Walking Success: From Real Estate to Firefighting, Trip Ian Horowitz Made

On a recent REsimpli podcast episode, Sharad Mehta met with former firefighter turned real estate mogul Ian Horowitz. The conversation begins with a friendly argument over Ian’s surfing photo and then veers onto his amazing real estate business.

Turning now to real estate, former Baltimore firefighter Ian and his business partner sought financial stability away from their prior employment. Beginning small, they developed diversified commercial systems allowing seven-year retirement from firefighting. Ian praises calculated risk-taking, whole real estate devotion, and problem-solving abilities for his success.

Sharad compares Ian’s strong approach with his own calm one. They discuss how balance of risk and action defines real estate profitability; Ian points out that commercial real estate may provide less risk and rapid income than single-family investments.

Moving from operating single-family homes to larger commercial enterprises changed Ian’s investing life. He emphasizes the significance of allowing constraints to reach progress and advises investors to accept fresh challenges for better success.

Apart from his financial success, Ian obtains motivation in the growth of his family and employees. His knowledge of the importance of having a definite objective and direction drives his passion for real estate. Ian also follows his leisure interests—jet skiing and boating—as well as recommended reading like “Becoming the Bank” by George Anton and “Atlas Shrugged.”

In the hunt for real estate success his tale shows the power of determination, well defined aims, and seizing of fresh opportunities.

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Transcript:

Ian Horowitz  0:15  

What’s up, brother, sorry, East Coast lunch time, no

Sharad Mehta  0:18  

waste, no waste. It’s all good. Love the the Zoom picture, your big surfer.

Ian Horowitz  0:26  

Yeah, that was, actually, I was behind the boat down in Austin, Texas Lake Travis.

Unknown Speaker  0:33  

Oh, cool, cool.

Ian Horowitz  0:34  

Yeah, it’s a good time. Awesome.

Sharad Mehta  0:36  

That’s amazing, man. Do you have any questions about anything in the podcast,

Ian Horowitz  0:42  

Nah, man, I’m an open book. I’ll talk about whatever you want. So you rely with Stratton the other day, my man. And

Sharad Mehta  0:50  

yeah, it’s amazing, yep.

Ian Horowitz  0:52  

And I’ll talk about whatever you want. I’m not shy, and however I can, I guess, help your what’s your audience? Mostly wholesalers, or what you

Sharad Mehta  1:01  

think real estate investors? Yeah, I would say wholesalers. But, I mean, the questions, I don’t have any preset questions, so I go based on kind of what you’re answering. So just talk about whatever you know, that’s kind of what you’re doing. So you don’t have to necessarily, you know, talk about, like wholesaling

Ian Horowitz  1:17  

sounds like a plan.

Sharad Mehta  1:20  

Cool. All right, let’s get and by the way, thank you so much for the rescheduling. Yeah, my parents came in town last week, and then I think we were booked for last week. It’s just, like, too much going on. And, yeah, I thought I could make it. You know, just in time, the Air flight would land on time. They would come out in time. Yeah, it didn’t happen like that.

Ian Horowitz  1:43  

Never fails, right? Yeah, never

Sharad Mehta  1:45  

fails. All right, cool. Let’s get started. 321, hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli podcast, host of the REsimpli podcast, and today I have a very, very special guest, Ian Horowitz, on this call. Ian, welcome to the REsimpli podcast. Man, how are you doing?

Ian Horowitz  2:02  

Yeah. Man, thanks for having me on. I’m looking forward to it. I’m a few hours ahead of you. I was just trying to scarf down lunch before we hopped on here. So hopefully I don’t have anything in my teeth, but I’m ready. Let’s do it. Cool,

Sharad Mehta  2:13  

awesome. Man, yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Man, where do you live and what kind of investing do you do, and how long you’ve been doing that for

Ian Horowitz  2:20  

Yeah, so my name is Ian Horowitz with equity warehouse. We’re out here in just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. However, my business partner, I we were both firemen for the city of Baltimore. We got hired in oh seven and oh eight during the financial crisis, and we, we knew there had to be a better way. You’re right. They were closing companies. They were changing our pay, they were changing our schedule. They were messing with our benefits. All the pensions were going bankrupt all across the country. So there’s gotta be a better way. So 2012 I bought my first house. 2014 we partnered up. My business partner started wholesaling. We partnered up. We both grew up outside of Philadelphia, and seven short years later, eight short years later, we were able to retire ourselves and leave the fire department by investing in real estate, and it’s been one of the funnest and best things we’ve ever done. Currently, we’re concentrated on multi family and self storage, mostly commercial assets, is where we spend most of our time when it comes to the real estate game.

Sharad Mehta  3:25  

Awesome. Man. Yeah, congratulations. All the success you’ve had in a really short period of time. Like, that’s incredible. I want to go back to you. Said you bought your first probably in 2012 right? Yep, yeah. What kind of led you to that? Like, why real estate? You know, it’s that you read a book, or did you, you know, kind of hit other people talk about it? Yeah.

