Podcasts about Michael Oh

‍What happens when patients don't pay their bill? In today's episode, I'm diving into a revealing conversation with Andy Grover Cleveland, the expert behind Collection Agency Ninja. Forget everything you've heard about the conventional timelines for involving collection agencies. Andy advocates for a proactive approach, suggesting engagement as early as 60 to 90 days post-EOB. This strategy not only streamlines financial operations but also nurtures patient relationships through clear communication.Andy reveals the secrets to choosing reputable collection agencies that enhance, rather than hinder, patient rapport. You'll learn why early intervention is a game-changer in maintaining your practice's financial health without compromising on patient satisfaction. From identifying common pitfalls in the collections process to crafting effective patient communication strategies, this episode equips practice owners with pivotal insights for balancing financial well-being and patient care.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why early intervention with collection agencies can benefit your practice.The importance of notifying patients about balances promptly.How to choose the right collection agency for positive patient interactions.Best practices for encouraging patient payments gracefully.Common mistakes dental practices make in collections.Strategies to balance financial health with patient relationships.Listen now to master the art of patient payment collections in your practice!‍‍You can reach out to Andy Grover Cleveland here:Website: collectionagencyninja.com‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey Andy, so talk to us, what's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Andy: I'm going to give something that probably goes against everything that everyone has ever heard in the dental business. I Believe you should use a collection agency at 60 to 90 days. After the EOB, which is probably very unpopular, but it's really crucial in the business of dentistry.Michael: Interesting. there specific communication strategies that we should implement at 30 or 45 days mark or to avoid escalating to the 60 days? Andy: Yeah, great question. Of course you want to notify. You don't want this to be blind. you do want to notify them that they owe the balance.And even before that, you want to try to collect it at time of service so that you never create the problem. However, you know, you have a real world and you have the perfect world. And sometimes those planets are just not aligned. So if someone does not pay that full balance, After that service is provided, you definitely want to notify that patient at least a couple of times that they owe, letting them know to please pay, but about 60 or 90 days, that's when the tide turns, Michael.That's when people decide, Hey, I'm either going to take care of this obligation or I'm not. So that's the ideal time to use it. Now, if you had interviewed me five years ago, Or 10 years ago, I wouldn't be as staunch on this opinion. It's kind of like merchant services. I don't know if you've seen this trend where now merchant services fees are being passed on to the patient.Have you been keeping up with that? Michael: Yeah, I've seen that. Andy: Okay. So if you asked me five years ago, I would say that's the worst idea. It's cheesy. Don't do it. It totally devalues your practice, but guess what? Every time I order tacos, every time I go to the doctor's office, every time I go to the car dealership, and now every time I go to the dentist, it's passed on. So we're in that kind of spot where it was unpopular, but now everybody's doing it. So why shouldn't the dentist? Michael: Okay. Interesting. So then three steps points or takeaways that you have to streamline this or make it easier, smoother. What would be number one then? Andy: one of the first takeaways is by implementing some type of collection agency strategy that's going to reach out.Number one, it doesn't make you the bad guy anymore. When you think about it, do you want to be known for chasing people for money or do you want to be known for treating patients with clinical excellence? So it's nice to have a scapegoat that you can blame for reaching out for the balance because it's strictly a financial driven practice.So I guess the number one is, it's much more convenient to blame your billing company. Then is for people to complain about someone in your office reaching out too frequently. I think we can both agree the optics aren't that great. Michael: Yeah. I think that's where I guess the patient relationship can get iffy, right?how do you do that then Andy? How do you balance maintaining patient relationships with the need to use a collection agency? Andy: there's no one right answer, but at the end of the day, if you hire someone to help you with the financial part of the practice, you can basically, just stay out of it.So if you're clinically driven, to help patients. That's your focus. Let someone else basically deal with the headache. Now, another part of how that works is it will motivate a certain part of your patient base to come back to be a patient of record. So a lot of times when dentists are doing these procedures, patients will say anything to get out of pain.So once you make that pain go away, it's sometimes could be a little too convenient to not pay. So by having a company reach out, you can actually help motivate that person to communicate with the practice and pay. And ultimately, You want that patient to be a valuable member of your clientele. So you have a divide where you can motivate people who generally value the service you're providing and keep them as a good patient of record. Also, if people choose not to pay the bill, they probably don't value the services that you rendered anyway. And arguably they're going to go somewhere else. So that kind of helps push them in another direction to maybe go down to the practice down the road and not pay them rather than come back for more service and not pay you.Michael: Does that make sense? yeah. So then I guess break it down for me. How does it motivate the patient versus sometimes like, stress them out or irritate him or anything like that? Andy: So it's pretty simple, Michael. If you, you got two phone calls today, once from someone, you owed money to.And it's just their office calling you, Hey, Michael, please pay. And then you get another phone call, Michael, from a collection agency. Again, same thing, you know, you owe the bill, but the collection agency is calling. Who are you going to pay first? Michael: one's a friend and the other one's the collection agency. Andy: They're both the same. you owe two parties. You have no preference one or the other, but one is that business calling you for money, the other one is a collection agency calling the question is, who are you more inclined to pay first? Michael: Oh, I don't know. That's a good question.What are the, data show?Andy: Generally speaking, people are going to pay the collection agency first. Middle class America wants to protect their credit. Michael: So Andy: generally speaking, people are going to pay the agency first. They're going to give it more importance because there's nothing negative that happens if they choose not to pay that original vendor, they'll get another statement or call next month and they'll address it Michael: Interesting. Okay. I like that. So then can you walk us through the process of selecting a reputable collection agency? Like What key factors Should we consider? Andy: Yeah. I mean, You really want to, interview multiple agencies. I would say the number one most important thing that you can do, assuming that people are being ethical, providing good service and being cost effective, which most are is having an agency that works directly with. Your practice management software. So we're in, a digital age and the collections business as a whole has done a very poor job on getting involved with technology. So I would definitely steer any dentist to work with the company that works with the technology. Well, You might ask, why is that important?There's numerous reasons. That's important. Number one. You're going to ensure safe and secure and rapid exchange of information. So accounts will be sent by their team by pointing and clicking, not manually updating a web form. The second thing it's going to do is it's going to tell who's paid. So in the collections business, Michael, and it's obvious you haven't been in collections from some of your responses, which is great.We don't want that for anybody. But sometimes the patient will actually pay as a result of that collection company contacting them. So with companies that work within the software, they should be notified when that happens. So let's paint a picture. Let's just say you're working with a collection company manually. Okay. You've sent patient ABC over for collection and the collection company has been calling them and they will call them incessantly to motivate that person. And let's just say that person paid the bill. Well Guess what? If your front office doesn't contact that agency by logging into the website, calling them, emailing, however that feedback loop is. That agency is going to continue to call that person for money. And it's going to further damage that relationship when they did the right thing and paid. So you want to have like an automatic feedback loop so that if someone does pay, it's automatically reported to the agency. So the agency doesn't cause any further harm. Those are probably the two top biggest reasons. There's many more. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So collection agency is just essential to have in this process, So number two, what would that look like? Bullet point number two. Andy: Yeah, so that was identify and motivate your ideal patients coming back into the practice as opposed to people that are just dentist shopping So we want to motivate people to pay and also be a patient of record. So when you turn people over to collection Granted, they're not happy about it, but it will motivate people that value that relationship with you to communicate and pay the bill. It will also motivate some people to leave the practice because they had no intention of paying to begin with. Michael: Okay. Got you. Got you. Now, how do you measure any of the success of a collection agency? What benchmarks or KPIs do you track? As a practice owner. Andy: So any agency that has technology to support you is going to give you metrics on how you can judge their efficacy. I will share with you as weird as this is, it's not all about the money. I specialize in working with independently owned dental offices. So it's a little more holistic and how they judge you. I would say that most independently owned practices, it's not about the money. That's more of a group practice thought process.Yes, money's important, but not the most important thing. Independent dentists, they don't compete. With corporate offices on cost, right? They can't, the economies of scale are not there. The flip side is also true. corporates can't compete with independent dentists on culture, right? They have turnover, you're getting new associates every six months. It's just a constant churn. So they don't really compete with one another, but at the end of the day, I think most dentists, will gauge the efficacy of their collection company, not only on the money recovered. And of course it has to be cost effective, but even more importantly than that, does it generate negative reviews?Does it motivate people to accept treatment? Does it allow their staff to focus on other things that are more important? So there's an opportunity cost To chasing your own accounts receivable. So it's much more multifaceted than just dollars in dollars out. Most dentists will hire a collection company basically to make their office run better.Michael: Have you seen that a lot, Andy, where some are hesitant to, bring on or call or ask about, money more for the review. Like, Oh man, I'm going to get negative. Andy: Yeah, of course. But in my experience, if you continue to chase your own money, you're much more likely to generate a negative review for yourself.If you hire somebody else to do it for you, they can give a negative review on that collection agency. Michael: Yeah. Andy: And certainly they could tie it back to you, but you can always, claim indifference, right? Hey that's what our billing department's for you know, you need to deal with them and it absolves you from some of that responsibility. Michael: Interesting. Okay. So then what are the financial risks and rewards of sending accounts to collections at 60 days versus waiting longer or not using collections at all? Andy: Great question. So you have this kind of traditional paradigm with collection agencies working with dental offices and that one is a very traditional approach where the office will work the account for months and months and months and years and years and years. And then they turn it over to collections, and then that company's working on a percentage basis. That's the way it's always been, but that is just not an effective way of running a modern or contemporary dental office. Sometimes you cause more harm than good there because if you wait that long, the accounts aren't collectible anyway. Right. If you wait a year or two, they're basically uncollectible. So I'd recommend just writing the accounts off if you're going to do that. The advantage to turning it over at 60 to 90 days is that's a very fresh account. It's still top of mind for that consumer and from a statistical perspective, it's much more collectible than something if you wait a year or two down the road to go after.So it's more about being proactive with that balance. The other thing you also have to measure in here, Michael. is a lot of times these practices are already getting hit with the PPO fee and basically reducing their billable amount. So they're already losing 30 or 40%. And then if you let that patient balance go unpaid. You're losing the rest. So in this environment, it's just too competitive to run a business like that anymore. You have to be responsible with not only the insurance portion, whether you're in network, out of network fee for service, but you also have to address that patient portion. It's crucial because again, you're taking such a big write off a hit in the beginning. It's really not cost effective for you to take another hit later down the road. You're essentially giving it away. Michael: Interesting. So then what common mistakes do practices make that you've seen when sending accounts to collections and how can they avoid these pitfalls? Andy: one of the things that clouds all of our judgment is emotion.So a lot of times, People get upset, and listen, if someone owes me money, I get upset about my own business, right? It hurts, but people still have that mammalian part of their brain that wants revenge, or maybe the patient was really rude last time they came in. So you have this, Emotional part of being owed money that clouds our judgment.that's a big mistake I see some practices, they just want revenge. That's usually where bad things start to happen when you think along those lines. So as a practice owner matures and goes through practice ownership, there's developmental stages where right in the beginning, it really hurts. Then you can start to kind of objectively step back and look at things more objectively. But at the end of the day, recommend the practice owners look at this from a very non emotional, like a CPA would, right? If you're producing a million dollars in revenue annually, and you have less than 1 percent of the people that owe you money, not pay you, write it off.You're collecting 99%. No one gets a hundred percent. I don't care how cool it is to say in the Facebook groups, nobody gets a hundred percent. There are times where it makes sense to write things off rather than pursue it. Especially if those services are disputed or you're dealing with a really difficult person, a lot of times it's just not worth it and you just have to let it go.Michael: Interesting. I love that. Thank you so much, Andy. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Andy: Probably the best way to do it is going to my website. collection, agency, ninja. com spelled just like it sounds. Michael: Awesome. Collection, agency, ninja. com. that's going to be in the show notes below. So if anyone's interested, want to pick Andy's brain a little bit more and so forth, definitely reach out to him there and Andy.Thank you so much for being with us on this Monday morning episode. Appreciate you having me. Thank you very much and keep up the great work. I'm honored to be here.Andy: Thank you.

‍How often do leaders find themselves in situations where silence could have been their most powerful tool? In this episode, we dive deep into the leadership journey of Dr. Manrina Rhode and learn about the transformative lessons she's embraced as a business owner. Dr. Manrina candidly reveals her shift from a leader eager to express every thought to one who masterfully chooses her words. She shares intimate reflections on learning when to "shut up," a tactic that has redefined her approach to managing teams and maintaining a harmonious workplace environment. Her story is a compelling exploration of the inner changes she made to lead more effectively.Drawing from her own experiences, Dr. Manrina offers a toolbox of strategies vital for any leader aiming to foster accountability and support within their teams. From scheduling regular meetings to address concerns in a steady, composed fashion, to the importance of documenting and constructively addressing recurring issues, her advice is both practical and refreshingly honest. This episode is not just an insightful peek into her leadership evolution but a guide filled with actionable ideas any practice owner can implement to refine their communication style and team dynamics.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The power of silence in leadership and when to "shut up."Strategies for managing emotional reactions in the workplace.How to foster a supportive and accountable team environment.The importance of scheduled meetings for conflict resolution.Effective techniques for documenting and addressing recurring issues.The impact of calm and constructive communication on team morale.Tune in to discover how to communicate more effectively with your team!‍‍‍Sponsors:‍‍Gusto: Dentist payroll for the modern practice. Gusto's cloud-based software provides all the payroll and HR tools you need to run your dental practice efficiently. Having it all on one platform keeps our prices low, and makes your job so much easier. Enjoy best-in-class support, benefits like health coverage for your team, and more. Visit or copy and paste the link here for a special offer! https://gusto.com/tdm‍You can reach out to Dr. Manrina Rhode here:Instagram: instagram.com/drmanrinarhodeOther Mentions and Links:‍Brands:Botox‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: amen. Rena, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Manrina: My piece of advice is to learn to shut. Michael: Expound on that a little bit. is that advice? Manrina: I think it's something that I've had to learn as a business owner and it goes against everything I learned before I was a business owner. So as young lady growing up and then as an associate dentist, I always believed it was important to speak my mind. And if someone had upset me, offended me, done something that felt like an injustice, To speak out loud about it, and I kind of pride myself for being that person and doing that. and as a business owner, I've learned that's not always the best way to go. And with your team, if every time they do something wrong that upsets you, like, I don't know, like I had someone today send out one of my patients, the wrong skincare product. They wanted one product and they sent them another product, you know, and I was like, why, why did you send the wrong product?And, you know, they said, oh, they were next to each other. And I think, you know, the, the old marina and the way that had been brought up and what I'd always believed to be correct. would have really wanted to talk about that and explore it and understand it and be like, but how is that an answer to sell me that because they were next to each other?If someone's ordered hydrate lip oil, you send them, hydrate lip oil, why would you send them plumpbut what I have learned, being a boss. Is it's not my place to then have that conversation. it's just my place to listen and accept and say, okay, and that's it.Shut up. Okay. And that's such a journey for me. because it went against my essence of just like really explaining how I feel. and to the point of like, then when you see the,person later on and, you know, in the staff room and they say, Oh, I'm really sorry about that. skincare thing. just smiling at them genuinely back and saying, okay, maybe how I was feeling, but I've had to learn this mass suppression of emotion opinions. So just, obviously it's important to take note of everything that's going on around you. I'll make notes understand what's happening with my team and bring it up at the right time in the correct way. But what's not correct is like my life has been up until now dealing with friends and colleagues that you can just be quite open about how you're feeling, about what's happening Michael: at the time. Interesting. So then how do you know when to bring it up in the right time in the right way, especially like that scenario? Manrina: Yeah, so we have meetings, scheduled meetings. with everyone, right? So I have a daily huddle, definitely a group environment. I bring things up in a group environment as team learning for everyone, not using a specific person as an example, but doing a reminder saying, Hey, we're all going to have a this morning. what product is this? What does this product do? Let's do a spot test. Does everyone know what's going on here? we have weekly meetings, which are designed to go through these things. which be a more appropriate place to do the spot skin care test. We have monthly practice meetings. we have monthly reviews for new team members and three monthly, reviews for team members who have been with us for longer. do it monthly for three months and then it moves on to three monthly and eventually six monthly. I also have, like, different team members, with my practice manager, for example, I have a weekly meeting. if she does something that I can make a note and in the weekly meeting, if I don't want to make a big deal out about it, then in the weekly meeting, when we're having a one on one, I can say, Hey, by the way, this happened this week. And that's made me feel a certain way. And is everything okay? And I guess it's also that it's being like, is everything okay? Rather than getting upset with someone and saying, I don't want to say it, but like, are you stupid? You're just going to be like, is everything okay? Well, you know, is there a reason why you felt like, did this happened or these mistakes happen this week?Is there something that I can support you in? so it's a whole like reframe you think when you're open to practice, everyone might think they're going to be the boss and they're going to tell everyone what to do, but I think it's almost the opposite. It's easier to be the boss when you're an associate, Whereas as a boss, to actually keep a happy team, you need just very calmly, Go through anything that goes wrong then put actions in place to make sure it doesn't happen again and obviously know everything down.So rather than acting on it immediately, make a note of it and then decide the appropriate action to take, the correct time to have that discussion. it's not necessarily something that you have immediately. Michael: interesting. So then it's almost like as if. Shutting up is part of the calming down process, could you think of something in that moment to, you know, I just need to be nicer, but I'm going to tell it to you straight. Yeah, Manrina: when like the skincare thing happened today, then I responded and said, Oh, okay. That's unfortunate that you're not familiar with our, with our sentence. read about them and watch all the videos. if you could do that for me, then when I see you next week, I'll schedule a time for me to go through that with you and test you on them. So this doesn't happen again. Could you please send an apology message to the person you sent the wrong skincare to? Arrange when you want to be sent out, just to let you know the cost of the skincare will be deducted from your wages. So that was my immediate response. Which was quite measured and, fair, with all the points for what needs to be done. there's nothing emotional in that.It's just very fact. This happened. This is what we're going to do about it, to make sure it doesn't happen again. And this is how we're going to fix what's happened right now. and these are the actions I'm taking because you've done something wrong. Michael: How do they react? Manrina: They said, okay, I, um, yeah, I was going to say you should deduct it for my wages as well. And yeah, sorry again. Michael: Oh, okay. Interesting. So then how did this come out to be Minrina? Like, how did you realize I probably should start shutting up more? Manrina: I think it was really early on. I had a nurse and He gave pounds worth of Botox. To the lab guy, like the lab guy came to collect lab work and he picked the lab work out of the fridge and picked up a bag of Botox as well.And gave the lab guy my lab work and 500 worth of Botox, which is a prescription medication and it's useless once it's kept out of the fridge. So couldn't even be returned. and then the lab called and said, Oh, you've given us this bag of Botox. And I think at the time I was so shocked like, you know, early boss days.And I'm just like that's incompetent. I feel like that's incompetent behavior. What do you think about it? And then he was like oh yeah, I made a mistake, but you can't call me. incompetent. That's not allowed. then I, you know, asked my, my HR and they were like, yeah, youcan't tell someone that they've done something wrong.Like say that this is what you are. You can only say to them, do you think that was competent? Do you think that was competent behavior? And so I was like, Oh, it's so interesting. Like in normal life, normal conversations up until now it's just been a conversation that you'd have about, this is what you are in my opinion, but you're not allowed to have that opinion as a boss.You have to ask what their opinion is. Michael: Okay. I like that. Interesting. Yeah, no, it's good. So then in the moment of you trying to create this relationships with your team whether it's like, Hey guys, we're a team or we're more than a team, we're friends, right. or we're a family or anything like that.Where's the line to where you're like, Hey, for example, you're really close with the team member and you're like, Hey, you know, you know me, right. you've seen my children and everything. But then you. Decide to be like, Oh, I didn't know that offended you me calling you incompetent. I apologize. Right. But then it kind of,creates a riff there or something like that. So where's the line for that for you? Manrina: I don't have an issue now. We're just talking to everyone very calmly. And I feel like as long as I'm telling them all very calmly and not in a bullying like, This is incompetent.That's, you know, I would never, I wouldn't say it like that. Anything they do now. Oh no. Did you give the Botox? how do you feel about having done that? what do you think we could do to make sure it doesn't happen again? It's almost quite maternal. It's almost like a family.or maybe it's like a really nice mom, rather than a mom that shouts at people and says, are you stupid? It's a really nice. Oh, okay. This happened. What should we do about it? What can we put in place to make sure it doesn't happen again? But also I make a note of it. I've got a folder where I make a note about all these things with the date and what happened with each team member.So if we see a pattern and it's recurring, then I've got, series of evidence. And obviously if it's recurring issues, then need to do something more. always calm now. passionate response to anything is gone.Everything's like, Oh, Michael: You ask questions right to your response. You're like, oh, why'd you do that? What were you thinking right in that moment? Manrina: anything, I'd just be like, why do you think that happened?What do you think we could do to stop it happening again? Michael: Yeah, no, that's interesting. So then with that being said, what are some exercises you're doing to remind yourself, especially in the heat of the moment where you're like, what the heck? What are the. Exercises that you're doing to remind yourself to shut up or be calm.Manrina: Yeah. So when um, feel myself having an emotional reaction that's not positive. So it's fine when I'm excited when things happen, then it's all good and let's celebrate. If something happens and I can feel it inside me that I'm like, Oh, that makes me want to make that noise. Take a deep breath in.Then I know that's when I need to shut up. So as soon as I feel that something goes off in my brain, it says, shut up, because you're feeling an emotion and better to respond to this when you don't, and there's no rush to respond to anything. So just take it in and say, okay. And then work out how you want to respond to it once that, it's calmed down.Michael: You started doing this like a couple of weeks ago or? Manrina: a progressive. So my clinic opened just over two years ago and it's been a progressive change, but it's something that I was only conscious that I started doing when I sent it to someone this week.I said, Oh yeah, when things happen, then I just don't say anything because it's just easier that way. And then I just deal with it when it's the right time. And then I was like, Oh, I didn't even realize I started doing that. That's what I do. I don't respond anymore. And I've always been, I've always been that person that you're, you know, how I'm feeling at all times.If I get upset about something, I'll tell you I'm upset about it. And then, you know, five minutes later it was done and it's gone and we've cleared it. But I don't tell you I'm upset anymore. Michael: That's so funny. No, that's awesome. Thank you so much for that advice. We appreciate it. And we appreciate your time.And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her on the Dental Marketer Society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly? Manrina: On my Instagram is a really popular way to do that. It's Dr. Manrina Road, D R my name, Manrina Road. I manage my own account.So that's a good way to reach out. Michael: Nice. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. I'm Marina. Thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Manrina: Michael.

Revelation 19:6-8 Rev. Michael Oh

Are traditional retirement plans holding you back? In this eye-opening episode, I dive into a conversation with Kyle Christensen, where he disrupts conventional financial strategies queued up for dentists. Rather than funneling earnings into several miscellaneous traditional retirement savings like 401ks and IRAs, Kyle introduces the novel concept of "fake assets" that might not serve you as you imagined. He advises dentists to channel their investments into their sphere of expertise—into themselves and their practice—in order to craft paths towards abundant wealth genuinely.Kyle breaks apart the paradigm of diversification and advocates for other arenas like real estate, intellectual property, and personal development ventures such as coaching. Discover the lengths to which specialization can forge wealth without waiting decades!What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why 401ks and IRAs might be considered "fake assets" for dentists.The importance of investing in one's expertise and practice for optimal wealth creation.Strategies for maintaining high liquidity to seize strategic opportunities.Understanding the value in real estate, IP investment, and self-improvement coaching.Kyle's take on why diversification strategies might be outdated.How specialization, rather than diversification, leads to increased wealth.Ready to reshape your financial future and mastering the art of specialization? Dive into this episode now!‍‍Sponsors:Studio 8E8: Dentistry's story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true‍You can reach out to Kyle Christensen here:Website: https://uniqueadvantage.biz/Kyle's Book "Principals Based Planning": https://a.co/d/8576RD3Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unique_advantage/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558072766116LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/uniqueadvantage-planning/‍Mentions and Links: ‍Terms:Fica Taxes‍People:Bill GatesElon Musk‍Books:FAKE: Fake Money, Fake Teachers, Fake Assets: How Lies Are Making the Poor and Middle Class PoorerThe Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and the Gospel of Wealth‍Videos:Why diversification is for suckers: Warren Buffet and Mark Cuban‍Businesses/Brands:MicrosoftAppleBerkshire HathawayWalmart‍Places:Wall Street‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Kyle. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Kyle: My advice is to don't gamble with your financial future. And there's a reason I'm saying that. Michael: What's the reason behind it? Kyle: I think most of your listeners are probably being pressured, by the conventional wisdom out there to start quote, saving for retirement.And basically the way I look at that is they're divesting money from their control and their use and their expertise, and they're putting it in things that they have no control, expertise or use. And that's generally encouraged by the financial planning industry. Okay. Michael: So would you say, Don't start putting funds into that. Kyle: I know. Sounds crazy. Doesn't it? Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. The financial institutions that are promoting the philosophy of retirement and retirement planning, they only have one objective, and it's actually a huge conflict of interest.Their objective is to get asset center management. Their objective is to get your audience to send them money on a regular and ongoing basis and not touch it for decades and not receive any income for decades from those supposed assets, Robert Kiyosaki in his most recent book called fakecalls 401ks and IRAs mutual funds.He calls them fake assets. And the reason is he says a real asset is something that puts money in your pocket. And a liability is something that takes money out of your pocket for years. And that's why he calls those kinds of things, fake assets. Michael: So then from your expertise, where should we be putting our money then?Kyle: They should be putting it in what they're experts in. I've been to plenty of dental industry events, conferences. throughout the country. And I can tell you by looking at all the exhibitors of these events, there's plenty of opportunity for, dentists to invest in themselves and to grow and to expand.They're being convinced, however, to, move their money and invest in things that are not in their expertise, which I just finished reading Andrew Carnegie'sautobiography earlier this year. And in his book, he talks about that exactly. He says, I've never seen a man be embarrassed by investing in anything other than things outside of his expertise.his recommendation, which he's the richest American thatthat's ever lived. You know, we think, Bill Gates is super rich and Elon and they are, but comparatively Andrew Carnegie would be worth 300 billion in today's dollars. So he knows what he's talking about.And I think there's some wisdom in what he's saying. He's saying that, look, you should be investing in thethings you can control, and influence. Michael: Interesting. So then what are some strategic investments specifically for dentists that they should be investing in?Kyle: Yeah. So number one, I would say, don't be afraid of having cash. Don't be afraid of accumulating cash because cash means opportunity, think everybody's heard the phrase cash is King and there's truth to that. The people who have cash have opportunity. I'm sure most of your audience has dealt with loans, practice loans, or equipment loans, or things like that, right?What if you could get to a point in time when, you're only using loans strategically. You're not using them because you have to, but you're using them strategically. Maybe when the interest rates are really great and you're making more interest in where your cash is at, right?So at that point in time, it might make a lot more sense to just maintain the cash, take the loan, right? But in most people's cases, they're taking loans because they don't have the cash. So I would say, don't be afraid to build and maintain high levels of cash because cash equals opportunity. I'm thinking about one of my dental clients that's in Oklahoma.I started working with him whenhe bought into his first practice and he was making about 250, 000 a year. so that was in about 2014 when I started working with him this year.in fact, a conversation that I had with him last week, he's buying in three more practices.So he'll have a total of six practices. He has over 10 doctors working for him, his annual income just from what he does managing the practices, he makes over 2 million per year. That's where people should be investing right in their own ideas, in their own business, in their own property. Investment, for a dentist could be, investing in coaching.That's a great investment. In fact, this particular client, that was one of the first big investments that they did is they invested into coaching for their practice. And the amount of increase in efficiency in their practice went through the roof. So those are the kinds of investments that I think that your audience should be considering and, should weigh heavier than things that they have no expertise in.Michael: Yeah. Interesting. was that revenue profit or cash? Kyle: That was net profit per year for him. Michael: Oh, interesting. I like that, man. So then how would you plan for long term, I guess, like financial security and wealth building Kyle: So one of the things that you can do is you can start to invest into real estate, right?For example, maybe the property that your practice is in, that's an opportunity, right? And that's actually a way to, change the character of your income. Let's say that you're paying 20, 000 a month in lease, for your office lease if you were to own the building And now you're practice is paying that to you that twenty thousand bucks a year.You're Recharacterizing two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year now. It's not going to be subject to fikaSo you're saving fifteen point three percent of that money in taxes And now you're going to pay ordinary income tax, which you would have anyway, but you save a huge chunk of money over time if you sell that practice in the future, you could still Keep the building, it's a cash flowing asset to you.You can look at investing in other, what I would call real assets. Real assets are basically things that financial institutions can't sell you. So real assets might be owning a franchise. It might be owning, other real estate property, intellectual property. I think about the inventions that have taken place in the dental industry in just the last 10 years.And it's incredible. If you've been to the dentist regularly, you've seen it, the way they take x rays, the way they do imaging, everything. It's amazing how much technology, how much improvement has been made. What's the genesis of most of that improvement? Is it somebody who's not in the dental world or is it somebody that's in the dental world that came up with those things?And I would say it's mostly things that were brought up or invented Or at least thought of by people in the dental industry. Your audience might be, as they go along, be coming up with ideas that are multi million dollar cash flowing ideas.And what I'm saying is, that's the sort of thing they should be investing in. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So then how do you balance reinvesting in the business with diversifying your portfolio for long term wealth here? Kyle: So diversification, just submit is a marketing idea. Really? Michael: Okay. Yes. Kyle: in fact, I would encourage everybody to look up what Warren Buffett says and Mark Cuban says about diversification on YouTube.Diversification is an excuse for lack of knowledge. So specialization is what creates well, it's having an inch wide. Knowledge, but it's a mile deep, versus the Jack of all trades that has a mile wide basis of knowledge. And it's only an inch deep the whole way.People get paid for what they know. this idea of diversification, it's wall street. Wall Street is encouraging diversification because an excuse for their inability to pick winners and losers, which all the research actually says that they cannot do. And so we pay all these mutual fund managers and these money managers a lot of money right, every year, so that they can pick winners and losers, and yet all the research says that they can't, and what do they tell us we have to do?Diversify. We have to diversify. We have to asset allocate, We have to change that so that if something goes down, which is out of our control, which is a key point, I think then not all of our money will go down. So my question is. Should Bill Gates have diversified out of Microsoft should Steve Jobs have diversified out of Apple should Warren Buffett diversify outside of Berkshire Hathaway, I would say no, I think that those guys know exactly what they're doing.And they're investing in the things that they know that they're experts in. Michael: Interesting. Okay. So then if we do have a portfolio and our consultants are, are, you know, financial advisors are telling us like, yeah, you need to diversify. We did it already.How can we start scaling back? Or do we just take everything out of our mutual fund 401k RAs and stuff like that? Or, Or what are your thoughts? Kyle: Here's my question. How much controller influence do you have over how that performs?Michael: None. Like If I bought Walmart stock, how much influence do I have over that? buy something at Walmart, but nothing happens. Kyle: But it's not going to move the needle, right? It's not going to change the stock price, right? So I have no influence over that. So in reality, if you look up the definition of the word invest or the word gamble, What is that more like, Is it really investing or is it really gambling? I think that's the first thing we need to do. Let's call it what it is. And some people like to gamble and that's fine. for some people it's exciting. It's a fun game, but I don't think that people want to rely, put their entire financial future on gambling, right?But they're being told that that's what they should do. So what should you do if you already have, most of your investment in that kind of situation? Well, number one, does it make it better to put good money after bad? in the business world, don't put good money after bad, right?So if we're already doing something and we realize maybe this isn't the direction I want to go, then don't keep putting money in that direction. Does that make sense? So that's the first thing I would stop contributing If you realize that, hey, you know what? I really do have more confidence in what I'm doing than I do in putting it into something I have no clue and I have no control, no influence over the outcome, right?I'm actually penalized if I touch my money, Here's the other thing. Don't let the tax tail wag the dog. So what I mean by that is, taxes, yes, are an important factor to keep in mind, But they shouldn't be the sole deciding factor, if my entire goal is to avoid taxes, you know what the easiest way for me to avoid taxes is?Don't make money. And I don't know of anybody who has that as a goal. That's not a goal for anybody. It's not a good goal. I don't think to not make money. So avoidance of taxes isn't really the goal. Financial freedom is your goal. It should be your goal. And I think that's what most people have in mind when they think about retirement, even though that's not what the word retirement means.I think that they think about financial freedom, you know, I want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Well, The problem with retirement accounts is that they don't provide you with any. income. They don't provide you with any velocity. That's the principle. It's called velocity of money.So you put money into a retirement account and you can't touch it for a long time. Michael, you seem like you're in your thirties, maybe. Are you in your thirties? So if you're in your thirties, when can you touch that money without paying a penalty? 30 more years. Yeah, it's 30 more years. And who benefits from that?Is it you or is it the financial institutions? Michael: I don't know if I'll be here in 30 more years, even like so. Kyle: that's true. It's absolutely true. There's no guarantee that you'll live that long. Here's the thing. Those products, those accounts are not designed for financial freedom. They're designed for retirement, which is an age.Retirement doesn't mean capability. And so here's the question. Would you rather pay the tax? And maybe even the penalty. Right now we're at, the market's still at, near it's all time high. It might make sense actually, to cash out. And pay the tax and the penalty. Which seems totally crazy. I'm the only financial planner that you'll ever hear that suggests that that might be a good idea.And here's why. Because I believe in you. I believe in you more than I do Wall Street. They have a conflict of interest actually. Their conflict of interest is this. If you take out your money, they make less. That's the reality. that's an actual financial conflict of interest. So when do they want you to take your money out?Never. Michael: Yeah. Kyle: Yeah. It's never. that's the game. They're just pushing it down the road for 30 years. And if you've put money into the retirement accounts, you've agreed to that condition that you won't touch your money for 30 years. Which only benefits them. It doesn't benefit you in any way, but they're trying to convince you that that's true And then when you get to 30 years from now because we just said what's their conflict of interest?They don't ever want you to touch your money. They get financially injured if you take the money out when you hit 30 years from now, do you think they're going to still want you to take your money out at that point? Nope. They're going to give you every reason why you shouldn't because you might outlive it.It's not enough. it didn't grow as much as we thought it would and so on. I would rather you have half of that money in your full control and your full use. Michael: Love it, man. Awesome. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Kyle: You can go to my website, uniqueadvantage. biz. And the last letters are B I Z, Boy Island Zoo. Our email addresses are on there. You can, reach out. I'd love to answer any question.Michael: couple other ways you can find out more, right? You can go to amazon. com and you can buy my book, principles based planning, a better approach to financial planning. The other ways you can find us we're on Instagram.Kyle: Facebook and LinkedIn. So we'd love to have you follow connect. We'd love to see on there. Michael: Awesome. Yeah. So that's going to be in the show notes below Kyle's book. I saw social media handles. Please reach out to him if you have any questions and Kyle, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.Thank you.

In this special episode recorded live at the Fourth Lausanne Congress, Michael Oh, Global Executive Director/CEO of the Lausanne Movement, offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the years of preparation, shares powerful insights from the Congress itself, and casts a compelling vision for what's next for the global movement. Main Points: The Journey to the Congress: Michael shares key milestones leading up to the Fourth Lausanne Congress, from its early planning stages to navigating challenges like COVID-19. Personal Growth as a Leader: Michael reflects on how this journey shaped him personally, including lessons in leadership and family discipleship. Congress Highlights: Walking through the Congress halls with 5,000 global influencers, Michael describes the energy, excitement, and life-changing moments unfolding in Seoul. A Call for Collaboration: Michael emphasizes the need for unity and collaboration in global mission, urging participants to continue working together long after the Congress ends. Looking to the Future: What's next for the Lausanne Movement? Michael outlines practical steps for participants to take as they return home, ensuring the Congress's impact ripples through the global church. Don't let the journey stop here! After listening, subscribe to the Lausanne Movement Podcast, share this episode with a friend, and explore the tools and resources available to continue the mission. Visit our website to access the Accelerate platform and stay connected with global influencers and ideas for mission. Links & Resources: Lausanne Movement Website - https://lausanne.org/ Lausanne Collaborative Action Hub - https://collaborate.lausanne.org/ The Accelerate Platform - https://lausanne.org/accelerate The Seoul Statement - https://lausanne.org/statement/the-seoul-statement The State of the Great Commission Report - https://lausanne.org/report Guest Bio: Dr Michael Young-Suk Oh is the global executive director / CEO of the Lausanne Movement. Michael is of Korean descent, born in America. Michael received his BA, MS, and PhD degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. He also completed an MDiv at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as well as an MA in regional studies, East Asia, at Harvard University. Michael, his wife Pearl, and their five children served as missionaries in Nagoya, Japan from 2004 to 2016. In January 2004, he founded a ministry called Christ Bible Institute (CBI), which includes Christ Bible Seminary, the Heart & Soul Cafe, and a church-planting ministry. He currently serves as chairman of the board of directors for CBI and chancellor of Christ Bible Seminary. Michael's first involvement with the Lausanne Movement was at the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization. Then in 2006 Michael served on the younger leaders planning team for the 2006 Lausanne Younger Leaders Gathering, where he also gave the keynote address. In 2007 he joined the Lausanne Board of Directors as its youngest member. He has served as global executive director / CEO since March 2013.

Top headlines for Thursday, September 26, 2024In this episode, we discuss the imminent threat of a major hurricane hitting Florida and the millions at risk, break down ballot measures to repeal unenforceable gay marriage bans in several states, and cover a prominent atheist group's request to the IRS to revoke the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's tax-exempt status. Plus, recent polls reveal surprising views on the religious standing of former President Trump and Vice President Harris. Subscribe to this PodcastApple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsOvercast⠀Follow Us on Social Media@ChristianPost on TwitterChristian Post on Facebook@ChristianPostIntl on InstagramSubscribe on YouTube⠀Get the Edifi AppDownload for iPhoneDownload for Android⠀Subscribe to Our NewsletterSubscribe to the Freedom Post, delivered every Monday and ThursdayClick here to get the top headlines delivered to your inbox every morning!⠀Links to the NewsHelene expected to make landfall in Florida as major hurricane | U.S.Michael Oh casts Lausanne's 2050 vision in digital age | Church & MinistriesVoters may remove same-sex marriage bans from state constitutions | PoliticsIRS urged to revoke tax-exempt status of Billy Graham org | PoliticsSchool board member says Jews choose to be white, sparks debate | U.S.Americans see neither Trump, Harris as especially Christian: poll | PoliticsGateway Church revokes membership of critical congregant | Church & MinistriesNFL star Jayden Daniels gives glory to God after MNF victory | Sports

How can you, as a dentist, truly make a difference in your profession through organized advocacy? In this episode, Dr. Bob Dee shares vital insights into the inner workings of the American Dental Association (ADA), emphasizing the power of active participation over passive membership. Dive into a comprehensive discussion on the strides the ADA is making in political advocacy for the profession. Discover how influencing legislation, like dental loss ratio and Medicaid laws, directly shapes the dental industry and enhances patient care quality.Dr. Dee also tackles big topics such as corporate intrusion into healthcare, offering a vigorous defense of the dentist-patient relationship's personal nature that corporate entities can't replicate. While concerns exist about the efficacy of membership and communication within ADA, Dr. Dee reveals a determined vision for positive organizational change. Don't miss out on practical advice on joining advocacy coalitions and learn about the exciting upcoming Digapalooza event that promises valuable insights from industry leaders.What You'll Learn in This Episode:The benefits and importance of actively joining the ADA.The ADA's role in critical legislative changes such as dental loss ratio and Medicaid laws.Dr. Dee's perspective on the unique gifted relationship between dentists and their patients in comparison to corporate healthcare.Practical steps on becoming more involved in dental advocacy.Upcoming industry trends and why it's crucial to stay informed via events like Digapalooza.A deep dive into the real impacts of your active participation in organizations like the ADA.Take action and tune in to understand how your dedicated involvement today can create a thriving future for the entire dental profession.‍Sponsors:‍‍For high quality AND affordable dental supply options, visit The Dentists Supply Company(TDSC) website today! Our listeners get a special deal - 25% off on orders over $500 - Just type in the special code: TDM25 at checkout for your exclusive offer. AND if you're a member of your state's Dental Association, you may be eligible for additional savings upon providing your ADA number. Click or copy and paste the link here to save today! https://www.tdsc.com/‍You can reach out to Dr. Bob Dee here:Website: https://dentistryingeneral.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dentistryingeneralFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/share/L5bCmGf8oKHcH3yH/?mibextid=A7sQZpDigapalooza Event: https://pay.dentistryingeneral.com/MondayMorning ($400 Off for Our Listeners!)‍Mentions and Links: ‍Events:Digapalooza‍Organizations:ADA‍Videos:Dr. Dee's Video on Medicaid Laws‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Bob. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Bob: As we discussed off the air, the one advice I can give you definitively is to join the American Dental Association. And that comes from someone who criticizes them on a regular basis. Michael: So let me ask you this why join them and what do you criticize them about Bob: first of all, let's talk about the positives I don't like to talk about Negativity first, everybody can improve things, right?so why should you join the American Dental Association because for a hundred and sixty three years dentists like myself have contributed to building this huge organizations. We are the fourth largest lobbying power in Washington, DC. Think about it. Hospitals, physicians, all these physical therapists, all these health care organizations.We are the fourth largest. Representatives and senators and politicians know our lobbyists by name. So it is important for us to have proper representation. The government will bring different, ideas to the table. There are a couple of them going on right now that we should be opposing. And we need to have a voice there.So if you do not join the American Dental Association, and if you do not contribute, do not just write a check and go to your offices and say they don't do anything. We need to get involved. We need to have a voice within organized dentistry. It's basically for advocacy. Michael: We're advocating for our patients first. and then the profession. Our oath is to the,patients and then the profession. So that's basically why we should, join. Why do I criticize them? I don't criticize them to weaken them. I criticize them to make them better.Bob: Every, time we, as an advocacy coalition, criticize them is an opportunity for them to correct things and be stronger and attract more people. For me, lack of communication between what the American Dental Association does and the members, that'sbeen an issue. Also lack of focus. To what is important, for the benefit of our patients and the benefit of the profession.I feel like we need to reiterate to them what is important so they can concentrate better. Michael: So you mentioned that we need to participate more and not just cut a check and then, you know what I mean? go back to practicing, but then you also mentioned there's a lack of communication. So do they even listen?Bob: If we participate.They are listening. I guarantee you that they are listening. I have this facebook group dentistry in general. They are part of it. I have heard that they are listening and they are making some changes. Is it fast enough for most people? I don't know. That's why I have created this advocacy coalition that includes 30 people past present American Dental Association leaders and well known people within the dental community to help guide them.We have a platform, a six pillar platform that we have presented to them, and we're going to be at the House of Delegates Trying to contribute positively. I want everybody to understand we're not here to weaken the American Dental Association. This is all for making them stronger. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So it's more like we're just sometimes, downhearted because it's not moving at the speed of our expectations.Bob: there is a, myth that the ADA can do everything. This is a capitalistic system that we live in, right? Michael: There Bob: are laws and there are rules that when a dentist Criticizes them that oh, why can't we have the insurance companies pay more? That's not the job of the American Dental Association That's illegal.We cannot to have Another company pay us more. These are things that we cannot control. A lot of times dentists criticize the ADA for things that's out of their control. Obviously they're struggling and they see their patients being affected. So we naturally want these things to happen, but we need to be realistic.The way we can affect all the things they want is by making sure we know what legislation to support. what issues we can push through the politicians through legal ways to make a positive effect. Michael: Gotcha. So then what can they control in simple terms and what issues right now do you see most trying to push?Bob: Right now two of the most important things is the dental loss ratio, which is identical to the concept of medical loss ratio that the Affordable Care Act brought for medicine. We want the DLR for dentistry. Unfortunately, ADA, in my opinion, agreed to a plan that is not What we should have agreed to so we need to be outspoken and we need to be involved in creating the better than a loss ratio one that was passed in massachusetts Called question two a lot of this information is on my youtube channel on my facebook group So if people need to find out more and educate themselves contact me educate yourself These are the most important things You that are affecting our profession and our patients.That should be the number one thing. We advocate for patients first, not for ourselves. And the second thing is Medicaid laws are being ignored in every state and people will say, why should I even worry about Medicaid? I'm fee for service. I'm a PPO. I don't take Medicaid. Medicaid laws dictate.every insurance law that there is. As Medicaid goes, so does the private insurance. Michael: Gotcha. So we should be focused more, especially if we're heavily insurance, but like Medicaid. Bob: We shouldn't be focused on it, but we should look at states to enforce Medicaid laws that are there. I have a YouTube video on this subject that goes into details of what it means.All we want is to prove to politicians that this is good for the patients and let's enforce it. Michael: Okay. And so doing this. The first steps, if we're like, ah, should we join? Should we not join is joining, right? Continue to join, continue to be a part of it. And then now, if we wanted to start having our input into it, we do what?Bob: The alternative is what? Sitting on social media complaining about our problems, right? And what's going to happen? Nothing. Zero is accomplished by not joining, So joining and getting involved is important, and then support the coalition. Dentistry in General Advocacy Coalition will be out there presenting ideas.It's not a, organization that collects money. I'm covering all the costs because I don't want people to think that this is a profit generating organization. This is to help younger dentists. For years to come. We want to make sure the profession is protected and our patients are protected.Michael: Gotcha. So right now, Bob, me a percentage from one to a hundred? How much of a percentage do you feel protected and your patients protected? Bob: Listen, we are fighting different wars on different fronts. The corporate intrusion into healthcare is something that everybody knows about, We have insurance companies. That's another corporation intruding into our profession and into our patients well being. So for me, to put a percentage on it, I'm an optimist, right? I'm a, Glass half full. I say something that a lot of dentists rolled their eyes at me. We are a lot like. Hairstylist, Then doctors. Why? Because you will drive two hours to see your hairstylist The personal relationship dentists form with their patients is very important to them. So I still believe we have a chance. of keeping corporate intrusion at bay.We can't prevent it. It's there, However, if you create this professional and compassionate relationship with your patients, they will travel to come to you, but they also pay out of pocket to be out of network with a lot of these insurances. So it's important to understand that. So I would say We are still 80 percent strong, my friend.Some people may be less optimistic as I am, but we want to make sure we keep it at 80 percent and we're not going to go down the road medicine took. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Awesome, Bob. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them in the dental marketer society, Facebook group, but where can they reach out to you directly?Bob: The easiest way to reach out to me or join my Facebook group is to go to my website, dentistryingeneral. com. There are two buttons, you can join the Facebook group, you can look at our event, and there is a chat button there that whatever you want to ask or comment, it comes right to my phone and we can talk.Michael: Gotcha. And then you also have I Bob: call it the Digapalooza, I try to bring speakers that are well known and are all stars. It's October 25th and 26th in the Chicago area. I say Chicago area because it's not downtown. It's 20 minutes away from downtown in a upscale mall. we have a very attractive lineup of speakers for two days and for your listeners, as I told you I still offer the early bird, which is 400 off and I can give you the link that you can share with your audience.Michael: Oh, we appreciate that, man. Thank you. So that's going to be in the show notes below the information for Digapalooza and at the same time, the early bird special So thank you so much, Bob, for that. And I appreciate you coming by and thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.Bob: Thank you for having me.

Are you thinking about launching a dental startup but don't quite know where to begin? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Chris Green to dive into the essentials of setting up a new dental practice, beginning with the crucial steps of demographics analysis and site selection. Chris shares his insights on the "windshield test," a simple method to augment data analysis with hands-on site evaluation. He also reveals practical strategies for identifying promising locations, accounting for natural barriers, and balancing commercial and residential areas—all keys to making sound, long-term decisions for your practice.The conversation continues with essential advice on how to work effectively with real estate agents and what to consider during site visits. Chris also discusses his book, "The Eminently Qualified Dentist," which includes a valuable self-evaluation scorecard to help dental professionals assess their leadership skills. As the episode wraps up, you'll get tips on regular self-assessment and Chris' philosophy on being always a work in progress.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why demographics analysis is critical for dental startupsHow to perform the "windshield test" to evaluate potential practice locationsEffective strategies for identifying the best areas for a new dental practiceTips for navigating natural barriers and balancing commercial-residential zonesHow to collaborate with real estate agents to find the perfect siteInsights from Chris' book on self-evaluation and leadership in dental practiceThe importance of regular self-assessment for continuous improvementTune in now to equip yourself with the tools for a successful startup!‍‍Sponsors:Studio 8E8: Dentistry's story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true‍You can reach out to Dr. Chris Green here:Website: thepracticelaunchpad.comEmail: cmgreendmd@gmail.comChris' Book - The Eminently Qualified Dentist: https://a.co/d/3AgXjbI (Reach out to Chris for a free copy!)‍Mentions and Links: ‍People:Dr. Thomas Reed‍Software/Tools:CoStar‍Podcasts:Jocko Willink Podcast‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: Hey, Chris, we'll talkto us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Chris: Hey there, Michael. I'd like to talk about demographics and actually the analysis of driving and having the area or the location you pick pass the feel and the site test more so than just the numbers test.talk to me a little bit about that like driving around and just looking or.Yeah. So it's a little bit.more intuitive than that. we have our demographics reports. We might be looking at them. We're looking for that 3, 001 dentists to population ratio, you know, the high income area.But then we have to look at how does it feel? Does it pass the windshield test? When I drive by behind the numbers, what does it feel like? So that's what I like to do. Michael: What's the windshield test? Chris: Yeah, so just. behind the steering wheel, you know, you're looking out the windshield and you're looking around and you're like, oh, cool.There's a lot of homes being built or. Oh, wow. You know, The demographics report said this was only like 1800 to 1, but I'm not really seeing the dentists. where are they at? so does it pass the eye test? So to speak would be maybe another way to say that. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. I like that.So then if you can, let's just say we're listening to this and we decided to do that. We're taking a drive strategically. How should we start? What are we mainly looking for that are red flags and what are some things that. We can probably let pass. Chris: Sure. So one thing that's well, known, if you've researched anything on demographics with a startup are natural barriers, like a highway that maybe people wouldn't want to cross or by us, there's the foothills in Colorado.So there's no real homes along the foothills. So now I've just eliminated growth to the West of me completely. Right. So if I'm butted up too close to there. And a couple more dentists come in and there's not a lot of room for new homes. I could be in trouble long term and I'm praying for turnover of the existing home, so to speak.The other thing would be, how much commercial real estate is in the area. Is there more commercial than residential, We want a nice balance of both and a lot of times in these newer areas that are up and coming The residential is there before the commercial is developed. So a lot of these projects are ground up commercial that we see a lot of startups going into they're waiting for the developers to finish to give them that great show Michael: How do we know that's a good balance then the commercial? And then the residential, Chris: some point you got to go with your gut and say, this is the location, right? You've worked with plenty of startups over the years. I'd turn the question back on you. What's your opinion on, some of that?Michael: Oh man. so when we focus, we focus just on ground marketing, right? So if it's commercial. We do want a lot of commercial, if it's residential, you have the HOAs, you have a lot of other specific things that you can be a part of. So I don't know, I guess it just depends on the type of practice you want to be right in the city, specific suburban area.Chris: Yeah, that's a great point. Are we talking a city and urban type atmosphere, rural or suburban for me? Just, I would say 80 percent of people are going to go to a larger suburb close to a major city. Let's say within 20 minutes to an hour outside a major city, Denver, Chicago San Francisco, whatever it may be.Michael: Yeah, gotcha. Okay. you're investing so much money into this, right? Your startup. Why wouldn't, not everyone just want to do this? Chris: And you said, hey, bring something that's unpopular. It's a little ambiguous, right? What I'm saying, it's not quite a science. It's a little bit of driving around, analyze the competition.Maybe your real estate agent didn't show you place that was available that has great visibility that meets the demographics and everything. But it just isn't on their radar and you have to say, Hey such such real estate agent. Would you mind looking into this place? It looks like it's vacant.Looks like it could be a good opportunity. I've seen situations like that work out really well for startup clients. Michael: Okay. So when you talk to them, real estate agent, is there a way you would want to bring that up to let them know like, Hey, you missed a lot of stuff. Or no, Chris: Some of them might be directing you where they know they're going to get a nice commission on it. But other times it's just not on the market, right? Maybe the hasn't listed it. maybe it's just doesn't show up on their searches on, what is it? CoStar or whatever. or maybe they didn't realize it was in a good demographic zone.Based on your demographics reports. So it's a team approach. Remember no one is more invested in this than you, the startup doc, So they're dealing with maybe, 20 clients at a time or something like that, you have your one little baby, you gotta do everything possible to make sure it's a home run.Michael: Nice. I like that. So Chris, you also have a book that you just came out with, right? Chris: Correct. So the book's called the eminently qualified dentist. I was listening to the Jocko Willink podcast and he talked about the eminently qualified Marine and I printed out this sheet and itit's about Marines and likethe levels of leadership what would signify that you're good at your job as a Marine.And I was like, wow, what if there was a scorecard that we could more objectively evaluate ourselves as dental practice leaders. so myself and Dr. Tom Reed compiled with or 12 categories the practice culture.Marketing leadership so on and so forth.And then some descriptions and ranking yourself from zero to five. And at the end, you could fill out the scorecard let's say you did that today, and maybe you've been working on some things you check in, six months from now, take test again and you see, Hey,it looks like I'm doing a little bit better as a leader.It looks like I am growing in the trajectories in the right direction.So that was the idea behind the book and it's quick read, more of an evaluation something that you might take on a flight,fill it out, read it, and then, reevaluate yourself. Michael: So if you can, one of the main things on there that you do, would you recommend, Hey, we should probably reevaluate ourselves every how often, Chris: maybe quarterly, there used to be a scorecard that I would use and evaluate quarterly, definitely annually when you're doing your maybe annual goal setting and things like that.but for maybe a book like this, twice a year, Michael: If you can let us know right now, where do you feel like, okay, I need to improve on this? Chris: Sure. I would say if a hundred percent, means. You've got it all dialed in. I would say we're probably lying to ourselves. I would say where I could improve a little bit more is with hard So you could always get better at having those hard conversations and not putting hard conversations off. I would say that would be an area for me to focus on. Michael: Yeah, man, that's interesting. So it does dive deep into the, not just like, what's your production looking like? What do you want it to be? But it's. goes into the granular part of conversations, which honestly Chris like, I feel like that's hard for anybody. You know what I mean? Like that's a, a difficult, nobody loves to be like, I love coming in and having difficult conversations.Maybe like 01 percent people, but that's good, man. Okay. So then this is available where? Chris: This would be available on Amazon. It's called the eminently qualified dentist. I it's 19 or 20. I've sent out a lot of free copies as well. So just hit us up if you want a copy I've got some good feedback so far for the people that have actually gone through it.It's, a reality check, right? When we introspective and evaluate how we're showing up to the world. we're always a work in progress is how I look at myself. So. There's always room for improvement and it's like when one category starts to do well, maybe another one suffers and it teeter totters.So it's hard to find that balance and everything. Michael: Yeah, no, a hundred percent, man. We go through seasons all the time, but awesome. Chris, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Chris: Sure. I'll just give my personal email. C M green D M D at gmail. com. You can also find me at the launchpad. com, which is our startup coaching group. Michael: Nice. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below and Chris, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Chris: Hey, I really appreciate you having me, Michael.Thank you.

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/   Episode from 2022 Suntree: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/live-from-suntree-retreat/   ----more----     Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting group of people to talk about a really exciting upcoming event, which is the Sun Tree Retreat, which is the second of these retreats that we've held in person for atheopagans from all over the world who can come. Held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and it's going to be over Labor Day weekend this summer. So, I'd like to introduce our two panelists here, who were at the last one Rana and Michael. Michael: Hello. Yucca: Rana, we Mark: I can't hear you at all. Rana: Oh, thank you for having us. Yucca: Welcome. And I think both of you've been on the podcast before, right? So, welcome back. Michael: Oh, thanks. Can Yucca: Yeah. Michael: put that Yucca: So let's, let's start with the, some of the details because that's coming up really soon, right? That's Mark: It is, Yucca: two months, which is not very long. Mark: nope, not very long, especially if you have to get plane tickets and that kind of thing, so, Really encourage folks that want to go to get registered and get organized around it, because it's going to be a really good time. So, details. The event is August 30th, which is a Friday starting in the afternoon through noon ish or one o'clock or so 2nd. Registration includes nine meals. As a part of your, your registration fee you also need to register for lodging, which is very affordable and you can find all the information about it by going to the Athe O Pagan Society website, which is the ap society.org, THE ap society.org, Yucca: And the lodging has several diff oh, Michael: notes as well for this Yucca: absolutely, yeah, we'll put that in the show notes so that people can just go ahead and click on it. I was gonna say the lodging has several different options including tent camping, and yurt and Mark: guest house, you're. Yucca: I think it's dry camping, but you could, if you have an RV and you're in the area, you can do an RV too, is that correct? Mark: Yes, there are no hookups, but but there is parking for RVs. We had a couple of people, at least one couple came last time, actually in a school bus, Yucca: was really cool. Mark: was converted. It was really cool. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, Michael and Rana we wanted to talk some about why this event was so cool last time and what we're looking forward to going into this next one at the end of this summer. So why don't we start with kind of golden moments. Michael, you want to go ahead? Michael: I wanted to just say beforehand, you mentioned the meals, and one of the high points of it was the options available. Like, every dietary requirement was accommodated, I think. Mark: Yeah, Michael: The catering team there are fantastic, and I think people shouldn't feel concerned about food at all because the options were great the food was really high quality I think everybody felt really good about the food, so that was an important, that was a real high point so just wanted to make sure we got that mentioned. And, Mark: Yeah, great. Thank you. And, and eating together was really a high point for me. Just sitting down for meals, you know, they had these round tables that I think seated eight or ten or something like that, and different combinations of people would sit together for different meals. And so we got to know one another better in those mealtimes. So that was a high point for me. Somebody want to go with another cool thing that they remember from Suntree in 2022? Yucca: well, I remember Robin led these I'm not sure what you would really call it,  Rana: yeah, the meal acknowledgement. We have talked about them in the group, but it was really different being able to experience it together. And it was things like bringing to mind the history of our food or thinking about the systems that brought it to us today or the hands that it passed through. And we've had some discussion in Mihal's full moon. We were doing like a full moon lunch thing for a little while as well where we kind of continued that conversation and, and thinking about that, which is something that I find really enriching and really enjoy. Also want to strongly second the dietary accommodations that they had. I really, really appreciate it because I have a little bit of an odd diet and I felt. Really good and definitely did not lack for good options for food. Mark: Mihal, you want to go? Michael: yeah, what I found really interesting about the, The whole experience was how quickly we created a community in space particularly when we did our Fire Circle get togethers. And the kind of spontaneous sharing that occurred at those events was really amazing. People really just suddenly kind of created this family. in situ and it was it was great to be part of that. Just sometimes if you go to other kind of retreats it can take a while to kind of break down those those barriers we put up. Just as just as being human but it seemed within a just a few hours we'd kind of already started to create a special Sun Tree community and I thought that was fantastic. Mark: Yeah, I really agree with that. I mean, I've been to a whole lot of various kinds of pagan gatherings and retreats of various sorts. And it seemed as though we just kind of got at this visceral level that we were among, you know, people that were of like mind and similar values. And so that we were safe. Right? We were all, we were all going to play nice with one another, and so we could talk about really deep stuff in our, in our lives, and in our, our experience. And I found that really moving throughout the whole long weekend. It was, it was, it came up over and over again. Yucca: I was also really struck just by the immediate level of respect and consent that was just part of the, Everybody had going in. So I had my five year old with me and in a lot of situations in our culture, people you know, will go up and touch five year old's heads and give them hugs and, you know, all of those sorts of things. And I remember it just being great because people automatically were so great with her about asking for her permission. Like, do you want a hug? And would you like to shake hands? And that was just the culture of it. And it was just so refreshing and wonderful to just be in that space, just from the get go. Like Mark: and I mean, we had, we had laid out guidelines around consent and around conduct because, you know, we wanted to be very clear about, you know, what the expectations are, but it seemed like people read them and were like, yeah, that's civilized behavior. That's how I'm going to be. And the subject Honestly, never came up. There was never a situation where somebody felt like they had been inappropriately touched or or somehow invaded in that kind of way. And I thought that was, that was really pretty amazing. Michael: I just wanted to talk about the actual place as well. The Retreat Center is Really, really phenomenal. There's this beautiful forest. You're kind of just on the edge of Colorado Springs, so it's not too far from any stores or anything that you might need. But once you get in there, you suddenly feel like The outside world has disappeared just in this beautiful forest really a fantastic place just to go for walks just to go into the forest by yourself if you want to go for I think one of the big highlights was that we had a lunar eclipse while we were, while we were there, and being able to all, for the whole, all of us to go out there onto this big lawn and just stare up at the, at the moon together, and people howling at the moon, it was It was just a really fantastic experience as well especially just having that, we, we had the the Ponderosa Lodge, which is this big log cabin lodge that we can use for a lot of our activities, for rituals, and for our workshops. And that's a real, that's, that's a really nice space as well, there are different rooms, so you can kind of break off and do different things with people, or you can kind of come to the main room and have a bigger discussion. We had dance parties there, we had the Carnival of Change, which was a chance to kind of take on a different persona, like dress up. be a different version of yourself for the evening. So I think the whole, the whole retreat center just kind of facilitates that. There's a, there's a labyrinth there as well, which we didn't really incorporate too much into any rituals the last time around, but I think we're going to try and bring that in more this time around. Mark: Yeah, it's a beautiful spot. Rano? Rana: Yeah, the, the shared experience of the lunar eclipse was pretty special and it, it just so perfectly aligned with what we were doing. It was the same night as the Carnival of Change and it just felt like great, like the weather cooperated and we got to see this cool celestial event. It wasn't even at a super late time, like it was, it felt like a Yucca: like eight or nine. Yeah, Rana: Yeah, yeah, it felt like started our evening, kind of, or, you know, it didn't, it wasn't, you know, too far on late night or anything. The Carnival of Change itself was really fun, just to be able to play dress up together and listen to some music and, and just have fun. And I also like, like Michael said being able to split off into other little rooms and areas. It And I think for me, something that I really appreciated was the ability to have these just kind of unplanned moments where so much of our online interactions are very scheduled and it, you just show up at a certain time and there's a group of people and that's kind of mostly how it's gone. But, like, I just remember some folks were up later one night just all chatting and hanging out. And I love that feeling of if you're up late and feeling a little bit chatty or sociable, you can just kind of see who's up and just take a seat and hang out for a bit. And that's something that otherwise has felt like not really something we have access to. So it was particularly nice just to be able to connect in a more organic way, depending on how you're feeling. Mark: hmm. Yeah. Nihal? Michael: Yeah I think we, there was a lot of, there's been some learnings from that event as well, and I think there, we were really concerned about accessibility this time around, because there was a lot of movement between different areas. And so this time around we are definitely going to be making it more accessible as well. There's going to be designated drivers, so we want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable and everybody's able to take part in all the different events that we're having. So, I, I know that there's going to be a lot of more accessibility this time around, especially just in terms of shuttling people around the property. Yucca: Because there were a few hills and we were moving from the bottom of the hill back up to the dining room and then back down. Michael: Yes, yes, yeah, but I think we, Mark: and we were at 7, 000 feet. Michael: that was another, yeah  Mark: yeah one of the things that we learned from the Sun Tree Retreat in 2022 is that we had programmed a lot of the time, but some of the most memorable and wonderful moments were the unscripted times. The, the, The break periods when we could just gather together and socialize, or plan what we wanted to do for a rite of passage during the rite of passage period that we had later on, which was one of the most moving things to me. That was really an experience. So this time we've programmed in more free time. There's still plenty of workshops and, and rituals and experiences to have, but we've made it a little bit looser so that people have opportunities just to hang out and experience the place and one another. Michael: yeah, yeah, I just wanted to I might talk about the rites of passage a bit more because that was quite a unique experience. I guess we didn't really know how that was going to go because it's kind of like, it's a make your own ritual event, basically. You, you just DIY it with some help from some friends. So I think people were, they had various things that they wanted to celebrate or commemorate and or mark the end of a period in their life, or the start of a period in their life. And we all came together and celebrated those those events together. And I think what was really amazing was just the creativity that people brought to their rituals. Really very moving and even though they were very personal, I felt that We all kind of, as a community, came together and it became something for all of us. Mark: Yeah. I felt so included in all of those rituals. I felt like my being there mattered. And even if just as a witness and that. You know, that there was room for everyone to have the kind of experience that they wanted to have. And it, and we, we ended the rites of passage with a wedding, which was sweet. It's kind of, you know, the classic act four of the movie, right? And that was really lovely. So, I was, I was super happy with that, and we're doing that rites of passage process again this summer. Michael: Maybe we could talk about some of the workshops that took, that people liked. Mark: Oh, yeah. Michael: I really, I think one of the highlights was the Cosmala workshop, bead workshop, which is basically making a bead necklace that, with each bead representing an important part of, in the life of the universe, or in your own personal life, or just various different events that you want to commemorate. That's, that's kind of right, isn't it? Or was there any Mark: John Cleland Host, who is our friend and a real innovator in the whole realm of naturalistic paganism, one of the earliest people to write about it in its new resurgence. He has this amazing more than a hundred bead string. Of, that all, it starts with the Big Bang and it works all the way until, at least until the Sun Tree Retreat, because he had special beads made for the Sun Tree Retreat that he distributed to people so they could put them on their own cosmola. That was very, very cool. And some of them are signed by people like Starhawk and Jane Goodall and just really a fascinating, wonderful ritual tool and evocative piece of art. Yucca: so there were a lot of different styles of workshops too. There was a, like a history one and there was a John did another one which was like the Wheel of the Year, which he had some really cool handouts for too for that. Mark: We live the year for families, which I thought was really wonderful. You know, a lot of people in our community have families that they're working to build traditions with together, and so, and John has really, you know, pioneered some of that, you know, working with his, with his wife and his sons. And just had a lot of great ideas about different things he could do at different times of the year and was, you know, freely sharing all that stuff. It was great. Rana: There was also a group guided meditation that we did outside overlooking Pikes Peak on their big, expansive, beautiful lawn with all the ponderosa pines, which I'd never, I don't think I'd ever seen them before. I'd never been to Colorado before. And that was really lovely just to kind of take a moment to be there and be present. And there was also a body painting. Which, I appreciated the, like, especially interactive stuff because it's something we're normally restricted about online. And I really loved Mihal's presentation about virtual meals because I think food is just such an integral way to connect with other people and you can infuse it with all this symbolism. And it gave me a lot of ideas. I need to revisit my notes on that and thinking forward to the next one a little bit too, just that ability to share food and those meal acknowledgements really adds to that feeling of making meaning with other people and making community. Michael: Yeah, we had a food altar as well, which was kind of cool. An abundance of food. People brought stuff to share. And I thought that was fantastic as well. Just, uh, one, one person brought some really good kimbap, which I love. So that, if you don't know what that is, it's Korean sushi, basically. And it was just really good. Mark: Yeah, there, there was there was just a vibe of generosity and mutual support. Mutual affirmation. You know, I came away from it feeling like, you know, I've got these amazing, super cool people in my world, and they feel the same about me, and that's just good for my life, generally. Even if I'm not going to see them for a couple of years, except online, just knowing that we shared this experience together just helps me to feel affirmed in who I am and what I do. And I, I, I think I think that was the general vibe that people got out of the event. Yucca: That certainly was, I felt that strongly as well. I was, you know, riding that for several weeks after coming home. Michael: Definitely an afterglow of, kind of like, hard to come down from the high of the event as well. It took a while because it was so special. Mark: yeah, absolutely. So we want to talk a little bit about some of the offerings we're going to have this time. Some of them are repeats from last time, but some of them are new. Let me see if I can pick one. Oh, go ahead. Michael: I was just going to say, maybe everybody's had a chance to look at the program and if you, if there's any particular highlights you want to, that you'd like to talk about that maybe you're looking forward to. Mark: There's so many things. Um,  Michael: Well, should we talk, let's talk about the theme first. Mark: sure, of course. That's a great Michael: we didn't, we didn't have a theme last time, but we do have a theme this, this time. Mark: Which is Solarpunk, a chosen family reunion. The idea being that Solarpunk being a very kind of optimistic movement for the betterment of the world, the betterment of our relationship with nature rather than kind of the doom and gloom that we, that we see everywhere around us now, Solarpunk is a, It's a genre of of writing and of art that is optimistic and looks to the future as, yes, filled with challenges, but also filled with opportunities for us to grow and change and do better. And the chosen family reunion part is I mean, I certainly felt and I think that a lot of us felt at the last Sun Tree Retreat that these, these people were my chosen family. It was, it felt like, oh, wow, all my cousins and uncles and, and nephews and nieces have all shown up and now we're having this great sort of family hoopla together. It was, it was great that way. Yucca: And one of the workshops is going to be on solar punk and atheopaganism more specifically, right? That's Mark: yeah. Michael: Yeah, Hanna is going to be leading that one. Mark: Mm hmm. I'm looking forward to that one as well. And of course we'll have some some elements that will be around, you know, learning how to organize rituals or to you know, to design them. Or you know, kind of learning the observational skills about getting more in touch with the processes of nature around you. Mm hmm. That was something about the, the lunar eclipse last time that it really dovetailed with something that, that Yucca and I talk about on here all the time, which is just about, you know, paying attention, about being present and experiencing the moment and observing what's happening in nature, and That was such a dramatic event. It really, really riveted our attention for about an hour or so. Michael: We're bringing back the Cosmala again, because that was so popular, and I think, I'm sure that new people are going to want to try their hand at making Cosmolas. Mark: I've never made one. I, I'm, it's an oversight. I have to do it now. Going to do a reader's theater. I'm organizing that of a reworking of the myth of Hades and Persephone and Demeter in Greek mythology. Because, even though that's a very popular myth in pagan, kind of modern pagan circles and a lot of different groups have done reenactments of the Eleusinian mysteries that enact that story, it's a pretty terrible story, really. I mean, Hades, Hades captures the innocent daughter Kore, drags her away and makes her his wife. That's terrible. Not so cool in modern, Yucca: way of putting it, Mark: yes, that is a very polite way of putting it, yeah. So, so I rewrote it. I rewrote it to have a different kind of ending and a different set of teachings than the original story did. And we're going to do a reader's theater where people who come to the workshop can pick up a script and take a part and we'll all read it together. And and it'll be fun and hopefully people will enjoy it. So that's another thing we're going to do. Michael: Yeah, we've occasionally done death cafes online which are kind of opportunities to talk about death and, you know, I think our movement's kind of a death positive movement, and we want to kind of honor that, and so something I'm going to be leading is an Irish wake kind of experience, and, you know, at an Irish wake, it's not just mourning the dead, it's kind of celebrating life. And kind of celebrating chaos and causing mayhem. So we're gonna have we're gonna have a bit of an Irish wake experience and I'm, people are gonna be invited to bury the things they want to bury, or remember the things they want to remember. And then we will also cause some mischief as well. Mark: Sounds great. I'm up for all of that. Yucca: And on Saturday, at lunchtime, we're planning to do the same thing that we did last time. to do a live podcast episode, and that may be an opportunity for folks who can't attend in person to zoom in and connect. Yes, Mark: Yes, cross, cross your fingers for the internet connection at the Retreat Center. Yucca: that's why we say May, we're going to try really hard, technology willing, right, Rana? Rana: So, the last time we had Sun Tree, we hadn't yet started our adult salon. Which we recently rebranded as Adult Forum, and I'm really excited to be able to have that in person for the very first time. I've really valued it as a space to connect and share resources and share a little bit about our experiences and our lives. And for folks that might not be as familiar with what it is, it is a peer support space to discuss adult topics openly, and it is, we consider it kind of semi structured. We usually start with a topic just as a starting point of conversation, and then we let things naturally flow depending on what the participants want to talk about, what's on their minds, can go through multiple topics in one session. It is a confidential and non judgmental setting where we're really there to learn from each other's experiences, share our knowledge, especially if you have a range of ages. There's folks that have just lived different lives or experiences that may have things to share feel less alone. In a lot of things that we encounter in life I know. There's a real epidemic of loneliness, especially in America, and it's something I always have felt really deeply about, but don't really know what to do about it, so I appreciate being able to be a part of this space and have this space together in order to continue that kind of connection and We're going to have a way for people to anonymously submit topics or questions while we're at the event so that the people that are there attending are really crafting what it is that we want to talk about and the topics have really ranged in the past and included things like money, relationship styles, aging, death, altered states, sexuality, and more and Yeah, I've just been really looking forward to it. It is an 18 plus event, and I just, I can't wait to have that in, in person. I think it'll be a great version of it, just because we've always had it remote. Mark: Yeah. Michael? Michael: I know there's one of the FAQs we get around this is that you know, is it going to be recorded? Am I going to be able to participate online? And unfortunately, no, it's just for some of the reasons we discussed. First of all, technology, it's not always reliable, so we can't really do live stuff. I think it's possible that some of the workshops will be recorded. That depends on the presenter. And, but we don't want to, we want to also, honor people's confidentiality as well. So it's possible that we can record some of them, but maybe some of them won't be recorded. But that's why we also offer our totally online conference every other year as well. So if you can't make it in person to SunTree, we will be doing our web weaving online conference next year. So that is just a way of bridging that gap where if you can't make it in person, there is still an online space for you to take part in. Mark: Right. Right. And I, and I should point out the adult forum will not be recorded. It's, it's a totally confidential, just live action space for people to, to have discussions about sensitive stuff. So you needn't worry that you're going to find yourself on the internet talking about personal things. Yucca: Right, and for any of the presenters who do choose to have their, their presentation recorded, it would just be of them, not of the audience. So there'll be the private, privacy for the folks in the audience. Mark: Yeah, because, I mean, there are, in our community, there are people who are You know, in various stages of outness in relation to their non theist atheopaganism, right? Some are out as atheists, but not necessarily the pagan part. Some are completely solitary in, in their You know, practice of their path, and we want to be respectful of all of that. So, it's really important to us that people be able to participate without endangering something that, that is important to them. Mijo? Michael: Something that's New this time around, as well, is that we will be kind of having formal vendors. I will be sharing a sign up sheet for people in the coming days, where you, if you want to, if you've got anything you want to sell, or products or services we will have a space for you to do that. So, if you're, it could be anything, you could be selling, selling your own craft, or, I guess, doing Readings or things like this. We'll just sign up and we'll we'll reach out to you if we need, if we have any further questions about the kind of stuff you're going to be sharing with us. Mark: We should say, though, that, that the vending is going to be during a particular window of time at the event, because what we don't want is for a vendor to be there stuck behind a counter, and for the entire event and unable to participate in the various activities, right? Because they're part of the community and we want them in with us doing all the stuff. So we're going to have a marketplace slot in the program, and that's when you can do your vending and, you know, promote your services and all that kind of stuff. So what else should we say about this? I mean, we know because we've been there, it's really cool. Hope that our listeners Yucca: to just put that out there for that part of the world. It's a nice warm time of year. Last time Michael: Will the swimming pool, Yucca: May, which was a little bit iffy, we got really lucky. last Mark: we did. Yucca: I think it started snowing right after we left, Mark: Yeah, something like three days afterwards it started snowing at the retreat center, but that's not going to happen this time, because we're on Labor Day weekend and it should be pretty temperate and nice. Michael: I think there's a swimming pool there as well. Mark: Oh, that's right, it was closed when we were there before, but there is a swimming pool there. Yes, Michael: We should double check if we have access to that, but I think we will, but we should probably double check that. Mark: yes, that's true. Ha ha ha! Michael: I guess you should definitely get booked in quickly if you are intending to come. Because we're, it's coming up fast. I can't believe it's only two months away, so you really need to start thinking about getting your, making your way there and booking your tickets. Mark: Yeah, yeah it's very affordable especially when you consider that it includes nine meals and the lodging for the, the Yurt guest houses is only 75 for the entire event. So it's you know, we, we, we set price points low because we wanted people to be able to access it and we know that there are travel expenses associated. We if you, if you want to come, but there are, you know, financial issues, we have limited scholarship support, so please contact us. You can use the the Wonder Podcast queues at gmail. com, podcast email address to contact us, and we'll get back to you about that. But we'd really encourage our listeners, you know, if you like what you've been hearing on this podcast for the last five years now come and, come and meet us. Come and, and, you know, meet the community and, and check us out. Michael: It was just, I don't know if I expressed how Amazing it was, but it was just such a unique, a singular event and kind of a highlight of my life, I'd really say. It was just spectacular, and I don't know if I, I don't know if I captured that before, but I just thought it was just an amazing thing to be part of. And I think it's going to be just as amazing this time around. Mark: Me too. Yeah. I, I, I can't wait to see you all. And and other folks that, you know, I met two years ago. I'm just, I'm so looking forward to it rana, I Rana: so for me, it, it really felt like coming full circle, like I'd connected with you all, and we spent so much time together during the pandemic. so much. My personal life was also going through some transition and Suntree was actually pretty emotional for me. It was good But I don't know it's a little hard to explain But it just felt like I did a lot of emotional processing while I was there But I very much felt like I was in community I was able to finally meet these people that I had connected with and So now it just feels like I have something to look forward to You going forward knowing that we're gonna do this with some regularity. And for myself as well, it also gave me some more confidence traveling alone because I'm used to traveling with a partner if I go somewhere, especially airplane travel. And so it helped me feel a little bit more adventurous and confident feeling like I went to a state I've never been to before and met up with some people and everything went great. Like, no, no complaints. Mark: really felt that same sense of just really being able to be myself. And I was surprised by that because as one of the organizers last time, I thought I was kind of going to have to be on and sort of be a host. You know, for the whole weekend. And that really wasn't the case at all. I, I, I just felt like, you know, I was, I was welcomed there, warts and all, and there were plenty of other people to help. And it was great. It was just really a good, good time. Well, listen, thank you. Oh, Michael: Hopefully we can do the, the firewalking this time, because last time we couldn't do it because there was a burn ban, but there is potential for doing a firework walk. So people are into that, that might be available. So we'll see what happens. Yucca: Keep our fingers crossed. Mark: that would be exciting. I've never done that, and I'd like to try it. I don't know why I'd like to try it. I, but I would. Michael: That's the ultimate ritual, I guess. And for anybody who's kind of, their ears are pricking up when they hear that the person leading that has got decades of experience. Mark: Yeah. And, you know, very, very careful rules around, you know, everybody having to be absolutely sober, you know, being, you know, a lot of focus, doing this in a really sacred kind of container, so that's that's That's all to the good. Let me see. So, we're gonna put the link to the the event in the show notes. You can go, you can read the program, you can read about the event, you can see a picture of the Ponderosa Lodge and Atheopagan Society website, there's also a gallery of photos that were taken at the last Suntree retreat. So you can take a look at that.  Michael: Could you add in the show notes as well? Could you add the episode we actually recorded? Yucca: Oh yeah, let's link to that because we, yeah, that would be nice to go back and listen to actually. And what was it like in the moment? So that'll be in the show notes too. Mark: yeah, yeah, I just, I just remember we're sitting there and we're talking and people would cruise up to the table glowing and sit down in front of the microphone for a little while and talk about the experience they were having and then toddle off and somebody else would come by. It was just, it was lovely. So listen, folks Sun Tree Retreat, you don't want to miss it. Please come join us, visit with us. We, we would so love to see you. And we will be back next week with another episode of The Wonders of Science Based Paganism. Thank you, Rana and Michael. Thank you for being here. Michael: Thank you.   

