From Professional Poker Player To Millions In Mobile Home Parks w/ Pasha Esfandiary

Paha, what's going on

buddy? Long time coming. Coming. Yeah, it's been a long time coming. I'm excited to be here,

man. I'm excited to have you, man. I had to throw all the chips on the table to be able to get you, so that is a poker pun. That's where we're starting, buddy. That's where we're starting. So I

told you Yeah that's good. That's a good place to start. go, Let's go. I told you, man. Let's go.

Pashas been making the rounds. He's one of my buddies here in Go Abundance, and I've gotten to, I think we've met in passing a couple of times, but we haven't been able to get. Deep into the weeds. And I've seen you making the podcast rounds and I've seen your podcast titles pop up. And then I'm a copywriter so I'm always like, Ooh, that one's punchy. That one's punchy. And it's like professional poker player to syndication extraordinaire. And I was like, man, what a freaking journey. So let's go back. I didn't listen to any of them cause I like to be curious in these interviews. So let's start back at your journey going into poker. Walk me through that. What was that about?

Yeah great question. Also wanted to say I've always heard only the greatest things about you, so I'm excited to be on this podcast. They're all lying. I know. That's why I figured out you all, you paid them all. . But so back to the poker thing, I was recently just a college dropout. I knew school was not for me. It's not what I wanted to do. I just knew the way my brain function. that this is not what I wanted to do. I don't want to have like mental anguish for another four years. And that's really what school felt like for me. Even though I could pick up concepts pretty quickly, I just hated the schoolwork and the tedious amount of reading this book and, having to regurgitate information. It's not the way I operate. I dropped out fairly quickly and my brother very shortly after who's five years older than me, won a poker tournament about. Almost a year and a half or a year after I dropped outta college. . And I just said shit, if my brother can do it, he just won 1.4 million. He ain't that much smarter than me, so let me just go take this and start playing poker. And the cool thing about it was like I got really good upfront training for my brother, really big high concepts and what no one was doing back in the day. So when I was young, he just taught me to be super. And most people are very tight and very conservative with their money, and that's what I did. I just started coming out the gates swinging and being aggressive, and I just started winning money in poker very early on, which probably skewed my like life for a while, but whatever. It was fun. So

I actually wanna dissect that a little bit. So first off, there's this quote, I forget who to attribute it to, but it talks about like your first entrepreneurial tests. And they say the first two entrepreneurial tests you go through is school and then your W two career, like your corporate career. , the first test is, do you do well in school? Are you just accepting of everything that gets thrown at you and you're like, okay, I'll happily. do the work that I'm assigned. And then the second one is, do you fit that cog in the corporate machine? And so I noticed a recurring theme, right? We're all like, wait, hold on a second. Why am I learning this? Why are we doing it like this? Come on. And then the second thing I wanna dissect there is you've got like the people that never win a break. And so they're used to being like at the bottom and they can't ever catch a break. And you've got the people that have an early. . So it could be a blessing and a curse, but then they're like, Hey, I'm gonna be aggressive and shoot for the stars. Moving forward sometimes to their detriment. Which do you think is more beneficial in the long run? Cause I think it gave you an edge. Yeah.

I think it's a very easy pick. What's beneficial in the long run? I want to, I actually wanna jump into that a little bit more. It's not about having success early on and then failing. I think it's just having the core belief. One thing that I like to talk about, I really try to impress onto any entrepreneur that I see all the successful people around me really emulate is that we're long-term thinkers. So it's never about the short-term failures or successes. It's all about who are you gonna be 20 years from now, how are you? Doing what you're doing now to reap the rewards later on. The way I look at my life, Brian, is that I am absolutely a hundred percent gonna die one day. And I know that we know that conceptually, and that sounds stupid and ridiculous to say it, but it's true. But I also do know that I'm gonna get old one day. And I also do know that I'm gonna want a family one day. And I do know that I want ultimate success one day. So I gotta start doing everything now and delay my gratification and keep betting on myself for the success later on because that time will come and you'll thank yourself. When you're earlier now, I think most entrepreneurs have that, but when you have a really accelerated. To look at your life like that, you can start making some really ultimate great decisions. And that's another thing that poker has taught me is that like you have to make short-term decisions that are based on long-term results, even though short-term, your variance rates in poker and decision making change so much, it's a massive swing to what you could do, what's right, what's wrong. Four short term results. Cause cards. It's a lucky game in the beginning, but long term it. A skill game. So it really just taught me to think long term. So even though I had a, like a lot of success playing poker early on, it was quite difficult for me to step back and then get into real estate because I knew I was gonna take a massive pay cut and I knew I was gonna have to work on the bottom and I knew I was gonna have to build everything again. But I did that because it's like a slingshot I like was able, I was okay with taking two steps backwards to take 10 steps forward. In 10 years from. . Brian: Okay. So you said, so a couple things I wanna pull out of there. So you said, it starts with luck, like the game is lucky in the beginning, but you have to stay in the game and play the long game to actually really reap the rewards. Talk a little bit about how that applies to poker tactically, and then how we can macro that out into entrepreneurship at large. Sure. Okay. Really good question. In, when you're playing poker, you're gonna have short-term results. Like even if I make a bet that's 80% of my favorite, right? The cards are, I'm favorite, so I'm gonna put all my chips in 80% and even though I lose, it doesn't matter. I still did the right decision, even if you're 51% favorite, depending on the game and other variants, but like just. , for black and white circumstances, you're still supposed to put your money in against a 49 percenter, right? Sure. Even though you're probably gonna lose a bunch of times, you have to be able to handle the variance. So that's what I mean in poker. Like short-term results do not dictate long-term results, because no matter what, we know if we flip a coin over a thousand times and you're getting a 51% edge over a 49% edge, you're gonna win in the long term. So you have to keep doing the right decision over and over again. That's what gets embedded in poker. is that we're continuously trying to siphon in incomplete information to make good decisions. That's how we're trained. That's all you're doing is making good decisions all the time and sometimes high level decisions all the time. You're actually, you're just trained to this being over you. Now how does that really work in our like, real life and in let's say real estate investing? The way I look at it, this is a very simple process. . I look at everything long term. So let's say a lot of people ask me, why why don't you do off market campaigns and cold calling to sellers? Yet? I haven't done that. I still go through the traditional approach. I'm only going outreaching to brokers. I'm still building relations cause that's who I am. But I'm gonna get to a key point. But what it is that I would rather go find these deals that are 30% i r returns that I can keep, that are gonna keep cash flowing forever. And I'd rather go buy 10 of them to TR than rather to go buy one or two. 40%, 50% irs. The reason being is because when I was very early on in my real estate career, I now realize I wish I kept all of those properties for rental income. And so I'm just trying to get my hands on as many assets as I can now.

