Dave Pere: From Military Millionaire to Real Estate Overlord

So and we're just finished talking about our medical issues and how we're falling apart as we get older . So , and we're just finished talking about our medical issues and how we're falling apart as we get older . Great way to start the podcast .

So anybody who can relate to us , which is probably most of the first responders and military guys , dave , thanks for being back on here . You're my favorite overlord .

So I was like dude , I wonder if they run these through ai and just say like make this more douchebag , make this more professional , whatever . So I took my bio and I ran it into chat gpt and I was like make this sound more douchey , make this more pretentious , make it more hype , make it louder , make it more .

I did it like 15 times , just added things and it came out with I saved it somewhere , I posted it on my Facebook but it was like you are the overlord of all things , military money , like blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . And I was like wait a minute , I own . But first off , everybody loved it . I thought it was hilarious .

But then I was like I do own my own business , like who says I have to be the founder . So I just changed my bio on linkedin to overlord . I bought I actually just took it off because it's warm in here . I have a hoodie that has the brand on the front and the back of it says overlord across the back of it now .

Last time we talked we I think you were looking at boutique hotels , right so where ? And I it was funny because somebody had sent me I think it was a waterfront property in like Florida or one of the islands , and then I saw you post about it . I was like , let me see if this guy actually buys this thing , cause I'm going to come stay at his fricking .

And then somebody from london this was probably like in april or no , mark , I don't know so early earlier this year uh , two of the three of us I wasn't able to make it , but two of them flew out there and looked at it and we went back and forth on pricing and this , that and the other , and then someone from london came in .

It was like like we were , we were around like the eight to nine million strike point , and someone from london came in . It was like 12 mil cash and so it fell out . And then , uh , they fell out of contract like four months later , and so we're back at it . We'll see what happens . That , that thing I really want to buy that , um , and what was it ?

Um , and it has room to develop like another 28 bungalows or it's zoned to like 700 units . If you just demolished it and built a resort one day not that that's the plan but it basically owns its own like section of a cove .

So there's like a , a bay , and I'd say two-thirds of it just looks , according to google maps , just looks like a swamp , and then we own the other third and then there's like on the far end of the bay , there's like two I mean probably like $5 million plus homes built on the water .

So , other than those two , we basically have the whole bay and it's got room to build and it's it's already profitable . But the guy who owns it , you know he owns like three properties in Costa Rica and he's like I'm just torn between these spaces .

What we're trying to do is we're trying to negotiate a lower strike point with leaving him in his equity so that he can still benefit on the upside of the property without having to , you know , deal with the headache of flying between two countries , because that's really the only reason he's selling it's . It's a cool property .

I mean I think it did like six or seven hundred k and in revenue from the tiki bar alone last year .

But the problem is it's the bungalows are all cute like , they all look good , but the like , when you , when you think of like a beachfront resort , right , the photo everyone thinks of is like the pool area out over the water , like where everyone's hanging out and partying and that just looks like it's straight out of the like 70s .

It's like the tiki bar is like a metal frame , like tarp tent thing , you know , like a boy scout hut with like a bar under it . And then the pool is it's not ugly , but like it's got a huge amount of concrete all the way around .

And I'm like , dude , if you could just turn the one wall into an infinity wall or and put like a hot tub there and make the tiki bar like , at least look like it was intentionally put there . Um , you know , I'm like . And then you just you get a couple hot instagram chicks to post about where they're staying .

You give them a free stay and be like yo just instagram this crap and it'll , it'll boost , because it's already like it's not .

You wouldn't be buying it negative so that all the work would be cosmetic upside , which I love , because the last one we built was kind of the opposite , where it's just we can talk about that one more , but it's like run into the ground , not terrible , but just uh , like it's , you know , just poorly managed . I guess .

I guess for for sake of anyone who understands hotel world , it was owned by a Patel and if you know the hotel world at all , there's actually a Facebook group , hotel motel Patel , because the Indian last name of Patel is is just like that's what they do . They buy hotels . I don't want to say they run them into the ground , but what they do is they .

I need to check that out because it's actually kind of interesting man like , yeah , I mean it's everywhere , like they're .

