SPEAKERS
Dakota Barker, Alfonso Cuadra, Carl Richards, Jeff Barker
Carl Richards 00:05
Welcome to The WealthGenius Podcast! The WealthGenius Podcast strategies for multifamily real estate investing, mindset, community, success. The WealthGenius Podcast with your host, The Godfather of real estate, Alfonso Cuadra, who has expansive experience in business and massive success as a real estate investor. The WealthGenius Podcast, let's dive in to today's episode.
Alfonso Cuadra 00:31
Wow. Look at us! We're here!
Dakota Barker 00:35
We are here!
Jeff Barker 00:35
Hello, hello.
Alfonso Cuadra 00:36
Good to ha-
Jeff Barker 00:37
Happy to be here.
Alfonso Cuadra 00:37
Yeah, good to have you here. The Godfather is also happy. The little Godfather. It could- somebody could say they look a little bit like you. But you know, I can't do this here. You know, I can't do this. So I got some beer envy. But the thought of having this podcast came about and you know, we talked with, you know, all the people that are going to be involved. And I'm like, "okay, who would be my ideal- we're shooting this season. It's, you know, 11 or 12 people that I want to interview. And it could be just one season, you know, we don't know where it's gonna go. And so I said, "Okay, if I was going to do this, who would be my people?" You know? And you guys were at the top of that list. You know?
Dakota Barker 01:21
Wow!
Jeff Barker 01:21
Wow!
Alfonso Cuadra 01:22
As you know, I care so much about you, and I'm your biggest fan. I'm your biggest cheerleader, you know? So I want to have that conversation 'cause I know that you guys could inspire people to take action (to) get into real estate, especially from your backgrounds. I mean, you guys left jobs. You know, that takes a lot of guts. Not anybody could just do that, right?
And so, you know, this has been a big, long journey for you guys. And I want to dive a little deeper on that journey. But we're gonna get to that, we're gonna get to that. I want to talk a little bit about pivoting. Because you're on this journey, you're investing in real estate, you leave your jobs, right, and you have like this vision of what you want to do. I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life. And about a month or so, yeah. And then interest rates. Yeah. Right. And everyone got the slap of the interest rates.
And so, you know, some people, you know, were crushed. A lot of people took L's, but you guys pivoted right, and you just change the strategy, right? Change the strategy to make it into a win, but even a bigger win than you would have had, if you would have continued with the old strategy. So let's start there. I don't know, like, maybe we'll start with the Dakota sharing a little bit about that story.
Dakota Barker 02:43
Yeah, so before we were in this multifamily space, we were doing a lot of flipping. So that was great. When the market was hot, you know, houses were selling super easily, they were going over market life was great. We were like, We're gonna make a ton of money off of all these flips.
And I think being having not gone through a market shift yet in our investing careers, we didn't really know when to stop acquiring new flips. So we got a couple that were a little bit later, in the hot season, maybe we'll call it. And did the flips and by the time they were done, unfortunately, the market had shifted. So interest rates are going up. People are scared to buy.
Jeff Barker 03:27
Nobody's buying anymore.
Dakota Barker 03:28
Nobody- yeah, nobody's buying, buyers are terrified. The markets going down, we actually listed one of the properties, I think, right as the first interest rate hike happened, and as we had it listed, we were trying to drop the price and the interest rate would go up.
Alfonso Cuadra 03:45
So you're doing this.
Dakota Barker 03:48
Yeah!
Jeff Barker 03:49
The timing for every single price drop, there was an interest rate change right after.
Dakota Barker 03:52
Yeah.
Alfonso Cuadra 03:53
And if only you would have price dropped before that interest rate, you know, if you would have started, where you ended up, you probably would have sold these properties.
Dakota Barker 04:00
Yeah, we would have been fine. And we just we couldn't catch the interest rate going up.
Jeff Barker 04:05
It's like trying to catch a falling knife.
Dakota Barker 04:07
Yeah. So we were in a private mortgage. We were paying out of pocket for this mortgage, right? Because there's supposed to be flips. There's no income coming in. They're just sitting there vacant. And we're just bleeding money. Every single month.
