Caleb Walsh
What an incredible story. With less than $10,000 in the bank – credit card debt up to his eyeballs, credit scores in the toilet, and his wife pregnant with their first child, Caleb Walsh thought this was the perfect time to buy an $800,000 multi-unit property! This could have been another 99 Homes story (where huge numbers of people got underwater on their mortgage) but Caleb turned it into a story of going from zero to 500 doors.
On this episode of the Uncommon Life Project Podcast, hosts Phillip and Bryan talk with Caleb Walsh.
Caleb Walsh is a leading authority in affordable housing with portfolios spanning over 1,500 units in six states. He resides in Tampa, Florida with his wife Denise and their two children, Lincoln and Noelle. He’s an economy of scale advocate, and his story involves jumping from five units to 500 units in a short amount of time.
Listen in and get ready for a spirited conversation. You’ll hear about Caleb’s mistakes and triumphs – and how he persisted until he reached his goals.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How to leverage credit instead of letting debt leverage you
- The value of going all in – making your side hustle the main thing
- Lessons learned from trying to flip homes at the epicenter of a downturn
- How to hold on to a crazy, grandiose idea
- Why establishing passive income can take “sleep is optional” amounts of energy. No such thing as easy money.
- How to capitalize on an investment that brings in a solid return.
- Building economies of scale for even bigger returns
- Going public with goals in order to build in accountability around those goals.
- Creating public momentum increases opportunity through others buying into your vision
The Golden Nuggets:
“At a certain point I had to decide – was I going to play it safe and go down the 9-5 day job path, or was I going to follow the entrepreneurial path? I thought the cubicle of doom was the responsible choice.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “When you trade your life hours in for a soul-sucking job, the creativity to do something else can get sucked away, too.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “I looked at my day job and all my side hustles and thought, you know the only thing that has worked consistently without me just willing it to happen has been these rental properties.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “Hard money lenders are betting on you to fail. Your plan B is their plan A.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “I saw real people writing real checks, paying for rent. And at that point I realized, wow, there is something to these basic needs – food, water, shelter – if you're in one of those big three, there's always a need.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “This is why I refer to myself as an economy of scale advocate. I realized that the more units I had, things like repair costs and landscaping at the property became cheaper because I could utilize subs across multiple properties.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “We're reaching something where we can be operating at very different level. There's a certain amount of scale that happens, and we can take back our life and own time. That is a tremendous motivator.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet “I began looking at debt in such a way that I realized that I may be living in a home and a home can be an asset later if I resell it. But unless that home is generating income for me it is, for lack of a better word, a liability.” – Caleb Walsh Click To Tweet