Chris Linger Shares His Real Estate Success Through Service

Kevin Harrington
Hi, I’m Kevin Harrington, an original shark from the hit television show Shark Tank and you’re listening to the underdog podcast

Pamela Bardhi
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the underdog podcast today I have an incredible guest here with me Chris, how are you, my friend?

Chris Linger
I’m doing well. Pamela, thank you for having me.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh my god, it’s such an honor to have you here today. Thank you so, so much. Oh my god, I’m pumped. I’m pumped to see your background, and your TEDx-certified accelerator multifamily. I’m like, I am gonna learn so much from you and like, just can’t wait to hear your story in detail. And I always start with this one question which is a very loaded one. Let’s see how you handle it. What inspired you on your journey to where you are today, my friend,

Chris Linger
Man, where we are today is beyond belief for us. And I will definitely give the credit to my wife Marcela. Without her, I don’t know that I would have the Jumpstart for where we are today. It was nowhere near being on my radar in life. And we found each other in 2017. We just exploded in every aspect. So firstly, you know, professional conversations, grew that into a little relationship. then got married during a four-year timeframe.

We were able to grow our rentals, each of us had a couple of rentals. We only had four units when we met each other. And by 2020, that was in 17. By 2020, we grew to 35 that we owned ourselves. And today, we are actually partners in 3000 apartments. Also, we have to sell storage and three mobile home parks. As I said, we’ve just exploded but what we found was to go back to your point. What inspired me is her drive and her want for more.

And I knew I wanted that I just didn’t know where to go or what to do. As you can see as you said from the background. We also found Grant Cardone who helped us to explode that concept from where we were semi-happy with the 35 apartments. If we go bigger and go do more, we can help more people. it’s about helping the communities help the investors. Yes, it helps us along the way too. But we’re providing jobs and homes and opportunities for folks far beyond we ever expected.

Pamela Bardhi
So amazing, Chris, my gosh. First off, I love your beautiful love story with herself that is absolutely amazing. And that she inspires your drives like that, that is beautiful. That is beautiful. I love that you have that relationship where you kind of really fuel each other. to keep going further and further and to kind of build this empire together. which is so exciting. And I cannot wait to dig into that. But back it up a little bit, Chris on you. Now, where do you want to be when you grew up as a kid? Like what was your dream?

Chris Linger
So at about 20 years old, I joined the military, I was thinking I wanted to do something medical. but I didn’t know exactly what my mom was a nurse. She’s an RN. And I thought maybe that might be the avenue. but I didn’t think I wanted to do doctor and all that good stuff. So I did 11 and a half years as an enlisted person in the Navy. I was a corpsman, which is kind of like a medic. And then at the 11-and-a-half-year mark, I actually commissioned as a nurse.

So I did another 15 years as a nurse before I retired from the military in September of 2020. And that’s when we like we were already doing a little bit of rentals ourselves, we had that portfolio 35. that’s when we transition to the syndication side. So but my expectation up until then, was really just when I retired from the military. it was to go pick up a contract job where one of my three daughters lived. And like I just worked there for a couple of months at a time.

So I could get to spend more time with them as adults because they’re in their 20s. And I would just bounce around from one hospital to another kind of thing and just kind of do the same thing. Everybody’s doing right w two jobs, nothing special. saving a little bit of money and getting to see family as much as possible, and struggled to do it. That was kind of and now when I look back at it, I’m like, man, it’s so small.

That’s such a small thought and small mindset. But it seems so awesome. Because of 26 years of being in the military, I didn’t get to spend that free time with my kids as much. I had to be gone, meaning I had to pull duty, whatever. So it was this lifestyle that we’ve turned into it has opened up doors for us that we’re able to travel. we’re able to go see family and help them.

Like I said, before we started recording, I’m gonna put it in there. We’re actually babysitting our new grandson for the next month. So that’s not something people just get to do in their 40s, they don’t usually get to walk away and do it. So super blessed and thankful for the dreams that I had and the dreams that are coming up and the dreams I don’t even know about.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that Chris first and foremost, thank you for your service all those years that is first and foremost. So thank you for that. And I think was really cool is your mom was an RN, and a huge transition bit to that too. which is like, it’s so interesting how life plays out, isn’t it?