Jeff Barker 04:21
There's two specifically, two single family homes that we had flipped. Renovations complete. And together it was $10,000 a month in interest payments.
Alfonso Cuadra 04:32
Wow!
Dakota Barker 04:32
Yeah, and remember, we don't have a job!
Alfonso Cuadra 04:34
S*** was going down. Okay, for the lack of better words. like how much stress does that put on your relationship?
Dakota Barker 04:42
A lot.
Jeff Barker 04:44
It does!
Dakota Barker 04:44
A lot.
Jeff Barker 04:45
There was such a grind, though, that it almost didn't even feel that much pressure on the relationship but stress levels went up for sure.
Alfonso Cuadra 04:51
So you guys, you guys were able to come like, I guess communicate because I don't think a lot of people could do that. You know?
Jeff Barker 04:57
We were in it together and we knew we were in it together. It's not like like one person made a mistake, and there's resentment.
Alfonso Cuadra 05:03
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 05:03
It's "we're both in this together."
Alfonso Cuadra 05:05
And so this is happening. What are you feeling? Like, what's the feeling like?
Dakota Barker 05:09
Stress was high, we saw the bank account going down, and we were like, "We need to fix this." We didn't know what the fix was because we didn't want- We didn't want to do a long term rental, and then the market, you know, comes back up, or the interest rates go down. And now we're stuck with this long term tenant because that wasn't going to be the plan. It also wasn't going to cover our private mortgage. We were-
Jeff Barker 05:34
And to sell a tentative property is-
Dakota Barker 05:36
Is tough.
Jeff Barker 05:36
-is not the same as selling a brand newly renovated top to bottom property.
Dakota Barker 05:39
Yeah. So we just- we were going through all these options, do we furnish it? Do we try to do short term rental? But in Ottawa, you can't do short term rental. So do we try to like MacGyver a way that we can do short term rental with them? So we're going through all these options to try to figure this out, but we were scrambling. Like there was nothing that was coming out that was clear. It was just-
Jeff Barker 05:58
I feel like we were spinning our tires, right? We were going in circles just trying to like- I think we tried the same strategy a couple of times.
Alfonso Cuadra 06:02
Which most people I think it's- it's fair because most people would- people are trying to survive. Yeah, people are gonna do whatever they have to do to survive.
Dakota Barker 06:10
Yeah, we knew that we wanted to get through it. We knew that this was something that we had to do. Because we knew this wasn't going to be the last properties we had, we knew that this wasn't going to take us out.
Jeff Barker 06:21
We weren't going to let ourselves fail.
Dakota Barker 06:23
Yeah. And that's actually- that was what we told ourselves when we left our jobs. We -at the beginning of that year, we-
Alfonso Cuadra 06:30
"We're in it to win it."
Jeff Barker 06:31
Yes.
Dakota Barker 06:31
Yeah, we are not gonna- we're going to take this leap of faith, we're not going to let ourselves fail. And suddenly, like months later, we're in this situation that we're like, "oh, man, we could fail." But yeah, we were in it together, we knew that this- we want to do real estate, that we had to figure it out, because this was not going to be what- what took us out. So thankfully, through a lot of discussions with you and trying to brainstorm on how to make this work, and we finally came up with a solution. But it took a really long time. And we tried different strategies. We-
Jeff Barker 07:00
We're talking like five months.
Dakota Barker 07:02
Yeah, we tried to do a rent-to-own with it. We actually did furnish one of them, which is a whole other story. But we furnished it in 48 hours with $2,000. It's a three bed, two bath full house, we furnished the whole thing in 24 hours with $2,000.
Alfonso Cuadra 07:19
And what was the objective? Like just buyout time? Buy time.
Dakota Barker 07:22
Buy time, so the idea was-
Jeff Barker 07:23
Short term rental or medium term rental it?
Dakota Barker 07:25
Yeah, it was to do a medium term rental just to create something like some kind of income to at least patch the bleed. So we could figure out how to do this and not just stress about bleeding.
Alfonso Cuadra 07:36
Yeah. And you're not the only one that went through that. Right? There's, there's people that got completely wiped out during that time.
Dakota Barker 07:42
Yeah.
