Commercial Real Estate Podcast

JF3225: Building a $650 Million Multifamily Portfolio After Losing It All in 2008 ft. Patrick Grimes

Written by Joe Fairless | Jul 4, 2023 7:59:48 AM

 

 

Patrick Grimes is the CEO of Invest on Main Street, which allows investors to passively invest in syndications for alternative assets. In this episode, Patrick shares his whirlwind journey from high-tech engineer to real estate investor, which includes losing everything in the 2008 housing crisis. He also shares the importance of learning to trust others and educating investors on the history of market cycles.

Patrick Grimes | Real Estate Background

  • CEO of Invest on Main Street
  • Portfolio: 
    • $647 million in AUM
    • 4,923 multifamily units in 26 communities across seven states
    • 138 natural gas and oil wells
  • Based in: Los Angeles, CA
  • Say hi to him at: 
  • Best Ever Book: A CEO Only Does Three Things by Trey Taylor
  • Greatest Lesson: Don’t fear the market cycles, learn how to ride the waves and invest in the downturn.


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TRANSCRIPT

Ash Patel: Hello, Best Ever listeners. Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I'm Ash Patel and I'm with today's guest, Patrick Grimes. Patrick is joining us from Los Angeles, California. He is the CEO of Invest on Main Street. They find investment opportunities in alternative assets that have strong performance and allow investors to passively invest in commercial real estate syndications. Patrick's portfolio consists of almost 5,000 multifamily units, totaling $647 million in 26 communities, in seven states, as well as 138 natural gas and oil wells. Patrick, thank you for joining us, and how are you today?

Patrick Grimes: Glad to be here, Ash. When I first started in this journey I had been tuning into this podcast fairly frequently, so... Glad to be on the other side of it.

Ash Patel: It's our pleasure to have you. Patrick, before we get started, can you give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and what you're focused on now?

Patrick Grimes: Sure. So my name is Patrick Grime, founder of Invest on Main Street. We are focused on bringing alternative investments, and me coming from a high tech background, I was very heavily weighted into high tech stock. I realized that I needed to be diversified, and I didn't know how to do it. So we're offering those passive investments and assets that are non-correlated by Wall Street. That's why we're Invest on Main Street.

Ash Patel: Patrick, 5,000 multifamily units... Tell us how that evolution happened. How'd you get started?

Patrick Grimes: So we're almost at 5,000... Yeah, it was a long journey. I started out back in 2007 and 2008 as a high tech professional. I got some advice to invest as much as I can, as soon as I can into real estate. I tried it out in a pre-development, which was supposed to double and triple my money every year or two... Unfortunately, I personally guaranteed all that, '09 and '10 happened, and it raked me over the coals pretty bad. So it was a rough start. I learned a lot about speculating versus investing, buying for cashflow, and eventually circled back after advancing my high tech career further into single family, and then recession-resilient lower risk investments, and then traded up to larger multifamily.

Ash Patel: Alright, a lot of that sounds generic, it sounds like it could be on a brochure... Give us the dirty. So how bad was it in 2009 and 2008? You personally guaranteed a lot of these loans. Did that result in bankruptcy ultimately?

Patrick Grimes: Well, I was in one pre-development back then. But no, I was determined not to go bankrupt. And I probably should have. And a lot of people in my position did go bankrupt. I was fairly confident that I can make my way through it. I've paid for longer than I should. In fact, when I hired the attorney to help me out, he said "Stop paying. And then you'll finally get a hold of them." My note had been sold about three times; I couldn't really find who the people were. I finally got him on the phone, or they reached out once I stopped paying. And I asked them "So am I going bankrupt, or are we going to figure something out?" And ultimately, what happened is it was all recourse, and in recourse they said they were not going to come after me. I went through a foreclosure. They'd then forgiven what they call the forgiven debt, and they wrote it off on their taxes, which means the IRS came around and said, "Hey, Patrick, you're personally responsible now to pay for the taxes of the debt that they forgave as if it was income for you personally." Ordinary income. So I was paying on taxes, foreclosure took a hit...

