Episode Summary:
Join us in this episode as we sit down with Travis Baucom, the founder and CEO of Balcomie Capital. With his extensive experience in investment strategies, asset acquisitions, and business development, Travis shares valuable insights into his role as the director of Balcomie Capital and how he selects key investment markets and asset classes to meet the goals of his investors. Tune in to this episode as Travis Baucom discusses building wealth, his experiences in the investment industry, and his efforts to create meaningful change both professionally and personally. Whether you’re interested in finance, entrepreneurship, or social responsibility, this conversation offers valuable insights and inspiration.
Show Highlights:
✅Who is Travis
✅Search for funding
✅Operation process
✅Making money on single family
✅Navigation in Real Estate
✅Self storage market
✅Challenging Risks
✅Appropriate goal
✅Book recommendation
✅Everyday habits
✅Best advice
✅Biggest pride
✅Inspirational person
✅Ways to contact Travis
🤝 Connect with our Guest:
Web: https://balcomiecapital.com
👉 Books:
“The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph” by Ryan Holiday https://www.amazon.com/Obstacle-Way-Timeless-Turning-Triumph/dp/1591846358
“Ego Is the Enemy” by Ryan Holiday https://www.amazon.com/Ego-Enemy-Ryan-Holiday/dp/1591847818
❗ SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW ❗
✅ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT31EMqyCfDMDTy9wLTQ82g
___
Ice Cream with Investors was built on the idea that personal growth directly correlates to financial growth. Whether you want to cultivate wealth or well-being, the first step is reframing your mind.
On our weekly podcast, we sit down with successful investors to learn how they strengthen their mindset muscles and make their money go to work for them. We help our listeners gain confidence, nix negative thinking, and drive life-long change through alternative investments.
Because in a world that’s more pessimistic than not, it’s up to us to seek out the good. And what’s more feel-good than ice cream?
________________________________________________
👉 ARE YOU INTERESTED IN INVESTING WITH ME? 💰
👉 Click this link schedule time for us to connect. https://nextlevelincome.com/next-level-investor-club-application/
🌐 VISIT OUR WEBSITE
✅https://icecreamwithinvestors.com/
Episode Transcript:
(00:00) focusing on like the shortness of life I think is really good for most entrepreneurs because there’s so many opportunities out there to make money you’re listening to ice cream with investors a podcast that is dedicated to teaching you how to better invest your money so that you can live a more intentional life I’m your host Matt four and it is my goal to teach and Empower you to remove the roadblocks to your financial success all right Travis welcome to the show hey thanks for having me Matt absolutely
(00:31) well we like to start with the difficult questions here what’s your favorite ice cream well I happen to be lactose intolerant but there is a vegan ice cream out there a company it’s called van leeuwens and they’re chocolate I chocolate ice dessert incredible that’s better than most actual real ice creams in my opinion so I was walking down the ice cream aisle the other day first of all like our Publix has a whole aisle dedicated just to ice cream so it’s fantastic wow but I’d never even noticed
(00:58) they have like vegan they have paleo they have no milk ice cream they have no nut ice cream like all these different ice creams out there and I’ve always wondered like what do those really taste like and it sounds like you’re a fan uh yeah there’s uh there’s you know they’ve come a long way since I realized I was lactose intolerant but because they were pretty crap at first but uh yeah definitely uh van leeuwens is the best and then we have HEBs here in Texas so HEB has got some non-dairy uh versions
(01:25) now that are really good they’re getting real close to tasting like they’re supposed to what is it about HEB I just have to ask because I lived in Austin for a little bit people love HEB down there and I’m like it’s just a grocery store like it’s all right it really is just a grocery store I don’t know what the uh the the whole uh you know cult followings about honestly I don’t like they have a lot of things that you can’t get out there elsewhere like they have their own like
(01:52) barbecue lines and stuff like that a lot of their generic or the HEB brand stuff is really high quality whereas like most stores um you know the the grocery store brand might be kind of a crap um HEB tends to have really high quality they actually have three versions they have like Hill Country HEB and then I guess Central Market would be the other one yeah I mean it’s not like a Bucky’s though Bucky’s is overrated Oh cannot we’re into the interview yeah I mean like like nice nice bathrooms but other than that
(02:25) like they don’t even have Sour Patch Kids at most Bucky’s around around these parts that’s because Sour Patch Kids are disgusting man that’s all right all right that’s rough wow tell our listeners what’s the scoop what do you do today yeah so I I want a uh Boutique uh private investment firm we we purchase and build uh self-storage facilities all across Texas and in Oklahoma uh we we tend to structure those through syndication model uh we buy uh somewhere around 20 to 30 million dollars a year
(02:56) and looking to turn that into eventually 100 million dollars a year it’s just kind of hard to grow in this environment with uh eight and a quarter percent Prime uh rates and who knows what values are because who knows what cap rates are yep yep well before we get into Self Storage tell our listeners where’d your real estate Journey begin yeah I bought my first house in 2012 right after we moved to where I’d live currently which is Waco Texas um it went really well I I rented it out before my first mortgage payment was due
