From $10/Hour to $1M+ in Real Estate by Doing This w/InvestorGirlBritt

0:00Ashley Kehr:Today, we have a guest on who's made some incredible moves in her investing journey. She started as a DIY hands-on landlord and then made the leap to a more passive approach.

0:10Brittany Arnason:And not only that, she scaled from single-family rentals into self-storage, which is a huge jump. And we're going to break down how she made that pivot, the system she put in place, and the lessons she learned along the way.

0:21Ashley Kehr:So if you're sitting there rehabbing and managing your own rentals, maybe juggling tenants, toilets, and turnovers, This is the episode that will show you what it's like to step back, build smarter, and start thinking bigger.

0:38Ashley Kehr:Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I'm Ashley Kerr.

0:41Brittany Arnason:And I'm Tony J. Robinson. So let's jump right in and hear from today's guest, Britt Arneson. Britt, thanks for joining us today.

0:47Ashley Kehr:Thank you so much for having me, you guys. Yes, we are so excited. And most people probably know a lot about your background from your large social media following and all of the BiggerPockets episodes you've been on in the past. But can you start off by sharing a little bit about your early days as a DIY investor and maybe what kind of drew you into real estate and what those first couple of deals looked like?

1:11Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. So real estate to me was building this path of freedom, right? I didn't want to have a boss. I wanted to be able to work when I wanted to travel when I wanted to. And in the early days, my first properties I was buying for under$50 ,000 in these small towns, but they make great cashflow. And the first one I ever bought was$25 ,000, but it made$850 in rent and I didn't have a lot of money. So I'd go out with my tool belt, learn how to do all the renovations myself, the demo, the painting, the flooring, the what you name it, I was doing all of it. And I was living in my van, working on these places and just burying those properties by rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, doing that over and over again.

2:03Brittany Arnason:And Britt, you built, you know, like Ashley mentioned earlier, a big following on Instagram because you shared and documented that journey. But at a certain point, you realized you couldn't continue to DIY all by yourself. So what was that point when you realized you couldn't be a one woman show anymore?

2:17Tony J. Robinson:Well, the point I got to was when I realized I, the whole reason I got into real estate was for freedom and not a job. And that's what I did. I just built myself this huge job. So in the early days, if I stopped working, my entire business stopped moving forward. And just more recently, I was on a month-long trip to Europe and I had so much progress in my business. We got two hotels under contract, raising capital. I sold an apartment building. So much happened. And this was all with me being in Europe and just doing a few check-ins with a team. Whereas in the early days, there would have been zero progress.

3:06Tony J. Robinson:Nothing would have been happening.

3:07Ashley Kehr:So you made a big difference from doing your work in Europe to spending every day in your rehabs, living in a van, sometimes living in the rehabs. For somebody listening, what's maybe that pivotal moment? And what's the first action item, the first step they should take if they decide, you know what, I'm not liking this path I'm on anymore. It is feeling more like a job. What's the first thing they should do or start thinking about to change that?

3:35Tony J. Robinson:I always say start thinking bigger sooner. because real estate takes time. We're in this for the long run. So the sooner you could start thinking bigger, surrounding yourself with people who are doing bigger things, that was a huge, pivotal moment for me when I actually got into rooms. And so just being alone in my DIY renovations, right? I just, I didn't believe really in myself that this would be possible for me. But once I surrounded myself with the right people, I think that's so key because you start to create this belief in yourself that you can do it too.

4:13Ashley Kehr:So do you think like building your community, attending events, masterminds, how do you get yourself into those right rooms with those right people?

4:22Tony J. Robinson:Yeah, there's so many out there and there's so many communities. There's so many things that you could join and you're not always going to go into the right one, right? Because there's a lot of people that I am extremely inspired by, but then there's a lot of interesting investors and influencers out there that maybe don't have the same core values that I have. So I think you have a feeling of alignment with certain people, certain mentors. When I was listening to Bigger Pockets way back in the day when I'm living in my van, driving to these properties, I'm listening to Brandon Turner. Everything they were talking about the podcast and their guests and there are certain things that I was just drawn to.

