Of people love the cash flow of the business, they wanna get involved. So we're actually partnering with a lot of owner operators that don't mind getting their hands dirty, wanna get in there, make a deal happen, and it's right now fifty-fifty between those 2. Are you like most sales and other professionals who want to grow their wealth faster than what they are currently doing through their company 401 k, even with that company match, the stock market, or just plain saving money? Would you sleep better at night if you had the financial freedom to be job optional in just 3 to 5 years through investing in real assets? Maybe you don't want to stop working, but wouldn't it be cool if you could retire a decade earlier than most?
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My guest today is Chris Long. He is with Long Yards and has a really unique industrial real estate offering that he's gonna talk a little bit about, but we'll also hear about his journey in real estate period. But Chris, welcome to the wealth flow. I'm looking forward to this. Yeah.
Me too. Excited to be here, Keith. Excited to get into it. Why don't we start with your background? Where did you grow up and what eventually led you to real estate?
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. Good start. I mean, I grew up on a farm, man.
So, yeah, I was just I was shoveling poop at a young age, you know, a little more a hillbilly, let's call it. But, anyways, just grew up on a farm and gone to the city at a younger age. I don't know where the trigger was, at what age or what the moment was, but I knew I loved real estate. It was, like, 11 years old. I'm just like, okay.
I gotta get into I'm not sure if it was a podcast or if you think they were that popular or not that old, but yeah. So just love real estate from a young age. And then I got to the trades. I actually started off as an apprentice carpenter and immediately, as soon as I got my ticket as a carpenter, as soon as I was actually making money, I started the business that I started getting into residential real estate. Bought my first house, turned it into a duplex.
Okay. I like this. Did it again. Bought the second house, turned it into a duplex. I was like, okay, this is cool.
And it would we didn't take long. I was in Canada for me to realize that like, oh, this is why it's difficult because tenants have so many rights and so many laws. And I had tenants not paying me for, like, a year. I was like, okay, so I love real estate. I love construction, but I don't like that tenants can have all those freedom and all these rights.
So I was on the right path, just in the wrong direction. And then it's funny, I had this commercial property, and my brother and I owned it, and he wanted to do storage, but like self storage and I want to do storage yards. And, you know, we bumped heads a little bit, but I ended up winning and ended up actually going all in by myself. And when I say all while myself, like no investor would back me. I had to sell both my houses, my rentals to get it going because I was a diehard believer in the concept.
Anyways, that's how I started long hours and went all in, sold it. And just from a young age, it was always real estate, cash flow and building. And now here we are with 11 locations on the way throughout Canada. The states. Awesome.
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about it because it's definitely a different concept. It's not your average industrial. So tell us a little bit about, number 1, why did you feel there was a need for this type of option for contractors and whatnot? And then kind of, I guess, tell us a little bit about kind of opening up that first one.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I knew that there was a need because I needed it. And that's when I started looking around. I'm like, hey, I'm a contractor.
I have storage equipment, tools, trailers. I need the space. And there was other people doing it. They just weren't doing it the way that I envisioned it. But I was kind of crazy, but not completely crazy.
I didn't see anyone in Ottawa, Canada doing it. But I was, okay, I'm a simple guy. If I need it, somebody else does. I was in the industry, and I'm like, there's massive pain points. If you look at what the market needs and what is not being fulfilled properly, that's where opportunity is made.
And with most contractors that prefer a space, their options are usually an acre and above. There's no security. They have to improve it. It's 3 to 5 years of a lease, triple net, and they have 2 tenant improvements in a lot of cases. A lot of these guys don't need that.
They just need something month to month that's in the middle, and that's what long haired is. So if you try to go look on the real estate platform and you try to rent a yard from 2,000, 20000 square feet, doesn't exist. There's just not out there and not to a standard where these guys need it. So I was like, oh my God, this is like an moment. So that's when I went all in.
I was like, sure, I'm gonna go for it. And that's what I did. Okay. And tell us maybe a little bit about that first one. How big of a piece of property was it and what did you do with it to make it kind of fit within this concept?
Right. So the first one was just shy of 10 acres, and it was just on the outside of Ottawa. I had a lot of good things go for it. It was right on the main road. Ottawa South is really growing.
