Reaching Financial Independence with 5 Properties & Multiple Income Streams

Ashley :
Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr and I’m here with Tony j Robinson.

Tony:
And this is the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. Now look, if you feel like it’s too late to invest in real estate in today’s market, you’re going to want to listen to today’s episode because today we’re going to hear a story that will make you believe that investing in real estate and reaching financial independence is still possible. So today we’re going to be talking to Kadeem Leslie, who’s a real estate investor that used arbitrage as a way to build capital to eventually build his portfolio to five properties. So we’re going to discuss ways in which he’s growing capital to invest in real estate and scale his portfolio, how he achieved fire, and what fire is through real estate investing, and how you can still be active in today’s market and what the 1% rule is and why it still works. So Kadeem, welcome to the show, brother. Excited to have you on, man.

Kadeem:
I’m excited to be here. I’m very excited and thank you for allowing me to share with the audience

Ashley :
Kadeem, to kind of start the show off, can you tell us how long you’ve been investing for?

Kadeem:
My first ever entry into real estate was actually in college as a freshman. Not to date myself, but a little under a decade. So there you go.

Ashley :
Well, I imagine you’re a freshman year of college was very different from mine, but kind of along that journey, when did you start to learn about financial freedom and the fire movement and did that kind of inspire you to start investing?

Kadeem:
I think I was not the typical 15-year-old because since I was 15 years old, I wanted to start in the fire movement and achieve financial freedom and I wanted to do that before 30 years old. And so I decided I gave myself 15 years. If I could do it in 15 years, that’d be pretty cool. And so that was me as a 15-year-old kid. And then what happened after that? I started to think more about how to go about that. I started thinking about investing real estate and business and then I think once I found Brandon Turner and the book on rental property investing, that set off a spark for me. And so after that I said, okay, well I have to try this real estate thing and that’s how I got into real estate.

Tony:
So ka you maybe just for folks that aren’t familiar with that phrase, what exactly is F?

Kadeem:
So fire is financially independent to retire early. And so what my approach has been is to find out how much you would need to retire in terms of cashflow every month, and then stack assets until you get to that income. But as a satin net, try to double or triple or even four times that income. So for example, if you know you need $5,000 a month to live, then get to $20,000 a month in passive income or income coming in from assets. And then when you get there, well

Tony:
Congratulations. Right? Yeah, I get you read the book and you listened to the podcast and you kind of went down that rabbit hole, but what made you believe that real estate investing was the best vehicle for you to achieve fire?

Kadeem:
So one, when it comes to investing, investing in mutual funds, index funds, that can take 40 years and you come down the line, real estate I think can get you into fire in maybe 10, 15, 20 years. And if you think of the real estate industry, it gets you into the billionaire status. 90% of millionaires have real estate. And so as probability, if 90% of people are doing this and end up where I want to go, well that seems to be a no-brainer. And then you come down the line, business can get you there faster though, but there’s so, so much uncertainty in business and you have something as certain or as well trodden as a path, as a real estate. Oh, it’s a no-brainer to try and see what you can do in the space.

Ashley :
So once you started trying, how long did it actually take once you started investing in real estate to reach that financial independence?

Kadeem:
The first time I started in real estate, what I started with was actually one bedroom. So I’ll tell this story really quickly. I was in college and I moved into a single family house, one bedroom, and then it turns out the typical college student, I had no money. And so what I decided to do was to move out of that room and move into the couch of that same house and said, okay, well let me see if I can do something with this bedroom, rent it out, Airbnb, Craigslist, VRBO, HomeAway booking com, and lemme see if I can meet my rent because I figured in New York that’s somewhere that you want to be inside and warm, but the couch is still comfortable. Right, that’s fine. So then what I did the first month I did it, I was able to meet my rent. By the third month I was able to double my rent.
So now I’m making money by staying at home. Now this is pretty cool. So then after that what happened, I was able to get more bedrooms in that house and I was able to get more houses because I was doing such a good job with that first house that developed the cashflow to get me into the first couple deals. And in that first house I actually was put on the title of that house and was able to get that house into my portfolio because I was able to do such a good job. And so that was actually one of my first properties that I was able to do. And that’s sort of unconventional because there was no getting the loan or going through the banks. It’s really knowing the owner here, I think you should continue taking care of this property. So that was really cool place to start.

