"Inspired to Invest" Podcast

A Revolutionary Approach To Real Estate And Foundation Repairs

• Serena Holmes • Episode 81

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Have you ever bought a property, and realized it comes with massive repairs?

Welcome back to episode 81 of "Inspired To Invest". This week, Bob Brown is here with us. Click here to watch vs. listen!

Discover the transformative power of engineering expertise in foundation repair with Bob Brown, a pioneering force in an industry too often led by sales tactics.

Bob shares his remarkable 35-year journey, from launching a foundation repair business to authoring "Foundation Repair Secrets."

Learn how his engineering-first approach has not only revolutionized repair methods but also saved homeowners from unnecessary expenses.

Bob's personal anecdotes, including the unexpected acquisition of a phone company property, offer a captivating glimpse into his real estate endeavors.

Join us as Bob recounts the extraordinary challenge of raising a massive tilt-up building by over 15 inches on a $6 million project.

His insights into forensic engineering and risk management provide invaluable lessons for anyone involved in real estate.

Drawing on his experiences at Arizona State University, Bob emphasizes the importance of understanding risk tolerance and making informed decisions.

This episode is a treasure trove of practical advice, showcasing the rewards of innovation and calculated risks in both foundation repair and real estate investing.

To connect with Bob, go to https://foundationrepairsecrets.com.  

“Inspired to Invest” is proud to support the Beyond Success Program, a not-for-profit financial literacy program for students, launched by More To Give & MAK Investments. Find out more at @more2give.ca.

Join us again on Feb. 19 for our next episode!

Thank you for tuning into “Inspired To Invest”, hosted by Serena Holmes & remember, "when you invest in yourself, the sky's the limit!"

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Serena Holmes:

Hey everybody, welcome to Inspired to Invest. I have Bob Brown here with me today and he is an author, speaker, patented, investor or innovator I was going to say investor but innovator and the foremost authority on foundation repair diagnosis. He's got more than 35 years experience. He brings transparency, accountability and engineering efficacy to an otherwise opaque industry. His forthcoming book Foundation Repair Secrets it's part of the Advantage Book Series, I would assume based on the bio, but it reveals insiders' secrets to avoid costly repairs. So a little bit of a tongue twister, but we made it through and I'd love to welcome you to the show. How are you?

Bob Brown:

Great, how are you?

Serena Holmes:

Good, thank you. So I guess, just to dive into it, I actually didn't understand some of the things from your bio, so maybe you can talk a little bit more about your career and how it connects to real estate investing.

Bob Brown:

Yeah Well, by the way, I am an investor also. I own nine rental houses and three commercial properties. So over the years I've picked up things and held on to them, so I understand the investor point of view quite well. Great, so I started a foundation repair business many, many years ago, 35 years ago. I started out just basically doing concrete repairs, okay, and eventually I learned how to do foundation work, diagnosis and foundation repairs.

Bob Brown:

And one of the things I realized is you know, there's not quite something right here. You know, something's not really kosher. What, what, what? You know, it seems like everybody is sending sales guys out and, and, oh man, these sales guys, they're not really that, that they're not that smart, they're. They're doing engineering work and they're not engineers. How does that work? And so I finally started to realize that, you know, the industry's kind of screwed up that way. Everybody sends sales guys out. It's the way it's done. Yeah, uh, it really should be done by engineers. So I, I built, uh, an engineering company along with my foundation repair company to help diagnose things. Now, I was the only one in the whole United States that I was aware of that did it that way. Now there's a company in California called Foundation Repair California that does it similarly, that I've been helping to do this, but that's the only two that I know of that would actually utilize civil engineers to understand the problem before you start figuring out what the solution is Right.

Serena Holmes:

So can you talk a little bit more about where you saw that to be a problem and what you've done to fix it?

Bob Brown:

Yeah, so I. One of the things I discovered is that, hey, wait a minute, we're not really solving the real problem here. I'll give you an example. So, like I had a it wasn't my customer, but I know of a customer that was up in a mountainous area of Arizona and it had a block stem wall that was not grouted solid. Well, this block stem wall, you know, there was the cells of the of the block were not solid concrete like they're supposed to be, and so it had moved out and the house was sitting just barely on the edge of it, just barely holding it up.

Bob Brown:

Yeah, well, the foundation repair company came out and said, oh yeah, if we, if we put a, a pier that goes down 25 feet and raise that up, it'll kind of rotate it back. And the co-owner's like, all right, you're the expert, you know, and they, they, they had an engineer that did the backend to pull the permits, but they didn't look at the front end as to what the real problem was, right, well, they got all done and it was the same thing. It didn't move, you know. And so the customer's like, well, now what? You know, I got this problem and you guys, I spent $27,000 and you guys didn't fix it and they're like well, we can't guarantee anything. You know, we said that in our contract and and if you really want to fix this problem, it's another $30,000.

