House Poor to HUGE Cash Flow by Doing THIS: Robuilt’s Rags-to-Riches Story

Ashley:
This is Real Estate Rookie Episode 315.

Rob:
I will give my parents all the credit in the world because I had no idea that we were poor, but I do remember there was this one day I came home and my mom was bawling at the kitchen table. I remember being like, “What’s wrong, mom?” And she was like, “You texted somebody so many times. Our bill is $600 and we can’t afford this.” That was a hard moment for me because that was the first time it clicked with me that $600 is everything for certain families. That was that moment where I was like I will never let my family feel like this again. I’ll make sure that my family never feels this way.

Ashley:
My name is Ashley Kehr, and I’m here with my co-host, Tony Robinson.

Tony:
And guest, Rob Abasolo.

Rob:
Hello.

Tony:
What are you doing? What are you doing?

Rob:
Oh, sorry. I’m marching in on your intro.

Tony:
Well, anyway, welcome to the Real Estate Rookie podcast where every week, twice a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. And you guys, if you didn’t recognize that voice, we do have someone barging on the intro today. But before we get to that guy, Ashley, what’s going on in your neck of the woods? We haven’t done any boring banter in a while.

Ashley:
I know, we really haven’t. I’ve been doing a lot of wake surfing. I’ve got two properties under contract. One is going to be a house flip and the other one is going to be a BRRRR. What about you?

Tony:
We still have this ever ongoing campground that we’re doing in West Virginia, but it feels like we’re finally getting close to the finish line on that one, so fingers crossed, we can start breaking ground before the year is over. And honestly, that’s pretty much it.

Ashley:
Tony, once you close on that though, I really want to do a rookie reply on that whole process of how that started.

Tony:
Oh, totally.

Ashley:
Yeah, a really interesting one.

Tony:
Yeah. We’ve learned a lot. Things went well, things went haywire, but it seems like we’re back on track. But honestly, most of my focus right now is building out Robinson Capital. That campground would be the first acquisition under that new company and really just trying to focus on more commercial acquisitions.

Ashley:
Well, today, we have a special guest with us. We have the co-host of the BiggerPockets podcast, and you may know him-

Rob:
Hello. Hello.

Ashley:
Do you want to intro yourself?

Rob:
No, no, you do it. I like it when other people talk about me.

Ashley:
You may know him as Robuilt. You may have heard him on the podcast or you may have watched him on YouTube or seen him on social media. So Rob Abasolo, welcome to the podcast. I would like to know, what is one great takeaway that you gave to us on the episode today?

Rob:
I would say the greatest takeaway that someone will get from today’s episode is understanding why it’s so important to have other people pay for your mortgage.

Tony:
That’s a good one. I would add to that, Rob. I love that. But I also think the idea and concept of starting small, testing and iterating to bigger things is a really important theme from your episode today as well.

Rob:
Yeah. You got to scale accordingly.

Ashley:
So what we do in this episode is we are going to go through Rob’s childhood journey, starting from his early years and things he’s learned from his childhood that shaped him who he is today. He talks about living under your means, frugality and what his family went through growing up, and you will get the chance to learn a lot more about Rob and how he built his legacy, starting with house hacking.

Tony:
We get real deep in today’s episode. We get Rob on the therapy couch, but overall, lots of really good things come out of today’s episode. Before we keep moving, I just want to give a shout out to someone by the username of MMK2255. They left us a five-star review on Apple podcast. This person says, “So many thanks to Ashley and Tony. I love the entertainment, knowledge and motivation from the host and their guest. I started listening four months ago and just closed on my first property. I met Ashley at a conference recently and she’s even more genuine in person. My next goal is to meet Tony. Keep up the boring banter and thanks for everything.”
So MK, we appreciate you. For all of our rookies who are listening, if you haven’t yet, please do take a few minutes to leave us an honest rating and review. The more views we get, the more folks we can reach and the more folks we can reach, the more folks we can help, which is what we love doing here at the Rookie Podcast.

Ashley:
If you haven’t already, make sure you check us out on YouTube at Real Estate Rookie or join the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group. Rob, welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Show.

Rob:
Thank you.

Ashley:
Thank you so much for joining us today. We are very honored to have you on. And some may be questioning why we have you on today, and we are going to go back to the rookie years, and we’d really like to start with childhood. So Rob, please indulge.

Rob:
Yes, yes. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a rookie. Well, hey, first of all, let me just say thanks for having me on the pod. So excited to be here. I put in my request in the form many years ago, and so very happy to finally have my moment.

Ashley:
That is if the episode airs, but yeah, stay tuned.

Rob:
That’s right. You guys will let me know at the end, right?

Ashley:
Yeah. So Rob, first, before you go into your childhood, I guess, who are you?

Rob:
Okay. So my name is Rob Abasolo. I am the co-host of the BiggerPockets Podcast and the Real Estate Show specifically. I’m a YouTuber, content creator. I’m a real estate investor specializing in the world of Airbnb, and I’ve been doing this for about seven years now and have gone from zero to a relatively decent portfolio that I’m really proud of that took a long time to get here, but couldn’t have done it had I not had a few really, really hard, difficult, formative years getting into the real estate space. Is that a good introduction? Did I do it right?

Ashley:
Yes, very good. You’re on the right path here. Okay, so let’s go back to your childhood. What was it like for you growing up and how do you feel that that molded you into the investor you are today?

