The Risk That Broke His Investment Strategy with Thomas St. John

The biggest risk in your deal isn’t the market—it’s the person you trust.

Most investors spend their time underwriting deals… but overlook the one variable that can wipe everything out.

In this conversation, we unpack what happens when experience isn’t enough—and how one bad operator can undo years of disciplined investing.

If you're serious about avoiding costly mistakes and accelerating your path in multifamily, this is exactly the kind of conversation we continue inside the Tribe of Titans—where investors break down real deals, pressure-test decisions, and learn directly from operators in the field.
👉 Join us: thetribeoftitans.com

What You’ll Learn

•  Why scaling from single-family to multifamily forces hard tradeoffs 
•  The hidden ceiling behind “keep it small, keep it all” 
•  What actually changes when you start raising capital 
•  The mistake that led to a six-figure loss—and what it revealed 
•  Why operator selection matters more than the deal itself 
•  The real difference between building wealth and generating income 
•  How to think about risk when you’re no longer investing alone 

Key Takeaways

This episode highlights a reality most investors don’t want to face: growth requires giving up control—and that comes with new risks.

The transition into syndication isn’t just financial—it’s psychological. You’re no longer just managing properties… you’re managing people, expectations, and capital that isn’t your own.

And if you get one piece wrong—the operator, the partnership, the structure—the downside isn’t theoretical.

It’s real.

About the Guest:

Thomas St. John

Thomas began his investing journey with determination and a commitment to learning from those ahead of him. Over 20+ years, he has built systems to improve efficiency and scale his real estate operations.

In the past decade, he has focused on multifamily, acquiring and operating apartment communities while delivering strong returns through disciplined asset selection, NOI growth, and value-add strategies. He has owned and self-managed hundreds of units, gaining deep experience in operations, team leadership, and project management.

Over the last four years, Thomas has expanded into private alternative investments as a Fund Manager, helping hundreds of investors place capital into high-performing assets with top-tier operators nationwide.

Before real estate, Thomas served as a Toledo firefighter, bringing discipline, leadership, and resilience into his business today.

Learn more about him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-st-john/, or https://northcorpcapital.com/ 

About the Host:

Brian Briscoe is an apartment operator and founder of Streamline Capital, focused on acquiring and operating multifamily properties in the greater Salt Lake City metro. He hosts the Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast, where he shares real-world operator insights and decision frameworks for aspiring multifamily investors.

If this conversation resonated, there’s more happening inside the Tribe of Titans. It’s where serious investors move beyond surface-level content and into real discussions that drive action. Visit https://www.thetribeoftitans.com/ to learn more.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Brian Briscoe 0:15

I'm Brian Briscoe, apartment investor, operator, and founder of Streamline Capital. And this podcast is built for the aspiring apartment investor who wants more than just theory. We talk about raising capital, closing deals, managing assets, and making the decisions that separate dabbling from building something that lasts. Now, if you're serious about taking the next step, this conversation continues inside of the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community where investors work through real deals together with live discussions and direct support. So let's get into today's episode. Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Briscoe with Streamline Capital. Really excited for today's show. We've got Tom St. John on with us today. So, Tom, welcome. Thanks a lot for having me.

Thomas St. John 0:59

It's a pleasure to be here.

The Telescope That Changed Everything

Brian Briscoe 1:00

Yeah, absolutely. So do us a favor and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into kind of real estate in general and then multifamily.

Thomas St. John 1:09

Well, I grew up and still live in the Toledo, Ohio area in the Midwest. Kind of a manufacturing, definitely a blue-collar town. You know, I didn't know anyone who owned businesses, let alone anyone who was wealthy. You know, I kind of grew up doing what everyone told you to do, watch my dad work in factories, you know, shift work, nights, weekends, holidays. I guess my story started when um in around 2005, my dad had a heart attack on a golf course in the early 50s. I'm kind of forced to retire. He kind of told my mom, whatever we got, we got. And uh a couple weeks after that, a big package came in the mail, and it was um a telescope. I talk about the story a lot, but that telescope just resonates in my memory. And to me, it just represented like what 32 years actually gets you. So I kind of watched my dad 32 years of uh factory work, and I kind of at that point I was just determined to find another way, right? All I've had the money to do was go to the library and start reading books, and uh I couldn't even afford to check them out. I just sat in the library and just wrote entrepreneur this, business that, and uh ultimately all the books I've read, one of the common themes in them was just real estate. It really spoke to me, and I kind of dove head in and I've been addicted to it ever since.

