The Everyday Millionaire Show
Ryan Greenberg and Nick Kalfas are two Maryland based business owners and investors. Ryan and Nick discuss topics such as basics of financial literacy, building businesses, investing, and real estate. This podcast is for people looking to achieve financial freedom.
The Everyday Millionaire Show
Finding Your Breaking Point: When Your Information Ends Up On The Dark Web (Full Podcast)
What happens when your account information ends up for sale on the dark web after a single stolen check? In this eye-opening conversation, Ryan and Nick dive deep into the financial vulnerabilities many real estate investors face and the critical systems needed to protect your business.
The conversation takes an unexpected turn as Ryan prepares for a two-week international trip—a true test of whether his business systems can function without him. This "two-week test" offers valuable insights for any entrepreneur looking to build a self-sustaining operation rather than an owner-dependent job.
Ready to strengthen your real estate business and build systems that work even when you don't? This episode delivers actionable strategies from investors who are doing exactly that. Join us and discover how to protect your financial future while creating space for personal growth.
Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire Show with Ryan Greenberg and Nick Kalkas.
Speaker 2:Alright, everybody, welcome back to the Everyday Millionaire Show. We're here with Ryan and Chase. We're doing a solo pod today. How are you guys doing?
Speaker 1:I think I was better at the intro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I fucked it up for a second, it's okay, you'll get it one day.
Speaker 1:I'm doing good nick, how are you pretty good chase.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, we're kicking with a little tsunami coming down here.
Speaker 1:That was a really bad storm, but I made it yeah, I was worried because we're at the new studio now. Last week this office lost power for like two days during that one of those crazy storms. So I was like telling chase, as we were setting all this stuff up, I said, watch, as soon as we set all this up, it's going to start, it's going to go out, and then it starts flickering yeah, luckily the storm has passed.
Speaker 2:This is the type of storm that would have done that. It was like lightning everywhere.
Speaker 1:The wind was crazy too, yeah so we were actually on the phone with somebody as we came in chase, got a call from one of the agents on our team and she had a leak in her house and I was just like, yep, leaks, that's the thing that's the thing that that's what I'm going to be dealing with for the next two days.
Speaker 1:After every rain, we get 10 to 15 phone calls with roof leaks, gutterter leaks, basement leaks you name it leaks. So, nick, let's first talk about. Chase asked about what you've been doing. Talk about cleaning up your portfolio. I guess let's do a little debrief on what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's been a long time coming. Cleaning up the rental portfolio. As I was growing and just buying, buying nonstop, I wasn't as focused in on what properties I should start eliminating properties that aren't cash flowing to my liking, properties that may be a lot of construction work that needed to be done if they need to be turned over. Some of those properties were bought occupied so they had already been outdated for many years and I just know that the day will come when those tenants move out and I have to put in a lot of money into those properties just to get them turned over.
Speaker 2:One specifically I'm auctioning off tomorrow. It's a duplex but it's a mixed use. It's a convenience store on the bottom, one apartment unit upstairs. I've had this property with hard money for the last three, three and a half years now. Jeez, and I don't you know I didn't pay any additional points, it's just been a straight uh 12. I'm not patch flowing, I'm just essentially breaking even right now. But it would be nice just to get to get that off my books and because at the beginning, when I first bought that, I was going to refinance it, but it was extremely difficult to find a lender at that time to refinance the mixed use, because it was they wanted the apartment to be more than 51 of the whole entire thing and the store was almost even or a little bit bigger than the apartment.
Speaker 1:So you just got to go through a commercial refi with the bank at that point. I we're doing one for this office right now. The appraisal was $4,000 for this office for this 1,500-square-foot office space. Just the appraisal, luckily. The one thing that's good about these bank loans, though once you have all the paperwork in, it's kind of good for a while. And if you just update it every six months, it's kind of good for a while. And if you just update it every like six months, it's kind of an easy process. Like I had a. We had a lot of our stuff already kind of done and then we just like re-updated it and got all the paperwork in and there's no origination fee. So you're saving like a good amount of money by you know, when you go dscr you're paying origination fee, you're paying extra percent on top of the interest rate, um, so you do save some money there. But being self-employed and having like 12 different llcs makes it very complicated you had your banker come to your house, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, I sit down and go through everything I had yeah, eric the banker, shout out to him and sure, united.
Speaker 1:Because he came to my house and I was like the only way this is actually going to get done and updated properly is if you come here and sit with me and make me do it and go through each line and figure this shit out. And it's difficult, especially when you have multiple partners, like Chase is a partner on one of the LLCs, not a partner in the other one, so we have to break apart all that money and they want to see every single LLC because if one was like completely bankrupted, even if one had a million dollars and one lost $2 million, they would see a loss of a million dollars. So they they really dig through every single thing that you have and that you own, and it's stressful. But once you have that PFS, that personal own, and it's stressful, but once you have that pfs, that personal financial statement, completed, and you just update it every six months. I haven't. We have to update ours again in a couple months after we sell some stuff and, and do you know, every?
Speaker 3:basically every three to six months do your accountants handle that, or is that something you just have to go through?
Speaker 1:so the accountants and the bookkeeper handle like our profit and loss statements, our balance sheets. So they update all like the assets like we just went through it with this pfs it was all the trucks that we just bought, because those get added as equity in the company or whatever they're, you know, an asset of the company. So they handle all that. And then, as far as like the personal financial statement, I handle that because it's all the businesses plus whatever I have personally, and then my wife is included in that. So, like it's just, it's, it's a lot. But, yeah, the accountants handle part of it, we handle part of it.
Speaker 1:And I just had the banker come to my house and I just had the banker come to my house. And that's what having a good relationship with a bank and somebody that works at the bank is super important, because I would probably have missed some stuff and gotten dragged through the mud with the underwriters and all that stuff if he had not been like. This is exactly how we want to see it. He made the format. He put it all into a spreadsheet for me, so that was super helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like you said, I mean in order to get to that point you need a really good accountant and a really good bookkeeper. And I finally hired a bookkeeper a couple months ago and it's a game changer because I used to just go through everything myself. I do love numbers, but it was super overwhelming and I would not suggest that someone else goes through that same pain that I'm sure you guys went through it also without having a bookkeeper at first. But hiring that bookkeeper it's like she's in all the accounts, she's seen all the credit card transactions, all the Home Depot transactions and she's in charge of all that. If she has questions at the end of the month, it's easier for me to answer at the end of the month than me trying to gather 12 months of information over the course of the year prior, of information over the course of the year prior, so more than even just once a month.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you a little story about when we were at the real estate rumble, which was huge success. We won yeah, we won the rumble. What it was was an adult field day, basically, and they had it. We were up against a bunch of middle-aged women brokerages and it was just like a bunch of us, like triathletes and big yeah, we put, we put together a team, we put together a real team.
Speaker 3:I told him, I said listen, when we come, we're coming, don't you? And they were like oh, phil, sorry phil, phil.
Speaker 1:Gird said the same thing last year and he came in last place and I was like I promise you that will not happen with us he was the phil girds was the announcer and he was like this team looks like they got a bunch of bodybuilders recruited to be on this team. But anyway, the day of the real estate rumble, I got a call from karen, uh, my bookkeeper, at 11 am saying that a check that we had written to a fox and associates it was, uh, some consulting firm, civil engineer or something like that got stolen out of the mail and washed. So they they basically take the name off of it and they were selling it on the dark web, really and somebody I forget the name now, um, some, some lady cashed a twelve thousand dollar check in name and our account information was for sale on the dark web.
Speaker 1:So I was literally like running in and out of this real estate rumble, like on the phone with the bank, on the phone with Karen, because at that point this was what day of the week was it? It was like right after Tuesday or Wednesday or something. It was like right as we were processing payroll for that week and all the contractor payments and everything was going out. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars going out and everything froze. Everything had to be frozen because we didn't know what was fraud and what was not fraud.
Speaker 2:I still think that that, like checks, is a crazy form of payment now and it's so necessary, right, like we pay contractors with checks. However, with the routing and account number being on a check, it's almost like we're in 2025. Why can't somebody create like a QR code to where this is associated with your account, but the person you give this check to can't even see it, in case they wanted to take your information and do something with it?