(03:27) which was good because I was almost I was going to have to borrow the money to make the mortgage payments so um it was great that I rented it out a typical entrepreneur there and then we bought a few more and things went really well then we kind of learned how to to Really buy at volume and Market at volume and so we were buying straight from Banks we were buying at the Foreclosure auction we were buying through direct mail or directed consumer and uh it manages exploded we were buying somewhere around 80 90 100 houses a year for a good well
(03:57) three to five years well you mentioned buying from Banks what year was that uh that was 15 through 18 2015. the better deals were in 2015 you’d buy them in both packages are like 10 or 15 and you know like one or two sucked and the rest of them were like home runs and then towards 18 it was like eight or nine of them sucked yeah and one of them may have made you many that was basically the difference yeah I was gonna ask because like where we are in the current market do you see that strategy becoming more apparent now
(04:29) because I think people have kind of moved on from that strategy since like 2016. it seems like I guess a better way to put it it seems like those banks are selling them off to Blackrock right now that’s what I was gonna say yeah it hasn’t moved on there’s just one or two or three this the models changed from the bank they can sell 10 to 10 to you tend to me or they can sell a thousand to Blackstone in one transaction that’s taking that’s over in 60 days or whatever and one person manages that
(04:56) whole thing or maybe a handful of people but like the Manpower is a lot less um I I don’t and then as far as like where we’re going I I don’t think we’re gonna have um if we have foreclosures I think it’s going to go to Black Blackstone I think the uh Gone are the days where you have you know you know three to Fifteen Pages like long you know photo closure list I don’t think that’s ever going to come back just because of cfpb laws Dodd-Frank laws that sort of thing yep yep so when you scaled it to that uh
(05:25) that level what was that like what were you doing with the homes were you taking them and flipping them were you wholesaling them what did I look like uh you know we we tried to wholesale as few as possible and a lot of that was because we were committing we were telling um you know especially the the director homeowner uh side of the business but you’re saying hey we are not going to sell this to another investor we’re gonna fix this up we’re gonna bring back your granddad’s Legacy for building this
(05:50) house back in 1940 or whatever and we’re gonna sell it and that was a big selling point that we were going to actually uh renovate it and sell it ourselves um a lot of the bank on stuff we we had to take it down so we were taking we were putting we were we were having Data Trust files on those so we were renovating those as well foreclosure um you know the foreclosure auctions those were those were about the same so we typically only wholesaled when we needed to get cash kind of an emergency situation or in a you know we can’t make
(06:21) payroll which you know or I didn’t really like wholesaling the wholesaling in Waco Texas was you could flip it renovated and flip it make 30 to 40 Grand or you could wholesale it make seven you know at the time we were doing it I think that changed after we stopped um just because the market just got so hot everybody wanted a house flip and so everybody was overpaying for stuff but when I had it and I and I wasn’t gonna over I wasn’t I wasn’t gonna oversell a property to somebody knowing that they
(06:47) were going to make money that just didn’t allow me to sleep at night and so um we were primarily just flipping and and that obviously ended up getting us in a pickle so I got two ways I want to take this conversation but before we start the first question in my mind is like where do you get funding to go do that were you taking private money were you taking Bank debt what did that all look like yeah for the bank loan or for the director Banks and the foreclosure auctions we were getting into private money we had we had a really nice office
(07:15) on the 12th floor of a famous building that overlooked pretty much the entire downtown Waco area we had all of our even though we had we ran everything on like Google Drive we had all of our houses on a whiteboard on purpose that was kind of a marketing thing I would bring in investors that had you know IRAs at 200 Grand to a million dollars I would take them out to eat somewhere really really Waco liked something that was only in Waco and then we would I would talk to them about what we did uh and then I would bring them up to the
(07:42) office and they would see everything they would see that everyone working really hard and it was always it was a pretty easy sell no one ever said no and then we were offering like 10 12 so uh generally speaking like most people are like super excited to be a part of a something like that yeah was it a fun model though or was I individual no it’s individual like hey hey hey Matt do you have 150 grand for the steel do you have you know we had we had a couple of for the Foreclosure auction stuff we did have a group out of Dallas that was like
(08:09) committed um you know a certain amount for us um and you know then but most of it was just like dudes that had a little extra cash that wouldn’t invest alternatively yeah what knowing what you know now would you have done anything different from a financing standpoint like would you have structured it in a fund or would you have gone still single investor single asset yeah one thing I didn’t mentioned is we had a lot of the direct and consumer stuff we would use Banks um if I were to have to do it again I
