From $10/Hour to $1M+ in Real Estate by Doing This

Brittany Arnason bought her first rental propertyToday we have a guest on who’s made some incredible moves in her investing journey. She started as a DIY, hands-on landlord, and then made the leap to a more passive approach.And not only that, she scaled from single family rentals into self storage, which is a huge jump. And we’re going to break down how she made that pivot, the system she put in place, and the lessons she learned along the way.So if you’re sitting there rehabbing and managing your own rentals, maybe juggling tenants, toilets and turnovers, this is the episode that will show you what it’s like to step back, build smarter, and start thinking bigger. Welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr.And I’m Tony j Robinson. So let’s jump right in and hear from today’s guest, Brit ar and Brit, thanks for joining us today.Thank you soMuch for having me, you guys.Yeah, so we are so excited, and most people probably know a lot about your background from your large social media following and all of the BiggerPockets episodes. You’ve been on the past, but can you start off by sharing a little bit about your early days as a DIY investor and maybe what kind of drew you into real estate and what those first couple of deals looked like?Yeah, so real estate to me was building this path of freedom. I didn’t want to have a boss. I wanted to be able to work when I wanted to travel when I wanted to. And in the early days, my first properties, I was buying for under $50,000 in these small towns, but they’d make great cashflow. And the first one I ever bought was $25,000, but it made $850 in rent and I didn’t have a lot of money. So I’d go out with my tool belt, learn how to do all the renovations myself, the demo, the painting, the flooring, the what you name it. I was doing all of it and I was living in my van working on these places and just burying those properties by rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, doing that over and over again.And Britt, you built, as you mentioned earlier, a big following on Instagram because you shared and documented that journey. But at a certain point you realized that you couldn’t continue to DIY all by yourself. So what was that point when you realized you couldn’t be a one woman show anymore?Well, the point I got to was when I realized the whole reason I got into real estate was for freedom and not a job. That’s what I did. I just built myself this huge job. So in the early days, if I stopped working, my entire business stopped moving forward. And just more recently, I was on a month long trip to Europe and I had so much progress in my business. We got two hotels under contract raising capital. I sold an apartment building. So much happened and this was all with me being in Europe, just doing a few check-ins with a team. Whereas in the early days, there would’ve been zero progress, nothing would’ve been happening.So you made a big difference from doing your work in Europe to spending every day in your rehabs, living in a van, sometimes living in the rehabs. For somebody listening, what’s maybe that pivotal moment and what’s the first action item, the first step they should take if they decide, you know what, I’m not liking this path I’m on anymore is feeling more like a job. What’s the first thing they should do or start thinking about to change that?I always say start thinking bigger sooner because real estate takes time. We’re in this for the long run. So the sooner you could start thinking bigger, surrounding yourself with people who are doing bigger things, that was a huge pivotal moment for me when I actually got into rooms instead of just being alone in my DIY renovations. I didn’t believe really in myself that this would be possible for me. But once I surrounded myself with the right people, I think that’s so key because you start to create this belief in yourself that you can do it too.So do you think building your community, attending events, masterminds, how do you get yourself into those right rooms with those right people?Yeah, there’s so many out there and there’s so many communities, there’s so many things that you could join and you’re not always going to go into the right one, right too, because there’s a lot of people that I am extremely inspired by, but then there’s a lot of interesting investors and influencers out there that maybe don’t have the same core values that I have. So I think you have a feeling of alignment with certain people, certain mentors. When I was listening to BiggerPockets way back in the day when I’m living in my van, driving to these properties, I’m listening to Brandon Turner, everything they were talking about the podcast and their guests, and there’s certain things that I was just drawn to. So my first mastermind was through Brandon Turner and I met some incredible people, incredible groups of friends, and I had it in my mind like, wow, everybody’s like this.Everyone’s cool and down to earth and growing and doing great things. But then I got into the real world. Not everybody’s like that, and you do have to be a little bit careful, but I think just putting yourself out there, I was so extremely nervous to go to these masterminds. I didn’t feel good enough. I didn’t feel that I’ve done enough. I was scared that I didn’t have the right things to say, but it’s just all in our heads where there’s always limiting beliefs and insecurities. We just have to push past that and know that the good people will be there for you, the good mentors, the good communities, and you can find that support.One of the first masterminds I went to and you were there at that one is we had to do a TED talk on a topic. And I was terrified leading up to that everybody here is more successful than me. Everybody here already knows anything I could talk about. But that was such the wrong mindset to have. It was everybody else is successful at what they’re doing and I’m successful at what I’m doing. And I found a super, super niche topic talking about having life insurance on your business partners, something very, very random and it worked. So I think a lot of it is that mindset piece. Even going to BP Con and joining even Facebook groups like having that courage and knowing