Daniel Kwak - Founder at Miotti Partners Capital | How To Become A Real Estate Millionaire By 24

Welcome to SuccessStory, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host, Scott DeClairey. The SuccessStory podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network and the BlueWire podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts like my first million. My first million is hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Purry. They feature famous guests. They discuss how companies made their first million and then some. They brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. Here are some of the topics you talk about. If you like any of these, you will love the show. Three profitable business ideas that you should start in 2022. Drunk business ideas that can make you millions, asking the founder of Grammarly how he built a 13 billion dollar company or SaaS companies that anybody can start. If these topics are up your alley, go check out my first million. Listen to it wherever you listen to your podcasts. Today my guest is Daniel Quack. He is a real estate investor, portfolio manager. He is an authority on all things real estate finance. He's built a YouTube community of over 200,000 individuals. I had a great chat with him. A little bit of a story of Daniel. He immigrated to the US at the age of five at 20. He had negative $187 in his bank account. He was motivated to change his life by the age of 23. He had 87 rental units assets under management in the millions, roughly $10 million. He had raised millions of dollars in capital at the age of 26. He founded my OD partners capital. It's a satellite fund that introduced equities fund management into real estate for the first time ever. Now he's raised money. He has a huge portfolio. He also built an incredible personal brand. And he is an authority on all things real estate finance. He built an audience in a community of over 200,000 individuals on YouTube. We spoke about his origin story. We spoke about his upbringing, his immigration, his faith and his faith-based roots. Some lessons that he teaches over. He's very in tune with God, with the Bible. What the Bible teaches about money and business. Why it's important for him? Why he speaks about faith and why it's such an intrinsic part of who he is. And how he includes faith into everything he does in business. Then we spoke about very tactical real estate things. So we spoke about how he grew his portfolio, how to raise millions of dollars in capital, with no capital raising experience or portfolio, how he went from zero to 87 units and doors in one year. We spoke about disruptive real estate investing models. We spoke about networking with investors. And then lastly, we spoke about some leadership topics, some entrepreneurial topics, some general advice that he has for people that are looking to start a side hustle or go full time into real estate, how to get started from scratch from the ground up. So let's jump right into it. Tons of faith, entrepreneurship, real estate, finance conversations. This is Daniel Quack, one half of Quack Brothers and he is a real estate investor, authority and entrepreneur. Yeah, well, every superhero has their origin story, right? Peter Parker got bit by the spider, Iron Man got rich. Actually, there's no origin story with Iron Man. He's just super rich. I think I'm going to be a superhero. That is not my story. I did not grow up super rich. I actually grew up quite opposite. So I immigrated to the United States when I was five years old, 1999, from a little country called South Korea. The only reason why you probably even know that country is you either watch Squid Game or maybe you listen to BTS, I don't know. But my family, so my dad was a pastor, still is. And he actually went back to Korea to preach and run a church. But we came here initially because my dad, and it makes it sound a little weird to perhaps non-faith oriented individuals, but God called my dad to come to Chicago and start a church. And so my brother, myself, I was five, my brother was seven at the time. We came to the United States. For people listening who know anything about immigrant life, sometimes it's not the easiest scenario. So I remember we came here, we had barely anything to our name, our studio apartment that was about probably 500 square feet, was one of those situations where you turned the light on in the kitchen and the cockroaches was spread. You know, they would go to the walls. But I will share this story. This is kind of, if you want to hear my real origin story, who made, you know, the story that made Daniel, who Daniel is today. I remember I was six years old, and there are many nights where I finally had to sleep in the car because it couldn't afford to pay the heating bill. And obviously winter, since Chicago are not necessarily the greatest. You know, you're not necessarily hunting or camping or roasting weeners on a fire. But I remember there was one night when, you know, it was probably around March or April. I don't really recall, I was six years old. And as a kid, I always had trouble sleeping. And I remember there was one night I looked out the window. It was about 1.30 a.m. in the morning. And I saw this guy who was stumbling out of, let's call it, a gentleman's entertainment center. And we, our apartment complex we lived in was next to a gentleman's entertainment center because that's all we could afford. And so I see this guy stumbling out and you don't have to be an adult or a grown man to know, or, you know, to know that something is expensive. You know, you could be a kid and you can tell, okay, that's probably worth a good bit of money. The suit that he was wearing was probably a $2,000 $3,000 suit. I saw that he had a really shiny watch on. He looked offensive. Absolutely, he looked rich. You know, and he got in the car, you know, he got in Lexus, which back in the 90s, Lexuses were like the luxury car brand, right? Like they were it. So he got in this Lexus and what made me really sad was he had a wedding ring on his hand. I mean, for some reason that made me really sad. But he, you know, he had six years old. I was six years old. Yeah. And I was like, all right, this guy's probably going to kill somebody because I literally saw him swerve, right? Because he stumbled. He stumbled out of the gentleman's entertainment center. So he was pretty well off. And then it turns my head, literally 90 degrees to my left. And I saw my parents who were sharing a twin bed in a room that doubled as our parents bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and living room. Next to, you know, rusted appliances, you know, it was a place where our rent was, I think, $380 a month. Just not the greatest place to live. And then the question I asked myself was, imagine if we had a world where people who had my parents' heart, because they were Godfaring people. I mean, my dad was the type of man where even if he only owned one shirt, he would take the shirt off his back and give it to, you know, a homeless guy or a stranger that needed it. And I started asking myself the question from six years old. What would it look like for my dad to know what the other guy, the guy who stumbled out of the gentleman's entertainment center? Because granted, even though he might be a jerk and not be the greatest person, he knows something that my dad doesn't know about making money. He knows something about accumulating resources and putting together a business plan and executing. And granted, he may have been the most transactional, horrible human being in the world. But let's give the guy some credit, you know. And I started to ask myself, what would the world look like if we had every single person who was like my dad, who had the knowledge of the guy who stumbled out of the gentleman's entertainment center? Or if the guy who stumbled out of the gentleman's entertainment center had the heart that my dad did, what would the world look like? What would that mean? And I started asking myself that question almost every day ever since I was a kid. And growing up even further and more so when I was a teenager or when my dad's church, I remember every month we had a guest speaker. And these guest speakers were phenomenal people, whether you're religious or not, you know, they were missionaries who would go off to other countries to help those people in those communities and tribes, you know. And one of the most common denominators was they were always asking for money. They were always fundraising. They were always needing financial support. But anything, it held them down from what they really wanted to do, which was help people. And so again, that question just kept playing over and over and over in my mind. And for some reason, I just didn't know. It just did nothing about it because I didn't know how, right? Like how can I get started? How do I even do this business thing? How do I even, you know, like I just didn't across to me. So it all led to a breaking point. You know, we all have our moments where we say enough is enough. Right? I'm sure you had that moment. We all every entrepreneur has that moment of forget this. I'm starting my business. It's time I had to take the first step. So I remember out 18 years old, I found myself having negative $187.65 in my bank account. And I still remember that day, like it was yesterday. I looked down on my phone and it was super embarrassing because I had a big crush on this girl. My brother came to me and he said, hey, man, are you still in debt? And I'm like, dude, shut it. But that was the day, right? That was the day I decided to do something about it. And I read an article by Forbes Magazine that says that out of the top 1% of wealthy individuals in the world, like