Ian Horowitz  3:46  

So 2012 you know, I’m in the fire department for a few years now. Wife’s about, we’re about to turn 30. Guys, just gonna let you know right now, when women turn 30, they want kids, it’s gonna happen. So between that, not wanting your kids to have to go to daycare, the cost of daycare, if you did have to send them, you know, everything that was going on with the city, like, dude, they were literally pension systems are going bankrupt across the country, California, Detroit, all these different things. I was like, dude, like, I gave up job. I gave up pay for job security, but now my job security is not there, and I’m not getting paid a lot. Well, I love the job. This isn’t cool. And what happened was, I started thinking about it. I was like, Well, what can I do to make money around the clock? And I started asking around, talking to people. I kept coming back to real estate, because the other thing was, you know a lot of firemen, we have side hustles, landscaping, construction, whatever it is. And I kept thinking, I was like, God forbid I get killed. God forbid I get hurt in such a way that I can never work again. My wife’s going to be stuck having to handle these open jobs. When I said, well, with real estate, she can always sell. The property, she can hire a property manager. There’s cash flow coming in so she can get herself together before she has to make a rash decision, versus having a business. And, you know, say, I collected a 20, 3040, $50,000 deposit and then never perform on the work because something happened to me. She’d be stuck with that. My family, my future family, at that time would be stuck with that. So I just kept coming back to real estate as a very secure asset, a very easy way to do business. And most importantly, I didn’t have a lot of cash, and I knew that the banks would lend me money. They’re like, literally lending me my future worth. And I was like, I could buy something. They’ll lend me the money, and off we go. And yes, where we learned about it, I spent a lot of time just reading books. This is kind of pre bigger pocket. Well, bigger pockets is probably a thing then, but pre, like, really the YouTube University, and it was really just going to RIA meetings, like old school networking type, type actions.

Sharad Mehta  5:59  

You know, what Anna, I love about your story is, you were it wasn’t just about having a side hustle, which I don’t know, like, it’s interesting that you said most of the firemen have side hustle. So it wasn’t just about having a side hustle, it was, you were very intentional about, hey, if I’m going to pick a side hustle, if I’m going to do something on the side it needs to meet these, you know, criteria that I have, that I absolutely love by just internet, the intentional decisions that you made that was that’s, that’s amazing. And, you know, rather than just jumping into something and seeing, I could just start a landscaping business, start making a bit of money on the side, but you went to that, if something happened to be, what’s going to be what’s going to happen with the open jobs? Or if I take a construction job, someone pays me 3040, 50,000 and I’m not able to perform. I love that. All right, so you started learning about it a lot of a big fear that people have is, you know, if they don’t w2 job is, you know, they don’t have a lot of savings, and then they go out get a loan, and they’re afraid that this is not going to work out. Like, that’s the fear that I had when I bought first couple of properties. I still had a WD job, my thought process went, What am I doing? Like, I have no idea, but it just like I was on the counter that the numbers made sense to me. Did you have any of that fear? Or how did you if you did, how did you get over that?

Ian Horowitz  7:21  

I mean, luckily, my risk aversion is like, See, I don’t want to curse on your show, but effort, I’ll figure it out, right? Like it’s going to work out. You gotta remember, like, at this point in my life, it’s 2012 I have $15,000 to my name. I’m buying a house for 25 grand. I have, like, five years on the job, I got 25 to go if I screw up. So what? Like, I’ll just be like every other fireman that declares bankruptcy. And to me, it was always like, What do you mean? You won’t sign a personal guarantee, like you’re either in or you’re effing out. Like, it’s very clear cut to me now today, where we operate with, you know, 1020, $30 million loans. All right, I can understand where some of the caution comes in some of these assets, but early on, I was like, dude, yeah, I’ll sign my life away. Like, whatever. I don’t care. And I if I was sitting in the room with you when you were first starting out and I just had some success, I would literally look at you and say, Sharad, like, Are you in or are you out? And you would say, Well, I like the numbers, okay, well then sign the personal guarantee, and you’re going to figure it out. You’re going to find a way out by putting yourself in that situation, and you’re going to make it work. Most people give up because they just want to throw money at the problems. And I’ll say this much, the fire department, the number one lesson we got and think about this is when there’s a fire, we cannot leave until it is out and the scene is safe. It’s the same thing we do in our business. We are putting fires out until they are out and our business is safe. So in the same situation, I would say, Okay, well, if I gotta go make extra money to pay this mortgage payment because I can’t figure out how to get good renters, I’m gonna go figure it out. I’m gonna go wholesale. I’m gonna go work whatever I can to make the extra money, to protect this asset, to ultimately make me produce income. So, yeah, man, I would just say, like, Dude, you gotta go, like, you gotta be in, like, the whole dip in your toe. It doesn’t exist. You’re not gonna have success. It’s always gonna just be a a hobby. It’s never going to be a business. It’s never going to be a something that’s going to provide for you.