Speaker 1:So the one solution to that is what we've had to do is go on this thing called positive pay, which is a system that most banks, if not all banks, have. It's essentially they go through and we upload everything as we pay it out. So if I'm writing you a check, nick alfis, I'm putting it into the bank app as a check to nick alfis. So then if that check number gets cashed to chase kinser, there's a. There's like a flag. So essentially every single dollar that goes in and out of the account gets a flag and we get a text and an email in the morning that there are exceptions or no exceptions on our account and we have to go in and basically match them up. So if, like the, the bank doesn't recognize something, they will deny it by one o'clock. So we have until before 1 pm every day to accept or deny the payments.
Speaker 1:But essentially they told me if I had waited another like 24 hours to catch that, I would have been shit out of luck and the bank wouldn't have given me the money back and I would have had to go through my insurance, like my liability insurance company, to get that money back. So karen's in our books every single day except monday, because she's off on mondays, um, but she checks now every single day and every single dollar that's written in and out of the account has to get put into positive. It's a pain in the you know what, but it's um. So we we were talking to somebody that had written us a big check for um, a commercial job, and he was like I got taken for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of six months by people washing checks and I didn't know it because he didn't have a good bookkeeping person or system at the time.
Speaker 1:um so yeah, it's something super important. If you're writing checks and you're listening, you need to be vigilant about looking at it and, like you do this with your credit cards too, you make sure nobody's stealing your credit card information.
Speaker 1:You look at your you know statements hopefully once a month and figure out if you know people have been frauding your credit card. But with checks it's if you're running a business. You just write like we were just writing checks for years. We didn't check if they were, and then if somebody had a question or they were like, oh, I didn't get paid, we would look at the bank and then look back. Now it's like every single, every single thing has to get checked I don't even own checks, so I can't I can't even relate.
Speaker 3:I don't even know how to write a check. To be honest, I'd have to Google it or chat to you to see how to write a check, because I haven't wrote a check. I really haven't wrote a check in probably three or four years.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, obviously there's times where you don't need to and times where you need to. I try to Zelle things to some contractors but Zelle caps you, so's like, um, at least if it's a zell transaction, it still ran through the bank account that the same checks would be into. So that's kind of like the same format and uh, then I'm like you know what checks are, probably the easiest thing, because then I'm gonna have to worry about capping out with zell. I can write as many checks any amount that I want for the contractors, but, like you mentioned, like if somebody gets you for a check and you don't pay attention to, you, don't log in.
Speaker 2:I log into my accounts every single day credit cards and bank accounts so like I'll always see like what's going on so this one, though she, the lady, was kind of smart, she cashed it for the same exact amount oh, so you wouldn't even notice that it was written like that amount was already supposed to be gone, but not to who it wasn't exactly now too so it was the exact number and exact check number and everything was good.
Speaker 1:But the um name was different. So luckily karen has a way that when she goes in the the account to see the check image and that's how she saw the name was different.
Speaker 2:But so the contractor reached out and said, hey, I haven't gotten paid. And you guys went in there and we're like, well, I see the amount here. But then it's a different person's name, that's crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah wait. So why can't you guys just ach like moose if they're already depositing the check into their bank account?
Speaker 1:we do. We do as many achs as we possibly can. Like we incentivize our contractors to get us their achCH information. Some people just won't do it. Some people, like are weird about other people having their account numbers and their routing numbers when you pay enough. People like, some people are just weird about that shit. So they're just like no, only form of payment is a check, especially new contractors. They don't and I don't know, you know what, what they're doing? We're sending 1099s. If they don't, they could be cashing these checks and not paying taxes. Who like, who knows like. But some people just aren't cool with it, especially the older guys.
Speaker 1:Like tomorrow I'm literally meeting a foundation guy for this big edition that we're doing in savannah park and I have to sign like a physical, like paper, with a carbon copy, like the old school, like rip off a sheet and there's a yellow contract or as a receipt, as a contract for his foundation work and I have to give him a check and like he doesn't accept any electronic payments and he's like in his 60s- yeah, some people are just old school, they're just in their own way and yeah, so that's just is what it is kind of thing um, but he's like the best foundation guy in sarana park, so we're using him and we're going to sign the physical paper, um.
Speaker 1:But I think that's like honestly something that I want to talk about too, and I know we've talked about this like buying, like we have this like whole generation of people that are trying to get out of um a lot of industries. They parents' generation or maybe not Chase's parents yet, but our parents' generation are retiring and they have all these companies. They own the majority of the companies and a lot of them are antiquated in a way where they don't have these systems in place. And I think it's a huge opportunity for us to come in systems in place and I think it's a huge opportunity for us to come in. And I was actually talking to Robin today about a custom contractor renovation guy that's trying to sell his business in Serena Park, that has a book of business but has no systems, has no branding, has just been kind of, you know, doing what he needs to do to make a living. There's a huge opportunity. I offered my HACAC guy $2 million a couple weeks ago to buy his company.
Speaker 2:Both of these people the first guy and the HVAC guy are they both owner-operators? Yep, so I think that's the most difficult piece of buying an established business is that owner is the face of their business and that's not what we want to see. We want to see systems in place, but that's not like what we want to see when we want to see the systems in place. But that's the key to their business is that their owner operators and they're going to care the most about that business. So that's the biggest thing. If you're bringing over a business like that, you got to figure out like, how can I replace this guy?
Speaker 2:Well, first you got to 80 percent as good as the owner used to be.
Speaker 1:You got to pay them to stay first, like in the contract of sale, they need to stay for a certain amount of time. And then, what a lot of companies do, especially bigger companies, they pay for that owner to sit on like a board. So they'll pay him x amount per year and not to even have a job but just to be there as a consultant essentially. I know a guy that I used to drive his boat for that he sat on the board of the company that he sold for like 60 million dollars and he was getting paid like close to half a million dollars a year just to sit on the board, just to be there, in case they had big issues that the private equity firm that bought it up like couldn't solve because he was the face of the company for so many years. So I offered I think it was $2 million.
Speaker 1:I offered this guy figuring out the EBITDA and all that stuff. I asked him what his revenue was and I said I'd pay you $2 million for the company and then $120,000 a year to work for the company for the next few years while we got systems in place. He doesn't do any service agreements. He doesn't do any Like he's very old school and I'm like dude, you're missing out on so much opportunity. And he's like, yeah, I'll call you when I'm ready.
Speaker 3:But basically like so yeah, some of these guys too are like you were telling me, or like the hvac industry, the electricians of the world, like. A lot of those guys are like addicts or like recovering alcoholics or whatever, and like they work and that's their new addiction.
Speaker 2:And to like get out of whatever they're they're doing.
Speaker 3:But I think you're right. I think, nick, I think the opportunity is in the owner operated because, like Ryan said, you put them on a board or you hire them for a year and you replace them with systems. Now you just took that company that is only doing a million a year and you put in good systems, branding and marketing, and now you took them to two million, three million, and now you have an exit plan. Now you don't have a business that's only owner operated and I think those are the big opportunities, not the ones that already have the systems in place oh yeah definitely you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:It's like that that's the value add piece is like being able to pull that owner operator out, put the systems in to bring the technology and then you can sell it, as long as they have good employees, and that's something that we've talked about. Me and ryan is like with an hvac company. I'm like looking into this myself and me and him have talked about it and it's just like okay, I could either start a company, go find employees, which is arguably probably the hardest part, definitely the hardest part and especially in a trade where they need to have gone to a school to right get to that point right and so, like you could go out and try to find those guys or you know, cherry pick them or whatever, and offer them incentives.