So in terms of the real estate itself, I was like, okay, what's the worst case here? I developed this as stone and whatnot, but the concept doesn't work. I still have a great asset. That's a wealth play. I factored a lot of things in, but the real estate itself, it was beautiful because it quite literally is a long yard, which is funny, Chris Long, long yards.
And, but it is 200 feet by 2,000 feet. So it is a long yard by nature. And you got one road in the middle, 2 east size yards on both sides, small and medium. And then that's pretty much, that's the first facility. We just built it out organically.
So I started, I bootstrapped it, literally putting fencing in the ground myself, did everything I could to get it going. Luckily, we had a quarry 5 minutes down the road, saved us a lot of money on trucking for stone. You know, being the gritty worker I am, I got that going. And then I was pre leasing before I was building the next phase of yards just to play it safe as I got started. That's it.
And now I've been there 3 times in the last 2 years and it's taken care of me. So, it was definitely hard to get going, but easy to keep running. Okay. And so, in that initial one, how many individual contractor tenants do you have? And maybe talk a little bit about also the types of businesses that, you know, utilize this type of option.
Yeah. So we have 67 yards at our first location. Now we have more tenants because we also have offices and containers. And most of them, it's about 70%, I would say 70% small business. And this is like a hybrid of like welders, contractors, carpenters, and then you have bigger corporate clients.
And then you have homeowners too, hobbyists. They have their work around their RV or they wanna put their boat and their toys in 1 yard, have it all tucked away with a camera and a power outlet. So it really varies. But for now, in that location, I'd say with 70% small business. Okay.
Okay. And are they all about the same size or does that is it kind of built to suit depending on how much space they need? Right. So with this one, we have smaller yards on the left side, which takes up majority of it. There's a lot less smaller yards, but the bigger ones take up a lot more space for them.
They're on the right side. So I would say, you know, out of the 67, I don't have the exact number, but it's about 40, 40 of the yards or smaller. And then you have bigger yards that cater to more corporate clients. And the smaller ones are more month to month, where the bigger guys will come in, they want a 3 to 5 year lease, and they pay a little bit less per square foot, but they're getting a bigger yard. So, and that's what we do our feasibility when we're looking at new locations and the layout of the land.
You know, do we want more small, medium sized yards or more large yards? It really depends on the market, what you're putting out there and what kind of traction you're getting. So, and we do want it to be adaptable to the marketplace. So as the market shifts, clients shift, you will want some of the yards to be able to move around as well. Okay.
And you mentioned that a few of the kind of larger corporate clients might want a longer term, but in general, kind of your bread and butter, what are the terms on those? They have, like, a 1 year lease. Is it month to month? What does that look like? Yeah, no.
It's majority is month to month. You know, I built a business around what I needed as a small business. Our mission is to serve and to make it affordable storage solutions for small businesses. And these guys, a lot of similar languages, self storage, month to month. That's what they need.
That's what they want. But if there's a big company coming in and says, look, I want this big yard and I want it for 3 years. We'll be like, sign up. Let's go. Right?
A majority is month to month. How long do they typically stay as far as your experience? Even though they're on a month to month. I know, you know, I look at some of my rentals and stuff, and typically, I'll do a yearly you know, this is on the residential side, but I'll do a yearly lease to start with. And then oftentimes, once that yearly lease is is finished, oftentimes, I'll leave them on a month to month.
It gives me, as the landlord, some flexibility if I decide to do price increases, that kind of thing. But they end up oftentimes staying another year, another 2 years. What are you seeing there? Yeah. So we have a very low churn.
When these guys set up, like, even in the self storage world, a lot of and and flex, which is becoming very common, like contractor condos, they love them because those clients stay the longest. And these are our clients. They're the small businesses, the contractors. Once they set up, they're not going nowhere. We have a very low churn.
It'll be 5 years, October 1st, my first location. So I'll be collecting a lot of data and have a lot of good information from just being more seasoned in the market for now. But you're seeing definitely over over 24 months for most clients, and some of them have been there since we started. So Okay. Cool.
And so you take a piece of, say, raw land, like, for instance, this 10 acres that you had on the first one. What kind of improvements are you making to the land to make it kind of fit what these guys are looking for? Yeah. That's a great question. There's what we want and what the city wants and what the county wants that what the mayor wants.
