Building wealth through your business is not just about producing the best products. You also have to ensure that you always have high levels of efficiency and productivity. Doing this can save you more time and earn you more money. This is what businesses should prioritize to achieve significant progress and incredible success. Chris Seveney is joined by Charles Kao to talk about the importance of quality over quantity. As the Principal for Twin Oaks Capital, Charles shares how he bravely faced challenges in their business through the right time management, efficient standards, and optimal productivity rates. Discover amazing insights from the experts in this episode and gain the highest quality of outputs in your business!

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Charles Kao On The Importance Of Efficiency, Productivity, And Time Management

We have a special guest. We have Charles Kao of Twin Oaks Capital. Charles, how are you? I’m doing all right. Thank you. We are going to start talking about quality over quantity and which is better. Should you go after quality or after the numbers? I know a lot of people can argue both sides of that coin. We’ll talk about Charles and his philosophies in investing, especially the different strategies he has. Similar to myself, Charles invests in multiple classes of real estate. I’m interested to see where this will go. Charles, why don’t you start by telling us what are you doing now? What’s your company profile look like? Our investment portfolio, as far as the operating side or assets center management, is self-storage, multifamily, industrial, and mobile home parks. I also have service-related businesses or equity shares in them. It’s even more diversified when you get into my passive investments or things I’m investing in with like a note or as a syndication. That extends into assisted living facilities, service businesses, car washes, and offices. You name it. We have done it across the board. What do you like the best? If you could choose only one, which one would it be? I’m not a person that invests in class. I’m a person that invests in an opportunity. For me, I’ll use the Dallas example, but if you could have gotten to any asset class in Dallas in the right neighborhood years ago, pretty much, there’s no way you could have lost money because of the population. Some counties around there have been over 10%, 15%, and 20%. I invest primarily in areas that have very strong economic fasters. Primarily in strong population growth, particularly in the younger populations between 20 and 40, which will also have kids that increase the population further. Also, with strong job diversity growth too as well, healthcare, military, and technology. I look for a lot of growth in those three sectors because those generally drive a lot of strong economic factors. People ask me that question all the time. They’re surprised I don’t see self-storage because that’s what I’ve been doing a lot. It’s more about the economic factors of the area and the individual deal itself. I can’t say there’s one asset class I specifically like more than the best because you can quickly change my mind if a big checkbook or bank account balances from one asset. It’s interesting that you’ve gotten to where you are now. Are you typically funding your deals through like Regulation D 506(c) or your own personal money? How do you typically fund your deals? I have not done a 506(c) yet. I do like a combination of both. I’ve done 506(b). We’ve done notes for our entire debt structures. I’ve done investments with family and friends. I’ve done it with just primarily with my own funds. I’ve also done it primarily with bank funds as well. It is a combination. Sometimes I have investments that I like, but on paper, they may not look good or be as easy to pitch to an investor. Whereas the other ones that are very easy to pitch to an investor may not be as high because I might notice some other factors that a desktop computer may not notice. Ultimately, one of the things I like about real estate is there’s so much diversity. Even within the system of living asset classes, there are even five subclasses of that. I do like the variety. I do real estate more because I like the challenge and the money.   How’d you get into real estate and your real estate career? I didn’t have a choice. I was enslaved into real estate by my dad. He pretty much made me tie myself to a tree with a chainsaw to take a tree down, flat-roofed me in a commercial restaurant, you name it. I pretty much did it. If it could be done for more than $50 by unskilled labor, my dad could do it with me for free. It was pretty much done by me. My dad was an immigrant. He moved to the United States, couldn’t speak English very well, and got a job with a woman as a handyman. Over the course of the next many years, he created so much value for her that she eventually sold her entire commercial real estate portfolio to him. As that happened, my dad still managed that portfolio and still did his full-time job, and I was a field guy. “Let’s utilize my kids wherever I can to help me with the business.” From translating legal documents when I was 12, 13, or 14 years old, I had a lot of exposure to all types of real estate. We were super hands-on. That was one of the reasons why I got out of real estate. I was like, “Real estate sucks.” Lifting toilets and dealing with tenants is like giving you excuses for why they can’t pay, but then you see them come home for a brand-new Mercedes. I dealt with all that