Investing in Real Estate: Building Wealth through Property Investments

Episode Transcript
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(00:50):
Aloha Inspired Money Maker. Thanks for tuning in. If this is your first
time with us, welcome. If you're returning, welcome back to
Inspired Money. I'm your host Andy Wang, a.k.a.
Advisor Andy. And I think I've mentioned this before, but when it
comes to real estate, one of my biggest regrets is
selling my apartment in Boston. I should have held

(01:12):
onto that and rented it out because I had such a low
cost basis, but I have to not look back.
I don't know about you, but if you've ever dreamt about building wealth through real
estate but felt overwhelmed by all the options, single
family homes, apartment buildings, commercial properties, syndications,
you are in the right place. Real estate has long been

(01:35):
one of the most powerful ways to grow wealth, generate passive
income and hedge against inflation. But today's opportunities
go far beyond buying a rental house or
flipping a fixer upper. From data driven investing in private
capital to to purpose driven development, the landscape
is evolving and smart investors are evolving with it. In

(01:57):
this episode, we're going to unpack what's working now in real
estate. From emerging niches and advanced
financing to the tech tools changing how deals are found and
analyzed. Whether you're just getting started or scaling your
portfolio, you're going to hear how top investors are adapting
strategies, managing risks and creating impact along

(02:19):
the way. Stay tuned. We have five super high
caliber guests who will show you how to think bigger, invest
smarter and build long term wealth through property. But
first, let me take a moment to thank our sponsor. Today's episode
is brought to you by my investment management firm, Runnymede Capital
Management because everyone deserves a clear path to financial

(02:41):
independence. Let me ask you, "Do you really
know when you can retire, and how much income you'll have when you do?"
Most people don't know and guessing is risky. That's why
we offer a free 3 minute tool that gives you real answers. You can go
to InspiredMoney.fm/getplan and you'll
see your projected retirement age and income plus some

(03:04):
strategies to cut debt, lower taxes, grow investments
and protect your future. There's no sales pitch, no obligation,
hopefully just clarity. These are some of the foundational
strategies that I use with my wealth management clients every day.
And now they're free to you. So take three minutes. Just go to
InspiredMoney.fm/getplan. Try it out and let me

(03:27):
know how you make out. Now let's bring in our guests.
First up, we have Ken McElroy, one of the most recognized names
in multifamily real estate. He's the CEO of MC Companies
which manages more than $2 billion in assets nationwide. And
he's helped countless investors achieve financial freedom through his books,
YouTube channel and the Collective Advisors Mastermind.

(03:49):
Ken is also passionate. He's a passionate philanthropist through his
sharing the Good Life Foundation. Welcome Ken. Thanks,
Andy. Appreciate it. Next joining us is Neal
Bawa, also known as the mad scientist of multifamily.
Neal is the CEO and founder of Ugro and
GrowCapitas, overseeing a billion dollar portfolio of

(04:11):
over 4800 units. He is a data driven
visionary who uses analytics, prop tech and fintech to
make real estate smarter, more efficient and more transparent for
investors. Neal, so glad to have you. Thanks
for having me on the panel. Really excited to hear what everyone has to say.
It's going to be action packed. We're also thrilled to have Jay

(04:34):
Papizan. He's with us. Best selling author,
real estate executive and thought leader, Jay has spent more than two
decades at Keller Williams Realty International where he's led
education, publishing and strategic content. He's the
co author of the One Thing which has sold over 3 1/2
million copies worldwide. He's also CEO of

(04:56):
Productive, Co host of the One Thing and Think Like a
CEO podcast and co owner of Papazen
Properties Group in Austin, Texas. Jay, welcome. Thanks for
having me. Our next guest is J Scott. He's an
entrepreneur, investor and best selling author of five real estate
books with more than half a million copies sold. Before

(05:18):
entering real estate, he was a Silicon Valley executive at Microsoft
and eBay. Today he's a partner at Bar Down Investments
where he owns and operates a $200 million multifamily
investment fund with over 1,100 units.
I'm hoping today to avoid
confusion, we're going to have Jay and J Scott.

(05:39):
J Scott, welcome. Thanks Andy. I appreciate it.
Rounding out our panel today we have Paul Moore,
founder of Wellings Capital, which manages eight private
equity commercial real estate funds. Paul is a seasoned
investor with over 100 completed property deals across
multifamily, self storage and large scale developments.

(06:03):
He's also an author, speaker and trusted educator
who's passionate about helping investors build wealth with
purpose. So good to have you here Paul. Yeah, great to
be here. Thank you. We have a lot to
cover. We've got an incredible panel so let's get
started with segment one. Commercial real estate goes far

(06:25):
beyond office towers. Investors are increasingly turning to niche
properties like self storage, small bay, industrial and medical offices
for stable scalable income. Self storage
benefits from life transitions like downsizing or divorce,
making it recession resistant. Small Bay Industrial
supports local businesses and ecommerce, offering reliable cash flow

(06:47):
through long term tenants who value functionality. Medical
offices provide perhaps the most stability. Healthcare tenants invest
heavily in custom build outs, resulting in long leases and high
renewal rates. These properties also respond well to demographic
trends, especially an aging population. Many of these
leases are structured as a triple net lease, pushing most expenses

(07:08):
to tenants and allowing for more predictable income. When
evaluating deals, look at cap rates, lease terms and tenant
profiles. By targeting specialized sectors, investors
can access better yields, lower volatility and more passive
income streams than traditional residential assets provide.

(07:40):
Paul, you've called self storage and small bay industrial "boring but beautiful"
asset classes. What first convinced you that these niches
could outperform traditional multifamily? You know, I had
written a book that was humbly titled the Perfect Investment about
multifamily investing. And somebody got on a call with me and they said,
I actually want to talk to you about self storage. And I said okay. And

(08:01):
then I thought, oh man, I don't want to hear about this. But
what convinced me was he said, look, if I was renting an
apartment to you for $1,000 a month and I
raised the rate by 15%, you might
move out rather than pay that extra
$,1800 a year that you're locked in

(08:22):
for. But if I'm renting you a self storage unit
for $100 a month and I raise it by 15%, you're
probably not gonna spend a weekend, get a U-Haul, get your buddies
together to move your junk, excuse me, down the
street just to save $15 a month, especially when
it's on a month to month lease. That got my attention. And then I

(08:44):
realized there were a lot of benefits to self storage.
Our company started investing in self storage, mobile home parks and other
asset types. And we've been really happy with
this investment class. I love it. I love the
stickiness that it has. Ken, you've scaled your,
you've scaled from small apartments to $2 billion in assets. What

(09:08):
have you learned about choosing asset types that hold up in different market cycles?
Well, we've done self storage, we've done office,
we've done development, we've done retail, we've done industrial.
I'm right now focused a lot on billboards because of the
bonus appreciation you get in year one plus a cash flow. And I'm trying to

