IAM371- Real Estate Investor Focus on Acquiring Multifamily Commercial Real Estate

Ellis is the founder of EllisHammond.com and an experienced real estate investor. He manages a private network of investors that focus on acquiring multifamily commercial real estate assets. He began syndicating real estate projects in 2018 with the goal of helping his friends and colleagues build wealth and create passive cash flow outside of Wall Street. Ellis is also the director of a local Christian non-profit focused on spiritual formation and leadership development for college students in San Diego, CA.

• CEO Hack: LinkedIn
• CEO Nugget: i) Define your identity (ii) Learn how to invest in real estate
• CEO Defined: Head serving of whoever you serve

Website: https://ellishammond.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellis-hammond-435b40156/

Full Interview:

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Transcription

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INTRO 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the IAMCEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Ellis Hammond of EllisHammond.com. Ellis, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Ellis Hammond 0:38

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me on really excited.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Yeah, no problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do before we got started was read a little bit more about Ellis so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Ellis is the founder of EllisHammond.com. And he is an experienced real estate investor. He manages a private network of investors that focuses on acquiring multifamily commercial real estate assets.

He began syndicating real estate projects in 2018, with the goal of helping his friends and colleagues build wealth and create passive cash flow outside of Wall Street. Ellis is also the director of a local Christian nonprofit focused on spiritual formation and leadership development for college students in San Diego, California. Ellis, are you ready to speak to the IAMCEO? Community?

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Ellis Hammond 1:21

Yes, we're waiting for this. Let's get it.

Gresham Harkless 1:23

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Ellis Hammond 1:29

Yeah. We were on this call a couple of weeks ago, and you said that most, you know, people who are starting their own businesses, especially in our generation, it really comes out of, you know, a need, you see your community. And I think that's exactly my story is that I wanted a better way to invest. My dad actually passed away when I was 21. And, you know, he, I mean, he was a business owner and entrepreneur, and he had left my brother, a little bit of money, nothing like that was life-changing. But enough that we said, Hey, we should do something with these funds. But unfortunately, you know, I didn't have any financial education, I didn't really know how to go and build wealth.

And so I did the traditional route of, you know, hey, I'm gonna go get a financial advisor, and we'll put this away. And so I was just kind of given the standard options and mutual funds, and, you know, kind of spreading it out here. And the plan was, when you're 65, one day, hopefully, you have a big enough lump sum, and you can use this money. And, you know, my bio is a Christian nonprofit, and that just really never sits well with me. And I think as a millennial, you know, maybe we're just seeing that there's a better way to do things like we want to see impact now and our 65. And that also should include our finances.

And so I don't know, they just kind of begin to stir in me a way to go look for better ways to, to build wealth. And so I really found that through real estate. And we can get in why that is, but but really, that's my story is I just, you know, the idea of like, let's build a big enough nest egg, that one day that I can kind of live off, it's a broken system. And, it really was something that was set up decades ago, not really to benefit the retiree, but to really benefit, the system or the government. And so I think it's just, it was my story that really led me to kind of think outside the box.

Gresham Harkless 3:21

Yeah, and definitely appreciate that. And then sorry, of course, that you know, hear about your father. But I know that just as you kind of touched on is that, you know, money definitely obviously does help. But that education, that knowledge is huge. And I think when we talked offline, a couple of weeks ago, we were just talking about how sometimes you don't know about anything until you get exposure to it.

So that's why I appreciate you know, everything that you're doing because there are many people that might be listening to this as well too, that don't know about those different opportunities and different ways to build revenue and think that there is still that only one way but it's by you know, you do what you're doing and you know, books and creating so much information out there that creates that exposure so that people are empowered to kind of do a quote-unquote, different way to be able to develop wealth.

So I know you touched on it a little bit wanted to drill a little bit deeper here, you know, what exactly you're doing, you know, for these clients Tell us a little bit more on like, why you know that real estate investment is a good opportunity.

Ellis Hammond 4:15

Yeah, absolutely. I love to so essentially what we're talking about is when we go and buy commercial real estate, mostly apartment complexes, and what we're focused on, and there's a couple of reasons we do that most. If I can explain this really simply, there's a difference between residential and commercial, and residential, you know, as most people are familiar with, the way that residential is valued is based on the second comparative analysis.

So what you know, ambassador's house down the street is worth and what you know, your friend Joe's house is worth, you know, kind of the market really determines the value of your property. So, there really is a cap to how much no matter how much work you do to your property, no matter how much income that property is bringing in let's say if you're renting it out, it's only going to be worth kind of the comparative set that's on the on your block, commercial is really different once you get about five units, and that the value of the property is now based on its income.

