236 | From IT to Real Estate Tycoon: Ash Patel's Path to Financial Independence

May 19

[00:00:00] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolf gathering the King's podcast Today. I've got Ash Patel here on the King stage. My brother.

[00:00:09] Ash Patel: How you doing, Chaz? I'm doing great. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Absolutely,

[00:00:14] Chaz Wolfe: man. I'm excited for this conversation. You know, we were just kind of chatting offline, about being, being busy and going after it.

We're gonna get into some of this because, I know a guy at your stage, doesn't have to, but he chooses to. What kind of business did you have?

[00:00:28] Ash Patel: I am in real estate now. I do non-residential, commercial real estate, but that was after a 15 year IT career and multiple side hustles. finally found my calling and honestly, I choose to work instead of sleep or really just about anything.

So very passionate about what I do and just focused on commercial real estate. I love

[00:00:52] Chaz Wolfe: it. give us, give us just a half second on, on what, what did the 15 years in tech look like?

[00:00:57] Ash Patel: You know, grew up with very strict immigrant parents and they kind of dictated my path, told me I'm gonna major in it and essentially, you know, I went into it because I didn't have the ability to do what I wanted to.

I had to follow their rules. Right. Had a 15 year career that, I progressed at, went up the ladder. But, I would lie to myself and say, man, I love my job, but in all honesty, I hated waking up, hated going to work, and, always had a side hustle to try to get me out of it. And it wasn't until, you know, 15 years later finally made it.

But yeah, man, it was, you know, I wish I had had the courage earlier Yeah. To make some hard

[00:01:40] Chaz Wolfe: decisions. Yeah. I love it. Well, we'll definitely get into some decision making. I wanna know before we kind of get a little bit more into your, your history and some of the decisions that you made. Why, what, what's the bigger play for you?

Like, not necessarily why commercial real estate, but, but why are you doing this thing? Why have you been doing it? Why do you keep doing it even though you don't have to?

[00:01:58] Ash Patel: You know, I struggled with that. earlier with my side hustles. I thought I was doing it for the money, and then when a little bit of money started coming in, it didn't really motivate me.

So I, I honestly didn't know why I was spending all this time working my nine to five and chasing side hustles. but finally it got to the point where I wanted the time freedom. Right. So that's been what I've been chasing, and then it just seems like it's an elusive goal that keeps moving. so yeah.

the why though now is because I absolutely love what I do and I love teaching other people what I do as well. It's just, it's way more fun, doing. Commercial real estate with other people. Right? Yeah. And for years I was a silo. I was a one man shop. And God, it's so much more fun when there's other people to bounce ideas off of and you know, if you want to go far, go together.

Right?

[00:02:55] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, that's right. well I love that about, Real estate in general, you can be pretty creative, but even in the commercial sta space at, at another level is that it's, it's usually made up of a team. It's usually made up of JVs or usually made up of multiple hands in the, in, in the pot making the stew.

And so you're right, there can be, a camaraderie, that doesn't exist in, in some other businesses for sure. talk, talk about maybe the transition, like you obviously were, you know, Side hustles, but then you, you made this leap into real estate. Tell us what that was like at the beginning, before kind of things got started.

[00:03:28] Ash Patel: Yeah, so the LEAP initially wasn't in real estate, it was starting an IT consulting company. Okay. And it was probably a safer move. You know, we had a young daughter, a married at the time, so, I quit my IT career to start an IT consulting job, and I thought that would be my way of working for myself and getting that time freedom.

But it ended up being a lot of work, a lot of travel, a lot of late nights. So that didn't cut. I mean, that was, you know, a lateral move. If anything, I just didn't have to go report to somebody else. Right. And I always heard that real estate was a great way to offset taxes. So I bought my first property. It was a mixed use building in a college town.

It was, it was kind of a dump. And my mindset at the time, Chaz, was I bought it because the bottom floor was a grocery store that basically sold a lot of beer to college kids. Mm-hmm. And there was four apartments above it. And, My dumb self at the time thought, okay, when the store leases up, I can manage the store as well and have another source of income.