Chris Linger
Absolutely. I won’t say that I ever went, Oh God, I never want to do that. it was always kind of interesting. But it became a true passion for sure.

Pamela Bardhi
That’s so cool. And then transitioning into real estate, I’d be like that is as opposite from the medical fields as you possibly

Chris Linger
Imagine you would think so. But there are actually a lot of people who transition into whether it’s real estate on the syndications world. like we’re doing real estate agents. you’ll see a lot of healthcare providers switch over because they’re still helping people. And that’s really not that drive to want to do it. They just don’t want to do it at the bedside anymore. Out of real estate agents that are previous medical providers of some sort.

Pamela Bardhi
Oh my god, I absolutely love that. And I mean, it’s that’s really what it comes down to. I think what happens that gets lost in the sauce very often when it comes to real estate. It’s like, you know, there’s big money, big commissions, big passive income, and all these things. But at the end of the day, you’re helping people that’s really the foundation.

Real estate’s a local business period always has been and always will be. And that’s just what it is. Like, yes, you can make a lot of money. but with the right heart and the right intention, you can really like TEDx, as you have. And I’ve heard you mention that, like several times, helping people has always been your sole focus. And now you’re, you get to do more of that, which is super amazing. Super Amazing.

Chris Linger
Appreciate it. Well, we’re able in our, in our careers in our life, we’re able to give back. even people we don’t know, we’ve actually done two mission trips. where we have given up wheelchairs once in Mexico, well, actually twice in Mexico. And we were in Trinidad and Tobago, and we went down and give out wheelchairs to locals. roughly 100 nits location is what we were given out. And we’re hoping to be able to go in May, we may go to the Philippines and do it again.

When you’re doing your W two job, you can’t just walk away and go do these things. You don’t necessarily have the money to donate into these funds, these funds and charities. And we just one of our mentors, I guess, put it out there during an event or something. And hey, would you be interested in doing in donating to this cause we did.

Then over time, we grew a relationship that they were like. we’re gonna go hand out some of these wheelchairs would you like to go? And of course, we’d been dying to do it. So then we connected with that group. now we’ve done some of the events on our own going out there on our own. without the help of our mentor, we’ve just gone to help. And we’re like, Hey if you’re short, you’re getting close to your time to go. You’re short on people to help give us a call. If it works in the schedule, we’ll go, we have that opportunity.

Pamela Bardhi
I absolutely love that. And you’re all about giving back, which is incredible, as well. you’ve had quite a journey in life really service. And now I always like to point out to many people because they’re like, Alright. so what really inspired Chris, right, like growing up? Was it your mom who was doing the armor and stuff like what? Who or what I guess motivated you? Is big time growing up?

Chris Linger
I wish I had a definitive answer to that. I would say that is my mom but through another direction. So my mom was a public health nurse. And so she went into people’s homes in the community and provided care that they couldn’t necessarily get to a doctor’s office. and they weren’t bad enough that they had to be in the hospital. through that, she developed relationships with everybody in our town.

And so Chris, as a kid couldn’t get away with anything without mom finding out about it either. I love that as you get older, you come to appreciate the fact that they had such a high standing for her. And so for me, I would say that that was kind of a driving factor in heading in that way to help people it was just something that’s been in my family. You know, my grandmother had done stuff through her Community Church and all that, well, that as well. But I hadn’t really thought about it in that intense moment. So I apologize.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah, no, no, I appreciate that. Because I just think it’s so beautiful because everything is so rooted in her. it feels like and everything seems to tie back to her somehow. which I think is absolutely, absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible. And throughout your life experiences, you’ve seen a lot you’ve dedicated your life to service and all of that. What has been some of the biggest obstacles. and how did you overcome them throughout the journey in the process,

Chris Linger
finding time for you to do what you need. Whatever organization you’re in. if you’re in a W two job, if you’re a contractor, you’re a number of the same as a blanket. You know, and this may be a little morbid or far-fetched concept. but find time to get what you need out of your day. Because for you, they just want to get the work of the business they just want to get their share of you. and you need to figure out how to get above and beyond that and that that takes personal internal accountability. drive push and if you don’t have it.

