Real Estate Secrets: Unlocking the Numbers - with Coach Charles Seaman

What are you doing next Saturday? Getting better at underwriting I hope.

Meet Charles Seaman - the multifamily real estate expert who can review opportunities like no one else. Best of all, he does it for free - Yes, every Saturday for free. 

He shares his expertise through  weekly underwriting sessions, helping people achieve generational wealth through real estate investing. 

As Managing Partner of Cash Flow Champs, Charles coaches busy professionals to build and maintain wealth through real estate investing.

Take advantage of this opportunity to learn from one of the industry's top experts. Tune in and discover how Charles Seaman can help you succeed.



Contact Info:
Charles’ Profile

linkedin.com/in/charles-seaman-90b9b932

Website

• cashflowchamps.com/ (Company)

Phone

• (347) 306-3278 (Mobile)

Email

charles@cashflowchamps.com

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Transcript

Johnny Nelson: 0:02

Hey, everyone here at the investing stuff we should know. We have a co, a really cool guest. This is Charles Seaman, and he he kinda mentioned that he. For, I think it's really cool actually. He has a weekly, or actually on a weekend a free underwriting session. Underwriting, as we know for a lot of people, is, you're uncertain. You don't really know what it is for, whether it's you're a newbie or less or more experienced. Super important to have those fundamentals hammered out. But Charles, thank you for be other. Aside from that, thank you for being here and sharing your story with us today at the Ational podcast. Johnny, thanks for

Charles Seaman: 0:33

having me. It's a pleasure to be

Johnny Nelson: 0:34

here. Awesome, man. Awesome. I always ask people, of course, they, they might ask, why we, should we listen to Charles? Why should we give this person credibility in even a half hour of her time? Give us a little background on where you came from and what you've done before you kinda started getting deeper into the real estate space or investing space.

Charles Seaman: 0:49

Absolutely. So my path probably started a little different than most in the sense that I. Necessarily seeking to be in real estate or commercial real estate. It was more so what I say as I was 20 years old and I was young, dumb, and broke, and I needed a job. And at that time I wound up working for a gentleman who I was a friend of the family and I didn't really know what role I would play when I went to work. Yeah. And what I found out pretty quick is that my role would involve a lot of different things and eventually, Nero expanded to help him manage all of his different businesses and properties. And he owned, multiple businesses, multiple properties, all commercial real estate a mix of, multi-family office, retail, different things. So it gave me great experience and great exposure and an opportunity to work with and learn from somebody who was incredibly successful.

Johnny Nelson: 1:36

Yeah. Where can you give us a, can you give us a location where this happened,

Charles Seaman: 1:40

Charles? Absolutely. New York City. York City, Brooklyn. If the accent doesn't give it away, I

Johnny Nelson: 1:44

didn't wanna insult you. Like I think I hear an accent, but I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to defend yourself before I just start leveling accusations here.

Charles Seaman: 1:54

Yep.

Johnny Nelson: 1:55

So we know that the, we know Brooklyn obviously, that, New York City is a huge market. Just first I've, and I've interviewed a few people on the show that have done or worked in New York City. Charles, what are some unique challenges and actually some unique things that you can learn that you have learned from operating in a tough environment like New York City? So many people, so many regulations and rules and laws, and. My gigantic high rise is that's gotta be, that's gotta be different than somebody who's running a duplex in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Give us the, give us some goods there. Give us the goods. I would agree

Charles Seaman: 2:24

with you on that. So I think the biggest difference and this is probably true everywhere, but I feel like it's amplified New York and maybe it's just the personality of New Yorkers that kind of goes with it. But yeah, you have to develop tough, as you have to be gritty and willing to do what it takes to survive. Is sometimes it can be a very rootless environment, but it's a good teacher

Johnny Nelson: 2:47

So it's like the ju, it's like the man-made jungle and you better, you gotta survive us. If you're not gonna survive them, you gotta leave or. Ke over or something. If you're gonna thrive and be successful, then it's gonna, like you said, it's gonna breed a certain level of toughness. So give us a funny or just an anecdotal example of something that you, that young Charles would got smacked over the face with and had to learn some toughness.