And it wasn't until I was there renovating the college apartments, I was unclogging at tenant's toilet. Actually, I look out the window and I see on top of the rooftop of the store. H V A C company replacing all the rooftop units for the store. So I go downstairs to inquire what's going on. The store owner tells me that their AC went out, so they're replacing their entire H V A C system on their dime.

So here I am. You know, fixing holes in walls and unclogging toilets from college kids that are destroying my apartment and the commercial tenants are actually improving it. And that was a pivotal moment where I essentially dropped everything that I was doing and became a full-time commercial real estate investor.

Yeah,

[00:05:16] Chaz Wolfe: that's incredible. there's that moment in time when you have these realizations and I'm, I'm sad to tell you this because I've had that same realization about commercial real estate. From the tenant's perspective. So obviously I've owned lots of retail, businesses over the years and I've ha I've been in that scenario where we're replacing the H V A C and I'm going, wait, so I gotta replace this thing and I pay for that dude's taxes and I pay for that dude's insurance and I pay for the parking lot, snow removal.

What does he pay for? He doesn't pay for

[00:05:47] Ash Patel: anything. Yeah. It sucks being a tenant, but you know, for, for all of those residential investors out there, I've been trying for the last 10 years to educate them, push them to at least look at commercial real estate. Right? Take the blinders off. Don't say it's too hard.

Don't say it's too much money, cuz listen, I did it and I started with really crappy properties. And move my way up. So just open up your horizons a little bit and look at other asset classes.

[00:06:17] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, love that perspective. Okay, so I wanna know, when you, when you finally started to like get some things rolling, maybe not like full momentum like you are now, but I wanna know of a good decision that you made ash of something you can look back on moment in time.

You're like, yep, pivotal moment.

the decision was just being relentless looking for properties. Mm-hmm. Okay. five times a day I would look at every commercial property that popped up in a hundred mile radius and that first mover advantage was often, what caused some of these big wins. So it's just relentless work ethic, trying to beat the competition.

Yeah, I love the perspective there cuz it's such a simple principle, of speed really. I'm

[00:07:01] Ash Patel: lazy. Listen, by nature, I'm lazy. I make a lot of mistakes. I always learn things the hard way. So, maybe it's because I absolutely love doing this and searching for deals. You know, it's, it's like somebody window shopping or shopping for cars online.

I'd rather look at buildings versus configuring a sports car or something. Right? Yeah,

[00:07:22] Chaz Wolfe: yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think that, you know, the, the, it's almost like, It's like you, like you solve, you like to solve problems. So, you know, you, you, you kind of create them sometimes, out of the, the, the laziness.

But, you know, I what you said there first, the speed. Let's go back to that because you're right. Searching, shopping, whatever you wanna call it. The first mover advantage is what you said, right? That applies to every industry. Speed. Speed is your friend. And so for you in commercial real estate, it's filling the pipeline with new deals.

That's the shopping part. You gotta, you can't grow the business if you don't have new deals. We know that. And for you looking on, a system, do you have a process of, you know, connecting with other people in them? Like how, how, how does this really, this first mover, you know, advantage the speed really play into just.

I'm looking at, at properties constantly, like, give us, give us what that actually looks like. Your

[00:08:15] Ash Patel: last comment on my laziness causing a lot of problems is very accurate and that

[00:08:22] Chaz Wolfe: hopefully you didn't take any offense to that. Oh, no.

[00:08:24] Ash Patel: How's more so for the listener? Chaz, you hit the nail in the head. you know, again, I'm telling you, I've made every mistake out there and I learned things the hard way.

And because of that is why I'm putting systems in place and why I have put systems in place. Love it. I was doing everything wrong, man. you know, 2018 I had to replace a, a toilet in a girl's bathroom in an office building. Got a tenant, said it was running, no problem. I'll replace it. Go to Home Depot, buy a toilet.