Then you need to find accountability through a friend have a partner or a mentor or something along those lines. who can help you find that avenue? a lot of people, they just go to work, come home, make dinner, go to sleep, watch TV for a couple hours. And that’s it. And if you want to get ahead in life, if you want to be set for your retirement years. your 401k is not going to do it, your stock market’s not going to do it. we see that real estate is a great opportunity.

And that, even if even like right now. when everybody’s stressing over the interest rates, and they feel like there’s not a deal out there. there are still deals out there, there are still opportunities out there for these projects to perform very well. They may not for the next six months or eight months. But when we turn the cycle, it starts going back up. all of a sudden, the profits are going to be crazy. the exit is going to make incredible money. And all you have to do is be able to ride through that.

So if you’re able to work your regular job, and maybe find another way to bring on a little bit more income. so you’re able to invest, then you’re able to take advantage of that once you get one cycle through. all of a sudden you’re in two, then you’re in four, then you’re in eight. And it just multiplies very rapidly point, but you have to start taking action for making that happen. And that’s kind of the drive on my son is to see that. These are the things that we need to do so that we can have that freedom of time and place and be able to give back.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely. I love that. Chris, thank you so much for sharing that. And now tell me like how did you meet Marcelo because I’m so intrigued. I’ve been waiting for this part of the story.

Chris Linger
Marissa is actually Mexican born came to the States 25 years ago. I don’t want to tell her whole story. But she actually joined the Navy Reserves. I was in the Navy. And she had done a deployment in 2016 came back from that. there was an opportunity at a hospital I was at. for two weeks of coverage for somebody who had had a baby and they were taking some maternity leave. And she was going to cover two weeks of that, well, I happen to meet masala in Sicily. that’s where we actually met.

At a Navy base, I was running the operating room and she does anaesthesia for a living. And I was the or manager, the operating room manager. She came to me because she was also the officer in charge at her command back in the States. And she needed to do reports on senior personnel. she didn’t want to mess it up. She hadn’t done it before and had that kind of impact on somebody else in that regard. if you write a bad report, and you don’t write a quote correctly for the Navy. then you can mess up somebody’s career, you know, and especially if they didn’t deserve it, then that’s a problem. So she came to me because I had 20 something years experience at that point.

And we had covered like I said conversations for about two weeks related around that. We talked about real estate at one point. And we had a couple other things being in the operating room. we can talk surgical procedures and stuff like that without a lot of backstory for any of these topics. so at the end of the two weeks, I found out I was thinking reservist. she’s in Austin, Texas, which is where we reside now. there’s nothing for the Navy there except for recruiting duty. I wasn’t interested in that.

So I didn’t really think anything in that in the romantic side when I was talking with her. then she said something about being a contractor. This means she goes from state to state hospital, kind of what I was thinking of doing in retirement. And I was like hold on timeout, that changes a lot of stuff. that means you’re willing to move around a little bit, you’re willing to be in different locations. which I was planning to stay in a little bit longer. And I still had like four months in Sicily.

So for the next four months, we actually talked on the phone every day for those four months until I got back. And we officially called it dating about a month before we ever had our first date. So it’s sorry to take a little little bit of time, but it isn’t, you know, love it. But no, it’s it’s been amazing for as much time as we’ve spent apart. like I said we met in 2017. It was actually follow 2020 When I retired is when we actually started living together full time. Like there were little pieces when she would be between contracts.

And she would come back out to wherever I was stationed and spend a month or something. But fall 2020 was the first time that we were actually together 24/7. And at that particular moment, we were also doing a renovation on a quad Plex. because we were still doing our own small stuff. So add that into the mix of changing the whole dynamics of your relationship. And if you can make it through that are thick as blood if not thicker.

Pamela Bardhi
I 100% agree with that a fourplex while you’re doing all of this, oh yeah, definitely pass the test. That’s incredible. I love how your energy is just like mesh together and just created this beautiful union, which is incredible. But like from that union, you now then took your four units to 35. In how many years one was a one or two.

Chris Linger
So when we did that up Plex that was actually the last four units of the 35. So in four years, we grew to 35 apartments. Now I told you earlier we’re in almost 3000 partners but we actually We are the general partner. in other words, we’ve run the work part of the run group that is actively running the asset for almost 2000. we went from 30 to 2000 apartments in two years.

