SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Real Estate Real Life Podcast. This is Nick Stockaberg here with my wife, Dr. Elaine Stockeberg. And today we're going to talk to you a little bit about having, we've got over half a dozen deals in flight right now. It's been a little while since we've done our last podcast recording. We apologize. We're hopelessly delinquent here, but we've got uh brand new baby that Elaine's wearing and just uh just a lot of deals in flight. And we want to share with you some insight, kind of a glimpse of of what that looks like and how we how we frame these things, how we think about these things, how we lead our team, and hopefully that that shares some insight with you that that might inform some of the day-to-day problems that you need to solve.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

It has been a summer. In addition to welcoming our sixth baby on May 12th, right after that, we very much went into buying season and have closed on a number of acquisitions and all of the goodness that comes from the period immediately after closing. And then, as Nick mentioned, have another handful under contract right now. And it, you know, we we knew that the summer would be busy with having the baby and then also just you know being able to tell the wins of the market. Um, but certainly it has been busier than we anticipated. And in many ways, it feels like a coming home to us. We had we had a period of expansion that was this ferocious in 2021, very joyful period, really grew our portfolio. And at that time, you know, we were, I would say we were, you know, very much like very entrepreneurial, very kind of flying by the seat of our pants. Every day was a new day, every day was exciting, getting things under contract, raising capital, working with investors, hiring our team, all of those things. And now in 2026, we get another season of that. And we'll talk about, you know, what's going on in the market that has led to that happening this summer. But we're coming at it from a very different perspective, a much more mature perspective with over a hundred full-time employees, multiple leadership.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

So crazy to say that out loud.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Yeah, yeah, leadership team members, departments. And it's still that, you know, joyful period of getting something under contract, closing, the, you know, just rush of activity that happens right after closing, which like that time period, it's unlike anything else in the whole life cycle of an acquisition. Um, and yet doing so with a very different flavor, very different feel to the days in 2026. So that's what we're gonna share a bit about today, and just you know, kind of allow you to, you know, almost, you know, be a fly on the wall of just our conversation about how the heck do we manage all of these new acquisitions, all of these new hires, keep our company culture, keep our heads on straight, and literally do so while wearing a newborn baby. I can't even say she's a newborn, she's 11 weeks old today, but don't tell her, don't tell her that she's not a newborn while while literally wearing a baby most of the day.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

And just to put some concrete, you know, quantitative framing on this. So we recently closed on a few properties here in Rochester, Minnesota. We for we closed on West Willow, which is 28 units in Rochester, Northern Valley, that's 16 units. We closed on quarters, that's 63 units, but it's all four to ask student housing rent by the room. So it's it's technically like uh 240 rooms. And just at that one product project alone, went from 80, 90 percent occupied at closing to down to 20 occupied as students left for the academic year, back up to I think 65 or 70 percent occupied now today. As we get through our high season leasing, at different times we'd have 30 staff members present at that one site. We have some properties under contract. We've got uh Cascade apartments here in Rochester, it's 44 units. Then we've got Metropolitan Towers in in Bloomington, that's 112 units, Cedar Gate uh in Bloomington that's 48 units, Cedar Glen in Bloomington, that's 64 units, South Point in Bloomington, that's 142 units. So altogether, that's 362 units in Bloomington and 44 units in Rochester. And that's what, half half a dozen properties that are under contract that are all imminently closing here. We called a full court press on some of these new acquisitions where we need to uh install keypad locks and security cameras and get just all the infrastructure in place that lets us uh create the value that we love to create. And it's a massive amount of time, organization, resources that we pour into an asset in a short period of time to try to just just reimagine what's possible with that community. And then when something's under contract, there's a lot of details you have to juggle. You have to have communications with attorneys and lenders and title companies, and it's always a scramble. I always thought, you know, when we got to like bigger properties and fancier counterparties and stuff, they would really have their act together. But it's just people are even more pressed for time. And oh shoot, yeah, we are selling that $20 million deal, are we? I I guess I do need to sign that paperwork, don't I? It's it's hard to reach people sometimes when you have these larger deals you're working on. So that that gives you a little bit of framing for the the joyful frenzy that we have going on here.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Joyful frenzy. Yes. I like that episode.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

