Josh Cantwell: So, hey, Samson, listen, so excited to have you on the show, man. Welcome to Accelerated Real Estate Investor.

Samson Jagoras: Thanks, man. I’m pumped to be here. Thanks for having me.

Josh Cantwell: Absolutely, man. So, tell me a little bit about what you have going on. What’s something that you’re up to, something that you’re excited about, something that you’re working on in your business that you’re passionate for?

Samson Jagoras: Well, I’m pumped that we’re sitting at best and final on 288 units in Oklahoma City. So, you know how it goes. You never know if you’re going to get it in the final stages like that, but pretty excited about the deal and just the opportunity of what we can do with it.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. What took you over to Oklahoma City? What did you like about that market, about that submarket, and specifically that property?

Samson Jagoras: In general, I think the biggest challenge you’re going to see in the next 10 years is just in and around affordability. I lived 16 years in Colorado and grew up in Los Angeles. And so, I’ve seen the diaspora of people just making their way to Colorado. Used to be this pitch that Colorado just had all the best seasons, and it’s just so affordable and the cost of living. That is history. And so, I have seen people are now making the next move, which they’re moving into the Midwest. And so, we think it has a lot of legs. So, beyond just the normal core metrics that we look for, which are just a large enough population, a growing economy, so on and so forth, we’re looking at affordability as kind of the driver because you’ve got to be able to deliver some yield to your investors. And these deals are getting tighter and tighter and tighter in these core markets.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, I love it. Yeah, we love the Midwest, the South, and the Southeast, which we have a building in Lawton, Oklahoma, 216 Crosby, we call it, and perform well for the last two years, had about a million-dollar Capex plan. We’re right at the tail end of getting that thing refied and love the Midwest and the affordability side of things.

Samson Jagoras: Lawton’s pretty tertiary too. It’s a good place out there.

Josh Cantwell: It is. Yeah, absolutely. Good luck with the 288, man. I hope you land that exciting stuff. So, tell us a bit more about your model. Tell us a little bit more– I mean you’ve invested, you invested in the stock markets. You’ve done commodities. You pivoted over to the real estate. You actively syndicate your deals and bring in passive investors, show high-income and high-net-worth individuals how to get great returns with real estate, but tell me a little bit more about your structure. So, if you were to give this 288-unit, what is that going to look like? What do you see as far as current rents versus future rents, current value versus future value? Give us a taste of what that deal could look like and just your structure and model overall.

Samson Jagoras: Yeah, so our structure specifically, we’re really focused on the syndicated model. Brokers care about one thing. They just want to know that you can close. So, I spent nine years in strategy scaling up a large marketing and technology company, built four departments, and scale that thing up to over $100 million. And the one thing that I learned early was the power of a partnership and carrying a deep bench.

And so, we shifted a little bit, really focused on, there’s so much damn money out there. I mean, it’s stupid. If you have a great team and you have a good deal, you can go get the money. That’s it. So, we’ve actually shifted a little bit more towards just looking for good co-investment partners in leveraging more equity brokers and things like that to source the equity piece of our deal, and also just partnering up with some other high-net-worth individuals who maybe had some 1031s and things like that that they need to place. So, that’s what change.

Sometimes, dealing with smaller investors or singular investors, it’s like herding cats, something that we’re trying to get better at. And we have shown some people in place now that are really focused on building up our private investor network, but, man, that gut feeling of like, is the money going to show up? I hate that feeling. So, with going the co-investment route and going leveraging equity brokers and things like that, you kind of alleviate that, and then you can focus on finding a good deal.

So, this deal in particular, in Oklahoma City, the group was an acquisitions company and they’ve been acquiring a ton of properties and then they pivoted kind of in the middle of their career towards development. And that is where their focus has been. So, it’s the perfect type of deal where it’s just being mismanaged. I mean, they have their own property management team. That team is not being actually run well. They’re not being allowed to drive rents. They’re not being allowed to push the property in the way that it should probably be pushed. And that’s probably because they just don’t want to rock the boat. They got income coming in. They’re focused on development, and everything’s good.

