Ep. 22 Connor Gross | From Real Estate to E-Commerce: Lessons on Risk, Success, and Scaling Ventures

Andres Sanchez [00:00:00]:

Connor, how are we doing, man? Thanks for coming on.

Connor Gross [00:00:03]:

Of course. I'm glad that to, to be on the show. Thanks for having me.

Andres Sanchez [00:00:07]:

Yeah. For sure. I'm really excited to talk with you. You popped up on my feed on Twitter, a good amount of times recently, and I feel like that's just the way I've been finding guests lately. If if you're popping up on my feed, you're doing something interesting. So, really excited to to get you on the show. And for everybody watching, you know, we go right into things Connor, who are you, what have you accomplished up to this state, and, give us a little background on how you got there.

Connor Gross [00:00:33]:

Yeah, man. Happy to. so, basically, a little bit of my background. 26 now living in New York City. I'll I'll probably just kick off story, I guess, beginning of college because I feel like that's when kind of started doing some, some entrepreneurial stuff. So, went to school up in Boston, started college back in

Andres Sanchez [00:00:50]:

2016.

Connor Gross [00:00:51]:

when I went up there, started an ecommerce business with a buddy of mine. We were just selling self and accessory products all across, like, Amazon or our own site as well. did that for pretty much the 4 years, start school, scaled that up, did a couple million in sales, and then ended up selling that a couple months just before graduating. So like, money hit the bank account on that business, probably, like, February

Andres Sanchez [00:01:12]:

20 2022.

Connor Gross [00:01:13]:

So, like, like, money at the bank account, and that was, like, when you start hearing COVID, whisper and whatnot. so it hit that money at the bank account, and then we went on spring break, came back, schools canceled, and we sat around for the next year pretty much bored out of our minds. after that, I started another e commerce business, have been running that with one of my partners right now. It's in the boat and the automotive space. and have pretty much scaled that up now. Have a pretty decent sized team in place there. And from all the, the sale proceeds from our last business, started buying self storage throughout Texas with my partner who I ran that business with as well. So, between those two, definitely keep my time busy in on top of that, just used to run a podcast, write a newsletter now. Just like fun stuff to meet interesting people like yourself.

Andres Sanchez [00:01:56]:

Yeah. For sure. I mean, I love how you just glazed over. Yeah. I did a couple million in sales there in college. that's an unreal accomplishment and congratulations being able to achieve that at such a young age. We've had a few ecom people on, so I'm always curious. Like, e commerce is this kind of mystical world where you see people like yourself making 1,000,000 of dollars. but for people listening, if you've tried you know, it's not as easy as it seems when you're watching people like yourself. And then if you haven't tried, it is not as easy as it seems when you see people like Connor pulling in 1,000,000 of dollars in sales. How did you decide that e commerce was gonna be the play? Like, what kind of peaked your interest in that?

Connor Gross [00:02:39]:

So the conversation back in 2016 basically started around. both myself and one of my partners, Giovanni, we come from entrepreneurial families. And so his dad owns, like, everything from strip strip malls to mobile home parks and condo developments and all of that kind of stuff. So he came from a real estate background. My parents, are in the candle manufacturing space. So between those 2, like, we just were like, we wanna start a business and when we were eighteen and nineteen years old, we actually just did not give a shit what the business was, but we're like, we just wanna go and sell stuff. and so after probably, like, a month or 2 of just brainstorming whatever one could do, realize, like, a lot of the easy, like, chop sheets, like, phone cases and cell phone accessories that they were giving out during freshman orientation were pretty easy to go and manufacture overseas. And so I thought was like, let's just go and sell these. Like, truthfully zero idea of what we're doing. No product market research. Nothing where, like, people are buying it. Let's sell it. and it probably took us, like, we ordered 2000, basically, like, the stick on the back of your phone wallet where you can hold, like, cash, keys, cards, all that stuff. Yeah. we ordered 2000 of them over from China. And we're like, we're just gonna sell, like, all of our friends. And then we quickly realized, oh, shit. We do not have 2000 friends. and so and so between that, we were like, okay. Like, let's go sell them a defense. went to the Boston marathon 1 year, try to sell them there. And we sold 1, literally 1. and we're like, alright. That's pretty disheartening. Let's try to sell them on our website. and, you know, we're like, oh, shit. Getting Facebook ad traffic is, like, really expensive and we don't sell an expensive product. We're like, how about we go and try Etsy? We're like, oh, this is kinda working. Like, we're using some of Etsy's traffic. And then finally, we tried Amazon and Amazon ended up being kinda like the bread and butter for that business for the next 4 years.