Pamela Bardhi
Yeah, definitely walk me through what that looks like. Because the reason why I love this, there’s so many people listening right now. there are a lot of millennials that are listenin. people from all over, but there’s a lot of people listening that are in completely different fields that are so interested in real estate investing.

And they don’t know how to transition from like, the medical field to go into real estate. like, how can they make their money work for them, and that kind of thing. So I’d love to hear the step-by-step on how you guys really got there, because that is amazing. And it’s not like you had real estate backgrounds. Or he didn’t, you didn’t I mean, you guys were in the Navy. You know,

Chris Linger
We’re both medical, we’re both military background, and I did in my last duty station. So in 2018, I got my MBA, so I understand business, she had a business degree. And on this side of it, it was really COVID kind of kick-started us with. I guess, being involved with other people. I know that sounds weird. COVID, you met other people? Well, everybody started these virtual events. so we jumped on a virtual event. we found a mastermind that was basically around the things that we were doing in real estate. And from that we found partnerships. then we also had talked to somebody before I retired.

That was in another programme for syndications. which was something that we’ve been talking about for a few years. we just didn’t know how to do it. And with the potential to deploy, we didn’t want to be in charge of other people’s money. So when one of us retires, that’s when we’ll start focusing in that direction. But we continue to educate ourselves, get ourselves prepared. So we have time there, as soon as I retired September 20.

We joined a group that taught us the ins and outs of syndication all the way from finding a broker all the way to the closing table. we already knew how to run the assets, we already knew how to run that business plan. because we’ve done it on a smaller scale with our quad plexes and eight Plex and in single-family stuff. And let’s see, it was about 13 months after we joined that group that we were able to close on two syndications was 350 apartments.

So we had already 10x in our portfolio in 13 months. and then now we weren’t the full owner. So I get that we’re not the full owners, but we’re okay with that small slice of a big pie as a pretty good slice. Sometimes, rather than having a whole small pie like you have in the little ones that you buy at the store for yourself. And so all we keep doing is adding a little sliver of pie into it. Every time we close another deal, we’re adding another little sliver of pie. it’s been able to help us grow.

And we’re having more and more experience with each of these different projects. because we’ve got things from a low A class all the way down to C class properties. And then we also through that first mastermind. we found partners for mobile, home parks and self storage, where they’re the experts in those areas. And we come in with the remote business sense and being able to evaluate that side of the business. so that we can help those are more short joint venture than then syndications.

How can somebody do it? How do you do the transition. So we’ve actually spoken with husband, wife, investor. a couple that from 2016, to 2021, they 6x, their net worth just by passively investing. they continue to do their day to day pharmacy jobs, and any extra income they invest passively with people they know like and trust. they ended up going from a $500,000 net worth to a three and a half million dollar net worth. And so that was in five years. And that’s with all only just doing that job. Like I said, if you have that job, and you just go home, watch TV at night, and you don’t want to do anything else.

That’s they just they understood the process, they understood what they were looking at for underwriting. And so that’s one way that a busy professional can get in there and start growing their wealth. without having to take away from their current employment and current income. The other option is to become more active and you start looking for deals, you start talking to partners. you start developing those relationships so that you can get into something but again. you’re gonna have to give up something in order to to start to generate income. and make more money out of that and increase net worth out of that.

So for the busy professional, we recommend you focus on what you’re doing. keep generating income, that you’re able to invest, and you can grow your net worth as well. But if you want to push this direction, we’re happy to have a deeper conversation on it. But it is possible. We have closed nine syndications since October of 21, and this is now April of 23. So 15 months and we have brought 12 new people into those syndications that several of them. like at least three or four of them are on their second or third syndication on their own.

So we’re happy to do it. We just there’s different avenues for doing that. And you know, everybody, there’s some friends that we’ve brought around. show them some of this stuff had discussions and they went with a different group. because it resonated with them. You know, so that’s really what it boils down to. at the end here, we’ll, we’ll pass a contact information. And we’re open to having discussions with folks to see what they’re looking for.

