Episode 051 – Andrew Cushman

Full Transcript

Rock Thomas: Hey everybody, welcome to another session of the I Am movement podcast. Today we’re going to visit with a dear friend of mine that has been part of my mastermind group.

Go abundance from its inception. Many years ago, and he’s gone on to grow his identity through that have an engineer into that of syndicators of real estate, a great

Manager of the properties. Many, many partners and at the same time somebody who has been able to build it not too fast and weatherproof it for things that are happening in the world, especially the recession that it looks like we are in the midst of.

 For over a decade, Andrew has been growing real estate investment businesses full time starting off with single family properties in the depths of the Great Recession and completed 27 single family flips, all of which were very profitable in 2011 and your transition to acquisition repositioning of multifamily properties acquiring a mostly vacant 92 UNIT PROPERTY on the other side of the country as his first deal.

That first property was eventually sold for several times its original purchase price and the engine now requires class value added properties throughout the southwest. He’s got 1800 multifamily units to date.

Outside of the business world Andrew has been a certified alpine ski instructor and when he’s not doing real estate or enjoying surfing or backcountry skiing and trying to be out with it by his two little boys, he’s spending time with his lovely wife.

And you know what, it’s interesting asked questions like,

What could be missing, and how could I be wrong, he’s an engineer. He comes from a background of looking strategically at how to make things better. And this has allowed him to do very, very well in the real estate field.

And it’s my honor and pleasure to bring him on to spew his wisdom because you’ll see he’s very articulate very to the point, and he’s going to share with you a couple of strategies on how to move through this current changing the market in a way that I think you’ll see is very intelligent. So let’s get to it.

 Welcome to the I Am movement podcast and you, my dear friend, this is interesting times.

Andrew Cushman: Indeed, it is good to see you, even, even just virtually rock.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, well, that’s part of the New World. I think that’s going to escalate. As we are all you know traveling through this year of the pandemic, but we’ll talk about that in a moment. Let’s

Rock Thomas: Bring people up to speed. They know but who you are from the bio that I’ve given them, but tell them a little bit how you ended up getting so deeply into real estate now from, you know, an educated background.

Andrew Cushman: Yeah I know I got a degree originally in chemical engineering, but from high school, I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Andrew Cushman: And so I just went into chemical engineering because I figured it was something that I could have a good job and tolerate until I figured out what my true calling was about seven and a half years in discovered flipping houses here in Southern California.

Andrew Cushman: And you know I quit my job to do that . My wife quit her job. Two years later, so we can both do it full time we did that about for about four, four and a half years here and then

Andrew Cushman: In 2011 or so we went and we syndicated in an apartment complex. That means we didn’t have the money to buy it ourselves. We pulled together investors and purchased a 92 unit apartment complex out in Georgia.

Andrew Cushman: And because we figured

Andrew Cushman: You know with all these foreclosures and all coming out of the recession, you know, apartments are probably going to do really well right because people can’t buy houses but they need to live somewhere and you know after recession, you have an expansion.

Andrew Cushman: And so we started we went into apartments full time in 2011 and since then we’ve bought about 1800 units. I’m actually really thankful that we have not bought much in the last two years.

Andrew Cushman: And that’s our full time job. And now, you know, now we’re definitely you know we’ve switched modes from acquisition and expansion to asset preservation and protection so

Rock Thomas: So explain that a little bit for people listening to that. What does that mean,

Andrew Cushman: So, you know, two years ago, our goals and our business plan was okay, let’s see if you know we want to try to buy 800 units. This year, and these cities and here’s how we’re going to raise the money and

Andrew Cushman: You know, we brought on two additional people to expand our team. And that was the plan, right.

Andrew Cushman: And it’s just like, you know, when the Titanic hit the iceberg. Everyone’s plan. Everyone’s plan was oh, hey, when I get to the other side and do this and this, all of a sudden

Andrew Cushman: The plan was okay, I’ve got to get to this lifeboat. I’m gonna make sure I get you know it all changes in a heartbeat. And that’s basically what happened to everybody.