At that point, I was pretty much wrecked, very embarrassed and got back into my high tech career, decided to make that my next thing; I did a master's in the engineering and business... I was very successful at what I did. I did a lot of great projects. It was very difficult though to climb that high tech ladder, as everybody, probably most of your listeners know. And I've found myself [unintelligible 00:05:26.15] away into traditional investments, IRA, 401-K's, but still had that whisper in my ear, "The wealthy invest in real estate for a reason. You just did it too risky, too fast, inexperienced, and at the wrong time." So that's when I reset, found other ways to get back into real estate, and decided to be the tortoise, and not the hare at that point.

Ash Patel: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. How many years was it that you went back into tech?

Patrick Grimes: Let me dig through the cobwebs... So I graduated college in 2006, mechanical engineer, and then through '09, '10, '11, '12, it wasn't until, let's say 2013 that I finished my master's in engineering and MBA; then I switched companies to make it big in a small automation company... And that's when I really started hunkering into the single family model.

Ash Patel: So you were out of real estate for how many years then?

Patrick Grimes: I pretty much got clear financially by 2010 and '11, I think I was clear financially... And then I started my master's degrees, and then that puts me maybe three or four years before I started actively pursuing other options in real estate.

Ash Patel: Yeah. And again, thank you for sharing that. It's amazing. You knew that you had to get back in real estate, but you did what you had to do for the time being; you got further educated and started going up that corporate ladder. And then when the time was appropriate, you got back into real estate. Amazing story.

And then - give us the run. So you started investing in single family homes, something a little bit safer... And how did that epic rise come about?

Patrick Grimes: Well, I tend to be a bit of an analyst, coming from the machine design space... And I did a lot of research throughout the investing world. And I wasn't 100% all-in on real estate when I came back around, but I arrived back at it for a similar reason... But I found that I was paying out of pocket because I wasn't buying things for cash flow. I was trying to get outsized returns quickly, by trying to create something. And when the music stopped, I lost it all. And I was personally guaranteed. I found that there were ways to buy in recession-resilient markets, like in Texas, and I found Houston actually, where the real estate market lifted, and then during the downturn it actually almost leveled off before it started going up again. If anybody's interested, I can send them the graphs that I looked at all those years ago, and the graphs still say the same things. They're recession-resilient markets for all the things that you probably are expecting. They have diversified employment, industries have some insulation from market volatility, [unintelligible 00:08:16.16] essential needs... And they're landlord-friendly. It's better, you can get more stable rent there, because you can get people out, and their legislative-friendly to new businesses. So the business keep moving and people keep moving there. Even in downturns, just like we saw during COVID. There are areas that continue to outperform.

So I've found those areas, and then it was about the asset; what am I going to buy? And I read "The Hold Investor", I have it over there, it's a yellow book on the wall there, about how I can continue my tech career until I die, basically... Or I can continue my tech career until I can get 40 single family homes. So I fell into that trap, and it was successful though, because I was buying these properties in Houston while in the Bay Area in Southern California, and I'm essentially burning the candle at both ends on the engineering career, doing amazing projects, Lockheed, Tesla, J&J, Abbott, and we're [unintelligible 00:09:13.16] all kinds of cool stuff. And I'm a huge geek, so I love it, don't get me wrong. I actually thought I was going to do it forever... While trying to moonlight by underwriting properties, meeting with wholesalers, contractors, getting them under contract, getting loans, getting contractors, getting them renovated, getting them refinanced and getting them filled in the property management... I was moonlighting, and it was painful.

If you want to hear the dirty skinny, the American dream would have us working at these high tech careers, or as a lawyer or a doctor, and idolizing these people that work for Apple, or become a resident or a doctor at some famous hospital. But that just leads to working forever. It leads to the 24/7 flog that I was. It doesn't leave any time to pay attention to your investments. So we just kind of push them off to 401-Ks and IRAs, like I did... Or you graduate, like I did, with a TV set, and that was glamorizing these house flippers. You know, late night TV, "You can become a landlord, and that's the American dream." Well, I'll tell you what - I didn't have any time left for family, friends and hobbies, when I was doing what I was good at during the day, and I was moonlighting real estate.