They do , you know necessary CapEx , like like water heaters and stuff , and they keep it up , but they will not update anything or modernize anything . They don't do , uh , they don't . Their systems are all like . A lot of them are still like pen and paper , like their old school system .

So this hotel you know what we'll take , this thing , for example , like he bought it 20 years ago , wrote it out until we got there , at one point , when we were under contract , we did like a you know a surprise visit and they had three employees on a Saturday morning at 130 key hotel .

So it's like you can't even , you know , turn the rooms , let alone turn the rooms plus maintenance , plus front desk , plus , like it was just very under operated . So there were a lot of reviews about it not being clean and this , that and the other , and then it didn't have a Google presence , like it existed , but there were like no , no reviews .

No , no , nothing . There's no website tied to a Google presence . It existed , but there were no reviews , no , nothing . There's no website tied to the Google page . The Google actually said it was temporarily closed . There's no social media presence at all .

The only thing on social media at all was a YouTube video of a guy reviewing it who didn't even end up staying there for the night because the bathroom was so dirty . And there's no Expedia , no bookingscom , no , no , no third party booking , no Airbnb , like just nothing . It was just you know .

Basically like if you drive by and see a vacancy sign , we're here and so we bought it . We're halfway through a three and a half million dollar renovation on it . You know we turned all the booking systems on and overwhelmed the system to where we had to do 17 refunds the first day .

So we turned them all back off till we're done with renovation , hired a bunch of new employees and that one's gonna be sexy . I'm hosting an event there in February . But that's kind of why I got into the . Well , it's really .

I got into the boutique hotel space because a really good friend of mine needed help pulling the final straws of the deal together and I was like , well , I can do your marketing I can do your social media , I can raise a million dollars to help you with it . You know , like , let me come help .

So I was bugging him and when he finally realized he was going to need a little bit of assistance , he let me in and the reason was I'd seen how well he operated these . I love Airbnbs , but you can't scale them and you have the risk of you know regulation , and you don't have that with a hotel because it's zoned for a commercial hotel .

If anything , you're the reason they're regulating airbnbs , uh , and it has all the laws of scale . But then also , if it's in a cool location I get to go visit . So like this one's two miles outside the smoky mountain national park , and I have gone there three times this year , took my son for 10 days doesn't cost me a penny to stay there .

It's super cool . So if we bought this one in st croix , I'm like , oh no , I have to go on a work trip to the beach for an entire month again terrible , it's great .

I was just looking up . I couldn't find this stat right now but I was like man , if you go into some hotels , like their standards are .

I think we've all kind of dabbled in Airbnb and just think about how much faster you went through stuff like bath towelsware , bedding , I mean I I would be shocked if some of that stuff doesn't have to get replaced , not just cleaned and repaired and whatnot , but like literally just replaced every six months or whatever the case may be , because I can't imagine

how many towels they must lose on the like . Just the cost of doing business . Factor well , especially if the chick who doesn't understand you're not supposed to sleep in factor well , especially if you get the chick who doesn't understand .

So it's there's four might be five gps , so the main operator , and then there's there's there's four of us total who signed on the debt and then I think there's two others who didn't sign on the debt and they , they kind of help put the pieces together . So I'm basically just , uh , kind of a marketing spoke and a .

You know I helped raise , I think I brought like 1.3 million into the deal through people . And then , yeah , the marketing side and the social media side . Once it's done , we're not really messing , pushing that too hard yet . We're going to wait until everything's pretty and then blast it all over .

But like I was the MC at an event there two , two or three months ago and I basically like there were like a hundred people in attendance and I got 72 of them to leave five-star reviews . So that's kind of like my shtick is like boosting all the online traffic and then I'm hosting my event there .

So I'll bring another 100 , 110 people to the event or to the hotel in you know , this month or in February , and that's like our lowest month traditionally .

So we're absolutely where those EMT looks do that , the things they've seen that don't need to be restated .

guess it would , but only on the one direction , like oh my god of all the things that would be one of those like why did dave kill himself ?