Andrew Cushman: In most of the world. A few weeks ago. And so now our number one thing is making sure that all of our properties and our investors come through this completely intact. So we’ve gone through

Andrew Cushman: And, you know, how can we cut expenses at properties and then actually several weeks ago we were, we tried to get ahead of it and we sent out flyers to all of our residents, saying, hey,

Andrew Cushman: Here’s the government programs that can assist you. Here’s how we’ll help you with rent.

Andrew Cushman: We did things like, hey, if you pay your April rent. Now even though it’s March it will give you a $50 discount, right, or will give you a $50 gift card to a grocery store. So we got a bunch of April rent in March.

Andrew Cushman: So that it softens the blow, and eight in April. So our number one focus now is, you know, again, preserving what we have, so that when we come out the other side.

Andrew Cushman: It’s still intact, because one of the beauties and things I love about real estate is as long as you hold on to it long enough.

Andrew Cushman: It’ll eventually be profitable right because you pay down the mortgage rents eventually come back up all that. It’s when you lose a property that’s really, truly. The only time you lose so

Andrew Cushman: Our number one goal is to make sure nothing like that happens.

Andrew Cushman: And then when the appropriate time comes, then we will shift back into acquisition mode and there will be a ton of opportunities at that time.

Andrew Cushman: In the mitten between now and then it’s going to be rough and painful, but you know what we like to focus on is like, okay, but when we get through that there’s gonna be a lot of opportunity so

Rock Thomas: Yeah. That’s very cool. So nobody has a crystal ball where the relatively at the beginning stages of this pandemic thing.

Rock Thomas: What is your sense as a business owner, strategically worst case scenario, best case scenario and how you plan on leading your team with that.

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, like a

Rock Thomas: Lot about the worst case scenario. I know you enjoy

Rock Thomas: About it already.

Andrew Cushman: Well, yeah. So let me tell you the worst case scenario, the worst case scenario is a couple weeks ago, we went and we modeled. What does it look like if our revenue drops by 70%

Andrew Cushman: And and in our properties are only running at 30-35% economic occupancy. How long can we survive at those kind of numbers dad is the worst case scenario that we modeled the best case scenario is you know

Andrew Cushman: As of right now today is April 1 maybe in the next couple of months, we come out with

Andrew Cushman: A vaccine is probably 12 1824 months out, but maybe in the next few weeks they figure out some some current drug combination that

Andrew Cushman: dramatically reduces the symptoms and all of a sudden, this isn’t quite as, you know, big a burden on the healthcare system and the death rate goes down and

Andrew Cushman: We can return to some semi normalcy within you know a month or two or three or something like that. I think the reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

Andrew Cushman: Meaning, we’re going to be dealing with waves of this over the next 12 to 18 months meaning okay we you know we

Andrew Cushman: Sometime next couple of months things. Calm down. We ease the restrictions. There’s another wave, eventually we go back into social distancing all this kind of stuff.

Andrew Cushman: And it’s probably going to be kind of off and on, until we do get the vaccine or and until we develop herd immunity.

Andrew Cushman: So what that looks like. Economically is probably kind of a U shaped thing where we come down. We bought them out hopefully not too deep. The government is doing a lot of things that will help

Andrew Cushman: Lenders are not rushing to foreclose in fact are doing the opposite. They’re saying, hey, we’ll help you, it will it will give you six months off right that makes a huge difference of not

Andrew Cushman: aggravating severity of this. So that is a real glimmer of hope to me.

Andrew Cushman: That this won’t be as deep as it could be. And then, you know, again, I think it could last at least 1218 months and then hopefully

Andrew Cushman: Once the virus becomes unfortunately probably just kind of part of daily life where it’s kind of like the flu. We’ve got a vaccine you wash your hands extra

Andrew Cushman: I think we start coming back out and we start the next cycle. So I’m not Doomsday. I’m also not too optimistic of a quick V shaped recovery. I think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. So we are preparing for something worse than the middle and hoping for something better.