Speaker 3:Or you could just go buy the company that already has the employees. They might not have the systems in place. Now you just come, bring your business mindset into the company and grow it and scale it so like that's something that I've been been looking at as well, and I think there's it's going to be a lot of opportunities within the next couple of years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of people are sitting on businesses that they don't know are are valuable, and I don't know what the exact multiple is, but I think it's like 12x what your net operating income is for an HVAC company. Your net operating income is for an hvac company and a big part of that is because they can do service agreements, which is like you pay 600 bucks a year. We're going to come out two to three times a year, change your filters, clean your coils, do whatever, and that recurring revenue is what drives up you know the, the um, the value. So, and a lot of these guys aren't doing that because he's just like oh yeah, that would be such a headache for me to handle the paperwork and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile, like I know for a fact because we use it in Appfolio like recurring maintenance calls. We do that all the time. Preventative maintenance is an automatic thing that comes into our system, it gets assigned to one of our people and they go out and complete it and they put it in Appfolio and it's done and it's all done with. I don't even want to say AI, just not even AI, just a computer software that we pay for. So I think there's some opportunity there in the next couple of years because there's a whole generation that's going to need they need to retire.
Speaker 3:And that's what I've been looking into too is bringing that AI technology now into those trade fields, um, and implementing that into your apps and and building a system to where, like the client facing system, like the client can say hey, my, my uh thermostat says it's been at 75 for you know three, four hours what's wrong, and then it troubleshoots the system right there without even having to have a tech. You know, on site.
Speaker 3:I think that would be super cool. Um something I've been looking into as well, but I can't give away my hope with this plane.
Speaker 2:Every time we get calls, we always ask questions like can you send a picture of your thermostat? What is it doing? Is it blowing air Is? It blowing no air. Is it blowing hot?
Speaker 1:air. Have you checked your filters?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the biggest thing is the filter change but like that on an app and it eliminates, you know, either their proper property management company or you know service tech coming out, because that's a lot of money, especially for a homeowner. If a homeowner has a call tech out like they're paying an arm and a leg, yeah yeah, 300 plus dollars just have somebody show up typically.
Speaker 1:So yeah, no, that's um huge thing for us with the property management company. We've had so many of these like calls that we just put it on a recurring thing that we contact the tenant. How do you handle that? Actually, I was talking to somebody the other day. How do you handle the filters and changing of the filters?
Speaker 2:So that's a very difficult piece to master, but I do have. Lupe will reach out every three or four months to the tenants to see if they have changed their air filter, and they'll either say yes or no, or I don't know how, and then, if they don't know how, we'll have someone go out and change it for them.
Speaker 1:So we've changed this system like probably a dozen times in the last eight plus years that we've been in business.
Speaker 1:But now we have a system where they have to send us a picture of the filter being changed and it's automated through app folio.
Speaker 1:So they get an email and they keep getting emails until they respond with a picture and then they get checked off the list essentially um. And then if we we do do um quarterly check-ins, essentially if we go out and the filter hasn't been changed and it's clear, then we charge them $75 and it's in their lease that they're agreeing to that. And when we do the move in, we make sure the person moving them in whether it's our leasing agent or a rabbit or maintenance tech shows them how to change the filter and takes a picture of where the filter is and what size it is and marks it in that folio. So now there's no way that the tenant can say, oh, I had no idea how to change the filter so I didn't change it. So, like we were like Nope, you definitely knew, because we moved you in and the pictures in that folio on this day we showed you when you know how to change the filter?
Speaker 2:yeah, either that, or just creating like a little video, a little 20 second video. This is the furnace. This is where the filter is located. This is how you pull it out. This is how you put it in, with the error face in the correct way and that way you can at least have that and send it to them and you can have that on. You can take one video and send it to multiple tenants, as long as it's, you know, similar furnace as the other properties I like.
Speaker 3:I like what you said do it on move-in day, take the video doing it at that one. So that's it's specific to that house. Now you have one video that you can send all the and it saves on that port, on that property's portal yeah so it's there forever and that that person can have it.
Speaker 1:That has been one of the biggest headaches, especially when it gets, because people don't change it and they don't think about it until it gets. 110 degrees outside, yeah, and then their system fails and they're like it's 100 degrees in here and I literally there's one guy the other day that was blowing up our emergency line and I was golfing at the um studio that shit was hot that day it was real hot.
Speaker 2:That was the hottest day of the year.
Speaker 1:That monday was the hottest day so far of this year so I got a call and he was blowing me up like hey, nobody's been out. I said, did you change the filter? And he's like yeah, change the filter. We got there literally the filter hadn't probably been changed in like five, six months at least. Like it was completely. And we chart and we charge them and essentially, like in their lease it says like if you were negligent to change the filter, the hvac charge charge is going to you. And he fought us and fought us and fought us and we were, you know, we're just like too bad, so sad you got to pay and we put it on their ledger and that's just is what it is, and I've had to have some like really tough conversations with tenants.
Speaker 2:but what are some other things that you put on an addendum like that? So I have like an addendum after the lease, and one of them is like you know, if we send a plumber out and we pull anything like wet wipes, you know, toothbrushes, baby toys, we're going to charge you back for this. And, like you said, if you pull a filter out and you neglected it, we're going to charge you X amount back for this. Is there anything else that's important that you add on to your lease, like an addendum to your lease, that you can think of?
Speaker 1:So we do move-in inspection photos like an addendum to your lease that you can think of. So we, we do move in inspection photos. So, um, they're timestamped photos that show the like where, what everything looks like on the day of move in. So then at the end of the move in that tenants can't say, well, that hole in the wall has been there for forever or whatever.
Speaker 1:Um, plumbing and HVAC are the two biggest ones, hvac being, I think, number one service call, probably for like negligence people not changing their filter and then plumbing, like you said, like a kid will stuff something down the toilet or something like that and we just have it in there in the lease. It's not even an addendum, it's just in the lease. It says you know, if there is a service call due to tenant negligence, the cost will be sent to you. And we even went as far as for the hvac filter thing. If the hvac filter causes the system to fail and need to be replaced, that will be on the tenant and that could be upwards of eight thousand plus dollars. And we tell them and like, I think the big thing it's not only just having the lease, because most people, like we do with real estate contracts, you just click, click, click, click through. Yeah, it's telling the tenant hey, just so you know this is in there and this is a very important thing and it could cost you thousands of dollars if you don't do it correctly. And I think being kind of up front with them and telling them, hey, look, you got to do this or it could cost you eight thousand dollars, that's going to be a way better situation than them just signing the lease and not really knowing what they're signing. Half the people. My lease is 30 pages long. Nobody's reading that shit, so but you go through it and you make them initial initial you know sign and then you tell them and I mean, ultimately you're always going to have people that you know fight back and complain. But I will say that I don't think I've ever lost a case in the courtroom. I shouldn't say that because now I'm going to lose but with this stuff, um.
Speaker 1:Another thing that we've been very strict with is, um, normal wear and tear. I don't know if you have this issue, but people ask for their security deposit back. They've been living there for one year and the house needs to be repainted and people say, oh, it's paint, it's normal wear and tear. I'm like, how many times have you painted your house in the last? Like, how many times have you painted your house since you live there? Once, once I've painted mine once in the last few years, like it should last more than one year for paint, like nicks on the wall or people like you know, bumping into smudging the wall, whatever. Should not be every year. You need to paint carpet. Should not be every year. In the beginning we were like, oh, carpets, normal wear and tear. Just got to change it out. Now we're charging the tenants for that if it's not been four plus years.
Speaker 2:We're charging them yeah, no, that's certainly a good point. Um, carpet definitely should last and I would think like after a year, yeah, we have to freshen it up.
Speaker 2:But if there's nicks everywhere, like you mentioned, that's no good and that's like something that should fall as not under wearing, normal wear and tear yeah another thing we add is if we get any citations due to, you know, trash outside that's not in tight-fitting lids or tall grass like we send it. We may go, you know, to the trial virtual trial that they usually have for the tenant, but if they've reduced the fine to whatever amount, it is like we're tacking that right onto the rent ledger like they're responsible for this and how do you guys charge them when you're saying you're adding it to their rent ledger?
Speaker 3:is that just next, next month's?
Speaker 2:bill just hits, yeah, it just goes on there. Let's say your rent's a thousand bucks a month and you got a citation for 200. It'll just show up, as I mean it'll be. It could be in the middle of the month that we can just tack it on to where now they have a 200200 balance.