(09:29):
do that to offset tax. So I think being in these niches is
really, really fun. However, the learning curve is high
and you know, there are things that are easy like, like for example,
when, when I did a bunch of self storage. It's easy to get in the
game quickly. You could build them quickly. You don't need a lot of land.
So the barriers to entry are less, you know, than, than maybe a

(09:52):
multifamily project which takes me almost two years to build.
So there are, you know, there are pros and cons to both, but I, I
love all real estate classes and I think at any time in the
cycle some are up, some are down. So you really, really need to
know how to run them. Any surprising
challenges with self storage? Oh, for sure,

(10:13):
yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things with, well, self storage
been my experience, the ones that we've built, the ones that I've owned, they,
they really have a lot to do with single family home
construction. So as single family homes build
out, people like to store their stuff.
Yes, you can always say there's divorce and all that kind of stuff and there

(10:35):
always is those kinds of things. But you know, but then what, what I've
seen is you can, you can, you can do 2, 3, 4, 5 projects within
a few square miles and then all of a sudden you're competing against
each other. Now the same thing can happen in multifamily, the same thing can happen
in office, but the barriers to entry, I think for,
you know, you can build a self storage on just 1 to 2 to 3

(10:57):
acres, you know, and, and so that's the difference with a
scalable multifamily. We need to build a good one, we
need over 10 acres. Right. And then you, there's massive zoning
issues and self storage is nimble because a lot of times they're
infill. You can rip down something. We just had one done in Scottsdale where
they ripped down an old restaurant that had been closed and you know, A

(11:19):
location, you know, and so that one's
crushing it. So it really is like anything else, it's one of
those sectors that you gotta be careful like,
because if you have three or four or five, if you have, if you got
an 8 x 10 and somebody's $10 less, you
know, half a block or one block or two blocks away,

(11:40):
that's a problem. So you know, they're sensitive, price
sensitive. And also I don't like the value add side of it personally. Like
there is really no value add. The market kind of sets the
number. Whereas apartments, if I buy something in the 90s, let's
say that, you know, for, I don't know, $100,000, $125,000, $150,000 a door, you know,
I can put 15, 20 grand into side of the unit and, and,

(12:03):
and get that rent bump. So there's kind of a forced equity that I
never found in self storage. I could be wrong. I know there's,
there's people that do it with tech efficiencies and stuff like
that, you know, but, but from a physical, what does
the customer get? You know, I haven't found anything
that, you know, works for value add in

(12:26):
self storage. Thank you. Yes, it sounds like that low
barrier to entry is a double edged sword. Neal, you're a
recovering technologist. What data points or signals
help you to identify promising but maybe
overlooked property niches?
Niches inside of niches. So here's what I'd like to say. I like,

(12:47):
you know, medical offices, I like self storage and I like, you know,
small industrial. I don't like large industrial, but I like small industrial. But here's
what I would say. Self storage is dealing with
one of the largest inventory releases in the US
8.8% of inventory in the last 36 months. That's a lot. That's,
that's a huge amount. As people have already said, it's very easy to build

(13:10):
storage because you get approval sooner and you build it faster
and so it can, it's very easy for there to be a storage
glut in a particular market and there to be a storage shortfall in a
market that's 10 miles away. So I really want to point out that
it's easy for investors to get carried away with, oh, self storage is
the new multifamily, or industrial is the new multifamily or, or its

(13:33):
medical offices. None of these are the new multifamily and neither is multifamily
itself the new multifamily. What we are basically saying is the market
is actually more hyperlocal today than it has ever been.
There are markets, Phoenix is a perfect example, where there's 15,000
multifamily units coming in the next 18 months. That's not, that's a very
challenging place to be. And then there are markets in the US like Boston for

(13:56):
example, where it's very difficult to build new things, where we have a
shortfall of about 10,000 units in a single market. And Boston is
the lowest cap rate market in the US bar San Francisco. So what I'd like
to point out to people is, and people don't like to hear this because they
want to hear us give you some kind of magical solution. Paul Moore says
this is the solution, or Ken says this is the solution

(14:18):
really My message to all of you is these are all great asset
classes and they're all horrible asset classes. It depends on where you're
looking. So be hyper local and you will find
lots and lots of amazing places where you can build or buy
self storage. And the same applies for all of these others. Having said that,
at the current moment, I would say small industrial is

(14:40):
probably in the best space in terms of not having over
capacity. There's lots of over capacity in self storage. There's
lots of over capacity in multifamily. I'm not so sure about
the medical office. It's a much smaller space. But I would say that small
industrial, I'm not seeing any evidence of over capacity or
overbuilding in that space. So big thumbs up from a point of view

(15:02):
of just data analysis. Jay, I want to
ask you, how do you teach agents and investors to evaluate
opportunity beyond their comfort zone? What's
the one thing that they need to focus on first?
Oh, yeah, if you've got something to add, jump in. So

(15:23):
the thing we don't ever want them to do is pretend to be an expert
on something they're not. So I think the definition of a professional is
when I know the answer, I'll give you the answer. When I don't know the
answer, I will go find the best answer. So we leverage our network
and we try to teach people to not give fake answers. I'm sorry,
that's just like the worst kind of customer service you could possibly give. But we

(15:44):
have a network that we can tap into for all of that. I wanted to
piggyback on what Neal said there because the thing about
niches in general, whenever I think about this class is I
think of this. And sometimes I get the yellow kind of warning light out.
I'm thinking a lot of times when we have this conversation, people are chasing
trends. And anytime you're chasing a trend, you may be by

(16:06):
definition late. And I would just always encourage investing whatever you're
investing in. Pick an asset class and learn how to
understand value. How value is made and created is even
better. And that'll shows you how to add value.
So, like, do you actually understand the value of what you're investing in?
Otherwise you're gambling. And I just feel like if you're going to pick a niche,

(16:28):
go be an expert in it in a local market because they are
so different. We see trends. New Jersey is not like Austin, Texas
right now. You've got a seller market in one place. We got a huge buyer
market here. A very important delineation between
gambling and investing. J Scott,
how do you evaluate whether an alternative commercial

(16:51):
asset fits into your long term strategy? Yeah,
so, I mean, just to piggyback on what everybody's already said,
another thing that your audience should consider when investing in
real estate is that every asset class is going to
optimize for different types of returns. So in real estate, we
typically see four types of return. We see cash flow,

(17:13):
we see appreciation, we see tax benefits. And we may see what's
referred to as loan amortization, where your tenants, whoever's renting
your property is paying down the loan, building equity in your favor. And
every real estate asset class is going to deliver
these returns in a different percentage, a different format.
So you may invest in multifamily where you may end up