Alfonso Cuadra 07:42
Right. And you guys just held on strong enough to even see the solution. See the other side. Yeah, you know, so that's incredible. So-
Jeff Barker 07:50
Well it definitely helped having you in our corner.
Alfonso Cuadra 07:53
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 07:53
That really helped. And I think actually one of the smartest things that we did, and as we tell the story, I'm kind of realizing it was to reach out to you. Just before all of this happened. Like, obviously, that wasn't the intention, but-
Alfonso Cuadra 08:05
It was good times. Yeah. It was everything was life was good. You know, I remember, we started a coaching program, we were you know, obviously, the objective was to buy multifamily. But then we had to, you know, we obviously had to pivot.
Jeff Barker 08:19
And that ended up being the main focus.
Dakota Barker 08:22
And that's important, right, because we had this discussion a lot, but you can't grow when you're stuck in this spot of like confusion-
Jeff Barker 08:29
Survival?
Dakota Barker 08:29
-and survival. And you're just like, you're gripping with like your fingertips just to hang on, you can't grow out of that, because you're stuck, your brain is full of this fear, basically, of what's going to happen if we don't figure this out. So it probably took longer than we wanted it to. But it was so important to get to where we are now where we are able to grow.
Alfonso Cuadra 08:50
Let's talk about the strategy, you know, it flipped to joint venture, what you've done is like you've restructured the deal. So you're going to add more units, right? So you brought on a partner that can help you with the qualifying power, and then it's going to be a homerun. Right? And so for people that are wondering, like, how does this kind of work, people that are looking for, like, maybe ideas or options to, you know, fix a situation, or how to make it a home run, so kind of go through that process.
Dakota Barker 09:21
Yeah, I think the biggest thing, like if you're watching this and you like, why didn't you just refinance the property and get out of your private mortgage? That makes the most sense.
Jeff Barker 09:28
Remembmer; we don't have jobs.
Dakota Barker 09:29
Yeah, we didn't have T4s, right? So we couldn't just walk into this property and ref- that would have been a great solution. But we couldn't go to the bank and say, "Hey, can I get a mortgage? Can you give me this great interest rate? And you know, we'll rent it out, and we'll be fine."
Alfonso Cuadra 09:42
Because the idea was not to keep it.
Jeff Barker 09:43
That's right.
Dakota Barker 09:44
That wasn't the original idea. It was, the idea was to flip it. So we had to back-
Jeff Barker 09:46
Yeah. And our flips were like, the longest flip I think was probably four months or something like that? So you're not holding on to the private mortgage for that long.
Dakota Barker 09:55
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 09:55
And so it actually makes sense to pay that amount of interest to have the ease of financing.
Dakota Barker 09:59
Yeah, so now we're trying to restructure this, we can't get that mortgage. So the idea is now bring on somebody who can. So someone who does have a strong T4. I always say someone that the bank is going to love. So we decided to bring someone on that could qualify for that mortgage, which is where the flip to JB comes in.
We basically sold him the properties in like, an unofficial-official way sold him the properties, but through a joint venture, maintained ownership, majority ownership of the property, so gave him some equity. And then we were able to maintain ownership.
Alfonso Cuadra 10:36
So you reduced the interest, which now the deal makes sense. And now you're gonna go improve the asset. We're now it's going to be a cash flowing asset.
Jeff Barker 10:44
Yeah. Because now we're adding we're adding units to the property as well. There's gonna be two tenants under each roof.
Dakota Barker 10:50
Yeah. And- and thankfully, that's actually how we started in real estate was adding units to single family homes which was-
Jeff Barker 10:56
Yeah we just went back to our roots.
Dakota Barker 10:57
Yeah. But it was something we were comfortable with.
Alfonso Cuadra 11:00
Yeah
Dakota Barker 11:00
So now suddenly, we're in the super uncomfortable- well we were in this super uncomfortable situation, bleeding money, very stressed. We bring on this partner and som- suddenly, we're doing something that we're super comfortable with that we can do no problem.
Alfonso Cuadra 11:14
Yeah.
Dakota Barker 11:14
So-
Jeff Barker 11:14
And we're no longer bleeding.
