Real Estate Underground

How Pete Neubig Balances Business Success With Well-Being

• Ed Mathews • Season 4 • Episode 130

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How does a journey from real estate investor to CEO inspire a quest for financial freedom and purpose? Join us as Pete Neubig, the visionary behind VPM Solutions, shares his incredible path from managing Class D properties to pioneering a new model in remote property management. Pete reveals the pivotal moments, challenges, and personal growth that have shaped his career, offering listeners a wealth of insights into the real estate industry. Discover the lessons learned from overseeing properties in low-income areas and the transformative decision to venture into third-party management.

Explore the intricacies of property management with Pete Neubig as your guide. We tackle the tough realities of handling tenant evictions, theft, and costly repairs, as well as the legal hurdles that come with third-party management. Pete candidly discusses the pain points and the importance of a clear buying strategy, likening property ownership to a marriage with its demands and commitments. Amidst these challenges, he identifies the opportunities often overlooked by realtors and property managers, while explaining how near-shoring and a marketplace model are revolutionizing remote team integration through comprehensive training and certifications.

Beyond business, Pete's commitment to health and fitness shines through, proving that a balanced lifestyle is within reach. Hear about his inspiring journey from 189 pounds to a healthy 165, and his dedication to staying active. Pete’s story is not just about real estate; it’s about resilience, reinvention, and reaching out for a life that aligns with one’s purpose. For those interested in learning more or connecting with Pete, he shares his preferred communication channels, offering yet another opportunity for listeners to be part of this exciting conversation. Join us for an episode packed with insights, inspiration, and practical advice.

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Ed Mathews:

Greetings and salutations. Real Estate Undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews with Season 4 of the Real Estate Underground. Thank you so much for joining us today. With me today is Pete Nebig. Pete, welcome to the show.

Pete Neubig:

Pete, thanks so much for having me here, man, I'm so excited.

Ed Mathews:

Pete is the founder and CEO of BPM Solutions and it's interesting. You and I have been in this industry for so long and we just recently met. I'm really excited to have you on the show today, because your experience has been varied throughout the industry and so we're going to hit on a whole bunch of points today. But for those folks who haven't discovered you online, why don't you just give us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, thank you for that intro, Pete Neubig. Ceo of VPM Solutions. VPM is a. It's a two-sided marketplace that connects real estate industry with virtual team members, and I got there a long way. In 2001, I started investing in properties. In 2008, I bought too many of them. I didn't know how to manage them. In 2009, I created a management firm. In 2010, I started a third-party managing company managing for other people. 2019, I sold that business and then in 2021, I came up and started VPN. So that's the long of it. I've owned apartment complexes and single families and duplexes all at the same time managing them all. When I third-party managed them, it was all single family.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, all right, great, you've done a lot.

Pete Neubig:

That just shows you, how old I am, Ed.

Ed Mathews:

I turned 55, so I think I got you. But in terms of the business, obviously you've done a lot of different things. Talk about good timing, selling into the 2019 market. Well done, by the way, in terms of the businesses that you've run. What's like picking your favorite child. What's one of the businesses that you really felt like, okay, this is where I belong, this is where I'm thriving here. I love this. I love getting up on Monday morning.

Pete Neubig:

So it ends up being VPM is the new one, right, but that's like the latest and greatest child. But I will tell you, when I was buying property, I loved buying houses. I loved it and I was buying to hold. And my original vision I had a business partner His name is Steve and I's original vision was to own 500 homes. That was the original vision and we literally built empire property management just to manage our homes. And what happened was so that was it. I love that. I thought that was my purpose in life.

Pete Neubig:

It ended up not being that way. The homes we were buying are class D homes and if anybody's owned class D homes, they're really difficult to manage. They're tough to really squeeze that profit out of. And what we found was when we started third-party managing homes I'm sorry, before we started third-party managing homes, I'm sorry, before we started third-party managing homes, we had the manager company and my accountant said hey, you have to pay into the management company as a management fee. You have to do this kind of legit. So we did it.

Pete Neubig:

At the end of the year, my manager company made money and the homes lost a bunch of money and that was going to be a blinding flash of the obvious one in my head and I'm like, hey, maybe we should third-party manage this stuff. And that got us into third-party managing. And then, of course, I thought that was my purpose. And then we sold. And there's a whole story there. Basically I didn't want to sell, my partner wanted to sell. I wanted to keep my friendship with my partner and sell Business partner, by the way, american Beautiful Woman, felicia, nothing wrong with that and then I thought that was my purpose. And then we sold.

