Special Guest: US Navy Vet, Real Estate Investor & Entrepreneur - Trevor Methena

With a real estate portfolio of over 20 properties, Navy veteran Trevor Methena now runs a successful HomeSmiles franchise in Austin, Texas—all while balancing a full-time job and family life. In this episode, we dive into his journey from military service to entrepreneurship, how he built his rental empire, and why he chose franchising as his next big move.

Transcript

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if anybody has any questions about starting a franchise real estate how you do it with a full time jobs the idea of protecting your assets whether it's your the home that you live in or rental properties or your own your own business for who work mortar type business but it's more allowing me to be strategic with everybody rises yeah it's not a zero something you don't do pretty much anything you can think of that's not requiring a license it does take some education to the consumer just to kick things off if you wanna introduce yourself a little bit about you know where you're from where you grew up sure um so I grew up in Indiana um my southern Indiana like a teeny tiny little town 10,000 12,000 people something like that um my parents are both in the Navy and they met over in Europe and uh went over to Maryland I was born in Maryland spent about five years there and my mom was like hey you gotta get out um she was already out and she's like hey you gotta get out too I'm going to Indiana whether you like it or not so that's where we went grew up small town and you know had that real small town kind of childhood the whole time so not a lot going on but good nonetheless yeah I'm not too familiar with Southern Indiana I've driven through Indiana but leaving Great Lakes cause I was in the Navy driving back to New York but I've hit up like Gary which was okay not the best spot but I'm sure you know home of Michael Jackson I think that's like the only thing they have going for them oh yeah it's stark difference from Gary Indiana yeah for Jasper Indiana so oh nice yeah so a little what did your parents do when in the Navy so that my mom was a was she a postal clerk yeah so I think that's what it was back then in the 80s and then my dad was air crew so he was a structural mechanic picked up air crew went to I think Wichita Falls and he helped with Tacmo which is like that wire that goes into the sea for subs and he was a loadmaster as well so he had to like do all the math to make sure the planes were loaded up correctly oh wow and then did you join the Navy yes yeah okay so let's talk a little bit about that so were your parents supportive of that decision considering they're both sailors oh yeah oh yeah for sure um I didn't go in right away at 18 you know I went I I floundered around for a little bit you know had a apartment car payment all the real world adult things and um then at 22 that's when I went in it's nice okay yeah I joined a little bit early a little bit later too I think there's some benefit to that like would you say you were happy that you joined it a little bit of an older age to get through training absolutely like it was a breeze just being gray man um I I like I failed the third PRT because um I didn't go through like this magnetic fields that counted your laps I went through I I didn't go through them all the way on my last lap and it failed me um and they did not know who I was until that happened they were like they were asking like were you here the whole time I said yes I've been here the whole time haha that's awesome that sounds about right though yeah but um yeah getting to my first command though being the like four or five years older definitely was like way harder like we were just not aligned as far as like other people in the barracks and what not um so that was a little tougher but yeah I was 2 years older and we had some older guys that actually my like best friends in the barracks were um this one kid his name is Josh he uh he was like 5 or 6 years older but he was super chill like he was like a hippie like lived in a van played in a band kind of dude but it's a kind of I think that's probably one of the better things about joining the military as a a little bit older is sometimes you find your people and then for the younger folks they kind of look to you as as a mentor but what was your rate I t oh nice okay and then what ships were you on no ships I was on I was very weird I didn't try it I put down small boys in San Diego and I ended up with like on my dream shade or whatever and the weird thing was our whole class got almost everything they asked for on their dream sheets and it was weird things like Oklahoma and the guy got Tinker Air Force Base Oklahoma um different stuff like that and um but I got it was a small boat security command I think they're called Mezron back in the day in Maritime Security Squadron all right yeah I went to school some Mezron folks yeah okay so did that and then come log Westpac in Singapore so we were it was just an office job at that point so all the MSC ships and things like that that's been pretty cool yeah yeah spent three days on an Indonesian ship that's the most time at sea I I had I mean I know some Navy folks have consider you lucky I think for me I hated being on the ship but I loved being in the ocean so it was like well the only way for me to get there is to be on a boat um yep how long did you serve 11 active and then four in the reserves oh what did you get to skip your rate when you went into the reserves barely by the skin of my teeth so I got out they did not let me um get a billet directly into the reserves we were undermanned raped and so they wanted me to stay active duty and it was it was like legitimately punishment from everything that the career counselor said so I had to get out I went to MEPs and they were they were just low on money it was around the end of around October so probably August is when I went in two maps had to go through the whole thing again I did the whole spend the night at the hotel so now not even 22 I'm like 31 doing this that was interesting yeah but this senior chief saw me and he's like he just points at me like prior enlisted like yes senior chief and he rolled he rolled me through the whole process and I got out of there in like 25 minutes so but had to do all the maps again and then they were so low on money I was gonna take BM BM one just be a BM one just to get back into the reserves my wife was pregnant we needed TRICARE like all the all the things I want to get the um the biggest reason second biggest reason to go the reserves was transfer education benefits as well to my kids so I had to do I the timing just wasn't there for active duty so I had to go into the reserves and hit that button and now all of it you know all that worked out so did my undergrad while I was on active duty and um NBA while through a my company that my former company and so I didn't need the benefi or I didn't need the GI Bill so I wanted to give it to the kids or at least one of them yeah I don't think people realize especially civilians like joining the reserves is so heavily dependent on fiscal year funding and like needs of the military like I tried going reserves I was a fire controlman and they're like you don't exist in the reserves like that's right based on the current fiscal year like can you come back in January they wanna like put me in depth until like January until like