And I looked at the sign that says we'll install it for $99. And I thought, nah, listen, I can do that. So put the kids to bed one night, 10 o'clock, go out there and I'm there till one in the morning replacing a toilet. Right? Yeah. And it's every, everything that I've learned in terms of systems and efficiencies I've learned, I.

By failing and making mistakes. So in terms of, first mover advantage systems, I hired an assistant, which was an absolute game changer because I was getting inundated doing everything myself. And what I realized was where I made all of my good decisions and money was searching for deals. That was my forte and.

I didn't have time to do that anymore. I was paying bills, doing leases, just a bunch of nonsense. Right? And, and I was insecure in that. I didn't know if I hired an assistant, if I can keep them busy enough, if I can create, inadequate work environment for them, if I'm so chaotic that they would just leave.

So a lot of those insecurities kept me from hiring an assistant. And I'm telling you when I. When I hired somebody, man, it was like a drug because you can give them something and they get it done and then they ask for more and it's like, oh my God. Like there's a human that you can give all your work to, and they love doing it.

They love learning. And you're adding value. it, it's incredible. So for all of your listeners that are inundated with whatever business they're in, even if they're working a nine to five and they come home, they've gotta cook, they gotta clean, they gotta, you know, do stuff with the kids. Man, figure out what you can offload.

Right? Because it's a, it's a game changer. We all know those mantras, like time is your most valuable resource, right? But they're just cliches. They really are. Cuz until you put that into practice, man, it. It's just one of those things that you've gotta do. Do it for a week. Hire a nanny for a week, hire an assistant, a virtual assistant for, for 30 days.

Just try it, man. Get out of your own way.

[00:11:01] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Right. I, I love how you, because the reality of it is, is that even though entrepreneurs are, you know, driven, we want to get more, we have these bigger purposes. There's a laziness factor to all of us. It's not just you, it's me too, and. Or some of these things that that play into getting in our own way.

So whether it's like, okay, in this realm it's laziness or self sabotage, right? That gets in my way, causes problems. Or over here actually you're, if we're gonna dub this word, laziness actually probably lent to, oh, like if you could get over that fear of hiring somebody, now you're like, well this is great cuz they get to do it.

And I don't, it feeds into that at least, or at least if you can have the vision of going, okay, if I can keep things organized, then. Then, then there's the there, there's a team doing it. And I don't necessarily have to ha wear the ego of doing it all myself.

[00:11:52] Ash Patel: You're right. And there's a famous question asked of Bill Gates, what kind of person would you hire?

And he said, someone that's lazy cuz they'll find efficient ways to get the job done. That's right. And in reality, that is the case, right? I either procrastinate or find efficient ways to get things done. There's not much in between.

[00:12:12] Chaz Wolfe: I appreciate the vulnerability. I think that, I think that if the listeners being honest, there's skillsets or maybe go-tos that they have.

Like you said, your skillset is looking for deals, you enjoy it, and on top of that, you're good at it. So you just get rid of the other things that, that maybe don't bring as much, life or in this case that you want to be lazy with. So I wanna know, I'm gonna flip the coin here. We've given already just incredible, insight from your story that's, that's been valuable.

But tell me about a bad decision. That you've made.

[00:12:43] Ash Patel: Yeah. so, you know, after maybe five years, let's say 2010 to 2015, those years it was very easy to make money. In commercial deals I would buy vacant. Unfinished buildings and somehow turned them around. Right? So, started getting a big head and a lot of my friends were patting me on the back.

And it really did go to my head. So there was an auction, an estate auction for a bunch of commercial properties in a town that was dying. And I, I had such a big head, man, I was out of town. I had one of my tenants. Go to the auction and bid for me. I couldn't even hear him on the phone other than every so often.

Ash, do you wanna keep going? I'm like, yeah, I have no idea what the number is, but whatever. I bought maybe a half dozen properties and, just like all the other ones, no problem. I'll figure it out. I. I'll rehab 'em, get tenants in 'em. Well, this turned out to be an insurmountable task because the town was dying.