You know it's slow season , so it's this month , but it'll be fine . We actually turned the entire upstairs into like extended stays , and so it was the first november since we've owned it that we actually profited instead of like break even or coming out of pocket .

So hopefully , that knock on wood , that stays the trend , because november was up 34 percent year to year in revenue . So , um , and you know , so we're playing with some things there that hotel we we didn't know what we were doing like that was part of a package . We overpaid because of the package .

Now , granted , I'll say we , we each we threw 300k total into this thing . We've pulled 600 out of it . We still own the hotel and and we've sold the other stuff . And so , you know , as far as like losing on a deal , I'm like we've already doubled up our money like anything we make on this is , you know , just icing .

So it's more just a learning experience . But this one was a syndication and yeah , if we do some of these other ones , there's a good chance there'll be syndications . But some of these deals are . Some of them are just , they're just so easy that you get . You know , I had one guy bring six or 700 K into this last deal .

So you get three or four guys like that and you can just do it as a partnership , depending on how much the raise is .

Then , like , depending on the volumes , right , like Mike's the general partner because he's running the show , if Tyler raises enough , he might be able to be a general partner , and then we'd both be kind of passive investors . Limited partners basically just means non-voting shares and you know there's different ways to structure it .

But the bottom line is just pulling a bunch of people together to raise money for a deal and you generally do like a 70-30 split off of return .

So if our payout is supposed to be 100K at 7% interest , we'd get 7% and then anything over that would be like a 70% split to us and a 30% to the people running it , and so the people running the deal essentially make no money for years and then eventually they get a massive payout and the people who invested , if it's a good deal , just get , you know ,

monthly or quarterly checks in perpetuity and it should come out to somewhere between , you know , on the low end , 16 , on the high end , 22% annualized return . Anything you see projected over that is often a kind of a red flag for me that they're they're way too bullish on the market , which answers your other question . You asked about a fund .

I have been going back and forth for probably a year now because I have an army of people that I could probably raise into a fund , especially if I opened it to lower investments for , like younger service members .

You know , even if it was like five grand or 10 grand a pop , I could probably generate a significant amount of cash to invest with and be confident that I'd earn a good return .

Problem is that right now in the market where there's a lot of syndicators struggling because they , you know , bought things on interest only and bridge debts and whatever , not banking for rates to do what they did , I feel like I'd be , you know , standing outside of a house fire trying to sell matches to firefighters .

It's like come on , guys , these are great , trust me . No , don't worry about the , don't worry about that . Like this fund's better . So I'm like , oh , we're going to wait and see what the market does . For now I'll stick to like deal specific . So we're we're looking at that one in St Croix .

Uh , I also have a call today with a buddy that they're doing ground up construction on like flex space , so like industrial warehouses where you can just throw dividers in and rent out different spaces , and they've got some really solid projected returns , primarily because one of my really good friends has been in construction for like 15 years and he's developing it

ground up , so their costs going into this are very , very , very low and the's developing it ground up so their their costs going into this are very , very , very low and the upside is still pretty , pretty stable and so because they're able to build at a fraction of the cost , most people are the returns , look , I would say probably in that range where you

normally I'd say it's a red flag . But I've known these guys for five , six years . I mean one of them . One of them is a private pilot by charter for billionaires and the other one like builds houses in bail . So they're both there . I trust there . I've seen there before and afters and I've seen them both .

I saw one of the guys lose a half a million dollars in a private loan to somebody he trusted . So I , you know , I feel very confident in when they say , oh yeah , this is legit . I'm like , okay , well , you know you make $60,000 a month flying around a guy worth $40 billion , so you know a thing or two and I feel okay with whatever .

We'll just say that like so you have like all these light industrial parks basically where you'll see that flex space . You know , this one's an auctioneering service , this one's a window tinting guy and these two are like a less than load delivery company and you just see that stuff a good bit around here .

And it's to me kind of nice where it's like the I don't want to say passive or hands-offish , but it's less management intensive than a hotel .