To extrapolate the main point that I took from all of that it's just a game of controlling the odds in your favor, right? Just making sure the pendulum ever so slightly swings more so in your favor through each calculated move. , just like the casino, at the roulette table, they're gonna put the zero in the double zero to make sure that they have that 51% or 52% edge over you. in the macro. Just finding that edge and finding that 2% variance that you say or margin , that's gonna add up to a fortune of billions of dollars for the casino. That's why I like entrepreneurship of outside of corporate America, cuz corporate America, there's a couple of different levers that you can pull that are ola. To stack the odds in your favor and increase your odds of that promotion to increase your odds of that salary, increase that raise entrepreneurship. When we're talking about, from a betting perspective, yes, there's way more downside because you could go to zero or worse debt, but also you have way more control over levers to pull, to increase your odds of success in investing in business and everything. Throughout your journey, you've been through a couple of different operations that we'll get into in a second. What are some of the. Telltale like macro levers that you've seen in your entrepreneurship journey that you can pull to make sure that you're gonna be one of the people with the edge over the majority that fail this game.

Yeah. So this is a great question as well. My outlook is and it is came from poker as well, is I go where there's less competition. My brother's a very famous poker player. He's one of the winningest poker players in the. And so he always got recognized and he always wanted these like big names and play against big names. I never gave a shit about that. I just cared about cash games. I cared about whether there's less competition. I cared about where I have an advantage cuz I am not the best poker player. I am not that good of a poker player. But I was able to get into games. I would go to the casinos and only play the good games and I would just seek out these like different games that where the players were just worse than me. It's like a very simple model. Yeah. And and that's how I've always looked at my career and my life. Where can I go where there's less competition? When I first started flipping homes, it I quickly found myself very attracted to buying the properties that were like a quarter burnt down. That they had hoarders living in there, that the ones that the people didn't want to touch. Cause I really, what I figured out early on in my real estate career is, The more problems that you solve, the more headaches you have problem solving, the more you get rewarded. That's what happened with my development career as well too. I didn't really know much about development, but I knew there was less competition. There's higher reward there. I did that as well. And then that's what also led me into mobile home parks and and like I'm operating a niche within a niche at this point, and I'll always do that. That's my investment thesis. I have numbers I want to hit and I will always go where there's less competition.

Yeah. And I love that because there's the book blue Ocean Strategy that some people really like, and I get the premise of it where it's just go and dominate a brand new market. So especially in like the startup investing world, people will go and be like, oh, I want to, do the electric vehicle like Elon, or . I wanna disrupt book selling like Amazon and do all this stuff. Yeah. But how you're doing it, like the premise is the blue ocean strategy, but really I see you just going you're not really playing a game of how can I create a brand new market? You're playing a game of what part of the market has the weakest players. What table here has the weakest players, has a collective pool that I can go down and I can kick their ass.

That's exactly what it's, that's spot on because. That's the exact way that I ever did really anything. And in poker as well. . do you have

Any broad scale advice to give to people that are early in the journey about how to identify these tables to sit at in these markets that are ripe for this? That's obviously the multi-billion dollar question of entrepreneurship, right? But do you have any kind of Yeah. Best practices you could recommend?

