Samuel Sells is an experienced Chief Executive Officer, combat veteran, and serial entrepreneur with a demonstrated history of success in developing and building sustainable and repeatable systems overcoming many of the key drivers of financial and social poverty. He is skilled in Innovative Business Planning, Operations Management, International Relations, Management, Entrepreneurship, and Policy Analysis. Strong business development professional with a Master’s Degree in Health Care Administration & Policy, Global Health focus, and an undergraduate degree in Business Strategy.
In this episode, Sam reiterates that there is more to life than living for yourself, and you can create an impact by helping others along the way through real estate. He shares his learnings from his failures, his insights on investing in mobile home parks and apartment complexes, and his advice to achieve success.
[00:01] – [04:04] Living an Impactful Life
- Sam started with mobile homes and now went full-time now running successful commercial real estate properties
- Although he could live a comfortable life after retiring, he pursued to make an impact on the world while making money
[04:05] – [11:28] Learning from Failure
- How his track record of success and how he leveraged his background and experience in the military to attract investors
- Finding lessons in mistakes
- He let others who are supposedly industry experts persuade him that something is worth more than he knows
- Sam talks about losing his earnest money and allowing people to sign him in on deals that weren’t what they claimed they were
[11:29] – [18:05] From Mobile Home Parks to Apartment Communities
- The supply chain for mobile homes became stuck in 2020 due to COVID leading to a lack of financing
- Sam decided to transition into apartment complex
- He also started self-storage development in Alaska
- Looking for a mentor who will guide you through every step is crucial
- Starting is always the difficult part as you need to be more present
- Sam and his team are focusing on disposition of mobile home parks and they are moving to work with institutional partners
[18:06] – [20:36] Closing Segment
- Sam on creating wealth by making a difference
- Reach out to Sam!
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“We’ve made a ton of mistakes. Now I know better.” – Samuel Sells
“Apartments are the easiest place to scale. It’s the easiest place to secure debt. It’s the easiest place to secure equity. It’s the easiest place to transition from buying half a million dollar property to buying a 10 million property.” – Samuel Sells
“We’re buying ugly stuff and we’re changing it and making it a clean and safe and positive place for people to live, and still affordable. We’re not turning it into million-dollar little condos. We’re turning it into, you know, homes that people can live in and raise their kids.” – Samuel Sells
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Connect with Samuel Sells! Send him a message on LinkedIn or Instagram at @cleanmoneysam or email him directly at sam@wildmountaincapital.com
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Samuel Sells: I believe and I know that we can use our money in a way that makes a difference. And you can tell when you invest in syndication and when you invest in these deals, you know where your money is going. That’s the difference. And with us, we’re buying ugly stuff, and we’re changing it and making it a clean and safe and positive place for people to live and it’s still affordable. We’re not turning it into million-dollar, little condos, we’re turning it into, you know, homes that people can live in and raise their kids.
[00:00:44] Sam Wilson: Sam Sells is a retired US Air Force officer and combat veteran who founded Wild Mountain Capital in 2018 with his as he says hero dad. Sam, welcome to the show.
[00:00:56] Samuel Sells: Hey, thanks for having me, Sam. Love the name and am super happy to be here.
[00:01:01] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. You got a great first name. Well, certainly appreciate that. It’s great to have two people with the same name on the show. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me? Where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?
[00:01:15] Samuel Sells: Yeah, we started in 2018, I was still on active duty Air Force trying to find a way to continue my impact on the world man started out with mobile home parks trying to take really distressed mobile home parks and creating nice clean places to live. We did that with found out that you can make money doing that. And a lot of it. And so we continued buying mobile home parks about eight more parks that year and to 2019. So in 2000 we had bought 10 properties that first year about killed myself. And then this was the amount of work we were doing slowed down that next year only bought one more property the following year. And then after that, we bought another 10 properties this time, apartment complexes and we did a storage development ground up develop development that we purchase and turnover. So now we’re sitting at 20 properties. And we’re in exit mode to a certain degree. We have property selling right now that we’ve finished our business plans on or gotten to a point where we could not finish the business plan due to COVID restrictions. But we are frozen. And it’s been a fantastic journey.
[00:02:22] Sam Wilson: Okay, so you decided 2018. Look, we’re gonna get into commercial real estate. Let’s go close 10 mobile home parks.
