EP71 Rehabbing Small Town Iowa with Dwan Bent-Twyford & Bill Twyford

[00:00:00] I think people should not be afraid to invest outside of where they live. Yeah. But they should also just be realistic to the fact that if you're going to do that, at least go and see the area and learn it and meet a few people. From cornfields to high-rises, office to industrial, houses to hotels, and every other asset class in real estate, we cover the people, the projects, and the profit. Welcome to the Investing in Iowa Show.

[00:00:28] This show is for go-doers, action-takers, and business owners. It's for people like you who are sick of Uncle Sam taking a huge bite of your apple. If you're looking to get ahead of what's taking place in Iowa, learn who is doing what and how you can get in on the action. You're in the right place. Hosted by Neil Timmins, an Iowa native who has been involved in over $300 million in real estate right here in Iowa. Recording in studio from West Des Moines.

[00:00:56] Here's your host, Neil Timmins. I've got Dwan Bent-Twyford and Bill Twyford here with me today. Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks, man. How you doing? Fantastic. I appreciate you being here. For the audience's sake, who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? Well, we live in Denver. We do a lot of investing in Iowa, which is what we're here to talk about today. And we are building ourselves a little downtown over in Clinton, Iowa. Taking over building by building. Building by building.

[00:01:25] Take me back maybe to the beginning. And I think for Bill, it ultimately starts in Clinton. But take me back to the beginning. And then I want to walk through some of the real estate journey and then we'll bring it home in terms of the resurgence and then coming back to Clinton. No problem. Well, you know, it's funny. I was born and raised in Iowa. So I moved away, went to Houston in 1982, started my own painting business. I was 23 years old. So right now, you know, I've been self-employed for 44 years.

[00:01:53] So I've never had a job other than working for my dad when I was a kid. And in 1993, I couldn't pass a respirator test and ended up, you know, having to get out of the painting business because of the health issues that I had. And I didn't really know what to do. And I always wanted to live in the mountains of Colorado. So I moved my family at that time from Houston to Colorado and became a real estate agent. I sold over 500 homes in four years as an agent. Wow.

[00:02:21] I was a Mike Ferry trained agent. And then I started working foreclosures. I helped a couple people out in foreclosure. I made 80,000 bucks on my first deal. And I thought, gosh, you know what? I'd rather work foreclosures than list property. So what year was that? That was 1998. Okay. I started working foreclosures full time and I flipped 80 homes my first year. And, um, Bill, you don't mess around, buddy. Oh, hell no.

[00:02:49] I, I prospect, I qualify. I do effectively follow up and I closed. Uh, you know, it's just, I, I took what I learned with my mentor, Mike Ferry as an agent, and I took it into the real estate investing arena. And just started chasing people in foreclosure. That's what I did. And then I met Juan at a seminar. So I had also been investing for a decade. And, you know, for people that maybe don't remember me on your show before, I was a broke single mom.

[00:03:19] I had been fired from Denny's and I started, I'm in Florida right now. I had started here in South Florida and I was going door knocking with the baby hanging on my hip, knocking on doors, living in all these houses, fixing them up, living in the next one, fixing it up and, you know, doing that. And then I was asked to start speaking at some of the Ria's. I found myself at a Ria in Colorado, which is where we met. And then the magic happened. Yeah. That's it.

[00:03:46] So the way we ended up in Iowa, we, since we were dating all the way till now, this high school is really good about having a classroom unit every five years. So we kept going back every five years and we would go to the downtown, which is downtown Clinton, Iowa. And it's only, you know, it's right on the Mississippi River. So it's three blocks wide and three blocks deep. And every time we'd go down there, I was like, gosh, this little town that, it like needs some love. Someone needs to like spruce it up, kind of bring it back.

[00:04:14] Cause you could tell it used to be like bustly and amazing. And now it's just like half boarded up and not much going on. And so we talked to somebody like from the building and planning department and said, Hey, you know, y'all doing anything? And they said, Oh yeah, we have this downtown partnership alliance. And we're looking for people to come in and buy buildings. Happens to be an opportunity zone. And the cool thing about it, the way we look at it, if you throw money at something long enough, sooner or later, you're going to win.