Charles Seaman: 3:09

I'm sure there's multiple instances there but a couple of projects. One in particular there were, there was, development and anytime you're deal dealing with that, there's always a lot of bureaucracy. Yes. You have a lot of building codes and different inspectors that you need to appease and it's always interesting as. Different inspectors, they tell you to do the same thing different ways, and then you do with the satisfied one and you get a different inspector that comes out and he says it's all wrong and you have to rip it out and do it again. Yes. So there's many times I've had instances like that and New York certainly has no shortage of that.

Johnny Nelson: 3:37

Absolutely man. I see here. You were an operations manager for operations manager for quite a few years. I imagine you started probably at a beginning stage and you you've, you kept ranking up or getting promoted within the organization. Tell us that journey. Yeah,

Charles Seaman: 3:50

That exactly sums it up. So when I first started there, I wasn't really sure what that role would entail. And I don't think my boss was fully short either, so we developed it as we went. He was in the process of growing his businesses at that time. And he knew that he needed more help. So it was just figuring where I could fit in and for better or worse, probably worse for my social life, but good for my professional life. Yeah. I never said no to anything And because of that it gave me a lot of learning opportunities cuz, he would always throw more and more at me and I'd say, okay, keep giving it to me so that way I'll figure it out and we'll learn and we'll get it done.

Johnny Nelson: 4:20

Awesome man. And how did you and so as that role progressed here, and you, like you said, you never said no to anything. Did you have a particular goal? Was it just like you, just like doing work or you were ambitious or what was the what was the kind of the underlying motivation or philosophy to just always or never saying no.

Charles Seaman: 4:34

The initial thing when I first started there was as, as at 20 years old, my mother became disabled and I knew that I needed to go ahead and get a real job. I was just a bank teller before, and not gonna lose a bank teller, but you don't make a lot of money in the bank teller profession. So I knew that. I just, you just put on your LinkedIn profile that you're a banker you banker. That's the absolute truth. So I know I needed to do something to pay the bills. Machine became dis. And that's what led me to initially going this route and then wind up staying there. And then after I started there but I realize there's a couple of things. relationship with my boss, even though at times it was contentious, it almost became like a father son type relationship. So there was a lot of. A lot of tough love for lack of Arian. Yeah. And a lot of good learning experiences. A lot of times during the daytime he had other businesses that we would focus on that at nighttime we would focus more on his real estate and a lot of times we would just be he and I in the office. So being that, oh wow, I never complained and a lot of nights' idea till 12 1 2 in the morning. was like, okay, you got to sit with him. And he would teach me, okay, this is how you read a contract. This is what you look for. This is, you know how you negotiate something. So they were invaluable lessons.

Johnny Nelson: 5:39

Absolutely, man. No, that's amazing. And then of course, like you said the tough, gritty nature of a large city. So much competition, so many people. I can, Ima only imagine if you had captured, been able to capture those lessons there being a whole book or podcast series or just to itself, all kinds of you those amazing learnings that someone older and more experienced, big market could share. Oh yeah. Which is absolutely. Of course they're all distilled in you now, which is pretty cool. As you grew and saw and learned and observed Charles, what how did, then, how did that trigger or lead you into perhaps seeing that you could do that yourself being a owner a general partner of that kind of stuff? The the mindset of an employee to someone that actually can lead and do that themselves is not necessarily an easy bridge to gap. Some people are very comfortable there, or they just never have the vision to go beyond that. What was, how did you break through that glass ceiling or whatever the term you want to use and see your soul? You know what I'm smart enough to do this. What happened there? What was that transition?