(08:36) would probably raise a fund like a like a debt fund um let me if I was if I were to do that model of buying really low income crap I would do a debt fund if I if I were to have to get back into buying single family homes I would only I would raise a very large sum of money and we would only buy Class A Products because Class A stuff is what appreciates and really like you make some cash flow in real estate but the appreciations where you make where you get rich and so got it got it well my second part of that question or in this part of your
(09:10) phase is really around operations so scaling a business that does one Home is pretty easy if you start doing 100 homes a year that’s a pretty big daunting task what did you learn through the operations and building out out the operations process uh single family homes are very hard business to scale and make money at that’s that’s probably the conclusion that I learned yeah but ultimately you needed you needed a handful of people you need an operations manager to manage all these following uh positions
(09:42) construction manager uh disposition manager uh transaction coordinator which could also be the disposition manager depending on how much is going on um we our disposition and transaction coordinator would list the houses in uh when we needed to sell a house would reach out to investors to sell through wholesale uh then we had a you know fractional CFO and then we had a uh acquisition guy that was would typically would be me and another guy uh the other guy I would always my my goal was to always be the other guy just
(10:15) because of my competitive nature um that I didn’t always say he was getting all the leads but I was like I know how to find these deals and so um so yeah that’s I think you can run it with the five really smart people those people need to make a lot of money or you got to pay those people a lot of money because they need to be really smart uh we chose uh we had some great people work that work for us but um I think one of the biggest failures we had is we hired a pretty low grade construction manager and that needs to
(10:41) be the highest paid position in your business because that is where you uh if you have a forty thousand dollar budget and you go sixty thousand dollar or you go 20 000 over that budget that means that 20 grand is coming out of my pocket and because we can’t find it we can’t go to the bank and say hey we’ve done you know the 20 grand or to the private lender we didn’t know that 20 grand and also if that happens normally your margin uh so your profit to pay everybody a limit goes way so um you
(11:07) know that’s a good construction manager can really work with the Acquisitions team on communicating like hey well this is what this is going to cost this is what we do in every house the painting is now this price you know that would need to be like a monthly if not every other week uh meeting to really understand how um understand the cause of how to how to you know uh how to figure out the rehab budget that sort of thing um we didn’t do any of that but if that five years ago if I were still in business or we
(11:36) could do it again that’s probably how I would do it got it got it you made a comment that single families are really hard to make money at why why do you why’d you say that in in general uh the the uh person that’s buying your house is is looking to make a emotional decision on if they want their kids to run around that house or if they want to throw parties at that house and so your house might be great you might renovate a really great house but at the house right next to it’s a piece of crap you
(12:04) know uh like the house that needs to be renovated or a house that has track usage or something like that uh then now all of a sudden that 250 grand house that you think you’re gonna get because you’re looking at a MLS sheet a map and you’re not actually paying attention to that house that 250 grand house you’re actually probably gonna have to sell for like 220 and that just affects your margin then you borrow money at 10 to 12 percent and so um if it doesn’t it if you if it lasts if your budget I mean if
(12:33) your renovation goes longer than three months and you budget for a five month sale so three months of renovation and two months sell but then it takes six months to do that and then it takes three months to sell then you’re you’re all you’re four months off your your uh your your numbers and you saw to make that payroll every week uh no matter what because if you don’t the taxes Workforce Commission is going to come out to you so yeah no I I agree with you wholeheartedly I scale my single family
(12:59) portfolio and then moved into commercial and that’s one of the things I found difficult was the choppy nature of single families um when you’re looking at an appreciation standpoint typically people are emotional one but also looking at the house next door and what did it sell for versus what can this property actually do from a business standpoint um last comment on the this whole fixing flipping error of your your career here is um one of the things that I typically find out is like people get into real
(13:27) estate wholesaling then once they get into wholesaling they get into flipping and then once I get into flipping they start holding a couple properties and then once they hold the couple properties they start getting into bigger assets like commercial you’ve followed a similar Journey um why do you why is that why do you think people kind of navigate through their uh real estate Journey that way wholesaling is dipping your toll in the deal you fi then you sell a few you make 10 15 grand and get really excited and
(13:52) then the dude six months later tells you that he made 70 grand on that deal you’re like what I made 15 I could have made 75 000 bucks on that deal and so you start thinking about that you’re like I could do a lot less deals I could hustle a lot less and make the same amount of money or make more money if I just want to say keep the same amount of hustle so then you get in the flipping business and then you start realizing that man this is hard work like you’re trying to figure out why the plumber
