Join Bronson for an inspiring episode with Aaron Ameen, host of The Hybrid Real Estate Professional Podcast. Aaron, a management consultant and father of three, shares his journey from buying his first rental property in Las Vegas to owning eight cash-flowing rentals across three states while working full-time. Discover how he transitioned to long-distance investing, navigated life changes like COVID and family growth, and now syndicates a $9M residential assisted living development in Houston. Aaron reveals time management hacks, the power of masterminds, and embracing a hybrid investor identity to balance a W2 job and real estate.
Learn his “20-Minute Investor” system for managing rentals efficiently and overcoming mindset barriers to scale.
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Full Transcript:
Bronson Hill: All right. Welcome to the Mailbox Money Show. I am your host, Bronson Hill.
I am here today, and of course, I’m here today. But I’m here today with a friend, Aaron Ameen, who’s really done a lot of things. He works in the corporate world.
He also is a hybrid real estate professional, which means he’s doing real estate on the side. His evolution as an investor has been really interesting to me. Because when I started, I was doing single-family, and then I went up to do multifamily. Now, I’m really doing as much in real estate right now. We’re currently doing a lot of buying businesses, oil and gas, and other types of projects.
So, as an investor, I think there’s really a case for saying, “Hey, where have I come from?”. Celebrating that, learning from those things, and continuing to grow. And realizing that you may stay in a certain class, or the real estate, or the multifamily. Or whatever, or you may branch out and do other things. And so, I just love when people are growing, they’re applying themselves. It’s really, there’s this famous quote about being the man in the arena, right?
It’s not the critic that counts, but it’s the man who’s actually in the arena. Who’s actually the one that is actually living, that he’s actually playing the game. He’s actually doing it.
So, Aaron, welcome today. How you doing, brother? Really good to see you.
Aaron Ameen: Hey, thank you for having me. Appreciate being here.
Bronson Hill: I was just on your show recently, had a great time. Really loved hearing a little bit of your story. I wanted to have you on the show here as well. So, evolving as a real estate investor. I know you want to give folks just a sense of kind of how you got started in real estate. Just like the one-minute version of, “Here’s how I started, this is what I’m doing now,”. And kind of how you got there.
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, absolutely.
So, right now I’m located in Houston, Texas, with my wife and my three young kids. We have three kids aged three and under, so a house full of love and chaos. But before this, about six years ago, we bought our first rental property. We’re living in Las Vegas at the time, and it was not very adventurous what we did. We bought one mile away from our primary residence.
And put 30% down on a house that had been newly reconstructed. So, we didn’t have some flashy entrance, no creative crazy strategies. We just bought a rental property just to get in the game, or get in the arena, like you’re saying. Over time, that evolved over the course of about three years.
We bought eight properties across three states. So, we started one mile away from our primary residence. But over time, as we fell in love with the process of becoming real estate investors, embracing that identity. We got more courageous over time, some by circumstance and some just by knowledge. And building our network and connections. Ultimately, we own eight properties across three states, the closest of which is a thousand miles away from us now.
So, we started as localized investors with very little to no knowledge, and grew into long-distance investors. And then, where we are now, over time, we’ve kind of evolved, and now we’re actually doing a development project. We’re building two residential assisted living homes here in a suburb of Houston. So we will be not only building those. But we’ll be running the business that overlays on top of that once they’re complete. That’s, I guess, the shell version.
Bronson Hill: That’s great. Well, and I think, like I said, everybody has a development of how they start. And they go from one to another. So, what was the reason for you? You wanted to go from doing single-family in the area you live in to out-of-area. I guess that’s one transition.
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, so I think a lot of our situation was born out of circumstance. So, when we started investing, it was 2019, pre-COVID. I was working in the entertainment industry. My wife was working at a nonprofit. We did not have any children. Dual income, no children, in a city with low cost of living allowed us to save money. We were able to, frankly, use most of our own money to build our portfolio.
And at some point, no matter how rich you are, everyone runs out of money. We were not particularly wealthy to begin with. So, I think we exhausted our resources by investing our own money. We continued to save up. We used the cash flow from our rentals to snowball forward and buy more rentals. But once COVID hit, my entertainment career evaporated.
We had to move, relocate. Went back up to Seattle, where I’m from, and we had to decide. Are we gonna…
Bronson Hill: I’m from Seattle as well. They come and yeah, I say went to University of Washington. That’s awesome.