Rob:
Totally. I grew up really just watching my parents do the ultimate sacrifice, living out the ultimate sacrifice for their kids. And what I mean by this is my dad and my mom, they’re immigrants from Mexico. My dad was a doctor in Mexico and my mom worked with them. I believe she was a nurse and that’s how they met. It’s quite the romantic story. And they had a great, great life in Mexico and I think a really great trajectory for where they could go, but they wanted to try this whole crazy thing of moving to America and providing a better life for their kids, and that’s exactly what they did in my perspective.
I really had no idea how difficult it was financially for my parents, growing up, because as a kid, you don’t really see that thing. But what I did see was that my parents were always working. They were always working second jobs. A lot of people would ask here, why didn’t your dad just move his license over to America? He was unable to. He didn’t speak any English and he tried to move his doctor’s license over to America and he took the test twice and he failed, and it’s because he really just was unable to do it because not only was he struggling to learn English and do all that thing, but he’s also having to work a minimum wage job to really provide for the family and everything like that. So I think after a couple of times of giving that a shot, he just decided to make the decision like, hey, I can’t keep pursuing this dream of becoming a doctor in America. I’ve now got to bootstrap this thing, work jobs provide for my family and everything like that.
And so that was really tough for me because I remember thinking as a kid that my dad is the smartest man I’ve ever known, and he would talk to me about health and things and doctor stuff because I guess he didn’t really get to talk about it all that much at work, but he worked a minimum wage job for so long. And I think it all clicked for me because I remember one day, they were bringing me to an office building at night and I didn’t really know what was happening. It was like third or fourth grade. And my parents were working full-time jobs during the day, and as soon as they finished those shifts, they would basically come pick me up from school. I think we would eat and then they would go work another job as janitorial staff at these commercial buildings. And that was really confusing for me because I didn’t really grasp it.
And through this journey, I just saw them always doing different things to make more money until eventually, they went and they bought a house and they started fixing it up and they would take me to the house every single day. And I remember they sold it and they flipped it and it was such a big deal for them because I think they made $20,000 or $25,000 and it was a huge, huge monumental moment for my family. They went and they did another flip and they made 20,000 or 25,000 and, again, life-changing income for them.
And then eventually, they go and they go to a tax auction and they buy this amazing house in the heights of Houston, which is actually, it’s a really, really good part of town and they thought they got a once in a lifetime deal, but I think they didn’t really know the English perfectly, the legal terms or anything like that. And I saw them basically buy the liens on the house. They didn’t even buy the house. They bought the debt associated with it or something. And they put every single cent, everything they had ever owned, any savings into this house until eventually, the owner came back and took it from them. And that was a catastrophe financially. They never moved on with real estate after that. That’s where they were like, “We can never do this again.”
And I saw this firsthand, and I remember thinking at that moment for me like, okay, my parents came here. They lived the ultimate sacrifice for me. I didn’t really understand real estate but I was interested. They were always telling me, hey, real estate, this is how people become wealthy. And they tried it and they failed, and I felt it was my duty and my responsibility to carry on the torch and finish what they started.

Tony:
Rob, first, thank you for being so transparent with your story. I think a lot of people come from similar backgrounds where they aren’t handed success on a silver platter and they have to grant it out. But something I’m curious about because I see parallels in my own life where my parents divorced when I was very young. I spent most of my formative years living with my mom. She worked two jobs at a lot of points just to keep the lights on. I developed almost this scarcity mindset around money because things were always tight growing up. And I still see how that impacts me as an adult in different ways. How has that impacted you? Your parents came across the border?

Rob:
Big time.

Tony:
Yeah. Just talk through that. How have you seen that play out as an adult?

Rob:
So like I said, when I was a kid, I will give my parents all the credit in the world because I had no idea that we were poor. It’s hard to even say that because of the life that they gave me and how much they gave to always make it feel okay for me as a kid and safe as a kid. But I do remember there was this one day, I came home after school, it was in seventh grade, and it’s actually when I had first met my now wife but then my crush. I was texting with Ash, my wife, thousands of times. This was back in the day when unlimited data plans didn’t exist. And I came home and my mom was bawling at the kitchen table and I remember being like, “What’s wrong, mom?” And she was like, “You texted somebody so many times, our bill is $600 and we can’t afford this.”
That was a hard moment for me because I think it was the first time it clicked with me that it’s like $600 is everything for certain families. And so that was that moment where I was like, “I will never let my family feel like this again and I’ll make sure that my family never feels this way.”
And so it really was those things where growing up after that, I was the cheap guy. I was the guy that my friends made fun of. I was the guy that was always starting side hustles. I remember I fell for this infomercial one time that was called the Greatest Vitamin in the World, and you would basically sell these vitamins for, it was a multivitamin for 20 bucks and if you sold it to 20 people, they would give you a thousand dollars. And I remember always trying these weird different things to just make money. I would be at work at my very first job and I would wait for the meetings at noon that were catering lunch. I would watch them from my desk or I would ask my coworkers that were next to that meeting to alert me the moment that that meeting was over so that I could run to the kitchen and get free lunch.
My friends always made fun of me for it, but for me, I just always felt like I had to always save every single dollar that I ever had. I had to be super cheap so that basically, I could stash my money and hopefully put it towards something that would build something for me later on. I’d never really realized that eventually, that would culminate into real estate.

Ashley:
That your friends made fun of you for, you’re talking high school into adulthood?

Rob:
Yeah, it was well into adulthood. It started in high school. They would always be like, “Rob, you’re the deal guy.” But then in my early part of my advertising career, that was it. And even until the end of my advertising career, honestly, until three or four years ago, I was like this. And my very first advertising career, I was making $40,000 a year, which at that time was everything. I was like, “Oh my, gosh. It’s the most money I had ever made in my life.” And so I thought that getting this job, I was going to be financially free and independent. My wife was nannying. She was making $12 an hour. And it turned out that after all of the expenses, we just didn’t have that much left over. And so I had always remembered my dad saying, “Hey, real estate is the way. Real estate is the way.”
And so we got a tax return eventually that was 5,000 bucks or something, and I was like, “Let’s use this as a down payment for a home.” And basically, that tax return is what funded the very first house that I ever had, and we were super house poor, and that really accelerated how cheap I was at work and all that stuff because we were putting all the money we ever had into our first house.

Ashley:
Can you give us a little more insight as to how valuable you think that was that you lived below your means as to you didn’t go and spend lavishly even though you got this new career as a $40,000 job, which at the time was a lot of money? So what advice can you give to our listeners as to how they can live below their means? They can follow those same principles of that frugality. And oftentimes, I think frugality is looked upon like, oh, I don’t want to be frugal, but more of it is just living below your means and maintaining that balance of how not to have that lifestyle creep.

Rob:
Yeah, totally. Well, my dad always said sacrifice everything for a couple of years and then everything that drips from the tree is honey. That’s a loose translation of what it was. He always said it in Spanish, but basically that always stuck with me that it was totally okay to live cheaply, right? Because in college, as a kid, I didn’t have a lot, and so it wasn’t really the biggest adjustment for me to get a full-time job because I was always super scared of not having anything. And so for me, I always felt it was worth it to sacrifice comfort, sacrifice friends, sacrifice social life more than anything. And my wife was on board too.
And I wish I could say that there was a big strategy here. I just knew that we didn’t have money to spend and so there was no reason to spend it. There were so many moments at the beginning of my career in real estate life where my wife would go spend five bucks at Target and literally instantly, five minutes out … because I was checking my bank statement every single day. I would text her and I’d say, “What did you buy at Target?” All the time. And that’s embarrassing for me, but we just didn’t have it. So we were always trying to stash away every dollar because I was just looking for the opportunity that it could strike.