that you do have something to bring to the table. If you’ve read a book on real estate, if you’ve listened to a podcast, you have something that you can contribute to the community.And if you really, really feel like you don’t, then listen. Listen, just be in those rooms and listen to what other people are saying, and you don’t have to contribute. You can just soak up all the knowledge in those moments. Tony, I wanted to ask you, you started off pretty much not ever doing DIY working in your properties, but you and Sarah did a ton of self-managing and you did a ton of the admin, all of that stuff. So what was that pivotal moment for you where you decided, okay, I want this to be more passive for me,Really, when my wife told me I can’t do this anymore, so you got to figure something out. She was the one who was really managing the day-to-day, and I think at that point we were up to 12 properties or something to that effect, and she’s like, Hey, I feel like I’m kind of burning out here. And that’s when we started to put more people in place and teams and systems. So I think a lot of times it is just when you get to that breaking point of like, man, I’ve been grinding for a while. It’s got to be something better than what I’m doing right now.We have to take a short break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk about some of the biggest pain points of actually being a hands-on investor. We’ll be right back. Okay. Welcome back. We are here with Brit. So Brit, what were some of the kind of strategy or mindset shifts you had to start making when you decided to become more passive?Well, a big one I would say is I had to learn to put a dollar value on my time. And I started as a waitress making $10 an hour. So I did that for so many years, and that was my starting point. And so doing every job, doing everything myself kind of made sense. But until I started to build up that skillset and I was listening to, I mean BiggerPockets podcasts had a huge impact on me. So I was doing my DIY renovations, I was learning, I was growing my skillset. And then I got to a point where, okay, I was learning from the podcast. I was kind of starting to realize that hiring out is an expense, it’s leverage. So I had to get out of those small tasks. I had to free up my time so I could focus on the $10,000 an hour task or a hundred thousand dollars an hour task.It’s like, okay, there’s way bigger things that we could do here. And for example, I bought an apartment building in 2023 for a million dollars and I’m now selling it for 2.5 and congratulations. Thank you. And honestly, I put less time and effort into that project than I did a few years before on a single family home, or maybe I made a hundred thousand dollars or less. So it’s just getting out of those tasks and start focusing on the bigger dollar per hour task, that was a huge turning point for me, and it was the most difficult one to get to. And it was just a lot of practicing, a lot of delegation, a lot of being intentional about switching that mindset because I grew up with the thought of partnerships are bad. You should do everything yourself. Why hire if you could do it yourself for free? That’s kind of the lessons that I was taught. So it took a lot to really break out of that. But now my first thought is, who can do this for me? Not how can I do it myself so I could focus on the bigger dollar per hour task.Brit, I appreciate that insight, but I want to put my rookie cap on for a moment because I remember hearing successful entrepreneurs say that when I was first getting started, like Dan Martell says, buy back your time, hire the right people to put in the right seats to do the work so you can focus on bigger picture things. But do you think that you would be as successful as you are today? Had you started that way, would you have had the resources from really just a money perspective to hire all those people? Or do you feel like going through that initial DIY phase was necessary to get you to the point where you could start hiring the right folks?I think it really depends on maybe your background, where you come from, what your skill sets are. It was necessary for me. I had to go through the figuring it out on my own, doing everything for you. I’m so glad I did that. And also big tip is to remember to document everything. The best thing I ever did was document all of those early DIY projects. I filmed everything. And this is because I had a mentor tell me start document and sharing your progress. You never know when you’re going to need deal flow, when you’re going to need investors on your projects. And so I didn’t really expect any of that to come true. But now 10 years after doing social media, I’ve raised over 25 million for my progress for my projects. I’ve seen so much come from that. So I’m glad I started there and worked my way up into hiring.I don’t think I could have just automatically went from the mindset of I’m going to hire everything out immediately. But it depends too. Maybe you really are at the point where you have to crunch down your timeline and maybe you have a management position at your W2, whatever it is, where you have a little bit more of that skillset to start hiring out right away. And I do know investors who get right into sell storage or right into commercial, but it’s usually because they have capital of their own. They could invest, they could start hiring earlier. If you don’t have any of that, it might take some more time or you might have to partner, you might have to leverage in other ways.And I appreciate that insight, Bri, because I think there’s two ways to build a business. You can do it top down or you can do it bottom up and top down is, Hey, I’m just going to hire some key people to help me build this business out, and I’m just going to lead those people and let them execute on the actual doing. And bottom up is kind of what you described where you were doing everything and as you built up your business, you started pulling people in to take off some of those responsibilities. Both of those approaches work. But to Britt’s point, I think a lot of it does come down to what are your resources at the beginning? Can you afford to put people on some sort of payroll to help you build out this vision and dream