Sharad Mehta  9:25  

I love that, man. I love that. When you were talking about Sharad, if I were sitting in the room with you, I’d ask you, Are you in or out? I got goosebumps, like, man, like, if I had a mentor like you when I started, yeah, there would be I’m like, my risk aversion is probably on the polar opposite. I’m very accountant. I used to be an accountants with together numbers, making sure double triple checking, which has probably cost me a lot of money, but, you know, it just fits my personality. Were you always this way? Yeah,

Ian Horowitz  9:53  

my risk aversion always kind of been like, Ah, well, I’m very happy. Go lucky guy. Now I. Business Partner is like, You, He is like, dialed into the numbers. But here’s why it works. Well, he needs me to be like, Yo, damn. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go. I need him to be like, Yo, dude. Like, stop, come on. Give me, give me a second. But dude, I you know what I was about to say is like, and you said, Are you always like this? Yeah, this is just like, I’m very like positive outlook, forward facing person. But what I would say to you is, you need to know what makes you tick, what makes you not sleep at night. And taking a dis personality test, I think huge, because if you realize what your dis like, your personality traits are, then you can solve for x. And for me, it was like, Y’all take 15 grand, toss it at a house, see if I can make this work. And if I don’t, oh, well, I’ll figure out the next thing. And for you, I bet you, it is okay. Well, I need to see the numbers, and if I put 15 grand out, what else am I missing out on? I need to take my time before I get into that deal. But you need to know that, right? Because you also need to know that, like, I’m going to take my time on a lot of deals, and sometimes I don’t always have time, so I might have to pressure myself into a situation I’m uncomfortable with. And the same for me, where I’m like, go, go, go, go. Now I’m much more like, all right, I thought about it. Let’s sleep on it for a night and come back and look at it. And now it’s like, okay, it’s much more methodical. Take a deep breath. You know what? That’s not really worth our time anymore, but that’s been 10 years of learning, right, what works and doesn’t work for

Sharad Mehta  11:27  

us? Yeah, yeah. But now, I mean, now, at this point in your career, you have a lot more to lose, right? When you first started? I think that’s the that’s the decision that I did with my life. You know, I bought like, two properties that I sat down with my wife, this is like, back in 2010 and I said, Look, she’s also an accountant. I said, the numbers are just unbelievably good. If I leave my job, you know, like, the downside is we have this, like 50, $60,000 that we’ve invested. We lose everything that we’re making, the worst decision ever, ever. But if the upside works out half as good as what I’m thinking, it’s like unlimited potential. That was like, kind of, and then we didn’t have any kids, so I was like, All right, let’s just go all in. But, and I double, triple check the numbers, and then at some point you have to make that decision. You know, you kind of have to know, you know, what is it that you’re losing? The worst case scenario, where the pros and cons out likelihood of worst case and then the best case scenario, yeah. And

Ian Horowitz  12:25  

I think one thing that I had is, you gotta remember, I would work with a bunch of like, alpha males. We’d sit around the kitchen table and everybody, oh, that’s dumb, oh, that’s dumb. Oh, that’s dumb. And the reason I’m bringing that up is is, like, how many of you been to that RIA meeting where you see the same dude with the same gal keeps coming back telling you that all these ideas are dumb, but yet have never invested in anything, and they just like going to the RIAs, right? Yeah. And so, like you said, at some point you got to shit or get off the pot. You got to go. You got to try it out. It’s the best way to learn.

Sharad Mehta  12:54  

Just do it like Nike’s logo. Just do it like, that’s the only way to learn. That’s amazing, man and I so you bought your first property, 2012 Did everything go as you had planned? I’m sure?

Ian Horowitz  13:09  

Yeah. No, we’re we knew that was the exact bottom of the market. We did it all right, no, like it was a mess, bro, like I paid, you know, my credit score is like, sub 600 at that point. Don’t ask why I had 15 grand in the bank when I had a bunch of debt and my credit was all screwed up. I buy the house. I take a hard money loan at like 16 and six, I have, I have no clue what’s going on, but what I was doing is I was landscaping, I was going to the house. I was doing the painting, I was doing the drywall, I was doing everything. Was it being done right? No, probably not. Did I do a bunch of stuff wrong? Yeah? But you know what happened was I did it good enough to get to the point where I was able to get I was our accounting practices were not spot on then. But let’s just say we’re in for roughly 50, 60,000 bucks. And I got $1,250 rent on that. And that was Dude, that was all I needed to see. And it was like, Cool, I know what I’m going to do different next time. Because, dude, the whole thought process of like, spending a couple extra dollars to have someone else do the work for you seemed dumb to me, because I only knew how to use these things by hand. Yeah, because that’s what we do at work every day, whereas I had to realize I’m at work for four days a week. I need someone to work while I’m not there, and I’m paying that person to do this. Now, my project gets done that much faster. So now, dude, I didn’t do anything right day one. The only thing I did right was take action other than that. You know, here’s,

Sharad Mehta  14:33  

I love that attitude, man, just like, I’ll figure it out. Just do it. I’ll figure it out. I love it. I freaking love that.