stuff, and I got out of real estate altogether for ten years. I was like, “I don’t want to work that hard,” but the truth was that it was ingrained in me to work hard. I worked in Corporate America. I worked at some of the largest companies in the entire world or even the largest in their sector in the entire world. I realized, “If I’m making them $80 million, $90 million, or $100 million a year from sales, I’m pretty confident I could do this for myself and maybe not work as hard as my dad did.” That’s how I got back into real estate. You realize that you’re still going to work as hard because it’s ingrained in you. You’re doing it for somebody else, and you’re letting them reap the rewards or the profits of it compared to doing it for yourself. That’s awesome. We started off a little bit, talking about quality over quantity type deals and stuff. Do you want to share what shifted your mentality? I know some investors would rather have, “I want to go have 500 doors, or I want to keep growing my portfolio and stuff.” They might be C class or some others that cause you to pull a lot of that hair out. It sounds like you like to keep small staff focused on the right deal and one that’s a quality deal that is going to provide a nice return to you, your investors, your family, or whoever’s involved. I feel like I’ve learned this lesson multiple times in our business, but then at times, I’m like, “Maybe this aspect of the business is not the way I go.” Universally, I feel like throughout my whole life of all our businesses, that’s been the case. I would say the first time I got that lesson was, I know you have your mortgage company and notes. We were dealing with a lot of investors on the brokerage side. Sometimes, we would get them good deals where they were too small for us. We didn’t want to purchase it. We were like, “Let’s make a commission on it and then move this deal because we don’t want to buy a fourplex. It’s too small for us, but it’s a great deal for our client.” We would find too as well that we got them at such a good discount. We took advantage of this rule essentially where if you buy a property, you cash, then when you go to refinance out, it’s considered a cash-out refinance. You have to do a lower LTV, and it’s typically a higher rate because it’s considered a riskier mortgage. If I allow you to buy that property with my cash and do it as a note, now you’re doing it as a rate and term refinance. You’re gaining a better rate and higher LTV. On top of that, it can be based on the appraised price, not based on cash, and you don’t have that six-month holding period. We would’ve got a client that’s like, “You’re going to buy this.” The numbers weren’t that good, but we had some close. We’ll use round numbers. You’re buying this place for $200,000. It’s going to appraise for $300,000. We’re going to lend you the full $200,000. We’re going to make a commission on it, and on top of that, we’re going to make $10,000 lending on it. Even though we’re doing all this in three weeks, you don’t care that I made $10,000 and am lending on it in three weeks because you got a property free and clear. As when you refinance out, you’re refinancing out for $200,000. You bought a property with no money down. When we were doing deals like that, I was like, “We could do more deals like this where we get the commission, lend on it, and get a happy customer.” On top of that, because they didn’t put $90,000 down or whatever they had to, now they’re still got that $90,000 to buy even more with us. I can work with fewer clients rather than, “Let me get another client. Let me get them up to speed and teach them how to invest and underwrite.” That’s where we first got realizing we could work with fewer clients in a broker start and serve some ultra-well. 1) They will see our praises. 2) They may or may not refer us. Some don’t want them because they don’t want us to lose their business elsewhere. We thought that that was the best way to grow that business. Flash forward now. I was with two different private equity groups. I got single-digit percentages of both groups. Our clients may or may not refer us because they don’t want us to lose their business elsewhere. But that was the best way to grow that business. Share on X One of the things that you noticed, though, is that even though I was only working for equity, I was a partner. It was like 13 or 14 calls. I had a business with my dad that we had sold off. I remember when we sold off the business. He wanted us to be part of the new company. The new company was calls and calls and training new people so much. I realized, “Do I want 10% of a $100 million company, or do I want 50% of a $20 million deal?” That way, I can do 1/4 amount of deals and run them super efficiently. I don’t have to worry about, “I got to manage this person. That person will quit. Now I need you to do that job, but then I need to train you. I need to step in, so I’m doing all these additional tasks.” That’s why I came to a conclusion and went, “I’m perfectly fine with doing 2 to 3 deals a year, $10 million plus deals, or $5 million-plus deals having more equity in them.” Also, I can be more efficient with them too as well. It doesn’t mean that I’m the only one doing it. I still have a decent staff. I got two VAs, a full-time assistant, and another partner, and my wife’s active in the business. I even had key personnel insurance. If something ever happens to me, my investors are covered with a life insurance policy. Ultimately, I felt that was a better approach for my