Speaker 1:And that fee gets paid first. So if they go to pay their rent and they only pay $1,000, they're still behind because that bill gets paid first. We do the same thing with water bills.
Speaker 1:If they don't pay their water bill on time. Before we do the audit of the water bills, we pay it ourselves and then tack it onto their bill. But that will always get paid first to their bill, but that will always get paid first. So on our ledger it'll say okay, it's a thousand dollars rent, two hundred dollars for the water bill or whatever. They paid a thousand and it was really 1200 they're. They technically owe 200 in rent, not for a water bill, so we can evict them for that 200.
Speaker 2:Delta and then another thing I don't with pest control, so I'll put it as an addendum and this is part of the addendum. At the end of the lease I'll say you know we'll provide at you know the owner's cost two pest control visits per year upon request. Anything after that, you know it's on them. How do you handle pest control services?
Speaker 1:100 is on the tenant and we basically say it's, it's on you, unless when the company comes out they find things that are like holes in the foundation that the rats are coming through and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:If it's.
Speaker 1:If it's on us, then we'll fix it. Like we had one where there was holes in the bottom of the um like brick foundation, and there were like rats and mice getting in.
Speaker 2:So we went in there and cemented it all up and and fixed it, but 100 of pest control is on the tenant so then, knowing that, I mean, how else would a rodent get inside if there weren't any exterior holes? I guess they can come through like a neighbor's party wall.
Speaker 1:Mice are. They get through little tiny holes. Rats are a different story, but mice can get in through like I think. I don't know the exact stats, so don't fact check me and blow me up on the comments, but I think a mice, like one mice, can get through something like as, almost as small as like a quarter.
Speaker 2:Probably smaller, maybe like a dime. No, I mean it depends on how small the mouse is, but they can get through very small cracks.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the party wall. Somebody leaves a door open, like my guys left at one of my remodels in Shipley's a very high-end house, we're doing a kitchen. My guys left the garage door open and a skink, a little lizard ran inside. So now these people have been living with the lizard for the last week.
Speaker 2:Damn One thing that I always charged back was bed bugs. I always kind of gave slack on mice or rats, especially in Baltimore City. It's just a high volume of those rodents. But if you get bed bugs and that's probably the most expensive pest control visit, it's like a thousand dollars. Yep, I've always put that on the tenant because roaches, um yeah, that that can be.
Speaker 1:That could be included in my that's gotta be on the tenant two per year, like if they request it, we'll do it, but so not to get too in the weeds with pest control specifically, but like german roaches will not leave if you don't go every week for like two months because they breed so rapidly. I learned this the hard way reset all the traps, the bait and the pesticides, whatever it is. They'll repopulate essentially faster than like what your pesticides are doing. So that's why I've just said all things are on the tenants and when you move in, the place is cleaned by a professional cleaner. You see that it's cleaned. If it's, if you have crumbs on the ground, you're subject to getting mice. I mean, that's just kind of what it is.
Speaker 1:We've been very strict about that and it's been um a battle with some people, but ultimately we've gotten really like thick skin of just like this is in your lease. I'm sorry, like I'm just the middleman, I'm the property manager. My tenants don't even know that I own the place if they most of them haven't have no way of like getting in contact with me unless they call the emergency line. And when they do call the emergency line, I answer as if I'm just an employee of the company. I'm like, literally the other day I was telling a girl that she was yelling at me and I was like I'll, I'll run it up the ladder, kind of thing, like I'll Tell the people that need to be told, and it just kind of is what it is. But I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean it takes the weight off of us. Sometimes, you know, like we don't want to be, like on the other end of the phone call, like happen to make that decision right down in there. Like you want to be, like I have to go consult with our management company or whoever, yeah, and then we'll get back to you. I mean it's obviously something very important in nature, we to you. I mean it's obviously something very important in nature.
Speaker 1:We'll get it done as soon as possible, but I don't want to be on the other end of the call like making that decision right there on the spot. Yeah, I agree, I wanted to talk about one thing, um, and I saw it on a like a clip of a podcast. It's called the two week test and I'm literally about to live this in my real life, like being able to just go on vacation for two weeks, and I'm not actually going to live it because I'm not going to fully disconnect. But I'm leaving for the Philippines for two weeks and I'll be on a 12 hour different time schedule. So my people here have to run the company.
Speaker 1:I have Jocelyn, who's director of property management. She's out on maternity leave. I have Chauncey, that is a project manager, that's out on vacation right now and he back before I leave, and franklin, our main maintenance tech, is on vacation for a week. So I have like three of my main people out at the end of next week. I leave for basically the rest of the month, because I come back only for one day and then we leave for our next ironman race. So I'm going to be gone for two weeks and I've created like a standard operating procedure guide using chat, gt and all my current stuff that I'm doing, and every project has like a different description of what's going on or whatever. And I'm like hey guys, like I'm going to pay some people double time to take my phone number and you know all that stuff.
Speaker 3:When.
Speaker 1:I go to the Philippines. I'm bringing carl to my to the island to like vacation with me for a week, so I'm not gonna have my main like assistant as well. Um, how do you think things would go and I I can't even imagine what kind of fucking issues I'm going to have in the next couple weeks how do you think things would go for you if you were to just leave the country and disconnect for two weeks?
Speaker 2:uh bad, yeah, yeah, that's, that's what I'm not not that great, and primarily because me and lupe are like a team and if I left then I'd probably be going with her and when we're both together it's kind of like she based all her work off of like what I'm doing and like what we're doing as a family as well. So it's kind of that makes it even harder for me, because it's like I still need her to like assist with things and I want to be like on vacation with them. We're both on vacation and it's it becomes like a grayish area.
Speaker 1:Primary example of owner operated yeah, yeah, it's true, and I'm not, like you know, necessarily proud of it, but there was no other, there's no other way to start and right now, this is like the, the ultimate test that I'm about to go through, um, and I'm gonna leave, and I'm gonna leave people responsible and I'm gonna hold them accountable and I'm gonna check in and schedule, like I'm gonna use all my technology, I'm gonna schedule text messages, I'm gonna do emails at night and you know, at night this time and it'll be daytime there or whatever.
Speaker 2:That's going to be very hard with the 12-hour difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly so there's going to be problems that arise that people here are going to have to solve.
Speaker 2:I remember when we were in California it was late, it was like I don't remember time. Maybe it was 3 am, 4 am, but it was like 7 am back home.
Speaker 3:And you're like answering phone calls.
Speaker 2:We're just getting ready to go to bed, like trying to get everyone started for the day, yeah, so I mean 12 hours is like a huge swing, like that's like the complete opposite yeah, exactly 7 am 7 pm.
Speaker 1:Basically, I'm gonna have like one hour of awake time, because if I go to bed at nine, everybody usually starts around eight. I'm gonna have one hour from eight to nine where, like, I'm going to be awake while my employees start their job.
Speaker 3:And your other CEO is going to be with you. So, yeah, yeah, your assistant, your man, for the first week.
Speaker 1:Carl is with me, which is going to be really tough. Luckily Adam will be here. He's going to have my phone number. Um, I'm still gonna be answering things, just I'm just gonna be late and, if you know, things catch on fire, people are gonna have to put it out and figure it out I hit you up on whatsapp.
Speaker 1:How am I gonna? Yeah, you're gonna have to hit me up on whatsapp, yeah. Yeah, I'm not gonna have a phone um for for that time. So we leave the 12th, we get back to 23rd. This is gonna be another interesting thing, and not that our listeners need to hear about my circadian rhythm, but I'm gonna be sleeping on the opposite schedule. I come back here the 23rd, we're here the 24th chase and I leave the 25th for an ironman race. So I'm gonna be completely flip-flopped on sleep schedule and then I'm going to have to drive nine hours to Maine and do a race.
Speaker 3:It's probably my only chance to beat him in a half Ironman If you don't beat me after this shit I how far before the race do you stop training?
