Avery: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Short Term Show. A lot of you come to us and want to talk about buying multiple properties to rehab or buying a bunch of land to build multiple properties. Our guest today, Bryan Cataldi, has done just that—he’s in the middle of a seven-unit rehab. I’m really excited to hear his story today. So, Bryan, how’s it going?

Bryan: Hey, I’m doing good, thanks for having me on this.

Avery: Of course! This is a really cool experience, so glad to have you. Like I said, sometimes I don’t know if I feel too worried to be on it, but it’s pretty cool to do this. Everyone is eager to hear about your background.

Bryan: Yeah, so my background’s a winding road. I grew up in northern Illinois, grew up racing go-karts and doing some stuff like that. I actually raced with Danica Patrick and that kind of thing back in the day. For a long time, I went to school in Iowa and got my undergrad as a CPA.

Avery: That’s awesome! Then what?

Bryan: After Iowa, I went up to Minneapolis and worked as a CPA for a while at PricewaterhouseCoopers on the tax side. I quickly figured out that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. I was working 70-80 hours a week, and I saw a lot of people who were older, divorced, or just not happy despite making a lot of money. I decided that wasn’t the path for me, but it was a cool experience because I got to see high-net-worth individuals and their tax returns. It gave me a roadmap for understanding how they made their money, which was mostly through real estate or partnerships, not W-2 jobs.

Avery: So that inspired you to pivot, huh?

Bryan: Yeah, definitely. My dad was an entrepreneur and handed me Rich Dad, Poor Dad back in the day, so even before 2000, I knew real estate was the way I wanted to go eventually. But it took me a long time to figure out how to get there. After leaving the CPA world, I moved back to my hometown, tried to start a company, but I was too young and didn’t really have the skills yet. I ended up running a company around race car stuff for a while. But by 2008, when the bottom fell out of the economy, I knew I had to do something different.

Avery: 2008 was tough for a lot of people.

Bryan: It was! I realized that income from race cars wasn’t going to cut it, so I went back to school and got my MBA. I didn’t really know what else to do at the time and was trying not to get pigeonholed as a CPA. I started teaching on the side, which I liked, but I also knew I needed to figure out how to make good money.