Rock Thomas: That makes a lot of sense to me. So you said that the last couple of years, you kind of reduced on your acquisition. You’re happy about that. What was the reason for that we just not finding find things in your criteria because the market was kind of bubbling

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, we’ve always, you know, whenever we look at an acquisition. Our number one question is, what’s the potential downside.

Andrew Cushman: And if the potential downside is acceptable, then we look at what’s the potential upside and as we looked at hundreds and hundreds of deals over the last two years, whenever we looked at a deal.

Andrew Cushman: In the price that we were going to have to pay to get it and then the resulting thin margins that we would be at we said, well, if something happens, meaning

Andrew Cushman: In our, in our view, just a normal recession. If a normal recession were to happen this property could be a problem. At these prices. So therefore, we don’t feel like we can pay this

Andrew Cushman: And so we ended up looking at hundreds and hundreds of deals in the last two years, and not buying any and

Andrew Cushman: Now, by, by being, I guess, disciplined or whatever, not just doing deals, just because we could do them.

Andrew Cushman: I was candidly, I was feeling left out. I’m like, okay, maybe we’re doing something wrong. Maybe you know if everyone else is buying these things.

Andrew Cushman: Maybe, are we underwriting wrong. Are we being too conservative? I mean, it really kind of made me question for a while. Our business model.

Andrew Cushman: Because everyone else is doing these great deals and we’re not now I look back, and I’m not necessarily saying they were all bad deals. I’m thankful that I just, I don’t have anything that we bought at top prices and on thin margins, because those would be the first ones to get into trouble.

Andrew Cushman: So yeah, it was you know now looking back or some deals. I was kind of pretty bummed that we missed. And now, like, you know what I’m actually kind of glad I don’t know that.

Rock Thomas: totally get it. So you are a team of what, how big is your team now.

Andrew Cushman: What we’ve got our, our direct team. And then we kind of have our indirect team. So we use third party property management. So if you were to include all of those staff members.

Andrew Cushman: You know, we’re probably a team of 35 or 40 but direct myself a we have myself and my, my wife, our business partners and then

Andrew Cushman: My three main principles in the apartment business or of course, you know, good good friends of both of ours, David, you know, David Osborne Tim road and Pat. Hi, Ben.

Andrew Cushman: And then we have two acquisitions people that we brought on one of them, you know, Kelly Andrea. She’s an absolute rock star. And so as Anthony’s not an M one, but both of them are amazing and

Andrew Cushman: They really improved our business and I and I can’t wait for them to

Andrew Cushman: Participate in the the with the opportunities that are going to come down the road so well and then have an office manager. So our core team is really kind of four of us. And then we’ve got David patent him and then all the third party you know manager type people and contractors

Rock Thomas: Do you have, have you had to lay anybody off or dial anybody back yet.

Andrew Cushman: No, we have not one thing we’ve always been really productive at is about trying to keep overhead low. So we you know we we feel like

Andrew Cushman: Yeah. And next, I’d say one of the the key things to surviving any kind of downturn or crisis is maintaining your core team right

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, that might be some fat you can shed, maybe even a little bit of muscle but you know your core people. That kind of the bones are the structure of every, every team and and you know we really want to keep them in place. And fortunately, we’re set up where

Andrew Cushman: We’re able to do that so

Rock Thomas: Yeah. Well, I’ve heard an expression that goes along with your metaphor, there is that, you know, you can you can cut the skin. You can even cut the muscle.

Rock Thomas: But you never want to cut the bone. Right, right. You want to keep that core there. So that’s really awesome. Now, as you look forward to riding through this particular situation. What skills do you

Rock Thomas: attribute to you having prepared for this. I talk a lot to people, I say, what are you preparing for in life.

Rock Thomas: And if you haven’t been prepared for something like this. You live paycheck to paycheck as an example.

Rock Thomas: You’re going to be stressed out more than the person has six months worth of savings. How have you prepared? Just in general with your mindset or with your budget or anything like that for something like this to come along to be in a better position than most people.

Andrew Cushman: For the last couple of years, we have been, we know that the last 10 years have been an amazing economic cycle here, and especially here in the US.