(17:36):
seeing a lot of cash flow, a little bit of tax benefits, some
appreciation, some amortization. Other real estate asset
classes may have a different mix. You may see more tax benefits or less
tax benefits. You may see likely more appreciation value add or
less appreciation value add you say? Might see more
amortization or loan pay down or less, depending on loan to value

(17:58):
ratios in that asset class. And so what I would recommend for any of your
audience who might be looking to invest especially passively in real
estate is to ask yourself, what are you looking for in terms of types of
returns? Are you looking for cash flow? Do you need cash flow to live on?
Are you looking for long term growth appreciation? Are you looking to offset
some of your income through tax benefits and then tailor your investment, the

(18:20):
asset class that you choose to invest in based on the specific types of returns
you're looking for? Neal, can you weigh in on this? Because I understand
that the tax benefits were a huge motivation for you to get into
real estate. Very much so. And I think that
nothing's really changed there from the time, you know, I had a big
exit in 2013 tech company and I needed those tax

(18:42):
benefits. I live in Taxifornia and
nothing's changed. I mean, if anything, with this new Republican
administration coming in and the return to 100%
bonus depreciation, I personally find it very
difficult to invest out of real estate. I'm Excel spreadsheet driven
and I'm looking at post tax returns. When I compare my

(19:04):
post tax returns with real estate with whatever I've invested, I've invested in
lots of things outside of real estate, I can't really find anything. There's
one tiny exception to that rule. You know, I invest in
syndications that are, you know, were legal
syndications. With that exception. I've actually never managed to
beat my real estate returns as a investor myself. I'm not talking

(19:26):
about as a general partner, just as a limited partner investor.
You know, especially if you're in a higher tax state, it's going to be hard
to beat real estate. If you track every single investment you've ever
made in your life, you're going to have a hard time beating real estate
as an asset class. It's a strong testimonial. Anybody else want
to weigh in before we move on?

(19:50):
JayPapasan said that it's really important to pick
one asset type and become an expert in that. You know,
Warren Buffett talks about having a circle of competence and
doesn't matter how large or small it is, you just need to know where your
edges are. Charlie Munger's friend John Aralaga picked
a circle of competence. He said, I want to be an expert at real estate

(20:11):
within one mile of Stanford's campus. And you know what, that sounds like
a really small circle, but he became a billionaire doing that. So
I totally agree with you, Jay, on that. I was just
going to add, if you qualify as a real estate professional, cost
segregation or bonus depreciation is kind of
miraculous. And we're back to the full benefit of it right now. A lot of

(20:34):
realtors out there don't realize they qualify as a full time real
estate agent to get that bonus depreciation. And it can
offset a lot of income. And the rates you can do,
especially with small commercial, are basically offsetting a lot of your
cost of entry. So I just think it's one of the most miraculous benefits out
there if you qualify.

(20:56):
I'll just add one thing, Andy. I think, you know, a lot of people
think that the deals are the problem, you
know, and they would be right, like, like raising money
because of people that are paying a lot in tax. You know, if you
just, if you just focus on that demographic that's basically
most high net worth people, they're all trying to figure out how to pay

(21:19):
less tax legally. And so if you, you
know, as Paul said, if you find your niche and you find something good
and you, you build a track record, the money is there.
The hard part is actually finding a deal. And when
you jump all over the place into these different niches, your
learning curve, like anything, is a lot

(21:42):
steeper. You know, we've been doing multifamily for 30 years.
We certainly don't know everything, but, you know, we've gotten the heck beat out of
us over those 30 years. And so, you know, so our saw is a little
bit sharper than somebody who's just jumping in.
Yeah, Healthy reminder that we usually learn best by making
mistakes. So you have to allow yourself to make those

(22:03):
mistakes in order to become an expert. Let's move on
to segment two. Scaling a real estate portfolio means
moving past conventional mortgages. Once you approach the 10 loan
limit, banks shift focus from your personal income to the asset's
performance. This is where portfolio and debt service coverage ratio
loans become essential. DSCR loans evaluate whether a

(22:26):
property's income can cover its debt service, typically requiring a
ratio above 1.25x. For even more
flexibility, private capital fills the gap. Hard money lenders
offer fast high interest loans for short term flips. Private
lenders, often individuals, fund longer term deals based on trust
and your track record. Syndications allow you to pool funds from

(22:47):
passive investors to acquire larger properties with you managing the project.
To succeed, you need a solid deal, clear projections, and a strong
investor pitch. With these tools, you're no longer limited by
personal income or bank ceilings. You're financing like a business
owner.

(23:17):
J Scott, in scaling to a $200 million
in multifamily holdings, what have you learned about
financing? Or have you had to make changes once you pass that
10 loan limit? Yeah, so I think for anybody out
there that's looking to invest either actively or passively, it's important
to understand this concept called the capital stack. And the capital stack is

(23:40):
basically just the proportion of money that's coming in from different
sources, debt and equity, and understanding how
and those sources of financing get paid
their returns. And so in any capital stack, any deal that you do is
probably going to be some combination of debt, basically loans from
either other people, institutions, banks,

(24:02):
government agencies, or equity, your own capital, your partner's
capital, your investor's capital. But even within the
debt and the equity pieces, there are different types of debt and
equity. And so when returns come into a deal, depending on
how that capital stack is structured, certain people are going to get paid first,
certain people are going to get paid second, and third and fourth and so on

(24:24):
up the chain. And depending on where you are in that chain, you're going to
get paid different amounts. And so understanding the capital stack,
not just in general how capital stacks work, but understanding the capital
stack for the specific deal that you're investing in and ensuring that the
capital stack is, is built and
designed appropriately to ensure that everybody in the stack

(24:46):
is getting paid a reasonable amount at a reasonable time
is really important. When structuring deals. And so I would recommend anybody out there
that's listening to this do some research, research into how capital stacks work,
the different types of debt that's out there, the different types of equity that's out
there, and how they all interplay and work with each other.
Ken, in managing billions, how has your approach to leverage and

(25:08):
liquidity evolved as your portfolio grew?
So we've done $600 million this year already. So
we've done. We're really, really, really busy. So we've done some
refinances, we broke ground, some new construction, and
we did five recaps with a company out of California.
And, you know, we're really active on acquisitions. And

(25:32):
so what we're seeing is the market is soft
in multifamily. You know, you can't deliver 504,000
units in a single year, which is the highest year on
record, this year, for the nation, and not expect some
softness. Now, what that does is it makes it harder
for the lender to underwrite these kinds of deals because you have

(25:54):
almost no rent growth, for example, you have concessions, for
example, your expenses are higher, for example, on a number of levels.
Property tax, insurance, marketing costs, those kinds of things.
So what they do is they pull back, and they pulled back
a while ago. So. So, you know, you'd be lucky to get,
you know, north of 60% loan to value,