(14:15) didn’t show up and you’re trying to make Miss Margaret’s uh two o’clock appointment to buy her house and you’re like I am so worn out you’re like well how about I hold on to some things um because you can get cash flow from that and so you buy a few you you hold on to a few things I give you cash flow then you realize that the cash flow sucks on single family homes because things like hvacs uh hvacs hot water heaters Plumbing sewer lines walls house uh appliances um grease fires uh murders suicides uh
(14:49) Pest Control issues uh roofs falling in all of that can happen and you’re like man that 300 a month that turned into 3 600 a year in cash flow um is gone very fast and then um you know and then you’re like this sucks what’s a better way and then you like you find us find someone who has a really nice life doing commercial stuff and the economy is a scale or in the commercial side and you’re like well I’m just gonna do that then and then there’s a lot there’s still problems in the commercial side
(15:19) but you have the economies of scale you have for Force appreciation as opposed to comparable Market appreciation or Market appreciation and and that makes all the difference brilliant brilliant so that led you to Self Storage um first of all you you were in the single family space you obviously knew about housing multi-family um you saw Self Storage why did you choose Self Storage over the other different asset classes out there well the fascinating enough as in the single family business I remember meeting everybody that was in the stores I’m
(15:52) like maybe dude you’re just a dumb business that’s all that concrete you’re gonna have to pull out all that metal that’s expensive stuff and who’s gonna keep the crap in there well comes out like everybody everybody keeps their craft in storage and so Americans do not like to throw things away and so um yeah I got into storage because I realized kind of the whole track you know timeline I just gave you guys uh about my journey there or the typical Journey like I just realized like I gotta find something
(16:20) that has a really low default rate and a really low failure rate and a actual real good cash flow mechanism and uh because the thing is like I I lost a huge amount of money in 2014 on a deal then in 2018 I had to fire my staff all my staff you know on one day because I was out of money and then it took almost two years to get out of that um I was like I if I’m going to build wealth if I’m going to reach my goals of wealth I’ve got to find another asset that allows me to get to that and that’s
(16:51) essentially what I found in storage because I looked at multi-family I’m like well I’ve owned some multi-family and it was a disaster I’ve looked at a few other things I mean I just office just seemed like it was going away retail seemed like it was going away I’m like storage seems that most of it’s owned by Mom and Pops Mom and Pops get old enough to sell there’s probably a lot of opportunity to buy a bunch of storage there um and so that’s essentially the the quick and dirty of of how why I wanted
(17:18) to get into the Self Storage business got it and today you develop and by what do you do today yeah so we own uh seven existing facilities uh so some of those are fully repositioned and we’re just living off the cash flow and those uh two two of them um we’re we’re heavy uh heavy value ad right now we’re about to start about an expansion on a smaller one and then uh then we’re building a very large Class A institutional grade facility in uh in Austin well in the Austin Metropolitan statistic area so the city’s Georgetown
(17:54) it’s basically a suburb of Austin yeah right north of Round Rock to the left around wrong north of Leander but all of those are like the same town you know it’s like a bunch of all like people that don’t want to live in East Austin or downtown Austin just like starting a family as they move up to Round Rock Georgetown hoping for a slower pace of Life basically yeah so you have an interesting model on how you do your development that you were talking about so talk to us a little bit about that project and how you’re doing
(18:21) your development yeah it really depends it really depends on the on which uh it really depends on several things on the uh the deal that we’re doing on the small uh pro project the drive up I you know basically the aisle drive up storage units instead of pouring instead of getting an engineer to charge us 50 Grand to re-plat everything um or to drop everything instead of having to deal with the city we are just putting we’re doing the dirt we’re basically making sure the water is going to drain really well and then we put
(18:51) these uh they’re called boxwell units and we put them right on right next to the existing facility they’re the same color as the existing facility and within uh you know by this time next month I’ll have another 61 units renting out and we haven’t even started the dirt wear kit that’s how quick we can get them so the dirt work will be two weeks and then they just ship the Box Wells they place them and they like kind of fold up and then they’re right next to each other and they’re all next to each
(19:17) other so they look like you you know they look like a pretty good they look like a brand new storage facility I we won’t do that like in Georgetown or the Oklahoma one we have but this one in the small town in Texas that we have it’s gonna be perfect and you know on those the great thing is it’s not affixed to the ground it’s just sitting on the ground so it’s equipment so the city doesn’t require you to have a permit for that you don’t have to do all the engineering work for that you