Sometimes, you know, you're kind of saying, well, this is what we need. And they're saying, well, this is what we want. And that could be let's widen a road before you can do anything on your property. And that could be a little discouraging on the real estate development side. So, you know, we try to filter that with selecting the right property to begin with, but, like, we need a base that's strong enough to drive on.
And it's not like trucking parking where it's as heavy duty. It's more like small to medium size equipment. So which gives us a little bit of a lower barrier to entry for site work density and improvement. However, when you try to say that to the city or the county, they're just black and white. They're like, This is what you want.
And it's a whole negotiation process. And that goes into the entitlements of the land and to the specificity of the location, whether or not if it's an overlap, the city and the county, the zoning alone, if it's a PUD, we've got to really make sure if it's surrounded by residential, there's so many micro factors that go into a site selection, which we built out an entire acquisition and seller line with a checklist, including trying to kill that thing as quick as possible to find out everything we've learned. But yes, there's a black and white answer there. If the best case is if it's an existing location that's up and running, then it's more turnkey, but you're paying Prime for that. Right.
Okay. And so you're putting in some type of a base that they're able to drive on. You mentioned possibly having electrical at some of the sites. You even mentioned, it sounded like, maybe some kind of office space. I guess this is all tailored depending on who's renting and what their needs are.
But what's typically done? Just the base that you're providing so that they're able to drive onto the property and then maybe some fencing? Right. So part of our, like, brand with the Longair is we want it to operate and look the same at each location. And, like, the base was customizable.
And think of the construction, the build out in 2 phases. You have the base and below, which is very specific to each location, but it's got to be drivable and puddles in your yard. That's pretty much 2 requirements on that. And then above that is the long yards build out, right? This is where our adaptable fencing comes in, our foldable offices and foldable containers, our power, our cameras.
So we're also running outlets and cameras to a lot of the yards most if we can, depending on the layout. But we want it to be very secure, very transparent, and very to be well utilized by our client base. Okay. And tell me a little bit more about the fencing. You mentioned kind of the foldable when you say foldable offices, that kind of thing.
Tell me a little bit more about that. Right. So another spin off on Longair is we got long box products. And the long boxes, we get it from Europe. And there's these containers that fold and unfold and offices that fold and unfold as well.
And they're just so versatile. They stack. They save a lot space. We sell them to the consumers in the marketplace. But also, it's perfect for someone who wants and needs an office in their yard, whether it's a small landscape company, a dealership, whatever the case is.
If they need a little office, they can get it with an AC, power, Internet, and everything else they need. That's the whole idea of the models to be adaptable, versatile to the client base. Okay. Okay. No.
That's great. And then as far as the fencing, is this just like chain link fencing, or how is it AMI, is it like, can somebody from the outside see through the fencing to see, like, if they have heavy equipment or whatever, or is some of that blocked out? Just give me a little bit better view on what that looks like. Yeah. So actually, we're evolving the fencing.
So right now, it's like 6 foot commercial chain link, but we have a hybrid product where it's a hybrid of temporary with permanent that's made to move around. So, and you can get, you can modify the barbed wire as well, really customized based on the terrain, the perimeter. And also, we are also looking at, you can get 8 foot fencing as well. But you gotta be a little more methodical. It has to be a good crown strength for more windy environments, because it's just higher up.
And we put a screen on it. It's got to be a little thoughtful of that. But it's all, like, blue branded, nice panels, very clean, and very my philosophy is very simple for the business model. Out of sight, out of mind. I don't want people to be able to easily see what's in the yard.
And I don't want people while they're driving around the facility, see what's in other people's yards. That's the whole idea of it. It's out of sight, out of mind, very private, very secure, and it just creates so much more of a warm atmosphere. Okay. And you said that you're providing also, in a lot of cases, provided you can run the lines, I guess, but, like, security cameras as well.
So it provide extra barrier of security there. Yeah. I mean, it's beautiful. Like, most my tenants at my facility, let's say they rent a yard and they have one of their employees or a colleague coming to view some of their stone because they're a landscaper and they're they're selling brick and they got 6 different types of brick. They could watch on their camera.
The guy go right through the facility and when they get to the gate, don't even have to give them their code. They can text the gate from their phone while watching the camera, open the gate, have them go into the yard, watch them in their yard, look at the piles, answer questions for them, and watch them drive away. So it's very virtual. And having the cameras, it's not just a benefit for security. It's just a matter of functionality for the clients well.