(26:16):
you know, and construction debt is, you know, in the 8, 9% range.
So, you know, so what you have is
the market's already figured all this out. So when we go out to find
an asset, we just got another one awarded this week in Las Vegas, you know,
a few years old, fully stabilized, that weʻll buy,
hopefully by the end of the year. And, you know,

(26:38):
at the most, you're looking at 60% debt and
40% equity. And so that is where we're
at. And, you know, when it starts to creep up, that's actually
when we should. That's actually when we should be careful. You know,
we all know that putting more money down is not a bad thing,
right? And so that's what gets everyone in trouble,

(27:01):
is when they start to lever these things up. There's one
little small thing like rates went up and I'm on a floating. I'm on floating
debt, or there's a maturity and the cap rates are up or whatever it might
be. So that's what's happening now. And so the softness
has presented a tremendous amount of opportunities on
the buy side because developers, builders,

(27:23):
owners, landlords, there, a lot of them are in distress, a lot of them are
not in distress. But there's a lot of money on the sidelines right now looking
to try to find good deals. Paul, what are your
thoughts? Have you had to adjust your fund structures at all to adapt to changing
interest rate environments this year? Yeah, back in
2022 when interest rates started rising, we

(27:45):
found that we were having a really hard time finding deals. But we also
found out, like Ken said, that there was a shortfall
on the capital stack. So we looked at a new
strategy and that was providing preferred equity.
Because our goal is not to get the best return
on investment. It's the bet to get the best risk

(28:07):
adjusted ROI. And we think we can get a
better return for each unit of risk using either preferred
equity or what we call JV hybrid equity, which has
control rights and it has, you know, protected
downside. It has other people in first loss position, but
it still has the same upward potential of

(28:30):
profitability as the LP investors. And so we've
been doing that almost exclusively for two and a half years now.
And this is not rescue capital, this is not development capital,
but this is preferred or JV equity in the middle of the capital
stack. And by bringing a large check, for example, we're bringing a
$12 million check right now and will be

(28:53):
about half of the equity. We get all
kinds of control rights and budget approval rights and things
we wouldn't get otherwise. So that's what we're doing right now.
Neal, on that topic of risk adjusted return,
how do you use analytics in your spreadsheets to model that
debt risk and capital structure for really long term resilience?

(29:17):
Well, I'm going to piggyback on what Paul said. So
as an investor, you hear about common equity, you hear
about prep equity and you hear about lending. These are three common
ventures. Have you spent any time actually
understanding the risk reward for this? Let's
say that the risk of common equity is 100.

(29:40):
Do you know what the risk of pref equity is? Is it 40? Is it
50? Is it 80? Is it 200? Is it higher than common equity?
What's the risk of lending? I think everyone looks at reward. Everyone's looking
at, well, common equity might make me 16% or
20% or at least what people are projecting is 20% or
higher. And pref equity might make me a little bit lower and then lending might

(30:02):
make me even lower. But I think what really needs to be done is you
have to look at risk and reward together. And I Don't see people doing that
in spreadsheets. So to me, a PREF equity investment with Paul
Moore, I'm an investor with him, by the way, is actually giving me
a higher return because what I'm doing is I'm looking at the return and
I'm factoring risk into it. This is actually not very hard to do. One

(30:23):
hour spent with ChatGPT and you'd have a spreadsheet that you can use for the
rest of your life. But what you should be doing is you should be taking
common versus lending versus pref and you should be adding a factor
to that and it's called the risk factor. And you can work out a factor
that works for you. And then when you look at a pref deal, you're never
looking at the returns, you're actually looking at your

(30:44):
aggregated return once you've added your risk factor in. And when you do that,
you'll find actually pref actually makes more money than common equity. This is the sort
of thinking that you need to have, right? You can't look at, oh,
somebody's making 18% or 20%. Yeah, but that 18% or
20% comes at a certain risk level and you have to factor that
in to your return. No GP will ever do it for you because they

(31:06):
don't want to say something that's, that's opposed to their own
benefits. But you should be able to to apply a risk factor based
on the type of risk you can. Again, ChatGPT is a wonderful place to have
this conversation. Jay, you've written extensively about
models and leverage. What are your thoughts?
I learned from someone who'd been through two massive recessions

(31:29):
and so risk aversion, it's like there is no move, no
matter how rewarding it might be, that we can take, that can knock us out
of the game entirely. And so I kind of. We've been
very, very careful as we've grown our personal portfolio. When we
came into these high interest rates, we had an 80% equity
to debt ratio. So we've been able to basically lend

(31:51):
to ourselves in this moment and tap
with that equity to make acquisitions when other people are really
looking for a way to get out. I think that might been what Ken
was alluding to. There are a lot of people who got in expecting markets to
rise and interest rates to, say, low. They're in trouble, they can't refinan,
and we can provide that for them. So I'm just super risk averse.

(32:13):
There are people out there, they're like, what about the ROI and I'm like, nope,
I'm playing a long game. We've done very well. I'm probably the smallest
investment portfolio here, but I, I love to de risk
it. You want the tortoise, not the hare.
I, well, he always wins, doesn't he? Always
wins. And I've just never seen the hare win in a long enough race.

(32:36):
Thank you. Let's go to segment three. Owning
rental property isn't the same as managing it like a business.
Landlords focus on repairs and rent collection. Asset managers
focus on long term value and cash flow. The shift begins with
tracking key metrics like net operating income and cash on cash return.
From there, it's about strategy. Raise income through rent

(32:58):
increases, cosmetic renovations and ancillary revenue like
pet fees or storage rentals. Reduce costs by implementing
ratio utility billing systems, also known as rubs, to bill
back utilities and budget proactively for capital expenditures.
Every dollar added to net operating income increases the property's
value. For example, a $3,600 annual

(33:21):
increase in NOI can add $60,000 in value in a
6% cap rate market. This approach, value add
renovations, tenant upgrades and operational efficiency
turns your portfolio into a scalable investment, not just a set of
properties. The goal is manage each asset like
a business, not just a building.