Pamela Bardhi
For sure, for sure. And so Chris, I’m gonna back it up a little bit. Because sometimes, like you and I know what syndication means, sometimes people are like, what is that? Like, I remember the first time I heard syndication, I was like, I don’t know what that is. You’re right. So yeah, so walk me through like the, the elementary of like, apartment, multifamily investments. this is where everyone wants to invest. But nobody wants to manage, So walk me through that,

Chris Linger
I love it. So I like to describe it, we’ll just say it’s called group buying, essentially, we will go out as a syndicator. we will go out and find an opportunity. we will vet the opportunity and make sure that the due diligence is appropriate. Just like if you were buying a home, you’d have a home inspector come out and look at it. you’d have a broker, lender, all that stuff. So we line up all those things, we get a lawyer to make sure they put together all the documentation for the SEC. the Securities Exchange Commission, to file this with them. So it’s all appropriate.
And then we’ll do an operating agreement, a business operating agreement. So when we’re all said and done, and we know we’re gonna buy this property. we will present the opportunity to investors. And they get to look at all this documentation, they can look at all this stuff and listen to the opportunity that’s presented. ask questions, and they then get to sign up and transfer their funds over to the business. that is actually going to be the ownership of the property. It’s kind of like buying stocks.

And in Coca-Cola, you have no responsibility. when you buy into stock into stocks and Coca Cola, right, you have no responsibility. And if they were to be sued, they’re not coming after you for any of the money. if there was some to be problem, they’re not coming back after you for anything. but with any investment opportunity, there’s always risk, there’s always risk of losing your investment. So I have to say that as a starter as well. Now, as a syndicator, we also were doing labour, we’re doing work. we’re making sure we’re managing the asset, we’re making sure that the business plan is occurring. and we’re keeping it on track.

So the ownership of that LLC, or that ownership of the property is split in usually an 8020, or 7030 split. And we’ll just say 8020, just for the easy ease of it all. Well, the 20%. I like to equate that to joint venture, everybody in that 20% is a general partner. and they all have to have a job and how this property runs. whether it’s online stuff or asset management, capex management. which is the upgrades you would do to the property, that group is the active component of the ownership. everybody else is owns 80% of the property with whatever amount that you put in based off. of how much equity was raised, you own 80 80% of whatever that property does.

Whenever distributions go out, you get 80% of the distribution split among your personal ownership. So the more money you put in, the more you would get when we sell the property we generally try to do depends on the age of the property. But we generally try for a three to five-year hold that we look to do 80 To 80% to 100% return on investment. So a 1.8 equity multiplier to a 2.0 will double your money in three to five years is what the goal is what we do when we underwrite those deals. we are very conservative and how we underwrite so what we try to do is underpromise and over-deliver.

But we don’t promise that we’re going to over-deliver. we just say here’s, here’s what we’re going to try to do. That’s the expectation. We can never say promise, I guess I’ll say we can never say promise or guarantee your returns. just like with Coca Cola, or Amazon, or Facebook, you know, the value could go down, it’s less likely. even in this market with the interest rates we talked about a little earlier, the values of properties are going down for a minute. But just like with Coca Cola, or Facebook, if you wait, and the value comes back up, that’s the time to sell. Right?

If you’re not long as you’re able to make that property performing and the business plan continue. It doesn’t matter what the economy does, you should have a hard asset that’s there. Tried true tested, there’s always going to be a renter, wherever we’re looking. we don’t go into little markets that are like Detroit. just to pick the city that everybody understands. There’s not a lot of movement into the area. So there’s probably not a lot. So that’s kind of the quick skinny of syndication or group by

Pamela Bardhi
that so cool. Girls, I love that. I love that it’s broken down because some people are like. Oh, how do we do that with that, you know, what does that look like? especially even just as an investor, which is incredible. And now, your perspective. I mean, you’ve seen these deals kind of happen throughout the Last Five Years. your portfolio and five, six years, your portfolio expanding? Now, what has been some of the keys to success in this? And then what has been some of the obstacles? And how do you overcome those

Chris Linger
keys to success for our side? So we’ve also had, we also passively have invested in deals, we had one. I guess I’ll start off keys to success is to be involved on our side and make sure that your syndicator is well vetted. Take it, ask them for other deals that they’re in, ask them for the financial information. ask them for original pitch deck on, on the property that they’re in. So that you can take a look and evaluate and see where they’re at. Are they actually a good manager of the property?