So, the rents as a whole on the property were just 75 bucks below market, as is do nothing day one. And then, they had started a light value add plan and they were showing another 75 bucks above market on improvements and rents. So, the goal was to come in and just start managing the property well, reduce some of the Opex by putting in a third-party manager, getting the rate down, getting some more efficiency out of the units and the properties, turning units, and we’re going to renovate about 112 units or so within the plan, but it’s a C grade property in a C grade community, so also just keeping in mind that we’re not trying to outpace the market, but it’s the nicest property group. Yeah, it’s the nicest property in our opinion in that market. And it should be crushing it in comparison to the property that’s right next door that’s already achieving the rents that we’re shooting for.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, so a couple of things seem that stand out. First of all, you mentioned the word equity broker. So, just explain that to our audience. And this is kind of a new thing like I give President Barack Obama a lot of credit for the JOBS Act of 2010, 2011. This whole idea of this 506(c), Reg A plus all these kind of things, it really has allowed all kinds of business, including real estate, to really take off to the point now where you’ve got firms and family offices and equity companies literally just looking to place equity from investors in deals. And it falls into that kind of mezzanine category or very different names for it, but many people might not be aware that there are literally companies that will stroke million-dollar checks for a big part of the capital stack that is not in the first position, so help the audience understand what is an equity broker. What’s the value of that? What do they do? What do they charge?

Samson Jagoras: So, I think most people are familiar with a debt broker, with a mortgage broker. So, the same concept, but people that are looking to place debt, those people are interested in the security that comes along with the note and that just consistent and persistent monthly check, yearly check that they’re going to get. With equity, people want to participate in the upside. So, an equity broker is effectively the same thing. They have these relationships with family offices and trusts and pension funds and people who are looking to place capital. And a lot of them have, let’s call it $5 million minimums, like that’s how big the check needs to be in order for them to write it, but sometimes, these smaller family offices, they’re looking to place a million, two million bucks.

The key there to getting access to that equity is, again, how deep is your bench? Like, what is your experience on your team? And who are you guys? If it’s your very first run at it, and you don’t really have any experience, well, then you’re going to need to borrow some experience from some other seasoned people in order to be able to do that, but, man, it’s a lot easier to pick up the phone to make one phone call than it is to go call 100 people and try to raise the capital, but I think both of those things can run in parallel. You can do those in on certain deals that are smaller, maybe call more friends and family, be doing that, but again, the challenge, you get another $40, $50 million, you got to go raise 15, 20 million bucks. That can be a little more challenging with just private money investors.

Josh Cantwell: Yep, I agree. We have a 552-unit that we just took down in Spring Branch outside of Houston and a similar situation where we had an equity company that was going to come in and do $8 million, basically mezzanine equity type of investment. Then they looked at our first mortgage and they decided to actually fund the whole thing. They blended it together. So, the first mortgage, let’s say three and a half, and mezz equity of, let’s say, 8% plus an 8% kicker down the road, they blended that together at like 5.25, and that worked out. And then we still had to raise $8 million from essentially Mom and Pops, which we did that, too. We bought that deal, but that’s what an equity broker does. And I’m actually surprised. These guys operate all over the place in the Sunbelt down south.

And when I started hearing about this in the Midwest, I’m like, what do you mean? Where did these guys come up? Who started doing this? This is fantastic. So, relatively new, and again, I want to give the JOBS Act a lot of credit for kind of opening up these opportunities for people. From your perspective, Samson, how long do you think these equity broker types of things have existed? This is kind of a relatively new still. What are your thoughts on that? And as the market changes and evolves, how do you see that helping you with your deals in the future?

Samson Jagoras: Yeah, how long it’s been around? I don’t really know.

Josh Cantwell: Pretty recent, doesn’t it?

Samson Jagoras: I think it’s just more commonplace because it’s just like syndication in general like there’s just more marketing and awareness about it, but I mean, back in 1987, after the savings and loan crisis, Donald Trump actually was a big proponent for advocating for bringing the syndicated model back to the market so that we could start to move more capital in and out in order to do development and acquisition and so on and so forth. So, it’s been around for a while. I just think that it’s more easily accessible, or the information is more easily accessible.

