The “Dirt Floor to $80K/Month” Investor is BACK (and She’s Gone BIGGER!)

Dave:
Yamu Camara grew up sleeping on a dirt floor in Gambia and overcame some incredibly difficult circumstances to move to the US and start investing in real estate. When she first appeared on the BiggerPockets podcast back in May of 2023, she had already acquired more than 30 rental properties across Illinois, Ohio, and Georgia. And today Yanu is back to share more of her incredible story. Hey everyone, it’s Dave. Yamu’s first episode, if you haven’t heard it already, is number 7 61 back from May of 2023 and is one of the most popular podcasts in this show’s entire history. So we wanted to bring her back to catch up on the last 18 months of her investing. And I’ll give you a spoiler, she’s still crushing it. I really think she has one of the most inspirational stories that we’ve ever heard on this podcast, and honestly, on any podcast that I’ve listened to and the things that she’s endured and overcome to build her portfolio, add some much needed perspective to the entire real estate industry. Just a heads up before we jump in, Yamo does describe some of the abuse she suffered before she came to the us, so please take care when listening. All right. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Investor Yamu Camara ya mu. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. Thanks for being here.

Yamu:
Thank you so much, Dave. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor.

Dave:
Well, it’s an honor to have you back. Your first appearance on the BiggerPockets podcast was one of the most popular episodes we’ve ever done. And just on a personal note, I found it to be one of the most inspiring and interesting stories we’ve ever had on this podcast. So I’m super excited to have you back. For those of you who didn’t hear Ya’s first episode, she first told her story back on episode 7 61. That was in May of 2023. But yamo, maybe for anyone who hasn’t listened to that episode yet, you could just give us a quick background on your story, how you grew up and how you came to the US in the first place.

Yamu:
Of course. So my name is Ya Mundo. Thank you guys for having me. It’s an honor to be here, to be back here. I grew up in West Africa, a small country called The Gambia seven siblings. I’m the last, my parents died when I was really young, my mom when I was two, and my dad when I was 11. So in my culture, it’s totally different from American culture. We usually live in extended families. So my sister was to get mad and she had to take me and my brother with her, so I have to go live with her husband’s extended family. So there was a lot of abuse, sexual, mental, physical, a lot of physical abuse. But yeah, we’re not going to talk about,

Dave:
I’m so sorry to hear that. I

Yamu:
Don’t want to make anybody cry anymore.

Dave:
No, it’s awful. Well, it’s important to know where you came from and I’m just sorry to hear that you had to experience that.

Yamu:
Yeah, so growing up there, it wasn’t easy. So for those of you kids that are abused, they usually have a lot of issues about anxiety. So I used to pee a lot in bed. They wouldn’t let me sleep on the bed. I would get cut boxes and sleep on the boxes. Mosquitoes, when I say floor, I mean third floor, not like carpet here or anything, but yeah, that’s how I grew up. One thing about me, God has always blessed me. I love school. That was my safe heaven. So when I go to school, I’m that smart girl, but when I go home, I’m that abused girl beatings. Sometimes I go to school with max and blood stains on my body. Fast forward, I made it all the way to juniors high high school to college. And in college I started a nonprofit organization that teaches girls how to code. And that kind of took off. And I applied for this fellowship called Mandela, Washington Field for Young African leaders. That was something that President Obama started and named it after Nelson Mandela, I got selected out of 40,000 applicants to come to the us. So that’s how I came to the United States. I was placed at Northwestern University and then I was flown to DC to President Obama, and then I was like, I can’t go back to this. So

Dave:
Yeah,

Yamu:
I’m saying this so people don’t feel sad for me and I’m just paying you guys the sad stuff, like the abusing detail and stuff. But yeah, that was my life until I came to the us.