Obviously Now , I've never owned a hotel , but I've done Airbnb but you go from having to be like concierge , top level , this , that and the other thing to where it's more like the storage business , where I don't have to worry about a lot of the , I don't have to worry about the linens , I don't have to worry about the plumbing , I don't have to worry about

that stuff , and the flex space is kind of kind of the best of those two worlds , I think , where you get the higher income per square foot but less BS of a rental .

But so there's a reason that the majority of , like , really successful residential agents are female and the majority of really successful commercial agents are male , and it's because traditionally residential real estate is the emotional side of the space and where it's really pretty and all the looks and feels matter , and commercial real estate is a very male dominated

space because it is not emotional at all . It is . Here's the numbers . Does it freaking work ? What's the zoning ? Great , nobody cares if their warehouse looks sexy . That being said , I mean there are some really sexy warehouses . But if you kind of take that further into , like who dominates the service industry ?

Like it's not the high school girl who's like I'm going to be , I'm going to build a landscaping company while I'm a junior in high school , like it's . Or a plumber , like they are not hunting those jobs .

So you are servicing an industry in the commercial space where most of your clientele are generally blue collar , hardworking dudes who don't give a crap as long as they have a place to park their truck . At the end of the day , the drama , the headaches , the whatever compared to hospitality where , god forbid , you bought one ply toilet paper me .

This guy right here will be standing outside your Airbnb in Hawaii holding it saying this is my sign that you should not have been an Airbnb host . Like in hospitality . You spend money on things like this , like where's my coffee maker ? Why don't I have ? You know , cause when you stay at a hotel or you stay at a Airbnb like , you expect a few things .

You expect a nice gentle Charmin , you expect clean towels , you expect a coffee machine that'll make you a cup of Joe in the morning , probably some wifi . You know , if your TV doesn't work , you're going to gripe at the front desk , like all these things . Whereas a fricking empty warehouse , like do I have outlets and are my utilities on ?

If they're not , I probably didn't pay the bill , cause that's my job , not theirs . So like , yeah , it's one of those things where it's like the returns there , but the headache isn't so it's because the opposite like the hotel space . It's funny .

You might buy a million dollar apartment complex with 100K NOI in a year , but you won't even blink to touch a hotel at that You're looking at . They want typical , like strike price for hotels is three X revenue .

So , like for a million dollar hotel , you'd want it to be at like three , 40 in revenue , whereas with an apartment you could be at , you know , a third of that and you'd be totally fine , cause you've got a manager and maybe a maintenance guy , whereas I've got like eight employees . So yeah , it's a whole different game and the returns skew for it .

Right , but like it's the same argument to be made as Nick the new guy investor buys a D-class apartment complex where he needs to carry a firearm every time he goes to the property , but it makes incredible money . And the seasoned does , the seasoned old veteran guy pays cash for a , a class beautiful property that he rents to a doctor .

His margins are almost nothing and he sleeps like a baby . So it's , you know which do you want ? Where are you ? The ?

On paper You're like why would you buy that as a rental ? Long story . But knock on wood like I don't . They don't even think about it . No , so um , yeah , I would say the way you're talking like it just makes me think the hotel business or play is almost less real estate and more of a business .

So if you go in there as the owner and you videotape and say , okay , this is how it looks and this is how I want it back , and they screw it up , then it comes out of their security deposit or whatever .

So they're getting paid back , obviously with interest over a certain time period , cause a lot of those leases are not a one-year lease , they're five-year , seven-year , 10-year lease type things . Yeah , I really like that space . Yeah , yeah , they all , almost all , have a 2% to 3% bump every year , just right in the lease documents .

whether or not the city demolishes his storage facility before we sign the contract .

stepped in and said you basically have to remove all of this dirt . There was a farm before you got to remove all this dirt and give us , uh , your plan for um making it safe again .

You can do backfill if you want to , but you're I mean that's hundreds of acres of dirt is what they want to remove and then find out where they can put it legally and then refill the dirt and then do the the build actually like maybe I'm building in front of millions .

No wonder people don't want to build shit this is where mike starts his political career yeah , yeah , no , you're right , but am I wrong ?

But they found a house down the road when they went to remodel or rebuild or whatever had issues and they checked the next and they it's almost like systematic , like they're going to take the whole block out and just build something new on it , but it's , you know exactly .