Brian Briscoe 2:15

Yeah, yeah, awesome, awesome. How did you get your start in real estate? I mean, walk us through your first investment and kind of why you chose what you chose and how you did what you did.

Thomas St. John 2:26

Well, around that time I started looking for people who were doing what I wanted to do. And I found a guy, I asked him if I could have a job, you know, working for him. He couldn't afford to pay me anything, and my negotiating skills back then were awesome. So I told him I'd work for free. I thought you can't say no to that. So I found a guy had about 12 single family houses, but to me, that might as well have been 1200, you know. Yeah. And so I just kind of worked for him, I cleaned out his vacant properties, and he ended up selling one, you know, just wanted to free up some capital. And I just went to the bank, kind of figure out what I needed to do. I uh saved as much as I could. It wasn't until about almost 2007, really late 2006, where I finally bought my first house. My plan was always multifamily, that was always my goal. I just didn't think it was possible then. It just wasn't in the cards for me to walk into a bank and ask a loan on an even an eight unit, let alone an 80 unit. So I started like a lot of people start, just kind of one house at a time, scratching and clawing to build up any kind of portfolio and any kind of track record of successful management. That way, when I walked into a bank, to me it was a requirement then. Maybe it's it wasn't, but I wanted to validate myself and show them that I have some experience.

Brian Briscoe 3:30

It definitely helps. Now, I think in 2006 is when you said you got your first one. Just walk into a bank would have got you a loan. But yeah, I bought my first investment property, a single-family home in 2007. Told the loan officer that I was gonna buy it and rent it out. I got a 100% financing loan.

First Rentals And The 2008 Crunch

Thomas St. John 3:48

Yeah, those days are gone, of course. Even today, it still has an impact on uh how real estate operators operate because of what happened in 08 and a lot of bad came out of it, but a lot of good, you know. For me, 2008, 2009, the property values where I live dropped 30, 40, 50 percent. I kind of like didn't really care at the time because I knew property value eventually would come up. But my problem was, you know, we talk about how easy it was to finance, but after that, it wasn't about finding deals, it was the credit crunch. I couldn't walk into a bank and get a loan for anything, it just shut down for guys like me. So I had to do all kinds of stuff that I wouldn't teach, but I wouldn't recommend, but I did a lot of creative financing strategies to acquire property. Probably had from 2007, eight, nine, I probably bought maybe four houses a year. Okay. Um, all kinds of different ways. The values were way down, as you I'm sure you recall, but I never had to lower the rents, so I was still able to cash for a little bit and kind of stay above water and just work and just ride it out. Real estate, it can be a very forgiving business, you know. Time will heal a lot of problems, and if you if you if you're able to hold property, you know.

Brian Briscoe 4:54

Yeah, that's the key. If you're able to hold, time's gonna heal everything. So you started a single family, did some creative stuff. You said your goal was to always get into multifamily. When did you start really kind of turning your sights on multifamily and I guess start realizing that you could actually achieve that?

Thomas St. John 5:08

That wasn't until 2015, actually. I always tell people it took me nine years to get started. I would tell people starting off now, you don't have to wait nine years to buy a multifamily. I just didn't know any better at the time. Everything was my own capital, my own money. You know, I look at a $500,000 apartment building, you know, you need a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar down payment. There's no way to get that if you don't have it. You know, that's the barrier to entry. At 2015, a different friend of mine had a this a little 12 unit that he was looking to sell to buy a 64 unit, which he still owns today. And so I just told him I'll buy it. I have no idea how he's gonna do it. And I had about 50 houses at the time, and what I had to do, it was a tumultuous time, but I I ended up having a auction. I had an auction, I sold like 10 properties, like for minimum bids. It was crazy. I lost big on some of those houses, but I had enough principal pay down at the time and had built up enough equity to I was able to acquire enough for my down payment, and that was just the direction I wanted to go, so it was worth it to me. And awesome. Within the two years of doing that, I had three or four small multifamily apartments, and I was in the game, right? You know, I felt good, I felt good about that.

Brian Briscoe 6:18

Yeah, now that transition from single family to multifamily, were there significant challenges? I mean, you you already talked about obviously the down payment and the barrier to entry, but were there other challenges between single family and multifamily that maybe you didn't expect?

