Frozen MIllionaires

Sober Living Facility Millions with Brandon Kemp

• George McCleary • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Welcome to Frozen Millionaires, Episode 4! Join us as we dive into the world of high-end sober living facilities with entrepreneur Brandon Kemp. Discover how Brandon's niche in real estate has not only transformed lives but also built a thriving empire. We'll explore the unique model of these supportive homes, where post-rehab individuals find stability. Brandon's journey is anything but conventional, and his infectious positivity is truly inspiring. Tune in for an incredible story of entrepreneurship, impact, and a can-do attitude. Don't miss this captivating conversation with Brandon Kemp!

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George McCleary:

We got Brandon Kemp. Brandon we're gonna get into the cold plunge. How are you feeling?

Brandon Kemp:

I'm getting my Wim Hof in me go on right now.

George McCleary:

Summoning his inner Wim Hof.

Brandon Kemp:

Summoning the inner Wim Hof.

George McCleary:

Alright buddy, in he goes. Just one, one

Brandon Kemp:

Ohh hoooo...Hoooo..hoooo...Let's go motion. baby, let's go!

George McCleary:

How do you feel?

Brandon Kemp:

Wim Hof baby, Wim Hof.

George McCleary:

His Wim Hofing it.

Brandon Kemp:

Oh, wow!

George McCleary:

Welcome to frozen millionaires! The show where we submerge successful people in ice cold water, then sit them down to talk about how they've achieved success. I'm your host George McCleary and I have a pension for ambition for entrepreneurship and for watching my friends suffering cold water. No tech CEOs or Wall Street Titans here. These are the Self Made Millionaires next door, and they're fresh out of the cold plunge and telling their stories. What's up friends, welcome to episode four of frozen millionaires. I'm really excited about today's episode because today in the studio, we have my friend Brandon Kemp. So you've probably heard the saying "The riches are in the niches." Brandon has carved out a niche within real estate investment that is absolutely crushing it. Brandon specializes in high end sober living facilities. This is where you go when you've just checked out of rehab, but you still need some support systems in place to make sure your new habits or lack thereof, take hold. These are regular homes, slightly modified to accommodate multiple residents. And residents pay good money to stay there a lot more than if it were just a standard long term rental. I love this model, but getting a foothold in the industry is not the easiest. And Brandon's path to building an empire was not the most prescriptive path, as you'll see. It's a great story about an awesome business model and Brandon is just an upbeat guy with a can do positive mindset that's contagious. I love how he's helping people with addiction issues stay sober. And I love that he's built an awesome business around it. Here's my conversation with Brandon Kemp. All right, everybody, we've got Brandon Kemp here in the studio. He's drinking out of my favorite mug.

Brandon Kemp:

Yes I am. Roger Rabbit, baby.

George McCleary:

Yeah, that's my favorite Roger Rabbit mug. He just emerged from the cold plunge. How do you feel bud?

Brandon Kemp:

I feel alive, tingly? Still trying to get that core temp back up but loved it.

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah. Brandon comes up, he comes upstairs and says, hey man, can I get out some tea or something? To bring this core temperature up a little bit

Brandon Kemp:

And stop shaking a little bit, starting to warm back up.

George McCleary:

The seasons are changing. It's starting to be a little bit colder and wetter here in the Northwest so he definitely can be forgiven for arriving a little chilly and then getting made even chillier snow. But that sounds like this is not your first rodeo, you've done the cold plunge before.

Brandon Kemp:

Done the cold plunge. I've been drinking the Kool Aid if you will with a lot of these little hacks in biohacking I guess you can call it with infrared sauna, cold plunge, you know, some of the supplementation stuff. So I'm drinking the Kool Aid.

George McCleary:

Good. Good. Yeah. Nope. Same. I don't have an infrared sauna. Maybe that's next for me, you know.

Brandon Kemp:

It's great, you'll love it.

George McCleary:

Yeah. Very cool.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

So man, you are in real estate also. Not a big surprise. We got a lot of real estate people on here.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

But tell tell everybody a little bit about what it is that you've built and how in this day and age in 2023 how you're how you're making money in real estate, because I love the niche.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, you know, it was it was years ago, I would say 2009 eight or nine area living in South Florida and Delray Beach. And my my wife and I had a small business there, I was our first small business. So we might touch on that later. But I met a gentleman down there who at that time was buying big single family homes, bigger single family homes and turn them into drug and alcohol recovery houses, where he'll rent by the room or by the bed some combination with within that time, those parameters. And I was like, wow, what a fascinating concept. Take a single family home that sometimes depending on your market could be challenging to cashflow as an investor.

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

But turn into something that's going to help people and will cash flow better than what it would be as a traditional rental.

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

And so I just kind of put on the back burner. Years later, my wife and I moved back here to the Northwest. And and I thought you know what? Out here they have Oxford homes, which is a nationwide chain, they've been around since the 70s. They do, they, a wonderful service. But stereotypically at least out here, there tend to be lower income rundown homes, you know, people sleeping in closets, you know, just for more roommates and keep cost down, but still kind of fits that affordable housing drug and alcohol recovery type model.

George McCleary:

And real quick, just when you say drug and alcohol recovery, these are people that have been to rehab that have been to like inpatient, outpatient or whatever, and they need to be in a sober living situation.

Brandon Kemp:

Yes. Most of the tenants come from a four week program, sometimes eight week program, inpatient, where they're living on campus, doing their their sobriety stuff. And then as they as they discharge out of the inpatient setting, they typically get encouraged to participate in outpatient services. And instead of going home to where the bad habits began,

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

maybe with a roommate who might be still practicing bad habits,

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

Instead, why not move into a house with your peers going into the same challenges and live in a collaborative, accountable environment, and check into the, your outpatient services, go to your meetings, get your sponsor, do all the things and we have house rules and guidelines to help that transition. And, and it works.

George McCleary:

So there's measures of accountability sort of built in to it kind of built into the real estate deal.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

So they're renting space just like you would with an apartment or a single room occupancy, or house, but there's, but there's a guard guardrails in place to make sure that it sticks that they're that they're treatments that just came out of really sticks, and they're maintaining those good habits.

Brandon Kemp:

Right. And there's, there's different levels of sober houses, we would be considered a thing like a level two, which means it's managed, we have a live in house manager. And then my business partner now he wasn't when we started, he was just he was just kind of my housing director, so he would manage the managers, if you will. Stop and stop into each house multiple times during the week unannounced see how things are going. But each house we have a live in manager that typically lives there for free as their compensation for being the eyes and ears for Steve. And, and yeah, so before they move in, they have to they have to go through our lease, which has specific house rules that helps them on their journey to sobriety.