Tony:
One thing I want to add here, Rob, is that you talked about taking that first tax return and using that as your seed money, and we’ve heard that story from countless people. Ashley Hamilton, she’s the Detroit investor.

Rob:
Yeah. She’s awesome.

Tony:
She has some super popular podcasts on the Real Estate Show. You guys should go back and listen to hers, but that’s how she started, with her tax return. I guess let me ask this one question. For a lot of people, it’s easy to get … For some people, that’s the biggest check they get every year, is their tax return. How tempting was it for you I guess to go put that into something else versus investing into real estate? And how did you have the discipline to use it towards something that was really going to benefit you long term?

Rob:
So this was something that really clicked for me in college because I remember my best friend, my roommates, we were paying so much money in rent. I think our place was two or 3,000 bucks. And I remember one time senior year, I was like, “Man, I wonder how much I’ve paid in rent.” And I calculated that over the years, me and my roommate had basically paid 50 or $60,000 of rent to landlords basically. And I remember thinking, granted, I didn’t know how amortization worked at that time, but I was like, “Man, $60,000. I could have bought a $150,000 house and only owe $90,000.” Obviously, with interest, it’s not exactly how it was, but that did click for me. That was something that was so clear that I was paying so much money but never actually getting a benefit other than obviously a place to live.
And so I remember moving to Kansas City for my first job, the one I was telling you about in advertising, and I was renting a place for 800 bucks a month, and it was a small four or 500 square foot place. It was a two-one. So those rooms were tiny, and it was me and my wife and our two dogs, and we were crammed in there. I remember being so fed up with being crammed in this tiny place, and I was paying 800 bucks and I mathed it out and I was like, “Man, we are effectively paying $9,600 a year, and I’ve been paying rent for the past three years.” And the whole calculation came up again. And one of my coworkers was like, “Yeah. Me and my best friend bought our house in college and we owned half of it outright.” And he clicked this whole thing with me that, oh my gosh, I wasn’t crazy for thinking that. Someone actually had done it.
And so understanding the idea early on of building equity in something and not just dumping money into rent was actually a relatively straightforward decision. And so I pitched my wife, I said, “Hey, we just got this tax return. We’re paying 800 bucks a month. You know what would be really cool is if we were paying $800 a month towards a mortgage, but we own it, and once it’s paid off, it’ll be worth a lot of money.” And she was like, “Are you sure? Is this something we can afford?” I was like, “Definitely not, but we should talk to a banker.” And the banker was like, “Okay, you can barely afford this. Are you sure you want to do it? Like wink wink, you don’t want to do it.” And I’m like, “Sign me up.”
And so really early on, I think the principle … I didn’t know what equity was. I didn’t understand the mechanics of it. I just knew that this idea of owning a house would provide freedom for me because I knew conceptually that once that house was paid off, I had something that I could then sell and get all the money back out. I didn’t know about refi. I didn’t know about cash outs or anything like that. So for me, I was like, well, what am I going to do with the $5,000? I guess I’ll go out to eat or something like that. But for me, I was like, no, we should buy a house.

Tony:
Rob, talk us through that first deal, man. Once you convinced your wife to take this leap of faith, what are the next steps you took? What did that first deal actually look like?

Rob:
Yeah, sure. So this house was $159,000, which was really a lot for us.

Tony:
And what market was that?

Rob:
This was Kansas City, Missouri.

Tony:
Kansas City, okay.

Rob:
Yeah, yeah.

Tony:
Actually, fun fact. I actually just found out last year that there’s a Kansas City in Kansas and a Missouri. So yeah, I’m always learning something new. I’m geographically challenged.

Rob:
So Missouri is the cool side.

Tony:
Okay.

Rob:
So there’s a difference. There is a difference. When you go out there, people are always like, are you on the Kansas side or the Missouri side? They’re both great. I’m just messing with all the people, but Missouri, for sure, for sure, for sure.
Anyway, so I buy this house $159,000 and our budget was 125, and we struck out. We kept striking out. It’s funny. Real estate is this really weird boomerang where you strike out, you get demotivated and then you stop. We had put on offers. Nothing really fit our buy box. And so we were just like, you know what? Let’s just take two weeks and let’s just take a break. Maybe the house hunting isn’t for us. And I remember getting on Craigslist, of all places, and I found a house that was $159,000, and I looked at it, and it was in a great neighborhood and it was all remodeled.
And I woke my wife up and I was like, “Babe, check this out. I think this is the one.” It was a guy that was a flipper that flipped it and he didn’t want to use a realtor, so he listed it on Craigslist. And it’s funny because I had given up. I took a week or a two-week break, and I decided to just look because I was like, yeah, why not feel the pain all over again? And I find this deal, and it ends up being the house that we buy. It was over budget but just something about it felt like home. I knew that. And so we buy this house, and the mortgage is a thousand dollars, and it’s about 150, 200 bucks more than what we were paying but for me, it felt right, and so we buy it.
And then it dawns on me. I have this crazy idea. My buddy was thinking about working in advertising. He was living in Austin at the time, and we were looking for interns at our job. And I was like, “Dude, you should apply for the internship.” And he was like, “Well, where am I going to live?” I’m like, “You can live with us.” And he was like, “Really?” And I was like, “Yeah, man, it’s going to be great. You could pay us 400 bucks a month. All bills paid.” And I had stumbled on to this incredible concept that no one else had ever done before where you rent your house out to other people to subsidize the mortgage. And so it was crazy that I was the first person to ever discover house hacking, at least to me. I had no idea.

Ashley:
Rob, I have to ask, did you offer this to your friend before you ran it by your wife or did you at least ask her first?

Rob:
I did run it by her, but he was a good friend. He was like a mutual … He was an usher in our wedding so it was a pretty easy sell.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Rob:
But also, it is one of those things where it’s like, yes, I asked my wife, but I was also like, “We need this financially to recover from everything else we’ve ever gone through.” And so she was like, “Okay, all right. Let’s do it.”