Charles Seaman: 6:30

It's funny because. It definitely was a transition and I'd like to say it happened quickly, but it didn't when I first started there I initially intended to stay there two to three years and then go out and do my own thing. And when I started there, I was 20 years old. And what happened is, as life happens sometimes I started making a little more money. I started getting more responsibility. Maybe I thought I was important, and then all of a sudden, two to three years turned into 14. Yeah. And around the time I was turning 30. I thought to myself, I said, boy, is this what I wanna do the rest of my life? And I said, I wouldn't have been poor if I did. I wouldn't have been rich. I wouldn't have been, somewhere in between. Yes. And I said I could have a decent living but is this really what I wanted you to do the rest of my life? And I kept coming back to no, but I said, okay now it's the best opportunity I have. So then, yeah, around 2014, 2015, I started looking at single family, wholesaling and investing. And I really didn't wanna do single family. And then you can make a lot of money with single family. It's just not for. But I also knew I didn't have the money to go out there and do commercial multi-family myself. So I said, okay, that's not really an option right now. Then, I even hired a method for single family and I worked at it for a little bit, but I determined I just didn't like it and I wasn't good at it. And, Like many people, and I feel like many of the listeners I would go to different real estate meetup events in New York at the time and I would go, to a good number of events. I'd exchange business cards, I'd even follow up. But one of the things that, that. Came to my mind after a while and my method that I hired for single family certainly brought this to my attention, is why do you go to these events? Yes. Because you need to have a purpose. You can't just go, there has to be something. Such a

Johnny Nelson: 7:58

good question, man. Like we we have to ask our, ask ourselves about that, about right. Everything actually, we should be asking ourselves about that. On everything. But also when we start getting into real estate space or game whatnot, and really make sure you have that question. Ask the question and get, be disciplined and get, find an answer of some kind, sooner than later. But go ahead and

Charles Seaman: 8:17

You're mentor challenge. Yeah. A absolutely. So what I realized is when I was going through these different events, after I started thinking about what I wanted out of them, I'd have people that I'd meet and I'd give them advice. They would take my advice and they'd make money with it. And like I'd see in the next month at the meetup event, and they're saying, you, you gave such great advice. And I'm thinking to myself, why? Why is everybody making money with my advice? Except for me? Yes. And I saying, what am I doing wrong? I must have a mental block. Cause obviously if these people, aren't even as far along as I am, what's the difference? And I said, it's mindset, right? It's gotta be mindset. They have. That they can do it. Yeah. And they're going out there and they're doing it. And here I am, even though I have some skill and some expertise with it and at least general knowledge of running a business and just, common sense for lack of a better term. Yeah.

Johnny Nelson: 9:07

Common business sense. Yeah, for sure. Common sense, but also common business sense, which is what people are trying to get more of cuz Yeah.

Charles Seaman: 9:12

So it took a lot. Retrain myself. And you had to tell yourself every time you think to yourself and say, no, I can't do this. No, I'm not worried that you have to retrain yourself and say, you know what? I can do this. I can be successful at this. I can be, or I am a successful real estate investor. So sometimes, speaking it into existence. It helps you start seeing it and being able to visualize it and getting ahead.

Johnny Nelson: 9:34

Yes. Yeah. I love that man. Yeah. Okay, so then that was kinda that this, you told us about the, that intermediate stage between, Charles, the employee and learning a lot of course, and doing a bunch of more and more respect sharing and getting more and more responsibility to seeing the transition and how that happened. Then what happened when you actually became, did you start out as a passive investor or as a lead? And then what was that, what did that first property look like for