Thomas St. John 6:33

I've always been like uh in the trenches. I've been the operator, the guy finding the deals, I've been the property manager, the maintenance guy, the leasing agent. I was a one-man show for many, many years. And one of the management challenges was just the tenant relations being so close. You know, that was that was a little bit challenging. You know, the parking, stuff like that on a granular level as far as management. Well, big challenge for me was I'm always like five years behind technology. I'm not a tech guy. So like automating leases, lease renewals. At one point, I had you know, say 40, 50 apartments. I remember a time when I didn't realize the apartment was vacant until I didn't get the rent. By the 10th, I was like, Man, I gotta start systemizing things, sending out lease renewals 30 days in advance. You know, I own a business here, I gotta treat it like one, you know.

Brian Briscoe 7:18

That's happened to me before, where you know you're expecting a rent check to come in. And yeah, this is one of my single families where we had a property manager. So anyway, we we had somebody who's supposed to monitor that for us, but whoops. Yeah, we didn't get a rent check this month. Uh thanks. Yeah, definitely. So how things progress from there?

Thomas St. John 7:35

I was kind of just floating along looking to how to get my next property. We're really like light lifts, right? They were pretty simple. The rents were were way below market. You know, I'm not the kind of guy I don't like to go in and jack everyone's rent up to crazy amounts. I just I like to provide value, fix stuff up all the right way, provide a good living experience from the you know, I look at it from the tenant's perspective. So those were pretty easy, like little value add plays. And I didn't want to sell them, but I found another opportunity, and I had to kind of sell those to raise capital to get to the next. That's the pattern I guess I'm leaning into.

Brian Briscoe 8:08

Is I've you're trading up essentially what you're doing, trading up, yeah.

Thomas St. John 8:12

But I've I never was able to really truly scale to a sizable portfolio because I always had to sell the previous one to get to the next, and a refinance would have worked financially to get to the down payment, but then the cash flow would have been too tight on the original one. So that's what led me to considering syndications and raising capital. But either way a person goes, I think is okay as long as you have that path, you know, uh and have a plan. Keep it small, keep it all was my mentality for a long time. I had my own little portfolio in my hometown that I could lay eyes on. I think it was when I had my daughter that I thought I thought, man, I I want to get more passive, but just kind of build up some strategic partnerships and do this on a larger scale.

Brian Briscoe 8:52

Yeah, all right. So you you basically hit that ceiling, and a lot of people, a lot of people do. You hit the ceiling, I assume that you jumped into the syndication world from here. Yeah, it wasn't very smooth at first, though.

Thomas St. John 9:03

You know, I don't know. Yeah, I analyze the deal. Um, it all pencils, everything works out, but then like, wait a minute, you have these LPs with pref rates and uh the waterfall structure, you kind of serve in a different master. I learned pretty quick, like a 36 unit or a 46 unit. I mean, you could syndicate it, but the numbers don't work at that scale quite as well when you have equity investors that expect a return. That was a big transition for me. And I had never even up to that point considered a agency debt. I didn't even know what that was. What agency are you talking about? Really quickly, I understood I have a lot to learn here.

Brian Briscoe 9:36

What were the biggest challenges you had? I mean, you mentioned debt already, but all inclusive going from keep it small, keep it all. I like that. Keep it small, keep it all, to uh to syndicating and bringing more people in. What were the biggest challenges there?

Trading Houses For A 12-Unit

Thomas St. John 9:48

I think it was just finding, well, first off, raising capital is not not an easy thing to do, but finding the right people, when it's all my own money and my own time invested, you might accept a little higher level of risk because you're just risking your own. I never had anything to begin with, so I never felt like I was risking that much anyway. But when you bring in a private equity, a guy that gives you a $50,000 or $100,000 check, man, the the level of stress goes up and it's a big responsibility, you know. Yeah, so finding the right people as a team, you know, asset managers, site managers, and partners that cared as much as I did, it was really difficult. And it was also real difficult for me to let other people do their job because I felt like I always had my hands and everything, you know. That was a big challenge to let that go. But as far as building a team, be patient doing that and find the right team. It'll pay off in the end. That on top of raising capital, there's been times where it's easier than other times, but it's always difficult and it does take a lot of work.

Brian Briscoe 10:42

Yeah, it does. There are some definite benefits to owning 100% of a portfolio. You know, your your management meetings, you know, have no arguments at all, you know. But once you bring partners in, once you bring investors in, the complexity scales, you know, and it scales really fast.