Tony:
Kadeem, I just want to make sure that I’m actually understanding what the story is that you just shared. So you’re saying that you were renting a room from a landlord and then because you did such a good job managing that asset for the landlord, that they eventually added you onto the title of the property?

Kadeem:
Exactly. Exactly. And actually, so from that I was able to get other properties not by owning, but rental arbitrage and able to expand that rental arbitrage portfolio and then we expanded into Atlanta and then that’s the brand really, things took off to a different level.

Tony:
So Kadeem, I know we talked about arbitrage, you mentioned that phrase, but for our rookies who maybe aren’t familiar with that, what exactly is arbitrage?

Kadeem:
So arbitrage is taking a property that you don’t own, renting it from a landlord and then putting people in there. And so this can be done in several ways. You can do midterm rentals, which is one month to six months, and you can do long-term rentals with rental arbitrage too. But what’s really, I think the most popular part of people is doing short-term rentals a few days, maybe a weekend or one week or two weeks and then doing it that way. And here’s the thing, if you are thinking about rental arbitrage, the wonderful thing about rental arbitrage is that it can have a lot of cashflow. And so for someone who is thinking of getting into real estate, it can be a really good way to start without risking a heavy down payment. But on the other hand, if you are thinking about rental arbitrage, you can learn the ins and out of the real estate portfolio really well. For example, getting into Atlanta, we started with rental arbitrage and then, which we’ll get to I think at the end of the show, getting into ownership. And that’s how we were able to learn the Atlanta market so quickly. So really works.

Tony:
So K, me obviously being an Airbnb guy myself, I have an idea of how short-term rental arbitrage works, but I think usually when you hear that phrase arbitrage, people think about renting out the entire space. But it sounds like your approach is slightly different. You said you were kind of sleeping on the couch. I guess maybe break down how you think about arbitrage in terms of whole space versus renting out sections of the house.

Kadeem:
That’s a great question because I started by room, by room, I think I saw the power of room by room before I started to see the power of renting out to your entire space. So what happened for me is that room by room became so consistent and predictable because in any market, for example, during covid, people always need rooms to stay in because people always want to save money on where they’re staying, right? In great markets, rooms get booked, but in bad markets, when luxury Airbnbs go down, room by room will still work because people are still traveling, you still have students, et cetera. And so what it is is that I understood based on doing rental arbitrage room by room first, I knew what numbers worked predictably. And so then when we went to Atlanta, I could predict what those numbers would be and it wasn’t a surprise. And so then we went to buy, it was the same numbers because I had been doing it for so long, it kind of got boring. But then that’s what you want in terms of predictability.

Ashley :
I want to ask if someone is like, okay, you know what, you’ve sold me. I want to do room by room. How do they actually go about it? What’s the best way to actually rent out your room?

Kadeem:
So it would be through Airbnb, right? So Airbnb has three different types of, it would be shared rooms, private room, and entire home listings. And so what actually happened in the 2023, I think it was winter release of Airbnb, they actually started to prioritize and get back to the original roots of Airbnb, which was having an extra bedroom or an air mattress that you could rent to people. And that was the original purpose of Airbnb. That’s how the phone started. And so Airbnb I think will always have that advantage of being able to do room bedrooms. That’s the sort of unique arrangement. And so I would recommend everyone would start in Airbnb in terms of room by room, but then you also have things like Facebook marketplace, very vibrant community on Facebook marketplace, people looking for rooms. You also have Craigslist. Now Craigslist sometimes gets a bad rap, but if you are looking for the right people, you can do really well on Craigslist. Now I’ve found some amazing people from Craiglist myself, and so those are some of the examples I have.