George McCleary:

Gotcha. Great! I love it. And I love how like the good habits part of it, how you brought that up, because a big part of this podcast is sort of like the habits that begets success. And success takes many forms. So we concentrate on success in business, success in life on this podcast. But success means different things to different people at different stages of where they're at. Success for someone has been like in a terrible car accident might be like getting out of hospital, standing up, you know, sort of like getting to that next level getting to the next level. When you talk to people that have substance abuse problems, a lot of times they say, you know, just not today, you know, I'm not going to drink today, I'm not going to use today. And that then that is success. And so, in addition to having a real estate play that you know, can make that can put some money in your pocket, you're also you're leaving people better than the way you found them. That's, that's fair to say, right?

Brandon Kemp:

Absolutely. Yup!

George McCleary:

That's fabulous.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

I love it!

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

And the way you make money on this is the same way you make money in real estate, you you own something, and then you basically lease it. So you're providing a service in a way with having house management. But really, it's, you know, the occupancy of the room to be in that type serve environment, it's kind of a real estate play plus a service play. Does that sound about right?

Brandon Kemp:

Absolutely. It is.

George McCleary:

Very cool!

Brandon Kemp:

It is. Yeah, you know, we, when we came out here, and I looked around at what what sober houses were available, it was mostly Oxford type, type stuff. And I went to Betty Ford Hazeldon, down in Newburgh, where there was an inpatient campus.

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And I said, I brought lunch to the folks down there and I said, hey, my wife and I, we know about sober living, we'd like to participate if you think there's a need. And they said, where were you yesterday? You know, hell, yes, we need you. And I was like, okay, well, that's an overwhelming, yes. And I said, so help us build this. What do you want to see as you take your patients and they discharge and they go from the inpatient setting to the outpatient setting? What does that housing residential environment need to look like? And so we had to find a manager, someone to manage the operation side surely wasn't going to be me. I wasn't in recovery myself. So what do I know? So we had we thought we kind of went through a couple different managers to we found someone who was ended up being fantastic and and Betty Ford Hazledon helped us with okay, here's some of the rules we want for the house and, and with a lot of trial and error over the last five years, six years now. And now we have six homes in Greater Portland just surrounding the city and about 95 beds or so right now.

George McCleary:

So 95 beds over six homes means that each of these places is rather large.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

It's essentially, it's a house in a neighborhood that looks like any other house. It's just bigger and has more bedrooms.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah. And we have to be very mindful of where we pick our housing because we need to have extra parking. We don't want to disrupt the flow of the neighborhood.

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And so

George McCleary:

Tell me about neighboor.

Brandon Kemp:

Right. And you know, neighbors are, they love what you're doing, we love what you're doing, but not my backyard. It's the not my backyard sentiment that pops up a lot. So

George McCleary:

Where does that nimbyism come from? Because these are not like, you know, these are not people that are just out of jail. They're like that are hardened criminals, or anything that could go to the bad I mean, kind of like worst thing that could happen is somebody starts drinking again, or someone starts using again and goes off the handle. And I'm sure that happens every now and again, but like probably not tremendously disruptive to it, to enable it on a day to day basis. Is that basically what you explained to them?

Brandon Kemp:

What what the neighbors will find out quickly is that these guys or gals, they're quiet, they're just most of them are just trying to straighten their life out.

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

And there's, there's no wild parties, there's no drug dealer. I mean, all that stuff gets nipped in the butt.

George McCleary:

Kind of the opposite, right? The opposite of

Brandon Kemp:

We I mean, every sober house is going to have the party.

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

So we have a legal precedent to move them 24 hours. guys and gals that relapse, and they get removed immediately. And we have back to the real estate landlord, you know, world, we have legal precedent to remove tenants within 24 hours because they are a threat. If they're in possession, or if

George McCleary:

I mean, that's nice, because what a terrible they're under the influence, they are a physical threat to their roommates. situation would be if you had someone that was you know, using again, flying off the handle, disrupting the entire rest of the house, and you couldn't get them out because of Oregon's terrible landlord dead laws.

Brandon Kemp:

Right BINGO, BINGO.

George McCleary:

But you guys, but you have legal precedent, so you can kick them out, right, overnight.

Brandon Kemp:

Right. And if they're, you know, if they're under the

George McCleary:

Terrific! influence, again, we will try to send them right back to the the inpatient facility they came from, that's the first step, if they're willing, if they're really in a bad position was some getting an ambulance to the ER. That's typically what we try to do. And as like a, like a batting average, like, how does this happen very often, or like,

Brandon Kemp:

I would say, not very often but it happens consistently. But when you have, you know, 80, 90 tenants at a time, you're gonna have a small percentage that relapse. It's just, it's gonna happen,

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

And we've had, we've had, right now we're just doing men only. So

George McCleary:

Oh, men only, the whole thing is just men?

Brandon Kemp:

Currently. Yeah, it's just men. It's just easier for my manager, well, who started out as my manager, is now an equity partner in this.

George McCleary:

Oh, great!

Brandon Kemp:

And you know, he's been, he's the secret sauce. He runs the thing. I'm just, I'm in the background, behind the curtain, trying to give him all the tools he needs to run this house.

George McCleary:

Right, you're the guy running the business and ah

Brandon Kemp:

He works in it, I work on it.

George McCleary:

There you go. Yeah. No, that's what you have to do as a business partner.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

Well, you and I've talked about this before, and you know, I love the model. I think it's great. I think it's a great real estate play, plus, you're just doing good.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

You're doing good for society. But I also know from having talked with you about this before that it hasn't all been smooth sailing. The road here, you know, was, was, then you told me recently that you've had difficulties, just as recently is like, like trying to get your occupancy permit on these things. Take me back, so let's go way back like young Brandon. Tell me about, let's talk about, you know, the road that you traveled, how you got to, how you got to this point, and what it was along the way that helped beget success and keep you going in the face of things that were knocking you

Brandon Kemp:

I mean, how far back are we going here. down.

George McCleary:

Let's see, in utero. So, you're in Pampers. No. So you, did you go to college?

Brandon Kemp:

I did. I went to Oregon State. Go Beaves! Yep, yep, went to Oregon State. And, you know,

George McCleary:

Go Beaves! this was, this was 1995 was my freshman year. Right on.

Brandon Kemp:

I probably had a couple of freshman years, '95,'96.

George McCleary:

Yeah, depending on how we're counting these things.

Brandon Kemp:

Depends on if you're asking the academic side of it or the physical side of it.

George McCleary:

Yeah, the time versus academic.

Brandon Kemp:

And you know, when, when I was in the mid 90s, I think unlike today, someone like me shouldn't be going to college. I didn't in my opinion. I wasn't looking to specialize, you know, anything architect or lawyer or whatever. I just thougt it go to college because that's what you're supposed to do as the next step.

George McCleary:

That's what I did too, that's what everybody did back then.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

Nobody goes to, well, few people probably not nearly enough, go to college really knowing what it is they exactly want to do. I didn't actually even pick a major and the major that I picked, I ended up going with business because I finally figured out that's what I wanted to do, but you're not alone.