they actually you know money dropped like this is so weird they were gonna actually put you in depth too yeah they're gonna have me put it going to depth just because like they wanted to hold on to me they didn't wanna lose me as like a number right okay um but yeah it was a pretty well so they drugged their feet so long though and I was willing to go in as a BM one they drugged their feet so long October rolled around and it was like October 2nd when the fiscal year re could are rolled over October 2nd he called and goes hey we can finally get you in his it I was like sweet so I went right then and signed the paperwork and then then it took they were it was all that sequestration all that stuff going on right yeah and so my my packet sat on someone's desk somewhere probably in Millington for months I couldn't get an ID I went through two drill periods without an ID and not getting paid and not having truck care paying out of pocket for my wife's appointments and everything while she was pregnant and it was it was wild we could not get anybody over there to to do anything and they finally they had to hire someone and then that person had to do all the processing so funny story I I attempted to go Navy Reserve I was like screw this Lego Marine Corps Reserve you know they're even more broke than the Navy for reservice but like five years later I went to go get my disabled veteran ID and they're like oh we can't give you an ID you're still active in the reserves and I was like what what Navy Reserves they're like yeah we have you down as FC one Navy Reserve and I was like well then I've missed like 65 Muster's oh my gosh yep yeah you should have been admin Sept a bunch of times yeah there was a Mike they ended up issuing me like 5 or 6 different DD two fourteens each for one like processing cycle and I was like this is so stupid so I got time and I didn't actually serve so I'm still currently fighting that but that's that's funny so okay so you went so how long has it been since you've been out of the reserves 2019 October 2019 was when I when I got out okay so so it's been a few years so what was that like kind of leaving active duty getting into the reserves like what was it like re entering or entering I guess you join older so re entering the workforce well it was it was um nothing went to plan I was I'm a meticulous planner I'm not the person who went to got out of the Navy just to go figure out what I was gonna do I had started a gym and um I um I had a partner that started it in the town that we were gonna move to here in Texas um a year prior and so he started it got it going I was doing everything I could remotely from Singapore so like 12 13 hour difference and he was trying to grow it we were doing okay and everything I got here and we were actually not doing okay um he was essentially he was a slob and we're in a gym where you're asking people to have their face on the ground you know what yeah do a burpee into this pile of dog hair please and so I was not okay with it he we could not even agree on that I made a huge mistake and I bailed quickly and had to get into just corporate project management it type work yeah yeah that's I feel like there's two general paths for most military it's it or law enforcement like and I've seen some of the veterans that go ITM like you weren't it when you were in were you field services so so what was so project management for it what did what does that mean okay so bait remember how I was not on a ship so on the ship you have to keep your servers and your switches and all the gear you're in charge of keeping it well maintained uh configured all that good stuff on shore though that's rented by a civilian company like NMCI or 1 net where the two companies whenever I was in depending on if you're in in the US or not um so that I had no admin access I didn't know how to configure servers routers whatever um so I had to like literally manage trouble tickets to a desk in wherever it was right so my job got to be about organizing and managing the operations of just keeping the tickets for going ask you know requesting this person for this this software get this person a new keyboard get this person this or that and that was where I kind of built those kind of project management skills and that that was what really transferred over oh wow okay so you went like government contracting afterwards no no just regular yep civilian it was for Dell for a hospital system so Dell contracted by a hospital system yeah fully fully civilian fully corporate so smart smart I went contracting you went the smarter out that's that's awesome so okay so what so you had a little taste of entrepreneurship but kind of like the worst case scenario so let's talk a little bit about you know what LED you into starting your own business you know from having been in you know corporate USA for so long oh sure I still had that bug I I always wanted to have a have my own business and so really I was talking with a friend we're in Austin Texas and I don't know if you know how much you know about it but it's a huge startup scene just kind of like Silicon Valley they call it even Silicon Hills so huge tech startup all these you know wannabe unicorn apps are coming out of here and all that good stuff I had no clue about any of that I didn't know what I wanted to do so a friend of mine was like we were talking about it he was the same mindset and he basically said well why don't you just start investing in real estate and I said no that's I I don't have money for that like what what are you even talking about he said no you can still like get loans you can get mortgages from rentals and and do it with no or low money down and there's all these options and stuff and so I was called him out and I said no you're lying but then I went and looked and researched and it was like oh no he was correct and then so that was really the first business was building a rental portfolio and making it a full legit business with you know in income expenses Pnls and making sure that all the margins were right and continuing continuing to acquire as much as possible and learning the ropes of all kinds of different aspects of of real estate did you manage those rental properties yourself or did you bring on a property management company little bit of both and still to this day it's about the same so I started out on my own and did you know did the listings myself I'd order the pictures I kind of ran it through my dad who lives up in Ohio where the rentals are and a really good realtor that I've been with the entire time just kind of building that team and being able to list it myself manage getting showings and all that it was super clunky though very hard to do so eventually I went with a property management company and they were terrible and then I went with the fired them and went with a better one and took me about two years to fully flush all of the bad stuff from that first first company so besides that there's also I also work with a medical group that that um leases about 10 of my properties and they do short term rental or midterm rentals for nurses I think they do some hospice they own like a medical facility and they also are just plugged into that network so I'm just the regular landlord and I take care of the bigger mechanical stuff if they need it but otherwise they furnish it they keep them cleaned updated paint stuff they put in they put in some porches different things like that