Dave:
It is, it’s an amazing story yamo. It’s a sad story, but your story of resilience and perseverance is honestly incredible. I really recommend everyone go listen to the first episode. We go into a lot more detail and honestly, real estate feels inconsequential compared to this incredible life story that you’ve lived. But we are here to talk about you as a very, very successful real estate investor. This yamo shared with us the beginning of her life, but as of 18 months ago when you were on the podcast for the first time, you had already gone from someone just gotten a fellowship to come to the United States and relatively rapidly you acquired 32 rental units. How long did it take you to get those first 32 units?

Yamu:
So I would say the first few years, maybe two years into the invest in real estate. So I started investing in 2020 and right now I’m at 156 actually.

Dave:
Oh, what, 156? Yeah,

Yamu:
156. So 59 rentals, 59 residential. And then I bought a South Story facility recently. So mostly now I have crossover to commercial deals. So by 12 units, 10 units, 20 units apartment. And yeah, I bought a South Story facility, 95 units, probably like the beginning of the year.

Dave:
Well, I want to get into that, but I want to get everyone else up back up to speed. You got those first 32 units, and this was mostly just through hustling, right? I know like me, we share a data science background. So I know you were working for the CDC in data science. Are you still doing that or are you full-time in real estate now?

Yamu:
Yes, I’m in both.

Dave:
That’s a good way to put it. Yeah.

Yamu:
Yeah. This is the thing, why would I leave a 250 something thousand job? That’s why I tell people you don’t have to leave. I mean, at the beginning it wasn’t that amount. Now I’m a senior level, but before it wasn’t that you guys know I started with only $8,000 when I started investing. That’s all I had then. But as I go, I progressed. I’m taking all the money I’m getting from my CDC job. It wasn’t much, but I’m buying more properties as I grow. So I went from 30,000, 40,000 property, 50,000 property to 200,000, 300,000, half a million, a million dollar buying properties in that price range. But this is what I tell people, do not leave your job one rental property or two rental properties, not going to have you go on vacation and all these lavish vacations you see on social media say, oh, I bought a rental property, now I’m financially free now.

Dave:
No, we’ll pay for one night of your hotel roof, basically.

Yamu:
Yeah, because when the maintenance hit, you could be cash flowing for six months straight and then you have a maintenance that’s like going to wipe out all the cashflow that you had. So I don’t like people telling people, oh, I’m going to teach you how to invest in real estate so you can leave your nine to five. If the nine to five is not a hustle, keep it. If it’s not a problem, keep it. If it’s stopping you from scaling and that’s a problem, that’s different. But for me, for you, you already know how data science work, like computer programming work, especially in a workspace, it’s not like you’re sitting nine to five to do a work. For me, working for CDC, it’s most like, oh, I will walk on a project. They want me to work on a project that when I build it is they’re going to use it for the next six months. So I’m really just doing maintenance work after the framework is done. So for me, why should I leave my job if I can do it in my sleep and still make money? So a lot of people ask me, why are you still working for CC or why you still have your nine to five? Why not?

Dave:
Yeah, I’m totally with you. I think that it’s one of the most underrated and misrepresented part of this industry is that

Speaker 3:
Working

Dave:
A full-time job makes investing just so much easier. Obviously you have a very high paying job and I assume you get some benefits from that too, which is great. But even if you have an average paying job, it just allows you to take more risk. It is easier to get loans. And I am completely with you. I’ve been investing for 15 years. I still work full time and I invest in real estate at the side. Okay, it is time for a break, but first a quick heads up that BiggerPockets Black Friday sale is happening from November 29th to December 2nd. There are not going to be any extensions. There’s no presale. There’s just four good days of good deals, and this is our biggest book sale of the year. So you don’t want to miss it because every single book and every format is discounted, some of them up to 60% off. So if you want to pick up my book, start with strategy or get classics like Henry Washington’s real estate dealmaker, go to biggerpockets.com/black Friday. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast with investor yamo. Karu ya. I am so impressed by your story, but I want to know what’s happened since the BiggerPockets podcast. It was super popular. Did things happen after you were on the show? Did people start reaching out to you or what happened?