Brandon Kemp:

Oh, yeah, I was in the College of Engineering, College of Business, exercise, sports science.

George McCleary:

You shopped around a little bit.

Brandon Kemp:

I did plenty of shopping. But you know, what's interesting is what life does for you because I have, you know, a beautiful wife, four awesome kids. And it comes down to one moment when I was living in what most people call a frat house, it wasn't Greek related or anything, but it was me and five buddies in a big party house at Oregon State

George McCleary:

Nice!

Brandon Kemp:

And I had a pre internship one credit course just to get you ready for to do an internship. And I skipped it most the time. It was common common thing for me.

George McCleary:

Sure.

Brandon Kemp:

But I skipped it to the previous two weeks in my

alarm was going off at 6:

30, it was a 7: 30 class.

George McCleary:

Ughh. Those existed?

Brandon Kemp:

Those existed. And,

George McCleary:

At least we had in Oregon was eight o'clock and I missed mine all the time.

Brandon Kemp:

I hit snooze and snooze, I'm like, I'm gonna skip it. I'm like, I skipped the last few times. And I was actually went and showed up, and this company did a presentation and I went, oh, yeah, I could do that. Oh.

George McCleary:

What were they, were they slinging?

Brandon Kemp:

It was called Gameface they were a sports marketing sales and marketing firm at Tualatin.

George McCleary:

Oh, there you go.

Brandon Kemp:

And, and I was like, oh, this is perfect, I could do that. Anyway, I did that. And they, from doing that internship they set me up with, I got hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars in NFL. And I went to and I went to Jacksonville site and scene, never been there for my life. I said, I said to the team, I said, I've been in Northwest my whole life, let's go Southeast.

George McCleary:

So you went from skipping class to hey, this looks interesting to getting hired to an internship to go into work for an NFL franchise. All within the span of like,

Brandon Kemp:

Oh, well, I did the internship for like three months.

George McCleary:

Yeah. So like a summer internship.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yeah.

George McCleary:

So it's within the span of a few months, suddenly, you've got opportunity right ahead of you.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

And it was really just kind of, sounds like it was it came as a result of you actually finding something that you, that you liked that you gave a shit about.

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

There it is.

Brandon Kemp:

Big football fan, right?

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And I liked the sun and warm so, went out there and it was just fun. I was working for the Jags for four years. I got to go to one away trip every every season I got one. I told everyone I was a backup punter. And

George McCleary:

That's genius. I bet that works well, when you went out at night.

Brandon Kemp:

You know what's cool is it was watching young people my age, you know, working, pounding the phone, sales, you know, hitting the phones.

George McCleary:

You're fresh out of Oregon State

Brandon Kemp:

Fresh out of Oregon State. I even left school early for the job and I finished while I was out there.

George McCleary:

Oh, wow!

Brandon Kemp:

Just because I wanted to do it and met some great people. Still great friends to this day that are back in Jacksonville.

George McCleary:

Ah, so you didn't even finish. So you were like, okay, this is interesting. Yeah, this is one thing that I really try and impress upon people like college will always be there. If you have something going for you and people I feel like I see people ask about this all the time, if you have an opportunity, you have something you want to get after, school always be there. You can always finish up whether you're partway through your freshman year, partway through your senior year, go do your thing. And it sounds like you have the foresight to go and do that. How did your parents feel about that?

Brandon Kemp:

What your stereotypical parents of that generation would say, stay in school finish you're almost there. And I basically said Mom, Dad, this is the NFL Colin? I'm taking it and

George McCleary:

Yeah

Brandon Kemp:

but they respected it. They're like, okay.

George McCleary:

Well if you want to drop out and just be

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah. like a sack of shit like no parent is gonna like that. Like I'm not advocating for that like not even the least but you if you have something really productive then you know I say dig into it and sounds like you went against your parents grain

George McCleary:

So you're, so you're working for the, you're on that and so you know I applaud you for that. That's great! working for the Jags and so this could get interesting how do we how do we get from there? Or actually no keep going.

Brandon Kemp:

You know, so the thing with the Jags was so much fun. But in order to make money in the NFL, listen, there was a line around the block of people wanting my job. What was my job? Pound the phones and sell shit? Sona widget happened to be season tickets.

George McCleary:

So, what were you selling?

Brandon Kemp:

Season tickets, tailgate parties, corporate, corporate package you know corporate season tickets a lot.

George McCleary:

Oh, so you're like a, like the guys who call me up and say hey, do you want these blazers?

Brandon Kemp:

That was me.

George McCleary:

That was you!

Brandon Kemp:

That was me! They're all you know 20, 28 range guys

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

unless I go do something else. And at this

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

and gals that just want to be in sports. And the guys and gals that stay in it become lifers, you have to move point, it was 2006, from city to city, club to club and I still have great friends that are ones of the VP of the of the Minnesota Vikings and other ones the VP the New York Mets. You know, I have great

George McCleary:

Right. friends still plugged in all over the place. But at a certain point, after four years, I realized that I'm not gonna make

Brandon Kemp:

And I had all these buddies making all this a lot of money, money in the subprime mortgage world. Oh, boy. Wait a second. I'm like,boy, that looks easy.

George McCleary:

What could possibly go wrong?

Brandon Kemp:

What could possibly go wrong? It's always gonna be like this.

George McCleary:

Oh, my God but you learn sales at that point.

Brandon Kemp:

Yup. Good three years of gobundance, taken a pause for

George McCleary:

That's actually a common thread among a lot of the guests and a lot of people that we've run with and go abundance. So yeah, that's right, Brandon's also a gobundance member or actually maybe a little bit of a lapse right now, but, but either way... this year, we'll see what next year brings. Oh, yeah, totally understandable. But

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

paid you money. So but you were still sales is really a common component of a lot of these, of nonetheless looking around and being like, you know what, seems a lot of these people that have become successful because in a sense, almost everything ends up being sales in some way, you're having to sell some sort of product. Sometimes that product is you and your skills. But, but at that point, if you're going to be successful in the ticket slinging game for an NFL franchise, you, it's a sales job more or less, it sounds like you got good ads to the point where they treated you right, like I could do a little bit better.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, I mean, you know, as a sales guy back in the 2001, '02, '03, '04 era, you know, your, your single guy making 50 grand a year, and you're on top of the world, right?

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

You know, I was it was wonderful. But then I saw all my other buddies making

George McCleary:

more

Brandon Kemp:

twice, three times that, four times that in the subprime mortgage game, and so I had to get in there.

George McCleary:

So you got, you became a loan officer?

Brandon Kemp:

I worked for a small bank out of Jacksonville, and I was a subprime lender, sales rep essentially. I would go into these subprime mortgage shops, and I would look at the loans that they're dealing with with John Q Public, and I would price them out and try to get them to come to us for the loan. My bank would would fund the, get the loan funded, and then bundle them and sell them to countrywide. You can see where this is going.