TOPIC: DREW US: "biblical question, JAIME MN: "speck in brother's eye comment", MATTHEW CA: "Vedic Scriptures comment", NICK AMSTERDAM: "girlfriend is pregnant, advice?", SUPERCHATS, Charles Barkley, KENNEDY TX: "comment on Texas border", DEREK NEBRASKA: "biblical question", MICHAEL OH: "how to find total peace on earth?" HAKE NEWS

TOPIC: Alaska Airlines door plug incident in mid-air, Michelle Obama kept up at night thinking about 2024 election, Father teaching son how to shoot a basketball, MICHAEL OH: "how to continue down the right path?", HAKE NEWS

Ryan: I don't think you understand how jeopardy works. Michael: Oh, I'm sorry. “What is ‘we're fine'”. This week Sean hosts a Jeopardy-themed trivia challenge sent in by one of our amazing listeners! Come to hear Alex and Edwin face off, stay for all of the mistakes we make trying this format for the first time. Then we head to the Conference Room for our Tot Tie Guy segment where we take questions from our Scott's Tots Patreon members!  Visit BetterHelp.com/SCOTT today to get 10% off your first month. Support our show and become a member of Scott's Tots on Patreon! For only $5/month, Tots get ad-free episodes plus exclusive access to our monthly Mailbag episodes where we casually pick through every single message/question/comment we receive. We also have Season 2 of our Ted Lasso podcast Biscuits with the Boss available to our Patrons, as well as our White Lotus Christmas Special. Oh, and Tots get access to exclusive channels on our Discord. On top of that, a portion of all show proceeds are donated every month to organizations that help fund education opportunities for minority students. Help us serve the mission that Michael Scott could not. Visit the grand re-opening of our merch store at mspcstore.com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's CIHAS episode, I'm speaking to online personal trainer and performance nutritionist, Michael Ulloa. Michael is on a mission to make the fitness industry a more welcoming and accepting space for all, which is exactly what we dive into in this ‘sode. We are unpacking some toxic myths about exercise, Michael spills the beans on his feelings about Joe Wicks, and we discuss what really goes into professional fitness models' photo shoots. Plus we answer loads of your questions like how to find a more joyful relationship with movement after a lifetime of using it as punishment for eating. Find out more about Michael's work here.Follow his work on Instagram here.Follow Laura on Instagram here.Subscribe to Laura's newsletter here.Enrol in the Raising Embodied Eaters course here.Here's the transcript in full:INTRO:Michael: The way that we're being sold health and fitness just isn't sustainable or achievable in any way and then people blame themselves and feel worse and then therefore they're more likely to spend money on all these other programs repeatedly and it's just a vicious cycle that just doesn't ever end.Laura: Hey, and welcome to the Can I Have Another Snack? Podcast, where we talk about appetite, bodies, and identity, especially through the lens of parenting. I'm Laura Thomas. I'm an anti diet registered nutritionist, and I also write the Can I Have Another Snack? Newsletter. Today, I'm talking to Michael Ulloa.Michael is an online personal trainer and performance nutritionist who is on a mission to make the fitness industry a more welcoming and accepting space for all. In today's episode, Michael and I are shooting the shit about the fitness industry, unpacking some toxic myths about exercise, and answering loads of your questions: like how to find a more joyful relationship with movement after a lifetime of using it as punishment for eating.Some of you have been asking for more episodes on movement and fitness, so I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. We'll get to Michael in just a second, but first, I want to tell you real quick about the benefits of becoming a paid subscriber to the Can I Have Another Snack? Newsletter and community.For just £5 a month, or £50 a year, you get access to the extended CIHAS universe. That means exclusive weekly discussion threads, links and recommendations, you get commenting privileges and access to my monthly Dear Laura column, as well as the whole CIHAS archive and a few other sweet perks, but more than anything, you're supporting independent evidence based nutrition information free from diet culture and anti fatness. I can't do this work without the help of paying subscribers. So if you get something out of being here, then please consider upgrading your subscription today. And if you're still not convinced, then check out this recent review I received from a reader. They said: "Laura's podcast and newsletter are always thought provoking, filled with care and compassion, and a respite from one size fits all health and nutrition advice."So if that sounds good to you, then head to laurathomas.substack.com and become a paying subscriber today. Alright team, let's get to today's episode, here's Michael. MAIN EPISODE:All right, Michael, I need to know what the deal is. Because you're like one of maybe five PTs who isn't pushing aesthetic or weight loss goals on us.Has that always been your deal? Or is this more of an evolution for you? Michael: Yeah, it's definitely an evolution and it's funny you mentioned that because I get a lot of angry messages from personal trainers that don't think that my approach is right, which is always quite funny to me. I don't know, it's, I definitely, when I first started off in the fitness industry... I've been a personal trainer now for nearly 10 years.And in terms of personal training, that kind of makes you a bit of a veteran because a lot of trainers are quite short lived on average. When I first started off, I definitely did have your typical, like, mainstream slightly bro approach to fitness and nutrition. And I know most people that maybe work in the kind of space that, like, you operate in, for example, there tends to usually be a reason or a thing that caused them to go down that path.But I didn't have that at all. It really has just been a really slow evolution of just actually reading the research, working with people on a day to day basis, getting feedback from clients about what is working and what isn't, and then just really tweaking things over a very long period of time. I've also had some very honest clients, which have been great too, who kind of really follow my content on social media and they would message me like, oh, that's not very helpful. How about approaching it like this? And i'm always open to feedback, I always want to improve my practice and my messaging and I was always just quite receptive to that and I don't know... 10 years later I now finally feel like i'm working with people in a way that genuinely helps them long term and i'm actually creating content that is useful for people rather than just almost creating content for other personal trainers, which seems to be what a lot of fitness professionals do.Laura: Tell me about the angry messages. Why are other PTs up in your shit about...? Michael: I really don't know. I wish I knew the answer. I think... I guess if you're attacking someone's entire being and their work and their ethos that they've believed in for so many years, then I guess that a lot of people will react to that in quite a negative way.I really don't understand it at all either. Usually male coaches too, are very angry in the way that I approach social media and some of the names and things I've been called are pretty grim, but I only... I wish I knew the answer to that, but some, for some reason people get very angry in the way that I am approaching fitness and nutrition.But yeah, I really don't mind. Like I, as I said, I feel like I'm really helping people now and I'm happy to keep championing that message. Laura: I mean, I'm just wondering if part of it is because that myth, certain myth of no pain, no gain. And that you need to like, basically punish yourself with exercise in order to achieve a particular body type.You're saying, actually, we don't need to do that. It's okay if you don't kill yourself with exercise. We shouldn't be weaponising it against ourselves. For me, it speaks to how deeply internalised people's anti fat bias is. You're challenging the fundamental sort of premise that their beliefs are resting on, which is that, you can't be fit and fat.Or you...yeah, like I said before, that you have to punish yourself with exercise or like that... it's somehow okay to exist in a body that isn't fulfilling this ideal that we have been told that we should not strive for. Michael: Completely. And I mean, if we're completely honest about it, the way that the fitness industry is set up now is way more profitable for these people too.So if you do start attacking the way that they're approaching their lives or their businesses too, then they're probably going to be a little bit grumpy about that. It's so much easier for me as a personal trainer to make money saying, here we go, come sign up for the six week program and we'll strip body fat off you in such a short space of time, rather than me saying, cool, let's work together for three, six, 12 months. And let's really work on those habits and have you feeling and performing better. Like it's just such a hard sell. I mean, especially for, as I mentioned, like, personal training tends to be quite a short lived career for a lot of people. And I appreciate that when people first start off, the best way to get clients is shock and awe, like showing before and after photos, like having the secrets or whatever it is. And the best way to get clients at the start is by doing that. So people are going to follow that path rather than doing it the right way. That is a bit of a slow burner. I know that a lot of coaches aren't really up for that, sadly. Laura: Yeah, no, I think you make a really good point when you're talking about... the financial aspect of things, because, yeah, there's no money to be made in being like, yeah, take a rest day or go for a gentle walk and look at the sky. Yeah, those like making huge promises of around body transformations and then making people sign up for some sort of like intensive bootcamp situation. Of course, that makes sense from like a business model perspective, but as so often is the case, anything that involves capitalism is probably not great for our health overall. Okay, so I am absolutely not in the fitness space at all. I've purged my social media account. I think I follow you and maybe a couple of other personal trainers, because I find it really annoying, honestly, watching fitness content.Michael: I strongly relate to that. And first of all, thank you for following me, but yeah, I honestly, I feel exactly the same way.  Laura: And I think, especially since having had a baby and because I have some enduring physical stuff going on as a result of my pregnancy in terms of, like, pelvic health, even the stuff that is like geared towards women who have had babies and like postpartum stuff.It's just anyway, so I've just checked out of it. So I have no idea. What is going on in that space, really? So I need you to like, translate it all for me. What are some of the most pervasive and toxic fitness myths that you're seeing at the moment? Michael: Everything. Honestly, every topic is so toxic at the moment.It's really frustrating. And I speak to... There's a few coaches that I'm really good friends with, who I think you probably know as well, that I tend to follow their content, I like engaging with them and talking about the fitness industry, but I have also removed myself from a lot of the mainstream approach because...I don't find it motivating or helpful in any way. Like I think a lot of the... Laura: You don't even hate follow some people just to have like stuff to...? Because I hate feed a lot of big feeding. I hate-feed?! I hate-follow a lot of big accounts. I just have this folder on my Instagram called Ammunition.And I just save posts in there that I want to come back and get angry about at some point. What are you seeing from... I know you do it! But what are you seeing from those folks? Michael: So I do a little bit of that. And I, so I've also, I've got an Instagram account for my dog, but I started up ages ago. I don't post anything to it, but every time I see something pop up on, like, the explore page or I see another trainer share, I'll send it to her account. And then I'll use that as fodder for, like, creating content and coming up with ideas. But I do not, I don't hate follow that many people now because like I spent a lot of time on social media, right?And I know that because of that following these accounts and seeing them on a day to day basis all of the time does massively negatively impact my mental health. And I think if i'm feeling that way as a fitness professional who knows the research, knows what these accounts are doing to us and can see through the nonsense... how are everyday people feeling? When they're seeing this content and they don't really know if it's the truth or not. So I actually don't follow that many trainers. There's probably a lot of trainers who... . Laura: So very evolved of you. Michael: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. There's a few trainers who, like, I know through just from working in gyms or whatever, I'll follow them, but I mute them so that I don't have to see their content.Laura: Yeah, that's smart. Michael: But yeah, I don't know. There's so many myths about every topic. Like you mentioned there about, like, women's health and pelvic health and anything pre and postnatal. The stuff around that is really gross because it's not even just the fact that they're spreading misinformation. They somehow always tie in with just losing weight, like this is pretty much what it all comes down to, right? Laura: Yeah. Yeah. That's the subtext. It's always there. Michael: It's always like improve your pelvic health and slim your waist, like it's everything. It just pushes people down the route of still obsessing about body weight and focusing on body weight rather than focusing on general health and wellbeing and health promotion, and it's infuriating.I guess the same as, like, building muscle. Like it's nearly always advertised by these guys that are absolutely jacked, clearly taking steroids, using images of themselves going... you can look like this if you work out like me and buy my programs and my nutrition plans, and you're just never going to look like these people. So you're always going to fail. Like everything within the fitness space is geared towards repeat sales and having people come back for more because the way that we're being sold health and fitness, just isn't sustainable or achievable in any way. And then people blame themselves and feel worse. And then therefore they're more likely to spend money on all these other programs repeatedly. And it's just a vicious cycle that just doesn't ever end. And that's why with my page, I'm trying to step away from any aesthetic goals. Like you'll probably see through my social media, I don't, I'm not against people having aesthetic goals. I just don't really ever talk about it because I don't think it should ever be the focus of someone's fitness journey. I mean, I think that's the bit that seems to piss people off. Laura: Yeah. And I mean, there's some interesting research that shows that people who exercise for aesthetic goals, they're less likely to engage in something that is sustainable for them.Like, it's more likely that they will give up. And I don't mean that in, like, defeatist kind of way, but it just won't be sustainable for them. Versus for people who are approaching, I don't know, a type of exercise or training or whatever it is from a place of maybe wanting to feel stronger or feel more comfortable in their bodies or because they have mobility stuff that they're working through or something like that.So it's really difficult though, because And we'll get to some of the listener questions in a bit where they're asking this, like, how do you uncouple the aesthetic goals from, those more internally motivated goals from the perspective that we are just constantly being drip fed, idealised images of people all over the internet? And then, like you say, half the time those images aren't even real, right? There's people on ‘roids. There are people who are like starving themselves, like making themselves dehydrated, like posing in particular ways. I don't even know what other tactics people use to stylise these images.But I feel like the sort of falsification of these pictures is huge in the fitness industry. Michael: It's honestly horrific. And I would probably go as far as to say, like, every professional fitness model has taken or is taking steroids of some form. That's like the level of manipulation that the fitness industry...I don't know, I don't think there's any issue with... having aesthetic goals. Like I always like to hammer this point home because I think sometimes with my content, I can... people misconstrue that I'm against anyone having any aesthetic goal at all. I'm not, it's just, I think that the emphasis needs to be elsewhere.For example, when I first started in the fitness industry, I was in that loop of must build muscle, have to build muscle to show that I know what I'm talking about and also to be seen as manly and capable or whatever, and I would do a lot of strength training. I would never do cardio because cardio is bad.It ruins your gains. Laura: It's for girls.Michael: Yeah, it's just exactly that. And it's so frustrating that I would... I spent years just, like, strength training, nothing but strength training, even when I was going through cycles of really hating it. Like I had to do strength training, got to build muscle. When I switched up my training... I still do strength training now. I enjoy building muscle. The challenge of building strength and muscle is really fun, but I also do a lot of cardio because I really enjoy it and it makes me feel great in terms of physical and mental health. And actually since switching up, dropping a bit of strength training that I was doing and doing more cardio, the exercise I really enjoy, I've made so much more progress with my strength building and muscle building gains.And I've just got such a better balance with it all. So if someone listening to this is really struggling of knowing like what they should really be doing, what should they be focusing on? Honestly, just like enjoyment and mental health, that needs to be the priority. And then everything else just tends to fall into line after that.And the fitness industry, just the tactics, as I said, like the trainers use. The one thing that really annoys me is a lot of personal trainers will, anyone who follows any trainers will... I've seen this in the past where a trainer goes through a really extreme cycle of dieting, exercise regime because they're training for a photo shoot - in quotation marks - Where they'll go and get professional photos done that they've dieted down to within an inch of their lives. And they'll get a little snapshot image of look how amazing I look and then they'll use that in all their advertising of promoting healthy behaviour change or whatever other nonsense. It's if you're not using healthy, sustainable habits in achieving your physique, then you should not be allowed to use that in terms of advertising it to say that you're going to help people improve their health and their life, their health and their lives.It's just, it's incredibly infuriating and... Laura: it's false advertising. Michael: Massively. Yeah. Massively. Laura: Need to get that fucking, is it ASA, advertising...? Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Standards Agency. Absolutely. Yeah. Laura: I'm on the case! But two interesting things that I wanted to pick out from what you were saying.First of all, I think there's some complexity and nuance around this idea aesthetic goals, isn't there? Because we are all aesthetically driven, right? We are all, like we're aesthetic creatures in some ways, like when you brush your hair in the morning or I don't know, you trim your beard, Michael, or like I chose clothes that I thought looked somewhat okay together. Like those are all aesthetic goals, right? And so I think it's really, like, hard for people to decouple aesthetic goals from their overall movement, exercise routines, whatever you want to call them. But I think what you're saying, and certainly what I would advocate is that the fitness industry has just blown... yeah, they've blown up aesthetics to be like the sole purpose that people should exercise, right? And that I think is the problem is that yeah, they've just coupled exercise and aesthetics to the point that it's like you were saying, people are engaging in disorderly eating behaviours. They're using illicit drugs, they are, like, punishing themselves to look a particular way, and that's when it becomes problematic, right? Michael: Completely agree. Laura: And you end up on that slippery, slippery slope to disordered eating and eating disorders. Michael: Yeah, it's so true the barometer of success or health or knowledge within the fitness industry is body fat levels. That's pretty much what it all comes down to. Like a trainer who is absolutely jacked and really ripped is seen as being an authority figure without really knowing anything about them. And whereas you'll have a trainer who's in maybe a naturally larger sized body who naturally carries a little bit more body fat, has a much healthier balance of exercise and nutrition, a far better trainer. Just look at the comments under the content that they push out there onto social media and people will criticize them and say they don't know what they're talking about. Like our barometer of success is leanness. I don't know what the answer is to trying to combat that other than just keep churning out content, calling out this nonsense.But unfortunately you feel like you take a few steps forward when it was like two, three years ago, when you see, started to see a lot more body diversity on fitness accounts and kind of big companies like Gymshark and Nike and stuff were using people in larger bodies to advertise clothing.That's now disappearing again because it's no longer.... and it's just toxic. And you just have to go on like TikTok, the latest platform, even though it's been around a few years, I felt like we were maybe making a bit of progress. Then TikTok just flips that again, and you just got to search the hashtag fitness on TikTok.And it's just white, slim, muscular people clearly taking steroids that are the main bulk of the content that you're going to see. It's infuriating. Laura: Everyone in the fitness industry really collectively needs to be speaking out against this, but I think there's a simultaneous thing that has to happen whereby we are amplifying and centering experiences and the work of fat fitness creators, right? And I'm using fat, for anyone who's not listened to the podcast before, fat as a neutral descriptor, as a reclamation of a word that is often used to weaponise and hurt people and harm people. So, yeah, I'm just thinking of some people off the top of my head.Like Intuitive Fatty, Jessamyn Stanley is fantastic for yoga content. Lauren Leavell does a lot of barre stuff, but there's loads. I mean, is there anyone that you would want to give a shout out to like anyone that's doing...? Michael: The Instagram handle Decolonizing Fitness? Ilya. The content is amazing. We're trying to set up a time for Ilya to come into our podcast to chat about this at the moment. And I just... there's so many voices that need to be amplified. And I know that I always have to check my privilege in the content that I'm creating. Like you see very few men within the kind of body neutrality, body positivity, space, whatever you want to call the area I'm working in.So I always like to acknowledge that, okay, I'm creating content for a space that isn't really for me, but I do think that can be really powerful. And we still need more voices of guys, especially within this space, calling it out because I rarely ever see male fitness professionals creating the kind of content that I am.They tend to go down the more mainstream approach. And I like to yes, fitness can look like me. I look how the fitness industry says you're supposed to look, but it doesn't have to look like that, right? This is one way it can look, but it doesn't need to be like that for everyone. And I think that can be really powerful whilst amplifying the voices of those who are marginalised and don't get the airtime that I do.Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, yeah, you make a really good point about men in this space. Like just in body neutrality, body positivity and again, there are some really great people doing stuff in that space. I agree like it's still underrepresented, but like the 300 pound runner. I don't know if you've come across his stuff? Michael: yeah, Martinus Evans.Laura: Yeah, His stuff is really cool as well. But yeah, anyway, just wanted to shout out some accounts and I'll link to them in the show notes as well. Yeah, so you mentioned that fitness professionals will embark on this really extreme diet, they will really bulk up, they'll, probably restrict what they're eating for a really long time, and then they'll do all their photos, and they'll probably go back to whatever they were doing before that. And it just reminded me when... and this is it's like really sad, but do you remember when Joe Wicks was talking all about binging? He went to America, and then it ... he just started talking about like he was eating all this chocolate and pizza and like stuff that he obviously was restricting so hard that when he went to the States, he had this like backlash against all of that and his body was just like, fuck this, and he just started eating like all of the food that he'd been denying himself.It just made me think of that and how he's... how disordered like this space is and how normalised that kind of thing is like that just like binge restrict cycle. Michael: Yeah, I mean when your entire business model relies on getting people really lean. If you're not sticking to those rules and keeping your body lean 100 percent of the time, then your business model kind of goes to shit. And I guess that's probably why he was having issues coming to terms with that. Joe Wicks is a really funny one because I don't like his content at all. I'll throw that out there. Some of the nutrition stuff he's spouted has been... I was going to say nonsense, but it's actually just damaging some of the stuff he comes out with.Also, on the other hand, I feel like, maybe this is giving him too much credit, I always feel like his heart is in the right place, but he just goes about it in completely the wrong way. I don't know if you would agree with that. When I hear him being interviewed, I feel like he's a really passionate guy who feels like he's doing the right thing, but he's just absolutely not.Because all of his content is focused on being lean and weight loss. And I just wish that... he's got such a huge platform now. It's terrifying. That if you had someone like him who could start promoting like a balanced and sensible message, it's never going to happen because he makes too much money now, then it would just be so powerful.Laura: But I don't know, like this piece around heart in the right place. I think we say that about a lot of these actually quite problematic white men. Joe Wicks, Jamie Oliver, I'm just gonna say it, don't @ me. But, of course their heart's in the right place, but their heart's also in their fucking bank balance, right?Michael: Completely, 100%. Laura: So that's one part of it, but also, I don't know when we can, when someone is, like you say, promoting harmful messages around food and around nutrition. And I don't. I think it matters where their heart is. Michael: Agreed. I wonder whether this... Laura: A murderer could use that justification to be like, Oh, well, this man is really toxic to women, so I'm just going to kill him.But that's not the solution. Michael: I know. I wonder whether kind of in my head, the reason I use those words is because I think of kind of the fitness industry as like a huge, like a line of like how problematic someone is. And I feel like he feels he's trying to do the right thing despite doing it very badly.Whereas you have a lot of people within the fitness space that go far beyond that, who are intentionally doing the really bad thing, trying to make a lot of money, it's still very bad. And Jamie Oliver is one of those as well, where he's got such a huge platform, thinks he knows what he's doing is the best thing, but it's just not. Like trying to ban the buy one get one free offers when people are really struggling to feed their families right now.It's just, I feel yes, hearts in the right place, but just no, like they need to be more informed and go about it in a better way. Laura: And especially when they are being given this feedback, right? Like it's one thing if you fuck up and you say, I was really wrong about that and I've learned some new information now like you have, right? And like I have. And you hold your hands up and you say, yeah, I was really fucking wrong and I'm sorry that I've caused harm and I don't want to do that anymore. I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna do better. And Michael: that's the sign of a good practitioner, right? And yeah. Laura: But speaking of Joe Wicks... Michael: Oh god!Laura: So, so you are a new ish parent, right? You have a seven month old. Michael: Yes, my son is seven months old, yeah. Laura: How do you feel about the prospect of Joe Wicks teaching your kid PE someday? Michael: Oh, just no, like awful. Yeah it's terrifying, isn't it? And these people do wangle their way into every aspect of our society of fitness.And there's just no getting away from them now. Personally, I never watched any of his school fitness things throughout lockdown. I know they're very popular. What was his wording? Did you watch any of them then with your kids? Laura: I didn't cause my little one was just a newborn at that point. And he's only three now.It just wasn't on my radar. I've seen his books. He has the burpee bears. And I've written a couple of like book reviews. They're super like, just tongue in cheek. But it strikes me as really problematic that he feels that we need to teach specific moves like burpees or other things like that to children, like to young children, like primary school age kids, and I don't really have a good justification for that because I'm not a fitness professional that other than does a five year old need to learn how to plank? Right? Or should we not be focusing on embodied movement that is climbing on play equipment in the playground or running or skipping or jumping or like, all of these things that kids, depending on their level of mobility and ability that they would intuitively do?Michael: I am completely with you there. I don't think we need to be teaching a five year old how to do a burpee. It's a bit ridiculous, to be honest. Yeah, that's the way that movement should be promoted and advertised to kids, if you want to use those kind of technical terms. It should just be about play and fun and movement, and that's... what it should be. Like if a kid sees their parent doing burpees or lifting weights and they want to try a bit out and get involved yeah, absolutely. But it just, it shouldn't be the go to, right? Yeah, absolutely. Laura: Yeah. My kid has seen me do a downward dog and he like gets involved and we do the cosmic kids yoga. I feel like that's a slightly different thing because it's a, it's so gentle and b it's animal poses. I don't know. All right. So I got sent through loads of questions from listeners and I thought they were really fun. So I just thought we could go through them. I think we've touched on a bit of it already, but maybe you can just give me your quick fire answers.Michael: Sure. Yeah. Laura: So this is an interesting question that Gwen from Dieticians for Teachers sent in. She said she would like to know more about the messages in your formal training. I think we can take a good guess, but I guess what she's getting at is, like, what toxic messages were in your formal training?Michael: Unfortunately, when you're learning to become a personal trainer still so much of it is about weight loss, still. You'll get taught, right, this is what we're going to learn about nutrition and this is how you help someone lose weight. So that is still at the core. And I guess a lot of the training for personal trainers, in terms of nutrition anyway, It's still very like basic government guidelines, which you can take those as you will. Some recommendations are maybe okay, others not that helpful. The training for nutrition for personal trainers is so, so, so, so basic that I would encourage any personal trainer who has recently qualified and not done any further nutrition study from there to please sign up to another course and learn more because what you learn as a personal trainer at the basic level is just nowhere near good enough to work with clients in depth.Laura: I have a lot of thoughts about personal trainers and nutrition, but I'm going to keep them to myself! Michael: No, no feel free to talk about it! It terrifies me. And it's very rare now that... a lot of the people I work with have had personal trainers in the past. The large majority of them have had negative experiences, and it's quite scary that's now just the norm.And I'll ask questions of my clients in consultations whilst working together and they'll be like, Oh, I've never been asked that before. I've never even considered that. And it just blows my mind that these things are being missed out or neglected by coaches. But the training is just not there. Laura: It's so interesting that the focus, I mean, it's not surprising, but that the focus is still on body size and not like flexibility or mobility or like rehab or like any of these, which I'm sure they like get touched on, but it sounds like from what you're saying that the real central focus is not mental health or like overall wellbeing. It's here's how you try and get people shredded, which we know is like biogenetically, if not difficult, if not impossible for most people. Michael: Pretty much. Yeah. Like I'm sure... I don't want to call out every personal training course. Like I did qualify a few years ago now, but I know there's some personal training qualifications that are trying to shift that, but it is still a large majority.And that is why a lot of the coaches coming through now, it's still very much before and after photos, weight centric. Yeah, unfortunately. Laura: Well, it's good to know that maybe there are some shifts coming down the pipe a little bit and I guess it just goes to show why again, you need to keep, like, pushing these alternative messages.Okay. This I thought was a really interesting question. And so this person asked, is exercise truly necessary? I don't enjoy exercising, but I do move a lot during the day, running errands and running after a toddler, all while baby wearing a newborn. And then the follow up question is, and if it is necessary to exercise intentionally, what form of exercise is best for someone who wouldn't otherwise prioritise it? Michael: That's such a good question. And it's very nuanced as well, depending on the person's situation. I would say, I mean, no, it's not necessary if you're moving around a lot throughout the day. However, so many health benefits come from incorporating some form of like direct exercise that it would be really sad to not explore all the potential areas that people could incorporate exercise into their life that maybe might not be the mainstream approach, right? If you are someone who moves around a lot throughout your day, if you say running errands and your general movement and step count is actually really high, then you could argue that as long as you get your nutrition, right, you're doing pretty well.However, strength training. Every time someone comes to me, no matter what their fitness goals are, I try and incorporate some form of strength training that I can, but that can take so many different forms. Laura: This person is carrying a baby around! Michael: Right. Yeah, exactly. Which is strength training, right?Exactly. So it's... when I say strength training, a lot of people listening to this episode right now will automatically... they'll think, like, gym, barbells, dumbbells, heavy weights, and it can come in so many different forms and it can be with resistance bands, body weight, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells at home. It can be like TRX, it can be like so many different ways that you might enjoy at some point. So don't just think, Oh, I'm not an exercise-y person. I've always hated it because there are so many different ways that we can incorporate exercise. That is a very vague answer. without me knowing much more about this person. However, if you can find a form of exercise you enjoy, that should be a priority because the health benefits are huge. Laura: I'm going to push back because this is my opinion, not necessarily based on scientific fact, but it does feel as though there is this tendency, and I'm also conscious of your bias as a fitness professional, that exercise is held up as the pinnacle of health.And it's like the one thing that we need to do in order to be healthy. And I'm not disputing that there are health benefits. I also am like curious about the magnitude of those benefits within the broader context of health and health behaviours, but also nesting that within sort of social determinants of health and like, how do we measure the effect size of exercise individually from, I don't know, sleep, other elements of mental health, community? I guess what I'm maybe trying to temper is like that there are so many, like, variables and factors that contribute to someone's overall picture of health and I appreciate that movement can be an important facet of that.Michael: Yeah, no I really like that point because it is so important and I think that's why it's important to approach exercise and hence why I said without knowing more about this person, it's hard to give an exact answer. I think it's important to look at all of those things in terms of context when you're trying to prescribe or recommend exercise to someone, right?Let's say that this person is, they're likely lacking in sleep right now at the moment, right? Because their life is very busy running around after small humans. If that person is exhausted and they have no free time at all. I'm not then going to say, right, you've got to go and exercise 30 minutes a day for three times a week, because it's just not going to be helpful. There's other areas of your lifestyle that we can focus on to improve your health. However, if there is a bit of wiggle room, if you have a bit of time, then maybe there are things that we could explore that you could quite comfortably fit into your day without it taking over your life like a lot of the fitness industry wants us to do. Laura: Yeah. I think that the, maybe the TL;DR there is you don't have to sweat it when you are running around after a small child and doing other, all these other things. But if it feels like it's something that you want to explore, and you're curious to give something a try, then yeah, you could have a think about some gentle movement or something, see how that feels and how that fits in the context of your life But yeah, it's tricky to prescribe something without knowing, yeah knowing someone's life and what they want to get out of it. Michael: So true and you're never gonna know if it was directly the exercise. It could be so many other things that then, yeah, that then causes the health benefit.I would just say, once again, like anecdotally, rather than looking at research, every person that I've worked with that we've tried to think, right, how can we incorporate exercising today in some format? The large majority of the time, everything else feels better and improves as a result.Laura: Yeah, no , it can, it has a knock on effect on like sleep and pain and like all these other things. So, okay. How can I move my body without shame and guilt driving it? These are two separate questions, but I'm just lumping them together, and then this, another person asked, how to find the joy in movement after a life forcing it?Michael: I think first of all, it's really important to, like, vet where you're getting all of your inspiration and information from is a really important one because a lot of the time, if we're following the kind of general societal recommendations when it comes to exercise and nutrition. It's always going to have quite a prescriptive image focused approach to movement.And if you can shift away, like what we spoke about at the start of this, you don't follow many personal trainers because you don't think that they're motivating or helpful to you. They actually just make you feel worse. I'm the same. When I constantly see gym bros. telling me that I have to lift weights X amount of times a week, and I've got to get shredded and have low body fat levels, it has the complete opposite impact on me. So if you can first of all vet where you're getting your information from, that is absolutely huge. And then, yeah, I guess also once again, it's not beating yourself up for having the more mainstream thoughts that you used to have. I know a lot of people when they're trying to shift into kind of taking a more intuitive eating approach or a more intuitive eating approach with like exercise too, as well as nutrition, we can sometimes feel really guilty when we start slipping back into older habits that maybe are slightly disordered.I'm just... like giving yourself a bit of leeway and a bit of space to grow and learn. I'm still doing that. I still probably get things wrong and have room for improvement, but I think by doing that, removing the pressure on yourself can be really helpful. Laura: Yeah. Two things that I might add to that are something that I've explored with clients as part of working on the relationship with food and body and movement often comes up as part of that, we might explore this idea of, what it feels like in your body where you've had a period where you haven't moved at all, right? Maybe it's because you're recovering from an injury or because you just were so burnt out with exercise that you just really didn't move. How did that feel in your body? Did you get any pain or did it feel nice to rest or what was that experience? And then also thinking about periods of your life where maybe you've been really deeply invested in fitness culture. And maybe doing the punishing exercises, maybe also getting injuries because of that, maybe getting ill a lot of the time, maybe losing your period, like all kinds of different things, like different experiences that you could have in your bodies.If you've got that framing of this is what no exercise feels like in my body, and this is what too much feels like in my body, then it can help you explore what some sort of happy balance might feel like. So that's something that I encourage people to think about. And I also just wanted to shout out Tally Rye's Intuitive Movement Journal.It's her book Intuitive Movement as well. It is isn't it? Clients have found that those are helpful resources for navigating stepping back from exercise and just exploring what rest feels like through kind of the framework of, or a similar framework to intuitive being. So if intuitive being resonates with you, then maybe Tally's work will as well. So I'll link to them in the show notes. All right, this will be our last question. And it is: I cut out all deliberate movement for a while, by which I mean, I walk to get places and that's it. I'd like to try some movement. and see how it makes me feel. But where on earth do I even start? Michael: Okay, once again, without a lot of context, this is very hard to give specific advice.So I would say think about where you would feel most comfortable exercising and start from there. So I know that for a lot of people, the gym environment can be incredibly intense and intimidating for many reasons. So if you think that maybe that feels a bit much and it's going to put you off. Let's write that off. Don't do that. So let's think, okay, maybe we could start some movement at home. Is there a form of exercise that you really enjoy? Do you like dancing? Do you like jump rope? Do you like bodyweight workouts? What is it that kind of you think, Oh, actually that sounds quite fun to me and start there.And then let's say that there's so many decent content creators online, depending on what you like that I could recommend. Feel free to reach out and just start from that point. If you're thinking that kind of back to my earlier point that, okay, strength training doesn't have to look like that in the gym. What can it look like? A set of basic resistance bands from Amazon for 10 quid, you've got a gym at home. Like you don't have to go to a gym. There's so many different ways that it could look start from that start from what gives you that, Oh, that's interesting. I might give it a try, and start really, really small and build from there and that's probably the best place to start. Laura: If someone hasn't done much movement other than, like, incidental daily movements for a while... there's obviously a lot of privilege in this question but I'm wondering if you would recommend like doing a couple of one on one sessions with a trainer, like a safe trainer that could help build up strength or make like a bespoke kind of program for someone or just help them with their form so that they... I'm maybe thinking of myself here, but I know that I have to be really careful what I do at home because I'm more likely to end up injuring myself just because of my like, specific needs and in terms of managing pain. And so what I've ended up doing... and again shitload of privilege in this but, I'm, after three years of pelvic girdle pain, I'm like, at my limit. So I've started seeing a physio one on one who does clinical Pilates. So it's like very much helping me build my strength, which I could do... like I was going to a barre class before that, but I was walking away with more pain, even though it was supposedly like a supervised class, like there were no adjustments. There were no like modifications for my body, like nothing. So I personally, I have found that trying to build my strength and reduce pain, like finding someone who's really specialised has been a game changer for me. Michael: Yeah, I would say... I was gonna say one of the benefits of COVID. That's not what I meant. I was gonna say for the benefits of kind of the lockdown that happened as a result of COVID is the fitness industry got pushed forward by about five to ten years in terms of the way that it can support people, especially on a tighter budget as well. There are now so many... Laura: oh, you mean like online?Michael: Online support, right? Because I know that personal training is an investment for a lot of people. It's not a cheap route to go down. If you can afford it, absolutely, yes. If you can have the support of a professional who's got years of experience, it does speed things up and it makes things a lot more kind of personalised and perhaps more enjoyable.However, the way that the online fitness space works now, it has improved massively. And for, kind of, much cheaper options, monthly options, you can get the support of a trainer online that will be able to do a video call with you to check your form. You can send them videos. Like I speak to people that follow me on Instagram all the time and they'll ask me a question. I'll say, just send me a video of you doing the exercise. I'm happy to give you some pointers. If you find people online that are truly passionate and care. If you send them a video of you doing an exercise, they'll happily help you out. So there are so many different routes that you can go down to get the support that don't cost a huge amount of money.Once again, even the cheaper forms are still an investment, but there are different routes that you can go down now. Yeah, absolutely. Laura: Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that. And then just to add to that, like I've done some sessions with this, like a one on one physio. And now I'm going to, like the group classes as well.So it's, I think, helpful to just... if you have any kind of rehab that needs to be done, or if you just want to feel more confident in the movements. Cause like Pilates can be tricky if you don't know exactly what you're doing to just be thrown into a class situation. So it's helped me at least like doing a few sessions, even though I've done Pilates before, but just having that refresher to then go into a class setting, it's just helped build up my confidence a little bit. And it's also, I'm not going to like this, like a gym. Sorry, I said that with so much disdain, realizing you're a personal trainer! Michael: Ugh, these disgusting personal trainers!Laura: It had, like, a visceral effect. Michael: It's so funny though, isn't it? That it's so sad that's what the fitness industry has become. And especially as a trainer who is one, every time I meet someone and they'll ask oh, what do you do? I have to like preface, Oh, like I'm not like the rest of them, but I'm a personal trainer, like it's really sad.Laura: I do the same thing, but with nutrition, I'm like, I'm a nutritionist, but I'm not that kind of nutritionist. Michael: I'm not going to sell you a cleanse, I promise! Laura: All right, Michael, this has been so fun to have you on and just shoot the shit about fitness culture. But at the end of every episode, my guest and I share something that they have been snacking on. So it can be a book, a podcast, a TV show. Yeah, just about anything that, that you feel like. So what are you snacking on at the moment? Michael: So one podcast I'm listening to, this is going to be a bit of a curve ball, there's probably quite a few people, especially in the UK listening to it... I don't like politics because in this country, it's so gross the way that politics is at the moment, but I like being well informed in what's going in politics because it has such a huge knock on impact to like societal changes.Laura: I was really glad that you said that, because when you said I don't like politics, I was like, argh where is this going! Michael: no, I do, but I get so infuriated by it because it's so important and I feel like coaches need to be informed because it does directly impact everything we're doing with our clients in terms of like socioeconomic impacts and food access and education and stuff, so I've been listening to The Rest Is Politics podcast. I don't know if you've ever listened to it. It's actually really good. It's Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Labour side, Tory side. They chat about all daily topics and I quite like that they disagree and argue. I, depending on what you think about those two individuals, I'm still very mixed on what I think of them.However, I think it's very good to have a nice balanced approach there. So that's the podcast I've been listening to a lot recently. I really like it. In terms of food. So I can't eat eggs and dairy. I'm lactose intolerant and intolerant to eggs as well. Laura: I think you were probably going to wait for like the bummer, yeah, for me to be like, oh, that's such a bummer. But I'm vegan, so I don't eat any of that stuff . Michael: Yeah, I know. I was saying, I'm like the worst gym bro ever. I can't have whey protein shakes and I can't eat like 12 eggs a day. So maybe that's another reason they all hate me. So I found a vegan chocolate bar from Aldi. I don't know if you've ever had it. I don't think so. What? So they do milk, in quotation marks, milk chocolate and a white chocolate. They do a dark chocolate too, but a lot of vegan chocolate is dark. Anyway, so I haven't even tried that but their milk chocolate and their white chocolate is so good .And i'm getting through far too much of this chocolate at the moment but I finally found a chocolate bar that tastes amazing. They're by far the best chocolate you can get that's vegan, hands down Laura: That sounds really good, but we don't have an Aldi near us. We have a Lidl. Michael: So it's worth commuting. Laura: Oh, is it? Michael: Yeah. Yes. Laura: Okay. Might have to go to the dark depths of Dalston too.Okay. So I'm actually going to do a podcast also, and it's Getting Curious with Jonathan van Ness, which everyone knows who JVN is, obviously. He's amazing. Yeah, love them. There was like a bit of a thing a while ago where on their Netflix show they talked about like food addiction and it was just really problematic and icky and fatphobic. But JVN seems to have really been on a bit of a journey with this stuff and the latest, well, at the time that we are recording, they've just come out with a podcast called... well, an episode of their podcast Getting Curious called What's the Cultural History of the Calorie? With Dr. Athia Chaudhry. They're a fat activist and it's immersed in like fat politics. So, yeah. I would recommend going and giving that one a listen, because yeah, JVN has been on a journey, it seems. Michael: That sounds awesome. And that is my afternoon listening. Thank you very much. Laura: I will link to all of those things in the show notes.Michael, before I let you go, can you tell everyone where they can find out more about you and your work? Michael: Of course, so, most of the content I create is through Instagram, so it's just my name, which is very hard to spell, so probably best if you check it in the show notes. Laura: Yeah, I will link to everything.Michael: Thank you very much. So it's @MichaelUlloaPT, and that's on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, TikTok, whatever platform, it's all the same. Laura: All right, Michael, I will make sure that... It's all fully linked in the show notes so that everyone can find you. Thank you so much for coming on and yeah, like I said before, shooting the shit with us about fitness culture was really fun.Michael: Thank you so much for having me.OUTRO:Laura: Thanks so much for listening to the Can I Have Another Snack? podcast. You can support the show by subscribing in your podcast player and leaving a rating and review. And if you want to support the show further and get full access to the Can I Have Another Snack? universe, you can become a paid subscriber.It's just £5 a month or £50 for the year. As well as getting tons of cool perks you help make this work sustainable and we couldn't do it without the support of paying subscribers. Head to laurathomas.substack.com to learn more and sign up today. Can I Have Another Snack? is hosted by me, Laura Thomas. Our sound engineer is Lucy Dearlove. Fiona Bray formats and schedules all of our posts and makes sure that they're out on time every week. Our funky artwork is by Caitlin Preyser, and the music is by Jason Barkhouse. Thanks so much for listening.ICYMI this week: "I'm Not Your Target Audience" - How Do We Get Men To Care?* Reclaiming our Appetites* MORE Teens, TikTok, and some Good News for a Change.* Dear Laura: I'm freaking out about what my kids eat - but is it really about them? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurathomas.substack.com/subscribe

Michael Sullivan is a property management entrepreneur who has grown his business to 275 doors. Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they chat with former DoorGrow client Michael Sullivan to learn about his experience starting and growing a property management business. You'll Learn [01:44] Getting started in the property management industry [07:49] Growing a property management business [24:01] Having support and feeling fulfilled in the business [28:13] Growing and scaling to the next level Tweetables “To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash if you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level.” “If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning.” “A lot of us business owners, we have a bit of ego.” “Being an entrepreneur can be one can be very lonely, and it is really important to have people in the same industry kind of in your village.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash. If you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level. Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management, growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, the co owner and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show and our guest today is Michael L Sullivan. Michael Sullivan is here hanging out with us. He is a client of ours and of Sullivan property management. Did I say that right? MLS ullivan property management. All right, your initials. Got it. And Michael, welcome to the show.  [00:01:33] Michael: Thank you. Thank you very much. Good to be here.  [00:01:36] Jason: We're glad to have you. So we've really enjoyed having you in our program and it's been really amazing seeing your progress. So maybe to kick things off, let's start with talking about how you got into this crazy industry of property management. Like you woke up when you were like maybe five years old and said "property management is the thing for me" maybe. [00:01:57] Michael: Yeah, like every little boy and girl, dreams about being a real estate agent or a property manager.  [00:02:03] Jason: It's right there next to veterinarian and firefighter. [00:02:06] Michael: I think that's right. That's right or professional baseball player so, I left the teaching profession in 1993 and became a real estate agent, a general brokerage real estate agent here in the Greater Research Triangle region of North Carolina, and I did very well. I, on average, sold anywhere between 5 and 15 million dollars worth of real estate when our average sale price was $150,000. Yeah, we were shifting a lot of shacks, and it was a good life. And for the 15 or so years between 1993 and the Great Recession of 2007, 2008, my biggest fear was, "what is going to happen when the market flips?" Because inevitably, real estate flips. It goes from a boom market to a bust market, a buyer's market to a seller market. And so during those years, I socked away cash. When the market crashed in 2008, I had an inventory of 40 general brokerage homes that were for sale. I had clients that were still moving to Massachusetts or Plano, Texas, or Austin, or Seattle, you know, to the other tech hubs in the United States and my clients were like, "All right, problem solver, what are you going to do because we still have to move?" And I was like, "we're going to rent them." And so with an Excel spreadsheet and time, because I had lots of time then I started managing property and in the first year, our goal was 30 homes and we had 50 and it was me and one part time assistant and an Excel spreadsheet. Well, after about 18 months, that didn't work anymore. So I went out and I found what I thought was a reasonable property management software. And then over the course of the next decade or so, we got up to 110 properties or so and things were good, you know, we were chugging along and profits were good, but I really didn't know what I didn't know, I kind of. [00:04:22] Believe that once you had an Appfolio or a Buildium on board that you had won the day and that your business was set and you know, it should be easy. And I soon discovered when I got to 115 doors and just kind of got stuck there that the business wasn't growing the way it should be. And I couldn't figure out why. I was on Facebook one day. And there was this guy, Jason Hull, talking about this company called DoorGrow. And so I did the click, click, clickety click. And then I started listening to some of his podcasts and I started researching DoorGrow and I thought, " huh, this guy knows a whole lot about this industry and maybe this is someone I need to engage with." and so that's how I came to DoorGrow about two and a half years ago, I think.  [00:05:21] Jason: And now you're on one, you're on one of the podcasts.  [00:05:24] Michael: I know.  [00:05:25] Jason: So what challenges did you start to realize you were dealing with at the time? Because generally, you've made a ton of changes in your business since working with us, and you know, it's been impressive to watch. What do you feel like were your challenges at that time? Like, what did you not know that you did not know? So  [00:05:43] Michael: I knew that there were currencies in a business, but I didn't know that there were five of them. And I knew that I was working really hard. So the currency of effort was there. Yeah, my bank account showed me that the currency of cash was there. Yeah, the currency of focus was really lacking because I was still doing a lot of general brokerage and still trying to do property management. The focus of energy was lacking. Because it was draining me kind of going in these different directions. And then there was a lack of time. I didn't have time to take off. I didn't have time to turn it off because it was me and an assistant property manager at that time, I was still doing all of the day to day operations and the round pegs in the round holes work. And figuring out those currencies and how to better divide them and focus on them was one of the things that I didn't know and that once I could put a name to it and once I could focus on fixing where there was a deficiency, then I kind of won the battle. I felt, you know, before you launched all of your different systems to help property managers, I listened to you and I went out and got Lead Simple. I went out and got Property Meld and kind of brought them into the fold. And I recognize that those tools, which you paid dearly for using these outside vendors, really bring you a wealth of time that didn't exist before. So I was able to capture that currency and by extension, the currency of effort was able to kind of tamp down because I had systems now in place to deal with the endless maintenance requests that having a practice that. Goes up over a hundred percent in growth is going to require.  [00:07:48] Jason: So let's talk about that growth. You had mentioned you'd gotten up to maybe, where were you when you started with DoorGrow?  [00:07:56] 118. [00:07:58] 118. Okay.  [00:07:59] And where are you at right now?  [00:08:01] Michael: 275.  [00:08:03] Jason: I mean, it sounds like you had pretty decent profit margin before. Well, what was that? If you don't mind sharing, what is it? [00:08:09] Michael: So, on a gross per door basis, when I joined DoorGrow, we were right at about $122 a door per month. Yeah. And today we're up. $153 and 82 cents per door per month.  [00:08:26] Jason: That's very specific. So, you know, your numbers, which is good.  [00:08:30] Michael: Well I try. Yeah. And year over year revenue increases from last year is up 58.7%.  [00:08:36] Jason: Wow. That's awesome. So money's up. So the cash currency has improved the focus currency. Have you been able to do less in the business and narrow your focus?  [00:08:48] Michael: Yes. So Saturday is my benchmark. I call it my Zen day. And if Saturday can be a Zen day for me, where I don't feel like I have tasks that I have to accomplish, that I can do the things that I want to do, still working on the business, not in the business, then I feel like the week has been a win. If I feel like there are pressing tasks that I have to work on within the business on Saturday, then I feel like the week has not been a win. So if Saturday is Zen, if I come into it feeling very kind of centered and relaxed, then I feel like things are in balance the way they should be. [00:09:34] Jason: So what percent profit margin are you operating at now?  [00:09:37] Michael: So coming into this year 2022, we were at 27 percent profit margin, but a lot of that was really underpinned by very robust general brokerage sales. I made a concerted effort this year to pour gasoline on the fire to really grow the business. The goal is to be over 300 doors by the end of the year. So we're 25 away. Nice. I'm pretty sure we're going to make that, you know, that goal. But our profit margin right now is at. 11 and a half, 11 and three quarters percent. So it's down substantially, but that was deliberate.  [00:10:14] Jason: Got it. And is deliberate because  [00:10:18] Michael: why? [00:10:18] Because we're making an investment in people. We're making an investment in systems and we're making an investment in things like vehicles and computers and marketing.  [00:10:30] Jason: Yeah. So I think that's an important thing for business owners to recognize that. To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash if you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level. And you can grow faster if you have thinner margins, which can feel a little more dangerous. And you know, if you're investing into the growth of the business and into the future, but you know how to add doors, so this isn't a concern for you. [00:10:57] Michael: It isn't. My bookkeeper and my accountant were a little apoplectic until I told them like, this is where we're going. And what I said to my bookkeeper was before the great depression of 1929, Ford motor company was the preeminent motor car company in the world. They had an amazing market share. Then the stock market crashed and the economy tanked and Ford circled the wagons, folded their tents and got very conservative. They scaled back. General Motors, by extension, said, "ah," and they saw it as an opportunity and they poured gasoline on the fire. And for the next 70 years, General Motors was the dominant car company in the world. And so I kind of am using that model.  [00:11:47] Jason: Yeah. So, now a lot of people listening to this might think, well, cool, I can get Property Meld, I can do something, you know, get something like Lead Simple, or we have a better tool now, which is DoorGrow Flow. " I can go and get tools and maybe I can do it on my own." Because I think this is the challenge. A lot of us business owners, we have a bit of ego. " I've made a lot of mistakes in the past and we think I can do it myself. Maybe if I watch enough YouTube videos, listen to enough podcast episodes, I can figure it all out on my own. I don't need DoorGrow or I don't need it." Like, so what would you say to people that listening to this or thinking that?  [00:12:22] Michael: So I would say to them, when I think back to me and one assistant and 115, 110 doors and good profit margins. You know, and a good life. I was in a really kind of felt very isolated and very alone I didn't have other friends or colleagues in the property management space that I could talk to. I felt like I was the only person in the world that was doing this, and once I joined DoorGrow and made very valuable, long lasting friends within the organization that I can call on off hours to discuss specific problems related to property management, that burden of feeling on my own and alone disappeared. Being an entrepreneur can be one can be very lonely, and it is really important to have people in the same industry kind of in your village. And that's why that's 1 of the benefits of joining DoorGrow is that I can call friends in Texas, Idaho, Pennsylvania, California and say, "hey, I've got this going on. What do you think?"  [00:13:40] Jason: Yeah, and I think you know, that's a testament to you is that you've been such a contributor that in the mastermind that it's allowed you to connect with all of these people, you know, there are some people that join the program and they still stay somewhat isolated. They're like, "I'm going to watch videos I'm going to learn stuff and do my own thing and they maybe don't get some of those advantages or benefits But I think that's key. [00:14:02] So yeah Yes. I mean, Sarah, when she had her property management business, I imagine you experienced some of the same sort of things of thinking it's. You know, this is, you're the only one in the world doing this. You're on your own.  [00:14:17] Sarah: Yeah, very much. And especially in the area that I was in I was always different and I just kind of do things differently and I think differently and oftentimes people are like, she's nuts, like, why would you do that? [00:14:29] Even my mom, sometimes she's like, are you sure you're going to do that? Like, are you sure? Like, I'm kind of nervous. But I've just always done things a little differently. And it's so, it is really lonely. And I think the mindset that I had back when I was in Pennsylvania versus, you know, the mindset I have now really has a lot to do with who you surround yourself with and that can. [00:14:53] I think it can just give you hope and it can show you like, Hey, like, I'm not so crazy. Like I've got it. Like I've got it figured out and I'm like doing the right thing and I'm on the right path. And you know, it feels right, but sometimes it's just, you know, you're like, Oh, is this really right? [00:15:07] Because it feels good to me, but man, everybody else is doing something so different.  [00:15:12] Michael: Yeah. And that's another benefit that DoorGrow has given me is. I now have the ability to say no. So I am the business development manager. I have someone in charge of maintenance. I have someone in charge of tenant experience. [00:15:28] I have someone in charge of ops within the office. They color within their lines and we are good. My job is to go out and build the business to work on the business, not work in the business. And until I joined DoorGrow, it didn't matter what came my way. Property wise, I was going to take it last week. I turned away more properties than we took on because they weren't the right fit. [00:15:53] And I have a very nice conversation with prospective clients about qualification and that they're qualifying us to make sure we're a good fit for them. But at the same time. I'm qualifying them, their mindset, their properties, their attitudes toward spending money, their attitudes toward maintaining their properties, and if those things don't align with what we believe here, that housing is a human right that people have the right to live in nice homes that are maintained and maintained properly, then We're not going to accept the business. [00:16:30] We're also not going to accept people that are rude, mean and abusive. Because I've learned since kind of letting the stress of being a general brokerage real estate agent. Slip away that there is plenty of good business out there and that it's more important to have the Philosophical fits with the business than it is to take just any property no matter what the cost  [00:16:57] Jason: Yeah, your ability to say no in business Gives you a business that you feel you can easily say yes to each  [00:17:03] Michael: day. [00:17:04] That's right.  [00:17:05] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to not have to wake up and go, man, I really don't want to do this today. And that's because we're setting boundaries for ourselves and that boundary in those containers allow us to create a business that we really like to be inside.  [00:17:20] Michael: Right. That's correct. Yeah. Now,  [00:17:22] Jason: when you came. [00:17:23] To us DoorGrow initially. I remember like you really had this mindset that you, and now you're doing business development, you had mentioned, you really believed you were the operator. It all was on your shoulders to operate the business, do operations, and you were good at it, but you believe that was your primary gift, I think, to the business and what your contribution needed to be. [00:17:45] And and I know you had some conversations with Sarah and some shifts in that, so could you touch on that a bit?  [00:17:51] Michael: Yeah well, control freak and always have been a control freak. I know one of those. You know, own it. And to a certain degree, I still, I observe. I trust and verify, but I don't get involved. [00:18:07] My number two said it best the other day. He said, yeah, with you. I only have to come to you if I know it's a problem that I can't solve. So I have kind of empowered the people who work with me to color in their lines. And when they are in trouble, come here and ask and we'll figure it out. I have also given them permission to make mistakes because if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. You're static, and I let them see that I make mistakes and that I admit when I make a mistakes above all else. I expect complete honesty here. We make mistakes. We admit our mistakes. You know, if we have to eat it because it's a financial error that we've made well, then by golly, we're going to eat it because it was our mistake. And we come by it honestly the empowerment of becoming a business development manager is I don't have to worry that the books are balanced every week because I know that there is someone who I've paid good money to who has balanced the books and they can't hide because the system has been created where I can see that it's been uploaded into the accounting software and that the books are in balance. [00:19:25] I can verify that the financial piece of the puzzle in the business is running properly because I get a report monthly from my accountant and my bookkeeper that says, "this is where we are. This is your cash flow. This is your profit. This is where you're spending a lot of money. Are you okay with that?" and I pay them good money to do those things. I have a maintenance coordinator who deals with maintenance and on the Property Meld dashboard, which I log into every morning. I can see the tasks picking off or I can see things progressing and I can see that we're handling our maintenance requests in 3 to 4 days on average and that's fine. I've also told him to maintain his sanity because he's a bit of a control freak. If it's after hours and it's a garbage disposal in a dishwasher and it's after 5 o'clock, you don't need to deal with that today. If it's a leak and we have a catastrophe, then you deal with that after five o'clock, but the small stuff can wait until tomorrow. [00:20:26] It's still important. It's important to get it done and move it off our plates, but you don't have to deal with it when you need to be spending time with your children at soccer camp or baseball practice or whatever he does in the evening with his four kids. And then my other teammates, I can see that they are moving their tasks forward and that I don't have to worry about the job that they're doing. And that's empowered me to go out and find the right properties to bring into the practice for us to manage.  [00:20:56] Jason: You know, one of the gifts that I see in you, which I think really sets you apart, Michael, is coming into the program you're really intelligent. You know this. You're an intelligent guy. I think everybody can pick that up just by hearing you and listening to you. But even though you're intelligent, you have humility about, you know, and this openness to learning. And you've come into the program and you just started to do stuff. Like you tried it out. You experimented, and you allowed yourself the time to prove whether or not it would work or not. And some of the times we get clients that are intelligent, but they're not humble and they're usually the biggest stumbling block to themselves. So I just wanted to point that out. I'm curious what Sarah's experience has been of you as well, because she worked closely with you on like reviewing some of the systems, reviewing your team assessing you and some of this kind of stuff. [00:21:54] Sarah: So, yeah, I think I definitely agree with what you just said about being open to learning and trying things just a bit differently. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, we do things differently. We're okay with that. But sometimes if it's not our idea, then we're like "I don't know if I want to do it because I didn't think of it." right. So, I think Michael is, he's open to thinking differently. He's open to trying things out and implementing a system. He'll do the research. He doesn't just, you know, blindly jump and he's like, well, Jason said to do this, so I'm going to do it, but he'll do the research and he's very thorough. And I really appreciate that about Michael. He's all into the details and he knows exactly what's going on in his business. He's not like, "Hey, I'm just going to kind of sit back and like, let the team run everything, and then I just, I'm going to cross my fingers and hope and pray that everything is going well, right?" like we know that it's going well because you're not the one who's doing it, so you've been able to get out of the hot seat in a lot of different ways and get yourself more into the things that you actually enjoy. because I remember that conversation with you about the operations and you said, "well, I really just, I love to sell" like, okay, then let's let you sell. Like if you're doing things in the business and you're just holding on to them going, "well, I have to be the one to do this." I think it's really common for us to think that like, " well, I own the business, so I have to do this piece or I own this. And it has to be me. It doesn't always have to be you." do you have to know what's going on? Absolutely. Do you have to have the right people on your team? Absolutely. And do you have to set it up so that things can run smoothly? Absolutely. But do you have to be the one who's actually like doing the work? Right. And I think that's one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in you is that you're able to say, okay I don't have to do this part and I don't want to do this part. [00:23:54] This is where I want to be. So I'm going to move closer to this and I'm going to figure out how to get these pieces kind of offloaded.  [00:24:01] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. When you taught me how to write R docs and after I had a disastrous hire two years ago, disaster, and I had to fire someone, something I'd never had to do, but it was my fault. There was nothing wrong with the person I hired. She was just the wrong fit for the job. And then we sat down, we wrote R docs. With detailed job descriptions and parameters and that made bringing on the next person who is now in that role a dream because she fit the culture. We knew what her profile was before she even interviewed with us. We knew who the person was and then she walked through the door and poof, there she was. And that's one thing I didn't know. I just thought you could teach someone into a position. Well, you can teach skills, but you can't teach the human touch. And that's what I had missed with the disaster, the mistake that I made.  [00:25:02] Jason: Yeah. You'd learn some concepts from us, like the three fits , mapping out R docs. One of you explain what R docs are for those of us. This is DoorGrow speak here.  [00:25:11] Sarah: I know it is. So an R doc, it's just basically a fancy word for job description. We call it R doc because every section on it starts with 'R.' [00:25:20] Jason: There you go. So the ultimate job descriptions. Awesome. So, yeah, so all of these little pieces and systems and mindsets that you've installed in your business have really, I think, primed your business for a lot of growth. Like, where do you see the business going in the future?  [00:25:37] Michael: Oh, so that's another thing I learned. And it was at, I think, Austin at the Austin meeting. And it was you said it in the first like two minutes and I got my nugget and I was like, okay, I can go home. I got it. You said, don't limit your growth. And I had constantly said 200 doors, 200 doors. That's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. And you already passed that now. Yeah, you said that. And I was like. " Why would I create like this false ceiling that I'm going to just bump into and stop at?" Yeah. So, ultimately, and I'd like to retire in the next 10 to 12, 15 years, maybe. We're realistically thinking in the neighborhood of 1,000-2,000 doors. Yeah, people have started to come a calling about, "Hey, do you want to sell your business?" And the time is not right. Some of the financial offers that have been made already are very intriguing. Yeah. But then I'm like, " what will I do with myself?" You know, "what's the next iteration?" And I think until I figure that out, we're going to just stay the course. [00:26:47] Jason: Yeah, I think that's one of the key things that I think a lot of people realize in the program that if it was just about money, then maybe you'd cash out, but it's not just about money, right? There's other things we want out of our experience here on this planet. And that's something else you got a lot of clarity on is what really personally drives you, which allowed you to build the business and the team around you so that you really could move into those plus signs and out of those minus signs. [00:27:13] Michael: Yeah, so the key is I went to the Netherlands in May to see art because it's my thing. Cool. And a little ostentatious to fly to Europe to see Vermeer, but I did it. And I was gone for a good long time and things here chugged right along and it was beautiful. And I knew then that we were doing things right, that I could leave and not be here for 10 days, and the business continued to operate. I continued to watch and check in. But they didn't need me.  [00:27:49] Jason: And how's that different from before you came to DoorGrow?  [00:27:53] Michael: Oh my God. Like the first meeting in Austin that I came to, I had I came really close to not coming because I was like "I can't leave. I just can't leave. I can't leave them." I was wrong. I was wrong and I went to Austin and I went to Vegas and you know, things were good. Yeah.  [00:28:12] Jason: Yeah. So awesome. Well, it's been really cool to see your progress. We really appreciate. Seeing your growth and yeah, there's no question in my mind. A lot of people hear you say, Oh, maybe a thousand, 2000 doors. And they probably think: this guy is ridiculously off his rocker that he could just believe that and the audacity to have that mindset. And I'm sure when you first came to DoorGrow, a thousand doors was like, probably magic, some magic, like pipe dream in the ethers that you would never even consider. I don't know, but. [00:28:40] Michael: 300 seemed unimaginable.  [00:28:43] Jason: Yeah, but now it seems very doable. And you're aware of the DoorGrow code and like we've got clients breaking a thousand doors. We've got clients doing it. And there's no question in my mind. You could easily do this in the next two to three years. If you really wanted to easily.  [00:28:57] Michael: Yeah, I work my golden 100. That's another thing I learned at DoorGrow. To have people that are valuable people that I love and care about that. I have to touch every 30 days because they love and care about me and buy it. So they send business. They ask questions and we share information. Yeah. And for that, I'm indebted to you.  [00:29:19] Jason: Not at all. Well, great. Well, yeah we, it's been really awesome seeing your growth. So cool. Anything else we should ask Michael? We've got him hanging out here with us. What's next for you, Michael? What's next?  [00:29:31] Michael: Well, once we go over 300, then the double it again. [00:29:34] Jason: Yeah. So what I see next for you is you've got some of the systems installed. And then I think what it will be next is to level up your three key systems of. People, process, and planning and maybe starting to build out even a little bit more of that executive team. I think you've got a good team going now and I think then what would be next would be maybe starting to acquire you'll be the one eating up some of these other companies. And I think, maybe working with us on acquisitions, and I think that'll be the quick pace to grow. And that also bring you really great people too, if you want. So [00:30:07] Michael: we're working on two. They're on a slow simmer because companies that I'm looking at have some. Bookkeeping issues. We'll just put it at that.  [00:30:17] Jason: It's an opportunity. Yeah. Always do.  [00:30:20] Michael: So we may be able to fix the problem. Definitely.  [00:30:24] Jason: You'll be able to fix the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I'm excited to see what you do in the future. I know like, I've seen companies hit all these different stages. I know. We know the challenges that you're going to hit at these different stages in growth. We're here to support you. And for those listening here on the DoorGrowShow if you are struggling, you're hitting some of these sticking points, these milestones, you're stuck in your mindset, whatever. Be like Michael, be like Mike, not Mike, but all the reference, be like Michael and you know, talk to us and let us map things out with you and see if we could help you out. We'll be sure with you. So, well, Michael, appreciate you coming on the show. We appreciate having you as a client and grateful for you.  [00:31:09] Michael: Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Have a good day.  [00:31:12] Jason: All right. Cool. So, if you're wanting to get into our free community of property management entrepreneurs on Facebook, go to DoorGrowClub.Com. We have some free gifts that we want to give to you. You'll provide your email as you join the group, we'll give you an, a drip, an email drip of some free gifts, including a fee Bible and some vendors that you can use and some different tools just to help you help yourself and help the industry level up. [00:31:42] And we, and if you provide your info, we will also reach out to see if you'd like to have a conversation with us and see if we could help you grow your business, which the answer usually is. Yes, we can. So we would love to support you and help you out. And if you're wanting to test out your website, which you think might be amazing, go to doorgrowcom/quiz and test your website. A lot of times, this is a great gateway to realizing that you have some blind spots in your business. When you see that your website is leaking lots of money. Which is something we can help you out with. There's a lot of other leaks you can't see, and this might crack your mind open, get you to be open minded like Michael and allow us to be able to help you and support you and make a lot more money, have a lot more freedom and make a bigger difference out there in the marketplace. [00:32:34] We appreciate you listening to our show. If you could do us a favor and leave us a good testimonial on, if you're hearing us on iTunes or like, or comment all of these things help us out and help us get the message out to enact our vision and our mission for this industry of helping it level up. [00:32:50] And until next time to our mutual growth, everybody, bye everyone.  [00:32:54] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:33:21] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

In this episode, we interview Michael Oh, global executive director / CEO of the Lausanne Movement, to trace his personal connection to Lausanne, unpack the Movement's impact on global mission, and vision for the future of global mission together. From stirring historical stories to key challenges ahead, Michael paints a vivid picture of the Movement's purpose and vision of uniting the global church in addressing the challenges and opportunities in the Great Commission.  Subscribe to our podcast for more conversations about unity, vision, and making the global church both beautiful and effective. For more information about the Lausanne Movement check out our webpage: https://www.lausanne.org

The launch of the Lausanne Movement Podcast is on the horizon. Dive into this sneak peek and experience the diversity of global voices and genuine conversations awaiting you. And don't miss out: stay tuned till the end for an exclusive clip from our first episode with Lausanne Movement global executive director / CEO, Michael Oh. 

The Lausanne Movement Podcast is coming soon! In our upcoming series, we will the hear from leaders from across the global church on a range of engaging topics as we journey toward the Seoul 2024 Congress.  This trailer is only a glimpse of what's coming.  Be sure to click subscribe so you don't miss out on our first episode with Lausanne Movement CEO, Michael Oh.

In this third and final episode in our series covering FINRA's ongoing crypto asset regulatory work, we hear from FINRA's Blockchain Lab, which serves as a central point within FINRA for the development of blockchain-related regulatory initiatives.Michael Oh, Senior Director of the Blockchain Lab, Brian Huerbsch, a Senior Blockchain Data Analyst, and Jason Foye, Senior Director and head of FINRA's Crypto Hub share how the Lab is supporting and advancing FINRA's regulatory work involving crypto assets.Resources mentioned in this episode:Episode 136: An Introduction to FINRA's Crypto Asset Work and the Crypto HubEpisode 137: The Crucial Role of FINRA's CAI TeamInvestor Insights: What Is a Blockchain, and Why Should I Care?FINRA Blog: An Inside Look into FINRA's Crypto Asset Work

Friends, we're all aware of the adage "When the cat's away..." Right? Well, in the case of this week, the cat is Gigi--and while she's away, we're delving into all kinds of stuff she'd never allow! Hang with us as we test the bounds of 'Entertainment vs. Decency' while our Den Mother spends her time elsewhere! We've got a LOT of car talk, politics, music and "inside" Wolfe Pack talk and nonsense...AND, John's friend Peter Tilden stops by to set us all straight--while we hang with our old friends Hanna the exotic dancer, Michael Oh's beloved step-adopted-whatever-mom, and more! So if you're on the lamb, you picked a perfect day to be in the house. Did you bring any beer? Just kidding--here's a Natty LIght for ya. Cheers!

We aren't able to record a new episode this week, so here is a great interview we did with Michael H. of the Atheopagan Society Council. See you next week! S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism, Mark: Hmm. Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do. Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as Mark: That's right. Yeah. Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one Mark: Yeah. Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah. Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right? Michael: yeah, Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.

Thank you for staying with us as we missed another week last week. Edward is traveling with his family this summer, making recording difficult. We still have a half dozen episodes recorded and we will trickle them out over the summer months, but there may be a few weeks this summer without an episode. But we have some fun ones coming! This one made me laugh while I was editing it… Enjoy!In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss Daredevil's recent loss to Stilt-Man. Does Daredevil even have any super powers? If not, is he just a crazy man who swings from building to building with a grapple hook? And what's up with Stilt-Man? Did he choose his own name? Why doesn't he have extendable arms as well? Is this all a joke? And if so, how did the “joke” defeat Daredevil? Behind the issue:This is the first appearance of Stilt-Man, who goes on to try out names like “Stilty” and “Daddy Long Legs”. By the end of the issue, Stilt-Man is defeated and shrunk into nothingness. That does not stop him, though, as he comes back to be active in the Marvel Universe through to the present day (he is killed by the Punisher at one point, but his clone continues to use his stilts for villainy).In this issue:A new villain appears on the scene - Stilt-Man - and he starts his career of villainy by robbing a helicopter mid-flight. Seems complicated for a heist, but there you have it. In any event, Daredevil tries to take Stilt-Man down after the heist, but does not succeed. Back in his civilian guise as Matt Murdock, Daredevil takes on a new client, Wilbur Day, who hires Matt to sue his boss Mr. Kaxton, who has stolen his patent. As the case goes on, Stilt Man continues his crime spree. It is eventually revealed that Wilbur is Stilt-Man. He goes on the run from Daredevil, and eventually, he is hoisted on his own petard when he accidentally turns his shrinking ray on himself, shrinking him to apparent nothingness.This episode takes place:After the short reign of Stilt-Man comes to an end.Assumed before the next episode:People did not really think much about Stilt-Man.Full transcript:Edward: Mike Daredevil is not dead, but he has been pretty badly injured, and I think this is what you get when you have someone who's just a vigilante with no real powers trying to take on super villains.Michael: Well, wait a minute. I don't know if he's spoken about this before, but is he a normal guy?Just in a funny costume, like he seems fine. He define seems similar.Edward: Well, define normal. You say normal to what does normal mean?Michael: Okay, so Spider-Man isn't normal, right? We know Spider-Man. Spiderman isn't normal. Climb balls and he's swinging from building to building. But what do we know about Daredevil? He fights on rooftops and kind of swings down from rooftops. Like, I could not,Edward: but he swings on a grappling hook. You could swing at a grappling hook.Michael: No, there's, there's a, there's a zero chance, even in the best shape of my life, would I use a grappling hook to swing from one building to another without a net?Edward: I'm not saying is something, I'm not saying it's a smart thing to do, but I'm saying you could do it. I think if push came to shove, I have faith in you, Mike. I think you could swing from a building to building. It's in a rope. You could, all you have to is hold onto the rope. Just hold onto the rope.Michael: Ed, have you ever gone to a cottage on a lake in the summer we're gonna a swimming hole and there's a rope? Yeah. And the rope it's tied to a branch overhanging in the water Sure. And the rope. And you grab the rope and you swing out. Yeah.That is still scary. Cause if you don't let go in time and you go back to shore and you let go, then you land on the rocks. Yeah. That's bad. As opposed to the water. So would I swing like that without the water? No,Edward: well, I'm not saying you would do it because you, cuz you have more sense than Daredevil does. Are you saying Daredevil's superpower is he's unafraidMichael: The man with no fear. I mean, he is. Pretty fearless, I suppose. But my point isn't that, that's what you would say is his superpower, is my take is that he, I think he has, he must have a superpower. He can't just be a regular guy in great shape who's like, no, cuz like, it seems like swinging from building to building isn't necessary to do what he's doing either.It's like, you know what I mean? It seems like, it seems like almost like an add-on, like gratus gratuitous s**t. Gratuitous. Yeah. Like, and it would be exhausting, think about Ed. I don't know the last time you tried to do a pull up or a chin up, but imagine that andEdward: I can do pullups and chin-ups.I can do that.Michael: Okay. They're hard cause you're lifting your full body weight up. Now imagine you're doing that a few times through the evening and then you fight. Super villain. I mean, it does seem that's,Edward: I'm saying he's making poor choices with his life.Michael: Okay. Okay. So either he's making poor choices and he has no fear, or he's got some kind of superpower. So anyways, you and I were talking about that, but you mentioned Daredevil andEdward: yeah. And then you went off on how superpowered he is and I don't know if he actually is, I think Thank you. He, he clearly has exceptional abilities, right? Whether those are super abilities or not, it feels like he's in the Captain America style. Then Captain America some sort of super soldier. Yeah. But, but he's not, he can't breathe fire. He can't fly, he can't stick to walls. And I think Daredevil's in the same class, he's Clearly very athletic. But man, is he athletic take on super villains. What's just happened is he was very soundly defeated by, basically a guy in battle armor with really long legs.Michael: You know what? They're calling him, ed,Edward: they're calling him the stilt man. The villain, the stil man.Stil man.Michael: It's just, it, it's just, it's just ridiculous. I don't mind, I love, and you and I, obviously we have, we have a show about this. I do love how humanity is evolving in these new things we're seeing, but, Doesn't it seem like we're scraping the bottle of the barrel for the influences, where you're naming yourself and your whole persona, your super villain persona is based on, in this case, stilts.Edward: Well, did he name himself stilt matter or did the media name him Stilt Man? Well, I don't know, but they, but that's what he has. He wasn't having a press, he wasn't having a press release. He was just going out and robbing things and the poor guy got labeled as a stilt guy. Well, okay, but we got it. It should have . Called him, I don't know. Armor Battle man.Michael: It'd be better, but he's clearly got some kind of body armor. That's fine. Yeah. And bullets, power bullets off him. Right.Edward: And he can got that he stole from a helicopter. He used his well, his stilts to extend upward and then, stole from a helicopter that the helicopter thought they were safe.They're like, nobody can get us up here because there's no such thing as a flying villain. Oh, wait a minute. Or a stilt villain that just came up and sell.Michael: It's just, that's the defining. Feature of it is that whatever you wanna, like stilts is what they are. He has these extendable stilts and it just seems so stupid. It's just, I don't know, for all that technology, first of all, it's impressive. It's an impressive engineering feat to say if a helicopter is 500, a thousand feet in the air, To basically be able to extend your stilts up a thousand feet and not fall over.Edward: And then, and then, yeah, balance.Look at the balance on that guy.Michael: It's incredible. It's incredible technology. It's just thatEdward: I would argue he probably more impressive than a grappling hook.Michael: I would give you that, but The Thing is, but why would you do that? Why would you spend all that engineering, why would you direct your energy towards that engineering feed where he could have created something else?Except, unless he's just going for the sort of the whimsy of, I'm a guy that has stills. I'm like really tall.Edward: He built like these hydraulic extension things that are, I think are really if you built this hydraulic extension technology and you decided you wanted to go and use it for crime? What type of battle suit would you maybe I'd have extending arms too. I'd have like extension arms to go.Michael: The arms are way more practical. Yeah, but the think with the power you'd have. Bam.Edward: But they can do the same thing with his legs. He just kick people with like his big extension. Legs and kicks are more dangerous than arms.Michael: He's not, he's extending the stilt so that he can perfectly time getting in front of a helicopter and hoping the helicopter doesn't just turn around or just,Edward: if it does, he can, can chase after climb. They go fast. He can run, his steps per minute could be very low and he could still achieve very high velocity.Michael: We haven't seen any film of this, and I'd like to because that would be interesting. But anyways, the point I'm making though is I hate it. I hate the idea that we've gotten to the point in this marvelous age of heroes and villains and super scientists and aliens and gods, and it's like, you know what? We've kind of run our course. Let's have. A stilt based hero or villain? Villain. Villain. Like a psychic ladder. Ladder boy. Like any, you know, like tall guy.Edward: I think you can be cynical on his name, but clearly Daredevil has a better name than stilt man, but like this guy defeated Daredevil. And so whatever superpowers you think Daredevil has, apparently they were not powerful enough to defeat this poor villain that you're mocking.Michael: Oh no, I agree with you on that. Even though I think the daredevil must have some powers, powers are not, he's probably exhausted by the time he flipped around and grappled through the city to then fight the stilt guy.Edward: But he has to grapple up the stilt man. You can't even get to him with those grappling hook that grapple is doing a lot of lifting,Michael: silly. Whether you're defeated daredevil or not. I just find it so silly. And I, maybe I'm okay. Don't take this the wrong way, but I feel like you and I put a lot of energy into our show talking about these amazing people, good and bad, and then along comes still, it kind of just undercuts everything we're talking about where that's what it is.It just seems so silly.Edward: He's not undercutting anything. He's way up high in the sky. Everything is below him.Michael: I just like to take his legs out cuz it just bothers me.Edward: Take his legs out. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

Rev. Michael Oh, Matthew 6:9-13

How does one begin to speak about purity and chastity in an age that hyper-sensualizes the human experience?  When we define ourselves so tightly and, in particular, so tightly to disordered desire, how is it that we bear witness to and embrace the call of Saint John and the other fathers to purity? Part of the answer to these questions is to immerse ourselves in the vision of the fathers; their anthropology and psychology and the spirituality that shapes these things. However, this only begins to lead us to an understanding of who and what we have become in Christ.  If it remains purely notional we will inevitably be drawn back in to what the culture puts before us. What Christianity calls us to is to see ourselves only in light of Christ and to find meaning and identity in Him. Likewise, we must see the radical solidarity that exists between every one of us as human beings made in the image and likeness of God. We are called to a life of radical conversion and repentance.  When we look out into the world and see great evil or sin, our response must be to turn to God with even greater zeal and desire. We must embody the love, joy, peace, and purity of the kingdom. Anything less is going to ring hollow to the world. To speak of purity or chastity in simple moralistic or legalistic terms is to fail to understand what we have become in Christ. It is the Spirit of God that dwells within us and we are not called to embody natural virtue much less what private judgment puts forward as good. It is the beauty of Divine life that must shine forth in our every thought and action. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:08:51 FrDavid Abernethy: page 142, para 19   00:30:23 Anthony: I kind of think I (we?) try too hard to be Christians, and that is a self-centered and very difficult focus.  It's not the way of easy relief of Christ's cross.  It's my cross.   00:31:39 Anthony: My pastor once mentioned how we make our own heavy, too heavy crosses.   00:33:50 Eric Ewanco: I try to project the seraph serpent mounted on a pole to the Eucharist lifted up during the liturgy, sending out healing to me from the crucifixion of Christ   00:50:56 Michael: Oh wow, I thought it was just a metaphor. I didn't realize he was literally talking about bestiality.   00:51:29 angelo: Reacted to "Oh wow, I thought it..." with

Welcome to a very special episode of Today's Conversation. In collaboration with The Mission Matters podcast, we bring you an engaging discussion featuring esteemed guest Michael Oh, the global executive director and CEO of the Lausanne Movement. Joining him as co-hosts are NAE President Walter Kim, Ted Esler, president of MissioNexus, and Matthew Ellison, president of sixteen:fifteen.In this episode, our distinguished guests delve into the dynamic work of God across the globe, with a particular focus on the transformative power of the global missions movement. Prepare to be captivated as they explore:The distinction between global missions and the globalization of missions, unraveling the nuances of their impact.The profound interplay between the demonstration and proclamation of the gospel, revealing the intricate relationship between both aspects.A captivating preview of the highly anticipated Lausanne Congress in Seoul, showcasing its unique and groundbreaking elements.An inspiring conversation about the hopes and aspirations they hold for the global Church in the upcoming decade.Don't miss this extraordinary episode as we bring you a truly enriching conversation that illuminates the remarkable ways God is at work in our world.

“Kingdom Collaboration” is a special episode for us, because we are co-hosting it with the National Association of Evangelicals podcast, Today's Conversation. Ted Esler and Matthew Ellison teamed up with Walter Kim of the NAE to co-host a conversation with Michael Oh about Lausanne 4 next year in Seoul, South Korea, and the importance of creating movements of collaboration to advance the Gospel. Learn more about the NAE at https://www.nae.org/ and the Lausanne Movement at https://lausanne.org/.