Speaker 2:Is it like a week before you just do a taper? So you're going to be training when you're away too I'm gonna be training out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure you can't stop gotcha. Yeah, it'll be slightly less. Um, luckily, we're gonna do some ocean swims. Carl is uh like a really good swimmer as well, so he's gonna swim with me. Our uh hotel has, you know, stationary bikes and stuff and I'll be able to run outside. Bring in my running shoes. But no, you can't really stop, especially mid-season like this, because you lose it so fast. And after a week of not training, even the week of the race, you're still doing they call them primers up until the day before the race, you're still doing like what some people would call an actual workout. We're doing as, just like a, essentially to keep our bodies warm, warm ready. So that's been, um, that journey has been been fun, to say the least we got.
Speaker 1:This past weekend we did um, was it saturday? We did a four and half, four and a half hour bike into a run, um, like a 30, 40 minute run after that. And then Sunday we did a two and a half hour run and then I did another half hour run in the afternoon. So three hours of running on Sunday.
Speaker 3:So your weekends are just gone. I mean, it's just, it's kind of is what it is like. I was talking to my wife. I was like, well, I hope you didn't have anything planned for the summer because we're not doing shit.
Speaker 2:Well, you just gotta cut that time down. Just start running faster and be like I'll be home in one hour and 30 minutes. Yeah, no.
Speaker 1:But it's actually more about the time, yeah, than it is about, like, the distance, because you're you're working on the vault like being able to being able to hold it for longer time, dude, it's it's so mental.
Speaker 3:Everybody thinks it's so physical, it's so mental. Dude, we got off the bike and we were supposed to run 50 minutes and I did. I did like, we did like 30 minutes or something and I just like it wasn't that I physically couldn't do more, it was just I'd been working out for fucking six hours and I was done, I was just done. You know like I was tapped out that's gonna be was tapped out.
Speaker 1:That's gonna be the most meant, that's gonna be the most difficult thing for the full iron man, which is gonna be like 10 to 12 hours of just like telling yourself this is, this is not what I want to be doing at at this time. You know, at the end of like a half iron man it was like you're battling a little bit, but do you generally like get you through it? And like five and a half hours or so is not that much time, but doubling that it's In this weekend. On that run we ran from here to Annapolis and I started overheating. I ran out of liquids. I had to stop at Navel Bagels and fill up my hat with ice to cool myself down.
Speaker 1:And you're just battling like. At one point I was just running by myself, just talking to myself, like my wife is ahead of me with sean, it was right. When we crossed over like ritchie highway and I crossed back and I was just talking to myself, I was like you're just gonna, this is just what you're doing right now and again, like chase said, like it's not the physical part, like you feel okay after you're in the shape that we're in mid-season right now.
Speaker 1:It's not the physical part at all, it's just like fuck, I'd much rather be home right now sitting down than running.
Speaker 2:You guys are listening to music too, Not during the actual things, but when you guys go for runs around here.
Speaker 1:Typically. Yeah, I have a little DeWalt speaker that I clip on to me.
Speaker 2:Oh, so no, like you don't have anything in your ears, you just have it clipped.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because then we can talk to each other. A lot of us like to you know we talk. Some people don't talk while they run and they put headphones in.
Speaker 2:I think that's even harder. Yeah, I think headphones are harder because in my head I'm thinking like this song is going to be over in three or four minutes and I only ran this much because this song just ended yeah, no, I, I literally yelled.
Speaker 3:I didn't yell at sean, I was just like sean, tell me a story like we're going to bed and and like it, just like keeps your mind off of what you're doing, I guess.
Speaker 2:guess, after running for so long like you, can you have the ability to talk Like? I would run a 5k and my mouth would be so dry that I couldn't even open my mouth.
Speaker 1:Yeah that. That just comes to like we're. We're running for our long runs, our long bikes. We're in like zone two heart rates. It's like very. What some people would call hard for us is like not hard anymore, I guess I had to say that without sounding arrogant, but like our heart rate is low enough where we can talk and that's like one of the ways, besides having heart rate monitors and stuff, to measure your where, what zone you're in is.
Speaker 1:Can you talk? If you can have a conversation, you're in zone two, and if you can't have a conversation semi decently without huffing and puffing, then you're probably in zone three or four higher. So that is one of those like tricks to training um endurance, ultra endurance stuff. It's like you have to do it with volume in mind, not with um speed, and that's really hard to do as like a competitor and an athlete Like you're just like I want to to go fast, you want to go fast, but it's really about going slow and longer and holding it for a longer period of time. So it's been it's been tough. We have this main race in end of july and then we have one month, essentially one and a half months, before our full ironman in maryland and I definitely think we're gonna have some mental, mental battles to to get through still.
Speaker 3:Your boy just bought a new bike. I'm coming for you, buddy, I am coming. I cooked his ass.
Speaker 1:The other day though, he did the bike.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah him and ben the last 20 minutes we were gonna do?
Speaker 1:we were gonna do 100 miles and we got all the way down to Chesapeake beach. You know, like North beach, harrington Harbor, it's like South Um, I don't even think it's in Anne Arundel County anymore, maybe same areas or something, um, but we wrote it was 40 miles. And we got down there and we were like refilling our water bottles and stuff and I typed in the address to get home and I was like I will probably only get like 77 to 80 miles or whatever. And ben's like no, we're doing 100, like I'm not stopping until we do 100. And I'm like all right, where, I'm gonna do 80, I'm gonna stop when I get home so we can run. He's like no, I'm gonna do I caught up to us and uh, he, he just looked defeated. He's like I'm cooked man like I he's. He basically said he's like I'm I'm fucking shot. And he still at that point I think was alluding to wanting to do 100.
Speaker 2:But we were like what's the average miles per hour for like 60, 70, 80 mile?
Speaker 1:that ride, that ride.
Speaker 2:I averaged 18 and a half and then if you're doing like what's a shorter race, like a triathlon, what are you doing in that type of race, like how many miles per hour? For the 56 that we did in chattanooga, 56 miles, we did 21 and a half miles an hour do you keep your bike in one, like, obviously if you're going up hills you got to do different, but if you're just going flat, do you keep your bike in one gear?
Speaker 1:um, typically if you're flat, you're yeah, you're putting out like a certain amount of power and you're keeping it in one gear. Unless you make a turn, you slow down, you're going to change the gears. Um, our new my bike and chase's new bike have electronic shifting. So you just hold a button and it changes them and the front gears get changed automatically.
Speaker 1:Um, but there's a lot of actually like skill to shifting properly, especially when you're doing like a climbing course, like rolling hills or climbing knowing what gear to get into before you get to that hill. So then you're not stuck in the wrong gear and you keep the momentum going, and that's one of the things that will keep your average speed up. Like, if you come into a hill and you're in the too hard of a gear, you're instantly going to go from. You know, let's just say you're going downhill into another hill, you could be going 40 miles an hour and that next hill could be almost like nothing, cause if you get into the right gear, you have so much momentum and power. If you're in the easy, easy gear that you need to be in, you could just push your way up there with just a couple of pedal strokes. If you get caught in the wrong gear. You just stop.
Speaker 2:So if you're caught, if you're in higher gears, it'll help you go faster. But what about a stationary bike? If you're in a higher gear, does it calculate distance at a faster rate than it would if you're in a lower gear?
Speaker 1:stationary bike yeah, yep, it does like power. The stationary bikes aren't exactly like super accurate. That's why we have like trainers that we hook our actual bikes to that like smart trainers. But um, the, yeah, the. The speed on the the bike our goals for the race is between 21 22 miles an hour is like is what an age grouper is typically like a good, solid, top of age group person's gonna do. The pros are like 27 to 29 miles an hour and are they just able to pedal faster or like?
Speaker 2:are they able to go far like?
Speaker 1:they're just able to put out more power per so. It's like watts per gig or watts per pound or whatever. Um they figured out watts per kilogram, so like essentially how many watts you can put out versus how much you weigh so could you guys do a 10 mile bike race at 27 miles an hour the whole time?
Speaker 2:no, or is it just so? You have to work your legs consistently just to get to that point where you're going 27 yeah, these are like professional athletes we're talking about, like they're on a whole, nother level of like these guys train for seven, eight hours a day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they're like sam long, I think. He just put out a video. He's eating 6 000 calories a day.