Andres Sanchez [00:04:23]:

So kind of take me through. I mean, it's it's not that easy to just jump on Amazon and start selling, and you tried all of these different avenues what were some of the challenges that came with deciding 5th Facebook doesn't work. Pinterest or Etsy is okay. and then you went and Amazon was the home run. Like, kind of what what was that process like?

Connor Gross [00:04:48]:

It's really just about the cost of traffic to, like, if we're selling a $10 product and our product costs are so minimal. Right? So it's like, our product costs are 30¢. They were selling cheap phone accessories. So, like, you have a 98% gross margin or whatever the map is on that. And we're like, okay. What about shipping? 22 bucks to ship this thing. So it's still not that expensive. What about, like, picking and packing it from a 3 deal? Okay. Another two bucks. So we're like, great. Our profit margin is $5. Can we acquire a customer on Facebook for $5? And then if we did that, we break even, which sucks. so we're like, no. We can't go on Facebook for that, which means that we can't go and tell enough people about the brand, which means that we can't sell this on our own website. So with Etsy, we were like, let's go and put this up here. and realized that we didn't have to pay for the traffic. So that $5 profit margin, that was ours. Right? Like, we could take that. Now with Amazon, in particular, it's quite literally Etsy just at scale. And so by listing on Amazon, yeah, I think we did. I actually kind of forget the sales couple of tens of thousands that first year in Amazon. and they were like, oh, we have something here. And then we ended up working on it a little bit more full time during college.

Andres Sanchez [00:05:59]:

Awesome. What was it like to sell the company at 22? Like, not the business side, the fun part of things. You said the money hit the account in February. What did that feel like? What did you do with the money post sale? Like, I wanna know a little more about that.

Connor Gross [00:06:13]:

Yeah. That was fun as fuck. I think the cool part for us, was that, like, none of our friends knew we were it was a big business. so all of our friends were like, gee, Connor, they did this cute little, like, cell phone accessory thing. we just never corrected them because, like, why bother? and then we sold it, and we got, like, a Forbes article, and it was, like, talking about how we sold millions and stuff. And everyone's like, wait, what were you doing? Like, I thought this was just like something you made some some beer money for them on the weekends. I think that part was kind of fun. In terms of what we did with the money, like, we didn't have a ton of opportunity to, like, really ball out, I guess, because the world shut down I actually remember, like, our closing dinner. We went to, like, a dumpling sushi night or whatever like that. And it was, like, discounted dumplings for the, like, 25¢ dumplings. so, like, still didn't spend anything crazy. We honestly just kinda, like, sat on that cash for a lot of 2020 until 2021 came around, and we were like, let's go and start buying some real estate. but in terms of, like, the fun stuff, like, I don't know. My my partner and I, like, we love to travel. So I think we've been to, like, 35, 40 countries, like, part of, being in college meant, like, we got to go and work in these co ops at my school. And so what we convince the school to give us 6 months off full time and just grow that business. And, like, during that time, we went from doing, like, 150,000 in sales to 850,000, and we're like, okay. We've got something here. so we were able to scale up the business really substantially, but, yeah, once we sold it, I think the big thing for me that I realized and anyone listening to the list who wants to get into ecommerce, whatever, if you don't have a lot of cash flow and if you need cash flow and what you wanna start your own thing, don't start an e commerce company because the reality is, like, we sold that business, and that was the first time our bank account looked full in, like, 4 years. because what a lot of people don't realize is if you are successful and you are growing in the e commerce world, you just put 100% of that money back into inventory. And so I would highly recommend starting another business if if you want to. but, yeah, that's it. But from a from the sales standpoint,

Andres Sanchez [00:08:16]:

Interesting question here that just came across my mind as we talk about this is ecommerce actually somewhat benefited from COVID when everybody was locked down at home. Do you think it was better that you sold pre COVID? Do you think you could have made more money if you would have held on during that COVID ecommerce spike, like, have you thought about that?