So that's really powerful, and why like investing in commercial assets, because now we can go and do things to the property in order to increase the value. And so we can increase the equity that we have in that property much faster in a commercial asset than we do in a single family. And, you know, there are, you know, most people don't kind of they, they stay within that one to four units, because they don't think, or they don't have the experience, they don't have the knowledge to do commercial real estate. And that's true, right? Like, there are a lot of moving parts in that thing. So the real value that I'm trying to bring to my generation is this thing called a syndication.

Essentially a syndication is pulling together a group of investors, which for me, has just been my personal network of friends and colleagues. And I'll take those group of investors, and I'll go find a really good operator, who is boots on the ground in a really good market. And essentially, you know, just take that group of investors in a management team and really bring that together so that we can, we can take advantage of the benefits of a larger asset, with limited risks, while also kind of leveraging the expertise of other people in the market.

So that's it, I hope that was simple enough, but that's essentially kind of what we're doing. I'm providing passive investment opportunities for my friends and colleagues who want to be in real estate, but don't have the time, you know, because just like the CEO nation, I mean, the thing I tell guys all the time is okay, yes, most people, when they come to me, they're ready to be in real estate, they see the benefits of it, they've been studying it, they know why it's beneficial. They see why a commercial is probably a better, you know, real estate investment than a single-family home. But they got their business, you know, like, they're 60-70 hours a week in their business, and they're crushing it, and they love it, you know, just like you and I, they're, they're inspired by it because it's what led them to maybe quit their day job and then become a CEO.

So I don't want them to quit doing that. I just want to say, hey, instead of kind of putting your money into a 4K or an IRA, and not really seeing it for 40 years, why don't you take 40-50k A year and put that into something that's going to dish off cash flow, and give you even more time to do the things that you love. So that's really what I'm passionate about is giving people time, because, you know, I don't even talk about this. It's about cash flow. Man. The reason I like real estate is, yes, I appreciate it over time. But it's kicking off cash flow to you every single quarter, which eventually if you're doing this consistently, is going to give you the thing that we all need the most more time.

Gresham Harkless 7:41

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think that, and I love, you know, how you kind of talked about it. And this is just, you know, what I hear, you know, when you were explaining it, and especially you know, you're hearing you're buying or reading your bio, is that a lot of people will invest in stocks because you don't, you can invest in General Mills, you don't have to go run General Mills and do it on a day to day basis. But when you're thinking about, you know, investing in real estate, you're like, Okay, well, I don't know how to use a hammer. I don't even know what nail goes where. But in reality, there's a different opportunity, because like you said, you can syndicate it, where you are a group of people, it sounds like that are investing in a specific property. And then you have a manager that actually does and has the does know where the hammer goes, the nail goes, and you can actually invest into that.

Ellis Hammond 8:24

Like, yeah, I mean, it's passive investing. And people might say, well, it's How's that different from being in the stock market? Well, I mean, it's very different. First, you actually are an owner of real estate, like, you get to take advantage of all the benefits of real estate, the depreciation expense that we get to write off that goes to the investor, right? The cash flow, the upside, all those things are just as if you own you know, your own single family or your own duplex, it's just like, you own a share in this piece of real estate, The nice thing is those, your liability on this project is limited to the amount of money that you haven't do the project.

So if you invest 100k, you're only going to lose 100k. And if you go to the bank to take out a loan, and let's say you want to buy your own house, you're not taking on the debt of this $10 million project either, right? So there are some huge benefits and just using this as an opportunity to build and grow your wealth, but also, as I said, receive more passive income, because that's why I mean, you know, we're talking about as a real estate as an investment opportunity.

But man, what we want for CEOs is more time, right? Like, That's why we're working for more time to either do more in the business that we love or spend time with our family. Mostly, the reason why I got into is because I wanted to grow my impact. And I didn't want that impact the weight of 65, right, like I wanted, you know, the income coming in that we could use in order to support the things that my wife and I were passionate about.

And so that's what I'm trying to help people understand then is like, just begin to think differently about your investments because you spend so much of your life trying to make an impact, but it's like we almost kind of separate our finances from that, you know, it's like, I'm gonna use my life and I'm gonna make this or whatever. But my finances are something for later life, it just doesn't have to be that way.

You know, that's something I think we've been taught. We've seen our parents do. And I just think I have to say our parents got it wrong, you know? And I mean, I can say that from home, maybe I don't speak for everybody. But my dad did, my mom did you know, and I'm really I'm still kind of recovering from that. And so just trying to maybe preach a different story to help people get more time back to really do the things that they love.

Gresham Harkless 10:33

Yeah, well, I think the big point is that, you know, the world has changed tremendously, too. And I think you saw, we saw this a little bit in 2008, and 2009, where, you know, the ability to go and work at a job for, let's just say, 40 years, and then to get a pension and all those things and be set up for the rest of your life is not necessarily always the case, as much as it has been, or if at all, I don't know, depending on, you know, different organizations, but I think that, you know, like we kind of talked about offline exposure to different opportunities may not have been as ample as they are now with the internet.