[00:04:43] In real estate, what did all the banks learn in that 2008 era is if you wait long enough, it all comes back. It all comes back. That's exactly right. So we bought a building. The first one we bought, it's on the main corner of fifth and third. And we pay what? Like 35,000? We paid 32,000 or it was 26,000 square feet. They wanted 150, but I knew the sellers and I thought, yeah, they're in Arizona. They really want to sell bad, you know? So I saw they lowered it to 99 then 79.

[00:05:12] So I offered them, you know, 29 and they counted back at 50 and they wanted us to buy it at 50. I just said, you know, and I thought, you know, you have to sell. I don't have to be. So they said, would you do 40? I said, I'll tell you what, I'll do 32. It's the best I can do. Hell, you can't buy plywood that cheap. Right. 36,000 square feet. Now I've put 180,000 in the building, but it's got an antique mall in there. It's got tenants in there. I mean, it's a great, great cornerstone building downtown. Beautiful.

[00:05:40] And then we bought another one. And then some lady said, hey, I heard you bought so-and-so's building. Will you buy my building? And these were several older widowed women whose husbands own the building since forever and they're just sitting on like, hey, you bought Carol's building. You bought that. You bought that. Will you buy mine? We're just like, oh my God, what are we going to do with all these buildings? And we started doing some creative financing. You know, I'd give them three offers. I'd say, here's all cash. Here's some owner finance with some cash down.

[00:06:10] And here's owner finance with almost nothing down. And a little bit higher price. And most of them take the owner finance with nothing down. Wow. Yeah. The price becomes attractive. Sure. And I suspect that it's gotten easier over a period of time. Would you say that's true? Because of the fact that you have made a name for yourself. You've made a commitment, planted a flag in the ground, if you will. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you know, that's a double edged sword because now when I'm buying stuff, I have to

[00:06:39] buy in students' names and stuff like that because they'll track down and know that I'm buying this stuff. They're just like, yeah. Yeah. There's a premium now that the ball's rolling in there. If the twifers want that, well, there must be something good with here. Yeah. And they start kind of sticking to the guns a little bit. Yeah, they do. Yeah. But the concept was, you know, keep buying and getting them, you know, we're like restoring the buildings. Yep. Back to their original glory.

[00:07:07] And renting out the spaces and opening some buildings and... Putting in businesses. Kids have rental properties in the Clinton area. And even in the residential areas, they have a lot of opportunity zones even there. We just, you know, one of the things I preach all the time is like, listen, if you're going to buy anywhere, get an opportunity zone, get an opportunity zone. Yeah. There's opportunity zones everywhere. Yep. And we have students buying there now.

[00:07:35] So, you know, your podcast, Investing in Iowa, we've got people coming into Iowa and buying buildings and buying rentals and spending money. Yeah. Because there's a lot of opportunity zones there. Yeah. Say for the audience's sake, maybe at a high level, if somebody doesn't know where an opportunity zone is, give us some colors as to what that is, what the benefits of that are. So, basically, it could, usually it's an area and it's, people can Google opportunity zone and you can find your state and you can click through to the county. Mm-hmm.

[00:08:04] Basically, someone from the city goes around, what county did you say you're in, Neil? Polk County. Yep. Yeah, Polk County. Polk County. So, they go through Polk County and they go, okay, well, these three streets are looking a little bit run down. We'll make these opportunities though. And, you know, these five blocks look good and over here is another area. And the thing that's, that's cool about it. And what they do is they make it an opportunity zone. So, like if you or one of your students buys it, if you own it for 10 years, there's no capital gains.

[00:08:33] And then there are things available, grants, things for facades, windows, or things available free because the city has designated this, like this side of the street versus this side. This side of the street might be fine. This side of the street got three ratty houses. They go, we'll designate this. So, it could even be block by block, street by street, area by area. And Trump put all that stuff in back when he was in office before. So, it's a federal program that they put in there. And that's what's nice.

[00:09:01] They got areas that they just want to go in and revitalize. They want to give incentives to investors to invest in these areas. Yeah, it's incredible. And I think, as you said, Duan, go Google it. A drill down. I know here in Polk County, it's largely been the Valley Junction area here in West Des Moines. It's largely been River Bend area up 6 Ave in the Des Moines area. But as you get outside of Polk County, actually, there's a lot of areas that exist. There's not, there's not a tremendous amount in Polk County.