Yeah. It's super simple when someone brings. an investment to you or an investment thesis or something in conversation, and that person seems like they know what they're doing and they don't seem shady. Go and research it. Go research that space, right? Like I only really understood mobile home parks because I heard it enough and I said, okay, I really gotta understand what this mobile home park game is. I know people are making money and a lot of people that I trust are in it. Let me just explore this. and including. What I really liked about it is that there's a big stigma around mobile home parks. If there's usually an emotional stigma or an emotional blockade to something, there's maybe some potential there to go and explore, and you can, and that's what the entrepreneurship is all about, is figuring that out and solving those headaches and then getting rewarded for it. So if anyone brings anything to you that you don't know about, but it seems interesting, go research. It and see. Go try to find some numbers that you like in it and go seek out people, especially in Go Abundance, man. There's so many people that are willing to help to advise you and just jump on a 15 minute call and ask a bunch of questions and see if it's up your alley to keep researching it.

To go back to answering, how can you stack the odds in your favor, right? I think that the ultimate answer to that is, Is a go Abundance is an eo is a Y P O is joining these organizations of people that are in the hunt with you. Oh, yeah. And that are further than you. So that you're like, okay, it's a freaking cheat code because then it's like you can learn from your failures and you're a winner, but to be a freaking champion, you learn from other people's failures. Yeah. And it's funny all of this, you know what my table is that I like to sit at, where I found out that there's a bunch of players that don't know what they're doing. Podcasting

pod. I knew it's that's what I figured. But I actually, I have to agree with you. All the stats podcasting about it were like, 90% don't even get past the first episode or something. Yeah. So

You got a couple shows that are raining supreme, that are raking in the dough, that are raking in the audience, and all these other ones are just side projects for people. It's just It's a back of the mind thing. They just throw up an episode, they throw it to some VA in the Philippines to edit. It comes back, they throw it out, and then they don't ever look at it again. And I was just like I can dominate at that table. So that's what I'm doing here. So I love that you said that because it's all very applicable. So what kind of revenue were you generating? What kind of income are you generating from this poker careers that people have an idea before we jump into the investing journey?

Yeah. So during my poker days I typically don't like to share this, so I did really well. Let's just put it that way. , I did really good.

fair. Okay. So Pasha was bawling All good. We can just extrapolate, we can just extrapolate that his brother was winning $1.4 million pot. So we can just, we can be like, okay, cool. This guy was pretty good at this thing. So let's go through the investing career, because you've dipped your pen in a couple of different inks, right?

Yeah. In, in, in terms of the real estate, I I've transitioned in real estate for sure. I've obviously been at LP and a bunch of other investments, but but in real estate I flipped homes. Then I started developing land up construction in la on Hillside. Then I went to multi-family, and then now I'm just solely focused on mobile home. . Brian: Okay, perfect. So what was the pivot point where you were raking in the dough as a poker player and you were like, Hey, assets, I should play this game? Yeah. I was, I remember I was 26 right around that age. I'm in the Aria poker room playing a five 10 game and I just look around and I, first of all, I want you to know I hate the life. I hate staying up late. I want to be asleep by no later than 10 30. I like waking up early. I like my morning routine. So there was a few things. I had to trick myself. Brian into hating everybody at the poker table for me to be a good poker player, like I, I truly, I took that personal Yeah, no, I took that.

It's like the Michael Jordan meme where he was in the bulls. Documentary. He's just fabricating all of these slights that people would do against him. He's I took that

personal man . I really had to, man, I don't care what it was. This person smiled at me wrong. I don't like the way this tone of his, I would play my best poker when I. The thing is when you get to know me is like I love people man. Like I instantly like connect with most people and I'm a very social, like I like to talk. I don't like awkward silences. I like to just have fun. And at the poker table you can't like, and so I was like, all right, first of all, I'm miserable. Second of all, I want to have a family one day and I don't want to have this

00 AM playing in the tire the next day, right? I want my kids to be able to jump on me and all of. and I just said, I just don't want my life progressing this way. And so I just made a really hard decision during a hard time in my life and I said, I've gotta look at my life in a long-term scale, just like I did in poker. And I said, what's gonna get me better results 10 years from now? And it was equivocally like building a real estate empire. And so that's when I quit poker. I went and interned for a buddy of mine who did multi. And residential flips in la I went and entered my time for three months. I went into the office. It was like my only corporate job, which I couldn't stand. I hated dressing up and all the, all that crap. But he gave me an education that I took with me to start flipping my first home. Sight unseen auctions. I had all the tools and I went back to Vegas and started my business from there. And then luckily at that time as well, I'd play a little bit of poker. Funny. , my wife actually made me get a job when we got back together. She wanted to know I was serious about life and she didn't think poker was serious about life, even though I was doing pretty damn good at poker. . And so I got a job at Aria Valet for eight months because of it, . And and I started building my real estate empire as I was doing that job playing poker. And I was just hustling to make money and I just built and built up my flips.

So two questions. One is, how did you identify that mentor to go intern for and make sure that was the right fit and that was something that you wanted to do? And then the second question follow up is walk me through the process of swallowing your pride and battling ego there from going to be a high rolling poker star to where you're like, okay, I'm gonna go valet for eight months and be this guy's desk jockey for three months to learn and figure out this brand new life. Because that's a, yeah, that's a huge pivot.