Connor Gross [00:08:38]:

I have thought about it. two things that I think really negatively impacted it. 1 is shipping from China, but every freight carrier is backed up all of the manufacturers were shut down. So there was zero supply chain. We couldn't have gotten more products. And then secondly, think about to COVID, right, board games blew up, like, being able to go and buy poker sets and things like that blew up because everyone was just stuck inside and didn't know what to do. No one's buying wallets. No one's like, damn. You know what I really need right now? Oh, you know what I really need right now? A new phone case. Like, because you're just not going anywhere. You don't need it. So No. I think we made absolutely the right decision. and I also think that I was very happy personally to be done selling on Amazon by that point. I was kinda over it just too much platform risk, and I wanted to kind of diversify and start investing in things that I thought had a little bit better of a chance of surviving the long term.

Andres Sanchez [00:09:33]:

I think maybe something cool for you to take us through because I know, I mean, at least for me, and I'm sure everybody else, when you start your business, You think about that exit. You think about what that situation is gonna look like. Was it just you and your business partner negotiating the terms for the sale of the company? were you guys working with third parties? What was what was that experience?

Connor Gross [00:09:56]:

So we worked with a business broker, and truthfully, from my experience, I thought they were not the best business broker in the world, so I actually won't name their I won't name the name right now. I just thought that, like, they did a very low effort in, like, the value of it was in having an email list and having somewhat of a brand. But the reality is if, like, it took us 9 months to sell the business. And when the person came along, who we wanted to buy it, like, the transaction, I actually went pretty smoothly. And that wasn't a testament to the business broker. It was just the individual who was buying us was, like, a very easy to work with individual. I think that I would have probably, if I had to do it in hindsight, I probably would have done the same thing. The only qual I have with this, I could just take a high fee. so I probably would try to negotiate the rates a little bit more to stick with them. but I think the the big thing for us, and this is what what I would recommend to anyone, especially if you're younger, showing a business is it was really nice to have a win at the age of twenty two, to have a win to have a, like, a bank filled filled with cash, like, a nice article to kind of reference next time you need to go and raise capital or next time you need to go and, like, recruit employees, like, having that win definitely goes in, like, adds credibility to you at a young age. And so For us, the money at the time is life changing. Now the question is, like, if I had if I owned that same exact business today, and I had sold a previous one, I would not sell because, like, the money would not be life changing at this point. Like, nothing in my life would change by getting that same amount of cash, But at the time when I was still in undergrad and had hadn't even graduated yet, it was absolutely life changing money. So just to follow-up on that,

Andres Sanchez [00:11:33]:

What would you what would be some tips you would give to a twenty year old, the twenty one, twenty two year old, or even somebody at 18, 19, just getting out of high school? who wants to get into business and wants to jump in and go get that first win under their belt. What would be some just baseline tips you would give somebody?

Connor Gross [00:11:49]:

I would start something that would give you cash from day 1 and skills. So, you come I don't know. I I sound pretty hypocritical here. Having started an ecommerce business and sold it and also running another ecommerce business right now, but I wouldn't start an ecommerce business if you are strapped for cash and you have never run a business before, it's just hard. People see the sexiness of, like, the marketing and all that stuff. nobody thinks about the back end logistics to fill in customer support, etcetera. so I personally would not start one. If somebody's and listening to this and wants to go and start something for themselves, I would highly recommend just starting an agency business that can focus on learning a skill. I think that's pretty generic and cliche advice, but it's the truth because fast forward 4 years from now, you start an email marketing business and your commoditized service, and I get it, and it's frustrating, whatever, you can be world class in performance marketing, email marketing, SEO, whatever, in 3 to 4 years time. you can develop a book of business where you are just essentially change exchanging your time in the beginning for cash and develop really nice cash flow. And then after that 4 years, if you're done with it, then you can sell the agency. And you don't get the highest equity multiple, but you will have developed cash flows and skills along the entire time. and then you can take fit skills and apply it into a higher equity business after you sell the business and use the cash, be reinvested into that.

Andres Sanchez [00:13:11]:

I am in full agreement. I think learning these as, like, somebody who's owned companies in the past, and then somebody who's now interviewed a lot of people who have owned companies. Marketing is one of the hardest or the hardest part of the the part, like, the growth part of the business where you start to make the actual money And if you can go in and learn these skills and you can go and understand email marketing, understand how to run ads, understand how to acquire customers, which are all agency based skills, you then can start your own product if you want. Then you can launch that sexy ecommerce site that you've wanted to to get started. But learning those skills and putting cash in your pocket early on. Like you said, trading your time for money, which is something that's gonna come with being new and and having to pave your own path, I think, is is a great point of advice for people listening.