Speaker 1:Damn yeah, and they're they have. They have professional strength, coaches and all sorts of stuff. I mean if in order to be that, you need to dedicate your entire life to it. It's not something that there's such a difference between like being like chase and I. We now like are good competitors and link the olympic distance races where we're coming in like top of our age group. We're at the iron man races like we're still like top mid, you know, mid to to top. I think I was like top 25 percent in that.
Speaker 3:Um yeah I'm still like 105.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean, kind of like and then the um pros are like they're, they're just so fast, dude. Like they're, they're putting out so much power.
Speaker 2:Like we look at their times, we're like thank god, we're not competing against them yeah, but those guys they have sponsorships that allow them to just yeah, that's what they do for a living that's what they do for a living.
Speaker 1:Exactly the bike that they wear, the jerseys that they wear, they're getting paid to wear them, they're getting paid to make the content and that's um, ultimately, you know, first you have to be an elite specimen. That's like step one. And then step two is you got to get the training and the proper. You know, you have to have the mindset. First of all, these ultra endurance guys like Chase said they're seven, eight hours a day of either swimming, biking, running or a mixture of both strength training and they're traveling from state to state or country to country every single week during the season, like right now. We're like mid-season. Sam Long won Chattanooga, raced in saint george a week before that utah and then came two weeks later or we raced the next weekend and I think he had like five races in six weeks. I think he said on that video so he had five 70.3 ironman races in six weeks and he came and he won.
Speaker 3:He wanted eagle man too, right yeah, then he came in one three, three hours and 46 minutes. Yeah, yeah, crazy, it's wild. Um, I, I can't even walk for three weeks after a half iron man and we didn't even swim, yeah, I we?
Speaker 1:um, yeah, we've been getting after it, nick. We're still waiting.
Speaker 2:You're still fully invited to train with us and join us in one of these races at the beginning of june, daniel hood posted on his instagram I don't know if you guys saw it. He said I'm going to run 50 miles in june or I'm going to donate a thousand dollars. Um, a couple other people said they're going to do it and I said same. So I was like held on the hook. So last month I I did run. I never ran this much in my adult life and it was. I ran 57 miles and I thought it was pretty cool. It's like I could. In my head. I'm like I'm only going to run one mile at a time because I can't run longer than one mile or I have to stop. My mouth gets so dry and I'm like dehydrated. And then Brian was like well, you're running too fast, and I said no, he said that's in KM. So he thought I was running like super fast.
Speaker 2:I'm like running an average like 10 mile an hour pace or 10 minute mile and yeah, or 10.5 or 10 and a half rather, and I'm like, no, that's what I'm running. He's like, well, just go ahead and try. And I just kept like going up and up a little bit and then eventually, after like a mile and a half, I kind of just broke into like another thing to where I can, just, you know, run it for a little bit longer. So the most that I ran in this past month at one time was 60 minutes and I ran five and a half miles, and I've never ran 60 minutes or five and a half miles at one time in my whole life. Nice, so I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 3:that I'm sorry you're almost at an iron man race everybody's like reposting his story and stuff, and I was curious to see, since it is july 1, how many people didn't I think everybody besides me and uh nico were the only two. I think that's his name, you and nico that were the only two that completed it seriously wow jesus, there was a lot of people too. There was probably like seven or eight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I should have joined yeah, it's like eight thousand dang, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to see how many I've run um this year. I have this year in our little challenge thing.
Speaker 3:I got I saw daniel post something um, when nico started, because he was running like two or three miles a day and he was like we should have upped it on. You Like made it more than 50.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did 391 miles this year so far, so I don't know how many that breaks down to per month. But we're also biking and swimming.
Speaker 2:Is that everything included? Biking and swimming and running? No, no, no or just running 391.
Speaker 1:That's a lot so that's 65 miles a month, which is pretty good. You said all the time no just this year chase. I have your stats here.
Speaker 2:You ran 246.6 does that app automatically calculate it?
Speaker 3:or is that oh?
Speaker 1:strava strava yeah, we're in a challenge with a bunch of people I'm. I'm really bad at recording my miles, though, so yeah, his is probably a little bit off, because he always forgets his watch, but I don't um. My wife and I right now I've been neck and neck.
Speaker 2:I'm at 391.2, she's at 390.8 is it a apple watch only, or is it?
Speaker 1:garmin, you could do apple or whatever strava is like. It's like a social media platform for runners and swimmers and bikers so any watch can link to that. Yeah, gotcha, yeah but um, this is cool, like it's everybody. The goal is 500, which will obviously all hit but at the end of the year, yeah gotcha but, like you're, you have a leaderboard.
Speaker 1:Perry used to be in the lead and then he had to go to work too much so he fell off. And now, like my wife, I see and you'll get a notification when somebody passes you Right now I'm like number one and she's like only point three miles behind me. So yesterday and today she passed me and I got on the treadmill and I ran, ran two miles, exactly what I needed to to get point three ahead of her.
Speaker 1:So just like pushing yourself, like mentally, and I was just like on the treadmill, I was like I just need to get.
Speaker 3:How did your watch track on the treadmill? It has a treadmill. Oh really, yeah, didn't know that.
Speaker 1:So you have a, you put it on, you run for a little bit on the treadmill and then you enter in how many you ran and then it like learns your cadence and yeah, so, yeah, it has a treadmill version. Um, sometimes it gives me like a little extra 0.1 per like two miles or three miles, but it's pretty accurate. It's pretty damn accurate. Um, but yeah, so that's been super fun. Um, I've dragged chase fully in the mud. He's signed up for maryland. He's signed up.
Speaker 3:Well, we didn't sign up, but we're signing up for lake placid next year we're not signing up for lake placid you just bought a ten thousand dollar bike yes, and I will use it at half iron man's and olympics very well wait, why?
Speaker 2:why not next year? Are you doing the one in september, the maryland one? Yeah so why not the one next year? He is, he just doesn't know why do we need two?
Speaker 3:one I didn't even want to do one first of all, one I got.
Speaker 2:I think one would be a very huge accomplishment. Three million, just like do halves. And then the triathlons. Yeah, one's enough one I can say I'm an iron man.
Speaker 3:I get a three million, just like do halves, and then the triathlons. Yeah, one's enough one. I can say I'm an iron man. I get a three million dollars worth of listings and I'm happy I'm a happy boy, I'll be done being mentally ill.
Speaker 2:I'll have a summer again, you know like I don't need to do two brian's like no, this shit's never ending it's never gonna end? No, I don't know I.
Speaker 1:We were talking the other day in the pool, I was like I need to find the, my limit, I need to find my wall like I need to break. I need to be able to break myself mentally, and that's my goal is to find that, and I think we will in the next couple months, yeah, I think september we're gonna find it yeah why don't you wait until september?
Speaker 3:why don't you do?
Speaker 1:that by just like running a mile faster each time, like what's the fastest mile is not gonna do it like we could do speed work all day long. It's not that's. It's gonna be the 10th hour of the race where I'm gonna be like I really don't want to be doing this right now. And I just biked, you know, at that point we had swam 2.4 miles through jellyfish-infested waters and then biked 112 miles, and then we're running a marathon. By halfway through that marathon, I'm going to be ready. I'm going to be ready.
Speaker 3:I think there's going to be a bridge and I'm going to be ready to jump off of it.
Speaker 1:Luckily, this is a very flat race. There's not many bridges that we have to cross, so there won't be many opportunities for suicide during the race. But I will be contemplating it. I think probably by mile. I would imagine mile 10 usually.
Speaker 2:On the run.
Speaker 1:On the run. Yeah, mile 10 is usually where, like on the half marathon is usually where I mentally am like okay, I feel okay, but I just don't really want to be doing this anymore. I think that's probably where I'll hit my wall. But I'm going to find that ledge.
Speaker 2:How many for a half marathon? It's 13 miles at the end 13.1, yeah. But then for the full, it's going to be 26.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep 26.2 miles, after biking 112 and swimming 2.4. The swimming is mentally the most draining, I think, because you're literally like you can't talk to anybody.