That's the that's the title of this podcast. Joyful frenzy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

So good. So good. And I think you know, likely what you're hearing and from other podcast episodes and from other things that we put out, you know by now that Nick and I love that pace. We we love, I would, I wouldn't say so much today we love chaos. I think we're more in the phase of our lives where we enjoy managing chaos and streamlining chaos.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

But we peace or harmony to chaos. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Yes, yes. Taking something that needs order and then putting that order into place and in doing so, creating a lot of value. And so it's been a lot of fun in 2026 with these new acquisitions, all of our new team members. Our scale has allowed us to hire people who were previously unavailable to us. Like, for example, we now have a licensed HVAC technician. It didn't make sense for a while when our portfolio wasn't big enough to support a full-time career in HVAC, but now we are big enough. And so we can bring that in-house. And anytime we can bring something in-house, we love that we can improve the quality, we can improve the timeliness, we can decrease the cost, and we have control over that function. And so as our portfolio grows, being able to bring more and more in-house, and it has just been, it has been such a summer, and it's going to continue to be that way through the fall as we close on these next round of acquisitions.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

So, uh, a principle that very much drives us is having a bias towards action. Did some coaching with a member of our leadership team last night because they said they felt uh a feeling of overwhelm because there's a lot of things going on and they're a newer member of our leadership team. And I just said, Well, what are you going to do about it? What action are you taking? What's your game plan for tomorrow that's going to make you feel excited to come in tomorrow morning? What are you going to do? And I kind of made like a like a you know, fist, fist punching your hand kind of kind of motion. And he's like, Well, you know, I'm just not sure exactly what to do. And there's all these variables, very much stuck in analysis paralysis, like physiologically, mentally, emotionally stuck in analysis paralysis. And I don't know where you are in your life where you might feel stuck in analysis paralysis. But I had him stand up, do a couple jumping jacks, uh, puff your chest down. You know, what's the top five things you can do tomorrow to move the ball forward? And in every aspect of your life, just have a bias towards action, a bias towards action. And in just a few minutes, you had a game plan for the following day. We're gonna cancel this meeting, we're gonna move this meeting. Okay, my whole meeting, my whole morning's free. I'm gonna need to talk to this person, we're gonna move this person over here. That's gonna solve these three problems. I need to have this phone call. I'm gonna have this person on the call. So I've got some backup. That's that'll be a tough call that I know this person's gonna help a lot with. Okay, great. We've got a game plan. And it's not like he's gonna walk into that difficult phone call with like a perfect plan or strategy, which is it's kind of ridiculous anyway, right? Like the phone call never goes exactly the way you expect it to go. And we don't necessarily know if any of those actions that we mapped out for the following day are gonna be successful or unsuccessful, but but gosh, like any action, any action almost always trumps no action, trumps kind of feeling. And and and by the time he went home that night, like he felt great. He, okay, I've got a plan for tomorrow. Whereas if he just felt trapped in that analysis paralysis. So, you know, a lot of the coaching that we do is literally just sitting down with someone. They might spend an hour, you know, pouring out their soul, all these complicated things. And we don't have the ability to know what the perfect action is, but we can recommend that you take a action and just that feeling. Once you've taken a action, it changes everything, that that bias towards action, it sets you up for extraordinary mental, physiological, emotional success.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Let's do a little bit of visualization here. This is something I teach inside of Freedom and Legacy Blueprint. And it's the idea that when we're standing in front of, say, a day or a week, it can feel like we have so much to do that we then become overwhelmed with it. And then we actually, we can accidentally have a desire to not do anything, right? That's the classic definition of analysis paralysis. And I like to guide people through seeing themselves standing in front of a field. A football field is a great analogy because it's demarcated by yards. And on that field are lots and lots of balls, and they're all spread out across the field. Some of them are really big, some of them are really small, some of them might be literally on the one yard line, some of them are all the way at the 99th yard line, and they're all over. And you're standing there in one end zone, looking out on the field, and you see all of these balls. And if you feel as though you have to get all of the balls into the end zone by a certain defined time period, maybe that's you know, maybe you're looking at a day, or maybe you're looking at a week, or maybe even you're looking at a year, that can feel so impossible. You don't know which ball do I grab first, how far do I take it? That one's heavy, that one's in a complicated path to reach, all of these things. And so you don't do anything. And instead, you know that every single day, some of the balls are going to get