just really been a great partnership with them and it's very low maintenance for me which is which is helpful so did you did you go the like multi unit route or are you purchasing like full houses they're all all single family houses one duplex but the rest are single family as of now so I'm I want to move into that down the road to get some more apartment complexes small to big multi family yeah I know that's that's interesting I I started down the same path to um say similar stories I hear from people when I talk to them about you know what should I do next and they're always like this property management company sucks and they like set me back a couple months it's it's definitely hit or miss anywhere in the country but um yeah so did you use your VA loan to to flip those so not exactly so whenever we moved in or whenever we came to Austin my wife had she she came six months early from Singapore and got us kind of set up she stayed in California with her parents for a little bit and then she moved out here got the house and everything like that but I wasn't here to do the VA loan or anything like that so she got it um and then I moved out about six months later by the time we started doing these rentals was when it Covid hit and we needed to get a bigger place because we had our third child so we went and did a new build with the VA loan so we were able to put zero money down there that meant by the time we sold the other property which was pretty high not the height not the absolute tip top of the market but rather high in the market we were able to sell that and use all of those proceeds to start purchasing rental properties smart yep that's definitely a recommended way to go I mean there are a lot of companies out there that talk about how to use your VA loan which is kind of the path that I took but once you get a decent like when you get a decent amount of money back from selling a property and you don't wanna pay pet capital gains and you roll that into another purchase some like there's so much more benefits going that routes that's pretty cool so let's talk about yeah let's just say if you're active duty too like if I that's one thing if I would have gone back to do I would have bought a duplex in alcohol something like that when I got there or and and like maximize the bedrooms I'll be a single guy or you know no kids at the very least and maximize the bedrooms and have almost everybody paying the the mortgage and that would have been I mean amazing like 2,000 eight 2,010 time frame um but I think it's still doable now anybody listening that's active duty still and you haven't bought a house you should look into the term house hacking um if you if you're single or or no kids um if you can suffer through that for a couple years you're gonna be set up for huge success so yeah I've had a few veteran realtors on and they everybody says the same thing don't wait till you get out start the second you can yep so not that's great advice let's talk about um home smiles and the current adventure that you're on so yeah so it's a home maintenance home property maintenance company and I guess not home is it property maintenance company because we do both residential and commercial retail the whole nine yards so um the big items we do are pressure washing window washing dryer vent cleaning um gutter cleaning things like that so the preventative maintenance that can really get you hemmed up as far as protecting your asset and you know causing some large capital output at the later on you know if your gutters are filled with everything that is allowing all this water to just fall right onto the foundation you're gonna have huge problems so pressure washing you know your you could have slip hazards in your house so I I was really when I when I was approached about it because it's a franchise that was immediately what resonated was the idea of protecting your assets whether it's your the home that you live in or uh rental properties or your own your own business brick and mortar type business you know you're eliminating some liabilities from a bunch of different angles doing so um the the founder of the franchise same deal he he kind of started because he was also a lawyer owned his own rental properties and saw the litigation from landlords being sued for negligence so a dryer vent fire if you're not cleaning out the dryer vent lint it can catch fire super easy and you know he's seen cases where houses have gone up in flames and you know it's a huge tragedy a really bad situation all around so it really resonated with me um so it's a local business right we can only we only service the Austin area um but my wife and I run it together uh for well she runs most of it because I still have a regular full time job as well um so yep we're just continuing on it's getting it's getting warm now so we really expect to like hit our stride um we've worked out a lot of the bugs operationally right now and we're hoping that this you know March and April start to really pick up and and we start to you know get everything lined out and start to grow right so question for listeners who are interested in the franchise model I've had other guests on who um who either started their own franchise or bought into a franchise so what does that look like um in just in you know in general not necessarily to home smiles but for you to start a business that is a franchise um what are their first few steps that you took so I was uh cold approached first over LinkedIn just an email hey have you been interested in um franchises by any chance I said actually no but let's talk because I was looking to buy a business but by like a mom and pop business of some sort probably in the trades is what I was looking for um but every time I went down that route you start to open up the books just a little bit and you start to get really scared of what you find in there you're like I can't trust any of this so you're starting a little fret a little more fresh on a franchise yet you don't have to put every single step into place so um I got cold emailed about and I'd worked with the headhunter that they make all their money from the franchisor so you know I'm not paying this person they're they're literally just kind of making the birkring some introductions we had a quick call to see what my what my goals were what I was interested in and he brought back like three different options and the home spells was the first one he showed and I shut down after that when I don't I barely remember the other two I was like this one completely resonated with me um I like that there were so many options within the the model of of services that you can give and so we we went right down the rabbit hole and then you the the next couple steps are you're starting to meet some of the team and start to get what's called the FDD it's the document that outlines everything and um I think it's franchise disclosure document probably is what FDD stands for um so it lines out all the cost like how much royalties are gonna be what are your fees what what all is a part of everything really and so you get to sit with that for a little bit and then you meet different parts of the team and that's when you start to get to you know are we gonna do a lease of are you ready to sign an agreement and get the ball rolling with your SBA loan if if applicable um pay some franchise fees to get started or at least a deposit on them and then another couple steps we went to