Ian Horowitz  14:39  

But here’s a here’s my question to you is, like, does anybody ever do it right? Like, even if you think, like, Coca Cola has it all dialed in, do you think that they have everything figured out correctly? No,

Sharad Mehta  14:50  

you know, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah. No, I but I love the attitude. I mean, that’s, you know, when you think about it, like, I truly believe all the knowledge that you need to be. Successful is already out there. Free of charge, you go to YouTube, anything that you can imagine, anything it’s already out there. Someone has made detailed videos, step by step videos. What truly separates one person from being successful versus someone else’s taking action, being willing to take an action and being able to take risk on yourself. And I cannot tell you how much I because I’m I’m a little bit opposite of kind of you, you know, I’m, like, very conservative, you know, when it comes to finances and taking risks, and I love your attitude. I’m like, Man, if I had a partner like you, just go, go, go, we’ll figure it out. And like someone like the partner that you have, and I was there just to balance, wow, that would be amazing. All right, so you bought your property, some things, you know, things didn’t go according to plan, but you had that proof of concept. You put 5060, in it. You’re getting 1250, so you have the proof like, Oh, wow. Like, even after the mistakes I made, I’m still making money. What happens after that? Yeah,

Ian Horowitz  15:58  

so about and you guys, you gotta remember, like I’m cash flowing five, 600 bucks a month, even with this crazy loan in place. And I that was more than a whole overtime shift. So I go buy house number two, six months later, then I buy and then my first two years, I end up buying 10 houses, and they weren’t in the best areas, but you know what? They cash flow. We did subsidize rentals, and it worked for me, but I was doing them on my own, now, side by side with me, my business partner, he got caught up in the oh eight financial crisis, and he’s wholesaling. So then in 2014 this is kind of like a pivotal moment, he comes to me and says, Hey, man, I got these, this package of properties. It’s, it’s got four houses in it, two Return key rentals. One I want to wholesale and I want to flip the other one. And I said, Oh, I would like to do a house flip. I’d like some extra cash, rather than side hustle and try to get some extra money. And I knew some people that would buy turnkey rentals. So we sold those two. I sold we wholesaled the other one, and then we fixed and flipped the last one, and we made well over six figures on it. And I was like, Holy crap. I said, Yo, Dan, can we do that again? And six months later, he found another house that we fixed and flipped. And I was like, Dude, that’s all I needed to see. We made another 4050, grand. And I was like, bro, like, let’s let’s go. And I said, I’ll go find us money. You find the deals. And that was it, and that’s when we started equity warehouse, and basically from there on, it was just a grind of single family real estate, fixing and flipping and building almost 100 house rental portfolio. And those were the pivotal years grinding out the single family real estate is where we refined all of our processes, buying, selling, leasing, property management, acquiring debt from banks, bringing on capital investors, those single family houses and those fix and flips is where we learned literally everything over the next several years. So

Sharad Mehta  17:58  

you were building processes while flipping single family houses. Then from there, like, what led you to go into commercial and self storage that you’re doing now?

Ian Horowitz  18:08  

Yeah, you know. So, yeah, we flip, we flip a few, you know, almost 100 houses. We build 100 house portfolio. We bring on some employees. What happens next? People are like, hey, like, how do I get involved with you? I love what you’re doing. I love what you’re doing. And you’re sitting here looking at doing. And you’re sitting here looking at rental properties of cash flow, three to 500 bucks a month, and you’re like, well, there, like, there isn’t room. Like, this doesn’t make sense to bring someone in as a capital investor. And also, I think there was just, like, something more inside all of us, of like, we want bigger and better. And it’s like, you know, sometimes you just like, it’s another house, whatever, you know. And what happened was we started to get priced out of the market. Well, when we got priced out of the market, you can imagine what happened. I was like, well, let’s go find something else. What did my business partner said? Say, Let’s go refine operations. So he’s him, and Ryan, who runs our whole operation, are refining our day to day operations from leasing and everything else. And what am I doing? We’re working 24 hour shifts. I’m on my phone all the time, just looking scrolling, looking at other people’s commercial deals, how they setting them up, how they doing this like I want to learn. And we bought a small industrial site, we bought a small seven unit apartment building, and figured out how to make it all work with our own cash. And then, like I said, we got guys, you gotta remember, we’re buying we’re all in for $120,000 and getting 1250 rent. All of a sudden, overnight, people want $50,000 for shells that need $100,000 worth of work. We’re like, No, dude, we’re out, and rent doesn’t change. And so I just kept looking at the commercial deals, trying to put them together, trying to put them together. Put them together. And I took our hard money lender, and was like, Hey, Jay, I’m thinking about doing some sort of commercial deal. Maybe we could figure out what, because we always talked about how to work together. And as the world would have it, a 34 unit building comes our way, a 76 unit building comes our way. And that was. Yeah, that was it. It was really just a matter. It goes back to doing the deals like we first did, just doing it right. And I think people put quote, unquote commercial real estate on a pedestal, like, Oh, dude, I don’t have to do that, because they’re too comfortable in their business to try to figure it out, to get to that, what everybody believes is the next level.