Ashley :
That’s why I love doing a short-term rental for rent by the room compared to having a long-term tenant because you can pick and choose when you actually want to have your booking window open. So if your family wants to come visit, you can block those days off and you’re not having some random person stay in your house while your family is there at Christmas time. So I love that option of taking house hacking, but doing it short-term rentals so that you can kind of pick and choose when you want to have someone here. Whether you’re doing house hacking or arbitrage in an apartment, I’m very curious, what was your cashflow number and how did you determine how many properties you needed to get or to arbitrage before you could reach it?

Kadeem:
Perfect. So I love talking about this. For me was I determined, and this was 15 years old, I determined that it was 2000 bucks. The reason why it was 2000 bucks for me is because I wanted to travel the world. And if you know the global numbers of most places around the world, if you are traveling solo, $2,000 a month, it’s plenty. You can go anywhere in the world for $2,000 a month. You can live like a king in most places. And then I think if you’re going for a family, then you want to go maybe to four or 6,000. But for me it was 2000, right? So then when I hit double that I knew that, okay, now I can say I’ve hit financial independence now beyond that, but I think that was the minimum for me. And so that answer your question,

Ashley :
And then when you started, since you started arbitraging the first property, how long did it take until you hit that number?

Kadeem:
Three years? Yeah. So the first one, that was a really wonderful situation. So that already passed 2000 a month. And so after it took maybe until 20, well, I don’t want to date myself. Well, it took during the pandemic, during the pandemic to really expand and start to get into more midterm and long-term rentals to start to say, okay, cool. Now we’re approaching five figures and that is a bit more secure. Yeah,

Tony:
Well Kadeem, I mean, what an amazing story to start this episode. I don’t know of anyone who’s kind of gone through that process in that same way. So I’m excited to keep digging in, but we do have to take a quick ad break. But for all of our rookies that are listening, if you want real estate deals like what Kadeem found and who knows, you’ll find that landlord that if you do a good enough job managing, they’ll just hand the property over to you in some way. Visit biggerpockets.com/agent finder where an investor-friendly agent can help you find your next real estate deal. Alright, awesome guys. So welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. So let’s jump back in. So Kadeem, what are some of the ways that you’ve optimized properties to get even more cashflow?

Kadeem:
So one of my favorite ways has been rental arbitrage, but then what I actually found during, for example, the pandemic, we were actually able to get even more creative with rental arbitrage. So before the break, we had talked about getting and expanding into Atlanta, and here’s what happened During Atlanta, we expanded in a time which was in the middle of a pandemic. And so the market was really weird and it had to be a little bit more creative. But then what we found is that rental arbitrage, especially short-term rental saw a spike, but then it was coming out of a decline and then it saw a decline again. So it was all up in the air, but then you still needed to make fairly consistent revenue. And so there are a couple of things that we did in one property, I really loved this talking about this story is that we set up a podcast studio in the finished basement and that was really awesome.
We set it up to pair space and set up renting per night or per month or per week, you get to rent per hour. So what happens when you’re renting a podcast studio is that, well, you don’t have to deal with headaches or stuff like that. People come in, they leave within the hour, they rent for that time. So actually one of those things that I think many people don’t talk about, if you have the space available and then also preventing parking spaces, because we were in Atlanta close to the city, parking is expensive downtown. But if someone, for example is coming into Atlanta, or sorry, they’re living Atlanta and they’re leaving Atlanta for a long time, they perhaps want to leave their space, their vehicle in a space that’s safe. So then hey, can you watch my car for two $300? You have three extra parking spots, that’s an extra 500 a month. Now that could be the difference between staying afloat or going on though. And so stuff like that we did during the pandemic. That was really fun to do.

Tony:
Kadeem. So one follow up. I know Peerspace have heard of that website before, but how were you facilitating the rental of the spots?

Kadeem:
So that’s an app called Naval. Great question. So pair space would be the event space Neighbor is an app that you can rent parking spaces. It’s really super simple. You go, you put it on, if you have a covered space, it works better than just having an open driveway, but you have to have something that’s off street parking.