[00:02:34] Samuel Sells: Yeah, so we just decided that we, you know, my dad doesn’t retire, I’m coming out of Air Force retirement. Yeah, I can make money and go with Puerto Rico and probably the lid just fine. But I love my family. And I still want to make a difference in the world. And so we figure out how can we make money and make a difference. And we had $0. So like, I had $30,000 in a Roth IRA TSP, and my dad had 80 grand, and that was his entire retirement. And we put those together and we bought two mobile home parks. We turned that 80 grand somehow into $170,000 Credit cards that may have been involved. So was refinancing my core, but we did it with a couple of lines of credit. And we bought these two properties in and we made money and we started making like $10,000 a month and pass passive income we’re like, This is crazy. We’ve got something here. And we totally cleaned up one of these little old park. People love this. crime dropped significantly, occupancy skyrocketed payments on time. And it just was such a nice thing to see. No more trash, no more other stuff. And we just like this is it. Now how do we do it? And so I started finding out about syndication. How do you raise money? FCC rules, and regulations, I absorbed everything I possibly could about it, and went out there and started doing it. And that’s when we like I’ve never raised a single dollar from anybody and somehow I raised like $2 million that first year.
[00:04:06] Sam Wilson: Wow. Okay, what did you do to inspire confidence in your investors like, Hey, my name is Sam. I bought a couple of parks, we are making money on it. But by the way, now we’re gonna go we’re going gangbusters and buying stuff left and right. Get in because it’s gonna be great. Like, how did you sell that?
[00:04:26] Samuel Sells: So, you know, I started flipping single-family homes in the early 2000s. We made it through 2008 crisis because we were buying we were flipping right and we were buying really distressed properties and good locations. And when the market crashed, guess what? You know, I paid $50,000 for this house. I spent 25 grand on the rehab. I’m selling it at $130,000 Cuz houses were cheap back then. Even at the pinnacle, and the market crashed and all of sudden you know, I had two homes I remember closing a 2000s Seven, December 2007, both of them fell apart because the markets are just ripping apart. And you know, we ended up reducing the price on one from 130, down to 120. And so much money, right. And then the other one, we turned to a long term rental held on it, I think for seven years, refinanced it probably four times and pulled cash out over those 10 or 12 years, made a ton of money off that little house in the middle of San Antonio, and then sold it and use the cash from that to buy apartment complex later on, a couple years ago.
[00:05:27] Sam Wilson: Yeah, man, that’s great. I guess the, when you start raising money from investors, what was the thing I guess that you feel like you did? Well, that inspired confidence in the people investing with you?
[00:05:42] Samuel Sells: Yeah, so a great question. And one was, you know, having a track record of success, it wasn’t our first time and in the Air Force, I have been traveling around the world, I’ve been working with foreign militaries, for governments doing everything from building clinics and Africa, like ground up engineering, construction, the whole thing, right, which is a totally different world, right? Asia, helping them develop systems and working in their hospitals to Hey, Do this, do that? And how do you guys like to do this, you know, building sustainable systems that when I leave, that they continue, I’m not the ugly American great book, if you every death, but understanding how to work with others, right. And so and at the time, when I started raising, I was responsible for a $68 million rehab on a 500-bed hospital at mash ruins. And I was the project lead, you know, reporting to the big leagues. And so I had a ton of project experience, I had a ton of team experience, I spent a lot of time so they’re there for Special Operations doing stuff and, and, you know, being able to combine teams and really smart people to accomplish a great task. And that conveyed well, to folks plus, we just proved the model we could show them, here are the financials, this is what’s happening. i We flipped a bunch of properties before, essentially what we’re doing is flipping except we’re holding on to them and keeping the cash flow. So buy low rehab, create a difference, make an impact, and here are the actual dollars.
[00:07:10] Sam Wilson: Right. Okay, now, that gives a lot more color to it. Thank you for that. I mean, I think I think leveraging, leveraging your background is so so so important in this and it may not necessarily be that you have owned a dozen mobile home parks, but yet you’ve got the requisite experience that when you do take one down, it’s, it’s not a brand new experience for you.
[00:07:30] Samuel Sells: Right, that’s, that’s it, we learned a ton. And we’ve made a ton of mistakes. Now I know better. Like if I go back to my old self, I would stop myself based on examining you do and do it this way. So much better. And two is like go find a mentor coach, and I tried to find a mentor, 3d in 2018 and early 2018, I could not find a mentor who didn’t want to charge me $35,000 even talk to me, right? And so now, you know, I offer coaching, a very, very reasonable price. And it’s like, hey, let’s start your own course, and see how you’re gonna get there. And then don’t do this. Don’t do that. I mean, if you want to do it and learn the hard way, fine, that’s on you. But I’m telling you don’t do those things. Because that’s going to cost you 150 grand, and you’re never going to get back.
[00:08:19] Sam Wilson: Don’t do that. There’s your piece of advice. What are a couple of those things that come to mind initially that you saved me? And those were, those are some hard lessons we learned?