(33:55):
Oh man, we've got AI Drones. Ken, you've taught
thousands how to move from owning property to owning
a business. What's the first mindset shift that every landlord
must make?
We're rolling right into a great topic which is, you know,

(34:17):
I think the property manager and the asset manager really need to be
connected by the hip. And let me tell you,
there are people that
manage tenants and manage the physical plant.
Then they're extremely important. As you know, that's how I came up
through the business. In college I was on site manager,

(34:37):
you know, I was collecting rent for on behalf of ownership.
Then I moved to the other side of the desk and at that point that's
more asset management. And now you're actually managing the investors,
you're actually managing the debt and you're managing the property manager. So
it's good to have a little bit of tension between the two in my opinion

(34:57):
because the, the role of the asset manager is to preserve the
investor capital. Was that a difficult shift for you? I
think you had like 9 years experience on the property management side
before you kind of. No. Oh gosh, no. I, I, I, you know,
I learned the school of hard knocks for sure. You know, like, like I, I,
I mean, I grew up in the construction business, so I did understand

(35:19):
how to fix stuff. And you know, so by the time I
started buying assets, I did understand how to fix
them. That is actually the competitive advantage that most asset managers.
I have asset managers in my company, So I have 300 people,
I have blue blood, highly educated, you
know, very smart folks. I sit across from the desk and I just shake my

(35:42):
head. They have no clue what goes on on the property, but they can
look at spreadsheets and that's how big the difference can be.
So you need both. And you know, but
I had to learn, you know, the other side of it. And thankfully
that's really all I do now is how do you preserve the
asset? Because at the end of the day, if the asset

(36:05):
is in really, really good shape, it's well capitalized,
it's maintained, financially maintained, you've got adequate reserves,
and you have a whole asset management function, then
it actually helps when you start to exit that whether it's, it could
be cash out, refinance, it could just be a sale, it doesn't really matter what
it is, you know, but the asset needs to be the

(36:27):
you. You know, I like to buy distressed assets
and like, like probably everyone here, there's a reason
that they're distressed and it's because typically poor asset management.
Yeah. And I guess on that note, let me ask J Scott, what
systems or tools do you implement first if you're taking

(36:48):
over a poorly managed property? Yeah, so. Well, keep
in mind, when you people like to think of real estate
as something different than a regular business, a lot of people go into real estate
and they think, okay, I can buy a property or two properties or five properties
and I can run them. I can do everything myself. And as Ken alluded to
or, and as you allude to as well, Andy, is that real estate, estate, just

(37:11):
like anything else, is a business. And to be a good business owner, to
be a good business leader, you have to understand everything that happens in business.
You have to understand how inventory works and how cash flow management
works. You have to be able to read financial statements and do
financial analysis. You have to be able to work with vendors. You have to be
a good leader and be good at hiring people. All the

(37:32):
things that, that go into running a restaurant or a tech business
or any other business that you might run are applicable
to being a good real estate operator. And so the first thing I would recommend
to anybody that's looking to get into real estate is to learn
the basics of running a business. Learn how cash flow
management works. Learn how to read financial statements. Figure out how to

(37:55):
be a CEO, a CFO, a marketing person, whatever it is
that, that you're going to be doing in that business. So that when you
actually start jumping into the day to day, you can hit the ground running
as opposed to thinking of it as a hobby where real estate is somehow
different than any other typ type of business on the planet. It's not.
Paul, you've written about the Perfect Investment. What does

(38:18):
operational excellence look like to you?
You know, it's funny, I actually, after writing that
I, I had a show on Bigger Pockets and
on their Instagram Live and YouTube channel and I said timeout, the perfect
investment is not perfect. And, and that's it. You
know, if you get a property, if you get an asset manager who doesn't know

(38:40):
what they're doing, a property manager who doesn't know what they're guys have said
a great property, a great asset
can be ruined by a mediocre operator and a mediocre asset
can be saved and prosper under a great asset
manager. And so we think that the more we go
on, the more we realize it's the people that make the

(39:03):
difference, like you guys have said, and great
people hiring great people, even if they don't have experience in
your field, they can be trained and they can be,
you know, they can do a great job in any asset
type. And we've have found that repeatedly. Yeah, the importance
of human capital. Yeah. Neal, what

(39:25):
technology or KPI dashboards have changed how you manage
assets day to day? I think on the
front end we tend to now be more obsessed about
supply. It doesn't matter what we're looking at, whether we're buying an industrial
building or it's BTR (build to rent) multifamily, it doesn't matter. We
really, really tend to be obsessed about supply data.

(39:47):
Obviously we get them from paid sources like COSTAR or Yardi,
but we also get them from unpaid sources. So we built a lot of dashboards.
These dashboards are built using an AI
software called N8N which is similar to ChatGPT. So
I suppose you could do a lot of what we are doing in ChatGPT before
you sort of graduate to building apps yourself. I

(40:08):
find asking the right questions to be indispensable. So
we have turned our entire company into an AI first company, all
employees are required to spend one hour on AI every day. And what we're
saying to them is any dashboards that you build, any metric that you
use. You must use artificial intelligence to power it.
So to give you an honest answer to our question,

(40:30):
what's really changed for us is not the change in metrics. Yes, supply is a
much bigger deal for us now that we've learned the hard way.
But I think it's about empower using artificial intelligence
to improve both the metrics and also improve the way that
we look at our dashboards. That's really what's changed in the last year. We're really
obsessed with AI and we feel that it has immense potential in

(40:53):
helping us be better money managers
and also better property managers. I mean, so much of what we are doing
today in terms of reporting, I'd say nearly 100%
is AI generated with humans. Obviously coming up with the
data and improving the AI. Jay, I want to tap
into your The One Thing expertise again. What's an

(41:15):
important daily or weekly action that an investor should focus
on to become a better asset manager? Can
I go monthly and quarterly? So I would say
for us, stop wondering and start asking, which I think
is what. I can't remember who said it earlier on. We've had
investments with property managers, and when we get the reports, we

(41:37):
wonder, well, I wonder why that happened. And when you're
earlier in the game, you just need to be unafraid to ask really
stupid questions and get the answer. And that's almost every
time we found out that a property was mismanaged
because the moment we saw a change, we picked up the phone and now we
have rules. If that fourplex ever has more than one

(41:58):
vacancy, we pick up the phone and call. If that fourplex has,
like there's just a set of rules. So it's a monthly discipline of
looking at the numbers and asking the questions that often go unasked.
And it's a quarterly meeting with our financial advisor. We get our
CPA, we get our attorney, we go through our portfolio property
by property. Most of the time, nothing's changed.

(42:20):
But the forced viewing of that and having other people look
at it often makes us so much smarter. So I just like
visit with the dashboards you create, don't create them, and assume that
it'll go well. And if you look at them and ask questions, you'll get smart.
Over time, paying attention matters. Let's move
on to segment four. Real estate used to be about who

(42:42):
you knew and how well you could eyeball a deal. In
2025, that model is evolving. Today's top
investors are using artificial intelligence intelligence to find deals before they hit
the market. And to analyze them with precision. AI
scans public records to flag properties with high sell likelihood,
probate tax liens, divorce, and delivers them

(43:04):
directly to your dashboard. Predictive analytics go a step
further, identifying zip codes with rising incomes, new
permits and shrinking days on market. Automated valuation
models offer instant property values while rental comp tools
project cash flow. With platforms like PropStream,
Localize.City and CompStack, you're no longer guessing

(43:25):
you're executing based on real time data. This shift turns
investing from speculation into strategic decision making. The
AI investor doesn't chase deals, they target them with precision and
speed.