First I wouldn't say that I was high rolling, but I was doing. . That's something

a high roller would say, man. Okay. Keep going. Yeah. . . Pasha: We're comfortable. , yeah. All right. And then , my, I just I had a my brother had a really good friend and we were friends. We had lunch a few times and I had dinner with his family. And he was just a guy that a i, I want to emulate in life just cuz of how loving and warm and compassionate he is. And then secondly, the business that he's built. He's been in the game for 25 years and he's built out this huge business for multi-family. and been syndicating for, 20 plus years. And I just I asked my brother, I was like, Hey, can you ask him, can I please come and intern for him? Even though we were close? I just wanted to come for my brother. My brother convinced him or not convinced him. I think he just said naturally, said yes, and he, the guy was so awesome. He put me up in an apartment. He furnished it for me for the three months and I just went in his office and I. Would try to learn and add value as much as I can. Every week he'd have a call or not a call a meeting with me to go over everything I learned that week and fine tune things and what to look for and what not to look for and how to do things. And so I just emulated someone I wanted to be. He's now even become a closer mentor to mine. And I see him all the time and I thank him every day for starting me this path. I'm gonna make the assumption that he's a fantastic father too.

Oh, he's, I'm not even, he's incredibly, he has four kids that are just the most humble, down to earth, amazing kids ever. Their whole life is something that me and my wife always want to emulate. . Brian: And there's a point that I of the times on the show, they say, they message me, they email me, they say, Brian, how do I find a mentor? How do I find a mentor? And I tell them that they're putting the cart before the horse because I think that you need to really figure out who the hell do you want to become. before you find the person that emulates that because people are trying to emulate something that's an idea that they don't even have fully formulated yet. So that's why I wanted to hit on that and really drive the point home that not only were you looking for a multi-family guy or like a guy that was in real estate that was successful, but he was also warm and compassionate, and he was a great father and he ran his business and his lifestyle design in the way that you wanted to become. You did the freaking work first, and then that's how you knew it was a hell yes. Home. Yeah. And that's, it's always easier. Yeah. It's always easier to know exactly what you want and then work yourself backwards. I

love that, man. I love that. Yeah. So what happens next? So you go through oh yeah, . So talk through that, it To be able to Yeah. To go from that to that. And then you were having to swallow a little bit of pride and it. Some, I'm sure some turmoil in that transition point because whenever we're going from version A to version B, there's some friction there. Walk

us through it. Yeah. I think the biggest friction, I didn't have any internal turmoil. One thing you'll get to know me is like when I make a decision, everything becomes really easy, right? Let's talk about this previous point. A lot of times I talk to people and they're like, Hey, what should I do? Should I do this? What do you think about this? I said, do you, and typically my question is always this verbatim. Do you know what you want 10 years from now? And when people are making big decisions, it's because they don't have any idea of what they want. They don't have a crystal clear vision of what they want 10 years. because it's so easy to make big decisions when you know exactly what you want outta life, what you want to create. And so the pro the progression from poker player to real estate professional or investor. The only ti the part was really difficult is I was still spending money as if I was making it And so when you Guilty . Yeah. So when you are making money in poker, it's easy comment, it's easy. Go whatever here. This Sure. Whatever. . But when you're in starting a career in a business, man, every dollar counts. And my first flip, I made $5,000. That's something I would typically, or $3,000, that's something I would typically do win or lose pretty easily a night. But it never deterred me and it was just like a motivation. I loved it. I caught the bug and I kept going. That was the biggest, the tran, the biggest transition was I was making all this money, but you know what I. . I was so steered by my passion and my, by my decision and where I wanted to be, that it was so much fun to me. My wife always makes fun of me because there was like a good two year period where, I'm not kidding you. I checked my credit score like twice a day. Yep. But I, as a poker player, I thought I'd buy everything, cash, everything. I always thought that like I was just my, this young naive kid that I just thought everything would buy cash. So my, my credit score was like five 20. Oh. So I had to back up. . Yeah. It was pretty shitty. Luckily now I can say I, I want brag myself when it's eight 30 now, which I'm really happy about. Oh my God. Yeah. Which is sick. But I was obsessive, man. I was obsessive. I just became really obsessive about what I wanna do. So the transition wasn't hard. It was realizing that real life money was actually really hard to make. Got it. And that's the biggest thing about poker man, is like, poker can keep you at this. Right where you're making more than like high paying jobs, but like for the way I was built and the what I was doing sustainable, I was never gonna, it's not sustainable. I'm never gonna crack like a multimillionaire. I might become a millionaire at some point. But I might, I'm not gonna crack multimillion. I'm not gonna crack a hundred million. I'm not even get close to building something where I could just do whatever I want. And so that's when I realized hey, I'd rather go build something bigger than myself. Yeah. And it's like to

that, and it's like you're, it's like you're just driving a sports car and you're just pedaled with a floor. And you're just redlining the thing and it's yeah, it's fun when you're in a freaking Ferrari and you're going to hunter down the interstate. But like, how long? until you run outta gas. How long until the engine kind of starts breaking down, yeah. You can't just keep, can't keep operating at that level of friction. What levers did you pull to change your environment, man? Because you're going from a world where you've got a bunch of poker buddies to, like, how that process go? That

