Diary of an Apartment Investor
New to apartment investing? This podcast shows you exactly how to start—from first deal to raising millions in capital.
You’ll hear from people just like you—busy professionals who stopped watching from the sidelines and started closing deals, raising capital, and changing their future.
Each week brings:
- Candid interviews with investors who pushed through fear, doubt, and failure
- Action-focused episodes with clear strategies to help you move forward
- A community-first message: you don’t have to do this alone
The host has helped hundreds make their first investment—and he can help you, too. Take the next step here 👉 https://www.thetribeoftitans.com
Diary of an Apartment Investor
Skills That Scale
Welcome back for a multifamily brief episode. Today, I am going to discuss navigating challenges, and my upcoming Capital Rising Course.
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Continue the conversation with Brian on LinkedIn
Join our multifamily investing community with like-minded apartment investors at the Tribe of Titans
This episode originally aired on January 5, 2026
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Your host, Brian Briscoe, has owned over twenty apartment complexes worth hundreds of millions of dollars and is dedicated to helping aspiring apartment investors learn how to do the same.
He founded the Tribe of Titans as his platform to educate aspiring apartment investors and is continually creating new content for the subscribers and coaching clients.
He is the founder of Streamline Capital based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is probably working on closing another apartment complex in the greater SLC area.
He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps in 2021 after 20 years of service.
Connect with him on LinkedIn
Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast, where busy professionals like you learn to achieve time freedom and financial independence through apartment investing. I'm Brian Briscoe. I'm a retired Marine Corps officer, turned full-time apartment investor, and founder of the Tribe of Titans investor community. Each week you'll hear inspiring stories and actionable strategies so you can replace your income and build a legacy through multifamily real estate. It's time to take control of your future. So let's get started. Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Briscoe. We've got a multifamily brief episode for you today. I know it's been a while since we've done one of these, but you know, we're going to be starting to do these weekly. Now, today I want to talk about something that I've had to learn from hard experience. Okay. You know, maybe I was taught wrong or in the wrong mindset at the beginning, but you know, it took a lot of years and a lot of hard experience to learn what I'm going to be talking to you about today. All right. And that is what are the two most important skills that are going to make or break a multifamily investor? All right. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a dozen different skills that you're going to need. You've, you know, somebody on the team has to be able to underwrite. You've got to be able to find deals, you know, maintain really solid broker relationships, you know, do your due diligence, you know, find debt, right size your deals, you know, everything here matters. Okay. Raising capital, asset management, all that stuff matters, and all that stuff is important. But out of all of that, there's two things that rise to the top. You know, and when I look back and see what's been most influential in my success, when I say success, I measure that by how much money I make, you know, which two skills have led to the most money in my bank account. Like I said, two of them come right to the top. And honestly, I think a lot of people who are brand new to this investing game, you know, what I call the aspiring investors, they focus on the wrong things, you know. And I mean, just about everyone I talked with is either a self-proclaimed deal finder or an underwriter or whatever, you know, and that's fine, I guess, but those are the easiest skills out of the bunch. Now, I guess you're wondering by now, what are the two skills? Well, here's the two skills that I think will absolutely propel you to new heights if you can nail. Number one, raising capital. And number two, managing your property after the acquisition. And I guess I could shorten that up by just saying executing your business plan or asset management, but they're all kind of synonymous. Let's jump right in. I'll talk about each one a little bit. So, number one, raising capital. Here's the truth. Okay, even if you start out a millionaire, you know, able to fund your own first deal, second deal, or whatever, eventually you're going to hit a limit to what you can buy with your own money. All right. You know, if you're using your own money, you're self-employed. Let's just be honest. But if you want to turn this into a business, if you want to scale, you're going to grow beyond your own ability to fund deals and you're going to have to raise capital. Now, when we look at acquisitions, what does it take to purchase an apartment complex? There's one thing and one thing only, money. Okay. That's it. If you get a property under contract for$10 million and you can bring$10 million to the closing table, you know, 99.99% chance that you are going to be able to close on that property. All right. That is all. That's all the seller is going to care about at the end of days is, you know, hey, we got a contract for$10 million. They brought$10 million to the table, sold. All right. So the number one and most important skill in acquisitions is by far raising capital. Now, looking at me personally, there's only one reason why I don't own billions of dollars worth of real estate. And that's because I cannot or I haven't learned yet how to raise enough money to close on billions of dollars worth of assets. Now, I've done pretty well. My partner Steven and I, we've raised 16 million in the last two-ish years and purchased, you know, roughly$40 million worth of real estate, you know, multifamily specifically. You know, so we've done well, but for us to scale and us to do better, we have to be able to raise more money. And the more capital that you can raise or I can raise, the faster you can grow and the more money you'll make. Okay. There is a direct relation between how much money you raise and how much money you will make. The better you are at raising capital, the more opportunities you're gonna have. You're gonna be able to get into bigger deals, better