[00:09:30] There's a lot more across this entire state and in places like Clinton, Iowa, where we need revitalization taking place. Yeah, the thing is, investors come in. As an investor, if I can buy five or six houses or buildings or vacant land or whatever storage is, and I can keep it for 10 years and not pay capital gains, and the government can grant me a little money for, I mean, there's even like grants for things like murals on the side of a commercial building. Yeah. You know, people love murals.

[00:09:57] You start putting murals and people go, oh, they're taking pictures and they're tagging your location, you know? Right. Well, the thing too is, you know, with these opportunity zones, you've got to invest before December 31st, 2026. So... Well, that's how long it's guaranteed. Yeah, because everything sunsets at that point and you've got to get in, you've got to get your building in order to start that clock on the 10-year hold period. Yeah. Now, ideally, people reassign that and say, hey, you know what? This did really great.

[00:10:27] Let's do it longer. Right now, it's only available to the end of 26th. Yeah. As long as you own whatever you want to own, you get all the benefits of the opportunity. And people don't realize, yeah, we have so many services like, listen, you can't just see an area and go, oh, it might not be every building. It might be, like I said, this street to that street. This street and on this side of the street, these houses are not. Yeah. And two blocks over, these houses are and these houses aren't. And on the corner, there's four houses. It's just...

[00:10:56] It generally works in areas is what it does. And you'll see it when you go to the opportunity zones. Look it up. You can Google it and it shows United States, blow up to Iowa, then blow up to your town. You'll see those spots all over. We've got multiple things in the open zone. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Oh, city doesn't have opportunities on it. Yep. All of them. Yep. And which is the point of move. It's like, hey, they like having the cities fix these up. Give investors a break. Let them fix them up. Correct. Hey, Iowa investors.

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[00:11:51] They just share in the income, appreciation and tax benefits. These opportunities aren't for everyone. They are for qualified, accredited investors only. If you want to learn more, please visit LegacyImpactInvestors.com to apply. So talk to me roughly how many, you know, how many buildings or how many square feet you guys own. And talk to me about the, talk to me about the vision for Clinton and really your guys' fingerprints, you know.

[00:12:18] We have about 22 or 23 buildings. I think they're close to about 900,000 square feet. So we have quite a bit. But you know, the thing of it is there's a company called Bush Construction out of the Quad Cities and also Cedar Rapids. They just put $18 million into a building called the Wilson Building. They're ready to put $40 million into a building called the Lafayette, which has been there since 19, like 21 or 1918, something like that.

[00:12:46] So they're putting, we're letting these big companies come in and build around all this stuff with lofts. And all I'm doing is playing the chess game. I'm just buying the stuff up around it. And then we're putting in businesses and stuff, which is bringing a lot more business downtown because we have a great riverfront. I mean, we have a huge dike. There's 99 counties in Iowa. And the only one that doesn't flood is Clinton County because you got this huge dike, you know. And it's funny you look that up.

[00:13:13] I mean, when I was a kid, all of downtown Clinton flooded in 1965. And just a few years ago, the Quad Cities, Davenport, Rock Island, Bettendorf and, you know, Moline, they all flooded, you know, because they don't have a dike system. But yet they also don't want a dike system because they like to be able to see the river. Well, we're in downtown Clinton. You can't see the river because the dike's in the way. But it's also nice. You don't have to squeegee out your basements of your buildings.

[00:13:41] When I built a dike, it's so beautiful. It's got bike lanes. It's got picnic tables. Yeah. There's a park. There's a skate park. There's a swimming pool. There's a bench shelf for music. There's the baseball team. I mean, it's beautiful. It's beautiful down there. Yeah. So here's what happened. We decided to buy a couple buildings and I am a, both of us, we're a huge fan of the Hallmark movie.

[00:14:07] So Hallmark has like the Oktoberfest, the Springfest, the Winterfest, the Fest, Fest, Fest, Fest, Fest. Christmas in July. And so we bought the first couple of buildings and every person that owns one building gets one vote because we pay our taxes. So one thing about an opportunity zone, you pay your taxes into a separate fund. So that fund is voted on and that's what's used to revitalize this little downtown area. So we're like, hey, let's do a Christmas in July. And they go, oh, we did that 10 years ago. It didn't work.