lifestyle because, for me, I didn’t care about whether I had $100 million or $2 million. All I care about is what goes into my pocket and, more importantly, how much work-life balance I have. On average, I would say I work under 25 hours a week on the average week. Tax season’s coming up, so I might have to spend work a little more to get some stuff, but then I also work a lot of five-hour weeks in there too as well. It’s interesting. You brought up a point there that I want readers to hear about, and it’s a very random one. You mentioned the key person policy. We have those with our company as well, life insurance policies where with our investors something happens, there’s insurance that covers a significant portion of the replacement also. It’s a policy that’s very good to have. The other thing that was interesting that I wrote down was we are very similar in our company. We try and focus or target on the right deals versus the number of assets.   Our company’s around $10 million now and we want to grow it to, say $50 million by the end of the year. People are like, “Our staff is going to have to increase significantly.” I’m like, “No, we’ll probably have to add one additional person.” They’re like, “How is that the case?” I’m like, “It’s in the note space.” Again, it’s based on deal size. If now, our average note’s $100,000. All of a sudden, our average note goes up to $250,000. We can still have the same number of notes but we 2.5X our numbers and still be able to manage. I’m the type of person that’s similar to you. I don’t want to manage 50 people. I’ve worked for companies that were that size and you work for corporate too. When you’re doing that, a lot of times, you’re more of an HR manager than anything. That came up when we let go of one of our VAs. One other thing too because you mentioned it too as well. We have a metric within our company. I’ve heard other people use it too as well but we have a productivity per capita. It’s very common when you see these larger companies as they add employees. Let’s say, you have ten people and per capita is $10 million. You would hope that if I added the 11th person, we’re going to go to $11 million or more, ideally. Oftentimes, you add that 11th person, and your sales increase but it might go to $10.5 million. Now your productivity per person has gone down. That’s a metric that we focus on as we’ve focused on productivity per person. How can we make each person more productive? It could be through incentives. If it is another person and that person doesn’t service deals without that drive, then what are they doing with the additional time that this person’s going to save? If I hire you a VA and you’re doing sales, show me how is this going to be more sales for you. This person has a $40,000 salary and I got to support this, then this is what we have to hit. Show me how you’re going to get $1 million more per capita out of this person through productivity because they’re not going to be the ones ringing phones. They’re working in an admin role for you. That’s a key metric that we work on too as well. We use something very similar with our sales and marketing because we raise the funds from investors. It’s the cost per acquisition for a customer. If we spend $10 on marketing, did we get $100 off of it? Based on the different types of marketing you do, it’s always analyzing the numbers of which one’s providing the best results. It might not always be the one that has the highest ratio because while the ratio might be high, the amount of dollars it’s bringing in is significantly lower. You mentioned if you have $10 million and there’s $20 million for us, let’s say after everything, we’re making 5% on that deal. Basically, if we’re doing the same amount of work but changing the portfolio structure, we’d rather be at $20 million than $10 million with all things being equal. What’s been your biggest challenge based on your business scaling and doing the different types from self-storage to pivoting to assisted living? It depends on when you ask me because I feel like every year, the answer changes. If somebody’s been hearing me from a show a year ago, I’m not lying. It has changed. The most impactful thing in my life is that my dad let me know in July 2022 that in August, he was going to be moving in with us. From that point when he moved into us, since then, he is also moved into assisted living. The care required to take care of an elderly relative forced me at times to step away from the business for a couple of weeks at a time. My wife was awesome. She stepped up. In some cases, she might have been too helpful with my dad but it made me evaluate my business as a whole. One of the changes that came as a result of it was, I do a rocks and pebbles exercise. We write down everything that we need and want to accomplish in our life now and then, in the next 24 hours, which of these goals you accomplished the most would impact it the most? I reversed it a little bit. “Let’s do all the tasks that I do. Which ones do I have to keep? Of these tasks, which one makes me the most dollar per hour?” I also try to figure in, “Is this something that I can maintain this dollar per hour if I work more hours, or is it something that can make more per hour if I prioritize it?”   