Thomas St. John 10:58

So the organization, the communications, the reporting, you know. I mean, you got SEC compliance. There's a lot of hats you gotta wear. And it's very difficult to be successful as a syndicator when if you're doing it on your own. I wouldn't even I don't even know if it if it is possible.

Brian Briscoe 11:13

Yeah, it it it is. I don't know anybody who's been successful long term at syndicating by themselves, you know. And this podcast, we hit our six-year anniversary in a month, and we've done 500 episodes. So, you know, when I say I haven't met anybody who's been successful at syndicating by themselves, I'm I'm looking back at you know, 500 interviews with people um who've been doing this.

Thomas St. John 11:36

So you Yeah, that's when a window in my life opened up, you know, just driving by a 280-unit apartment complex before I even knew what syndication was. I I just thought to myself, like, who owns that? How did he get the down payment to buy that? And if he had the down payment to buy that, why would he just have a private island somewhere, you know? Then it kind of occurred to me like it isn't just one guy that owns it, it's a hundred people, just like me that own a small percentage of it.

Brian Briscoe 12:00

Yeah. For the large ones, it's definitely like that. I mean, I remember sitting out with my friends. This is uh, you know, I was in college, you know, I got married early, and so did a couple of my friends, but we're all living in the same apartment complex. Remember, we had similar conversations. We're like, man, I wonder who owns this. Yeah, we we got to figure this out. You know, how can we do this? And and then we all went, you know, got jobs in different locations, went our separate ways. But that was something from very early on that I was thinking about as well, is just like, you know, I don't want to own that single family, I want to own that large multi. And what you said early on, I you know, really resonated with me too. I couldn't figure out how to do it, so I started buying single families.

Systemizing Management The Hard Way

Thomas St. John 12:36

Yeah, that was the only path I knew existed, really. Yeah, you know, and one thing that's gotten me as far as it has is I've always been an action taker. So I think taking action is important, but I wish I had a mentor early on. My trajectory would probably have been a lot different. But yeah, it is where it is, and it's been a lot of fun. I I look I look forward to uh continuing on. But having 50 single families and be able to raise enough for a hundred thousand dollars for a down payment, that was the only path I knew existed at the time.

Brian Briscoe 13:02

So, how have things changed recently? I mean, uh started syndication. Where do you own properties? You know, what type of structures have you been looking for and and such?

Thomas St. John 13:11

Yeah, mostly it's still in my hometown area. I have built some strategic partnerships with a couple guys in the the Houston area and uh just super high-level guys with unbelievable integrity and unbelievable ability to perform. I like look forward to growing them, and it's hard for me to invest with someone where there isn't someone there locally. I just feel like you have to have someone that can walk the property. It's disingenuous to for me to when I raise capital when none of the um GPs or the the lead sponsors, no one's there. So Houston, uh the Phoenix area. I have some uh people I work with there. Uh Indianapolis is another market I like, and I can it's three hours away. I can drive there. And then again, my local market.

Brian Briscoe 13:51

Awesome. Something you said, absolutely crucial. If you're not boots on the ground, you have to have somebody who's there. I do have one property in my portfolio where nobody in the general partnership is there. It didn't start that way, but we had somebody move, you know, the person who was the boots on the ground. But a lot of the little issues that we have could be easily solved by somebody swinging by once a month, you know.

Thomas St. John 14:12

As long as there's some active management there, you know. What I've found too, and I've really enjoyed lately is you know, branching out and networking with all these people like yourself and other real high-level groups. I uh started a fund of funds, which again I had didn't had no idea existed six years ago. And so I raised a lot of money for um other real high-level guys through my fund. And that gives me a lot of peace of mind knowing I'm doing the right thing by the investor. There's a great property in another state, and that's a better place for them to put their money than my my little property in Toledo. And so that it builds a lot of credibility and trust. You learn when you start to grow in real estate, especially in syndication, you you're not investing in deals anymore, you're investing in people.