Ashley:
Did you do a contract or a lease agreement?

Rob:
No.

Ashley:
Anything formal?

Rob:
No.

Ashley:
It was just … Okay.

Rob:
No, definitely not. Don’t follow my footsteps here, but I did not. But he was just like, “How do I pay?” I was like, “How about Venmo?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure.” And I remember getting that first Venmo for 400 bucks and being like, I own real estate. I was like, I felt so rich. I remember 400 bucks off of a thousand dollars was $600, which is $200 cheaper than my rent. I was winning. I was winning life. And so then I started thinking like, oh, okay, I’ve got this thousand square foot basement downstairs. What if I renovated that? It’s a wet basement. A lot of basements in Kansas City, they’re all wet basements so you can’t really finish them out unless you do a lot of expensive work. And we also didn’t have the money to do it.

Tony:
Wait, Rob. So for us Californians that don’t understand basements, what is a wet basement and why is that different from a regular basement?

Rob:
So basically, from my understanding of it, all the ground, all the soil, it’s just particularly damp. It snows a lot, for example, in Kansas City so there’s always snow melt. It all seeps into the ground. And my foundation was cinder block, which is super porous. So basically, it just means that it’s not a dry environment, and thus if you put drywall over your walls, it starts to get wet and moldy basically.

Ashley:
We see that very common in the Buffalo area too, especially with older built homes that the foundations are like that too where it’s damp and moist down there. Yeah.

Rob:
I’m really glad you said that because for the past week, I’ve been trying to remember who I talked about buffalo wings with and going to Buffalo, and then that person was like, “Oh yeah, they’re really good here.” It was you.

Ashley:
I know. And I’m going to overnight you some Bar-Bill wings, which I think are better than any other wings. So yeah. Just sent me your address.

Rob:
Oh, man, I’m so glad we figured this out. Okay. Oh, my address is 555 Main Street … I’m just kidding. So I don’t end up finishing out this basement. But the $400 a month thing just got me addicted to making money because it clicked with me that it wasn’t just $400 off of a thousand bucks. It was like $400 off of what I considered my freedom. I felt like if I could get my mortgage back or what I was paying, if I could save that every month, that was freedom because then I had a thousand bucks to go out and eat with my wife.
For example, for reference, fun fact about me, I love Chipotle, everybody knows this. But for the first eight years of my relationship with Chipotle, I straight up only ever bought rice. It was 67 cents. I would go to Chipotle and I would say, “Hey, can I get rice in a bowl?” And they’re like, “You don’t want anything else?” I’m like, “That’s all I can afford for now, but thank you.” And so house hacking was the first time that I could be like, “You know what? Yes, I will take the entire entree for $8 because I can afford it now.”
And so I was really sprinting to figure out how I could offset my mortgage. And I remember that next twist for me was like, all right, well, how can I make more money? And so I think a lot of real estate investors, they fall into this addiction where it’s like, oh my gosh, subsidized mortgage. How do I completely knock it out? I remember wanting to buy this pipe industrial coffee table off of Etsy and it was $800, and I was like, that’s crazy. This must have been $50 to make this. And so I decided to build my own, and I was down there for three weeks and I was building it, and I remember my wife was hanging out with her friends in the living room and I brought it up and they were all super impressed, every single one of them. My wife was like, “You built this?” I was like, “Yeah.”

Ashley:
What nice timing on your part to bring it up while she has all her friends over. Here’s my masterpiece.

Rob:
But they were all drooling over it. They’re like, “This is amazing.” And so I was like, okay, they really gave me the confidence to … I was like, well, let me just see what happens when I list this on Craigslist. And someone messaged me the next day and I sold it for 400 bucks. And I was like, what? I can make $400 doing this.

Ashley:
Yeah.

Rob:
And so I turned my basement into basically a furniture wood shop for the better part of a year and a half, maybe two years. Every night after work, I’d get home at five or six, I’d eat dinner with my wife, and I would go downstairs from seven to one, and I was just making furniture and I was selling it on Etsy and making an extra, it wasn’t a lot, but it was 800 bucks a month.
And so it wasn’t truly a house hack because I was renting out the room, but in a sense, I was trying to figure out how else I could make income with this property in this basement that was completely empty. It was a thousand square feet, the same size of my house. This was it. And so I was making another 800 bucks here, and by this point, I’m basically breaking even on my mortgage. I got 1,200 coming in, bills and expenses and everything like that. And so this created this addiction for me where I was like, okay, no mortgage means I can let it ride a little bit and keep pushing that money into the next project.

Ashley:
So is that how you funded your workshop there? Did you take the money you were saving from not paying the extra $400 to your mortgage, and were you putting that to build out this workshop or was there not really a lot of expense to starting this furniture business?

Rob:
No. I did how every woodworker did where we’re just doing a lot of really hard manual work that’d be a lot easier with an $80 tool thing. And so anytime I had a new project, I’d be like, all right, I’m going to buy a planer or I’m going to buy a joiner. I’m going to buy this or that. And so this all eventually culminates because we love our house. Finally, I don’t want to say we’re feeling comfortable because as much as I want to glorify this part of my story, we were still living what I considered to be paycheck to paycheck. I think after all of our expenses … Right before this, we had less than a thousand dollars every month to our name after our mortgage, student loans, which were a thousand bucks a month. And then, what was it? Oh, credit cards. I think we were 15, $20,000 in credit card debt.
So yes, all of this was great and it was paying my mortgage, but this is where the addiction comes in because I’m like, oh, this novel concept of working hard outside of your nine to five and making more money to pay off your liabilities, that’s what was really firing off in my mind. And so I was just trying to always find little things here and there to figure out, things that I could do to make an extra a hundred or 200 bucks. And so that was my brand or my personality in my early corporate life.

Ashley:
Did you already have that idea when you started the furniture business that this is something short term, you don’t want to have workshop forever in your basement? Or were you just thinking day-to-day like, this is awesome, this is great, with no exit strategy of, okay, I need to get more passive investments or more real estate so that I don’t have to have this workshop in my basement? What was your mindset early on doing that business?