Andrew Cushman: And while it was hard to find what was going to put an end to it. We knew at some point it would. And so about two and a half, three years ago, we said, look, let’s go through our portfolio and we identified

Andrew Cushman: And then this could apply to someone who has a business, most small businesses or single family rentals, or in our case apartments. I mean, the principle applies anywhere or even stocks really

Andrew Cushman: We went through our portfolio and said, Okay, what are the weakest holdings right if we get a recession next year or in two years?”

Andrew Cushman: What are the, what are the properties or the stocks or the businesses that we wouldn’t want to be holding in a recession.

Andrew Cushman: And you know, we didn’t okay well you know this one. This demographic here is probably going to suffer in a recession. So we don’t want to own that. And every session. So we went through and sold off almost half of our entire portfolio over the course of two and a half years.

Andrew Cushman: And we the ones we sold off were the ones that again. We didn’t want to hold in a recession and we had huge profits on some of those, you know, one we bought for 2.4 we sold for 7.1 we bought another one we bought for 2.8 we sold for 6.4

Andrew Cushman: And our view was, you know, if we get a recession that opportunity is going to evaporate. So let’s take some chips off the table. Take that cash and just bank it

Andrew Cushman: So that if something happens. Number one, we got a lot of runway and to the people who can most take advantage of opportunities at the bottom of those who have cash.

Andrew Cushman: And so that’s how we kind of prepare. We’ve done the same thing as most of our properties.

Andrew Cushman: So we, we typically buy with a bridge loan and then refinance and sort of when we did refinances the last two to three years.

Andrew Cushman: At each property we took large sums of money and just set it into a reserve account, even though we had no idea what it would be used for

Andrew Cushman: In some cases, we set aside hundreds of thousands of dollars into reserve accounts just to sit there for something

Andrew Cushman: And let me tell you the properties that have that I feel really good about right now. And there was one property that unfortunately we had a management issue and we had to use two thirds of that reserves.

Andrew Cushman: And so we’re only a good about a third of where I would like it to be. And that’s the property that you know I would most be concerned about, but still kind of looking back, having those reserves, both personally and at the other properties that definitely helps me be asleep. Yeah.

Rock Thomas: That sounds like you’ve done a great job with that. Tell. Talk to me a little bit about how you’ve shifted your identity in the last 10 years or so, you and I met about, about seven years ago or so.

Rock Thomas: You were kind of starting into, you know, moving in that direction.

Rock Thomas: And I would say, now you’ve become an authority in the area of syndication and apartments acquisition. You’ve been on other podcasts, where people consider you authority. Throw your name around people like oh yeah I know him. How has that shifted for you.

Rock Thomas: You know, go back to when you were transitioning from chemical engineer to starting in real estate to now, I think you probably feel quite confident and comfortable in your lane.

Andrew Cushman: You know, it’s funny. I still I still I still reference myself as an engineer. Right. It’s kind of like once a marine always a Marine. I think it’s once a once an engineer always an engineer, it’s, it’s a way of thinking and then

Andrew Cushman: Being you know it, it’s kind of, you know, scary. In one sense, um, you know, my, my identity is definitely you know all sorts of different aspects of that right there’s a husband. There’s dad, there’s, there’s an entrepreneur. There’s investor.

Andrew Cushman: And it’s in one sense it’s really what I wanted to be and become as you know someone who, at least in my niche is as educated and knowledgeable as I can be.

Andrew Cushman: And but at the same time it’s a little bit. It can be scary is not really the right word, but can be scary at times, knowing that, hey, people are listening to what I’m doing. When I’m, what I’m saying right, it’s an added level of responsibility.

Andrew Cushman: And

Andrew Cushman: You know, then there’s also just the, you know, I see myself as a steward, I have, you know, hundreds of people have given us their hard earned money.

Andrew Cushman: To invest and grow and take care of. So I see myself as a steward, whereas an edge as an engineer. I wasn’t in the beginning when I was flipping houses, you know, we’re just it was really just for us.