Hitting The Ceiling And Syndication

Brian Briscoe 14:53

Yeah, definitely investing in people with it. You know, that's that's a component that you can't separate. Somebody asked me a week ago, would you rather invest with a good operator with a mediocre deal or a good deal with a mediocre operator? And and my answer was simple is you can't separate them. You know, the you got a property, you got an operator, you put those together, and that's that's the deal there, right? So that one's a no-brainer, yeah. Yeah, so they're the they're they're inseparable. You but the the people operating it, I would say, are probably more important than the property itself. But I learned that the hard way. You do, you do. I have seen some people operate and run things into the ground before, you know, and it's definitely key there. So in general, you're raising capital, you're placing it with solid operators with a track record in markets that you believe in and you trust in. Awesome.

Thomas St. John 15:44

Around 2019 or 20, the market started really going up. As you recall, my daughter was real young at the time, and I got an offer on a huge percentage of my portfolio. And I just was like, Man, this I just can't believe I'm gonna get this much for him. Yeah, I made a huge exit, had a huge chunk of money, and I was I wanted to go towards the passive side, and I made a pretty substantial investment as a passive investor, did my due diligence. I ran the underwriting, I scrutinized every comp. I ended up losing a hundred thousand dollars on that deal or a little bit over, over six figures because of the operator. I didn't thoroughly examine everything about his life. He had other businesses, he had restaurants, a bunch of stuff I didn't know about that were struggling. I don't think it was really malicious, but he just was incompetent. And so then that's kind of what I found in my new company. Like if this can happen to me, who's someone that understands real estate, it can happen to a guy that's just looking to invest passively and get out of the public market. I really found my lane as just a guy who vets operators. I can take the legwork and all the guesswork out of where a passive investor should put his money. I don't charge anything for it. Yeah, awesome.

Brian Briscoe 16:49

Awesome. I think that's a service a lot of passive investors like because you know you are kind of the in-between guy. You're able to vet the sponsor. I raise money for my own deals, and of course, I'm gonna tell everybody I'm the best there is, right? You know, but uh that's one thing that a lot of people are accepting risk on is that sponsor, the person who's in charge of the deal. That's one of the biggest places where you're accepting risk.

Thomas St. John 17:10

It is, yeah.

Brian Briscoe 17:11

I am living proof of that.

Thomas St. John 17:12

I can I'll I'll walk you through the through it if you ever want to. But I mean, it's yeah, yeah, the fancy pitch decks or the projections, and I love doing what I do. I love underwriting deals, I love driving out to the properties, flying out to meet the sponsors, sit in their office, meet their kids, have lunch with them. That's what I really, really enjoy. People ask me all the time, like, I can't believe you do that, man. And I don't feel like doing that. It's like, well, maybe it's abnormal, but I actually enjoy it. I love everything about it. You know, I eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff.

Team Building And Sponsor Responsibility

Brian Briscoe 17:39

So yeah, I've done a couple of different things. I I think everybody, you know, there's lots of different roles to play in multifamily. People end up gravitating towards the one that works best for them. And I did start a fund and I did start picking operators and whatnot. And there was a deal that I picked that lost a lot of money. I've split that deal up a hundred different directions. You know, was it the operator or the market? My conclusion on that particular deal is because the market went bad so fast, they probably would have lost money anyway. You know, a good operator would have lost money anyway. But in this case, I think they kind of accelerated the loss. Yeah, yeah. Hard to make money. And by the way, when you look at the timeline, this property closed in April 2022. I mean, the first rate hike had just happened and then things went downhill fast.

Thomas St. John 18:23

But yeah, they're they're both important, of course. A good operator will stress test the deal to the point to where they're projecting to sell at a six cap. Well, see what happens if it's a seven cap or you have a five and a half percent interest rate. See how that deal works out at a seven and a half percent interest rate. That's pretty extreme, but I'll stress test the deal until it fails. That way I know exactly what has to happen for this deal to go bad. Now, that 2022 time, like you talked about, you can plan for a lot of things, but that one was pretty extreme, you know.

Brian Briscoe 18:52

Yeah, it was. It was. Uh, we were kind of talking about the money issue. One one thing syndications do is we get money on the front, money on the back end, and there's not a whole lot in between. So you mentioned you're you're working on trying to build up that other cash flow as well. How's that working out for you and why? I think this is probably the most important thing we people coming into syndication world need to understand. Yeah. The way I like to explain it to people is, you know, real estate's my passion, right?