Yamu:
A lot of people reach out to me. A lot of people say, you made me cry. You did this. I think

Dave:
You made a lot of people cry.

Yamu:
Yeah,

Dave:
A lot of people cry in a good way. It’s an amazing story. It’s inspiring.

Yamu:
But to answer your question, a lot of things changed. People reach out to me. A lot of people tell me, I was inspired. You changed my life. I went ahead and went back to investing. Now I’m not scared. A lot of people tell me, I’ve been investing for so long and I stopped. But after, watch your story, why stop? Why not go? So I get a lot of positive comments. A lot of people reach out to me, especially people that connect or understand my story or has been through what I went through or something similar that did reach out. But yeah.

Dave:
That’s so exciting. Well, you deserve it. That’s great.

Yamu:
It was exciting. But when it comes to real estate, I continue buying and never stopped. I’m still buying.

Dave:
Well, it sounds like it. You went from, in just the last year and a half, you went from 32 units to 156 you said. So let’s just start back in May of 2023. What deal did you do right after you had 32 units, you’re on the podcast. What happened next in terms of your portfolio?

Yamu:
So what happened is I found this deal, so you guys already know I do a short term midterm rentals and section eight, I found this deal that was like 12 unit. I don’t know what it did with me and 12 units, but I always find them incredible.

Dave:
It’s your magic number.

Yamu:
Yeah. So I found this 12 unit apartment and I’m working on it. The way I found it actually was a distressed property. A lot of people underrate the Facebook market. I found it in the landlord group. So the person that listed it put it that day that he has multiple properties that he’s selling. But when I saw it, I had seen everybody messaging and say, I’m interested. Here’s my number, I’m interested, here’s my number. I did the same, but the person still responding. And I was like, this person’s probably an investor who’s busy doing other things. Probably did not even come back to the Facebook. So what I did, I was like, okay, I’m a data scientist. I know how to find people, what can I do? So I went and found out, researched his name, found out that he has a property management company as well that’s attached to his name. I called the property manage company. I was like, Hey, I’m looking for this person. The name was already on Facebook. So I gave them the personal number and I got a call from the owner. It was like, how did you find me? And I was like, well, you posted on Facebook, you never said anything. So

Dave:
I yeah, didn’t you want me to find you? Yeah, I tried to sell a deal.

Yamu:
Yeah, and lemme tell you, I went under contract, got my scope of work for my contractor. He listed it for five something. I got it for four 80. It pays for like six 60 as is now. It’s like 7 25. Oh my God. Yeah. But listen, it came with a lot of problems. It needed a lot of work, but I got it under contract, bought the property, and I still go back on the Facebook page and there’s still messages, new messages of people say, I’m interested, Hey, I’m still waiting to show you if you really want this, you have to look at it after business and don’t under write Facebook market. You can find deals there. But that’s how I found that deal. So everything was going smoothly. It turned out the property had some violations, right? So I already know this, right? I’m doing a gut rehab, so I know the violations, I could take care of them.

Yamu:
It’s smaller things that the tenant had reported in some of the units, but the owner never fixed those. So when the city was like, okay, do those things, the units that were reported that had issues, fix them and they will come and do inspection. So the building and zoning came for the deck, the plumbing inspector, electrical, all the inspectors came and it was more main bumping head. Basically I, I’m not going to let anybody move into this unit to this house looking like this. And I’m like, it’s been like this and people lived in there. I’m actually going to be renovating everything. When they came, they were not focusing on the things that were on hand. They were, first of all, the plumbing inspector was like remove all the water heaters from the stairs. The other one was like, have an engineer come and redraw the whole building. Everything needs to be put apart. Oh my god, we need fire rated doors. Fire rated doors are expensive.

Dave:
Super expensive.

Yamu:
800. Yeah, there was like 24 fire rated. We done this. So I started, I was like, okay, fine, I’ll do those. I did them. They came for reinspection. They went ahead and added more stuff and now they came with a fire marshal.

Dave:
Oh my God.