cleared off of the field, and more balls are going to get added to the field. And that is not scary. That's actually very joyful because you know that you will never clear the field. If you clear the field, that means you're dead. That means you're dead, right? You don't want to die. You don't want to completely clear the field. More balls will always be coming onto the field. And your role is to look at the field and say, how many of these balls can I move forward? Maybe you pick up a couple of small balls and you run them 50 yards. You pick up the biggest ball on the whole field, and maybe you can only eke it forward one yard. So what? That's good. You moved it. How many balls can you move forward as far forward as you can, getting some of the balls completely cleared off the field, knowing that tomorrow more balls will come onto the field, and that you're always there playing the game and you enjoy playing the game. You you like to think about how can I learn to move balls faster? How can I learn to pick up heavier balls? How can I have balls that are bigger than any ball I've ever had before and get that ball onto the field? Because once I learn how to move that ball all the way down the field, gosh, all those little like pebble balls, oh, those are fun. I can figure those out. And then you can add more and more and more onto this visual analogy. You build a team, right? You don't have to be the only person on the field. You build a team. Maybe you build pods of teams, you coach your team. This is how you can move, you know, a large number of small balls very quickly. This is how you move some heavier balls, and you can just carry forward with this analogy, but it's you standing in front of that field looking out playfully that this is a game that you get to play another day of the game of life. And isn't that exciting? And what are you going to move forward today? I see that in my mind probably four or five times a day. You know, as my energy ebbs and flows, as I look at how I behave at say 3 p.m. when maybe I only have an hour left to go before I pick up the kids, is very different than how I behave at say 8 a.m. when I'm fresh, kids are dropped off at school, I'm full of caffeine. Right. At 8 a.m., I might want to pick up the biggest ball and eke it forward as much as I can. And at 4 p.m., I might just want to go around grabbing some small balls, kind of carrying them as far as I can. I don't have a ton of cognitive bandwidth left. So I'm just like, okay, how can I kind of do a little bit of a clean sweep? But I'm seeing myself in that visual field many times per day. And I've taught it inside of Freedom and Legacy. And they too are now seeing themselves in that field. And that's what I would offer to you if you're thinking about, well, I don't have a bunch of buildings under contract, or I'm not an entrepreneur, I don't have a hundred employees. Cool, that's great. You still have amazing balls that you have in your personal life, your spiritual life, your relationships, your kids, all of those things. Those are the balls on your field. What do you want to move forward? Pick up the ball and move it forward, know that more balls will come on the next day. And that's how you stay out of overwhelm. And that's how you get excited about yeah, let's get however many units under contract, like 500 plus units under contract in you know, a three or four month period while having our sixth baby. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Let's do it. One of the most critical skills that you have to have in order to lead a big life is to cast a vision so big that other people can see themselves within that vision. And the process of recruiting and enrolling people to your vision, it's one of the most powerful skills that you can have. And that might sound a little bit abstract. So let's just say this another way. You are one relationship away from taking your life to the next level. You are one relationship away from taking your life to the next level. And that can be a uh a contractor of some kind that you hire someone to clean your house or to mow your grass or whatever service in your life is needed that's gonna free up time and energy for you to do something more valuable. If you don't already have any employees, it might be hiring your first employee and an admin that might unlock you to go do more productive things. If you're a W-2 employee in another organization, I can tell you your boss, one way or another is gonna be elated if you go to your supervisor and say, Hey, I really want, I want you to hire somebody. I want you to pay this person's payroll. I want that person to come work for me. And here's all the ways that this is gonna make the company money. Those are people who get promoted real quick in our organization. So at no point do we want you to think, oh, well, it seems unrelatable hiring people. Whatever phase of life you're in, you are, you are one relationship away from taking your life to the next level. And I find that people really do the math wrong on this. And it's it's almost like a cousin of analysis paralysis. They say, well, you know, what's this person gonna do? I need a 20-page job description, and I need to know exactly what their scope of responsibilities are going to look like. And no, no, no. They need to have a crystal clear vision. Every person we hire has a one-pager, just a few bullet points on what their job is. And I'll give you an example of of what that looks like. So we recently hired an HVAC technician. Actually, we're so excited about that. We now have two full-time HVAC technicians. The first one doubly excited. The first one worked out pretty well, and so we immediately hired a second HVAC technician.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

This is 96 degrees in Rochester yesterday. So we need this person on.