Ashley :
What was the startup cost for the podcast studio? How much did you spend getting all the gear and getting it set and then what did you actually charge per an hour?

Kadeem:
So it started around 15, we got up to 50 per hour and then we just switched back to short-term rentals when that market picked back up. But the startup cost, I would say a few hundred because I remember for example, the microphone I think was like a hundred dollars. We had some spare furniture, so that wasn’t really too expensive for us because we’re already in short-term rentals. One of the cool things that I think that we did was that we set up lights and we had this grass background. I wish I had pictures. You love it. It was really nice because you have to make a podcast space because of course podcasts today are also visual you’re going to put on YouTube. So then we had a nice background, nice colored lights that there were neon and actually changed colors throughout the show. So it’s pretty nice. So I really like this stuff. The microphone was another hundred, so maybe I would give an estimate around 500.

Ashley :
Tony, is this generating any ideas for you for your podcast studio you’re sitting in right now?

Tony:
I was literally just about to say that, right? There’s so many times and hours of the week where this is just sitting empty and it’s like, could I just rent this out on peer space and maybe cover the cost of my office space? Yeah,

Kadeem:
Exactly.

Ashley :
And then what about the parking spaces too? What did you end up getting for the parking spaces? What were you charging?

Kadeem:
So I don’t think in any month we had three parking spaces, but I know for perhaps one person, they stayed full with us for six months and that was 200. So you can think of the LTV instead of just the per month, but again, whether it’s two or three or 400, that’s a good chunk of change. And that was because that place had a really long driveway and so we could fit many cars. And so then for that place, having two cars didn’t disturb anybody else that was coming to that location. So really great place.

Tony:
Kadeem. Just one follow up to that because I love how you’re getting creative with different ways to generate revenue. You’re renting out the podcast space, renting out the parking spot. I’ve heard of apps where you can rent out your swimming pool by the hour. I just found out about an app yesterday where you can rent out your backyard to people who have dogs that want a place to let their dogs run free. I’ve never heard of that before.

Kadeem:
That’s awesome.

Tony:
Just think about for all the rookies that are listing that if you have a property that you’re doing short-term midterm or maybe you’re in between tenants and you have some of these amenities, could you potentially offer those out to generate additional revenue? So I love the creativity there kadeem, but I guess beyond getting creative, how are you kind of growing your capital to continue to invest in actually buying the real estate?

Kadeem:
So one of the things that I, which is I think what you alluded to just now is that being entrepreneurial minded first has always been a part of my fiber. And so I have a property management company have the short-term rental company. That’s great. We also have a merchant processing company that processes credit cards for businesses, help them save on fees, cash discount program. And so that’s a really cool company and that that’s also similar to how real estate works in terms of residual income. You get paid per month and you get paid a fraction of the value that you provide to the people that you serve. So I really love businesses set up like that where you can have that type of income that’s on a recurring basis.

Ashley :
So after you started doing these other little side hustles and implement them into your business, was it actually beneficial to you to do these things and what was the outcome?

Kadeem:
Absolutely. So the purpose of using side hustles to increase that cash flow is to pour back into long-term strategy. And so the side hustles are only really to speed up the rate at which you can grow your portfolio. And so let’s say for example, you know that you have to put 5% down, which changed November last year, which is fantastic. So then if you’re looking for a million dollar portfolio, a million dollar portfolio is going to cost you 50,000 bucks. Well how many times can you get to 50,000 bucks in for example, one decade? And so then okay, can you do it in two years? Great, can you do it in one year? Great. Can you do it in six months? Great. And then that’s what the purpose of the site hustles are. And so rental arbitrage for example is another method to speed up the cashflow with which you can get more properties. So that’s a great way to think about

Ashley :
Kadeem. It almost sounds like you did a vertical integration with your business by picking up these other little side hustles as you call him, to add more cashflow and more profit to your primary business of rentals.