Connor Gross [00:14:09]:

Yeah. I mean, even even stuff like this, like, with this podcast right now, do you edit all your stuff?

Andres Sanchez [00:14:14]:

I personally do not edit all my stuff, right now. just don't have the time for it, but I'm fortunate to have budget and and a team that I can go out and hire, but it it cost me money.

Connor Gross [00:14:27]:

No. Right. But I was gonna say that's literally is, like, some eighteen year old kid to be listening to this right now. And if you had said yes, which I know a lot of podcast producers will go and edit their own stuff, like, you can turn on and say, hey. For 500 bucks a month, I'll go and do all of your stuff. And it's work, but it's work on your own accord and eventually you build up a big enough book of business that you can start hiring somebody and train them how to edit it. Like, that's that's really the name of the game. as a as a side note, what do you do? Like, what kind of businesses do you run?

Andres Sanchez [00:14:55]:

I don't run. I don't operate the companies anymore, but in college, I was I got started with selling sneakers. I love sneakers. They were expensive, found out I could flip them. turn that into a 6 figure a year business. And then on top of that, built a community on Discord around sneaker software, and had a rent and utilize it, grew that to another 6 figure business. Unfortunately, COVID absolutely derailed me. but I looked back and it was, like, such an amazing learning experience. And in the moment, I was living the dream like you, 2021, 22, making a a lot of money living at home in Miami. Life was really good. but then things completely turned. And, like, Fortunately enough, I had invested 50 percent of the profits into the stock market, and I had a built a great portfolio of long term investments. So When things hit the fan, it wasn't a complete 0, but it was it was hard. we're, like, going back I wish I would have maybe specialized in a skill and not done this whole, like, big ordeal because looking back, I I can't really other than, like, cool stories that I can talk about and experiences I can share, there's not, like, a set skill that I developed during that period other than good business acumen, which I think I had prior, where if I would have specialized or or worked hard, I I could have been able to, like, drill down on something. I could've been able to keep pushing that forward.

Connor Gross [00:16:23]:

I don't know. I would I would still say that, like, the fact that you ran into this court, right, like, you built up the ability understand how to attract people to that, how to go and manage community. Like, even the sneaker flipping itself, it sounds like you've probably always been a hustler, but I feel like there's a difference between being a hustler and then actually executing. And when you execute, then you're able to go and build confidence that you can go and do that again in another need for, like, the reality is, like, when it comes to a lot of, like, business building stuff, most ideas work. It's just about how you wanna go and make them work and what time horizon you're off with them. so I don't know. I feel like you probably built up more intangible skills than maybe you might think whether it's sales, marketing, or community building. But, yeah, I would I would just recommend to anybody who's listening to this that wants to start something, try to go after a skill based, service. You're just gonna go learn more and make more earlier on than once you have cash flow and eventually maybe a win and exit, whatever, you can reinvest into things that have a longer time horizons.

Andres Sanchez [00:17:20]:

A 100%. I was looking through your tweets, before the episode, and I saw that you tweeted today. I'm excited to launch a product. and then the title of the product was how to quit your job and not run out of money. Oh, yeah. I'm in I'm interested in hearing a little more about that. I know it was you, yeah, explain it to me because you're gonna do better than I would.

Connor Gross [00:17:42]:

I gotcha. yeah, so I started this product because I've always been interested in the idea of selling a digital product. Just didn't really know what I wanted to do, and so I wanted to give it a shot. So I bought the domain name, how to quit your job dot co. And, basically, the whole thesis around it is I sold this business, had 7 figures in the bank. And when it came time to graduate college, I was sitting around and all of my friends were getting jobs, and I didn't have another business idea. And my bank account was only draining every single month because I was just spending money and no more money was coming in. And I was really bored. And so I was like, what do I actually just got a job right now? I was like, I have no idea what to do. I don't have a business that I'm working on, like, what should I do? So I hit up an old manager that I used to have, and a software company that I worked at in Boston. And I was like, can I just work for you? Hey. Just gotten the CMO job, at this ecommerce software business. I really like the guy. I think he's really smart. I I think he is really smart. and I like the industry of e Commerce in general. So I was like, let me just work for you. till I figure out my next thing. And then once I figure out my next thing, you know, I might just jump. So I got that job, worked there for, like, 9 months got some value out of it and then ended up bouncing. But that whole time, when working there, I was like, damn, I can very much just see how people are going to get sucked into this. It was an easy lifestyle, easy paycheck, week to week, right, whatever. it's it's not a bad life, but what I quickly realized being further out from college is nearly all of my friends just don't like their jobs that much. and and this is not an episode to try to go and, like, shit on jobs or anything like that. Like, if you like your job and you like your team, that's awesome. Like, keep working on it. If you don't like your job, but, like, you like the idea of, like, having the stability, or not having to go and, like, wear every single hat in a business, like, work at another job. Right? Like, not downplaying that at all. I just found out a lot of my friends personally were miserable. And over the last 2 years, I would do some consulting calls, and I would be on calls with my friends. and, like, eventually just convinced, like, I don't know, a dozen or 2 people, like, two dozen people to go and quit their jobs and work for themselves. And I think through that process, I kind of quickly learned, like, there are ways to go and think about how to go and quit your job and work for yourself that not a lot of people talk about. and it's, like, it's a more straightforward path than you might actually expect. And so I think I wanted to go and take every single thing that I learned from those consulting calls and from calls with my friends and kinda bottle it up and package it into a digital product. that'll go and show people the path because I think what a lot of people realize or the story and narrative that I hear from a lot of people is I wanna quit my job, but I don't know what I'm gonna do. Right? And I think, like, that's the the most obvious thing. This product does not go and tell you what to do. but it does show you a pretty clear framework for how much money you need before you quit. Should you even quit in the first place when you go and decide to quit, what, like, what should you spend your time doing? And it's like, the reality is if you're like a biomechanical engineer, you probably shouldn't quit your job start an email marketing agency, like, probably easier and better ways for you to go make money. but I just have, like, 18 different case studies that I can go and show you how you can go and, do the same, like, quit your job and work for yourself. And, and the other thing is, like, 5 different things that you can do before you ever quit your job so that way you kind of derisk the path of entrepreneurship.

Andres Sanchez [00:21:01]:

And then when did you launch that how can people go and buy it? and what does it cost?

Connor Gross [00:21:08]:

Oh, yeah. I lost you last month. yeah, they can buy it pretty easily at how to quit your job dot CO, and it costs, a hundred bucks.

Andres Sanchez [00:21:17]:

Awesome. Perfect. I think that's super useful. And I know the course business or something like that gets a lot of bad rap, but I think this is a great idea, a unique idea. And I do agree. I'm we're we're pretty close in age, and I've got tons of of friends who hate their job. and It's funny because those are also the people who have never been able to understand when I talked about, like, oh, I made money online today. Like, oh, I make money online. And I'm always like, if you really hate it, like, you're really young, go live at home and go try and start something cool. We have so many tools We have the ability to literally do almost anything we want at this point in life with the internet. And they just don't get it. So, like, I feel like a course like yours, something visual case studies for them to read is is super impactful. So that'll also be linked in the bio below for anybody who wants to go check that out. I think it'll be super helpful. Yeah. I wanna talk. Yeah. because I was

Connor Gross [00:22:17]:

just gonna say quickly, like, on the digital course product business, I will say I never would have put myself as the type of person to do that maybe a year or 2 ago. I actually really liked the idea of not making money on my name, but, like, owning a bunch of companies nobody even knows that I own, and they just happen to go and shop with them. that's what I've always enjoyed. But, basically, the way I even went down that path in the first place is like meeting new people. I wanna go and jump on calls for people that I meet from newsletters, LinkedIn, Twitter, whatever. got to the point where more people wanted to talk than I could handle. sort of charging for it. And then I would charge, like, $200 for an hour long call. Right? almost all those calls were about how to go and quit your job and what to do afterwards. And so I was like, okay. I'm having all of these calls. It's $300 a piece. I'm just gonna do a do exactly what I'm telling every single question on these calls. wanna package it up and sell it for a $100. So I think that mindset reframe shift, whatever you wanna call it, at least helped me kinda have the confidence to go and put it out there too.