It was ravaged by drugs, job losses. The politicians that were running the town were in fighting. But, you know, all along my friends were like, ah, don't worry. He'll find a way to turn this into a golden nugget. And, I, I am just now in the process. 5, 6, 7 years later of offloading that last property. So, I needed that, right?

I needed that kick in the ass to let me know that not everything is gonna be a win. Not everything I touched turns gold. So, it, it cost me a ton of time. I don't know how much money, but a lot of aggravation. So important lesson learned, ma'am. Get that ego in check and you're gonna have failures. You know, and, and be happy when you fail.

[00:14:30] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. I I I consider them dues, right? Yeah. Like you said, like you, you needed it. Well, you, the only reason you would say that is because it gave you something a

[00:14:39] Ash Patel: hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:42] Chaz Wolfe: For you to be able to come out on the other side and, and now know what, you know, you've obviously, I'm sure changed some, some procedures and some decision making, but I, I wanna press into that just a, a little bit because.

The ego. The ego, man, it gets it, get it. It gets us all. It is probably the biggest thing that maybe we don't even talk about a whole lot. Maybe I, maybe I should talk about that more, but just from a, from a half perspective there. Like you're, you're reading your own press clippings, you're making these decisions even in the midst of you struggling, your friends are still.

Singing your praises,

[00:15:15] Ash Patel: so it's like hard. Yeah, yeah. Cause I'm not, I'm not sharing that I'm failing it. It's not until now that, you know, people ask me about that and I'll share the story. But, you know, you talk about your wins, you don't talk about your losses. Right? Yeah. And I, I wish more people did that, right?

Yeah.

[00:15:32] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. How do you think, like, so for the listener, you know, today they're, they're, you know, maybe where you were back then or, or, maybe a smaller version of that and, The reality is, is that they're struggling. Is there value in the listener finding someone to say, Hey, I'm struggling?

[00:15:49] Ash Patel: Yeah. All the side hustles that I had, I wanted to go to score, which is the service core of retired entrepreneurs, a free government organization of retired business execs or entrepreneurs that help startups and help young businesses.

And again, it was insecurity, man. I, I, you know, if, if they saw my financials on my little Excel spreadsheet, they'd probably laugh at me. And it was that fear of asking for help because I, I thought I would get laughed at. And that's what kept me from doing it. But I would've progressed so much more in the side hustles when I started in real estate.

I, I made excuses. You know, not many people do non-residential, commercial like I do. And especially when I started, you know, the mom and pop businesses, the smaller strip malls, office buildings, I just didn't think there was a lot of people in that space. But all excuses I should have sought out.

Mentors, coaches. Other people, regardless of what asset class they're in, in real estate, I really should have used their help. and it's not until, you know, recent years that I've networked more with other, other people and asked questions of them, and I've always mentored other people, which has been great.

And it's one of those things that I love equally as much as finding deals, I can have a desk full of. To-dos and paperwork for the day. If somebody calls me and says, Hey, will you help me, evaluate this property, man, I'll drop what I'm doing and spend an hour. Cuz that's the fun stuff, right? Yeah. But in terms of, yeah, man, seek out mentors, make sure you do it the right way.

I had, I had, I had a rule, so after people found out that I was mentoring, I would get calls left and right. And, they're like, Hey, you know, I, I want to do what you do. And I'd say, what is it that I do? Like, ah, you know, I want to get paid. Yeah. I'm like, okay. I mean, that's what you want. Right. But Right.

They don't wanna put the grind in and they don't want to come. Correct. Right. So I made a rule where I. The first conversation I'll have with anybody, 45 minutes an hour long, and then you get one homework assignment because I would spend hours putting together plans for people that they never followed.

So my rule was after our first call, you come back with three commercial properties. Tell me what you like and don't like about 'em. No right or wrong answers. 95% of the people. I'd never hear from again. Yeah. So the few people that followed through, I would give them all of my time. Right. Because I know they're gonna follow through.