Kadeem:
Exactly. And so they are interconnected. And so for example, what happens in Atlanta now, which I love talking about is because we haven’t sort of ecosystem is that we have in one place we have property managers, we have electricians, plumbers, people who can work on HVAC in one place, and then we’re also growing our portfolio there. So we have the same people that work or general contractors that would work in or rental arbitrage space, but we also have them working on all properties that we have there. So it really works nicely in Atlanta together. And then the cashflow is one pool and everybody can take from that one pool. So it’s a really cool,

Tony:
Yeah, I love the idea kadeem of leveraging the ecosystem you’ve already built to help continue to grow the business, man. So I guess on that note kadeem, I’d like to shift to what your portfolio today actually looks like. So with the side hustles, with the couch surfing, with the renting by the room, what does the portfolio actually look like today?

Kadeem:
So in New York, New Jersey, right? Well in New Jersey that’s two properties, one owned one rental arbitrage in Atlanta, I think we have six, seven right now. Two of those, this is duplex in Atlanta and then we have three in Jamaica

Tony:
Went international. That’s awesome man. I guess just really quick on that, I feel like for a lot of people kadeem the idea of investing remotely is somewhat scary for them. And you are in the states obviously and Atlanta and you have a property in Jamaica. What gave you the confidence to go across country lines to pick up that property? And I guess what advice do you have for someone that maybe wants to invest remotely from where they live

Ashley :
Before you go Kadeem? I also want to mention that he’s also in Brazil right now doing this recording. So he is remote from all of his robberies at the moment.

Kadeem:
And so that’s I think what I would rely on family and friends for and I really have to, I know they’re going to watch this, so I love you all and I really depend on my family and friends to a really great extent and what’s in it for me? I agree to grow my portfolio, but what’s in it for them? Of course they also get to be a part of what we’re building and they get cashflow and they get equity and they get to be homeowners. And so it’s really instead of one person doing this and working 24 7, it’s, Hey, can I give you a piece of this and this will be your piece and then we can build this together. And so that’s happening in all of these places. And so I prefer to split and grow something, have 50% of $10 million than to have a hundred percent of 500,000

Ashley :
Kadeem. We should have had you write a chapter for our book Real Estate Partnerships to kind of go through how you were able to structure all of this. I think that’d be really interesting in talking about how you’re able to manage those partnerships with your friends and your family while maintaining those relationships.

Kadeem:
And I would say one lots of phone calls. Lots of phone calls,

Ashley :
So good communication.

Kadeem:
Exactly, exactly. And you have to be upfront and people also have to trust what you’re saying, so trust what you’re saying. And so you have to be able to just know a lot, right? People will ask you questions and if you don’t sound like you’re sure then that’s probably going to be a problem. But then if you lay out, hey, this is the information I have, this can take us from here to here. This is all of the facts, this is the data, this is where the economy is going, this is where it has been. And if you present that to people in a really solid case, it kind of becomes hard to say, I’m going to pass.

Ashley :
One thing I am curious about is when you’re going to buy these properties, before you even find a partner, what is your actual buy box for the properties that you’re going after?

Kadeem:
So multifamily, two to four units right now outside of this rental arbitrage, owning would be two to four units using of course the FHA 5% down, sorry, FHA 3.5% down or conventional 5% down. Either one is fine or plan is to go for four units, four properties over 10 years, convert that into apartment buildings and then from there that’s when we can start talking about refinancing and buying back. But for now, the path would be multifamily for in a decade, one every two years.

Tony:
Alright guys, so we got to take one final break, but more from Kadeem and his journey to strive for financial freedom through real estate investing right after. Alright guys, welcome back to the show. So Kadeem, maybe tell me about a deal that you’ve completed.

Kadeem:
Right, so recently we were able to acquire a duplex, wonderful duplex in Atlanta that the closing price was 420 5K and that was I think 3%, 3.5% down. And I’ve said that wrong twice so far, but that was 3.5% down and so it was around $15,000 with the seller concessions coming in. And so it actually came back when the appraisal came back that we had built in 50 K in equity. And so the value of that property is already at 4 75. So that was really awesome.