Andrew Cushman: We’re gonna, we’re gonna flip a house, make a profit and move on. Whereas now, you know, we’re yes we’re in business for ourselves, but we’re also in business with hundreds of partners who are investors.

Andrew Cushman: And you know their livelihoods are partially dependent on us and us being good stewards and us making

Andrew Cushman: wise decisions, as you know, as best as we can and then. And again, that’s part of the, you know, as you know, I’ve been in abundance for a long time. And that’s one of things I love about it is, is I can tap into the wisdom of

Andrew Cushman: So many people who’ve gone before me and learn from their experience rather than make mistakes, myself and that’s that’s been a change for me to

Andrew Cushman: You know, in the beginning, I’ve historically. I’ve always been very much a lone wolf type of guy. And my identity is changed and morphed over the years to

Andrew Cushman: That’s been a learning experience that that’s not the best way to go.

Andrew Cushman: Maybe you can move the fastest as a lone wolf, but not necessarily the farthest or know the best path. And so that’s been changed to whereas I see myself as part of a larger team part of a tribe and yeah that’s been a gross and a change in identity over the years. Very nice. What

Rock Thomas: What would you recommend to people that maybe resist that because I hear that a lot. People like to try to figure it out on their own, they

Rock Thomas: Sometimes don’t want to be knowing that they don’t know the answers they want to look good, or whatever, they’re shy, whatever.

Rock Thomas: What do you will have you convinced yourself to be more proactive and approaching people getting their opinion, getting their perspective and things like that. How have you, how have you created that for yourself and expanding your identity.

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, I, I really have to give credit to other people because I was kind of dragged into it. Right. I mean, you know, for going back to the abundance example. The only reason I went, is because Tim road invited me and

Andrew Cushman: You know I respected him. So I went and I didn’t really think much about those type of groups, but what happened is not and not just a bunch of other people I know in the business and just throughout life is when I see is the people who

Andrew Cushman: Learn to just ask the questions to reach out to others to be in another group. They were the ones who are learning the fastest. They were the ones who were scaling the fastest

Andrew Cushman: And now that is definitely I well I’m thankful that I did do it you know if I could change something I would say I would go back and do that earlier.

Andrew Cushman: I would get more involved with other people and other groups and other learning experiences. I would have, I would have expanded our team earlier. I definitely missed out on some opportunities by, you know, only expanding our team fairly recently as opposed to doing it five years ago.

Andrew Cushman: So, you know, I can’t. I wish I could say it was something where I strategically approached it. And so, oh yeah, I should do this. I didn’t want to. We were fortunate that you know, and wouldn’t need my wife’s help. I was

Andrew Cushman: I also used to be pretty pretty tight fisted with expenses and so I didn’t want to pay for mentors. Fortunately, fortunately, my wife was the wiser. Of the two of us and convinced me to do it. And that was a big part of why we’re here. And at the same time. Should I do it? So that was good.

Andrew Cushman: But yeah, expanding expanding the team and expanding to other groups and learning from others more would have would have, you know, put us at probably even even better position than we are now so

Rock Thomas: So anytime you do an investment you obviously you do your best to make sure it’s going to go well. But there’s going to be surprises.

Rock Thomas: Yes, been a change

Rock Thomas: It’s going to change. You know the numbers, the return, etc. What is one, two or three of the top lessons you’ve learned in the last kind of 10 years of doing this.

Rock Thomas: That now maybe is automatically like okay, we’re going to check this, check the neighbors or check the references or check the cooling system. What are some of the two or three top things that you want, now that I will not buy a deal unless that is, you know, clear to me.

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, I would say one thing that applies in general, not just a real estate is always go in over capitalized right if you think you need 50 grand going with 75

Andrew Cushman: If you think you need 100 going with 200 right, you can always especially if you’re raising money from other people. You can always give that money back. If you don’t need it.

Andrew Cushman: But it’s way harder to go get it later if you run short right so that’s number one that applies across the board. If you’re starting a new business if you’re buying real estate whatever you’re doing, going over capitalized.