[00:14:36] And we're like, hey, let's do an Oktoberfest. Oh, we don't have the manpower. And we keep getting voted down. So after like two years, we call up the guy, we're like, listen, how many properties do we need to own to control the vote? That's what we need to know. We've got all these big plans. Nobody can see our vision. Everybody's like, well, we tried it once, we tried it once. I'm like, yeah, that's why y'all are sitting here with a board up downtown. So then we swooped in and grabbed another piece of property that had enough of them sold. And then the next boat, they go, oh, and I say, hey, listen, we control the vote now.

[00:15:05] So here's what we're going to start doing from now on. Yeah. And if you're going to do it, great. If not, it's okay. We're going to do it with or without you, you know? So we pulled a gangster move and took control of the vote. We OG'd them. That's incredible. So you got control of the vote. And what have you done? What's the vision? What have you implemented as a result of that newfound control? Well, now, you know, we've got everybody downtown is really going gangbusters. They really are there. We had a Winterfest. We had a candy cane festival.

[00:15:33] We had wine walks. We've got all these things going on now because we have a lot of people in place that are making this happen. And people are starting to come down. We have music on the avenue. It's like our fourth or fifth year of doing that. And music on the avenue, we have anywhere from 1,500 to 1,800 people that show up. Every Thursday. There's a band that shows up. It's June, July, and into August. It's every Thursday those months. And they just have a band.

[00:16:03] So all these people show up and then we keep our shops open and stuff so people can shop while they're listening to music. And it's just really fun because downtown, all the time you drive downtown, they've got the local radio station, which is a great channel, 94.7 Mac FM. They play a lot of classic rock. So when you're downtown, all you hear is classic rock music. You know, Steve Miller and Eddie. Ah, cool. You know, Stones, all that stuff. So it's kind of cool.

[00:16:31] You know, it's kind of a nice field downtown. Yeah, there's outside music. There's little parts and notes. There's live music everywhere. And now the people in the Alliance, they're doing something. We don't hardly have anything up anymore. We're just like, hey, we'll put some money in on that. Yeah. They do something about every third week. There's some big events. Yeah. Thousands of people are like, wow. And now we've got new businesses. We've got a brewery. We've got the Rusty Barrel. Yeah, we've got a lot.

[00:17:01] We've got some bakeries. We've got food. We've got the antique malls. And the whole downtown has it. Like, you know how you go and there's like a vibe? Like you can tell what's happening there. Since two years ago till now. Yeah. Everyone that goes like, wow, there's like a vibe. Like there's movement, action. There's people like stuff's happening. It's like, that's because somebody had to like, you know. Make it happen. Yeah. That's right. Take control. Yeah. You got to make it happen. Talk to me about, you know, your full time or primarily full time in Colorado, right?

[00:17:31] You spent some time in Florida. All right. So I know people in the audience listening to this are going, how in the world do you do this from afar? How do you make things happen? How do you invest from afar? Talk to me about that versus if this was down, you know, if you live there, what are the pros and cons as well? Well, you know, it's like I tell my wife, I go, I can only afford to go to Clinton only a few times a year because every time I go, it costs me like 40 grand.

[00:17:58] It's like every time I've got, you know, I've got all these buildings. We've always got roofs to do. We've always got stuff to do on them. But, you know, we travel a lot because we're national speakers and been doing that for 25 years. We're always all over the country. So it's not a big deal for us to hop a plane or, or make a trip to Iowa and spend a couple of weeks like we spent May, June, July, and August in Iowa, this whole summer working with

[00:18:25] the guys on the buildings and getting stuff done that we wanted to get done to get a lot of stuff turned around on some of the exteriors of the buildings. Because the first four or five years, we just did work on the interior of the buildings, putting in shops and stuff like that. But, you know, us being national speakers, we're always traveling all the time. So it's no big deal for us to take off and go to Iowa for two weeks and then go to Florida for a week and then go to, you know, Nashville for four or five days and do a workshop and then go back home.