You either have a lot of knowledge and a lot of deals and not enough money or too much money and not enough deals. And so, you’ve got to always keep in mind that you hold a lot of power as the deal finder and the deal maker. If you can put together deals and structure and etc. because that capital needs somewhere to go. Inflation came in about 4% in the first quarter. So, if we just stay on pace, it’s going to be what? 16% this year. So, sitting in cash is just literally burning in your pocket every single day. So, people need to deploy. And if they’re trying to offset their inflation hedge, they want to deal, they want to be able to place capital. So, it’s not that hard.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Love it. Now, the other thing you mentioned, which I think our audience would be interested in hearing some more commentary on is, you mentioned, that this deal is $288, that the current property manager, the current boots on the ground, they’re not being allowed to push rents. I thought that was interesting. So, just explain that, like, why wouldn’t they be allowed? You mentioned that they don’t want to rock the boat, but it seems just so like anti-smart, like anti-business to not push rent. So, why would somebody do that? Again, I’m baffled by some of the decisions other operators make. So, what are your thoughts on that?

Samson Jagoras: My thought is that they’re just distracted, is kind of the biggest key, and their best move would have been to actually hire a regional property manager to save, whatever, 3% to 4%, and that’s what they think they’re saving and pass that off to a regional and just say, “Hey, hammer this property and run it like it really should be run,” but there’s this misconception that if I own the whole thing if we’re vertically integrated, that somehow we’re going to make more money. You’re never going to know if you’re not there and you’re not living there. Maybe that’s one of your properties, and you’re not in that market every single day. Man, it’s really hard for you to know how the markets move in, what’s the change in how rents are being pushed on another property, what’s sold over here and there. If you’re just not focused on it, it’s just not that important to you, or maybe you don’t think it’s possible.

It also depends on what your entry price was. If you bought it at $10 million and you’re talking about selling it at $15 or $17 million, you’re doing okay, you’ve got a pretty good spread there. The other part of that is they maybe want to leave some meat on the bone for the next person. That makes the deal more attractive to people like you and I, to say, well, if I can come out some value here.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, exactly. It just seems so bizarre that our audience would be like, why are they not pushing rent, that type of thing? It’s great stuff. So, it seems like– let me just go back to this equity broker arrangement. So, if we were interested in finding more equity brokers for our deals, where have you found yours? What does it take to find someone like that? Are they just on Google? Or is it somebody that you found through relationships, meetups? Tell us about how do we find more equity brokers.

Samson Jagoras: Yeah, I mean, Google is obviously a good source. One of my partners is a commercial loan originator. So, he has a lot of those relationships already. Just being in the world of debt and bridge lending, he knows those people. And then there are also some big names that’ll come up – Cooper Horowitz, Tauro, those are some big names that are pretty well known in that space. There are some people that even do it on a more like private consulting-type capacity as well. I’ve come across guys that spend a lot of years in the business, got a ton of relationships, and they say, “Hey, I make introductions.”

And I think one of the questions you ask before that I didn’t answer was the fee structure. How does it work? It’s very similar to originating alone. If you originate the equity, you want a percent of that. So, sometimes it’s 1%, sometimes it’s 3%, depending on the person of the group. And then sometimes, there’s like a holdover period where they’re saying, “Hey, if you use this equity for the next three years, I get a slice of that every single time it comes through.” There’s a number of different ways that it can be structured. I think you’ve been in the industry long enough and been investing long enough to know that you can’t take the first quote that you get, or the first bank that you call is like face value because they’ll say something like, “Ah, you can’t do that.” That just means that we don’t do it that way, but it’s out there. If you look hard enough, you can go find it.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting when you see it like really well written, like a LinkedIn post or a Facebook post about a deal closing. There’s almost always in the comments, somebody who’s an equity broker or a debt broker, that’s like, hey, next time you do a deal, here’s my information, right? Those guys are real. They’re out there networking. You obviously prefer to have a favorable introduction face to face or virtually than just comments in a Facebook or Instagram or a LinkedIn post, but I’m surprised when I make a really well-thought-out post, we get hundreds of comments and lots of views like there are real guys in there doing real deals, real equity, and got guys, they can help you want a deal. So, if you don’t have a deal and you’re looking for relationships, follow other people’s posts. There’s another decent way to find it.