Markets Boots On Ground And Funds

Thomas St. John 19:18

I just love it. I think it's the tax advantages, the tax-deferred growth. But what the way I like to describe it to people is real estate to me, it's always the vault, but it's not always the ATM machine. So the cash flow from operations and stuff, it may not cover all your monthly bills or create this lifestyle that you envision from owning a hundred-unit apartment deal. So, what I've done is I've started investing a lot of my personal money into um private credit and real estate debt funds. And I found that my investors really like that too, mainly because it's not a five or seven-year lockup. The two funds that I've invest personally in are 12-month lockups, you get 12% interest. Who's gonna argue with that? And you have the option to reinvest the distributions, which accelerates compounding. You know, people, when you talk to an investor about compounding, they always say, Yeah, it's earning returns on your returns, which, yeah, that's true, but only when it's uninterrupted. When you invest in the public markets and you have the swings, you know, a 0% a year, a 4% year, then you have an 18% a year. Well, you say, Well, I average the same as you. It's like, well, my I why do I have more money? My average return was uninterrupted. Lately, I've I almost have had a little bit of a pivot and a shift towards vetting operators of these private credit funds. The one provides loans for small businesses, and it fills a huge same thing with real estate debt. It's it fills a huge gap in traditional financing that was created by the 2008 debacle. These very highly qualified borrowers can't walk into a bank. So you don't have a W2. Yeah, they don't have a W2, or they don't have they don't check out whatever boxes the SBA wants them to check, you know. Yeah, so I've found a lot of enjoyment out of that, a different new avenue of not just real estate, but just the whole world of private alternative investments is that's that's where I belong and is what I'm super passionate about.

Brian Briscoe 21:00

Yeah, a lot of good stuff there, but I think the point for people listening, you know, when you get into the syndication world, you know, you're gonna get checks when you buy, checks when you sell, you know, and you gotta figure out how to make that in-between work. Yeah, you have those buckets, right?

Thomas St. John 21:15

Yeah. You got that growth that real estate can provide, the the tax benefits. But once you get to a point, you know, you have to start thinking about you know some other buckets as far as as far as monthly income, I think.

Brian Briscoe 21:26

Yeah. Going into this last downturn, I was very hyper-allocated to real estate and you know, took a significant hit. Going forward, I'm gonna I'm gonna structure a lot of things differently. I'm going to build definitely cash flow. And it's not necessarily gonna be multifamily, but I think we both agree, you know, multifamily is a great way to build wealth, but uh it's not always the best way for cash flow.

Thomas St. John 21:48

I think, yeah, I I would agree with that 100%. I think it's the best way to build wealth. Um, that's why I kind of came up, maybe I didn't come up with it or I read it somewhere. I I think real estate's the vault, but it doesn't always have to be the ATM machine. That's how I Yeah, I love that.

Brian Briscoe 22:01

That process is uh in my head better. Yeah, I have a coaching program too. And there's something my partner and I always say to each other, you know, uh the multifamily side is long-term wealth. The coaching is the money now. You have to figure out how to bridge the gap between acquisition fees and dispositions and whatnot. But uh made it work so far, you know. Uh it also helps that uh I spent 20 years in the military. I have a pension, my wife's a school teacher. So, but yeah, we anyway, it's you you gotta figure out how to how to fill in the gap between all that. Anyway, we're closing up, a couple of questions for you to finish up. Question number one, what's next for you?

Losing Money And Vetting Operators

Thomas St. John 22:36

Well, I think what's next for me is really really diving into this world of marketing. We talked about it a little bit before we started recording, but that's a world that I have no idea. I was never on social media, I've never looked at my real estate business as that where I needed to be a marketer. But what I feel that I offer to investors is priceless and I feel compelled to share it. I vet these sponsors, I vet these operations, I've invested personally in the deals. You know, the last guy who invested with me said, Man, the reason I invest with you is because I know if I go down, you're going on with me. I told him I'll be I said, I just laughed, you know, I thought that was great. So I want to share with people like what I do, and I basically tell people invest where I invest. I mean, you don't have to, but my service is free. You you give me a call, you get in touch with me, I'll tell you what I'm doing, what I'm seeing. I don't have a sales pitch because I don't have anything to sell. I don't, you know, and I just love um meeting people like you and all these other people that I've uh just built some great relationships with that I didn't do the first 15 years of my career. So that that's kind of what's next for me is just putting myself out there and um letting people know my journey.

Brian Briscoe 23:42

Yeah, awesome, awesome. Uh if you had to give advice to somebody who's just starting out, what would that advice be?