And, you know, the feature of the gate, the text to open, it's as much technology that we can merge in with the business to make it as simple, transparent, and smooth as process. And, I mean, yeah, we wanna expand as much of that tech as possible and automate as much as we can, but it's beautiful with the cameras. Yeah. For sure. And so the initial one was in Ottawa.
Where have you opened up the second one? And tell me a little bit more about kind of where these are starting to pop up. Yeah. So, I mean, we have the one in Central Florida's gonna be opening shortly, and then we have other sites. There's a long life cycle between it could be two and a half years depending on the land, or it could be 6 months.
It really depends. And this is what we have gained the knowledge and depth of understanding of our market to go, Yeah, how long does it take? But we're, I mean, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, and right there, I mean, we have several in Texas and Florida itself, and we have 11 locations in the life cycle between a territory secured and about to be grand opening. So and then we also created a great unique selling proposition, which is the go long or go home. And what this does, this protects the territory for $5, right?
You like your area? You like what we're doing? Sign up. Let's protect your area and make sure no one can come in. It's $5,000 and then, you know, go hunting for a location.
And the idea is to make a long hair tap it. So we're, we're offering this for probably only gonna do so much longer. You know, we are committing a lot of help and giving a lot of resources to new people who sign up. And yeah, I mean, we're definitely expanding right now for sure. Okay.
And tell us maybe a little bit about so you can kinda reserve an area for 5,000 in anything that you can share. And I know that some stuff you may not be able to, but, like, with the franchise model itself, you decided that one way to be able to help expand this is to, kind of, franchise it. And so, I guess, what do people get with the franchise, and how much do they need to invest for a territory? What is a typical development cost for us to implement this? What does that typically run?
Right. So we're growing in 2 different ways. One of them is with franchisees, and that's more like lease a piece of dirt and pay a royalty. That's like more traditional franchise route Where we're also partnering with other co sponsors, co GPs to take down real estate or just with an owner themself that says, hey, I love this. Because, you know, if your average location using s using SBA, which Longyear's was approved for, allows you to buy it, the dirt, and do the business for 10% down.
Right? And then we are just coming as a partner at a 19.5 percent equity split. And now we're aligned on the success. I don't make money unless the partner makes money. We go and we find a deal, make it happen.
So whether or not it's a franchisee on the lease side or corporate partnership, also 2 ways right now looking to scale. Okay. Okay. Now that's great. Which one of those two ways are you finding to be most popular with some of the investors that you're working with?
Well, it's actually 5050. It's not so many investors. It's more older operators right now that wanna get involved. I mean, look, one deal changed my life, creative financial freedom. And a lot of people love the cash flow of the business and they want to get involved.
So, you know, we're actually partnering with a lot of owner operators that don't mind getting their hands dirty, want to get in there, make a deal happen. And it's right now 5050 between those 2. Okay. And so as far as just give us an idea maybe about the type of income. You mentioned it changing your life, just 1, you know, one facility.
What kind of returns are and what kind of gross revenues can something like this produce? I know it's going to vary, obviously, depending on how big it is, but just in general. Yeah. It could be between 1.2%. I don't know if you're the 1% rule.
Right? Like, if you're 1% rule is kind of hard to find, but we're we're breaking 2% on a lot of deals. So kind of gives you an idea, but the return on investment's fast, especially if you're refinancing using SBA. Like the one in Canada is bringing over $40,000 a month. And that was in that for $200.
Now I bootstrapped and did a lot of work. So, I I don't know if that's really fair, but I mean, if I had SBA, it would have been the same thing in the US, which is just a beautiful program. So, yeah, I mean, it's really specific on each location and the build out and the tier of land, but I'm in a self storage mastermind and they're even in the storage community, they're not doing numbers like me. Yeah. Oh, that's great.
That's fantastic. And so when you're partnering with somebody and you're looking for land, what type of land are you looking for? What are maybe some of the market conditions with respect to that land that it seem like, hey, this could be a winner of a spot to go with? Yeah. So, we have a funnel.