Speaker 3:You're just like by yourself in the middle of the water like a big water, a big body of water with a bunch of fish and creatures is pretty far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very far. Yeah, it's really gonna take over an hour.
Speaker 1:It's gonna be like an hour and 10 hour and 20 minutes probably that's like longer than your drive home.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna be swimming longer than your drive home wait?
Speaker 2:well, obviously that's only 2.4 miles, but swimming 2.4 miles is a very long time in my head yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying, you mean like my drive home to time. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a long time After 40 minutes in the water like, I'm ready to be done Like and it's not physical.
Speaker 2:I'm going to think about them on my way home. Like damn they got to swim this whole time they're still swimming. I'm going to be home.
Speaker 1:We're like looking out in the water Like is, and some people like when we first started I didn't even know how people held a freestyle stroke like a regular, like freestyle stroke for even a mile, and now we're doing it like without any issues. But that was one of the hardest things. I wouldn't say without any issues. Well, I freestyled the entire race. Now, instead of, like I used to the first couple, probably the first year of racing, I would even like in a sprint or olympic distance, I would start breast stroking so you can get like a breath, of true breath, in every uh stroke.
Speaker 3:And now I'm just like you just figure it out and kind of like the last race I had to, I had to get into the breaststroke for a second because my got my goggles. That's been the worst part too. It's like your goggles fog up or your goggles leak water and now you got salt water in your eye and it's burning.
Speaker 1:What's really annoying is when you have a friend, my little friend Benji, who's really he's the most inconsistent racer of them all, but he was like backstroking, like for a good portion of it, where I freestyled the entire thing and he still beat me.
Speaker 3:so he would like he like freaks out sometimes started backstroking and then got back into freestyle and and somehow still beat, beat me yeah, at the beginning of the the rock hole race, yeah, we jumped in the water, me and ryan first, and then I'm like on ryan's toes for a little bit. We get around the first buoy, I look over to my right and benji's just sitting there on his back floating like a otter and I'm like yo are you good? He's like yeah, I'm good, just had to take a break.
Speaker 3:I was like okay, and then he, him, ryan, all of them beat me out of the water and I made the wrong turn, but I was just like dude, this guy's a freak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ben is one of the most fun people to race with because you literally never know what you're going to get. Like he will be balls to the walls and then he'll just fall apart or he'll do great, like at Eagleman. The guy didn't bring, he forgot socks, so he was running, his feet were bleeding through his shoes, like he has blood stains on his shoes, so he biked the whole bike without socks and then ran a bunch of the half marathon with no socks, started bleeding so bad that he had to stop at a medical tent. Now at this point chase thought that he had cramped. Chase was on the sideline with my wife and my wife had run with me for a second to be like tell me where I was at, because everybody has trackers on them, like chase and them were tracking. All of the three of us that were racing and chase had thought that ben had cramped. And ben was just stopped at a aid like a medical aid station getting his feet wrapped up and he had like I texted them.
Speaker 1:I actually used my phone during the bike. I was like how many miles? I knew ben was ahead of me. I said how many miles has been ahead and somebody texted the. I texted a group chat and somebody texts me back. He's like he's like three or four miles ahead or something like that and I was like all right, and I started just hammering to catch him. And then, when we got on the run page, um ran next to me and she's like ben's cramping. You know, you, you, you had a 12 minute gap. Now you're like three minutes back, just keep your pace. Like don't push yourself, just stay this pace. I was doing like eight minute 30 second miles. I was very consistent. I was not. I was like between 8 and 8 30s the whole time and I felt good and I had more in the tank and I should have like turned it up a little bit. But he ended up beating me by like a minute and a half yeah, ryan, ryan pulled back, I mean literally.
Speaker 3:I think he had like six, seven minutes on you and you pulled back within. Like at one point we were like, oh shit, ryan's in the lead now and uh, he had like a minute on him. Ben had I guess that's another time ben had stopped, um, and then ben just pulled away right there at the end. Just it was crazy. It was an intense race, it came down.
Speaker 2:That seems pretty crazy, like a minute and a half apart. Yeah, they have the.
Speaker 1:The tracker has like an estimated time to finish and an estimated, like it has your speed, it has your estimated time to finish and you can track multiple people.
Speaker 1:So the people on the sidelines are like watching us, like go around the course and like um and, and this course was cool because it's an out and back twice, so you pass the people. So, like ben, I would see ben at one point and then on the next lap I didn't see him there, so I knew he either gotten further or he was closer, and at that point they had already told me that I had put some minutes on him, that I was like getting closer. So at that point I was like mento, like I gotta catch this guy, I gotta catch this guy. And I didn't end up catching him and he beat me fair and square, but that was a uh, definitely a fun one to. It's cool to spectate too. Like it is like to to just be there, like after the race when I finished and I was waiting for matt to come across the finish line, like I got on my app and I was watching for matt to come and like see how fast he was going.
Speaker 1:And it's, there's thousands of people there. The energy is great. You should, you should, come to one of these races where's the one in july? In maryland in the main july's main.
Speaker 3:Yeah, september you should come to maryland, right on the eastern shore.
Speaker 1:You can take your boat down there.
Speaker 3:It's a it's a fun day yeah, I'll have a lot of family there. You'll have family there, we'll have tents and stuff they're gonna cook out what uh day september 20th, 20th, okay yeah, but it is. It is a super cool event. I was glad I wasn't racing that day. Um, it was super choppy um in the water but it was. It was cool just to like watch and like be a part of the atmosphere and hang out and kind of chill for once.
Speaker 1:See the other side of it my parents came and they my mom still had kept calling triathlon. She called everything a marathon. Whether I did a 5K triathlon half marathon doesn't matter. She called everything a marathon. She's like are you doing another marathon race this week or whatever? Now she's like into it. So she's coming to Maine to watch us. And she was cheering me on from the sideline and I went across the street and gave them all a high five as I went by and like just that motivation, the family being there and everything is super cool. Um, now my mom's super into it and she's coming to maine.
Speaker 3:She's coming to maryland.
Speaker 1:Um, they're chase's family's coming, like they're gonna have the. We're gonna have tents set up and they're gonna cook out. We're probably gonna end up stopping and eating with them for a couple minutes and yeah, dick, just mid-race we got to eat something. We'll probably try to stop and do that. So, yeah, it's cool, it's a cool culture, it's cool thing and I am fully into.
Speaker 2:Wait. So you said mid-race, you have to stop and eat. Is it not like a bar that you would have?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, I'm not saying we're going to stop and eat burgers and hot dogs, but we're going to have to at some point. Do you carry a backpack or anything?
Speaker 2:No, so you would have to just grab something really quick.
Speaker 1:Our tri-suits have some pockets in them, and then our new bike has a fuel station. So my bike has a built-in water container and a storage container for food, but essentially there's also on the run an aid station every mile that will have like bananas, oranges, bars like all sorts of different stuff to to eat and drink.
Speaker 1:Um, so you could stop at those aid stations, the pros, they don't even stop, they just throw things in their face as they're running through the aid stations. Um, at Eagle band I didn't stop at any of them, I just ran through and you just grab stuff from them. Um, but there those races are pretty good, pretty well supported.
Speaker 3:The full will have the ability to stop halfway through the bike too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a drop site for like. You can drop stuff halfway through the bike. So if you wanted to put in like a sandwich or some people eat peanut butter, jellies or stuff like that you could put that in your drop bag for the mid-race.
Speaker 2:stop, yeah, we're going gonna see how we feel, but how do you dry your feet when you get out of the water to put your socks and shoes on?
Speaker 1:do you have?
Speaker 1:a towel right by your bike yeah, you have a little transition area. It's part of the whole. Strategy is, honestly, like transitioning fast, getting out of the water, getting your wetsuit off, getting into the next thing, whether it's your bike shoes or whether it's your running shoes, um, and remembering your socks and remembering to put everything in an order, you have to have your belt, your running belt, your number on it, all that kind of stuff, your running hat, whatever you, whatever you need, um, it's all part of the that's all part of the race. Like transitioning is one of the ways that I've lost the last couple races, like I sat down at the one and I fell over and probably wasted like 20 seconds like sitting and falling.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, and I think that rock hall race I was fourth place and I would have been podium and the two people that were one person that was ahead of me in third. The only thing that was much faster than me was his swim is a little bit faster but his transitions were like almost double as fast as mine because I like sat down and, like you know, fucked around too much where you just have to be like in and out. If you watch some of these videos, if you get in that algorithm, you see some of these videos of the pros doing it, it's wild.