So my soon to be wife that I met - and this was when I was 35, and I had not gotten married yet... I knew it was time, and I found a girl that was 26 years old and amazing. I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna take a pause", and she was actually there for my last single family closing. And then I said, "Look, I've gotta take a break, and I want to marry you. Then when we come back to it, we're gonna do something else." And that's when I learned that I couldn't do it all myself, I had to trade up. And from then on, the shift was in private equity, syndications and partnering, and multifamily.

Ash Patel: Passively, or actively, or both?

Patrick Grimes: Both. In fact, I have some articles in Forbes where I write on asset protection, which talks about the outsized risk of the single family dream... And the passive position in a limited partnerships securities offering, and the better position it puts you in. I have articles on the accelerated growth in the multifamily space... So I was all-in on getting the returns on the passive side. But the engineer in me would not let me just not understand the inner workings of everything... So I've always been that [unintelligible 00:11:41.11] So it wasn't long, two and a half years, actually, from when I stopped doing single family, that I actually was the active partner in my first multifamily deal.

Ash Patel: What the hell did you do for two and a half years?

Patrick Grimes: Over-analyze...?

Ash Patel: Okay, and that was my next question. In my experience, engineers make some of the best syndicators because of all the systems that they implement. And I think the flip side of that is, at times, they will over-analyze deals as well. So what's the solution to having people like you, that are very technically savvy, and get them to at some point draw a line in the sand and say, "Okay, this is a good deal. Move forward. Stop analyzing and talking yourself out of this deal"? What's the solution to that?

Patrick Grimes: Well, I had it in both ways. I actually did a podcast on [unintelligible 00:12:35.09] where the guy just poked at me for being an analysis paralysis guy for a while. But I had a double whammy, where I had lost it all and I had gone through this incredibly painful, financially and emotionally, experience. And it was scary. Alright, so I had already lost it all one time, and in addition to being an analyst and an engineer. And I had done most of everything on my own. I tried to be the expert in engineering, and I thought, "Well, if I'm so good at that--" It's like many of my investors - they're really good at being an attorney, or a doctor, or whatever. Entrepreneur. Well, that means they can obviously figure out real estate too, right? Well, it turns out that I was so focused on trying to do it all myself, that I lost myself.

So the journey for me over that two and a half years was unpacking the onion. It was how do I trust in others to partner with? ...whether it's a limited partner or an active partner. In order to scale this, I need to find somebody in a new asset classes, alternative investments, that have been doing it for decades successfully, have been through the downturn, understand the conversations and the questions I'm asking, because they felt that defeat and come out of it... And can build a portfolio to last. I need to find those kinds of people, actively or passively. And that took a long time.

My wife and I actually traveled a lot together, because I was already traveling for high tech, and I have a companion pass; we'd catch a ride every now and then. She is a rock star in her own right, not to underplay her. She's production manager for feature length films. So she's a bit of a systems person herself. But ultimately, it took me to get past just the trust factor, and then who is the right who, that has the right values, and then what are we going to do? What are the assets? There was probably a dozen different potential partners, sponsors that we had literally met physically, before we found the right one. I don't expect everybody to go down this path, but for me, that was the exploration that I was on.

And then when we started investing, it was more of a natural. We understand the mindset, I learned about underwriting, I understood the business model, and it became much more of a "Let's just do more and more together." I had brought a number of investments to them over the years, saying, "Hey, what do you think about this? Or about this?" Then I started -- when I learned about being active, I started meeting brokers and getting my own deals; underwriting, getting feedback, and saying, "What do you think about this deal? What to think about this deal?" And I have been doing this with half a dozen different large syndicators, ones that have been doing it for decades, and I was determined to trade up. And ultimately, one of the ones said, "Let's work on one together." And that's how the active journey started.