On top of the funnel, it goes to areas that are we want to look at and don't, right? And that's the big list that we've filtered out. Then it goes to the buy box, which is detailed checklist of anything that ideally is going to work. Then it goes to zoning, then it's local building requirements, and then it's our feasibility tool. So we've gone through 5 different series of filtered steps before we're going to look at a piece of real estate and say, is this worth looking into even further?
So that's a whole level of depth itself. I mean, you look at Longyear, it's like an iceberg. Gave the top. That's a beautiful business model. You got this whole chunk of ice set 90% underneath it.
That is the real estate. And finding it, filtering it, going through the due diligence is really half the battle, if not 3 quarters of the battle of the entire process itself. And, you know, if you just ask the wrong questions with the building department, you could have lost $6,000 and $60,000 So it's a whole process in itself. And we know people that are trying to do it. And it's like, they call me a year later, Hey, I'm experiencing these problems.
And it's, like, kinda too late at this point. So it's it could be a risk. Right? Yeah. The the DIRTT is a journey in itself and the whole filtering process of everything between in between with zoning and build local building requirements as well.
Okay. Okay. And you guys have experience in kinda working through that and can kinda help hold the hand of the potential operator? Yeah. Exactly.
That's their skill set. That's why they're helping that's why they're working with us. Right? We're gonna help from e to z, site selection, buy box feasibility, acquisition and selling line, the due diligence items, the construction process, the brand, the lease up, the marketing, and it's a profit share. So, like, now the franchise, that's more simple.
It's a lower barrier to entry in terms of cost. But, I mean, that's why they're working with us. Right? And we've done it successfully. We're continuing to do it and we'll keep doing it.
Yeah. Okay. And as far as your vision for the company, what do you see in the next 3, 5, maybe 10 years? And you mentioned some other products that might kind of go along with this. Tell us a little bit more about your vision on this, Chris.
Yeah. I mean, you've asked me that 2 years ago and in 3 years, I said, I want 50 locations. Let's go. And it doesn't go as fast as you want it to go. I mean, the site selection is very methodical.
So looking at the next 3 years, I mean, if I had, which I think is very realistic, 25 locations, I think I'd be happy with that. Depends on the team though, if we build a great executive team behind us, we can really roll out faster. 5 10 years, I mean, my mission and vision is when you think of a yard to rent, you think of long yards. And we built a franchise system, and I think we have all the tools, knowledge, know how to really go everywhere. And that's what we aim to do, really.
Okay. And as far as you mentioned kind of who utilizes this, why would somebody, just because of maybe the flexibility, give us an example why a contractor would end up going with a facility similar to to yours versus, you know, maybe light industrial, you know, park where they have maybe an overhead door and a little office. Maybe they have a need for some type of a yard along with that. What are some of the advantages? Yeah.
So and the biggest thing is cost. We're that middle ground between a contractor needing a big flex space and a 1 acre property and not needing it. And there's a big gap in the marketplace. So if someone needs an acre lot and a flex space, well then go get it. Right?
We are more affordable. We're a lot less expensive. And we're just that gap in the middle. And there's a big gap in the middle that is underserved. And that's who we're targeting.
So the right clients are going to find us. They're going to need what we have. And there's a lot of people who just need a small to medium size here, and that's all they need. Okay. And you talked a little bit about the time frame from start to finish.
I guess, give us much detail as you can on what the process is like. If this is something that I look at and I say, wow, this sounds appealing, Chris. What's my next steps? And kinda walk us through how that process happens. Right.
So if someone is like what we're doing, they wanna get involved. First of all, it starts with a meet and greet. You may have a questionnaire. Wanna make sure what your goals, your pain points, what really you're looking for, and make sure it's well suited for both of us. So that'd be the first thing.
Are we a good fit? Next thing is in your territory, is it available? We are signing up territories. We had 2 calls last week and both of them, we couldn't serve them. So, sorry, your territory is gone.
And they were waiting the call. It's like, you know, if you wait, that's how it goes. That's just the nature of territory. But once it is available, it's like, Hey, let's secure it. Let's go to town.
And then you start going into our database. You meet our team. You see our systems. You really start to learn commercial real estate to the depth of everything we've learned. It's like, Here's the cookbook.
Here's how it is. Here's how to underwrite. Here's how to look. Here's all the little secret sauce tips. And then before we go to the negotiation, at that point, that's when we go to the next phase of the business.