Pete Neubig:

And then I was lost. For about 18 months I was working for the man, the company that bought us, and I had more money in my pocket than I ever had. I was making more than I ever had and I was more miserable than I ever was. And that's when I realized money ain't everything. It helps, it's helpful, but it ain't the whole thing. So I started building VPM and launched that in 21. And now this is my new favorite thing. So I think whatever business I start is the thing I feel like that's my purpose.

Ed Mathews:

Your most recent child is your favorite. Yeah, I spent 24 plus years working for the man as well, and or the woman in a couple of cases, but I loved every minute of it until I didn't love it anymore, and then I had to go do something else.

Pete Neubig:

And I think once you're out of it it's hard. I had to go do something else and once you're out of it it's hard. Look everybody who's listening to this. If you guys are actively trying to buy real estate, my guess is that 90% of you are buying real estate to get that freedom, that financial freedom, because you don't have to be told to be at the office at seven in the morning, to stay till five o'clock, and once you have your own schedule, it's hard to go back.

Ed Mathews:

It really is. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. There were a couple of years there where I'd get phone calls from former colleagues or a recruiter hey, any chance. And I was like, no, I'm having fun. Now they don't call anymore, I'm not relevant to that, not employable, so I don't know that they're wrong. So, in terms of the portfolio, how large the single family portfolio, how large did that ever get?

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, so what I owned, my largest was 31 single family homes and three apartment complexes 100 unit, a 32 unit and a 52 unit. As far as when I managed third party, the biggest I got was right around 900, like 894. And I was in three markets. I was in Houston, dallas and Fort Worth.

Ed Mathews:

That's a really healthy property management company, congrats.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, thank you.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and so let's fast forward. So you decide it's 2018, 19, and the world is changing. Covid hasn't quite hit yet, it's a few months off, but so what spurred you to sell the properties?

Pete Neubig:

Was it just the partnership, or I sold the properties before 18 and 19. So I didn't quite get that uplift. But what actually made me sell was they were class D and every year I was dumping money into them. They weren't appreciating yet and I had held them for a few years at this point and I realized that they're hard to manage. So my team now who's managing them were stressed out, and it was mainly due to my properties. I couldn't sell them originally and so what I did is I actually owner financed them, chris, yes, and I wrapped the note and so I talked to the bank. We bought all these properties through a local bank at the time, which they're much easier to work with than the Chase banks, and I managed them. So for the first time in 10 years I was making money on these properties because I was getting a management fee and I was getting my principal and interest and I would only sell them to investors at that time.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, We've had several guests on the market on the show that have go into a market like that and they'll buy them for 30, 40, 50 grand. Have go into a market like that and they'll buy them for 30, 40, 50 grand, pour money into them and then turn around soon thereafter and sell them for 60, 70, 80, 90 grand with a wraparound, and they live on the mortgage payments for the next 30 years or so.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, I did a little differently, and usually you sell those to owner occupied Exactly. I did a little differently because I didn't trust the owner occupied in that area, because it was such a rough area that I didn't want defaulted notes on a bunch of defaulted notes, which then means I'm the bank right, I have to take it back and I didn't want to get involved with that. So I sold them to investors on a three-year balloon and the deal was you can buy the property, I'll give you even a good deal, but I have to manage them at my normal management rates and you have to refinance them or get out of it in three years. And some of them were five years, but most of them were three years because I wanted out of them. Looking back now, man, I mean if I would have kept those properties, I bought them for $35,000 back in 2008. Today they're worth about $120,000. But I was getting my butt kicked. Honestly, I was losing money every year, so it would have been a wash.

Ed Mathews:

It's really stressful. We manage our own properties here and most days are good, but the stressful days are really stressful and that's no fun.

Pete Neubig:

So it's no fun for your team and it's certainly no fun for you as the principal, Especially low income right, Low income. They don't pay rent online or they don't pay rent on time or they don't pay rent at all. When you get the house back, I call them parting gifts, right? So the resident gets evicted or leaves. They may not take everything, but they take some things like your refrigerator, your dishwasher, and then the neighbors will take the AC unit, whether it's affixed to the property or not. They'll take the dishwasher, the stove. So I used to go into a house and all of a sudden it's holy crap, Like there's nothing there but pure and beans, and so, yeah, it's rough when your make ready. Costs are $10,000 to $15,000.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, I used to go to this place, a restaurant actually it was a dive. It was a long time ago in college died. It was a long time ago in college and there was a sign there then you just reminded me of it. That said anything not nailed down is ours and it can be pried up.