EPISODE NINE: SYSTEMS‍We're getting into Dr. Naomi Sedani's world!‍Follow her journey, week by week, as she creates her start-up: Lil' Dente‍Naomi is scheduled to open up her practice in February 2023... that's only a couple of weeks away!‍Listen each week to hear the raw truth and the "behind the scenes" details that not many talk about publicly when it comes to starting up a practice!‍We uncover unexpected struggles she is facing, what "life-saving" practice tips she discovered, how much everything is costing, what equipment/ companies she decides to go with and why, her vision to grow in the community, all her financials, how all of this is affecting her personal life, and everything in between!‍Naomi may need your help and advice, so please feel free to engage with each episode, share your feedback, and ask questions here:‍The Making of a Dental Start-Up Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1511481045554890‍The Making of a Dental Start-Up Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themaking.of/‍Message us through our website here.‍Find Out MoreThank you for listening to this series "The Making of Smile Oasis" on The Making of a Dental Start-Up. If you enjoyed it, please share with anyone you think will gain value from the show by clicking on one of the sharing tabs above.Also, please consider leaving an honest review on iTunes. It helps other listeners find the show, and I would be forever grateful.Questions or comments? Feel free to contact me here.Follow me on Instagram or Facebook and improve your dental practice every day!Have you subscribed? Don't miss a single episode!‍You can also find us on Spotify now, just type in the search bar "The Making of a Dental Start-Up".‍Listen to podcasts and learn more about The Making of a Dental Start-Up on the website.‍Remember that Naomi's dental practice is being built in real time. Follow her incredible journey and message her here:‍Naomi's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nks7499‍Naomi's Personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.naomisedani/‍Naomi's Practice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lildentesmiles/‍p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your start-up.‍[TRANSCRIPT]‍Michael: What's up Naomi? How's it going? Good. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. T today a snowstorm. Snowstorm hit you, right? Naomi: Yeah, unfortunately, supposedly the biggest one, New York has gotten ak. The only one New York has gotten. Are you serious? Yeah. That's the first snowstorm in the area, basically. It's crazy. It's like in March. Michael: Was it, was it like a legit one or were you like, uh, Naomi: I feel like they were making it out to be like something really bad. Um mm-hmm. . I mean, it definitely snowed and there was freezing rain last night, but it was like all the schools canceled. Everyone was two hour breaks. Businesses were closing and then we drove, or like we came in by train just so we didn't have to deal with the highway, and it's totally fine. , Michael: is it real? So there's nothing No. Is it, has Naomi: it passed? Uh, yeah. It's not even snowing. Like The snow has stayed and it's definitely there and it's like slushy icy status. now, but. Nothing wild like New York, it was fine. I don't think Connecticut knows what a snowplow is, but that's all good. Does the snow in Connecticut? No, it definitely does. It's just like the roads here are way worse off than New York roads. Michael: Oh, I get you. I get you. You don't, they don't, they don't know how to like, to plow in people get, just get stuck. Gotcha. You. That makes sense. Yeah. So has that set you back today or what has it done? Naomi: Yeah, um, I had four or five patients on like the calendar today. And three of 'em canceled, yesterday just because of like the snowstorm and snow days and they were gonna have to be home with the kids, blah, blah, blah. And then we had, I had an op this morning, like a nitrous op and then her brother was gonna be getting a new patient exam and we kept trying to contact them to see if they wanted to reschedule, but she was insistent on coming in, so we opened up the office to be able to see them. Michael: Were you trying to reschedule people today Naomi: or. I mean, I was just asking them, I didn't wanna force the appointment or anything. I know some people just don't feel comfortable driving in snow and mm-hmm. right now. My schedule has a lot of flexibility in open spots, so I didn't mind like being like, Hey, if you're not comfortable, I totally get it. Yeah. Michael: So then were they all able to reschedule or were they like, oh, I'll get it back to you, or, Naomi: um, one of them's getting back to me, she tends to only come here because right across the hall is like that pediatric therapy group. Mm-hmm. and their therapist is supposed to come in on my dental visit with him, so she has to re coordinate that whole thing. And then the other one is my cousin and her kids . So you better come, we rescheduled her. I was like, you better be coming. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other ones were just the op and the sibling and they definitely came and it was actually good because I got to spend more time with them and. . It was like easier for sure, and I, it turned out to be a good visit, so it's all good. Now. I'm just here doing admin work. Michael: Oh, that's good. How long is normally like that new patient or that patient visitation that just happened? Naomi: I mean, I think if it was like recalls and then more frequently, I wouldn't say it would be take more than 20 minutes, but just because you're trying to get to know the families, you're talking, you're trying to understand what they're coming from. I would say it takes 30 to 40 minutes and I did some like same day like sealants and all that stuff on him, so. Michael: Hmm. Yeah. Are you asking for like reviews and referrals already or No. Naomi: So the mom today, she on her own says she's gonna refer a family friend to us, which was like really sweet. But like I'm starting to ask Beatrice to. say at the front like, Hey, if you had a great experience, which it sounds like you did, we really love a review, I'll be happy to send you a link once you're home. so we're starting that dialogue here. Mm-hmm. , no one has done it like in our face quite yet. And then 24 hours after the appointment we always send like a follow-up text Hey, we're hoping blah, blah, blah. Did. Well as you know, we're a brand new business and readings and reviews mean a lot to us. if you enjoyed your experience, we'd love to hear about it and here's a link. Gotcha. So you're doing that now? Yeah. Yeah. We started like those texts. So I have to work with Casper on like if it can be automatic because right now Yeah. I'm the one that's going in 24 hours after the appointment and sending that text Michael: message manually all the time. Naomi: Yeah. Right now. But I think there has to be a way to do it through Casper. Yeah, I was Michael: gonna say there has to be. Yeah. I would assume, Naomi: I dunno, they're very good at automation, so Michael: that's good. That's good. So far out of all the, I guess, software that you have, has any of 'em been like, I didn't really need this, or, eh, I expected more from you or kind of thing or No? Naomi: Mm-hmm. , Casper truthfully has been like my, I don't wanna call it saving grace, but I think it's the one that's like showing like a lot of great feedback. Beatrice, my front desk slash assistant, she loves it. she loves the patient communication, like she loves, like the ease of being able to see everything. the forms are something I'm just still trying to get a little bit more used to, but everything has been like really seamless so far in terms of like, at least the communication side, being able to do whatever I want. And so I'm, I'm extremely happy, but I love the fact that I don't have like Mango Flex. I don't know what else. Swell. Michael: I dunno what's like in those Ed Dental, all Naomi: that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next health, whatever. I'm very happy and as a minimalist myself, I just really appreciate it's a one all be all and one program. I don't have to like contact all these different people. it's just there. And what's also great on Casper, if none of you guys have like ever demoed it, they have like a little chat button, like on the main desktop page itself. So it's kind of nice that while I'm dealing with an issue or a question comes up, I can still have a chat text with them and they'll be able to fix things. While my day is going and it's up on a web browser, it's not like a software program that's integrated onto your desktop so I can access it from anywhere. Hmm. Michael: When it comes to the forms you mentioned, you're still getting used to that. . Naomi: So theirs is definitely more set up for gps, I think just PS just has a little bit of a different need. So like the extraction form, ? Mm-hmm. . Um, it's saying please don't smoke after the extraction. . I don't think my , my little seven year old today is gonna be having a cigarette afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Michael: Yeah. Naomi: I keep telling the parents, I was like, I'm so sorry. This is an adult form. I'm still working on the kids form. . Please ignore this part when you're signing the paperwork. . Michael: Yeah. They're like, oh no, he does. He does. They're like, Naomi: I, I, I assume Luna is not like smoking. Right? And she's like, no. I was like, okay. Just making sure , Michael: uh, that's funny. Okay. So just stuff like that you have to adjust. Naomi: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. I'm learning. I'm learning as we go. So far it's been Okay. . Michael: And then you also started your work, huh? Or your associateship. Naomi: Yeah. Yeah, so that's, I'm actually gonna be there for three days this week. Um, my boss that's usually there three times a week. He just got married last weekend, so he's kind of escaping for a couple weeks. So I opted to cover him cuz I haven't had a job since December. The bills are gonna be coming, so I figured might as well work the next three days and I'll just consolidate everyone as much as I can. Michael: Okay. That's cool. You're working what, three days? Naomi: typically I'm there Wednesdays and Thursdays, but this week I'll be there Wednesday, Thursdays, Friday. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Have you done any marketing since last week? Naomi: So I'm trying to reach out to one of the most local schools. right now, the daycares, we had dropped them off cupcakes and like tote bags for the employees. So I've been trying to contact the director. like about doing a presentation for the little kids. turns out like a few days after we went, some other pediatric dental office went and dropped off toothbrushes. So the director was getting us confused with them and blah, blah, blah. But basically he just said send him over an email. What we'd like to do, he's gonna forward it to the teachers and see which teachers wouldn't mind us Michael: Did you Naomi: forward the email? No, I literally just found this out last night, so, okay. That was part of my plan today to send an email, but I also don't wanna just send like a little text, email with like, bullet points. I think it would be a good idea for me to have maybe a small presentation or p d f like thing about this is like what I usually do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. just so I can have it for like future daycares or school presentations. Michael: Do you have something like a presentation already, or No? Naomi: I have an idea of what I would wanna do, but it really depends on the age of the kids. , like I think for more of a daycare sort of developmental thing, like having them, for example, you can do a happy tooth and like a sad tooth and kind of put foods mm-hmm. that like go towards a happy tooth or the small sad tooth. Another one would just be taking like a toothbrush and they can dip it in white paint and paint the tooth with the toothbrush. There's like little things like that just kind of just depends on what the teacher is up to. But I wanna be able to have, marketing materials also available as well. So outside of like the toothbrushes, I wanna be able to have like a small little, not just business card, but like a little detailed sort of like, I don't know what you call postcard. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , I guess a postcard. Mm-hmm. like some more bullet points that are a little bit more, um, catchy and stuff like that. So I'm just trying to make sure I have all the right stuff. Like available too. Yeah. And then the other marketing thing is we're having like a five day local business giveaway. starting next week. Mm-hmm. So I've been in contact with a few of the businesses in the Darien area. Um, three or four of them have offered to donate some product or services, and we're just gonna be matching each other on the days of the giveaway. Uh, so some like local people can get some swag two of them have been like really, really sweet and like totally on board to help promote me, like both internally as well as like on their social media. Mm-hmm. . So one of them is a local soccer league that just opened up in the past like six months. So we obviously definitely have the same age groups, like two to eight. they have currently like 50 people in the, 50 kids in the area that are part of their. Soccer league thing. And then in April they're gonna be doing spring registration, which is definitely gonna be even more people at that time. So they said that I could come in with swag bags and they would be giving it to all the parents for me, which is like really nice of them. So I'm trying to create like marketing materials dedicated to that. Like I'm trying to go the trauma route if your kid has this, here's a few bullet points. Don't forget to call us. We're also here. You know, stuff like that. And then, um, there's another business, it's like a stretching sort of thing. It's called Limber. Mm-hmm. . But, uh, they have a lot of middle school and high school students, so it's a little bit of a different age group than the soccer one, but they have a lot of like sport athletes as well who come and like, get their services. Um, a lot of the families like come into their thing and she was like, yeah, just drop off your business cards or whatever else you want. And I'd be happy to give it to anyone who I know who's a family. So. Nice. That's gonna be good. Michael: Yeah. we literally just came out with an article on the dental marketer.org website about how to do a presentation and get into schools. I'm reading it right now. There's a sample email reaching out to school administrators if you ever wanted to use it. Um, it's kinda like a good outline, you know what I mean? On saying like, the presentation will be approximately like, you know, this long and we'll cover topics such as the importance of brushing and flossing. Then you can kind of ensure what you're gonna do, the role of diet, oral health, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Naomi: Wait, that sounds like right up my alley. I know that in the marketing course you guys have really awesomely covered, like this thing. So that was my goal tonight, which was like, part of why I also didn't wanna send anything out like quite yet. I wanna be able to go in like sounding like a little bit more professional. Yeah. I was gonna re-listen to that part of the course and like, well Michael: read this, read this article about you. Like this one is a little bit more like up to which I'm gonna, we're gonna add it to the. Of course here pretty soon. But if you want to, um, look into this one, cause I think that would be cool. Also, at the same time I wanted to ask you social media-wise, what are you doing? Naomi: So I have, uh, someone who's doing graphics for me, she's putting out 12 graphics like a month. Um, I don't know if you can even get access to it, like right now while we're talking, but, Michael: it Instagram or Naomi: what? My, my Instagram. it's a little Denti Smiles, but basically I just sent her my branding stuff. I sent her some like pinpoints of like things I wanna cover for the month. So we just actually had a call like yesterday. My goal is obviously this giveaway for the next, like for next week we're gonna start promoting it. I'm starting to try to promote educational content through reels, um, and then. . I also have just, one of the things I keep getting a lot of questions from parents, just because it's on my website quite yet, is what insurances am I in network with? And that's something A, I'm working on the website side, but B, I wanna now start like publicizing through social media. I was waiting to get in network with few more before I started putting the word about it out there. And I also created an in-house membership plan, so I just sent her all those details. So that's gonna be starting to get pushed out during the month of March. Michael: Gotcha. So do you guys have like a specific day where you're like, this is the day we're gonna create a ton of content for Instagram? Or is Instagram your main, I guess what's gonna be your main. . Naomi: Yeah. And anything that's going from Instagram is going straight to like our Facebook page at the moment. And I'm still playing with Facebook ads like a little bit, but what I, I haven't created any specific ad just for Facebook. I've just been boosting some of the posts that are a little bit more engaging, more educational or more about come to little DTI for X, Y, Z. And I'm just kind of seeing right now like what is biting and what's not biting so that then I can kind of know where do I want my efforts to go into a little bit more. Am I getting more engagement on reels and cool, I'll make a reel. Um, am I getting more from some of the stuff that I spent more time on artistically fine. Then I'll try to come up with a little bit more creative posts. I just don't wanna keep bleeding money out into something that's not actually gonna be working for the sake of saying it's a Facebook ad. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So I'm just trying things out right now with Michael: the little things that you've been trying out. Mm-hmm. , I mean, not the little things, a lot of things that you've been trying out, but the little time that you've, I guess, been trying it out. Mm-hmm. , what have you seen where you're like, This looks like it's moving the needle Naomi: Interestingly, um, one is like my business card logo. I don't have it with me right now, but it's, I had done like a specialized like photo shoot months ago that I'm gonna plan on be putting out on like social media. Um, they're just like basically taking everyday objects and it's gonna be the way I speak about like dental education mm-hmm. . But in that photo shoot, one of the images was specifically for my business cards and like any sort of related content. when I posted that on Facebook as like we are opening up February, that one just blew up. Like the amount of dms I was getting about like, oh, I love the creativity, I love this. It got a lot of engagement, I think just like from maybe the way it looked. and then secondly was anything that's been involving my. which I wasn't expecting. . , Michael: you're like my face, which I wasn't Naomi: expecting. . like, that's a good thing though, I guess, right? No, it's great. Like, thanks guys, like for liking, but I kind thought uh, initially Little DTI was the office and I'm kind of like an actor for a little enti. Hmm. So I wasn't planning on like promoting me solely as this is Dr. Naomi's office, this is Little Denti. So as a provider I started showing the staff a K, me, and Beatrice. So when I start putting my face out there like a little bit oh, this is Dr. Naomi, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those have been getting a lot of more engagement than I was like expecting. So I think I'm just gonna start trying to promote things like of me doing stuff around the office or whatever, not specifically for Dr. Naomi, but just. little dentists, providers, or whatever you wanna call it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. . Michael: So, yeah. Are you, are you also taking pictures of you going to these places, where your ground marketing or doing events and stuff like that? Like, that'd be good, I think. Naomi: Yeah. That was, uh, a mistake I made when we went around and I didn't do that. Mm-hmm. , but, as a small, like refresh, I'm in a medical building and there's seven other businesses in my particular building, but we have a neighborhood build, literally right next door to me is another medical building full of 10 businesses. they're all owned by the same like landlord. And he gave me all their information so I could connect with them. So I'm gonna be doing stuff with them and I think through them I'm gonna. Showing that like, I'm coming to these businesses, going to the pediatrician's office, blah, blah, blah. The hardest part that I'm actually finding, and maybe it's just because I'm in a suburb and I'm coming from like a city in the city, pretty much every single location and company has a social media page. Like it's probably one of the most widely used ways to connect with like customers in New York City here. Like not so much, if they do have an Instagram, I would say 60% of them are actually active. There's been some that are just, haven't even been touched since 20 20, 20 21. And then at least like 15% of them just simply do not have Instagrams. So for example, the pediatrician here, there's two of 'em, Stanford Pediatrics and Healthy Child. Neither of them have Instagrams and I don't know how to show, Hey, I went to blah, blah, blah, and have them possibly repost it or something like that. Just because they don't have an account. . Michael: Yeah, I wouldn't, try to be a collaborator with them. I'd just more just take it for the content, you know what I mean? Like, hey, like we're here. And people would be like, oh my God, my kid goes there. Mm-hmm. , you know, and then that's it really. And then you can like, do the hashtags of their, the community. Not so much like, cuz they have one. That's Naomi: actually funny you were saying that because I'm trying to figure out now now that I'm getting my groove and I'm kind of understanding things a little bit more, I wanna do something silly for St. Patty's Day. Get a little bucket and fill it up with like gold Hershey kisses, even though I'm a dentist, whatever. I like to give out candy . Yeah. Just like little things like that. Easter is coming. So like, the fun of these holidays that are coming up my way along with delivering them to like other kids, kid-friendly places like around here, e pediatricians, um, maybe like even nursing places, lactation places, doulas, like, all of that sort of stuff. I wanna try to find these businesses and just start connecting just like have some fun with it. Michael: Yeah, I think it'll be nice. I think you'll, you will, but yeah, I'm looking at your Instagram right now. It's pretty good. Like as far as like the colors and everything, you know? Yeah. And then the, the content, I think last time it was at in the hundreds and now we're looking at it and it's in the two hundreds. So, . Naomi: Yeah. It's slowly like getting built out, like a little bit more. It's kind of fun, like seeing it grow. I remember, last, I think you and I spoke last, like Wednesday maybe and mm-hmm. when I saw Beatrice on Friday, I was like, Beatrice, we're at 1 99. I can't wait till we get 200. And then at the end of the day, we had 2 0 2 or something. And I like high-fived her. I was like, yo, , Michael: this is, this is fame bro. This is fame. . Yeah, . Naomi: I was like, do we get our blue check? Mark Michael: a message Instagram right now. Be like, I'm ready for it. Like Naomi: this. You right. I'm ready to be Michael: verified. . No, but it's gonna be good. It's gonna be cool. I think that's the key though. You have to, um, everybody I talk with who, you know what I mean, obviously has a lot of followings where they do have the blue check mark. They kind of do say that. They're like, yeah, even though it's your business, you gotta somehow make it your own kind of thing. Right? Unless you're like a big brand like Nike, you don't see the c e o posting his face or anything like that, right? Naomi: I'm taking all, like the little wins, like when Charlie, my dog comes and visits, I'm constantly showing him, like throughout the day we had the photographer come in yesterday for the giveaway, so we kind of showed him sitting in like the midst of all of this. People are like, oh my God, he's so cute. it's nice to get those like little engagement stuff. today before we walked into the office, Beatrice and I took a picture in like the snow for example, the snow day. And it's just like little silly things. And now I'm starting to get a little bit more patient, um, content. So like today I extracted a tooth. she took a picture with her tooth fairy certificate that I give for any kid that whose teeth I take out. Um, and so she looks like miserable cuz she was like hardcore like standing, but it's still a cute picture Nonetheless. ? Yeah, . She's like wearing a mask and like her eyes just look like she. So intensely . Michael: So I'm like, Naomi: who's the sweetest person? Um, oh, just not in front Michael: of the camera. . Maybe like if, if you could, but that you make people, the parents sign a consent Naomi: or? We, I have been like having them just sign something. But through Casper, again, I need to actually create like a real social media form because I'm not loving like what I do currently have right now. What are you doing right now? so when I hired Beatrice, there's like a thing that says like, oh, you'll be allowed to be on like the social media, blah, blah, blah. I just kind of took that blurb and I like send it to them and I'm like, Hey, just like acknowledging this. Yeah. So yeah. Worst case scenario, they yell at me to take it down. That I take it down, Michael: but yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's like the worst case I think. Yeah. Wanna say. But that'd be cool, like to post that up and make it like a caption contest. , what is she thinking? Like best, funniest one wins or whatever Right. Kind of thing. That would be, that would've to be really funny. Naomi: Yeah. Yeah. Like I swear that Luna really had a great visit, but what do you think she's actually thinking? . Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Funniest catch wins. Yes, exactly. . Think about that. Think about that. Awesome. Okay, so this episode we're gonna talk a little bit about systems that will be implemented and ones that you implemented already. Okay. What have you implemented already? And what I mean by systems is like, it can be anything from not software related, right? But like anything from like morning huddles, downtime, protocol, patient experience, new patient experience, uh, recalls, things like that. Naomi: I guess first I'll start with uh, we had Jean, my consultant come in for two days before opening, and she kind of went through the idea of systems, like with us a little bit. some of the systems that she's pretty rigid on is obviously she's a consultant, so she's always thinking like financially. Mm-hmm. , she. Was very big about making sure that you don't lose track of your patients. Um, so she set up if a patient like requires treatment, say, I don't know, an extraction of a tooth, she has like paper forms that we have to fill out that stays in a binder right by the front desk that we constantly have to refer to. So on down days, like when Beatrice is like here at the office, when I'm at my associate job, she has like a stack of papers that she can go through and make sure there's no unscheduled treatment. She also has like in that same binder, kind of like a follow up schedule of every seven day, seven days you contact this next batch. And so she put in a lot of paperwork systems, if that makes sense. Um, she just believes that like electronically, like things are really great. . There also needs to be a paper trail as well. Mm-hmm. tracking patients. so that's been like one thing we've been trying to work on. It's a little bit weird doing it. It seems kind of excessive only because it's just me and Beatrice right now. We don't, we only have 20 patients, like in our roster, . Mm-hmm. . But I'm pretty sure once we add on like more staff, more front desk and all of that, it's probably gonna be a system that's good to implement just so that anyone and everyone who's involved in the office knows where to find unscheduled treatment. now in terms of morning huddles, that's not something we're doing per se officially, mostly because Beatrice and I traveled together. When we come to the office, um, we either take the train together or we're both in the car. That's kind of when we connect and we sort of talk about like our day. Hey, we have X, Y, Z coming up. Hey, we have these tasks. we're just constantly checking in with each other. So we haven't exactly done that. properly in the office itself, but we do have the talks that we expect. So for instance, what I usually bring up whenever I'm talking with Beatrice is like, okay, what patients do we have for the day? Anything special that we need to know about them? I would like you to do X, Y, Z. Mm-hmm . Then she'll bring up, Hey, I've been following up on this claim. I haven't done this. I need to do this with Open Dental doc. You have to also like call this person, like she also does like her check-ins, and then we just kind of talk about other things that. Kind of feeling need to be adjusted and stuff like that. So that's just a daily conversation that me and Beatrice always have together. when we do plan on like adding on a third person, I am probably gonna make it more of an official morning huddle, but right now it's just working for us because of the way that we travel together. Michael: Yeah. That's kind of like your morning huddle right there you know Naomi: what I mean? Yeah. . Yeah, exactly. But I do think it's actually vital. I remember in my associate jobs, they kept trying to push like morning huddles on us, and we had like treatment coordinators that we worked with individually, and it just always felt like a waste of time. Maybe it was just the way that the office was set up or something, but I'm finding personally a lot of value in them and just having those check-ins. And God, I feel like I'm promoting Casper, like hardcore in this, in this. But, um, Casper also has like a task list that I can assign Beatrice. So it'll be like, Hey Beatrice, I need you to do like this, this, this, this. And I can even put due dates on it. Mm-hmm. . And then I can see when she's checking it off and if she needs something from me, she can also task me. And it's just like really nice that I can go back home and she like put in something like, yo, you need a, I don't know, email Mike about like changing the podcast. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or something like that. It's nice to have that system there as well and that all of us have access to so we can kind of see what we all need to do. , patient experience. That's actually funny that you bring this up. Um, this is something that me and her have been having more conversations as of late. I think the past like couple weeks, I've only been open 20 days. Wow. So it feels like Michael: longer. Have you been open 20 days? 20 days Wait, 20 working days or like 20 days? In Naomi: just 20 days in total. I open up. It's still a lot. That's a lot. That's a, that's a lot. Yeah. It feels kinda weird though when you say that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's good though. Out loud. I think the past couple of weeks though, have been a lot about like just us getting our footing in like our own space and like just trying to figure out we're both friendly people. We're nice people. So I think just naturally we're like, Hey, how are you? Blah, blah, blah. But everything I'm doing right now really needs to have a foundation so that when my team grows, all those people are acting in the same boundaries that I want for my brand to have. does that mean like for example, when someone walks in, do you stand up or walk around the desk? Do you give 'em a tour of the office? Do you go by first name? What are all of those like little minute like patient experiences and interactions that are part of your brand and also part of the patient experience that you want? So now that we're having a little bit more downtime on like during the day, Beatrice, I am trying to make our focus on stuff that has nothing to do with me on the days I'm not here. But yesterday we were having like a pretty good dialogue about like patient experience and what we really want and what does that mean. those are systems that we're just trying to create like a little bit more and whenever we decide on something, I'm having her create like a manual in a way that, so when someone, or, yeah, hopefully soon, but like whenever someone does join the team, they have the words that we're using, the dialogues that we expect and blah, blah, blah. Michael: What? How would it work if, when someone comes in, right? Mm-hmm. and then they're, they come in from a practice that, you know what I mean? Like another practice. they come in how would you know if you're like, Hey, no, use what we have, but what if they're like, but this works better. Naomi: I think better is different for each person, right? but I think that's also on me to be open and receptive to hearing what they say. Cuz it could be true, it could be better, right? Mm-hmm. , I, I might not know. I don't know everything, and I might be like, oh, whoa, wait, that's actually like a really good thing to use. Yeah, let's like implement that and let's like all try it out. , but better to them might just be that they don't understand little density quite yet. And like what I want out of the patient experience and maybe hopefully through conversation or seeing the way that we interact, they'll actually be like, oh, this actually works for you guys. But I'm always open to hearing what someone thinks is better. it's kind of nice for someone else to be thinking about it instead of me . Um, but it doesn't mean that it will Michael: work. . Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Yeah. Because I know sometimes people want to come in and you know what I mean? Depending on Yeah. I've felt like it's depending on a couple things, like their experience and also like age, if that makes sense. Yes. You know what I mean? Like you hire like a old like, no, I don't wanna say older, but like a really, really older right person. And then they're like, no, older than you, is what I mean, right? Naomi: Oh, no, totally. Totally. it's amusing to see even like for example, gene Gina is older than both me and Beatrice. , she's fantastic with communication. She's dealt with it on multiple different levels throughout her career, but the way that we even would go about something, what she views as like a great patient experience, I'm like, we could do one step better. I'm valuing like these minute details while she is like, well, I'm valuing this part. So it's like funny to kind of like see the differences, like right Michael: there. What minor details or minor details are you battling then? Naomi: I think what makes your practice stand out besides like maybe your demographic reporter and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that's fun stuff is really like when a patient, the moment that they contact your office, right? Mm-hmm. , even if something as simple as like how many rings before your front desk picks up the phone. Is it two or is it. . all of those like tiny, tiny little details make such a big difference. for a patient experience when they're placed on hold, how long do you keep on, on hold for? How do you communicate with them? when they walk through the door are you saying, hi Michael, it's really great to see you and what's your name? And things like that. Do you stand up at the desk? Do you offer them a water? Do you do all those things? Those little details I think is what's gonna make your office stand out versus the office, like down the street if they have the exact same thing. So those are the experiences like I value, I might, I do think I'm a good clinician, but like I think dentistry, like the actual clinical dentistry is maybe 10% and eighth of what it is that you're actually doing on a day-to-day. Mm-hmm. , you really need to make sure that a patient, and in my case, the parents are really getting care and value and like trust within our office. and the way I might interact with a new patient would be different than maybe a recall patient. I haven't reached a recall phase. , I've only been open 20 days. Right? Uhhuh? . But , maybe the time that I'm taking with a new patient and just like discovering who they are. Like those interactions, those little details, like what is a kid's favorite color right now, for example, it's gonna be different than a recall patient, which I've already built up that rapport with a little bit more. So all of those, like I think details really, really do make a big difference. And I would hope that when I bring on an associate, that's the stuff that I have written down of what I expect of them to be doing as Michael: well. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Do you have a protocol or like system for like the end of day, like this is what everybody, Beatrice is what you need to do At the end of the day, Naomi, this is what I need to do at the end of the day kind Naomi: of. Yeah. So I think we just naturally fell into the roles versus like it being listed. But since I'm the one in the back, like kind of dealing with the kids and like more of the op stuff, I'm the one that's basically cleaning up the rooms. I run the autoclave, I run, I do all of that behind the scene stuff. Beatrice is like confirming everything was checked out. Okay. She'll run the production reports, she'll make sure like the phones are being forwarded to my cell phone. Um, there's no pat last minute patient communication stuff. Um, any admin related things, that's what Beatrice is taken care of at the end of the day. So I'm definitely the one who's in charge of making sure all the sections are off, all of this is off, blah, blah, blah. Um, and it's just, it's been working for us so far. Um, but we'll see. I'm open to it changing, but it hasn't been too drastic right now. Yeah. Michael: I think when you get like an assistant and stuff like that, it's, it is gonna, you know what I mean? Hmm. Change the Oh, yeah. Naomi: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. Michael: What's the like. Have you guys, or did Jean ever give you guys like a weekly maintenance, monthly maintenance kind Naomi: of thing? Yeah. So that's actually funny that you're saying that because me and her name Beatrice have been talking about like how we wanna implement this. Jean gave us like just through her training manual, kind of like what you should be doing weekly, what you should be doing monthly. And me and Beatrice have been trying to figure out what's gonna work for our office. So for example, I don't even think this is written Gene Sing, but I have AAC chairs. when the guy came, he was like, you have to make sure that you maintain them a certain way during the week. Definitely cabby, wipe them down, do whatever it is you need to do, but you need to actually like, rinse off the cabby, wipe residue with some simple soap water and a microfiber cloth, but one time a week. It doesn't have to be anything more than that, but you have to do that to maintain the longevity of your chair. So now like, When do we do that? ? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be every Friday. Cuz Fridays, I'm trying to close a little bit early just so we can use like the last hour to do those little catchup things. It's right before the weekend. Mm-hmm. , maybe every Friday is when we do all the cabby wipes up. That's when we do anything autoclavable and like blah, blah blah. So we're now approaching that one month mark where we have to like kind of run through the stuff with my chairs, my autoclave, all that stuff. I just haven't figured out what day of the month I want that on. so T B d . Michael: Okay. That's good. Wait, the chairs are a weekly maintenance thing or a monthly? Yeah, Naomi: so definitely he told me just like once a week, just wipe down the cavi, wipe residue. That's all you need to do and it's going to expand the length of your chair. Michael: Yeah. I wonder if that's every chair or, cause I don't, I don't remember Never doing, I mean the CBI wipes here all the time. Right. after every patient, but. The sofa. Yeah, Naomi: I know. I never, I personally haven't seen that myself, but like I haven't worked in an office that had eight x chairs, so I don't know if it's because like their leather is like a little bit softer and like more malleable. Like I think I've used Peloton and cranes chairs and I've used uh, forest chairs and you can definitely feel the difference in the leather. It's like way more like firm, so Yeah. As porous. Yeah. Yeah. So I dunno if that has anything to do with it, but I'm listening to the guy right now. best Michael: you do? Yeah. Listening to the guy. Yeah. Okay. That's good. So you're gonna have, now are you writing all this stuff out, Naomi? Like the weekly maintenance, are you thinking about it throughout the month or how Yeah, Naomi: so just because I'm running the OP stuff, like the backroom stuff, like at the end of the day, I'm the one that's like remembering it. But I think what I might do is. Uh, calendar, in the back, and then just like for the entire year, like right on the Fridays with the checkbox, like next to it. I, I don't know what system to really implement right now. Honestly, if anyone has one for like, how to handle that, that would be great. But I can easily, assign tasks, I can do all that stuff. But I think it's important that it's written somewhere, almost like a monthly, like repetitive thing. We have a Google calendar that Beatrice and I share for like the office. office. I don't know if I should put it on there, but I have room in my sterilization to put up a calendar, so I was like tempted to kind of just put it up on there. Michael: Hmm. you, you and Beatrice have your own separate Google Naomi: calendar? Yeah, we both use like Gmail, so I just, Before we physically were coming into the office so that we could like kind of, she knew like when I wasn't gonna be available, um, what I was expecting when I was expecting her to be in the office. We have a shared Google calendar on there and also through Dark Horse. All of my email platforms are through Gmail. So even though it's like hello little denti.com, it's a Gmail workspace. Mm-hmm. . So everything is done through Drive and the calendar. Michael: Okay. That's nice. So that's like a little, or not a little, but like a whole system in itself kind of thing, right? Yeah, Naomi: exactly. Exactly. Michael: Are you gonna add more of your team members on that calendar or no? Naomi: I think so. I think especially who whomever's third, I'm assuming it would be an assistant, but, whomever is on there. I think they need to be on there as well, because just because your assistant doesn't mean you wouldn't be doing admin and all that stuff, so, Michael: mm-hmm. when it comes to admin work and your systems for that, how do you know what to do? . Naomi: so Jean did kind of like guide us like a little bit about what your expectations should be like in terms of the insurances, blah, blah, blah. I think just an understanding from working as an associate in other offices, I've been able to get a grasp of what needs to be done, but quite frankly, if I'm really honest, I'm still learning. for example, yesterday was the first time I got an insurance check like ever to the office. it's just like a fuzzy feeling. I finally got paid . I haven't put Beatrice on like my checking account yet for the office. So I'm the one that has to go and deposit it at Chase. I'm trying to figure out like that system for it. Am I comfortable yet with her doing it? Am I not? Even in putting in the check number into open dental, having her like input the things like properly, are we scanning every single e o b in the check? all of that stuff. I'm just trying to figure out the systems, like as it comes and I'm hoping to make a proper protocol as it's like kind of Michael: echoing right now. You're doing all that though, Naomi: kind of slash I'm telling her to do it. So . Okay. . Like for example, the checks came yesterday. Me and her were driving in my car, so she was opening it up. We got it like right before we left. , I kind of thought they were gonna be claim denials just because I've been dealing with issues with Delta Dental. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Then we thought they were checks, and I was like, okay, great. I took the checks home with me, and then when I brought them in today, I was like, all right, let's like get this scanned into each patient's chart because it has the EOBs on there. I was like, let's make sure that all the insurance checks are like put into like their accounts. So I kind of tell her, but then she actually does it and then, I mean, one of her best qualities is her problem solving, so we we're having some issues like understanding some like minute things with like payments on open dental. She immediately gets on the chat with them and like, we'll figure it out. and then she'll update me. She'll be like, yo, by the way, this is like how you do this. I'm not doing it per se, but I'm letting her know what to do. Michael: Makes sense. do you trust her already to be like, go to the bank? Make this deposit? Naomi: I think so. Um, I have Chase for my bank account. Um, it's literally right across the street. Mm-hmm. , so I don't think I care so much if she deposits and stuff, but I'm just trying to figure out the system of am I, do I want the, we're gonna be doing EF fts soon, it's not gonna be these personal checks. So will she have access to a checking account of any sorts? will I give her access to electronically deposit all the checks, or is that something I should be doing? I'm trying to figure out where my comfortability is when I research online or just see what others are doing. It seems to be a 50 50 split. I just have to figure out where my personal I think one of the hardest things for me, and at least anyone else I'm talking to is that it's hard to give up control. But there's gonna be a time that I just don't have the bandwidth to be doing this. There's a reason I'm paying someone to take care of like, ,, all this stuff. Mm-hmm. . But it's just, I think right now it's a little bit hard to kind of give up that control because then I know exactly what checks are coming in. I know exactly what this and this is, but I do know I need to let someone do it and start to learn to kind of let go control a little bit while keeping an eye on it. Michael: Yeah, no, makes sense. Makes sense. Awesome. Okay, so then monthly performance reviews. are you gonna have those or not really? Are they gonna be quarterly, weekly? I don't know. What are you thinking? or yearly. Naomi: Definitely quarterly. I think that's really important. Quarterly, it allows me to do the three and six month checkup, which I think is really good. Mm-hmm. , um, once again, Jean, she had created like an employee review sort of thing about are you up to standards on X, Y, z I just have a personal angst against objective criticism of someone. And I mean that in the sense of giving someone a, say for example, a score of four out of five that just. Sounds awful to me. I don't know why. I'm just, I don't know. Like maybe it's because I've been in school for too long, so like numerical grades or like anything on this sort, yeah. Just doesn't really like work for me. I do think it's important though, to always like, highlight someone's positive traits and what they're really, really doing great on. and then things I would like for them to work on. But I think those are so individually based versus even like somewhat agree, agree, strongly disagree, like all of those sort of like things, I don't know. I, I'm just trying to figure out like what works for me on that front. But I think would, like for example, bhs just because I have her, I think probably sometime in May, I do wanna catch up with her and be like, Hey, I'm noticing you're doing a really great job with like, communication, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I would like for your role to start including, more responsibility with the back. So I've noticed like we haven't really like done that before, so now I want you to do this. Mm-hmm. and let go of like X, Y, Z I think it just needs to be like almost like a dynamic dialogue Michael: a little bit. That's interesting. Yeah. in Jean's performance review, I guess outliner template, is it like, hey, number them from one to one to five, one to six, and you're not comfortable with that. You're not like, I don't wanna number, but you kind of have to see it. Like maybe you don't have to do it that way, but You know what I mean? Kind of like how good are you doing? Naomi: I know I. . I think if I had an office manager underneath me, for example, and she was the one that was like doing these, I would want her to probably do it. But I think with just such an intimate team, I feel uncomfortable doing that at this moment in time. I do think it's important to like let someone know where they need to improve. Because for example, these quarterly reviews are also to see if and when they get a raise, right? Mm-hmm. , if I'm constantly just only giving positive feedback and then suddenly I'm like, yo, you're not getting a raise. That's not gonna make any sense. . Yeah. Yeah. but if I'm, for example, say in three months, I'm like, Hey, I need you to be on time a little bit more. I'm just noticing we're having some, a lot of discussion around like your, timeliness. Mm-hmm. . And then in six months I am still noticing it. At least that's documented even though they're doing a great job and everything else. And then when it comes time to the raise, then I have it the ability to be like, you know, this is just a common theme that we've been like bringing up. So I just need to figure out how I actually wanna do it. I, I guess I'm just taking it how I personally am, and I would hate to be graded out of score of five or even 10. I think I would prefer like more specific bullet points that are just related to me, but maybe I'm just being like sensitive and Michael: need I agree. But at the same time, I think, if I were to like, okay, yeah, you're a Naomi, I'm sorry, but when it comes to like interpersonal skills or personal or whatever, I don't know. Right. Like Picking up the phone, timeliness, timing, let's just talk about that timing year or two, but here's why. Right. Kind of thing. Here's the thing, there's two ways I think you can do this. Have you heard of the sandwich compliment? Naomi: Oh, like start with a compliment about them. Yeah. Michael: Yeah. I've heard of that. And then do you know who, um, Irene Iku. Naomi: Sounds very familiar. I feel like you've brought her up Michael: before. she's been on the, on the podcast. She's, um, on Instagram, tooth life, Irene. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's what, yeah, she's, I think she has a practice in Canada or something like that. She thinks that's, she hates that sandwich compliment. She, on the, she says, she's like, I think if you're giving enough good appreciation to your team, then you won't have a hard time saying what the heck? You're late. Right. Kind of thing. Um, but obviously in a better terminology, right. You're not gonna be like, what the heck? You're late. You know? You're gonna be like, Hey man like, is everything okay? Like, You're, you're, you're late, you know, again, this time. But I've gotten enough good feedback and appreciation from you to be like, okay, all she does is tell me negative stuff, which is not true. I don't know. Which one do you prefer to those two? Naomi: The latter. I think Irene's for sure, I think you really need to motivate your staff and I think sometimes motivation comes in positivity. I don't think it always needs to just come in what? What they need to work on. So let me just use Beatrice for example again. Mm-hmm. , she has been getting actually a lot of compliments from parents about her communication through text. people who haven't even seen us yet, they're like, Beatrice, you've been, you're so great at like your job. Thank you for communicating. This is like the first time I've ever gotten like such good communication before. And she's feeling very proud of that. Mm-hmm. . And it makes me happy that she's feeling proud. And that's one of my biggest pillars, like in this office, is like transparency and communication with my patients. So the fact that she's doing it, I couldn't be more thrilled. I constantly motivate that side of her by letting her know, I see this and I appreciate a hundred percent that you're doing a good job. At the end of the day. If she handled, for example, an insurance claim that. Has been one of our biggest pain in the butts. Mm-hmm. all I have no problem. And think it should be said like, good job, like high five, like you're doing really, really great at this. It did make it easier when I did have an issue, with her, it was a miscommunication between us. I wanted her here at the office not working from home and she like misunderstood what I had said and landed up like working from home. It was a quick fix, not a big deal. Yeah. However, when I was able to tell her, hey, let me just like restate like kind of what I expect from you, blah, blah, blah. This, these are the days I expect you to be in the office. It made it very easy for me to talk to her about it. And she knew I wasn't coming from like a bad place. She was receptive to it cuz she was like, oh, normally, like Dr. Naomi would never say this. Mm-hmm. . So, and it was received well and so. , would it also work in that manner as well? If someone was constantly critiquing me, I'm just gonna be like, let down and would wanna distance myself. So Michael: yeah. I think sometimes people feel, or back then, I feel like it used to be like that where it's like you can't always compliment them or else, you know, when they, you do give them a compliment, they're gonna be like numb to it and it's, I don't think that works like that. You know what I mean? I don't think it's like that. I think you, it it's building blocks. You're getting built, built, built. Naomi: Yeah. But you also have to be confident to actually let someone know, like when they're not doing a good job. I think that's like where a lot of this stems from. It's like that anxiety about letting someone know that they're doing something wrong. I think that one of the reasons I don't love the sandwich technique is o oftentimes when people implement it, they use that word, but. instantly negates any of the positivity that's been said either before or after. Mm-hmm. . Cause you just send me, you focus on like the meat of the sandwich, , you're just like, Ugh, they're mad at me and this butt, it doesn't even matter. It's Hey Naomi, you're nice, but . Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, okay. And you can say all these different things, but I still know the technique enough to know that you're just trying to soften the blow. Yeah, Michael: I agree with you. I feel like it does that, or I've noticed what I do is I'm like, Naomi, man, like I appreciate you coming on the podcast. You know, you're a fantastic person, but you need to say more things, right? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I'm like, but you know, other than that, you're really great. So don't even worry. You know? Don't even worry about then now I just like the one thing, the negative thing. Yeah. I like even undermine that myself even more. I'm like, don't worry about that. You know? So, It's kind of um, that's weird. Naomi: It, it does undermine it. And then honestly, like if you would've just told me that right now, then I think I leave confused. I'm like, but isn't really that big of a thing cuz you just complimented me too. So . Yeah, yeah, yeah, Michael: yeah, yeah. I'm like, uh, . So it's better to just do the other thing than how what I, yeah. Yeah. What new idea. Okay. That's good. That's good to know. I also Naomi: think, I don't know if this has been something that's been talked about like with Irene, maybe I should look into it, but I think intentionality behind someone's mistake also is a big thing too. I don't know, just I'll even use dating or relationships or whatever. Mm-hmm. sometimes when like our partners like do something that irritates us, it doesn't mean that they came from a bad place. They might have no idea. They might not. They might just be going about their day and they're like, oh, I like this person, but I'm still acting as me. And then you're like, Ugh, what you just did is so annoying. Um, it doesn't mean that they did it to annoy you, it's just whatever they did was just like the wrong thing. I think that kind of goes the same in business. for example, if Beatrice like misunderstood me or did something that I don't really love, I don't think that she came from a bad place. She's not purposely like, I wanna screw you over Dr. Naomi. why would I go after her with like such judgment? Michael: No, yeah, I agree. But then let me ask you, how much of that would you tolerate where you're like, you know, that's not her intention, you know, but she keeps not maybe the same thing but different things. It's like you're just misinterpreting, or I'm misinterpreting your actions and we're not hitting the ball Naomi: here. . Well, I think it's like dating. Then you gotta break up. It's like, I love you, but our communication sucks and no matter what we're doing, it's not working. So , I just think maybe we're not suited for one another. Michael: Do you have a system for that firing Naomi: policy? Yeah, through HR for health, but I don't remember it. . Michael: Wait. HR for health Naomi 9 DRAFT: fires? Naomi: People for you or if I remember when I made the employee handbook, there was like a section about if you don't do X, Y, Z, there's like the right to it or termination or something. So they wouldn't do it for me, but they have all the paperwork and all the stuff that I would. Need to kind of go about it. But yeah, I would probably have to just be like, this is not working. It's like breaking up with a patient. They don't believe in what I'm doing. Audios. Michael: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. There has to be systems for that too. You know what I mean? Yeah. Naomi: But you know about the firing. I'm hoping it doesn't come anytime soon. never Michael: happening is open . I know, but would, would you prefer having to fire someone or someone just ghosting you? Fire you Naomi: prefer firing? Yes, 100%. I don't do well with no communication. Michael: Was it me? What happened? What's going on? Naomi: Oh my gosh. I would be questioning it like all the time. I'd be like, what did I do? What was wrong? Yeah. I'm totally the girl that like needs answers. Michael: closure. You're like, I need this closure right Naomi: now. Yes, Michael: closure. There we go. Got you. . Gotcha. Gotcha. Awesome. Okay. Uh, so then what's. Naomi: so definitely, and I think marketing is just gonna be a really big push for the next four weeks. So we're starting off March strong with like our five day local giveaway. I'm trying to get more personal, um, relationships going with gps, orthodontists, oral surgeons, pediatricians, like just in the area. I just really wanna start developing, ties with the community and that's just something I w really wanna dedicate, like my admin time and like time off to. So that's kind of like the goals for the next, next month. Yeah. Nice. Michael: Take as many like videos and pictures as you can with all that stuff. That's the key. That's gonna be it right there, you know what I mean? I think Naomi: the content is just something I'm I need to like remind myself that I have to do it. I'm also. Beatrice has also gotten to the point. She's like, I'm taking out my phone doc. I'm like, thank you, . Or I'll be like, Beatrice get out your phone. Cuz her camera's better for some reason on hers, even though we have the same iPhone, it makes no sense. But , Michael: I know the consistency with iPhones is weird, man. Naomi: But yeah, it's so annoying. Like mine is always hazy and I'm constantly having to wipe it down. Hers is like clean as a button, every single time and I'm like, what the heck? But do you Michael: think you got in the lens dirt and stuff or? No, Naomi: I, I have a gut feeling there's something wrong, but quite frankly I really wanna update my phone anyway. So maybe I'll just write it off as a business expense sometime soon. Michael: Yeah. , which one do, which one do you Naomi: have? the 11 Promax. Michael: Oh. Oh, that camera's good. I don't know why you, I know, that's Naomi: but like hers is like awesome. So I don't know. But yeah, like I think getting content's gonna be the other thing. Um, I'm just trying to really push out reels now. Someone messaged me saying I should really try to go on TikTok. She was like, it just allows you to branch out like further than just your community. So that's something I'm gonna consider. I don't know if I really want to, I had one viral video go on TikTok, and it had nothing to do with dentistry and then I got freaked out that it went viral. So I made my account private. . Michael: What was it about? It was Naomi: something so dumb. It was like about, um, there was like different sounds. It was like, uh, ambulance, gunshots, like all that stuff. Then there was like a sound of no more fan going in the background. And what it was, was just basically like New Yorkers can sleep through all these noises, but the moment the AC turns off, we all get up out of our bed. And it was just solely because I just wanted to see what TikTok was about. Yeah. I think I did it in like 2021 or something, and all of a sudden it just blew up. I think it got like a million views and then I was like, oh shoot. And then Oh yeah. Michael: Can you share it with us? Yeah. Yeah. I'll send play That'll be, yeah, yeah. Share it with us. So I was on the, literally right before this, uh, recording I was with, do you know who Dr. Simon Chart is? I don't think so. Okay. He's, um, he was telling me a little bit about, if you want, you can look him up on Instagram right now if you want, while I'm letting you know. But, um, he was telling me how he grew his, following and his patience and everything through Instagram. . But he said if he had to do it again, it'd be through TikTok. And he's like, and I know I would instantly kill on TikTok. Like, it would be, it'd be amazing. But, um, it's a whole different reach, a whole different, ballgame, like a machine. So if you want, Naomi: Well, dental, I just feel it's taking over and it's actually kind of fun because I think Instagram is all about like professionalism, making things look good. And I think Instagram is trying to make it toy with the reels. Yeah. I think the fun part about TikTok, at least when I'm enjoying like other creators, is like, , you can just go on like TikTok and you can mimic a kid just like acting up and like how you feel about it. But everyone finds humor in it because they expect TikTok to be lighthearted and mm-hmm. , I kind of wanna take advantage of that because like with kids it can be like funny, it could be horrible. It could be like, you could just like kind of make fun at it and parents could enjoy it. So my might as well, it's just like putting yourself out there is so hard sometimes and I just don't wanna be like, talked about or teased. So I, I just have to suck it up and do it. But I think you're right. Oh yeah, Michael: yeah. Him, him, yeah. Yeah. So he, he doesn't have TikTok, but he's like, if I did, if I did have to do it again, it would be on TikTok and he gave us like the reasons why. So, I don't know. It's something to think about. Something to think about. If you wanted Naomi: to go, why doesn't he go for it though? Like did he say anything about why he wouldn't just start right now? Even with a large Instagram following because he Michael: knows it will take time. . So he, he has like a family. He has some kids and then he has a wife and he has a practice. He has that business. He's running the toothpaste, right. Company. Yeah, yeah. All this other stuff. Um, and so he's like literally . Yeah. Yeah. He's like my pa Literally, I knew I would have to take some time out in order to make content for that. Right. And so that's the only reason he, I mean, he hasn't yet, I don't know if you will, but it was interestin

At the 2023 Global Missions Conference we explore how God is using us to make “all things new” here on earth and in the ages to come!   Dr. Michael Young-Suk Oh is Executive Director/CEO of the Lausanne Movement. Lausanne was founded in 1974 by Dr. Billy Graham and Rev. John Stott and has played a unique role in helping to convene the leaders of the global church and to guide the strategy for global missions. Lausanne has also helped to introduce and champion some of the key mission strategies of our day including unreached people groups and the 10/40 window.   Michael is of Korean descent, born in America. Michael received his BA, MS, and PhD degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. He also completed an MDiv at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School as well as an MA in Regional Studies, East Asia, at Harvard University.   Michael answered the call to lead the Lausanne Movement because of a passion that he “wants the world to look different in ten years." Michael, his wife Pearl, and their five children served as missionaries in Japan for over 10 years and now live near Philadelphia.

In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the increased police presence in the city and how that is affecting both real and perceived crime. Is this because police have less to do as a result of the superheroes helping out? Is the presence of superheroes itself causing criminals to give up lives of crime, and maybe even become heroes? More to the point, is that what happened with the Green Goblin - he was inspired to become a hero? If so, why has he not changed his appearance? Does he want to be scary, or is what he truly looks? And how the heck does he balance on that glider - does he have abs of steel?Behind the Issue:This is the third appearance of the Green Goblin. Clearly, he does not become a hero. Steve Ditko and Stan Lee decided to keep the Goblin's identity secret, but behind the scenes they were debating who he should be. Lee wanted him to be someone from Peter's life, but Ditko wanted him to be a stranger. The disagreement meant that the Goblin's identity remained a secret from the readers until Ditko left the title (the Goblin's identity was revealed in the first issue after Ditko was replaced). Oh, the drama!In this issue:The Green Goblin tries to take over the New York City underworld, and while they are not convinced, he is definitely scaring them. Meanwhile, Peter Parker notices that former reporter and criminal Frederick Foswell is back at the Bugle. Apparently, the Bugle's publisher J. Jonah Jameson believes in redemption, or at least the value in giving people a second chance. Peter is not convinced that this is a redemption story, though, and he tails Foswell, whom he notices speaking with a thug. Foswell turns over information to Jameson that the thug had on a crime boss, who in turn provides this information to the police. The Goblin is overjoyed with these pieces falling into place - he has set this whole thing up to help him with his hostile takeover of the world of crime. Peter then changes into his Spider-Man outfit and tracks the Goblin, who tricks him into conflict with a mob boss and his lieutenants. Spider-Man basically does the Goblin's dirty work, taking out the gang and leaving them for the police. Realizing he has been played for the fool, Spider-Man finds and attacks the Goblin, who gets away. It's not all roses for the Goblin, though, who is disappointed to find out that Spider-Man did too good a job when he took down the mob boss and his entire gang, with the result that the Goblin had no gang to take over.Assumed before the next episode:The Green Goblin is going to need to rethink his whole gang takeover strategy.This episode takes place:After Spider-Man took down an entire gang.Full transcript:Edward: Feeling safer these days? Mike?Michael: No. ? No, I wouldn't say so. ,Edward: I feel like, like there's increased police presence on the streets. They're putting some crime bosses away. Is New York not a safer place than it was even a few weeks ago?Michael: Oh, well I guess that's standard than maybe, but I definitely have noticed a greater police presence in the last little while, certainly since the, a. Population of superpowered individuals on the scene. Do I feel safer before buildings could be captured and kidnapped and brought into space? I wouldn't say so in, you know, multiple invasions in New York City, butEdward: so, so, so, so clearly. Life is less safe now than it was in 1960 before.Michael: RightEdward: buildings. Were getting torn away, but I'm just talking about recently, like recently it feels like the superheroes are out on the streets. There's a bunch of them now. It feels like they're covering the ground around the monsters and the super villains, and that's freeing up the police to go and take out the normal villains.Michael: Well, I think so. I have noticed that there's more police for sure. I, don't know what element of that is performative and what element is that the costume vigilantes that we speak about every week have been in addition to attacking gods and monsters and aliens have also been attacking street level crime as well. There is no doubt that Ant-Man and now Giant-Man and Spider-Man and all the insect related heroes, I suppose are trying to deal with some street level justice, which probably is freeing up some time for the police to focus on other things, other elements of society that require policing. That's my guess. Or, is his performatively they're just trying to show that maybe they shouldn't be ignored. Yes, there's people flying through the air, but we're the police, darn it. And we're in the. Keeping you safe, .Edward: Yeah. That, that, that is something, right? If that performativeness makes us feel safer, it could also make the criminals feel less safe and drive the criminals back into the holes they came from.Michael: Maybe. It could, but I still wonder if it's just performative. It's almost just trying to get attention, if you know what I mean. Like it's like everyone's talking about Iron Man, but don't they know we're the real heroes, , and it's likeEdward: the, the every we have, we need more, less kids. Dressing up as Iron Man and more kids dressing up as everyday police officers.Michael: That's right.Edward: Let's have more realistic dreams. Kids. . .Michael: Yeah. Unless you are a super science genius, can invent your own costume, you should probably apply to the police academyEdward: don't expect to be superhero. Just be a regular, everyday hero.Michael: Yeah. And that's good enough. But no, but seriously, I guess I haven't made my mind up. I'd be curious about the statistics. let's just call it regular crime and whether police are being freed up to deal with more of the regular crime that's why we're noticing it. And if they aren't, if there's no real change in how much, in the impact of like regular crime and how it's being policed, then I think it is performative. And it just seems like they're just trying to get some of the attention. I have a mixed mind, not when it comes to the police in general, it's just they're not there to tell me what to do and not to do they're there to investigate crimes and well, and,Edward: and they've, and they, so they've had some successes lately, right? So, lucky Lobos basically says whole criminal enterprise got all swooped up. The Frederick Farwell, a former crime boss himself outta prison now working for the daily bugle, put together a. Basically did investigative reporting figured out where all of Lucky Lobo's financial records were kept and, blew it out to the police. And they shut down, not just the head of the family, but basically shut down the entire operation and that's gotta reduce crime. ?Michael: Well, yeah, it would, I think, I'm not saying that there haven't been some recent successes, it's just that I'd like to see that's more anecdotal. Or at least there's a recency effect here. I'd like to see what has been the impact? I guess I'd express it this way. What has been the impact of having superheroes and super villains out in, say, New York City on the ability of police to police regular crime? If there has been any impact, so is it that the superpowered individuals are taking care of that and a little bit of regular crimes such there's more effort being put into a policing regular crime or if it's just no impact at all. And it's just for show, I don't know.Edward: It's interesting when I was in business school, one of the studies that we looked at was about crime in cities. And clearly like when crime goes down, real estate prices go up. And so we, well, we cared about in business school was money Mike and how forget about safety, but how safety affects money. But the point was, When you could, one way to drive down crime and drive up real estate prices was to basically do us like a spike of policing. Because if crime was at a relatively low level, that meant the police that you had on duty could identify any new crime that happens and shut it down. But if crime is at a really high level, the same number of police can't handle all that crime, and crime goes unenforced, which then encourages more crime, cause you can get away with it. Your chances are getting cock down. And so you need to drive it down to a low level and then keeping. At that low level is a lot easier than getting it there to begin with. And so I wonder if this, like the spike in policing that we've seen, the performative nature of it, the fact that we have these superheroes doing stuff. Has that driven crime down to a level now that it's gonna be easier to maintain at a low level. And it's driving even super villains to become superheroes like so the Green Goblin, for example, now he's gone from being a villain to like apparently being a hero. And maybe that's because crime doesn't pay anymore. let's switch to the other side.Michael: Before we get to the Green Goblin, I understand the point you're making, maybe, I mean, again, but I think as a business person, you would like to see the data as would I, but I'm a little confused. Why are you saying the Green Goblin is, is acting like a hero?Edward: So Green Goblin was involved in this whole shutdown of The lucky Lobo criminal gang, he helped take them on and he was seen battling them and taking out the crime bosses. He's working for the good guys.Michael: Yeah, Goblin's always worked for the good guys.Edward: Are you saying? Saying maybe if he's gonna switch sides, he should change his name too and become like the green? I don't know. Green Elf, .Michael: I don't know. He is got this goblin mask, he looks frightening on purpose. So are you sure he's on the side of the angels now, ed, you don't see that maybe taking out a whole. Might be in the interest of someone who's previously acting like a villain and attacking the city.Edward: Oh, so you're saying that he's just taking out his competition?Michael: Well, I mean that's, yeah, I mean, cuz The Thing is, okay, how about this? Previously he was acting like a villain, dressed up like a goblin, and he's frightening. He's on this glider, he is throwing bombs. at a, I think wasn't at a TV state. At a, at a tvEdward: Wait, at, at, the fan event, the Spider-Man fan event. He was like terrorizing people.Michael: I think it was being filmed too, but whatever it was, it's certainly at a fan event. So that's a criminal? Who should be locked up? And so do we have such a short-term memory that he just is still wearing the same stuff with the same equipment? And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm good now. Well, he reallyEdward: yes and no. So we assumed he was a villain, but we also assumed that Spider-Man was a villain, right? There was a lot of assumptions flying around with these people, and it's not like Spider-Man and the Human, Torch haven't had public battles in Times Square, like the go what did the Goblin really do in his past event? He basically tried to attack Spider-Man, but like, it feels like everybody wants to attack Spider-Man. Maybe he's just like a guy who like has a grief with Spider-Man and now he's like trying to do.Michael: Wasn't he throwing bombs at crowds of people?Edward: Wasn't the Human Torch throwing like fireballs at crowds of people?Michael: I don't think he, no, I don't think he was at crowds of people, but I don't know. But may I assume you're right.Edward: They were in New York City and there were fireballs going around and there were people in New York City. Now nobody got hurt, but I don't think anyone got hurt from the goblins bombs either, did they? .Michael: I don't know off the top of my head, but I think there's a difference between throwing a bomb into a crowd of people and then actually being engaged in a fight. But anyways, I don't wanna make that go down, that so far cuz then we get the whole idea that you're right, they shouldn't be fighting in crowded places, but let's, okay, let's assume he's the go, the green goblins now a hero. You're a business guy. Is this good marketing? Like should he, what if he just got a new costume?Edward: Fair enough.Michael: He's truly on the side of angels and just changed it. So he looks like, I don't know, the,Edward: well, here's the other thing. Do we know it's a costume? Patel? Maybe he's like a Defor. Maybe he's like, that's his face. Like do we know it's like an actual mask? Maybe It's like, like, I dunno, like the Hulk looks kind of weird and stuff like there, there's all sorts of villains.Michael: I think it's a rubber mask. I, I think that the reporting shows it's a rubber mask. It's not like as a skin texture, but,Edward: maybe his, I think he, like Mike, we live in a world of monsters and aliens. Maybe his face just looks like a rubber mask, , and the poor guy can't change his face. The poor guy is like this ugly. Deformed thing that was driven into crime because it was deformity and people were making fun of him, mocking him, people like you. And now he's trying to go to the side of good and we're still mocking his like ugly.Michael: So you heard it here first, folks, ed, nevermind humanitarian, , goblin, goblin, defender,Edward: . I'm just, I'm just saying that not enough people defend the ugly people. People like there are focus groups and there are groups that help all these different people who have a tough time in life, but there's no group of like the Association of Ugly people that helps people like,Michael: Ed, I think that you've got the organizational skills. I think you're the person that should do that. But I wanna talk about one other thing before we go on to your pledge drive to help the criminally ugly people in the world. But what do you think about the green goblin? And I was, I was kind of thinking about this for a while. Like, what do you think about the fact that he is flying around on a glider like technology that doesn't exist? Right? He flies through the air at fantastic speeds. On the one you think, he must be a genius to invent that. But on the other hand, don't you think he would take some special training in order to manage that? Like I as a kid found a skate. Challenging, you know what I mean? as an adult,Edward: many people can use skateboards. Michael , many people use skateboards.Michael: It's, yeah. But to really use it like, to do tricks and whatever and to go down the street. But as an adult, I think I would find it impossible. But what do you think, but what kind of skill level would it take to properly manage that glider? I mean, we've seen it. We've seen it in action. It's incredible what he can do with it.Edward: Clearly, clearly the goblin has some skills.Michael: Some skills, but where do, where does he get the skills? So he gets it from, is he actually a military trained operative who's now broken, bad or good? Depending upon your view of him. Is he like,Edward: maybe, maybe he's just a really skilled skateboarder.Michael: really skills skateboarder . But what if he's a foreign national scent here to just ferment descent? I mean, I don't know, but that's the first things that jump to mind, right?Edward: Yeah. Yeah. So , it's po It's possible maybe I'm a foreign national here to do dissent. Who knows. I think jumping to the conclusion just because this poor man is ugly, that therefore he is a foreign national Michael. Like, like they're, they're ugly people Are, they're ugly Americans as well,Michael: what I'm saying. Forget the, you're the one calling him ugly, by the way. I'm not like, I've never called the,Edward: you said he's so ugly and he must be wearing a mask that no human can look as bad as this poor man looks .Michael: I think he's wearing a mask. I definitely think that, but you're the one that calls it ugly. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make though, is that to talk about what is where do you think the green goblin's from? Right, and I think the ability in and of itself to fly in that glider tells me that he's had some training.Edward: Or, or maybe he has like superpowers, like other people do. Like Spider-Man, I dunno. Like spider, I'm pretty sure Spider-Man doesn't climb walls and fly on webs cuz of training. He's not like some foreign national or military guy. He has like some sort of superpowers that give him like the powers of a spider. Maybe the green goblin has like the powers of a goblin. .Michael: Yeah. He's got like an amazing core, . so strong, and he's like, he's like, his quads are unbelievable. Just like the power of like standing crouched like that and flying at like standing upright, well, flying through the air at 50 miles an hour. The amount of strength that takes.Edward: He's, he's ripped man. The man is ripped. So all you women out there that are worried about his ugly face, but he's a ripped body. You know, this is the trade off that sometimes has have with men. But I think Spider-Man for example without any, I think additional training could be riding that glider, captain America could be riding that glider. Right. We, we have a lot, we have a lot of these superheroes that have special abilities. To me, it makes sense that the goblin has these special abilities too, and the fact that he, and, maybe he didn't invent the glider himself. Maybe Tony Stark invented the glider and gave it to somebody who had the superpowers to be able to use it. .Michael: I'll tell you what I think that the Green Goblin, if he's listening to our show, should feel comfortable coming on our show because , hi,Edward: because it's a radio show and it's no video, so he doesn't have to worry about his ugly appearance.Michael: no, I never said he is ugly and he is clearly gonna offend and Ed, who thinks he's a good guy? So, come on the show Goblin, but leave your goblin pouch outside with the bombs. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

Higher Interest rates and lower debt sizing is what ALL apartment syndicators are anxious about today. What is your defensive strategy? Michael gives you INSIDE INFORMATION on how he is structuring his transactions in this environment. Survive until '25. Listen to the guy that has acquired over 14,000 apartment units. Are you interested in learning more about how Multifamily Syndications work? Please visit www.spiadvisory.com to learn more about Michael Becker's Real Estate Syndication business with SPI Advisory LLC. If you enjoyed this discussion…. Please leave us a 5 STAR RATING on iTunes.

We used a new AI tool to create a “complete episode summary” (see below). Please take a read and see if you find it valuable. If you do, please respond to this email and like the post. If there is enough interest we can generate the summary for all future episodes (and previous ones if there is enough demand). It costs ~$5/episode for the service, so we will only do it if there is demand for it. Let us know!In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss how the Wasp is being treated while she is in critical condition and digress into trying to understand just how fast Thor can fly. He can cross the Atlantic in three minutes. That is faster than any plane, train, or automobile! Is it faster than a rocket? Does he light the air on fire? What would it be like to be saved by Thor at that speed? Do we need to worry about mid-air collisions? Should we apply speed limits to superheroes?Full episode summary (AI generated from audio):The Trouble with Thor's Speed - Controlling Velocity for Protection.1. The Wasp's Critical Condition: An Update2. Uncovering the Mystery Behind Thor's Travels3. Controlling Thor's Speed: A Discussion4. Speed Limits: The Need for Superhuman RegulationThe Wasp in Critical ConditionReports of the Wasp's condition have been grim, but optimistic. She is currently stable but in critical care. With the Avengers involved, it is unclear what sort of medical help she is receiving and what types of injuries she sustains. It could be something as common as a car accident or sports injury, or something more specific to what the Avengers do.The Mystery of Thor's TravelInterestingly, Thor has been reported to have been flying around the world, potentially looking for a specific doctor to help the Wasp. Reports also indicated that he flew across the Atlantic in three minutes, much faster than any plane could go. Whether he is flying suborbital, as some science fiction theories suggest, or following flight paths at a certain altitude to avoid mid-air collisions, it is remarkable to consider the speeds at which Thor is traveling. One aspect of Thor's power that often goes overlooked is his impressive speed. During a podcast discussion, the hosts discussed just how fast Thor can fly. They estimated that Thor can fly at about 80 times the speed of sound - Mach 80 - which is much faster than any mechanical aircraft on Earth, and even faster than a rocket to the moon.Controlling Thor's Speed:The hosts then discussed how Thor's speed might be useful in saving people. They concluded that Thor would need to understand how to control the speed. If he could fly to someone quickly but then decelerate to a stop, he could rescue them before they were injured. They also discussed the amount of power behind his speed, and the air displacement it could cause if Thor flew by someone on the street. All in all, Thor's speed is an extremely impressive part of his power set and is a major factor in why he is considered one of the most powerful superheroes., The speaker highlights the potential problem of an individual traveling at a speed far beyond what humans would normally experience. They discuss the potential damage that could be caused in the wake of someone flying at such a high speed.The speaker questions whether the superhero, Thor, should partake in control testing far away from other people, to see the damage that could be caused by traveling at such a high speed. They point out that although the idea of traveling from one place to another quickly may sound great, it could lead to destruction in his path. The speaker emphasizes the need for speed limits for a reason, to ensure that people are not traveling too fast, resulting in destruction.Behind the issue:This issue deals with the cliffhanger we were left with in issue #13, with the Wasp in critical condition. The story introduces a new alien race, the Kallusians, but they are not revealed to the human race, and they are never mentioned again in the Marvel Universe.In this issue:The Wasp is in critical condition, and with not a moment to spare, Thor flies to Norway to basically kidnap a medical specialist, Dr. Svenson, to hopefully save the Wasp's life. It turns out that Dr. Svenson is an alien in disguise, and when his mask is removed he dies. And so the Avengers are now on the hunt to find the real Dr. Svenson. They do that by tracking down the aliens in the North Pole; they have a futuristic city beneath the Earth's crust! The aliens subdue the Avengers and, being the bad guys, they monologue about themselves and their plans. They're the Kallusians, and they escaped an interplanetary war and hid out on Earth. They have trouble breathing on Earth, and when all looked hopeless, Dr. Svenson stumbled their way, and they kidnapped him, convincing him to help them figure out how to breathe on Earth. Dr. Svenson figured out how to help them, but the Kallusians have refused to release him. The Avengers break free, battle the Kallusians, and then find out that Dr. Svenson does not want to leave, as he has agreed to stay and help them with their breathing issues for as long as they need to hide out from their interplanetary rivals. And after that exposition is provided, the Kallusians' alien enemies locate them on Earth! What are the odds? Anyway, Thor basically scares them to leave the planet and fight their enemies in space, freeing up Dr. Svenson, whom they take to New York City to operate on the Wasp and save her life (he does). The Watcher also shows up at the end of the episode to explain how lucky it was for humanity that the two warring alien races did not duke it out on Earth.Assumed before the next episode:The Avengers are likely wondering what to do with the now-abandoned alien city beneath the North Pole.This episode takes place:After the Wasp's life has been saved!Full transcript:Edward: the wasp, is still in critical condition? Mike? They think she might recover, but we don't know her her state right now.Michael: No, but I suppose good news to find out that she hasn't passed away. She hasn't died in the line of battle. And our thoughts are obviously with her and the rest of the teamEdward: I think they're saying stable but critical. So she's in critical care. Mm-hmm. , but not getting worse. Stable. They're trying to find some sort of doctor to help her, and they're communicating with us. And so I think we're cautiously optimistic, right.Michael: But you gotta wonder, you gotta wonder what is it? We don't know exactly. We know that she was injured injuring battle. But is it something that is a run-of-the-mill medical issue that could happen to any of us if you're in a car accident or you're in a sports event or even in a regular military engagement?Or is there so. Specific to what the Avengers do, and if it is the latter I'd be curious because we've been following the superhero SUPERPOWERED community for so long, is there something unique that's being done for her? .Edward: We don't know. And it's nice of them to share at all. I think at this point, you don't want to give away too much of the secret sauce that makes them superheroes and what could possibly hurt them? What are things that can hurt the wasp? Probably the same things that can hurt you and I only, mm-hmm. , she's just far more athletic and capable and able to change.Michael: Key among them is that she changed the size. I mean, that seems to be, to be an inherently risky thing to do . So I'd be curious about what the injury is, and also it may affect the ability to treat her. I don't wanna speculate too, too much out of respect for the wasp, but I'd imagine that. There could be something complicated about her physiology now.Edward: We don't even know what size she is now. Is she being treated Yeah. As, a wasp or is she being treated as an adult human, or is she like a giant man? She's extra big. We don't know what size she is. And maybe that's part of the complication. Maybe she is mm-hmm. In a very small form and maybe a very special doctor who's able to treat her with special in.Michael: Well, and don't say this analogy too, too far, but it could be a regular surgeon who might be involved, or doctor, it could be a pediatric surgeon if she happened to be, you know, size, smaller size, quite frankly, it could be a veterinarian, you know what I mean? To deal with the idea of no, seriously, she, oh, sheEdward: has wings, , maybe her wings are anything.Michael: She, she has wings, but also she might be super small, like a small animal. Or she could be the size of a horse, you know? And both those were the fields of veterinarians. So I don't wanna, I'm not trying to suggest in any way anything more than she is a mammal who might be a different size and there are specialists that deal with that. And, on we go, good luck to the wasp .Edward: Do you think this is why, Thor is flying around the world? Is he looking for a specific doctor to help her?Michael: That's what I started thinking about, so we heard the news, that Thor was being tracked, flying across the ocean and by the reporting, and this is interesting, I hadn't heard this before. Thor traveled across the Atlantic Ocean within minutes, within minutes and , you know, and, and it's like, I would've thought he could have, if you believe he's is an as guardian, he's a, a Norse God from Asgard. that he would travel in some form of interdimensional, something rather, that we don't know about. But no, he didn't, and he didn't do that to go to Europe and said he just flew across the yo.Edward: We don't, we don't even know what, I think at one point people thought he has his hammer and he is just so strong that he swings his hammer around, throws the hammer and the hammer like, I dunno, the hammer's so powerful. It pulls him in a direction or people thought that he's the, got a thunder. He can control the weather and maybe he's using the winds to pull him around. But neither of those explanations make sense when you can cross the Atlantic in three minutes.Michael: No, and, the first thought I had is okay, number one, so air travel is carefully regulated. There's flight paths between say New York and London and miami and Dublin. And so there's gonna be paths, and the idea is it's very carefully regulated to make sure that you don't run into people. Uh, so planes don't run into each other as they're flying at the required altitude so is Thor flying? I would imagine Thor to be, if he wants to get there quickly, would probably fly to certain altitude, much like the planes to cut through the air as well as you can. Well,Edward: I'm sure again, Thor does not wanna be part of a mid-air collision. Imagine the news when Thor runs into an airplane and Families are destroyed and died because he was blasting through them with his hammer. And it seems like that's a very easy thing to avoid by just flying at a different height than airplanes fly at. I'm not sure what flight, I'm sure there's like certain flight paths and certain flight altitudes and he would just fly either like lower or presumably higher.Michael: Well, but think about this with my point is that I suspect that, and we should talk to an aeronautical engineer we probably could confirm this. There are heights you likely. for maximum, efficiency,Edward: well that depends on how you fly, right? So airplanes fly because they have engines that are shooting off exhaust that are propelling them forward, and then they have wings that are providing lift. So as they propel forward, the wings provide lift and they get lifted up into the air. And then they can control that up and down. There's no exhaust coming from. , at least no visible exhaust. Unless he's no I don't wanna be vulgar here on the radio, but I don't think there's like exhaust coming from his ass, like pushing out, pushing him through the spaceMichael: Too many beans ,Edward: too many beans. . If, if he's, if he's ever gets into shilling for products, he should definitely promote beans. Like Oh, get your, get your Aus Garan beans from Thor.Michael: It's a magical fruit. .Edward: The, the, the more you eat, the more you fly.Michael: fly. no, but, I'm getting a little bit away from what I really wanna talk about, I would think that there is, if you're Thor and you wanna get across the ocean quickly because your teammate. Needs you to do something, which is what Thor was doing, that you would probably do your best to fly the most efficient way across the ocean. But you're right, I don't think he'd irresponsible. So he is likely isn't flying that high.Edward: Or, I think he's flying probably higher. Like higher. Here's The Thing too. If, if he's. Given that he's like the mighty Thor, he probably is able to survive pretty high in the atmosphere. I dunno, can he survive in space? It wouldn't surprise me. He feels like he's like, he feels like he's the type of person who would survive in space, didn't he? He sent the absorbing man. Yeah. Right into space. Maybe Thor can survive in space and so if he can survive, he can go high enough. It depends if he's able to, if he's able to propulsion himself high enough, he doesn't need air to prop, repulse himself off of which he may not, then going higher is actually better for him cause it's, it's less wind, there's less wind resistance, less air resistance.Michael: Could he also, like, could he also break through the atmosphere and spike up and as the earth is, if he's going across to Europe, the earth is moving in his direction and he goes up and then down, that would be. Efficient way of getting, of getting across the earth quickly. Right.Edward: That's true. So instead of flying in a straight line, he could just fly suborbital that. That's, and there's been lots of science fiction written about that. If you wanted to go mm-hmm. to from London to Sydney as fast as possible, and we had the technology to do it, we would fly a suborbital flight that would blast off. It'd be a parabola, we'd basically a parabola from one to the other. Yeah. And so maybe if that's how Thor travels parabolas.Michael: I mean, in my head, I must say, I wasn't thinking of parabolas. I was thinking of Thor, kinda like just flying, just barely above the ocean. And hopefully not hitting a ship, but maybe he's the right height to not hit a ship either. But my thought was if he flies across, and this is what I really wanted to talk about, even though I'm kind of fascinated by the idea he'd fly into Pablo, which so cool. ,Edward: we, we, you, we should, we should have, we should think, talk more about paras. It feels like parabolas are under talked about topic on radio University.Michael: Our listeners love it. They love those parabolas, but if you are getting across the ocean within minutes, let's say it's about three minutes, and it's about over 4,000 kilometers. Well, you tell me are you applying so fast that you're we're gonna light the, like the air on fire. You know what I mean? That, that seems un unfathomably fast.Edward: It is remarkably fast. I, so yeah. Let's, let's, let's run through the math and so, okay. I know we are in America and we should be using, local imperial measurements, but when you start talking about the speed that Thor is flying at, we're gonna use that archaic metric system that the French use and cause the math is a lot easier. And so the ocean is like roughly, I think from North America through to Europe. We're talking at roughly 4,800 kilometers, 4,800 kilometers, 3000 and something miles, right? For the rest of us. And then, He did that in three minutes. So he's doing that at what, 1,200 kilometers per minute? That's, uh, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's doing three times that. So he's doing, yeah, in a minute he's doing 15,000 kilometers or 14,000 kilometers or something like that. Per, per, no, no, no, no. That was right the first time. No, no. He's doing a little over a thousand kilometers in a minute, and then in three minutes he gets all the way to the 5,000 kilometers. But that turns out that flying a thousand kilometers a minute is really, really, really, really fast. And like the speed of sound is about a third of a kilometer per second. . We do some math, dividing, whatever. I think it works out too, that he was flying at roughly 80 times the speed of sound. So, so mock 80. Mock 80. For those who are familiar with the mock termsMichael: And how fast, I mean, what's our fastest plane like, how fast did the rocket to the moon?Edward: Oh, that's a good question. I don't know I should know that to break the orbit, right? But like I know that planes, like passenger planes don't fly that fast. They fly no, significantly slower than the speed of sound. The really, really fast, like breaking the sound barrier, which we did before we went to the moon. Breaking the sound barrier was a big deal. And that by def the sound barriers was what, what we call mock one and I know we have planes that go faster than the speed of sound now, but not a lot. Fast mock two, mock three, something like that. Thor was going mock. It's fast.Michael: I don't think that that's fast. It's fast. And I don't think that when I, when we've seen the footage on, on our, the rockets to the moon. I don't, they don't, I don't think they were going that fast. At least visually didn't seem that they're . You get across the ocean. How high, how high is it to get to get, to break the atmosphere? Right. How, how high is it? It's not, how high is the atmosphere? Four. Yeah, it's not tough. 4,000 kilometers and it takes, it took a few minutes certainly to get above, to break the atmosphere. So they're not going as fast as Thor a Thor can get across the ocean.Edward: No, no. So, so the atmosphere, so I think the atmosphere is bigger than that man. I think the atmosphere is roughly 10,000 kilometers up.Michael: No,Edward: yeah, yeah. Like 6,000 miles or. And depends, depends where, depends where you, it turns out there's not like a line, there's not like a fence where like now you're, now you're in space and it slowly becomes less atmospheric all along. But when you start going the, the high atmosphere, it's like roughly, roughly 10,000 kilometers, 6,000 miles.Michael: Okay. Well, could you get up there in, I guess within 10 minutes? Does it, does the rocket take, did the rocket take 10 minutes to get above there? Which would be kind of similar to Thor flying across the ocean?Edward: Yeah, so he is going, I think faster than rockets. I think Rockets are going, yeah, I think so. Like somewhere under 10 kilometers. Like they, when they get going to speed, they're going about 10 kilometers a second. And what do we say Thor is doing? Thor's doing. 80 times the speed of sound. And the speed of sound is a third of a kilometer per second. So what's that 80 divided by three? He's doing 20 times, 25 times, times the times. 25 kilometers per second, something like that. And our rockets when they're like, when they're really, when they get this really going up there when they're really picking up speed. They're doing about 10 kilometers a second. And so he's roughly two and a half times faster than a rocket . And so that's, but, but as fast, it's fast. It's fast. But as fast as, rockets aren't setting air on fire. I don't think Thor is setting, he's not setting air on fire fast.Michael: No, no. But he's still going fast enough, like faster than any any mechanical device on earth,Edward: he's definitely the fastest human in any form of transportation that's ever happened.Michael: And it's funny because I guess we've always sort of, when we talk about Thor or any of these heroes, we focus on a few things, like for Thor, we've always focused on, he's a p he's very strong he's a God. But I've never thought much about him flying, which is funny because if you started flying, I would think that's incredible Ed. But it's, um,Edward: and, and if I started flying at 80 times a speed of sound, you'd be like that is, that is extra incredible. That is like more incredible.Michael: Yeah. That's worthy of a discussion. But, um,Edward: that could be don't, but your point is that could be a main power. If someone's power was flying 80 times the speed of sound, we would be. Wow. You are definitely one of the best superheroes on the planet. And yeah, the fact that that was Thor's, fourth or fifth power.Michael: Yeah. Like Thor. Let's just break it down. So if Thor, if you're walking across the street and you're carrying a coffee and you're not paying attention and a truck comes barreling at you, Thor could easily grab. You know, maybe that's not the most heroic thing, but move you from the, the crosswalk so you don't get struck. But there's probably something, there must be a better example, but I wouldn't even know who saved, you know what I mean? That fast,Edward: you know, like if he moved that fast on a human, Thor is very solid. He's a very strong human being who bullets bounce off him and that most bolts don't bounce off cars. And so he is big, he is stronger than a car, more solid than a more dense than a car. And if a car was. 80 times the speed of sound and ran into you. You would not be saved. Saving is not The. Thing. That would happen. .Michael: That's right. Well, is there a way to like, you know, when you catch a ball, someone throws you at a ball at you, right? You kind of grab it and you control the momentum of it. We think we talked about this before. Sure. So is there a way that. How about this? Let's slow it down. ,Edward: I think, I think if you were thrown at Thor, if someone like threw you at Thor and Thor, caught you, but then went with the motion, the way you went with a ball. Yeah. Then yeah, I think that he could stop you from, from being squished, but if you were flying at him and he said, you know what? I need to get to you quickly. I'm gonna fly towards you at 80 times a speed of sound. Like you're not gonna have a body left after.Michael: So if Thor is going at 80 times, the speed sound up to you thinking, oh, that person's in a crosswalk he's gonna get struck by that truck that's outta control. And he went up and just touched you. , , his finger would just go right, like right through your body as he just continued on. There must be a way that he could do it.Edward: Would, would you rather hit by a truck going at. 20 miles, 50 miles an hour. Or Thor going at like 1000 miles an hour.Michael: Oh, Thor. Thor. It'd be so much cooler to get blown up that way,Edward: but I guess if you're gonna die, go out in style .Michael: Well, could you do this? How about this? I'm still now thinking about it. What if Thor went very quickly and went. Under the ground and cut the ground out from underneath you and lifted you through or would like, there'd be so much wind resistance you'd be ripped apart by Well,Edward: if you move through the air Yeah. You're telling me what if the ground underneath me started flying upwards? Mm-hmm. Immediately at 80 times the speed of sound. Yeah, that would, that's not like, let's be human. When we, when, when, when we first started trying to break the speed of like, the sound barrier, like people died trying to make their break the sound barrier, and that's mock one. We're talking about mock 80. It's not, there's, there's no scenario, no world where, that is a helpful place for a human to be.Michael: Okay, let me loop back then, ed. I don't know if it's the most useful power then for saving people. Perhaps, but it's useful to get to where you need to go. As long as he's maneuverable and he can stop and maneuver and not run into things, then that part's useful but I was thinking like, what if he'd be a very useful superhero if he could just go really fast and get you outta danger, but if he just blow you up every time he touched you, ?Edward: No. I think the key is using his speed to get to you and he has to. He just, we need to understand how fast Thor can decelerate. That that's the key. If he can, that's critical fly, fly to you very quickly, but stop on a dime and pick you up gently. Fly away slightly faster than the truck is coming towards you.Michael: Here's another question then just think about how fast story. So, he's coming at you. Is air being pushed in your direction? Or is it not? Or is it, or is he cutting through it?Edward: I think generally he's cutting through air. He's moving so fast that I don't think, I think he's moving faster than any air particles getting pushed. I think if he blew pa, if you were like standing on the side of the road and he blew past you, I don't think you would experience anything until he passed you and then all the air he displaced would hit you and it's like a train. When a train comes by, you can feel the train coming after the fact, but it's not coming before the fact.Michael: Okay, so let's say again, using my example of I'm in the street. Flying on the street, what would happen if he's flying through and, then at that speed, or he is even slowing down, would not like, there would be a train, a trail of destruction right behind him. Things, you know what I mean?Edward: I, could see that I could see like a bunch of it. It, yeah I think what we're dealing at with is an order of magnitude of speed that I think us normal humans can't really comprehend. And, we just don't, we don't experience speed like this at any normal time in our lives.Michael: So I, I'd like to, I guess, Thor, I'd like you to maybe do some control testing far away from other people to see, because I mean, just in case you're attempted to like race to the scene of a crime or an incident or some event that you wanted to prevent at first. Seems like a great idea. But in second thought, it sounds like it might be complete, like it'd be fine flying across the ocean it doesn't run into anything. But it wouldn't be that fine if he's flying across North America, if he's getting too low to the ground, causing damage in his, in, in his wake, right.Edward: Yeah. Hey, hey, we have speed limits for a reason. Thor, we have speed limits for a reason.Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. This is a public episode. 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Apologies for no episode last week. Here in 2022 we are also shutting down for the Christmas holidays. We should be back the first week of January. Also: Welcome to all the new listeners. If last episode was your first with us, we would love to hear how you heard of us. Apparently we are now the #25 top Marvel podcast, but that was published on December 11th, and we picked up many new listeners on November 30th. Where did you all come from? If you subscribe at www.SuperSerious616.com you can reply to the email we send you and you can tell us. We would appreciate it if only to satisfy our curiosity! See you in the New Year!In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss the mind-bending news that a sabertooth tiger has been found in Antarctica. Does this mean that other previously assumed extinct animals are not actually extinct? What about dinosaurs? Questions abound!Behind the issue:This is the first appearance of Ka-Zar and the Savage Land, which will go on to be a major environment in X-Men comics and the Marvel Universe more generally. There are rumors that the Savage Land and Ka-Zar may make an appearance in the MCU during the Thunderbolts movie due out in a couple of years. This is where it all began.In this issue:The evening news broadcasts a video from Antarctica of a Tarzan-like figure with a sabertooth tiger fighting explorers to the frozen continent. The X-Men suspect that this wild man may be a mutant, and they decide to investigate. They head to Antarctica and find a secret passageway through the frozen environment to a tropical land filled with dinosaurs and other strange creatures. They also encounter warriors fighting with preindustrial weapons. The wild man Ka-Zar and his sabertooth tiger Zabu come to their aid and help turn the tide of the battle. The X-Men leave, having made a potentially valuable ally.Assumed before the next episode:People are still wondering whether the sabertooth tiger is real, and if so, whether other extinct animals may return from the dead.This episode takes place:After the amazing news that a sabertooth tiger has been cited has been somehow lost in the new cycle.Full TranscriptEdward: Mike, when did Sabertooth Tigers go extinct?Michael: I don't know exactly, but I thought they were prehistoric. Did they not go out at the time of the Willie Mammoth? Think so. 2000 years ago.Edward: I feel like, my understanding is that they, ex, number one is they existed. They're not like a unicorn. Unicorns never did exist. I know some people think that unicorns went extinct, but they did not. There was never a unicorn as far as we know. But sabertooth tigers, which kinda. Kinda unicorns. Cause they have giant, huge, giant teeth that kind of stick out. They existed and I think they were North American. I think they existed in North America. Yeah. And then when people came across that the land bridge into Alaska and then came down through the continent, there were all these crazy animals there. And humans just basically killed them all. By the time the Europeans got there, there weren't many of these big animals left. There were still bison and there were cougars, but, things like the mammoths and the sea two tigers were all killed off.Michael: Were they killed off or they just die? I don't know if there's historical record for it being killed off by humanity, but I thought,Edward: I think the record is, they overlapped with humanity. So humanity was there at the same time as they were. And, humanity lasted and they didn't. So they died off at some point after humans were there. And it turns out humans liked to eat animals. So there's a possibility that humans. Them all.Michael: I thought it'd be more temperature. I thought it'd be more temperature related.Edward: It could again, maybe, maybe Was Willie Mammoth ? Well, there's, there's wooly mammoth in Europe I think as well, but they also went extinct. And we know that humans ate those things for sure. Mm-hmm. , I think there's a lion, but regardless Europe, there's a lion in Europe too, and that, that also went extinct and we know that humans kind of wiped that out. I think I was curious what's going a lot of these animals in, in North America, they basically, they didn't have a defense against humans. Like all the animals in Africa. They evolved along with humans and the ones, and so they had defenses against humans. But I think all those animals in North America, we were an invasive species and we showed up and the animals had never seen us before, so they didn't know what.Michael: That's interesting. Well, anyways, you asked me, but going back to the beginning. Yeah. So Saber Tooth Tigers haven't been around for a long, long time.Edward: Except now they are.Michael: Except now they are. Yeah, I mean, likeEdward: they're back baby. They're back.Michael: They're back. They're back. And they're better than ever. So the people, uh, they watch thisEdward: not just as a sports team logo, basketball. No.Michael: Well, like, so what we're talking about,Edward: I feel like there should be though, shouldn't there be, why isn't there a sports team with like the Philadelphia Sabertooth Tiger.Michael: Well, I, support it, but now they could probably get one maybe, but, for people that aren't, that haven't, haven't watching the news lately, what it is, is that there's a recording, a video recording of a man who looks like Tarzan walking with a sabertooth tiger who's attacking people in Antarctica. And it's like, it's so,Edward: can interrupt thatMichael: crazy.Edward: He looks like Tarzan. What does that mean? That means he, that means what does Tarzan even look? You mean like the drawings, the things that were on the covers of his books like a hundred years ago.Michael: Yeah. Like a bear chested, loin, loincloth, guy walking around Antarctica, which is odd with a se tiger.Edward: When you're saying he looks like Tarzan, you're basically saying there was some dude without clothes on.Michael: It's for our younger listeners. I didn't wanna get too graphic, but Yeah. Some, some dude is basically wearing Speedo, walking around Antarctica with a sabertooth tiger.Edward: Mike's gonna go to the next swim meet and he's gonna be like, Tarzan Tarzan's everywhere.Michael: Well, that's what comes to mind when there's a man dress in a loin cloth with a prehistoric animal. Yeah. It kind of makes sense. Or with a big cat, like a saber tooth tiger. But there's a saber tooth tiger.Edward: Yeah. But, Tarzan was never a, didn't have prehistoric animals in those books, did he? He was just, it was a chimpanzee, elephants,Michael: the lord the jungle. No, he's in charge of the jungle and this guy's in charge of, it looks like from the video that he's in charge of the sabertooth tiger. And so, no, that's why, that's my connection, . But anyways, the Tarzana, the tar side. What I'm really getting at is that it's nutty.Edward: Don't get confused by the Tarzan reference. Tarzana is not evolved.Michael: I'm moving on from it. Moving on from bit, but here it is. So a sabertooth tiger. And, 10 years ago we would be, it would've blown our. If there's a video of a saber tooth tiger, that would be the front page of the news. I don't think many people know about this. Number one, and number two, we can't. We, you and I were talking before our show. Neither of us can totally agree on what is the most likely reason. There's a sabertooth tiger right now.Edward: Yeah. There's a couple of things going on. Number one is, there's a sabertooth tiger. They went extinct thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, and now there's one back. So that's weird. Number two is it didn't appear in North America where they were last seen. It appeared in Antarctica. , which is like a weird place for it to be. And then number three is of all the, the weird places for it to appear. How does it survive in Antarctica? Like nothing survives in Antarctica. There's penguins.Michael: And, and then so you say, well, where would it have come from? Because presumably, if there's been a line of savory tooth tigers for thousands and thousands of years that we didn't know about, there would be some evidence of that. And, people that investigate these things and the study of prehistoric animals just got it wrong and missed it and missed the evidence of years and years and years of sabertooth tigers prowling around or, the evidence, their bones or whateverEdward: Be fair fossils if sabertooth tigers were really prowling around Antarctica this whole time, we haven't spent much time in Antarctica. I just think the evidence that any animal could survive in Antarctica is so low. That's the reason why we haven't been exploring Antarctica, is it's not really a place where animals survive.Michael: Well, so that leads, okay, so number one, sabertooth tigers can survive in Antarctica. That's number, that's the first question, but it doesn't make a lot of sense because there are mammals, they're furry mammals that would live in,Edward: they're predators. They have to eat other animals. If this sabertooth tiger is surviving in Antarctica for any period of time, that means there are prey animals living in Antarctica for some period of time. And I don't think it's just penguins. Like I think we've studied penguins in Antarctica as far as we know they do not have lions preying on them.Michael: No, no. And so, it's kind of odd, but that's the most logical thing is that just it, we just happen to have missed it. And that's the conclusion that we'd have to draw if this was 10 years ago. But we have to entertain other possibilities. Could it be that we know time travel exists? So maybe it's a time travel thing.Edward: That sounds a really easy answer, right? Like if, Kang who came here and tried to take over our timeline, take over our world, what would stop him from just going back in time and picking up a caveman in a sabertooth tiger and bringing them into our time. That sounds very reasonable.Michael: It's a possibility or maybe it's another dimension that overlaps with our, we know that there's other dimensions and overlaps with ours and just maybe that. There's a crossover point down there. Maybe,Edward: maybe in that dimension, Antarctica is like hot and bombing because we also know that a long time ago in humanity, Antarctica was hot and bombing, it was a nice warm right place with lush forests and so on. Maybe there's another dimension where that never changed and we got a portal to that dimension and these guys hopped through.Michael: Maybe it's an alien because we know that there have been alien attacks and they seem to be similar. The aliens seem to be relatively similar to how we look, so maybe there's versions of mammals on other planets and this is just an alien either left their sabertooth tiger here, or maybe the sabertooth tiger is an intelligent species from another planet and we just haven't found the spaceship .Edward: And he brought along his prehistoric man as a pet .Michael: That's right. That's what it is and then maybe the other one I was thinking maybe it's from Asgard or something. Maybe it's from where Thor comes from. Because just a magical beast just like Thor's a magical Oh, that's true. God, I don't know.Edward: And then this magical beast might be tens of thousands of years old. It's an un aging magical tiger.Michael: Yeah, but the point is that we don't know. And so,Edward: oh, I have another, I have another possibility.Michael: What's thatEdward: robot? You know what I mean? We've had robots be we're we thought they were aliens. Turns out they were robots or we thought it was Iron man. Turns out it was a robot. It feels like robot impersonators are a thing. Why not just make a robot cat?Michael: How about, and that's a good idea. But how about this also, it came from underneath the earth.Edward: Oh, we, Atlantis is we know there's, there is an Atlantis underneath the earth. That could be a, it's almost like another dimension at this point, but yeah, that makes sense. Totally.Michael: Boy, this all leads though. Is thatEdward: Maybe this old Atlantis kidnapped primitive humans. Mm-hmm. and and, giant cats and mammoths and stuff. And then breeding them underground in zoos. And these ones just escaped from the zoo.Michael: Well, the point is that these are all now equally logical. , right, because it's just because there are of theEdward: broadest sense of the word .Michael: Well, but there are, there, they, we know that there's these are things that are, have happened last few years and so it, it doesn't stretch the imagination to believe that this is that there are sabertooth Tigers through any of these various reasons. So this is why you and I have been doing what I consider to be the hard news Ed, where we've been talking about the real stories. And I do think, these things have to be studied so that people, we, we could turn to, a more scholarly academic source to say, oh no, we've looked into this and turns out the robots who promote it, and now that people can study itEdward: like mad scientist, it's a mad scientist who found ancient DNA and recreated primitive man and and tigers.Michael: Oh my, I love it. I love it.Edward: It's, it's The Thing. It's The Thing for an academic to dive into.Michael: Yeah. Well, you know, Ed, if you and I, if our legacies that we're encouraging scholarship, so be it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com   S3E41 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Mark: Welcome back to the Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm Mark, one of your hosts. Yucca: and I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting episode. We have an interview with a member of the Atheopagan Society Council, Michael, who is joining us today, and is gonna tell us about his journey and what this community means to him and his vision for the future and all kinds of cool stuff. So welcome. Michael: Well, thank you very much for having me. Mark: I'm delighted to have you here, Yucca: Thanks for coming on. Michael: Yeah, no, I'm excited. Yucca: Yeah. So why don't we start with so who are you? Right? What's, what's your journey been to get here? Michael: Gosh. Well, I kind of have to start at the very beginning. So my name's Michael and you know, I've, I start, sometimes I go by Mícheál, which is my Irish, the Irish version of my name. And that's something I've been using more as I've been involved in the Pagan community. My parents are both Irish and. They moved to the United States in their early eighties cuz my dad got a green card working over there Mark: Hmm. Michael: and I was born in America. And then they decided they want to move back to Ireland then in 1991. So already I had this kind of dissected identity. Was I American or was I Irish? I never really lost my American accent. When I, when I moved to Ireland my sister who was born in Ireland, she actually has a slight American accent just from living with me. So she never people always ask her, are you, are you American? And she's like, I've never lived there. So it's funny that it's kind of stuck with her, but I moved to Ireland and I suddenly was kind of got this culture shock at the age of five and moving to this new country. And my mother has a very large family, so she has like, two, two brothers and seven sisters, and then I've got like 30 cousins. So , it was a big, a big change from AmeriCorps. It was just the three of us. Moving back to Ireland and. It was a very, you know, Ireland, you know, is, would've been considered a very Catholic country, and it's been kind of secularizing since the nineties up until now. But back then it was still quite Catholic. Like homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1992 and divorce was only made legal in 1995. So, I guess the first kind of sense of, of what I meant to be Irish back then was, You know, you learned Irish in school, you learned to speak Irish in school, and this was very it wasn't taught very well, I would say, and I think most Irish people would agree with that. It's kind of taught like almost like Latin or something as a dead language rather than as a living language. So you're spending time learning all this grammar. And you don't kind of develop that love of it that I think you should. I did go to like Irish summer camp in the Gaeltacht . The Gaeltacht  is the Irish speaking area of Ireland, and I kind of became aware of my Irishness, you know, just through being part of all this and also. I would've introduced myself as American when I was little but people didn't really like that. It was kind of a, like a weird thing to do. So my mom eventually told me, maybe you should just stop paying that. And so throughout my I, you know, as I mentioned, it was a very Catholic country. And when I was in the Gaeltacht in Irish summer camp one of the kids said they were atheist. And I was like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't believe in God. And I was, and in my head I was like, I didn't know you could do that, I didn't know that was an option. . So I kind of thought about it for a while. I became, we started studying the Reformation in school when I was about 14. And then I learned that Catholics believed in transubstantiation and nobody had really mentioned that before. They didn't really teach the catechism very well, I guess. I'd done my communion and my confirmation, but nobody ever mentioned that. We literally believed that the, the body and blood, you know, was that the bread and water? Oh, sorry. The bread and wine actually became literally, And the body. And I thought that was a very strange thing, that that was a literal thing. It wasn't just symbolic. And then we also studied Calvinism and all that stuff. And I was like, then I started to read the Bible and I was like, then it fun, it finally just dawned on me that I didn't believe any of this, and it was kind of liberating. But it was kind of a way of being d. In a very homogenous society too. You could be a bit of a rebel. So I think I was one of those annoying teenagers who was always questioning everybody and having, trying to have debates with everybody about religion and they didn't enjoy that . And so I went through school and I just remember hating studying the Irish language until eventually when I left school. On the last day, I actually took all my. My Irish textbooks and burnt them and I feel I . Yeah. I mean I feel so much guilt and regret about that and I think about that how important it's to me now and that, that was a real shame that, but I didn't, partially I didn't put the work in, but also I just think the structure. Was not there. I mean so many Irish people come out of outta school not really know, knowing how to speak the language, you know, and I think it is an effective col colonization as well, where, you know, you consider English is a useful language and learning French or Spanish, that's a useful thing, but there's no use for Irish in people's minds, which is a, and I find that a real shame and I. could go back and change that. In university I studied anthropology and history because I was very interested in religion. All throughout my teenage years, I was obsessed with learning about world religions, you know, there was a world religion class in, in secondary school. I didn't get into it, but I begged the teacher to allow me to. Into it because I was so interested in the topic. And he was like, fine, fine. And he kind of thought he'd humor me in one class one day and he was like, well, Michael, maybe you could talk about satanism. That's the topic for today. And I was like, well, let's start with Al Crowley. And he was like, okay, maybe he actually knows what he is talking about So, I went, I. I went to the university sorry, national University of Ireland, Minuth Campus. And it's funny because that used to be known as so it's actually, it's two campuses. They're St. Patrick's college, which is like a, a seminary for priests. And there's the I, which is like the secular version, and they're both, but they both share the same compass. So it's funny, it used to be the, the biggest seminary in Europe. They call it the priest factory cuz they pumped out so many priests that sent, sent them all over the world. And it's when you go out and you walk down the corridors, you see all the graduating classes. So you go back to 1950 and you see a graduating class of like a hundred priests. And every year as you're going down the corridor, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Until I think the year I graduated, there was like two people graduating as priests. Yeah. So that was, that was a, I decided to study history and anthropology at n Y Minuth and one of the books that I read. Was kind of a gateway into thinking about land and language, which are two things that are really important to me in my, when I think about Paganism. It's a book called wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Bato, bass by Keith Bassell, and. I'm just gonna read a little bit here from the book because he was an anthropologist working with the Apache, the Western Apache, to try and remap the land using the Native Apache words rather than the, the English words. So trying to make a native map and working with Apache people to find all the true, the true names of all these. so this is the quote, but already on only our second day in the country together a problem had problem had come up for the third time in as many tries. I have mispronounced the Apache name of the boggy swale before us. And Charles, who is weary of repeating it, has a guarded look in his eyes after watching the name for a fourth. I acknowledged defeat and attempted to apologize for my flawed linguistic performance. I'm sorry, Charles. I can't get it. I'll work on it later. It's in the machine. It doesn't matter. It matters. Charles says softly to me in English, and then turning to speak to Morley. He addresses him in Western Apache, is what he said. What he's doing isn't right. It's not good. He seems to be in a. Why is he in a hurry? It's disrespectful. Our ancestors made this name. They made it just as it is. They made it for a reason. They spoke it first a long time ago. He's repeating the speech of our ancestors. He doesn't know that. Tell him he's repeating the speech of our ancestors. And I'm gonna just there's another section here, a little, a few pages. But then unexpectedly in one of those courteous turnabouts that Apache people employ to assuage embarrassment in salvage damaged feelings, Charles himself comes to the rescue with a quick corroborative grin. He announces he is missing several teeth and that my problem with the place name may be attributable to his lack of dental equipment. Sometimes he says he is hard to underst. His nephew, Jason, recently told him that, and he knows he tends to speak softly. Maybe the combination of too few teeth and two little volume accounts for my failing. Short morally, on the other hand, is not so encumbered though shy. Two, a tooth or two. He retains the good ones for talking and because he's not afraid to speak up, except as everyone knows in the presence of gar women no one has trouble hearing what he. Maybe if Morley repeated the place name again slowly and with ample force, I would get it right. It's worth a try, cousin. And then he, I'm just gonna skip forward a bit and he successfully pronounces the name, which translates as water Lies with mud in an open container. Relieved and pleased. I pronounce the name slowly. Then I, then a bit more rapidly and again, as it might be spoken. In normal conversation, Charles listens and nods his head in. . Yes. He says in Apache, that is how our ancestors made it a long time ago, just as it is to name this place. Mm-hmm. So this became important to me when thinking about the Irish language because something similar happened in Ireland in the you know, we have all our native Irish place. But in the 1820s the British Army's Ordinance survey came and decided they were gonna make these names pro pronounceable to English ears. And so they kind of tore up the native pronunciation and kind of push an English pronunciation on top. So you have these very strange English Anglo size versions of Irish Place names Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Soin in is is probably better known in English as dingle, but doesn't really have anything to do with the Irish. And there are plenty of, there are so many examples of this and I think when you're trying to learn about a landscape in your relation to a ship, to a landscape, it is important to know the native place. It's something that I think about a lot and I try to learn. One of my favorite writers is named Tim Robinson, and he's well he died in 2020. But I had the opportunity to meet him in 2009 and he was an English cartographer. But he moved to the west of Ireland, to the Iron Islands and also to Kamara. So he kind of moved between those two places. He lived there for more than 30 years, and what he actually did was he went out and mapped the landscape and talked to local people, and he was able to find some of the place names that had been lost over the years that weren't on the official maps, and he was able to help recreate a Gaelic map of those areas. I think that's a really kind of religious or spiritual activity to go out onto the land and walk it. And to name it and to name it correctly. And I think that's what I think my pagan path is in a way. It's to go and walk the land and learn it, what to call it. Cause I think language is the most important tool we have as pagans. Mark: Hmm. Michael: So those are, that's kind of when I started to think about this stuff. I've always been interested in folk. It was actually funny. There was, it started with a video game one of the legend of Zelda video games called Major's Mask Mark: Hmm. Yucca: Yep. Michael: in, in the game, they actually have like a mask festival and they dis they discuss the the history of the festival. Anna was just like, wow, I didn't, I ended up making masks with my sister and we kind of pretended to. A little mask festival of our own Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: that you're, you're familiar with that? Yucca? Yucca: Yes. Yeah, I played a lot of it. Michael: Yeah. So, but I guess I really started to think about folklore when when I watched the Wickerman as um, as a teenager. I was probably at 16 when I watched it, and it kind of opened my eyes completely. And we've talked a lot about this in the group. And I. It's watched as a horror movie in a way, but   I think I really got into the, the paganism idea of, of paganism as a teenager because of watching the Wickman and just the symbolism and the pageantry. And I also just like the idea. These island people turning on the state in the form of, of the policeman. So that's kind of been something I've that I've really enjoyed over the years, watching that every every May as part of my, my, my annual ritual so, you know, after university, I, I moved to South Korea to teach English, and, but at the same time I was quite into Buddhism. I had been practicing some Zen Buddhism from about the age of 18, and, but not like, more as just a practice rather than believing in any of it. Not believing in reincarnation or anything like that. I just found the ritual of it very beautiful. And I ended up going and doing a temple stay in a, in a place at, at a temple. Up in the mountains and it was very beautiful and really amazing. You know, something you'd see in a movie because the monk, the head monk actually brought us out into a bamboo grove and we sat there meditating just with all surrounded by bamboo. And it was waving in the wind and it felt like a correction, tiger Hidden dragon or something like that. And one of the powerful events that happened on that trip. Doing the Buddhist meal ceremony where we ate in in the style of a Buddhist monk. And the idea is that you do not leave any food behind. After you're, after you're finished eating, you've, you eat all the food, and then when you wash the bowls and they kind of put the communal water back into the, the, the waste bowl, there should be no no bit of food, nothing. It should just be clean water. That comes out of, after everybody finishes washing all their bowls. So we followed all the steps to do that and, you know, some people really, really weren't into it. They didn't wanna do the work of, of being extremely thorough. And there were a few rice pieces of rice in the water at the end and the head monk said to us oh, that will now get, you're, you're gonna cause pain to the hungry to ghost. Because the hungry goats ghosts have holes in their throats, and when we pour the water outside for the hungry ghosts, the rice particles are gonna get stuck in their throats. And a lot of people were like, what? What are you talking about Mark: Hmm. Michael: But I thought that was beautiful because it doesn't, not, you don't have to. It's a story that has a purpose, and that's why, you know, It made me think about the superstitions that we have. And I don't know if I like superstition like these, calling it that. Cause I think a lot of these things have purpose and you have to look for the purpose behind them. And the purpose of that story of the honky go story, maybe for him it is about not causing harm to these, these spirits, but it's also about not wasting food. And I think it, it has more power and more meaning. And you remember. More thoroughly when you have a story like that to back up this, this practice. So I think it kind of made me rethink a lot about the kind of folkloric things that I, in my, in the Irish tradition and that, you know, I think about things like fairy forts, which are, you know, the, these are the archeological sites that you find around Ireland. Like, I think there's like 60,000 left around the country. These, these circular. Homesteads that made a stone or, or saw, or saw that you find all over the country and people don't disturb them because they're afraid they'll get fair, bad luck. The, if you, if you disturb the, the fair fort the ferry's gonna come after you , or if you could, or if you cut down a tree, a lone tree. Lone trees that grow in the middle of fields that don't have a, a woodland beside them, just singular trees. These are known as fairy trees and it's bad luck to cut them down. But I feel like these folk beliefs help preserve the past as well, because, you know, farmers who don't have this belief, they don't have any problem tearing down fray, forts and that kind of thing. They just see it as a, something in the way of them farming, especially in the kind of age of industrial agriculture. Yeah. So it just made, that was when I started to think about how important it is to keep folk belief alive. And I've really, and I really started to study Irish folk belief after that point. And I lived in South Korea as I mentioned. I met my wife there, she's from Iowa and she was also teaching in, in South Korea, and we moved to Vietnam after that. And we lived there for a couple of years, and I might come back to that later. But fast forwarding, we moved to Iowa then in 2013, and I'm teaching a course in Irish. At a local community college, but I always start with this poem by Shama Heini Boland. And I just wanted to read two extracts from it. So the first stands out is we have no prairies to slice a big sun at evening everywhere. The eye concedes to encroaching. And then moving downwards. Our pioneers keep striking inwards and downwards. Every layer they strip, they, every layer they strip seems camped on before. So I, I started with that initially, kind of trying to, as, it was almost like a gateway for my students to kind of look at. Look at Iowa with its historic prairies, which don't really exist anymore. It's all farmland. There's very little prairie land left. I think maybe 2% of the state is prairie. But that idea, that idea of our pioneers strike downwards, and I've been thinking about that a lot as well, that that's kind of a, a colonial look at the land because this land, the American land has is just as camped. As Ireland, and I've been kind of experiencing that more and more. I have a friend who's an archeologist here and just hearing them talk about the kinds of fines that they have. You know, we lived in a town where there was a Native American fishing weir was a couple of hundred years old. It you could kind of see the remains, but it mostly washed away by the time we had. But I did see an old postcard of it from the seventies, and you could see it very clearly. And so just make, and then we always it's become a ritual every every autumn, we go up to northeast Iowa to these, to these effigy mounds, which are some Native American mounds up there on a bluff, just overlooking the miss. Mark: Hmm. Michael: And that's really amazing to look at that and experience and experience that. And you know, I'd love to go back, unfortunately, Shamus, he died more than 10 years ago now, but I'd love to go back and ask him if he would consider rewriting that line, you know, because this land is just as a count on Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: and I'm trying to, trying to make sense of that and what it means. As an Irish person living in America, Yucca: Mm. Michael: Cuz we, Irish people are victims of col colonialism,  Mark: Hmm.  Michael: Irish people, when they moved to America, they just became white as well and had the same colonial attitudes as everybody. And I'm trying to kind of, but you know, there's, there's, there's kind of stories of reciprocation as well. Where during the famine, the Irish famine the, I think, I believe it was the Chota Nation sent Emin relief to the AR to Ireland. Even though they didn't have much themselves, they still saw this. People in need across the water and they sent money to help. And, you know, there's that connection between the Chta nation and the Irish has continued to this day. But I am just trying to figure out what it means to be an Irish person and a pagan living in this country. And that's kind of where I, where I am right now. But to get back to how I got into Ethiopia, paganism I mentioned earlier that I was really into the Wickerman and I found this group called Folk folk Horror Revival on Facebook. And somebody one day mentioned that there was this group called Atheopagan. And so I decided to join and I found a lot of like-minded people. And I've been kind of involved in the community for, for, I think that was maybe 2018. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: And I've been involved in the community since then and maybe on a bigger, I've been much more involved since Covid started and we started doing our Saturday mixers. And I think I've made maybe 90% of those Mark: something Michael: and we've, yeah, and we've been doing that for the last three years and it's just been. It's a really amazing, it's one of the highlights of my week to spend time with with other people in that, in that hour and 45 minutes that we spend every Saturday. Mark: Mm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah, I, I really agree with you. That's, I, it's a highlight of my week as well. Such warm, thoughtful people and so diverse and living in so many different places. It's yeah, it's just a really good thing to do on a Saturday morning for me. And. We'll probably get into this more a little bit later, but the idea of creating human connection and community building I know is really important to you and it's really important to me too. I think there have been other sort of naturalistic, pagan traditions that have been created by people, but they just kind of plunked them on the internet and let them sit. And to me it's. That would be fine if I were just gonna do this by myself. But when other people started saying, I like this, I want to do this too. To me that meant, well then we should all do it together. Right? Let's, let's build a community and support one another in doing this. And so the Saturday mixers, when we, when Covid started, I think. I mean, to be honest, COVID did some great things for the Ethiopia, pagan community.  Yucca: Yeah. Mark: yeah. Kind of accidentally, but that's, that's Yucca: Well that's the silver linings, right? That's one of the things we, you know, life goes on. We have to find the, the, the benefits and the good things, even in the challenging times. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.  Michael: yeah. I think. I'm just thinking back to when we started. So it's kind of, we have maybe six or seven regulars who come to every meeting maybe. And then we have other people who join now and then, but I'm just trying to think back to the first meeting. I think we, that's when the idea of doing virtual ritual began as well in that first meeting. And we were trying to figure out how to do.  Yucca: Was that was the first meeting before Covid or was it as a response to Covid? Mark: You know, honestly, I don't remember. I think it must have been in response to Covid because everybody was shut in and, you know, everybody was kind of starving for human contact. Michael: I think the first one may have been March or April. 2020, Yucca: Okay, so right there at the. Michael: Yeah, right at the beginning. Yeah. And I think, I remember in the first meeting we were talking about ritual ideas and I think the first suggestion I came up with was like I'd love to somebody do like a, describe what an atheopagan temple might look. Mark: Oh yeah. Michael: Yeah. And I left, and I think you were recording the meetings at that time, but we don't record 'em anymore, just so people can feel free to be themselves and not have a recorded recording of themselves out there, . But I know that, I think James who you interviewed recently he, he was listening to that one, I believe, and he came the next week and actually had prepared a guided meditation. Of what a pagan temple would be like to him. And it was a walk through nature. I think that was the first, our first online ritual together. Mark: Yeah, I remember that now. Yeah, and it's been, it's really been a journey trying to figure out how, how can you do these ritual things over a, a video conferencing platform. In a way that makes everybody feel like they're participating and engaged. Right. So that there's a, a transformation of consciousness. But I think we've done pretty well, to be honest. I mean, some of the rituals that we've done have been really quite moving. Michael: Yeah. And I think the ritual framework that you've worked at translates very well to. A Zoom conference as well. I dunno if maybe, if he wants to describe that, what the usual atheopagan ritual would look like. Mark: Sure. We've, we've talked about this before. The, the, the ritual structure that I proposed in my book is basically a, a five step process where the first is arrival, which is sort of, Transitioning into the ritual state of mind from the ordinary state of mind, and then the invocation of qualities that are a part that we'd like to be a part of the ritual with us, which is sort of the equivalent in Wicca or other pagan traditions of invoking spirits or gods or what have you, ancestors, what have you. And then the main working of the ritual, which varies depending on what the purpose of the ritual is. But it can be, well, we've done lots of different kinds of things. We've braided ribbons and then tied, not tied magical knots in them. We've made siles, we've we've done just lots of different kinds of things. And then gratitude expressions of gratitude. The things that we're grateful for. And then finally, benediction, which is sort of the closing of the ritual at a declaration that we're moving back into ordinary time. Yucca: So how does that look in, in a meeting, like a Zoom meeting In a digital format? Mark: Michael, you want to take that one or should I? Michael: So you know, you have maybe, I think usually when we have a ritual more people attend that and so we might have 12 people there and often  Yucca: cameras on. Michael: Camera's on. Well, it's optional. Yeah. If you don't feel comfortable having your camera on, that's completely fine and you don't even have to speak. We do encourage people just to you know, leave a message in the chat so you can just listen in. You can engage as much or as little as you want. And you, you, so. We have all the people on in the conference, and maybe we'll try and get some more of the senses involved as well. So sometimes we'll like candles and everybody will have a candle in front of them. I do know for for some of our sound rituals. Mark, you've used two cameras where you, you aim one camera at maybe a focus, like what's one of the examples of that that you. Mark: Well we did that both at Sown and at Yu. So both the Halls ritual and the Yule ritual where I would create a focus or alter setup with thematic and symbolic things relating to the season. and then I would point, I would log into Zoom with my phone and point my phone at that. And then, and then I'd log in separately on my laptop for myself as a person, and then I could spotlight the focus so that it's kind of the centerpiece of what everybody experiences on their screen and sets the atmosphere. Michael: Yeah. So just a virtual focus that everybody can, everybody can virtually gather around. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. And I think we've also used a Pinterest board in the past as well for people. I think it was at Sound again, we had that Pinterest board where people could put up notes about. Their ancestors or loved ones that they were That's correct, isn't it? Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Or pictures of people that had passed recently or. Yucca: mm. Michael: yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of digital space that you can use for this ritual. We also try not to involve too many props as well. Because we wanna make it as easy as possible for people of all abilities. And just if you don't have the space for something, for a large proper if you don't wanna make a lot of noise, you know, we're not gonna have you using chimes or things like that. So we try and make it as easy as possible. Sometimes we do invite you to bring some food to eat as well, because, you know, a lot of these are feasting rituals. So we maybe, if you feel comfortable bringing some refreshments, you might want to do. And just have a friendly meal with people online. For example, we're actually gonna start doing I'm gonna be leading full Moon meals every month on the, on the, so the first one's gonna be December 7th. And I'll post, post about that on Discord, and I think Mark will post about that in the Facebook group. Yeah. And so the idea is everybody just comes. Joins the Zoom meeting and everybody should have their meal. Whether you're, whether that's lunch or if you're in a different time zone, maybe there'll be dinner or maybe it's just a snack. And then we'll spend a minute just thinking about the providence of the food and then we'll eat us and maybe people can talk about the food that they're eating and what it means to. And I'm hoping to make that a monthly event that we meet every full moon to share a meal together Mark: That sounds. I, I, I really I have pagan guilt over how little I pay attention to the full moon. I'm, I'm always, I'm always aware of what phase the moon is in, but I, I don't do a lot in the way of observances of the phases of the moon. And so, I'm excited to have this added in to something that I can attend. Michael: Mm-hmm. . But yeah, as you can see from that format, it's very simple. And again, you, if, if people listening would like to attend as well, there's no obligation to keep your. Your camera on, there's no obligation to speak. You just, you can just listen in and just feel part of the, part of the community that way. Yucca: Mm-hmm. So in the mixers sometimes ritual, are there discussions or what else do the mixers. Michael: Usually the mixer is kind of a freeform thing. Yucca: Mm-hmm. Michael: Maybe we'll have a topic sometimes, but usually people just come and do a check in and talk about how they're, how they're getting on that week and if there's anything they wanna discuss, we just open it up to that. Depending on the size of the turn, we may require some kind of etiquette stuff. So if there are a lot of people and we don't want people to. Shut it down or have spoken over. So we'll ask people to raise their hands if they wanna speak. That's, that really is only when there's a lot of people and, and often I, I know I'm somebody who likes to talk, so it's a, I think raising hands also gives people who are less confident, or, I'm sorry, not less confident, just not at, don't feel like interrupting. It gives them an opportu. To to have their say as well and be called on mm-hmm. Mark: Yeah. Yucca: Mm. Mark: I think it's really good that we've implemented that. It, it's, it helps. Michael: Mm-hmm. I think one of the really cool rituals we had recently was for like the ATO Harvest, so that was when was that? That was in September or October. In September, yeah. Yeah. So. We were trying, I mean, usually it's, you could do some kind of harvest related and I think we've done that in the past. But I have a book called Celebrating Irish Festivals by Ruth Marshall. And this is my go-to book for, for, for ritual ideas. And this is, and I like to. Kind of some of the traditional holidays and maybe just steal from them. . So Michael Mass is is the holiday around that time in Ireland? It's a Christian holiday, but it's also it's a  Yucca: were older. Michael: yeah, yeah, Yucca: Christians took for the older Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, it's about St. And he's known for slaying a dragon as just as St. George was known for slaying a dragon. But I thought, well, let's turn this on this head and let's celebrate our inner dragons. Let's bring our dragons to life. So it was the whole ritual was about dragons. And we actually drew Dragons, drew our inner dragons and shared them. Talked about what they. And kind of we were feeding our inner dragon so that they could warm us throughout the coming winter. Yucca: Hmm. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: as well as watching the home. Star Runner Strong Door, the Ator video, Michael: Oh yeah, Mark: which you, you have to do if you've got dragons as a theme. It's just too funny to avoid. Michael: That's an old flash cartoon from the early two thousands. That was pretty popular. Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: Yeah. Track toward the ator. Google it, and in fact, I did a, I did the hot chip challenge as part of that ritual as  Mark: That's right. Yeah.  Michael: where I ate a very, very hot tortilla chip on camera. And. It was it was painful, but I'm sure, I don't know if it entertained other people, but it was, it was fun Mark: Oh yeah. It was fun. Michael: So, yeah, they're like, I mean, these rituals aren't all, they're, they're fun and they're kind of silly and goofy and but I mean, I thought at the same time they're very meaningful because people really opened up in that one  Mark: Yeah.  Michael: and shared some really profe profound truth. That was one of my favorites actually, and I hope we do another, another dragon invoking ritual in the future. Mark: Maybe in the spring Michael: yeah. Mark: you do it at, at both of the equinoxes. Michael: Mm-hmm. Mark: so you've joined the Atheopagan Society Council, which is great. Thank you so much for your, your volunteering and your effort. What do you think about the future? How do you, how do you see where this community is going and what would you like to see? What's, what's your perspective on that? Michael: Yeah, so just before I discovered the Pagan Facebook group I had attended A local cups meeting. So that's the covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. And so it was just a taro reading workshop and, you know, I was, I, I like kind of using these kind of rituals just for their beauty and, but not, for not, not seeing anything supernatural in them. I was, it was amazing to, to find a group that was interested in these kind of things too, but without the they weren't incredulous. So I guess what I'm hoping for is that as we, as we kind of find more people who are, are, are aligned with us, maybe we can have more in. Experiences. That was one of the great, the great highlights of, of last year was attending the Century retreat and meeting all, all these amazing people in real life and being able to spend time together in real life. And I hope that as we kind of, as the word gets out about this group, more and more of us can meet in person or as we are able to, Mark: Mm-hmm. Michael: That's what I really hope for the future that you're finding your, your people that we are, we are being able to get these local groups together and then spend time on these important days of the year. And I believe the Chicago Afu Pagan group was able to do that not too long ago. And I know Mark, your local group meets quite regularly as well. Mark: We, we meet for the, for the eight holidays, for the eight Sabbath. So yeah, we're gonna get together on the 18th of December and burn a fire in the fire pit and do a, a ritual and enjoy food and drink with one another. And yeah, it's a, it's a really good feeling that that feeling of getting together is just You can't replace it with online connection, but online connection is still really good. So that's why, that's why we continue to do the mixers every Saturday. And Glen Gordon has also been organizing a mixer on Thursday evenings. Well evenings if you're in the Americas. And. Yeah, there's just, there's, there's a bunch of different opportunities to plug in and it's always great to see somebody new. Michael: Yeah, I think that would be another hope as well that, you know, if you've been on the fence about coming to a mixer I hope that what we've described today maybe entices you to come along. You know that there's no expectations and you can, you can share, you can just sit in the background and watch, or you can participate. There's no expectations and it's just a nice way to, to connect with people, so, Yucca: how would somebody join in? They find the, the link on the Facebook discord. Michael: that's right. Yeah. So I think, mark, you post it regularly on the Facebook group, and it's also posted on the disc. As well. So, and it's the same time every Saturday, so it's 12:15 PM Central for me, so, and that's like 1115 for you, mark, on the, Mark: No, it's 1115 for Yucca. Michael: Oh, okay. Mark: It's 10 15 for me. Michael: Okay. Okay. Yucca: one 15 for Eastern. Then  Michael: one, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yucca: Hmm Mark: And. Michael: and it's always the same time, and I think we've, I think we've only missed one week, maybe in the last three years. Mark: Yeah, I think that's right. I wasn't available and I couldn't find somebody else to host or something like that, but yeah, it's been very consistent. And I see no reason to think it isn't gonna keep being consistent. But yeah, we, you know, we welcome new people. And if you're not in the Americas, that's fine too. We've got a couple of Dutch people that come in all the time. There's a, an Austrian woman who lives in Helsinki who participates. So Yucca: E eight nine ish kind of for Europe, Mark: Yeah.  Michael: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We've even had on the Thursday night mixer, we've even had Australians join occasionally too. So Yucca: That sounds like that'd be early for them then, right?  Michael: yeah,  Yucca: getting up in the. Michael: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. But I'd I'd love for some of the listeners to come and join us on one of the mixers and then cuz you know, you bring new ideas. And I we're always looking for new ritual ideas, Mark: Mm. Michael: That kind of bring meaning to our lives and to everybody else's. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yeah, cuz that's, I mean, that's what we're doing, right? We're, we're create, we're, it's a creative process for us. We've got these sort of frameworks like the Wheel of the Year and the, the ritual format that I laid out. Although people can use other ritual formats too. That's fine. But it's, it's an ongoing process of creation and of taking some old traditions and folding them in where they fit but creating new stuff as well. One of the innovations that we, that we've been doing for the l past year or so is if people want to be done with something, if they want to be finished with something in their. They can write it in the chat and then I take the chat file and I print it on my printer and I take it and I burn it in my cauldron. So it is actually being burnt physically. But it just takes a little bit of technical processing before that happens. Yucca: Hmm. Mark: And it's those kinds of innovations that are really useful for online rituals. And boy, if you have new ideas about things we can do for online rituals, I, I would love to hear 'em. Yucca: So thank you so much for sharing your story and your visions or the future with us. This has been, it's, it's really been beautiful to hear and to get that insight. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Yucca: Yeah. Mark: It's been delightful hearing from you and, and I, I gotta say, I, I feel like our community is very lucky. You've been exploring religion and and folklore and ritual for a long time in a lot of different frameworks and I feel really fortunate that you've landed with us cuz I like you so. Michael: Okay. Well thanks very much. I like you too, Mark: Okay folks, that'll be all for this week. And as always, we'll have another episode for you next week on the Wonder Science Based Paganism. Have a great week. Yucca: Thanks everybody.  