I know they're gonna hustle. Yeah. And they have a higher chance of success. So in more recent years, my time has become more limited. So I love the approach where people just call and say, Hey, what can I do for you? How can I add value? Can I shadow you? Mm-hmm. Right in instead of I wanna learn from you. you know, Be humble, approach people with humility and try to add value.

It's a lot of cliches. Don't ever ask somebody for coffee. You know this, right? Man. When you get to a certain level, you're busy. You don't have time to take yourself out to coffee, let alone have someone else spend an hour of your time and not knowing what the agenda is. So just be very respectful of people's time.

[00:19:12] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, it's, I'll tell you a half, half story on that, is kind of, especially as the world transitioned to Zoom, you know, obviously in the Covid period, but the reality of it is, is that if I'm gonna go meet you for lunch or even a coffee, is that there's a before and after to that, and I have to end what I'm doing.

I have to, I have to, I have to dwindle down what I was focused on to be able to then, Leave the house to then drive to meet you, to then, like you said, have this unidentified time to then drive back and then to get ramped back up into what I was focused on. It's way more than just a 15 minute coffee. And when you have people like you and I that calculate time like that, It, it makes it very difficult.

And so I remember a couple people here in Kansas City, right, we're at, they're like, man, we should da da da. Hey, no offense, but like, let's do a 15 minute zoom. And it, it was like offensive. We're in the same city. What do you mean Zoom? I'm like, no, it's not about Zoom, or we're in the, like, it doesn't matter.

I want you want 15 minutes with me? I want 15 minutes with you. I wanna get to know you. Fantastic. Well, let's make it 15 minutes.

[00:20:18] Ash Patel: Yeah. You know, I had a, a guy that I mentored, a young kid actually, and he was a killer. He would find out what restaurants the person liked. And then invite, give them a choice of three, invite them out to dinner or breakfast.

And I like that approach better because, you know, during the day you can have the best laid plans of how your day's gonna progress. All of a sudden, one email or one phone call throws everything into disarray. So doing lunches is difficult cuz you, you know, middle of the day you gotta drop what you're doing.

I love the breakfasts. Or drinks or dinner in the evening because it's downtime right before your day starts or after it's over. But man, getting somebody in the middle of the day is a tough one.

[00:21:03] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, it's funny. I had a guy, actually on my show a couple weeks ago and he told a story about how this investor, I was trying to get him to do certain deals.

it's like a snow, snow plow contract scenario. And, and he talked about all the, the guy was like, lemme take you to lunch. So he took him to lunch and he convinced him to do this, this deal through lunch. And so I told him, I was like, so you're an easy prospect. I just gotta take you to lunch. Right. And he's a states away, right.

So I'm like, what's your favorite sandwich shop And what, what, what? We'll schedule a Zoom and I'll have a sandwich sent to you and we'll have lunch together. It was pretty funny. We had a good laugh. And we'll have lunch together. That's cool.

[00:21:36] Ash Patel: That's creative. Yeah,

[00:21:38] Chaz Wolfe: why not? Right? I mean, we're not, we're not, I'm not gonna fly to, to have lunch maybe.

You never know. I love that approach. It's, and now, of course, as soon as I asked, cuz I, I did, I scheduled the time and then I'm like, what's your favorite sandwich shop? And he was like, I'll get my sandwich. It's okay. Like, let's just have lunch together, you know? That's awesome. Good for you. Yeah. Anyway, so here we go, brother.

I want to know, is there a certain process or discipline to making decisions that you have now knowing that you've given us the good and the bad, the ugly type of thing? What, how do you process decisions

[00:22:07] Ash Patel: now? The biggest thing is evaluating downside risk. it's a mistake that a lot of people make now in real estate because we've had a long, prosperous run, and honestly, anybody under the age of 33 hasn't really seen hard times or down economic cycles.