Samson Jagoras: And it’s a highly lucrative career to be an equity broker and to have those relationships, I mean, and have that book, it is very, very valuable. So, there’s a lot more than you think, the people that leverage those relationships to make a mint.

Josh Cantwell: Yes, a mint, I like it. Nice. So, Samson, tell us a little bit more about your start, like, how did you get really going in the multifamily space, in the real estate space? What were some kind of early challenges that you faced?

Samson Jagoras: Yeah, my path into real estate literally makes no sense. I went to school, studied physiology. I thought I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon. My grades pretty much determined, for me, that wasn’t the case. I played D-I football and trying to manage all that. And it wasn’t like some of my teammates who had got a degree in, like Native American studies, like I got a real degree. And it was just a lot trying to keep it all together. So, I was an average student at best and enjoyed my college career, too.

Josh Cantwell: Sure, as you should.

Samson Jagoras: But I met my wife and I knew, man, I met her when I was like 20. We dated all through college and I just knew, I just want to marry this woman. And so, you start looking at what your career path is coming out with a degree in physiology. I was not about to go work in a lab or do something like that. It does not meet my personality. I was thinking about the road of strength and conditioning. I actually own a gym now, so I did it, but the road of strength and conditioning, man, is long, and you’re just a little bitch basically for like 10 years. And so, you get like a real career.

You can make great money. I mean, the head coach at Arkansas makes 600 grand to be the head coach, but he’s been there for like 20 years. Like the dude’s going to be there until he dies. So, I didn’t have anybody in my family that was a business person and entrepreneur, I didn’t have anybody that was in finance or investing. My uncle kind of dabbled in real estate a little bit. So, when I was getting ready to graduate, it was actually my father-in-law, I sat down to talk to him. I was like, man, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m 23, like, what the hell am I going to do? He’s like…

Josh Cantwell: He probably loved hearing that from his son-in-law, future son-in-law.

Samson Jagoras: Well, he never even…

Josh Cantwell: You’re going to take care of my daughter? You have no idea what you’re about to do.

Samson Jagoras: You know, he didn’t even go to college. So, he’s been an entrepreneur his whole life. So, he’s like, “Hey, I can’t teach you to be humble, hungry, smart, gritty, competitive. Like, you just have those things. I can’t teach you how to be a broker.” So, I graduate on a Friday with a degree in physiology. I walk into the commodities brokerage on a Monday, and about three months later, on September 29, 2008, newly crowned broker, the Dow Jones fell 777 points in a single day. Boom, baptism by fire. Welcome to economics.

Josh Cantwell: Wow!

Samson Jagoras: Yeah, but man, it was invaluable in my career because I had nothing to lose. So, I watched some customers make a killing and I watched some customers get killed. The first time you watch somebody run their account from $25,000 to a million and back down to $25,000, you’re like, holy cow, leverage is good until it’s not good. The people that consistently made money were my actual producers, people that had stuff – gold, crude oil, pigs, cows, corn, soybeans. They always use the market to hedge. They didn’t just speculate.

So, that’s kind of the notion of like assets and things are important. And I learned that quickly, like an economic crash. And you start watching what’s happened in the commodities. And I remember when crude oil was trading at 110 bucks a barrel, and you come in and the market would swing 10 bucks in a day, be up to five bucks and down five bucks by the end of the day, so a lot of volatility. So, I started kind of shifting my focus on safe and consistent Evergreen.