a training so we have went out to Northern California for the training that's where the headquarters is so I went first and then it wasn't originally the plan for my wife to be involved but some job situations that kind of occurred made us have to pivot and she jumped right in which has been really great to be able to have that because honestly I don't know how much I could have done with my regular job it picked up at the exact same time as the franchise started so so I went to California she went a couple months maybe one or two months later and then um as you get closer you start to have to knock out all these checklist um as you get ready for your opening date you're aligning uh ordering we have to order a van and get that delivered to us we have to hire technician and then set up training for the technician so we had someone from corporate come out here you do a couple um for us we did a couple houses do a run through of the whole process and then they kind of like they pretty much let you go at that point um obviously they have like a sale center they have a bunch of support operationally administratively things like that coaching sales coaching things like that and then then you're off to the races and just have to start you still feel like you start from the ground from from ground zero just it's really hard building trust um spinning a million plates in the in the air um so you know the biggest bonus of the franchise is there's sops there's checklist there is a backend system already set up that you didn't have to do those were the big appealing items from franchising for me because of having the other job and not feeling like I would have the time to set up all that backend and build that infrastructure as well yeah I think that's one of the major benefits of that I've been a consultant on the development of franchise manuals and that process for smaller franchises and it's just like I definitely recommend for people that are interested in starting a business but are intimidated by developing all of those things like sometimes a franchise just the best option if there's something that like like with you like if it resonates with you and if it's something that you think you could do and be proud of then yeah 100% so what was your um what was your wife's rate when she was in was she it also oh no she she wasn't in um I met her she was in college she went to UCSD while I was stationed in San Diego oh nice go try and I went to UCSD oh nice haha um no that's cool smart civilian haha yeah I always laugh what the dual military like hey listen whatever work but sometimes when I hear it someone married a civilian I'm like good job yeah I don't know I I was I was warned plenty to to probably not go down that route if possible but you know it works yeah it works for some for sure no I mean I have tons of friends who are you know they've gone out and they're still married to who they met you know at our command and I consider them unique oh yeah it's the yeah anyway I've even seen this separate branches so a Navy officer in an army officer this guy this guy that I worked with he was great but yeah they were married and they he was in Singapore and I forget where I think she was in the US somewhere interesting for 2 3 years so and they did that a lot yeah I I have friends who you know cause I was on amphib so I have friends who met like Marines and I have Marines friends who met Navy folk and they uh they made it work even though duty stations were tended to be completely opposite of or like on other sides of the world but hey whatever whatever works for folks what was um I'm just curious what was Singapore like so I was an E5 and then an E6 and it was the most expensive place in the world two out of three of the years I was there very tough to me very tough as a E5E6 even when we met that like when I did my check in with the Admiral he uh he said that like first thing he's like be careful it's really hard as an E5 to do this so um super expensive you could get everything done in Singapore from a tourist perspective in about three days um and then but the jump off to everywhere else in Asia was absolutely excellent so we spent about the first year and got to get some good traveling including our honeymoon we got married right before we came out and so um we got to do all that traveling then we had our first son um he was the only one we had while we were there but you know traveling definitely slowed down at um after after having him born but it was it was pretty good I met a lot of local folks as well that I got along with just through like Crossfit basically got to meet you know a lot of locals they liked us a little better then a normal permanent resident um because it wasn't looked at like we were taking someone else's job or like a local Singaporean's job um because we were there on behalf of the military plus they have national service and I saw it firsthand when someone it followed people all well into adulthood if they got out of national service somehow if they kind of what people perceived as kind of squeaked out or you know kind of got some rule did by an exception or something it was it was a big deal there so the fact that all of our all the military that they knew were all volunteered it was a it was they looked at it like with some reverence yeah that's I had a mentor he just recently retired I haven't talked to him in a while he was a Navy seal and he kind of took me under under his wing to learn like some outdoorsy stuff but um he talked to me about doing training in Singapore and he just made it sound fucking scary like really the wildlife and like to me Singapore is like a jungle like Singapore Indonesia and a couple other like Java and like some other places he made sound like just way back when like I would not be surprised if a t Rex popped out likes like just like this this the background scene of Jurassic Park like that's how he described and I'm like are you just making this sound cool because you were there just messing around the jungle or like is this what it's really like so that that's definitely Thailand and Indonesia Borneo probably a lot of places in the Philippines as well but I mean Singapore whenever we were there is a full concrete jungle it's six million people live in a 30 square kilometer rock yeah and it's hacked yeah I mean my mom's one of my mom's best friends is from Singapore and she lives in New York and she considers it similar to New York oh yeah I don't know why I don't know he made it sound like terrifying and I was like well I don't wanna go well in the 90s early 2 it was definitely a lot less um built up and I mean it was yeah total jungle where we lived um was the northern part of it and it was a lot less um less built up we lived in what was called the black and whites and these Japanese bungalows they were built during World War 2 um I and so like the Brits were up there because it was a British colony they got rolled out during World War 2 they got they left in eight days when the Japanese came on to the island they left in eight days and left all the locals um it was really it was a rough rough they had a rough go at it with yeah with World War 2 and um but we lived in these big houses that were probably eight to 10 thousand dollars a month uh rent if we were having to pay for them but we had jungle cobras we were doing like a MWR like clean up around the neighborhood and it was kind of a silly because Singapore is very