Ash Patel: Out of the almost 5,000 units that you have, are those ones that you are actively managing, or are you partners in that, or do you solely control those?

Patrick Grimes: Those are on the general partner side, and I'm a co-general partner in all of them. What I learned over the years is one piece of the puzzle is the analyst, one piece of the puzzle is the underwriter [unintelligible 00:15:42.21] projected to the proforma, the other piece of the puzzle is vertically integrated management, that can control all the way to the tenants. And somebody that takes like me, a designer, that walks in the building says they have a new gizmo or gadget and creates this automated machine, and does the analysis, financial modeling, 3D modeling to actually produce something - that is different than the person that takes that thing on the manufacturing floor and gets it from 80 to 85, to 90 to 95 to 99.99% efficient. And I learned that I needed those guys in the long term, that were very passionate about that vertically-integrated property management, building out teams... I needed those partners that were in the various markets - I didn't want to be all in one place anymore - that are in the various markets, had decades of experience, success, to partner with. And that's when I learned to partner with the right who, and that's when I learned how to be successful.

Ash Patel: Are you a co-GP with multiple different operators? Or is it mostly concentrated in one or a few?

Patrick Grimes: [00:16:50.15]

Ash Patel: Okay. And what is your primary role as a co-GP?

Patrick Grimes: I've done a little bit of all the roles - deal finding and underwriting. Asset management is perhaps not my strong suit, but I play a role in making sure that the properties are meeting the projections and proformas. I tend to work with others that are very passionate on the property management side. I'm a key principal. I have my [unintelligible 00:17:13.06] so I can help secure the loans. We put up earnest money, and we're a co-investor in all the deals. And we capital-raise.

Ash Patel: Okay. So you're not typecasted into any one roll or with any one group; you go where the opportunities are.

Patrick Grimes: Yeah, and I think that comes out in this next example; on the multifamily side there's a lot of different flavors. Really great deals come in different shapes and sizes, with different partners. On the diversified energy side, obviously, I haven't been drilling oil and gas wells for my whole life; my great grandfather did, and it's in the family, but I haven't. So partnering with operators that are heavy in that space, that have a track record. And then in the recessionary acquisitions fund that we're launching now, we're finding incredible assets that are way undervalued, like deals we saw in 2009 and '10, that I wasn't able to scoop up. So there's a number of partners on that side, in different markets, that are able to help chase those down, a little bit like whack a mole - when you find it they disappear - to help chase those assets that are steeply discounted [unintelligible 00:18:23.01] So each of these, to your point, has a little bit different system, a little bit different process.

Break: [00:18:29.27]

Ash Patel: Patrick, we've had a great run of many years, arrow went up and to the right, and that's not the case today. Can you give us an example of some lessons learned on deals that you're involved in that maybe paused distributions, or didn't meet the proforma expectations? ...and really the lessons learned from that.

Patrick Grimes: Right. For example, having lost everything in real estate once, I was very cautious of going into debt products. So I'm happy to say that all of our deals, our 26 acquired assets on the real estate side have all had either long-term fixed interest, or interest with rate caps. And they were all stress-tested to be able to ride out the downturn, meaning that we had breakeven occupancies well below where we saw them fall in past recessions. And we keep six to eight months of reserves on the sideline, so that if some natural disaster were to happen, we can ride it out... Along with insurance.

Now, with all that said, some of those things have happened. After COVID we had delinquencies rise in places like Atlanta and Houston. All of a sudden, people start getting free rent, and they decided not to pay. And that happened on a mass scale, to the point where - we're used to be able to get people out in a month if they didn't pay, and it's three and four, and in one case almost six, where we're struggling to get somebody out. So that slows us down.