In this episode:Mike and Ed discuss whether the Fantastic Four or the Beatles are more famous. The Thing and the Human Torch were recently at a Beatles show and did some damage while capturing thieves who targeted the cashboxes. Who should pay for that damage? Should good samaritans like the Fantastic Four be held responsible? If they are, what type of disincentive does that create for other superheroes to help others? Are there more superpowered people out there who are keeping their abilities secret because they can't afford the insurance?Behind the issue:The Beatles are first mentioned in the Marvel Universe in Fantastic Four #34 (two months prior to this issue's release), but this is the first appearance of the actual band. The Beatles' first comic book appearance was a few months earlier in July 1964 when Dell Giant released a special issue focused on the fabulous foursome. A few days after the Dell book hit the stands, an Archie title also mentioned the Beatles (Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica #105) and the girls shopped for wigs, but the actual musicians did not appear. Perhaps the very first appearance was in the aforementioned Archie series #104, which teased the following issue and had a page of text explaining who the Beatles were (see below). The Beatles are mentioned in Marvel Comics a number of times through the years, but, as far as we are aware, they do not appear again until 2007, when it is revealed that the band had been kidnapped years ago and had been replaced by Skrulls (who were responsible for the majority of their music in the Marvel Universe).In this issue:The Thing and the Human Torch are getting under each others' skin, and likely need a break from each other. No such luck, as their girlfriends convince them to go see the breakout sensation from Britain, the Beatles. The foursome head to the show, but before it begins, they learn that the venue's payroll has been stolen. The Thing and the Torch head out and capture the criminals, but unfortunately miss the entire show.Assumed before the next episode:People are more interested in being entertained by the Beatles than being saved by the Fantastic Four, or so we assumeThis episode takes place:After the Beatles have started their British Invasion!Full transcript:Edward: Mike, who is more popular? The Beatles or the Fantastic Four ?Michael: I think if you listen to our show regularly, you would assume the Fantastic Four. But if you lived in the real world you'd probably say The Beatles people meaning it for a reason, right?Edward: Fantastic Four have clubs, fan clubs, but there's no fantastic mania. How even the four mania how would you even say that?Michael: Yeah, I don't know ff mania, but like, you know, there's, I thinkEdward: we don't swear on the show, Mike. No swearing on the show.Michael: Yeah, . Well, they're certainly popular. They're incredibly popular and they're being followed and there's celebrity magazines that report on them, but, Nothing like the Beatles. Nothing like The Beatles has happened in a superhero superpowered world. Yeah.Edward: And in this particular case, we had the Fantastic Four went to go and see a Beatles show and we've had no incidences, we know about where the Beatles have gone to see a Fantastic four show.Michael: No, they're not showing up the Baxter Building, you know, pen and paper hand asking for autographs. Although, funny about it is maybe it's just a comment on human nature or our society, but like the Fantastic Floor have saved the world more than once.Edward: And Beatles, the Beatles have not, Beatles have never saved the world.Michael: So you think, you'd think that if there's gonna be this adulation, idolatry, of anyone, it would be the fantastic for, but no, it definitely isn't. It definitely is not. The Beatles are far more popular.Edward: Yeah. The, I guess the Beatles have saved music.Michael: Okay, we'll go with that. They definitely struck a nerve in our society and they're making their mark. And so time will tell us whether the Beatles will be remembered. But right now it's hard to avoid them. If you're trying to avoid them, they're everywhere.Edward: There's that question too, a thousand years from. Looking far, very, very far in the future, are we gonna remember the Fantastic four of the Beatles and I think it would be the Fantastic four, the first real superheroes on the planet are I imagine more memorable than any music bandMichael: the Fantastic four are, as we chronicled or the vanguard of this new evolution of almost post humanity then this is a moment in our history, where there's, who knows where we're going to evolve to. So my money would be that the Beatles are a flash in the pan and the Fantastic four are here to stayEdward: and interesting there's four of each of them. I think that's a coincidence?Michael: Oh my, I didn't think about that. So do you think that maybe, do you think that there's a matching principle going on here, we noted in, remember we talked about recently with the frightful four, there's four of them and we're just confused as to why they would limit them.Why wouldn't they be like the hateful eight or something. But instead it's like they pick the four and the beetles are quarted as well. So do you think. Are we? Are the Beatles being influenced by the Fantastic Four? Is music being influenced by superhero culture?Edward: Yeah, maybe. Or maybe the other way around. Maybe the Fantastic Four just search out for groups of four things.Michael: Yeah.Edward: They go to the grocery store and be like, yeah, I know you have a dozen eggs, but do you have like a smaller package, like maybe a third the size?Michael: Or maybe. Or maybe it's just. Things come into four, right? There's the four of food groups, there's four seasons. It kinda just naturally would evolve to where the Fantastic four, who, when you really think about their powers are quite elemental in nature. They have this sort of,Edward: there's four elements. There you go.Michael: There's four elements. Yeah. So maybe there's an inherent connection to the idea of having teams of four. Although maybe I'm just spinning some mirror here. But anyways,Edward: Can you match them? Can you look at the, we talked about this before, the frightful four. There's like a match almost between, Medusa had her stretchy hair. Mr. Fantastic Reed, Richards could stretch his body. There was kind of a rough match betweenMichael: mm-hmm.Edward: the Frightful Four and the Fantastic Four. Can we do the same thing with the Beatles, is there does Paul match to Sue? Like what is the match? The Four Beatles and the four Fantastic. Four.Michael: You know, I just don't know enough about 'em but maybe there might be something there. Maybe that's something that if they stick around, we can we'll explore it a little more and look, maybe they're the first. Maybe the Beatles were the first super. Powered band. Maybe we're gonna find out that they have powers too. Just don't know about, we just know, knowEdward: IF it happens to anybody, it'll happen to the Beatles. I think a couple things to talk about. I think with this encounter with the Beatles and the Fantastic Four, well, I guess the Fantastic Half, the Fantastic four, it was The Thing in the Human. Torch were going to see a show and in the process, I guess someone tried to steal all the money from the show andMichael: mm-hmm.Edward: the Fantastic Four prevented that. So I guess they did, they did their good deed for the day. But in the process of doing that good deed, they did some damage and. I think this is interesting is that the damage that they caused is not being paid for by the theater, not being paid for by the Beatles, not being paid for by the government, not even being paid for by an insurance company. The fantastic for themselves are gonna cover that damage. And I think that's just, it's interesting that it wasn't like The Thing and the Human Torch were being professionally employed by anybody. They went out of their way to help the Beatles or to help the theater anyway with these thieves, and now because of that good deed, they're gonna have to pay. They're taking the money outta their own pocket, and that doesn't seem,Michael: It doesn't, and it, but it's interesting. It probably, it gives us some insight into the institutional nature of the, or at least the institutional connection between the Fantastic Four the society that they live in. So we've talked before about how the Avengers seem to have a pretty direct connection, almost be a separate like military force or arm of the armed forces in America. But the Fantastic Four haven't. You think that Fantastic Four has some kind of formal relationship. As being almost a police force that they would. They'd have an immunity from any kind of possible civil liability or prosecution if they're,Edward: are you saying that they are a police force or they should be a police force?Michael: I'm saying that they aren't, because if they were then if they're acting in the course of their duties, then they would have an immunity from prosecution and civil liability to provide that they were still carry of their duties within their own responsibility. And so then they wouldn't care about paying the damage themselves because if they got sued, they have an insurance policy, they would respond. And they're not, they won't be worried about, say, being arrested for the damage that they caused in the course of exercising their duties.Edward: And that's, I was gonna say that's probably true. If when the US military went and asked the Fantastic four to go and take down the Hulk, they were basically working under the under the authority of the US military, and I'm assuming that any damage caused during that battle with the huk was paid for by the US government, by the military. In this case nobody asked Ben and Johney to go and stop the thieves. They just, they were good Samaritans and they went and did it. That changes the calculation a little bit.Michael: It does up that. I think when they're tasked by the American military, I think that they could be considered to be contractors in that role. But I am saying that here, that they just acted as good Samaritans and did a public good. They acted as if they were, police officers. But the fact that they paid outta pocket tells me that they don't have any kind of special protection or immunity from prosecution or from civil liability. So they did, then they wouldn't have reached into their own pocket. But the fact they reach into their own pocket tells me that they're doing the analysis, which is that it's probably better for us just to pay outta pocket than to get sued by the people that owned the buildings that were damaged or anyone that had a possible liability claim.It's probably just worth their time to pay it out. So they must have number one tons of money. And number two they don't have any kind of protection. So number three, they're gonna use their money to avoid getting sued and have their time being eaten up. It's just worth their time to just pay people rather than having a claim against them.Edward: But I guess why are they doing it at all? So basically these thieves came in, they stole the money, they took off if Ben and Johney just said, oh, you know what, that's not our problem. We're gonna go sit and watch the show.Michael: Mm-hmm. ,Edward: Then number one, they get to see the show, and number two is they're only out of the ticket price. Instead, they went and chased these guys down. They didn't get to see the show, and they had not having to pay a bunch of money outta their pocket. What was the incentive for them to do that?Michael: That's The Thing, right? If there was a, they had immunity from a civil lawsuit, then they would go do it. But here they clearly don't. And so they had to pay out of pocket because they're involved in this incident that caused damage and they pay out pocket cuz it's easier for them to make the claim go away, the potential gifts go away. And I don't know what their incentive is other than to do that other than that they're heroic or because they feel they can solve the problem and they have so much money that it's worth it for them to both be heroic and to also make sure that they don't have their time wasted that they're, after you keep against them,Edward: you keep saying they have so much money. Is that true?Michael: They'd have to, otherwise they wouldn't do it. If they didn't why would they pay out of pocket? Why would they wait and get sued? I guess.Edward: I guess that's my question. So where's that money coming from? I guess they had that one movie that they had a while back. And Reed has some inventions that he's invented. He lost all his inventions that he invented in the past due to that bankruptcy. But he presumably he's invented other things since then but it doesn't seem that that's an unlimited fund of money. I just, I think there's a, from my business world. One of the heroes of the business world was Adam Smith, who invented the whole idea the trade is good. And one of his famous quotes was, it's not the benevolence of the butcher, the baker, or the brewer that we expect our dinner, but it's regards to their self interest. We don't count on the butchers and the bakers to give us their foods for free. Why are we counting on superheroes to do all of their work for free?Michael: We're missing some information then, right? Because it's clearly happening. So number one, the Fantastic Four don't have this protection from being suit for damage that they cause in the course of acting heroically because they're paying out pocket, because that's the only reason that you would pay outta pocket. So why would they continue? Why would they do it?Edward: So let me dive into that cause it's exactly right. It sounds like of there's an incentive to be a butcher, there's an incentive to be a baker.Michael: Mm-hmm.Edward: society incentivizes people to be police officers and salesmen and retail clerks and radio personalities like us, there's all sorts of incentives in the system for these things. It sounds like right now there's a disincentive to be a superhero, and so that's what, okay, go ahead.Michael: I was gonna say that, but that's where I think this is going is that. On its face it doesn't make any sense unless they have so much money and how are they getting so much money? I don't know. Perhaps it's that we are talking about the Fantastic four who have access to space travel and interdimensional travel, right? Based on their recent adventures to our knowledge.Edward: They're just stealing from other dimensions and bringing,Michael: I don't, yeah, I don't know. I do not know if they have access to resources or minerals or something that we don't have access to here and that we're just not made aware of it. Or Reed has been inventing things and selling and profiting off of that.Edward: Yeah. So I guess that could be it, right? So you could be Right. Maybe they're just obscenely wealthy and in order to keep that wealth, in order to keep getting access to these other dimensions and keep the government off their back, they go and do good deeds for good public relations and those good deeds cost them money. But in the same way that, I dunno, Proctor and Gamble donates to clean water in Kenya, they're just like going like they're, it's like the tax on them. The good deed tax is there to keep their good PR so that they can go and make their money some other way that we don't really know.Michael: Yeah but on a personal level I work as a lawyer, so I make my money by going to work and billing and I bill my time. And so if I'm walking to work and I see someone's gonna walk into traffic and I'm gonna stop them because that's a normal human thing to do and it, but on a cost benefit, I guess it costs me time so therefore it costs me money. Cause I don't get to go to work early enough. But, It's on a human level it's what you wanna do. Now if it's now if to save, if I saw someone fall into traffic and for me to save them would require me to, you know, run.Edward: You don't want to skuff your shoes.Michael: No, but if I could lose my life, then I think that it might be more, I'd hope I'd be heroic and chance losing my life to save somebody who's falling into traffic but I don't know, maybe that's where there would be a line. And what I'm saying is that the fantastic core haven't hit that line yet. Yeah, it's still worth their time.Edward: Let's going back to this scenario, it's even worse than that. It's imagine if now you go and you save that guy, he falls down the road and you rush into the road and you save him but in so doing so, you cause a car to swerve and hit another car. And so now they wanna fine you for that car accident because you jumped in the way to save that dude. That doesn't seem right either. It's one thing you've already risked your life, you've already taken your time. Now we're gonna say, Hey, oh, and by the way, now we want your money too.Michael: That analysis only works, that analogy only works, is that I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, hold on a second. Let me pay for everything outta my own pocket. But I have an insurance policy that would respond to it. So likely I'm gonna be okay. So even if I did that quick math in my head, is it worth it for me to go in traffic?Edward: Yeah. But should your insurance company be paying for that? The guy who busted his car up again, not, not his fault, maybe the guy who felt that in traffic, you go after him, but going after the insurance company of the guy who saved the person's life, that doesn't seem right,Michael: It doesn't work like that though. If somebody falls into traffic and I go in and try to save them, as a result, some other car gets into an accident. I guess if they sustained injury, they would sue me. They wouldn't Sue the insurance company. My insurance company would respond on behalf of me. And there are some legitimate legal defenses that would apply to that very scenario where it's there. I didn't do anything wrong. I wasn't negligent. They'd have to establish negligence in order to trigger it. But my point was less about the intricacies of motor vehicle law and claims, and more just to say that my analysis is not gonna be influenced. I wouldn't have to think I take into my pocket and pay this person out rather than pay my deductible so that when I got sued, that my insurance company would respond and defend me. Whereas the Fantastic Four, clearly it's just not worth it for them to. To possibly don't have insurance, which I don't think they do to respond to the claims that would be made them damaging thatEdward: if they did their insurance would be so high ,Michael: they'd be so high.Edward: What insurance?Michael: You're an orange, rocky, monster that could destroy a building. So I think the insurance would be quite high if you had it. But at the same time, they could sued personally. The, Thing would have to, he is paying outta pocket. They must have so much money that it's just like there's, they're not even thinking about being tied up in a potential lawsuit later because so much doughEdward: and so clearly all these disincentives that we're creating haven't stopped the Fantastic Four from existing. But what's I always find interesting is when these disincentives exist, we have to ask what isn't happening because of these disincentives. Are there lots and lots of other superheroes out there that are being like, you know what, I don't wanna be a superhero. Look how much it's gonna cost. It's too expensive to be a superhero, like being a lawyer. I'll just be a lawyer by day and a nothing by night because it's too expensive.Michael: Well, I'm not, nothing by night a cause you know that.No that's why Spider-Man wears a mask. We've been quite critical on Spider-Man, how he wears a mask and doesn't reveal his identity would be super critical of him.Edward: And it's not, it's not afraid of a villain's attacking him. It's not because he's wants to do criminal things. It's because he's not super rich. Everyone who's not super rich wants to be a superhero, has to cover their face.Michael: So maybe, so I think the solution would be if we recognize it being a superhero is public good, much like having volunteer firefighters and police officers and things like that, then there needs to be new legislation passed in order to provide some immunity from civil prosecution civil claims, if he did, it would remove that disincentive if The Thing and the Torch burned down a building or destroy a building, the building owner can't sue them because they were legitimately acting the course of their superhero duties and roles, then I guess I had to put a claim over to their insurance company. But what would, and I think the only way that works is that probably all of our insurance rates are gonna rise to accommodate that but it's pretty fair to spread their risk out of superhero related damageEdward: It does. And then what that should open up is all these other superheroes that are presumably hiding right now and aren't doing anything. Or have they have secret identities or they have no identities at all because they're not super, they're just, well, they're super, but not heroes. If you wanna take, if you want more of your supers to be heroes, fix the insurance laws.Michael: No fix. You know what we need to have, there? Have to be local, state level and federal legislation that's passed in order to have, immunity from prosecution and immunity from civil claims pass. And that the question for us, I guess as a society, is that a better way to go? Or is it better to have them running around with masks and I don't know. I used to be pretty anti masked, but now I'm kind of seeing the value of it.Edward: Yeah. I think these laws, when you create these new laws, don't they have like catchy names and stuff too?Can we call this law the put the hero back in supers?Michael: I like where you're going with this, but what it be like, there's no i n team, but there's I Insurance Act from 1965. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.superserious616.com

In this final episode with Aaron Chapman, we discuss how adversity can shape your legacy. In this current market environment, many investors will be challenged, but that does not mean they must fail. Your mindset, work ethic, and ability to learn from the external forces that turn your world upside-down will be the deciding factor of your long-term success. Aaron Chapman is a veteran in the finance industry with 25 years of experience helping clients better understand, source, and finance cash-flow positive investment properties. He advises over 100 clients a month in the acquisition and financing of their investment properties and primary residences. Aaron is ranked in the top 1% of mortgage loan processors in the country, in an industry of over 300,000 licensed loan originators, closing in excess of 100 transactions per month. Episode links: https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/qjo-investment-tool/id1533823468 https://www.aaronbchapman.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor Podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me I have for our third and final episode of this series, Aaron Chapman and Aaron's a lender, and he's gonna be talking to us today about how well you take a beating determines your legacy. So let's get right into it.   Aaron, what's going on, man? Welcome back for part three of our conversation. How are you?   Aaron: What's up, brother. Man, it's looking forward to this one.   Michael: Me too our last few conversations. If you didn't catch them, I highly recommend you go back and give them a listen to Aaron drop some amazing wisdom and knowledge. Today we're talking about how well you take a beating determines your legacy as a theme. But for anyone who didn't catch the first two episodes, give us a quick and dirty who you are. And what is it that you do, Aaron?   Aaron: So I am in the Real Estate Investment Finance space. I'm one of the few conventional lenders that focuses on real estate investments. And I do about 1300 transactions a year for investors, I've been doing that since 1997. Got a great big team of 30 plus people, and we're into heavy into the education and helping people build a business while at the same time getting financing done. And it cost them nothing to have all the experience and the the wisdom, we're trying to give them the guidance while it is getting their financing done like they would do anywhere else.   Michael: Yeah, I love it. And so many lenders, especially conventional lenders, I've come across and you might have shared experience are just trying to push the biggest loan that someone qualifies for on them. And they don't really care what that's gonna be used for. They don't really care what how it's gonna affect the end user. But it sounds like you take a little bit of a different approach.   Aaron: It does bother. Well, there's two things about this industry. You know, I think I may have even referenced it, maybe not among the last two episodes is that humans are the apex predator, we fall prey to no other species except other humans. And I found that our industry is just full of predators. They don't care what you do, as long as you close, they will use every sales technique, everything they've ever been taught to try and find a way to get you to close on that transaction.   Myself, I'm of the mindset is I'm gonna do everything I can to ensure that you close and are successful in that transaction. Because if you're unsuccessful and what you end up doing, you're not going to do deal number 2-3-4-5, I don't care about deal number one I care about deal number 10. Why do I care about deal number 10. Because if you made it to deal number 10, you're a badass, you're getting stuff done, you're achieving your goals, if you get to deal with and pretend that I'm a badass, because I'm getting more deals done, right?   But one, if you have that bad experience, man, I'm never gonna see 10. So we don't when people come to us, and they've got questions that they've never had before. They've got decisions they got to make that they've never had to make before. There's a good chance they've never had to really experience what it's like to make that kind of decision. Well, what I do 1300 transactions a year and I've been doing it as long as I have, I don't answer the question with an answer. I give them stories, what I've seen people do in that same scenario, and then give them the outcome of those decisions. So they're making decisions based on practical data, not speculation, in theory.   And then I also if they're questioning a deal, like, I'm not sure if this is right, if it's wrong is like Well, let's take a look at some things I tell them what to look at, and what questions to ask and who to go get the answers from. Take notes and bring them back to me. And we'll evaluate those answers together. And what I'm doing is helping them to determine whether they move forward or they walk away. And they also got to education about it at it. And they also learned about the other people they're working with are these people that are in it for the closing, or they're in it for them and the longevity of their business. And we get to find that out. And you get to talk to people really, really quickly.   And sometimes it takes time you have to investigate things. You have to spend money on appraisals, you have to spend money on on inspections, and things like that. And it could be costly, but you never stay in the deal because you spent money that you spent the money to walk away from it. And we help them understand that they're their CEO, their real estate investment business, and we're here to support it.   Michael: Yeah, no, I love it. Sunk cost was definitely something I got exposure to early on in his business. And it's could be a very tough concept to wrap your head around. If you're not familiar with it, you know, don't throw good money after bad.   Aaron: And that's a heavy duty sales tactic to get people to follow the sunk cost, thought process and process and get really, really caught up a man have already spent this money. If you understand why you're spending the money. There's never a sunk cost. Yeah.   Michael: Yeah, no, it's so true. It's so true. So let's talk about I mean, where we are today is very different than we were six months ago, a year ago, 18 months ago. And I think people might be in for a little bit of a whirlwind. So let's kind of talked through this concept of determining how well someone takes a beating really determines your legacy, which I think is a really great theme. So why do you think it's pertinent to talk about today, Aaron?   Aaron: Well, we're going into what could be a rarity A very big beating. And the fact that, like you just said, we're coming into something we were this different than what we experienced the last little while. It's different. It's something we've ever experienced. When you go back into the market and started researching what's happened in history of these markets that we that we've been following all the way back in the 1800s, we don't have any data to tell us how the economy and how the market or the world is going to react to the last What is it 12 years, 13 years, since 2009, January 1 2009, we started the quantitative easing, and it's continued to keep going $8.9 trillion $8.9 trillion that put into the market. And now we don't know we have no idea how the markets can respond to that as they're, as they're trying to back off of that 40% of the of the world's currency, or I guess the US currency has been produced in the last 18 months. So for people to tell me, Hey, markets go in cycles, and we can get this particular loan, and we'll just refi later, like, Dude, you can't think that way. Because we're not in any cycle we've ever seen.   The last cycle last tilt since 2009, was really the cycle. Sure, there are some little mini cycles in there. But for the most part, we had extremely low interest rates, never seen before we had a housing market has just been on a tear for 13 years. And now you're thinking that some cycle is gonna come along the next five that you can risk getting a five year loan, and do that. No, I think weren't, it was. And I just know, I think Warren Buffett said the 30 year fix is one of the greatest instruments in the world, because it's a one way bet. If you bet on the 30 year fixed and you're wrong. Worst case scenario is you refinance the house. But if you bet on the 30 year fix, and you're right, you're save yourself 1000s and 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of dollars, depending upon the size of your portfolio. So don't get suckered into these short term loans on a long term investment.   So now going into what we're going to be experiencing here, one, I don't know what it's going to be. But if we go back to 2008, here's my own personal story in 2008. You know, I shared my story about coming into the industry and the beatings that I took getting into it, right, and now we're getting into what happened in 2008. Everything starts crashing, everything's falling apart. I at that time, was still doing pretty well. I was making a good six figure income. I had decent clients coming in in 2008. And I was doing kind of a night thing for two throughout two months. I had a buddy of mine I I'm a former fabricator, I've worked on vehicles, I built a hot rods, all kinds of stuff, build jeeps, a lot of things and I have that kind of a background. Well, a buddy of mine says hey, we need you in on this deal. I need another fabricator on this and what we were doing was taking a double decker Bristol bus an English bus. We cut the top off of it, turned it into basically a mobile strip club is what we did. And we did this for a guy that wanted to take it to Burning Man, you guys can look it up. It's called shaggileic. Rapping it's this white bus wrapped in for a cruise ship horn on the front. I mean, it's just it's one of the craziest things you've ever seen. What a trip, I was fabricating everything up top building in the DJ booth. There's a bed going up there places for the poles, all that and that's what I was building.   While I was doing this thing where I was sleeping maybe three hours a night I go to the office, keep working on my lending business. And at night I was fabricating all night long for these guys. Because they were doing during the day and I was doing my part at night. Well then August 8 rolls around am I lucky numbers always been eight. And so as a result that this is August 8 of 2008. I was jumping on the bike, heading out of town for a three day ride through New Mexico just to clear my head. So it's a crazy time in my life and mind that my head was not in the right place. I'll guarantee I just tell you that. Cruising down the highway and right next to this guy is in a black truck and I've been by him for a while so I knew he knew I was there. But Donald suddenly flips on his blinker and he starts coming over to me. Well, I quickly looked over to my right, nobody was there. So I hit my throttle, I leaned that bike. What I didn't realize is somebody just then started to pass me and I clipped her front bumper, and I went flipping. So I don't remember the accident self except for my bike kicking sideways. And then I remember waking up in the hospital and we're looking around and this this really bright light and really quiet area and I remember sitting up and I noticed kind of fuzzy there's somebody sitting in a chair and my lapse my vision got clear is my wife. So I asked her where am I at and what seemed like was kind of an exasperated going to tell me for the 40th time you're in the hospital. You had an accident, and she started explaining things.   Well, what what ended up happening is when I went flipping, I used to race mountain bike so I would instinctively talk I realized this because I had such a massive bruise. This is where I initially hit my my my helmet had big ol crack in it. When I hit it just obliterated my collarbone and a bunch of ribs. It collapsed my right lung when I flipped my legs hit and I shattered my legs and ended up skidding to a stop. So if you've ever been to Arizona in August, but the pavements not nice to lay on in August so I had a lot of burns. A lot of road rash And so I was in there for a couple of weeks in the hospital that a bolt me back together my memory at that point because the head injury we had pinwheel would basically flip every three minutes. I could only remember every three minutes and never reset, but little things would would stand out.   So there's some things I do remember, but a lot of it's gone. And then there's actually some stuff in my history that's gotten my I was with my sister and brother in law, and they showed me some pictures from their wedding. I'm like, I don't remember this. And they showed me pictures of me being there. And then they played the video Like, I have no idea about this night. So there's certain things in my history that are gone because of that accident. So kind of the point behind all that is, I wheeled into that hospital I was I was a mountain climber. I was a marathoner. I was in phenomenal shape, best shape of my life at the time, I weighed in at190 pounds, maybe 12% body fat, worse about on paper, because of my investments worth about three ish million dollars. When I wheeled out of that hospital weeks later, I was 156 pounds at six foot one, and I had a negative net worth of 1.5 million everything was taken from me.   So I had to start over from there. So I had to learn how to walk again. I had to train my memory back. And then I had to negotiate with everybody who is foreclosing on all my rental houses, they're coming after me for all the other debts. And because if it wasn't for the fact now, to me, it was a blessing. There's a lot of people that went through the crash. And they lost everything I know of people that ate bullets, they went back to their office and they shot themselves. I know people who did that. But I had the blessing of being able to negotiate with these creditors, and I'd send them my first week's medical bill for $1.7 million, and then immediately back off. And what I have is a certain amount of money left in the bank, that was all I had to my name. And it was about I think it was like five grand or something I don't remember exactly.   Well I called every creditor up that I owed money to that was calling me and I said here, here's how much I have in my account, you look at my credit report and how many people I owe, I will give you that if you agree to that and wipe the credit clean. So I negotiated that with every single person. And what I did then is then I had an underinsured motorist thing finally kick in months later. And I was able to use that to pay off everybody that one negotiated amount. So I got clear of the whole world and they let me do that because the nature of my accident. Not a lot of people had that. So they didn't have the blessing getting their *** kicked, and be able to leverage an *** whoopin to be able to get out of that right.   The other thing that was real tough about this *** whoopin was I came back to an obliterated business. The lending industry was not doing well and I got back on my feet about eight months later. And all the people I was doing business with before the realtors and people like that they were out of business. They were doing something else. There was two left in the industry, my mom and a gal by the name of Carolyn Irby with Coldwell Banker, they at that point, they were still doing business, they're getting deals done. And they call me up say, Hey, I got a client for you need to call this person, they would got to the point that they'd call me back five minutes later say, Hey, did you call that person like what person they said, Get your pad and write this down. So I got to I was carrying a notepad with me all the time, I'd write down what I do all day long. And the calls are supposed to make the outcomes of those calls. And then if it was crossed off, that means I did it. If it wasn't crossed off, then I would have to make this call. I can't tell you how many people I called that weren't crossed office. We just talked on the phone. Right? It's like well, can you can you tell me what we said.   So talk about earning trust, right? That's a real hard way to earn trust with somebody when five minutes before you don't even remember the conversation by explain the scenario. And people were very, very, very kind to me. Now. There were some saying, Hey, I can't do business with that does have a memory. There's a lot of people that were that did. And I rebuilt my business on that. And because of that notepad, I rebuilt my memory and I read, I was able to reconnect those wires in my head by the grace of God. And by just being very, very religious about maintaining my my pad, I wished I had my stack of pads, I throw them away, oh, I don't know why throw them away. But that was how I lived my life at that point. And I recovered back to a business that I built back up from zero to now. I get I start the the real estate investors coming into Arizona, and they're buying these houses that are undervalued. And so I started to do those loans. They were really little loans. There's like 50,000, or loans. Nobody's making a bunch of money on 50,000 our loans by doing a ton of them. And then I went from there to doing more and more they went from from Arizona to Indiana, Indiana, Missouri, Missouri, to Texas, and then over to Tennessee. And so I started doing more and more loans.   Well, then I had one of my biggest competitors, who was also a guy call and he'll give me pointers on how to do some of these loans are a little bit tougher. He decided in 2015 that we should merge our businesses. So when he flipped, they flew me out to Utah, I sat down with him and some of the executives in the company. Let's do that. So I merged the business with him. But you can only do the loans under one person's name. Well, since we're merging into his company, well, the company he worked for as a loan originator was put on to his name. Six months later, he pulled it all apart, took it off himself and left me at zero again. And it took my entire database.   Well, the executives called me up to say, um, we're probably at the fire your staff, and you're just gonna have to start over like, No, give me 90 days. So me and my staff have two or three, we sat down and we said, what are we going to do when the phone rings is going to ring in 10 minutes? What are we going to do with these deals, now, you don't have our big team anymore. And we mapped out a plan. And within six months, I was ranked number nine in the company. And within a year, I taken over the number one spot within the company. And now years later, that guy's out of the business. Because he I mean, that's what happens when you become selfish you and it's all about you, everybody leaves you he ended up all by himself, he end up not having a business anymore. He's completely out. I haven't heard anything from him, he got away from doing investor loans like three, four years ago. And I would venture to say I'm the number one guy in conventional lending for real estate investors. And last I saw by statistical numbers that was just published in a mortgage originator magazine, if you look at how many trends looking at by how many transactions closed per year, I think I'm right, number six or seven, the United States.   Michael: That's wild Aaron. That's so insane.   Aaron: And to me, a lot of people is like, how did you do all that and I'm like, you just every single day you have an objective and you keep moving forward. And it was actually, to me the noise of the world getting turned down around me and I was stuck to my own thoughts. You have to decide whether or not you agree with the person that you were and I would did not like the person I was at that time. I was a really arrogant, cocky prick before that accident. You know, I was dressing the part and acting department being the man. Now it's like, you know, I decided I'm just gonna be me. And if people don't like me, then then that's fine. I don't need to we don't need to do business. It's not about that I would do whatever I need to do to close a deal before. Now. I just want to make sure I get along with a person. And like one guy told me this last week, I thought it was really interesting. He says, Do you you just collect people? Like what do you mean I collect people because you collect relationships, because that's that's your investment, you invest you invest in things, but you spend money to make sure you have more relationships with people. And that's the truth.   And that came up because we talked about flying first class, one guy said he's really really cheap. The other guy said no, I love first class, I got pampered by it. They say you fly first class all the time. So yeah, I'm Executive Platinum with American Airlines, I spend more time in seat 3D and I do at my house. But it's not for the seat, or for the free drinks. It's for the person next to me. Because you'd be amazed at the kind of people you sit with in that environment and the kind of conversation you get to have. And they're all very, very memorable. If you'll just reach out and say hi.   Michael: Yeah, that's such a different way of approaching it. You know, so many people are going for the drinks or going for the big seat. Sounds like you could care less about that. Aaron: No, I mean, it's comfortable being a sibling I hate sitting in the back, because because of how much Americans have the room. Let me I'm not I'm not a fan. I do have to I do fly Allegiant from Arizona to to Missouri. So it's only one one stop to go to my place out in Missouri. So I still do it. I'm not a fan of it. I don't love it. We in fact, my family is dubbed at low rider of the sky. But when we go to kind of fly American, I'm, it's gonna be a long flight. I need to be comfortable. For two reasons. One, I've just gotten used to it. And I like sitting next to people I sit next to number two, I've lived the last What is it now? 12 years, 14 years in pretty heavy pain. And because of that pain, when we hit the sky, and they start pressurizing. I was doing a lot of pain in my shoulders, a lot of pain in my legs, my ankles are just both my feet were snapped off in that in that accident. So the extreme pain I was dealing with that. It's now gotten a lot less because I really took the time to rehab this last year, I went to rehab to physical therapists like crazy and we had loss and I got back to working out I got in a lot better shape than I've been in a long time in 14 years, honestly. And I feel awesome. But now the reasons I sit up there is not for the same reasons. It's for the it's for the relationships and like yourself, right? Well, I'm collecting people right here now. And now wherever I go. I see you as there's my guy. There's Mike.   Michael: Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. So Aaron, I mean, you've been like literally to hell and back again and came out on top. So for people that have maybe been never been through a downturn or a market cycle, if that's what we're headed into. And it sounds like that might not even be the case. I mean, what should people be doing to prepare, if they do find themselves with those shorter term loans coming due now?   Aaron: Well, and they're gonna come to at some point, even if it's not now, I think they need to be on the watch for any opportunity to put themselves into a longer term loan and have to bite the bullet or whatever that expense is. Do I believe, I mean, I think interest rates going to keep climbing to an extent they're gonna have to taper off because I can't see us continuing down this path. Interest rates are just, you know, mortgage backed securities are getting slaughtered, but I also can't see why anybody, anybody want to invest money in the mortgage backed security. Honestly, I don't understand why that money is flowing in there. Because if inflation is as high as it is, and you're going to lend somebody money, potential for 30 years risking it for 30 years, you're not getting your money back, you're losing money. But the marketing engine that is the real estate, the mortgage lending world, for the banking world, the marketing engine has convinced people, if you drop it 1%, you should refinance. And so the majority of people will refi, within the first four to five years, you're looking at an amortization, amortization table, the first four to five years, they're taking advantage of you, because you're all you're doing is paying an interest and then you put you back into a heavy interest period, they're gonna continue to keep them just just sucking money from you is what they're doing.   So they're, I believe, there's going to come a point that we're going to taper off, things might get a little bit better. And if it does that, within the next year or two, I'm going to highly encourage you, if you got suckered into a short term loan on a long term hold, get into a long term loan, get yourself comfortable. I always say control what you can control for as long as you can control it. And you can't do that in a short term loan. It's just not going to work that way. Michael: Yeah. No, I love it. And from a mindset perspective, I mean, it, I could see it so easily where you could have given up when you lost everything in a weight when you woke up from when you came out of the hospital, you know, went from a positive network to several millions and negative net worth overnight, seemingly? I mean, how do you get out of that? Because I think, again, it's so easy to go into despair and poor me. What kind of mindset does it take to lift yourself up from that?   Aaron: Yeah, that that was an interesting question to have to answer. Because not only do you have when you stack it all up, and I have to ask myself several times, how did I get where I'm at? Now, when I look back on that particular thing? It it was, like you said, you get your *** whooped that heavily. You're the everything's taken from you, you can't get you can't walk, you can't think you can't pay for anything. And they're giving you free drugs. And it wasn't just, it wasn't just weak drugs. This was good, good stuff. I don't know if you've ever had a lot of bad stuff. Is that amazing?   Michael: It's not Advil.   Aaron: No, it is definitely not Advil, and they were just willingly handing it to whatever you wanted, I had to get off of that. And I had to point myself in the right way. And I was still in a wheelchair, I was still having to deal with all this intense pain, I still had a lot of rods and stuff, multiple surgeries still being done. And I threw the stuff away and like, I don't want it, I gotta get my mind, right, I gotta get focused on where I needed to go. And what it was, as I've never sat still I just never had in my entire existence. So it was the drive to get up and get moving again. It was also that I always had an objective and a goal and where I was heading in life, even if it was just it was never really defined, but it was just kind of floating out there. I decided I was going to go after that I was going to continue after that. But I don't like to do is what was in front of me that day is day after day after day, day after day after day. But I think to the biggest driver at that point was I did not like the person I was before that accident. So I want to do everything I can to be anything but that man. And I am grateful that he was there to show me the way you shouldn't be doing things. But he was the biggest driver to continue to become something different.   And then after that the next big driver was I had a good friend of mine. His name's Joel. He's like a brother of mine. And it's it's a really long story to tell you how we met because we hate each other first. But now he's basically like my brother. And we went out one night with our wives. And at the end of dinner or after the event, we went to walk into our cars we have the opposite direction goes, Hey, by the way, I'm making a big deal happen right now me and my business partner, and it's going to change your life. Like how's it going to change my life? If you're making a deal, he goes, I can't tell you, he goes, but it's going to close here real soon. But it's going to change your life, believe me, I'm gonna change your life.   And as we parted ways, give him a hug. He turns around and walk in his car with both his hands and he goes, I'm going to change your life. And he yells out to me from like, 50 yards away, not knowing what that is. My colon changed my life, dude. Well, let's see what this is. Well, then, short time after that I found out he closed on the second largest. It's now the second largest real estate brokerage in the state of Arizona. And they'd made a deal with another lender to be their premier lender inside. What he wanted me to do is contact that lender and he told them call this guy, I want this guy in your company to work with us. So they called me and we talked about me coming over there. And to go over and meet with them and went through all the back contracts and everything. I'm like, Okay, well see how this goes. And they said we want you to come meet the CEO of the company, but you can't meet the CEO until you do this exercise and they hand me this five year vision that the CEO had for himself, you know, his five year plan and then they told me gave me the elements of the five year plan.   Cool. So I wrote this out like this is all bullcrap. Nobody does this. None of this crap works as goal setting stuff is stupid. But Fine, I'll do it. Just so I can meet the CEO, Joel opened up the door on going to do a jewel asked me to do like sat down. I wrote out this audacious freaking plan, right? The best month I've had before that was 18 Maybe 18 transaction that due in a month. And I think I closed maybe 20 Some million a year or 25 million, maybe 30 million year my best year. Well, I wrote this thing I was going to do 100 million a year and my staff is gonna grow by this and that in that net over the five year window, no ideas, I set it up as a story. I'm sitting on along Rubicon Trail in my chair with a fire gun. My wife's next to me, we got the Jeep parked there were searing steaks on the on the trail grill, and I'm thinking back on my life or last five years, and I'm writing a letter to myself of everything that happened.   So then I went forward, I met the CEO, he's like, this is the most unique five year plan I've ever seen written, we would love to have you come work for us. Now, incidentally, I didn't go work for those guys. It didn't work out. But I stuck with that five year plan. And I continue to follow that five year plan to go back and look at it look at it. I blew through everything on there and doubled it. Because I wrote it down. And then I discovered a few write things down things happen. So one of the next things that I'm doing, I have a book out there shows people I'm working on another book with Robert Allen, if you know who Robert Allen is, but we're working together on a book. So he wrote the book, no money down in the 80s. The guy was basically   Michael: Oh, yeah. Okay.   Aaron: So he's an absolute bad***. I mean, Robert is awesome. And we're writing this book as if me sitting there talking to an eight year old about how life or 18 year old about how life works. And it's taking a beating. So it's how to take a beating. And that beating is actually how you learn. And explain why believe that. And so on and on be teaching people within the first chapter, then all the way through the book on how to write this out, and then help people come to me will sit you down, I'll take it in an environment. And there's more stories about how that got done. And other ways I've used writing it down to become successful, and show people you write this stuff down. It's amazing how the universe starts to line up to get things done for you.   Now, when it comes to a beating, right, the one thing is that we have noticed that we as humans learn better by getting our butts kicked. And I believe that there's this Bigfoot that wakes up at about 7:30 Every day, this big, ominous invisible foot to kick your *** all day long if you let it. If you so think about this, I wake up at 4:30 in the morning, I get up way before the foot does and I do what I want to do, right I sit down, I send a message to my team, every single morning, I read, I write, I do the stuff that I need to do I have prayer before I get started all that and then I go and I work out every single day. So but if you're a person who wakes up at 7:45, and you got to be the office by eight, the foots already up, right, it's already kicking your *** the second you put your foot on the ground from from the from your bed to try and get to the bathroom, you stumble into this, you stumble into that your day is just wrong from the very beginning.   Get up before the foot does, you got to figure out where your personal foot wakes up. That's out there to kick your butt. And you got to get up before the foot doesn't plan your day and start executing on that. The other things that I've noticed with people, you know, how we learn, we do have to take a beating learn so you need to dissect every beat you've got so what am I learning from this? And how do I need to take from that, and let me illustrate how I know that. That's how that's true. I was six years old. And my parents put me in a Pentecostal school for my first grade year. I didn't go to kindergarten straight to first grade. And it was this Pentecostal church in this small town. And they had everything from first to high school senior all in one church and everybody had their own little thing and you had different teachers for all of it. And I segmented us first graders off for the first three months and we're meeting in the little room and they were teaching us the alphabet and numbers. And as they're going through the alphabet every letter was had a nursery rhyme style Limerick to it and a filmstrip. Now you may be a little too young to remember filmstrips. But it's up…   Michael: No I got it, I got it.   Aaron: Okay, so you got the film strips got the little thing. You'll play the music and here's the beep and you flip it to the next next slide, right? It's basically slides. Well, it was a it was the we got to the letter M. And the letter M was about this mule named Milton. And the way the nursery rhyme when it says Milton the mule he made a mistake as you read a map, you walked in a lake. And as it's going through those filmstrips, you've got this cartoon mule walking down the road, in a suit holding this map, and then you see him falling in this lake. Well me being me, even at six years old, I redid the limerick, and I said it out loud. So instead of having Milton falling out falling in a lake, I had him ******* in a bucket. I know it's stupid. Right? The six year old stuff. The little girl sitting next to me did what you just did, she laughed about it. That didn't go over well with the teacher. Now the teacher happened to be the wife of Noah, who was also the pastor. She heard all this so she grabbed both of your ear lobes. Walk the straight to the principal's office and sat us down in these chairs.   This guy was not a small guy. He was a big man. So he's the pastor. He's the principal. He made me repeat exactly what I said. When I was done. He turns around he picks up this old aircraft aluminum style briefcase, sets it on his desk, puts in the code opens it and very ceremoniously turns it so I can see the contents had a padded interior cut out to houses pattern. So then he pulls the paddle out makes us both stand up and turn around and put our hands on the on the chairs. She got one swap I got two because I'm the one that came up with the limerick. Now it wasn't that hard. My dad's Irish my mom was Spanish Believe me I that way harder buttons for a lot less than what that guy gave me. But it was The gravity of the situation that caused the tears to flow. And then I also knew I had to face my dad that night. He always told me if you go to the principal's office, you're getting an *** whoppin. Well, I did. I got a pretty good one. But ultimately, the main reason I bring that story up is there's how many letters in the English language?   Michael: There's 24   Aaron It's 26?   Michael: That's so embarrassing.   Aaron: I know. I googled that I thought it was 24 as well very recently, and I go, so yeah, there's 26. So 26 letters, which we just established. How many guy remember the limerick for?   Michael: How many did you remember the limerick for? You probably remembered him for all of them. But for sure M.   Aaron; Just one. That's the only one I remember. I remember the letter M. I don't know anything about the other ones. That was 42 years ago, I can only recite the one for letter M I don't remember what the other ones were about. I can't remember you even articulate what the letter A would have said for it be what it stood for. But remember what M step four? Why do I remember it because I got my *** beat. That's why.   So we as humans learn very well through a beating. So what I tell people don't take, don't take a beating is something that's bad, learn whatever you got to do, just don't take the same beating. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes, just make new mistakes. Because you're making new mistakes, you're still advancing. There's nobody, that people who fail to get ahead in life make the same mistake over again. The other there's another thing that they say is there's two types of people never amount to anything. A person that can't do it, they're told, and a person that can do nothing but. I would say take the time, and analyze that to people that will never amount to anything, a person that can't do what they're told, and a person that could do nothing but.   Those are some very, very powerful words to sit and think about. And you have to figure out who am I? What am I getting done? What kind of *** whopping am I taken on a daily basis? And I said the same one over and over again. What do I got to do to make adjustments so I could advance myself and get away from this beating I keep taking.   Michael: Man Mike drop exit stage left Aaron Chapman, everybody. This was so much fun, man. How do people get in touch with you if they need you?   Aaron: Best way is Aaron chapman.com Or just go to Google and type in Aaron chat and you see a bald bearded redneck lender you got the guy.   Michael: That's you awesome, man. This was so much fun. Aaron thank you again for coming on for the third time. This was definitely the one that did it. We'll do it. We'll be in touch man.   Aaron: Thanks, brother. Appreciate you man.   Michael: Likewise, you got it.   Okay, everyone that was our episode A big thank you to Aaron for coming on today and the other two episodes as well. If you didn't catch those, I highly recommend you give those listened to Aaron dropped some really fantastic wisdom, knowledge and thought perspective on where we're headed in the next couple of months and yours with the market.   As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we'd love to hear from you with a rating or review wherever it is get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing

Today, we welcome Billy Keels back on the show to discuss how he went from living the corporate life to running his own business. We discuss his motivations, the mindset shift, the challenges, and finally, the rewards of his decision. Before becoming a real estate entrepreneur, KeePon Cashflow's founder Billy Keels worked in the corporate world. In fact, he was one of the best “corporate soldiers” you'd ever want to meet. Billy says that he was happy enough in his J.O.B., but something was missing. An emptiness and longing for a different life chewed on him, pulling him to what he knew he wanted to do more than anything else. Billy wanted to be an entrepreneur who brought two worlds together. So he took steps and kept on the path to his goals. Today, Billy is an international real estate entrepreneur, problem-solver, author, coach and mentor. He sees opportunities where others often don't in real estate. --- Episode Links: https://www.firstgencp.com/ https://www.firstgencp.com/paylesstax https://www.linkedin.com/in/billykeels/?originalSubdomain=es --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today with me I have Billy Keels back on for another episode. For anyone who missed it Billy is an entrepreneur business owner ex former tech sales guy, and he's gonna be sharing with us today about how he started his business, why he started his business, and really the mindset shift around going from employee to entrepreneur. So let's get into it. Billy Keels, welcome back for round two, man. How are you? It's so good to see you. Billy: Michael, what's up man? I, um, super excited to be back. This is nice.   Michael: I'm super excited to have you here. So for those listeners that did not catch our first episode together, give us the quick and dirty who you are, where you come from, and what is it you're doing in real estate.   Billy: Very cool. But you know what? You know what I have to do first man, because you're very kind to welcome me back and I just wanna say everybody, by the way, if you haven't already, Leave Michael a nice, wonderful, honest written review as well as rating. It helps to… Michael: Oh my gosh…   Billy: Bring guests to you, which is phenomenal. No, I mean seriously. I mean.... The energy, you all bring the organization, you bring the structure. Uh, and also I know a lot of the things that you are doing are making positive impact cause you're helping to educate people and also inspiring them to take action. So it's the least I could do also as a fellow podcaster, um, to go out. Uh, and, and, and ask of that. So, um, but yeah, Billy Keels, I'm still the, the same guy from the Midwest, uh, of, uh, of Ohio, who has spent the last 26 years of his life, uh, in corporate up until recently, uh, no longer, uh, in the corporate world. I've also been spending the last 21 years, uh, living in Europe. I know Michael, that's close to your heart as well? Michael: Very much so. Billy: And specifically, yeah, specifically between, uh, France. Italy and most recently Spain. I am someone who really, really had a great corporate experience. I really enjoyed it. It was fantastic. Some personal things happened in life that helped give me some clarity that was time to do some other things. Uh, and now I am very, very fortunate to be living, uh, you know, I'm living my, my best life and, uh, was able to make my nine to five optional and doing that in a point in time where I'm still in my forties and, uh, living between, uh, the US and, and Europe and that was part of my life goal. Uh, very, very fortunate and super excited to be back here and share another conversation with you, man. Michael: Oh my God, I love it, I love it. Billy, before we jump into it, I'm just curious, do you remember the best compliment you've ever received? Just outta curiosity. Billy: The best compliment. So you've kind of putting me, putting me on the spot, man. Um, I don't know. I think that's when you have to ask my parents. I don't know because they're , you know? I don't know. I just, I don't know. I, I, I can't remember. But usually it's, it's probably something that's not related to me, but something that I would've learned from my parents. More than likely. Um, but I don't remember specifically why, Why do you ask? Michael: I love it. I'm just curious, man. I'm curious to know if people remember, like human psychology, if people remember the compliments more, or do they remember the insults more? Billy: I spent 26 years of my life, uh, 20, one of the 26 years in sales and sales leadership roles. So the, the bad stuff I've learned to just kind of let it go. , the good stuff. I try to. Um, but if it, like, one of, part of the process that's happened with me is I try not to internalize too much of this stuff because then I kind of keep that and there's a tendency to say, Well, I've heard this so many times, therefore I am, um, I always try to work and be in the best version of myself, so even if I get a compliment, it's kinda like cool. I appreciate that. I probably learned that from my mom, from my dad. It's something I've seen from my brothers or something that my, my wife is helping me to be better in. Michael: I love that man, I love that. Can we turn back the clock a little bit, Billy, and talk about. Your corporate career, because I think that you have a, a similar story to a lot of folks, especially listening, have an amazing corporate job, are killing it in whatever it is they're doing. Um, and they can see themselves doing that maybe forever you had kind of a life change. I'm just curious, like why did you decide to go into business for yourself? Billy: So, you know what, Michael, this is actually super, um, such a wonderful question and I can tell you, I think the last time I told you that there was something that happened to me when my, um, it didn't actually happen to me. It happened for me when my son turned three, I missed his birthday right and I, because I chose to go to a business meeting that was in Germany because I was chasing the corporate dream. I was, you know, that was the thing that I was supposed to do, I was a really young father in that day. It was, I felt an incongruency in my, like, in my being right. I was, I woke my wife and son up to, you know, wake them up and our one year old just to give a hug to our three year old and kiss and then I was out the door. So that was the thing that made me realize like, hey, look, I've gotta kind of take action. I really like my, my corporate career, but I got lost somewhere along the way and my priorities got outta whack and so that helped me to take, start taking action, stop reading a lot of books. Cause I'd been reading books for probably three or four years, right? I knew all the numbers, all the theory, all the stuff, but I didn't take any action and I'm very, very proud to say that I've just celebrated a decade later, right? A decade later, I was able to accomplish the goal, which was being able to make my nine to five optional and even though I went in probably for the last three years and I didn't actually financially need to, I chose to go because, um, the life balance that I had was much better than it had been the previous years. Um, I was still enjoying the things that I was doing in my role. I was really well recognized. I was, you know, making way more money than I thought I ever should be, Uh, making and a decade later, like I literally just came back from, uh, Ohio, uh, where I was, uh, over visiting some friends, got to go to a, a sporting event, which was fantastic. Saw family members and then was able to be back here. Uh, for my son's 13th birthday. So a decade later, I recognized that the action that I took for a decade while I was working my day job, having this side hustle, like it really, it's paid off and it hasn't been perfect. Michael, Um, not even close to perfect, but the fact of the matter is I got outta my own head. I started taking action. I started seeing results, and then I started multiplying on that action and. Even though I left the corporate, because something also non-financial, and I think we talked about this last time, happened with my dad, and it helped me to realize like, okay, I really like what I'm doing, but there's some other things that I can do now less than a year later and my son's, you know, 10 year, 10 years later, his 13th birthday, I'm at a point where I'm like, wow, you know, all these things that I dreamt and wrote about on my dream board. They actually came to fruition. Um, not perfectly, like I said, but you know, being able to be in this point now is, I, I, you know, I'm glad that I started taking the action and I'm glad that I started that side hustle and I know that I worked through a lot of, you know, a lot of crazy hours during some of that time, but it wasn't all for nothing. Michael: Yeah. That's amazing, man. Well, first off, congratulations. That is super, super exciting to hear and I'm sure your family is super thankful as well. Let's talk about like, I think so many folks get it in their head that they can't have a side hustle, or they can't go build a business of their own either because they don't feel creative enough, they don't feel inspired enough, they don't feel called to do something, or they just feel like they don't have enough time. So talk to us about the mindset around. I'm working my nine to five scraping by or doing really well, not even scraping by just doing really well, but I'm exhausted at the end of the day. How does someone like that even think about doing something else? Billy: Yeah, so, and you know, I, I guess I kind of put it in a, there's a couple different things inside of me. I kind of always knew that I wanted to do something else as well, because I think one of the best things about working in a corporate role is in specifically like I was in the IT sector, right and not only in it, I was in software. So this is like super cutting edge, massive profits, and so it was great place to be every single day and so there are so many, like I realize like for a while, I just wanted to continue to work and be an employee and, and things were great and I was really, really fortunate because I had great salary. Um, you know, I was given opportunities to learn to grow leadership opportunities, great training and so for that period of my life that I didn't really wanna do anything. This was like, this was the most amazing thing ever. But then also as I started getting into the other phases of my life, I realized like, hey, listen, there are other things that are really important to me. I want to be able to be here or be there, or just be nowhere when I want to do it and not have to worry about somebody else telling me when and so when those things started happening for me once again, I started realizing like, okay, well, number one, the things that, because I didn't grow up with money at all, but I got into a point where I actually was not just saving money, but investing money, but then I realized that it was outside of my control. Like the stock market couldn't control that, but that was the only thing that I'd been taught to do, which was buy low, sell high, not really a winning strategy, and I didn't take enough time to get educated on that. That happened in 2000 when the DOT combo will happen, and the same thing happened again in 2008 I lost 33% of my portfolio, so I knew that even though I was in a really great c. Opportunity and create corporate experience inside of me. I needed something else. I wanted something else. I just didn't know what it was and so it wasn't until I came across that little purple book that so many people have read that that started turning like the idea on in my mind. But even with that, my goal, like I said, it took me like three and a half, four years to go from theory to practice and it took me missing my third, my son's third birthday to actually start to take that action and so, once I started, uh, you know, being able to, to take that action, I realized like, hey, listen, as long as I continue to give the outputs, cause I was in sales and sales leadership, like what are the outcomes that are expected In my role, I always performed at a high level. Like I was in the top talent program. I was going to Hawaii every other couple years for, you know, overachievement against quotas and stuff like that. So I felt like it was always important to be able to give everything that I gave during my corporate time because that was also providing me the income to be able to do the investments in the other stuff, which is actually creating my runway for my own life, like the one that I was building for my family. So it was finding that balance between being, a really good sometimes great. Uh, corporate employee, I think even, well, I don't think for on my, for a while on my, um, on my LinkedIn it said, hey, you know, happy corporate employee like that was my moniker. So that, that was like the thing and people were like, You really a happy corporate employee? Like yeah, I mean it's treated me really, really well. Yeah. Um, but it was something more that was inside of me that said, hey listen, it's time to do something else and I was afraid for a really long time because I was a high paid executive who was visible and people, you can't be doing anything else, man. You like, you need to be client facing all the time. You make a lot of money, you're doing this, you're doing that. But I knew that it was, um, it was something that I, I really wanted to do and there was sacrifice that also went on, right? Cuz you, you, you're in that type of role, you're expected to be on. Almost 24 hours a day. So I was waking up really, really early in the morning and I was staying up really, really late at night and fortunately both my, my, my wife and my kids understood that, um, once I got back on track, um, and, and it was about being able to find that balance. So I know it's maybe a little bit of a, kind of a longwinded answer, but I think it was about, you know, recognizing how fortunate I was in the corporate role that I was in and I did like it. Uh, I liked it a lot and at the same time, at a certain point I knew that I wanted something more. I knew that I wanted. The control. Initially it was of the financial, uh, outcomes of my life and what I realized it was, I really wanted to have more control over my time and it manifests itself just a couple days ago, which was a decade later, which was me being able to fly to my hometown, stay there for a week, hang out, and then be back for my son's 13th birthday. So, um, yeah, so that's. Hopefully that answers your question. Michael: Freaking amazing, man. So let's talk about like the next obvious question because you were an executive in it, tech sales. So what did you end up doing? Like what kind of business did you start?   Billy: Yeah, so, um, so the thing that I started to understand was it was a thing that came across. It was really, this is kind of dumb luck. It happened, it just really happened that I read that low purple book. The proof of concept was really simple. He was like, okay. I was working in this intangible world selling software. You can't touch it. You pay multimillions for it and then there was, hey, you pay a couple hundred thousand, then a couple million, and you get this actual, physical, tangible thing that you can touch. People wanna sleep in it, so they'll pay you for it. So that's the revenue line. By the way you've gotta make sure that this place stays in order. So you've got some operating expenses, you know you gotta pay your insurance taxes, maintenance and operations, maintenance, repairs, things like that. Then afterwards you get to this line, which is net operating. Well cool and if you have some debt service or mortgage, you pay that mortgage and everything else you get to keep. I was like tangible, simple business model and there's a need for it. So I went and started investing in real estate and I think we talked about it last time, but here based in Barcelona, Spain, but investing always back in the United States, exclusively in the US. So I started with the, with the smaller multi-family and then I bought a mobile home park and then I opened my mind to thinking about new things and I was like, okay, cool. Once I understood that, I get the education, start to build a network around people and then start to continue to take action on this imperfect information I started seeing my asset base grow and those assets, you know, the smaller multi-family, the mobile home park, the ATM machines, and then I started investing with other people because that made a lot of sense for me because I was a high paid executive. So I started realizing like, this is really, really cool, but it's taken a lot of time. I need to do something where I can actually leverage the e efforts and expertise of other people and I was somebody who was a credit investor. I figured that out later and so then I started giving, or not giving, but investing my capital with other people and things like the ATM machines and things like, um, larger multi-family buildings and some development projects in the hospitality space and then I kept having this one specific problem, which was, I was investing in all of these, and I don't wanna get too technical, but passive streams of income, like IRS definition of passive income and I kept still paying 40 plus percent in income tax, and I was like, this doesn't work. So then I started realizing that I needed to start asking different questions. I got into a specific area within the energy space, and that energy space helped me do a couple things, which was continue to build my asset base. That was generating income. This time it was active income, but it was also helping me out as a high paid executive. It was really helping me on my income tax because there were some specific, um, tax code rules related to energy production that helped me not just generate, you know, income moving forward, but it also helped me keep more of my income through income taxes and income tax deductions. So it was looking at all of these different things. At a certain point when I left my corporate career, I thought, I really like this building the asset base. I like continuing to do it and I'd build a lot of relationships and the one thing that really made the biggest impact on me as a high paid executive was the, the thing that was helping on the generating active income and, and keeping more of my active income. So today I really focus, uh, my company in that area through syndicating capital with accredited investors, uh, for those people that are very similar to the way that I was when I was in my corporate role. Uh, and that's, my business has continued to evolve, uh, today. So hopefully that answers the question as well. Michael: I love it, I love it. And Billy, can you give us, I mean, because you're in the energy sector and if anyone's been paying attention to the news or the world or living not under a rock, the energy sector has gone a little bit haywire over the last couple months, years. So can you walk us through like, what has your business gone through over the last couple years with Covid and the war in Ukraine and this sort of thing? Billy: Yeah, man. So this is, so this is really, really interesting, right and one of the things that I appreciate us as, uh, as investors in real assets, right, is number one, it's just, and whether we start in real estate or we start in something else that's tangible, it, it starts to open up our mind to way of thinking, right? I remember when I was just doing stocks, I just thought about stocks. But then when I started investing in real estate, it was like real estate. Oh my gosh, this is simple. this makes sense and okay and yeah, and then it opened my mind to other things and so I was then open to, uh, doing other things and it's very similar, right? If I think about now what I'm understanding about energy, like energy has always been super important, right? If you think about it at a very high level, every single output that we have, it has two component. The first component is labor and the other is energy and I thought, wow, okay, well yeah, that kind of makes sense and as I start realizing that, and then I started saying because of some of the incentives that are related to energy and energy production specifically, it made it a place that I really wanted to learn more about right and, and it, I've now started learning about a lot of different types of energy. But to your point, because energy is everything and everything is energy regardless of what's happening at, um, at your house down the street or even across the world. There's always something that is going to impact energy and the need for more energy, and so, It's very similar to what I started thinking about from a, um, basic needs perspective. When you need a place to live or you know, you need or want a place to live, the proof of concept already exists and so being able to explain the need for energy, to your point, I don't, you don't, I don't really need to explain it. It's just a matter of how is the energy being produced. That's where more of the, the explanations come. Um, and because of that, because it's something that most of us understand or understand the need for um, that part has made it relatively, uh, easy to have conversations about. Of course, there's always, um, very specific conversations or if I'm speaking to somebody who's in, uh, for instance the energy or oil and gas space, and they may be an expert, I always learn stuff, uh, as well. So, um, so just recognizing all the different things that have happened, uh, in the energy space and also having now a real focus on it. It's something that I've seen my business expand exponentially. Like what do I mean by that? So remember I was, uh, a high pay professional. I was, you know, very visible and at the same time I was, you know, syndicating capital, bringing people together around common goals and common dreams and just to kind of give you an idea from the first year, more or less that I was doing this, or a little bit year and a bit, Um, while I was still working my corporate role, since I've left my corporate role and have now done focus just specifically on helping accredited investors that are looking for these, uh, types of investment opportunities that generate returns and also help with income tax problems, um, our business has multiplied by seven right and so what that means to me is one, I have more of a focus now. Um, I'm understanding the accredited investor base that we are serving because also it helps that I am one of those people. I understand, uh, what it's like to go every single day, all day from early morning to late night and recognize that you're doing a hundred percent of the work, right? I was doing a hundred percent of the work, and many times I would bring home, you know, 50, 55% of the work at a certain point, I didn't like that, especially because I was open to learning about new investment opportunities because the real estate that helped open my mind is now continued to keep my mind wide open and so, now being able to look at new opportunities, evaluate those new opportunities, understanding the teams behind those opportunities, it's just, it's one of the things that's now an extension, uh, of where my business is and how we're serving, uh, those accredit investors and why and the energy spaces is one that's, I think, gonna be around for quite a while, kind of like real estate. Michael: That's great, man. I'm curious, Billy, for yourself, I mean, you're clearly a super bright individual. You're very open, you're very curious for the person that is just getting involved in the investment space or maybe in the real estate space that's new for them. They're high paid professional, they don't understand that world. They don't have maybe the same curiosity that you do. I mean, what's the mindset shift around hey, I know stocks and bonds. This is what I've always done and it's worked for me. Why should I bother with this alternative asset class this, this, something different? Bolly: Yeah. So I'm gonna probably, um, cheat a little bit here because we're asking the question and you are asking the question of me and the person that's listening that had that question. Here's the good part, You're already here listening, so you know that something inside of you knows that something's wrong, knows that there's something more that's out there. So what I would suggest is that you've already taken the first step, right? You're already here listening to Michael. You're learning from the guests that are here. So, you know, continue to go down that path. The curiosity's already there because you're already here, right? Yeah. Um, and the, and the reality find out, listen, um, you know, talked about it before. I mean, you have an opportunity to even leave an honest review and in your review, say, hey look, I would really like to have this question answered. I guess what, somebody's probably gonna respond to you and it's about being able to take the steps that you feel comfortable with, um, as an investor. The curiosity's already there. You're already here you heard the question asked, so give, you know, I would say I would give. The ability to continue down this track. Listen to more of the podcast. Start to read about the things that you believe will help to, um, move you forward, move you closer to whatever your, your goal is, um, because everyone has a, you know, have as an investing goal and allow yourself to get educated, move towards the things that you really want to be able to do and ultimately that's gonna help you. So, um, I only say that because I know that they're listening. If they're here, they're listening to the question that you ask, and they just need to give themselves the, uh, ability to keep going down that path. Michael: I love it, I love it. I'm curious, Billy, for most of the clients that you work with, the credit investors you work with, are you having to sell them on this idea of, of your business model and what it is that you're doing or are they already here coming to you saying, hey, I've already done the research. I know who you are, I know what the asset is, like, let me give you money and, and or throwing money at you. What does that look like Billy: Well, so I'm, I'm pretty particular, right? Like, I don't, um, if our relationship started that way, it wouldn't be a relationship that would last very long and, and what I mean by that is, is yeah. What I mean by that is if someone just wants to throw money, uh, at you, I don't want a transactional relationship right I want to build a long lasting relationship. It, that may be the person's intention. Hey, look, I, I eventually want to invest with you, but the type business culture that we're building is we're building an investor family. And so in the same way that we want to get to know one another, you know, I'm very intentional. Hey, let's you know, let's invest 20 minutes in getting to know one another. At least have a 20 minute conversation, 30 minute conversation, understand a bit more about your goals, your dreams, priorities, and also understand about me and my business, what are our business goals and priorities because if there's an alignment, then it makes it really easy for us to take the next step and say, okay, well listen, you can, I know you have an investment, uh, opportunity. You've probably seen something about me somewhere online, or you've listened to this wonderful podcast and you're thinking, okay, well listen. I think because we sound pretty similarly aligned, so what's the harm in investing 30 minutes to get to know one another, right? I'm doing that multiple, multiple, multiple times a day. Um, and so from there that, that's the first part is to, to be able to, to start the relationship on the right foot. Getting to know one another, getting to, to like one um, you know, one another, you like one another, eventually you trust one another. But also, like, one of the things, and this is probably comes from, you know, the 26 years of, of working in, um, you know, really a relationship based type of roles in the last 21 years in, you know, high value type of, of selling, um, and relationship building.   It's really about like, I wanna always help and I want our company to always help those accredited investors that we're serving to make an informed.  because what we do, like the solution that we offer, it's the solution. Like it does what it does. So you have to be comfortable, you have to be informed, you have to ask all of the questions that you feel uncomfortable asking, and my team and I have to be able to give you the information or the data in the way that makes the most sense to you, so that you ultimately can make an informed decision. Because the worst thing that can happen is you look at something, you're like, Wow, this looks absolutely awesome. The numbers are fantastic. You don't spend time getting to know the person or the company that you are going to invest with. You don't know if you're aligned and you're making a decision just based on some numbers that you saw and when as soon as things don't go according to plan and you haven't done the prep work on the front. That's when things get really, really wild and out of, out of control. Like at least that's what I've seen at least in the last 21 years of my experience and so I do have a lot of focus on, you know, being aligned up front, being able to get to know one another, and then also being able to help someone make an informed decision and then after that, you know, if they're informed decision things go. Hey, listen, at least they were informed, they knew about the risks and you know, we will also wanna protect on the downside and, and talk about risks, because that's something that's also very, very important to helping someone make an informed decision. So, um, I don't know if that's a little bit long winded, but hopefully that answers the question. Michael: No, it's, that's great, man. I mean, as you were saying that, I had this, this question you were saying, you know, we're not transactional. We wanna develop this relationship and in my head, I'm, I'm thinking, why, why, why, right? Because from a, from a growth standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, Yeah. I mean, people could look at, at you and say, well, Billy, you're doing it wrong. You're taking too much time with this person. You're spending too much time there. But I think you've explained the why so eloquently and it is because you're protecting the downside when something, if something, probably when something goes side based when something happens, you've got, you've got that foundational relationship to look back on and say, Hey, this, you know, we trust each other. There's not a finger pointing game going on, I would imagine. Billy: Yeah. Well, that's part of it and then also too, you know, I guess this goes back to the company, is that I've worked, been fortunate enough to work for, a lot of this is about business models. It's like I was talking about earlier, Well, let me, let me put it this way, maybe so, I like food. My kids like food and there are things that, like my son, when he's given the opportunity to go somewhere, well, he chooses to go to McDonald's, right and so that's where he likes to go and he likes to eat McDonald's.  Um, I don't so much, but, um, the, well, sometimes when you used to a lot when I was smart, younger, and then there's other places… Michael: There Mc Flurry outta control, right? Billy: All right, I'll go agnostic, I'll go agnostic. Some people like fast food. I probably should have done it that way. Some people like fast food, right? Um, and there was a point in my life where I like fast food as well. I'll change it up a little bit. Um, there's also another point in my life where I like to be able to sit down and I wanted to have more of a, you know, you wanna sit in the booth and you wanna talk and you, um, you just wanna spend a little bit more time and then there's also a.  in my life where I like to take my wife to. Very nice. Sometimes one, two or three Michelin star restaurants, right? The thing is, each one of those business models work. They can all be profitable. But the thing is the business models are very, very different. Do you like fast food? Do you like slow dining or do you like Michelin restaurants? All of them are profitable and it coming back to… Michael: It's got tingles, man, that's such a… Billy: But it's, but, but it's coming back to the question that you ask. , our business is not a high volume business, right. I would rather invest the time to build a deep, valuable relationship and that also means that the, the, the, the investor base that, that my company is serving, I is the investor base that we've decided to do is a, is an accredited investor, is typically a busy high pay professional. That once they have more control over their time and I recognize that for some people that's gonna be a challenge, but it's also for the person that's willing to invest the time. I know that that person has a much higher probability of getting to the goals that they're, that they're really wanting because they're gonna invest that time outside of the stuff that they're, that's keeping them busy and they're gonna be investing the time on the things that's gonna get them closer to their life priorities. That's our business model. There are other models that pretend that will prefer to go to a high number of, right? It's, but there's no wrong business model. That's just the one that I think works the best for me because I'm kind of that person today. Uh, that's the person that I understand the most. Michael: Yeah, man, I love that I love that so much and, and your analogy, the restaurant, different service types just was like, loved it… Billy: Use it whenever you want. Michael: Yes, Yes. I'm gonna, It's, you know, tm Billy Keels. Um, this has been so much fun as always. For everyone who's stung, who stuck with us this far, and there's like on the edge of their seats, what is the name of your company if they're like, I have to invest with this guy. Billy: Yeah, it's first Generation Capital Partners that you can find it at firstgencp.com and actually for people who are the credit investor, having that challenge around, um, being able to find things that where you can find investment opportunities that are gonna get you closer to your life goals, generate income for you, as well as provide tax benefits earned income side of things. We have a guide for you. You can go to firstgencp.com/payless tax. Um, that's a probably the best way to find out exactly, you know, what we're doing. Have a nice little white paper there and if it makes sense for you to continue to move forward, love to be able to get on the phone call and talk. Uh, have a conversation with you, Michael the other thing is, and this is the kind of, people can find out more about me as well, but they should go. Um, the going Long podcast, episode 2 21, where you absolutely crushed it . So going long, podcast episode 2 21 with your buddy Michael. Uh, and then from there, I, I think I'm the only Billy Keels in Barcelona, Spain. So if you wanna look me up on LinkedIn, you can go there. Uh, like I said, Billy Keels, Barcelona, Spain, just let me know that you heard Michael and I, uh, having a conversation here and it's gonna help us to, uh, keep our conversation going. So, uh, with that, I, you know, I love being able to be back here. I, I feel very, very thankful, grateful, uh, for the, uh, for the ability to be back here and share a little bit more of my story. Uh, Michael team really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Michael: Oh no. The pleasure is ours, Billy. Thank you and we will definitely be in touch, man. I'm looking forward to doing this again soon. Billy: Thank you. Michael: Take care. All right, everyone. that was our episode. A big thank you to Billy for coming on again, opening his vest a little bit, showing his cards, being a little bit vulnerable, and sharing some of his mindset and what was going on in his life when he made some of those massive transitions. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we'd love to hear from you with a rating or review wherever it is to get your podcast, and we look forward to seeing you on the. Happy investing…