Dakota Barker 11:15
Yeah, so we got some other financial partners who came on as equity partners, no more private mortgages or private lending on these properties. So brought on some equity partners for it. And we're actually in the middle of doing the renovations now called in the old Reno team that were like, "Hey, you thought we left. Come back and do some STs for us."
And yeah, now we're doing something that we know, well, we're comfortable with. And it's going to be a great project for us a great project for all the partners involved. Actually, my mom is one of the investors and she gets to own equity in a property.
Alfonso Cuadra 11:48
Beautiful, beautiful. It's a win win, win, win win. Yeah,
Dakota Barker 11:51
It totally is!
Alfonso Cuadra 11:52
I love that.
Dakota Barker 11:53
Yeah.
Alfonso Cuadra 11:53
And so now, I mean, the transition now that, you know, like, you can breathe, you know, $6 million property 24 units looking at, you know, multiple millions of dollars in real estate, you know? I mean, you guys are like true investors, like building your portfolio. And so, let's fast forward, you guys leave your jobs. Like real estate as an idea is one thing. But you know, did you submit resignation letters? And what was that like? Did you do it together?
Jeff Barker 12:26
Nope. Dakota did it- so okay, it was we were- we have to back up I think a little bit a little bit before this. By the way. None of this started with wanting to be entrepreneurs. Right?
Dakota Barker 12:39
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 12:39
This was, let's buy some properties so that we can kind of-
Dakota Barker 12:44
Supplement more than-
Jeff Barker 12:45
Supplement and have kind of retirement plan with that.
Alfonso Cuadra 12:48
Yeah.
Dakota Barker 12:48
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 12:49
So it was supposed to be just a side gig.
Dakota Barker 12:51
And then the side gig got very, very busy. Because we had four projects, four flips happening at the same time, while we were also in our full time jobs. Yeah. And because we thought we were going to be ultimate flippers and make a bunch of money off of that which we now know.
Alfonso Cuadra 13:03
HGTV!
Dakota Barker 13:04
Yeah, we now know that didn't quite happen.
Jeff Barker 13:05
Actually a company did reach out to us.
Alfonso Cuadra 13:07
Okay.
Jeff Barker 13:08
To do something like that.
Alfonso Cuadra 13:09
I see that, I see that. I see you guys doing a show. you know?
Dakota Barker 13:12
Maybe one day, we'll see. But it got really busy. And we were like, "You know what? If we're gonna do this, this seriously, we need to be able to invest the right amount of time into it."
Jeff Barker 13:21
Yeah, one of us needs to leave our jobs.
Dakota Barker 13:23
One of us needs to leave our jobs. And it went back and forth a lot. There was the Jeff will leave first and then I'll go on maternity leave in like a year or two years and then just never go back.
Alfonso Cuadra 13:35
Maternity leave. So you guys were really like-
Jeff Barker 13:38
We were four years into our relationship.
Dakota Barker 13:40
Yeah, we were engaged. So this was like also planning a wedding.
Alfonso Cuadra 13:44
So yeah, you had a whole plan, like laid out here. You know?
Dakota Barker 13:46
Yeah, yeah. So-
Alfonso Cuadra 13:48
You look like planners.
Dakota Barker 13:49
Just a little bit. It went back and forth like he'll leave first I'll leave first. I was in healthcare in COVID. That was really tough. And Jeff could see what it was doing to me from a mental health perspective. So he was like, "You know what, you need to get out of the hospital, you need to get out of health care. Why don't you leave first?" So we finalized it, I put in my two weeks notice it felt soooo good!
Jeff Barker 14:16
This was in December?
Dakota Barker 14:17
It was in December. And I did it in a way that they wouldn't give me one of my days off for my holidays. So I did it in a way that my last day was the day before they wouldn't give me off.
Alfonso Cuadra 14:30
That's not spiteful at all!
Dakota Barker 14:33
Anyways, I put in my two weeks, it felt really good. So now I'm out of my job. Jeff is still in his job. Then-
Jeff Barker 14:41
I was watching you-
Alfonso Cuadra 14:42
Were you- were you a little jelly?
Jeff Barker 14:44
Yes of course.
Dakota Barker 14:46
Jeff was a little jelly!