George McCleary:

You don't know what happened to countrywide just you're one Google search away.

Brandon Kemp:

You're one Google search away and I'm looking at these loans and at this point, they moved me down to South Florida. So if you've seen the movie The Big Short,

George McCleary:

Oh yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

I was in the middle of that movie, living it live but I didn't realize I was green as a blade of grass in this industry

George McCleary:

Right because you're a 20 something that was tasked with just

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah

George McCleary:

you know, All right sling these shitty

Brandon Kemp:

Open up, open up the Palm Beach area and and the

George McCleary:

Oh my God. So your eyeballing this and like Fort Lauderdale area with our bank. So I'm going to all these shops with some some dudes at the mafio so looking dudes with the affliction t-shirt and the ripped jeans, their true religion ripped jeans and the sport coat, running around with their with their AD reps, pat on the phones and yelling at them turn on the phone, I'm just like, and I'm pricing out loans and and I'm looking at going, janitor stated income $350,000 a year I'm kind of going, NINA loans, ninjas, all those all those acronyms that we all you know there might be some alarm bells going off way in the back of your head but

Brandon Kemp:

I was like, this is nuts cause it's, I just thought that's the way it's always been. Yeah,

George McCleary:

Well you have no other point of reference at that point.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, So you don't really know that janitors don't really make that he probably made that up. Yeah. Fast forward through it. It was 2007 not '08 it was '07 that our loan started to fall out and and in mid process and they're falling out. I got my life threatened by these affliction T-shirts ripped to religion sport coat mafio so just

George McCleary:

I'm sure they threatened at least three people's lives before they have their morning coffee.

Brandon Kemp:

I literally got my life threatened and I believed them. And I called up my boss and said you know what? Yeah, I'm done. I'm out. And that was'07 and the really although Bear Stearns all this stuff didn't really happen until '08.

George McCleary:

Yeah,yeah,yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

But this was happening already with Countrywide and Sachs and some of these other banks and anyway

George McCleary:

But you started to see something something's not right. So you're like so these guys are threatening you because you're saying like, hey, you know, maybe something's not right here or I'm not sure about this and they're like you keep your mouth shut and

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

keep doing the thing or else

Brandon Kemp:

But you know what the the education of it was great. I learned the whole mortgage game by accident. Okay, before I got into anything real estate related, I least I knew how lending was kind of working behind the scenes so it was a good education is great experience.

George McCleary:

But you dipped before completely everything completely fell apart. It sounds like.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

Good.

Brandon Kemp:

Well, I mean, after I quit my bank closed their doors 45 days later.

George McCleary:

Oh, okay.

Brandon Kemp:

So yeah, it would have happened anyway.

George McCleary:

By default. Literally by actual default.

Brandon Kemp:

Yes. Literally and figuratively, Yes. Yeah.

George McCleary:

Wow. Okay, so then you quit because something's not feeling right but do you have a place to land? Where do you go at that point?

Brandon Kemp:

At this point my girlfriend at the time was we were living together now my wife and we were living together and in beautiful Fort Lauderdale. And we were renting a room off Las Olas Boulevard if you'd know if you know Fort Lauderdale I mean it was a fun place to be and we were in our late 20s and it was fun.

George McCleary:

Living it up!

Brandon Kemp:

Living it up! You know we didn't take much money'cause we didn't have any rent.

George McCleary:

Sure.

Brandon Kemp:

And, and then my wife said well girl from the time let's open a tanning salon.

George McCleary:

Oh.

Brandon Kemp:

And I went after I got done dying laughing I was like you got to be kidding me. Well she through college did the little airbrush tanning stuff.

George McCleary:

Oh yeah, yeah a little spray tan.

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

So I started going, hmm, so I went around like I was interested in buying one of these franchises, Tan USA wherever the hell they are.

George McCleary:

Sure.

Brandon Kemp:

And I went around the state, Tampa and all over the place looking at these and educated myself, come on, it's a tanning salon. I mean

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

how difficult can this be.

George McCleary:

You basically have a big capex because you gotta buy machines and then you market it and people

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

demand get tan and

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

collect monthly or subscription whatever

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

Sounds about right.

Brandon Kemp:

The misstep was I should have learned from what I was seeing in the in the subprime mortgage space in '07. As we got in that was early '07 as we got into later '07, we got into this, we bought a tanning salon and we were going to start our own. We ended up buying one that just opened their doors three months prior. Brand spanking new is in Delray Beach,

George McCleary:

What you pay for it if you don't mind me and asking.

Brandon Kemp:

Exactly what he he built the build out was. All the machines in the bill that was it was like 110 grand, I want to say.

George McCleary:

Right on and you guys have money kicked around or still from your from your mortgage business and whatnot.

Brandon Kemp:

For that one, I took a loan from from pops.

George McCleary:

Uh huh. Okay.

Brandon Kemp:

And I said, Dad, my girlfriend and I are gonna buy a tanning salon. And he says, you're out of your fucking mind. And he goes, I go,, I need financing. And he's like, I'm not loaning you and your girlfriend money. I'll loan you money. If this is what you want to do, I'll stand behind you and I'll you know, and he did a loan for me. I'll lend it to you, you lend it to your LLC whoever's in there, that's up to you. But you're the one who owes me the 100 grand

George McCleary:

So that is a personal guarantee.

Brandon Kemp:

Personal guarantee. It's, it's as good as gold.

George McCleary:

Yeah, exactly. That's funny. Yeah. No, that's, without getting too autobiographical. yeah, I've had that same conversation with my parents before. Like, yeah, well, we'll give this to you, but don't think that you don't owe it to us no matter what the heck happens.

Brandon Kemp:

So we bought a tanning salon leading into the biggest recession of our lifetime. Great choice.

George McCleary:

Boy, you know, tanning is probably I'm guessing not the most recession proof.

Brandon Kemp:

Correct, whatever say.

George McCleary:

Haleness. Even a Floridians probably inches up.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was it was a tough business. We kept it afloat for six years and then we sold it.

George McCleary:

You make a profit?

Brandon Kemp:

No, I sold it for I think we sold it for 90.

George McCleary:

Okay, but like the equipment had been like depreciated and whatnot. So you're

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, but back then, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was learning on the fly. But yeah, you're right. Yeah. But that so we sold it. And during that time, after the first few years, I was like, okay, I gotta get a real job and we can let this run on its own. And that's when I got into medical which is what I've been doing. That's been my main horse.

George McCleary:

Medical, how do you...?

Brandon Kemp:

I got into spine, spine devices. So I would go into spine surgery and I'd bring the screws in and the rods and all the equipment and and I would work with the scrub tech stay ahead of the the neurosurgeon just because it made sense to go from from NFL to subprime world to tanning salon to spine surgery. It's a natural progression.

George McCleary:

It's the most logical progression.