It makes you just stare into a mirror and go huh , because you're like it's been here 60 years . The one of the spaces that is currently filled like infilled with storage units as an inside part , as opposed to all the outside storage units , was a train depot .

Like we know for a fact , like we're not idiots in when route 66 and and this freaking train station came through in the in the early 1900s , they were 100 dipping oil all over the damn place . Nobody like cared when we built it .

But now all of a sudden , like right as we're about to sign the contract , the epa is like hey , we need to drill some holes in your , in your parking lot and make sure the dirt underneath is good . What if it's not ? Well , we might need you to take the whole thing down .

So , mike , up by you , fort Detrick , by your first dude , there's a cancer cluster .

And he's like no , no , no , no , no , no evidence , there's been no evidence . And they're like well , why did he ? He's like how do you , what do you mean ? Shooter , my client's been charged of nothing . He's like the whole . He's right , what's the whole ? Innocent until proven . So he's just like . They're like well , what about X , y , z ?

And he's like I don't know what you're talking about . He's not been to court .

The fact that I was just told this earlier was that he still had his 3D printed gun on him , he still had the manifesto on him and he had something else . This sounds like a fictional book I would read back when I was like in high school .

And like he's like I've got another video and so , like , supposedly tomorrow there's an actual , like full length video of this guy dropping on the internet that is set and set to go and I don't know many movies , man , he's trying to set up a whole script .

It's so interesting though I'm like , oh my gosh , like I hope Netflix is taking you know some , some notes on how to make a .

If you , even just watching the little clip , you're like this is not a guy who doesn't know something about firearms , like this is not your typical like angry this was calm , cool , collected , well thought out , had fired a gun many a time makes you wonder if you'd ever shot anyone before , because shooting somebody's a lot different than shooting a target .

And he just like folk , I mean it's it's interesting to watch . And then you see the clips of the kid like losing his mind with cops and you're like just the personality even , like it's like yeah , it doesn't necessarily add up , because he was anyway whole side .

and he's now he's a video editor for a friend of mine and shoots all his footage . But I was asking him about Baltimore one day and he's like , dude , I'm pretty sure like he's like I was the guy who showed up on crime scenes and had to like get testimonies from people who just had their like you know brother shot .

And he's like the guy like stepped off script , made a really odd phone call that made it sound like he ordered a hit . And then like lo and behold , I was in that neighborhood that night with a murder , like reporting the murder . And he's like I'm pretty sure I saw like oh man , again goes back to deny , deflect and reaccused .

And then I looked more into it and found out that he went to a $40,000 a year school as a you know high school and blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . I was like all this because his grandfather was a real estate investor . Funny how things work out .

I have this online community helping service members and vets , and so my goal there is to help 10,000 vets achieve financial freedom . You know , we've got a mastermind in there that we we run and I love it . It's fulfilling , but I've got a I won't , I won't , we'll keep it . Kind of . I've been making people sign NDAs .

So , since this is a podcast , we'll kind of we'll just say I have a business that I'm trying to branch into in 2025 . And if I do a good enough job , you'll all know about it by the end of 25 .

But my hope is to use that to really impact a lot of events and kind of change the I want to say change the banking culture , because it's not going to be a bank but like that kind of side of things where it's very commission driven and people seem to like to target vets for you know , screaming deals , quote , unquote .

So we're going to try to build something out that's fee-based and subscription model rather than commission-based , to compete with some of the big dogs . Kind of leave it vague there for now , but that's a good indicator .

I mean same thing first responders and military guys like everybody uses us to kind of prop up their ideologies like , oh , I support so and so I support so , and so you know it takes just as much effort to click the veteran owned box on Google and there's just as much verification as to click the LGBTQ owned .

I'm like , hey , if anyone asks , you're the queer , and then probably pronouns on their uh signature box yeah , yeah , I mean they probably are , but I'm like , I'm like , shoot , if this impacts google search . Like I'm gonna check , yes , on all the boxes I can . I can't really check black , but you know most of the other ones are unverifiable .