[00:18:54] So we're always moving. So we like doing that. We do. But the key is for people that want to invest out of an area, I think it's worth going to the area. Yeah. Finding like a contractor or a handyman, finding a property manager, meeting a few people in the town and from the city and kind of getting to know the area so that you can actually be an absentee. He just really likes to actually do a lot of the work. And I like the idea of like, hey, we're going to design this and here's what we're going to do. And we're going to make that.

[00:19:24] We hash and we like to be hands on. But we have people running our stores. We have. Yeah. We have employees there. We have full time handyman that take care of the buildings and the people. And, you know, the power goes out and this and that, whatever. So I think people should not be afraid to invest outside of where they live. Yeah. But they should also just be realistic to the fact that if you're going to do that, at

[00:19:49] least go and see the area and learn it and meet a few people and maybe talk to the building. You know, the city administrator, the mayor, people like that. Talk to the administrator. Talk to the mayor. Talk to a few people. Say, hey, I'm going to come in. I'm going to invest some money in your town. How do I get things done? How do I stay in the good graces? Who do I need to talk to for things? And that's kind of what happened. Like, so when Bill went through his bone marrow transplant, the mayor and the city administrator

[00:20:17] were like, hey, listen, you're not going to hear nothing from us for the next two years. Yeah. Brick falls off one of your buildings and something comes in and we're just going to make a little pile over here. You get your health back. You don't worry about it. If there's anything major, we'll take care of it. We'll help you out. Just go do what you're doing and come back healthy. But that's because we had taken the time to establish relationships. There's always something, you know, a brick falls off your building. Well, then you got to, you know. Well, just today, the lady from building and zoning and stuff called me on my cell and

[00:20:45] said, hey, listen, we had a lot of wind last night. You've got a panel on one of your buildings that's wobbling. And I heard it banging. Can you get somebody over to fix it? So I just called my maintenance guy and they just went over and took it off. You know, so there's certain things that just show up. The nice thing about having things out of town and having people do it, when you invest in your area, you're working seven days a week. I mean, because tenants are calling you, people are calling you, neighbors are calling

[00:21:12] you and saying your tree is, you know, is rubbing against my house. You need to get over and fix it. And the next thing you know, you're doing everything. And you, you know, on your, on your, on your holidays and stuff, you're replacing the toilet for somebody because they've got a bunch of family in or whatever, you know? So we like long distance investments. We have investments close, but most of our stuff is, is in Iowa. If you're a house flipper, execute the burst strategy or do double closings and are in need of money.

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[00:22:08] I wonder, you've spent years in Colorado, certainly invested over a period of time there. You've constructed, right? You've built ground construction for a period of time. I'm curious about the differences, if any, between contractors there in the heart of Colorado. You know, you're in the, you're in the greater Denver area, giant metropolis versus Clinton, Iowa.

[00:22:28] Is there, is there a material difference meaning in, in the people, how they communicate, how they work, their honesty level, whatever it may be, or are they tremendously similar? They're, they're tremendously similar, but yet they also. People in Iowa work for a lot less money per hour than people in Denver. Sure. For sure. So, for sure. It's like, wow, you're only charging me how much to do this? Yeah. Because in Denver, Florida, that's, you know, things are a little bit cheaper, which is kind of nice.

[00:22:58] Which is nice. But you get a little bit of that Midwest value and like that hard Midwest work ethic. I see that a lot. Yeah, you do. And the quality, if you get a good framer, you get a good electrician. I mean, you get a good HVAC guy, which my, my cousin happens to be an HVAC guy. He owns his own company. So he does all of our stuff, you know, and when he gets slow, he goes, what do you need me to do? I said, well, put a furnace and AC in this building over here or that.

[00:23:28] When I say that, it's always like a $40,000 deal because it's really five furnaces and five AC units. And they need cranes to put them up on the roof. And, you know, so it's not just, you know, replace it in a house. You know, it's, it's a big deal, you know, spiral duct work, all kinds of stuff like that. But now our kids own single family home rental. There. And in Iowa.