three fourths of them made their money investing in real estate. And so I was like, I got an investment real estate. So long story short, I'd get up at very early in the morning. I wouldn't go to sleep till late at night. And I would just learn everything I could about investing, finances, real estate. And all to answer the question, why did my parents grow up broke while that guy who stumbled out of the gentleman's entertainment center was rich? Why was that? Clearly, there was a knowledge gap there. So I spent about three years learning my butt off. And this is the first major lesson of how my success occurred takes place. So I'm 22 at this point, 21, 22 at this point. And I haven't done a single real estate deal yet. And mind you, I'm probably the smartest person in every single room I walk into when it comes to real estate. But I think one of the reasons why most entrepreneurs and business owners, even individual starting side hustles fail, is because they have the knowledge, but they lack the skill to be able to translate knowledge and information and inspiration into a blueprint that they could tangibly do on a daily basis, on a weekly basis. After spending hundreds of hours and thousands of hours actually training different entrepreneurs investors, that in my opinion is the number one problem. The ability to turn information and inspiration into a blueprint that works for you. They can turn it into a full, I don't think so. I don't think that's I don't think that's knowledge. I think it has for one a lot to do with fear, but it has a lot to do with in my opinion, acumen, right? Like people say, oh, is they have that X factor? They have the it factor. Well, no, nine times out of 10. They just are really good at turning information into action steps. Most people don't know how I mean, you know, Scott, I'm assuming you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs. How many beginner entrepreneurs and business owners or even just mom starting side hustles? How often do they just go, I just I just don't know what to do. Like I have all this knowledge. I have like I just don't know what to do. They're overwhelming. It's super open. Thank you. That's another word that they use, you know? Or they just go, this is why I want to hire a coach, you know, or this is why I want to take courses, but again, nothing wrong with it, right? I don't I have a real estate invested coaching business, right? Like I'm I'm all about it, but that's what I help people do. I help them translate their information that they have into knowledge and you know, action steps and also KPIs leading like we can get into that here in a second. But, um, uh, 22 years old, I haven't done a deal yet. I know all this knowledge. And so usually in moments of frustration, uh, I have a conversation with the big man upstairs. And, you know, I go to God and I go, Hey, man, uh, and by the way, that, that is actually how I talk to God. I go, Hey, hey, Dad, or Hey, man, what's going on? You know, I don't go all mighty Lord seventh of thy, you know, like I don't do that. Um, I actually can't stand people who do that. It's like a pet peeve of mine. But I just go, Hey, uh, Dad, or hey, God, or hey, bro, you know, um, why am I having such a hard time with this? You know, like why why am I so frustrated? You know, why can't I get this to move? And so he takes me to this passage. It's in the Bible, which I hope you don't mind me. We're going to Bible, but uh, it's in John chapter 13. It's just a story. How Jesus has this realization that he's the most powerful being in the universe. So imagine you having the powers of Superman, Iron Man, Hulk, you know, like all of them combined. And he has this realization and it actually says in the Bible word for word, that Jesus, as he was entering, uh, the room, right, the upper room with his disciples, uh, he had this realization that the father had put everything under his authority. And then he was from the father and was returning to the father. And literally, the verse right after that is so like S.O. across the effect, uh, he begins to remove his outer garments, brought out a basin of water and began to wash the feet of his disciples, which historically speaking in terms of context, was actually the task reserved for the lowest ranking slave, not even servant, but the how slave was reserved in the lowest ranking slave had to do that. And by doing it, you know, he exemplified his humility, right? I'm a big believer that money doesn't change anyone. It just magnifies who they were a whole time. And if you consider what power does to an individual, that's exactly who Jesus was. So the story and the moral of the story. Now you're seeing in that story, in that particular story, I want to understand how you actually use that story to sort of action what you learned. But more importantly, I'm seeing I'm seeing the thread between what you saw as a child and then what that story means to you because I think what you're getting at in your opinion, this is the issue with money and power and wealth. It's that you don't have that humility and that constant tying back to humble that will sort of set you in a good spot so that you can be an ethical moral and still successful person. Yeah, it's so many gestures now because I didn't, I don't think it's a bad thing to drive a nice car or have a private jet or you know, like it's not, it's not a bad thing at all. Most people who have hundreds of millions of dollars that are my, their friends of mine, they continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars, not because they're selfish but because for them, they love it, they love business, they love expanding it, they love growing it. Otherwise, why would they still work, you know? But for me, the lesson that I got from it was, you know, and I spoke to what's called the Holy Spirit, right? So that the Holy Spirit is God's presence in your day-to-day life and I asked the Holy Spirit, like, what does that story mean for me, right? Like, how can I apply that and, you know, and work it into my life? And God was very clear in his voice. He says, Daniel, the problem that you have is that you have a very smart brain. You have all this information, but every single room you walk out of the people's feet are still dirty, you know? And for me, that was my big epiphany. So what I, what I started doing is actually really simple. I got a no pet out, very, something very similar to this, right? Like a journal, something a journal was with you. And at the time, I belonged to a couple of different weekly networking events. And I started asking everybody the question, and by the way, this is like five, six hundred people, right? I started asking everybody the question, what is your biggest obstacle you currently have in your business right now? Right? And it actually points to an epiphany that I had four years later that every since sexful successful business has three things locked down. Number one, who is their ideal client? Number two, what is their grand slam irresistible offer? And number three, what is the market telling them? So the problem was I had a kick ass product, right? I knew who my ideal client was, but I had no idea what the market was saying. So me washing other people's feet and asking five, six hundred people, hey, like, what's your greatest problem you currently have in your business allowed me to unlock that third question that I needed to answer for myself? And so that led me. So I started doing that survey in 2016, 2017, in January, first, I had a goal of acquiring 20 rental doors. That's what I wanted. I want a 20 rental units, 20 income streams within real estate. And then my mentor around that time very wisely told me, Daniel, don't set goals, set standards and expectations, right? And I said, really? Okay. So I started doing that. I spent three weeks in January, refining what are my daily action steps? What are the things that I have to do every single day for me to succeed? You know, John Maxwell describes it perfectly, right? You know, he talks about how he gives the metaphor of cutting down a tree, but doing five, you know, swings every single day, every single day, no ifs, answer buts, just a daily habit. So I wrote down, I spent a week writing down all the action steps that I could do. I reverse engineered me hitting 20 rental doors. And I reverse engineered that goal of acquiring 20 rental doors. And I reverse engineered what action steps I have to take to get there. And I wrote all those action steps down. And then I brought it to my mentor and I said, how can I make this more efficient? Right? Like if I keep doing these things, I'm confident that I can get this goal done in a year. How can I get this done in a month in a week? What would you do differently? And after a four week process of just going back and forth to my mentor, making corrections, new drafts, I came up with five action steps that I would do every day of the year, 2017. And again, this is after I asked five, six hundred people, what are the greatest problems you have in your business? So I had all those. Still at this point, I've actually still not. No, you still have not actually purchased. Nope, have not. So, so I got those answers from my mentors and I did them every single day, right? Then my first deal in March of 2017. And by the end of the year, don't mind me asking, but were those those action steps? Yeah, yeah, perfect. I'm just curious what they are. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So one of my biggest hurdles of acquiring deals was I needed to race capital. You know, so I needed to acquire investors. And that's one of the things that my mentor helped me point out was, hey, you know, you're trying to do these deals no money down. So I was trying to buy them seller financing, which is, you know, you get the financing from the seller and not the bank. You know, and when you get to seller to finance you, you could be a little bit more flexible with terms, you know, you can do a 0% money down, you know, 2% and you can get a little bit more creative. So that's what I wanted to do because I had no money. And then my mentor goes, hey, you got to utilize your investors that you already have a relationship with. Like that's just low hanging fruit. Why not just do that? That increases the likelihood of you doing a deal by like 40% that, you know, expands the amount of deals that you're able to do. So that was one of them constantly building new relationship investors. The daily action step for me at that point was go to two networking events minimum per week and then reach out to one potential investor a day. That was my, that was my action step. That was the action step that I had for myself. Not only that, but look at at least three to five deals every single day. And, you know, and I had, so I had daily ones, I had weekly ones and I'm monthly one. So I had eight, I had eight total, not nine. I'm sorry, I had nine, five every day, three every week, one every month. And the one every month was just, you know, taking two hours to make sure that the ball is continued to move forward, that I'm continuing them holding myself accountable. Every single week was a stuff like, you know, going into two networking events, you know, every single week. Another one was introducing myself to a new real estate professional, right? So a lot of it surprisingly was network-based. Because my mentor saw my strengths in my weaknesses, he goes, look, you know a lot, you have all the information, you just got to expand your network, you know, knowledge plus people is going to equal success, you know, you just got a network, get yourself out there more. So all, like probably about half, half to about the majority of my nine, you know, regular action steps were some type of networking, yeah, some type of networking. And then the other ones were just, you know, spending every morning looking at what's happening in my local market. That was that was one of my, what's known as KPI's key performance indicators. And so as a result, December 31st, I had 87 by the end of the year. 87. So I went from shooting for 20 and I actually ended up with 87 and that's actually one of the key advices that I would tell every entrepreneur, every real estate investor, like you can set a goal, but focus more of your time on the process and how you get there and reverse engineer your action steps. And that will actually take you a lot longer and not farther than what you actually couldn't be capable of doing. Because if you think about setting a goal, you're setting that goal based on what you know and who your network is right now. But if you focus on the process, you actually expand the network and expand the knowledge that you currently have. And then your goals can be infinite. You know, and then as you as you so how you got these first 87 doors. So you went into your network, you had these action steps, you found investors, you found properties. What was what were some of the learnings of having 87 doors? Because you're not owning these outright. So what kind of what kind of financials are we talking about when you actually do something like this? Yeah, so 87 doors you know, when we bought them and we kept them, we raised a rent. That was one of our strategies. And I think that the portfolio evaluation ended up being somewhere around 10 million dollars worth of real estate. One of the things that I've learned a hard way was the importance of leadership. And what it actually means to lead people and cast a vision and move towards it. That's something that really underestimated. One of the things I told myself early on was like, well, I can just do deals. That's completely fine. And then I realized once you get to a certain point, you got to have a team around you. And this is one of the things that I really attribute to is knowing what people want. Everybody is driven by different things. I thought everybody was driven by money. I was dead wrong. I learned through a couple hard ways that no, like that maintenance guy over there is actually not driven by money at all. He's driven by different things. Surprisingly, some people are driven by words of affirmation. Believe it or not. So I looked at a couple of assessments that really helped me. So one of them is a book called Drive by my business coach Woody Woodward. And literally the book is all about how people are driven by different things and how you could utilize what people are driven by to your vantage. And it's not like an inauthentic, like I'm going to take advantage of the type of thing. But it's actually, it's actually a more human empathetic approach to how to lead people. I think that you nailed it. Like the worst thing you can do as a leader is just think that everybody thinks like you. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, my definition of leadership today is because most people think like, well, how do I get the, how do I, you know, ring the most out of my people, right? And like Simon Sennett talks about how like, you know, most CEO, they visualize their people as like a towel. You got to ring the most water out of the towel, right? My definition of leadership today is my job is to create the utmost premium atmosphere for people to be their best they could possibly be, right? That is my job as a leader to help somebody become the best version of themselves is what I believe. You know, and sometimes that means not being a part of my organization, you know, when instead having them be a part of somebody else's organization. But I think that that's my job. That's is to help them become the best version of themselves in and out of the office is to help them win in all aspects of life. You know, I truly believe that. So through the painstaking process of learning what that people are driven by different things, I learned what it means to be a leader. And even in my faith journey, you know, I asked God, God, you are, you are the greatest leader that has ever walked here, right? Like I truly believe that Jesus was the greatest leader that ever walked here. I said, how do I do that? Right? And it's amazing, right? Jesus just said two words. He goes, you want to learn how to lead, follow me, right? If you want to be the greatest leader, learn how to follow, but more so specifically follow me. And that's what I started doing because I grew very religious church kid, right? Like my parents didn't even want me watching Harry Potter. Like I was very conservative growing up. That's hardcore. That's super hardcore, man. Like I was, I was in the, I was not allowed to drink. My mom was one of those people who was like, you can't kiss until you're wedding day. Sorry, mom, you know, that that that secrets out, you know, that happened long before my wedding day. But you know, that's how it kind of how I grew up. And it was very religious. It was very rule following. And then, you know, when I started having an actual personal relationship with God, I realized that didn't matter a lot to him. And so I learned how to be an amazing leader by following him, not by following religious rules, I guess. That makes sense. Yeah. The did, do you feel that that religious upbringing? Because I don't think I've spoken a lot of my parents. I don't think we've ever spoken about religion on this show, really, that much. But do you feel like it helped you or hurt you with that kind of strict upbringing? In many ways, the strictness growing up super strict, it kind of sheltered me. If you think about the ability of being an entrepreneur, I'm just thinking of networking. I'm thinking of being a shelter and then going to networking. And that seems like hell. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Because you know, people would say the F bomb and I said, oh my gosh, you know, in like, but if you think about what it really means to have a relationship with Jesus, it actually doesn't mean following a set of rules or being offended if you have sex before marriage or if you drop the F bomb or whatever. You know, but it's actually more so loving than despite, right? Like that's what Jesus was all about, right? Like he saw people's heart not their actions. And I think a lot of religious institutions see the actions of people and then judge their heart. Jesus did the opposite. He saw the heart first and because he loved their heart and created an authentic relationship with these individuals by seeing their heart, the actions then were transformed afterwards just by simply being around him. And for me, that's what I've really emulated is myself having an authentic relationship with God allowing me to have a more authentic relationship with people. I got to a point where instead of seeing people and what they could do for me in my business, I saw their heart. You know, I saw who they were. I saw their heart. I saw what their dreams were, what their goals were, what they wanted out of life. And more importantly, as a leader, how can I help them win and obtain that? And that is opposite to what the business world says, right? The business world says, network based on what people can do for you. Well, Jesus told me no. Like connect with people authentically and get to know their names or spouses and see their heart first. And then once that relationship is built, then the business can happen. But now it can happen so much it's got a better place. Well, it's just funny because I feel like the, you know, the transactional like you use and abuse relationships, it actually doesn't end up paying off. No, really ever. No, I've never really seen it. I've never, even when you break it down to like you come from a real estate background in world, and I come from more like a tech and sales world, but even if I've ever sold a deal in the tech space, like, yeah, there is a transaction, but I can guarantee you, like, I have a good relationship. And sometimes like, like, you turn into friends with the people that you're selling to and you're doing business with. And those are the people that come back again and again and again. And those are, like, at the end of the day, any transaction is always built on trust. And you can't get trust if people feel that they're being used, even if you have something that they want. Yeah. It's very difficult. Yeah. And you know, most people call it vibes. Some people call it energy. I call it the spirit. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's very much similar to, like, you know, if you grow up and you do something bad to your neighbor's yard, you know, your neighbor's going to yell at you because you did something bad. Your mom's going to yell at you because they want to help you become a better person, right? The words that are used maybe the same, but the spirit is different. And surprisingly, having an authentic relationship got allowed me to see the heart of people. And therefore, it allowed me to see people's true intentions. Do you feel, I want to ask you more like, yeah, like tactical real estate stuff, but I think it's really interesting because you've brought up God and Jesus and you quoted the Bible. First of all, why do you feel that it's important to speak about these things? Obviously, it's had a huge impact on you, but it's not a common thread or topic that you usually hear, even if it is important for people. So why do you speak on it? Yeah. And by the way, I don't speak on it because I'm here to, you know, convert people to, like, that's not why I'm here. I know I can tell it's because it's important to you. It's very important to you. But for me, it's impossible to talk about my business success without talking about my relationship with God because of how much those things have been intertwined. Like, let me be very clear and honest and vulnerable. Like every single business decision and transaction I do, I always ask God, what should I do? You know, it's a God, you know, my heart, you know, this person's heart, this is now the time to get into it. Most Christians, when they're in business, you know, a lot of Christians, and there's a lot of those communities out there, like faith-based business, you know, movements. Oh, yeah, it's not just, it's not just, we're talking about, like, your religious beliefs, but any faith-based community is operates the same way. Absolutely. Very, very similar. Most Christians will go, oh, God, you know, like, this, this, this money that we got for you and all this stuff and, you know, but they don't hardly ever ask God for the strategy on how to actually make the money. If you actually look throughout the Bible, like, there's Joshua 8. So, you know, Joshua was his young king, and there's, you know, the entire chapter in Joshua 8, God outlines the specific strategy on what Joshua is to do to overtake this, the city that the enemy is currently in. And it's the same thing, right? Like, for me, you know, I invite God into my business, and but more importantly, I invite myself into God's business. So, a lot of times, you know, when, when I'm in the business world, you know, sometimes God's win is for me to just love that person unconditionally as he would. It's not for me to make a million dollars or two million dollars. It's just for me to show up in a way that's very authentic and genuinely care about the people that's around, you know, the Zoom or the conference table or the business table. And so, for me, if I can show up in that manner, I know that God wins, I know I win, but I will tell you, and I'll be very clear that some of my best business relationships have happened due to me showing up in that manner. And that for me is just like, wow, that's mind blowing to me. How do you, maybe you can educate me. So, why is there at least in my mind, and I'm pretty sure this is something that could be confusing for other people that like look at somebody who is very religious or who always tries to include God in sort of like the conversation regarding what should I do next for my business? Is money not regarded as not great and or evil in most religious contexts? And how do you wrestle with that? Is that something that is incorrectly interpreted? Because I feel like that's the one thing that I would always hear if you're talking about business, like to be successful, be hyper successful, like in the multi-millionth of dollars, it seems like that's not necessary for one person to live. It's much more abundance than one person should ever need. And that would be something that almost seems like selfish or hedonistic. Yeah, as a matter of fact, it's not just Christianity, but almost all religion condemns living a life of, you know, luxury and worth and, you know, of abundance, right? Like most religions do, right? Even looking at Buddhism, you know, and I've gotten around the block and studying a lot of different world religions, but you know, even looking at the concept of Buddhism and Nirvana, right? Like, what does Nirvana even mean? It means that you are literally detached from everything, or nothing means nothing, like everything means nothing. And, you know, even with Christian, like most Christians in America believe that they have to suffer, that that's living a very spiritual life. It's actually not true. Like, you know, if you see God as who we really is, which is at the end of the day, it's just a loving father, right? A father that just loves his kids. What loving father doesn't want their kid to do well in life, but at the same time as a good loving father will do, he wants his kids to live well, but at the same time have grit, you know, and be willing to work hard and have humility and have a great heart. You know, that's what every loving father wishes for their kid is. They want to do more, but they don't want them to be a prick, right? The problem was with Christians on both ends is the poor Christians are like, well, we're doing it, right? We're suffering with a gospel, whatever. And the rich Christians are going, oh, no, God has blessed me and all this stuff. I don't think that's a blessing, right? If you're a Christian and you have a nice car, a nice house, whatever, look, if you're the enemy, if you're the devil, I want you to make a million dollars a year, because that way you're actually put yourself in a position where you don't need God anymore. You know, like, why would you need God if you have a million dollars a year? More difficult. It's more difficult. And when you start being successful, you start to think in, like, you know, this is all me, like, I feel proud of myself. Like, it's easy to fall into that. 100%. Like, all the most rich Christians that I know, they'll say, oh, glory to God, this is a blessing from God, whatever. But they actually secretly kind of go, no, this is all me, you know, like, I don't need God anymore, you know, and the proof is in the pudding, you know, because if you ask them to sell everything they've got, and just follow Jesus, 99% of them won't do it. You know, so the mentality that I've learned, and I'm still learning to adopt is, and there's a great book called Kingdom Economics by a guy named Brett Johnson, but he outlines how, you know, he uses this example, how the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, right? And they have the slave mentality of, hey, we just go to work, you know, about our housing needs are taking care of food is taking care of, but he talks about how every Christian in general, not just entrepreneurs or business owners, have to go through the desert period where they have to learn how to lean on God. They have to learn what it means to live with the spirit of Jesus every single day. But the purpose of the desert is to get rid of the slave mentality that they had in Egypt. That's the purpose of being in the desert, and historically it's true, the Israelites were in the desert for 40 years before they can get to the Promised Land, but the problem is that most Christians romanticize being in the desert. They romanticize not having a lot, they romanticize suffering because that would they believe they have to do, right? And most Christians don't go to the Promised Land, the mentality of the Promised Land, where in the Promised Land all the Israelites, everybody had land, everybody had cattle, everybody was living abundantly. Everyone, like not one person was in poverty, you know, everyone was living a good life, and most Christians forget that, hey, the Promised Land is there, right? Like God wants us to do well, and a lot of times most Christians, and I see them myself, don't start that business. They don't go after those ventures, because number one, they're secretly afraid, right? But number two, they're just like, oh, no, I'm like, I can't, the love of money is horrible, you know, we can't, we can't do it, you know? Well, you can still create an awesome business without, you know, chasing money every single day. You can do it with actually argue that actually most businesses that are successful to people actually aren't chasing them. They're not, that you're exactly right. You know, also some of my friends who do really, really well, they're value driven. They love solving problems for other people, and then they monetize the value, right? But a lot of times my friend, the people that chased the money, so the ones who, they go away after a little while. I thought this was interesting, nothing like a religious perspective, but even like a nonprofit perspective, it's like people that want to help seem to have an aversion to understanding that if you want to help people, you have to have a lot of money to have the resources to be able to help people. Even when you were talking about, you know, your store, when you were growing up, when you were six, and your parents were in the bed, and you saw the, the rich guy that was stumbling out of the, the gentleman's club, and you're like, why can't, you know, my parents that have committed their life to helping people have that level of luxury and wealth, because ultimately, like you can't help anyone if you're broke, like you can never help anyone, you can barely help yourself, and sometimes you're a drawn society if you don't have enough money. Yeah, to be honest, like, so anyways. Yeah, no, we need more money in the hands of good people. 