I had a great mentor when I was getting started in trading. He was a technical trader and he’s like, you’re going to lose more in this game than you will ever win. On the whole, when you’re using highly leveraged commodities, it’s all about keeping your losses small because your winners are going to 10x, but if your losses are 10x your net-zero, you’re going backward. So, I applied that concept and that’s what made a lot of sense to me about real estate, is I could actually see what 99% of my risk factors were not COVID, per se, but I can plan for, I can build in a breakeven occupancy, I can build in a contingency. I can make sure the property cash flows from day one. I can make sure that I can withstand 20%, 30% vacancies on the property. You just can’t do that when you’re speculating in commodities and markets that are manipulated by artificial intelligence and stuff like that.

So, that was kind of the appeal towards it. And then my wife and I got married. I was 100% commission. It was tough to try to buy a house and coming out of the economic crisis, but we bought our first house, and I think we held onto it for like three years or something like that, made some renovations, sold it, and then made like a really pretty penny. And then the market was just accelerating. So, we started pulling equity out of our house. I hate lazy equity. It’s nice to say, like, “Oh, on paper, I got $250,000 in equity,” but I’m like that 250 could go to something else.

So, we started parlaying that into rental properties, and then after doing that for quite a few years, it’s like, man, this is, it’s onesies-twosies. This is a lot of work, and I could buy one or two houses a year for the next 10 years. Or I could just spend the next two to three years focused on raising money, building the team, getting to know the right people, sourcing deals, meeting equity brokers, doing those types of things, and do one deal and effectively 10x my return. So, that was what the precipice was. And I just leveraged skills that I had. Nine years, I was inside of a marketing and technology firm and hired a ton of people and scaled a couple of departments, and we built a really incredible company.

And so, strategically, over the last few years, I’ve been building those groups of people on my team. And now, I’ve got some great joint venture partners that I work with in totality amongst our group. We have like a billion dollars under management, $400 million owned, $750 million of that is multifamily assets that are managed with some of my co-investment joint venture partners. And that’s been my focus. And now, we’re doing deals, you know what I mean? So, I love real estate. It ain’t going anywhere, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – food, shelter and water. I mean, Americans are funny, like they talk about all this life is so hard. It’s like you guys have no idea, but go talk to our grandparents, our great grandparents, like you didn’t live through a depression. We were trying to figure out how we were going to eat. Like, you guys are fighting about stupid stuff, you know? And so, some of the needs and wants, the stuff that we talk about right now is kind of silly, in my opinion, but when you get down to the brass tacks, the most fundamental needs, when everything hits the fan, people will do everything in their power to make sure they got a roof over their head. And I can live now with that.

Josh Cantwell: No doubt, especially like even looking at the Great Recession, multifamily was only down like a 10%, 11%. Residential was down 33%. The stock market did 50%. Commodities got crushed. Gold and silver went through the roof, obviously, but multifamily, 10%, 11%, and then it quickly swung right back. That’s a B class. People got a place to live. Maybe, they don’t pay their rent, even COVID, right? There are people with eviction moratoriums and stuff, but if you are an active operator, you did well, we did well. We had like 98%, 99% collection rate and we had to be a little bit more creative. We had to go to the government slush fund for some customers, some residents, fill out the applications, be proactive with those people, but then again, the government set up the eviction moratorium, but then they set aside the slush fund. It was like $25 billion for rental assistance. And that’s worked, right? We didn’t have tons of people get this rental assistance, but we got checks for three grand here and five grand there and two grand here and $4,000 there. You just got to use the system and generally, though, people that are just good B class residents are going to pay the rent, period. The end. If you dabble in C, C minus, D, you’re in deep trouble. And those are the people that take advantage of the system, but, man, it’s held up really well. So, I love your position on that. Food, shelter, water, that’s what people need.

Samson Jagoras: Historically speaking, other than 2008, real estate, in general, has held up pretty well. It’s had more up years and less down years in the stocks or bond market combined. So, I mean, it’s like people, they take that one moment in time and they try to like cascade it over like everything. To your point, default rate on commercial multifamily during 2008 was 0.04%. It’s like a cash flowing monster, and you could just withstand so much more vacancy and turmoil.