In this second episode with Aaron Chapman, we discuss how much interest rates actually matter. Over the past couple of years, low interest rates have allowed people to get into a deal and see immediate cashflow. But with interest rates rising, many are concerned that they are not seeing immediate positive cash flow. Is that a deal breaker? Should investors sit on the sidelines and wait for rates to drop once again? Or should investors be thinking about real estate like other business models and be willing to put their capital into a deal and expect to see profits occur over a longer time horizon? Tune in to hear Aaron's unique take on these questions.    Aaron Chapman is a veteran in the finance industry with 25 years of experience helping clients better understand, source, and finance cash-flow positive investment properties. He advises over 100 clients a month in the acquisition and financing of their investment properties and primary residences. Aaron is ranked in the top 1% of mortgage loan processors in the country, in an industry of over 300,000 licensed loan originators, closing in excess of 100 transactions per month. Episode links: https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/qjo-investment-tool/id1533823468 https://www.aaronbchapman.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today joining me again, I got Aaron Chapman. And in case you missed, here's prior episodes, definitely go back and give that a listen. But Aaron is a lender in the residential mortgage industry. And he's got a wealth of knowledge and experience under his belt. And today we're talking about how much interest rates actually matter to doing our deals. So let's get into it.   Aaron Chapman, welcome back, man. Good to see you.   Aaron: Good to see you too, man. It's good to be back. In fact, it hasn't been long.   Michael: For those of you that caught our prior episode with Aaron, we are recording this back to back so we figured we just knock it out.   Aaron: I don't I don't have a dozen of these specific shirts for those who are wondering.   Michael: Like, yeah, he bearded his braid exactly the same and wearing the exact same hat and funny, he's in the exact same location. So Aaron, today we're talking about how much rates really matter. And you've been in the mortgage business since 97. For those folks that didn't catch your bio and background go and get that first episode listen to let's talk about like how much rates matter, man, like rates are creeping up, not keeping up but seem to be running up as to where they were previously. And I'm hearing a lot of folks kind of get scared and spooked and want to hang on the sidelines until rates come down. So give us a little bit insight is that right thinking? Is that the wrong thinking help drop some knowledge?   Aaron: Well, it's I like to tell everybody so level of your everything has to do with a level your comfort, right? Your ability to get in there and, and slug it out and make things work? Because it all has to be about interest rate. And are you really a real estate investor, because that's why I work with as a real estate investor, opportunity is only sitting in front of you at the time that it's in front of you. And often people are trying to get the market to line up and I look at that kind of like watching a star football player sitting on the bench on the sidelines, waiting for the perfect time to jump on the field to get on the highlight reel. Well,   Michael: That's such a good analogy.   Aaron: We're on the field at the time the game is being played, right? They're not sitting on the sidelines at all. It's amazing how often people think that they have the capability to time something and most people trying to time it have never time the damn thing in their life. Right. In fact, most of them are fairly new new investors or investors with maybe you've had five or six houses. So you feel like you're a seasoned investor. I've been doing this for 24 years I've been at this since 1997. I'm barely seasoned in what I do. And the reason I feel that I'm barely seasons, because I do over 1300 transactions a year for real estate investors, I get to see where a lot of people are making decisions, or a lot of people are making mistakes and where a lot of people are doing it right where a lot of people failing or a lot of people are succeeding.   What I tell all my all the people I work with is there's this old saying good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment, great way to learn on the grade school playground of very, very tough way to learn in real estate. So don't go about trying to figure out things that way yourself. Reach out to me, I got to see for 1000s of people have made decisions. I'll guide you through that telling you stories. I don't answer questions. I tell stories as to what I've seen other people do. So you will have practical data, not speculation in theory, and then hopefully, hopefully, we're able to guide you in a way that makes you successful now is it going to be successful every time you make a decision? No, you're going to hit a brick wall between those brick walls, that just means you got to change your direction and keep moving and keep moving and keep moving.   So then you eventually find success because you become nimble enough become successful, it does not benefit me to close a deal and you fail, because that's only one deal. I need your 100th deal. That's what makes my business work is to do this dozens of time with you not just one time and walk away. That's not the business I built. So when it comes to interest rates, you need to get comfortable with it and understand that you're never the price of money is always going to move. But what we also have is the price of housing is always moving. You know, we talked about in last episode, the average rent is going up by 12%. Year over year. I don't expect that to be sustainable. I think it's probably a go up, you know, maybe seven, but it's going to keep going right? We have we're short how many houses right now in the United States,   Michael: I think like 5.2 million or something of that effect.   Aaron: 5.2 million and what's the building looking like right now people are not there's not a lot of construction going on, compared to what the demand is. We've got a hurricane, they just wiped out on how many houses we don't even know that the full total that devastation and then the ability of the supply chain to be able catch up with that. And then of course there's talk of another pandemic coming which we saw the effects of that one, and how well handled that mess was. You start stacking all these things up rents and quarterly rental increases are here to stay. So when you're on that end of it, and you get to continue to increase your rents effect, let's do the math real quick here. Let's say, let's say you got $100,000. House, you're renting it for $1,000 a month. Right. And now you get to raise the rent by 3%. Well, they're saying you're only getting say 60 bucks a month in cash flow. That's not sexy. You're not getting excited, right?   Michael: That's a couple of Chipotle is with guacamole.   Aaron: Exactly. So 60 bucks right now, not a big deal. So you raise the rents by 3%? What's 3% of 1030 bucks, 30 bucks, nothing. It's actually nobody's excited. Again, what's really cool about is your tenant won't get excited. And I can just up and move and know the night and dump concrete down the toilet. Right? So it went up by 30 bucks. But you're making $60 a month cash flow, you're one now you're making 90. So what percentage did your cashflow go up by?   Michael: 50%.   Aaron: That's a 50% compound growth in your cash flow. So what you start to see here is over time, it's not going to happen right away. You know, it's not, it's not Swift, but it is certain that you will continue to get this compound growth in the double digits a year over year over year. But as we talked about, in the last episode, go back and listen and get my get my my tool, the QJO investment tool, and run these numbers, you're gonna find that you're paying back less and less and less for that set mortgage you have, even if the rates go eight, nine, 10%, you're paying back less, because inflation is eroding the dollar. But yet you're increasing at double digits. As far as your cash flow, there will come a point that one catches the other and you surpass it. It's much like any investment that a person does. It's amazing how we can talk ourselves into getting into other types of investment vehicles, like all but if you stick with it for three, four years, you're gonna see it really grow or 10 years or whatever. But yet you get into a house. And also we think of it as an expense. When it comes to real estate. It's not you're not spending money and going into debt. You're a business owner, that is now the pass through for this capital, you get to increase.   Michael: I love that. I love that. Aaron answer me this because I think it's something that I've been hearing from a lot of people I know for sure, in the Roofstock Academy is folks saying, Michael, five months ago, I could go buy a house for 150 grand and make 100 bucks cash flow at three and a half 4%. Now that same have that same price, the same purchase price is still 150 grand, but now I'm paying seven and a half percent that eroded all my cash flow. Does that mean I should still go buy that deal? And hang on for those first couple of years? Because I'm going to get that double digit compound growth with the rental increase? Or do I just need to go find a new deal? Or potentially a different market?   Aaron: I've got I've got a few answers that I would give right. And I sometimes depends on the individual, right? Because I do ask them Okay, so what do you think right? Now let them tell me, because I want to find out what's going on your head, right? So tell me what your first instinct is. But if they're asked me exactly what I would do, I mean, again, I might get cut out here, guys, when I was gonna have your balls attached or are they there for decoration, right? Nobody has ever made a fortune because they they want out of the gate. Nothing is ever has ever paid what a few things are paid off out of the gate, right. But most times they don't. We had a history of people making this amazing cash on cash return for the last, what 10 years, it was the easiest thing in the world to sell cash on cash return for the real estate sales side of it. I think my personal belief is the real estate sales side of it has actually put themselves in a corner, and they're trying to claw their way out of it. Because we spent so much time talking cash on cash. We never talked about the rest of the ways people made money. It never got discussed.   For the last eight, nine years. I've talked about everything but cash on cash return, if they take that metric and throw it away, take their performance somebody gave you because that's that's Greek for bullcrap. It doesn't mean anything. They made those numbers up. Right? So let's talk about reality. Right? And reality is business is going to cost you something nobody has ever opened up a shoe store was profitable in the first five years, right, you have to have a certain amount of capital to get started, everything needs a certain amount of capital to get started. You're the CEO, the CEO of your startup real estate investment firm, that means you are going to be a lot more discerning about what kind of property you buy, when you're not making $200 a month cash flow out of the gate than you would be when your before making cash no matter what happened because of interest rates are so low, they softened all the blows.   But now, because of things the way they are, you're going to become a better CEO, you're going to sink more, you're going to take more time to understand what you're buying, you're going to buy the right property. And that's what it's all about. What can you keep reasonably rented for the entire time you own it, and what can you raise rents on that's it. If you can get that to line up and that alone, you will continue you will see that compound increase we were talking about. You may have to nurse that that investment along for the first couple of years. But then you're going to get that compound set and forget it kind of growth. And that's where I tell people it's going to teach you to be a real estate investor now. The people that are not real estate investors, they're out we're not gonna have to deal with them anymore. You're not gonna have to fight with the masses of people try To get in on that one deal and bidding at too high, what you're going to have is people gonna be very, very discerning, and you're become a smarter person as a result.   Michael: Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. And I was just going to ask you, but I think you kind of beat me to it, do you think we're going to see the investment investor pool thin out, because folks are looking at deals and saying, the numbers don't work, I can't invest in this, or they bought deals two months ago, and are now getting burned by it?   Aaron: Yeah, I think we're going to see people get out of it. And we're gonna have some of the true investors be able to capitalize on it, that people understand what they're getting into, they're gonna jump in there, and they're gonna be able to weather this properly. Because it's about the it's about the real estate itself. It's not about the loan, it never was about the loan, you know, we had the loan was a way of getting a lot of people involved. And probably a lot of people shouldn't have been involved with, they got involved anyway, right. And so they're still going to do well, because what's really cool about that, if you got that in that loan, that 3%, or 4%, or 5%, loan, that is an, that's an asset in itself. That's a massive asset. In fact, any loan for 30 years is a massive asset. But that's even even bigger assets. So now you have a tradable commodity, if you will, because now it's like hey, I can I can hold this house, and I can literally kind of sell this into with a with an owner financing kind of deal or something to that effect.   Now how that will play out, don't say Aaron Chapman said it's okay to do this. You got to check with your lender, make sure you're not putting yourself in a bad spot, talk to an attorney, all that kind of thing. There's instruments to make that happen. I'm not your guy to guide you through that. I'm just saying that that's a valuable thing to lock money up in single digits. Think about that single digits, because if you go back to 1971, all the way till 2009, the average interest rate for somebody living in a house was 9.1%. If you take that 1971 Till now, the average interest rate was 7.76%. For somebody living in the house, that was not real estate investors. The only reason it went down from 9.1 to 7.76. Is because of quantitative easing. When did quantitative easing start, Michael?   Michael: Man, I didn't know I thought it was just gonna be an interview. I didn't know it was gonna be a frickin test. When did it start?   Aaron: I'd love to quiz everybody. Because here's why your mind starts thinking and now you're gonna remember the answer. We're gonna give it to you.   Michael: That's true.   Aaron: Hopefully, because I'm gonna ask you next time. So quantitative easing didn't start till after the crash crash happened in 2008 2008. We'll talk about that in our next time we come together because that right there had to teach resiliency to a lot of people. Well, then the government decided, Okay, we're gonna start this quantitative easing thing, we're gonna take US Treasury capital flowing through the Fed. And we're going to start buying into mortgage backed securities and into treasuries in was a corporate bonds and all of these other things. And as a result to doing that started January 1, 2009, till the end of March 2010, the Fed dumped $1.25 trillion into the market, just in that short window of time to bring interest rates down and start getting the economy going again. But now, they couldn't stop it, and they kept it going and kept going kept going, then you get to the pandemic of 2020. Now, we just talked about 1.25 trillion between March January 2009, to end of March 2010. Now you get to March 20, 2020. From March 20 to march 30. They dumped in another trillion in 10 days to basically bring the market off of where it was because the market crashed. Right. We had a massive meltdown in the in stocks.   What happens? What happens if people have more? Have stocks on margin when stocks dropped that far?   Michael: Oh big problem.   Aaron: Yeah, massive, I've got a margin call, right? Well, banks don't take our money that we deposit and just stick it in the vault, right? They invest it places, they need to make money on that money, they're gonna pay us our little pittance of whatever, right? They're gonna continue to make money on it? Well, a lot of times, they're gonna have that money into the markets and stocks and other equities. And as a result of that, they may have no margin, they did have no margin, they gotta pay a margin call. They can't just go back to the coffers. Because the the vaults empty, they have it all on investment. So they have to sell assets, what assets did they sell, they sold mortgage backed securities. Interest rates spiked during that window of time. It was it was amazing how much they spiked. The fact got to the point, I couldn't lock rates now. Now and again, the rates will be published might have five people on my team all ready to go. And I just kept refreshing the rates all day. As soon as there's ready to go, we could we'd lock 50 loans at a time. And they were ugly rates, but people needed to lock.   And so we had this message that we're going to continue to keep business flowing during that window of time. But then they got that trillion dollars dumped in there, they got seeing semi stable, they're dumping 30 to $40 billion a month in the market, sometimes more hundreds of billions of dollars a month in the market, trying to keep this money flowing. And that's how we got our interest rates down into the threes and fours.   So because of that, all that capital going in there, we had this this run on lower interest rates. So from January 2009. Up until just this last year, we had all this capital dumped into the keep the rate so that's what gave our average that a little bit lower point. But you know, some people are saying well, can we just get an ARM and wait for the rates to go back down? What makes you think they're going back down? The only time they went down from that average of 9.1 was when they dumped eight Point $9 trillion into the markets? Are they doing that again? I think they've learned their lesson not to do that. Michael: Yeah.   Aaron: So if that's the case, and let's just say that's the case, let's say, somebody's actually going to learn from history, and we're not going to erase history, we're not going to call it you know, whatever, whatever make up whatever we want to make up about it and say we're triggered by it, we're actually gonna remember this move was a bad move. I don't see interest rates getting back anything lower than what we have right now, this might be the lowest interest rates that we see in our lifetimes.   Michael: Interesting. Over the last 30-40 years, when we've seen interest rates spike like they have hasn't there been a pretty sharp decline after the fact?   Aaron: We have seen that a lot in our lifetime, just because of what I was just talking about with the Fed manipulating it. But prior to that, we didn't see that very much. We saw interest rates, hovering in fact, I got in the industry in 1997, the interest rates are in the sevens. And then that was for owner occupied. And then when they went down, like 6.875, I got this refi boom going on. In fact, you know, I was working two jobs, I was running heavy equipment in the morning, from 3am till noon, they go to the office from two till 10pm, I sleep four hours a day, for for a full year. But for the until those rates dropped below 7%, I was able to replace my income of 50, whatever, thousand a year at the time, and got full time into this industry. Well, as a result of that, you know, we got this 6% thing going on. And it never really got much lower than that we saw a window where the during the mid 2000s, that I was able to get an adjustable rate loan, like a five year ARM don't like 5.75. But that was it. It wasn't until quantitative easing do we start seeing these enormously low rates.   So we're not seeing these massive swings, like we see now, then the swings happen to be because we have a global market that everybody's tapped in, we get to see everything that's going on in real time, all the time. That's one of the really, really bad things of social media in the way our, our our technology is, what it's done for us has brought us to where we see the slightest thing happened. But on the other side of the world, it kills markets overnight. So that's why I see such massive swings. So some people think, well, if it goes down as we come right back up. We don't know that because there's another black swan waiting right around the corner. Why do we know that because we know what's going to happen in the other country when it happens.   It'd  be one thing we were just a an economy to ourselves. And it was not such a big big market mover. Now we're a global economy. And we have we have crazy people out there running countries, including our own doing stupid things that's causing such a massive swings and so much so much emotion in the market that I can't say it's going to improve. Now it's going to have to I mean, there will be some but to the extent we've seen I don't believe so.   Michael: Yeah. Interesting.   Aaron: Let me just say I pray I'm wrong.   Michael: Yeah. That makes two of us man.   Aaron: You're wrong. We're back in the season. We're good because I'm making another couple million dollars a year.   Michael: I love it. Someone if they didn't have the wisdom of hearing this show five years ago, three years ago, when they got their five, one ARM and now they got two years left on it and they got a 5% They got the ability to lock in a 6% for 30 years say? Or do they roll the dice and let it roll for another two years? See where interest rates land? What are you doing?   Aaron: I think goes back to that are your balls attached situation, just see, see what you're willing to do? Right, you're the ones guy put your head on the pillow at night, you got to be able to understand how you feel about. Me, I love to control things for as long as I can control it. I'll take my lumps. And I'll take that 6% all day long. Because I would much rather allow inflation to erode the dollar over a long period of time. Rather than forcing me in a situation like that. I've had too many people that I've talked to that did the ARM thing in somebody else's request even at my own. I mean, I did the there's something out there right now called the all in one. This is a big deal. Back in the early 2000s. We sold something very, very similar to this. It just wasn't called the all in one.   And when the market freaked out in 2008. And they started freezing these people's credit lines, I got numerous calls saying What did you put me in? Because I didn't know what was going to happen. Now I do know. And everybody says, well, they're not going to do that. What makes you think I'm not going to do that? The banking industry will do whatever the heck they want to do. They'll shut down. They will kill product, they will not honor locks. They'll wipe anything out that makes it work for them on the next day. They don't care about what they committed to today. They care about what it keeps them in existence tomorrow. As a result of that. I know that's what they do. I've seen them do it. I can't in good conscience do anything but tell person Hey, the 30 year fix so far is the only one with a proven track record.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. How did you think about the interest? I know you said it's not all about the interest rate. But let's put that on the shelf for a minute. If someone's got a property that they're not thrilled with its performance, but they've got this outrageously low rate and a 30 year fixed. Do you think time is going to heal that wound or do you think they should maybe look to move into something else at a higher rate, but that they might be a little bit happier with?   Aaron: I think it really, really depends upon the scenario what's making them so unhappy about it, is there a possibility to try to change whatever is making them happy unhappy about that there's something about the property, this specific thing that's creating a difficulty with it, is it just not being rented because of this or because of that, you know, it may be one of those times, we have to spend some time understanding what's happening in the market that's causing that property to be what it is, right? People coming by either I don't want to rent this thing. Because of this, or because of that, it could be a very simple thing. You know, when we own something we don't see with our lens very, very well, we see, hey, this is what the possibility is because we can only see from one angle, but when you get the whole market's angle on a multiple people are willing to come through a look at it, sit them down and ask them, Hey, can you tell me what what about this place? What would have to happen to that make it something so yes, I do want to rent this, or yes, this I can make my home for five years?   Understand that is sometimes you might have to bite the bullet, put a few bucks into it. And next thing, you know, now you have a very low interest rate, which again, that right there is, is is a very, very valuable piece in itself. And then you have whatever changed on this house that now makes it what it needs to be. And its location that might be something's completely, you know, one of these things you can't fix, right? You have to find the one person in the world that wants that and carry a note for them and see if you can swing something like that. But if it's something that's changeable because of aesthetics, or or usability, or it's just whatever that might be, you might have to bite the bullet and fix that one thing.   But investigate it first, before you try and make a very, very big decision. Like leave it as is and suck it up and write it out or dump it and move because I've seen I've got a very good friend of mine, named Joel, he owns a lot of shopping centers. I don't understand shopping centers. This guy's like the walking talking Stephen Hawking of shopping center this guy, just look at it, tell you what's wrong with it, and make it make money overnight. And the guy's amazing at what he's able to do. And because one person can't make it work, you have a guy like Joel come in, he looks at it makes an offer, they sell it cheap. He spends a few bucks. And now that thing's fully rented, and it's worth 10 times what he paid for it. It's just a matter of getting the right perspective. Take the time, understand the market, get the perspective.   Michael: I love that. I love that. Aaron, I want to get you out of here until next time, but in the meantime, where can folks if they didn't catch on the first episode, reach out to learn more about you or get a hold of one of your loans?   Aaron: Just go to aaronchapman.com And if that one doesn't work, go to aaronbchapman.com. Another good place to just Google Aaron Chapman. There's like five of us out there that pop up on Google there's only one bearded redneck lender there is a pastor there's a there's a English soccer player there is a an author and then camera with the other guy is but yeah, there's five and I'm an author as well so you can go to you can look me up on Amazon that kind of stuff. I'm working on another book got a few things cooking.   Michael: Right on man love it. Well hey, this was awesome as always and until next time, looking forward to it be well.   Aaron: Thanks, buddy. Good to see you again.   Michael: Likewise.    Alright everyone that was our episode A big thank you to Aaron for coming on again dropping some fantastic wisdom, insights and knowledge. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing

About MichaelMichael is the Director of Threat Research at Sysdig, managing a team of experts tasked with discovering and defending against novel security threats. Michael has more than 20 years of industry experience in many different roles, including incident response, threat intelligence, offensive security research, and software development at companies like Rapid7, ThreatQuotient, and Mantech. Prior to joining Sysdig, Michael worked as a Gartner analyst, advising enterprise clients on security operations topics.Links Referenced: Sysdig: https://sysdig.com/ “2022 Sysdig Cloud-Native Threat Report”: https://sysdig.com/threatreport TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. Something interesting about this particular promoted guest episode that is brought to us by our friends at Sysdig is that when they reached out to set this up, one of the first things out of their mouth was, “We don't want to sell anything,” which is novel. And I said, “Tell me more,” because I was also slightly skeptical. But based upon the conversations that I've had, and what I've seen, they were being honest. So, my guest today—surprising as though it may be—is Mike Clark, Director of Threat Research at Sysdig. Mike, how are you doing?Michael: I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. How are you doing?Corey: Not dead yet. So, we take what we can get sometimes. You folks have just come out with the “2022 Sysdig Cloud-Native Threat Report”, which on one hand, it feels like it's kind of a wordy title, on the other it actually encompasses everything that it is, and you need every single word of that report. At a very high level, what is that thing?Michael: Sure. So, this is our first threat report we've ever done, and it's kind of a rite of passage, I think for any security company in the space; you have to have a threat report. And the cloud-native part, Sysdig specializes in cloud and containers, so we really wanted to focus in on those areas when we were making this threat report, which talks about, you know, some of the common threats and attacks we were seeing over the past year, and we just wanted to let people know what they are and how they protect themselves.Corey: One thing that I've found about a variety of threat reports is that they tend to excel at living in the fear, uncertainty, and doubt space. And invariably, they paint a very dire picture of the internet about become cascading down. And then at the end, there's always a, “But there is hope. Click here to set up a meeting with us.” It's basically a very thinly- veiled cover around what is fundamentally a fear, uncertainty, and doubt-driven marketing strategy, and then it tries to turn into a sales pitch.This does absolutely none of that. So, I have to ask, did you set out to intentionally make something that added value in that way and have contributed to the body of knowledge, or is it because it's your inaugural report; you didn't realize you were supposed to turn it into a terrible sales pitch.Michael: We definitely went into that on purpose. There's a lot of ways to fix things, especially these days with all the different technologies, so we can easily talk about the solutions without going into specific products. And that's kind of way we went about it. There's a lot of ways to fix each of the things we mentioned in the report. And hopefully, the person reading it finds a good way to do it.Corey: I'd like to unpack a fair bit of what's in the report. And let's be clear, I don't intend to read this report into a microphone; that is generally not a great way of conveying information that I have found. But I want to highlight a few things that leapt out to me that I find interesting. Before I do that, I'm curious to know, most people who write reports, especially ones of this quality, are not sitting there cogitating in their office by themselves, and they set pen to paper and emerge four days later with the finished treatise. There's a team involved, there's more than one person that weighs in. Who was behind this?Michael: Yeah, it was a pretty big team effort across several departments. But mostly, it came to the Sysdig threat research team. It's about ten people right now. It's grown quite a bit through the past year. And, you know, it's made up of all sorts of backgrounds and expertise.So, we have machine learning people, data scientists, data engineers, former pen-testers and red team, a lot of blue team people, people from the NSA, people from other government agencies as well. And we're also a global research team, so we have people in Europe and North America working on all of this. So, we try to get perspectives on how these threats are viewed by multiple areas, not just Silicon Valley, and express fixes that appeal to them, too.Corey: Your executive summary on this report starts off with a cloud adversary analysis of TeamTNT. And my initial throwaway joke on that, it was going to be, “Oh, when you start off talking about any entity that isn't you folks, they must have gotten the platinum sponsorship package.” But then I read the rest of that paragraph and I realized that wait a minute, this is actually interesting and germane to something that I see an awful lot. Specifically, they are—and please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this; you are definitionally the expert whereas I am, obviously the peanut gallery—but you talk about TeamTNT as being a threat actor that focuses on targeting the cloud via cryptojacking, which is a fanciful word for, “Okay, I've gotten access to your cloud environment; what am I going to do with it? Mine Bitcoin and other various cryptocurrencies.” Is that generally accurate or have I missed the boat somewhere fierce on that? Which is entirely possible.Michael: That's pretty accurate. We also think it just one person, actually, and they are very prolific. So, they were pretty hard to get that platinum support package because they are everywhere. And even though it's one person, they can do a lot of damage, especially with all the automation people can make now, one person can appear like a dozen.Corey: There was an old t-shirt that basically encompassed everything that was wrong with the culture of the sysadmin world back in the naughts, that said, “Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.” But, on some level, you can get a surprising amount of work done on computers, just with things like for loops and whatnot. What I found interesting was that you have put numbers and data behind something that I've always taken for granted and just implicitly assumed that everyone knew. This is a common failure mode that we all have. We all have blind spots where we assume the things that we spend our time on is easy and the stuff that other people are good at and you're not good at, those are the hard things.It has always been intuitively obvious to me as a cloud economist, that when you wind up spending $10,000 in cloud resources to mine cryptocurrency, it does not generate $10,000 of cryptocurrency on the other end. In fact, the line I've been using for years is that it's totally economical to mine Bitcoin in the cloud; the only trick is you have to do it in someone else's account. And you've taken that joke and turned it into data. Something that you found was that in one case, that you were able to attribute $8,100 of cryptocurrency that were generated by stealing $430,000 of cloud resources to do it. And oh, my God, we now have a number and a ratio, and I can talk intelligently and sound four times smarter. So, ignoring anything else in this entire report, congratulations, you have successfully turned this into what is beginning to become a talking point of mine. Value unlocked. Good work. Tell me more.Michael: Oh, thank you. Cryptomining is kind of like viruses in the old on-prem environment. Normally it just cleaned up and never thought of again; the antivirus software does its thing, life goes on. And I think cryptominers are kind of treated like that. Oh, there's a miner; let's rebuild the instance or bring a new container online or something like that.So, it's often considered a nuisance rather than a serious threat. It also doesn't have the, you know, the dangerous ransomware connotation to it. So, a lot of people generally just think of as a nuisance, as I said. So, what we wanted to show was, it's not really a nuisance and it can cost you a lot of money if you don't take it seriously. And what we found was for every dollar that they make, it costs you $53. And, you know, as you mentioned, it really puts it into view of what it could cost you by not taking it seriously. And that number can scale very quickly, just like your cloud environment can scale very quickly.Corey: They say this cloud scales infinitely and that is not true. First, tried it; didn't work. Secondly, it scales, but there is an inherent limit, which is your budget, on some level. I promise they can add hard drives to S3 faster than you can stuff data into it. I've checked.One thing that I've seen recently was—speaking of S3—I had someone reach out in what I will charitably refer to as a blind panic because they were using AWS to do something. Their bill was largely $4 a month in S3 charges. Very reasonable. That carries us surprisingly far. And then they had a credential leak and they had a threat actor spin up all the Lambda functions in all of the regions, and it went from $4 a month to $60,000 a day and it wasn't caught for six days.And then AWS as they tend to do, very straight-faced, says, “Yeah, we would like our $360,000, please.” At which point, people start panicking because a lot of the people who experience this are not themselves sophisticated customers; they're students, they're learning how this stuff works. And when I'm paying $4 a month for something, it is logical and intuitive for me to think that, well, if I wind up being sloppy with their credentials, they could run that bill up to possibly $25 a month and that wouldn't be great, so I should keep an eye on it. Yeah, you dropped a whole bunch of zeros off the end of that. Here you go. And as AWS spins up more and more regions and as they spin up more and more services, the ability to exploit this becomes greater and greater. This problem is not getting better, it is only getting worse, by a lot.Michael: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I feel really bad for those students who do have that happen to them. I've heard on occasion that the cloud providers will forgive some debts, but there's no guarantee of that happening, from breaches. And you know, the more that breaches happen, the less likely they are going to forgive it because they still to pay for it; someone's paying for it in the end. And if you don't improve and fix your environment and it keeps happening, one day, they're just going to stick you with the bill.Corey: To my understanding, they've always done the right thing when I've highlighted something to them. I don't have intimate visibility into it and of course, they have a threat model themselves of, okay, I'm going to spin up a bunch of stuff, mine cryptocurrency for a month—cry and scream and pretend I got hacked because fraud is very much a thing, there is a financial incentive attached to this—and they mostly seem to get it right. But the danger that I see for the cloud provider is not that they're going to stop being nice and giving money away, but assume you're a student who just winds up getting more than your entire college tuition as a surprise bill for this month from a cloud provider. Even assuming at the end of that everything gets wiped and you don't owe anything. I don't know about you, but I've never used that cloud provider again because I've just gotten a firsthand lesson in exactly what those risks are, it's bad for the brand.Michael: Yeah, it really does scare people off of that. Now, some cloud providers try to offer more proactive protections against this, try to shut down instances really quick. And you know, you can take advantage of limits and other things, but they don't make that really easy to do. And setting those up is critical for everybody.Corey: The one cloud provider that I've seen get this right, of all things, has been Oracle Cloud, where they have an always free tier. Until you affirmatively upgrade your account to chargeable, they will not charge you a penny. And I have experimented with this extensively, and they're right, they will not charge you a penny. They do have warnings plastered on the site, as they should, that until you upgrade your account, do understand that if you exceed a threshold, we will stop serving traffic, we will stop servicing your workload. And yeah, for a student learner, that's absolutely what I want. For a big enterprise gearing up for a giant Superbowl commercial or whatnot, it's, “Yeah, don't care what it costs, just make sure you continue serving traffic. We don't get a redo on this.” And without understanding exactly which profile of given customer falls into, whenever the cloud provider tries to make an assumption and a default in either direction, they're wrong.Michael: Yeah, I'm surprised that Oracle Cloud of all clouds. It's good to hear that they actually have a free tier. Now, we've seen attackers have used free tiers quite a bit. It all depends on how people set it up. And it's actually a little outside the threat report, but the CI/CD pipelines in DevOps, anywhere there's free compute, attackers will try to get their miners in because it's all about scale and not quality.Corey: Well, that is something I'd be curious to know. Because you talk about focusing specifically on cloud and containers as a company, which puts you in a position to be authoritative on this. That Lambda story that I mentioned about, surprise $60,000 a day in cryptomining, what struck me about that and caught me by surprise was not what I think would catch most people who didn't swim in this world by surprise of, “You can spend that much?” In my case, what I'm wondering about is, well hang on a minute. I did an article a year or two ago, “17 Ways to Run Containers On AWS” and listed 17 AWS services that you could use to run containers.And a few months later, I wrote another article called “17 More Ways to Run Containers On AWS.” And people thought I was belaboring the point and making a silly joke, and on some level, of course I was. But I was also highlighting very clearly that every one of those containers running in a service could be mining cryptocurrency. So, if you get access to someone else's AWS account, when you see those breaches happen, are people using just the one or two services they have things ready to go for, or are they proliferating as many containers as they can through every service that borderline supports it?Michael: From what we've seen, they usually just go after a compute, like EC2 for example, as it's most well understood, it gets the job done, it's very easy to use, and then get your miner set up. So, if they happen to compromise your credentials versus the other method that cryptominers or cryptojackers do is exploitation, then they'll try to spread throughout their all their EC2 they can and spin up as much as they can. But the other interesting thing is if they get into your system, maybe via an exploit or some other misconfiguration, they'll look for the IAM metadata service as soon as they get in, to try to get your IAM credentials and see if they can leverage them to also spin up things through the API. So, they'll spin up on the thing they compromised and then actively look for other ways to get even more.Corey: Restricting the permissions that anything has in your cloud environment is important. I mean, from my perspective, if I were to have my account breached, yes, they're going to cost me a giant pile of money, but I know the magic incantations to say to AWS and worst case, everyone has a pet or something they don't want to see unfortunate things happen to, so they'll waive my fee; that's fine. The bigger concern I've got—in seriousness—I think most companies do is the data. It is the access to things in the account. In my case, I have a number of my clients' AWS bills, given that that is what they pay me to work on.And I'm not trying to undersell the value of security here, but on the plus side that helps me sleep at night, that's only money. There are datasets that are far more damaging and valuable about that. The worst sleep I ever had in my career came during a very brief stint I had about 12 years ago when I was the director of TechOps at Grindr, the gay dating site. At that scenario, if that data had been breached, people could very well have died. They live in countries where that winds up not being something that is allowed, or their family now winds up shunning them and whatnot. And that's the stuff that keeps me up at night. Compared to that, it's, “Well, you cost us some money and embarrassed a company.” It doesn't really rank on the same scale to me.Michael: Yeah. I guess the interesting part is, data requires a lot of work to do something with for a lot of attackers. Like, it may be opportunistic and come across interesting data, but they need to do something with it, there's a lot more risk once they start trying to sell the data, or like you said, if it turns into something very unfortunate, then there's a lot more risk from law enforcement coming after them. Whereas with cryptomining, there's very little risk from being chased down by the authorities. Like you said, people, they rebuild things and ask AWS for credit, or whoever, and move on with their lives. So, that's one reason I think cryptomining is so popular among threat actors right now. It's just the low risk compared to other ways of doing things.Corey: It feels like it's a nuisance. One thing that I was dreading when I got this copy of the report was that there was going to be what I see so often, which is let's talk about ransomware in the cloud, where people talk about encrypting data in S3 buckets and sneakily polluting the backups that go into different accounts and how your air -gapping and the rest. And I don't see that in the wild. I see that in the fear-driven marketing from companies that have a thing that they say will fix that, but in practice, when you hear about ransomware attacks, it's much more frequently that it is their corporate network, it is on-premises environments, it is servers, perhaps running in AWS, but they're being treated like servers would be on-prem, and that is what winds up getting encrypted. I just don't see the attacks that everyone is warning about. But again, I am not primarily in the security space. What do you see in that area?Michael: You're absolutely right. Like we don't see that at all, either. It's certainly theoretically possible and it may have happened, but there just doesn't seem to be that appetite to do that. Now, the reasoning? I'm not a hundred percent sure why, but I think it's easier to make money with cryptomining, even with the crypto markets the way they are. It's essentially free money, no expenses on your part.So, maybe they're not looking because again, that requires more effort to understand especially if it's not targeted—what data is important. And then it's not exactly the same method to do the attack. There's versioning, there's all this other hoops you have to jump through to do an extortion attack with buckets and things like that.Corey: Oh, it's high risk and feels dirty, too. Whereas if you're just, I guess, on some level, psychologically, if you're just going to spin up a bunch of coin mining somewhere and then some company finds it and turns it off, whatever. You're not, as in some cases, shaking down a children's hospital. Like that's one of those great, I can't imagine how you deal with that as a human being, but I guess it takes all types. This doesn't get us to sort of the second tentpole of the report that you've put together, specifically around the idea of supply chain attacks against containers. There have been such a tremendous number of think pieces—thought pieces, whatever they're called these days—talking about a software bill of materials and supply chain threats. Break it down for me. What are you seeing?Michael: Sure. So, containers are very fun because, you know, you can define things as code about what gets put on it, and they become so popular that sharing sites have popped up, like Docker Hub and other public registries, where you can easily share your container, it has everything built, set up, so other people can use it. But you know, attackers have kind of taken notice of this, too. Where anything's easy, an attacker will be. So, we've seen a lot of malicious containers be uploaded to these systems.A lot of times, they're just hoping for a developer or user to come along and use them because your Docker Hub does have the official designation, so while they can try to pretend to be like Ubuntu, they won't be the official. But instead, they may try to see theirs and links and things like that to entice people to use theirs instead. And then when they do, it's already pre-loaded with a miner or, you know, other malware. So, we see quite a bit of these containers in Docker Hub. And they're disguised as many different popular packages.They don't stand up to too much scrutiny, but enough that, you know, a casual looker, even Docker file may not see it. So yeah, we see a lot of—and embedded credentials and other big part that we see in these containers. That could be an organizational issue, like just a leaked credential, but you can put malicious credentials into Docker files, to0, like, say an SSH private key that, you know, if they start this up, the attacker can now just log—SSH in. Or other API keys or other AWS changing commands you can put in there. You can put really anything in there, and wherever you load it, it's going to run. So, you have to be really careful.[midroll 00:22:15]Corey: Years ago, I gave a talk at the conference circuit called, “Terrible Ideas in Git” that purported to teach people how to get worked through hilarious examples of misadventure. And the demos that I did on that were, well, this was fun and great, but it was really annoying resetting them every time I gave the talk, so I stuffed them all into a Docker image and then pushed that up to Docker Hub. Great. It was awesome. I didn't publicize it and talk about it, but I also just left it as an open repository there because what are you going to do? It's just a few directories in the route that have very specific contrived scenarios with Git, set up and ready to go.There's nothing sensitive there. And the thing is called, “Terrible Ideas.” And I just kept watching the download numbers continue to increment week over week, and I took it down because it's, I don't know what people are going to do with that. Like, you see something on there and it says, “Terrible Ideas.” For all I know, some bank is like, “And that's what we're running in production now.” So, who knows?But the idea o—not that there was necessarily anything wrong with that, but the fact that there's this theoretical possibility someone could use that or put the wrong string in if I give an example, and then wind up running something that is fairly compromisable in a serious environment was just something I didn't want to be a part of. And you see that again, and again, and again. This idea of what Docker unlocks is amazing, but there's such a tremendous risk to it. I mean, I've never understood 15 years ago, how you're going to go and spin up a Linux server on top of EC2 and just grab a community AMI and use that. It's yeah, I used to take provisioning hardware very seriously to make sure that I wasn't inadvertently using something compromised. Here, it's like, “Oh, just grab whatever seems plausible from the catalog and go ahead and run that.” But it feels like there's so much of that, turtles all the way down.Michael: Yeah. And I mean, even if you've looked at the Docker file, with all the dependencies of the things you download, it really gets to be difficult. So, I mean, to protect yourself, it really becomes about, like, you know, you can do the static scanning of it, looking for bad strings in it or bad version numbers for vulnerabilities, but it really comes down to runtime analysis. So, when you start to Docker container, you really need the tools to have visibility to what's going on in the container. That's the only real way to know if it's safe or not in the end because you can't eyeball it and really see all that, and there could be a binary assortment of layers, too, that'll get run and things like that.Corey: Hell is other people's workflows, as I'm sure everyone's experienced themselves, but one of mine has always been that if I'm doing something as a proof of concept to build it up on a developer box—and I do keep my developer environments for these sorts of things isolated—I will absolutely go and grab something that is plausible- looking from Docker Hub as I go down that process. But when it comes time to wind up putting it into a production environment, okay, now we're going to build our own resources. Yeah, I'm sure the Postgres container or whatever it is that you're using is probably fine, but just so I can sleep at night, I'm going to take the public Docker file they have, and I'm going to go ahead and build that myself. And I feel better about doing that rather than trusting some rando user out there and whatever it is that they've put up there. Which on the one hand feels like a somewhat responsible thing to do, but on the other, it feels like I'm only fooling myself because some rando putting things up there is kind of what the entire open-source world is, to a point.Michael: Yeah, that's very true. At some point, you have to trust some product or some foundation to have done the right thing. But what's also true about containers is they're attacked and use for attacks, but they're also used to conduct attacks quite a bit. And we saw a lot of that with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict this year. Containers were released that were preloaded with denial-of-service software that automatically collected target lists from, I think, GitHub they were hosted on.So, all a user to get involved had to do was really just get the container and run it. That's it. And now they're participating in this cyberwar kind of activity. And they could also use this to put on a botnet or if they compromise an organization, they could spin up at all these instances with that Docker container on it. And now that company is implicated in that cyber war. So, they can also be used for evil.Corey: This gets to the third point of your report: “Geopolitical conflict influences attacker behaviors.” Something that happened in the early days of the Russian invasion was that a bunch of open-source maintainers would wind up either disabling what their software did or subverting it into something actively harmful if it detected it was running in the Russian language and/or in a Russian timezone. And I understand the desire to do that, truly I do. I am no Russian apologist. Let's be clear.But the counterpoint to that as well is that, well, to make a reference I made earlier, Russia has children's hospitals, too, and you don't necessarily know the impact of fallout like that, not to mention that you have completely made it untenable to use anything you're doing for a regulated industry or anyone else who gets caught in that and discovers that is now in their production environment. It really sets a lot of stuff back. I've never been a believer in that particular form of vigilantism, for lack of a better term. I'm not sure that I have a better answer, let's be clear. I just, I always knew that, on some level, the risk of opening that Pandora's box were significant.Michael: Yeah. Even if you're doing it for the right reasons. It still erodes trust.Corey: Yeah.Michael: Especially it erodes trust throughout open-source. Like, not just the one project because you'll start thinking, “Oh, how many other projects might do this?” And—Corey: Wait, maybe those dirty hippies did something in our—like, I don't know, they've let those people anywhere near this operating system Linux thing that we use? I don't think they would have done that. Red Hat seems trustworthy and reliable. And it's yo, [laugh] someone needs to crack open a history book, on some level. It's a sticky situation.I do want to call out something here that it might be easy to get the wrong idea from the summary that we just gave. Very few things wind up raising my hackles quite like companies using tragedy to wind up shilling whatever it is they're trying to sell. And I'll admit when I first got this report, and I saw, “Oh, you're talking about geopolitical conflict, great.” I'm not super proud of this, but I was prepared to read you the riot act, more or less when I inevitably got to that. And I never did. Nothing in this entire report even hints in that direction.Michael: Was it you never got to it, or, uh—Corey: Oh, no. I've read the whole thing, let's be clear. You're not using that to sell things in the way that I was afraid you were. And simultaneously I want to say—I want to just point that out because that is laudable. At the same time, I am deeply and bitterly resentful that that even is laudable. That should be the common state.Capitalizing on tragedy is just not something that ever leaves any customer feeling good about one of their vendors, and you've stayed away from that. I just want to call that out is doing the right thing.Michael: Thank you. Yeah, it was actually a big topic about how we should broach this. But we have a good data point on right after it started, there was a huge spike in denial-of-service installs. And that we have a bunch of data collection technology, honeypots and other things, and we saw the day after cryptomining started going down and denial-of-service installs started going up. So, it was just interesting how that community changed their behaviors, at least for a time, to participate in whatever you want to call it, the hacktivism.Over time, though, it kind of has gone back to the norm where maybe they've gotten bored or something or, you know, run out of funds, but they're starting cryptomining again. But these events can cause big changes in the hacktivism community. And like I mentioned, it's very easy to get involved. We saw over 150,000 downloads of those pre-canned denial-of-service containers, so it's definitely something that a lot of people participated in.Corey: It's a truism that war drives innovation and different ways of thinking about things. It's a driver of progress, which says something deeply troubling about us. But it's also clear that it serves as a driver for change, even in this space, where we start to see different applications of things, we see different threat patterns start to emerge. And one thing I do want to call out here that I think often gets overlooked in the larger ecosystem and industry as a whole is, “Well, no one's going to bother to hack my nonsense. I don't have anything interesting for them to look at.”And it's, on some level, an awful lot of people running tools like this aren't sophisticated enough themselves to determine that. And combined with your first point in the report as well that, well, you have an AWS account, don't you? Congratulations. You suddenly have enormous piles of money—from their perspective—sitting there relatively unguarded. Yay. Security has now become everyone's problem, once again.Michael: Right. And it's just easier now. It means, it was always everyone's problem, but now it's even easier for attackers to leverage almost everybody. Like before, you had to get something on your PC. You had to download something. Now, your search of GitHub can find API keys, and then that's it, you know? Things like that will make it game over or your account gets compromised and big bills get run up. And yeah, it's very easy for all that to happen.Corey: Ugh. I do want to ask at some point, and I know you asked me not to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway because I have this sneaking suspicion that given that you've spent this much time on studying this problem space, that you probably, as a company, have some answers around how to address the pain that lives in these problems. What exactly, at a high level, is it that Sysdig does? Like, how would you describe that in an elevator without sabotaging the elevator for 45 minutes to explain it in depth to someone?Michael: So, I would describe it as threat detection and response for cloud containers and workloads in general. And all the other kind of acronyms for cloud, like CSPM, CIEM.Corey: They're inventing new and exciting acronyms all the time. And I honestly at this point, I want to have almost an acronym challenge of, “Is this a cybersecurity acronym or is it an audio cable? Which is it?” Because it winds up going down that path, super easily. I was at RSA walking the expo floor and I had I think 15 different companies I counted pitching XDR, without a single one bothering to explain what that meant. Okay, I guess it's just the thing we've all decided we need. It feels like security people selling to security people, on some level.Michael: I was a Gartner analyst.Corey: Yeah. Oh… that would do it then. Terrific. So, it's partially your fault, then?Michael: No. I was going to say, don't know what it means either.Corey: Yeah.Michael: So, I have no idea [laugh]. I couldn't tell you.Corey: I'm only half kidding when I say in many cases, from the vendor perspective, it seems like what it means is whatever it is they're trying to shoehorn the thing that they built into filling. It's kind of like observability. Observability means what we've been doing for ten years already, just repurposed to catch the next hype wave.Michael: Yeah. The only thing I really understand is: detection and response is a very clear detect things and respond to things. So, that's a lot of what we do.Corey: It's got to beat the default detection mechanism for an awful lot of companies who in years past have found out that they have gotten breached in the headline of The New York Times. Like it's always fun when that, “Wait, what? What? That's u—what? How did we not know this was coming?”It's when a third party tells you that you've been breached, it's never as positive—not that it's a positive experience anyway—than discovering yourself internally. And this stuff is complicated, the entire space is fraught, and it always feels like no matter how far you go, you could always go further, but left to its inevitable conclusion, you'll burn through the entire company budget purely on security without advancing the other things that company does.Michael: Yeah.Corey: It's a balance.Michael: It's tough because it's a lot to know in the security discipline, so you have to balance how much you're spending and how much your people actually know and can use the things you've spent money on.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to go through the findings of the report for me. I had skimmed it before we spoke, but talking to you about this in significantly more depth, every time I start going to cite something from it, I find myself coming away more impressed. This is now actively going on my calendar to see what the 2023 version looks like. Congratulations, you've gotten me hooked. If people want to download a copy of the report for themselves, where should they go to do that?Michael: They could just go to sysdig.com/threatreport. There's no email blocking or gating, so you just download it.Corey: I'm sure someone in your marketing team is twitching at that. Like, why can't we wind up using this as a lead magnet? But ugh. I look at this and my default is, oh, wow, you definitely understand your target market. Because we all hate that stuff. Every mandatory field you put on those things makes it less likely I'm going to download something here. Click it and have a copy that's awesome.Michael: Yep. And thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun.Corey: No, thank you for coming. Thanks for taking so much time to go through this, and thanks for keeping it to the high road, which I did not expect to discover because no one ever seems to. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it.Michael: Thanks. Have a great day.Corey: Mike Clark, Director of Threat Research at Sysdig. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry comment pointing out that I didn't disclose the biggest security risk at all to your AWS bill, an AWS Solutions Architect who is working on commission.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Garrett Sutton is a corporate attorney, asset protection expert and best selling author who has sold more than a million books to guide entrepreneurs and investors. For more than 30 years, Garrett Sutton has run his practice assisting entrepreneurs and real estate investors in protecting their assets and maximizing their financial goals through sound management and asset protection strategies. The companies he founded, Corporate Direct and Sutton Law Center, currently help more than 13,000 clients protect their assets and incorporate their businesses. Garrett also serves as a member of the elite group of “Rich Dad Advisors” for bestselling author Robert Kiyosaki. A number of the books Garrett Sutton has authored are part of the bestselling Rich Dad, Poor Dad wealth-building book series. There are three types of entities most commonly used to own real estate: Limited Liability Company, S Corporation and Limited Partnership. Tune in for todays episode where Garrett provides a quick summary of the best entities for real estate investment. Episode Link: https://corporatedirect.com/contact/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Garrett Sutton, who is an attorney, investor and author with over 1 million copies of his book sold and today Garrett is gonna be talking to us about all the different entity structures we should be aware of as real estate investors, as well as wherever we might want to think about forming those entities because it plays a big role. So let's get into it.   Garrett, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time.   Garrett: Thanks, Michael. It's a pleasure to be with you today.   Michael: No, no, the pleasure is all mine ad I'm super excited to chat with you. I know a little bit about your background and what you do kind of on a day to day basis. But I would love if you could share with our listeners who you are, where you come from, and what is it that you're doing in real estate today?   Garrett: Well, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area like you and I moved to Reno in 1989 and Nevada is a great state for setting up LLCs and corporations along with Wyoming. So I practiced corporate law since 1978, and became associated with Robert Kiyosaki and have written a number of books in the rich dad advisor series and you know, have enjoyed talking to people around the country around the world about how to protect your assets. As you start investing in real estate, you need to think about how you're going to protect that real estate because we live in a very litigious society, people sue each other all the time and unfortunately, they don't teach this in school, you have to get this information on your own and so that's what we provide is the information you need and then we offer a service to help you protect your real estate and brokerage and other assets.   Michael: Love it and just right off the bat, I read one of your books for our Roofstock Academy book club, it was a great read, so I can definitely vouch for it. But what are the books that you've written and then what talk to us about your most recent book?   Garrett: Well, I've written a number of books in the rich dad advisor series, including start your own corporation, that's kind of a foundational one, and then run your own corporation, a lot of my clients and I set up a corporation now what do I do, and you have to run it properly. Then I also did loopholes of real estate, which is kind of the tax and legal strategies for investing in real estate and then the newest book is veil not failed and that deals with the corporate veil, you set up an LLC or a corporation to be protected and too many people do this themselves, Michael, they just set it up online, and they don't realize that there are additional steps you have to take to stay protected and so if you don't want your veil to be pierced where someone can sue the company, there are no assets there. They can go through the veil of the company and get it your personal assets, if you don't want that to happen and that's why you set up an LLC.   Michael: That's the point, yeah…   Garrett: It's that you don't want it to happen. You need to follow these corporate formalities and so that's what the book veil not fail is about kind of stories, horror stories of people who didn't follow the rules and then in the latter part of the book, it shows you how to follow the rules so you can stay protected.   Michael: Yeah, great. and where can people find out if they're interested in picking up a copy?   Garrett: Amazon has it the veil not fail. It was supposed to be out in April, but we have this thing called supply chain problems.   Michael: I've heard of that.   Garrett: Not enough paper out there. So it's not out until November but you can go ahead and preorder it.   Michael: Fantastic. Garrett, let's talk about I think a pretty hotly contested and debated topic in the real estate space and that's LLC versus no LLC, I think and it's tough because we're I'm California based. A lot of our listeners are California based and so to have an LLC in California, you're paying at minimum 800 bucks a year and with today's cash flow based on some real estate investments that can eat in to your investment pretty significantly and so I've heard folks say, you know, forget the LLC, go get umbrella policy, go get high liability limit insurance and call it a day. Don't worry about it. What are some risks pros cons associated with doing that, that you've seen folks run into?   Garrett: You know, there's a whole area of law called Bad Faith litigation, and that's when insurance companies collect the premiums and then find a way not to cover you. All right, the insurance companies have acted in bad faith over the years. errors in collecting the premiums and then having exclusions, that little tiny print that you never read and so, you know, the insurance companies, let's face it, they have an economic incentive to not cover every claim and so they're going to find reasons not to cover you and so I always recommend that people have insurance. That's the first line of defense but these LLCs are the second line of defense, in case the insurance company doesn't cover you, or what about a situation where your insurance is, say 2 million, but the judgment is 4 million, right? I mean, you're personally responsible for that extra 2 million. If the property is in an LLC, they can get what's inside the LLC. But if you've done it, right, if you if your veil is strong, they're not going to be able to reach your personal assets for that extra 2 million. So the idea that you're just going to rely on insurance is, in my opinion, quite naive.   Michael: Yeah. Okay, I love it. I'm of the same opinion. I always, I never like to play my hand, though but I love hearing that because I come from the insurance world. So I know how bad things can go and I also have seen how they're supposed to work. But I think you're totally right, there's totally an economic incentive to not pay claims and the insurance industry as a whole gets kind of wrapped in with the folks that are doing the latter, not the former. So I think it makes a ton of sense. But Garrett talked to me about I've heard this concept, and this idea that, okay, there's this, you can be over insured, there is such a point. Now, if I go get a $10 million umbrella, because I really want to be protected. Does that then put a target on my back for a claim or a plaintiff to say, well, hey, he's got a pretty a pretty massive insurance policy, you know, I was only going to sue him for a million, but let's go after the full 10.   Garrett: Well, I mean, there are a number of factors there. I mean, having enough insurance is not a bad thing. If the claim is a million, it doesn't give the attorney the right to try and collect 10 million, you know, I mean, the claim is a million. So you know, the fact that you have extra insurance isn't a bad thing. The attorneys, you know, what we like to do, what we tell our clients is you want to have enough insurance to cover any claim and so you want to have insurance on the property fire casualty, right? You want to have a personal umbrella policy of insurance covering your home and your autos because I think that's the biggest risk out there is a horrific car wreck, right. Do you need that umbrella policy, a commercial umbrella policy over your various rental properties, maybe I had a part such a policy for a while but here in Reno, it got pretty expensive and so I just have regular insurance on the properties. I have regular insurance for my home and autos and I have an umbrella policy for me personally and so you get in that horrific car wreck. There's enough insurance money for the attorneys to get at. They know how to get at insurance monies, they get a percentage of what they collect and then if everything else is held in LLCs you know you'll have a an LLC if you own a property in Oregon, you have an Oregon LLC on title, you own a property in Utah, you'll have a Utah LLC and tie on title and then those two LLCs are owned by one Wyoming LLC. That's how we like to structure things and the attorneys are going to have a tough time collecting from a Wyoming LLC and so they leave you alone on the LLC. Do you have enough insurance to pay the claim and they'll leave you alone on the LLC is that's how we recommend our clients structure things.   Michael: Okay, and why Wyoming LLC because I know you made a very deliberate point of saying where is formed, what's the point?   Garrett: There are three really good states out there and they compete against each other to be the best which is good for us. Instead of having one federal law that applies to every single state. After the American Revolution, each state wanted their own corporate law and so now we have each state with their own corporate law in Delaware, Wyoming and Nevada compete against each other to be the best. You know, the filing fees every year that come in are pretty good. It helps fund the government. So the reason I like Wyoming over Nevada and Delaware is all three protect the owner of the LLC the charging order is the exclusive remedy and all three, but in Nevada and Delaware the annual fee is $350 a year and in Nevada they list your name on the state website. In Wyoming the annual fee is $62 a year and your name does not show up on the State web site. So Wyoming offers lower cost, better privacy and equal protection. So a lot of our clients set up Wyoming LLCs.   Michael: Yeah, okay, well, I'm sold. So being a California guy, though, this is what I've heard and would love your insights. So I've been told that California they want their piece of the pie. So I've got to register any LLC that I own. In California, because I'm a resident here, I live here, even if it has not doing business, because the way California defines doing business is basically me living here. So if I do I own property in Oregon, I own it with an Oregon LLC, that LLC is owned by the Wyoming LLC, but then I gotta register both of those here in California?   Garrett: No, you raise a very good question. So in our example, we had an Oregon LLC and a Utah LLC and if those were owned by you, as a California resident, we'd have to pay 800, twice, once for Oregon, once for Utah, by having the Wyoming parent there, the Wyoming LLC, and we qualify that one to do business in the State of California. You don't have to pay the 800 for Utah, or Oregon. So that's a way to save the $800 for all the title holding LLCs yes, one of them has to pay right $800 to the state of California and you know, California has gotten a little bit looser, you don't have to pay the 800 the first year, that $800 is a credit on the first $50,000 in profits. So it's not like it's wasted. So, you know, I've had people move from California to Nevada, because of that $800 fee. It's just infuriates people. But there is if you love living in California, there's a way to work it so you have protection, and you don't have to pay $800 for every single LLC you own across the country.   Michael: Okay, fantastic and then in going back to that example, if I've got the I've got to register the Wyoming LLC here in California, do I lose out on any of the anonymity that Wyoming affords me because now it's registered here in California?   Garrett: Yeah, you'd have to list your name in California.   Michael: Okay, all right. Yeah, maybe I will think about moving, who knows? All right, Garrett, in your book, and I want to get really nice here for a minute, because I've got you. You talk about quitclaim deeds versus warranty deeds and I think a lot of our listeners out there have utilized this practice, or have heard about this practice because if you go get a conventional loan from a traditional bank, they won't lend to an LLC. So you go get the name the loan in your name, then transfer the property title to an LLC after the fact, right. In the book, you talk about quitclaim deeds versus a warranty deed, can you give us a little bit of insight into what the difference is and why someone should think about using one versus the other?   Garrett: Well, the warranty deed or the grant deed says, I warrant that I own this property and if I don't, if I transfer it to you, and I don't own it, for some reason, you can sue me. All right. So it's a more powerful deed. The grant deed, the quitclaim deed rather, says, I don't know what I own. But I'm transferring whatever I own to you and the title companies go, well, he quit claimed that property and so that severs the title insurance, right because he didn't know what he had and so we're not going to cover him on it on a quitclaim deed and so and too many people pronounce it quick claim.   Michael: I know, I know.   Garrett: You know, and it's the same deed with a couple of different words in it. But you really always want to use the grant deed or the warranty deed because in many cases, you sever the title insurance, when you use a quitclaim deed, okay, and that's….   Michael: Okay and that's even if you're going from yourself as an individual owner to an LLC that you own 100% of?   Garrett: Right, yeah, just ask for the grant deed. Also, if you're buying property from someone, you want to insist on a grant deed or a warranty deed, because if they don't deliver the title that they've promised they are going to deliver, you have the ability to sue them for failure to perform.   Michael: Okay, super good to know, super good to know, Garrett, as people who are just getting started on their investment journey, I mean, what's the appropriate time to set up an entity because I've heard people say, I'll do it later. I'm too small. It's too expensive. You know, what are your thoughts there?   Garrett: Right at the start, you know, it's just not that expensive. We do not charge a lot of money to set up LLCs for people. It's very affordable. It's a business expense, you get to write it off. But I'll give you an example Michael and I I've told this story 1000 times, but I was in San Francisco at an event and I gave a talk about asset protection and this lady comes up to me and she goes, Well, I'd like to transfer title. I just bought a duplex and I'd like to transfer title into the name of an LLC. I go, that's a great idea. I go in California, it's $800 per year per entity and she goes, oh, I can't afford that and so I'm giving a talk in San Francisco again and she comes up to me and says, I've been sued by a tenant, I'd like to set up that LLC now. Well, it's too late, right? You know, the tenant rented from you, in your individual name, UX, they have a claim against you as an individual, and they can reach all of your personal assets as a result and once you've been sued, or even threatened to be sued, it's too late to set up an LLC. I mean, you can't put a seatbelt on after the accident. Yeah, right. So you really want to set this up right at the start and I've heard CPAs say, oh, well, you know, just set it up when you can and that's bad advice. I mean, you know, the joke I tell is that CPA stands for can't protect assets. It's just, you need to set this stuff up right now.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think it makes a ton of sense and I love the seatbelt analogy. I think that really hits home for a lot of folks. So as someone that's getting more sophisticated with their investing strategy, what like tools or strategies should they be aware of as they're starting to scale up and they're investing?   Garrett: Well, I think having that Wyoming, LLC is the parent holding LLC is a good strategy. We talked about an Oregon LLC and a Utah LLC owned by one Wyoming LLC and that Wyoming LLC is passive. It's not going to hold real estate, it's not going to do business with anyone, because if someone sued the Wyoming LLC, they could get at Wyoming at the Oregon and the Utah LLC. That's what the Wyoming LLC owes. So that Wyoming LLC is passive, it doesn't do business with anyone because we don't ever want it to be sued. All right. So that's a key strategy in protection. Now, if your clients are holding brokerage accounts, right, bank accounts, gold and silver stock brokerage accounts, in their individual name, the same rules apply. If they get sued personally, and they have all these assets at a Charles Schwab account in their individual name, someone can very easily get those and so what we do is we set up an LLC for the paper assets for the bullion and if you get sued, and that horrific car wreck, they're in an LLC, it's much different, much more difficult for an attorney to get at those because the exclusive remedy in Nevada and Wyoming is what's called the charging order and that is a lien on distributions in the state of California if you own an LLC that owns a piece of real estate in California, the law in California is that the car wreck victim can go to court and the judge can say yes, you've been injured, you can set forth the sale of the duplex. All right, and that is not good asset protection. So we like Wyoming and Nevada where the court says, okay, you have a claim. But here's the remedy that we offer in our state, you are entitled to distributions that come through the LLC, you can't barge in and force the sale of the real estate, you have to wait for distributions to come and that's not a good use of the attorneys time. You know, monitoring if distributions are made there on a contingency fee, they get paid when they collect on the insurance monies. So their time is better spent going to the next case that has insurance. So that Wyoming LLC that offers the charging order remedy, not where they can barge in and force the sale of the real estate but where they have to wait and monitor distributions that go to you. It's a much better system for protection than choosing a weak state like California, Utah is a really weak state, New York is weak. So we have to understand which states are strong and weak and structure your plan accordingly.   Michael: Yeah, interesting and Garrett, talking through all this kind of makes me beg the question of in our Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, California LLC example where the Wyoming LLC owns the properties. There is a holding company rather, if the tenant in Oregon falls and Sue's sues the owner. I mean how far Is this go and where is the court date held, how does that all work?   Garrett: Well, if you, if the tenant has is renting from the Oregon LLC, that's or they're in contract with, so the claim would be tenant would sue the Oregon LLC, the lawsuit would take place in Oregon, right? That's where the property is. That's where the tenant fell. The action stays within the Oregon LLC, it doesn't give the tenant a right to go down to the Wyoming LLC, which is the parent, it doesn't give the tenant the right to go over to the Utah LLC. That's a separate business entity. So the key here is that if the tenant sues, you want to get notice of that lawsuit as soon as possible, right, you want to turn over this claim to your insurance company, so that they can assist in settling the case. Too many people, Michael have this idea that if they use a land trust, where no one will ever know who the owner is, and no one will ever serve you is just nonsense because you want to get notice of the lawsuit as soon as possible. In the Land Trust scenario, they say, well, geez, no one will ever find out who the owner is. Well, what happens is they go to court and they say, Look, we tried to sue the land trust, we couldn't find out who the owner was and the court says, okay, well published notice in the newspaper. So they published it little two point type in the newspaper that We're suing the Oregon LLC, or the Oregon Land Trust, rather and you don't get notice of that either. They go back to court and say we tried to serve them, we published notice in the newspaper, and no one ever showed up. The court says default judgment, meaning the tenant has won and then when they're trying to collect, you know, you find out that you've been sued, the insurance company can say, Well, look, you should have had notice of this lawsuit, we could have defended you, but we're not covering you now. You didn't give us the proper notice and so this whole idea of a land trust and privacy is just nonsense. You want to get notice of a lawsuit, so you can turn it over to your insurance company.   Michael: Yeah, that makes no sense. I guess it's kind of like the ostrich approach like if I stick my head in the ground, I don't see it. I don't hear about it. It's not a problem.   Garrett: Yeah, it is a problem.   Michael: Interesting, okay and Garrett talked to us about some of the different entity structures that are out there. Because there's the C Corp, the S Corp, the single member LLC, multi member LLC, like should we as real estate investors be thinking about utilizing some of these different corporate structures or is really the LLC that that kind of 45 of structures.   Garrett: Pretty much the LLC is the way to go, if you're going to hold real estate, you in some cases, the limited partnership can work. If you're syndicating real estate and you want to absolute control, the limited partnership can work, you're not going to hold title to real estate in a C Corp or an S Corp or any other kind of corporation, tax wise, it's just not the best way to go. So the LLC is pretty much I mean, 98% of our formations for real estate are LLCs. The other 2% would be LPS for syndication purposes, or, you know, for estate planning purposes where mom and dad with an LP, the general partners, which would be another LLC can own as little as 2% and have absolute control over the property. So mom and dad through their LLC have 2% ownership, the limited partnership has 98% ownership owned by the kids as limited partners, and the kids can't force mom and dad to sell the property. So there are cases where the limited partnership works but in the vast majority of cases, it's the LLC that is on title to the real estate.   Michael: Okay. Good to know, good to know. I had another question for it and it totally escaped my mind.   Garrett: Well, how about fail not fail the new book?   Michael: Yeah…   Garrett: You know, people have these promoters out there just say that most wrongheaded stuff about LLC. I mean, they say that you don't need an operating agreement- wrong. They say that you never have to issue stocks or timber membership interests certificates- wrong. So you you'd need to treat your LLC, like a corporation whereby you have to follow these formalities. You have to have the annual meeting, right and the idea that you never have to have a meeting is when you get into a court of law, you're in front of a judge or a jury. I want you to have a minute book with the minutes of every yearly meeting in it and these promoters say, well, you never have to have a meeting. I want you to walk into court and tell the jury, yeah, I ran this property for 12 years and never had a meeting. It just doesn't work.   Michael: It's not going to fly.   Garrett: It's not going to fly. So you know, the reality is, when you're in a courtroom, the reality is not when you're in office with a promoter telling you don't have to do anything to maintain your LLC. It's just not accurate. Yeah, so that's why I wrote the book, because there's so much misinformation out there about corporate formalities. So with a corporation, you need to follow the corporate formalities and with an LLC, you need to follow the corporate formalities because someone suing can pierce the corporate veil on a corporation, they can pierce the veil on an LLC. It's very, and the rules are not hard to follow. They're really easy. It's just if you don't follow them, they can go through the LLC and reach your personal assets.   Michael: Yeah no, that's such a great point and also, Garrett, I mean, to that point, if someone listening is thinking about reaching out to an attorney for help with forming for entities or restructuring entities, I mean, what are some questions they should be asking and things they should be looking for, with an attorney that they want to put on their team?   Garrett: Well, does the attorney invest in real estate? I mean, I think that's a good question to ask because, you know, I invest in real estate, I've been through the wars and so it just helps you appreciate what the client is going through to have done that yourself. You know, I think some attorneys specialize in personal injury. In contract cases. I mean, you want someone who really knows the ins and outs of LLCs, and appreciates that we have good states and weak states, and that you have to put the combination together to fully protect the client.   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense and we're recording this, let's see September 2022, what is like the reasonable cost to form an LLC, and then what are any kind of maintenance fees associated with maintaining the LLC?   Garrett: Well, we charge a flat fee of $795, in that, and then the filing fees are on top of that. So Wyoming, for example, is $100. That 795 includes the registered agent for the first year. So you're not paying any extra for that. We also have a system whereby we keep all your documents and if you have lost your operating agreement, we give you a portal where you can go on and download your documents. So we kind of have this backup service for you and then so you pay the 795, the first year, and then the second year, it's already formed, so everything drops down, you only pay 125 to four, the registered agent. Now we give you a book that shows you how to do the minutes because you really should do the minutes every year and even though we give you the book with the forms in it, a lot of people don't do it. So we offer a service where for $150 a year, we'll make sure that your minutes are done and we want to keep you in good standing, we want you to have those annual meeting minutes in your file, just in case you don't want to be in a courtroom and say I never had a meeting.   Michael: Right, it's too late, then like you said, Garrett, this has been super informative and people want to reach out, continue the conversation, take advantage of your services, what's the best way for them to get in touch?   Garrett: Well, they can go to https://corporatedirect.com/schedule/ and set up a free 15 minute consultation with an incorporating specialist that you'll work with this person all the way through the process and they'll give you a quote for what our services entail and you know, just see if there's a fit, we're happy to talk to you and so we set up entities in all 50 states, maybe you're you set up your entity already, it's an LLC, you don't have an operating agreement, you haven't issued the membership certificates. Don't tell anyone but we can clean it up for you. We also offer a registered agent service in all 50 states. So if you've got one company here, one company there we can be your one company to serve as the registered agent in all 50 states. So we'd be happy to help your listeners Michael and you know, have them call corporate direct or go, go visit the website, corporatedirect.com and there's plenty of information and articles there and kind of tells you what we do.   Michael: Amazing. Well, Garrett, thank you so much for that. One final question before I let you out of here. We've said the term a couple times. But for anyone who maybe isn't familiar, can you bring them up to speed on what a Registered Agent is and what the importance is?   Garrett: Well, the Registered Agent is someone in the state where you set up the entity or where you're qualified to do business and the idea is that instead of having someone who's trying to sue you search all over the state of Texas for you, right? The Registered Agent is an address where someone suing, you can go and serve the registered agent with service of process. So it's just it's kind of an efficient way for the justice system to work. It's one place where you can serve an LLC or a corporation, and then they're responsible for forwarding that on to you and so you want to use a reputable registered agent service that knows the importance of a lawsuit, if we get a notice of a service, we're on the phone immediately to our client, because you've only got 30 days to get an attorney and answer that complaint. So you don't want a mom and pop that is going to go out of business or doesn't appreciate the consequences of being served with a lawsuit. So it's an important function and if you fail to pay the Registered Agent, they're going to refuse service a process and then they're, you know, the person suing us is going to go back to court and get, you know, authorization to publish notice in the newspaper, and again, you're not going to get noticed to this cert of the claim. So you want to have that registered agent on your team at all times.   Michael: Yeah, yeah, super great point and the Justice Department looking for efficiencies. That's not something I maybe I've ever heard before. So really exciting stuff.   Garrett: It's something that does exists, so…   Michael: Oh, Garrett, thank you. Again, this was super informative, and I definitely would love to have you back on once your book comes out in November.   Garrett: That sounds great. Thanks, Michael.   Michael: You got it, take care. We'll chat soon.   Garrett: All right.   Michael: All right, everyone, and that was our episode a big thank you to Garrett for coming on. Definitely take advantage of that. 15 minute free consult if you're interested. As always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review. We'd love to hear from you all and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Pete Neubig has been investing in real estate since 2001. He has owned and managed 39, 52, and 100-unit apartment complexes. He currently owns single-family homes and a 52-unit apartment complex. Pete created a property management company based on the motto "by investors for investors". His property management company has clients from Houston and all over the world. His technology-based systems allow owners to see everything that is happening at their property without having to be involved. Pete leverages virtual assistants to do more than he can do on his own. A real estate virtual assistant (VA) is a business admin who essentially acts as your right hand. A real estate VA can offer a variety of business services in-person or remotely. The right VA can cover diverse tasks like lead gen and database management, or even finance and marketing. Tune in for today's episode where Pete talks about how he uses virtual assistants and what real estate investors should be aware of when they want to take this step in building a team. Episode Link: https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and joining me again today for a recurring visit is Pete Neubig and he is the founder of VPM solutions. He's gonna be talking to us today about virtual assistants and what we as investors should be aware of and how we can utilize them to our advantage. So let's get into it.   Pete Neubig what's going on man, you are back for more didn't have enough the first time we had.   Pete: Man, Michael, thank you so much for bringing me back on. I had we had such a blast. You know, last time just talking about my investor jury and then right at the end, we got to talking about my new venture and so I'm glad, thank you so much for having me back to talking about my new venture.   Michael: Of course, no, super, super excited. So for those who didn't catch the tail end of our conversation from your prior episode, give us a quick and dirty who you are, and what you're doing in real estate and what your company is all about.   Pete: Sure. Well, my name is Pete Neubig. I'm out of Houston, Texas, I started buying properties in 2001. I bought so many that I failed miserably at it that I ended up creating a property management firm in 2012, sold that firm in 2019 and in 2020, I started VPM solutions and we went live with our product in 2021 and VPM solutions is think of it as a dating service. It's like it's an online marketplace that connects people in the United States and Canada, like employers, you know, people in real estate, with contractors in mainly Philippines and Mexico, but we're in about 60 different countries where we have different contractors and so that's you know, so we're like, like dating service, like match.   Michael: I love it, I love it, I love it. Okay, so who are your clients? Kind of on the investor side and then who are your contractors on the contractor side, just random, random people?   Pete: Yeah, that's a great question. So we really try to stick with the real estate industry. So because I'm a property manager by trade, we started with property management and so we targeted property managers in the United States and Canada, right, because in property management, as most of your clients know, especially if they self-manage, is a process oriented and is a people oriented business, right? It there's a lot of things you have to do manually and so you can't automate as you can automate a lot. But there's still a lot that has to be done manually. So we started there. So that's our main clients, we're now breaking into the real estate and brokerage side of things because there's a lot of work, there's a lot of help, they need like transaction coordination, and just generating leads and appointment setting, so we're there, as well and on the contractor side, what we're looking we advertise we do quite a bit of advertising in different countries, just letting people know, hey, you can work from home, you can pretty much make a little bit more money than what you can get, you know, in your environment and we actually build some, it's called LMS. But it's video training, that you can literally take video training for free to learn more about right now is property management. But we're going to be built, we're going to be throwing some other videos out there always well, we'll be adding more video training out there and so are our contractors, somebody who's bilingual, someone who's educated, and somebody who's looking to make a little bit more than what they what they make in their own in their own country, and that they want to get into real estate, mainly property management or in the real estate industry.   Michael: Okay, interesting. So I am like, the whole concept of a VA is I understand it, but it's totally foreign to me, I've never utilized one but I know people who have so give all of our listeners who are listening, a little bit of background or insight like why should someone consider a VA, like what benefits do they bring?   Pete: Yeah, another great question, man. It's like, so, here's the main thing, right. What happens is, you get so much work, that you need to hire somebody, right? Whether it's whether you're self-managing, and like me and Steve, what my business partner, we were self-managing properties and next thing, you know, we had all these maintenance requests, we had all these leases that had been renewed and we had all these resident questions and we have lease marketing, and it gets daunting and all of a sudden your conical passive job becomes very, very active very quickly and so now you have to either A) hire somebody or B) you know, hire a property manager or hire somebody internally, right and so when you start looking at assistants in the United States, what happened was, especially after the pen EMIC with inflation. So what's happening is those low level low enjoyment tasks that that you don't want to do as the you know, as the investor or as the self-manager you want to give to somebody else? Well, if you, you try to hire that person United States, typically what happens is that job role doesn't pay what people want.   So for example, it might be like the job role might only pay 30,000 a year, right? That's a full time, whatever, but the person wants 50,000 a year and if you pay that person, what they wanted, you would make you would be negative cashflow, you will make any money. This happens quite a bit when you're managing your own properties and you're kind of building your portfolio and adding more properties to your portfolio. It's like all of a sudden, you're overwhelmed overworked, to hire somebody, now you're cash negative and so and then what happens is with these folks, what I found in my personal job, my personal company, Empire industries, when we when we started, we manage over 1000 units. When I hire people in the US, they have like a GED, or that you're getting very, like you're getting very low, you know, schooled, low education type people, and what happens is one, they're not appreciative of the opportunity get, and then two, they always want more money, and then three, they always bring in their outside challenges into your business, the car doesn't work, they take more time off, you know, they have family drama, that kind of comes into your business and so in the past, what happened was, you have to be stressed out to make money in property management. So I have I have, I have, I have all these doors are managing, I have all this work that needs to be done, I have to hire somebody. But as soon as I hire somebody, now I'm not profitable. So now I have to go get more properties to manage, so that I can bring the income up and now everybody's stressed again and the reason why everybody's stress is because I'm hiring people in the States, which, you know, demand a much higher hourly rate, if you will and so what I realized is, if I, if I hire if I outsourced, in a second or third world country, I can get educated people, bilingual educated people, that will work for a lot cheaper than somebody in the US and it's not, I'm just going to pay them less because they're in the Philippines or they're in Mexico, it's that in Mexico, $10 an hour goes a lot further than $10 an hour in Houston, or $10 an hour in Northern California. So the way I tell people look at is like this, if I took if I was doing the same job in Northern California, as I do in Houston, Texas, I'd get paid a lot more for that job in Northern California, because the cost of living, right, and then I'd get less money doing the same job in Houston, because of the cost of living and I probably make, I probably even get paid less if I was in like Arkansas, because of the cost of living. The dollar still travels just as far. Well just think of Mexico, as you know, as the next level down of cost of living. Just because you're paying somebody $10 an hour doesn't mean you're taking advantage of them. Matter of fact, $10 an hour in Mexico is a very good hourly wage. It's actually a very good wage and then in Philippines, to give you an idea, Michael $4 an hour is a good wage in the Philippines.   Michael: Wow.   Pete: And you think you save yourself? There's no way we're gonna take advantage these people? No, I mean, $4 an hour is a good wage in the Philippines. So it's, you know, as a criminal getting paid very well here in the States and so, the reason why people are outsourcing is because I can get bilingual and by the way, most of these people are either their high school educated or greater. They have some type of education after high school, whether it be associate's or a college degree. So you're getting educated people that that are bilingual, for a fraction of the costs in the United States that you are in the United States and because these low level jobs can, you can only pay so much. Now you can actually pay what the job role requires, which means now you can make more money in the company, right and then I'll turn this around on how we actually helped our US people, because I had people in Empire that were that were making some money. The ones I hired the virtual team members like oh, Pete, you got rid of jobs. Actually, no, they got rid of themselves because I couldn't afford them anymore. They wouldn't work at the level I needed them for the company make money. But once I hired these other virtual team members in the company started making money, I was able to actually pay my US people more, I was actually able to get better benefits for my US people, right because these are contract workers in the Philippines and Mexico and you know, Costa Rica, wherever you're going to hire them from and so they're contract workers, so they work they get paid, that's great. But your team members in the US once a company starts making more money, you can treat your kids because their employees right so you can treat them better stock options or 401k, whatever it was. So for us, it was bonuses, it was higher salary and we started doing we started we started looking at it we start doing health insurance. So that's how we were able to benefit out team. So the next question is, well, what can a VA do that somebody in the US?   Michael: Yeah, that's exactly where I was gonna go with it.   Pete: What I'll tell people is the VA can do anything that the person in us can do except for two things. One, obviously, if they need to be physically at the property, right, right, they can't they can't do that and then we'll do if they need a license, if they need a license to do something, they can't do license act, right. So give you an example, though. We actually had one of our virtual team members do all of our lease renewals? Well, you say, well, P That's a licensee Act and the you know, you need to be licensed to do lease renewals and the answer is actually, you don't need to be licensed to just create the lease renewal, you need to be licensed to negotiate the lease renewal. So what we would do is 90% of our lease renewals were not negotiated, most people just sign the lease renewal, right, most of our owner clients, or our residents would just sign the lease renewal and the ones that would have questions, that would get escalated to our property manager and so what we did just that one, just that one job role, what we did is we literally took 90% of the work away from the property manager gave it to give it to the virtual team member and then a product manager took the escalations. Now, I'm a big proponent of it, the way you can save your company, so to speak, a lot of a lot of stress and noise is can you automate through policy and can you automate through, you know, computer technology, in this case, what we did in this, you have to look at it but in Houston, we know that the average rate, the average renewal rate would go up about 2% per year over time. Now, some years, it would go up more in other years, it wouldn't go up at all, it actually would go down. But over time we…   Michael: need in terms of like the rent, like how much rent, you're getting rent increase the renewal… Yeah, okay.   Pete: So we did is we just create a policy that our rent increases every 2% every year, and we put that in the lease. So there was no negotiating, right on the residence side...   Michael: It wasn't up for discussion…   Pete: Right, so but if people say, hey, I'm gonna leave unless we do XY and Z, well, that would get escalated but we were able to reduce the escalations because of the part because of the policy we were able to automate and then we on the on the owner side, we would send something 90 days out, hey, do you want to renew your release or not, right like, we didn't ask them what the amount was, we because we built the 2% and so we stopped doing CMAs. So it is a lot of grunt work that we can stop doing, which then allows your virtual team ever to actually do a lot more, we have one person for 1000, doors, doing lease renewals, and, and reviewing inspections.   Michael: one person for all 1000 doors…?   Pete: For lease renewals and inspections. Yeah…   Michael: Holy smokes.   Pete: But then I had one person that did all collections. So I'll kind of go through the whole thing, right. So like, you can have a virtual team member, their whole job literally could be making sure that your collections are being done, your notices are getting sent out and that they can if you have if you have a third party company like we did that handle the evictions, they can actually be the gatekeeper with that third with that third party company and do all that stuff. My property managers did nothing with evictions   Michael: What?   Pete: Yeah, yeah. So we again, we had policies in place, right. So if, if the resident owed less than 50%, we, we wouldn't file evictions, if they owed, you know, 50% or more, we'd file the eviction we like so we just put on a different policy. You teach the VA, what the policies are, and then they just follow the process and what's cool is they actually know the process better than you and they, hey, can I do this or this or this instead, and they tweak the process and you're like, yeah, that sounds so much better and then they own the process. So if you're like an investor listening to this, and you don't like magic companies, for whatever reason, by the way, obviously, I own a magic company, I highly recommend. But let's just say, let's just say that you don't like me had a bad experience, and you're gun shy. But what you're finding is your leases aren't being renewed, right? You're your maintenance is overtime, the phone rings you like, I don't want to deal with this. You hate when somebody moves out, because you want to deal with the turn, your books are a mess, because you don't have time to do the books because you're, you know, a high net worth individual working 70-80 hours a week as it is, then a VA could do all of that stuff for you. They can do everything, you got to train them, of course. So just step back, take two steps forward. But they can do your property accounting, they could be your QuickBooks, they could do your business accounting, they could do your maintenance coordination, they could do your turn coordination, they can do your collections or evictions. So they can do your utility turn on and turn offs, like so all that stuff that you like, oh my god, they could do your onboarding for you. So I was going to get a new property you got to enter all that stuff in the in the computer system. They can do all of that stuff for you.   Michael: If anyone's watching the video here, you see that my jaw is like on the floor. So for anyone listening I just want wanted to bring you up to speed. But okay, so peace on, let me just understand. So they could do, like they could do all of this stuff and literally anything I mean sky's the limit is and with regard to things that they can do other than the two things you mentioned the license act, and then anything that requires them to physically be there. But when it comes to accounting, I mean, one thing that I'm thinking about is, there's very sensitive information, there's banking information, there's pat, you know, credit card information, as part of the accounting process that I do personally. So am I going to need to divulge personal information and sensitive information to the VA or like, how does that work?   Pete: Yeah, so, you know, in most in most instances, like in your QuickBooks, and in any property management software, they have different levels of permissions and even in your banking, like I bank with Chase, and Chase has different levels of permissions. So I can give you all the rights to, to my, my, my VA team, right, which I did, I gave them all the rights, so they can see everything, they can reconcile the bank statements, they can, they can look at everything, they just couldn't make any payments, right, they couldn't make any transactions. So that's, that's what we did. Now, we also had two property accountants that they did probably accounts for our third party folks and so they had access to, you know, sensitive information. So what we did is we did a bet we did a thorough background screening, there's a third party company out there that can do background screening, and they came up, you know, pretty, they came out really good. So we went forward, and then we just had our cyber liability insurance policy just to make sure go again, because we're a property manager firm with over 1000 units that we manage. So we wanted to make sure that we you know, we took care of ourselves. But if you're an individual with a handful of properties, or a small property manager, then you can do all of this through the permissions that your banking and that your that your software allows you to do.   Michael: Okay and so as I'm hearing you, you talk about as a man, I'm getting really excited, I'm trying my the wheels are kind of turning on all of the things that I might be able to outsource. What are some things that you should definitely not have a VA do? I mean, have you seen some things go really sideways or go really south because someone said, oh, well, Pete said, they can only can't do these two things. So I'm gonna give my VA everything else. I mean, what should I be thinking about in terms of limitations?   Pete: Yeah, so I gotta be honest, you, Michael I, at first, I always thought like, okay, I'm just gonna give him a list of things to do. I'm going to scan it to him and we're going to just do this stuff off the list, like a checklist thing. I quickly realized he could do much more. Then I said, hey, I own the process and they own the process and they can and now I do believe that I actually had VA supervise people in the States. So I had somebody in Mexico supervising people in the United States. So I believe they can get to that that supervisory level, what I will say is, they can do everything. So I'm not saying they can't do anything. But the one thing is you need to put in place some escalation paths…   Michael: What do you mean?   Pete: So even though they own so let's say for example, they own maintenance, right? Well, they're going to be able to handle 99 out of 10 maintenance calls, no problem. But then there's that mold call that comes in, right where the resident says they have mold, well, right there, that should be a buzzword that gets escalated to the property manager because they don't like they don't have mold in other areas of the country of the world that were that worried about mold as much as much as we do in the US. So if there's like an emergency, that could that can cause you know, a resident can get sick, right, or anything like that we're property code. So each, each state has their own little different property code, right. So like, for example, in Texas, believe it or not heat, if they have no heat, that's, that's a, that's an emergency. But if they have if they don't have air non-emergency, well, we treat no AC as an emergency in our in our company we did and so there was like three or four things that those got escalated a property manager. Now the property manager, at that point would say, I'm going to take it from here, or here's what you should do. But then the property manager is kind of co-managing that ticket. So I believe that in any business that you run, whether you own a property management firm, or you're a you know, an individual landlord that manages your 10 units, there's got to be certain. I call them taps on the shoulder, there's got to be certain tabs that you realize this is a potential problem, right? So let me deal with it or I call them taps two by fours and then getting run over by a man, right? On over by a Mack truck means that you're in a lawsuit, right? The two by four means somebody moved out because you didn't handle a maintenance request in a certain way and the tap is the maintenance request is 10 days, 15 days old, whatever it is, and no one's looking at it. Right, so how can you run your business through tabs? Well, if you have these vas, the great thing is you're not doing the work anymore, right? You're not creating the lease renewal you're not you know, calling, you know roto rooter to get out to the property. You're not doing that but what you have to do is you have to take a step above, right so you have to instead of being at the ground level, you got to be 2000 feet up, right, not 15 30,000 feet up, but at least 2000 feet up and as report you have to review and so if you see a property that's vacant for over so many days, that's a tap, if you see a maintenance request that's open for so many days, or major quests that hasn't been responded to, in so many days, these are tabs. So if you can identify what the potential problems are, your job now becomes manager, right? So I'm not the doer anymore. So you're getting rid of the task or hat, you put it on your manager hat. So if you hire a VA for him to do everything, and then you don't put your manager hat on, I can tell you, you're gonna, you're gonna get in trouble. Especially if you, especially if you do terrible training, which most people do.   Michael: That was gonna be like my next question and so like, for everyone listening, what what's the expectation around training? How long is it before a VA is really up and running and so as people are thinking about, okay, forecasting, I don't need a VA today, but maybe in 369 12 months, I maybe need one. So what's the runway lead up time to get someone effective?   Pete: You're gonna hit the answer, but it depends.   Michael: That's my favorite answer.   Pete: It depends, okay, so the more like, even if I'm a smaller firm, and only got 20 properties, I'm managing, I'm doing everything, you have to teach that VA, every piece of managing that property, right, from onboarding, to, you know, to utilities, to lease ups to move into maintenance, to collections to eviction, to move out, and you have to teach them everything… Well, just because only one move out happens a month, it doesn't make anything any easier, you have to learn, they have to learn how to do that they have to understand basically, property management. So that's going to take a lot longer than say, like, with me, I had one person like all they do is collections. Well, I can teach collections in less than two weeks. Right, especially if you have processes in place. So the big thing depends. So if I wanted to hire somebody for collections, it'd be about two weeks. But if I want to hire someone to do maintenance, the more I call them, if they analysis, the more decision points there are in the job. In the process, the longer the training, right maintenance, so many things go could happen with lease renewals, it's like there's three things, like you teach them the three things, and then they know, okay, I do these three, if this happens, I do this and if this happens, property manager, right. So to my least your own person, it really was like two weeks of training. My maintenance people, it was about two months to three months of training.   Michael: Wow. Okay, so yeah, you weren't kidding. When you said it depends.   Pete: It depends, yeah.   Michael: And then I guess, like, the next question that comes to mind is, what is the turnover look like if I'm an investor, and I'm investing two months, three months into a person really getting them up to speed, and then doesn't work out or they don't like it or they move on, like, what have you seen in terms of turnover?   Pete: That's a great question as well. So what I saw at Empire, I had 23, virtual team members, 23 different roles that that my virtual team members handled, and I had them for about five years, you know, most of the jobs some jobs were newer, but I had people there for five years and in those five years, I had to get rid of I let go of two and one person left. So I had three people, my churn rate was much lower on the VA side of things than they were on the US side of things…   Michael: I was gonna ask… in the US:::   Pete: Now, I'll tell you why my churn rate was low, though, okay, because I treated these people like team members, not like virtual assistants, right? So the old mentality of a virtual assistant is, I'm just going to throw you here's the work, you go do the work, I'm going to make sure it's done and like, that's it right. My guys that we have day out there on our website, they had videos, they were they were part of all of our company meetings, they had, they had ownership of each of their job roles so that they can, they can modify and do things they had, they had more control over certain things. We went down, I went down there to go visit them, because most of my people were one city in Mexico, so I paid them PTO like I gave them like if they even though there were contractors, if they needed a day off Mike just put the time in, that's okay, I'm gonna give you a day. So we the more you treat people like we can we put them on a bonus structure. So if their key performance indicator was met, they got a pat on the back, but if they exceeded it, they got they got 50 bucks, or something small, but $50 to somebody in California that Michael they're going to take the $50 thing it's critical and throw in your face like this isn't even a gallon of gas. You know, and but in you know, Mexico you give somebody 50 bucks that's like a half a day's work, like so again, you so you can make people happier with a lot less with a lot less money, right? because sometimes it's like, oh, it's not the thought. It's like, wow, man, you only gave me $20 like that's like almost like an insult you know, in the US where it's not a over there. So if you treat the people, right, so what does that mean? It's not just like paying them and treating them, right, make it part of the team, but also manage them correctly. A lot of people think like, I'm just gonna hire this VA, but they have, like, they hire the VA and then you're, you're not ready for the VA, like, you hire them because you like you got excited, you heard this podcast, I'm gonna hire VA, right and then it's like, okay, you don't have a good job description, you're not really sure what they should do, you don't know how to manage if they're doing a good job or not and so you hire somebody, and they don't really know what to do, and then you don't know what to do and then it doesn't work out, right. So I recommend anybody do is make sure like you, you create a job description first. So you can go about it two ways:   One is I want them to take this, this process from end to end or two is like I want to be an executive assistant and I want to do the things that I hate doing. So identify the low level low enjoyment tasks that you don't like, create a job description from that, post it out there, say this is what I'm looking for or say, man, I really want to give somebody collections evictions, you know, like that process? So it depends if you're if you're smaller than you may say, hey, I want them to be a property manager and give me all the things I have to do just understand it's a lot more training. So once you have the once you have the job description, so that you know what they should do they know what they should do. The next thing is what are the key indicators that you know they're doing a good job and the rule of thumb is 123 key indicators they call key performance indicators and every job role in the organization should have at least one if somebody has 14, that's way too many, I know because I live this I had my property manager API's and it's not it was way, way too much. So like, for example, your executive assistant. If that's where they are, you know, maybe they have to answer calls, well, maybe a KPI is answering 94% plus call rate, right or response to any email is in less than one day. Now, you the KPIs, you can pull them out of a hat, but they have you have to have a report that can show that, that they can put the KPI and so they have to get the data, the data has to be available, right? So if I say hey, I want a 90% call rate, but my call, my call software doesn't have call answer rate, I'm not gonna be able to get that number. Does that make sense?   Michael: It makes total sense.   Pete: And so you have to be able to report on it. So just because you want a KPI, but there's no way to report on it, then you have to figure out a way to report it and get that KPI. If not, you have to move to a different KPI. So if I have the job description set up, they know what to do that we have the key indicators, so they know what the scorecard is if they're doing a good job or not, and so to you, because so many of you will say, yeah, I feel like that he's not doing a good job. What the hell is that me show you?   Michael: How do you know?   Pete: Especially if they're, you know, 20,000 miles away for you in the Philippines? Like, yeah, like, so how do you know the key indicators and then if you have good training, and you spend the time with them, and then you should once you have the train, So training is like every day, right? You do every day for two weeks, maybe three weeks, you have training every day, hour a day video so they can rewatch it and they can build, they build the process manual, not us. So they build a process manual. Why is that important because if I had 100 page process manual for maintenance, I did Michael I swear at Empire had 110 page process manual…   Michael: We talk in single space, or double space?   Pete: Single space, I think. Like legit, it was legit. Nobody read it. Nobody knew how to navigate it and nobody learned once I had them build their own manuals, guess what happened, they started retaining stuff and they knew how to navigate their manual. So don't be don't be upset if they like let them create their own manual so they can navigate it. So now you know what they what you want them to do. They know what they know what they're supposed to do. You can you can you can scorecard it with the metrics, you train them, and now you manage them and the way you do that is you have a weekly meeting. Now if you're smaller, you're going to have you're going to meet with them every day, right my IV pm or smaller firm was five of us, I mean, when my VAs every day, because we're just we're so small, we have to talk about what to talk every day when I was at Empire because I have 40 people working for me. I met them once a week and I would meet my maintenance team, separate from my accounting team separate from my resident services teams and for my own services team. But I would go over with them each week and we'd go over, we'd say what's a feel good? Tell me something that's good, right because as humans, we have this habit of going below the line instead of like above the line. So let's start off the meeting really good. Let's go over to metrics, right individual and then the group metrics, the department metrics, then let's go over tasks from last week did they get done? Then let's go over challenges and each one of those a five minutes and challenges like 20 minutes, 25 minutes. You don't you can't solve all them all the time. But you can solve you know, a couple of them and if you could solve a couple of challenges each week, you're doing really, really good and then and then one thing I added was what's your stress level from zero to 10. This was interesting because sometimes they'd be at a 10 and it was because somebody was on vacation or we just got 50 new houses that week, it's worth, you know, 10 yeah, okay. But when it's 10 all the time, and that's the standard, that means you haven't to do too much and if somebody's attend all the time, it means they're ready to punch out. Like anybody in your team, you should literally take the pulse of your team on a weekly or monthly basis, right and but here's sometimes the 10 was because they had something going on personally and then I'd get everybody off the off the phone, and then I would talk to them personally and that gives you an incredible opportunity to create relationships with people who you never met, that working with you that are, you know, 5-10 1000 miles away and that is why they didn't leave me because they knew I cared, right, it wasn't a bonus. It was it was I cared, I want them to grow the company, I want them to, you know, to, to feel like they're wanted, but I also cared about their personal lives, I really did and so if somebody had an issue, you know, Hey, man, you know, we talk about so you get to learn a lot about people when you do that. But I did that each week and if a KPI was read two weeks in a row, and went to the issues list, you know, things and so you, if you have a structure with your business, you're the person you hire, the chances at whether that's in the US, like sitting next to you in the US, that's, you know, a few states away, that's working virtually, or a virtual team member outside the borders of the US. If you have structure, the chances of you hiring somebody successfully becomes great becomes very, you know, most cause much greater. But if you don't have that structure, the chances of hiring anybody is not going to be it's not going to be very, very, very good. It's going to be much lower rate of success.   Michael: Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Pete, have you ever had a VA hire and train another like another VA?   Pete: Oh, yeah, of course. That's the whole job, right? The whole goal, right? So monkey see monkey do, right? So when I forget Empire, the first round of vas, you're looking at the trainer. I was the guy I trained there. Okay but my maintenance team, once somebody would leave, and somebody would get hired, or they would hire a new person, I was out at a training business.   Michael: I love it.   Pete: They train them. So once you train that first batch, and by the way, here, Michael, here's the secret to at Empire, I was gonna hire two virtual team members. That was that's what was in the budget. I interviewed four people hired all four of them and here's the reason why one figure one person is going to wash out right? Can you figure that and then the second thing is, it's, I was hiring two to three people for one person United States.   Michael: Okay.   Pete: All right. So think about that hourly rate, I would get rid of one person us and I'd hire three people in Mexico and so do you think more stuff gets done with three people?   Michael: I would than one probably guessed.   Pete: So. Yeah. So then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna hire four people. So I was over budget, guess what happened within 30 days, I'm able to grow my business because more tasks are being done and so all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, and if one but I hired four, none of them washed out, I was one of them wasn't a good fit, they were a good fit for the organization, not a good fit for the role. So we moved on to a different role. So another important thing is when you hire and this is probably I mean, your team, your, your listeners probably know this. But every business has core values, that can be a sheet on the wall that you never look at, and they're not going to be any, they're not going to be worth anything for you. But you should have core values that you hire, fire, promote and demote on, and give raises to like, that's your core value. So who are the people you want on the bus with you, right and if you are, if you are an individual landlord, that you know has a bunch of house and you're looking to hire that first person. Well, that's a business, right Michael, would you teach that like, as soon as you're hired, as soon as you buy that first house, you are business…   Michael: Yeah, you are business…   Pete: You are business. So you need to have core values and if you don't, as a business, you should have them as an individual. So who are the people I called the fog. So who do people want to foxhole with you? That gets you the right person in the organization. But that doesn't mean they're the right person in the right seat, right because the right see, for example, like, if somebody's super outgoing, you want them in sales, if they're super outgoing, but not detail. You don't want them in accounting, right? I might have the right person. But if I put that outgoing person, and that's shipping and sales and accounting, he's going to do a terrible job. So I found the people through my core values, I then put them through a personality profile test. I like disk. It's super simple. I don't know what you would use. Do you have one that you use?   Michael: No, not personally, but I'm definitely going to be adopting one as I'm gonna get for virtual assistant, yeah…   Pete: There's, there's a lot of them out there. Disk is super easy. I know it very well. It's easy to learn. So I use disk. So that tells me I get the right person in the organization. I put them in the right seat and through my job description and my key performance indicators. I know they're going in the right direction. So if you do all of that, and then you do the training and then you do the managing the chances of you having somebody washed out or somebody leave, it goes down dramatically. It's not 100%. It's never 100.   Michel: Like anything… Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me, Pete this has been, this has been super eye opening, really exciting, exciting stuff for people that want to learn more want to take advantage of the cam solutions, like how do they get in touch with you? Where should they be going?   Pete: Yeah, so you can go to https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ , and create a free profile. So that's the other thing, Michael, everything on the company side is free. So creating a profile posting a job, searching for people, finding them is all free. When you thought when you hire somebody, they we charge the virtual team member a percentage, and that's how we make our money. So, it's free to the company. So all you're paying is the hourly rate, and a small processing fee that we pass on from the stripes of the world onto the onto the dude the company, but that's what it should go and if you want to email me directly, it's pete@vpmolutions.com and we have over 14,000 virtual team members in 60 countries on our on our site right now looking for work and we have property management video training that your listeners can actually take for free as well. So we have like, I think we have like 12 courses, it's over about nine hours of content it goes from, it's basically the lifecycle of property management. So if you are a, you know, a self-manager, and you want to learn more about how I can manage my property a little bit more efficiently, I highly recommend taking those courses and then when you post the job, you can actually ask your VA, these are the recommended courses that we recommend that you take and then people would actually take those courses on their time and they're done. So you're getting a little bit of people trained before you actually are paying them.   Michael: That's really slick and it probably helps weed out a little bit more of who's serious versus who's not is who's gonna put in the time in advance.   Pete: Absolutely, 100%...   Michael: Oh, man, I love it. Pete This has been so great. Thank you for coming on with us a second time. Definitely, we'll be in touch man.   Pete: Yeah, Michael, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.   Michael: You got it, take care. All right, everyone. That was our episode a big thank you to Pete for coming on. Super exciting. If you couldn't tell it was pretty giddy throughout the episode. It's something that I'm going to be very much looking into for my personal business. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we love hearing from you reviews, comments, feedback questions are always welcome in the comment section, and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

