He Sold Pokemon Cards to China, Ran 35 Miles for Fun, and Built a Multifamily Empire
Dustin Miles ran a candy business out of his backpack at eight years old. By college, he was shipping Pokemon cards to buyers in China and New Zealand to pay for ramen. By his thirties, he was an engineer at Lockheed Martin. Now he owns multifamily real estate across Texas and the Midwest, runs Momentum Multifamily with his partner Hayden, and recently ran 35 miles from Fort Worth to downtown Dallas just to see if he could.
This one's about the long version of "success" - the unsexy parts, the misfires (he tried forex, MLM, and lost money to a coach who ghosted him), and the mindset that takes a kid hustling Laffy Taffy to a $1.6M real estate raise. None of it was a straight line.
We get into:
- The Pokemon-to-China side hustle that funded a ramen-noodle college life
- Watching a friend's family own a skyscraper and deciding "why not me"
- The first $1.6M raise and how he stacked the cards in his favor
— Where multifamily actually is right now — concessions, fraud, leasing season
- The "build the airplane as you're falling out of the sky" Covid raise
- What he tells his 14-year-old son Henry about staying coachable
What's the longest you've ever run, walked, or pushed yourself for no good reason? Drop it in the comments.
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:35 - The Candy Man at 8, Pokemon dealer at 20
04:10 - Engineering, Lockheed Martin, and picking the hardest path
06:30 - Running 35 miles from Fort Worth to Dallas
13:20 - The skyscraper that changed everything
17:00 — Why the four-minute mile mindset matters
19:00 - Taking action before you're ready
25:20 - Hiring coaches, getting ghosted, and what actually works
29:00 - The state of multifamily right now
32:30 - The wildest concession he's ever seen
34:30 - What's kept him in the game through this cycle
40:30 - Covid, preferred equity, and pivoting under pressure
42:30 - Advice for his son Henry
GUEST
Dustin Miles - Momentum Multifamily
🎧 New episodes on the 1st and 15th. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one.
📲 More on Instagram: @justsayanpodcast