If you have 300, 500, which the 500 in 26 units on that one property, you could turn down the rent five bucks, 10 bucks across the entire property and serve a lot of people and help them. And it doesn’t impact you like insanely too much, you know what I mean? Whether it’s economic or physical vacancy, that’s the power of leverage and the power of scale that you get with multifamily that you just can’t get with anything else.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, I love it. So, Samson, now that you’ve had like you’ve gone through that ramp-up period and learning the business and doing different things, being through these up and down markets, the huge portfolio now, a lot of success to your partners, I mean, really, really, really substantial stuff. Looking back at your journey, what would you do differently? Like what advice would you give your younger former self? Or what advice would you give our audience? Things you’ve learned along your way as an entrepreneur, as an investor, what are the things that have stuck out that have worked well, and maybe some things that you would do differently?

Samson Jagoras: Man, seeking mentorship much earlier than I did. I’ve always been a really independent, kind of walk-to-my-own-drum kind of guy. And a lot of times, I just got to go, like, get into it first and really bang my head against the wall and figure it out, but, man, every time I’ve leaned on a mentor or hired a mentor or anything like that, it’s been insanely powerful to accelerate my growth because success leaves clues. And if I can get from point A to point B without all that headache and turmoil in between, because you’re going to give me a roadmap, why not do that? Do you know what I mean?

And then, just partnering up sooner with people, especially in this business, trying to do everything by yourself without any kind of track record is really challenging, man. It’s incredibly, incredibly challenging to go to a table against guys like us. And you’re the new guy on the block. Nobody’s ever done a deal with you. Nobody knows who you are. Nobody knows your track record, your assets under management, or anything like that. And to say, no, I’m good for it, I can get the money, I can close some of the deal. That’s very hard to do. Not saying that can’t be done, but there are like five ways you get into real estate investing.

Number 1, you’re just like born into it. Your family does it. Number 2, you spend seven to ten years working in the industry. A lot of like commercial mortgage guys build those relationships, and then all of a sudden, they go on and they’re putting deals together. You go and bang your head against the wall. You find a mentor and learn from it. Or number 5, you just invest passively. So, I think it’s also important, too, that people just draw a clear line in the sand of like, do I want the benefits of investing in real estate without the brain damage? Okay, cool, I like to invest in real estate. Or am I ready to go be an active owner, an active operator, somebody who likes the business of real estate? That’ll kind of determine what your path should be.

If you just want to invest, call Josh, call me, just give us some money, and we’ll press it for you, but if it’s the opposite, man, then it’s a long road. Be prepared. And mine was a combination of all those things – working in the industry, banging my head against the wall, and fundamental shift. I had no family members or anybody to guide me.

Josh Cantwell: Right. Love it. Love it. Love it. That’s great advice. I’d like the five ways to get into real estate. I think it was number 3, bang your head against the wall, my least favorite of the five. So, Samson, let’s finish what we call the final five. You’re ready for this? Alright, here we go. What’s your favorite way to find great multifamily deals?

Samson Jagoras: Man, the power of networking relationships. Man, we have built and fostered an incredible list of brokers. And people don’t realize, but the brokers really do control the market. And so, if you can show them that you can close, you can get deals in front of you before they ever go fully marketed and you can have an opportunity to have a conversation that other people aren’t having, so that’s my number one favorite way to do is just relationships.

Josh Cantwell: I have to add this. Normally, this part of the interview goes really fast, but I have to talk about this one thing. Yesterday, I had lunch with the guy, 90 years old, owned 600 units, and he was on the former board with the Ratner’s Forest City Enterprises, which was one of the original publicly traded REITs, a multi-billion-dollar company. So, I had lunch with him yesterday. A friend of mine that got the meeting with the country club had lunch with the guy. Immediately after that, I went and met with a broker to go walk a 486-unit that we’re going to offer next week.

Talking to the guy, the broker, he’s like, “Yeah, I’ve met with that guy 24 times already. I’ve known the guy for 15 years, 20 years. I know he’s got seven daughters. I know exactly what he owns, the building that he owns.” So, that’s the difference. With Samson just said about networking with brokers, like the brokers already controlled that relationship and talk to this guy for years over, you said, two dozen times, luncheon meetings, and things like that, versus going direct to seller, I’m starting from zero. I’ve done both, but relationships with brokers and the network is enormous. My favorite way to find deals, too. Samson, question number 2, what’s your favorite way to find capital or to fill out your capital stack?