Jeff Barker 14:47
But I was also watching and Dakota was still very busy. And I wanted to help but I was stuck in my office doing meetings and stuff that I didn't care about right? As time went on I started to resent my job more and more because I was trying to build something and that was getting in the way at this point. So I think I lasted a month.
Dakota Barker 14:52
Yeah!
Jeff Barker 14:54
The plan was one year, right?
Dakota Barker 15:08
The plan was a year.
Jeff Barker 15:09
One year, and then I was gonna leave.
Alfonso Cuadra 15:11
So you write these letters.
Jeff Barker 15:13
The timing was right.
Alfonso Cuadra 15:14
The second you press send; what are you feeling?
Dakota Barker 15:20
It was mixed i the whole time, the whole process, I was like I need to get out of here. I don't want to be in this position anymore. And then when it actually came to sending the letter, it was really hard. Because medicine was, was a job. It was also supposed to be my career. Right? Like medicine was something that I specifically went to school for I specifically graduated for.
And in the end, I like I still loved the medicine component of it. There were just other pieces of it that obviously didn't work out very well. So it was hard, because I was like, this was like six years of my life that I put into being in this job in this career. So actually submitting it was really tough.
But once I did, I think I still had some mixed emotions, because I was like, you know, "should I have just gone to like, maybe I'll just go do a- another job, another medical job, maybe like this one wasn't right." So I was still having these like back and forth. Like, "am I really going to give up six years of this, of like, training for this? And then six years of working in this career?" I got over it pretty quick. And then I was really excited with the back and forth-
Alfonso Cuadra 16:29
Yeah.
Dakota Barker 16:31
-left my head
Alfonso Cuadra 16:32
So same question for you. You're about to press send.
Jeff Barker 16:35
So I think when I press send, I was excited, pure excitement, because I analyze things. So I'd already done all that self talk before.
Alfonso Cuadra 16:47
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 16:48
So I knew that that was kind of what I wanted to do. We also had four flips on the go, right?
Alfonso Cuadra 16:53
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 16:53
So we saw the potential in what was that was going to bring? Yeah. And so we thought, okay, I have RRSPs from my time in my career, I'd also been like, laid off for an IT job. So I it wasn't like my first big job out of school. So I had been through multiple, through multiple companies. So it wasn't like that big of a deal, I guess to leave one job, and then maybe just go find another one.
Alfonso Cuadra 17:19
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 17:19
If I absolutely had to. But I knew that I had RRSPs.
Alfonso Cuadra 17:22
So it was like, okay, it was a relief that now you could do these- work on these projects. And so, I mean, I feel that's so inspiring. I know that who is ever watching this, and they're holding on to their job or whatever, by the way, we're not telling people to leave their jobs. But if it's something you need to do this is this is what you got to do.
And I definitely, you know, want to congratulate you guys for, you know, making that decision early versus holding on to something. And maybe when all of this would have been happening, maybe you wouldn't have fought as much you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have rose up to the occasion, you know? So what are tips?
Dakota Barker 18:01
So the first one is going to tie in to my second one. So the first one is to remove the ceiling that you've probably created for yourself. I think a lot of people think that they can't do things, and it's all in here. So if you're able to remove that ceiling and think of what the potential is, and what the potential that you could live up to, could be. It's a really incredible feeling. And I think so many people are living with this artificial ceiling that they've created for themselves.
Alfonso Cuadra 18:32
Yeah.
Dakota Barker 18:34
And to go along with that. So like how do you get rid of it? Which not the easiest thing I'd say is to get into the right rooms. So make sure that you- you know people always say don't be the smartest person in the room, if you're the smartest person you're in the wrong room. Get out of that room, get into a room that you're surrounded by people doing bigger things than you are because then you're going to be able to step into that space. So you're gonna be able to step out of that ceiling. And then the other thing is build your resiliency, because there-
Alfonso Cuadra 19:07
It's not for the faint of heart.
Dakota Barker 19:07
No it's not! So like it's gonna kick you down, it's gonna be hard. So figure out what's going to make you resilient. What's gonna get you to push through those like really hard time because there will be, I don't care what HGTV looks like, I don't care what social media looks like.
Jeff Barker 19:26
Flips don't happen in 30 minutes?