We are cash-flowing on the asset, or we are reducing distributions on many of the assets because of the slowdown, but just getting people out during COVID has caused some slowdown. We have reached our rate gap on all our assets, which is great, meaning that we weren't fixed interest, and we are now not exposed to any further increases in interest rates, which is part of the underwriting... But also, we saw insurance rates go up. Some carriers are leaving areas altogether, so it's a little bit of a dance we're playing, where sometimes we'll get a 10% insurance increase, or 20%, or 30% in some areas, and then we're out shopping. So the compounding effect of these things means that even though we bought for very strong cash flow, and we conservatively projected, and we're still realizing dramatic rent growth in the markets that we're in, because we bought in markets with significant influx of people and rent growth, we're a little bit flatlined at the bottom level for now, because of the delinquencies and the insurance going up, as well as much of the rent growth that we created through the value-add was consumed by our interest rates rising to hit our cap.

At this point, I'm happy to say we're on our way out of that, but it did probably set us back about six months, maybe a year in a property or two in our proforma; it did set us back on the timing, because we just can't get people out to renovate... And we're working on that now, we're doing cash for keys in some cases... And as that all comes to fruition, we're able to continue to renovate. The fundamentals of the deals that were bought at steep discounts, very much so under market rents, with easy, superficial value-added lifts that we do through renovations - the fundamentals of the deals are still strong.

Ash Patel: Having the luxury of hindsight, what should you have done differently?

Patrick Grimes: Well, in every single deck I've ever done, instead of trying to project 20+ IRRs, we've said "This is a 15 to 16 IRR. This is a 17 IRR." And we've added all these protections in there. We even have a line in every single investor deck that said "This was underwritten, or the forecasts of this investment, with an eye towards what happened in 2009 and '10, and not 2015 through 2020." And that line has been in there for many, many years. Nobody really paid attention to it. We kept emphasizing it in every single webinar. Nobody really cared so much about it. They were actually more like, "Why are you raising this extra million and a half dollars and six to eight months in reserves? That's a lot of money. What are you doing with that? It's just sitting in the account." We even took flack on "Well, what are you going to do with it? It's gonna get hit by inflation." Well, it's just sitting in the account.

So we did as much as we could through those times to prepare ourselves for these times. The more investor education that you can give towards every market is cyclic, the better. For example, on my passive investor guide - it's a free download on my website - right up in the very beginning it talks about the diversification of the middle class, the high income earners, and ultra wealthy. The middle class is about an 8% allocation outside of traditional investments; that's everything that's alternative. The middle class is relying on 92% of all of their investments to [unintelligible 00:25:15.00] their employer put things. They put it in the 401k, or maybe they're in the stock market, day trading, maybe they've graduated as a financial planner... All of that, 82% is all in the cyclic tax inflation hedge space. But the high income earners are 25%, and the ultra wealthy are 50% in alternative investments. That's private equity, business equity, and real estate.

So I like to educate people all along... My story, throughout this huge rapid growth that we've seen, to your question, has been I've lost it all in real estate once. You shouldn't have more than half your wealth in real estate, and you shouldn't put more than 5% of your wealth into any particular deal, and you should consider diversifying like the wealthy, into non-correlated investments. And that's why we're offering what I believe to be the highest risk-adjusted return in multifamily, the way that we structure it, with the foundations that we structure it with, and the underwriting, as well as diversified energy - both essential needs - as well as recessionary acquisitions. Because while you see people's portfolio going down right now, and that reset happening in commercial real estate, there's opportunities to take advantage of the downside. There are people that are cash heavy, that are out there looking for those deals and buying them.

So the education I would give is don't fear the market cycles. They happen. That's part of capitalism. It's always going to be going like this, and everybody could expect that... But learn how to ride the wave up, and learn how to invest on the downturn, so that you can at least get exposure to the upside and the downside. Don't fear it, to learn how to invest on the downturn, and scoop up those discounted deals. That's the education I think everybody should hear, instead of sitting in fear on the sidelines... Because unfortunately, they're gonna be like me, [unintelligible 00:27:10.06] like, "How did those guys do so well in the downturn?" Well, I was sitting scared.

Ash Patel: So if I'm hearing this correctly, the answer to my question "What would you have done differently having the luxury of hindsight?" is you would have taken the time to educate your investors on market cycles, how to prosper in down cycles?