is a great freaking question. I remember when I was 25 and I was moving from Houston, while I was living in Houston and I moved to Las Vegas to. Just keep doing the poker thing. I remember when I was I didn't read any books at that time. I didn't really have any personal development, but I remember having, being laying in bed, I was very depressed. And I just like, I hated my life because I made a bunch of, I saw this condom lose a bunch of money. Yeah. And I was, I remember looking around and taking evaluation of all my friends. I was living with my ex-girlfriend at the time. I'm like, this sucks. This is, this life just sucks. And I didn't like her whatsoever. And she didn't really like, and I just said, wow, I don't like any of my friends. They're not good influences. They're these people that are just takers. And I remember calling all of my friends, which weren't that many. There was like seven of them at that time. And I just said, Hey, you know what? I'm like, I'm breaking up with you. Basically, I like, I had a friend breakup. I just had listen, I want to go a different trajectory in my life. I don't think we can be friends. I'm really sorry. I enjoyed the good times that we had, but. I'll always be cordial with you, but I just don't wanna be friends anymore, so I apologize. I actually did that and it was one of the greatest decisions of my life. And so when I moved to Vegas, I really don't have many friends. I had my family. I don't really have many friends there at the same time, when I was transitioning from poker into real estate I did an emotional intelligence course and I really loved the environment. I like, I really came unlock. And so I knew I wanted to surround myself with other like-minded people in personal development, people who were on the same trajectory as me. And I really built my friendship group from this at least when I lived in Vegas out of this core group of personal development junkies. , and really wanted a fast track. Are results in life. And those are people who I befriended. My wife luckily was the same exact person as I was then personal development junkie, even at a, to we went to a Tony Robbins u p W and we hadn't taken a honeymoon yet. This is my wife and I just remember saying this is why I'm so glad we, I married you. She ran up to. and she's can we for our honeymoon, do the Fiji life and wealth mastery? Thank God I married the right woman. And so Patty, we're about to have another kid. Come on, . Yeah, . , Brian: correct. Peak state, baby , Pasha: vague state for short. Yeah, it was great, man. I enjoyed it and so I really developed my friend. within that community. And then obviously things evolve, some fall off and some stay with you. And that's really what happened. But I never kept my poker friends because of the degenerative lifestyle. Yep. And I am not attracted to in friendships where people keep making the same mistakes over and over again. I am like, the biggest supporter of my friends, but I am the first one to say this is a pattern and that you're getting a abruptly end the pattern now and I'll support you for that. But don't keep coming to me with the same problem. I'm not that guy. I just had that conversation with a friend of mine who's like going through this breakup, not breakup thing, and he's called me three times in the last, like two weeks lately. And I had to tell him, I said, listen, I'm always gonna be here. But only call me from now on about your relationship, only if you're making a really hard decision, and then I'll support you then.

Yeah. not here, I'm not here to babysit you emotionally

here. Yeah. And my time is valuable. I love my friends, but also at the same time, grow up . Yeah.

No it's hilarious to think about it. It's a heavy subject and that's why I ask about it, because I went through it too, and nobody talks about it. They just act like it's the easiest thing, but I think it's the hardest thing in this journey. . Killing off parts of you killing parts of your ego killing off old relationships. I'm doing that right now. I'm moving from Atlanta to Austin, Texas. because, oh, I just got out of a long-term relationship. I just got done traveling around the world. I came back and I'm like, let's do an inventory here. Let's do an audit. And it's just it's time to move on. It's time to be around the people in Austin all the go bros in Austin. So I'm doing the same thing as you. So it's just fun to watch other people on this journey. What's some advice that you would give to people that are going through a similar transition, especially as we're going here into a new year where people are making a lot of change and then we'll get into the financials here.

Yeah. Look, I. At the end of the day my advice to anybody that's in here and having to make that decision again, let's talk let's resurface the conversation from earlier, long term. You have to know what you want. You want a crystal cure vision. You have to be inspired by your friends. People. People think this is really hardcore of me, but I rank my friends, right? Oh man. Like MySpace. Oh God, yeah. A hundred percent. , and that was brutal, by the way, publicly . I loved it, by the way. I loved it. I think I, I loved it so much because it's instant feedback, right? Sure. It truly is. And if you are in an entrepreneurial role, you have to get feedback. If you can't get feedback you're just screwed. You're gonna keep making the same mistakes over and over again. So I love the instant feedback. So I rank my friends. I'm not saying don't be as cutthroat as I am, but what happens is you start to dec. Very easily. What's really important to you in a friend? And that's what you seek, right? And then so a, I would really figure out what you want in your friendships, right? They're just just taking a step backwards and really getting in with yourself and maybe journaling to see what attracts you to people and who you want to be around. So when you can identify those traits in a friend. , go and seek a friendship and go tell that person. I would like to be friends. Be authentic. Yeah. But there's also

a key point to that. You have to be the guy or the girl that's like worth that. You have to be that person Yeah. To seek that person. I think a lot of people forget to do that part