(19:41) don’t have to so you’re saving tons of time some you know tons of money but just by just doing it that way so it doesn’t sit on a slab at all then it sits on a a watered and rolled pad you can do slabs if you want um but just doing the like it’s basically crushed concrete and then you like roll it with a weighted roller and they drive over it it’s basically it’s basically concrete at that point um it ain’t going anywhere and then you put the the building on it got it so when you looked at the economics of this
(20:12) what did that cost to buy that and put them on versus build yeah so each unit I think was like 8 200 bucks so you could get a 10 by 20 for 41 or two 10 by 10s for forty one dollars a square foot um that’s shipping erection all that stuff and and so uh you know we can and then it only takes a month whereas the timeline for like the engineering build just the the cost alone at the time we were doing the uh at the time we were trying to make that decision uh we’re looking at 48 to 56 dollars uh for a 10 by 10 unit or a 10
(20:49) by 20 unit and we’re like wow we can just that’s going to be a six month build so we gotta hire the it’s gonna be a lot more expensive too we have to hire the engineer we gotta design it we gotta move all the dirt we got to put the or lay the concrete and then we gotta build the facility um and so for me I was like man it’s not only am I saving money per unit I’m also like cutting five or four to five months out of the the time that it takes to build this thing and so uh we can you know start making you know paying
(21:18) distributions a lot faster than if we were to build a you know old school style uh drive-up facility yeah yeah now why did you not do that on the other facilities a lot a lot of it depends on the the clientele so this this specific facility is in a rural area in between two big cities uh south of DFW and then uh and so it kind of fits because we’re just going to be storing people’s ATVs and their lawn equipment and you know that sort of thing maybe the Christmas decor um you know the other facilities in
(21:48) Edmond Oklahoma which is like one of the one of the nicest areas of Oklahoma City um it’s also an RV and Boat so it didn’t really fit um we could certainly put box wheels on that facility but we have plenty of like vacancy there so we can we don’t really need it at this point but um as far as Georgetown goes that’s a climate control three-story you know climate control facility that will eventually be owned by a Reit and so um you know that’s the highest grade you can get looks kind of it looks more like
(22:17) a hotel and it does a storage facility and so um that’s why we didn’t use it at that location but generally speaking you can put it anywhere you want it um and rent it out there’s you know the city isn’t going to permit or not permanent so yeah that’s what I was going to ask are there any differences in permitting or is it easier to put it up because you don’t have to go through the permitting process 100 easier because it’s it’s considered equipment as opposed to a real estate and so so in
(22:45) addition given that Texas has super high property taxes it also is not taxed that person’s that that square feet will not be taxed we’ll probably have to hire an attorney every year to tell the appraisal district that hey this is equipment not real estate yes but it is we will lower our taxes so then if you think about like a typical self-storage facility margins or I mean operating costs are 35 to 42 percent now that we’re not going to have an increase in property tax so we’re probably going to skinny that up
(23:14) to closer to 28 percent and we’re hoping gotcha and then on the tax side this isn’t tax advice uh Travis and I are just people talking on the internet don’t sue us all that kind of stuff but from my understanding operating equipment can also be depreciated on a 15-year schedule versus like a 39-year schedule in commercial real estate are you going to see some of those tax benefits as well yeah our cost set guys mentioned mentioned that it’ll it’ll be good that we’re using that as opposed to
(23:40) uh as opposed to you know building it out so yeah gotcha that’s awesome well um one of the things I found interesting in your um research of you is how entrepreneurs have personal stories that kind of affect their business life and um we were chatting a little bit before the show about how you view risk and kind of unwinding the business and before you jumped into this how you took a different role beforehand just kind of reassessing your life and risk could you talk us a little through uh a little bit through that
(24:14) yeah yeah so as I previously mentioned you know that my first deal I didn’t have any money and you know I barely was able to get it bought uh if I would have rented that out I would have been to default the first month of owning my first piece of real estate um you know that you we made some wins in 2014 we we took a we bought a luxury property in a different city ended up being a well into the six-figure loss I remember to tell myself I’m like I gotta I gotta stop playing around and get real serious about this and so then that’s
(24:42) when we started just sticking around the Waco area and buying um and then in 2018 kind of things got tight um again just because we were just growing too fast we’re paying attention to risk I was okay with having four or five grand in my bank account at a time just stuff that I would never think about now when I say that I’m like that sounds so ridiculous and so and then then as we were unwinding that business in 2020 when covet hit I had like two or three months left and I’m like this is not going to be good I’m not this is