Yamu:
I never knew the fire marshal would do any inspection on a property if there was no fire. The fire marshal came, put exit signs, put this, oh my god, I used to cry. I’m used to just buy the property, fix it up, rent it out, slow motion, like slow smooth ride. But this wasn’t,

Dave:
Is it just because it was a commercial deal and there’s different regulation for commercial over residential? Commercial?

Yamu:
Yes. It was a commercial, so I never experienced that before. My other commercial deals needed minor repairs. Inside interior wasn’t involved with the city. This time I’m under the city’s radar. Listen, I used to cry at night just thinking about this, but the inspiring part was I have already to signed a contract with a solar company that I’m going to host 12 of their guys.

Yamu:
So the property’s already was going to cashflow when it was ready because guess what? Each of the unit I was going to rent for 1800, 1800 a month. So that was a lot of money. I was like, you know what? Let me do all of this. I’m already in it. I came back out. So I fixed all of that. I didn’t want to lose the contract, but every time they come for inspection, they find something else. The fire marshal was dragging me afterwards. The city was actually helping me. I made friends with the city and when they did the final inspection, the building and zoning guy was like, over here, they’re going to come. They’re going to say something about it. But what we don’t see, we don’t know. So don’t pull permits on this until we’re done. We give you the certificate occupants because you did amazing. Some of the landlords will never do this. Like your property, you turn it around, you listen to me, you listen to everyone else. That’s how I got that property out. So afterwards I got my certificate occupancy and I almost lost that contract actually. But yeah, it turned out great. Yeah.

Dave:
So can I ask you a few questions? I mean, I am glad it turned out, but that sounds like a pretty rough situation.

Yamu:
It was rough, yeah.

Dave:
How did you finance this deal in the first place? What was your plan for the purchase and financing it and how were you paying for the renovations?

Yamu:
Yeah, the bank was financing everything, right? Not everything. I have to put a percentage there. I think I put 15% or something like that for purchase price and renovation as well.

Dave:
But when the inspection happened, and I assume your renovation budget just snowballed. It just got bigger and bigger. Did you have to go back to the bank to get more money or did you have enough planned that you were able to cover these new expenses?

Yamu:
One of the expenses was the electrical. The plumbing. I knew I was going to buy plumbing already. It was already in my, yeah, but they wanted me to redraw the building. So I have to fight them to say I can’t redraw the building. If I redraw the building, where do we put the water heaters? This is designed that way. So I have to go back and forth with them. So if I have to redraw it, I would’ve paid thousands and thousands to redraw the building and reinstall the water heaters somewhere else. So the water heaters are still under the stairs. The amount of money that I had to spend was the electrical, the exit signs and all of that. And I strike a deal with the electrical to pay. I paid him. I think he charged me like 15,000. I paid the fourth half and the other half when it’s already rented. So I said, can I pay the rest when the rent comes? He was like, I’ve never seen this. He’s worked with the city, but he’s never seen the city do this to anyone. All the extra stuff. He said, I work with other landlords here. I’ve been working with the city, but I’ve never seen them go this month I was getting so

Dave:
That’s crazy. I’m so sorry. That’s

Yamu:
Terrible. That happened. And there’s a reason why, because one of my contractors had, one of the inspector said, do you know how much money she’s going to make on this? They’re not enough. 12 units around this area. And then my contractor was from then on, I knew it was going to be bad.

Dave:
They were just mad that you were going to make so much money off it.

Yamu:
They were counting my pocket.

Dave:
Yeah, they were seeing how much profit they could eat into, I guess.

Yamu:
Yeah, I don’t know.

Dave:
That’s too bad.

Yamu:
Yeah.

Dave:
Well, I’m glad it worked out for you, and that’s impressive. It shows how much you get from relationships. One that you were able to sort of win over the city in the long run and that helped you ultimately stabilize this deal. And two, being able to work with the contractors and having strong relationships with them allowed you to be a little bit more creative with some of the financing options. Rather than having to come out of pocket or seek more financing, you were able to strike up something that worked for both parties, contractors obviously getting more work, not because they wanted it, but because of this unfortunate situation and were fortunately willing to take some payment a little bit later.