Patrick Grimes: Right. How to diversify in the upswing, and then how to position yourself to win from a downturn.

Ash Patel: So you've hit your rate caps... When do those expire? And you've got over half a billion dollars of AUM. And we've seen the articles on what rate caps are costing going forward. What's the plan for that?

Patrick Grimes: There's a lot of debate. In fact, I was just at a mastermind over the weekend, we were all discussing rate caps... And two thirds of the rate cap, to be clear, is just volatility risk; it's uncertainty. So the rate caps are hyper inflated right now because of uncertainty. People are unsure as to what's going to happen. Now that the debt ceiling, which - I'm not sure when this will air, but we just learned that debt ceiling was opened up. That relieves some of that. It was kind of a little bit of a pressure valve. And right now there's going to be Treasury issuance, which allows the government to start spending again. The probability of another rate increase this month is about 20%. That's a really good sign. And that's what the market's reflecting. It may happen in July, but the Fed is certainly starting to taper their rhetoric.

Ash Patel: We had a crazy jobs report that sent the markets soaring... And that's not what the Fed wanted.

Patrick Grimes: So that's just on the surface. However, if you look at the net jobs, it's not that good. The different indicators -- in fact, if you look at the likelihood of a rate cap, it's only 20%. And that's because that created a lot of jobs, but the net job loss has not been [unintelligible 00:29:06.21] and that was a relief to the Fed. So there are lots of ways to look at these numbers, and there are ways that are perpetuated in the news... But right now, if that was the case, then why wouldn't the probability of [unintelligible 00:29:22.04] be 100% for July? Simply, it's because the Fed is looking at more than just one index, which might skew it.

Now, I'm not saying it won't happen or will happen... I was just going to share a little bit of the banter that we have between this syndication community. Most of pretty much everything that we closed on prior to last year was fixed, Fannie and Freddie. And it wasn't until last year that we've found a lot of challenges with Fannie and Freddie, in both the loan-to-value and the interest rates. And we've found that doing a three year plus one plus one was more advantageous for our investors. And even the costs to pay for the rate caps, and the cost to increase the rate caps down the road is more advantageous than what it was costing to get to Fannie and Freddie.

So for the most part, we do have another two years before we're up for a renewal, and within those loan terms; it was a three plus one plus one across the board. Now, the strategy is to be well capitalized; and well capitalized - that means we have the money available to purchase an extension on the interest rate cap. Now, those interest rate caps that we purchased have actually gone down from the time that we purchased them. For example, we purchased one rate cap that would normally go for 40,000 in steady state interest rates. In 2021, it was closer to 400,000, and we actually closed on it at 1.2 million. Well, now that same interest rate cap is trending somewhere around 700k 800k. So we had planned with far more liquidity required in the bank than what we see today. And right now we see the uncertainty - actually rate caps coming down, because there's a lot less uncertainty now with what the rates are going to do. I'm not saying it's just in the price of the rate caps; we feel very well capitalized to be able to purchase them.

Ash Patel: Patrick, would you agree that one of the best things that you did was raise excess capital as you were raising for each of these deals?

Patrick Grimes: It's the safety margin way of thinking from an engineer's perspective... But it's not just that; it's first low leverage is fine for cash flow. If we had 90% leverage on all these properties, and we had six to eight month worth reserves, we would still be tanked. We'd be all over right now. By sticking with low leverage and a high cash flow, that means that even if the market temporary fluctuates, the lenders are okay, because their debt coverage service ratio is fine. And that's where you really run into challenges today.

Ash Patel: Help me understand that... So if you had 90% LTV, why would that be detrimental? Would they call your loan?

Patrick Grimes: No, they'll recap it; they'll come back and say "We're gonna reassess your loan, because it's a technical default." A technical default doesn't mean you are a bad actor, it just means you don't have the debt coverage service ratio. In other words, the current valuation of your property, based on your current occupancies and the trending rates has now meant that it's too risky for them to carry forward, meaning they may say either you need to move on and refinance this, or you need to come up and pay down your loan, and that's why we see a lot of capital falls in order to create that debt coverage service ratio.