And the little spring things that are in the light filaments for the light bulbs , I install those for a living . So , like these , the people that we were dealing with , the girls they're like oh my God , it's such a cool job , How'd you get into that ? And blah , blah , blah . And one girl was like you do have big lips , I can see your big style .

I was like you racist bitch , but like at the end of that . So this girl was like your name is not Jamal , she's like I know you . I was like no , my name is Jamal , I've been installed right for him as well . She's like no , no , no , I know you . She's like I know your cousins . She's like I've met you before . So small world .

She , um , my cousin played he Ireland and she was dating one of the guys on the team . So she had seen me at my cousin's games . So I was like just don't blow my cover . Yeah , that's funny . You can identify , however you want to these days .

Basically , what I'm doing is whatever I can get into without a ton of cash out of pocket and or without having to be the operator I'm in for . So , like the 13 unit portfolio , I own 35% . I brought the money and signed on the debt and formed the LLC my buddy's operating everything , doing all the renovations and whatever and he found the deal .

And then the duplex I got in zero down creative financed . Basically I got the seller to credit me the down payment for closing , so I just you know and hand it off to a property manager and the hotel I'm . I raised probably about a third of the cash for it and do all the social media stuff or whatever , but I'm not operating .

So I'm just trying to keep to where , like , my investments are as hands-off as possible and I'd rather be the guy like signing on the debt as opposed to putting in all my cash because I'm trying to reinvest my money into my actual business , because that turns out more cash , and then I can use that to go buy things I do plan .

My goal this year , hopefully , is to pull enough cash aside , now that I'm done paying off the divorce , to actually go and throw . I'd like to just pay off a couple of my houses . So it's just straight , you know , pure nothing to worry about . No interest rate cash , just as like a nice little hedge .

It's either all three or one of the three or two of the three , and I was like depreciation she broke it down to me . So , residential real estate you can write off depreciation of the house not the land but the house for 27 and a half years , whereas commercial , which you guys have been doing , you can write off over the course of 39 years .

You guys have been doing you can write off over the course of 39 years . Um , and then , obviously , with the step up and the bonus , depreciation that has changed a little bit is slowly going away , with trump coming back in office who knows it actually is if it's going to be re-upped or not um it's just the ways you can avoid paying taxes .

That's what trump said . Like , I do the same thing that your friends do . This is what he's talking about . Stuff , stuff like this , oh yeah .

is just different words that say the same damn thing . To a T all the way through . There's probably like eight of the 15 paragraphs are like damn near identical , all the bullet points . And then at the very bottom , mine is like you know , you served your country , now it's time to enjoy your freedom , or something like that .

And his even has that like asterisk bullet point at the bottom . And I'm like all right , dude , whatever . Like I talked to my my attorney and he said it's it's not a copyright infringement because the ideas are not original , like he didn't steal any original ideas , he just plagiarized .

And I'm like , well , that's probably how this guy got through college because he's not , maybe through naval school , and then yeah , exactly like . Must have been a great officer . Then I pulled up his picture on linkedin and I laughed . It was like it looks like it picture . Picture fits the action .

The funny thing , though , is he probably doesn't even know like he probably hired some book like oh look , we'll get you published . Well , you know , you'll have author credibility , because I bought it's like a flimsy , it's a he didn't take his viagra .

You know , the book is just as a little booklet and I'm like , yeah , whatever , mine's like three times the length and actually has information in it , so I'm not really like too bothered by it .

I may have acknowledged to a couple of really close friends the book title so that they could , you know , decide for themselves whether it was worth purchasing , and then being a verified reviewer when they trashed it . So far I don't think anyone has , but it's on them , I don't care .

I almost trashed it online and now I am a verified purchaser , so I just might .

I might just put my own photos of my own book up and be like I'm not saying I copied this , but mine was published first , so at least I'm going to let people see my book in the reviews , and it's bigger and size matters , even when it comes to books , I have a hard copy . He does not .

And then once I saw it , I look like I said I broke even and shut it down . But the whole thing and then the aftermath afterwards it was just it was like okay , I shouldn't say that I would not do something like that with a third party .