SPEAKER_00 14:36

Yeah, very hot for an eck of the woods. And I find people do the math on this wrong because they, you know, you well, can we afford this person? Does our business generate enough profit to pay this person salary? Or, you know, if you don't have any employees, well, I don't have enough income to cover this person. No, no, no. If you are bringing someone into your life, a relationship into your life within 90 days of that relationship existing, it should be a net gain for you. It shouldn't take very long to explain to a cleaning person how to clean your house or fold your laundry or whatever it is that you need to unlock your time. And when you hire a new employee, if you hire someone who's in a revenue generating position, well, I sure hope they're going to generate more revenue, ultimately more profit than their salary covers. In the case of our HVAC technician, we just looked up the numbers. We looked up how much should we pay to various vendors? And there's one particularly expensive HVAC vendor that we've been paying, and our leadership team is kind of hemming and hawing a little about this hire. And I said, Well, could we just hire an HVAC person that their only job is to make sure we don't call this one vendor? And let's look at all of our invoices for the year. Yeah, yeah, this is way less than like a person year's worth of work, and we spent hundreds of thousands, like $300,000 on this one vendor. An HVAC technician is not an inexpensive person to hire. It's kind of a high salary, they need a truck and tools and supplies, but it's not $300,000 a year. And so the framing I had to, you know, to our leadership team was truly, there's no way we can mess this up. If we hire this person and their one bullet point is as a result of you being on our team, we never call this other HVAC vendor. Like, do you think he can handle that? Do you think it gives them crystal clarity? And there's no conceivable way this person could cost us $300,000 a year. So it's truly like a can't lose hire. And if 90 days into the job, this is the very top of mind because we did like our 90-day review today on the first HVAC hire, if 90 days into the job, they haven't saved you that money or generated that revenue or or created whatever value it was that they needed to create that was like a no-brainer can't lose proposition, then you made a mistake, they made a mistake, you need to fix it, or you need to end that relationship. And so people they often get that that calculus wrong. They think they need to like have the profit or the revenue or whatever to support that salary. No, no, no, the salary, the salary is hopefully generating that revenue, generating that profit. And you need to give this person crystal clarity about you know the one thing they need to do that's going to, if they just crutch it at this one thing, like they're going to be a profitable hire in your organization, or they're going to be a successful service provider that you bring into your life.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

We hired 38 people this quarter. And even as I say it, I'm like, well, it's probably like 39 by now.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, we we started seven people in one day. I mean, when you're onboarding this many units that this fast, like it it takes that many humans, and and getting the humans and training them and onboarding them to make sure we're not diluting our culture, that is way harder than getting the property under contract and closing and raising the capital. And it it takes, I mean, it just takes that many humans for us to bring the level of customer service, quality control that you know that we want to our customers, to our residents. Uh, and that's that's the hard part.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