An international commercial airline pilot who, after the tragedies of 9/11, was forced to realize that his “Safe and Secure career” was nowhere near as safe and secure as he had thought. Steve Rozenberg chose real estate investing to be able to control his own destiny and create his own generational wealth. He created the fastest-growing property management company in the state of Texas. Managing over 1,000 properties across 3 major metropolitan cities. Steve built the business up and created maximum cash flow positioning his company for a very profitable exit.   He has been a guest and collaborated on countless panels, webinars, masterminds, conferences, and podcasts as well as being a published author. In today's episode, he shares his story, how he began real estate investing, and how important your mindset is to be successful in this business.   Episode Link: https://steverozenberg.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Steve Rozenberg, who's an airline pilot and entrepreneur, and he's gonna be talking to us about the mental mind shifts we as investors need to make in order to scale and have successful businesses. So let's get into it.   Steve, what is going on, man? Thanks so much for taking the time to come hang out with me today. I appreciate it.   Steve: What's happening, fellas, good to see you.   Michael: Oh, super good to see you, Steve. I am super excited to share with our listeners a little bit about you and your background, because I know a little bit about it. But for anyone who doesn't know who Steve Rozenberg is, bring us up to speed quick and dirty. Who you are, where you come from, what is it you're doing in real estate today?   Steve: Sure. So I live in Houston, Texas, born and raised in Los Angeles, actually, my career brought me out here and that careers, what got me kind of involved in being a real estate and being an entrepreneur. I'm an airline pilot by trade and I got hired at 25 years old. I was the second youngest person ever hired by this particular major airline and hired at 25, I had the best job in the world is flying all over the globe. I was 25 years old and it was the most safe, most secure job that anyone could imagine having. Until a certain day in history. That day was 9/11 and that day changed my life, it changed a lot of people's lives. It changed my life because on 9/13, two days after 9/11 in the towers fell, I got delivered a furlough notice and I was basically told, hey, Steve, you know what that safe, secure job that you thought you had, it was never safe and it was really never secure and you're about to be on the street with 50,000 other pilots.   So to say that I got punched in the face very, very hard within about 48 hours would be an understatement and it was it was rough. You know I always I ever want to do as a kid is be an airline pilot. I didn't want to do anything else. I was fulfilling my dream and this something happened, which I realized it had nothing to do with me but it affected me. You know, I didn't I wasn't a part of 9/11 but I was a repercussion, a ripple effect, if you will and so I started to talk about what I could do, what could I do? What to survive to make a paycheck, right? All I knew was to be a pilot, but there was many, many other pilots out there probably better pilots than me to be honest with you that you know, we're also on the street and I looked and I saw that everyone that was tied to wealth somehow was tied to real estate. I didn't know anything about real estate, but I was like, okay, I mean, I knew some pilots who had rental properties, but I didn't know much about it. So this is 2001. So there was no YouTube or Facebook. So I had to go to the library. I had to get a library card.   Michael: A lot of our listeners are probably asking, like, what is that?   Steve: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a big house with a lot of books and so I had to start learning about real estate, I read a book a week and I just I read everything I could, because I thought that I was behind the curve of figuring out what I was going to do with this airline thing. If there was another terrorist attack or something happened, I was gonna be out of work and so I learned all the different things you know, now it's very cliche, you know, burrs and all this other stuff. But I just I learned how to buy I learned how to flip I learned how to wholesale properties. I got lied to, I got ripped off, I got cheated on. I mean, you name it, I just kept getting pushed down face down in the mud every time. But I kept getting back up because I had to I didn't I didn't have a choice. I had to figure out this combination and I, I saw people that were successful. So I was like, okay, there's a recipe. I just don't know it. But I can think like, I'm not the dumbest guy in the world. But I could figure this out and then I started getting better and I started winning a little bit more than I was losing and I started figuring out and what I realized was communicators are actually the ones that are the most successful, not the contractors.   It's four walls in a roof. It's relationship driven. It's not anything else and that relationship is driven by business models, and it's driven by systems and so I started realizing that the four walls and a roof and the dirt really had nothing to do with being a real estate investor. The successful people were good communicators, and they understood the value of leverage and team and then I started looking back at my real estate in my airline career and I started looking at how airlines run and I was like okay, systems, procedures structure and I kind of started melding the two and that led me into start learning to become successful as with my, my old business partner, Pete Newberg, who has been on your show, he and I built a very, very successful property management company, by understanding how to leverage those models and how to leverage systemization and then I've gone on to do a lot of other things, coaching people working with people, helping people understand the systemization of a business is very fundamental to be successful, is what I've learned and that's what I help people with.   Michael: I love that and we're gonna get into a little bit more of the systemization here in a minute. But for anyone listening, it's like, well, Steve, Michael, I'm not an extrovert. I'm more of an introvert, I'm more of an insert inside kind of person, like, Am I just doomed to never be a real estate investor like, what should I be doing if that's me?   Steve: So that's a good question because a lot of people you know, are a lot of people that go into real estate, what I've learned is they're running away from a life or job that they don't want you when you talk to real estate investors, and I coach a lot of real estate investors all over the world and when I talk to them, I'll ask them, why are you doing this, and a lot of them will tell me, I don't want this, I don't want that. They're running away from something and what they're running away from is a life that they don't want to have. Unfortunately, when you're running away from something you don't want, that's what you're focused on, and you run right back into it. I mean, that's the cycle, right because that's your filter. But what I've learned is, you don't have to be the best communicator, but you have to have good communicators on your team. There's things that I am really, really good at and there are things that I am horrible at. It's a matter of understanding, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses, I don't think that I should become like, that's just my opinion. I don't think it makes sense to work on my weaknesses. I don't know anything about accounting, I would make a company go bankrupt if I started doing the accounting books for my business. So why should I go and take two year courses at a junior college to learn how to do books, or I just hire someone and that's what they do. So I've taken my weakness, and I've actually turned it into a strength because now I don't have to think about it, I don't have to focus on it. I have someone in place that is run by KPIs and metrics and accountability and I just, I just parceled, that whole piece of my life off.   So to answer your question, I don't think you have to be good at that. A business needs it like my business partner, Pete. He was the integrator and I was the visionary. I was the forward guy, I was the guy out in front. But I sucked at the operational side, he was like the mushroom in the in the back room and, you know, my job was to break his business all the time. It's like I wanted to have so much sales and marketing coming in, that he would go Steve, I can't take it anymore and that was like my victory lap of showing. That's the that's the sales and marketing tug of war that goes on, right and so I don't think that you have to be good at everything because the reality is, is you're not, you're probably good at one thing and you suck at everything else that you do. It's a matter of identifying what am I good at? What am I not good at leveraging out those other things and focusing on that one thing to be the very best that you can be and if you can do that, you will help the business, the organization and you'll be much happier too.   Michael: I think yeah, I think it makes a ton a ton a ton a ton of sense. So talk to Steve about like, you got three to five properties, you're looking at scaling up, you're realizing maybe a little bit more and more, you're self-managing, hey, this might be more of a job than I was anticipating I'm trying to get out of a job that people what are some systems people should be putting in place and how should they be thinking about systemization if that's a new term for them, that's never something they've done before?   Steve: Yeah, that's a great question and let, I'm going to back it up a little bit if it's okay, because a lot of people, if they have three to five properties, and I get a lot of people that will call me and ask me that question like, hey, Steve, you know, if I'm in front of them, they'll put a deal like three inches from my face and they're like, hey, is this a good deal like being closer makes it more sense? I don't know. But they'll put this right to my face and they're like, is this a good deal? Well, I don't know what a good deal is for you. So first question is, what's the goal, right? What is the date of that goal? So if they don't know the goal, and they don't have a date, and a timeline and a way to achieve that goal, I can't tell them what to do. I can't give them directions. It's kind of like if you said, hey, Steve, we're all gonna go to Disneyland and we got to be at the front gates at 8am on Friday morning and we're going to leave our house at 6am and we're going to take the 405 to the 91. Get off on Disney drive, and we're gonna go into the gates to be there ready to go. Well, if along that way, you get lost, you're gonna pull over and you're gonna go, hey, Steve, can I get directions? What's the first thing I'm going to ask you? Where are you? Where are you going? If you say, I don't know, I'm just driving around today, I'm gonna go with it. I can't help you, because I don't know where you're trying to get to. So if you take that same analogy, many people buy properties. They don't have a goal. So they say, should I buy more properties? My question is, is I don't know what's the goal? Because, you know, many people, you know, they think that owning rentals is the goal. That's just the strategy to achieve the goal. That's like saying, I'm going to get on the 405 freeway and you're going, where are you going? I don't know, I'm just gonna get on the freeway and drive and the reason I know that is when Pete and I first started buying properties, that's what we did. We were just buying properties and we're going the wrong way, in the wrong direction at a very, very fast pace and nobody stopped us to say, where are you guys going because we're just driving. We're like, we're making great time. Unfortunately, we're going in the wrong way. So to answer your question, to going back to what you're saying about systemization, every business normally has about eight to 11 systems in their business, it's a matter of looking at what you do and systemizing everything. So if you took a system and put it in a vertical, let's just say when you're going to rent a property, what is the system that it takes to rent that property, you've got to basically first thing you've got to do is maybe the first trigger of that system is when the Make ready is done. Now the property is in rent ready condition, it now triggers this system to happen. What's the first thing you got to do? Well, maybe you've got to go and take pictures and video of the property. Step one, what's the next thing you got to do? Well, then you've got to do some comps and check out the area and see what the property is renting for. That's step two. So you're going through and you're just basically talking to me, like I'm a three year old or third grader and you're explaining to me in very painstaking detail, what you're doing. These are all steps in the process of a systemization. Once you create the system all the way through to getting the property rented, once the property is rented, that system is complete. Maybe that system is 19 steps, right? Then you look at that system and go okay, is this the most efficient way to run this system, does or is there any redundancy? Is there any things that we don't even do or should not do? Are we missing some things? Now, let's say for example, this person, he, let's just say he grows and he gets an employee to do these tasks, right and or he subs it out to a company. This company needs to know very, very clearly what they're doing because the definition like look, I think we can all agree that when you own one business, or you own 50 businesses, which are rental properties, those are businesses, that you've got to treat it like a business, right? The challenge is, most people don't they don't have any systems that don't have any structure and it's chaos, which is why so many landlords get sued, because there's no systemization or standardization, meaning how you lease a property. When you're in the airlines, right, we'll go back to being an airline pilot, if I'm an airline pilot, and I came out and said, hey, everyone, this is gonna be a great day today. We're off to Hawaii. This is my first time ever doing this. So wish me luck. I'm just gonna wing it and hopefully we make it there. How would you feel?   Michael: Yeah, a little bit shaky.   Steve: Right but yeah, you'd probably be like, I'm not getting on this plane. Yeah, but that's what many people do with their rental properties and they're doing that with their financial lives, right? This is your real life, you're trusting me with your life but you don't do that with your financial life. So there's a disconnect as to the training and, and the way that you can scale because if you have to do everything in your business, you don't own a business, you own a job and a job is not scalable, because you have only so many hours in the day, and you have so much knowledge of what you're good at and what you're bad at. So I don't know if that answered the question but there's, that's a very hard thing to unpack.   Michael: No, it totally does. It totally does. Two things. First thing is I think you must be having been out of LA for a long time, because your analogy you're talking about getting on the 405 Dizzy land, you leave by six get there by eight. There's no world in which that happens today. Yeah, first and foremost. But secondly, so like, how does someone make that mindset shift because I think so many of us and specifically, it seems to be pretty pervasive in the real estate world, this DIY mentality, you know, I do it myself, do it myself, do it myself. How does, how do you make that mental leap of, okay, I'm going from doing it myself, small business owner to hiring someone or contracting it out or putting it to somebody else so I can get out of my own way?   Steve: Sure. Well, there's a couple things. Number one, you've got to you have to be willing to let go of your ego and pride, right? Because ego and pride are success inhibitors, they will kill your success quicker than anything. I should do it because I'm in charge, right and so let's go back to the goal, right? If I said, hey, what's your goal and you didn't, you didn't and this is what I use this example when I coach people, I'll tell them, okay, let's just use this as an example. I call it a 2020 2020 properties in 20 years, giving you $20,000 a month in passive income. It's a bait. It's a goal, right? Yeah, it's, it's got a time limit on it. It's something that we can attach an actual goal to and we know how we're going to achieve that goal because we have a scoreboard to see if we've made that. So that means that each property needs to be giving off $1,000 a month in passive income to get 20 properties give me $20,000 a month. Okay, that means, okay, so let we're gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna answer your question in a roundabout way, we've got to say, Okay, if we want to have 20 properties, that means by year 10, we have to have acquired all those properties so that from year 10, to your 20, we're going to pay those properties off, because we want them free and clear by your 20. That means between year one and year 10, we have to purchase 20 properties, which means we have to close on two properties a year, which is every six months, which means every three months, we have to be looking for deals.   My first question is, is do you have the finances to even make this happen? Do you have the do you have the financial means to achieve this goal? If they say I don't have a job, I'm gonna go well, then we're done talking because first thing you need is the financial means to make that happen. That's number one. Then we say okay, when you achieve the goal of 20 20 20, right, and we get to where we want to go, what I have learned and what many people I'm sure some people will learn, it's not a bad thing to learn. But a lot of people identify success by their accolades, meaning how much money they have in the bank, or how many properties they have, how many doors whatever they want to whatever they want to use as their gauge. That's how they quantify their success, or lack thereof. Now, I had Pete and I had a very successful property management company that we sold to a venture capital much larger firm and I can tell you that when you get that money in the bank, it is very, very, very anticlimactic. Like I mean, literally, like after we sold our company, and we sold it for well into seven figures, all of a sudden, I thought I'm done, like, oh, this is awesome. Now, mind you, I still am an airline pilot this whole time. So I'm okay financially but I thought, man, if I just if we sell this company, we're good. You don't happen Monday morning, after we sold the company?   Michael: You put on your uniform and go fly a plane.   Steve: My wife said, hey, don't forget, take the trash out the trash bin or come and I'm like, when I sold the company, like I sold my goods just like, don't give a shit. Take the trash out. So, but the point is, is like all of a sudden you think you're in some magic club like you think you break through this glass ceiling and the reality is, is nobody cares and the reason I'm saying the reason I'm going somewhere with this is that we think that once we achieve a mark or a goal that's going to make our lives complete and sadly, it doesn't, it actually makes it more hollow because you realize, like, wow, I've been doing this all these years, and nobody even cares. Like they're, you know, everyone's moving on. So what I always tell people when I talked to when I told you earlier that a lot of entrepreneurs, they buy real estate, and people want to get involved in real estate and I asked them why they say I want more freedom, right? I'm sure you've probably heard this, I want anytime freedom, do what I want, blah, blah, blah, they use this word freedom, like it means something special to them. I tell them okay, well, let me ask you this, why don't you just sell all your shit today, go live in your car at the park, and you'll have all the freedom you need. No one will bother you, you'll have your freedom. They think about that I'm like, but you know, what you won't have is you won't have the memories that you want associated with that freedom.   So we're really not buying freedom. What we're buying is memories. So when I sell a business, or I have rental properties, giving me cash flow, what am I doing with that cash flow, it's giving me the ability to have freedom to go buy the memories. It's the memories we want. So going back to your question, how does somebody step out of what they want? I would first ask them, what memories do you want to buy because at the end of the day, we're not leaving, we're not leaving this earth with anything except our memories, right? When we go when our when our expiration date happens. We're not going anywhere, except with memories in our brains. What memories do you want, right in the real estate, and the cash flow or whatever you're doing with that will give you the means to buy those memories. So buy the memories don't buy the time is you go to prison and have all the free time you want. You may not like the result, but you'll have free time by the memories, right? Go to you know, have dinner on the Mediterranean in Greece, right? Go to this African Safari, the Rolling Stones in Wembley Stadium. Those are the memories that you want and that's what real estate gives you. So going back to your question when someone says, hey, like, you know, how do I get out of it? I'm like, what memories do you want? Do you want to be an employee? That's trading time for money because that's what you're doing? I'll give you an example. So my son, he bought a rental property at 14 years old. Okay and everyone's like, oh, that's awesome. Yeah and he bought it with his money, you know and so everyone's like, man, that's awesome. That's great. Like, did you have him do the rehab and clean the house and I'm like, No. Why would I do that? They're like, so he can learn. I'm like, I don't do that. Why should I make him do that? That's being a hypocrite. I want him to be a business owner, not an employee. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with being an employee but that's that that is not the goal of one rental property like, hey, congratulations, you want a rental property? Now go learn how to cut wood lay tile, put it insulation but dad, you don't do that. I wouldn't even know how to do that. Like, again, working on strengths versus weaknesses, right? People seem like when they get a rental property that like, all of a sudden, I've got to learn how to put a toilet in and I gotta get up on the roof and inspect it. I'm like, have you ever done that before? No and I'm like, Well, then why in the heck would you get up on a roof? If you didn't know what you're doing like this is how you become a statistic. But we think we should because of ego and pride. So that's kind of a long answer but that's my answer.   Michael: I love it, I love it a great answer. Steve, great answer. Talk to us a little bit about, like, the qualities and what you see really successful people do who are able to implement systematization like what like, what skills should people be go out there and refining in order to be able to execute here really, really well?   Steve: Well, yeah, that's a great question and I've studied a lot of very successful people. I've been coached and mentored by some very successful people and I'm a constant student, I still a mentor to this day. Anyone who says that they don't need to be coached, and they don't need to be mentored, is missing out on a lot of opportunity. I look at Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, these guys are at the top of their game, and they still have coaches and mentors. All professional athletes have coaches, you don't become a professional athlete, and then lose the coaches. They make you better.   Michael: So I'm done.   Steve: Yeah, it's like I'm done. Um, you know, even Kobe Bryant, I mean, everyone, they all have coaches. I mean, that's how it works, right? Right, it's brings the best thing out of you. So number one, I think you always have to have somebody holding you accountable and if you look at all successful people, they have accountability. They have somebody holding them accountable in somebody, you know, a three feet distance is a world of perspective, right? In the simulators. When we find the simulators and we're practicing engine failures and all these things. The simulator instructor is about three feet behind us the control panel, and we joke and he they know, they're like, yeah, I'm the smartest guy in here because I'm three feet behind you, I can see all the mistakes you guys are making. You don't see it, because you're in the heat of battle. He's like, I can see it coming a mile away. I'm the smartest guy in the room. So having somebody three feet away, is a world of perspective, having an organization help give you guidance to when you're looking to acquire a property that's giving you that three feet difference. That's a world of difference, right? So, there is a recipe for success and I'm a firm believer. If you look at all successful people, they follow a very simple recipe. It's not magic, people who are failures, they follow a recipe also and I think that every day that you wake up every day that we all wake up, we have a decision to make. It's very simple. Am I going to be better than yesterday or am I going to be worse than that, initially, is our decision that we make every day because you're not good, you're they're getting better. You're getting worse, we never stay the same ever and so when you wake up in the morning, what is the decision you're gonna make? Are you going to do any reading? Are you going to do any I'm statements? What are you going to do to focus on solution based questions slash trying to be better or are you going to be in blame excuse or denial? So going back to your question, I think that people that if you want to learn how to become better at systemization, then talk to someone who knows what they're doing and that can help you become a systems expert because, look, as an airline pilot, right? I've been I've been flying for almost 30 years, I've been trained by Boeing, I fly one of the most complicated aircraft out there a Boeing 787. I didn't, I wasn't born that way, I had to be trained and guess what, we still go back to training every six months, and we go back through all the initial stuff. So just because you reach the pinnacle, you don't stay up there and if you look at people that are successful, they're always trying to be better, just because you have three houses or five houses or 500 houses. Look, the crash to the bottom is much faster than the rise to the top, as we all know, and seen, you know, with banks crashing and other things. It's the people that are cognizant and follow that recipe and again, I don't think it's a very complicated recipe and if you look at people, you know, they do a lot of things in the one thing that I've learned, I'll give you a quick story. I was with one of my mentors one time, guys. 11 businesses, right. He's on the board of 11 businesses and he was my mentor, and we lunch and I was like, man, I don't know how you do it. Like you have 11 businesses. I'm like, how many days a week do you work? He's like, Tuesday, Thursday, and sometimes half a Friday. It was like this guy was talking Martian to me. I was like, like, how is that even possible and he goes, You know what, Steve, you know what the difference is? He says, I say No, way more than I say yes and I said, you know what, that's easy for you to say because you're this multimillionaire that has 11 businesses and he said, I would have never become this way. If I didn't start saying no and he said there's an opportunity cost that every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else, right.   So he goes every time you say yes to doing something that is not the most high income producing activity, you are saying no to something. He's like, it's again, he goes, it's your choice. So when I coach people, one of the things I do, and this will be a freebie for people watching is, I always have them do a two week time study, okay? So it's a very simple time study that they have to go and they have to write down for two weeks, every single thing that they do, right, you want to go on a diet, you start tracking your food, you want to see where your money's going, you go on a budget, you want to see where your time is going and start tracking it at the end of the day, they have to give me an executive summary. Tell me how your day went? I don't care. I don't care what you did. I just want to hear it from your words. Within one week, within one week, they will be like, I now know where my time is going and most people think they're so productive, like, oh, I work all day long. I'm like, bullshit, you don't work all day long. Yeah, study and we'll see. After they do the time set, he's like, man, I'm only working like three hours a day. I'm like, because everything else is reactionary. A five minute interruption, a five minute phone call is equal to 23 minutes of lost time. How many times as a as a real estate investor entrepreneur, do we get the sideways calls that interrupt our data, and they sidetrack us, if you get 10 calls a day, that's 230 minutes that you were never expecting to lose, you just lost that chunk of time. So now you're living what's called a reactive life and when you're living a reactive life, you're in chaos and when you're in chaos, you're not in control and when you're not in control, you're not making money. So the challenges is what people don't put a factor into this chaotic life, is the mental stress that it weighs on you. So once they do the first week, the second week, they have to go back in every day, they have to do this and I and just the type of coach I am, every day, they have to send me a picture of their time study and I tell them, the day you don't send this, to me is the last day you will hear from me, because I can't want it more than you like it's very simple. Like, even if you pay me all the money, you're done like that's just how it is I can't I don't have time to waste if you don't want to be better. So when they do this, the next day is they have to put an H or an L next to that high income activity, low income activity. And guess how many low income activities they do on a day?   Michael: Probably the majority…   Steve: Probably the majority. So then what we do at the end of that next week, we go, okay, these are the things that make you money. These are the things that don't we need to outsource systemize or automate the things that you don't make money on of these high income activities. Which ones do you like doing? Which ones are you good at? I like this, and this, okay, this is the focus, we need to find someone else to do these other high income activities. We don't ignore them and so my point is, is one of my mentors said that he goes TV goes understand saying no is not saying that. No, the way you think it. He goes when I say no, it just means I'm not doing it. He goes, I just make sure that other people are getting it done, but it's not through me. He goes things to have to get done in a business but he goes, it doesn't have to be you. That's your ego and pride, thinking that you have to be the one doing it all. So that was a very valuable lesson for me that I share with you, you in the listeners.   Michael: Yeah, thank you. I mean, as you're saying this, I'm just like, oh, my God, I have so many hours in my day, this is insane.   Steve: Yeah, we do. We all look, we all do. And it's a matter of stepping on the scale whenever I'm coaching someone, or someone gives me a call, like, man, I just feel like I'm losing it. I'm like, just do a time study. I mean, it sounds it sounds so simple, or whatever but I'm like just do the time study you will see very clearly, and then just fix it. Look at the pendulum swings. It's okay but you got to do something to take corrective action. Otherwise, it's going to keep swinging, it's never gonna go back on its own. You don't all of a sudden become more organized and more productive. It doesn't work that way, right? You're always gonna go back and you've got to start focusing on making that decision every day. What am I doing? You know, and it could be something simple. It could be reading for five minutes, could be writing your day could be whatever it is, but start creating habits and those habits become patterns and those patterns will change your life.   Michael: Mike drop exit stage left, Steve, that was amazing. Man, I want to be super respectful of your time. If people want to talk with you more, learn more about you reach out, have you as their coach, what's the best way for them to do so?   Steve: Yeah, they can find me on all social media handles. It's Rozenberg, Steve on Instagram, Steve Rozenberg on all the other stuff. They can also go to my website. My website is https://steverozenberg.com/ , it's ROZENBERG.com and you know, I do a lot of coaching. I do three day masterminds with very high level, people like Bradley, the iron cowboy, other people, I bring them in. It's all about mindset and it's all about, you know, the one thing I'll say real quick before we go and I want to be respectful of your time is don't be selfish, and to the people watching and what I mean by that is as entrepreneurs, we watch these shows, right? We buy real estate, we do all these things, and we do it for the people that we love but here's the thing, we never actually share the knowledge that we've learned with the people we're doing it for. To me, that's the definition of being selfish be selfless. Like I said, my son bought his first rental property and 14, create generational wealth, right? Bring them into the loop. Don't be selfish, because when you're selfish, you're isolating yourself, have an open mind and the ability to give abundance and share the knowledge that you learned from this podcast, show reading, bring the family that you're doing it for into the mix, and you will have a much, much more fulfilled life and you'll be much more successful not just financially, but personally relationship and all that stuff. So don't be selfish.   Michael: Yeah. I love that, Steve and one more final question before I let you go. You mentioned you're running a mastermind and I think a lot of our listeners maybe have been to how to coach or been to seminars or been in real estate trainings, and just whoever reason can't implement it. They take the classroom knowledge, but they can't execute a role. So what have you seen people do who are really successful at that and actually applying what they've learned and taking that excitement and went out and actually ran with it…   Steve: That's a good question. So and the reason I created my mastermind is that very reason, right? Everybody goes there, rah, rah, they leave in there, like two weeks later, they're like, it's in their car underneath their seats, all the dogs chewing on it and so what I do when I do my masterminds is once they're done, they get unlimited coaching from me, they get my phone, they get my text, they get my email, if they need me, they call me. So I'm there as accountability for them every single day. It's not that hey, I know you have a problem Monday morning with a tenant exploding your house but we're supposed talk Thursday at three so call me then that doesn't work in the real world. I don't think that that's a very successful model. I give unlimited so that they have me and they have me as accountability. I think the biggest challenge when you leave these events and coaching is the accountability part. If the coach if you have a coach and he's not accountable, find them accountability person, one of the things I do when I coach partners is I have a board of directors meeting, I create a board of directors for them going over the P&I statements going over balance sheets, going over the goals. This is what you need to do in any organization, all businesses do it. Most people don't. So if you can't make your coach be accountable, or you can't afford a coach or whatever the case may be find a friend, a family member or go to the bum on the corner. I don't care but make someone hold you accountable that you actually have to answer for what you're doing and I think if you're accountable, based on what you learned, that's why I do unlimited coaching, you're going to be much more successful with achieving the goals that you set out to achieve.   Michael: Makes total sense, Steve, this was a total, total blast, man, thank you so much for taking the time to hang out with me. I really, really appreciate it.   Steve: Thank you, man. It's good having you appreciate you having me on.   Michael: Hey, we'll definitely talk soon.   All right, when that was episode, a big thank you to Steve for coming on super, super, super great stuff. As he was talking. I was like, oh my God, I need to start doing a lot more of what Steve is talking about. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy investing…

Pete Neubig is a realtor who focuses on investment properties. Pete has been investing in real estate since 2001. He has owned and managed a 39, 52, and 100-unit apartment complex. He currently owns single-family homes and a 52-unit apartment complex. Pete created a property management company based on the motto "By investors for investors". His property management company has clients from Houston and all over the world. His technology-based systems allow owners to see everything that is happening at their property without having to be involved. Tune in for today's episode where Pete talks us through some of the mistakes that he made as an investor and how he's doing things differently today. Episode Link: https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, I have Pete Neubig who is a real estate investor and CEO of VPM solutions and Pete is going to be talking to us today about some of the mistakes that he made as an investor and how he's doing things a little bit differently today than maybe your typical investor. So let's get into it.   Pete, what's going on, man? Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. Appreciate you coming on.   Pete: Michael, thanks so much for having me, I'm really looking forward to it.   Michael: No, me too and so before we hit record here, you were telling us about the three different lives that you've lived. So you are a super interesting guy. Needless to say. So for anyone who hasn't heard of Pete Neubig before, give them the quick and dirty rundown of who you are, where you come from, and what you're doing in real estate today.   Pete: Sure. Well, real quick. Let's see, I'm from New York City originally, I moved to Texas in Houston back in 1995. So I have a gun. So I guess I'm a Texan now.   Michael: Give me one when you move to the state, like I think…   Pete: They give you a cowboy hat, a gun in some boots, you know. So I started buying real estate in 2001 when I bought my first property, actually, I bought a duplex and a single and a a 100 unit apartment complex like same day, like I closed on the same day, I ended up owning bunch of property that I ended up starting a property management firm and I got so busy doing that, that I stopped buying real estate for a while just to build the investment, the property management business, I ended up selling the property management business and now I started a an online platform. It's a virtual property management solutions or VPM solutions where we connect the real estate industry with virtual talent around the globe, so…   Michael: That's so cool. Pete just taking a total step back to say you're from New York now living in Texas, do you remember like I don't know in the late 90s, early 2000s there was that pace salsa commercial where like all the cowboys were sitting around like, where's that guy from New York City, New York City? When you say that, that's like the first thing that I thought of like, oh, hey, salsa commercial.   Pete: And I still can't say y'all correctly I get I get I get yelled at all the time and I'm down here saying y'all, so…   Michael: Y'all with the New York accent, I love it, I love it. Well, you did you I mean, this is a really cool trajectory that that you've ended up on and I would love to focus on kind of the first stage of your investing career where you own a bunch of rentals and again, we were chatting before we hit the record button, and you were saying that you had sold a bunch of them off, and then actually paid off some of the remaining ones. So walk us through, you know, like, why because I think I think a lot of people would be like, oh, that's stupid, like, what is Pete doing? You gotta have leverage. That's how you juicy return. So, you know, walk us through how you built up the portfolio and then why you decided to sell them but then keep some free and clear.   Pete: Sure thing. So I started buying on my own first right so I own like 12 I think it was like duplexes. I was for some reason I was love duplexes. I think most people would say, well, it's the cash flow, right? Duplexes, have a great cash flow and I was always looking at just cash flow and I think if I go back in my, in my investor life, I can tell you, Michael, I've lost so many millions of dollars by not buying houses with very low cash flow, because I forgot about this thing called appreciation, right? I wasn't buying cash flow, right and my goal at the time, I was a young man, I was early 30s, like 30-31 when I started buying, my goal was to get enough cash flow so I can just leave my corporate job. That's kind of what the way I was thinking. So I buy a bunch of properties and then I get I get talked into being a passive investor for 100 unit apartment complex and I told if I buy one apartment complex, I can retire right? So I'm like, oh, great, you know, monopoly, I'll buy a bunch of houses, sell them and all that good stuff. Well, it just never materialized. I was buying lower income homes and if anybody knows the lower income homes a cash flow is really just on the sheet of paper. It's not it's not true returns unfortunately, because there's little things like you know, the evictions or you know, not getting all the rent and in the make readies are not a couple 100 bucks or a couple of $1,000 because people in low income they take what's called parting gifts. You know, they take your AC, your doors…   Michael: Your goodie bags, you know…   Pete: Yeah, good. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so I ended up connecting with a business partner named Steve Rosenberg, who he's kind of a a national speaker now but Steve and I ended up finding his guy who is offloading a lot of his portfolio. So we thought this is great and we ended up buying like 30 houses and we were both enamored with buying property. But we didn't had no idea what to do once we bought them. Like we were terrible and how to manage them. So what happened was…   Michael: Pete was this was this local in New York or local in Texas, there was this remote?   Pete: Yeah, great question. So I was, I was, I had lived in Texas at the time, we're buying everything in Houston. I there was no such thing as Roofstock that we knew have to go buy stuff in other areas and back in the early 2000s, the average price of a single family home in Houston was like around 130. I was buying it for 35,000. Like, lower low income houses. Yeah.   Michael: But not have roofs, like, what's the deal?   Pete: Man, they were just in low income and today, those houses are now worth about 150, right, 20 years later, and I was buying them at 35 and they were worth 50 to 55,000. So I was buying them below. But I just found an investor who wanted to offload stuff but he was offloading me all his problems, right and if you don't have good management, behind you, if you have a good management company, by the way, it's really difficult to manage these low income stuff. It just is because they don't pay online, they don't abide by the lease, they have dogs, when they say they're not going to have dogs, all that all this stuff that you have to deal with. It's just difficult and so Steve and I, we ended up buying 31 homes. So now I have 31 homes, and we advertise bad credit, okay, no credit, okay, like you have you have a pulse and $1 will, we're gonna let you in the house and of course, that comes back to bite you to the point where not only are we not making the cash flow that was projected, but we're losing money at the end of the year, now I have to come in and pay for my taxes and my insurance and so now I'm working even harder at my nine to five than I did and I'm working hard to manage these properties.   But all of a sudden, this this like, dream that you have is becoming a nightmare and so, you know, caution, number of cautionary tale number one for your listeners is buy absorb, right, and then buy some more like don't just keep buying if you can't manage the assets, or number two is go find a professional management company that will take your properties. My problem was I had my problems was so low, I couldn't get a professional management company to take my properties. The manager companies know how hard they are and I'm like, Well, I'm gonna give you 25 They're like, Yeah, great. Keep it like, we want to charge you more. So I ended up creating the management company with Steve so we can manage our own properties and so there's been two there's two things, the two big instances that happen in my investing life that has propelled me to pay off properties, right. So let's get to your question. The first thing was I bought all those properties, and I wasn't making cashflow, right, but I had to pay the note every month, right and at the end of the year, now I'm getting in tax and insurance. And so there was no cashflow there and there's no appreciation I just told you it took him 25 years to get that double or triple of appreciation. So I own these properties for 10-12 years for 35,000 and they were worth like 45,000 right 50,000 I told you I got equity, but that nothing ever increased. So when that when the banks are coming and asking for their money, and I gotta go work a double because I need more money, or I gotta go sell off stock because I got to. So that that was something that kind of made me realize maybe I want to be the bank myself, or maybe I don't want to owe the bank so much money. So that was the first thing. The second thing was, I ended up buying that 100 unit apartment complex that I told you about and that 100 unit apartment complex. I am still today friends with the lead investor, he's a good guy, we just had a bad plan. We lost the apartment complex. Now I was a passive investor and now here's cautionary tale number two for your investor listeners. If you're going to be a passive investor, make sure that you either A have an attorney you trust or be read the documents yourself. So I was a passive investor, but I was legally on the hook for with my credit. So I personally signed the note. Yeah, I see you I see you if you for those of you not look, for those of you listening and not watching the video, Michael's jaw just dropped, right and so and then what happened was because the plan was bad, we couldn't we couldn't make a payment and so the bank led us to believe that we can restructure our debt. Well, they ended up having somebody that would buy the debt would buy the property from under us. So they foreclosed on us and sold the property for more than what we owed, which in normal cases, you think that's fine. I owed 1.1 million they sold for 1.5 million. I should be off the hook. Well, there was a little checkbox that said no, if they foreclose on me regardless how much they sell, they can sue me for that amount. So I got personally sued for one point $2 million.   Oh my god all because now I will tell you this, I paid a mentor and I paid an attorney. Before I got into that deal thinking I covered myself, I got a guy who's done a bunch of apartment complexes, I have an attorney, they just missed that. They just missed it, the mentor wanted to deal to get done because he was the broker on a deal. So it really was it wasn't aligned. You know, are you know, of course, at the time, I was like, get the deal done. But he needed to protect me from myself at that time and so when you owe, so long story short, I ended up selling. I had a six unit apartment complex that I sold, made 30 grand, and I actually was able to, to pay $30,000 to make the lawsuit go away. So the bank knew that what they were coming after me, they knew that they didn't really have a good case because they made their money. So they just wanted their attorney fees paid for but that put the fear of God in me to be quite honest and so I vowed that I don't want to ever be over leveraged, right and so of course, Kiyosaki talks about other people's money and every you know, rich, Guru, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, guy, every guru out there will tell you, if you can borrow 110% borrow 110%. Well, back in the early 2000s, you were able to borrow 110% I don't know if you remember and so I did that, right now. I was fortunate that I was able to overcome when the properties weren't making any money because I had a job. But if you are again, a cautionary tale number three, if you are a full time real estate investor, you cannot survive when you when your cashflow negative, it's very, very difficult, and you have to sell off assets. But if the assets are worth less than what you owe, that's a challenge. So when I got into property management, I realized pretty quickly that people will manage Class B homeless people will buy and rent Class B homes, I always had this mindset that people will only manage or rent Class C or D homes. I'm like, no one's gonna pay $800 in rent or $1,200 in rent, and go buy a property, a nice property and have $1,200 on my mortgage, right? Like it was a mindset thing and so another tale is if you're an investor, don't you don't try to buy anything that you would live in you. Other people will live in stuff that you like, why would they rent stuff when I when you can buy something? So when I found that aha moment, I pivoted and I hired a property manager. Finally I was trying to property manage and I was terrible at it. Like, I'm like, I had to hire a property manager. First day she comes in, she goes, okay, we're gonna fire half your clients, this tree store, we had 67 doors, 30 of them were mine. She's like, we're gonna fire half your clients, because those houses are in are in a low income area. They're not worth managing. We're gonna pivot, we're gonna get these Class B homes. Oh, and by the way, you need to sell off your homes. We're not managing your homes either. So you know what I said, You know what, I've been trying to make this work for so many years and are every year I'm coming at the end of the year, I gotta pay money. Now I quit my job to start my property management firm, which by the way, I was making $105,000 a year now making $12,000 a year am I okay? These properties, they can't be an albatross around my neck. So I sold a bunch of homes. So I had, I think 31 of them and 25 are in kind of the lower income area and I couldn't get rid of some of them. So I owner financed them and that was when I had an aha moment. So I was able to wrap the note, I had a very good, I had a local bank and I had a very good relationship with a local bank, and they allow me to wrap the note, right. So basically what that means is I've sold the property to you Michael, right. But I still own the property, you pay me 10% 20% down, you're gonna pay me a mortgage, and then I'm gonna pay the bank, the mortgage, and I get the spread. Yeah, the first time ever that those properties made me money.   Michael: Wow, okay. Were you able to sell them for much more than you paid for him? I know, you said there wasn't much appreciation.   Pete: No appreciation. But remember, I did have equity. So I sold them for like 50,050 to 55,000. I bought it for 35,000. So I was able to make money that way but if you think about it, I lost so much by owning and by doing the rehabs that I kind of broke even. Okay, it's great. Like, I'm able to be on podcast now. Tell that story, I guess. You know, it's the school of hard knocks, right? That's it. So college is way more expensive than that, by the way that just took me a lot of time. I ended up breaking even and making a little bit of money on it. But what happened was so when I when I started my property management firm, I don't know if you've ever started a business from scratch, Michael, but it is not easy, right? I didn't I didn't build it. I didn't buy somebody else's business, right. I built it from scratch and, you know, it's at 90 hour weeks. It's every day, you know, and so I got away from the investing thing. So I sold off my assets at a 52 unit that I sold office well took a bath in there, investors lost money.   So I don't like multifamily. I can just tell you that much. I know you do. I've listened to some of your stuff. But we could debate that on another pod. A lot of fun things off. So when I, when my property management firm seven years later started becoming like I was working now five hours a week, 10 hours a week, I started getting back into buying investment properties. So I was able to find and a bought a couple of properties for about $120,000. It's called Baytown. So it's a little bit it's like a Class B, B minus area, blue collar, I like it gray area of town in Houston to buy in, because there's a lot of renter's there, but I started buying them and I started buying cash. So of course, you have to have the cash, right. So I had some cash I was able to buy in cash and so all my other properties that I did keep, I kept paying those down, and I have those in cash. So today, instead of 31 non producing properties, I have eight properties, one of them is paid for, and I own the note. So I sold it, I did an owner financing sell and I make more money on that property now than I ever did when I rented it out. I have three others that are paid for three or four, four others that are paid for and then I have four others that have a note on them. With the four that I bought the last four, I bought a boat with a note, it was one of those commercial loans. Package note, I had to put 30% down I did, I bought them in January of 2020. So right before the pandemic, there I bought it for 535 from a California investor he was done. We I gotta because I own the management company. So before I went on the market, I made him an offer and so I got him for 535 they appraised at 640 and I put 30% down and they kept they cashflow beautifully and I have I have a small note and now if I want them to sell one of the houses, I can take it out of notes, sell it pay the note down. So now I own eight or nine properties total and they're worth you know, close to, I want to say like one like one, let's call it 1.2 million, I only want 300,000 or 350 on the whole thing, right and my cashflow is about 12,000 a month, uh, me a little bit less, a little bit less, a little bit less, maybe like 10, five around there and so, so I'm a big fan of owning the property outright. So I have both houses that aren't paid for right, so. So it's just hear me out on this, I am now in my 50s. So in my 30s I was a big fan of taking out mortgages, as much as you can bind as much as you can, because you got this thing called time on your side, you can make mistakes, right? At 50 you have less time, right? I've 20 years less, so I can't really make the same mistakes. So I believe even though I make less cash on cash, right? Less overall, I have this thing where I can sleep better at night, right? The house is paid for like, for example, I own  a house, I just had to put in a brand new AC and heater, right cost me like I think like six grand. That's cash flow for a year in most in most instances, right and you can't afford it because you don't have the money. Well, when the house is rented for 2500 a month. That's only two to three months. It's not terrible. It doesn't it doesn't knock you out of the game. You're not always stressed for cash. In my in my in my bank account for my business, my housing business. I got like 30 to 35 to $45,000 sitting there all the time, right. So if anything ever happens, I'm okay and so that in now because they're paid for I have more cash flow. I don't have to pay all the notes all the time. So, so again, as you get older, you're like, okay, well, how can I have like, How can I afford to live day to day? Well, if I have $12,000  a month coming in, and I only have $22,000 going out for principal and interest. Well, now I'm at 10 grand and now you figure another 3000 a month in taxes and insurance. So now I'm at seven grand. Well, that's, you know, that's almost 80,000 a year in Texas. It's not terrible and of course if maintenance happens, which always does you never get that full 70% right you never get that full deal. So because of my past issues with banks, by the way the bank on the 100 unit apartment complex really, they really screwed us they let us believe one thing and kind of did the end around and so because of that, I'm really you know, just I was scared is not the right word, but very unjust and very hesitant, hesitant to do it now. That doesn't mean that I won't take on a note, especially if I can't afford to buy something in cash, but I'm gonna He's going to put 2030 40% down, whatever, whatever the bank wants, and then a little bit more and then I'm like, I'm at the back into my life, right? So I am looking to, to pay these things off. So I have 20, year amortizations. If I could, if I could pay them off in 15 years. Okay, I'm 60-65 and now I have no notes, and I have all these houses paid for and at the end of the day, you want to live on cash flow, right? You don't want to live on like hoping that your properties increase in value, and then you can take the money out. If they're if they're paid for in 10 years, I can go take you know, 80-70, 80% of the value of the house, which are increasing now. tax free. So I have so I do have ability to, to go take the money out. Should I should I choose to do that?   Michael: Yeah, man, this is wild, man. This is this is such a cool story and of course, I'm so sorry to hear that you had to deal with all that nonsense, Bs. But it sounds like it helped lead you to the decision and kind of path where you are today. So would you say that you're thankful for those experiences as crummy as they were?   Pete: Yeah, look, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I am truly I think I'm a better business partner today than I then I was back then I'm a better investor today for sure and so overall, I feel like I'm, I'm better, I'm a better as a person, because you won't like, like I said, if it doesn't kill you, the one thing that you as an investor, as a real estate investor, you have to make sure that you don't make the mistake that could put you out of business, right. So in my when I had the 100 unit apartment complex, I use my 401k. No my IRA money, so I went and did a self-directed IRA and that's how I invested my money, lost it all, by the way, okay. Again, at 31, I lost 120 grand, which is a lot of money for me back then. A lot of money for anybody right now. Okay but it didn't put me out of business.   Once I once I was able to clear my name with the bank, my credit was cleared, everything was clear. Like it was never it's not on my it's not on my credit history at all, because they know that they messed up and I was part of our deal. So that allowed me to get back in the game and by I had another pair of business partners, that they ended up taking bad advice, they ended up using credit cards, taking money out of their credit cards, cash advances, to put money down to buy this apartment complex, because some guru told them that he did it, just because he did it and it's possible doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Well, they had declared bankruptcy. So they were they were out of the game. They you have a bankruptcy, you're not going to be buying investment properties. Why don't you know, you're not going to buy your personal home, let alone investment properties. So as a real estate investor, for the for if you're listening to this, you know, it's great to take on some risk. I mean, obviously, we all take on some risk, right? We know there's no guarantee price is gonna go up. There's no guarantee that people are going to pay their rent. There's no guarantee but don't take on a risk that will put you out of business.   Michael: Yeah, I love that and I think that makes a ton of sense. Pete, you said something kind of at the beginning of your story that I want to come back to and that's you were buying these low income properties, and you bought them and you scrimped and you saved and you and you put these deals together, and they really hadn't appreciated very much and you sold them because your property manager, right, yeah, that after that, they appreciate it. So like, talk to us about how people should be thinking about if they're in a similar situation, they bought a property. They did all this work to get the deal done. they scrimped and they save and they just haven't seen very much appreciation. Maybe they're in a similar situation where it's not cash flowing, or it's just covering its expenses. It's just not what they thought it was going to be. When should someone cut their losses and run and maybe go try something else or how do they know maybe they should keep hanging on because we're right around the corner from that appreciation jump?   Pete: Yeah, that that is if I had a crystal ball, I could I could answer that. I can just, I can just tell you from my perspective, I did everything I could to make those properties work. I mean, I would put it you know, like when we did a rehab, we made the house even nicer than it was right? We got rents up, but for whatever reason, and we just can never get them to cash when we were losing money. After about five years, I think you got to if you do not have the cash flow, where you can lose money every year on your properties, and it hurts you. You know, I think you got to cut the cord after a couple of years of trying everything. You have to try everything though. I'll tell you my grandfather before he passed away, he was in his 80s and he when he passed away, he was worth I think 30 million. So this is a guy who knows a thing or two. But he told me one of the last conversation I had with him he said, Pete, never sell your property. When grandpa died here. We had a lot of property it was he was a mess. The guy didn't put any money into it. Son of a gun when we had to deal with it, but it was luckily all those properties appraise or appraised value over time, time heals all wounds if you can afford it and knowing like, hey, like, I can tell you this when I bought the properties in my early 30s, I needed the cash flow as a means to I try to exit out of the of my, you know, my w two life, right?   Luckily, my w two allow me to handle those properties, right, allow me to handle the losses. When I got into starting my own business, I knew the upside of starting my own business was great but starting my own business meant I had to take a huge step back in how much money that I can afford, that I was going to be able to extract out at a business. I wasn't venture backed, none of that stuff, right. I mean, I literally just hung a shingle and I started working. Well, I couldn't afford to lose the money on those properties anymore. So that was, that was a big reason on why I decided to sell. Now I will tell you, I sold all those properties in 2015. I bought them in like 2008 2005 I bought most of them and I saw them 10 years later. So it wasn't for lack of trying Michael like I tried right? Even after 2015 they didn't jump up until recently, like this pandemic has me all jacked up, I have no idea what's up what's down, like, I thought the price would come down. So I sold my last property in that area of town for 120. I bought that piece of property for 50 in 20 in 2005, so here we are. So it kind of matches up right 2005. Here we are 15 years later and that thing actually, you know, more than doubled. Now that property I owner financed, I sold it at 120. It was probably worth 100. Alright, so probably doubled in value over those 15 years. I always pay, I always sell it for a little bit higher because I'm holding a note. I want to build in that appreciation. You want to go through the numbers on it real quick?   Michael: Yeah, let's do it again. All right.   Pete: So when I when I own the home, and I rented it out, I was renting for 1000 bucks a month.   Michael: Okay, you bought it for 50 renting for 1000. So crushing the 2% rule. Everyone on paper is like, oh, you're killing it.   Pete: Right? Exactly. On paper, right. So 1000 bucks a month. So now you like Pete, you're making $1,000 a month. But am I Michael? I'm not making $1,000 a month, right? What do we have? We have taxes 300 bucks a month now making 700 a month? What do we have? We have insurance 120 a month. Okay, so now I'm down to 580. My management fee was 80 bucks, I'm down to 500 bucks a month and that's before you get into maintenance and turn, right. So on my best month I make 500 bucks a month.   Michael: Oh no.   Pete: You wanna go through the numbers?   Michael: Yeah, let's do it, man.   Pete: Or go through the numbers. Okay, so I'm renting that property for $1,000 a month, right? I bought it for 50 rent it for $1,000 a month, right? So am I making $1,000? a month? No way? No, right because the taxes were 300 a month. So now I'm making 700. Right, my insurance is 120 a month. So now making 580 and my manager fees are 80 bucks a month. So I'm making 500 bucks a month and asked me for any kind of maintenance happens or turn. So the best I can do is 500 a month, right? So now I sold the property I sold for 120 got 10% down. So the notes 113. I sold on a 20 year amortization 7%, I found a company that will actually serve as the note for 30 bucks a month that I pushed on to the buyer. So right now it's cost me nothing. The principal and interest on that house is 7-78 and it's like I think it's like $67 is principal and $7 is interest and that's what I make on that house every month, right? If taxes go up, does it affect does it affect me and my cash flow? No insurance goes up doesn't affect my cash flow. Refrigerator breaks doesn't affect my cash flow   Michael: Vacancy could be vacant doesn't affect your cash flow.   Pete: Doesn't affect my cash flow. Now I ended up selling this one to an owner occupied. So I didn't sell to an investor on this one. So the owner occupied and he pays and all I gotta worry about is if he doesn't make his payment, I can foreclose on him. I don't know what the laws are in California in Texas, it's about 21 days. Before we before we can start the process and start the process.   Michael: Okay, okay. Okay.   Pete: So 21 back in the day used to be 21 days, you get them out now it's like…   Michael: That's what I was going to ask. Yeah. Okay. So just real quick on owner financing, because I think this is something that a lot of our listeners who own property should hopefully their ears are perking up. How do you underwrite a buyer, someone who's going to be, you know, seller financing from you as the lender as the owner.   Pete: So, I don't really care about credit at that point because if they had good credit, they're not coming they're not buying.   Michael: They go then to a bank…   Pete: Right, exactly. So what I'm looking for and what I'm always looking for is why is it credit bad, right? So are they not paying their rent or are they not paying the you know, the electric bill or whatever, whatever, you know, car or bill or whatever it is, right? So I want to know what kind of why they're why they have such bad debt. I don't care why they have such bad credit, I don't care that bad credit and then I'm looking at cash, how much money they make. So what happens is a lot of these guys, so guy that that bought my property, he's in like the construction business, right? So he has his own little deal, he can't show he shows no income, but he showed me his bank statements and he showed me his deposits for the last couple of years and so I just look at how much cash do you have, can you afford it right and then, as a property manager, I always go to two and a half to three times. So if I can get two and a half to three times of cash for what it's going to cost them all in, then I feel I feel at that point, it's not that big a deal. Also, he's paid me 10% down. So I have some cash there. So if he did move out, or couldn't afford any more, I got a little bit of cash, I could make the place a little bit nicer. Okay but the mentality of somebody who buys your property, even if it's owner finance verse, somebody who rents your property, let me just tell you what happens, right? When somebody used to rent that property, what they used to do there give me a long list of stuff that didn't work in the house, that they wanted me to fix it, right, even though the lease says, as is all that good stuff, right? When somebody buys a house, they're getting a long list, and they're improving the house. When somebody rents your house, they're paying the car to pay the electric, they're paying their damn Hulu bill before they pay you because they know that they can they know the eviction process all the way through and how long it take them right? When they own the house were they paying first and for paying…   Michael: The mortgage first. Every time they pay the mortgage, first…   Pete: Hulu gets put on the back burner, the car payment gets put on the back burner. So the mentality is completely different. I've only I've only you know, I think he's been over there a little over a year, never had one issue with payment. Knock on wood.   Michael: That's great and is the term is the note do you get it full term to 20 years or is it a couple of shorter year term with a 20 year AM?   Pete: I will have to double check but I'm pretty sure it's just a 20 year amortization and he just pays me to 20 years and then that's it. So what a lot of people say to me is well, Pete, you're missing out on the appreciation, right? Like, if you sold the house or 100, or the house is worth 120,000 or 200, right? So if you think about this, Michael, most people don't pay extra. Most people don't pay the house off early or if they do right grade, they pay the house off early. They make my money. But he's paying $60 In principal and $680 in interest, right? If you if you pay that house off in 20 years, he's gonna pay that he's gonna pay about 240,000 hours on that house. I think I got my appreciation.   Michael: Just fine. Yeah. Oh, man. I love it, I love it. That is so cool Pete. That is such a great story.   Pete: I built into cushion of 20,000 so that he can't refinance right away. Right, because the house is only worth 100. So by no one's gonna give him $110,000 or whatever it takes to refinance the house. So by increasing it a little bit, you save yourself at least those first you know, five years or so.   Michael: Super, super smart. Super smart.   Pete: Yeah, that's a good one.   Michael: That's a that's a really that's really good, man. Pete, we could chat for hours, man. What's the best way if people want to learn more about you reach out to you for, nobody gets to cover your VPM solutions today, but learn more about your words, where is the best place to do so?   Pete: Yeah, you know, best thing is they can actually I'm on all the socials I guess. But it's Pete Neubig NEU big and you can email me at: pete@vpmsolutions.com or you can just go to our website to https://www.vpmsolutions.com/ and check us out.   Michael: Right on man. Well, thanks again for coming on and sharing some wisdom, really appreciate you.   Pete: Thanks, Michael. Very good talking to you.   Michael: All right, when that was our episode, a big thank you to Pete for coming on super interesting way of thinking and doing things just a little bit differently than maybe we hear about what we need to be doing as investors. So as always, if you've liked the episode, we'd love to hear from you ratings and feedback are always appreciated, and we look forward to seeing you the next one. Happy investing…

Neal Bawa is a technologist who is universally known in the real estate circles as the Mad Scientist of Multifamily. Besides being one of the most in-demand speakers in commercial real estate, Neal is a data guru, a process freak, and an outsourcing expert. Neal treats his $947 million-dollar portfolio as an ongoing experiment in efficiency and optimization. The Mad Scientist lives by two mantras. His first mantra is that "We can only manage what we can measure". His second mantra is that, "Data beats gut feel by a million miles". These mantras and a dozen other disruptive beliefs drive profit for his 700+ investors. In today's episode, Neal shares insights about his strategy for multifamily investing, some interesting market statistics, and what he expects the future of the real estate market to look like. Episode Link: https://multifamilyu.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my very special guest, Neal Bawa and he's talking to us about multifamily investing syndications and some really, really interesting market statistics about looking forward into what the real estate market future holds for all of us. So let's get into it.   Hey Neal, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show with me today. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing some wisdom with me.   Neal: Well, it's exciting to be here, especially because I am a fan of your company and until five minutes ago, I didn't know that I was doing a podcast with Roofstock. So super excited to be here.   Michael: Awesome. Well, surprises always tend to keep people on their feet. So I'm really excited to chat with you today. So I know a little bit about your background and who you are but for anyone listening, who might not be familiar if you can give us the quick and dirty who you are, where you come from, and what is it you're doing in real estate today?   Neal: Absolutely. I'm a geek, a nerd, a maverick, I come from Silicon Valley. I live in Silicon Valley, I'm a data scientist by profession with a computer science degree. I've had a successful tech career, which, after 17 years ended in the sale of my technology company. I got into real estate because I live in Texas Fornia and I was paying 53.7% of my gross income in taxes and so you know, I looked around and looked at lots of different avenues to save money, looked at solar panels looked at oil, and came to the conclusion that none of those were anywhere close to real estate in terms of the incredible taxation benefits. I tell people, real estate is America's number one legitimate tax mafia. That's really what it is. I mean, no other area has the astonishing, the shocking tax benefits that real estate has. So I started doing real estate for that and started sharing a lot of my data science, you know, thought processes and ideas and it sort of just exploded from there. The first time I shared my insights on data science, I had four people in front of me. A week ago, I had 1100 listening.   Michael: Oh my gosh, that is really, really cool. So I love chatting with data scientists with geeks and nerds as the self-proclaimed title that you gave yourself, because I think it puts a process. They come from very process oriented backgrounds, and it allows them to apply the same processes to real estate, which I'm sure we're gonna get into in a little bit. But you're doing some pretty amazing things in the multifamily space if I'm wrong, mistaken, right.   Neal: I am, I am and I'm a huge fan by the way of the single family space and often direct people to single family, but multifamily is where I've been simply because of its amazing scale. So I started off in single family and I have now moved over to multifamily. So currently have about 750 million in construction and various multifamily spaces such as built around and apartments have about 250 million that I'm managing that I purchased that are existing buildings, and then I dabble in other areas as well as multifamily is kind of the core foundation of my business, but I dabble in self-storage, industrial townhomes for construction and student housing as well. So I love all kinds. I love all kinds of different asset classes at different times. But I always come back to the Foundation, which is which is multifamily.   Michael: Okay, now, you said a lot of amazing things with a lot of big numbers and I want to come back to that in just a minute. But I'm just curious on a personal note, can you share with our listeners, what's the best compliment you've ever received?   Neal: I think that the compliment had and I actually use it now you already heard it today was a person that walked in and said, This is the geekiest and nerdiest presentation I've ever heard that was still very entertaining. So that second part was like, okay, so I can I can get geeky I can get nerdy but I can still kind of get it down to the level where people enjoy it and are not snoring, you know, five minutes into the presentation. So I love that comment because it's hard to be a geek and be a nerd and still, you know have these aha moments for my audience. So I've worked really hard on that.   Michael: I love it and clearly you're doing it well because people 1100 people are coming to listen so my hat off to you. So let's talk about what excites you about multifamily because I think that there's an argument to be made that the fundamentals but you talking about going back to the basics is single family. So why do you think that it's multifamily? Why do you make that argument?   Neal: Because of single family? The short answer is this single family is why I'm excited about multifamily. Okay. So, you know, you hear a few numbers all over and over again, people say these numbers that don't quite explain the meaning of this, right. So we say in this home, the you hear this all the time, we have a shortage of single family homes in the US 5 million, the actual shortage is 5.1 4 million. You also hear we have a shortage of multifamily or apartments in this, you know, in the US and the actual shortage today is 600,000 units. So you notice most of the shortage is actually on the single family side, right? 5.2 million there 600,000 on the apartment side and for both of those, the vast majority of the shortage, not all of it, but the vast majority came from the fact that the US actually didn't really build anything single family or multifamily between 2011 in 2015. So we used to build, you know, I don't know, eight 700,000 800,000 a million units and then all of a sudden, 1112 1314 15, we built less than half of that creating this massive supply demand gap. It was enormous and that's why that has led to rental growth being you know, to AX what it used to be in the previous 30 years, we've also seen massive growth in prices on the multifamily side where, you know, we used to buy, you know, properties at, you know, $40,000 a door, and now we're buying the same properties at $250,000 adoor. So it's just an incredible, massive increase there in Parador prices, a lot of it really comes back down to the fact that we are absolutely unable and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary, we are absolutely unable to build starter homes in the United States, we actually don't have a shortage of single family. It's a very common misconception. We don't have a shortage of single family, we have a shortage of starter homes and when I talk about starter homes, I mean anything that in a reasonably reasonable Metro, I'm not talking about San Francisco Bay area, but let's say something in Phoenix, right? Being able to build a nice three to four bedroom home that's brand new for about $275,000 that has become categorically impossible today. Okay, for I'll give you an example of this, as you know, multifamily scales a lot better because when you're building 100 units, you get all these economies of scale, blah, blah, blah, okay, my cost of construction in New Braunfels, which, by the way, is not a major metro, you've probably never even heard of it. It's in the corridor between Austin and San Antonio and so you one could say Austin and San Antonio are both, you know, secondary markets, not primary like San Francisco or Los Angeles and in so and this, so this market must be like a tertiary market because it's in between my cost of construction for townhomes, not single family is well over 300,000 units. That's what my cost as a builder is, right.   So you understand what's happened since March 2020. Construction costs in the US have gone up by 34%. That's basically about 27 or 28 months, they're up 34% and the problem was there before COVID. So before COVID, even in the face of outstanding and insane amounts of demand. We were only able to build enough single family enough multifamily housing just to keep up with demand. So remember what I said 11, 12, 13, 14,15 those five years, we under built massively, and then 1617 1819 20, those five years we built okay, we did find we stayed up with demand. But we didn't make any dent in the single family shortage. We didn't make any dent in the multifamily shortage, those numbers stayed the same, because we were just building enough. And that was before this once in a century 34% increase in construction cost. That was before that increase. Today, construction cost has gone up. So but people who think that home prices will drop 20% simply have no understanding of the fact that there is it's impossible to supply a product. If home prices dropped by to even 10 or 15%. Most builders will either go out of business or simply pivot to build the rent. So they'll stop building anything for the market and what that will do is make the shortage worse, which means that there's even worse it's going to make it much worse, right? Because we absolutely have to build 500,000 units a year just to keep up with this year's demand. Forget about the shortage from before, right, we still want to keep up with the demand for this particular year. So we can keep the shortage from getting worse.   You know, otherwise, that number that 5.2 million number will go to 5.5 million and 6 million and 7 million so we'll keep getting worse and every time it gets worse rents rise prices right? So there's a cushion under home prices and most people wonder mentally failed to understand the mathematics here. If your cost of construction goes up 34% how are you going to deal with prices going down and if developers don't make enough homes, the only homes available in the market are the existing homes, right? So will competition on them will increase and haven't you been reading already in the last three months that permits in the US have dropped to 30% because as the US economy goes closer into a recession, so it's inevitable at this point that we'll go into recession, builders are very skittish, their construction costs are at an all-time high and so they're backing off. They're saying, You know what, I'm not going to take the risk of building 10,000 homes, I'll build five. So if everybody drops their permits by 30, or 40%, you're digging now a new hole for the construction that would have afforded for the delivery that would have happened next year and the year after. So now we're digging a hole in 2023, deliveries and 2024 deliveries. How do you reconcile that with a 20% drop in prices? The mathematics, the fact that people actually keep saying this with a straight face is mind boggling to a data scientist.   Michael: Yeah, I love that because you like everything you just said, I don't know, if you're watching the video, you saw my jaw on the floor, I'm gonna have to pick it back up here. But it just people feel like it feels because prices are so high and toppling, then interest rates are so high, but everything you've just said, I mean, factually, and mathematically makes so much sense and so how should people be listening? How should our listeners be thinking and reconciling? Okay, well, interest rates have gone so high, so fast. So the purchasing power has been drastically reduced. How should you be thinking about like, what's going to happen next?   Neal: So the first thing you should do is study the past, because the past gives you some wonderful examples of what happens when these sorts of things happen, right? So I'm gonna give you some benchmarks that will really blow you away, right? So in 1982, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates so fast, and so many times that mortgage rates went to 18%. As we're recording this, mortgage rates are at 5.3%. So when I say this in front of a an audience, I was teaching in Seattle, there were 500 people listening. So just, you know, for shits and giggles, I basically went down to the stage and I stuck the mic in people's faces and I said, So if interest rates were at 18%, would you buy a single family home? No. Okay. Do you think anybody else bought a single family home? No. What do you think prices went down? Why the answers were 20 to 50%? Well, history tells us that in 1982, when interest rates to buy new homes were 18%. Home prices declined by 10% for one quarter, bounced up by 10%, the following quarter, and actually ended the 1982 recession higher than the beginning of the recession. study history. It tells you how sticky real estate is. Now, everyone, the biggest reason why people feel that prices are about to fall off a cliff is 2008. There's no other reason because if you look at the data from the last 61 years, all you notice is home prices are extraordinarily sticky when interest rates go up, because interest rates haven't gone up once or twice, or three times. Nine times in the last 61 years, the Federal Reserve has hiked rates to kill inflation, nine times, right? Eight times the economy went into a recession, how many times you'd be have real estate prices go down? Once 2008 because 2008 was not a recession. 2008 was the largest single evidence of large scale fraud in American history. Millions of brokers and 1000s of bank banks committed large scale fraud on about 20 million Americans. That's what caused those home prices to fall. I see no evidence of fraud at this point. If I if anything, underwriting standards are pretty darn robust. The people have trouble…   Michael: getting a mortgage is such a pain.   Neal: Right? So when you look at this, and you say, so every everything that you're doing is based on what you saw in 2008. But you're not comparing the US economy today to 2008, right. So let's go back to looking at 2007 and comparing it to today's economy. So you want home prices to drop by 20%? Okay, fine. Question is, have you looked at how many jobs the economy was creating in 2007 and have you compared that to today's jobs, right? So in the last three months, and people are saying we're in a recession, and maybe we can talk about that, in the last three months, the US created 500,000 400,400 1000 jobs. That's 1.3 million jobs in the last three months, we actually struggled to create that many jobs in most regular years. So in three months, we created 1.3 million jobs and of course, before you know anybody says, hey, the quality of the jobs is very low. They're part time no, they're not. Please go back and look at a a shockingly high percentage of those are full time jobs and then people are like, Yeah, but people are not getting paid enough.   These are standard objections, right because people are not studying the radar. No wage inflation is very high in the US right now in work have the upper hand. Wait, inflation is at 5.1%. Most years, it's one and a half percent. What that what does that mean? People are good people who have existing jobs are getting big raises and then there's 11 million open jobs in the United States. This is the first time in US history that we've been at 3.5% unemployment and still have 11 million jobs open. So the economy is producing jobs at two and a half times. It usually does in a normal marketplace. How do you factor that in with home prices falling 20%? It's the it's a highly desired asset that people want. Now, it's absolutely likely that home prices will fall. But the big question is, will they fall on a nationwide basis and the answer is that there is no data to support that. markets that are red, hot, white hot, some of those markets that I invest in Phoenix, Boise, Las Vegas, Austin, these are markets that are at risk of a 10% correction, maybe some markets might even get a 15% correction. But the US is combined of 330 markets. When you look at those 330 markets, the chances that we will see a 1% overall price reduction is still low and most people are talking about 10 to 20% based on what data?   Michael: Ah, I love it. I love it. Neal, this is this is super, super insightful. So kind of thinking about the feel part of the emotional part and the people talking about the 20% correction. There are those who have said that the Zillow or the kind of red fins that give estimates of value or rentability. It's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy if I'm an investor and I go on Zillow and see hey, this was only valued at 100k by Zillow, but it listed at 120 I just wanna be paying 100k. Is there some risk of that with public sentiment that prices should be falling with the Zillow effect that's not trademarked?   Neal: Let's call it the Zillow effect and actually, it's a very important thing to talk about because if you know, the question really is, is there a risk of that the there's a 100% chance that the Zillow effect will drag home prices down? Here's the catch, though. The Zillow effect is both ways, right? So we've also seen the Zillow effect when prices go up. So you're gonna see a short term curve downwards as the market adjusts and then when it adjusts, a whole bunch of people are like, home prices are 10% down, this is my chance to get in and it's not just, it's not just the individual investors anymore. America is fundamentally different in 2022, than it was in 2008. There one single company called BlackRock, I think is Blackrock or Blackstone, maybe I'm confused about that, it has now launched a $50 billion fund, just to buy homes during a dip and their definition of a dip is 7%. So the moment they see home prices falling 7%, they're gonna come in, and there aren't, it's not a billion dollar fund. It's not a $2 billion fund, it's $50 billion, just Google it, right. So just Google $50 billion home buying fund. Now, that's one company, but there's at least two dozen of them. So real estate now is an institutional asset class that rival stock markets, and people who invest at a big scale in the stock market, their dip is 5% 7% 10%. So you'll get that dip and they'll come in and they'll, you know, scoop up a bunch of these properties and then at some point, people will realize this market isn't going to crash 10%, they're going to be like, Yeah, but it's seven or 8%, or 12%, down in my area. Let me grab some properties and then you're going to see that correction and now all of a sudden, your backup as before you know it, this is normal, right? The market that we've had for the last 10 years where prices only go up. That's bizarre, that's abnormal. That's never happened before in US history. What we've seen before is prices go up. But they don't always go up in a straight line, they go up, they're just a little bit, they go down for three or four months, then they go back up, and the overall direction is upward. in markets like this. The Zillow effect is necessary, right?   I'm telling people number one, a dip in market prices is incredibly healthy. I've got my fingers and toes crossed that it happens. I've got my fingers and toes crossed that the US economy goes into a recession and most people would beat me up for that. It's like, why would you have your fingers and toes crossed for that? Short answer is when we have this much money floating around. If we do not occasionally adjust the economic cycle, we always end up in a bubble and bubbles when they burst of this size, create trillions of dollars in losses and can drag us into a 2008 type recession but if you look at the history, and again, I keep going back to this, the Fed has raised and income interest rates nine times and eight of those the US economy went into a recession, right? Only one of those eight was a destructive event 2008. All other seven events were in economic cycle, reset or adjustment and when you actually look at the effect of that recession over a three year timeframe, the net effect was zero, the cyclically adjusted, some of the bad companies fell out some of the bad developers fell out some of the bad money in the marketplace fell out and in the if you look at the long term trend, that that bumped down that six month recession had no real impact on the economy 2008 I can't say that, right. So once again, there's one time when we've seen total destruction happen, and that was because we perpetrated large scale fraud on American millions of Americans and using that as our benchmark to make all decisions in the future simply means we're ignoring 61 years of history.   Michael: Which seemingly is easy to do for a lot of people.   Neal: But for most people, it seems right. So I'm kind of looking at this going, this doesn't make any sense. Do you not realize that we just produced 1.3 million jobs in the last three months and isn't that the best way for company, companies are saying we're worried about recession, they're issuing earnings, you know, forward looking, and they're saying your earnings might reduce, and then they go off and hire 500,000 people in a month, right. So I mean, it's lip service for the stock market, it's lip service, for their for their, you know, phone calls with their investors. But they're not doing what they're saying they're going to do, which is reduce hiring, reduce hiring is half a million. Now normal months tend to be about 200,000 reduce hiring should be 100,000 new people being hired or 50,000, not 500,000.   Michael: Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting, Neal. So how do you take the data and use it when you're investing?   Neal: So one of the things that I do, and I'll kind of give you a little story on this on how I got started, so right, so I'm a data scientist. So right around 2009. I am, you know, looking at the real estate market, and everything looks incredible for me, of course, everyone else is telling me this is the worst real estate market of all time. So I go and tell my family, we should be buying all kinds of real estate today. Just buy everything in the marketplace, you know, with every last dime you have and then my family basically decides that I'm so stupid that they don't want me attending family events in case I infect other people with my horrible ideas. So I'm excommunicated from the family because, they like this guy is going to infect other people and we're going to lose millions dollars. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna prove these people wrong. So I go and get gathered the best of my data science information and  I mined the Zillow website, I mined the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, along with a Ukrainian hacker was pretty good at mining. So we, you know, gather all this data together, we put it in a statistical software called R and we look at every city in America and up at the top is an unknown city, a town called Madera, California, mid era, it's 20 minutes from Fresno, right?   Nobody's ever heard of Madera, California. I know Madera, right and so Michael, what my data is telling me is, Madera, California is by far fallen way more than it should have, because from Peak 2005, it had already fallen in 2009 by 73%. So prices had fallen by 73%. But most markets fell by 30 and 40%. You know, some markets didn't even fall that much like Dallas only fell by 11%. So I'm looking at this falling 73%. I'm like, statistically speaking, this is the greatest market of all time. So I drive a jump into my car, I drive 144 miles to Madera, and I go there, and I see all these very beautiful Kaufman and Broad homes. They're like, gorgeous, like, they're brand new, right? Nobody's clearly nobody's ever lived in them. So I go to a broker in Madera, and I say, hey, what's happening here? I mean, these homes are gorgeous, right? Why doesn't anybody want to buy them and the answer is, well, Kaufman and Broad basically sold these two farmworkers, none of them had documented income. They've all left, so half the city's empty and I'm like, so. So what does it cost to make these beautiful five bedroom homes today? So it's like, yeah, if you were doing new construction would cost 250,000? So I'm like, but I'm, what are they available for? Oh, you can buy these for 90,000 any day, you know, they're all available for 90,000. You can buy as many as you like and I'm like, why in God's name? Would I not buy these for 90,000? He says, Neal only for one reason, one reason only one reason. You can't rent them. There's too many empty homes in Madera, so you can't rent them.   So you basically would have to buy these homes and then keep paying your mortgage in the hope that the market comes back someday. I'm like, I have to find a solution to this. There has to be a solution. So I jumped in my car again, I drive another 20 miles to Fresno, which is the big city, right and I go there, and I talked to a broker and I say, I want you to sell me an ugly property. He's like, Neal, no, no, no, no, I'll send you a brand new one. I've got plenty of them. None. I said no, I want a 30 year old ugly property in Fresno and he says, okay, well, these, you know, sells me a property. I buy it in cash. It's $110,000 on Summerfield, right? I take that property, I put pictures up on the web, and I go to my Ukrainian team and I say I want to In an avalanche of leads, rental leads for this one property and they're like, why? I mean, it's a pretty decent rental market in Fresno. Why do you want that many leads, I'm like, trust me, just give me like 5000 leads for this one property and they're like, okay, so the guy is sort of goes to back to his Hacking Team, and he hacks a bunch of sites, and he writes a bunch of scripts, and all of a sudden that property is like on the web 300 times in 26 different places and so is just listing it continuously using his engine and before I know it, the phone's just ringing off the hook, I'm, you know, my mailbox is filling up with leads. So I hired a person in the Philippines, this lady on a full time basis, and I say, call every one of these people and tell them this property is rented. But I have nine brand new properties 20 miles away in Madera and I will give you $50 amazon gift cards, if you just drive there and attend an open house $50, no questions asked. We'll just give you an Amazon or gas card and so she starts making phone calls. She was pretty good at her job. She'd been in a call center and you know, half the people swore at her because they would they were like, yeah, but this is not press No, this is Madera and it's like, well, this property is rented, I, you know, I've got these options and she would keep sending pictures to them by text, right, because people weren't reading, reading their emails, she would keep texting pictures of these beautiful properties and before I knew it, people were attending those open houses, I already had to deal with the banks where the moment I got a rent contract signed, I would pay cash for the property the next morning. Well, before I knew it, 11 properties were rented and then I turned around and repeated my success with my family and all of a sudden, I was making massive amounts of cash flow on these brand new homes, that now of course, they're all you know, $400,000 each.   But even back then, I was making so much money every single day on properties that I knew had to come back. It's all about the cost of construction. You don't hear about this on podcast, if it costs $250,000 to build something, and it's available for $100,000. Buy it because construction costs have never gone down in human history. They've only gone up and they've gone shockingly, up in the last two years. But even before that they've never really gone down. Nobody was able to reduce construction cost during the 2009 downturn. They simply didn't build anything, right. But did anybody get a reduction in construction costs? That's not possible. Most of our construction material doesn't even come from the US or I mean, our steel comes from places like China, right? You can't get a discount simply because your economy is in a recession. So it's all about construction costs. So once I had proven this algorithm, I decided I'm going to tell the world about it. But that's another story. So that's really how I got started in in single family and then I wrote algorithms, again and again, published them. As I said, the first time I had people that were for people listening to me last week, I had 1100 people listening to me, it's really about those algorithms. The only thing that's changed and this is the answer to your question, sorry, long winded but the answer to your question is, what I found was, when I spend this, use the same algorithm for single family that it has everything that I can possibly imagine except scale, I can never grow to a billion dollar portfolio, I can maybe grow to 10 million or 50 million, and a lot of people have. But if I apply the exact same data with multifamily, I have an 18 month crystal ball and I'll explain what that means and I was getting the same exact results. But because I was buying 200 units or building 300 units at a time, I was able to hit my goal of a billion dollar portfolio and I did it in I don't know that from 2014 to 2021, right. So seven years, I was able to hit a billion dollars. You just can't do that in the single family side. Otherwise, single family pretty awesome.   Michael: Neal, I love it. I absolutely love it. What happens and then I want to hear about your 18 month crystal ball. But what happens when things switch where the cost of new construction is cheaper than buying something that's existing?   Neal: My business is in trouble. We're all in trouble. But and so I obsess over that greatly. I go to all the conferences where I see new real estate technology coming out. I go to the modular conferences, I go to the 3d printing conferences. I look at what Amazon is selling online in terms of you know, kits I look at. I look at everything and I can tell you with complete confidence that in the next five to seven years, there is no technology that will drop cost of construction in the US. The first technology that I think will make an impact right around the 2030 timeframe is 3d printing. Modular is a laughable technology in the US. less than point 1% of homes in the US are made through modular and the total volume of modular factories in the US is under 5000 units. We need a million. So unless Congress decides to put $150 billion towards building ala carte factories, there's no volume and because of a company called KATERA, a very famous company K A T E R A going out and losing $2 billion of investor money. Nobody in the right white mind wants to build a modular factory modular completely, you know, not useful. 3d printing, yes. But remember, 3d printing only works in edge case scenarios, because the property looks odd because of all that concrete that you have to basically put on. So I think it'll work in subsidized housing for the first 10 years. So let's say 2030 to 2040. It'll be in subsidized housing by the end of 2040. I think 3d printing will completely change all math around construction and we'll do a full reset of real estate. So luckily, I'll be gone long before them.   Michael: I would say, well, hopefully this podcast is still in existence, we'll have to have you back on in 2040. To talk about it. Yep, so give us give us some insight into your 18 month crystal ball because that's something I've never heard before.   Neal: Yeah. So I love you know, again, going back to Statistics, right? So when we're crunching numbers or big data with our teams, one of the things we realized is when a market starts to see home prices going upwards. Okay, so it's home prices are screaming upwards, right in a certain market. What we noticed was between 12 and 18 months later rents in that market explode. Okay, between 12 and 18 months later, but not immediately and you might say, why not? Well, the short answer is, what happens is that there's a bunch of people in that market that are looking at home prices going up, and everybody wants to be on that train when it's going upwards. So they jump in, they buy these homes, and then that makes more people want to jump in and buy those homes, because they're friends, you know, their homes are worth a lot more and so you see this upward momentum and then finally, the market hits a critical point where most people that are looking to buy a new home in that marketplace, their income doesn't allow them to qualify, not most substantial portion of those people, right, so you get to maybe a quarter of all the people in market X can no longer qualify based on their income, right and the moment that happens, those people, they realize that their dream of homeownership is gone forever and then they don't want to go live in an apartment, what they'd want to do basically is they either wanted to go live in a class A apartments, so it's amenitized, with pools and gyms, and all those kinds of things or they want to go live in a built to rent community, which I'm building lots of, which essentially is the same as a single family home, but it's for rent.   But it's better than a single family home, because you've still got the pool and the jacuzzi and, and the dog park and the park, right, because it's 200 single family homes in one community, it's just that you're renting that home instead of buying it. So now you have a massive increase in demand for those kinds of assets because people realize I simply cannot buy any more unless I get a huge salary increase. I'm going to be renting, then those people they want to rent the best property they can find. At the very high end, they're going to be doing built around a single family rentals below that they're going to be doing built around. Below that they're going to be doing class a multifamily below that they're going to be doing Class B and Class C multifamily. So all of these rental markets see a massive boost. So this crystal ball works for every market, we've never actually found an exception to this rule with some weirdo exceptions in in rent control markets where rents simply can't rise. So as long as the market is not rent controlled, we have never seen an exception, the crystal ball works. The only part of it that is a little fuzzy is sometimes we see rents going up as soon as 12 months after the explosive growth of home prices and sometimes it takes 18 months.   So that crystal ball makes my life so much simpler because crystal balls are so hard to find actual crystal balls and reliably work are so hard to find. So I just look at these markets that are seeing these massive increases in home prices and I go buy a multifamily there, I have a business plan to rehab that multifamily and do value ads with it and do or maybe I'm doing new construction. So either way, I have a business plan. But that's my plan A but what I've found so far is in every instance that I've done this plan B has worked better, which is simply the market just went exp has explosive rent growth. So I didn't actually ended up implementing my business plan. I simply ended up selling my property in 18 to 24 months and making my investors a lot of money. I mean, I don't know of anybody else in the US that uses Core Data Science, not just numbers, but core data science to do what we do. We've had 37% IRR 47% annualized returns for our investors by simply using the crystal ball over and over again, over and over again. I mean, and I can tell you what those cities local like today, and I guarantee you've not heard of many of those cities.   Michael: Neal, I love it. What would you say have seen massive price appreciation? What is that mean because I think massive could mean different things to different people. So is there a percentage that you say, hey, you know what we crossed this threshold, that's the city that I want to invest in?   Neal: Oh, absolutely. The short answer is with multifamily. It's only about 25- 30% increase in prices. So one of the things that most people don't understand is, you don't need prices to double to double your profits, because you use leverage. So let's say somebody buys a $10 million building, and $3 million of that is equity, right or down payment, and 7 million of that is a loan. Now, let's say this building goes from $10 million to $13 million, right? So you've it's only gone up 30%. So if you sell it for 13%, and you return that $3 million in equity, right, there's $3 million in profit, plus all the rents you got for two years while you were holding it. So you've doubled people's money in two years or three years, right, even though the property's only gone up 30%. So that's very important to realize, 25 to 30% increase, usually doubled investor money in during the whole time and recently, those hold times have been very short, two years, two and a half years. So essentially, that means 45-50%, annualized returns. Now in normal times, it takes about five years to get to that point. So you're, you're doubling investor equity in five years, but that's still 20% annualized returns and I think that's pretty awesome because the investors are doing nothing, they attend a quarterly webinar, and they read a monthly update and if they, if they like you, they don't even do that. They just sort of delete your emails when they come to cash flow, right. As long as their cash flow checks are coming in. They're not reading anything you're sending them.   Michael: They're not complaining. That's it, that's it. Neal, this has been so much fun. Where can people learn more about you continue the conversation, and what's the best way for them to get in touch?   Neal: So I'm lucky enough that I'm the only Neal Bawa on the World Wide Web. So simply typing in any URL, and bawl and hitting enter into Google. There's a couple 100 podcasts that I've been on. They're geeky and nerdy, like this one too. But and if you're interested in my metrics, if you want to figure out what is that next unknown city that is going to have explosive growth, type in Neal space Bawa space, location, magic into the web, and you will see a 45 minute course that walks you through that process. So you can find those cities yourself. Or you can simply be lazy and go to my website multifamilyyou.com and find location magic they are sometimes we call it real estate secrets, same webinar, go in there and there's a list there's a list of those cities. You know, and I believe a lot of them are tertiary markets, but a lot of them are actually 35 minutes away from some kind of primary or secondary market, I find that the primary market secondary markets are really too expensive and are at much greater risk today of price drops. So like I wouldn't go out and in buy a property in Austin. But I've surrounded Austin with seven different properties because I find it to be the hottest city in America for the next 10 years. I'm just not interested in paying what I have to pay what I would have to pay in Austin. So I've literally surrounded Austin in all four directions with my portfolio.   Michael: Super clever. I can't wait to see how that works out. Neal, thank you so much for taking the time and coming on sharing with us. Really appreciate it and I'm sure we'll be chatting again soon.   Neal: Thanks for having me on the show.   Michael: Okay, everyone, that was our show a big thank you to Neal for coming on. Tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of meat and potatoes there to go digest and really think about because Neal kind of flipped the script on what a lot of people have been saying for a long time. So as always, if you enjoyed the episode, definitely we would love to hear ratings, feedbacks review from all of you, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