And this is the develop, the due diligence, the development, the construction. And then at that point, we just finalize everything between us. So it's kind of like a little dating phase, the beginning secure territory, get your feet a little wet, understand how we work, like what we're doing, really immerse yourself with the business because it's a long term marriage. We look for long term cash flow players. I do the one multiple locations in multiple territories, and these are the people that we want on our team.
So with that, there's phases to it, and it's mostly starting with the right people with the right mindset that love what we're doing. Yeah. You're fairly new as far as being the franchising part. Tell us a little bit about how that process was with getting approval through SBA and being able to utilize, because that's huge. Just any kind of investment to be able to do it with just 10% down is pretty incredible.
Yeah. That took about, I'd say, 6 to 9 months, just going through all the hoops with our fully built out franchise disclosure document, all the legality behind it, and a lot of underwriting, a lot of due diligence. We have good advisors on our team that really help kind of solidify the business. And that was a process in itself. And there's a directory board for SBA, and my business is on it, but they actually closed that.
So it's closed now. But now any lenders, they actually still reference that directory. And if I'm on there, then it's great. So it's kinda like that door is closed for new startups for what we do it. But then I snuck in there just, I swear it was a month after I got approved that it closed.
So I don't know how I got so lucky and I just timed it right. But I guess, you know, fortune favors the bold. When you jump all in and burn the ships to get to the island, you get to the island. There's some good things that come with it in any case. So it wasn't an easy approval, but we got it.
And I mean, it's really beneficial for people that really want to change their lives and want a great business. I mean, that's what SBA does and that's what we're here to do. And so with that 10%, is that includes if you work with SBA and with yourselves and you find the piece of land and all of that, you can orchestrate all that and the development process all within just a 10% down payment? Yeah. So say the land is $500,000.
The build out is 800 grand. Then you have 200,000 for carrying costs, operation. You could even pay yourself a small salary of $40, and SBA will cover. Even the franchise fee is rolled in. Let's say you're in toll, including the run rate, carrying costs until your breakeven, 1,500,000, you gotta come up with $150,000.
Yeah. That's great. I don't know many places that you could find a company that is acquiring some of the most scarce asset class with a self storage model for 10% down with the speed at which we do it. So, like, long hair is just made to go quick. We got SBA behind us.
Now we see great partners with great locations that really rock this thing. Yeah. That's great. Tell us maybe a little bit about the Florida one and what that one's gonna look like as far as size, how big was the land, how many yards are gonna be in there that'll be available for rent, and when you feel like I guess, just walk us through kinda how that one's gone so far. Yeah.
I mean, good and bad. It's around 6 acres, 32 yards. It's actually a hybrid. There's warehousing on it, and we just ran the highest and best use with the feasibility of the marketplace. And it was, it was kind of a close draw between Flex and Climate Control Self Storage.
Because there's a shortage of Climate Control Self Storage, that's what we're actually doing on it. So, I mean, the numbers are great. The bad news or downfalls, everything we've learned, everything we've learned through the entitlement process, the zoning, and we almost bought an island because there was a path, a walkway to get over, to get to the property. And, you know, during the title report and easement search, everything checked out, but there was about 6 different approvals from previous title searches that we had to cross reference and verify. I think the 13 digits were wrong.
And then I don't know how it slipped through the cracks, but because of that, we can no longer access our property. And literally it was like a 10 inch slice of space through 30 feet. And because we didn't have an easement to go over that, we always want an island. And then we had to go through our engineering process, widen the road, coming through the separate entrance, talks to all the neighbors. And we lost, you know, I think it was 9 months just because of that little hiccup.
And these things happen in the due diligence process. So what we're full steam ahead, construction's underway. We're planning on by the end of the year at that location. But, yeah, I mean, and that's why people are working with us. We've also have bruises and scars.
We know what not to do, not just what works. It's what doesn't work. Something is more value in that in a lot of times. It's like, let's be really careful. Yeah.
No kidding. That's great. It's unfortunate, you know, that sometimes you have to learn those lessons as you're going through the process, but it sure is good to have a few of those under your belt to see kinda what, like you said, like, what not to do next time or what to consider on the next one. Yep. Absolutely.