Brandon Kemp:

George, It's a natural progression.

George McCleary:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, If I talk to one more guy that came from the NFL to a tanning salon to spinal matic

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, so did the whole spine rep thing for for 5000. years as a 1099 and so this is a 1099 you know learning, oh, I can expense stuff, how you do this, how you do that and it was really kind of a eat what you kill game so yeah, we had to hustle and I had some guys I worked with and we hustled after it and and built it up and it was great.

George McCleary:

I've heard those guys can do well you know basically it sounds like you're the spineomatic 5000 rep you know, you sell it to like, hey, this can fix it back and you show up to surgery, you make it fix the back and then if you do that, well I hear that those guys can actually make at least like a few 100k per year.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yeah. And that's what it was. It was something I was doing 200, 250 a year type of thing for me,

George McCleary:

That's great!

Brandon Kemp:

which was a great scenario.

George McCleary:

And you're like in your early 30s..

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah. First kid just popped out, my wife and I buy our first house, you know, now we're in Orlando.

George McCleary:

Not a bad gig!

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, it was a great gig! You know, bought our first house real estate's just gonna, sshhh...shhh..shhh... so buy the house, living it for two years, sell it, upgrade the house, that whole game.

George McCleary:

Wow. And you didn't completely, like let a phase plan after like the tanning salon thing, because, like, I mean, you were with it for six years. And so it sounds like it was a little bit of a bumpy ride but by the end of it, like, you know, you're still able to, you know, you're still doing okay, you're buying houses, you're

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

getting into new gigs. So at this point, you hadn't really been fully punched in the gut, just a series of mini punches.

Brandon Kemp:

Correct! A lot, a lot of learning, lots of learning going on. And, and then, you know, my wife started to have kids fly out of her on a conveyor belt.

George McCleary:

Oh, yeah. Couldn't stay away, could you, buddy?

Brandon Kemp:

No. So, we're like, well, do we want to raise our kids in Orlando? Or do we want to raise our kids in the motherland, the Pacific Northwest?

George McCleary:

Uh huh.

Brandon Kemp:

And so we decided on the Pacific Northwest, and

George McCleary:

She's from here also?

Brandon Kemp:

She's from Minnesota.

George McCleary:

Minnesota?

Brandon Kemp:

We knew we were not going to Minneapolis, too damn cold. Sorry.

George McCleary:

Yeah. Fair enough.

Brandon Kemp:

Not doing that. And she didn't want that either.

George McCleary:

Take rain over consistent snow.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

It's dirty on the side of the road, buddy.

Brandon Kemp:

At the time, we thought, you know, what, what a great place to raise a family, Greater Portland and stuff. And since then, it's got a little squirrely, but in Portland

George McCleary:

We have talked about that with other guy to stir how things have kind of like, yeah, a little bit dip. But we we've agreed that there's signs of an upswing impending, and also kind of in progress as well.

Brandon Kemp:

I can get behind that.

George McCleary:

That's a, that's a whole separate conversation.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

But either way, so you're, you start popping out kids, you want to be up to the Pacific Northwest, because it's just a great place to raise kids, which is, which is true.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yeah it is, yeah.

George McCleary:

I mean, you got outdoors, you got all sorts of great stuff out here. So, so she agrees, even though is she a little bit hesitant?

Brandon Kemp:

No, she was all about.

George McCleary:

She's all about it, okay great!

Brandon Kemp:

She was pushing it.

George McCleary:

Good for her. So then, are you still slinging spinal equipment or

Brandon Kemp:

Still doing spine and I knew some guys out here in

George McCleary:

You leased it, okay. Greater Portland doing a very similar business model that I was doing with spine and I convinced them to bring me on. And they kind of had to float me, you know, with a guarantee, you know, because it's a relation, it's just like anything with sales it's relationships. And so I had to

Brandon Kemp:

And that was our way of low risk. Because what build trust and stuff with the surgeons here. And that took a while. And so I was doing that and that's when we also, we also brought over that concept of the Sober Living. And we moved here in 2016. And by 2017, we opened up our first sober house, but we did it by tiptoeing, starting to shallow in the pool, I didn't buy a house, I found a, an assisted living house that was for rent. And I said, hey, it's, here's our housing model. And the owner loved the concept. And she just had, it wasn't assisted living, it was assisted living. She then rented out to a bunch of girls that were in college, they trashed the house. So she was like, I'm done with the whole rented out two roommates college stuff. And so I said, hey, we'll sign a three year lease. And it's my company, we're gonna, here's what we're was my risk? It was the cost of the furniture, you know, 15 going to do to the housing. She was all about it. And so we grand, and then first, first deposit and first month's rent. leased that first house leased.

George McCleary:

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're not putting down like another 100, 200k on like a$600,000 house. You're just, was like, a few grand a month or something like that?

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think at that time, it was maybe three grand, 3500, something like that.

George McCleary:

But you have enough bedrooms to where you like you're doing the math on the napkin saying like, alright, well, we do double occupancy at this much, pretty sure we could have it spliting...

Brandon Kemp:

And by design, we want it double occupancy because we want to avoid isolation. As they're coming out of inpatient service, we want no isolation.

George McCleary:

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Right on!

Brandon Kemp:

So we get houses, bigger bedrooms, that can support two twin beds comfortably without dudes on top of one another, you know what I mean.

George McCleary:

Of course.

Brandon Kemp:

And so that first house worked out wonderful. And that was kind of for me and my wife that was our proof of concept.

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

And then we bought a house in Northeast Portland after that one's in Tigard and then we got on Northeast Portland and we bought our first one, which is exciting, and did a lot of rehab to it.

George McCleary:

Are you guys homeowners at that point? Or...

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, we're homeowners, yeah.

George McCleary:

Okay, so you had your primary but then but you didn't mess around with like, oh, let's go buy a duplex or let's go buy like a 10 plex or flip a house or anything like that.

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

You never really got into any of like the traditional real estate channels. You kind of, sounds like you specialize in a very specific niche right from the jump and your real estate career.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yep, that's the, that's the first thing we did was the sober living stuff. And still was the only real estate play that I have, that I have.

George McCleary:

I think it's great! I mean, why, why do anything else, right? It's

Brandon Kemp:

I always seem to I love the contrarian style. I don't like to follow the herd in anything,

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

I'm always thinking, what's the next thing? And I don't know what the next thing is for us, we might expand more. You know, there's federal Medicaid dollars that flew into every state and every state has a bunch of Medicaid, federal Medicaid dollars sitting in their checking account that's earmarked for inpatient services, and outpatient transitional services, including housing.