Ashley :
Yeah, already having that $50,000 of equity baked in is great. You mentioned the word seller concessions. What is that?

Kadeem:
So we had an interesting strategy on getting this property. So it actually a strategy that we had tried with a previous deal, but that fell through. But then we tried to get on the second one and then they accepted. What we decided to was yes, we know that we have the 3.5% down, but if we went to the seller and we said, Hey, we did cost analysis of all of the repairs that we think that this property needs, if you look at this, it adds up to about 35,000 bucks. Now we can do that and we’re going to put that into the property however we want you to accommodate some of this 35,000 bucks. Now of course, $35,000 was done by a general contractor and so it had all the quotes, it had all the pictures, this is what’s needed. So then when we went into the seller, hey, okay cool, we see that we’re going to give you 10 12 off in the down payment, that’s what we’re going to cover for you. So then when they came back and said, okay, cool, we can cover for you 12,000, we said, great, that’s no problem then. So that’s how we got the seller concessions.

Ashley :
So how much did you actually put into this deal for your capital?

Kadeem:
I own 14 or 15,000 bucks.

Tony:
Sorry, I just wanted to highlight really quick ash, I don’t want that to get lost in our rookie audience that he’s talking 14 or $15,000 to control an asset that’s worth almost half a million. It’s like where else can you do that? Real estate investing is uniquely qualified to do that. So I’m sorry, I just wanted to add that in before you jumped into the next one.

Ashley :
No, that’s okay. I was just wondering kind of the outcome of the property, now you’re in it for very little money. What did the property end up cash flowing? What are you renting the units out for?

Kadeem:
So it’s a five bedroom house and using the same strategy. So this is actually interesting. I stick to the 1% rule religiously and I learned the 1% rule from the book again on rental property investing. That’s the third time I think I’ve rented that book. But the 1% rule really means that if you can rent the property for at least 1% of the purchase price, then it’s probably going to be a good cashflow deal. Probably not, yes, but probably. And so what we did was, I understand the numbers going back to my room by room rent days and my minimum is in any major city I know I can do 1000 per bedroom. That’s what I know minimum. Now other cities can do more. If you’re in New York City, it’s probably 2000 bucks for a bedroom, but I know I can do $1,000 in any major city in the US per bedroom. And so when we went to the 1% rule, we know we have five bedrooms, we have four of them rented out, then we can make $4,000 minimum per month. And so the poverty is actually cost for in between a thousand and to $1,500 right now. And the mortgage is around 3000. So it’s great.

Tony:
So kadeem basically crushing it, right? Is what it sounds like. Appreciate it.

Ashley :
So with this property, how did you even find it? You said the 1% rule is really big for you, what market is this in and how did you source it?

Kadeem:
So this one was Atlanta though. This one was Atlanta though we found it through an agent. What we actually did, and I would encourage anyone to do this, is that we looked at maybe three dozen properties before we found this. And remember that we had one deal before this that fell through. So we did three dozen to possibly close on two. And just the scale of numbers, we went for five and we like this one. We looked at a lot because we had to find one that really worked for our strategy. And I’m sure picking up based on what I’ve talked about, we really do stick to our strategy because if you stick to one strategy that works, then it will work, right? But if you switch strategies, you have to start all over. And so we found this one agent, found the right property, found everything that met our criteria, and then once we did, we said, okay, we’ll proceed with this one. As long as it meets the numbers, we can go for it.

Tony:
So kadeem, I guess you said you worked with an agent. So you’re saying that the property was just listed on the MLS, it was on a Zillow or Redfin.

Kadeem:
Exactly.

Tony:
So I guess that leads me to my next question and there’s a lot of people kadeem who feel that real estate investing is impossible to be successful at right now, right? With rising interest rates, with rising purchase prices, there are no deals out there that make sense. So I guess what would your response be to those people that feel that the market should just been too hot to get into?