Andrew Cushman: And as far as real estate specific we found one of the biggest things for us in the bit that when we look back at the portfolio and which properties were the most successful and the least headache.

Andrew Cushman: If we look at median income, you know, we tend to buy C plus to be class properties, which is kind of like your workforce housing middle of the road, you know, mostly renters for life, type, type demographics.

Andrew Cushman: And once we found that once you get below.

Andrew Cushman: Again, most of the news we’re not talking California or crazy New York type incomes and prices, but for the majority of the country, the South and Midwest. Once we get below 35,000 median income.

Andrew Cushman: Those properties tend to really struggle more with collections evictions delinquent rent crime goes up, you know, as ink as income goes down below 35 we find crime goes up exponentially. The further you get below 35, the higher the crime rates tend to get

Andrew Cushman: And use get into, you know, a demographic that you know is just struggling harder than the majority of everybody else. And so we don’t buy anything in an area where the median income is less than 35,000. We also will not buy in an area where crime is high.

Andrew Cushman: You know, if you, if we’re looking at a single family big apartment complex, whatever it is, if there’s a couple crime issues at your property, you can buy it and you can fix that. But you can’t change the neighborhood around you.

Andrew Cushman: And it doesn’t matter if the whole neighborhood has, you know, high crime rates or similar type issues.

Andrew Cushman: You can try to clean up your property in it. They just keep them just the issues. Just keep flooding back in you, you cannot change the neighborhood. So that’s another big one for us is crime in addition to median income.

Rock Thomas: Those are some great distinctions. Thank you. And you for sharing. What is your five year vision? Are you going to continue to acquire real estate? Are you going to

Rock Thomas: Diversify a little bit as we go through this choppy market, are you going to be you in the stock market. Are you going to continue? Are you going to start buying at some point in time?

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, my five year vision is very different than it was a month ago.

Andrew Cushman: You know, it’s like, like I said, when you hit the hit the Titanic all sudden everyone’s

Andrew Cushman: Yeah dangers of what their what their main goal is, but I’m so far as the stock market goes, You know what, I actually went and did a study

Andrew Cushman: And looked at the three greatest historical analogs. So that would be the 1918 Spanish flu, the Great Recession and 30 Great Depression in the 30s and then 2008

Andrew Cushman: And when you look at those. The stock market declined over a period of one to three years, not just in the first month 123 years it declined anywhere from 50 to 84% right so

Andrew Cushman: I am looking at getting back into the stock market, but my guess is it’s probably going to be more at a level where the Dow Jones is in the 15 to 16,000 range.

Andrew Cushman: I, you know, again, if you look at historical events, it’s typically not you know drops for a month and then starts going back up it zigzags down for 123 years and I would be surprised if that’s not the case this time so

Andrew Cushman: I do have an allocation for the stock market. I think that’s a you know way. One way for people to take advantage of this at the right time.

Andrew Cushman: And again, no one. You can’t perfectly time the bottom but you also don’t want to Catch a Falling knife right it’s better on the way.

Andrew Cushman: Up. It’s better to sell early than sell late and on the way down. It’s better to buy a little later than then by a little early. Right. So that’s kind of how we’re approaching it. And we want to get the general sense of the bottom, not the exact bottom

Rock Thomas: Yeah.

Andrew Cushman: makes total sense. And then as far as real estate goes, we were actually in the middle of an acquisition when this hit and we just put it on. Pause

Andrew Cushman: We just you know we amended the agreement and say, hey, we’re just going to extend this timeframe, an extra month and a half, and then we’re going to

Andrew Cushman: revisit it at that point right, we still like you as the seller, we still like the property, but the world is in chaos, knowing you know not just going on. Let’s just sit back and wait

Andrew Cushman: And so we put that on hold. Outside of that,

Andrew Cushman: You know, we’re I will not say I wouldn’t say that we won’t take any opportunities, but we’re certainly not aggressively pursuing new acquisitions right now.

Andrew Cushman: You know my thought process today is we’ll probably start seeing some really good opportunities and maybe nine to 12 months.