George McCleary:

And you're the latter, your outpatient Right, right. transitional.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, I'm just transitional housing. We don't provide any service. We provide structure, structured living, managed oversight, peer to peer support, and we helped get them plugged in with employment services, we help them get into their outpatient recovery services. So we lend a hand, but it's there's no service provided, we're just we're just a residence. And so yeah, it's just kind of grown, grown from there. You know, some of the challenges along the way, we bought a house, I got, now I got a little bigger proof of concept. And I brought on a partner or two partners, actually. And we bought a house in Bend, one of the partners was a private equity firm out of downtown here. And he was very interested in what we were doing. And he wanted to see, hey, can we do a house outside campus, if you will, outside of our reach, right, and then three hours away, and manage it effectively? And so if we could, then he'd help us scale it on a massive scale.

George McCleary:

Wow!

Brandon Kemp:

So and he had, he had, he had capital to do that with him and his partner.

George McCleary:

So he's basically saying, like, hey, can we try and do this in a place that's not, not Portland, not where we're physically there every day or every week. So that once we have this model, where we can copy and paste this thing, outside of our reach, we can copy and paste it coast to coast

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

as much as we want. And by the way, I have the capital to infuse to be able to make this to replicate this model, a trip of 10, 50, 100 times whatever.

Brandon Kemp:

Right. So I was working with him on building out a pro forma that said, if we were able to acquire a house every six weeks, and we went from Sacramento, to Reno, to Boise to Spokane, to Seattle, and everything in that circle, you know, could we could we get up to 100 homes in a matter of a couple of years or more? And what would that look like? And how would we manage and stuff? And so because our houses tend to be our, remember we talked about a Huxford?

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

More of a budget model. Okay, your travel Lodge.

George McCleary:

Sure.

Brandon Kemp:

We don't want to be a Ritz Carlton, but we want to be like a Hyatt, Regency Hyatt,

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

you know, a middle of the road.

George McCleary:

That's a great place to land with this, because I feel like you're you've got like, I mean, I'm sure there's degrees of risk with all of them.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

But you know, but generally, if you're in class C, anything, you've got a higher tenant risk. And if you've got class A you know, you've got a risk associated with that, I'm sure with sober, I don't know how much people are relapsing in class A versus Class C, but it seems like a nice space sort of a niche within a niche.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

Does that sounds right?

Brandon Kemp:

Absolutely!

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

Because I didn't want to, I don't think I compete with Oxford. I think I complement what Oxford has been doing wonderfully for years and years, decades. I didn't want, so they have that, their space, I wanted to compliment them by offering something not over the top. But instead of spending 500, 400, 500 a month at Oxford, maybe you'll pay seven or 800 at mine. And you'll have the 4k screens and the 100 megabit or one gigabit WiFi and the nicer bed the pillowtop, extra long twin instead of you know, so just little, little amenities just to kind of upgrade it. Nicer neighborhoods, you know, you're talking about homes that are 800 to a million in, in value, I would say.

George McCleary:

And are you doing a lot of mods on these things? Because when he's talking about buying a house every six weeks, I'm imagining that these are not homes that were specifically built for this purpose. These are just nice homes. but you're changing, right?

Brandon Kemp:

The problem, the problem would be finding homes that at that clip, if we had the capital ready to go,

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

you know, that never took off. Because we went, we did that house we purchased a house in Bend, and this was in 2018, we bought it in Bend 2018. And the house was our poorest performer, it cash flowed but nothing that made anyone interested. And the problem was my manager didn't want to drive there three hours, especially in the winter going over the past.

George McCleary:

Oh, you didn't have a local manager in that house?

Brandon Kemp:

We had a live in house manager, but again, those live in house managers are managed by our house...

George McCleary:

managed by the manager here Portland, so he had to make some trips over there, didn't love that.

Brandon Kemp:

He didn't love the trips, and he was managing it from afar. And, and it just was poorly ran. And so it did fine but it wasn't interesting enough. And then one of the three partners got health problem, a very bad health problem.

George McCleary:

Oh, it's not good.

Brandon Kemp:

So we had to buy him out and I ended up just buying out both of those guys and just said, and he'd said, Brian, you're going to do find your own just, let's just part ways and I just bought them out,

George McCleary:

Really? So the private equity guy at that point is being like, is basically like, alright, well, we tried to, you know, do this prototype, it didn't really go to the moon, like I was hoping to. So

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

you know, here, buy me out pretty please with sugar on top. And so you did and...

Brandon Kemp:

And he had, he already had a friend or client of his that owned like 100 assisted living homes in the West. So we currently had like, can we get a deal with them to scoop up all their properties and convert them. And then that kind of fell off because the buyer was, we didn't come to terms on on pricing and stuff.

George McCleary:

Because you're you're ultimately responsible for like a model like that, you're ultimately responsible for basically becoming, for coming up with like the SOP that goes into the copying and pasting of this model. So imagine you gave that a decent amount of thought as you formed the place out and Bend. And then to have it not quite work out, that probably didn't feel great. What do you, what did you chalk that up to?

Brandon Kemp:

It was just too far. And my focus was in my, my nine to five.

George McCleary:

Oh, so you still are slinging spineomatic 5000s?

Brandon Kemp:

I still am today.

George McCleary:

Still am today.

Brandon Kemp:

I'm not doing spine anymore. I transition my medical into, I now sell human tissue.

George McCleary:

So you become, so you're cutting people's organs out and selling them on...

Brandon Kemp:

I essentially, I am a distributor for tissue bags in the country. They get donated human tissue after death and they process it and they create whatever tissues you want. I focus on stuff for advanced wound care, whether it's chronic wounds or surgical, crazy surgical wounds. So we sell placental tissues and skin grafts essentially.

George McCleary:

So you've got, you had and still have, like a like a like a nine to five...?

Brandon Kemp:

The whole time.

George McCleary:

Building, building wealth, building this business, essentially, after hours.

Brandon Kemp:

Oh, yeah. 100%.

George McCleary:

Why not quit the nine to five and go to the moon with your real, with your real estate business?

Brandon Kemp:

My, my thinking up through now was the real estate or the medical business can can supply additional cash flow for faster growth?

George McCleary:

Ahh yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And my, my operations guy who's now a small equity partner as well, he's doing such a great job managing the business. I didn't have to do anything, just make sure the numbers are working. He's, does a bang up job with the, with the, the operation side of it. And so, you know, when I was in spine, what I realized is, you know, I had the very stereotypical epiphany when you read Rich Dad Poor Dad.

George McCleary:

Oh, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

Only I didn't read it at 18 or 21. I read it at 39 years old.

George McCleary:

Oh, there you go. I mean, as long as you read it, I think I read that, I think right smack dab it like 21, 22.

Brandon Kemp:

That, George, I'm not kidding you. As we've heard many times from so many other people, I just went, the light bulb went on. And I've been in the dark for 39 years, and I went holy shit. I now know how much I don't know. And I was, I all of a sudden had this hunger to learn. So I plugged into Kiyosaki and I read Cashflow Quadrant I went into da..da...da...da...da... And then I, Oh, he introduced me to Ken McElroy. Not to oh, real estate. Oh, Tom Wheelwright. Oh, taxes. Oh, Garrett Sutton, you know, and I just went bananas with that. And then like, oh, wait a minute, podcasts, that's just free information. All you got to do is go out there and throw it in your ears and absorb it, digest it.