Kadeem:
So I would say that having an agent makes all the difference. So I mean, think about my story or agent was able to go to bat for us, having a really good agent is actually cheaper when you’re thinking about investing because or agent was able to go to bat for us, get a seller concessions, saved us $12,000 on the backend of this deal. And so I would say just having a really good agent makes a world of better.

Ashley :
And if you need help to actually find a good agent, you can go to biggerpockets.com/agent Finder as just a starting point to kind of meet agents that are in your market that are investor friendly and then do what Kadeem did and take the time to actually vet them, ask questions, work with them. And just like when you’re buying real estate, figure out what your buy box is. So find out what your agent box is, I guess I don’t even know what to call it, but think about why you need an agent. I need an agent to do the paperwork to set up my showings, and that’s basically it. Okay, Kadeem, he needed an agent to help him negotiate to have those creative ideas. You may need an agent to help you with the market research knowing the area because you’ve never even been there before and you need help with that.
Or maybe you actually need help with the deal analysis too. And you want an agent that is also an investor who invests in that same market that can help you. So really figure out what you want from the agent and make sure when you’re interviewing and asking questions instead of saying, do you work with investors? Ask how many investors are you currently working with? Something like that where it’s a number they have to give back because anybody can say, yeah, I work with investors, but asking them specifically, how many are you working with? And it’s like, well, I did one a couple of years ago, or actually I have 10 right now that I’m working with. So kind of tailoring your questions that way can helpful when doing the interview process too.

Kadeem:
Absolutely. So just to add to that, I actually had a specific question when I went to meet with real estate agents and it was, have you closed any multifamily in the last 12 months? That was my question, that was my opening question. And so if they said No, well no problem. Have a great day. And so that was my qualifying question because it paid to a tragedy and so something to think about. Definitely.

Tony:
Well, Kain, that’s a great piece of advice, and I guess that kind of leads me into my last question here, but what would be your biggest piece of advice to all the rookies who are listening to this podcast, that one achieve financial independence, but are maybe hesitant to pull that trigger? They’re stuck in analysis paralysis. What is your advice to them?

Kadeem:
Well, you are going to be 10 years older in 10 years anyway. So what you actually have to decide is whether you want to be 10 years older in 10 years having tried stuff or well where you are right now. And if you’re happy with that, that’s fine. However, if you do want something different, you’re going to be 10 years older anyway. And so then you can have one or two or three or four properties in 10 years or you cannot do anything. And so the difference is really action. And so then that’s decide, well, in 10 years I want to be this, and then go for that.

Ashley :
It’s almost like working out. You can start now or you can wait six months and then when six months come, you’re just going to wish that you would’ve started six months ago.

Kadeem:
Exactly.

Ashley :
Kadeem, thank you so much for joining us today and to giving us an insight into your journey, learning all about arbitrage and how you’ve been able to reach financial independence. And again, congratulations on your success.

Kadeem:
Well, thank you for inviting me or allowing me to be on your platform because BiggerPockets has been really inspirational to me. I’ve been watching since I was a teenager, and so it’s really awesome to be here. I’ll tell you, I read and watched and I just really inspirational what you guys do and people are watching you from all over the world. I’m here in Brazil still watching, so kudos to what you guys do.

Ashley :
Well, we really love to hear that and we appreciate you coming on to give back to others so that they can also learn from BiggerPockets. So if you want to learn more about km, we’ll link his information into the show notes. We also did mention a few books throughout this podcast. You can go to biggerpockets.com/bookstore and you can use the discount code, Ashley or Tony and get 10% off. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Real Estate Rookie. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. And we’ll see you guys next time on the Real Estate Rookie podcast.

Tony:
This BiggerPockets podcast is produced by Daniel ti, edited by Exodus Media Copywriting by Calico Content.

Ashley :
I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and you have been listening to Real Estate Rookie.

Tony:
And if you want to be a guest on a BiggerPockets show, apply biggerpockets.com/guest.