Sharad Mehta  20:19  

Yeah, I would not lie to you. Ian, I’m one of those people. I’m starting to change my mind shift. I just bought an 11 unit, 11 or 13 year old building with a buddy of mine, and I was just talking to him on the phone this morning, like, hey, let’s look for more. Like, how much more work is it like? It’s just, let’s say, buying a single family houses, have single family house renovating, going through the whole process versus buying, let’s say a 50 unit building, right? How much more work is it on that 50 unit building versus a single family

Ian Horowitz  20:50  

well, I won’t discredit what we do on an everyday I would just say that work is reallocated. Right in the single family space, it’s Go, go, go, go, go. And if you’re an action junkie, it’s so much fun, dude. But like, how many houses can you buy and sell? How many leases can you like, it is so much where and think about it, most of the time you’re buying a single family piece of real estate that has zero income being produced by it that you’re taking all the risk to then get it stabilized and sold or rented. You buy an apartment building, nine times out of 10 there’s revenue coming in day one that allows you to then go and make a much more coordinated effort on what units you want to renovate. How are you going to renovate them? What capital improvements are you going to do? So what I’m ultimately getting at is the work to acquire the deal, maybe a little more on the commercial side, from the standpoint of a little more underwriting, little more capital raising, a little more sophisticated debt, maybe you need a securities offering agreement. There’s a little bit more work up front, but the day to day, like the methodic I always look at, it’s very more, much more methodical and pre planned and predetermined what you’re going to do. And honestly, I would say the work on that side of the house might be a little bit less than it is for the single family real estate, in my professional opinion, based on what we’re doing today,

Sharad Mehta  22:14  

right? But it’s not like it’s 50x more work. I think that’s that’s the limiting belief that lot of people have, and I’ve had that for a very long time, where I just thought, Oh my God. Like this commercial properties, because, I mean, I used to put them on a pedestal. I’m like, oh my god, this is like, whole next level. You just need to be prepared for it, and it just talking to successful investors like yourself, seems like that’s not the case. It’s just like any other deal you need, like, you know, this different process that you have to go through. But it’s not like 50 times more difficult to do that.

Ian Horowitz  22:44  

You know? What the problem is is that too many people get comfortable, right? And me and you, I’m sure to you today and me back in the day, single family house, what street, what block I can give you a number you need to look at. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  22:58  

right. Oh, my God, that’s explaining our business, yeah, yeah,

Ian Horowitz  23:02  

exactly. Now, today, I’m like, yo Sharad, let’s go do, let’s go do this multi family deal on that same street, and you’re gonna go, oh, bro, dude, I don’t know, but it’s like, Yo, dude. It’s just 11 units inside of one building. Like, what are you afraid of? We already know the rent. We already know what we need to do to get it to that standpoint. And it’s like, people don’t want to do the work again. So saying there’s a little more upfront work, and too many people are comfortable. And what it took to go from zero to a million or zero to whatever number you want to say to them, to go to that next level, that one to 5 million, or whatever number you want to pick, people don’t want to get uncomfortable again and bust up their business and have to get uncomfortable again and be a little nervous about doing something, because you got this really comfortable life over here. And now I’m going to tell you, Hey, man, take that comfortable life. Go light it on fire, and let’s try to go open basically a new line of business. And people get scared of that shit and just want to stay in their comfort level. The same way when people have single family real estate, and you tell all your w2 buddies, go buy real estate, go buy real estate. And they’re like, No, you’re crazy, dude. I know this guy, this blah, blah, blah that those guys don’t want to leave their comfortable w2 to go live this life over here, and we’re telling these guys to go live this life over here, and people are just in their buckets and they don’t want to get uncomfortable

Sharad Mehta  24:16  

with it. Oh, my God. Like, as you were talking to me, I’m like, Man, how does he know so much about me? Oh, because, because

Ian Horowitz  24:21  

we lived it, man, yeah, we’re all, we’re all the same person, right? Like, it’s just so, right? This is where, where in the ecosystem Do you want to fall, and how much risk you want to take? Because I can tell you right now, like, we’re at our top, like 1010, to $20 million is, like, the top of our bandwidth as of today, capital constraints, risk tolerances, what we want to deal with. But one to 5 million is like, literally where we live. It’s a good size. It’s an easy capital raise. It’s easy to get debt. It’s not single family transactions, it’s B to B, and that’s what works for us. And we’re probably going to live here for a really long time, and then at some point, maybe we go bigger, or maybe. We never leave this, because this is what works for us when we found our niche, you know.

Sharad Mehta  25:03  

So what are you finding your deals? I mean, that’s one thing, you know, I feel like people that are just so comfortable in the residential space they struggle with, Oh, I know my process, like I can do I can pay for leads, I can do PPC, but that’s not how you’re finding your commercial deals. You know, people are not going online. Hey, how do I saw my apartment building. How are you finding these? Are you finding them on loop net or other like MLS or, you know, listing services, yeah,