Andres Sanchez [00:23:20]:

Yeah. And I I love how you mentioned you just love talking to interesting people. I think we're very similar in that perspective. I could literally talk to a brick wall. I'm sure people I'm sure the people who have listened to all the episodes have heard me say that a million times, but I I just love talking. I love meeting people. I love interacting with people. So it's cool that that was where that kind of offers stemmed from. Moving away from that, you have this amazing real estate portfolio, $5,000,000 in storage right now. what is that kind of journey been like where yeah. I know you said your partner had a little bit of a real estate background, but still, I mean, You're relatively young, acquiring that much real estate in a short period of time is a huge accomplishment. I'd love I'd love to learn more about it.

Connor Gross [00:24:07]:

Yeah. So we bought our 1st property September of 2021. found it in a Facebook group. It was gonna sell it in 7 days. We flew down the next day to Dallas Texas, sell the property, offer 400,000 cash to buy it, and close it 7 days later. And I think anyone who's listening to this that owns real estate. It's funny to say that's the most absurd story to close on property that you didn't know about, in 7 days. but it's how it happened and how it's how it went down, and we ended up buying it from a wholesaler. so they already had title open or all that kind of stuff. From there, we spend pretty much the next year just getting really freaking good at operating self storage facilities remotely. And so we ended up buying more. We bought about 4 and once we bought that 4th 1, we're like, okay, we should buy a team that or not buy a team, build a team. and so after we bought that 4th, we pretty much spent that whole year getting a little bit of of a portfolio together, becoming a world class in terms of operating and managing these facilities. Manu said, great. Let's scale it up now. So we brought on an operations manager. We brought on a head of acquisitions, and we've just now hired 3 acquisitions associates as well. from doing all of that, we then are now, like, pretty much about 2 years into the business, almost 2 years, as of September. And our plan from here is pretty much just go and scale this into the moon. So it's really just about finding mismanaged properties from pop shops that are kind of in that sub institutional, like, $1,000,000 range roughly, and just taking them over, running them like a business, you know, taking the owner's cell phone number off the side of the building, putting in a call center, like, creating a Google listing, setting up a website, accepting credit card payments, like, managing the actual property, the way that it should be, and anyone with common sense would wanna go to manage it, and then slowly realizing the equity. I think the thing that maybe not a lot of people know about with real estate is, like, I think an ecommerce business, you make $1 profit for a year for ecommerce business. you can sell that business for $3. It's a, you know,

Andres Sanchez [00:26:04]:

3

Connor Gross [00:26:04]:

to 4 times, profit multiple on a lot of these businesses. a lot of real estate will go and trade at, like, 15 to 20 times profit. it's just how it works. It's the they're called cap rates instead. And so instead of a multiple you do an inverse of what's NOI divided by overall purchase price, and that's your cap rate. So take an example that we had for our 1st property. We bought we ended up going. And, the number's gonna be off here because I'm pulling up something in my head, but it's basically it was doing about $4000 a month. we already bought it for probably less than it is actually worth. so we bought it for $400,000. We got revenue up at that facility to just shy of $10,000. And then we reapproached the bank, and we said, hey. We're now doing almost $10,000 a month at this facility. What do you think it's worth? and based on products and different property comps in the area, they said, well, we would appraise this building at 1,250,000. So then we were able to go and pull out a loan at 50% of that purchase price or not purchase price appraisal value. and it was we pulled out

Andres Sanchez [00:27:06]:

$504,000.

Connor Gross [00:27:07]:

So the nice part about that property now is but for 400 appraised for 1.25. Got all of our cash out and plus an additional $100,000. And now that thing's still cash flows every single month. And so our pretty much game plan for all of these properties is go in, buy under market, stabilize it at an actual valuation that it will be worth, and then realize that we didn't keep on 10:30 wanting it to future properties.

Andres Sanchez [00:27:32]:

Man, that's that's awesome. Like, that's really, really, really big at your age to do all of these things, like, with your business partner and to go through. And I'm sure there's real estate gurus hosting big sessions who have not had this type of success. So, I mean, it's just amazing. Is it is it easy to find mom and pops storage units like, is is that has that been simple or not really?

Connor Gross [00:27:58]:

No. Not really. Just hundreds of calls a week, running Google ads, sending postcards, sending mailers, Like, we just do the blocking and tackling. And every few months, we find some good ones.