George McCleary:

Yup.

Brandon Kemp:

I'm listening to, I'm driving around as a sales guy. I have a lot of windshield time. I'm listening to sports talk dribble, what NFL running back just punched their girlfriend type of great quality content. And I'm thinking to myself, holy shit, I've wasted all this time, where I could have been, you know, one hour a day of a podcast times five work days that's five times 52 weeks a year times 10 years. How much content could I have, could I have digested?

George McCleary:

The answer is way too much and it gets, it gets a little bit exhausting. I mean, so maybe it doesn't for other people. Maybe you can consume as much real estate and wealth related content until you, until you're blue in the face but I have to apportion it.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, yeah.

George McCleary:

It sounds like you were just going nothing but you know, just...

Brandon Kemp:

It was all new to me.

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

At 39 years old, it was all new to me.

George McCleary:

Oh, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And so for five years, I was just gone, I went crazy with books and podcasts and, and I loved it. And, and that was helping build the sober housing and now, now I'm you know I'm forming a team, the CPA, the bookkeeper, the lawyer, the you know, Kiyosaki, build the team. And and it's it's been a game changer.

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

Absolute game changer.

George McCleary:

Yeah because that, that book essentially, you know, to me, I've read it, I had the same light bulbs go off. It sort of really attuned me to what exactly is wealth creation. You know, it's where your assets just continue to outpace your liabilities and you're worth more and more money. And that chunk of money can start spitting off money that you can spend on you know, bread, speedboats, etc. But, if you, and we talked a little bit more with other guests about wealth creation versus cashflow, and being on the West Coast, a lot of, a lot of it kind of trends towards wealth creation because these are appreciation markets for the most part. Whereas if you like live in Alabama, you know, it's more of a cash flow market. And so it sounds like you know, your, your day job essentially a sort of like you know, your daily get your, your cash flow and then the sober living facilities is more or less your wealth creation. Does that sound right?

Brandon Kemp:

I haven't taken $1 out of the sober living yet,

George McCleary:

Really?

Brandon Kemp:

And I say yet, we just finished a construction project. In addition to our pinnacle property over here in Beaverton,

George McCleary:

And that was a pain in the ass of what you were telling me, am I right?

Brandon Kemp:

I've never built anything in my life. And I said myself, okay, we bought this property in Beaverton three years ago and the property used to be a daycare, had, it's about an acre, just under an acre lot in Beaverton with a green space on two sides, surrounded by apartments. So it's already dense living, we're not going to disrupt the flow of the neighborhood. Huge lot, lots of parking. And it had a medium

George McCleary:

bedrooms size house, but it had two kitchens and two living rooms. It just needed a second wing of

Brandon Kemp:

bedrooms and bathrooms.

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And okay, so we're gonna build this 2000 square foot addition of four mega bedrooms with dividers. So we're going to put three in each room. So 12 beds, one and a half bath to each, each, upstairs and downstairs.

George McCleary:

Interesting! So that is a little bit of like a, like a departure from the norm, isn't it? Because it's normally working with regular sized bedrooms and you double up so now you're going bigger bedrooms, but you're tripling up.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, and I and with huge bedroom, I don't know the dimensions, let's call it 28 by 16 or 18 type of, type of room.

George McCleary:

Okay.

Brandon Kemp:

And we put these little half walls and so when guys are laying in bed, you know, they're not staring at each other type of thing. And then the walk through closet is kind of like an NFL locker room where you have your your booth right, just like an NFL

George McCleary:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

locker. That's where I kind of got just been working at home. That'd be perfect just to have like, you know, turn on your light and you have your little cubbies and your, anyway so that's literally occupancy will be get at, by Friday, my GC told me. So this Friday, we get occupancy for that.

George McCleary:

Thank goodness, yeah!

Brandon Kemp:

But what what amazing, I sat there and it took 2.6, 7 years to build this little addition.

George McCleary:

I cannot...

Brandon Kemp:

Blows my mind. But I told myself, just shut up and observe. Learn something you remember?

George McCleary:

Yeah.

Brandon Kemp:

And I just, okay architect, what do we got to do? Help guide me architect and I just let him guide, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Back and forth, back and forth. Great. Okay, now we're dealing to the city of Beaverton, let's submit the plans. Oh, back and forth for eight months, nine months. And I'm going, is this how it always this?

George McCleary:

Generally speaking, yes. It's, it's, Beaverton's easier than, than, than Portland, so there's that. It probably would have taken longer if it was in Portland. But that's just, that's just how it is.

Brandon Kemp:

Blew my mind. So right now I have zero appetite to build anything right now but that's the customer right at the end of the project. But this, this is where it's gonna get fun because I've said I've never taken a dime, all the cash flow has gone right back into growth, every single penny. And now especially in this climate, this economic climate we're in, in this lending environment, I'm just going to pause on growth. We're gonna, I'm gonna sit back and observe. Stockpile some dry powder, and wait to see what next year brings and what opportunities arise. And so I'm very excited... You fuck, you fucking pussy. Take your capital, grow more, make more money. Get off your aspirin. I'm just, I'm just really kidding. No, I'm still a horse blinder on my medical business right now because I essentially started a new business last year. And I don't really need to get into details but I had to convince other, other some guys I've known in the industry to come with me. And here's the model and I showed the proof of concept being a lone wolf on it, I said, let's scale it. Let's get some 1099s in Spokane and down in Medford and let's, let's, let's build this and we're building it, we're having a lot of success, the cash flow isn't there yet.

George McCleary:

And this is more Sober Living? Or

Brandon Kemp:

No, this is medical.

George McCleary:

Oh, this is medical.

Brandon Kemp:

This is the, this the placental tissues and this is human tissue that we sold.

George McCleary:

Wow!

Brandon Kemp:

Hospitals, doctors offices.

George McCleary:

You don't mind just like trading the hats, you know, you're, you're, your're tissue man one day or medical man

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

and medical tissue. And then the next day, you know.

Brandon Kemp:

Well, I had to get out of the spine game because I was trading time for money in the operating room. I would stand there for six hours, four to six hours during the case. And you'd have to show up early, you have to clean up afterwards. And what I was seeing is reimbursement for us, payment from us was going down, down down because hospitals were chopping the price of our implants. They were also limiting the number of vendors that are allowed in so we were someone in a cubicle would decide whether or not I can, I can, I can work in, in that hospital,

George McCleary:

Right.

Brandon Kemp:

which was incredibly frustrating. I can get a customer, neurosurgeon to say yes, Brandon, I trust you

George McCleary:

Yeah, you gotten good at it. and your, your products but if I can't get in the door of the hospital, then I'm, shit out lock, and the shit out lock stuff was piling up and I was sick of it. And I wanted to, to have a I want to stay medical just because I have the expertise after 14 years.