Charles Seaman: 9:56

you? Good question. So it took about two years to get so initially I was still working my full-time job when I started in the syndication space. So I started in syndication in June, 2017. And at that point it was very part-time, maybe 10 to 15 hours a week. I was probably working anywhere from 60 to 90 hours a week in my full-time job. And, I knew that I didn't have a lot of time, but I knew that whatever time I had to use productively and efficiently. Yes. A lot of times I would get home late from work, so I knew that I couldn't call anybody. At the times I'd get home. No, nobody's gonna wanna speak to me at those times. So normally didn't take lunch breaks where I worked, but I said, okay, I'm gonna have to start taking something cuz whatever I need to do on the phone, I need to be able to do during normal hours. So I would take whatever I could get, whether it was 10 minutes, 15 minutes, if I got a half an hour break and I would just schedule my pools in advance, if I had to speak to a broker or an attorney or whoever it may have been, so that way I could just start building relationships and just moving forward. So then after that, And then at night time, I'd go home and underwrite deals and just do things that didn't require me speaking to people. So after about two years I came to the realization that, okay, I've made a lot of progress. I'm a lot further ahead than where it was, but I'm not really where I wanna be. And at the pace I'm going, it's probably gonna take me a, a decade to close a deal. So I decided to leave my full-time job at the end of May, 2019 and totally uproot my life and moved to Charlotte, which is markets. And I said lemme just put myself right in the Santas. do you learn the market better than living and working at it every day? Yeah. Ironically, a few days after I moved down here I got my first deal on the contract. That's incredible, Ben. Incredible wasn't, it was in the Atlanta market, but close enough But it worked out with that. And then about three months after we'll be closed. Yeah. So thankfully, The first deal, knock on wood, actually went pretty, it went smooth in most regards. Yeah. We didn't find any major items that were unexpected during due diligence. We didn't really have any grief from the seller or the lender. The only real challenge we had was raising capital and. like many people starting out, we were probably, my partners and I at the time were probably overly ambitious. Yeah. And maybe overly or falsely confident in our ability of what we'd be able to do And we, the raise was roughly, 2.2 million and we said, oh, this shouldn't be that big of a deal. We should be able to go ahead and raise that. And that sounds really good in theory. And then as we're nearing the end of our due diligence bureau saying, boy, we don't have anything RA raised or committed yet, we got a problem. And we almost thought about pulling the plug on it because we're saying this could be a real mess. We're gonna lose all this risk capital. Yeah. And this could be a major problem. Where did

Johnny Nelson: 12:29

you can I ask real quick, where did you find your partners? Were they from prob, presumably from New York then?

Charles Seaman: 12:34

No. So ironically, one lived in Charlotte and the other lived in Pennsylvania. I had met them at, okay, at an at an RI event, one of Dave Lin's events. We all came up through their system and then we connected a few times at different events and then we ran the.

Johnny Nelson: 12:47

Awesome man. Yeah. Awesome. So yeah that the first deal, you moved down there. I love that action, that bold action just uprooted your life and just, boom, went right into the middle of the heart of one of the beasts of yeah. A large city that's growing and it's definitely a target market for savvy investors, like you said, Raleigh. So then what what does today look like? So that's obviously like kind your, kinda your growth trajectory, your path, your goal action of taking that. And then what is what does it look like right now for Charles and what is actually looking forward in a 20. 20, 23 and 24, what does it look like?

Charles Seaman: 13:13

So the way I describe it, I say every time almost say this is kinda like a video game in the sense that every time you close a deal, it's like leveling up. The first deal was to put something on the school board and, it may not be a home run. It did work out good but it may not be a home run, but it's to get something on the scoreboard. So at least you. Or at least get on base. Maybe not even get on the score board. May, maybe that's the wrong analogy. Yeah. Maybe you're hitting the single and you're getting on first base. Then the second deal advances you, you advance the runner and now you're closer to scoring. So little by little you're building up. And with each deal you close, you're getting access to different deals that you wouldn't have had access to beforehand. You're getting access to investors that may not have wanted to invest you beforehand. So different opportunities present themselves because now all of a sudden you have more track record and more credibility. And then as you go full cycle on your first deal which they did last year then you see even more opportunities open up. Cause sometimes you'll have people that will follow you, especially with social media nowadays for 2, 3, 4 years and never say anything. But then all of a sudden, they catch win that, oh, this person,

Johnny Nelson: 14:15

the famous LinkedIn, Facebook, blah, blah, blah, lurk they're, there's the people that lurk out there ah, I see that Charles doing some stuff. I'm gonna just see him every day. It's gonna gradually build psychological confidence in these people that just observe and watch and Yep. Are just curious what is Charles up to? What's he doing? So that's, it's a very profound phenomenon. I've also have observed in, in myself and others.