Andres Sanchez [00:28:10]:

Awesome. And you think real estate's gonna be where you shift, like, fully or you I know you have those 2 ecom brands. how's your time spent? 5050 between real estate and the ecom brands or 7040,

Connor Gross [00:28:25]:

or that's bad about

Andres Sanchez [00:28:26]:

70 30.

Connor Gross [00:28:27]:

You're good. I would say it's I would say it's pretty equal. in terms of, yeah, where we spend personally, I think running and operating businesses is more fun It's a little bit more creative. I like the dynamics. I like the fact that there's infinite scale, whereas, like, let's be honest, that one property that I just described to you Like, we're not gonna be able to get past, like,

Andres Sanchez [00:28:48]:

$12,000

Connor Gross [00:28:48]:

a month, for example, unless we just build more storage. And so Yeah. I think the fun part about business is that 1 month, you can make a $100,000, and then the next very next month, you can make

Andres Sanchez [00:28:59]:

$300,000

Connor Gross [00:29:01]:

that's really cool to me. And so in my mind, I like spending my time 5050, but, no, I would definitely probably steer a little bit more towards the business side.

Andres Sanchez [00:29:11]:

Got it. I I agree. I I tried to dip my foot in the real estate world pre COVID, and me and my buddy just like you, I have a bet friend who has a little bit of a real estate background. We wanted to buy college housing just because there's so many big colleges in Florida. And we we they we got our offer approved. We went into escrow. We're about to buy this 22 in Gainesville for, like, $71,000. And there was renters already at, like, and all the other units in the complex around the college. and then things started to get a little weird. And the AC unit was fifteen years older than what they said it was when the inspector showed up. Hello, Nick Nacks. and and we bailed. We, like, kinda freaked out. We bailed over, like, 7000 extra dollars.

Connor Gross [00:30:00]:

Yeah.

Andres Sanchez [00:30:00]:

The units the units sold 2 weeks later for 84. And then now, I think, sold, like, 6 months ago for a 120. And we were gonna buy this 3 years ago. So, I mean, another great learning experience, but it's it's I mean, like, what you just described, like, doing the work, getting out there, like, finding the right properties, Like, I think for us, we just didn't do as much as we needed to. And then we just weren't educated. When the moment came to, like, take the opportunity, we didn't know enough freaked out. And then now looking back, it's like, probably shouldn't have nickeled and dimed over a couple grand there.

Connor Gross [00:30:36]:

So I think I think that a big learning for me too. it's it's an education thing, right, when in terms of, like, making decisions and where the risk actually lies, right, that you guys bailed because you know it was too risky. you thought it was too risky because you didn't know what the property was actually worth. Right? I think it's an education thing. I think with real estate in particular too, like, that first deal that we did because it was $400,000 because it was all cash and, like, we weren't taking a loan out at all. So it's, like, each myself and my partner were throwing in, like, probably 2.20 each 200 each for the actual property and some working capital to fix it up a little bit. we were also getting cold feet before closing. Right? And, like, this is a home 1 home run deal on hindsight. I'm telling you, like, it just appraised for 1.2, home run deal. We were getting cold feet right before closing because we're like, we don't know what we're doing. Is this actually a good deal? Like, should we go and be putting in all of this capital into, like, buying this thing that we've never done before? And I think the question that reframed it a little bit in our heads was If not this deal, then what? Right? If we're not buying this property, okay, that's fine. But what are we going to buy? It because we both knew that we wanted basis something we've talked about for the last 6 months that we wanna buy a deal. If we work out right to this one, what one was gonna come along that was gonna be better than this one. we thought about it for, like, an hour. And we're just like, no. I guess this is this is probably it. and thank god we did because it ended up really giving us the confidence to then do the next deal and, now when we see deals come across our desk, we can kind of pencil them out very quickly and know what is a good deal and what is not much faster because we've had the confidence to do it once we have the education of having done it now for the last 2 years.

Andres Sanchez [00:32:12]:

Yeah. I think the good the the number one takeaway here is do your homework 1, but take the leap of faith. If you can financially take that leap of faith and you think that it's smart, having cold feet, being scared is normal. Like, you probably never spent that much money on one single thing. Go in and just give it a shot. I think real estate is super important. I will be investing in real estate for the next 30 years of my life or more. So it's it's great to hear your perspective from, like, the storage unit side and and it's it's all great. I saw that you had said you've been on a 120 podcasts or a 120 plus podcasts, which is which is awesome. This is maybe putting you on the spot a little bit here, but what's the biggest thing you've learned from all of these experiences? I mean, a 120 podcasts, multiple speakers, multiple questions, What do you think is the biggest takeaway that you've learned from these experiences?