If I'm going to do something , that would go down more like a more traditional route , like actually have a store , create a product , do something like that , but the whole third party thing , it was like if it sounds too good to be true , it's probably something wrong with it .

So that would be the one thing I would not invest in again again , mike , how about you ?

Dave mentioned about syndications .

I am in one syndication we're all familiar with that and I think we're all involved but I don't know how many of those I would do moving forward , not necessarily because I have any issues with the one I'm in whatsoever , but there's a lot of syndicators that we alluded to earlier that are kind of right now really screwed and I don't necessarily want to get

lumped up into that .

I mean , maybe not on those platforms , but they don't buy the material for the job , if you will , until they get the order .

But can you do more with that money ? Because obviously we're all active investors and our active investments usually make a better return than , say , eight or 10% . So like , is it worth it to put money into a deal like that . On one hand it's kind of like okay , it's money you don't have to think about , I can project my income coming out of it .

I know I'm getting paid back on the backend , but can I make more money somewhere else ? And I agree with you in that respect . I'd also think that it's for me . It opened doors and I can have conversations that I definitely couldn't before .

Like if I need to go to somebody who's a syndicator , I can say , hey , I need you to work with me on this , to show me how who do I ? need to talk to and how do you set this up and structure it , and blah , blah , blah .

Some people don't have access to people like Dave or Tyler or Mike who can walk them through a lot of these things without having to pay for , say , a course or something like that or being part of a group . So I think it does open doors for some people and for people who are too busy in their day-to-day in W2 , I think it creates an atmosphere , or not .

An atmosphere creates an opportunity for them to make a return on their investment money that would always sit there stagnant , because 8% and 10% is still better than your high yield savings , which right now I think are like four to 5% max .

There might be a higher , lower , but , like it's a , you know , double your returns with just having somebody else do the work . Dave , what do you , I mean , what do you think about that and what do you think about things that you never invest in again ?

As a result , I was supposed to get a store out of like my marketing results plus a share of you know get . As a result , I was supposed to get a store out of like my marketing results , plus a share of you know whatever revenue . I drove over their normal whatever . And uh , yeah , that guy owes me 70 grand and no , no store . So same same thing .

Um , I ended up , you know , we tried to sue to collect and basically he just dissolved and ran and it's pretty funny . Um , that was unfortunate , but I , you know , we never really got any answers out of that . I think there were probably a couple of people who bought into stores that got hosed in that regard .

So , man , you know , I think the answer for me is basically like anything where I have to be the point of action .

So you know , I don't want to be the guy managing GCs on renovations and flips and I don't want to be like I am not detail oriented enough to succeed at a high level as an operator , and so I'd rather stay on the like vision side than on the day .

And , that being said , like I'm , I fundamentally I'm good at all of it , until it comes to the part where you have to like hold someone accountable to it . Like I am a people pleaser to the core , like I just do not do a good job of being like no mother , like this is not what you said , this is what you said , this is what you're gonna do .

Like all of that part's where it like falls apart . Um , so I'd much rather like have an ax man and stay as the guy who is like the face .

You know we're buying a zero down with the credit and all this other stuff and or sorry , self-storage facility . And then I called my buddy , the same guy who operates that 13 unit , and I was like yo , I'll give you 50% if you run the day-to-day on this .

Like , I'm totally okay with passing off a large chunk of equity for it to be as close to passive as humanly possible for me and to know it's taken care of by someone who actually is good at the operations , because it'll be run better than I would anyway .

And then I can focus my energy on places where I generate revenue , which for me is , you know , the , the online , like the face , the networking , the coaching , the , the helping other people build a business and raise money is where I generate more of my revenue and it's more fulfilling for me . Like , I'd rather , you know , I can help if I can .

I can make 10 grand off a tenant and they're never going to thank me for being a landlord . Or I could like make 10 grand off helping Aaron make 10 grand and that's way more fulfilling for me , way more fulfilling for Aaron , way more impactful . It's just more fun . So I'd rather do that .

I don't think they have a place as a large , you know pin in your portfolio , and so I just . For me , it's more like , yeah , how do I invest in whatever asset ?

I would never be able to stomach the roller coaster .