Exactly. Exactly. A hundred percent. And and then the and there's a, just a other key components there is that, you have to understand that life is one long continu. and people will come and go into your life and people will come and be part of your journey forever. They'll be lifelong friends. People will come in for 10, 20 years and that's awesome. Some people will be in for five years, some people will be in for six months. Some people, and you have to understand that life is just as. Crazy continuum, but I promise you, if you're whole and you like love yourself, you're gonna find other people who can be around you, who you can share the love with. There's just so much of abundance of love and people are so generally good at their core. And so that even if you have to get rid of some friends, just understand that's just part of your chapters in life. And if you're holding onto something that's not serving you now or serving an anchor where you want to, , then it's not worth it. If it's just a net, like you, we talked about it a little bit earlier. If you're, if they're a net positive in your life, then keep them. If they're a net negative, just get rid of them. It's you know what it's like when you're giving advice to somebody who's in a relationship, that's a bad relationship. We like when you do that, you just, cuz you're not emotionally attached, you just know what the right answer is. Always. Yeah. Like you're just like I told you so it's just, we're never wrong when we're emotionally detached. Unat attached from the relationship. Yeah. . And so you have to learn how to be able to unattach yourself and detach yourself from the emotions and understand it logically if they're gonna serve good or bad. I'm not saying give up on love and try to help and support people. You should always do that. You should always know that you tried to help 'em in whatever way, but if they're not serving you like another person will fill up that void that you're about to get rid of. I. Yeah, and

I like the analogy of the minivan, , you've got this minivan of life and you've got all these different seats and rows in this giant minivan, and it's just you don't necessarily need to kill the relationship completely. Some of these people may be friends from college or people that would take a freaking bullet for you and you're like, Hey, I'm not killing the relationship and I'm killing my availability to it. Yeah. So it's just like they're not sitting in, yeah, they're not sitting in the front seat of the van with you. Controlling the directions, controlling the music that you're listening to, like they're sitting in the back. And sometimes it has to be family members too. But walking through your journey, walk us through at a macro level again. So you are flipping houses. Walk us. The kind of the transition of businesses and we'll dissect them a little bit here over the next 10 minutes and then wrap up. Sure.

Yeah, at a very high level on the flips, I was making about 20% margin on net on all my properties, and it was a high turnover margin for me. It was try high turnover. I can typically buy these things at auctions and be, have them sold within the three month period. Las Vegas changed its laws around where you couldn't even really sell until the. Or list it technically on the, until the 91st day for some reason after the financial crash happened. So that kind of delayed it. And then there was some other stupid of law that they put in that, like you really, every house went from being able to be sold within three months on a very systemized way to at least five or six months every home now. And that just kind. completely killed my margin. So the Los Angeles good move was good for that reason. When I moved to Los Angeles I flipped one home here, and I quickly realized that I was such a small fish in a huge pond. And for every deal that I was going after, even though we were trying to go all cash, and I was like, in Vegas, when you're all cash, man, you just, you're on top of the litter, right? Here in Los Angeles. Everybody was all cash. And these were guys were, that were massively wealthier than me, right? And so they kept asking for proof of funds and I kept having to ask my friends who were richer than me, can you gimme a proof of funds, please? And, like just, but I, it was so competitive. And so when I was flipping that one home though, I picked an area that was path of progression and I knew that. And my partner and I at the time started. man. There's like a lot of empty land here, which is quite rare for Los Angeles. This is an Eagle Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Matt, Washington area, which is just north of downtown and downtown just blew up and in LA whatever. I won't get into it, but it was in the path of progression. Sure. And there's all these empty lands there for about 20, 25 K lots. And I was like, Hey, we gotta figure this game out. And we did. And I, so what I did is I went and bought as much land as I could, knowing that everywhere around this area you could not get anything like this or even something close to this. It was just so mind boggling to me that this was still left in Los Angeles and my thesis was correct. And in thus, , five or six years that I was flip developing. I was just developing on this land and that land now is easily worth 150 K per lot that we bought. It's really exploded, went from there. And I really decided that for my short-term goals and my long-term goals, I wanted to stop flipping houses. Not flipping developing homes because it's like feaster famine. The money was coming in, then you go and put, do other projects and so I didn't really enjoy this up and down. Plus just understanding how my brain works. It was torturous to wait two months for a decision from the LA county. It was torturous having to deal with these neighborhood councils. And so I don't like when a decision is held up for two weeks by the city and you're waiting for this. It drove me nuts. So I wanted to get into something faster. Results cuz of my a d brain. Went into multi-family, wanted to build a passive income cause I knew I wanted to be a father soon. When I did that, I bought some apartment complexes in Wichita, which was really fun because I went to go buy one house. So this is how my whole multi-family thing progressed. I went to go one, buy one house, cause I wanted to be in low. Housing, and I want to create these programs in low income housing that could be for another time. . And so I went, and in Wichita I had boots on the ground. I have a good family of friends that live there, and the realtor goes I have this 74 kind of unit complex. They're all like fourplexes, triplexes and low income areas. Do you wanna look at it? I said, yeah, absolutely. Send him my way. And I'm evaluating all these numbers, and mind you, I, I was only looking for one. , I was all these numbers and I just said, holy shit. Like I have to buy this. This is insane. And so I even contacted my friend, I was like, Hey, these numbers can't be right. Can you please overlook my shoulder? And sent it to him. And he goes, buddy, like if these are the actual numbers and they're not like lying to you, you have to buy. 74 unit complex. I said, all right, so I did . That's how it goes. Why? That's how it goes. So I was like, all right, cool. I went from wanting one and creating a rental portfolio of burrs in Wichita to I have the 74 unit. While I'm in escrow, I ask the property manager that we're hiring, Hey, do you have anything else that you know, I could potentially land? And he said, we have this deal two years ago. buyers walked out on, but I think they still wanna sell. Let me reach out to 'em. I said, sure, please. I don't even know the size. And he's you haven't even, you haven't even gotten multi-family