of yours? And some people can’t, other people. I know for me, when I first started, I was working a day job out of family of mortgage, different things we were working to take care of. So just know that there’s two different ways to attack that. But Brett, you mentioned partnerships and systems. I guess what role did partnerships, property management, or really just systems and processes play in allowing you to scaleEverything and all of those things are leverage. So you’re leveraging other people’s money, other people’s time, other people’s experience using technology as a leverage. And all of these things can help with growing in a significant way. And the more you learn how to use leverage, the more you are able to scale and grow. But again, these things do take a lot of time and I mean, I love partnerships now. Can be good, can be bad. You have to really, like I say, be aligned with your partner in a long-term vision way. And even your core values, there’s so many things that you want to be careful about when partnering and I was brought up that partnerships were bad and that was because my mom is an entrepreneur. She had a really bad partnership in her early days, so she always told me, never partner, never partner.You’re going to get burned. You’re going to get screwed over. Same with hiring, there’s no good workers, all of these things. So that was all in my head until my first partnership with my self storage partner, a GA Osborne, and everything aligned. We have the same vision, we have the same goals, we had the same values, and it’s been an incredible partnership. And I know, and that really changed my life. I learned so much. I was able to leverage his experience, his skill sets, his systems, and then I brought my skills to the table as well. We all have strengths and weaknesses, so we all bring something to the table. I’m really bad at a lot of things, but I’m really amazing at a lot of things. So I’d rather focus on those amazing things, focus on my best skills, and then partner with people who have the opposite skillset.Now that you’ve kind of grown your team built out these partnerships, what is some of that technology that you’re actually using? Like Tony and I use monday.com for a lot of our project management. Is there technology out there that we should be using and just software in general that has really helped you manage and kind of scale and grow your business?So I would say for me, I am pretty terrible with systems. I’m terrible with SOPs, I’m terrible with technology, all this stuff. However, my team is the best at it. So now I have six people on my team. They’re all pretty much opposite to me, very organized, very good with technology, with systems. I have a COO that runs my meetings. So we have weekly meetings where we use the EOS entrepreneur operating system from the book Traction, I highly suggested it keeps things, even if you’re on your own. I was actually using EOS way back when I was just starting to figure this all out. But using a system is important because you have to be able to track your goals, track your progress, and if you’re not tracking, it usually just falls away because life gets busy. But you have to keep some sort of structure.And we use clickup for task management. Again, I’m barely in there. I’m out there. I’d rather be out there creating the relationships, raising capital, finding deals, networking, doing all those things. And then my team is in there getting the task done. So there’s a way to do it. And if you’re not good at something, there’s always a way to expand when you do have a team. Now I’m so thankful for my team that can use the best systems and keep up with it. I’m not be the one to do it, so I need the people in my corner that are going to move those things forward.Now Brit, a really hot topic for us has been just strategy in 2025. What new opportunities are you seeing in 2025 and how are you evaluating them?Yeah, so it’s an interesting time, and one thing to note is this great wealth transfer with all these baby boomers starting to retire. And that’s why I’ve been really focused on self storage and hotels because a lot of these owners, and I think it was like 80% maybe, of these owners are in that generation who maybe don’t have someone to pass these properties down to. So there’s so much opportunity in that, and it’s going to be a small window of time because we’re seeing it even in the cell storage industry, it was very much fragmented to mom and pop owners, individual owners who had maybe one storage facility or maybe two. And then the number goes down and down and down because institutions are buying these places up quickly. So our window is getting smaller and smaller. So we have to get out there and start looking and learning.And if that’s something, maybe it’s hotel investing or self storage. Those are the two asset classes that I’m focused on, and I could get into those reasons why as well. But they’re businesses, so you own the business and you have a high cash flow business, but the real estate is attached to it. So I love how these properties are valued. I love how you can add income streams. I love the creative financing that you could do. They’re usually a little, it could be a big project, but you also could find storage facilities and even small boutique hotels for less than a duplex in some markets. So there are lots of opportunities out there. And I think getting creative 2025, it’s been a little bit of a crazy year, interest rates skyrocket, but I just see so much opportunity coming up.But I love, you’re talking about self storage and I’ve heard it called the silver tsunami, right? Where there’s a lot of folks in that generation who are retiring, and that’s part of the reason that we got into hotels as well. And I want to get more into how Ricky’s can think about this transition, and we’ll cover that right after A quick word from today’s show sponsors. We’re back here with Britt. So Britt, you talked before the break about why you like self storage, and I think there’s a big opportunity in commercial real estate right now as well. But with this transition, did you keep scaling your single family residential portfolio or did you just really start to focus on these bigger commercial assets?I completely stopped