From Maintenance Technician to Real Estate Syndicator

Jered Sturm was always very driven, when he was a maintenance technician just early on, when he was younger. It was just a stepping stone in the progression, but he always had a natural skill set of working with his hands. The high school, he went to had woodshop and he spent the majority of his time and that woodshop, not in the academics. So he had a natural skill set of that and then found something that would pay him to use that skill set now as being a maintenance tech. As he was a maintenance tech, he had friends and family members reach out and say, “I know you're fixing this, can you come fix my whatever.” That turned into, “Can you renovate my bathroom? Can you renovate my kitchen?” So himself and his brother who today is still his business partner, they started taking on bigger projects, higher-end bathrooms, kitchens, additions. So it grew into somewhat of a construction company. So there was a progression of maintenance tech to construction company. Then in 2008, when they seen the real estate market tanking, they kind of looked around and said, “Why are we fixing up other people houses. Let's go ahead and fix up some that we own.” The first property purchase was in 2008, and all they did was buy the most distressed house and use our lack of capital at that time. They substituted for they work ethic and skill set and construction. So then that grew, and the portfolio continued to scale with their own capital and eventually made the decision to switch over to the syndication model to grow at an even faster pace.

In the beginning or through those seven years, he did have people reach out and express interest and say, “I see the success you’re having. You’re investing this capital and it's coming right back out within a short timeframe, and I'd be interested in deploying some of mine.” He didn't think they were going to do it. So he didn't want the responsibility of raising capital. Even to this day, the way he sees it was people trade small portions of their life to earn that money. If he is going to take it, he’s essentially playing with little portions of people's lives, and he didn't want that responsibility. It wasn't until they had a mindset shift of he didn't want the responsibility to till he saw they can give people this benefit. So they had the successes they are having, and he thinks what prompted that was his dad who is like the most financially disciplined person, he says that his parents are the most financially disciplined people, and they were going through retirement planning. They were sitting down helping them with the numbers, and Jered realized their 401(k) that they followed the textbook way of retirement. Work in the job for 30 years. Put it in the 401(k). While they’re doing fine and they're well-off, it was less than they expected with following all the rules. So they actually helped them buy a small multifamily and partner with them using some of those retirement funds, and it worked out so well. They looked around and said, “We can help other people do this as well.” Now, he is interested in having that responsibility rather than getting away from it, and they see that it could do for other people. So that's when it shifted and they said, “Let's take on this responsibility, let’s help others, let's grow their capital, and let's make what happened there for my parents for other people.” So he thinks that was the shift that really prompted it.

Listen to full episode: https://lifebridgecapital.com/2019/10/ws365-from-maintenance-technician-to-real-estate-syndicator-with-jered-sturm/