Dakota Barker 19:29
It's hard. It is hard work and things suck sometimes, but you have to figure out what's going to make you resilient and what is it that's going to push you through those hard times. So I think that's those are the-
Alfonso Cuadra 19:42
I love that it's it's important. Jeff!
Jeff Barker 19:44
I think changing your circle or not necessarily changing it, upgrading it, but you want to make sure that you're surrounding yourself with the right people.
Alfonso Cuadra 19:53
Yes.
Jeff Barker 19:54
People that are inspiring you.
Alfonso Cuadra 19:56
Yes.
Jeff Barker 19:56
And not just trying to keep you down. You always talk about the crab bucket. Right? You don't want to be hanging around with the crabs or the pigeons.
Dakota Barker 20:03
The naysayers.
Jeff Barker 20:04
The naysayers. Yeah. Yeah.
Alfonso Cuadra 20:06
So quickly, quotes, phrases, proverbs that have inspired you, we'll start with Dakota.
Dakota Barker 20:14
So I don't know if you know this, but I use this a lot in- if I do talks, if I do presentations, and it's something that you said, at a boot camp, you say versions of it often. But I think it was probably a year ago, actually, at this time. And you said "Want more to give more." And that has stuck with me ever since you said it at I think a boot camp about a year ago.
And I use- I have a slide actually, that moves into a bunch of my different presentations it doesn't matter what the presentation is about. It is my last slide. And I just I thought that was so beautiful, coming from- coming from a place of like a career of service, right? And trying to figure out how I can still be of service in the world of real estate, because everyone looks at real estate investors, they're like, you know, they're out there to make money.
They're out there to like, you know, fill their pockets. And I thought that was such a cool thing that you said was, "if you're somebody who is scared of wanting more, you're probably the person that should have more."
Jeff Barker 21:17
So you can give more.
Dakota Barker 21:17
Because if you want more for other people, and therefore are holding back what you want, if you are the person that's going to have more, you're going to spread that.
Alfonso Cuadra 21:17
Yes.
Dakota Barker 21:27
If- yeah, if anything, those people that are trying to hold themselves back, because they don't want to take up too much space, they should take up that space, because then they are going to give that to other people.
And I just thought that was such a beautiful thing. And such a great way to look at entrepreneurship. And like in our case, real estate investing, and it gave me a space to want more and to be able to be from a position of service within the real estate world. So-
Alfonso Cuadra 21:54
Love it.
Dakota Barker 21:54
Yeah.
Alfonso Cuadra 21:55
Jeff.
Jeff Barker 21:56
Mine's gonna be a lot shorter.
Dakota Barker 21:58
It normally is. You can tell who likes to talk.
Jeff Barker 22:03
"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."
Alfonso Cuadra 22:05
I love it. I love it. And it's true. I always tell people to take inventory of the people that are around you, because people's lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer groups. Change your peer groups. Change your life. Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future. You guys are amazing. I know you can inspire a lot of people. How can people reach out to you?
Jeff Barker 22:29
Like social media? Facebook, we're on Instagram.
Alfonso Cuadra 22:32
Yeah.
Jeff Barker 22:32
We have a website.
Alfonso Cuadra 22:33
All this stuff will be underneath.
Dakota Barker 22:35
Yeah, I always say like, it's great to like, reach out on Facebook and Instagram, but book a zoom call with us. Or like if you're-
Jeff Barker 22:43
Our calendars on our website.
Dakota Barker 22:44
Yeah, like we're pretty accessible. So like, get on Zoom, even if you're like "oh, I don't know. I don't know what we'll talk about. I don't know what value we can add." Like, just to have a conversation.
Alfonso Cuadra 22:54
Yeah. I love that.
Jeff Barker 22:55
We love to connect with new people.
Alfonso Cuadra 22:56
Yeah! Alfonso loves you! Alfonso loves you and we'll see you all at the top! Woooh!
Carl Richards 23:05
Thanks for listening to The WealthGenius Podcast. If you have a question or comment about something you heard today, reach out to The Godfather via social media or email him anytime. All that information is in the show notes. And of course don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode of The WealthGenius Podcast. The WealthGenius Podcast. Until next time, see you at the top.