So there's this air of never ending prosperity out there. Mm-hmm. Where everyone knows you just buy apartments and raise rents every year and then, you know, cap rates are going down and, you know, interest rates are not a problem. Well, all of that is gonna change at some point. So for me, decision making is always, encapsulated by assessing your downside risk and, Time as well, right?

So evaluating how much time a project is gonna take and if it's worth the returns. So those are the two biggest

[00:22:58] Chaz Wolfe: factors. Love it. I love the, take risks, but calculated ones.

[00:23:04] Ash Patel: Yeah. And you know, people's, what I'm hearing you say, people don't stress test their deals, everyone does their proforma where the arrows moving up into the right.

Yes. But what if you can't increase rents? Matter of fact, what if you start having more vacancies? What does that do to your model? Yeah,

[00:23:18] Chaz Wolfe: no, the stress test, we've talked about this recently inside gathering the king's, mastermind where you're building structures and things inside your business.

Whether it's a, a real estate business or a a garage door company. You're still building what's valuable on the inside that could potentially be sold. And, and does it operate without you? And you can stress test that way as well. But what you're talking about as far as like, do the numbers work, you know, buying a business, buying a deal, you know, getting into it.

yeah, you gotta stress test the worst case scenario for sure. Cuz it could happen, especially as you're saying like this, this, this bull run that we've been on, things are gonna change. but that doesn't mean that they have to, that there's no deals.

[00:23:59] Ash Patel: Yeah. Outta curiosity, why did you say if it works without you, Well, the,

[00:24:05] Chaz Wolfe: that's a good question and I think that the common theme in entrepreneurialism and or even, you know, I use real estate, but it, it's business, right?

You said freedom. I want, I want time freedom. And so if, if you have a system that works, Outside of your activity, then, then that's time freedom. in real estate it's called passive income, right? It's called cash flow. and, and of course in the commercial space, cuz it's, you're talking about the power of what you have, isn't dependent upon necessarily, a more of a short term in and out, residential play where you've got a maybe a longer contract of business that's in place.

You know, something like that. I'd love to hear your, your, your take on that.

[00:24:46] Ash Patel: I love that you said that because that was an epiphany that took me 10 years to learn. And I'll share a quick story. I had a buddy of mine that was a home builder and I asked him, you know, do you meet all of your customers?

And he only built 15, 20 homes a year. And he's like, no, and I won't. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like somebody's spending their life savings with your company. You won't just go to a design meeting, pat 'em on the back, say, Hey, my name's so-and-so owner of the company. Thank you for building with us.

He's like, absolutely not. He said, I got this advice a long time ago that. If you have a business and you're gone for six months, it should come back better than how you left it. So he put all these systems in place from the get-go, and I thought that was the dumbest thing ever, man. Like I, I didn't understand that until I got my head so far up my butt that, I was inundated with things and now, I'm like, oh my God, this stuff needs to run without me.

I should not be this integral to making things happen. Right. So again, like I said, I learned things the hard way. and that was an important lesson that I learned.

[00:25:53] Chaz Wolfe: That's good. All right, Ash, I wanna come at you in a couple different, angles here. I got some speed round questions as we call them. Yep.

First one is this. If you had to dwindle your entire business down to one trackable metric, What would it

[00:26:06] Ash Patel: be? It is your personal balance sheet. So however that business affects your personal balance sheet, because we all are shooting for a certain number, we all have a finite amount of time. If your net worth isn't increasing year over year, then you're not achieving forward progress.

So, you know, Track your balance sheet, do your personal financial statement at least once a year and see what kind of trajectory, your trajectory you're on. I

[00:26:36] Chaz Wolfe: love how you tied it to, the personal balance sheet, the net worth, because there's a lot of times, obviously the, the, your business gotta make money in order for it to affect your personal balance sheet positively.

And so, yeah, net profit, sales, all those things need to be tracked. but. Really, what are we after we're after it to affect us personally and of course the other people involved as well. But that net worth that number if, if, if I only had one. That's it. That's it. That's great, man. Okay, so what book would you recommend that a six figure business owner read?