100%. Because if it's not in the hands of good people, because the good people are religious and super spiritual, well, which hands are they in? The people who don't care. Yeah. You know, like, do we, do you want to live in a world like, I don't want to live in a world like that? You know, I mean, like that's, I mean, it's not like we're not living in a world. We have some of that already. Sure. That's yeah, exactly. So how do you, how do you, you know, you have your values in your mission? As you do make more money, how do you base yourself? How do you ground yourself? Yeah, I have a cap. I pay myself a salary. I don't pay any more than that. And everything else I give away. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I put my money where my mouth is, you know, so I mean, even going back to the teachings of Jesus, Jesus says, where your treasure is there, your heart is also. Right? So Jesus is saying, hey, you want to know what you really care about at the end of the day? Look where your money is going. You know, is it, where is it going? Is it going to serve you? Or is it going to serve others? Is it like, where is it going? You know, so, I mean, for me, you know, for my wife and I, I put a cap, you know, I actually get, I'm a W2 employee of my own company. I pay myself a salary. I don't pay my, you know, I mean, and I put a cap on how much I earn every single year. And anything beyond that, I try to, I try to give it away. You know, so I think for me, that's, hey, you got, you got to put your money where your mouth is, you know, you just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode, HubSpot. Now, as a leader, you're always on the lookout for more ways to arm yourself with knowledge, the books, the seminars, and most importantly, the podcast that help you make the best possible decision for you, your company, your customers, because when you know more, you can apply more, and you can grow. With HubSpot, CRM platform, you can store, track, manage, and report on all the tasks and activities that make up your relationships with customers. With a bird's eye view over all your customer interactions, HubSpot empowers your decision making like never before, so you can give your business and your customers all the good you've got. Learn how to make your business grow better at HubSpot.com. What about, like, do you, do you not, do you not find there'd be more value? Yeah, there's good, it's good to give stuff away, but you know, if I'm a value on reinvesting that in your business as well. Oh yeah, no, we do that. So my brother and I, we still reinvest capital into our business, we grow much bigger, because you know, at the end of the day, our business is our church, right, we impact people through our business. In my opinion, I think businesses impact the world more than churches do, right? Because most churches, they focus on building bigger and better programs, and if you want a bigger building, we want a better worship team, whatever. If you look at the budget of 99% of churches in America, very few money actually go towards what Jesus was talking about, which is, you know, taking up the whole listen. All the churches in like L.A. and like, not even L.A. like the mega churches and like the like the churches where it seemed like I don't, I'm not part of these communities at all. So I don't really understand it, but I do know that there's a lot of money going into what it looks like. Very elaborate productions. Absolutely. And like, and if I think about like what I think a church is, it's not something that looks like like an NBA game basically in terms of production and sound and lighting and camera crews. For sure. Like it doesn't make sense to me. And that to me is like that, that seems toxic. Yeah. It doesn't seem like that's the best version of religion. No, I truly believe that based on what Jesus truly taught, like if you look at even in the early church, there was no building that they met in, like people met in homes. They had genuine community. There was no true community, right? There was no lights, camera, action, like there was none of that, you know, and if anything, I would consider that sometimes to be a waste of money. You know, like I'm a, yeah, like pastors like to have like G6s. Oh, for sure. Like I, dude, Scott, between me and you, I genuinely believe that if we sold every single church building in America and we met the way that they met in the Bible, like the way that it was supposed to be done, I'm convinced we would have enough money to solve the world's biggest problems. Whether it's sex trafficking, the world hunger, the water, I am genuinely truly convinced that that'd be the case. I truly believe that, you know, and entrepreneurs actually had more of a bigger role in churches than some of these pastors did because they were the ones responsible for allocating capital towards some of these big causes. And you don't have to have money, right? Like this is a training that I go into a lot, but I believe in any successful business, there's four currencies. There's money, there's time, there's knowledge, and there's relationships. You know, any single problem can be solved, either a combination of two or three or four or all four of them, or just with one of them. With my journey in real estate, I didn't have the money, but I had the relationships of time and the knowledge, and I was able to use those three as a combination to generate money for myself and create a portfolio for myself and other individuals. I think every business owner should look at their business through the forms and the lenses of those four currencies. Okay, let's pivot back to some more real estate stuff, because I know you also wrote a book on it, so we should do it. Yeah. So it's a, you know, it's good lesson. So, you know, you got your 83, 83 doors, correct? Yeah, 87, 83, 87, sorry, 87 doors. How did you raise the money for it? You had no fundraising experience. You were networking a lot, but networking is fine. You have no portfolio. I would say it's still probably not easy to go ask somebody for X 100,000 or million dollars plus with no portfolio. Maybe just some knowledge, but you don't actually have any track record. Yes, so I had none, right? So what I did is I answered the three questions that I had mentioned earlier, right? So who's my ideal client? What's my product and what's the market really wanting? And most people, they don't know how to raise capital because they don't know that they're actually selling a product. And most people don't actually even have a product. I tell people all the time, when you're raising capital for real estate deals, your product is number one yourself, your strategy, and then the asset that you're going after. That's the product, right? And you have to sell that product. So number one, I asked myself, who is my ideal client? So my product was multifamily buying hold. That was my product when I first started out, right? So there's me. There was apartment complex. That's the asset that I'm going after. And the strategy is for me to buy it and buy and hold it and raise runs, et cetera, et cetera. And I asked myself, who is the ideal client to be able to do that? Right? Like who are the individuals that need multifamily? And through rigorous research, I learned that doctors were like the number one candidate to get into multifamily buildings. And they needed it because a lot of doctors have pretty large tax bills. And in the back, good money. They made great money. They're not entrepreneurial. I don't think in how they think. Yes, that's right. Some are in some don't. But most doctors, they just don't have the time. That's true, too. So for me, my ideal client was, well, I need somebody who doesn't have time. They just want to be a passive investor. They need to get into real estate to be able to mitigate their tax liabilities. And I need individuals who are bankable. Because in case seller financing doesn't work out and we got to walk through the doors of a bank, you know, they got to have a high W2 income that the banks are going to love. So again, through research, I learned that doctors were my ideal client. And so that changed the way I did sales marketing, right? Because sales and marketing to get everybody as your client is tough. However, as you know, I'm sure as a marketing expert, if you niche down on who you're looking for all of a sudden, you can do what you can do like targeted ads. It becomes a lot easier, right? It becomes a way easier. And you can actually write your copy to fit and, you know, align with those types of people and you can speak their language. And there's so many different things you can do to cater uniquely to that audience. So that's what I started doing. I just didn't know I was doing it at the time. But I started writing all my marketing material on who