One of the conclusions was that the broker side of the business. While it is pretty good hourly pay, it is the worst return on time and it is the worst one to compound for return on time. If anything, my return time goes down. Also, on top of that, it’s one time. There’s no second investment. Whereas, in the building construction management side, my return on time was if not 4 figures per hour, it was probably closer to 5 figures per hour. To do that, “I can do more of this, and can I still get that?” Probably pretty close. On top, I could get a little more efficient with it. I also potentially could train my staff to help me with that. I’m paying them $20, $30, or $40 an hour to do a $10,000 task that potentially helps me. That’s why we decided to pivot our model more towards that. Also, a little bit more towards consulting. Whereas consulting is returning enough time for money but there are benefits to it. I learn about markets all over the country. We’ve also been able to pivot that into partnerships too. Whether it’s raising capital for them or converting my consulting into equity because they said, “You know so much. We want you on this deal to help us run it too as well.” That was the lesson learned that we got from that. I recommend many people to do that. Take four weeks away from your business and see what happens to it. It may suck for 1 or 2 weeks coming back to that train wreck but you’ll see where your deficiency yard is in your business when you do that. Take four weeks away from your business and see what happens to it. It may suck for one or two weeks coming back to that train wreck, but you'll really see where your deficiency yard is. Share on X I’m too much of a control freak. I couldn’t do that. That’s interesting and I enjoy hearing that story. It gives shed because unfortunately, I lost my father years ago. I was working full-time but also had my side hustle. That’s when I started getting involved in notes back in 2016 and early 2017. I bought some assets. He’d been ill for a very long time but got even worse. It’s interesting that when you reflect on things like that, it can alter or change a course when you start looking at things from different perspectives. It’s good to look at things like that because a lot of times, we’re so tunnel-visioned and focused on our business and put the blinders on and are running. I’m an engineer. It’s like, “How am I building the next step or the next piece?” Sometimes it’s good to have some of that outside interference. I wanted to jump back about some of your deals because I was curious. It sounds like you might be buying some distressed properties and stuff. Are you buying distressed properties and rehabbing? Are you doing ground-up construction? What have you been working on? When you start talking ground up, I start smiling because that’s one of my favorites. I am working on a large deal that we’ll close on very relatively soon. It was a portfolio of multifamily I was helping asset manage. I provided so much value for the partners and one of the partners was retiring and getting out. I was asked to buy into a portfolio. I’m like, “The portfolio is huge. I don’t have the funds to get into it now.” Also, I’m a little bit worried about the bank at the time. The partners found a way for me to essentially buy in with no money down and also use my asset management fee to essentially serve as the monthly payment on the note. I’ll still get disbursements on it. I’m buying into a $10 million plus deal with simply no money down. That’s what I’m working on now. We had another very large, 100-plus unit deal that we were working on that fell through. I’ve been doing quite a bit of consulting. We had three new builds in 2022. The primary limit that we’re using essentially told us that we hit our exposure limit with them. I’m trying to find another lender willing to take on that risk. You could probably appreciate what we decided to do with Pitney for our new construction. Banks essentially were telling us, “We do not like new construction at all right now. Also, these interest rates are pretty terrible.” I know people always talk about skin in the game. In most of the investments I do with my investors, when it’s all said and done or right when we close, I typically have no money in the deal. As most people know, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a ton of time and I have a lot of money invested in that getting reimbursed. What we’re transitioning to now is that, let’s say I do a million-dollar construction using round numbers. We’re going to say, we’ll give you 60 LTV. What typically happens then is that we close a loan then I have to put that $400,000 into the deal, which could take 4 to 6 months, then they start lending me that $600,000 for the construction. The problem is, now I have this issue where I wasted six months of my interest-only period where I wasn’t even drawing from it. What we’re pivoting to is a model where now I front that. I tell the bank, “Let’s assume that we are going to be 90% done with this construction because we know that the day that we’re finished building, you have equity. You have something that you can go after for collateral. It’s tangible but I want 75 LTV.” They’re like, “That’s fine. We will close this.” I’m right about to finish the touches. I front that 25% down myself out of pocket. We close the loan where I am making that last contractor payment to fund it. My investors are getting end when we finished building. It reduces risk to investors and to the bank. If the bank comes back and says, “We still don’t like the deal because I don’t like the hold,” what I can do is say, “I got this property free and clear. I got this other property lot equity. Let me cross-collateralize that as a down payment for six months until we stabilize.” If