yet. Like you just

are under contracting your first mortgage. I'm under contract. I'm in the escrow process and the due diligence process of the 74 unit, and I get this 180 unit to me, this apartment complex. And and so I underwrote it and I said, I think this makes sense, but there's gotta be things I'm missing. I've never. Done a transaction. I've done a bunch of underwriting. First I took all the courses. I went back to the same buddy who I trust dearly, and he goes, you have to buy this. This is, you have to buy it. We had at what was it? We bought it, our clothes officially, and at six four, he's I, you gotta go up to 7 million up for this deal. So we bought the deal. And I, at this point, I was just just doing bridge loans and trying to sell off my development projects. And so I went from a 74. To 180 unit. And so I basically went from buying one and buy one to 250 units, but very quickly after another 10 unit there and then it was just lights off. I just said, oh, these are the numbers that I can make here. This is the passive income that I want to create. So then I just started selling off my portfolio of all my development deals and transitioning it all into multi-family. Then I had a friend of. Convinced me to buy a mobile home park because again, there were stigmas, but I said, Hey you're really smart. If you're putting your own money into this, let me go research it. I've heard this enough times. Lemme go research. I started doing the numbers. I started understanding what mobile home parks were. I said, okay, let's buy this. I looked at this mobile home park through the lens of an apartment owner and I said, this deal doesn't work through an apartment owner. And he goes, just trust. and we bought it, quote unquote what I thought was top of market. That property loan did better than my other properties I got for a steal. We actually just closed on that deal. We bought it less than a year ago. We just closed on it and made about a 60% i r on it just less than one year. And I started a fund for that. Yeah. And so then I just started to realize the more research I did, the more I realized I have a thesis that if things are no-brainers, that's what I go. properties that are no-brainers and a sector that are no-brainers, in my opinion, was mobile home parks. And so now I realize there's a lot of people like myself who are getting into the mobile home park space. And this is really a kind of an untapped market that I am now just devoting all my energy and time to, and we're having wins like this left and right because we are in secondary and tertiary markets. We're not messing with institutional money. We are not the brand in Turner. But we are getting these little properties that are like 50 to 150 units in secondary and tertiary markets that are, have so much inefficiencies already going into them that we're able to just build a ton of equity in. Yeah. Fun. And this

is all over, and this is all over the last couple of years,

right? This is all over the last couple of years. But this is the thing, when you identify a market you want to be in, and when you, I identify, let's say, let's bring it back to a poker term, a game that you want to be. You've gotta attack it with vigor, right? And so there's, I'm not gonna sit on the sidelines and wish 10 years from now, man, I wish I got more of my hands on these properties because these properties are getting gobbled up. And so me and my team we're scaling. And also to know, even though we're scaling, we're incredibly conservative even compared to most operators out there for the mobile home park space. Just the way we identify the properties, the way we go in the way we add in our margins, to always beat our perform. , but still these properties will be gone in five years. In my opinion. Institutional money oper like people who are good operators like myself are coming into this space left and right. I wanted to attack it, man.

All right. Yeah. You put your shifts on the table there, bro. Oh my God. Yep. Yeah. So a quote that comes to mind, there was a guy that we had come speak at a GoBundance event. His name was Craig Valentine. I don't know if you were there for that one, but he was like a professional keynote speaker, and he's like, when it comes to speeches and speaking, you can't get ready. You have to stay ready. He goes, so if I get a speaking engagement next week, I already need to be on my. because then it's showtime. And so that's how I view your story to where it was just like, you didn't spend, you didn't go spend 30 months doing due diligence on multi-family and taking the courses, doing the masterminds, doing all this stuff. You're just like, okay, like I've got a friend that knows how to under rent, multi-family this, I'm just gonna ask, oh, hey, is this a good deal? I think it's a good deal. Let me double check. And you're like, okay, cool. I'm gonna figure. . So yeah, you were ready to go. You're like, okay, I'm taking this down, and let's figure this thing out. Yeah. And that's how the game works. And most people don't realize that. They think that it's like this one unit, then two unit, then four unit. The next year is an eight unit the next year, but they don't understand compound returns and exponential returns. Yeah. Like you did.

Yeah. What I will say is this, before I got into multi-family for two years, I studied multi. I went to seminars, I went to So you were ready? I was. I, yeah. For, again, I'm an always overly prepared kind of guy, because I know what I want to do and education's such at a forefront. But it's true. Like you're gonna seek opportunity and you just have to be ready. Go for it. As long as your numbers work, right? Like especially with the poker, if the numbers work and the odds are in your favor, and you've built enough cushion on your margins and you know that, then you've gotta go attack it, right? You just have to be ready to go attack it, and then you'll figure it out. That's the cool thing about entrepreneurship. You have to go figure it out. I didn't have the money to buy the 180 units all tied up in my development deals, but I knew that I could get a bridge loan. I knew I could figure something. I knew I had a bunch of equity. I knew I had a bunch of collateral. You just figure it out's just one step. Figure out what you wanted. You just figure it out. Also another beautiful thing that anyone can take away from this. You don't have to do it yourself. if you want to create something, you can have some. I was always a lone wolf. And now that with within my business, I have like a partner who is just incredible what he does, and I'm good at what I do, and we're able to run fashion. We've built out a team, and hi. Hire or partner up with your weak spots. , but you have to know what your weak spots.