clean like they say um there is hardly any sort of um litter trash there's no spitting there's no gum all those rules those are real um and so we were in these like huge um gutter huge like gutters that they have because it rains so um torrentially and we were in there pulling them out and I said you know what I'm gonna stop like blindly pulling stuff out of here and sure enough 10 minutes later a Cobra was found I would have freaked out if it was anywhere near me and we got pictures of it we had like an MC mass communication person with us and took pictures of it was so cool like we kind of chased after it to go get a better look turned around one time opened up the hood and we just ran everybody ran we're like no we're good yeah no that's in the monkeys there was a ton of monkeys there they would steal your groceries um you were instructed like if they try and grab your groceries you let them have them it's not worth it they will go for the jugular yeah I'm trying to get bit by a monkey no yeah see I've always I've never been on a west pack I've only ever been to South America and I did some stuff contracting that took me on the other side of the world but yeah I've never done a west pack but you know there's just some things that folks will say and they say it all nonchalantly like oh yeah you know there's monkeys snakes and trees and I'm like no oh yeah I mean the first time I saw snakes and trees were real yeah that's terrifying you're walking like this the whole time yeah absolutely fucking terrifying and like I love the outdoors I love hiking like I did tons of like jungle excursions when I was in South America but that was also the first time I saw one monkey eat another monkey and I was like tap out like I'm good like nature is crazy I'm ready to go back to the city the only thing I got to worry about is black widows like I'm good with that but you mentioned Westpac though so the Singaporean Navy folks that I got to work with we did a bunch of exercises with all the Asian countries the all the Southeast Asian countries and so Singapore Navy you join and you don't have a choice but to retire you have to do 20 to 30 years no matter what if you join unless you maybe medically there's a thing you're not allowed to leave the country not even without permission so you cannot like you can't go on vacation to even Indonesia which is like a 30 minute boat ride to Baton um I could be a little bit wrong on that but that is how is explained to me and but the the ones that I worked with they stay on the same ship for a lot longer than we do way way more than three to five years like 10 to 12 years potentially wow um but so most of the guys I got to talk to we did a west pack and it was the best time of their life they all looked like when they talked about it they looked at like you're the best vacation you ever had that was how they how they saw their west back yeah I mean all the good ports and time and I wonder what their west back looks like I mean I know for us it's all just Asian countries there's some lucky folks that'll get to do like exercises with Australia so they pull into Australia and New Zealand but those I feel are so rare and I have a lot of you know after see school everybody splits up right East Coast West Coast so I have a lot of friends on the East Coast that did like little European tours nothing crazy you know six to nine months tops like I lucked out by going to South America but I'm just like I was good it's you know I don't know I think the more I Learned about like I Learned that the deadliest snake is lives in the Amazon which is where we were just fucking around in the Amazon I'm like y'all didn't get my daughter would probably know say again she would probably know the name of it I I forget my daughter is obsessed with snakes oh really see she loves them now okay so I I do like snakes I don't like snakes that are aggressive so like we have rattlesnakes out here and I I'm always getting rid of them like rattlesnakes is where I draw the line right okay like that most most because like I have no choice but to deal with them all the time cause I live in wine country so they're just everywhere but anything after that right anything after that I'm like I am good like if this thing can kill me just because it's pissed off like where I accidentally walk past it no Bueno like I'm good but we have a lot of rattlesnakes here too in Texas area and all right I have not really come across one yet but everybody else has and they have been they've become silent too my friend's kid walk past when it did not rattle and just jumped out and bit him in the ankle he was a big you know high school kids he was fine it hurt really bad but it did not rattle before him no warning went right for you know chose violence yeah see that makes me nervous too so I go hiking a lot out here so I'm in I'm in Southern California I'm up in like the Idlewild area so I live in Temecula wine country and I go hiking out there all the time but like it's rattlesnakes new season right now like it's starting to warm up they're all coming out so I know that I have to wear like snake gators when I go hiking and like before I let my dog out I have to go outside and like check the area but um like I love little garden snakes like occasionally I'll go grab one of the garden snakes or the king the king snakes that we have out here in California and I'll actually bring them to my yard because we have field mice because of the vineyards and I don't want them to eat my vegetables so I like I'll just go grab a snake from the park like just please stay here eat all the mice you want oh that's awesome yeah your daughter might like the reptile show in Anaheim every year oh she would probably love it she watches this YouTube people from Minnesota that have a ton of yeah uh snakes and everything she'll wanna do all that stuff and I'm I'm still terrified of anything I hate them all what what is how did that happen how did she I don't I don't know I really don't but she loves it she's hilarious she it whatever she gets into she really really gets into it and it's been snakes for a while so wow you guys have to get a little ball python little docile I she can get a snake when she moves out and that's 10+ years from now she's eight she's eight years old so you got yeah you're more than welcome to get a snake just gotta wait like 10 years and you had your own address yeah that's funny I had a lot of ball pie so growing up my brothers had reptiles iguanas and things like that but I'm from New York I'm on the South Bronx and I don't know what it is with people in the South Bronx they love snakes so you cannot walk around the Bronx without seeing some random dude with an 11 foot banana snake or a ball python they're everywhere they're more common than dogs and yeah it's so weird why there's so many snakes there and there's a lot of snake breeders there too so any given moment so I think that's kind of where I started to like snakes but then the more I Learned about them in the million different variety of venomous snakes was I started to like them a little bit less but no that's funny so what's it like managing a business with so you have how many kids do you have now and you said a son and a daughter three kids three kids all 11 8 and 5 oh wow really young back to back yeah a couple years in between yeah so what's it like you know with your wife running the the franchise and you working your regular business and the rentals