You know, I would say that that’s probably one of the biggest keys to success is vetting your team. making sure that you know that they’re going to be able to manage that property well. and they’re going to be able to carry out that business plan. One of the things that I didn’t mention on getting into that. buying it is that when we underwrite it, there’s also a broker that underwrites it. there’s a lender that underwrites it, when you buy a single family home or a duplex. it’s just you going, Hey, I want to buy this. And I’m just like, okay, cool.

Go for it. There’s no, no, there’s no backstop to make sure that this is a good idea. And so that’s an extra plus, is that you are going to bring on a team of individuals. a lot of them are third party and you’re paying them to act on your behalf in your best interest. But that’s also the best interest of the investor. And that’s really our our focus is the best interest of the investor. Even if we just got done, we own a property that we’ve on for a year. Now. We just did an investor review last night, actually. we didn’t do we did one payout.

And we haven’t done anything for a couple of months. And we said there’s a reason. so at the annual report, we had that reason rationalised out and we said, look, the property is making money. Here’s everything that’s going on. I said, but rather than borrow more money and increase our mortgage payment. we took the cash flow from the property reinvested it into the property. to do the upgrades that the lender will reimburse us for. that we might be on that tipping point for the interest rate. we actually won’t pay as much for borrowing that money as we would have if we did.

After that people were just like, Okay, I see what you guys had it going on. Now I understand. So I will say another key to success, be transparent and communicate often. So those would be my three. And then the downside obstacles. right now, the interest rates an obstacle, not only for your deals. But the hard part is with the shift, and it’s, let’s say it started eight months ago. sellers are still holding out for those ended 21, early 22 prices. they’re still want those, those dollars. to be able to give to their investors, which I completely understand.

But the markets change, you’ve picked a bad time to sell, this is what it’s gonna be. So the obstacle there is finding the right deal. So we just we’ve done a couple of offers, but we put it in at the price that we feel is appropriate. If we don’t get the deal. That’s fine. And we made best and final a few times, but we just haven’t made it to the contract phase. We haven’t been accepted. But the other side of it is the next person who did. we’ve seen a couple of times where they’ve had to drop out because the deal didn’t work anymore.

So we were actually rational in our offer. And these guys said, oh, yeah, we’ll meet your price. Okay, yeah, we’ll just get it under contract, and then we can renegotiate. We’re trying to be pragmatic with it. I make sure that they realize this is the reality. And so we’ve seen a couple of times that it’s actually sold at the reality of what we had originally submitted. So that’s one of the obstacle with the seller. The other is the investors that don’t necessarily understand fully. where we’re at what we’re doing, how it works.

And I’m not trying to downplay that at all, you know, everybody has their element of risk that they’re willing to take on, know your criteria. Make sure that your every investment you do fits within your criteria. If you want to branch out, you take a little bit of the extra cash that you don’t mind. and then you branch out for something a little more risky. There’s all kinds of syndications and opportunities to invest in real estate. And it really boils down to know your people and be able to vet them. like I said earlier and know what their history looks like. Because that’s probably the biggest risk that you can take is jumping in with somebody. that you don’t know and you don’t know their history.

Pamela Bardhi
Totally, especially with your money. Do your due diligence people everyone like loves when they showcase all these beautiful things. and the minute you ask them for Financials, it turns into like a whole nother game. They’ll be the ones who are authentic with it. They’re like, Oh, yeah, no problem. Here you go. Here’s full transparency many Buddy questions giving you financials. you should have every reason to question than all things real estate.

Chris Linger
And honestly, financials is kind of a faux pas for people to talk about. Yeah, it’s something, oh people. And usually, it’s because people are uncomfortable, they’re either uncomfortable because they don’t have enough. or they know that they make far more than they should or far more than the other person they’re talking to. So they’re just not comfortable with that conversation. But in this world, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. That’s what I say.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely, totally. Chris, I’m totally with you. And I’m so excited to hear what your next response is giving you this. this is my favourite question that I always love. I saved the best for last, of course,

Chris Linger
let’s go.