(43:51):
Neal, you recommended to your people using AI daily.
Where are you seeing the biggest impact right now and how is it
changing how you find or underwrite deals?
There's no particular area. And please note, I do not recommend to
my employees using AI. We are forcing AI on
our employees. They have no choice. We set quarterly

(44:13):
milestones. We are like many of the folks here. We are an EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating
System) company. So our EOS quarterly rocks.
There are quarterly rocks on AI. And we basically told the
employees that if you are not completely AI empowered by
the end of this year, even if you're the best employee in the company, we
will let you go. So we've been very blunt and very straightforward with our employees

(44:34):
and that's really helped. We have now built more than 400
AI applets. We call it mini apps, they're called applets
or power strings in just the last four months. So
we are not aware of any aspect of our business that has not been
changed by AI. Obviously some are sort of ahead of others.
Marketing definitely has built about 200 applets. They're ahead of everybody else.

(44:57):
The way that we market has changed drastically because of AI. But in terms
of underwriting. Right. So all of our rent comps are now done by a
tool called Manus. I think most people don't even know this tool exists. It's a
Chinese tool. We have not been able to find a US equivalent.
Manus basically does all of our rent comps. And
so we are not spending any time doing rent comps anymore. And that allows us

(45:19):
to to underwrite a massive number of properties.
Most of our underwriting is also now done through AI. There's
still components that humans do. We have not laid off any employees. Just so you
know, we. And we don't have any intention of laying off any employees. With one
exception. We laid off a copywriter about 12 months ago simply because we felt we
could copyright better than them. And that happens to be the case. But with that

(45:41):
exception, we haven't laid off any employees. We're just processing
2x or 3x the volume that we used to be able to process. And
we're able to manage our properties better because we no longer, for
example, write, you know, our
weekly reports on, on asset management. Those reports are now
written by highly trained AI that we've trained using custom GPTs.

(46:04):
And doesn't mean that the asset managers are not doing their job. It means that
their hourly meetings are recorded. One other thing that I would tell you is
that in the AI world, you should never ever go into a
meeting without a AI note taker. So we do
not allow any meetings of our company in person or
over Zoom, without every single person's AI note takers

(46:26):
to be present and to actually make sure that everyone
has them. Every single employee in our company has to give their AI note
taker a name. I'm a huge fan of Ironman, so mine is
called Jarvis. So Jarvis has to be present 100% of the
time and, and you know, other people have their, their own names for these
things. And the combination of having an AI note taker taking

(46:48):
100% of our meetings and, and you know, AI
basically processing everything that we do allows us to do more
with the same number of people. J
Scott, how have you integrated technology into your process?
Yeah, so I'm very much on the underwriting

(47:08):
side of the business, so I run our underwriting team. And so for me, it's
looking at deals and being able to
use AI to enhance our ability to analyze deals.
And we do that in a couple ways. Number one, we can look at more
deals than we were previously looking at. So when you start to look at
larger commercial deals, and especially when you're in the value add

(47:29):
space where you're projecting what a deal is
going to generate two, three, five years down the line,
it can take literally an hour, two hours to do even a
first pass underwriting of a large deal. Using AI, we've been able to get
that down to 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. So we can analyze a lot
more deals. But the big thing that I found AI to be useful for

(47:51):
is, and one of the biggest risks as an investor is when you buy a
deal, you're relying on the seller to provide you some information. The two biggest
pieces of information in the multifamily space is a rent roll and
a trailing 12 months of profit and loss. And using these two documents,
we can basically model what the property is likely to be worth
now and in the future. But you can't always rely on

(48:13):
what the seller is giving you or telling you to be true. And in a
lot of cases, a seller, especially a smart seller, can hide information.
Hide, I don't want to use the term fraud, but they can hide some things
that are, that can be unethical, like renting themselves units
to make the occupancy look higher or giving
concessions on, on the back end to make rents look higher.

(48:36):
Using AI, we can analyze T12s and rent rolls a lot more
efficiently to determine if there are anomalies that the seller
is is in the data that the seller is providing us. Are they doing
things that might distort the actual performance
of the property or try to distort it so that we think the property is
worth more than what it actually is. And so for us, AI, the two

(48:58):
big roles is being able to underwrite more deals and being able to find
anomalies in the data that the seller is giving us that can potentially
help us avoid making a mistake and overpaying for a property.
Ken, how do you balance automation or technology with
gut instinct, especially in high stake decisions?
Well, it certainly helps a lot. Like, I'll tell you a great story.

(49:22):
I had a unsolicited offer on one of my businesses from a big
company called Greystar. They sent me, and I
know all those folks, and they sent me something and said, you know, would you
be interested in selling this? And it sat in my inbox for, I don't
know, almost two weeks before I got to do anything. I forgot to send in
my attorney. We're in the middle of other stuff and it just was a low

(49:43):
priority. So he called me and he's like, hey, I'm in town,
can you meet this afternoon? I was like, oh no. So I pull up with
the, the LOI and I said, I ran it through
ChatGPT and I said, how, how would Chris Voss renegotiate this?
And it kicked me back there like three page.
And I, I brought it with me to the meeting and it completely worked.

(50:06):
And I think, you know, that's just a interesting example
of, I think, you know, where the legal profession is, where the
securities profession go. You know, I have a friend that's an SEC
attorney, he just sold his practice. You know, I have friends
that say they don't need paralegals anymore. So, you know, so we're starting to see
these tools I think that you can use, including,

(50:29):
you know, but the end of the day, here's what I would say. Andy,
you know, Jay and Neal are right on. This stuff is, is because
it's not there yet for exactly what we need. But at the end of the
day, it's still the same thing. If it flushes out some things that need to
be attended to, then you still need people to do it. And that's actually
the biggest issue. You know, we've got all the metrics and all the stuff being

(50:51):
pulled out through AI and all that stuff, but at the end of the day
they might get the report. But then it's still a people
issue from that point. So, and I, so I haven't
completely taken my hat off to it yet. I still think, you
know, you know, the, like, like for example,
we're going through our budgets for next year already. And I told my whole company,

(51:13):
I said, listen, you better not me on, on
rent growth. And, and, you know, and, and I said we're gonna have expense
growth and flat rents and that's how you need to budget. You know, I,
and, and so, you know, that's, that's a nuance. For example,
that chat GPT might not catch. You know, what, what, what, what
next year, what's going to happen next year? We know the softness of the market

(51:36):
today. So those are things I think that you still need to put your touch
on. Thanks for that prompt. I'm definitely going to bring a
virtual FBI negotiator with me next time I'm going
somewhere. Jay, what are your thoughts on this one?
Are you going to J Scott or me? I'm going to you. Okay, great.
I'll put in a vote for Manus. I've used Manus and

(51:59):
I'll just go in a different direction. I've used it to literally
create a blog of summaries of podcasts that I don't have time to listen
to. And I can go through there, look at the summaries, and then say,
wow, that's a really good one. I need to go listen to that episode. So
I'm using it to kind of advance my own education. And
the big question we're asking as a team, everybody's looking to

(52:21):
this to save cost and improve efficiency.
And if you could go back to 1995 and
be one of the first movers in SEO (search engine optimization), would you do it?
And I've not asked this to anybody else. As messy as it was back then,
if you could be a first mover for SEO, you would do it because
that, like, GEO (generative engine optimization) is happening now. So

(52:43):
I've seen some of my friends blog traffic. The Google
traffic has dropped off by 80% in the last two years. So
now Gemini is making the choice not the Google algorithm. So
we are asking the question if we want to get leads from the web, how
do we optimize for generative optimization?