how's that dynamic work it is not easy that's for sure it is very stressful especially with just the reactivity that's required from a new business so you know you can only do so much prepared or preparation um but there's still a lot of reaction and you just need to be prepared for reaction um your you can you know you can have run into an issue that's the first time you have it no matter how much you planned you know you still gonna run into different issues for the first time and have to continually make adjustments so um it's it's been very difficult and stressful but you know the kids are into it they're always asking they've done some social media with us around it we have other ideas as well for for adding them into it so they're all they're bought into it um you know my luckily my job is work from home I do it in at my house my regular job um I've done it for a while so I'm pretty good with it and I have a good uh pretty good leadership team and all that good stuff so um additionally the rentals they are down I'm down to like 2 to 3 hours a week tops is my was is my average to to work on them so um kind of can do everything simultaneously it's just really all of our focuses into a home smiles right yeah and how many rentals are you at right now 20 nice okay yeah you know in half a while yeah it's yeah we would like to build we're not we're just not sure quite yet and with the you know it's a little bit unknown to me about the like whether are we in a recession are we heading for one is it going to be worse than last time um so you know there's a little opportunity to go after some other properties but the prices are still really high and the interest rates are still really high we're probably gonna just hold tight for a little bit longer um I want to eventually start getting some multi family down here and utilize Home Smiles as our property maintenance company too right so be able to help uh you know help get a better um be able to afford to be a little more competitive on the acquisition side because we know our expenses will be lower yeah yeah I something that I've been talking about on the channel is I've been um purchasing land okay because right now everything's been up in the air with with houses and I've looked like I'm buying a house in Arizona right now and I was you know I'm looking I'm buying a house in upstate New York and Virginia and I'm just like it's so there's a lot of unknown right now a lot of uncertainty so I've been going for for land and okay I found that land has been a pretty good um side quest I guess because you know you can rent out land there's tons of wellness groups that are popping up now and tons of like van lifers so I rent out pieces of my property people that are passing through you know van life folks and then I rent out pieces of land to wellness groups working with an outdoor company right now there are non profit they're gonna be um one of my part of my land in Wyoming there's a I'm sorry yeah in Wyoming there's a like a mountainside so they're gonna do like rock climbing retreats so I also have been talking a little bit to folks about about um everything I've Learned since I started purchasing land cause I think for veterans you have this amazing thing called the VA loan and there's tons of opportunities and other you know business loans USDA grants and things like that to purchase property and and just land you know not just surface rights but you can purchase subsurface rights you know if you wanted to do anything like that but I think I think people are very set on just starting a business something that's tangible that they can sell to people they can throw up any commerce store but I'm like real money is gonna be into purchasing property property and land um so question about home smiles as a franchise owner are you um do you own the rights for Austin now yes yeah you buy territory um you and they're they're broken up for us it's like broken up by 250,000 residents or you know population so we had to buy like sets of zip codes for as much as you're looking to do so we bought enough territory that we should hopefully be the only ones in Austin for the foreseeable future so right yeah I did not like the idea of of having to share it yeah no I mean that that makes sense um I think it's interesting that they did that that way cause I've definitely seen where it's done by County Line for some of the smaller franchises just a little bit easier to do it that way but by zip code is interesting so you just probably buy like 5 or 6 or however many packets of zip codes to own that yeah county but it's more allowing me to be strategic with the the demographics of the zip codes or the you know the the salary ranges or the average salary for household salaries or things like that um so you could be what much more strategic like for instance there's a town above um Georgetown which is a suburb of Austin in the north and it's called Sun City and it's extremely affluent um retirees it's like a 55+ city um something like that and I didn't have that zip code in my original request so I had to make like a change request to get it in there and I swapped it out for one that did wasn't as appealing and it was further away from my from our home base so you know that's that eats up into the expenses and everything like that so um so yeah you get to be pretty strategic and it was um a lot of that was because I was one of the first like 30 in the country um 30 or 35 so you know you got that's that was the risky part was you know it's a newer franchise but you actually get you know the you get dibs first on the on the area with Austin being such a hot area where people moved here recently and you know well they have been for a long time but you know population growth it was a it was good to be able to get um land a large part of the territory yeah no I I love Austin I think it's you would not if you just looked at Austin someone give you a picture of Austin and didn't tell you where it was your guest would not be Texas sure yeah um at least that's my that was my opinion of it um now for the listeners I have a lot of listeners who are in Texas and a lot of those listeners are business owners brick and mortar I have a guest who was on probably a few months ago now he owns several gyms in Texas so I have to link you guys up but if folks wanted to get a hold of you in your specific Home Smiles franchise how would they do that yeah um you go to Austin dot home smiles.com and that will bring you right to us it's it has the number to our sale center though um so best would be to do like maybe you put in the notes or something if you reached out through um Instagram Trevor Athena underscore Rei um or home smiles Austin on Instagram and DM me there I could get you hooked up we can go meet for coffee uh see what you're needing at your business or or your home or whatever it is and we'll get we'll get um get your house or your property taken care of awesome yeah I'll leave a link to all of that in the description I guess my next question is if someone were looking to open up a Home Smiles franchise could they contact you to help them with that process maybe there's like a commission based thing for you how would that work um no I don't think there's a commission base but it's the it's the rising tide or whatever rising oh man I'm gonna mess that one all up everybody rises yeah it's not a zero sum game you know the more we have a national wide brand the better