I was, my business plan, you know, the things that the marketing material that I would distribute, I would gear it towards doctors. And generally, Pi W2 income earners, you know, so I would emphasize the tax benefits. I would emphasize your ability to be a passive investor, you know, where you can just sit on the sidelines, just invest your capital and I'll do all the work. And you still get all the benefits, you know? So I emphasized those things. And, you know, because of it, I was able to attract a lot of high W2 earners, right? And then I had a grand slam offer. I had my irresistible offer, the thing that I put out there that made them impossible for them to say no. And I asked myself, okay, what do doctors value the most, right? And out of everything, all the benefits that real estate offers, whether it's cash flow, equity accumulation, appreciation, depreciation, they valued the depreciation the most, the tax advantages. And so my grand slam offer was, and this is how I would close them, right? In the sales process, I would close them by offering them 100% of all the tax benefits of the deal. I'd say, I don't, even though we're splitting this deal 50-50, I'll give you 100% of all the tax benefits. And typically, at that point, that's when the people are like, all right, I'm in. Like, you got me, you know? And last but not least, you know, what is the market looking for? You know, that was a result of me asking all the doctors, hey, why do you want to invest in real estate? Why do you want to do this? I started asking different occupations. What makes you want to get into real estate? And that's what allowed me to answer the first two questions to the highest degree and with most clarity. I think the strategy is very smart. And when you've already spoken to these people extensively over the past few years, what is the reason why they want to get into real estate? Because I just made a huge assumption. I'm like, well, they're not entrepreneurial, but you said, actually, that's not true. Some of them are, but is it time? Is it, you said, depreciation, tax benefits, like, or is it a combination of everything? Yeah, it's a combination of everything. And the question, and I ask myself that those three questions every month, you know, for all my businesses. And recently, you know, inflation's been a really big concern for a lot of big investors. You know, I mean, inflation's at 7.9% as reported in February of this year. A lot of real estate investors are worried about that. A lot of people who invest in the stock market are worried about that. And obviously that has a big impact on what happens with bonds and treasuries and et cetera, et cetera. So the big shift that I've been noticing in the market right now is a lot of investors are moving their capital from the stock market and the bond market and they're moving it to precious metals, cryptocurrency, but mainly real estate because it's tangible. And all these assets that we just mentioned, they're tangible assets that hedge inflation. So one of the big things that I'm catering to my clients right now, my investor clients is the question of how are we with our strategy and the assets that we're going after? How are we going to combat inflation? How are we going to do that? And not only survive, but how do we thrive in a very high inflationary market? So again, it's all about answering those three questions and for the question that you just asked is what is the reason why people won't invest with me? Well, back then it was the tax benefits. Today it's the tax benefits and it's the inflation hedge. So for that reason is why a lot of investors that I'm talking with, I had a call actually right before this with an investor who's got about 20 million that he wants to allocate to some of the projects that we're doing and that's a big concern for him. That was actually the first question you have for me is, hey, what's your strategy on hedging inflation? And so it's good. And without like giving like all the proprietary info, what is a real estate perspective on hedging against inflation? Yeah, so what is that answer? Yeah, so in my opinion, real estate is the best way to hedge against inflation from an investment standpoint because first and foremost, the number one reason is you can leverage real estate. So by hedging the, so by leveraging the real estate by only putting 20% down, I like to do a seller finance deal where we only put 10% down. So by 10% you know, by you putting 10% down, you're able to allocate 90% of the value that you're getting today as as future value, as in the future and you're able to, that was always the case though, that was always the case. So how was that? Oh, no, that's exactly right. But in a very high inflationary market, that's more important. So by doing it and it's over, it's the positioning. So by doing it over a 25 to 30 year span of time, we're able to hedge against that inflation by literally stretching it out over a longer period of time. And I do it by, you know, doing longer amortizations today, but also doing a very low interest rate environment, putting as little down as I possibly can, and allowing rents to be able to increase along with the market. Because if you think about the things that go up and down with inflation, you know, stuff like gas prices and also the cost of the cost of living, the cost of housing, which is rent, you know. So a lot of times rents are the first things that will increase or decrease as inflation rise and go down. So if we can put ourselves in the position where we're buying a piece of asset, like on the apartment building, and we can hold it, that way we could, that's a really strong way in my opinion of navigating inflation, especially if you have a fixed interest rate pool that can actually, that can actually increase or decrease. That's exactly right. Actual cash flow with inflation. Right. And if I can obtain a fixed interest rate for all those 30 years, that's phenomenal because typically in a high inflationary market, interest rates tend to be a little low, right? Like they are right now. So if I can get a fixed rate interest rate, I can lock down the benefits of today while mitigating over a future period of time, the disasters of what's happening today as well. For me, that's a strong win in my book. I just want to take a second to thank the sponsor of today's episode swag.com. 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Right now they're giving everybody who's a success story podcast listener special offer. It's 10% off your entire order. But only when you go to swag.com slash success and enter promo code success 10. Remember for 10% off, go to swag.com slash success and use promo code success. 10 is you know, it seems like what you're doing all makes so much common sense. Like even like how you you raised your money, how you position it, the questions you ask yourself, the people you go after is there something you've done differently that has differentiated you in this in real estate investment? Or is this something that seems to be like the de facto? Like what did people do 10 years before you? Were they also targeting doctors, lawyers, IW-2 runners? Or is this something that you've sort of crafted yourself or is this sort of like the standard for real estate investment now? Yeah, you know, I think just based on the fact that a lot of people are putting their money into real estate right now, I think it's pretty common knowledge that real estate is a good inflation hedge. But one of the things that I differ than a lot of people in a lot of my peers in my industry is especially in a market right now where values are super high, I tend to stray away from the refinancing. So it's very common for real estate investors to buy a property, fix it up, raise the rents, and then refinance out the equity. For me, I'm very nervous about doing that right now, you know, because a lot of people that cash out their equity, you know, for cash, right? To go out and do the next deal, well, you're putting yourself in the position where values are overpriced for one, we all know that. We all know that real estate right now is overpriced. And at the same time, you're taking your equity position as low as you possibly can. Well, depending on the financing that you structure, what's going to happen when the value of the loan is higher than the value of the asset? That's a pretty big no-no, especially for institutions that are financing your projects. And we saw that in 2008 where a lot of properties their value went underwater compared to the mortgages that they had. And because of it, most people were forced to sell or short sale. And so, you know, I mean, that makes me very, very nervous right now. And we can get into the whole mumble jumbo as to why, you know, I believe people are doing it and how banks right now are being propped up by what I call Mickey Mouse money, because the federal reserve... Let's do it. I don't know how to do it. No person actually getting to that. So you give me a, give me a preach, like, rundown, all of it. I don't know how to... Yeah. I don't know this market like you do so. Yeah. So, hopefully your audience will follow along, right? But I'll do my best to try to keep this as simple as I possibly can. So a lot of danger. So the number one risk in real estate is financing. You know, so a lot of my buddies who own thousands of rental doors and you know, even myself who've done a good amount of deals will all tell you that the biggest risk in obtaining and acquiring a piece of real estate for investment, sake, especially if you're holding it, is the financing that you structure? Well, who finances them? Well, the banks do, right? They finance the majority of the commercial loans that people do their deals