Pete Neubig:

It's not nailed down.

Ed Mathews:

So it's. It's, yeah, it's a difficult business, right? And one of the things for those folks listening out there one of the things that you've got to be crystal clear on is the buying criteria. What does your buy box look like? And you've got to think through not only can this business, can this building cashflow, can I bring it back to life, but also what's it going to be like to manage and it's not for everybody, I can assure you, and it can certainly be a huge challenge. If you are, say, for instance, prone to taking things personally, then property management is probably not the game for you, right? You should outside.

Pete Neubig:

I always equate it Like buying houses is like dating, and then when you buy the house and you have to own it and manage it, that's like marriage.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah.

Pete Neubig:

It's not super sexy anymore. It takes a lot of work, but it can be very fruitful over a long period of time.

Ed Mathews:

lot of work but it can be very fruitful over a long period of time. The hubby gets a dad bod and stops shaking. I hear you yeah, that's you're not wooing each other anymore, so to speak. Nope, the hard work begins. Yeah, exactly Okay. And then you sell off the portfolio. Now you're into Empire, and Empire is what you sold in 2019, yes, Correct.

Pete Neubig:

I sold the business in 19. A funny thing about third-party management, though it's a difficult business, even more so than managing your own properties, because now you're at a shim stock between everybody and the owner. And the funny thing is that I bought no properties for almost eight, nine years when I was running the business, because I was too busy. Now think about this. I'm managing properties. Now think about this. I'm managing properties. There's deals coming in front of me all the time and I'm just too busy to see them. And I hear a lot of realtors, right, that happens with them as well. They see the deal and they're turning around and selling the deal. I'm like this thing has $50,000 equity in it. What are you turning around selling it for? Because they're just too busy. They just want to get the deal done, and that exactly happened to me as well.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, it's interesting. It's one of the tactics that we've used a lot in terms of acquiring buildings is, when we go into a market, one of the first things we're doing is making friends with guys like you. Right, the property managers and I want to meet their most stressed out owner, and so the reason being is that the property manager is running hard trying to manage that property is that the property manager is running hard trying to manage that property. The stressed out property owner can be anywhere from just stressed to totally frantic and need to get out, and we've found that we've been able to acquire properties really good deals that way. But it's interesting that you say, because my first question to the PM is how come you didn't buy it? And I get similar answer to what you just gave me, which is I don't have time.

Pete Neubig:

Too busy, too busy, too busy earning a living to make a living. And those stressed out owners by the way, they're terrible clients for property managers because now they're stressed out, they don't have the money or they don't want to invest the money. And now, all of a sudden, now you are in, caught in between potential legal lawsuit Res, potential legal lawsuit residents going to send and, by the way, the magic company always gets named in a lawsuit, always by both parties, by the resident, and the owner can't win. Yeah. My deal is if you own a property manager firm and you haven't been sued yet, you're not big enough yet, yeah, or you haven't been along and been until long enough. Yeah, it's a matter of time, it's a matter of time Okay.

Pete Neubig:

So empire gets sold. You started VPM while you were at it was JLL that you were at right. I sold Empire to a company called Mind M-Y-N-D and they just merged with this year a couple of months ago.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, all right. And then so you go work for the man for a little while VPM gets launched. So tell me all about VPM. What does that company do?

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, the inspiration behind VPM was when I was at Empire. I was struggling to make a profit. People in the States, they need more money, right, our inflation has gone up and all that stuff. But the job roles that need to be done are kind of lower end job roles, right Maintenance coordinator, leasing coordinator, answering a phone, exec, admin all these people that you need for tasks. And I was trying to fill them with people in the US. But the people I could afford were had GEDs, maybe high school diplomas, but they had outside issues that brought into my company. They didn't really care. It was just a J-O-B, it wasn't a career and they really didn't care about the company. They would use sick days, they would come in late, all that stuff. There's no passion there and what we found is that if I hire people near shore, like I hired in Mexico because we were in Houston, central America and Mexico, same time zone, spanish speaking and what I was able to buy I was able to hire two and a half people for one US salary. So think about that because all these tasks are coming in. So now I have three people doing tasks versus one.