somebody might say, “You don’t have any skin in the game,” technically, I did. I had 25% equity skin in the game for six months. That was all me. I’m also cross-collateralizing another million-dollar property on it too for six months. That’s skin the game.” I may not have money in the deal but I have skin in the game. That’s what we’re working on within our model. I want to rewind something a little bit there because it sounds like the deal might not be finalized and stuff but you’re very nonchalant in the fact that you’re not getting $10 million but you’re getting equity into a $10 million deal. Your investment is your asset management fee. You want to talk about learning or working in asset management. You want to talk about sweat equity. That is amazing. I want to peel back a little bit and be like, how long have you been managing that asset for that investor? How long have you had that relationship? Going back, I’ve always been a dog when it comes to work, like early on to get experience. I knew that. You need three things in real estate and if you’ve heard me on any of my platforms, I say it all the time. You need time, capital, and knowledge or you need access to those. You got to have at least one of them, you have all three, or you have a lot of one of those and that helps. I had a lot of time in the beginning when I didn’t have a lot of. You need three things in real estate: time, capital, and knowledge. Share on X I use that time to gain knowledge. I would get to the point with self-storage facilities or multifamily where I got to the point where I’m like, “I could do this on my own.” I would go to people and say, “Let me manage your property for 3% or 4%.” I would go in there and I’ll do an amazing job for them. I crush it, then after I crush for them, I’m like, “I’ve proved that I can do the deal for you. Now, pay me market.” They’re like, “No way I’m paying market.” “Okay, cool. Take it back.” They then come back to me. I found ways to create value for myself by working for free or super cheap until I earn my keep where I could charge that. The reason why talked nonchalantly is that for a lot of the deals that we did on the brokerage side, we would offer a lot of different structures. If somebody wanted to buy a million-dollar deal from me, sometimes I’d be like, “I like this deal. I’ll waive my 3%, 4%, or 5% commission for 10% or 15% equity.” What broker does that on a deal that’s a dud? If I sell a deal to you that’s garbage, why would I give up my commission which is given to do it for equity? I thought of all these different ways to try and create passive income for myself. In this particular situation, what happened was the clients came to me about selling this portfolio. They gave me a number. That number’s not possible. It’s not going to happen, at least not with the way it is now but I want the listing. I know I’m competing with Colliers, CBRE, and some big brands that want that business. On paper, they probably are more qualified but I offer a unique survey they don’t always have. “Let me make your property worth the $12 million, $15 million, or $16 million that you want.” Essentially, I came back to them and said, “Give me four units. I want these renovations done and I believe we can get these rents. Once you get this portion of the portfolio done and leased out, now we’ve proven our concept to people.” They know, “If I put in this million dollars, I can get this X back.” We have the potential to get buyers because now, we’ve shown partial proof of the concept. We haven’t done it all the way. They’re not going to pay all the pro forma in that but now they will pay a portion of it because we put the model in place. They started doing that but then when they did that, they were like, “Why are we going to sell to do this? Why don’t we keep it now?” I created value for them and decided to keep it. Although our brokers were trying to get money out of them, for me, I was trying to create so much value for them like, “I’m your guy. Any time you got a million-dollar listing, I’m your guy.” I created so much value for them that they realized, “It’s like with one of my employees. If this guy keeps creating so much value for us, he’s probably doing it for other people. If we don’t bring him into our company, we’re probably not going to retain him.” That’s essentially what they did. They said, “We need to retain Charles as a partner, so that way he still works with us because we need him unless we want to do it ourselves.” It’s interesting because it makes me think that fear gives me a lot of feeling about some of the things that I’ve done in the past. For example, when I got started, it was typical note investing. If you had an investor, you’d split the profits 50/50. They would fund in. I started out with, “What is my competitive advantage?” I don’t have one but also it’s like, “I’m giving you more of that upfront profit. I’ll give you 60% or 70% upfront.” People are like, “Let me try it.” Again, it made them some serious money, they kept coming and they kept telling somebody else. It’s like, “After 1 or 2 deals, now I do need the market price. I’d still do better than probably others.” Thinking outside the box is what I like about this. You’ve taken it upon yourself to focus on being a differentiator and being creative. A lot of people want to follow the norms and like, “I’m going to do everything the same.” When we created our latest fund, we did a lot of things differently than other people. There is education to educate people on some of these differences and make sure people understand them. Once you create that, you end up creating that competitive advantage which you’ve done which then generates some massive wealth opportunities for yourself. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time but if you stick with it over time, it can be extremely lucrative for people. As we wrap up this episode, I like to ask people as well if there’s one tip or one nugget you’d like to leave people as well as if there’s a book you’re reading now or you read that had some influence on you. I read so many books. I get tidbits, I’ll say that. It’s rare to read a book for me now that has completely changed my life unless it’s spiritual or something like that. They’re all the same. I was reading Traction and then Scaling Up, which are very similar. The books are almost identical. They all have the same theories, which is, “Work hard, people.” The last one that had a ton of impact on my life is an old book by Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement. It’s about mindset and goal setting like that rocks exercise we’ve talked about. That was one. As far as advice, it’s time, knowledge, and capital. Keep it simple. Those are the three things you need. Another thing is that I made a lot of money being the bad guy. I have a client for example that whenever he needs somebody to say no, “Would you consider investing $1 million into my new tech startup?” They’re like, “Sure. Let me refer you to my business partner Charles if he likes sitting there.” They’re saying, “I need you to say no to this person.” You’re the bad cop. I do a ton of that for a lot of people. People dislike you because they’re saying no a lot. Find a way to create value for others based on what their time is worth, not your time is worth. To quote my mentor, when I was texting him, I was like, “Where can I look up rental certifications in Rapids?” When I caught up with him, I was like, “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you. What’s going on? I feel like you’re ignoring me.” “Yes, I’m ignoring you because you’re asking me questions that you could find on Google in 2 hours or 3 hours or ask somebody else but you’re asking me because I’m making it too easy for you. Now I’m politely ignoring you. I came to find out that my time is worth $10,000 an hour and your time is worth $30 an hour. If you can find something out in three hours rather than asking me and have it take ten minutes of my time, which costs $1,000 or hundreds of dollars an hour, you need to use your time to do that. Don’t waste my time and act like it’s worth what your time is.” To be honest, it allowed me to pivot my bottle to create so much value for other people which in turn, made them want to work with me. Now, my time is getting to the point where it’s worth so much that other people are trying to do the same with me as well. Now, I had over a dozen phone calls by 1:00 now from new investors asking me for help. Frankly, I ignored almost every single one of them because honestly, I was on the computer or phone calls all day. That would be the biggest thing. It is great value for somebody based on what their time is worth, not what your time is worth. You’ll understand. If you think about it, “If I call this person up, is it worth asking this question if their time is worth $10,000 an hour?” If you ask yourself, most time, you’ll not pick up the phone and ask that person that question. You’ll find somebody else that can answer that question for you. Maybe their time is worth $80 an hour. I am stealing that quote because I love that. That’s a great thought process for anybody to consider, especially people who are getting new into any type of business. I’ve been asked similar questions a lot of times. I’ll get some random email from somebody that literally it’s something that can be looked up in a Google search, “Do I need to be licensed in this state?” It’s like, “Google it.” Improve your Google skill. Get Google class. I don’t care but don’t ask me. Maybe ChatGPT will be able to answer it for you coming up. Charles, thank you so much for coming on this episode. If people can create value and it’s worth your time, what’s the best way for people to reach out to you? If people want to ask questions, most of the time, I post videos on my YouTube channel because I have a question with the person. I’m like, “Instead of answering you because I know I’m going to get asked this, I’m going to answer it to hundreds or thousands of people.” My YouTube channel is @TwinOaksCapital. It’s the easiest way to learn and we go deep into how we conquer even. That would be the spot for that. Instagram, @CharlesCKao, is probably the next best spot to see what we’re up to and go from there. Thank you again for joining us. As always, make sure to subscribe to us on your favorite channel. Take care, everybody.  

Important Links

• Twin Oaks Capital
• Traction
• Scaling Up
• Maximum Achievement
• @TwinOaksCapital – YouTube
• @CharlesCKao – Instagram

 

About Charles Kao

I am the Principal for Twin Oaks Capital a Boutique CRE firm providing asset management, brokerage, capital, consulting and building constructing management throughout North America. Twin Oaks Capital and its subsidiaries is focused on quality of deals and not quantity. Our company is a small staff that focused on taking equity in value add and semi-distressed properties with a speed and precision most larger companies cannot operate. Simply fewer deals, more equity, happier investors, more work life balance, less clutter.