(25:11) going to last forever the last recession last three years this one last for a long time what am I going to do and so I think I just went through so many experiences that I realized that life doesn’t have to just be this big stress ball of never having money it can actually be something very very you know prosperous and enjoyable um so in 2020 we moved to another part another house we sold all of our real estate to kind of hope to cash in uh on the next what I was hoping would be a Fallout or I was kind of thinking a Fallout of real
(25:43) estate that didn’t happen because the terrorist act but um as we continue to get through 2020 the guy that married me my wife him and his wife died in a car wreck and I was like I just remember sitting down in a uh in my chair in my my my my my my bedroom and I’m like I’ve got to figure this out I’ve got to come up with something where if I die suddenly you know I can get like my kids are gonna be fine my wife’s gonna be fine or if my wife and I died at the same time the kids are gonna be fine well two
(26:15) weeks after that dude’s uh or after that guy’s uh a funeral like uh my we were on Coach we had got exposed to covid so we had to get tested we were waiting for results we got our results back and um they were negative and I was like Hey kids let’s get in the hot tub and so turn the hot tub on it takes about an hour to get warm I was we were waiting I had a very uh we had a very hyperactive at the time we had a very hyperactive three-year-old and she was like put my put my bathing suit on so I put her
(26:45) bathing suit on I was like stay right here and I would go get my bathing suit and then we get in the hot tub together well she didn’t stay right there she actually went outside I was uh at the time I was like where’d she go like I’m really frustrated she didn’t obey me I walked out I couldn’t hear anything and then I was like well she had been playing in the backyard anyways I was just thinking she made me she was around the pool Cabana and uh and unfortunately like what I found is he was actually in the hot tub
(27:10) at the bottom of the hot tub and and that just shocked me uh and I grabbed her I screamed for my wife she was able to my wife’s a registered nurse she was able to uh perform CPR and saved her life and then and then the paramedics came and took her to the hospital she spent four or five days in the hospital I held her hand the entire night because I felt like it was my fault that she had went out there because I kind of had put her bathing suit on that really changes your life um that takes you from a place of like
(27:42) man I’ve gone through some hard times to to like I never want to experience this ever again not just this specific drowning incident my by the way my daughter is fine I didn’t mention that part she’s young and healthy she’s great uh super grateful yeah so yeah um and then and sorry I realized I didn’t say that and I signed my track myself so ultimately what happened is we had it took me and my wife about 12 months to get over to not get over that but to get over the trauma of that and so because of that
(28:13) the way I think about risk is completely different what I want in every single one of our deals is I want 12 months of mortgage payments so if all the tenants it’s storage so no one ever leaves or if they did it’s we still can pay our bills but I want 12 months of reserves and then I pay myself when we do a syndication I pay myself a fee to make sure there’s money in the account in case I something happens to me my family’s okay and then we have the 12 months of reserves in case something were to happen to me my and partners are
(28:43) okay and then every single deal we do I have in this I have this um they call it an assistant GP and it’s someone that doesn’t have ownership or it’s an assistant manager they don’t have ownership but they do know it’s my attorney who gets it or one of my attorneys and so he knows if I die he has control of all my all my facilities and he can he can logically and slowly sell it to make everyone whole as opposed to just everything falling in in complete chaos that everyone everyone getting really stressed out about their
(29:15) money and my family might be getting sued from that you know that sort of thing so yeah so that was intense yeah a lot of intensity there um I think our listeners might know but my sister actually passed a couple years ago and it happened in the middle of the night and she was mentally disabled um so no parent should have to bury their child let alone happen in your own house especially if your child has already had a tough life in being mentally disabled and I just remember at that time it kind of compressed life for
(29:47) me like you always hear the stories of like you only get one life life short and you know whatever but until it happens to you or someone you really care about then it really kind of puts into perspective and so I think that’s made me one more motivated to go pursue this idea of Financial Freedom whatever it is to anybody that’s listening out there but then two to try to figure out what what do I enjoy in life and how do I do more of it because chances are not even chances are there’s a good probability that you won’t get to
(30:19) experience those at some point in your life so you should go do that now anything you would add to to that assessment or just thought process there yeah during covet I I started reading a lot of Ryan holiday’s stuff and and there’s a lot of quotes I can’t remember all the sources of the codes but um but you know one of the things I’ve kind of learn from all of that on top of everything and then ex then also my own experience is thinking about death isn’t a bad thing it’s not a morbid thing it’s
(30:49) not a dark Gothic thing it’s it’s a it’s a real thing and I think our generation hasn’t had a lot of like major catastrophes in a sense of wars or you know actual deathly plagues we that probably upper debate but um but yeah this what we like I’m 37 I got hopefully I got like 50 years left right you know my all my grandparents that live really are still live their really long life and uh I was like well surely that way I eat a little bit longer but at the same time like 50 years ago by so quick I just turned 37