5:14Tony J. Robinson:So my first mastermind was through Brandon Turner. And I met some incredible people, incredible groups of friends. And I had it in my mind like, wow, everybody's like this. everyone's cool and down to earth and growing and doing great things. But then I got into the real world. Not everybody's like that. And you do have to be a little bit careful. But I think just putting yourself out there. I was so extremely nervous to go to these masterminds. I didn't feel good enough. I didn't feel that I've done enough. I was scared that I didn't have the right things to say, but it's just all in our heads where there's always limiting beliefs and insecurities.

5:56Tony J. Robinson:We just have to push past that and know that we're the good people will be there for you, the good mentors, the good communities, and you can find that support.

6:05Ashley Kehr:One of the first masterminds I went to, and you were there at that one, is the, we had to do like a TED talk on a topic. And I was terrified leading up to that. Everybody here is more successful than me. Everybody here already knows anything I could talk about, but that was such the wrong mindset to have. It was everybody else is successful at what they're doing and I'm successful at what I'm doing. And I found a super, super niche topic talking about having life insurance on your business partners, like something very, very random and it worked. So I think a lot of it is that mindset piece, like going into even going to BP Con and joining even Facebook groups, like having that courage and knowing that you do have something to bring to the table.

6:54Ashley Kehr:If you've read a book on real estate, if you've listened to a podcast, you have something that you can contribute to the community. And if you really, really feel like you don't, then listen. Listen, just be in those rooms and listen to what other people are saying. and you don't have to contribute. You can just soak up all the knowledge in those moments. Tony, I wanted to ask you, you started off pretty much not ever doing DIY, working in your properties, but you and Sarah did a ton of self-managing and you did a ton of the admin, all of that stuff. So what was that pivotal moment for you where you decided, okay, I want this to be more passive for me?

7:38Brittany Arnason:Really, when my wife told me, I can't do this anymore, so you got to figure something out. She was the one who was really managing the day-to-day. And I think at that point, we were up to 12 properties or something to that effect. And she's like, hey, I feel like I'm kind of burning out here. And that's when we started to put more people in place and teams and systems. So I think a lot of times it is just when you kind of get to that breaking point of like, man, I've been grinding for a while. There's got to be something better than what I'm doing right now.

8:04Ashley Kehr:We have to take a short break, but when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the biggest pain points of actually being a hands-on investor. We'll be right back. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast, easy? Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking.

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10:40Ashley Kehr:Okay, welcome back. We are here with Britt. So Britt, what were some of the kind of strategy or mindset shifts you had to start making when you decided to become more passive?

10:53Tony J. Robinson:Well, a big one I would say is I had to learn to put a dollar value on my time. And I started as a waitress making$10 an hour, right? So I did that for so many years. And that was my starting point. And so doing every job, doing everything myself kind of made sense. But until I started to build up that skill set, and I was listening to, I mean, BiggerPockets podcast had a huge impact on me. So I was doing my DIY renovations. I was learning, I was growing my skillset. And then I got to a point where, okay, this, I was learning from the podcast. I was kind of starting to realize that hiring out isn't an expense, it's leverage.

11:37Tony J. Robinson:So I had to get out of those, those small tasks. I had to free up my time so I could focus on the $10 ,000 an hour test or$100 ,000 an hour test. It's like, okay, there's way bigger things that we could do here. And for example, I bought an apartment building in 2023 for a million dollars, and I'm now selling it for 2.5. So, and thank you. And honestly, I put less time and effort into that project than I did a few years before on a single family home, or maybe I made a hundred thousand dollars or less. Right. So it's just getting out of those tasks and start focusing on the, the, the bigger dollar per hour tasks.

12:30Tony J. Robinson:That was a huge, um, turning point for me. And it was the most difficult one to get to. And it was just a lot of practicing, a lot of delegation, a lot of being intentional about switching that mindset because I grew up with the thought of, you know, partnerships are bad. You should do everything yourself. Why hire it if you could do it yourself for free? And so that's the kind of the lessons that I was taught. So it took a lot to really break out of that. But now my first thought is who can do this for me? Not how can I do it myself? So I could focus on the bigger dollar per hour tasks.

13:10Brittany Arnason:Britt, I appreciate that insight, but I want to put my rookie cap on for a moment because I remember hearing successful entrepreneurs say that when I was first getting started. You know, like Dan Martell says, buy back your time, you know, hire the right people to put in the right seats to do the work so you can focus on bigger picture things. But do you think that you would be as successful as you are today had you started that way? Would you have had the resources from a really just like a money perspective to hire all those people? Or do you feel like going through that initial DIY phase was necessary to get you to the point where you could start hiring the right folks?