Charles Seaman: 14:36

Yeah it definitely goes a long way. So then, f fast forward to last year we started out aggressively buying, then we cooled it off when we saw the change in market conditions. Yes. We closed four deals in the first five months last year, and then we put the brakes on for a bit. Now we're looking to be very aggressive this year. But smartly aggressive, not foolishly. Cause I still think there's a lot of people that may get, they may wind up in bad deals if they wind up letting their guard down a little bit. So the goal that we have collectively this year since then, I'm actually part of a new team Cashflow Champs now. And we've known each other for, probably two, three years now. And the team came together initially, virtually, I hadn't even met the team, the team were vice versa until after we actually partnered, we'd known each other on Zoom meetings and phone calls, but we'd never met in person until maybe three or four months after we partnered. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. And, the byproducts of the Covid world, the goal we have this year is 500 million in acquisition volume and that's not, 500 million in my pocket or my balance sheet, even though that sounds great. But 500 million in acquisition volume. So it's gonna be, a combination of deals. It could be 10, 50 million deals, it could be 20, 25 million deals. But we want to do bigger deals and we want to do more deals, and we think that the next two years in particular, are gonna to provide excellent opportunities to do.

Johnny Nelson: 15:46

Amazing man. Let's talk about something we, you chatted about pre-show here, and that was the value and the need for hard work. So we're pivoting. So we talked about maybe the traditional stuff of kind of the path, the growth trajectory, which is all interesting. And it gives people context and the ability to see themselves through you or vicariously, through the, what you've done and some other things. And some, they can emulate what they find to something that, that, that motivates them. Let's talk about hard work. We both know, sharing our story in a, like a, in a reasonable storyline sounds like, just like you just did this and you just did that and it just happened and then this or that happened. Talk to me about the value and the need how hard it is and how oftentimes this is a really tr, hard hard road and difficult path to

Charles Seaman: 16:24

follow. Yeah, absolutely. What I would say is a few things. One is syndication can be very lucrative, but none of that lucrative ness is at the beginning. So it's going to take you some time to build up. So what I would tell anybody is, depending on your financial situation, it's probably not a great idea to jump into it full-time unless you have some other source of income that's going to be floating your lifestyle. So there's going to be a lot of effort that's. And if you're in a position where you can go out and you can hire, then that's great. But if you're not, then you and your partners are probably gonna be doing a lot of that front end work. And that's gonna be, finding deals. It's gonna be the underwriting, it's gonna be asset management, and all these things take time. They take good amounts of time. If you're gonna do them right, you can do a. A mediocre job, but then you're going to get a mediocre result. Yes. So if you want great results or exceptional results, that's gonna take time, effort, and for lack of a term, blood, sweat, and tears.

Johnny Nelson: 17:17

Yeah. And I think I just, and I think that, I love that your opening statement there, and that is syndication can be lucrative, which not will be, or like guaranteed or often is, like you say, but it happens not at the beginning. That's so important here. It takes lot of work to get there, to get the team, to get the momentum. And we're, essentially you're the reason to get into real estate, and this is my contention. Tell me, you can gimme your feedback on this, Charles, is you don't necessarily, oftentimes you don't really need to be lucky. Or super smart or just stumbling to the right team. It's luck amount is low, but the harder amount or the hard work is high for success. It's all about do what does it take to get to success? Will it be like, just get lucky that one time, or, this or that or the other. So you don't need a ton of luck, but you do need a lot of hard work to achieve. Typically really, compelling success. So I think that's why, and just it's because of taxes and market and leverage and these different things, underlying fundamentals of real estate. And of course you're servicing a human need as well. All those things taken together make real estate compelling. But then what are the, what's the business cycle? So there's lots of businesses we could open up, could be software or sales or plumbing and all these different things here. But like the business of real estate, the business of multi-family or apartments is successful because of all these underlying factors. But establish a successful business is the, a critical component is the hard work piece. Would you what's your take on that? Those that kind of statement or those kind of those observations? I