Rob:
Yeah. So it was like a, hey, this is great. I love it. I love making money. And I think I just realized that it was difficult for me to scale that business and have a nine to five job because it was taking me literally, there were nights, there were legitimate nights where I would get done making my furniture and then I would come upstairs and my wife was getting ready for work because she woke up at five or six, and she’s like, “You’re barely going to bed.” I’m like, “Yeah, I couldn’t figure out how to make this table or whatever.”
So no, I didn’t necessarily have this long-term business for it. I think what happened towards the end as I was getting burnout as anyone would, my wife and I just felt like Kansas City was really great for us. We had no idea it was going to be this amazing city, but we were like, “Let’s do something else. Let’s go on to whatever the next thing is.” And we were still really broke. We were making it work. House poor is really the best way to put it. But I do remember we were like, “Well, what should we do?” And we’re like, “All right, let’s map it out. We’re really broke. We don’t have a lot of money. How about we move to LA?” And we were like, “Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.” And that’s exactly what we did. We moved to LA after three or four years of living in Kansas City.

Ashley:
And did you buy a property there or did you rent it?

Rob:
Well, initially, we rented. I went back into the same trap of like, okay, I bought this … I rented this 660 square foot apartment. It was a one bedroom, one bath. It was my wife and I, and it was way smaller than the house that we had sold because in my house, I had an 1,100 square foot house, a thousand square foot basement, and I’m paying $1,800, 1849 because they were charging me pet rent in this apartment for six months. And it just really made me sick to my stomach. Something didn’t feel right that I felt like I had regressed. And granted, we weren’t struggling quite as much at this point because we had gotten really big significant raises at our job, each of us, and so we were actually doing okay for the first time, but it just felt weird paying $1,800 to someone and never getting hit back.
And so about six months in, I’m just like, “You know what? Let’s buy a house.” And my wife was like, “We can’t afford that.” And I was like, “We definitely can’t.” But here’s what happened. We sold our house in Kansas City for $215,000, and that was crazy for us because we listed it for 195. Remember, we bought it for 159. We listed it for 195. We got three offers the first day, and one of them was $215,000. And sadly, it didn’t appraise. I think, I don’t know, we ended up meeting in the middle at 208. But after all of our closing fees, our commissions, all that stuff, we had a profit of $40,000 from that house and we owned it for two years.
And so I think that not only was that groundbreaking because it was the most money I had ever had in my life in my bank account, my wife and I. But it was like, oh, wow, this all happened because I invested $5,000 or 6,000, whatever three and a half percent is of 159,000. We bought a house with that. And granted that we just happened to be in Kansas City at a time where it was exploding, but we made $40,000 from this house in two years. That was my salary. That was a life-changing amount of money.
But while we were moving to LA, my wife was like, “Well, hey babe, you’ve got $40,000 in student loan debt. Do you want to just pay it off?” And I was like, “No, I don’t think so.” And she was like, “Why? You’re always complaining about we can’t afford the thousand dollar payment and this and that and if you do this” … And I was like, “I know, I know, but I just feel like there’s something we can do with this $40,000 that isn’t paying off my student loans. And I know it’s crazy, but I think we got to sit on this money. I think we just have to figure something else out with it.” And she’s like, “All right, if you feel that way.” I was like, “I do. I really do.”
And so we rent this apartment and we’re living there for six months, and the $40,000 is just decaying in our bank account, paying this mortgage. And so that’s where I had this idea. I was like, “Let’s buy this house.” My wife is like, “I don’t know if we can afford it.” I was like, “I don’t either, but we do have enough for a three and a half percent down payment with an FHA loan.” And I was like, “I think we should try it.”
And so same type of thing. We start the house hunt and everything in LA, by the way, is a very expensive market for anyone that doesn’t know. And our budget was 450,000, which was very laughable even for that time. So we struck out, struck out, struck out, really just heartbroken. And I think early on, I just realized the first lesson you should ever learn in real estate is to never get married to your house, never get excited, never get your hopes up until you are at the closing table and you close on that house because so many things can happen before then. And so we kept falling in love with these houses and we kept losing them, and we tried writing the letter, we did everything, and we just lost over and over and over again. And I think we gave up, we did.
And we’re living in our apartment, whatever, we have six months left on our lease. And then guess what? Same exact thing. A week later, our realtor calls us and is like, “Hey, I’ve got this off market property.” And I was like, “Okay, tell me more.” And she’s like, “And it’s got a basement underneath and you can rent the basement.” And I was like, “Oh my, gosh. We did it. That’s totally what we need.” Because when I was looking in LA, I was looking for something that I could house hack with. I had learned this principle early on and I was like, all right, if I’m going to pay a $4,000 mortgage, I have to make money some other way or else I’m going to be paying a ton of money in mortgage every month.
And so the realtor calls, she’s like, “I’ve got this house with not even a … it’s like a bonus space, 279 square feet.” And I remember walking in and being like, all right, needs a lot of work, but it was exactly what we needed, and it was $624,000, which was embarrassing at the time because when we closed on this house, I couldn’t … Look. I was scared to tell my family. I was scared to tell my friends. I was scared to tell my coworkers how much this house costs because I knew that they would think either, wow, he must make a lot of money if he can afford that, or he’s an idiot for spending that much money on a house. And really, that was probably the case. It was so foolish for me to do that.
But I just knew that, again, if I could just figure out how someone else could pay my mortgage, it worked for me once. I bought this house in Kansas City. I made $40,000 on it. And I was like, if I just keep doing that, eventually I’ll have a lot of money, I think. And so we buy this house, and I had calculated that if I rented that little 279 square foot studio on Airbnb, on this crazy platform where people pay you every night to sleep in your place, I remember thinking, if I could do that, I think I could make 50 to 75% of my mortgage. And so that was laying the heart on the table to my wife. I was like, “I think we can do this. Believe in me like you always have. And if you do, we’re going to make it work.” And that’s what we did. We bought the house.

Tony:
A couple of things I want to point out that you mentioned. First, you talked a little bit about, hey, you had this lump of cash that you could have used to pay off your student loan debt. Just off the top of your head, ballpark, what was the interest rate on your student loan debt?

Rob:
So a lot of them were government subsidized so I had interest that was anywhere from two and a half to three and a half percent mostly.

Tony:
Super low interest debt. Right?

Rob:
Yeah.

Tony:
And dude, I was actually just reading an article this morning about Jay-Z and Beyonce. They’re billionaires, and they bought this $88 million mansion in Bel Air somewhere. And a billionaire, Jay-Z and Beyonce could probably have the cash to just buy that outright, but they even got a mortgage when they bought that property. They put down 35 million, but they still had a mortgage for, what is that, $53 million. And if you see Jay Z and Beyonce leveraging debt in a smart way, it’s because they know even at a 6% interest rate, if they got 53 million in cash with their name, with their businesses, they could go out and 10X that money if they wanted to.