13:44Tony J. Robinson:I think it really depends on maybe your background, where you come from, what your skill sets are. It was necessary for me. I had to go through the figuring it out on my own, doing everything for you. I'm so glad I did that. And also big tip is to remember to document everything. The best thing I ever did was document all of those early DIY projects. I filmed everything. And this is because I had a mentor tell me, start document and sharing your progress. Because you never know when you're going to need deal flow, when you're going to need investors on your projects. And so I didn't really expect any of that to come true.

14:29Tony J. Robinson:But now, 10 years after doing social media, I've raised over$25 million for my progress, for my projects. And I've seen so much come from that. So I'm glad I started there and worked my way up into hiring. I don't think I could have just automatically went from the mindset of, you know, I'm going to hire everything out immediately. But it depends, too, because maybe you really are at the point where you have to crunch down your timeline. And maybe you have a management position at your W-2, whatever it is, where you have a little bit more of that skill set to start hiring out right away. And I do know investors who get right into self-storage or right into commercial.

15:16Tony J. Robinson:But it's usually because they have capital of their own. They could invest. They could start hiring earlier. If you don't have any of that, it might take some more time or you might have to partner. You might have to leverage in other ways.

15:29Brittany Arnason:Yeah. And I appreciate that insight, Britt, because I think there's two ways to build a business. You can do it top down or you can do it bottom up. And top down is, hey, I'm just going to hire some key people to help me build this business out. I'm just going to lead those people and let them execute on the actual doing. And bottom up is kind of what you described, where you were doing everything. And as you built up your business, you started pulling people in to take off some of those responsibilities. Both of those approaches work. But to Britt's point, I think a lot of it does come down to what are your resources at the beginning?

16:00Brittany Arnason:Can you afford to put people on some sort of payroll to help you build out this vision and dream of yours? And some people can. Other people can't. I know for me, when I first started, I couldn't. And I was working a day job at a family, a mortgage, different things we were working to take care of. So just know that there's two different ways to attack that. But you mentioned partnerships and systems. I guess what role did partnerships, property management, or really just systems and processes play in allowing you to scale?

16:28Tony J. Robinson:Everything. And all of those things are leverage, right? So you're leveraging other people's money, other people's time, other people's experience, using technology as leverage. And all of these things can help with growing in a significant way. And the more you learn how to use leverage, the more you are able to scale and grow. But again, And these things do take a lot of time. And I mean, I love partnerships. Now, can be good, can be bad. You have to really, like I say, be aligned with your partner in a long-term vision way and even your core values. There's so many things that you want to be careful about when partnering.

17:17Tony J. Robinson:And I was brought up that partnerships were bad. And that was because my mom is an entrepreneur. She had a really bad partnership in her early days. So she always told me, never partner, never partner. You're going to get burned. You're going to get screwed over. Same with hiring. Like there's no good workers, all of these things. So that was all in my head until my first partnership with my self-storage partner, A.J. Osborne, and everything aligned. We have the same vision. We have the same goals. We had the same values. And it's been an incredible partnership. And I know, and that really changed my life because I learned so much.

17:55Tony J. Robinson:which I was able to leverage his experience, his skill sets, his systems. And then I brought my skills to the table as well. We all have strengths and weaknesses, right? So we all bring something to the table. I'm really bad at a lot of things, but I'm really amazing at a lot of things. So I'd rather focus on those amazing things, focus on my best skills, and then partner with people who have the opposite skillset.

18:22Ashley Kehr:Now that you've kind of grown your team, built out these partnerships, what is some of that technology that you're actually using? Like Tony and I use monday.com for a lot of our project management. Is there technology out there that we should be using and just softer in general that has really helped you manage and kind of scale and grow your business? So I would say for me, I'm pretty terrible with systems.

18:50Tony J. Robinson:I'm terrible with SOPs. I'm terrible with technology, all this stuff. However, my team is the best at it. So now I have six people on my team. They're all pretty much opposite to me. Very organized, very good with technology, with systems. I have a COO that runs my meetings. So we have weekly meetings where we use the EOS entrepreneur operating system from the book Traction. I highly suggest it. It keeps things, even if you're on your own, I was actually using EOS way back when I was just starting to figure this all out. But using a system is important because you have to be able to track your goals, track your progress.