Pete Neubig:

So when I sold my business, I'm like I can help. I was an early adopter in it, so I'm like I can help other management firms do this, and I was going to pay them and I'll take the middle, and I ended up coming up my business partner, now Ross. He came up with a better model, and he came up with a model today, which is the marketplace. So think of it like a matchcom Fiverr if people know Fiverr and it's built for real estate though and so the company says I need help with maintenance coordinator, and we have a bunch of profiles with free training on maintenance coordination and software that supports it, and so you can get somebody who's certified. You hire them through the platform and you pay them through the platform, and the way we make money is we get 10% from the VA or the remote team member.

Ed Mathews:

Interesting? Okay, and so are. Is there? Are you a middleman in terms of the transaction, or are you relying on the VA to every two weeks, when payday comes, to pony up their part? I'm just curious.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, so I'm a middleman. I take my money just as a property manager. I took my 10% before I gave you the rent or my management fee, and so the virtual assistant. They put time in, they get paid weekly and through our payment system Stripe is our payment process they take their little percent and I take my little percent, and then the remote team member gets the rest of it.

Ed Mathews:

And so the talent that you're hiring is predominantly in Mexico. Have you looked at any other markets?

Pete Neubig:

We're in 120 markets right now, but it's predominantly Philippines, Mexico and Central America.

Ed Mathews:

I would say, the main we is on of luck with hiring out of the Philippines here and are basically right hand as someone who's been with us for five, almost six years now, and I'd be lost without her.

Pete Neubig:

And although inflation has hit the rest of the world, in the U S it's hit a little bit higher. But I remember Filipino work, new workers 10 years ago $2 an hour. Today it's about five, six, seven bucks an hour. Today it's about five, six, seven bucks an hour is what I'm seeing out there.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, and, and the thing is, our bookkeeper, who also sits in the Philippines, lives in the Philippines and she's a CPA right. And we're hiring college educated, genuinely good, decent, hardworking people to a to a person like right across the board, and, and the fact is, their English is as good or better than mine. They certainly speak better than I do and they understand the business right, and so that's one of the unique things that you just said that I really want to drill into is so you provide training in the background to help them to be a project coordinator.

Pete Neubig:

A maintenance coordinator or an appointment setter or marketing social media.

Ed Mathews:

Tell me about. So you've got some sort of like school or Kajabi in the background. That is aligned with the job roles.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, and it's a work in progress. We have about 30 plus courses right now. But if you think about it, let's say I live in the Philippines. I know nothing about US-based real estate, I know nothing about managing properties, so we built these property management 101 courses. There's 12 of them. It's nine of them, 12 hours of content. And then what I went out and did is I got vendors that support the property management industry and I was starting to get their courses on our platform as well. So I'm trying to consolidate all these courses, so I'm trying to build them for every job role.

Pete Neubig:

So the first phase was just overall property management. Now I'm trying to create one for every job role and I'm trying to get all the vendor stuff, all the vendor training, in one deal. So let's say, for example, I'm like I need somebody who knows maintenance, coordination and property meld and app folio. Those are three two softwares and a job role. You can go in and click those certifications and pop up 1,500 people and you can invite them to the job. So that's the idea. And for the remote team member, now they're showing that they have the ability to learn, they're showing that they're interested in that subject and they're showing that they know the subject. So this way, when you get them, you don't have to teach them what is days on market mean? What does DOM mean? They know that stuff. So they're crawling, they're not sprinting and they're still training. So I don't solve the training problem, I just get them further along when they get hired.

Ed Mathews:

It's great that you do that, though, because my experience, both internally here as well as just colleagues who also work with virtual assistants the primary difference between those that are successful with that model and those who struggle with that model is the back office training right. Entrepreneurs, our world, like you were saying earlier, our world is frenetic. We're constantly busy. There's never downtime, right, you walk in the door at 7, 730. You're walking out the door best case 5.36, but it's usually a lot later and it's go. You're on the phone, you're doing deals, you're making offers, you're solving problems. It's never ending. And so having that infrastructure to be able to train your team goes a long way. Because, like when we, early on, when we started hiring virtual assistants, we struggled a little bit, but it wasn't their fault, it was our fault. We weren't teaching them how, we weren't teaching them well enough how to do the job 100% agreed.