Rob:
Yeah.

Tony:
So for the rookies that are listening, I think there’s something to consider as well where you want do the math and understand, okay, if I’ve got student loan debt at 2%, but I can go and invest this into real estate and get 10% or 12% or 15% or 20%, which one makes more sense for me financially long term? It does take a little bit of courage, which I think Rob is something you’ve shown that you have, but for a lot of people, it is the right choice financially.
That takes to my next point that you’ve done a really good job throughout this story, Rob, of taking somewhat calculated risks. The first investment, it was, hey, we’re paying $800 in rent. Can we stretch it to get to a thousand dollars in our mortgage? Okay, then how can we subsidize that? Then you get this proof of concept in a less expensive market in Kansas City, and you say, okay, how can we now replicate this in a more expensive market like Los Angeles? So you didn’t jump off the deep end and go from, hey, I’m renting an $800 apartment in Kansas City to I’m buying a $600,000 house in LA. There were steps in between.
So I think for our rookies, as you’re listening to Rob’s story, the things that are important for you to take away are what are the baby steps you can start taking in the same way that Rob did to start proving out that concept to make sure that you’re not overextending yourself?
And then the last thing, Rob, and this is where I want your input, you’ve said the same phrase a couple of times now, but you said that you pitched to your wife. I think I’ve heard you say it two or three times now. And I think for a lot of our rookies, that’s the challenge that they have is how do I get my spouse on board with these crazy ideas that I have? So from you, Rob, and your experience, why do you think you were able to get your wife to be supportive of these big steps that you wanted to take as it came to real estate investing?

Rob:
First of all, I was in advertising, so everything I did was a pitch in life, at work and everything like that. But really, I think you’re so right in that these are all calculated risks. And everything is based on experience. It’s never like I just went and did something, other than buying the first house with no experience, everything was always leveling up accordingly. There was one control variable in every single risk or every single experiment that I ever took. And that control variable was me. I knew what I could do. I knew that when I want something, I will make it happen. And I believed in myself every step of the way.
And I think if I had probably approached that conversation with my wife like, hey, I don’t think I’m good at this, but I’m going to do it.” She probably would have been like, “Well, let’s take a breather, champ.” But I think her just seeing how serious I was, it wasn’t like I was ever like, hey, yeah, I don’t know. Let’s just do this. It was always like, hey, let’s do this because I genuinely believe it’s going to change our life. I think it was just hard for her to see any other alternative because she was so sold in as well like, okay, hey, you’ve done right by me along the way, and you’re going to continue to do that, and so let’s do this thing.
She was always the person that was … I always say this. I’m an astronaut outside of the Space Station floating around in space, and Ash was my tether. She keeps me attached to the ship so I don’t float away in space. So I always had little things or whatever, and when I wasn’t super confident in those things, she’d be like, “I think you don’t even believe this.” I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right.” But for the stuff that I’m for real on, she was always on board a hundred percent.

Tony:
Robin, I think that’s such an important distinction because again, we get asked this question often from rookies that are fans of the podcast that are doing everything, and they’re like, “Hey, how can I get my spouse on board?” And a lot of it comes down to you asking yourself, have I really earned my partner’s trust and respect to get on with this idea of real estate investing?

Rob:
Totally.

Tony:
Ash and I had a conversation, your wife and I had a conversation, I think it was at your event or one of the times that I saw her in person., and we were talking about starting this little fitness competition with each other. I was laughing. I was like, “Oh, whatever. I’m going to beat Rob at this, that and the other.” And she says something to me that stuck out to me, and she looked at me, she’s like, “I don’t know, Tony. When Rob really puts his mind to something, I don’t think anyone can really beat him.” And that’s something that you’ve shown and proven throughout your entire relationship to your wife for her to have that trust and faith and confidence in you.
So for all of our rookies that are listening, if your spouse isn’t on board, I think one of the things you need to do is look in the mirror and say, okay, why haven’t I earned that support from my spouse?

Rob:
Yeah. Wow, that’s really nice of her. That’s the nicest thing she’s ever said. No, I’m just kidding. I’m going to take her out tonight. Honestly, it’s so touching that-

Ashley:
It is, really.

Rob:
… she says so nice things about me behind my back. Isn’t that how it should be, by the way? Oh, man. Thanks for sharing.

Tony:
No, of course, man. Well, let’s keep the story going, brother. So you got the house hack in KC. You got the house hack in LA. You’re buying this house, but you also have the apartment. So are you just breaking your lease or what are you doing with the apartment when you move into the house?

Rob:
Right, right, right. Okay. So that was that big conversation that I had with her. I was like, “Let’s buy this house.” And she’s like, “What about the apartment? It’s like 1,800 bucks. We have six months left on the lease.” And I was like, “All right, yes, I hear that and allow me to rebuttal.” There is this website, it is called Airbnb, and if you put your apartment on it, people will pay you a hundred bucks a night. And so this was all the wild west. We had no idea what Airbnb was, if it was going to work. And she was like, “Well, do you think it’ll work?” And I was like, “We rented our house long term for 400 bucks in Kansas City, and LA is easily four times more expensive. So in theory, I should be able to make a lot more.”
And so we buy this house with the intention of Airbnbing the little studio apartment that I told you about. And so I was faced with this decision. I was like, all right, well, I have to either break my lease and pay 8,000 bucks or I could sublease it and just break even. But I was so interested in this concept of, okay, what if I listed on Airbnb and I could make a delta, the in-between? If I have this rent at 1,800 bucks, if I’m charging a hundred dollars a night, 18 nights later, I’m breaking even. So if I can book it for 20 nights or 24 nights, I’ll make all that juice afterwards. And so honestly, it was risky. I didn’t know anything about Airbnb, but I was like, well, the alternative is I let the lease run out and I just pay 1,800 bucks every month. So I ended up listing that apartment on Airbnb. Again, this was seven years ago.

Ashley:
So was there no rule in your lease agreement that you couldn’t do that then?