it is for everyone here especially if you're a veteran I wanna see way more veterans in there I'd love to have enough for us to have like a a veteran group within it or like you know yeah like a resource group for for veterans and we already have plenty um which is great so we get to talk about them and I even had an old well I never met him but I've done a few of the what they call like meet the team day or meet the owner meet an owner day and I get to get a bunch of Q&A with some potentials and there was a retired chief that was up in Dallas looking to do to open one up and he even came down and sat for about three hours or so we talked through the whole process he saw the van and got to do the whole thing so yeah I'm always willing to do that especially for veterans I would love to see something like that open up in where I'm at in Temecula cause it's half retired community half commuter community it's all veterans out here like you cannot throw a rock and not hit a veteran every person is a veteran there is um home smalls San Diego and I think he's even he says it says San Diego but I think he's up more like North County area interesting yeah up the coast a little bit it's a little it's it was kind of the he's one of the first members and um little Wild West with the naming sometimes but he might be able to go I mean I'd say he could go out that direction too so I just yeah just don't know how how far it is so I'd recommend that that that um and Home Smiles considers coming up to Temecula 1 because it's dusty as hell out here oh yeah like I am forever power washing my house and like like power washing my driveway it's just it's just sand all the time and with the fires out here everyone is so on guard right like I I had never had my dryer vents cleaned by the way which is ironic because I used to work for a dryer vent cleaning company before I joined the military yeah pure laziness I was like it's just me right it's I'm just washing my stuff right but then like five years goes by and you're like oh I should probably have this cleaned out so I paid some random dude on Yelp who wait definitely overcharged me to clean it out and I saw the stuff he was pulling out and I was like I one warm breeze could have lit this on fire it's crazy I we I watched a guy do it with the Flint and he did two 2 chops like chop chop and yeah it just lit up yeah Calfire is forever putting on videos like hey BT dubs something is just look at what can happen and I actually just saw a video I love watching those dryer vent cleaning videos totally satisfying to watch that but I remember one of the videos is somewhere in the Midwest um this guy was pulling out stuff from the dryer man and the top of it was burnt already because it had clogged the like exhaust on the roof and whatever had happened it already started to burn but it put itself out because of the straight contact with the like the hood of the exhaust okay that is fucking terrifying it's I don't understand I'm listeners out there especially if your dryer vents to the roof you have to take care of that it's gravity yeah gravity does not allow as much of it to push out as it would through the side of the house yeah and it the the ones from the roof first of all it's a little more dangerous to go up there and clear them out we try to clear them out from behind the dryer as much as possible but if we have to go up there those um the little flaps they don't like to come up very much either cause of gravity and it's stuff gets clogged up really bad there and yeah those are those are tough I would recommend doing those at very minimum once a year for sure yeah yeah I had this guy he went on the roof he checked there was nothing up there but when he came he moved my dryer out of the way a little bit and when he was pulling this stuff out I'm like I'm a little embarrassed like there's so much shit in there he's like when was last time you did this and I was like never like I moved in 6 years ago I think the previous owner had it done before she moved out he was like yeah I could tell I was like listen you can get a whole other wardrobe with what came out of there so what what services do you offer specifically so we offer dryer vent cleaning pressure washing window washing solar panel cleaning gutters it's gutters and downspouts and we'll check your we'll check all the batteries on your smoke detectors your carbon monoxide detectors we'll clean the coil on your AC unit or your refrigerator we're changing HVAC filters and and much more we also can our particular branch can offer light handyman services as well um so anything like small trim carpentry you know patching holes touch up paint um you fixing things like we just put a projector into a media room um so things like that we're we can do pretty much anything you can think of that's not requiring a license like an HVAC electrical license things like that we can we can do that is amazing so I have another another story time and why I think that's so important so smoke detectors right I'm sorry carbon monoxide so I'm sitting in this room which doubles as a library for me so I'm just sitting in here reading a book and my carbon monoxide alarm goes off I'm like that's weird all the windows were closed it was the winter time all the windows were closed and I was like huh weird okay so go over I turn it off it turns back on and then another carbon monoxide alarm alarm goes off and I'm like fuck so I like grab my phone scoop my dog up throw my dog outside then I run through the house to the front door on the phone with the fire department they send somebody down turns out all the batteries died or were dying and I did not fucking know again hadn't changed the battery since I moved in it turns out not only were the batteries dying but the device is only good for about 5 years yep so and I had no idea all I know is that more than one went off which makes sense they came in a two pack so they died at the same time and I'm fucking like panicking and I'm I'm not dressed to entertain so like the fire department's there looking at me cause I look fucking crazy and they come in they're checking and they're like no everything's good and they look at the actual device and like oh yeah this thing's only good for X number of years turns out this is 2024 this is a few months ago turns out it uh they expired in 2023 so they had already been Sol like where I had been Sol for a whole fucking year so for anybody out there check your shit right or have home smiles come out and do it for you because that is a service that I think would just set in and forget it you make one appointment they do everything sounds like so if I made one appointment could you guys just come out and knock everything out oh yeah absolutely everything special everything we do um is around the packaging right we we do the single services but we much rather come out and take care and knock out the whole thing so we have three packages it's essential essential plus and then whole home and it just gradually you know more and more services are added onto it so essential is your dryer vent and your smoke detectors kind of that safety piece and then Essential plus gets into a little bit more curve appeal so we're gonna do the windows gutters um and and we could pressure wash too if if need be and then whole home is you we're doing the solar panels we're doing all those other things mentioned and we're doing interior exterior window cleaning um we can do