What Would Chris Older Self Tell His Younger Self

Pamela Bardhi
Chris, now this can be business, personal life, whatever, whatever you choose to be. Now, what would your older self tell your younger self based on what you know, now,

Chris Linger
I would have sought out real estate earlier. I didn’t really figure it out until I was about 37. When, I came across somebody in the military who said, If you can own 10 homes, like fully own them. by the time you retire, you’d be able to live off of your retirement. and that income for the rest of your life. you shouldn’t really have to worry about it. So at that, I was already 11 years in, I was like, Man, I’m overseas at the time. I’m like, I don’t even have a chance to buy another property right now. And I only had one.
And I was like me, I was kicking myself because I had purchased some. and sold them when I left the duty station. had I kept him I would have had some built up. So that would have been my advice to myself earlier would have been get started sooner. And so the last half of my career. I actually spent a lot of time at work talking about it like discussing what I do. That’s the other thing. Discuss what you do and what you want to do. the universe will provide when you talk about these things. because if you don’t, it’s just you trying to make it happen.

But you have a network you have people to talk to. you have people who have friends that maybe they’re selling something. maybe they already, maybe there’s somebody who has more experience. and you hitch a ride, have a conversation and see what happens. You know, but there’s so much more out of partnerships and stuff like that. So if my earlier self would have been to get involved sooner. and start meeting people within the real estate realm. so I could learn more, and I would have moved along a lot faster, or a lot further.

Pamela Bardhi
Absolutely love that, Chris. Well, it looks like you are vertical right now is that like a 90 degree like up up up above? So I think you’re making up for lost time very quickly, my friend.

Chris Linger
We’re trying, we don’t have time to mess around, we want to. I won’t say that we want to kick back and relax on the beach. Because every time we try to do that we’re always on the computer on the phone or doing something else. But we do set everything aside and spend time with family, friends, other folks to try to help build them up. One thing with the military was mentorship. And so we always looking ahead of us.

And we always had a mentor that was like two or three steps ahead of us. And that way you’re not you’re not a threat to them. I guess I’ll say in the military anyways. because you’re going to be close to taken over there, Mike, or their job. so we kind of took that on by grabbing mentors. then also, we always make sure that we reach back a little bit and bring some folks along with us. try to help people who are just trying to get started or trying to understand more.

Pamela Bardhi
I love that Chris and like so what’s up in your world? And like the next few months, like, what are you guys working on? Probably a lot.

Chris Linger
So we just got this TEDx certification. We are now attending certified business coaches, which also plays into our route of business. We have a coaching business there as well as a virtual assistant agency, we found with our scaling so quickly. There’s no way we could do that by ourselves. And so we had hired some virtual assistants to help us out. And then we had friends that were like, Wait, I see what you guys are doing. How do I do that. so we would refer them to the website we use.

It wasn’t processed like it took a little bit of time and process and whatever. And some of these folks are very like they’re 10 years in on doing syndications and still doing everything themselves. when it gets low and slow in this in that world, and you have to litigate stuff. And that’s another benefit to being military. We always had to delegate but it was with our virtual assistant agency.

We’re able to provide people, especially real estate related but we’re able to help in any business. It’s amazing how much stuff transcribes over to other businesses. A lot of people develop their processes and grow their businesses well with that. So that’s a very new business. For us. syndications is also the focus so keep trying to build the multifamily stuff. It has great tax benefits as well as wealth generation. So that’s what we’re trying to do for ourselves as well as owners.

Pamela Bardhi
I absolutely love that. Chris, thank you so much for sharing that you guys are up to like incredible stuff out there. like just like life-changing stuff with business coaching and you’re offering the virtual agency. which is amazing helping people create more time in their lives. And then of course, helping people up their net worth. which is always in a passive way, which is always incredible. Now you’ve got to let everyone know where to find you and your awesomeness, Chris.

Chris Linger
Oh, I don’t have an email or anything. No, I’m just kidding. So you can reach out to us at invest@upplex.com. And that’s, that’s also our website. So aplex.com And you can see more about us and send us an email. let us know if you’re interested. We’d love to help you on your journey. From our website, you’re able to book a call and all that stuff, too. But please feel free to reach out. You are

Pamela Bardhi
Amazing. Chris, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so grateful to hear your story, your journey, everything that you’re up to thank you. Thank you. So that’s it for today’s episode of underdogs. catch us next week, always dropping on Thursdays. And remember, if you’re interested in real estate. or want to learn how to create more money and magic in your life. check out meet with pamela.com and let’s chat sending you so so much love