Aaron Ameen: Oh, nice. Me too. Well, there we go, fellow Husky. But my professional network was up there because I went to college there. Entertainment industry had more or less evaporated with COVID. And so we had to decide, are we gonna sell all of our properties?
We had four at the time in Vegas, just to buy one house in Seattle. Are we gonna find a way to be long-distance investors? So, it’s almost like a forced evolution. Yeah, once we did that and we conquered a lot of that fear. Moving during COVID, managing long distance, we self-managed for the majority of the time that we’ve owned those properties.
It kind of like one of those, once you conquer that fear and you realize the world doesn’t end. The checks are still coming in. We made some mistakes, but we also overcame every challenge that we’ve faced so far. And I think the more we proved that model out, even just by circumstance. It gave us courage to then invest out of state again.
And so, what started as a very risk-averse strategy, investing in our backyard. Turned into, “Hey, we can learn, we can keep evolving, and developing into long-distance investors.” As far as how that turned into, development and residential assisted living, that’s a bit of a longer story. But I think the first five and a half years of investing in rental properties. Just becoming as good as we possibly can at that. It’s what gave us the foundational, skills to be able to take on a bigger project. With a lot more zeros at the end and a lot more responsibility. I don’t know that we would have had the courage to take on that project. If we didn’t have a strong foundation from our time with rental properties.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, I think this is the thing too. As an investor, people don’t realize you can take from your life experience. A lot of people, like if we’re in a business, right? There’s a lot of experience with numbers and being able to dollars and cents. It’s going to be able to say, “I’m gonna do real estate,”. Or if you’ve done stuff in single-family, you can take that and go to multifamily.
We started doing single-family years ago. And then I realized it wasn’t really meeting our goals as quickly as I wanted. So I said, “Well, I’m gonna do multifamily,” and so we did that. We did four single-family unit properties. Then we went to 225-unit properties. Like, “Well, how could you do that?”
It’s like, well, I use other people’s money, and I didn’t bring all the money, right? I brought some of the money and I partnered, and it was a way I could gain experience. So, 2,500 multifamily units later, you learn a lot of things along the way. There’s things we do the same, things we do different, and all sorts of different things.
So, for you, I think one of the most interesting things to me, is for you to continue to make these shifts. So now you’ve gone. Now you’re actually syndicating. I know you have your podcast that I was on, and so you’re actually getting investors. And you’re syndicating real estate. How is that adjustment for you?
Obviously, you get to a certain point, eventually run out of money, your own money. And so, Robert Kiyosaki, one time I heard him say, I kind of really serious. It’s selfish to just use your own money. So it’s like to be able, like a lot of the people on these deals that you’re doing. But how has that been an adjustment for you? So if someone listening is like, “Oh, I’m thinking about raising money or doing syndication,”. How has that been for you?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, I got to, like, add some context here. But it’s not like we just flipped a switch one day. And we went from $150,000 rental properties to a nine million dollar development deal.
Like, I’ve joined and participated in multiple masterminds over the last three to four years. There’s one main one that I’m in where it’s almost entirely focused on larger commercial deals. So, the people that I’m surrounding myself with. I know you and I talked when you came on my show about this. It’s like you put yourself in a room where the normal activity is taking on these larger deals. Dealing with the challenges that come with those deals. So, I get to watch and learn by osmosis from other operators as they navigate challenges in those mastermind groups. It’s not just about painting rosy pictures. It’s really learning from the lived experience of other people who have done what you’re trying to do.
Yeah, so I really absorbed as much of that as I possibly could. And I was also going through lots of different underwriting, simulations, and financial modeling. Just becoming more and more comfortable with deals of that size and magnitude. And trying to understand the problems that people face.
So, I just want to give that context that while I was running my single-family. And getting as good as I can at that, I was also kind of looking ahead to the next chapter. Trying to build that, next layer of skills that I would need in order to operate at that level.
And then the other piece of context is residential assisted living. So, that’s a niche that I think people are starting to see pop up on BiggerPockets lists. People talk about cash flow and all that, but it is much more than just a real estate niche. It is a business. It’s a 24-7 business. People’s lives are in your hands. It’s a pretty serious, high-gravity decision that people make when they put their loved ones in an assisted living home.