Pete Neubig:

I actually created a video training for company owners on how to hire, train and manage a remote team. It's the number one challenge that I have. When somebody fires a VA, it's not the VA's fault, it's their fault. And the main thing is one is, if you don't have a job description that you know exactly what that remote team member is supposed to do, they have no idea what they're supposed to do, if you like. For example, like answer phones, all other duties assigned by management, that is not a great job description. It's very it's just like very vague. So once you know that, and then you spend time, there's a great book called the One Minute Manager and it's an easy read. Highly recommend it. I use that as the training methodology. And, of course, if you can create training and video when you train them, now you have a video training database.

Pete Neubig:

And then managing Everybody needs to be managed, not micromanaged, and there's a big difference. And you don't want to abdicate, you want to delegate, and so it's like the one person will be like oh yeah, I hired my VA and I just tell them go ahead and just go, do what you want, do you? I'm like that's not managing, and the other ones. I want every five minutes. I want on a spreadsheet of what you've done. I'm like you pay this guy five bucks an hour. Meanwhile you're paying somebody $80,000 a year in your office. They're coming in late, they're leaving early, they're taking long lunches, they're hanging out by the water cooler taking smoke breaks and you don't give two craps about this guy, but you care about the $5 an hour guy, making sure that he's working every minute of the day.

Ed Mathews:

Right. So what do you do in terms of what's the happy medium? What's that look like in your world?

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, look, this is just my perception. This is the way I've done it. I have 23 of them that work for me in Mexico and Philippines. I have virtualists that work for me now. Number one is well one. I always train them, right, like. So it's like monkey, see, monkey, do I train them? I video it. They watch the video later that day. Then they build the manual. So I made the mistake early on where I built a manual. I had a hundred page maintenance manual. No one ever read it. No one even knew how to navigate through it. So you have to train them.

Pete Neubig:

The second is the management piece is one I manage by availability, right? So they're on Slack and they have to Slack me back within 15 minutes. They have to email me within two hours. They have to be on. Every call is video. They have to be in their office. Number two is I can't get escalations, either external or internal. If somebody says they cannot get in touch with you, that is a major problem with me. And then the last thing is KPIs. If I know the metrics that you're supposed to hit and you are hitting the metrics, ed, I personally don't care if you work 40 hours a week or 20 hours a week. They're available and you're hitting your metrics. Don't care if you work 40 hours a week or 20 hours a week. They're available and you're hitting your metrics, Don't care.

Ed Mathews:

And that last one is so key right, going back in my consulting days, anything that's measured can be managed. And if you're not measuring and it doesn't, and the thing is that I'm curious what your opinion on this, from my perspective, it doesn't need to be 47 KPIs. Right, key performance indicators.

Pete Neubig:

Can't be.

Ed Mathews:

Three, five, max five, and so keep it simple.

Pete Neubig:

I've always been taught through business coaching that the department has three to five, the business has three to seven, the job role one to three. If you have more than three KPIs then they're probably wearing too many hats.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, noted I. Then they're probably wearing too many hats.

Pete Neubig:

Okay, noted I, got a couple of people wearing too many hats here, then my property managers had 11 KPIs when I first started.

Ed Mathews:

If everything's important, nothing's important. You're like every frenetic and it's unattainable. It makes it a lot for somebody to succeed at the job. I interviewed Nick Huber, who is a very successful down in the South I think he's in Georgia and one of the things that he said was I don't need to hire I'm paraphrasing I don't need to hire A players, right? I need to hire regular people and provide the systems that regular people can succeed at in order for the business to succeed. Right. And he's always on Twitter talking about buy boring businesses, run boring businesses. That's the way to growth and wealth, and on many levels I agree with him. But that key point he made was made a lot of sense to me in that, if you keep it simple, you don't need to hire an MIT grad with a Stanford postgraduate degree. You can hire a really smart person who's just coming off the street, train them on what they need to do and not give them three to five, but give them one to three KPIs to manage and you'll find that they're very successful.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, when I manage my team and I have a weekly meeting with them, the main question that I ask, as the business owner, the business leader or the manager is what challenges are you having and what can I do to make your job easier? Leaders Absolutely, and if you do that and you strip away one challenge or one thing that they can make their job easier every week, that's 52 things and they will be so prosperous for you because you stripped away all of these challenges that they're having.

Ed Mathews:

Right, and I know you get it because I just noticed behind you that that placard that says process.

Pete Neubig:

The process king. That's my, that's one of my nicknames.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, being a former techie, me too, me too. Ok, so we are getting into the latter part of the show. A little change here in season four Instead of the final four, I've made it the final five, and that probably gets me out of trouble with the NCAA and also I get an extra question to get answered.