Samson Jagoras: Currently, it’s leveraging equity brokers. It’s a lot easier than herding cats. I think long term, you probably make more money as a deal maker if you have your own investment network, but, man, it’s really nice to just make one phone call and just be an expert at finding deals, putting the deals together, and operating the heck out of them than it is to also have to build this investor relations arm of your business.

Josh Cantwell: Yeah, I agree. Samson, what’s your favorite book that you’ve ever read or advice that you’ve ever been given?

Samson Jagoras: Oh, man, that’s tough. Favorite book that I ever read is probably the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. It’s an incredible take on just success, the difference between people who make it and people who don’t or people who are just willing to have extreme personal accountability.

Josh Cantwell: Love it. Samson, I know you’re busy, entrepreneur, family, lots of assets, a lot of success, but you’ve got to find a way to think, a place to think, decompress, and just kind of step back from it all and kind of be outside your business and slightly above it, looking down on it to think, what’s your favorite place, your favorite way to decompress and think?

Samson Jagoras: Well, I live in Colorado, and we have these unbelievable views of the mountains. So, where my house sits, it’s on a ridge, and I can see clear to Wyoming and I can see clear to the Rocky Mountains, look right over the Horsetooth, which is in Fort Collins. And in our neighborhood, we have the highest point because the people that built this house put a balcony in up there. So, we just sit out there and just watch the Colorado sunsets and just think and enjoy. Man, right now, it’s so beautiful in Colorado.

Josh Cantwell: I bet, jealous. Isn’t it funny how, like when you actually spend time thinking and spend time just decompressing, like, usually that’s when you get your best ideas?

Samson Jagoras: Oh, my gosh. I mean, it takes about three days to really unload from the work mode, and yeah, the ideas pop in out of nowhere, you just wouldn’t expect them.

Josh Cantwell: Absolutely. Samson, the last question is, you mentioned mentorship earlier, you talked about it a lot, how important it’s been for you. Has there been a leader or a mentor that’s had a big impact on your life? Who is that? And why?

Samson Jagoras: I’d have to give a ton of credit to my father-in-law. He showed me around in my life that I didn’t know was attainable, which is this world of just finance and investing and entrepreneurship. And so, he was the first person to just basically say, “Hey, you have these intangible qualities that I can’t teach you.” And here’s how those translate over into success. And then, playing football and just having some incredible coaches all around me, that’s been a big part of it. Also, my mentor when getting into multifamily, the guys over 37th Parallel, those guys are Chad Doty, Dan Chamberlain, just really smart, savvy operators and just good dudes who put together a great program.

Josh Cantwell: Nice. I love it. So, Samson, I’m sure our audience will want to connect with you. Great interview, by the way. I love your energy. If our audience wants to reach out to you, connect with you, do a deal with you, invest with you, or just learn more about you, where can they go?

Samson Jagoras: So, our website is TheGrowthVue.com, so that’s where you can just learn more about our group as a whole, as multifamily operators. And if you want to learn more about passive investing in real estate, I think that’s one of the things that prevents people from actually taking action on it, is it can seem scary because it’s a totally different world, right? You decide you want to be a real estate investor, you go, man, that’s too much work. So, at this crossroads of like, do I just place LP capital, or do I just keep doing traditional stocks and bonds? So, I think what helps people is getting a grasp on the actual industry itself and what it means to be an LP, and how to actually screen a deal. What does it screen a sponsor? What does that look like? So, I actually put together a master course or Masterclass. You go to PassiveInvesting.pro, and we’ll just share a little bit more just about how multifamily works in general, as well as how you can develop a natural framework to analyze every single deal, whether you invest with Josh or I or go invest on your own.

Josh Cantwell: Love it. Love the resource, PassiveInvesting.pro and TheGrowthVue.com. Samson, I had a blast from this interview. Thanks so much for coming on Accelerated Real Estate Investor.

Samson Jagoras: Thanks for having me.

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