We had some exposure to that through two single-family houses we owned in Las Vegas. They were actually leased to a company that provided assisted living, right?
So, we got this idea that they were on five-year commercial-style triple net leases. Where they paid us around every month. They covered almost all repairs except major maintenance and capex, and it was a great deal for us. It was the closest thing to mailbox money. I’m very reserved about using the, what I call the p-word, passive. When talking about rental properties, but these were pretty close to that.
And so, that planted the idea in our head. And then, as we got more and more involved. We joined a residential assisted living-specific mastermind group and gamed out the business plan. That’s what we’re essentially using now for this development project.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, I love that. Well, I think there’s a few themes there. One is that you were exposed to something that was like, “Oh, hey, this is interesting,”. And you’re renting these out. They probably paid more in rent than other groups would pay. Like you said, it was an easier way to do it. They probably, maybe you or they had some extra insurance as well, but, like, it’s great.
It’s kind of like, I like hotels, I think, for that reason. That the challenge with some of the challenges, right? Like when you owned the land, it was different than you operating the business, right? You’re operating, I mean, it’s super high cash flow. You do the math, especially, like, where I live in California. You live in Texas, probably, like, people are paying five to ten K a month or more to live. And if you have five or eight people living in there, that’s a lot of cash every single month.
But then, someone’s got to be there all the time. You gotta have staff members around. Have somebody, like, day, night. You gotta have medical, whatever else is needed. All the different functions for the house. You’ve got a billion certifications. Like, it’s a lot, right?
Aaron Ameen: Absolutely, and I think, the other bit of context, right? Is that we had three kids in three years during this process of building our portfolio. And I’ve had my W-2 all throughout, my wife’s took breaks each of the times we had children. And everything refactored, right? Our whole financial life, more or less, flipped upside down. The amount of money, the monthly burn rate that it takes to sustain a family of five. It’s very different than two kids. We moved out of Las Vegas, which is a cheaper city, to Washington State, which is much more expensive. So, a lot of stuff changed, like in the background, in our personal lives.
Basically, we built a portfolio that we’re very proud of with our rental properties. And even net cash flow, net after all expenses. It was between four and five thousand dollars a month, which is healthy. But it wasn’t enough to sustain what we needed for our household anymore. And so, we really asked ourselves some difficult questions. “What do we want the next 10, 15, 20 years of our lives to look like from a lifestyle perspective? From a financial perspective?”. And all that. We kind of came to the conclusion that we had to do something different.
So, even though we had built this nice, steady stream of income and a good, stabilized portfolio. We liked the houses that we have. We’ve decided to even cycle out of some of those and pursue this bigger project. That also has a degree of impact, right? It’s senior care, memory care specifically. There’s a huge supply-demand mismatch.
So, we felt like we were able to refactor our personal lives and our personal goals. Find a strategy that we could feel really good about sinking our teeth into over the next 10 to 20 years. And solve multiple problems at once. And I think you also said this, right? You’re able to then open that opportunity up to other investors. So, we’re engineering a lot of upside for ourselves. But we can also bring other people on board to participate in that. And we just—we love everything about that.
Bronson Hill: Yeah. Yeah. No, it is.
It’s definitely an evolution, and everything sounds crazy until you do it. I remember, like, we’ve raised almost 50 million dollars now in the last six years. It’s like, oh my gosh, like, so many amazing things have happened. There’s been different challenges along the way, but it really is interesting. You have to kind of become a different person because, you know, I realized I couldn’t grow how I wanted. I couldn’t leave my corporate job. One of my goals was to leave. I couldn’t leave several years ago until I had done that, until I found a way to kind of cover my living expenses or cover my income.
And so, I guess, for you, you’re finding a way to do that through syndication. What would you say to someone who’s like…
Yeah, I know I want it. We talked about firing yourself in the book behind me, you’re firing yourself. But a lot of it has to do with cash flow, and a lot of people that are doing single-family, it’s the same problem that you’re sharing. It doesn’t get you, it’s not enough gas in the tank to get you where you need to go.
So, the logical conclusion is, okay, I need to use other people’s money. What’s the… like, what would you tell someone who’s kind of like, yeah, I know I probably should do that, but I don’t quite know how, or like, could I even pull that off? Could I even do that?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s two directions. I’ll take that one. One is, like, know your endgame, know your outcome. If you don’t have an expensive household or live in a high cost of living area, and you’ve got really good control over your monthly expenses and the lifestyle that you want for yourself, you can be happy with, five, six, seven thousand dollars a month. Then maybe that same portfolio that we built would be just fine for you. Right? But we know our circumstances and the lifestyle that we know we want, and the things we know we want to be able to do with our family change that math for us.