Serena Holmes:

Oh my gosh yeah.

Bob Brown:

You know, well, I mean they just they, they, they fix the wrong problem.

Serena Holmes:

And that happens a lot with sales guys, because they're not engineers, they don't understand the product, so, yeah, they don't have that experience.

Bob Brown:

Yeah, so that's kind of what set me on my mission. That's why I wrote my book and, by the way, the book is out now. Yeah, you can. You can get it on Amazon and you can read about what you know. He versus settlement, all those kinds of things.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, Well, maybe just to loop back. So obviously this, the premise of this podcast, is real estate investing. I know you talked a little bit about you know the properties that you own, but maybe you can just talk about your career path and how you kind of layered on the real estate investing with the other things that you're working on and how they also go in tandem.

Bob Brown:

Well, it was interesting because I was living in one house and I noticed in back there was a lot of telephone company trucks going in and out of man. There are trucks going out of there all day long. It can't be a person's house. So I found out well, that house belongs to the phone company, all right. So well, they weren't. I noticed they weren't using their covered carport, so I called them up. I said, hey, would you rent the covered carport to me? And they said, oh no, because we're going to sell it. And I'm like, oh well, well, how much are you selling it for?

Serena Holmes:

And they said, uh, we're selling it for $13,000.

Bob Brown:

I'm like I'll take it Now. It was interesting because it had never been a house. It was, it looked like a house but uh, it inside was a smooth floor with no walls, no plumbing, no electrical. Uh, there was air conditioning but uh, but there was like no, you know, not enough electricity to like have anything. And so I had to like cut you know trenches in the floor and put in sewer pipes and put you know supply pipes and build out walls, and I built it all out and it was still a good deal for me and that's how I got into the real estate business. And then I realized, hey, this is pretty cool. So at first I just, you know, I built it out so that there was a bedroom in back that could be locked from both sides, and then I rented out the front half of the house as a one-bedroom house. I thought, well, nobody's gonna want a one-bedroom house, but sure enough they. I had demand and people wanted it.

Bob Brown:

So yeah it was cool. Yeah, what would you have said in terms of those kinds of?

Serena Holmes:

repairs to bring it up to a functional house.

Bob Brown:

Yeah, well, it wasn't repairs in this case. Yeah, I've done repairs on a lot of rental houses, but in this case it was just building it out right, and so that kind of turned me on to it. And over the years, when I saved up a little more money, I just thought you know what, I'm not going to put it in the stock market, I'm going to put it in real estate. And I did and I sold my company last year. I got, you know, a lot of money for it, but I had just as much money in value for my real estate and it served me well over the years. You know, it really did serve me well.

Serena Holmes:

What would you say are some of the challenges that you've experienced as you've invested in different things?

Bob Brown:

Yeah, Well, I'll tell you, one house had to do with peering. It was interesting because because of my knowledge I could. I could buy houses with foundation problems, Right. But one house I bought didn't even know had foundation problems. It was a house, lot of equity in the house. She sold me the house, took $70,000 and prepaid rent upfront for three years. The end of the three years she moved out. I discovered when I finally went there I was not allowed into the house. I had to buy it sight unseen.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah.

Bob Brown:

Wow, but it had all kinds of foundation problems.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah Well. I guess your experience then yeah, so then, what did you do exactly Like with your, your experience? Like, are you servicing now people that have these kinds of issues? Are you just focusing on the products that you would ideally get into the hands of people that have these issues?

Bob Brown:

now. Well, I sold my foundation repair company at the end of last year.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, okay, got it.

Bob Brown:

So you know, I'm consulting. I'm here in Northern California doing some consulting. Today I do. I wrote my book. I've got some patented products, I've got some software that engineers and contractors are using. So you know, after 35 years it was time to kind of move on. After 35 years it was time to kind of move on. And basically my message is out to people people investing in real estate, people, real estate professionals is that if you have a problem, never call a foundation repair company that doesn't use engineering on the front end. Most of the areas, what that really means is just call an engineer first. Now, that's, that's not going to be free. Right, they're going to charge you and foundation repair companies are going to be free, but guess what? You might end up paying $80,000 for something that you don't even need.

Bob Brown:

So you know risk reward thing going on right. You have to kind of take your chances, but that's really if you want it done right, you got to call a forensic geotechnical engineer.

Serena Holmes:

Understood. Now what would you say when you look back at your career you're most proud of?