Yamu:
Yeah.

Dave:
Okay. So that deal, when did you buy that? At the beginning of this year.

Yamu:
So that was last year.

Dave:
Okay, so that was in 2023. What about in 2024? Have you done any deals this year?

Yamu:
No. So during 2020, I bought another 12 year. Right after a while I was renovating this. Of course you did another deal. I’m not letting my money sit in the bank. Every deal teaches me something new. So I’m not lifting my money sitting there while I wait for this renovation to be done. I knew that, okay, now that I’ve taken care of everything, I went ahead and bought another 12 unit apartment. This one is a brick complete. Both of them are brick building, but I’m obsessed with brick building. But this is a 12 unit and I needed it to stabilize. I needed something that would just print cashflow. And what does that is section eight. So the property doesn’t need a lot of work. It’s amazing. Beautiful property is ordered to rented. So when I found this one, I’ve already been wanting it a year prior. So I made an offer, but somebody made a better offer and got it. They got it under a seller financing deal, the person that I bought it from. So what happened was they had a seller financ, but he didn’t make a balloon payment or whatever payment. He didn’t meet the payment, so he lost it,

Yamu:
But then he was trying to sell it so he can make a profit, pay off the seller and go away. So they were going through court process. I don’t know if the owner was going to sell. My agent called me back and said, guess what? I’m at the hospital. Her mother, her grandmother was at the hospital. So she was there, she got up, she saw a miss call, called the person back, is the owner of the property. Say, Hey, in court, I saw that your client wanted to buy this property. He said with the same terms exactly that she had offered before. I’ll take it for that. And I bought the, I was like, look at God. It came 360 back to me.

Dave:
Yeah, right. Patience.

Yamu:
Yeah. Rented section eight. I closed within weeks. I was already, I had already told the bank and I told her, yeah, we lost the deal. They already give me approval letter and everything, letter of intent. But then when I came back and I told the bank, guess what, the property’s back and this time I think it’s to stay. They were like,

Dave:
That’s awesome. So it was already underwritten. The bank had already done all the paperwork, so you could just, oh, that’s a little silver lining to the story or getting the runaround is the second time. It was a little easier.

Yamu:
Yeah, the seller had all the documents already and we were like, yeah, we ready to move. The same amount of money that I offered with the guy, that’s how I got it in section 8 12, 1200 for the two bedroom, 900 for the one bedrooms. My goal is to do midterm rentals later on, but it’s cash flowing nicely.

Dave:
Oh, great.

Yamu:
Yeah. So my mortgage only is like 4,300 and something. So imagine that over 7,000 cashflow.

Dave:
Yeah. Wow. Good for you. That’s super cool. Another great deal. Yeah, it’s time for one more break, but when we come back, I’m going to ask yamo about how she moved from her successful portfolio in residential deals into self storage in 2024. We’ll be right back. Let’s jump back into this week’s investor story on the BiggerPockets podcast. Earlier you said that you’ve gone from, I think you said like 58 or 59 residential units, but you just bought a self storage unit. If you’re doing so well in residential and 12, you could have just stuck with only buying 12 units. It’s your lucky number here. Why’d you move to self storage?

Yamu:
So I always wanted commercial. I eventually wanted to get into commercial. Why not? But that doesn’t stop me from buying single family homes and small multifamily. I’m still buying. I just bought two and I’m renovating them. But what happened was I have been reading about self storage for the last two, three years, since 2022. I’ve been reading, researching. I wanted it So back,

Dave:
Can I just ask why self storage? What about it was so interesting?

Yamu:
Because I don’t have to deal with toilets. I don’t have to deal with a lot of maintenance. I don’t have to deal with fair tenants in that capacity. I don’t have to deal with check-ins and checkouts or my team doesn’t have to deal with it. But I wanted something that would be low maintenance, and also it’s a cash cow.