So, I do think really understanding where you, listener, specifically want to go is going to drive the types of strategies that you end up pursuing. And the second, as far as like whether, how would they go about doing it, or, you know, are they even capable—I think it’s kind of the strategy I use was putting myself in those rooms where people are doing it, and that’s the normal behavior.
If you put yourself in a room where people are doing big deals and they’re raising capital, they’re overcoming their fears, they’re sharing wisdom, they’re sharing vulnerabilities and challenges that they’ve had, not just the wins. That’s the kind of room you want to be in. Because then, when you do decide to take that bigger risk or that bigger challenge, you’ve already been learning from others, and you’re in the right room where when you hit a roadblock or a challenge, you’re capable of getting past it and not giving up.
Because I do think, I mean, even in the limited time that we’ve been scoping and working on this project, there have been some very challenging moments. And I can see, without the support network or without the exposure to the other people that have done it, moments where I might have given up.
So, I really believe in the network and the power of those groups.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it really is amazing. I mean, the idea of having mentors. It doesn’t have to be a paid mentor, but just being able to have someone that you can send an email, pick up the phone, call them, “Hey, I’ve got this problem,” and because there are problems that you don’t even know what questions to ask, you don’t know what’s going to happen, right? So, being in a room where someone can kind of walk you through that is so valuable as an investor.
I mean, I first started doing this, I’ve done over 2,500 calls now with high net worth investors. And when I first started doing this, it was like, oh, I don’t really know the answer. “Let me get back to you.” I have to, like, do that a lot. They just didn’t know, and that’s… well, it’s kind of like, okay, I gotta kind of do this.
But in the beginning, I think people will respect you if you ask for help, both the mentor, as well as somebody who is a potential investor. We don’t think we should try to fake that, “Oh, we just know it.” You say, “Oh, well, that’s a great question. Let me get back to you.” And then it also gives you a chance to follow up with them, right?
So, it’s actually a good thing in sales. It’s all about having a follow-up process. And when you’re raising capital, it is a sales role. People don’t realize, like, it actually is selling. You may not be actually pitching, but you still have something you are pitching, you are pitching your deal.
And so, I think mentors are incredibly valuable. So, for you, I guess talk to me a little bit about like, I think I’m most interested. We talked a lot on the show about different mindset-related things.
But, like, what’s the mindset that, for you, was really limiting you? That you saw a limit of, like, “Can I do this? Can I not?”
And also, maybe even just, like, not just the mindset, but like how supportive was your wife in that, or your parents, or was there some resistance from anybody in your life? The kind of, like, fought you on it a bit?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, so this kind of boils back to the brand and the podcast that I run, the Hybrid Real Estate Professional. And the idea behind that is that people can develop the skills and the network, and the path of becoming a real estate investor while still working full-time and, in many cases, raising a family. It’s not that you have to choose one or the other.
A part of that is being willing to share what you’re doing. A lot of people, maybe they own two or three rental properties on the side, but all they ever talk about on LinkedIn or their social media is whatever their core occupation is, or maybe the recreation and stuff they do. But you’re doing interesting stuff on the side that frankly, a lot of people might take interest in, and some people have money they want to deploy, or they want to get into real estate. And by sharing openly about it and getting past that kind of fear, I think that opened up a lot of conversations and helped me build a network of people that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.
So, I kind of embraced what I call the hybrid identity. And I think that even on LinkedIn, for example, I have a core job that I don’t have any intention of leaving anytime soon, and I do that job, but I also talk about that.
“Hey, I’m a hybrid. I’m a hybrid real estate professional. I invest in real estate. I’m building two residential assisted living homes.”
I’ve got my podcast. So, I think just by pushing myself past that limit of being afraid to share that decision on its own opened up a ton of different opportunities and really made me feel more open and free about pursuing real estate, versus, like, “Oh, I need to compartmentalize this and put it on a shelf somewhere, and I can only talk about it in private.” Just being open about that definitely changed the game.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it was muted there. I had a great conversation with myself. Now, your story’s a little bit different in that way, because for me, I had a sales job, and I felt like I couldn’t really share. Because again, I was working remotely, and I was going to hospitals and everything, but I was, like, taking calls in the car after hours, 6 a.m. I was kind of doing whatever, and I was kind of dialing it down a little bit at work so I could kind of dial it up on the real estate side.