(53:03):
Right. I want to know that ChatGPT chooses us and
the second place, I'll just, I'll stop here. Unless we want to unpack it is
we're looking really hard at how do we train our salesforce on it.
You can take Grok or ChatGPT and go to audio mode
and you can role play situational. I need you to role
play a seller who is indexed too high on the value of their property

(53:26):
and you can get live practice and reps. And
I'll tell you, ChatGPT can be a little too friendly. Grok is actually much more
aggressive but you can get lots of reps for your people to
educate them faster. So those are the uses that I think are really interesting right
now. But we're playing full speed. Thanks for
sharing those insights. In the interest of time, we're going to bring it home

(53:48):
and go to the last segment. Investing in real estate can yield
both financial returns and community value. Impact driven
strategies like green building affordable housing and community land
trusts deliver measurable social or environmental benefits
alongside solid performance. Green certified buildings typically
command higher sale prices and rents enjoy stronger occupancy occupancy

(54:10):
and lower operating costs which boosts net operating income and
asset value. Affordable housing using tools like the Low
Income Housing Tax Credit offers predictable tax
advantaged returns while meeting critical housing needs.
Community land trusts preserve long term affordability by separating land
and building ownership, ensuring generosity endures.

(54:31):
This approach reframes developments from extractive ventures to
purposeful investments. Stronger tenant retention, positive social
outcomes and operational efficiencies become part of the return equation.
Doing well and doing good are not at odds. They reinforce each other.
Strategic impact investing opens access to new opportunities and
aligns real estate holdings with long term value for investors and

(54:54):
communities alike.
I'm going to go to Jay Papazan first because I think you have to hop
off at the top of the hour. I know that Keller Williams has long

(55:15):
emphasized building wealth to fund a life of significance.
How does that philosophy shape your own approach
to purposeful investing? Thank you for jumping before I
have to jump. The money is good for the good it can do.
I think whatever baggage you have, I think that wealth is great because
we can make great change with it. And I know that some of

(55:38):
the people here that I know personally are doing great things with their money to
change the world. And as investors we can look for opportunities.
So my wife and I set goals around time given, money
raised and how much we donate. And we also try to be ethical
investors. Right now in a lot of urban areas, Austin is one of them.
They want urban density. It's better for the environment. It's also better for their

(56:00):
tax base, which is why they do it. And so you can take a single
family lot and if you've got the investment
income and the know how you can take a single family home and turn it
into three units and you talk about an amazing return on
investment for about 12 months of work. So we've got a couple of those
projects that we're doing. I love it because it is urban

(56:22):
density which is good for the town, it's good for the tax base, is
good for the world and it's very lucrative. Love it.
Profitable and doing good. Thank you, Jay. Paul, you've
written and spoken about investing with integrity. How do you
define profit with purpose in your own investing journey? Yeah,
so we're not a developer and asset manager, so I can't speak to some of

(56:44):
the green building. But I can tell you that one of my heroes,
William Wilberforce died about 200 years ago and he affected
effectively. You should check out his story. There's a movie about him called
Amazing Grace came out in 2007. He and his
group effectively ended slavery in the UK and then
eventually in the western hemisphere. But here we are

(57:07):
about 200 years later and there
are more enslaved people that any time in world
history. And listen to this guys. If you took the records, not the
average, but the record profits of ExxonMobil,
Nike and Walmart added those record profits together
tripled that number. You'd come up with the approximate

(57:30):
annual profitability of human trafficking. It is a
tragedy and we've got to do something about it.
So we can't fix the problem. But what we can do as
real estate investors, we can get the word out and we can also
what we did, WellingsCapital we analyzed different non
profits to see who was most effective. We found one called

(57:53):
AIM. Their website's aimfree.org We've helped raise about
$900,000 for them in the last four years. They
are able to free children from trafficking in Cambodia
and now Belize for a thousand dollars per child. Now
there's more costs after that, but they put bad guys behind
bars. They free children. And I recommend, you

(58:15):
know, I'm a little older than some of you guys, I know I don't look
it, but but at any rate,
the older I get, the more I view my significance and the legacy
I'll leave. And this is one way I want to do it.
It's amazing how $1,000 can make such a
huge impact. Way more beyond what you would think

(58:38):
$1,000 could have, depending where it's being put.
Neal, do you believe technology can accelerate more
equitable and sustainable investment models? And
if so, how? I think it can, though it tends to do the opposite.
So from what I have seen in the last 30 or 40 years, technology
increases inequality across the world. Certainly in the United States.

(59:01):
We're one of the most unequal nations in the world at this point of time.
And a lot of that is because we use a ton of technology. So
it's a natural focus. The answer is absolutely 100%.
technology can reduce inequality, but there needs to be a focus on
that. There needs to be a focus from their political perspective, there needs to be
a focus from the corporate perspective. And I'm going to basically break from

(59:23):
the group and say not necessarily to
donate money. I'm not suggesting that the way to
reduce inequality is to donate money. I'm suggesting that you basically,
look, you try to solve problems. You know, I'm not a huge fan
of Elon Musk's politics, but I am a huge fan of his ability to solve
difficult problems. And I think inequality is one of the most difficult

(59:45):
problems of our time. And I think it can be solved by technology, but it
requires focus from both politicians and
corporations. We're doing that in our little
niche. We're building 10,000 homes for the middle class families,
the baristas, and giving them brand new townhomes. We've already seen succeeded in doing
that with hundreds of townhomes. And we want to get to the point where we

(01:00:06):
are at 100,000 townhomes, and that's a process. And we're doing it
not by engaging the government. We don't have that level of capability, but
we are succeeding by engaging family offices and corporations. And they're
helping us with basically something very simple, cheaper debt.
With just doing cheaper debt and nothing else. And all they're doing is helping
us get cheaper debt. We're able to basically picks inequality

(01:00:30):
in a small way. And I love that. I like finding
solutions to very hard problems. And this is something that can be fixed.
It's beautiful to hear. And I surmise that if
you were working with the government, you would not be able to move so
quickly or nimbly.
But I will steer clear of the politics. J Scott,