Connor Gross [00:33:15]:

So, okay. I mean, I'll I'll give you a couple of things just come to mind, like, right off the bat. One, I think that the happiest people I know have the highest sense of agency. And so what I mean by that is that anybody who feels like they're in control of their life and their decisions. They are, like, hands on the happiest. And I find that that's often very true with a lot of entrepreneurs and people who run companies. because they feel like they can allocate their own time, their own capital, their own, you know, emotional stakes, whatever, into the things that bring them fulfillment. So I'd say that's the first thing. the second thing is gonna be, like, a little bit more, like, gray and honestly fluffy, but I just believe it's so core to my being. the majority of those episodes were people that I've interviewed. So we used to run a podcast. Haven't done it in, like, 7 plus months at this point just because I was, like, traveling a lot and wanted to work more in the companies. there I would say there were, like, 3 types of podcast guests in particular. Right? So there's, like, the seat rated guests where it's they're not, like, good. They're not good at talking, and they don't do interesting things. There's the b rated guess where they're good at talking, but they don't do that interesting of things. and then there's a c rated guest. Oh, sure. And there's the a rated guest, who they're good at talking and they do interesting things. Right? like, I think the biggest takeaway that I've learned is this, like, people who are high achievers people who get a lot done in life just intrinsically just want it. And I don't know if, like, if it's just the cliche of, like, winners win. but I've I don't know how to quantify it, I guess. And I don't know if what the separation is or whatever it is, but that's just been like the truest thing for me. is that, like, people who want things more and, like, are willing to put the time and effort in, get the results. It's never the smarter people and the people that went to the Ivy League Schools or the you know, people who are just, like, naturally so charismatic, whatever, it's almost always just people who just spend a stupid amount of time doing something that end up getting the results. so I don't know. I I if I find a lot of comfort in that fact,

Andres Sanchez [00:35:15]:

Yeah. No. I mean, those those are amazing answers. And, I mean, I think I think this episode has been just absolutely amazing. So many different key points that people can take notes from and and and learn from you. You've accomplished so much in a short period of time, and that says a lot about you as an individual. It says a lot about your drive termination. so I it's it's really been an honor to have you on the show. Something I like to ask every guest as we come to the tail end is simple, Connor. What are you excited about in the near future?

Connor Gross [00:35:49]:

Right now, we're hiring a CEO for one of our e commerce brands. So, I'm really excited to kinda learn how to do that and go through that hiring process.

Andres Sanchez [00:35:58]:

That's awesome. That's that's a unique answer there. It's really exciting, huge step for you and your businesses. Just maybe a little side question. Like, what are you looking for in a CEO?

Connor Gross [00:36:09]:

That's a good question. so we just got 600 applicants over the last day. And I was kinda all all morning trying to go through it. So, like, I've we narrowed it down to 25 now. So I have a lot of interviews in my future. the tough part that I've realized is we are we have a small team. So whoever we hire for the CEO role, they can't be like a CEO of a five hundred person company in the past. Like, because those people are great at strategy and organizational planning and recruiting, but we need somebody who can roll up their sleeves and kinda do the work. so, like, in my mind, the CEO who ran a small business in the past, is gonna probably be the main criteria. You know, big enough where they could set strategy and grow tragically, small enough where they're not afraid to roll up their sleeves and jump in Shopify or Klaviyo. If something breaks last minute,

Andres Sanchez [00:36:56]:

Amazing. That's that that that's great. where can people follow you? I want to make sure anybody listening can go and interact with you. and follow you on this journey?

Connor Gross [00:37:08]:

Yep. It's atc_grou on all platforms, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, And then, I wrote a weekly newsletter at bizbringsstorms.com where it's just me sharing different business lessons and ideas and things I find interesting.

Andres Sanchez [00:37:22]:

Perfect. And all of that is gonna be linked below the newsletter, the how to quit your job and not run out of money. offer and then all of Connor's socials. Connor, I really appreciate it. This has been an amazing episode. I look forward to continuing to stay in touch and getting to watch you on this journey, and continue to succeed. And thank you so much for taking the time to come on.

Connor Gross [00:37:47]:

Of course. Thank you Andres.