So , like that dogecoin phenom where everyone went crazy . Um , I had bought dogecoin about six months before anyone even knew what it was . I put 200 bucks in because I saw it and I was like that's funny . And then Elon Musk tweeted about it and it skyrocketed and over the next month it just went bananas and every time it doubled I'd pull half out .

I turned that 200 bucks into like 15 grand . Well , the difference between what I did and what everyone else did is that 15 grand bought a duplex and I now rolled that into a hotel and rolled that into whatever . So that 15 grand has probably made me 75 , $80,000 in cash flowing real estate .

That pays me every month , you know , off that 200 bucks , whereas most of these people that I knew they were like it's going to keep going and now they're back to square one , so it's like $47 . Yeah , as like a asymmetric small piece of your hedge . It makes sense .

And people bought , like sold everything to get into the tulip game , and then it is the historically it is the largest , uh like boom and bust of any asset class in history . I can't remember the percentages , but it's like just freaking to the moon and then it like just drops , and so people literally like were selling houses for tulips .

And then people wait , anyone can like they're just tulips and they just went to dirt , you know . And so I have a graph of that , because basically , what it is by the time everybody in the world knows .

Just like AMC , like you're here , you might have a little bit of runway , but like all the money's made , all of that screaming from the rooftop is the people who got lucky . The problem is those assholes don't get out from the roof . Rooftop is the people who got lucky . The problem is those assholes don't get out .

And then , like , it gets here and everyone a few lucky people sell and everyone else gets dragged through the mud and sometimes it's so bad that you see , with like some of these currency exchanges or whatever , where it comes down so fast , even if you're smart enough to sell , you can't get your cash out and it doesn't matter , and that's what's really screwed .

People like robin hood got sued for that during the amc thing , or like they wouldn't let people buy and then they wouldn't let people exit , and people who knew that it was time to get out couldn't , and so like , yeah , I keep , I'd say , between zero and like five percent of my net worth . Playing around in crypto is all pure speculation , gamble bets .

It's all very minimal and like like anytime I I double , I pull half out . So like my house's money is playing with the house's money of my last house I think I'm the original thousand bucks I put in has probably been turned to like 50 grand and I still have like four or $5,000 in that account .

But every time it you know , if it goes from like four grand to eight , I'll pull four out .

I was like , well , okay , you bring $100 to the casino to bet money , right ? You made $400 . Now you have $500 in your pocket . You pull out hundred dollars , that's your money , and now you're just playing with the house money , the four hundred dollars profit that you made . He was like oh , nobody ever explained that to me . It's , it's .

I just thought it was common knowledge . Yeah , yeah , it's . It's a good way to do it . So I got something to say . I'm waiting for it no , I'm just listening .

So my captain every time he would see me after I left that station , hey , let's go vertical . So , but no , I mean , it makes sense , right . And I think too what David said 5% right , like there's a lot of us that want to do stuff like that .

Very small percentage , have fun with it , and if it works out , awesome , if not , it's not going to change anything . One of my best friends is probably the most conservative people you'll ever meet . He is not in the fire service or anything , but he loves penny stocks . His day job is a .

He's the chief underwriting officer for a large commercial bank , but again , he's not putting a hundred grand in there . He probably has like a couple of grand . He has fun with it . He bets . If it goes up , it goes up . If it goes down , it goes down .

He's also the one that used to do 10 team parlays with me , but it's like you're not banking on that right . We would never take the money that we invest in real estate , like a couple hundred grand , and try to buy Doge coins . I mean , it's just , it's not smart , but I think I think there's always room for it .

And I have a buddy who has millions in crypto and I would never , never would want to do that because I don't understand it . But he does and he's very big on it and he's never taken that money out .

But we do have a couple masterclasses where we brought in experts to talk about stuff . But the education is not what makes the money in our group , it's the community .

It's probably that we only let service members and vets in , and so it is the tightest knit military community you can find and it's just a place where you can come and be yourself and learn about money .

And really I tell everyone I'm like the community is like all the information is great , but the way the community makes you all the money is by telling you no , no , no , no , no . Don't do that one thing , and that'll save you more money than any course will ever make you .