[00:23:49] And one of the nice things is you can buy, you know, a 50 or $60,000, a three bedroom, one bath, and it rents out for $1,000, $1,100. Yeah. And, you know, we have people all the time, students that go, we were, we're thinking about buying a rental in Denver. And I look at it and go, you're buying a rental in Denver for $500,000 that rents for $2,500 a month. You get that same $500,000 if you buy 10 houses in Iowa. Anywhere in Iowa particularly, a small town Iowa, I mean, not Des Moines, but small town Iowa.

[00:24:19] You can buy 10 houses for 50 grand and bring in $10,000 a month. You know, it's four times the money. And if you have 10 rentals, if one goes vacant, the other nine will pick up that little bit. That's right. You know, if one goes vacant and you own one rental, now all of a sudden you're making two house payments. You know, so diversification is a big thing too. So, and we just, you know, we like it there. We like the people there. We like, we like to invest there. And it's just, it's a fun place to go.

[00:24:47] So you got to hold them for at least a decade, all in, all done. What's the long-term vision? Is there an exit? Or is the exit, you know, going out feet first, giving it to the kids, having them continue the legacy? Yeah. Okay. The exit is ideally generational wealth. Like to the kids, to the grandkids, to the grandkids. Because, you know, Bill and I, I'm from Ohio. He's from Iowa. So we're both raised in the Midwest.

[00:25:14] And I came from a, like, factory worker type parents. Yep. He came from basically the same thing. So we are the first two people in both of our families to become millionaires. So I look at that and go, gosh, I wish my granddad or my dad would have done that for us. It's like, okay, so we're going to make all this money. We're not just going to give it to the kids and let them just sell it all and blow it and they live easy. So we're like, you know what, we'll be the ones that will start the generational wealth in our family.

[00:25:44] Well, it's funny. Even my dad, he had his own business part-time, but he kept his full-time job painting at a place called Clinton Corn, which is now ADM. They make high frucose corn syrup and ethanol and stuff like that and corn-based products. But I told him when I was 13 years old, I said, Dad, we make more money painting houses part-time than you do working your job. Why don't you just quit and start your own business? He goes, I can't do that. He says, I got benefits. I've got retirement.

[00:26:13] I've got all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, but you can buy all that stuff. Now that's my mind at 13. I'm looking at my dad going, why don't you just quit your job? And we'll just paint houses, you know, and we can tape and texture and sheet rock and do all that stuff in the winter time. I said, you know, you'll make three times the money. And he just couldn't do it, you know. But then they had a walkout in like 1974 and he walked out with like 60 people and all of them got fired. And he came home.

[00:26:42] He says, we've got a bad situation. I got fired. I said, great. Now we can start the business. That's what I told him. And he was just like... Your teenage son being like, hey, dad's on fire. Let's start a business. Yeah. So that's what he did. So Duan's right. I wish our parents had the vision we have or our grandparents.

[00:27:03] Do you think, Bill, do you think you're that, you know, having your dad in that role, doing that thing, the story you just told, do you think that helped shape you to the entrepreneurial spirit? Or do you think you just showed up that way somehow? He came out. He came out being like, how do I work for myself? You know, it's funny. I had an uncle that my mom's sister was married to, my uncle Bob. And he gave me the vision to dream big.

[00:27:33] When I was a kid, he had 42 muscle cars, rare cars in the early seventies. Yeah. And I had at 18, I had a 66 Hemi charger, a 69 Hemi road runner and a 70 Hemi Cuda at 18 years old. And all of them had less than 40,000 miles on them. They're all over their six figure cars now. And I wish I still had them, but I was, but I saw him. He was a contractor. He always worked for himself.

[00:28:01] And I wanted that vision for myself and my dad. And I saw that when I was seven, eight, 10 years old. And I just finally told my dad at 13, you got to quit your job. I mean, you know, I'm never going to work for somebody other than you. And then when I get old enough, I'm going to start my own thing. And that's what I did. I moved to Houston because I wanted to work year round. I didn't want to be stuck doing sheet rock and taping and floating at houses in the wintertime. And there's a lot of money in industrial sandblasting and coating and painting water towers. And that's what I did.

[00:28:31] So I moved south to do that, you know, did your dad end up going back to work and retiring? No, he didn't. How did it end up? He ended up working his job. I mean, working his business until he ended up getting pancreas cancer. And then he died when he was 53, which is a very young age to die at. Terrible. Yeah. So, and sometimes I still think about it. I still think, gosh, you know, you know, maybe I should have stuck around and help my dad longer instead of just taken off on my own.