Ian Horowitz  25:27  

and that was a mind shift change that we had to make. You know, we were the direct mail guys. You know, we we played all the games that every other single family person plays, but when we got to the commercial space broker, relationships to me are exponentially more important. And I’ll tell you guys why, because I never really liked it in the single family space, because it was like, you build this rapport and then that’s it, and there’s like, nothing left. Like, you got the asset, you’re done. We’re in the commercial space, like I look for that broker network, because there’s a lot of deals that trade off market. There’s a lot of deals that they know about. They’re like, hey, this seller might sell if we got this number. And it’s like, okay, cool. And there’s all kinds of problem deals out there. And I like to build the relationship with the brokers, because my whole thought process is, if I build it with that seller, that’s a one time transaction, and I gotta manage a lot of them, whereas there’s so much more room to make money in the commercial space if I work with the brokers and build the relationships, like, there’s a guy in Alabama that we bought a bunch of storage from, and he went to University of Alabama. Well, Jalen Hurts, the quarterback for the Eagles, went to University of Alabama. Alright, well, dude, we, we’re, we’re now boys, and we talked about the Eagles every single week. And he’s like, Oh yeah, by the way, like, I’m making these bets on sports. I’m like, yeah, cool, whatever. You’re crazy, by the way, I got this deal. I was like, you know, because you’d always call me, I said, Well, what do you think about the Eagles this week? And I’m like, Yeah, we’re going to win. And he’s like, Oh, by the way, I got this deal. And you would get looks at deals and building that relationship. He’s the same age as us. He’s going to be the in the business as long as we are and building those relationships, I think are so much more important. And that’s where our deal flow comes through. Is mostly the broker network and a little bit off market, but 98% of its broker network looking further off markets.

Sharad Mehta  27:15  

How are you getting like if you haven’t done any deal right? I’m just asking like for myself. Let’s say, if I go and start reaching out to brokers I haven’t done any deal. Like, how do you go about having these brokers start taking it seriously? Do you build it based on, you know, hey, I’ve done so much in residential, I’m looking to kind of, you know, scale up my business to commercial. Like, how do you go about doing that?

Ian Horowitz  27:35  

Yeah, this goes back to my risk aversion of, like, hey man, yeah, and you try talking the lingo with a couple guys, but dude, you start to pick up the lingo, right? Like, the same way when you call for debt. But honestly, I would just call them up transparently and say, Hey, I’m looking at this deal. I’m interested in it. I’m not going to lie to you like I’m mostly a single family guy, but this one caught my eye. Can you tell me a little bit more about it’s the same as any other negotiation. Just get them to talk, and then you’ll pick up the bullet points that you want, right? And if I remember correctly, like, I would just call brokers, or I’d send an email, they’d tell me all about it, and then I would just respond be like, Hey, I don’t think I’m in the right price point for this one, but keep me posted on the next one. And then they’re actively trying, dude, they’re they’re playing matchmaker on their side in the commercial space single family, all they gotta go do is stick it up online and it sells. Right over here, they’re playing matchmaker all the time. And then they start to build a profile for you, and then they start feeding you deals. And I would just be, I would be transparent, cracksy loop net. You know, my favorite one to find commercial assets is, is is going on. And like, just saying, like, self storage California, and going, like, four or five pages deep and finding the residential brokers that have commercial real estate listed, because they are usually so dumb with it that you get the best deals buying from them. But dude, overall, you’re going to find, dude, you’re going to notice the signs that are in the streets when you’re driving around more and more you’re up in Fresno, are you down south,

Sharad Mehta  29:04  

like San Diego area?

Ian Horowitz  29:06  

So a friend of mine, I think he’s in the I think Inland Empire al Lopez. He’s a good dude. If I connected you with him, he’s going to know somebody to say, hey, Sharad, like, go talk to this guy you’re looking where? Like, okay, we got another guy here, another broker. Like, those dudes are all, I’m telling you, it’s like they’re all feeding in the background, trying to play that matchmaker game. You just gotta talk to one maybe two, and eventually you’re going to find that guy that wants to

Sharad Mehta  29:32  

help you. Awesome, man. Awesome. What do you what do you see yourself in? Like, I’d say 235, years down the road, like, you know you envision yourself. What are you doing in well,

Ian Horowitz  29:43  

I can’t lose any more hair, so that’s out. No dude. Like, so people ask me all the time. They’re like, Man, why do you like? Why do you keep going like, but it’s more. It’s more than us. We got 15 employees. Like, when I look at it and say, God damn. Like. Ryan had a really bad pass, and now he has a family of three, and has this beautiful house that he bought, and his brothers working with us, same situation, and everybody else that all of our maintenance guys, and everybody else that you like, he’s one of our maintenance guys, is getting married and just seeing the success that everybody else inside the organization’s having. It’s more than just Dan and I, and what I would say is that we’re going to continue to do deals, mostly because we’re deals. We’re deal junkies, and we enjoy doing it. But side by side with that, if our team wants to continue to have growth, we’re going to continue to do it. And as far as long as they want more workload, or they want to see the team grow, you know, they’re a part of our conversations every day, of saying, Alright, Ryan, it’s more than just me and Dan, like, what do you see from your end if we bought another property, how many more employees do we need? What does this look like? And we don’t want a gigantic organization, but we still want the ability to continue to do deals and grow and side by side with that, I would say it’s just trading our worst assets off the books and trying to buy better and better quality assets all the way through the food chain to hopefully, where we’re owning a complete class, a portfolio of whatever it may be, multi family, industrial storage doesn’t matter to me, as long as we’re always trading up for better assets and moving up the food chain and not down. So this

Sharad Mehta  31:19  

is something I struggled for a while. So I want to ask you, I want to pick your brain, would you say your why right now, is the team that you have, or is it family, or is it something that you have personally that drives you?