(31:24) last year and I’m about to turn 38 nine days you know and so like and I’m like I still have strong memories of when I was in Middle School and in sixth grade and in high school and in in college and it seemed like yesterday that that happened but it was actually 20 to 25 years ago and focusing on like the shortness of life I think is really good for most entrepreneurs because there’s so many opportunities out there to make money do you want to make have the opportunity that helps you reach your goals that aren’t business related
(32:00) like you know family uh you know uh extracurriculars traveling a lot that sort of thing or do you want to do the the business that will make you you know 100 billion dollars but you’ll never be able to spend it in your entire life and so and we’ll take all of your time 12 13 14 hours seven days a week I remember reading about Bill Gates still work 12 to 12 to 15 hours a day if you’re seven days or seven days in a row or seven every day he would work 12 to 15 hours including Sunday and he had been doing
(32:29) that for 20 years it was just he was married to he was living for Microsoft he was married to Microsoft and so instead of just jumping into a business if you’re like this is what I want to do it’s like well will this business serve me and then um and then where’s my level of like I’m gonna stop when I get this much cash flow especially for a real estate investor like will I stop when I get this cash flow and then I’m gonna spend a month or two in Lake Tahoe and then two months and Palmetto Bluff with my
(32:58) family and then I’ll spend the rest of it in in where I you know where my personal residence is um that’s those those thoughts I think are way more important than uh how much money you can make I guess is what what what’s the business I need to start that allows me to live a lifestyle that really serves me and it gives me really good happy thoughts that my kids want to come home after they leave uh my house and my wife doesn’t want to leave me for another man like what business is that that’s that’s the business I want
(33:29) to be in yeah it’s interesting you said that because I was having a conversation with my partner the other day around basically you know I I feel a lot of momentum Brewing right now and I’ve got a number in my mind that I want to be at and when I get to that number will I be successful or not will I be happy or not and I already told her I’m like I don’t think that I will be so I need some check and I need some support and helping me along the way because I don’t want to be that person that gets to my
(33:57) goal that I have today two years from now three years from now 10 years from now and be upset that it’s not more because I’m looking around at other things so um how did you how do you how do you talk how do you think through that how do I think about like what what what’s a good goal to get to well just making sure that when you get to a goal you’re satisfied and not always looking for more you know because I I think you’re you’re probably driven like me to where you’re never satisfied you know well
(34:25) yeah and that’s that’s the challenging thing there’s the ambition and there’s the drive uh there’s a you know and then there’s and then there’s shiny object I would say those are good things ambition and drive and focus focus on goals and then there’s the shiny objects in there I’m like I’m gonna do everything um for me it’s really coming down to I want I I don’t want to do something that’s going to I after my daughter’s accent I became acutely aware of my emotions it’s like I
(34:55) I know when I’m over stressed I know when I’m you know I can process a lot of that’s probably the therapy with because we had to you learn learn like how to what are we dealing with here um I would say I don’t want to be in a place of unregulated or chaotic stress for longer than four weeks and then if and that’s like that’s a long time so like if that’s the case the next four weeks will be me mountain biking or just send the kids off to go to school then going back to bed and sleeping or
(35:29) watching sports center in the morning until I feel like I’m at a place of peace and regulated um and that’s really the focus that’s my I guess my thermometer of like am I doing too much is if I’m if I’m stressed out and if I’m yelling at people you know if I’m impatient then something’s off in my life and I know I need to regulate that because there’s so much more than just making money like making money isn’t easy but it’s easy compared to like making sure you have a great great
(36:00) relationship with your friends and your partners and your wives and that sort of thing um so that’s I tend to just like if I’m unregulated then I will try to eliminate whatever is like we have a deal we’re working on and I’m like super stressed out and I’m I’m a jerk to people that I’m like okay something’s going on here like is this really worth it or should I just cancel that and go do some stuff that I actually know that I can get get funded and get done and that sort of thing yep yep interesting well Travis
(36:29) fantastic conversation I want to switch this now to our last round we’re calling this the five toppings our first one is what is your favorite book or what is a book you’ve read recently that’s given you a paradigm shift yeah going back to Ryan holiday’s books um obstacles the way egos needed me still it’s the key that’s I feel like rereading those books over and over or listening to those books on Audible changed my life it gave me a different operating system on what I was right uh