Andrew Cushman: You know, the stock market responds instantaneously to this type of thing and which we’ve already seen real estate takes a while to work through

Andrew Cushman: And so I think you know nine to 12 months down the road, you’ll see some opportunities, the government’s doing lots of things to to help

Andrew Cushman: Properties make it through. But there’s going to be people who either just aren’t proactive enough or stick their heads in the sand or they’re like, Screw it. I just don’t care, I’m out, you know,

Andrew Cushman: And so that will provide opportunities down the road. So, you know, our five year plan now is kind of

Andrew Cushman: Again asset asset preservation right now is number one.

Andrew Cushman: And then lay the groundwork to be able to benefit from the opportunities that are probably coming down the road in one to two or three years so that by the time I get to five years, we’ve our team is intact and and we’re, we have a bigger and better portfolio, then we do now.

Rock Thomas: Makes a lot of sense. So what I hear you saying is that even though the government is taking action right away. Those people are going to drop the ball not pay attention not know the benefits

Rock Thomas: Wake up in three, six months, find out that they can’t pay the bills on their property.

Rock Thomas: There’ll be probably an increase in foreclosures and one second works its way through the system will start to probably see some good, decent opportunities speaking our language in the latter part of this year, and maybe into the, the next coming years.

Andrew Cushman: Yeah, something along those lines. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rock Thomas: I would agree with that. What are your favorite books, Andrew.

Andrew Cushman: Haha, you know, one that I review on a regular basis is How to Win Friends and Influence People

Andrew Cushman: That is, you know, the material in there is key. No matter what business you’re in. Yeah, and it applies to everything outside of business too. And I also really like

Andrew Cushman: It is an old one from the 90s. But Jim camps. Start with no to great negotiating book a good companion to that is, the more recent Chris bosses never split the difference

Andrew Cushman: And yeah, I’ve got. And actually, you know, that’s what, that’s one thing. That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years is, you know, a lot of us. It’s very nice. I’m going to read 50 books this year 100 books and you know you speed through these books will, you know, how much do you really

Andrew Cushman: You now enact that and use it to change your life. Whereas what I’ve found is if I take the books. I’m like, wow, that was really awesome.

Andrew Cushman: So then I save that and then go back instead of trying to read 10 more new books. I go back and read what I highlighted in the original one. SO WE’LL HAVE I applied this to my life if I haven’t applied this to my life yet.

Andrew Cushman: Then why do I need to get a bunch of new things to apply if I haven’t even done the other ones I’ve already identified, right. So, actually.

Andrew Cushman: So there’s books that I go through and reread and re study

Andrew Cushman: And say, well, I already said this is going to help me. So let’s get this enacted, and then I’ll read some more new ones. So I do a combination of rereading and re studying ones that I already know are impactful and then you know redoing new stuff on top of that, so

Rock Thomas: I love it, I love it. Well, Andrew. I want to thank you so much for dropping by the I Am podcast. You’ve been a great friend and you and I have paddled the fjords Norway together.

Andrew Cushman: That was epic. Yes.

Rock Thomas: And we’ve done some really cool stuff. And it’s doesn’t surprise me to watch how you have incrementally built your business and done it with integrity and even

Rock Thomas: Kelly, who works with you as somebody that came through the magic of the mastermind and shoots for you to, you know, talent to meet experience and for that to grow. So it’s been nice, you know, having you as a friend and watching your success.

Andrew Cushman: Likewise, rock. I appreciate that I brother. Thanks so much. All right, take care.

Rock Thomas: All right, that’s a wrap. Thank you so much, Andrew. I really appreciate that. Some really great insights. I’m gonna see if I can move this one up to come out a little bit sooner. I think it will be appropriate.

Andrew Cushman: Okay, cool. Well, I appreciate the invite. And always happy to help. And if you want to do another whatever it was that M one lived or whatever we did. I’m happy to do that too. And yeah, so

Rock Thomas: Okay, I appreciate that very much. We’ll be in touch, buddy.

Andrew Cushman: All right, take care. Good, see you, too.