Brandon Kemp:

So and I have the relationships. And so I said how do I leverage my relationships and that expertise of 14 years but also do it in something I can scale. And I can work from home or I can work from my RV in Montana.

George McCleary:

And it's also like you're a bit, you're a business owner

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

on this one.

Brandon Kemp:

Absolutely!

George McCleary:

So you can actually can like is when you're trading time for money, like you're talking about before, I've, it's been a long time since I've traded time for money. And sometimes if you're like a brain surgeon, you trade your time for money, you got a great return your selling spine stuff, got a great return on, on, on your time for money. But at the end of the day, if you're selling, if you're selling your time, you have no leverage, you have no, you have no leverage in which to build wealth and to actually create more and more money. And so unless you're like an NBA player, or like somebody or lawyer makes 1500 bucks an hour, you're not going to become wealthy trading your time for money,

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

And so if you got, if you can take what you learned to like the medical space, and similar to how you did in the sober living facilities, be able to leverage that into like an actual, into an actual business where you're the owner and able to get a return on other people's time, other people's money, that is, that's appealing to me as a guy who nerds out on businesses.

Brandon Kemp:

Right, yep.

George McCleary:

And so that's, so that's sort of the plan sounds like you've kind of got two, you know, two things going in parallel with your sober living, which you've decided to hit the pause, button on which I will make fun of you.

Brandon Kemp:

Well, we'll see what tomorrow brings. I just exhausted from this construction but yeah.

George McCleary:

Be prepared to have a short term memory on this. I've done a bunch of flips and new a new builds and every single time I finish it up, I'm like, fucking finally, I can't believe this took that long, it was this hard this expensive. But then I'll sell the thing and I'll make some money, I'll be like, maybe that wasn't so bad, after all. And now I'm thinking about doing because the bigger projects I've done in the multiple millions, those have been the hardest. And now I'm thinking about taking on another one. And I'm like, did you not learn?

Brandon Kemp:

Right.

George McCleary:

But at the same time, I'm also telling myself, hey, man, like you've gotten a lot better at this. And if you had to do the exact same thing that you did to your Beaverton facility next door, you know, starting, starting tomorrow, do you think it would go faster or slower?

Brandon Kemp:

Oh, of course. It will be, be much better now. Yeah.

George McCleary:

Yeah, exactly. It wasn't a whole lot of fun the first time around, it's really like being pulled through a keyhole. But that's just what it takes sometimes. And then after And, you know, we didn't get into the medical you get good at that, you know, you get a thicker skin, you get some knowledge base, and it would probably take half the time, cost less money, be less brain damage, and you'd still have that product. It's, it's getting back into it, that's stuff too much but you know, it sounds like you're leveraging really tough and time and again, I've been like, oh my god, I'm what you know about that already, and turning it into an never gonna do that again, and then gone ahead and did it and actual business and dude, I just love that man, I love that for just gotten better as a result. So you know, take your breather, take a, take a pause, you know, because you deserve it after being, after going through that, but don't completely abandoned because I love that model. I love that model with a Sober Living. you.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, thank you!

George McCleary:

And so, and that's what it takes to make it as an entrepreneur and that's why we have these conversations. Why I have these conversations on these podcasts because I just love that, I love that energy, always looking for something new and opportunity and angle and you managed to find that. That's something I really admire about you, buddy.

Brandon Kemp:

Thank you. Appreciate it, appreciate it.

George McCleary:

So yeah, this has been Brandon Kemp.

Brandon Kemp:

First podcast ever!

George McCleary:

First podcast ever!

Brandon Kemp:

So thank you, George for the opportunity. This has been fun.

George McCleary:

It's been great, man. So yeah, what a great journey you have. And I'm glad you're not in tanning salon. I think, I think you...

Brandon Kemp:

Easy one to poke fun at, for sure.

George McCleary:

It is. It is. I'm glad you admitted that. That's great! I mean, heck, if the tanning salons made a bunch of money, then I would have done it too. So. So yeah, man. How do people find you online?

Brandon Kemp:

I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. The only social platform I'm really on as LinkedIn that's important for my business. So you can find me, what is it? Brandon Kemp and I guess, what was my LinkedIn handle? You can email me at brandon@prov, P R O V as in Victor, props, P R O P S dot com.

George McCleary:

That's right. I'm not sure if we even got the name of your Sober Living Company actually.

Brandon Kemp:

Sober Living PDX. By the way, soberlivingpdx.com is our website.

George McCleary:

How on earth did you come up with such a clever name?

Brandon Kemp:

Just lots of marketing, blood, sweat and tears.

George McCleary:

Oh yeah, this is pre ChatGPT. so, you know.

Brandon Kemp:

It absolutely was. Otherwise it would have had a better name.

George McCleary:

That's great! Oh, man. Well, dude, thanks so much for coming on man.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

George McCleary:

It was great to see you and you toughed out the plunge beautifully, man.

Brandon Kemp:

Love the plunge. Keep that going. That's good piece of this.

George McCleary:

I'm glad you like it.

Brandon Kemp:

Yeah.

George McCleary:

Okay, that was Brandon Kemp, what an entrepreneurial journey he's been on. And I gotta say, I think my favorite part of that interview was when Brandon told me he was taking a breather from expanding his business, feeling a little wrung out from his latest construction project. And without hesitation, I call him the dreaded P word. Tell him to sack up, get after it. And we both share a good hearty laugh over the whole thing. That was good fun. But here's the thing, when you're an entrepreneur, it's not always grind time. There are seasons to it. Mike Nuss, and I got into this on episode three, one of the best things about being a business owner is the only person who can truly compel you to go hard is yourself. And if you're wrung out over a construction project that took too damn long and went over budget, it's okay to not go and do the same thing all over again, straight away. Even if you know, it's gonna be a lot easier the next time around. If you know me, personally, you know that I like to have a good time. And I'm not always on the grind. And Brandon is no different in that regard. Pick your times, pick your battles and pick your seasons to really grind. And when you take it easy fill your bucket and the ways it was neglected when you were focusing on fulfilling your purpose. This way, when you get back to the hunt, you're gonna be hitting it hard and with passion. And that's where real entrepreneurial energy comes from. You can tell Brandon's got that passion and that lust for life, but not just in his business. So hopefully his story gives you a little bit of that as well and put some of that wind in your sails. Thanks for listening and please like and subscribe if you're on YouTube. And if I've earned a five star review from you, I'd be grateful for that. I'm George McCleary and remember this, just like the energy and Brandon's Sober Living facilities is contagious and conducive towards change, the energy of your surroundings we'll do the exact same thing. See you next time on frozen millionaires where will once again be embracing the cold so we can ignite the dream. See you there!