Dave:
So

Yamu:
Either way it wins. It is all part of real estate. But I wanted to scale. I just don’t want to do the same thing. So I’ve been reading about it. Every time I make an offer, somebody will make a better offer and get it and sometimes sell a financing deal and then it wouldn’t go through because of underwriting. But I found this sell story facility in the same town that I have some of my properties in. I already have a team, I have property. It came in the market. The person was doing a 10 31 exchange, probably bought it seven months prior before I bought it. But they wanted to buy a 20 unit apartment or something. So it was doing a 10 31 exchange and I got it. It have half acre of land that comes with it. Already have two tenants that one of them had a boat on the piece of land and one of them have, what’s it that thing called a little

Dave:
Trailer that you put the bottle on a trailer? Yeah, a

Yamu:
Trailer. So I have a little trailer. So I was like, okay, so this could give me an opportunity to not just the 95 unit sales story facility, but also the piece of land. I can redevelop it and I can just put gravel, I can rent it all out. And that’s what I’ve been doing. Systems in place hand off. But that too, us with the problem, right after I bought it, I realized that the owner was dealing with break-ins, a lot of break-ins

Speaker 3:
And

Yamu:
The commerce were not working. So what I did is I added 16 newcomers that pick up animals, even like a small cat, the cameras will pick them up. So it’s more like problem solving. But a lot of people are like, well, why don’t you have your team do it? No, I want to master the app of doing it myself before I hand it over. So I wanted the in and out of the business. Now the theory part, I’ve read all this book, I’ve done all of this. But yeah, when I get excited about real estate, I talk too fast. So hopefully everybody’s understanding me.

Dave:
No, no, this is great. I just have a lot of questions. You’re already filling us in on a lot, but I have more questions. So it sounds like you got rid of the toilet part, but you inherited more problems now that you’ve stabilized it is self-storage actually less property management and less work for you overall?

Yamu:
Yes. Yes.

Dave:
So you got what you wanted? Just took a while.

Yamu:
I got what I wanted. It took a while, still have. So with the cameras, instead of having my team follow up and step, the cameras attached to my phone, one of my property manager. So when I see a din DI couldn’t check. And if it’s a human being and it’s suspicious, I call the police.

Dave:
Oh my God.

Yamu:
So we did that for a couple of times. Yeah.

Dave:
How many times have you had to do it?

Yamu:
Maybe four times that the police were caught, somebody but with

Dave:
Criminal. Oh my. So this is a really big problem.

Yamu:
Yeah, it’s a big problem in the area. And I called other story facility. They said there’s nothing we can do. They will rent out this unit and get in their unit and break into the other unit next door and still, and they’ll keep going. So they would just do whatever. They would come with their tools and stuff. So what I did was every time I see suspicious anything at any time I call the police. Because with these people, criminals, they usually have contact and the world will go around that, Hey, they call the police, don’t go

Dave:
To that place.

Yamu:
These owners don’t play. So

Dave:
Yeah, you got to make them afraid of you essentially.

Yamu:
Yeah, yeah. The police arrested them in action like three times now, and it’s all different people. So now it has ease down. Thanks God. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again. But this is just to tell you, everything is going to come with a problem as a real estate investor, is to fix problems as an entrepreneur, period. It’s fixed problems.

Dave:
All right. Well it sounds like you’re mastering this. Congratulations on another problem solve that seems to be something you’re quite good at. I do want to ask you a little bit yamo about the future and what you’re planning. But before we do, I was re-listening is the second time I’ve listened to your previous episode and you said something about how one of your main motivations, once you came over to the US you decided to stay here, to not go back. And one of your motivations for getting into real estate was to help support your family back home. Have you been able to do that? And what has that support looked like for you and for your family?

Yamu:
Okay, so let’s define family here. I’m only supporting my immediate family, my sisters and my brother.