with. Well, okay, so if you look at the state of the bank right now, let's talk about what the banks are at right now. We're living in a time where the federal reserve has bought seven trillion dollars more than what they're used to when it comes to their balance cheap. And in terms of what they're buying is they're buying, you know, typically assets that the bank zone or or even sovereign wealth fund while stuff like bonds, securities, you know, the federal reserve has been buying 40 billion dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities for the last god knows four or five months, six months. And that's taken a dent on the housing market as in it's propped up to housing market. It's increased, you know, a lot of times the value of the overall housing market. So if you look at it from a supply and demand standpoint, if you have the federal reserve, who by the way is having a zero percent interest rate, well, as of March 2016, it's at 0.25%. But for about 18 months there, especially while the pandemic happened, we were in a zero interest rate environment. At the same time, our government was printing trillions of dollars in the form of stimulus checks. And at the same time, the federal reserve was buying trillions of dollars worth of securities. I mean, almost overnight, the federal reserve became the largest owner, private owner of securities. Like, that's insane. It took Warren Buffett 40 years to get high up on that list. It took the federal reserve, I think a matter of weeks, right? To the point where they own something along lines of like 22,000 different securities. You know, I mean, it was insane. So imagine where you have an economy or an investment market where you have trillions of dollars, whether it's in the form of federal reserve backing, whether it's in the form of fiscal policy with governments printing money to be able to give to their citizens, which by the way, on a side note, isn't it funny how the sales of like Dolce Cabana, you know, all these luxury brands skyrocketed around the same time the stimulus checks were run out. Isn't that funny how that works, right? You know, like, and we wonder why there's a big wealth gap in our country. Well, maybe if you're making $40,000 a year, you shouldn't have, you know, Dolce Cabana purses or Burberry gloves. Probably not the greatest idea, you know, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them, but no, but it shows you where where people's heads are at. Exactly. Those two events are correlated right now. It's not great. It goes back to even the teachings of Jesus, right? Where your treasure is there, your heart is also, you know? Again, so anyways, so, so we had the government and the federal reserve trillions of dollars. And around the same time, we had the lowest interest rate that we've ever seen. So it's no wonder we had the highest inflation we've had in 40 years. It's because trillions of dollars are going into the economy and no one's accounting for it. You know, there's a statistic saying that I think it was like as of 2000 and I think at the end of 2000 and maybe it was the middle of 2020, 21% of all US currency circulating was printed, I think in 2020 or something like that. Well, now it's even worse, right? It's especially now where, you know, at the end of the first quarter of 2022, I think that number is actually closer than half, right? It was printed in the last 18-something months, right? I said it in a YouTube video recently, so I'm sure people can go find it, but that's crazy. Like that is absolutely nuts. But recently, here's what really worries me, is that recently Jerome Powell, who's the chairman of the federal reserve, came out and he says, hey, that $9 trillion that we spent propping up the economy, well, we're going to start paying that back. We're going to start reducing that balance sheet. So meaning that there's going to be a reverse effect. So instead of the federal reserve pumping trillions of dollars into the bond market to securities market and propping up the stock market in the economy, well, now we've got to pay some of that money back. Now that money has to be taken out, right? So if you think about that environment and considering a lot of the banks, the central banking system, if you look at monetary policy as a whole, the central banking system borrows money from the federal reserve to be able to conduct their business. Usually it's on a 10-to-1, it's known as the reserve, you know, it's the reserve requirement. Banks, if they want to borrow $100 million from the federal reserve to be able to lend to us, the people, well, they have to have $10 million in their fault, right? That's what they have to do in the form of any liquidity. So now, right, since considering the central banking system is backed by the Fed and now the Fed is focusing on reducing that $9 trillion balance sheet and now at the same time they're increasing the interest rates, they increase the 25 basis points, which is 0.25% in March, you know, in March 16th of this year, which was literally two weeks ago, and they announced that they're planning on raising it six more times this year when they need. So let's see, let's take a roll call here on no review. The federal reserve are increasing the rates, money is going to become much more expensive, and they're also focusing on reducing the $9 trillion balance sheet, and they're also planning on stopping the $120 billion a month purchasing that they're doing in securities and bonds, 80 billion in US treasures, 40 billion in mortgage-backed securities. What's going to happen with the banking system? Not good things, right? Not good things. Not good things. So what does this actually lead to? How it affects people? Is this like an ultra recession at this point? No, I'm not one to predict, right? Because I mean, I have friends who try to... No, but you are forward-looking and you do. If something happens, there has to be what's, you know, if there's an action, there has to be a reaction to that thing. Well, let's put it this way. I think a lot of real estate investors were putting together loans where they're stripping as much equity as they possibly can to get enough cash to the next deal. I'm very nervous about what's going to happen to those loans, right? Because what happens when, you know, you have a situation where, you know, you have a loan where you don't have a lot of equity into it, and you have a bank that's, you know, starving for liquidity. Not good things. A lot of that happened in 2008, right? Where banks were starving for liquidity and they had to call a lot of notes, do. Is that going to happen again? They can't do that. And banks can do that. Banks can't do that. If you look at, if you look at a majority of loan origination documents, which most people don't read, you know, the banks have the ability. They have protocol. People who call notes do for the sake of self-liquidating their portfolio. They have the power to do that. Is that going to happen? I don't know. You know, I don't know what I should be told. I know what's, what's most likely going to happen. I know what could happen. But, you know, it makes me very nervous, which is why for myself and our partnership, we're going after a lot of these off-market deals. And we're setting up financing that's non-institutional. You know, I think that's extremely, extremely important right now, especially right now, with everything that's happening. And that's where you, that's where you are focused on finding money. That's where you're trying to get the money from. Well, that's where I'm focused on, yeah, finding assets for money. Do you also build into your deals that they can't, like if you, I guess if it's non-institutional, you're not as concerned, but do you also protect yourself by making sure that the deals that you do sign, if possible, don't have clauses where you can make that loan come to fruition if that person needs that extra capital for liquidity reasons. Yeah, so when I do typically the solar financing, yeah, we typically create it in a way where they cannot call the no-do because it's a contractual agreement, right? With the bank, you know, they have all the leverage. But even when I do business with the bank, I'm pretty thorough on making sure that we have a long-term balloon that our financing is secure, that we have enough liquidity. I personally right now, I'm not refinancing currently, all of our commercial deals, just because you just never know what's going to happen, right? You know, my mentor told me if you protect the downside, your upside will take care of itself. And that's true in real estate, that's true in business. If you focus on the risk, then your profits will come. Very smart. Okay, last thing that I wanted to go into because I think it's interesting. You built a personal brand. What was the purpose for that? Why did you diversify? Why didn't you just, you had a path? It was going well. What does a personal brand give you? Is it deal flow? Is it because you just wanted to go into other avenues? I see a lot of people, and I'm a fan of it, obviously, and I believe in building a personal brand. What was it for you? Yeah, so I don't kind of build like a typical personal brand where I put out stuff on Instagram, and you know, all my personal Instagram or like my Twitter, I don't even have Twitter, I don't have a TikTok or anything like that. But what I do focus on is YouTube, right? Why not though? Also, why not? Yeah, so for me, I don't know. It's a very interesting question. I think a lot of the content and things, because I mean, what's the typical answer, right? Like, typical answer as well. Like, if I post a lot of stuff on Instagram, I can help people, I can help put out content. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? I have friends who are influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers and some of them know the followers, who put out really, really good content, you know, and they put out really good, solid, gold nuggets, and it's amazing. But for me, the transformation that I've experienced that have helped me in business, that have helped me in my personal life, have more so come through relationships. They've come through doing life on a day-to-day basis. So I don't put a lot of stuff on Instagram, but I constantly have people in my office that are wanting to learn. And I just say, yeah, come on board, man, just come hang out with me for a day if you want. You know, if you work on some stuff, if you need my input, I can help you in between meetings. And, you know, I'm pretty open about people who want to come to my office and just chill and learn. I open doors any day of the week for that. But yeah, my wife and I were pretty private people, even if we're getting on this podcast, I had to hire a marketing agency to get me on this podcast, right? Because I do recognize there are things that I think I could offer that could help people. So I love the podcast format because we were able to spend an hour to get deep. And you're able to ask questions and we're able to do life, you know, and talk life. But I don't know, just putting reels out on Instagram just never really resonated with me. It was funny. I think that I think people have over indexed on Matt. I think I'm probably not the best example of how to do social because I do all this. Like, I'm not the worst example of how to do social, but I do social the way every other influencer does social, which is just mass amounts of content. And I actually do believe that I've over indexed on content and under indexed on personal relationships. And I think that to truly, to truly become known and respected and trusted, I do not think it's, I think it's very difficult to do that virtually exclusively. And I think that my strategy was birthed sort of through COVID and my personal brand strategy and when everybody was remote and everyone's virtual, I was looking for content at scale. But I have, I have been trying to be more in person and be more present and do more in person stuff and maybe try and do meetups and build community and do things that impact people at a deeper level than just content and just constant content. So I think what you actually break it down tactically, I think that the content distribution builds an audience, but I think in person as much as possible builds a community. And I think community is where you have audience, people consume your content, community is where people love you so much that they're going to go tell five or ten of your friends of their friends to go check you out. But I don't think they're usually going to do that through social. If they've never met you in person or seen you at an event or had some sort of like more intimate connection or interaction with you. So I think you're doing it a different way, but I think it's a different way to do it. And I think you can marry up both. Yeah, somebody who once told me is like people transform never on what you do but who you are. And you know, and nobody can truly know who you are unless you spend time and sit down with them. Kind of like what we're doing now, right? And doing life together, 30 second real. You know 100%. That's that's why for me like I hesitate doing a conference, but I will do retreats. So like I have this retreat coming up in November where I'm hosting 35 to 40 entrepreneurs. And it's mainly real estate entrepreneurship, but you know, it's this four days where we just get to dive deep and talk about your business individually and do life together, know the people. And you know that people exactly. And you know, I'm bringing in some pretty cool speakers. Don't get me wrong, but that's what it's going to be all about. So in about a way, I do do a free meetup. So I do it twice a month. People want it. If you want people to join my meetups, I think you can just go to the clock where there's dot com. We also just released a free course. We call it base camp where it's literally I think like 50 hours with the material on real estate investing entrepreneurship. Like we have a productivity course on there. You know, I'm filming a mini raising capital course to put on there and we just give it off for free, you know. So I try to give as much as I can away content wise, but yeah, I think if people want to find it, it's you can I'm sure you can just go to the clock where there's dot com. And you'll be able to find it. And I mean, it's in the bio of my personal Instagram. I don't have a lot of followers. I only have like, I think 40, 300. So it's not a lot. But it's in the bio of my Instagram. If you want to check it out, you don't even have to follow me. Just click on the link. If you want the free stuff. But my Instagram handle is just like the Daniel clock. I tried doing the underscores and stuff, but it's like I can't do it. So it's just THE Daniel clock. And it's not like an arrogant thing where it's like V Daniel clock. No, it's just like, no, it's just that's just who I am. It's like the only word that makes sense. Good. Okay. I want to do a couple of rapid fire to close this. Yeah, man. Love it. Before we pivot anything else that's top of mind, anything else you wanted to bring up, you sort of dropped your socials already. So that was you answered that question for me, but sort of closing thoughts. Yeah. No, I mean, I, you know, I think being an entrepreneur is the closest thing you can to. So I found a lot of intimacy in my relationship with God by being an entrepreneur. If you think about what the definition of entrepreneur is, it's recreating the world using the lens of your product or service, right? Like if you believe, if you genuinely do the world is a better place because of the product that you offer or the service that you offer, fantastic. That's exactly what God did, right? He had an image of what the world could be and he created it through existence of his words. So for you, you're exactly, you're doing the exact same thing that God, the creator, the artist is doing when he created us, right? You're recreating the world based on your image, how he created us on our image. So I say, you know, the number one thing that is a success indicator of an entrepreneurship as I've learned is just don't quit. You know, just keep, just keep moving forward. Reach out to as many people as you possibly can. Ask good questions to mentors. I have a rule of thumb as I try to have at least three mentors in my life at all times. You know, and I try to grab breakfast or lunch with them at least once a month, keep them updated on what I'm doing, give them the details and they always are very quick to suggest that the idea of how I could do things differently. And journal, right? That's another really big thing. I journal in a very different way. Every day I journal what did I learn today that helps me become a better entrepreneur and every Sunday night I reread all the entries I wrote every single day and on Sunday night I wrote I write down what are the three big rocks I need to accomplish for my business to move forward every Sunday. And I assign the time. So if you read Callan Newport's deep work, which I'm a big reader, I'm sure you have as well. I write down the three big projects I have to get done and sometimes it's four or sometimes it's five, sometimes it's one, right? And I actually look in my calendar right then and there and I assign myself the time that I'm going to get that done. And that for me has been tremendously helpful. So awesome. No good advice. Very good advice. Okay, let's do a couple rapid-fire to close this out. The biggest challenge you've overcome in your own personal life. What was it? Had you overcome it? What did you learn from it? Yeah, probably getting out of my own way. It's the realization that every bottleneck of every business, nine times out of ten is the leader. If you had to choose one or multiple people, obviously there's probably been more than one, but you can pick one if you want. One person's had a major impact on your life. Who was it? What did you learn from that? My wife. My wife actually helped me become a more selfless human being. My definition of marriage is marriage is just God's number one way of helping you become a less selfish person. And my wife has certainly helped me with that. A book, podcast, audible, something you'd recommend people go check out. Yeah, so obviously my book, you can just go to zero to 75units.com and you can get the book for free. All you guys do is pay for shipping. But a book that I absolutely loved was a real estate book. It's called Am I being too subtle by a guy named Sam Zell. And it's probably one of my favorite breeds of all time, especially in real estate. If you could tell your 20 year old self one thing, what would it be? I wouldn't say anything. I'd probably just give that kid a hug. Yeah, I just say this guy, watch out. There's nothing you could tell that kid. And then last question, what does success mean to you? Yeah, success mean for me, it's just whatever you want it to mean. If it means making a million dollars a year, great. If it means making 12 million dollars a year, great. For me, my definition is are the people that are closest to me better off than they were a year ago because of who I am. That's success for me. Am I subconsciously helping people become the best versions of themselves, whether they're a part of my team or not? Is there a significant improvement? Is there a tangible improvement from one year to the next to the next and next because of my relationship with them in their life?