deals, and more deals if that's what you want. All right. But if you can reliably raise capital or bring capital to the deal, people will want to partner with you. Brokers will be tripping over themselves to get your attention, all right? And the deals are going to flow towards you. Now, there are a lot of deal finders and a lot of underwriters in that space. And, you know, like I said, those are really easy skills to learn. Maybe that's why so many people, you know, gravitate that direction, but there's not a lot of strong capital raisers, you know, per capita compared to the deal finders. And quite frankly, most people who brand themselves as just deal finders don't go very far. Okay. Shh. That's our little secret. And that's why learning how to raise capital is gonna give you a competitive edge. Okay. Once again, just kind of reiterate you can find the fantastic deal, underwrite it perfectly, do perfect due diligence, yada, yada, yada. But if you can't fund it, you're not gonna close. Simple. Now, with this in mind, that's one of the reasons I'm raising a full capital raising course in January. It's gonna be 10 weeks taught by me live over Zoom with a bunch of content to go with it. So if raising capital is something you want to get good at and you want it to be your superpower, you probably ought to hop into my course. All right, check the show notes for where to sign up and you know let me know when you're ready to go. But uh, we'll have a link down there and you can do everything yourself. No input on my part needed. So sign up for the course. We are going to limit it to 12 people. So be one of the first 12. All right. Now, moving on to skill number two, managing the property, okay? Asset management, whatever you want to call it. Now, I'm gonna say roughly the same thing that I did before. It doesn't matter how well you raise capital, it doesn't matter how well you underwrite or do anything else. You know, once you purchase the property, all of that stuff's behind you. And now you have the marathon. Now you have the long-term grind of managing the property. And this is probably, you know, the most vital of everything we do, okay, is managing the property. It's where fortunes are made or lost. In great economies, when apartments prices are going up, when rents are going up like they did, you know, early 2000 20s-ish, you didn't have to do anything and you'd make money in this deal. That's not normal. Those were very abnormal years. You know, most of the time, what's going to make or break you is how well you can execute your business plan, how well you can increase the NOI, how well you can maintain occupancy, how well you can maintain the property, how well you collect those rent checks every month, you know, controlling expenses, all of that stuff is really what's gonna matter. And when you look at that purchase price at the end, you know, it is gonna be based on that net operating income. So the better you are at managing, the higher you can grow that net operating income, the better off you're gonna be. And quite frankly, people don't just invest in your deal. They're investing in you and they're investing in your ability to operate the deal. Okay. So you can't screw this up. All right. It's one thing that you absolutely cannot screw up. You can do everything right on the front end, find the deal, raise the equity, get the loan, and still blow it if you can't properly, you know, manage the asset and execute your business plan. All right. It's how you turn your projections into actuality. Now, let's bring this all together. And don't forget, you know, this is a team sport, and you are gonna need multiple people involved to be able to handle the deal from beginning to end. Okay. So don't think that you necessarily have to be the best at both, but you know, within your team, you've got to knock both of these out of the park. All right. If I had to pick one of the two of the above skills, I would choose raising capital. All right, because that's gonna get you into deals faster and get you experience. You're not gonna first straight off the bat be amazing at managing assets, all right. So, like I said, if I had to pick one for a new aspiring investor to focus on, it would 100% be raising capital. Get yourself into a deal, get a front row seat on the asset management before you try to not seat yourself. That's one of the mistakes I made. All right. Now, back to my script. That was, you know, a little bit off script there, but that's okay. Raising capital is gonna get you in deals. Managing the deals is going to keep you in the business. I'm gonna say that again because it's that important. Raising capital gets you in deals. Managing the deals is gonna keep you in the business. All right. These two skills feed each other. When you execute well, investors trust you. They're gonna reinvest with you, they're gonna tell their friends about you, you know, they're going to shout your name from tops of mountains. Not really. All right. And when you raise capital well, you're gonna get access to bigger and better opportunities. Okay. If you master these two skills or create a partnership where these two skills are the fundamentals, you're going to do well. And everything else becomes a lot easier. Okay, it really does. So here's my challenge for you today. Take an honest look at where you are. What's your current ability to raise capital? What's your current ability to raise deals and pick one? But like I said, raising capital is the most important upfront out of all the skills you have. And if you want to learn from me how to raise capital, super simple. You know, check those show notes, you know, click the link, and we're gonna give you more information on how to get into that course. It's gonna be a 10-week course. We're gonna meet on Zoom as a small group. We're limiting it to 12 people in this course. And you're gonna learn directly from me how we've been able to raise, you know, 16 or so million in the last two years to fund$40 million worth of deals. So that said, hope to see you guys in that course. All right, if you're serious about capital raising, now is the time to take action. My capital raising course kicks off on January 22nd and runs for 10 weeks. It's designed to take you from zero to raising millions. Format is very simple. You're gonna get weekly content in our Tribe of Titans app and live group coaching from me. Now, to make this the best experience possible, we are capping it at 12 people and it's priced way below market because I want to keep it tight, focused, and super valuable. The link to join us is in the show notes. Don't wait, spots will go fast.