It has been a joyful season, as Nick called it, of joyful frenzy over here. Hopefully, you enjoyed a little uh peek, peek behind the scenes into what we've been up to the last several weeks since we had baby Elizabeth in May, closed a couple of deals, have many more under contract, brought 38 new people onto our team. We crossed our half a billion dollars in assets under management. Huge, yeah, woo for that, huge milestone that we've been working toward. And I think what's most exciting for both Nick and I is you know, we've been working toward this billion dollar vision for years. And and there was a time when, you know, it almost felt silly, right? Like we, you know, we were, we were like a kindergartner talking about like what we were gonna major in in college or something like that. Um, and so we would say it occasionally, but you know, always sort of like, you know, maybe like lower our voice a little bit, kind of test the room of like, do people think we're like kooky when we say that? Um, and now it it's like it's a foregone conclusion and it's just a matter of time and really not that many years away, and something that we've been, you know, working toward for many, many, many years, and it feels so good to see that soon to be actualized. We have we have 500 million to go. So don't don't let don't let me don't let me put the cart before the horse. But that's the psychology that we're living in. And this is what it takes in our psychology and the work that we're putting in every single day with getting these deals under contract, doing all of the due diligence. Lending is a huge piece. We'll do a whole episode about state of the market and how we're putting deals together and how we're putting lending. More importantly, the lending is the most important piece right now, how we're getting the lending together. We'll do a more tactical episode on all of that. Um, but we wanted to share kind of, you know, what it's like inside of our world and kind of fill you guys in on why there's been some radio silence. And we, we, we've said that in our last couple episodes when Baby Elizabeth was only, I think, what, two weeks old. We were taking her to I'm proud of us getting the podcast out with her to a real estate summit and that was super fun. But it has been even more fun this summer um than you could possibly imagine over here at Black Swan. And we hope you enjoyed getting that little look behind the scenes. We do want to invite you, if you haven't signed up for real estate real life, that is coming up September 18th through the 20th. We put that on here in Rochester, Minnesota, and we have a really high quality, high fidelity virtual option as well. This is not just getting access to some Zoom recordings that you zone out on. You are there live in the room. We take you live on our property tours through Rochester. We have an amazing camera setup where it looks as though you were literally walking right along with us during the conference portion. We can see you right there in the Zoom room. We can see you in chat. We can unmute you and you can ask questions. You can hear everything in the room. It is literally as though you've transported yourself right to inside of the event while you can do so from the comfort of your own home, not have to mess with expensive fear fair, those sorts of things. We would love to have you virtually. You can see all about that at rerl2026.com. That's rerl2026.com. We would love to have you join us. If your calendar still allows and you're able to join us here in person, all the better. We would love to have you there. Joining us virtually is an amazing option as well, too. And you get lifetime access to the recordings afterwards. So we hope to see you there September 18th through the 20th for real estate real life 2026, where you can meet these amazing team members, tour these amazing buildings, get a firsthand experience of what it really feels like to live in this joyful frenzy.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

Our URL is very much a joyful frenzy. It's very high energy and a way to it's uh it's it's unlike any other conference you've ever been to if you if you haven't been to one of our events.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, and we blend together kind of everything that you hear in these podcast episodes. We blend together property tours where we don't just talk about real estate, we go out and we see, touch, and feel real buildings and talk to you about why we acquired something, what the purchase price was, what the business plan is, where we are in that in that business plan. We like to share what we call the messy middle. So we get a tour of all of those properties. We do the real estate portion where we talk about what are your real estate goals, what's the state of the market, what are some smart moves you can make now to protect and grow your capital. We do the real life portion where we talk about visioning and what it is that you want from real estate investing. No one invests in real estate just to grow a balance sheet. They they invest to unlock freedom and what does that mean for you and really seeing that vision because that's what drives you in your investing journey. We do an amazing breath work session, which for many people is their first time ever doing breath work. I guide you through all of that. I am there in the room. I'm I'm the sole voice that guides you through it. Even people that are maybe worried about it, maybe they think it's woo-woo, or you know, they're not sure what's going to happen in their body, they do it and they love the way it feels and describe it. They get so much unlock into kind of their next level of thinking. And we incorporate all of that real estate, real life. That's the exact title. We bring it all together, pack it into a weekend. People describe it as life-changing, as you know, like Nick said, unlike anything else they've ever experienced. This is not a typical conference where it's all just slides and presentations. It's it's kind of a mix of everything that we think really unlocks the next level for people. Some tactical skills in real estate, some visioning and mindset work, uh, uh embodied experience with breathwork. We would absolutely love to have you there. And we get all of that packed into the virtual experience as though you were literally right there in the room with us. And maybe there will be a surprise visit from baby Elizabeth. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Maybe. We appreciate you joining us here on today's episode of the Real Estate Real Life Podcast. Um, Nick Sager here with my wife, Dr. Elaine Sager. And we like to look forward to she we look forward to seeing you uh on the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Have a good day, everyone.