a whole home soft washing um everything so and those will be those will save you too if you do them in the package they're all designed to be uh money savers to do the full packages yeah and that's that's phenomenal yeah and then you're put on a drip and the next year we're gonna call you and say hey it's been a year you about ready to to have us come out again and you know we'll we'll be able to come out again you literally can't set it and forget it see that's fucking phenomenal like if I would have had so the dryer vent guy came like probably 4 or 5 weeks before the fiasco with my carbon monoxide so I just think like how much time that would have saved and you know taxpayer dollars that probably couldn't have been wasted if a freaking fired a full blown fire engine came to my house like this wasn't like the cow fire like duty vehicle no the whole fucking engine came with like six firefighters oh that's awesome so I think about how much embarrassment and time and yeah I'm the type of person where it's like if I can find somebody who can come and knock at everything knock knock out everything like I don't have to call one guy HVAC guy for the dryer vents and another guy for this and I'm thinking of like the hole in my wall right now because my dog bust through the back door like he pays rent like you know I think that's phenomenal I think you know shout out to the guy who who came up with the franchise that lawyer but also shout out to you guys for starting this yep thank you it's it it does take some uh education to the consumer around you know the benefit of it right cause we still mostly are mostly we are talking to people who are like I'm looking for just windows I'm looking for just pressure washing and then my Monica has real my wife she's been really crushing it as far as upselling and getting everybody to understand the packages quickly on a quick phone call or a quick visit over to the house you know we're trying to save people time people are busy we are you know experimenting every way we can to reach the to these people like I'm pretty convinced that we're are we need to really reach millennials they have a couple young kids they have a full time job they're super busy they don't wanna do this stuff they don't wanna buy all the crap they need to do it um so we those are who we need to reach um the older retired generation they're still like super stubborn and want to do everything themselves and the husbands will always go well what would she keep me around for if I had you do all that stuff we had that conversation way too many times yeah so um yeah I think I'm the type of person where it's like I value my time especially since I own my own businesses and if I could 1 support a local business and 2 give myself some more time back I would fucking do it especially if you're gonna do one stuff shop like I just got solar panels and I was thinking about like climbing up there and cleaning them myself and I'm like that sounds fucking awful haha it is it's dangerous it's it's very dangerous and you gotta be you know super careful to not void the warranty all that good stuff and there is that is one of the definite services that we do that you can see a measurable difference right that there is a layer of film on that thing after even a couple three months that will um definitely degrade the input or the output of it whatever however energy yeah consumption yeah no I mean it makes sense right if there's a fog over your solar panels are not gonna absorb as much sunlight you're gonna reduce the amount of you know input output so yeah my neighbor just paid some kids to power wash the solar panels on his roof and it was it just you can tell the difference between a professional and just somebody doing a side gig cause like he has I live in a ranch style home and he has a 2 story basically all of the dust from his solar panels came onto my house oh no of course and I'm like and I felt bad cause they were like children who did it and I was like listen nice and I respect the whole washer is not the move either not for the solar panels I would we have a so we have water fed pole system for windows there's I had no clue how much professionalism were there is in pressure washing and window washing there is chemistry involved with the chemicals and the detergents there is a ratio for like the size of the dishes you know to the size of your motor and then for windows you have traditional and you have water fed poles but water fed pole is it's got literally like little jets on it and it's got a brush that you can clean it and that and we run it through like a water softener and a deionizer so it comes out spot free and so that's what we use for the for the solar panels and there's even this other orbital little like a like a toothbrush that like one of those circular toothbrushes they have for solar panels too so I would stay away from the power washing of the solar panels yeah see that's more than I knew cause if you didn't tell me that I would have been like spider monkeying on top of my roof with my fucking power washer that I used to clean my car with again another reason why I need to hire professional to do this stuff and not try to do it yourself no I think you're on the money when it comes to marketing to millennials um unfortunately the older generation our parents and our grandparents are extremely stubborn but sure that being said if it's like you can sit out back and just chill go watch your stories and and then let us do the do our thing now I think it's phenomenal I know that when we first talked you had mentioned Home Smiles and I checked out your website and I was like okay I mean I get it I did not realize how beneficial all of the services like I didn't realize you guys had a package and it was all in one I think that's phenomenal and I hope you guys do as well as I know you guys are gonna do just cause in hearing that I'm like I'd sign up for you guys coming to my house every year indefinitely there we go just like I'm gonna go hit up that guy in San Diego and be like hey what are the chances you have uh you know Temecula on your radar cause he very well might um and there might be someone in the pipeline coming out that way so yeah I'll definitely be on the lookout and let you know yeah I love to see that let me know if you guys have like a referral system because there are a few people that some of my clients actually that are looking to are kind of looking in the franchise world right now um and I'd love to to send them to home smiles and potentially hooking guys up with a furl whatever sure I mean like I said I would not be worried about it I would do it no matter what I mean at the very least I know the guy that's the main account manager he's up in Waco which is an hour here from here I just make him take me to barbecue yeah if I got someone placed so that I'm not worried about it that's awesome yeah well thank you so much shout out to your wife for holding the fort down while you do your thing it sounds like she's doing a really good job with Home Smile so big time before we wrap things up is there anything that you wanna mention to the listeners no I think we I mean we covered a lot so now I really appreciate your time and um and uh if anybody has any questions about starting a franchise real estate how you do it with a full time job you know you want to hire us for home smiles in Austin or the surrounding areas any of that just hit me up would love to chat