[00:08:30] Samuel Sells: Yeah, so twice, this has happened to me, both, you know, some time ago is, is allowing people who are supposedly experts in the field or in a location convinced me to something’s worth more than I know it. Right. So once we pay too much for a property, way too much real property. Fortunately, there was no investors in that deal. But we did it as a favor to a person who had invested a lot with us. And it turned out that it was not at all what they said it was, and I lost money on that deal. I’m not afraid to say that I lost money on that deal. If you’re investing with somebody who never lost money in any deal, either one, they’re not telling you the truth or two, they just haven’t been around long enough. Because real estate, if you spend too much money, you’re going to lose money. So you make your money when you buy, particularly in value add and in this case, it was a place of its asset of our expertise. And we listen to him and we pay too much. Right. So the other time was, you know, same thing brokers, property managers, oh, this, this, this and this, and we went into the deal. We did our due diligence, they came back that this was not at all what was being advertised. And you know, we had gone into the deal. And I kept saying, Look, if we’re going to go into this, I know this is going to be an issue. It’s going to be an issue and we’ve got to make sure we get our earnest money back. And I allow them to talk me into signing a call on a track where we didn’t get our earnest money back, and sure enough, we get in there with due to the diligence and the structure had so many issues, well over a million dollars worth of structural issues and I could see them when we were walking there. And denounce we walked away from that deal. I’m glad we didn’t buy it. Somebody else bought the deal. Good luck. I hope they did the due diligence they’re supposed to because we hired engineers to go there because I’ve been in construction long enough. I’ve built enough things. It’s the foundation’s fallen apart, and there’s mold up in there and there’s water we need the buildings, you’re just a recipe for disaster. So somebody else’s disaster sorry, good luck to them. Another syndicator bought that property. It’s really pretty on the outside.
[00:10:36] Sam Wilson: It sounds like you lost your earnest money on that deal.
[00:10:40] Samuel Sells: We lost our earnest money we fought and got a bit of it back because it was so far from what they were telling us the sellers and everything else. And they just refused to work with us there where they weren’t local. They were obviously in so they hate you know, look, I would have been embarrassed as a seller. If you came to me and said, Look at all these issues. I would have been embarrassed and would have worked them Nope. Yeah, they were. Yeah, they were not friendly.
[00:11:08] Sam Wilson: Those are the painful lessons when you go oh, my gosh, my earnest money. There it goes. Like I could have had more fun just lighting a pile of money on fire and watching it burn.
[00:11:17] Samuel Sells: Yeah. And watching them for me. I should have bought new toilet seats for half of America with 150 grand right? That have been better, right? Throwing it down the drain?
[00:11:28] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. Tell me when did you transition from a mobile home park, into an apartment community and why?
[00:11:36] Samuel Sells: So in 2020, with all of COVID happened and everything slowed down. One of the things that happened was a supply chain for mobile homes, brand new mobile homes got stuck really, really bad. And so we had ordered a bunch of homes. And we just kept waiting and waiting and waiting. And they were creating homes for they’re only building homes for the biggest mobile home park operators who are buying hundreds of homes at a time and they weren’t even though we were way in front of them and the stack. We were too small, right? It’s like, well, we want to buy 100 homes, but you got to deliver the first 20 Or we’re not doing anything. Yes. And so that process killed us. So we had bought these properties. We’ve done a bunch of renovations but we had bought property when the tip to bring in all these new homes, and the prices were gone were skyrocketing, and death on mobile home parks became incredibly difficult. We had six refinances fall through with COVID and everything else that Marcus stopped all of our refinances just died and our lenders like well, we’ll do apartments, we’re not gonna do mobile home parks anymore. And so we shifted and 2021 Early in a t 2020. With buying apartment complexes. We bought one we saw really good turn on that one. Four months later, we bought another one. And it just kind of snowballed. And we bought eight apartment complex that said a year and two other properties. One of them was a property.
[00:13:02] Sam Wilson: That’s amazing., And in that, you also transitioned and said, hey, you know what, I think we can do a self-storage development.
[00:13:09] Samuel Sells: Yeah, so we bought, we actually bought that in 2020 the storage development it was right next door to at a park a mobile home park. It was in Alaska, I was living in Alaska at the time, you have this huge space where there was no storage was right along the highway. And it was just an ideal location a guy had bought it had developed it into storage, like the ground and everything. And then his wife had gotten really sick, they moved out of Alaska and Alaska, you really need to be present. You got to understand that market is completely different. You’re not going to gain appreciation if anyone comes says oh, we’re gonna get you know, 2% per year appreciation, you’re like wrong, that’s not gonna happen. Cash flow is gonna be great. And so you’re gonna bypass flow 100% And so we built this whole complex we moved I found another operator there who was local I could take over and he’s gonna do a bang up job.
[00:14:01] Sam Wilson: Got it man, that’s a lot of moving pieces, a lot of acquisitions in even a few different asset classes in a very short period of time. And it found it sounds like you found a way to efficiently scale into all of them, what have been or advice or what has been some of the keys you would say that you have used in order to do that.