Mike Simmons, a real estate investor, author of the book Level Jumping (linked below), has shared the stage with some of the greats like Gary V. Has made over $1 million in profits in 12 months!! He knew he wanted to invest in 2003, and bought his first flip in 2008....why did it take so long? Like a lot of people starting out Mike was afraid to tell his spouse because of the difficult conversation. It wasn't until he finally decided he was tired of allowing fear to be his excuse that he dove in. Today, Mike shares his inspiring story of how he left his job, entered the real estate world professionally to begin wholesaling and flipping houses. Episode Links: https://www.mikesimmons.com/ Level Jumping   --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, I'm joined by Mike Simmons, author, CEO, business coach speaker, and we're gonna be talking about Mike's business, wholesaling and flipping houses, and what we should be aware of if you're going to get into either of those businesses. So let's get into it.   Mike Simmons, what's going on, man? Welcome to the real estate investor.   Mike: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, no, the pleasure is all mine. Super excited to have you on and really excited for our conversation today. So Mike, I know a little bit about your background and a little bit about what you do but for all of our listeners who are not familiar with you, give us a quick and dirty who you are, where you come from, and what is it that you do in real estate today?   Mike: Yeah, no problem. So, you know, I always say that my background is probably the least remarkable. I didn't sell baseball cards, I didn't go around the neighborhood looking for lawns to mow or things to do. I was a normal kid, probably on the lazy side. You know, and my parents were, we're in the automotive industry, and we're very blue collar Michigan, right. So the life that was displayed before me through example, and through explicit, you know, direction from my parents, and the Blueprint was, you got you finish high school, you go to college, or just as maybe even more preferable, you get into a union factory type of environment and it's very secure and you work there for 30 to 35 years, and you retire and you hopefully save some money and you scrimp buy and that's how you that's how life goes. That's just life. That's what people do, that's normal. Yeah, there wasn't one single person in my family or anybody on the horizon that was doing anything remotely entrepreneurial. So I did that I went to school, I went, I finished high school, I got a job with UPS, Teamsters, my parents could not have been happier with me being in the Teamsters and I went down that path, and I got married young, and I was working at UPS and like, unfortunately, UPS is a great company.   But there are injuries that happen because people you know, lift wrong and all that and at 25 years old, 24 years old, actually, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning without going to the chiropractor three times a week as a 24 year old, otherwise healthy man, oh my gosh and I knew I couldn't retire from there, because I was already almost too hurt and crippled to do the job I had to do at that time and I was in my early 20s and so I got another job in the automotive industry. It was a desk job and I started working there and this was, we were the mid to late 90s at this point and the automotive industry, like most industries, were starting to decline starting to have some problems. We were heading toward 2000 where a lot of bad things happen and in, you know, people think about tech and what happened if tech the big boom that happened. But the same thing happened in the automotive industry, essentially, we went from, you know, booming industry to many, many suppliers, going out of business struggling, it was really bad for a while and so I had to look around and ask myself, and I'm one thing I'm good about one thing I one of my superpowers is I'm a very honest, and I can I can very objective about myself and part of that is because it can be a tough thing to do. It's most people I don't think are, are objective about themselves and I'm not saying this to brag, I'm gonna tell you why I'm objective, and it's gonna kind of be like a poor, poor guy. My dad was a Marine, and, and he made it real clear what our shortcomings were on a daily basis as kids and so I have no problem. being real, honest, in a way that say, these this is what I'm not good at.   This is what's not great about me, like I'm very aware, I'm very easy for me to for me to figure that stuff out and so I asked myself at this point in the automotive industry, and things were declining, I didn't have a college education. I would I hire me if I were without a job and I was in the position of HR and I was, you know, somebody like me was across the table. What is there anything about me, that makes me more hirable than the 1000s of people who've been laid off over the last few years and it was easy. There was nothing about me that was remarkable. I had no college experience and I had very little practical experience. So why hire me when there's so many really, really talented people that were being laid off because of the industry. So went back to college, got a degree and I was working I'm kind of fast forwarding a lot, but I got my degree and I doubled my income. Like the minute I retire, graduated, the minute I graduated, I got a job, which literally was twice the annual salary and I was like, here we go, baby. There's no stopping and so just to kind of illustrate how that went, so I went into a company, it was automotive and I was working there for about six, seven years and at one point, it's seven o'clock at night and it's everyone had gone except my team. Everyone had gone home for the night, obviously, it was a five o'clock, most people were gone. It was seven 30 and I'm in at work and there are our client is there too, because there was something going wrong with our program that we are working on and he's there and in we're discussing the problem, and the guy gets really agitated the client, I'm not going to say which automotive company I'm talking about, but it rhymes with board.   Break company, I have an F 150. But he gets in my face and basically start screaming at me like dressing me down, like very much, really like when I was a kid like my dad did write down. Yeah and he was and it was seven o'clock at night. We're all working overtime. We're all clearly busting our butts to solve the problem and he gets in my face. They're screaming at me and he's the client, right? He's a big client and I can't really say anything back, except I'm really sorry. We're working on it and after he walked away, I went to my manager who was there too and I said, what are we doing here? What is happening right now? Why are we here? I'm getting screamed at we're doing our best, like there are issues I get it but nobody, nobody was negligent. We just have we have things that have happened, and we're working through but why are we still here? We should be at home and he said to me, I'll never forget, you need to get your priorities straight and I thought you are correct. I absolutely do, I have young children at home, I have a wife at home. I've been working overtime all week on this project. I didn't say this but in my mind, I'm thinking, you are correct, my priorities are wrong and from that point, I decided to take my side hustle that I was doing, which was real estate, flipping houses not doing a particularly great job at it, but just kind of stumbling through it and I said that is going to become my career priority. My priorities need to get dialed back to my family and make sure I'm at home and I'm spending the evening with them. I'm eating dinner, putting my kids to bed but from a career standpoint, that now becomes my focus and I will get my priorities straight and so he essentially put me on the right track. Inadvertently, he obviously was referring to work priorities but it worked the other way and so I from that day, I started making my side hustle, my main focus and I will say I a year later quit my job and the first year that I was in business and real estate full time that listen to this, this is true and I did this math, the first year that I was in business full time for myself as a real estate investor, my company's gross profits were equal to the total sum of my salary for the previous 25 years that I was working for somebody else, year one, which was a million dollars, I made over a million dollars in my real estate and over the years, like I'm talking going back to 18. When I started working right, I was making very little money and in the middle, I wasn't making a ton toward the end, I was making more but if you just take the average, which is about $40,000 for me, and you times that by 25 and is $1 million. My company grows that in in one year.   Michael: That's crazy, Mike! So where did you take it from there? I mean, are you still flipping houses today where you focus exclusively on that? Give us give us the insider scoop?   Mike: Yep… Yeah, good question. So I was flipping houses. When I was working full time, my wife and I were flipping houses and like I said, we weren't doing a particularly great job of it because she worked full time as a teacher, I was working full time plus as an automotive person and we were getting flips done. But we weren't particularly profitable, like we should have been. We didn't have any processes in place. My wife is extremely risk averse and so I kept trying to do more and do it faster. And she was slowing like brakes, brakes, brakes, right because she was nervous that we were getting ahead of ourselves and she probably saved me from really screwing up bad in the beginning. But at some point, she said, You know what? This is great and you clearly love it. I don't love it as much as you do. In fact, this is making it hard for me to sleep and it's making me hard for me to focus on my day job with the kids and I'm a teacher and that's what I do and I love you, I love the I love real estate but it's the roller coaster, the mental roller coaster is too much and I really would rather you go on without me and let me pull back and I'll just cheer for you from the sidelines and I totally support you and this isn't a negative this is actually a positive I just trust you to do it better without me and I did in and that's when things started taking off because I started doing way more activity like before we would get a house under contract. We would get it quoted out, you know, we would renovate it, we would put up for sale, we'd go through the wholesale process closed, check in the bank, before we started looking for the next day and that's not really a that's not how you scale anything, right?   So when she backed out, I was like, okay and I started putting offers in on multiple houses a day, like I was putting offers on everything and I started getting multiple deals at one time and so I had to learn how to raise money and I had to learn how to manage groups and what a forced me to do was, it forced me to come up with a process in a system that was repeatable and could handle scale. Before that, nothing we did was scalable, is all very manual, we'd go to Home Depot, we'd pick new colors for the walls, we'd pick out different cabinets, different flooring, like everything was custom to the house that we were working on and what I realized was really, really good house flippers who do it at scale, okay, and I'm not talking boutique flippers, who go into a town and they buy a $3 million, you know, historical home, and they like, put it back together with love. It's I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the people that are flipping 20-30 at 100 200 deals, they are not falling in love with every single house and going in there and making it the route, right, it's turning burn a little bit and so I learned how to turn and burn a little bit more in my business and scale it in a in a way that had systems and processes. But I still hadn't hired anybody. It was still just me, what changed the game for me and that changed the game for me in terms of, you know, a racing analogy, but, and again, this is not like I said all this in front of my wife as early as like the last month I've said all of this and she 100% agrees but she was like the governor in a race car, right? They put the restrictor on there. So you can only go so fast. Once that got pulled off. I pushed the gas all the way down to the floor, and I never stopped like, and so things just go faster when you're doing that much volume and back then, you know, now we're talking about 2014 ish timeframe. It was easier to get deals, I'll be honest, like, as someone who coaches people in real estate, I'm not gonna lie. It's harder now than it was back in 2014.   Still possible now, but it was easy back then. So I was getting deals off the MLS and it was going pretty fast. Fast forward another year or so and it started to get harder to get deals off the MLS and I was struggling a little bit and so I had to do some research and figure out and I was I was going to all the meetup groups and I was asking all the other house flippers like, where are you guys finding deals like what's happening? Where are you guys getting your volume from and they were all like, man, it's hard, like we're not getting deals like we're struggling and I'm like, Well, where are you looking? Where are you trying to find deals and everybody said the MLS everybody. I only knew one wholesaler in my market and I reached out to him. I'm like, Dude, I know you're not buying off the MLS. So where are you finding deals? He's like direct mail, I'm going direct to sellers and I'm like, what do you mean, go direct to sellers? How do you do that and so I took him out to lunch. He gave me the down and dirty playbook for how to do direct mail is what I was doing at the time and I started doing that and the deal flow started happening again and I started building and what I realized was and there's a whole story behind it that we don't necessarily have to get into but I changed my model from house flipping to wholesaling and it wasn't because of that guy. To finish in a nutshell, I was overly dependent and this is a huge mistake that new investors make all the time. I was overly dependent on one contractor and one realtor, they were everything the realtors, he found all the deals for me and they ran the numbers and they told me what was a good deal and my contractor was my only contractor and he basically made her are broke my rehab and on the same project as chance would have it. The realtor missed the numbers pretty badly and my contractor started flaking.   Now if you flip houses or renovate houses, or you have rentals, and I say my contractor flake, you probably don't need more information than that you go I'm with you, my contractors flaked too, right. But essentially, he stopped showing up he started charging me for things that he wasn't doing. He started making up half truths about stuff that he did do and so I was forced it and by the way, I was getting deal flow because I was direct mail, right. I had to let both these individuals off my team, to say the least and I had no backup plan and so as these deals were coming in, I reached back out to my wholesaling friend, I'm like, What do I do? I don't know how to wholesale. Can you just tell me what that even means? Like, what do you guys do and he again, gave me the down and dirty playbook and I called a house flipper friend of mine who I had recently talked to and he's like, I can't find anything and I said, Hey, man, I got this deal under contract. Do you want it for 110,000 at the time, that was the price 110,000 he's like, let me take let me look at let me look at the numbers coming back in 10 minutes. He's like I'll take it, I got it under contract for 95,000. I made $15,000 in like 10 minutes and In Michigan at that time, a normal flip 15 to 20,000 is a good flip number. Right, profit. Yeah and I was like I made almost the entire profit with a phone call. That was cool and probably a lot easier sold.   So much easier to do. No, by the way, no contract, right? No realtors. So I got another deal under contract. Ironically, it was also a contract for $95,000 and it was in a similar neighborhood. I called the exact same guy and I told him the exact same thing. I've got a deal for 110,000 It's yours. He said, give me five minutes. Call me back, he said, I'll take it. This all happened within four weeks to deal. I was like, I felt literally talked about love at first sight. I was in love with the model of wholesaling and so I switched my model over to wholesaling and I started, I started scaling it up and what really changed everything for me though, because although I was scaling up and I was starting to have some success, I still wasn't really running it like a true business I was I was a little bit scattered, I was a little bit unfocused and I joined a mastermind, a friend of mine at the time who lived in California, he had a podcast, and I knew him just through podcasting, and I was listening to his podcast one day, and at the end, he signed off, thanked his guest signed off, and I was doing dishes actually, at the time in my house and I saw I let it go, it was it's just kept going because I wasn't able to turn it off. My hands were wet and if it was over, he goes, Hey, if you're still there, I want to let you know about this very exclusive opportunity. I am pulling together some of the best real estate investors from around the country. We're going to form a mastermind, we're going to share ideas, we're going to help each other it's going to be awesome. If you want to get involved, you know, send me an email, whatever.   So I did $25,000 mastermind. Well, I $25,000 bazillion dollars to me at the time, but I was I was doing wholesale deals, right and at the time $25 was like two wholesale deals because I was averaging around 12 $13,000 per deal and I thought, I mean, if I surround myself with these people, will I do two more deals as a result of the relationships and the knowledge that will be exchanged. It seemed reasonable that I would and so I joined and I met someone their mentor, more than one person, but one person in particular, who laid out his company, he just laid it out. This is how I run my company is exactly what I do is what I did right and wrong over the last decade and he had the company I wanted and I said to him, his name's Andy, I said, if I if I see what you did, and I see what you're telling me, I should do and I totally agree with you. But you took you 10 years if I knew everything that you know now, and I apply it proactively. Couldn't I condense that timeframe? Like could I do any year and he said, I don't see why not? That's exactly what I did and I sort of came up with this term that, that I didn't think about a much until I've said it on podcast, and people resonate with it but I think the most powerful thing you can do in business is to use other people who are successful use their hindsight, which is 2020, as they say, right, as your foresight and so I used Andy's hindsight, all the things he did right and wrong, as my foresight going forward and I was able, that's what I was telling you that first year that I was doing the full time because I applied all of Andy's principals and I went from doing a couple of deals here and there to 10 to 15 deals per month and scaled up to a million dollars in that first year.   Michael: That is amazing and so right now your business is focused exclusively on wholesales, are you still doing flips?   Mike: Historically, it's always been wholesales but recently, and I have a business partner to its which is a whole story in itself kind of interesting about hiring and identifying talent. But so my partner and I have started strategically buying properties outright and then doing in Michigan, what we call them land contract, or we basically play the bank, we own the property, and we sell it to them and we hold the note as a company. So we started doing a lot of that. So we do like 100 deals a year, but half of those or more, but at least half would make fantastic land contract deals for us and so, and because of you know, COVID kind of showed us this a little bit and over the last several years that we've been in business, every business has ups and downs every industry has, you know, markets go up and down, right. So revenue kind of fluctuates and we thought how do we level that out a little bit? How do we make the valleys much higher, you know, so they don't go down and so we're doing a lot of this land contract stuff because it's every it's like you know, monthly recurring revenue and so we make the valleys much shallower and the peaks are still there. So we're probably wholesaling half of our deals and the other half we're buying inland contracting out…   Michael: Okay, let's dig into land contracts live because it's just not something I know very much about and we always joke on the podcast that we get to ask self-serving questions of our guests... So walk our listeners through asking for a friend walk us through like how land contract works and why it's so wide, so interesting.   Mike: Yeah, it's pretty straightforward but the concept and I'll kind of give you a peek, like a little bit behind the curtain here, right? The real like mechanics or the real like logic behind it. Me and my partner both as of a year ago, I had about 25 rentals, okay, which I have sold recently and I did it for a couple of reasons. Now, because rentals aren't great, they're great and actually, the rents are higher now than even when I sold them. So rent rents are going up, which is awesome. But for me, I bought them really, and I bought them like 2015, most of them and so the equity in them was very tempting to tap into and I recently have started doing lending on a grander scale, like I've scaled up my lending company, and I wanted to put that equity, that money into my lending company, it's just more of my focus now. But so what we're doing with land contracts, and why one of the reasons why we love them is unlike a rental, we are not responsible for any maintenance, any vacancies like we are, what the bank is to your mortgage, we get the mortgage payment, regardless of whether or not they have a leaky roof or whatever has to happen, right, we don't have to deal with any of that stuff and what we're able to do at least in Michigan, this doesn't work necessarily everywhere, the same way, because the rents aren't high enough in the house prices aren't low enough for to work in a lot of areas.   But for us, if you take someone who's living in a neighborhood, and they're renting, and let's just say they're paying for the sake of round numbers, they're paying $1,000 in rent, okay and they're renting a certain level house in that neighborhood, I can buy a house in that neighborhood that maybe is a little bit in distress that I can go in and buy it inexpensively and put some work into it and if someone were to buy that house with a traditional mortgage, especially a year or two ago, when rates were like high twos, low threes, they could buy that house and their mortgage payment might be $600, right, right. But they can't get approved for a mortgage for whatever reason, right? They have bad credit, or whatever it is, right? But I can buy that house, I can renovate it, and I can sell it to someone and really the pitch to them is listen, you want to own a home, and you're not currently in a position to get approved for a mortgage through a traditional mortgage company. But what if you could have homeownership, and you would pay no more than you were paying when you were renting, right still give me $1,000 give or take. But you own the home and you can build equity and in three to five years you can refinance out at a lower rate and you can own the home and probably drop your payments a little bit. Is it important enough to a person to own the home? If they're if all things being equal rent 1000 I have to pay this company 1000 for the house, but I own the house. That's what we do we buy the houses now, the reality is the interest rates are a lot higher than what you might get at a mortgage company, right. But we're also taking a bit of a risk. These are folks that have defaulted on things in the past and their interest and their credit scores are not great, but they have homeownership at this point and if so they if they have a down payment, and they want to own a home, we can get them into a home for no more than they would pay to rent a home in that neighborhood and three to five years, the goal for them is to fix things in their life and be able to refinance out at a lower rate and move on forever and then. So we're typically an average deal for us might be, you know, we buy it for 50. The ARV is 100, we put 20 into it. So now we're into it for 70 and we sell it for 85, right, we're still a little undervalued. So they're getting some instant equity, they have home ownership but when they go to refi in three, five years, we're getting a $15,000 check or whatever it is at that point, right. So in there's no calls from tenants, and there's no vacancies and none of that stuff. So that that's the that's the allure for US interest…   Michael: Interesting, I mean, isn't that similar, like rent to own or is it different?   Mike: It's similar, but they're not renting, right? a rent to own it, depending on how it's structured. Obviously, you can have some portion of the rent go toward whatever, but you still own the house, right? You still own the house as the person who's having that rent down. We don't own the house, necessarily. We own it, just the way the bank owns your house when you have a mortgage, right. But we're never getting calls from the city for law for Tallgrass. We're not getting calls about the maintenance issues or whatever. We don't have to worry that they didn't, you know, they left and they didn't finish their contract like it's a mortgage and if they if they don't pay their if they don't pay their mortgage, then we will foreclose we can foreclose on them.   Michael: Yep, interesting and so that like when you place these tenants into the home, there's a recorded sale that happens and so you're literally just playing bank, interesting…   Mike: Yep, just playing bank. Yeah, because we both had rentals, both of us and like I said, rental they're awesome but there's just a different level of responsibility for us playing the bank than then playing landlord and that's just what we're choosing to do. We both of us have rentals and it's, it's awesome. I rentals have been fantastic for me. It's just, it's not what we're doing now and we were just like, gonna get rid of the rentals and just wholesale. That's it but then this model presented itself, somebody we mutually knew in the industry is kind of like, hey, I'm doing this and they're doing it in Texas and it works down there too. I don't know that it would work in Los Angeles or San Diego or I don't know that it would probably not as well because the house prices but if you have house prices that you can get a house in a nice in these are like safe blue county collar neighborhoods, we're not talking about like war zones, but by any means I wouldn't buy a house there but in a nice blue collar brick ranch neighborhood, if you can get a house between 50 and 150,000. It could work when they start getting up to a half a quarter of a million, it just doesn't work as well anymore. You can't, the numbers don't work out.   Michael: Okay, okay. Good to know and just out of curiosity, I mean, how many folks end up refinancing out of your mortgage and then truly then own the house versus how many what percentage defaults or you have to go through that?   Mike: Really good question. We started doing this, like, eight months ago. So okay, I don't know, we don't have a loop. Yeah, but the friend of ours who kind of introduced this concept to us. He said about half of them refi out. Very few defaults, very few defaults because it's home, you know, people it's their home, right? They don't default, like they do necessarily on a lease, because it's not as transient. So according to him very few defaults. But we also screen people pretty well to like you would with a rental, like we're not just letting anybody in there, right? If they clearly have a pattern of defaulting on everything they've ever done, we could expect to default to we're not special but people have certain circumstances where their credit cut takes a pretty good hit but it's you know, it's something that is understandable, or it has a you know, story behind it. That makes sense. So I'm not expecting a lot of defaults, how many people will refi out? You know, our plan is to be a little bit more proactive with helping them with credit repair right now, we're not really getting involved in that but I suspect as we do get more involved with helping with that, that the number of people who actually refi out will probably go up, you know, so I don't really know right now how that's gonna go down. We'll see, we'll see how that goes. I don't know. Sure…   Michael: Okay, we'll have to have you back in 24 months to see. See what that looks like…   Mike: For sure, for sure.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Mike, let's shift gears here just for a moment and talk about wholesaling because, I mean, like you were mentioning a bit ago, it's no surprise that deals are a bit tougher to come by today. I think in the industry as a whole it's probably no surprise that wholesalers don't have the best reputation out there. Yeah, so I mean, I have I'm going to share kind of my thoughts on I think what makes you different but curious to get your thoughts and share with our listeners, me what makes you different as a wholesaling company and then what are some things that people can do to protect themselves from the not so great actors out there who are wholesalers?   Mike: The problem with wholesaling and the reason why it can get a bad name Is it is it is advertised and when I say advertised, I mean if you go out on the internet and say how do you become a wholesaler? Should I be a wholesaler? It's billed to people as this no money, no experience and that's how you get started in the industry…   Michael: And no risk…   Mike: Yeah, no risk. You get this, like, this mentality of this person who thinks they're just gonna roll out of bed open up their eyes, and money's gonna pour through the windows of their house if they're a wholesaler and it's not true, obviously. So you asked me what I do that makes me different. Here's what anyone can do to make their business different, but it doesn't it's not, you know, just for wholesaling but you have to run it like a business and a lot of wholesalers are very transactional in their thinking. They only care about the cheque they're getting next they don't care about future checks. They don't care about consistency, or predictability of their of their business and so they treat wholesaling, like this little dirty act they have to do before the real serious business comes along and in the reason why a lot of wholesalers get this bad reputation also is because there's something called daisy chaining in real estate, and most real, most wholesalers I'm doing air quotes if you guys aren't watching.   The reason most wholesalers or a lot of wholesalers have this reputation is they're not really wholesalers as much as they are what's called daisy chains and a daisy chain er is okay I'm a wholesaler I market to sellers I go into a seller's home. I create rapport and trust and in understanding of what's happening. I get a purchase agreement with them and I take that purchase agreement and I market it out to the other real estate investors in my community and some person who sees this takes the pictures, they take the text, and they mark up the price and then they send it out to a bunch of people, a lot of times a lot of the same people at a higher price and it's like called them and so you call them and you say, hey, I'll take it because you didn't see my marketing, you saw their marketing for whatever reason, you say, I'll take it. They don't even know me and I don't know them. But they're representing that they have this this deal under contract and meanwhile, I'm working with my buyers and I come to an agreement with a buyer and then this person calls me who's was also marketing up my contract and says, hey, I want to buy that house and I go, I've already sold it. Well, he's already told his buyer that they can have it for that price. But I already sold it because I have it under contract. Now he has to go back to the buyer and say, sorry, we have to back out of this deal, right and so it looks like a wholesaler is a really bad business person, bad guy, dishonest, whatever, misrepresenting himself, but he never had the deal and so that happens that's runs rampant. That's a real epidemic in the wholesaling world. So you also asked me, How do you tell the difference or how do you how do you avoid the bad ones?   The first question is that because I get people who send me deals, and frankly, I'll look at them if some other wholesaler finds a deal, and they were they offer it out at a price that my company might be able to land contract that house and we want to buy it, we'll do it. So the first question I asked them is, do you have this under contract yourself or are you representing somebody else and a lot of times they do and sometimes they don't? Sometimes they say they do and I say good. Then before I would buy this, I would need to see the agreement between you and the seller, your company in the seller, what's the name of your company, and I verify this stuff because if they don't have it under contract, I don't even care if they say, yeah, it's not me. But the guy who has under contracts a good friend of mine, and he gave me exclusive rights. I want to talk to who has entered a contract always deal with the person who has an order contract with the seller, with the seller, right? All right, that's, that's key. That's huge and we don't, we don't allow daisy chaining, we don't ever allow people to market out our deals, we only market them out and so all of our buyers know, we've told them several times, if someone if we're marketing a house and you see the same house being marketed by someone else, believe me when I tell you, they're not authorized to do that, they will never be able to sell it to you. So and as a wholesaler, I always make sure that I'm dealing with the end buyer, not a middle person, right? So if someone comes to us, though, and says, hey, I've got a buyer, and they're gonna, they'll pay you this much money and it makes sense for us. We'll give them a check like, well, we'll compensate them for bringing that buyer. But we're not going to we're not going to be what's going to be all transparent, we're going to let everyone know what's happening and so transparency in the wholesale process is important between us as the wholesalers and the buyers total transparency. Now, I'll say something that your audience may not love. There is not total transparency between us and the seller and does that mean that we're lying to them? No, it's not it doesn't. But here's what I always tell people to illustrate my point. Nobody loves or trusts me more than my mother, nobody.   My mom has heard me explain what I do as a wholesaler 1000 times and she has been all ears like she's could not be more dialed in to hurts her baby boy and what he does, and she's so proud and so happy and she's listening intently. But if you call my mom and put her on the air right now and said, Could you please explain to me what your son does? How he does it? She wouldn't know she might even tell you. I'm a realtor. She just doesn't know. It doesn't make sense to her. It's just it's too obscure. Right? So when we're in a seller's home, we don't say to them, Mr. Mrs. Seller, I know you're under a lot of duress. You have to move maybe there was a death or divorce or whatever there was right? Something happened in your life is spiraling. Here's the deal. I want to sign a contract, saying that I'm gonna buy your house, but I'm not buying it. I don't even know who's gonna buy it. I don't know where the money is coming from. I don't know who's gonna show up at closing. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna be able to close. Can we sign the deal now? It nobody would say yes. Okay and that's an a character characterization of what a wholesaler does. But on some level, it's facetious, but it's sort of true, right? I'm signing a contract. I don't exactly know who's going to buy it. In my case as a wholesaler and what I think makes what I do ethical is I have the financial backing to buy any house that I put under contract. If worst comes to worst, I can buy it right and that's not that doesn't come in the beginning. new investors don't always have that luxury. But what you can do as an investor and where you can be transparent and you should be transparent is do not sign a contract and imply or explicitly state that you will for sure be closing on the house without exception, you can't say that in most cases.   So what I say is some version of this, Mister seller, when I came here I was prepared to offer you $100,000 for your house, that was the highest number that I was authorized to offer you, you cannot go below 110,000 That is your lowest, that's the number. That's the gap, right… You want 110 minimum, and I was maximum allowed to offer you 100 but here's what I would like to suggest. Let's sign the contract for 110. Okay, I'm gonna go back to my investors and people who make decisions and help me buy these houses and I am going to see if there is interest at that price, I anticipate that there is not going to be but there very well could be but at the very least, if you can give me two weeks to talk to my investors and go to bat for you, and try to make them understand now that I'm here, I see this house is very nice. I didn't know is this nice but it is a very nice house. I think I can get this done but give me two weeks and I will come back to you in two weeks or less by the way and I'll tell you one of two things either, we can't pay 110 and so we need to rip this contract up and just part as friends, because we all knew that that was a possibility or we're going to move forward at this price and everything is good and I guarantee you will close. Okay, can if you couldn't give me two weeks. Now, if you don't want to do that, I totally get it. If you go to a realtor, they're going to want you to sign it like a three month contract where they get three months to market your house. I just want two weeks and if it takes me two days, I'll come back in two days. Either way, I'll be totally honest with you and it will be up to you what we do from that point we rip up the contract or not. It's totally up to you. Is that? Is that something that you can live with just for a week or two and nine times out of 10? They say yes. Now, when I when I go out now I am going out to my buyers and I'm saying hey, I got this this opportunity who's interested, right? If I get crickets and it's like, nope, nope, nope.   Then usually we'll try to figure out what our buyers would pay, right? That's the next question. Okay, you don't want it? It's fine. But what would you pay for this and we start getting that feedback and so we can go back to the seller and say, listen, I was right. 100,000 is the best we can do but I'm totally willing to rip up this contract because you want 110 or we can talk about a reduction or, or the or we get buyers that are like, yeah, I'll do it for that price. That's great, right and it's a little better than we thought and we go back and tell the seller, hey, if we go out to our buyers, and we find out that 110 is a really good price for us still, we'll still make the money we thought we were going to make we always go back and say we'll honor the 110 because I think that's the question I would be thinking in my mind if I'm listening to this interview? Well, what happens if they get really great offers? Do they still always go back and try to get that lower number? No, we don't. If we can make what we thought we would make or pretty close to it, we'll pay a higher price, right? We're, my goal here is to get to heaven not to make an extra $5,000, right. So I'm not trying to be a bad guy. But the key is the ethical wholesalers versus not the ethical ones, prepare the seller for the potential for a renegotiate or a cancellation up front and so when we go back, how often are they irate because we come back and say, hey, we can't do the 110. Almost never, because we very thoroughly explain what we're doing and we prepare them that we may have to come back and discuss the reduction or cancellation. The people honestly, they just want clarity.   They just want to know what's going to happen. What people get mad about are surprises. So when you say oh, great 110 done deal. I can't wait to close with you in a few weeks. This is so exciting and then you come back in three days and say we have to cancel the contract. They're mad 100% of the time, because they weren't you're not clear on what was happening. You surprise them with bad news and nobody likes being surprised with bad news but when you come back and say, hey, remember when we talked a week ago and I said this? Well, we can't do the 110. You know, we tried nine times out of 10 they're totally fine and honestly, seven times out of 10. They say well, what can you do and then we have that discussion. So, man, it's all about setting expectations.   Michael: Yes, 1000 times yes, as funny as you were going through kind of your pitch. I was like, Oh yeah, like that makes sense. That's such a different, like feeling that I got as you were giving as you were giving that Spiel than what I was expecting or than what I've experienced with wholesaler. So I mean, kudos to you and your team. It's clearly it's clearly working for you, so keep up keep up the great work.   Mike: Well, honestly, we have gotten deals, where and I know that sounds cliche, but I swear to you, this happens all the time and it we only know that when people tell us right so my guess is it happens more than we even know but we get deals where they got a higher offer from another wholesaler. But because we come in and we are professional, and we do address their concerns, but we wholesaling is not really about buying houses. It's about solving problems and again, sounds cliche, totally true. You can figure out what their pain point is and you can focus on that the sale of the house is secondary and I know that because we've had sellers tell us listen, we had somebody come along and offer us more than you guys, but we're not going to sell to them, we're going to sell to you because we believe you, we believe what you're saying and we like working with you. So professionalism matters and just to illustrate that point, underline it real quickly, one of our reps went into a house one time, and he was talking to a seller and they were going through the whole thing, it was like halfway through the meeting, and then knock on the door, and the seller says, oh, I forgot.   There's another investor or another, whatever. They call them coming in another person who wants to look at my house and my rep was like, oh, okay, and he kind of stood aside and a guy came in, my rep looked outside, and he saw the guy was driving a Mercedes, nothing wrong with that Mercedes fine but he left it running. He was wearing a suit, he came into the house, briefly said hello, and started walking around, pointing out all the flaws in the house, this is all this has to be replaced. That's no good. Nobody wants that and he shot a number at her with what he would pay and said, think about it and he got in his car and left. Like, everything that guy said, that wasn't verbal screamed, you are not that important to me. I'm way too big of a deal for you and I don't even have time to turn my car off. That's how little I think about what is your situation. I'm just telling you what I need and what I want and what I'll give you and I'm out of here, right and understandably, the seller was floored. She's like, that was the rudest thing I've ever seen, like, that was awful. I feel so like, offended by that. Yeah and of course, my rep was like, yeah, I would be offended too, right. Like, I agree with you. They're horrible. We're great. Let's get back to talking about how great we are. So it matters, like paying attention to their pain points, and not being all about the number. If you start talking about price right off the bat, you can almost guarantee you're not gonna buy the house. Yeah, if you start by listening, and addressing their problems, and let the sale be last. It'll work out for you much, much better.   Michael: I love it, I love it, I love it. Mike, we could go on, I think probably for days talking about this stuff but I want to be very respectful of your time and get you out here. For anyone that wants to learn more about you, your processes your business, where's the best place for them to do that?   Mike: Yeah, thank you for that by the way, I appreciate it. The best place to get a hold of me would be at my on my website, https://www.mikesimmons.com/ . If you go on mikesimmons.com, you can find anything about me and also my podcasts. I have a podcast called just out real estate. You can find the link to that on my on my website as well.   Michael: Right on…   Mike: Which you were on right, you were my guest.   Michael: We had a lot of fun.   Mike: Yeah, we did.   Michael: Well, Mike, thank you again for coming on and sharing so much wisdom with our listeners really appreciate it and I'm sure we'll chat soon, man. I look forward to it.   Mike: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.   Michael: Likewise, talk soon.   All right, everyone. That was our show a big thank you to Mike for coming on. Super, super insightful stuff. I learned a ton about the wholesaling business and wholesalers in general, and some really great questions that we as investors can be asking wholesalers to protect ourselves from the downside. So as always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your episodes, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

Brandon Schwab is based in Chicago where he specializes in boutique assisted living. Brandon who is, founder, and CEO of Shepherd Premier Senior Living and Boutique Senior Living Fund had experienced first-hand the deficient care of his grandfather at a large, industrial-type senior living facility, he vowed to make improvements in the industry by starting his own senior living company that provides better, quality care to the elderly. It seems that parts of the US are significantly under-served with this class of product. To learn more or to connect with Brandon tune in to today's podcast and you can set up a time to speak with him directly. Brandon talks about his unique business model of syndicating small senior living assets. Episode Link: https://boutiqueseniorlivingfund.com/ wwww.shepherdpremierseriorliving.com www.brandonschwab.com   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by Brandon Schwab, who is going to be talking to us about how he's turning the senior living facility industry upside down. So let's get into it…   Brandon Schwab, what's going on, man? Thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I appreciate you coming on.   Brandon: Hey, man, this year is awesome, man. Thank you for having me.   Michael: Oh, of course and I think we're gonna have a lot of fun today, talking about senior living, which is I don't think we've ever covered this topic on the show before. So I'm super excited.   Brandon: Never…?   Michael: I don't think ever I don't think ever and shame. I know, I know, I know. Shame on us, that's our bad but give us the quick and dirty. We're gonna get into senior living in just a minute. Give us we can do it, who you are, where do you come from and what is it that you're doing in real estate today?   Brandon: Down and dirty… I've been in Crystal Lake Illinois. For 35 years, I am 40. I've got two kids I got in real estate in 2010. But back before that, I actually opened up our own company at the age of about 15 years old. I did that for 14 years, until I figured out quickly that I didn't actually own anything. I thought I owned something the whole time. But I found out at the end, I didn't actually own any assets. So therefore, I  didn't actually have anything to own to actually have up for sale. So I got into this industry in 2010. After I got crushed after 2008 happened. I at the age of 15. I was cleaning cars in RVs for 14 years and I thought I was crushing it doing there. I was taking home 200 220,000 per year but I was probably working 7080 hours per week. So like wholesaling back in 2010. Because I was like dude, I got paid like $200 for each car and probably about 500 for each RV. So like wholesaling in our first deal was like $1,000 I was like, do you know that would take me like 40 hours just to like, even come close to that and I said I have to get into that business. So that's it, man, it's awesome. Fast forward to today I am changing the industry for how the elderly are taking care of totally upside down.   Michael: That's wait. So you're putting elders on their head? I don't think is that is that good for them?   Brandon: We obtained we are changing the whole and we're changing the whole industry of how everyone thinks of it because typically, if you think of the older industry, right? You think of 100 to 200 type with a ton of elderly in there, right? Tons of them, right and they typically have a pretty terrible odor and the odor isn't very good. It's the odor because people don't get any help and then there's also the atmosphere of everyone asking for help because the average caregiver has to care for 20 to 30 people. I don't know on you, but we are in the top country in this whole entire and if that's how we care for the elderly, I feel like we didn't do things properly and they have to be totally turned upside down because how they're currently doing it isn't able to operate. I had a thing happen in our family back in 2004 where there was a person in our family who was 85 who ended up in a place for 200 beds and we pulled the pull cord to have people come in there to help them and it took them 10 minutes 15 minutes by 20 minutes like I'm getting like pretty irritated by 25 minutes like I just lose my shit and I go out to get a them to help them and I can't say I handled it all that well because I kind of exploded but like that's how I was first exposed and it turns out that's actually common to how the industry is able to operate and I said that's terrible. I hate this industry, hate it, hate it hate it.   They bought 10 years after that I was down in Florida and I got exposed to a five a home that had five people in it and I was like what is this? You know at the time I had 23 homes in our total I began build In our portfolio in 2012, and by the end of 12, I had 23 homes and I had, I thought I kind of had everything figured out. Well, at the end of 14, I'm in this house down in Florida and I'm doing each one of these like arms kind of crossed, because I'm just looking at the place and I go, What is this? I haven't ever seen a home before that is it was probably a 2800 foot house. There was houses on each side, probably 10 or 12 feet from the house and I was just like, What is this because typically as I would go down to Florida, Kelly's dad would play his piano in the old folks home 328 times per year for 35 bucks and I hated going because it was typically in these huge in the elderly in the odor was just terrible and I was just like, if we can get out of that, is there anything that I can do that I don't have to actually, and I would offer to like cook to clean all of that just so I didn't have to go? Thank God, I didn't I didn't have any option because I was ill put this house and I was like, What is this? This is cool. It's it didn't have any odor. It had this awesome atmosphere and I was just like, how have I been in?   How have I been investing in assets and I don't have any clue what this is and I asked the girl in charge, and I said, hey, how much do these people pay to be here and I threw out a figure of like 1500 or $2,000 in this girl did this hurt? Like her eyes came down here and like this girl's answer was like, and just kind of kept on walking and I was like, Kelly, what the hell was that answer? She didn't even answer me. So I ended up calling her and the girl goes, Brandon, I am sorry, I thought that you were only kidding because they begin at $5,200 a month, what times five people I'm like, that's $26,000 and every home that I had all 23 Our highest was like $2,200 per month and our average was like 18 and I said holy crap that one house with five people in it was outperforming every house that I had two times each month. And I was like, I'm in the I have to get into that business and by the time I was able to come home, I found a house in a town of 832 people and it was the house was 4880 feet on three acres. So like we bought it for 250 and put $550,000 into it right over the top. I got this house full by February of 17 and we were gross and 55,000 of income within a cost of the expenses of like 30 to 32,000 a month. So this house was jam on month, one month, one house, we were changing the industry to and offered this cool option that people have never heard of.   Michael: So you're netting like 20 grand a month on this place.   Brandon: Per house, yes and I have homes that are 1015 and 20 each home. So that's the that's the entry level for us, is 10, so…   Michael: I mean, okay, I've like speeches, I have so many questions. So I've got to imagine caring for the elderly. This is a very medically intensive, medically heavy industry and so talk to us a little bit about how do you how do you get into this industry because I think there's so many barriers to medical and then care and I could go on but tell us how you how you got started.   Brandon: So when I got going, I had everything in the to open up the house, right, I was able to open it. I even got the first two or three people in there, right and when I quickly got past like two or three people, I quickly figured out that I didn't really have the experience to operate them, right. So I was doing what I was trying to do to get the house full was I was calling on churches, in particularly wanting to talk to the head of each church. Now, I found out quickly that churches are hard to call on because they don't ever answer and they don't tend to call you back but I finally got one and I called in I was talking to the church pastor and honestly, I think he felt terrible for me because he's like, Brandon, you aren't so good at this like this is this isn't going to be your thing, right? So like he goes Brandon, hi god, their closest friend was in health care for 38 years. She just retired in in. She was getting kind of anxious to like go in to do things. So they introduced me and she was in health care industry for 38 years I ended up taking You're out to eat every Tuesday for about six months and I finally got her on our team, I got her to invest, but I had her in charge of operations and that was back in 2015. So I basically was able to open up homes, but I quickly figured out that I needed a team of experts to actually operate them. So after I had her in, it was in 2015, I kind of had her handle the ops and I focus on opening up homes.   Michael: That is wild. So at the beginning, before you brought her up, where I mean, were you there at the home, cooking, cleaning, doing all that kind of stuff yourself?   Brandon: No, I only had to go there when people didn't come in. So there was a handful of times where a person called in, and I had to go in there. That wasn't very fun and I quickly figured out I need to have things in place that that isn't going to ever happen over because I found out quickly that I am not very good when it comes to cleaning and taking care of people I quickly said, you know, I had to get out early. So I found people, I did have to cover a handful of shifts and I did call in for help because there were some things I just couldn't do.   Michael: I can imagine, I can imagine. So when you're looking at properties, I mean, this first property, what about it kind of jumped out at you and said, Hey, this, this is a good candidate or a good prospect to purchase, you know, for this type of business.   Brandon: So when I was down in Florida, I saw a five bed house in the five bed house was great. But the five bed house wasn't. It was geared for like an owner operator, a person that was in a health care field and I quickly figured out that that wasn't going to be us that I couldn't do that personally. So I decided to exercise. So I was looking for a first floor house, it was like 5000 feet, first floor 5000 feet. That's hard to find. So when I came back home, I thought that they'd be everywhere because down in Florida, there's 1800 of these homes. California has 2800 out there close to you, I think Arizona has 3000, Texas has 15,000 back by us. There's 55 by five, so I said…   Michael: And when you say when you say these homes, you mean like single family homes in neighborhoods that are being used for senior care facilities.   Brandon: So I am talking about homes that are caring for the elderly under 10 people. It is under 15 people per home.   Michael: Okay, All right. So you had 55 in your market…?   Brandon: 55 not in and there's 18 in all of Florida, and there was only 55 here, right and I said, that's bingo. Perfect I'm in, so that's how I first jumped in but a thing a thing that happened is when I first got in, there wasn't a ton of other people out there doing this. So I had to kind of go teach people this concept. So the healthcare part was definitely challenging but the houses that I was trying to find where four to 5000 feet, first floor only our first house, it was on three acres. It was a financial planner that I purchased that bought our debt built in office on to his house. So I had to open things up, I ended up putting 550,000 into the first house. So I had four private bedrooms, and I had three bedrooms for two people each. So for privates, and then I had three for two. So I had a total of 10. Did I go over, did I go overboard? Absolutely but I feel like if you're going to do anything, you have to do it how it ought to and I put three ADA A's on the inside for people to go to the psych bathroom, I only had to have only one and I had 380 access points to get into the house and out of the house and we just did everything over the top. So that's how I first got in and then beyond that house, it was harder to find that type of house over. So fast forward to today I've got five homes up and operating. I got two homes opening up in quarter three this year. And then in 2000 are in I also have 7.2 acres of land that I bought before COVID that I was going to put our own homes on.   Michael: This is incredible. So what is the financing look like for these homes? I mean, can you go to a bank and say hey, I want the purchase. I want to purchase it at 20 and I want you to give me a line of credit for the construction for the rehab. I mean who's financing this type of stuff…   Brandon: I had a chance, dude when I went in there to talk to these guys, they thought I had like, they couldn't get it. These guys are used to like, easy, typical type deals, when I told them that, that I was going to 10 people each paying 5000 to 5500. Each month, their heads literally exploded. They're like, Hey, man, why don't you come back after you do your first house? Then I'll talk to you and I was able to do that and they're like, hey, why don't you come back when you have two houses and then at that, at that part, I am like, you know, I don't think I'm going to actually go ask him for anything anymore. But like, that's how it happens. So a thing that I do for financing is I actually brought in private capital, from investors on a per L for each home and that's, that is how we did, I had to offer some pretty high IRR hours. But when you're first getting things going, that is your only option and a thing that I found that I was really good at is when I was buying properties, I was buying like oddball type properties, not the typical like three to 2200.   So I was buying houses that were on properties that the typical family at the time weren't trying to buy, right. So I was buying houses that were on the app on the MLS for 200 days, 400 days, 500 days and what I would do is I would give them an offer for them to carry back financing at the full asking price. Or I would give them an offer for cash but the cash offer was like so like 50% and a lot of times I was just using that cash offer to help prop up the other offer but I've had a handful of times where when I was putting in those two offers, they would take the other one. So I bought one house off the MLS one time that was on for 2.4 million. I bought that for 750 cash and other time I bought one in Connecticut that was on the MLS for 2.1 million. I bought that one for 700,000.   Michael: Okay, you are not kidding, those cash offers 30, that's incredible a budget you're solving for someone's like, that's…   Brandon: Yeah, those are offers that as I was able to have them in I thought no ways anyone can ever take this off or like they are going to be like, click just kiss but they took him because our other offer was 1.8 million owner carry back financing and they just didn't take but that was probably only 30% of our upfront portfolio. The other ones, I've had them take the owner offer carrying back financing. So that so that is how we did hazing.   Michael: And then you bring in investor capital to do the rehab, whatever upgrades you need. Yep, amazing.   Brandon: Yes, sir.   Michael: So like, when you're looking at properties, there's got to be at Imagine zoning limitations or requirements or local licensures that you need to get what, like, what should people be on the lookout for or how should someone be thinking about those?   Brandon: Well, anyone that's thinking of getting into this themselves and having people operate it themselves, I would tell you don't do it. It is something that I casually got into it thinking that I could just figure it out and it's been one of the most challenging things I've done, where it's taken me eight years, open up five houses and it's challenging. But as I would look for houses, I would look for houses in an area where the household income, the average was over 80,000 and then one of the things that I would do is I would go to the population and I would look for a population of in each town over 65 years of age, I would look for like 10 to 12% plus, anything that was up over hire, that was awesome. I did buy the 7.2 acres of land, all of our first five homes, they're in towns where it's like, you know, 10 to 20 or 10 to 18% over the age right. And then the town that I bought this dirt in for 7.2 acres, we paid 220,000 per acre but it is located directly next to a Dell property.   That's that is 5500 homes that are all 55 plus. So our percentage of over 65 in this town of 26,000 people is 32% Wow. Let's go. All of us purchase that. Before COVID. We were finishing that we got through entitlements, we were going to build six homes, 20 beds each and in office, it was gonna cost us $15.5 million. We had the all of that done, we even had a closing in place for a family office down in Florida, actually to give us a 10 $10.86 million at 12% and they were going to close March 13 2020. We were going to begin pushing dirt April 1, 2020. If you think back to the time, a little COVID pandemic entered into this plan, and the family office were two guys that were probably in their 70s or 80s themselves that earned a bulk of their family office capital from offices and they were in the class a office industry, right and they were trying to take cash out of that inputted into any other asset class and they ended up pulling out two days before closing. Yeah, because they were having tenants that GSA weren't paying. So it wasn't ideal, the overall timing of it, but our things have changed where we aren't building today because cost the build is just too high, where we are holding off until that cost comes back down and we are doing other things today that that fit what is going on.   Michael: Okay, you should have told those guys look, you'll get a free room and board. Just give me the money. I'll build you a spot.   Brandon: I was trying. It just wasn't great timing. I was like, what COVID? Come on. That's fine. It was just too early for us to have any clue. So yeah, unfortunately, they passed but I'm gearing things today now to try to build those connections up with those guys, because a ton of those guys have capital galore. So much dry powder that's just sitting, where if they can find an asset class that is out there that can help the elderly that can help give them awesome IRR that's going to top inflation and also help have a tangible asset. That's what they are looking for today. I think the days where people earn in 200% 300% Kryptos those days are kind of over for some time now, where people are looking for tangible assets today and I have this, so…   Michael: That is amazing and so these houses, I would imagine they serve three meals a day, and they've got all the medical care and there's like it's like a proper business like you would expect to see if you went to a traditional elder care facility, you would have all those same amenities and sounds like and then more, right…   Brandon: So a thing that's different for us for a for every home that has 10 Total people in it, I have a caregiver to every five to eight, five to eight total people compared to the other. The other competition has a caregiver every 1520 to 30 people. That's the thing that causes the old the overall odor. So in a home for 10 total people, I've got two caregivers in there from 7am till 10pm and then I've got a RN that comes in in the am and in the evening just to have eyes on everybody and then I have… that comes each week or as he has to write. So I offer everything in a home that is very cozy that other places have in 100 to 200 type building. Now, with that being said, it's actually harder for us to be as efficient as everyone else. As I only have 458 homes, I actually need like 1020 3040 80 homes to actually have things be efficient. So I'll tell you 10 Plus, under 10, it's hard to be efficient and that's a thing that keeps other people from being able to get into this overall industry or if they do get in there.   They're the owner operator that owns a home or to homes but they're in it every day going 80 hours per week probably profiting 250 to 400,000 per year, but they're busy and I said you know I can't do that I'm going to operate a company that I can expand, to have time to go do other things. You know, I've our oldest is 14 years old and I openness that I could have time to coach him, right and I have been able to coach him playing baseball just since he was eight years old and that's only possible because everything here so time free is…   Michael: That's amazing, Brandon. I think my last question for you. I mean, I have a million more, let's be honest but we gotta keep this within time. How do you insure the thing, is it like us traditional long term rental? Is it insured like a medical office? I mean, what does that look like?   Brandon: Yeah, so the insurance is going to, you're going to have insurance on the overall asset but then you also have to have extra, the extra insurance for operating it for E and O for if anything is able to happen, if anyone's able to get hurt all of that. That's typically about $800 Each house each month but a thing for us, though, is because I haven't had any issues. Over the past eight years, we haven't had any, any type claims, whereas you're in a home with only 10 people, if you offer on if you offer awesome care, they don't tend to have any issues and that's what's awesome on this because typically at the other places for 100 to 200. They have a they've got a caregiver to every 20 to 30 people because the owners are trying to get it to earn extra money. The only avenue to do that is either to push up your income or to cut your expenses. That's the only thing to change the actual NOI. So what they typically do is they cut the care giver item, which is going to an increase the NOI. However, when people are able to have issues and they are able to pass, then you have their families, a attorneys after you and they're pissed, telling everyone how terrible you are. I always feel that it is better to do things how they ought to be done upfront, even if it's harder, because everything that I'm able to do is harder. Like this isn't easy by any means I would tell you, it takes you getting to like home tend to like really cover the overhead. The overhead I found to truly operate this properly, is over 500,000 per year and in order to pay for that you need enough houses paying towards that, to don't have each house covered in too much expenses that they just can't cover, so…   Michael: That makes total sense. Big numbers…   Brandon: Big numbers.   Michael: Yeah, awesome Brandon, this was so much fun, man. If people want to learn more about you reach out with additional questions. What's the best way for them to do that?   Brandon: They can they can call me or text me. So on my phone, you can call me at 815-790-2330 or else you can call our office of 847-380-8624, yes, 847-380-8624.   Michael: Amazing and do you have a website that people can check out as well?   Brandon: I do for our fund but our fund isn't for everyone or funds only for a for investors that are a core they are qualified purchasers. So it's a tear a BB it's a 506 C they can check that out their shepherd, our operating company, I can get you the page to put in there. So it is well just for anyone to put eyeballs on our actual homes or our fund is https://boutiqueseniorlivingfund.com/   Michael: Awesome.   Brandon: That is that as well, man. Thanks for taking time to talk with us today, man. This has been awesome!   Michael: It has been a pleasure, I am sure we'll be in touch soon and take care.   Okay, everyone, that was our show a big thank you to Brandon for coming on super, super interesting topic that like I showed at the beginning of the show. I don't think we've ever had someone on the show talking about this topic, so really interesting. Definitely go check out Brandon's fund, and it's an interesting asset class. See where it goes from here. As always, thanks so much for watching or listening, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

Dana Dunford is the CEO of Hemlane Property Management and a real estate investor. In today's episode we discuss market conditions, interest rates, what is happening in the stock market, and what the current moment means for real estate investors. If you are wondering if it is the right time to purchase an investment property, you will want to listen to this episode. Links: Hemlane.com --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The remote real estate investor podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by Dana Dunford, co founder and CEO of Hemlane Property Management. And today Dana is gonna be talking to us about the state of the economy and some things that investors should be aware of and thinking about as we move forward in today's market. So let's get into it.   Dana Dunford, welcome back again to The Remote Real Estate Investor. Thanks for coming on and hanging out with me.   Dana: Great. Thanks for having me. Again, Michael.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, it is such a pleasure. You are great friend of the pod. Great friend of Roofstock. For those who might not be familiar with you give us the Quick, quick and dirty background of who you are. And background on yourself.   Dana: Yeah, so I'm Dana Dunford. I'm here in San Francisco. So just right across the bridge from rootstock. I have been in technology for gosh, now we're going on 18 years. So I'm a tech veteran, which we'll be talking about tonight, today, which I'm excited about. And on top of that, I'm in property management. So we're a tech platform for property management, and partner of Roofstock's. And we've seen what has been going on since q1, the market softening things changing in technology. So I think this is going to be a great call, because both Roofstock and Hemlane have seen it firsthand. And hopefully this gives some insight into what, what the upcoming year is going to look like for all real estate investors out there.   Michael: Totally. And just to give some people, some additional color, you are CEO, co founder of Hemlane, and you just did your series A, what was it q3 of 2021 or q4 of 2021?   Dana: Q4, so we raised at the perfect timing, those who are not in venture and the tech world of Silicon Valley. We couldn't have timed it better. You know, right now, and we'll talk about this today. Right now, the market is really softening. There's just less capital going into startups. We can't say this was people were already predicting this. So back in q3, and q4 venture capitalists were already saying, Ooh, there's a lot of money pouring into this valuations are really high. And some had already started pulling back. But it wasn't until what happened in the public markets, where you know, trillions of dollars were taken out of these Sass companies, valuations are overall the market cap, that suddenly the venture world that trickled down and people really started to pull back capital. So yeah, we raised back then roofstock, when was your guys's last raise? Because you guys are at a later stage. And so obviously, also impacted by this and quite, potentially, more significantly than us.   Michael: I think we got our term sheet squared away in in q4, as well. So right around that same perfect timing with money getting wired in coming in and in q1.   Dana: Yeah, perfect. So you guys will be able to weather the storm with that what we're going to be talking about soon here.   Michael: Yep, absolutely. I'm thinking so. Okay, so let's talk about how, like, how did we get here, because you're mentioning that trillions of dollars have been essentially taken off the table in terms of market cap. But for those people that aren't familiar with the space that haven't maybe been following along as closely, what like, where are we today? And can you give us some insight and background as to how you think we got here?   Dana: Yeah, so first of all, I believe most people on this podcast today listening are real estate investors. And so all of you hopefully got in when interest rates were super low, just artificially low, right? We never seen interest rates below 3% for so long. And one that was fantastic for real estate, right? You could get a rental properties at afford a higher price because your interest rate is much lower your loan. And then for startups and for companies money was much more free it was much more flowing. What we ended up seeing happen which most people predicted this would happen. But no one knew when or at least I haven't heard of any economists who knew this was going to happen exactly. We're in March, but we started seeing the inflation go through the roof, you know, 8.6%. And it's been consistent where we have seen the inflation rate really, really high.   And so the only way for the Fed to essentially combat that was obviously, to increase interest rates, which we are all seeing now are all seen in our real estate itself, doesn't mean there aren't great deals out there. So Mike, like, do you want us to talk about that, because I still think there's great deals out there that you guys have on the platform, and now could be a really good time to buy. So don't let that taint your decision of whether or not you should go into real estate.   But with that, as you know, when the Fed raises interest rates, consumer spending just goes down, that will probably people will spend less, and also things are more expensive. And so once you have that happen, the stock market's inversely correlated to interest rates. And so once interest rates went up, there was a correction in the stock market. Why it affects us on the private company side so much is Roofstock and Hemlane are both considered growth companies. And what happened was essentially, in the public markets, so any public company, there's basically two different types, there's growth, just like us, companies like Roofstock, that have gone public. And then there are value companies and the value companies are much more stable. They're based on their cash flow. They're typically larger, older companies, and their price is based on their sales. So their price is relatively low relative to sales, in companies like that, or like Bank of America, if you think about it, and RG like gas companies like very stable, steady businesses, where you're not going to see   Michael: Blue chip companies.   Dana: Yeah, your blue chip companies where you're not going to see, you know, 500% growth year over year. But what ends up happening is when the interest rates go up like that, and stocks go down, the ones that get devalued, the most are the growth stage companies. And the growth stage companies are companies like Roofstock, and heavily that are public. And so what we basically saw happen was this huge, huge cut in market cap in the public markets. And so for SAS company software as a service where you go, you pay a subscription every month to use a service, the market cap cap got cut by $1 trillion dollars from November of 2021. Until today, and so what that did was essentially, these companies thought they were worth a lot more.   And you know, some of them, like the stripes of the world, in the snowflakes had these really high revenue multiples, and suddenly, those just deteriorated. And the multiple based of what their valuation is versus their, their revenue went down. And that essentially trickled down to private companies like us as well. And so now when a company goes out to raise capital in q1, q2, primarily, now it's even, it's even worse. And what we're foreseeing in q3 is that you might have had a 10x, revenue multiple, so your valuation, it's 10x, what your revenue is, that's how it used to be.   Now you go out to a venture capitalist, and they're like, great, you're worth 3x, or 5x. So much lower valuation. And so what they're, they're expecting is a lot of down rounds, a lot of startup saying, If I can, let me just hold on to my cash, let me cut my bird, let me try to raise later and better times. And all of this impacts the economy, because it was the public markets that were hit. And now it's also the private companies where we are in Silicon Valley. And I do think this, this trickles a bit to real estate. It's it's a different type of market correction that we saw in 2008. In 2008, it was housing right and the mortgage crisis today, I think this is a lot more like the.com bubble. This is very similar to the.com bubble of these really high tech valuations that need to be corrected. And so when you think about purchasing real estate, I actually think that's why Roofstock is such a fantastic place to go. Because you're getting out of the tech scene, you're going to other markets and purchasing there.   Michael: It's so interesting. But then so I'm curious, we talk so often about in real estate that the price is only a factor, or it's only important if you're doing something with the property if you're buying selling refinancing, because otherwise you're just having a cash flow, and that often is independent of what the value is of the company, or excuse me, the property. So why does that matter? or for companies like the fact that there's the company is now worth less, unless they're trying to do something buy, sell, or refinance or raise, raise, raise capital, like, why does that matter?   Dana: So it doesn't matter for Roofstock. And it doesn't matter for Hemlane, because we just raised, we have enough capital to weather this storm. But imagine a company that raised and they had a, let's just give the case of like the stripes of the world 100x Multiple. And let's just say it's a private company, with 100x, multiple, and now they're going back out, and they're now getting a 10x. Multiple, they could have what we call a down round, where suddenly they are worth less than they were before. And that gives a lot less confidence. One the company itself, right? The amount that you're giving up as a founder, as an employee, as an existing investor, it's a lot more just to get in the same amount of capital you wanted to historically, in so what you're seeing is these companies really, really tighten the ship, and just say, Okay, we're going to stop hiring as many people, we're really going to look at our expenses. And that means there's not more money pouring into, you know, hiring 100 people every week, they're suddenly going back and thinking about who are the strategic hires, we really need? Should we be letting go? You've seen the massive tech layoffs where it's, you know, 20% of the workforce. And now suddenly, they're really tightening their books, because cash is king right? Now, you want to hold on to that cash? Because the last thing you want to do is go out and have a lower valuation.   Michael: Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense. And so talk to us a little bit about why this is affecting real estate investors or why real estate investors should even care about this that's going on?   Dana: Yeah. So I always think there's a huge opportunity when there's like the Warren Buffett, quote, right? be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. I think right now everyone's scared. And there's a lot of real estate investors, like we actually just did a survey at Hemlane, where majority were saying we're not going to purchase in the next 12 months, because interest rates have gone up we should have gotten any year ago. Well, you know, the best time to get into real estate was 10 years ago, and the next best time is today, I think there's going to be a lot of great deals out there. I think that while others are tightening up, other investors are scared, this is a time for you to be really aggressive. I mean, still looking at your pro forma and and follow your numbers. But you'll be able to find some some great deals out there.   Michael: I've heard a lot of sentiment around, you can always change your interest rate, but you can never change your purchase price. So if someone is getting into a deal today, at an interest rate that's a little bit higher than they're comfortable with. But they anticipate interest rates to come down at some point down the road. What are your thoughts there?   Dana: Yeah, you can always refinance. I mean, don't do a deal hoping that interest rates go down, and you can refinance it or fudge the numbers on your spreadsheet. This is why   Michael: I was hoping that's what you were gonna say.   Dana: Yeah, like this is I mean, this is why I'm, I'm more conservative than most in every property purchases had a fixed rate. I don't do adjustable. But I can refinance, right? So I can always refinance. But I want to know what I'm getting into. So when you do your pro forma, do it with whatever the interest rate is now and consider it a huge advantage and just like increased cash flow, if you can refinance in the future, will interest rates go back to this like artificially low rate that we saw over the past five years, maybe not. But I don't think that is a reason not to purchase now. You do your numbers, and you look at it just because you might say property values are really high interest rates are going up, now's not a good time to buy. That's just laziness. Like, honestly, that's just you being lazy and not wanting to do the work.   There's always great deals out there. You just have to do the work, find them look at the numbers and say even with this increased interest rate, it's still a great deal. I'm still cash flowing and I've got a great cap rate, and you can go ahead and purchase. So I don't think of this as the time really to, to change your decisions on real estate. And part of that has to do with I think, you know, some markets will soften. Some markets may remain flat for a while but that doesn't mean that you're not getting the cash flow and having a great investment that by the way, with inflation where it is If it continues, having an asset where the value goes up with inflation, so I still think now's a great time to purchase real estate. And you might be able to get some fantastic deals as other investors are pulling out, you can really, really go in and get those great deals.   Michael; Love it. And Dana, I'm curious if because we've seen prices go through the roof, and interest rates have also gone up significantly, there might be a bit of a lead lag measure until we see prices come down. So in in terms of looking for different markets, I mean, are you targeting markets that are continuing to grow? Are you targeting markets that maybe are seeing some of that softening in terms of pricing?   Dana: So for us, we go where the real estate investors are. So if there's a real estate investor there, right, we're going to do the property management for them. I think when you're when you're thinking about the lag, that is definitely true. I've heard this with other real estate investors, I've seen it myself, where you see a price. And with interest rates up, the seller puts one price out there, because that's what it was two weeks ago. And suddenly, it's not worth that much. It's worth like 10% 20%. Last, but it's actually really good to put yourself into the position of the seller, and of the real estate agent, because you can actually get some really, really good deals off of that.   And what I mean by it is real estate investors have always told historically, have told their buyers in the past couple of years. If your mark, if your property is on market for over two weeks, people might think there's something wrong with that. And so, you know, we're going to ask for offers on X date, right, like X date and two weeks, or maybe we'll do one week, we're going to ask for offers. Well, if they've missed priced the property, you might be able to go in and you don't know this, but you might be the only offer because they priced it way too high, because we priced it from a purchase price from two weeks ago. And now that has suddenly changed like the market changes every two weeks, it really is. And you could go in and get a great deal. And so I think from from that perspective, there are still fantastic deals out there. But you have to be patient. And some of it will be that luck, where you get the right deal, though what else has gone into, and you can go ahead and purchase that.   So if you put yourself in the other shoes, you might see that you also see a lot of people you know why I don't think it's like 2008 and 2009 is people have a lot more equity in their properties because one value values have gone up. And then two, the interest rates were really low, people could afford more put more money in the market was booming. And so what we're seeing is that more people have equity in them. And at some point, it's emotional for someone, they're like, I just want to get rid of this asset, because I'm gonna go buy another one, or I just really want to move out of the city and move somewhere else. And, you know, to them, maybe 20 To 50 to $70,000 is not a lot depending on what it is. But that is a lot to you. And that changes, changes the numbers on your spreadsheet significantly.   And so I mean, with that purchase price, obviously that matters. But just because the price is out on the market for a property doesn't mean that the price is going to sell for. And so it would be a really good time to go out and experiment with that you will know your market better than anyone else, whatever market you're in, because it will take you bidding on like five properties. And maybe people will laugh at you like your first one, you go like 20% under and they laugh at you. But maybe you get lucky on the fifth one, and you'll get a great deal. But yeah, just follow the numbers in your spreadsheet don't have a purchase price, that doesn't make sense and you're not cash flowing. Or don't change the interest rate hoping that it will go down to that to that amount.   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense. And speaking of spreadsheet numbers, are you seeing a lot of your investor clients that you work with adjusting their expectations around cash on cash returns? Now that prices and interest rates are up?   Dana: So not really I think most investors like most of the savvy ones we work with, we work with his sort of two different types of of customers, those who had properties just handed to them. And they actually never did the analysis like pan downs from parents and things like that. And then others   Michael: Accidental landlords.   Dana: Accidental Yes. And then others who are very strategic real estate investors and what we have found with them as they have the capital and they might not be they might be with inflation to your point Michael being like, Oh, maybe I should just go buy something because the dollar today is worth less On tomorrow, but no, I actually think most real estate investors are still saying, this is the deal that I got, historically, I want to get something like that. And so they're not changing those expectations on cash on cash return, but they might be going somewhere else. So they go to Roofstock, and they say, Okay, I, you know, couldn't find this property, you know, in my backyard, but on Roofstock, they do have the cash on cash return that I that I that I targeting. And so I do think they're not changing their expectations. But they are going out and finding alternative ways to get the numbers they need.   There's one case, Michael, where I find people change their expectations. And it's first time real estate investors to just get their foot in the door. And I'm actually okay with that. I think that there's too many people who, and for anyone who's listening to this, who doesn't have a real estate investment, you kind of sit there and you kind of fantasize about getting one and then you put so much like anxiety into getting your first property. And once you have your first you're like, oh, okay, that's what I got, here's what it is. And it makes it easier, where then you can go and purchase more properties and more properties. And you know, what you're looking for, and you know what the return was, and you have this process set up.   But the first one is really difficult to get into. So I find that those people today are changing their expectations, for certain metrics just to get into the market, before it's too late. Interest rates go up more, or you know, they're kind of kicking themselves that they didn't get in, you know, four years ago, five years ago. So I only think it's first time real estate investors where that's happening. And I'm actually okay with that. Because I think if you can get more people into real estate investing, and more people to just get their foot in the door, you're going to learn so much off of that first property, that then you're going to say, Okay, this was my cap rate for my first property. My next one, I have to at least have that or better and you kind of improve, you know, it's kind of like dating, you never like you don't date someone who's great. And then like the next person is like a downgrade, you kind of have the standard. And you're like, I can only go up from there. It's the same exact thing with real estate investing. So I really think it's only first time homebuyers where that happens are real estate investors for rental properties?   Michael: Yep, I think and I think that makes tons of sense. It's something that I hear all the time. It's Michael, I'm trying to get my first deal done and has to be amazing. And you know, it has to be a Grand Slam? Like? Don't worry about the grand slams, let's practice getting on base first. And then you'll know how to swing for   Dana: Exactly, exactly. And it makes it a lot easier when you have one property in that area. You know your market a bit more, and then you can kind of purchase some more around at.   Michael: Yep. Yeah, I think it makes him think that's totally right. And so Dana, we're kind of at this like crossroads where we're talking about, some investors are pressing pause on their acquisitions. And then this whole other cohort of investors are like, Oh, crap, I gotta get into the market before interest rates go up further before prices go up further. So it does feel like there's this pressure to buy or there's frenzy to buy, on the one hand, and then there's this whole other group, that's again, kind of taking a step back and saying, let's, let's wait and see what happens. How do you square those two?   Dana: Well, to me, I'm like a pretty unemotional real estate investor. And I feel like for anyone, whatever segment you fall into, you still have to go back to the numbers and see what makes sense. And so I mean, is there a right way to go? I think one people who are not going out, and they're using this as an excuse not to purchase properties, or just being lazy, honestly. And for those who are out there saying, I gotta get in and get my next deal. I think they're almost too emotional. Where they might go in and change the numbers to your point of saying, like, oh, it's not, you know, my last deal was was better than this, but I just need to get my foot in the door. Maybe that's not the right approach to have, it's, Hey, there's gonna be a deal out there. I might have to be a little bit more patient during this the for the next three to six months, I have to be patient, I have to understand what's going on.   But yeah, I just kind of go back to the numbers. I think in both cases, they're they're taking emotion and what's happening in the market and using that, like the macro for the micro. And instead of saying, You know what, I know what is a good deal, here's what it looks like on paper. Let me continue to go search until I find that and it might take you a little bit longer to find it. Or you might find a process like oh, wow, I can, you know, go 20% under and get lucky on a deal off of this, whatever the home price is, I could, you know, undercut them and give them an offer and maybe they'll take it to get that great deal.   Um, But I don't I think both categories are bad. I think someone who says I have to get my foot in the door. Before interest rates go up is emotional. I think someone who says there are no great deals out there are just lazy. And so I kind of fall somewhere in between of saying, yeah, just be financially prudent as you always should be with your real estate investment investments, know your market, know what numbers numbers you need, and make sure you're a little bit more conservative. Like, I know, a couple investors with adjustable rate mortgages that did them, you know, back when interest rates were really low. And I bet they feel pretty stupid right now. So   Michael: we won't name names,   Dana: Won't name names here.   Michael: Well, I'd be very interested to meet the the emotionally lazy person, because it sounds like those are two opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah, I have to see. Okay. And last thing that I want to ask you about is around expectations. If someone is newer to the investment space, they may be looking to get their first deal done. Everyone around them, their sister, their brother, aunts, uncles in this market are making 10% cash on cash. Yeah, pick a number. Nice round number 10%. And they're like their expectation was was 15%. Right, for whatever reason, that's what makes them tick. That's what gets them excited about an investment. Everyone around them is making 10%. So how the how should investors be thinking about not looking at other people, and just focusing on what's good for them, but also not being blind and naive to what a market is really able to produce? In terms of In other words, like, they I want someone to be excited about the returns that they're getting, but I also want them to be realistic. How do you kind of how do you?   Dana: So the biggest thing I would say to throttle that is, most likely you've sort of selected a market because you've looked at, okay, where is and I mean, Roofstock does this for you, and you guys, I think have some great shows from like every single market of why why you guys are looking at a certain market. So that helps. But you as a real estate investor are gonna say worse population growth? And why like, is more industry going there? Like maybe an Amazon facility was just put into place? Does it have fed, ed's and meds? Like, is it stable, even recession proof, especially now? So you kind of go through and figure out why am I excited about this market? And you just start there? And like, don't forget about your, I mean, 15% cash on cash return? Like, let's just forget about all of that and just go through? What looking at macro, and now we're kind of going to micro to like city level?   Why do I think this is going to be a lot a good market in five to 10 years, because you're going to hold on to these properties and purchase more, right? Do that first, then you say, Okay, this is my market, then what you're going to do is for two to three months, you're going to look at all the deals there, go on Roofstock, I think you could set up alerts because I have those that go to my email that essentially like tell you here's a new property in that market, great purchase. Um, you're gonna go through and you might the first couple of properties, say you know what? Those, those don't really hit my cash on cash return expectations, but now you're starting to know your market and you're gonna see a trend, are they going up? Are they going down? And you can look at that over time to make an unemotional decision that is based on data.   I think that is the most important thing to do. When someone gets in this frenzy of I need this cash on cash return shoot, I'm not going to get it. So I'm just going to slash it. And I'm going to say now I need, you know, seven or 8% I and you're just becoming emotional. But if you go through look at the numbers and you say okay, great, I wanted 15% You know, my friends are getting 10% I'm and you're you change those expectations. And suddenly you say, Okay, I made this decision, and here's my cash on cash return. But I knew at that time, that was the best I could do. Because I looked at the data, then suddenly you never go back and wish you had done it differently. Because you have something that is non non emotional to back you up. And don't compare yourself to other real estate investors. I've seen real estate investors in the past four to five years who've been super successful, who are super stupid.   And the reason they were successful and I hate to say that but like there's so many people out there because basically it was free money like there was so much investment it was there was so much easy money from investors that I saw way too many people also going into real estate. A lot of actually on the fix and flip side that just got lucky because yeah, money was basically free to do a fix and flip and a The home prices were going up astronomically. And they feel like they're the smartest people in the room.   Well, maybe they were at that time, but like, give it two to three months, maybe six months, and the story might change. And so that's why I think it's hard at like one point in time, if you're just getting started to compare yourself to those around you, I don't think you should do that. I think you should just be financially prudent, and make sure that you're not overextending yourself. And you know, your market. And you know why you made the decision, you see you did, and it's all based off those numbers. And it's based off the numbers, but also you need to know the market, like you need to know you guys have neighborhood scores and ratings, that kind of stuff of like, here's why I only invest in neighborhoods that have three stars, or greater, or whatever it may be like it, write all of this stuff out, and take a really methodical approach to your assets, your real estate investing, and I don't think you'll regret it. Like, I don't think you're gonna go back and say, Oh, I really wish I would have gotten that 15% I targeted?   Michael; I think that is like spot on. Thank you so much. And if you missed it, if you missed any part of that, go back, rewind the last three minutes, and listen to that again, cuz I think that's a lot of gold in there. Then this was super fun. As always, if people want to reach out more, find out more about you or hemline. Where's the best place for them to do that?   Dana: Yeah, you can go on to Roofstock when you purchase a property, how many will be listed as a property manager? So go go ahead and do that. You can also go to Hemlane.com. And my email is dana@hemlane.com. So I love hearing from people.   Michael: Awesome. Well, thank you again, and very much looking forward to having you on. Again, I'm sure take care of we'll chat soon.   Dana: Great. Yeah, I'm excited in six months for us to see if we were if we stand corrected on what's going on in the market.   Michael: I know it'd be very interesting. Well keep close tabs on it.   Dana: Great. Thanks so much for having me.   Michael: You got it, take care.   Okay, everyone, and that was our episode A big thank you to Dana for coming on as always big friend of the pod as we were saying at the beginning of the show. As always, if you liked the episode, we'd love to hear from you all with a rating and review and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing

Dana Dunford is the CEO of Hemlane Property Management and a real estate investor. In today's episode we discuss market conditions, interest rates, what is happening in the stock market, and what the current moment means for real estate investors. If you are wondering if it is the right time to purchase an investment property, you will want to listen to this episode. Links: Hemlane.com --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The remote real estate investor podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by Dana Dunford, co founder and CEO of Hemlane Property Management. And today Dana is gonna be talking to us about the state of the economy and some things that investors should be aware of and thinking about as we move forward in today's market. So let's get into it.   Dana Dunford, welcome back again to The Remote Real Estate Investor. Thanks for coming on and hanging out with me.   Dana: Great. Thanks for having me. Again, Michael.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, it is such a pleasure. You are great friend of the pod. Great friend of Roofstock. For those who might not be familiar with you give us the Quick, quick and dirty background of who you are. And background on yourself.   Dana: Yeah, so I'm Dana Dunford. I'm here in San Francisco. So just right across the bridge from rootstock. I have been in technology for gosh, now we're going on 18 years. So I'm a tech veteran, which we'll be talking about tonight, today, which I'm excited about. And on top of that, I'm in property management. So we're a tech platform for property management, and partner of Roofstock's. And we've seen what has been going on since q1, the market softening things changing in technology. So I think this is going to be a great call, because both Roofstock and Hemlane have seen it firsthand. And hopefully this gives some insight into what, what the upcoming year is going to look like for all real estate investors out there.   Michael: Totally. And just to give some people, some additional color, you are CEO, co founder of Hemlane, and you just did your series A, what was it q3 of 2021 or q4 of 2021?   Dana: Q4, so we raised at the perfect timing, those who are not in venture and the tech world of Silicon Valley. We couldn't have timed it better. You know, right now, and we'll talk about this today. Right now, the market is really softening. There's just less capital going into startups. We can't say this was people were already predicting this. So back in q3, and q4 venture capitalists were already saying, Ooh, there's a lot of money pouring into this valuations are really high. And some had already started pulling back. But it wasn't until what happened in the public markets, where you know, trillions of dollars were taken out of these Sass companies, valuations are overall the market cap, that suddenly the venture world that trickled down and people really started to pull back capital. So yeah, we raised back then roofstock, when was your guys's last raise? Because you guys are at a later stage. And so obviously, also impacted by this and quite, potentially, more significantly than us.   Michael: I think we got our term sheet squared away in in q4, as well. So right around that same perfect timing with money getting wired in coming in and in q1.   Dana: Yeah, perfect. So you guys will be able to weather the storm with that what we're going to be talking about soon here.   Michael: Yep, absolutely. I'm thinking so. Okay, so let's talk about how, like, how did we get here, because you're mentioning that trillions of dollars have been essentially taken off the table in terms of market cap. But for those people that aren't familiar with the space that haven't maybe been following along as closely, what like, where are we today? And can you give us some insight and background as to how you think we got here?   Dana: Yeah, so first of all, I believe most people on this podcast today listening are real estate investors. And so all of you hopefully got in when interest rates were super low, just artificially low, right? We never seen interest rates below 3% for so long. And one that was fantastic for real estate, right? You could get a rental properties at afford a higher price because your interest rate is much lower your loan. And then for startups and for companies money was much more free it was much more flowing. What we ended up seeing happen which most people predicted this would happen. But no one knew when or at least I haven't heard of any economists who knew this was going to happen exactly. We're in March, but we started seeing the inflation go through the roof, you know, 8.6%. And it's been consistent where we have seen the inflation rate really, really high.   And so the only way for the Fed to essentially combat that was obviously, to increase interest rates, which we are all seeing now are all seen in our real estate itself, doesn't mean there aren't great deals out there. So Mike, like, do you want us to talk about that, because I still think there's great deals out there that you guys have on the platform, and now could be a really good time to buy. So don't let that taint your decision of whether or not you should go into real estate.   But with that, as you know, when the Fed raises interest rates, consumer spending just goes down, that will probably people will spend less, and also things are more expensive. And so once you have that happen, the stock market's inversely correlated to interest rates. And so once interest rates went up, there was a correction in the stock market. Why it affects us on the private company side so much is Roofstock and Hemlane are both considered growth companies. And what happened was essentially, in the public markets, so any public company, there's basically two different types, there's growth, just like us, companies like Roofstock, that have gone public. And then there are value companies and the value companies are much more stable. They're based on their cash flow. They're typically larger, older companies, and their price is based on their sales. So their price is relatively low relative to sales, in companies like that, or like Bank of America, if you think about it, and RG like gas companies like very stable, steady businesses, where you're not going to see   Michael: Blue chip companies.   Dana: Yeah, your blue chip companies where you're not going to see, you know, 500% growth year over year. But what ends up happening is when the interest rates go up like that, and stocks go down, the ones that get devalued, the most are the growth stage companies. And the growth stage companies are companies like Roofstock, and heavily that are public. And so what we basically saw happen was this huge, huge cut in market cap in the public markets. And so for SAS company software as a service where you go, you pay a subscription every month to use a service, the market cap cap got cut by $1 trillion dollars from November of 2021. Until today, and so what that did was essentially, these companies thought they were worth a lot more.   And you know, some of them, like the stripes of the world, in the snowflakes had these really high revenue multiples, and suddenly, those just deteriorated. And the multiple based of what their valuation is versus their, their revenue went down. And that essentially trickled down to private companies like us as well. And so now when a company goes out to raise capital in q1, q2, primarily, now it's even, it's even worse. And what we're foreseeing in q3 is that you might have had a 10x, revenue multiple, so your valuation, it's 10x, what your revenue is, that's how it used to be.   Now you go out to a venture capitalist, and they're like, great, you're worth 3x, or 5x. So much lower valuation. And so what they're, they're expecting is a lot of down rounds, a lot of startup saying, If I can, let me just hold on to my cash, let me cut my bird, let me try to raise later and better times. And all of this impacts the economy, because it was the public markets that were hit. And now it's also the private companies where we are in Silicon Valley. And I do think this, this trickles a bit to real estate. It's it's a different type of market correction that we saw in 2008. In 2008, it was housing right and the mortgage crisis today, I think this is a lot more like the.com bubble. This is very similar to the.com bubble of these really high tech valuations that need to be corrected. And so when you think about purchasing real estate, I actually think that's why Roofstock is such a fantastic place to go. Because you're getting out of the tech scene, you're going to other markets and purchasing there.   Michael: It's so interesting. But then so I'm curious, we talk so often about in real estate that the price is only a factor, or it's only important if you're doing something with the property if you're buying selling refinancing, because otherwise you're just having a cash flow, and that often is independent of what the value is of the company, or excuse me, the property. So why does that matter? or for companies like the fact that there's the company is now worth less, unless they're trying to do something buy, sell, or refinance or raise, raise, raise capital, like, why does that matter?   Dana: So it doesn't matter for Roofstock. And it doesn't matter for Hemlane, because we just raised, we have enough capital to weather this storm. But imagine a company that raised and they had a, let's just give the case of like the stripes of the world 100x Multiple. And let's just say it's a private company, with 100x, multiple, and now they're going back out, and they're now getting a 10x. Multiple, they could have what we call a down round, where suddenly they are worth less than they were before. And that gives a lot less confidence. One the company itself, right? The amount that you're giving up as a founder, as an employee, as an existing investor, it's a lot more just to get in the same amount of capital you wanted to historically, in so what you're seeing is these companies really, really tighten the ship, and just say, Okay, we're going to stop hiring as many people, we're really going to look at our expenses. And that means there's not more money pouring into, you know, hiring 100 people every week, they're suddenly going back and thinking about who are the strategic hires, we really need? Should we be letting go? You've seen the massive tech layoffs where it's, you know, 20% of the workforce. And now suddenly, they're really tightening their books, because cash is king right? Now, you want to hold on to that cash? Because the last thing you want to do is go out and have a lower valuation.   Michael: Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense. And so talk to us a little bit about why this is affecting real estate investors or why real estate investors should even care about this that's going on?   Dana: Yeah. So I always think there's a huge opportunity when there's like the Warren Buffett, quote, right? be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. I think right now everyone's scared. And there's a lot of real estate investors, like we actually just did a survey at Hemlane, where majority were saying we're not going to purchase in the next 12 months, because interest rates have gone up we should have gotten any year ago. Well, you know, the best time to get into real estate was 10 years ago, and the next best time is today, I think there's going to be a lot of great deals out there. I think that while others are tightening up, other investors are scared, this is a time for you to be really aggressive. I mean, still looking at your pro forma and and follow your numbers. But you'll be able to find some some great deals out there.   Michael: I've heard a lot of sentiment around, you can always change your interest rate, but you can never change your purchase price. So if someone is getting into a deal today, at an interest rate that's a little bit higher than they're comfortable with. But they anticipate interest rates to come down at some point down the road. What are your thoughts there?   Dana: Yeah, you can always refinance. I mean, don't do a deal hoping that interest rates go down, and you can refinance it or fudge the numbers on your spreadsheet. This is why   Michael: I was hoping that's what you were gonna say.   Dana: Yeah, like this is I mean, this is why I'm, I'm more conservative than most in every property purchases had a fixed rate. I don't do adjustable. But I can refinance, right? So I can always refinance. But I want to know what I'm getting into. So when you do your pro forma, do it with whatever the interest rate is now and consider it a huge advantage and just like increased cash flow, if you can refinance in the future, will interest rates go back to this like artificially low rate that we saw over the past five years, maybe not. But I don't think that is a reason not to purchase now. You do your numbers, and you look at it just because you might say property values are really high interest rates are going up, now's not a good time to buy. That's just laziness. Like, honestly, that's just you being lazy and not wanting to do the work.   There's always great deals out there. You just have to do the work, find them look at the numbers and say even with this increased interest rate, it's still a great deal. I'm still cash flowing and I've got a great cap rate, and you can go ahead and purchase. So I don't think of this as the time really to, to change your decisions on real estate. And part of that has to do with I think, you know, some markets will soften. Some markets may remain flat for a while but that doesn't mean that you're not getting the cash flow and having a great investment that by the way, with inflation where it is If it continues, having an asset where the value goes up with inflation, so I still think now's a great time to purchase real estate. And you might be able to get some fantastic deals as other investors are pulling out, you can really, really go in and get those great deals.   Michael; Love it. And Dana, I'm curious if because we've seen prices go through the roof, and interest rates have also gone up significantly, there might be a bit of a lead lag measure until we see prices come down. So in in terms of looking for different markets, I mean, are you targeting markets that are continuing to grow? Are you targeting markets that maybe are seeing some of that softening in terms of pricing?   Dana: So for us, we go where the real estate investors are. So if there's a real estate investor there, right, we're going to do the property management for them. I think when you're when you're thinking about the lag, that is definitely true. I've heard this with other real estate investors, I've seen it myself, where you see a price. And with interest rates up, the seller puts one price out there, because that's what it was two weeks ago. And suddenly, it's not worth that much. It's worth like 10% 20%. Last, but it's actually really good to put yourself into the position of the seller, and of the real estate agent, because you can actually get some really, really good deals off of that.   And what I mean by it is real estate investors have always told historically, have told their buyers in the past couple of years. If your mark, if your property is on market for over two weeks, people might think there's something wrong with that. And so, you know, we're going to ask for offers on X date, right, like X date and two weeks, or maybe we'll do one week, we're going to ask for offers. Well, if they've missed priced the property, you might be able to go in and you don't know this, but you might be the only offer because they priced it way too high, because we priced it from a purchase price from two weeks ago. And now that has suddenly changed like the market changes every two weeks, it really is. And you could go in and get a great deal. And so I think from from that perspective, there are still fantastic deals out there. But you have to be patient. And some of it will be that luck, where you get the right deal, though what else has gone into, and you can go ahead and purchase that.   So if you put yourself in the other shoes, you might see that you also see a lot of people you know why I don't think it's like 2008 and 2009 is people have a lot more equity in their properties because one value values have gone up. And then two, the interest rates were really low, people could afford more put more money in the market was booming. And so what we're seeing is that more people have equity in them. And at some point, it's emotional for someone, they're like, I just want to get rid of this asset, because I'm gonna go buy another one, or I just really want to move out of the city and move somewhere else. And, you know, to them, maybe 20 To 50 to $70,000 is not a lot depending on what it is. But that is a lot to you. And that changes, changes the numbers on your spreadsheet significantly.   And so I mean, with that purchase price, obviously that matters. But just because the price is out on the market for a property doesn't mean that the price is going to sell for. And so it would be a really good time to go out and experiment with that you will know your market better than anyone else, whatever market you're in, because it will take you bidding on like five properties. And maybe people will laugh at you like your first one, you go like 20% under and they laugh at you. But maybe you get lucky on the fifth one, and you'll get a great deal. But yeah, just follow the numbers in your spreadsheet don't have a purchase price, that doesn't make sense and you're not cash flowing. Or don't change the interest rate hoping that it will go down to that to that amount.   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense. And speaking of spreadsheet numbers, are you seeing a lot of your investor clients that you work with adjusting their expectations around cash on cash returns? Now that prices and interest rates are up?   Dana: So not really I think most investors like most of the savvy ones we work with, we work with his sort of two different types of of customers, those who had properties just handed to them. And they actually never did the analysis like pan downs from parents and things like that. And then others   Michael: Accidental landlords.   Dana: Accidental Yes. And then others who are very strategic real estate investors and what we have found with them as they have the capital and they might not be they might be with inflation to your point Michael being like, Oh, maybe I should just go buy something because the dollar today is worth less On tomorrow, but no, I actually think most real estate investors are still saying, this is the deal that I got, historically, I want to get something like that. And so they're not changing those expectations on cash on cash return, but they might be going somewhere else. So they go to Roofstock, and they say, Okay, I, you know, couldn't find this property, you know, in my backyard, but on Roofstock, they do have the cash on cash return that I that I that I targeting. And so I do think they're not changing their expectations. But they are going out and finding alternative ways to get the numbers they need.   There's one case, Michael, where I find people change their expectations. And it's first time real estate investors to just get their foot in the door. And I'm actually okay with that. I think that there's too many people who, and for anyone who's listening to this, who doesn't have a real estate investment, you kind of sit there and you kind of fantasize about getting one and then you put so much like anxiety into getting your first property. And once you have your first you're like, oh, okay, that's what I got, here's what it is. And it makes it easier, where then you can go and purchase more properties and more properties. And you know, what you're looking for, and you know what the return was, and you have this process set up.   But the first one is really difficult to get into. So I find that those people today are changing their expectations, for certain metrics just to get into the market, before it's too late. Interest rates go up more, or you know, they're kind of kicking themselves that they didn't get in, you know, four years ago, five years ago. So I only think it's first time real estate investors where that's happening. And I'm actually okay with that. Because I think if you can get more people into real estate investing, and more people to just get their foot in the door, you're going to learn so much off of that first property, that then you're going to say, Okay, this was my cap rate for my first property. My next one, I have to at least have that or better and you kind of improve, you know, it's kind of like dating, you never like you don't date someone who's great. And then like the next person is like a downgrade, you kind of have the standard. And you're like, I can only go up from there. It's the same exact thing with real estate investing. So I really think it's only first time homebuyers where that happens are real estate investors for rental properties?   Michael: Yep, I think and I think that makes tons of sense. It's something that I hear all the time. It's Michael, I'm trying to get my first deal done and has to be amazing. And you know, it has to be a Grand Slam? Like? Don't worry about the grand slams, let's practice getting on base first. And then you'll know how to swing for   Dana: Exactly, exactly. And it makes it a lot easier when you have one property in that area. You know your market a bit more, and then you can kind of purchase some more around at.   Michael: Yep. Yeah, I think it makes him think that's totally right. And so Dana, we're kind of at this like crossroads where we're talking about, some investors are pressing pause on their acquisitions. And then this whole other cohort of investors are like, Oh, crap, I gotta get into the market before interest rates go up further before prices go up further. So it does feel like there's this pressure to buy or there's frenzy to buy, on the one hand, and then there's this whole other group, that's again, kind of taking a step back and saying, let's, let's wait and see what happens. How do you square those two?   Dana: Well, to me, I'm like a pretty unemotional real estate investor. And I feel like for anyone, whatever segment you fall into, you still have to go back to the numbers and see what makes sense. And so I mean, is there a right way to go? I think one people who are not going out, and they're using this as an excuse not to purchase properties, or just being lazy, honestly. And for those who are out there saying, I gotta get in and get my next deal. I think they're almost too emotional. Where they might go in and change the numbers to your point of saying, like, oh, it's not, you know, my last deal was was better than this, but I just need to get my foot in the door. Maybe that's not the right approach to have, it's, Hey, there's gonna be a deal out there. I might have to be a little bit more patient during this the for the next three to six months, I have to be patient, I have to understand what's going on.   But yeah, I just kind of go back to the numbers. I think in both cases, they're they're taking emotion and what's happening in the market and using that, like the macro for the micro. And instead of saying, You know what, I know what is a good deal, here's what it looks like on paper. Let me continue to go search until I find that and it might take you a little bit longer to find it. Or you might find a process like oh, wow, I can, you know, go 20% under and get lucky on a deal off of this, whatever the home price is, I could, you know, undercut them and give them an offer and maybe they'll take it to get that great deal.   Um, But I don't I think both categories are bad. I think someone who says I have to get my foot in the door. Before interest rates go up is emotional. I think someone who says there are no great deals out there are just lazy. And so I kind of fall somewhere in between of saying, yeah, just be financially prudent as you always should be with your real estate investment investments, know your market, know what numbers numbers you need, and make sure you're a little bit more conservative. Like, I know, a couple investors with adjustable rate mortgages that did them, you know, back when interest rates were really low. And I bet they feel pretty stupid right now. So   Michael: we won't name names,   Dana: Won't name names here.   Michael: Well, I'd be very interested to meet the the emotionally lazy person, because it sounds like those are two opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah, I have to see. Okay. And last thing that I want to ask you about is around expectations. If someone is newer to the investment space, they may be looking to get their first deal done. Everyone around them, their sister, their brother, aunts, uncles in this market are making 10% cash on cash. Yeah, pick a number. Nice round number 10%. And they're like their expectation was was 15%. Right, for whatever reason, that's what makes them tick. That's what gets them excited about an investment. Everyone around them is making 10%. So how the how should investors be thinking about not looking at other people, and just focusing on what's good for them, but also not being blind and naive to what a market is really able to produce? In terms of In other words, like, they I want someone to be excited about the returns that they're getting, but I also want them to be realistic. How do you kind of how do you?   Dana: So the biggest thing I would say to throttle that is, most likely you've sort of selected a market because you've looked at, okay, where is and I mean, Roofstock does this for you, and you guys, I think have some great shows from like every single market of why why you guys are looking at a certain market. So that helps. But you as a real estate investor are gonna say worse population growth? And why like, is more industry going there? Like maybe an Amazon facility was just put into place? Does it have fed, ed's and meds? Like, is it stable, even recession proof, especially now? So you kind of go through and figure out why am I excited about this market? And you just start there? And like, don't forget about your, I mean, 15% cash on cash return? Like, let's just forget about all of that and just go through? What looking at macro, and now we're kind of going to micro to like city level?   Why do I think this is going to be a lot a good market in five to 10 years, because you're going to hold on to these properties and purchase more, right? Do that first, then you say, Okay, this is my market, then what you're going to do is for two to three months, you're going to look at all the deals there, go on Roofstock, I think you could set up alerts because I have those that go to my email that essentially like tell you here's a new property in that market, great purchase. Um, you're gonna go through and you might the first couple of properties, say you know what? Those, those don't really hit my cash on cash return expectations, but now you're starting to know your market and you're gonna see a trend, are they going up? Are they going down? And you can look at that over time to make an unemotional decision that is based on data.   I think that is the most important thing to do. When someone gets in this frenzy of I need this cash on cash return shoot, I'm not going to get it. So I'm just going to slash it. And I'm going to say now I need, you know, seven or 8% I and you're just becoming emotional. But if you go through look at the numbers and you say okay, great, I wanted 15% You know, my friends are getting 10% I'm and you're you change those expectations. And suddenly you say, Okay, I made this decision, and here's my cash on cash return. But I knew at that time, that was the best I could do. Because I looked at the data, then suddenly you never go back and wish you had done it differently. Because you have something that is non non emotional to back you up. And don't compare yourself to other real estate investors. I've seen real estate investors in the past four to five years who've been super successful, who are super stupid.   And the reason they were successful and I hate to say that but like there's so many people out there because basically it was free money like there was so much investment it was there was so much easy money from investors that I saw way too many people also going into real estate. A lot of actually on the fix and flip side that just got lucky because yeah, money was basically free to do a fix and flip and a The home prices were going up astronomically. And they feel like they're the smartest people in the room.   Well, maybe they were at that time, but like, give it two to three months, maybe six months, and the story might change. And so that's why I think it's hard at like one point in time, if you're just getting started to compare yourself to those around you, I don't think you should do that. I think you should just be financially prudent, and make sure that you're not overextending yourself. And you know, your market. And you know why you made the decision, you see you did, and it's all based off those numbers. And it's based off the numbers, but also you need to know the market, like you need to know you guys have neighborhood scores and ratings, that kind of stuff of like, here's why I only invest in neighborhoods that have three stars, or greater, or whatever it may be like it, write all of this stuff out, and take a really methodical approach to your assets, your real estate investing, and I don't think you'll regret it. Like, I don't think you're gonna go back and say, Oh, I really wish I would have gotten that 15% I targeted?   Michael; I think that is like spot on. Thank you so much. And if you missed it, if you missed any part of that, go back, rewind the last three minutes, and listen to that again, cuz I think that's a lot of gold in there. Then this was super fun. As always, if people want to reach out more, find out more about you or hemline. Where's the best place for them to do that?   Dana: Yeah, you can go on to Roofstock when you purchase a property, how many will be listed as a property manager? So go go ahead and do that. You can also go to Hemlane.com. And my email is dana@hemlane.com. So I love hearing from people.   Michael: Awesome. Well, thank you again, and very much looking forward to having you on. Again, I'm sure take care of we'll chat soon.   Dana: Great. Yeah, I'm excited in six months for us to see if we were if we stand corrected on what's going on in the market.   Michael: I know it'd be very interesting. Well keep close tabs on it.   Dana: Great. Thanks so much for having me.   Michael: You got it, take care.   Okay, everyone, and that was our episode A big thank you to Dana for coming on as always big friend of the pod as we were saying at the beginning of the show. As always, if you liked the episode, we'd love to hear from you all with a rating and review and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing

Kori Covrigaru is the Co-Founder and CEO of PlanOmatic. PlanOmatic provides quality photos, floor plans, and 3D to the single-family rental industry with speed and at scale, nationwide. With an unwavering determination for client success, he has created a team that thrives on the core value of together we win. With a national network of 200+ contractors and more than 40 employees, Kori has met the moment with the unique value proposition PlanOmatic offers through technology combined with data to support their clients' goals. Today, Kori shares what he's doing as a remote investor in the single-family rental space with a fund that he started with some of his colleagues.  Episode Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/koric/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Kori Covrigaru with planOmatic and he's returning to the podcast not talking about planOmatic, but actually to talk about what he's doing as a remote investor in the single family rental space with his fund that he started with some buddies. So let's get into it.   Kori, what's going on, man? Welcome back to the podcast, thanks for taking the time to hang out with me.   Kori: Always, always excited, Michael.   Michael: This is gonna be a lot of fun. So the last time we had you on we were talking about your company planOmatic and for anyone who missed the episode, give us the quick and dirty, what is it that you all do and how you're disrupting the industry?   Kori: We helped at the beginning of this industry. So back in 2012, we started out with the SFR industry but we've been playing thematic creates professional photos for plans in 3D for the single family industry at speed and scale nationwide. So that's what we do plain and simple, we are the boots on the ground that go out, take professional photos, do 3D scans, export floor plans from that, and then deliver that media to our customers. We try to do it under two and a half days and we're pretty damn close to it. So that's what we've been doing, we help these REITs institutional investors in smaller companies scale from 5000 properties all the way up to hundreds of 1000s. That's our business, that's what we're here for.   Michael: Amazing and today, you and I are here to talk about something a little bit different kind of related. Yeah, but really, it's about your journey in the SFR space as a remote investor.   Kori: Yes, sir. So, you know, just being in this industry for so long. I'm surprised it took me so long to decide to get involved on a higher level. But yeah, I've been just watching, you know, myself and some people that I work with here and some family and friends outside of here have been watching this SFR industry grow to the level that it has and never really gotten involved on the investor side. I mean, I had rentals on my own. I've had a rental, you know, my first rental I bought with my business partners. I want to say it was 2006 I think it was October 2006 or 2005 and we bought a rental out in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Since then we exited that then I had a couple rentals here in Denver, but nothing remote and nothing to the level of what we're building right now with SFR Emo, that's the name of the partnership, the group that we've established with 13 partners, and we all threw in some cash and have been acquiring homes, single family homes, for, you know, residents to live in and Alabama, of all places Birmingham, Alabama. So that's what we've been doing, yeah.   Michael: Interesting. So you've done the local investing local with you in Colorado, so what I mean, what did you eat? What did you drink that decided, hey, I'm gonna go do this crazy thing and invest where I don't live.   Kori: I ate and drank reports for where our customers are buying real estate and where it made sense and just reading articles. I mean, there's so many great content distributors, you guys included in terms of what markets make the most sense what to look for in a market and so I had been immersed in all of this data and all of this information for so long, that I finally pulled the trigger and said, hey, time to form a partnership. You know, we started out with five partners, that was the deal was gonna be five partners no more and then, you know, I don't know if you've ever been involved swings. But what happens is you start getting phone calls from random people saying, hey, I want this thing going on, like I want and why didn't you invite me? It's like, well, hold on a second, like, first of all, I don't I don't know how you found out within second. Like, it's this really small thing we're doing and so it went from like five partners to 13 and we had to like, we had to cut the investor pool out at that point and build with what we've had what we have right now, because we still haven't, you know, deployed all the capital. So it started, I'm starting to understand why we see billions of dollars come into the industry committed to buying SFR is, but it's very slow to deploy and so we're experiencing that right now. I mean, we're not slow to deploy, but it takes some time and so that's kind of how the idea started. Yeah, just get involved eat your own dog food, as they say, I think right, that's the term.   Michael: That's it, that's it. So Kori, I mean, you just went through, I think what so many newer investors really struggle with, and that's picking a market and talk to us how I mean, what are these reports showing? What were they telling you and also like, how did you settle on Birmingham because I'm sure the reports show that there were really a lot of other great markets to invest in, too, yeah.   Kori: Yeah. I mean, we landed on a cut to the chase, then I'll kind of backtrack a little bit but we went with Birmingham because this is a small partnership, and we really didn't want to have to continue to put money in so we wanted to pick a market that could cash flow. We wanted to pick a market that was cashflow positive, had great cap rates, relatively speaking hearing coverage are being compressed everywhere right now as we know, cost of capital is going up, prices of homes are going up, that's actually going to reverse here pretty soon, in my opinion, we can get into that later. But so we picked Birmingham, there was a lot of economic opportunity being created there, jobs being created there but also, we knew we were going to be cashflow positive with the cap rates, and there was a room for appreciation. Plus, we found a really great property management company partner that we work with down there that can not only serve us in that market, but we can also expand to other markets, you know, with their with their support. So that those are the reasons the main reasons why I mean, we apply nomadic had the advantage, we have a critical mass of single family rentals that come in through our pipeline to shoot photos, create floor plans, you know, 3D and so we kind of have like this, this holistic view and indicator of what markets might pop off next and, you know, we use that data to make decisions for us farm on where to invest, it's a bit of an advantage that not most have, but I'll tell you what, all that data is public, I mean, we can go out there and see and look at county records and see where all the institutional landlords are the professionally managed properties are being bought and so if you dig data or like to, you know, you can always go on Upwork or Fiverr, and say, hey, please go find me this set of data, those are kind of hacks that you can do to figure out where companies are buying. Now, just because professionally managed companies are buying there doesn't necessarily mean it's a homerun, you have to do your own research, figure out what your goals are with your portfolio where you want to start. So that's kind of been our trajectory on the direction and where, where to own and operate for us.   Michael: Yeah and that makes a ton of sense and I love that you said that to like, go find someone else who can kind of help aggregate the data or figure out the data for you because like, you can, like you don't have to be the person to do all of the due diligence, you don't have to be the person to do all of like the research and also you can leverage other companies paid employees, like you were just mentioning, if an Amazon fulfillment center is going in there, or like Whole Foods is setting up a new headquarters there. They've done the research, so of course, don't reinvent yourself. The wheel, right… Yeah, it's, I love it.   Kori: It's out there.   Michael: Okay, so Birmingham was the target. Yeah. What did you all do next? I mean, how are you executing there? I know, you said you had a great property manager, but like, yeah, the, from the physical like property acquisition to due diligence. There's so much more involved before you even own the property. How did you get that accomplished?   Kori: Yeah, so we this idea came about at some point in 2020, when, you know, shit hit the fan and COVID was on the way and in my mind, and I've always been fairly wrong, when it comes to trying to predict the market. The only thing that's, that's, ya know, I mean, the only thing that's going to be successful is that there is no bad time to buy, that's just my mentality. Like, there is no bad time to buy, it's just a matter of how you go about finding those properties and what you do during negotiation, and due diligence. But um, you know, back in 2020, you said, oh, the real estate buyer is going to absolutely flop right now, everybody's, nobody's got jobs, unemployment is gonna be crazy, we're headed into this, you know, doom and gloom period, which is, of course, very wrong and we said, you know, it's a good time to buy single family rentals, rentals, they perform, regardless of economic conditions, typically, in recessionary periods, they still grow not as fast, but they do grow, that's a hedge against inflation, so on so forth and so we decided to form the entity again, went from five to 13 very quickly. But between, you know, between mid-2020, and mid-2021, I don't think we purchased a single property and so you know, we had to go through all kinds of processes, right, you have to have a good operating agreement, you have to establish a an EIN number, you have to select a property management company, you have to make sure you're finding the right tax forms, you need to find a broker, you need to do research and figure out where you want to go. I mean, that was a big chunk of our time was we didn't know in 2020, exactly where we wanted to go. So we had to do that research, we had to have, you know, make sure that everybody all the partners were kind of on board and then at some point in time, we decided to, hey, these three partners or five partners are actually gonna make the decisions. Okay, now we have to amend the operating agreement that requires lawyers again, I mean, we kind of did a lot of stuff makeshift but, but there's a there's a lot to do, and a lot of time to be had between the moment where you decide, hey, I'm gonna get into this, especially if you're remote and we just closed on our first property, right. So it's, you know, it's, it's more than you expect, but doing it right is the most important thing and I think we've done it right. So far we learned a lot along the way. But we're on the right track. I mean, we're almost at will be at 28 single family homes and that's only that's the course of a year right. So from 20, mid 2020 to 21. We didn't purchase a single home in the last 12 months we've purchased approximately 28-20 single family homes.   Michael: Wow, that's so killer. So Kori I mean, I'm curious to know too. Why did you not just do this alone, a lot of people would argue well, wow, 30 people like that's way too many cooks in the kitchen or five people making decisions like it can get very convoluted very quickly are very quickly. Wouldn't a single operator be more lean and be able to move quicker?   Kori: Yes, yes. I mean, well, so the short answer that is, I can't really do anything. I have a lot of really good ideas but I can't do much. So that's why I didn't go at it. Yeah, I'm the idea guy, right, and the people around me to do things. So, but no, I mean, you know, what, one big reason why we went with more just to have more capital, to be able to diversify more, you know, it's, it's risky as an individual to go out and buy one or two rentals. But if you go out with a group and buy, you know, our goal is to hit 60. That's a pretty diverse portfolio and minimizes risk and there are a lot of great minds in our partnership. I mean, we have a finance guy, right, we have a data guy, we have consultant who's seen many different organizations, we have myself, who's kind of like, overall, seeing the organization from a high level and helping with the financing part of things. So I think it helps to have different people plus, this is all you know, passive for us, right? Everybody's got a full time job and so, you know, if, if I were to do this alone, this would be a full time job, no doubt, but spreading it across having the right property management company, but this person doing, you know, diligence in this person negotiating offers in this person, making sure our bookkeeping and finances and taxes are all in line, it just helps kind of spread that out…. It's fun, man. It's more fun to succeed with partners, like I, you know, I have two business partners here at planOmatic and I couldn't imagine being a sole proprietor, it just doesn't seem as fun to me. Like, for us, it's always been the game in the chase and like winning the game, and it's, if you're by yourself winning and celebrating, that's not fun and the same goes with, you know, the lows. I mean, 2020 was a tough year right and so having a supportive business partners help. So I just think it's more fun.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. That makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, quite, how did you figure out like, who does what, and when you were picking your partners and picking your team? What was the process that you went through to do that because I think a lot of people like, oh, my best friend, we're so uh, like, we're so similar. We think the same, we should be partners, we should be business partners. Was that kind of the case for you?   Kori: You know, for me, I mean, I kind of surround myself with people that are like minded and sort of see things, you know, in a certain lens when it comes to opportunity, right? So it was actually it was pretty simple. It was more like who do we, who do we not tell, you know, and ask versus who, because a lot of people came to us a lot of really good friends. So it was just who's willing to take an opportunity who trust I think trust is the number one thing when it comes to partnerships is like, is there trust, we had to make sure there was trust there and then, and then different specialties from different people, again, like I said, like one guy is a full time controller, you know, big company, that's really helpful. Another guy is an operations guy who's operating, you know, we're shooting five to 700 listings a day, right. So like that, that really helps play into one of our guys, Tim Rose, he heads Planet Labs and we analyze and optimize workflows and analyze and optimize reports and data just based on what's coming in and so having him on board to help us decide which market to go with, or what cap rates to focus on, I mean, that was helpful. So it kind of this one all came together and then the people that wanted to be involved, they kind of like stepped forward said, hey, I'd like to be more involved those that didn't, are just passive for this particular partnership. I mean, one of the, I don't want to call them mistake, but it was a rookie move was like 13 partners all equally invested right and so that creates challenges for two things. One, every time we close a loan or refinance, we have to get 13 signatures and that's like, probably the biggest pain in the ass that we've got as a group. The other is like, we're putting in a lot of work on the side, especially, there's one person in particular in the partnership that puts a significant amount of work in, and his return is the same as everybody else's and so this was really like a search and destroy mission for us. Let's figure it out, figure this out, figure out a proof of concept, see if it can work and then in the next round, we're a little more educated, we'll structure the company a little bit differently, make things happen and move a little bit quicker. So yeah, that's kind of where we're at today.   Michael: Okay, like with regard to that signature, and then the equity piece where what else? What else would you do differently for anyone listening? It's like, I want to do this, like, what should they be thinking about?   Kori: When owning and operating and SFR funds, you want to separate out the management company from the fund that owns the properties and we didn't do that it's all one thing. So when you've got one entity that manage manages the portfolio, you know, that's where all the work is. Capital, putting in capital to buy homes is simple. You read a check and then there's typically somebody at the fund but the management company, you know, in today's world, and so far, they're helping acquire the properties on behalf of the fund and so creating an entity for the fun with limited partners, and then a property management company or management company that owns an app rates the portfolio separately, it just makes a whole lot more sense and that's really, you know, shame on me, like I've seen this, I know this, but we just wanted to get going and again, at first it was five, right. So we weren't going to separate those two out as simple as like, we can get five signatures. But when it grew with 13, it became challenging and so we'll look at that a little bit differently.   Michael: Okay and have a separate management company, even though you all are leveraging a local property manager.   Kori: Yeah, because there's much more that you have to communicate with the management company, you have to go through the process of buying the homes and through due diligence, and you have to make offers, and you have to make sure your books are in order, you have to file taxes, and you have to sometimes raise more capital, you have to open up a line of credit, so you can buy in cash and turn on refinance, we can talk about that, that as well. But there are a number of things hidden, hidden chores, let's call them that have to happen when you manage a portfolio, even if you have a property management coming up property management companies can help you place tenants and make sure your tenants are happy and having residents are having a positive experience. Outside of that, they're not doing a whole lot. They might help you find homes, they might help you negotiate, they might help you with renovation, but everything around organizing the company there, that's just you know, that's one vendor that you have as a part of the organization, you have your CPA, you have a bunch of different things that are you have your banker that you have to manage property manager company is not going to deal with your banker, it's not going to happen, they're not going to go find a line of credit for you like that doesn't work that way. So there are a lot of hidden chores that are in there that I strongly recommend, like thinking ahead, because it doesn't take very many homes, very many investments to need to put a significant amount of time even if it's distributed amongst partners into the operation. It doesn't it's not a set it and forget it. This is not George Foreman grill, this is like there's a lot there's a lot going on.   Michael: I don't think I've heard a George Foreman grill reference.   Kori: Now you have or maybe it wasn't George Foreman, maybe it was. What was that? No, it was a different one. It was an infomercial, set it and set it and forget it.   Michael: Oh, that's too funny. Well, Kori talk about like the strategy because you mentioned it just briefly about like line of credit, purchasing and cash and then going turning around and doing a cash out refi. So how are you purchasing properties and how are you structuring your deals?   Kori: So up until now, and oh, boy, are we headed for some news on Mays real estate market, like people aren't going to believe what they what they read in terms of percentage swings. But up until now, it's been a very competitive market for buyers. I mean, like, you know, you had to show up with cash you had to show up with, with no contingencies, waive the inspection, right. All of these things that everybody in a healthy market will tell you don't ever, ever do this you had to do over the last two years to buy real estate in some markets, you've had to do that since 2011, or 12. I mean, in Denver, for example, you know, and this is one of the reasons why we didn't we didn't come to Denver, but in 2012, we went my wife and I visited a home and we had to put an offer in same day and we thought we were crazy, right and we ended up closing about houses, it's now a rental above, you know, closing at 332 is it's probably worth 900,000 and there's a reason why because Denver has been nuts, right. So the markets been like that since then. So what we decided to do is utilize a lot of the cash that the partners put in to buy the homes in cash, make cash offers, you know, promise a quick close, because we had to win the properties and then we would turn around and take the portfolio, once it got to a certain size and refinance it with a bank, we have a great banking partner down in the southeast, and they've been fantastic. But we've always historically bought in cash and around refi pull the money out. Oftentimes, it'll appraise much higher than, you know, we initially bought it for and I'm scared to say this because it sounds so 2009. But the bank is paying us at this point to buy these homes because we're able to leverage 85% and so if they've appreciated more than 15%, right? They're like giving us cash to close on these homes that we bought in cash. Again, sort of scary to say but in terms of rentals, like we're not in danger, like they've performed fine and as long as you as long as you cash flow through ups and downs in the market and interest rates, ups and downs, it's you know, you'll end up on top, but like Denver is a crazy market.   I mean, I remember I was talking about getting a single family home to rent like separately outside of SFR I think it was like two months ago, maybe a month and a half ago and I took my kids to the open house and I showed up about 10 minutes early because I had to be like a birthday party or some bullshit like that and I get there 10 minutes before and there are already eight like, like a groups touring and I'm just like, still really like in in this neighborhood frankly, like, really and so I it took me one open house so you know, I'm out of this market. I mean, I know this right and a lot of the advantage that that people will have is they'll understand the local market and understand the neighborhoods understand where are they putting, you know, new light rail estate in where's their economic opportunity. But Denver was just too competitive, you know, to stick around for. So, yeah, yeah, it's been amazing. So we buying cash, turn around refi, pull cash out, rinse and repeat sort of deal and as long as properties are appreciating, you know, it's a, it's a pretty good model, especially when it comes to rentals, you know, fix and flip, I'm not a big fan, I think, you know, someone gets caught with their hand, that cookie jar at the end of the day of fixing flips, but as long as you're keeping in cash flowing, I think you're fine. And that's, that's kind of been that's been our model and we're able to now take out a line of credit. That's, that's, you know, securitized by our portfolio. So even better, we're able to use cash and a line of credit, make sure that there's good cash flow, turn around the bank, you know, refi it, pull the cash out, and rinse and repeat and that's, that's sort of what we've been up to and you can keep doing this, depending on how the market performs and how interest rates look. I mean, you can keep doing this for a while, right. Our goal, we're at 28. Now, our goal is 60. But depending if, if things continue to appreciate, then we could be even higher than 60, depending on how much the bank will pay us to buy these homes, basically, I'm afraid to say that, should I be saying that?   Michael: It sounds it sounds terrifying. But that's what I wanted to ask you. So you say they're financing 85% loan to value?   Kori: Yeah, yeah…   Michael: That's, like, unheard of in the investment property space it.   Kori: You know, usually, here's 7525, we find a bank, that's pretty aggressive. I mean, it's not like a small lender, it's a bank, it's a legitimate bank and they've been, they've been a great partner for us, and they see the opportunity, and they're a little bit of a risk taker. You know, they're keeping these loans or not, obviously, not selling them to Fannie and Freddie, I don't think, but we've also got so many partners to fall back on, like, it's, it's not risky for them, you know what I mean, when you have, yeah, that much that much wealth behind the partnership, and I'm not talking about the individual employment as a group, like you've got 13 households, where if something goes wrong, for some reason, with the majority of the portfolio, like, they'll be fine, you know. So I think that's also potentially why they're able to leverage so much. But they also are bullish on the rental market and SFR and they understand, you know, as far as you go to a bank, let's say up in upstate New York, they just haven't been around so far, very long. So they might not be as accommodating and as flexible. But boy in the Sunbelt, I mean, banks are trying to try to monetize this just like every other individual investor and so finding the right banking partner has been, you know, really great for us and strongly recommended. I mean, that's, you know, one of the most important things, we've gone through two banks. Now, we were with the credit union before, they didn't really see the vision that we had, but now with private bank, and it makes a lot more sense.   Michael: Okay. Well, that's great to know and I'm curious, when you started putting this all together on paper that was 2020-2021 and the interest rates were at three, four, maybe sometimes even in the twos. Now they're up in the five, six sevens. Has that changed your model much or really changed the performance of what you were expecting return wise?   Kori: Well, yes, of course, right. Cost of capital is it's real, it's real thing for individual investors who are buying their primary home, it's a real thing for smaller investors, family office all the way up to up to the REITs and the institutional landlords. So everybody's feeling a squeeze with those interest rates, cost of capital, obviously, going up, cap rates being compressed. I think what we'll see and what we've seen, historically, is that rents keep up with interest rates, right? So we'll see, you know, rents have gone up, I think, year over year 16%, I believe, and so far, we'll see those continued fact check that before you post it, but I think I saw it in the Wall Street Journal and so rents kind of keep up and so that's, you know, we have that to look forward to in terms of paying more for capital. But also, you know, the goal is to cash flow through the periods through the ups and downs, right through the different markets and so foreign investors, you'll see, you know, we borrow at five and seven year, seven year loans, right, so we're not in it for the 30 year fixed and so that should take us through any sort of period, right? We should be able to refinance within the next seven years, again, hearing things from 2008, kind of reverberate in my head. But that's the idea is that if as long as you can cash flow through interest rate periods, you should be fine and as long as rents hold up, which we don't see any reason why they shouldn't. I mean, we're again, four and a half million homes short of supply right now supply is not going away. Now, home values have gotten to a point now where buyers have said I've we've had enough, we're not we're not doing this anymore. Besides the fact that we can't afford it, right. Like between the interest rate hikes and the appreciation of home values over the last two years, we're seeing about a 43% increase in cost to pay a mortgage. Okay, like that's insane, so…   Michael: Compared to when?   Kori: Two years ago, that's compared to like beginning of 2020. I mean, between the appreciation and the interest rate increase, going from like three on average to five whatever and a half, one would be 43% more expensive to make mortgage payments today. Now, the good thing for SFR and for rentals is people are still there's a high demand for spacious, professionally managed homes, right single family rentals, and that demand isn't going away. So when people can't necessarily afford today to buy a home, or maybe say, hey, I'm going to sit on the sidelines for a couple of years, because this is batshit crazy, they're going to rent, right and so the demands keeps up, the rents keep up inflation continues to go up and hopefully we'll see that slow down here, due to the increase in interest rates. But you know, cash flow is important, I think it's been proven over time and history that rents will keep us cash flowing and that's why the industry is so attractive and so, you know, so new still, we're only a decade into this being professionally managed, right landlord has been around for before we can remember.   But there's an appetite for professionally managed properties, so that the experience that I'm gonna have, as a renter as a resident is on par with if I own my own home, and was able to do whatever I wanted to do to my home. Now I can have that luxury of having that home, but having it professionally managed. So if things go bad, I can just call someone, they'll be here soon to fix it right or if I want to move, it's not it's not that big of a deal on my lease ends, I go find another lease, right. So that demand isn't going away and that's what's keeping us so strong as an industry and I was just at the National rental home Council conference in DC and that's kind of the theme is that, you know, everybody's cautiously optimistic, because it's a weird time. There's a lot of uncertainty right now in the economy. But there isn't a whole lot when it comes to our industry and so I think, you know, again, when is it a good time to buy, in my opinion, always. So what's happening right now is interest rates are going up, prices are still like going up. We are seeing I think a Redfin report came out today that prices are starting to come down, actually and so there's a huge opportunity for investors to get into the market right now and buy, and investors don't have to buy at this price. Like it's been only a month, but the whole thing has been flipped upside down. So what I'm telling my acquisitions team, right, my expositions team, is, this is a time where, frankly, you go in and you offer 15 to 20%, less than what it's listed for, and you offer on volume all of a sudden, and then those that are willing to get out with a cash offer today, those are the deals to be had and yes, you are paying a higher interest rate right now for that. But you know, what, if you get the deals, and I'm not saying you'll get them at 20 or 15% discount, but you'll get them, you don't have to pay this price today, because the market just hasn't adjusted down to the interest rates that we're at. There are some steals out there and so it's a volume game, right? It's like, it's like going to a bar and meeting men or women, right. The more the more you ask, the better chance you're gonna have to succeed and it's the same with real estate today, like the more offers you throw out there that might be less than what they're wanting or hoping for a price. Some are in a situation where they need to exit or want to exit and so there are opportunities out there more right now than ever so far, which is crazy to think about.   Michael: That is crazy to think about and so you mentioned there's some big news coming out was that was that the Redfin report about where you think prices are going for the May report?   Kori: No, well, I mean, there was there was some information out but we're still they're still reporting on April, my mind, this is just, you know, my prediction is crystal ball, my crystal ball tells me based on very, you know, various different data points that may will be the biggest drop in transactions we've ever seen the biggest drop, the biggest drop in transactions month over month that we've ever seen, I'm predicting, I'm putting it for…   Michael: May 2020.   Kori: To May over April and may year over year, also that will be the biggest drop in in housing starts as a percentage and let's say close transactions will be in May, that'll continue into June because there's always a lag housing starts we get at the beginning contracts to buy new construction, we get the beginning. So that's always an indicator, a leading indicator of where the markets headed. But we'll see that as built, you know, are already built on existing home sales. They're just going to plummet right now and that's because there's pretty much gonna be a standoff between buyers and sellers right now. I mean, when do you remember seeing homes drop in price in Denver like, right, I don't remember when that happened. Yeah, you know, so I think that I think the buyers are fed up. I think that affordability has gone through the roof and I think that the Fed is going to succeed and installing the economy and stalling you know, the housing market, which has a trickledown effect to the rest of the economy, right. I mean, think about movers, Comcast, right, any sort of cable television, Home Depot and Lowe's, right, all these all these companies that we don't really think about. or Amazon people buy stuff for their new home like the Fed wants to slow the economy down, they're definitely going to succeed. We're going to see some job loss from it. But at the same point in time, this is an OK, adjustment to the overall market and the housing market. We know that this is not sustainable. We said that a year ago, a year into this crazy Rock chip ride. So we'll see a slowdown and it's healthy, it's okay and that also creates these deals that I think are definitely still out there. You know, there are still motivated people that need to sell for one reason or another. Maybe they have to move, maybe they are they're adjustable rate mortgages off, right, maybe they set it seven years ago, and all of a sudden, they're having to refinance and it doesn't make sense. Maybe they just feel like they want to cash out and it's time and so, you know, those who went under contract, let's say a month ago, kind of probably hit the top. But for the short term, but there's still a lot of opportunity out there to get some good deals right now.   Michael: You heard it here first, folks. That's awesome, that's awesome. All right. Well, Kori, we got to get you out of here, man. Thank you so much for coming on again. For people that want to reach out to you connect with you learn more about planOmatic where's the best place for them to do that?   Kori: LinkedIn is great. Although my name is hard to find K O R I C O V R I G A R U, I'm sure it's in the in the post, LinkedIn is great. My email kori@planomatic.com, I'm always fielding emails. So send me an email and otherwise I'm not I'm not really on Facebook or Instagram or any of those, so email and LinkedIn is probably best for me.   Michael: Right on that'll have to do. Well, Kori thanks so much, man. Appreciate you coming on again. We'll chat soon, all right.   Kori: Thanks, Michael. Great to be here.   Michael: All right, everyone. That was our episode, a big thank you to Kori for coming on and sharing with us what he's been doing in the space. As always, if you'd liked the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever they as you get your podcasts, and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…

Pam Hill is a Harvard and Dartmouth-educated entrepreneur and CEO of a multi-million dollar real estate company, a business and money expert, a former Fortune-500 executive, and the founder of My Smart Cousin.  Her main goal is to help people understand money, increase their accountability and build generational wealth. Today, Pam shares her story of how she became a professional real estate business owner, how she purchases homes for the price of a car and how you can start your real estate business. Episode Link: https://mysmartcousin.com/tag/pam-hill/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by a very special guest, Pam Hill, who's talking to us about my smart cousin, and how she purchases homes for the price of a car, or maybe sometimes even an expensive bike. So let's get into it.   Hey, Pam, thank you so much for taking the time to come hang out with me today. I really appreciate you coming on.   Pam: Thanks so much, Michael, really looking forward to engaging conversation.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, me too. So, Pam, so excited to have you here. If you could give us a quick intro bio about who are you? Where do you come from and what is it you're doing in real estate today?   Pam: Absolutely. So I'm Pam Hill with my smart cousin. The nifty name comes really from family coining that for me, because I am that smart cousin at family reunion to always follows up make sure that folks do what they say they're going to do on their finances on their real estate and that, of course, is now brought in to my clients as well. How I got into real estate was about 10 years ago. So during the Great Recession, my husband at the time we were dating, he was looking for his first home and he was looking in Wilmington, Delaware, and we were stupefied at just how cheap there's, there's not a better word inexpensive to the wrong word, cheap houses were in Wilmington, Delaware to the tune of 20,000-25,000. In perfectly rock solid working class neighborhoods. Once I saw it, I definitely could not unsee it and that's what led me down the real estate rabbit hole since then I've bought 21 houses totaling 25 houses totaling 31 units, and have loved every step of the journey.   Michael: That is so cool and so Pam, were you living in Wilmington, Delaware or was this something that you were doing from afar?   Pam: No, so I was living not too far from Wilmington, Delaware in a suburb and so I was used to six figures and not 100,000 as in six figures. But in fact, what the average price of real estate is in the United States, some 321,000, I think I've read is the average price of real estate across all 50 states. So I was used to seeing those kinds of numbers. I had already owned real estate before as a homeowner and I really couldn't believe that there was this whole other world and once I saw it, I became committed to helping others who are looking to start their real estate investment journey and feel like they just don't have enough coin to get there. Or those who are aspiring homeowners and thinking the same thing that it's got to be a generation, three decades, 30 years slog My goal is the number of fingers you've got on your hands, 10 fingers 10 years or less. That's when the house should be paid for and everything is cream after that.   Michael: I love it, I love it. So was it just a function of where the economy was at that point in time that you and your husband were able to find houses for that price point or were you doing something different or looking in a different way than everyone else?   Pam: Yeah, no, it's a great question, because it kind of begs whether that opportunity is still there and very much still is. There are hundreds of houses listed on any given day that are maybe not as cheap as what I got them for that takes a little bit of digging, although they are that cheap still to just not in Wilmington, Delaware. So my cheapest house was 2500 in Jersey that included the all four walls.   Michael: …a roof....   Pam: Yeah, absolutely. Goal number one is don't buy anything that is best addressed through the services of a wrecking ball company. So only things that maybe they're going to take a new furnace, okay, a new furnace, but not a new every single thing you can think of and my most expensive house was 35,000 and that includes I'm really kind of a an adherent of eating your own cooking. So that includes the house of my husband and I live in the house we bought in a suburb of Philly was $35,000. So and that was in 2016. So it's still there and there are many homes in states like certainly New York, Wisconsin, Michigan, quite a number of homes that are in that 60-50-40 neighborhood and even multi families and small commercial, that price point.   Michael: And so I mean, I've got to imagine at that price point the homes are in really rough areas or need tons of rehab. Are you finding that to be the case or is there something there's something that you know that that we don't?   Pam: Right, so the homes are in areas, how would I think about it. areas that aren't so rough that no one at all lives there, I've yet to find a neighborhood that that is on livable, I suppose everyone needs a home that it's just a flat out the truth and so there are really three things that any person who's renting is looking for one is the neighborhood. So they aren't going to be concerned if crime, for instance, is a big problem and where it is, for some of my houses I work closely, you know, first thing I do is find out who the police captain is, and introduce myself, I asked the tenant to let me know if there's any kind of roughness going on, so that they don't have to feel like they're the one making the call that I can be the person making the call. If there's a car that has sat abandoned in front of their house or near their house, I call the licensing and inspection agency, so they will tow it. So those are the things I do to make the neighborhood better than how I found it. Then the other things that a renter is going to look for, is going to be the landlord as well as the house itself, those two things I can absolutely control. So I control the neighborhood, only at the barest of margins, but the house and the landlord, absolutely within my scope. So that's what I do and to your question of where are these houses? I think that the I think that the issue is that most folks don't look from the bottom up, they look from the top down. In other words, they're used to asking themselves or allowing their bank to suggest to them that they start at what they have qualified for and what you have qualified for is probably far more than you have to pay. So if your salary and such qualifies you for that average price of a home in the three hundreds, first thing you should do is tell your real estate agent, only show me houses that are 60 to 100,000. In fact, don't even give them a range. I don't want to see anything. That's more than six figures. If I do if it's more than $99,999, you're fired and they will quickly show you the houses that meet that criteria and that way you accustom yourself to that to that look and you tell the realtor, just a look where the neighborhoods makes sense for you school district wise and so on.   Michael: Interesting. There, I've got so many questions. There's so much there to unpack, Pam but and Vicki about the price point, if someone goes to buy a $20,000 home, are they able to get financing on that home right?   Pam: Going to be difficult, that's the honest truth. The easiest source of financing, if they buy a house like that is going to be if they are also looking to be a home owner, and really a multifamily home owner. So for a person who tells me, they really don't have much, much in the way of savings, but they want to do something now and moreover, they're not too satisfied with where they are living as either a renter or possibly as a homeowner, then I would help them find homes, let's say in that lower price point of that 20 that you mentioned or 30,000 that are in the areas that they are okay with, we would look at the land banks listings, for instance, sometimes there are more than 200 land banks across the US. So sometimes a land bank will have a house that is in terrible, terrible shape, but it's in a good neighborhood, that house is going to qualify for some financing that can help the homeowner if it's not that kind of house, and instead, it's something owned by Fannie Mae, by Freddie Mac, by US Department of Agriculture by Veterans Administration, all these wonderful government agencies that you didn't know we're in the real estate business, well, then that's good news because they can now become your lender, in addition to selling you the home.   Michael: Interesting, okay, so someone can just google or your online search for the local land bank and whatever market they're interested in living or investing in, and it'll pop up with listings, just like the MLS.   Pam: That's exactly right. Just type in name of your state. If nothing comes up name of your county, if nothing comes up name of your city. So try it in that order and if nothing comes up in your county, then look at the surrounding counties. I would also just type in something like land banks, United States map sometimes, you know, some set of words like that and then that should uncover all of the line land banks and help you see For your state, for instance, if you're in New Jersey, what are the land banks in New Jersey and then find it that way.   Michael- Interesting. Wow, this is so cool, Pam and so you are you self-managing all of your properties that you own?   Pam: I am, so when I first got started with this, I was working in a really demanding job in corporate America as an exec and that was not feasible to be self-managing. So I worked with a property manager and perhaps someday I will go back that route except this go round, of course, creating my own property management company. But right now, I'm right in the thick of it. So all of the units are self-managed and that includes units that are two family, three family and even four family, again, all bought for 35,000 or less.   Michael: And what are the rents that you're seeing on these types of properties?   Pam: Yep. So for a house, that's a four family that well, that particular one is all studios. So of course, the rents there are going to be a lot less, so that's 850 each for a house…   Michael: Wait, wait, wait, wait, sorry, timeout back one second, 850 each on per unit on a four family that you bought for 30 35,000?   Pam: Yeah, for 26,000, yes, that particular one.   Michael: I've been thinking about people talking and saying there's you can't find properties that are the 1% that meet the 1% rule. This is like the 678 percent rule.   Pam: And that's why I encourage folks to come to come to my smart cousin.com where I will hold you by the hand and help you not only find these, but much more importantly than just like, hey, that one there? How about that one? But to really evaluate them and see, does it meet? What I hope is a set of criteria that you've given some thought to? So for instance, you asked me a really important question, which is do I self-manage? That's a question that anyone should think about, do they have the ability to self-manage and moreover, do they have any interest in self managing or do they think that's going to lead them to hate all of humanity and…   Michael: A one way ticket…   Pam: One way ticket straight to? Why am I already 30 years of my life before I was headed downstairs? So that's how they're built. Don't do it, don't do it, turn it over to someone else, pay someone else to 10% 12%, even 15% to do the property management. But if you're built for it, then go ahead and do it. So that's one. Second is are you looking at long term rentals, which is what I do? Are you looking at short term rentals, meaning the Airbnb ease of the world? If so, well, then we need to look at a different set of properties. Are you looking to have something have tenants essentially under your feet, in other words, a to family where they're next door to you or underneath, right underneath you? So those are the kinds of questions to think about before you just run in and buy the first thing that you say.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense and such great tidbits and advice, but I'm so sorry, I interrupted you because I would just like my mind exploded. You have to forgive me. I hope it didn't get too much on the screen here.   Pam: Oh, no, no, not at all…   Michael: So, that was your for family lower rent at 850. A unit studio? Let's get that. Let's jump back to other side….   Pam: Yes, right. Okay, so probably the standard size is going to be your three bath, three bedroom, one bathroom, right and so that I have a lot of those and I suppose the lowest cost one is 1025 and there I just keep it there because it's, you know, a great family. They've lived there a long time and I'm not interested in changing anything for them. But I have another one where someone just moved in and that's 1500.   Michael: So that you bought for 28,000-30,000?   Pam: Right, that I bought for that one within a paper that one 345, 345. So yeah, it's a it's good pickings right now, but like anything, you just have to stay strongly tethered to the ground planning for other variabilities that could occur in the market for the two family that I have there. That's two beds, one bath, and that rent is 1000 for each. So I guess I just say that to say that in the north east. Generally the rents are going to be higher however, prices I mentioned a couple of states earlier, I mentioned Ohio and I think I mentioned Michigan and so certainly the Midwest is many, many more houses for the price of a car prices for rent are lower. But that said, Certainly you would target I think, the Midwest for a good solid multifamily, perhaps a three family that you might buy in that 40 $45,000 neighborhood. This is and then it won't hurt as much to have those lower rents.   Michael: Right, this is amazing. Pam, what are some of the risks or the downsides that either you've seen or learned about that folks should be aware of and hope to help mitigate?   Pam: Absolutely, so the risks, certainly one risk. You mentioned this earlier, when you asked about obtaining a loan and I would say more broadly, the risk is ensuring that you have sufficient cash to whether all of a sudden something is needed on that house, oops, I thought I could just put something to repair this roof and in fact, what do you know the roofer went up there, he said, it's like an eight layer cake made of asphalt shingles and so now I've actually have to replace that roof at a large cost or some other thing. So that's one risk is that you need to have the pocketbook, or access to a home equity line of credit or some other string to pull on. A second risk is how you start. I don't advise anyone to start in the deeper end of the pool, deeper and meaning, let's say auctions, auctions are site on scene, you are not able, at least not legally to go into the house and see it…   Michael: I think it might be a story there…   Pam: …And see it, it is Buyer beware. So I would never advise someone to do that as their very first house. Start instead with you mentioned MLS, lots listed on MLS, start their land banks, they will allow you most of them anyway, to go inside and bring someone with you to tour the home. I'd say another one, I suppose if I had this to do over again and so like a 2020 hindsight, it's think about when you're looking at homes, if something is in a much better neighborhood, or has some other vein of silver running through it, for instance, it is in a commercially zoned area. But maybe it costs a little bit more not a ton more. So for instance, it doesn't costs 55,000 Instead of cost 65. This thing that's a little better, I would have, I would say to young Pam Hill isn't worried. Those are what you should target the ones where you've got to spring for a little more and the reason why is even though that 10,000 or 15,000 will seem like a lot in the moment, the appreciation value is significantly higher. So that is something I would suggest to folks as well, to not just pick as many as you can dollar store style. But to instead look at where it makes sense to go a little bit higher, and that includes more multi families. 2-3-4 families are always going to be a little better than a single family because that is just one piece of infrastructure in the case of the roof. In the case of the sidewalk in front of the house versus two, I've also found that with multifamily is oftentimes the person who is living in unit one, as soon as unit two becomes empty, they refer you to a friend of family or someone else for unit two and that way you have a self-reinforcing mechanism for rent being paid by both parties because neither wants to see the other get into the terrible shape.   Michael: That is very interesting, that's very interesting. Pam on the property that you purchased, and I think I know the answer, but I'm going to ask it anyhow. What has the appreciation been like because as investors we talk about cash flow or appreciation, it tends to not be both or that's what kind of land somewhere in the middle. So what have you seen with your properties thus far?   Pam: That's a great question and it even gets back a little bit to the other question around the risks. So I would say First answering the question, the appreciation is not as high when you are buying for the price of a car and thus that is also the risk. If you are looking for a flip opportunity, you would do better to buy your standard $200,000 home, for instance, that is in a $400,000 neighborhood and needs $80,000 worth of work, you are going to be able to obtain, maybe not from a percentage perspective, you might not think, gee, that's returning as much, but absolute dollars are what matter in that example, not the percentage. So percentage wise, my houses have all appreciated quite a lot relative to others to the tune of two or three or even four times as much but think how low the base is. So those houses are really two things. Thing one is cashflow, thing two is lottery ticket for appreciation value. So as a for instance, the houses that I own in Wilmington, Delaware, I would imagine that when the Joseph R Biden library is built, I'm presuming that is going to happen in Wilmington, Delaware. Given President Biden's long experience there as a senator, that neighborhood is going to see some significant appreciation value. So that's where I see the upside, should there be a cash sale as it were of these houses. Something else that you can consider this is more of a risk. But it is something that you can consider when you buy a number of houses that have a common macroeconomic theme to them, like house for price of car, you can think about either a real estate investment trusts, so putting them under a REIT, or putting them under a hedge fund and for those investors who are interested in that higher level of return, you mentioned the 1% versus the six or seven, those investors kind of like low, low investment grade high yield bonds, might have some interest in that kind of portfolio and that can be another way to both obtain cash flow, or certainly to, to get out of the market as it were all together without selling them off one at a time.   Michael: Interesting and this has been so eye opening and so insightful. We chatted before we hit record last time we spoke about some of the things that you're doing to be an advocate for some of your tenants and people might hear that and think well, how can I be an advocate as a landlord and also have a tenant relationship? It seems almost counterintuitive, so can you speak to a little bit of the work you're doing?   Pam: I'd say first is that I do it, I do it because I feel driven to do it. In the same way that the community that I focus on mission wise is black and brown people, women, but certainly there's room under the tent for everyone. But I think about who has been disenfranchised, certainly by FHA and others, some many decades ago and still there's some of that rattling around in our system. So as I think about tenant rights, there are two in particular in Delaware that I'm passionate about. One of them says that you should not be able to discriminate against a tenant, because they receive a Housing Choice Voucher. In other words, because they receive section eight, it is legal to do that to advertise your home and say I do not accept section eight. That strikes me as a very strange, legal rule, since it is not legal to discriminate for other reasons, including economic source, I certainly couldn't tell a nurse your money doesn't spend here, missy, where are the firefighters? That's who I want. So it strikes me as the same with that and so I am advocating for that. A second one is a right to paid representation for very low income tenants who are facing eviction. This is a one year pilot of sorts that Delaware is looking to implement and that I approach from a perspective of fairness. It seems only fair, that folks who more than likely cannot afford not just a lawyer, but even a day off work to come to the eviction hearing in the first place. It seems only fair that some sort of representation for them just the same way that it's within my scope, should be available and second is from a landlord perspective, my hope is that with that representation, and usually it would not be a lawyer, it would be some sort of legal advocate. But the hope is that, that gives the tenant someone else to listen to, rather than thinking, Oh, Pam Hill, you're just talking your book, I do not want to listen to what you have to say, I'll just take my chances in front of the judge. But by hearing another person, look over their case and tell them, You owe the grant. It's just that simple. Let's work out an arrangement to make a payment. I think that that could help us both, so that's the reason that I am behind these.   Michael: It makes so much sense and it is so interesting, and frankly startling to hear that these laws exist, and it does seem so punitive to the tenant and so I really applaud you and thank you for being such an advocate for your tenants and I'm sure that they appreciate it as well. So keep up the good work.   Pam: Yes. Thank you, thank you.   Michael: Absolutely. Well, Pam, this as I've been saying it the whole show, the whole episode has been so interesting, so insightful. So much fun. Thank you again, for coming on. If people want to learn more about you want to learn more about my smart cousin, where's the best place for them to do so?   Pam: Come to my M Y, smart S M A R T cousin C O U S I N.com. Certainly follow me on instagram or twitter with the handle @mysmartcousin. If you go to my site, you'll be able to see a couple of things. One is a free eBook. Second are free webinars that I do and then third, paid courses. So look forward to seeing you there. Look forward to helping you on this journey. Please take action, even if you listen, and then tune out from any sort of hand holding from me or anyone else as quite alright. Just get going on your slice of this American Pie.   Michael: Love it. Pam, thank you again. I'm sure we'll be chatting soon. Take care, alright!   Pam: Thanks so much, Michael.   Michael: Okay, everyone. That was our show a big thank you to Pam super, super interesting story and pretty amazing what she's been able to accomplish at the price points that she has really amazing stuff and really cool work that she's doing being a Tenant Advocate where she invests locally. As always, we would love to hear feedback from you all on things that you'd like to hear future episodes on and the reviews are really helpful for us. We look forward to seeing our next one. Happy investing…

Tamar Hermes is a full-time real estate investor and educator. After building successful businesses in the retail and entertainment industries, she turned her attention to real estate with a mission to get more women to become investors and continue to build her portfolio. Tamar has been investing for over 20 years with a focus on appreciation with buy and hold single-family homes and duplexes in Los Angeles. In the past few years, she has expanded her portfolio to include passive multi-family investments across multiple states, private lending, and Airbnb properties. She bought her first duplex when she was 28. She always had a knack for saving money, but it took her years to discover there were other ways to earn income besides working a 9-5 job. Today, Tamar will talk about how financial freedom is possible through real estate and the importance of knowing how to allocate and invest your money and protect assets is a critical piece of sustaining financial independence and creating a legacy. Episode Links: https://www.themillionairessmentality.com/ https://wealthbuildingconcierge.com/ https://quiz.tryinteract.com/#/60bd0792decf1d00177af595 --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey everyone, welcome to the Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Michael Albaum, and today I am joined by Tamar Hermes, who is an author, investor, coach, an all-around awesome person and she's gonna be talking to us today about what it's like to get started, as well as some of the different avenues that investors can take as they're going down their investment journey. So let's get into it.   Hey, everyone, just a quick note, before we get into the episode, today, I wanted to give a shout out to the Roofstock Academy, which can be found at roofstockacademy.com. It is a one stop shop for your real estate investing education, independent of where you're starting from whether you're just starting out trying to get that first deal done, or a seasoned investor with a sizable portfolio, looking to get involved some other asset classes, or maybe streamline your investing. We've got stuff for you. It's comprised of on demand lectures, so you go at your own pace. Some of our programs have one on one coaching access to private Slack channels, forums and group coaching sessions. So come check us out at roofstockacademy.com. Look forward to seeing you in there.   Tamar, thank you so much for taking the time and joining me on the podcast. Really appreciate you coming on.   Tamar: Thank you so much for having me.   Michael: Oh, my pleasure, so I know a little bit about your backstory. But I mean, you're an author, you're a coach, you're an investor, give us the little background of who you are, where you're come from, what it is you do in real estate.   Tamar: How long does this podcast? Okay, in a nutshell. So my background is similar story, as a lot of investors that start out in real estate, I was looking for a way to lower my expenses and so I bought a duplex over 20 years ago and the rest is history, I realized that I could get other people to pay my mortgage and it was very exciting and I went on and did more of it cut to I did grow up without anything. So I wanted other women to realize the opportunity in real estate and that's when I started wealth building concierge. I recently wrote a book, the millionaires mentality to teach women how and men too actually should say, how to invest in real estate and the many ways in which you can do it and the many ways to build wealth through real estate.     Michael: Oh my god, I love it. Well, there is a ton here to unpack, we'll see how much we get through in today's episode. But so the duplex that you bought, you obviously bought it locally because you were living in it, and your future investments and kind of proceeding investments after that were those local or those remote?   Tamar: So when I first started investing, many years ago, in Los Angeles, I was living in the duplex and so I bought there, and I continued to buy there because we didn't I didn't have the resources that we have now and I didn't realize the opportunities of investing out of state. Over the years, I have investments across the country now and I also invest in both passive and active meaning that passive that I give money to partners and they do all the work and I get a piece of the pie active where I do the work and I take advantage of the real estate professional status and get to enjoy all the perks of controlling my own asset.   Michael: Love it, so on the remote real estate investor podcast, we've often done showdowns between single family versus multifamily passive versus active investing and we try to take a stance and defend both positions having done both, which do you like better and why?   Tamar: I will say that I enjoy both for different reasons. I enjoy both passive and active. I ultimately like passive better because passive is where you're on the beach in Hawaii, drinking a Mai Tai while you are collecting checks, so that kind of trumps everything. Although active gives you tax advantages, it gives you more control over your investment and it is a way in which you can also learn a lot more about real estate investing because if you're passive, you need to learn a certain skill set in terms of looking at analyze a deal and how to vet a sponsor. However, you don't need to know all the ins and outs of how the property management works and the ins and outs of negotiating, finding the deal. Dealing with the tenants all of that those aspects. So there's a different, it depends on what you want to accomplish as part of my whole platform, where I feel like right now we're in a time where real estate investing is very popular, which I'm so grateful because there's enough for all of us, and we can all make a lot of money have owning real estate. What I do get concerned about is that there's not a lot of thought or strategy around what we're buying. So a lot of investors now they might say, okay, I want to buy Airbnbs and the goal is to cashflow 10,000 a month. Well, that's a great goal and that's wonderful. However, what is the big play in terms of the Airbnb and where are you really going with that and what then is the property appreciating or is it just in a market where it doesn't appreciate? What happens if the market changes and will that place still rent as well or do you have to turn it into a long term rent and can you can it? Can it take the that strategy? So there's a lot of pieces that I like to think about in terms of mitigating risk, and in terms of wealth building in terms of how do we build a portfolio where we have passive income, where we have certain assets, performing in certain ways and other assets performing in certain ways. And I'm also in private equity deals, I'm in crypto, I like a diversified portfolio.     Michael: Love it, love it, love it. So if someone is just getting started, they are trying to get their legs under them invest in their first deal and they're getting kind of overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that you have to learn and do to get involved into an active ownership deal. Do you think passive is a good place for someone to get started or do you like people to see, go the active route, get their teeth cut, get an education to understand what goes into the back end stuff around the passive deal?   Tamar: That's a great question. I think it really depends on one big factor, which is how much time do you have, if you are a busy professional, and you are working or running companies, and you're not really that interested in real estate, but you want to benefit from the profits that are available to you, then passive is certainly the way to go and then I would I would do is focus on that dive deep into meeting the right sponsors, finding out about how to look at the deals and learn about certain deal structure and the benefits and that is a great way to go. If you are someone who is young, you've got time you're interested in real estate you want to be in the game, get your hands dirty, then you want to be asking yourself, what is the most appealing aspect of real estate in terms of do you like and Airbnb, a lot of a lot of people don't like designing, they don't want to deal with all of the nuances and the expense sending up an Airbnb, Airbnb is expensive, there's not a lot of way around that if you're going to furnish a place, you're going to have to put money into it. So those are if you don't have that resource, then that might not be an option for you right now. Granted, if you're able to maybe do a get a property where you can get a low enough deal and get enough appreciation into it and do sort of the burr then you have the opportunity to do the option of Airbnb and because maybe you have enough money in the deal there or maybe you take a partner. So those are just examples. A very simple way to get started is even with Roofstock, you do a great job of providing turnkey properties where people can go on and figure out where they want to buy and then do a purchase and start learning that way. That's another great way, keep it simple.   Michael: Tamar, I think that's such great insight and I know that you've done all kinds of investing, you've implemented a ton of different strategies, kind of throughout the country. So I would love if you could give people just a taste of some of the things that you have done and then I'm curious to get your thoughts on what your favorite has been.   Tamar: My favorite investing strategy is passive investing and I'd say that as a general because any project that you can get in on where you are making mailbox money is a good project and especially when those projects exit, you get another bump and you're looking at interest returns of close to 20% generally annualized when it when it all shakes down when once a project exits. So granted, you have to remember it's it an investment, so it could vary and even if I'm making 14% annualized, I'm pretty happy. I think that's a pretty great return for doing no work and putting my money in. Now my favorite investment strategy for if you are just starting out is a little different. I would say right now my favorite investing strategy for starting out is probably the Airbnb model and I think I'm not alone and that's why it's become so popular because you can cash flow properties and buy in appreciating areas, which is sort of unheard of in the past, when you would buy in Los Angeles. Well, Los Angeles is a bad example because they have terrible laws for, for tenants. So that's not a good example.   But let's say Austin, where I live now, Austin is a great city. So it is possible in Austin or San Antonio to buy a place if you if you are savvy and you can buy it right and get a great opportunity, then you can move into an Airbnb structure. Now, I should say, though, in Austin, there are regulations, so you need to go outside of Austin, but certainly San Antonio, there's a lot of places where you can do it and you can actually buy in an appreciating area in Florida and Georgia, there's a lot of places and I just think that's a great strategy for a beginner, you do need some money, like I said, because you got to furnish the place and it is harder to buy in an appreciating area, because prices are higher. So if you don't have as much money, it makes it cost prohibitive. But there are a lot of labor areas that you can go in Texas, in Florida, in Georgia, in Idaho, where you can make money and do well.   Michael: Love it, so I think what's hard for so many beginning investors and curious to get your thoughts if you see the same is that there are so many different things, so many different rabbit holes, an investor can go down, oh, I want to learn about wholesaling and go through that I want to go learn about burr investing go to that I want to go into fixing, flipping, go do that and so it's can be really overwhelming. And so if someone is interested in buy and hold, or in Airbnb, I mean, how do someone stay focused when they're just learning and they're just getting started?   Tamar: So that's a great question, it can be very daunting and you can also get into analysis paralysis, where you want to buy the best deal and make sure that it's the best one and you make the most money and a lot of times getting a base hit is better than getting a home run on the first go around and sometimes you're a seasoned investor and you end up with a base hit. It's happened to me, and it happens to the best of us because we can't control all the variables. So there are a couple things you want to look at if you're just starting out one is where do you live and do you live in an area where you can actually invest and it makes sense and if you do, I always think don't go to another state. If you live in a perfectly good state. If you live in South Carolina, don't go to Texas to invest in South Carolina, it's a great market, you don't need to make your life harder. So the first thing is deciding on the area.   The other thing is, then you need to decide what strategy now strategy a lot of times comes down to how much money do you have and how much time do you have and how many partners can you get if you need money to Terez for a deal. So if you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of money. Wholesaling is a great option because you can get a deal and you can make a really quick profit, and you can start building some profit in there. Now you're not owning the property, so you haven't quite built your asset column. Although you're doing a great job in terms of bringing income in and building that that nest egg, well, not a nest egg, but an investor egg that you can turn into buying properties working capital, working capital, exactly, you have working capital and so you just look at where you are and I think you really the numbers are pretty basic. If you're not going for a huge deal multifamily aware, you have a lot more metrics that you need to be looking at. So if you're just a single family, it really isn't that complicated. You just need to look at how much it's how much the expenses are going to be. What can you rent it for? Are you in an area where people are moving? Or are you in an area where people are moving away? That's a consideration. What kind of markets are in the area or is there just one industry like it was in Detroit, that was a huge problem. When the industry fell apart, and then a lot of people were leaving their homes and there was no one to buy those homes. So those are the kinds of things that you want to ask yourself and don't get caught into wanting to retire from real estate investing next week, because unless you have millions of dollars that you're playing with, you've got to build that and chances are you're not going to build it on the first deal. Although if you keep moving you will ultimately get there you have to stay in it and you have to do the work and be diligent and just believe in yourself a little bit. You can look at other people who have done it and you know you can do it especially when I speak to women, which is who I coach and who I serve.   We are looking at what we can, what we're looking at what we can do, how we can get an action, how we can focus and diversify and create portfolios and with, with clarity and confidence so that you can actually get past that part of the of the gate where you're just looking and wanting to dive in and actually diving in and being on the other side of actually, oh, my gosh, I own property.   Michael: Yeah, no, I think that makes a ton of sense and kind of continuing in that thought vein, have you ever had a deal a bad deal or a deal go sideways that you could share? Because I think so often, especially on real estate podcast, we're talking about the wins the highs, the best of the best and people are like, I could never do that. I could never be where Tamar is I could never do what she's done. So give us a humbling experience that you had in real estate.   Tamar: Yeah, sure. So I can talk about a deal recently, that wasn't really a horrible deal. But definitely the numbers were not what I expected and I did, I never think that you actually I don't like to say you ever lose money in real estate, unless you sell at a loss, right? It's just like the stock market. It's the same principle. If you hang on to the property, and then the prices go up, and then you sell then you made money. But if you sell at a loss, then you that's the only time you lose money. So recently bought a property in Arkansas, and I had boots on the ground. That was the other thing I was going to talk about that if you want, let's say you don't live in a great area, like you live in Los Angeles, you might need somewhere where you have some people in place that can help you find the property and facilitate the, the rehab and manage the property for you. So those are things you think about. So in Arkansas, I had boots on the ground in this area and I purchased a little lake house that I wanted to Airbnb, and the margins were terrific and my boots on the ground were very seasoned and I had done other deals with her before and I kept asking, hey, is the Airbnb regulation an issue and she said she really didn't think it was and that other people were air being in the area and that we just had to go through a process with the with the city and with the with the gated community that I bought in, and that it would be fine and so I went through with the deal and we started buying furniture and I did it very hesitantly because it's, it's expensive to furnish an Airbnb and I kept thinking, well, I want that to go through the regulations to make sure we're not stuck and at the end of the day, we did get caught in some red tape, we were denied by the city, there was a big political issue. We're actually in this area, we're actually going to court now not just me, the whole community of Airbnb, Airbnb homeowners that are upset about the regulations and feel like it's not good for the community and that it's not, it isn't diplomatic at all and so what I ended up doing was I ended up renting it for six months to a guy that was actually building a lake house, and I am covering my mortgage, and I'm making a few $100. So it is cash flowing a bit. But it definitely wasn't the few 1000 that I thought I was going to make in the area. So that's a story where it wasn't like the worst thing in the world. But it certainly wasn't the best I use my resources, I expected a certain return and I didn't get it. But I just pivoted, and hopefully in six months in a year, if the regulations change, then I believe that my property will not only double in value, but I will also be able to start Airbnb being it. So sometimes it takes a little longer when you're doing an investment.   Michael: Yeah, okay. Oh, that's interesting. So maybe you didn't get to make lemonade today, but you made like lemony water, and next year, you'll be able to hopefully make the full fledge lemonade.   Tamar: This is part of the reason why I like a diversified portfolio because you can't control all the variables in real estate and that's part of the reason why people don't ever get into it, because they are uncomfortable with the fact that you can't control the variables. They think that when they invest with a financial advisor, and the financial advisor puts them in stock, somehow that financial advisor is protecting them and protecting their assets for the one and a half percent commission that they're making. The truth is they don't control the stock market. So it can go down just as easily. You're just as vulnerable. In fact, I think a lot more in the stock market than you are in real estate.   Michael: That is such a good point and I just want to kind of touch on that again, because I think it just I had an aha moment for myself. I think when people get involved with other people that can talk the talk or that have experienced doing whatever it is, they get this illusion of say see, and to your point, exactly, the person who's selling you the product or placing you in a product has zero control over the market or the company into the stock that placing you and so I think that's a really great point to hit home.   Tamar: I mean, they certainly have knowledge and they are certainly doing the best they can, although we know historically that it's volatile, and then ultimately, they don't control it.   Michael: Okay, Tamar. So getting back to kind of having a bad experience I showed on a prior podcast, I just got my lunch eaten on my very first deal, but I was too green, too naive to know to stop. So I just kept falling forward and I was like, well, this is progress. When people hear those types of stories, like whoa, like, I don't want that to happen to me, I'm gonna do my research, I'm gonna get educated, I'm going to do all the things I need to do in order to do this responsibly. How should someone think about being ready, because you could very easily say, and I'm guilty of it, too. Oh, one more podcast, one more conference, one more book, one more coaching session, whatever it is you're doing to prepare yourself if you're just getting started. So how do you take that leap and know that yeah, I'm doing it responsibly and I have enough information to proceed without getting without, you know, being overloaded with information?   Tamar: I think you need to be honest with yourself. And I think you need to look at what's really happening for you. So there is a point where you are educating yourself and you do feel like, okay, I want to have my ducks in a row, I want to be pre-qualified for a loan, I want to have a certain amount saved. So I can buy this property at this amount. Or I want to educate myself in a certain strategy and then there's also a certain point where you are just in analysis, paralysis, and one of the things you can do that really helps is one to set a deadline, just decide to say, okay, I have two months to do this and after two months, I'm going to do this and when you do that, one, you're making a commitment to yourself and also in your mind, you're making a commitment to that action, the other thing you can do is get an accountability partner and say in two months, hold me accountable. I said I was going to do this. Now, you mentioned coaching, I'm a huge fan of coaching, I have coaches, I pay a lot of money, for support for guidance for collaboration and I think that it's very important to look at yourself and see if you're the kind of person where you know what, I need somebody to take my hand and look at this with me and say this is okay. Now granted, you could have a mentor, and sometimes you could go to meetups, and you can meet mentors for free and a lot of people are super generous, and they will be able to support you. So you couldn't even get that support for note paying no money and I would also say there is a huge benefit in being in a group being in a private coaching, really looking at what you're doing, and having someone support you in that deliberate way. Because we do pay attention to what we pay for and it's just the truth. So sometimes when we get it for free, maybe somebody gives you some great advice, but you don't pay for it. But then as soon as you pay for it, you think, okay, I just gave that person money to tell me for the value of their knowledge and they told me to do this, this and this, I'm going to do it because I just pay money for that and I want to get the I want to get the benefit of that. So it does work pretty well and the trick is to really know yourself, and to make sure that you are moving forward and don't be afraid.   The other thing that happens is we have this attachment to money, we have this false attachment that if we hold on to our money, that we're safe, and that we are building wealth, and that we're secure and the truth is, is that we don't build wealth by keeping it in a bank account, where in fact right now with inflation, we are most certainly losing money. If you want to use the rule of 72 and seven years your savings is gone at this point with the inflation rate we're at. So the truth is that that money needs to be working. I can't tell you how many clients I've had where they have hundreds of 1000s in the bank, and they're just paralyzed. They just don't know exactly. I'm not sure what to do. I don't want to make the wrong decision. I don't want to lose money and I don't know exactly what direction to go in and they are so happy once the money starts moving. I had a client she ended up buying a house that really suited the next move for her. It's an Airbnb, but also her family can use it. So it kind of tied in really nicely with her desires, which is also important and then right after she did it, she made a big sale and some money came in. I mean, it was crazy. Once you start moving the money, money starts moving with you and it's amazing how that works and that's why I really think that the false attachment to money can really also hold us back from the real estate investing and we need to be careful about that because if you fall into that trap, you will just be hoarding your money and it just won't be working for you and you also won't be reaching your goals because you can't buy anything unless you're willing to give somebody some money to buy the property.   Michael: All right, that makes a ton of sense. For those that might not be familiar to mark, you just touched on what is the rule of 72.   Tamar: So the rule of 72 is you multiply how much percentage you're making, by the years that it will take to double your money. So in 10 years' time seven, that would be 72. So that would take you at 7% 10 years to make that money at 10% inflation, it would take you seven years to make that much money.   Michael: Perfect, perfect. Thank you for the clarification. Let's shift gears here and talk about your book. I know you said who it was for it and why you wrote it. But I'm just curious, how did you get the inspiration with so many real estate books out there? How did you want to set yourself apart?   Tamar: Yeah, that's a great question and I think this is really at the crux of everything that we do, because we can look also at all the people that are involved in real estate, wait, where's my space? How do I fit in? Is it is the market? Is it too late for me? Those kinds of questions. So for me, right, what I think is a great place to come from is to think about your why and think about why you're doing things. So for me, the book was about me sharing with the world. So I wasn't thinking about everybody else and how saturated the market was, and that there wasn't a space for my book, I was just thinking, You know what, I have this knowledge, I have an idea I want to share who I am and how I got to where I am, I feel like I have a message that I really want to share. I feel that I have knowledge that I want to share and so I just shared…   Michael: …and people were clearly receptive to it.   Tamar: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, a lot, a lot of women are and men are reading it too, and getting a lot of benefit out of it. So it was really about what it's really all about and everything that that the listeners are do is about what is it that you want and what do you want to put into the world and how do you want to live and if you want real estate, by golly, just figure out a way to get it, you know, other people are doing it, why not you? They're not you're gonna, we're all just humans, we're all just people. The only difference between me and you is that I've done it a lot. So I have amassed a certain amount of wealth and you might be at the beginning or at a middle stage, it doesn't matter. It just you're on your journey. I'm on my journey. But you can still find properties.   Michael: Yeah, yeah, not so good. Someone once told me and I forget if it's a famous person or a quote, but you know, you look at someone that's really accomplished. The only difference between them and you as they've made a ton more mistakes than you. It's like, oh, yeah, like they've gone, they've gone through the stuff, right? It's true.   Tamar: That's true and most of the people just so that, you know, that I ever speak to, and that in the circles that I'm around where we're a lot of us have accomplished a lot. We have come from nothing. We have worked really hard, we have made a lot of mistakes, we continue to make mistakes, we continue to put ourselves out there. It's just working that muscle and just be willing to be in the world and create the life that you want.   Michael: So good, Tamar, it's no secret that the world of real estate investing is like oversaturated with dudes, it's like it's ridiculous and we've really tried to make an effort here at rootstock to highlight the women voices that are out there that are doing it. So what can you share with women that are out there who are wanting to get invested, but are feeling overwhelmed or nervous? Because it is such a male dominated space?   Tamar: Yeah. So it's, I think we're still 30% women are investors and we're, we're making strides and I would say, embrace the men embrace the good men and don't feel like it's us in them, just because they've been in the game a lot longer. Historically, we couldn't even buy property, it sounds insane to even say that, because none of it makes sense. Although it's true and we haven't had as much time in this arena. I would say I think the women that struggle more or any woman that starts thinking, oh, those guys, they did this they did that they're hard to work with. I have tons of partners that are men, I adore them as much as I adore the woman and that I work with that I partner with and I believe that if we all embrace what we want, and as a woman understanding that we have skill sets that men do not have and that there's place for us in the real estate investing arena, then we will continue to flourish and to make strides.   Michael: Love it, love it, love it. Tamar, this has been so much fun. Where can people get a copy of the book and how can they get a hold of you if they want to learn more?   Tamar: Yeah, awesome. The book is called The Millionaire mentality of professional women's guide to building wealth through real estate and you can get it just by going to tamarbook.com. It's T A M A R book.com and then also, I'd love to share my real estate investing personality quiz, which is also at the beginning of my book to support beginners and learning. How do you decide what area of investing you want to go into and that you can tamarquiz.com.   Michael: Amazing. Thank you so much and if people want to reach out or learn more about you, is there a good place for them to do that?   Tamar: Yeah, absolutely. You can visit my website at wealthbuildingconcierge.com or you can also send an email to me and my team at hello@wealthbuildingconcierge.com.   Michael: Amazing and we will link to those in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for taking the time Tamar. I really appreciate you coming on and I'm sure we'll be chatting soon.   Tamar: Awesome, thanks for having me.   Michael: You're welcome. Take care.   Alright, everyone, that was our episode, a big thank you to Tamar for coming on. Really, really great insights. Love the piece about the financial advisor that she talked about. So if you missed that, definitely go back and give it another listen. As always, we love hearing from you all with episode ideas, comments and feedback. So feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing on the next one. Happy investing…