Charles Seaman: 18:35

think you hit the nail in the head and I say the same thing as well. I say, you know what, it sound like we're doing brain surgery. We're not doing rocket scientists. You don't need a PhD. Heck, I only have a high school diploma so you don't even need a, an associate's degree, but you do need to be willing to put the work and the effort and the timing. And you know what I say in this business is very similar to what you said, and I think you, you were very on point with it, is that, it's just gonna take repetition. And a lot of times it's in numbers game. It's, looking at a hundred deals to find one, or nowadays it might be 200 deals to find one Yeah. So you know, you're gonna be looking at a lot of deals, you're gonna be meeting a lot of contacts, I think the statistic that they say out there is to take something like 27 investor leads to get one person that actually invests for you. So there's a lot of time, a lot of conversations, and a lot of effort invested into those relationships to find that one person. So it was just doing the same thing. over and over again. And if it's not working, then you want to figure out what little tweaks you can make, but it's rare. You need to revamp the entire process because it's a fairly simple and prudent process. Yeah, for sure. And

Johnny Nelson: 19:34

that's really awesome. Give us a, as we take, turn the final turn to the final chapter of our show here. You mentioned, and I know as well that you have a, an underwriting session or course just a weekly. A weekly. Tell us bit about that. The, when it is, the purpose of it and how it started.

Charles Seaman: 19:49

Yeah, absolutely. Every Saturday at 4:00 PM Easterns are free underwriting session. Depending on the week, it probably goes anywhere from 90 minutes on the short site to three hours on the long site. And what we do is we review a different multi-family deal each week. Some of the deals are provided by me, some are provided by attendees. and we go through one deal each week, usually from top to bottom how we enter the underwriting and the underwriting software. And then usually we go through the o A M and figure out what follow up actions oxygen needed, and we talk through that process. So initially when it first started what happened is right before COVID started, my, my team and I decided we were gonna bring on some unpaid interns and. We would find people who were interested in learning the acquisitions and underwriting sides of the business in exchange for finding deals and areas that we weren't actively looking in. Yes. So we found, four or five guys all, most of them were local guys. We've met at meet events, and initially I would just get together with them every Saturday in person for a few weeks, but then as soon as the pandemic broke out, we couldn't do that anymore. So I said Why don't we use Zoom? I guess that's usually what everybody's doing anyway at this point. So we'll jump on wood. And then we started doing that and I said what's the difference if we have, just the four or five of us? Or if I open it up and we have 10 or 20 or 40 people, And initially the first couple of months, I really didn't have a lot of momentum. It started slow. There was probably, anywhere from four to 10 people per week depending on the week. And yeah, and then organically it just grew over time. And, for whatever reason, I guess people have been attracted to them and they refer a lot of people up until about three or four months ago. I never did any real marketing or anything with it. It was just strictly word of mouth and yes. And hearing about. And over nearly two and a half years at that point, yeah, there was probably 850 people that had come to it at different times.

Johnny Nelson: 21:34

That's amazing, man. Yeah. So you're providing value, like kind of sharing, there's obviously initially, like you said, it's yeah, it could value, could be both ways, but then you realize, which is really the nature of an entrepreneur, this could actually grow into something more valuable and people, obviously hear about you. And it's really, it's a need, it's also, it's a skill, it's a need. and a lot of people are not certain and, want more of it or want some handholding and this, that, and the other. So that's amazing. That's amazing. Alright man. So what's the obviously give us the link or the I'll drop the link in the notes here, but anything else, is there anything else you wanna share with the audience to get in touch with you or what is the best way to get in touch with you? Anything else you wanna share?

Charles Seaman: 22:05

Sure. So the best way is probably on my link tree and we can include that in the show notes. So that'll help us to pretty much all my social media platforms and all the different things that our team has on. Awesome,

Johnny Nelson: 22:15

man. Alright, everyone here at the Investing Stuff You Should Know, podcast. We thank you for attending, listening to another great episode here. This story is really, I think it's, I resonate with it a lot. I had a construction background in some years past and worked up through different areas as well. Charles, thank you for being here, sharing with your story with us, and for connecting.

Charles Seaman: 22:34

Johnny. Thanks for having me. It's been a blast. Hey,

Johnny Nelson: 22:37

later, next time.