Yamu:
So I get, I’m going to cry. So all for those of you who haven’t, and I probably haven’t said this at the first interview, but in the extended family, like I said, it was a lot of abuse. But in the extended family, everybody could have hit me, anybody could hit me. And I don’t want people to use this as pity or something. I just want you to see where it all started. So I still get messages from people that have done stuff to me like, oh, we are suffering. We are not having dance, we haven’t eating for this so long, dah, dah, dah, dah. At the beginning, if you know somebody who’s abused or only grew up in that environment, you always go back to the abuser. So at the beginning, even when I came to the us, I still send money and do stuff. But now with a therapist has helped me how to navigate what’s help and was still a abuse mentally how I grew up. So that’s all I know. So I would still get messages from, oh, we want help us. We don’t have this. We or my kid hasn’t gone to school because school face. And I remember I’m like, you are the same guy who used to beat me until you leave Max on my face.

Yamu:
Did you forget all those stuff? Or the same person that did this or cut my hair or beat me because of no reason or did this to me. And I’m like, you forgot all of that and you asking me to send it before I would send the money. But now I only send to my family, my sister, my brothers, and my other family members. Not the family where I experienced that abuse. But yeah, I’m

Dave:
Trying not to cry. I mean, I’m sure an incredibly painful memory and challenging because I would imagine that now that you’re in this much better financial position, that I’m sure all sorts of people start asking you for things and they didn’t treat you and you seem like a very good person. And I’m sure it’s difficult to establish those boundaries and be able to help the people who have been important and supportive of you and not just trying to manipulate you. Now that you’ve found success, well, I’m excited for you that you’ve been able to help your brothers and sisters. That must be a really good feeling.

Yamu:
Yeah, it’s a good feeling to help out. Even with them, I still wanted to help, but I wanted to make sure it’s not like, oh, you still have a hole on me, or I’ll help out when I have to. But when it’s entitled, you need to understand that these are the same people that will tell me, don’t come home if you can’t do this. Or I’m sitting down, I’m the breadwinner. And that they will send somebody to turn off the lights because I didn’t buy the cash power or so, yeah, I’m still doing therapy and all that. Now I feel better. I don’t cry much about other things, but I still have PTSD and a lot of people ask me, well, when are you going back to Africa? My experience for me is like when I go, I have to create my own reality. I don’t want to revisit that. I want to create my own experience of going back to Africa.

Dave:
Good for you. Well, I’m sure thank you. It would be very difficult and take quite a lot of time to process everything that you’ve been through, but it’s incredible what you’ve achieved given the very difficult circumstances that you’ve came from and still have to deal with. Even being in the us it sounds like there’s still a lot of challenges that you, you’re overcoming. Alright, let’s turn to the future. I know I am sorry to bring it up. I know it’s a very emotional topic. Okay, it seems like an important part of you and your story, but let’s talk about the future. You’ve done so well for yourself over the last couple of years. What are your goals? You’ve done so much, you have hundreds of units, are you still motivated? And what are the things that you’re looking forward to in the coming years?

Yamu:
So I’ve been doing a lot of charity work. My nonprofit organization now, I fully registered and everything. I went from sponsoring five offerings to 17 now. So that’s something that’s like a passionate project. And I’ve done a charity event, two charity events actually for offerings in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, where I teach real estate and people in turn. So I find a nonprofit organization that is working in ground with these people offerings and I didn’t even contact them. I just research take their website and put it on my page. So people go donate and then you send us a receipt and we add you to the webinar. So those are things I’m doing now. But when it comes to buying real estate, I just purchased two single family homes for 50,000 each of them. I have this amazing contract that I just won with a windmill company. The windmill company is actually in Europe and they’re sending their guys to work here.

Dave:
It’s probably where I am in the Netherlands. We got a lot of windmills here, sort of invented them. Listen,

Yamu:
They are paying me the money I need more. Didn’t realize in that area. Yeah,

Dave:
Wait, because they want to house people who are working on wind projects basically. Yeah. Okay.