[00:14:24] Samuel Sells: So mentorship coaching is vital. Finding somebody who can help you buy mobile home parks, the way that you create wealth and mobile home parks are the difference. It’s very different. The numbers are different. Financing is different sourcing equity. The capital stack is different than it is in apartment complexes storage in general has really small returns. Now, because there are just so many entities and storage and the gravy train has ended, you can still find these little ones that are doing good. But mostly the gravy train has ended. Right. And so you need it to be a tie operator. And if you lie, if you love store and you really want to leave storage, you can make money in stores. It’s just super, super difficult as a starting point. But we’ll hold hearts you can start but you need to be present, you’ve got to be close to that place, or is going to be a disaster. Apartments is the easiest place to scale, it’s the easiest place to secure debt, it’s the easiest place to secure equity is the easiest place to transition from buying half a million-dollar property to buying a $ 10-million property. That gets easier as you get bigger. Right?
[00:15:34] Sam Wilson: That’s really, really intriguing. So you guys have gone, you guys are still going long in apartments right now or as you said, at the beginning of the show you guys are more into the disposition side of your business.
[00:15:47] Samuel Sells: Yeah, so we’re on the disposition side of our mobile home parks. We’re selling up eight of the 10 mobile home parks were really focusing on some markets in Texas and Oklahoma. Oklahoma gets overlooked all the time. But the cash flow there is great. And so it’s like why would you overlook this place college towns, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Stillwater and you get these places where they’re Norman, Oklahoma, just financial, little gems that people overlook all the time. And so we love those markets, but you know, our focus really, Dallas Fort Worth, that’s where we’re buying right now. And one of the things that we also transition and very few syndicators ever make this transition is to move into working with institutional partners that close our last deal with an institutional partner what that is, it’s not syndication, it’s like the next level up, it’s more complicated as more sophisticated, you’ve got to be able to operate at a certain level, but then they’re gonna get all up in your gravy train, if you’ve been through the military, and you’ve entered maps, you know what I’m talking about. And I’m, I’ll be polite here on the show, but there’s a certain amount of sniffing that goes on and underwriting of you as a sponsor. I mean, they listen to all my podcasts or guys, why don’t you listen to my podcasts? I mean, I think they’re wonderful. My guests are fantastic. I’m an idiot. Don’t listen to me, listen to these other people who are smart. But, you know, that model dramatically changes how your money operates. And so just from that single deal, will owe more than 12x Our money with our partners, institutional partners, and we can help other people know how to do that we can help place equity with everybody talks about family offices, family offices are wonderful but they’re finicky, need to have a great relationship. And they promise you the world and they never ever deliver. I’m sure they do it just super difficult to get them to deliver institutions will deliver if you meet their criteria and a deal meets the criteria.
[00:17:43] Sam Wilson: I would love to have you come back on another episode. And we talk specifically about that, because there’s so much nuance, I’m sure in to getting your first institutional capital partner to come on board and take down deals. I bet I bet we could have a conversation that you know, would go on quite quiet for a long time. That’s absolutely cool. Sam, thanks for taking the time to come on the show today. I did have one maybe if you got 30 seconds, maybe about 30 seconds snippet here, if you can tell us what you mean when you say that you guys are creating wealth by making a difference?
[00:18:18] Samuel Sells: We have this concept of clean money. Whenever you get your money you invest. Let’s say you buy bitcoin, where did that Bitcoin get produced? Right? Mafias, you know, these big drug cartels, they love bitcoins because they can produce it, they can mine it, they can sell it, it gets to come cash to them. And then they can use that cash to order a hit on a family that they don’t like, right? So Did Jesus Buy Bitcoin from a cartel that mined it, and now he’s using your money to kill people. You have no idea. You have no idea that your clean hard-earned money that you invested just got used for nefarious purposes, I believe and I know that we can use our money in a way that makes a difference. And you can tell when you invest in syndication when you invest in these deals, you know where your money is going. That’s the difference. Right? And with us, we’re buying ugly stuff and we’re changing it and making a clean and safe and positive place for people to live and it’s still affordable. We’re not turning it into million-dollar little condos. We’re turning it into, you know, homes that people can live and, and raise their kids.
[00:19:29] Sam Wilson: That’s awesome. Absolutely. Love it. Sam. Thanks for taking the time to come on the show today. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you what is the best way to do that?
[00:19:36] Samuel Sells: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram @cleanmoneysam, you can find me on LinkedIn, Samuel Sells Facebook, please reach out to me. You can also send me an email at Sam@wildmountaincapital.com. And I would love to talk to you about what we do if you want to co-sponsor you want to learn more about how institutional and how to change or move into that space, or how to go from just raising capital to doing your own deals and being the lead sponsor. We’re happy to have that discussion and help you make those transitions.
[00:20:05] Sam Wilson: Fantastic. Thanks again, Sam. Appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day.
[00:20:09] Samuel Sells: Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it.