Ian Horowitz  31:31  

Um, it’s, I mean, when I say family, it’s more than just me, my wife, my kids, it’s Dan, his wife, it’s it’s his kids, it’s our whole team. So to me, those two are married. When I look at it, I’m like, This is my family. Like, I have 15 brothers and sisters. You know what? I mean? Like, right? It’s more than just me and money, doesn’t I mean, dude, you know money, there’s a lot of gurus that chirp, this is why. I hate saying it this way, but it’s like, money is just a tool in the end. Like we can all we all know how to make money today. Like, if you lost your business today, I lost my business today, we’ll find tomorrow, we’d be up and running figuring out how to make money out and be a big deal, and that’s just a piece of it, but you would lose your team. And to me, that’s Uber more important their success, their ability to succeed, my ability for my kids, which ultimately is the most important my wife and kids to succeed. And, you know, we homeschool, and my wife absolutely loves it, and that makes her tick. The fact that I get to see my girls, you know, like this morning, before I did this podcast, I was out, took her to a coaching lesson for softball, and getting to explore what they want to explore and not just be boxed in, like we are all boxed in as kids who say, go to school, go to college, go do this and giving them a better life. I mean, I don’t, I forget what you asked me, but all that shit makes me tick. Yeah?

Sharad Mehta  32:51  

I mean, like, yeah, it’s like, What’s your why? Like, what like, makes you get them in the morning, like, Man, I want to do. This is why I’m doing what I’m doing. Because I’m sure you have days where, like, man, like you question, like, what am I doing? You know, could I do something else? Do you ever feel like that? Like, just, you know, got into my comfort zone. Am I pushing myself enough or not?

Ian Horowitz  33:11  

Yeah, dude, hell yeah. Like, whenever we go into the lows, like, you know, and again, commercial real estate’s methodical. Maybe we only buy one asset a year. It’s like, oh shit, I’m doing the rest of the year. Like, screw it, sell it all. Let’s go to move to Mexico, or whatever it is. But then I sit here and think about all the capital we were we’ve raised. Dude, our team’s more than just our employees. It’s also our CO investors. Yeah, like, they’re all firemen, police, nurses, teachers. Dude, like military. This is the backbone of America, and it’s just like, Everything we’re doing is allowing these guys to have success, allowing team members have sex success, allowing our family to have success and just grow and go and it’s it’s hard to put it down, because when you are good at business or enjoy business like, it’s hard to put what are You gonna do? Like, you really gonna go sit on the beach all I can’t imagine. Our personalities are completely opposite. There’s no way I could see you sit on the beach every day. You get to just

Sharad Mehta  34:09  

drive me crazy. Yeah, I live like, 10 minutes from the beach, and I don’t even like, I moved here for a year, like the area that I live in, I think I’ve only been to beach once. Yeah,

Ian Horowitz  34:19  

crazy. You’d be drawing ledgers in the sand, being like, alright, well, how can I make more money out of this sand? Right? Like it is what it is. And, you know, again, I think too many people, when you have that w2 you’re like, bro, I gotta get out. I just want to be on a yacht all day. But I can tell you, there’s people on the yacht all day are also looking for purpose. And if you don’t have purpose in life, you’re dead man, like you’re a dead man walking. And the fact that we have a purpose, and we have a drive and we have a mission, and this is why I love doing podcasts, because I’m literally sorting out my whole business as you are with me, it’s just like, Yeah, dude, like, this is what it’s all about, man, we have a purpose to get up and go and do my kids take it over? I don’t know, do does Dan kids take it over? Sure, no, but you know what we can do, sell it all off and leave them with more than we ever had a chance to start with. And I think that’s, I think that’s the powerful stuff that goes unspoken a lot of the times.

Sharad Mehta  35:13  

I agree. Man, yeah, like it. It is amazing. Once you have clarity on why you’re doing what you’re doing, it just energizes you so much. And I can just sense it from like, you know what you said few minutes ago, like, I can tell like you’re energized, like you’re so clear about you’re not looking as your team members that you have as employees. They’re part of your family. You know, they’re part of your extended family. And then, just like you talking about seeing, you know, one of your team members, like, you know, growing buying a house, you know, growing their family, their their brother, you know, that person’s brother also joining the company. I think that’s where I feel, like, for me in my business, like, that’s where I get gratitude from, you know, like, it just makes me so grateful that and you it comes, I’m sure you feel it that way also. It comes with a huge sense of responsibility. Like, man, holy crap, these people are now dependent on me for their life. And you start taking like it just makes you so much more responsible and accountable for what you’re doing. And you get excited about it, as you see, like, one of my team members shared pictures of the trip that she took with with her family, with a 10 year old son, like, one week vacation, you know, they went to this beautiful island, and she sent me a message like, Thank you, Sharad, it would have never happened if I were not, you know, part of the company, I’m like, holy crap. Like, it just makes you, it makes you so, so happy. And you don’t realize you’re like, Man, I never thought when I started the company that this is the impact I would have. Like, when you start the company, you know, you’re not so clear about why I’m doing this, like, money, hey, I could do this. I could do that, but after a point of time, like, Man, this is so much bigger than money at this point. Now you’re impacting people’s lives. So I love that you share that,