Speaker 3:I showed ryan last sunday how to transition pretty well, yeah, from a man, from man to a woman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did. Actually, we did a coach, we did, we did a coaching session last weekend and I was cooking them on the bike and we were doing a back and forth bike to run, bike to run and naturally, I should be beating them on this bike that I have, like with chase, got into the transition and just blew me away like I.
Speaker 1:I came in first and I was still putting on my first shoe and he was already in both of his shoes and running away. So that just like goes to show you how much transition can make a break especially in the shorter distances too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, sprint distance, olympic distance. You got 30 seconds to a minute and typically, like the first transition, you're coming out of the water and you have to run barefoot for a little while. So, like sometimes, it's up to half a mile where you're running from the water to transition and you're just running barefoot and that's all part of your transition time. So you got to get that that part down and then dry off and whatever else. Typically I don't even really dry off, I just put the shit on and keep them, keep them moving. But anything else to add before I go eat?
Speaker 3:sushi. Um, yes, real quick. I wanted to introduce a new segment to the podcast called boda business.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's kind of like build a bear is this a thing that you just didn't think to tell us about? We're gonna start a new segment. I'm not even prepared. Yeah, exactly, this is the whole point okay, so let's hear it.
Speaker 3:I just want to like go through real quick and one idea, like a business idea that you're not going to act on. It doesn't have to be crazy, but like just an idea about business or a business that someone could start and implement, or you know, just just some type of concept of a business, something so I always thought maybe not always, but like as I, as we get older like what kind of business can I start to where it takes the least amount of my effort over time?
Speaker 2:like maybe it can take a lot of effort, like to jump start it and get it rolling, but like a business where I can jump start, get it rolling, be all in and then, kind of, just like you know, let it go and coast on its own and the two business that always come to my head are car washes and laundromats car wash.
Speaker 3:They're um, they're opening one right right down here on richie actually car washes are good money.
Speaker 1:A lot of private equity companies are making bringing that, but as as far as starting one, that those kind of businesses that you're talking about take a lot of capital. So what I would do if I was like restarting right now, I think going to business owners, and I think going to business owners and teaching them or getting some sort of AI figured out for a specific business and helping businesses implement that into their business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there is a lot of money in teaching people how to become better businesses or teaching people about finances and money.
Speaker 1:Like I've seen a lot of those coaches pop. I think there's so much opportunity with ai right now that will most people like, like we said in the beginning of the podcast, that they're in their 60s.
Speaker 2:They don't want to learn something new.
Speaker 1:But if somebody comes up and like, hey, can I get 10 minutes of your time, let me show you what chat GPT can do for just me as an estimator, Like the other day I typed in. I mean I just posted in chat GPT a drawing of roof, of a roof trust that we're building an addition on, and I just asked it how many squares of roofing shingles do I need? And it just spit me out exactly how much I needed. That stuff is game changing for businesses and if you could be the one to sit down in front of somebody and show them how it works like if I could sit there and show a contractor that's manually estimating things how to use Polycam and upload that Polycam into ChatGPT and estimate that job for them, I could change somebody's life and charge them for it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think that's a big one. I know I have a ton of people asking me, like how to use ChagBT or how to use AI and automations. I think that's a huge one. It's just showing them how to use the new technology and how you're doing it too. I think you do that with your coaching clients. Yeah, I do See that wasn't so hard, right, built a business, but built a business. Um, but no, mine was, I was.
Speaker 1:I've been noticing a big trend and like let me guess, wait, let me guess it's quick transitions.
Speaker 3:No, not no, but I should teach you on how to do that, so that way no, no, I'm happy as a man.
Speaker 3:You'll be faster as it um, anyways, um know that the health and like recovery industry I think the recovery industry of, because so many people are starting to get into running that there's a bigger boom and like people recovering from their long runs or the run clubs and those type of things um, we were talking off podcast about um a couple people that I've seen start like recovery, um resorts, if you will so, like airbnbs that have like saunas, hot tubs, cold plunges um I don't really know, like we just bought cold plunges um, and I don't really know of anywhere around here besides. Actually, somebody did hit me up on instagram a vive agent that owns like a what are they called cryotherapy spa, but I don't know too many of those like airbnbs where you can just go and connect around here with nature and kind of recover.
Speaker 1:So I thought that was a pretty cool idea yeah, I think the the whole fitness industry, I think is a is a great place to be right now, especially because I think a lot of people are getting into like I've heard of like people they're doing like fitness, like music festivals. Now we're like, yeah, when I went to music festivals 10 years ago is people were just doing drugs and drinking and getting fucked up the whole time. Now there's music festivals where people are going and like exercising and doing like you know.
Speaker 3:I just saw one retreat in in austin texas. It's called coffee and chill and you go there. It's a daytime rave. You go there. There's no alcohol. You get unlimited coffee, matcha, non-alcoholic drinks, you can go and cold plunge. It's like all these people dancing and cold plunging and it it's like that's a cool atmosphere and I think our age group um, your age group, millennials, and then gen z have started to notice like, hey, we should be on this, this kind of trajectory, and I think that's kind of what's taken over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just ultimately feel so much better all the time that I than I used to, and I like compare it to how I always used to have stomach aches. I always used to like feel like shit because I wasn't treating my body well. Now that I'm, I just feel good every day. It's like a weird thing, but it's. I think a lot of it has to do with not drinking alcohol and having like there's no toxins. Um, it's. I think that's a way of the future and, I think, recovery. I mean, how many people have fucking cold plungers? Nobody knows. Nobody knew what a fucking cold plunge was 10 years ago. I never heard of cold plunges until probably the last few years, and now chase and I both have one at our house and I do it every single day, sometimes multiple times a day.
Speaker 1:So you're psycho yeah, every morning now when I wake up, first thing I do put on my robe and I go right downstairs and I I get in that thing. There's nothing like waking up to 48 degree water actually I've been putting it down to 43 degrees and you just get in that water and you just like start, you just you start battling right away. You wake up quick yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:It is a dopamine rush. It definitely like I could see me starting to substitute the cold point for like coffee yeah, not having to use coffee, or I start.
Speaker 1:When I started cold plunging in the morning, I found less of a need for the pre-workout and I actually did it the other day on accident, forgot my pre-workout at home and went to the gym right after a cold plunge and I actually felt like awake and totally fine and I was like maybe I should start weaning off the the uh pre-workout. But I haven't.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna keep doing pre-workouts I actually just had my first energy drink the other day in six months.
Speaker 1:Didn't you have one in Chattanooga?
Speaker 3:Well, that one. Yeah, that was half a can that I gave to you after. But so my second one.
Speaker 1:I was going to say we chugged one, we split one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so my second but my first full energy drink. Like I finished that can and that was like dude, that felt like Adderall, it was crazy, um, but I've been feeling like you said, I've been feeling great and I think it's just all of what you put in your body.
Speaker 1:so yeah all right well, july 31st, we have an event on deerco road. Look us up on facebook to find the actual address. Uh, july 31st, six to nine, everything free. There is a Facebook link. We just hit 10,000 subscribers on Facebook, which is cool, so that's a big big thing. We're going to find out if my business survives two weeks of me being gone. In the next episode, probably that releases after this one. But yeah, july 31st. Shout out to all the people that help us with the podcast Carl, who edits all of these stuff and has to watch us and listen to us talk, and Eric, who's been a huge help. Um, eric Campbell, he will grow your social medias, youtube specifically, but all of our social medias have grown because of him, and he knows the algorithms and I don't know. Chase can probably speak better on it, but he's just. He knows what, when to do it, what to do, and it's been, it's been a game changer for us. So thank you Eric, thank you Carl, and until next time.