And with all this technology that we are able to, you know, hop on a podcast and talk about these different opportunities, whereas years ago, may not have been able to do that. So I definitely appreciate you for fighting the good fight and spreading the word about different opportunities. And I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This might be for you or might be for your organization. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Ellis Hammond 11:30

Yes, that's so good. It's funny, you call it secret sauce, I call it the soup of superpowers. But I think it's the same thing. And this is what I tell people all the time. You know, it's like in it's you got to do it. You're the best at you know, and when you can learn when you learn what that is who you are. Because I think most people start backward. They think about what to do. And it's like, know who you are, and who do you serve. is really the first two questions before what would you do for them. And so, you know, for me, God has really given me the ability to connect with people to really build community. And so my secret sauce is that is really connecting with people and really trying to build a community that wants to live for something much bigger.

Gresham Harkless 12:11

I wanted to hear about some CEO hacks that you have. So this could be like an app or book or a habit that you have what's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient?

Ellis Hammond 12:19

Yeah, LinkedIn. And if you're not only doing like, that's, my bread and butter. And it won't be too complicated, right? I tell folks, you know when I'm kind of coaching them about how to use LinkedIn, your bio is really important, you know, having a good headshot, really making it look professional. And most people will just kind of go in there and put their resume. And it's like, no, that's a terrible thing to do on your bio, Go in there and think about who your ideal client is like, again, who do you serve. And you could start with who you are, but always be thinking, Who am I that serves somebody else? Right. So yeah, I'm a real estate investor. I've done this, but why does that matter to the person that that's, and so that's really important. I have a good bio. And you could check my knowledge and example.

Gresham Harkless 13:02

Yeah, I think that's absolutely huge. And I think that's definitely you know, one of the biggest things because I think a lot of times when you create content, you want people to like it, you want people to engage with it, you want people to put a comment there. So if you're the one that's doing that, it creates that opportunity, because that's what everybody wants, They want when they put something out for you to get that engagement for people that like it or not like it or something like that. Some people may not say that, but that's usually what we're trying to do. So when you're that person doing that, that helps you to build that connection. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Ellis Hammond 13:40

It's funny, man, because I just you know, I still get to work for that nonprofit. So I did I mean, constantly sitting down with young guys, and just, you know, sharing these nuggets, sharing what I wish I'd have known at 19 or 20. And I mean, the first thing for me is that, and I hope thankfully, someone did share this with me in 19. But the biggest question that anybody can ask is, who are you. Right? What is your identity. For me, as you know, as a man of faith, and I'm a child of God, like, that is my foundation.

So I say that is the most important question to start with. But, after that, when I think about the CEO and the business side of things, even though those are for me, those are you know, those come together, but it's learned how to invest in real estate, right like that. I mean, that's what I would have done in the 19s like, hey, learn, it's about passive income. It's about cash flow. It's about getting time back.

Gresham Harkless 14:30

Yeah, well, I definitely appreciate that. I think that's a great knowledge. And you know, because if you trade time for money, you're always going to be on that treadmill, you're never ever going to go over. So that makes perfect sense. And so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is, what is the definition of what it means to be a CEO? And we're all gonna have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So what does being a CEO mean to you?

Ellis Hammond 14:52

Being a CEO means that you are the head servant of whoever you serve. You know, that's So that's what I've been doing man, I've, you know, in the nonprofit world, like it has been my job to really be a servant on the college campus really trying to help, you know, essentially kind of set up college students for the next phase of life. And so I think as a CEO, that's got to be your mindset is that the reason you're doing this company is because you're you have a product, you have a service that is benefiting the lives of others. So to be a great CEO is, you know, to really be a servant of others, man.

Gresham Harkless 15:27

Exactly. It puts the emphasis away from you and what you build into what you know is of importance to the target market that you have and the people that you're trying to serve. So I think that's an incredible perspective and Ellis. I truly appreciate your time and all the awesome things you're doing. I wanted to pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know and of course, how they can get ahold of you.

Ellis Hammond 15:49

If you want to interact with me. My website is EllisHammond.com. There are some great articles or resources if you're trying to you know you're interested in our real estate investing, you want to join our community, that would be a great place to go and I can you know, shoot me an email there. And I can send you some more resources. So on LinkedIn, you can find my profile is Ellis Hammond is a great place to connect.

Gresham Harkless 16:11

Awesome, we'll have those links in the show notes as well just so that anybody can click through and follow up with you. But I appreciate you, my friend. Appreciate all the awesome things you're doing and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Ellis Hammond 16:21

Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

OUTRO 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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