Ash Patel: Interesting. I invest in non-residential commercial. In our world, that doesn't happen. That's crazy to me that they modify loans as you go, but I understand it's a technicality. Interesting. Patrick, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?

Patrick Grimes: My best real estate investing ever is first who then, what. Find a partner that has been through a downturn, that has seen challenges and struggles and came out of it, and learned from it. It was so frequent, and it was the most challenging thing, was to find partners that I could ask questions who actually understood what I was asking... And I said, "What are you doing to fortify this investment to ride out the next downturn?" Or in this case, it's "What are you doing right now differently than before to take advantage of the market reset? How are you capitalizing on deals are going to fall out from this? How do I win from the downturn? Have you done this before?" First who, then what. There's a lot of flashy marketing out there, a lot of people walking on [00:33:54.04] doing a lot of crazy deals... We lose to these individuals, because they're paying top dollar higher pricing... And when we talk to them, they don't have an appreciation for essentially the same fortification that we do and that we placed in our investments.

Ash Patel: Patrick, are you ready for the Best Ever Lightning Round?

Patrick Grimes: Sure.

Ash Patel: Alright, Patrick, what's the Best Ever book you've recently read?

Patrick Grimes: [unintelligible 00:34:19.04] He's a solid buddy of mine, and that book you need to read at least three times. Leading an organization - there's a ton of self-help books out there to try and teach you how to be a better leader... This one really spoke to my heart, and it's the first one that -- I was usually listening to 1.25 or one and a half; I slowed it from one and a half to 1.25, and then I slowed it from 1.25 to one. And when I got through it, I started it again. It's just an incredible book, it's brand new... I'd recommend everybody pick it up and read it.

Ash Patel: Patrick, what's the Best Ever way you like to give back?

Patrick Grimes: Well, coming from where I have, in high tech, and climbing the corporate ladder, succeeding at it, and then diversifying into real estate, failing at it, and then doing it again and winning, but trading all my time away from family, friends and hobbies and single family, and then finding other ways in commercial real estate, and energy funds, and other ways to diversify, I got a lot of experience, and I relate to a lot of investors, and I'd be happy to have a conversation with anybody, if they would like. I have a lot of time now, because all I do is real estate, and the private equity alternative investments. So I'd be happy to chat with anybody that is along their path, and they can just go to our website, investonmainstreet.com/contact, and you can set a meeting up with me on my calendar, and if we're not a good fit, I'll be happy to pass you along to some of my partners that might be.

Ash Patel: Patrick, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?

Patrick Grimes: We have two websites: investonmainstreet.com, and then we have passiveinvestingmastery.com. We have a lot of educational content, and the current [unintelligible 00:36:07.11] like I said, the recessionary acquisitions fund. In addition to writing for Forbes, I do have a book out that did make a bestseller on Amazon. It's "Persistence, pivots and game-changers: Turning challenges into opportunities." I'd be happy to give this away, a signed copy, hard copy, shipped for free. I just do it as part of my give back. A lot of people out there that can relate to my journey. There's also Phil Collins, the lead guitar at Def Leppard, NFL NBA players, coaches, entrepreneurs, athletes, a lot of really cool stories... And the first time I told my whole story. If anybody's interested, go to investonmainstreet.com/book. And if you use the promo code BestEver, we'll get a signed hard copy out to you. And if you'd like to chat, just go ahead and use the link on that page and set up a call, too.

Ash Patel: Awesome. Patrick, thank you for your time today, and thank you for sharing your story of how you started out in real estate, you got hit by the economy, went back, educated yourself, leveled up as an engineer, got back into the game that once kicked your butt, and you've succeeded incredibly in real estate. So thank you for sharing that story with us.

Patrick Grimes: I appreciate it, Ash. Thanks so much for having me.

Ash Patel: Best Ever listeners, thank you for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star review, share this podcast with somebody you think can benefit from it. Also, follow, subscribe and have a Best Ever day.

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