[00:28:59] But, you know, sometimes that eagles got to fly out of that nest. You just can't stay home all the time, you know? So, and I got the same issue with my son. You know, when I went down for two months for two, two years, you know, my son goes, geez, dad, I've only worked for you. I've never worked for anybody. I said, you know, the system you've been on all these trainings with us. You've been at all of our workshop, just go out and work the system. He went out, worked the system for one year.

[00:29:27] And I said, I'm going to work for you for $2,000 a week. There's no way. Because we're doing rehabs and stuff. He goes, there's no way. So I lost my guy, just like my dad lost me. But that's okay. I want my kids to do better than me. Wow. That's just incredible. Yeah. And he just bought, I think his 11th rental there in Clinton. Yeah. He's 33, he's got 11 rentals. He's got a beautiful wife. He's got three kids. Yeah. Four kids.

[00:29:57] I'm sorry. Four kids. It's an $800,000 house. It's like, who doesn't want that for the game? And you know, the thing of it is, in the last five years, he has bought and sold over 60 homes in that little market of 25,000 people. And at any time there's 40 to 60 homes on the market. And over a four to five year period, he's bought and sold over 60 properties and kept 11. So he's really rocking it, you know? Yeah.

[00:30:25] Whoever says you can't do it in small town USA, doesn't have it right. Yeah. They don't have it right. And that's what people think like, oh, it's kind of old, it's run down. It's like, listen, there's been a lot of money to bring the juju back. Yeah. You just sort of, sometimes you just have to hit lightning at the right time. Yeah. Which is what we did with the downtown. We hit it just at the right time. Yeah. Since we've owned our buildings over the last five years, property values have gone up 48% downtown. Yeah.

[00:30:54] Which is a huge deal. Yeah. So now it's like, oh, we don't want to pay that much for anything. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Well, I, I, what you're, the work you're doing is incredible. I can't wait to see it continue. You know, it's like a snowball going downhill, right? And just keep moving. And keep pushing it. Yeah. Tap it. That's it. Correct. You know. You're absolutely right. But somewhere since you're so close, you'll have to come spend a day with us. We'll love it. And we could do a little video and show you some of our different buildings and have some sort of like a, uh, why they follow us around podcast.

[00:31:23] And here's what we're doing. And I think you'd really have a blast doing that too. I would love coming around. I would love coming around. You know, it's so funny. A couple of years ago, before I went in for my cancer treatment, you know, I've got a lot of Safeway scaffold and stuff to scaffold up the sides of buildings. And I built this scaffold on the side of this building. Cause I was doing some caulking on the outside with my guys and I was up there and my wife came out and she goes, what the hell are you doing up there? And she goes, I don't want you on scaffolding like that. I said, honey, I've lived on scaffolding.

[00:31:51] Like, so to me, that's her telling me to go out and buy a JLG lift. So I did. I went out and bought an 80 cent lift and she goes, how'd you buy that for it? Do you tell me you bought me on scaffold? I bought this lift. No, the question was the permission, huh? Yeah. Yeah. And to have the lift, I have to buy a building to put it in. So I bought a building too. And I drive it right in a parking. And she's like, there's no winning with you. There's no winning. If I tell him he needs something and don't do this, don't do that. He takes that and then he needs to buy something else.

[00:32:20] It's like, don't we deal with that? You two are you guys ready for the final three questions? Yes. If you had one piece of advice for your 20 year old self, what would it be? Don't spend more than you make. I've spent more than I made my whole life. I wish I would have just kept 10 or 15% back. I'd have millions in cash sitting around right now because of the money that I've made. But I've always, I've always tried to build a lifestyle versus building a career.

[00:32:49] I would tell my 20 year old self to do drugs. Yeah. I spent my entire 20s. It was the 80s. And if people are old enough to understand what the 80s in South Florida was like, I was clubbing, partying, working in the bars, doing drugs. Not saying I didn't have fun, but I completely wasted an entire decade. And you know, it's, it's funny because like in 1980, 1987, 28 years old, I went and bought a brand new Mercedes for 62,000 bucks because it was the thing to have.