in the single families because kind of like I was saying before, I just wanted to focus on the higher value tasks. Like I was saying with my single family home when I was doing that and I maybe made a hundred thousand or I could focus on commercial assets and make a million, I’d rather focus on that. And so recently I sold my last single family home and actually gave a few to family members as well because I just got to a point where it did make sense for me to stay focused. And I think with real estate, it’s hard because shiny objects, it’s just everywhere. Oh man, I want to do storage. I want to do hotels, I want to do single. I want to do flips I want to do, and then the problem is you just get a little distracted. So I think putting the blinders on is quite important. And then you get to a point, okay, now I’m doing well. Now I could start to diversifyWith the self-storage. What was the reason that you decided to choose self-storage as your path?I was always interested in self-storage. I love, like I said, that is a cash flowing business as well as the real estate. And I love that you didn’t have tenants at the property. I thought that was pretty cool. I love that you can add all these income streams. And I actually heard, of course on the BiggerPockets podcast, my now business partner, I didn’t know him at the time, but it was AJ Osborne, and he was talking about how he made $13 million on one deal, and that just blew, I didn’t even know you could make that much money in real estate. I was at the time still DIY, buying houses for $25,000 working on them. And I’m listening to this podcast like, the heck, you can do that. That’s crazy. So that really sparked the interest. And then I met him later on at a mastermind that Ashley was talking about earlier as well, and there was just so much certainty that that was the path I wanted to choose.And I love the asset class. I love it’s way different from single family and I’m creative. I think that’s why I’m drawn to the hotel and hospitality side as well, because my personality, I love the creativity of that. But then in storage, there’s still a lot of creativity. You can take a mom and pop facility that maybe doesn’t even have a website, they don’t have any advertising, they’re not even checking if people are paying every month. So there’s a lot of money on the table that you could come in and it’s pretty simple business operations. As long as you understand those basics, you can really turn the place around. And then in commercial real estate, the property is valued off of the net operating income. So if you’re increasing that income, you are increasing the value of the property itself. Whereas in single family homes, you can do this incredible property, bring in all this income, and it doesn’t matter. It’s based on the comparable properties in the area. So if you are bringing in tons of income in your property and you did this incredible job, this renovation, it doesn’t matter. It just matters. If houses are selling in the area for $300,000, that’s what it’s going to sell for. It doesn’t make a difference on the value and the income you created. So I like that that’s in your control. And there’s a lot of simple strategies and ways you could do that within self storage investing. And then your property value goes up in that way.When I went through my year of having really bad shiny object syndrome, self-storage campgrounds, mobile home parks, anything you can think of, I looked into and I found a self-storage deal. And the guy, he would go whatever the first Sunday of the month ended up being, he would go and sit at the self-storage unit and that’s when people would come and pay there. He’d sit there for four to six hours until everybody came and he would collect rent that way. So the first Sunday of the month, the person renting had to go and deliver their rent. And so obviously that seemed like a really good opportunity there. Imagine how many people refused to rent there because they’d have to drive to pay rent every time and just not having to waste time and sit there as operator. But I think there’s lots of potential in self-storage. And you actually are doing a workshop at B Pecon with aj, your partner. Tell us a little bit about that workshop and why someone may want to attend it.It’s going to be awesome. All my self-storage nerds, we’ll convince you if you’re not a self-storage nerd yet, but it’s going to be a three hour workshop. We’re going to go through how to find these deals. We’re going to go through how to analyze deals. We’re going to have worksheets where we’re going to have a lot of interaction as well. We’re going to go through the self storage industry, the history of it, but then where the huge opportunity is now and how you can take advantage of it. The time is now, we’re talking about this silver tsunami. You don’t want to be on the sidelines. This happens all the time. People go, oh man, I wish I invested in 2008. Well, the time is now. It really is. And the more you just sit on the sidelines and you’re waiting for perfect scenario opportunity, now, this is the time to get out there, learn as much as possible, take advantage of the opportunities, and go all in. And me and AJ are going to be there with you, answering questions, doing worksheets, really getting you in that space where you can take advantage of the opportunity. And we have a really exciting announcement because if you buy a ticket to the BiggerPockets Conference, you could use the code storage workshop and that will get you a free pass to our storage workshop, which is going to be incredible. So we can’t wait to see you there.That’s awesome. That’s such a great value to get that for free with your BP ticket. So yeah. Awesome. Well, Brit, besides seeing you at BP Con, where can people reach out to you and find out more information?Mostly on Instagram. I’m the most active there at Investor Girl Britt, but I’m all over social media, so if you prefer LinkedIn, whatever your social platform is, I will be there.Well, Britt, thank you so much. We really appreciate you taking the time today to share with rookies your transformation and pivot from DIY to passive investors. So thank you so much. I’m Ashley. He’s Tony, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.