think we're seeing the same thing. We've had some good buys on some deals that kind of got to hold my nose on the interest rate. But I'm like, man, this is a really good basis on this deal. In two, three years, this thing's going to shoot up like.

Brock Holliman (46:03.18)
Dream.

Devin (46:03.781)
You know, so it's like, and there's just so much hesitation and fear out there, understandably, but it's like, man, if you can get, you lock in your basis, that rate's not forever. So we're definitely, we're definitely seeing some of that.

Brock Holliman (46:16.814)
I want badly to be in the multifamily game right now. I wish that's what I had more energy to focus on because I think that is the biggest opportunity for this year is to get some multifamily. Just like you said, if even if the numbers don't pencil out great on the cashflow, if you can scoop some of these deals up at the current cap rates, I mean, you look at cap rates two, three years ago that were half of what they are now, that alone rents don't even have to go up a penny. And we're talking double, double.

Devin (46:39.013)
Right.

Brock Holliman (46:44.526)
the value, which if you put 25 % down, that's a 4X on your money. So I wish I had the energy to put or the time to put into this right now, because that's the space to kill it this year, I think.

Devin (46:57.221)
Yeah, yeah. And I think we've kind of always been in multifamily and we kind of go, we keep buying through thick and thin. And have, you know, that's kind of the core of our portfolio. But at the same time, you got something that's working, you got the machine built, a lot to be said for just, you know, charging ahead with something that's that's already working. If you're going back talking to young entrepreneur, you know, what are you telling them from your vantage point now, if they're just getting started out?

Brock Holliman (47:24.726)
Um, entrepreneurs in general, just, just, uh, keep fighting and keep working out, work everybody around you because when, when, when everybody leaves the office, that's actually the time to double down and get more stuff done, especially in your early stages. Cause when people are at the office or who, even if you don't, you're not even big enough to have an office yet. Um,

Devin (47:38.341)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brock Holliman (47:45.934)
when you're making calls and you're doing activities that are going to progress your business, that is going to take up your time. But it's only going to take up your time when other people are awake and doing business. Not everybody's doing this thing at night. But if you can continually outwork everybody and put more time and energy in, then you can take three steps for every step that everybody else is taking, and you can elevate your business quicker. And then on the real estate entrepreneur side,

Don't sell anything. Just figure out how to keep as much as you can.

Devin (48:18.757)
Listen to that, folks. Write it down, kids. Those are wise words. Brock, this has been awesome getting to know you and your business and your companies. I love it. Love talking to fellow entrepreneurs, people that are brave enough to go out there and make it happen. If somebody listening wants to connect and learn more about what you guys are doing, where do we send them?

Brock Holliman (48:36.782)
Yeah. So we just started or I just started up on, on Instagram and social media. I'm trying my best, but with all the work that we got going on or I got going on, it's hard for me to get in there all the time, but I am on there. I'm constantly answering messages. We're shooting videos and stuff to try to promote things like that. But please go out there and, and follow me on Instagram and it's at follow .brock. So at follow .brock. Um, weirdly enough, someone stole at Brock Holloman. Um, but anyway,

Devin (48:46.053)
Yep.

Brock Holliman (49:07.022)
That's where you can find me on social and hit me up there. Also Facebook, same tagline. I'm not on there as much, but my team is. TikTok, same thing. But you know, also check out my website. Like you said earlier, mynewrental .com. Just look at our product. And if you want to tell me how good it looks, you can still drop me that message on Instagram. I'd love that. And it'd make me feel good. And yeah.

Devin (49:29.637)
not to be mad about that. Love it. We'll link to that in the show notes. If you're listening, you can scroll through, click through the website or click through to Instagram. Brock, this has been great, man. I'm kind of fired up to go tweak some systems things in my companies, but I appreciate you spending time and wish you success here in the year ahead.

Brock Holliman (49:46.958)
Thanks Devin, it's been great for me too. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Devin (49:48.889)
All right, see you. Take care.