Rob:
There probably was. I have no idea. I do remember going to the leasing agent and being like, “Hey, yeah, so Airbnb, do people do that here? Do you all care?” And she was like, “Yeah, sometimes they do not really.” And I was like, great, good enough for me. And I ran off. And I remember thinking now in retrospect, it’s very funny to me because that property, that leasing agent definitely making, I don’t know, 10, 12 bucks an hour, doesn’t actually care about the management of the place. She’s just clocking in and creating leases and stuff.
And also, she probably didn’t really even know, this was 2017, and I didn’t either. I didn’t realize, oh, that is a liability for apartments or anything like that. So in my mind, I felt like, yeah, hey, so you don’t care. And they’re like, no, not really. And I was like, all right, sounds good.
That was the first one I ever did. But after that lease ran out, we moved on to actually … I think I figured out pretty quickly that if I want to scale and do this, I got to own the real estate. And so that ended up being very true throughout the rest of my career. But I was able to basically make money from that first apartment. And it did, again, trigger this spark in my mind of like, oh my gosh, I could use other people’s property and list that and make money off of that. And then on top of that, I’ve got this house in LA that I bought. My mortgage was $4,400. And the catch was that it was a complete fixer-upper and I had to renovate that studio.
And for a lot of people at home, you may not know this, but when you buy a mortgage or when you buy a house, you don’t really get your first mortgage for a month to two months. It takes a while for it to process and for that first one to hit.

Ashley:
Like your first payment due.

Rob:
Your first payment, exactly. And so I had closed, we had calculated it with the mortgage broker at the exact day that would basically give us 50 to 60 days to do it. And so I knew. I buy this house, and it is a ticking time bomb before that first $4,400 mortgage is going to hit. And I was like, I need to completely remodel this 279 square foot studio before I can list it on Airbnb, and I don’t have a lot of time to do it. And so I go in and I’m like, I don’t really know much. I had started doing some DIY type of stuff in Kansas City. I had built furniture, and so I felt like I could do it. I was like, I think I can graduate onto remodeling a little studio.
And so every night after work, and my job was an hour away from my house, it was only three miles away because it’s freaking LA. But I’d get home at 7:00, 7:30, go get my wife a kiss, maybe a little hug, and then run over to Home Depot, buy whatever drywall or whatever I needed. I would get a Red Bull and I would get sour cream and cheddar Ruffles, and I would go down into that studio until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning every single night for two months. And I demoed it. I took all the ground out, and I had gotten it all pretty much gutted to where it needed to be.
And I remember thinking, all right, now I just have to tile this bad boy and I’m good to go. And so I buy this tile that’s three hours away but it was a good deal, and I drive to Lancaster, California or something. I don’t remember. It was two hours away. And I get all this tile. I load it up in the back of my car. I drive home and I’m like, all right, time to tile this less than 300 square foot studio. And I started tiling it, and my wife is like, again, it’s morning, and she comes down and she’s like, “This is all you’ve tiled?” I was like, “What do you mean? This is art, babe.” I had only tiled four by four. I had no idea how to do anything. And I had only tiled 16 square feet and my back hurt. And I was like, oh my gosh, I did fail at this. I thought I could do anything, but I did fail at this.

Ashley:
How did you even know what to do though and where to start? Did you YouTube it or how did you know what materials to buy?

Rob:
I did. I did. I YouTubed it, and all the YouTube videos, those freaking YouTubers, they always make it seem a lot easier and then the guy is like, “All you have to do is back butter and then you back butter here and you place it down.” I was like, oh, I could do that. This old house. Thanks. I tried it, but no, it’s not. Tiling is … I have the utmost respect for both tilers and their backs because that was a very difficult thing. So I knew early on, okay, hey, call it in when you … Fold when you know you can’t play the hand. And I was like, I am not going to learn how to tile. That is not my gift. That is not my talent. And so I ended up hiring that out.
The guy comes to my house, literally laughs at the job. He goes, “This is it?” I was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “This took you eight hours?” And I was like, “Yes.” And he was literally just very insulting, but he was also 500 bucks. And I remember being like, “500? Are you kidding me? Boom, let’s do it.” I don’t have it, but it’s so worth it for me.

Tony:
That was nice of him to still give you honest pricing because for a lot of tilers, if they came in and saw that you did that little square for eight hours, they had been like, “Hey, maybe 3,000 bucks to tile the rest of them. Yeah, that’s a great deal actually.”

Rob:
And at that moment, I probably would have done it. He does it and he does it in less than eight hours. It was crazy how fast he did it.
This is a fun little story about this whole thing, a little fun fact that I actually just realized when we were planning this out. The very first YouTube video that I had ever wanted to make was of this studio. And I actually set a camera up and documented the whole process from start to finish. And I remember looking at that footage and saying, “This is absolute garbage.” And I closed my computer and I put that footage out. I think I deleted it. And I was so hung up on having a perfect product that I never went on to actually edit it or post it to YouTube. And the reason I tell that story is because I am a YouTuber now, the Robuilt channel. And the very first video I made for that really wasn’t that much better than that first one I had ever made. But the difference is there was a seven-year delay in between both of those, between my first YouTube video now and the one that I never published.
And so I always like to tell people, if you’re interested in documenting your journey, there are so many benefits to doing that. There are so many benefits. You get people to know you and understand you and trust you, people in your sphere who might want to invest with you. And I lost out on seven years of those relationships because I was so scared to put myself out there with an imperfect product. And had I done it earlier, who knows? Maybe the Robuilt channel would’ve existed seven years earlier and my life would be even more different than it is now. I don’t regret it. I’m happy with where things are, but it’s just funny to me that me, of all people, was so scared of posting my first YouTube video.
And so just a little encouragement for those of you that have created that Instagram account or whatever, document the journey, don’t be afraid to fail. I wasn’t afraid to fail on the DIY side. I was afraid to fail on the content side, but do it. Put yourself out there because it opens some pretty crazy doors.

Ashley:
And there’s somebody that’s going to take value from it, someone that is going to appreciate what you’re sharing along your journey too.

Rob:
Yeah.

Tony:
Rob, so just to finish things off, so you get this little studio tiled. I’m assuming you then launched that property onto Airbnb as well. So you get the apartment unit that you’re arbitraging basically. You get your basement unit that you’re renting out on Airbnb as well. I guess the question is, are you able to cover your mortgage, this new $4,400 mortgage with the income coming in from those two units?