Pete Neubig:

Oh, I'm nervous. I only came prepared to answer four questions.

Ed Mathews:

I'll make sense. You don't know which one's coming when, so if you can answer me this in terms of purpose, I one's come and went. So if you could answer me this in terms of purpose.

Pete Neubig:

I want you to finish the sentence. My purpose is. My purpose is helping business owners be profitable and getting people out of poverty across the world.

Ed Mathews:

Love that. You help enough people get where they want to go. They'll help you get where you want to go right. What is the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you?

Pete Neubig:

I got a lot of great advice but I'm going to piggyback on your story earlier. Business doesn't get easier, you get better, and business is boring. Those two things I got from a business coach of mine who ended up becoming a partner, doug Winnie. His name is Doug Winnie and Doug used to tell me business doesn't get easier, you get better.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, I love that. So leaders, almost universally, are readers or consumers of information. So I'm always curious about what a guy like you is paying attention to. What books are you reading? Do you consume info on YouTube or podcasts, or do you go to conferences? How do you pay, how do you sharpen the saw, so to speak, and specifically who you pay attention to these days? Or do you go to conferences? How do you pay, how do you sharpen the saw, so to speak, and specifically who you're paying attention to these days? What do you read?

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, so the book that is my Bible is called Traction by Gina Wickman, if you're familiar, and I read that one almost every quarter because we do our quarterly meetings, which is part of the EOS model. I self-implemented EOS at Empire, I self-implemented EOS at VPM and I would say that's my Bible. I run the whole business that way and, yeah, it's all of the above. I listen to some podcasts not as many. I'm more of a reader than I am podcast guy. I like a lot of YouTube. I'm into Alex Hormozy. I don't know if you've heard of him. I'm into him right now. He's a big character guy but he's so smart.

Ed Mathews:

Yeah, he is, and his two books are excellent. A hundred million offers.

Pete Neubig:

Just bought them. They're in my inbox. I have to read them.

Ed Mathews:

If you like, Alex, I also suggest you read Russell Brunson's books Dot Com.

Pete Neubig:

Secrets, expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets. He's the funnel master right.

Ed Mathews:

Awesome com and the Expert Secrets gets into a lot of additional stuff. Traffic Secrets is exactly what it sounds like how to drive traffic, but those are excellent books. And actually, russell, be a mentor to Alex back in the day when they were doing the gym. Gym, launch, yeah, launch. Thank you. All right, I want you to finish another sentence. For me, success means what to you?

Pete Neubig:

Success means that I have enough money to survive and that I am in control of my calendar. I think that's what it means to me right now, and being happy Like right now VPM. I don't make great money, it's a startup, sure, but I make enough money to live my life and I have my own calendar. I work when I want to work, most of the time. Even business owners, you said earlier, sometimes, like when I started Empire, it was 90 hour weeks, and I think having control of your life versus having to be told what and where to go and when to do it and how to do it, is important to me.

Ed Mathews:

I couldn't agree more. I think time freedom is the most valuable thing to people, especially younger people like the 25 year old version of me, totally overlooked. I wanted to build empires and be a bazillionaire and blah, blah, blah. And when I got, when I had kids my wife and I had kids and they got a little older really the only thing I wanted to do was get up and spend my day the way I wanted to spend it, without having to ask permission of anybody else, right, other than my wife. You know how that works. But oh yeah, you never bust your house. Okay, and the fifth and final, let's talk about failure, right? I think you learn more from mistakes than you do from successes. What is your? What is the one decision you'd like to have back and how did you fix it?

Pete Neubig:

So many to choose from, just saying okay, there's so many to choose from. But one of my first deals I did is I invested into an apartment complex. I was supposed to be a passive investor but I actually had to sign on the mortgage, on the loan. Sorry, I had to sign on the loan to personally guarantee it. Now think about that. I'm a passive investor, so I have no control of the property and I'm personally guaranteeing a loan. And that was the end On top of that. So it's two decisions in one role. I got my mom to invest. She wasn't personally liable for the loan I invested at the time I was 31. I found out about self-directed IRAs. I moved all my money that I had in my life, which was about 120 grand. I put that in. My mom invested another 70. First apartment complex I'm ever doing, and I'll just put it this way Fast forward.