Bob Brown:

I think, the most. The thing that I'm most proud of is coming up with the idea that engineers need to be used. That's a relatively new concept. Most people are not aware of it, and on my website, foundationrepairsecretscom, I have a listing of forensic engineers all around the country that people can call, and so what I'm trying to do is make the world a better place, trying to help homeowners, investors, real estate professionals steer clear of being manipulated and steer clear of being talked into doing things that maybe they don't need to spend money doing, and so I'm proud of the fact that I'm trying to make the world a little better place in the process.

Serena Holmes:

Great, awesome. Well, on that note, we're just going to take a really brief break for a word from our sponsors, and we'll be right back.

Bob Brown:

Great.

Serena Holmes:

We'll just take a little brief pause. Hey everybody, Welcome back to the Inspired to Invest podcast. I have Bob Brown joining me, from Northern California and he's talking about his experience, which spans a lot of different things, but one of the biggest things is teaching homeowners how to avoid wasting money by engaging an engineer sooner, so that they're not wasting time and money on products that actually won't fix the problem. So I guess when you look back at you know the last 30 to 40 years. What would you say is the craziest thing that you've experienced, either as a real estate investor or as a business owner?

Bob Brown:

Well, I'll tell you one crazy story about a building, one of the last buildings I did as a foundation repair company, a large tilt-up construction building, and it settled 15 and a half inches and shape and, uh, the the owner of the building paid us six million dollars to fix. It, took us three years. We raised the building back up. When we raised it so much, we raised it to 15 and a half inches you could actually crawl into the building from underneath the footings. You literally, literally, I mean it's kind of scary, but you could crawl underneath there. That's how much we raised it up and it was a crazy, crazy, crazy job. What a very interesting, you know. And the building I think the building was worth $12 million. It was built on top of a landfill, so they built it knowing that it could be a risk, you know, and they had, I think, 11 other buildings that didn't have a problem, but this one did right. I think it still paid off for them, but it worked out for them and Amazon is in the building today, using it.

Bob Brown:

Been there for three years now and it's functioning perfectly fine. Raising it up 15 and a half inches, the floor, the footings, everything.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. I was actually at an event this past weekend and they were talking about actually going in kind of like you. You're talking about like there's about two feet underneath the house where they can kind of crawl around in the dirt and stuff like that they're trying to resolve like a termite issue.

Serena Holmes:

So they cut all the footings and stuff like that to try to curb the problem and all of that. So I kind of envision that, not that I would ever want to get under something that's sinking and crawl around in the dirt, but I've done that.

Bob Brown:

I do understand that plenty of times.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, he called it, like you know, being in the mud, and it became this metaphor for all these things in life, like, and every time they got into trouble it was like you're in the mud, right. So, it's great metaphor and message attached to it, but I do understand what you're talking about. Uh, now, with your different experience, what would you say is some of the best advice that you've received?

Bob Brown:

Well, I mean, as a business owner, you always want to be looking at, trying to figure out how much risk I can take. So I had a great professor at Arizona State University that told me, you know, bob, he said everybody has to decide whether they want to eat better or whether they want to sleep better, because you can't have it both ways. And so that's a really great metaphor for, okay, how much risk do I want to take? Do I want to take a lot of risk and have some sleepless nights but eat better, right? Or am I not cut out for risk and I just want to? You know, sleep well at night and I don't care if I have great dinners. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to eat better, I want to sleep better.

Bob Brown:

And everybody is on this continuum. Some people are one end all the way up the other end, and some people are clear at the other end, and a lot of us are right in the middle. We all have to know what our risk quotients is, and as business owners, you've got to take some risks at some point, otherwise you're going to be stagnant, you're just going to be doing what everybody else does, and it's going to be a race to the bottom for price right, you've got to innovate, and that involves taking risk. How much risk can you stand, right? Oh, I don't know. And some people take more risk than they can stand. And guess what? Now, when the fit hits the shan, they can stand. And guess what Now, when, when, when the fit hits the Shan, they can't hang. You know they, they bail and they make, they make a hasty decisions because they're scared and they can't handle the risk.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah.

Bob Brown:

That's. That's not good. You don't want to be in that position.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like right now I don't know what things are like in California, but here in Canada there's definitely a big. You know. There's been a lot of companies that had scaled too fast and they maybe even raised money the wrong way in some instances and there's a lot of issues with you know that they're kind of walking these really fine lines. Some are going into bankruptcy and receivership and insolvency issues and stuff like that. And you know, for me, I've been more on the passive side and I always kind of thought like I'm really well diversified, you know. You know, even if one or two things goes wrong, then I have like 20 other things, and right now it's probably like 15 to 18 of the 20 things are, all you know, going down and it's just because of this huge um, you know the risk. Maybe it's a reaction to the recession and interest rates are scaling too fast, but it's kind of like it's affected a huge volume of companies within the industry.