And I did have a boss that kind of found out, “Oh, hey, what I was doing,” and then it kind of became this big issue.
Have you had any pushback at work? A lot of people that are in a job are concerned that the perception becomes reality at all. If this person is engaged over here on these other things, then they’re less engaged at their W-2, or at their work?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that’s when you’re open about stuff that you’re doing on the side, it’s inevitable that you’re gonna push up against that boundary line at some points. I’ve had conversations like, I’ve definitely, what do you say, got my hand close to the stove. But I then also mostly resolved that just by having conversations with my managers and superiors.
Now, I’m a management consultant, so I bill on different projects. So now I’m actually much more comfortable with being transparent and just even checking before I make assumptions, right? If I go on to a new project, I explain, “Hey, this is part of my personality. This is part of what I do. I am committed to the deliverables and the expectations that you have for me in this role, but also, this is an important part of my life,” and I try to be upfront about that. And, of course, if I am not meeting expectations, then they have every right.
I do think you kind of put yourself under a magnifying glass. If you share that you’re working on something else, then your expectations of performing at your main job become higher because you’re kind of working from behind, because people inherently assume you’re distracted or disengaged. So you do have to be willing to be sharp and make sure you’re still contributing value.
That’s a really good call-up.
Bronson Hill: Do you feel like that’s a lot of pressure? I mean, do you, like, because I know in any job, there’s times where things are going well and things kind of, like, at least in sales, like, okay, all these good things are happening, and just sometimes, like, maybe you have—maybe it’s hard to quantify sales. It’s like, you sell this amount of things, you see it here, or daily you’re ranked against your peers.
But I mean, have you felt, like, I mean, having three young kids, doing all this real estate stuff, and working full-time? Do you feel like it’s a recipe for burnout a bit?
Aaron Ameen: What I’m doing right now, as far as we’re booting up this development project, and yeah, we’re syndicating and doing a lot of things for the first time, has been particularly challenging. Buying rental properties and operating them, even from afar, I believe, is truly manageable.
So, if you, six, seven months ago, asked me that same question… Part of, like, I do some coaching for real estate investors, and I help people kind of replicate a similar playbook to what we did, which is work full-time, be able to, build the foundational skills, but then have systems in place to be able to do it without taking over your life.
We have basically what we call the 20-Minute Investor, which is, if you dedicate 20 minutes consistently per day, that becomes part of your daily routine. That’s really all you need to effectively manage rental properties. People talk about how the stress and the burden of that can feel all-consuming, but if you really boil down the activities that you need to do, especially if you’re remote, even the stereotypical 3 a.m. toilet call, that stuff can be avoided with systems.
And when you do have a quote-unquote emergency, the actual time that it takes to get on the phone with a vendor, or like, dispatch somebody out to the property, it’s not like that takes four or five hours out of your time. It’s usually a series of phone calls and text messages, whatever it is.
So, the actual amount of time is really not as much as people think, and if you can boil it down and just be consistent like, don’t only think about your rental properties once a month or once every two months. Think about them consistently, square up your books regularly, and just put the right people in place. I think it is manageable, and we’ve proven that in our own lives. And, you know, I think if people actually treat it like a business and not an afterthought, then it shouldn’t take over your life.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, no, I think it is. You can prioritize, you can get really good. I know a guy in, like, one of my business entrepreneur groups that I’m in, runs a business, has a full-time gig where he’s high up in a bank and makes, you know, close to half a million dollars a year. And then he basically has another business that he does on the side that’s like… I mean, it’s… he’s got it down to, like, a few hours, like less than 10 hours a week for the side business, but he’s making, I don’t know, probably more money in his side business than he’s making in his job. But he’s got systems, he’s got… he calls himself, like, he’s a ninja when it comes to time management.
And like most stuff, a lot of things you can delegate. A lot of people think we’re the only ones that can do it, but especially when it’s not your main job, if it’s something else, certain things there are regular compliance things, imagine things you’re doing and things like that. But some stuff can really be sourced out.