(01:00:53):
what advice do you have for investors who want to align their capital with their
values, but they don't know where to start? So
definitely talk to other people who are investing that have the
same values as you. We have to rely on our networks. We
have to rely on those that, that can do research faster,
better than we can. None of us knows everything. And so when I'm looking

(01:01:16):
to invest, the first thing I do, and whether it's it's aligning values
or just ensuring that I'm de risking who I'm
investing with or what I'm investing
in, it's doing research by talking to other people that have
to or working to achieve the same goals as I
am. And so, yeah, talk to your network. Form a network and

(01:01:38):
ensure that those you're speaking with have the same values that you have and
find who they're investing with and what they're investing in.
And once you find that, go out to your network
and recommend those investments. Be proactive in helping other people
find those things that align with your values. And you're walking that walk,
right, because you've built educational communities and mentorship

(01:02:01):
programs. So I'm assuming that you view
that as part of your impact beyond financial
returns. Yes, certainly. We like to pay it forward. I couldn't have been
successful in this business if I didn't have a lot of people who helped me
be successful. I also say while Paul and
what Paul and Neal said is amazing and

(01:02:22):
I can't match it in terms of scale, it's also important to look on a
local level. We do a lot of local outreach. We help
our tenants in our multifamily properties
interact and work with private businesses
around us for the benefit of both sides. So we do a lot of community
outreach and we bring a lot of businesses into our properties

(01:02:45):
to provide services and to enhance, again,
both sides, the tenant value that they're getting from the community and private
businesses and the benefit that the private businesses in the community
are getting from our tenants. And so focusing local is just as important
as focusing national. Ken, your foundation, Sharing
the Good Life, integrates philanthropy into your business. What

(01:03:07):
inspired that model? Yeah, so we have a full
time director of philanthropy on staff and she
started, I guess seven or eight years ago now. You know, it started
organically, just like, like everyone's talked about here. We all have our own
passions and I, I think the need is great. And, and
the other thing that I believe is this is a team sport. So

(01:03:30):
we said, all right, like everyone on my team, like,
all the way down. Whoever does anything, they all
have something that they're passionate about. So how do we include
everybody? So that's, so we, we start off with my partner and I
monetizing it. Then, you know, from our property
distributions and also from our vendors. So let's say we have

(01:03:52):
a vendor that supplies paint or carpeting or appliances.
You know, we literally say, listen, you can have our business, but there's
1 or 2% that you need to put into our foundation. So a
lot of it just has grown over time. It's fully employee run.
And one of the things that we did during the pandemic
is we actually had a lot of money in there. So we've given away millions

(01:04:14):
at this point, but we actually were giving tenants
rent money. So imagine that like literally, because we're
not in the business to evict people at all. And
people go through hard times and certainly that was one of those periods. So, so,
so you, there's, there's things that you can do
when you have a collective effort. You know, essentially it's a

(01:04:36):
501(c)(3), it's a whole business has a board of directors
and you know, it's employee run and all that. And so there's initiatives,
there's one year, three year, five year, ten year plan at all. And then
from there they decide, okay, we think this is important. We think that is
important. And as you know, things come up and you
know, sometimes you just don't know and then you learn about things and then all

(01:04:59):
of a sudden you're passionate about that as well. So I
just love the whole piece. I
think it's been such a, it's one of the biggest things we've done in our
business is to have that focus.
And it's also helped help with employees like the people that
want to, that come to our company and work for us. You know,

(01:05:21):
there's, there's a certain caliber of employee that goes. And when
they're looking at where to work, you know, they can work a lot of places
and, and they're like, okay, we like this company. This is what they stand for.
And that wasn't why we started it, but that's been a really, really
nice offshoot. Yeah, that sounds like a positive side effect.

(01:05:41):
And yeah, great. I love hearing that. It's a team effort.
This has been a fantastic conversation and I hope that you
Inspired Money Maker, are walking away inspired and maybe
even rethinking about how you look at real estate. One of my
favorite takeaways from today's discussion is that successful
investors don't just buy properties, they buy systems they

(01:06:04):
think about or they approach it as business owners. They focus
on cash flow, efficiency and long term value instead
of just the number of doors that they own. Although as that
increases, that doesn't hurt. Here's my Inspired Money challenge
for the week. Take one step to move from "landlord thinking" to
"asset manager" thinking. Review a property that you own

(01:06:26):
or one that you're considering and calculate its net operating income.
Ask yourself what simple change could increase
cash flow or reduce cost. That simple shift in mindset
can transform how you invest and accelerate your
path to financial freedom. If you found this episode valuable,
please be sure to subscribe, share

(01:06:47):
it with a friend and join the conversation online. A few
more things before we part ways. If you're on LinkedIn, find
me by searching for Advisor Andy. Inspired Money
is created by yours truly and Bradley
Jon Eaglefeather. Bradley is behind the scenes during the live stream and

(01:07:07):
and edited the segments. Chad Lawrence does
our graphics, animations and editing. And last but certainly not
least, I want to give a big shout out to our amazing guests today.
Go follow their work and keep learning from the best
you can find. Ken
McElroy at kenmcelroy.com. Don't miss his podcast,

(01:07:28):
The Real Estate Strategy Show for Data Driven Investors.
Go to grocapitus.com to follow Neal Bawa,
the Mad Scientist of Multifamily and check out Multifamily University
Live. Lots of great resources there. To go deeper on
mindset and focus, head to Jay Papasan
and listen to the One Thing Podcast with Jay Papasan.

(01:07:51):
I saw some great episodes on YouTube, but you can also listen wherever you listen
to your podcast. If you're looking for practical advice on scaling your
portfolio, explore jscott.com and pick up one of
the of J's best selling real estate books, including the book
on estimating rehab costs. Listen or watch his
Drunk Real Estate podcast. That's another fun one.

(01:08:13):
And finally, connect with Paul
Moore at wellingscapital.com where you'll
find his books the Perfect Investment and Storing Up
Profits. He has the new book what's it called Boring
Investor coming out. Boring Investor is coming out. Yes.
Plus great educational content on commercial real

(01:08:33):
estate. Does anyone have anything that they want to plug
or promote? No, it's
not a promotional group. Just my Limitless Expo in
Phoenix August 14th and 15th and 16th. Just my
LimitlessExpo.com It sounds
like a great event. Well, thank you to all of our panelists for

(01:08:56):
sharing their expertise and insight today. Thank you Inspired Money
Maker for joining us and being part
of this journey. We have great shows coming up, the Power of Giving:
How Philanthropy Impacts Financial well Being and

The Psychology of Money (01:09:11):
Understanding the emotions and behaviors
that Impact Financial Decisions. We
have those upcoming Inspired Money returns next week on Wednesday. That's
October 8th at 1pm Eastern. I look forward to seeing you then.
Until next time, do something that scares you because that's where the magic
happens. Thanks everyone.

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