Yamu:
Yeah. It is called robotics something windmill the company. So they literally would house three people, four people at a time, but pay me 60,000 in advance.

Dave:
Wow. How do you find these people? How do you find these companies?

Yamu:
So all the companies that I have, because a people person. So I know how to have great conversation and also tap into opportunities. So the fourth one started is the solar company that I told you guys about. That one started because a manager booked one of my units as the Airbnb and then liked it. And I was like, Hey, I like this a lot. Do you have other units that you rent? I was like, well, actually I’m renovating a 12 unit, or I’m renovating whatever unit I was. It was like, well, I managed these guys and they’re coming over here for a couple of months and at a time with possible extension. Can I see those places if they’re done? So one of the places that 12 unit that I was renovating, and that’s how I got into that. And yeah, they signed 24 months contract, 1800 a unit, and then they connected me to the windmill guys. The windmill guys also connected me into a company that does installation for them. So I just kept collecting this. It’s God, I don’t think it’s me per se. I think it’s God.

Dave:
No, I understand what you mean. But obviously you’ve done a lot and made the most absolute, most of the circumstances. People say you get to pick what cards you get dealt, but you’ve played them very well and you’ve made the absolute most of it. And it just shows your personality and your willingness and ability to build strong relationships just keeps coming back and benefiting you in so many different ways throughout real estate. I think that’s a story and a skill that everyone listening to this can really try and emulate because it’s hard to put your finger on, but it’s amazing when you develop that skill, how many opportunities start to come forward to you. So sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about your goals. I was just curious how you found this awesome thing, but so tell us what you’re going to do next.

Yamu:
So a lot of people reach out to me after my podcast. You should write a book. Your story is so inspired and I’m like, I haven’t even told quarter of my story. If I have to tell all my story, then yeah, I need a book to write.

Dave:
It’s going to be a long book. Yeah,

Yamu:
Yeah. It’s going to a long book. So I’m looking toward, well, I want to write a book that’s going to be more of inspiration and also real estate, but actually how to do it. So that is something I want, and I’m going to manifest this. I want a TV show.

Speaker 3:
Cool,

Yamu:
Not a TV show. Yes, I’m going to manifest it here. So millions of people are going to hear and pray for me. I really do want representation. So for example, the HTB show, not to bash the HTB shows we have now, but it’s mostly like, oh, a dog walker and a primary school teacher or a kindergarten teacher approved for 1 million home. And I’m like that. How is that realistic?

Dave:
And that’s just entertainment. It’s not education.

Yamu:
Yeah. I want to teach through education. So I want to show a normal couple that earn 60,000 a year or 70,000 a year, how to buy a rental property for 40,000, not in your state. If it’s your state possible, yes, but if not, just know that it’s out there that you can do it in another state. So I want to show that will show that. And also, I’m a numbers person. I want to show you how to calculate it, how to find the property, how to build a team, how to calculate, how to check the IV, how to check the cashflow if it’s going to rent on all kind of stuff. So that’s what CV show I wanted.

Dave:
Well, you already had me sold saying you wanted to help normal people buy rental properties. I love that. But you throw some data and numbers in there. I’m watching that TV show.

Yamu:
All right, well, let’s do it. Somebody help me. So if there’s a producer here, please help me.

Dave:
I don’t know anyone, but maybe someone listening, we’ll do that. Well, AMU, thank you so much for joining us. This was a lot of fun. It’s great to hear how successful you’ve been and how much your portfolio has accelerated in the year and a half you were on the first show. And hopefully we’ll have you back for a third episode sometime in the near future. I can’t wait to hear what you do

Yamu:
Next. Thank you.

Dave:
Thank you again. And everyone listening, if you haven’t listened to ya, MU’s first episode, highly recommend now that we’re wrapping up, that you go check it out. Again, it’s episode 7 61 from May of 2023. Thanks again, and thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the BiggerPockets Podcast. We’ll see you next time.