What’s been the biggest time hack? That was a good tip you shared there. But what’s another time hack or time saver, or even like an app or something that you use?
It’s like, oh, this just totally… or time blocking… or what’s something that you do that’s like, this really helps when it comes to time management for me?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, so I kind of… the best exercise that I ever adopted was at the end of every week, I try and look back over the previous week and ask myself, “What could have been delegated? What could have been automated? And what could I just have not done entirely?” And so it’s like the process of elimination.
Maybe there’s nothing, right? Like, if you were super hyper-efficient and productive that week, maybe there’s nothing you’ll uncover. But if you ask yourself that question pretty frequently, whether it’s weekly or once a month, you’ll probably uncover a lot of waste, right? And I’m not talking necessarily about scrolling social media. That’s its own problem that probably most of us suffer from. But I’m talking about, like, what is a task that you undertook in your core business that you’re doing that was either not necessary, or at least not necessary for you to do.
And I have this kind of double lens on that, where if something, if a task does not require decision-making, and if it doesn’t require an actual decision to be made, and it’s something you’ve done more than once, then it becomes a candidate for either delegation or automation, right? If it doesn’t require you specifically to make a decision, and it’s something you think you’re gonna do again, get rid of it.
So, I think trying to be as ruthless as possible about what fits under that lens has definitely bought me back a lot of my time, and then also not being too stingy with, like, I have a VA that helps with a lot of that. A lot of that admin stuff.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, it helps a lot because once you get… like, I was in the beginning when I did this. I think this is good. It’s been a few years for me, but like, when I first started, it was challenging to learn a lot of these… like, we use ActiveCampaign… which is in marketing, some of these HubSpot, or what do you use? But it was just challenging to learn all these automations and setting things up, whatever. It took me a while.
But, like, a person I used to work with said, “Well, if I learn something, how to do it, if I learn how to do something, I can teach it,” right? And that’s just awesome because then you basically do it one time, and then you teach it, and then you never have to do it again, hopefully. You know, some things come up, at least you can step in, but it’s so great because then what happens now, several years later, my staff is like taking it there. They’re evolving on top of, like, levels on top of what I just set up in the beginning.
Right, I’m not a huge tech guy, but I embraced it because I knew I had to get it so I could teach it to someone else. And then, yeah, I mean, $8 an hour or $8.50 an hour, that’s more than triple the average wage of the Philippines. It’s three or four times, and so people are very happy to have the work, you know.
Aaron Ameen: Absolutely, and I think, you know, the VAs that I use are fractional. So instead of having to hire somebody where you have to guarantee them 20 hours a week or 40 hours a week, they bill for whatever I use them for. So if all I need them to do is take one email that I send them per week, and store some files in my Dropbox, and then send me a recap email, they’ll charge me $2, right, or whatever the amount of time that is. And so I can kind of use them as needed based on the tasks available.
So, I’ve identified a lot of repeatable stuff that they help me with, but I also can activate them for ad hoc stuff as it comes up. If we sell a house and we need to go shut off utilities and, like, do some closeout work, I can delegate as much of that as possible whatever doesn’t require my signature or a decision.
And so I think, again, just being… I don’t know if ruthless is the right word, but trying to be honest about, like, what can I get away from my plate and not being stingy, right? Like, I’m sure I could save that 60 or $100 a month on the VA, but then I would be reabsorbing all that work, which is time I have to borrow from my employer, which is not an option, or my family, which is not something I’m willing to do.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you read the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, it talks about the sequels of the camcorder method, where you’re basically… it’s like someone sitting over your shoulder recording everything you’re doing. And what you can do is there’s programs like Loom. It’s one create a short video, create a two-minute video, three-minute video on whatever the process is here. “I’m doing this, I’m clicking on here, I’m moving this over here, I’m writing this in here.”
And so we just have a series of Loom videos that we’re able to create for each other, and it’s awesome, right? And then people can take it and they can run with it.
So, I’ve got two full-time… I’ve got an executive assistant in the Philippines. I’ve got one that’s kind of a social media marketing. And a lot of people are like, “Oh my gosh, how do you do all this stuff? How do you…” I was like, “Well I don’t… it’s like we record this episode, and then it goes off, and somebody else does something else with it, and we have a team that does that.”
And so the amazing thing is, especially when you have money in your job, it can be really valuable to invest and put money into what you’re building next, which is your personal brand, which I think is really valuable.