Even the little crazy things, we're looking at a site in Houston. And just to add a gate, the city wanted a a new plat. And new plat was 6 months $50,000 Then you had to talk to all the neighbors and just do this whole process just to put a gate on the property. Now, someone would say, let's throw a gate up, you know, but do you really want to risk everything and sink and buy a $1,000,000 property and do an $800,000 build out? And now the city is already been flagged with this.
There's so many little things like that in building out our checklist on to really be mindful of. And anyways, it's real estate is a journey. Yeah, for sure. And so in your in the process, you live in Florida now, right? That's correct.
Yeah. Okay. I just remember that from our previous conversation. But yeah. Tell us maybe a little bit about that because I think you had some interesting stories as far as your citizenship and moving and then making the move to the US.
Oh my God. Yeah, it's been a journey. So my wife and I were like, we were done with Canada. And when I say done with Canada, my daughter was 6 weeks old when we drove and had to take a private jet just to leave Canada. We were not even allowed out.
So just to leave was a journey. And then we didn't even know what we're like, we didn't have a place leased or anything. We've never even been to Florida. I don't even know anyone in Florida. And we had our 3 animals and our 3 kids and packed driving to Florida.
And then we're just like, you know what? We believe in the business, and we just that and we're done with Canada at the same time. So, I mean, that was a journey when getting here. But do you know how the immigration was gonna work? I don't even know how.
I'm like, where do I even start? I don't know, but I'll figure it out when I get there. And that's what we did. Been here 3 years now, just approved for the 5 year E2 visa. And it just goes to the testament of, like, when you leave, you jump in, you make it work.
And I mean, I'm not gonna say it's been easy. Right? We had different visas. We had lapses and request evidence. You can't leave during the evidence period.
I make the joke. If I would've walked across the south illegally, it would have been easier. But, you know, being a law abiding citizen and wanting to be a genuine American to contribute to this country, it has come with some scars and bruises. But it's all good. I feel like I'm earning it.
And, I mean, I'm making myself my way through it. And it's been a journey. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
That's awesome. And so, I guess, if somebody wanted to first, I guess, maybe if you can just tell people how they can find out more about you, if they want to invest, if they want to see what you have available, what's the best way for them to touch base with you, Chris? Yeah. I'd say, like, just go to my website longears.com. You can complete a form, learn more, and you kind of see the options available, what makes sense for you, and if your territory is available.
And just reach out there. You can also email me as clong@longyards.com. Okay. And as far as geographically, where are you currently selling territories? And I guess what areas are you looking to expand into next?
Yeah, it's funny because like when I first came to the States, I'm like Florida and Texas and they are great markets and we sold a lot of our, we're selling territories there, but there's also other formulas for other data metrics that are really exciting as well. I'm not going to disclose those, but it's not just Texas and Florida. There's other metrics where other areas are more exciting for returns and growth that we're focused on right now. Okay. Okay.
Cool. Sounds good. And why don't we do this? If we could maybe you've told everybody where they can find out more about you. And I've got a couple questions that I ask every guest, Chris.
So I'd like to ask you, if you had advice that you could give somebody who's maybe just starting out in their investment journey, what advice would that be? I said, don't be afraid to fail. Like, just go for it. You're going to learn so much and the regret and overthinking it is stopping you from learning. And sometimes we take the leap.
Oh, you might see the end zone and you might only have step a and B figured out, but when you get to B C and D, that was more clear. So I would say just learn to fail quick, feel fast, learn from it and keep moving. Like, don't be afraid. Yeah. I love it.
That's great advice. How about a book recommendation? Doesn't have to be real estate related, but it certainly can be just something that you've read that's been impactful. Yeah. I'd say a very simple book that I read a while ago that helped me understand real estate was Money People Deal.
That's by a classic Canadian investor and author, Stefan Arnio, and you just need 2 of the 3, right? It's money, people, deal. You need great people, find a great deal, and the money will come. And vice versa, great people with a lot of money looking for great deals. So you become a great operator, find a great deal, money will come.
Yeah. Haven't have not checked that one out, so I certainly will. But, Chris, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thanks.
We had to do this a second time because of some technical issues last go around, but I've enjoyed it, and I really appreciate you being on the WealthFlow. Yeah. Thanks, Keith. Appreciate it. And then I'll look forward to hearing this launch.
Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks. Being that you're still here, I trust and found value in this episode. I personally wish I would have known these guests and strategies when I started my wealth creation journey.
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