He hasn't, he hasn't scaled to that seven figure

[00:27:11] Ash Patel: mark yet. I'm gonna throw a two out there, if I may. One is who not how love it. And the other one is rocket fuel. For so many years, I thought me being scatterbrained was, a fa a, a, a failure, right? A detriment to me. Yeah. And in reality, I learned that it's just being a visionary and I'm not an integrator.

an incredible book for anybody that starts things and doesn't follow through all the time, has great ideas and just, yeah. Read that book.

[00:27:42] Chaz Wolfe: Love it. Yeah. And who not how, kind of pings off of our last comment here of not doing it yourself. Yep. Another phenomenal read. We'll put 'em both in the comments, in the show notes below.

What, what do you think about networking or masterminding with other entrepreneurs?

[00:27:56] Ash Patel: It is probably one of the biggest factors to my success. like we mentioned earlier, if you want to go far, Go together. this is a team sport. Most businesses are a team sport. treat your competition as team members, right, not competition.

it's incredible how much networking opens up possibilities, brings more deals to the table, and helping others. Always comes back to you. Right. the mastermind thing, I, I looked for a commercial mastermind, didn't really find any that would suit me. number of people came up to me, wanted to learn commercial real estate about six months ago, started a mastermind.

and it's been incredible cuz we all learned from each other. Yeah. So get involved in some kind of mastermind. If there's not one that suits you, start one.

[00:28:46] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. I love the, I love the approach. I think that you and I took a similar, similar step there. okay. And in, in the operations, kind of going back to the who, not how place for just a half second.

If you only had one hour each week to work in your business or on your business, how would you use that hour to successfully run your business like you do now?

[00:29:07] Ash Patel: I would develop people because that's the time. That's time that's exponentially returned. Right. I can, another answer would be, look for deals, but that's not enough time.

I'd rather train other people to effectively do their job. Yeah, so develop your staff. Develop your people.

[00:29:27] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Cuz you can multiply, right? Looking for deals. Whatever the task is that needs to be done. You could have 20 people learning how to do it. 200 people learning how to do it. Absolutely. Okay. Last question for you, Ash.

If you lost it all, what would you do?

[00:29:43] Ash Patel: You only need two things to get back to the top. And that's knowledge and network, right? Love it. So, by now you should have the knowledge. If you were in a position where you lost it all. Hopefully you had the knowledge and just struck out, that network is so important.

So just two things I would get out there, network more, find deals, and use my knowledge, use the network, put the deal together.

[00:30:08] Chaz Wolfe: That's good stuff, man. How can the listener find you? maybe they're in commercial real estate, they wanna check out your mastermind. Maybe they just want maybe potentially a JV on a deal with you.

Maybe they wanna. They wanna, ask you for a, a breakfast or a dinner, how can they

[00:30:21] Ash Patel: find you? I'll give you my email address. It's Ash, a s h b as in boy patel gmail.com. I'm on bigger pockets, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Ash Patel, Cincinnati, not too hard

[00:30:34] Chaz Wolfe: to find. It's good stuff man. We appreciate your time.

Of course. not just to be cliche about it, but cuz we know how valuable it is and so we thank you for that. Thank you for the value. we wish you nothing but success and blessing in your business and all the things that you have your

[00:30:48] Ash Patel: hand to. Chaz, great job. This was a fun interview. Thank you so much for your time.

Absolutely.

Join host Chaz Wolfe as he welcomes the 7-figure real estate mogul, Ash Patel, to share his journey and insights into the world of commercial real estate investment. With a decade of experience in the field, Ash transitioned from a 15-year career in IT and has since built his real estate empire on his own terms. In this episode, Chaz and Ash delve into the importance of time freedom, strategic delegation, and the dangers of buying into your own hype. Don't miss out on the valuable lessons Ash has learned along the way, and gain the knowledge you need to accelerate your business growth.

Ash Patel:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ash.patel.58118

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ash-patel-95b1a25/

Chaz's favorite morning drink to fuel him for his day

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