So, that’s awesome. And, well, anything what else have we missed when it comes to really evolving as a real estate investor and kind of really stepping out and doing this? Is there anything that’s kind of coming up for you as we’re talking about this?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, I think just being conscious… like, I’ve come to really embrace this idea that life is not linear. Things don’t evolve if you try and make a 10-year model on a spreadsheet that says, “Buy one rental per year for 10 years,” and it’ll magically model my way to early retirement. Maybe that’s the case, but most people’s lives don’t unfold with exact 3% annual increases in their expenses and their income, right? There’s a lot of variables. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try and create a plan and long-term goals, but I think you have to give yourself permission to acknowledge when your circumstances have changed.
That’s what happened with us. If we didn’t have kids, or let’s say we only had one kid, maybe the eight… you know, the eight-property portfolio that was kicking off about sixty thousand dollars a year—like, that could be just fine, and we let that play out for the next 20, 30 years and enjoy the rest of our lives. But the math changed, the circumstances changed, and I think it took me a while to accept that those things had changed. And once I did, it gave me that permission that I needed. I gave myself that permission I needed to evolve and go and pursue a strategy that’s gonna meet the moment that we’re in now.
So, I think I would just reflect that back to people: be honest about your own circumstances and when something’s changed, and don’t change just for the sake of change. But, at a minimum, just meet yourself wherever you are and find the strategy that fits.
Bronson Hill: Yeah, that makes sense. That’s awesome. I just want to appreciate you for sharing. I think a lot of people are doing what you’re doing, but they’re not talking about what they’re doing as a hybrid investor, that they’re working full-time and doing it. And so I think anybody who is in that space should reach out and connect with you.
And we’re gonna kind of figure out how people can do that in a minute here. But again, just really want to celebrate the processes you have in place, the way you’ve worked hard and again, for someone who works full-time in a high-demand job, has three kids three and under, and also is really trying to do well in different areas of life, well done, brother. Just really appreciate you.
How can people reach out and connect with you and follow what you’re doing?
Aaron Ameen: Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Given some of what we discussed about workflows and saving time, I’m gonna say check out 20minuteinvestor.com. My business partner and I put together basically all of our workflows. So if we had 20 minutes a day for seven days a week, how would we actually spend that time? We film Loom videos with, you know, how do we put out offers? How do we do bookkeeping?
So all those workflows are actually available, along with a free workshop, at 20minuteinvestor.com. Would love for people to check it out and hopefully put some of that to use.
Bronson Hill: And 20minuteinvestor.com—that’s with the number two-zero. Okay, at two-zero, not spelled out, but two-zero minute investor.
And here it is right here. So awesome, man, that’s great. Love it. Love that you’re doing it.
Thanks, brother. Really appreciate the time. Thanks for being here. Looking forward to catching up with you soon.
Aaron Ameen: Thanks for having me on
Bronson Hill: Okay, so I really enjoyed this interview. If you can relate with having a job and basically trying to figure out how you’re gonna do all this investing on the side, you can absolutely relate with them. The thing I probably most related with and we just talked for a minute in between the end of the episode there is about how do you do it when you have your employer and they’re watching what you’re doing and you’re posting on social media.
It’s either got to be a special relationship with your employer, or they gotta really like what you’re doing. They gotta believe in your work. And if you tell them, “Hey, this is just outside of work time. I have people helping me with this. This is kind of a separate project,” sometimes I’ve seen people very high up in organizations be able to do this.
They’re at C-suite level things, or they’re operating in a very high-functioning job, but they have things on the side where they’re doing this with people in place. And so a lot of us just need to communicate expectations, and obviously navigating that can be a little tricky depending on your relationship with your boss. So I’d love for you to share this, the hybrid real estate investor, and love to know what you got out of it.
If you haven’t checked out our investment club, we have opportunities to invest, and you’re not hearing about the deals that we’re doing. We’re primarily doing stuff outside of real estate. Doing buying private businesses, oil and gas deals. We’re doing debt funds within real estate, but on the debt side and not the equity side, that are consistent cash flow. All these are cash flow investments, which really is the thing that really is hard to find within real estate.
So if you’re looking for cash flow, looking to fire yourself, you can check that out at the link below. Go to BronsonEquity.com. We’ll start a relationship with you and look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Mailbox Money Show.
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