[00:33:17] And in that Mercedes, I had an audio box cell phone. An 80s set was cordless to where I could just dial the number and drive and talk, but it cost me $1,200 a month to have that phone in my car. Oh my. And it's all about you. You know, that's the way the 80s was. Yep. And we got three final questions. Two books that changed your life. Relentless was one for me and Cashflow Quadrant. I love both of those books, read them both multiple times. Gosh, I don't know.

[00:33:46] I read so many. I think I liked the Napoleon Hill, those type of books. You can go rich. You can go rich. I read all those in my 20s. I've always loved books like that. They made me think bigger than like working in the bar business. Yeah, for sure. If you were cast away on an island for a year, you could only get three pieces of data about your business each and every month. What three things must you know to know how your business is running? Okay, so I'm cast away on an island for a year. Am I with or without Bill? Yeah, you're with Bill. You're on an island.

[00:34:15] You only get three pieces of data coming out of your business each month. Because remember, I'm the junk drawer. What she doesn't want to do, she throws on me. I'm the junk drawer. Give us a six-piece of it. See, I would want to know, I would want to know, first of all, are all my employees doing okay? Because they would be self-managing themselves. Right. Same here. I would want to know how, these are probably weird things because we're in Iowa.

[00:34:43] I would want to know how many people are coming into the stores, you know, is whatever my marketing is doing. And I would want to know what the weather's like. Why? Because we lose a jillion hours in Clinton from the ice, the rain, the snow, the shovel. We lose so much time over weather. I'd be like, okay, it's sunny outside. Put some things outside to sail. There's a rainstorm coming in. Make a sail. Make a post. If there's no storm coming in, people are going to go out, put up a bunch of sail.

[00:35:13] Get people to come in the stores. I know it's probably super weird things to do, but based on the fact that we have walk-in businesses, we are very much decided by who shows up to work and what's the weather like outside. I want to keep an eye on bank accounts. I want to keep an eye on what's going on with our Facebook stuff, with our stores, and our real estate business. And I definitely want to be hooked up to Zoom so I could still do webinars. So I can still make money. Yeah, there you go. All right. I do too. I've asked tons of questions.

[00:35:42] I'm sure we could talk all day. And when you invite me to Clinton, we will do it. But what's one question I did not ask that I should have asked? You really did a great job asking questions. I think if I was going to sort of leave off with a piece of advice, it would be for anyone that's thinking, rolling it around, listening to podcasts, going to webinars. Years have gone by. They still haven't done anything. Listen, get off your butt and just take action because another year is going to pass. You're going, oh, man, I should have done it. I should have done it. I should have, should have, should have.

[00:36:11] And the market's always good. Real estate doesn't matter. It's markets are markets. So, start today. But everything's sick. Start today. Start today. No matter what's happening, start today. Yeah. And the thing of it is, you can never give up. Once you start that moving forward, you just have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing because you're going to get hurdles. You're going to get walls that come up. You've got to figure out a way through them or around them, over them or under them. And you just can't stop. This has been great. I appreciate your guys' time. For people, they want to find you, follow you.

[00:36:40] They want to connect with you. Where can they go? What should they do? They can go to dwanderful.com. Because as you know, I took Dwander Wonderful and I made a new word. They can go to dwanderful.com and they can find both of us there. And they can also find us at InvestorsEdgeUniversity.com. Links below in the show notes for everybody. You too. I appreciate you guys being here. Thank you. Thanks. See you later. Thanks for listening. If you're enjoying the show, may I ask a favor of you? Naturally, subscribe so you never miss an episode.

[00:37:09] But would you rate and leave an honest written review on Apple Podcasts? It does a lot for us here at the show. And I appreciate reading your thoughts. Great guests make for a great show. If you know of another island who would be a great guest or you yourself have interest in being a guest, well, get on our radar. Visit Investing in Iowa to fill out an application or recommend a guest.

[00:37:33] And if you want to connect with me one on one, go LegacyImpactInvestors.com. Click on the invest with us button in the top right corner. And there you can pick a time for the two of us to get on the calendar and connect. Until next time, keep investing in Iowa.