Ian Horowitz  36:56  

yeah, and it’s more than just, like everyone thinks, like, Oh, I gotta get these guys to buy in and have equity. It’s more than equity. Like, again, read the room negotiations. It’s like, Oh, you just want to be able to work from home one day a week. Well, that’s not really what we do, but if that makes you be a better employee here, great. You know, it’s not always about money, sometimes, sometimes it’s about vacation or benefits or whatever it is. One here pushing, and I think too many people get caught up. I gotta do this. It’s like, Dude, that’s the norm. Who cares? Just do whatever you want and make sure that everybody’s happy. And for us, we view everyone as entrepreneurs. And it’s like, I don’t care if you’re a maintenance guy, a boots on the ground, or you’re number one in charge. You’re dude. You do it the way you see fit. Act as if it’s your own act, if you’re your own business inside of our company, and handle it now, some days I’m like, Yo, bro. Like, why’d you do it that way? But that’s the time for a discussion to make people better at a later date, right? Hey, why don’t we try it like this? Do you think maybe that’ll work better? And really, you gotta view yourself. Everyone’s like, oh, CEO, I’m so no. It’s like, Dude, you’re really just a coach. You’re just trying to help people along to all work towards a common mission. And if you can define that, I think you’ll be better. And you’re, you’re, I even hate saying the word employee, but your employees will do better by you. And I don’t care if they’re a VA or, like I said, number one, in charge. They are on your team working towards a common goal.

Sharad Mehta  38:18  

Absolutely man, yeah, this has been absolutely incredible, man, absolutely incredible. We have next segment of our show, just couple of more questions. What do you do for fun?

Ian Horowitz  38:29  

What do I do for fun? I do enjoy getting out on the water. We have a house on a local Creek near us where we go wake surf, jet skis, boat, and I do have my private pilot’s license. So I do flying other than that. Man, I’m pretty simple. Whatever the girls want to do. I’m up for whatever my kids want to do. So yeah,

Sharad Mehta  38:49  

I see some odd on on you. What is that? What your kids Drew? Oh

Ian Horowitz  38:53  

yeah, you know, I’m sure you got, I’m sure you got, oh

Sharad Mehta  38:57  

yeah, yeah. It was Father’s Day. My son made me something. So yeah, I’m gonna be putting up in my office. Yeah, that’s amazing. Is it a book that you look back and like, Man, this book had the biggest impact in my life. It could be a personal or a business book or one of each.

Ian Horowitz  39:14  

Um, yeah, actually, very early on, one of the first books I’ve read was, this is an old one, George Anton, becoming the bank, and literally just thinking about money and buying assets to then produce to offset your daily operating income. And really what we did was we took our active income and turned it into quote, unquote, passive income that generated revenue that allowed us to quit our jobs. That book there was super big for me. And the other one that I like to bring up, that not a lot of people talk about, is this book right here. Atlas, shrugged, oh

Unknown Speaker  39:47  

yeah, go

Ian Horowitz  39:48  

out, check it out. It’s an insanely long read and or listen, but it talks about being a producer. If you ever question why you need to start a business, or why you need to go out and produce for yourself. For free to the world. This, like, literally highlights all of it. It was written in the 40s. I read it during the 2020 election, and it was just crazy to like, hear that this book and these ideas stood the test of time over such a long period of time, and now more than ever. And I know you’re we’ve only talked about real estate, but this is more than just real estate. It’s about starting businesses. It’s about creating and producing long term so great

Sharad Mehta  40:25  

final question, if you could spend a day with anyone in the world, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with, and why? Boy,

Ian Horowitz  40:36  

um, if there’s anyone in the world, and I’m not going to take a cop out here. Let’s see dead or alive, I would say right now I am pretty consumed with Andy Priscilla’s content, the guys over at first form. I know I’m probably missing a bunch of other people I should have said, but I really enjoy his content, talking about business, talking about producing, talking about everything here. And just want you know another dude that came up from the cloth and built $100 million company. And it’s just it’s impressive to see. And just like hearing from other normal business operators, not the gurus of the world, and I’d love to just spend a one on one and hear from him. So cool,

Sharad Mehta  41:21  

I didn’t if someone wants to connect with you, learn a little bit more about your journey. What’s the best way for them to do that?

Ian Horowitz  41:27  

Yeah, if you want to hear about how we co invest with our friends and family, go check out equity warehouse.com. We’re on all the social sites. I’m the most active on Instagram and then right now, inside of our community at cre syndicate.com, syndicate.com, I’m doing a $50 million acquisition challenge. I’m trying to buy 50 million $50 million of stabilized assets by the end of this year. I’m a million dollars deep, and I got a few other Lois out. So we’ll see what happens. I don’t know if I’m going to make the goal, but it’s also day number 11, so we’ll see what happens. So one

Sharad Mehta  42:01  

asset, or like, 50 minutes spread across, spread.

Ian Horowitz  42:05  

So we’re, I love that, underwriting all the deals in real time, showing people how everything we just talked about, underwriting, how do I, how do I set the deals off, all that fun stuff. So

Sharad Mehta  42:15  

I love that. Love that. Ian, thank you so much. This has been incredible, man. I love talking about like we didn’t really get into real estate a lot, but just talking about mindset, it’s I absolutely love talking about that, man. Thank you so much for that. Yeah,

Ian Horowitz  42:28  

thanks. Thanks for having me on and.