Pete Neubig:

Three years later we lost the apartment complex. Not only did I lose all my money, but I was getting sued for 1.5 million because I personally signed for the note. It ended up working out okay overall, but talk about stress and a loss of sleep. For sure that was a rough period of my time. Meanwhile I was engaged and I'm like, go to my future wife. And I'm like, hey, if you want out of this thing, like you can get out of this thing because I'm getting sued, this is going to be. If I don't win this thing, this is going to be really bad for us. And she stuck with me and we're still married today, 17 years later.

Ed Mathews:

Congratulations. You obviously married well. Thank you, yeah, I'm glad you got it worked out. One of the things that I've realized and I've gotten there've been a couple of projects I'd love to have back. One case in particular. I got a little bit over leveraged and the one thing that helps is and I haven't always done it well, to be honest, but I'm getting better at it is communication. You stub your toe. Your first phone call is to your banker. Hey, here's a situation. I understand what's going on. Here's what I'm doing about it. Can you work with me? And sometimes the answer is no, but a lot of the cases they don't want to bring an asset, especially one as large as that, your balance sheet.

Pete Neubig:

I'll let you in on a little secret here. We did talk to the bank and they actually were telling us don't pay the loan, we're going to go ahead and repackage the loan for you. And then they declared bankruptcy or they took the property from us and sold it for more than what was owed on the loan and then came back and sued us for the full amount of 30. And in that instance I wish I didn't tell them anything. We were very forthcoming with them and yeah. So there's a lot more that goes into that story, but it was. I agree. Yeah, you want to tell everybody communication.

Pete Neubig:

But man, be careful with bankers, especially if they're not local. Like my local bankers. They were awesome Cause I would walk in there and I can have a conversation. This bank, I think, was in, was in Florida and I couldn't, and I'm in Texas and it just. You just don't have that relationship. And to them I was just a figure and they saw how they can make money. They can steal my property from me, make a bunch of money. I owed 1.2 million on the property. They sold it for 2.1 million and then sued me for 1.2 million and that was another one. That was the one I was firstly signed a no for, so that was scary.

Ed Mathews:

I am a huge proponent of. I use commercial loans to acquire properties and then I immediately refi them as soon as humanly possible with a local bank, so that exactly what you were saying you can walk in the door, you can talk to the VP who's in charge of your loan and there is something to be said. Yeah that's pretty smart. Red lightly. Be careful, okay, thank careful, okay. Thank you for that. When you are not talking about real estate or saving the world from bad virtual assistants, how do you like to spend your time?

Pete Neubig:

So I'm into walking right now, believe it or not. So I used to be a triathlete. I did an Ironman, three-time Ironman finisher and I love walking. I walk right now. In the last whatever, a few months, whatever I'm walking an average of nine miles a day. So a lot of podcasts, a lot of YouTube. It's over 20,000 steps.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, you have a short stride.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, I do. I'm a short guy, I'm only 5'7", so I do about 20,000 steps every day. That's my new thing, man. Yeah, I love it. I walk everywhere now. I walk to the restaurants, I walk to the gym, I walk everywhere.

Ed Mathews:

It's amazing what it does to clear your head too.

Pete Neubig:

And it burns fat. I've lost 30 pounds walking in the last since we're recording this. In end of September I was 189, got down to 152, and now I'm a healthy 165. Oh, congrats, thanks. Good for you, yeah, thank you.

Ed Mathews:

As I always said, the big dogs get taken first, right. So good help, Pete. Hey, I've really enjoyed this conversation. If people want to get in touch with you or learn more about VPM or anything else that you're working on, what's the best way to do that?

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, so I'm still old school. I like email. I respond to all. I respond to all my email. I do not have a virtual assistant that looks at my email, my email. Yet I know it's Pete at VPM solutions. com and I'm a Facebook guy, not a LinkedIn guy. I don't know why I I haven't just. I just not have just gotten into LinkedIn. So I'm a Facebook guy and I think it's PeteNeubig1,. I think Just friend me and if you want to go to our site and learn more, it's vpmsolutionscom.

Ed Mathews:

Okay, we'll make sure that all this is in the show notes but, Pete, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Enjoyed this conversation. Congratulations on all your success. Enjoy your walking. I'm sure your knees feel a whole lot better than having to bike ride and run a bike, run and swim, whatever it's 140.6 miles Hard. Pass for me on that, but congratulations on that and and your AT, or your 20,000 steps a day, and keep on keeping on Nice to meet you.

Pete Neubig:

Yeah, nice to meet you. Thanks for having me.

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