Yeah. Yeah. And for my limited interactions with all this game, like I'm in the trenches with people is what I like to say. But the e o s system's a pretty good way of identifying. So it's just are you the visionary or are you the integrator? And like for me, I'm painfully a visionary to where I'm like really good at crafting these big visions. But then I'm like, okay, cool. It's time to make it come true. But in this new economy, we've done a bunch of calls about this and we don't have to go in depth about it, but what asset classes are you gonna just go, you're going all in on mobile home parks, you're like, this is my freaking thing. I'm diving in on this over these next couple of years. I see this is my play. What do you think?

Yeah it's a hundred percent you heard here first guys. Yeah. . Yeah that's it. Yep. There you go. Really you just. I never tried to predict what's gonna happen. Fir, first of all, actually, let me back up 1 1, 1 moment. I'm in mobile home parks because I knew it was recession. Recession resistant. Like anybody in 2008 who had mobile home parks that don't have variable rates, it was business as usual. Okay? I'm not saying that this recession's gonna be anything like that. What I do know about this recession is that it's gonna hurt. It's gonna keep hurting for a little bit. Money's gonna be expensive, but. . A lot of people who have a lot of money on the sidelines we're very liquid. Even though we're in a recession, there's a lot of liquidity on the sidelines. I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't know how it is. It's gonna like change. But what I do know is this, at some point, It's gonna churn. It's gonna churn really quickly, right? And I've picked a sector of what, at least I do in my business, that I can keep accumulating and I still want to keep accumulating good properties. Anytime you're in recession, real estate's pretty easy cuz it's on deal per deal basis. Is this deal gonna make me my IRSs that I need to hit in five to 10 years? If yes, it doesn't matter what time you buy it in. And so for us all across our portfolio, , we're still so under market rents that we're still gonna keep making money. We're still about only 10 5% of household medium income for all of our markets where the average is 32%. So in a recession, we actually see an in increase, in an uptick. in demand. Where about other, I know other sectors of real estate are having less demand, having to lower their prices into, in certain markets. , I'm not an expert on those markets. I just know what's happening for us. Nothing has changed for us other than we're becoming tighter with our guidelines on purchasing new properties because we know that interest rates are gonna increase. And we've also become more conservative in our underwriting on cap rates. So we, if we're coming in at a seven cap rate, we typically will write for about a seven cap rate exit or a 7.25 cap rate exit. And now we're increasing it to about an, like an extra point or point and a. In some cases, depending on markets, and that's on a a 10 year exit. So we're being ultra-conservative in our underwriting. Yeah. But then

you can also look at the people that are hyper liquid and you can look at the calls that we are having. And you can look at like the macro psychology of it, and it's just like when the 2000 and when 2008, like you've got like the two thousand.com bubble. You got the 2008 real estate bubble. But it's just like in our circles, you see so many people that have made such generational wealth from the back backside of 2008 to where they were just like on fire. So it's just like in the entrepreneurship communities, I feel like not only are people liquid, but the macro psychology is. around this time where everyone's okay, bring it on. I've been looking to find deals like . Yeah. I've been waiting like, okay, bring it on. Macro macroeconomic crash. Let's go. I'm I've been waiting. I've got 50 million on the sidelines. I think Brookshire Hathaways got like a couple hundred billion sitting on the sidelines. Yeah. They're just ready to go.

Hey, as long as they find a good deal, they're gonna deploy it, right? Yeah. And so also people learn lessons, man, everyone. That I know is oh, I should have bought more in 2009, 2010, 2011, those 2010, 2011 were the prime times to buy real estate. Everything was jerk cheap and everyone was going after it. So the psychology, like you mentioned, is that, hey, when things are down, go buy them. But right now, money's expensive. Things are getting a little tighter. Deals are harder to come by because sellers haven't come down. So I expect about. Six to 12 months, I think some sellers will come to realization that the market is completely different. And then we'll be able to find a lot of good deals. I think

so too. All right, brother. Where can people find you?

Yeah, I think the easiest thing is if you're in GoBundance, you can reach out to me. I'm pretty easily to get connected with too. But if you're not screw you . Yeah. If you true. No, you should join. Just, I say that because I'm. I always love getting to know people. Yeah. And bonding with others. And then, but if not, just go to evo capital.net. All my information's on there. We're actually revamping the website should launch in a few weeks. And then if you ever wanna just jump on thing, you can just jump on there. If you're a potential investor, just put your information in and we'll send you out some info. Perfect.

Love it brother. Appreciate you coming on, man. This is a freaking home run, just like when new it would be. So I appreci. Appreciate you coming on brother. This been Brian and Paha with the Action Academy Podcast. Sign it off.