Serena Holmes:

So it's been pretty scary for both active and passive investors. But to your point about risk, I think people just really need to understand that when they are investing, whether it's active or passive, they've got to maintain the balance right and really try to think ahead with their exit strategies and all the things that kind of come along with that.

Bob Brown:

I mean, frankly, that's one of the advantages I think of real estate, even though it's illiquid. I mean, frankly, that's one of the advantages I think of real estate even though it's illiquid, it's not very risky. I mean, it did. My portfolio value did go down during the recession of 2008.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, you know what?

Bob Brown:

It wasn't hard to find renters and I wrote it right on through and didn't lose a single house, yeah, and a lot of people really, really got hurt bad in that recession and a lot of people really really got hurt bad in that recession. But real estate I think makes a great balance. You know it doesn't go up and down and all over the place like crypto or stocks and that kind of stuff Not to that volatility.

Serena Holmes:

I think you know where some people are having issues is maybe where they raise debt instead of equity, so that's not necessarily sustainable when they run into funding issues For us. You know, some people have experienced interest rates going from two to 3% upwards of 10% or more in some cases. So it's just, you know, created a lot of liquidity issues and things like that. So it's not necessarily the value of the actual property of the portfolio, but just all the different things swirling around it. So it's been a bit of a crazy time. Now you obviously sold your business last year. What would you say is next for you, like, is there something else that you're looking to start a new venture on? Are you just looking to promote your book? Like, what are you hoping to achieve May in the next five to 10 years?

Bob Brown:

Well, I have been on a big mission with my book to create a huge awareness call it consumer advocacy, okay of seeing how consumers get taken advantage of, and so that's primarily where I wrote the book and I've got a couple more that I'm thinking about.

Bob Brown:

But you know I've developed some software. Part of the problem in the real estate business is that you have expansive clays I mean in the underpinning business, sorry. Business is that you have expansive clays or I mean in the underpinning business, sorry and it's difficult to know whether you're settling or whether you're swelling, because when clays get wet they swell and they push things up and if you've got part of the home or the build commercial building that's being pushed up, you don't know whether that's going up or the low parts going down, right, it's hard to tell and things get mistaken. And, and so I've developed some software that helps analyze all this and helps engineers and contractors realize, help them, help them see a clearer picture. It's a modeling software and I and I've got customers using that and I've got a few patented products that I've that a needle pile and and and some, some products to fix heat, which nobody's ever developed, and some products that fix rusting, rebar and concrete. So I've got a number of patented products that that I've developed over the years that customers are using.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah.

Bob Brown:

And I hope that it'll save people money, solve problems and hopefully make people's lives better. That's the main thing that I'm after At this point. I don't really need to work. I've got 10 times more than I need to retire on. I'm just wanting, I'm doing things to try to make the world a little better place.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's great. So, on that note, the name of this podcast is Inspired to Invest, so I always like to ask people if there's a particular quote that motivates or inspires them.

Bob Brown:

Oh, a quote that inspires me. I don't, I can't. You know, it all comes back to risk and reward. For me, you know, and eating and sleeping better. I don't know that I have a particular quote that that really inspires me. I've always known that. You know, you, you spend less than you make and you invest the rest. You, you pay, you pay for yourself, right.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah.

Bob Brown:

And if you don't do that, then you will not reach a place where their money can work for you. Yeah, if you don't build up enough where you can survive off the money investments, then you're not saving enough and you're not investing enough.

Serena Holmes:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's smart wisdom. So, for anyone that wants to get in touch with you, or even to find a copy of your book, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Bob Brown:

Well, you can look at my website or my book with Foundation Repair Secrets. It's on Amazon, but you can also go to foundationrepairsecretscom and that's my website and I've got a blog on there and I talk about all these issues and what's important for people. So those are all important things. I'm on YouTube. I've got like I don't know 6,000 followers on Facebook. Now you can find me pretty easily. I'm also known as the Dirt Whisperer, so you can find me under that name as well.

Serena Holmes:

Great. Well, we'll include all of that information in the show notes below. Obviously, thank you for your time today and for anyone that is watching. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure that you like, comment and subscribe. You can also follow along at inspired to invest podcast on social. And, of course, remember when you invest in yourself, the sky's the limit. Thanks again.

Bob Brown:

Cool.

Serena Holmes:

Just going to hit stop.