Thomas St. John 23:49

To find a mentor, probably even sooner than I did. The first mentor I had was a guy who owned a handful of properties. I I learned a lot of what maybe not to do with him. But then I kind of went on my own. My brother helped me for a little bit as a maintenance guy, but it wasn't until like 2015 where I had you know 30 or some apartments, and I was like, man, it was it was when I didn't even realize that I had a vacancy. And uh so I I kind of just reached out in the world, and a lot of guys that have a ton of success, man, they love to share their stories, they love to help younger people out. And so I I would tell someone is just starting off, read as many books as you can and find people that are where you want to want to be. And yeah, most of them will be more than happy to reach out to you. It's I didn't find my true mentor maybe I bet it was about seven years in. And I I wish I would have um found him sooner.

Real Estate As Vault Not ATM

Brian Briscoe 24:40

I followed a similar path, and I I mean I I love that advice. I mean, it was me to a T. I started out by reading books and then had the realization that I needed to find, you know, a mentor to help me. And in my case, you know, it was listened to a podcast episode. The guy running the podcast had a mentorship program, only one I had ever heard of. You know, I didn't realize there was dozens or hundreds of them out there and signed up the next day. But and it worked, you know. I mean, it worked really, really well. I think we were recording when I mentioned this, but yeah, we're 530 episodes in. Honestly, I think most people sitting where we're at right now took that same path.

Thomas St. John 25:16

Yeah, when I joined some mentorship groups or just networking with like-minded people, you know, it was kind of uncomfortable at first, you know, because I I was in a lot of rooms that I probably to be honest with you, I didn't belong in. These guys were very high-level guys, and I had a little maybe a little 12-unit property or something. But I now I take that same approach. I get in rooms with guys who operate these nine-figure funds, hundred million dollar funds, and I have no business being in the room with them. But but do that if you're getting if you started out, get uncomfortable.

Brian Briscoe 25:47

I've had some of my biggest light bulb moments in rooms like that, you know. One of them I've shared many times, just give you the Cliff Notes version. But I was invited to a dinner that I didn't belong at, and yeah, um, what I what I noticed is they were all talking about their real estate portfolios and everything else, and they were all wildly successful. Um, some of which you would know. I realized walking out of them that each one of those guys had a very narrow focus.

Thomas St. John 26:14

Yeah, that's a great point.

Brian Briscoe 26:16

Very narrow focus. I only buy X, Y, Z in A, B, C, you know, and that was it. And I was just spread all over the place. I had B class, C class, I had 20 units, 40 units, 80 units, 150 unit apartments. Yeah, you know, and that was just one of those epiphanies that you know that's a great point.

Thomas St. John 26:36

I've always moved forward in my journey in my life, but I've done a lot of zigzagging, you know, to your point, you know, find a straighter, find a straighter path, you know.

Mentors Focus And How To Connect

Brian Briscoe 26:44

I think I like that. That sounds like my journey as well. You know, I I've been going the same direction for 20 years, or but you know, it's been a zigzag. But uh anyway. All right. Last question for you how can listeners learn more about you?

Thomas St. John 26:58

I'm probably most active on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook, just search Thomas St. John on LinkedIn. I love to connect. I got a lot of free guides and uh free resources. I I love to hand out. My company is North Corp Capital. So you can go to North Corp Capital.com. Um, it's my phone number on there, my email. Uh feel free to reach out. I respond to everyone.

Brian Briscoe 27:18

Yeah. Just pointing out, you know, his advice was reach out to somebody, and he said, feel free to reach out. So I actually did that once after a pod, like when I was brand new after a podcast, and two weeks later I was sitting at lunch with the guy, you know, talking about, you know, rooms I didn't deserve to be in, but uh never hurts. But uh anyway, Tom, thanks for coming on the show. Very much appreciate your time today.

Thomas St. John 27:38

Yeah, it was a pleasure.

Brian Briscoe 27:39

I uh can't thank you enough. Look forward to following along with your journey. Awesome. Hey, I hope you got a lot from today's conversation. Uh, if you did, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We're on all major podcast platforms and YouTube as well. Now, if you're ready to move from listening to actually doing, check out the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community. That's where investors go deeper with live discussions, real-time QA, and practical support around capital raising, finding deals, asset management, all of it. All right, you'll find everything you need at thetribe of titans.com. That link in the show notes, tap it, and we'll see you there.