Rob:
Oh yeah, baby. Are you kidding me? It was great. Man, I was living the life at that moment because not so … In Kansas City, I was saving the thousand dollars. My reference point in LA was my $1,800 mortgage or $1,800 rent in that apartment. So then buying the house is a $4,400 mortgage. Yeah. So studio ends up totally panning out. Literally, I am hanging up curtains and screwing the final screw into the wall. Airbnb guest knocks on the door and checks in and they’re like, “Oh, hey.” I’m like, “Oh, I’m so sorry. This is my first time doing this. I’m just getting get ready, blah, blah, blah.”
And so that ends up, yeah, basically ended up making two to $3,000 a month on that studio. And then the apartment that I was arbitraging was making one to $2,000 profit. And so basically on a perfect month, I was making more money than my mortgage. And that was like, oh, I figured it out again. And it’s addicting because when you can finish that, figure out that puzzle, you just want to keep going to the next hardest puzzle.

Tony:
And Rob, I love that you ended on that, man, because that’s exactly what you’ve been doing. I mentioned this earlier, but it’s like you test an idea, then you expand it, you test an idea, then you expand it. Because you had the KC property, you house hacked, then you went to LA, you house hacked again but this time with Airbnb, then you did the rental arbitrage. We didn’t really get into this, but you also built the tiny home in your backyard in LA, but it was a paired down version and then you rebuilt that same tiny home in Joshua Tree but a much bigger, nicer version.
So that’s just been what you’ve done consistently throughout your career, Rob, is you test something smaller, then you do a little bit bigger, then you go a little bit bigger, then you go a little bit bigger. And I think that, if anything, is the big takeaway from our rookies that are listening today, man. But dude, thank you for sharing your story, man. We never really get to dive in like that.

Rob:
Yeah, yeah. Well, let me just say one final thing to cap off that LA property. I said that Kansas City house, I bought it for 159, I sold it for 215 and that was a $40,000 profit that I had sitting in my bank account. I was 10 times more petrified to buy that LA property when I bought it for 624. That house today is worth between 1.2 and $1.3 million.
And I want to end on this because it’s crazy to think that I put $18,500 as a down payment. I had a bunch of seller credits and stuff, but I put down 18,500 bucks. And if I lost everything tomorrow, I could sell that house and have half a million dollars in my bank account because I believed in myself, because I knew that real estate could unlock the opportunities for me that my parents always wanted me to have. And it’s really cool that that house was really the beginning of what would eventually become my real estate empire. It really was. Obviously, the Kansas City house was first, but the lessons I learned in that LA house were the ones that shaped me into who I am today. And it all came down to me believing in myself, my wife believing in me, and everyone else that believed in me along the way. So super happy and grateful to be here and thanks for letting me tell my story.

Tony:
Yeah, that’s amazing, Rob.

Ashley:
What a way to end the show. That was great.

Tony:
I can tell you’ve done this talking in front of the microphone one or two times before, man.

Rob:
I’ve had in a pod a time or two, but I’ve never really told this story, really not like this.

Ashley:
Right. Yeah.

Rob:
And it’s really cool to come and talk about it and it’s really nice to go and focus on the details of the days when I was a nobody with nothing. It’s the most special time in my life when people are struggling, when people are like, “I’m spread thin. This is so hard.” I’m so jealous of what you’re going through because you only get to go through that one time, and I miss those years so much. So enjoy it. Enjoy the process, peeps.

Ashley:
Yeah. Enjoy the journey.

Tony:
Rob, I want to take us to our rookie exam before we let you get out of here, man. So these are the three most important questions you’ll ever be asked in your entire life, man, so are you ready for the first question?

Rob:
Sure, let’s do it.

Tony:
All right. Question number one. What is one actionable thing rookies should do after listening to your episode?

Rob:
Go get pre-approved for whatever house that you’re thinking about doing because that is the first thing that will tell you what you can and can’t buy. Everybody is like, oh, where am I going to buy a house? What market? What this blah, blah, blah? Find out how much you can afford first. Get approved with a mortgage person. That will set the ultimate guardrails on how you can make your next step.

Ashley:
Rob, what is one tool, app or system you use in your business today?

Rob:
The greatest tool I have is my camera. The best camera on the market is the one that you have in your pocket. And the hardest part about making content is hitting record, so never be scared to just turn on your camera and document whatever house flip, house hack, new construction that you’re in.

Tony:
I love that answer, Rob. Ash and I talk about this all the time, about the power of documenting your journey. I think all of our lives has really been impacted by content and us sharing what’s going on in our lives. I would not be in front of this microphone right now talking to any of you had I not started my own podcast before. That’s how I came to the BiggerPockets ecosystem. Rob started his YouTube channel. Ashley was on social media and had a decent following there. All of us had some way that content played a role in our ability to grow our businesses. So for all of our rookies that are following, don’t think that you have to wait until you’re this massively successful person. Just grab that camera and document the journey that you’re going on.
All right, Ro, last question for the exam. Where does Robert Abasolo plan on being five years from now?

Rob:
Oh, that’s how I know you really know me because you called me Robert. Five years from now, I think I’d like to be at 500 units. I’m currently working on a bunch of developments, glamp sites, unique tiny home stays, and I want to get to a hundred by the end of this year. And I guess if we just carry that math on, 500 of the coolest units on the face of the planet, that’s where I want to be.

Ashley:
Okay. Well, Rob, thank you so much for joining us today, and please tell everyone where they can reach out to you. And you also have a big event coming up, too, that I’ve seen and heard all over about.

Rob:
I’m so excited. Okay. Yeah. So you can find me over on YouTube or Instagram or Threads if you’re really in on the know at Robuilt, R-O-B-U-I-L-T, or you could find me at my conference, Host Con. It’s happening in Houston, Texas in October 28th through the 30th. It’ll be a perfect final leg to the BiggerPockets Conference. It’s right after that. Come to both. Come hang out with me. You can find out more over at hostcon.com. And obviously, the best place to find me is three times a week over at the BiggerPockets Real Estate podcast show where you can learn about real estate, entrepreneurship, scaling and everything in between.

Ashley:
Yes, we love that show. And Rob, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. It is definitely an honor to have you on the Rookie podcast and to share your childhood journey and your very beginnings as house hacking. Thank you so much.

Rob:
Thank you. Thank you.

Ashley:
I’m Ashley at Wealth from Rentals, and he’s Tony, @tonyjrobinson on Instagram, and we will be back on Saturday with the Rookie Reply.