(36:56) what I was running on and I I greatly appreciate it yeah I uh I found stoicism through holiday and uh it’s interesting how it can change your mindset 100 yeah our second one is I believe that the person you become 10 years from now is directly correlated to the habits that you have and things you do every day what are some of the habits that you have every day yeah so um at the end of the wake up I have four kids and so it’s kind of a slurry uh kind of smile chaos in the morning um get them to school and then I do I do
(37:28) yoga and then I typically read a you know daily that well daily dad just came out I just got it I just today uh that’s a Ryan holiday but uh typically Ray daily stoic and I’m gonna start reading daily dad um just kind of like one chapter and then you know get ready head up here and then uh we I tend to stop around three if I if I don’t have anything going on I’ll just not go mountain biking um typically you want to have lunch with a friend I found that like having lunch with a friend that isn’t in my industry
(38:00) is really good because I just I get to unwind and I I and really I’m a big relationship guy so I want to know people and then around three o’clock I I kind of wrap things up and then if I don’t have a podcast and then uh Then I then I head out uh to the park and mountain bike and so I know there was a lot of I said mountain bike a lot but it’s really basically an hour that’s my exercise like I don’t I’m not a gym guy I can’t I’m just not gonna go to a gym so I just you know ride really hard for
(38:28) an hour or two and then go home and cook dinner for my family so nice I I’m a cyclist so I appreciate the mountain bike reference um our our third one is what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received oh geez um yeah it was from an old investment banker that had been very successful like very very successful he he goes uh Travis you’re a tiger and you need to stay in your territory if you get out of your territory that means you’re in some other person’s type uh you’re in some other Tigers territory and he’s gonna
(39:00) eat your lunch so stay in your state your territory and that you’ll be successful if you just stay in your territory I like that that can help you stay away from all the shining object syndrome that we Face 100 yeah um our fourth one is what is the thing that you’re most proud of in your life um I would say being a dad uh you know it was something I always wanted to be and there was a way I wanted to be a dad um that I didn’t feel like I had growing up and uh you know and then given some of the stuff that has happened in my
(39:38) life as a father um it’s a really I I can’t I I don’t like going to conferences I don’t like going to Real Estate masterminds anymore because I just miss my kids too much as you know and my wife I’d miss my wife too but I really miss my kids as well that’s fine you said that I left that conference early the other day and everybody was just like that’s a quick trip why are you leaving and all that kind of stuff and I’m like I just want to be there when they wake up yep and they don’t get
(40:03) me there at least when they wake up it’ll get me in late tonight and I will not see them tonight but they will be I will be there when they wake up yeah hanging out with my kids is way more important than trying than hearing the same crap from a different person at a mastermind over and over that’s how I feel it and it took me a while to get to that point but I just I’d rather stay at home yeah well our fifth and last one is if you could sit down and eat a bowl of ice cream with anyone Dead or Alive who
(40:26) would it be and why you know it would probably be George W bush and I’m not that conservative of a person I just really like the way that he thinks about things and the way it’s for the most part like post post-presidency um but you know good Texas guy he doesn’t live too far for me or his Ranch isn’t too far from a house and um and I’ve just always it’s something I’ve always wanted to have a cup of coffee with them to ask him a few questions not really about politics or about office or
(40:58) anything but about like business and about the oil industry and about owning the Texas Rangers and all that stuff that you know I grew up going to the Texas Rangers games when he he was the owner and that’s just I don’t know some I think it would just be neat to talk to someone who’s had so much success in life um and so that’s that that’s who I would pick he could probably teach you a thing or two about painting these days too right exactly yeah I think the uh humility of an ex-president to pick up
(41:26) painting and post-presidency and then like publish it out there knowing that you’re not Picasso and things like that I mean it’s good don’t get me wrong like I could never paint the way he does I think it takes a lot of humility for that I kind of have a lot of respect for him for that yeah and that’s the and that’s the thing right like he he was a he did not have to he was kind of the man pretty much anywhere you went because just giving his last name and uh super successful and now he’s like well
(41:52) I’m just going to paint that’s that’s my last thing I want to do my Magnus Oppo miss the paint yeah well Travis fantastic conversation if our listeners wanted to learn more about you or get connected with you where is the best place we could Point them yeah there’s two places um I spent a lot of time on Instagram uh we we post uh videos on social media a lot on that uh platform the my handle or whatever it’s called is at Travis underscore bockham b-a-u-c-o-m that’s how you spell my name
(42:21) and then um if you want to check out some of our deals or learn learn more about the storage industry uh go to invest in storage deals.com perfect we will link those in the show notes and then Travis thanks for coming on the show yeah thanks man appreciate it man thank you for listening to ice cream with investors if you like what we serve you here it would mean the world to me if you would like subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast app [Music]
